2015.03.13 - Flashback: Camp Wilson

"Five minutes."

Looking at the black and olive drab face of his beaten-up old watch, Slade Wilson calls out the time with a grim half-smile on his face. Although it looks as if he's had it since he was a young man, it still works by some combination of luck and care. "Better check your equipment again."

He stands to his feet, wobbling a bit as the floor moves under him. He reaches up to grab onto the static line running down the aisle. It's something that he'll hold onto for support, but unlike most of the people who usually sit in the back of this aircraft, he won't be hooking anything to the static line.

Though the entire passenger area of the C-130 is empty aside from Slade and the other passenger, it's still extremely noisy back there. The lack of soundproofing is considered more or less normal for a military aircraft. With the engines running, it'd be tough to hear anyone who wasn't shouting. But fortunately, this isn't the first time Slade has ridden in the back of one of these planes, and he came prepared.

He doesn't need to check his own equipment, obviously, as the idea that he might have forgotten something is beyond preposterous. But he gives his parachute a final check just to be safe as he begins walking toward the back of the plane. He presses the button on the headset "Go ahead and lower the ramp, Wintergreen."

Slowly, the back door of the aircraft starts to lower, making almost as much noise as the engines themselves do. A rush of cold air fills the entire passenger area, shaking away any cobwebs that might have been building up.

"I already checked it," Rose whines as she nonetheless stands and pulls a heavy duffel full of stuff down from an overhead compartment. She unzips it, runs her fingers over the top of the mixture of gear piled up inside while staring into its depths, then seals it back up and lugs it over to the parachute rack. The whole process takes five, maybe six seconds; she does, at least, spend substantially longer with the parachute, perhaps due to catching Slade checking his out of the corner of her eye.

Her fingers twitch upwards, then freeze and dart back to the duffel so that she can open it back up; after a little digging, she comes up with her headset and slides it into place.

"Wintergreen, tell Daddy I know how to pack," she mutters, joining Slade with a finger on the button. "I've done tons of packing." Her head lifts towards Slade and her hand falls, with that; sassy though she may be, there's a mixture of anticipation and fear in her eye as she slides the parachute onto her shoulders.

"I'm ready; I promise. I was basically born for this."

Anticipation, fear, and excitement.

Night jumps are several times more dangerous than day jumps. The risk of hitting an obstacle or landing incorrectly is magnified when one can barely see. Fortunately, as previously mentioned, this isn't Slade's first rodeo. It's not even his hundredth rodeo.

Unfortunately, Rose hasn't had nearly as many rodeos.

"Jump when I do, deploy your chute only when I tell you, and follow my lead. You should be fine." The door finishes opening, and locks in place. It's a clear night outside the plane, but the moonlight is barely half full so the visibility is a bit underwhelming. Still, the vague shape of an island can be seen below.

"This is our stop. Do we have a green light, Wintergreen?" In response, the light next to the door changes from red to green signalling that the drop zone is clear.

"GO!" As is his custom, Slade runs down the ramp without hesitation and leaps out of the back of the plane. He disappears over the ledge, falling almost headfirst toward the island.

Rose looks away from her father as he instructs her and, for the first time, sees the dark water below and barely makes out the black mass suspended atop it.

Although her lips part, no annoyed commentary or snarky rebellion comes in response to any of it because her mouth goes dry right around the point when it clicks that she's about to fall towards a place she can barely see and certainly doesn't know, with nothing more to guide her than the moon, the stars, and Slade himself.

This is not her first rodeo, but the others were brightly lit; at least one involved a helpful bullseye spray-painted across the desert.

His last command before jumping scatters whatever trepidations she might be feeling, however, and sends her racing after him following one last, forceful swallow of whatever moisture she can can muster. The silver sickle hanging over them isn't of much use, but she can track him, follow his lead, do as he does to ensure her own survival; it isn't ideal, but it's all the assurance she can really expect as the wind rushes past her.

"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK--" she exclaims, seconds after tumbling out of the plane.

"--YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!" she concludes as adrenaline begins coursing through her system.

The 'slightly darker black' turtleneck and tactical pants combination that Slade has chosen makes him harder to see in the darkness, but his outline is still visible from above, rocketing toward the ground with his feet pointing almost directly toward the sky.

