And then, under the howling of the wind, there was the sound of running feet. And a guy in some kind of white lab suit was crouching down beside the wreck. He had a gauze mask on, and rubber gloves. How could medics have gotten there this fast, he wondered?
Peering in at Charlie, he quickly assessed the situation, and said, “Can you breathe?”
“Barely,” Charlie replied. “The seat belt.”
And then the guy’s hands were working the buckle, prying it loose. When it popped open, Charlie’s belly fell and he felt a rush of cold air entering his lungs. Then his coat was being opened, and the medic took a long look without saying anything. Two of the spokes from the gearshift were sticking out of him like bent twigs.
“Hang in there,” he said evenly, “you’re gonna be okay.”
Christ, that’s exactly what they’d said to him after he’d hit those rocks running the Heron River Gorge.
Then he closed the coat again, and moved beyond Charlie’s narrow field of vision, to tend to Harley in back.
“Can you move your head and neck?”
Harley groaned again and swore, but the medic was slowly extricating him from the wreckage. “Don’t move anything you don’t have to,” the medic said. “Just let me do it.”
Through the empty space where his window had been, Charlie could see his brother’s mangled body being pulled from the van and onto the asphalt. Heavy snow was falling, mixing with a widening pool of something wet and viscous. For a second, Charlie thought, Could that be blood? But then he realized it wasn’t. It was gas.
Harley’s groaning was becoming more of a scream. And he was shouting something about Eddie again. “Goddamn it, Eddie, it wasn’t my fault!”
And he was struggling with the medic. It seemed like he thought the guy was Eddie.
“Calm down,” Charlie mumbled to his brother. Funny how his guts were growing colder by the second. “He’s not Eddie.”
“Fuck you,” Harley spat at the medic, his arms flailing under the blanket drenched in blood. And then, in a flash, one of his hands broke free, and it was holding the goddamned Glock semiautomatic.
“I told you to quit it!” Harley shouted. “I told you!”
The medic grabbed for his wrist, but not before a sudden spray of shots went wild into the snowy night sky.
The medic twisted the wrist, banging it on the road and trying to free the gun, but Harley managed to pull the trigger one more time. Charlie saw a blazing arc of light, a bright and beautiful orange parabola that nearly blinded him, as the bullets ripped into the overturned van and punched holes in the gas cans. That was when the whole world lifted off, painlessly and effortlessly, with an all-enveloping whomp, and Charlie was carried up into the air, as if by the Rapture itself … up out of the wreckage, out of his own maimed body, and into a darkness so deep, so dense, and so comforting that he could actually feel it …
Chapter 57
Nika froze, the radio handset dropping into her lap, as she watched the fireball unfurl and the ruined van shoot up into the air. A moment later, the impact of the blast reached the ambulance, shattering the splintered windshield and raining glass down onto the dashboard.
The boom sounded like a distant thunderclap, and the chassis of the ambulance shimmied.
“What was that?” a static-y voice asked over the radio. “Are you still there?”
Pieces of the van started crashing down on the asphalt, while others flew in flames over the side of the bridge.
“Please reply,” the operator insisted. “Are you okay?”
Nika was lifting the mike when something slammed down on the hood of the ambulance, then ricocheted through the gaping hole and onto the seat beside her. She looked down at it—half a leg, in blue jeans, soaked in blood, the foot still attached. And then, in shock, she bolted out of the car.
She was running for the bridge, right past the patrolman who was standing outside his damaged car, mike in hand and the cord stretched to its limit. She heard him saying, “Emergency! Now!” She just kept telling herself, Frank wasn’t wearing blue jeans. He was wearing the white lab suit. He could still be all right.
When she got to the ramp of the bridge, she could see bits of burning wreckage still wafting to the bottom of the gorge. The wind reeked of gasoline and carnage. She ran on, toward the cloud of black smoke and destruction, but as she got closer she had to slow down and pick her way, while squinting her eyes against the acrid fumes, through the smoldering debris.
“Frank? Can you hear me? Frank?”
The storm was whipping the smoke and ashes into an evil, dusky brew. As she stopped for a second to clear the tears from her eyes, the cop ran past her, sweeping his flashlight back and forth. Its bright beam picked out hunks of torn metal and wood and fabric … and chunks of scorched body parts.
Please, God, she thought. Please, God, let me find him.
“Frank!” she called again, the dirty air searing her lungs as she plowed ahead. She remembered the face mask hanging around her neck, and quickly fixed it over her mouth and nose. She was never so glad to have it.