MARIEL

3~Squeeze My Hand~

Todd Caravan turned the knob to the radio drove his truck steadily down the interstate. The windshield wipers tapped beneath the sound of a country song on the radio. It was already dark. They had been driving for at least forty-five minutes, and the traffic had finally spread to a more tolerable distance. The Caravans were headed north, and they had seen multiple ambulances on two different occasions passing on the southbound route. Jerome had been right; the roads were icy and slick. The bed of his truck had fishtailed two times already, but he was still confident in his and Mary's driving skills. Mary had finally submitted to the idea of taking two cars, mainly because she knew his job as a police officer always came before his vacations. If they needed him, he was there. Todd took his duty very seriously.

Todd glanced in his rear view mirror. Mary was far behind him and it unsettled him. She had tried to keep space between her SUV and his pickup, but other drivers had seen that as an opportunity to cut her off and fill the space. It happened several times, and now he had no clue how far behind she was.

"Damn it," he muttered. He turned down the radio and reached for his cell phone to call Mary. He knew he would feel better if he could hear her voice. He was frustrated with himself, now uncomfortable with the idea of Mary driving by herself while pregnant in these conditions. Todd began to dial the number,

keeping one hand on the wheel and darting his eyes back and forth from the road to the phone. The car swerved to the left lane a little and a person passing in the left lane angrily blared their horn.

"Fine, fuck it!" He exclaimed, tossing his phone aside and returning his eyes to the road. Mary would be safer if she did not answer her phone anyway.

Red and white lights flashed as another ambulance passed on the southbound interstate. Todd watched the lights fade in his rear view mirror, wetting his lips nervously. His stomach growled. Two more hours of this, and neither had agreed on a place to stop to eat before they left. Mary's normal level of forgetfulness had gotten worse since her pregnancy with Esther, and Todd's career in law enforcement left him tired and forgetful as well, leaving it almost impossible to remember small details such as discussing plans before it was too late.

He heard the sharp, brisk vibration of his phone at the far end of the passenger seat where he had tossed it in frustration. If that was work, he would be angry. They would not even let him leave the state before they called him, could they?

Todd slowed the truck, keeping his eyes on the semi the short distance in front of him. He glanced towards his phone. It was Mary.

"Shit," he groaned, keeping the wheel steady as he reached slowly across the passenger seat. The phone slid back a little at the first touch of his fingers. The phone stopped buzzing and, heart beating, Todd glanced up quickly to make sure he was still a safe distance from the semi ahead of him. He was. Annoyed with the short reach of his arms, he took an abrupt, desperate grasp at the phone and secured it with his hand. Breathing a sigh of relief, he straightened up in his seat.

The semi had stopped seconds earlier. Todd was driving 60 miles per hour towards the white trailer of the semi.

His foot smashed against the brake pedal, his reaction too quick to give him time to consider the repercussions. The tires screeched as the truck slid unwillingly across the ice towards the semi and Todd swerved to the left lane to avoid the hit. The back of his truck violently swayed back and forth, fishtailing and sliding out of his control as he gripped the steering wheel with wide, desperate eyes. The truck spun, lights blurred, and it spun again as oncoming car horns shrieked into the cold night. Todd's body slammed against the steering wheel with a violent snap as the truck hit a minivan stopped alongside the semi he had avoided.

Everything stopped spinning. There was a brief second of complete silence. Then, the screech of oncoming tires. Todd raised his head quickly from the steering wheel to see a flash of headlights. The oncoming car struck the side of the truck and Todd's door dented inwards. The loud hit threw his body to the side and the seatbelt locked. He heard the screech of another car and saw, in horror, as it skimmed the ice and onwards into the end of the semitruck trailer. Glass shattered, and the front of the car crunched into crushed debris underneath the trailer. Todd gasped and covered his mouth. He glanced towards the interstate and saw many more oncoming headlights. He unbuckled and, with sudden horror, remembered that Mary was in the group of those oncoming vehicles.

"Jesus, no!" He slammed his body against the broken door. Jammed. Todd flung open the glove box and retrieved his handgun. He shattered the window, broke the remaining glass from within and forced his body into the sharp, cold air. "Get out your car! You need to get out now, there's more!"

His body hit the top of the car that had struck his door. He crawled desperately to his feet and slid off the car and onto the road. He grabbed the handle to the car and yanked it open, pulling a sobbing white-haired woman from the car. Todd pushed her. "Get to the side of the road further up, go!"

He began to sprint, crying as he ran down the shoulder of the road. As a police officer, his normal reaction would have been much calmer, much more logical. But his pregnant wife was in one of those oncoming cars. He kept waving his arms, screaming at the drivers to slow down. He knew it made little sense, but he was desperate, on the cusp of insanity.

A car fishtailed and slid sideways down the ice. He heard the clap of metal behind him as it struck. A Jeep screeched across the ice, swerved, and flipped onto its side and continued to slide down the interstate. And then there was another car, and another, and another, mercilessly spiraling and crashing behind him, some sliding into the ditch on the other side of the road. A semi jackknifed, and the trailer detached. Then, he saw it... the vague outline of an SUV skidding towards the semi-trailer.

"Oh God, no."

The SUV turned sharply and whipped head on towards the ditch, but the car closely following t-boned its side and drove it speedily towards the overhang of the road. It flipped. Headlights flashed upwards and the SUV crashed down the hill.

Todd knew. He knew it was Mary, and a sob caught his throat. He screamed, looking for a space, any space to rush to the other end of the road. When there was a brief moment in time, he scrambled across the road, slipping, sliding, crawling to his destination as tears streamed down his face. If there was one chance that he was wrong about the driver of this car...

The SUV lay on the passenger's side, wheels spinning. He could smell the gas leaking as he slipped down the hill. "Mary!" His voice held a frantic sound of question. He scrambled atop the SUV and tugged at the door. Breaths coming in gasps, he peered through the window.

It was empty.

He screamed, sliding off the car and whirling his head back and forth as he looked for his wife's body. How? Where? How?

He heard a cry and looked further down the hill near the trees. Crying, Todd sprinted toward the figure lying in a heap. Behind him was a lightning storm of flashing headlights as tires screeched and cars crashed down the interstate.

Todd came to a sliding halt before the person and saw with relief and fear that it was, indeed, Mary. "Mary, baby –"

She was gasping. Her hands grabbed at him. "Are – are you ok?" She took in a deep breath as tears trickled from her eyes.

"Are you? Mary, were you thrown from the car?"

An explosion echoed in the distance. Then another.

Her chest heaved up and down. "N-no. Someone –" She shivered and stuttered the next words. "Someone pulled me – pulled – car was – airborne-" Mary let out a sharp cry and clutched her pelvis. "Con – contrac...tions!" She began to wail.

Todd looked around desperately. The crashes had stopped, but the interstate was chaos now. Flames roared in some areas, people ran to and from cars, screaming and crying. The ambulance had not even arrived yet.

He looked back down at his wife. Out of stupidity, he had caused this chaos. Now he knelt at the bottom of a hill before his wife, who was about to give birth to a daughter who would be 7 weeks premature. Seconds earlier, his thoughts had been racing, but suddenly his mind was blank. Finally, clear. Just silence.

Todd knelt closer and grasped Mary's hand. "Mary," he whispered. "Squeeze my hand."