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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 1 year ago

Note

Animorphs / Yellowjackets crossover?

• The night of the 25th Reunion of the Claremont High Class of 1998, Marco is waiting on the curb when Cassie’s car pulls up. He looks the same as anyone else, tonight. Not like a movie star.

He pulls her into a firm hug. Cassie holds on hard.

And then, shoulder-to-shoulder, the only two real survivors of the 1996 Air Penn disaster push open the doors and walk into their school’s gym.

• They’re not friends, not really. But tonight they need this. Marco because of the unsubtle glances of their former classmates, Cassie because of the whispered notes of concern as people watch her walk through.

“Where’s Ronnie tonight?” Marco asks, sotto voce, as they make their way to a table near the back.

“At home with Shelly.” Cassie pulls out a chair for him, then for herself. “I know kids are invited, but she didn’t need to be here. T’Shondra?”

“Same story.” Marco gives his public smile for a classmate’s husband who’s even now pointing and whispering their way. “Out with friends.”

Before Cassie can say anything else, they both clock the woman approaching, a copy of Marco’s autobiography in hand. Marco’s smile widens another inch, edging toward feral, even as he pulls out the pen.

• See, a while back, Marco was in a movie. He got the role as a press gimmick, but he’d done pretty well with his minor part and there was talk of his getting a recurring role in an upcoming Netflix series.

• A while before that, Marco wrote a book. The most-quoted review called it “a tell-all that tells none,” which isn’t even wrong. There are plenty of anecdotes about his life before the plane crash, his life after being rescued 18 months later, and even a few isolated descriptions of their mock-prom and their pretzel-sharing system while out stranded in the mountains. He cottons to having eaten an entire bottle of Rachel’s foundation when hungry enough, but that’s as scandalous as it gets.

• A while before that, Marco did a speaking tour. It was half inspirational, half comedy show. He perfected the art of answering questions without actually answering them.

When asked the worst thing he did to survive: “Breathing in Jake Berenson’s stank eighteen months out from his last shower, hoo boy.”

When asked how Rachel died: “Uh, hello? There was a plane crash and we all spent a year and a half without real food? You’re the one who bought tickets to this event, lady, you can’t tell me you didn’t already know that.”

When asked why Cassie claimed Rachel was alive until a few months before rescue: “Dude, I wouldn’t trust anything I said after all the isolation and hunger. I went full-on Tom-Hanks-talking-to-a-volleyball out there, only my volleyball was a friggin’ rock, and let me tell you on the bad days my rock friend Mr. Balboa started talking back.”

When asked whether he’d left anything out of his book: “The shit bucket. We do not speak of the shit bucket.”

When asked how David died: “Seriously, you did buy tickets for this event on purpose, right? You are here to see guy-who-was-in-a-plane-crash voluntarily? Because if this is, like, a hostage situation, then blink three times...”

• In retrospect, the crash itself would seem so clear. Practically inevitable, as one Reddit commenter puts it. It was a crappy charter plane that they’d booked last-minute because the commercial flight had been canceled for weather. It was overloaded with luggage and equipment from the baseball team on board. It had one pilot battling a long illness, and one who still held trainee status. Rumors of a bribe to allow a too-fast inspection were never confirmed, but they were never denied. Wing, meet downdraft. Nose, meet mountain.

• For over a year, everyone assumed that was the end of the U.S.’s third-ever coed Little League team. The news outlets ran beats of the same story: Rachel Berenson showed up to tryouts alongside her cousin, knowing perfectly well this was the boys’ team. The unusually progressive coach let her at least give pitching a try. She struck out five batters in a row. She struck out a hell of a lot of other teams too, throwing a no-hitter that got her team into Playoffs and then giving them a shot at the Little League World Series.

Then the storm. Then the crash.

The other girls on the team — Cassie, Collette, Kelly and Elena — got mentioned as well. Sometimes the reporters even remembered there were boys, that Jake was their main slugger and team captain, that Aximili could clean up the bases on a hard hit and steal anything he didn’t bat in.

If you look long, you might even catch one of the broadcasts that remembers the pilots. If you’re really lucky, you might catch the one segment — just one — that mentions Gafinilan and Mertil without immediately blaming them for their own deaths.

• Melissa was almost on that plane. Nowadays she’s fond of telling people that: she missed being on that flight by a matter of sheer luck. The Yellowjackets’ shortstop, she would’ve been traveling with them except she took a hard line-drive to the face less than a week before playoffs. Concussed, barely able to see out of her left eye, she was forced to miss the rest of the season while Marco took her place.

