[Interstate 55/Sep. 24th/1805 hrs.]
The rain thudded against the fiberglass-and-metal exterior of the white Ford Explorer Sport Trac with all the furry of an attack from angered gods. Visibility outside the SUV was dangerously low--perhaps 40 feet--but it did nothing to deter Nicholas from keeping his heavy foot firmly pressed against the gas pedal, switching quickly to the brake at what seemed like regular intervals whenever the curtain of falling water was suddenly glowing crimson with the brake lights of the vehicle ahead of them. Several times now he had come inches from slamming hard into the back of the much smaller Ford Focus that traced a black-blurred line before them as they made their way along Interstate 55; the image of his friend Tim jumping up and down in anger at the sight of his precious car smashed like a glossy black beer can caused a smile to push at the corner of his blonde goatee. Once again the rain was filled with red light and Nick’s foot pumped the brake and sent each of his passengers rocking forward in their seats.
“Dammit, dude,” Brian yelped from the forward passenger seat. Nick gazed over to see the man’s wiry frame arced back into the tan material of the seat, his face gaping wide-eyed down at the Panther’s jersey he always wore--he’d had the thing for as long as Nick could remember and, for just as long, it had remained at least two sizes too big--which was now sporting a brown color which blanketed the blue and black. “Half the fucking bottle, man!”
Nick laughed. “Chill out, Brian,” he huffed. “Better that than your blood, y’know?”
“Half the bottle, dude!” It was easy to see that Brian was about to make the rest of the trip home the highpoint of the busted day. If being rained out of a day at Great America wasn’t bad enough--it’s not like the group got together as often as they used to anymore--now he had to sit through the rest of the two-hour trip home dodging Tim’s Focus and listening to Brian bitch about spilled Pepsi.
A headfull of messy black hair suddenly filled the space between Driver and Whiny Co-pilot. After a second of close examination, Ray’s voice made its way out of the bird’s nest of hair. “It’s not that bad, Bri.”
“I spilled half the bottle, Ray.”
“It’ll dry.”
“Half the bottle.”
“I bet’cha it doesn’t even stain, bud.”
Ray’s head once again disappeared into the backseat and, not willing to give up so easily, Brian turned sideways so as to show the front of the jersey to the rest of the passengers in the back with Ray, holding a pinch of fabric from each shoulder seam between the finger and thumb of each hand. “Half. The. Bott--”
Brian’s words were choked off by another yelp as the truck once again lurched and he was jostled forward. Resigning himself to the fact that no one in the world cared about his woes, Brian spun back and, removing the jersey which left him sporting a simple white tee, sank into the chair and did his best not to be annoyed. “I’m going to die young and it’s going to be behind the dash of this fucking truck.”
Nick let loose a laugh he’d been holding back.
“Oh, laugh it up, pal,” Brian bit out. “If you make it out of that fateful crash alive, I swear to God I will fucking haunt you.”
Nick’s laugh was joined with that of the three in the backseat and Brian’s mock rage was fueled.
“I kid you not, asshole. I don’t care if naked, big-tittied angels come down to escort me to the Pearly Gates of my own personal eternity of rampant sex. I will tell them to fuck right off,” he jerked his thumb toward Nick as he continued to speak to his imaginary angles. “I’m gonna spend eternity making this fat bastard wet himself every night.”
Nick’s laugh faded into the ever-present grin that gave him the loveable teddy bear reputation he was known for; well, that and the plush figure Brian was just making fun of. Nick wasn’t fat by standards of disgust, but he’d long since filled out with the help of a well-earned expertise on the various nuances of beer. He was bigger than most of his friends but in a way that was either lovable or intimidating depending on your position on the line of his anger and he was never anything short of comfortable with who he was.
“S’okay, Lunchbox,” Ray piped up from the back, calling Nick by the moniker the taller man had dubbed him with due to his slight resemblance to Kevin Smith’s pulp-classic character Silent Bob. “At least he won’t be wearing that damn jersey.”
Nick laughed again and Brian jerked a different finger toward the backseat. “Fuck you,” he said in his playfully pain-filled voice.
