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the shoe belt with his penknife, his arm pumping like a man using bellows. There was a sudden wrench and he was free. But he was already dead. He knew it. There was no way he could reach the surface with what he had left in his lungs.
    He kicked his way to the part of the roof space where he knew the air bubble was. If this didn’t work, he was finished. He had no choice anymore in the matter.
    He spat all the air he had left in his lungs into the water surrounding him. Then he thrust his nose and mouth up to where the trapped air had to be. He drew in two deep breaths. He didn’t allow himself to think of what he might be taking into his lungs – the makeup of the gases he was ingesting – the quality of the mulch after two days stewing. He booted his way out of the car, leaving both his belt and the skirt of shoes still attached to the front seat. He was fighting off an overwhelming desire to gag.
    He still had the two tyre irons, the jack, the tow rope, and the fire extinguisher clutched to his stomach. He knew that their weight might prove just enough to tip the scales and hold him down. But there was no earthly point in ascending without them. Something deep inside his head was telling him that.
    He floated onto his back and began to ascend. He was far too weak to kick anymore. As he rose through the water, the remaining air in his lungs bled out through his teeth in a rapidly diminishing stream. Abi closed his eyes. He was kaput. He would arrive at the surface dead. Somewhere on the way up he would let go of his burdens and watch all the prizes he had fought so hard for vanish back into the murk below him.
    He contrived one final upward kick with his feet. It was more like the spasmodic movement a dying man will make than any direct product of Abi’s will.
    He bobbed to the surface and sank forwards onto his face, still clutching his booty. His nose and mouth were in the water. He had no strength left with which to breathe. He would die now, and that was fine by him.
    He felt himself being turned over. The weight he was cradling in his arms was taken away from him. Then he was see-sawed onto his front again and slammed against something soft. His back was pummelled and slapped. He brought up some viscid liquid. Then a little more.
    Abi lay half on, half off the raft of bodies.
    When his senses finally returned, he found, to his astonishment, that he was still alive.

 
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    Abi spent the better part of the night recovering his energy on what his three junior siblings now insisted on calling the ‘body raft’, and which he, playing Devil’s Advocate as usual, termed the ratis corporum . The reeking raft of corpses would only suffer two persons on it at any one time, so the other three took turn and turn about, alternately hanging off the sides and then catnapping on board throughout the course of the night.
    First thing in the morning, just as the sun began its steady creep across the face of the cenote, the raft sank. The rot began with the outlying bodies, but soon communicated itself to the central portion of the raft. Abi barely had time to grab the jack, the two tyre irons, the tow rope and the fire extinguisher, before the raft slid out from underneath him, just as if it had been spirited away, like King Arthur’s sword, by the Lady of the Lake.
    Abi trod water for a few moments, his heart pounding with delayed shock. The others struggled towards him through the water, their faces pale in the early morning light. Abi thrust the fire extinguisher into Rudra’s hands, while Nawal took over carrying the jack, and Dakini the two tyre irons.
    In a movement which belied his obvious exhaustion, Abi wrapped the tow rope around his midriff and attached it over one shoulder with a quick-release knot. ‘Right. I’m going to get on and do this while I’ve still got some energy left. We’re already half starving. In a few hours’ time we’ll be gnawing at the dead. If we can still find any, that is. The