text: [Themes: modern]
  
  If you have to be stranded anywhere out here, you would prefer to be in your own familiar space; your truck may have been stolen from you, but at least you still have the Bear's Den. It's half a mile down the road, so it will be a long walk given the conditions. Your clothes are already soaked straight through, so there is no point in trying to be delicate. There are dry clothes back at camp.
  
  Turning your back on the A-frame, and in no mood right now to see what might be waiting inside, you set off down the driveway. There is no way to keep the rain from being blown into your face, unless you walk with your head turned to the left. This solves one problem, but then you nearly trip over a large branch. An impulse comes over you to kick the thing and scream at it, but that urge would be more satisfying if it were Gordy lying there on the ground.
  
  When you reach the road, the tire tracks left by the F150 are like parallel canals carved into the soupy gravel surface. They tell you that the people who just ran off with your truck made a left turn, in the direction of both the Bear's Den and Griffin. You assume they must be going to the latter place, to town, and getting out of here. Would that you had done the same thing when you had the chance this afternoon!
  
  The insides of your shoes feel like miniature tubs in which your feet are sloshing around. At least now the wind is at your back, but you're sick of this nonsense, sick of the ignominy of being forced to trudge your way back through the storm. The more you ponder the situation, the less you like it — the more you dislike the people who did this to you.
  
  So you begin to jog, to get this over with as soon as possible. But to your dismay, the rhythm of your splashing footsteps brings to mind a certain song:
  
  I'm ahead, I'm a man
  
  I'm the first mammal to wear pants, yeah!
  
  I'm at peace with my lust
  
  I can kill 'cause in god I trust, yeah!
  
  It's quite possible that the Goodcheer-Fellows have spoiled that song for you.
  
  Minutes later you round the bend in the road and begin the approach your own driveway, the one with the crabgrass over the gravelly soil and the cut-up sections of the dead balsam tree. You can already see the faint glow of the kerosene lantern still burning in the window — the same light that apparently attracted Gordy and Charlei a short time ago, or so they claimed. Now what the hell were they really doing out here? At first you had taken their story at face value and assumed they had been stranded in the rain. Based on what happened at the A-frame, however, the evidence almost suggests they were intentionally seeking you out.
  
  The sight of headlights bouncing through the swaying trees ahead of you brings you to a stop. Another truck is coming up the road. Is it someone from town coming to check on you? Perhaps word of what has happened here has already gotten out?
  
  You begin running again, this time toward the truck, swinging your arms back and forth above you in a flagging motion to catch the attention of the driver. Both you and the truck meet each other just in front of the Bear's Den, but then you recognize your own license plate affixed to the front bumper.
  
  The passenger-side door opens and Charlei jumps to the ground as Gordy revs the engine.
  
  "Al, we need to get out of here!" She seems frantic as she runs to you and grabs your hand. "Gordy's gone insane! I think he means to kill us both!"
  
  Before you know what's going on, Charlei is pulling you into the woods beside the road. Gordy must be watching from the driver's seat, because you can hear him screaming after you. "Charlei, you bitch! I knew I couldn't trust you!"
  
  You yank your hand free. "What the hell is going on?" you yell.
  
  "Al, this is no time!" Charlei implores, her face just a ghostly shadow in the distant periphery of the headlights' glow. "You probably didn't notice, but he's been hiding a gun under his vest all night long. We need to get out of here!"
  
  As if to prove her point, Gordy steps down from the Ford and fires a shot into the trees. As far as you can tell, it comes nowhere near you.
  
  "Charlei, when I get my hands on you! You've betrayed me for the last time!"
  
  He certainly sounds sincere, and indeed when they first appeared in the Bear's Den earlier you sensed some tension between the two. But this display now is off the charts, as if his own wildness has caught up with that of the storm. Did something trigger this rage since you last saw him a few minutes ago in the Coopers' driveway, or is this another one of their acts?
  
  Charlei, for her part, looks shaken. "Al! This is no time to panic on me. I know a place where we can hide!"
  
