Imogen charged across the creek, splashing in the inches-deep water. “No no no no…” The man couldn’t take this on alone—he might have sensed something was wrong, but he didn’t know what he was walking into. He didn’t know about Gale’s weapons.
Gale saw the backpacker emerge from the scrub when he was thirty feet away.
“Everything okay over here?” the man asked. Was he close enough to see Beck’s and Tilda’s hands, bound behind their backs?
Gale took a step forward and held up his hand, a halt command that the backpacker didn’t heed. “This ain’t none a yer—”
“Help us!” Tilda screamed—and kept screaming.
“What are you doing, what’s going on?” Alarmed, the man veered away from Gale to get closer to the two women.
Imogen raced across the level ground, her bamboo stick pumping freely at her side as if she were a locomotive, gaining speed.
“Stop! Stop!” she bellowed—it didn’t matter who it was for, she just needed to stop the impending collision. The backpacker looked at her, his face a frightened question.
“He has a—” Beck’s warning came too late.
Gale thrust his knife into the man’s chest, upward, under his ribs.
It couldn’t have been more than a minute from when Imogen spotted the backpacker to when Gale decided to end his life.
She flew the remaining yards, breathing hard, tears streaming down her face. Tilda shrieked, lurching backward against Beck. Maybe it wasn’t too late, maybe the man wasn’t dead, maybe—
“Nooooo!” Imogen cried.
Gale knelt beside the backpacker and thrust his knife in one more time. Ripped it out. Satisfied, he stood back and watched the growing pool of blood.
The man gurgled, twitched a little, and went still.
Imogen collapsed to her knees, skidding to a stop on small rocks that dug into her flesh. The man was on his side and the bulk of his pack shielded Beck and Tilda from the worst of it. But Imogen saw every detail.
—the harrowing splatters of blood—
The salt-and-pepper of his unshaven face. His gray eyes, surprised but sightless. The canvas hat that had tumbled off his head.
—flesh ripped through—
His dusky-green T-shirt bloomed with wet, dark stains; red rivulets streamed from the slashes in his chest. The man’s mouth had frozen in the shape of the surprised scream he hadn’t been able to utter.
—dentures exposed in shock—
The land spun and Imogen wasn’t sure what sickened her most. She crawled away and vomited.
“Why did you do that?” Beck howled at him. Tilda clung to her and they buried their faces in each other’s shoulders, sobbing.
Gale stood there gazing down at what he’d done, traces of disappointment on his face. “Yer smarter than that, Doc. Nothing else to do.”
Imogen wept uncontrollably. She wept until she started choking, and then coughed and wiped her drooling mouth.
“Why does she get like that?” Gale asked Beck. He sounded confused, but also maybe concerned. Imogen made wheezing noises as she tried to breathe.
Beck extended her foot toward Imogen, the only part of her body that could get closer. “Some things have happened. In her life.”
Gale nodded, watching Imogen. “Sorry you had to see that.” He grabbed her under her arms, practically picking her up off her feet, and moved her so she was closer to Beck and Tilda—where there was less gore. He wiped his knife clean on the backpacker’s rugged shorts before resheathing it.
Imogen felt safer in the proximity of Beck and Tilda. Her throat still burned from her lost breakfast, but she quieted as something occurred to her: What if he wasn’t alone? What if the man had mates, walking at their own pace? Maybe another person—or a few—would yet stroll into Boucher. Gale might not think about that, but she knew seasoned hikers didn’t feel the need to stay in sight of each other. She fought the urge to look behind her, toward where the trail came into camp. It was better if he didn’t know this might not be over.
“On the bright side, y’all have been concerned about running low on provisions. This should help.” Gale compared the size of his foot to the dead man’s. He squatted down and loosened the laces before tugging off the man’s boots.
Aghast, Beck and Tilda gawked at him as if he were a demon, casting off the garb that had allowed him to appear human. But Imogen thought he had a point: he’d get less rattled, feel less pressure, without the constant worry of running out of food; this could buy them some time. She didn’t mean to be heartless—the man’s murder was unforgivable—but Gale’s response to her had been almost kind.
Gale yanked the heavy pack off the dead man’s body and an unwanted image flashed in her mind of an animal being stripped of its pelt. She wanted to vomit again, but all she could do was stare, hoping the film would burn in the projector so this horror show would end.
“Now. Where we gonna put this guy?”
None of them uttered a word. He looked at the dark clouds.
“Rain’s holding off. This is good. This is real good. A pack fer each of us.” It was almost pitiful the way he was trying to convince himself. “Can you take this on up?” he asked Imogen, tying the boots together and draping them over the pack.
With a glance at her sister, Imogen got to her feet. She didn’t want to approach—Gale or the body—but he was keeping the pack upright, ready to lift it so she could slip her arms through the straps. She shuffled forward, eyes on the backpack. Alive, the man probably had almost a foot on her and a good one hundred pounds. She started shaking her head, already seeing herself falling to her knees from the crushing weight.
“It looks like it weighs as much as I do.”
Gale considered her for a second, then chuckled. “Yeah, my bad. Okay—you take yer little pack up and I’ll figure this out.”
Still shaky, Imogen managed to get her pack on and fastened, but then she realized she couldn’t bend over and retrieve the walking stick, not without teetering. Her queasiness now extended beyond the lingering damage to her ear.
“Can you hand me the stick?” she asked Gale.
He complied, and continued to study her. “Look a little green around the gills. You ain’t still dizzy?” She nodded. “You need to toughen up. You know life ain’t no picnic.”
She nodded again, and made eye contact with her sister before heading off to the shelter. Beck’s face was ashen, stunned, an injured mask that barely resembled the woman she’d been only a few hours earlier. Imogen couldn’t assess how Tilda was faring: her knees were up, her face pressed into them.
As she crossed the creek again, Imogen feared time was looping on itself and she’d get up to the overhang only to see another hiker approaching. Another hiker getting stabbed for trespassing into the dragon’s territory. There was a thrumming in her head. She struggled to get her feet in focus, her boots blurred into four, then two, then six. Perhaps the punch to the head had only exacerbated what she already felt: this couldn’t be real.