Doomed (10 page)

Behind us, Emily starts to sob, and I realize the reality of our situation has finally hit her, too. “It’s going to be okay, Em,” I tell her, though I’m afraid I’m lying. Right now, I can’t imagine how anything is ever going to be okay again.

Theo releases my seat belt right then, and I fall, not nearly as hard as he did, though, as he shifts so that he can catch me. His gallantry costs him. I can tell from his hard exhale, the groan he can’t quite bury.

“Sorry.”

He shakes his head, lets go of me slowly.

Behind me, Eli has released his seat belt as well and is trying to help Emily out of hers. “I can’t,” she wails. “It hurts.”

“I know it does.” He speaks to her soothingly. “But we’ve got to get you outside, so that we can see what’s wrong.”

I twist to face her, peer around the side of the seat to get a better look at her. Then I almost wish I hadn’t, as she’s a mess. She’s even bloodier than Theo, her face already bruised and swelling from where she hit something, hard.

“We need to get her out of here,” I tell Theo urgently.

“I’m trying,” he answers, and then he’s pulling back his at-least-size-fifteen foot, slamming it into the windshield as hard as he can manage in his awkward position.

The windshield cracks some more but doesn’t shatter, so
I kick with him the second time. The whole car shudders, slides, under the combined power of our blows, but the windshield still doesn’t give. A random thought goes through my head—that this looks so much easier in the movies than it is in real life—and then it’s gone, as Theo’s foot connects squarely with the most broken part of the windshield.

A huge
crack
echoes through the car, and then more small pieces of glass are flying everywhere. Theo struggles a bit, pulls off his shirt, and wraps it around his arm. He’s got a gash on his left side, and it’s already starting to bruise around it. I know it must hurt to move, but he doesn’t even flinch as he knocks out more glass—enough that we can climb through the windshield and onto the ground.

We land in a pile of tangled limbs. “This way,” I say, crawling out from under the hood on the left side of the car and scrambling to my feet. Without looking, I know Theo is following me.

“We’re coming, Em. Just hold on a little longer!”

“I can’t,” she sobs, and I hear Eli talking to her quietly. He doesn’t make a mad scramble for the front, like I thought he would—like I very well might have in the same circumstances—and I’m grateful he’s there with her. Because we have a bigger problem now.

Theo sways a little, and I reach a hand out to brace him. But when I do, I realize it’s not him that’s unsteady, it’s me. I must have hit my head harder than I thought.

Something’s crawling on my face and I lift my hand to swat it, but my fingers come away red and sticky. It’s not a bug, I realize with a detached kind of horror. It’s blood slowly leaking down my face. I wipe at it a little with my
arm, but there’s no time to do anything else, because once he realizes I can stand on my own, Theo starts walking around to the other side of the car.

“We need to get Emily out,” I tell him.

“Hold on a minute. We need to see—Shit, come here!”

There’s dismay in his voice, and it galvanizes me like nothing else could have. Adrenaline, already in heavy supply, surges through my bloodstream, and I race to where he’s standing as fast as my wobbly legs will carry me.

And that’s when I realize what he already has. The car we’ve slammed up against isn’t a parked car as I originally thought. Its engine is running, and there are people in it: a child screaming in the backseat and a man behind the wheel.

I stumble around to the passenger side, yank open the front door. “Are you okay, sir?”

He looks at me, shell-shocked, and I realize I can only see his left arm from the shoulder to right above the elbow. The rest of it must have been resting outside the open window when we hit, because it’s crushed between his car and the Range Rover.

“Oh. My. God. Oh my God. Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod!”

“Don’t freak out on me, Pandora!” Theo’s voice cracks like a whip.

It steadies me a little, has me glancing around wildly for help. But there aren’t many cars on the road right now, and the few that are out don’t stop.

Their behavior isn’t normal. This is a nice area of Austin, where people help each other all the time. So why aren’t they stopping? Why aren’t they
helping
?

I lift my arms, try to flag someone down, but Theo says, “Don’t waste your time. They’re too stressed out by everything that’s happening. They’re in survival mode. We’re going to have to do this ourselves.”

