Voracious (2 page)

The air burned in her lungs. She had to get a breath. Twisting and contorting, she couldn’t even flip herself over. It was as if something was holding her down,
trying
to drown her. She struggled more, pushing against the rough bark of the tree while struggling to hold her breath. But she couldn’t wriggle free. Her backpack caught in the branches, holding her fast.

Forcing herself to calm down, she unbuckled the straps around her hips and chest, then slipped her arms out. Kicking out vigorously, she broke branches and got free. She desperately swam toward what she thought was the surface. But her grappling hands found only branches and the rough rocks. She bounced against them painfully, cracking her knee and bashing her elbow.

Over and over she somersaulted in the freezing water, until she was so disoriented she had no idea which way was toward air. Tumbling, crashing, pounding over rock after rock, plunging ever downward, down the mountain.

She grasped desperately at branches and rocks as they passed by over and under and next to her. And then she was careening head over foot, arms flailing in the frigid water, legs scraping painfully against passing granite beneath her, bones connecting painfully with solid rock, jutting edges and boulders and slabs of scraping roughness.

She coughed involuntarily, her lungs out of air.

She tried to swim in the other direction, kicking out frantically. For a second she was fighting through a maze of branches, and then a hard slap of water hit her in the face. Her head reached air. She gasped deeply, saw a moment of blue sky just before the tremendous trunk of a tree spun into her line of sight and connected violently with her head.

A blinding light erupted behind her eyes, and her muscles refused to work as she sank down into the frigid darkness.

WHEN
the knock sounded on Madeline’s door, she started so badly that tea sloshed out of her cup and onto her book. She looked up from the couch, seeing the outline of someone behind the door curtain. She glanced down at her watch. It couldn’t be George. He wasn’t due back in town until later that day.

Her stomach went sour as she rose, trying to make out the shape behind the curtain: a woman.

The knock came again, but Madeline stood frozen in the middle of the tiny apartment. After a moment’s hesitation she sat back down, opening her book once more. Then the knocking started again. Incessant knocking.

“Madeline?” came a woman’s voice from the other side of the door. “Are you in there?”

Who the hell?

“Please, Madeline. It’s a matter of life and death. We need you.”

Need her? No one had ever needed her before. Avoided her at all costs, but not
needed
her.

“It’s my daughter. She’s missing.”

The book fell out of Madeline’s loose fingers. Slowly she rose to her feet, then walked numbly to the door. Pulling aside the little curtain, she saw Natalie Stevenson, a young mother who had often whispered about Madeline at the grocery store or in the line at the post office.

“Your mom told me where I could find you,” Natalie said through the glass.

“My mom?” A daze filled Madeline’s head. She didn’t realize her parents knew anything but her PO address.

“Please.” Natalie’s tearstained face was pitifully red and swollen.

Then Madeline felt herself opening the door though everything inside her screamed to just lower the curtain and walk away.

Ten minutes later, Madeline raced across a field behind the Stevensons’ house, clutching the last thing little Kate Stevenson had been known to touch; a small robot action figure. She tried not to stumble, speeding faster and faster as she leapt through the tall grass. Clearing her mind, she let the images come to her freely.

The little girl in a white dress, playing and laughing behind the Stevensons’ house with a stuffed dinosaur and the robot toy.

Two older boys approaching. Teasing the little girl about her dad. “He’s a drunk.”

The girl, defiant at first. “No, he’s not.”

The boys continue taunting, malice in their eyes. “Saw him. Wrecked the company car. He’s a useless drunk.”

The girl, sobbing. “No, he’s not!”

“Didn’t you hear? Old Man Taggert fired him. You’re going to starve. He won’t work in this town again.”

“No!” The little girl dropping the robot, running out of the yard, clutching her dinosaur. Entering the field at the edge of the property.

The boys laughing, staying behind.

Madeline ran on. The blond grass whipped and stung her bare legs below her shorts.

