Luckily, the window was shattered, so I reached in and, checking her pulse, I was gladdened to feel something. I looked at the configuration of her body’s alignment to make sure her neck and spine were intact—it was a gamble to move her, but I was betting it was only a question of time before the whole conglomeration of heating oil, gas, and who knew what was going to come pouring out of the damaged vehicles and we’d be faced with an entirely new catastrophe.
I tried the door, but it didn’t budge, the handle coming off in my hand. I growled, slipped the stag-handled knife out of my pocket, flicked it open with my thumb, and, reaching in, sliced through the nylon safety belt. Getting a strong grip on her jacket, I pulled her up through the window and sat her briefly on the sill, where she slumped against me. She was still out cold, with the side of her face scratched up from the implosion of glass and more than a little blood streaming from one nostril—we would be more than lucky if that was the extent of her injuries.
Pulling her over my shoulder, I began the trip down and could see the easiest way would be across the hood of the Dodge rather than the route I had taken to get to her.
I could hear that Henry was spraying the fire extinguisher over the engine area of the Rio. “Is he alive?”
“Yes, is she?”
“Believe it or not, yep—concussed for certain and torn up a bit. I can see Sam and Kimama up ahead, so I’m going to need your help in getting the whole bunch out of here before that tanker decides to rupture and we have a more volatile situation on our hands.”
“As soon as I find a way through, I will be there.”
I slid off the hood and transferred her from my shoulder to my arms, found solid ground, and stumbled forward, attempting not to lose my precious cargo.
In the combined light of the one headlight from the tanker and the revolving emergency lights on the lopsided Dodge, I carried Rosey to the Toyopet Crown, which was sitting quietly, the motor having of course quit. The front fender of the import was jammed into the rock wall to my right, but other than that it appeared that Sam’s keepsake was salvageable.
I gently laid Rosey on the trunk and went around to the driver’s-side door, which proved impossible to open, the crumpled front fenders looking to have blocked it. “Well, hell.”
Reaching in the smashed window, I felt the large man’s pulse and was satisfied he was simply unconscious. Crossing behind, I took another quick look at Rosey, but she hadn’t moved, so I checked on Kimama, also down for the count but still breathing—at least they’d listened and had on their seat belts.
Hearing a noise behind me, I turned to see Henry attempting to get through the tangled mass of twisted metal backlit by the Diamond Rio’s Cyclops headlight. “Hurry it up—we have to get this thing away from the wall so we can push it out of here.”
I was listening to the Bear’s approaching footsteps as I went back around to get a better vantage point in order to push the tiny car when I got a funny feeling and turned back.
Seeing the apprehension on my face, he asked, “Expecting someone else?”
“Never. Where’s the fire extinguisher?”
“Out.”
“Great.” Approaching the driver’s side, I reached in past Sam’s prodigious belly, shoved the Toyota into neutral, and tried to straighten the steering wheel. I had a little trouble because the fenders were obviously pressing against the inner surface of the tire.
“Why don’t we get them out of the car?”
I finally yanked the wheel free enough to straighten the alignment. “Because there are the two of them in there and Rosey on the trunk and Sam weighs over three hundred pounds.”
“Good point.”
“Push.”
He did as I asked, and the mighty Toyopet Crown bounced off the curb and rolled to the middle of the road in a hesitant manner, squealing as the tires rubbed against the wheel wells, grinding it to an uneven halt. “This may prove to be more of a chore than at first thought.”
“Yep.” Coming around to straighten the wheels again, I joined him, hovering over Rosey, as we began pushing with only minimal results.
“Are you sure it is in neutral?”
“Yep.”
“And the emergency brake is off?”
“Yep.”
“Is Sam’s foot on the brake?”
“That I didn’t check.” I looked and came back, reporting in. “Negative.”
“I do not suppose there is any sense in attempting to start it.”
I took a moment to give him my most incredulous look and then continued pushing. We both bore down to the effort when I noticed we were heading in a slight turn toward the other wall. “Keep pushing, and I’ll try and straighten the wheel again.”
He gave me the look back as he now strained double time.
I reached in and aligned it just as a strange noise came from behind me. I stood up, hearing the clatter of metal on metal, then something sizzling and a long hiss along with the unmistakable sound of liquid hitting the pavement like a cow having a highly combustible piss on a flat rock.
Turning, I stooped and saw a dark reddish liquid filling the gutters on each side of the road and flooding the entire surface as it poured underneath the crashed vehicles and began pooling toward us like arterial blood.
The smell was unmistakable.