“I’ll help!” Bradley shouted, scurrying to grab two of the durable nylon slings they used for collecting wood and tossing one directly at Gabi’s head. “Come on, Girl Lowell,” he taunted. “Though who knows how Ames can tell the difference. I’ve seen eight-year-old boys with bigger boobs.”
His words would have embarrassed her to cinders just a few months ago, but Gabi had become so single-minded in order to keep moving that the taunt glanced off her like a tossed pebble. She picked up the sling and followed Bradley into the woods as Ames ordered “Boy Lowell” to set up the tents and the dishwashing station.
Bradley seemed more interested in gathering enough kindling to please Ames than tormenting Gabi, but she was careful to keep far enough behind him that she had a chance of escape if he gave chase. The trees were massive, their shade discouraging undergrowth so that Gabi’s feet shuffled through nothing but patches of snow and soft brown pine needles. She threw a few halfhearted handfuls of the pine needles into her sling. Nothing she did would be good enough for Ames anyway, so she figured she might as well enjoy a few quiet moments to herself while she could. It still didn’t seem real how radically her life had changed in just a few short months. Being almost alone in the woods felt like it slowed everything down so that for the first time in months, she felt calm.
All it took was a moment of closing her eyes to lose sight of Bradley and notice that they only had another twenty minutes or so of sunlight before darkness fell in the woods. She could hear him thrashing somewhere off to her right in the opposite direction of camp, but a dense copse of tree trunks kept him from view. The thought of becoming lost in the forest mere yards from camp was more than her ego could endure. She could simply go back and leave Bradley to grope his way out of the woods, except that Ames speechified at least once a day about the cardinal rule of Witness work. Never ever leave a man behind. With a sigh Gabi followed the sound of Bradley’s footfalls as they retreated away from her.
“Bradley! Bradley, you’re going too far! It’s almost dark, and we have to get back. We don’t need that much wood.” All sounds of Bradley’s progress faded, and a musical note floated toward her as Gabi pursued him. Finally she reached an opening in the woods, the waning sunlight reflecting off the snow to reveal a wide white path running downhill. She could feel Bradley nearby. More than him, actually. Colors and smells had grown more vivid for her since the beginning of the trek, as though each day someone turned up a dial in her brain. Smells infused the glade that she couldn’t account for by nature, Bradley’s presence, or the Witness teams nearby. The little clearing felt distinctly crowded.
“Braaahh!” Bradley screamed, springing out from behind a tree with his burden of kindling. Gabi shrieked and stumbled backward, landing hard on a crust of snow. “Ha!” Bradley crowed. “Classic, reject. You would be completely useless in an attack. I’d be doing the whole mission a favor if I just left you here to die.”
Gabi tried to scramble to her feet, but the brittle covering of snow concealed a bubbled sheet of ice, and she couldn’t get her footing. Bradley stalked toward her, days’ worth of suppressed malice sparking in his eyes. “Like a pitiful, starved deer that needs to be put out of its misery,” he taunted, rubbing at the acne stubbling his chin.
Gabi’s bare hands grew numb from scrabbling on the ice. She crammed them under her armpits, as stuck on that slippery sheet as if she’d been glued to it. The musical sound flowed just under Bradley’s taunts and her labored breathing as she tried to calm herself. Bradley wouldn’t dare leave her for dead—he knew the “no man left behind” rule as well as she did—but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t make her suffer before heading back to camp.
“Heeyah!” Bradley screamed as he faked a lunge toward her. “Hah! Hah! Hah!” He jumped and swung at her repeatedly, drawing closer with each feint. Every time Bradley jumped, Gabi heard a deep groan that she first thought was coming from her throat. But as he made another lunge, a fracture opened in the ice under Bradley and he began to slide. The split widened into a chasm, and the ice shifted under Gabi, revealing strata of frozen water marbled like uncut bacon. The music had been the sound of water rushing beneath the ice. The groans were the complaints of that ice as Bradley’s jumps caved it in from above.
“Help me!” Bradley screamed as he crashed to his hands and knees on the now-tilted slab. His feet plunged into the water, kicking against the weight of his waterlogged boots. Gabi rolled onto her belly and inched toward Bradley, using the points of her elbows as blunt picks to drag herself forward. Bradley fought to keep hold on the up-thrust edge of the slab as she inched along to get within arm’s reach. The expanding pool where Bradley’s feet thrashed, which was sucking
