Page 6

6

The sign said the road was closed, but he could easily drive around the gate and take the degraded road, for a while, anyway. He peered ahead. In the near distance, he saw downed trees and tree limbs. But that seemed like the only feasible option: driving through the woods.

The other option, turning around and heading back to 302, would be suicide.

He pulled the truck around the gate, off road and into the forest’s edge, driving over shrubs and tall grasses, until he reached the beginning of the forest: a row of trees that grew close together. Too close. There was no getting through. Directly in front of him was a cluster of small boulders blocking what seemed to be the only way to get the truck into the forest and hidden out of sight of his pursuers. The thick woods would help him conceal the vehicle, but he had to get through this perimeter.

He put the Ford into 4 Low and rolled slowly toward the smallest of the boulders. He tried crawling the truck over the boulder, but there wasn’t enough traction to get him over it.

He backed down, and then put the truck back into Drive, using momentum to help carry him up and over the top of the boulder. He heard something rip off the right side of the Ford with a metallic crunch, but he kept going. He’d reached the top of the boulder and found that his tires were spinning but the truck wasn’t moving forward.

Gently, slowly, he hit the gas pedal. He started to move, and soon his tires gripped and took him over the boulder.

He could see Sawyer River Road from here, which meant his truck could be seen from the road. Straight ahead of him was more stone, bordering the rocky bed of a dried-up stream. These boulders were smaller, and the truck clambered over them and into the streambed. The clamber destroyed the Ford’s undercarriage, but at least the truck wouldn’t be seen from the road now.

Then he heard a popping sound, and the truck engine shuddered.

Soon he was out of the streambed, but the steering wheel felt loose suddenly. It shook and vibrated. Also, the brake light on his dashboard was now illuminated. Something had happened to the brakes. Maybe a rock had snagged one of the brake lines. Maybe the truck was leaking brake fluid.

But at least now he was able to drive straight through the woods. Scraping between trees, threading the needle, he was soon deep enough into the forest that he wouldn’t be spotted.

He noticed suddenly that he was going steeply downhill. He braked to slow the descent, the steering wheel continuing to wobble, but the brake light hadn’t lied: something was wrong with his brakes.

The vehicle wasn’t stopping. It was accelerating.

And as he jammed on the brake pedal, he realized too late that only the back brakes were dead. His front brakes were still working.

The truck lurched, and he was thrown forward against the dashboard.

He felt like he was tumbling in a giant washing machine. For a split second, he floated in midair. The truck tumbled end over end, back end over front. It was terrifying. He heard the crunch of metal and the shattering of glass, and he was thrown forward again. The world spun. He was upside down, right side up. Objects from the front seat and the back seat went flying; something hard hit him in the chest, and he was nearly deafened by the sounds of the crash.

For an instant, he must have been knocked unconscious. When he came to, he found himself hanging upside down by his seat belt. But he was alive, and he didn’t think he’d broken anything. His heart pounded in his chest, and his ears rang.

It took him a minute to orient himself, to figure out where the ground was. He yanked the seat belt open and dropped down onto the Ford’s ceiling. Now it felt like he’d hurt something. He pulled the handle on the nearest door. It wouldn’t open. He yanked again, kicked the door with his foot, but it didn’t move. He tried the passenger-side door, but that one wouldn’t open, either. He smelled gasoline. The engine was still on, he fumbled for his keys in his right front pocket and remembered he didn’t need a key to shut off the engine. He pressed the ignition button.

But the engine wouldn’t shut off. He felt a rising panic, then realized the truck was still in Drive. Finally, he managed to pull the gear shift handle toward himself and get the vehicle into Park.

The Ford’s engine shuddered and stopped. But he was stuck inside the cab, the odor of gasoline growing stronger. He had to get the hell out of there.

He kicked at the smashed front windshield again and again, leaving a jagged opening, but the shattered safety glass was held in place by a plastic film of some kind. With his bootheel, he stomped on the windshield again, tearing a larger opening. He crawled through it and tumbled to the ground.

Steam rose from the hood of the upside-down truck, then black smoke and the acrid, burnt-plastic stench of something electric.

He sprang away, running through the dense trees. Then he remembered that he had left the go-bag in the backseat of the truck’s cab.

He returned to the truck, crawled in through the hole in the shattered windshield and into the cab, his feet landing on the ceiling. The smoke was now pluming from the engine, and he saw flames licking upward around the Ford’s upside-down hood.

Get the hell out of here.

It’s about to explode.

There it was, the black duffel bag. It lay on the ceiling’s white vinyl headliner. “Come on!” he shouted to himself. Grabbing the duffel, he propelled himself back through the opening in the windshield and crawled out onto the beaten earth of the forest floor.

Was there anything else in there he needed? Nothing important. He backed away from the wreck, which was still giving off dark thick smoke, the fire under the hood growing stronger. He choked on the fumes from the burning gasoline, stronger now. His head throbbed.

He turned and ran away from the flaming carcass. When he was only a few hundred feet away, the Ford finally exploded with an immense orange flash, an ear-splitting blast, a torrent of black smoke, a great ball of fire.