The Last One(5)
As I pour the latest batch of water into my bottle, I realize that I haven’t built my shelter yet, and the sky is clouded as though for rain. Fading light tells me I don’t have long. I push myself to my feet, wincing against the tightness in my hips. I collect five heavy branches from the woods and brace these against the leeward side of the fallen tree, longest to shortest, creating a triangular frame just wide enough to slip into. I pull a black garbage bag from my pack—a parting gift from Tyler, unexpected but appreciated—and spread it over the frame. As I scoop up armfuls of dead leaves and pile them atop the plastic bag, I think of the priorities of survival.
The rules of three. A bad attitude can kill you in three seconds; asphyxiation can kill you in three minutes; exposure in three hours; dehydration in three days; and starvation in three weeks—or is it three months? Regardless, starvation is the least of my concerns. As weak as I feel, it hasn’t been that long since I ate. Six or seven days at most, and that’s generous. As for exposure, even if it rains tonight it won’t be cold enough to kill me. Even without a shelter, I’d be wet and miserable but probably not in danger.
But I don’t want to be wet and miserable, and no matter the extravagance of their budget they can’t have placed cameras in a shelter that didn’t exist before I built it. I keep scooping armfuls of leaves, and when a wolf spider the size of a quarter skitters up my sleeve I flinch. The sharp movement makes my head feel too light, partially detached. The spider clings to my biceps. I flick it away with my opposite hand and watch it bounce into the leaf litter beside the debris hut. It skitters inside and I find it hard to care; they’re only mildly venomous. I keep collecting duff and soon have a foot-deep layer atop my debris hut, and even more inside as padding.
I lay a few fallen branches with splayed fingers of leaves atop the structure to hold it all in place and then turn around to see the fire is barely more than coals. I’m all out of sync tonight. It’s the house, I think. I’m still spooked. As I crack off small sticks and feed them to the coals, I glance back at my shelter. It’s a low, rambleshack-looking mess with twigs sprouting up from all sides at every angle. I remember how carefully, how slowly, I used to construct my shelters. I wanted them to be as pretty as Cooper’s and Amy’s. Now all I care about is functionality, though, truth be told, the debris huts all look about the same—except for the big one we built together before Amy left. That was a beauty, topped with branches interwoven like thatch and large enough for all of us, though Randy slept off on his own.
I drink a few more ounces of water and sit beside my resuscitated fire. The sun has departed and the moon is shy. The flames flicker, a smudge on my right lens lending them a starburst sheen.
Time for another night alone.
2.
The premiere’s opening shot will be of Tracker beside a river. He is dressed in black and his skin is dark, the tone of tilled earth. He has spent years cultivating the aura of a great cat, and he now exudes without effort a feline sense of power and grace. His face is relaxed, but his eyes watch the water intensely, as though hunting something in the current. There is a slight curl to Tracker’s posture that will cause viewers to think he’s about to pounce—on what?—and then Tracker blinks toward the sky and it suddenly seems equally likely that he will find a patch of sunlight in which to nap.
Tracker is considering his options: attempt to cross here or search for a better spot farther upstream. He’s confident in his ability to leap stone to stone across the twenty-foot-wide river, which is swift but not deep, but there is one rock that troubles him. He thinks he can see it shifting in the current’s force. Tracker does not like to get wet, but he admires the transformative powers of water, and it is with admiration that he smiles.
Viewers will project their own justification onto this smile. Those who do not like Tracker for reasons of race or bearing—they’ve seen nothing of him yet other than his standing here, so their dislike can be only bias—will think cockiness. A particularly strident off-site producer will see this shot and think with glee: He looks evil.
Tracker is not evil, and his confidence is well deserved. He has overcome challenges far more ominous than a quick, shallow river, and much more natural than what waits for him on the far side of the river: the first constructed Challenge.
Across the river is also where Tracker will meet his eleven competitors for the first time. He knows there will be teamwork required, but he doesn’t want to think of the others as anything but competitors. He said as much in a pre-competition confessional, along with much else, but as the strongest contestant he will not be not allowed a sympathetic motive. Tracker’s because does not make the cut, and the clip inserted into this shot will be of him steely eyed before a white wall, saying only, “I’m not here for the experience. I’m here to win.”
His strategy is simple: Be better than the others.
Tracker lingers; the shot travels over the rushing current and through thickly leafed branches to where Waitress stares at a compass. She is dressed in black yoga pants and a neon-green sports bra that sets off the red hair falling in loose curls past her shoulders. A violet bandana is tied around her neck like a scarf. She’s nearly six feet tall and slender. Her waist is miniscule—“It’s remarkable her guts fit inside,” a troll will scoff online. Her face is long and pale, her complexion smoothed by a thick layer of SPF-20 foundation. Her eye shadow matches her bra, and glitters.