Chapter Nineteen
Auralia
“Here goes nothing,” Auralia mumbled under her breath.
The car had been stable. The rain had shifted to a pitter-pat.
It had been her intention to be ready but stay put. Eventually, rescue workers would arrive on the scene, and she had an advantage in her position. She was close to the truck that had caused this whole thing.
Initially, this seemed like a good approach because the rescue workers would park on the side of the road and jog forward to assess the situation. And she was in a very visually precarious situation. They’d want to get lines on her right away.
As time went on, that hope dimmed.
First of all, what the heck was going on with these drivers?
Sure, it was country driving. And country driving was long and often dull. These were all roads that the folks out this way could drive blindfolded. The problem was that people were driving by rote, not paying a lick of attention to what was out in front of them.
From either side of the bridge, there had been a string of squeals and strikes.
Luckily, that had stopped.
By using her mirrors and phone, Auralia could see other cars sticking up at odd angles. It was like playing her beloved childhood game of pick-up sticks, only these results had to be devastating.
The pile-up was catastrophic.
That shift in the probability of getting some support was certainly one of the reasons that Auralia was rethinking her strategy.
The other was the wind.
It had picked up considerably. And her car, with its flat bottom sitting up there like a sail, would feel the sustained press. One good gust and she’d go over.
Over might be fine.
Might even be preferred.
With the passage of time, her calculations were changing. Not only were the water levels creeping higher, but equally concerning, the sun was setting.
In the water in daylight? A crisis.
Trying to survive rushing white waters under the dark skies of a new moon? Possibly cataclysmic.
Yes, over the rail might have been fine, unless her car flipped and she was trapped upside down in the cab.
Over the rail might have been fine when there was enough water to act as a sort of cushion to ease her down.
But she’d missed that window of opportunity.
Not only was the water higher, but it was also faster.
What she could see of the shoreline had been gobbled by munching waves. The water had risen to a point where the drop off was sheer and slick with clay. No one was moving up or down that slope. She’d have to find some bit of land that still rose above and perch there and make a new determination.
And because hypothermia fogged the brain quickly, she’d have to be aggressive about her actions to stay warm. And that meant she couldn’t sustain any injury.
Now, like all the Rochambeau children, Auralia could swim before she could walk. But fast water with only a black bag of air shoved under her chest and held in place by her armpits, dragging her clothes along wasn’t ideal.
She had her phone. Her phone still worked.
She’d avoided all but that one, brief check-in with Creed.
If she got hold of anyone from Iniquus, they’d stop what they were doing and prioritize her.
Did she love that idea? Yes!
In fact, no.
Still, she’d call even if it was selfish because she didn’t want to die.
She was privileged in that she had the connection.
Auralia didn’t want to go in. Survival seemed improbable.
She needed to chance the back window and see if there wasn’t a handhold she could grab onto.
Bracing with one hand, she toggled the button that slowly, slowly moved the driver’s seat backward.
She paused. Where the seatbelt had compressed before, it had been the anxiety she experienced in many yoga poses. She knew from her daily practice that the calmer she could remain, the better she would be able to navigate to the other side of this fiasco.
Whew, the anxiety of her precarious position lit panic in her brain like a match to dry kindling.
Auralia fought to stay in the moment and to process. Panic or freeze was life-threatening, and the danger of both had become a ratatatat at her temples and oddly in her sinus cavity.
She hadn’t had an expectation for how her body would move in space while she adjusted her seat.
The idea had been to keep things as even keel as possible.
Moving weight in a straight line toward the back of the car seemed reasonable, but shifting to the side, out from under the wheel, and then back through the tiny crawl space seemed jarring.
Doli had done it, but Doli was serpent-like in her ability to move her body. She was as fluid as the ribbon of a rhythmic gymnast.
Auralia was athletic and trained hard for survival’s sake, as well as for the pleasure of strength; she didn’t have Doli’s hypermobility. She wasn’t convinced that she could slither to the back seat without causing the car to rock.