  She does? How would she know these woods that well, and where could this hideout of hers possibly be?
  
  > follow Charlei.
  Perhaps it's mere curiosity that compels you to follow Charlei — to see where this hiding place could possibly be, or maybe to figure out the cause of this rift with Gordy. If this is a game of some kind, then you need to observe the way in which it's being played before you can use the rules to your advantage.
  
  Or maybe it's just because events are unfolding so swiftly tonight you haven't had a chance to formulate a coherent strategy of your own. All you've been able to do ever since these two idiots showed up is react to their provocations.
  
  "It's this way. Come on!" she urges, leading you into the woods. The way ahead is only dimly lit, at best; Gordy and the truck are behind you now, the headlights pointed in almost the opposite direction. But Charlei is forging ahead nevertheless, as if she has a specific destination in mind.
  
  As well as you know this area, it's difficult to keep your bearings in the dark. You assume she's leading you toward the river, which means you should be coming to a big drop-off any moment now. There is no shelter there, though.
  
  But instead of a steep slope, your shoes scuff against a gravel surface, one that has been saturated by the rainfall. The tactile sense beneath your feet is familiar.
  
  "We're back on the road!" you say.
  
  "I know. Quick! Gordy will be back this way any moment now."
  
  So, instead of to the Honnedaga, Charlei is taking you back in the opposite direction, toward the foot of Starbuck Mountain. This means you are probably on the next property to the east of the Bear's Den. The longer your flight continues, the more you feel like a tiny planetoid caught between the two mighty gravitational forces of the night: Charlei, leading you deeper into the storm it seems, and Gordy, who you assume is driving up an down the road in your truck, consumed by his rage. You look behind you from time to time, but you do not see the headlights.
  
  As the two of you flee through the woods, the ground below you is soft, cluttered with leaves and sticks. Wet branches slap at your face and arms. Then the ground beneath you becomes firm, and you realize you are in a yard. The silhouette of a camp looms directly ahead.
  
  You're pretty sure you know this place, but so too does Charlei, it would seem. Without hesitation, she leads around the corner of the building and finds the unlocked back door, right where you knew it should be. She flicks on a flashlight, and for a second the meager light is blinding.
  
  "Quick, close the door!" she orders.
  
  The two of you are now inside the rustic kitchen of your neighboring camp, another old farmhouse owned by the Starbuck Mountain Gang, a hunting club from the Gloversville area. It is a place that is probably even less fancy than the Bear's Den.
  
  "All right, so what the hell is all this about?" you demand, water dripping off you and onto the dusty floor. A pool is forming around your feet.
  
  Charlei is no drier. In terms of outerwear, she has been wearing nothing other than that hoodie she first showed up with about an hour ago, which has been soaking up the rain like a washcloth. The hood has been pulled up over her head, but her hair is still matted against her skull as if she has just stepped out of a pool fully clothed.
  
  "It's a long story," she says. "But we should be safe here. Gordy doesn't know about this place."
  
  Charlei immediately sets about the business of finding a better light than the flashlight. There is an old Coleman lantern hanging over the kitchen table, which she sets down on a red-and-white-checked tablecloth that is speckled with mouse turds. She then locates a box of matches from a nearby shelf as if she already knew they were there, and a moment later the entire room is illuminated.
  
  The camp is musty from the lack of recent use, and unfussy in its tidiness. Mouse turds dot more than just the table, and dust covers everything. A vintage cabinet on the wall, probably stocked with non-perishable staples, is sealed shut by a stick jammed through the handles. Just past this kitchen area, at the other end of the large room that occupies two-thirds of the first floor, is a den where mismatched furniture, all of it old, is centered around a woodstove.
  
  Clearly, your guide has been here before. But alone, without her husband as she claims? The more time you spend with them, the greater the enigma becomes. Who are these people? How long have they been poking around these camps, and what brought them here to begin with? Answers would be a nice thing to have.
  
  "So what's your plan, then?" you ask. "Just hang out here and wait for Gordy to lose interest in finding us?"
  