In the rearview, Nick saw Ray grin up at Brian as he put his left arm around the tiny frame of the tan-skinned girl beside him. With a brown-eyed grin of her own, she snuggled against him as he said, “No, thanks, bub. I’ve no need for your scrawny ass with perfection at my fingertips.”
“First of all,” Brian said, “and I mean no offense Sarah, but ‘perfection’ is a matter of subjective opinion.”
Sarah scoffed in mock-insult. “You don’t think I’m perfect, Brian? Why, what ever shall I do? How can I possibly go on living?”
“I don’t see how you haven’t killed yourself already,” Nick teased.
Ray cut in, anticipating the direction of Nick’s joke. “If this is a dig on having seen me naked, tubby…”
“I’m just sayin’, man.” Nick tossed in a shiver of disgust for good measure.
Beside him, Brian was getting annoyed again. “And second,” he all but yelled, “I’ve never understood the whole ‘I wouldn’t fuck you‘ reaction to the phrase fuck you.”
“I don’t follow,” Ray said.
Sarah was the one that answered. “What he means is that the phrase ‘fuck you’ implies that you fuck yourself. Not that you fuck the speaker.”
Now Nick was confused. “That doesn’t make any sense. If ‘fuck you’ means go fuck yourself, then why not just say ‘go fuck yourself’?”
“Yeah,” Ray agreed.
Brian shrugged. “I don’t know, dude. Classic American Laziness being applied to a commonly used turn-of-phrase?”
“I can’t believe you guys are arguing the finer points of ‘fuck you’ versus ‘go fuck yourself’. It’s like being stuck in a never-ending dinner at the Pryor household,” Shaun, the fourth--and unusually quietest--passenger finally chimed in.
A few seconds of silence filled the SUV’s cab as everyone took a second to ponder on the truths of Shaun’s statement. A moment of silence that was, as usual, broken by Ray’s self-proclaimed sharp wit.
“Well,” he said, once again snuggling against Sarah. “Either way you mean it, I’d rather spend the implied activity with my darlin’, here.”
“You’d rather have sex with me than masturbating or packing your friend’s fudge,” Sarah said with a roll of her eyes. “I can’t remember a time when I’ve been more flattered. Thanks, baby.”
Without missing a beat, Ray grinned down at her with pride. “Anytime, babe. That’s just how much I love ya.”
“Yeah, yeah, Captain Ass-hat,” she laughed and then tilted her head up so he could kiss her.
Nick took another glance in the rearview at the two of them and smiled to himself again. He then snatched the pack of Marlboro’s out of the center console and pushed in the lighter, allowing the ceramic coil in the little metal cylinder to heat up while he fished out one of the white deathsticks and popped it between his lips. As if on cue, though, the second the lighter’s black nob popped back out indicating its readiness, Brian’s voice chirped up from the passenger’s seat once more. This time, though, the pitch and tone were altogether different.
“Say, there, pal,” he began, staring at the cigarette between Nick’s lips with the look of an orphan who hadn’t eaten in a week and it was chocolate and not tobacco. “Seeings as how you ruined my jersey, think maybe you could spare one o’ those?”
Nick rolled his eyes as he tossed the box over to his friend, sighing dramatically as he quipped, “I fucking knew I should have made you ride with Tim.”
“But I can’t smoke in Tim’s car.”
“I know.”
[Interstate 80/Just Outside of Morris, IL/Sep. 24th/1855 hrs.]
Brent Black had only been a Grundy County Sheriff for two years and already he’d seen more than his share of messy car accidents along this stretch of interstate and, as he pulled his cruiser onto the rain-slicked shoulder of I80, he could tell that this one was not going to end up on the bottom of that particular list. From his vantage on the opposite side of the highway, he could count two ambulances, three fire engines, the local black-and-white--the first responder--and the vehicle involved. The firefighters were gathered around the vehicle while one set of EMTs hovered around and waited to get to the victim and the other set cleaned up what had to be a second victim; generally, it was Sheriff Black’s experience that when a single car was involved in an accident there was usually something to clean off the road, but it was usually a deer or similar animal and a body bag wasn’t involved.
“Well, fuck,” he sighed, grabbing at his raincoat beside him in the passenger’s seat. “There goes Meatloaf Night.”
