So Cold the River

by Michael Koryta

  “Claire Shaw,” he said.

  “I told you.”

  He seemed almost calm as he gazed at her, but somehow Anne was more afraid now than ever.

  “You’re his wife,” he said. “Eric Shaw’s wife.”

  “Yes. And we don’t know Lucas Bradford. We have nothing to do with the Bradfords. If you want money, I can get you money, but you have to believe that we have nothing to do with the Bradfords!”

  “I can get you money,” she said again. “My family… my father… I can get…”

  Her voice trailed off as he walked back to her. He still had the knife in his hand but now he knelt and picked up the roll of duct tape, pulled out a short strip and cut it free with the knife. She was trying to say more when he bent at the waist and smashed the tape roughly over her mouth, running his fist over it to make sure it was secure.

  “Don’t hurt her,” Anne said softly. “Josiah, please, there’s no cause to hurt anybody. You heard what she said, they have no idea—”

  “What?” he said. “What did you just say?”

  It took her a second to realize he was upset about the use of his name. He actually wanted to be referred to as Campbell. He was standing there in front of the bloody drawing he’d left on her window, asking to be identified as a dead man. She’d never heard of anything so mad.

  “Don’t hurt her,” she said in a whisper. “Campbell? Please don’t hurt her.”

  He grinned. Showed his teeth in a wide smile, as if the use of Campbell’s name was something delicious to him, and Anne felt a bead of chilled sweat glide down her spine.

  He turned from her, still smiling, to stare out the window. A moment later Anne realized he wasn’t staring out of it but at it, at the blood silhouette he’d drawn there that had now gone dry on the glass.

  “Well,” he said, “what now? You told me to listen. I’ve tried. And this bitch isn’t worth a thing to me. Not a thing. I’m standing here holding a handful of nothing, same as I always was. But I’m ready to listen. I’m trying to listen.”

  The wind rattled the glass against the old wood frame as he stood there and stared at it, stared as if there were something in it that could offer help. Down on the floor, Claire Shaw was silent, watching in obvious astonishment and horror.

  “You’re right,” Josiah told the window. “You’re right. ’Course she’s not worth anything to me—none of them ever was. That isn’t what it’s about. I don’t need the dollars. I need the blood.”

  Anne’s mouth had gone chalky and her heart was fluttering again.

  “I’ll deal with them first,” Josiah said, voice softer now, thoughtful, musing. “Finish what needs to be finished, and then I’ll come back to that hotel. They’ll remember me when it’s done, won’t they? They’ll remember us when it’s done.”

  He swiveled his head back and locked his gaze on Anne.

  “Get up.”

  “What? I don’t—”

  “Get up and go down into the basement. Now.”

  “Don’t hurt her,” Anne said. “Don’t you hurt that woman in my home.”

  Josiah dropped the knife to the floor, stepped over it, and collected his shotgun. Lifted that and swung the barrel to face Anne.

  “Go down into the damn basement. I ain’t got time to waste tying your wrinkled old ass up.”

  It was only then, the second time that he said it, that she realized exactly what was being offered—the shortwave, the dear old R. L. Drake. A lifeline.

  She stood up, legs unsteady after sitting for so long, and, with one hand braced on the wall, went to the basement door and opened it and started down the steps. There was a light switch mounted just beside the door but she didn’t reach for it, preferring to walk down into the dark rather than chance his seeing the old desk with the radio.

  He didn’t even wait till she’d reached the bottom of the steps before slamming the door shut. That plunged her into real darkness, and she stopped and gripped the railing. She heard some banging around and then something smashed into the door and the knob rattled. He was blocking the door, locking her in.

  She slid her hand along the railing and took a careful step down into the blackness, then another. A splinter bit into her palm and she gasped and stopped. Upstairs Josiah was saying something she couldn’t understand, and then she heard footsteps, too many to be just him. The front door opened and then banged shut. She stood still and listened and when she heard the motor of his truck start, she thought, Oh, no.

