head and the windshield.
Josh didn’t get to witness the impact. A billowing cloud mushroomed before him in an instant and his vision turned silver-white. He felt a jolt of pain across his chest and his right side tingled. For a moment, he thought he’d died and gone to heaven.
Josh wasn’t in heaven. The seat belt had locked, pinning him in place and the driver’s airbag had detonated, exploding into his face. The chilling water seeping into his shoes told him he wasn’t dead and his ordeal wasn’t over. The car was in the water and sinking.
He smashed his fists into the deflating air bag. He had to see how bad it was—and it was bad. The nose- heavy Ford tilted forward at an angle, the weight of the engine forcing the crumpled hood underwater. Small waves lapped the windshield, showing him glimpses of the depths of the river. Water leaked in from the door seals and from somewhere under the dashboard bulkhead.
The car bobbed halfway between both shores, about a hundred feet from safety. A hundred feet—it was less than the length of a swimming pool and an easy distance to swim. Except Josh had never learned how to swim.
He had taken lessons as a kid, but had scared the shit out of himself when he went down a waterslide and found himself at the bottom of the deep end. Since then, he had never been in water any deeper than his chest. The water slapped against the side windows.
It took a moment for him to realize his foot was still on the brake pedal. He wanted to open the windows and cry for help, but knew it would let the river in. He looked at the bridge for someone who might have seen him go off the road. The tailgater stood on the bridge in front of his SUV leaning against the safety railing.
The driver was watching him, watching his car sink, watching him drown. Josh screamed at him to help, to do something. The driver did nothing.
Josh couldn’t see the man well enough to distinguish his features. Sunglasses and a baseball cap obscured the man’s face, but he could make out the driver’s movements.
The driver removed a cell phone and started
punching in a number.
“Thank God,” Josh said aloud and let his head drop.
Emergency services would be on their way. He hoped they would get to him before the car sank. It was going to be okay.
The driver put the phone away, then did something Josh didn’t understand. He held out his right arm perpendicular to his body and put his thumb up as if he
were thumbing a ride. Slowly, the driver twisted his arm around until his thumb pointed down, like a Roman Emperor giving the thumbs-down to a vanquished
gladiator.
Openmouthed, Josh stared at the man. He couldn’t believe it. What is he doing? Does this guy want me to die? It had never occurred to him that malice had been intended. He’d assumed it was no more than an accident born from reckless stupidity. The gesture was
bizarre. It didn’t make sense. The only person who could help him didn’t want to. Josh just couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Hands against the window, he murmured, “Help.”
The tailgater lowered his arm, got into his vehicle and accelerated off the bridge.
Shock galvanized Josh into action. He reassessed his position. Water circulated around his ankles. He had a submariner’s view of the murky depths of the river.
Even with most of the windshield submerged, the bottom was not revealed. Silt mingled with the water, obscuring the view. River debris slid past, dragged along
by the current that also dragged Josh’s sinking car along with it.
He needed his cell phone. Why hadn’t he thought of that first? He unsnapped his seat belt and searched for it. He found it wedged between the windshield and the dashboard. The LCD display was cracked, but it looked operable. He powered it up, but couldn’t get it to dial.
The shock of the collision had broken it. Josh cursed and threw the phone into the rapidly filling foot well.
The car continued to sink. The windshield was totally underwater now and the driver’s side door was
three-quarters submerged. The water tugged at Josh’s feet.
He could do only one thing. He could swim for it
and hope for the best. He knew the techniques. He just lacked the confidence.
“I can do this, right?” he said to himself. He pulled on the door handle before he could disagree with himself, but the force of the water and the buckled panels kept the door closed. He tried the passenger door, but got the same result. He pressed the power window buts, but the electrical system had crapped out.
His exit points were blocked in the front, but he had rear passenger doors to try. He clambered into the cars rear; his every clumsy move made the car rock and bob in the water. Frantically, he tried the doors, kicking and banging them, but they were stuck just like the front ones. The windows were his last chance. Josh had not been able to afford power windows all around at the time of purchase and had cursed the inconvenience.
He blessed his good fortune now.
He leaned on the handle. The mechanism strained
against the damaged door. He looked into the dirty green water pressed up against the window. Flotsam nudged the glass. He didn’t relish the prospect of the river and its crap gushing into the car with him, but he had no choice. He leaned harder on the handle and felt the mechanism shift under his weight.
Slowly, the window retracted into the body of the door and he smelled the air. He breathed in the pleasantly earthy freshness. He continued to wind the window down as the river broke over the level of the
receding glass.
An arc of water flooded into the car with him. Christ, it’s cold, he thought, as the water drenched his thighs and groin, taking his breath away. Struggling with the overwhelming chill of the river forced him to suck in sharp, hurried breaths. The invading water dragged the car down at an accelerated rate. It left Josh with a disorientating sense of falling.
He had opened the window, but not enough to get
his athletic five foot ten body through. He forced the window open as the water climbed up his chest. Water swept through the Ford as swiftly as his fear. Knowing his head would be under the surface at any moment, he took deep breaths to fill his lungs.
For a moment, a long moment, he hesitated. His
body seized and he held his head against the roof of the sinking vehicle, sucking at the diminishing pockets of air. I can’t do this. I don’t wanna do this. Someone will save me, won’t they? Realizing doing nothing wouldn’t help him and action would do everything, he gripped the window frame against the force of the incoming water.
Josh took a final breath and held it. He threw himself through the open window, but the river forced
him back into the car. He tumbled back into the vehicle and swallowed water before he thrashed his way
above the surface. He took refreshing gulps of the remaining air.
The car disappeared below the level of the river and Josh was subjected to a view he didn’t want to see.
The pressure equalized in the car as it dropped to the riverbed, allowing Josh to squeeze himself through the aperture and out of his watery would-be coffin.
He made inefficient mauling motions with his arms and legs, but his natural buoyancy carried him upward.
He lost most of his air on the way to the surface and gulped mouthfuls of the dirty river. He surfaced with a froth of effervescent bubbles spiraling up from the car.
Coughing and spluttering, Josh took lungs full of life-preserving air. Concentrating on breathing and not swimming, he sank below the water. He reemerged,
splashing in some semblance of a crawl crossbred with t a doggy paddle.
?;- Josh looked toward the safety of the shore and nothing else. Fighting for breath, he took mouthful-sized bites out of the water and smashed at the river with his |, arms and legs as if he were beating off an attacker. His motions took him slowly toward the shore, but he had the added problem of the river current with which to contend.
