They walk with the wind at their backs. The hours pass in unnerving silence, Dina pacing behind Ellie, yet to say anything since they escaped the hunters. At first, Ellie chalks it up to the hard terrain, watching her footing as they crest hill after hill of yellowing aspen trees, an eternal upward struggle, but now she's not so sure. Without being able to see the river, she can only hope they're moving in the right direction.

The aspen chatter with the gust of wind, shifting and rolling at them down the valley, bound to bring winter soon enough. Ellie glances up between the gold canopy, grey clouds pushing into blue sky, and hopes she smells rain and not snow.

At some point, the climb flattens. Ellie pauses as Dina ascends alongside her. The forest still blocks any kind of vantage point. They break and lean against the tree trunks, passing the water bottle back and forth. Ellie is mindful not to let it touch her mouth. Dina drinks and still says nothing.

Ellie can't wrap her head around why she's being so quiet. Dina had peppered her with questions the entire morning. Ellie's lips itch, aching to break the silence and asks, "What do you call a cow with no legs?"

Dina perks up, the question completely out of the blue, her brow furrowed. For a moment Ellie thinks she's going to blow her off, but she very slowly replies, "What?"

"Ground beef."

Dina pauses. Smirks. Shakes her head and says, "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Why can't bicycles stand on their own?"

"Why?"

"Because then they'd be two tired."

Dina rolls her eyes. "Okaaay. You can stop now. Those are terrible."

Ellie rubs the back of her neck and wrings her hands together. "Did I do something back there to piss you off?"

"This isn't another joke, is it?"

"No."

Dina hesitates. She peels bits from the water bottle's faded Idaho Springs water bottle. "I'm not… pissed off at you."

"Kinda seems like it."

"Well, you know what you're doing, and right now… I don't. So I just want to help, but I don't know how if…" Dina pauses, bites her lip, and shrugs. "I feel guilty."

Ellie tilts her head. "What? Why?"

Dina takes a deep breath, crossing her arms, and kicking a tree root. "I have a confession to make."

"Uh… Okay?"

"Look, if it wasn't for me, the bonfire would have never happened. We would have never gotten attacked, we wouldn't have gotten lost in this stupid forest, we wouldn't have been shot at by hunters, we-"

"Hey, whoa, slow down," Ellie interrupts, watching the panic spread across Dina's face. She grimaces. "Stop blaming yourself. The bonfire probably would have happened anyways. They're always having those stupid things."

"Not this one," Dina replies. "I told Darren I had never been to one. He told Mikey, who told Cassie, and she put it all together just for me."

"So?"

"So, if I hadn't told anyone, we wouldn't be here right now." Dina sighs. "My family and I… We used to have bonfires on the beach back home. And now, that's gone, too. All I guess I really wanted was for things to be the way they used to be."

Ellie frowns, her insides sinking. "What happened to them?"

Dina shrugs with a dark scoff, crossing her arms and chewing on her lip, bitter. "The same thing that happens to every quarantine zone; LA collapsed, and… that was it. My brothers and I managed to escape the city, but everyone else…"

Ellie places a hand on Dina's shoulder before she can stop herself. "Hey. I… I get it. You don't need to explain it to me. And you… you don't need to blame yourself for that. That's not on you. That's not on any of us. It…it can't be."

Dina looks at her, umber eyes glistening, swimming back and forth between pain and relief. Then, a smile. A small one, but a smile. Ellie feels her shoulder relax under her hand. Dina wipes her nose with her sleeve.

"Thanks," she says. "You… You seem like the only one that gets it. I've tried telling other people, but they… I don't know. They think I'm faking it or something. That like, because I wear girly dresses or sing in the choir that I haven't lost as much as they have. That because I haven't suffered, I'm… lesser than them."

"And you're not," Ellie reminds her. "You just do what you have to do."

"Right." Dina nods. "We just… endure and survive."

Sudden elation swells in Ellie's chest and she can't help but grin. "You're a fan of Savage Starlight?"

