You could see the flames. Even in the middle of the afternoon, when the hot outback desert sun singed everything bright and skylit, the flames shot up like spouts from hell on the horizon. The cities were burning. And Officer Weston knew it.
His police scanner was dying. It crackled, desperately spitting out garbled, squawked chunks of mayhem as the airwaves jammed with electromagnetic interference. Murders. Rapes. Cannibalism. The choked voices didn't bother to mention arson or robbery or assault. In this new order they were petty crimes, less than loitering. The continued litany of horror broadcast by their numbed words lacked the urgency of a cry for backup. The flat, pithed timbre of their voice was indication they knew no help was arriving. Weston recognized the voices of his squadmates – Paton and Pearce, Johnson and Aspland. Methodically, they bore witness to the horror, the voices of condemned men desperately scratching a final proof that they once existed on the impassive face of time. Then the pop of gunfire, boots on bone, the thump of bodies beaten to pulp. Then silence. That flat, white noise of empty static, like the crackle of a roaring fire, far in the distance and inching closer.
The speedometer's needle jittered in the straining red at the very bottom of the gauge as Weston hammered on the gas pedal. His cruiser's frantically spinning wheels kicked up the clay. The airborne motes of dust stung his nostrils like pepper spray and battered his eyes raw. His throat constricted and his eyes welled with tears. It's the dust, he lied to himself, and sped on.
He willed his battered eyes to focus on the road. The blank, desolate outback extended in every direction. The horizon shimmied in the heat. A glint at the bottom of his peripheral vision distracted him. He glanced down.
His badge was still pinned to his chest. In the flat, insistent noon light it sparkled with eye-gouging brilliance. A jolt of shame cut through him. The scanner was silent now, its white noise mute testimony to a squadron devoured by anarchy. Except for him. Officer Weston, the coward who turned tail and ran when the shit hit the fan.
"I was the only mate still at headquarters," he said aloud to the empty car, in a voice choked with apology. "Today was my desk day. They was on patrol and I was right where I should have been." And so when civilization came toppling down the force's lone man left standing -- the only man on the force without a wife or family who would mourn him -- grabbed a box of ammo and the cruiser with the most petrol in the tank and headed for the hills. It would have been suicide, a 50-minute, gas-squandering drive, followed by certain death, if he'd headed into the fray. He knew that. Any man with half a brain knew that. His badge twinkled with blinding, demanding insistence at the rim of his vision.
He grabbed at his chest. The pin was stuck. Normally it took an unconscious second to fasten it proudly to his uniform each morning but his hands shook with remorse and the bone-jarring rattle of the speeding car. He struggled one-handed for a few furious seconds, then took his eyes off the road and wrenched it from his chest, hurling it out the window, watching it spin like a mote of golden light and disappear –
WHAM!
The collision blind-sided him from the right front corner and spun him around in a spray of glass. That horrible, dying animal sound of tortured metal let him know this was a bad one. His thoughts were ominously, bizarrely clear as the car spun in angry, bruising circles, etching wet looping streaks of burned rubber on the hot tarmac as he bounced around the car's battered interior like a rat shaken by a dog.
The hiss of the fractured radiator let him know the collision was over. It took his head a moment longer to acknowledge the spinning had stopped. He was staring out the window, at an entirely new patch of forsaken desert. The vista was separated into stained-glass panels by the spider web cracks that spanned the windshield glass. Water vapor and grey smoke steamed in angry geysers from the crumpled front hood.
Weston ran an astounded hand over his face. No wetness, no blood. He scanned his body for injuries. None, just the usual jackhammer bruise across his left shoulder and groin, proof the seatbelts had done their job. He gingerly turned his head from side to side. No whiplash, but he'd feel the tight injury in his neck after a night's sleep. Other than that, miraculously, wondrously fine.
He forced open the wounded door with a grind and screech. The seatbelt chime went off. Its polite melody sounded a ridiculous counterpoint to the catastrophe strewn before his disbelieving eyes.
He had hit a van. The vehicle was bent in half, like a twisted beer can. The tracks in the dust showed how it had tumbled end over front for several paces before coming to a smoking rest some hundred feet away, its wheels still spinning like an animal twitching after slaughter.
They had been trying to escape, too. The back hatch had popped open in the crash and all manner of suburban accoutrements had spilled out the back. Clothing, toys, sports equipment, coolers of snacks, cans of non-perishables, bedding. Signs of civilization spilled over the crossroads.
He hadn't seen the crossroads. He thought he had miles and miles of straightaway when he'd reached down to fumble with his badge. But now, looking at the scene, he was dumfounded that he could not have noticed. The junction was scribed into the dust with all the subtlety of a treasure map. He saw clearly how they had collided. They were approaching from the right angle. He hadn't stopped. He clipped them fiercely, and spun them out of control. Their top heavy van was no match for his low-slung cruiser. They tumbled ass over teakettle and spilled their junk. The X of the crossroads made the crumpled hulk of their vehicle look crucified.
Years of police training snapped him alert. He broke into a run towards the downed vehicle, realizing too late he'd sprained his ankle in the crash. The sharp jolts of pain went ignored as he limped to the van, wrenching the mangled doors open and frantically searching inside.
The man and woman in the front seats were buckled in but their restraints hadn't been as kind to them as they'd been to Weston. They hung limply from the straining belts, tongues lolling, necks at unnatural angles. The man wore a frown-shaped dent in his forehead, its source apparent from the bloodied upper rim of the steering wheel. The woman – God, she had been beautiful. Her cheekbones were high and her features fine and porcelain, but one half of her face was smashed like a shattered teacup and her blonde hair ran sticky and red.
