I exploded from the ground, my head ringing, my vision blurred, but there was no pain, only a momentary fear of blacking out that surged through me but then was gone, and I was running, staggering under the fear that the bear would return. I resisted the urge to run into the woods and made for the canoe. I pushed it into the water, and then realized it was still tied to the tree. I scrambled up and struggled with the knot. I kept looking up toward the woods as I frantically tried to undo the knot. Finally it gave at the exact moment that the woods erupted with an enormous bellow and the bear came bursting out as if in slow motion, its massive forearms flung out at each stride, muscles rippling, the huge jaw open. The roar of the hunter hunting its prey boomed through the woods.
Frantically I pushed the canoe off with my right foot, but as I did I slipped and fell headlong into the canoe and lost momentum. The canoe rocked dangerously to the left, the gunwale almost slipping beneath the water as the bear charged down toward me. I frantically groped for the paddle and pushed myself up onto my knees. I could feel the current begin to pull me even as the bear gathered itself at the water’s edge, its legs bunching into a coiled spring, and then it leapt at the canoe, one long, graceful jump at full stretch.
It missed the canoe by inches, and the waves it sent out caught the canoe broadside, throwing me off balance. I felt the canoe begin to go over. For one frantic moment, it sat suspended on the edge of tipping as I tried to regain my balance. I slapped the water with the open face of my paddle, and the canoe fell dizzyingly back to a level field. As I did so the bear reared out of the shallow water right next to me. I brought the blade of the paddle high over my head and brought it down on the bear’s open jaws. The shaft of the paddle broke and the bear lunged at me, grabbing the broken end of the paddle and jerking his head back.
The strength of the movement was terrifying and instinctively, I released the paddle and grabbed the gun-wales to try and steady the canoe. The bear sensed the danger before I did, but it was too late. I could hear the roar of the rapids, feel the pull of the water against the canoe. And suddenly the bear and I were one, the power of the bear reduced to basics as the power of nature took over. I had to move to the stern to get the second paddle if I was to have any chance of running the rapids in the canoe.
Leslie had said there was an easy route through them along the outside curve of the river, the route that was always taken in a lightly loaded canoe. It was a fast, straight run with no obstacles, and I remembered that Ryan and I had been able to run them almost fully loaded. However the western shore, the side now drawing me down, was a roiling, boiling mass of foam and standing waves, boulders, and small shelves. I shuddered at what must have happened to Patrick and marvelled at how I could still feel something for him.
I scrambled forward, holding both sides of the gunwale, grabbed the paddle, and hunkered down inside the canoe. I jammed the paddle into the water with a powerful forward stroke against the strengthening current. I had to hold my own against the current long enough to get me over to the other side. With my back to the rapids, I angled the canoe upriver, pointing toward the eastern shore, and paddled like a mad-woman. If I got far enough across I could steer my bow around and safely head down the clear channel.
The rapids were roaring in my ears, the sound inexplicably dividing in my head into all its parts: apart from the homogenous noise of constant wind through the trees I could now hear, as in a symphony, the gurgles of water moving around the rocks that I could sense creeping up behind me; the sucking, squelching sound of whirlpools near a keeper where the swirling of the water has been known to spin and swallow a canoe; the crashes and splashes of the standing waves set up by water rushing over boulders many feet beneath the surface; the pounding of the waves against a rock island; and the quiet gliding of water flowing over rocks far beneath the surface. Like the instruments in a symphony, they all played their own tune, joining in to present a crescendo of raging, roaring water that overwhelmed the quality of its separate components.
I could feel the pull of the water on my paddle at every stroke as the river gathered speed. The small riffles on the water suddenly vanished, and I knew I would never make it to the other side. I was going down stern first into the rapids, held in the powerful grip of something I couldn’t beat.