“I was almost on that plane,” Melissa says, on the stage of their school gym, the night of the 25th Reunion. She’s looking straight at Marco over the top of the mic stand. “It was almost me.”

I was almost as famous as you get to be, it sounds a little like she’s saying.

“Never forget what we lost.” Melissa clicks the remote in her hand and that stupid Goo Goo Dolls song starts playing. Cassie feels Marco stiffen next to her as the first image of Rachel fills the projector’s 40-foot screen.

• Back then, Tobias shouldn’t have been on that plane at all. He was just the coach’s son, just the pitcher’s nephew, just the batboy. Not a Yellowjacket. And yet.

• Back then, when Rachel swam awake in the first seconds after the crash, her whole body aching, Jake was crouched directly in front of her. “Move!” he shouted in her face. “Rachel, we have to move!”

She widened her eyes, trying to clear her vision. Jake was filthy with ash and blood, blooming with red marks that would soon be bruises, and even over the ache of her whiplashed neck she couldn’t ignore the sharp pain of the seatbelt-jerk bruise across both hips.

“The plane” Jake shouted “is on fire—”

And that got her on her feet.

They moved so fast that the world would’ve blurred even without her battered brain: Cassie was the first person they ripped from a seat, then David. Collette was bent up all wrong, body folded around the seatbelt in a way that made her scream breathless as Rachel dragged her loose. They got Marco under both arms and heaved him out into the snow. Jake got as far as grabbing Kelly, and then he jerked his hand back from cold bloodless flesh. No time for discussion, with smoke thickening the air; they moved to Elena and shoved her out as well.

Tobias was the hardest of all, crouched over his father. Coach Alan was upright in his seat, but he wasn’t breathing to disturb the smoke and didn’t react when Jake jabbed him hard in the eye. Both arms around Tobias, Rachel dragged backward, holding him against her body until she was able to tip him onto the emergency slide. She turned back to the nose of the plane.

Jake met her coming the other way. He shook his head, pointing for the exit.

“Timmy!” she shouted, coughing. “Craig and, and—” Their basemen were all still up there, hidden in the opaque smoke. She tried to shove past Jake, but he blocked the aisle.

“We have to go!” He had to shout too, in order to be heard over the roar of the fire.

“Craig!” she screamed, fighting Jake, but he was shoving her backward. “Liam!”

And then they were falling, down the slide, tumbling in a heap into the snow below.

Rachel punched Jake in the face. The fuselage exploded.

• Then, the headcount over the next few hours contained more bad news than good. Jake’s older brother, their third-base coach, was dead. So was Tobias’s dad. So was their chaperone Mr. Hamee. Timmy, first base; Liam, second; Craig, third; Jesse, reserve. All had been sitting together near the front.

No sign of the emergency beacon. Collette, Pedro, and Elena all injured. Enough bags of trail mix and pretzels to get them through maybe four more days out here.

It would’ve been five, but David was bouncing around the wreckage talking a mile a minute and pouring peanuts into his face. "Do you guys see this shit?" he was shouting. "Like a movie! Like an action movie! It’s wild!"

“I think the bleeding has stopped,” James said quietly, where he and Cassie were bent over Elena. There wasn’t blood anymore, but it’d been coming out of Elena’s ear. There was no way that was good.

“We’re fucked.” Marco said it first, staring at the burst-open fuselage. “We’re totally fucking fucked.”

“They’ll find us.” Jake spoke even louder than David. “There’s a search party going as soon as any plane goes off radar, and...” He pointed to the huge swath of downed trees the plane had destroyed in its last seconds of life. “We’ll be easy enough to spot.”

Tobias had been sitting on the ground, staring into space, but at that he lifted his head. “How far were we blown off course?” he asked. “Do we have any guarantee they’re even looking in the right place?”

There was a long silence from everyone, even the injured and panicking kids. Rachel broke it when she jerked the trail mix bag out of David’s hand, which was the second time in their first day that a conflict came to blows.

• Now, Marco drives through the night, after he leaves the reunion. He didn’t have a drop of alcohol — paying for Tobias’s third and fourth trips through rehab turned him off the stuff — and his relationship with sleep has been somewhere between on the rocks and it’s complicated for the last two decades. He keeps to the speed limit, making three left turns to be sure no paparazzi are following, and he keeps his eyes on the road. Once he catches himself humming “Iris” under his breath, and in response cranks the car’s XM metal station to eardrum-damaging levels.

• Now, the sun’s coming up by the time Marco makes it to Seattle. He checks his hair twice in the rearview mirror, smoothing it back and then ruffling it into an attempt at nonchalance. The shop’s exactly where he remembers it being, the last six times he drove up here and lurked across the street without ever going in.

