Mile 81, Page 4

  Instead of coming back, Johnny turned and bent to look inside. When he did, the door swung shut on his head. There was a terrible thudding noise. The stone on Carla's chest was suddenly gone. She drew in breath and screamed out her husband's name.

  "What's wrong with Daddy?" Rachel cried. Her voice was high and as thin as a reed. "What's wrong with Daddy?"

  "Daddy!" Blake yelled. He had been inventorying his newest Transformers and now looked around wildly to see where the daddy in question might be.

  Carla didn't think. Her husband's body was there, but his head was in the dirty station wagon. He was still alive, though; his arms and legs were flailing. She was out of the Expedition with no memory of opening the door. Her own body seemed to be acting on its own, her stunned brain just along for the ride.

  "Mommy, no!" Rachel screamed.

  "Mommy, NO!" Blake had no idea of what was going on, but he knew it was bad. He began to cry and struggle in his car seat's webwork of straps.

  Carla grabbed Johnny around the waist and pulled with the crazy superstrength of adrenaline. The door of the station wagon came partway open and blood ran over the footing in a little waterfall. For one awful moment she saw her husband's head, lying on the station wagon's muddy seat and cocked crazily to one side. Even though he was still trembling in her arms, she understood (in one of those lightning-flashes of clarity that can come even during a perfect storm of panic) that it was how hanging victims looked when they were cut down. Because their necks were broken. In that brief, searing moment--that shutterflash glimpse--she thought he looked stupid and surprised and ugly, all the essential Johnny out of him, and knew he was already dead, trembling or not. It was how a kid looked after hitting the rocks instead of the water when he dived. How a woman who had been impaled by her steering wheel looked after her car slammed into a bridge abutment. It was how you looked when disfiguring death came at you out of nowhere.

  The car door slammed viciously shut. Carla still had her arms wrapped around her husband's waist, and when she was yanked forward, she had another lightning-flash of clarity.

  It's the car, you have to stay away from the car!

  She let go of Johnny's midsection just a moment too late. A sheaf of her hair fell against the door and was sucked in. The top of her head smacked against the car before she could tear free. Suddenly the top of her head was burning as the thing ate into her scalp.

  Run! she tried to scream at her often troublesome but undeniably bright daughter. Run and take Blakie with you!

  But before she could even begin to articulate the thought, her mouth was gone.

  Only Rachel saw the station wagon slam shut on her daddy's head like a Venus flytrap on a bug, but both of them saw their mother somehow pulled through the muddy door as if it were a curtain. They saw one of her mocs come off, they got a flash of her pink toenails, and then she was gone. A moment later, the white car lost its shape and clenched itself like a fist. Through their mother's open window, they heard a crunching sound.

  "Wha' that?" Blakie screamed. His eyes were streaming tears and his lower lip was lathered with snot. "Wha' that, Rachie, wha' that, wha' that?"

  Their bones, Rachel thought. She was only six years old, and not allowed to go to PG-13 movies or watch them on TV (let alone R; her mother said R stood for Raunchy), but she knew that was the sound of their bones breaking.

  The car wasn't a car. It was some kind of monster.

  "Where mommy-n-daddy?" Blakie asked, turning his large eyes--now made even larger by his tears--on her. "Where mommy-n-daddy, Rachie?"

  He sounds like he's two again, Rachel thought, and for maybe the first time in her life, she felt something other than irritation (or, when extremely tried by his behavior, outright hate) for her baby brother. She didn't think this new feeling was love. She thought it was something even bigger. Her mom hadn't been able to say anything in the end, but if she'd had time, Rachel knew what it would have been: take care of Blakie.

  He was thrashing in his car seat. He knew how to undo the straps, but in his panic had forgotten how.

  Rachel opened her seat belt, slid out of her booster seat, and tried to do it for him. One of his flailing hands caught her cheek and administered a ringing slap. Under normal circumstances that would have earned him a hard punch on the shoulder (and a time-out in her room, where she would have sat staring at the wall in a boiling fugue of fury), but now she just grabbed his hand and held it down.

  "Stop it! Let me help you! I can get you out, but not if you do that!"

  He stopped thrashing, but kept on crying. "Where Daddy? Where Mommy? I want Mommy!"

