by Baron Sord
That was ridiculous.
I headed outside to double-check.
Glass crunched beneath my shoes as I staggered into daylight. More bodies lay on the concrete sidewalk.
Traffic was stopped dead in the street. Dozens of cars had crashed into each other. Every one was turned this way and that. The drivers behind the wheels were all out cold.
Everything had taken on the eerie quality of a mass grave. I still couldn’t tell if people were asleep or dead.
Was I the only person left alive?
I could barely process the idea. This was the sort of thing H.P. Lovecraft wrote about like it was awesome. It wasn’t. I didn’t want to be the only person left alive on the planet. Too damn lonely. Invading aliens would be a far better fate.
A sound to my left caught my attention.
Lady Liberty.
Or whatever her name was.
She was walking on shaky legs and looked as shocked as I felt, but she was alive.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Did you see that green light?”
She didn’t hear me.
I wanted to walk over to her, but there were too many bodies in the way. I went down the steps to the street and wove my way through a maze of motionless cars.
A wedge-shaped Cadillac CTS had rolled partially onto the sidewalk. Two pedestrians were jammed underneath. One appeared to be a man in a Superman costume. All I saw were blue shins, red boots, and the tail of a red cape. The rest of him was completely covered by the car. Not good. The other was a woman who appeared to have fared better. Only her foot and ankle were trapped under one of the tires.
My adrenalin spiked.
I needed to either move this Cadillac or these people. My first thought was to drag the Superman dude out, but he might have a neck injury. Obviously, he was only dressed as the Man of Steel. What about the woman? Maybe I could move her safely?
Not without moving the Cadillac.
I couldn’t do that without tools or help.
I shouted at Lady Liberty, “Hey! I need your help!”
She stared at me from afar, her face zombie-blank.
Please don’t let this be the zombie apocalypse. No, that was stupid. Everyone knew genetically engineered superbugs or mutated jungle viruses started the zombie apocalypse, not green eclipses.
I shouted again, “Hey! These people are trapped under this car! I can’t move it myself!”
Lady Liberty continued staring at me like she might do it forever, because this was the zombie apocalypse. Then she blinked her eyes, muttered something I couldn’t hear, and made her way toward me through the piles of intervening bodies and scattered cars.
When she got close, she said, “You’re the penciler.” She sounded out of it, but definitely not zombie-out-of-it.
“Yeah. We need to move this Cadillac off these people.”
“How?”
“Maybe if we lift together, we can tip it up on its side and pull them out?” As soon as I said it, I knew it would never work. Two normal people couldn’t tip a Cadillac on its side. The minimum curb weight for a Cadillac CTS was 3600 pounds. With add-ons, it easily hit 4000. Maybe two bodybuilders could tip it. Not me and her. Although I did go to the gym, I wasn’t as strong as a bodybuilder. Not even close. She didn’t look like she was either. She was very fit, but not bodybuilder strong. Still, we had to try.
I said, “I’ll take the front. It’s got the engine so it’s heavier.” I grabbed the fender over the wheel.
“Okay. I’ll take the back.”
“Get a good grip.”
She squatted by the wheel well and her long cape draped around her. “Hold on. My cape’s in the way.” She unhooked it from around her neck and dropped it on the ground, instantly forgetting it. “Okay, ready.”
“On three.” I hadn’t thought this through. How would we move the bodies if we were both lifting? It didn’t matter. We had to do something. “One. Two. Three!”
My muscles strained and I grit my teeth.
This was never going to work.
“It’s working!” she laughed.
Sure enough, the tires on our side rose a foot off the ground. Amazingly, the Cadillac felt light. It had to be the adrenalin. I said, “I can hold it. Can you let go and pull her leg out?”
“Are you sure you can hold the whole car by yourself?”
“Yeah. Easily.” Definitely the adrenalin. Tomorrow, my back would probably be in so much pain I wouldn’t be able to walk. But that was tomorrow. Now, I was all about holding up a Cadillac. If it made me look like a stud in front of Lady Liberty, my back be damned.
