He grabbed her and gave her a shake and she calmed down just enough to stave it off.
He tried to open the door, but found that it would only open a crack, as the bottom of it kept hitting a mound of sludge and so he reached up front and freed the fire extinguisher from its cradle, to then slam it against the locking pins that held the door in place.
With all locks disabled, the door began rattling as water rushed in at a greater volume, and rose above their knees.
“Juliet, when I kick this door open they’ll be no air left, so take a deep breath. We can’t be more than fifty feet below the surface and when we reach it, we can climb up onto the ice.”
“Oh God, the water is so cold.”
“I know, but if we’re going to swim we can’t do it in these clothes,” he said, as he began removing his jacket and tie, along with his shirt and shoes.
Juliet looked down at the wedding dress she wore with a mournful look, but then slid out of it to reveal her underwear.
She shivered. “We’ll freeze before we ever make the surface.”
He laid a hand against her cheek.
“It’s the only chance we have, honey.”
After she nodded in agreement and had taken a deep breath, he took one of his own, turned, and kicked both feet at the door. To his shock, the door drifted a foot away from the helicopter and then took off in a streak, even as the helicopter filled with water.
He had the thought even as its reality grabbed ahold of him.
Undercurrent!
He and Juliet were ripped from the chopper along with anything else that wasn’t strapped down, such as the pilot, whose body, still held by the seatbelt around his waist, was bobbed about in the current like a rag doll.
The force of the current was dragging them backwards with astonishing speed and he reached out to grab Juliet’s hand, but she was too far away to touch.
After just a few seconds in the frigid water, he could feel his muscles begin to spasm and he knew that his time was growing short, as his body used up the sparse amount of air in his lungs to combat the effects of the cold.
He looked into Juliet’s panicked face and saw that she had reached her limits. A moment later, and she gasped, enabling the lake water to fill her lungs. In her death throes, she drew closer to him and he managed to snag her hand, and was holding it, as her struggle ceased and she died.
He released her and watched as her corpse drifted off into a cross current, along with most of the debris from the chopper.
Even as he mourned Juliet, he knew that he was soon to join her, as he felt his air dwindle away and his heart raced from the stress of the cold.
Then, complete darkness swallowed him and he seemed to be rushing downward along an underground tunnel of some sort. When his left shoulder scraped hard against a rounded concrete wall, it hurt so much that he nearly opened his mouth to cry out. Two more impacts followed, but they were minor, and he once more emerged into murky light, as he understood that he must have passed through the opening of a dam, and as the current ceased its controlling hold on him, he found that he could weave his path through the water and headed for the surface.
As his lungs burned intensely for air, he did a quick mental calculation on his distance from the surface and knew he wouldn’t make it, that without more air, he would die.
That’s when salvation drifted upward across his path.
It was the pilot’s thermos.
He stopped swimming and grabbed for it, then, he took his knife from his pocket and plunged the blade deep into the plastic cap, which caused a stream of bubbles to flow from it, air bubbles.
He withdrew the blade and swiftly covered the slit with his finger, before bringing the thermos up to his lips, to suck greedily at the precious air trapped inside, as he again started towards the surface.
When he broke through the water, he was only halfway home. The current had carried him through the opening in the dam and into the nearby river, where he was being swept downstream.
The river was wide and its flow fast, and he felt as if he were taking two steps backward for every one forward. And although it was no longer a struggle to breathe, the water temperature was still a factor, and even his immense stamina was reaching its limits, as the minutes ticked by and his arms and legs grew weary.
Eventually, his efforts were rewarded and he felt the riverbed beneath his feet as he shuffled towards the riverbank.
As his strength ebbed, he fought his way through the ice and snow lining the river’s edge and found himself on a muddy strip that the water lapped at constantly.
He looked up and saw what appeared to be a near vertical climb, for just a moment he considered lying atop the muddy, narrow lip of the river to rest, but the river water was still rising due to the open dam and he feared being swept back in.
With the last vestiges of his strength, he began climbing as dark spots floated across his field of vision and his muscles trembled with the effort. Fortune soon favored him, as the final remaining yards of the climb lessened in their slope and he pulled himself up and onto the grass of a clearing bordered by trees.
From the time he exited the dam until he made it ashore, nearly an hour had passed, and in a corner of his brain, he realized that he must be far from where the chopper went down.
He attempted to crawl up onto his hands and knees but his command went unheeded by his body, as it had reached the end of its capacities and he passed out, with thoughts of Jessica swirling in his mind.
CHAPTER 8
Joe Cowley removed his apron as he watched the two men circle the dining hall once again.
Fred and Barney, he thought of them as Fred and Barney. One of the men was well over six feet tall and had a barrel chest with unruly dark hair and a big nose. The other man was short, with a mop of blond hair and a not-so-bright expression on his face. Both men had big, wide feet.
“Louise?” Joe said to the elderly black woman standing beside him.
The woman turned and gave him a bright smile. “Yes, honey?”
Joe smiled back as he always did with Louise. He couldn’t help it; her smile was contagious.