Instinctively I turned around in the canoe to face downriver, grabbed the paddle firmly, and studied the river, my fear swirling around me like the water before me. I was being drawn toward the wide open V of water funnelling between two gigantic boulders. As I approached, all the riffles and white of the splashes further up were suddenly pulled taut as the water was hauled down an incline of the earth’s surface and then stretched through the rocks and boulders.
I hit the V dead on, my canoe gathering speed so that I had to back paddle to slow it down. Ahead lay a boiling jumble of froth and foam, impossible to read because the angle was so flat. Briefly, I stood up for a better view, but all I could see was a field of unforgiving boulders. I concentrated on what was directly ahead of me: on the right a jagged, evil-looking rock and to the left a nearly completely submerged boulder with water dancing on its gleaming pate. I went right, squeezing between the jagged rock and another boulder, and danced down through some standing waves, struggling to keep from broadsiding any of them. I’d never soloed in rapids before, and I was way out of my depth.
I could see an ominous stretch of smooth water ahead, and the telltale cut-off shoreline at the waterline indicating a shelf. There was no way out: the current was going too fast and the shelf was too wide. I could-n’t get around it. I had to go over it.
The canoe shot forward, and the horrendous scrape and shudder of the keel as it went over the shelf jarred me and almost flung me out of the canoe. I held fast, and the canoe dived into the churning waters. The bow went under, and I went with it.
The churning, roiling waters grabbed me and I gasped as the cold water soaked me through. As I came up for air I looked around wildly for the canoe. It was now a lethal weapon that could wedge me against a rock or knock me out. I saw it tumbling ahead of me like a matchstick. I pitched and turned and was taken by the current.
Desperately I tried to ride it on my back, legs up and out of the way of any boulders that might snag them and spell death for me. I didn’t want my leg getting jammed between two rocks while my body was thrown forward by the current, forcing my head down under the water just as it had with the sweeper. I bounced and rolled and grazed some boulders and felt a dull pain in my left leg. I caught glimpses of the bear surging through the foam ahead of me, tossed like a toy, and the thought of ending up in an eddy with it made my mouth go dry. Suddenly I was pulled under by some unseen force lurking beneath the river.
I felt it pull my legs first like an enormous vacuum. I took in a huge lungful of air as it sucked me down, and then the whirlpool’s powerful spiral of water took the rest of me, pulling me down with no intention of spitting me out again. There was no fighting the power of this keeper, and I knew it. If I tried I’d exhaust myself further. I had only about a minute at the most before my air ran out. I had to fight the instinct to swim up and instead go with it, letting it take me, waiting for the chance to swim out from under it. I felt a moment of panic as my body tried to move up, against my mind’s wishes, but my mind won.
I fought my way down through the spiral, down, forever down, until I could feel my lungs screeching for air. When I hit the bottom I swam along for as far as I could before I knew I had to let my body take me up, whether or not I had swum far enough to escape the clutches of that deadly spiral. I burst out of the water spouting foam and gulping air in great wracking heaves as I struggled to stay afloat. I was out of the worst of the current. It took me gently now and swirled me through into an eddy behind a large boulder. With what strength I had left I hugged the boulder and lay there, retching and coughing uncontrollably.
The bear was less than fifty yards from me, but on the other side of the river with fast water between us. It was
hauling itself out of the water right next to where my battered canoe lay wrapped around a boulder, a gaping hole spouting water like a sieve. There was no point in even trying to get over there. Even if I did, the canoe was useless, and with the bear now on that side I wasn’t feeling very brave. I hugged the rock and lay still, gathering my strength.
The bear staggered up onto the shore and stood swaying on the river’s edge, peering back at the rapids as if looking for me. It started moving drunkenly toward the woods, and then stopped. It shook the water from its hair. Starting with its head the shake travelled like a wave down its body to its rump and tiny tail, shaking the water free. I watched it amble off unsteadily into the woods, and then I released my hold on the rock and was swept down into the quiet pools at the very bottom of the rapids.
