Pharmaceutical sales rep Elijah Green often referred to his silver Audi S3 as his mobile office. Considering the long hours spent and the many miles logged in the sedan, traveling between pharmacies, doctors’ offices, hospitals and outpatient clinics, his nickname had a certain inescapable logic. Unless he was taking a client out for a business lunch, the passenger seat of the Audi functioned as a mini desk, holding his samples trunk, laptop computer and an old-fashioned clipboard and legal pad. But he had a dashboard mount for his smartphone, which allowed him to see notifications of incoming calls and texts without fumbling in his pockets while navigating the highways and side streets of Evansville, Indiana.
If he received an important call, he’d pull over and answer rather than dividing his attention between the caller and the road. Some days he drove well over a hundred miles before heading home to Braden Heights. He’d seen more than his share of distracted drivers and refused to become one. They came in all shapes, sizes: chatting or texting on phones, eating fast food lunches out of paper wrappers cradled in their lap, applying makeup with the aid of a sun visor mirror, yelling at kids in the backseat to behave, even a few who’d spent too many hours on the road and dozed off at the wheel.
After a brief, hopeful flirtation with a Bluetooth earpiece—a gift from Brianna—in an effort to communicate hands free, Elijah finally concluded that phone conversations, no matter how they were conducted, remained too much of a distraction for him. During his one-week trial with the earpiece, he’d caught himself drifting into the next lane twice; on a third occasion, he’d been scolded by a passing motorist who laid on his horn for three indignant seconds. Elijah might as well have been dozing. Another time, he hadn’t noticed traffic slowing ahead in a construction zone and a tailgating situation quickly escalated to a near-miss fender bender. To avoid the collision, he’d stomped on the brake pedal and watched helplessly as his trunk, laptop and clipboard slammed into the dashboard. After that incident, he took the hint and tossed the earpiece into the dinged glove compartment.
Sometimes days on the road seemed like a war of attrition, or at least an erosion of concentration. And while he might joke about the car being his mobile office, anyone who carried a smartphone knew that possessing one of the miraculous devices, with constant access to email, text chat and voice calls, meant that the owner never left the office. Being on-call 24/7 was not always a blessing, but Elijah was particularly grateful for the freedom it allowed him these past few days. He’d made Brianna promise to text him whenever she had news. Sure his schedule in the field remained busy and hectic, but almost anything on that schedule could be rearranged. All it took was a few calls. Problem solved.
Naturally, her first text came during rush hour, while traffic maddeningly alternated between too slow through the bottlenecks and much too fast when the lanes opened. While slogging through the former, he’d turned on the radio to take his mind off of how slow so many cars could move in unison. The Stones’ “Mother’s Little Helper” was playing when his dashboard-mounted phone’s screen lit up to display the text notification. Considering his situation, he vacillated between recognizing the appropriateness of the song and believing it was far too cynical for a pharma rep to ever include on a playlist.
His gaze darted between the uncomfortably close rear bumper of the PT Cruiser in front of his Audi and the short text message on his phone’s screen.
“Gotta go!”
At the moment, he was stuck between lanes of slow-moving traffic, no opportunity to pull over and too risky to attempt a fumbled reply. He’d narrowly avoided one fender bender. Best not to push his luck. Instead he wondered why she’d waited so long to text him. He’d asked her more than once to text him right away. And she had promised, playfully offering to pinky-swear if he doubted her.
The phone chimed again. “Can’t wait!”
Frowning, Elijah jabbed his finger at the radio to switch stations.
Another text chime: “Sorry!”
Strangely, the new station was also playing “Mother’s Little Helper.” Hell of a coincidence. He was used to hopping between stations and hearing the same irritating commercial, those things were impossible to avoid, but what were the odds of both stations playing this old song?
He was mentally rambling, a familiar habit when his anxiety climbed, which happened when he felt himself losing control of a situation. Nothing he peddled in his samples case would treat that condition.
Chime: “Malik’s here.”
Fortunately, Elijah was nearing the end of the bottleneck. Ahead, he saw cars accelerating, the mass of metal expanding and flowing away from him at unsafe speeds, many drivers determined to make up for lost time. Today of all days, he could sympathize. As the PT Cruiser sped away from him, he pressed down on the gas.
Supposedly, Brianna’s brother was the backup plan, in case she couldn’t reach Elijah. She hadn’t wasted any time, though. She must have called Malik first, before bothering to text her husband. Maybe she thought Elijah would find his way home in time, but planned all along to have Malik take her. To keep her own anxiety under control. To be fair, her needs came first and his being there for the main event was more important than being the chauffeur.
Feeling control coming back into his grasp, he punched in a third radio station.
“Seriously…?”
Once again “Mother’s Little Helper” played on his car speakers. An earlier part of the song, enough of a change to assure him the programmed radio buttons still worked. But the same song on three stations at once? He shook his head.
Chime: “Meet us at LMC! If you can!?!”
Elijah decided to let the damn song play and risked a very quick text reply, a mere three letters, “OMW,” which automatically expanded to “On my way!”
After allowing himself this small infraction of his self-imposed rules, he leaned back in the driver’s seat and took a deep breath. Not that he’d been too worried about risking an accident for three letters’ worth of distraction, but simply to calm his own nerves. He still had quite a drive left, plenty of time to consider their life going forward. Normally, he’d pull over, review his schedule and make the few calls necessary to juggle the last few appointments of the day, but that could wait. And Brianna couldn’t.
His nostrils flared at the strong scent of cinnamon. Like some kind of weird, reverse memory association. He’d want to remember this moment, and now he would associate it with one of his favorite scents. Was his brain playing some weird trick on him? The symptom of a stroke?
Sudden movement reflected in the rearview mirror. His gaze darted there, expecting to see the approaching bumper of a car or truck whose driver had overestimated Elijah’s speed. Instead, he saw something dark and wretched rise into view, eyes black as coal under a foul mat of straggly hair. For a brief moment, he believed a homeless person had stowed away in the backseat of his car and had somehow gone undetected while he made his rounds.
Unspoken outrage on the tip of his tongue, he whipped his head around to face the intruder and before the grotesque face could come into focus, clawed hands flashed in front of his face, first blocking his vision then destroying it. Searing pain ripped through the flesh around his eyes—then utter darkness.
Instinctively, his hands flew from the steering wheel to his savaged face, and he felt the Audi swerve out of control, heard the protracted warning blare of a tractor-trailer’s horn and felt, for the briefest moment, a jarring, thunderous impact immediately followed by explosive white-hot pain throughout his body—