by Zoe Chant
She clung to the tree until it was clear no more waves were coming and then sat up, stretching out each of her limbs at a time. She was dripping wet and slightly bruised, but nothing seemed to be broken. It took her a couple of attempts to stand up on her shaking legs, and then she tottered out of the trees onto the beach.
High waves still lapped up the sand, but no worse than she'd seen in winter storms. Her truck was still where she'd parked it, too big and heavy to be moved. Her little skywatching nest was completely gone, telescope, camp chair and all.
Maybe the telescope had been pushed into the trees, Sarah thought dazedly, rather than being sucked out into the depths of the lake. She would have to come back in daylight and look for it. At least she hadn't gotten around to taking the DSLR camera out of the truck yet, so she hadn't lost that.
And ... there was something out among the waves, bobbing on the lake.
She walked on rubbery legs down the beach until the purling waves lapped at her boots. The lake was starting to settle down now, rocking gently like the surface of a giant tub of water. The floating thing on the lake was about thirty yards offshore. She could see it mainly because it still glowed a faint, dull red from the heat of its reentry. It seemed to have broken apart when it hit the water; she could see bits and pieces floating on the surface, sinking rapidly out of sight.
The biggest intact piece of the object was vaguely roundish and maybe the size of one of the small outbuildings on the farm, not barn-sized, more like chicken-house-sized. It bristled with oddly angled parts, although she couldn't tell if that was because it had a bunch of antennas and things poking out, or because it had been crumpled and damaged in its crash landing, so she was looking at pieces of its exterior that had been broken and partly torn away.
It was getting harder to pick out the object from the dark water. The red glow was fading as it cooled, and more than that, she realized it was sinking into the lake. In moments it would be gone from sight.
Something moved abruptly, a large section of the main body of the thing flipping up and outward. For just an instant, Sarah glimpsed what was unmistakably a figure starting to clamber out—
—and then the whole object heeled over and sank very abruptly beneath the waves. Water rushed into the space where it had been.
Sarah stood and stared, even as a higher wave of displaced water swamped her up to the thighs and made her stagger.
There had been a person in that thing.
A test pilot?
An astronaut?
Whatever she'd just witnessed, whether it was a torn-off piece of the International Space Station falling to earth, or the crash of an experimental military test plane, or something else entirely, there had been a person in it. And they weren't coming up.
Sarah threw her sodden sheepskin jacket onto the beach and kicked off her boots. She ran into the water and met the next wave head-on, diving into it.
The October lake felt like ice, even to her already chilled skin. She was courting hypothermia; she couldn't stay out here long.
But she was a strong swimmer, a legacy of hot summer days at the lake, when she and the other kids from neighboring farms used to paddle around in the water to cool off. Back in her teens she'd been a strong enough swimmer to make it all the way across the lake. Those days were behind her now, but working on the farm kept her in good shape, and she was naturally buoyant even with her soaked sweater starting to weigh her down.
She stroked hard, swimming toward where she had watched the object go down. Something jostled her under the water, a piece of floating debris that slid away from her when she reached for it; she felt a sharp edge of metal brush her fingers. In the cold water, it was slightly warm to the touch.
Abruptly, something alive and struggling broke the surface just in front of her, thrashing in a spray of water droplets and then going under.
Sarah dived after that struggling figure. She caught a fistful of what felt like hair and kicked toward the surface.
They splashed into the air together. She released her grip on the other person's hair, but he clutched at her, starting to drag them both down again.
"No!" Sarah gasped, shaking him. Her head went under the surface and she kicked up again, gripping him by a—bare?!—arm. "Relax! Try to float! I've—augh! blerk!—got you!"
She had no formal lifeguarding experience, but her gym teacher, Mr. Mancuso, had made sure that if the kids were going to spend the summer down by the lake, they'd all know the fundamentals, not just for rescuing each other but also because summer people often came out to the lake without knowing how to properly swim. He'd also warned them that drowning people could easily drag you down with them. And that seemed to be what this guy was doing. Her hands slid off his torso, catching on bits of metal or plastic; he was wearing some kind of slippery body suit that left his arms bare, which didn't give her any good purchase to grip, not like a jacket or sweater would have.
But then he went limp, as if he'd suddenly figured out what she was trying to do, or perhaps remembered his own water rescue training. It immediately became obvious that he was too heavy and dense to float on his own—guys often were, according to Mr. Mancuso, because they typically had less body fat and more muscle than girls—but Sarah got her arm under his shoulders. She felt him start to struggle again as his body tipped back in the water, then relax (kind of; he was still tense as hell), and a moment later they were drifting in a rescue position, with his head against her shoulder.
"That's it," she panted. She was starting to shiver. They had to get out of the water as fast as possible or they'd both be in trouble. "I'm just going to swim toward the shore. Float with me. Okay?"
She couldn't tell how out of it he was, but he understood enough of what was going on to let his body trail in the water as she towed him toward the beach. His wet hair rested against her cheek, his head on her shoulder. She could feel him breathing in short, shallow gasps.
"Slow breaths will make you panic less," she told him between strokes, dredging up another fragment of Mr. Mancuso's lifeguarding wisdom. She was going to have to look up her old gym teacher and thank him someday. "If you hyperventilate, it makes it worse. Try to slow your breathing if you can."
There was no answer, and his breathing didn't slow down, but he seemed to relax a little more, as if her voice itself was calming to him.
She was shivering hard by the time her feet finally touched the lake bottom. From here it was a desperate scramble onto the beach, with Test Pilot Guy clumsily helping. Together they stumbled out of the waves and fell onto the sand in a tangle of limbs.
"Oh my God, oh my God." It was half profanity and half prayer; she was laughing in relief as she unwound herself from her rescuee. Now that they were out of the water and he didn't seem too badly hurt, the impact of the adventure was starting to hit her, leaving her dazed and giggly. It really was an adventure, the most amazing one she'd ever had, a million percent better than getting chased by the Wazlowskis' bull at age eleven or that time she got lost with Jeremy McManus in the woods behind the lake. "Oh, my God, can you believe this is happening? Can you believe you survived that? Can you believe we're actually—erk!"
In the middle of her giddy babbling, Test Pilot Guy erupted from the ground, a sudden explosive movement so fast she had no time to react with anything but a startled, strangled cry as she was slammed into the sand. The next thing she knew, she was flat on her back with his knee jammed into her chest and something sharp and hard pressed to her throat.
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