“It is. I’m really not afraid to die. I’m just afraid it’s going to hurt. You know?”
“Yeah.” I choked back tears. “I still don’t think you should be alone. If I can get close, I’ll cover my face with a sweatshirt.”
“Why don’t we wait an hour, see if things calm down?” Annie suggested. “Just stay on the phone with me?”
“Okay.” That made sense. I could stay on the phone with her the whole time, try again in an hour when things had hopefully calmed down.
“My throat hurts, so you talk, I’ll listen.”
“What should I talk about?”
“I don’t know.”
I tried to think of something happy. I heard a gurgling from Annie’s end. “Are you okay?”
“I’m just drinking. Drink lots of fluids and get plenty of rest, right?”
“Absolutely.”
Annie laughed a little.
“The two of us are going to laugh about this over drinks in a few days, after you’re over the flu,” I said. “It’s the flu. Even if there was an anthrax outbreak, people still get the flu this time of year.”
“You’re probably right.”
I tried to drive with tunnel vision. I didn’t want to see what was happening outside. Every block seemed crowded with people trying to get help. A woman wearing a head scarf flagged me from between two parked cars. I didn’t stop; I felt like shit, but I didn’t want to contract anthrax. Could it get into the car through the vent? I turned off the heat, just in case.
“Would you say your life has been mostly happy up till now?” Annie asked.
I wasn’t sure how to answer. “Yes and no. I’m happy when the universe isn’t dropping giant shit-bombs on me.” I was going for an ironic tone, but it came out dripping with self-pity.
“How old were you when your twin sister died?” Annie asked.
“Twelve.” I had a flash of memory: sitting in the Buckhead diner, holding Lorena’s hand, Annie sitting across from us in the booth, tears rolling down her cheeks as I told her the story of how Kayleigh drowned.
I made it to the 75/85 interchange. It was crowded, but so far the traffic was moving.
Annie started to say something, but it tripped off a coughing jag. “You still there?”
“I’m here,” I said.
“Someone on CNN said anthrax. Maybe terrorist attack. Not confirmed.”
“They’re probably hearing the same rumor I heard.”
I drove in silence, the phone to my ear, digesting Annie’s words. Terrorist attack? They were just sensationalizing a bad flu outbreak for ratings. That had to be it.
My chest felt tight, and for a second I wondered if I was infected. Annie had said the breathing difficulties came later. This was just anxiety.
I made it to Collier and got off at the exit. It wasn’t mine, but the parkway was bogging with traffic.
I tried to think of something else to say—something that didn’t involve terrorists, ambulances that sounded like a pack of wolves. I was flying along Howell Mill Road, with the reservoir on my right. Almost home now—another fifteen minutes. Almost safe. “I’m on Howell Mill Road. Have you ever heard the legend about this road?”
“No,” Annie said.
“There’s a local legend that this road is haunted, that if you put your car in neutral at a certain spot and let it coast, a ghost will pull you uphill. When I was a senior we would come here all the time. Everyone had a different opinion of where the spot was, and none of them—”
There was a woman kneeling in the middle of the road.
I hit the brake, jerked the steering wheel to avoid her. As my wheels screeched and the car skidded toward the guardrail I wondered what the hell she was doing there, down on her knees like she was praying.
The impact was deafening. I squeezed the wheel, my teeth clenched, as my car flipped over the guardrail.
For a moment my car was airborne and there was silence, except for Annie calling my name, her voice tiny and far away.
Then the car hit, front-end first, and cartwheeled down the embankment. My head slammed into the window and I heard something crack. There was a loud pop; I couldn’t see anything, and realized the airbag was in my face.
Something slammed against the roof like a giant fist, and everything stopped.
Then there was Annie’s voice again, asking what was wrong, imploring me to answer.
