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“Wanna fight,Formosa? Let’s see how good you fight in hell.” He veered the car out of the road. “If I’m losing today, I’m choosing how. And I’m bringing you with me.” His deranged eyes turned to me, and his insane smile made me shiver. Doom was surrounding me, and I wasn’t sure I could escape whatever he was planning. “Let’s make it a day your savior back there will never forget.”
He directed the car to the lake, already frozen by the unforgiven winter looming over us. “No, no, no.”
“Yes,Formosa. Let’s see how good you swim inside a car.”
I tried to get free, but the door wouldn’t open. My scream was muffled by his hysterical laugh as my desperation grew. I punched his head with my tied hands, trying to stop him from driving, until he had enough and elbowed me in the face.
After that point, the last thing I saw was the car I was in flying from the pier and breaking into the icy surface of the lake before cold and despair engulfed me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Terror surrounded me. As Matias veered the car into the lake, accelerating instead of stopping on the small pier, my heartbeat skyrocketed, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
But there was no time to panic, so my fears had to wait. I skid the car to a stop, and Mia was out before I turned the engine off. I caught up to her easily with my much bigger legs, and we raced to the lake.
Trying to lighten ourselves and gain speed inside the freezing water, Mia and I began to take off some of our gear, our boots, and our clothes as we ran. We dropped our rifles and hoodies scattered on the ground, leaving in our wake our Kevlar vests and sweaters. Under any other circumstance, the shirts we remained wearing wouldn’t be enough to fight the increasingly chilly weather, yet that didn’t stop us. The freezing would come right after anyway.
At a distance, I heard more people approaching and the sound of a police siren, yet we kept going. There was no time to waste.
Our stomps over the pier echoed in the too-white scenery, turning a winter picture into a horror scene. Knowing Mia was behind me, I dove right into the lake, arms and head first. The moment my body hit the water, my lungs seemed to freeze, and I had to control a gasp so as not to drink or inhale water.
It was obvious the water would be cold, but nothing could’ve prepared me for the pain that assaulted my muscles and brain at the astoundingly low temperature. It was like a shock to my system.
I felt a wavy disturbance in the water and knew Mia had jumped into the freezing nightmare with me. I pushed forward through the pain, gun in hand, and swam down toward the diving car. The water was darker thanI’d expected, so I tried to focus my vision and guide myself through the silhouettes.
When I reached the car, I helped myself closer by pulling one of the open windows. My lungs were starting to protest, but I ignored them. I pushed myself closer to the driver’s seat and saw Mia was already on the other side, cutting the seatbelt with her knife to get an unconscious Lisa outside the car.
They were almost out when Matias pulled Lisa’s leg inside, fighting to make her drown. Grappling against the fire in my lungs, I pulled him back so he’d let them go. He struggled more than a moribund should, holding them back against my efforts to stop him.
When Mia slid her knife on his arm, breaking his skin and managing to pull Lisa out, Matias turned his rage at me and tried to pull me inside the car. I let go of some of the breath I was holding, and I knew my time underwater should end soon. Punching him didn’t have the effect I was expecting, what with the water holding my momentum back and taking away some of my strength.
Not wanting to leave his death to chance or at nature’s volition, I pointed my gun at him and shot his chest. When that only slowed him down, I placed it over his head and pulled the trigger, putting an end to it.
I looked around the car but couldn’t see anything. My surroundings were too dark for me to spot Mia and Lisa. I was getting dizzy and in desperate need of breathing. The pressure in my ears increased, and my lungs felt like they were on fire.
It was so shadowed underwater that if it weren’t for the car pointing to the bottom, I wouldn’t know which way was up. Unable to hold my breath any longer, I swam up and took a lungful of freezing air as soon as I broke the surface. I looked around for any sign of the girls, who were nowhere in sight.
With my adrenaline still high and desperation even higher, I dove into the water again, only to be met with darkness. It was impossible to identify anything, even the shadow of the car wasn’t visible anymore. I went back up for air—it was getting harder to stay longer without breathing—and to see if they’d resurfaced, only to have my panic skyrocket when I didn’t find them.
The weather was so cold that some points where the car had broken into were starting to solidify again.
I was about to dive into hell another time when a few feet away, Mia broke the surface, gasping loudly for air, bringing up Lisa—whom I prayedwasjustunconscious. I swam to them as fast as my freezing limbs allowed, and together we took my woman to solid ground. More like a bed of snow.
We were soaking wet and walking heavily, our wobbly legs barely sustaining our weight as the unforgiving wind assaulted us. Due to our adventure in the freezing lake, the wind only made the temperature seem lower. It was almost paralyzing. Mia and Lisa’s lips were purple, and I knew mine shouldn’t be different.
After I placed Lisa softly on the snow, uniformed men swarmed the area, and I heard a familiar voice yelling, asking for an ambulance. Trying to block my fear and give my woman my best-trained service, I positioned her the way I needed and kneeled beside her as Mia cut the ropes tying her hands and feet.
I placed two fingers on her neck. No pulse.
Placing my hands over the center of her chest, I started the CPR maneuver. I pushed using my body weight, trying to restore her blood flow yet mindful of not hurting her. After a few pushes, I stayed in position as Mia gently tilted Lisa’s head back and lifted her chin to open her airway.
She pinched Lisa’s nose shut, covered my woman’s mouth with her own, and breathed into her. When nothing happened, she tried again. Another time, Lisa’s chest was immobile, so I resumed my pushing on her chest.
Mia and I worked on Lisa, pushing and blowing, yet nothing seemed to work.
My desperation was getting the best of me. “W-Where the fuck is t-the ambulance?” My voice was breaking from the cold. “We need an e-external defibrillator.Now!” I kept pushing and pushing, only stopping so Mia could blow air into Lisa’s mouth.
A disembodied voice I didn’t recognize chimed in. “It won’t work. She’s gone already.”