  They were on the move. He was leaving, and he was taking that woman with him.

  Anne had to hurry now.

  She took another step, down into the dark.

  55

  KELLEN AND ERIC WERE still standing in the same spot in the woods when they saw the cloud. The rain was coming down in furious gales and the wind was howling now, sounded like something alive, like something wounded and angry, and it was Kellen who pointed up at a bank of purple clouds that seemed to be separating and joining and separating again, partners in some strange turbulent dance.

  “I don’t like that,” he said. “We got to get out of here, man.”

  “I need to find that spring,” Eric said, feeling numb as he watched the clouds. “I’m going to need that water, Kellen. It might be the only thing that will work.”

  “Then we’re going to have to come back for it,” Kellen said. “We’ve got to leave now.”

  Eric stared at the clouds but didn’t move or speak.

  “Come on,” Kellen said, and when he pulled Eric away by the arm, it was with the ease of a grown man moving a child. Only when he realized Eric was finally cooperating and running alongside him did he loosen his grip.

  “Gonna be slick!” he shouted in Eric’s ear. “Watch your ass. We run fast enough, we’ll be back at the car in a few minutes.”

  They ran down the hill and found the dry channel and splashed through it. It was a dry channel no longer—the slab they had used to cross was a foot underwater now. The Lost River filling it from beneath even as the rain attempted to do the same from above.

  Eric’s legs didn’t feel steady, seemed to be operating more out of momentum than muscle control, but he kept up with Kellen as best he could and kept moving. Finally the edge of the tree line was in sight, and from there it was maybe a half mile through a field of short scrub pine to get back to the car.

  They broke out of the trees into a roar of wind and ran right up to the barbed-wire fence. Eric was ducking to his hands and knees again, thinking, the hell with looking graceful, he just wanted to be on the other side, when Kellen reached down and grabbed the back of his shirt and spoke in a hiss of awe.

  “Look at that. Look at it.”

  Eric straightened and followed his stare and felt his own breath catch.

  From here they had a view out across open fields, and to the west, a ways off but not so far as to feel comfortable about it, a funnel cloud was lowering to the earth. The mass above it was black and purple but the funnel cloud was stark white. It eased to the ground almost peacefully, as if settling down for a rest, and then its color began to change, the white turning gray as it blew through the fields and gathered dirt, sucking soil and debris into its vortex. The air around them vibrated with the distant roar.

  “Is it going to come this way?” Eric shouted.

  “I think so.”

  They stood without speaking for a moment and watched as the cloud churned through the field. The tight funnel shape morphed into something less distinct as it went, circles of debris ringing the base. It crossed the field with apparent leisure. There was a row of power lines just ahead of the road, and when the tornado reached them, the poles lifted from the earth and the lines snapped. When it crossed the road and went into the next field, something lifted it into the air, almost like a bounce. For a moment the base of the cloud seemed to hesitate, as if it might retreat altogether, but then it dropped again and there was another burst of dark gray when it tore back into the land.

 
“It’s definitely coming this way,” Kellen shouted. “We got to run!”

  “We can make the car?”

  “Hell, no. Can’t outrun a tornado, man! We got to get down in that gulf. It’s the only place low enough!”

  He bent and grabbed the top strand of the rusted barbed wire and lifted, tugged it up and waved at Eric to climb through. Eric scrambled under, then turned to hold the wire for Kellen but saw that he was already across. He really could jump the damn thing.

  The gulf was close and it was a downhill run, but the roar around them was getting louder, too. Out of the trees the wind was a stronger force, and Eric realized with a mixture of astonishment and fear that it was actually pushing him off course. They were running in a mad sprint now, and for a moment Eric didn’t even realize that Kellen had hold of his shirt again, was dragging him along. By the time they hit the ridge above the gulf, the horizon line across from them was a wall of black sky.

  “Got to get down!” Kellen shouted, and then he put his hand in the middle of Eric’s back and shoved.

