Axe

References

• Axe Throwing
• Machu Picchu
• Axeman of New Orleans
• Crime and Punishment
• Wendigo
• Log Flume
• Splash Mountain
• Song of the South
• Almost Plausible: Snowflake
• Ho-Chunk/Winnebago
• Princess Mononoke
  • Demon
• Sasquatch
• Almost Plausible: Candy Corn
• Rick & Morty
  • “An extra curvy piece of driftwood”
• Boca Raton
• St. Bart’s
• Ryan Reynolds
• Jaws

Corrections

Emily stated that the Axeman of New Orleans murders happened around 1914, and while that’s possible, the official timeline starts in 1918.

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Emily]
There’s no bromance there.

[Shep]
Is there a bromance in this? Is it going to be rom-com?

[Thomas]
I mean, knowing us.

[Emily]
It’s the story of a young greenhorn falling in love with a wendigo. “They come from different worlds.”

[Thomas]
“He was a greenhorn. It was a wendigo. Theirs was a love forbidden.”

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there, story fans. Welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary objects and turn them into movies. I’m Thomas J. Brown, and on the show with me are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey guys.

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
Axes have become weirdly common lately with the rise in popularity of axe throwing bars. Have either of you been axe throwing?

[Shep]
You didn’t start this with “I’m going to axe you guys a question. Have you guys been axe throwing?” I’m shocked that you passed up that pun opportunity.

[Thomas]
Well, maybe you’re ruining my pun for later- No, you’re not.

[Shep]
Oh, no.

[Thomas]
I did consider that joke, though.

[Shep]
Oh, it was so bad, you didn’t say it.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Emily]
I’ve always wanted to go and Shep and I were talking earlier off recording about how a lot of women in dating profiles right now have them holding an axe. And I was like, well, that’s the fish equivalent for women.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Men holding fish, women throwing axes.

[Shep]
Throwing an axe.

[Thomas]
That and Machu Picchu.

[Emily]
Yeah. Well, everybody goes to Machu Picchu.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
That is what I’ve learned. Everyone but me.

[Thomas]
Right? I have not been axe throwing. I have no desire to go. But maybe part of that is that I’ve seen axes go flying off in different directions among people who have been drinking. That doesn’t seem like my idea of a good time, personally.

[Shep]
Yeah. They don’t allow alcohol at the gun range for a reason.

[Thomas]
Right? Well, Emily, pitches/throwing. There’s a connection there.

[Emily]
Sure.

[Thomas]
So from axe throwing to pitching stories, why don’t you go first?

[Emily]
I’ll take a swing at it.

[Thomas]
Hey!

[Emily]
So my first pitch is: a struggling up and coming band hits it big when their lead guitarist finds the mythical Axe of Apollo. It’s a sweet-ass guitar in the shape of a double headed axe. The music played on this guitar is mesmerizing, and near perfection. The guitar player becomes consumed by the power she yields and threatens to destroy the world.

[Thomas]
That’s pretty good.

[Emily]
Yeah, I was trying to be as creative as possible. So my second pitch is: an axe throwing team enters the World Championship. So basically, it’s an underdog story, like Beerfest or Dodgeball something stupid and light-hearted.

[Shep]
Where they take it super seriously.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Where they take it super-duper seriously. And the last one is: blah, blah, blah. Axe murderer in New Orleans at the turn of the century. Let’s do a cinematic retelling of the Axeman of New Orleans.

[Shep]
Is that a thing? The Axeman of New Orleans?

[Emily]
It’s an actual unsolved crime. At the turn of the century, around 1914, New Orleans was struck by a series of axe murders. And they kept getting letters sent to the newspaper. The guy was talking about how much he loved jazz and that jazz was the greatest thing in the world. So he was going to attack on this night and any house that was playing jazz music was safe. And so people all around New Orleans that one night played jazz music and nobody died. It’s a really weird story.

[Shep]
And they never stopped. That’s why New Orleans, to this day, constantly has jazz.

[Emily]
Yes. To prevent the Axeman from killing everyone.

[Thomas]
I mean, I feel like- I’m no detective, but I feel like it was the head of the record label that sent the letter to the-

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Obviously.

[Thomas]
I’ll go next: In St. Petersburg, a former law student steals an axe and murders an elderly pawn broker before robbing her.

[Shep]
Is this a reference to-

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
It’s Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky. Okay. No. My real pitch is: in the late 19th century, a group of lumberjacks heads out into the woods. They’ll be away from society and isolated for the duration of their stay. Things go well the first day, but the second day, one of them is killed in a mysterious and gruesome way. Now, logging is a dangerous industry, and the men are no strangers to death on the job. But the savagery of this death has them all shaken. They soon discover a monster is stalking them. The foreman has a shotgun to protect the camp from bears, but he only gets a couple of shots off on the monster before it hauls him and the weapon away into the woods, never to be seen again. The remaining men must use their axes to protect themselves while completing the construction of a log flume in order to get back to civilization.

[Emily]
Is it a wendigo?

[Thomas]
I mean, it sort of seems like it.

[Shep]
Is that based on the log flume ride at Disneyland? Is this one of those Pirates of the Caribbean ride transformed into a movie pitches?

[Thomas]
It’s the other way around, actually. Log flumes were definitely a thing that loggers used to very quickly get logs from where they were logging to the river or to wherever they wanted them to go. And the Log Flume rides are based off of the actual log flumes.

[Shep]
But I’m saying, could you get Disney money?

[Thomas]
Oh, no, forget everything I just said. It’s the Log Flume, the ride, but made into a movie. Yeah, that’s it.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Isn’t the Log Flume ride in Disney Splash Mountain?

[Thomas]
Yeah, more or less.

[Emily]
Yeah, it’s already got a movie tie in and it’s changing to a different movie tie in now.

[Thomas]
Really? Why is that, Emily? Is there something about the movie tie in they don’t like?

[Shep]
What are you referencing?

[Emily]
No, I mean, not for 1950s white men.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
What are you referencing?

