under the trailer, where the sturdy rear fender, designed to prevent damage to
loading docks, had ripped through the coachwork like a chain saw. Nora
Dunn was still alive but unconscious. Her new Cresta C99 was already a
total loss, its aluminum engine block split, frame bent sixteen inches out of
true, and worst of all, the fuel tank, already damaged by corrosion, was
crushed between frame members and leaking.
Snyder saw the leaking gasoline. His engine still running, he quickly maneu-
vered his truck to the shoulder and jumped out, bringing his light red CO2
extinguisher. That he didn’t quite get there in time saved his life.
“What’s the matter, Jeanine?”
“Jessica!” the little girl insisted, wondering why people couldn’t tell the
difference, not even her father.
“What’s the matter, Jessica,” her father said with a patient smile.
“He’s stinky!” She giggled.
“Okay,” Pierce Denton sighed. He looked over to shake his wife’s shoul-
der. That’s when he saw the fog, and took his foot off the gas.
“What’s the matter, honey?”
“Matt did a job.”
“Okay …” Candace undipped her seat belt and turned to look in the
back.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that, Candy.” He turned too, just at the wrong
time. As he did, the car drifted over to the right somewhat, and his eyes tried
to observe the highway and the affairs within his wife’s new car.
“Shit!” His instinct was to maneuver to the left, but he was too far over to
the other side to do that, a fact he knew even before his left hand had turned
the wheel all the way. Hitting the brakes didn’t help either. The rear wheels
locked on the slick road, causing the car to skid sideways into, he saw, an-
other Cresta. His last coherent thought was, Is it the same one that. . . ?
Despite the red color, Snyder didn’t see it until the collision was inevitable.
The trucker was still twenty feet away, jogging in, holding the extinguisher
in his arms like a football.
Jesus! Denton didn’t have time to say. The first thought was that the colli-
sion wasn’t all that bad. He’d seen worse. His wife was rammed by inertia
into the crumpling right side, and that wasn’t good, but the kids in the back
were in safety seats, thank God for that, and-
The final deciding factor in the end of five lives was chemical corrosion.
The gas tank, like that in the €99, never properly galvanized, had been ex-
posed to salt on its trans-Pacific voyage, then even more on the steep roads
of eastern Tennessee. The weld points on the tank were particularly vulnera-
ble and came loose on impact. Distortion of the frame made the tank drag on
the rough concrete surface; the underbody protection, never fully affixed,
simply flaked off immediately, and another weak spot in the metal tank
sprang open, and the body of the tank itself, made of steel, provided the
spark, igniting the gasoline that spread forward, for the moment.
The searing heat of the fireball actually cleared the fog somewhat, creating a
flash so bright that oncoming traffic panic-stopped on both sides of the high-
way. That caused a three-car accident a hundred yards away in the eastbound
lanes, but not a serious one, and people leaped from their vehicles to ap-
proach. It also caught the fuel leaking from Nora Dunn’s car, enveloping her
with flames, and killing the girl who, mercifully, would never regain con-
sciousness despite the blazing death that took her to his bosom.
Will Snyder was close enough that he’d seen all five faces in the oncoming
red Cresta. A mother and a baby were the two he’d remember for the rest of
his life, the way she was perched between the front seats, holding the little
one, her face suddenly turned to see oncoming death, staring right at the
truck driver. The instant fire was a horrid surprise, but Snyder, though he
stopped jogging, did not halt his approach. The left-rear door of the red
Cresta had popped open, and that gave him a chance, for the flames were
mostly, if temporarily, on the left side of the wrecked automobile. He darted
in with the extinguisher held up like a weapon as the flames came back to-
ward the gas tank under the red Cresta. The damning moment gave him but
one brief instant to act, to pick the one child among three who alone might
live in the inferno that was already igniting his clothes and burning his face
while the driving gloves protected the hands that blasted fire-retarding gas
into the rear-seat area. The cooling CO2 would save his life and one other.
He looked amid the yellow sheets and expanding white vapor for the infant,
but it was nowhere to be found, and the little girl in the left seat was scream-
ing with fear and pain, right there, right in front of him. His gloved hands
found and released the chrome buckle, and he yanked her clear of the child-
safety seat, breaking her arm in the process, then jerking his legs to fling
himself clear of the enveloping fire. There was a lingering snowbank just by
the guardrail, and he dove into it, putting out his own burning clothing, then
he covered the child with the salt-heavy slush to do the same for her, his face
stinging with pain that was the barest warning of what would soon follow.
He forced himself not to turn. He could hear the screaming behind his back,
but to return to the burning car would be suicide, and looking might only
force him into it. Instead he looked down at Jessica Denton, her face black-
ened, her breathing ragged, and prayed that a cop would appear quickly, and
with him an ambulance. By the time that happened, fifteen minutes later,
both he and the child were deep in shock.
Fast-Forwarding
The slow news day and the proximity to a city guaranteed media coverage of
some kind, and the number and ages of the victims guaranteed more still.
One of the local Knoxville TV stations had an arrangement with CNN, and
by noon the story was the lead item on CNN News Hour. A satellite truck
gave a young local reporter the opportunity for a global-coverage entry in his
portfolio-he didn’t want to stay in Knoxville forever-and the clearing fog
gave the cameras a full view of the scene.
“Damn,” Ryan breathed in his kitchen at home. Jack was taking a rare
Saturday off, eating lunch with his family, looking forward to taking them to
evening mass at St. Mary’s so that he could also enjoy a Sunday morning at
home. His eyes took in the scene, and his hands set the sandwich down on
the plate.
Three fire trucks had responded, and four ambulances, two of which, omi-
nously, were still there, their crews just standing around. The truck in the
background was largely intact, though its bumper was clearly distorted. It
was the foreground that told the story, however. Two piles of metal, black-
ened and distorted by fire. Open doors into a dark, empty interior. A dozen
or so state police officers standing around, their posture stiff, their lips tight,
not talking, not trading the jokes that ordinarily went with their perspective
on auto accidents. Then Jack saw one of them trade a remark with another.
Both heads shook and looked down at the pavement, thirty feet behind the
reporter who was droning on the way that they always did, saying the same
things for the hundredth time in his short career. Fog. High speed. Both gas
tanks. Six people dead, four of them kids. This is Bob Wright, reporting
from Interstate 40, outside Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Commercial.
Jack returned to his lunch, stifling another comment on the inequity of
daily life. There was no reason yet why he should know or do more.
The cars were dripping water now, three hundred air miles away from the
Chesapeake Bay, because the arriving volunteer firemen had felt the need to
wel everything down, knowing even then that it was an exercise wasted on
the occupants. The forensic photographer shot his three rolls of 2OO-speed
color, catching the open mouths of the victims to prove that they’d died
screaming. The senior police officer responding to the scene was Sergeant
Thad Nicholson. An experienced highway cop with twenty years of auto ac-
cidents behind him, he arrived in time to see the bodies removed. Pierce
Demon’s service revolver had fallen to the pavement, and that more than
anything had identified him as a fellow police officer even before the routine
computer check of the tags had made the fact official. Four kids, two little
ones and two teens, and two adults. You just never got used to that. It was a
personal horror for Sergeant Nicholson. Death was bad enough, but a death
such as this, how could God let it happen? Two little children … well… He