Strikers

by Ann Christy

  The gap is there before me and it’s far worse than I thought. I have to stop so suddenly that I lose my tentative footing and drop to my knees, one hand barely catching the last tie to stop my headlong fall into the water. A single beam of the old rail reaches out into the gap, ragged grating clinging to the support structure, and I know from the terrible groan when I scramble forward that it won’t hold my weight. This is the end of the line.

  The water below me is an unending ribbon of deeper black. The flashlight beams attenuate at this distance and create just enough glow that it’s impossible to use the moonlight to see details. Is it shallow or deep? Are there rocks or is it a soft muddy bottom? There are several hundred feet between me and the shore and I’m more than halfway over the river. No good options are on offer at the moment.

  I rise to my feet and Jovan sees me standing there, arms akimbo to keep my balance, and he stops, too. He turns, holding his arms out as a barrier between Creedy and me. Creedy is fit, but far older than we are, and he hasn’t made it very far running along the rails. We stand there for a breathless moment, each of us knowing our choices have narrowed to exactly nothing.

  “I’ll let her go if you come with me,” Creedy shouts.

  Jovan shakes his head, almost sadly, steps backward onto the next tie toward me, and answers, “You won’t.”

  I can’t see much of Creedy with Jovan between us, but I can see the gun lift, the barrel glinting in the moonlight. He says, “I’ll shoot her now unless you come.”

  Jovan takes another step backward, risking a fall by not looking, but his step is sure and firm. He’s just three ties from me, almost close enough to touch. I have the terrible feeling I will never touch him again, and a sharp pang of regret for all that I will never experience pierces me. If this is the end of my life, at least I can have the final moments of it with Jovan, who I have loved since I was too young to understand what love was.

  “If you shoot, you’ll hit me and all those people down there will know it. You might be able to spin a tale for my father for a while, but he’ll find out the truth and you’ll be a dead man. You and I both know it,” Jovan assures him and takes another step backward. “Stop coming forward or I’ll jump. I’ll be just as dead.”

  I can only see bits of Creedy now. Jovan is covering me as best he can, but I can see Creedy’s feet as they stop short. I can almost feel the wheels turning in his head from where I stand. Jovan takes ones more step and I put my hand on his back, feeling the sweat-dampened fabric and the heaving of his breath. He’s frightened but also determined.

  The words I need to tell him before I die are forming in my mouth when he looks over his shoulder and whispers, “I’ll get you. Trust me.”

  He knows how poor my swimming skills are. We discussed it when we crossed that first lake. Braving water of unknown depth on an open-sided raft made me visibly nervous. He knows I won’t survive the river even if I survive the fall. He’s asking me to risk it all based on trust.

  But really, what choice do I have at this point? I can see that Jovan’s holster is empty so there’s nothing else that we can reasonably do.

  Seeing my indecision, he smiles and whispers, “You need a bath anyway.”

  That’s it. It’s all I need. His smile, the certainty in his eyes and the way those eyes move over my face is more than enough. He turns back toward Creedy, who has lifted a foot slightly, like he’s about to step forward. The lifted foot comes back down and the stalemate resumes. I take a long breath, then another, and jump.

  *****

  It seems I’ll fall forever and I hold my breath, only dimly aware of the shouts from the shore as I do. I try to stay straight, my legs together and arms at my sides. My pack is on my back but there’s nothing I can do about it now except hope that it doesn’t drown me.

  The impact is bone-rattling and I have no sense of how far I sink, only that I’m turned and tumbled in the water, entirely lacking control. My pack slams into the back of my head and jerks my arms painfully. Stunned and confused, all I can think of is the breath that just whooshed out of me and that I have no way of knowing which way is up, no way of finding the precious air I need.

  Opening my eyes is almost no help at all. The moonlight makes the river around me a confusion of bubbles and brown water. I can feel the current like a cold embrace, pushing me with shocking speed away from the bubbles. My lungs are burning and the temptation to simply breathe in anything, even water, is an instinct I have to fight with every fiber of my being.