She smirked at me, “I thought you said you didn’t work out.”
“I guess I lied.” I wasn’t going to tell her it was the adrenalin.
“Okay, here goes,” she said. “I’m letting go.”
“Go for it,” I nodded.
When she did, I cringed, expecting the Cadillac to fall on me. To my surprise, although it sagged slightly toward the rear, I had no problem holding up the front end in a deadlift position. I knew the two tires on the far side were taking a lot of the weight, but I had to be holding up at least 1000 pounds like it was nothing. That was way over my max. I wanted to laugh, but I didn’t want to drop the car.
Lady Liberty squatted down near the injured woman.
I said, “Be careful with her leg. No telling how bad it is.”
Lady Liberty examined the situation for a moment. “Looks okay to me.” She carefully lifted the woman’s leg until it was safely out from under the tire. “What about Mr. Superman? Do you think I should move him?”
“He might have a neck injury.”
“Well, we can’t put the car back on him.”
“Good point,” I sighed. “If we could move the car out of the way somehow…”
“We can’t tip it over.” She was right. The other side of the Cadillac was blocked by the stout post of a large stoplight. “What if we move the entire car the other way? It doesn’t seem that heavy.”
I said, “What, like lift it up off the ground and carry it?” My back told me I was being an idiot, but I wasn’t going to admit that to Lady Liberty.
She said, “Sure, why not?”
“Okay, let’s try.”
“Yeah.” She squatted down behind the trunk of the Cadillac.
“Make sure you grab the frame, otherwise you’ll tear the back bumper off.”
“Already did,” she said. “You ready?”
“Hold on. I need to grab something solid.” I reached down and got a hand on the A-arm.
“Are you ready now?” she asked.
“Wait, this is awkward. Can you keep the car tipped up while I switch to the front end?”
“Yeah,” she nodded.
“Okay, I’m letting go.” I released my grip slowly, expecting the Cadillac to drop.
It didn’t.
She grunted, “Hurry! This is really heavy!”
I rushed around to the front end and put my hands firmly under the angled frame and set my legs in position. Straining and gritting my teeth, I hissed, “You ready to lift?”
“Yeah. On three. One. Two. Three!”
To my total amazement, we both heaved and picked up the low side of the car, lifting the whole thing to level about 3 feet off the ground.
No, my arms weren’t tearing out of their sockets and no, the disks in my spine weren’t rupturing. It felt like I was lifting maybe 100 or 150 pounds, but I knew that was wrong. Half this car was 2000 pounds or more. The world record for men’s deadlift was somewhere in the 1100s.
I had to grin.
This was insane.
I had just broken the world’s record.
Where were the guys at Guinness when I needed them?
“We’re doing it!” Lady Liberty giggled, sounding as amazed as I felt.
“Okay, let’s move it,” I said.
On shuffling feet, we walked the Cadillac safely to the middle of the street and set it down next to another car. I
glanced at the driver inside the Cadillac. Despite all the tossing and turning, he was still asleep at the wheel. Or dead. I tried not to think about it.
“Nice work,” Lady Liberty beamed from behind her blue mask while clapping the dust off her gloves. In full sunlight, those cyan eyes of hers were at least 100% cyan. At least.
I held up my hand. “High five?”
She slapped it and smiled, “You said it!”
With her standing this close, I could smell her intoxicating scent. It wasn’t perfume or shampoo. It was just her. Why was it that truly beautiful women always smelled as good as they looked?
Lady Liberty said, “What do we do about Mr. Superman? He’s lying in the street.”
“I don’t know. He’s not bleeding that I can see. Neither is the woman. I’m not a medic, so… call 911?” I pulled out my phone, pleasantly surprised that Lady Liberty and I were functioning as a team. I knew it wouldn’t last, but I was going to enjoy the moment while I dialed 911 and waited. And waited. And waited. “It’s not connecting.”