  I want her too, asshole, Rachel thought, and undid the car seat straps. "We're going to get out now, and we're going to . . ."

  What? They were going to what? Go up to the restaurant? It was closed, that was why there were orange barrels. That was why the gas pumps in front of the gas station part were gone and there was grass poking out of the empty parking lot.

  "We're going to get away from here," she finished.

  She got out of the car and went around to Blakie's side. She opened his door but he just looked at her, eyes brimming. "I can't get out, Rachie, I'll fall."

  Don't be such a scaredy-baby, she almost said, then didn't. This wasn't the time for that. He was upset enough. She opened her arms and said, "Slide. I'll catch you."

  He looked at her doubtfully, then slid. Rachel did catch him, but he was heavier than he looked, and they both went sprawling. She got the worst of it because she was on the bottom, but Blakie bumped his head and scraped one hand and began to bawl loudly, this time in pain instead of fear.

  "Stop it," she said, and wriggled out from under him. "Put on your man-pants, Blakie."

  "H-Huh?"

  She didn't answer. She was looking at the two phones lying beside the terrible station wagon. One of them looked broken, but the other--

  Rachel edged toward it on her hands and knees, never taking her eyes off the car into which their father and mother had disappeared with terrifying suddenness. As she was reaching toward the good phone, Blakie walked past her toward the station wagon, holding out his scraped hand.

  "Mom? Mommy? Come out! I hurted myself. You have to come out n kiss it bet--"

  "Stop right where you are, Blake Lussier."

  Carla would have been proud; it was her she-who-must-be-obeyed voice at its most forbidding. And it worked. Blake stopped four feet from the side of the station wagon.

  "But I want Mommy! I want Mommy, Rachie!"

  She grabbed his hand and pulled him away from the car. "Not now. Help me work this thing." She knew perfectly well how to work the phone, but she had to distract him.

  "Gimme, I can do it! Gimme, Rache!"

  She passed it over, and while he examined the buttons, she got up, took him by the back of his Wolverine tee-shirt, and pulled him back three steps. Blake hardly noticed. He found the power button of Julie Vernon's cell phone and pushed it. The phone beeped. Rachel took it from him, and for once in his dopey little-kid life, Blakie didn't protest.

  She had listened carefully when McGruff the Crime Dog came to talk to them at school (although she knew perfectly well it was only a guy in a McGruff suit), and she did not hesitate now. She punched in 911 and put the phone to her ear. It rang once, then was picked up.

  "Hello? My name is Rachel Ann Lussier, and--"

  "This call is being recorded," a man's voice overrode her. "If you wish to report an emergency, push one. If you wish to report adverse road conditions, push two. If you wish to report a stranded motorist--"

  "Rache? Rachie? Where Mommy? Where Da--"

  "Shhh!" Rachel said sternly, and pushed 1. It was hard to do. Her hand was trembling and her eyes were all blurry. She realized she was crying. When had she started crying? She couldn't remember.

  "Hello, this is nine-one-one," a woman said.

  "Are you real or another recording?" Rachel asked.

  "I'm real," the woman said, sounding a l
ittle amused. "Do you have an emergency?"

  "Yes. A bad car ate up our mother and our daddy. It's at the--"

  "Quit while you're ahead," the 911 woman advised. She sounded more amused than ever. "How old are you, kiddo?"

  "I'm six and a half. My name is Rachel Ann Lussier, and a car, a bad car--"

  "Listen, Rachel Ann or whoever you are, I can trace this call. Did you know that? I bet you didn't. Now just hang up and I won't have to send a policeman to your house to paddle your--"

  "They're dead, you stupid phone person!" Rachel shouted into the phone, and at the d-word, Blakie began to cry again.

  The 911 woman didn't say anything for a moment. Then, in a voice no longer amused: "Where are you, Rachel Ann?"

  "At the empty restaurant! The one with the orange barrels!"

  Blakie sat down and put his arms over his face. That hurt Rachel in a way she had never been hurt before. It hurt her deep in her heart.

  "That's not enough information," the 911 lady said. "Can you be a little more specific, Rachel Ann?"

  Rachel didn't know what specific meant, but she knew what she was seeing: the back tire of the station wagon, the one closest to them, was melting a little. A tentacle of what looked like liquid rubber was moving slowly across the pavement toward Blakie.