  Instead, I do the thing that is exactly opposite to my instincts and simply go still. The confusion of bubbles resolves into a receding curtain that is moving past my feet. I’m upside down. I flail my arms and feet, turn and then kick until my head breaks the surface.

  Air has never tasted so sweet or felt so good before. I suck in great gasps and let the stars in my vision clear. The bridge has fallen behind me and I have no control over my direction of travel. Coughing, I try to dog paddle, to stay afloat, but the cold current below wants to tug me downward and it’s all I can do to keep my lips and nose free of the water.

  I’m exhausted almost immediately and my frantic looks around don’t show me anything that might be Jovan. It’s getting harder to keep my head above water and it seems every few seconds a branch or something else comes looming out of the night to smack into me. My pack has filled with water, the clothes inside weighing it down. With a pang I realize I will have to let it go.

  Everything except what I have tucked into my pockets is in that pack. Not just the few spare clothes that I have, but also the food, which will likely be useless now anyway. My flint, the medical kit and even our pot is in that pack. The loss of those things is far more crucial.

  Most hurtful is my little box, the few reminders of my life tucked within it. Except for the single photo in my pocket, which is no doubt getting ruined, all the photos of my father and mother are in that pack.

  I shrug out of it and it falls immediately away, taking with it my past. It’s like I’ve shed a body’s worth of weight and the relief is immense. Keeping my chin out of the water seems almost possible now.

  I gather what little energy I have left and shout, “Jovan.”

  It comes out sounding more like a croak than a yell, but I hear my name in response. It’s not close and I can’t tell where it’s coming from, but I hold up my arm, hoping he can see it. I’m paddling with my legs as fast as I can, but my head dips lower in the water again and I have to lower my arm again.

  After doing this a few times, holding up my arm till I can’t anymore, then gathering my strength for another round, I feel him grab me and hear him say, “I’ve got you.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  His hand grips mine, our thumbs locked and his fingers tight around my palm as he pulls me to him, chest to chest. He spins us around in the water until it is his back pointing downstream where all the debris appears from. I can feel his legs scissoring underneath us with strong strokes very unlike my pathetic dog paddle.

  His free arm wraps around my back and I feel the sharp points of his knuckles digging into my chest where our clasped hands are squeezed between us. He gasps, “Put your arm around my neck. Hang on.”

  I do, wrapping my arm almost too tightly around him, loosening my grip when he winces though my instinct is to hold on even tighter. His arm releases my back when I have a good hold, but he doesn’t release the lock he has on my hand. I feel a change in his kicks as his one free arm guides us with more purpose in the river that still carries us swiftly along.

  We aren’t in the middle of the river, but close enough so that either bank looks impossibly far away. He’s guiding us toward the opposite bank from where we began but I can’t even imagine how far down the river we’ll be before we’re able to reach that bank. He seems tireless to me. Little grunts punctuating his effort are the only indicator he gives as to how hard he’s working.

  It seems like hours have passed, though I know it can’t be more
than minutes in reality, when I hear the sounds of arguing over the roar of the river. Jovan stops his work for a moment, just keeping us afloat while he looks around, so I know he heard it, too. All the muscles in my body clench until the voices resolve and then I laugh.

  “You’re such a jerk-off! If we want to get across we have to use the paddles to help it push us, we can’t fight it!” Cassi’s voice is clear and high and very angry.

  I can’t see them, but I shout out her name before we move past them entirely.

  “Karas! Where are you?”

  The beam of a flashlight is joined by another a moment later and it plays over the water far behind us. Any hope I had of being able to climb up into a handy boat are dashed when I see that they are still on the other side of the river. We’ve actually made more progress than they have.

  I shout out, “We’re past you already. Get across and look for us south of you. We’ll wait!”

