THE MAN DOESN’T RUN. Not in time, anyway. Dawn hears him say something as Warden appears on the slope above him. She can’t make out the words, but his voice is confused.

She can’t hear if Warden answers.

She hears the man’s voice again and this time it’s not confusion she hears, but fear. And then pain. And then she can’t hear the man’s voice anymore, just the sound of something hard slamming against something soft, over and over and over again.

And then she hears nothing at all.

---

He’ll come back for her now.

Dawn knows this.

She knows the innocent bystander is good and dead, and as soon as Warden is sure of it, he’ll come back up the slope to where she’s lying here fully spent, and then he’ll finish her off.

Maybe fast, or maybe slow.

She looks around for a weapon. There’s nothing but soggy tree branches and soggier mud. There’s not even any half-decent rocks.

You can’t kill a monster with mud.

Already, Dawn can hear Warden moving back up the slope through the bush. She knows her time on this earth is growing extremely limited.

She knows her only hope is to come for Warden first.

To use her own body as a weapon.

And she knows she has no time to spare.

Just standing up is the most challenging thing Dawn has ever done in her life. Her arms feel like jelly and her legs don’t exist, but somehow she manages to pull herself up and lean against that hundred-year-old tree that nearly killed her, and she stays there for a half second to catch her breath and blink the tears from her eyes.

She listens to Warden coming up the slope and knows that he must be only a few feet down from the other side of the tree.

She knows it’s time.

She forces her mind to forget about the exhaustion. Pushes off from the tree and steps out from around it, nearly collapsing when she puts her whole weight on her legs.

In fact, she does collapse.

Falls back to the ground and hits so hard she thinks she might die.

But it’s not a big deal, Dawn collapsing.

Because when she falls, she takes Warden with her.