Chapter Seven

Roz pushed them hard—almost harder than Fiona could take. Her knees, battered from the scramble, seemed to complain the entire time. They were hiking at a disadvantage today, as they had to go farther, faster than usual to make camp on time. Normally they’d have been on the trail several hours before they started, and with the delay at the scramble, they had to hustle to make up for lost time. Roz had a contingency plan in case they couldn’t reach the campsite before dark, but she wanted them to try to make the original destination before implementing the backup option. This meant very infrequent and very short breaks, but with all the recent drama, not talking to each other for any length was probably a good thing.

The sun had started to fade into early evening almost exactly when Fiona was about to call it quits. For what felt like hours now, she’d been battling the urge to simply sit down and stop, and her legs and knees felt like they were beginning to shut down. Already, she was starting to trip more often, losing coordination, and she’d fallen behind the others. She could still see them ahead in the woods, but they were getting farther and farther away. She watched her feet, concentrating on putting one in front of the other without stumbling over them, and when she glanced up again, the others had stopped. At first she thought they were waiting for her, but when she finally hustled up behind them, they were all staring into the woods in front of them. Fiona was panting, and it took her a second to get enough air for words.

“What…” She had to pause and take a shaky gasp, “are we looking at?”

“Shhh!” Jill said.

“I heard something,” Roz said quietly.

Fiona could hear nothing over the pounding blood in her ears and her own whistling breath, and both Jill and Carol made quieting motions. She put a hand over her mouth to stifle the sound and tried to listen as she bent at the waist, her other hand on her knee. She heard nothing but the usual sounds of the woods, and when she stood up again, the others were looking around at each other, confused.

Roz shrugged. “I guess I imagined it. Come on. Let’s get going.”

She started to move, and Fiona almost began to cry. “Wait, wait. I need a minute. Please. I can’t keep going like this without a longer break.”

Roz turned toward her, looking almost annoyed, but the others were nodding agreement, already taking off their packs. Fiona saw now that their faces were strained, everyone smudged with sweat and dirt. Even Roz seemed a little peaked, her eyes ringed with fatigue. She stared into the woods again and sighed before turning back to them.

“Okay. Ten minutes.”

Everyone talked at once.

“What?”

“That’s not enough—”

“I’m about to fall over—”

Roz held up a hand. “Guys, I know today has been rough, but we’re almost there.”

“How close is almost?” Jill asked.

Roz glanced into the woods in front of them again and shrugged. “Half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes from here. Definitely not more than an hour.”

Jill sighed and rolled her shoulders and neck. “Okay. Fine. But give us fifteen, okay? I’m about ready to fall down right here.” She turned to Fiona. “How are you doing? You okay? Your hands all right?”

With her pack off her back, Fiona felt much better, and she managed a weak smile. “I’m okay. I can go a little farther.”

Jill squeezed her shoulder. “I’m proud of you. You’re holding up better than the rest of us.”

In her near-exhaustion, Fiona found this remark touching rather than patronizing, and tears prickled at the corners of her eyes.

“Thanks.”

Jill grinned and winked. “Since you’re in such good shape, you owe me a massage when we get to camp. I feel like knives are jabbing me in the shoulders.”

Fiona winked back. “I’ll do you if you do me.”

“Who’s doing whom?” Carol asked.

“You can do better than this tramp, Fiona,” Sarah said, nudging her.

“She wishes,” Jill said, rolling her eyes.

The four of them sat down on the ground next to each other, and Roz wandered ahead a little, ostensibly to check the trail. She was clearly still keeping some distance from them. While they had trekked most of the afternoon in near silence, the atmosphere had been stressful from the moment they woke up. The strain had to be particularly hard on Roz. She had to keep the four of them going, adjust the speed to make up for the lost morning, and deal with whatever emotional turmoil she had to be in after the guys’ abandonment and the argument with Jill. Fiona was tempted to walk up to her and offer her recognition and gratitude for all she’d done and gone through today, but she looked peaceful over there on her own.

Jill nudged her in the ribs. “She likes you.”

