Manna From Heaven

by Karen Robards

  "I never even go out on boats," she moaned through chattering teeth, unable to believe the situation in which she found herself.

  "I've got you. As long as you don't panic, we'll be fine." His tone was reassuring. So was the knowledge that, he was handcuffed to her wrist. No matter what happened, he wouldn't be letting her go.

  Something that glowed faintly in the darkness floated into her line of vision, rising and falling with the motion of the water. It was pencil thick, and semicircular....

  "Hold onto this," Jake instructed, distracting her by shoving a branch the size of an oar in front of her nose. Charlie took one look, and thought thank you, God! With his help, she wedged it under her arms, and felt marginally more secure. Between Jake and the branch, she just might survive this nightmare after all.

  "Okay, we're heading for dry land. We'll be out of this in just a few minutes. Hang on."

  He was towing her steadily toward shore, Charlie saw with a quick glance around. Although it was so dark she could barely differentiate the solidness of the branch from the inkiness of the water, she could tell where shore was: It was that place where the white line of foam bubbled against a grayer shade of night. Looking closer, she realized that the grayer shade belonged to a wall of sheer rock. Even if they reached the riverbank, getting out might prove difficult if that wall of rock was as straight up and down as it looked.

  "Jake. Jake, they killed Laura." The imminent prospect of drowning had knocked the horror of it clear out of her head. Now that she felt fractionally more secure, her brain was able to function enough for her to remember.

  "What?" He sounded startled.

  "They killed Laura. After Woz knocked you unconscious, he shot her. Her head—it—it exploded."

  "Jesus." She could feel the arm beneath her breasts tighten. "Stupid sonofabitch, I told him not to get his girlfriend involved. Now they're both dead."

  Charlie took deep breaths, trying to expel the hideous image once again. For a few moments both of them were silent, as Charlie did her best to erase her memory banks and Jake concentrated on keeping them afloat. The glowing thing bobbed into view again, closer this time. Successfully distracted, Charlie frowned at it, then realized with a burst of pleased surprise what it was.

  "Sadie!" The little dog was swimming valiantly in their wake. The glow Charlie had seen was from the reflector strip on her collar. Now that Charlie knew what to look for, she could see her distinctly. Sadie was stretching her neck, holding her head as high above the surface as she could, her eyes round and black in her pale face. She looked about as drowned and desperate as Charlie felt.

  Without thought, Charlie reached out toward her. The branch immediately tried to dislodge itself from beneath her arms, and she grabbed it with a sudden fresh upsurge of panic and damped it back into place.

  "What the hell are you doing? Lie still." Jake sounded breathless. "This is like swimming with a ton of bricks on my chest as it is."

  "Sadie!" Charlie tried to coax the dog closer. "Come on, Sadie!"

  "Are you deaf? I said lie still."

  "It's Sadie! Here, girl!"

  "I don't give a damn if it's Madonna. You keep wriggling like that, and we're both going to go under."

  The warning terrified her anew. Charlie made a conscious effort to relax her muscles as best she could, letting her head rest back against his broad shoulder while her lower body floated, but she kept her eyes on her dog.

  Sadie paddled determinedly, but whether her efforts or the force of the current brought her nearer Charlie couldn't tell. She was almost close enough to grab.

  "Look at the damned dog's damned collar." Jake sounded so alarmed that Charlie stiffened instinctively. His arm tightened, and she was reminded to relax. "Look at it! It glows in the dark! No wonder they were able to track us through the woods. The damned dog was following us the whole time. They'll be able to find us in the river, too. Don't call it any closer. Damn it to hell, anyway! Grab it, and let's ..."

  His words were interrupted by what sounded like a firecracker going off. A sudden splash of water hit Charlie in the face.

  "Shit!" Jake said. "That was close."

  Even as she looked in the direction he was looking in, Charlie heard what sounded like a whole string of fire-crackers exploding. Water shot up all around them in frothy white mini-geysers, showering her with spray.

  From the top of the rocky wall that lined this section of the river, a baseball-size circle of light shone in their direction: a flashlight, she realized. Its beam was a puny thing as it reached over the dark water toward them, but its impact couldn't have been greater if it had been the spotlight that had mesmerized Charlie earlier: Woz and Denton had clearly found them. The geysers were caused by bullets hitting the water. Her pulse, frozen into near nonexistence, began to race anew. Had she thus far survived drowning only to be shot? Or maybe she would be shot, and then drown?

  What was this, a hundred and one ways to die? Charlie moaned.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jake grab Sadie, pulling her in. His savage kicks and her death grip on the branch was all that was keeping them afloat. Bullets smacked the water in a sharp, staccato rhythm, kicking up water all around.

  At least, she thought semihysterically, she wouldn't die alone. Not that there was much comfort in that.

