by Brian Keene
I trailed off, unwilling to finish the sentence. Could Hector really be dead? It just didn’t seem possible. Earlier in the day, Charlie and I had stood in his cubicle, laughing over a dirty cartoon Hector downloaded off the Internet. In it, the cast of Family Guy was having sex with The Simpsons. We hadn’t shown it to Craig, of course. He was our friend, but he was also a born-again Christian, and we didn’t want to offend him. Craig wasn’t preachy. In fact, he didn’t bring God up unless somebody asked him directly. He respected our views (I was Jewish and Charlie was agnostic; said he couldn’t worship a God who’d condemn him to Hell just for being gay).
We’d laughed over the cartoon. Next weekend, the four of us were going to Lake Redman for the day to do some fishing. Hector had just bought a new bass boat with his bonus. We were going to try it out. So how could Hector be dead now? It didn’t make sense. And where the hell was Craig? Maybe he’d hit his head and had amnesia or something. Wandered away from the wreck.
The man in the yellow hardhat stared off into the distance. “Wonder what’s taking them so long?”
“They’ll be busy today,” Gabriel said. “This is just the beginning.”
Charlie nodded. “You heard the blast, too? Think it was terrorists?”
Gabriel didn’t respond.
“Ask me, it didn’t sound like no explosion,” the guy in the hardhat said. “Sounded more like—well, a trumpet. Fucking weird shit.”
Gabriel’s smile was tight-lipped and sad. I wondered what he was thinking. Groaning, I grabbed his wrist and removed his hand from my chest. Then I sat up and spat more blood onto the pavement.
“You should rest,” Gabriel said again, rising to his feet. “You’re going to need it before this day is through, Steven, and I will be very busy with other things. I won’t be able to catch you again if you fall.”
“What?”
I wondered how he knew my name. Before I could ask, my attention was drawn to the crowd. They were all around us, people from all walks of life. Bankers, customer service representatives, cabbies, stockbrokers, IT techs, secretaries, construction workers, janitors, telemarketers, forklift drivers, systems analysts, machine operators, and soccer moms, all stranded together in the middle of the interstate during Wednesday afternoon’s rush hour. We saw each other every day, drove past one another, competed against each other for lane supremacy, shouted at each other and flashed obscene finger gestures when we lost. But none of us had ever truly met, until now. It was like some bizarre version of The Breakfast Club.
Charlie gave me his sweaty hand and pulled me to my feet. He squeezed, forgetting about my cut palms.
“Ouch.” Wincing, I pulled my hand away.
He wiped my blood on his slacks. “Sorry, dude.”
“That’s okay. Listen, did you tell that guy my name?”
“Who?” Charlie looked confused.
“The black guy. Gabriel.”
Charlie shook his head. Then he turned away and said, “God—look at this.”
I glanced around, stunned by the magnitude of it all. Ours wasn’t the only wreck on the highway. Remember when you were a kid, and you got out all of your Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars and made one giant traffic accident? That’s what the interstate looked like. Vehicles were piled up in both directions as far as the eye could see. Some were just minor fender-benders. Other cars had been totaled. The occupants, those who were mobile at least, milled around on the median strip and weaved between the wreckage, looking as stunned as I felt. Some exchanged insurance information. Others held cell phones to their ears. Many more simply stared in shared disbelief. I wondered how many were in shock.
Charlie, the guy in the hardhat and I were standing in front of the Timonium exit. The on and off ramps were choked with snarled traffic, too. A thick forest spread out beyond the southbound lane. To our right was a steep embankment. There was a chain link fence at the bottom that surrounded a trucking company. Frantic employees ran around in the parking lot, looking as confused as we were.
A pretty redhead took a step towards us. She swallowed, made a choking noise, and then took off her shoes. I noticed that one of her heels was broken. She looked at us and said, “It’s like the end of the world.”
We nodded. Charlie coughed.
Then she padded away.
In the distance, a lone siren wailed.
“Sounds like the ambulance,” Charlie said.
