Chasing Tomorrow

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Chapter 1 

“The driver of that Buick is dead,” the sheriff said. His bushy gunmetal gray eyebrows flickered at the word “dead.” He tilted his head to one side and searched Danny’s dull blue eyes. “There is no coming back, son. You do understand that don’t you, boy?” 

“Hey, come on, man. Watch that, will you?” Lamar snapped.

The sheriff’s words echoed in Danny’s head.

There is no coming back. There is no coming back.

He got that. Danny Hughes may not have understood a lot of things, but he understood death was permanent. He understood once Rachel was gone, she was gone forever. He understood if Rachel died, he’d never be with her again - not as long as he was alive anyway. 

And that’s what scared him. 

“Y’all don’t give my boy enough credit,” Lamar continued. “It’s a miracle he walked away from something that.”

The sheriff nodded, recalling all the dead and grotesque horrors he’d seen throughout his years, mutilations to which no one should have to dutifully play witness. Indeed, it is a miracle. He surveyed Danny, wondering what made him so special as to walk away from an accident like that.

The accident was like something from a bad dream, a real life wide-awake nightmare (a concept with which Danny was quite familiar). Two automobiles collided on a path of inevitable destruction in what is commonly known as a “T-bone.” The offending car traveled at absurdly high speeds – torrential conditions notwithstanding. Days of unrelenting rains had turned lowlands into swamplands and highways into waterways. The ambulance arrived as soon as possible, but to those concerned it might as well have been an eternity. In life and death moments, every second counts. One paramedic quipped on the drive over that it would have been faster to come by ark. They found Rachel an unresponsive bloody mess.

Accidents are classified as “fatal” when someone dies as a result. If a victim is deceased at the scene, it’s DOA. The sheriff reported Eddy Hue Goin, the driver of that 1955 yellow Buick, as dead on arrival.

Eddy was only twenty-nine years old. He graduated Breighton High two years prior to Danny. He had been Danny’s tormentor in high school. He didn’t graduate because he showed sufficient academics, but rather because faculty didn’t want to put up with him anymore. Who could blame them? Eddy was always getting into trouble. Rules didn’t apply to him. Never have, never will. He did what he wanted when he wanted. Law enforcement came to know Eddy, too. As a juvenile, he committed petty crimes: stealing candy from grocery stores and vandalizing public property. As he became older his crimes became more egregious: robbery and assault. More than once, his girlfriends called the police on him.

Not ironically, on the day of the accident (and his final day of breathing) Eddy was running from the law. He wasn’t accused of assault and battery or robbing a bank, nor was there a warrant out for his arrest. Eddy was simply being pulled over for speeding. That’s when he got it in his head that it would be cool to outrun the law. He knew he could do it. He bragged of having a “modified jet engine” under the hood. He won street races all the time (some for money, most for pride). He was undefeated. And if he didn’t win this time (if, in the unlikely event, the sheriff actually caught up to him) Eddy figured he’d spend a few days in jail. Big deal. He’d done stints before. He’d be out by Tuesday. 

It was a short chase. The sheriff’s cruiser could not keep up. When Eddy’s Buick plowed into another vehicle, the sheriff wasn’t even a blip in Eddy’s rearview mirror. The sound of metal twisted and crushed into unusable scrap was described as an explosion by those within earshot, like a grenade maybe or a bomb perhaps. Witnesses had never heard anything like it - before or since. 

Rain beat down on Danny’s face through the broken window. He groaned, forcing one eye partially open, then the other. He blinked several times, completely unaware of how long he’d been out. Some of the glass shards that peppered his face and hair fell off as he labored to pull himself into an upright position in the backseat. He rubbed the nape of his neck and looked around still trying to gather his thoughts. He had no idea what just happened, only that it all happened in an instant. He had no memory of the vehicle spinning around and around, gouging wounds in the earth that wouldn’t soon heal before slamming into an unforgiving beech tree. He mindlessly looked around for a clue that would explain this carnage. Then, he saw it a short distance away: a mangled yellow Buick oozing toxic black smoke. The Buick had somersaulted and tumbled end-over-end before coming to a halt with a violent, muddy SPLAT. 

Still out of it, Danny turned his attention to the blaring horn. It was so loud. Deafening almost. How did he not hear it before now? Rachel’s husband was slumped against the steering wheel. Was he alive? Was he dead? It was impossible to tell from the backseat. Danny’s eyes snapped around to the passenger’s seat. A chill tingled his spine. His half-mast eyes were now wide open. She was gone! His eyes darted around, frantically scouring the area for a sign of her. Where could she be? His hands began to shake uncontrollably. Then, from the corner of his eye, beyond that wretched tree, he saw her: a lifeless heap, twisted unnaturally. Even the pelting rains took no pity on her.

