By the time they entered what his map called Shadow Canyon, Williams estimated they had about two hours of light left. As for the Santiago River, they heard it before they saw it (for the world had grown eerily silent since the Flashback), rushing and bubbling, swirling and sluicing, until they rounded a craggy bend and saw it laid out before them—beautiful in its untamed wildness, bursting as though in flood, and, having no bridge, utterly impassable.
“I don’t get it,” said Sheila, exhausted. “Who builds a road and then runs it straight into a raging river?”
Williams peered at the opposite bank, where the dirt road resumed. “If I had to guess I’d say there’s a dam upriver, which would have allowed passage—in, say, a 4x4—whenever it was closed.” He sneered and spat. “It’s a ‘Redneck High
