Chapter 10

Theodore "Teddy" Jones had gotten his nickname Teddy from his many nephews and nieces, because they all thought he was a big old teddy bear. Right now, he tried to apply the old approved methods to the new situation he found himself in. Luckily, there was no hurry. The practice dummy wasn't actually bleeding out, or about to stop breathing if he didn't hurry. Still, they were being timed, all a part of the good-natured competition between firemen.

Teddy wasn't the fastest EMT trained fireman, but he was the most careful in considering his own movements. This was probably because he'd spent a lifetime trying to fit his huge, well padded, six foot ten inch body into a world that seemed a size too small.

The exercise today was simple. They had placed a wrecked car upside down and put the practice dummy inside. His job was to get the dummy out, but the twist was, he was supposed to use the new Gravity Nullifiers that had been delivered to the Rochester Municipal Fire Station No. 16 earlier that day.

Everyone had seen them on TV, and several of the guys from the station had even gotten a pair of wings. They had waxed poetic in their efforts to convince the rest of the guys to buy a pair. Teddy hadn't even given them a thought. The very idea of his huge lumbering body flitting about like a bird, was ludicrous.

Still, he regarded the problem before him for several more seconds, to the jeers of the crewmembers that had gone before him. The solution that had worked for most of the guys had been very simple. They had crawled up under the wreck, put a nullifier on the dummy, unbelted it and pulled it slowly out the window. That wouldn't work for him. He would never fit his bulk far enough under the wreck to reach the dummy.

He shuffled the metal disks of the Nullifiers in one hand. The motion was complicated, since there were two sizes. He looked down, an idea forming. The four smaller disks nullified gravity in a three-foot radius, but the two larger ones were able to affect a six-foot radius. That might be enough.

Now that he had decided, Teddy's movements were swift and sure. He placed the two larger disks on the exposed bottom of the car, turning their dials up to full. He walked to the front of the car, and reached down to grasp the bumper. His arms entered the volume with no gravity. It felt odd, not to have any strain to hold them outstretched. This just might work!

Straining he pulled on the wrecked car's bumper. The nullifiers might have eliminated the weight, but it still had a lot of mass to get moving. After several seconds, the car was clearly beginning to lift off the ground. Teddy stop pulling upward on the bumper. Instead. He concentrated on holding the front bumper still. It took nearly thirty seconds for the car to slowly flip over him, and land upright, behind him. He reached in and made a conventional rescue of the dummy, with the addition that he placed a nullifier on its waist before pulling it from the car.

Beaming at his astounded fire crew. Teddy carefully laid his 'victim' on the ground in front of them, in record time.

Late that night, while Teddy and most of Station 16 slept. A low, warm moist air layer rolled in from the west. As it hit the cooler air near Lake Ontario, the air was unable to hold all of the moisture, and it condensed out into a low thick layer of fog.

The intersection of highways I-590 and I-490, in the southeast corner of the city, had been a problem for years. The New York State Highway Department had planned improvements and expansions three times in the last fifteen years. Each time, the budget had been cut prior to groundbreaking. Part of the problem was simply that people refused to slow down to the posted 60 mph speed limit.

A young couple of newlyweds, Jason and Gabriella Stevens, were returning from their honeymoon at Niagara Falls in a rental Dodge Charger. Both came from old money families on the east coast. Jason had just finished his Masters in Business Administration at Yale, while Gabriella had finished her Bachelor of Arts in Music at the same time.

Peering through the fog futilely, Jason said, "I wish we hadn't let your parents talk us into staying at their new house tonight."

Gabriella wrapped her hands around his upper arm and said, "We couldn't have made it all the way back to Grand Isle on Lake Champlain nonstop, it's already 1am."

"Ok, maybe you're right," he conceded, but went on worriedly, "I just wish you'd been there before, and maybe that this fog wasn't so thick."

Gabriella saw a sign, only fifty feet ahead, and couldn't read it until they were thirty feet from it. It indicated the exit to northbound I-490 they needed, and she cried, "Turn off here!"

