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The sight of a campfire was no unfamiliar thing to Jake Park. Countless upon countless nights were spent under the starry skies of the Montana Wilderness, his campsite lit and warmed by the burning embers of pine and cedar. A fire meant a lot of things to the Solitary Survivalist.
A campfire meant warmth. It meant safety. It meant protection. It meant a safe night and a sound mind, after a day spent bending nature to your own will to provide for oneself. Jake’s eyes came back from his hazy thoughts to rest upon the Campfire before him, a large pile of ceaseless burning wood. What he knew from a campfire, and what one had always meant to him… none of that was here. The crackling logs looked and sounded exactly like the one of many hundreds of campfires he had built before.
But this one was a farce. In every way, shape, and form.
An outstretched hand wafted through the dancing flames with no change of temperature to show for it. The fabric of the gloves he wore did not char, nor did his skin underneath burn. There was no warmth. No safety. No protection. Just the cruel reminder of the circumstances he and the four others sitting around him were in.
An agitated huff sounded off to his direct left, Nea pulling her beanie down over her eyes as she refrained from watching Jake put his hand directly into what looked like roaring fire.
“Can you not fuckin’ do that? I already see enough weird shit these days…”
The young woman had only been here for what felt like a few days. The Urban Artist brought with her a new horror that the group of Survivors now had to contend with, and trying to learn and adapt to a new monster only had her and her companions even more on edge than usual.
Jake gave a half amused grunt at her discomfort, looking at the others sitting around the same campfire. If being what was essentially a hobo living in the woods prepared him for this kind of living, he could only imagine just what someone like Claudette was going through.
The college age woman looked bookish at the best of times, her glasses pushed far up her nose with her hair splaying across her head in frizzy dreads. Now? With the added pressure of escaping and evading 8-foot tall monstrosities hellbent on sacrificing her to some eldritch spider horror? She looked a mess and a half. Claudette sat hunched with elbows on her knees atop a fallen log, using the light coming off of the faux-campfire to inspect something within her hands.
The dark green fern leaf spun back and forth in the Studious Botanist’s hands as she inspected it closely, its secrets within coming to the forefront. It was a Bracken Fern, pulled off of a bush she had taken cover in to avoid The Trapper as he walked right past her without a second glance. The plant was still as green and lively as the moment she had pulled it off its vine, neither withering or losing its luster in her hands.
“This… shouldn’t be here…”
The girl’s muttering had Meg Thomas look up from her shoes, picking out dirt and rocks from the webbing of her running sneakers. “Huh? What shouldn’t be here?”
Claudette’s eyes shot wide as she realized she was speaking out loud, clenching the plant in her hand as she brought it to her chest.
“Oh, sorry… I just… I found this plant at the Coal Tower and just… wanted to look at it closer…” She fought with her natural instincts to hide her interest away from the other people around her, taking a shuddering breath before holding her hands out once again. “This fern leaf. It shouldn’t be in this type of environment.”
Meg adjusted the sports cap holding her french braids down her neck, scooting over on the log the two girls shared. “So, it shouldn’t be… where exactly?” Meg gave an exaggerated glance around them, eyes drifting to see nothing but thick woods and all encompassing darkness. The small dirt clearing they had refuge in had all sorts of bushes and tall grass around them, but none of the foliage looked as unique as what Claudette was holding before her.
“Anywhere like this place. We’re in the woods right? This type of Fern should be in a warmer temperate climate. Somewhere like South America or the American Southwest.” Claudette’s demeanor as she elaborated grew confident, her earlier anxieties fading as her interest in Botany took the lead. “I know we’re not exactly in any place that would follow the rules… but maybe I can figure something about where we are if I took a closer look at the type of flora we can find. You know, while we aren’t being chased by chainsaw wielding maniacs…”
Jake nodded at hearing the explanation, only having an inkling of know-how regarding certain types of edible plants. Meg on the other hand was staring at the Botanist with a blank look on her face. “I uh… never had the chance to go to college.”
Dwight waved a nonchalant hand over his shoulder, his attention being solely focused on trying to replace a burnt out bulb of a flashlight in his lap. “Same. Was working at a supermarket to scrape by on my rent. Grades were never good enough.”
The Nervous Leader sat up straighter as he twisted the glass optic over the end of his weapon and flicked the switch on, pointing it directly at Nea Karlsson just as she lifted her beanie back off of her eyes.
“Argh! Dwight! I’m gonna rip your fuckin’ dick off!”
Dwight gave a loud yelp as Nea came blindly rushing at him, one arm covering her now burned retinas as the other reaching out to grab and throttle the taller man. Meg watched with a small grin as the two went sprinting into one end of the thick woods surrounding them, more of a playful game than any serious fight, only to come running back from a completely different end of the forest.
The sight reminded the girl of watching corny monster of the week cartoons on her old TV at home in Connecticut. Watching silly cartoon characters run back and forth through hallway doors in an impossible manner was one of the few pleasures she could hold onto after her father walked out of her and her mother’s lives. To watch someone run so fast you could almost see all of their problems be left behind in the dirt?
That sounded like a slice of heaven to the Energetic Athlete.
Meg stood up from her seat next to Claudette and raised her arms over her head to stretch, bending her torso left and right to loosen her shoulders. “Someone should stop them before they hurt themselves. Sit tight.”
The jogging hoodie and sweatpants she was wearing was a small mercy granted to her, allowing her to maintain her full range of motion while she was running. She winced as she thought about the Blue Skinny Jeans that Claudette wore as she was forced to run for her life.