[Emily]
Song of the South.

[Shep]
Oh.

[Thomas]
My second idea: a city is plagued by a serial axe murderer when one night a man is attacked by the killer. The man manages to get the axe away from the attacker and uses it to kill them in self-defense. He runs from the scene to safety, still clutching the bloody axe. For some reason he can’t explain, he doesn’t call the police, who proclaim the now deceased killer to be another victim of the serial axe murderer. The man is inexplicably drawn to the axe, and holding it gives him a sense of power. It turns out the axe is cursed and it compels the man to become the new serial axe murderer.

[Emily]
Did we switch brains? Because I really like your pitches this week and I’m jealous that I didn’t come up with these.

[Thomas]
I figured you guys would like this one because they’re elements of both serial killers and magical reality.

[Shep]
I’ve heard this story a lot, though. I mean, this is a very common trope.

[Thomas]
All right, well, those are my ideas. Shep, what do you have?

[Shep]
Think about a guy lost in the woods with only a survival axe, which is a real sponsorship opportunity. Companys on Amazon, give us money and an axe.

[Thomas]
Each. An axe each.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Come on, don’t sell all of us short.

[Emily]
Yeah, I want one too.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
There’s a guy lost in the woods. He’s got his survival axe. He’s doing relatively okay, trying to find his way back to civilization until he runs into a secret drug operation and he has to fight off drug dealers with only his survival axe. Real valuable sponsorship opportunity. Like, you’ll see this axe in in a variety of survival situations.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And after I thought of all that, I was like, “Isn’t this Snowflake? Isn’t this- didn’t we just do this?” So that’s it, my one original idea and it was our previous episode.

[Thomas]
At least you’re recycling our own IP.

[Emily]
That’s right.

[Thomas]
Is there a particular pitch that one of you both of you all three of us liked?

[Emily]
Oh, I’m down for the lumberjacks in the woods.

[Shep]
The one based on the Disney ride?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Do we have a physical description of a wendigo? Is there like a commonly held.

[Emily]
There’s some similar characteristics across the tribes. Long limbs, sort of man-doggish look to them. Or man-animal look.

[Shep]
I was going to say it’s the size of a winnebago. It’s where the word winnebago comes from. But winnebago is an algonquin word meaning ‘person of the dirty water’.

[Thomas]
The picture that I sort of had in my head is that like evil spirit from Princess Mononoke.

[Shep]
Mmm.

[Thomas]
Something like that, where it’s kind of like a big, almost like a teardrop shaped body with like lots of legs and moves really quickly.

[Emily]
I mean, we could totally go with that. We don’t have to make it an actual wendigo. It can just have wendigo characteristics.

[Shep]
Or just be a forest monster.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Just a crazy forest monster works. As long as it’s not Sasquatch, because he’s a peaceful creature.

[Thomas]
Maybe he shows up at the end.

[Shep]
So Sasquatch saves the foresters at the end.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah, we’re all thinking it.

[Thomas]
So what would we say is kind of the overarching plot here? I think I’ve kind of outlined it more or less, but-

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Is there a period of mystery where they don’t know what’s going on? Like, how many of them are there and are killed before they see the monster or realize the monster is getting them?

[Emily]
Yeah. I think there’s got to be at least two or three scenes in the beginning after they’ve set up camp and they’re settled into their work. That like the young guy, the rookie, the new man.

[Thomas]
The greenhorn?

[Emily]
Yeah, that’s the word I was looking for. Ends up disappearing and they’re not sure.

[Shep]
I-

[Emily]
Did he? Was it too isolated and lonely.

[Shep]
I don’t think it should be the greenhorn to disappear.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I agree.

[Shep]
The greenhorn should be the audience stand in.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Because that’s who everything is going to be explained to by the more experienced woodsman.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s a good thought.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
So the greenhorn is our main character. That’s who we follow.

[Thomas]
Oh and we got to get established that first day is them- You see the old crew heading out, the new crew is coming in. We meet the foreman and he introduces the greenhorn to the crew. Or maybe they’re ribbing the greenhorn because that’s the way it is. You got to haze him a little bit. And maybe we see one of their hazing jokes to establish, like, that’s a thing, so that later he’s like, “Oh, yeah, you guys are just hazing me.” And they’re like, “No, man, this one’s not us. Like, this is a real threat.” And then we see, like, the log flume is not done, but it’s, like, mostly built because obviously they’re not building a log flume from scratch.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
They’re there to complete the log- That is part of what they’re going to do. But they have two weeks to do it or something like that. And so, as part of our story, they have to get it done in just a few days.

[Shep]
I want to add a second greenhorn.

[Emily]
Sure.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
Who dies. Spoilers.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Maybe it’s a friend of the first greenhorn.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Two guys who signed up to do this for the summer.

[Shep]
Right. They’re doing it together. They know it’s dangerous, but they got each other’s back.

[Thomas]
But the money yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I was going to say with the ribbing idea. A lot of our folk American folklore and tall tales comes from loggers and lumberjacks because that’s what they did at night, was sit around and tell these amazing stories. And so it’s really great to do that after their first night there. And that’s when they’re really, like, ribbing the greenhorns and fucking with them and trying to scare the shit out of them, but also warning them at the same time because they hear these noises.

[Shep]
Noises in the woods.

[Emily]
We didn’t die. Get over it.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I think that’s all great stuff. So the first day, they go out and they go logging.

[Emily]
Well, I was thinking in the first day, do we want someone to disappear on the first working day or, like, the second working day?

[Shep]
I want someone to disappear before this team gets there. I want this to be something that, like, the two team leads talk to each other about.

[Emily]
Oh, okay.

[Shep]
They’re not sure.

[Emily]
Secretly, kind of?

[Shep]
Yeah. Secretly, because they’re not sure that it’s going to be a problem. But they’re both very experienced and maybe this is not the first forest monster that they’ve had to go up against.

[Emily]
I like it.

[Thomas]
Why is nobody else concerned that someone is missing?

