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The Wilderness hums. It twitches. It slinks around corners, like vapor, like gas in a cave. It waits for something. A sacrifice, perhaps.
Akilah knows better than to believe Lottie's words, her castles of delusion. Her fantasy.
She does anyway.
Lottie's older than her. So is Travis, if only by a year. Maybe that's why she ends up trusting them in the end, listening to them in earnest.
Her older sisters had always stressed the importance of listening to her elders—they'd pat her on the head, patronizing, talk to her in that grotesque baby voice people only ever use with actual babies, or really old people. It used drive Akilah crazy, but unfortunately, it made sense, with their enormous age gaps. Twenty-seven, twenty-three, and fifteen. Take a guess at who the accident child had been.
Now, out here, she follows their advice as best she can. She's the youngest, save for Javi–okay, fine, the youngest girl, the youngest teammate. An understudy, a stand-in for the actual youngest teammate, who's probably laid up in bed at home, counting her lucky stars that Taissa had slide-tackled her into next week, that practice before the day everything went to shit. The older ones—the seniors—forget her name a lot, never mind the fact that she was meant to literally play with them on the field at fucking Nationals. Taissa is the only one who doesn't, who pays attention to her, who helps Akilah with her hair and checks in on her, asking if she's doing okay. Akilah is embarrassed to say that she latches onto it, like she can fool herself into thinking that Tai's just another one of her sisters, watching out for the runt of the litter.
Everything changes, obviously, after the failed expedition, after Laura Lee—who, in Akilah's opinion, had needed to stop deluding herself into thinking she could fly a plane, not that she'll ever say that out loud—after Doomcoming. With Van's face torn open like a candy wrapper on Halloween, Taissa begins to devote her energy to being the full-time voice of reason, in the face of growing restlessness, desperation. Akilah can feel her drifting away too, especially as she herself is drawn towards the shining, solar orbit of Lottie Matthews.
Lottie. Lottie with a knife in her hand and leaves in her hair and wine stains still ringing the edge of her mouth. Like some type of avenging, biblical angel, she plunges the knife deep into the throat of the bear that had kneeled to her, shown her devotion, worship. That's it, probably—the moment Akilah feels enlightened, like the answer to all of their problems is a teenage girl hunched over in front of them: a forest-goddess, a prophet. A savior.
She won't see the irony of that until later.
Travis, on the other hand. Sour, bad-tempered Travis, who'd always skulked around on the edges of the practice field, fed up with his father and his brother and the world. Bitter, jaded at such a young age. She'd always found him too mean, too snarky: Don't mix 'em up like Travis did, and okay, you guys are disgusting. Playful jabs across the campfire, her wrapping the cut on his shoulder, in the aftermath of the actual crash, pulling it too loose and then too tight. That had been the extent of their relationship, out there, until That Night.
Akilah would love to blame it on the shrooms. Really, really love to, the way Tai and Van and Coach all sigh, like some silly little mushrooms explain away their actions from last night. Maybe they've got the right to, though. They didn't try to kill someone, try to—
Travis isn't at the cabin for dinner. Neither is Natalie. Some sick part of Akilah is relieved, thankful she won't have to see him, not with the way her tongue still tingles, like it's forcing its way back into his mouth, or the way her hands are twisting in her lap, like she's trying to pull herself back, restrain herself from meddling with a belt buckle.
"What were you gonna do to Travis last night, Shauna?" Jackie asks eventually, arms folded like she's got something to prove, and that's the question of the century, isn't it?
Akilah knows what she was going to do.
She turns her head, glances across the room at Lottie, who's staring up at Jackie, face pensive. Thoughtful. As though she's just now considering that question, ruminating on her actions from last night. As though the thought of Travis trembling underneath Shauna's knife, Travis sprinting away from them in the woods, Travis pinned to a chair in this very room as they'd ripped his shirt off—as though none of that had crossed her mind at all.
Akilah exchanges a glance with Mari. Mari's eyes stay focused on the fight brewing in front of them, clear and angry and guilty.
She doesn't actually know what the others had been thinking. For her though, it's clear. The hive mind. The team. The older girls, prowling the woods, howling to distant wolves, laughing together—drunk off their own audacity. Maybe it's more than that, though—maybe it had been the growing hollowness of their survival, the creeping feeling that they were edging towards something bad. Winter.
No going back, she remembers thinking, on her knees, reaching her head up to kiss at Travis' neck.
It's not an excuse. It will never be an excuse. But, as Jackie grabs a blanket and storms outside, alienated for the crime of speaking out, Akilah allows herself to pretend that maybe it can be.
Just for tonight.
In her dreams, her teammates rip themselves open, over and over again.
Van's face weeps under her shaking hands, needle trembling as it threads itself across her pale skin, as though Akilah's hands are seperate from her body. Shauna screams and screams, something dead trying to push its way out of her, tearing apart her starved body from the inside.