He would have to call Bonnie and let her know he was going to miss dinner tonight. But, since the officer who belonged to the black-and-white had seen him and was making his way to him from across the highway, it would have to wait until he’d gotten the initial report. Black swung the door open, shifted the raincoat so that it was ready, and stepped out of the squad car and into his coat in one practiced motion. It didn’t seem to matter, though, as the seemingly fist-sized drops were falling so hard he was soaked before he even made it to a standing position. His annoyance at missing Meatloaf Night skyrocketed into full-blown anger in the time it took the police officer to reach him.
“Sheriff Bla--”
“Johnson,” he barked, half yelling to be heard over the rain and half because he was well and truly wet. “I know full-well that you are not about to stand here and give me your report before you get a traffic vest on and toss some flares down to keep the rest of us from winding up like the driver of that car!”
“Sir! I called for some traffic units, sir!”
“Are they here yet?” Brent took an exaggerated look around; there wasn’t much in the way of traffic right now but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be and it was stupid to stand here in this rain without at least one unit directing passerby around the accident. “The rain’s comin’ down in buckets, so I guess their lights could be washed out in all this shit!”
Even in the rain, Brent could see the twisted look of distaste on Johnson’s face. It was all he could do to keep from smiling when the older man turned and headed back toward his own squad car. Four years ago, Brent Black had tried out for the Morris Police Department and had been washed out. Two years later, his father--a Grundy County Sheriff for Brent’s entire life--retired from the department and pulled some strings to get him as the man to fill his spot. Brent had always played at wanting to get onto a police force without his father’s help but, what the fuck, he deserved a seat either way, right?
Officer Johnson was pulling into position with his car as Brent approached the first EMT; one of the pair on clean-up duty. As Brent approached, the male of the pair was stuffing what looked like a mangled arm into the black plastic bag and, for just a second, Brent thought the arm looked like something had torn a chunk out of it. He was suddenly glad for the rain; soaked to the bone as he was, a good hard rain beat down the smells that normally came with such things.
“Not a whole lot to tell here, Sheriff,” the EMT female of the two said, standing and lifting one end of the bag, the contents shifting in a manner that suggested the body within was not in one piece. Maybe meatloaf wasn’t such a good idea after all.
“Why don’t you tell me what there is,” he said, trying to cover his sudden discomfort with bravado.
The male EMT wasn’t fooled for a second but didn’t stop his partner from telling what they knew. “Well, from what we can put together,” apparently she wasn’t fooled either, “it looks as if this guy ran out into the highway and that guy,” she nodded toward the crashed car, “swerved to avoid him.”
“Looks to me as if he failed,” Brent smiled, trying now to back peddle with a little charm.
“Uh, yeah,” said the male EMT. “The driver appears to have clipped the victim as he swerved to avoid him. We’re not exactly sure how, yet, but the victim was cut in half.”
That would explain the odd weight displacement in the body bag. Brent’s stomach dropped again. “Uh, that seems unlikely given that the driver’s crash was less than a hundred feet away from the victim. If he’d hit him with enough force to split the guy in two, the pieces would have been thrown further. And, for that matter, I’m guessing the speed needed to do it would have left a bigger mess for you to mop up.”
The female tossed him a disgusted look at the implication that they were nothing but glorified janitors. The male simply shrugged. “Your guess is as good as ours, sir. The only thing I can tell you for sure is that, aside from the massive head wound and, well, the dismemberment, most of this body’s condition looks to be due to damage sustained well before the accident.”
Not a single bit of what the man said made any sense to Brent. However, he wasn’t going to let either of them know it. “Okay,” he said, waving them toward their ambulance. “I’m sure the county coroner would be very interested in everything you just told me. For now, I’m going to take a look-see at what’s going on with the victim we can save.”
He headed toward the gathering of firefighters crowded around the car, leaving the EMTs to do their jobs. He paused for half a heartbeat as he swore he heard the female call him an asshole, but he couldn’t prove it wasn’t his imagination and the rain and it would solve nothing to call her out on it right now anyway. Trying to prove his manhood to an EMT in the middle of an accident scene would be a surefire way to land him an unshakable reputation around town. Better he just try and buy her a beer next time there was an Emergency and Protection Workers of Grundy County social event.
