Chapter Text
The bus ride to summer camp was fucking weird.
Virgil Tempest leaned back in his seat as one of the head counselors rattled off names from a clipboard. He didn’t want to be here, but since his parents signed him up for this, he didn’t have much of a choice. He was stuck on the bus next to some kid who had his face buried in the pages of a book, surrounded by a shit ton of other kids who wouldn’t shut the fuck up.
“Virgil!”
“Here!” Virgil shouted, raising his hand to make himself seen.
A couple more names were said before the counselor put her clipboard away. The bus started to move, and they were on their way.
A man in a white shirt stood up at the front of the bus. He fiddled with a megaphone for a moment before shouting into it. Virgil winced and covered his ears at the sound.
“Settle down, campers!” the counselor yelled. “We’re on the road, so buckle up!”
Virgil glanced around for a seatbelt. It didn’t seem like there was one on his seat.
“There are no seatbelts!” a kid shouted back.
The counselor didn’t respond to that. “Welcome to Camp Unus Annus! Over the next few days, we’re gonna be showing you all the best tips and tricks to get the most out of your camping experience. Survival tactics, how to stay safe, and most importantly, how to have fun!”
“That’s right!” the counselor in the driver’s seat said. He was speaking over the bus’s intercom in order to be heard, which Virgil thought was a million times better than the megaphone. He wore a black shirt instead of a white one.
“We’ll get your camp uniforms once we arrive,” he said, “and get ready to have a fun filled week of adventure, friendship, and of course, the buddy system! Our number one rule.”
“Our number one rule,” the counselor in white repeated through the megaphone, his voice suddenly harsh and serious.
“Number one rule,” the counselor in black echoed. He leaned into the speaker. “Don’t you ever fucking forget the buddy system. It is the number one rule of surviving in nature!”
The counselors were silent for a second. The one lady counselor started fiddling with a video camera.
“Make sure you’re not sitting alone,” the counselor with the megaphone said, tone bright and cheery once again. “The point of camp is to get to know each other, not sit alone in isolation and die in the wilderness without any witnesses. I’m one of your head counselors, Annus, and this is your other head counselor, Unus.” He pointed to the man driving the bus.
“Who’s that lady?” one of the kids shouted, pointing to the woman with the video camera.
“No one you need to know or care about!” Annus said.
“Did you say your name was ‘anus’?” one of the kids piped up.
Annus pointed to them. “You better pray your buddy watches out for you tonight, because I will murder you in your sleep you little shit.”
“Cool!” the kid yelled.
One of the other kids yanked the first one back down into their seat. “Remus, stop!”
Virgil blinked. What kind of fucking summer camp was this? Virgil was pretty sure these counselors could get arrested for threatening kids like this.
Most of the other kids started talking again. Virgil poked his head above the seat in front of him to look around. The bus was nowhere near full. If he had to guess, there might have been about twenty campers.
Virgil shoved his hands into the pockets of his sweater. What was he supposed to do? He didn’t want to talk to anyone here, but he didn’t want to sit around and do nothing.
“Salutations.”
Virgil nearly screamed. He whirled around to face the kid he was sharing a seat with. He had put his book away and was staring at Virgil intently through his glasses. The kid was dressed like a baby professor, with a button up polo shirt and a blue tie.
The boy held out a hand. “I’m Logan. You’re Virgil, correct?”
Virgil hesitated. He placed his hand in Logan’s and shook it once. “Yeah. Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.” Logan pushed his glasses up his nose. “So, why are you here? Did your parents sign you up?”
Virgil’s stomach turned with anxiety. He was sure he was going to stutter over his words or say something stupid, but he forced himself to speak. “Yeah. They want me to get better at talking to other kids. You?”
“My parents want me to be more of an outdoors person. I don’t particularly enjoy nature, although fresh air and vitamin D do provide multiple health benefits that I can’t get while holed up indoors all the time. I simply don’t enjoy being outside in the hot sun with bugs and such, but this trip may provide me with some benefits, such as a bigger social circle and some much needed sun.”
Virgil stared at Logan. This kid spoke like he read dictionaries in his free time.
“You some kinda child genius?” Virgil asked. He was having a hard time believing that this kid might be in seventh grade like Virgil was.
