Submerged

by Cheryl Kaye Tardif

"What?"

  "I see lights behind me," she sobbed. "He's coming for us, Marcus. I'm starting the engine."

  "Rebecca, try to stay calm. It could be someone—"

  He heard the engine of her car rev up.

  "I can't outrun him," Rebecca cried.

  The squeal of metal on metal made Marcus cringe. "Rebecca?"

  She screamed. "We're going over a cliff! Marc—"

  Silence.

  "Rebecca?"

  No reply.

  "Rebecca!"

  The line was dead.

  He called Leo's direct line at the center. "The bastard didn't leave, Leo."

  "What?"

  "He rammed the car again. Rebecca said he pushed her car off a cliff."

  "But there aren't any cliffs in the area."

  "I know. It doesn’t make any sense."

  Nothing did.

  "There aren't any cliffs," Leo said in a quiet voice, "but there are some steep embankments along the McLeod River."

  Marcus flinched. "The river? Oh hell."

  Chapter Eighteen

  Near Cadomin, AB – Friday, June 14, 2013 – 11:56 PM

  The interior lights were still on, and Rebecca took stock of her surroundings. Though she couldn't see anything beyond the windows, she guessed they were at the bottom of a ditch or a quarry. Thankfully, the car hadn't flipped or rolled, but they had landed with a resounding crash. The front end of the car tipped down slightly, the steering wheel putting more pressure on her ribs.

  "Is he coming back?" Colton cried out.

  She took in a few ragged breaths and tried to calm her racing pulse. "No, honey. He's gone now."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes, Colton. He's won't be back."

  She didn't know if this were true or not. All she saw in the rearview mirror was total blackness. The truck could still be out there, waiting.

  She was cold, and her fingers and toes felt numb. She wiggled them, trying to force the circulation back into her hands and feet. She tried to push the steering wheel away, but that only sent daggers into her chest and made her dizzy.

  "Mom, Ella's wheezing again," Colton said behind her.

  "Give her another shot of Puff."

  Rebecca wanted to scream, cry, lash out. Every fiber in her being was enraged by her situation. Her children needed her and she was helpless.

  "Is the 911 guy calling back soon?" Colton asked.

  "Any minute now, honey."

  "Good."

  She tried to start the car, but the engine was dead. She jiggled the door, but it held fast. "Try your door again, Colton."

  She heard him grunting and straining, and she mentally kicked herself for not getting the damned door fixed.

  "It won't budge," he said.

  Every now and then, the car made small, subtle tremors. Somewhere in the fog of her mind, she knew it wasn't a good thing, even though this time the movement was gentler, almost peaceful. At times the car would shudder, as if the ground beneath it had given way. And she swore she heard a sharp crack.

  "My feet are freezing," Colton said.

  "Try to prop your good foot up behind my chair. Maybe you can massage it to get it warm."

  "Mom, I think our water bottles spilled on the floor."

  She shifted her feet and heard soft splashes. She glanced down at the floor near the brake. Water. She scowled. An awful lot of water.

  That's when it finally hit her. Water! The car had landed in water.

  Panic rose in her chest and up her throat. Oh my God! The car's sinking! A whimper escaped her mouth.

  "What's wrong?" Colton asked, his voice tinged with fear.

  "Nothing," she lied, her mind racing to recall everything she'd ever heard about submerged vehicles and how to escape them. "My ribs hurt a bit."

  Stay calm. Try not to let him know what you're thinking. Not until he has to know.

  She turned on her phone and dialed 911. A stranger picked up.

  "I need to speak to Marcus," she said, struggling to keep the panic from her voice.

  "Rebecca?" the man said. "Marcus is going to call you from his cell phone."

  "He said I should call in if—" she lowered her voice, praying that Colton couldn't hear her, "there was water on the floor of the car."

  "And I take it there is," the man said in a calm voice.

  "Yes."

  "Rebecca? Here's what we're going to do. You hang up. I'll call Marcus and tell him to call you right away. Okay?"

