Last on the Scene

by Drew Stearns

The Porsche left the road and melted into the chain-linked fence. The fireball could be seen from a half-mile away, lifting into the air like a fluorescent hot-air balloon. The explosion echoed through the coastal canyons for a full fifteen seconds.

Luke was A-list. The search engines said so. Rory wouldn't have wasted his time otherwise.

It was a spectacular sight. A lake of fire and and a tower of oily smoke. Rory checked his camera. Seven minutes of exclusive footage and counting. A single car had yet to pass the scene.

No sign of movement from the wreckage, not that Rory expected any. Luke had probably vaporized upon impact. How could he not have at 180 miles per hour?

Rory fastened the lens cap over his camera, satisfied. Eleven minutes of pristine, high-definition footage began beaming back to an air-conditioned office in Los Angeles. He slung the tripod over his back and folded the spike strip underneath a camouflage tarp behind the roadside boulder he had been filming from.

Still not a single passerby. Rory hadn’t counted on this. Without a good samaritan happening upon the wreckage and making an emergency call, there would be no cover under which he could escape. He was counting on a sea of emergency vehicles to clot the scene.

Fifteen minutes on and nothing. Rory had chosen this particular stretch of road precisely because of how little traffic it saw, but this was a bit much. His time at the scene was approaching an hour now, and still the only car to come through was Luke’s.

The fire continued to burn. There was so much smoke; it had risen in a perfect column, straight above the crash site.

The wreckage stirred.