The Human Condition

that...? Shit, what the hell is happening...? Jesus, this is a bloody pileup. It looks like a load of cars have smashed and been wedged together and... and I've got to stop before I hit them. I slam on my brakes but I'm going too fast to stop in time. The car behind me is doing the same, and the one to my right too. I'm going to hit something or something's going to hit me. I try to keep hold of the steering wheel and take my feet of the pedals so that I don't damage my legs and I'm just trying to...

    Seven minutes later Peter Guest woke up. Dazed and disorientated, he gently pushed himself upright and gagged and coughed as warm, semi-coagulated blood trickled sickeningly into his open mouth and down the back of this throat from his broken nose. The fact that he might miss his vital meeting was the first irrational thought that crossed his concussed mind. He immediately struggled to unbuckle his seat belt and disentangle himself from the remains of the now deflated airbag which had prevented his face from smashing into the steering wheel with any more force. He had to get out of here and get to the office. He had to let them know what had happened. They'd understand if they knew he'd been in an accident.

    Guest slowly and painfully attempted to focus on his dull surroundings. The end of the tunnel around the bend allowed a degree of grey morning light to trickle and seep across the scene a hundred meters or so ahead. Nearer to him the yellow-orange strip lights suspended along the arched ceiling of the tunnel provided a little more illumination. His car was wedged tight between the tunnel wall on his left and a crashed black taxi cab to his right. He tried to open his door but could move it no more than a couple of inches. Needing to get out of his car and out of the tunnel he lifted his aching body up out of his seat, clambered over the dashboard and scrambled through the shattered remains of his windscreen before rolling over onto his back on the car's crumpled bonnet. The effort required to move just that short distance was immense. He lay still for a moment or two longer (just enough time to let a sudden debilitating wave of nausea subside) and then stood upright on his car, leaning breathlessly against the grubby tunnel wall for support.

    For as far as Guest could see both ahead and behind him the tunnel was filled with a huge mass of tangled, crashed traffic. Most vehicles seemed simply to have collided with those in front and around them and had come to a sudden, shunted stop whilst others had been forced up into the air by violent impacts. A few cars behind where Guest was standing a once pristine bright red, two-seater sports car lay on its roof, straddled widthways across the remains of two other vehicles.

    Apart from him, nothing was moving.

    Guest cautiously began to edge forwards. The road was obscured by wreckage and he had no option but to clamber over the mass of cars, trucks and vans if he wanted any chance of getting out of the tunnel. He had to do it. He was in pain. He needed daylight and fresh air. He needed help.

    After dragging himself over the boot, the roof and then the bonnet of another car, Guest was faced with a short jump onto the boot of another. Pausing to compose himself and bracing himself for impact, he jumped onto the second vehicle and lost his footing, slipping down onto a small triangular patch of road that had somehow remained clear in the midst of the carnage. He fell clumsily against another car door. Inside the car the sudden lurching movement caused by Guest's impact made the body of a passenger slump over to one side, its head smashing against the window with a heavy, sickening thump. Christ, he hadn't thought about the other drivers. Struggling with his own disorientation, pain and confusion he had only been concerned with his own safety and well-being and with trying to get himself out of the tunnel as quickly as possible. Now that he stopped to think about the others, however, they were suddenly all that he could see. He scrambled through the devastation to get to the nearest body but it was no use, the poor bastard was already dead. As was the next one he found, and the next, and the next. He was the only one left alive.

    Everywhere Guest looked he saw bodies. Vast, countless numbers of them. Bloodied, battered faces smashed against windows and limp, shattered bodies hanging awkwardly out of half-open doors. And the longer he stared into the shadows, the more he