I’m horrified. Horrified by what he’s said, and even more horrified by the actions of the people around us. Across the street is the delivery truck that hit us, the driver passed out over his steering wheel. No one’s stopped to help him, either.

“Pandora!” Theo calls my name again and I snap to attention.

“We need to get the cars apart,” I say, opening the back door and crawling inside to unbuckle the screaming child. It’s a little boy, maybe four or five, with blond hair and blue eyes. He looks pale and frightened in the yellow glow of the streetlights, but he’s not hurt—at least, not that I can see. “Come on, sweetie. Let me get you out of here.” I reach for him.

“Daddy!” he cries.

“Go with her, Josh,” the father tells him, his voice weak and shocked. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“Daddy!”

“Go, Josh!”

“Come on, Josh,” I tell him. “Hold on to me and I’ll get you to the sidewalk. Then we can help your dad.”

He whimpers the whole time, but he scoots over a little, wraps his arms tightly around my neck. My already-sore body protests his weight, but I ignore the aches and pains and carry him away from the car to a spot about ten feet down the sidewalk.

“Can you wait for me here?”

“I want my daddy,” he wails at me around the thumb he’s started to suck.

“We’re going to get your daddy. I promise. But I need you to stay here so nothing else happens to you. Can you do that for me?”

He nods.

“Okay, good.” I start to pull away, but he’s hanging on to me with all his strength. “I have to go, Josh.”

He starts to cry again, and it’s the most pathetic, lonely sound I’ve ever heard. In a normal world, I’d be able to sit here, comforting him, while others helped his father. But we’re a long way from normal, and if I don’t work with Theo, no one will. “I’ll be back, baby, I promise. But I need to help your dad, okay?”

He lets go reluctantly, and I want nothing more than to hold him on my lap and rock him. But Theo is between the two cars, straining to move the Range Rover away from the red SUV so that he can free Josh’s dad.

It isn’t working, of course. Theo is huge and strong, but he can’t
actually
slide a car across the ground on his own. I run over, lend my strength to his, but that doesn’t work, either. I’m nowhere near strong enough to do it.

“We need Eli out of the car for this,” Theo says. “He can help.”

I rush back around to Eli’s side of the Range Rover with Theo on my heels, try to open the door. It’s jammed from the roll, just like Theo’s, but at least it’s moving. Theo and I wedge our shoulders against the car and yank. Metal scrapes against metal but I feel a little give. We pull harder, so hard that
there’s a sharp pain down my arms and between my shoulder blades.

A little more slide. A little more give.

Theo grunts and pulls harder, and suddenly the door is free. It flies open, sends me careening onto my butt. Eli’s out in seconds, and then he and Theo are rushing to the front of the other SUV. I reassure Emily that we’ll be right back and then hurry to join them.

By the time I get back to it, Eli and Theo have already taken hold of the front bumper. Under my amazed gaze, they each bend their legs and lift. The front wheels of the car come up, and then I’m rushing forward and we’re all pushing.

The car moves a few inches before they drop it again.

We do the same thing again and again—lift, push, drop—until there’s enough room for us to squeeze between the cars. But when we get to the driver’s side of the SUV, to Josh’s dad, I feel the blood drain from my face. His arm is crushed, nearly detached from his body, and now that the pressure of the car is gone, blood is gushing everywhere. He must have severed an artery.

Emily looks over and sees the man. She starts to scream and scream. I want to go to her, but Josh’s dad is more important now.

“Eli!” He doesn’t look like he’s in any better shape than my best friend, so I shove him out of the way, toward Emily. “Go see about getting Emily out of the car. Theo and I will take care of this.”

Then I spring into action, terrified that I’m going to do something wrong, but more terrified that this man is going
to die right here in front of me. I whip off my sparkly tank top, wrap it around what’s left of his arm, and try to apply enough pressure to stop the bleeding with one hand, even as I start to undo my belt buckle with the other.

“Josh,” he gasps.

“Josh is fine,” I tell him. “He’s sitting on the curb. What’s
your
name?” My fingers slip on the buckle, and I nearly scream in frustration.

“Anthony.”

“Everything will be okay, Anthony,” I tell him. “We’re going to get you some help.”

