Chapter 2, scene 1

Below, Foreign Body Reaction, an online novel, continues. The PDF of the first chapter is clickable from the menu to the right.

Foreign Body Reaction, Alan McNeill Chapter 2, scene 1, copyrighted, all rights reserved to me.

Foreign Body Reaction, Alan McNeill Chapter 2

Ben pulled the truck onto the road that ran past the trailer and flipped open the cell phone. The heater on the truck was still pushing cold air and he shivered against cold that was drilling through him now.

He dialed 911, before noticing that there was no signal. He cursed beneath his breath and closed the phone. He had great signal here yesterday, another thing among many it seemed that made no sense.

In the rear view mirror the flames danced, and the thin aluminum sheathing on the trailer walls sagged and dripped down, melting, burning, oxidizing away. One wall remained. Despite the cold, the fierce heat of the fire slightly warmed the truck cab.

Expensive fire, he thought as he brought his hands to eyebrows. They felt stiff, and crumbled where he touched them. He brought the mirror down and checked to see if he had burned his face. His pale blue eyes stared back at him, his hair, too long, formed bangs that covered his tanned forehead. His light brown eyebrows were singed and his eyelashes had a curl to them but he couldn't feel any other damage.

As best he could in the front seat of the truck, he checked his upper body and back for any wounds. His biceps and shoulders were strongly muscled, as was his back and chest, courtesy of his physical job and the time he spent with weights and exercise. Except for a stray leaf and a few twigs, he appeared unhurt. He would check the rest of his six foot frame when he was warm enough to get out of the truck. His left shoulder was sore from hitting the ground, and his hair felt gritty, but he was alive.

Shit, no signal, he thought, checking the phone again. The thirty two foot trailer behind him was almost completely gone now. The flames seemed to be dying down a bit, but Ben understood that if both propane tanks had not already gone the remaining one could blow at any moment. He clenched the steering wheel and fought the impulse to rush back to the trailer, to try and save his valuables, identification, and all that paperwork. Fuck, fuck fuck! he shouted, pounding the steering wheel with both hands. It just gets worse everyday!

Ben steadied himself, breathing, letting the self pity go. He was alive, he was a planner, and he of all people knew what to do in in an emergency. Panic is the killer in times of stress. He took stock, realized he was in no danger. He had survived an explosion that could easily have killed him a few minutes ago. He took a deep breath and thanked luck, fate and the gods of entropy for his lucky timing. The truck was warming up now and there were clothes in the back of the truck when he felt warm enough to get out and get them. Ben knew that all that was lost was stuff. Just material stuff. He would get more stuff. Jacob got these ex-FEMA trailer's some super good deal, and his truck was undamaged. He would pick himself up and start again.

The first thing was to get a fire crew up here to douse the flames. It was November so the fire danger to the forest was small. Good timing there too, Ben thought., It is very hard to start a forest fire in wet season in the Pacific Northwest.

He started the truck and began the drive up the ridge towards the top of the ridge. He reached the top that overlooked his trailer in about ten minutes of careful driving. Ben knew that despite his outward calm, a shock like he just experienced would affect his actions for some time. Reaching the highest clear point on the ridge, he stopped and tried the phone again. The signal was good, four bars, and he dialed 911 again. This time it connected. However the voice on the line was a recording.

“All emergency operators are on currently serving other emergency calls. Please hold the line and your call will be answered in the order it was received. Thank you for your patience.” The voice was professional, calm, disinterested.

The truck cab was warm now, and Ben tapped the phone's case as he held it to his ear. It was fully dark now and he could just make out the road that he had just driven up as it wandered along the ridge, descending back towards the orange glow that had been his trailer.

Ten minutes later Ben was still on hold and he was pissed. He watched for any explosion down the mountain which would indicate another propane bottle had burst, but the glow slowly grew fainter. Ben toyed with the idea of going back and trying to put out the remaining fire with the extinguisher in the back of his truck. While he was weighing that thought, he saw emergency lights flickering in the distance, drawing nearer.

Someone must have reported the explosion. Ben threw the transmission into gear and did a three point turn, heading back down the mountain. He needed to warn the fire crew about the danger that might still be present, and about a few boxes of ammunition that were stored in the floor heating ducks in the trailer. .

Ben drove down the ridge toward the trailer as fast as the road would allow. In the last half mile, he rounded a bend and the lights of an approaching vehicle blinded him. The roof mounted emergency lights were flashing and the vehicle was approaching quickly. It wasn't a fire truck or tanker, smaller than that.

Ben had little time to think about that. He was trying to slow down enough and find a place they would all be able to safely stop. With his left hand he was searching for the electric window button. Finally he found it, got the window down while still braking. Ben did wonder why they had gone past the burning trailer instead of stopping there.

The road ran steeply down the ridge line in this section, the mountain dropping off sharply on each side of the road. There wasn't much room for error and the vehicle was still approaching quickly. Ben could see now that it was a dark SUV approaching when it began to veer towards him and accelerate. There was no time to react. Ben instinctively pulled tight to the right side of the gravel logging road as possible, the right side off in the rough gravel. The truck was bucking and sliding a bit but still under control. Then the black SUV was flashing past, the driver's face plain in the glare of his truck's headlights when Ben saw the driver pull his steering wheel hard to the left slamming the SUV into the bed of Ben's truck. The impact nearly tore the steering wheel from his hand.