This time, he gets out of the car.

“Welcome to Wash World, how can I...”

The guy behind the counter trails off. He’s a big man, full beard and long hair sprinkled with gray. In the flannel shirt and fleece-lined jeans, he looks like a typical Seattle hipster. Even the California accent fits.

“Hi Jake,” Marco says. It feels like an understatement, all things considered. It’s been fifteen years since he last spoke to his ex.

“You a customer?” A small woman in a brightly-colored headscarf appears at Jake’s elbow before he can say anything.

“If you’re not a customer, you have no business here.” A different woman, albeit with the same Eastern European accent, has emerged from behind Marco. She crowds close to Marco, backing him away from Jake.

“Our Yakob has no business with anyone and you can have your shirts pressed or you can leave.” The third of the Eumenides has gone so far as to pull the front door open and gesture.

Marco holds up both hands in surrender. Cassie told him to call ahead, and apparently she wasn't kidding.

“Ms. Zivojinovic,” Jake says, to one of them. Possibly to all three. “There’s no harm. He’s my brother.”

Marco’s eyebrows go up at that, but sure. He won’t argue. It’s simpler than the truth, and more likely to go down easy with this group.

The one closest to the door sniffs loudly. “If he’s not a customer, I don’t care if he’s Jimmy Hoffa found at last. He can —”

“I prefer to think of myself as Amelia Earhart.” Marco shrugs out of his 5000-dollar leather coat, dropping it on the counter. “There, dry clean that.”

“It’ll take three to five business days,” the woman behind the counter says. “You going to stick around for three to five business days? Or are you some fly-by-night, ne’er-do-well, love-and-leave...”

“He’s my brother,” Jake protests, louder.

“I have a brother,” the one by the door mutters. “You have never met him, Yakob, and do you know why?”

Jake sighs. “He is garbage?”

“He is garbage! Would you like a receipt?”

Marco takes a second to recover from the abrupt turnaround. “Yeah, I want a receipt. How would I get my coat back without one?”

“If it comes to that,” one of the Misses Zivojinovic says ominously, “we will find you.”

• Jake extracts himself from the Eyrenies at last, promising to be back within the hour. “Come on,” he says to Marco. “There’s a café a few doors down.”

Marco follows until they’re just outside the plate-glass window, and then he stops. “Good to see you, bro.” He waggles his eyebrows at their reflections.

Turning, Jake follows the direction of Marco’s gaze. He doesn’t laugh, but he does an almost-smile. It’s obvious why Marco’s amused: Jake’s stopped growing at six-foot-three, two-fifty pounds. Between that and the beard, they’ve never resembled each other less. “I’m sorry,” Jake says. “It was just...”

Marco flaps a hand in the air, dismissing this. “Like I’ve never told someone you’re my cousin or team captain or very good friend.” He doesn’t have a dead brother, so he’d never dare to pull out the line Jake just used, but he gets it.

It’s too cold to linger on the sidewalk without a coat. Jake pulls open the door to the café, ushering them both inside. Marco pays for their coffees and Jake lets him, because neither of them talked about it when it was Jake paying for Marco’s arcade passes and cheeseburgers.

“So the beard.” Marco gestures, tilting the rim of his mocha latte. “That’s different. I had wondered how you’d managed to avoid notice all this time.”

Looking down, Jake fiddles with his paper cup of hot chocolate. “I don’t own a phone or computer. It’s as simple as that.”

“Oh, I’m sure and the Kindly Ones using the bodies of nosy journalists to compost their garden have nothing to do with it.”

Jake shrugs. “They’re good people. And they don’t watch the news.”

“Yeah,” Marco says. “Speaking of which.”

All at once, Jake’s whole body goes still. It’s the kind of tension, readiness for violence or flight, that Marco hasn’t seen since the last time he watched Jake drive a knife through the chest of a struggling rabbit. “Something came out,” he says.

Marco shakes his head. “Nothing like that. Not yet, anyway.” Lifting his butt halfway off the chair, he fishes out the scrap of paper Cassie gave him last night.

I know what you did. I won’t keep silent unless you make me. That’s all there is to the note, other than the rough symbol scrawled underneath. It looks like an odd little insect: six limbs on an elongated torso, two extra eyes on stalks, a scorpion-like tail.

• Back then, Tobias was the first one to find the symbol carved into a tree trunk. “Look,” he’d said, voice rising in excitement as he pointed up at it. “Guys, look.”

“What is it?” Rachel squinted at the symbol. “Some kind of alien centaur-thing?”

“Who cares what it is?” Tobias spun in a circle, looking for more marks. “It wasn’t carved by a moose, I can tell you that much. It’s a trail marking, or a property boundary.”

