Badwater Read Free Page A

oxygen-starved blood, and remembering a case where a young girl had been under the ice for forty-five minutes before being hauled out and resuscitated. Hypothermia when drowning can be a blessing. Lessens the amount of potential brain damage caused by prolonged submersion. There was a chance, anyway. Thigh-deep now and pushing a wake that splashed all the way up to my chest, I could see before me the dark green water in the pool beneath the big boulder.
    I could also see a thin branch floating
upstream,
beginning to turn a slow arc back in the direction it should be floating.
    Whirlpool!
I thought too late, just as I jumped up then porpoised headfirst into the deep water.

three
    T he water was so cold I had to fight to keep the air from being torn out of my lungs. The cold was so intense that it burned my eyeballs as I stroked downward. The big boulder shaded this part of the river, so it was dark and getting darker the deeper I dove. I could still see a little in the green-black murk, but I couldn’t see what I most wanted to see—the bottom. I could, however, feel the current now. It was gathering strength with each foot I clawed into the depths. It seemed to be moving sideways, trying to spin me.
    It was a whirlpool all right, swirling down in a sideways funnel and drawing me under the cliff. It was getting tighter. Getting stronger. Getting so strong that I couldn’t keep it from beginning to turn me around. But I forced my way deeper, fighting to hold my course and find a solid bottom that I could push off of. My ears ached with pressure and I moved my jaw to clear them. In the gloom I could make out huge, long shapes below me. They looked like coffins all piled together haphazardly. And there were some white sticks scattered over them. I could hear strange sounds, too. Pops and clicks and cracks like gunshots. And, far louder, a roar like a train passing just underneath. It was the sound of thousands of gallons per second being sucked through wood and rock.
    Shit!
    I belatedly realized what the current meant, what a whirlpool in this place indicated. There was a sink under the boulder, an underwater cavern gulping down a large portion of the river. Like the Sinks and Rise near Lander, where you can watch an entire river disappear then rise up a quarter mile later. The dark coffin shapes were shattered tree trunks that had been pulled under then wedged over the cavern’s entrance. The white sticks were the arms and legs of a child.
    What if he gets sucked through? What if I do?
    Panic was suddenly an even stronger force than the cold or the current. I’m someone who has always reveled in the rush of adrenaline, but that’s in high, airy places, a thousand or more feet off the deck, where the pull of gravity is familiar, where you can pant and curse all you want, and where a rope is always there to back you up. Here, under the river, there was no air. No light. No rope.
    The panic was just too strong.
    I arched my back and thrust for the surface with everything I had, shaking with cold and exertion and fear. Ashamed of turning around, giving in, but succumbing to the necessity. The whirlpool pulled me back and fought to hold me in its grasp. I had to angle for its center in order to weaken the hold. My lungs were starting to scream. Then I finally broke out into the light.
    The tall trooper was still standing in the river just thirty feet away, staring at me with an expression of fear that I think was probably magnified a hundred times on my own features.
    “Jesus! You okay? You okay?” he shouted.
    I bobbed my head once, then forced the cop from my mind and instead concentrated on just filling my lungs.
    I gasped three times. The first two were shaky, but the third inhalation was deep, all the way to the bottom of my gut. I scissored my body and dove again into the whirlpool.
    This time I allowed the current to spin me as I swam, corkscrewing me down toward those dark shapes. This time I didn’t let the panic