Ten yards from the bridge, ferocious currents caught the truck, lifted it, dropped it, tipped it half onto its right side, rolled it back to the left, and slapped loudly against the doors.
Sailing out of the storm into the eclipsing shadow of the highway above, they passed the first of the bridge columns in the row immediately to the right. Passed the second. At horrendous speed. The river was so high that the solid underside of the bridge was only a foot above the truck. They surged nearer to the columns, bulleting past the third, the fourth, nearer still.
Pheasants and dragons. Pheasants and dragons.
The currents pulled the truck away from the concrete supports and dropped it into a sudden swale in the turbulent surface, where it wallowed with filthy water to its windowsills. The river teased Spencer with the possibility of safe passage in that trough, pushing them along as if they were on a bobsled in a luge chute — but then it mocked his brief flicker of hope by lifting the truck again and tossing it passenger-side-first into the next column. The crash was as loud as a bomb blast, metal shrieked, and Rocky howled.
The impact pitched Spencer to his left, a move that the safety harness couldn’t check. The side of his head slammed into the window. In spite of all the other clamor, he heard the tempered glass webbing with a million hairline cracks, a sound like a crisp slice of toast being crushed with a sudden clench of a fist.
Cursing, he put his left hand to the side of his head. No blood. Only a rapid throbbing that was in time with his heartbeat.
The window was a mosaic of thousands of tiny chips of glass, held together by the gummy film in the center of the sandwiched pane.
Miraculously, the windows on Rocky’s side were undamaged. But the front door bulged inward. Water dribbled around the frame.
Rocky lifted his head, suddenly afraid
“Hell,” Spencer said, “pee on the seat if you want to.”
The truck sank into another swale.
They were two-thirds of the way through the tunnel.
A hissing, needle-thin stream of water
When the truck soared out of the trough, it wasn’t thrown into the columns after all. Worse, the river heaved as if passing over an enormous obstruction on the floor of the wash, and it slammed the Explorer straight up into the low concrete underside of the bridge.
Braced with both hands on the steering wheel, determined not to be thrown into the side window, Spencer was unprepared for the upward rush. He dropped in his seat as the roof crumpled inward, but he was not quick enough. The ceiling cracked against the top of his skull.
Bright bolts of pain flashed behind his eyes, along his spine. Blood streamed down his face. Scalding tears. His vision blurred.
The river carried the truck down from the underside of the bridge, and Spencer tried to push up in his seat. The effort made him dizzy, so he slumped again, breathing hard.
His tears swiftly darkened, as if polluted. His blurred vision faded. Soon the tears were as black as ink, and he was blind.
The prospect of blindness panicked him, and panic opened a door to understanding: He wasn’t blind, thank God, but he
He held desperately to consciousness. If he fainted, he might never wake. He balanced on the edge of a swoon. Then hundreds of gray dots appeared in the blackness, expanded into elaborate matrices of light and shadow, until he could see the interior of the truck.
Pulling himself up in the seat as far as the crumpled roof would allow, he again almost passed out. Gingerly, he touched his bleeding scalp. The wound seeped rather than gushed, not a mortal laceration.
They were in the open once more. Rain hammered on the truck.
The battery wasn’t dead yet. Wipers still swept the windshield.
The Explorer gamely wallowed down the center of the river, which was broader than ever. Perhaps a hundred twenty feet wide. Brimming against its banks, within inches of spilling over. God knew how deep it might be. The water was calmer than it had been but moving fast.
Gazing worriedly at the liquid road ahead, Rocky made pitiful sounds of distress. He wasn’t bobbing his head, wasn’t delighted by their speed, as on the streets of Vegas. He didn’t seem to trust nature as much as he had trusted his master.
“Good old Mr. Rocky Dog,” Spencer said affectionately, and was unnerved to hear that his speech was slurred.
In spite of Rocky’s concern, Spencer couldn’t see any unusual dangers immediately ahead, nothing like the bridge. For a couple of miles the flow appeared to proceed unimpeded, until it vanished into rain, mist, and the iron-colored light of thunderhead-filtered sun.
Desert plains lay on both sides, bleak but not entirely barren. Mesquite bristled. Clumps of wiry grass. Outcroppings of gnarled rock also grew out of the plains. They were natural formations but achieved the strange geometry of ancient Druid structures.
A new pain blossomed in Spencer’s skull. Irresistible darkness flowered behind his eyes. He might have been out for a minute or an hour. He didn’t dream. He just went away into a timeless dark.
When he revived, cool air fluttered feebly across his brow, and cold rain spattered his face. The many liquid voices of the river grumbled, hissed, and chuckled louder than before.
He sat for a while, wondering why the sound was so much louder. His thoughts were muddled. Eventually, he realized that the side window had collapsed while he’d been unconscious. Gummy laces of highly fragmented tempered glass lay in his lap.
Water was ankle-deep on the floor. His feet were half numb with cold. He propped them on the brake pedal and flexed his toes in his saturated shoes. The Explorer was riding lower than when last he’d noticed. The water was only an inch below the bottom of the window. Though moving fast, the river was less turbulent, perhaps because it had broadened. If the arroyo narrowed or the terrain changed, the flow might become tempestuous again, lap inside, and sink them.
Spencer was barely clearheaded enough to know that he should be alarmed. Nevertheless, he could muster only a mild concern.
He should find a way to seal the dangerous gap where the window had been. But the problem seemed insurmountable. For one thing, he would have to move to accomplish it, and he didn’t want to move.
All he wanted to do was sleep. He was so tired. Exhausted.
His head lolled to the right against the headrest, and he saw the dog sitting on the passenger seat. “How you doin’, fur butt?” he asked thickly, as if he had been pouring down beer after beer.
Rocky glanced at him, then looked again at the river ahead.
“Don’t be afraid, pal. He wins if you’re afraid. Don’t let the bastard win. Can’t let him win. Got to find Valerie. Before he does. He’s out there. He’s forever…on the prowl….”
With the woman on his mind and a deep uneasiness in his heart, Spencer Grant rode through the glistening day, muttering feverishly, searching for something unknown, unknowable. The vigilant dog sat silently beside him. Rain ticked on the crumpled roof of the truck.
Maybe he passed out again, maybe he only closed his eyes, but when his feet slipped off the brake pedal and splashed into water that was now halfway up his calves, Spencer lifted his throbbing head and saw that the windshield wipers had stopped. Dead battery.
The river was as fast as an express train. Some turbulence had returned. Muddy water licked at the sill of the broken window.
Inches beyond that gap, a dead rat floated on the surface of the flow, pacing the truck. Long and sleek. One unblinking, glassy eye fixed on Spencer. Lips skinned back from sharp teeth. The long, disgusting tail was as stiff as wire, strangely curled and kinked.
The sight of the rat alarmed Spencer as he had not been alarmed by the flood lapping at the windowsill. With the breathless, heart-pounding fear familiar from nightmares, he knew he would die if the rat washed into the truck,
