He turns out to be smarter than she expected. The cave is well-covered, quite concealed. She builds her first proper fire in months. The faint footsteps she hears don't even make her jump.
"Are you her? Are you the one?"
She looks at him from across the flames, which do interesting things to the lines and shadows of his face. He looks around her age. He's handsome, she allows herself to admit, since he is only her accomplice for the night.
She does not try to fool herself into thinking that she will stay with him anywhere past the early, gray hours of the morning.
"The one?" she asks.
"The one," he states again, like it should be enough of an explanation. "The creature in the woods."
She looks down, stares at the hot wood on the fire, listens to it crackle and pop.
He continues, "The creature in the woods. The one that slaughters everything in its path. You must've heard the stories. People wandering into the trees, desperate for food or water. And they're never seen again. You never send anything into the woods that you aren't willing to lose."
She pulls her knees up to her chest, answers with silence.
"You must be, if you haven't heard the stories. I'd thought everyone heard them."
She continues to stare at the glowing orange twigs on the fire. She was right, she supposes. Except, she doesn't have the humanity to be classified as a monster.
She is a creature. One who terrorizes those who remain.
She'd only wanted to survive.
He interrupts her thoughts.
"It's funny. I'd always pictured you as something – "
"Different?" she questions, cutting him off. She looks up, and he nods once at her.
"Yeah."
"Looks can be deceiving," she whispers.
He laughs somberly. "You're telling me."
"It's late," she tells him. "We should get some sleep."
He rises to put out the fire, as she turns away from him, lying on her side on the rocks and using her pack as a pillow.
"You'll be gone in the morning, won't you?" he asks her, before the last flame is out.
"Yes," she says simply.
She hears him sigh, and then with a breath the cave is pitch black. He settles down, and then she hears a sentence mumbled so quietly, she thinks she might've imagined it.
"I think I'd rather you stayed."
"How long did you think you could follow me before I noticed?"
She stops her trek in the wood, turns around and waits. Moments pass, and then he slowly steps out from behind a tree.
"Oh, I don't know. Maybe an hour, tops?"
She sighs heavily. She'd left about a half an hour ago, just before the sun peeked out from behind the horizon. She'd been sure to be silent, so she didn't wake him. She didn't want to have to listen to him plead with her to stay. That wasn't an option. She just couldn't. And there was no need to disappoint him.
But it seems he hadn't been asleep, and she had noticed his footsteps only five minutes after she'd gone. He was quiet, but not enough to be hidden from her trained ears. She hoped he would give up and leave her alone, but she stares at him now, an unwanted companion on her journey. This is just the sort of thing she needed to avoid.
The look of trepidation on his face is almost comical. She snorts.
"What, are you afraid I'm going to shoot you? I'm the creature in the woods, after all."
His face softens. "Hey. That's not – "
She interrupts him. "Look, I'd tell you to get out of here, but somehow I don't think that you would go. And I don't think threats are going to deter you. So you have two options. One, you can leave. My preferred choice, and the one that I think would be best for both of us. Groups really are dangerous. Alone, we have no guilt, we don't owe anybody anything, are accountable to no one but ourselves. You go one direction, I'll go another. Wish each other well and be on our ways. But, of course, I don't think you're going to go for that."
He smiles. "You know me well already."
"Option two," she begins, "you follow me. But let me make something very clear to you. I am in no way responsible for you. I am not your protector. I will not feed you, I will not shelter you, I will not save you. You're not going to become my charity case. I'm not going to fight for you. I am my main priority and I'm sorry if that sounds cold or shallow or callous, but my goal in this whole fucking mess is to live, not to make friends. So you can follow me. But you better watch your own back. Are we clear?"
He nods. "Crystal."
"Good." She turns. "And try to walk more quietly. I could've picked out your footsteps a mile away."
"Yes, ma'am. Lead the way."
They build a small fire at night. One just big enough to take the sharp chill out of the air.
"May I ask where we're headed?"
She pauses, considering his question. She's never had a location in mind, she's just simply gone. She wasn't working towards a certain destination. She was only trying to get away.
"South," she says. She always went south.
"What's south?"
She shrugs. "What's here?"
He chuckles lightly. "Good point."
They're quiet for a few moments.
"I'm Peter, by the way."
She nods.
"Oh, come one. You're not going to tell me your name?"
"No," she answers.
"What do you think is going to happen? We're suddenly going to become best friends and won't be able to bear being without each other? Just because I know your name?"
"I told you I wasn't going to be your friend," she retorts.
"I know. It's just that usually, you need to know more than someone's name to be classified as their friend."
"Well, it's not like that anymore."
He pauses, stares at her with incredulous and annoyed eyes. Then, he smirks.
"You weren't much of a people person before all this, were you?"
She glares at him.
"Fuck you."
"Aw, sweetheart, I'm flattered."
It takes every bit of her restraint and ever-fading manners not to punch him in the mouth.
"I'm no one's damn sweetheart," she spits at him. "And you can shut your mouth, because I didn't sign up for this. I never wanted a partner, let alone a self-righteous smart ass who would beg to follow me and then pout if I didn't give him his way. This operation is going to run my way, no questions asked, and if you have a problem with that your option to leave is still available to you at any time. If you stay, you swallow whatever useless pride you have, you suck it up, and you shut up."
He makes a show of it, pantomiming zipping his lips. She rolls her eyes, getting up to put out the fire.
"You're a real trip, you know that?"
Darkness overtakes them. She lies down to go to sleep. Just before she shuts her eyes, she murmurs a question into the night.
"Why did you even come to save me, anyway? Why did you rescue the creature in the woods? Why didn't you just let them kill me?"
She tries to ignore the hint of wistfulness she hears in her voice, pushes away the thoughts that tell her that maybe death would be easier than this. Maybe it is the only end to everyone's story now, and that all she can hope for is that it is quick and relatively painless.
She waits for his answer. But she doesn't receive one. After all, she told him to shut his mouth.
He does.