[Shep]
Well, maybe he’s not missing. Maybe he’s known to be dead. Which could be a thing that they talk about when two new guys show up and like, “Oh, well, you know, we did lose a guy.”

[Emily]
Yeah. One of the other guys is “Yeah. I guess it was a pretty bad mauling,” or something to imply could it be a cougar or a bear.

[Thomas]
Mmm. Yeah.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
And you see, like, the other crew is heading out and they’ve kind of got this real, down look on their faces. And the crew coming in is like, “Oh, boy, it must have been a rough couple of weeks for them,” and, “Oh, I’m sure they’re just tired.”

[Emily]
Yeah. It’s hard work.

[Thomas]
It’s hard work. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So they’re all coming in. The greenhorns are- one of them makes some sort of a comment about it, and then one of the experienced guys says, “Oh, yeah, I’m sure it was just really hard.” And then he kind of falls back to the foreman and he goes, “You see there were only seven of them?” He’s like, “Yeah, I saw that, too.” Something like that. To show, like, the more experienced guys understand, like something’s up.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Was he saying that to the foreman? Because the foremen would have been talking to each other about what happened. The foreman already knows it should be the experienced guy talking to another experienced guy.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. That’s a good point.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
So this crew’s foreman knows where that mauling took place and doesn’t assign the greenhorns to that area.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
So they’re paired up with more experienced lumberjacks and sent to learn the ropes other places. So the first person from this crew to be mauled is someone else that they don’t experience. They don’t see it. They’re far away.

[Thomas]
Is this person somebody that, he’s not tight with anybody in the group? He’s just kind of a journeyman from another part of the country who’s here for this season or something?

[Emily]
They, like, know of him because he’s been around before, but they’re not like best buds.

[Thomas]
Right. But he’s not close friends with anybody.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Emily]
There’s no bromance there.

[Shep]
Is there a bromance in this? Is it going to be rom-com?

[Thomas]
I mean, knowing us.

[Emily]
It’s the story of a young greenhorn falling in love with a wendigo. “They come from different worlds.”

[Thomas]
“He was a greenhorn. It was a wendigo. Theirs was a love forbidden. This summer in the pacific northwest.”

[Shep]
This summer and every summer.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Don’t judge us. We’re very lonely out here in the woods.

[Thomas]
That’s the tagline of the film. “It’s lonely in the woods. I saw a curved stick.”

[Shep]
One time. One time with the curved stick. You’ll never let me forget it.

[Thomas]
So do we want a character who disappears early on and then comes back a couple days later, like, shell shocked?

[Shep]
Ooh.

[Emily]
That’s a good plot.

[Shep]
Okay. Who was his partner? Where was his partner? Or did they both disappear and only one shows up later, shell shocked?

[Emily]
I think that works. You miss a team together.

[Shep]
Right. They’re all on two-man teams.

[Thomas]
Are they? I mean, maybe the more experienced guys aren’t.

[Shep]
No, because the foreman knows something might be going on.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He’s making sure everyone’s on two-man teams.

[Thomas]
Good call. So then, as he comes back- oh, so they hear this noise, and they’re all anxious. It’s night. They hear this noise, and they’re all getting ready, and he bursts through into the clearing or whatever.

[Shep]
Right. With the foreman’s there with the shotgun, like, ready for whatever.

[Thomas]
Ready. Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Nearly shoots this guy.

[Thomas]
Right. And he comes in, and he’s telling them about how it’s like, “Oh, my god, it’s a monster (or whatever), I’ve seen it.” And he’s describing it and everyone’s kind of looking at each other like, “What? Wait, wait. What’s going on here?” And the greenhorn is like, “All right,” because they’ve been ribbing them for a couple of days now. They’ve heard the tall tales around the fire. They’re like, “All right, guys, this is like, I mean, I’m impressed, but this is, like, a really huge length to go to to try to pull one over on me, and it’s not working. So you went to all that trouble for nothing,” and the guy is, like, pissed off at him because he watched his friend be murdered by this monster. So then does the monster grab him right then and the foreman fires on it?

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
No, because that’s been done too many times.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
That’s too on the nose.

[Shep]
Yeah. If the monster is at the camp, the movie is over. Now, do the more experienced loggers have experience with monsters? You got to know someone that knows the story to tell it to the other people, including the greenhorns. The audience surrogates.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I feel like it’s a story they’ve heard.

[Emily]
Yeah. They all know a guy who knows a guy that this happened to.

[Thomas]
Right. If the guy who comes back into camp is gone for two days, how many people have died since they got to camp? Just his partner?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Or do you want someone else to die between the time that they disappear and he shows up again?

[Thomas]
That’s what I’m thinking.

[Shep]
I like that because now they know. Well, see, now you lose the scene where the greenhorns think they’re being ribbed by this delirious guy. It has to be the partner of the person who dies in between that they think is joking. But then they all know at this point that there is a monster in the woods. This increases the tension of the scene where they hear a noise and they’re preparing to fight and it turns out to be one of the missing loggers.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s true. When do we kill the first greenhorn?

[Emily]
Can that be the second turning point?

[Thomas]
Or is this mid second act turning point, the guy coming back?

[Emily]
Is it the lowest low, then? When the-

[Thomas]
No, I think he needs to die pretty early. I guess that’s a good point. We should figure out, like, where do all these key events happen? I gotta feel like by the end of the second act, they know the monster is real. Oh, the lowest low is when the foreman and the shotgun disappear, because now they don’t have-

[Emily]
Now they only have their axes.

[Thomas]
Only have their axes and themselves, and they know for sure at that point something crazy is going on. We got to get out of here.

[Shep]
How many guys do we have?

[Emily]
Eight. Right? Isn’t that what we-

[Thomas]
That was a number that was thrown out. We can tweak it from there.

[Shep]
How many people survive?

[Thomas]
I would say not many. Four at the most. Do you think? Three or four?

[Emily]
Yeah. Our greenhorn.

[Thomas]
Yeah, one greenhorn. There’s got to be, like, the grizzled guy he gets paired up with.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Or is losing that guy in the third act a big thing that happens? Like, does that guy sacrifice himself or-

[Shep]
No.

