by Otto Schafer
Another chunk of giant floated past them, quickly disappearing into the drainage tunnel. Garrett couldn’t tell if it was a leg or an arm. The tunnel was filling, and time was running out. Shit, we have to go, he thought. He turned to David. “You remember back in the dojo when you said you believe in me, but that I need to believe in myself?”
David’s eyebrows stitched together.
This was it. There would be no second chances. “You remember when you guys said you would follow me, even into fire? Well, this isn’t fire, but I’m asking you to trust me, to believe in me now.” Garrett turned back to David, his eyes shimmering in the low light of the headlamp. “I know you’re scared, David. We’re all scared, but believe in me now. We have to try! There’s no other way! Something is tearing that giant apart, and we’re about to get flushed.” He put his hand on David’s shoulder and pressed his lips into a flat line. “Follow me, David! I won’t let you down.”
David pressed his palms against the sides of his head. “Alright. Ah!” He nodded. “This is nuts, man! This is the craziest shit ever, but alright.” He sucked in a breath and clenched his fist, trying to control the fear. “What’s the plan?”
Garrett looked at Lenny and Pete.
Lenny forced a weak smile. “Balls.”
Pete shrugged.
Garrett let out a single relieved exhale. He didn’t know why he was relieved. He had just convinced his friends to follow him into a plunge to their deaths.
They positioned Coach on the edge next to the rushing water of the drainage tunnel, careful not to let him get washed away. “Okay, everyone grab ahold of Coach, and no matter what, don’t let go of him. He will be the link that keeps us all together. When you hit the river, swim like crazy for the bank and whatever you do, don’t let go of Coach.”
Everyone nodded, reluctantly working their way into position.
“Wait,” Lenny said, holding up a hand for quiet. “Did you hear that?”
Everyone froze, trying to listen for whatever Lenny had heard over the roar from the drainage tunnel. Then they all heard it. The shrieking of a rat being tossed about by a wave of crashing water heading right toward them.
“Guys, there’s nothing blocking that crevice anymore!” David shouted.
But then they heard something else – a voice. “Steady now! Stay… steady!”
“That’s Paul!”
“Now! Go!” Garrett yelled, grabbing ahold of Coach’s arm as he jumped into the drainage tunnel. Simultaneously everyone else did the same. David hugged one of Coach’s legs, Pete grabbed the other, and Lenny latched onto the arm opposite Garrett’s with one hand and his staff with the other.
Instantly they were swept away with a rush.
41
Into the River
Wednesday, April 6 – God Stones Day 1
Petersburg, Illinois
Underwater, Garrett’s ears filled with the roar of churning water mixed with high-pitched screeches as he and the others tangled and tumbled with the giant rat.
To and fro, Garrett was tossed before suddenly he was slammed against the bottom of the drainage pipe, a great furry weight crushing him then scrambling over him. For a brief instant, he thought all the air would be forced from his lungs, and in that moment, Garrett was sure he would die. Bre flashed through his mind. The thought of not keeping his word to Paul hurt more than the heavy rat squishing him. He wanted to live. To see them all, to keep his promise to Paul – to save Bre. He fought the urge to breathe, visualizing Bre’s eyes, her smile – her beauty. He was so close to giving in to the urge when he realized something. He had never heard Bre laugh. Oh, it must be a beautiful laugh. Probably the most beautiful sound god had ever created. He wanted so bad to know that laugh.
Garrett squeezed Coach’s arm for dear life, nearly losing it, but holding on. Then he was weightless, falling, ejected from the drainage pipe like so much refuse, and sent hurling through the wet night air. Time around him seemed to slow, but he wasn’t doing it. The moment was just so surreal. He sucked in a short gasp of air, aware of the rat, water, his friends, and even Paul – all falling weightless with him. Sightless in the night, he could only feel their consciousnesses around him. He gasped in again, shallowly, as he smashed into the river below, landing hard on his back amongst a tangle of knees and elbows, the river stealing the air from his lungs.
