He took a burning branch from the fire over closer to the man. The panic of fighting for his life behind him, Tony realized the man looked wrong somehow. He wouldn’t describe how, exactly, just that he was wearing clothes of a sort and that “he just didn’t look right.” He said that he debated just trying to sleep until morning and then bring back the hatchet and knife to me, but he was so hungry that he couldn’t sleep.

And all that meat was just lying there.

After he had cooked and eaten until he thought he would be sick, he fell into a deep sleep. It was close to dawn when he woke up and realized that there were now two other figures sitting in the cave, quietly watching him. Tony said that instinct kicked in at that point. He bolted, expecting to be caught or attacked at any moment as he ran from the cave and back in the direction he thought led out of the swamp.

But no attack ever came, and when he tripped and twisted his ankle, a look back told him that no one seemed to be following him at all. Getting back up, he realized that aside from a sore ankle and his bleeding arm, he actually felt much better after eating and sleeping. Checking again that he wasn’t being followed, he started making his way back to me.

I was terrified by what he was telling me, but I tried to focus on the fact that he had made it back in one piece and that we still had the problem of being lost in the woods, except now we had the extra worry that these strange people might come after us as well. After he rested for a few more minutes, we decided to start walking again. Right away I could tell that he had way more energy than I did, and while we made some progress that day, I knew I was slowing him down.

He managed to make a fire for us that night. We sat together by it, and I stared into the flames in a kind of stupor born out of exhaustion and growing illness. Even with the heat of it so close by, I felt like my chest never really got warm, and my lungs hurt now when I coughed. That’s when Tony asked me the question.

“If you were to eat me, what part would you start with?”

I looked at him, trying to keep my expression neutral. Any other time I would have thought it was a joke, but I knew what he had done in the cave. I wasn’t sure if he was suffering from some kind of guilt, or if he was just fatalistically thinking ahead in case he died and I needed to survive.