[Emily]
No, I want him to be like the surrogate father and fight with him.

[Shep]
A guy that experienced wouldn’t sacrifice himself. The reason he is still alive is he’s not that guy.

[Thomas]
He sacrifices someone else.

[Shep]
Yeah. You don’t got to run faster than the bear.

[Thomas]
Yep. Yeah. I mean, it’s like four. It was fine. Three or four is fine.

[Shep]
I’d like the partner of our main greenhorn to be one of the survivors.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Who’s sort of, he’s experienced. That’s why he’s paired with the greenhorn. He’s one of the guys that has the most experience.

[Emily]
Why don’t they just abandon the log flume and return to civilization?

[Thomas]
Because they were dropped off in a truck that’s not coming back for two weeks because it’s that remote.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
That’s why I set it at the late 19th century so that they didn’t have like an easy way of contacting or getting people there quickly or anything like that.

[Shep]
So I imagine that the log flume is being built from the bottom up.

[Thomas]
Right. Because once you attach it to the water, it’s on.

[Shep]
Right. So they are near the top.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
That’s where their camp is.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I think that when the foreman gets taken and it’s just a bunch of guys with axes and no gun, they collectively as a group think, “Let’s just walk down to the river and follow it back to civilization.” But they get attacked trying to go down, just following the log flume because they determine, like, that’s the beast’s territory now. He’s moved his territory and he’s like taken over that area so they can’t go through his territory on foot. They will be killed.

[Emily]
So they have to finish the log flume to ride the logs.

[Shep]
They have to finish the log flume to go fast enough to pass through that area.

[Emily]
Like it.

[Thomas]
And apparently they go really fast.

[Shep]
Yeah. So you can still have that tension at the end when they’re going down the logs and the beast is there grabbing some of them. They thought they were going to make it.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They built the log flume and they’re riding to freedom, but the-

[Thomas]
I could totally see a scene where it just goes like, it jumps and is sort of like flying across and grabs a guy off of a log and just like goes clean over the log flume and takes a guy off the log behind them and they’re like, “Oh shit,” or in front of them.

[Emily]
Yeah. And they’re stuck. They can’t do anything.

[Thomas]
Right. You can’t do anything.

[Emily]
They can’t go back.

[Thomas]
What are you going to get off? Yeah.

[Emily]
They can’t get off.

[Shep]
So this explains why they’re stuck, why they have to finish the log flume, why they can’t just hike out of the woods.

[Emily]
I like that. That’s a really good tension.

[Shep]
And also the whole audience knows exactly what’s going on because the whole group’s stuck together. You don’t have people going off on their own like in a horror movie to die needlessly.

[Emily]
“I’ll be right back.”

[Shep]
Everybody is sticking together as a group and they still can’t make it through because all they have is axes.

[Thomas]
How many days are they in the woods total? We’ve got the first night, the first day where everything goes well. Right? So the second night… Is the first night when they do the- get like the initial stories and bonding and stuff like that? Or is that just-

[Emily]
I think that’s a nice device to set everything up, is that first bonding experience. We introduce all of the characters. We kind of know their stories. We were learning what it means to be a logger in this time period and what scares them and doesn’t scare them kind of a thing.

[Thomas]
So the first day goes well?

[Emily]
So maybe the first day, those first two guys do disappear, the one gets eaten and the other one witnesses it and gets lost in the woods.

[Shep]
So that’s not the first day. That’s the first day of logging.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
The first day is when they arrive. That first night is before they started logging.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
That’s when they do their bonding and everything is going well.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
And the second day, which is the first day of logging, two guys disappear, one of the teams disappears.

[Emily]
And we established, like you said, they’re there for, like, two weeks, so they have 14 days. Twelve left. Right?

[Shep]
You have title cards. “Twelve days left.”

[Thomas]
So that second night, everyone’s a little on edge because the guys are gone?

[Emily]
So everyone’s a little kind of stoic and quieter than normal. It’s not the rowdy storytelling of the night before.

[Thomas]
Why are they not attacked at the camp at night while they’re all asleep?

[Emily]
Wendigos afraid of fire?

[Shep]
It’s not a wendigo.

[Emily]
Okay. The monster is-

[Shep]
It’s just a forest monster.

[Thomas]
Well, yeah, the monster, the creature.

[Shep]
I think the camp is just not in its territory.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
So if it’s a territory thing, and I know I said that, but if it is that, why was its territory not where the log flume is now, when they were building the log flume? Why did it move its territory?

[Thomas]
Juvenile. It just moved into the area.

[Emily]
Could be that. I was thinking the noise of the construction of the building and the men attracted it.

[Shep]
Then it would be attracted while they were building it.

[Thomas]
Migrating forest creature. Was on vacation and it got back from Boca Raton and was like, “What?” I’m sorry, from St. Bart’s.

[Shep]
He was in St. Bart’s with Ryan Reynolds.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s right. Well, let’s take a quick break, and while we’re gone, we can ponder this conundrum. When we come back, we’ll figure out the rest of our story for Axe.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we are back. Shep, before the break, you had mentioned the idea of why is the monster attacking now? How did they get the log flume built without being attacked? And my thoughts were we could do one of two things to not answer that question. One is just don’t bring it up, because movies ignore shit like that all the time and just hope no one notices. Or the other idea is, since there would be no way for our loggers to know the answer to that question anyway, let them ask that. Like, “How did this happen? Why now? Why is this just happening now?” “I don’t know, but it is and we have to deal with it.” So just lean into the fact that there is not an answer.

[Shep]
Well, so a lot of times in movies, they’ll say, “Oh, such and such has happened. And that’s why yada yada, yada.” So we need to have a reason why its territory changed to include where the currently built log flume is, where it wasn’t before, so that the loggers know that that has happened and that’s why they can’t try again to walk out of the woods.

[Emily]
Okay. So why do other animals in the wild determine their territory?

[Thomas]
That’s a good question.

