Slaying demons, p.8
Slaying Demons, page 8
part #2 of Damsel Series
Max stared at her for a second, then laughed.
“You came prepared? They gave you some warning?”
Kate snorted at the words, then laughed.
“We totally ambushed her this morning. She didn’t know that we were coming here at all. So, what’s with that, Hannah?”
She shrugged.
“What? I have a gun, too. I don’t go unarmed. Even in the shower. That’s normal right? I mean, Max, you go around armed all the time, don’t you?” She didn’t know if that was right or not, but the hairy man nodded, backing her up, as if she wasn’t being unreasonable at all.
“You know, I do. How about you, miss?” That was for Kate, who sighed, but did empty her pockets, to show she had two blades, only one of them folding, and a small emergency kit on her. That was in a metal box, that had been painted to say, Life of Kate on the outside.
“I had a heads up though. Not a big one, but a few days, so this isn’t really what I carry around all the time.”
The big man simply grinned then.
“That’s a lot better than I thought we’d be seeing! Good. We have most of a day’s worth of light left. Get on the shelter first... Sorry, I don’t have a name for you?” He pointed toward her, which got a snicker from the crew.
As if a survival expert was supposed to know who she was from their show.
“I’m Hannah. This is Kate. Lewis is on camera, Doug is the sound guy, Connie is the producer and she needs to take over so that I can learn who everyone else is, too? Well, Burt... He’s a driver.” She didn’t say more, since, if they were smart, their clever trick with the private ambulance was going to be hidden from the masses. It might not be all that great, inside, but they’d driven on the roads for hours and hadn’t been stopped at all.
Connie moved forward, even though she wasn’t being caught on cam at all.
“Dave, Eric, Tiffany and my assistant, Darnel.” The last one was an interesting looking younger man. He was white, but had, clearly, started as a decently cute, round faced, girl. One who hadn’t taken any hormones, but who was, now, a man.
Hannah was fine with that, so simply marked all the names in her head.
Max didn’t seem to give a single damn about any shooting schedules at all, or prior plans, so moved right into survival information. Important matters. Like getting ready for the night.
“You two need to learn some tricks, and fast. Shelter, water, fire and food. In that order, unless it’s going to be incredibly cold. Then shelter is still first. Hannah, you have a problem with the cabin here. A real one. Psychological, not just being picky. That means you need to get something else going. You brought your own blade, so we’ll get a lean-to, for the night. Come with me. You have all day, but if you’re going to eat, too, you need to get a move on.” He sounded a little brisk, but affable at the same time.
Which meant he was going to seem like an asshole by the time the show came out. Even walking around being sweet and kind, people said and did enough that they could be turned into the bad guy with very little effort.
She was already on her feet, but didn’t know what to do still, the man had pointed to the trees, across the grass meadow, about a hundred feet away. There was a small river in the way. When she got to that, she frowned, but it wasn’t deep or anything. Max simply hopped across, sinking into the mud a bit on the far side. She moved back, to get a moving start and still ended up with her left foot getting soaked. Kate, being taller, made the hop with no problem. The camera people simply walked across, having boots on that seemed dry and like a good plan. She lost her running shoe in the mud. That wasn’t comfortable, but she rinsed it out, and put it back on, as the others watched her. Trying not to laugh. At least Kate was. The camera and sound guys were laughing, but doing it silently.
She just waved, smirking a bit.
“I found water! So, that’s one of the four things, right? I don’t know if it can be used or not.”
Max actually smiled then, as if she’d said something funny.
“This should be fine. Look here... Animal tracks. Deer, in this case. You can tell by the pattern. They have hooves. See the split here? There were probably four or five of them. Maybe more. If they can drink the water, in general we can. Still, we’re going to treat everything. Good job, remembering what I told you, Hannah. With only shelter and water, out in a temperate climate like this, in the fall, you can live for weeks, if you have to.”
Her left foot sloshing, she followed the others, with Max and Kate in the lead.
Max pointed to various trees.
“Get boughs with a center about as big as your thumb. That will be heavy enough. Try to break them and find something to saw on them with. Don’t use a knife for it, if you have anything else at all. You don’t want to break your blade. A bit of jagged rock, a hatchet, that kind of thing works. It will take time. So get to work. You have to carry everything back to the base camp yourself, Hannah.” The man waited then, looking at her like he expected a fit to be thrown.
She nodded. After all, she wasn’t helpless. Also, he wasn’t treating her that way, expecting her to do things for herself, like he was. It would take fifty trips, probably, so she needed to hurry. Like he said, being helpful and not bossy. First though, she searched the ground, finding a fist sized rock that had a very straight, flaky side to it. That was covered with dirt, but everything was out there, so she nodded and showed it to Max.
“Is this good?”
There was a somber nod in response.
“That should work. Awkward and not comfortable to use, but in a pinch, yes.”
The actual gathering portion of things took nearly two hours. She made fifteen trips back to the camp, before the bearded fiend, who had followed her around the whole time, but not called out any helpful hints, other than suggesting once that she grab some saplings, stopped her.