  "I have to go," Rachel said. "We have to get away from the bad car."

  She dragged Blake to his feet, staring at the melting tire. The tentacle of rubber started to go back where it had come from (because it knows we're out of reach, she thought), and the tire started to look like a tire again, but that wasn't good enough for Rachel. She kept dragging Blake down the ramp and toward the turnpike.

  "Where we goin, Rachie?"

  I don't know.

  "Away from that car."

  "I want my Transformers!"

  "Not now, later." She kept a tight hold on Blake and kept backing, down toward the turnpike where the occasional traffic was whizzing by at seventy and eighty miles an hour.

  Nothing is as piercing as a child's scream; it's one of nature's more efficient survival mechanisms. Pete Simmons's sleep had already thinned to little more than a doze, and when Rachel screamed at the 911 lady, he heard it and finally woke up all the way.

  He sat up, winced, and put a hand to his head. It ached, and he knew what that sort of ache was: the dreaded HANGOVER. His tongue tasted furry, and his stomach was blick. Not I'm-gonna-hurl blick, but blick, just the same.

  Thank God I didn't drink any more, he thought, and got to his feet. He went to one of the mesh-covered windows to see who was yelling. He didn't like what he saw. Some of the orange barrels blocking the entrance ramp to the rest area had been knocked over, and there were cars down there. Quite a few of them.

  Then he saw a couple of kids--a little girl in pink pants and a little boy wearing shorts and a tee-shirt. He caught just a glimpse of them, enough to tell that they were backing away--as if something had scared them--and then they disappeared behind what looked to Pete like a horse-trailer.

  Something was wrong. There had been an accident or something, although nothing down there looked like an accident. His first impulse was to get away from here in a hurry, before he got caught up in whatever had happened. He grabbed his saddlebag and started toward the kitchen and the loading dock beyond. Then he stopped. There were kids out there. Little kids. Way too little to be close to a fast road like I-95 on their own, and he hadn't seen any adults.

  Gotta be grownups, didn't you see all those cars?

  Yes, he'd seen the cars, and a truck hooked up to a horse-trailer, but no grownups.

  I have to go out there. Even if I get in trouble, I have to make sure those stupid kids don't get smeared all over the turnpike.

  Pete hurried to the Burger King's front door, found it locked, and asked himself what would have been Normie Therriault's question: Hey afterbirth, did your mother have any kids that lived?

  Pete turned and pelted for the loading dock. Running made his headache worse, but he ignored it. He placed his saddlebag at the edge of the concrete platform, lowered himself, and dropped. He landed stupid, banged his tailbone, and ignored that, too. He got up, and flashed a longing look toward the woods. He could just disappear. Doing so might save him oh so much grief down the line. The idea was miserably tempting. This wasn't like the movies, where the good guy always made the right decision without thinking. If somebody smelled vodka on his breath--

  "Jesus," he said. "Oh, Jesus-jumped-up-Rice-Krispies-Christ."

  Why had he ever come here?

  Holding Blakie firmly by the hand, Rachel walked him all the way to the end of the ramp. Just as they got there, a double-box semi blasted by at seventy-five miles an hour. The wind blew their hair back, rippled their clothes, and almost knocked Blakie over.

  "Rachie, I'm scared! We're not supposed to go in the road!"

  Tell me something I don't know, Rachel thought.

  At home they weren't supposed to go any farther than the end of the driveway, and there was hardly any traffic on Beeman Lane in Falmouth. The traffic on the turnpike was far from constant, but the cars that did come along were going superfast. Besides, where was there to go? They might be able to walk in the breakdown lane, but it would be horribly risky. And there were no exits here, only woods. They could go back to the restaurant, but they would have to walk past the bad car if they did.

  A red sports car swept past, the guy behind the wheel blaring his horn in a constant WAAAAAAAA that made her want to cover her ears.

  Blake was tugging her, and Rachel let herself be tugged. At one side of the ramp were guardrail posts. Blakie sat down on one of the thick cables running between them and covered his eyes with his chubby hands. Rachel sat next to him. She didn't know what else to do.