Rachel had crashed through the windshield – narrowly missing the support post that, given a chance, would likely have sliced her in half. She rolled to a sloppy stop. The mud padded her spill, but there’s no question she had multiple fractures (which, doctors would find out later, would be the least of their worries). Rachel was bleeding. Profusely. Externally and internally. 

Danny cradled her body and comforted her as best he could. He gently rocked her back and forth. She was cold. So cold. He pulled shards of broken glass out of Rachel’s bloody scalp. Her thick brunette hair had become a dark red. Warm blood dripped into a cold puddle, creating a most hideous color. 

“Wake up, Rachel. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me,” Danny mumbled as he did his best to choke back the tears – just like Daddy used to order him to do. It was hopeless. His tears showered Rachel’s face almost as much as the rain. He wanted to wake her but wasn’t sure how. Why didn’t his rocking wake her? He pried one of her eyelids open: all white with just a touch of brown at the top. Her eyes were floating belly up.

“Sir? Let me take a look,” a man yelled. Danny didn’t hear him, nor feel the tapping on his shoulder. 

This was a true race against time - not just for the victims, but for those who came to help. Lightning was incessant. There was a constant threat of electrocution. Also, Eddy’s car wasn’t just billowing smoke anymore – it had erupted into a full-blown inferno. Any moment now, it could explode, firing shrapnel and toxic fluids in all directions.

Danny looked up at the man, unsure if he should let go. Though it was mid-morning, the dense clouds blotted out the sun, making it feel closer to midnight than sunrise. Lightning lit the stranger’s face like a strobe light, flickering between light and dark, on and off. Danny could see the man’s dark hair was actually light gray.

He looked to be around fifty, his eyes deep-set and desensitized. 

“Let me take a look,” the paramedic said gently loosening Danny’s grip. Danny realized the man was only trying to help – he risked life and limb just to be here, after all – so, with guarded trepidation, he allowed his hands to be removed. The paramedic placed two fingers on Rachel’s neck. If she had a pulse, she had life. Her skin felt cold. He couldn’t be sure if it was due to the cold rain or if she was fast approaching hypothermia. 

Thunder boomed overhead. A subsequent rumble followed.

Spectators began milling around. They kept a respectful distance yet inched ever closer. Despite the dangerous storm, the crowd continued to grow. Folks were eager to catch a glimpse of whatever they could. Every new onlooker asked the person next to them in hushed tones what happened. Only Mable Arnett, an elderly woman with wiry silver hair and wrinkles as deep as a Saharan elephant’s elbows, offered a theory: booze. She blamed it on the devil’s elixir. She hoped Nixon would once again make alcohol illegal like it was when she was young, the good ole days. She yammered on about it to anyone who’d listen, but no one paid much attention to her. They were more interested in watching Rachel’s husband being carefully pulled from the wreckage. They could only assume he was alive (just not kicking). 

“I-I can’t stop it,” Danny said apologetically. 

The paramedic held Danny’s gaze a moment, unsure what that meant. He looked down at Danny’s hand. It was applying pressure to Rachel’s abdomen. Blood oozed between his fingers. Danny couldn’t stop the bleeding. He’d never felt so helpless. Rachel had done so much for him, yet he couldn’t do this one thing for her.

Mable Arnett wandered over to Eddy’s ruins, curious why emergency services weren’t tending to him. Certainly he needed medical assistance, too, right? She let out a shrill scream. The sheriff hollered at Mable, demanding to know what she thought she was doing and ordering her to get back. He couldn’t care less about the grim image of Eddy’s mutilated corpse forever engraved in that woman’s vestal mind. To him, that Buick was a bomb. At any moment the flames could ignite the gas tank in a spectacle of flesh-charring fury if a victim was close enough. He figured it would have exploded already if not for the deluge of rain. 

“Get back! It’s too dangerous!” the sheriff repeated.

Mable heard him but could not comply. She couldn’t move a muscle (not even her eyes). She was petrified, her face a mask of sheer horror at what she’d found staring back at her - Eddy’s dead eyes, nearly squeezed from their sockets. His chest caved in, crushed under the weight of the Buick. Blood vessels had exploded like Hollywood squib packs, gushing from his nose and mouth. Someone grabbed Mable from behind and forced her away from the brutality.

Lightning emblazoned the dark, saggy clouds overhead. It didn’t take a child’s overactive imagination to see its shape resembled the outline of a hideous creature.

The paramedics slid Rachel onto a spine board then hoisted her limp body onto a gurney before covering her with warm blankets and fitting her face with an oxygen mask. They shoved the muddy-wheeled gurney into the ambulance. The elder paramedic jumped in and attempted to close the doors when Danny stopped him.

“Is she going to die?” Danny asked.

Another round of thunder boomed overhead. The sky might not be falling, but it definitely felt like it was getting closer.

“That’s not my call to make,” he replied then latched the doors shut. Sirens whirred and lights cut through the darkness. The ambulance sped away. Danny watched it become smaller and smaller before finally disappearing over a rolling hill.