  "Oh, he won't lose interest," she says.
  
  "But you honestly think we'll be safe here?"
  
  "He'll probably spend the night at your place," she says, taking off the drenched hoodie. "He won't get any farther, though. The road is washed out half a mile from here."
  
  That, at least, explains why they returned so soon after taking your truck. It's the closest thing to a credible answer you've heard all night.
  
  > Next page.
  Despite everything, though, this is at least a solid shelter from the storm. There may be just a thin barrier between you and the elements, but the Starbuck Gang boarded up the windows before leaving at the end of their season last fall, and so the camp feels adequately sealed off from the wind.
  
  Charlei is perusing the pegs near the front door, from which hang a collection of old hunting clothes. You see shirts, jackets, and other items — all coarse and well-worn, and probably as musty as the camp itself. She finds a red flannel shirt and a pair of wool pants that apparently meet her approval, and she removes them from the wall. "I'm going upstairs to change into something dry. Wait down here, OK?"
  
  There is nothing you can say in response, given the surreal chain of events that led you here. Charlei dashes up the wooden steps and opens the heavy trapdoor that seals off the second floor. She makes no sounds other than her footsteps above you as she presumably removes her own wet clothes and puts on her borrowed hunting outfit.
  
  While you are alone, you make a quick inspection of your surroundings: pots and pans hanging from nails above the gas range, plates and bowls still piled up in a dish rack by the sink, washed back in November but never put away. The shelf above the table that produced the matches also holds several decks of playing cards and old issues of Playboy and Field and Stream. No guns anywhere to be found, though; the hunting club members would never dream of leaving something so valuable here. The most lethal items you see are a cast-iron frying pan above the stove and an old axe next to the back door. It's hard to see how either would be very effective against a madman with a gun.
  
  The trapdoor at the top of the stairs opens again, and you see the pair of wool pants descending. Charlei looks particularly out of her element, wearing men's clothing that is several sizes too large and probably twice as old as she is. She can't possibly find that coarse fabric comfortable, and yet she seems unfazed by her situation.
  
  "I feel much better!" she says as she reaches the bottom step. It's a casual statement, like the two of you are old roommates. Rather too chummy for someone who just a short time ago helped steal your truck.
  
  You watch as she proceeds to the woodstove, opens the small metal door, grabs some kindling from a nearby box. When she decides there is something else she needs, she brushes past you in the kitchen.
  
  "So you plan to just stand there dripping wet all night long?" she says skeptically as she approaches the cabinet, removing the stick that holds the doors shut. "There are all sorts of old clothes upstairs. You should change, too. It's going to be a long time before the storm passes."
  
  Her calmness is frustrating — the ordinary way in which she seems to be treating this scenario. You slam the cabinet shut in front of her.
  
  "Who are you, and what the hell is going on tonight?" you demand. Enough games; you deserve answers!
  
  Charlei seems unimpressed, however. "Al, don't get fresh with me. I may not look like much, but I could bring you down in a heartbeat if I wanted."
  
  This is the second thing she's said tonight you that seems perfectly credible. You remove your hand from the cabinet. "You didn't answer me."
  
  "Not when you ask like that," she says, finding the stash of old newspapers she was seeking. "Look, just go get changed. We can talk later."
  
  You stare at her, but she ignores you and returns to the task of starting a fire inside the woodstove.
  
  "Don't forget to open the flue damper a smidge," you say. "Otherwise you'll smoke us out."
  
  "Al, if you don't change out of those wet clothes you'll come down with the flu! Now get!"
  
  Changing into another dude's clothes is a non-starter for you, no matter how soaking wet you are. Instead, you take off your jacket and hang it from a nail in one of the floor joists of the naked ceiling above your head. The T-shirt and everything else you've been wearing can stay where they are. You'll be uncomfortable in all these wet clothes, sure, but if Charlei gets a good fire going then at least you won't die of hypothermia.
  
