Koontz, Dean R. - Hideaway

by Hideaway(Lit)

grateful for the sight of anything, even of trouble serious.

  Shivering, she freed herself from the entangling straps of the safety

  harness, and touched Hatch again. His face was ghastly in the queer

  backsplash of the instrument lights: sunken eyes, waxen skin, color less

  lips, blood oozing-but, thank God, not spurting from the gash on the

  right side of his head. She shook him gently, then a little harder,

  calling his name.

  They wouldn't be able to get out of the car easily, if at all, while it

  was being borne down the river-specially as it now began to move faster.

  But at least they had to be prepared to scramble out if it came up

  against a rock or caught for a moment against one of the banks.

  The opportunity to escape might be short-lived.

  Hatch could not be awakened.

  Without warning the car dipped sharply forward. Again icy water gushed

  in through the shattered windshield, so cold that it had some of the

  effect of an electrical shock, halting Lindsey's heart for a beat or two

  and locking the breath in her lungs.

  The front of the car did not rise in the currents, as it had done

  previously. It was settling deeper than before, so there was less river

  under to provide hIt. The water continued to pour in, quickly rising

  past Lindsey's ankles to mid-calf. They were sinking.

  "Hatch!" She was shouting now, shaking him hard, heedless of his

  injuries.

  The river gushed inside, rising to seat level, churning up foam that

  refracted the amber light from the instrument panel and looked like

  garlands of golden Christmas tinsel.

  Lindsey pulled her feet out of the water, knelt on her seat, and

  splashed Hatch's face, desperately hoping to bring him around. But he

  was sunk in deeper levels of unconsciousness than mere concussive sleep,

  perhaps in a coma as plumbless as a mid-ocean trench.

  Swirling water rose to the bottom of the steering wheel.

  Frantically Lindsey ripped at Hatch's safety harness, trying to strip it

  away from him, only half aware of the hot flashes of pain when she tore

  a couple of fingernails.

  "Hatch, damn it!"

  The water was halfway up the steering wheel, and the Honda all but

  ceased its forward movement. It was too heavy now to be budged by the

  persistent pressure of the river behind it.

  Hatch was five-feet-ten, a hundred and sixty pounds, only average in

  size, but he might as well have been a giant. As dead weight, resistant

  to her every effort, he was virtually immovable. Tugging, shoving,

  wrenching, clawing, Lindsey struggled to free him, and by the time she

  finally managed to disentangle him from the straps, the water had risen

  over the top of the dashboard, more than halfway up her chest. It was

  even higher on Hatch, just under his chin, because he was slumped in his

  seat.

  The river was unbelievably icy, and Lindsey felt the warmth pumping out

  of her body as if it were blood gushing from a severed artery. As body

  heat bled from her, the cold bled in, and her muscles began to ache.

  Nevertheless, she welcomed the rising flood because it would make Hatch

  buoyant and therefore easier to maneuver out from under the wheel and

  through the shattered windshield. That was her theory, anyway, but when

  she tugged on him, he seemed heavier than ever, and now the water was at

  his lips.

  "Come on, come on," she said furiously, "you're gonna drown, damn it!"

  2

  Finally pulling his beer truck off the road, Bill Cooper broadcast a

  Mayday on his CB radio. Another trucker responded and, equipped with a

  cellular telephone as well as a CB, promised to call the authorities in

  nearby Big Bear.

  Bill hung up the citizen's-band handset, took a long-handled six-battery

  flashlight from under the driver's seat, and stepped out into the storm.

  The frigid wind cut through even his fleece-lined denim jacket, but the

  bitterness of the winter night was not half as icy as his stomach, which

  ha turned sour and cold as he had watched the Honda spin its luckless

  occupants down the highway and over the brink of the chasm.

  He hurried across the slippery pavement and along the shoulder to the

  missing section of guardrail. He hoped to see the Honda close below,

  caught up against the trunk of a tree. But there were no trees on that

  slope-just a smooth mantle of snow from previous storms, scarred by the

  passage of the car, disappearing beyond the reach of his flashlight

  beam.

  An almost disabling pang of guilt stabbed through him. He'd been

  drinking again. Not much. A few shots out of the flask he carried.

  He had been certain he was sober when he'd started up the mountain.

  Now he wasn't so sure. He felt... fuzzy. And suddenly it seemed

  stupid to have tried to make a delivery with the weather turning ugly so

  fast.

  Below him, the abyss appeared supernaturally bottomless, and the

  apparent extreme depth engendered in Bill the feeling that he was gazing

  into the damnation to which he'd be delivered when his own life ended.

