Years ago some friends and I were sitting around a campfire drinking beer and telling stories. A campfire stories tend to do, they drifted toward the supernatural and the macabre. When his turn came around, John said, “The story I’m about to tell is true. It happened up 36 near Brenham, before they widened it.”
“Oh, crap,” said Chris, “Is this about the trucks?”
“Yeah,” said John, “Now shut up before you ruin it.”
“This is messed up,” Chris said, “I remember when this happened.”
“So, what’s with the trucks?” I asked.
“So this buddy of mine works for the Bellville police department but lives in Brenam.” John said as he added another log to the fire. “One night he gets off duty and is driving home. He comes over the hill and has to slam his brakes. Like, he turned his car sideways to keep from hitting the back of an 18-wheeler that was stopped on the highway. No flares or anything and right over the hill in the middle of the road. So Larry pulls his car back around, calls it in, and sets his car back with the lights on to warn other drivers. The ones coming from that direction anyway.
It was a really bad accident. Two semis had crashed into each other head-on. One of the drivers was dead. They think the other one lived for a while but he was trapped in the cab and died before they could cut him out. Both cabs were crushed into each other so badly, burnt and fused together, so that they couldn’t pull them apart. What they ended up having to do was unhitch the trailers and winch both trucks onto a flatbed to get them to the junkyard.”
“Damn.” I said. “What a way to go.”
“It gets worse from there.” Chris said. “This used to give me nightmares.”
“So they got the trucks to the junkyard and everything was back to normal.” John said, “Except that after a few days, the trucks started to smell. After a couple more days, it got worse. Texas summers and all. The guys at the junkyard thought that maybe one of the drivers had had a dog or something in the sleeper. The odor finally got so bad that they decided to cut into the trucks to see what they could find.”
John stopped for a moment and stared at the fire. He lit a cigarette and slowly reached into the cooler for another beer.
“So, what did they find?”
“They found a family.” John said. “Mom, Dad, and a little boy. In a Miata; crushed between the trucks. Somehow the car got between them and when the trucks hit each other, the little car just got crushed into nothing. I mean, you can imagine the force of two semis going opposite directions at 70 miles an hour. They never knew what hit them.”
“Damn.” I said as I lit a cigarette of my own.
“Yep.” said John.
The three of us sat for a while, just staring at the fire..
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I remember you telling me this story years ago. Death before they knew it. Sad, especially the young boy.