I’ve never known anyone who smiled so much, except for—no, no I am not going there.
“Joe, is something on your mind?” Louise said, breaking him from his reverie.
“I just want to say thank you for everything, but it’s time I was moving on.”
“Right now?”
“Yes,” Joe said, as he glanced over at Fred and Barney. “I think now is a good time to go.”
He had seen Fred and Barney once before, at a youth hostel. He had stayed there for three days when the weather became far too brutal to stay outdoors, and although he had a good ten years on most of the kids there with him, he had gotten along well with them, and for a while, had even started to forget.
Since he was the only one among his group who had any money, it was he who volunteered to venture out and get croissants and coffee the morning the snow had finally stopped falling.
The little blond girl, Katy, she wanted to go along with him, and as they tramped through the high drifts of powdery snow, he spotted Fred and Barney looking at them from the front seat of a van with chains on its tires.
He barely gave them any thought then, after all, Katy was a beauty and most men would look her over. It wasn’t until he saw them again, later that day, when he was alone, that he paid attention to them, because they were paying attention to him, in fact, they were following him.
He lost them inside a crowded bar as he walked into the kitchen and out the back door. He had assumed that they were muggers and that he had escaped being robbed.
A day later, two of the boys from the hostel went missing.
Now, here are Fred and Barney once more, and as Joe watched them, he saw that they appeared to be evaluating each man they saw for some unknown quality, looking at them the way a predator looks at prey.
Louise gave him a good hug and a kiss on the cheek
and off he went out the back door of the soup kitchen. Whatever the hell Fred and Barney’s game was, he wanted no part of it.
He tossed on his large backpack and adjusted the straps. He’d been traveling with the grey bag on his back for over a year now and the hefty weight bothered him not at all. Inside the pack was his whole life, a life he lived one day at a time as he waited for Lady Death to come and claim him.
He was too much of a coward to go to her, at least, that’s how he thought of himself.
Ten minutes later, he was walking along the line of small hills that skirted the river, and that’s when he saw the stranger struggling in the water.
The man was shirtless and as he fought to free himself from the river’s strong current, Joe could see the sinewy muscle in his arms and back.
Joe called out to him, but soon realized that with the distance and the rush of water in the man’s ears that his shouts had no chance of being heard.
He ran down the hill and alongside the river, trying to keep pace with the man, but the current was not only strong, but also fast.
By the time he came to the bend in the river where the banks climbed steeply upward, the man was out of sight and all Joe could do was to offer a prayer for him, except, he never prayed anymore.
He made as good a time as he could with the weight of the pack upon him, hoping to find that the stranger had won his battle and was lying along the muddy, snow-dappled bank somewhere farther on.
Long after he had given up on him, he found him, and marveled that the man had made the steep climb up the hill. The man was unconscious and bleeding from several minor cuts. His hair hung across his handsome face and his fingers were a light tint of blue from the cold.
Joe tried in vain to wake the man, even though his pulse seemed strong and he was breathing normally. He chalked it up to sheer exhaustion brought on by the man’s life and death struggle with the water and dug into his pack for gear.
Although it was a warm day topside, Joe knew that the water temperature could not be far above freezing, and in fact, some ice still clung near the shore.
He pulled the wet slacks off the man and was surprised to find that they were the bottom half of a tuxedo. Although the stranger was taller than he was, his corduroy pants fit the man’s waist with room to spare and he then went to the task of layering him in sweaters and a parka.
His feet, Joe looked at the man’s feet and saw that they were as blue as his fingers were. He searched the multitude of pockets on his canvas backpack until he finally found what he was looking for.
He began to shake the little packs of activated charcoal and broke the outer pouch, causing the packs to heat up.
The man’s feet were about his size, but before he placed his sneakers on them, Joe stuck heat packs into a pair of thermal socks and slid them over the man’s feet, and then repeated the process on his hands while using a pair of gloves.
When he was done, Joe stared down at the stranger and for the first time since his new life began, he wished that he had a cell phone.
He leaned over and patted the man on the chest.
“Hang in there, buddy, I’ll go get you help.”
Joe hated to leave his backpack behind, but if he was to reach the highway and flag down a car, he’d make much better time without it. He grabbed it, along with the stranger’s pants, and hid them both behind a bush.
Afterwards, he sprinted back up the hill and slipped on a patch of ice, but recovered, and within minutes, he could hear the whine of the vehicles out on the interstate.
Once he got there, he wondered how he would ever get anyone to stop, as the traffic whizzed along at high speed.
As he was about to step into the roadway, he saw the black van parked along the shoulder a half mile away, and sprinted to it.
Sitting in the passenger seat with the door open was a woman with long, red hair that she wore up in a bun atop her head. She was drinking a beer and having a smoke.
Joe ran up to her out of breath, and bent over at the knees as he talked to her.
“Hi miss... listen... I need help... there’s a man down by the river... whoa, I need to catch my breath... down by the river, he almost drowned, but I think he’ll be fine once he gets some warmth and rest.”
