"James van Pelt - Parallel Highways" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pelt James Van)

At mid-trailer, the truck's turbulence buffeted them and pulled them over. Jack leaned on the wheel,
keeping them in the center of their lane.

Debbie said, "That's the same one, isn't it?"

Howling, the trailer's front wheels passed the window in a blur of rubber and spinning metal. They were
beside the cab. Jack could see the foot rest and the bottom of the door. They were by.

Closing his eyes for a second, Jack breathed easier. The lane to their right was now open for a hundred
yards, as if no one wanted to be in front of the semi. Keeping one eye on the truck in his mirror, Jack
scanned the road ahead for junction signs. He couldn't remember how long he needed to stay on 57
before hitting 91. It seemed like years since he'd driven this stretch of road. Years of driving and driving,
but never arriving.

After minutes more, they caught up to the car that was immediately ahead of the semi, now a hundred
yards behind. Jack kept looking for the signs as they inched past.

"Oh," said Debbie. "That poor man."

In the car beside them, a yellow Volvo sedan with two little boys in the back seat, the driver was
wide-eyed and weeping. The man rotated his head left and right, and Jack could see in his face disbelief
and growing horror.

A newbie, Jack thought, and he remembered when he and Debbie realized they were trapped, how the
sickening dread had welled up inside them. The traffic wouldn't let them stop; there was no place to exit,
and they were trapped. They must have looked like this.

The man's face was pure anguish. He didn't even appear to see Jack and Debbie looking in at him, and in
the backseat the children played, two little boys with their heads down, studying something between
them. Maybe a coloring book.

What could they have done to deserve being here? The image of the children waking up in the half-death
after their first inevitable crash boiled up within him. A thousand years (it seemed) of pain and death.
What could they have possibly done?

Tears glistened on the man's face. He barely seemed to be paying attention to the road as he wandered
from side to side.

Jack felt a fist in his throat. He couldn't take his eyes away from the man. Then the car behind Jack
beeped, a short angry beep that said, "Keep up, buddy. You're slowing me down." A gap had opened in
front of Jack.

He checked his rear-view mirror. The driver behind beeped again, but what Jack saw was the semi
closing fast. The hundred yards was now fifty. Black exhaust streamed from the truck's twin pipes above
the cab, and the windshield glared like a rectangular sun. Directly in front of it, the unknowing newbie
waited to be squashed. He didn't see the traffic. He didn't see anything, and his boys played on.

Debbie saw it too. She looked at Jack.