"You're both clear, Slade. I'll see you at the rendezvous. Try not to let Miss Wilson break anything important." The plane get progressively smaller as it heads back toward the base, but it's unlikely that anyone is paying much attention to it when the ground is approaching so quickly.

"Roger. Now get back to base, you old softie..." Keeping his eyes on the ground, Slade reorients his body to be more parallel with the ground. His descent slows slightly as he spreads his arms and legs.

"We're approaching our elevation, Rose. But don't deploy your parachute until I do. Remember, with your chute inflated even the worst sniper in the world will have more than enough to line up a shot. We go in hard, and we don't pull our cords until the last second." He has to shout to get anything across on his headset. The wind will do that to you when you're dropping like a stone from... really high.

"And... 3... 2... 1... Pull it!" He snatches his ripcord just as he nears the elevation at which a parachute wouldn't do him much good. The opening shock cuts off the feed from his headset for a minute as his body is violently jerked.

Rose is dressed more or less identically, albeit with a 'FREE WAYNE' shirt beneath the turtleneck. If she wasn't busy juggling screaming and indulging in the distinct high of, well, falling at high speeds, she'd probably have some protest for the notion that she's so easily broken, but Wintergreen's the last thing she's hearing. Even Slade's side of things is mostly just a wash of static and baritone next to the ferociously whistling wind.

Still, though-- she does have the presence of mind to move as he does, moving from terminally fast dart to splay-limbed pancake with practiced ease, her single, thick braid fluttering wildly in the wind. At some point, he stops bantering with Wintergreen or going over the instructions for, like, the hundredth time; instead, he just rockets past her and the feed dies.

"D-- SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII--!"

Her eye's as big and round as the moon isn't when she yanks her cord a second after him. The force of the opening tears the end of the curse from her mouth and causes it to trail after her like a profane ribbon.

The rectangular parachute flutters with the constantly-changing wind pressure. Unlike Slade's clothing, his parachute's pack and canopy are olive drab, and probably some sort of military surplus. He steers toward a spot on the ground, though what exactly he's aiming at is anyone's guess.

"Remember to pay attention to the wind direction, we want to keep our landings as unsloppy as possible." Focused on the task, Slade is grim and serious. He almost sounds a bit bored by the jump. But maybe that happens when you've done multiple jumps without a parachute.

Because they opened their chutes so lo, there isn't much time spent in the air before the ground is almost touching their feet. Flexing his knees and pointing his feet in the direction of travel, Slade pulls back on the risers of his canopy. Despite the changing winds, he's able to halt his sideways progress enough to do a textbook standing landing. The parachute falls behind him, flopping limply on the ground.

"Careful, we're in unfamiliar territory. Maintain awareness."

Rose is much better at falling than parachuting; a fairly significant chunk of her life up to this point has been spent falling and picking herself back up again, so she's gotten to be something of a professional.

"-- IIIIIT!" The back end of the word comes out right before Rose hits the ground with her knees near her chest for maximally effective rolling. Just a second of miscalculation - of letting herself be swept along in the heady, singular experience of a night-time jump - is paid for with what feels like an eternity of tumbling across foreign terrain thanks to coming down a little too quick and too hard for a composed landing like Slade's. Her chute drags along behind her, picking up dirt and a fair few tears before she finally skids to a crouched, but sorely shaken halt a ways away from him. The duffle is several yards away, having been thrown from her grasp almost immediately.

"Ruh--" she stammers, pushing herself up on shaky legs and swiveling her head around for a glimpse of him. "-- right. Uh-- hh--"

Her lithe form wavers to and fro like a reed in the breeze once she's on her feet, but once she has a chance to brace herself in a wide stance and give her head a vigorous shake, she's stable enough to twist towards him and bring a hand to her brow; once it's there, she is able to still the slight tremor in her forearm.

"Ready-- ready when you are," she assures him, swallowing after that first word. "We just... need to go..." She turns around a couple of times, starts to pull up the hand the duffle was in, then glowers at the darkness and starts marching towards a black lump that she's pretty sure contains her compass and other important stuff.

If Slade wants to chuckle, nobody further than a few feet from him would ever know it. Whatever mirth he might draw from Rose's extremely graceful landing, he simply stands there stoically. In fact, he looks very much like Tom Cruise's stunt double after a particularly impressive stunt. Too cool to show any emotion, despite having jumped over a burning bus full of orphans.

