I don’t know. The only living thing that has died so far has been a rat. All the other dead people were dead when the story started.

Peter sat on the front bumper and took out his cell phone. He was pondering whether he wanted to call the police again. He didn’t want to, so he called Louise.

“Louie? Are you busy?”

“What? Are you almost done with Ralph?”

“We found, well we didn’t find it, another foot found us.”

“What does that mean?”

“When we were driving up here, it hit the windshield.”

“That’s crazy. Who threw it?”

“We think a bear, but it made a really strange sound, almost singing.”

“Bears don’t sing.”

“Well it did, and we saw Eric twice. He was down at the bridge on the Wishkah and he was just up here. He had the ammo box that Ralph was looking for.”

“Too weird.”

“Should I call the cops about the foot?”

“Go to a payphone and call it in anonymously. Make sure that you’re not on for more than thirty seconds.”

“Good idea. I’ll tell Ralph. We’ll be back in about a half an hour.”

“Bye, don’t bring any of those things home.”

“I won’t, bye.”

While Peter was on the phone he watched Ralph go up the trail and into the bushes. Ralph only took a minute to go to the spot that they’d seen the bare dirt and then he was back on the trail walking back.

“Hurry up! We’re going to a pay phone!”, Peter yelled.

Peter heard something in the woods to his right. It sounded like the same rustling that he had heard when the car horn honked, so he got into the van, turned the key on and started pressing the horn button. Ralph started running when he heard the horn, and Peter kept watching the brush in front of the van. Just as Ralph turned the corner where the trail ended something came out of the bushes. Ralph ducked as a woman’s head flew past his.

“Holy shit! Let’s get out of here!”, Ralph yelled as he opened the van door.

The whining started again, but this time Peter just held the horn button down, and started the van. They both rolled up their windows to keep the sound out and Peter backed up to get the van out of the trailhead as fast as the old VW could go. As he straightened the wheels and started to drive forward, the head rolled to a stop right in front of them. He swerved to miss it and they were on their way back to town. Ralph kept looking back, trying to see if he could catch a glimpse of the bear, or whatever it was that was throwing more body parts around.

“Hey, there’s the foot. Reset your trip odometer”, Ralph said, looking at the running shoe on the side of the road whiz by.

I’m at 46742 words, almost there…