Now & Again Read online

  “Get us outta here!” Josh fought to free his tangled seatbelt.

  From outside, they heard trapped people start screaming. Both men caught the deadly shadows of airborne vehicles tumbling their way.

  “Oh, my God!” Kendall got it into reverse and tromped the gas. The pickup shuddered in protest and scraped hard against the concrete as it jerked backwards.

  That was when the deep throated call of a semi’s air horn cut through the noise. On the other side of the freeway, a massive, gleaming gas truck jack-knifed and started its slide toward the divider.

  Josh screamed. Kendall looked up just as a flipping Lexus SUV swallowed their view. He threw a useless arm up as it hit with an overwhelming crunch.

  Kendall and Josh were speeding down a wet freeway. They were okay again: no accident, no cuts, no air bags, nothing. A light rain pattered the windshield as wipers slapped methodically back and forth to clear it.

  Kendall gripped the wheel with white knuckles and glared. “Dammit! What is this?”

  “You have to do somethin’ sooner!”

  “What’re you talkin’ about?”

  “Something different. Right now!”

  “How is this happening?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Hey, wait…” He looked up, confused. “It’s raining?” He touched the windshield with a hesitant finger. “Josh, it’s raining!”

  “Huh?”

  Josh looked strangely at the streaming windshield. He listened to the wet drops drumming against the cab. How can it be raining? What in the world? No time for this! “Forget the rain! Change lanes! Now! Hurry up!”

  Kendall slashed left and clipped a black Taurus. The raging driver honked his horn over and over again. Kendall cranked right. A panel truck swerved and laid on his horn.

  “Make ‘em move!” Josh desperately looked around. “I don’t care what you have to do! Get us off this freeway!”

  Ahead, a sea of brake lights suddenly flared red. Josh screamed, “Too late!”

  “The hell with it!” Kendall spun the wheel and floored the engine. Tires smoked on the slick road. Other drivers dodged around him, or bounced off. The pickup did a 180 and narrowly evaded a sliding black Camry that would have rear-ended them.

  A sudden passenger side impact whipped Kendall into the dashboard. Caught off guard, Josh slapped his head against the side window and glass exploded in a halo of shards.

  The soaked freeway was filled with sliding and crashing cars. A van towing a trailer catapulted over the center barricade and vanished onto the opposite freeway. A furious blare of horns and a flurry of heavy crashes ensued from the other side.

  Inside the pickup, Kendall rubbed his bleeding forehead. Josh brushed at the pieces of safety glass stuck in his wet hair. Rain streamed across his face through the shattered window. In the distance, falling vehicles began to crush trapped ones. From somewhere, a semi’s air-horn blared. Josh stuck his face out into the downpour and squinted to see more clearly. Without warning, a black dump truck careened out of the rain heading straight for him. Josh fought his seatbelt. The massive truck swiftly filled the window. Josh yelled in terror as it ripped through the door with a sickening crunch.

  Instantly, Kendall and Josh sped down a sun-filled freeway in heavy traffic. The sun visors were down and the radio was playing country music. No death. No rain.

  Josh gasped for air and looked at his chest, surprised to be whole. “We gotta try something else!”

  Kendall grimly swerved back and forth, looking for a way out of his lane. “I am, I am.”

  Josh’s body shook as he looked around, clearly in shock. His voice stuttered. “Where’s the rain?”

  Kendall was angry. “I don’t care!”

  Behind them a blue van braked and honked. Kendall glanced in the mirror and did a double-take. “What the hell? Wasn’t it…red behind us last time?”

  “No, black or…” Josh was losing it. “Screw that! Just cut across the lanes!”

  Kendall swerved right but got a horn. Josh stabbed a look back. “Wait! Wait for the taxi…”

  “Taxi? Where’s that panel truck?”

  “Panel truck?” Josh did a quick check. “Now! It’s clear! Go! Go!”

  Kendall brutally veered right and swooped behind an airport taxi. Determined to continue right, he bulled his pickup through the traffic and brushed the nose of a shocked Ford in the slow lane. Ahead, a sudden sea of brake lights surfaced; all glowing red.

