Look, you ran off ten minutes ago, and I’m just starting to chase you now. My knees are bad, I have asthma, and my legs hurt if I walk too fast ever since we had to go on the run last year. I’ve already taken two breaks to sit on a log and mutter obscenities while catching my breath. There’s no way I’ll catch up to you to shoot that spider alien just in time. I know you're a terrible shot, based on the number of bullets we've all taken from you during target practice, so I'm sorry, but you're definitely going to get eaten.
I get it: you want to take a boat over to this island you think is broadcasting a radio signal. You think there are people there to dance with, become mayor of, and eat, if need be. But you’re shit out of luck if you think one of these spider aliens is going to move unrealistically slowly toward you, giving me just enough time to shoot it and have it spray green goo blood. I’ve unbuckled my pants, and started humming Springsteen songs, and I'm still, like, five miles away.
It sucks that you’re definitely going to get eaten. You’re one of the coolest people I’ve met at base camp. You really helped boost morale when you performed Die Hard from memory and played all the parts. You taught us about history and veganism, but through song, so we didn’t get mad that we were learning during an apocalypse. I’m going to steal your guitar, or maybe try to barter it in exchange for some loose cigarettes or pudding cups. I just want you to know that when I hand it over to Cigarette Dave or Pudding Maria, I'll think of you.
I really wish it was like we saw in the movies, where the hero gets to show up and say something cool before shooting the monster and saving someone. This is why you really should tell someone before you run off on your own rogue mission. Or at least tell me. Everyone’s been mad at me ever since I suggested we conserve water by drinking and recycling our bodily waste. It's been two years of being called King Urine. I could've really used a win here. Instead, I’m going to have to tell the group you’re dead, and worst of all, there’ll be no more Alan Rickman impressions.
This is, of course, if I can find my way back. You took off at 11 PM, and my night blindness is pretty bad. This is what got me into all that trouble back when we were at that Arctic base. Since we were all doing the white-puffy-jacket look, I confused snow leopards for one of us, thinking they were running over with urgent news. After the mauling, I laid there much like I am now, screaming into the sky, and wishing the aliens could've been the enslaving kind, and not the killing and eating kind.
I'd give up all my drinking urine if it meant I could work grueling hours to build a statue of one of these things.
Tomorrow morning, we'll make sure you're paid last respects. We'll run the Alpha Movement Pattern, with Dentures Johnny and Sunglasses Ray sweeping away our steps as we try to find your corpse. Since we don't have silencers, we'll shoot Preparation H suppositories into the sky while R&B Dylan sings “Return of the Mack.” We'll then share memories about the times you shot each of us, or the time you mixed it up and performed Point Break for us all from memory and played all the parts.
Maybe that's the greatest tragedy about all of this. It's not that you ran off, or that they tasked me, the least competent, most expendable person in the group, to chase after you. It's that we'll never see you as Keanu Reeves as Johnny Utah pretend to skydive again.
Then again, I'm sure Movie Alison could probably just do it.