The Haigerloch Project

Almost there. He threw a quick glance toward the sound of the roaring truck. The speeding vehicle was just lurching out of the curve….

The trees thinned just before reaching the road. On the far side of the roadway the mountain fell away sharply. Quickly Dirk looked around. A few cords of cut wood were stacked at the roadside. He dismissed them at once. Too damned heavy to move quickly. A large pile of half-withered branches lay nearby. He headed for the heap. He tore at the thick, entangled branches. As Sig came dashing up, he shouted to him, his voice winded.

“Grab them! Heave them out on the road!”

He flung a bough onto the narrow roadbed and at once tugged at another, ignoring the sudden stab of pain in his arm.

Sig followed suit. He looked toward the on-roaring truck only a few hundred feet away….

“It won't stop him!” he shouted. “He'll ride right over them!”

“Get’em out there!” Dirk screamed at him.

A couple more leafy branches were hurled onto the road— and the truck came racing down on them. Without slowing, it plowed into the flimsy barrier. For a moment, sheer momentum carried it on, dragging some of the branches with it as it slewed down the road. Suddenly the driver stomped on the brakes. He was losing control. Some of the branches were caught and wedged in the steering lever under the truck. The front wheels had locked….

With screeching brakes the truck skidded along the dirt road, raising a cloud of brown-gray dust. It hit the shoulder, leaped across it and hurtled down the steep slope, caroming from rock to rock like a pellet in the tilt of a nightmare pin- ball machine….

Dirk and Sig raced across the road.

The truck was plummeting down the hillside.

Dirk stood rigid at the edge of the ravine. He watched the precipitate plunge of the bucking truck as if everything was being played in slow motion….

One of the bikes, flung from the truck, hurtled through space to smash into a tree, buckling instantly and wrapping its steel frame grotesquely around the trunk. Sig's?

The truck-bed gate wrenched off as the body glanced off a massive rock outcropping, shooting sparks like a giant flintlock struck by its steel hammer….

Bits of metal and splintered wood spewed from the body in a flurry of debris….

He saw the final impact as the front end of the truck slammed into a huge boulder covered with green moss and jolted to a stop, wedged tightly between the rock and a squat, weathered tree stump. He saw the windshield shatter and cascade in a glittering shower. A split second later he heard the crash….

For a moment there was utter silence — as if the entire forest was in shock. Then, as if with one voice, a host of startled birds set up a cry of outrage.

In the same moment, as if he'd been waiting for this raucous signal, Dirk — who had stood rooted to the spot at the edge of the road — jumped down and raced toward the wreck….

The truck was lying on its side, wheels slowly spinning. There was a dull whoosh — and flames shot out beneath the engine and the cab, licking upward. Dirk strained to quicken his scrambling rush. He caught his foot in a gnarled root, tumbled to the ground and rolled sprawling down the embankment. He caught himself and leaped to his feet. He glanced toward the burning truck….

He saw the German farmer slowly rise up through the empty cab window — like a lazy jack-in-the-box. Writhing, pushing, wedged in the opening, he struggled desperately to free himself. His horror-stricken face was streaked with rivulets of blood from a deep gash in his scalp. He looked around him wildly. He spied Dirk.

“Get me out!” he screamed. “For God's sake—get me out!” He twisted violently in the grip of the tortured metal. “My legs!” he shrieked. “Oh, God! My legs! They — are — burning!” His mouth opened in a cry of agony….

Dirk was at the wreck. He gave a fleeting thought to the big can of gasoline lashed to the back of the cab. In only a matter of seconds it would explode….

He leaped up on the wreck — and he saw it.

Wedged in the broken windshield, held by a jagged glass splinter, was his rucksack. It was burning.

He closed his ears to the screams of the farmer. He ignored the pain in his bleeding hands. He reached. The hair on the back of his hands was instantly singed away. He yanked and tore at the pack. It came free. He leaped from the truck, stumbled a few feet with the blazing rucksack and threw it to the ground. At once he shoveled dirt and sand upon it with his hands, smothering the flames.

He turned to run back to the truck. Sig, too, was running toward it….

There was a deafening explosion as the gasoline can blew up, showering the man wedged in the cab window with blazing gasoline. At once he flared up — a writhing torch. He tried to scream, but no sound came from his scorched vocal cords, seared instantly by the flames he inhaled. His hair flared up in a brief gust of flame, his eyes burst from the heat….