Dark Rivers of the Heart

the ruined ramparts of an immense fortification erected and destroyed in a warring age a thousand years prior to recorded history. Along some of the highest portions of the expanse were suggestions of crumbling and unevenly crenelated parapets. In places the wall was breached from top to bottom, as though an enemy army had battered into the fortress at those points.
        Spencer concentrated on the fantasy of the ancient castle, superimposing it upon the escarpment of stone, to distract himself from the dead rat floating just beyond the broken window at his side.
        In his mental confusion, he was not initially concerned that the river was carrying him toward those battlements. Gradually, however, he realized that the approaching encounter might be as devastating to the truck as had been the brutal game of pinball with the bridge. If the currents conveyed the Explorer through one of the sluiceways and along the river, the queer rock formations would be just interesting scenery.
        But if the truck clipped one of those natural gateposts…
        The spine of rock traversed the arroyo but was breached in three places by the flow. The widest gap was fifty feet across the lay to the right, framed by the south shore and by a six-foot-wide, twenty-foot-high tower of dark stone that rose from the water. The narrowest passage, not even eight feet wide, lay in the center, between that first tower and another pile of rocks ten feet wide and twelve high. Between that pile and the left-hand shore, where the battlements soared again and ran uninterrupted far to the north, lay the third passage, which must have been twenty to thirty feet across.
        "Gonna make it." He tried to reach out to the dog. Couldn't.
        With a hundred yards to go, the Explorer seemed to be drifting swiftly toward the southernmost and widest gateway.
        Spencer wasn't able to stop himself from glancing to the left.
        Through the missing window. At the rat. Floating. Closer than before.
        The stiff tail was mottled pink and black.
        A memory scuttled through his mind: rats in a crampedplace, hateful red eyes in the shadows, rats in the catacombs, down in the catacombs, and ahead lies the room at the end of nowhere.
        With a quiver of revulsion, he looked forward. The windshield was blurred by rain. Nevertheless, he could see too much. Having closed within fifty yards of the point at which the river divided, the truck no longer sailed toward the widest passage. It angled left, toward the center gate, the most dangerous of the three.
        The channel narrowed. The water accelerated.
        "Hold on, pal. Hold on."
        Spencer hoped to be carried sharply to the left, past the center gate, into the north passage. Twenty yards from the sluiceways, the lateral drift of the truck slowed. It would never reach the north gate. It was going to race through the center.
        Fifteen yards. Ten.
        Even to transit the center passage, they would need some luck. At the moment, they were rocketing toward the twenty-foot-high gatepost of solid rock on the right of that opening.
        Maybe they would just graze the pillar or even slide by with a finger's width to spare.
        They were so close that Spencer could no longer see the base of the stone tower past the front of the Explorer. "Please, God."
        The bumper rammed the rock as though to cleave it. The it-npact was so great that Rocky slid onto the floor again. The right front fender tore loose, flew away. The hood buckled as if made of tinfoil.
        The windshield imploded, but instead of spraying Spencer, tempered glass cascaded over the dashboard in glutinous, prickly wads.
        For an instant after the collision, the Explorer was at a dead stop in the water and at an angle to the direction of the flow. Then the raging current caught the side of the truck and began to push the back end around to the left.
        Spencer opened his eyes and watched in disbelief as the Explorer turned crosswise to the flow. It could never pass sideways between the two masses of rock and through the center sluicewa The a was too narrow; the truck would wedge tight. Then the rampaging river would hammer the passenger side until it flooded the interior or maybe hurled a driftwood log through the open window at his head.
        Shuddering, grinding, the front of the Explorer worked along the rock, deeper into the passage, and the