Fiona rolled her eyes. “She does not.”

“More than me, anyway. She thinks I’m a pain in the ass.”

“You are a pain in the ass.”

Jill touched the back of her hand. “I’m serious, Fiona. I think you have a real shot with her. I’ve seen her watching you a few times and the two of you talking together. Every time she gets a little moony. I’m not kidding you here. She’s really into you. You should go for it.”

Fiona was about to retort, but Jill was pulled into a conversation about dinner with Carol and Sarah, and she was left to her own thoughts. The idea that Roz might find her attractive was flattering, but she also didn’t quite believe it, certainly not with the three of her friends here, too. She was the runt of the litter compared to them. Still, she couldn’t help but watch as Roz continued to examine the trail and the woods, her solitude clearly chosen, part of who she was. What would it be like to be part of that quiet peace?

As if she’d sensed Fiona’s gaze, Roz turned back toward them, walking softly and surely through the woods, almost silent. She seemed as much a part of these woods as the trees and animals around her, her neutral-colored clothing nearly camouflage.

“That’s fifteen,” she said.

The four of them groaned in unison, then laughed. Fiona felt suddenly jubilant, excited, even. The fact that they were going to make it to camp felt like a dream. Even an hour ago, she honestly thought she wouldn’t be able to do it. Now, as she struggled into her pack again, the aches and pains of the day immediately back and barking for attention, she knew she could do anything. Between the speed, distance, and elevation gain, today had been the hardest day they would have this entire trip, and she’d done it. She could be as proud of herself as she pleased.

“I like the smiles, guys,” Roz said, cinching her pack. “I thought you all would hate me by now.”

“Oh, we do,” Jill said, smiling. “But we’re too hungry to care right now.”

Roz smiled a little, obviously recognizing the attempt at a joke. “Okay. Let’s get you to camp then, and you can eat as much as you want. Maybe you won’t hate me so much when your stomach is full.”

The trail here had evened out, and, perhaps because of the break, or perhaps because they were almost finished, the final leg didn’t feel as arduous as before. Fiona even felt a little spring in her step, as if her pack had magically lightened. The woods were a little thinner, too, the sunlight breaking through a little more often than before. Fiona could tell by the angle of the light that it was late in the day, but they probably had at least another hour to go before they began to lose the light. Even then, there would likely be another hour of dim sunset before it was difficult to see without a headlamp. If camp was as close as Roz thought, they should have everything set up before that happened.

The sound of the water gradually faded, and Fiona remembered that Roz had mentioned that the river diverted from the trail in a few places. She didn’t like the idea that they would have to trek farther for the water they would need, nor did she like the thought that they were well and fully lost back here if something happened to Roz. Perhaps because of the lack of water here, the trail was even harder to detect through the woods. Everything was carpeted with dried pine needles, with very little broken undergrowth to point the way. Roz, however, was walking surely, carefully, following some path she could clearly see. Watching her from behind, her strong legs eating up the miles, was the single pleasure of the day.

Right as Fiona’s second wind died, and just when her shoulders started to scream again in protest, Roz suddenly slowed to a stop. She turned back to them and pointed.

“We made it.”

There, ahead in the woods, was a wide clearing, the end of the day’s sunlight streaming down on it like a little oasis. Everyone around her sighed with relief, and the four of them nearly staggered the final yards. Fiona tripped her last few steps, but she managed to snag the side of a tree before going down entirely. She unclipped her chest and waist belts and let the pack drop off her back, the relief so overwhelming she groaned.

“All right,” Roz said. “One person should start dinner, one should get water, and someone should set up the tents. I also want to hang half the food so we’re not doing all that in the dark, and I’ll need a hand. We can do the second half after we eat.”

“I’ll help you,” Fiona said, surprising herself.

Roz gave her a strained smile. “Thanks. Okay. Let’s get started.”

They divided the food bags into two piles while Sarah started on the tents, Carol set off on the faint trail toward the water, and Jill started dinner. Between the five of them, each person had carried a different part of tonight’s meal. Roz had sent them a very detailed list of what to buy and what to divide for every night of the trip. Doing this meant that they could have slightly more elaborate meals at the end of the day, as one-person cooking was slow and generally monotonous.