  "Okay."

  "And by the way," the stranger said, "my name's Leo."

  "Thank you, Leo." She hung up.

  Please, Marcus, call me and tell me what to do.

  The phone rang. "Marcus?"

  "I'm here, Rebecca."

  "You know what you asked me to look for? It's on the floor. And the car keeps moving every now and then."

  "Tell me about the motion."

  "At first it was an occasional movement, but now it's constant."

  "Describe it."

  "It's like we're balancing on a teeter-totter. And every now and then it feels like we're sliding forward, and sometimes it feels like we've dropped a few inches. It's probably my imagination."

  Marcus swallowed hard. "You could be hung up, rocking on an embankment of some kind, a small hill." He dreaded the thought that her car might be nose-first in the river.

  "Don't try to open the doors," he said.

  She moaned. "They won't budge anyway."

  "Can you tell if water's coming in quickly?"

  She wiggled her foot. "It's almost to the top of my foot, but it's not gushing in."

  "Good. Keep me posted on how high the water is. Let me know if it gets halfway up your calf."

  She shuddered at the thought. "We're in a river or lake, aren't we?"

  "If you'd landed in deep water, the car would be sinking fast. We do know you're not far from Edson. You did an awesome job at helping us narrow down your location."

  "But you still don't know exactly where we are."

  "No." She could hear the frustration in his voice. "How are the kids doing?"

  "Colton is still pinned behind the seat. Ella has barely moved."

  "Keep administering her medication."

  "What happens when it runs out?"

  "We'll find you before that occurs."

  "I'm scared," she whispered, clenching the cell phone.

  "I know."

  "Talk to me. I need a distraction so I won't lose it in front of Colton. Why are you a 911 operator? What made you do this job?"

  "I wanted to help people."

  "Because you couldn't help your wife and son?"

  "I guess. And because I couldn't do the job I was originally trained for."

  "What was that?"

  "I was a paramedic."

  "Not too far of a stretch from that to what you’re doing now." She massaged her icy fingers. "Why did you leave that job?"

  "I didn't have a choice."

  "You were fired? Why would they fire a good person like you?"

  She heard a sigh. "I wasn't such a good person back then. I made some bad choices."

  "What kind of choices?"

  "I had a shoulder injury after a mountain rescue. My doctor prescribed some heavy-duty painkillers. After a while, they stopped working. Some nights the pain was unbearable, but I still had to do my job."

  "Why didn't you take time off so you could heal?"

  "We were short-staffed, and I couldn't afford to take time off."

  "So you took prescription drugs? Why would that be a problem if a doctor prescribed them?"

  "When the drugs stopped being effective in managing the pain, I tried to get a stronger prescription but was told I wouldn't be able to work if I took it."

  "So you tried to ignore the pain?"

  "I wish I had. No, I made a decision that has haunted me ever since."

  "What decision?"

  She heard him inhale deeply. "I took drugs from our paramedic supplies."
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  "And you became addicted," she guessed.

  Marcus cleared his throat. "Yes."

  "So they fired you."

  "They called it a temporary suspension. Said I could find another job until I had kicked my habit. Then I could come back to EMS. Leo helped me get a job at the center."

  She swallowed. "Did your wife know about the addiction?"

  "She suspected. But she never knew the extent of it. I tried to shelter her from that part of my life."

  "When your wife and son were killed, were you—?"

  "I was shooting up in a cabin in Cadomin."

  There was such intense bitterness in his voice that she flinched at his words.

  "I got out of the cabin as soon as I heard, but by the time I made it to the accident scene…it was too late." The last four words came in a strained whisper.

  A tear slid down her cheek and she left it there, soaking in the trickle of heat it emitted before it cooled.

  "How did they die exactly?" As soon as the words left her mouth, she wished she could take them back.

  "Jane's car hit a patch of ice on the highway and rolled into a ditch."

  Something in his voice suggested he wasn't telling her everything. "Do you want to talk about it? I've got nothing better to do than listen."

