Lloyd took a long drag off his cigarette and idly scratched at his beard. His fingers found a small piece of bread which he plucked out and inspected. He turned it over several times before he finally flicked it out onto the road. He looked back at his truck and muttered, "Piece of shit."
The logo on the side of the trailer flickered red in the darkness, illuminated by a series of road flares set up to warn oncoming traffic. The trailer was typical cargo container, 13.7 meters long and more than a little battered. The slogan splashed across the side read, "Maypole Pharmaceuticals, Bringing Peace to Your Spirits".
Lloyd hopped back up into the cab of his truck and picked up the radio handset, "Janet, you there? Any word on when we can get someone out here to look at this truck? I've been sitting here by the roadside for ages."
The voice that responded was gravelly but definitely female, "Yeah baby, we've got someone on the way out. You getting' lonely out there?"
Lloyd laughed, Janet flirted with all the men in the fleet but not many of them had ever met her. "Yeh, a bit darlin'. You want to come down and keep me company?"
It was Janet's turn to laugh, "Lemme just git on my hooker boots, I'll keep ya warm," she purred.
A huge grin split Lloyd's frazzled beard as he said, "That'd be nice, hell of a night tonight. I was afraid the flares were going out, it's damned windy tonight. You know how much longer Bella's gonna be?"
"She left the garage about an hour ago, so she should be practically on top of you now."
Lloyd's entire frame shook as he laughed out loud, "Between your boots and Bella being on top of me, I'm likely to end up in the hospital, girl!"
"You behave, Lloyd! I've gotta get off though, we've got other trucks coming in tonight that need unloading, they'll need me on standby. You stay out of trouble!"
Lloyd said, "All right, good night," and set the radio handset back on it's stand. The evergreens by the roadside bent and swayed and tiny shards of ice assaulted Lloyd's face. His beard closed around his mouth as the edges of his mouth turned back downwards. Lloyd hauled himself the rest of the way up into the cab and slammed the door closed.
It had been a while since Lloyd had run the engine to warm up the cab and the cold was beginning to seep in. He checked his fuel guage, it read three quarters full. Lloyd turned the key in the ignition and the truck roared to life. Lloyd turned the heat all the way up and leaned back in the driver's seat, listening to the steady rumble of the engine. Darkness tugged at the edges of Lloyd's vision. He checked his rear view mirror and then looked at the clock on the dash. Lloyd leaned back and closed his eyes.
A moment later the world shook and spun onto its side. Thunder crashed outside and the world went red. Lloyd was tossed around the inside of the cab, thudding heavily first into the steering wheel and then into the passenger side door. White hot pain ran down his arm and across his chest. Glass exploded inwards as the cab twisted like a dishrag being wrung out.
Over and over the cab rolled down the hillside, pieces being torn free as it glanced off the pines. A large shape flew out from the windshield and smacked into a tree trunk with a wet cracking noise. The truck continued on for ten or twenty more meters and then groaned to a halt. For a long time the entire forest was quiet except for the tinkling of glass.
The first sound was the hoot of an owl. It was followed by a warning chitter from a squirrel, and then silence set in again.
A shivering form groaned at the base of a tree. Lloyd tried to open his eyes and was only partially successful. His head throbbed and another pitiful moan escaped his lips. He could see out of his right eye a little, but it offered little in the way of information. All he could see was darkness and bark. He tried to wipe the blood out of his left eye and discovered that his right arm was pinned beneath him in between a rock and the tree. He tried to move his other arm and his moan suddenly became a scream.
From up the hill came a voice, to Lloyd it seemed to be the voice of an angel, "Lloyd!! Lloyd!! Is that you? I'm coming!"
Lloyd took two ragged bubbly breaths and said, "Bella.... I'm...." The forest went quiet again, and Lloyd closed his eyes.
When he finally reopened them he was in a hospital bed. The room was impossibly bright, every surface seemed as if it were illuminated from inside. Lloyd squinted and let his eyes adjust. The room slowly came into focus, the bleached surfaces gaining colour and definition. Lloyd panned his head slightly from side to side.
To his left he could see a curtain. Behind it he could hear muffled voices. He listened for a moment and realized that it was a mother talking to her son, her words were gentle and comforting. She was sniffling, as if she had recently been crying. Lloyd turned his focus to the other beds in the room, there were two others beside the one behind the curtain, one of which was empty. An elderly man lay in the other, tubes running at obscene angle in every direction from his body.
