Highway To Hell (8 page)

“Am.” Sammy finally understood the previous sentence. He reached into the pocket of his overcoat and pulled out a small velvet box. “I had much bigger and better plans for this, you know,” he said, passing Mandy the box, which she took with hands that trembled from nerves.

“This is one hell of a way to win an argument, Sam,” Mandy answered, laughing. The smile that was stretched across her face, even in the darkness of the car, was answer enough.

“Well, think of all the fights we can have in the future,” Sammy joked. He took his eyes off the road and looked at her just for a second. He felt a sudden need to see the sparkle in her eyes, even if they were bloodshot from a night of drinking. She still made his heart skip a beat, the delicate outline of her features, the way she poked her tongue out between her teeth when she smiled – a real smile, that was – and the creases around her eyes when she laughed, her smooth skin, and full lips that gleamed in the halogen amber haze that was cast down by the streetlamps.

Mandy giggled at him, and turned her head as if embarrassed, then sensing the weight of his gaze she turned and looked at Sammy. Her face was youthful, and Sammy never stopped wondering how he had managed to keep someone who looked as amazing as Mandy and had the brains to match. She opened her mouth to speak, to answer his question at last; despite the certainty of its affirmation, a yes was still the necessary prerequisite for the occasion. However, what came out was a blood-curdling scream better placed in a scary movie.

“Sammy,” was the only discernable word that came out. Her face was frozen in a look that was somewhere between the height of orgasm and sheer horror, color drained from her face, as if the blood had packed up and left before whatever unspeakable event was about to unfold could occur.

Sammy turned to look and wasted half of his remaining time with Mandy wondering what the hell she saw. Part of him thought it was a meteorite, or for longer odds a UFO. The night sky filled with bright orange sparks that flew across the horizon, tumbling without grace. It was only when impact was imminent that he realized what it was. A Mercedes, he wasn’t sure of the model – not that it mattered when the car in question had become a fireball.

“Jesus Christ. Mandy, hold on!” he yelled, grabbing the steering wheel and trying to find the brakes with feet that felt as though they were glued to the floor. Sammy’s leaden left foot rose and tried to find the brake that his right foot refused to touch, but it was too late. The noise was tremendous, as the Mercedes, having lost control at a high speed, toppled head over tail towards them, somersaulting like an obese gymnast.

Instinctively, Sammy reached out trying to grab hold of Mandy’s hand. All he could hear was his heart as it thundered in his chest, while his brain failed to function on a clear or understandable level. Even Mandy’s screams were a mere whisper, a distant murmur, as though she were trapped in another room or at the end of a long corridor.

The automotive torpedo impacted Sammy’s car on the edge of the hood, causing minimal damage. It was the sudden change in momentum that caused the car to flip over.

“Shit!” Sammy cried out as he felt the car begin to tip forward.

Despite the speed with which it all occurred, everything felt as though it happened in slow motion. The change in the weight of the car, the crunching sound of the hood, engine and undercarriage being crushed, the strange, stomach-churning sensation as the car left the ground, flipping over like a disc in a game of Tiddlywinks. Beside him, Sammy heard Mandy scream, her seatbelt forgotten by her intoxicated mind. She fell forward as the car flipped and she fell into the windshield, her head hitting hard enough to crack the glass. As the car continued its first of many cartwheels Sammy saw a bloodied smear mark the glass as his girlfriend’s head bounced free, her body falling against the roof as her head then made contact with the dashboard. Mandy’s body followed a similar trajectory as the car, her legs crashing through the glass of the windscreen as the roof crumpled against the road surface. Sammy heard something snap; a burning pain thundered through his body. He didn’t have any time to look – not that he could see anything anymore, for every image had blended together, his world awash of darkness and fire.

