Skidding, half on his feet, half on his seat, he had negotiated a hundred yards further when a glowing flash brightened the sky to the north. There followed a muffled boom. The fireworks had begun. While the resulting momentary glow wasn't much, it gave a different dimension to the landscape around him. He sat against a bush and caught his breath, waiting for a repeat performance.
The next eruption, and the one after it, gave insufficient light to help, but then a multiple display hung in the sky like a full moon, giving time for his eyes to search left and right. Still nothing. He had turned to check Lydia's light above him when another display followed. His eye caught something off to the side, but it was quickly gone as the darkness returned. He waited, eyes trained on the shape. When another flash painted the night, he was sure. They had crawled past it by no more than fifty feet. His heart raced as he rose and began to claw his way up and to his left.
Lydia called out to him as he moved away from her. He wasn't sure if she had seen it, too, or she was afraid he was returning to the road without her.
"It's over here!" he called. He was climbing now, hand over hand, over a mass of boulders, his flashlight re-hooked to his waist. He was thankful he couldn't see down as he inched his way around a large boulder with only emptiness below. Without the light in front of him, his progress was brief pictures taken by the flashes from the sky. Then he was there. He knew by the smell of gasoline and antifreeze and the wetness he felt as he reached above his head. Then, in the glow of yet another rocket, he saw it-a nearly unrecognizable mass of twisted red metal.