  "Let go," Jake said in Charlie's ear, and to her horror the branch was wrenched from her grasp. She gasped, stiffened, flailed and sank, swallowing what felt like half the river in the process. Jake sank right beside her, but instead of hauling her up again he kept her beneath the surface, holding her down and pulling her along as he swam. He was careful to keep just enough distance between them so that she couldn't latch on to him as she was desperate to do. Lungs aching, eyes wide open but unable to see anything in the frigid darkness, Charlie kicked and clawed at the water with her free hand even as she mentally surrendered to the inevitable: One way or another on this hideous night, she was going to die.

  When they surfaced at last, she was so limp with terror and exhaustion and lack of oxygen that she couldn't even latch onto Jake. She gasped and coughed and wheezed, filling her lungs with air, letting him do with her as he would. Once again she found herself with her back to his front and their connected arms beneath her breasts. He was treading water, supporting her, and she leaned her head back against his shoulder and just breathed. None of her senses seemed to be working properly. Even her sense of fear was numbed, which she realized vaguely was probably a good thing. Otherwise she would, by now, probably have been literally scared to death.

  However, she could, she realized after a moment or two in which air was the most important thing in the world, still hear. More specifically, she could still hear gun shots, although the sharp pop-pop-pop was fainter than before. That realization caused her to lift her head, brush the soaked hair from her eyes and look around. She could see, too, she discovered, and feel, and even smell. The wind was brisk and cold against her face. The muddy smell of the river was all around her. The intense blackness of the water and the slightly lighter darkness of the shore was interrupted by the faint beam of the flashlight which was now moving away from them. She and Jake had surfaced, Charlie judged, almost in the middle of the channel, and the flashlight seemed to be chasing a pale, glowing semicircle that bobbed up and down as it fled downstream.

  Realization was sudden and terrible.

  "They're shooting at Sadie!" Charlie gasped with horror, stiffening in spite of herself.

  "God damn it." It was a warning growl in her ear as they started to sink, reminding her of the need to remain limp. "They're shooting at the branch. I put the damned dog's collar around it. With any luck, they'll follow it clear into the next county."

  "But Sadie..."

  "Right behind us," Jake said, sounding as if he was talking through clenched teeth. "What is the thing, a damned bloodhound? The way our luck is going tonight, we couldn't lose it if we tried. Think you could kick your feet a little without sinki
ng us both? I'm getting kind of tired here."

  That news was so alarming that Charlie found that she could, indeed, kick her feet. Meanwhile, her gaze fastened on Sadie's knobby head stretched cobralike above the water. The killers had been, for the moment at least, thrown off the trail. Now if they could just survive the river...

  The current was far stronger where they were, Charlie realized after a few minutes. With the water rushing them inexorably downstream, they managed nevertheless to make progress toward the opposite shore. Jake's breathing grew increasingly labored, rasping its own warning against Charlie's ear. Now that she had the hang of it, she kicked fervently, although she could no longer feel her legs. Her teeth were clenched to keep them from chattering. She was so cold that she would have felt warmer sitting in a freezer, and the sad thing was that being cold was the least of her problems.

  Thankfully Sadie remained near, fighting the current just as they were, sometimes drawing closer, sometimes being forced farther away. Charlie could not do much to help her pet under the circumstances, but she kept her gaze on her, almost as concerned for Sadie's safety as she was her own.

  Another oar-size branch floated past, and she managed to grab it despite Jake's snapped warning to stay still. Wedging it beneath her arm, she felt marginally better. It provided an extra degree of buoyancy that might prove to be the difference between life and death. For Jake as well as herself, she realized. With their wrists handcuffed together, their fates were inexorably entertwined.

  In a strange way, she found the knowledge almost comforting—until she considered that it was Jake the bad guys were primarily trying to kill.

  She was just, with the worst luck in the world, along for the ride.

  7

  “TELL ME SOMETHING: What the hell kind of normal adult human being doesn't know how to swim?" Jake growled in her ear, sounding very tired. Charlie had thought his movements were feeling more and more sluggish, and his tone confirmed her estimate of his exhaustion. Their bodies were definitely riding lower in the water, too; her chin was more or less resting on the undulating surface. Her fear was already so acute that it could scarcely grow worse, but it definitely gave off a new, very sharp, pang. Sort of like an appendix that intermittently flared up, warning that it badly needed to come out, before it finally gave up the ghost and burst.

  "One who never, ever planned to dip so much as a toe in a river," she said, and swallowed a mouthful of muddy-tasting water for her pains as a surge slapped her in the face. Clinging to his encircling arm for dear life, she coughed the water up. They seemed to be sinking lower with every movement, she realized. Among other problems, most notably her lack of swimming skills, their waterlogged clothes were dragging them down. There was nothing to do about it. Handcuffed as they were, they could not shed the soaked jackets that now seemed heavy as anchors. The only thing they could lose—their pants—didn't weigh enough to make their removal worth the near-death experience that would almost certainly be involved.

  "I suppose you'd rather have been shot back there."

  "At least I would have died quick."

  They were being swept downstream at a far faster pace than they were progressing toward shore. Still, they were getting closer to safety, Charlie saw, twisting around to cast an assessing look over his shoulder at their destination. They had, roughly, another four hundred yards to go. Maybe—please God, please God—they would make it after all.

