The Viperob Files Page 19

  He risked a look down, seeing nothing but darkness. With clouds blocking any light from the moon, the world was reduced to muted tones of grey and black. He couldn’t see the water far below, but he could hear it. Underlying the demonic shrieks of wind as it whipped over the Maglev track was the ever-present fury of the ocean. Waves reared, crashed and swirled as if clamouring for the group to make a misstep and fall into its wet embrace.

  Ethan grimaced, concentrated on the track, and started walking again. One foot in front of the other. Careful steps. Each one bringing him closer to safety. The harness whipped behind in his wake, the material sliding beneath the track faultlessly. Before him on the track, a grey shape loomed out of gloom, materializing into the stationary form of Gwen as he got closer.

  “What’s going on?” Ethan had to shout to be heard.

  Gwen glanced over her shoulder at him, eyes squinting into the gale. “Not sure, Jaego seems to be caught on something.”

  Ethan looked passed her to see Jaego crouching on the track, his harness pulled tight on an obstruction beneath.

  He looked up at them, face tight. “We’ve reached the middle of the bridge.”

  Shit. Ethan felt his heart rate surge at the import of the sentence. He’d looked at the bridge countless times during the day, admiring the stark beauty of the structure that consisted of nothing but a single beam of silver track supported by a narrow pylon at its centre. The pylon connected solidly with the track, creating an obstruction that their safety harness wouldn’t be able to pull past without being disconnected and reapplied on the far side. The look on Jaego’s face showed he’d come to the same conclusion.

  “We’re going to have to unclip, aren’t we?” muttered Ethan.

  His mate’s face was white as he nodded agreement.

  “Right, let’s get it over with,” said Ethan, trying to keep his voice calm despite his racing heart. “Slow and steady, yeah?” At any other time, he would have offered to go first, the need partly driven by a desire to get the deed over and done with. But on this bridge, that wasn’t an option. The first in line had to be the first to overcome the obstacle, and his mate had drawn the short straw.

  Jaego gritted his teeth and sat on the track, each leg wrapped around the metal beam to hold on tight, each heel pressed tightly against the start of the pylon beneath as he unclipped one end of nylon rope from his harness. The end of the rope with carabineer attached dropped from his hand, swinging out under the track to be caught by the wind and flung out sideways. He reeled in the writhing line hand over hand. Once Jaego had the carabineer in his grip again, he froze, eyes staring down past the track into the yawning darkness below, his free hand gripping the edge of the track with white knuckled intensity.

  Come on, mate. Ethan silently urged on his friend to get moving. You can do this.

  Jaego’s head gave slight jerk, as if shaking himself into action. His hands stretched forward, took a grip on the track, then dragged his bottom along the sleek surface. He repeated this twice until he’d passed the pylon and his ankles were able to entwine about themselves beneath the track again. Jaego leant down until his belly and chest were flat on the metal and fed the carabineer from one hand to the other under the track. Although the beam was narrow at no more than forty centimetres, it was deep, with Jaego’s arms only just long enough to reach.

  As Ethan watched his mate clip back on the safety rope to his harness, a grin of pure relief on his face, he knew that Gwen wouldn’t have such an easy time of it. Both of them were smaller than Jaego, but he knew Gwen lacked the reach to simply pass the carabineer from hand to hand under the track.

  Ahead of him, Gwen had already sat herself onto the track and unclipped. Fears for his own safety were unconsciously discarded, replaced by concern for his friend. One of them had made it past the obstruction, now Gwen just needed to make it two of them on the far side.

  Gwen frowned as she gripped the track between her thighs with the wiry strength of a rock-climber, holding the carabineer in hand. The mist-laden wind had soaked her clothes, plastering them against her body as a second wrinkled skin. A second skin that she cursed as it restricted her movement, the damp material pulling at her joints and chafing.

  She blinked salt water from her eyelashes as she looked briefly at the metal clip. Attached to a length of nylon rope, it seemed incongruous that such a simple loop of material, slung below the track and back up again to fasten onto their harness again could be their only lifeline. But with the carabineer now unfastened, the safety net it provided was gone.

