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Authors: Diem Burden

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BOOK: End of the Road (The Rozzers)
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He quickly ran off in the direction we had come from as Cat and I legged it to the rear of the truck. We left Smudge flapping over the beers in the truck, anxiously throwing cans out of the window.

We stopped and stared at the empty space behind the truck. The digger hadn’t just
fallen
off the trailer as we had feared; it had completely vanished, along with the trailer it was sitting on!

Cat and I looked into each other’s eyes without saying a word – we both knew that this meant even bigger trouble than we initially thought. We’d lost the
complete
trailer! The whole damned thing had come uncoupled. Cat bent down with a view to checking the truck’s towing eye; he had to know – had he failed to lock it shut with the securing pin?

The scream came out of nowhere and stopped him dead. Its volume was amplified by the absolute silence and darkness of the plain. It was right on cue and it scared the hell out of the pair of us. It was the most dreadful, painful, drawn out male scream I had ever heard. It came from the darkness, about fifty metres behind us.

We stared into that void as the nightmare was unfolding around us, acutely aware of just how isolated we were out there on the plain.

 

Part one of THE ROZZERS by DIEM BURDEN

o0o

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

 

The trailer and digger combination – about twenty tonnes in all – had obviously flown off the side of the empty road, landing harmlessly on the grasses of the huge, empty plain. There was nothing but rabbits for miles around here, so who the hell was screaming and why?

“Okay, so nobody passed us, but was there anybody behind us, Cat?” I asked.

“No, definitely not,” said Cat. “I’m sure I would have noticed.”

I believed him – Cat was a conscientious enough driver to be aware of what was behind him at all times.

The sergeant reappeared, his nervousness clear. “What the fuck is that?” he whispered.

Six eyes searched the darkness along the road, each of us wishing we were still at the church.

“Anyone got a torch?” asked Cat.

We both shook our heads.

“Shit,” he said. He took a deep breath. “Well, there’s only one way we’re gonna find out
who
that is and why the hell they’re screaming like that.”

I swallowed and looked at the other two. We nodded in unison, each drawing strength from the others. This is how I imagined war would be, as we set off at a ‘you go first’ pace into the darkness, none wanting to be the first to find the screamer; all completely terrified of what we’d discover.

I jumped – we all did – when, after about twenty metres, a large black shape loomed out of the darkness, at rest in the middle of the road. It was about as big as an old TV set, black and mangled. Before any of us could guess what it was, the scream came again, further along the road, closer now. We ignored the lump of metal and walked on –
it
wasn’t screaming, whatever it was.

About thirty metres further on a large black shape began to appear before us. The thing grew in size as we approached it, rising to about four metres in height and wide enough to completely block the road before us. It was digger - and trailer - sized.

“I think we’ve found it,” whispered Smudge, hardly breathing.

Another scream made us all jump, coming out of the black shape just in front of us. It didn’t stop this time – the casualty must have heard or sensed our presence. He wasn’t shouting for help as you’d expect someone in trouble to. He just screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

We stepped closer and, slowly, the image of a car’s rear end formed, protruding from the black mass before us.
So a car had passed us.
Unfortunately, it was now wedge-shaped, reduced to a squashed point at the front by the twenty tonnes of heavy metal lying across the top of it.

The front end of the car was buried somewhere under our digger, and still attached to the bottom of that was the trailer, now lying on its side across the road. I felt oddly relieved that the securing chains hadn’t actually come undone as initially feared. In fact, they had done an amazing job of remaining intact throughout this enormous crash.

We finally acted, as men do when there is no other way to delay the inevitable. We ran to the car, but we couldn’t open what was left of the doors. The screaming continued as we frantically searched for a way in, far more intense now. Or just closer.
Damned close.

The backhoe – excavator arm – was squashing the roof down at the exact spot that any front seat passenger would have been. There was only one scream coming from the car – there couldn’t have been two. The only way into it was through the smashed rear window, and Cat took the initiative and clambered into the backseat. I squeezed through after him.

We were two burly squaddies squashed onto a tiny backseat, one much reduced in size due to the impact. We could hardly move and had to bend down so as not to hit our heads on the crumpled roof. The feeling of weight bearing down on us was very real. Once inside, we felt around the dark interior.

My hands touched something warm and soft; the driver. We could feel him, but not see him; the darkness in the car was worse than outside. The driver was squashed so close to the lowered roof of the car that, if it hadn’t been for the noise coming from him, I’d have guessed he was dead. Fortunately, he proved to be very much alive.

“We need a light,” said Cat.

I searched the rear of the roof for an interior light and found it. I clicked the switch and, amazingly, it still worked.

Only now could we see what was causing the man to make so much noise. He was pinned into his seat, and not two inches from his face and the whole of his body was the squashed-down roof of the car. We couldn’t see his lower legs; they vanished under the weight of the digger.

“Help me, please, help me!” he cried, trying to turn his head towards Cat.

“It’s okay, it’s okay! Try not to move; you might make matters worse. We’ll get you out of here; just try to stay calm, okay,” said Cat.

The man was terrified and confused. “Where am I? Where am I?”

“There’s been an accident,” said Cat. “Help is on its way.”

I had five years of highly realistic first aid training to draw on and I should have been prepared for this, but those dolls and actors never screamed like this and their legs were always reachable. They were never in danger of dying in my hands like he was and that just scared the crap out of me.
Okay, okay, so what do we do? He’s going to die unless we help him; we’re totally alone and it’s up to us now. Come on! Think, man, think! Whether this man lives or dies depends on what
we
do next.