Theo steps in front of me, bats my fumbling fingers away. “Keep the pressure on,” he says as he whips my belt out of my jeans. He loops it around the top of Anthony’s biceps, then pulls harder and harder until the gushing blood slows to a trickle. Then he knots the belt so that the pressure will stay on.

I toss aside my saturated shirt, and with Theo on one side and me on the other, we help Anthony over to the curb. To his son. “Someone will stop soon,” I tell him, and again hope I’m not lying. “We’ll get you to a hospital.”

He nods, but he’s in bad shape, his face pale and sweaty and his entire body shaking. Still, he wraps his good arm around Josh and pulls him in close.

Unable to do any more for him right now, Theo and I run to the Range Rover, where Eli is back in the car, pounding on Emily’s door from the inside. In the crash, it caved inward, wrapping itself around the top of Emily’s leg. She’s completely wedged in.

Now the only question is, how are we going to get her out?

I look at Theo, but he looks as bewildered as I feel. We need the fire department. The Jaws of Life. Something. But there isn’t anything—just us.

“Eli.” Theo’s voice is calm, but his jaw is clenched so tightly that I have to listen closely to understand what he’s saying. He’s at the back of the SUV now, trying to open the tailgate, but it won’t budge, either. “I need you to crawl into the back. Your dad usually keeps a tool kit there. The red box. Remember?”

Eli starts moving before Theo even finishes his sentence. Emily whimpers as he leaves her. I crouch on the ground, next to her window. “We’re going to fix this. We’re going to get you out. I promise.”

“Found it!” Eli crows, and then a soft-sided red bag flies toward Theo, who is sitting on the ground, next to Eli’s open door. He catches it, pulls out a small hammer—the kind you use to break windshields. We glance wryly at each other. Too little, too late. There’s also a bigger hammer in the tool kit, a huge screwdriver, a long, heavy flashlight, and some Allen wrenches.

Theo pulls out the screwdriver and hammer, hands them to Eli, who’s made it out of the trunk again. “Can you wedge the screwdriver under the caved-in part of the door?”

“I’ll try.” Eli leans over Emily, and he must have jostled her because she cries out again.

“I’m sorry,” I hear him whisper to her.

“That’s okay. Just please get me out of here.”

“I will.” The metal screeches in protest as he pounds at the screwdriver with a hammer, but it moves a little.

Emily starts to cry. I tilt my head so that our eyes can
meet through the car window. “Just a little longer, Emily. I promise. Just a little more.”

She nods, puts a hand up to the glass.

I place my hand up so that it meets hers, with only the glass of the car window in between. Palm to palm. It’s the way we used to swear promises when we were little girls. We haven’t done it in years, but it feels right now, here in the middle of all this chaos. It’s a pledge, from both of us, not to give up.

Eli hits the screwdriver again, and Emily screams this time. I don’t know if that’s a good sign or a bad one, but I smile encouragingly at her. “Come on, Em. We’re almost there.”

Eli’s pounding away in earnest now, and the metal is twisting, shuddering. Emily looks terrified, but I hold her gaze with my own. Will her to be strong, to hold on, not to lose it. Not yet.

“Wiggle your leg a little,” Eli tells her, and she does. A smile crosses his lips briefly, and I know it’s good news. The door is moving. A little bit at a time, but it is moving.

I glance at Theo, who has run over to the truck that hit us and is trying to rouse the driver. He’s not having any luck, and suddenly I’m terrified the driver is dead. That he’s been dying this whole time and we didn’t even bother to check.

I don’t know how this happened. Our light was green, I know it was. I saw it. Did the delivery truck just run a solid red, then? Was he distracted by the radio, by what’s going on in the world? I glance up at the traffic lights to make sure I didn’t imagine it, to make sure they really are working.

They are. The lights are green. So how … And that’s when it hits me. From my vantage point I can see a cross
section of lights, one that runs north-south and one that runs east-west. Both sides are green.
Both sides are green!

The worm must have somehow affected the control system that runs the traffic lights, and turned them green in all directions. No wonder we crashed.

And we can’t be the only ones. If this has happened at every intersection in the city, in the state, in the country, how many people have gotten hurt? And how many have died?

Horror is a live thing deep within me, twisting and turning, raging and seething, until I can barely think. This can’t be happening. It just can’t be happening.