  “Dad!”

  “I see it.”

  Kendall madly snaked the truck through braking vehicles trying to escape the roadway. “Almost there. Hold on!”

  He jerked the wheel to get onto the shoulder, but he’d cut it too close. His truck’s tail caught the merest edge of the back bumper of a braking Honda, but the effect was cataclysmic. Their truck abruptly twisted left, went out of control, and flipped.

  Kendall was thrown up and down against his seatbelt as his world rotated: wheel, window, wheel, window. Josh’s head shattered the glass next to him and then struck it again and again, on each roll. Loose debris in the cab rotated with them as they tumbled over and over.

  Behind them, the freeway was chaos. Horns blared. Vehicles spun and crashed.

  A Cadillac glanced off a shuttle bus and then slammed into the divider. Behind it, an RV, towing a trailer with dirt bikes, rode up the Caddy and then ponderously tipped over the center barricade and fell onto the on-coming traffic. Horns blared from beyond the barricade as the havoc spread.

  Kendall opened his eyes to an upside down world. He was hanging in his seatbelt. His forehead was bleeding but gravity kept his eyes clear. Josh’s face was crisscrossed in lacerations. He grimly fought a twisted belt with one hand. His other arm hung limp and he was suspended above a caved-in roof and piles of safety glass.

  From outside, they heard the distant sounds of trapped people and falling cars. Kendall released his seatbelt and dropped in a painful heap onto the roof. He rolled to all fours and began to awkwardly crawl towards Josh when he heard the loud blast of an air horn.

  On the other side of the freeway, a massive gas tanker truck jack-knifed to avoid the growing pile-up. As the cab rolled over, the doomed driver pulled his air-horn, and the gleaming trailer slapped onto the roadway in a cascade of sparks. Broken cars were tossed aside or flattened as the trailer slid toward the center divider. Embedded steel supports inside the barricade sliced open the skin of the tanker when it slammed home. Gas spilled over the sparks and erupted into an immense concussion of vaporized fuel and fire.

  Kendall and Josh ducked, throwing their arms over their heads. A flashing avalanche of flame and truck parts swallowed their view.

  And now they were back in the quiet pickup, humming down the freeway in traffic. They screamed! They thrashed at their clothes! They were on fire! But they weren’t. They were fine. The truck was untouched.

  Josh cried and huddled in his seat, arms around himself, rocking against his seatbelt. “Please stop it! Please God! Stop it! Please!”

  “I was on fire!” Kendall looked wildly at his clothes and his hands. “I was – Josh? You okay?”

  “Make it stop! Please make it stop!”

  “How can I make…? Listen to me!” Kendall reached out and grabbed at him.

  His son pulled away. “No more. I can’t do it.”

  “We gotta beat this somehow.”

  “We can’t. We’re in hell.”

  “This is not hell. It’s somethin’ else.”

  “We’ll never beat it.”

  “If we don’t, it’s gonna keep happening.” Josh’s eyes grew wider. Kendall tapped the brakes and swerved looking for openings. “Josh? Answer me!””

  “What?”

  “Don’t freak out on me. At least now we know.”

  “Know what?”

  “How it all ends!”

  A yellow Jetta Sportwagen braked behind them and honked. Kendall whipped a look in the mirror. “Now it’s yellow? Weird!�
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  “What?”

  “Guy behind us. Stop saying ‘what.’ Tell me if I’m clear.”

  “I can’t do this.”

  “Yes, you can! Can I go yet? C’mon!”

  “This is crazy. It’s not happening!” Josh was frantic and weepy.

  “Get in the game!” Kendall shouted harshly. “Either you help me, or this’ll never stop! We can beat this.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “It’s better than crying!”

  Josh flinched, as if rocked by a blow. Shame and anger leaped across his face.

  Kendall was stone cold. “Now? Can I go? Check for me!”

  Josh clenched his teeth and flashed a look back and to the right. “A-Almost! Wait for…where’s that taxi?”

  “Can I go? C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!”

  “Yeah! Now! Go!”

