Day Three
July 23, 1952
Wednesday Morning
In the wrong lane and heading directly into the front end of an 18-wheeler, River had one thought and one thought only, to avoid a head-on hit at all costs. It wasn’t even a thought, really. It was more of a chemical reaction in his brain, a reaction that made him jerk the steering wheel to the left with all his might.
The vehicle reacted like a startled snake.
The center of gravity shifted violently.
River felt it in his gut but kept his eyes on the mountain of steel speeding at him.
He might clear.
He might not.
He closed his eyes at the last second and tightened his grip on the steering wheel until there was no squeeze left. Then, whoosh. The front ends didn’t lock. The vehicles passed by each other, so closely that River felt the vacuum suck him to the right.
Then he flipped.
His body left the seat and slammed into another part of the interior, then another and another.
Everything spun.
It was too fast to make out images.
All he could see were violent blurs.
Then the vehicle almost tipped again but didn’t. Instead it twisted, reset on the wheels and sped into the topography with a wild bumping motion.
River’s brain lightened at that second.
The vehicle wouldn’t flip again.
He wasn’t dead and whatever happened in the next few seconds wouldn’t kill him.
He’d survived.
He might be hurt-hurt badly in fact-but he wasn’t dead.
The vehicle slowed and finally came to a stop. River was in the back seat, half on the floor, twisted. He bowed his forehead onto his hands and closed his eyes.
Everything was silent.
It was the deepest silence he’d ever heard.
Thunder rushed through his veins.
He was alive.
That’s all that mattered.
Alive.
Alive.
Alive.
Then a warning sounded inside his head, a warning that said he had no time to relax.
Something was wrong.
A pain from his side made him focus. He looked down and saw a knife sticking out of his body.
There was blood, lots and lots of blood, enough to scare him.
He grabbed the knife as fast as he could, pulled it out and dropped it.
There.
The bastard was out.
He twisted upright and pulled his shirt up to see how deep the wound was.
He couldn’t tell.
There was too much blood.
It felt deep but he couldn’t tell.
Suddenly his right eye blurred.
He wiped the back of his hand across it.
When he pulled it away, there was blood, dripping down from somewhere above.
He felt around until he found the wound. It was on his head, under his hair, two or three inches back. He ran a finger along it to gauge how bad it was.
It was bad.