She shrugged, “Everybody is probably trying to call right now. That always happens during disasters.”
“But everybody is… asleep.” I didn’t want to be pessimistic and say dead. From our vantage point, it seemed like all of downtown San Diego was unconscious. “Unless I’m mistaken, nobody is calling 911 except me.”
“What the hell happened back there?” she laughed.
“I have no idea.”
“How did we lift that car?”
I chuckled, “You’re asking me?”
She shrugged. “Did you see that green light before the windows exploded inside the convention center?”
“Yeah, it happened right after the eclipse.”
“Was that what that was? I thought the sun turned black.”
“No, it was an eclipse,” I nodded.
“Are you sure? It had a green hole in it. That’s not an eclipse.”
“I thought the same thing,” I smiled. “What I can’t figure out is the source of the light. An eclipse doesn’t produce light. Even if it did, it wouldn’t be green. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Right?” She smiled, “This is gonna sound stupid, but do you think it was aliens?”
I laughed, “I was wondering the same thing. I don’t know. Maybe?”
We stared at each other for a moment and both broke into nervous laughter.
“Naaaaaah,” she giggled.
“Probably the government.”
“Yeah.” She looked at me with her 100% Cyan eyes.
We were definitely having another moment.
Probably the adrenalin.
She broke eye contact first and put her hands on her hips while looking elsewhere.
I picked up her cape. “You want this?”
She took it. “Oh, thanks. When is everyone gonna wake up?”
“No idea,” I shrugged, not wanting to state the obvious.
“Is there anyone else we should help? Anyone stuck under another car?”
I glanced around. “I don’t see—”
BOOM!
Nearby, the rear end of a Chevy Impala exploded in a column of fire and black smoke. The Impala was jammed between an SUV in back and a San Diego city bus in front. The flames quickly engulfed the Impala’s trunk.
Lady Liberty dropped her cape.
We both ran over to the Impala.
She said, “There’s people inside!”
Standing only a few feet away from the belching flames, I could feel the heat singing my skin. I said, “We need to get them out before they suffocate!”
“There’s little kids in back! And the doors are locked!”
I grabbed the rear door handle and… ripped it completely off the door. “What the…?” I dropped it clanging to the street.
There was a second clang as Lady Liberty broke the front door handle off and dropped it. “What’s wrong with this thing?”
“I don’t know.”
“We need to break the glass!” Lady Liberty hooked a fist, ready to smash through it.
“Wait! You’ll break your knuckles.” I already had my keys out in my fist, my big car key pointing down like a spike. I stabbed it against the glass.
CRACK!
The window spider-webbed into a thousand pieces. I stabbed at the shattered glass with my key until I cut a big enough hole. Then I jammed my free hand inside and grabbed the interior door handle.
It broke right off.
“Shit!” I hissed.
“Here, let me,” Lady Liberty nudged me aside. She clawed out the rest of the glass and grasped the bottom of the window frame with both hands and pulled hard. With a metallic squeal, she ripped the door off its hinges and dropped it banging onto the street.
That was impossible. A person couldn’t tear a door off a car like that. Not even a bodybuilder. It didn’t matter we had lifted a car a moment ago. Ripping a door off was… it was ridiculous.
But she had done it.
Lady Liberty reached inside the Impala and unbuckled the first toddler from the car seat and handed him to me. I ran across the street and set him down on the sidewalk. When I came back, the first car seat was on the street in pieces, like it had been ripped out of the Impala as easily as the door had come off. Lady Liberty slid out holding the other toddler and ran right past me.
She hollered, “You get the driver!”
I rolled over the hood and lifted the driver’s door latch carefully, not wanting to break it off. Fortunately, it opened normally. The airbag had deployed earlier and was now half-deflated. The woman behind the wheel was draped over it. I couldn’t see her seatbelt buckle beneath the airbag, but I could see where the belt attached to the frame behind her shoulder.
