Undead at Heart (3 page)

“Damn, hold on.” He
turned back to the car and leant inside.

“What the fuck are you
doing?” she screamed at him. She pointed to the buckled front of his car.
“There’s smoke and shit coming out from under the hood – the… the… dammit
!…
the bonnet! It’s going to explode or something.”

He knew this. A quick
glance to where she was pointing showed him the increasingly dense cloud which
was emanating from the engine. Was that a flicker of flame he saw? But he had
to find his Blackberry. The rest could burn, or blow, or whatever the hell it
was going to do, but he needed his phone. It was his life.

He scrabbled around in
the car and finally saw it lying in the passenger-side foot-well.  He
dived over and scooped it up from under the bulge of plastic and metal which
used to be the door, and pulled back out of the car holding it in the air.
“Got it!
Let’s go!”

He dived past her and
starting running towards the crash barrier in the central reservation.

Nicola was
wrong-footed as the guy ran past her. Did he really just dive back into a
potentially burning car – definitely burning now as bright tongues licked the
sides of the hood – to rescue his cell phone? She stood still and watched him
run past her, not quite able to believe what she’d seen. He stopped just short
of the guard-rail and turned back towards her. “Well, come on then! It’s going
to blow!” He put a hand on the rail and jumped over.

Watching
the crazy man achieve the relative safety of the other lane and head towards
her car, and her daughter, brought Nicola back to herself.
She ran after him, once more simply
hurdling
the barriers, landed running and caught up
with him as they hurried towards her dark blue people carrier.

“What the fuck were
you thinking?” she
panted
as she reached him. He
ignored her, looking back over her shoulder. She turned and watched as the
flames took hold and the car started to burn. She had always thought that a car
on fire would explode and was slightly disappointed to see nothing more than
the fire working its way through the car. The seat where he had been sitting
was a torch now, burning brightly despite the midday sun shining down on it.
Then the backseat was aflame. And then –

The man grabbed her
arm and pulled her behind her car as the flames, which had found their way via
the upholstery, finally reached the tank. With a loud bang the back of the car flicked
into the air in a shower of metal and fire. A few small pieces of metal bounced
off the side of Nicola’s car, but the explosion seemed contained and almost
docile. Thick clouds of black smoke started rolling down the carriageway
towards the stationary cars that had managed to stop before running into the
car and truck combination.

As it went up, Nicola
heard a scream from inside her car and once more remembered Alyssa. God, what
kind of mother was she?! She pushed the man out of the way and yanked open the
rear door. Alyssa had already removed the seat-straps and was clambering over
to her. She scooped up her daughter and pulled her out of the car, cooing and
shushing in her ear, and retreated to the soft verge by the side of the road.

The man followed her
and she turned on him, “What the fuck were you thinking? Your car was going up
and you had to stop to pick up your phone! What, you going to take a photo of
it?
A self photo?
‘Me and my burning
car’?
It was nearly you
in
your burning car!
You
stupid fucking fool!”
She could feel tears trying to come, but damn if
she was going to cry in front of this asshole.

“Hey! Don’t shout at
me! I’m not the one who left my child in my car while I went chasing after
burning wrecks. I’d have been fine if you left me. I was just about to get out
anyway!”

“The fuck you were.
You were unconscious. If I hadn’t come over there
– ”

“And if it had gone up
when you were ‘saving’ me? What would have happened to her, eh? Didn’t even think
about it, did you? Had to be the big hero!
God, you
Americans, always storming in where you’re not needed!”

“I’m not American! And
anyway, she was safe inside the car. At least mine wasn’t on fire!”

“Well, you sound
American!”

Nicola was suddenly
aware that they were standing at the side of the road, screaming into each
other’s faces, Alyssa held in front of her like a shield to protect herself
from this crazy Englishman. Alyssa didn’t look upset by this shouting match, as
she might have expected, but was simply watching them, stunned. Nicola
stopped,
her mouth open ready to retort, and let it close.
She felt all the anger drain from her, taking her energy with it, and took a
stumbling step back.

“Yeah, well, I’ve been
away for a while.”

“Must have been a long
while, you really do sound American.” His voice had also dropped down to a
normal level.

“Fifteen
years, actually, so yeah, a while.”

The surrealism of
having this conversation while vehicles burned around them and crowds started
to gather, moving from their stationary cars to watch the flames, hit her and
she let out a laugh. The man smiled in return. She let Alyssa slide from her
arms to stand behind her. The girl held onto her hand, but didn’t seem to be
particularly distressed now she was free of the car, more curious. Her head
peered round the man to watch the flames from his car and the truck. Then she
looked up and down the road at the people and cars.

“Sorry. Sorry,” Nicola
said. “I guess I got a fright.”

He shrugged.
“You and me both.”

“Are you okay, though?
I thought the truck was going to hit you.”

“It nearly did. Turns
out my brakes are better than I thought. I skidded and I think I slid sideways
into it, or it slid into me.
Both, maybe.
Whatever.
It was a hell of a thump. And then there you were,
giving me another one.”

“Ha,
yeah.
Well, you
needed it, didn’t you?”

He gave a short laugh
and nodded. Nicola suddenly realised how young he looked. Poor thing, must be
scared, she thought.

She thrust out her
hand. “I’m Nicola.”

“Tony.” He took her
hand and shook it, and she he looked her up and down, so consciously that she
would have sworn she could feel it. She relaxed her grip and took her hand
back, resisting the urge to wipe it on her trousers.

