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Stop panicking. Stop freaking out, Wrenlee,I encourage myself silently. It’s only going to make the air run out faster.
But who wants to prolong this?
I don’t want to die.
Please, God, don’t let me die. Not like this.
It’s quiet under here, but I can still hear the sound of tires crunching over gravel as Alice drives away, leaving me alone with the dead woman in the shallow grave she made for me.
thirty-six
Wrenlee
I don’t know how long I lay in my eternal tomb like this, silently pulling in small puffs of limited air that tastes sour with death. I try not to think about it. About the fact I’m inhaling the stench of death—that my companion in this horror is a corpse.
If I think too much about it, about the sour rot in the air—the scent of old blood and body fluid left to dry—I’ll break.
I focus on small breaths. Counting, one, two, three, four, five, six…one hundred and ninety-nine…three hundred and seventy-two…four hundred and twenty…
There’s a sensation in my fingertips now. I can feel the cold of the November air. My legs feel heavy,but I think I’m wiggling my toes. Just a little. The earth over my body is heavy. Who would have thought that two feet of earth could be so impossibly heavy?
I’m not going to be able to dig myself out of this. There’s no way…
My chest is hardly able to expand with the breaths I’m dragging deep, gulping down, the weight of the earth is so much.
That’s the moment it settles. My reality. Acceptance.
I’m going to die here today.
With the acceptance comes a kind of warmth that could very well be late-stage hypothermia. I’m too beyond that to care, though. I let the warmth wash over, settling into my eternal tomb with a kind of heaviness that comes from one who has seen the outcome and knows the result.
I know my fate today.
I understand my chances of survival—of rescue are closer to impossible than anything.
Alice is confident Cash will find me. So, I figure she’ll find a way to tell him where I am, when she’s well and truly confident I’m gone.
I’m unsure how long I lay like that, tossed between memories of Dad’s comforting hugs and hair kisses, and the way I feel so complete when Cash loves me. At first, I think the sound of car tiresis in my mind. And then I’m confident I’m hallucinating when I hear Cash roar my name.
I savour the sound of his voice before I realize, when more voices shout for me, Kane, Tav, Ian and Candace—that I’m not hallucinating. Not at all.
Dragging in as much air as I can, I let out a scream. It’s more like a whistle of air from the depths of my chest, but I do it again and again until bright white light flashes behind my closed eyelids. Then I feel more pressure on my chest. Too much pressure.
I know this is it.
Gravel scatters, pebbles crashing. The sounds of desperate hands and a feminine, “Oh, God no! I’m calling an ambulance.”
Everything becomes so heavy. So impossibly heavy, and there’s no more air.
I try to cling to hope, to…
Everything goes dark.
thirty-seven
Kane
I’m going to have nightmares about today for the rest of my life.