On a whim, I grabbed the belt in both hands and pulled apart hard. The heavy-duty nylon webbing shredded into strings like it was a paper towel. It must’ve been defective or had been damaged during the crash. It was the only logical explanation. Seatbelt material was incredibly strong. You couldn’t just tear it.
Amazingly, I had.
Chuckling to myself, I pulled the woman out and draped her over my shoulder before hopping onto the hood and dropping back to the pavement to trot back to where Lady Liberty had laid the second kid next to the first.
“We have to move that SUV!” She pointed behind the burning Impala. The flames from it were already licking the front end of the SUV, which had people inside. “Help me!”
“On it!” I shouted. After laying the sleeping woman next to her sleeping kids, I ran to help.
We grabbed the back end of the SUV and lifted it no problem. There was nothing directly behind it, so there was plenty of room to roll it backward. Instead of rolling smoothly, the locked front wheels dragged across the pavement and left black skids.
Lady Liberty said, “It must still be in drive.”
I grinned, “I was going to say the same thing.”
Side note: Hot strippers who drew comics and knew a thing or two about cars? And liked Iron Maiden and KISS? Yeah, she had a boyfriend. There was no way we were having a dinner date later. Not unless her boyfriend joined us.
Despite all the weight and the gripping of the tires, we dragged the SUV back 10 or 15 feet like we were dragging an empty cardboard box. We set it down in front of a delivery van that had turned into the curb during the eclipse.
“That bus is full of people!” Lady Liberty pointed at the city bus directly in front of the burning Impala. “We have to move it before the fire spreads! Help me!”
“Can we move a bus?”
“I meant the car!”
We jogged to the Impala. The burning back end was roaring like a volcano. We squeezed between its front bumper and the back of the bus. Lifted the Impala and rolled it smoothly on its rear wheels.
The only problem with our solution was we were boxed in. Rolling the Impala away from the bus put it closer to the SUV. The other lanes also had cars, all of which had passengers inside.
> I said, “We need to put the fire out!”
“How?! I don’t have a fire extinguisher!”
I growled, “I need a second to think!”
But there wasn’t time to think. The Impala was an inferno blazing away with demonically hot flames.
An image of the “fire triangle” popped into my mind. I’d learned it in high school chemistry class. Fuel at the base, heat and oxygen on top. You put out a fire by removing one of the three sides of the triangle. I couldn’t do anything about the fuel because it was locked in the gas tank, which was probably 1500 degrees Fahrenheit by now. That left suffocating the fire by blocking the flow of oxygen to the fuel source or removing the heat by cooling the blaze.
Guess what?
I had:
No fire hose.
No fire blanket.
No fire extinguisher.
Not even a backhoe with a bucket full of sand ready to dump on the burning car.
Did anybody have a squirt gun?
Anybody?
Lady Liberty said, “We need to move people out of the cars!”
“Okay, you start doing that!”
I turned back to the burning Impala. Maybe I could throw it over the graffiti-covered 8-foot-tall retaining wall onto the grass beside the trolley tracks?
No, I wasn’t that strong.
Was I?
I squatted and deadlifted the front end of the burning Impala up to waist height. That was the easy part. The hard part was getting myself underneath it so I could hurl it. If I was actually Superman, I would magically pick it up over my head in a military press and toss it wherever it needed to go.
Since I wasn’t a magician, I curled the front end higher and rested it on my chest. That put a huge amount of weight on my torso. My back and stomach muscles contracted hard to support it. I winced, expecting something inside me to tear or snap or burst or break.
Nothing did.
I switched my grip so my hands were in a military press position, then I finished my half-assed clean-and-jerk. Next thing I knew, I was holding up the front end of the Impala over my head.
It was really heavy.
There was no way I was picking up the entire thing and throwing it. What if I pivoted it around and leaned the front wheels against the concrete retaining wall? If the Impala was long enough, I might be able to hook the front wheels over the top edge, run around to the back, and lever the car up over the wall.
