Larry Burn: CONVERGENCE

[Laraqua]

The winding hills keeps him aware, hands stuck to the wheel of the truck, keeping it in the right lane as the hill slants down through the light fog to the sun-dappled waters of Lake Toluca that he sees occasionally glinting behind the pine trees. It's been awhile since he got back behind the wheel of a truck. All that time to get the paperwork in order and get a clear record again. Having a brother as a defence attorney is useful. Great, even. How else do you make it through? It's not like Larry had been in the right state of mind to protect himself. It wasn't his fault, right? The whole night a blur. But it wasn't his fault?

There's a hip flask under the car seat. He'd been good. Only a few sips or so. Not enough to get drunk or affect his driving. Not really. Just enough to keep him going. Keep his hands from trembling on the wheel. Help him concentrate. The fog is spooky, coming across the path in trails, burning up in the sun. At least the fog and the hills should cool it down. It was too warm beforehand, had to turn the AC on high, though maybe that's just what happens now when he's good, when he doesn't touch the bottle too much. His skin flushes. Though maybe that's just the tension.

His nerves feel like a high-tension wire, but then the road flattens out into some kind of observation post, the tunnel into Silent Hill up ahead. It should be high enough to let his truck pass but that's not the problem. The problem is there's construction equipment in the way, alongside those little plank bollards that tell people not to enter. Some kind of construction work. Now what was he supposed to do? To make it even worse, there's no sign of any of the construction workers and the fogs starting to bank up.

He might need to attempt a U-Turn and use the parking lot by the Observation Point to help give him enough room, but it's a big truck and it might jack-knife. That's not a huge problem when you're going slowly, when you're doing a U-Turn, but it does mean that the back trailer will stop moving if the angle is done wrong. And then that'll be a pain to turn it around and he'll need to call in some help and that'll be embarrassing for everybody.

He was (un)lucky to get this job as it was.