Fiona and Roz loaded two of the bear canisters, and then Roz led the way through the woods some hundred yards away. Like last night, the canisters were hung as counterweights on a high branch. Bears had learned long ago that they could simply chew or claw through any trailing rope that attached to the ground, so the trick was hanging food in a tree far enough off that ground that they couldn’t climb up to it. Obviously, Roz had chosen a specific tree for this long ago, as the one they walked to was ideal—no low branches to climb, the nearest one to the ground far too high to reach. Roz needed her to hold the ropes to keep them from tangling and to keep them taut. She used the hanging branch as a kind of lever to haul the food up with the second rope.

The process was usually slow and tedious, something Fiona had struggled to do well in the past, but this was anything but. Fiona enjoyed watching Roz work. As with everything, she was efficient and sure, none of her movements wasted or rushed. Fiona stood far enough back to be out of the way, which gave her an excellent view of the woman. She didn’t even have to worry about staring at her, as she needed to watch her to help effectively.

Roz twitched the second rope, and the other end dropped to the ground. The food hung perfectly above the ground. She gave Fiona a warm smile.

“Thanks for your help.”

“Sure,” Fiona said, a little breathless. That smile undid her every time.

“You can leave the second rope here since we’ll need to do this again after we eat.”

“Of course.” Fiona dropped it in a heap.

“We should help Carol get the water.”

“Mmm hmmm,” Fiona said, starting to lose her ability to make coherent speech. Her cheeks were burning, but she couldn’t break eye contact with the woman. Roz was staring at her, one eyebrow crooked up in a question, and the expression was so endearing, so adorable, Fiona almost said something about it.

“So we should go,” Roz said, clearly waiting for her now.

“Yes.”

Roz laughed and shook her head, then walked toward her, in the direction of camp, passing close enough that Fiona felt the heat from her body. The edge of Roz’s shirt brushed against the exposed skin on her forearm, and Fiona shivered, closing her eyes. It was all she could do not to grab Roz’s arm and…there the fantasy broke down, and Fiona’s eyes snapped open. She wasn’t brave enough to imagine what came next.

“Are you coming?” Roz asked, already several feet away.

“Yes,” Fiona said, and started following her.

They hadn’t walked more than a few feet before the screaming started. Both froze for a second, and then Roz took off, running so hard and fast Fiona couldn’t keep up with her. She disappeared around a particularly thick clump of bushes, and Fiona almost called out to her to slow down, but someone screamed again, closer, and she made herself keep going. Once she could see Roz again, some hundred feet away back in camp, Fiona pushed herself to speed up. The screams were louder now, and she saw Roz pause, listen, and then race toward the sound.

Fiona was vaguely aware as she dashed through camp that the others weren’t there, and the dread she’d been fighting washed through her, closing off clear thought. Who was hurt? Who was screaming? What had happened?

Roz was far ahead now, but her light-colored pants were visible as a flash of brightness in the woods. Fiona made herself go faster, bending slightly at the waist where a stitch had begun, working hard to avoid hitting trees as she ran. Branches were slashing at her face, and she was dimly aware of a sharp, stinging pain across her cheek, but she ignored it, her focus entirely on her moving legs.

She ran into a clearing and almost collided with Jill before she was able to stop herself. She took in the scene in a sweep of terror before she could make sense of what she was seeing.

Carol had been swallowed by the earth, only the top of her head visible. Her face was pinched in pain, and she let out another ear-piercing scream. She’d fallen into some kind of hole. It was some six feet deep, judging by how much of her could be seen, but Fiona couldn’t understand what had happened. The ground around Carol seemed to have caved in, but Fiona could see branches sticking up out of the hole around her, too. Almost as if—

Jill said it before she could think of the words. “It’s a pit trap. Like for wild boar.”

These were, of course, exactly the words she’d been trying to think of. Someone had dug a hole here and covered it with earth and branches. But why? Who?

