boy was free, and Jack kicked his numb legs, hoping they were moving upward. His lungs burned; the rest of him was dead. Then they surfaced, and the air was so cold it hurt, but damn. The kid choked and gasped, still clutching Jack.
“Relax and kick,” Jack said, his lips hard with the cold, his breath clouding the air. The boy just grabbed Jack harder, so Jack looped his arm around the boy’s neck and swam.
The dock was sixteen, twenty feet away, maybe. He could make it.
How many minutes had it been? Three? Five? More?
Sam was on the ladder of the dock, reaching out for them. He and the other boy grabbed their friend by the arm, silent with shock and shivering with cold.
Jack was already swimming away.
“I can help!” Sam called.
“Stay there,” Jack ordered.
He was also shivering. No, shuddering. This wasn’t good. This was Hypothermia: Stop Fucking Around edition.
Still...what was the word? Still...survivable.
The last boy, the driver—probably dead. Drowned, if not killed on impact. Jack himself would probably...what did they call it? Oh, yeah. Die trying.
It was getting hard to think. Advanced hypothermia.
So quiet now, the red sky above, the frigid water all around.
The cold didn’t hurt so much.
The car’s headlights were still on. Jack wasn’t sure why.
A deep breath, a hard exhale, a deeper breath, and he was under again, swimming as hard as he could and still too slowly.
The car rested on the driver’s side on the bottom of the lake. Ten feet deep, give or take. A fish swam in front of the headlights, then was gone into the darkness.
Jack tried to open the passenger door, but it was locked or jammed. But the window was smashed. The dashboard was still lit up. The clock said 4:41.
He reached in for the driver, who looked oddly peaceful, arms drifting, hair waving in the current. Eyes closed. Almost certainly dead. Not wearing a seat belt, a huge gash visible on his forehead, black against the white of his skin, blood trickling up in a dark, lazy swirl.
No bubbles, meaning he wasn’t breathing.
Jack reached for the boy’s arm and pulled.
The kid didn’t budge.
Soon Jack would have to surface again or die down here. Which maybe wouldn’t be so bad. Nice that he could see. Deep blue all around.
He pulled again. A little movement now, but Jack’s chest was working, wanting to breathe, and if he didn’t go up now, now, he’d drown, navy or no navy.
His niece was eighteen, too.
He’d want someone to try one more time for Abby.
He pulled as hard as he could, bracing his legs against the car, all the air in his lungs leaving in a bubbling rush.
And then they were moving, heading up, and how they were doing it, Jack didn’t know because he couldn’t think anymore, but they were making it, a centimeter at a time, and then there was the sky, red and purple and violently beautiful, and full of air, like icy needles in his lungs, but so, so good, the sound of his gasps tearing through the cold.
His gasps. Not the kid’s.
He held on to the boy and tried to keep going. It wasn’t pretty. It was hard and sloppy and weak.
A siren screamed, then another. Police and firefighters, on their way.
The dock was still so far away. Jack closed his eyes, his head slipping again under the water. Shit. Kicked harder, his legs really just flailing now.
The boy was still and quiet. No breath, no coughing. No resistance.
Jack’s labored panting rasped in and out of his aching lungs.
The water splashed, over and over, a hopeless, wet sound as his arm smacked lifelessly in a sorry imitation of swimming. He held on to the boy with his other arm, and God, it was hard.
Still not there. Still not there. In between each stroke, Jack’s face dipped a little lower in the water. He choked on some water.
Still not there.
Then someone grabbed his arm. Sam Miller, clinging to the dock ladder, reaching out for him. God bless Sam Miller.
The other boys reached down and grabbed on to their unconscious (dead) friend, hauling him up the ladder, ice in their hair now. One of the boys was sobbing.
Sam reached down for Jack, pulling him up, which was good because Jack was not going to be able to make it out himself. Water streamed off him, and he fell onto his knees. “On his side,” he managed, and they obeyed, turning the limp boy onto his left.
“Oh, shit, Josh,” the sobbing boy said. “Josh, please.”
Josh. Right. Josh Deiner. A troublemaker.
It was now too dark to see if any water had come out of Josh’s mouth, up from his lungs. Jack pushed him on his back and started chest compressions. He couldn’t feel his hands, but this was a brutish job, just push, push, push, elbows locked, fast and hard.
The sirens were louder.
Sam breathed into Josh’s mouth.
One...two...three...four...five...
God, he was tired.
And then there were red-and-blue flashes, and footsteps thudded down the dock.
“Jack, we got this,” said a voice. Levi. Emmaline Neal was there, too, another cop, a good hockey player. They knelt down and took over compressions.
There was a clattering, and Jessica Dunn and Gerard Chartier were running with the stretcher.
“Dry him off!” someone ordered. “He has to be dry if we’re gonna shock him.”
There was a whole crowd now. The three boys were being wrapped in blankets and hustled away, their faces white in the gloom.
The sun was still setting. How could that be? It seemed as though hours had passed.
Someone put a blanket around Jack, too, then led him down the dock, arm around his waist, holding him when he staggered. The three boys climbed into the back of one of the town’s two ambulances.
The other would be for Josh.
“Let’s get you out of the cold,” said the person at his side. It was Emmaline. Huh. He thought she was back with Josh. She opened the door of her cruiser and gently pushed him in.
“Is he dead?” Jack asked.
She