  The drop-off was sheer and lined with trees, the sort of place you’d walk around carefully on a normal day. Today, Kellen just pushed Eric right out over the top of it and jumped after him.

  For a moment Eric was airborne. Then his feet caught the hillside and his momentum sent him into a pinwheel down the slope, branches whipping at him. He was thinking that he’d fall all the way down into the water when he tumbled into the side of a tree. The impact exploded his vision into a burst of white light, but it also stopped him. He gasped and blinked and then he could see where he was—two-thirds of the way down the slope, a good sixty feet from the top of the ridge.

  He looked for Kellen and found him fifteen feet farther down, covered in mud and leaves. He was crawling toward the stone cliffs, away from the trees. Trying to get lower. Eric followed, not even bothering to attempt getting to his feet, just sliding on his ass and using his hands and heels to push himself along.

  They got most of the way down the slope, about five feet from the waterline, and pushed up against the loose stone wall, where there was an indentation that allowed them to pull back and find greater protection. There was no point in attempting to talk now; the roar had reached a thundering crescendo. It sounded exactly like the train that had blown past Eric on his first day in this place.

  They didn’t have to wait long. Thirty seconds, maybe a minute. It felt longer, though, felt like a damn eternity, the way time passed when you were sitting in a hospital watching an ER surgeon approach from down the hall to provide the status of a loved one. Then the storm finally caught them, and the world exploded.

  A full-size birch, fifty feet tall at least and with a wide spread of branches, tore out of the earth on top of the ridge and shot into space. It didn’t fall straight down, bound by the laws of gravity, but blew forward before catching on another tree and splashing into the swirling, roiling pool. The water sprayed up and showered them and then another tree was sliding down the cliff face, scattering loose stones in its wake. The woods were crackling with the sound of thick, powerful limbs and trunks snapping in two, and the wind was such that Eric could no longer hold his eyes open against it. He covered his face with his arms and pressed his body back into the indentation Kellen had found in the limestone wall and above them the world screamed in fury.

  Then it was gone.

  That something so terrible could pass so swiftly seemed impossible. There were still rumblings in the woods as uprooted trees and fallen branches slid down the hillsides and found resting places, but the raging wind was gone and the roar faded at its heels. Eric lowered his arms and stared out at the gulf. The water tossed and spun and in its midst were a half dozen trees now. When he looked up, he could see a line carved through the treetops on the east side of the ridge, as if trimmers had come through and topped them and then had gone on, leaving the limbs behind in careless piles. On level ground, the damage had been devastating. Would have been deadly. But they’d gotten down here into what was essentially a pit, ninety or a hundred feet below the surface, and the tornado had not been able to find them there.

  “That would have killed us,” he said. “If we’d been on level ground, that would have killed us.”

  Kellen nodded. “Yeah. We might still be airborne. In pieces.”

  His voice was as tight as if someone had a hold of his throat, and Eric finally turned and looked at him. Kellen’s face and neck and arms were a mass of tiny cuts, and there was one good-size gash above his left eye that oozed a thick band of blood that ran along his jaw and curled out toward his chin like a sideburn, and Eric knew he couldn’t look any better. Kellen’s face was locked into a grimace, though, and he was rocking back and forth, hands squeezed into fists.

  “You okay?” Eric said, and then he followed Kellen’s eyes down his leg to his foot and whispered, “Oh, shit.”

  Kellen’s right foot hung unnaturally beneath the leg, twisted almost backward, and there was a distended bulge just above his shoe, pushing at his skin. The ankle was clearly broken. Not just broken, he realized after a closer study—destroyed. The bone had snapped, but clearly some ligaments had torn loose as well to let his foot hang like that.

  Kellen’s face had drained to a gray pallor and he kept up that gentle rocking, but he didn’t moan or gasp or shout with pain.

  “You’re hurt bad,” Eric said. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”

  “Shoe off,” Kellen said through gritted teeth.