  Kendall muscled the truck to the right. He ducked momentarily behind an orange Toyota and then, heedless of the dangers, slashed right again, clipping the nose of an older pickup. The surprised driver cramped his wheel to avoid a collision and rolled, tossing used furniture across the lanes. Cars behind him swerved and hit each other.

  Kendall glanced in his mirror. “Sorry.”

  Josh looked ahead and saw the brake lights flaring red. “Dad!”

  “I know. I know!”

  Kendall recklessly swerved around a braking car, barely missing his bumper. “Brace yourself.”

  He gunned the pickup off the freeway and leaped onto the shoulder. Gravel rooster-tails spouted behind him as the bucking truck howled up the steep embankment. Just below, the freeway chaos had begun.

  “Get your belt off now! You know it’s gonna twist!”

  The pickup smashed through shrubs and small trees. A mirror ripped off as they powered up the steepening hill toward a guard rail at the top.

  Josh struggled with his seatbelt as he was tossed about the seat. “Tryin’! Damn thing won’t work!”

  Kendall yanked off his own seatbelt. Unexpectedly, the bouncing truck scraped a boulder and skipped sideways in the gravel. Kendall tried to recover but it bucked a deep hole and suddenly ground out. The motor shrieked and seized. Kendall’s body flew from his seat and slapped the windshield. Everything crunched to a stop. The smoking truck groaned as it slowly tipped sideways, towards the driver’s side, and back down the embankment.

  Josh freed his belt. “Dad?”

  The truck tipped more steeply. Josh kicked his twisted door open and jammed his feet against its armrest to keep it ajar while he extended a hand back down to his groggy father.

  “Dad! Move it! You know what happens next!”

  Kendall heard a remote voice but couldn’t make sense. He knew he needed to move but he couldn’t remember why. From below him, an air-horn blasted a warning. Kendall jerked awake. He grabbed at Josh’s hand like a drowning man. “Get out! Out! I’m comin’! Out!”

  Kendall transferred his hold onto the center console in the nearly vertical world of the crew cab and let go of Josh’s hand. “Hurry!” He yelled as much to himself as to Josh.

  Kendall pulled himself up far enough to grasp the now dangling seatbelt in a death grip. The truck continued its slow motion roll over.

  Josh was poised at the door, waiting. Kendall furiously yanked himself up the belt with both hands and tackled Josh. They were both catapulted out the open door as the truck rolled away and tumbled downhill.

  Below, vehicles were smashing onto trapped cars and the jack-knifed gas truck slid inevitably toward the center divider.

  Kendall jerked Josh to his feet and shoved him ahead. “Up the hill! Now!”

  Josh didn’t hesitate. He raced off in a mad dash with Kendall right behind him. Both of them clawed and scrabbled up through the underbrush. Reaching the top, they felt the concussive whump of the tanker’s detonation and heard the roar rising behind. They leaped the guard rail together. A torrent of flame and truck parts howled by just above their heads and continued on into the air.

  The two men rolled wildly down the opposite side, with their arms swishing through the tall grass, to arrive at the bottom in a tangled heap. For a time, neither man did anything but gasp for breath and stare at the blue sky above them.

  Josh slowly propped himself up on his elbows and swallowed enough spit to lubricate his voice. “Is that it?”

  Kendall coughed and rolled onto his side. “Just wait.”

  Josh sat up. He checked his hands, front and back. “Wait for what?”

  “Hopefully nothing.”

  “You mean it’s over?”

  Kendall gently probed his bruised forehead and shrugged.

  Josh looked at him. “So, you were right?”

  Kendall painfully sat up and cocked his head to the side. “Always a first time.”

  Josh staggered back up the berm and carefully gazed over the guard rail, shielding his eyes.

  Kendall gingerly rose to his feet to follow but stopped. He grabbed wonderingly at his suit coat, holding out the sides. “Hey Josh, what the hell?” He swayed a bit on uncertain feet and looked at himself. “When did I put this on?”

  “What?” Josh looked curiously down the hill at him.

  “My suit coat! I took it off first thing before I got in the truck.” He shook his head and laboriously crawled up the hill after Josh, muttering, “That’s just nuts.”

