Muddy, my arms hurting. I scramble back in the truck with the murmur of the water all around us. Angry with us now. Wanting us.
Bud makes the truck roar, and we lurch into a hole and out of it and up. The water gurgles at us in its fuming, stinking rage.
I check Gene and the power cells, they are dead.
He is heating up.
Not fast, but it will wake him. They say even in the solution he's floating in, they can come out of dreams and start to feel again. To hurt.
I yell at Bud that we got to find power cells.
"Those're not just ordinary batteries, y'know," he says.
"There're some at DataComm," I tell him.
We come wallowing up from the gum-yellow water and onto the highway.