Chapter Fourteen

Oscar

A rock jutting into his side, and piercing pain in what had been his right shoulder. He gripped the round of it, as if to hold it together. The pain was bigger than the place where the wound was; it consumed his whole body. Something soft was placed under his head. Someone cut away his wet sleeve. Then something tried to pull his hand from his shoulder. It touched him and he screamed.

“Sorry, Oscar.” A voice, scared and worried, probably Gwen’s. “We’ve got to stop the bleeding. I’m sorry, there’s going to be a bit more pressure.”

Something pressed and he felt a searing pain; they might as well have stabbed him with knives. He gasped but managed not to scream again.

“We’re almost out of gauze. This is soaked,” a voice said.

“Here, use my extra shirt.”

“Won’t that get the wound dirty?”

“We can press it over the gauze. We’ve got to get the bleeding to stop.”

His breath was quick and shallow, he wasn’t getting enough air, but he could not slow it down. His heart skittered and skipped like a nervous bird. I am panicking, he thought consciously. I am falling apart. He opened his eyes and saw the blood all over his front and hands; he closed them again quickly. He was aware of how much farther they had to go, and he knew he couldn’t make it. He thought of Lily and his mother, their beautiful faces, which would cloud with sorrow if he didn’t come back. But these were distant thoughts, outside and apart from his central awareness, which was: I’ve been shot, I’m shot and bleeding, this may be the end of it all.

How could this have happened so quickly? One second he was hiking, relieved to have survived the thunderstorm. Then the impact like a spear through his shoulder. It had sent him tumbling forward and only then had the pain come, the awareness of ripped flesh, the shocking forever change in his physical being where the bullet had torn through his body. He’d hit the ground hard, scraping his forearm and cheek. When he saw the blood he knew what had happened. He’d tried to rise again but he couldn’t get up; the next shot ricocheted off a boulder right in front of him. Somehow he’d been dragged and shoved behind this large boulder. And the pain kept coming in waves, each one bigger than the last.

“The bleeding seems to be slowing down,” someone said, and he felt a change in pressure against the wound, a slight letting up.

“Let’s try to get it cleaned up and bandaged,” said someone else. He did not know who was talking and he didn’t care; they were all outside his pain, all not-him; he was locked in himself and yet away from himself, so that it took him several minutes to realize that the groans and cries that filled his ears were coming from his own mouth.

“What are we going to do?” one of the voices asked. “He’s got us totally in his sights. We can’t move!”

“We’ve got to take him out of commission,” said someone else.

“How?”

“We’ve got to ambush him, like he just did to us.” This was a male voice, Todd’s.

“How the hell are we going to do that?”

“There’s only one way to do it,” Todd said. “I’ve got to wait until dark and go down there and find him.”

“Are you crazy? He could shoot you.”

“As opposed to what he just did?”

“But you don’t even know where he is. He could be anywhere.”

“He could. But wherever he is now, he can’t stay there. There’s no cover, and he’s as exposed as we are.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying he’s probably going back down to that bit of wood, the place where we slept.”

“You think so?”

“Yes. There’s no other place. It’s where we’d go if we could, if our positions were reversed. At least until it was safe to move again.”

Silence for a moment.

“Look, let’s figure this out later. Right now we’ve got to get Oscar stabilized.”

“There is no later. We’ve got to decide what to do. I need to go back down and take care of that guy, and the rest of you have to get over the pass.”

“He’s right,” said one of the other voices. Tracy? “There’s no other way.” Then: “I can go down with you.”

“No, you need to get the others out. Oscar and Gwen can’t make it without you.”

A pause.

“I guess you’re right.”

Silence for several seconds. Then Oscar felt someone close to him again. “This may hurt, Oscar,” said the first voice again. “But we need to remove this compress. And then we’re going to bandage it up again.”

There was a moment, and then another, when nothing happened, and Oscar lay breathing fast, his body tense. And then something pulled against his raw ripped flesh and a violent pain coursed through him. He screamed again and his heart jumped and fell and then he passed out.

Chapter Fifteen

Todd

He left as soon as it was dark. After checking and double-checking the plan with the others, he pushed off from their hiding place behind the rocks and made his way down the slope. By the time he left he couldn’t make out their features, and in a way he was glad, because he didn’t really want to be able to see them. Not with the task that he knew he’d be best suited for. Not with what he had to do now.

The going was rough because of all the loose rocks, and he was moving straight down in the dark. This was more dangerous than traversing—it was easier to slip, or to trigger a rock slide that would alert A.J. or his brother that he was coming. But traversing took time, and he didn’t have time; he needed to get down to where the shooter was and ambush him at first light. He chose his footing carefully and used his one pole, but even so, he stepped on a loose rock and felt it give way, wrenching his legs apart. Then he was on a patch of loose scree and skidded ten feet downhill. His elbow hit the ground and his jacket tore; the butt of the rifle, which was slung over his shoulder, jammed into his side. But at least the rocks stopped when he did, didn’t make noise or tumble farther down the slope. His missteps, little avalanches, stayed his own.

The stars were out and the sky was filled with streaky clouds, remnants of the afternoon storm. This was good—the moon two nights ago had been so bright it had lit the entire canyon. Two nights ago, at the campsite where Gwen had seen the fawns. It felt like a lifetime ago, and it was.

The moon was still behind the eastern range, and he wasn’t sure when it would top out and spill light into the canyon. Or if it would at all, with the clouds above him shifting and combining, splitting apart again. Right now, as he was making his way down the slope, the others would be moving up, leaving the rocks and trying to gain the pass under cover of darkness. They wouldn’t be able to move very fast. Oscar had lost blood, he was weak and in terrible pain. But he was grim and determined. Todd looked up to check if there was any sign of movement, even a flash of white fur. The dog had lifted her head when he left but had stayed with the others. He couldn’t see anything—the whole slope was encased in moon shadow, the same shadow that protected him too.

It had been years since he had stalked a target at night, but as he grew more sure-footed, the old feeling, the familiar adrenaline, returned. Despite hardly eating or sleeping, despite his earlier coldness, he felt good, he felt alive, stronger and more alert than he had in years. He remembered early mornings in Wisconsin, moving in the dark to reach the deer blind in the woods before the sun came up; he remembered a quality of stillness and fullness in the air, as if the night itself anticipated violence. But then he’d been hunting for creatures—deer, sometimes birds. Now he was hunting a man.