“People,” Rachel breathed.

“Exactly.”

They’d set off crashing through the woods before Jake could point out what a bad idea it was. “Hello!” Tobias had been yelling, when they’d disappeared from sight. “Hello, whoever you are!”

• Then, Cassie had watched them go, had watched Jake go chasing after. It was probably safe enough, as long as they realized they could follow their own tracks back through the mud and slush. Instead she went back to what she’d been doing: tearing their spare jerseys into strips to make bandages. There were a lot of wounded, and not a lot of clean cloths.

Rachel and Jake and Tobias weren’t back when the sun started to go down, and she did her best not to worry.

“We should eat something, right?” That was James, standing on a fallen tree to address them all. “We should each have a small snack.”

That was one of the first moments when they looked around, hoping for an adult or at least someone with some kind of seniority. One of the first moments they realized just how on their own they were.

“Yeah.” Cassie spoke up then. “We should.”

James became the one to divvy up the little bags, that first time, with Marco following as an informal enforcer. (“Two hundred calories per bag of pretzels,” Marco said, “and we can get by on seven hundred a day. We get a pretzel bag or half a trail mix apiece for three meals, and that’ll last us for five days’ worth of food.”)

“Hey,” Cassie said, sitting next to Ax. She’d seen him peering close at the back of the bag of trail mix he’d been handed, frowning at the ingredient list for the chocolate candies. “You’re vegan, right?” His family were religious, even if Tobias tended to eat meat.

He shrugged. “It’s not worth insisting on right now.”

Gently, Cassie took the trail mix out of his hands and handed him her pretzels instead. “It can still matter,” she said. “For now. We’re not giving ourselves up yet.”

Ax had smiled weakly at her, and selected a pretzel. “I hope you’re right.”

“I’m not giving myself up.” She leaned back against the log, chewing slow to make the M&Ms last. “We’ll get through this. Even if we have to walk back home.”

There was no answer. Ax was looking at the plane, at the place where his brother’s body was unlikely now ever to be recovered.

“Ax...” Cassie said, feeling like a fool.

“Even if we have to walk.” Ax bit down hard on a pretzel. “We will survive.”

• Then, Tobias had come crashing back later that night, still glowing with good news, to announce the hunter’s cabin he’d found. “There’s a dead guy in the attic,” Rachel had said, as if no big deal, “but I doubt he’s using the place anymore.”

That first night in the cabin, Jake had gone up to the attic alone. It smelled rancid, it had that horrible desiccated corpse watching from the corner, but it was the only place that had privacy away from the cold.

Marco followed, because it was what Marco did; he couldn’t help it.

“I got you, man.” Marco had wrapped firm arms around Jake, had held him too tight. “I got you.”

Jake had crumpled then, but only as far as his knees. Only as far as burying his face in the juncture between Marco’s shoulder and his neck, their skin wet everywhere it intersected. Disgusting, beautiful, whatever.

• Now, Jake agrees to pack a bag and go with Marco for the next few days, even though the Weird Sisters are clearly displeased that he’s conceding to someone who knows about his past. He mumbles a greeting as they pick up Tobias outside a motel that’s really more of a flophouse, and keeps his hands in his pockets as they walk up the front steps to Cassie’s beautifully decorated front parlor.

• Now... “Hi,” Ronnie says to the others, in the kind of voice people use when they’re trying hard to sound casual. “I’m Cassie’s husband.”

It’s pretty clear Tobias has been sleeping rough; he mostly stands in the corner staring at Ronnie. Between his dad dying in the crash, what later happened to Rachel, and Ax’s disappearance, they all tend to agree that he has every right to be even more messed up than the rest of them.

More messed up is saying something — Marco knows why Jake kept the long sleeves on in the San Diego heat, he had Cassie calling him at 4AM last week claiming there were wolves in her backyard — but Tobias can’t help it. They know. It’s why Marco keeps paying for his rehab stints, why Cassie keeps offering her couch for him to sleep on.

“Jake.” Jake becomes the one to shake hands. “Thank you for having us.”

“So this... note.” Cassie gestures to the scrap on the table. “It could be nothing.”

“It could be Ax.” Tobias, of course. He has a tendency to ascribe everything from robocalls to weather patterns to Ax.

“Your relief pitcher?” Ronnie asks.

“Our friend,” Jake says, but there’s no sting to it. “We haven’t seen him since...”

• Then, it’d been six weeks since the plane crashed. Six lonely, cold, hungry weeks. Marco was walking on eggshells around David, Collette around Rachel. They’d eaten the last rabbit Tobias had shot, down to the skin, down to the marrow. Ax, of all people, had quietly suggested taking apart the taxidermied deer head on the wall to boil the skin off that as well.

