Water splashed across the windshield and windows. The Monte Carlo bobbed in the turbulent river. Steam curled from under the hood. Lights sputtered on the dashboard.
A voice called to me from the stereo speakers. She had the perky earnestness of a Girl Scout rehearsing for a lifesaver merit badge. “On Star here. Do you need help? Are you okay?”
“Help? Think you could make me invisible?”
“Pardon?”
Bullets peppered the roof. The cops weren’t even going through the pretense of rescuing me.
“Sir, I show that you’re in the Missouri River. Is that correct, sir?”
“I’m looking for my boat.”
“Uh-uh,” the voice said. “I’m going to summon the police.”
A bullet punched through the side window. “Don’t bother. They know exactly where I am.”
“Sir. Sir. Could you verify that you’re…” The voice cut out. The lights on the dash dimmed and went dark.
I tilted the steering wheel up, undid my safety belt, and smashed the driver’s window with my elbow. Cold river water cascaded in and splashed the contacts out of my eyes. The Monte Carlo tipped to the left as brown water flooded the interior.
In seconds the coupe was rolling underwater and still sinking. I pushed the door open and swam clear. The current grabbed me like a giant hand and shoved me against rocks and mounds of silt.
The police expected the river to carry me downstream. I dug my feet into the muddy bottom, turned upstream, and plodded forward. The river current pummeled me and I groped along like a blind crayfish.
I came across a pile of rocks and climbed them. My head broke the turbulent surface. A bridge loomed over me, about three hundred meters from where I had ditched the car.
In the distance, police cars rolled close to the riverbank. A couple of helicopters hovered high above the water. Just as I thought, they expected me to float down with the current.
Would they issue an APB? Did they know who I was? If they had the license number to the Monte Carlo, then the rental agency would give them my name. I could see SEEKING FELIX GOMEZ, PERSON OF INTEREST flashing on those Amber Alert highway signs.
If I climbed out of the water now and ventured into public, my wet, soggy appearance would attract even more attention. I couldn’t risk it. Better that I hide until dark.
I used cracks in a concrete river wall as handholds to move upstream. Water poured from a culvert above my head. The opening looked big enough to squeeze through. With luck, it would take me far enough from the river, where I could get out and escape.
I reached for the lip of the steel pipe and hoisted myself up. The inside of the culvert was layered with smelly muck. I crawled through the mess for a hundred meters and emerged in a sewer, where I could stand up. Rats clung to my shoulders. Narrow shafts of sunlight beamed through the holes in a manhole cover above. I shooed the rats and hiked through the sewer to get more distance from the river.
My overnight bag was still in the Monte Carlo. I had packed light, a few extra clothes and toiletries. My other luggage and the bulk of the cash remained in my Cadillac back at the airport in Savannah. When I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and opened it, gritty water dribbled out. The screen remained dark.
My watch was gone, lost in the river along with my contacts. After what seemed like hours of spelunking through the sewer, I stopped in a chamber at the intersection of two tunnels. A steel ladder led to a manhole cover. Circles of light marked the holes around its inner circumference. Traffic rumbled on the street and the sunlight blinked as vehicles passed overhead. I’d wait here for darkness and pass the time in a cold, miserable, and disgusting funk.
I couldn’t believe the ordeal I put myself through. Other vampires lived in penthouses and were attended by a coterie of rich, beautiful women. The low point of the day was when the martini glass ran dry.
So what the hell was I trying to prove? Why was it my lot in eternity to champion the wronged and find justice? I was no superhero; I didn’t even own a pair of tights.
About the time in my youth when I gained my identity as a man, I’d always chosen the path that set me as a bulwark between the privileged and the underdog. I helped my mother and her sisters deal with unscrupulous salesmen and landlords. Later, when I joined the army, I might have talked about benefits, security, and opportunity, but deep in my heart, I saw myself as a patriot, the enemy of tyrants. Ironically, it was in service during a war we had no business starting that I murdered the innocent in the name of freedom, and it had taken my conversion to the undead to wipe the cosmic slate clean.
Maybe the slate wasn’t clean enough and I needed to atone a little bit longer, perhaps for another century.
The rays shining through the manhole cover slanted as the time passed. The lights dimmed and disappeared as night settled. I climbed the ladder, put my hands against the bottom of the cover, and pushed.
I had to rotate the cover until it lifted and allowed me to look out over an intersection. People loitered on the sidewalks of a seedy part of town. Good. There were plenty of smelly, dirty citizens I could hide among.
I tilted the cover up and scrambled onto the street. The cover dropped into place behind me.
I walked across the street toward an alley. An illuminated billboard for Rizè-Blu beamed its cheery message of chemical self-improvement onto the homeless and drunks.
Damp, filthy clothes and black slime covered my body. Before I did anything or went anywhere, I needed to wash up and change clothes. I smelled, well, like I’d been swimming with rats and turds.
Dumpsters covered with graffiti and piles of trash were set against the walls of the alley.
The skin on the back of my hands tingled. Danger.