I clambered onto the rocks and eyed the shoreline dubiously. The forest came right down almost to the water’s edge. It would be one hell of a bushwhack back, even with the portage. My legs ached from the bashing against the rocks, and my arms and hands and back were throbbing from where the bear had raked me in its efforts to turn me over, but there wasn’t a lot of blood and I seemed to be okay.
I was still thinking about the sickening sound the claws had made when something made me look up. About twenty yards upriver I saw Patrick, lying motionless at the water’s edge where he had dragged himself half out of the water. I watched him closely for five minutes, but there was no movement. I picked up a good-sized rock, hefted it in my hand, and cautiously approached him, bracing myself for him to spring to life with a blood-curdling yell and strangle me with his hands. When I was five feet from him he moved and I jumped back in alarm, but it was only the current pummelling him.
I approached him warily, gripping the rock so tightly my knuckles showed white. Gingerly I turned him over with my free hand. He was out cold, his handsome face ashen, highlighting an angry slash across his temple. I quickly felt for a pulse. Slow and steady. I thought about leaving him there in the eddy, wanting to let my fear of him get the better of me, but then I thought of my disks, and what I had foolishly thought he once meant to me, and realized I couldn’t. So I pulled him out of the water and took off my belt to tie his hands; my nerves, tighter than a spring, jumped at every perceived movement, expecting those bedroom eyes to flash open with murderous intent. I fought my imagination as hard as my fingers fought to tie a knot around his hands before he could wake up and turn nasty.
chapter twenty-five
Ineedn’t have worried. The blow to Patrick’s head had been a dilly — it was incredible that he’d stayed conscious long enough to haul himself out of the water. Even after I’d mopped up the blood and badly bound the wound with chunks of my shirt, he was still out cold, and I was simply cold. My teeth were chattering, partly from relief that I was alive, partly from the physical cold that the sun couldn’t seem to dissipate as it rose higher in the sky, and partly for the emptiness I felt when I looked at Patrick.
I looked at my own wounds and figured they could wait, except for the baby finger. I bound it up again, and when I finished I figured it was about seven o’clock in the morning and I wondered what the hell I was going to do. I was on the wrong side of the river to hike out for help unless I left Patrick where I’d hauled him out and swam across to the other side. I took one look at the swirling water at the base of the rapids and the far shore a hundred yards away and I knew I did not have the energy to do it. I was wondering if I could float one of the old logs piled like matchsticks at the base of the rapids, and paddle across astride that, when I heard someone yell.
I thought at first that I was delirious, but the yell came again. I turned and saw a canoe approaching down my side of the little lake from the direction of the biology station. The canoe was backlit, and I couldn’t make out who it was, just that they were wildly waving their paddle, which flashed silver in the sun. Nothing had ever looked as nice as that canoe. As it got nearer, I saw that it was Leslie kneeling amidships, strong-arming the canoe toward me, a fishing rod wobbling up and down as it trailed behind the canoe. I felt an enormous wave of relief that nothing had changed Leslie’s mind about coming here to fish for breakfast.
Leslie nosed the canoe in as close to where I was as she could get, and then leapt out and hauled the canoe out over the rocks. She came running over, leaping from boulder to boulder.
She was out of breath when she reached me, but the concern in her eyes was evident.
“Jesus, what happened to you?” she asked, as she fumbled in her backpack and pulled out a tiny first aid kit. I couldn’t imagine what she saw as she looked down at me. It was likely not a pretty sight, and I couldn’t imagine her little first aid kit doing much good. She was about to set to work fixing me up when she caught sight of Patrick’s body slumped behind the boulder where I had pulled him to safety. The colour drained from her face as she took in the horrid gash on his face, the claw marks, the blood, and his bound hands. I thought he must have looked worse than I did, or maybe it was the bound hands that bothered her, but she took a while regaining her equilibrium.
She slowly returned her gaze to me and said, “What the hell happened here? You both look as though you’ve been through a meat grinder. Is he alive?”
