She tore her eyes away from the creek and looked at Tommy, his face calm, deliberate, still calculating slowly.
"Is it passable?" she asked. Her voice, she was pleased to note, was steady, though shouting helped.
He pursed his lips and seemed to come to a decision. He straightened and shouted back at her.
"I think so. There used to be four logs, but if those three haven't gone, they probably won't now."
Probably.
Probably was very little protection against that hungry-looking water. Probably was no help at all if the extra joggling of her weight caused a log to slip out from its wedged mooring and toss her gaily into the torrent that—
She pushed the thought into a closed room, shut the door hard, and set her mind to the job.
"Thanks, Tommy, I couldn't have found it without your help. I won't have any problems finding the Road—"
"Oh, no, I'm not going to leave you now," he said, and before she could grab him, he was into the muddy water. The three logs settled obediently under his weight, bound together somehow, and although his feet disappeared under the water, he walked surely across and up onto the other side and turned in the loose tangle of branches to wait for her.
Kate took a step into the water and stopped as a chilling little thought bubbled up into her mind. Tommy Chester is a suspect, said the little singsong voice. Tommy is not completely right between the ears, said the voice, and Tommy found the first body, and, yes, it made him sick but what if he himself did put it there, and what if he's waiting to give those logs a nudge when you're out on them? She looked across at the darkening hillside, less than twenty feet away. Was that a shadow across his face, or was he smirking at her?
She took another step into the icy water, and another, until the toes of her shoes hit the rough end of one of the logs, and she looked up at Tommy, who stood, waiting, in the water at the other end. Half consciously she lowered the zipper of her jacket, and she stepped onto the logs.
It actually was a bridge—uneven and very wet, but it was thirty inches wide, and the logs did hold together as a unit.
Tommy didn't move, and she took another step, and another, and now she could feel the water tug at her feet, and she walked with bent knees, her arms outstretched. Tommy didn't move, and she took three more steps into the grasping torrent, and three more, and she was four feet from the far end when her shoes betrayed her and she went down.
Her right arm caught around the top log, and she clung desperately as the full force of the water sucked her body into the middle of the stream and pulled. Her muscles fought to get one leg up, around the logs, to sit up, and she might have made it, might have won, but for the shifting of her body on the tenuous balance of the wood in the water. She felt the whole bridge shift violently and cried out, tried to scramble to the bank, so close, and a wave slapped her face as the bridge became a raft, and she flung her left hand hopelessly toward solid ground, and it connected with flesh, a hard, warm human hand that gripped her wrist like a vise and held her gasping and blind in the water as the logs scraped and slithered across her body, struck her hip a glancing blow and began their brief journey to the sea.
She was buried in water, but the hand was still there, one solid reality in the tumbling, shocking, cold universe. She worked her other hand up to the bony wrist above her and clung. Something touched her side, and again, and then a third time, and she realized that she was among the tangle of branches that dragged into the water and that the rush of the stream was slightly less powerful here. She got her face to the surface, gulped a wet breath and coughed violently, but managed to catch a glimpse of the bare branches that surrounded her. The grip on her wrist held, though it must be costing him a lot to hang on, she knew, and she raised her head again to look for a branch big enough to take her weight. There were none this far out, but she forced her free hand to let go of his wrist, slowly, and plunged her arm up into the tangle, pulling herself deeper into the thicket, and then her legs found a submerged purchase and, half lying on her back, she shoved and pulled and scrabbled up and out of the current, which seemed to gibber its disappointment as she cleared the branches and collapsed on the bank beyond, coughing and retching.
It was some time before she could speak. ,
"You can let go of my wrist now, Tommy."
"I can't."
She turned her head and looked at him where he lay, arms fully outstretched between the anchoring tree and her hand, his feet in the water, a distressed look on his face. She started to giggle, then, in relief and the dregs of terror and the absurdity of their position.
"Well, you'll have to, damn it, or my hand will fall off."
He started laughing too, then, and the two drenched and filthy creatures lay guffawing helplessly on the edge of the mindless creek, until Kate finally crawled to her knees and pried his grip, finger by finger, from her wrist. She rubbed her hand to bring back the circulation and watched Tommy slowly flex the abused muscles of his arms and chest and try to move his hands.
"You're going to be damn sore tomorrow, Tommy."
He thought for a moment. "Not as sore as you'd be if I'd let you go."
"No," she agreed, and started to laugh again until sensation came back to her fingers. She staggered to her feet, moved away from the water, and sat down on a log to begin the necessary process of removing several gallons of water from shoes and clothing. The weakness in her hands was terrible, and she concentrated on squeezing out the sodden jacket until she looked up to see Tommy seriously pouring about a quart of water from a boot, and she started laughing again, weakly, until she needed to go behind the bushes, but the thought of peeling off her wet, clinging trousers was too much for her, so she just lay back and laughed until the tears came, and then the telephone rang.
It was the walkie-talkie, crackling and muffled by the water-sogged heap of cloth and its plastic covering. It squawked angrily for quite some time before Kate uncovered and unwrapped it.
"Good evening, Al, at least I assume this is Al—who else would call at such a totally inconvenient time? Remind me to tell you sometime what I think of your telephone calls, Al. What can I do for you? Over."
His voice came blasting tinnily out from the machine.
"Thank God you're all right, are you all right, and what about Chesler? Tyler saw what he said looked like the bridge wash by a minute ago. Over."
"It was the bridge. We're both wet but thanks to Tommy unhurt, just bangs and a mild case of hysterics, but if I sit here and chat with you we'll both freeze to death, so I think I'll sign off if it's all the same to you." And she did so.
All four feet squished as they walked, but despite the wind the effort of movement kept the cold from becoming seriously threatening, and the path back to the Road was both shorter and less strenuous than it had been on the other side. It was nearly full dark when they reached the deserted road.
"Where are we now, Tommy?"
"About a half a mile up from the washout."
"Then it's about a mile to the Dodsons?"
"Is that where we're going?"
"No, you're going home. It shouldn't take you more than ten minutes and it's not that dark. I'm going on up."
Tommy stood for a long minute, his face screwed up with the effort of thought. Then he shook his head and turned decisively uphill.
"I suppose you can threaten me with your gun, or handcuff me to a tree, but short of that you won't get rid of me. Tyler told me to guide you, and that's what I'm going to do. Sorry, Casey, you're stuck with me." She saw his teeth flash white in the dark and heard him move off. She fell in beside him and undipped the flashlight from her belt.