Wreck

 


Excerpt from Chapter 10

I was traveling back home, looking forward to crawling into my own bed with an awaiting Cassie. It was a clear, warm night, and within a few minutes I was cruising on the I-581 beltway, passing the brightly lit Mill Mountain Star and heading toward I-81. Traffic was scant . . . until it wasn’t. Just up ahead, perhaps a quarter mile, a trail of bright red brake lights suddenly appeared like a Christmas tree lighting ceremony. It was a few seconds before I realized the cars hadn’t just slowed, they had stopped completely.

Crap. Must’ve been an accident.

Upon closer inspection, peering through the last of the September dusk, I saw open car doors and people on the road, running around on the highway asphalt, arms flailing.

This was not good. In the same way an off-duty cop is never completely off duty, neither is an emergency worker. I slowed and veered my truck onto the left shoulder, came to a stop, cut the engine, and jumped out, hastily making my way to the commotion only yards ahead. Moving closer, I saw that I had not been mistaken; before me lay a horrific scene.

Just a few yards up the road, in front of the first line of cars, scattered debris littered the road. High-pitched shrieking noises filled the air. The headlights of the lead cars illuminated the remnants of a motorcycle—badly twisted and surrounded by shards of its own metal and plastic. The noxious smell of spilled gasoline assaulted my nasal passages. Ten yards beyond that, two helmeted bodies lay motionless in shadow, sprawled across the asphalt, lifeless.

I looked around and saw no flashing lights, of any color, anywhere. I heard no sirens. The scene could not have been more than a minute or two old. I sprinted up to figure number one. Based on size and shape, he looked to be male, wearing full riding leathers. His body was badly contorted, left arm impossibly twisted behind his neck, deformed and disfigured. I moved closer and kneeled before him. His face shield was smashed, blood trickled from both nostrils, his eyes were open, his face lifeless. His other arm was against his side in full extension, rhythmically jerking, wrist in flexion. He was decerebrating—a neurologic response that occurs when the brain is badly damaged or deprived of oxygen and the brainstem is in its final bursts of electrical activity, shutting down. I recognized him as a Priority 4: dead or near death with zero likelihood of survival. I reached under his helmet and felt a weak carotid pulse. A half circle of bystanders stood behind me, cell phones out recording and snapping photos. I shooed them away.

Another few yards or so beyond victim number one was a woman....

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