Read Online Dead Voices by Rick Hautala - Free Book Online Page B

on this stretch of road?” Doug yelled. Elizabeth knew he was really angry at himself and his own half-assed driving, so she didn’t shout back, After glancing at Caroline in the backseat and reassuring her that mommy and daddy were all right, and no, they weren’t really arguing, she went around to the driver’s door, got in, and sat behind the steering wheel. She knew there was no convincing Doug.
    “ Now don’t go stepping hard on the Goddamned gas,” Doug shouted, frowning deeply as he leaned down and braced himself to start pushing.
    “ You mean don’t do what you just did, huh?” Elizabeth said under her breath.
    The car rocked back and forth as Doug shoved against it. With the driver’s door still open and her left foot out on the snowy ground, Elizabeth eased down on the gas, silently praying that the rear tires would catch and pull the car back onto the road, snow covered as it was; then — maybe — Doug would calm down enough so that she could convince him to head hack to Bristol Mills.
    What happened next happened so fast that it was nothing more than a fuzzy, black blur illuminated by stinging spikes of light.
    There was a sudden blast of flashing light in the rearview mirror. Turning, a scream already issuing from her mouth, Elizabeth saw bright yellow headlights, like the angry eyes of a demon, bearing down on her from behind. She yelled something — she didn’t know what — and turned just in time to see Doug leap away from the car. Something slammed into the rear of the car like a pile driver. Elizabeth was thrown forward and hit her head hard on the edge of the steering wheel. More lights. Brighter lights, exploded inside her head upon impact. and she was just barely conscious as the plow of the town highway truck scooped up the Subaru and carried it up and over the plow ridge as easily as if it were a Tonka toy.
    She heard shrill screaming, but she was never sure if it was her own or Caroline’s. All she knew was that — suddenly — she was flying through the wind-whipped snow. and tht:n her flight abruptly ended with a chill when she landed face-first in the snow.
    She knew she was screaming when she scrambled to her feet and watched, horrified, as the snow plow carried the family car down the hill and into the gully. The steep slope of the land was brilliantly illuminated by the truck’s headlights and bright orange flashers. The taillights blinked intermittently bright red as the driver pumped the brakes. It might have been the shrill whistle of the storm wind or the snow plow’s brakes, but Elizabeth was positive she heard Caroline crying out as the car and snow plow roared down toward the frozen stream. Caroline’s last words echoed endlessly in the raging blizzard-
    “ Mommy! ... Help! ... Mommy! ... “
    Elizabeth stumbled forward as though she were drunk. Her arms flailed wildly, punching back and forth as she labored to push her way through the snow in the wake of the snow plow. The bright orange flashers on the back of the truck painfully stabbed her eyes as she watched both vehicles tumble down in slow motion over the drop. She watched in horrified silence as the plow flipped over, and its full weight came crashing down onto the Subaru’ s front end.
    Elizabeth was still screaming when Doug caught up to her. She grabbed him by the arms and shook him. screaming her agony and terror as they both helplessly watched the car and truck finally stop their tumble and come to rest more than a hundred feet off the road. In either her ears or her mind, Elizabeth could still hear Caroline’s cries —”Mommy! ... Help! ...”
    Looking down at the flattened wreck of the car, Elizabeth thought she saw Caroline’s face in the rear window. Her eyes and mouth were nothing more than round, black holes in the blur that floated behind the glass.
    There was a short burst of angry crackling as gasoline splashed from the truck’s ruptured gas tank onto the Subaru. A blinding second later, the