  He was paralyzed by that sense of futility that sometimes overcame even

  the best of men-though usually when they were alone in a bedroom,

  staring at the meaningless patterns of shadows on the ceiling at three

  o'clock in the morning.

  Then the curtains of snow parted for a moment, and he saw the floor of

  the ravine about a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet below, not as

  deep as he had feared. He stepped through the gap in the guardrail,

  intending to crab down the treacherous hillside and assist the survivors

  if there were any. Instead he hesitated on the narrow shelf of flat

  earth at the brink of the slope because he was whiskey-dizzy but also

  because he could not see where the car had come to rest.

  A serpentine black band, like satin ribbon, curved through the snow down

  there, intersecting the tracks the car had made. Bill blinked at it

  uncomprehendingly, as if staring at an abstract painting, until he

  remembered that a river lay below.

  The car had gone into that ebony ribbon of water.

  Following a winter of freakishly heavy snow, the weather had turned

  warmer a couple of weeks ago, triggering a premature spring melt. The

  runoff continued, for winter had returned too recently to have locked

  the river in ice again. The temperature of the water would be only a

  few degrees above freezing. Any occupant of the car, having survived

  both the wreck and death by drowning, would perish swiftly from

  exposure.

  If I'd been sober, he thought, I would've turned back in this weather.

  I'm a pathetic joke, a tanked-up beer deliveryman who didn't even have

  enough loyalty to get plastered on beer. Christ.

  A joke, but people were dying because of him. He tasted vomit in the

  back of his throat, choked it down.

  Frantically he surveyed the murky ravine until he spotted an eerie

  radiance, like an otherworldly presence, drifting spectrally with the

  river to the right of him. Soft amber, it faded in and out through the

  falling snow. He figured it must be the interior lights of the Honda,
/>   which was being borne downriver.

  Hunched for protection against the biting wind, holding on to the

  guardrail in case he slipped and fell over the edge, Bill scuttled along

  the top of the slope, in the same direction as the water-swept car

  below, trying to keep it in sight. The Honda drifted swiftly at first,

  then slower, slower.

  Finally it came to a complete halt, perhaps stopped by rocks in the

  watercourse or by a projection of the riverbank.

  The light was slowly fading, as if the car's battery was running out of

  juice.

  3

  Though Hatch was freed from the safety harness, Lindsey could not budge

  him, maybe because his clothes were caught on something she could not

  see, maybe because his foot was wedged under the brake pedal or bent

  back and trapped under his own seat.

  The water rose over Hatch's nose. Lindsey could not hold his head any

  higher. He was breathing the river now.

  She let go of him because she hoped that the loss of his air supply

  would finally bring him around, coughing and spluttering and splashing

  up from his seat, but also because she did not have the energy to

  continue struggling with him. The intense cold of the water sapped her

  strength. With frightening rapidity, her extremities were growing numb.

  Her exhaled breath seemed just as cold as every inhalation, as if her

  body had no heat left to impart to the used air.

  The car had stopped moving. It was resting on the bottom of the river,

  completely filled and weighed down with water, except for a bubble of

  air under the shallow dome of the roof. Into that space she pressed her

  face, gasping for breath.

  She was making horrid little sounds of terror, like the bleats of an

  animal. She tried to silence herself but could not.

  The queer, water-filtered light from the instrument panel began to fade

  from amber to muddy yellow.

  A dark part of her wanted to give up, let go of this world, and move on

  to someplace better. It had a small quiet voice of its own: Don't

  fight, there's nothing left to live for anyway, Jimmy has been dead for

  so long, so very long, now Hatch is dead or dying, just let go,

  surrender, maybe you'll wake up in Heaven with them ... The voice

  possessed a lulling, hypnotic appeal.

  The remaining air could last only a few minutes, if that long, and she

  would die in the car if she did not escape immediately.

  Hatch is dead, lungs full of water, only waiting to be fish food, so let

  go, surrender, what's the point, Hatch is dead She gulped air that was

  swiftly acquiring a tart, metallic taste. She was able to draw only

  small breaths, as if her lungs had shriveled.

  If any body heat was left in her, she was not aware of it. In reaction

  to the cold, her stomach knotted with nausea, and even the vomit that

  kept rising into her throat was icy; each time she choked it down, she

  felt as if she had swallowed a vile slush of dirty snow.

  Hatch is dead Hatch is dead....

  "No," she said in a harsh, angry whisper. "No. No." denial raged

  through her with the fury of a storm: Hatch could not be dead.