Jake had floated the idea of doing their own take on Prom because... because the date would soon be right. Because they all had their formal outfits for the banquet anyway. Because it was something to do. Because they all needed a pick-up, with winter coming on. Because they were about to be out of food, again.

Rachel had seized the idea with both hands, of course. She’d gone wild with her makeup kit and the tatters of everyone’s formalwear, tying Jake’s tie and then — laughing at them, much-needed laughter — Marco’s and Ax’s and Tobias’s as well. Cassie was in jeans because she’d already sacrificed her gown to make bandages, but she looked more comfortable that way. Collette’s dye job was grown out several inches (she continued to insist she was a natural blond) but Rachel braided it so that the brown and gold wove together into a pattern.

They’d been beautiful.

• Beautiful or not, once they reached the torchlit clearing they’d stood around in silence for so long that Rachel was about to call the whole thing off.

It was James of all people who’d cleared his throat and started singing: “And I’d give up forever to touch you, ‘cause I know that you feel me somehow...”

“You’re the closest to heaven that I’ll ever be,” Jake sang along with him, Rachel taking up the melody a second later, and by the time they were at the chorus, there were six or seven voices in the clearing.

“What?” James said, when he finished and everyone was staring at him. “I’m only a badass thrash-punk six and a half days a week.”

That got another laugh, so very needed, from the clearing. Pedro made a circling motion in the air, and James turned to look at him.

“Another?” James asked, flushing but looking pleased, and Pedro made a humming noise of agreement.

“Baby’s black balloon makes her fly,” James sang, game enough, “Almost fell into that hole in your life, and you’re not thinking ‘bout tomorrow ‘cause you were the same as me...”

Tobias held out his hand for Rachel, smooth as you please, and they became the first couple twirling across the clearing in each other’s arms, both still singing along. But James had pulled Collette into his arms, he and Elena together holding her up.

And then Marco seized Jake’s hand. Jake jerked back automatically, but Marco thrust up his chin and stared hard challenge into his eyes. The kind of look Jake could never back down from, and Marco knew it.

Jake was a terrible dancer, but that was all right; Marco was a good lead. And if anyone stared, if anyone whispered, then they were looking too hard at each other to know about it.

They’d all felt a little strange, floaty-headed and bobble-eyed. James’s words slurred a little, and none of them were quite balanced. But they were hungry. That had to be it.

Time got vague. Half of them could hear the music, even after James stopped singing.

• Then, there was a scream echoing through the clearing. Instantly Jake had a branch in hand, Ax producing the hunting knife.

It was Rachel who emerged into the clearing, dragging David behind her by a fistful of his hair. She threw him to the ground in the middle of their circle, driving a kick into his side.

“Tell them!” she shouted. “Tell them what you just said to me!”

“Jake.” David rolled to his knees, arms over his head. “Jake, help me, she’s losing it!”

“Okay.” Jake kept his voice level. Anyone else, and he might’ve believed Rachel really had snapped from the stress. But out here David had revealed a side of himself that scared Jake almost as much as the snow and the hunger. He’d started talking about no rules ten minutes after the crash, and hadn’t stopped since. “Why don’t you just tell me what happened. Rachel first, then David.”

“He was talking big.” Rachel spat. “Trying to impress me. And then he said...” She leaned close to David, snarling. “Tell them. Go ahead. Tell them.”

“David?”

“I didn’t, I didn’t, I was just, I was lying, okay?” He hadn’t dropped his arms. “I was just making it up, it was just a joke.”

“What did he say,” Jake said.

“He found the plane’s emergency beacon.” Rachel’s fists shook, but her voice was steady. “The first day. He found it — and he smashed it with a rock.”

Jake felt his whole body go cold. He’d been expecting something sexual, something pressuring and gross, but... but this...

A body slammed Jake on its way past. Marco, screaming, wild with rage. He’d taken off running at David, who’d dragged himself to his feet and sprinted into the woods. Rachel was half a step behind Marco, and Tobias keeping up with Rachel. No sign of James, or of Pedro, but there were more bodies out rushing through the trees after David. David was crashing away, and then he was screaming, and then he wasn’t.

Wait, Jake considered saying. Stop. Only he didn’t. He and Collette looked at each other, and they listened to what was happening in the clearing on the other side of the ridge.

• Now, Cassie pours them all coffees, examining each of their faces. Marco’s unreadable under the makeup and big hair. Jake looks healthier than she thought possible: full-faced, broad-bellied, laugh lines starting around his eyes. Tobias is loose-skinned and skitter-eyed, but at least the track marks she can see all look old. What do they think of her, she wonders, with broad hips and grey in her braids.

