Rift (10 page)

“Keep running!” Tom screams at me. “Don't stop!”

But I can't keep running. I can't leave Tom behind. I turn around, intending to go after him, when I see Ivan barreling toward me on the cart path.

“Find Crystal, Cam! Get the fuck out of here and find—”

His words are cut off by a gunshot.

“
Tom!
” I scream.

I think I hear him answer. It sounds like the word
run
. But the rain is so loud now I can't be sure. My mind screams at me to go down there, to go help him, but already his pursuer is standing up, gun in hand. Ivan will be upon me in a few seconds.

Tom, please forgive me.

I take off running again.

three

I
t's the end of the world.

The cart path veers this way and that as it circles the small hills that provide the golf course with its impressive relief. My feet, barely able to maintain traction against the slick asphalt, pound along as fast as my adrenaline-enhanced legs will drive them. I don't know if it's fast enough.

Ivan is still behind me.

My father was once a Little League football coach, and he taught me never to turn around when I was running unimpeded for the end zone.
It will only slow you down,
he said,
and that might be the difference between a touchdown and getting tackled from behind.
Sound advice, I suppose, but the survival instinct encoded in my animal brain always overpowered even this simple logic. You want to know who is chasing you, you want to know how close he is, you want to know how much harder you have to run. Or maybe you just want to know when to expect the end.

When I left Tom, Ivan was thirty or forty yards behind me. Since then I have not been able to widen the distance between us. This is disturbing, because I get the feeling Ivan is just biding his time, waiting until I run out of gas. Let the runner tire out, after all, and he'll be in no shape to put up a fight.

Why would Tom tell me to find Crystal? Because she already knew about the transmission machine?

The rain slackens somewhat. It's still a downpour, but at least a person running for his life can now see where he's going. I'm moving alongside hole six, about halfway to the green, and I'm losing energy fast. There are no structures immediately in sight—the last was a restroom stall—and thus there is no one to help me and no place to hide.

I don't know where I'm going, but I'm pretty sure I'm never going to outrun this man. Maybe I should stop right now and try to reason with him. Maybe I should just give up.

My legs pump, my chest heaves. My heart is going to explode at any moment. I haven't run this much since a 10K charity event last summer, and that fiasco laid me up in bed for two days. I honestly don't know how I've made it this far. Adrenaline and emotion, I suppose—two wells of energy that are going to run dry any moment. The only way to avoid capture by Ivan is to use the only tissue in my body not currently exhausted: my brain.

The first thing I do is veer off the cart path. Any idiot knows you don't run straight ahead when your pursuer is faster than you, and yet this is exactly what I've been doing. The cart path still follows the top edge of a small hill, but the drop away from the pavement is less severe now. My feet slide immediately into mud. I nearly fall twice, but somehow maintain my balance all the way to the bottom of the hill. Ivan is not so lucky. As I change directions, I see him slip in the mud about halfway down. His butt hits the ground first, and then he slides for a few feet before slamming into a rock. He flips over and tumbles the rest of the way down in a series of clumsy somersaults. The gun flies out of his hand. It lands about ten feet from his outstretched arms and buries itself halfway into the mud.

I could make a play for the gun, because for a second or two Ivan doesn't move. But as I stand there, his arms and legs dig at the muddy ground, and he manages to bring himself to a wobbly stance. Fuck the gun. I could have run fifty yards while I stood here watching. I turn around and take off once again, paralleling the foot of this hill. My side hurts as if I've been punched in the kidneys. My legs are gelatin. When I finally look back for him again, I am shocked to find him less than thirty yards behind me.

I'm in decent shape for a thirty-five-year-old man, but only Superman could keep up this pace forever. Any moment my legs are simply going to stop moving. I was dumb to leave the cart path, where at least the possibility of encountering other people existed, and now I don't have the strength to get back there, not with that hill to climb.