Weston's legs dropped from under him. His battered knees' scream of protest as they hit the blacktop was drowned out in the tidal wave of guilt that washed over him. The fires in the distance were further away now, but they still burned with fierce desolation. Because of his carelessness, two people were dead. But all he'd done was hasten their inevitable demise. Watching the distant city burn incinerated any hope left in Weston's doomed heart. He uncocked the weapon at his thigh. The sun-heated barrel burned his tongue.
The wind ceased for a moment, and that's when he heard it.
A wheeze, like part of the car settling. But then again.
And again, with respiratory regularity.
He stopped. His finger edged away from the trigger.
He jumped up to the car. He pressed his ear close to the woman's mouth. Nothing. Scrambling over her, pushing her inert body to the side, he did the same to the man. The same wheeze continued, unabated, but definitely outside.
Weston scrambled outside. He frantically scanned the landscape. And then he saw it – oh God, how could he have missed it!
Lying crumpled among the bedding and toys and detritus scattered over the roadway was a twisted body. It lay there, sprawled in an unnatural tangle, baking in the sun. Through the wobbling waves of heat rising from the black asphalt Weston saw its chest rise and fall, but feebly, and with much strain.
Weston raced over. His heart surged with adrenaline. Please God, don't let me be too late, he prayed.
It was a young man. Tall and fine-boned. The same chiseled features as the dead woman, imparting him choirboy delicateness. The same golden hair . . . and the same sticky red stain at the temples. His breathing was gurgly and labored. Rusty, thin blood bubbled at the base of his crushed throat.
The youth must have been in the back of the van, unrestrained, thrown out in the collision. Weston knew the statistics for being thrown from moving vehicles. A bloodstained bundle of sleeping bags lay unfurled nearby. Maybe they had blunted the fall? Weston leaned over him.
The youth's eyes darted up like startled birds. They were as breathtakingly blue as the dry and cloudless midday sky. Seeing their uncomplicated beauty stirred something in Weston.
"Don't move, lad. You've had a spill." The youth's chest rose and fell in quick sharp jerks as Weston brushed his hair away from his neck. The bubbles of blood at the youth's throat frothed in panic.
"Shit." Weston swore, anxiety creeping into his voice. "Wiggle your toes for me, lad, can you do that?" The youth's feet twisted hesitantly inside his sneakers. Weston breathed a sigh of relief. No spinal injuries. Yet. But that throat injury – if he doesn't get turned over he'll drown, one lungful of his own blood at a time, the first person ever to drown in this dry and desolate wilderness.
"This'll hurt, lad. But don't cry, you'll just make it worse." He bent down beside him, his knee against the small of the youth's back. He placed his hands on each side of the youth's head. His meaty paws looked swollen and dirty against the youth's pristine skin and aristocratic features.
There should be two people to do this proper, he thought, and gave a silent wish that he'd do more good than harm as he kneed him in the small of the back and rolled the youth over to his side. The youth made no sound, only a whooshing whimper as his shattered airway gusted a trapped lungful of air. But his body shook with nascent shock and liquid welled in the gutters of his cerulean eyes. He inhaled through his nose, a tremendous hungry inhale, and most of the air made it to his lungs. Weston saw the color return to the youth's face. His skin glittered in the sun, as if coated with fairy dust. Then Weston realized it was just imbedded glass.
Weston ripped off his shirt uniform, tearing the sleeve into shreds with his teeth. An overturned cooler lay nearby, melting ice glittering, hot cans of cola beading in the sun. He grabbed a drinking straw and stripped off its paper wrapping. He scrambled around to the other side and dipped his shirt sleeve in the ice, dabbing at the youth's injured throat. The youth's skin jumped and his eyes squinted in agony. Powerless whimpers escaped his clenched teeth.
"I'm sorry, lad, I've just got to see what I'm dealing with here." The gouge at the youth's throat was ragged, but not deep. Its breadth didn't span far enough to the arteries fluttering in the thin skin below his jaw, thank God. The worst of it was that it was ill-placed, right across the larynx. Stop the bleeding and he'd pull through. But he'd probably never speak again. What caused it? A shattered and bloodied LP nearby, its glossy black shards melding almost invisibly on the asphalt, answered that question. He'd probably been idly turning it in his hands, sulking over whether he'd hear a favorite song ever again, when their cars collided and sent the edge right into his throat. A fresh surge of guilt sunk Weston's shoulders.
"I swear to you," he said, and his own voice caught when he said it, "this is the last time I'll ever hurt you." He took the straw, wrenched off the top portion at the accordion bend, and – wincing in sympathy – slid it into the gaping slit in the youth's throat.
The youth coughed and spasmed in reflex but Weston held his shoulders tight and wouldn't let the straw slip out of the youth's throat. "Don't do it," he cautioned. "Don't spit it out. You can breathe now. Come on, lad. Breathe." The words penetrated the youth's panic. His eyes got wide and frightened but his breath deepened and eventually calmed. Weston gently wound strips of his shredded shirt around the impromptu tracheotomy tube. "Let me know if it's too tight." The youth nodded, just barely. The cloth soaked with blood first but abated quickly. By the time Weston had completed his impromptu bandage all that remained was a rust colored corona around the rim of where the straw jutted from the youth's neck.
The youth's eyes shone with gratitude. Weston felt a warm glow, the first small stirring of joy he'd felt in a very long time.
Then those blue, blue eyes rolled back into his head and the youth went limp.