  The woodstove is one of the few things in the entire camp that doesn't look ancient; the hunting club apparently splurged on a new one, with an old-timey look but a shiny-black paint job. Charlei's fire starts with little resistance, and soon she is raiding the stack of dry wood behind the staircase. She looks at you with dismay after she shoves a few pieces into the stove and closes the hatch.
  
  "Well, if you're not going to get changed, then at least you can make yourself useful and find us something to eat."
  
  What else can you do but humor her at the moment? You examine the cabinet, but as expected all you find are bottles of ketchup, pancake syrup, and instant coffee. The only thing here that is even remotely tempting is a small bottle of Fireball, still half full.
  
  "I ask for food, and you bring whiskey instead?" Charlei says, covering an old Naugahyde recliner with a blanket.
  
  "What were you expecting? Hot dogs?"
  
  "Fine. Give me the bottle." You do, and she takes a long swig of the contents before handing it back.
  
  "What a night!" she says, settling into her recliner. "Take a seat, Al. We might as well get to know each other."
  
  You examine one of the other recliners next to the stove, but it looks like rodents have been raiding its innards for nesting material. Instead, you find a simple wooden chair parked beside the kitchen table and drag that over into the den. It reminds you a bit of your own chair back in the Bear's Den. You settle into it, whiskey bottle in hand. The old wood creaks under your weight. Hopefully the Starbuck Mountain Gang won't mind you drinking their liquor; under the circumstances, they'd probably agree you deserve a drink.
  
  > Next page.
  Charlei watches as you try and get comfortable. "You probably hate me, don't you Al?"
  
  In response, you take a swig from the bottle.
  
  "None of this was my idea, you know," she continues.
  
  "Oh? I didn't notice much hesitation when the two of you decided you wanted my truck."
  
  "It's not like I had much choice! You have no idea what Gordy is like. It was all I could do to get away from him!"
  
  "So he's a stark-raving lunatic, and you're the innocent victim?" you say.
  
  "You say that like you don't believe me."
  
  "Am I supposed to?"
  
  "You're always supposed to believe the woman."
  
  "I thought that was for assault cases, not grand theft."
  
  "Let me see that bottle again." She reaches over and takes another long swig; at this rate, there may not be enough of the Fireball to last the night.
  
  "I can only imagine what you must think of me," she says when she's done, handing the bottle back.
  
  "I have no idea what to think. Every time I ask a direct question, you deflect it back at me."
  
  "Why? What do you want to know?"
  
  "Well, for starters, who the hell are you?"
  
  "Yeah, I guess we did gloss over that part of our introduction," she says. "Sorry. But there's not much to tell, though. Gordy and I are just two people trying to get by in a cruel, difficult world."
  
  Still a vague, noncommittal answer in your opinion. "And you thought it would be a lark to just come up here and bust into all these camps in the middle of nowhere?"
  
  "We didn't bust in! You let us in! But see, you don't understand. Gordy has been under a lot of stress lately, and I had been hoping some fresh air would do him good."
  
  "Let me guess: he has a dozen warrants out for his arrest."
  
  "Al, don't be so cruel! Are you like this to your wife?"
  
  "My wife?" you say.
  
  "Yes, your wife. I see that ring on your finger. I hope you treat her with more respect than you're treating me!"
  
  Here come the games again, you think. This could go on all night: you try to get information from her, she pretends to oblige for a second, only to turn around and put the focus back on you. She is very skilled at this tactic, and you have to wonder if she even realizes when she's doing it. If this is how the night is going to unfold, then it would be best to spend it in silence.
  
  But then, after a pause, she surprises you with a complete reversal in tone.
  
  "Al, I'm really glad I found you tonight," Charlei says, her voice nowhere near as defiant as it was a moment ago. "I thought I was all alone out here tonight with him. I thought tonight was maybe going to be the night, when... you know, this might be it for me. Then we found you at that camp of yours. I regret that it took so long for me to figure it out, but I realize now you are somebody I can trust."
  
  Now it's your turn for a long swig from the whiskey bottle.
  
  "You still don't believe me, do you?"
  
