Dany Atkins - Fractured

But then another noise screeched out from the street behind me, as finally, for the first time, the speeding car began to apply the brakes. Still thrusting uselessly at the fallen chair I glanced behind me for the last time. Yes, the car was braking, but it was much too late.

The sight of the speeding vehicle was growing ever larger in the window, so close now that I could make out the frightened face of the young driver, his eyes wide in terror as the inevitable approached.

He really had thought he was going to make it. The road was straight, nothing was coming. He was invincible. He could do this. And then suddenly the bend was coming up, way faster than he had thought it would.

And even then he might still have made it, if it hadn’t been for the flaming setting sunlight catching and reflecting off the large plated window filling his vision like molten lava. He could see nothing, neither the curve nor the edge of the road.

He stamped down hard on the brakes and the car shrieked out in protest at his actions. Burning rubber filled the air, and still the car hurtled forward like a missile. The blinding reflection suddenly cleared and there, less than twenty feet away, he saw the terrified face of a young woman staring back at him through the window.

I never saw him coming. He must have moved at incredible speed to get to me. One moment I was trapped in this tiny space between the fallen chair and the window and the next two strong arms had appeared from across the table and fastened onto my own like a vice.

How he found the strength I never knew, but Jimmy literally hauled me out from where I was trapped and over the top of the table. I caught the look on his face as he dragged me across the clothed surface, mindless of the scattering bottles and glasses as I ploughed through them. His eyes were filled with indescribable fear and the tendons of his neck stood out like cables with the effort he was using to pull me towards him.

I grabbed onto him, trying to help, my feet scrabbling frantically over the cloth to propel me forward. Then from behind us I heard an ominously loud thump as the car left the road and mounted the pavement.

Jimmy threw me. That’s the only way to describe what he did. One minute I was half across the table and the next I was lifted up, launched and thrown like a rag doll, slithering down to the floor some feet beyond the head of the table. But that act of impossible strength and bravery had taken up the last precious milliseconds between the car leaving the road and crashing into the restaurant.

Jimmy was still standing directly in the path of danger when the window exploded behind him.

The first thing I felt was the heat. Something heavy was over my legs, trapping them under a weight of pain that burned like fire. And there seemed to be water everywhere, thick, salty water running freely down from my forehead, over my cheeks, into my eyes and mouth. I tried to cry out, but no sound came. There was nothing left in my lungs but smoke-filled whispers of vapour. Someone was screaming behind me, someone else was crying. I tried to turn my head and realised I couldn’t see properly with the sticky wetness blocking my vision. Tentatively I raised one hand to my head and attempted to rub my eyes. The hand came away covered in a slick red gauntlet of blood. All around me was a mountain of debris, so thick and dense I couldn’t see beyond it to where the crying and screaming people were. The car was also blocking my view, half-in half-out of what had once been the window, it was impossible to see what was left of the mangled vehicle, as the air was thick with a dense fog of smoke from the engine and disintegrated masonry from the front wall. I felt the shroud of glass over and under me and knew I must be lying among the remains of the window.

From behind me I heard the voices shouting frantically as masonry and rubble began to be moved and I realised that people were trying to reach us. Us. Not just me; of course not just me. Jimmy had been there when the car came through the window. Jimmy, who had left his position of safety and had come back to save me.

Ignoring the way the blood began to flow even faster when I turned my head, I managed to lift my neck an inch or two off the glass to look for him. The haze of dust and smoke was still too thick, but I thought I could just make out a shape some feet away to one side. There were huge broken masonry blocks and some long twisted piece of metal, which I guessed had been wrenched from the car, and they were all lying at a strangely skewed angle on top of a long white board. As my vision began to clear further, I realised that it wasn’t a board at all; it was what was left of our table. And the reason why it wasn’t lying flat against the floor, but was canted at that strange angle was that something, or someone, was beneath it.

Mindless of anything else, I flung out my arm, raking it in a desperate arc towards the crushed table and what must be beneath it. At first I felt nothing, and then the very tips of my fingers brushed, just for a moment, against something soft.

‘Jimmy!’ I croaked hoarsely, ‘Jimmy, is that you, can you hear me?’

No reply. ‘Jimmy,’ I started to cry, the tears cutting small rivulets through the dirt and blood on my face. ‘Jimmy, oh no Jimmy. Say something . . .’

The dust and debris had begun to settle a little and I could just make out what it was I had been able to reach. Jimmy’s forearm protruded at a strange angle from beneath what was left of the table. That was all I could see of him, just his forearm. The arm still looked strong and tanned, as it had a few moments before, when it had somehow found the strength to pull me away from danger. Only now it wasn’t moving. Long before the ambulances reached us, I realised that it would never be moving again.

CHAPTER 2

December 2009

Five Years Later . . .

The wedding invitation was propped up on the mantelpiece, almost hidden by a small bundle of bills and fast-food delivery circulars. I suppose I was trying to bury it, or something. Perhaps I’d thought that by not seeing it, I could then claim to have accidentally forgotten about it and somehow missed the date. As if that was ever going to happen. Of course I’d replied with an acceptance card when the invitation had arrived a few months earlier, but that had been easy, when the thought of going back to Great Bishopsford had seemed like something abstract that was going to happen so far ahead in the future that I didn’t need to really think about it. But now, when the date was only two days away; when I was standing in my tiny flat with a open overnight suitcase before me, I didn’t know why I’d ever felt that I would be strong enough to do this. To go back.

Abandoning my packing for a moment, I went to retrieve the small embossed card from the mantelpiece. ‘ Mr and Mrs Sam Johnson request the pleasure of your company at the marriage of their daughter Sarah to David . . .’ I ran my finger lightly over the raised scrolled handwriting of her name and knew then, as I had always known, that I had to go; that I couldn’t make some pathetic excuse and not be at the wedding of my best friend just because it was taking place in my old home town. And was it really the town I was scared of, or the memories that I knew were waiting for me there? Memories I’d schooled myself to bury deep and never allow to surface.

Still clutching the thick cream-coloured invitation, I raised my head to look at my reflection in the mirror above the mantelpiece. In my eyes I saw the truth; returning to the town was only half the problem. The greatest fear was how I would cope with seeing everyone all together in one place again for the first time in years, well almost everyone. A haunted look fell over my face and that seemed appropriate, for I knew it wasn’t a reunion with the living that was going to be so hard to deal with.