There was a dripping.
And from somewhere far away, a sobbing.
Chrissy Barron opened her eyes and they slid shut almost immediately. She was in her bed, she had to be in her bed. Just half awake coming out of a dream, that’s all this was. Just relax and drift off. She heard her mind tell her this and she accepted. At least for a moment or two, then she felt the wetness sloshing around her. Heard that dripping. The sobbing.
Sobbing?
She leaned forward, expecting maybe a pillow, but submerging her face in chill water instead.
She gasped and cried out.
She opened her eyes and forced them to stay open. She was sitting in the back of Heather Sale’s little VW bug, her safety belt cutting a trench into her belly. The car was filled with water. It was right up to her neck. Her entire body felt numb and tingly.
What the hell was going on?
She tried to think and the harder she tried, the less anything made sense. But in the front seat, that sobbing. She recognized it. Maybe everything else was a blur, but she certainly recognized that sobbing.
“Lisa?” she said. “Lisa?”
But the sobbing continued unabated. Chrissy tried to rise, but her seatbelt held her in place. Her neck was sore like she’d gotten whiplash and the rest of her was just numb and senseless. When she tried to move her arms, they felt thick and ungainly. Like rubber limbs somebody had grafted onto her as a joke. She flexed her hands into fists, kept doing so and soon they were tingling madly, almost painfully, but they were working.
“Lisa!” she said. “Heather!”
“Oh my God, oh my God,” Lisa Bell was saying, her head reclined back on the seat. She moved it slowly from side to side, so at least she was coming around and that was something.
As Chrissy tried to work her seatbelt catch with those rubbery, useless fingers, a panic settled into her. She was not the panicky type, that was Lisa’s thing, but it took hold of her and she began to thrash in her seat, fighting to get the belt off. When careful manipulation didn’t work, she tried brute force. Yanking and pulling on it, sweat popping on her brow, her muscles bunching and straining. But it was no good. She was gripped by claustrophobia, the sense that the car was sinking and that she was going to sink with it.
Finally, she relaxed, panting.
The car wasn’t sinking. Oh, it had definitely sank, but the water wasn’t any higher than it was before. Still up to her throat. It was then, as she breathed in and out, forcing herself to relax, she remembered or allowed herself to remember. Heather. It had been Heather’s idea. They were coming back from the Uptown Mall just off Main and Heather wanted to get a closer look at the flooding in River Town. Chrissy had told her she was nuts…it was getting dark, the sun was going down. Time to get home while they could. And that had been Heather’s idea. She was driving Chrissy home, over to Crandon, but she decided to skirt the outer edges of Crandon, get a look at River Town and the flooding…
Then what? Think! Think!
Cable Street. It wound around the outside of River Town, right in-between River Town and Crandon. It was a hilly drive and then they’d come down into that hollow, the road disappearing into a sea of dark water.
“Let’s just plow on through,” Heather said, liking the idea.
And before anyone could stop her, she’d jammed down on the accelerator and they’d raced down there, hitting that water and then something else, something that stopped the VW dead. Chrissy could remember the car flying up in the air, the sudden jolt…then blackness.
And how long ago had that been?
It was dark now…they must’ve been out for awhile.
The feeling coming back into her fingers, she easily popped the catch on the safety belt. And let out a breath, the cruel embrace of that belt squeezing her mercilessly.
“Heather!” she said, sitting forward now, a sharp pain in her guts and shoulder where the belt had dug in. “Lisa! Lisa!”
From Heather there was only silence.
But Lisa was coming around, moaning and groaning. She coughed a few times and raised her head up. “Where…are we? Oh My God! Help me! Somebody help me! I’m drowning! Oh God, help me!”
She began to thrash and wail, crying out things that were utterly unintelligible. Chrissy pulled herself up by the front seat and took hold of her. “Take it easy! You’re all right!”
Lisa turned her head. “What happened? What’s going on?”
“We hit something in the water,” she managed. “Now get your belt off.”
Lisa started to do that and then she looked over at Heather, seemed to realize that there was someone else in the car with them. “Heather? Heather? Heather?” She let out a little scream and started to thrash again. “She’s dead! She’s dead! Heather’s dead?”
“Knock it off!” Chrissy shouted at her. “Heather’s not dead! She’s just out cold…”
But then she pulled herself halfway over the seats and saw Heather. Unbelted as usual, she was facedown in the water, her blonde locks floating around like strands of sea grass in a tidal pull. Chrissy grabbed her, pulled her up out of the water, but it was no good. The windshield was shattered and she must have hit when they struck the water and whatever was in it. She could see that perfect bloody impact in the windshield, cracks spiderwebbing away from it in every direction.
Lisa screamed and Chrissy wanted to, too.
Heather’s head was split wide open, the ragged wound running from forehead to the crown of her skull. The water had washed all the blood away and even in the dim light, you could see the bubbly-looking convolutions of her brain, gray and fleshy and just awful.
Chrissy let go of her and she slipped into the water face-first.
She wasn’t wearing her seatbelt, Chrissy started thinking. She’s dead because she wasn’t wearing her seatbelt.
She turned away, dropping back into her seat, ripples running through the water now. She fought to keep the contents of her stomach down and slid over towards the door. She tried to open it, but it was jammed somehow. She unrolled the window and pulled herself out of it, submerging in that chill, stinking water. Coming up, gasping and shaking, feeling all those slimy things floating in it. She had to get a grip here and she knew it. It was all up to her now. That’s how it worked. Heather was the daredevil. She was the queen and Lisa? Lisa was the basketcase. Sweet and caring, but useless in a stressful situation. She freaked out when she got a B on an algebra paper, became positively suicidal when she couldn’t remember the combination to her gym locker.
Brushing water from her face, Chrissy thought: Okay, you have to do this. You’re an absolute self-centered bitch and you know it, but right now you have to be something else. Can you do that?
She figured she could.
She took hold of Lisa’s door and got it open a few inches. She kept pulling and it opened slowly with all the water, but it did open. Lisa was having an anxiety attack, but that was to be expected. She fought against Chrissy as Chrissy tried to help her. Finally, Chrissy just slapped her right across the face. It was what they did with hysterical people in movies and although she was not a violent person…honey, it just felt right.
It calmed Lisa right away.
She started to cry.
“Knock it off,” Chrissy told her, popping the catch on her belt and dragging her up out of the car. “We have to get help.”
Together, they climbed up the hill out of the water. When they got to the top, they could see River Town spread out to the left and Crandon to the right. Most of River Town was submerged and parts of Crandon were under, too.
“What can we do, Chrissy?” Lisa said. “I’m scared…I mean, I don’t know what I am. But we’re trapped, we’re really trapped.”
“We’re not trapped. We just have to do some wading is all.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
