Live Wire

The cart picked up speed, the rusted wheels screaming against the narrow metal rails. The darkness of the bypass tunnel swallowed us completely, broken only by the erratic green pulse of Garrison’s watch.

"Pump the handle, Valerie!" Garrison yelled, his voice cutting through the roar of the wind. He was leaning over the front edge of the wooden platform, trying to pierce the dark ahead. "The track tilts downward here. We need every ounce of momentum to clear the old junction before she cuts the power!"

I grabbed the iron pump-handle, throwing my entire weight down on it. The cold metal bit into my palms, but I ignored the sting.

"Garrison, she grabbed the overhead cables! If she rips those lines down, this entire track becomes a high-voltage conductor!"

"The cart has wooden wheel axles!" he shouted back, joining me on the handle. Our movements fell into a frantic, bruising rhythm. "The frame is insulated, but if the current hits the steel chassis directly, the battery pack under your feet will explode! Keep moving!"

A loud snapping sound boomed from the tunnel behind us. It sounded like lightning striking a tree.

I looked back over my shoulder. A blinding cascade of blue and white sparks was crawling down the ceiling of the tunnel, chasing us like a wave of light. Cynthia had ripped the primary transformer line right out of its concrete anchors. The copper wire was dragging along the tracks, sending thousands of volts of raw electricity directly into the steel rails.

"She’s grounding the line!" I screamed, my lungs straining as the air in the tunnel filled with the sharp, burning scent of ozone. "Garrison, it’s catching up!"

"Hold onto the center rail!"

Garrison dropped his hands from the pump-handle and dove across the platform to grab my waist. He pulled me down onto the rough wooden planks just as the electrical surge hit our track sector.

A massive explosion shattered the quiet of the dark tunnel. The small auxiliary battery pack bolted to the undercarriage of the cart blew apart in a shower of white-hot magnesium sparks. The blast lifted the rear wheels of the cart right off the iron rails, sending us skidding sideways into a terrifying, grinding tilt against the concrete wall.

My face slammed into Garrison’s chest armor. The taste of rust and smoke filled my mouth. He wrapped his massive arms around my head, pinning me down as the metal sides of the cart scraped against the stone, throwing a blinding sheet of orange sparks over our bodies.

"Are the wheels still on the track?" I choked out, my ears ringing from the blast.

"The front axle is holding!" Garrison growled, his voice vibrating through his chest into my cheek. He shifted his weight, using his boots to brace against the buckling wooden sideboards. "The gradient is doing the work now! We are coasting to the junction!"

The white-hot glare behind us began to fade as the broken copper wire ran out of slack, snapping completely a quarter-mile back. The darkness returned thicker than before, but the cart was still rolling, its broken rear axle clacking violently against the ties.

Up ahead, a faint gray light appeared at the end of the tunnel.

"The gorge," I panted, wiping a smear of grease and blood from my forehead. "Garrison, we are coming out onto the mountain bridge."

"The express line runs parallel to us out there," Garrison said, scrambling back up to his knees. He reached into his vest and pulled out three loose pistol rounds he had kept hidden in a side pouch. He began reloading the small sidearm with steady, freezing precision. "Thorne’s car has to slow down for the automated curve check before the bridge. That is where we drop him."

The cart burst out of the tunnel, launching us onto a narrow steel trestle bridge suspended hundreds of feet above a black, jagged mountain canyon. The howling wind hit us instantly, freezing my wet clothes against my skin.

To our right, less than thirty yards away, the silver automated express car emerged from the main tunnel. Its white LED bars were flashing red now—the internal system warning Thorne that the primary power grid had been severed.

Through the tinted glass windows of the advancing car, I saw Dr. Thorne. He was standing at the manual console, his white coat covered in grease as he frantically threw secondary breakers to keep the backup batteries from locking the brakes.

And right behind him, her hands resting flat against the control glass, was Cynthia. She looked through the window, her eyes locking onto me through the storm.