The guy in the hardhat grunted. “Guess that other fella was right. They’re gonna be busy.”
The siren faded. Then another one took its place.
It was mid-August and the late afternoon sun beat down on the blacktop, yet I suddenly felt very cold. Shivering, I gently rubbed my arms with my sore, bloody hands.
We stood there, not knowing what to do next. Charlie and I called out for Craig, but he didn’t answer. In truth, I hadn’t really expected him to. I glanced back at the van once, looked at Hector, and then forced myself not to look anymore.
The guy in the hardhat said nothing. I think he was too shocked to speak. He stood there and watched the employees in the parking lot of the trucking company below.
The breeze kicked up. A traffic helicopter hovered overhead, surveying the damage. Then it flew further up the highway. Some of the crowd waved their arms and hollered at it, but the chopper didn’t return.
Another young woman stumbled toward us through the wreckage. She only wore one shoe. Her other foot was bare, and her nylons were torn. Her blonde hair was mussed. Tears and mascara streamed down her face along with blood from her nose.
“My baby,” she sobbed. “Please, somebody help me. I can’t find my baby!”
Charlie stepped forward and gently put his hands on her shoulders. “Shhhh. It’ll be okay.”
“Okay? My baby is missing! She’s not in the car.”
“Where’s your vehicle?” Charlie asked, trying to calm her. “Take us to your car, and we’ll help you find your daughter.”
She pointed. One car behind us—an undamaged, neon green Volkswagen Jetta. There was an infant’s car seat in the back. It was empty. Just like Craig’s seat had been. That was when I felt the first pangs of real fear.
2
“Her name is Britney,” the woman wailed. “I can’t find her.”
“My wife’s missing,” a man shouted from the opposite lane. “Has anybody seen her?”
“What’s she look like?” someone else hollered.
“Brunette. Freckles. She’s pregnant! We were on our way to the hospital for a check-up.”
Several people clustered around him, while Charlie led the crying woman back to her car.
I thought about my own wife, Terri. No doubt the pile-up had already made the local news. She’d be worried, wondering if I was okay. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the house. After a minute, I got a recording telling me that all lines were busy and to try my call again. Sighing in frustration, I stuffed the phone back into my pocket.
The guy in the hardhat stuck out his hand. I held up my bleeding palms and shrugged. “Sorry. Don’t want to bleed on you.”
“Appreciate that,” he laughed. “Frank Wieczynski.”
“Steve Leiberman. Nice to meet you.”
He nodded. “Yeah, you too. Shame it isn’t under better circumstances.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” Cringing, I pulled a piece of gravel from my hand and smoothed a flap of loose skin over the cut. My mouth had finally quit bleeding. “Thanks for your help back there, Frank. I appreciate it. I guess it was shock or something that made me pass out like that.”
He shrugged. “Don’t mention it. To be honest, I didn’t do much. Just called 911 as soon as the pile-up started. That’s all. It was that other guy, Gabriel. He’s the one you should thank. I saw him catch you when you fell. Moved like greased lightning. One second you were falling, and the next he was there, keeping you from cracking your head open on the highway.”
I searched the gathering crowd, looking for Gabriel so that
I could thank him, but he was gone.
“Where’d he go?” I asked.
Frank took off his hardhat and scratched his balding, sunburned head. “Don’t know. He was just here a second ago.”
I scanned the crowd some more, but there was no sign of him. “It’s like he vanished.”
“Seems to be a lot of that going on,” Frank said. “Couple of other people are missing, too. Your friend over there, the one helping that blonde—he said one of your other friends was missing? That who you two were hollering for earlier?”
I nodded. “Craig. He’s got to be around here somewhere, though.”
The yuppie from the Volvo, the one who’d been paying more attention to his cell phone than the road and had caused the truck to swerve into our lane, climbed out of his car and slammed the door. His face was like a storm cloud. Running a hand through his perfectly coifed hair, he surveyed the damage to his rear bumper, muttered something under his breath, and then glared at me. His tie fluttered in the wind. Then he turned his attention to our van, and caught sight of Hector’s body. He flinched. The color drained out of his face, but he still looked angry.