When Garrett’s body struck the water, he was ripped away from Coach. He moved with the current, frantically gasping for breath that wouldn’t come as he searched around for Coach and the others. But he was alone. He wanted to yell, and now that his head was above water, he should have been able to breathe, but his body wouldn’t let him. His diaphragm had tensed in spasms from the impact. He had had the wind knocked out of him before, but this felt so much worse than he had remembered. He heard a voice. Lenny! Garrett spun in a circle and found Lenny’s headlamp glowing in the distance.
“Garrett! Garrett!” Lenny shouted.
“Leeennnnnnyyy!” Garrett rasped, barely above a whisper. He sucked in short pulls of air as he fought the current. Something below him tugged. In his mind he told himself it was the current – only the current. Finally, through the short wheezing breaths, air was getting in. He kept his eye on Lenny’s headlamp as he tried to swim toward him, his legs heavy as if his ankles were wrapped in chains.
As Garrett approached the headlamp, his heart filled with relief when he saw Lenny and Pete still clutching Coach. Then as fast as hope rose it sank again. “Where’s David?!”
“What happened… to not letting go of Coach?” Lenny said through shivers.
“Lenny, David? Did you see what happened.”
“I don’t… know, I haven’t seen… him since the tunnel. We need to get out of this water, Garrett… I can’t feel my feet or hands,” Lenny said.
“He let go in the tunnel. I tried to grab him, but he kicked me in the face,” Pete said.
“Swim, guys, we got to get to the bank,” Garrett said through clenched teeth.
Together they pushed and kicked, somehow avoiding any brush piles. A few moments later they dragged Coach’s body onto the muddy bank of the Sangamon and collapsed.
Garrett pushed himself onto his hands and knees, the cold mud pushing between his fingers. They had somehow made it out of this nightmare, but where was David?
Lenny placed his head on Coach’s chest. “I think he’s dead, man.”
“Help! God, please… I… I can’t hold on!”
“That’s David!” Lenny announced.
“David! Where are you?” Garrett shouted back at the dark river.
David returned the shout, his voice difficult to hear over the rumble of the dam. “I’m slipping, man! I’m in a brush pile and I can’t hang on! It’s pulling me under! I don’t want to die! God, please! I don’t want to die! Not like this… not like this!”
Pete squinted in the direction of the shouts. “He’s pinned under a brush pile on the other side of the river!”
“I’m going in!” Garrett said, turning to Lenny, both on their feet now.
“You’ll never be able to cross it before you’re washed over!” Lenny argued.
“I have no choice! David trusted me!” Garrett shouted. He was so pissed at himself. He had given that damn speech about trust and believing in him, and now David was alone fighting for his life. If you ever believed in me, believe in me now… what a joke. “I asked him to follow me out of that stupid-ass pipe, Lenny!” Garrett stepped into the edge of the water. “I’m going,” he said with finality. Turning in the direction of David’s voice, he shouted into the night, “I’m coming, David!”
“Wait, Garrett, I’ll—” But it was too late. Garrett was gone as soon as he hit the water.
“Hey,” croaked a voice from behind him.
“What the!” Lenny spun, falling back onto the muddy bank. “Coach?”
“Where’s Garrett?” Coach asked, barely able to speak.
“I… I don’t know. He went back in
to the river to get David.” Lenny stood and shouted, “Garrett!”
“Damn that brick!” Coach growled. “I tried to save him from the worst part. I tried, dammit!”
Lenny frowned. “What are you talking about?” He turned back to the river uneasily, worry gripping his face like a mask as he searched the darkness. “Garrett!” he shouted in desperation. Where is he?
“The prophecy, Lenny. ‘The serpent shall swallow my son, delivering him to his death,’” Coach said, pointing his long elvish finger at the river. “I was stupid to interfere. Stupid to think I could keep him from dying.”
“What? You’re saying he’s going to die!?” Pete turned back to the dark water.
Lenny’s eyes sprung wide. “What! Die?!”
The elf nodded, but he was nodding to empty air – because Lenny was gone.