[Shep]
This would be a problem for the writers to solve because it will require research.

[Thomas]
Yeah. All we need to know, the three of us need to know is that it has a territory which has boundaries and the camp is outside the boundaries.

[Emily]
Right. Yeah. Similar to the reasons that other predators have boundaries.

[Shep]
Yep. There’s a couple things that I would like to suggest. I was also thinking during the break-

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
One, the experienced guy that’s partnered with our greenhorn, the new leader, has to have experience with this kind of thing before. He doesn’t mention it at first because nobody would believe him. So he just doesn’t bring it up. He knows what’s going on and he plans accordingly, but he doesn’t say anything until everyone else sees it. And then he will explain what it is or his previous experience with this sort of thing.

[Thomas]
So that feels like the mid second act turning point.

[Emily]
Yeah. That’s good.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So they see and they all believe, but they don’t know what it is.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
And he’s like, I know what it is.

[Emily]
Perfect.

[Thomas]
Yeah. That’s great.

[Emily]
And that helps establish at the beginning, like Thomas had suggested, that the one kind of like, note to one of the others or the new foreman before he meets the old foreman to swap information. And he’s like, “You notice there are only seven?”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Because he right away picks up on it. And then the foreman-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Who is he saying that to?

[Emily]
I say, he’s saying it to the new foreman before he meets the old foreman. And they have that discussion.

[Shep]
He says it to his foreman.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And then the foremen go off and talk. That’s good, because then you establish who are the two most experienced people.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
The foreman and this guy. And then the foreman disappears.

[Emily]
Yeah. And they both have that knowledge and belief in it.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Emily]
And both have obviously had some experience with it.

[Shep]
Yep. Which is all the more reason he’s paired with the greenhorn, to keep the greenhorn safe. And the other greenhorn isn’t paired with an experienced guy, and he gets eaten, so-

[Thomas]
Well, he’s paired with an experienced guy, just not anywhere near as experienced.

[Shep]
Not as experienced.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah, not fully experienced.

[Emily]
It’s as if we’re writing a cohesive story.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
When does the guy come back? Is it the fourth night?

[Shep]
So before that, though, we have a death.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So that’s the third day. The third day, one person or one team? It’s got to be one person because someone’s got to come back with the story.

[Thomas]
Is it the greenhorn or is it the greenhorn’s partner? Not our main guy, but the other guy, the expendable greenhorn.

[Shep]
Do we want to get… hmm. If it’s the other greenhorn, we lose him real early.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
And you don’t ever think, “Oh, these guys are going to make it through together,” because we want to hint at that at the beginning so that we could twist that later.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
But if it’s his partner, then it’s the greenhorn coming back with this outlandish story of this wood monster. Forest monster. Wood monster makes it sound like it’s made of wood.

[Thomas]
Right. And clearly it’s made of forests.

[Shep]
So maybe people wouldn’t believe him if it were the other greenhorn, the expendable greenhorn.

[Thomas]
But I think that’s a great place to have the scene where he says, “No, you’ve got to come and see,” and he leads them to where it happened, and it’s just like a shockingly violent scene with lots of blood and bone and stuff like that.

[Shep]
Viscera.

[Thomas]
Right. It’s not like a tree fell on the guy.

[Emily]
Right. And it’s clearly more than a bear or cougar mauling.

[Thomas]
Right. It’s almost like he exploded in a way. Like there’s a tree snapped in half or something like that. Like, what the hell happened here?

[Emily]
And it’s mostly just like blood and shirt left and not so much body.

[Thomas]
Yeah, right. Exactly. And so that kind of really gets everyone shaken up, especially the greenhorn, the expendable greenhorn. He’s got to be like, “I’m not going back out there.”

[Shep]
Do they go out the fourth day?

[Thomas]
Oh, wait, if the two guys disappeared the second day, do we want to have the foreman have people out working on the third day or searching on the third day? If I’m the foreman, what is my logical next step? We don’t know yet. We haven’t gotten that reveal from the really experienced guy that it’s the monster.

[Shep]
Right. Does the foreman know or does he think it’s a bear?

[Thomas]
I think that he knows it’s not a bear, but I don’t think he has any idea what it is for sure. So if I’m the foreman and that’s my mindset, what are my instructions to everybody on day four?

[Shep]
If it’s a creature, if we eliminate the creature, we can relax and do the job.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that makes sense.

[Shep]
Okay, fourth day, foreman decides, let’s go track down and kill this bear.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Then we can work in peace.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It’s not safe to send crews out even two at a time because one crew disappeared and one of them, half of the crew got eaten. So let’s all go out as a group and kill this bear. So they do. He’s got his gun, they’ve got their axes. Here’s the change. They do. They find it and they kill it. And the greenhorn is like, “Yeah, that’s what I saw. That’s the creature that I saw.” Obviously, this isn’t the creature because you’ve seen a movie before.

[Thomas]
Right. Because we’re only 35 minutes into the movie, and it’s a 90 minute film.

[Shep]
Well, when you put it that way, do you even want to have them tracking down and killing it? But, see, that would give an excuse to the foreman to start sending crews out again. I was just thinking, how do you get back to business as normal?

[Thomas]
They could split half and half, so the greenhorns and a couple of the younger guys stay at the camp. So far, the camp has been safe and no sense in putting everybody at risk. Some of the more experienced guys and the foreman take the gun, they go out, they find a bear.

[Shep]
Oh, they find a bear. They don’t find a forest creature?

[Thomas]
Right. They find a bear and they kill it, and they come back. “It’s dead. We got it.” And maybe the bear has, like, dragged some viscera from the exploding area and taken it back to this cave, and they’re like, “Yeah, we found his shirt there, his jeans or whatever.”

[Shep]
Right. His left arm.

[Thomas]
Right. There’s evidence. “It was this bear, but we got it, we killed it, everything’s fine.”

[Shep]
And because the greenhorn wasn’t there.

[Thomas]
Right. He can’t ID it and say-

[Shep]
Right. He knows it wasn’t a bear, though.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, for sure he knows.

