Chapter Twelve
Auralia
“Where do you think the speakers are heading?” Doli slid the phone into Auralia’s jacket pocket and zipped it up.
“Not home. They all live to the south. North is an interesting choice.”
“We’re heading toward the highway on the other side of the northern bridge, then?” Doli tapped the navigation panel.
“That’s what we planned, right? Find a BBQ joint?”
Doli narrowed the screen. “This takes us toward West Virginia.”
“Beautiful area, but nowhere near a population center. If I were running away, I wouldn’t head to the country.”
“Why’s that?” Doli asked.
“Think about your family. What would happen in a small population when strangers show up?”
“I grew up on Native lands. So there would be a group that went out to have a chat about why they were there and how soon could they be gone.”
“Yeah, those are different circumstances. But it’s the same in theory. In a small town where everyone knows everyone, an outlier takes on significance. You suddenly show up in the Bayou and we start wondering if you’re there to feed your dead wife to the gators.”
“That’s horrible. Does that really happen?”
“Could be. I know that Creed and Rou joined a group of search and rescue personnel who went to a pig farm to sift through the dirt in the hope of finding teeth. The police suspected the guy there of being a serial killer, and he’d strip the bodies naked and feed them to his pigs, then burn the clothes. They found a zipper in their fire pit.”
“Gross.”
“But a gator could do the same kind of damage. A few years back, we were down home for my cousin’s wedding, and everybody was all stirred up. This five-hundred-pound, twelve-foot alligator attacked a Louisiana elder. A man.”
“That one’s as big as the one that gave Gator his name?”
“Same size. And while Gator’s name makes it sound like it was kind of fun, it wasn’t.
They clamp on and put you in a death roll.
You’re not fighting your way out of that.
No way. The only reason my brother survived was that he had had a suspicion that he would need my daddy’s hunting knife, so he strapped it to his side in a thigh holster that thankfully had a release latch, so it didn’t just fall out as they were fighting in the water. Still, it was a close thing.”
“No shit,” Doli said. “And the elder?”
“Yeah, not so lucky. His best friend watched it happen, too. He tried to help. Got him out of the water and up on the porch. But the elder was bleeding out, and there were no phones in that stretch. So he jumped onto his hydrofoil and took off, which must have been terrifying. I mean the size of the beast that was in the water somewhere.”
“Can you imagine?” Doli asked.
“The best friend got to the volunteer fire department, and they went out with lights and sirens. But by the time they get there, the elder is gone,” Auralia said.
“Dead, huh? That’s a shame.”
“Nope,” Auralia said. “Just gone.”
“Is this one of your ghost stories?”
“No, you can look it up on the web. There was a big old alligator hunt by the folks in that area. It was just too dangerous, what with the family pets and children playing by the water.”
“And grown men,” Doli added.
“Exactly. So, they find the alligator and cut it open. Sure enough, they find human remains in its stomach.”
“How do families cope with that kind of danger?” Doli asked.
“Alligators don’t usually eat humans. They hunt something, then they stash it under logs and what have you until they rot, then take them out and eat their kill.
That guy was attacked after a hurricane, so the alligator’s caches were probably all empty, and he was extra hungry.
The same thing happened to Gator. Besides his natural woo-woo, Gator probably had his antennae up because even though he’d warned his commander, the cake eaters decided to continue with their scheduled evolution.
Gator was grabbed when he dove into the water in service to a fellow Marine with marginal swimming skills and no idea how to act in a swamp. ”
“Brave man, your brother.”
“Still married.”
“Yeah. Yeah.”
Behind their car, the locusts were swarming; people headed both left and right out of the designated parking space. While they popped a little extra gas as they hit the pavement, they quickly slowed along with the traffic.
Horns bleated as people realized they were trapped on the slope.
The rain was coming down now with enough force that Auralia adjusted her windshield wipers to the intermediate setting to see clearly. “We beat the clay pit.”
Doli lifted her camera with its long-range lens still attached, and she spun around in the seat to look out the back window.
“Not by much. This is the outer band, but the sky looks fierce. I’d be blaring my horn, too.
This guy is about to touch your bumper. And I’d say he was being an obnoxious asshole, but it looks like he’s getting pushed from behind.
People are stomping on the gas.” She turned back around and let her camera dangle from its strap.
“Yeah, people coming out of the bowl are freaking out and pushing everyone forward.”
“If they were smart, they’d keep their foot off the gas and give themselves some cushion. I say that once we get over the bridge, we find a good shoulder, pull to the side, and let them roar on by. You can get some footage.”
“We’ll lose Morrison,” Doli pointed out. “We don’t know why he’s driving away from his house.”
“True. Okay, scratch that idea.” Auralia sat a little taller in her seat, not liking that she was in a pack of panicked drivers. The next stretch, there was silence in the car until the bridge rumbled under her tires.
Doli craned her neck, looking out the passenger’s side window. “The river’s running fast and high. I wonder if it might just flood the dell after all.”
The sudden squeal that sounded like truck brakes came from out in front of them.
Doli grabbed her seatbelt to yank it tighter. “Incoming!”
Over the top of the hill on the other side of the bridge, a semi was sliding down the hill. Cab faced forward, his bed swung wildly from left to right, then decided it liked the northbound lane best and pushed the cab down the hill, crunching the mayor’s SUV and pushing into Auralia’s lane.
