by Paul Cleave
He digs his fingers into the damp ground and twists himself toward Cyris. His killer is facing Feldman and the woman, the shotgun firmly in his hands. Landry uses his arms and his good leg to crawl forward. He starts to close the distance.
One of those shapes in the red landscape is Charlie. He grins. He guesses he’s on a first-name basis with the guy, now that he’s about to save his life. When he wanted to kill him, it was Feldman. Now it’s Charlie. He nods at Charlie, and Charlie nods back. Message received. He reaches into his right pocket. Charlie took the keys to the handcuffs, but not both sets. For as long as he’s been a cop he’s always carried a spare handcuff key in case his own cuffs were used against him. It’s a trick that Theodore Tate taught him. Of all people, Tate is the last person he wants to be thinking of right now. He curls his fingers around the key and pulls it out.
Unbelievably, his hands are steady. The key slots in on the first attempt. He undoes the left bracelet and leaves the right one attached.
He crawls closer to Cyris knowing this is the last thing he will ever do.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Cyris is shouting at them and Jo can’t make out the words. She’s too cold, too confused, and she’s pretty sure her hearing may be permanently shot. You never see that in the movies-you don’t see bank robbers and homicide artists getting doctor’s appointments to have hearing aids fitted. She glances at the river, but knows only drowning waits for her there. It looks black and cold enough to stop her heart, assuming it’s still beating when she hits the surface-which at this point is a big assumption. She should have trusted Charlie. Should have trusted herself because she wanted to believe him.
The policeman is crawling toward Cyris. He has nodded at Charlie, and Charlie has nodded back, and she’s pretty sure something is about to happen, and she’s pretty sure she’s too cold and scared to go along with the plan, but she’ll do her best. The policeman’s leg is a mess.
One day, when she was a kid, her dad was driving off to work and she was standing in the driveway waving goodbye. There was a rabbit behind the car. They didn’t live on a farm, but in suburbia, so the rabbit must have been somebody’s pet. The damn thing didn’t move, it just stayed still, and by the time Jo saw it and screamed at her dad to stop, it was too late. He backed over it. The resulting mess, the insides of that rabbit, the way its innards seemed to take up more room on the outside than when on the inside, well, that’s where her mind went when she saw the policeman’s knee. It looked just like that. Except where there was fur all those years ago, there is a shredded pair of pants. She cried for days back when she was a kid. She’ll cry for days now too if she’s given the chance.
The policeman drags his leg, the raw wound of meat-that’s how she thinks of it now-behind him. He’s managed to unlock one of the cuffs. She knows what he’s going to try, but what she doesn’t know is if it’ll work. He makes his last lurch forward and latches the empty cuff around Cyris’s ankle. Both men yell out at the same time: Cyris in a loud “No,” and Landry in an even louder “Run.” Cyris stamps hard on the policeman’s hand. She sees the fingers buckle beneath his boots, and when Cyris steps away, the splintered fingers are splayed out like road signs pointing in all the wrong directions, but the handcuffs keep the two men joined. With his other hand the policeman throws the key into the darkness.
Cyris levels the shotgun down to the back of Landry’s head.
“Come on,” Charlie says, tugging her hand. She turns toward him. He doesn’t need to tell her what they need to do. They switch hands and step toward the river. There’s no hesitation. The shotgun explodes behind her, but she doesn’t look back to see what has happened. She stares into the water and a second later they’re falling into it.
She sinks as if a large stone has been shackled to her ankles, but the only extra weight she has is Charlie. She clings tightly to his hand as her nose and mouth fill with water that is far colder than she thought water could ever be. So cold it burns her eyes, and for all her efforts all she can see is nothing. This is complete and utter lack of any light. It feels heavy, almost appealing. For a moment-a long moment, impossibly longer than it ought to be, her heart stops. She’s sure of it. Doctors might disagree, but for a second or two the cold is enough to stop it beating, but then the shock of adrenaline starts it back up. She kicks upward, but it feels like she’s kicking at nothing. The current is moving them, but to where she doesn’t know. Maybe only deeper. Maybe nowhere at all. Maybe right back to Cyris. All three of those things panic her, but then, strangely, after a few more seconds, none of them do. She feels calm. It’s peaceful beneath the water. Quiet. And the prospect of drowning isn’t really that scary. In fact it’s almost. . almost what?
The answer is relaxing. Drowning is almost relaxing, and hadn’t she heard that somewhere before? Or read it?
