“Okay,” C.P. said. “I’m on board with that plan. But let’s put Griffin’s camera and notebook in that sack you have with the food, all right? I still want to take those with us.”
They transferred the camera and notebook to Mattie’s bag. The camera did make the bag heavier but not too much. C.P. offered to carry the sack but Mattie shook her head.
“I can manage, and the strap would irritate your shoulder.”
Then she remembered William stumbling forward, the rifle clattering to the ground. “The rifle!” she said, and went back toward the cliff’s edge.
It hadn’t fallen off the cliff with William, as she feared. Mattie picked it up. It was heavy, and she didn’t know if it still had ammunition inside, but if it did then they might need it.
She brought it back to C.P., who checked to see how many shots were left.
“Looks like ten. He probably had extra ammo in his pockets but we’re not going to climb down to check. You still have those keys, right?” C.P. asked.
Mattie felt for the string around her neck and pulled the key ring out to show him.
“Damn, I really hope we find that guy’s car,” C.P. said. “I have never wanted to not walk so much in my entire life.”
“We should go back to the stream,” Mattie said. “It’s not far from here, and we’ll know for sure that we’re heading in the right direction. And we won’t be under the trees.”
C.P. cast a wary glance at the tree branches hanging over them. “Right. But we’ll have to go through the woods again to get there.”
Mattie had thought of this, had realized that the creature could have crossed the stream and picked up their trail again already. She listened hard, and heard the sound of birds.
“It’s not here yet,” she said. “There are birds nearby. Let’s hurry.”
They climbed back up over the boulders and into the woods, C.P. moving very slowly.
“I really want to say it’s just a flesh wound,” he said, “but it hurts, goddammit. I will never believe anything I see in a movie again.”
“What do you mean?”
“In movies guys are always getting shot, but in conveniently non-vital places. And they’re always like, ‘It’s nothing,’ and then spend the next hour sprinting around and punching bad guys like they’ve had no blood loss whatsoever. Well, I’m here to tell you that even this little wound makes me want to sit down for at least an hour, and also I want two meatball subs and a beer, not necessarily in that order.”
Mattie didn’t know what a meatball sub was, but she understood the impulse to sit down. The rush of fighting William and winning had passed and now she was more tired than she’d ever been, so tired she thought she could close her eyes and fall asleep standing up.
She felt her eyelids drooping and realized she was falling asleep, falling asleep while she was walking, which was something she hadn’t thought possible.
“Stay awake,” she said.
“I’m trying,” he said.
“No, not you. Me. My eyes were closing.”
“Mine are, too,” he said. “What if we just stood here and took a one-minute nap?”
“No naps,” she said. “Move now, nap later.”
They were moving slower than they had been earlier, but it still didn’t take very long to reach the stream again. Mattie felt a wash of relief as they entered the clearing. The creature couldn’t hide from them here. They would have warning if it was coming.
Then C.P. cried out, “No! No! For chrissakes, no!” and she saw what he was yelling about.
Jen hung from her intestines in a tree on the other side of the stream, her torso an empty cavity like a blank eye.
“Don’t look,” Mattie said, though she couldn’t stop staring herself and her voice didn’t sound like it was attached to her body. “Don’t look. You can’t do anything for her. Don’t look. Come on, C.P. Come away.”
He let her lead him like a child, her hand pulling his. The rifle slid out of his other hand.
“The rifle,” she said. “Get the rifle.”
“What good will it do?” he said dully. “That guy had the rifle. He shot the monster. We heard him shooting it. But it still didn’t die.”
“We don’t need to kill it,” Mattie said, picking up the rifle herself and wrapping his hands around it. “We just need to keep it away from us so we can live.”
“It doesn’t seem fair,” he said. “That we can live, and they didn’t.”
“No,” Mattie said. “It doesn’t. Come on. Don’t think about it right now. Just take a step. Let’s go. Come on.”
They went on like that for some time, Mattie coaxing, C.P. shuffling along like a sleepwalker. All the while she was listening, listening for the sound of birds chirping above the bubbling of the stream, listening to make certain it never got too quiet.
The stream bent around toward the southeast, just as C.P. said it would. Mattie couldn’t hear the river yet, but she hoped to very soon. The river meant they were closer to the base of the mountain, to town, to places where there were no monsters.
William came from a town, once, and so did you. Your monster came right in through your bedroom window.
No, she wasn’t going to think about William. She wasn’t going to drag his ghost with her all the way to her new life.
The quiet came all at once, a hush that swept through behind the wind.
But why? Mattie thought. We’re leaving, moving farther away from its cave, and neither of us look as weak or injured as Griffin or Jen did. It has no reason to hunt us.
“Don’t stop,” she said in an undertone. “It’s here.”
C.P. looked at her, but his eyes weren’t focused. He’d gone somewhere far from her, someplace where his friends were still alive and happy and not hanging from trees in the forest.
“What’s here?”
“The creature,” she said. “It’s near. The woods have gone quiet.”
The dazed look receded, and he glanced around. “I don’t see