  A gust of wind slapped into her back. Whether it was nature urging her onwards, or downwards, she could only guess. Either way, it was a reminder that she needed to get moving. Gwen dropped the clip. The nylon strap, weighted by the carabineer, whipped out from below the track to writhe like a live entity at a ninety-degree angle. Gwen wrestled the strap back from the wind’s grasp, pulling in the line with workmen-like efficiency until she clipped the carabineer back home on her harness.

  She dug her left heel in tight against underside of the track and risked a glance downwards at the pylon. The supporting structure was around a metre in diameter. A cylinder for most of its length, it tapered into a narrow wedge over the last hand-span to join seamlessly with the polished steel of the single track. In the night, the metal was greasy, black and unforgiving. All the more reason to get the hell off it.

  Gwen straightened again, bringing her centre of gravity back over the track, and began to shuffle her seat forward, a few centimetres at a time.

  “Come on, Gwen, you can do it,” said Jaego.

  She looked up to find Jaego sitting astride the track, beckoning her onwards.

  “Just don’t think about it. Pretend you’re anywhere but here, that’s what I did.”

  Easy to say when you’re safely anchored again. Gwen continued her slow movement, a crease between her eyebrows as she concentrated on every changed grip.

  “Right, that’s it. I think you’re past the pylon,” said Jaego.

  Sure enough, with her next movement forward, Gwen’s heels thudded together underneath the track. Shit. Now I need to get this rope around the damn track again. Gwen felt a tremor in her fingers as she unclipped the carabineer and lay her chest forward onto the metal with the clip in her right hand. The track was cold and slimy beneath her cheek as she reached her arms down to encircle the track and pass the clip into her left hand.

  Gwen felt her stomach lurch as she realised her arms weren’t long enough. She couldn’t quite reach, a hand-span still between her fingertips.

  “I can’t reach!” she shouted, voice cracking.

  She felt a hand grab onto her ankle. “Don’t worry. I’ve got you,” said Ethan from behind. “Just take hold of the strap a little bit back from the carabineer and swing it up into your other hand. You’ll be fine.”

  Gwen forced herself to take a steadying breath and focused on the task, trying to ignore the little voice of anxiety in the back of her head that was rapidly growing in volume. She swung the carabineer across to her other hand, but the wind teased her, changing the direction of the clip so that her fingers couldn’t grip it. Shut up and do it again! Gwen flicked the strap with force and felt the nylon material hit her left hand, fingers curling about it. She felt a surge of triumph, knowing that she was almost safe again and shoved herself up with her right hand to a sitting position again.

  Too quickly.

  The greasy metal under her left heel slipped, and suddenly she was falling to the right. She screamed, her left hand yanking the carabineer on the end of the nylon strap toward her harness to close the loop.

  It missed by a hair’s breadth.

  And suddenly she was falling.

  Chapter Thirty

  At the wound’s base, a drop of crimson gathered and slid free, rolling down through his eyebrow and into the hollow of his eye. Harris blinked at the added fluid, the blood lending a pink lens as he watched the screen in the control room. Irritated,
he wiped at the eye with the back of his hand and then flicked the blood off his fingers, sending a spatter of fine droplets across a white notepad on the desk.

  There were numerous video screens in the control room, each relaying different camera streams. A seventy-five-inch screen dominated the main wall, providing footage shot from the front of the train returning to the island. Another screen to the right of Harris showed a scale map of the entire Viperob rail system. At a glance the rail system appeared rather small, but the distance between factories and mine stops were, in reality, huge. A red light indicated the location of his train, the crimson dot seeming to only crawl forward across the map. But while the dot crawled on the screen, the train was flying at 400 kilometres per hour, seemingly floating mere inches above the single track. He didn’t understand the complex magnetic forces used to levitate the carriages off the rail, nor did he care. His only concern was that the bloody thing worked.