Besides, he thought, Bonnie’s twice as hot as that bitch. What difference does her stupid opinion make anyway?
Brent sloshed his way to the crash site and got his first real look at the damage. The driver--indiscernible behind the shattered glass and emergency crew trying to get to him/her--was the now not-so-proud owner of what had once been a candy pink Hummer H2. The hideously painted luxury SUV had gone off the road with enough speed to buckle the front end when it had slammed into one of the big luminescent green and white road signs--this one indicating that they were officially “2 Miles to Morris”--and brought the left side of the sign down onto the roof, smashing in the sunroof and showering the driver with shards of tinted glass. Given that the crew was working with diligence and controlled excitement, it was safe to assume that the driver’s airbag had gone off and/or she’d been wearing her seatbelt and that she was showing signs of life.
Well, at least I’ll have something more than D.O.A. to put next to the victims’ names on the report, Brent thought as he reached up to get the attention of the nearest firefighter.
“Hey,” he said, tapping on the shoulder of a thirty-something firefighter. “What’ve we got?”
The man he was speaking to looked every bit the part of a life-long fireman, even in the rain. From his perpetual Five O’clock Shadow hugging the bushy soot-stained mustache and framing his gaunt jaw-line and sharp, bright blue eyes. His neon yellow-and-red helmet hung cock-eyed on his head and made the rest of his gear--resting comfortably on a stocky frame--seem one hundred percent fitting ensemble. There was a look of mild annoyance as he spun to see who was interrupting the rescue effort; of which he was playing no real role in.
“What’ve we got,” he blurted back as if the question itself should have been self-answering.
“What we’ve got, Sheriff, is a one-car accident which has resulted, thus far, in one fatality and, as you can see,” he motioned dramatically toward the ugly Hummer, “my crew and I are workin’ real hard-like to make sure it stays at one fatality.”
That was it. He was wet, irritated and was pretty sure he’d already taken shit from the female EMT. Sheriff Brent Black was not going to be belittled by some redneck smoke-chugger. He reached up and tapped the man’s shoulder again, this time only once, but with much more force.
“What’s your name?”
The man spun around again. This time completely, squaring off with Brent, shoulder for shoulder. His answer was nearly drowned out by the pounding of the rain and the rise-and-fall grinding of the diamond-toothed wheel saw Brent had seen used by rescue teams on more than one of these crashes. “Mark Snyder,” he blurted. “Why’s it you wanna know?”
Brent nearly smiled as he replied. “Just in case this victim dies,” he said, pulling out his notebook and pen and attempting to jot the name down before the rain destroyed the paper. “That way, I’ll be able to put in my report the names of those who actually tried to save her and those who just stood around watching.”
Even in the rain, Brent could see the man’s blue eyes ice over as the remark hit home. His big gloved hands balled into a fist and, for a split second, Brent thought maliciously that he would have an assault charge to go with the accident report. However, before Mr. Snyder could even draw back to prepare for the swing that would end his career as a firefighter, a terrible wrenching sound preceded the sudden silencing of the saw.
“We’re in!” Behind Mark, Brent could see the five or six firemen gathered around the vehicle surge forward in an effort to get to the victim. It was surreal how that many men could move together so smoothly, Brent thought.
Then, suddenly, surreal became the theme of the world.
The man who had been operating the saw passed it off to another who instantly moved in to take it. It absently occurred to Brent that this was the same man who’d called out the claim to getting in. As the saw was passed off, he reached forward and shoved the driver’s side door out of the way and reached into the vehicle to aid the driver. From his point of view behind all the firefighters, Brent could see that the driver was slick with both rain and her own blood and squirming against her seatbelt in shock as her rescuer reached in to help her.
“Ma’am,” said the younger fireman as he struggled past her, “I’m gonna need to get around you to undo your belt and get you--”
His words were literally cut off as the driver lunged forward and sank her teeth into the man’s exposed neck. Acting on instinct, the man jerked back out of the Hummer and actually helped the driver tear a massive piece of his neck away. The pounding of the rain was suddenly overpowered by the agonized scream of the young man as he threw himself back, grabbing at the fountain of blood opened in the space below his right ear. As he hit the mud-covered ground, the scene erupted into shouts of shock and instinctual action.