By the time she's found her duffle, Slade has already repacked his chute. It's not jump-ready, obviously, but at least it isn't fluttering all over the makeshift drop zone.

"We landed on target. Well... I did. But either way, we're close to our objective. If you're ready to move out, we should probably start beating feet." He leaves the parachute pack where it is and begins walking in what seems like a randomly-chosen direction. Apparently he didn't bring any gear with him. Or at least he didn't bring any gear that he couldn't fit on his belt or in his pockets.

Rose is still digging through her supplies as she closes on, then ends up following Slade-- though, after a few feet of unconsciously doing the latter, she glances up to see that they're moving towards something, which prompts her to stop looking for her compass with a groan.

Before zipping up, she fishes out a knife; even if Slade knows where they're going, she doesn't know what she'll find when they arrive.

"I was close," she insists with a frown while clipping the sheath to her waist. She sounds upset, certainly, but more with herself than anything. "I just need to do it a few more times, and then it'll be perfect." An apologetic look is flashed towards Slade's back, and then, with a sharp sigh, she forces herself to concentrate on scanning the darkness ahead of them for signs of strangers, hostile or otherwise.

She makes it maybe five more feet before seeming to run into a wall-- or, maybe more accurately, hitting the end of a tether. A cry of surprise is cut short as she snaps her head around to search for a trap and finds her parachute dangling from a bare tree branch.

"God--" she bites off as she hastily undoes the pack and tosses it down. Her first move after freeing herself is to hurry after Slade, but after a few steps and twitchy glances behind herself, she heaves a sigh in response to some imagined chiding and doubles back to see about pulling the 'chute down so that it can be packed up instead of hanging around as evidence of her presence.

A couple minutes later, she's running up to his side with the pack slung loosely over her shoulder and duffle slapping against her leg, panting lightly.

Right about now, the duffle is starting to feel like a mistake. A mistake full of assorted weapons and survival gear, but a mistake all the same; it makes for an awkward running companion.

"Sorry, had to..." Her eyes bounce down to the strap on her shoulder, then forward to the darkness, hardening. "... how close are we?" she asks in a penitent whisper instead of finishing the apology.

"I think... " The question comes as a bit of a wake up after several minutes of relatively peaceful walking. This is probably a good thing, as whatever thoughts he was lost in were probably horrifying. The way that he looks around, one might think that he did pick a random direction after all. "You know, I haven't been here in years. But everything looks more or less the same. Some billionaire bought the island and decided to preserve it...."

He looks around, more nostalgic than confused. "... which means we should be passing a couple gravestones on our right in just a... ah! There they are." Sure enough, they pass the predicted landmark, a couple of gravestones that were clearly made by hand with limited resources.

"So we just have to turn left here, and our objective should be just down the trail ahead." He picks up his pace just a bit, either from excitement or simply because he wants to be done walking soon. Although it's still dark, there's just enough light to follow a grown-over path for about a hundred yards, until a very small clearing opens up next to a tiny creek. There, as if recently set up in preparation of their arrival, a small fire pit has already been stocked with wood. Several logs have been set near the fire pit, presumably to double as chairs or small tables.

"And here we are. Welcome to Camp Wilson."

"Wh-- someone owns this place?!" Rose hisses in a surprised whisper. Her fingers wrap around the knife handle and her eye darts around in search of movement, or vaguely human figures. Or threatening shapes, overly ominous shadows-- security could be anywhere.

Even in her fit of paranoia, her eye catches on the gravestones. In part, this is because Slade called them out ahead of time, but their presence is inherently unusual: roughly hewn graves don't really belong on an island owned by someone with the kind of money to own a goddamned island, unless the owner is ambivalent, or-- absent. Her attention drifts down towards the ground itself as her mind races, but the graves are out of sight before too long.

Ambivalent, absent, or--

"-- Daddy, wait," she murmurs as she tries her best to follow what's left of the path in the home stretch. Deathstroke is, if not the greatest assassin in the world, easily one of them; she's familiar with the reputation, but she still hasn't entirely grasped the implications of it.

Who bought this--"

She abandons her lowly voiced question when the camp is introduced and brings her attention up from the tangled foliage covering the ground to take it in with a widening eye. Slowly - and after a brisk look around the camp from she and Slade's position - she releases the knife; a moment after that, she is able to hold her hands open instead of reflexively clenching them, and after that she begins to quickly pace towards the camp.

