108
I watch, helplessly, as Cat and Thorun fall foul of Miranda’s trap, Thorun now pelting through the forest away from where Cat dangles by one leg, thirty metres or so high up a Spruce.
The camera strapped to Thorun’s front takes me away from Cat, and my heart is in my mouth as I watch the Icelander’s flight from her perspective.
At Cat’s shout she’d spun from the blood-splattered ice immediately.
Now, as she runs through the trees, her steps slowed by the thick snow, my worst fears have been realised, and hers too.
Cat is out of the Game. Miranda’s likely to finish her off easily now, and Thorun will then be easy pickings next, leaving just Miranda and Cherry as the final two.
As I watch Thorun run, Miranda still heading in the other direction towards Cat, I frown and catch my breath as the Icelander comes to a sudden halt.
Shaking my head, I realise what she’s going to do. I’d expect no less of her.
“No!” I snarl, unable to do anything but stare at the monitors in horror.
I’m aware Mr Dott is having a field day filming my emotions, but I’m all out of fucks to give at this time. Starlen, on the other side of the room, prattles into the cameras about ‘sacrifices, feelings’ and ‘tragedies,’ but I can’t focus on anything other than what's going down out in the wild.
Covering my face with my hands momentarily, I breathe deeply and shake my head, preparing to force myself to witness what I’d had a hand in foreshadowing.
I’d made a mistake not telling Thorun about the Life Token when I had the chance.
A terrible, selfish mistake. And I’d made a greater mistake asking Cat to care for her.
In doing both these things I’d sealed the fates of the only two women worth knowing on this show.
‘The only two I care about.’
Taking my hands away from my face, I straighten my shoulders and look back at the screen, but something’s changed.
‘What IS she doing?’
Thorun, her breath coming in short, sharp bursts due to the intense cold and exertion, has changed direction again and reached the area where she and Cat had built their moose trap.
She’s crying now as she leans across the two-metre by three-metre trench they’d covered with branches, and presses big prints into it with a branch.
I shake my head and smile at her ingenuity.
‘If this works…’
When she’s satisfied, she rises and, still bawling loudly, spins to run back the way she’s come, towards Cat and the rapidly approaching Miranda.
She reaches Miranda just as the Australian, walking slowly and purposefully, comes into view of an unconscious Cat hanging from her trap.
“Hey, Miranda, you fucking rassgat!” Thorun shouts across a distance of perhaps twenty metres, sobs hitching her words.
The Aussie comes to a halt and smiles a broad, deadly smile when she sees Thorun.
“Thorun,” she murmurs, taking a slow step in the Icelander’s direction. “Don’t be scared. I’m here now. Cat’s out, but I can look after you the rest of the way.”
Thorun begins stepping backwards at the same, slow pace as Miranda’s stalking gait.
“I don’t think that’s what you plan,” Thorun shakes her head. “And I don’t think you should come any closer, Miranda.”
“Come on now,” the Australian smiles, still moving forwards, “you can trust me, Thorun. Didn’t I already try to align with you before Seville? Let’s work together now.”
As she says this, she puts her hand behind her back where Cat’s machete is tucked into her belt.
The movement isn’t lost on Thorun, who steps back too fast, her back slamming up against a tree trunk.
At Thorun’s surprised squeak Miranda grins and bounds forwards, all subterfuge dispelled with.
Thorun, spinning on her heel, darts away like a startled deer, making a mad dash through the trees the way she’d come. But neither she nor I anticipated how fast Miranda would be.
“Come on, Thorun,” I murmur. “Move!”
The director taps me on the shoulder, and I lean back and shove him into the cameras, the crash and his cry filling the small room.
Starlen makes the most of it by going into overdrive for the audience about how close I am to losing a favourite.
I contemplate turning around and ripping his head off, but I can’t take the time; I’m glued to the screen.
As I stand with bated breath I, like the audience, am now racing through the forest in Thorun’s shoes, my breath coming hard, my legs sinking knee-deep in the snow as I try to ignore the laughter of the Australian catching up to me.
As we reach the area where the moose trap is set Thorun injects a burst of speed into her legs and runs around the trap before Miranda rounds the corner of the trail.
Leaning down, Thorun grasps her ankle and cries out, pretending an injury as Miranda approaches at speed.
The Australian, keeping her eye on the prize, runs straight over the trap just as Thorun had hoped.
She gets a frightening two thirds of the way across before the ground gives way beneath her and drops her into a pit lined with sharp stakes.
Her screams are terrible.
Thorun clasps her mittened hands to her ears and screams equally as loudly as she sees the Australian lying, face up, her body pierced by more than a dozen timber stakes.
“Help me! Help meeee!” Miranda screams as dark blood bubbles out of her mouth. “Thorun, help me! I’m your friend, Thorun. Thorun help me.”
I bow my head, my heart heavy, as the Icelander, sobbing, folds down into the snow and gives in to her horror, her relief and her shame, as the Australian continues to beg, threaten and cajole as she bleeds out.
Even if she wanted to Thorun couldn’t get down into that hole without a ladder. Even if she did she wouldn’t be able to do anything to save the Australian. But she does what she can do. She sits for an hour or more unmoving in the snow as a silent witness to Miranda’s last breath.
Finally, rising stiffly, she stumbles back the way she came, nightfall almost upon her.
Reaching her shelter, she searches high and low in the waning light for the tomahawk or knife to cut Cat free, not knowing that Miranda had beaten her to the punch and already taken them.
Crying softly, she leaves the shelter to run to the tree where Cat is still hanging.
When she comes across her, deathly still, blood completely covering her face and frozen into a garish red mask, she screams and falls to her knees.
“Oh, no, Cat. Oh no. Oh, Cat! Caaaaaat!”