Far From True

Five

Once he was out of the trunk, Derek ran. Not away, not back down the road, but past the gate and onto the grounds of the drive-in theater.

Toward the screams.

He couldn’t run directly to where the screen had fallen. A fence too high to scale ran alongside the driveway for about fifty yards. Once he’d cleared it, he doubled back, sprinting to the disaster site.

There were at least a hundred cars in the lot, and it was Derek’s experience, from the few times he’d been here, that hardly anyone parked in the first row, right in front of the screen. Just as most people didn’t want to sit in the front row of a conventional theater, and have to crane their necks at an awkward angle for two hours, very few were interested in leaning forward, heads perched over the dashboard, to take in a flick.

Except maybe for owners of convertibles.

It was a cool evening, but not too cool to drop the top, if you had a blanket or two. You put down the roof, reclined the seat all the way, and watched the show.

Derek was betting that the two cars that had been crushed by the falling screen were ragtops.

Everyone was out of their cars. Some stood by their vehicles, too shocked to do anything but look toward the collapsed screen in horror. Cars that hadn’t been buried in debris had still been hit by some of it. Many cars had busted windshields. Some of the people milling about in shock were unaware of the blood running from minor cuts on their faces. Others had their phones out, either making calls or taking video of the mayhem. Probably uploading it to Twitter and Facebook so they could brag that they were the first to do so.

There was random shouting.

“Call 911!”

“Oh my God!”

“Terrorists! It’s a terror attack!”

“Get out of here! Run! Run!”

But the only ones running were several men who, like Derek, were heading toward the collapsed screen. By the time he reached it, he was part of a pack huddling around the tail ends of cars that had been crushed. Several people were waving their arms, trying to keep the clouds of dust out of their faces.

Lots of coughing.

“We need a crane!” someone shouted.

“Has anyone called 911?”

“Where the hell’s the fire department?”

Derek was reminded of pictures he’d seen on the news. The aftermaths of earthquakes. Entire buildings crumbling into the streets. But Derek didn’t think this was an earthquake. It wasn’t as if the ground had opened up anywhere. The only thing that had come down was the screen.

And the noise he’d heard while he was still in the trunk, if he was guessing, sure had sounded like an explosion. Could there be gas lines or something under that screen? Propane tanks that linked to the concession stand, where they barbecued the hot dogs?

Or could that guy shouting about terrorists be onto something? Could this have been a bomb?

But how much sense did that make? If you were al-Qaeda or ISIS or whoever was the latest threat to world peace, was this part of your grand scheme to make America surrender? Blow up a drive-in in some half-assed town in upstate New York?

“Grab that!” a man standing near Derek said.

Together, he and three other men tried to shift a piece of the screen, about the size of two sheets of plywood but ten times as thick, off the top of a small red car that Derek could see, from the markings on the trunk, was the remains of some old sports car. Derek knew enough about cars to guess this was a midsixties Jaguar.

“One... two... three!”

The four of them, putting everything they had into it, shifted the piece about four feet to the left, enough to expose the passenger side of the two-seater.

“Oh Jesus,” someone said, turned, and threw up.

It was a person. Or had been, once. It was hard to tell much more than that. The head, little more than pulp and bone now, had been mashed down into the rest of the body.

A woman, it looked like to Derek.

A man with a stronger stomach stepped carefully around to the side of the car and leaned over the body. At first Derek thought he was trying to get a better look at the dead woman, but now the man was peering beneath the debris that obscured the driver’s side. He’d taken out his phone, opening a flashlight app, and was shining it under there.

“This one’s a goner, too,” he said. “Let’s check the other car.”

Sirens could be heard in the distance. The deep foghornlike moans of fire trucks.

The second car — Derek could tell from the taillights that it was a Mustang — was buried under much more debris than the first. The men stood there, shaking their heads.

“The fire department might have something to lift it off,” Derek said. “I don’t think we can budge it.”

“Hello?” someone yelled into the pile of wood and plaster. “Can anyone hear me in there?”

Nothing.

Derek wondered, briefly, what had happened to his so-called friends. They sure weren’t here trying to help. Probably took off in the car while they had the chance. Assholes, the lot of them.

“Those bastards!” a man shouted. “Those goddamn bastards! Idiots!”

Derek spun around, saw that it was the man who’d wanted to inspect the trunk. The drive-in owner, Lionel Grayson. At first, Derek wondered if he was talking about his friends, but quickly figured out his tirade was directed at someone else.

“Fucking idiots!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. He put his hands on his forehead and started to wail. “Oh God, oh dear God!”

Derek took a step toward him. “What are you talking about?” he asked. “What idiots?”

Grayson wasn’t hearing him. His eyes were fixed on the catastrophe before him. “Not happening,” he whispered. “Can’t be happening.”

“What idiots?” Derek asked again.

“The demolition people,” he said, not looking at Derek. “It comes down next week... They weren’t even supposed to... they’re not supposed to put the charges in until... I don’t know... I don’t know how this could...”

Grayson dropped to his knees, the upper half of his body wavering. Derek and a woman standing nearby rushed to the man’s side, knelt down, kept him from toppling over.

Three ambulances screamed into the parking area, lights swirling. People waved them toward the front. Paramedics leapt out, ran in their direction.

Derek was thinking about what the manager had said. How the screen was set to come down soon. How some demolition had been scheduled for a later date. But someone had screwed up, big-time, and allowed the dynamite — or whatever it was — to go off early.

And kill people.

Derek was pretty sure no one was going to give a shit about him trying to sneak in for free.