[Emily]
He is convinced. He knows.

[Shep]
So would he leave the camp again? Because how do we get rid of the expendable greenhorn?

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, good point.

[Shep]
The problem with this is we have the one guy from the first disappearing team returning. Why are they on edge when he returns, if they’ve killed the bear.

[Emily]
They aren’t. They have a false sense of security. “Oh. Everything’s good.” And then the guy returns.

[Shep]
Oh, this is where the greenhorn, the expendable greenhorn is like, “It wasn’t a bear. It wasn’t a bear. It’s still out there. You have to believe me.” And then they hear something coming to the camp.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So that’s the fourth night when we wanted the guy to come back anyway.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
So they killed the bear the fourth day, and then the guy’s coming back. We think we killed it, but the greenhorn is real insistent and something is coming, and so they’re on edge, but they don’t shoot even though it’s nighttime. And it is the survivor from day two.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Who comes back and corroborates the greenhorn’s story?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
That’s got to be the mid second act turning point there. Right? Like, now everyone knows it’s real. A more experienced person has seen it and described the same thing. Because he wasn’t there when the greenhorn described it, he couldn’t have heard what the greenhorn said.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
And so for him to come back and say the exact same thing, describe it just the same way. So day five, foreman’s like, “We got to go.” The fastest way back is to follow the log flume because it goes right down to the mill or whatever or takes you to the river that takes you to the mill or whatever it is.

[Shep]
How far is the walk?

[Thomas]
Several miles. I mean, you’re going basically through forest. It might be cleared out. They might have had to clear cut a channel, but you’re basically going through, like, just wild land. So it would not be a nice walk necessarily.

[Shep]
But a walk doable in one day is what I’m asking.

[Thomas]
Right. One long day.

[Shep]
One long day. So where along the trip do they get attacked? It’s got to be before the midway point. Otherwise they would just keep going.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
They have to turn back.

[Thomas]
According to Wikipedia, the first successful log flume was 15 miles long.

[Emily]
Yeah. Ten-ish miles would be reasonable. And that’s a reasonable walk within a day for exercise to men.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay. Let’s say they get attacked 2 hours into it.

[Thomas]
Do we lose expendable greenhorn there?

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
He doesn’t want to leave the camp. He is afraid of everything. But now they’re leaving to go back to civilization, so he’s going to risk it.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
But when the creature comes out, because he has seen it before, because he has seen it kill before, he is paralyzed with fear.

[Thomas]
At this point, we’ve only lost two people, right?

[Shep]
Yeah. We lost one half of the team on the first day, and we lost- on the second day. I’m sorry. And then one half of the team on the third day.

[Thomas]
So here we’re going to lose the greenhorn. That leaves us with, if we have eight, that leaves us with five.

[Emily]
Mmhmm.

[Thomas]
Do we want to lose two here?

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
We lose the foreman here as well.

[Emily]
And the gun.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
And the gun, because the foreman is trying to rescue the expendable greenhorn because he’s a good foreman.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He’s good at his job and he’s trying to keep his men safe. And he has a gun, which he thinks will be enough.

[Thomas]
Does he run down to where the, or run over to where the greenhorn is and, like, sort of-

[Shep]
I think the greenhorn is in the middle of the pack because he’s afraid he wouldn’t want to be on any edge of the group.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
The foreman is in the front. He’s got the gun, and he’s leading the way. So when the creature comes out, do they try to attack it? Like, they did kill the bear successfully…

[Emily]
Yeah. This is when the axe battle happens.

[Shep]
Right. They all have their axes. They’re ready to fight. I’m trying to figure out how do they have this fight where they can’t kill it, but also they don’t all just die.

[Thomas]
Oh. Does the creature, when it attacks, does it attack quickly or does it saunter up to them like it comes out from somewhere slowly?

[Emily]
Like, we see it in the background and nobody else notices it?

[Thomas]
Well, no, it kind of walks around and looks at them and everybody stops and is like, “Oh, shit, there it is.” And it’s like, slowly kind of walking toward them. Like it doesn’t need to charge because it’s not afraid. It knows it’s the biggest, scariest thing here.

[Shep]
What kind of gun does the foreman have?

[Thomas]
Double barrel shotgun.

[Shep]
Okay. He’s got two shots.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
So the creature comes out. Does he wait till it gets close enough to shoot at it?

[Thomas]
Have to. It’s a shotgun.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Those don’t have a lot of range.

[Shep]
This is a problem. So the creature comes out and they just brace for it. They get their axes ready, he gets his shotgun up and aims. And they wait for it to come closer.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I like that tension of it coming closer.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Oh, does the greenhorn bolt?

[Shep]
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, is they’re in formation, but the greenhorn is so afraid he’s going to bolt. But what direction does he bolt where the creature can chase after him?

[Emily]
But we’re going to later have it jump over the flume and grab people, right?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
This is where we establish it’s jumping and speed.

[Thomas]
Oh, yes. Yes.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Because we haven’t seen that yet.

[Emily]
So the green horn’s going behind them. They’re in a line, he’s fucking off the other direction.

[Thomas]
So he heads back toward camp, right?

[Emily]
Yeah. And then the creature jumps over the men, or whatever.

[Shep]
If the creature jumps over them, it’s now between them and camp.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So why wouldn’t they run further away from camp?

[Thomas]
So maybe it comes at them perpendicularly to the log flume. They’re walking in a line parallel to the log flume and it comes perpendicular so it charges toward… well we don’t want it to hit the log flume and destroy it, though. Yet.

[Shep]
What if instead of the greenhorn running back toward camp, he tries to run towards the mill further down because that puts the creature between them and their destination.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. So it does come from the side.

[Shep]
Yeah, like you said, it comes perpendicular.

[Thomas]
And so they all turn 90 degrees to face it because they’re readying for battle, essentially. But the greenhorn bolts. It sees him running and that’s when we see its speed. Maybe it jumps from the ground and sort of grabs onto the side of a tree and jumps down on top of the greenhorn, like, pounces down from above.