Lenny was on the same side of the river as the tunnel they had been spit out of. He was running to beat hell – no, to beat death. The shoreline between the tunnel and the dam was practically nonexistent, rising up dozens of feet at an unclimbable, near-vertical grade. What riverbank there was between Lenny all the way to the dam was littered with busted-up trees and broken slabs of concrete, some chunks as big as living room furniture – a preventive measure to reduce erosion on the town side of the river.
Garrett couldn’t die. What kind of f ’ed-up prophecy kills off the guy who’s supposed to defeat the bad guy and get the God Stones back? But they hadn’t got the God Stones back, and they hadn’t stopped the bad guy, had they? What the hell was going on? He didn’t know, but he knew his best friend in the whole world couldn’t freaking die!
Lenny maneuvered on the uneven surface with a speed that should not have been possible. Not on a moonless night, not on the bank of the Sangamon, especially on this specific stretch. Hell, not even on a sunny day, with his body well rested, should the ease with which he negotiated the terrain be possible. The thought niggled there, at the back of his mind, but Lenny was focused on one thing – Garrett.
Gracefully, almost artfully, he bounded over stuff small enough to jump, danced with short steps across stuff too big to jump, and made hairpin pivots around stuff too big to cross, and he did it with nothing more than a single headlamp beam to guide him through the seemingly impenetrable darkness. In less than two minutes, Lenny was at the broken dam.
As it turned out, they hadn’t been too far away. Lenny guessed maybe a quarter mile. This was not necessarily good though. How was Garrett going to get to David before being swept over?
Lenny ran out onto the dam. “Garrett!” he screamed, trying to get his voice above the roar of water.
The dam had been a derelict structure doomed from the start. Like at some point the city decided they would create a dam by taking the busted-up concrete or maybe even bricks from the old cobblestone streets they had replaced with blacktop and pile it across the river then, for good measure, pour a thick layer of concrete over the top. It was no wonder the dam had breached long ago, leaving a wide space in the middle where water raged through. You could venture out for a good twenty yards before reaching the spot that was broken. On the upstream side of the river, the concrete dam wasn’t much higher than the water level, but on the downside the water dropped a good six feet.
As Lenny reached the broken section, water gushed over the jutting rocks in a whitecapped furry, breaking violently in sporadic sprays as it churned through the gauntlet of jagged rocks, no doubt splintering any debris that might pass through before plunging powerfully down on the opposite side, dragging any remaining pieces deep below the surface in the undertow. Just standing next to the break was frightening, as to fall in here meant certain death.
Kids said the water had been digging its way down in that spot way before the dam was ever built. They said kids had been dying in there way before America was even a thought. They said it just kept getting deeper and deeper, over hundreds maybe even thousands of years. Lenny had even heard other kids say there was no bottom at all. Lenny didn’t think it was bottomless, but he believed the thousands of years part. Hell, he’d fished it, they all had, and it didn’t matter how much weight he put on a line or how much string he cast out, it would just sink and sink.
All this flashed through Lenny’s mind as he drew up to the edge of the break, and he couldn’t help but hate the Sangamon – the river Abraham Lincoln so loved. He hated it for the kids it killed, and for the friends he feared he couldn’t save.
Lenny bit down hard on his lip, knowing he was about to flirt with a danger of the incredibly stupid kind. He might as well be standing back in that temple with the dragon about to light his ass up. He squeezed his staff in both fists harder than he realized. If Garrett and David went over this dam, he would never see them alive again.
He looked upstream into the night and screamed Garrett’s name.
42
Breathe
Wednesday, April 6 – God Stones Day 1
Rural Chiapas State, Mexico
As Gabi entered the shadow the ground disappeared beneath her feet and she fell, tumbling forward down what felt like stairs. A second later she hit water. Fully immersed, she scrambled to right herself as Sarah landed with a hard splash next to her.
