It hurts like a mother. Over and over and over again. Dawn closes her eyes and tries to protect her head and collides into things and pinballs off them and keeps falling.

She reaches for trees as she passes them and her hands grasp at the earth and come up muddy and it does nothing to arrest her descent.

She knows she’ll keep falling until she hits something big, something hard.

Something that might kill her if she hits it hard enough.

There’s nothing she can do but continue to fall. And hope that her body can withstand the impact.

Chapter 119

DAWN COLLIDES WITH A TREE.

It’s massive. It’s probably a hundred years old, maybe more. It’s been standing in the same place for more than a century, and it sure as hell isn’t moving for Dawn.

She crashes into it hard. Like, concussion hard. Black-out-for-a-minute-and-wake-up-confused hard.

Dawn hits and blacks out and then she comes to. Her brain’s more or less jelly and she couldn’t tell you her last name. All she knows is that she has to keep running. There’s a problem, though. She can’t.

Dawn’s reached her breaking point.

She’s tapped out. Exhausted.

Her whole body feels broken and she can’t focus her thoughts. Her mind is swimming; she’s weak from hunger and exertion and she hurts all over from the fall.

Standing is not an option anymore.

Running? Forget it.

Dawn can barely keep her eyes open.

She can hear Warden up the hillside above her. He’s crashing around like a real-life grizzly bear. It’s impossible to say how far he is, but Dawn knows he’s getting closer.

She knows her only option is to hide and hope that Warden doesn’t see her.

But that’s not what happens.

Chapter 120

DAWN SEES WARDEN up the slope at more or less the same moment Warden sees her.

She can tell that he sees her because he slows down. And smiles.

It’s that evil smile again. The real Warden smile.

The smile that says I’ve got you, and I’m going to hurt you.

But something happens at the same time as Dawn sees Warden smile. The same time as Warden begins his slow, steady, victorious descent.

Dawn hears something else, something behind her.

Downslope.

Dawn hears movement.

There’s somebody else on the trail.

Chapter 121

THERE’S NO POINT in trying to hide anymore. Dawn screams for her life.

“Help! Help me, please!”

With every last ounce of strength she can muster, Dawn screams for help.

Above her, Warden continues to descend. He doesn’t speed up, and he doesn’t slow down. He just drops, slowly and steadily.

And Dawn keeps screaming.

Whoever it is on the trail?

They hear Dawn.

They stop moving, and then they call back, “Hello?”

A man’s voice. A voice Dawn doesn’t recognize. But that doesn’t matter.