Sara Reinke - Backwoods

“Jesus,” he whispered.

With a hissing spatter, antifreeze began dribbling down in a frothy, steaming puddle from the truck’s splintered radiator. Nearby, another fluid began peppering down, slowly at first, then dripping more steadily—oil. He became dimly aware of a loud, droning BLAT; the truck horn. It rang out incessantly, as if someone had mashed their hand onto it and held it fast.

Moving slowly, keeping his teeth clenched as molten agony speared through his leg with every jostling movement of his shattered ankle, Andrew crawled out from beneath the truck. By the time he cleared the wreckage, the puddles of engine fluid had widened in broad circumferences, making him slip and slop for clumsy purchase against the slick floor.

“Dani,” he called out, his voice hoarse and warbling. With a grunt, he pawed at the step leading up to the driver’s side door, hauling himself up. Resting his weight on his uninjured leg, he pulled with all of his might, catching the side view mirror and door handle to support himself as he stood.

“Dani,” he gasped again, slapping at the door. The horn hadn’t stopped honking, which meant whoever was behind the wheel had slumped across it, either injured or worse. And because there was no other whoever in the garage to have been driving, that meant Dani had somehow managed to get into the cab and run Prendick down.

Groaning, he hooked his fingertips into the window frame and tried to drag himself upright enough to look inside. “Dani,” he pleaded, hitting the window now, leaving palm prints smeared against the glass in blood, antifreeze and grease. “Dani, open up. Can…can you…?”

When he fell, he fell hard, losing both his grip and tenuous footing simultaneously and crashing back to the floor. He barked his chin first on the fender, then again on the steel step, then crumpled into a heap beside the right front tire. His mind slipped again into a murky haze of pain-induced semi-lucidity, and when he heard the screech of door hinges from the opposite side of the truck cab, Alice’s voice crying out his name, frightened and tearful, he thought he was dreaming.

“Andrew!”

He came to being shaken, small hands clutching at his shoulders. His vision swam into bleary view, Alice’s face, her large eyes standing out in stark contrast to her alabaster skin and dark hair, which clung to her forehead and cheeks in messy, blood-smeared tangles.

“Andrew,” she pleaded, her voice choked and strained. Tears spattered in warm, wet droplets from her eyelashes and cheeks against his face.

“Alice?” he croaked. Not right, he thought, dazed. This isn’t right. You shouldn’t be here. You’re supposed to be gone. Long gone. You and your dad both.

“Andrew, please,” she pleaded, coiling her fingers in his shirt and tugging frantically. “I’m scared. Daddy’s hurt. He won’t wake up. Please.”

He felt his mind fade again, his eyelids droop, but when Alice shook him, it startled him awake again, and with a grunt, he shoved his elbows beneath him and sat up.

“Help me,” he groaned. She was a child, half his height and probably no more than a quarter of his weight, but she did much of the work and bore most of the brunt as he hobbled clumsily upright again. The moment he tried to step down onto his maimed foot, he nearly toppled again, and had to balance himself unsteadily between the truck and Alice until the pain subsided.

Beyond the crumpled front end of the truck, which looked like the lips of a menacing dog turned back in a snarl, he saw Prendick pinned at the midriff, his legs trapped beneath the mangled grill, his upper torso folded over the hood. Face-down, arms outstretched as if embracing the truck, he lay motionless, his uniform soaked with blood.

Jesus, Andrew thought. “Where’s your dad?” he asked Alice.

“In the truck,” she said. “He won’t wake up.”

Prendick had dropped his rifle when he’d been struck, and Alice brought it to Andrew so he could use the stock as a crutch. With Alice’s help, he managed to wrestle the door open and looked up into the cab. Moore slumped forward in the driver’s seat, his head turned to the side so he faced Andrew, his cheek mashed against the steering wheel. When Andrew managed to shove him back into the seat, the horn at last fell silent. Even without a medical degree, Andrew could see Moore was in rough shape. His nose had been broken, a swollen, misshapen mess. His lips were busted, his scalp lacerated, his face and shirt soaked with blood.

“We have to get him out,” Alice whimpered, tugging at Andrew’s arm, pleading.

How? Andrew thought, at a dismayed loss. The dash had collapsed around the steering column, trapping Moore’s legs. “I thought you left,” he said to Alice. “I thought your dad…he was going to get you out of here.”

“The door closed,” Alice said. “Daddy got it open but then it rolled shut before we could get out.”

With another pained grunt, Andrew grabbed the door and muffler stack pipe, hoisting himself on his good leg up onto the step again. “Moore,” he said, keeping one hand on the frame to keep his balance and using the other to reach beneath the shelf of Moore’s chin, fumbling for a pulse. “Dr. Moore? Can you hear me?”

Moore didn’t answer, but beneath Andrew’s fingertips, he felt a faint, thready vibration. Moore uttered a sigh, a moist, rattling, laborious sound. The steering wheel was big, raised enough so when he’d crashed forward at the impact, he’d caught it against his face and upper chest, probably crushing ribs.

“He’s hurt,” Alice moaned and Andrew glanced down at her. There would be no sparing her from this, no hiding or disguising it. No sheltering her.

Because I’m not going to be able to get him out of here, Andrew thought. Not without a hacksaw to cut his legs off at the knees.

“Listen to me.” Biting back a pained gasp of his own, he stepped down from the ruined cab of the truck. Sitting against the stool was not only a blessed relief to his wounded leg, but it put him down at the girl’s tearful eye level. “I need you to help me,” he said, cupping his hand against her cheek. “Can you do that, Alice?”

She nodded and he tried to smile, reassuring and calm. “Good girl. Do you remember the little bathroom where we made you a pallet to sleep? There’s a desk right beside it, Dani Santoro’s desk.” God, it pained him to say her name at the moment, because the last he’d seen, she’d fallen to the ground, having taken at least one shot from Prendick’s M16, if not more. He didn’t want to think about what that might mean.

“That’s where Daddy found the truck keys,” Alice said.

“That’s right.” Andrew nodded, still forcing bright nonchalance into his face and voice. It was working, he could see it in Alice’s face. He was acting calm, so her own anxiety was dissipating. “I need you to look around inside the drawers and see if you can find any more keys. These trucks are too smashed up to drive now. We’ll need to get another one.”

She glanced up at Moore, momentarily hesitant, then back at Andrew and nodded. “Okay.”

“Good girl,” Andrew said again, with a smile he didn’t feel.

He watched her scurry across the dark landscape of the garage, hands outstretched, her feet whispering against the smooth floor. Then he stood again, and, using the rifle to balance himself clumsily, leaned back into the cab.

“Moore,” he said, giving the older man’s shoulder a little shake. After two or three such attempts, Moore groaned, his eyes opening. His gaze was unfocused, pain-filled and dazed, settling in visible confusion on Andrew’s face.

“Alice,” he said in a warbling voice that dissolved into a sudden, sodden stream of coughs. Blood peppered his cheeks and chin with each forceful, painful exhalation, and in the aftermath of the fit, he slumped back against the seat, eyes closed, blood dribbling down his chin.