I Am Still Alive

Jess manages to get herself and the deer carcass back to the cabin, leaving it in the shed so she can tend to Bo’s wound. Afterward, she tends to the bite on her arm as well. Jess starts a fire, takes a painkiller, and tries to sleep. When she wakes the next morning, she checks her traps, eats the last of her vegetables, and butchers the deer. Jess realizes that she is sometimes happy and satisfied with her new life, and she feels that she has nothing to return to in the world anyway. She wonders if she could just live in the wilderness forever. The only thing that keeps her pressing forward is the thought of revenge. In her cabin, Jess covers the walls and any paper she can find with more of her story and advice for herself. Suddenly, she hears the rumbling of a plane engine.

As the plane gets closer, fear almost overcomes Jess, and her heart beats frantically. She gathers everything she needs and pushes herself to walk around the lake to her planned hiding spot. When the plane lands, Jess can clearly see the pilot, but she doesn’t see the other two men anywhere. She manages to creep up beside the plane and takes the pilot off-guard, pointing the rifle in his face. Jess tells the pilot to disarm and walk onto the lakeshore. All the while, she debates whether or not to kill him. She fires one shot without thinking, which hits the pilot, but the pilot runs across the ice and attacks her. Jess and the pilot wrestle with the rifle, but he quickly overpowers and injures her. Bo attacks, but he is soon shot by the same man who shot Jess’s father. She can hear the man telling the pilot not to kill her and realizes that she is the only one who knows where the crate of money is hidden. She laughs to herself as she falls unconscious.

Jess awakens with her hands tied and feels like she has a concussion. She looks around for Bo and only sees a trail of blood leading into the forest. She sees Raph and Daniel, along with the pilot, who is sitting on the ground and tending his bullet wound. Raph sees that Jess is awake and demands that she take him to the crate. She agrees to do so, thinking of a plan along the way. Jess leads the two men to a random spot and tells them the crate is buried there. While they dig, she tells them that she needs to pee. Daniel takes her into the bushes, and she convinces him to untie her hands. She asks him what the date is and realizes that she has missed both Christmas and her 17th birthday. When he turns around to give her privacy, Jess hits him on the head with a rock, then runs.

Jess runs through the woods as Raph chases and shoots at her blindly. She bolts toward the cabin, keeping low to the ground, and finds Bo inside, badly injured from a bullet wound. Jess is just glad to see him alive, but she feels horrible for not simply shooting the pilot and escaping with Bo. At the same time, she also feels guilty for hurting the pilot and Daniel, and wonders whether they are decent men. She hunkers down and considers her options, planning ways to kill Raph, get her revenge, and escape to safety.

Jess convinces Bo to stay in the cabin. She grabs a few supplies and one grenade and leaves to hunt down Raph. She finds Daniel’s dead body, confirming that she only has to worry about the pilot and Raph. When she sees the pilot sitting weakly by a fire on the shore, she thinks about shooting him. Before she can act, the wolf-dog approaches the pilot and kills him, but not before the pilot gets off a shot that fatally wounds the wolf-dog.

Raph approaches, drawn by the gunshots, and Jess decides to try and escape in the plane. She grabs the keys out of the pilot’s pocket and gets inside the plane, but Raph is there a moment later and drags her out. Jess and Raph wrestle on the ice, and Jess eventually takes out her grenade and pulls the pin, warning Raph not to shoot her. Raph dives for the grenade, and the two wrestle again. The grenade is flung into the air. Jess manages to avoid the blast, but Raph gets the brunt of it and collapses onto the ice. Jess can see that he’s still alive and considers shooting him, but she decides instead to sit and wait for him to die. She clambers back into the plane, but it begins to sink, and Jess regretfully makes her way back to shore after grabbing Raph’s satellite phone. She makes a call to somewhere in Alaska and tries to describe her position. She is told to wait there. Jess goes back to the cabin to get Bo. She realizes that she was never alone; she has always had her friends and family, the people who taught her to survive.

Jess goes back to the cabin to get Bo, who is badly injured and bleeding. Jess sees that he cannot walk and attempts to haul him onto her sled, but after a few feet, she realizes that Bo won’t make it back to Alaska. She knows she can’t just leave him in pain, so she makes the difficult decision to shoot him with her last bullet, ending his pain. Jess then makes her way to the shore and builds a fire to wait for the rescue team. When they arrive, she is confused and stunned, and as she flies away in the helicopter, she looks into the forest and sees herself and Bo, running into the woods as though she never left at all.

Jess notes that there are two versions of her story: one in which she is the hero and the focus, and one in which she is a side note. Jess sees a truth in a combination of the two stories, and adds that several men were arrested after the information she was able to provide to the FBI. She learned that her father was involved with a group of friends who wanted to live away from the world, but one man in that group was prone to violent action and wanted to support a takeover of the government. One night, a police officer pulled the men over for a broken taillight, but one of the men killed him. Because Jess’s father was present, he was blackmailed and used by the group for several years afterward. Jess has held a memorial service for her father and now lives with a foster family. She has regained contact with old friends and has also made new ones, and she even went to visit Griff and his daughter. Jess feels satisfied with her life now, and knows she is where she belongs, but every once in a while, she still thinks of the wilderness and feels grateful for the scars she acquired there, appreciating the fact that she survived.