Meg took off at a speed that Jake almost couldn’t believe, the sound of her feet stamping against the forest floor leaving the two survivors almost as soon as it had started. The girl had almost literally left the both of them in the dust. “Jesus… I can’t imagine being able to run that fast. That must come in handy huh?”
It took a second longer than Claudette was willing to admit to realize that Jake was talking to her. She looked at the young Korean man as he looked at her expectantly. Right… being social was something she had to do.
“I mean… I don’t think it's any less useful than being able to Sabotage hooks. None of us are able to do that.” Claudette had on more than one occasion fallen at the hands of someone like The Wraith, being picked up and dragged towards one of the awful sacrificial hooks dotted around their Trial Grounds.
Even as she fought tooth and nail to try and break free from the Killer’s grasp she had known it wouldn’t be enough before he reached his goal. When it seemed only a moment before she was strung up, she would hear the tell tale clang of a structure collapsing and the sound of a metal hook hitting the ground.
Even without the help of any Toolbox, Jake had a knack for destroying Hooks to help save his fellow Survivor.
Jake looked contemplatively down into the Campfire he despised. Living off of the grid meant he needed to know his way around baiting for game and the construction of ramshackle structures for hunting or shelter. And oh, was taking something apart so much easier than putting things together.
“Lots of practice I guess. What about you miss Botany Knowledge? You can fix somebody up way quicker than any of us, even with someone like Dwight nearby to play Leader.”
More often than not, when Jake had his back to the wall and was hanging on to consciousness by a thread, it was Claudette who would come sneaking out of the shadows to mend his wounds. It was like she always knew where any of her friends were once they were hurt, and made quick work of patching them up to boot.
Claudette could feel her face heat up at the direct complement. Her mother had always said that she held too much Empathy for wounded animals they would find walking the forest trails of Montreal. She would never call having such a trait a bad thing.
“You’re always a little harder to find you know? Meg or Nea, they get pretty loud when they get hurt out there… You don’t really make any noise like that, do you?” Claudette herself was not innocent in being quite noisy when she was injured. Grunts of pain while she ran, trying to muffle her cries while she stayed out of the sight of any Killer’s hunting her down, there was almost no stopping it.
She had seen Jake on the other hand take cover within a locker directly behind a confused Hillbilly as he searched high and low for the survivor that must surely be nearby, the blood trail still visible on the ground. With no grunts or cries of pain the Killer was forced to move along in search of another victim to slay.
When she saw Jake wearing a small sad smile she almost felt bad about bringing his unique skill up. “It was something I had to learn when… heh… it sounds a little crazy when I say it out loud.” Claudette’s head tilted curiously at the sudden self conscious air to Jake’s words. “I was stuck up a tree with half a boar’s carcass dangling from a cord, with three wolves biting and clawing at me to try and have an easy meal.”
The Botanist’s eyes widened at the story. “Wolves?!”
All Jake did was nod his head in response. “Turns out Gray wolves are pretty abundant near Yellowstone. Learned that the hard way.” The survivalist then reached down to his left leg, pulling his hiking pants up just past his calf. Three jagged scars slashed down towards his ankle, signs of crude first aid being applied over the wound apparent.
“I learned something important that day. Pain? It’s just an obstacle that keeps you from getting fed. You need to stay one step ahead.”
Claudette sat and stared for a moment at the young man across from her. Much of her young adult life had been spent in Botany Forums answering questions that school children left for her to answer as ‘Science Girl’. To even imagine about being in a situation like that, before being sucked into the nightmare she was currently living in?
Unthinkable.
The tense atmosphere around the two survivors was broken up by the sounds of another man’s pained cries, Dwight being escorted back towards the Campfire by Meg holding him by his ear, the captive walking with a suspicious limp like he had taken a hit to the nethers. Nea followed closely behind them both with a satisfied grin on her face.
Meg let go of Dwight with a huff and went to take her seat next to Claudette. “Those things are bright enough to blind The Nurse through that pillow case she wears over her face, kay? How about we don’t do that next time, or I’ll let Nea off the leash.”
Everyone settled back into their seats around the faux-comfort of the Campfire. The moon above them, ever present, had not moved a single inch in the sky. A thick fog began to roll in from the edges of the site, extinguishing the facade of safety and solitude they had all begun to craft in their tired minds.
Dwight groaned at the sight of it all. “And I just sat down… Look alive, we’re gonna have company.”
The Fog was ever present, a reminder of the hell they were all stuck in. Dwight clenched his Flashlight in his fist, nodding and giving Nea a playful wave with it. A single finger was the only response he was given back.
Claudette Morel reached behind her seat and revealed a Med-Kit she had fully stocked with Gauze Pads and Surgical Sutures. It was her job to keep everyone healthy.
Meg Thomas knelt down to tie her shoes. Her playful chase to stop Nea from killing Dwight was child’s play compared to what was to come. It was her job to keep the Killer busy.
Jake cracked his knuckles before taking hold of a Toolbox next to him, a fresh Hacksaw and a Wire Spool tucked within. It was his job to get the Generators running.
Dwight pushed his eyeglasses higher upon his face as he looked at his fellow Survivors. Things were never going to get easier. He could feel it in his bones. He’d grown up living a life of mediocrity, barely coasting by both socially and studiously. Now, in a special kind of hell, he could feel his resolve growing stronger with each Trial past.
Now he had something to fight for, more than just his own worth. He fought for the Bond he now shared with those around him, to make sure he was the Leader they could all rely on.
Even if things never changed for any of them, he could hold his head high and say to himself, ‘I did everything I could.’
The Entity would get its Trial. It was Dwight’s job to make sure it wasn’t an easy one.
“Ready up people… Game’s on.”