Dark Water - Laura McNeal [75]
Forty-nine
I woke to a world that wasn’t black but gray, and on the surface of the water below my chin floated soapy flakes of ash. Amiel felt me jerk awake and he released his hold on my waist. He stood up slowly, his clothes heavy with water and mud, and I did the same, an ache in my head so sickening that I shuddered. There was something heavy in my pocket: the drowned phone. In no direction could I see flames, though I suspected that the ashes on the burned side of the river would hold, like the ashes in a fireplace, pink burning coals. Even the water smelled like smoke.
A low droning sound became a loud droning sound, then a deafening thwap. The helicopter was low enough that I could see, briefly, a human being inside, and I imagined that the human could see us. The helicopter turned around and made another pass. Yes, someone was looking at us, but I couldn’t think whether this was salvation or doom.
Most of the blackened trees were south of the river, but Amiel’s side of the river was still green, so that was where we climbed out. I was shaking so hard I could barely walk. I hate to throw up, but I threw up. I kept walking so that I wouldn’t be near the vomit and after a few steps found I couldn’t walk anymore.
“I have to sit,” I croaked to Amiel, wondering if this was how his throat felt most of the time. He turned and gestured to me to wait, and when he returned, he had a blanket for me. He’d brought a can of beans and a knife, which he used to punch a hole in the lid, but I couldn’t swallow the beans he tried to feed me.
The droning sound returned, grew louder, hesitated, and went away. I shivered in the blanket, laid my head on Amiel’s lap when he pulled me to him, and then was not conscious of anything beyond the long gliding mythical body of the mountain lion as it turned its head to see what I’d done until I heard voices and saw beside us the thick black boots and yellow tarp-like pants of a firefighter. Not one but three. The one with a cleft chin and a voice like cold water knelt down and started checking things a doctor would check.
“How’d you get down here?” he asked. He didn’t sound angry, but I thought he would be angry soon.
“Have you found anyone else?” I asked, my voice not only hoarse but trembling. I kept expecting the air to heat up again and rush burning into my head. Amiel stood off to one side, coughing hard.
“What do you mean?” the firefighter asked. “Were there more of you?”
“My uncle came to look for us. On his motorcycle.”
He didn’t answer me, but he pressed his lips together and I saw the narrow-faced one exchange a look with him, then go off a little way to talk into his radio.
When two of them put me on a stretcher, I saw in Amiel’s face the same look that the mountain lion had in my dreams, and I said they should put Amiel on a stretcher, too, but Amiel shook his head, and they thought he couldn’t speak English.
“¿Hablas inglés?” the water-voiced man asked Amiel, but Amiel didn’t respond.
“He saved me,” I said. “We should call my mother,” I finally thought to say. I was stuttering now. “And we should call my uncle.”
The man with a narrow face who had talked into his radio asked for the phone numbers and I chattered them out through my teeth. In a few minutes I heard him say, “Mrs. DeWitt? This is Larry Greenworth of the fire department. I’ve got your daughter here and I just wanted you to know she’s fine. Looks like shock and hypothermia, some smoke inhalation, but we’re going to take care of that.”
Pause. “The river bottom,” he said. “Santa Margarita.”
Pause again. “No,” he said.