"Please, Eric, get rid of it," Tracy pleaded.

Eric's hands were clutching the lapels of a sopping denim jacket. Inside the jacket slumped the bloated body of a young man in his early twenties. Water lapped his chest as he bobbed next to the canoe. Exact age was hard to determine because the skin was so puffy with water. Rubbery, like moist bread dough. Parts of the face had been nibbled away by fish, particularly the lips and the right side of the mouth all the way back to the cheekbone. The clenched teeth that showed through the flapping flesh hinted at the grinning skeleton lurking beneath.

But Eric's purpose in hauling him out of the water to show her was clear now. So was his warning. A wooden arrow had drilled through the face just to the left of the nose and was sticking out the back of the skull.

"Seen enough?"

She nodded, unable to work her frozen mouth.

Eric wrapped his fingers around the wooden arrow and firmly tugged. The shaft moved slowly at first, reluctant.

"What the hell are you doing?" Tracy asked, horrified.

"We may need the arrow." He added a little more muscle, twisting the arrow as he pulled. Finally it dislodged from the skull. The soggy skin tore easily, clinging to the wood like wet tissue paper. Eric swirled the shaft in the water a few times, rinsing it clean, then handed it to Tracy. "Put it in your quiver with the others."

She held the arrow, said nothing.

Eric pushed the dead man away from the canoe and wiped his hands on the thighs of his Levis. They watched the boy's lifeless arms flop into the water, the swollen body rotate face down with black water bubbling like a fountain through the hole in the back of his head.

"That's why you keep your head down," Eric said, kneeling back down and grabbing his paddle. "Understand?"

Tracy tucked the arrow into her quiver next to the long bow, fighting the surge of nausea clawing in her stomach. Her mouth tasted bitter, metallic, as if she'd been sucking a rusty nail. Fresh blood. Sometime within the last minute she'd bit her lower lip. She prodded the wound with her tongue, then ignored it. She fished the fallen carrot stub from the canoe and finished the last two bites.