He raises his head carefully, looking around. “Don’t see it.”
Oh God, hear me now. Please. Please send him. I’m sorry for everything I’ve done. I’m sorry I’ve kept secrets from him. I need him. If not for me, then at least for my friend. Abe needs your help. He needs it more than I do. Please, oh please, help him.
There’s no response, but isn’t that the way of things? The decision gnaws at my insides, but I don’t care. I can’t. This man is my friend. He is my family. I won’t let him fall.
“Fuck it!” I snarl at him. “You listen to me. You listening, old man?” He nods, not meeting my eyes. “When you move, you gotta move fast, okay? It’s going to hurt like hell, but you gotta roll out. Roll over until you feel the cement on your back. Once you do, you keep fucking rolling, you hear me?”
“B
ut the truck,” he whispers. “You….”
Blood drips from my face to the roof. I know where it’s coming from now. It feels like my shoulder has been sliced open. The blood is steady, not gushing.
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell him. “It’s either one or both of us, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you go down with me. You listen to me, okay? You have to go get help. You can’t let them get away with this. It’s Griggs. It’s Walken. It’s Traynor. And whoever their boss is. They have killed, Abe. They’ve killed so many people, and you have to stop them. I can’t. Not anymore. You have to—”
Footsteps, crunching glass.
“Hello in the truck!” a voice calls out. Not Cal, but familiar.
“Oh, thank God!” Abe cries out. “Help! Benji’s stuck! The whole damn thing’s about to go over!”
“Is that so?” a voice drawls, the footsteps getting closer.
“No,” I whisper. “No. Not like this.”
Jack Traynor crouches under the hood of the Ford, cocking his head to peer in at us. The smile he gives is one of such terrible beauty that I want to scream and fight and rip him to shreds. He reaches up and presses against the truck, and it rocks even further, and he laughs quietly. “You bastard,” I whisper. “Oh, you fucking bastard. You did it, didn’t you?”
He misunderstands me. “Yeah, thought you guys would go over a lot more quickly. Still a pretty crazy flip you did. Kind of exciting to watch.”
“My father,” I snarl at him. “You did it!”
He’s taken aback a moment, the surprise on his face almost comical. He glances down at Abe, who is glaring up at him. “Ah, son,” he says, as he rocks the truck again. “That was before my time, though I do admit to copying the move a little bit. Works better than you’d think. By the time this old beater falls, there won’t be many people left for anyone to figure out a single thing. I wonder if it’ll explode? Like in the movies.” He looks wistful. “But no. No, it wasn’t me who done in your dad. Had I been around, I would have done it gladly, but I can’t take credit. Seems to me that you just couldn’t keep to your own business, could you? Like father, so much like son.”
“I’ll fucking kill you!”
He smiles again. “No. No, I don’t think you will. Should have just left the grown-ups alone, Benji. This whole thing could have been avoided had you just minded your own business. If it’s any consolation, it will be quick. I’m sure of it.” He says this last as if he’s being kind, and a shudder tears through me.
Abe moves then, quicker than I could ever imagine, given his age and injuries. I see a flash of silver in Abe’s hand before the gunfire erupts inside the cab, the noise deafening in the enclosed space. A spray of blood erupts from Traynor’s right side and he howls as he falls backward, out of sight. Abe’s hand is shaking as he raises the gun again, but it’s too much for him and it falls to the floor, bouncing out of his reach. He tries to move, but the truck has started to sway again alarmingly.
Traynor curses loudly, and there’s a reverberating bang that shakes the truck. “You assholes!” he shouts, and the bang happens again. “You faggots! Oh, fuck, I’m going to kill you!” His foot flashes up in my vision, and he gives a vicious kick to the hood of the truck. It rocks up… up… up… and then I’m sure it’s going to fall with one more kick that doesn’t come.
“What the fuck is that?” I hear Traynor say hoarsely over the groan of metal. Then, above all else, I hear it—the beating of wings.
Cal.
An answering roar comes from above. It is filled with such extraordinary fury that it shreds my heart. I try to call out to him, but I can’t find any words, less and less making sense in the garbled mess in my mind. Instead, I scream out to him and let all my anger and fear pour out of me. Only one thought repeats over and over: He came. He came.
He came.
He answers my cry with another furious shout and the beat of wings grows louder even as the truck creaks and tips dangerously. The blood continues to drip down my side and face and another wave of nausea rolls over me. My vision narrows and shadows start to dance across my eyes, unconsciousness trying to pull me under, clawing at me, dragging me down. Not thinking, I snap my head back and forth, trying to keep myself awake. Blood sprays in tiny droplets over the ceiling of the cab, which rocks even further. Traynor cries out again, but there is terror in his voice now, not just pain. Abe clutches his arm and gasps as the truck tips up again, causing him to roll further into the cab. The truck tips up again, and it reaches an apex, so much farther up than it was before. I know this is it, this is the moment when the truck will slip off the edge and I will fall into the river, and I will drown just like my father did.
Some part of me recognizes that your life is supposed to flash before your eyes at the moment of your death. Time is supposed to be slow so you remember every little detail about your life in a series of memories—still photos that burst across your mind like a comet in the dark. You see the good. You see the bad. You see the people you’ve hurt, the people you’ve loved. Memory explodes like a star and it rushes over you in an overwhelming wave that blocks out all other senses.
This does not happen to me. I do not see my past.
I see my future.
The wings beat again, and a whistling sound cracks through the air, signifying a heavy descent. Traynor screams and kicks his leg up into the air again, but whether a reflex of fear or to kick the truck again, I don’t know. Before his foot can make contact with the truck, there’s a flash of brilliant blue and the cab shakes as the ground rolls beneath it when the angel Calliel lands on the bridge. He snaps his hand out and grabs Traynor by the ankle before he can connect with the truck again. Traynor’s scream is choked off. Cal snarls at him and pulls on his leg, whipping him around and hurtling him in the other direction. I can see Traynor’s face for a split second, and his eyes are blown out, his mouth twisted open so wide that he reminds me of the Strange Men. He makes no sound as he flies out of my line of sight, only leaving a brief arc of blood from the wound on his side. I hear him crash down on the other side of the bridge, and I feel a brief moment of remorse that he didn’t go over the edge.