“I suppose I could be considered that,” Logan said. “I am eleven years old and sitting at a university reading level, and I am already working my way through twelfth grade math. How old are you, by any chance?”
“Twelve,” Virgil answered, a little dumbfounded. He was still having trouble with seventh grade math. How was this sixth grader working his way through twelfth grade math?
Virgil wanted to ask some questions, but he was interrupted when Annus’ voice spoke over the bus intercom. “You hungry?” he asked. He seemed to be talking to the other counselor, Unus. Maybe he didn’t know that the intercom was on.
“Yeah, I could take a snack,” Unus said as Annus began to rummage through a bag at his feet.
“I got snacks,” Annus said. “I got a lot of pickles. Do you think I brought too many pickles?”
“Nah, the campers can eat some. Pass a jar around. You got anything else though?”
“I don’t know, I’ve got a lot of pickles,” Annus muttered. “It’s either pickles or this.”
Unus didn’t respond for a moment. “What is that?”
“It’s a beef stick.”
“Gimme the pickles.”
The campers closer to the front of the bus quieted down, their voices replaced by crunching. The person in front of Virgil turned in her seat and held out a jar. “Here.”
Virgil stared at the jar of pickles. “Uh, thanks.” He took it and held it out to Logan. “Pickles?”
Logan hesitated. He plucked a pickle out of the jar and squinted at it as though he’d never seen one before. He brought it to his mouth and took a bite. He scowled as though he’d just eaten a very sour candy.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, that is strange.” He swallowed the one bite of pickle. “I cannot decide if I like that or not.” He smacked his lips, processing the flavour as he eyed the pickle warily. He took another small bite.
Virgil couldn’t hold back a snicker as he watched Logan tentatively eat the pickle. He passed the jar to the kids behind them.
“Do you wanna put on some tunes?” Unus asked, voice quiet over the intercom.
“Music serves no purpose,” Annus said. “If I’m listening to something, it serves a purpose. I don’t listen to music.”
“We can put on an audiobook,” Unus offered. “We’ve also got that vocal warmup CD.” A loud crunching sound came over the intercom as he bit into a pickle. “Sound good?”
Logan grimaced at the pickle in his hand. “I don’t want this,” he muttered.
Virgil glanced around for a garbage can or a bag or anything. There was nothing.
“Can’t throw it out,” he said.
Logan huffed. “Well, what do I do with it then?”
Virgil shrugged. “Eat it?”
“I don’t like it.” He paused, then looked up at the window next to him. He stood and pushed it open. The pickle flew out into the air.
One of the kids gasped as he watched it fly past. “Guys, it’s raining pickles!” He opened his window and stuck his head out.
“Remus!” The kid sitting in front of him turned around and tried to push him back into his seat. “It’s not raining pickles, you dumb fuck!”
“Fuck off, Roman!”
Someone tapped Virgil on the shoulder. Virgil looked down to see the kid in the seat behind him holding out the jar of pickles. Virgil was about to say that they’d already gotten a round of pickles, but he was distracted by the kid’s face. His right eye was brown, but the other was a bright green. The entire left side of his face was pink and scaled over, like a giant burn scar. Or maybe he just had really bad eczema.
Virgil took the jar. “Thanks.” He turned back around and looked at Logan. “Another pickle?”
Logan shook his head. “No. I find them disgusting.”
Virgil shrugged and grabbed a pickle for himself. He’d never tried one before. Might as well try now.
He took a bite. It wasn’t as bad as Logan’s facial expressions had made it seem. He took another bite of pickle and passed the jar to the kid in front of him.
“Welcome to the vocal warmup CD,” said a voice over the intercom. “First, massage the muscle that connects your neck to your jaw and yawn.”
Virgil tuned out the sound of whatever the hell their counselors were doing at the front of the bus and kept eating his pickle. He still heard that kid, Remus, shouting in the back of the bus, while whoever Roman was tried to shut him up. They sounded very similar, although Remus’ voice was higher. He wondered if they were related.
“Hi there!”
Virgil squeaked and turned in his seat. One of the kids sitting right behind him poked his head right over the seat, smiling at Virgil. A pair of round Harry Potter-ish glasses sat on his nose, and a couple curls of orange hair peeked out from under the hood of his cat sweater. A smattering of freckles decorated his cheeks. His face was cute and chubby.