  5. JIMMY GOLDING ('11 Crown Victoria)

  A child's scream may be one of Mother Nature's more efficient survival mechanisms, but one of mankind's--at least when it comes to automotive traffic on roads with high speed limits--is the parked State Police cruiser, especially if the black bulb of the radar detector is facing the oncoming traffic. Drivers doing seventy ease back to sixty-five; drivers doing eighty step on the brake and begin mentally figuring out how many points they'll lose off their licenses if the blue lights go on behind them. (It's a salutary effect that wears off quickly; ten or fifteen miles farther up or down the line, the stampeders are once again stampeding.)

  The beauty of the parked cruiser, at least in Maine State Trooper Jimmy Golding's opinion, was that you didn't really need to do nything. You just pulled over and let nature (human nature, in this case) take its guilty course. On this overcast April afternoon, his Simmons SpeedCheck radar gun wasn't even on, and the traffic passing southbound on I-95 was just a background drone. All his attention was on the iPad propped against the lower arc of the steering wheel.

  He was playing a Scrabble-like game called Words With Friends, his Internet connection provided by AT&T. His opponent was an old barracks-mate named Nick Avery, now with the Oklahoma State Patrol. Jimmy couldn't imagine why anyone would trade Maine for Oklahoma, seemed like a bad decision to him, but there could be no doubt that Nick was an excellent Words With Friends player. He beat Jimmy nine games out of every ten, and was leading in this one. But Nick's current lead was unusually small, and all the letters were out of the electronic draw-bag. If he, Jimmy, could play the four letters he had left, he would win a hard-earned victory. Currently he was fixated on FIX. The four letters he had left were A, E, S, and another F. If he could somehow modify FIX, he would not only win, he would kick his old pal's ass. But it didn't look hopeful.

  He was examining the rest of the board, where the prospects seemed even less fruitful, when his radio gave two high-pitched tones. It was an all-units alert from 911 in Westbrook. Jimmy tossed his iPad aside and turned up the gain.

  "All units, attention. Who's close to the Mile Eighty-one rest area? Anyone?"

  Jimmy pulled his mike. "Nine-one-one Dispatch, this is S
eventeen. I'm currently at Mile Eighty-Five, just south of the Lisbon-Sabattus exit."

  The woman Rachel Lussier thought of as the 911 lady didn't bother to ask if anyone else was closer; in one of the new Crown Vic cruisers, Jimmy was just three minutes away, maybe less.

  "Seventeen, I got a call three minutes ago from a little girl who says her parents are dead, and since then I've had multiple calls from people who say there are two unaccompanied little kids at the edge of that rest area."

  He didn't bother to ask why none of those multiple callers had stopped. He had seen it before. Sometimes it was a fear of legal entanglements. More often it was just a case of don't-give-a-shit. There was a lot of that going around. Still . . . kids. Jesus.

  "Nine-one-one, I'm on this. Seventeen out."

  Jimmy lit his blues, checked his rearview to make sure he had the road, and then peeled out of the gravel pass-through with its sign reading NO U-TURN, OFFICIAL VEHICLES ONLY. The Crown Vic's V-8 surged; the digital speedometer blurred up to 92, where it hung. Trees reeled giddily past on both sides of the road. He came up on a lumbering old Buick that stubbornly refused to pull over and swept around it. When he pulled back into the travel lane, Jimmy saw the rest area. And something else. Two little kids--a boy in shorts, a girl in pink pants--sitting on the guardrail cables beside the entrance ramp. They looked like the world's smallest vagrants, and Jimmy's heart went out to them. He had kids of his own.

  They stood up when they saw the flashing lights, and for one terrible second Jimmy thought the little boy was going to step in front of his cruiser. God bless the little girl, who grabbed him by the arm and reeled him in.

  Jimmy decelerated hard enough to activate the ABS system. His citation book, logbook, and iPad went cascading off the seat onto the floor. The Vic's front end drifted a little, but he brought it back and parked blocking the ramp, where several other cars were already parked. What was going on here?

  The sun came out then, and a word completely unrelated to the current situation flashed through Trooper Jimmy Golding's mind: AFFIXES. I can make AFFIXES, and go out clean.

  The little girl was running toward the driver's side of the cruiser, dragging her weeping, stumbling kid brother with her. Her face, white and terrified, looked years older than it should have, and there was a big wet patch on the little boy's shorts.