CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LACEY
It’s a scorcher outside, the kind of dry heat that burns your nostrils and turns your skin to paper. The Captain doesn’t seem to mind, still donning his black shirt, cap, and Aviators. He looks us over. “So, you’re already in Hell, but I want to welcome you to the Graveyard.”
The area we’re in is full of mangled car wrecks, including what appears to be half an old school bus further down the back. Tools are laid out between us and the Captain.
“It’s no secret that attending MVAs, or Motor Vehicle Accidents, is going to be the bulk of your workload should, God willing, you make it out of here. Thus, entrapment and extrication training.”
What follows is a detailed lesson showing us every possible way to extract someone from a wreck, whether that be cutting off the door, the roof, right down to amputation. The dummies are unnervingly lifelike, but I figure I better get used to it if I want to make this a career.
The Captain’s watching as I work on a wreck. “Nelson,” he barks. “Grab the jaws there. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
The hydraulic-powered jaws of life look like something out of a doomsday movie, a special apparatus used to pry apart metal. I pick the thing up, all twenty-five pounds of it, and slam the nose between the door and car’s B-pillar, adding pressure to the handle to get the ‘jaws’ to separate.
“Easy now,” says the Captain, watching on. “They don’t call it the StrongArm for nothing.”
I’m just thinking about all the times I could have used this thing when I locked my keys in the car.
The door separates like a tin can, two of my classmates moving in to extricate the body.
The Captain claps his hands together, jumping up onto the roof of the wreck. “You’re a damn natural, Nelson. If you can sort the small-spaces thing, you’ll be set.”
Payton takes the jaws of life from me, placing them back down in the row of tools. “I can’t tell you how turned on I am right now. Seeing a hot girl wield a big apparatus like that…”
“I wield yours just fine, don’t I?” I wink, shaking my ass a bit as I make my way over to a series of pipes and plumbing bits stuffed with fake fingers, hands, and arms.
Hernandez is working on what appears to be a thumb stuck in a short length of copper piping.
The instructor there’s shaking his head. “Jesus, Hernandez. The poor bastard wants his thumb back, not a fucking microwave meal.”
Jackson picks up another pipe, looking through it at us. “You guys think a dick would fit in here?”
“Yours, maybe,” laughs Payton. “You’d need a fucking sewer pipe for mine.”
The instructor overhears him. “Pretty apt considering the filth it’s been in, Cox.”
I pick up a rubber foot with a giant nail through it. “Charming.”
I select a pair of pliers and turn the foot in my hand, try to work out the best way to go about this. I should really have been studying this last night—not sexing it up with Payton to all hours.
But it was worth it, wasn’t it?
The warmth between my legs says ‘yes.’
Of course, it’s not the only reason I’m tired. I don’t think Payton even realized I left.
“How do you feel about another road trip tonight?” he asks, waving half an arm at me.
“I won’t be going anywhere with you if you keep waving that thing around in my face.”
He smiles, cheeky as ever. “That’s not what you said last night.”
“One night and you think I’m a pushover.”
Jackson drops the pipe he was holding. “Whoa, overshare much?”
“You’re just jealous, King,” says Payton.
He shrugs, playing with the finger in the pipe. “I’ve got a jar of vaseline and a vintage Playboy collection to keep me going.”
Payton’s eyes bulge. “Now that is too much information.”
I’m laughing, but it’s cut short when I see Ryan approach the table of body parts. He stands opposite me.
I feel Payton tense. “Why don’t you find something else to work on?” he suggests.
Ryan puckers his lips, blowing me a kiss. “Like this pretty piece of pussy here, you mean? I could work on her all night long.”
The instructor hears him. “Fielding, get your ass down to the end of the table.”
Ryan licks his lips, picking up a pipe and bringing it to his crotch, his hips gyrating against it. He’s still looking at me. “Let me know when you’re ready to step up to a real man.”
Payton starts forward, but I place my hands on his chest. “Let it go.”
“Did you hear what that fucker said?”
“He’s not worth it. Think, am I with him or you?”
That seems to calm him down, but for the next hour it’s an awkward game of eye tennis between the two of them. I’m pretty sure the table’s going to combust if they stare at each other any harder.
Like there isn’t enough combustible material in this place already.