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