The Sleep Part I: The Fan & The Things That Hit It

Chapter 3: About A Boy

“Help, please, help!”

I can’t leave the kid here, it could have been Darcy.

“Evie, what’s going on?” Darcy asks, making a grab for his blindfold. “Why have we stopped?”

“It’s nothing!” I say, and start pushing again.

I run across the bridge and almost roll the scooter as I turn onto the exit ramp. Darcy giggles as we pick up speed.  We reach the bottom and skid to a halt.

I hit pause on the iPod and remove Darcy’s blindfold. “Darc, I need to go and get something from in there,” I say, pointing toward the highway. “I… I… I dropped my sweater when we were on the bridge.”

“But Evie, won’t you get run over?”

“There aren’t any cars today. It’s really quiet. I’ll be back in five minutes.”

“Can I come?”

“No, I need someone I can trust to guard our new scooter from strangers, okay?”

Darcy perks up at this, he likes being treated like a grown up. “You got it,” he says, smiling.

I run along the sound barrier and reach a service gate. It’s padlocked shut, but there’s a fair amount of slack on the chain. I crouch down and squeeze through, out onto the grass bank of the highway. 

The scene looks even worse from here: the pile up, the disheveled arm, the blood from the SUV — but I don’t dwell on it. It’s too horrifying. I put my head down and run toward the boy, concentrating hard on the acronym from health class.

Dr. A.B.C: Danger, Response, Airway, something and something.

Right. Danger comes first. 

I force myself to look up again. The boys green sedan is reasonably stable on top of the delivery truck, even though its upside down. But the gas leaking from it is going to become a problem. It’s flowing toward the drain… Where the motorbike lies… on its’ side… battery sparking.

Great, so we’re very much in danger.

Response?

“Hey, are you okay?” I call ahead to the boy.

He completely freaks out. He cries and screams and bashes his fists against the cars back-window.

I guess that counts as a response… I don’t think I’ll bother with the rest of the acronym.

Finally, I reach the pile-up. The delivery truck looks taller now that I’m standing beside it. I take a deep breath and climb up the side the cabin, shimmy around onto the bonnet, and heave myself up to the roof. 

I freeze.

To get to the boy, I’ll have to crawl past the fronts seats of the car. Where the drivers will be trapped inside. Probably dead.

Don’t look, don’t look.

But I have to…

A man and a woman hang upside-down from their seat-belts. Unlike all the other unconscious people I’ve seen today, their eyes are wide open. Blank. Staring.

They must have been his parents.

I turn away and crawl along the roof to the back of the car. The boy is quiet, shivering, eyes wide.

“Hello, my name is Evie,” I say through the small gap in the window. “I’m going to get you out of here. Can you move?”

No response. 

“Hello, I’m Evie, what’s your name?” I put my hand up to the glass and he shies away.

Shit. I’ve got to get him out of there, and fast. 

I pull off my shoe, reach back and smash it against the window. My hand bounces away, my shoe drops to the ground and the boy starts screaming again. 

“Oh shitting, fucking, shit!” I curse, shaking my hand.

Okay, we’ll go with Plan B. But the boy will have to crawl past his parents.

“You need to go out that window,” I tell him, pointing to the front.

He backs away and looks at me like I’m mad, shaking his head frantically, arms crossed over his Sesame Street t-shirt. 

It seems ridiculous in this situation but I’m desperate.

“Sunny day, sweepin’ the…” I start singing through the gap in the window.

The boy looks at me. And starts humming.

“….Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street,” we sing together.

“Jin,” he says.

“Hi Jin, I’m Evie. Are you hurt?”

He holds up his arm, there’s a long scratch from his elbow around to his wrist. It’s bleeding a lot, but it doesn’t look too deep.

“Can you move your fingers?”

He can. “It makes it bleed more,” he says, and starts sobbing again.

“Jin, you need to crawl out and come with me. Quickly,” I say.

He points to the front, “Mom. Dad,” he stammers.

“Someone else will be along to get your Mom and Dad soon,” I lie. “I’m in charge of helping kids. My little brother is waiting for us. He’s your age. Come on.”

Jin crawls slowly into the front of the car, skirts around his mom, and squeezes through the window on to the van next to me, his arm now completely covered in blood.

I look over to the side of the highway. The pool of gas is only a few meters away from the motorbike battery. 

I grab Jin and together we slide down the windshield of the truck. I put him on my back and run like hell.

In true Mission Impossible fashion, the highway explodes just as we crawl through the gate.

 -

But unlike Tom Cruise, I have a panic attack when we get to safety, and vomit (again) in the bushes.