I look behind me and find Ivan closer still. He no longer carries the gun, but this provides little consolation, since I could surely mount no physical defense against him. I am caught. There is no escape. I am—

My feet slip out from under me while my head is still turned, and I fall headfirst into the ground. Searing pain sweeps across my cheek as my face strikes a rock embedded in the mud. I slide forward, my arms and exhausted legs scrambling against the grime, instinctively trying to resume my flight from danger. With great effort I gather my feet close and struggle to stand. Then arms grasp me from behind in a powerful bear hug. Ivan pulls me backwards briefly and then throws me against the ground, pinning me there. When I try to look at him, mud oozes into my eyes. Stinging me. Blinding me.

“Why did you run?”
he screams.

My mind, whirling and nauseous, doesn't comprehend the question. My eyes scream in pain. My ears roar. I think I must have suffered some sort of brain trauma when my face hit the rock.

“What do you know? Tell me or I'll drown you in that river.”

River?

“Talk to me, goddammit!”

The roaring is louder now. Not brain damage, but the sound of rushing water. I must have been running directly toward it.

He seizes my shoulders and slings me closer to the roaring sound. I land on my back, solidly, and the impact induces a jagged fit of coughing that I fear will yield blood.

“Your friend back there knew something. He told you to call Crystal. Was this a setup?”

I would like to know the answer to that question myself.

Ivan seizes my shoulders again. This time, instead of throwing me, he straddles my body and drags me forward until the ground beneath my head falls away. Adrenaline pours into me, pooling as terror in my fingers and toes.

I have landed on the bank of a surging current of mud and water. Even from this compromised position I can see the river tugging at its bank, eroding the rain-softened earth at an alarming rate. Our position so close to the edge is obviously not safe. Already the mud beneath me is moving, pulled toward the river and sinking at the same time. If I go into that water, I will likely die.

Ivan leans forward. Pulls my head close. Tobacco and garlic foul his breath.

“Tell me, motherfucker, or I'll throw you in. Tell me what you know and how you know it.”

“Did the transmission do something to me? Am I going to die?”

He doesn't answer.

“Are you going to kill me?”

“I didn't come out here to kill you,” he says. “You shouldn't have run.”

The ground is still moving, down and away, but now
I
am moving as well. Sinking. My body is two, maybe three inches below the surface of the mud. Ivan seems to notice this the same time I do, because he lets go of me and tries to step away. But his feet are stuck. He loses balance and falls backwards, onto my ankles.

My head fell when he let go and now hangs over the soft edge of the bank, pulling my neck deeper into the mud. Ivan manages to suck his feet out and stumbles away from me, but I can barely move. This mud is like quicksand. My arms and legs are almost completely immobilized. If anything, struggling seems to be pulling me down more quickly.

Fear floods me now, a claustrophobic terror with which I am utterly unfamiliar. This is what it must feel like to die.

“Help me!” I yell.

Ivan stands and seems to come closer. I can't see him, not with my head hanging so far over the bank, but I imagine that he's grinning.

“Fuck off. You're the one who ran.”

“Please! I'm sinking!”

“No way, Cameron. Batista will never know I didn't save you. That asshole should have told me you knew something. That lying prick.”

Mud closes in over my arms and squeezes my neck until I can hardly breathe. The claustrophobia is like fire inside me, burning me, killing me. Rain splatters on my face. I am about to sink into a muddy grave.

“Oh God PLEASE!”

“Believe it or not, it's better for you this way. If you knew what the experiments were like, you'd be glad to drown.”

He moves forward and steps on me. Pushes me deeper. Now my entire torso is enclosed, and my neck goes next. I suck oxygen into my lungs like a machine, inhaling and exhaling with great effort, ignoring the burning, friction pain. I cannot move. I cannot hear. All I can do is scream.

I am screaming.

I am dying.

The smell is raw. Earthen. Mud completely covers my ears and now begins to seep into the corners of my eyes. My lungs inhale and exhale automatically, violently, as involuntary systems struggle to keep me alive.

