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Show 220 way we can get around this?" They came around the curve, and ahead stretched a long line of stalled cars, three lanes wide, with the left lane open-and far ahead, beyond the group of scattered police cars, a yellow cabover truck lying on its side-just the tractor, no trailor-black smoke billowing out from underneath, laced with an occasional tongue of flame. The figure of a patrolman crouched off to one side, with fire extinguisher canisters scattered on the pavement behind him. A few yards beyond and across all four lanes, resting against the divider, was the twisted wreakage of a car, a naked front tire-the fender torn away-crushed up into the windshield. A blue Volkswagen-it took a moment to determine just what the twisted metal had been-small and terrible in its grotesqueness. The figures of the patrolmen were scurrying about it, one was leaning through the windows of the passenger's door. "Oh, Robbie-it's bad." She glanced over at him, his face was set, he had seen the car too: she was sorry that she had said anything. He turned off the engine and removed his sunglasses, carefully folding them into the case while surveying the scene ahead. "If they don't get that fire out pretty quick," he said thoughtfully, "I'd think it would reach the gas tank on that truck." "Will it blow up?" "I don't know. I've heard if they don't go on impact, they usually just burn without exploding. But I wouldn't want to bet my life on it. Maybe that's what is burning now." "It looks like one of the tires. One of the back duals, on the bottom." |