  Her voice is fainter, less clear, when it comes back to me but I can understand that she’s acknowledging me and that’s enough.

  Jovan resumes his work with a grunt, his efforts redoubled, and I do my best to help him without tangling our legs. I can’t help but wonder why we are moving faster than the debris floating on the surface and the boat—or whatever it is they are paddling. I feel that cold current on my legs and how hard I have to work to keep my body fairly upright and realize the water moves faster under the surface than on top of it.

  That gives me an idea so I tighten my grip on Jovan and push my body to the side. It puts me facing the faster current at an angle, allowing me to act almost as a rudder for Jovan to work with. It seems to help and Jovan looks at me with a sudden smile.

  His face is inches from mine and I feel a perverse desire to kiss him, remembering what I almost said before I jumped from the bridge. Life is entirely too short for fear to be a factor in how we live it. Before I can think again, I dart my head forward and press my cold lips to his.

  Like mine, his lips are cold, but they are also soft. They feel exactly how they look like they should. I press our lips together, my hand around his neck, until I feel his surprise melt into something different. I can feel our motion become less controlled, his kicks less strong, so I pull away and kick my legs back out to the side.

  His smile returns but it’s different, meant just for me. I think I will forever love the way the light of the moon makes the world look because of this moment. His smile warms me all the way to my toes.

  Jovan goes back to work and the addition of my makeshift rudder changes our path dramatically. A new danger looms out of the night in the form of deadfall along the banks of the river. We’re still moving too fast to want to risk plunging into range of it and take our chances, though we’ve begun to slow a little as the bank nears.

  “Pull your legs up,” I say through chattering teeth.

  That slows us even more and I see another huge deadfall looming ahead, so tall that I think it is an old ruined building at first. It’s a tangle of branches and trees that must have piled up after something large enough to provide a good base caught hold.

  Behind it, there will be a lee, a small pool of calmer water free of debris because everything is already caught up in the deadfall. It will break the flow of the river, but it will be a small window of opportunity that we must not miss.

  “Now. There. Now!” I exclaim as we draw even. I kick for all I’m worth, as does Jovan, and the sudden loss of current sends us those last feet toward the bank. I’m still kicking when Jovan gains his feet so all I accomplish is to knock him over again. He gets his feet back under him and I can feel the firm hold of the earth in the way he holds me.

  “Oh!” I say as my boots touch the mud.

  He laughs, but it is a tired laugh, weary all the way through to the bone. The mud is sticky and sucks at my boots, so he hauls me closer to shore with an arm around my waist. It reminds me of how he picked me up when I first saw my father, the day all of this started.

  Once on the bank and out of the mud, we collapse into a heap. My limbs feel boneless and weak, trembling with fatigue. I fall onto my back and decide that I love solid ground. Jovan flops down next to me and I can’t help but grin at him as we pant out the exhaustion.

  He lifts an arm and then lets it fall again. “I feel like my bones fell out,” he says.

  “Me, too,” I answer. It’s pretty much all I’ve got the energy for right now.

  I’d like to just lie there a while, but the air is too cool to stay in the open with soaked clothes and there is nothing save dark trees for as far as I can see. The border should be behind me somewhere, but there’s no evidence of that from where I am. And we have three friends in the water to watch for, possibly still having problems steering their boat.

  “The others,” I say and brace myself on an elbow.

  Jovan stands, groaning at the effort, but he holds out a hand and I’m not ashamed to use it to stand up. There’s nothing obvious, but with the moon there’s only so far we can see. When I listen, the sounds of the water flowing past the tangle of deadfall is almost all I can hear aside from our still ragged breathing.

  We look at each other and decide without having to say a word. I cup my hands around my mouth and yell, “We’re here!”

  It’s shockingly loud and it goes against all my instincts. We’ve had to be so careful, so quiet, since we left that it seems wrong to be anything but quiet. I hear a faint answer that I think came from upstream. I see Jovan has begun to collect wood further up the bank where it’s dry. I hate to tell him that I have no way to start it.