In a place where the grass was smashed flat, she spotted something brown. She raced to the spot and looked down. The brown, furry face of a brontosaurus smiled up at her. Bending over, she picked up the toy. Emotions swept over her. Images.

The little girl in the white dress sobbing uncontrollably in the grass, chest heaving, thinking about her dad, of the stink of alcohol on his breath.

Memories of a time the girl had spied on him from the stairs as he pulled a bottle of vodka out from behind the worn couch cushions and took a long, deep drink.

The girl kneeling in the grass for a long time, sobbing until her chest shuddered when she inhaled.

Then dropping the dinosaur and running on, toward her secret place, a lightning-scarred hollow tree beyond the old dam.

The girl had left for it just a few moments before.

Clutching the brontosaurus tight under her arm, Madeline raced forward. Ahead lay the edge of the woods. Beyond that burbled the rushing white water of the North Cascade River and the old cement dam, abandoned in the 1940s. She raced to the edge of the woods and entered the forest, the rich scent of sun-warmed pine greeting her. Following the worn path that dam workers had used decades before, she strained her ears for any sound of the girl, but the gentle whisper of wind in the pine needles muffled the sounds around her. A pounding cacophony erupted, slowing her pace, but she realized instantly it was a woodpecker, high in the trees, thrumming away on a decaying tree. She ran on.

Soon the roar of white water replaced the whisper of wind. The air temperature dropped noticeably as the cool air blew off the river. The old dam came into view, a narrow expanse of concrete built over the tumbling teal water. The large turbines had been removed in the ’40s, leaving large holes through which the water now filtered.

On one side of the dam the glacier-fed river ran wide and deep. In the beginning of the century, when the dam was still relatively new, a lake had formed on that side of the barrier. But over the years it slowly drained away as more and more cracks opened in the old cement. On the other side of the dam, water gushed from the turbine holes with explosive force, returning to its native river form, free from its man-made confines.

Madeline stopped, staring at that white churning water, a vivid memory of her friend Ellie floating down those seething depths. She couldn’t do this. Not the river.

She stopped short of crossing the dam and looked around for the girl. “Kate!” she yelled. The roar of the water filled her ears. Even if the girl yelled back, Madeline might not be able to hear her.

The hollowed-out tree lay on the other side of the dam. To reach it, Madeline would have to walk out over the top of the dam, a narrow ridge of concrete spanning the rapids below. She hadn’t crossed that dam since the day she lost Ellie. She couldn’t do it again. “Kate!” she called.

Nothing.

Kneeling down into the soft bed of pine needles, she touched the edge of the dam, hoping to get an image that would tell her if the girl had run this far. Her fingers rested on the rough concrete, and images rushed into her.

Kate, reaching the dam and starting across it, hands thrust out to maintain her balance, eyes blurring with tears, barely able to see the concrete ridge under her feet.

Balance failing, arms windmilling, the girl, terrified, falling over the side.

Freezing water engulfing her, desperate swimming, rough rocks banging her knees and scraping her arms.

Then the black mouth of the turbine hole fast approaching, the water sucking her inside. Crashing into a clump of sharp debris on the opposite side of the hole, held there, stuck there, lungs burning with lack of air as the water flooded past her body, stealing her warmth.

Trying to scramble free, but too weak against the strength of the current, too hung up in long, snaking arms of old, slimy branches.

Madeline gasped and straightened up.

The girl was drowning.

Or dead already.
Ellie.

Without thinking, she dropped the stuffed dinosaur and robot, tore off her boots, threw them to the side, and ran onto the dam. Leaping off where the girl had fallen, she drew in a breath as she plunged into the icy cold below. Instantly the numbing water knocked the air from her chest. She fought to the surface, gasped in fresh air, and then plunged back in, swimming up next to the dam. The force of water against her was incredible, and for a moment she didn’t think she’d be able to move where she wanted. It slammed her against the side of the dam and held her there.