"Are there any fish in the creek?" she wonders with a grin. Turning so that she can face Slade while continuing to walk backwards, she adds, "Why didn't you tell me to bring a tent?! Or a bag?" The grin doesn't fall, despite the complaints; inconveniences like possibly having to sleep on the ground under the stars can't really diminish this.

It's not her first camping trip, or even her hundredth, thanks to her mother's insistence on making sure she was prepared for every eventuality.

It is, however, her first time at Camp Wilson.

"We are going to train, right?"

Sure, Slade is the kind of person who frequently kills people for money or because it's Tuesday. This is rude of him. But his most infuriating habit might have nothing to do with violence at all. When a question isn't to his liking, he doesn't avoid it, he simply provides no answer whatsoever. This is, of course, what he does to Rose when she makes inquiries about the island's ownership. She'll just have to wonder a bit longer about the island's mysterious owner.

"There are plenty of fish, but the most field-expedient source of protein on this island is the grub worms. You'd have much better luck searching for those than trying to catch a fish. But we won't be eating any of that tonight."

Slade checks out the fire pit, prodding at the stacked wood and ensuring things are arranged for optimum burning. "In fact, if you didn't bring some sort of implement for starting the fire we might not be eating anything at all tonight." With an old man sigh, he sits down on one of the upturned logs, the makeshift seat the closest he'll likely be able to get to being comfortable tonight. "But if you DID bring something to start a fire, and if you look in the hollow of that tree over there, you'll see that I stashed all of the materials we're going to need for one night."

From his seat, he gives the girl the first genuine smile he's been able to muster all night. Too bad most of it is obscured by the darkness. "So tonight you'll be trained in one of the most critical skills a practitioner of bush craft can master: how to make hot dogs and s'mores under field conditions."

Rose's eye lights up like she's just been handed a sword to decapitate the guy who killed her mom.

"Thank God," she says as she tosses her pack near one of the logs, sets her duffle on that makeshift table, and commences digging. "You have to dig up so many of those," she continues while searching for matches... "It's a pain in the ass, and then you have to cook them..."

... or a lighter...

Rose's eye narrows as she begins chucking stuff - some world maps, a couple of clips, a canteen, another knife - over her shoulder. "... or else they wriggle everywhere, and you can just, you can ''tell'..."

... or one of those clicky things you start a blowtorch with...

"At least if... if they're cooked," Rose continues as panic quickens her breath and her face pales. "You can... I mean, they kind of... they get nutty..."

It's hard to swallow right now, but she forces it anyway as she nears the bottom of the bag. Her lighter is right where she left it when she was packing: in a drawer she was going to remind herself to check on the way out to the airport.

"Ohgodohgodohgod..." she rattles off, staring into the depths for an incredulous second before bending up and sprinting towards the edge of the camp. "... ohgodohgod, ohmygod, oh god..."

A few rocks and chunks of biomass are quickly scooped up tossed aside before she finally comes up with some firemaking supplies she likes; she nearly trips over her own feet when she hustles it back to the firepit, and ends up sliding down to a crouch beside the circle. The knife is drawn and scraped over stone with a trembling hand, but after her first couple of tries get her nowhere, she is able to steel herself - at least, enough to do what needs to be done.

"Sorry," she squeaks out over harsh scratching as sparks are forced from stone. "Sorry, sorry, I-- I don't know how-- I promise, I double-checked everything, I just--"

The beginnings of a fire smolder deep within the wood and her cheeks puff as she stops apologizing long enough to lean in and nurse it to full health.

Once the logs begin crackling, she exhales, looks up apologetically, and finishes, "-- forgot."

No assistance. That seems to be Slade's plan for the night. He brought no gear of his own and doesn't move a finger to help his daughter. From his position on the stump, it's clear that he's here simply to serve as an evaluator. But at least he isn't here to nitpick.

On the contrary, he mostly remains silent. Silent and unmoving, he all but disappears into the dark. But he's already given her all the help he can at this point, it's up to her to survive or fail on her own. Either way, Slade will probably be fine even if he has to skip a meal tonight and sleep in the cold.

As we've already covered, this isn't his first rodeo.

As the fire begins to crackle, the glow from the flames illuminates his lined face. A barely suppressed smile is there, though one has to look hard to find it in the low-light conditions.