“That guy still alive?” He walked over to Frank and me, one hand massaging his neck. “Because if so, then he’d better have a damn good lawyer. I think my spine is hurt.”
“He’s dead,” I told him. “So you’ll probably have to sue somebody else.”
“Dead?”
“Yeah. In case you didn’t notice, he’s got a twelve-inch pipe sticking through his fucking face.”
The Volvo driver suddenly forgot all about his supposedly injured back. “Jesus Christ. This is bullshit. I’m supposed to be in York by six. I’ve got a meeting.”
Dismissing him with a wave of my hand, I turned back to Frank. “Is your cell phone working?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Signal was fine when I called 911. The woman said she was dispatching units right away. Sounded like she was in a hurry. Frazzled. I’ll bet other people were calling about this, too.”
“Maybe,” I agreed. “I hate to ask, but can I borrow your phone? Mine’s not working, and I’d like to call my wife. Let her know that I’m okay.”
“Sure.” Frank handed me his cell phone. “I’d call my old lady, but she left me two years ago.”
He launched into the story, but I tuned him out, made sure I had four bars on the display, and then dialed Terri. This time there was no recording. Just silence. Dead air. I waited, but there was no dial tone or ring.
“I think your cell is out of service, too.” I handed the phone back to Frank.
“That’s weird.” He glanced at the network bars. “It worked before. Looks like I’ve got a signal, too.”
“Maybe they’re jammed up or something. Like what happened on September 11th, when everybody was trying to call home at the same time.”
“Could be. If that’s so, then this is even bigger than we think. That explosion was the damnedest thing. Couldn’t tell where it came from exactly, but it must have been close. And I still say it sounded like a trumpet.”
Before I could reply, somebody screamed nearby us. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. It was just a high-pitched, drawn out wail that went on and on, and then finally faded after what seemed an eternity. A dog barked. Then another person called out, wondering where Thomas had gone. Thomas didn’t answer. A small child began to cry for her mother.
Frank looked scared. “This is getting bad.”
“Thomas? Thomas, you get back here, right now! Where are you?”
“Mommy? MOMMY! Where’s my mommy?”
“Thomas! You quit scaring me right now. Come back.”
“Motherfucker…” The guy from the Volvo threw his cell phone down, smashing it on the pavement. The broken casing slid under a nearby car. “God damn piece of shit. I’ve got a meeting, goddamn it!”
“That guy is losing it,” I whispered to Frank.
Volvo kicked his front tire.
Frank eyed him warily. “Yeah, we’d better keep an eye on him till the cops show up.”
I turned back to Charlie and the young blonde woman. She was in hysterics, crawling underneath her car and scratching at the pavement, and all the while shrieking for her missing baby. Her skirt was soiled with dirt and grease. Charlie knelt beside her, his expression a mixture of sadness and bewilderment. He looked to me for help, motioning me over.
“Leiberman,” Frank grunted. “You Jewish?”
I nodded. “That’s right.”
“I got a friend that’s a Jew. Nice guy. We play cards sometimes.”
I’d heard this reaction before, many times, in fact. I guess it’s that way for lots of people—white, Anglo-Saxon protestants assuring them that they have a friend who’s black or Muslim or gay or Jewish, and they’re okay with it. It’s always struck me as sort of weird. I do know it’s that way for Charlie, living as a gay man in corporate America. I’ve watched him go through it time and time again, usually at company functions or Christmas parties, when one of our co-workers has had too much to drink and has to prove how evolved he is by assuring Charlie that even though he’s straight, he has a lot of respect for Charlie publicly admitting that he’s gay. Either that, or they feel the need to list their gay friends for Charlie. I never understood the reaction, but then again, I’m not a WASP.
