Lost

Something is crawling on my shoulder. A rat digs its claws into my shirt, dragging its sodden body from the current. I can smell wet fur and see sharp teeth, reflected in the square of light. My whole body shudders. Rats are all around me clinging to crevices.

Finger by finger, my hands surrender. I can't hold on much longer. The current is too strong. I think of Luke. He had such great lungs; air-sucking bags. He could hold his breath for much longer than I could, but not beneath the ice.

He was a stubborn little tyke. I used to give him Chinese burns. “Give up?” I'd say.

Tears would be welling in his eyes. “Never!”

“You just have to give up and I won't hurt you anymore.”

“No.”

In awe of him I'd offer a truce, but he'd refuse.

“OK, OK, you win,” I'd say, sick of the game and embarrassed at hurting him.

My last finger surrenders. I roll faceup in the current and take a deep sulfurous breath. Washed into darkness, I tumble over a waterfall and get dragged into a larger pipe.

I don't know where the ransom has gone. Washed away, along with my shoes. And what of Mickey—is she drowning somewhere ahead of me or behind me? I heard a soft cry when I peered into the pipe. Perhaps it was the wind or the rats.

So this is how it ends! I am going to drown in stinking slime water, which is pretty much how I've lived—in a putrid soup of thieves, liars, murderers and victims. I'm a rat catcher and a sewer hunter, a bone grubber and a muck dredger. Poverty, ignorance and inequality create criminals, and I lock them away so that polite society doesn't have to smell them or fear them.

My shoulder strikes something hard and the pressure of the water rolls me over. Gulping a mouthful of air, I flay from side to side, trying to find a handhold as I tumble down a sloping ramp or weir.

Blindly, I plunge into a deep pool. I don't know which way is up. I could be swimming away from safety. My hand breaks the surface but the current won't let me go. A whirlpool drags me around and around, sucking me under. I want the air but the water wins.

The end is close now. I'm inside a narrow pipe, barely wide enough for my shoulders. There is no air pocket. My chest feels like it is wrapped in cables pulled tight with a ratchet.

I need to breathe. Carbon dioxide is building up in my blood. I'm being poisoned from within. The instinct not to breathe is being overcome by the agony of airlessness. My mouth opens. The first involuntary breath fills my windpipe with water. My throat contracts but can't stop water flooding into my lungs. I'm as helpless as the day I was born.

My shoulders are no longer scraping along the walls. A different, slower current has picked me up, turning me over and over like a leaf caught in a gust of wind.

I'm dying but I can't accept it. Above me—or maybe it's below—there is a solid gray light. I feel myself rising, fighting for the surface; climbing one hand at a time as if trying to pull the light toward me like it's a candelabrum at the end of a long table. The last few strokes are impossibly hard.

Breaking free, I vomit water and phlegm, making room for that first breath. A floodlight is blinding me. Something hard hooks my belt from behind and hauls me upward, dragging me onto a wooden deck. My lungs are heaving in their cage like bloated battery hens. Strong hands pump my stomach. Someone leans over me and wipes my chin and neck. It's Kirsten Fitzroy!

I loll back against her arm. She strokes my head, pushing wet hair across my forehead.

“Jesus, you're a crazy bastard!” she mutters, wiping my mouth again.

My stomach is still contracting and I can't speak.

The boat engine is idling in neutral. I can smell the fumes and see a dull light shining in the cockpit. Taking ragged, greedy gulps of air I turn my head and recognize Ray Murphy kneeling next to me, dressed all in black. “We should have let him drown,” he says.

“Nobody is supposed to get hurt,” replies Kirsten.

They argue with each other but Kirsten refuses to listen.

“Where's Mickey?” I whisper.

“Sshhh, just relax,” she says.

“Is she OK?”

“Don't tell him a fucking thing!” threatens Murphy.

A tiny red dot is dancing on his forehead as though bouncing over the lyrics of a song. A fraction of a second later he makes a noise like a popped water balloon and half his head disappears in a spray of fine red mist and shattered bone. One eye, one cheek, half a jaw are suddenly erased from his face.

The sound of the bullet comes a heartbeat later. Zip!

Kirsten screams. Her eyes are as wide as a child's. Blood has splattered her cheeks.

Murphy's body is lying across me with his head on my chest. I roll him off me, kicking my legs to get away, sliding on the wet and bloody deck.

Kirsten still hasn't moved, immobilized by the shock. I turn and crawl back toward her.