"You had me worried. Cold hot dogs are a personal phobia of mine."

He leans forward, holding his hands up to let them catch a bit of warmth from the fire. "You covered nicely though. Your equipment can never be relied on. It's too easily broken or lost. All you can ever truly rely on is yourself. If your lighter is gone, you have to find or create something else. Remember: There's always more than one way to field dress a cat."

Rose looks down after getting that word out and resumes blowing on the fire; a constructive use for all the air she'd otherwise waste with nervous hyperventilating.

She didn't really have time to search the darkness for smiles before that, nor did she expect to find any; fixing the mistake is priority number one.

When his hands come in to hover near the fire, her eyes snap to them and the air leaves her lungs in a great rush. Then she looks up at him, sitting back on her heels and brushing hair loosened by her awkward landing and frantic fire-building behind her ear. There's fear in her eye as he lays out the moral; she eagerly nods along at the appropriate moments, but she's tense, clearly waiting for the other boot to drop.

"Mom used to say not to depend on anything you didn't make yourself to do anything but fail when you need it most," she quietly reminisces. Her eyes fall from his and she chews on her bottom lip for a moment. "I promise I'll be more careful next time. All of the times, even. Thanks for-- the advice." She hardens her expression a little in that gap, trying to banish the fear from it; a badass mercenary doesn't lose it because she left her lighter at home, probably.

With that, she pushes up to her feet and jogs over to the pantree to fetch hot dogs and toss them to Slade; everything else, she carries back herself. He can worry about the hot dogs; she's going to try and figure out how to assemble her first s'more.

"Smart woman, that mother of yours." It's probably a good thing that Slade's face is mostly covered by darkness. Otherwise, she might be able to see the cloud that suddenly falls over it. But that's perhaps to be expected considering that most of Slade's memories of Rose's mother are 'bittersweet' at best. Perhaps it's at moments like this that he wonders if Sweet Lili would approve of the way he's been raising their daughter.

She probably wouldn't. She'd probably throw a fit if she saw the course he was pushing Rose toward.

"Your mother would be glad to see how you've turned out, I think. Very proud. She'd probably be horrified that I'm letting you eat junk food at midnight though." That's probably not what she would object most strongly to.

The kit is pretty standard camp stuff, clearly placed here within the last few hours. Otherwise, the hot dogs wouldn't feel refrigerated, and the animals would have gotten into the packages.

Pulling out his own knife, he cuts open the package, and skewers a hot dog on the end of his knife. As he holds it over the fire, he puts the materials in a more central location. Fortunately, he carries pretty long knives, or he'd burn his hand.

Sweet Lili kept her daughter's existence a secret for a reason, that's for sure.

Rose can't help but beam at the compliment; she keeps her head low on the way back to the fire to try and hide it a little, though. "She preferred eating what we could grow or catch," she says with a slight headbob. Like grub worms, which probably are a nutritional step up from hot dogs and/or s'mores. "Organic stuff from local farmers, if that wasn't an option; forget midnight, she'd happily have just dropped this stuff in the fire and walked away, morning or night."

Rose punctuates this insight into her early childhood diet by sweeping the duffle to the ground so she can sit on the log it was occupying and tear into graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate bars. She's seen people do this on TV(like, once). She's heard the word plenty, wrinkled her nose in disgust and astonishment at the Pop Tart it's inspired; she's spent most of her life learning how to survive all manner of catastrophes through determination and resourcefulness.

She still winds up shoving a couple of crushed, shattered, and smooshed piles of failure into her mouth periodically as her attempts at exposing completed s'mores to the fire by dangling them from zip ties or artfully skewering them on her own knife go about as well as they could.

By the third, she gets the bright idea to slide a marshmallow onto the knife and carefully turn it through the flames.

"Did you... miss her?" she wonders around a mouthful of empty calories. "Why did you two even split up?"

Slade would probably also rather be eating grub worms. For now, he's avoiding the dessert, and sticking exclusively to the only source of protein. Unlike his steaks, he insists that the hot dogs be almost charred before he eats them. He might need to chide whoever stashed this stuff here for not including anything with alcohol.