  "Are you trying to sink us? Quit squirming." Something else she had seen in that one quick glance registered on her consciousness: a faint, luminous line on the horizon dead ahead. For a moment Charlie puzzled at it; then, absolutely unable to resist the temptation to do so, she sneaked another sideways glance that required just barely moving her head. The puzzling white line was still visible. There was no bank in that direction for the river to break against. The banks, a sheer wall of rock behind them and a more forgiving wooded shore ahead, were to the north and south. The new line of foam was to the west. Suddenly the increasingly louder roar which had been filling her ears for some time began to make a certain, terrible sense. The sound, which she had put down to a combination of the normal murmurings of the rain-engorged river and the thundering of her own blood in her ears, had a far more terrifying source.

  "There's a waterfall ahead!"

  "Just figuring that out, are you?" He sounded as if he were fighting for breath. "If you want specifics, it's about a thirty-foot straight drop onto rocks. I saw it when I checked this place out a couple of weeks back. Think you could kick a little harder?"

  "We're going to die," she moaned, kicking so vigorously that the splash she made hit her in the face.

  "Not that hard!"

  She moderated her kick so that no more water was displaced, but kept her foot action vigorous. They were making steady progress toward shore, another eyeball-rolling glance informed her, but at the rate they were going they weren't going to make it. Already the current was much faster, pulling them along just like the debris swirling past. Its force made simply staying afloat while gaining scant inches per stroke about as much as they could hope for. There was no way to swim any harder. Both she and Jake were doing the best they could. Even Sadie was desperately fighting the current. Close behind them now, pushed against their bodies by the force of the water, Sadie was swimming almost backward, her muzzle pointing upstream. Her eyes were big as quarters and she looked terrified—almost as terrified as Charlie felt.

  "Look at it this way," Jake said, his arm tightening around her rib cage as an entire tree rocketed past them, missing them by less than a yard. "Nobody lives forever."

  "Oh, that made me feel better." She kicked for all she was worth, muttering every prayer that she, the daughter of a Baptist preacher and a gospel singer, had ever learned in her life. After a moment or two spent praying and kicking, she was interrupted by an amused sounding grunt in her ear.

  "You sure know a lot of prayers."

  "You should try saying some."

  "I don't know any. But yours seem to be working, so keep it up. There's a rock dead ahead. I'm going to let go of you, and we're going to spread out and latch on to it. All you have to do is stay afloat. Ready?"

  "No!" He was going to let go of her? No way! No how! She would sink like a stone. She would drown. She would...

  But he had already let go and was swimming out from underneath her, pushing her away from him so that suddenly she found herself facing forward with him beside her but as far away as the chain would allow him to get. Panicked, Charlie churned her feet like a duck in its death throes, pawed at the water with her chained hand, and prayed as she had never prayed in her life. She was going down. But no. No. She still had the branch wedged under her left armpit. It was keeping her up. All she had to do was not let go.

  At that point, the combined plagues of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse couldn't have forced her to let go.

  Caught up by the current, she—they—were heading straight for what was to all intents and purposes a tiny island. The centerpiece of it appeared to be a large rock, visible because it was a solid, unmoving charcoal triangle above the oil-black water, and because of the foam that leaped and curled against its base. Logs and a variety of miscellaneous debris had been trapped against it, making it into a small, precariously put together oasis— and their only chance. Latching onto it in their previous position would have been almost impossible. But in their present butterfly formation, they might, just might, be able to snag it.

  Another strand of the current caught them up, carrying them wide. Suddenly they were being swept too far to the left.

  "No!" Charlie cried.

  "Kick! Kick!" The roaring of the water all but drowned out Jake's words. He surged toward the rock with a mighty one-armed stroke, towing her after him. She kicked frantically in an effort to do her part. All at once, while still about three feet short, they were level with the rock, passing it, going to miss it altogether....

  Jake hurled himself across the su
rface of the water like a flying fish and latched on to the outermost branch of the outermost log. Charlie could see the paleness of his hand closing around the dark wet bark as, despite kicking for all she was worth, she was carried on downstream. Would his one-handed grip be strong enough to hold them? Would the forearm-sized branch break? The falls were so close she could have thrown a rock and it would have gone over, she discovered with a single terrified glance over her shoulder. She could feel the current tugging at her like a giant vacuum, intent on sucking her down.

  Sadie, still paddling frantically upstream, swept past. "Sadie!" Without thought, Charlie lunged for her pet, knowing the dog faced almost certain death if she did not catch her. Her clutching hand closed over one fragile front leg. The branch wedged under her armpit shot free and was gone, just as quick as that. Charlie didn't even have time to feel horrified. Gasping, kicking, flailing, hanging onto Sadie with every scrap of determination she possessed, she sank. The water was merciless, swallowing her up like a giant mouth, shutting off air and hope. She clawed for the surface, for air—and felt a powerful jerk on her right arm.