Sarah was crouched some five feet to the left of the hole, face ashen with horror. Roz sprawled on the ground, flat on her stomach, her hands stretched out in front of her like a swimmer.

“Carol,” Roz said, her voice loud, but clear and calm. “Grab my hands. I can’t get any closer to you without falling in.”

Carol tried, jumping a little inside the pit, but her reach fell far short of Roz’s. Roz inched forward a little farther, but the branches underneath her started to snap and crack. She scooted backward quickly and then sat back on her heels. Her expression was frantic, nearly panicked, and Fiona realized then that Roz, for once, needed help.

Fiona checked behind her on the ground and spotted what she needed in seconds. A large branch, almost as thick as the trunk of a small tree, had fallen on the ground nearby. It had been buried on one end by mud and other debris, but it pulled out of the ground with a solid yank.

Seeing her struggle with it, Roz leapt to her feet and moved to help, and the two of them knelt, far from the edge of the pit, and started sliding the branch toward Carol. Carol didn’t need to be told what to do. She waited until it was nearly in her face and then grabbed two smaller branches sticking out of the sides. Roz moved slightly in front of Fiona to grip their end of the branch, and the two of them moved backward together, hauling Carol out of the hole and back onto solid ground.

Fiona collapsed backward, a startling, piercing pain shooting through her lower back and tailbone, and watched as Sarah pulled Carol into a close hug. She and Roz stayed where they were, panting, Jill hovering a few feet away.

“Are you okay? Are you okay?” Sarah kept repeating, kissing Carol all over.

Carol was crying, still clinging to her wife, but she managed to shake her head.

“What’s wrong?”

“My ankle,” Carol said, sobbing. “I think it’s broken. I landed on some rocks and branches down in the pit.”

She was also scraped up, bloody scratches on her arms and face mixing with the dirt and pine needles on her skin and in her hair.

“Let me see,” Roz said, pushing Sarah, not too gently, to the side. She picked up the ankle Carol indicated, and Carol cried out, throwing her head back.

“Sorry. I need to get this boot off to see better.” Roz looked back at Fiona and Sarah, and Fiona moved forward, grabbing Carol’s shoulder. She lifted her chin at Sarah to suggest she do the same on her side. Sarah paled considerably, but she nodded, putting her hand on Carol’s right arm. Carol’s instinct would be to try to stop Roz, and they needed to hold her back.

Using her utility knife, Roz cut the laces off Carol’s left boot and then spread the edges of the boot as far as she could. Finally, she slipped the boot off. As predicted, Carol tried to sit forward to stop her, but Fiona and Sarah managed to hold her back. Carol shrieked again and then collapsed backward, but Fiona managed to stop her from hitting her head. She’d passed out.

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Roz said. She pulled Carol’s sock off, and Fiona had to look away, gagging. Sarah’s ankle was twisted, misshapen, the skin purple and torn. Even with no experience of any kind of medicine, Fiona could tell it was broken.

“Oh, Jesus,” Sarah said, sounding nearly breathless. “Oh, my good God.”

“How did that even happen?” Jill asked. “The hole’s not that deep.”

“She said something about rocks down inside there,” Fiona said.

Jill inched closer to the hole, peering inside it as best as she could from a safe distance. “There’s something down there, all right. Big, loose stones and thick branches. She must have landed hard when she fell in and twisted her foot or something. Couldn’t be more than six or seven feet deep.”

“Quiet,” Roz said. “Let me think for a second.”

“Who would do something like this?” Sarah asked. “Who would dig that pit out here, right on the trail?”

“Shhhh!” Roz said, her patience clearly breaking. “I need to think, but first I need to splint this ankle. I have some first-aid stuff in my pack, but nothing for something like this.” She looked at Fiona. “Go find some sticks—six of them, about this long and this thick.” She indicated the size with her hands. “If you can’t find anything like that in five minutes, make something with a pocketknife. Jill, come with me to the backpacks. Sarah, stay here with Carol, and don’t let her move. If she wakes up, try to keep her calm. We’ll all be back as soon as we can.”