Jason had been trying to stay in the middle of the three lanes, since he could barely make out the lane indicators, but he had drifted to the leftmost lane. So when he swerved to make the exit, he had to cut across two lanes of traffic. Interstate I-590 was always heavily traveled, even at 1 am. Jason clipped the left rear quarter panel of a big SUV that he had not even seen.

The SUV spun once, then hit the barrier, flipped end over end, shedding plastic, glass, and metal debris. It finally came to rest, sideways, across all three lanes of I-590. The Steven' Charger spun, and hit the barrels covering the end of the divider to the exit ramp, rear end first, sending five hundred gallons of water shooting skyward. The entire rear end collapsed, and the left rear wheel flew down the two-lane exit ramp. Slowed dramatically, they only made one more spin before coming to rest on the ramp, pointing back toward I-590.

None of the cars coming behind them, had any idea what had just happened only two hundred yards in front of them. At a speed of 75 mph, they covered the distance in less than 5 seconds. The lead car was a Honda, traveling at just over 75mph. The driver of a Honda never realized what the dark shape suddenly looming before him was, so he never slowed down, and hit the SUV in the driver's side at 76 mph. The Honda's front end was pushed all the way to the back seat. The SUV, nearly bent in half, collapsed around the remains of the Honda.

The next car was a minivan. Marcia Santiago had left her four children with her mother so she could go out clubbing. Her only warning was the taillights of the Honda that had just passed her suddenly disappearing. It was enough, barely, as she was only going 65mph. She instinctively slammed on her brakes, and swerved. She just clipped the wreckage of the SUV, sideswiped the barrier in the median, and blew out both tires on her driver's side as the barrier tore through the sheet metal. Screaming as the minivan started to rebound from the barrier, with no tires on one side, she couldn't prevent the minivan from rolling, even if had she known how.

The next vehicle was a three quarter ton, four door, long bed, dual wheeled, Dodge Ram pickup. Sam Hendrickson had been at the bars to have a few drinks. A general building contractor, this was his personal work truck. Luckily for him, he needed to take the exit ramp to I-490 northbound. He knew the area well, but with the fog, had slowed to fifty to make sure he made the turn. Still, when he hit the top of the ramp, and saw headlights pointing back up the ramp at him, he panicked. Assuming some drunken bastard was coming up the ramp the wrong way, he locked up all six tires. Half a second later the ABS system kicked in and he shuddered to a stop, in front of the smashed Charger.

Sam thought quickly. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911. While he was doing so, he flipped on his hazard blinkers, and opened the door of his truck. Before the phone was answered, he heard the sound of an eighteen-wheeler locking up all eighteen wheels coming from above him on the highway. There was a terrible crash, followed by the tinkling of broken glass, spraying across the highway. Sam cringed at the thought of what had just happened, but maybe he could help this situation.

Running for the back of his truck, he tried to remember which side he had his roadside emergency kit in. He opened the left side storage area and there it was! Quickly grabbing it with his free hand, he had just started back up the ramp towards the highway, when the phone was answered.

The flat voice intoned, "This is 911, what is the nature of your emergency?"

The wheel which had flown off the Steven's car, had rolled down the ramp bounced off the embankment, and launched itself over the drainage ditch next to the southbound lanes of I-490, finally coming to rest in the center lane. The driver of the semi trailer never saw what he hit, but when several of the wheels on one side blew out simultaneously, he had no control as his rig spun, jackknifed, and smashed into the barrier.

Sam spun toward the noise coming from below, and said into the phone, "Oh my God! There's a multi-vehicle pileup happening in the fog at the intersection of I-590 and I-490!"

The operator's voice, urgently asked, "Which part of the intersection?"

Breaking into a trot, Sam screamed into the phone, "I was turning off of I-590 eastbound onto I-490 northbound, there's a car there blocking the ramp, and I can hear wrecks happening up on I-590 and down on I-490! You've got to get somebody out here! I'll do what I can, but it's already too big for one man!"

The operator said, steadily, "Ok, sir. If you could just stay on the line until help arrives."