The turbine holes lay on the bottom of the dam, and she managed to creep downward, using the force of water to steady herself against the dam. Her eyes wide in the clear water, she found the edge of an opening and pulled herself downward to peer inside.

White fabric filled the hole, plastered against the tumble of branches and mud beyond, and she realized it was the little girl’s dress, tossed in the powerful current. The hole reached back at least three feet, and Madeline could barely make out the girl’s hair-plastered face, just a hint of pale in the turbulence among a dozen twigs and sticks and leaves spiraling madly inside. While the openings in the debris were certainly large enough for water to get through, they weren’t large enough for a human to escape.

Snaking her arm into the opening, she attempted to grab Kate, Madeline’s arm whipping violently in the current. The little girl wasn’t moving. Her hair parted in a gust of current, and Madeline saw with horror that her eyes and mouth gaped open.

Pulling herself down farther, she managed to make contact with the girl’s arm. She tugged fiercely, but couldn’t even budge her. The current was both helpful and harmful; while it kept her plastered against the side of the dam, it was just too powerful to yank Kate out.

But Madeline tried again, this time reaching both arms into the large hole and grasping one of Kate’s legs. Suddenly Madeline slid down farther, crying out underwater for fear that she, too, would be sucked into the hole. But then her position stabilized. Pulling with all her strength, Madeline squeezed her eyes shut, no air left in her lungs. Kate’s body gave a little, but she realized there was no way she’d be able to pull her free from the hole and then around the lip and up to safety.

She had to think of something else.

Letting go, she crawled up the side of the dam and burst into the air above. Gasping, she didn’t stop to recover, instead gripping the edge of the dam and pulling herself up dripping onto the top.

The glacial meltwater had robbed her of every bit of warmth, her cold muscles rebelling with every movement. She peered over the other side of the dam. If she couldn’t pull Kate out, maybe she could yank the debris free from the other side.

Knowing she couldn’t fight the current if she just leapt in, Madeline dashed back to the bank of the river, ran around the dam, and waded into the frigid water on the other side. Before her the water roared out of the four turbine holes. Kate lay trapped in the second. Pressing against the wall of the dam, Madeline waded out to the first out spout in thigh-high water. It was too high to leap over, and she couldn’t crawl under it because it rushed out flush with the riverbed. Her only option was to wade out farther into the torrent where the current would be less powerful and then burst across the outpour. Leaving the safety of the dam wall, she cut out diagonally, reached the rushing column of water, and then made a dash across it. Instantly her feet swept out from under her, and she desperately kicked and swam, angling back toward the dam. Her feet hit large rocks beneath, and she used them to spring-board back into the shallows next to the dam.

Now she was between the first two turbine holes. She ran toward the second one. Roughly four feet across, the dark hole erupted water at a violent rate. She wasn’t sure if she could even thrust her hands into the outpour. Approaching the opening from the side, Madeline braced one foot against the dam and forced her arms into the frigid water. Immediately the water spat her hands back out. She tried again, more quickly this time, and her fingers laced around a thick, knotted branch inside the hole. She pulled, straining, to no avail, the algae on the wood making the branch too slippery to hang on to. The angle was too awkward, not giving her enough leverage.

Not letting go of the branch, Madeline moved forward, plunging her entire body into the outflow and bracing her legs on the dam below the opening. Cold water exploded over her body, bursting up under her chin and spraying out behind her. Throwing her back into the effort, Madeline strained against the branch, gritting her teeth, gasping for air when she got the chance.

The thick branch slipped and shifted a little to one side, and she strained harder. It shifted again and came free in a wave of debris, hurtling Madeline backward into the river with explosive force. Twigs and branches lashed at her arms and legs as she gasped for breath and went under, releasing the heavy branch to the depths below.

Turbulent water tossed and somersaulted her, dashing her against slippery rocks. She found her bearings and righted herself in the current, head bobbing above the surface. Desperately she looked around for Kate, for a hint of white fabric among the deep teal and thrashing whitecaps of the river.