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“I followed the screams,” he told her. “I thought if I could find the trees, tell them I had repented, they wouldn’t haunt me no more. Took me a long time. Walking the woods, night after night.
“Eventually, I followed the cries here. But when I came back during the day, the woods had fallen silent again. I had to keep waiting. Then last night, the trees started again. I could hear them, clear as a whistle, standing here.”
“Who’s screaming, Walt?”
“People I hurt. Maybe the girls Jacob hurt. Just wait. You’ll understand what I mean soon enough.”
A noise above them, followed by a small shower of falling rocks. Kimberly jumped as half a dozen pebbles careened down the mine entrance. Flora, already standing in the pile of boulders at the opening, leapt to the side.
Walt’s gaze jerked up. One second he was standing relaxed, the next he was raising his shotgun to his shoulder, screaming, “I see you, devil! I see you standing there!”
Kimberly dropped into a crouch, going for her ankle-holstered .22. Walt was pointing that damn shotgun right at her and Flora. Yelling at shadows, lost in some haze where he looked ready to shoot first, question later.
She was aware of Flora, twenty feet away, reaching for her butterfly blade. A fresh shower of rocks, then a particularly large rock dropped from above, smacking Flora on the head. The woman went down hard, a blur of blood and shadow.
As Walt continued waving his shotgun wildly toward Kimberly, the only person who now stood between him and the mine.
“Begone with you, I say. Begone!”
Shit. Kimberly jerked out her .22, lifted it up from the crouched position.
Pump, kaboom.
Walt let loose with his first load. Too high.
Kimberly honed in on the target. Except, just as she was about to squeeze the trigger...
Crack.
The ensuing noise was no shotgun blast, but a rifle. Coming from somewhere above and behind Kimberly as she ducked her head reflexively, then fell back toward Flora, a fresh avalanche of debris crashing upon the mine opening.
Before her, Walt staggered. Bright red blood bloomed across his dirty T-shirt. He pumped his shotgun for a fresh load, aiming it up, up, up. The air cracked again. A second flower of blood joined the first across his chest. He still worked to aim his weapon. Then, his knees buckled. His grip on his shotgun loosened. He sank to his knees.
His lips were moving. A last prayer to God, or to the ghosts that haunted his nights?
Then Kimberly got it. Walt Davies wasn’t pleading for mercy. He was giving her a command.
Go.
His blood-frothed lips moved again.
Get away, get away, get away!
More noise from overhead. Footsteps scrabbling down the rock face.
Kimberly looked ahead to the sunny clearing, where Walt was now collapsed in the grass.
She looked behind to the gaping maw of the dangerous old mining tunnel, where Flora was collapsed, bleeding heavily.
It wasn’t much of a decision. She raced for the entrance, aware of the danger descending rapidly from the rock pile above. She zigged right, then left, jumping over one pile of fresh debris, then another as the rifle cracked again. Dirt sprayed her ankles, slivers of rock slicing at her pants.
She stumbled behind the first stone massive enough to provide cover, breathing hard. Flora had slipped behind a neighboring boulder, where she now appeared to be unconscious from a head wound, which coated her face in blood. No time to check for further injuries. Now or never.
Kimberly darted forth, and using all her strength, hoisted Flora up and over her shoulders in a fireman’s hold.
Then Kimberly staggered into the belly of the beast, acutely aware of the armed man, scrambling through the boulder field behind her and much too quickly, closing the gap between them.