Water surged into the car above my head. For a moment I didn’t understand what was happening, then I grasped that the car was upside-down in the reservoir. I reached for the buttons to close the windows, but they were already closed—the water was coming from somewhere else. It didn’t matter; I was sinking and I needed to get out. I fumbled with the seat belt, unable to locate the release as freezing water washed over my face. Shocked by the cold, I lifted my face up out of the water, but it followed. A second later my entire head was under.
I panicked. I thrashed in my seat as if I could bust myself out of the seatbelt, realizing too late that I should have taken a deep breath before the water rose over my head. My arms and hands clenched as the numbing water rushed over them.
All I could think was, this shouldn’t be so hard. I should be able to get out.
I followed the seatbelt up to my lap and found the release, felt a jolt, then I was floating free. The water had stopped churning—the car was completely filled. I clawed at the door, seeking the latch, and instead found the buttons for the windows.
They didn’t work. Or maybe I wasn’t pushing them right. My fingers were so numb I couldn’t tell if the buttons were moving.
There was a gentle thump: my car had hit bottom. The thought of it horrified me. I was at the bottom, my head inches from the mud.
I pushed feebly at the window. My chest hitched, resisting my lungs’ insistence that I breathe. I went back to searching for the door latch.
I finally found it, down lower than I’d thought. I was so disoriented from the cold, the upside-down car. I jammed my fingers into the cavity and pulled the latch, sensed rather than heard the door pop. I pushed with my shoulder; it eased open in slow-motion.
I tugged myself free of the seatbelt, and drifted into the open water.
Swim. I willed myself to move, but my limbs wouldn’t work. It was like they’d been disconnected. I managed to wriggle my hands, but my arms wouldn’t move, not together in a coordinated way.
The water couldn’t be that deep—I only needed to swim a few feet. Or stand. Maybe I only needed to stand. If I could figure out which way was up. I wasn’t cold any more, just very, very stiff, as if I were wrapped in a thick layer of gauze.
It occurred to me that I’d just been talking about Kayleigh drowning. I didn’t want to drown. I sputtered in fear. Bubbles burst out of my mouth, trailed across my face.
Follow the bubbles. Where had I read that? Was it in a movie? If you don’t know which way is up when you’re underwater, follow the bubbles, because they’re going up, they’re escaping the cold, black water into blessed air. I felt the bottom pressing my elbow. I tried to reach out and push off, but I didn’t move far.
There was a terrific humming in my ears, like electricity. Electricity always reminded me of Lorena. Rivers and electricity. Canoes. Lorena hadn’t drowned, though; she’d been on the edge of the water.
Images flashed in my head, incredibly vivid. Geometrical figures flying past, like futuristic cities, each shape glowing colorfully, creating a kaleidoscope that spun and twisted around me. Outside sensations—the press of water, the sound of my body struggling not to breathe, then, finally, giving in and inhaling—receded. Then my thoughts receded too.
CHAPTER 2
I snapped awake.
The TV was on.
“This is not good. This is not good,” a woman said. She was crying.
I thought it was the woman I’d swerved to avoid in the road, that she had pulled me out of the water and for some reason taken me to her house. But I was in the same seat as the woma
n, like she was sitting in my lap, only she wasn’t, because she wasn’t blocking my view of the TV. I tried to look around, but couldn’t.
I leaned forward and retrieved a cigarette from a pack of Camels sitting on the coffee table. Only I didn’t. It was as if someone else was moving me. I didn’t smoke. I never smoked.
“Oh, Christ,” the woman moaned. I looked at my hands as I lit the cigarette with a red plastic lighter, only again, I didn’t mean to look at my hands—my eyes just went there. They weren’t even my hands—they were a woman’s hands, slim and pale, with rings on three fingers. They were trembling. The cigarette came to my mouth and my lips wrapped around it. Not my lips, this woman’s lips. I was watching from behind her eyes. She didn’t seem to know I was there.
I felt her heart pounding, and that at least felt right, because I was terrified. Her heart was pounding for her own reasons, though, not mine.
