Student Bodies by Sean Cummings Read Free Book Online

I roared. “Stay where you are, I can hardly see you!”
    And then all hell broke loose. The air filled with the sound of screeching tires, honking automobile horns and the unmistakable sound of metal smashing into metal. Through the thick cloud of blinding snow I saw a searing flash of light and then to my horror, a car literally flew up a snow-covered embankment and headed straight for Marcus.
    â€œ Marcus !” I screamed as he threw himself away from the oncoming vehicle. It missed him by inches and smashed into a poplar tree. I watched in dumbstruck awe as the driver smashed through the windshield, his body clearing the wreck by about twenty feet.
    â€œOh, Jesus!” I shrieked as I raced to the driver. Marcus stumbled up the embankment and headed toward me, his face ashen.
    The driver moaned. Luckily, I remembered my first aid training. I checked his airway and saw that it was clear, but his face was a pulpy mass of blood and shredded tissue.
    â€œT-that kid,” he gurgled through a mouthful of blood. “W-walked right onto the street… Then I couldn’t see him anymore. I couldn’t see anything.”
    The man’s arm was twisted and clearly broken, but at least he was alive. From the distance, the sound of emergency vehicles approached and as quickly as it started, the gale force wind disappeared. Marcus covered the shivering man with his winter coat as I looked out onto McLeod Trail. What I saw before me through the dissipating blizzard was sheer automotive carnage.
    A small pickup truck had ploughed into the side of a parked city bus. Vehicles of every shape and size were scattered along both sides of the roadway like Tonka toys. A light pole had been sheared off its moorings and lay across the hood of a battered SUV, sparks of electricity shooting up into the air. And that wasn’t the worst of it, not even close. The broken body of Travis Butler lay next to an overturned Volkswagen and an injured driver was trying frantically to help him. A dark pool of blood stained the snow-covered street where Travis’s head lay as the driver began to do CPR.
    â€œOh my God,” I whispered. “Oh my fucking God.”

 
    CHAPTER 7
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    Five ambulances, three fire trucks and at least half a dozen police cars responded to the call. Marcus and I stayed with the driver who’d been launched through his windshield until the paramedics arrived. We didn’t know the extent of his injuries, but from the grim look on the faces of the two paramedics who lifted his stretcher into the back of the ambulance, we didn’t have to ask.
    We spent the next two hours giving witness statements to the police inside a tent that had been assembled by the emergency response teams. Warm air blew in through a flap in the side, powered by a loud portable heater. Marcus’s parents arrived first, followed shortly afterward by my mother. From the grim look of her, I could tell that she had been shaken by the scene on McLeod Trail.
    Amanda Guffman sat on a folding chair next to Marcus. Her blonde hair was tucked into a winter hat and she was wearing a pink-colored parka. Her arm was draped around Marcus’s shoulder and her eyes were puffy from crying.
    â€œAny word on Travis?” Marcus asked. He spoke in barely a whisper and he stared blankly at melting snow on his winter boots.
    Wallace Guffman knelt down in front of his son. He looked precisely like Marcus, only thirty years in the future; as though time travel were a real possibility and an older Marcus had taken a trip back. He placed a bony hand on his Marcus’s knee and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
    â€œLook at me, son,” he said quietly. “What you and Julie did here for that man today was very brave. McLeod Trail might look like a scene from a disaster movie and we don’t know if the man you helped will make it, but just remember that you took quick action to help him and that’s an