“Well…” she said,
looking around them at the scene of devastation. There was no sound of sirens
or anything, but she imagined that it was too soon for that.

“Yeah,” was his only
reply.

They both looked
around and nodded for a moment, as though they’d run out of conversation at a
cocktail party.

“So,” she started
again, “What do you think happened?”

“Oh.” He seemed
startled by the question, but Nicola thought it was quite an obvious one.
“Well, there were some helicopters.”

“Yes, I saw them. They
flew over me. They seemed really low.”

He was nodding and
already speaking before she finished. “I saw one of them take a dive just the
other side of the trees. I guess it crashed on the truck and, I dunno, its fuel
tank must have exploded and catapulted it over the trees.”

She thought about it for
a moment. It sounded reasonable, but – “Would that be enough to throw such a
big truck in the air? I mean, your tank exploded and it just lifted the car a
bit, didn’t throw it over our heads.”

“Well, it could have
done. I was down to a quarter
tank
, and a truck’s tank
is so much bigger. If it was
full,
and maybe if the
helicopter exploded too…” He trailed off and shrugged.

“Well, maybe. But what
made it crash in the first place. Did you see anything?”

He shook his head and
looked around him again. Again she was reminded of a cocktail party but one
where he was growing bored and looking for someone else to talk to. She looked
too. More people had gathered from the increasing tail-back. The trailer was
still in flames, but they were dying down and she could see people and mangled
cars through the frame. The traffic on Tony’s side must have been lighter, or
more careful, as there wasn’t the same scene of wreckage. From the look of it
there had just been a few fender-benders.

Finally, after
standing in silence, she asked him, “What
is
that noise?” Over the sound
of flames she could still hear the strange whizzing and cracking noises from
behind the trees.

“Probably
ammunition on the helicopters exploding in the heat.”

That made sense, she
guessed, but she didn’t trust this answer either. The noise sounded too
electronic for that. It was more like something from movies or a computer games
she remembered.

She dismissed it and
looked back past the trailer. “It looks like people have been hurt. Should we
go and help. It feels strange just standing here.”

“We could, but there
seem to be plenty of people. We’d only be in the way. Personally I’d just like
to get out of here, find some way to get around all this mess and on my way.”

“What about your car?”

“It’s insured. The
police will find it when they turn up, identify it from the chassis number and
it’ll all get sorted. If I can get to a car rental place, I can get on my way.”

“But
your things.
Aren’t you bothered?”

He pointed to the car.
“All burned and useless.
I’ll buy more, no worries. I
have everything I need right here.” He held up his Blackberry and waved it at
her.

She nodded, not really
understanding how blasé he could be about all this.

“You’re not hurt are
you?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“And the sprog’s
okay?”

“The
what?”

“The
sprog.”
He
pointed to Alyssa.

“Oh.” She looked down
at her daughter, who was busy twisting the tassels which hung from the hem of
Nicola’s short jacket. “Sure, I think so. You’re okay, aren’t you, honey?”

Alyssa nodded.

“Okay. And your car
looks okay, too.
A little smoky, but intact.”

“Well, yes, I suppose
so.”

“Excellent.” He rubbed
his hands together. “So how about you drop me in the nearest town with a
car-hire place and we can be on our way.”

“What? Just drive away?
Leave all this? But shouldn’t we stay?”

“What
for?
What
possible good can we do here? Who can we help, tell me that.”

She shook her head.
Again, he seemed to be making sense but she couldn’t help feeling there was
more going on here than it appeared.

“I – I guess so.” She
pushed her hand into her pocket to look for the keys and then realised that not
only were they still in the ignition, but the engine had been running all this
time.

Tony moved quickly to the
passenger door, nodding at her, encouraging her, and she led Alyssa slowly back
to the car.

As they climbed in, he
was already staring intently at his phone, tapping away on the keys. He said
nothing as she settled Alyssa and climbed in herself. She looked around,
feeling very wrong to be just leaving the scene of this… well,
this whatever
it was. But she put the car into ‘Drive’ and
started forward.

They had managed about
ten yards when there was another huge explosion, this time from further away
behind the trees, accompanied by a strange whirring, whining scream. The engine
went dead and all the lights on the dashboard went out.

She heard
Tony say, “What the-,” and looked over to see he wasn’t responding to the
failure of the car at all, but was shaking his cell phone. The screen was blank
and all his shaking was doing nothing to bring it back.

God, the woman could
talk. Okay, so he was grateful that she’d pulled him from the car. He’d really
thought he was dead when he saw the truck sailing towards him. Some quick
thinking and fast reflexes had saved him, though, and he was sure he would have
been awake and out of the car in plenty of time, even without her assistance.

In fact, here she was
protesting about him going back in for his Blackberry, but if she hadn’t been
so damn pushy about him getting out of the car in the first place, he would
have remembered it first time round and the extra delay wouldn’t have been
necessary. Typical bloody American, he didn’t care what she said. Her accent was
a give-away. Born there, brought up there, it didn’t matter. Once the culture
got into them it was all fuss and bluster and getting their own way.

At least she had
finally seen sense. Okay, something weird was going on here, but he didn’t need
a flashing neon
billboard
to see that. He just didn’t see where that was
his business. He had places to be and people – well, person – to see. Really,
what good could they do by hanging round here? He hadn’t done any first-aid
since that one year in Cubs, and she had the sprog to look after. Even if she
turned out to be a nurse, what was she going to do, leave the kid at the side
of the road while she tended to the wounded? And there was no way he was going
to look after the kid.
All that screaming and moaning and whining?
No thanks.