Auralia jammed on her brakes, but the car tailing her had left zero reaction room. She knew they’d get plowed. “Cover your face!”
What Auralia didn’t imagine at all was that the car with Morrison would try to evade the pile-up by pulling hard to the right.
The screech of metal against metal as his SUV scraped along the ancient railings was agony. The pressure of the behemoth of a vehicle, pressing against the structure, made the railings bow outward. Finally wedged between the mayor’s car and the bridge, Mrs. Morrison came to a stop.
And even though this whole scene played out in Auralia’s mind as if she held a film under a light and could investigate the action frame by frame, she knew this was happening in the blink of an eye because a piece of metal rotated into the air and then hung there as if suspended.
Auralia was sandwiched between the Morrison family car that she had jammed into and the car behind her, which had slammed into her bumper with what seemed like full force.
Unseen by Auralia, a car had been in front of the semi. It slid along the bridge, hitting the Morrisons from a front angle at the same time that Auralia slammed into the Morrisons from behind.
The SUV flew through the railing, arced through the air, and dropped into the river below.
Auralia was thrown forward. Her face was bright with the sensation of stinging nettles, and she popped back upright as her head hit the rest behind her.
Creed had adjusted it to be exactly the right height to prevent whiplash, she thought gratefully as she was thrown forward again against an empty airbag.
Doli swung her head toward Auralia like a dream-scape. Then everything popped into real time as Doli yelled, “We’re going in!”
The car rocked back and forth.
“You okay?” Auralia grunted.
“I had an acid facial from the damned airbag. I’m okay.”
They tipped down, and there was the river water churning below them.
“Brace!” Auralia yelled.
Filtering into Auralia’s assessment of the situation they found themselves in was an article her newspaper had recently printed. It reported that when the legislature allocated money to pay for long-overdue infrastructure projects, this bridge had topped the list for emergency funding.
This bridge was bad.
Like the “collapse at any minute” kind of bad.
They tipped up and they could see the sky and trees.
“Shit!” Doli screamed, reaching for the grab handle.
They dipped down, and there was the water.
Auralia held her breath.
There was a scraping sound beneath them, and that’s how the car came to a rest.
“Good,” Doli said. “Are we good?”
Auralia patted Doli’s arm. “Are your camera and bag still with you?”
“Yup.”
“Here’s a plan.” Auralia reached for her armrest and pressed the toggles on all four windows to open them.
If they were going in, they’d need an exit.
“You are going to very slowly move from the front to the back seat with your camera. Go out the window, over that other car, and get a safe distance up that hill so you can film.”
The car rocked forward another inch, and the undercarriage scraped again, sending vibrations through the cab.
Both women gasped and grasped.
“What about you?” Doli asked, breathlessly.
“I’m right behind you. But I have to get out from under the steering wheel.” Her phone sounded. “It’s got to be Creed checking on us. He’ll have equipment. So when you’re safe enough to text, can you let him know my situation?”
The car shifted forward another smidge, just enough to make Auralia’s gut clench.
She reached up and cranked her seat belt tighter and gripped the wheel with her elbows locked out.
She’d been over the edge of a river bridge a time or two, but she was always free jumping in a known area with friends in the water to help if help were needed.
And then she realized. “Doli, we didn’t break the rail. It was the Morrisons' car. They’re in the water. Tell Creed that, too. They’ll need a fast water rescue team.”
“They’ll need an all-hands-on-deck rescue team. This pile-up is crazy.”
Doli swiveled her cross-body strap so her equipment was on her back.
She stopped talking as she fully focused on getting out.
“Slow,” Auralia said with a level of calm she definitely did not feel. “You’ve got this.”
Doli was supple and strong, and she moved with the grace of someone who grew up climbing cliff walls and crawling through cave systems. Her toes found purchase on the dashboard, but she didn’t thrust her leg into it; instead, she moved her weight hand over hand on the backs of the seats until she could coil her fingers around the few inches of window that were still visible to Auralia in her mirrors.
“Slow and steady,” Auralia encouraged as Doli’s body was a silken ribbon being drawn from front to back.
Doli let her body bend at her hips as she thrust out of the window. As graceful as a yoga flow, Doli was brave enough to let her body fold at her hip joints.
From her side mirror, Auralia watched as Doli placed the flats of her hands on the glass-strewn road.
She walked her hands forward, slowly, slowly dragging first her thighs, then her shins out of the car.
Once Doli balanced her ankles on the lip of the window that extended past the door, she bent a knee, pulled it to her chest, and stepped down, one foot then the other.
Auralia’s car hadn’t moved an inch through all that. Maybe she’d stabilized.
Crouching, Doli sucked in a breath and panted as she came to stand beside the car. “Should I try to pull the frame back down?”
“I think we’re balanced. If you tip it at all, you might break the thread holding it in place. Text Creed and Gator, then get to work filming. I’m going to be slower than you were.”
Doli called out, “Doing it!”
And now it was Auralia’s turn.
She had to get out.
She would. She could.
It was simply a matter of sliding to the side and working her way to the back seat, then out the window.
Doli did it.
Auralia only had this extra step, and she could do it too.
But just in case she was going to take a car ride over the edge, maybe she should first get rid of the extra weight of the ballistic vest.