And always, the first of them all. Lottie's forehead drips with blood and little bits of dirty glass, a sharp, jagged scar growing across the smooth skin. Il veut du sang, she'd gasped out. It wants blood. Their first warning.
Akilah wakes from the dream to a cold, silent cabin, knowing they should have heeded it sooner.
"Here," Lottie says, pressing the cup into Akilah's hand, after she'd finally given in. "The tea will help you."
Akilah cringes away from the mug and its tangy, earthy smell. "I don't like it," she whines a little, feeling like a child. "The mushrooms. I don't like how they make me feel."
Lottie stares at her for a beat, almost taken aback. Almost as though she wants to argue. Akilah shrinks back, but Lottie just says, "Okay. That's fine."
Akilah blinks. There's a shift next to her, and she locks eyes with Travis. She nearly flinches at what she sees.
There's a glint of real, raw anger in his eyes, the first sign of the old him she's seen in months, since before Javi and Natalie and the fire. A dark shadow of envy, jealousy, like she's got something he wants, taken his favorite toy from the play-pen. An old grudge from before.
Lottie's still talking, commanding both of their attentions back to her, its rightful place. Their prophet.
"There's another way," she tells them, and into the caves they go.
"I fucking made it all up," Travis tells her, and the crossbow shakes in her hand, though she's not surprised. Its another glimpse of the old him—talking to her like she's slow, a child, someone who can't tell a truth from a lie.
Travis stares her down, like he's willing her to get something, wanting her to read his mind. She wants to scream at him, freak the fuck out—the betrayal is already sinking into her bones, gnawing at her insides. Months of nothing but damp caves and the smell of toxic fumes, the hissing sound the gas had always made as it had creeped its way towards her. The visions. All for nothing. She feels herself deflate, anger shrinking into something more resigned, hardened.
Travis had betrayed her, sure. But it's not like he didn't have good reason to.
She says nothing instead, even as he continues on to catch up with Kodiak. She just bends down to tie her shoe; feels like a viper, waiting to strike.
Lottie is in the caves, on her knees, whispering to the spirits. Their beloved deity, on her knees—what a joke.
Akilah shakes as she approaches. The others are above-ground, out there. Howling, hunting. Mari is on her own now, their precious decoy, a red-herring for the ages. Hopefully Melissa and Gen stick to the plan, their roles in all of this.
"You're not hunting?" Lottie asks, like she'd known who Akilah was, just by the sound of her stuttering breaths.
"No."
"I know how much it must have hurt," Lottie replies, still facing the cave wall, "to do what you did."
So she knows. Akilah shifts, lip curling. If we want a hunt, she remembers saying, friends and allies surrounding her, I might have an idea. Her goats convulsing on the ground. The feeling of Tai's arms around her, an older indulgence, from before things really went to shit.
"You made me believe that I could see things," is all she says in response, and she can't help the childish lilt to her voice, as though calling out one of her sisters on a lie. It's such a stupid comparison that Akilah feels her hackles raise, resentment curling low in her stomach. Her desperation builds, which just makes her angrier.
"Travis told me he made it all up," she hisses, wanting to hit Lottie where it hurts. She watches as her teammate stills, slowly turns her face to look at her. "He's been lying to you this whole time. And you're just too pathetic to see that."
Lottie just laughs: "I know. He's an awful liar."
There's nothing to say to that. The rock shakes in her hand. Lottie is staring at her with that wide-eyed, desperate look, like she needs Akilah to reassure her in her faith. A turn of the tables. "Your visions came true, though. Even if it all started out as a lie." Lottie is terrifying like this, curled in on herself like a sick owl. "We're all connected to It," she whispers, and Akilah feels her temper fray, snap like a thread hooked to a needle.
"I don't believe that!" she shouts. The flashlight she's been clutching drops to the ground, spins around. Lottie's face is now fully illuminated, utterly deranged in the light. "I think that this is all your fault."
"You'll see," Lottie responds, turning back to the wall, ignoring the accusation. "You'll all see. It's in us, now. No going back."
No going back. Akilah feels something rush through her veins—something like courage, maybe despair—and she lifts the rock, lunging forward to smash it into Lottie's temple. Something trips her up, causing her to slip—the flashlight betrays her, skids across the floor of the cave as Akilah loses her balance and the grip on the rock.
She hits the ground hard. There is no time to scramble away as the rock flies towards her, as the sharp edge of it digs into her head.
Blood spurts, leaking down into her eyes. There is a sharp, burning pain in her forehead. Her ears ring, but one sound manages to creep its way through the muffled noise: Lottie is muttering to herself again. Akilah can make out, through her rapidly blurring vision, that Lottie's hands are clasped, as though in gratitude, head tilted up towards the surface, the sky.
"Il veut du sang," she whispers, as Akilah's eyes flutter shut, on the floor of a cave, just like always.