The woman smiled at something beyond Joe’s shoulder.
“Hear that boys? We got two for the price of one.”
Joe spun around to see who she was talking to, and there stood Fred and Barney.
CHAPTER 9
The first thing he became aware of was the movement of the vehicle he was riding in, the second thing, his exhaustion.
He could not recall ever having been so tired and it was a struggle just to open his eyes, when he did, he found that he was lying down. Above him was a white, metal ceiling.
The memory came to him of the helicopter crash, of his struggle for life, of Juliet’s death.
He had made it ashore. It had taken everything he had, but he had survived and soon he would be with his wife, he would be with Jessica.
The vehicle bounced as it encountered a pothole and the thought came to him that he must be in an ambulance, headed for the hospital, headed to safety.
As his head lolled over to the right, he saw that he was not alone. There was a man leaned up against the wall and his hands were taped securely together at the wrists, as well as his ankles. He also had a gag taped in place.
The man had dark hair and sad blue eyes.
He spoke to him, and his voice was so weak, so devoid of his usual timbre, that he wondered if the man even heard him.
“I’m not in an ambulance, am I?”
The man shook his head no, and he knew that he had been understood, but before he could ask another question, the fatigue overwhelmed him and he returned to that state of rest that was near-coma in its intensity.
He would not awaken again for many hours.
***
Joe watched the stranger’s eyes close again and knew that he had once more entered a deep sleep.
When the man had turned his head and looked at Joe, the gaze had startled him. The man had intense eyes, such intense eyes.
From the front of the van came the sound of laughter as Fred and Barney, along with the redheaded woman, laughed at something. At times, he would catch a snatch of conversation and could tell that his captors all had southern accents.
They had taken his wallet and the eighty-odd dollars in it, but if robbery was their game, then why abduct them. Why the hell had they taken him, him and the stranger?
He, of course, had heard the stories of men traveling the roads and abducting young women, but him? What the hell could they want with him, and the stranger?
The answers Joe came up with to that question frightened him so much that he soon put the thought from his mind.
Escape, he must think of a way to escape, for him, and the somnolent man lying by his side.
Easier said than done, thought Joe, as he felt his fingertips go numb from the tightness of his bonds.
***
They stopped three hours later, although to Joe, it seemed much longer.
He heard the van doors open and close, and a moment later, a panel slid aside and Joe could see out the windshield, where he beheld the sign of a famous chain of fast-food restaurants.
The woman came through the opening with her head hunched down so that it didn’t hit the roof. She checked the stranger’s pulse and then ripped the tape from Joe’s mouth.
“This dude ever wake up?” the redhead asked, and Joe decided right then that he would dub her Wilma.
“He woke for a few seconds and then went right back to sleep.”
“And you say you pulled him from the river?”
“He got himself out; I just redressed him in warm clothes.”
“Ain’t you the Good Samaritan, now listen, don’t try hollering for help or anything and we’ll give you some food.”
“Food sounds good, but I really got to... you know, go, and I mea
n badly.”
Wilma nodded.
“As soon as the boys get back we’ll hit the road again, a few miles down, I’ll have one of them take you to a bush where you can drain the lizard, last thing I want to do is smell piss while I’m trying to eat.”
“Thank you.”
Wilma narrowed her eyes at him.
“Don’t thank me, just sit there and be quiet.”
Wilma went back up front and soon Fred and Barney returned with food. Despite the circumstances, the aroma of the burgers and fries was making Joe’s mouth water.
Barney came into the back of the van and Joe flinched when he saw the knife he was holding. Barney sent him a smirk and then cut his hands free of the tape that bound them.
Pain!
His hands throbbed with the ache of revival as fresh blood reanimated his fingers, which had gone numb from the lack of circulation.
Barney tossed a burger in his lap.
“Eat, and if you try any shit, I’ll stick you, got it?”
Joe nodded as he reached down and fumbled the burger from its bright paper wrapping, even as Fred started the van moving again.
Just a few minutes passed before Fred pulled off onto a dirt road.
Wilma called back to him.
“Now’s your chance to take that leak, dude.”
With Barney following, Joe walked to the nearest tree and let loose, the relief felt as satisfying as the food had.
“Why did you guys take us?” he asked Barney.
“Shut up and take your leak.”
“Where are we going?”
“I said to shut the fuck up.”
Joe decided to heed the advice this time, because Barney had moved closer with the knife held up and ready.
Minutes later, his hands were once again bound and his mouth gagged.
Wherever they were going, Joe knew that he was never coming back.
***
The next time the stranger awakened, he seemed more aware and lowered his chin, to look down along his body and see his own bound wrists and ankles.
He turned his head and stared at Joe, and again, the intensity of his gaze unnerved Joe, even more so, as their only light came from the flickering beams of the headlights of passing cars. Joe became even more unnerved when the stranger sat up, bared his teeth, and lunged at Joe’s face.
The TAKEN! Series - Books 1-4 (Taken! Box Set) Page 36