“The easy thing here would be to tie it all together with some string, rope or even fishing line. Letting you do it the easy way would be cheating you now, after all that work. So you get to weave the top supports. I’ll walk you through it. Kate, come watch this.”
Hannah spent about an hour on the actual construction. There was no real help at all, the man making her do it all, even though this time she was actually told how to get it done. Then, as soon as she had a serviceable shelter up, he clapped his hands.
“Nice! Now, we need to take this down and have you do it again. Tomorrow, though. Right now, we need to get back to the woods and collect enough firewood for the night and get some water in. You noticed where that was already, so even if you had to drink it straight, you could do that. That means fire is the priority.”
He didn’t make them run to do it or anything, but Hannah nodded and moved instantly, regardless. She felt tired, from her unfamiliar carrying duties, but part of that was due to being tiny. If the expert said that getting wood and then a fire going, were the needed steps, then she needed to get right on it.
That didn’t take fifty trips and this time Kate got to help, instead of just walking back and forth. That meant collecting dry wood from the forest, of which there was a lot. It wasn’t a place that people went to much, apparently, so it had that kind of thing just lying on the ground. Some of the pieces were big enough that they both had to carry them. They didn’t have a saw, and unless her pal was going to rip them apart with her mind, Hannah didn’t get how they could use those.
The last trip was all about collecting handfulls of little things. Dry bits, to use to start the fire.
She expected to be handed two sticks to rub together, but Max, apparently saving that kind of treat for later, simply gave her and Kate a box of matches, then walked them through the set up needed.
“Fire starts small and grows. You pretty much can’t set a log on fire with a single match. Not on purpose. So clear an area and set up a little tepee using the tinder. Don’t make it too big to control, just enough that it will give you time to slowly add larger pieces. Remember fire climbs, so if it starts to go out, give it fuel it can run up.”
Kate went first, and managed it without using ten matches. Only one, in fact. Hannah had her fire set up, but simply walked over to her pal and grinned.
“Can I borrow a burning twig? Please.”
That had Connie sending Lew with a camera, to stand right next to her, as if expecting her to fail. Which she did, the first three times. On the fourth she managed to get the bottom of her little stand of twigs going, and then, carefully, with some helpful hints from Max, had a bigger blaze going, not losing it, after that.
The man started to chuckle, for some reason. That had cams put on him.
“Here they told me to expect whining and tears, for the first two weeks. You managed two fires with only one match! We’ll work on porting fire, then. That wasn’t in the plans, but if you came up with this on your own, you can manage that, too. Now, we need food. Tonight, we’re eating out of cans and bags. Dried food. We’ll want water for that. We need to boil it, for at least ten minutes. I have a few buckets.”
That they, Kate and herself, were supposed to get that water was clear. Also, they were, it seemed, supposed to bitch and moan about it. Hannah wasn’t trying to sabotage the show, but so far it hadn’t really been that big of a deal. Even in the first season, she’d mainly just been polite and calm. There had been a few other girls on it, to liven things up. Some of them would be amazing to get out into the woods. As she moved, carrying a metal bucket, she smiled at the idea.
“We should get Terry and Lara back in for this. I bet they’d love it.” They were on camera, but Kate laughed.
“I can’t imagine... Though, they are on call for this, if we can get them out here for it. We should learn what we’re doing first. Then we can be the ones with skills, and Lord it over them.” The words weren’t catty, but weren’t whispered, either. That was going into the show, given that.
She smiled then.
“Still, we can warn them first, so they know to bring clothing? I’m going to look bad, wearing the same thing for a week. Plus, this is going to start to smell pretty ripe.”
That was just the truth, but she didn’t know what to do about it.
Wash a lot and wear damp clothing, part of each day, so what she had could be cleaned.
Connie actually laughed.
“Okay, we aren’t that mean. We have clothing for you. Both of you. Makeup, at least for Katherine...”
That last bit was clearly designed to get to Hannah, but she just giggled. It wasn’t really funny, but she was good with looking bad. It wasn’t her show, after all.
“I’m pretty sure that no one will care. Not out here anyway.”
It was interesting, but Max rolled his eyes. Then looked at Connie, like she was being stupid.
“No perfumes or anything out here. It will attract bears. Possibly cougars. There have only been fourteen real cougar attacks on human beings in the states, over the last hundred years, so let’s not make that happen. It will give them a bad reputation.”
Hannah grinned then.
“That’s silly, of course. Cats don’t care about that kind of thing. Now bears... I’m sure making ourselves smell like flowers and candy will go over really well with them. Mmmm. Tasty city folk!”
Lewis had a camera facing her directly, as she said that. Connie grinned, happy to finally get some sass from one of her actors, even if it was just a joke. One that Max laughed at, so at least one person agreed with her.
“That’s pretty much true. This area has black bears, which won’t want to mess with us too much, but I’ll tell you now, one of them can take one of us in a fight, seven out of ten times. So make sure that no food is left open near the camp and if any of you ladies are having that time of the month, we need to send you back to the city.”