“Ronnie,” she says quietly.

He pushes to his feet. “I’ll give you the room. Nice to meet you all.”

This is a reason she loves him: that he understands there are things he’ll never understand. That there are things she can only talk about with her boys, her fellow survivors. Like how, her first hot shower after getting rescued, she orgasmed so hard it felt like a panic attack. Like how she can’t stand the sight of supermarket meat, fragments of body parts sealed in plastic, but she’ll butcher and cook any livestock who die under her care.

But then, there are things the two white boys and the Latino movie star standing in her kitchen will never understand either. Things only Ronnie can appreciate.

So Cassie’s been complete. She’s been good, all things considered.

And now this. One damn thing after another.

• Now, Tobias doesn’t care what they think about him when he says again, “It could be Ax.”

“Ax has been in a funny farm in Germany since I don’t know when,” Marco says.

“Switzerland,” Jake says, at the same time Cassie murmurs, “That’s rude.”

Marco rolls his eyes, smudged day-old eyeliner exaggerating the motion. “Fine, Mom and Dad, he’s in a mental health facility in Switzerland.”

“Why would Ax blackmail us?” Jake asks, more pragmatically.

Tobias doesn’t have an answer for that one. He looks away, out the window at Cassie’s sprawling backyard. Seems like they only went two ways after rescue: soaring to success in politics (Cassie) and media (Marco), or going to ground. Tobias self-medicates; Ax pays other people to medicate him. Ax’s way probably works better, but Tobias’s is faster.

• Then, Jake had hiked back out to the site of the plane crash six months after it went down. In case some remains of the signal beacon were there. In case there was a bag of pretzels, a single solitary gummy bear, that they had missed. In case...

Coach Alan’s body was the one he saw first. Coach Alan’s skeleton, rather. The flesh had been cut away in gouts and chunks, pulled loose from the limbs and torso to expose lengths of rib and femur.

Jake staggered back, hand coming to his mouth. Craig’s body beyond looked intact, but. He couldn’t— he couldn’t— Tom—

There was a crunch from outside, and Jake spun around, hot bile in his throat.

“Hi.” James stepped into the fuselage through its torn-off front end, expression carefully neutral. “I figured this conversation was coming sooner or later.”

“You.” Jake looked from the stripped body — Ax’s brother, Tobias’s dad — to James. “You...”

“I chose to keep my friends alive.” James shoved his hands in his pockets. “Just like Rachel did.”

“Don’t say that!” Jake snapped. “David might’ve doomed us all, and Rachel didn’t have a choice.”

“We had a choice about eating him,” James said levelly. “And we chose right, didn’t we.”

Jake shook his head, shook it again. None of them had been in their right minds that night — something in the soup, something in the air. That was a mistake, and it wouldn’t happen again.

“Jake.” James took a step toward Jake. “We have to talk about this. I know you’re hoping for rescue, and so am I. But we have to make it that far, first.”

“We?” Jake said coldly. “Where’s all this...” Again he pointed at Coach Alan. “Been going, James? Because if any of it has made the communal soup pot, most of us haven’t seen it.”

“You’re right.” James shrugged. “I’ve been coming here, harvesting, and giving it to my friends. Your little clique seemed fine with getting first crack at every rabbit Tobias brings back.”

Jake was shaking his head harder, ears ringing. “We have to live with ourselves. We have to act like human beings. Not— not sharks eating their own. If nothing else, we have to all be together on this.”

“I’m keeping my friends alive,” James said. He took another step toward Jake. The hunting knife was on his belt. “I’m doing what it takes.”

Jake didn’t move. “Listen to me!” he shouted. “Listen to me, we are not doing this. Or at minimum, we’re putting it to a vote, and we’re discussing it as a team.”

“Thanks, captain,” James said. “But no thanks.”

Jake shoved him hard in the chest. James stumbled, taking a step back. “We keep everyone alive,” Jake snapped. “We act for the good of everyone. You want to lead? Fine, lead. But just because you’re hungry, that doesn’t mean you get to be selfish. Call for a vote about what we do while we wait.”

“Hungry?” The contempt was stronger now, twisting the corner of James’s mouth. “Of course I’m hungry, you fool.” He planted both hands on Jake’s chest, not shoving back, just applying pressure.

“So are they. A vote—”

“Let’s just acknowledge the elephant in the room here, Jake.” James dropped his hands. “The good of everyone is going to end with all my friends dead, well before yours kick it.”

