“Why isn’t the sheriff here yet, you think?” Letha asks. “I kept expecting him to show up.”
“Why would he call it in?” Jade says back.
Letha hears exactly what Jade’s saying, but still says it anyway: “My dad, you mean.”
“Your dad.”
“Who would never do a thing like this.”
“Who did, then?”
Letha just sits there, and after a few seconds of it, Jade notices she’s crying. No sound, just tears.
“The twins,” she says, about the massacre on the yacht.
“And L-Lemmy. Gal.”
Because of course the final girl doesn’t think of herself first.
“If it matters, then… I think they’re all right, probably,”
Jade says.
“Why do you think that?”
“Kids believe in the boogeyman. They know to hide.”
“Thought you were going to say that my dad wouldn’t do that.”
“That too,” Jade says, uselessly.
“So, what now?” Letha asks.
“Want to go to a horror movie with me?” Jade asks back.
Letha just looks up to her about this, like checking if this is even a serious question.
“Hardy’ll be there,” Jade adds.
“I know where the keys are,” Letha says, tossing her chin to the yacht. “We can—”
“Going back on that boat is a death sentence. He— whoever it is, he’s probably there waiting. He knows we need a phone.
So they’re probably all already overboard.”
Letha looks down to what she’s wearing: her ruined camisole and pajama bottoms. No shoes. Aside from covering her in the most minimal way, the only real purpose her sleep clothes are serving anymore is to keep the gore and blood close to her, which might be good if she were going up against Van Damme in an alien suit, but Theo Mondragon doesn’t have heat vision, just slasher goggles.
Still, instead of already having sneaked over to the yacht for a clothes-change, here she is, right?
“Thanks for digging me out,” Jade tells her. “You didn’t have to, I know. I’m not worth it.”
“Please shut up.”
“You could have split, really.”
“Jade, you—it’s not your fault, what your father… and why you’re… you.”
“Yeah, I know, wow, it’s terrible, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t mean it like that. You’re you, and that’s great.”
“We should get going,” Jade says, high-stepping out of this moment.
She swings her hurt leg ahead of her and brushes past Letha.
“And we’ve all got daddy issues, right?” she can’t help but mumble, wincing the instant it crosses her lips.
“My dad isn’t the one—”
“Then why didn’t he dig you out?” Jade asks, playing with her lighter now, wishing so hard for a smoke.
“He didn’t know where we were,” Letha says, stepping out now as well, her voice rising a bit, in defense.
“If he felt that collapse, or heard it, or smelled it, whatever,”
Jade says, finally getting a strong flame going to occupy her eyes, give her somewhere else to look, “then… then either he thinks we’re dead, which is score one for the good guys, or he went for help.”
“Instead of digging us out?”
“How long did it take you?”
Letha narrows her eyes across the lake, considering this.
“He’d have had to go all the way around,” she says, liking this.
“And his leg’s like mine now,” Jade adds with a shrug.
“He used to play football,” Letha says. “He says he played one game with his kneecap all the way behind his knee.”
“There you have it,” Jade says, moving her lighter back and forth, daring the flame to flicker out. “But”—and she does look up for this—“why isn’t anybody here yet?”
Letha flicks her eyes away.
“Whatever you believe or want to believe or won’t believe,”
Jade tells her. “We have to get across the lake. We can’t stay here. Here’s done.”
“Terra Nova.”
“Terra Nova’s done, yeah.”
Letha steps past Jade for the boat garages.
Jade shrugs to herself, and, being sure Letha’s clear enough, tosses her lit lighter into the dead elk, trusting the pent-up methane to catch that lick of flame, whoosh up into a bulbous explosion, one Jade can walk away from in slow dramatic motion.