Стивен Бойетт - Mortality Bridge

The forest of crucifaxes thickens, a pinioned nation growing before him.

Something hits the side of the car and Niko swerves. On the train the demons hoot and highfive one another and then make room in a boxcar doorway for another demon who holds a naked Asian woman in his great hands.

Niko dodges another crucifax. The landscape itself is forcing him closer to the train. Up ahead the only place the car will fit is on the right of way.

On the train the demon twists the woman’s head off like an apple stem and dangles it by its long black hair and reaches back and winds up like a pitcher on the mound. A muscled leg comes up headhigh and then stomps down as the great scaled arm lashes forward. The gaping head shoots toward the Franklin like a comet trailing hair. Niko brakes and the train pulls away and the head streaks past the hood. The demons boo. If they want to stop him they can probably do it any time they want. Smash him from above or open up the ground before him. Peel off the roof and pulp him like an overripe tomato. But that’s not the deal. The deal is that Niko’s free to try to get out with the bottled soul of his lady love in tow so long as he does not look back. And they are free to do everything in their formidable power to make him look back. What could be simpler?

And, of course, Niko is perfectly free to fuck up on his own. Less than twenty yards now separate him from the train. Crucifaxes whip by like demented roadsigns on his left.

A demon separates itself from the freight of demons screaming out their joyous wrath. Its wings flat along its muscular back as tigerlike it gathers itself and springs, body seeming to elongate as it arcs from the train with tendrils reaching overhead and wings unfolding like parasols to rake back and guide.

Once again Niko slows the car, this time to no effect. This missile is volitional and banks toward him. The Franklin’s chassis rocks when the demon hits the side. Dodging crucifaxes as if playing a deranged video game Niko glances at a monstrous face that leers in the passenger window. The demon clings to the doorhandle and crouches on the rubber runner. A moment later Niko realizes that the demon is circling the tip of one tendril in a gesture for him to roll down his window.

Niko scowls. Fuck that. Dodge crucifaxes, don’t hit the train, shake the demon off the car.

Another glance at the demon’s face and he revises his game plan. Holy shit. Without another thought or word he leans across the seat and pulls up the doorlock.

The demon shakes his great leathern head. His expression says You moron. He points at the rear doorlock and Niko understands that the demon can’t open the front door without knocking himself off the runner and the back door is locked.

Niko jerks the wheel to avoid squeegeeing the demon across a crucifax. Then the car breaks into a clearing in the cruciforest and Niko nearly stands in his seat as he blindly reaches back and tugs up the lock. Foul hot air invades the car as the suicide door opens and the demon tumbles into the back. “Nice driving, buddy pal,” his own voice says behind him as its owner slams the door. “Now let’s get the Dodge out of Hell.”

“IT’S A FRANKLIN ACTUALLY.”

“Say what?”

“The car. It’s a Franklin.”

“Whatever. Hey look out. Ooh that was close. Cut right cut right cutright.”

“I don’t have room.”

“You have room.”

“I don’t.”

“Trust me.”

“Yeah right.” Niko cuts right. There’s room, barely.

His demon bends a tendril to wave bye bye at the crucified woman they have nearly sideswiped. “Nice car.”

“Thanks. I stole it myself.” Niko’s palms are slick on the wheel. A stunt driving ace he is not. He’s gotten ahead of the train, but the thickening profusion of the crucified is giving him nowhere to drive. Suddenly ahead there looms a chasm. Redlit from below, miles wide and untold miles deep. The only bridge across it is the slender rampart of the tracks themselves atop a frail and narrow truss bridge that looks like a thread strung between the tops of two skyscrapers.

Niko feels as if he’s been dashed with icewater. “No way. No fucking way.”

“We’ve got to,” his demon urges from the back. “It’s the only way across, and if the train gets there ahead of us it’ll stop on the tracks. We’ve got to outrun it.”

“Goddamn.”

Thunder rumbles and the ground trembles. The tremors’ ripples shudder through the long and slender railway bridge.

Niko’s demon sticks his head up front. “I strongly advise you not to use such language once you’re on the bridge.”

“I really don’t want to do this.”

“Okay.” The demon withdraws into the passenger compartment.

“Pull over and stick your thumb out. Maybe they’ll give you a lift.” Niko dodges a crucifax. “There’s no way I can drive on that.”

“The car can do it.”

“I know the car can do it. I don’t think I can.”

“Sure you can.” The demon glances back. “The train’s two hundred yards back and gaining but you’ll have plenty of lead if you don’t slow down. Hey did you know your rearview mirror’s back here?”

“Yeah.” Niko eases the car toward the tracks. The crack in the plain looms like the end of the world. “Where’d this thing come from?”

“Same thing that caused the Ledge.”

“I think I’d remember going over this.”

“We were getting bagged on the boxcar when we went across. Good thing you decided to jump later, huh?”

Now they’re right beside the rails and near the point where the choice is hop on top or sail into the great divide. Niko takes a deep breath and says Hold on and yanks the wheel and steers the car onto the rails.

“GO. GO. SERIOUSLY go.”

“It won’t go any faster.”

“Then we’re S O L, buddy pal.”

“How far now?”

“Hundred fortytwo yards. The rate they’re gaining, a minute before they hit us.”

“I can’t fucking believe I’m doing this.”

“Drive.”

The unbordered tracks look like a slash across a landscape painting of a Martian canyon. Close-set crossties shoot from the vanishing point and disappear beneath the car.

“Where’s Jem? Where’s the jar?”

“I’ve got it. You just keep us on the rails.”

“How can you be so calm?”

“Cause I’m the one with the wings.”

Humming tires run atop the narrow rails before the gaping train behind them bearing down. Niko struggles not to blink. He’s so terrified he wants to cry. His mouth is dry, he fights an urge to sneeze. He wants to scream but all he does is clench his teeth. His palms are sweaty on the wheel. He dares not look away from two slim lines on which the big car rides above the deep crevasse without an inch of play on either side. Maybe that’s best. They’re balanced like a clown bike on a tightrope and if he looked down and saw nothing but miles of empty space above a redlit and unfathomable bottom he would surely lose whatever fraying thread of nerve he still possesses.

“How far?”

“Forty yards now.”

“We gonna make it?”

Another pause. “No.”

Niko narrows his eyes. “If I’d stopped every time I thought that.” An awful pressure builds between his shoulderblades as the voracious iron engine burns down the heated night toward them. Worse than looking back to see the locomotive gullet straining to engulf them is not being able to look back at all. Now his demon is his eyes and ears.

The very iron trembles with the resonance of hurtling weight behind them. This bridge should not support its own weight, much less a locomotive, but it does. The rolling thunder gains and Niko swears he smells its heated iron breath. His demon yells Faster but the pedal’s on the floorboard.