Breathing, bleeding, breaks and burns!
That’s it; the mantra that had been rammed down our throats year after year so that we wouldn’t forget. It worked; I hadn’t forgotten it.

Take it one step at a time, b
reathing
first. Check. Yes, he was breathing.

Bleeding
. Check. He was certainly bleeding; from his face, his arms, his hands, from everywhere!
Okay, keep calm; it’s blood, but it’s not pouring out, just seeping.
Not enough leakage to kill him, from what I could see. I glanced further down his body, to where his legs vanished under that huge machine lying on the flimsy roof. There was no way of knowing if they were still attached to him. For all we knew, he didn’t have any legs left and he’d be dead in no time, no matter what we did.

“Try the seat, Cat,” I said. “See if you can release it somehow, slide it back.” It was an automatic reaction, a desperate attempt to get a dying man out of a crumpled car.

Cat blindly groped around the base of the deformed seat for the release handle, but found it to be jammed. He eventually managed to force the lever open as we worked together, pulling on the seat. It was difficult to find a position to apply leverage, a bit like trying to push a small refrigerator door open with your feet, from the inside. I pleaded for the seat to come back, away from the oppressive weight of that digger.

The seat jolted backwards a few inches, causing the man to yell out in abject pain, tearing something awful inside of me. I fought the urge not to try again, but we had no choice. Fortunately for him it wouldn’t budge, but unfortunately, we still couldn’t see his legs.

I was pleased that we’d managed to release the pressure from his legs, if only slightly. Then I realised that perhaps we shouldn’t have done that; he might well bleed to death down there, and there would be nothing we could do about it. I didn’t want the driver to know this, but I did want Cat to realise it.

“Check for any bleeding around his legs, Cat,” I said. “See if you can get your hand down and have a feel around.” Cat didn’t need telling twice and tentatively checked around, squeezing his fingers into the gap between the man’s legs and the roof. The driver yelled at his touch.

“Sorry, just checking for damage,” Cat told him. He pulled his hand out and held it up to the light.

I dreaded seeing blood dripping from his fingers. They were red, but it was just smeared blood. I breathed out – we hadn’t killed him.

Okay, breathing and bleeding sorted; now for the breaks and burns.

Breaks?
Under the present circumstances, I didn’t think it mattered too much if the guy had any broken bones. He wasn’t going to be moved any time soon, and I was sure he wasn’t going to die from any broken bones, even if his legs were all smashed to pieces.

And finally burns.
He had no burns to worry about because there was no fire.
Fire?
I could smell the fuel; it was actually quite overpowering but I hadn’t been aware of it until that point. The whole car was sitting on a lake of fuel, gallons of the stuff having leaked from the impacted vehicles. If this thing did catch fire the poor bastard would burn to death and there’d be nothing we could do to help him. If we didn’t get caught up in the inferno and perish with him, we’d have to sit on the side of the road and listen to him die.

I wanted to panic – it was the easiest option, but I forced myself to focus. I knew the digger was full of diesel and there was no way diesel would ignite; I knew this for a fact. However, the car was full of petrol, as most cars were back then, and petrol does catch fire.
Easily
. As a POM, I was able to tell the difference between diesel and petrol just from the smell, but that basic skill failed me when I needed it most.

I silently and exaggeratedly sniffed the air at Cat’s face. He sniffed back and frowned at me. I shrugged.
Which is it?
He shook his head.
No idea
. We both understood that we were completely powerless at that point, and that we needed professional help and fast. I remembered we were not alone.

“Sarge!” I yelled out of the back window.

It took a while for him to reappear. He’d been with Donk, asking motorists to turn around and find a phone box in the nearby village and call for an ambulance.

“Sarge, we need serious help here! Driver’s well trapped and badly injured. We need fire and rescue and quick!” I considered telling him about the fuel too, but I didn’t want to add to the driver’s worries. Nothing could be done about that until fire and rescue arrived anyway.

“Need the first aid kit from the truck?” he shouted back helpfully.

I knew the box of plasters he was on about. “No, a waste of time; we need a medic and we need one now!”

“Hang in there; the ambulance should be well on its way. I’ll chase up the fire brigade!” He ran off back to Donk at the head of the line of traffic, briefed him and then ran to the other end of the road to Pizza and did the same.

We didn’t know exactly where we were or which village was closest. We just needed somebody to get to a phone and make the call. We didn’t know if any of the drivers were making the calls; none came back to tell us they had, because they couldn’t with the huge traffic queues that had built up. We just hoped they had.

Smudge briefly reappeared and asked if we were all right. We weren’t; we were very worried. It’d be at least thirty minutes before the first emergency services arrived at our isolated accident site. We honestly believed that this man would die before any help got remotely near us.

There was little we could do except to talk to him, keep him calm and offer some kind of reassurance. It was quite a task, trying to take his mind off the twenty tonnes of machinery lying two inches from his face, as fuel dripped onto the tarmac beneath us, mixing with his blood.

“Is there anybody we can contact for you?” asked Cat. “A wife or someone we can call to come here?”

That was good thinking; if the guy was to die, he might want to do it holding hands with the one he loved, and not a couple of terrified, sweating squaddies. I looked at the squashed passenger seat next to him and hoped she was at home.

He battled with his thoughts for a few moments, then spoke. “Robin; the name’s Robin.”

“You want us to call Robin?” I asked.

“No,” he said, fighting back the pain of talking. “It’s my name; I’m Robin...”

BOOK: End of the Road (The Rozzers)
11.91Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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