Her childish joy brings out a bigger smile in Dina. "To the edge of the universe and back."

"Oh man," Ellie says. "I've never met anyone else that's a fan. That's so cool! How many comics have you read?"

Dina raises a brow. "Comics? There are comics?"

"Uh, yeah!"

"Oh, I only watched the movie."

Ellie's green eyes bulge with excitement. She had seen the posters all over Pittsburgh, but the idea of actually watching it was a far-fetched dream. "You've seen it?"

"Yep. It's pretty great."

"Ugh, I'm so jealous. Is it like the comics? What happens in it?"

Dina picks up the canvas bag, ready to start again. "Sorry. My lips are sealed."

"You suck," Ellie remarks with a playful smirk. She looks up at the sky, a gentle drizzle of rain rolling in. The breezy morning wind had become stronger, louder, and brings a distinct chill with it. "We should keep moving. It's getting dark again."

"How long do you think we have?" Dina asks.

"Maybe an hour," Ellie replies. There's no way they could hike back to Cottonwood Tower, and she wouldn't risk it with the hunters likely camping nearby. But, there was no flat ground where they currently stood, root balls tangling with rocks and dead trees. They had been moving in the same direction since the early afternoon, but for all Ellie knew, they also could have been walking in circles. "Let's go as far as we can. We won't get far without a flashlight or something."

Dina picks up the canvas bag, sighing with exhaustion, but follows Ellie to where she thinks the trees are thinning. Saplings sprout in dense clusters, Ellie and Dina shuffling sideways through them, crashing through grey branches. They dodge the tree roots, a knotted mat with patches dying grass, sneakers slipping over wet, yellow leaves. Silver mist creeps in around their ankles, rising slowly to her knees as they descend, coming from a break in the trees ahead.

"Well…we found the river," Ellie announces, stopping at the treeline. A thin rug of moss reaches out onto bare rock and drops down, down, down into the river nearly 200 feet below.

"You've gotta be fucking kidding me," Dina sputters, reaching the treeline and then backing away from the edge, her hands reaching for the saplings to hold her up. "First sketchy staircases…and now this. Any way around it?"

"There." Ellie points at a mile or so downriver. An old railroad stretches over the river and across the canyon.

"Oh, lovely. A bridge. Because that's so much better than jumping off a cliff."

"We can make it."

They duck into the safety of the treeline, shielded from the drizzling rain, now parallel to the cliff.

"So," Dina calls. "When are we going to do something you're afraid of?"

"Hopefully never."

"Hmm… I bet you're afraid of spiders."

"Nah. Scorpions are way creepier."

"Okay…" Dina says slowly, tapping her chin. "If I was Ellie, I would probably be afraid of something outlandish and existential, like…your teeth falling out."

"I still wouldn't want that to happen, but no."

Dina sighs. "Help me out?"

"Maybe another time. I don't wanna jinx us," Ellie murmurs. "We're here."

The bridge stretches nearly 400 feet across the river. Thick trusses are still latched in place by solid gridiron, ancient and unbreakable. Plumes of mist rise from the river below and carve rust into the steel rails. Further below, timber scaffolding criss-crosses all the way down to the white, frothing rapids.

Ellie climbs up the weathered burm and to the center of the tracks. Her sneakers crunch on the gravel packed between the trusses.

"Hold up," Dina calls. "Did you hear that?"

Ellie pauses. The static roar of the river bellows up the canyon and washes everything else out. "No. What did you hear?"

"I'm not sure… Maybe some kind of horn?"

Ellie waits. She tries to listen above the river; a flock of chickadees pittering between the trees, the higher winds susurrus through the pines, and somewhere, a tree branch snaps and clatters to the ground. None of it remotely sounds like a horn.

"I'm not hearing anything," Ellie replies. She tightens the messenger bag's straps on her shoulders.. "It's probably the wind."

Dina hesitates and joins her on the tracks. "Sorry. I must be losing it."