The three of them scattered, Fiona racing into the woods almost as fast as she’d run here. She needed to find the sticks before Roz returned. They had to stabilize that ankle, or Carol would be in excruciating pain. Even stabilized, it was going to hurt terribly. Fiona expected they would get used to her screaming long before they got her out of these woods.

She was bent close to ground, her eyes glued to the dirt, searching for the wood they needed for the splint. She’d found several pieces thick and long enough but needed at least three more. She started moving some of the leaves and brush aside as she walked, and if she hadn’t been doing that, she would have walked right into the bear trap. It was buried slightly, with leaves and pine needles, but she saw the jagged metal teeth mere seconds before she stepped on it. She froze, her foot still in the air, and managed to take a wary step backward. She jerked around, visually sweeping the area behind her. More traps were here—three or four she could see, which meant likely more she couldn’t. Each had a pressure plate in the center which, when depressed, would make the trap snap onto whatever had triggered it, clamping those jagged teeth into an ankle. While they’d been placed slightly to left of the trail, it would have been easy to stumble into them if you were, like she was, searching for something in the woods.

A scream started rising to her lips, but her terror was deep enough that it stuck in her throat. A high-pitched, whistling moan escaped her lips. She stopped herself from running away, knowing suddenly, instinctively, that if she did, she would run into something else. She froze, peering around wildly before choosing her path backward, moving with mincing steps as she scooted around the traps. Once clear, she walked back toward camp, starting to shake and tremble when she was safe. She almost tripped again but caught herself, grabbing another tree and hugging it fiercely to keep herself from going down.

“What are you doing?” Roz asked, making her jump.

She pointed a shaky finger. “Traps. Bear traps. I almost stepped on them.”

Roz’s eyes opened wide, and she walked over to them. Fiona almost called out a warning, terrified she would miss one and step on it, but Roz stopped long before she reached the traps, peering down at them from a safe distance. She turned and walked back and held out a hand.

“Come on. We all need to get back to Carol as quickly as possible. We don’t know what else is out here, and we can’t deal with it now.”

Fiona took her hand without thinking, letting the taller woman lead her back to Sarah and Carol, both still down on the ground. Sarah had put Carol’s head in her lap. Carol was awake again, her pale face pinched and tear-stained. Jill returned with three first-aid kits, which she opened in front of Roz. She pulled out all the Ace bandages from kits and ripped open a little astringent cloth.

“Did you find the sticks we need?” Roz asked her, kneeling next to Carol’s ankle.

Fiona had managed to cling to them despite her earlier terror and held them out. “Only four.”

“I need two more. Here, take this,” she pulled her Leatherman out of her pocket and tossed it, “and make a couple more from that branch we used to pull her out of the hole.”

Fiona set to her task, using the little saw on the Leatherman to cut off two of the secondary branches from the bigger one. She handed them to Roz and watched as Roz prepared the splint. Roz motioned Jill forward, and Jill scooted next to her, her face pale and lips quivering.

“Carol,” Roz said, voice low and calm, “I’m not going to lie to you. This is going to hurt like hell. But we need to do this so we can move you back to camp. Also, it will hurt less once it’s stable.”

Carol nodded, tears still leaking from her eyes, and Sarah squeezed one of her hands. Roz made eye contact with Sarah and Fiona, and Fiona knelt to help hold Carol down again.

“Jill, I need you to help hand me things. We’re going to wipe the skin with the astringent, just in case the flesh is broken. Then we’ll wrap it once and wrap it a second time with the splint wood to hold it in place.”

Jill swallowed and nodded.

“Everyone—try to stay calm. I’ll do this as quickly and carefully as I can, but Carol, you yell all you need to, okay?”

“Okay.”

