Майкл Корита - If She Wakes

Up at the top of the hill, where the Challenger was executing its awkward turn, bells were clanging and guard arms lowering to block traffic on Ames Road. The train would soon take over that task. The train would block them above, the river already blocked them below, and Abby and Shannon would be sealed in the middle with Dax and his gun.

Abby brought the Jeep to a stop, twisted, and looked at Shannon Beckley. She’d clambered off the floor and back into the seat. Blood from the cut sheeted down her cheek, but her eyes were bright above it. Abby looked down at the handcuff that chained Shannon to the vehicle. Only one of them could walk away from this.

I’ll take the phone, she thought, I’ll take the phone and I’ll make him negotiate. Just like with the man named Gerry.

The man he’d killed.

The negotiating hour was past.

She looked down the hill. Ahead of her, there was only the parking lot, the river, and the railroad bridge.

And, now, the train.

She looked back at Shannon Beckley, expecting to see Shannon staring ahead. But she was staring right at Abby. Scared, yes, but still with a fighter’s eyes.

“I have to try,” Abby said.

Shannon nodded.

Abby started to say, It might not work, but stopped herself. That was obvious.

Behind them, Dax had the Challenger straightened out and was facing her once again.

Abby let her foot off the brake and started downhill. The wheel slipped in her bloody hands and pulled left, but she caught it and brought it back. Behind, the Hellcat roared with delight and gained speed effortlessly, a thoroughbred running behind a nag. Abby didn’t look in the mirror to see how fast Dax was pushing it. Her eyes were only on the bridge and the train. The train was slowing, navigating the last bend ahead of the bridge, and its whistle cried out a shrill warning, and the bells tolled their monotonous lecture of caution.

She fed the wheel back through her blood-slicked palms, bringing the car to the right when the road curved left, toward the parking lot. She pounded the gas as they banged over the curb and off the road and then headed for the short but steep embankment that led up to the train tracks. The Jeep climbed easily, and at the top of the embankment was the first of Abby’s final tests — if she got hung up on the tracks, it was over.

The front end scraped rock and steel as the Jeep clawed up onto the berm, and she managed to negotiate the turn, praying for clearance. She had just enough. The Jeep was able to straddle the rails, leaving the tires resting on the banked gravel and dirt on either side.

Behind and below her, Dax brought the Hellcat around in a slow, growling circle, like a pacing tiger. She knew what he was assessing — the Jeep sat high, able to clear the rails, and its wheelbase was wide enough to straddle them. The Challenger sat low, a bullet hovering just off the pavement. It would hang up on the tracks, leaving it stranded.

Dax didn’t seem inclined to try pursuit. The car idled; the door didn’t open; no gunfire came.

He watched and waited.

He thinks I’ve trapped myself, Abby realized.

And maybe she had. Squeezed from multiple sides now, she could go in only one direction: straight toward the train.

She kept expecting a gunshot but none came, and she realized why — he didn’t think she’d try it. His brake lights no longer glowed, which meant he’d put the Challenger in park — he was that confident that Abby was done.

She looked away from him and fixed her eyes ahead, staring down the length of the railroad bridge, where, just on the other side, the huge locomotive was negotiating its last turn and entering the straightaway of the bridge. How far off? A hundred yards? Maybe less. It couldn’t be more. If it was more...

I’ve just got to run it as fast as I can, that’s all there is to it, she thought. When it came down to the last lap, when the rubber was worn and the fuel lines were gasping for fumes, there was no math involved, no calculations, no time.

You finished or you didn’t. That was all.

Abby put her foot on the gas.

She was doing forty when she reached the bridge and she knew that she had to get up to at least sixty, maybe seventy, to give them any chance. But she also had to hold the car straight, and the gravel banks were built to keep the rails in place, not provide tire traction. It was a bone-rattling ride and one that made acceleration painfully slow.

The train was some thirty yards away from the bridge now. Thirty yards of opportunity remained for her to decide if it was a mistake and bail out. Ditch the Jeep, and then Abby could run, even if Shannon could not. With the diesel locomotive’s headlight piercing the fractured windshield and the train’s whistle screaming, it was easy to believe bailing was the right move.

Behind and below them, though, Dax waited.

He thinks I’m choosing my own way to die, Abby realized.

She kept her foot on the gas.

In front of her, the train straightened out until the diesel locomotive was facing her head-on. In the backseat, Shannon Beckley moaned from behind the tape. Abby was aware of a flicker of open grass to her right, a place where she could ditch the Jeep without falling into the river below.

Last chance to get out... take it.

She tightened her grip on the wheel. The last chance fell behind. Then they were on the bridge, and out of options.

A brightening sky above and a dark river below. A whistle shrilling, a headlight pounding into her eyes. The bridge seemed to evaporate into a tunnel, and though she wanted to check the speedometer to see whether she’d gotten up to seventy, she couldn’t take her eyes off that light.

She would never remember the last swerve.

There was no plan, no target, nothing but white light and speed and the question of whether she could make it. Then, suddenly, the gap appeared, and instinct answered.

Daylight.

Chase it.

She slid the wheel across blood-soaked palms, and the daylight was there, and then the daylight was gone, and then came the impact.

A bang and a bounce and blackness. I thought it would feel worse than that. That wasn’t bad at all, for being hit by a train, she thought, and then the furious scream of the whistle brought her back to reality. She was facing a wall of grass. It took her a moment to realize that it was the bank on the far side of the river.

The engineer was trying to slow the train, but with that much mass and momentum, it didn’t happen fast. The locomotive was across the bridge and headed uphill before the cars behind it began to slow. A timber train, flatbed cars loaded with massive white pine logs from the deep northern woods.

Abby looked in the mirror. The Challenger was in the parking lot, facing her, idling. It no longer looked so smug. In fact, it looked impotent.

She knocked the gearshift into park, then reached out her bloody fingers, gripped the edge of the tape covering Shannon Beckley’s mouth, and peeled it away. “You okay?”

Shannon nodded, as if unaware that she could speak now, then said, “Yes.” Paused and repeated it. “Yes. I think so.”

Abby opened the driver’s door and stumbled out into the morning air. The train was still easing to a stop beside them, each car clicking by slower than the last. In the pale gray light, she could see the Challenger’s door swing open, and she thought, After all that, he’s still going to shoot me.

The kid limped around the front of the idling car. He eyed the pedestrian bridge below the train. Abby looked in the same direction, and for the first time, she saw Boone’s body. Dax started to limp ahead.

He’s still coming, she realized with numb astonishment. He would cross that bridge once more, even after all of this. All for a...