At last Dee hooks the claw-hammer into the dead jaws and pries them open. The fangs are pale and translucent in the torchlight. She throws the mangled body into the forest, as far as she can.

Something bubbles up inside her. Don’t scream, she tells herself. But it’s laughter. She is racked with it, wheezing with it. Tears stream down her face. There was a snake, after all.

She doesn’t want to look, but she has to. The flesh around the bite is already swollen and discolored like a week-old bruise.

Get it done, Dee Dee. Still giggling, she rips her sleeve off at the shoulder to relieve the pressure on her ballooning flesh. She is a good hour away from help. The only thing to do is go on, and finish it. Ahead, Ted’s light dances away through the trees. Unbelievably, the encounter with the rattlesnake took less than a minute. Dee stumbles after his light.

She begins to feel sick. Other things happen, too. It seems to her that the trees are becoming whiter, and there are red birds darting among the trunks. She gasps and tries to blink the image away. This is not a dream. There is no nest of human hair. Her arm pulses, like it has its own heart. She knows that if you are bitten, you are not supposed to move. It spreads the poison. Too late, she thinks. The poison got me long ago.

She follows Ted westward. She turns off her flashlight. The moon is bright enough. Ted keeps his on. It must be difficult, keeping his footing with all that weight on his back. Maybe the weight is moving, fighting him.

With her good hand she fingers the claw-hammer in her pocket. It is sticky with drying snake blood. She burns; her anger leaps and licks at her insides. Ted will pay. Every fifty feet she blazes another tree with reflective yellow. She has to believe that she will be coming back this way, with her sister.

She follows as close as she dares. Even so, she loses him. His light dances out of sight, and then he’s gone. The ground begins to fall sharply, and Dee stumbles, panics. But then logic reasserts itself. She can hear water running somewhere below. He will probably stop by water. Dawn is not far off, she can smell it in the air. Dee leans against a slippery trunk and breathes. She just needs to be patient for a little longer. She can’t risk falling in the dark. She needs dawn. She knows it won’t be long.