  “Jovan, I had to dump my pack. I’ve got no flint,” I confess. I cross my arms in front my chest to hold in what little heat I have and contain my shivers. He just keeps collecting wood and tossing it into the cleared space between us.

  “Are you listening? I don’t have a flint, so unless you’ve got some secret superpower I don’t know about for making fire, collecting wood isn’t going to help us,” I say, the cold making me sound sharp and short-tempered when all I really want is for him to come and hold me so we can share some warmth.

  In response, he stands and pats his pocket, his white teeth flashing in a grin. “I’ve got one.”

  If I weren’t so happy to hear that, I’d probably be angry he left me guessing. Then another thought strikes me.

  “Wait, maybe we shouldn’t light a fire,” I say.

  He stomps over to me, tossing another armload onto the ground as he does, and says, “We need a fire. We’re both freezing and we need to signal the others.”

  That’s a reasonable and true statement, but it’s only half of what we need to consider. “And it will signal anyone else who comes down the river looking for us, too,” I counter.

  He stops and shakes his head, like he can’t believe he didn’t think of that. Then he looks back up the river, perhaps expecting to see a boat, its searchlights seeking us. There’s nothing, of course, but that doesn’t mean it will remain true for long.

  As cold and wet as we are, as eager as we are to see our friends, we need to remain calm and keep thinking. Given that they didn’t seem to know what they were doing with the boat, it’s unlikely they obtained it legitimately. It’s a distinct possibility the owners of the boat will come looking if Creedy doesn’t.

  It may feel like we’ve left Creedy behind, and if we’re lucky, the people who just saw him drive us over the edge of a bridge will detain him, or at least not allow him access to a boat. But we simply can’t count on that so we have to use our heads.

  We hunker down next to our useless pile of wood and after a moment of solitary shivering, Jovan scoots closer and pulls me tightly to his side, his arm draped over my shoulder. It doesn’t feel the same as when we were in the water. This is less intimate, without that sensation of being entirely together like before. It’s more functional than emotional. That’s a disappointment, though I feel bad for thinking that way.

  Functional or otherwise, there’s comfort
in it and the warmth we share is welcome. I curl into him and we watch the river together, hoping for our friends.

  Their arguing reaches our ears long before their small boat comes into view. We yell out, unwisely given how long Creedy has had to come after us if he did manage to find a crew and a boat, and they pass us with assurances that they are alright and getting the hang of the boat.

  They look relatively close, maybe fifty feet out from the shore. It’s almost close enough to tempt me to suggest they jump in and swim, until I remember that Connor can’t swim at all and Cassi is only slightly better than I. I have no idea if Maddix can, but I do know he’s been shot recently and that usually doesn’t mix well with dirty river water.

  After their still-arguing voices fade and we sit there for a while, absorbing the fact that they are safe, Jovan bursts out laughing. I stare at him for a moment, not at all understanding what might be funny about any of this. That seems to just set him off even more. He’s laughing so hard he falls over, making noises that sound more like choking than laughter. I start to get worried so I poke him in the side, hard.

  “What?” I ask, pulling a face, when he keeps laughing. “Are you alright?”

  He waves a hand at me, telling me to wait, while he chokes on his laughs and then quiets a little. When he looks at me, he starts laughing again and we go through the entire cycle once more.

  Right about the time I lose my last bit of patience, which doesn’t take long, he says between laughs, “The arguing! They’ve been arguing the whole time. While we were…”

  He trails off with more laughter but I don’t see what’s funny. And then I do. While we were jumping off a bridge, possibly to our deaths, and fighting the river, they were arguing and making incredibly slow process. And they did it all while remaining entirely unaware of our circumstances. It’s sad, yes, but also hilarious in a very twisted sort of way. I chuckle too and soon we’re both laughing so hard it hurts.