ADAM HALL - The Pekin Target

Something was wrong because I wasn't floating as high as I should be: my head didn't touch the roof when the black water rose against my face and blocked breathing: something was keeping me down.

Sensation in the legs, the feet; something was tugging. It was the seat belt. I'd been turning slowly, inside the car, and the seat belt had wound round my feet.

Turning which way?

Choking, a long paroxysm this time, bringing disorientation and the touch of panic. When I put my hands out to feel what was happening I found they were closer to the smooth arc of the steering wheel: I was still turning, and with each revolution I was being dragged down. For a long time the organism took over and fought like a cat, kicking at the seat belt's twisted webbing but doing no good, my hands clawing for a grip on something that would pull me higher and let me breathe, while the conscious mind knew there was nothing there to grip.

Black water smothered me and blocked my breath.

Turn. Turn. But which way?

Then the water rose again and blocked my breath and this time it didn't recede because the air was escaping from the bubble: the car must be tilting forward in the mud. I struck out with my hands, pulling at the steering wheel and spinning, feeling the padded seat squabs and using them as levers, spinning again, feeling the water rising to the point where I had to hold my breath because there was no more air.

Turning the wrong way.

Hands frantic now because I wasn't breathing any more: the water was at eye level and it didn't go down. The seat belt was tugging all the time, providing an anchor, securing my body to the huge mass of the car while the water lapped across and across my eyes and the pressure began building up in my lungs and there came the terrible temptation to suck in whatever was there, even water.

Turning, turning the other way now, my hands in a frenzy as my body span, my head bumping against the roof for the first time and my face lifting to find the last of the air — but it wasn't there any more: the bubble had rolled along the underside of the roof towards the smashed rear window. My feet were still trapped, but as I went on spinning in a vortex of my own making I felt them release and I jack-knifed and turned half round and dived and felt the scraping of the rear window frame against my back as I cleared it and rose, using my hands as fins to turn me face upwards so that when I reached the surface I could breathe.

Light burst against my eyes and my lungs exploded and dragged in air and water and I choked and then breathed again with my whole body shaking to the thudding of my heart, while the black river water lapped at my face and covered my eyes as I kept my head tilted back to let the breathing go on, following the rhythm of its own biocosmic tide as the life came back into me and the thought process started again, arousing imagination.

They would look for me.

I brought my head forward a little and opened my eyes and waited for them to clear. The men up there on the river bank would be watching for movement, so I let myself drift; the river was swollen after the rains and the current was fast: the street lamps were moving steadily past me against the dark sky. I was quite close to the bank, where flotsam was caught and gathered for a moment before it was tugged clear again; the lights of a car were moving along the road that ran parallel with the river: it looked like the dark blue Mercedes. A pickup truck had stopped near the bridge and I could see two figures moving across to the bank; when I turned my head I could see the black Porsche standing at the spot where I must have gone in, with several figures ranged along the bank and watching the river. They were covering the situation thoroughly, watching for me to surface from the car, and watching for a glimpse of my drifting body further downstream.

The water lapped and tugged, turning me round in the eddies, blocking my ears and receding as the sound of traffic came intermittently from the streets. There was a man standing a hundred yards downstream, where the Mercedes had now pulled up and doused its lights; with the current moving at this speed I would be floating past him within a minute and at a distance of thirty feet or so.

I could dive and swim underwater for as long as my breath held out, but it wouldn't be for more than half a minute because there was still a severe degree of oxygen loss and my lungs were already working hard to replace it; in half a minute I wouldn't move far from the bank with the current this strong, and when I broke surface I'd present a sure target with the light pattern disturbed. The only chance was to go closer to him and use camouflage.

I turned slowly over, face down, and veered towards the bank, feeling the gentle bobbing of flotsam against my neck; then I lifted my face enough for my eyes to make a selection, and chose a cardboard box that was drifting at an angle low on the surface, with scum and smaller flotsam clinging to it. I turned slowly onto my back with my face under the box, and moved my hands behind me where their paleness wouldn't show. And then I did nothing. I drifted.

When you have done everything you can, you can only wait, and hope that karma will decide in your favour; but it isn't easy; you don't become, suddenly, a fatalist, uncaring as to whether you are going to live or die.

Ignore, and let go, and drift.

The cardboard box was perfectly empty, with no shavings or paper left inside; it had been ripped open to get at the contents, and there was a split along one corner, giving me a glimpse of a street lamp and then the gleam of a star; it was the only way I was aware of movement, because my body was drifting at the same speed as the current and the water around me was still. Sometimes, much closer, right against my face, I caught sight of other flotsam through the split: some eggshells and a cylinder of straw from a wine bottle, something unidentifiable and covered with slime, and the sheen of wet black fur on a drowned cat.

I went on drifting, watching through the split, slowing my breathing and letting my lungs fill only tidally, to keep my body's mass low in the water with the legs angled downwards. It wasn't easy to judge how close I would be to the man on the bank when I passed him, but it wouldn't be more than twenty feet. That was very close.

The flotsam was restless around the box, and once I thought I could feel the fur of the dead cat caressing my face: it was a sensation only slightly stronger than the feel of the lapping water, and infinitely delicate; perhaps it was the tail.

I would have liked to raise my head enough to get my ears clear of the surface so that I could listen; but if the men along the bank called to each other it would probably be in an Asian tongue I wouldn't understand, and if one of them shouted there he is it wouldn't mean anything to me, or give me time to draw the last quick breath and wait for the bullet's spinning force to sting and pucker the flesh; it was better to keep my head low, and hear nothing, and drift.

Poor kitty. How did you get here? How long has it been since our paths began meeting? Since the day you were born, I suppose.

I could see a street lamp. The man on the bank had been standing between two of the lamps, so this would be the first of them; it wasn't far now. If I could drift past him without being seen I would survive the night; the other vehicles had stopped upstream, closer to where I'd gone in. But twenty feet was close, mortally close. On the other hand there were the shifting reflections of the city's lights across the surface, blinding him a little to my dark shape underwater; all he might see, if I kept still, would be the cardboard box and the eggshells and the dead cat.

What did the lettering say, on the box? Condensed milk? Condoms? Sardines? You used to like sardines, kitty, whenever you could get them off the kitchen table before they caught you at it. I used to like sardines. I would have given you some of mine.