“YEEEAAAARRGH!”
“What the fuck!?”
“Holy shit, she bit him! The bitch bit Mike!”
“Get out of the way, man! We need to get the bleeding stopped!“ The EMTs hovering on the outside of the scene started shoving their way forward; this one a male and female team as well. What’s that all about, anyway, Brent thought oddly as his brain worked desperately to process what was happening in front of him.
[Interstate 80/Just Outside of Morris, IL/Sep. 24th/1919 hrs.]
“Dude, if you give even one more syllable to the defecation of anything even remotely related to any of the James Bond movies--with the exception of the blasphemous Timothy Dalton Run--it is quite possible that I will pull this car over and beat you to death with your own Mountain Dew bottle.”
Nolan, annoyingly crammed into the backseat of Tim’s Focus--rather spacious for the interior of a compact car, but a compact car nonetheless--rolled his eyes at the back of Tim’s head. He knew the man well enough to know for a fact that the threat was nothing shy of bravado thinly wrapped in off-kilter humor, but even Nolan was reaching the last of his tolerance for the "Themes of Bond" CD that had been looping through its rather short number of tracks for the last two hours.
Besides, Matt had a valid point.
“Don’t get me wrong, Tim,” Matt pushed to argue said point. “I dig the Bond movies, man. Especially the more recent ones. But I gotta be honest, bud, this music’s getting a little old. Just change the damn CD and I won’t be forced to kick your ass when we do stop.”
Knowing both men as well as he did and having his girlfriend, Cassie, crammed between himself and Matt and, thereby, in the line of fire for any objects--specifically the Mountain Dew bottle Tim had mentioned, which now doubled as Matt’s spittoon--Nolan decided to take action before anything was made suddenly airborne. Shifting his weight to roll his knees purposefully across the back of Tim’s seat, Nolan cleared his throat.
“I’m going to have to take Matt’s side on this, Tim,” he said, catching a glimpse of himself in the rearview--damn if he and Cassie didn’t make a fine pair--before locking eyes with Tim through his reflected glasses. “I mean, let’s be honest, man. You have to be obsessed with Bond to truly appreciate this music. With the exception of, maybe, Live and Let Die by Wings, this music is altogether hard to listen to.”
Matt couldn’t help himself, leaning his spike-haired head forward to fully emphasize his victory. “And we’ve been listening to it for two hours!”
Tim let out an exasperated sigh of defeat; it was a rare occasion for Tim to not bend under Nolan’s will. He reached forward and ejected the CD, pulling a new one from the center console behind the gearshift and holding it up for their approval. “Does anyone have a problem with Bon Jovi?”
“I think it makes a subtle commentary about your sexual orientation,” Nolan laughed. “But it’s better than another play-through of Tom Jones singing Thunderball.”
Again, Tim sighed, slipping the new CD into the discslot on his dash and then reaching over and grabbing at the passenger’s hand; the passenger, of course, being Amy, his fiance. “They just don’t appreciate my taste, babe.”
Amy was one of the thinnest women Nolan had ever seen outside one of those commercials with Sally Struthers and was very rarely outspoken without the assistance of a few Millers; especially against Tim. However, occasionally, when the situation was safely in her favor, she would chime in with a differing opinion. “Well,” she said quietly, looking over her glasses at Tim with eyes that reminded Nolan of a doe, “it was getting kinda old.”
Tim pulled his hand away in mock disgust, though Nolan suspected the act came naturally, and blew out an exasperated sigh. “The whole damn world’s against me.” His eyes locked onto Cassie and his best Used Car Salesman smile pulled at his goatee. “Help me out here, Cass.”
“Uh,” Cassie said, her body pressing against Nolan a little more. “I only really liked the last movie, Tim. And I really can’t even remember the song in the beginning of that one.”
“The whole fuckin’ world,” Tim said. Then, after a second, muttered under his breath, “You Know My Name by Chris Cornell.”