  "I'm not really supposed to be telling you my life story."

  "I need a distraction, Marcus. I can't keep thinking about where I am, where my kids are. Talk to me. About anything."

  "I took off on them," he began. "I was holed up in that cabin in the woods, near the bat cave. I convinced Jane that I needed some time to think, to clear my head. I insisted that I wanted a week of fishing, nothing more. But I lied. I went there with drugs. I planned to stay in a fog of oblivion."

  "So did you?"

  "For four days I was stoned out of my mind. I started imagining things, seeing things."

  "What kind of things?"

  "Children. In the woods around the cabin. They were wearing pajamas, even when it was freezing outside."

  "Did they say anything to you?"

  "Not at first. But they left me signs that they were there. Strange gifts on my doorstep."

  Rebecca shivered. "And this was all imaginary?"

  "Except for the gifts. They were real. Fruit, candy…I can't explain it."

  "Maybe someone was playing a prank on you."

  "I thought that too. So I asked the cabin owner if there were any kids in the area."

  "What did she say?"

  "She gave me a weird look, shook her head and walked away. I figured she knew I was on drugs. Probably thought I was hallucinating. I'm not sure I wasn't."

  "So what did you do?"

  "The next time I was in Hinton getting groceries, I hunted down a dealer in the park and bought two Vicodin tablets. To numb the weird visions, I told myself. Figured I'd be back to normal after that and wouldn't need anything else."

  "But it didn't work," she guessed.

  "Yeah. I kept seeing those children. Two days later, I bought a vial of heroin and a package of hypodermic needles from a kid in the park. I don't remember much. I spent two days lying on the couch in a dazed stupor. Then I got the call that Ryan and Jane had been in a car accident. I got into my car and drove. But I didn't get there in time."

  "I'm so sorry, Marcus. I can tell you loved them very much."

  "They were my world. Until drugs took over my life. They died because of me."

  "It wasn't your fault," she argued.

  "Yes it was. Jane was driving out to see me, probably to bring me home."

  "Still…" She paused, searching for the right words. "It wasn't your fault. It was an accident. An awful twist of fate."

  She heard more noises on the other end. Then a horn blared. Since when did they have horns like that in an office building? "Marcus, where are you?"

  "I'm on the highway."

  She was instantly filled with hope. "You're looking for us?"

  "Yes."

  She blinked back the tears. "I thought you were at the 911 center."

  "I'm calling you from my cell phone, so just hit redial if you need to call me back."

  "Don't you have others looking for us?"

  "I'm going to be honest with you, Rebecca. We have too many rescue vehicles already in the field at other locations. When you called in, we were down to our last police car."

  "No!" she cried out, then muffled a sob. "So other than one police car, no one else is looking for us?"

  "I am." His voice was firm this time, full of resolve. "I'll be there soon. You have to hang up now. I'll call you in five minutes."

  "You really are a superhero," she said with a whimper.

  She disconnected the call and slipped the phone between her bra and her skin. "Colton? How are you doing back there?"

  No answer.

  She strained to listen and heard the familiar sounds of soft snoring. Colton was okay. It was probably better that he was sleeping. At least that way he wasn't feeling the cold.

  Speaking of cold…

  She wiggled her toes in her shoes. She could barely feel them, or the cheap leather of her last Payless splurge. But she did feel something. Water on her ankles.

  The interior lights flickered on and off like a strobe light. She didn't want to think of what would happen once the lights turned off and they were plunged into complete darkness. The mere thought made her body quake.

  Plucking the phone from her bra, she shone the light from it toward the floor. Murky brown water covered her ankles completely.

  If she wasn’t found soon, hypothermia would set in. If it hadn't already.

  She thought about Colton. His leg was trapped, which meant his foot was sitting in freezing water too.

  She shone her phone toward the back seat and angled the mirror so she could see him. He'd managed to find his hockey gear and had a sweatshirt draped across Ella. His leggings and other gear were piled on top of him, not much of a barrier to the cold.

