Solo Camping (Short Story)

The black blob silhouetted on Anna’s tent top terrified her to the point that she could not peel her eyes off it. It kept tricking her by moving ever so slightly in the shine of a nearly full moon. Her Thermarest was perfectly placed, her sleeping bag snug around her exhausted body, her muscles humming from the day’s uphill hike. All conditions were perfect for a peaceful night’s rest wrapped in the arms of the mountain, except for that shape that kept her eyes pried open. There was no hope of the darkness of sleep to slide over her mind anytime soon, and she knew it. As she lay there, she tried to conjure images that were happy and familiar to her, tried to imagine herself at home, asleep in her big cozy bed. Bella certainly had no trouble; she was curled up at Anna’s feet with her head resting on Anna’s ankle. Just like at home, she was out as soon as the lamp had gone out, her snore just a slight flutter of air through her brown muzzle. “Stupid dog,” Anna thought fondly, “just go on to sleep without me.”
Claustrophobia was a battle Anna continually faced. She had hoped that all the time and energy she spent hiking that day would pay off in an easy drift off to a restful night’s sleep. She always hoped this, and it never worked. Neither the crisp mountain air nor the open night sky could negate the feeling of the stuffy tent and the tightness of the sleeping bag that never seemed to have quite enough room, even though she had paid more than enough money for both specifically because of their roominess. It was a battle in her mind, and she knew there was not a tent or sleeping bag that would make her comfortable enough. She thought for a moment of just leaving Bella in the tent and sleeping out on the ground instead, but there was a threat of rain and a soaked sleeping bag would not be pleasant to deal with. Just as she had in the past, Anna resigned herself to the idea of a broken night’s sleep with hopefully enough rest for her weary muscles to make the next day bearable.
With her eyes still glued to the black blob, Anna scanned her mind over the events of the day. Getting started was simple enough; Bella had been excited about the trip ever since Anna pulled out her old back pack. The chocolate Labrador had been bouncing around their little apartment for days, sniffing over all their equipment as if to check its durability. Anna had laid out the tent in the living room and popped it up. Her plan had been to sleep in it for a few nights before the trip in hopes of battling her phobia, but each morning she had awoken in her bed, music blaring from the alarm clock. Regardless of her unconscious move in the night, Bella had stayed in the tent, looking up at Anna with the expression a mother would give a silly child. Even though Anna had several dogs through out her life, none had bonded with her like Bella, and none were as protective as that dog could be. Like a normal lab, Bella was an overactive people lover and not normally wary of strangers, but Anna knew from experience that Bella could sense something about people that Anna herself could not. When Bella was on guard around someone, then Anna knew she should be too.
Anna turned from these fond thoughts to their day on the trail. As they set off from the truck, Bella, who normally stayed at Anna’s left hand, trotted ahead a few yards, sniffing uncontrollably. She then stopped abruptly, cut off into the woods, and circled around behind Anna, taking up her customary spot. Anna assumed she was just checking out their surroundings, making sure everything was in its natural order. Together they fell into the rhythm of the hike and made good time to their first stopping point. Bella splashed into the cold water of the Thompson River as Anna dropped down on a rock to enjoy their first break. The citadel of color in the tree canopy played tricks on the water in still spots, and the dog swam tirelessly, breaking apart the reflections with her sleek body only to have them reunite once she’d passed. At that point in her reflective reverie, Anna started to drift off to sleep, her reminisce from the day morphing more into a dream. Her dream Bella suddenly turned to her from the creek water and asked, “What was that sound?”
Anna sat up suddenly in the tent and hit her forehead on the lamp she’d hung from the loop at the tent’s apex. “Ow, crap!” she said loudly, rubbing her head. She was not the only one awake. Bella stood silently over Anna’s feet. She turned her boxy head toward the woman, and in the moon light in the tent, Anna could see her brown eyes full of warning to be quiet. The dog’s body was aimed at the front of the tent, her tail down in apprehension, the hair between her shoulders bristling slightly. From the left of the tent, a twig snapped loudly, and Anna’s heart quickened in her chest. Bella crouched slightly, still staring at the tent door, still silent. As the leaves rustled closer to the tent, every doubt was erased from the mind of the woman and the dog. Someone was out there, and both the woman and the dog knew that someone was coming into their tent.
A low grumbling started in Bella’s throat, barely audible, as time slowed and Anna’s heart quickened. She knew with clarity that she was going to have to protect herself, and she felt into her sleeping bag for the knife she kept there. She silently unsheathed it and ran her thumb over the blade, checking the sharp scrape and trying to muster her confidence. She had a weapon, she was not going to go easily, and then, time caught up with her heart as adrenaline pumped into her system. It happened in an instant. Deafening barks met the ripping of the tent flap, and the air was suddenly filled with the noise of a struggle. But Anna was not a part of it. She could make out two figures in the low light; her dog and a medium sized person who she figured to be a man from the low grunts emitting from his throat. Bella had him by the forearm as he flailed half in and half out the torn flap of the tent. Reluctant to relent on her grip, Bella’s growls deepened, and suddenly the two creatures disappeared.
