These thoughts went through Barbie´s mind in seconds; the shadow of the airplane was still between him and the chuck, a black cross racing along the highway. Then two things happened, almost simultaneously.
The first was the woodchuck. It was whole, then it was in two pieces. Both were twitching and bleeding. Barbie stopped, mouth hanging open on the suddenly lax hinge of his lower jaw. It was as if an invisible gillotine blade had dropped. And that was when, directly above the severed woodchuck, the little airplane exploded.
3
Barbie looked up. Falling from the sky was a squashed Bizarro World version of the pretty little airplane that had passed over him seconds before. Twisting orange-red petals of fire hung above it in the air, a flower that was still opening, an American Disaster rose. Smoke billowed from the plummeting plane.
Something clanged to the road and sprayed up clods of asphalt before spinning drunkenly into the high grass to the left. A propeller.
If that had bounced my way -
Barbie had a brief image of being cut in two - like the unfortunate woodchuck - and turned to run. Something thudded down in front of him and he screamed. But it wasn´t the other propeller; it was a man´s leg dressed in denim. He could see no blood, but he side-seam had been blown wide open, revealing white flesh and wiry black hair.
There was no foot attached.
Barbie ran in what felt like slow motion. He saw one of his own feet, clad in an old scuffed workboot, stride out and clop down. Then it disappeared behind him as his other foot strode out. All slow, slow. Like watching the baseball replay of a guy trying to steal second.
There was a tremendous hollow clang from behind him, followed by the boom of a secondary explosión, followed by a blast of heat that struck him from heels to nape. It shoved him on his way like a warm hand. Then all thoughts blew away and there was nothing but the body´s brute need to suvive.
Dale Barbara ran for his life.
4
A hundred yards or so down the road, the big warm hand became a ghost hand, although the smell of burning gas - plus a sweeter stench that had to be a mixture of melting plastic and roasting flesh - was strong, carried to him on a light breeze. Barbie ran another sixty yards, then stopped and turned around. He was panting. He didn´t think it was the running; he didn´t smoke, and he was in good shape (well ... fair; his ribs on the right side still hurt from the beating in Dipper´s parking lot). He thought it was terror and dismay. He could have been killed by falling pieces of airplane - not just the runaway propeller - or burned to death. It was only blind luck that he hadn´t been.
Then he saw something that made his rapid breathing stop in mid-gasp. He straightened up, looking back at the site of the accident. The road was littered with debris - it really was a wonder that he hadn´t been struck and at least wounded. A twisted wing lay on the right; the other wing was poking out of the uncut timothy grass on the left, not far from where the runaway propeller had come to rest. In addiction to the bluejeams-clad leg, he could see a severed hand and arm. The hand seemed to be pointing at a head, as if to say That´s mine. A woman´s head, judging from the hair. The power lines running beside the highway had been severed. They lay crackling and twisting on the shoulder.
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