Arms braced hard against the steering wheel, Robin drew a long breath, deluded by the childish thought that, if he wished hard enough, he would, like Superman, fly free of the steaming, broken, smashed pile of cars before him. Then he was engulfed in the madness: the scraping desperation of his first evasion, the lurch, crunch, terror, and total disorientation of impact. His body was propelled against the seat-belt, the air bag exploded into his chest, and his car rolled over and over before landing, miraculously, upright. For a fleeting, hope-filled second, he thought he’d escaped, then the jack-knifing body of the artic ploughed into his car, and the cab toppled towards him. He held his hands up, and yelled, but the front of his car concertinaed like a crumpled can of beans, and the air bag burst as the steering column punctured it, and carried on into his chest. His treasured car squeezed the breath from his body as it folded him in its dying embrace. Distantly, he felt the shock of cars still slamming into the pile, like giant footsteps, grating splintered bones.
It was too bad for fear. Trapped within the diminished confines of his car, Robin was numb. As the vibrations became more distant, the sound muffled, he simply wondered when it would stop. And amidst the horrendous scrape of steel against steel, the Brahms chorus continued to rise serenely into the air.
Eventually, a heavy stillness settled, broken only by the shocked, keening cries of others trapped, like him, and the barely-controlled horror in the voices of those who had somehow clambered out of the mess, and were trying to help. He wanted to scream, because he could feel the heat of fire somewhere close, and that scared him more than anything, but even the faintest bleat was beyond his ability. His head was twisted sideways, immovable, his cheeks crushed between seat and roof. A small slither of tarmac sparkled in bright, mocking rays of sunshine. Pain was held at bay by shock, by encroaching death. He was angry. It wasn’t fair. He didn’t want to die. He was too young, too bright, too successful.
He saw the shadows of people walking past, heard the sirens when they came, felt the shrill rasping vibrations of metal saws, and above it, eventually, the heavy drill-sergeant voice of someone taking control, turning chaos into order. He alternated between wishing death would hurry up, and sucking in shallow, desperate breaths: life didn’t let go that easily. He was losing blood. Cold seeped through, numbing pain and he began to drift in and out of consciousness, to hallucinate.
He squinted at the small patch of sunlight, his one touch with reality, and suddenly, there was a face peering back. A young man’s face, tip-tilted. A burst of adrenaline hit his middle. Someone knew he was here. They would get him out. He would survive. He emitted a minute sound, a wordless plea – Help me, please? I don’t want to die.
The disembodied face, blindingly beautiful, vibrant with life, smiled, and asked, ‘What does it feel like? To die, I mean? Can you feel it coming? You know you’re dying, don’t you? They’ll never get you out of there alive...’ The head turned, eyes surveying the world beyond Robin’s vision. ‘Just look at them. Like ants, running in circles when the nest has been destroyed. Can you speak? Ah, probably not. Well, I’m afraid I have to go now. I’d like to stay, to see this through, but you’re taking too long. What a rush, eh?’
Robin felt a bubble of laughter rise in his crushed chest as he realised the last words on earth that he would hear were those of an insane youth.
Time went by and the sounds of shock faded as the recovery teams, immersed in the gruelling labour of wrenching, cutting, tearing bodies out of wrecks, became immunised against horror. Lost in semi-consciousness, it meant nothing to Robin.
Then a hand slid through the distorted window frame, to touch him. ‘Jesus Christ,’ a voice yelled, ‘There’s someone alive in here! Can you hear me? Hang in there, buddy, we’re going to get you out.’
Was he still alive? He thought about it a bit, and realised that he was hurting. But with the words came a violent desire to live. He drew in breath after painful breath. He wasn’t going to let go. Not now. The artic’s cab was cranked away, infinitesimally relieving the pressure on his chest. Then the roof of his car was peeled away and the engine jacked up. The broken bones in his legs grated and moved. The tinkling of shattered glass and the seared scrape of tangled metal was the sound of violent physical pain. When they began to cut him out, he didn’t know whether he was pleased, or bitterly disappointed. Don’t move me, please don’t move me, he screamed in his mind, but he was only able to emit a continuous animal noise somewhere in the back of his throat. They strapped something around his neck, his upper torso, every movement lacing fire through his head. Only partially conscious now, blood seeped into his throat and began to choke him as his jaw shifted. Not after all this, he thought. Not now. There were shouts, frantic movements, the seat was cut out from under him, was pulled out. There was nothing left except agony, then gradually even that faded.
Chapter 2
Chief Inspector Redwall walked through the steaming, twisted piles of scrap metal towards his car. He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. The sinking sun mocked a final fiery salute as the crane ripped another wreck from the tangled mess. His eyes instinctively targeted the movement. It would take some imagination to call it a car. The top had been cut off completely to effect easier removal of the bodies – two women and a toddler, he recalled – and the front wheels nearly met the back ones beneath the blackened paint-work. Jesus, he hated pile-ups. But he’d never seen one as bad as this before. Pretty much everyone from everywhere had been called in to help. Wounded had been shipped to hospitals all over the south east to relieve pressure on the local surgeons, and the dead were stacked in the local mortuary, like haddock in the fish market.
