HARD AS I TRIED, MY BRAIN WOULDN’T WORK. AT FIRST I struggled a few steps farther over toward the cliff side of the stairs, but it seeped through the mush of reason that I was incapable of digging Meg out of anything like two tons of earth, even if I managed to find her.
I sloshed on.
Then I heard the cries. “Help! Shit! Goddamn it, where are you? Emma!”
“Meg?” I croaked in disbelief. “Where are you?”
But she wouldn’t have heard my amazed whisper on a calm day, so I started back toward the steps. I knew that there were fourteen of the cement steps, and oddly, I remembered that Sherlock Holmes knew how many stairs led down to the rooms at 221B Baker Street. Might as well have been a hundred, from where I stood in the water. A wave shoved me in the right direction and I fell against the wet, gritty stairs.
Meg had called. Meg had called. I used that as a mantra, a focal point as I tried to make the most of the wave’s push, since I was already a mess. Only I couldn’t feel the hurts I knew I had, and that bothered me. I started to count the stairs, try and mark my progress to the top, but the only real thing that kept me moving was the fact that Meg was still out there.
“Coming,” I muttered. I pushed myself up carefully, if not on all fours, then unsteadily on three, and hauled myself up four more stairs. I sat on the fifth as a reward, but realized that if I didn’t want to risk the rest of the bluff crumbling away from the stairs, I would have to keep moving.
I hauled myself up another three stairs, only to be surprised by the feel of grass under my hand. One more effort and I was at the top, where I fell over into the sharp, wet weeds. All I wanted to do was sleep. I forced my eyes open again, and that simple act brought with it a ray of hope.
Or at least a ray of light, which was just as welcome. Meg’s flashlight spilled a beam along the ground away from me, illuminating her as she clung, almost on her belly, to the edge of the bluff. She seemed to be trying to edge forward without moving too much. Suddenly I saw something appear on the bluff a few feet from where her head and hands were. Had Tony returned? No, it was Meg’s foot, followed by her backside, as she, in one move, pulled herself up and over, and rolled away from the edge to lie on her back about fifteen feet from where I had collapsed.
I must have checked out for a moment, for I heard Meg yell hoarsely, “Emma! Where are you?” and couldn’t remember how she came to be standing up.
“Over here!” I tried to holler, but a hacking cough was all that came out. My stomach rolled as I raised my head.
She started, not expecting to find me so close by. Meg’s chin was badly cut, and the front of her was unevenly covered in coarse, wet sand. Water soaked her leather jacket, and even as my vision closed I was transfixed by the way the rain beaded on her glasses and earrings, spattering them with dark jewels. She picked up her flashlight and came over to me.
I waved tentatively, trying not to lose my balance and fall again, but my head was buzzing and I couldn’t see very clearly. Through the warm fuzzy feeling that seemed to envelop me, I lazily tried to remember something that seemed rather important at one point. “Tony…I think Neal’s…I wasn’t…”
Meg didn’t bother to stifle her exclamation of dismay when she reached out for me. I looked down and saw that my left index finger was jutting out and back in a sickening fashion. My stomach heaved and I looked away.
“Shhh. Neal’s not okay, but he’s not dead, not by a long shot,” she said. “We’ve got to get the two of you to a hospital though, or we’ll have a couple more specimens for the faunal collections.” She half-pulled, half-carried me up the slope, away from the edge of the bluff. “Damn, you weigh a ton,” she gasped.
That irritated me, but I couldn’t think of any suitable retort.
“I was just getting him, Tony, lined up when the ground collapsed under me. I could feel the vibration and chucked the light and Sally, but I got the wind knocked right out of me, I didn’t think I was gonna be able to hang in there—”
Meg was rabbiting on and on about climbing, and blankets, and whatever, and I was glad to have her there, but I really wished she would just shut up and let me drift off. I’d had enough. I tried to explain this politely to her, but apparently the words weren’t coming out properly, because every time I tried to stretch out on the slick grass for a little rest, she would just start swearing and yelling at me. Then she would yank me up again, which was annoying, but at least now it didn’t hurt.
Then, just as I had decided I would really have to be quite short with her, Meg shouted again, but this time not at me. Dozens of people, it seemed, came swarming toward us, asking me silly questions, and poking and peering rudely. I lost track trying to watch them, and got more muddled when I tried to talk to them. I caught words that I recognized, but most of it made no sense, like I had missed the beginning of a word game. In the midst of all the to-do, I felt something sting my arm and cursed the virulent Maine mosquitoes that seemed not to fear either the dark or the stormy weather. I abruptly decided that if no one was going to take the trouble to deal with me politely, I would ignore them too, so I slipped away into the dark.