Anger replaced her fear with a burning, raging intensity. If she saw Buckner then she’d have gone for him, trying to rip him apart with her bare hands instead of doing her best to escape. It would be a poor revenge, destroying something already dead and sacrificing herself in the process. But she had no idea how much free will she still had. Perhaps she’d never had any.
But if the murdering bastard was back there, maybe the water’s flow was still pressing him against the rear window. So she grabbed the handle that lifted the roof vent and started turning, trying not to gasp out precious air as she found sprains in her arm she didn’t know she had.
It took seconds but it felt like hours, and as she pulled herself up to punch out the propped plastic cover, she thought she saw shadowy movement below her.
Don’t think about it, get out, swim. She pushed her arms through the small opening and propped her elbows either side of the hatch, then pulled. Above her, the surface of the lake glittered with stars and the promise of air. As her hips squeezed through and the feel of open water welcomed her, the Rambler shifted violently beneath her, dragging her sideways and shocking a gasp of precious bubbles from her mouth. She thrashed in the hole, trying to swim herself out, and a hand closed around her ankle.
Somehow she held in the rest of her air.
Dana thrashed, kicked, using her hands to move her body from side to side, shoving down with the heel of her free foot, and she knew that if he grabbed that one too, then he would only have to hold her for a few more seconds until she drowned. Then he’d pull her back into the sunken van and carve her up.
Kicking, her anger raw and red in her eyes, the pressure building in her lungs and her head thumping, she felt her heel connect with something more solid than water, but softer than something alive.
The hand released and she pulled through the hatch, swimming for the surface. When she broke through the cold air in her lungs was soothing, the starlight on her skin welcoming her back to the land of the living.
She trod water for only a few seconds before spying the wooden dock twenty feet to her left. And then she swam for her life.
Ahhh, Sitterson thought, time for beer.
Sometimes at this juncture he’d feel an overwhelming sense of anti-climax, as if something momentous should happen, but never did. And even though he knew that this was all about making certain something momentous didn’t happen, he’d feel an element of being let down. Cheated. All that effort with no visible result.
But not today. Today it had been closer than ever before. If he really let himself think about how close it had been, he’d probably collapse on the floor in a gibbering wreck and not be able to speak coherently for weeks. That time would come, he knew. Nights when he slept alone and the darkness closed in around him like a huge, crushing hand…
So, beer. Celebratory, and also to numb the possibilities that had been avoided. He flipped the lid from the cooler beneath his console, pulled a bottle and lobbed it to Hadley. Then he took out two more, one for himself and one for Lin.
Lin. Joining them to celebrate. He grinned. She’d obviously seen how damn close they’d come, too.
At the rear of the control room, two more mahogany panels had been opened, two more levers pulled, and deep, deep down the blood would have flowed, and the etchings would be filled. Old carvings given new life with someone’s death.
Only one left. And that one…
Well, that one was optional.
“God damn that was close,” Hadley said.
“Photo fuckin’ finish,” Sitterson agreed. “But we are the champions… of the world.” He glanced at Truman and held up a beer. “Tru?”
Truman shook his head.
“I don’t understand. We’re celebrating?”
“They’re celebrating,” Lin said. “I’m drinking.” Sitterson raised his bottle and took a swig, and as he did so he glanced at Lin. Damned if she wasn’t almost smiling. He’d always wondered if she might not be the cold fish he once thought—she couldn’t be as cold as she projected, or she’d be as dead as the Buckners— and perhaps it had taken something like this to warm her up a little. He wondered just how much she’d been warmed up. Whether after festivities had truly taken off, she’d be up for a walk somewhere, a shared bottle of bubbly, a liaison in one of the small admin offices down the corridor.
He chuckled and drank more beer.
“I still don’t understand,” Truman said quietly.
Sitterson pointed at the large monitor, on which a bloodied, exhausted Dana could be seen swimming toward the wooden dock.
“Yeah, but she’s still alive,” Truman said. “How can the ritual be complete?”
“The Virgin’s death is optional,” Hadley said. “As long as it’s last.” He watched the screen for a moment, nursing his beer in his lap. “All that really matters is that she suffers.”
Sitterson stood and leaned on the back of Hadley’s chair.
“And that, she did,” he said with genuine respect. Truman might never understand. The drink was a celebration, and an expression of relief. But it was also a toast to the swimming girl and her four dead friends.
“I’m actually rooting for her, believe it or not,” Hadley said. “The kid’s got spunk, which is more than—”
“This where the party’s at?” someone said. The door was wide open now, and several people were peering inside with huge grins on their faces.
“Hey, thank god,” Hadley called. “Tequila! Get in here!” The people entered—lab smocks, suits, uniforms—one of them carrying a huge bottle of tequila. The new arrivals milled and shook hands, laughed and clapped each other on the back, and even Truman smiled when a cute lab tech started chatting with him, handing him a plastic cup half-filled with booze.
Sitterson watched them all and acknowledged the congratulations that came his way, smiling when a woman flirted mildly with him, laughing when someone from Story said he should go work for them. And all the time his eyes kept flashing back to the big viewing screens that continued to show what was happening down by the cabin in the woods.
I’m actually rooting for her, Hadley had said. Sitterson was too. But he knew that her death would be slow, painful… and soon.
Somehow she found the energy needed to swim. In high school she swam for her school in the state championships, helping them streak to a win in the four-by-one-hundred meter freestyle. The year before, she’d taken part in a sponsored swim in her local river, covering three miles and raising over a thousand dollars for charity. It had always been easy for her. It had always been a pleasure.
Now it was neither.
She slapped at the water instead of slicing her hands through it, her breathing was labored, and she kept her head above the surface, afraid of what she’d see or what would see her if she turned her face beneath. The dock was close, but with every stroke she took it seemed further away than ever. The water was cold, but felt warm and slick as blood. It tasted clean and pure, but she smelled only entrails and death.
Swim, she thought, trying to give herself a regular rhythm. Swim… swim… swim…
She didn’t know if zombies could swim. She didn’t even think these were zombies, not really, not according to the pop-culture use of the word. They seemed to walk and work with intelligence, their only aim to trap and kill her and the others, and she’d seen no evidence of eating… no blood on their jaws. They wanted to kill in the most painful ways, and make them suffer, and she let out a sob as her hand struck a wooden post of the dock.