Pipeline (16 page)

“Something must have happened up front,”
Dylan said. “I don’t like this.”

“I can’t see in front of the van,” Susan
said. “But let’s hurry, maybe we can catch up, then go around
him.”

“No, don’t! It’s too dangerous, especially on
these back-roads.”

“I don’t like it either,” she said. “I’m sure
this is the same route that she and David had taken that
night.”

Dylan had figured as much, and now he felt
his heart sink down to his tingling legs and not for the first time
this evening. He tried to dial Leah back, as Susan followed
Sidney’s lead, flooring the Taurus’ gas pedal.

* * * *

Tracy shook her head, fighting off the
approaching slumber that was distorting reality into a dream-like
euphoria. It was happening again, and at this moment, her body
waged a full scale battle with her mind for a much needed reprieve.
Her body began its countdown toward sleep, while her mind fought to
focus on the road. Her hands gripped the steering wheel, baring
bone white knuckles.

The light shining from the dashboard became a
hot-white, blinding iridescence, blurring with the headlights in
the rearview mirror. She thought she heard a strange honking like a
horn, but it was hard to hear over the radio that had become a
voice of its own, taking command with a haunting tune she knew so
well.

Valentine is done...

Here but now they’re gone...

She tried to keep her eyes on the road, but
the light kept glowing brighter, and the smell of David’s cologne
became potent and unmistakable. Her sleepy eyes burned with
tears.

“David,” she said, her voice now a weakening
rasp. The song continued louder, but the power of the volume did
nothing to sober her. In the recesses of her subconscious, the song
merely became part of the dream state; it was David’s song.

Romeo and Juliet...

Are together in eternity...Romeo and
Juliet

40,000 men and women everyday...Like Romeo
and Juliet

The light was closing her eyes.

40,000 men and women everyday... Redefine
happiness

The swerve of the jeep was everywhere
now.

* * * *

“She’s all over the road!” Sidney yelled, and
pressed with his palm on the defective horn with all of his
strength. The jeep swerved, and it was as though Tracy couldn’t
hear them behind her, or didn’t care.

“Something’s happening to her up in front,
Sid, can’t you see it?” Again, Leah pointed to the light in the
jeep, the ghost light they could do nothing about. It was happening
without them, and they were powerless.

“Run her off the road, Sid,” Brett’s
desperate idea was the only thing left to do.

“What?!” Sidney scoffed.

“Off to the side, nudge her off to the edge
of the road, quick, before she gets...

* * * *

The jeep steadied again and as she glanced to
her right, she could see the light from the dashboard now
illuminating the shape of a figure, much like a ray of sunshine
unmasks a flurry of rolling sawdust in a shadowed corner. He was
sitting next to her. The light revealed more than his outline. She
could see the fullness of his lips, the shape of his nose, the wave
of his hair and a strange, sad, contentment in his eyes. His
eyes—she could almost see the blue of his eyes.

It was a dream, she thought, but what about
the jeep? Maybe it was all a dream. She could no longer feel the
vibration of the wheel beneath her fingers. She couldn’t feel
anything, but she could still hear.

Baby take my hand... don’t fear the
reaper

Her eyes forced themselves shut, and she
failed to recognize the sign before her.

CAUTION

SHADOW VALLEY CURVE AHEAD

She felt the pulsing beneath her feet and
popped her eyes open, seeing the real world roll out before her as
the sleep state slipped away. She gasped and moaned at a final
shock all too familiar. She squeezed the brake pedal hard with one
sleeping foot.

We’ll be able to fly... don’t fear the
reaper

The brakes screeched and squealed, and Shadow
Valley Curve loomed before the jeep’s headlights. The Cherokee
flipped in a somersault and flailed over a steel barrier, front
over back, down over the steep embankment. It twisted and bounced
and each hard landing of the now contorted death trap screamed
sounds of crushing metal, steel, and shattering glass.

It crash landed face down into the same oak
laden valley where she and David had met fate before. This time, it
wanted to meet only her.