  Harris looked at Sue, the station manager. Since finishing her list of contacts on turning the train around, she’d sat in silence, nervously chewing the nails of her left hand down to the quick as she tried to avoid any interaction.

  “How long until the train hits the bridge?” asked Harris, his voice terse.

  The woman finally met his gaze, eyes glistening with unshed tears and face pale. “Not long. Maybe ten minutes at most.” She paused for a moment, her mouth contorting into words that failed to make it past her lips.

  “For God’s sake woman, spit it out,” muttered Harris.

  Sue took a sharp intake of breath. “I’ll never sleep again after this night,” she said, voice catching. “You’ve made me into a child murderer.”

  Harris snorted. Some people are so weak. “Not yet I haven’t. But give it a few minutes more,” he said with a cruel smile. “And then we can join the league of child killers together. How’s that sound?”

  Sue’s face crumpled, tears leaking as she broke.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Ethan’s heart skipped a beat as he felt Gwen’s body weight move to the right, slipping on the greasy metal. He tightened his grip on her ankle but knew it wouldn’t be enough to hold her. Ethan saw her attempt to reattach her safety line and miss.

  Then she was falling.

  There was no conscious thought, no time to consider if his harness could hold the weight of two if he jumped, no time to think of his own safety or fear. Necessity stole away any chance of emotion. There was only time for instantaneous reaction.

  Ethan let himself fall to the right with her. He hauled on her ankle, using it to lunge forward with his left hand as they fell. His palm slapped against the wet clothes of her lower back then reflexively grasped into a fist about a strap of her climbing harness.

  Ethan’s safety line snapped taut, stopping them dead less than a metre below the track. Gwen’s ankle slipped out of his right hand, unable to maintain a grip on the wet skin with the force of the stop, but he still had one handhold left. The nylon strapping of her safety harness bit into the fingers of his left fist. Ethan tightened his fist, his fingers like the talons of an eagle, refusing to let go. He lunged down with his right hand and took a second grip of the harness.

  “I’ve got you!” he yelled, voice hoarse with the strain of taking her weight. The two teenagers hung beneath the track in near-complete darkness, their bodies buffeted by gusting wind that set them both swaying. Ethan gritted his teeth against the growing pain in his hands. Either he managed to get her back onto the track in the next few minutes, or she was dead. “I’m not going to be able to hold on for long, so we have to do this quick. Can you help me?”

  “Just tell me what to do!” Gwen’s voice was high-pitched, cracked.

  “I’m going to lift you up, and I need you to take hold of me as high as you can. We need to get your safety line reattached, or you won’t be able to get back up to the track. You ready?”

  “Yes!”

  Ethan was grateful for any response or chance of help, knowing that at this moment, Gwen was staring into the void below, terrified that at any moment she could start a long dive to the waves and Tri-Claw below.

  “First, I need to turn you around,” he yelled, shouting to be heard over the shrieking wind. Without waiting for an answer, he alternately slid his grip along the waist harness, forcing her body to turn until she now looked up at him. In the meagre light he saw her face in shades of corpse grey. Her pupils were hugely dilated with adrenaline, mouth open, breathing rapid.

  “Right, we’re going to go on three.”

  Gwen gave him a slight nod, her mouth in a grimace.

  “One. Two.” Ethan took a deep breath, clenched his teeth. “Three!”

  In one massive muscular contraction, he drew Gwen up against his chest with both arms. She wrapped both legs tight about his waist, arms about his shoulders, breath loud in his ear as she clung. Feeling the strength of her grip, Ethan changed his hold, and enclosed her in a massive bear hug, his fingers entwining themselves about her harness again at her back for added support.

  Gwen grabbed onto one side of the loop of nylon rope that formed Ethan’s safety line and hauled on it to change the position so that they hung perpendicular rather than horizontal.

  “Are you guys ok?” yelled Jaego.

  Ethan looked up to see his mate lying flat on the track, staring straight at him, brow creased with concern.

