a cold sweat dampened his forehead. God, do something! Please do something!
The sudden blaring of the truck’s air horn caused all eyes to turn in its direction.
“I think the guy’s lost his brakes!” Adam gasped, his grip tightening on the steering wheel.
Terror seized Tavia’s heart as she watched the on-coming truck through the rear window. “He’s going to hit us! I know he is!”
“Adam! Pull off the road and let him by!” Jewel’s shrill voice echoed through the inside of the truck.
“I’m trying!” Adam screamed back, “but the embankment is too steep! We’ll flip over!”
Tavia wanted to watch, to make sure Adam would be able to get off the road in time, but she couldn’t. Her eyes were fixed on the rapidly approaching truck, sure they were all going to die.
Beck geared down, but the truck continued to barrel forward, ever closer to the SUV.
He’d lost control.
Forty tons of steel hurtled forward of its own volition like a heat-seeking missile, and there was nothing he could do about it but watch and pray.
Beck stared through the windshield at the fancy SUV just seconds ahead of him on the road. I sounded my horn. Why doesn’t the guy pull over? Try to get out of my way? He has to see me!
He sounded the horn again then glanced at the radio. What good would calling for help do? No one could help him now. He was all alone in the cab with a full load, careening totally out of control. He knew there’d be an emergency turn-off ramp down the road a couple of miles. He’d seen it hundreds of times. If it wasn’t for that SUV in front of him, he might be able to make it there.
“Get out of the way! Move it!” he screamed out at the top of his lungs as he gave a long, loud blare of his horn and waved one arm frantically across the windshield. “Dear Lord! Don’t let those innocent people die because of me! Help me!” he shouted out.
It’s too late! The realization struck him like a sucker punch as they rounded a curve. “If I hit these people, they won’t have a chance!”
He watched in horror as the distance between the two vehicles lessened, feeling helpless to do anything now but continue to hope and pray—no more in control than a mere spectator.
The brakes still weren’t taking hold.
Even the Jake brake wasn’t helping.
“Move it!” Beck yelled as he flailed his hand wildly across the windshield again. “Go left! Cross the road! Take the ditch! Take the ditch!”
The SUV made a slight move to the left, then a wild swing to the right, as if the driver was out of control and trying to compensate, then left again, but it was too late.
Much too late.
Beck white-knuckled the steering wheel as the truck rammed into the back of the vehicle, shoving it along as if it were a mere toy. He wanted to close his eyes, to pretend it wasn’t happening, but it was and he had a front row seat. Within seconds, his bumper was crushing the SUV’s rear end as easily as if it were a paper cup. The ugly sounds of the screeching Jake brake and crunching metal were deafening to his ears.
Beck clutched the steering wheel, holding on for dear life as his huge bumper pushed the mass of twisted metal down the road ahead of him, unable to do anything but ride it out and blame himself for going ahead and driving the truck after he’d suspected a problem. Although he could no longer see the passengers, he knew they must be in total panic.
The SUV continued to veer to the right, coming closer and closer to the edge of the road and the guardrail that edged itself along the deep gorge, the truck’s heavy bumper twisting the vehicle’s rear end around to the front like a bump-em car at a carnival. Beck maintained his death-grip hold on the steering wheel as if just by squeezing it he could regain some sense of domination.
But it didn’t work.
He gulped in a breath of air and released one hand long enough to wipe the sweat from his eyes. That guardrail would never hold!
While casting a hurried glance into the rearview mirror, Beck felt the cab begin to shift. Just as he’d suspected, the deadweight of the loaded trailer began to drift sideways, pulling him with it. “Oh, God, no! Don’t let it jackknife!” he yelled out, knowing nothing short of a miracle from God Himself would keep this from happening. The SUV was in the truck’s clutches, going wherever the eighteen-wheeler wanted to take it.
“Oh, Lord, if they go over the side, they won’t have a chance! Don’t let it happen! Please! Don’t let it happen!”
A shower of sparks shot into the air as high as Beck’s windshield as the SUV smashed sideways into the guardrail, still being scooted along at breakneck speed by the cab’s massive bumper.
Beck gasped in horror as the passenger in the back seat was hurled through a window into the air, tossed along the edge of the guardrail like a rag doll being discarded by an uninterested child.
He felt bile rise in his throat and thought he was going to vomit. “No! No! This can’t be happening!” If only he could do something!
Watching in what felt like slow motion, what he’d feared the most happened.
The guardrail gave way.
With nothing to stop it, the battered and beaten SUV straddled the rocky ledge for only a few feet, then plummeted into the deep canyon below.
Though nearly out of his mind with grief and guilt, and taking time for only a quick glance over the canyon’s rim, Beck continued to fight the truck as it rapidly cascaded down the descending road toward the turnout.
Then, as if it had taken on a mind of its own, the truck made a sudden swerve to the left, crossed the road and headed for the rocky embankment. That was the last thing Beck remembered.
Tavia couldn’t breathe. Something was filling her mouth and nostrils. She felt herself drifting in a swirling pit of darkness. Where am I? Why can’t I breathe? My head is pounding. Black. Everything black. Am I dead? Am I in hell?
Slowly, she tried to open her eyes, but the intense pain made it impossible, so she lay motionless instead, trying to put things together, staring at the blackness and the wisps of light that seemed to come and go in fleeting, erratic shafts.
“I think she’s coming around,” a female voice said. “I’m almost certain she blinked.”
“I hope so. They’ve been so worried about her,” another answered.
She felt a hand on her arm, shaking her gently. Hurt. I hurt.
“Can you hear me? If you can hear me, try to open your eyes.”
Can’t open them. They hurt. My head hurts. My chest hurts. Arm.
“She’s got to be all right,” a man’s voice interjected. “I’m not sure that woman would make it if they lost her, too.”
I hear you, I hear you. Tavia wanted to shout out the words, but they wouldn’t come.
