H
e turned off the country road to what I first thought might be someone’s long driveway. The branches of large trees hung over the road, and in the darkness, I could see what looked like abandoned fields.
“We’re pretty much in the middle of nowhere,” I said.
“It won’t be long,” he said.
“Until what? James, let’s stop and talk. You want me to hear your story.” I didn’t feel this would end well. The hairs on the back of my neck felt like they were doing the jitterbug, so I reached back to rub my neck. The movement caused Streelman to lift the pistol a couple inches off his leg.
My options were limited. He was doing fine steering with his right hand, leaving his left hand with the weapon aimed at me. I didn’t think anything I could do would be faster than his pulling the trigger. I silently cursed myself for getting into the car.
“Why did you tell the police that I killed Doug?”
“What? I didn’t? I didn’t know who did it.”
“Who was it that put you onto me? Was it LG? I always liked him, too. Never thought he would rat on me.”
“You’re making a lot of wrong assumptions.”
“Does it matter? I’m not going to be able to talk to them again.”
The road looked like it came to a dead end or maybe a tee intersection about a quarter mile ahead. A slender thread of relief drifted into me. At least the wait might be over.
“Just up here,” he said.
The headlights lit up the end of the road, and I could see that we were approaching a dead end. Thick underbrush blocked the view past the road. A couple large trees shot up high straight ahead in the darkness.
Suddenly, Streelman did the unexpected. He stomped on the accelerator, and the Nissan shot forward like a quarter horse coming out of the gates.
“James!”
He ignored me, staring straight ahead. I looked and saw we were bearing down on a large oak. The car accelerated past fifty miles an hour, bouncing on the uneven road. He had dropped the pistol and now gripped the steering wheel with both hands. At the last second, I reached over and yanked the steering wheel, turning the car to the right.
The car missed the tree trunk but shot through tree branches, bushes, vines, and tall weeds. I tried to shift the car out of gear, but things happened too fast. The car went flying off the ground, and despite the increasing darkness, I saw a small river below us. We hit the slope about ten yards above the water, tearing through small trees, logs, and a variety of boulders in our final descent into the water.
At some point the air bags inflated, smashing my head back to the seat’s head rest. Something broke violently through the front windshield. The entire motor assembly smashed back against my feet and shins. Something hit the roof above of the car, slamming it against my head. Streelman screamed.
I don’t think I lost consciousness, but I was dazed. The feeling of cold water rising up to my knees brought me out of it. My eyes took a second to shake off the blurry filter I seemed to be looking through. The air bags had already deflated. We stopped at a forty-five-degree angle with the front end of the car under water, possibly wedged into the bottom of the river. The back of the car began settling down, resting with the front of the car still at a slight downward slant.
The front windshield had cracked in a million places, making seeing out of it almost impossible. A limb of a tree, about two inches in diameter, had punctured the glass, the driver’s side air bag, and Streelman’s left shoulder.
“Streelman.” He didn’t answer. I studied what parts of my body I could see. Other than my wounded arm, I couldn’t see any other injuries. My face hurt, likely as a result of the air bag smacking into it. The dark water prevented me from seeing my legs below my knees. I couldn’t move them. If the damaged motor parts that had them trapped had cut me, I worried that the dirty river water would soon be infecting them. I felt the pressure against my legs and hoped that was a good sign.
The car suddenly slipped and went deeper into the river. The water spread up to my lower chest. I removed my seat belt before reaching over and doing the same for Streelman.
“We need to get out of here.”
He remained silent, but his head turned to face me. His eyes opened, startling me, but they looked like a blind man’s or a dead man’s eyes.
“Can you hear me? Streelman!” He didn’t respond, but his eyes fluttered and closed.
I leaned over to great a better look at him. His nose had a light flow of blood oozing out of it. The only other noticeable injury was the tree limb sticking into his left shoulder. A dark stain was spreading onto his shirt all around the branch. Even in the darkness, I knew it was blood. I stretched to feel behind his shoulder. The limb had not gone through.
Grabbing the limb, I tried to pull it away from him, but it didn’t budge. The limb extended out the front window for about three feet where it looked like it had snapped off its tree. Something bumped against the front of the car. With all the cracks in the windshield and the darkness outside, I couldn’t see what had struck the car. I hoped it wasn’t an alligator that had come to investigate.
I tried to open my door, but it wouldn’t move. My side window had cracked into a thousand fragments in the crash but remained mostly intact. A diagonal piece of glass had broken away from the top right section of the window. Kicking the rest of the window out would be easy, but I first would have to free my legs. I tried in vain before deciding it would be easier to move the seat.
Streelman coughed and gagged. His right hand lifted a few inches off the center console before dropping back down into the water.
“Streelman! Hey, snap out of it. We need to get out of the car.” He didn’t give me any indication he heard me. “Damn you, I thought you wanted to talk. Why did you go and do this?”
I reached down to feel for the buttons to move the seat backwards. To my surprise the seat didn’t have any. I hadn’t been in a car without power seats for a long time. Still, one doesn’t forget how manual seats work, so I pulled on the lever that allowed my seatback to recline. Other than slightly improving my comfort, the action was useless. I still couldn’t move my legs.