  “We need to get my safety line attached again,” shouted Gwen.

  Jaego gave a stiff nod. “Throw it up to me and I’ll feed it around the track and back to you again.”

  Gwen spoke into Ethan’s ear. “I’m going to need my arms to do this. Don’t you let go of me, Claymore.”

  Unbidden, a grin cracked across Ethan’s face. “Not a chance, Russo. Now get on with it, will you?”

  Gwen let go of him with her right hand and hauled in the length of nylon strap from where it flapped in the wind until she had the end carabineer in hand again. She took a length and whipped it overhead. Ethan looked up in time to see Jaego shoot out a hand and catch the line, and within moments it was fed back over the track and down to them. Gusts of wind frustrated Gwen’s attempt to get hold of the line, dancing it just out of the reach, until on the fourth grab she managed to catch it. With trembling fingers, she attached the carabineer to her harness again, the click as it closed sending a warm wave of relief through Ethan’s body.

  Gwen gave the line a stiff yank followed by a satisfied nod. “Looks like it should hold.” With legs still wrapped about his waist, she leant forward and to Ethan’s surprise, planted a kiss on his lips. “Thank you.”

  Before he had a chance to say anything in return, Gwen let go of him and swung outside arm’s reach, allowing her weight to be taken by her own harness and strap. For a moment, he could feel the warmth of her lips against his own before the wind tore it away. He gave his head a slight shake to clear it. The job was only half done, they still needed to get back up onto the track.

  Above them, Jaego wrapped his long legs about the track, crossing his ankles tightly beneath so that his weight couldn’t budge, then stretched an arm down towards Gwen. They grabbed each other’s wrists and Jaego hauled back, muscles bunching as he lifted straight up until her torso was over the track. Gwen clung to the metal for a moment like a limpet on a wave-spattered rock, before bringing her legs up and straddling the track like Jaego.

  Now it was Ethan’s turn. He gripped the safety line in his hands, then tipped himself upside down, bringing his feet up to the base of the track. At the base of the track, there was a lip of metal which he dug his heels above. He hung for a split second to ensure he had a reasonable hold, then flexed his core muscles and bent upwards, bringing his hands within reach of the track. He hung beneath the track like a monkey beneath a branch, breathing hard and muscles burning. Not for the first time, he wished he had something with better grip to hold on to the metal, as his fingers threatened to slip free on the greasy surface. He gave a last effort and shot one hand up
wards and over the track. Another heave, and began to pull himself topside, aided by a hand wrenching on his shoulder. His body felt twice its usual weight as he lay on top of the track, exhaustion stealing strength as adrenaline ebbed.

  They’d made it.

  Ethan lay flat on the track, cold metal kissing his cheek as he caught his breath, still barely believing that they’d succeeded. Don’t count your chickens yet. He grimaced, remembering that they still had half of the bridge expanse to cover. Ethan groaned and pushed himself to a sitting position to find both Gwen and Jaego looking at him, eyes soft with something that looked like… awe. Nah. Can’t be.

  “What?” said Ethan, feeling self-conscious under their combined gaze.

  Jaego just cracked a grin. “When you’re ready, Princess, we need to get moving.”

  That’s more like it. Ethan matched his smile and pushed himself carefully to standing. After hanging in space, the narrow beam didn’t seem half as bad as before and the trio set off at a faster pace than earlier.

  Gwen had managed to push aside her fall for the moment, concentrating instead on each step. She’d come quickly to the conclusion that freaking out over her near-death experience could wait until after she reached safety. And that was by no means a foregone conclusion. With still a quarter of the bridge to cross, complicated further by the fact that the track on this section had begun to slope downwards, she concentrated on placing each heel carefully. She focused on making contact with an almost flat foot, knee slightly flexed to ensure her grip didn’t slip forward on the greasy surface. If I never see a bridge again, it’ll be a good day. The only good thing to happen since the fall was that the gale-force winds had eased, reducing to a fitful breeze that barely troubled her balance.