No one tucked a hand in the air, but Hannah kept the idea in mind, even if she was going to be safe for two weeks. It could be used as a trick to get out of the country for a while, when it got too boring. She assumed that was going to happen, at least.
Once they got the water, boiling some of it in a large pot, Max started to break out several different plastic packages of dried food. He also had some canned pie filling, and a yellow cake mix, in a box. Everyone else stood back, as they used the last few hours of light, to come up with something for everyone to eat. For once they couldn’t just have that catered, or brought in from a local restaurant. Everyone was eating what they were, that night. What was there, in the box, was craft services.
Which Hannah was fine with. Not that she loved that kind of stuff. The truth was that she would probably hate it. Never having had it, used to good food, or even not eating much, she kind of thought it would be horrible. Then, she wasn’t having to eat something they’d caught. Yet.
That would almost certainly have to come, and at that point, she was probably going to either be sick or have to throw a fit, to get out of it. She wasn’t a moral vegan, but she mainly ate veggies, with a bit of grain on the side. Eggs were fine, but she wasn’t certain that making rabbit from scratch would work for her very well.
Which got her to go still for a moment. She was already planning to be weak. To give in because something was gross or too real for her. She ate meat, after all. It just came from a safe and sane shop, down the street, or out of a kitchen, already prepared. It was cowardly of her to eat it presented on a plate, with a garnish and to be afraid of doing the dirty parts, herself.
Moving in toward Max, who was setting up to cook for them, she waved her right hand.
“What do you need done here?”
For some reason, he looked up at her, surprised.
“Can you build up the other fire? Clear around it a bit more first. Give it at least three feet, without anything that will burn too easy. We’ll want coals, for the dump cake. Then get more water? We need to have some for washing up and all that.”
She nodded, doing the fire first. Kate simply stood up and got two of the buckets, now empty. She waited for Hannah to be ready, leaving her one of those to carry. They were caught on camera, the whole time, even if they weren’t doing anything interesting. They were just the ones carrying the water. They didn’t talk a lot, working together on that, and bringing back three quarters filled buckets. Then, because they needed more, she filled a pot and started it to boil, simply nestling it into the wood of her fire, with Max watching. He didn’t call out to stop her or anything.
Then she went the seventy feet back to the water, alone. Except for Eric and Connie. Eric was on the camera. Connie was holding a notebook, smirking, in a slightly evil way.
“So, Hannah. You walk around armed all the time? Why?”
The question was probably stupid. That the woman really might not get why she’d be doing that was just possible, so she shrugged.
“I’ve been kidnapped four times. Buried in a box once, so, you know the thing with the little cabin. It’s just the wrong shape and size for me. Last month a group of people with super powers had orders to kill me. Luckily that turned out to be a mistake, that we smoothed over with a call to their bosses. The Khan Collective? I have to say, if you ever have any problems with them, it really pays to actually get in touch. Great customer service for a crime syndicate. Of course, they claim to be revolutionaries, so that might be why it worked. Anyway, I’m not planning to be a victim any more. I might end up dead, but no one is just stuffing me in the trunk of a car again. So, I’m armed, getting training and all that. We have to be responsible for ourselves. We, all of us, have to be ready to stop crime, even if it means going up against people with powers. Nothing against the cops or the good super types, either. They can’t be everywhere, all the time. It isn’t fair to make them feel like they have to be.”
She smiled then and shook her head.
“Don’t get me wrong. Some of my best friends have powers. That just doesn’t get me out of doing my best to protect myself.”
Connie made a face then.
“We can’t use that. Here... How do you feel about Tyler Yuan? You said that you know him? We haven’t seen him yet... Is he hot?”
She shrugged then.
“He’s incredible. Not hot, no. But if you can’t see past that, you’re an idiot. If Kate wasn’t dating him, I’d be working on hitting that. Trust me, it’s crossed my mind, even before they met. His understanding of tech stuff is super top end. He taught me how to set up and run my VR rig. Trust me, that wasn’t easy for him, having to work with me on that.”
That made her wrinkle her eyes happily, probably being too nice. Which it was, but she should have tried to make it seem like Hannah was seriously considering stealing Kate’s man. Which, if her friend wasn’t smart on that part of things, she just might. They could get good mileage out of that, if they tried.
Connie reset, reading while they walked, and then while she got a new third full bucket of water. It was about what she could carry without spilling it all. On the way back, the woman tried again. She seemed a bit bored with what she was saying, as if it wasn’t possibly going to be a good story element.
“You’re living with a man now, aren’t you? Kate mentioned that.”
She grinned then, since the truth was so boring it was doing that or yawning.
“I am. Nate, my brother.”
That just got a nod. Then a follow up. A rather bland one.
“He’s a super-villain, isn’t he? Solar Storm?”
She snorted, buying time before replying. Kate heard what was going on, and stood up, from where she’d been stooping, near the water pot on the second fire. From the look on her face, she was about to come to the rescue. Hannah just shrugged.
Then lied. She was good at doing that.
