He continues to walk. He’s passing branches that have snapped. Somebody came this way. Suddenly there’s a lull in the storm and another flash of clarity comes to him, and he knows what’s happening. He reaches into his pocket for the painkillers, then throws them as far as he can into the trees. He hears them rattling as they fly through the air, then they are gone forever and already he misses them. He pushes ahead. He can see shapes-no light, but shapes-and he realizes that some of the branches here are pushed back so perhaps this is a track, a track after all. He smiles and laughs, then stops and rests a hand across his throbbing stomach. He sucks in a deep breath and the duct tape holding the wound closed feels hard beneath his fingers. He reaches into his pocket for the painkillers, but can’t find them, then searches his other pockets, but they’re not there either. Must have left them at home. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
He carries on walking, yeah, yeah, and his body is cold, so cold, but at least he’s wearing a jacket, and at least he’s not the one in the water. He wonders if good old Charles is dead yet. He scratches a hand across his face and buries his fingers beneath his beard, then flicks the nails over his skin and draws blood. He needs to think. Thinking and walking, that’s all he has to do, and he does this as he moves deeper into the darkness, hoping he won’t be lost forever-and forever started around nine o’clock the previous night.
“Into the realm of dark never he traveled,” he says, wondering what he’s talking about, if he’s even spoken. Hopefully Charlie will survive the river. The woman too. Because he’s just remembered he’s doing this for the money. And going through all of this has to have been worth something.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I’m stuck.
I’m pressed against a boulder and I don’t have the strength to roll myself away. One moment I can breathe, the next I can’t as water splashes into my mouth. Jo is against me, her head pressing into my chest.
If I drown right here and now, will the current keep me pressed against this boulder? Probably. Yes. At least until the rain eases off and the river calms down-if that can even happen. Maybe the river is always like this.
My strength is gone. Drained by the efforts of the night, the efforts of the week, drained by the lack of oxygen. If I can just get a deeper breath, then maybe. . maybe I can fight back.
My hands are becoming numb. I have never been in water so cold. Somehow I’m still holding the flashlight, and somehow I manage to unscrew the base. The batteries drop into the water and I can’t feel my body enough to know if they hit me on their way past, off to wherever it is that batteries go underwater. I unscrew the top of the flashlight and let it go the way of the battery. I’m left with a tube. I lift one end above the water and hold the other end to my mouth. The air above is cool and I drink it in and my energy returns, not quickly, but at least it’s something. I put the tube in Jo’s mouth and she gets the concept quickly, and we’re able to climb a few more inches.
“We need to roll away at the same time,” I tell her.
“What?”
“We need to roll away at the same time!”
“We should roll away at the same time!” she says.
In other circumstances I’d roll my eyes at that. But not these circumstances.
“On three,” I tell her. “We go left.”
“Your left?” she shouts.
“My left. One. Two. Three!” With renewed yet frozen energy I push away at the rock, Jo pushing with me, and we twist out into the current. Nothing at first, it seems we’re dead in the water, then suddenly something hits us hard, and it takes me a second or two to realize it’s a body. It’s Landry. The impact gets us free from the rock, and suddenly we’re traveling down the river with the dead man, gasping for air as we bob up and down, breathing in cold water, cold air, cold rain. I have nothing to hold on to except the wet darkness and Jo. As I fumble against the water, I sense more than see the branches that jut from the bank toward us like spears. They try to stab and skewer as we rush by, try to hold us with wooden fingers beneath the surface. I stay in front of Jo, trying to take the impacts away from her, Landry only a few feet or so ahead of me, not trying to do anything. When a bright orange flare lights up the night sky I genuinely believe help has arrived, but soon realize the glow is inside my head, ignited by the back of my skull cracking into a boulder. When it happens again only a few moments later the flare is gray.
Floating or drowning-I can’t tell the difference now and don’t think it matters. My grip on Jo weakens with each knock I take and I’m so cold I can’t tell if her fingers are still clutching me.
As the water pulls us down for seconds at a time, I drift and so does my perception of time. More boulders, and I slam into them, but there’s no pain. I wonder if death will have feeling. My eyes close and open, but there’s darkness either way. I hardly feel a thing when my cold body comes to rest against a fallen tree. Thick dead branches cradle me above the water as my feet dangle in the current ahead. The tree bridges the width of the river. Jo is trying to claw herself from the water. I lean my face against the tree, scratching it on the bark. I watch as Jo comes toward me. Her arms reach for my arms. I kick at the water while she tries to pull me from it, and when I’m closer I clutch at branches and bark and pull myself along as though climbing a sideways ladder. This woman I kidnapped, this woman I’ve nearly killed, is trying to save me. Maybe this is why I love her.
The current swirls around my legs, begging me to join it, but it had its chance and lost. My feet touch the riverbed and I continue forward, and soon the water is only up to my waist, my thighs, my knees. When it’s around my ankles I collapse, my body slapping into the muddy bank. I look back at the water. Landry is pinned against the tree, but it’s too dark to tell which way he is facing.
I roll onto my back. The rain drums against my eyelids. I think about my warm bed-lying in it with a hot water bottle between my feet and another behind my back. All I want to do now is go to sleep. I start thinking of a Friday or a Saturday night, so I can sleep all day and then the next. I close my eyes. Something touches my face. It’s frightening away my sleep. I open my eyes to see Jo slapping me. Only I can’t feel it. I can see it, but that’s all.
“Come on, Charlie, wake up.”
I am awake. Can’t she see that? I try to tell her, but it’s hard since my lips and tongue no longer work. Somebody must have removed them.
“Charlie!”
She slaps me hard and again I open my eyes. Does she really think this kind of tough love is going to work? I brace my elbows against the ground and try to tilt my body upward.
“Charlie!” Jo’s slapping me again and I open my eyes again. I know she’s angry at me, but this is all too much. I’m no longer propped up. She needs to save herself rather than hanging around just to abuse me.
I explain this in careful detail. “Juss wev’m ere.”
“You got me into this mess, Charlie. You can help get us out of it.”
She stands and grabs the front of my wet shirt. My body bows forward as she pulls. I reach up weakly and grab hold of her arms. My mind is still a maze of confusion. My right eye is aching-it feels as though somebody has stapled it directly into the socket, only backward. The inside of my head is pounding, over and over, over and over. I manage to sit up and with more of Jo’s encouragement I force myself onto my knees, then onto my feet. I hang on to the nearest tree to get balanced and then on to Jo as we make the first steps. And I’m exhausted. We rest against a tree. Now we have to pick a direction.