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

All he wanted was to sleep and to wake up thereтАУto wake up anywhere other than on the highwayтАУnot
to be pounding out the miles and watching the bumper in front of him. Jack wanted to sleep and to wake
up and to sleep again far away from the roads and horns. Far away from the zombie motion of driving the
car.

He lurched, bouncing his forehead against the glass. No telling how long he'd been asleep. It didn't feel
long. He squinted against the pain, then peeked over at Debbie. Her chin was down, eyes closed; her
hands loose on the wheel.
Too late, he jolted upright, reaching for her. Concrete whizzed inches from the side window. Metal
screeched. Sparks fired from the front of the car. Debbie shot up. Overcorrected.

The world keeled over and slowed as the car went sideways and rolled. Jack floated to the ceiling as it
crumpled toward him. Glass shattered into the passenger compartment. His arm broke first, a wet snap
above the elbow, then his shoulder. Then he hit the ceiling. And last, as the car rolled, he saw through a
red veil the semi bearing down, an avalanche of metal and momentum.


***


Jack's consciousness surfaced in the half-death in a white flash of agony, and through the shock
he thought, pain slows time. Agonizing second after second. He thought, terminal cancer victims
must hear clocks in their blood slowing down. Any minute and every minute an infinite reach.
Unstoppable and dispassionate. Waves lapping against the sand. Everyone like the first; none the
last. All bones crushed. All flesh mangled. Pain living forever. All of it over and over again. For
infinite time, his bones broke one after another, and like Prometheus, without healing and without
cessation, the bones broke again. He had no way to tell, nothing to measure it against, but the
crash seemed to replay for a thousand years.


***


"I'm sorry, Jack." Debbie held the wheel in one hand and touched herself with the other. First, her face,
then across her chest and onto her leg. "Oh, god, I'm sorry."

They passed under another sign, CarmilhanтАУ8miles/Alice MarтАУ104 mile/TitanicтАУ156 miles. On the
dunes beyond the cement retainer, isolated Joshua trees spaced themselves between long patches of bare
sand. Each like a mutant sentinel, holding mutant limbs to the brilliance of the white sky.

Jack felt his own arms, stretched his back. Nothing broken. Nothing even sore. "It's inevitable," he said.
It's not your fault. We're bound to get tired."

She shook. Her hands trembled on the steering wheel. "I can't do that again. It's not fair that I should
have to do that again."

Cars bunched up in front of them, closing the distances. Looking in the mirror, Debbie switched lanes,
away from the congestion. In a minute, they passed a four-vehicle pile-up, two cars, a cement mixer and
a bread truck. Broken glass crunched under their tires as they went by. Debbie looked away.