"No, you're… you're fine, Dina." Ellie exhales. "We just have to get across. And then we'll rest."

Dina kicks at the gravel on the tracks and saunters to Ellie's side. She clasps her hand, clammy and tight.

"This is the only way you're getting my ass across," she says definitively, a mild quiver in her voice.

"I know." Ellie holds her hand firm in response. "Let's do this."

A frigid gust of northern wind blindsides them. Ellie hunkers down against it, her insides whipped with cold, the sweat on the back of her neck feeling frosty. Dina whimpers and Ellie keeps her steady, letting her press into her shoulder.

For a moment, she thinks she hears a whistle. But it can't be anything but the wind, or maybe the lonely howl of a wolf.

The gust lessens, passing like a wave. Ellie leans forward. "C'mon."

Thin ice slicks the railroad tracks beneath them. They make slow progress, stepping together, the spaces between the trusses almost as wide as their feet are long. They watch the rocks give way to the racing river.

"I'd normally say don't look down, but…"

"Kinda hard not to," Dina sputters back. She clutches Ellie's hand in a vice, knuckles white. It hurts, but Ellie doesn't let go.

And now, she hears the horn. A long, brassy note blowing through the misty valley makes both girls freeze in place.

"That's what I heard before!" Dina exclaims.

"But what…" Ellie begins, but a bright flicker catches her eye. She looks over her shoulder at something on the tracks rounding the corner. "Oh shit. Oh shit. Dina, we gotta move!"

"Ellie, what is that? A train?"

She doesn't want to answer, tugging at Dina's hand. "I don't want to find out. We're almost halfway across."

The wind pushes against them, as if trying to dissuade them from crossing the bridge. Dina interlocks her arm with Ellie's, scared of falling through the gaps in the railroad trusses, unable to keep her eyes off the river rushing below.

Ellie glances over her shoulder and she stumbles. Light curves around the bend with another long, eerie horn blast.

"Move! Move!" Ellie hustles. She untangles her arm from Dina and jerks her hand as she sprints, bridges be damned.

The light is directly behind them now. More than one hundred feet of bridge still lays ahead.

"Ellie, we're not going to make it!"

"We will! C'mon, stay with me!"

The tracks tremble with thunder. Ellie sends a silent prayer to the other side of the bridge, pleading for it to come closer. She's running for her life yet again.

"Ellie!"

Dina falls facedown on the tracks, her foot wedged between the trusses. Ellie almost slips, catching herself as her wrist wrenches free from Dina's grasp, spinning around.

"Come on, get up, we've gotta go!" Ellie panics, reaching under Dina's arm to yank her to her feet.

Dina yelps in pain. "Stop, stop! I'm stuck!"

"Well try again," Ellie says, pulling harder, but Dina is caught tight, jeans stuck on something underneath the truss. "Fuck!"

"Just go!" Dina shouts over the airhorn, squealing again. "Go without me!"

"I'm not leaving you!" Ellie declares, furious that Dina would even suggest such a thing. "Okay? I'm not leaving you, now come-"

"Ellie!"

Both girls raise their hands to shield themselves from a pair of blinding headlights, bracing for impact, but it doesn't come. Orange sparks sputter from the steel rims of some sort of truck and screech to a halt.

"Oh shit," Ellie mutters, paralyzed like a deer in the headlights. Like the deer from her dream.

"Go hide!" Dina commands, pushing her away.

"What? Fuck no, I'm not-"

"I've got this."

"But-"

"Just go, Ellie! Trust me!"

It's wrong on every level. With one final look, Ellie abandons her, fleeing for the dark, overgrown cover of the railroad ditch. She buries herself amongst the dying brush and leaves, pressing low to the cold, wet earth. From under a scraggly bush, she squints into the headlights, discerning a railroad service truck of some kind, elevated to ride the train tracks. Corrugated steel plates the hood and sides like armor, crudely welded together with thick patches of melted metal. Black exhaust chugs out the rusted tailpipe, the diesel engine idling as the passenger door wrenches open, someone emerging, and then slamming shut.

