The bearded man is yelling, but the drifter can’t hear him. He’s gotten out of the car again and is pacing in a frenzy. “Toot your bloody horn!” the bearded man yells through the door.

“Why?” the drifter ask calmly. His eyes draw the bearded man in and hold him still. The bearded man’s face explodes. “Just bloody do it.” He reaches across the drifter violently and slams on the horn. The drifter rears back from the insufferable noise. “Keep on it,” the bearded man yells at him and the drifter can tell that he means it.

He is screaming into the obliterating rain, the wind snapping his voice back into his own face. His arms are slicing the air like machetes.

The bearded man is hysterical. His eyes are as desperate as the German girl’s. The drifter slams on the horn, although he can see no point to it.

Outside the car the bearded man has made another run towards the rest of the highway. He is screaming into the obliterating rain, the wind snapping his voice back into his own face. His arms are slicing the air like machetes. The drifter is hitting the horn again and again, then he looks out in the direction where the bearded man is yelling and sees a large black blur making its way down the road past the bottle store. It’s a truck. The fires from the exploding road train reflect off of its distant roof. It seems to slow, but keeps moving.

The bearded man is swimming in the mud but not moving. His voice is devoured by the storm. The rain is laughing at them, and the drifter feels like laughing too. He has no idea what the bearded man is so worked up about, not even when he watches the oncoming truck dive into the sinkhole to crush the two sisters in the car. Not even when he sees the bearded man fall back in the chest-high mud as though he himself has been shot in the head and only rise much later and float back out and onto the highway.

‘Why me?’ the drifter asks aloud, his words floating on the smoke of the explosions. But, why not? And this was what the German girl knew when she stared so intensely into his dark eyes.

For a moment the bearded man seems to be crying. He has seated himself in the shallow water on the high road. The drifter is aware of them being on a sort of island in the middle of all this chaos, the rain purging their plot of all the sludge and debris and casting it out on all sides in graceful waterfalls. The bearded man smashes his hands down again and again like a child playing in a puddle, and then just stops, sits there, still. He has lost his shoes and the mud coats his bare toes. He peels off his shirt and crawls out of his pants. A calm comes over his face. The rain trickles from his forehead over his beard and hair covered body revealing streaks of flesh through the dirt. He stares off into the distance, but at nothing. Then he looks over at the drifter and smiles, almost smiles. He might laugh even.

The third tanker blows and throws the drifter back against the car, or maybe he jumps, flies. He feels the heat of the fire on his face. His skin hurts from all the rain, drinking and drinking more, flushing through his system until everything is so purified and diluted that it is recognizable no more.

The bearded man is still smiling at him after the blast and the drifter walks towards him, and asks, “Are you okay?” He bends to help the bearded man up, but when the drifter touches him he feels nothing but rain. The drifter can see that the bearded man has been almost completely washed away, his face contorting as it melts, getting tangled in the clump of hair beneath his chin. The drifter feels bad for him, but even with all of his great efforts the man could never have saved them all. Then, “Why me?” the drifter asks aloud, his words floating on the smoke of the explosions. But, why not? And this was what the German girl knew when she stared so intensely into his dark eyes.

The drifter is still watching the road where the truck is halfway submerged in the hole like a sunken ship, the car flattened beneath. Because he can’t help but to be pleased for himself, the drifter smiles as the water fills up around him feeling both the heat from the fire and the cold from the storm entirely.