I wasn’t dogmatic about my faith. I was Jewish by birth, rather than belief. Most of the time, I wasn’t even sure if I believed in God. To be honest, the only time I really talked to Him was when I wanted something. Mine was a faith of convenience. But my parents were devout. And I’d experienced just as much intolerance from them as I had from other religions and races. More, even. Terri was a Christian—a Lutheran, just like her parents. We’d met in college. When I told my parents we were going to get married, they threw a fit, forbidding me to marry her and threatening to disown me if I went through with it. I just laughed and explained that I was an adult now, and while I loved and respected them, I could make my own decisions. Then, when they saw that I was serious, they pestered me about what faith our children would be raised in. It didn’t matter to me, but my parents worried that their grandchildren wouldn’t be real Jews, since Judaism is traditionally passed down through the mother’s lineage. I wondered aloud if they’d love their grandchildren any less if they happened to be raised Lutheran. They didn’t have an answer. I’d thought that would be the end of it. Figured they’d come to accept Terri as their daughter-in-law once we were married. But they didn’t. My parents were just getting warmed up.
After the wedding, they demanded that a mezuzah be placed on the door of our house, to mark Jewish territory. Terri balked and told my mother exactly what she thought of the idea. Needless to say, relations with my family were strained from then on. I’d overheard them in private a few times, referring to Terri as a shikse. It’s a term that’s usually used jokingly, made popular by an old Seinfeld episode, but in Terri’s case, they didn’t mean it as a compliment.
After two years, Terri and I found out that we couldn’t have children. Turned out I was sterile. Terri didn’t want to adopt, and the whole point became moot anyway. Eventually, my parents dropped it.
But my heritage and our marriage didn’t cause problems with just my side of the family. Terri’s parents got in on the act as well, worrying about my immortal soul. Every chance they got, they’d witness to me about the glory of Christ. About how I had to be born again and needed to believe he was the son of God, that he’d died on the cross for me. And how I should ask him to come into my heart and forgive my sins, number one of which was being born into Judaism rather than Christianity. It was very important to them that I believed Jesus was the messiah. We’d had several arguments about it. At least they’d never accused me of killing their Savior. But they never missed a chance to let me know about the day when Christ would return to earth and take the faithful home. According to them, Jews—even devout ones—weren’t allowed on that ride. They called it the Rapture. I’
d asked Craig about it once, when we were out at a bar, and he told me that not all Christians believed in the Rapture. According to him, it wasn’t even mentioned in the Bible.
Another shrieking siren brought me back to the present. Frank put his hardhat back on and stared off into the distance again. I wondered about Frank’s comment. Was he secretly anti-Semitic and trying to cover it up? No, I decided. I was on edge and overreacting. It was this situation. We were standing in the midst of a massive traffic jam. Dozens of people were injured and dozens more were apparently missing. This was not a normal, everyday commute. Frank was just as scared and freaked out as I was, and he was simply trying to make conversation by telling me about his Jewish friend. I let it go, and walked towards Charlie and the woman.
“I’ll see if I can find someone with a cell phone that works,” Frank called after me. “If I find one, I’ll let you know.”
“Sounds good.”
“Hey,” the guy from the Volvo shouted. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
I stopped, turned and fought to keep the annoyance out of my voice.
“To help my friend and this woman. Her daughter is missing.”
“Bullshit. You’re not leaving the scene. You guys rear-ended me. I don’t even have your insurance information yet. Just stay put until the cops get here.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I sputtered. “Leave the scene? Take a look around you, dickhead. The entire interstate is one big scene. Where would I go?”
I turned my back on him and walked towards Charlie and the hysterical mother.
“Hey!” Volvo’s shout was hoarse and shaky. “Don’t you walk away from me. I said get back here, goddamn it.”
“Fuck you,” I called over my shoulder, and then punctuated it with, “Jackass.”
His footsteps pounded across the asphalt. Before I could turn to face him, Charlie was at my side, his fists clenched. Several onlookers watched us warily. A few of them looked excited. Here was something to take their minds off their troubles: fellow commuters getting in a fist fight.