We looked toward the TV. A reporter wearing a medical mask stood in front of a hospital, its windows dancing with reflected red lights from emergency vehicles. Behind the reporter people raced around, all of them wearing masks.
The supporting title at the bottom of the screen read: Anthrax Attack in Atlanta.
The reporter was speaking in a breathless voice. “Peter, Emergency personnel are scrambling to find some way to handle the crush of victims in what is now being described as a terrorist attack that may have originated in the MARTA subway system.”
I thought of Annie, hoped that somehow, against all odds, she was all right.
I stood, or the woman stood, and went into the kitchen. We grabbed a bottle of red wine by the neck, and, as we turned toward a drawer, I caught a glimpse of the woman reflected in the microwave. It was Lyndsay, my date.
We took a long swig right from the bottle, set it down on the coffee table, then picked up a phone, punched a number, got an “all circuits are busy” recording.
“Shit!” We threw the phone down.
I tried to make sense of what was happening to me. This must be a hallucination. I was dying, and for some reason my brain was creating this vivid, pointless hallucination of what Lyndsay might be doing at this moment as it flickered out.
If that was true I had to snap out of it, move my arms and swim. I didn’t want to die at all; I wasn’t like Annie.
On the news they showed Fifth Avenue, an impossible tangle of cars and people.
“Authorities are instructing people to stay in their homes, but clearly, Peter, thousands are not heeding these instructions...”
For a second I considered that this whole thing was a hallucination, starting with my phone call to Annie, or even back to the date. I had stayed home, went to sleep, was having an incredibly vivid dream.
My vision broke apart, splintering into a million colorful shards. The shards morphed into geometric shapes again, and I watched them fly by, twisting and stretching out to an unseen horizon.
CHAPTER 3
“His eyes are open again.”
A face hovered over me. It wasn’t the woman with the cigarette, it was a man with a goatee. He was wet and shaking.
“Can you hear me?” he asked. Droplets of water dribbled off his goatee.
I tried to answer, but my lungs cramped painfully. Water burst from my mouth, briefly creating a fountain rising toward the goateed man. I was seized by a painful coughing fit.
“Get him on his side,” the man said. I felt myself being rolled, and my lungs stopped aching a little. I’d never been so cold. And confused. How had I gone from the bottom of the reservoir to Lyndsay’s living room to here?
“Here,” another man said. I was covered to the neck with a blanket, but it didn’t help. “Nine-one-one didn’t answer.” The man laughed. “Imagine that. You think we should take him to a hospital?”
“Are you kidding me?” the goateed man said. “You want anthrax?” “I’m going to go to sleep now,” I mumbled, drawing my hands up under my chin.
“Whoa, you better not.” The goateed guy said, pulling my wrist away from my face. “Come on, let’s walk to my truck. We can turn the heater up full blast.”
That sounded great. Just the idea of a heater filled me with longing like I’d never experienced before. I struggled to raise myself on one elbow, but couldn’t manage it. The two men pulled me to my feet. They half-dragged me toward a truck, which was parked on the shoulder of the highway.
The woman I’d swerved to avoid was still sprawled in the road. She was an old woman, clearly very sick. She was pleading for someone to help her. Two cars had pulled over. A small group was huddled on the shoulder.
My saviors shoved me into the truck. It was a tight fit for the three of us, but I didn’t care. Heat blasted from the vents—that’s all that mattered. I held my frozen hands in front of the heater, my jaw chattering.
The guy on the passenger side, a big, Italian-looking guy, abruptly leaned away from me. “Hey, you’re not sick or anything, are you? It just occurred to me.”
I shook my head, feeling my neck muscles creak. “I don’t have it.”
He relaxed, let his big thigh settle back against mine. “You’re one lucky bastard. Five minutes ago you were dead.”
“Dead?” I echoed.
“Dead,” the driver said. “No pulse, not breathing.”
“Toby saved your life,” the Italian guy said. “I got it all on my phone.” He showed me the phone. “You want to see it?”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to see my own dead body.
