Eventually, I regain my feet and stumble out of the brook. My legs are numb as I return to the destroyed debris hut. Twilight has given way to dawn; squinting, drawing closer in tiny movements, I’m just able to make out the animal, the front half of which juts from the leaves. Its head looks like a boulder was dropped on it.
Is that what I am now—a boulder careening downhill, driven by inertia instead of will?
I pick up a branch and sweep the crimson leaves off the top of the shelter, then pry up the sticks covering the body. I’m still shaking and my throat is raw.
The animal is smaller than I thought—about the size of a collie—thin-legged, its bushy tail stained with excrement.
Not a wolf, but a coyote. The longer I look at it, the smaller it seems.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry you got sick.
I’m sorry I killed you.
I dig out my boot and backpack from the rubble. Thick rents run through the toe of the boot. I poke it with a stick, which slips through easily to strike the inner sole. Some of the holes go all the way through the sole; the boot is useless. The front of my backpack is shredded too, and it’s several minutes before I find my glasses. The frames are twisted, both earpieces snapped off. Only one lens is intact, the other shattered where a tooth struck it like a bullet.
Fear distinct from the fear I felt during the attack drifts over me. An equal, opposing fear. A slow fear. My vision isn’t bad compared to a mole’s, but it’s bad enough. I haven’t gone a day without corrective lenses since fourth grade.
“I can’t see,” I say, turning around. I lift my chin, hold up my ruined glasses, and directly address the cameras for the first time since Solo started. “I can’t see.”
Help should be here by now. An EMT should be sitting me down, handing me the ugly backup pair of glasses I entrusted to the producer the day before we started. I look at a bright red scratch that runs across the back of my right hand, dotted with pinpricks of drying blood.
“I need the vaccine,” I say to the trees. My heart is speeding. “Day zero and day three, post-exposure.”
They required us to get rabies vaccinations before we came. It was one among a plethora of requirements: a full physical, a tetanus booster, proof of a whole host of other shots that I already had for school and work. Rabies was all that I needed to meet their requirements.
“I’m not immune,” I call. My voice cracks. The rabies vaccine is atypical in that instead of creating immunity, receiving it pre-exposure only decreases how many doses one needs after exposure. I hold up my hand and turn in a circle. “I have a cut, look. I touched its saliva. I need the shots.”
There’s no answer. I stare at the blur of leaves, squinting, searching for a camera mounted on a branch, a drone hovering above. It must be there, it must be. I think of the boulder, of Heather’s taxidermy bear and the first prop splattered at the base of a cliff. I think of the doll, its mechanical cries twisting through the cabin’s suffocating air. My fear begins to morph, to sharpen, and even as I wait, I know no one’s coming.
Because they planned this.
I don’t know how, but they planned this and now my glasses are broken and I can’t see.
I feel as though my anger will split my skin, flay me alive from the inside.
I can’t fucking see.
6.
The host projects his voice as though onstage. “For our first Team Challenge you will be working together to find edible plants,” he says. He slept well. The contestants did not, except for Tracker, who sleeps better outdoors than in. “Whichever team collects the most different types of edible plants in half an hour wins. However, that doesn’t mean you can go picking flowers all willy-nilly.” The host wags his finger, and Carpenter Chick’s eye roll makes Zoo laugh. Both action and sound will be cut; this is a somber moment. “For each incorrect identification your team makes, one point will be deducted from your score.” He hands each team leader a brightly colored tri-fold pamphlet. “You’re playing for something very important—lunch.”
Tracker woke before dawn to check his traps, and a rabbit became breakfast for his team. Biology also shared her protein bars, though she was no longer obligated to do so. The eight contestants outside their team are famished, and the host doesn’t know about the rabbit.
The next several minutes are compressed to an instant. The teams are ready, and the host shouts, “Go!”
“I bet Cooper knows all this stuff,” says Carpenter Chick to her teammates. “One of us should just follow him.”
“I’ll do it,” says Waitress, wishing she were on his team.
Zoo doesn’t like this idea. All her life she’s followed the spirit of the law as well as the letter. “I know some of these,” she says, looking at the handout. “And I think I saw Queen Anne’s lace yesterday. We can do this on our own.”
“I agree,” says Engineer. Yesterday, he wondered at his luck, ending up on a team with three women. He didn’t know if it was good luck or bad. He’s thinking good now. He likes how Zoo’s mind works; he thinks they have a chance.
“Whatever,” says Waitress. She’s hungry, but this is a sensation she’s used to. Her current crankiness stems more from fatigue and a caffeine-craving headache.
Zoo hands her the guide. “Some of these are easy. We can all look for dandelions and chicory and pine, but how about we each focus on one or two of the others?”
“You’re the boss,” says Carpenter Chick.
Tracker’s team is off to a strong start; Biology has already collected a handful of mint. She found the patch last night, chewed some this morning after finishing her portion of rabbit. In addition to teaching life science, Biology advises a gardening club. Between her and Tracker, her team has an obvious advantage.
Air Force’s ankle hurts more today, and is swollen enough that he can barely fit it in his boot. “You should rest,” says Black Doctor. “We can handle this.”
Cheerleader Boy lurks behind them, hair mussed, eyes red and exhausted as they run over the pamphlet. “What’s a basal whorl?” he asks, trying.
“It means coming from the base,” says Black Doctor. “So all the leaves or petals would be coming from the same spot on the base, not scattered along the…” He pinches his thumb and forefinger and runs them up and down in the air, as though drawing a short line.
“Stem?” supplies Exorcist.
“Like a dandelion?” asks Cheerleader Boy.
“Exactly,” says Black Doctor. “What do we have to find that has a basal whorl?”
“A dandelion.”
Exorcist laughs and slaps Cheerleader Boy on the back.
And now, a montage:
The teams trekking through the trees, searching.
Air Force sitting with his foot in the icy water of a small brook, poor wounded bird.
Banker crouching by some growth at the base of a mossy boulder. “I think this might be purslane.”
Zoo tearing a leaf, sniffing it. She holds it out to the others and says, “Smell this.” They pass it around. “Smells like…” Engineer cannot decide. “Carrot,” chirps Carpenter Chick. “Bingo,” says Zoo.
In the bottom corner of the screen, a timer races from thirty toward zero. Some believe that time is its own dimension—a sequential continuum—others argue time is an incalculable, untravelable construct of the human mind—a concept, not a thing. The producers and editor care little about physics, or philosophy, and they will travel the half hour, leaping so that minutes disappear in irregular chunks. They will bring the viewers with them.
Cheerleader Boy swats at a needled branch. “All these plants look the same,” he says. Exorcist grabs the same branch and tells him, “Pine.”
“Pine,” says Carpenter Chick.
“Pine,” says Biology. Her statement came fifteen minutes earlier but will be presented as a triangle’s third side at nine minutes remaining.
Tracker leads in silence, pinching leaves, smelling his fingers, searching.
“You can really eat this?” asks Waitress, holding the bit of root that Zoo handed her. “I think you’re supposed to cook it first,” Zoo replies.
A gong echoes through the woods; everyone stops to listen. Five minutes blinks the timer.
“I guess we should head back?” says Banker.
“We don’t have them all,” says Biology.