  "It's a pretty big pile of bull to swallow," you say.
  
  "Well if you think I'm so evil, then why'd you follow me here? Why are you sitting here sharing a bottle of booze with me?"
  
  You have no ready response.
  
  "You saw the way he was shooting at us, Al. You saw how unhinged Gordy was. That's the way he's been for the last five months, ever since we got back from— That's the way my life has been, a nightmare! So is it my fault if a little bit of his crazy has rubbed off on me?"
  
  Again, you say nothing.
  
  "You're obviously a good man, Al. A good, solid man. I feel so... safe with you."
  
  Charlei is looking straight at you, as if it's important that you notice just how vulnerable she is claiming to be. But you sense there is something else to it, like there is a place she is trying to get to tonight, and these are just the beginning steps of that journey.
  
  "Do you think we're safe here, Al?" she says.
  
  "So long as your nutso husband doesn't show up," you say.
  
  Charlei sighs at the mention of Gordy. "I don't know, he might."
  
  "I thought you said he didn't know about this place."
  
  "He doesn't. I found it when I went out for a walk yesterday morning. This cabin is so far off the main road! But there aren't many other places we could be, so he might eventually track us down."
  
  "And then what?"
  
  "Oh, Al! This kind of talk scares me!"
  
  "Speak of the devil!" you say. Charlei doesn't understand you at first, but then she sees it too: the glow of light from outside the cabin, filtering through a slim gap in one of the window covers. What else could it be, but headlights coming up the driveway?
  
  "He's here?" she says, but compared to her professions of fear and vulnerability the last few moments, this sounds more like dismay — like something isn't going according to plan.
  
  "It must be him. Who else would be paying us a visit?"
  
  Charlei looks more annoyed than afraid. "Perhaps you should wait upstairs," she says. "I'll talk to him. It's best he doesn't see us together."
  
  So much has happened tonight that you don't know whom or what to believe anymore. There is something about Charlei that doesn't add up, and hasn't from the very beginning. But at the same time you can appreciate the wisdom in not wanting to be found alone with the wife of a madman.
  
  > go upstairs while Charlei talks with her husband.
  "All right," you say, "I'll be upstairs. But I don't like this one bit."
  
  "Don't worry, neither do I," Charlei replies, and in a strange way you sense she means it sincerely. But somehow you also get the impression her annoyance has nothing to do with anything the two of you just discussed.
  
  You can still see the thin beam of light through the window cover, telling you the truck has been parked in front of the cabin and left running. Gordy must be striding to the door right this very second. You scramble up the wooden steps, lifting the heavy trapdoor with your shoulders and dropping it back into place once you're on the upper floor.
  
  There is a window just above the trapdoor, this one with an entire slat missing from its wooden cover. The glass is beaded and streaked with rain water, but the light from the truck is spilling through the gap and illuminating this upstairs space. There is a short hallway radiating into three small rooms, each tucked under the two slanted halves of the gable roof. All three doors are open, and in the shadows you can make out the old-fashioned metal bed frames, each no doubt topped with a mattress in a typically unhygienic state. Water seems to be dripping through the ceiling in the room to the left; you can hear the rapid pat-pat-pat as it trickles onto one of the grody beds. The opposite room, on the right side of the hall, is catching the light through the window. Inside you can see Charlei's wet clothes and underwear hanging from a wire.
  
  You had hoped to listen to the conversation between the two love birds down on the first floor, but the rain is pounding away too heavily on the roof up here. You creep into the middle bedroom and gently lie down on the floor, doing your best not to make a sound. Putting one ear against the floorboard, you can make out voices below you, but not well enough to be understood. So you grab a grungy pillow from the nearest bed and cover your other ear with it, drowning out the sound of rain hitting the roof. This works somewhat better.
  
  "This isn't what we said!" Charlei is protesting.
  
  "What do you mean? You said to give you some time alone with him, and then come over." That's Gordy's voice, no doubt about it.
  
  "But it's only been a few minutes!" she says. She sounds frustrated with him but is trying not to raise her voice.
  
