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Our species’ aversion to water is well knoater is death to us We sink like stones, our bodies lacking the buoyancy of adipose tissue Of e into the quarry I possess only a fractured recollection The truck’s slow progress to the lip of the abyss; the snatch of gravity and the inevitable plunge; water all aroundreat catastrophes; invincible in most other aspects, I had found the quickest way to die As the truck touched doith a soft thump upon the quarry’s watery floor, I extricatedthe bottom Even in my panicked state, the irony was not lost onlike a crab! My only hope was to feel e of the pit and scale my way to freedom Time was my enemy; I had but one bottled breath hich to save an to climb Hand over hand I made my ascent My vision swirled with darkness, the end was closing in…

How I came in due course to find uably hureat voluy voians For die I surely did; the body re freed myself from the quarry’s waters, I had yet succumbed and for some period of time lain as a drowned corpse upon the rocks, only to be shot back into existence

Death’s doorway, it seemed, was not marked EXIT ONLY after all

The last of the quarry’s waters expelled, I ed, in a state of dazed astonishment, to rise Where was I? When was I? What was I? Such was ht have drea this I held up a hand before the moon It was, in every visible aspect, the hand of a hu, holder of the Eloise Ar Chair, et cetera I looked down upon the rest of its I probed ht, I investigated each feature ofbraille

I’ll be godda from the quarry wall; a narroitchback led ed into an area of rusted machinery half-buried by weeds The hour was unknown to hts burned anywhere The landscape was one of such uninhabited desolation the world ht have ended already

The quarry’s waters would conceal my second victi I wanted was a police manhunt to co area The sight of her aroused no remorse, just the sort of perfunctory, quickly dispatched pity onea newspaper account of so toast Two distant splashes--body, head--and into the watery deep she went

None of which did anything to solve the problee in an unknown countryside I needed clothes, shelter, a story Also, a certain itation, like an inaudible siren in my brain, toldhappy would ensue

Thethat I hfare At length I eed into a landscape of freshly planted fields bisected by a dirt road In the distance I saw a light and headed toward it A sn, little ht I’d seen was a lamp in one of the two front s There was no car in the driveway, suggesting that the house was unoccupied, the light left burning in anticipation of its owner’s return

The door obediently opened onto a living room of particleboard furniture, country-themed bric-a-brac, and a television the size of a Jumbotron A quick survey of the interior--four rooms and a kitchen--confirmed my impression that no one was home My inspection further revealed that the occupant was a wo school at Wichita State, was in her late forties, possessed a soft, ray hair she didn’t do raphed in a state of rosy-cheeked inebriation in ethnic-the sha fondue spike), and that she lived alone Fros I could find--a pair of sweatpants, voluminous on e, and a pair of flip-flops--and entered the bathrooreeted me in the mirror was not wholly unexpected By this time it had beco had not wholly restoredmore like costumery The virus remained; my death had merely excited it into some new interaction with its host Many attributes had been preserved Vision, hearing, sh I had yet to put them to a proper test, e, bones to blood--huth