Fuck. Fuck.

Ellie holds her breath between clenched teeth. The driver emerges after the passenger hoisting a hunting rifle under his arm, aiming at Dina.

"Hands in the air!" he barks, loud enough for Ellie to hear him over the wind.

Dina flops back and throws her arms up. "Please! Don't shoot. Please, I need help, I'm stuck."

The passenger says something in a rough, low voice to the driver. Ellie doesn't catch it and she crawls closer, straining to hear.

"Give us a reason not to run you over like the rest of them," the driver growls. He gestures at the unrecognizable body parts ensnared in a nasty tangle of barbed wire lacing the truck's front bumper.

"No, no," Dina replies, her voice high and terrified, wanting to inch back further than she already was, still stuck in place. "Please, please don't do that. I… I can be useful. I can help you."

The passenger says something again Ellie can't hear. She swears under her breath, sneaking closer, but still avoiding the headlights, sticking to the shadows. She watches at the driver approaches Dina, lifting her chin with the barrel of his rifle, as if inspecting her like a butcher on the lookout for the next fine cut of meat. He says something, but Ellie doesn't need to hear what it is. She knew the reasons why there were no female hunters, and it had to do with exactly what Dina was offering in exchange for freedom.

The driver kneels down to help Dina up, when the passenger suddenly grabs him back, saying loudly, "Wait, what if this is a trick? Wasn't there someone else with her?"

"I'm alone," Dina replies, looking back and forth between them. "There is no one else. I… I swear."

"You know what… I think you're right," the driver replies. "How do we know you ain't fakin' this so your little friend can steal our shit when we ain't lookin'?"

"I… I'm not faking it," Dina sputters.

"So where'd you get that pretty jacket?" He points at her dark green ranger's coat. Dina's mouth gapes, caught in the lie, and the driver grins, predatory. In a voice Ellie can barely make out, he says, "I've got an idea. How about we keep you, and you can still make yourself useful. And we'll go take care of your buddy in the woods, there. You won't need to worry no more."

Dina is speechless. Satisfied, the driver stands, and whistles with two fingers in his teeth. Two more hunters emerge from the cab of the truck. "Find the other one!" He points at the passenger. "And you, help me get her into the truck!"

"What? No, no, no!" Dina cries, thrashing as the passenger tries to help her free, but she's just as stuck as she was before. "Get off of me! Get off!"

Ellie's fingers curl into the earth. She can't just lay there. She wants to gut all of them with her own two hands. She springs to her feet and takes refuge in the arms of a fir tree. Thick, evergreen needles camouflage her in the dark, shielding her from the wandering flashlights of the two approaching men. The rough bark pokes into her back as she flattens herself against it.

"You, check over there," one of them mutters to the other, and they nod, splitting up.

Ellie holds her breath. Boots thud over fallen conifer needles not even five feet away from her. She clutches her knife in her fist. She'll not only have to be quick, but quiet.

The hunter passing her starts to go further down into the ditch. Ellie slinks in the shadows behind him, her footsteps significantly lighter than his, and when he stops to investigate a rocky outcropping, she gains the high ground. She has the advantage.

Ellie catches him by a fistful of hair and jerks him back, pressing the knife across his throat so that instead of a warning shout, it's a muffled gurgle, her hand clapped over his mouth. He thrashes and she cuts deeper, his blood hot and slippery and staining her bare hands, until he flops dead in her grasp.

She lays his body gingerly down to the ground, as if there hadn't been a struggle at all.

"Hey, man, where are you? It's dark as shit out here."

The second hunter with the flashlight comes closer. Ellie backpedals, hands fumbling behind her, and grasping a large, chunky rock. She hurls it over her head. It clanks against the rails and the hunter's flashlight darts to it.

She can't attack him from behind, now, but she can from underneath.