  "So?"
  
  "So, I was only just getting started!"
  
  "I don't get it," he says. "What were you planning to do, anyway?"
  
  "Well it doesn't matter anymore, does it? He knows you're here."
  
  "Like I was going to leave you alone for very long with that pig anyway."
  
  "Why? What's your fear?"
  
  "He's probably a creep, like the rest of them. Where is he now?"
  
  "Upstairs. I told him to go hide when we saw you coming."
  
  "How could you see? All the windows are boarded up, I thought."
  
  "There was a gap, and your lights were bright. Now the game is over. If you're going to do it, then just do it and get it over with, all right?"
  
  "All right. Upstairs you said?"
  
  "Yeah. Probably smelling my panties or something."
  
  "Is he armed?"
  
  "You know as well as I do there's nothing but a bunch of ratty sleeping bags up there."
  
  "I'll only be a moment, then. Why don't you go wait for me in the truck?"
  
  You spring to your feet. Crap! As you suspected, Charlei had been playing games with you all night long. Why, you'll never know. But there is no time to worry about that — Gordy is on his way to finish you off.
  
  Immediately you realize you have a two-part problem: first you need to prevent Gordy from reaching you, and then you need to find a way off this upper floor. The solution to the first problem is obvious: you yank on the nearest bed frame until it is in the hall, leap on the other side, and then push it toward the trapdoor. The metal posts wail as they scrape across the wooden floor, and the whole bed bounces by an inch or so when Gordy bangs against the underside of the door. But it holds, and he is unable to open it.
  
  "What the—" you hear him say, and then, "Oh for crap's sake!" You nearly jump backwards in fright against a wall at the sound of a gunshot, but apparently whatever he is shooting down there isn't enough to pierce the wood. When you hear nothing further, you assume he's looking for an alternate way to get through that door.
  
  As for the second part of your problem, the only obviously way out of here is through that window. With all of the rain it is difficult to see through it clearly, but it looks like there is a porch roof immediately below you, and then your truck parked just beyond with the engine running and the lights on. Strangely there is a second car parked nearby, in the shadows. So, long story short: you can get out this way, but it probably won't be undetected.
  
  You see a chair in the same room as Charlei's wet clothes. Grabbing it by the back, you smash it against the window. The glass shatters, the chair breaks, and rain begins to enter the little hallway. You give the broken window cover an amateurish karate kick, then another, until you have forced open a wide enough space to fit through. Then there is nothing left to do but crawl out onto the porch roof.
  
  > Next page.
  The metal roof is hardly steep, but boy is it slick! Your first step nearly sends you careening over the edge. Before you have the opportunity to fall for real, you get down on your butt and scooch to the edge. The headlights of your stolen truck are illuminating most of the ground below, except for the large shadow cast by that car of unknown origin — and that shadow is exactly where you're going to land when you push yourself over the edge. It's a good ten-foot drop, at least, and you hope there are no hidden objects lurking in the darkness, just flat ground softened by the rain.
  
  Common sense tells you not to be jumping off porch roofs in the middle of a hurricane, but there is an urgency to this situation that overrides common sense. So off you go....
  
  Without the ability to see the ground directly beneath you, the landing is tricky. You tense your legs for the impact at the wrong time, you hit the ground too stiffly, you roll headlong into the car that was casting the shadow. Ultimately no harm is done, insofar as no bones seem to be broken. You can't say, however, that you didn't leave a dent in the side of this old car.
  
  Oddly, your escape from the cabin has not created a stir among your adversaries. You expect Gordy to come careening around the corner at any moment, or Charlei to come up with some new scheme. But if Gordy is still inside the cabin trying to open that trapdoor, then he can't see you through all of the covered windows. That leaves Charlei, who was supposed to be waiting for him inside the truck. You crawl around to the back side of the shadowy car to try and get a better look; sure enough, you can see a figure inside the crew cab. It looks like she's fidgeting with the satellite radio, probably looking for a channel she likes.
  