The car flipped once more, the roof flattening even further, and Sammy’s fastened seatbelt wasn’t enough to stop his head from colliding with the driver’s side window. His neck whiplashed with a loud crack and a burst of pain shot into the center of his brain. He tasted blood in his mouth and couldn’t breathe; his chest was crushed, both lungs punctured. He also had a compound fracture in each leg, the femur protruding at about mid-thigh level. Finally, the car came to a stop, landing upside down in the middle of the road, the engine somehow still revving angrily, the rear wheels spinning, while the aroma of spilled fuel began to fill the car.

“Mandy,” Sammy coughed, blood spurting from his lips. Looking over to the passenger seat, pain surging through his body, Sammy tried to find the woman he loved. Sammy groped desperate to find Mandy, even as his wheezing breaths began to shallow. He sweated and shivered simultaneously, and the pain began to dull as Sammy’s body shut down. He had lost control of his bodily functions not long after the car began its second rotation.

The seat next to him was empty; Mandy had fallen out of the tumbling projectile in stages as it had flipped its way along the road. Her head had been the first to come away, cut through as the car descended from its second flip; she had already fallen halfway out of the window when the road came crashing down again, snapping her neck and sending the head rolling down the road like a gruesome bowling ball. By the time the car came to a stop several fingers and her left arm had been scattered along the road like the lost items that can be seen lying beside any highway; a shoe, a book, things you often wonder how is it possible to lose while within a car. By sheer chance, the rearview mirror was still in place, and although cracked and missing several large chunks, Sammy could make out what was left of Mandy’s body further down the road, a fit of spasms racing through her dismembered torso as the rain pelted down, washing the blood from the road deck as if the world were wanted to hide it.

His head grew dizzy, the gargling sounds of his breathing lessened, and with it the depth of each inhalation became shallower. Yet Sammy refused to give up. “Mandy.” He struggled to make any sound, and was surprised at how strong his voice sounded.

Sammy received no answer to his cries, the still night air broken only by the steady ticking sound of his car engine. The summer storm that had been threatening all day made its move, and the rumbles of thunder drowned out the emergency service sirens. Lightning cast a stark, brilliant flash on the horizon, highlighting the blood and oil covered road, glinting in the open eyes of the head that lay between the two lanes, boxed inside the dividing lines. The blond hair that crowned it was fanned out like a wedding train.

Sammy was long dead by the time anybody arrived at the scene, his face frozen in a twisted image, as if the last thing Sammy had seen had been was death himself as he leaned in to claim him.

~

V

Graham

“Who’s there?” Graham Williams sat up in bed – well, he raised his head as far as he could; his bed was already set in a semi-seated position; the best thing for his lungs, or so the doctors had said on their last visit. Personally, he thought it a pile of fresh bullshit but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Not anymore.

No answer came back to him, only the echoing footsteps of the night porter walking the linoleum hallways, his mind not on the job but rather following the Monday night football. The playoff positions were filling up fast and his team needed just one victory to clinch their spot, and with it the chance to gain redemption for the painful defeat at the end of the previous season.

Despite the lack of an answer, Graham could hear the intruder, his lumbering footsteps heavy on the cheap carpet; he knew the sound of heavy boots when he heard them, unforgiving, uncomfortable. He had been trained to hear them, as they snapped a twig or crunched on a pile of leaves. It was the smell he didn’t recognize; a sweet, meaty aroma, like a cheap butcher’s workroom in the heat of summer. He would have retched at the stench but his stomach had long ago given up its uses, now nothing more than a shriveled bag inside his decaying body, possibly the only organ that the cancer hadn’t eaten away. He hadn’t drank anything since Sunday morning, not that anybody who ‘cared’ for him would have noticed. They had all written him off long ago. As soon as the illness entered what they call end-stage, he had been moved to a new room at the end of the terminal wing, where he was then as good as forgotten. Sure, they visited every now and then, but only to check his pulse. He hadn’t had a change of clothes for three days and while he wasn’t certain, he thought that he had pissed himself at least once.

