At least he had a sense of humor.
The truck was bouncing crazily along the edge of a dry gulch that went down a hundred feet, down to more sand and sagebrush, stunted pine trees, dogwoods, and dry grasses. A few times a year, Grandpa Luke had told her, it rained, and then the water would go rushing down the gulch, sometimes in a sudden torrent.
It was hard to imagine that as she gazed blankly down the long slope.
Then, without warning, the truck veered off the road.
Lana stared at the empty seat where her grandfather had been a split second earlier.
He was gone.
The truck was going straight down. Lana lurched against the seat belt.
The truck picked up speed. It slammed hard into a sapling and snapped it.
Down the truck went in a cloud of dust, bouncing so hard, Lana slammed against the headliner, her shoulders beaten against the window. Her teeth rattled. She grabbed for the wheel, but it was jerking insanely and suddenly the truck rolled over.
Over and over and over.
She was out of her seat belt, tossing around helplessly inside the cabin. The steering wheel was beating her like an agitator in a washing machine. The windshield smashed her shoulder, the gearshift was like a club across her face, the rearview mirror shattered on the back of her head.
The truck came to a stop.
Lana lay facedown, her body twisted impossibly, legs and arms everywhere. Dust choked her lungs. Her mouth was full of blood. One of her eyes was blocked, unable to see.
What she could see with her one good eye was impossible to make sense of at first. She was upside down, looking at a patch of low cactus that seemed to be growing at right angles to her.
She had to get out. She oriented as best she could and reached for the door.
Her right arm would not move.
She looked at it and screamed. Her right forearm, from elbow to wrist, no longer formed a straight line. It was twisted into an angle like a flattened “V.” It was rotated so that her palm faced out. The jagged ends of broken bones threatened to poke through her flesh.
She thrashed in panic.
The pain was so terrible, her eyes rolled up in her head and she passed out.
But not for long. Not long enough.
When she woke up, the pain in her arm and left leg and back and head and neck made her stomach rise. She threw up over what had been the tattered headliner of the truck.
“Help me,” she croaked. “Help. Someone help!”
But even in her agony she knew there was no one to help. They were miles from Perdido Beach, where she’d lived until a year ago when her folks moved to Las Vegas. This road led nowhere except to the ranch. Maybe once a week someone else would come down this road, a lost backpacker or the old woman who played checkers with Grandpa Luke.
“I’m going to die,” Lana said to no one.
But she wasn’t dead yet, and the pain wasn’t going away. She had to get out of this truck.
Patrick. What had happened to Patrick?
She croaked his name, but there was nothing.
The windshield was starred and crumpled, but she couldn’t kick it out with her one good leg.
The only way was the driver’s side window, which was behind her. She knew that the mere act of turning around would be excruciating.
Then, there was Patrick, poking his black nose in at her, panting, whimpering, anxious.
“Good boy,” she said.
Patrick wagged his tail.
Patrick was not some fantasy dog that suddenly learned to be smart and heroic. He did not pull Lana from the steaming wreckage. But he stayed with her as she spent an hour of hell crawling out onto the sand.
She rested with her head shaded by a sagebrush. Patrick licked blood from her face.
With her good hand Lana detailed her injuries. One eye was covered in blood from a gash in her forehead. One leg was broken, or at least twisted beyond use. Something hurt inside her lower back, down where her kidneys were. Her upper lip was numb. She spit out a bloody piece of broken tooth.
The worst by far was the horrifying mess of her right arm. She couldn’t bear to look at it. An attempt to lift it was immediately abandoned: the pain could not be endured.
She passed out again and came to much later. The sun was remorseless. Patrick lay curled beside her. And in the sky above, a half-dozen vultures, their black wings spread wide, circled, waiting.
THREE
298 HOURS, 05 MINUTES
“THAT TRUCK,” SAM said, pointing. “Another crash.” A FedEx truck had plowed through a hedge and slammed an elm tree in somebody’s front yard. The engine was idling.
They ran into two kids, a fourth grader and his little sister, playing a halfhearted game of catch on their front lawn. “Our mom’s not home,” the older one said. “I’m supposed to go to my piano class this afternoon. But I don’t know how to go there.”
“And I have tap dance. We’re getting our costumes for the recital,” the younger one said. “I’m going to be a ladybug.”
“You know how to get to the plaza? You know, in town?” Sam said.
“I guess so.”
“You should go there.”
“I’m not supposed to leave the house,” the little one said.
“Our grandma lives in Laguna Beach,” the fourth grader said. “She could come get us. But we can’t get her on the phone. The phone doesn’t work.”
“I know. Maybe go wait down at the plaza, right?” When the kid just stared at him, Sam said, “Hey, don’t get too upset, okay? You have any cookies or ice cream in the house?”