As he tears into his second dog, he chews slowly as if in thought. "Well... I'm sure you already know that we weren't really together very long..." They weren't really 'together' at all, in any kind of respectable sense. But telling your daughter that her mother was basically just a short fling isn't the best way to win that father of the year mug that Slade prizes so highly. "... but it was probably for the best. Like I said, your mother was a smart woman. Too smart to put up with me for very long, I suspect." His smile is tinged with only a tiny bit of bitterness, but with a lot of regret.

"But yes. I miss her. I just don't allow myself to miss her very often. Your mother understood what it means to be a warrior, and she wouldn't want me to spend any time moping."

Rose blows out a few little flames clinging to the blackened marshmallow after it's withdrawn. Her expression is quite melancholy for a girl who is about to eat her first real s'more, but reminiscing doesn't slow her down in sandwiching the black and white confection between chocolate and graham crackers.

It just makes concentrating on that first bite that much harder.

"I still think about her a lot," she admits mid-chew as she watches the fire crackle. "Not-- as much as when I was with the Madisons--" Her foster parents after Lili, presently deceased after a visit from someone with a grudge against Slade(who is also deceased).

"-- but enough." Her eye lifts towards Slade as she weighs his perspective on her versus the hard, pragmatic woman she remembers. "Probably-- too much." She quickly shakes her head and wipes the look off of her face; this is Camp Wilson, and there's no crying at Camp Wilson, probably.

"I'm sure that she had her reasons for separating - she was very independent - but I think that she'd be glad to know that you're taking the time to teach me what she couldn't, now."

It's probably guilt that causes Slade to look away as she speaks. Normally, he's above such feelings, but this is all striking a bit too close to home. Slade is suddenly flooded with memories of a younger, happier man who hadn't crossed quite so many moral boundaries yet. But like all of his reminisces, this one is quickly suppressed.

"You know, the two of us spent some time travelling through country that was very much like this." He looks around, taking in as much of his surroundings as he can. Between the stars and the firelight... it's still pretty much just dark. "This island doesn't have quite as many snakes though."

His third hot dog finished, he apparently is either full or can't stomach the thought of another one. He backs away from the fire a bit, wiping the blade of his knife before he re-sheathes it.

"The snakes are still out though, so make sure you watch out for them when you're setting up your sleeping bag. You'll probably want to do that sooner rather than later. Long day tomorrow."

Standing, he slowly stretches his arms. "I'll take the first watch. You should get some shut-eye."

Rose moves on to roasting a hot dog over the fire as she finishes her s'more. Like Slade, she elects to keep hers in the fire until it's black, hanging onto the end of her knife handle for maximum flame-to-weenie contact.

"Sounds romantic," she sarcastically murmurs over the sound of charring meat. She smiles softly and sadly as she says it; the idea of her mother getting romantic with anyone, even her father, is tough to rationalize with her memories of the woman.

The warning draws her eye up from the dog to study what she can see of Slade's features for some sign of how serious he is; after a few seconds of wary examination, she assures him, "I've killed plenty of snakes; I'll be fine," with a dismissive handwave.

A second after her hand falls back into her lap, she uses her serum-granted speed to hop to her feet, drop the knife to her stump and throw her arms around Slade's torso while his arms are raised, all in the space of a heartbeat.

"For the training," she explains as her grip tightens. "And the s'mores."

No matter how hard Slade tries to turn this teenage girl into a soldier, she occasionally finds ways to remind him that she's still a teenage girl. Those who've known Slade for years would be very surprised by how naturally he seems to return the hug, while anyone who'd never met him before would have no idea that he isn't ordinarily much of an 'emotion guy.'

His grip is quite a bit looser than hers, giving her only a brief squeeze before breaking off the hug. "There's no need to thank me, kiddo. No daughter of mine is going to go through life without knowing some basic bushcraft skills." He draws his hand into a fist, and gives her a gentle rap on the side of her face. "Now quit stalling, you. I'm going to go find some more wood, and when I get back you'd better be snoring."

"Stealthily, of course."

While Slade hunts for more wood, Rose wolfs down her hot dog, then goes digging in her duffle.

By the time he gets back, he'll find her rolled over and slipping into dreamland. Next to her bedroll, an unlucky snake is pinned to the ground by a knife through the skull.

Hours later, when it's her turn to take watch, she finds the camp empty, save for the snake and a Post-it stuck to her hand:

'I took all your gear. Good luck surviving the next six months.'

There's that other boot.