Kait was almost convinced of her own competence when she saw the shape in the road. It was directly in her path but far enough ahead to avoid.
A gray shape. A low horned shape—a goat.
If Kaitlyn hadn't seen it before, she might not have recognized it—there was so little time. But she knew every line of that goat; she'd stared at it for hours this morning. It was exactly like her picture, down to the red eyes. They seemed to blaze at her, the only wink of color in the gray and rainy landscape.
Silver, some part of her mind thought wildly. The silvery-gray river hadn't been a river at all but a road. And the fog had been the rain-vapor rising from the ground.
But most of her mind wasn't thinking at all, it was just reacting. Brakes, it told her.
Kait's foot hit the brakes, pressing and releasing the way her driver's ed teacher had advised for bad weather.
Nothing happened.
Her foot slammed down in utter defiance of the driver's ed teacher. And again, nothing happened. The van didn't skid; it didn't slow in the least.
The goat was dead ahead. There was no time to scream, no time even to think. No time to pay attention to the sudden clamor in the web as the others realized that something was wrong.
Kaitlyn wrenched at the steering wheel. The van swerved and careered to the left, into the opposite lane. She got a flash of trees getting close very fast.
Turn right! Swerve back!
Kait wasn't sure whose thought it was, but she was already obeying. The van swung right—too far.
I'm going off the road, she thought with a curious calm.
Then everything was confusion.
Kaitlyn could never really remember what happened next, except that it was awful. Trees whipped by. Branches hit the windshield. There was an impact—shocking—but it didn't seem to slow them.
Then the van seemed to leap and go rocketing downward.
Kaitlyn had a sense of being rattled around like a pea in a tin can. She could hear screaming—she thought it might be her own voice. And then there was another impact and everything went dark.
Chapter 10
Kaitlyn could hear water—a musical gurgling sound. It was soothing and part of her wanted to listen to it and rest.
But she couldn't. There was something… someone she had to worry about. Someone…
Rob.
Not just Rob. The others. Something terrible had happened and she had to make sure they were all right.
Strangely, she wasn't sure just what had happened. All she knew was that it had been awful. She had to piece together just what the awful thing might have been from what she could see around her.
Opening her eyes, she found that she was in Marisol's van. The van wasn't moving and it wasn't on the road anymore. Through the windshield she could see trees, their branches dripping with green moss. Stretching in front of her she could see water. A creek.
For the first time, she realized that there was water around her feet.
Idiot! There was an accident!
As soon as she thought it, she looked over to Rob. He was blinking, trying to undo his seat belt, seeming as dazed as she felt.
Rob, are you okay? Instinctively Kait used the most intimate form of speech.
Rob nodded, still looking stupefied. There was a cut on his forehead. "Yeah—are you?"
"I'm sorry; I'm so sorry…" If pressed, Kaitlyn couldn't have said what she was apologizing about. She only knew that she'd done something dreadful.
Forget sorry. We have to get out of here, Gabriel said.
Kaitlyn twisted to look behind her. "Are you guys all right? Is anybody hurt?"
"We're okay—I think," Lewis said. He and Anna were getting up. They didn't seem to be injured, but their faces were drained of color and their eyes stared wildly.
"Help me get this open," Gabriel said sharply, wrenching at the side door.
It took all three of them to get the door open, and then Kait and Rob had to crawl over the center console of the van to go out the same way. Jumping out of the van, Kaitlyn landed in water so cold it took her breath away. With Rob's help, she waded painfully over irregular stones to the bank.
From here she could see what had happened to the van. They'd gone off the road, hit a few trees, and then plunged down a steep embankment into the creek. Kaitlyn supposed it was lucky they'd finished right side up. The silver-blue van was dented and battered—the right front fender a mass of twisted metal.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. She now remembered what she had to be sorry for. She was doubly guilty—she'd lost control of the van and she'd failed to interpret her own drawing, the drawing that might have warned her.
"Don't worry, Kait," Rob said gently, putting his arms around her. But then he winced.
"Oh, Rob, your head—there's a terrible cut."
He put a hand to it. "Not that bad." But he squatted down on the fern-covered embankment. Rain dripped from the trees around him.
"We should wash it," Anna said. "We've got water, but we need some cloth—"
"My duffel bag!" Kaitlyn started into the water, but Gabriel held her back, seizing her arm ungently.
"That's dangerous, you idiot," he said. His gray eyes were hard.
"But I need it," Kaitlyn said. She felt that she could stop the shaking inside her if she just had something to do, some action to perform.
Gabriel's mouth twisted. "For God's sake—oh, all right. You stay here." Letting go of her so roughly it was almost a push, he turned and waded to the van. A moment later he was splashing back, holding not only Kait's bag, but Anna's, which contained the files Rob had taken from the hidden room.
"Thank you," Kaitlyn said, trying to look him in the eye.
"The blankets and sleeping bags are all soaked," Gabriel said briefly. "Not worth saving—we'll never dry them out in this weather."
Anna used a T-shirt of Kaitlyn's to wash Rob's cut and staunch the bleeding. Then she said, "Hold this, Kait," and went hiking up the embankment. She returned with a handful of something green.
"Hemlock needles," she said. "They're good for burns; maybe they'll help a cut, too." She applied them to Rob's head.
Lewis had been staring around at the dripping trees, twirling his baseball hat on one finger. Now he said abruptly, "Look, what happened? Did we skid or—"