After The Virus by Meghan Ciana Doidge Page B

constant struggle to move and do and consume and try, try to just be, to exist.
    She thought of Snickers, who was too young to be overwhelmed in all of this. And then her legs moved, kicked against the demanding water. She panicked that she wasn’t going to break free, that she’d waited too long, let the current have its way and signed over her life rights.
    She broke through and pulled air into her deflated lungs. Her rib was still stuck, maybe broken, but she had other things to worry about. Such as the insane speed with which she was being dragged and the jutting, jagged rocks that she was lucky she hadn’t yet hit headfirst. Instructions from a river-rafting trip taken with her father in her teens came to her, and she faced downriver and stuck her legs forward. Her father had died a few weeks after that trip. By his own hand. She stuffed that memory away for another dark day.
    She let the current direct her, as she was sure it had directed Snickers. Scanning, she squinted against the sun. She’d lost her sunglasses. Everything was white. White water surrounded and pulled her around rocky outcrops. Snickers' dark hair had to show against all this white.
    If Snickers had made it to the surface… if… if… if , her brain nagged. The river was so strong and Snickers was so little.
    The river twisted and she scraped her leg on something jagged underneath the surface. At least there weren’t any sharks in a river. She hadn’t realized before how cold the water was — cold and clear — good enough to drink.  
    She suddenly dropped a few feet and went under; when she surfaced again she found herself in a sort of resting place. A pool drop , her brain unhelpfully supplied.
    Going under the water brought her to her senses again and… there!
    A scarf tied around a rock?
    She swam to the other side of the calm pool. She wedged up against a boulder so the river didn’t drag her up and over the next set of rapids. Then, tracing the scarf, she found Snickers.
    The girl had tried to anchor to the rock, but was now hanging on to the ends of the scarf and barely keeping her head out of the water.  
    Rhiannon wrapped her legs around her side of the rock and reached over to drag Snickers back. The river wasn’t too happy about releasing the girl.
    Snickers' lips and hands were blue-tinged, and her head rolled limp. She seemed unaware of being pulled over and wedged against the boulder.  
    Rhiannon fumbled with the scarf and the knots that Snickers had made around her wrists. The constant pull of the current had painfully tightened those knots.
    Only when blood rushed back into Snickers’ hands did she react, and the girl’s pained, ferocious look gradually eased into recognition and… joy ?
    “Hey baby,” Rhiannon smiled, and almost got a return smile. ”What a ride! But maybe now is a good time to dry off?”
    Snickers nodded her agreement.
    She looked for a place to climb out of the river, but saw none nearby.
    “Looks like we might need to go down river farther. You up for it?”
    Snickers nodded and tried to climb around onto her back, but couldn’t seem to move or grip very well with her right arm. Was it broken? Snickers didn’t seem to be bleeding and she saw no jutting bone, but given the way the girl was moving, it was at least painful.
    “Sorry, baby, this might hurt. Try arms around my neck, legs like this.” She coached Snickers until she was wrapped around her frontways.
    Then, fingers clumsy with cold, she tied one end of the scarf to Snickers’ belt and one end to her own, and hoped that was the right choice.
    The child didn’t make a sound, but Rhiannon felt her desperately clenched limbs and her fierce little heart pounding against her breastbone.
    As she eased around the rock and let the current catch them, she realized she wasn’t scared anymore. With Snickers, she could accomplish anything.
    She tried to steer toward a group of rocks and hoped for another calm pool. But instead of a safe