She jerked the wheel suddenly, hard, screamed between clenched teeth.
Kells felt the beginning of the skid; he looked outward, forward into blackness. They were in space, falling sidewise into blackness; there was grinding, tearing, crashing sound. Falling.
Black.
There was a light somewhere. There was a voice.
Kells moved his arm an inch or so, dug his fingers deep in mud. The rain beat hard, cold on his face.
The voice come from somewhere above him, kept talking about light.
“I can’t get down any farther,” it said. “We got to have more light.”
Kells tried to roll over on his side. There was something heavy on his legs, he couldn’t move them, couldn’t feel them. But he twisted his body a little and opened his eyes. It was entirely dark.
He twisted his body the other way and saw the narrow beam of a flashlight high above him in the darkness. The rain looked like snow in the light.
He pushed himself up slowly, leaned on one elbow, saw something white a little distance away. He got his legs, somehow, out of the dark sharp metal that imprisoned them and crawled slowly, painfully toward the whiteness.