Chapter 7 - The Iron Bridge
The bridge was a narrow, two-lane truss structure built in the 1940s, its rusted steel girders arching over a swollen, black torrent of river water forty feet below. Blocking the entrance on the opposite side was a heavy-duty road service truck, parked diagonally across both lanes with its hazard lights flashing rhythmically.
Two men stood near the front bumper of the maintenance truck, holding flare torches that cast an eerie red haze over the rain-slicked asphalt.
Behind Bus 402, the damaged SUV was recovering speed, its crushed bumper scraping the asphalt with a rhythmic metallic clatter. Thomas had less than three hundred yards of clearance. If he hit the brakes, the SUV would box him in from behind; if he charged forward, he would ram a ten-ton flatbed truck head-on.
""Daddy's glass house?"" Lily asked innocently, pointing through the windshield at the flashing red lights reflecting off the steel girders of the bridge.
""Not yet, little bird,"" Thomas said through clenched teeth. His eyes scanned the approach. Just before the concrete lip of the bridge, there was an old gravel service ramp meant for river dredging equipment—steep, overgrown with weeds, and unpaved.
He didn't slow down. At sixty miles an hour, he wrenched the wheel sharply to the right.
The bus groaned, the tires screeching as rubber bit into loose river stones. The massive vehicle violently pitched sideways, the suspension bottoming out with a deafening crash as it plummeted down the unpaved service decline, bypassing the barricaded bridge entirely.
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Inside, loose items flew through the air. Thomas fought the steering wheel with every ounce of strength in his aging arms, keeping the tires pointed straight along the narrow mud bank beside the rushing river. Tree branches whipped viciously against the reinforced safety glass, leaving long green scratches along the paint.
With a final violent shudder, the bus cleared the underbelly of the steel bridge and climbed back up the eastern access road on the other side of the river. As they crested the bank, the bus’s engine coughed, a cloud of white steam billowing from the damaged radiator grille.
