One by One

Claire wakes to a gunshot and wakes up Noah. Jack and Warner are gone, so Noah decides to look for them. Claire insists on going with him. They see Jack, kneeling in what appears to be blood. He has the gun but says he did not shoot Warner. Jack woke up and Warner was gone, and Jack went to search for him. Jack shot the gun once because he thought he saw a coyote.

Near the blood that Jack found, Claire again sees the five claw marks. She thinks back to Emma’s dream about the monster with an even greater sense of foreboding. They decide to look for Warner since he has the map.

While searching for Warner, Claire stays close to Noah. She asks Noah if he believes that Jack only shot at a coyote. Noah is unsure, as he tells Claire that Jack was unhappy in his marriage to Michelle, and he finds Michelle’s disappearance suspicious. He also tells her that Warner revealed he saw Jack walk into the woods with Michelle the night that she disappeared. Noah doesn’t want to believe that Jack would be capable of hurting Michelle or Warner, but his suspicions still linger. Claire wonders if she’ll make it out of the woods alive.

As they continue north without the map, Claire, Jack, and Noah realize they’ve run out of food, and Jack is down to his last water-purifying tablet. They refill the water bottle and take measured sips to conserve the water as they continue north. Claire thinks that Penny must have realized something is wrong, given that Claire hasn’t called her. She hopes Penny has organized a search party.

The group stumbles upon a cabin. They don’t see a vehicle, and Jack wants to go inside, though Claire is scared. Jack opens the door.

The unnamed narrator remembers a night that they heard their parents fighting about their father’s alleged infidelity. They blame their mother for driving away their father. Their father leaves the house, and the narrator goes to search for the rifle case. They find it, though it’s locked, so they cannot use the gun on their mother.

They go downstairs and make themselves a sandwich, then they hear a crash from their mother’s room. They go to investigate and find their mother unconscious next to four empty sleeping pill bottles. The narrator knows their mother needs her stomach pumped or she’ll die, but they still step over her body to go downstairs and eat their sandwich.

The cabin looks empty and is completely silent. Claire investigates and finds it has running water, which thrills the group. They all drink water before they notice a partially eaten sandwich on the table. The fridge is stocked with food that hasn’t gone bad, which means someone was living in the cabin somewhat recently.

They search for a phone but find a phone jack without a working phone. Noah makes sandwiches for himself, Claire, and Jack. After they eat, they investigate further, and Claire is particularly troubled by the partially eaten sandwich left behind. She wonders what happened to the owner of the cabin. They decide to wait at the cabin for a search party to find them, as Penny must have alerted the authorities.

Claire investigates the cabin’s bedroom. The inhabitant was clearly a man, as the dresser has a copy of the Bible and a pair of men’s jeans. Claire is slightly comforted by the Bible, as she grew up going to church with her family. Noah is also a non-practicing Christian.

Claire picks up the Bible, but it’s been hollowed out with an empty space for a gun. Claire is shaken and drops the Bible, but she doesn’t tell Noah what she discovered. Noah goes to lie down on the bed and rest, and Claire goes outside to get fresh air. When she goes outside, she sees five claw marks on the wall of the cabin. Jack finds her, and though she is suspicious of him, she goes with him to see something behind the cabin.

There’s a pickup truck behind the cabin. When Claire looks in the driver’s seat, she sees a dead older man, clearly the owner of the cabin. Jack tells her that he thinks the man was stabbed to death recently, but the keys to the truck are missing.

Clare is scared and wants to tell Noah, but Jack convinces her not to. He casts suspicion on Noah and lists out why he thinks Noah is the killer. Jack thinks that though Claire’s minivan is new, her battery appeared older than the rest of the car, something Noah could have tampered with. He also remembers that the water they drank the first night tasted chalky, which was the night that Noah gave up his sip of water for Claire. He thinks Noah could have drugged the rest of them and done something to Michelle, which he thinks would be motivated by Noah’s anger about their affair.

When Claire says that Noah wouldn’t be capable of something like this, Jack tells her about how Noah punched him in the face randomly after Noah’s father died, when Noah was in a months-long catatonic state of grief. Claire doesn’t know what to think.