The man had backed through the tent flap with the dog in tow. Here he could use his full strength to wrestle with the dog. Anna could see their forms in the light around the tent and thought over her options. There was no time to run by them, and that was no real advantage, especially through thousands of acres of forest barefooted. She would have to face this attacker, but she knew from the struggle going on outside her tent that the man was not armed. If he had been, it was unlikely that Bella would still be alive. No report from a firearm had blasted the air, and Anna could tell that the two were still locked in a fierce struggle. Her knife was ready, and she thought it best to wait for the man to come to her. The rustle of leaves, the growls from Bella, and the man’s curses continued in the night for another few seconds: then Anna heard a heavy thump and total silence.
“Thank you, Bella,” Anna thought, instantly feeling that her dog was gone. Grief would have to come later. There was a man crawling into her tent.
“I bet you aint as tough as that dog,” he said to her. She stayed quiet, and he sat back on his heels to survey his victim. “Not comin for me?” he asked. Anna could see the man’s arm wet with dark liquid and felt her heart warm to what her dog had tried to do for her. “Thanks for the break, lady,” the man said as he caught his breath. Then he moved suddenly to her, trapping her under his thick body. Still in her sleeping bag, Anna’s hand gripped the knife handle tightly, waiting for what she felt would be the right time. “I been watchin you today. You was all stretched out there by the crick on that rock, and I thought to myself, this is gonna be a sweet night,” he breathed into her ear.
With every word, Anna’s resolve thickened. There was no need to plea for her life. There was no need to beg for his mercy. He wouldn’t give it, she knew, and neither would she when it came to be his turn. She could feel him fumbling for the bag zipper, trying to find his way in. Her hand was ready, and, as he yanked down on the zipper pull, she aimed the blade of the knife upright and stabbed directly into his belly through the sleeping bag. He fell back cursing and Anna was instantly out of the sleeping bag. The man grabbed at her ankle as she tried to crawl past him, but she answered him with another quick stab into the soft flesh of his back, just beneath the shoulder blades.
The man kept cursing, swearing from pain and anger and frustration. Anna knew to escape, she was going to have to kill him. Wounding him was not enough. He would find her and finish her eventually even if she did get away tonight. She needed a clean swipe at him. She reached quickly into his shaggy hair and tangled it around her hand. “This is the face you’ll see in your dreams, sweetness,” she heard him say as one hand pulled his head back. Her knife wielding hand swept cleanly across his neck, and her struggle was over. She scrambled out of the tent, with one hand still tightly gripping the knife and the other hand webbed with strands of the man’s hair.
Crawling out of her tent and into the gray misty morning, Anna searched the ground for Bella. She found her crumpled at the foot of a big oak tree where she had hung their backpack. The dog was still, but her brown eyes were open and staring at Anna. As she moved closer, the dog whimpered slightly but a look of relief washed over the canine’s eyes. Anna dropped the pack out of the tree and dug through it for her cell phone. “I can get service from the ridge,” she said to the dog, “Hold tight, girl.”
Within an hour, the forest service swarmed Anna’s campsite. She sat against the trunk of the oak with her dog’s head in her lap, refusing to look into the tent. The signs of a struggle were too obvious for anyone to believe that Anna’s reaction was anything but self defense. Bella had come around more, and, although Anna was unsure of exactly what had gone on between the dog and the man, she was sure that Bella was fine. The two rangers regarded her with a mixture of fear and awe. How could such a normal looking woman have done this? As the area police arrived on the scene, Anna found out that the man who lay lifeless in her tent was a serial rapist. The police matched him immediately with the profile of a man they had been keeping tabs on for months who had recently dropped out of sight. They had been hoping at the very least that he had moved on, and there was no doubt from this scene that Anna was in no way to blame for this man’s death. Not on a legal level, anyway.
Anna looked away as they removed the body and zipped it into its own black, plastic sleeping bag. The men packed her belongings into carefully labeled plastic bags and dropped her tent to a heap on the ground. Anna’s eyes swept over the black North Face logo on the tent’s roof. Her black blob, what had kept her restless through the night, was the triple hump of a silhouetted mountain. Such a simple thing to scare someone so much, and, at that moment, Anna knew her claustrophobia had been overcome. She knew she would be whole, and, within a year, she and Bella found themselves by the Thompson River again.