Tracy Kimball was dead underneath the two ton
broken machinery, her hands still clutching the wheel as the blood
soaked her glass filled hair. And the radio played on.

Baby I’m your maaaaan... La La La La La

Chapter
Sixteen

They felt the
momentary heat of shock and disbelief grip their bodies, enflaming
them with an invisible torch as instant tragedy unfolded before
their eyes. The jeep had toppled and careened head over heels down
the fated embankment. They watched in stunned silence; the moment
they had strived to prevent played out in front of them like a
motion picture.

A vision of the last tiny grains of sand
slipping through to the bottom half of a completed hourglass
flashed inside Sidney’s mind.

“NOOOO!!” His caterwaul was steeped in shock,
regret, and defeat, a drone that gushed forth tears of shattered
denial from the rest. There was no mistaking what they’d just seen.
It was real, not a dream. There was no clock to turn back, no
hourglass to reverse.

The wheels of the van screeched as Sidney
slammed the brakes and pulled over alongside the twisted steel
barrier.

“We have to get her out!” Sidney jumped from
the front seat, ignoring the admonitions of Brett and Leah to wait.
He carefully straddled the rail, and by the time they reached the
side of the embankment, Sidney was scurrying and skidding downhill
towards the toppled jeep.

Just as Brett and Leah were carefully scaling
the embankment after him, Susan pulled behind the van, wheels
screeching to a speedy halt. Her headlights shined on them as they
stepped over the guardrail.

She and Dylan could see that something had
happened ahead, in front of the van, and the nervous pleading of
prayers were uttered in desperate whispers. Their worst fears were
confirmed in the glare of the headlights: Tracy had gone over the
embankment and crashed... just like David.

“God, this can’t be happening!” Dylan said,
already dialing 911 from his cell.

“Wait!” Susan yelled out the window, and
quickly told Dylan what to tell the emergency operator. Like all
psychiatrists, she was also a medical doctor, and the unexpected
crisis she hoped would never happen had occurred. She sprang into
action, fleeing from the Taurus and popping the trunk, grabbing her
black medical bag from inside.

But deep down, she knew the bag would be
unnecessary, and a pain winced at her heart. She thought back to
first day she’d met Tracy Kimball in the nurse’s lounge, then the
night of David’s accident, the therapy sessions afterward, even the
frozen look of terror on her face tonight. She wiped all that from
her mind; she had to get downhill to the jeep.

* * * *

Sidney’s cries wailed up the embankment,
echoing through the wide valley much like Tracy’s had the night
that David died. He had tried to open the driver’s side of the
jeep, then turned, running toward the passenger’s side. Both sides
of the jeep were smashed in, the twisted metal of the doors melded
shut. He yanked hard, but the doors wouldn’t budge. He began
kicking away part of the spider webbed windshield that hadn’t
completely given way. The sounds of smashing glass and frantic
prayer went up in the night.

“Wait!” Susan yelled again. “Don’t move her!
Wait for me, Sidney. I’m a doctor.”

Sidney ignored her and managed to partially
pull the body from the wreckage. She was face down in his arms, the
blood and glass soaked and strewn through her long, brown hair.
Sidney screamed out again in desperation to the vast, starry
expanse above, cradling her in his arms leagues beneath Orion’s
belt.

The music from the radio continued to play a
fateful message.

She had taken his hand...she had become like
they are

Come on baby...don’t fear the reaper...

Susan and the others moved closer toward the
front of the wreckage where Sidney sat on the ground, clutching
her, a failed rescue illuminated by the still beaming headlights of
the totaled jeep.

“Sidney,” Susan said, touching his shoulder.
He wept in broken sobs while visions played a slideshow in his
mind: the apparition’s face and those cold, black eyes flashed on
his mental screen, followed by an hourglass no longer sifting sand.
The final grains had slipped away.

Susan gave him a moment. There was no point
in rushing—Tracy was gone.

The repeated wail of sirens blared, coming
closer. It had only been two minutes since Dylan had phoned, and
now the sounds of emergency usurped the radio and its continuing
performance.

