Chat - Archer Mayor [3]
Leo was surprised. “Are you kidding about that?” he asked. “Have you really noticed . . . ?”
He suddenly stopped speaking, his hands tightening on the wheel. “Damn . . .”
Alarmed, she looked first at him and then out the window, expecting a deer to be standing in the middle of the road—an almost common experience. Instead, the road was beginning to shift away as they slid out of control on a slight curve.
“Shit,” Leo said through clenched teeth. “Hang on . . .”
She was ahead of him there, clutching both the dashboard and the uppermost handle beside her. “Leo,” she said, almost a whisper.
Ahead of them the landscape changed from the comfort of the black macadam to a blizzard of white snow as they plowed through an embankment that exploded across their windshield. They could hear beneath them the tearing of metal against the remnants of a hidden guardrail, along with their own seemingly disconnected shouting. They were first jarred by several abrupt encounters with buried stumps or boulders, and then became weightless as the car began to barrel roll, causing their heads to be surrounded by flying maps, CDs, loose change, and an assortment of now lethal tools that Leo normally kept in the back.
In the sudden darkness following the loss of both headlights, Leo’s mother focused solely on the muffled sounds around her, coming from all sides as they continued farther and farther downhill. She began thinking about the cold water that might be waiting at the bottom—if that was the way they were headed.
And then it was over. In one explosive flash, she felt a shocking blow to the side of her head, the sense of some metallic object, perhaps a lug wrench, passing before her face, and then nothing.
Leo opened his eyes briefly before shutting them again with a wince, brought up short by a burst of pain in his left eye. He paused a moment, trying to sort through the throbbing at his temples, to remember what had happened.
“Mom?” he asked suddenly, attempting to see again, ignoring the pain. He shifted in his seat, looking in her direction. The car was black and utterly silent. Carefully, he reached out and touched her, the tips of his cold fingers slipping on something wet on the side of her head.
“Oh, Jesus,” he murmured. He made to turn toward her and shouted in agony, the entire left side of his chest suddenly spiking as if electrified. He sat back, panting, and coughed, feeling as if his lungs were full of phlegm. He gingerly pushed through his overcoat at his ribs with his good hand and winced.
“God damn it,” he said, mostly to hear his own voice. “Mom?” he repeated then, reaching out a second time, but lower, groping for her shoulder, which appeared to be fine—maybe merely because it was there at all.
But she wasn’t moving.
It was cold, and the other thing his fingers had felt was snow. Somewhere there was a broken window. He had no idea how long they’d been here, had no clue if they were visible from the road. He didn’t even know if they were both alive.
He followed her shoulder up to her neck and burrowed his index finger between her collar and the scarf she was wearing, probing for a pulse. He was a butcher, he thought ruefully. At least he knew his way around a body.
His fingers were too cold. If her heart was beating, he couldn’t feel it, but he doubted he could have anyway. At least that was the comfort he gave himself.
“Okay, okay,” he said softly. “Probably just as well. No pain, no struggling. She’s got her coat on. Could be worse.”
Still using his right hand, he touched the window next to him. Intact. He didn’t feel as though they were on their side, and he couldn’t hear running water, which meant they hadn’t reached the river. So far, so good.
He felt down to the door latch and pulled