  "Oh, Colton…Ella…" she sobbed.

  One of Colton's shoulder pads rolled off him and landed on the floor.

  Marcus had made her promise to call if the water rose.

  She pointed the soft light from her cell phone at the windshield, but could see nothing beyond the glass. Just black oblivion.

  What if we're already underwater?

  Bile rose in her throat, and she battled to keep it at bay. Her stomach clenched, then lurched. Grabbing the steering wheel for balance with her good hand, she leaned as far as she could toward the passenger seat and threw up. The smell was overwhelming, a combination of sourness and sulfur. Fear and death.

  She opened her phone, saw Marcus's phone number and hit call.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Near Cadomin, AB – Saturday, June 15, 2013 – 12:03 AM

  It had been about twenty minutes since Marcus had left Edson and the rain had finally let up. But still no sign of Rebecca's Hyundai. He hadn't seen any fresh tracks leading to any of the side roads. Had he already passed the area where Rebecca had been forced from the highway?

  He was about to turn around when a shiver slid over his body. All the hairs on his arms stood up. The sensation made him think of the cabin in Cadomin, the one he'd stayed in before Jane and Ryan's accident. The one with the ghostly children in the woods.

  The headlights of his SUV swept over something in the middle of the road.

  He slammed on the brakes. Jane?

  He blinked, but the vision of his dead wife remained. She stood in the middle of the road, pointing ahead as if telling him to keep driving.

  Then she vanished.

  "Keep driving!" he snarled. He'd deal with Jane's ghost later.

  The phone rang.

  "Everything okay, Rebecca?"

  "Yeah, if you call being trapped in a car in the river 'okay.'" There was a hint of dry humor in her voice, but worry quickly followed. "The water's rising, Marcus."

  Shit! That was the last thing they needed.
"Are you still moving?"

  "Yeah, but not as much."

  His bad feeling turned rancid. Rebecca had driven off the highway, into the trees, for God knows how long. There were a few lakes in the area, and the McLeod River with all its tributaries. The second attack from the mysterious truck driver could have pushed Rebecca's vehicle into the river.

  "Are you sure you didn't see anything before you left the highway?" he asked. "Something in the woods or along the highway, maybe? I need to figure out where you went off the road."

  "All I saw were trees. I'm not even sure I turned down an actual road. It could've been a damned footpath for all I know."

  Marcus gazed out the window as his SUV sped down the highway, his eyes darting from side to side. There were numerous unpaved roads and dirt trails that led into the bushes on either side. This was quad country.

  "What about Colton?" he said suddenly.

  "He's sleeping." She sounded like she was on the brink of crying.

  "Maybe he saw something. You were driving, trying to see the road ahead. Maybe he saw something you missed. Ask him."

  "Colton?" she called, her voice stronger. "Wake up, honey. I have a question for you. Did you see anything when we went off the road?"

  Marcus couldn't make out Colton's answer.

  Seconds later, Rebecca came back on the line. "He says he saw pigs. Flying pigs." She let out a sob. "Oh God, he's hallucinating. I think Colton's going into shock. I think you're too late."

  "Don't say that. I'm still here, still looking."

  "If you're too late, I want you to promise me something."

  "Hey," he said, trying to sound jovial, "we're not doing this right now. None of this kind of talk."

  "Marcus, listen to me. Please." He heard her inhale. "If we don't make it, I'd hate it if you blamed yourself. You've done everything anyone could ask for and more. Fate, remember?"

  "Fate's a mean bastard," he said between gritted teeth.

  "I agree. So promise me, no blame."

  Marcus cursed under his breath and slammed a fist on the wheel. Then he took a deep breath. "I promise. No blame."

  "My feet are so numb I can't feel my toes."

  He could almost taste her fear. "Hold on, Rebecca. Hold on."

  "I'm afraid to hang up. This might be my last call to you."

  He barely heard her words as something flashed up ahead. A sign! One he'd forgotten about. And carved into wood was a picture of two robust pigs with wings.