  “What?”

  “Get the shoe off. It’s swelling so fast… I don’t think it should be in the shoe.”

  Eric slid down the slick rock and reached for the laces of Kellen’s shoe. When he gave one a gentle tug, it shifted Kellen’s foot. This time he shouted with pain. Eric dropped the shoelace and pulled back, but Kellen shook his head and said, “Get it off.”

  So he untied the shoe. He did it as quickly and gently as possible, but Kellen hissed with pain, and when Eric slid the shoe off, he could see the bone move under the skin and felt a cloud of sickness move through him, leaving him dizzy. He dropped the shoe and it slid down the rock and into the water. Kellen didn’t seem to care.

  They waited for a moment, Kellen sucking in deep breaths and staring at the treetops. He reached into his pocket and slipped out his cell phone, handed it to Eric.

  “See if one of them works?”

  Kellen’s didn’t, and wouldn’t—the face was cracked and it was soaked with water, wouldn’t even turn on. Eric’s still functioned but couldn’t find a signal. No surprise down here in the hole, and who knew if it would change once they got to higher ground. The tornado might have taken out a tower or two.

  Eric’s left arm was shaking now and the pain buried in his head made it hard to focus, his vision starting to swim. He blinked and stared down at the gulf.

  “I think it’s still rising.”

  “Coming up fast,” Kellen said without even giving it a look. “We’re going to need to get me over to the other side.”

  “No way you’re walking on that,” Eric said, looking at Kellen’s massive frame and wondering if he’d be able to carry him.

  “No, but you get me up, and I can hobble.”

  It took three tries and some intense pain to get him upright. Then Eric dipped under his arm and tried to drag him along, but Kellen was large and heavy and the going was awkward. Every time they took a step, Kellen gave an unwilling gasp. His right foot just dangled below the ankle. They made it around the rim of the gulf, into the tall grass that grew along the flat bottomland near the trail, and then Kellen told Eric to stop.

  “Any chance you can make it to the car?” Eric said.

  “Maybe. But I doubt there’s much left of the car.”

  Shit, he was probably right. Both of Eric’s hands were shaking again. Behind them the water in the gulf gurgled and boiled around one of the fallen trees.

  “You need to get to the road,” Kellen said. “Going to be police and
firefighters out checking on the farms. Tell somebody I’m down here.”

  He’d lowered himself down into the grass and leaned back on his elbows, grimacing and studying his unresponsive right foot. Eric saw he was digging into the mud with his fingers. The pain had to be brutal.

  “That water comes up much higher, it’ll drown you,” he said.

  “I can get up higher if I need to. But I’m not making it back to the road.”

  “All right,” Eric said. “I’ll get help.”

  He went on up the hill alone.

  56

  JOSIAH FOUND THE STREETS of town damn near deserted, everyone taking heed of that storm siren and seeking shelter. He blew through a red light, not giving a shit because wasn’t anybody out to notice, and then hammered the accelerator when he cleared town, sped past the West Baden hotel without so much as a look. He’d be back for it.

  At Anne McKinney’s house Campbell’s instructions had finally clarified, the reality of this whole fucking mess becoming crystal clear: Josiah didn’t need anyone’s money. Didn’t need their explanations either, didn’t need a damn thing from a soul in the whole valley, the whole world.

  What he needed was to listen. And now, finally, he was starting to. He heard the goal now, warm as a whisper in the ear. Take this place down, and watch it burn. They’ll know your name when it’s done, better believe that. They’ll know it, and remember it.

  Eric Shaw’s wife was in the bed of his truck, bound with tape and wrapped in a tarp and pushed up next to the dynamite. Way that rain was coming down, the bitch was probably a tad uncomfortable. The wind was coming at him strong enough that it was hard to hold the truck in the proper lane, and he thought it was a damn good thing the roads seemed to be deserted. Fact was, this looked like a hell of a storm. He punched on the radio.