Copyright © 1996 by S. A. Swiniarski. At! Rights Reserved. Cover art by Don Brautigam. DAW Book Collectors No. 1040. Atl characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resem- blance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental. If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book." First Printing. November 1996 123456789 DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES —MARCA REG1STRADA HECHO EN U-S.A. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. The literate pans of this are dedicated to Robert E. McDonough. The bloodthirsty parts of this are dedicated to Susie Kretschmer. Acknowledgments to Astrid, Susie, Charlie, Levin, Mary, Bonnie, Geoff, and Paula for doing their best to eviscerate this novel in the manuscript. I also give thanks to Mr. Poe for the obvious reasons. PREMATURE BURIAL Thank Heaven! the crisis— The danger is past. And the lingering illness fs over at last— And the fever called "Living" Is conquered at last. —"For Annie" 1 I dreamed of blood, and I awoke in a frozen darkness, wondering why I was not yet dead. As my blood-red dreams faded, cold wrapped my body in a grip severe enough to tear flesh from bone. "Shit." My painful whisper was loud enough to frighten me down to my soul. My back pressed against a wall of curving concrete. Water rushed over me, up to my waist. I opened my eyes, and could barely see a darker shadow where the rest of my body was. The water numbed my body, and my frozen hands couldn't feel the ice on the walls. My senseless hands slid over the concrete as I tried to push myself upright. When I finally stood, I heard the rip of my clothing tearing from where it had frozen to the wall. When the wall released me, my head slammed into the low ceiling, and dizziness overcame me. I had to crouch and dry-heave until my gut ached and my eyes stopped watering. I was so cold. My mind flew in chaotic tumbles, the cold and the vertigo making it easy to lose my concentration. My thoughts took a supreme effort to retain, and it was some minutes—too many minutes in this icy tomb— before I had overcome my disorientation long enough to think about where I had awoken. Once I could concentrate, it was obvious that I stood 12 S.A. Swiniarski in a storm sewer somewhere. But I had no idea where it was, no memory of how I got here. The more I tried to force my memory, the more traitor my mind became. As I groped for some impres- sion, some image of my life before this icy hell, my mind was gripped by a headache that shot sparks of color before my eyes. I was in serious trouble. I had no memory. Every- thing before my awakening, and a sense of a dream, was a void. I felt a sick impression of what was there, like sensing the definition of a forgotten word, but the substance of my memory was gone. Not only couldn't I remember how I had come to this place, but I couldn't remember who I was. I put a hand to my head, and while I couldn't find an injury—all parts of my skull throbbed equally—my hair was clotted with frozen blood. Not good. Possible head injury, nausea, dizziness, amnesia, nightmares—and I was probably going to die of exposure and hypothermia down here. The thought of dying down here, with no memory of who I was, ter- rified me. I started downstream, hoping for an exit before the cold finally claimed me. As I duckwalked through the knee-deep current I tried to force a memory of how I'd gotten into this mess. Had I fallen through an open manhole? Had I col- lapsed into a drainage ditch to be washed under- ground? I could not focus on what had happened. Nothing emerged from my memory beyond the impres- sion of violence done to me. However I had come here, I could not imagine it happening more than a quarter-hour ago. The cold was deadly. It was a miracle that I had not yet died from it. However long I'd been submerged in this icy water, any longer, I felt, and I never would have woken up. For a moment I took some comfort in being able to RAVEN 13 think clearly now. That comfort brought an unbidden thought, If I am brain damaged, would I know / was thinking like mushy cabbage? I pushed away the idea. I slogged downstream, the rushing water cold, deep, and painful. I felt sick that I might have survived what- ever accident brought me here only to die of hypo- thermia, or lose my legs to frostbite. For some reason, that brought an involuntary laugh which made me dizzy and surprised me by showing me my own breath. My eyes had adjusted to what little light there was, and I could see my misty laughter before me. I hugged myself for warmth—gaining little from it—and slogged on. The laugh had been for the word "accident." The