“No, I—”
“Five minutes,” Jade says, not letting go.
Theo Mondragon is free in two, standing again.
The chainsaw he’s carrying rips awake and Letha steps back involuntarily.
“What was that guy’s name in the stairwell?” she asks, even though she knows. Just, Letha needs to be seeing the two halves of Ross Pangborne up and down the stairs right now, and what might have made him like that.
“It can’t be,” Letha says, but she’s talking to herself now.
“Do you want to stay and find out?” Jade asks, Theo Mondragon slinging the chainsaw back and forth before him like Leatherface’s last dance. He’s cutting the brush and limbs out of his way, and kind of lurching now from the bear trap’s bite.
“Shit,” Letha says, looking around for what to do, where to go, how to live.
“This is gonna suck the big one,” Jade says, standing with Letha’s help, then pointing with her lips to where she means.
Letha looks across, doesn’t get it at first, then does.
“No,” she says.
“Only way,” Jade says.
“We can—” Letha tries.
“Not enough time,” Jade says back, not letting her finish because whatever she’s going to say isn’t taking her hurt leg into account.
“You’re sure he won’t look there first?” Letha asks.
“Would you?” Jade asks.
When Letha has no answer, the two of them lunge ahead to the pile of rotting elk. That’s what it is now. Not a killing field anymore, but a mound of corpses, which Jade guesses must be some stage of cleanup: pack them tight enough that a front-end loader can scoop them up in as few runs as possible, since heavy machinery leaves deep ruts in the national forest.
“How are we going to—？” Letha asks, then they both see the answer: there’s a sort of tunnel in, held open with fresh-cut lodgepole pine. Which explains why the chainsaw was handy.
But why would Theo Mondragon have been boring a temporary tunnel into all this rotting meat and bone, all this horn and hoof?
There’s no time to figure it out. He’s almost to the trees now, his chainsaw already ripping the night in two, its pungent exhaust seeping in ahead of him.
Jade pushes Letha in first, not because she’s suddenly valiant or anything, but to be sure Letha doesn’t chicken out, start running.
But would that really be so bad? She could stay ahead of her dad, scary limp and all.
This is already happening like this, though. For better or worse.
Jade still has her open hand to the small of Letha’s back when Letha’s muscles contract in a way Jade’s are already starting to: the smell in this tunnel, this literal hell hole. It’s almost sweet, but it’s oily on the roof of Jade’s mouth, too.
Thick and oily and there’s not a clean breath anywhere. Worse, they can’t see what they’re touching, can only hear it squishing, feel it between their fingers, and on their lips, against their eyes.
It’s warm, too.
Because… Jade tries to remember, isn’t sure she can: does decay kick off some sort of methane gas, maybe? She becomes extremely aware of the lighter already in her hand, that she was about to spark into light for them.
Shit. Shit shit shit.
They’re only about ten, twelve feet in, too. And hunched over, the only thing keeping the pile up is two X’s of cut tree trunks.
Is this his evil lair, what? At least Jason had the decency to have candles. At least Freddy’s kind of fit a theme. Jade doesn’t have time to wonder anymore, as Theo Mondragon’s headlamp is washing across the elk, the chainsaw idling. Jade lunges across, clapping her right hand tight over Letha’s mouth, pressing her back into the wall of flesh and skin.
Letha’s tears drip down over Jade’s skin, but, instead of fighting free like she could, Letha covers her mouth as well, both her hands over Jade’s one.
The light peers in but the stubby tunnel’s not a straight line, is more like a comma curving to the right. Theo Mondragon makes a retching sound, and now Jade understands why he really had that gas mask. This is even gross to him.
“Hold on, hold on,” Jade whispers to Letha, and Letha nods, and when the light flashes over her perfect face for a tenth of a second, what Jade sees to either side of her is the reason Theo Mondragon was prospecting into these elk: Cody’s pressed into the meat and bone to Letha’s left, and Mismatched Gloves is impaled on sweeping antlers to her right, one of the tips coming out through his mouth, the velvet horn dark black with gore, now.