“I’m Patton,” he chirped. “What’s your name?”
Virgil paused. “Uh, I’m Virgil.”
Patton gasped. “What a cool name! Wanna be friends?”
Virgil didn’t want to say no. That would just be rude. “Sure?”
“Nice! My seat buddy said no, but I’m pretty sure he’s just joking. We’re all gonna be friends by the end of the week, I’m sure.” Patton turned to Logan. “Who are you?”
Logan raised an eyebrow. “Logan.”
“Do you wanna be friends?”
Logan straightened his glasses. “On average, it takes about fifty hours of being in one’s presence to consider someone a casual friend, ninety hours before believing someone to be a good friend, and over two-hundred hours to become close friends. Considering we have known each other for all of forty seconds, I would not consider us friends.”
Patton’s shoulders slumped. “Oh.” His face brightened again. “What about acquaintances?”
Logan narrowed his eyes. “Hmm. I suppose. I’m pleased to make your acquaintance then, Patton.”
Patton’s eyes sparkled with happiness. “Neat!”
Annus’ voice crackled through the megaphone, interrupting their conversation. “Alright, listen campers. We’re going out in the woods, so one of the things that I want you to know is that there are dangerous things out in the wild.”
“There are hunters,” Unus added over the intercom. “And Bigfoot. Snakes, toads, frogs—”
“No, no, no, no, no,” Annus interjected. “Yes but no. You’re completely misguided here. Yeah, those things are terrifying and deadly, but this is why I thought you’d need the helpful hand of a guide. So I just want to, uh...” He turned around and looked at Unus. “Are you actually going to pay attention? Because this is important.”
Unus craned his neck to look further out the windshield. “We’ve got a turn coming up.”
Annus turned back to the rest of the bus and scrambled with a bunch of paper in his arms. “Okay, the number one thing that you need to be on the lookout for is BATS!” He flipped a paper around to reveal a picture of a bat. He turned it around and shoved it in Unus’ face.
“Hang on, I have to...” Unus tried to look around the paper. “There’s a turn coming up. I have to merge onto an exit.”
“Well I don’t care, this is very important,” Annus insisted. “If you go into the woods without knowing about these particular threats, you will die.”
Unus didn’t respond. Annus lowered the paper. “I feel like you’re not taking your imminent doom seriously.”
“I’m just getting into the right lane,” Unus said.
Annus turned the paper back to the campers. “Bats! Nature’s flying predator. They can hear better than you. They can see better than you.”
“Falsehood!” Logan called. “Bats cannot see well in the—”
“They can bite better than you ever could,” Annus said, cutting him off. “They’ll swoop in, suck your blood, and you’ll be gone.” He pointed to the bat picture he was holding. “You seeing this? You seeing that? They can fly, which is super weird because they don’t even have feathers.”
“There are other animals that can fly or glide without the use of feathers,” Logan said, standing up to make himself heard.
“Like, imagine you stretched out your nutsack,” Annus continued, ignoring Logan, “and tried to fly on that. That’s what they do.”
“Falsehood!” Logan yelled. “Bat wings are in no way comparable to the testicles of a human being—"
“Now how do you avoid a bat?” Annus asked through the megaphone.
“I think the number one tool that you would probably use is a net,” Unus answered. “Probably. To get a bat away.” A smile creeped into his voice. “Or maybe a mitt? Bat, mitt? Baseball?”
Silence fell on the bus. Virgil heard a loud crunch as someone bit into a pickle.
Annus shifted his papers in his arms. “To get away from a bat, number one, don’t go out at night. That’s when they’re the most active. Don’t let any of your parts that have excessive blood flow be exposed. This is the neck, the groin, the penis—none of those can be exposed to the open air at night or even during dusk. It must be full sunlight to purge them, okay? They can’t survive in light.”
“Falsehood!” Logan shrieked. Virgil jumped in his seat.
“The second thing you need to look out for,” Annus continued, “is the most elusive, the one that you wouldn’t think.” He switched out his bat picture for a photo of a squirrel and shoved it in Unus’ face. “The American squirrel!”
Unus leaned around him to look in the bus mirrors. “I just need to get into the other lane...”
