chapter ten: interlude

You dutifully remember that it’s way past tablet time so you neck another handful of pills and wind up the MLC till it’s virtually in stealth mode. The velocity is such that your progress is now surely being tracked by radar, or more probably, by satellite. Any land based object travelling at such speeds is no doubt triggering some automated camera in the ionosphere where details of the journey, its likely destination and purpose are being computed on a massive mainframe buried in an hermetically sealed unit deep under the Mojave desert. Most likely jets will have been scrambled to intercept the predicted parabola; your journey, like the Great Wall of China and the Barrier Reef, an object visible from space.
The glow of the dawn is winking in traffic light shades of red and gold and the flitting impression can be gained that you’re actually free of the ground, cruising at a low trajectory soft above the unyielding tarmac. It all feels very spacey, the cosy cabin, the instrument panel, the merging of the stars and the first burst of sunlight….or maybe it’s just a pharmaceutical impression that gives the dawning sky such a romantic edge.
Oh well, nothing for it now but to relax and enjoy the scenery for the dawn is truly breaking and the Chemical Bros are pumping out those block rocking beats at such a volume the rear window is all but vibrating as the bass lines kick you in the kidneys while the seat mounted speakers deliver the full 40 watts per channel. You didn’t know the stereo could go up to fifty, did you?
The sheer noise in the cockpit gives everything else a strangely dislocated feel. The traffic that swoops away to the inside must be making a noise yet it slides by swiftly and silently. The trucks rumbling down the other side of the carriageway must be belting out the decibels but they too drift on by like ghosts, their fronts lit up like Christmasmas trees with flashing, winking lights in unnatural colours that contrast harshly with the muted colours of the paler sky.
The whole trip is becoming hallucinogenic. You're driving in time to the music. Kilometres per hour and beats per minute compete for dominance and the question of who is this doing this synthetic outrageous kinda psychedelic funkin’ takes on a real significance.
Then something strange causes you to remember a book from childhood: a Biggles story. It was Biggles in his WWI days, flying a Sopwith Camel over the channel. He spots what he thinks are three Fokkers in the distance. Never one to shirk a challenge or the opportunity to add to his tally by shooting down the Hun the intrepid ace alters course and sets off in pursuit. Pretty soon though he realises that they’re not moving and the three enemy aircraft are actually three spots of oil on his goggles. Jolly bad show. Biggles executes a perfect Immelman turn and heads for home
So you rub your eyes and the grittiness is painful but more worrying is that the smoking dot in the distance is not an oil spot on your windscreen. No, it’s real enough and is growing larger by the micro-second. No wonder, the closing speed is close to warp factor 10.
And now for the bad news. It’s not an enemy aircraft; it’s a petrol tanker. And it appears to be dancing across the southbound lanes. And the smoke that you saw is real and blue and is coming from the rear wheels which appear to be locked under intense braking. Now that’s got to be loud but again it all takes place behind a screen and at a massive remove from the reality of piloting the MLC. The tanker now shimmies sideways in an almost coquettish fashion that you would be hard pressed to emulate in your machine. And then, in a moment of cumbersome beauty, it approaches the central reservation, scattering cars in its approach like toys and with a juggernaut effort it straddles the barrier, like some gross high jumper, before flipping itself into the air. The cab becomes instantly dis-articulated and wrenched free of its cargo it slams into the tarmac like a boxer hitting the canvas nose first, taking a Fiat Punto down in its embrace. The now freed trailer, all 10,000 gallons of kerosene en route for the Buncefield oil terminal at Hemel Hempstead before being pumped to Heathrow, is heading your way……..
Now what did the driving instructor tell you when you approached that roundabout at the parkway? Use the accelerator to get yourself out of trouble, not the brakes. But your foot is welded to the pedal and it just won’t go any faster.
The tanker is now airborne, just, and is flying towards you at a very low altitude. As it gets closer the emergent detail is fantastic. Quite often sitting in traffic you are tempted to reach out and touch the huge tyres of the commercial vehicles that hulk over the MLC. Well, may be you’ll have your chance soon. Every bolt, every section of tread, every rust speck, every aspect and angle is so sharp and clear. And so very close. The thought occurs to you that…………… but you’ve no time to consider this fully for your mental processes are interrupted by a really loud bang and the MLC sort of takes off…..and yes, one day, you’ll believe a man can fly……..

…..your life doesn’t flash before you. Any action you are aware of is most definitely not in slo-mo. But your senses are working overtime to comprehend events and perhaps the sheer effort required squeezes some reaction time out of the neurones. Things alter rapidly. The tanker trailer looms larger than a cinema screen seen viewed from the front row and whatever volume the stereo was belting out is reduced to a whispered insignificance as the roof of the MLC gets ripped off and the world is full of unimaginable noise and heat and light. The shrieking screams of creation roar into the sky and just for a moment the world is alive with ugly sound. And then just as quickly it is silent. Silence. Lots of deep, dark neurological silence.

