He hit the water hard, the impact sending ripples across the flooded factory floor, then he hit the concrete bottom and the air was knocked out of him.
Kara watched Matt fall and she heard his body hit with a sickening thud. She screamed and may have shouted his name; she didn’t know. She ran as fast as she could toward him, water splashing. She fell, got up, then her shin hit something hard and sharp and she stumbled and fell again. She forced herself to get up, get going, find Matt. What if he was unconscious? What if he drowned? What if he broke his back?
Damn damn damn! He couldnotbe dead. Not dead. Not dead. Not dead.
He didn’t surface.
Her heart pounded, her body felt numb, her head was spinning as she navigated as fast as possible across the factory floor.
He hadn’t surfaced.
“No no no no no,” she repeated as she reached down to where he had fallen, feeling for his body, touching his arm, pulling him up.
He sat, coughing water out of his lungs, his face pale and drawn but alive.
He was alive.
She sat in the stagnant water with him, wrapped her arms around him, pulling him close. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”
He held her.
“Is anything broken?”
“No,” he said, his voice raw. “I think I’m okay.”
“You scared the hell out of me.”
“Ditto.”
They helped each other up and Kara winced. Yeah, she had really done a number on her leg. She didn’t know what she’d hit, but it hurt like hell. She didn’t say anything.
She scanned the factory floor, desperate for any sign of an exit. There, at the far end of the room, was a door. It was a faint silhouette against the gloom, but it was a door.
A way out.
They started toward it and her left leg gave out.
“What’s wrong?” Matt asked.
“I cut my leg. It’s fine.”
He steered her to one of the many conveyor belts that traversed the floor. They supported each other until they both sat heavily on one of the belts, their feet still submersed in the standing water.
She looked down and saw blood seeping through her sweatpants at the same time Matt said, “You’re bleeding.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. It’s deep.”
He leaned over and pulled her sweatpants up to her knee. Blood poured steadily from the deep gash.
He took his shirt off over her protests and tied it tightly around her calf. “This water is probably filled with thousands of bacteria and—”
“Your leg is cut up and you just fell from nearly two stories, so I don’t want to hear it,” she said.
“My cut has clotted. Sore, but not bleeding.”
“Let’s just get out of here and then I won’t even fight you about going to the hospital.”