I don't know if my attacker is still around. I can no longer detect stimuli other than rain and the smell of mud closing around my face. Erosion is going to bury me. A fold of mud closes over my face, covering my mouth and partially blocking my nasal openings. Panic drives the spike of terror farther into my brain. It seems as if I am sucking air through pinholes. Not enough. The air is not enough. Water around me. Pulling me. Down.

Into my grave.

No eulogy.

         

Water around me. Cool water, eroding the riverbank.

Still sucking for air. Keep drawing in flecks of mud that stick to the hairs in my nose, further constricting the pipes through which I cling to life. Can't see anything at all now. From above I must appear to be almost fully buried.

Water scours away the mud around me, under me, gurgling, gushing, spurting. My breathing comes fast and shallow. I swallow driblets of muddy water.

My God, I am going to die.

Misty gone to me forever. Tom perhaps dead already. My mother, my deceased father, everyone I know and have known. What is death? Is it sleep? Surely I will awake on the other side and laugh away this apprehension and fear. I have no concept of eternal darkness.

I struggle to hold my breath, command my body not to suck in another gulp of water. But desperate for oxygen, my chest shakes and heaves. My mouth opens. Muddy water rushes toward my throat. My lungs sense the danger and attempt to choke out the alien liquid, then greedily inhale more. The machine sputters. Muscles struggle against each other; straining, thrumming, dying.

The soft earth behind me rumbles, shakes, and a great flood of water flows through my grave and washes me out of it. The river is destroying the bank on which I was thrown, carrying the dissolved silt away in a rush, and me with it. I am tumbling, performing involuntary somersaults in the fast-moving current. Water runs up my nose and into my throat again, drowning my burgeoning sense of hope.

Then I break the water's surface. It happens quickly—wind across my face, rain pattering my cheeks—and fleetingly. I barely have time to cough out some of the water in my lungs before going under once again. The river pulls me forward at what feels like extraordinary speed, but the tumbling has stopped, and it appears I am only a few feet below the surface. With a little effort I am able to propel myself upward, and soon my head pops out of the water once again. I gasp for air this time and force my eyes open in spite of the grit that poisons them. I don't know how far I've traveled, but judging from this limited vantage point, the golf course is already long gone. Along with my pursuers, I suppose.

Without warning, I'm pulled underwater again. I begin to roll, tumbling, sinking deeper into this rushing current. After a few of these spins, I cannot tell up from down. My stomach pumps once, twice, and then vomit bubbles out of my mouth, along with most of the air in my lungs.

Something strikes me from behind, something both substantial and yielding. After a moment, I realize it is the riverbed. I slide forward across its soft surface, grasping in vain at anything that might slow my progress. But why do such a thing? I am out of usable oxygen. There is only one direction to go.

I allow myself to tumble over again, so that when I come around this time my feet strike the riverbed. Then I push forward with my legs and attempt to swim. But it is no use. I am so very tired. At this moment sleep seems like such an escape—the only way to retreat from the overpowering fury of the river, in fact—and my mind begins to drift into dreams.

Misty on the deck in our backyard. Sun shining bright overhead. Birds in the trees. She is young again—a fresh, twentysomething woman.

Let's take a swim,
she says, strolling to our kidney-shaped swimming pool.
Come on. Get in.

I can't,
I say.
I'm too tired.

You must,
she says, and dives into the pool. I watch her dark form glide beneath the brilliant ripples of chlorinated water. Then she rises and beckons me.
Swim, Cameron,
she implores.
Swim now if you ever want to see me again.

And then I am in the pool. The water is brown, muddy. What the hell? I gasp for air, coughing and choking, and look around for Misty. She's disappeared. I jumped into the pool to be with her and now—

Something is scraping my back. I force my eyes open and find myself against the riverbank, out of the river's main throughput. I've come to rest against a thick root of some kind. I notice that the rain has slackened to sprinkles.