24 Tons
When I get a call for a traffic fatality the description is usually “Hwy 40, mile marker 230.5″ or something like that. Because there is no house address I can know what to expect. The other day we got one of those and we were looking for the particular mile marker on the highway. Just past an overpass we spotted the flashing lights of the Highway Patrol. The accident however was not on the highway, but inside the clover-leaf of the on-ramp. Large construction equipment was in the process of moving dirt and rocks. Two over-sized tow trucks were trying to right a water truck that was on it’s side.
It seems that the driver had backed up to the edge of a large water collection basin about 40 feet deep. He got too close to the edge and rolled. He was ejected in the process and the truck which weighed in at 24 tons came to rest on top of our unfortunate client. When the tow truck operators finally got the truck back on its wheels using their high-tech wireless remote controls we found the victim resembled a large insect that had been stepped on by a much larger boot. He was still recognizable as a human, only much flatter than your standard human. His head was also flat with one eye staring straight up into the air like the eye of a flounder looking up from the seafood cooler case at the grocery store. His arms and legs ran in uncomfortable to look at angles.
The Highway Patrol officers put on gloves and jumped right in to help us (the Sheriffs who we normally see during our work rarely offer to help so bonus points to the Troopers). We picked up our pancaked friend and placed him in the body bag. As we did so I noticed that I had stepped in something sticky. I pulled my boot back and looked at the pile of brains I had just stepped in and thought some potty-mouth words. My partner Roger got down on his knees and began to grab hand fulls of brain tissue in his gloved hands and place them in another bag. I grabbed a couple fist-size pieces of skull. I looked up at the Highway Patrol officers and noticed that a couple of them had looks of horror on their faces as Roger continued to scoop up the brains with his hands. One of the officers handed Roger a broken tail light cover to use as a scooper, but he was too absorbed with the task to stop.
When Roger was finally finished with his zombie fetish, the Troopers helped us carry the body bag up the hill out of the basin to the van. It was odd to note that with all the damage to the body, the cell phone on his belt seemed intact. One of the Troopers asked about taking it, but declined to do anything. A few minutes later we were driving down the highway when the victim’s cell phone began to ring. “I can’t come to the phone right now because I have a truck on my mind”.
When I got home my wife came outside while I was washing off my boots with the hose. She gave me a questioning look, “brains” I said. She shook her head and asked me when I was going to get another job.