  This is a fortuitous turn of events: you've escaped the cabin, and the two people most interested in knowing about it are completely clueless. You had previously assumed that the next step would be to run, but if no one is chasing you at the moment this seems like a perfectly good place to hide. The car, you can see now, is an old Dodge Stratus with Michigan plates. Its presence here seems like an important clue, similar to the way seeing the Coopers' Ram back at the A-frame was a warning its owners had been there recently. This car seems to tell you that someone else was here, at this camp — or is still here, in one of those rooms you didn't explore. Someone you didn't meet.
  
  Or wait a minute. Maybe you did meet them. Maybe this is the Dodge with the dead battery, the one you had offered to jump. Except that when you left the Bear's Den, the Goodcheer-Fellows directed you to the other place, perhaps for no other reason than the amusement of seeing your confused expression. Maybe they had hoped you would go inside the camp and find out what they did to Ray and Mindy Cooper — just before they did the same thing to you.
  
  All night long you have been seeking a reason for this encounter, a reason behind everything Gordy and Charlei have said and done. But what if there is no reason? What if you are nothing more than a toy to these people, something that exists solely for their manipulation? If that's the case, there is no question you can ask them that will score an honest answer, no logic to their behavior that you would want to understand, even if you could. For you, there is no winning — not in this game. The best you can do is remove yourself from the playing board and hope never to be found again by either player.
  
  It's the best theory you've had all night. And so you wait behind the Stratus, watching Charlei inside your truck. You don't even mind the rain anymore; it's a force of nature that can't be helped. Charlei must be getting impatient; Gordy is taking an awfully long time to kill you, she is probably thinking. He should've been done by now. What the hell is taking him so long?
  
  Sure enough, she opens the door and steps down from the crew cab. She closes the door behind her and then follows the conical glow of the headlights toward the back door of the cabin, the one you've all been using tonight. You're about to make a run for your truck when she stops midway. It's not because she heard something, she is simply hesitating; although she is a willing participant in these games, she's squeamish when it comes to the actual act of murder. She wants to see what's taking her husband so long, but she's afraid of what she might find.
  
  Eventually curiosity gets the better of her, and she enters the cabin. That's when you run, circling around the back side of the F150 to the driver's side door. The engine is purring along beautifully, unconcerned by the weather. Just as you're situating yourself behind the steering wheel, you see both people rushing out of the cabin. They've figured out what's become of you! Ideally you would've made your getaway completely unseen, but if you're in possession of the only working vehicle on the premises then that's almost just as good.
  
  You throw the truck into reverse and pray there are no storm-related surprises in the long driveway, pressing down harder on the gas pedal than you normally would. The thought that either Goodcheer-Fellow might be able to outrun you at this speed makes you cringe, but you don't dare take your eyes off your rear window. When you reach the main road, you quickly shift into drive and get out of there as fast as possible.
  
  Charlei's news about the road into town being washed out is probably accurate; it's what you predicted would happen anyway, long before you knew she even existed. Going back to your own camp is out of the question, because it's not far enough away, and it's the first place they'd look for you. A sense of neighborliness urges you to stop at the Coopers' place to determine their fate once and for all, but that too is too close to the Starbuck Mountain Gang's camp. And so you drive all the way to the end of the road, dipping through the little gullies eroded all over the place by washed-out culverts and rampaging water. The state trailhead is located in a small clearing, a place where no falling trees or flooding rivers should be able to touch you. It also puts several miles between you and them.
  
  You turn the truck so that it is in the middle of the lot, facing back toward the road. Then you turn off the engine and the lights, leaving on only the satellite radio.
  
  > Next page.
  The day after the storm.
  
  You spend the remainder of the night, and almost all of the morning, inside the truck. All things considered, this is hardly a bad place to be; the seats might not have been as comfortable as your bed back at the Bear's Den, but then you were too much on edge to do much sleeping anyway. It probably wasn't until about 4 A.M. that you finally dozed off, convinced that after all those hours the Goodcheer-Fellows weren't going to track you down.
  
