Day of the Dead - J. A. Jance [140]
Twenty-Nine
Brian Fellows had heard the expression “watching a train wreck,” but he had never understood the implications until that very moment. It seemed to happen in slow motion. Not wanting to alert Larry Stryker, he had shut off the siren as they entered Oracle Junction. Once they were on Highway 79, he saw the approaching gravel truck. He saw the little yellow Honda. When the Honda’s brake lights came on, Brian assumed that the vehicle was preparing to turn, but when the turn signal didn’t come on, there was no way to tell which way the Honda was going. Then, to Brian’s gut-wrenching dismay, the Honda turned directly into the path of the truck. And through it all, there was nothing—not one thing—Brian could do to stop it.
“My God!” PeeWee shouted. “Look out!”
And Brian was looking. He was searching desperately for some safe haven, somewhere to pull off the road and get the hell out of the way. He saw the speeding tractor slam into the side of the Honda. With one tire bouncing high in the air above them all, the out-of-control Honda spun through the air while the truck careened straight toward them. Trying to dodge out of the way, Brian wrenched the wheel to the right. He managed to miss the bouncing tire and the Honda, but the maneuver sent the Crown Victoria pitching off the steep shoulder and directly into a concrete-bridge abutment, where it slammed to a stop.
For the briefest moment, Brian’s vision was obscured by what turned out to be his deployed air bag. When he could see again, the fully loaded gravel truck and trailer were skidding on their sides along both lanes of roadway, spilling mounds of gravel and raising clouds of dust.
Brian turned to PeeWee. “Are you okay?”
PeeWee nodded, rubbing his collarbone. “I think so,” he said. “You?”
Brian tried the door. The frame was evidently jammed. His door wouldn’t open. Neither would PeeWee’s. They ended up having to shove their way through the shattered safety glass in the windshield.
“You go,” PeeWee said when the hole was wide enough for Brian to slip through. “I’ll radio for help.”
When Brian hit the ground, the Mack truck tractor lay on its side, wheels still spinning, with its signature bulldog hood ornament buried in the broken remains of a crushed mesquite tree. As Brian watched, the shaken truck driver scrambled out through a window opening and crawled across the door. Gripping the running board, he slipped over the side and then dropped the last few feet to the ground.
As soon as the man landed, he took off at a dead run. At first, Brian had no idea where he was going. Only when he looked beyond where the driver was headed did Brian see the wreckage of the smashed yellow Honda. It lay at the bottom of a steep wash, leaning up against several strands of barbed-wire fence. The truck driver ran to the edge of the wash and scrambled down the side. By the time Brian reached him, he was pulling desperately on the driver’s-side door handle.
“We’ve got to help her,” the man was saying. “We’ve got to get her out of there.”
But that door wouldn’t budge, either. Peering through the window, Brian saw the still form of a woman. She was flopped over against the door with blood seeping from a deep cut on her head. When he pounded on the window beside her, she didn’t move.
Leaving Brian behind, the truck driver raced around to the far side of the vehicle, clambered over the fence, and shoved. To Brian’s surprise, the Honda wavered for a moment and then tipped back onto its three remaining tires. Brian had to step back to get out of the way. With what seemed superhuman strength, the truck driver