Hitchers

CHAPTER 3

“His eyes are open again.”

A face hovered over me. It wasn’t the woman with the cigarette, it was a man with a goatee. He was wet and shaking.

“Can you hear me?” he asked. Droplets of water dribbled off his goatee.

I tried to answer, but my lungs cramped painfully. Water burst from my mouth, briefly creating a fountain rising toward the goateed man. I was seized by a painful coughing fit.

“Get him on his side,” the man said. I felt myself being rolled, and my lungs stopped aching a little. I’d never been so cold. And confused. How had I gone from the bottom of the reservoir to Lyndsay’s living room to here?

“Here,” another man said. I was covered to the neck with a blanket, but it didn’t help. “Nine-one-one didn’t answer.” The man laughed. “Imagine that. You think we should take him to a hospital?”

“Are you kidding me?” the goateed man said. “You want anthrax?” “I’m going to go to sleep now,” I mumbled, drawing my hands up under my chin.

“Whoa, you better not.” The goateed guy said, pulling my wrist away from my face. “Come on, let’s walk to my truck. We can turn the heater up full blast.”

That sounded great. Just the idea of a heater filled me with longing like I’d never experienced before. I struggled to raise myself on one elbow, but couldn’t manage it. The two men pulled me to my feet. They half-dragged me toward a truck, which was parked on the shoulder of the highway.

The woman I’d swerved to avoid was still sprawled in the road. She was an old woman, clearly very sick. She was pleading for someone to help her. Two cars had pulled over. A small group was huddled on the shoulder.

My saviors shoved me into the truck. It was a tight fit for the three of us, but I didn’t care. Heat blasted from the vents—that’s all that mattered. I held my frozen hands in front of the heater, my jaw chattering.

The guy on the passenger side, a big, Italian-looking guy, abruptly leaned away from me. “Hey, you’re not sick or anything, are you? It just occurred to me.”

I shook my head, feeling my neck muscles creak. “I don’t have it.”

He relaxed, let his big thigh settle back against mine. “You’re one lucky bastard. Five minutes ago you were dead.”

“Dead?” I echoed.

“Dead,” the driver said. “No pulse, not breathing.”

“Toby saved your life,” the Italian guy said. “I got it all on my phone.” He showed me the phone. “You want to see it?”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to see my own dead body.

“He spotted the back of your head in the water and pulled you out.” He slapped the dash. “Shit, Toby, you saved a guy’s life! Un-fucking-believable.”

I looked at Toby, who kept his eyes on the road, smiling, clearly proud.

“Thanks, Toby,” I offered. It wasn’t nearly enough, but I couldn’t find the energy to elaborate.

“No problem.” He held out his fist. I bumped the top of it with mine, like we were playing one-potato, two-potato, not sure if that’s what he wanted.

“I’m Joe, by the way,” the Italian guy said.

“I have to sleep now,” I said.

A wriggling in my pants woke me. Joe was fishing around in my pocket.

“Don’t worry, I ain’t ripping you off,” Joe said when he saw I was awake. He withdrew his hand. “I was trying to see if there were phone numbers in your wallet, but your wallet’s all wet and it’s stuck to your pants. Is there someone I can call? We’re not sure what to do with you. We gotta be somewhere.”

My first thought was Annie. My second was that I should call my mom to let her know I was all right. She was probably frantic, out in Arizona with no information, calling my phone and getting no answer. Later. Right now I needed someone to come and help me. There was my friend Dave. He had a family to worry about, but if he could, he’d come.

“Call my friend, David Bash.”

I couldn’t remember the number, and my phone was in my car. Joe looked it up, dialed, and handed me the phone.

All circuits were busy.

I shut the phone, handed it back to Joe. “You can just drop me at my house.” I gave Toby directions.

Joe clicked on the radio. The roads out of Atlanta were closed. The National Guard was setting up auxiliary hospitals in armories and schools. The office of Homeland Security had released a statement saying the outbreak had tentatively been traced back to the subway, and was assumed to be a terrorist attack.

“How did you bring me back?” I asked Toby.

“I pushed on your chest. That didn’t work, so I punched your chest like they do in the movies.”

“You never took CPR?”

Toby made a face. “Hell, no.”

We slowed to pass a police cruiser parked half in the road. The police officer was nowhere in sight.

“How long was I in the water?” I asked.

They glanced at each other. “What would you say?” Toby asked Joe.

Joe shrugged. “What? Ten, fifteen minutes?”

“Right in there, yeah,” Toby said.

I tried to wrap my mind around it. I’d been dead. Not unconscious, dead. I had that vision, of being Lyndsay watching the news. A lot of people who had near-death experiences reported vivid hallucinations, and now that my head was clearer it seemed likely that that’s what happened.

It had been remarkably vivid, though. It hadn’t felt like a hallucination at all.

The radio was describing the symptoms of anthrax, but I already knew them from my conversation with Annie.

“Wait a minute,” I said aloud without meaning to. Both men looked at me. “Did they say it started in the subways?” I thought I’d heard that, but that couldn’t be right, because I’d heard the same thing during my hallucination that I was Lyndsay.

“That’s what they’re saying,” Joe said.

I wrapped my arms around myself and trembled harder. “Jesus,” I whimpered.

“What?” Joe asked.

“Nothing.” I was so tired.

We pulled through the gates into the remnants of Toy Shop Village, with its empty bumper-boats pool, rusting rides, rotting streamers, and Toby and Joe were sure I was delirious. Who lives in a defunct amusement center? I directed them toward the drive-in theater toward the back of the Village, assuring them I lived there.

I thanked both men from the bottom of my heart. Joe’s eyes filled with tears and he nodded; Toby waved me off, insisting it was no big deal. I got Toby’s business card, intending to come up with a truly awesome thank you gift to send once I could think straight. Quivering in front of my locked front door, it took me a moment to remember the spare key over the door frame.

As soon as I got inside I tried to call Annie on my land line, but got no answer. I stripped, pulled every blanket and towel out of the linen closet, threw them on my bed, and passed out underneath them.