Chapter 155 - The Frozen Spur
The Dodge Power Wagon lurched backwards through the debris, its heavy tire chains clawing through snow and shattered slate with ferocious violence. A second burst of gunfire raked the hood, one bullet punching clean through the passenger-side windshield, showering Emma with diamond crumbs of safety glass.
Emma didn't scream; the scream died in her throat as she threw her entire body over Maya, pinning the six-year-old against the steel floorboards beneath the canvas.
"Stay down!" Julian roared, spinning the enormous bakelite steering wheel with both arms.
He didn't hit the headlights. Driving entirely by memory and the dim, snowy glow filtering from the clouds, Julian swung the truck around 180 degrees and dropped the transmission into low-range four-wheel drive. The Dodge slammed through an ancient chain-link fence, ripping the wooden posts out of the frozen earth like rotten teeth, and plunged onto an abandoned logging spur that cut directly south into the impenetrable hemlock forests of northern Franklin County.
Behind them, the high beams of two tactical SUVs crested the quarry lip, bouncing wildly over the rim as they initiated pursuit.
"They're coming down the service road!" Emma yelled, glancing through the shattered rear window.
"They won't keep up," Julian grunted, his foot flat against the floorboard. "Those Mercedes SUVs have electronic traction control. In three feet of unplowed powder over wet slate, computers hesitate. Iron doesn't."
The truck crashed through drifts of snow that exploded across the windshield like white tidal waves. The logging road was barely wide enough for a tractor, flanked on both sides by jagged outcroppings of granite and dense, century-old spruce trees whose branches clawed against the side mirrors with deafening screeches.
Julian wrestled the wheel through a deep, snaking curve. Ahead, the road crested a steep railway embankment—an old abandoned spur of the Central Vermont Railway, its rusted iron tracks half-buried in ice.
"Hold on!" Julian shouted.
The truck hit the embankment at thirty miles an hour. The impact slammed Emma's jaw shut, her teeth clacking together with a sharp crack. The Dodge went momentarily airborne, clearing the rusted rails, before crashing back down on the other side with a bone-jarring impact that flattened the leaf springs and sent a shudder of raw agony through Emma's spine.
The truck skidded sideways, its rear tires kissing the edge of a sixty-foot ravine choked with frozen hemlocks, before Julian caught the drift, feathered the gas, and straightened the vehicle out onto a narrow, snow-covered gravel bed running parallel to the dead rail line.
In the rearview mirror, the headlights of their pursuers reached the embankment. The lead SUV attempted the jump at full speed; its front axle caught the elevated rail line with a shower of orange sparks, flipping the vehicle violently onto its roof before it tumbled down the rocky embankment in a ball of flame.
May you like
The second SUV slammed on its brakes, stranded on the far side of the tracks, its spotlights sweeping uselessly across the dark void of the forest.
Julian didn't slow down. He kept the Dodge moving down the rail bed, pushing the needle toward forty, disappearing deeper into the blind, unmapped heart of the Green Mountains.
