Dark Rivers of the Heart

the sandwiched pane.
        Miraculously, the windows on Rocky's side were undamaged. But the front door bulged inward. Water dribbled around the frame.
        Rocky lifted his head, suddenly afraid not to look. He whimpered as he peered at the wild river, at the low concrete ceiling, and at the rectangle of cheerless gray storm light beyond the bridge.
        "Hell," Spencer said, "pee on the seat if you want to."
        The truck sank into another swale.
        They were two-thirds of the way through the tunnel.
        A hissing, needle-thin stream of water squirted through a tiny breach in the twisted door frame. Rocky yelped as it spattered him.
        When the truck soared out of the trough, it wasn't thrown into the columns after all. Worse, the river heaved as if passing over an enormous obstruction on the floor of the wash, and it slammed the Explorer straight up into the low concrete underside of the bridge.
        Braced with both hands on the steering wheel, determined not to be thrown into the side window, Spencer was unprepared for the upward rush.
        He dropped in his seat as the roof crumpled inward, but he was not quick enough. The ceiling cracked against the top of his skull.
        Bright bolts of pain flashed behind his eyes, along his spine.
        Blood streamed down his face. Scalding tears. His vision blurred.
        The river carried the truck down from the underside of the bridge, and Spencer tried to push up in his seat. The effort made him dizzy, so he slumped again, breathing hard.
        His tears swiftly darkened, as if polluted. His blurred vision faded.
        Soon the tears were as black as ink, and he was blind.
        The prospect of blindness panicked him, and panic opened a door to understanding: He wasn't blind, thank God, but he was passing out.
        He held desperately to consciousness. If he fainted, he might never wake. He balanced on the ed e of a swoon. Then hundreds of ray dots appeared in the blackness, expanded into elaborate matrices of light and shadow, until he could see the interior of the truck.
        Pulling himself up in the seat as far as the crumpled roof would allow, he again almost passed out. Gingerly, he touched his bleeding scalp.
        The wound seeped rather than gushed, not a mortal laceration.
        They were in the open once more. Rain hammered on the truck.
        The battery wasn't dead yet. Wipers still swept the windshield.
        The Explorer gamely wallowed down the center of the river, which was broader than ever. Perhaps a hundred twenty feet wide. Brimming against its banks, within inches of spilling over. God knew how deep it might be. The water was calmer than it had been but moving fast.
        Gazing worriedly at the liquid road ahead, Rocky made pitiful sounds of distress. He wasn't bobbing his head, wasn't delighted by their speed, as on the streets of Vegas. He didn't seem to trust nature as much as he had trusted his master.
        "Good old Mr. Rocky Dog," Spencer said affectionately, and was unnerved to hear that his speech was slurred.
        In spite of Rocky's concern, Spencer couldn't see any unusual dangers immediately ahead, nothing like the bridge. For a couple of miles the flow appeared to proceed unimpeded, until it vanished into rain, mist, and the iron-colored light of thunderhead-filtered sun.
        Desert plains lay on both sides, bleak but not entirely barren.
        Mesquite bristled. Clumps of wiry grass. Outcroppings of gnarled rock also grew out of the plains. They were natural formations but achieved the strange geometry of ancient Druid structures.
        A new pain blossomed in Spencer's skull. Irresistible darkness flowered behind his eyes. He might have been out for a minute or an hour.
        He didn't dream. He just went away into a timeless dark.
        When he revived, cool air fluttered feebly across his brow, and cold rain spattered his face. The many liquid voices of the river grumbled, hissed, and chuckled louder than before.
        He sat for a while, wondering why the sound was so much louder.
        His thoughts were muddled. Eventually, be realized that the side window had collapsed while he'd been unconscious. Gummy laces of highly fragmented tempered glass lay in his lap.
        Water was ankle-deep on the floor. His feet were half numb with cold.
        He propped them on the brake pedal and flexed his toes in his