24

A figure leaps from the trees, and the brothers fall away from Adelaide.

She retches into the dirt and pushes onto her elbows. The brothers landed a few punches to her ribs, a few kicks to her side before everything began to spin. Adelaide touches her face. Her teeth are intact. Her eyes are not swollen, and her nose is not broken. They’ve spared her that.

Adelaide hears screams from deep in the thicket. A man.

She hauls herself to her knees and looks around for River as the other man—Brother #1—dashes back toward the trucks and the blinding light.

Another scream.

There is no going back—this ends tonight.

Adelaide stands and follows the sound into the darkness.

Just ahead, a dark puddle stains the earth. And there, beyond the densest tree cluster, she spots them.

The wild woman clings to Brother #2, her arms wrapped around the man’s neck, her elbows folding in on his throat. She is bloody, and he is bloody, the battle vicious but equal.

Brother #2 fights her, but is no match for an angry mother, and he collapses from her grasp, clawing at his shattered windpipe.

A car door slams, and Adelaide turns, watching Brother #1 rush back to the thicket, his footsteps growing louder, closer. And he has something in his hands.

Two sharp noises clack across the clearing as he racks the shotgun.

The wild woman straightens to her full height, standing above the gasping man on the ground. Clawing for air. Begging for air. His jaw practically dislocates as he tries to scream, managing only a whistle, a gurgle.

And then Brother #2 is motionless in the dirt.

A shotgun blast rings through the night, and Adelaide clutches her head, the sound like a bolt of lightning to her skull.

“Hey!” Brother #1 calls out, as if such a simple word can stop everything. As if such a simple word can undo it all.

The hounds snarl and scream into the night, slamming against the metal crate in the truck, desperate for release.

Brother #1 lifts the shotgun to his shoulder and locks his legs. He becomes a hunter, still and calm.

The wild woman growls, spittle foaming at her lips. She is preparing to leap toward Brother #1 when he releases two clacks of sound and fires into the clearing.

The wild woman screams—a horror of a scream, an anomaly of a scream—and she whirls into the shadows.

Mother falls into the dirt and the pale rain and the girl runs to her. Mother is hurt and her blood is on the girl’s hands. It is the color of the bird that makes the yeep sound.

The girl asks, Are you very hurt?

Mother says, No. Only a little hurt.

Little hurt is better than big hurt.

As the girl watches mother struggle to stand, she knows they should run away, but she can still feel the woman in the clearing. The woman is in danger, and the girl wants to help. She needs to help. Because the woman is kind. But she is not strong like mother.

The girl shakes out of the soft thing the woman wrapped around her so she can run better, and mother says, No.

Her heart pounds in her chest like thunder when it rains.

Mother stands and screams, NO!, but the girl is already running through the trees, mother reaching and spinning behind her.

The wild woman was nothing more than a fading shadow to Adelaide, an animal returning to the forest.

Brother #1 racks the shotgun once more. Two clacks of sound. He trains the gun on the trees, but the wild woman has vanished.

He slings the shotgun over his shoulder and falls to the ground beside his lifeless brother.

“Daddy!” he yells from the shadows.

The young man pounds his brother’s chest. He screams, his voice like an ice pick to Adelaide’s skull. He punches the dirt, punches the rocks, rips the shotgun from his shoulder and slams it against the base of a tree, over and over again, raining bark all around.

“Daddy!”

Adelaide tucks farther into the darkness and peers around the thicket. The trees have taken a beating, dozens of small holes marring their mighty trunks. Buckshot.

A spray of blood streaks the clearing, and Adelaide hopes that the wild woman will once again survive the cruelties of them all.

River emerges from the blackness, crouching on all fours. She is nude, having shed the shirt Adelaide wrapped around her only hours before. River advances toward Brother #1, and Adelaide reaches for the girl.

No.

River bares her teeth. Her eyes are wild, crazed, the sight of them sending a shiver up Adelaide’s spine.

No.

Brother #1 sees her, too. His face is scarlet, sheeting with sweat. River doesn’t cower and she doesn’t advance. Her eyes are locked on the man. Behind her, the wild woman stumbles forward, struggling to stand. Howling for her daughter.

Adelaide lunges toward Brother #1, and he turns, his arm whipping across his chest, spinning her backward through the air. Adelaide trembles against the cold ground, cradling her head, testing her jaw.

And then River leaps from the shadows.

The child wraps her body around Brother #1’s neck, but she is small—so small—and her arms and legs barely grasp his torso. The man stumbles back, the shotgun falling from his shoulders, clattering against stone.

River will not win. She is not big enough, not strong enough. A fierce little beast, but a child all the same.

The wild woman screams. She, too, knows the truth.

Adelaide throws herself atop the shotgun, pulling it into her lap. She aims it at the man. But River is there, and Adelaide cannot risk it.

She aims at his legs, wondering if that will be enough distance for buckshot. Will she hurt River? She hopes not, pleads not. She has no choice.

But then Brother #1 falls to his knees, and as River tumbles across the ground, Adelaide snatches her finger from the trigger.

The girl is fast, uninjured, and she launches at the man once again.

“What the hell’s goin’ on over there?” The old man’s voice echoes from across the clearing above the cacophony of his kenneled hounds.

She’ll never save the girl now.

Brother #1 spins wildly through the trees, ripping River’s legs from his chest, punching at her small arms enveloping his neck.

But River does not cry out with pain. She does not flinch.

She meets Adelaide’s gaze for only a moment before sinking her teeth into Brother #1’s neck.

The girl stays latched to his throat as his voice turns to mud, as his arms fall from her torso, as his knees slide out from beneath him.

Dogs bark, tumbling from their crate, hungry for excitement, the old man in pursuit.

Adelaide bolts toward River, and the pain in her abdomen flares. She’ll never be able to handle the weight of both the weapon and the girl, so Adelaide drops the shotgun and launches herself at River, throwing the child over her shoulder.

River barks mutilated sounds and stunted syllables into the trees, blood sheeting from her jaw like an oil slick.

Adelaide runs toward her cabin as the old man races with his hounds to the thicket. To Brother #1 and Brother #2. His sons. He doesn’t yet know what has happened here this night. But he will soon.

The hounds spill as a single wave through the clearing, but when they spot Adelaide and River, they change course, their paws tangling in the glare of the headlights, as they surge anew toward the cabin.

But Adelaide is there first and she throws open the door, hurling River into the cabin.

The dogs draw closer. Teeth bared, like River. Growling, like River.

We are not getting out of this alive.

This is the thought that lodges in Adelaide’s mind as she throws her weight into the cabin, pulling the door closed behind her just in time.