  Together they peered down at the horrific devastation below them. The massive tanker fire raged across both sides of the freeway, its unrelenting flames roiling from the wreck in bloated orange waves. Thick black smoke swelled into a solid column high in the air. At the edges of the accident, injured people wandered aimlessly. Bodies and twisted cars were strewn everywhere. Faint sirens wailed a promise of help while the distant stutter of helicopters grew louder.

  “What just happened to us?” Josh asked, still staring downhill.

  Kendall tipped his head back following the column of smoke up into the air. “We survived.”

  “Did we?”

  “I think so.” Kendall puzzled at something he saw below him. He stretched higher on the brow of the hill and unconsciously moved his head forward as he looked more intently down the embankment. “Josh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What color’s my truck?”

  “What? Why?”

  “C’mon. What color?” Kendall’s voice had become hard. This was no idle question.

  Josh moved nervously. “Black…”

  “Yeah. Right. So, what color is…that truck?”

  Josh stared down the hill at their flipped and abandoned red truck. He blinked a few times and then his face went empty. “That’s not your truck.”

  CHAPTER 2:

  The Reivers Corporation headquarters building in Pasadena, Maryland presented a striking edifice; as well it should, since it was the expensive result of a spirited architectural competition. Seated on a forested plot of high ground within a manicured twenty acre campus, the unusual three-story, reflective skinned building commanded a pleasant view of Beards Creek to the west and Glebe Bay to the northeast. It was positioned perfectly to take advantage of its unique woodland views, and yet close enough to Chesapeake Bay for visitors to smell the sea. Perhaps that was why the owners of the large homes that used to grace the very private Burgh Lane fought so hard to keep their property. Still, with the high-level government contacts and deep pockets that Reivers’ founder controlled, it was only a matter of time before the fears of eminent domain convinced them to settle for the generous cash offer that was already on the table. Two years later, after the winning architect had executed his startling vision, there was not one shred of evidence that those unique homes had ever existed; even quaint Burgh Lane itself was gone.

  Only twelve miles southeast from Baltimore, Reivers’ corporate executives and their distinguished guests had easy access to major airports as well as the largest seaport in the Mid-Atlantic States. In fact, Baltimore’s Inner Harbor was once the second leading port of entry
for immigrants to the United States, a fact not lost on many of the world’s most prominent citizens as they made their own journeys to visit the powerful brain trust at the Reive.

  Unknown to many outsiders, and unappreciated, even by those who worked inside, the Reive had far more building beneath its grandiose surface façade than above. Indeed, there were other, equally expansive subterranean areas under all the other surface structures that dotted the acreage. Some of these lower floors, principally those in the main building, were relatively accessible to visitors and divided into the surprisingly diverse endeavors of the corporation, including medicine, process industries, energy, agriculture, literature and the arts, computer science, physics, archeology, general science, to name a few. These divisions were staffed by a panoply of highly paid, bright minds that efficiently churned out the many breakthroughs, insights, advances, and inventions that fueled the Reive’s staggering fortunes, and kept its New York financial firms supplied with fresh meat.

  The levels beneath these public floors, however, were accessible to only a select few. In fact, these deeper rooms were rarely mentioned, and certainly did not appear on any unsecured schematics or architectural renderings. Still, these protected catacombs were the very heart that pumped the oxygenated blood of Reivers Corporation. Without them, far more than a single company stood at risk, although no one fully comprehended how fragile the muscle had become or how uneven the heartbeat.

  * * *

  Deep inside a secure section of the main building, in a multi-storied open space nicknamed the arena, a series of low-toned computer alarms beeped insistently. Concerned technicians in white coats moved quickly among tall banks of semi-transparent, flat screen monitors. Each bright rectangle was mounted flush beside others, with the lowest one set at a height just under eye level, and the highest at about ten feet. These colorful walls of moving images faced each other across narrow corridors that marched, rank upon rank, until they completely filled the shiny tile floor of the arena. From one of the many second and third level balconies, the constantly changing walls of color and light below took on the appearance of a sparkling maze within which the technicians scurried like lost people searching for an escape. Though imprecise, the image bore a certain semblance of truth.