Pulling a knee off the ground, she wedged her leg against the steering wheel. She stilled and waited for the gust to still. The car seemed to handle one change agent; she didn’t want to push the boundaries.
Slowly, she lifted her right hand to wrap around the metal posts of her headrest. It was a squeeze to get all four fingers into place.
So far, so good.
She raised her left hand and was able to wrap just her index finger into place.
She’d forgotten the seatbelt.
Auralia pressed her lips together as she scolded herself for forgetting a step. Every movement felt like she was taunting fate.
How to move forward? She was a little stuck.
Finally, Auralia wished she hadn’t put both of the black bags in the back.
She’d done it for fear of the plastic getting over her nose and mouth, and if she blacked out, she’d never wake up.
It would be unforgivable for her to die and put so many loved ones into churning grief. Creed and Gator would blame themselves for not saving her, and that would become a lifelong burden.
I’m going to survive this. I just need to think clearly and choose wisely, and then hope that my guardian angel didn’t go off on a damned coffee break.
She lowered her hand, knowing that she would take more of her weight onto it, and pressed her leg harder against the steering wheel.
The release came with a gust of wind.
Back and forth, back and forth she teetered.
The car slid an inch, and her stomach dropped with the lurch.
As the wind abated, she pressed her leg and pulled her hand until she could tuck her knees and swing both bare feet onto the steering wheel.
Crouched, she reached for the back window as she straightened her legs.
But she was stumped because she seemed to be dangling from her back tires. Yes, that last slip and slide seemed to catch or latch or something. Something was different.
She should have set the hand brakes to lock the rear tires.
Honestly, what would stop them from simply rolling over the rail?
Fatal mistake?
Breathe. “You can’t fix that now.” It hadn’t even occurred to her until she tried to imagine if dangling from her tires was a good thing. The physics of this said no; this wasn’t good at all, mainly because the rear window wasn’t over land anymore.
The only thing Auralia could think to do was to turn over onto her belly and reach a hand out the window for the rail, let the bags go—there was no way for her to take her things with her—get the other hand out of the window onto the rail, pull her body out of the car to dangle over the raging river.
Could she do a pull-up? Adrenaline might help, but the thickness of the rail meant that she would have to cup the top of it.
They weren’t painted, and they were wet, so they were probably slick.
If someone was on the bridge and could grab her wrists, that would be helpful, but surely that was wishful thinking, because anyone on the bridge was either injured or actively helping someone else.
And it was dangerous as hell to be possibly half in and half out of the vehicle if it decided to drop into the water.
There were no easy choices here, but one thing she felt for sure was that if the car was going over into the water, she wanted to be face down with a firm hold on the headrest and her feet thrusting into the steering wheel.
And while the safety belt seemed like it was the safest bet, Auralia was glad she was free of it because traumatic asphyxia, caused by pressure to the chest and restricted blood flow, was deadly.
And dead was dead, no matter the cause.
Auralia started the process of rolling over. When she moved, she tried to counter her weight and keep her body from jarring the car loose.
It was so slow.
It sucked her attention like a sponge, and she was oblivious to anything else happening.
There was no sound, no color, no fear. She had entered into a space of sensation alone as she asked her blood not to throb through her veins with such velocity so that the beat of her heart didn’t tip her into the water and end the beats of her heart.
Once Auralia’s hip bones settled against the seat back—perspiration dripping from under her armpits and in a rivulet down her spine—she tucked her chin and gripped the seat, working to pull more oxygen into her lungs.
This was better. She could stand here at this angle with her bags gripped so tightly in her fist that her fingers had turned white and her joints had locked into a claw.
But looking out toward the place on the rail where she’d hoped to put her hands, Auralia realized it was way too far away. She could make it if she were an orangutan, but even then, the splintered metal would slice her.
Devastating.
It felt like a blow.
A loss.
A personal spit in the face by the Fates.
And when the next gust blew across and under the bridge, the wheels turned.
And as the car plummeted toward the roaring waters, in her mind Auralia screamed, “Creed!”