Billy Langstrom's body stared out from beneath the overturned Jeep, eyes open, a look of mixed surprise and horror on his young face as he lay in a pool of darkening blood. Dean closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "God, what a waste. What a waste." He said it out loud, but there was no one close enough to hear. It wasn't a new sight-he'd spent far too many years as a police officer not to have seen it, uncounted but never forgotten times. He never got used to death, especially the young.
Dean crawled on his hands and knees, peering under the vehicle for Billy's young girlfriend but there was no one else, only a liquor bottle-unlike its victim, unbroken. He picked it up, and in frustration, flung it as far as he could. He heard a tinkle of broken glass far below him as tears coursed down his cheeks.
"He's dead," he called up to Lydia, who was out of sight behind a bulge in the slope. He waved his flashlight in an arc above his head and repeated the two words, a quake in his voice. There was no verbal reply-only a returning wave of her light.
Suddenly another voice called out, and as Dean peered upward, he could see a glow from a column of headlights moving up the road to where they'd parked. He yelled a response and blinked his light. Instead of inching his way back to Lydia he remained by the wrecked Jeep. A chorus of voices yelled down, asking if there were survivors.
"No," he answered as he stared at Billy. A million dreams unfulfilled. He wiggled out of his shirt and placed it over the boy's lifeless face and sat down to wait.
Two Mountain Rescue volunteers descended with remarkable agility to where he crouched, waving his light as a beacon. They asked if he was injured and assured him they'd hoist him up to the road.
Dean motioned toward Lydia's direction. "Pull her up first. I'm fine."
"It's okay, Mr. Dean. There's others taking care of her." Dean recognized the man but didn't know his name. He'd seen him jogging the highway, his long hair, now covered by a helmet, spilling behind him. His partner, a woman, lifted Dean's shirt from the body. She did it gently, as if not to disturb the victim.
"Shit," she said. "It's Billy." Then she added, "Thank God Melissa wasn't with him."
A rope fell out of the sky, striking Dean on the shoulder. "I'll get that," the man offered. He tied the line around Dean's waist with practiced fingers, keeping it below Dean's naked upper torso. "You okay for them to haul you up?" Dean nodded his assent. "I'll be right behind you," the man added.