“He spotted the back of your head in the water and pulled you out.” He slapped the dash. “Shit, Toby, you saved a guy’s life! Un-fucking-believable.”
I looked at Toby, who kept his eyes on the road, smiling, clearly proud.
“Thanks, Toby,” I offered. It wasn’t nearly enough, but I couldn’t find the energy to elaborate.
“No problem.” He held out his fist. I bumped the top of it with mine, like we were playing one-potato, two-potato, not sure if that’s what he wanted.
“I’m Joe, by the way,” the Italian guy said.
“I have to sleep now,” I said.
A wriggling in my pants woke me. Joe was fishing around in my pocket.
“Don’t worry, I ain’t ripping you off,” Joe said when he saw I was awake. He withdrew his hand. “I was trying to see if there were phone numbers in your wallet, but your wallet’s all wet and it’s stuck to your pants. Is there someone I can call? We’re not sure what to do with you. We gotta be somewhere.”
My first thought was Annie. My second was that I should call my mom to let her know I was all right. She was probably frantic, out in Arizona with no information, calling my phone and getting no answer. Later. Right now I needed someone to come and help me. There was my friend Dave. He had a family to worry about, but if he could, he’d come.
“Call my friend, David Bash.”
I couldn’t remember the number, and my phone was in my car. Joe looked it up, dialed, and handed me the phone.
All circuits were busy.
I shut the phone, handed it back to Joe. “You can just drop me at my house.” I gave Toby directions.
Joe clicked on the radio. The roads out of Atlanta were closed. The National Guard was setting up auxiliary hospitals in armories and schools. The office of Homeland Security had released a statement saying the outbreak had tentatively been traced back to the subway, and was assumed to be a terrorist attack.
“How did you bring me back?” I asked Toby.
“I pushed on your chest. That didn’t work, so I punched your chest like they do in the movies.”
“You never took CPR?”
Toby made a face. “Hell, no.”
We slowed to pass a police cruiser parked half in the road. The police officer was nowhere in sight.
“How long was I in the water?” I asked.
They glanced at each other. “What would you say?” Toby asked Joe.
Joe shrugged. “What? Ten, fifteen minutes?”
�
��Right in there, yeah,” Toby said.
I tried to wrap my mind around it. I’d been dead. Not unconscious, dead. I had that vision, of being Lyndsay watching the news. A lot of people who had near-death experiences reported vivid hallucinations, and now that my head was clearer it seemed likely that that’s what happened.
It had been remarkably vivid, though. It hadn’t felt like a hallucination at all.
The radio was describing the symptoms of anthrax, but I already knew them from my conversation with Annie.
“Wait a minute,” I said aloud without meaning to. Both men looked at me. “Did they say it started in the subways?” I thought I’d heard that, but that couldn’t be right, because I’d heard the same thing during my hallucination that I was Lyndsay.
“That’s what they’re saying,” Joe said.
I wrapped my arms around myself and trembled harder. “Jesus,” I whimpered.
“What?” Joe asked.
“Nothing.” I was so tired.
We pulled through the gates into the remnants of Toy Shop Village, with its empty bumper-boats pool, rusting rides, rotting streamers, and Toby and Joe were sure I was delirious. Who lives in a defunct amusement center? I directed them toward the drive-in theater toward the back of the Village, assuring them I lived there.
I thanked both men from the bottom of my heart. Joe’s eyes filled with tears and he nodded; Toby waved me off, insisting it was no big deal. I got Toby’s business card, intending to come up with a truly awesome thank you gift to send once I could think straight. Quivering in front of my locked front door, it took me a moment to remember the spare key over the door frame.
As soon as I got inside I tried to call Annie on my land line, but got no answer. I stripped, pulled every blanket and towel out of the linen closet, threw them on my bed, and passed out underneath them.
CHAPTER 4
I woke trembling with cold and utterly disoriented. My fingers and toes felt like they could never possibly be warm again. I wondered if I had frostbite.
Hitchers Page 3
