doomsday. ( yellowjackets )

soixante-sept.

xxx.

chapter soixante-sept.
chapter sixty seven.

1997.

xxx.

           Sam almost stayed in the cave that day. She just didn't feel like following Coach Scott around again, though he insisted they needed to check the snare and the pit, which they'd covered with a tarp and some combination of dirt and brush. Even though she didn't want to, Sam still went; mostly because she didn't think it was right to let a man with one leg do that sort of labor while she sat, doing nothing.

           And, though she regretted it within the hour that they'd been walking, Sam knew that even if she had stayed behind, the same thing would've still happened.

           Coach Scott suddenly stopped in front of her, and she would've ran smack into him had she not been paying attention to their feet. She stopped, too, but didn't question him verbally, she simply stared at the ground and tried to figure it out herself. At first, she thought that he might've just been having a poorly timed hallucination, but then, she heard it.

           A whimpering, which could've been from an animal.

           She wished it was from an animal. The alternative would open a can of worms that neither her nor Coach Scott were prepared to handle. Sam looked up at the man just as he turned around, a bit of elation on his face at the idea of food being caught; she could see it on his face, he was imagining a deer, something a bit more fulfilling than the bats they killed in the cave— well, Sam did let him do that alone —or even a rabbit would've been a welcome change of menu.

          Sam didn't say anything to break his inevitably fleeting moment of joy, but she could share the feeling; she felt a pit of dread in her stomach, though unsure of why she knew that this wasn't anything to be happy about. She watched him with upwards brows, a thin frown on her face as she trailed after him in the direction of the pit.

         She didn't want to look over it, and she didn't have to. Coach Scott inched carefully to the edge of the pit, and she could see that the blue tarp was gone, as were the branches and bushels of leaves they'd left on top of it. Something had in fact fell into the trap.

         But the panting, the quick, scared breaths that came from inside the pit, those were someone's. Within the second that Coach Scott peered down at the intruder in their trap, Sam's bad feeling was confirmed, and she heard the sudden screaming of a human.

" Help! Help! HELP! " Sam had to cover her ears after the third wail, grimacing as she stepped forward beside Coach Scott finally to see it was Mari stuck in the pit below them.

They couldn't have been handed a worse option, that much was clear from her continuing to scream at the top of her lungs despite Coach Scott trying to make her stop, albeit ungracefully, " God damn it, Mari, knock it off! "

" If you're gonna kill me, just make it quick. " Mari's voice shook as she finally stopped, sniffling and staring at her leg; from Sam's spot over Coach Scott's shoulder, she could see that a leg of her pants was torn open, and her knee was clearly swollen and bruised, her skin reddened, likely by the trauma of falling into the hole.