A shadow moved across the doorway and Bella entered carrying a coffee. She stumbled a bit when she saw that Lloyd's eyes were open. Quickly she moved to the bedside and said, "Hey, hold on a second and I'll get the doctor." She set her coffee down on the windowsill and turned to leave the room.
"Nurr..," Lloyd muttered. He found it was difficult to talk and realized it was because he had a tube of his own. It ran out from the corner of his mouth to a machine with what appeared to be an accordion inside. Bella stopped and turned back to face him. Slowly he forced out the words, "Wha.... wha..... hur....pen.... ooo.... mur......"
Bella's face went slack for a moment and her mouth hung open. Her eyes looked upwards for a few seconds and after some time she said, "Oh! Oh, I'm sorry Lloyd I didn't know... Anyway, of course, you want to know what happened to you!"
She moved another step away from him and took hold of a chair. She slid it across the floor until it was beside the bed. Bella sat down and leaned in close to Lloyd's ear. "They say your truck was caught in an avalanche. But I got there first, Lloyd, I was there before anyone."
She looked back over her shoulder at the door and continued quietly, "That was no fucking avalanche I've ever seen. Your trailer was torn to shit. There was a tree right through it. And not from the top like it fell, from the side. That fucking thing was right through the side like a javelin."
"Lloyd, they don't know what happened, not really. No avalanche I ever heard of tears open boxes and dumps out the stuff inside like that. And there wasn't really any snow anywhere, not on the road anyways. It was the weirdest shit I ever saw."
Bella had gone a little pale. She rose from her seat and walked to the end of the bed. She looked out into the hallway again for a moment and then pulled the privacy blind all the way around the bed. She came back over to Lloyd's side and sat back down. As she sat she pulled the chair even closer to the head of the bed. She leaned in and said, "But that's not all, Lloyd. There's something else."
She closed her eyes and whispered so quietly Lloyd could barely tell her voice from his own breath, "On the road, where the cab was, a tree was standin' there. But not just standin'. It's as if it had grown there... The pavement around was all cracked. It looked like the fucking thing had shot up out of the ground and pushed your truck right off. You wasn't hit by an avalanche, you was attacked by the trees themselves..."
Lloyd squirmed in his bed, shuffling upwards until he was almost in a seated position. He pulled his right arm out from under the covers and brought his hand up to his mouth. Bella gasped as he yanked the tube from his mouth. It was longer than she had imagined, and Lloyd gagged and coughed as he wrenched it from his throat. He sputtered a few times and said, "Get me a fucking doctor, I'm leaving." A thin trickle of blood ran down from the corner of his mouth and was lost in the coarse hair that surrounded it.
Bella's expression hardened. Her eyes narrowed as she said, "You're not going anywhere, you're broken." She leaned over and pressed the nurse call button beside the bed, "Where the hell you gonna go anyway?"
"I've got shit-tonnes to do and not much time to do it. I need outta this bed."
Bella remained firm. Her hand rested on his forearm and tensed, "What do you need to do? I can help out but you are staying right here."
"Bella, I need you to do me a favor. Call up the local police and find out where my truck is, I need to see it."
Bella shook her head slightly, "The government men came to clean up the mess. There were drugs all over he road, they had guys in suits there by the time I had hauled you up that hill. They put you in an ambulance and drove you here."
Lloyd rocked back and forth slightly for a second and his eyes drooped slightly. He let himself slump back down into bed and when he spoke Bella could hear a slight gurgle in his chest, "Bella, in the glove compartment of my cab there's a book and a box, I need those. You gotta get... Gotta," he took a deep ragged breath, "I need 'em. Could you just pull up them covers a bit?" Bella pulled the covers up over Lloyd's chest and shoulders and left the room to find a doctor.
Three hours later Bella left the hospital. She got into her tow truck and reached around behind the seat and grabbed a backpack. She unzipped it and reached inside. She pulled out a crumpled shirt and several pairs of panties before finally grabbing a box labeled, "All Nite: Wake Aids". She popped one of the blister packs and swallowed the pill that bounced out. She opened the glove compartment and put the opened box inside. She packed her clothes away and tossed the backpack over her shoulder.
She put her key in the ignition and started the truck. She backed slowly out of the parking spot, muttering as her truck squeezed past an SUV that had parked too close on her left side. She made her way to the parking attendant's booth and opened the glove compartment to get out her wallet. She rolled down her window and the attendant said, "Twelve dollars." She handed a twenty to the teen aged boy in the booth. As he counted out her change she reached back into the glove compartment and dug out another pill. Tonight was going to be a long one.