word was soaked with irony despite the fact I could remember nothing of what had happened. My subconscious knew, however, that "accident" was the last word to describe what had occurred. What had happened to me was violent, purposeful, and inten- tional. This had been done to me. No faces, no memory of the act itself, only the certainty that some asshole had tried to kill me. My anger made me a little warmer. So did the move- ment, the effort easing some of the chill. It helped when I finally walked into a chamber talt enough for me to stand upright. By now I could nearly see, and I was fighting to stand upright against the current pushing me. The water was up to my chest before I found a ledge lining the tunnel that was high enough for me to stand out of the water. I climbed up on it and stood, shaking, cold, and wet. Sensation, searing cold, returned to my numbed lower body. I don't know how long I'd walked down that sewer pipe, or how long my legs had been submerged, but when my legs were exposed to the air, cold as it was, it felt as if someone were torching them. The pain was 14 S.A. Swiniwski bad enough to make me gasp and nearly pitch headfirst into the torrent below. Looking down at the water, I couldn't believe I had fought my way out. Now that my eyes could make out this gray subterranean world, I saw how close to death I'd been. The water roared, carrying logs the size of my thigh and battering them against the walls. As I watched, one slime-blackened log slammed into a swamped shopping cart that was wedged against the walls. The sound of the impact echoed through the sewer, and the cart was dented and knocked loose, to clatter along the wall and out of my sight. If I'd been struck by that log, it would have cost me some ribs or possibly my spine. I must have been unconscious and swept down the sewer by this torrent. Miraculously I hadn't drowned or had parts of me bashed to pulp against the walls. I felt my head again. Maybe part of me had been pulped. I suddenly realized that I had stopped breathing. Panic gripped me, slamming the headache back into my skull. I thought I was having a stroke. But once I thought about it, my chest shuddered and I started breathing again. I sucked air in great gulps that had to originate from psychological rather than physical need. I hadn't been consciously holding my breath, and I hadn't stopped long enough for it to cause any pain or discomfort. It scared me. It scared me worse than amnesia or possible brain damage. It scared me because I hadn't realized it was happening. I was terribly conscious of my own breathing as I made my way down the storm sewer. I inched along that concrete ledge, sliding along walls of brick, concrete, and eventually corrugated steel. 1 managed to avoid immersing myself again. It seemed an aeon before I finally made it out of that RAVEN 15 frigid little hell. Logic told me that the time I spent underground must have been subjective. Had I actually spent the hours down there that I felt I had, I would have been a frozen corpse long before I reached the sewer's outflow. The outflow I came to emerged from underneath a highway. The echo of traffic reached me through cor- rugated steel long before I saw the opening. The exit itself was hidden around a bend until I stepped in front of it. It opened onto a swollen river that snaked away into a frosted ravine. Snow-covered ice began a few feet from the opening, an unbroken blue plain, shimmering in the moonlight. I inched out of the sewer opening, stepping on rocks and downed trees, trying to avoid dunking myself again. It was colder out here, under a clear black sky, the air sharp enough to shave with. I pulled myself onto ice that could support my weight, holding on to a tree growing out from the lip of the ravine, and looked up tne wall from which I had just emerged. The storm sewer outlet was set into a sloping hillside that went up for maybe a dozen or twenty feet, topped by a guardrail. As I watched, a lonely car sped out of the darkness, passed me. and dis- appeared back into the darkness, chased by its own bloody taillights. I moved to the edge of the ravine, holding on to the branch above me until I was certain that I was on firm ground rather than snow-covered ice. Seeing the highway lifted something in me, as if it was a confir- mation of my survival. I was going to make it through the snow and the cold. I was going to live, however unlikely that was. I shook in the cold and told myself that I had, finally, made it. I had gotten out of the pit alive. Whether or not I was in one piece, that was debatab...
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