Carol bucked backward the second Roz touched her, and it was all Fiona and Sarah could do to hold her in place. Jill grabbed the second foot to keep her from kicking out at Roz, and Carol screamed again in a loud, peeling shriek. The next thirty seconds stretched into eternity, Fiona using all her strength to help. When Carol collapsed into unconsciousness again, she almost collapsed on top of her. Everyone was panting, but Roz worked with her usual efficiency, wrapping the entire ankle once to protect the skin, then walking through the next step with Jill, who positioned the sticks—two on each side, one on front and back—as Roz wrapped them into the next layer. A final layer of bandage was tied on, and the splint looked solid, stable.

Everyone sat back, breathing heavily. As Fiona looked around, she could see equal levels of exhaustion in the way everyone held themselves. Shoulders drooped, faces were tight and pinched, everyone filthy and drenched in sweat and dirt.

“Here,” Jill said, handing her an alcohol wipe from the first-aid kit. “Use that on your face.”

“What? Why?” Fiona asked. She touched her cheek, and her fingers came away sticky with slightly congealed blood.

“You must have cut yourself when we were running,” Roz explained. “Here, let me help you.”

Roz scooted closer, resting on the balls of her feet, and took the little towelette out of the package. She leaned closer, her breath warm on Fiona’s face, and then touched her face with the cloth. Fiona gasped, reeling back, and then bit her tongue and let Roz work on her, leaning onto her bandaged hands to give her leverage. The towelette was soon entirely red, and Roz had to use two little butterfly bandages to pull the two sides of her cut together.

“You’re going to have a gnarly scar there, I think,” Roz said, smiling as she sat back.

“That’s okay. Scars are cool.”

“And badass,” Jill added.

She stood, and she and Roz helped Fiona to her feet.

“You’ll want to put some Neosporin on it later,” Roz said.

“We’ll do no such thing,” Sarah said, leaping to her feet. Her voice was dark and low. “We’re getting the fuck out of here this second.”

Everyone stared at her, surprised.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Jill asked. “I don’t know about you, Sarah, but I’m dead on my feet here. No way I can hike out of here tonight.”

“Of course you would say that,” Sarah said, stepping toward Jill, fists clenched. “You’re the one that got us into this mess in the first place.”

“How is this my fault?” Jill asked. “I didn’t booby-trap the damn camp, for Christ’s sake.”

“We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. We should have turned around this morning.”

“Carol wanted to keep going, too, you know.”

“Don’t you bring her into this!” Sarah said, taking another step forward.

“Ladies, please calm down,” Roz said, moving forward. She held a hand toward each of them, and Fiona was reminded of Carol doing the same thing this morning with Roz and Jill.

“Fuck, no, I won’t calm down!” Sarah shrieked. “This is all your fault, Jill!”

“You can’t seriously believe that,” Jill said. Her anger had deflated, her expression soft with disbelief.

“You’re damn right, I do!”

Jill reacted as if slapped, taking a step backward and away. Her eyes darted from Fiona, to Roz, to Sarah, and down to Carol on the ground.

“You all believe her?” Jill asked, her voice trembling.

When no one spoke up, Jill burst into tears, turning away from them and sobbing into her hands. Fiona was initially shocked. She’d seen her friend cry perhaps five times in all their long friendship—twice over breakups, the others for deaths. Her surprise lasted long enough that she hesitated too long to comfort her. Jill stopped sobbing almost as quickly as she started. She spun around, clearly furious with hurt and pain.

“How dare you put this on me, Sarah? How dare any of you? This isn’t my fault, goddamn it!”

“Jill,” Fiona said.

“Can it!” Jill said. “You’ve been on me all day! I don’t need to hear any more from you.”

With that, she stormed away, leaving the three of them standing there, staring at each other.

Fiona moved to follow her, but Roz grabbed her arm, shaking her head.

“Don’t. Give her a few minutes. We need to take Carol back to camp, anyway. That should give Jill a few minutes to calm down. And anyway, I think she needs the time to accept the facts.”

“I’m not staying here a second longer,” Sarah said. “Someone is trying to kill us, or had the two of you forgotten?”

Sarah pointed up into the trees. She and Roz looked up, and an overwhelming horror swept through her. There, up on three trees around the pit, were the same symbols they’d seen carved into yesterday’s campsite.