[Emily]
I like that imagery.

[Shep]
I like that a lot. Especially if when it’s grabbing on the tree, it’s leaving a mark on the tree, which they can then see. “Oh, this is the territory that it hunts in.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“You can see these marks on the trees.”

[Thomas]
“And they match what we saw at the exploded guy area.”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
He’s like, “What are these crazy markings in the tree? Like, what could have done this?”

[Shep]
Yes. “It’s not a bear.”

[Emily]
“Not a bear.”

[Thomas]
So then does the foreman yell for everyone to go back to camp because we want them to attack it, right?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
The foreman says “Attack!” because it’s now stopped moving because it’s eating the greenhorn, the expendable greenhorn.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. Yes.

[Shep]
The brave men rush up with axes. Does the experienced guy go up with them?

[Emily]
No. I think he’s smart enough to hold our greenhorn back.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
I like that. He knows axes aren’t going to do it.

[Thomas and Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Why is he so concerned about keeping our greenhorn, the main character-? We should give names to these guys. We should have given names to these guys an hour ago.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Well.

[Emily]
While our listeners can suggest names.

[Shep]
Yes. If you have names for these characters, write them on our website.

[Thomas]
What if he is his future son-in-law and he’s being particularly hard on him at first and hazing him kind of the most, but ultimately, like, he does like this kid?

[Shep]
They already knew each other beforehand.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Emily]
The stakes are higher for the two of them to survive.

[Shep]
Yeah. So they didn’t bond at the beginning. They already knew each other.

[Thomas]
A little of both. I mean, I think that there is bonding that’s happening, but-

[Emily]
Yeah. They already knew each other and now they’re actually bonding.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
It’s no longer an acquaintanceship or whatever.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Thomas]
And so we need the greenhorn to do something brave or heroic or something to prove his manliness or whatever to the future father-in-law.

[Shep]
Right. Oh, maybe he’s been trying, maybe that’s why he came up to be a logger. Right? He’s trying to prove his manliness.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Even though he’s not inherently very manly. And the father-in-law doesn’t really think he has it in him, but is trying to help him. Like, maybe… I don’t know.

[Thomas]
Something along those lines, though.

[Emily]
That sounds right.

[Shep]
So when everyone’s rushing forward with axes, our main guy would also want to rush forward with an axe even though he’s afraid.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
He wants to show that he’s not afraid. And this is when the experienced guy grabs his shoulder and holds him back and he shakes his head.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I like that.

[Shep]
So after this, they go back to camp. The survivors go back to camp. And that’s when you have the Jaws speech from the experienced guy.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
Now you know why he held the main character back.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Because he knew because he had seen this type of creature before and they had tried to attack it with axes before, and he knew it did nothing.

[Thomas]
So this, I think, does then become the lowest low because you’ve lost half the people who came up here are gone, the gun is gone. There’s no easy way to get out of the woods because of this thing. Like the fastest way out was what they were trying to do and now you can’t do that.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
And that really sets up that final act of them working to finish the log flume to get out of the woods.

[Emily]
Can the completion of the log flume be our greenhorn’s idea?

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. He’s like “The log flume.” They’re like, “No, we already walked along the log flume.”

[Emily]
“No, we ride it.”

[Thomas]
He’s like “Not walk. We ride it.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
“We finish the log flume, we ride logs.”

[Shep]
“We have to be faster than the creature. That’s how we get to be faster.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
And because we’ve established that he wasn’t manly before, maybe more intellectually curious before, so he’s proving that his way also is a good way to be a man.

[Thomas]
That’s good.

[Shep]
I like it.

[Thomas]
Do they finish the log flume? How long does it take them to finish it? I mean, it doesn’t have to be good. It just has to operate. It’s mostly done, it’s mostly secure. So they could build kind of a dodgy upper part because it’s not like they’re going to be loading logs in the upper part.

[Emily]
Right. They’re not using it right now for work.

[Thomas]
Right. They just need to get water flowing.

[Shep]
I think it should take at least two days because that gives us at least another night.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
Everyone’s on edge because they’re afraid the creature will come to the camp.

[Thomas]
Okay, so day six, building the log flume. Night six, that last night. High, high tension, nobody sleeps. 7th day, more building. Oh…

[Shep]
Oh… Thomas has an idea.

[Thomas]
I just had a picture in my head of them riding the log flume at night through a forest fire.

[Shep]
Ooh, whoo.

[Thomas]
I like the visuals of that.

[Emily]
That would be cool to watch.

[Thomas]
Oh, and then you get like the shadows, like the silhouette of the creature. There’s like smoke and you can’t quite tell. And then all of a sudden you see it and it’s like, “Oh, that’s not smoke, that’s it.” And you’ve got the little, like, embers floating around.

[Shep]
So it’s finished the 7th day or it’s the 7th night.

[Thomas]
Well, it’s finished the 7th day late in the day. And maybe the creature does attack the camp just as they’re finishing it and they’ve flooded it, but it takes a bit for it to get going, I guess. I don’t know. At any rate, I like the idea of the creature attacking the camp and somehow stuff like maybe-

[Emily]
Kerosene.

[Thomas]
Yeah, kerosene or something like tips over and lights something on fire. It’s not like the forest fire is going to spread fast enough for it to be ahead of them.

[Shep]
Okay, maybe it’s not completed yet or it needs to be, you know, one last thing needs to be done further up the hill.

[Thomas]
Yeah, you have to open the sluice gate or whatever.

[Shep]
Right. They’re getting it all ready. They’re going to finish it tomorrow. Early in the morning, the camp is attacked at night. Fire starts and starts to spread. They have to go further up the hill to where the head of the log flume is and finish it and ride it down through the now forest fire that has spread, knowing that the creature is somewhere ahead of them, but not where. That’s a big finale.

