The Survivalist Page #8

A streak of moonlight across the dark of the cabin. Milja

is asleep, head resting on Survivalist's chest.

She wakes. She adjusts to her surroundings; not her

mother's room, but his. He stirs in his sleep, a hand

slipping round her shoulder.

She stills and sets her head down on his chest again.

EXT. FOREST - DAY

Kathryn, bearing shovel, walks with Milja towards the

heaps.

KATHRYN:

You stayed with him last night.

Milja looks at her mother defensively.

KATHRYN (cont'd)

That's good. He'll trust you more.

Kathryn does a quick scan for prying eyes, then scrapes

away a thin covering of soil on the ground. She exposes the

femur, a piece of skull plate, teeth.

Milja steps back, hand to mouth.

MILJA:

He told us what to expect.

KATHRYN:

Fresh bones in that pile. But look

at these.

Kathryn pokes a few thin white bones with a stick.

KATHRYN (cont'd)

Small bones, milk teeth.

She pokes another few remnants.

KATHRYN (cont'd)

These are adult. But look at the

colour and rot... they went in the

ground the same time.

MILJA:

We don't know what happened.

Kathryn scoops the fragments and drives them back in the

heap.

KATHRYN:

True.

INT. CABIN, MAIN ROOM - NIGHT

The three eat in silence at the table.

KATHRYN:

What sort of animal... you catch in

those traps of yours?

Milja shoots her a look.

SURVIVALIST:

Squirrels. Rabbits.

KATHRYN:

Bigger game?

SURVIVALIST:

Foxes. Sometimes.

KATHRYN:

Stealing food.

SURVIVALIST:

Foxes steal.

KATHRYN:

But you can't eat them. All gristle.

SURVIVALIST:

Good for compost.

KATHRYN:

Same thing, though? Same thing in

the end.

He shrugs, nonchalant.

SURVIVALIST:

We're always someone else's sh*t.

EXT. FARM PLOT - DAY

Kathryn and Survivalist at the beds. Inspecting for pests,

signs of rot.

He finds a thick weed. It's stubborn and won't come loose

under his strained tugs. The shotgun, strapped over

shoulder, dips into the dirt as he stops.

He sets the gun down on the walkway. His hands pull at the

root... it breaks from the soil in long, white shoots.

Survivalist reaches for the shotgun strap.

His hand finds absence.

He turns to see Kathryn stepping away from him, raising the

shotgun with both hands. She knows how to hold it.

It is level, not quite aiming at him. Her hand runs up the

wood, towards the cock.

But her hands stills. She holds the gun looser now, as if

inspecting it.

KATHRYN:

Blanch twelve-bore. Vintage. The

sort my father used to use, for

pheasants. You find this on the same

estate that had those poacher traps?

Silence. He's still crouched over the beds, and she's still

holding the gun.

KATHRYN (cont'd)

He used to let me hold it, when I

was a girl. Sometimes I got to shoot

our supper.

SURVIVALIST:

Then you know it's not loaded.

A moment of stillness.

She smiles and hands him the weapon by the barrel.

KATHRYN:

You can tell by the balance.

He snatches it from her, straps it over his shoulder.

KATHRYN (cont'd)

What's the point of carrying it if-

He takes a shell from his right jacket pocket, opens the

barrel, slots shell, locks it, c*cks it. It takes about two

seconds.

He holds it low and at her gut.

SURVIVALIST:

Accidents happen.

She tries to remain calm and not break the fiction of her

curiosity over malice.

He breathes deeply through his nose, primed to shoot.

Then he turns and stomps off towards the thick of the

forest.

EXT. FOREST - DAY

Survivalist brushes branches and leaves from his face as he

breaks a new path through the forest. He lunges over

tripping roots and knee-high nettles, letting the forest

wear down his anger.

A vista opens up into a clearing of the forest - he sees

Milja almost right away. She lies in the basin-like sink of

a hollow tree, as if an innocent of the woods. She is

wearing earphones, her figure sunk into the lush foliage

that has found life in the roots.

She senses him, looks up to his silhouette against the

hillside.

He makes his way down towards her.

He stands over her. She stops the music on her music player

and holds it out to him.

He crouches and inspects it; it has been jerry-rigged to

run off AA batteries. The touchscreen interface is not

intuitive to him - been so many years. He toys with it,

noobish.

MILJA:

Two pairs of batteries left. When

they run out... the rest is silence.

His brow creases at the interface.

He sits beside her.

She silently demonstrates how to scroll and select tracks.

Memories of a world of such devices silence him.

MILJA (cont'd)

You like the 80s?

SURVIVALIST:

Don't remember them very well.

MILJA:

I mean the music.

He shrugs.

She pulls the earphones from her ears and affixes them to

his. She takes the mp3 player and scrolls for a track.

She selects KISSING THE PINK - THE LAST FILM.

A military drum-beat cues up before a shrill whistle,

tinny, through the headphones. Survivalist is rapt by the

cacophony of sounds; Milja observes him coolly.

He takes the earphones off.

SURVIVALIST:

You want mushrooms?

INT. CABIN, MAIN ROOM - DAY

Kathryn surveys the space. Figures out a plan of attack.

Then she begins. Obvious places first. The shelves. Tools,

seeding guides, seed guides, medical texts, gauzes, nick-

nacks, cutlery. A jumble of utility and memory.

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