Nolan wasn’t sure if it was meant to be heard or if it was just reflex on Tim’s part, but, either way, Matt leapt at it. “Are you fuckin’ serious?! Dude, you are sick. Seek help.”
“What? I can’t help that I’m a Bond fan.”
“Uh, fan, yeah. Sure.”
“Okay, okay. Anyway, you guys wanna stop and grab somethin’ to eat before I drop everyone off at Ray’s?"
Nolan’s stomach had actually been gurgling at him since they’d gotten off of I55 and had thought about asking to stop when they’d passed Minooka--the neighbor-town about ten minutes behind them--but had decided against the thought of more greasy food after the day’s lunch and snack-riddled diet. However, the thought of a group dinner was fairly appealing. He looked at Cassie who, knowing what he was silently asking, nodded approval.
“Well, I’m not sure about fast food,” Nolan said, finally, but if you want to call back to Nick and see if they want to stop at Chili’s or something, we’re down.”
Tim looked through the rearview at Matt. “What about you, dickhead?”
Matt said something witty, Nolan was sure, but he hadn’t been listening. His attention had drifted through the rain-slick windshield and up the highway a ways toward an all-too-familiar red-and-blue flashing that anyone their age should recognize. His curiosity was pushing the standard, “hey, what’s that” up to his mouth when something caught the words in his throat. As they sped toward the lights, which he could now see were taking up the entire road, and Tim started to break, the rhythmic red-and-blue-and-red-and-blue was broken up by another flashing; this one irregular and an orange-white in color. For reasons he couldn’t fathom at the time, Nolan’s heart suddenly leapt into overdrive.
By now, with the help of Amy, Tim had noticed the flashing lights and was slowing down. “Hey,” he said, apparently able to get out the words Nolan had inadvertently swallowed. “What the hell is that?”
“An accident, maybe,” Amy asked, leaning forward in her seat to try and see through the rain.
“Don’t be stupid,” Tim blurted. “If it was just an accident, what’s with the other flashes?”
Amy spun a hurt look toward Tim. “I don’t think it was a stupid ide--”
Her words were cut neatly off by a strange chnk-thukt which was followed by a few heartbeats of stunned silence.
A silence that was devoured by chaos in the time it took Nolan to register Amy had even stopped talking. From where he was, he could only watch as the events of the next few seconds unfolded in a bizarre kind of slow motion he’d only ever experienced with the help of a tightly packed bowl. He wasn’t even sure he was actually seeing it until the reality of it was brought sharply back into focus by that first splash of hot syrup.
Amy’s words were cut off by that strange sound and she simply stared at Tim for what seemed like a handful of heartbeats. Then, just as he was starting to demand she finish her sentence, her doe-eyes went as wide as Nolan had ever seen human eyes open and her hands flew to her throat. Her efforts were too-little-too-late, however, as the hole she was attempting to cover--a hole that Nolan hadn’t even noticed was there until just now--geysered a thick crimson liquid that Nolan could only assume was blood. The syrup--blood, it had to be blood, right?--splattered outward in an indiscriminate fountain, splashing red and hot on Nolan’s face and the world suddenly reverted back into “Normal Play”.
Beside him, Cassie let loose with the full force of her lungs.
“Holy fucking shit!“ Matt, ever the collected participant, threw himself away from Amy’s Life Fountain, now pulsing its contents through bony fingers as Amy made a valiant effort to put a stop to the mess she was making. “What the fuck just happened?!”
Tim had given up on the world as a whole outside of his sloppy passenger the second the first drop had leapt from the hole that had magically appeared in her neck. He was now reaching for her with both hands and it occurred to Nolan seconds before the world went sideways that Tim’s lapse in judgment effectively left the five of them in a car with no driver.
And they were still moving.
Fast.
Even as the thought formed in his head, Nolan was thrown against the door on his side of the car, Cassie pressing against him in a way that was far from pleasant. The sound of Amy’s stomach-wrenching gurgling was momentarily drowned out by the screeching of tires on a wet road and then even that was topped off with what had to be the sound of metal and fiberglass against concrete. Then, with a strange sort of feeling that resembled being submerged in a pool--wow, really?--the world went sideways and everything was suspended there for the faintest of moments.
Then pain.
Then nothing.
