You’ll burn for this Scout Master.
He leveled his rifle, eye down the barrel, finding the Guide’s chest in the sight.
No Hendrick, we shall both of us burn.
His voice echoed through the darkening twilight woods. The light odor of kerosene being wafted into his nostrils as he inhaled deeply. The wind was blowing directly on him, as he had hoped it would, carrying the vapors of the fuel with it and away from the mountain man standing with rifle pointed at his chest.
Silence enveloped the forest. The trees groaned in the breeze. Somewhere an angry squirrel screamed out, eliciting further screams from his compatriots.
The last sound he heard was so much like that final smell. Crisp, definitive, and final. The hammer came down against the primer with a snap. The primer exploded into the shell igniting the propellant. The signal flare embedded itself into the kerosene soaked forest floor of pine needles and fallen leaves. The fire overwhelmed. He ran as fast as he could, straight towards that flare between the awestruck and bewildered hillbilly’s legs. The flare gun dropped to the forest floor and from the back of the waistband came the broken paddle shaft with the t-grip. Jagged and sharpened, pressed deep and hard into Hendricks belly. Twisting and pushing with the grip doing as much damage as possible.
Thick smoke from burning wet leaves, strong waves of evaporating kerosene, they soon hit the turf. A loud grunt from the impact. The Guide had expected more of a fight, had expected his plan to go completely awry. Instead Hendrick lay there beneath him, slowly wheezing, his eyes wandering wildly at the canopy and the rising smoke. Hands fallen from the guides back and splayed outward, an obscene forest floor angel. Fire beginning to singe his shirt and burn his finger tips, circling both of them and beginning to rage. The Guides face planted in the dirt and leaves, smelling of earth and life and death and decay. Smelling of Hendrick and his dying breaths, of his unwashed clothes, of his intestines. Pushing himself back up and gathering his knees beneath him while straddling the dying man. He looked skyward, tendrils of smoke reaching towards the browning canopy, leaves falling and riding the waves of heat from below.
The Guide hadn’t heard it.
Must have been the same time I fired the flare, or was it while I charged this shit heap of a dying man?
His chest was warm. His breathing labored. His hand fell away from his ribs wet and scarlet, pink bubbles forming from the red that spread from where his shirt was torn away. Light headed and confused he halfway stood, then lay down on the ground abruptly. In his pocket was the wristband she gave him for safe keeping. The Guides right pocket, where his hand weakly dug so that he could feel that rubbery little bracelet. Somehow he knew that by touching it, by knowing the feeling of those engraved little letters that spelled her name that she would know too. It was done, his promise fulfilled, no more little ones would lose anything to that monster. No more little ones would be scared into silence anymore. It ended here, in flame and smoke. He hoped, with his last breath and his last thought, that he would be hollering all ahead full and smiling at her again soon as she bounced up and down on the raft and cackled hysterical laughter. Soon, he thought, soon.