AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What if he doesn’t?” Joe asked.
“Would you stay there?”
“But trains derail,” Hayley cried. “Two hundred and fifty-three worldwide in the last six months alone. And not all of them hit trucks!”
Kurt looked at her sideways. “How would you even know such a thing?”
“I keep abreast of all travel-related accidents,” she said, “to remind myself why I stay at home.”
At three hundred feet, the train’s blazing headlights began to light up the broadside of the big truck. The driver could be seen blocking the light from his eyes.
Kurt flipped the radio back on, switching channels until he heard someone speaking.
“… do not allow the train to pass,” another Russian-sounding voice was saying.
Kurt broke in as soon as the frequency cleared. “Whoever you are in the truck, I’d move if I were you.”
Kirov’s voice came next. “Driver, if you move that truck, I will personally cut your heart out.”
Two hundred feet from impact, with the train beginning to gain momentum, the truck driver made a decision that split the difference. He threw open the door, jumped from the rig, and ran for the hills.
“Didn’t see that coming,” Joe muttered.
“Oh no,” Hayley gasped.
“You have to stop now,” Kirov threatened.
“Don’t stop,” Kurt told the burly Australian engineer.
“No worries,” the big man said.
“I really don’t want to be in a train wreck,” Hayley cried.
The engineer looked at Hayley. “Don’t worry, love,” he said. “At this speed, we’re not really a train anyway.”
The truck was only a hundred feet ahead.
“What are we, then?” Hayley asked.
The engineer grinned manically and held the shuddering engine’s throttle wide open. “The world’s largest, most powerful bulldozer!”
There was something both inspiring and borderline crazy about the engineer. Either way, he wasn’t slowing down. And Kurt was glad for that.
“Brace yourselves!” the engineer shouted.
The last hundred feet vanished in ten seconds. The rumbling train thundered into the broadside of the truck, shoving it forward. The diesels alone weighed six hundred thousand pounds. The sheer power they were generating, and the weight of the entire train, made quick work of the truck, lifting it and then discarding it to the right as if it were made of tin.
The impact was incredibly loud, a thundering boom followed by the wrenching sound of shredding aluminum. The feeling was like that of a ship breaking a large wave. The train shouldered through the blow with great power. The headlights blew out, and the windshield cracked, but the safety glass stayed in place. And when the last bits of the truck were finally tossed aside and sent tumbling down the embankment, the train itself was still on the tracks.
* * *
Four cars back, the impact had felt like a sudden application of the brakes. Kirov and his partner had to grab the handholds to keep from being thrown to the ground. They saw the remnants of the truck thrown off to the side and felt the train continuing on, accelerating smoothly once again.
“How are we going to get into that locomotive now?” his partner asked. “They’ll be waiting to pick us off the second we open the door. If we can even get there, that is.
There’s no door between the two engines. They’re separate units.”
“Maybe we could go on the roof,” Kirov said.
