Suddenly he thrust an arm over her shoulder, pointing to something ahead and just upslope from them: an enormous fallen trunk, like a low wall that was easily two feet high.

“I see it,” she said.

“Get down behind it.”

“What?”

“There’s no choice. Do it.”

She nodded and made the turn—partly running and partly scrambling now, grabbing saplings for handholds as she made her way upward on a long angle toward the deadfall.

From behind them came another salvo of shots, a dozen or more. She heard the bullets zipping into the dirt and ricocheting off limbs, no more than a few feet away in the gloom.

She reached the downed trunk and vaulted over it without stopping, pressing herself flat to the arid soil and scattered pine needles behind it. Half a second later Dryden landed just beyond her—face to face in the near-dark.

He was still holding the second gun. He brought it up in front of his chest, took a deep breath and forced it out, then sat up fast and leveled the weapon.

Danica heard someone gasp, forty or fifty feet away, in the instant before Dryden fired.

A single shot, and then he threw himself flat beside her again, and even before he landed she could hear someone coughing and choking. It sounded wet. Like a near-drowning victim trying to force water out of his windpipe.

She heard other voices cursing and dragging the injured man over the ground.

“How many of them left?” Danica asked.

“Two.”

“And how many bullets?”

Dryden thumbed a lever on the side of the pistol and dropped the magazine out of it, then felt the open top of it with his fingertips.

“Shit,” he whispered.

“You’re out?”

He shook his head. “One in the chamber.”

He raised his head just enough to see over the sideways trunk. His gaze darted back and forth over the slope beyond.

“Got a plan?” Danica asked.

Dryden nodded. “Drop the closer guy, rush the body and get his gun.”

“Is that going to work?”

“We’ll see.”

His eyes were narrowed, watching the dark woods. He turned his head just slightly, listening.

Suddenly he threw himself down, and the deadfall came to life with bullet impacts, ripping into the bark, shredding the top edge of it. Danica could smell the burned wood where the shots had hit. She could hear the gunfire coming from both shooters, though they sounded like they were in separate positions now. As if they had split up.

The shooting stopped again. In the silence there came the metallic sounds of weapons being reloaded—wherever they were.

“They’re going to try to get around us,” Dryden said.

“What the hell do we do?”

For a few seconds Dryden didn’t answer. He looked at the gun again, considering it.

“Sam?”