This camp was the stage Kyle had chosen, the set he’d built for himself. Maybe someday someone would come here to see the place where he’d spent his last days. A pilgrimage. This is where he ate, they might say. This is where he boiled water. This is where he set his traps. Do you see the lake? That’s where he bathed. Do you see this tree? He climbed it.

“We should leave him here,” said Mara. “I think that’s what he’d want. He was proud of this camp and he was proud to be here.”

“We could burn the shelter,” said Ashley. “The whole thing.”

That made sense, too. Flames for the closing curtain.

Mara had understood from the moment she saw the blood, they had all understood, that they were going to leave. It was the only option. It was nice that Kyle had once said so himself. It made Mara feel like they’d be honoring his wishes rather than abandoning him, and she wondered now if that was why he said it in the first place—not giving instructions, but permission. She had not previously ascribed much emotional insight to Kyle, but dying brought out the wisdom in everyone. Or maybe it just earned them the benefit of the doubt.

This camp had belonged to the four of them. Now they were three, and it wasn’t theirs. It was time to go. If they found other people, they’d be saved. If they didn’t, they’d be fucked. They might as well be fucked somewhere new.

They moved in silence, the three of them like arms and legs of the same creature, moving through dusk and into darkness. Gathering all the wood they had left, everything they had collected, and piling it around the outside of the shelter, the dry moss and the bark walls. Time had compacted the layers of the roof into one dense and brittle object. How dry the shelter was, after weeks of toasting from the fire within. How ready it was to burn.

Finally they had arranged the wood in a massive pyre. The shelter itself almost small in the center, like a child’s toy. Lit gold in the setting sun.

Ashley walked to the doorway and slipped inside. She came out with an armload of belongings and dumped them on the grass, knife and pot and ramen and cards and flashlight and meat. Everything they owned together. Then she went back in.

She was gone for a long time. Mara thought she’d come back with a burning log, something to light the pyre from the outside in. But instead she came out with the bow drill. She gave it to Bullfrog, who crouched to rub the sticks. Just when he had built up a line of smoke, his hand shook. The bow flipped and clattered to the ground.

“He just had to pick a bow drill,” said Mara. “He couldn’t resist.”

“It never runs out,” said Bullfrog. “With a lighter, matches, when you use ’em up, you’re screwed. Bow drill lasts forever.”