Graham opened his mouth to call out again, his throat dry and scratched raw, his lips paper-thin. He stuck out his tongue to wet them, but that too was dry, swollen and heavy in his mouth. He heard his own breathing; slow rattling breaths as if his lungs had filled with water. Yet still he heard the approaching footsteps. It was as if death himself had come out tonight to claim him. Not that Graham cared: he was ready to go, had been ever since his wife died and the government shoved him into a nursing home. He had been more than capable of looking after himself, still would have been if not for the disease – he was only seventy-six, for God’s sake. They wanted to sell his home and build some cheap houses to give to all the fucking foreigners. Graham had no living relatives and so was an easy target. Within seven months of entering the home he was confined to his 8x5 cell, or ‘room’ as they all called it. It was en suite, but they insisted on giving him a commode in the corner to use. He wasn’t allowed to walk anywhere, instead wheeled him to and from the dining room where frozen TV dinners were served lukewarm at best. To top it off, twice a day Graham was transported into the recreation room, which was a plain whitewashed room with large windows that overlooked a supposed garden and fish pond but which looked more like an overgrown wasteland with a large muddy puddle in the center. There were no fish in the pond, that was a certainty, and the only thing that ever dared enter the garden was the occasional bird, but it wouldn’t stay long. Nothing ever stayed in Golden Acres nursing home long. There were a few bright pictures on the far wall, modern art they called it, but to Graham it looked more like the artist had farted while painting something else and that by-product of his misdirected bodily function had been the better piece. The other occupants of the recreational room were just as exciting, either parked in front of the television, which seemed to broadcast nothing but old black and white movies, as though people over a certain age watched nothing else. Graham couldn’t remember the last time he had seen the news or read a newspaper. It looked and felt, to him at least, not like a retirement home but a hideaway, a pre-burial storage compound. Food and water was given and they were just left to wait for their clock to run down. Now, lying in the darkness, hearing the footsteps of an invisible enemy, Graham looked back on it all with no feelings other than a strange and consoling acceptance. A readiness, willingness to go with the strange visitor regardless of what it held in store for a man who had killed the Germans with a song in his heart, before teaching children for the majority of his life, including more than just a few of German descent. He wondered then, for the first time, if any of them still had their grandparents at that time, or had he taken them away from them? Then again, wasn’t that why he became a teacher, to educate, to stop kids rushing off and joining the military simply because it was the easy option, the safe bet that if you failed in your studies you could still go away and be the best that you could be?

Something moved in the corner of the room, to the left of the door. It was his chariot; a worn out wheelchair. Its rusty wheels creaked, its carriage moved back and forth as if some hidden weight had taken a seat, testing it out for after he had passed.

“Who’s there? I know your there?” he croaked, his body objecting by starting a chain reaction that began with a violent coughing fit and ended up with a mouthful of bloody phlegm being spat into a basin positioned on the floor beside the bed for that very purpose.

“It’s me, Sarge. Edwards,” a scared voice answered him. It wasn’t a physical sound but rather a whisper carried on a breath of wind. In fact Graham doubted he had heard anything at all, only it was that name… Edwards, why had he heard that name?

Graham couldn’t speak further; he was too exhausted, and his body racked with pain. His every muscle ached as it fought just to take the next breath, to see a sunrise that he couldn’t be bothered to see. Ever since his wife died Graham had asked for death, begged for it, yet it was years before the cancer took hold of him, and now not even his own body listened to him: it just kept on fighting.

“I think we made it, Sarge. I’ve been hiding in the bushes but I don’t think the fuckers saw me. It’s been so lonely, but now I’ve got you here... Hey, you want to play a few hands? I’ve got a deck in here somewhere; I traded them with a guy from the airborne a while back.” The voice set off alarm bells inside Graham’s head. Triggering memories he had long since forgotten, or that had simply been deleted by the grey masses that had now spread through his body.

There was a small reading lamp on the table beside his bed – not that he read much anymore. Occasionally he could make it through a few lines before his eyes gave up; his glasses were long lost. He fumbled with his trembling hand, his body covered with a cold sweat that had soaked his sheets.

‘Do I really want to turn it on?’ Graham thought to himself, his hand recoiling as it reached the switch.