The movers had the truck loaded sometime after four pm. Tommy sat in his pick-up waiting for them to roll out of Janet's driveway toward Cleveland, and then… who knows?
The moving van pulled out of the driveway. Tommy waited a minute and followed it, keeping his lights off until he really needed them to avoid attracting unwanted attention, particularly from the drivers of the moving van.
The van headed west on I-80. Tommy kept back a few car lengths, and one lane to the right. He didn't know what he'd do when they got to Cleveland. He guessed he'd wing it when he got there.
Tommy lit a cigarette and inhaled, staring blankly at the endless stretch of highway. The road continued on through Pennsylvania, long and generally straight. It wasn't like the highways in New York. They were treacherous, from a fireman's point of view. After a while, he'd learned what to expect at a highway job: carnage.
"I want to go home." The girl laid her head back down on the hood of the car. The only place she was going was the morgue; her back and neck were broken.
Tommy found himself surrounded by flames. Gas tanks had ruptured and fuel covered the asphalt; it burned.
"Highway job," Franco had said. Tommy knew what that meant.
Recovery. Damage control.
Sometimes, the carnage was so bad, the FD was merely a formality, so the city could say they did all they could.
"Please. I want to go home." Tommy blinked at the girl. He knew she was dead.
Apparently it didn't stop her from speaking to him.
The car behind him flashed her high beams, which reflected off the rearview mirror into Tommy's eyes, startling him in time to avoid the concrete divider flying towards him. The car's lights also awoke him in time to see the moving van merge to exit the interstate. Tommy dodged in and out of traffic to cross the highway before he missed the exit.
Normally, he'd have had to have been drunk to pull a maneuver like that, but this time he didn't have anything to worry about losing. Jan had already taken everything else from him.
And by God, he was going to take it back.