by J.J. Mainor
Chapter 7
The queasiness in Kimberly’s stomach abated as if knowing it was lunch time. She took one of Reese’s bags and crawled out of her tent. Then taking a seat by the fire pit, she dug inside finding a half-loaf of wheat bread, some honey, and a jar of peanut butter. The peanut butter was all natural of course. Eating healthy was always important to her, even before she met Reese.
Her first run-in with Reese had happened, of all places, in the gym. It was for her a strength training day. Starting with some core work, she grabbed an exercise ball and a weight for some sit-ups. To her, Reese was just another of the many meatheads frequenting that gym. She didn’t think much of him right away, though she noticed he kept stealing glances her way. By the third set he realized he had been caught. Instead of trying to hide it, he crossed the room and said “hi.”
Normally, neither of them were in the gym to meet people, and she always found the muscleheads to be intolerable, but Reese came to her with a humble approach. He asked her about her routine. He was interested in her goals, in what she was looking to get out of fitness. Not once did he ever bring up his routine, his bench pressing, or his arm size. Instead of offering suggestions as if he were the end-all expert as most of the guys loved to do, Reese took suggestions from her. He seemed genuinely interested in her routine and why she organized it as she had.
Kimberly had agreed to work out with him the following day. And though she decided to try his routine, he never set out to embarrass her or try to show her up by drawing attention to his weights. He deflected that attention, by discussing nutrition the whole time. There she learned it was not the gym work, but the nutritional aspects she was under informed about.
The commercial peanut butters Zach or Gunner would have brought were filled with sugar and hydrogenated vegetable oil. Commercial breads were baked with high fructose corn syrup. Given the list of chemicals in Zach’s cereal, it was no wonder one taste left her feeling sick.
She stirred the oil at the top of the jar into the peanut butter, and scooped out a spoonful onto a slice of bread, thankful for something with one ingredient on the label. The honey gave her sandwich some sweetness, and one bite helped her to forget that debacle at breakfast.
After lunch, she returned the bag of food to her tent and looked out across the campsite, wondering what to do with the rest of the afternoon. The guys would have been too far into the woods to catch up. The idea of finding Raymond’s river seemed tempting, but it didn’t seem wise to head out alone.
Reminded of the old man, her eyes veered toward his tent. The secrets that must have been inside beckoned for her. “Surely,” she thought, “this frail, old man didn’t come all this way just to see a patch of woods.” Baxter Park was much closer to just about everything. Ignoring that she and her friends were there, a tempting conspiracy entered her mind.
Kimberly slipped into the old man’s tent and found a scene similar to that in her own: a sleeping bag sprawled out next to his pack with a few clothes lying about. She opened a small pocket on the side of his pack. Instead of a bloody glove, or juicy pictures of a senator with a prostitute, she found a sewing kit, some twine, and a compass. The pocket below it held a mess of travel-sized toiletries which, judging from his unkempt appearance when they picked him up, had not yet been used.
She opened the first pocket on the other side and found only a deck of cards. Thinking there was nothing salacious hiding in the old man’s pack after all, she went to return the cards when she noticed a tip of paper peeking out of the box. Upon investigating, she found it to belong to one of a couple newspaper clippings hiding in the deck.
“Logger Slain,” headlined the first article. It was a simple story detailing the discovery of a body with its throat slashed. Written less than a day from the discovery, it didn’t contain many details. Yet it left Kimberly wondering just how long this killer had been hiding in these parts. And if Raymond knew, why didn’t he say anything?
Her answers lay in the second article detailing how the murderer had been discovered and killed himself. The clippings weren’t referring to their killer after all. Still it was odd these woods were home to multiple murderers.
She tore through the pack with renewed fervor. Another pocket turned up a pamphlet for a mental health facility in Bangor. “What is wrong with this old man,” she wondered aloud. Before she could get her answer, she heard someone running across the campsite.
Peeking out from the tent, Kimberly caught a figure disappearing into the woods. She didn’t see much about him, but a brief glimpse of his mangy hair marked this person as someone from outside her group. The killer. And he had been inside their camp, closer to her than she thought he would get.
Her first instinct was to stay hidden in the old man’s tent, to wait for him to get a fair distance away. Getting over that, she knew they didn’t come here to hide or run from this guy.
There had to be a knife or a hatchet, or some kind of weapon in Raymond’s pack. She dumped everything out onto his sleeping bag with no luck. Whatever he had must have been on his person. There was a knife in her pack though, but the killer might still be nearby, hiding behind a thicket of trees or an overgrown brush patch, waiting for her to make her move.
Peering out, Kimberly didn’t see any movement from the woods. He tent was only a few feet away, so gathering her courage, she raced to get inside it. The knife was readily found in the front pocket. Not small by any means, she unsheathed ten inches of sharpened steel: enough to eviscerate any jerk who might try to mess with her.
The woods offered no further evidence of the killer’s presence. Kimberly listened intently. Certain she could hear his footsteps faintly in the distance, she set off in a full sprint after him. The trees and their branches zipped by, many attempting to assault her face. She dodged and weaved as if fighting her way through a wall of linebackers. It slowed her down, and killed her visibility, but still she ran. The killer was ahead. She thought she could still hear his footsteps, still distant, but closer. She was gaining.
And then…
The woods cleared to a river. Was this the river Raymond told them of? It had been so close to where they camped, yet they never knew it was here. The water appeared shallow enough, but it was swift. The killer would have had too much difficulty crossing. Kimberly listened for a clue to where he went, but nothing. Upstream and down were both silent. He could not have gotten away.
She searched the sandy bank for a sign. She was not a tracker, but maybe, just maybe there might be footprints to follow. She searched so intently, she missed the most obvious sign: the killer himself creeping carefully behind her. He approached, slowly, silently, the flowing water covering the slightest sounds his feet made.
An ax hung from his hand. Its head dulled to a rusty brown except for the blade which had been sharpened to a dull gray. He raised it over Kimberly’s head while she remained fixated on the ground. Then flipping it so the blade pointed upward, he struck her with the butt. Her head cracked open with a gush of blood, and she fell, crumpled onto the river bank.