“What the hell!” yelled Ben as the truck began to fishtail.

The impact has turned Ben's truck almost right angle to the line of travel. Ben let up on the brakes and tried to recover, to bring the front end around by steering into the direction of the slide. The truck groaned and began to straighten, but the rough border of the gravel road caught the right side wheels. The wheels caught and the truck rolled over. Ben held tight to the steering wheel as the truck turned three hundred and sixty degrees and hesitated. The hillside was too steep. The truck began a sickening roll down the mountain into the inky blackness that lay below. Ben was slammed around in the truck as the truck rolled over and over. With a horrible screech the canopy tore off the bed of the truck. It was briefly illuminated by his headlights as it careened past him down the hill. One roll caught a stump and the truck flew into the air. Ben couldn't maintain his grip on the wheel, and then, nothing..

Ben awoke twisted and stuffed into the passenger floorboard area. Disoriented he tried to stand up, only to find that he was up, and he fell awkwardly down onto the bench seat which now was below him. The truck was upside down.

The truck lurched as he fell to the seat. His right eye was warm and wet and in the feeble glow from the instrument panel, he could see that his hand was wet with something dark.

The truck engine was quiet. It must have stalled, but Ben reached up and turned off the ignition key anyway. Cold air flooded in through the missing rear window, and as he had seen the canopy was gone. In the sudden darkness Ben found the ash tray and found his small LED flashlight.

Ben felt numb. He had to get out of the truck. It might be ready to roll again. The cold was penetrating with the windows broken out, and he was still bare chested. There had been a jumpsuit and rain gear in the back of the truck, but if the truck had tossed the canopy off in the roll down the hill, he expected little might remain in the truck bed.

#

He made his way slowly up the hill, watching the flashing lights of the SUV above him to the right. Slow because he was sore, slow because of the blood that obscured the vision in his right eye. He wiped at it again and it seemed that it was drying.

He had to pick carefully through the berries and vines as he climbed. He didn't dare use his small flashlight, he couldn't risk it. Ben didn't understand much right now but he did understand that these people in the SUV had just tried to kill him. It was no accident.

Ben knew that there was a terrible mistake here. They must have the wrong person. Nobody gave a flying fuck about him. One consequence of his ever smaller life, after his affair with Bea, was that he was increasingly self sufficient, emotionally and physically too. He had little to do with others. He had few friends, and to his knowledge, no enemies. Ben found peace when he was alone and it was quiet. They were going to kill him, and they have the wrong guy.

Jesus it's cold, thought Ben, the warmth of the truck a distant memory now. He was shivering and needed to get warm soon. The people from the SUV were moving down the mountain through the brush, moving towards the wrecked truck below on the hill. The ridge had been clear cut five years ago and replanted into Douglas Fir trees, but they were barely more than small twigs. A good size stump had been what broke the roll of the truck, not a little sapling. Ben had wiggled out the rear cab window, and after searching for more clothing around the truck in the dark he had given up and begun his climb up to the road.

His guess is that the men would descend to the truck and check to see if he had survived. If they couldn't find him he hoped they would think that he had taken the easier direction and gone down the hill. Instead Ben had gone up the ridge. Even with the exertion of the climb Ben knew that he needed to get warm soon.

Because of his wildlife photography Ben spent a lot of time moving through the woods learning to be quiet, trying to get close to wary animals. In contrast, the men looking for him constantly tripped and cursed as they worked down the hillside.

Ben reached the road without being discovered. The SUV that had hit him was parked crosswise in the road, the driver side towards Ben, and the damage to the front fender of the SUV was obvious. A second SUV was beyond the first and both had their doors wide open and interior lights on. The emergency flashers continued their strobe.

The logo on the door, scratched and muddy, read Global Security. Ben filed that away for later for by now he was almost too cold to think. He briefly considered trying to get unnoticed into one of the SUVs and steal it. He remembered the look of the man as he twisted the wheel into Ben's truck. He was trying to kill him, without warning or reason. Ben now needed to get back to the remains of his trailer and see if he anything was left. Then he needed to get away from these people. .

One man was patrolling around the SUVs and Ben could see him touching an ear piece at times and speaking. The guard walked around the front of the second vehicle, and for a few moments his view down the road towards Ben was obscured by the first SUV that was parked crosswise in the road. Ben was twenty yards up the ridge when he crossed the road in a crouch, his skin was covered with a sheen of sweat despite the cold. He made it across the road and over the steep bank. He worked along the bank below the road grade, crabbing sideways trying to be quiet. Ben could distantly hear the shouts of the men as they reached the truck and found it empty. They would be alert now. They knew he was alive.

He forced himself not to think about the cold and began a shuffling scrabble descending towards his burnt out trailer. The cold seemed less intense now and he tried to move quickly to stay warm.

A small mountain lion waited below Ben far down the mountain. He lay perfectly still his coat blending with the brush pile. His mother would be back at daylight, but right now he was concentrating on the movement of the man across the hillside above him. The man moved in a crouch, stumbling, tentative, hurt. He looked like prey, shaky, inviting, weak, all but done, but now with each step he changed. The young cat yawned. He was uneasy about prey that first was prey then changed to hunter. It was very confusing. He yawned again to dispel his tension, then settled down to wait for dawn, and his mother.