“Captain!” she yelled. “Wake up, Captain!”
Was she trapped in a crashed ladder truck with a corpse?
“Captain Jacen Williams! The Chief has announced we’re changing back to Cleveland Fire Department and to gorge ourselves on white flour and refined sugar.”
“Don’t be a bitch, Rodriguez,” he mumbled.
“You’re alive!” Luna shouted, suddenly exalted. “I wasn’t sure.”
“I wish I wasn’t,” he moaned. The integrity of the cab had been compromised. Williams was jammed up against the dashboard, which was shoved in over his legs and chest. The computer was gone, the radio was smashed to smithereens.
“Status, Rodriguez?” he asked.
“Cold. Neck’s okay. Something wrong with my right arm.” She twisted for a moment, and a wave of vomit-inducing pain swept over her. “Broken, I think. How about you, Captain?”
“My neck and back seem okay.” He turned to his head to face her. “I can’t actually see my legs.”
“It can’t be that bad or you’d have bled out already.”
“I appreciate that assessment, Lieutenant.” His voice sounded off, like he was drawing on his reserves of energy. “Describe the scene, liabilities, and assets.”
“Yes, sir. We appear to be buried under snow. It smashed in the front of the cab.”
“It’s ice,” he said. “We were on the freeway for the accident. Our next stop was the nursing home so we drove east instead of getting off.”
“It was snowing, and I was going under a bridge . . .” Luna remembered a strange exterior rumble at the time.
“The whole frozen shelf of ice collapsed off the bridge. The vibration of our tires must have been the perfect frequency.”
“Other liabilities include you pinned down, broken radio, and my cell phone is at the firehouse. Do you have your cell phone on you?”
“Yes.”
“Asset!”
“In my pocket pinned underneath all of this.” Williams waved a hand and pushed ineffectually at the remains of the dash.
Luna wondered if she had any chance of moving some of that debris and hunting for his cell phone. It was very possible the debris acted as a tamponade to any internal bleeding he might have. If she moved him, he could bleed to death. Also, with her luck, the cell phone would be broken, have no signal, or a dead battery. She’d have killed her Captain for no good reason.
Other than he was an unfriendly asshole.
It was unlikely with a broken arm she could reach over the console anyway.
“Not an asset.” She thought hard. “Assets include being alive, conscious. The truck isn’t on fireand we’re not in pool of gasoline, unlike the last time this happened to me. This one isn’t my fault so Chief Baker can’t blame me.” She felt around on the side of the door. It was stuck, but in one of the compartments she found a little box. “We have provisions!”
“We do?”
“Yes. Kevin keeps a set of breath mints in the door.” She held up the box. “We’ll be minty fresh when we’re rescued.”
“They can write that on your tombstone.” He closed his eyes.
“Hey, what are you doing? If you fall asleep, you die.” The idea of being left alone to freeze to death was worse than spending time with him.
He opened his eyes back up. “That’s TV bullshit. Nowhere in any hypothermia protocol does it state the importance of keeping a rescue awake. Losing consciousness is a sign their blood pressure dropped and they’re going into shock. Don’t even start me on telling someone to ‘hang on.’”
Luna set her jaw. “I know, but it makes me feel better. No going to sleep!” Could this man not even unbend a little bit on the brink of death?
“We have no communications. This is a Level 3 snow emergency. When they notice we’re missing, then they’ll have to figure out where we are. And it might be too dangerous to send someone to rescue us.”
