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Bunker Hill Bridge Pile-up
All of a sudden, as the time read five forty-seven, she heard a crash behind her. Glancing in her rear-view mirror, she saw the beam of a car's headlights ten feet in the air. Dozens of cars were colliding with it, one after the other. Distracted, she stopped watching the road, and tapped her brakes when she saw the car behind her slowing down. She could only watch as the pile up on the center of the bridge got larger and larger as if none of the cars behind it could hit their brakes in time.
Marissa screamed next to her just as they heard an incredibly loud splash. At this point, Amanda forced herself to look forward to get their own car to safety just as one of the cars in the left lane swerved across both lanes of traffic, narrowly missing the front of her car. A few cars around her slammed on their brakes. Next to her, in the right lane, however, a small, sports car was driving full speed right behind a driver that had hit their brakes, and the small, red sports car rear-ended the slowing car in front, and the back end of the small car was lifted onto its front wheels and, to Amanda and Marissa's horror, toppled sideways over the side of the bridge between two of the long, white support beams.
At this point, Amanda couldn't watch any longer. Cars slid all over the road in front of her while cars behind her continued to speed ahead, barely slowing down. Realizing that if she hit the brakes the tail-gating car behind her would surely crash into her, she was forced to keep driving ahead at fifty miles per hour. At that moment, she heard a bang as a car in front of her swerved into her lane and scraped the right side of her car. She turned her car to the left to avoid it as much as possible. The damage on the car wasn't enough to affect her driving, so, now in the left lane, she found herself at the end of The Bunker Hill Bridge still at about forty miles per hour. Few cars were facing forward at this point. Most were drifting to one side, crossing multiple lanes of traffic and then colliding with the side of the bridge. A large, black truck nearby was still going full speed when all of a sudden a van crashed into the left side of it, sending the truck into the divider that separated Route 93 from an onramp on the right side of the road. The front half of the truck instantly collapsed as another car crashed into the back of it.
Before she could aim her gaze forward again, the car plunged into the tunnel that was at the end of the bridge. Immediately, Amanda hit the brakes and the car came to an abrupt stop. The lights along the ceiling of the tunnel flickered. It was like one of those old movies, when the individual frames were separated by a split second of darkness. The sound of crashes continued outside, but it looked like they were safe. There was complete silence inside the tunnel, on the other hand. No one around them moved. No one got out of their cars or even yelled out for help at all. Only at this moment did Amanda hear that Marissa was sobbing uncontrollably.
"Are you al...right, Marissa?" she asked, choking up slightly. Before she received an answer, however, she heard a consistent thumping sound coming from behind them. Looking in the mirror, tears streaming down her cheeks, she saw an eighteen-wheeler flipping on its side in their direction. Plowing through all cars in its way, the truck slammed into the side of the bridge and was flipped around. Before either of them could so much as let out a scream and amidst the continued flicker of the lights around them, the huge vehicle slid into the tunnel on its side and passed by their minivan with no more than five feet of space in between. Then, as the truck collided with the enormous pileup in front of them, there was an explosion of glass and pieces of metal that rained down on the windshield of their car.
Then, the flickering lights went out, plunging the entire tunnel into darkness. The only light came from the small light from the clock in front of Amanda.
The time still read five forty-seven.
The entire, horrifying catastrophe had started and ended in less than sixty seconds.
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