The water that covered our legs was pitch black in the darkness and already smelled of gas or oil. I reached into it in front of my seat to find the lever that would allow me to move the seat back. The part of the car that had been forced back against my legs only allowed the narrowest slit to reach my arm through. I forced my arm down, feeling a sharp edge of metal rip my skin. When I pulled my arm back, the metal felt like it dug in deeper, so I stopped, deciding to continue to reach lower and find the lever.
“West,” Streelman’s voice croaked.
“Not right now.”
“What happened?”
I ignored him, as my fingers finally wrapped around the lever. Unfortunately, my arm was pressed tight against the seat. My hand and fingers had to move the lever without any motion of my arm. The open space under the seat gave my hand plenty of space, and despite the awkwardness, I finally moved the lever enough to release the seat. It sprung backwards an inch or two. Not far, but enough to remove the pressure on my legs.
I lifted my arm up without tearing it anymore on the jagged edge of metal. My legs felt okay, so shook them as much as I could and wiggled my feet. Although it would still be tricky, I thought I might be able to squirm out of the car.
“I can’t move,” Streelman said.
“Join the club. Why did you do this?”
“I wanted to die. I think I will now, just more slowly.”
“I thought you wanted to first tell me everything.”
“Screw you, I lied. I wanted you to die, too.”
That surprised me. Maybe it shouldn’t have, because I always thought he might shoot me, but I thought he actually wanted to confess why he had killed Doug.
“We need to get out of here.” I thought of my phone and dug it out of my pocket. Water dripped from it.
“Does it work?” He sounded lucid, but spoke in a strained voice.
“No, we’ve had water up above our waist for a while.”
“Guess you don’t have any rice to put it in,” he started giggling. After a couple seconds, the giggling turned into coughing and gagging again.
“I’m going to try to get out, and then I’ll see what I can do about you.”
“I think I’m going to throw up.”
“Not in here.”
I tried to squirm up and off the passenger seat. I couldn’t. I again tried lowering the back of the car seat as low as it would go and even repeated the effort for a third time. It didn’t recline any further. If I had been made of rubber, it would’ve been an easy task, but my bones wouldn’t bend.
“It’s no use,” he said.
“I’m not giving up that easy.”
“I got you pretty good, didn’t I?”
“Well, you’re stuck here, too,” I said.
“I don’t mean that. Where I hit you, it’s bleeding again.” He actually grinned when he said that.
I touched the bandage above my eye but couldn’t tell much. My hand was already wet, and the darkness made it hard to distinguish blood from the dirty, dark water.
“If this is all a joke to you, why did you have to kill yourself and take me with you. What terrible sin are you hiding?”
“It’s no sin. It’s something Doug should have left alone. It was my business, not his. He turned something nice into something that would ruin several lives. He intended to take all my money, too. What did he expect?”
“That last part, I agree with you. I’m sure everyone will understand, so let’s get out of here,” I said, trying to sound sincere.
Reaching under the seat I tried to find a lever that might allow me to remove the seat from the floor of the car, but if such a thing was there, I couldn’t find it. I pushed against the section of the car that the accident had crushed against my legs, but it wouldn’t move.
“Can you move your legs?” I asked.
“Nope. Don’t want to, either. Hurts when I do.”
I figured the best way to free my legs would be to bust out the passenger side window and to crawl out, dragging my legs and feet up and sidewise. Doing that would prevent my having to bend my legs where they didn’t bend. It would still be a tight squeeze, but I thought it should work.
Not having a tool to use, I struck the damaged window with my elbow. The window cracked some more and bent out a little at the impact point. Feeling confident, I struck it again with more force. Part of the window popped out of the door, but my elbow extended out a small hole that it had made, and the safety glass still clung together around it, pinching into my arm when I tried to pull my arm free.
Cursing, I used my left hand to peel away the glass from my arm. Despite the darkness, I could see a dark fluid flowing out of the bullet wound. Spots of blood also grew in size where several pieces of glass had dug themselves through the first layer or two of skin. I used the side of my right fist to carefully pop out the rest of the window. One small, triangle shaped piece of glass remained in place at the bottom of the window. I wiggled it and tried to remove it but it wouldn’t budge. Too small to hit with my fist, it remained there looking like a shark’s tooth happily waiting for me to try to slide out the window.
The glove compartment wouldn’t open, and my search for any type of tool failed. I maneuvered my soaking wet cell phone out of my pocket again, and after once more verifying that it was dead, rapped it against the fragment of glass. I finally managed to break most of the glass away, but a small quarter inch of jagged glass remained. It looked a lot less dangerous than it had a moment before, but I figured it would still tear my jeans and maybe rip my skin if I wasn’t careful.
Streelman had passed out or died. I didn’t care which; my mind focused on escaping from the car. I tried the door again, but it didn’t budge. Getting out the side window turned out to be a lot more difficult than I imagined. My first obstacle was getting my head and shoulders out. The open window had enough room, but I had little leverage to use in lifting my body, especially with my legs still trapped. I had to reach out the window with both arms and use all my strength to slowly ooze my upper body through. At the same time, I tried to use my legs and feet to help, but the tight space in which they were trapped complicated things.
I managed to twist both feet and started my final push when all of a sudden, the car slid violently sideways pushing me ahead of it as the rear end of the car started to swing around in my direction. The water rose, and I felt my shoe get stuck on something as I tried to escape.