Jake opened his mouth. “That’s not—”

“Pedro’s my roommate. Collette’s my best friend, and Elena’s with her. I was...” James pointed to the seat to his left. “Sitting there. Pedro next to me, Collette and Kelly across the way. I’m supposed to be in the same boat as them. And you know what they all have in common?”

Of course Jake knew. Collette was paralyzed, Elena couldn’t see. They weren’t sure how the hit on the head had affected Pedro, partially because he was having trouble talking enough to explain his symptoms to them.

“If it comes to a vote, to waiting for rescue, they lose,” James said. “If we’re going to be all equal and civilized, then...” He shrugged. “My money’s on Cassie to be the last to starve. That catcher’s bulk has served her well so far. But maybe it’ll be Marco, since he’s smaller and needs less. Heck, Tobias could probably provide for himself forever if he was only catching squirrels for one.”

Jake shook his head, shook it again. “That’s not...”

“You’re trying to save your friends,” James said. “I’m trying to save mine.”

�� Now, Tobias leans against Cassie’s island. “Guys,” he says, “there’s something you should know about Ax.”

He’s back stateside. He reached out to Tobias a few weeks ago. Something about a compound where a lot of people like them — damaged, not quite right — are gathering to support each other. Ax has been talking to it, he said in that call, and wouldn’t say how.

“He said he can help us settle,” Tobias tells the group. “He said he knows what it wants, and—”

“It.” Marco’s whole face twists with the force of his sneer. “It. What, the fucking mountain? Last I checked, we left that out in the Canadian Rockies where we found it.”

“Not the mountain,” Cassie says. “You know that’s not what he meant.”

“Fine!” Marco throws up both hands, drops them to his sides. “Then it doesn’t exist. The One is a fucknugget, just on the off chance it does.”

“Don’t think anyone said it wasn’t a fucknugget,” Jake says. “But might still be worth to find out what it wants.”

• Then, Ax had known what Jake hadn’t said, what Jake had found — and not found — out at the airplane.

“The wilderness provides,” Ax said, because it was the only way to make sense of it all. “The mountain has taken so much, and there’s nothing saying it won’t give something back occasionally.”

Jake stared in stunned silence, the small bundle of desiccated flesh limp in his arms. Like a man who’d braced so hard for impact he had no choice but to fall when the impact didn’t come.

“Okay,” James said. “Okay. I’ll get some water boiling.”

• Then, it’d lasted another eight months. What they’d taken from the airplane. What they’d taken from David. Tobias brought back a squirrel a week, sometimes two, sometimes even a pair of rabbits. But two rabbits among ten people stretched to less soup than would fill an eight-ounce coffee cup, and squirrels stretched less than that.

• Then, at first thaw, Marco had been the one to suggest they hike for it. A smaller team, a dash down the mountain and straight east as far as they could go. East because it was easier to keep track of, with the sun rising nearly dead-on that way now that spring had come. East, because they had to go some way. East. Until they found help, or until they couldn’t go further.

• Ax and Tobias made the first attempt. Two weeks they’d been gone. And they’d made it back to the cabin, eventually. Barely. They’d been limping, injured, so exhausted and hungry that their steps were a staggering line even as Tobias half-carried Ax to join the others.

“Fuck this,” Rachel had said, around the fire that night. “Seriously, fuck this. We’re not getting rescued, we don’t have the strength to walk out, and we don’t have anymore fresh meat. We’re all slowly starving to death.”

“So what do you suggest?” Jake said, weary and hoarse. “We sent Tobias because he can hunt, and Ax because...”

Because Ax knew more than anyone wanted to admit it was possible to know, about the whims of the thing keeping them here.

“You know.” Rachel looked at Jake, fist clenched around the knife, teeth bared. “You know.”

“We’re all still okay,” Jake said. “We’re still—”

“We’re skin and bones,” she snapped. “Our fucking teeth are falling out, Jake, and our nails are coming off. James is dying. Collette will probably go next. We need to act, now, or—”

“No.” Jake pushed to his feet, which took effort. His knees hadn’t worked right in weeks. “No. We’re not discussing this.”

“Damn right we’re not.” Rachel was on her feet as well, and she had Tobias’s gun in her hand. Now everyone was standing, all shouting, Ax trying to pry the rifle away and Marco grabbing at Rachel’s arm. She wrenched loose of them all, and raised the gun before anyone could react.

“We are not,” Jake shouted, “drawing lots!”

“Agreed.” And then Rachel swung the gun around, and she’d hooked the toe of her shoe through the trigger guard.

There was a gunshot. So loud, that none of them heard her hit the ground.

• Cassie was the first to react.