  Unthinkable. Not Hatch, who never forgot a birthday or an anniversary,

  who bought her flowers for no reason at all, who never lost his temper

  and rarely raised his voice. Not Hatch, who always had time to listen

  to the troubles of others and sympathize with them, who never failed to

  have an open wallet for a friend in need, whose greatest fault was that

  he was too damn much of a soft touch. He could not be, must not be,

  would not be dead. He ran five miles a day, ate a low-fat diet with

  plenty of fruits and vegetables, avoided caffeine and decaffeinated

  beverages.

  dn't that count for something, damn it? He lathered on sunscreen in the

  summer, did not smoke, never drank more than two beers or two glasses of

  wine in a single evening, and was too easy-going ever to develop heart

  disease due to stress. Didn't self-denial and self-control count for a

  Was creation so screwed ere was no justice any more?

  Okay, all right, they said the good died young, which sure had been true

  of Jimmy, and Hatch was not yet forty, young by any standard, okay,

  agreed, but they also said that virtue was its own reward, and there was

  plenty of virtue here, damn it, a whole shitload of virtue, which ought

  to count for something, unless God wasn't listening, unless He didn't

  care, unless the world was an even crueler place than she had believed.

  She refused to accept it.

  Hatch. Was. Not. Dead.

  She drew as deep a breath as she could manage. Just as the last of the

  light faded, plunging her into blindness again, she sank into the water,

  pushed across the dashboard, and went through the missing windshield

  onto the hood of the car.

  Now she was not merely blind but deprived of virtually all five senses.

  She could hear nothing but the wild thumping of her own heart, for the

  water effectively muffled sound. She could smell and speak only at the

  penalty of death by drowning. The anesthetizing effect of the glacial

  river left her with a fraction of her sense of touch, so she felt as if

  she were a disembodied spirit suspended in whatever medium composed

  Purgatory, awaiting final judgment.

  Assuming that the river was not much deeper than the car and that she

  would not need to hold her breath long before she reached the surface,

  she made another attempt to free Hatch. Lying on the hood of the car,

  holding fast to the edge of the windshield frame with one numb hand,

  straining against her body's natural buoyancy, she reached back inside,

  groped in the blackness until she located the steering wheel and then

  her husband.

  Heat rose in her again, at last, but it was not a sustaining warmth.

  Her lungs were beginning to burn with the need for air.

  Gripping a fistful of Hatch's jacket, she pulled with all her might-and

  to her surprise he floated out of his seat, no longer immovable,

  suddenly buoyant and unfettered. He caught on the steering wheel, but

  only briefly, then bobbled out through the windshield as Lindsey slid

  backward across the hood to make way for him.

  A hot, pulsing pain filled her chest. The urge to breathe grew

  overpowering, but she resisted it.

  When Hatch was out of the car, Lindsey embraced him and kicked for the

  surface. He was surely drowned, and she was clinging to a corpse, but

  she was not repulsed by that macabre thought. If she could get him

  ashore, she would be able to administer artificial respiration.

  Although the chance of reviving him was slim, at least some hope

  remained. He was not truly dead, not really a corpse, until all hope

  had been exhausted.

  She burst through the surface into a howling wind that made the

  marrow-freezing water seem almost warm by comparison. When that air hit

  her burning lungs, her heart stuttered, her chest clenched with pain,

  and the second breath was harder to draw than the first.

  Treading water, holding tight to Hatch, Lindsey swallowed mouthfuls of

  the river as it splashed he
r face. Cursing, she spat it out. Nature

  seemed alive, like a great hostile beast, and she found herself

  irrationally angry with the river and the storm, as if they were

  conscious entities willfully aligned against her.

  She tried to orient herself, but it was not easy in the darkness and

  shrieking wind, without solid ground beneath her. When she saw the

  riverbank, vaguely luminous in its coat of snow, she attempted a one-arm

  sidestroke toward it with Hatch in tow, but the current was too strong

  to be resisted, even if she'd been able to swim with both arms.

  She and Hatch were swept downstream, repeatedly dragged beneath the

  surface by an undertow, repeatedly thrust back into the wintry air,

  battered by fragments of tree branches and chunks of ice that were also

  caught up in the current, moving helplessly and inexorably toward

  whatever sudden fall or deadly phalanx of rapids marked the river's

  descent from the mountains.

  4

  He had started drinking when Myra left him. He never could handle being

  womanless. Yeah, and wouldn't God Almighty treat that excuse with

  contempt when it came time for judgment?

  Still holding the guardrail, Bill Cooper crouched indecisively on the

  brink of the slope and stared intently down at the river. Beyond the

  screen of falling snow, the lights of the Honda had gone out.

  He didn't dare take his eyes off the obscured scene below to check the

  highway for the ambulance. He was afraid that when he looked back into