Ellie thrusts her knife into the hunter's soft calf and he doubles over with a startled yell. He turns with a balled fist and pain crashes through Ellie's skull, knocking her away as hands suddenly choke her throat. She gasps as the world spins, the man too heavy to fight, and her hand reaches for something, anything, and her fingers curl around a rusted railroad spike. She swings hard into his temple and cold air rushes back into her lungs. He's on his hands and knees and she clocks him again, so that when he does fall this time, he doesn't move.

"Motherfucker," she seethes, ripping her knife out of his leg.

"Ellie, watch out!" Dina screams and a shotgun explodes past her left side. The passenger, armed with a sawed-off shotgun, advances down the tracks, pumping and blasting at her shadow at an unnervingly rhythmic pace.

Step, step, click, boom.

She scrambles down into the ditch again. The shotgun follows.

Step, step, click, boom.

She almost trips on the first hunter's body. She kneels down, thrusting his body over. He has nothing. Nothing at all.

Step, step, click, boom.

"Quit running, bitch," the hunter growls. "You got nowhere to go!"

Ellie dodges behind a tree, but this one isn't as nearly covered as the first. She freezes. He can see her and she knows it.

Step, step, click-

Click.

He's empty.

With a savage roar, Ellie throws all of her weight against the shotgun, catching him by surprise. He jerks the gun back and slams the stock into her ribs. It's the kind of blow that knocks the breath right out of her and she gasps through the pain as he hits again, feeling something deeper inside break. He doesn't need to pull the trigger to kill her.

Ellie stumbles back, unable to breathe, and when he pulls back the gun one more time for another strike, she plunges her knife down onto his arm. He roars, dropping the gun, and she stabs him in the gut once, twice, and then three times. He starts to fall backwards and Ellie jumps, driving the knife into his eye socket, giving it a lethal twist.

Dina screams, almost hoarse. The driver tears her up from the tracks' unmerciful grip and to her feet, one fist clenched around her arm.

Ellie's slippery fingers dig in the dead hunter's pockets and she finds one final cartridge. She props the shotgun on her knee and loads it, breathing hard as she hikes back up onto the tracks, and into the full bloody view of the truck's headlights. Dina fights the driver, shoving him away and taking only a few steps before falling down again. Ellie presses the shotgun stock into her shoulder and takes deadly, precise aim, knowing full well that it could be her only chance.

Step, step, click...

"Oh shit-"

Boom.

Lead and carnage splatter the entire hood of the truck. What remains of the driver flops on top of it in pieces.

"Dina!"

Ellie drops the empty shotgun and runs to her side.

"Are you okay?"

Dina looks at her, wide-eyed and horrified, mouth agape. Ellie's entire front and hands are covered in dark, sticky blood. Dina flinches as Ellie reaches for her.

"Ellie…"

"I'm fine," Ellie replies, despite a terrible, fiery pain in her ribs. "It's… It's not mine. Most of it, anyways. Think you can stand?"

That seems to ease Dina's fears, but not by much. "Uh, yeah… Yeah, I think so."

With a helping hand, Dina staggers to her feet. She looks back at the truck, still running, no longer recognizing the driver. She shakes her head, mouth opening and closing. She looks past Ellie and up the train tracks, noticing the trail of blood that follows, at least one of the bodies in plain view. Finally, she meets Ellie with wide, glassy eyes.

"Jesus, Ellie… How… Where do you even learn to kill someone like that?"

Ellie's heart hammers in her throat. This part…This hideous, nasty, brutal survival part she thought she had quietly buried was something Dina was never supposed to see. She trembles with adrenaline. Sweat and tears sting her eyes. She doesn't answer because she doesn't have one. It's instinct. A piece she will never be able to remove.

"We should get out of here," Dina decides. "You know, before… before others come."

Ellie nods. She can't speak without wanting to burst into tears. They scavenge the flashlights from the dead bodies and push forward into the dark, not saying another word.