He’s not moving.

But from the rise and fall of his chest, Dawn can tell he’s still alive.

She knows this is not a good sign. She’s seen too many scary movies to believe this is over. She knows the only way to really end this story is to kill Warden dead and make sure he stays that way.

She doesn’t have a weapon, but Warden seems to have dropped his knife, and Dawn knows she could crawl over to him and just, you know, cut off his air supply or something. Crush his windpipe. Something brutal and awful and guaranteed effective.

She has enough strength to kill him. Barely. And Dawn knows that’s what has to happen.

But Dawn isn’t a killer.

Dawn has done a lot of bad shit in her life.

She’s cut class and partied and hooked up with weirdos. She’s been rude to her mom and her stepdad and her teachers. She ran away and shacked up with a drug dealer.

She got drunk and threw up on some guy and that’s why her father is dead.

If you asked her, Dawn would tell you she’s not a good person.

But Dawn isn’t a killer.

Not like this.

She shoved Brandon off that cliff, sure, but that was different. That was a fight.

That was him or her.

Warden’s unconscious. He doesn’t look like a monster anymore. He looks like a teenager. A fragile, broken boy. Dawn can’t crush his windpipe.

She can’t strangle him to death.

(But you and I both know that’s going to come back and bite her.)

Chapter 125

THE OUT OF THE WILD GUY, Steve, must have a radio.

That’s Dawn’s thought. That’s her rationalization for not killing Warden. She’ll crawl up to the dead guy and take his radio and call for help, and hopefully Warden will stay unconscious or even die on his own.

She won’t have to kill him.

That’s her plan.

She has to crawl on her stomach and her hands and knees and she’s covered in mud by the time she gets up to the dead guy, and her legs are mostly useless, so it’s her arms pulling her up the slope, but at this point, Dawn’s arms are more or less useless, too.

It takes a long time.

The dead guy lies on his back with his head up the direction of the slope, and Dawn can see how Warden stabbed him a bunch of times and then he must have hit him with a rock for good measure. The dead guy is in fact Steve, and from this angle he doesn’t look very old or particularly tough; he looks surprised and, I don’t know, offended that Warden actually killed him.

But that doesn’t matter now.