The second figure lies still and silent on the sand.
I still can’t tell which man is which, without moving closer.
Has Bryan gotten the knife away from Josh? Is Josh about to rush me?
The dark pool on the pale sand spreads thicker and wider by the second.
“Bryan?” I try, my voice shaking, but there is no reply. I can’t be sure he’s heard me.
All I can hear is the distant chaos on the shore, oars clunking against rubber, river water sloshing against plastic, women screaming and crying, and someone—maybe Macy—shrieking about not being able to find her pocket knife.
Are they leaving us? Why isn’t anyone coming to help?
My mind races. Something Allie said last night echoes through it. How the Camas Creek victims left their stuff behind and got into rafts, trying to get the hell out of camp. Even in the dark.
“Bryan, is that you?” I ask again, unwilling to move any closer until I know which man is alive and which is dead. My legs tense, ready to run again if I catch the profile of Josh’s leaner, more angular face.
The hunched figure stands before he speaks, and my legs go wobbly with relief when I see the stout shape of him, that too-big swim shirt billowing as he moves. When he turns to face me, I see the outline of Bryan’s patchy beard, then his wide eyes glinting in the moonlight.
That means Josh is the shape on the ground, lying motionless and bloody.
Relief makes me dizzy.
“I got his knife,” Bryan says, voice shaking as he staggers toward me. “I stabbed him. I just … kept stabbing him.”
He’s clutching something long and narrow in each of his outstretched hands.
Two knives, one blade longer than the other, both dripping with blood, as the moonlight catches the metal blades.
His swim shirt, drenched in dark blood, flaps wetly in the breeze. “He stabbed me, too … a couple of times … I’m … I think I’m gonna pass out.” He takes a faltering step toward me like he’s going to collapse.
“Oh my god,” I cry, stumbling forward to catch him.
“S-safe now. Call … the others back,” Bryan rasps. “Need help,” he adds.
From the sound of paddles slapping the water, the women must already have one raft well into the river. I fill my lungs with air and shout as loudly as I can to the others. “Come back, it’s safe now!” I yell. “We really need help, Bryan is hurt!” I trail off, adding, “Josh … is dead.”
The noise at the shoreline slackens.
Then I hear, “Okay, we’re coming!” It’s Macy’s voice, terrified and gasping. I hear her ordering someone to get the first aid kit. Someone else shouts that the current is strong.
“Hurry!” I cry, a new kind of panic taking shape. Anvil Falls, a Class Four, is directly ahead, and the current feeding into it is as swift and powerful as any on the river. Unlike the beach we camped at last night, where the river mellowed into a calm harbor near shore, this river stretch is fast-moving and deep, the water rushing through the narrow canyon with momentum toward the falls. Rowing against that current will be a feat all by itself.
“We’re coming back, too!” cries another voice that sounds farther away than Macy’s. “Come on, all forward, everybody back to shore!”
It hits me then, that in the chaos, they’ve launchedbothpassenger rafts without me.
I’ve almost been left behind, alone with a dead man and a wounded one.
I turn back to Bryan just as he stumbles into my arms, pushing me backward a few steps toward the nightmare scene of the tents. “Thank you,” he says, his voice shaking. “Thank you for not leaving me. I can’t believe I got the knife away from him,” he chokes. “I really thought I was going to bleed out alone.”
I can’t help but imagine Leo Marsden lying beneath his mother’s body, wondering if he would bleed out, too.
“Where are you hurt?” I ask, trying not to think about the bodies, all three of them, only a few yards from me. Or the blood from Bryan’s shirt smearing across the arms of my sweatshirt. I resist the urge to pull away from him. “Sit down, okay? You’re going to be all right.”
“We’re almost there!” Macy calls, her voice growing closer. “The other raft is farther out!”
“Hang on, help is coming,” I tell Bryan. But I realize, then, that he still hasn’t told me where he was stabbed. And he hasn’t sat down. He clings to me, as if he can’t let go.