'Reports are coming in of a massive motorway pile up on the M1 north of Nottingham. As many as twenty three vehicles are believed to have been involved. Many are feared dead. On the scene for BBC News 24, our reporter Kirstie Oldman. Kirstie, you've only just arrived on the scene. What can you tell us?'
The camera reveals that the sun is rising, regardless. But when the sun surveys the scene it ducks behind a cloud and casts a pink glow over the carnage: somewhere between butcher’s shop, bar-b-q and bonfire the light seeping from the edge of the clouds turns from pink, to fuchsia, to red, to deeper shades of scarlet, vermillion and madder rose.
'Alison, it’s now 5.36 a.m. and early eye witness reports talk of a wall of flame. The lorry driver I spoke to said he was instantly reminded of his former life as a stunt driver when he regularly took his motorbike through a hoop of fire. Others have likened it to the closing scenes from Apocalypse Now, trees ablaze but minus the soundtrack'.
The camera pans down the carriageway, smoke lends a mellow mistiness to the landscape.
'All along this section as far as the trees on the right the road was literally on fire. Witnesses talk of sheets, walls, even pools of flame, burning vehicles and utter devastation'.
'Kirstie, is there a chronology of events......'
Kirstie has to duck for cover and the broadcast is interrupted as a helicopter clatters the air above the still smouldering verge.
She asks for the question to be repeated.
'By 5.03 the 'accident' as such was over. By 5.04 emergency centres were receiving the first panicked calls for assistance. By 5.14 the first ambulance crew were performing triage and as early as 5.15 the local hospitals had effected their emergency plans.
'And is it too early to speculate on the cause of the accident?'
'It is, although it seems fairly clear that a petrol tanker has somehow collided with oncoming traffic, hence the ferocity of the fire and the extent of the damage'.
'You say that it has collided with oncoming traffic, Kirstie....but how could that have happened?'
'Well, we will have to wait for accident investigators to complete their enquiry but mechanical failure, some kind of injury to the driver or even driver fatigue can't be ruled out'.
The sun climbs a bit higher for a better view. It isn’t pretty. The blood red tones have mostly been washed away by hoses now but the melted road surface stinks of decay and bitumen. Maybe this is what hell looks like. A police driver tells his rookie mate that Belfast was regularly this way in the seventies. The rookie, who wasn’t alive in the seventies, nods like he was there on the Shankhill Rd. A magpie has come down to peck at some decaying flesh and has gotten itself trapped in the melting tar. There’s feathers everywhere. The air is full of the chatter of telecommunications and moaning and crying. Hydrocarbons and particulates are almost visible in the atmosphere. Some firefighters argue with police about breathing apparatus as an ambulance crew carry bodies into their vehicle.
Rival TV crews have arrived now. Their vehicles are parked on the hard shoulder half a mile either side of the site. The police won’t allow then any closer until the officer in charge has okayed the media intrusion. It’s breakfast news. There is talk to camera. There is make up. The presence of national newsreaders and Radio Four gives the scene some sense of gravitas. By now the rescue workers can see themselves on TV, hear themselves interviewed on the radio and watch the operation take place while they contribute to its success. A helicopter batters itself into the air and lurches towards the Hallamshire Hospital, Sheffield, where the county’s finest neurosurgeons are awaiting the arrival of what's left of the few survivors.
A local radio station has snatched an eye witness from under the noses of the BBC.
'What did you see of the accident itself? You say there was a collision between the tanker and another vehicle?'
'Yeh, well, it was all in the rear view, like, and what I first noticed were this black Japanese machine coming up the opposite side of the motorway. It was in the outside lane and it were absolutely flying. Lights on and really fast, y'know like.....fast...ton, easy......'
'And the tanker...?'
'Yeh, well it were behind me then...it were behind me and..... and when I looked in the mirror the tanker were flipping itself over the barrier. ...'
'The tanker actually crossed the central reservation.....?'
'Yeh, jumped the barrier....It had already hit something by then and this Japanese thing swerved but.......nah......not a chance......not a chance. It was like a bomb, like a bomb had gone off............just.......like..............there was an explosion......and then there was just a massive fireball.......'
The sun is high and warm now. The road is closed. Lots of people are very angry because they’ve been delayed. Flights are missed. Holidays ruined before they’ve begun. Appointments are not kept and job opportunities are lost. Business deals falter. One marriage at least is saved. Two more are postponed. Meanwhile, the sun, like an extra in a Beckett book, continues to rise, having no option, over the nothing new and 200 kilometres away she wakes to the radio news and the breaking story of a serious pile-up on the M1.