Her feet hit something and she automatically pushes off from it, her survival instinct kicking in. Charlie moves in the same direction and she guesses his feet hit the same thing. The current twisting them, moving them through a corridor of no light, no sound. The relaxing feeling has disappeared. That panic from a few seconds ago takes hold, its hold so tight it makes her lungs burn.
They break the surface. It’s so quick she barely manages to suck in some air before being dragged back under. Charlie pulls her tighter toward him, then she feels part of him hitting something, but she can’t tell what. Her head hits something, something soft that she’s sure is part of Charlie. The pain is warm and reminds her all is not lost, but she’s not sure if Charlie will be feeling the same way. She manages to get above the surface again, but only for a moment, just enough to see the water angry around her. Charlie is pinned to a boulder, his back spread evenly across it, and the current is pushing her into him. He’s still holding the flashlight, only it’s not going anymore. The angle of the stream, the strength of the current, she’s not sure they’re going to be going anywhere either. She sucks in a deep breath and isn’t sure how much longer she can fight before the water pulls her back down.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
You’re shooting at nothing, Cyris, shooting at nothing.
The boulders he hits are laughing at him, and inside the laughter he can hear them telling him things he doesn’t want to hear. He shuts them up by firing the gun again and again, and his fingers feel heavy against the trigger.
Charlie and his girlfriend have gone, gone into the river and gone from sight, and maybe forever. He’s left out here in the darkness. Oh God, it’s so dark. The moon is up there, but it’s covered by cloud, and all he can see is absolutely nothing. He hates the black moon. He wants to kick it, but has to settle for screaming.
He moves away from the river. The handcuff is still attached to his ankle, the other cuff has flesh and blood scorched against it because his first shot after Charlie and the bitch woman jumped into the water was into the policeman’s hand. It blew apart into a pulpy mist. He walks back over to that policeman now. He points the shotgun at the cop’s head.
“Where’s the key?” he asks, but he already knows the answer. The key will be somewhere in the forest, out there making friends with the hedgehog he stood on earlier.
The cop doesn’t answer. His answering days are in the past, back there with days of breathing and thinking. This guy ain’t living no more. And now he has a stupid set of handcuffs hanging from his ankle. No way to shoot them off without shooting himself in the foot.
He searches the policeman for a flashlight, but finds only a packet of matches. He lights the first match and the rain puts it out, and the second, and the third, and suddenly he’s out of matches, just like that. The only thing he can think of that might help is to throw the dead cop into the river, which he does, only it doesn’t help at all. It was stupid to think that it even would. It does make him feel better, though-mentally, at least, but picking that bastard up has hurt his stomach. He presses his hand against his wound as he walks in the direction he thinks he came from. Then he digs his heavy fin
gers into his wet pocket and pulls out the bottle with the twist-off cap, but the cap won’t move, not at first, but in the end it does, and he swallows two pills, maybe three-he loses count. What he needs is the shit his buddy gave him years ago, but that’s all used up. He doesn’t know if he can get more. There’s his wife’s morphine-but he vowed never to touch that. Shit-has he touched it already?
He tries to remember how long he walked earlier, and for some reason his mind goes back to the other night. He cut one of the breasts off one of those women, and then he put it in a cardboard box, and then he left it in Charlie Feldman’s house. Why the fuck did he do that? He’s never done anything like that before and, come to think of it, he’s not even real sure he did that the other night. There’d be no reason to. Unless doing random shit is a good reason.
He looks for a track, but the black moon keeps it hidden. He wishes he had a flashlight, then remembers that he does-it’s the same flashlight he used earlier to read the note in his pocket. It’s only a small one, but it will do the job so he pulls it from his pocket and turns it on. He walks further from the cave and river, and he keeps on walking, following the sound of the water because he seems to remember hearing it on the way here, but this time he keeps it on his right. His stomach hurts. Hurts like a bitch.
A moment later vomit erupts from him, and his thoughts seem to focus for a few seconds as the drugs leave his stomach, but surely they’re in his system by now, aren’t they? He wishes he knew. For a few seconds things are clear and he knows the painkillers are killing much more than the pain. They’re killing his ability to think. He knows the shotgun is empty and knows there has to be more to all of this than just killing.
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.
“How far do you think we’ve traveled?” I ask. I stutter the sentence out. My teeth keep chattering. Any harder and they’re going to break.
Jo shrugs. “What time does your watch say? Mine isn’t waterproof.”
I look at my watch, but can’t make anything out. I hold it up to my eyes and try to focus, but it’s no good-it’s just a blur of hands and dashes. Jo seizes my wrist and holds it in front of her face.