Fake Money, Blue Smoke by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: Penzler Publishers

22

Ahead of him, Joel heard the whoosh of the train coming out of the tunnel and then two sharp blasts from the train whistle. The walkie-talkies didn’t work underground, so the whistle was Caleb’s way of signaling that everything was still okay in the cab and there was no need to bail off the train before it got up to speed again.

But now it was speeding up again. Joel could hear it shooting out of the tunnel; the whooshing was getting louder. He was close. There was no time, no time, no time to ride down the embankment and try to grab hold of a stairway or a doorway or jump onto a car buckling. Ahead of him he could see the lights of the train now, the nighttime running lights. He was almost to the end of the service road, above the tunnel’s exit, where it ramped down into Colorado. There was no time to think about it. No time. No time. He would miss it and his brothers would go to jail. He felt what he thought was adrenaline coursing through him, suffusing every inch of his body. He pulled Rusty’s reins tight and the horse pulled up to a fast stop, skidding a little in the dirt but not losing his footing or balance. Good horse. He was a damned good horse.

Joel was swinging his foot over Rusty’s head, jumping out of the saddle, running toward the edge of the road—right above the tunnel’s mouth. He was only about ten feet above the train, which looked now like it was going pretty goddamn fast. Not that either of those calculations mattered anymore. Joel was running too hard to stop or change his mind. He couldn’t go forty, thirty, twenty-five miles an hour, but he needed to get as much speed as he could for this to have any chance at all of working.

For the tiniest split second he thought it was strange that he wasn’t scared. He felt bizarrely rational. His brothers needed help. They were on the train and he needed to be on the train. It was logical.

At a full sprint, he jumped—right over the center line of the train coming out of the tunnel. He watched the roof come up to meet him. He was in the air for less than a second.

When his feet hit, he tried to fall forward, find a hand grip. But as soon as his feet hit, they were swept out from under him and he started to roll, head over heels, back along the train. But not perfectly straight. Toward the edge. He grabbed for the safety rail he saw pirouetting through his vision and caught it with his left hand. It was a square tubing and the edges cut into his fingers as he latched on with the grip—the crazy-man, super-strength grip—of someone who knows positively that he’ll die if he lets go.

His body tumbled, his hand slid down the tube, but he didn’t let go. His legs flopped over his shoulders.

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