Virgil heard the crunch of a pickle. “Are you looking at this?” Annus demanded, voice muffled by food. “Are you seeing the evil that is before you?”
Unus risked a glance to Annus’ papers. “Oh, squirrels, yeah.”
Annus turned his papers back to the campers. “So, at night, you need to watch out for bats. In the daytime, you gotta watch out for squirrels. There’s a theory that bats turn back into squirrels when the sun comes up.”
Logan looked like he was going to protest again, but Virgil grabbed the sleeve of his shirt and tugged him back down into their seat. “Just let it go, Logan. He’s not gonna listen.”
“How do you avoid squirrels?” Annus asked.
“Well, I know how to do that,” Unus said. “But do you know how to do that?”
“I’m not the one being quizzed here.”
“Wait, are you certified? When was the last time you took the test?”
Annus shifted his papers. “Uh, I have permanent certification. I got grandfathered in.”
“I don’t agree with permanent certification,” Unus said. “Things get changed. You gotta stay on your toes.”
Annus turned away from him. “Alright, so you’re gonna die from the squirrels. Good to know. You have no idea what you’re talking about.” He brought out a new paper. “Boom! More people die to deer attacks than shark attacks.”
“An unfair statistic,” Logan grumbled, “considering people are around deer more often than they are sharks. More people die to cows than sharks as well, simply because they keep cows around them. We don’t have farms full of sharks, lowering the average—”
“Deers are highly territorial,” Annus said.
“Deer,” Logan corrected. “The plural of deer is just deer!”
“They could gut you in a second, their antlers are so sharp they could pierce your abdomen and your intestines would come spooling out.”
“I wanna fight a deer!” Remus screeched in excitement at the back of the bus.
“Deer don’t have teeth, do they?” Unus asked.
“I’m pretty sure deer have teeth,” one kid in a pink seater vest said. “There was one episode of Gravity Falls where a demon named Bill Cipher steals the teeth of a deer—"
“It’s not about the teeth!” Annus interrupted. “It’s the antlers and hooves!” He switched around his papers and held up a new one. “Now what is this?”
“I can’t look at it for too long,” Unus said. “I’m driving.”
“It’s snakes! Now what do you do?”
A camper stood up and raised her hand. “Ooh! I know! I know!”
Annus pointed to her. “What do you do?”
“You run!”
“Right! You run as soon as you see or hear it. You have to look, scan, observe, react, and run. L.S.O.R.R.” He grabbed a new paper and held it up to Unus.
“Hang on, I have to go in the other lane.”
“Bears!” Annus shouted into the megaphone. “What kind of bears are we going to encounter in the wild?”
“There are black bears,” Unus said, “grizzly bears, brown bears, polar bears, jungle bears, water bears, uh...”
“What do you do if you see a bear?” Annus questioned.
“Play dead!” a camper piped up.
Logan shot to his feet again. “Falsehood! You make yourself look at big as possible and make noise until it scares the bear off! Intimidate it so it doesn’t attack you!”
“Correct answer!” Annus yelled.
Logan spread his arms. “Thank you for fucking listening!” He flopped back down in his seat next to Virgil.
Annus put down the bear picture and held up a new picture. Virgil craned his neck to see it. It just looked like Annus himself, crouched low to the ground like a caveman, and not wearing any clothes. At least it was blurred out.
“Have you seen this man?” Annus asked.
“What is it?” Unus muttered.
Annus pointed to the picture. “This just goes to show that sometimes, the most dangerous animal is man.” He set down the picture. “Now, lets go over what we’ve learned. You avoid bats by not going out at night. Avoid squirrels by staying away from the trees. Avoid the antlers and hooves of a deer, run away from snakes, and scare the bears.”
“What about the last one?” Unus asked. “How do you protect yourself from that?”
“Oh, there’s nothing you can do. Completely unpredictable. Just try to stay out of its way.”
The entire bus was silent.
“Hey, lets listen to that vocal warmup CD again,” Unus suggested.
“Yeah, sure.”
Music played over the intercom and the two counselors sang along, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they had just given a bunch of bullshit survival tactics to a bunch of children.
Virgil sighed and sank down in his seat. The kid in front of him twisted around and offered him the jar of pickles again. He took it and dejectedly took another pickle with a sigh. This was going to be the stupidest camp ever.