But the hand doesn’t come. She makes it to the rowboat, raises her arms and grips the sides. She turns, expecting to see a snarling face inches away, Brad bearing down on her ….
But there’s no one. Nothing but ripples on the surface.
He’s beneath me.
Panicked, Jessie grips the edge of the rowboat and lifts herself up, praying it won’t tip over. She gets her stomach on the rail, throws her good leg up and over, then rolls into the boat. She sits up, lifts one of the oars from its socket and holds it aloft like a club, scanning the water for a face (or a tentacle) to appear.
A minute passes. Then another. She looks around frantically but sees nothing.
“He’s gone!” a voice yells, and Jessie turns her head to see Tom sitting on the bench on the far side of the lake. She figures Brad sent him over there while he swam from the dock in case she breaks for it. She notices the rifle lying flat across his knees, his arm slung casually over the back of the bench. The ATV sits silently, a few feet away.
It was Brad, she realizes. I fell asleep, and Brad swam out to kill me. To feed me to the thing in the lake.
It made sense. Brad was stronger, and seemingly the better swimmer of the two.
And now he’s gone. Dragged to the bottom of the lake by black tendrils, pulled down into the dark to be with his pet. To be swallowed by Nessie.
How had he put it? That bitch is always hungry.
Jessie realizes she must be looking east, because there’s a hazy purple glow along the tree line, lighter than the rich dark black of the sky above.
Dawn.
There’s something in that—in knowing that the sun is so close to returning—that flips a switch inside her. There will be a new day. She will see a beautiful sunrise burst over the horizon.
She closes her eyes, takes a couple deep breaths. “Okay, okay ….”
In … out. In … out. Her routine.
“Enough,” she whispers and opens her eyes. She grips the oars, lowers the blades into the water, and begins to row.
“Aw, come on, not this shit again,” Tom yells from the bench, but he’s already on his feet, ready to break for the ATV.
But Jessie feels good. She feels strong.
She blows out a breath and tugs on the oars with all she’s got, aiming—one last time—for the dock, for the house and the car and civilization. For freedom.
After a few seconds, she’s in a groove. As the new day’s light turns the black water a deep blue, and the shadowed treetops blaze crimson with the rising sun, Jessie finds herself slicing through the water like an arrow, putting more and more distance between her and Tom. She wants to laugh with the surge of power she feels, the endorphin rush of pushing her muscles to the max, her body way past exhaustion, past hunger.
Wind pummels her back as she works her breath, drives her legs, and takes another stroke, the tiny rowboat feeling like one of her crew boats, narrow and sleek, designed to fly across the water as if it were air.
As she rows, she keeps an eye on Tom on the ATV. She almost laughs out loud to hear him cussing as he tries to start it again, and again.
She risks a quick glance behind her. The dock is close, no more than twenty yards away. She’ll be there in ten more strokes.
Across the lake, the ATV roars to life and Tom wastes no time. Within seconds he’s racing along the left side of the lake, coming at her faster than she’d like.
She pulls even harder, willing the boat to go faster… faster.
There’s a skidding sound and the boat stops so suddenly Jessie’s unsure what’s happened. She twists around to see the bow driven into grass and mud, a foot of water beside her.
“Yes!”
Jessie steps out of the boat and into the shallow water. Her legs wobble at first, her ankle is tender but not as bad as she would have thought. She can put weight on it, and that’s a start. One of the oars slips out of the oarlock and splashes into the lake. Instinctively, she reaches down and grips it.
The ATV bursts from the trees to her left and is flying toward her, the engine’s growl filling the air. She glances over and sees Tom snarling in the day’s musky new light, the rifle strapped to his back. Jessie takes a step backward, onto the grass, and almost sighs in ecstasy at feeling firm land beneath her feet. She closes her eyes, allows herself to take one last deep breath.
“Shit, you’re dumber than you fucking look,” Tom says, leaping off the purring ATV, no more than a few feet behind her now. “You want to turn around or should I just shoot you in the—”
Jessie spins and brings the heavy wooden oar with her. She swings it with every last ounce of strength in the direction of Tom’s voice—like hitting the ball off a tee.
The oar’s blade connects with Tom’s chin. There’s a loud crack that splits the morning silence—the sound of snapping bone—and Tom crumples like a ragdoll into the grass.
He moans but doesn’t move. The rifle lies in the dirt a few feet away.
Jessie walks over to him, still gripping the heavy oar, and inspects his face. The right side is caved inward—the cheekbone is gone, leaving a hollow sag of skin below his eye, and his jaw is badly misaligned. His eyelids flutter between open and closed, and she notices the right eyeball filling with blood.
There’s a glint of metal at his waist. The hunting knife tucked into a sheath at his belt, dislodged by his tumble. An inch of blade catching the sun.
Jessie kneels next to him, slides the knife free.
I win, she thinks, and begins to cut.
TOM WAKES.
The pain in his head is unbearable, and there’s something wrong with his face. He raises a hand to touch it, feels the missing cheekbone, the broken jaw, already swollen as a grapefruit. He rolls his head to one side, spots Jessie standing in the distance, watching him. She’s blurry, and he figures he’s still messed up from whatever the hell she clobbered him with.