I nodded, and told her about Patrick’s attempts to stalk and kill me as she cleaned me up far better than I had been able to do. I told her about finding the blind and the cougars, and tripping over Don’s dead body. Leslie turned pale at the mention of Don’s name, and some garbled sound came from her lips, her distress building with every new word I uttered. When I’d finished my story, Leslie was dumbstruck. In the end, all she could manage to say was, “Poor Don, no one deserved what he got.”
She turned her attentions to Patrick after handing me a windbreaker.
Gratefully, I put it on. I was shivering so hard it was difficult to pull it over my head. I watched her cleaning the gash on Patrick’s head and thought sadly of what might have been. He was still out cold, and I hoped he stayed that way until after we’d turned him over to the police. I didn’t think I could bear to look into those beautiful murderous eyes. How could I have been so wrong?
Leslie came back and asked me if I thought I could help drag Patrick to the canoe. I didn’t want to touch him. I felt so betrayed by my own feelings. It took all my strength, physically and emotionally, to help Leslie carry Patrick, and we dumped him unceremoniously into the canoe, his hands still bound. Leslie stowed the fishing line, took the stern, and handed me a paddle. We pushed off, rounded the point, and headed across the lake to Diamond’s old camp, with me paddling like a toddler.
Leslie steered the canoe to the beginning of the second set of rapids, and not to the gravel beach of the campsite where I assumed she would head. “It’ll be easier to get Patrick out if we go alongside the rock ledge of the portage,” she yelled.
“Why don’t we just land at the beach and I’ll go for help?” I waved in the direction of Diamond’s campsite, where Roberta had said she would be with Davies and Shannon.
“Nobody there. They all went back to the biology station last night. Left me to clean up.” I nodded and turned to look at the beginning of the portage, where Ryan and I had almost died. I could see the cliff where the rock had come plummeting down, and I watched as the water began to swirl and gather strength around us. I could hear a veery calling in the woods near the campsite, and the sun touched my face like an old friend. I should have felt relieved, but instead I felt jumpy and on edge. I quickly looked back at Patrick, who was lying amidships. I half expected to see his eyes boring into my back, but he was still unconscious.
Leslie steered us expertly in and along the shelf by turning the canoe at the last minute and coming up into the current and the small eddy. I was seizing up, and it was awkward to get out while holding the knotted bowline. I nearly fell between the canoe and the shelf as we got our signals mixed and Leslie, without warning, got out at the same time. She stumbled, and the bag she was holding in one hand fell a
nd something metal clattered toward me. We both reached for it at the same time, but I got to it first and Leslie backed away. I glanced at her and then looked back at the object in my hand. Time stood still. I was holding a pair of miniature binoculars. Even as I turned them over in my hand, I knew what I would see. A shaky D that looked like a P. I raised my head and our eyes locked.
The sudden jolting fear in my stomach crashed through my body like a physical vibration. Leslie must have picked them up while she was searching for my body in the rubble. I remembered the tug of the strap on my neck and the snapping sound as it had broken. I slowly put my hand up and rubbed the sore spot on my neck. I couldn’t peel my eyes away from Leslie’s. It was like the sick fascination of a spectator at a car crash — I could only stare at her and wonder what was going through her head.
Leslie broke the spell by backing away from me and reaching for her pocket. I suddenly found myself looking at the dark, round hole of the gun that suddenly materialized in her hand.
“Took you long enough,” came the snide, cutting voice. I saw a cruel smile of triumph spread across her face. “Untie Patrick’s hands.”
She inclined her head in Patrick’s direction. When I didn’t move, not out of bravery but out of pure and simple shock, she said calmly, “Don’t you understand? It’s got to look like an accident. If he goes down those rapids with his hands tied, everyone’ll know it wasn’t an accident, won’t they? And that could raise very inconvenient questions.” She smiled sweetly, and I felt as though a vacuum cleaner had suddenly sucked my mouth dry.
Forever Dead Page 26
