Supplies

The morning passed in silence as you kept the fire going to drive the last bugs away. Lucy wasn't taking the situation well, sitting by the lake and looking over the contents of the box over and over again. "What the hell is this, Hunger Games?!" she shouted at the calm water, an ironic sight.

You sat down next to her. "Well, if they meant what they said then you're not far off. The Most Dangerous Game and all..."

She sighed and finally stood up, the dirt sticking to the bottom of her shredded dresses. "Well, I suppose we ought to play their game if we hope to survive..."

She got up and started walking away, mumbling "...not that it'd be so bad if you weren't here."

You heard it, and felt rather hurt. You'd tried to support her ever since you met her, was it really so fair to claim things would be easier without you? "What do you mean by that?" You couldn't help but interrogate.

She began walking into the forest with the map, waving you to follow her. You grabbed the notes and the gun, going in after her.

She glanced back at you once you'd walked a minute or so, "I don't know you all that well, but you seem nice enough John. And unfortunately that means I care that you survive, which means I've got to keep myself alive longer than I want to."

"Oh." was all you could say in response at first. "Well...I suppose I'm..sorry?"

She shook her head and chuckled sadly, "It's not your fault, I'm just not in a good mood."

You both walked on in silence for a while, letting the sounds of the forest proceed with their chaotic symphony. It got thicker as you walked, vines and webs getting in the way. "They can afford a military base but not a path through the jungle...very thoughtful." You tried a joke to lighten the mood.

"Those animals probably love the chaos.." she responded with a smile.

"What, our friendly hunters or the actual mammalian ecosystem?"

She couldn't help but laugh at that, "I suppose both, the only difference between the two is our 'friendly hunters' don't appear to have a functional mammalian brain."

"And we do? Last time I checked I'm not a cat."

She rolled her eyes, "The human brain can be split into three areas, the reptilian brain (the stem bit) the mammalian brain (The middle of the brain) and the neocortex, the part that makes us human."

"I knew it!! The politicians really are reptilians!" you shouted excitedly.

This made her laugh more, "Something like that, yeah. Careful, our real reptilian friends might take notice if we make too much noise."

"Are there alligators?" You guessed.

"I have no clue, but I'm not taking chances if I can help it."

"I thought you wanted to die?"

"That was before I met 'Mr. skipped biology class', I feel too bad to let someone so ignorant die alone." she prodded your ego playfully.

"Hey, it's not my fault! Nobody remembers those test answers years later." A proper defense, you thought, there's no way she remembered every little test result.

"Correction: nobody remembers those useless test answers. You've got a point though, it's unrealistic to expect you to research topics like that unless you learn their worth." She replied.

"Exactly! How did you learn about 'their worth' anyway?" You queried.

She gave you a sheepish look, "I never went to school, I was homeschooled."

"Oh." suddenly her personality made a lot more sense, introverted but unpracticed in avoiding socialization, she just wasn't experienced in it at all.

"Lucky you," you said, not wanting her to take your pause the wrong way.

She gave you a lonely look, "lucky in some ways, unlucky in others, I know what you're thinking. My closest experience to socialization was a homeschool group that made me sick with religion...unusual ideas would bounce off them like some cursed rubber ball. Maybe that's for the best, I could be wrong about them. But what really got to me was that no one could give me anything more than a claim. 'It's human nature, we have to have hierarchy, don't you know?' they'd tell me, and I would ask and ask over and over for any speck of evidence that it really was human nature. They'd point to China, North Korea, every hierarchical system ever built that humans depended on despite their evil deeds. Then they would point to the glorious US and claim even here there's hierarchy, even in family there's hierarchy, and look at the animals! They have hierarchy!" She sighed. "And I would explain that while that is history, we aren't animals. We aren't the past, and plenty of experiments exist showing that independence can be manufactured just as effectively as dependence is within the outcome-based education model. They'd then point at something like the middle east and call that anarchy because the government is in shambles, despite the fact that other cases of anarchy have had brilliant internal results. I'd point to those and claim with weapons, with proper cultural engineering, it's entirely possible they could have built what would seem to us to be a utopia. They wouldn't listen..."

You both walked on in silence for a while, you weren't sure how to respond.

"I probably sound insane, don't I? An anarchist on a deserted island, talking about brains and guns."

"Well.." you began, "I'm not sure I'd agree, but I never had enough of an interest in those subjects to outright deny the possibility."

She nodded with a smile, "Well, thankfully you don't have to worry about me inviting you to some cult across the globe, as we've reached our supplies!"

"Oh good!" You said enthusiastically, following her into the clearing. A crate stood in the middle.

"Shh! Stay down!" She whispered at you and grabbed your hand so she wouldn't lose you below the tall grass, and you walked holding hands towards the crate. You pulled the gun out of your pocket, holding that in your other hand just in case.

"They said they'd be two days, didn't they?" You asked.

"Do these people look like they play fair?!" She whispered furiously, pointing to your gun, "You have one bullet!!"

You nodded, "Point taken."

You both walked up to the crate, looking around to make sure no one immediately visible was watching. Then, you pushed the top off with your free hand and looked inside.

"Oh no..." you whispered.

Lucy was kneeling beside you, keeping watch. "What?? What is it?"

"The-the-...we should go..."

She shook her head and rose up to her feet, refusing to heed your unspoken warning and looking inside. "Fucking hell!"