Bear, Greg - Dead Lines by Bear Greg

Author:Bear, Greg [Bear, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-10-30T15:42:47+00:00

CHAPTER23

AHUGE TRAFFIC jam had packed the 5 and spilled out onto the 10. Peter sat in his low, low seat behind a massive SUV—a Porsche SUV, he noted with a slight curl of his lip, built like a stack of shaved hockey pucks. Was nothing sacred?

He could not see ahead to know whether to push right and get off at the next exit. When he edged right to reconnoiter, he saw the surface streets were already jammed and that traffic was, if anything, moving more slowly there than on the freeway.

It took an hour for the never-ending conga line of red taillights to ooze like cold molasses to the interchange. Peter glanced at his watch—an old, scarred, gold-plated Bulova he had had since high school—and saw it was eight-thirty.

“Damn it,” he said, clenching his fists on the wheel. Helen would be at the house before he got there. He would not have food for Lindsey’s breakfast or ice cream for a late night snack. He was once again a loser, fulfilling Helen’s heartfelt expectations.

Suddenly, he hated Los Angeles, the freeways, his ineptitude for not foreseeing such a delay. He had lived here most of his life but had not in fact braved Friday-night traffic for years, his social life being what it was. Blame LA. Blame everything and everyone.

After ten long minutes of angry speculation, the Porsche finally crept around the slowdown’s dreadful cause. Traffic was snaking to the right. Purple flares created a proscenium around a stage of spun and crumpled wrecks, like gaslights for a theater in hell. Firefighters and police waved red-muzzled flashlights to get traffic to move along, move along. Two of the wrecks, still smoking, had been doused with white foam.

Despite his vow not to look, Peter stared, thought for one plunging moment Helen’s car might be among the ruins, he might see them trapped or on stretchers. Two covered stretchers were being lifted into a big square white van. Cars had halted to let an ambulance push out from the shoulder of the highway.

The wreckage fell behind and still the traffic did not let up. He endlessly shifted and pushed in the clutch and brought the revs up for first gear and let the clutch out and turned the wheel minute fractions of an inch, watching the temperature needle move closer to the red—it did that in prolonged slow driving. He crept along the last mile until he could get into second gear on the off-ramp.

Five minutes later, he pulled onto Pacific and breathed a sigh of relief, watching the temp gauge drop back to normal. Traffic here was light. He might make it.

Climbing into the hills, with less than a mile left to the house, the oil pressure pegged on zero. The Porsche made a desperate little grinding noise and coughed a chuff of blue smoke. The engine mercifully died. By dint of quick action slipping the car out of gear, he was barely able to coast to the curb.

The time was now 9:05.

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