[Thomas]
I like it. And then at some point on that ride, which, by the way, would be absolutely bonkers, you’d be tearing along at high speed, no control whatsoever. You’re just along for the ride, probably being jostled and bounced and stuff. And the creature is maybe chasing them. It’s running alongside at some point and they can see it keeping pace with them. And then maybe it kind of disappears at one point. And then all of a sudden, it comes flying perpendicular across and grabs the guy on the front log and-

[Shep]
Oh, it disappears. And then, because they’re going fast, they can see it up ahead on a tree, ready to pounce like it does.

[Thomas]
Oh.

[Shep]
It jumps on the tree and it gets ready to pounce.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And then it pounces.

[Thomas]
And there’s nothing they can do. You can’t stop.

[Shep]
There’s nothing they can do.

[Emily]
And they lose a man.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And they lose a man, but not the main character and not the experienced guy.

[Emily]
No.

[Thomas]
No, because it’s a movie.

[Shep]
Because it’s a movie. I like it. Well, that’s the big finale.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
What do you follow this up with?

[Thomas]
They get to the mill.

[Emily]
They get to the mill and send their communication out.

[Shep]
Yeah. Success in this movie is not killing the creature. Success is-

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Living, surviving. Yeah.

[Shep]
Getting out of the woods and sending a message to the company and having them deal with it.

[Emily]
Yeah. Because the greenhorn is definitely not going back.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Our greenhorn is like, “You know what? I’m going to go to college.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
“This is enough for me.”

[Thomas]
The experience guy is like “Yeah. I was planning to retire anyway, so.”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“That was my last job.”

[Thomas]
Seems as good a time as any. So do we have our story, then?

[Shep]
I think we have it.

[Emily]
I feel like we do. Yeah.

[Thomas]
I really like this movie a lot.

[Emily]
I don’t. And I am normally not the one who’s scared by the stories we come up with. And this one is kind of freaking me out.

[Thomas]
This one is legit. Like a pretty scary one, I think.

[Shep]
That’s good.

[Emily and Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I would totally watch the crap out of it and then I’d have nightmares all night, but it would be worth it.

[Thomas]
All right, who wants to give us a quick wrap up here? Go over the story one more time so that we have it in our head clear what actually happens.

[Emily]
I feel like Shep does a good job of synthesizing things.

[Shep]
Okay. First day, you see the crew arriving.

[Thomas]
Eight guys.

[Shep]
Eight guys. You see the old crew, and the experienced guy comments to the foreman that there’s only seven guys. The two foremen go off and chat about it, but everything goes well. Everyone’s bonding. The previous crew leaves, and that’s the end of the first night. The second day, the foreman sends people out in groups of two because someone disappeared on the previous group.

[Thomas]
They suspect there’s a bear or a cougar or something.

[Shep]
Right. Something.

[Thomas]
Some predator in the woods.

[Shep]
Right. So no one’s going out by themselves. Everyone’s going out in pairs.

[Thomas]
Makes sense.

[Shep]
One of the pairs disappears, and that night, everyone is on edge. Third day, the expendable greenhorn’s partner gets eaten and leads everyone to the scene of the mess. And the third night, everyone is shook. The fourth day, some of the people stay back. The greenhorns stay back at the camp. But some of the experienced guys track down a bear and kill it with axes. That’s the name of the episode. The foreman thinks the site is now safe. That night the expendable greenhorn insists that it wasn’t a bear and something is coming. They can hear something coming through the woods and it turns out to be the survivor from day two and the survivor corroborates the expendable greenhorn’s version that it’s not a bear and it’s still out there. The fifth day the foreman decides “Hey, let’s all walk down to the mill as group guns and axes ready to fight and send a message because this is untenable, there is some predator out there and we don’t have the equipment to fight it off.”

[Thomas]
It’s just totally unsafe to stay.

[Shep]
It’s unsafe to stay. It will hurt the schedule if we try to stay and work through it and it’s better for the company if we go down. So they go down but 2 hours into the walk they are attacked. The expendable greenhorn panics and flees and attracts the creature’s attention. They try to fight it, the axes do nothing. The foreman tries to shoot it or does shoot it but it doesn’t kill it and he is killed and the gun is lost. And so the survivors head back to the camp away from the creature. That night they get the Jaws speech from the experienced guy who’s now taken charge of the group and the- our greenhorn, the main character, suggests finishing the log flume so they can ride it down faster than the creature runs. The creature is fast but the log flume is even faster. The 6th day they’re building it. The 6th night everyone is on edge. The 7th day they’re still building it and the 7th night the creature finds the camp and attacks. Kerosene spills, starts a fire, the fire spreads to the forest. The survivors head further up to the hill to finish the last part of the log flume and start their ride down. They ride through the now forest fire and are chased by the creature who pounces and takes one of them, at least one of them.

[Thomas]
I think during the part either at the camp attack or while they’re trying to finish it, we lose one of the four remaining guys. So it’s three on logs, our two guys on one log and another guy on his own log.

[Shep]
Oh the other guy, he’s on his own log because he didn’t wait for them.

[Thomas]
Oh yeah.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Shep]
They were going to go as a group and he just went on his own ahead because he was too afraid and that’s why he gets pounced on by the creature because he’s the first one in range.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Love it.

[Shep]
Yep. So his haste to get to safety is what caused his doom. The two survivors, which is the main character and his father-in-law, the only people out of the original eight, make it down and get to the mill and send off a message and retire from logging. The end.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I like it.

[Emily]
I like it.

[Thomas]
That’s good. Well, we like it, but we would love to hear your thoughts on today’s show about an axe. Was it a sharp bit or do you have an axe to grind with us? Let us know by leaving a comment on our website, reaching out on social media or sending us an email. Links to all of those can be found at AlmostPlausible.com Thanks for listening. Emily, Shep, and I will be back on another episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]

[Thomas]
Well, that was good.

[Shep]
Yeah, it built to a real climax.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah, while you were going through all that shit, there were noises in my tiny room. That’s why I’m like, “I don’t like this story anymore.”

[Shep]
You have a dog. Your dog is making noises.

[Emily]
I know. It’s my dog and my cats.

[Shep]
You brought this on yourself.