Amelie limps along, moving with a certain grim determination, the burning sear above her ankle with each plodding step. It's wet in there. Spongy wet. Would that it were water.

---

Water slapping rhythmically against rocks. It's her second favorite sound. Her nose is cold, poking out into the air. Wind soughing through branches - that's her first favorite sound. She has to pee. And that's what finally gets her to crack open her eyes, light dim through the fabric of her sleeping bag. Amelie shifts in the snug cocoon and unlaces the tie, the hazy light of pre-dawn growing bigger in an ever widening circle until her entire face is exposed. She's a grown woman swaddled tight in down-stuffed nylon and she smiles peaceably at the translucent sky.

"Hey. Hey, Amelie." A face comes into view, young, no more than nineteen, clear-eyed with a hint of wild. "I can't get the fire to start. Guys are gonna need their coffee." Amelie attempts a glower, but doesn't quite manage it and gives it up, squirming until she's freed her head, then shoulders, then arms from the sleeping bag. "Fire never stopped," she tells him for the umpteenth time. "You just need to... nevermind, I'll get it."

---

Never stop. One foot. And the next gets you where you're going. Squish, step. Squish, step. A sound in the brush and she freezes, ignoring the throb along her ankle. She lifts the branch she's using as a walking stick, holding it like a baseball bat, arms feeling heavy with exhaustion, and waits.

---

The kid - Nick - he grins wide. "We can't wait, Amelie!" and ambles off, whistling, his mission accomplished. He rejoins his buddies who stir and grumble at the early hour. The four lads, as Amelie privately calls them, rafting the waters of the Sacramento River with Mt. Shasta Adventures. Amelie's job is to lead them through the wilderness that's become as foreign to them as another planet, make them feel like Earthlings again.

"C'mon, squirrels," she calls out, dragging her hair into a tail before tending to breakfast. "Rise and shine, we're riding the falls today." Amelie steers them along, gets them dressed and watered and fed and the camp broken down, does her best to teach Nick, the only one with a bit of talent for the outdoors. Truth is, she'd rather be alone, arms wide and playing Nature Girl. Give her a horse and a trail, a raft and a river, hell, a walking stick and a mountain and she's happy as a clam.

---

The walking stick wavers and then she hears the moan, sees the leaves shakes, sees the filthy grey hand clawing into a beam of sunlight.

---

Finally, they're ready, the sunlight bright and clear, gleaming off the water. Everything's stowed and the raft is waiting for them to climb aboard. "Where's Joey?" Amelie asks the boys. The kid had the bladder the size of an acorn and had vanished into the trees. Nick snorts, Richard and Jonas shrug and Amelie sighs. Following the path, she calls out, "Hey. Frat boy. The sun's not going to wait and neither's the..." she trails off as she sees him, back to her, shoulders slumped, head down. "Joey?" She moves closer. "C'mon, zip it up. We need to g--" he turns around.

His eyes, glazed, eerie pale, like someone has painted greasy fat over the windshield to his mind. His jaw, hanging loose and moronic, his tongue lolling. And the sound he makes, a gravely kind of moan, pointed, both urgent and mournful. She thinks of cattle lowing for a moment and finally manages to speak. "Joey, what's wrong? Let's get you back to camp, okay?"

And despite her instinctive revulsion, she reaches for him. Reaches to take his hand.

Clammy and disgusting, like she's taken hold of butchered meat, the fingers wiggling worms against her palm, then moving, wrapping around her wrist. Jerking her forward and that gaping mouth, yawning closer.

---

Amelie keeps the branch ready, sees that yawning mouth, the dead eyes fixing on her, watches as the thing gets excited, a slavering growl rising. Balance on her good foot, make it count. It lunges - they always do - and she swings, putting her shoulders into it, gorge rising at the sickening rotted pumpkin sound it makes when the wood connects with the decaying skull.

---

"Wha-FUCK!" she exclaims as she stumbles into him, and she thumps the heel of her free hand hard against his face, meaning to shove it away, feeling the sponginess of his skin, her stomach clenching. "STOP!" she shouts and Amelie hears yelling behind her, growing closer, but the hand on her wrist is like iron, a manacle made of flesh and bone. Joey turns his head towards her free hand and SNAPS at it like a dog. Something kicks in, some innate need to fight, to flee the thing that wants to eat. Wants to eat HER.

---

Gore splatters. She's almost used to it. God, the reek. It's only been 18 days and she's almost used to it. It lays still and she stands there, panting, arms limp at her side, branch dangling on the ground, barely held in her loose fingers. Gathering herself, she lifts the branch high once more. Have to make sure.

---

She's writhing and twisting like a wild thing, feet tangling over loose branches, wrist still held and that's all that's keeping her from falling. "Yaaaaaaaaaaargh!" Nick comes barreling past and shoulders himself right into Joey. Amelie's free and tumbling, watch in frozen shock as the boys fight. Brain scrambling to process. Nick picking up one of those branches and driving it hard into Joey's stomach, squelch, oh, GOD. "What the hell? What the HELL?" she yells. Amelie thinks it's over. Shouts behind them still.

---

It's never over until she makes sure. Aiming carefully, Amelie brings the branch down, spearing it through the dead thing's gummy eye. Stays there, leaning on the branch, catching her breath.

---

Nick whips around, faces her, grasps her upper arms painfully tight. Shakes her. "They're crazy. They've gone CRAZY. What did you do? Was it in the coffee? What did you--" and Joey rears up behind him, teeth burrowing deep into the meat of Nick's shoulder, Nick screaming, Amelie screaming, blood, so very much blood. She runs to camp. Sees Richard and Jonas, pivoting 'round to regard her with rheumy eyes and she rides adrenalin to the packed yellow raft, pushes herself off into the white water. Off to ride the falls. Alone.

---

Straighten up, check her compass, start again, south and southwest. The wind soughs through the branches and Amelie strains to hear above it, listening hard for the tell tale signs of the restless dead.

She used to love the woods, her safe space, her cathedral.

Not anymore.