“Oh my god.” She covered her mouth in horror as she
watched the black SUV hit a patch of ice and careen into a utility pole.
Several moments ticked by, but for
her, it felt like years had passed.
Still, no one emerged from the vehicle.
In fact, the only thing coming from the vehicle was smoke from the
engine. While she didn’t know much about
cars, she knew smoke from the engine was definitely not a good thing.
She hurriedly searched the horizon
in all directions. It looked as though
everyone else had been smart and stayed off the roads in such crappy weather
conditions. Cursing, she ignored the
fact that her light was still red and drove her truck as slowly as possible up
to the smoking SUV, making sure to avoid the ice that had incapacitated the
other vehicle.
About ten yards from the crash site, she put her truck in park and
turned off the engine. She grabbed her sweatshirt
from the seat next to her and quickly pulled it on over her head. Without even bothering to remove her keys
from the ignition, she exited her truck and
began trudging through the snow to the SUV.
“Hello?” She pounded her fist against the driver’s
window as hard as she could.
“Hello?!”
Receiving no answer, she yanked on
the door handle and fell backwards as the door swung open. Quickly, she pulled herself up from the snow
and back up to the driver. She looked
him over and found a gash on the side of his head, as well as a black and blue
mark that appeared to be getting larger and darker with each passing second.
“Damn it!” She knew she shouldn’t shake someone who’d just
suffered a head injury—Common Sense 101.
Still—it could mean his life if she couldn’t get him to wake up and get
him out of the vehicle. “Sir?” She grabbed his arm and shook, but to no
avail. The man groaned, but didn’t wake
up.
At least the groan told her that he
was still alive.
A loud pop echoed in her ears. She looked over to see even more smoke
billowing from the engine. If she didn’t
do something, fast, he was going to die.
She leaned over his lap and grabbed
for the buckle to his seat belt. The
damn thing wouldn’t budge. Oh, god. She was about to watch someone die in a fiery
explosion, right in front of her!
She took a step back and sucked in
a deep breath of cold air. If she
started to panic, she wouldn’t be able to save him. She needed a clear head in order to pull this
off.
Looking around the front seats of
the SUV, she saw nothing that could aid in removing the belt from imprisoning
him. There wasn’t much of anything in
the vehicle at all, anyway. Must be
relatively new.
She knew there was nothing she
could use to cut away the belt in her own truck. She tried yanking on the belt again, but it
refused to budge.
“Fire!” She could burn through the damn thing…but
what did she have to carry the fire from the engine… She yanked her sweatshirt off and circled
around to the front of the SUV. At least
the fire would be useful for something.
She bunched up and twisted her sweatshirt
into a makeshift torch before sticking one end of it in the flames. Once it was
ignited, she ignored the pain the heat caused in her hands and went back to
where the man was still out cold. She blew
out the flame and carefully burned through the shoulder strap with the embers
of her quickly disintegrating garment.
Then the lap strap. Another,
louder, popping sound told her she was almost out of time. As soon as he was free of the restraint, she
threw the scraps of her sweatshirt aside and grabbed the man’s arms and tugged
with all of her strength.
He fell into her arms, his dead
weight throwing her off balance. She twisted
and managed to have the bottom half of him fall on the ground instead of on
her. Now all she had to do was try and
drag him a safe distance away from the burning SUV. She managed two tiring steps—he wasn’t fat,
but he was heavy—before a thought crossed her mind.
“Cell phone!” He had to have a cell phone. A brand new SUV and no cell? She laid him down completely in the snow and
patted down his pockets. No phone. “Fuck!”
She spun around, back to his SUV, intending to search for a possible
means of communication, when the engine fire finally caused the SUV to explode,
sending her flying back, crash-landing on top of the other driver, and knocking
her unconscious.
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