Ax was crying, Collette too. Marco was gagging like he’d throw up if he’d eaten anything at all this week. But Cassie didn’t hesitate, grabbing the knife where Rachel had dropped it on the ground.

“We do not waste this sacrifice.” She spoke loud, over everyone’s ringing ears. She was crying too, but her teeth were bared. “We do not. Now, all of you, help me.”

• Then, they’d split up a second time. James’s prediction was coming true: Cassie and Jake, Tobias and Marco and Ax, were the strongest ones left. Cassie and Jake for their fat reserves before the crash, Marco for his small stature and slow metabolism, Ax and Tobias because they knew the most about survival. They were the natural team to go down and east, down and east until they couldn’t anymore.

But Cassie stayed. To cook, to be medic as much as she could. To get the last of Rachel’s marrow where it could do some good. Jake begged her to come, but Cassie had stayed with James and the wounded ones.

• Then, they’d walked, the four boys, for another month. The tips of their toes had gone black, later to be amputated, as had the littlest fingers of both Jake’s hands. Tobias had shot until he ran out of shot, had brought back a decaying fox that writhed with maggots and had boiled the maggots into a nasty stew because the fox itself wasn’t safe to eat. Marco cried with hunger, and cried again with joy when Ax had come across the batch of fiddleheads. He didn’t care who saw.

Ax cut himself, every night when they stopped. He let blood he couldn’t afford to lose, and at some point Jake stopped trying to get him to stop.

Tobias settled for thanking the rabbits, the birds, the fox and even the maggots. He thanked the fiddleheads and dandelions, when those were what they could find.

He thanked Rachel.

• It’d happened anticlimactically: the forest ended. First on a clear-cut, then on a logging road, then on a suburban backyard.

“Who the fuck are you,” said the homeowner, when they stumbled and shuffled up to his back porch. “And what the fuck do you want.”

He had a pistol on his belt, the kind that people who didn’t know shit about guns bought just to have. He wasn’t shy about pushing his coat back to show it, but then there was the rifle slung back over Tobias’s shoulder.

“We don’t mean any harm, sir,” Jake rasped. “We were in a plane cr—”

“Get the fuck off my lawn.”

Holding up their hands, they went. Behind them, the guy made no secret about dialing 911 and loudly starting a conversation with the cops.

Good, Jake thought. That was what they needed, anyway.

• Now, they drive, Cassie at the wheel this time because no one trusts Tobias and Jake claims not to have a license. Tobias has the pair of coordinates from the text he received, and Cassie’s GPS app is wiling to take latitude and longitude as input. Marco sleeps at last, but only because Jake is there. (“Hold me,” he muttered, so soft the others can’t hear. “I don’t know what’ll happen.”) Jake does as he’s told, and so nothing much does happen.

• Cassie finds the place easy enough, because although it doesn’t have an address as such, it does have a road. Maybe Ax is up there, she thinks, looking at the gate. Maybe it is. Maybe just a bunch of hippies with soola root and too much spare time. Maybe something a hell of a lot weirder.

“We doing this?” It’s Jake, coming around the side of the car, hands stuffed in his coat pockets.

“I’m not right,” Cassie says bluntly. “You’re not either. But maybe we can figure it out, if we... I don’t know, if we listen carefully enough.”

“I’m sorry,” Jake says.

“About?” But she knows, and that’s why her tone is sharp even though she doesn’t mean it to be.

“That week.”

Cassie looks away. She knows what week; they’ve had this conversation before. “Let’s go, okay?”

• Then, it took a week — seven full days and nights — for the search party to find the cabin. Jake had described its location the best he could, and Tobias even drew a rough map, but it wasn’t enough to narrow down an entire mountain range all that quickly. One entire week, to find the other half of their party. This, after over a month of walking to get out.

Collette was dead, by the time they got there. James was dead, Pedro, Elena. Only Cassie left. She’d kept them going as long as she could, had stretched the meat and had resorted to boiling bark, boiling grass. Boiling Collette, when it came to that.

It wasn’t enough. She wasn’t enough.

Cassie didn’t talk about those weeks that she’d waited, or about what happened to the others. She didn’t talk much at all, those first months back. But of the survivors, she was also the only one to finish a college degree. To get into vet tech work full-time, animal welfare activism on the side.

• Now, Cassie puts both hands on the right gate, and Jake on the left. Her boots slip in the mud as she struggles for purchase, but Tobias is there shoving next to her. Marco gets a shoulder next to Jake’s end, and together they force the door.

The plan was to load back into her car and go up the hill, but there’s a figure standing on the other side, backlit by the sun. Ax. Or someone who looks like Ax. Or something who looks like him.

“You have done well, to come this far.”