Jade flames followed them, rolling down the stairs in a great ball of death, filling every bit of the void. Underwater, Gabi squinted as the world above was suddenly blindingly bright with fire. There was no time to allow herself to feel the pain of the fall, no time to scream out, no time to pull in a breath. This time it was Gabi who grabbed Sarah and pulled her underwater. The flames rolled over them.
They tumbled, clinging to each other as a strong current dragged them away from the dragon and the fire and into the unknown. They were being swept downward into an underground river or stream. Not a stream, streams are outside. We are in a cave. This was bad. Gabi’s heart slammed against her chest as the darkness swallowed them once again. She kicked her legs in a panic. What if she couldn’t surface!? What if the water went all the way to the ceiling!? Gabi kicked and kicked as she screamed out all the air she had, exhaling as she broke the surface. She gasped again and again. The ceiling above her was low, her head nearly scraping the surface. Sarah broke the surface next to her, flailing for breath.
Behind them the dragon roared something. This sound was different. It had meaning. This wasn’t the roar that preceded the flame; this was an angry scream. The dragon was saying something to them – yelling something at them. Then after came the roar of fire, a final burst of it – a last hope of incineration.
Behind them the cave glowed, but they were moving fast and were far out of reach.
Their heads were bumping against the ceiling now, and Gabi could barely keep her mouth above water.
“We need to get out,” Sarah said in a gargled rasp as they swam for the edge, but the walls were sheer to the ceiling. There was no place to get out. The ceiling pressed even lower now.
“This is bad!” Sarah said. “Hold your breath, Gabi.”
That’s all they could do – hold their breath. They would be pulled under and never seen again. After all this… they were going to drown. Mamá, Papá, I’m coming to you. Gabi drew in a deep breath as the ceiling met the water.
Blindly they drifted forward, the water cold and the darkness absolute. Underground rivers could run for miles and miles. Some never surfaced at all.
Gabi rolled onto her back, face up, dragging her hands along the ceiling, hoping against hope to find an air pocket. Even a small one, just something to allow her a breath. But there was nothing. Why couldn’t I have just died with my family? María Purísima! Please. I don’t want to drown! Then she saw something. A light. This was it. This was death. The other side. Heaven. Her parents would be there, waiting for her. She just needed to let go, breathe the water in and let go. Then she felt Sarah pulling on her. Pulling urgently. Sarah, Gabi frowned. She could still see. Not very well but a little. The absolute darkness was no longer absolute, there was a light
. Now she realized it wasn’t the other side… it was coming from somewhere else. But where? This light wasn’t sunlight. The color was wrong, and it couldn’t be daylight out – not yet. Then what? She rolled around in the water looking for the source. The silhouette of Sarah was motioning frantically now, pushing her toward the light. She realized now there was a fork. The left side was light, the right side was complete darkness – death. If she didn’t make it to the left tunnel she was going to die. She swam with everything she had, harder than she had ever swum. Death pulled at her, trying to drag her down into the depths, and she was sure at any second a serpent would lunge forward from the darkness and pull her under.
When Gabi reached the small shaft of white light, she felt Sarah pushing her from behind and suddenly she wondered if Sarah was panicking, about to run out of breath. Oh please, Sarah! Please don’t! She couldn’t lose Sarah too. She couldn’t be alone.
It was a tight squeeze, but she managed to squirm inside. She had enough room to reach up and pull herself. She grabbed at anything she could, dragging herself along by her fingertips for what seemed like forever. Her heart raced as the light became brighter and the sensation to draw breath burned in her chest.
Finally, Gabi pulled herself free, emerging from beneath a partially submerged rock outcrop. Once she wriggled clear of the overhang, she planted her feet and pushed herself up. Her face broke the surface of the water and she gasped greedily at the night air, two breaths, then three, then four. The water was shallow, coming only to her waist.
Sarah burst from the water next to her, choking.
“Sarah! Are you okay?”
Sarah held out her hand, waving her off as she bent and retched violently into the water. A moment later she spoke. “Gabi… I almost made it but then I couldn’t… I couldn’t hold it any longer,” she coughed again, still gasping for breath. “I must have swallowed a gallon of water!”