Despite himself, despite knowing he was defenseless, that his body was likely on the precipice of life and death, that the slightest jostling of his position could bring the bloody black-robed rider crashing laughing down upon him, he screamed! He kicked! He thrashed his one free hand around, swiping madly, invisibly, at the blackness!

“Get away!” he shrieked in a strained, broken cry. “GET AWAY!”

He kicked his foot toward the scuffling sound and heard a satisfying, tiny squeak of pain. Or frustration, he thought. His breath became quick and ragged as he thrashed defensively. He knew his toe was bleeding, probably quite badly. He prayed the smell of blood would not bring more of them.

How many would it take to eat all of him?

“Stay away from me!” he cried, his strained voice sounding alien and weak in the darkness, any reverberation muffled, as if he were screaming curses from the inside of a padded cell.

He stopped, waited, heard nothing. He slowed his breathing once more, willed the panic to subside. He waited for the scuffling sound to come again, the scurrying of the tiny rat feet...

“Hello?” came a voice.

Matthew held his breath, cocked his head. A woman’s voice, he thought wildly. From where, from where...

“Hello? Can you...” she said, the voice thin and wavering. The woman was somewhere... she sounded just beside him. No more than a few feet away. Was it possible someone had been down here this whole time, and he hadn’t heard her? Didn’t sense her presence?

Yes, he thought, yes, of course it was possible. She was injured, unconscious, but alive, alive!

Hope coursed through him and he forgot about the weight on his back, forgot about the foot, long-since fallen asleep and grown numb, intertwined within coarse hard metal. Forgot about his trapped shoulder, about the rodent feasting on his toe... Alive! he thought once more, the word a blaring trumpet in his brain.

“I hear you,” he said urgently, loudly as he could. But his voice was so feeble it surprised him. It was as if something inside him had gone wrong. As he strained to look through the dark, toward the voice, he was suddenly light-headed, dizzy. What was left of his tongue was slimy with blood, and when he tried to spit he only managed to drool more slick fluid over his chin. He shook his head, tried to clear his thoughts.

“Are you there?” Or am I going crazy? he thought.

“I’m here,” her voice replied, from so close he felt as if...

He reached his free hand toward the origin point of the woman’s voice. His fingertips found dusty chunks of rubble, something coarse and metal, but nothing more. Just a shattered wall between him and whoever was speaking. He started feeling out the chunks of debris blocking him from the woman, straining his shoulder socket to its maximum flexibility to try and find a piece to remove. If he could dig through...

“What are you doing?” she said, sounding panicked. Scared.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m trying, well, this is stupid, but I’m trying to dig to you.”

“Please don’t,” she replied. “I’m afraid. I don’t want anything else to fall on me.”

Matthew paused, let his fingertips rest on the rough, dusty barrier. They were such small pieces of rubble. He could feel around their edges, could imagine their shapes. Much of it was loose, not like the thing pressing him down, crushing him to death.

“Please,” he said, almost a whisper. “I’m so scared.”

There was no reply, and Matthew wondered, again, if he’d imagined it all.

“Hello?” he said, praying. “Lady?”

After a moment – a long moment – she spoke.

“I’m here.”

Matthew felt sweat running into his eyes and tried to wipe it away, lick the blood and dust from his lips. “Are you... are you all right?” He could almost sense her taking stock of herself as he waited.

“I don’t really know,” she said finally, and he could have sworn he heard her lightly chuckle. “I think my arm is broken. And my legs. Something is wrong with my legs. I can’t feel them.”

Matthew felt an icy cold wash through him, but stayed silent.

“My head hurts terribly,” she said weakly, absently, as if she were trying to understand how she had become so badly injured.

There was a long pause. Matthew didn’t know what else to say. He began to search for anything to tell her, just to keep communicating.

“I think a rat was eating my foot,” he said finally, feeling idiotic but also needing to share the terror engulfing his heart.

For a long time, the woman did not reply. Great, she probably thinks your nuts, boy-o, he thought. She probably thinks she’s stuck down here, in the bowels of a destroyed building, with a raving lunatic. Some comfort you are.

“I kicked it away,” he added, hoping the rational response would allay any fears of his insanity.

“What’s your name?” she said, so softly and sweetly Matthew wanted to hold her and cry.

“Matthew.”

“Matthew,” she said, as if tasting it. Her voice rose a bit, more reassuring now. “Matthew, I’m Dee.”

Now Matthew did cry, the tears running hot down his face. He smiled, unconsciously covering his eyes with his free hand. “Hello, Dee.”

“I think it’s safe to say,” she said, her voice much stronger now, “that I wish we had met under better circumstances.”

Matthew started to laugh, but a bubble of blood erupted from his throat, and he gagged on it. Something in his stomach was burning, burning so badly and he prayed the works in there weren’t fouled up, prayed his liver hadn’t been crushed, that the contents of a torn intestine weren’t dumping out into the clean rivers of his bloodstream. He tried to respond, but could only cough.

“You sound hurt, Matthew,” Dee said quietly. When he said nothing, could say nothing, she said: “You should rest now.”

And when Matthew heard those words, he thought there was no better idea in the world. He lowered his forehead to his concrete pillow, and immediately fell asleep.

5

“IS IT SERIOUS?”

“What’s the phrase?” Kelly said into his ear, the connection beginning to crackle and fade as Diane drove them deeper into the mountains. “As a heart attack?”

“Yeah, that does sound serious. Plus, you know, at his age, not the worst metaphor.”

“Oh ha ha,” Kelly replied. “Let’s get it all out of your system now before we meet up. C’mon, here we go, please, cut loose,” he urged.

“Well...” Matthew said, sparing a look at Diane’s focused expression as she wound the old Ford up the narrow tree-lined road into the frozen heart of Big Sur. She saw him watching and gave a half-smile, then put a hand on his knee while expertly steering with the other. “I did have a whole folder of daddy-issue puns I was planning on using this weekend.”

“Uh-huh,” Kelly said drily, distracted now. “Whatever, Matthew. Tell Diane to keep you under control, please.”