I kicked at the bottom of the lake, untangling myself from more muck and weeds and trying to push myself out into the lake, trying to move, God damn it, as another bullet punched through the rubber and made a splash right next to my ear. I dropped my head under the water, more icy shock and the whole world gone silent except the ringing in my ears. The water was dark with the stirred-up muck and I was going numb. Only seconds gone by and no hope for Vinnie to do anything at all.
I am losing it, I thought, in a little voice that seemed to be watching the whole struggle from outside my body. I am fighting the water and the weeds and the cold itself and I’m a goner.
I went up and took a breath, went back down, tried to kick my way into the lake, get the raft moving for God’s sake, back up for a breath and back down. A mouthful of dirty water and I’m coughing it up now, my face above the water and the raft folding in on itself.
Another shot and I pushed the raft away from me, the little voice telling me in its obscene calm that the raft was the target and I needed to get away from it. I’m pushing it with both hands but it’s like a wet parachute draped all over me until I go back down and claw at it until it’s moving over me and away at last.
I am upside down now in the water, looking up at the surface without seeing it, my eyes stinging in the filth and weeds and I must be still. God damn it, be still and don’t kick or thrash your arms or your life will end right here in this water.
I am seizing up now with the cold, but the voice says to stay flat and to grab on to the weeds with my hands and keep everything under water, everything but the very tip of my nose, which I must finally slowly slowly move up out of the water, yes, that’s it, just enough to finish breathing out and to draw another breath and pull myself down again, just like that, the voice says, just like that and hold it as long as you can. Vinnie is running in the woods, I can see it in my mind’s eye, running as silently as the wind, as hatred, as vengeance, God damn it, I am so cold I cannot stay like this anymore. I cannot, I cannot.
Another breath, hold it, Alex, hold it, your whole body, just like that, just like that. I am so close to the surface now I can see the sky, see the trees, a cloud, the sun, the sun, the sun, God damn it, I’m gonna have to get out of this water. I’ll run for it and he can shoot me in the back if he wants, I don’t care, I can’t do this for one more second. This is it.
I got up on my hands and knees, fighting my way through the green tentacles and the goddamned muck and tearing up both ankles and both knees getting onto the shore and up the slope into the trees. I knew the shots would come at any second and cut me down, but somehow it didn’t happen. I was up the bank and into the woods, scrambling on ruined legs, finally falling to the ground, sitting up, dripping cold water and covered with dirt and leaves and pine needles. Somehow, I was holding my coat. I didn’t remember grabbing it, but there it was. I wrapped it around myself and looked out at the lake. The raft was mostly submerged, a faint yellow secret in the dark water.
I listened hard. There was nothing to hear but my own breathing.
Vinnie, where are you?
I kept listening. Nothing.
I got to my feet, limped back down toward the water. I stood by a tree, my cheek against the rough bark, and looked out across the water and all along the shore.
Nothing.
The hell with it. I gathered my breath. “Vinnie!”
The sound echoed across the lake and back, then died. There was no answer.
“Vinnie!”
The wind picked up. I was shivering so hard now.
“Alex!”
Dear God. “Vinnie! Where are you?”
“I’m here,” he said.
I looked in every direction. I couldn’t see him.
“To your right,” he said. “About two hundred yards.”
He was in the opposite direction from where we had started, which meant he had to run all that way around the lake. How did he do it?
I made my way over to him, holding the coat tight around me, stumbling my way through the trees. When I finally got there, he was standing still, his back to me.
“Vinnie.”
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t move. When I came up to him, I saw what he was looking at.
Hank Gannon was on the ground, lying on his side. The spear had run clean through his back, out through his chest. There was blood on his shirt, the blood that pumps bright red out of a chest wound and nowhere else. He was shaking and spitting up more blood, and clenching his hands at the spear without touching it. He looked up at us.
“I’ve been asking him why,” Vinnie said.
Gannon moved his lips. He couldn’t speak. He bled and bled and looked at us. A bolt action. 308 rifle was lying on the ground behind him. I reached over him and picked it up. I saw a boater’s key chain sticking out of his hip pocket, the kind with the float attached to it. I took the key chain and put it in my own pocket.
“He won’t tell me,” Vinnie said. “He won’t tell me why he killed my brother. He won’t tell me why he-” Vinnie leaned down to him, “burned him.”
He was about to do something-take Gannon by the throat, kick him, take the spear out and run it through him again. I didn’t want to see it.
“Vinnie,” I said, grabbing his arm. “We need to get out of here. If there’s anybody else up here, they heard the shots. You know they’ll be here soon.”
He wouldn’t move. He kept watching Gannon bleed.
“Come on, I’m going out to the plane.” I didn’t want to leave him there. If someone else was on their way, I didn’t want him to be an easy target.
I pulled him away. When I looked back at Gannon, he was still bleeding, still shaking. He was not dead yet. I knew it would happen soon, but, God help me, when I walked away from him, he was still very much alive.
The last thing I wanted to do was get in that water again, but the raft was long gone, and we needed to get to that plane. “Take your coat off,” I said. “Hold it over your head.”
He took his coat off. He had that same blank expression on his face, the way he looked when I found him fighting off the bears. “We’ve come this far, Vinnie. You’ve got to hold it together just a little bit longer.”
“I’m together, damn it. Let’s go.”
I took my coat off and wrapped it around the rifle. When I waded out into the water, it didn’t even feel cold. I was past feeling it. But I had second thoughts about getting Vinnie out here. I was about to send him back to the shore, but he was already in the water up to his chest. He was gritting his teeth.
I had to fight my way through the muck again, working hard to keep my coat dry, along with Gannon’s rifle. When we were both deep enough, we swam sidestroke, moving slowly through the water.
“Vinnie, you all right?”
He didn’t answer, but he was still swimming. So I kept my eyes on the plane and made myself do it.
Kick, God damn it. Kick.
Fifty yards away, twenty. Finally, we were there. The plane had spun around now, so that the Gannon dummy was on the opposite side. I grabbed onto the float and hauled myself up to the ladder. The side door was ajar. I pulled it open and threw in my coat and the rifle. Vinnie was a few yards behind me. I waited there on the float, shivering like all goddamned hell in the cold wind, until he was close enough for me to grab his hand.
When we were both in the plane, we wrapped ourselves up in our coats. I sat down in the pilot’s seat, took the key chain out of my pocket, and started trying all the keys in the ignition switch.
Vinnie reached down into a paper bag and pulled out a couple of energy bars. He opened them up and gave me one. I sat there looking at it for a moment, not quite registering the fact that this was food in my hand. I finally bit into it and it was like eating chocolate-flavored cardboard. But at that moment it was the best-tasting cardboard I’d ever eaten.