Half the time in these cases you never knew who the hell to blame, but this time his fury had a target, for as the long day progressed and reports crowded down frenetic telephone lines, it became obvious that this catastrophe had not simply been an accident. It had been deliberately caused. Just one person, straying from the bounds of sanity, had created this whole massacre.
He compressed his lips and turned away. Mentally and physically exhausted, his work here was done. There was no point in hanging around. They had the registration numbers of all the cars that were still identifiable, they had the names of everyone who could speak, and some who couldn’t. The task of identifying those left, and the unenviable task of communicating with the bereaved relatives would remain with the small army of junior officers who had been temporarily assigned to him.
And it wouldn’t stop there.
The station was flooded by calls from hysterical people who had heard of the disaster on the radio. Ten to one most of those who called had nothing to worry about, but imagination would age them while they waited to find out. Experience told him it was probably the ones who were blithely getting on with their lives, uncluttered by the barrage of media, who would live to regret this day.
His task now was to map out what had happened. Photographs had been taken from every angle of the three-mile mess, from the road and from the air. Skid marks had yet to be measured, and crash experts to cast experienced eyes over the scene of devastation. Soon the photographs, technical data, and statements would begin to spill into his office in an avalanche of paperwork that would need to be analysed, catalogued, and sifted. Everyone would contribute. The living would be interrogated, the dead sliced open, prodded and inspected with detailed attention to accuracy.
And the media would glut on the tragedy.
News like this made big bucks. He didn’t doubt he’d get a visit soon, from his long-time friend, Freman, who’d be fishing for snippets of unique, insider information. There were times he didn’t like him at all.
It was estimated that about a hundred cars were involved in the main body of the pile. That did not include the couple of hundred at the tail end, whose drivers’ main concern now would be working out which insurance to claim on for damages. Or the ones behind that, whose frustrated drivers had been screaming at the delay, not knowing the cause. Ins
tead of thanking whatever stars had led them to be one minute later than those before them, they would be furious they’d been put to so much inconvenience, hoping, at the least, to come out of it financially better off. No, it was the cars at the front of the pile, those who had been shunted into and hurled on top of each other by the force of impact, twisted and snarled into a modernistic sculpture of metal and flesh, which would provide meat for the stories.
The radio coughed into life. ‘Guv, they’re waiting for us. They need to leave, now.’
‘OK, Jim. On my way.’
Just one minute between life and death, he thought, as he drove the wrong way down the carriageway towards the barriers of flashing lights and police vehicles at the slip-road. Not long enough for last thoughts, just comprehension that death was unexpectedly imminent.
By morning, the road would be functioning as normal, but now, the seared stretch of Motorway before him was strangely still. Hours ago, this section had been closed, the redirected traffic causing gridlock and road rage for a thirty-mile radius around London, and probably a thousand other small incidents as a knock-on effect. It had to be the worst incident of its kind he’d ever been involved with.
They’d put out a message on national TV and radio for people to stay at home, to not go to work or take kids to school, but no-one listened. Bosses weren’t going to pay time to people who didn’t turn up, so a black cloud of frustration roiled over carparks, buses, the Underground.
The helicopter, incongruously waiting in the middle lane, flailed the grass in the central reservation as it rose in an explosion of dust. For a short while there was nothing but sky and sun and the Thames curling peacefully below him. Sweet Thames flow softly, he hummed to himself, blocking the horror from his mind.
Then buildings rushed up to meet them. The bulbous machine settled onto a yellow landing pad, the door flapped open to allow the DCI and his sidekick to descend into the whirlwind beneath the rotor-blades, and run, crouching, to the building’s sliding doors.
Inside the hospital, he discovered another war-zone. Though hours had passed since news of the crash had jolted them into action, victims awaiting surgery over-spilled the wards, and lined the corridors with their grey faces, emergency dressings, and drips. There was a pervading calm here, as though anaesthetic seeped from the walls. Shock had numbed most people into a state of dumb acceptance, and those who might have been treated as emergencies in other circumstances, waited their turn as the staff fought for other lives; amputating mangled limbs, packing gaping wounds.
The DCI balked for a moment in the flashback of painful memories brought on by the smell of blood and pain and anger. Then a white light flashed in the corridor. There was a scream of rage, and a doctor, already pressurised to exhaustion, tried to unhook a man’s locked fingers from a reporter’s throat. He guessed the injured child’s father had at last found a target for his previously unfocussed fury.
The camera smashed to the floor.
‘I’ll sue you!’ the reporter screamed, clutching at his throat, thinking he had an ally in the police presence.
‘You do that,’ Redwall said. He grabbed the reporter’s wrist and twisted.
The reporter gave a shocked gasp, then screamed, ‘You’re breaking my fucking arm!’
‘Get him out,’ he advised, pushing him into the arms of two Orderlies who had rushed onto the scene, before kicking the smashed camera aside. ‘And don’t break his arm unless he resists.’
As the reporter was propelled out, screeching about rights and freedom of the press, the DCI turned on his heel and bumped into a woman who was standing in a daze. He compressed his lips as he put her gently aside. His compassion wasn’t for the staring horror of the newly dead, but for their relatives, and the broken, the damaged who hadn’t yet seen the darker side of survival.