Susan would ride with the ambulance and the
rest would give their statements to the police—as best they could
without divulging Tracy’s situation. Then they would fill out their
own reports with the society as to what really happened. There
would be questions, and there would be answers. But first, there
would be grieving.

* * * *

Thirty six hours had passed since the
accident and Sidney, who still hadn’t slept, forced himself to read
the headline of the newspaper’s afternoon edition. He’d been
avoiding it, and now he was the last to flinch from its eerie,
enigmatic truth.

Shadow Valley Curve claims former crash
survivor in ironic twist of fate.

Underneath the headline was a picture of
Shadow Valley Curve taken that morning once the sun had set, and
the car and the body had been removed, and the only thing to remain
was the black and yellow police tape cordoning off the stricken
guardrail. The caption under the photo mentioned that the well
known hazardous spot had claimed yet another life, now a total of
six victims in the past twenty years.

Sidney threw the paper across the table like
the rag he thought it was then lowered his head in sadness and
frustration. All, including Susan, sat around the long conference
table at the team’s campus headquarters. They had arrived back
after the day’s sad agenda, an event that shouldn’t have been.

Tracy Kimball’s funeral was an assembly of
friends, relations, colleagues, and high school chums all gathered
by unexpected bereavement, disbelief, and a shock that would linger
long after explanations were issued. They paid their respects and
grieved for the young woman they had considered a survivor. Her
co-workers at the hospital exchanged glances at each other, looks
that secretly confirmed their silent suspicions that Tracy’s
drinking had escalated to a degree greatly underestimated.

Marcia Ross’s face displayed a wrenching pain
that distorted her features into a solid mask of hardened
confusion. Her diamond cut eyes had become red pools of bloodshot
tears and at one point, those eyes had cast a frigid glare at Susan
Logan.

“When this is over,” Marcia said, referring
to the service. “I want to know exactly what happened in that
house. Do you understand?!” Her voice climbed an octave, causing
heads to turn and wonder, but Susan pacified her into a quiet hush.
“What am I supposed to tell them?”

Marcia had pointed to Tracy’s parents, who
had returned home for their daughter’s funeral. Jim and Sara
Kimball sat in the front row at the viewing, unable to take their
eyes off of their daughter who lay posed in permanent slumber, snug
in the peach colored, satin lining of a white casket. Both in their
early sixties, they seemed somehow younger.

Jim showed only traces of salt and pepper in
his hair and Sara’s youthful face seemed not much older than her
daughter’s. Their bewildered eyes stared in confusion, awaiting
some explanation, and when their eyes did divert, they shot around
at each unfamiliar face that entered the room, hoping one of them
knew what really happened to their daughter.

They wondered who these five people were that
had arrived together. The blond woman was a psychiatrist; she must
have been the one Tracy was seeing. They didn’t recognize the
younger people. Tracy hadn’t spoken of many friends outside of
Marcia, who was now talking to the psychiatrist. One of the young
men, the fat one, stared at them for almost a minute then quickly
turned his eyes away. Something was going on, and soon they would
discover just what that was.

“Let’s get through this,” Susan said. “We are
going to discuss everything when this is over... I promise.” Susan
continued to hold Marcia’s quivering hand as she burst into sobs,
and then Susan held her.

The service wasn’t long. After David’s
funeral, Tracy had been adamantly opposed to the old fashioned,
three day, death ritual that was most common. For her, it had been
torturous, and she had made this fact known.

The viewing was three hours, followed by the
interment at the cemetery where the preacher talked about how God’s
plan couldn’t be predicated, especially for his chosen ones. The
final moments of goodbye were cued by the singing of “Amazing
Grace,” unleashing tears and cries of rueful, early good-byes at
the cemetery.

The procession made its exit in a single
file, car lineup. Many drove to Marcia’s house for the gathering
afterward, but five of the most crucial guests had returned here,
to the team’s headquarters, where Tracy had originally sought them
out. They had to prepare themselves for the story they were about
to tell. What they had told the police was something entirely
different.