Then Zena saw the needle. Karen had injected something into her own thigh.
Zena felt a throb of dismay. Karen had seemed like an ideal prospect for the long hauclass="underline" sensible, well-adjusted, handsome. Obviously she wasn’t. Drug addiction would be an overwhelming liability in this situation!
Should she tell the others? No, that would do no good, and the truth would surely emerge in its own course. Besides, she didn’t want to admit she had been peeking.
How much misery and crime was allowed to flourish unchallenged in the world, she wondered, because of the silence of hypocrites like herself? Perhaps it was best that it all be washed out by the deluge. She knew she would have a bad night—but instead she slept soundly throughout.
The bus stopped in the early gloom, waking everyone. Gordon turned off the motor and stood, stretching. “I’m hungry,” he said.
Gus, sleepy, started to protest the delay, then saw what lay ahead. A broad lake obviously too deep to drive through. The Suwannee was at hand!
“I’ve done my stint,” Gordon said as he raided the refrigerator. “No sense wasting gas, which is already low. We’re stranded for the time being.”
He did not really believe in the permanency of the rain, Zena remembered. No sense arguing.
“Thatch, do something!” Gus cried. Gus believed!
Thatch peered about. “No anchorages for pulleys,” he said. “I’m afraid this is it. We’ll just have to swim.”
A fair assessment, Zena thought. The bus had been nice, very nice, but they couldn’t stay in that cocoon forever while the water rose.
“Get this machine across!” Gus shouted. His volume made the others wince. He seemed to be afraid.
Thatch looked at him helplessly. “If I try to drive it there, it’ll stall.”
“Why should it? We caulked it.”
Now Zena remembered: there had been a stop in the night, and some getting out and working. She had heard it, but no one had called her to help and she had been too logy to rise on her own initiative. Thatch and Gordon must have sealed the crevices and panels, or tried to.
“That may keep the water out of the residential section,” Gordon said. “But not out of the motor. It will stall.”
“Maybe it will, maybe it won’t,” Gus said angrily. “Drive, Thatch.”
Thatch shrugged and got into the driver’s seat.
“This is crazy!” Zena said. “It’s useless to—”
The motor started. Thatch drove the vehicle into the water. Zena held her breath, knowing what was going to happen.
But the water was more shallow than it had looked. The bus continued, making enormous splashes to either side. The shore line receded behind, fifty feet, seventy-five, a hundred.
Zena let out her breath. And the motor stalled.
“Now you’ve done it!” Gus said angrily to Thatch.
Zena wanted to yell at Gus, but sighed instead. Yelling might be satisfying, but it would not solve any problems.
Gordon finished his breakfast and went to the bathroom. “I’m going to sleep,” he announced.
Karen looked about. “Is there anything I can take that floats? I can’t swim.”
“You won’t have to swim!” Gus said. “We’re getting this thing across. Time to start pushing, Thatch.”
“We can’t push it that far,” Zena objected. “We tried that before.”
“You can start” Gus said. “It’s still downhill, some. Get moving, Thatch.”
“Get moving, Thatch!” Zena mimicked. “For God’s sake, Gus, downhill means deeper into the water!”
“We can still push,” Karen said. “I’ll help. But let’s eat first.”
“There’s not much food,” Zena said, remembering the woman’s injection of the prior evening. Was Karen in a drug euphoria? “And we don’t want to waste it.” Actually, she hadn’t resented Gordon’s meal. He was an asset to the group; was Karen?
But Karen had found some wrapped lumps of sugar. She opened them and ate them quickly.
They took turns using the little bathroom, where Zena’s several sets of soggy clothing remained in the sink. The closet supply would not last forever; they would have to find a way to dry things. “Don’t flush the toilet,” Zena warned. “We may need the water. We can’t trust what’s outside.”
Karen went back to the bedroom. “Oh!” she said.
Zena came to look. Gloria had remanifested, and was asleep on the couch Karen had used.
“That’s Gordon’s other self,” Zena explained. “He says he is a woman in a male body.”
“He seemed perfectly sensible to me,” Karen said, shaken. “I never guessed he was—”
“He isn’t. Just let him be. Her be. We all have our little secrets.”
Karen looked quickly at her, seeming to comprehend in that moment that Zena knew about her addiction. But she did not speak again.
They went out into the rain-blasted lake: Thatch and Karen and Zena. By common consent they left Gloria to sleep; he/she had done his/her part by driving at night. Gus, of course, was a hopeless case; the girls could not have dragged him out, and Thatch would not.
It was downhill. They pushed, and the bus moved, slowly. And the water deepened, climbing Zena’s thighs. The rain lanced down, as ever.
Zena knew it couldn’t last. They would soon be exhausted, and it would be impossible to get the bus up out of the water without using the pulley system. And impossible to use the pulleys without anchorages. Also, the increasing depth of the water was making things extremely awkward.
They stopped to rest, gasping. “Why do I go along with this idiocy?” Zena asked rhetorically. She was waist-deep now and more than physically weary.
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“What?” Zena looked about, confused. But it had not been Thatch speaking. Gordon had joined them.
“We didn’t see you,” Karen said. “There was only some blonde…”
Gordon grinned. They got together and pushed again, making slightly better progress now that they were four. The water was up to Zena’s shoulders and the whole of the vehicle’s chassis was beneath the troubled surface. They would never get it out of this!
“Stop,” Gordon said.
Zena stopped pushing, glad to get her chin out of the waves. But the bus continued moving. Thatch and Karen also stood back.
They stared as it proceeded without them.
“I was afraid of that,” Gordon said. “The current’s taken it. We have lost control.”
“Current?” Zena felt stupid, perhaps from fatigue. But of course there was a current! All this water was in transit, flowing from high ground to low ground. The bus presented a broad expanse of surface to intercept that force, now that the main body of it was in the water. A much more powerful push than three tired people could produce—or combat.
“The brakes!” Gordon cried, “Gus, put on the brakes!” But it was hardly likely that Gus could hear.
Zena forged up to the front, finding relief in full swimming but barely exceeding the bus’s velocity. She realized that Karen was being quite brave, if she really couldn’t swim, for at the rate they were going the water would soon be over her head.
“Gus—brakes!” Zena cried.
Now Gus heard. “You’ve got her going well! Don’t quit now!”
“We’re not doing it! The current—”
“Current!” Gus looked out the window, alarmed.
The bus kept moving. “Put on the brakes!” Zena screamed.
“I did!” Gus screamed back. “They’re locked!”
“They can’t be. It’s going faster than ever!”
Then, slowly, she realized. The brakes were not working, because the entire vehicle was floating!