He could have told them that life goes on after despair, but he doubted he could make them believe it. He knew from experience that there were no words powerful enough to counter the consuming immediacy of grief. Tennyson rose to haunt him with words he thought he had left behind several years before: ‘Break, break, break on thy cold grey stones, O Sea, and I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me’.
If the bard hadn’t managed it, how the hell could he?
Chapter 3
Sarah was exhausted to the point of hallucinating. She’d just been leaving her shift when news of the Motorway crash came in. They were short-staffed, as usual, and she’d immediately volunteered to ride shotgun in one of the ambulances that had been conscripted from another hospital. Over the following hours, she’d lost count of the trips. Awake for thirty-six plus hours, she didn’t have the cognitive power to even do the mathematics, but as a trained paramedic, she was needed. Besides which, she couldn’t have simply gone home to sleep, it wasn’t in her nature.
But the overwhelming emotions bludgeoning her from every side was unbearable. Terror from the dying and the helplessness of those watching them was physically disabling. She groaned, doubling under the onslaught. No one else knew what she knew, and there was no way she could tell them. They’d think she was mad. Lock her up. There were times when her gift made her warm with the knowledge that she was helping, but right now, she cursed her father. Damn him for making her different. She wasn’t even quite sure what she was supposed to do with this gift. Providing solace to souls leaving the safe harbour of their bodies was surely the province of people who believed in God? She’d gone down that road for a while, searching for someone who truly knew, and could help her, but amongst those who professed intimate knowledge, she had found not one genuine person in whom belief was more than hope, and more than a few who were not genuine at all.
But she knew.
Some souls stayed with her for a while, their essence mingling with hers before drifting, as they always did, in the end. Despite the brief comfort she provided, and the enormous sense of subsequent loss when they departed, she had no idea what happened to these drifts of sentience once they moved on.
She winced under the onslaught of desperation, and slipped to her knees on the hot tarmac, trying to shut them out. Although she didn’t want to ignore desperate souls, the living needed her more, at this time.
The paramedic, who she now knew was named Sean, placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Yeah. Sure. I’m tired, that’s all.’ She managed a smile, and allowed him to help her up. ‘Exhausted, actually.’
From somewhere inside she discovered the strength to put up the mental barrier required to allow her to get on with the job of saving the living. At this time, the dead would have to save themselves, as they had been doing through the centuries. The living needed her.
Then, suddenly, it seemed, the panic was over.
They found themselves sitting on the back of the vehicle, stunned and silent, waiting for the last couple of bodies to be extricated and taken to the morgue, so that the teams of breakers, working quickly and efficiently, could clear the road and get traffic moving again. There was an unreal air of finality hanging over the devastation.
Then, a fireman screamed, ‘There’s someone alive in here!’
‘Fucking hell,’ the paramedic muttered. They jumped up. He slammed the doors, negotiated the ambulance through the carnage, then they were out, running with the gurney.
The car was probably half the height it had been when leaving the factory. It had been lodged under the cab of an articulated lorry, which was being craned away. The twisted logo on the bonnet proclaimed it a Mercedes. It was impossible to suppose anyone could be alive in there, but hydraulic jaws sliced the pillars, and the roof of the car was removed. Sean was shouting for the brace, and as the top of the car swung away, she saw the driver.
The sole occupant, he had been squeezed into a space too small for a man to occupy, and if ever she’d seen a dead and mutilated body, this was it. But as the brace was eased behind his head, he emitted a faint groan, and his eyes fluttered.
> ‘Hold still, mate,’ Sean said, with overt bonhomie. ‘We’ve got you covered. It’s OK, now.’
But they all knew it wasn’t. As the steering column was sliced off, the engine hoisted out, the man lost consciousness, which was a relief. He was leaking blood from massive trauma to his legs, and probably wouldn’t survive. But in the ambulance, they still had a pulse. ‘Plasma,’ Sean snapped. She tugged the locker door, already reaching, then froze. ‘There isn’t any.’
‘There must be.’
‘There isn’t.’
They exchanged a shocked glance, then looked automatically at their patient. He was white and still. Without further thought, Sarah bared her arm, and began to insert a needle into her inner elbow. Unspoken communication had the paramedic leaping into action. As the blood flowed through the clear plastic tube into the patient, he glanced up at her. ‘Still got a pulse. You OK?’
‘Drive,’ she said, and grabbed the rail.
He drove.
She hung on, keeping the transfusion going, until they screeched into the emergency bay, and the needle was ripped from her.
‘Go home,’ the duty surgeon snapped.
Sarah had pulled a double shift, and blood loss on top of exhaustion was making her see double. On another day someone would have made sure she was OK, but there was no one to spare. By the time she made it to her flat, she was seeing black stars, images of the last victim still rattling around in her mind. Was he still alive? Had her action saved him? Christ, what a mess. It would have been kinder to have let him die. Maybe giving him blood was the last thing she should have done. If he survived, would he be grateful? She somehow doubted it.
Stations of the Soul Page 2