  Also, as far as comparisons to the Bear's Den go, there was that time somewhere around 10 P.M. when the storm seemed to double in its intensity. The winds, which had already been strong from the beginning, strengthened into gale mode. The truck lurched, the rain blew horizontally, and the trees gyrated in painful dances. Many of the latter came down, making you worry a bit less about Charlei and Gordy and more about your own chances of getting out of here when this was over. The gale didn't last long, but boy did it get your attention.
  
  It was nearly twelve hours later when Bob finally showed signs of clearing out of the valley, having lingered for a total of about sixteen hours. That was a tremendous amount of rain, combined with the terrible winds. Your strategy of parking here in the open worked; no fallen trees or branches reached the truck. But you were also a hopeless number of miles away from civilization, at the wrong end of a narrow road that can be rough even in good weather.
  
  So here it is now noon, and you are beginning to concede even the F150 isn't going to make it out of here today; the road was beginning to wash out in several places last night, but now those little gullies have grown into big ones. You have given it a valiant try, trying to negotiate some of the smaller washouts and fording the shallower streams. But then you come to Rooney Brook, where the eight-foot-diameter culvert has been shoved out of place, and you realize that all further travel today will be done on foot.
  
  You are tired, hungry, and still soaking wet — which is to say, you are humorless and eager to get back to normal. Given everything that happened last night, it would've probably been smarter to remain at the trailhead parking area, beyond the reach of any and all psychopaths. On the other hand, there's food at the Bear's Den. And if trouble is still afoot, you'd feel better about facing it in broad daylight.
  
  Leaving your truck on the last piece of road before the Rooney Brook washout, you use the displaced culvert as an awkward footbridge and then begin the hike back to camp. The road climbs up, the road drop backs down, the road climbs up a second time. The Honnedaga River is roaring in the depths of the valley to your right, probably swollen to obscene levels in Bob's aftermath.
  
  Progress comes to a crawl, however, just before you reach the Coopers' place; the gale winds left a swath of fallen trees that have choked the road, making it impossible to continue following it. You are forced to go around this swath, but in so doing you can only catch a glimpse of the A-frame: surrounded by devastation, but only moderately damaged itself. This makes you even more concerned about the state of your own place, roughly half a mile away. The fact that you can't get a good look at it doesn't bode well.
  
  There is no point in lingering here, if here no longer exists. But the next camp in the sequence would be that of the Starbuck Mountain Gang, and that you approach with a bit more trepidation. Not that it's an easy approach: the belt of blowdown may be thinning, but there has been a different kind of devilry on this part of the mountain.
  
  As you know, the soil on the upper slopes of an Adirondack mountain is thin, basically little more than the accumulation of dead plant material from the last ice age to the present — an organic skin over a bed of fractured rock. Normally, the roots of the trees hold it in place. But when the system is overloaded with water, those roots can become dislodged. The entire mass comes sweeping down, wiping out everything in its path until coming to a slow stop in the valley below.
  
  And this is what you find, when you arrive at the approximate location of the hunting club: a slide path extending from a headwall high up on the mountain and ending just shy of the river, removing everything that had been here down to the whitish bedrock. The camp, the Stratus, the new woodstove, the mouse turds, and anyone who might have still been here — all wiped clean, as if by the hand of God. Not a single shred remains.
  
  You have survived, and for that you should feel grateful. It will take some time, but help will reach you; the blowdown will be cleared, the washouts repaired, the F150 back on the road to Rochester.
  
  But there is also a distinct lack of satisfaction in not knowing what happened to the Goodcheer-Fellows. If they perished in the landslide, then well and good, but how much better it would be to see their broken bodies dashed upon the rocks. Not seeing them leaves open the possibility that they have somehow managed to survive; as they arrived with the storm to torment you, so did they depart.
  
  But what a silly idea, that two grown people could just be blown around by the wind, like a pair of balloons torn loose of their ribbons and doomed to land in some distant ocean. You put the thought out of your mind as soon as you think it, and worry instead about where you might find something to eat amidst all this biblical devastation.