from his custom van, video camera already running.
I called after her. 'Pam! No. There's nowhere to run.'
Nick Fox grabbed me by the arm. 'Let her go, Jake.' I shook him off and moved closer to the foot of the rising span. As she climbed uphill, the increasing grade slowed her. In a moment I knew she would never make it. The opening at the mouth yawned wider. She couldn't reach the top, and if she did, she couldn't jump it. So she hung there, a hundred feet from the base of the bridge, clinging to the steel grating with both hands, digging her bare feet into the open grids, poised at a precarious angle as the bridge shuddered even higher. Then she looked back over her shoulder at me. In the eerie green haze of the vapor lamps I could not make out her face. She was calling to me, but the cacophony of horns drowned her out.
I wasn't doing any good where I was, so I sprinted to the tender's shack and pounded on the wall. 'Stop it! Bring it down.'
I looked through the window, covered with a metal screen. The tender was on the far side of sixty, a skinny guy in a Yankees T-shirt, propped on a dirty pillow in an old wooden swivel chair. He pointed to the Bertram about to chug through the opening and shook his head. I didn't care about a rich guy's tuna tower. I tried the door. Locked. But it was peeling plywood, and one good shoulder caved it in. I faced the control panel, a series of black and red buttons, four three-foot levers.
'Which one?' I demanded. 'How do I stop it?'
He froze, eyes widening. 'Unless you're from DOT, you're not allowed-'
'Which one!'
'It's against regulations to-'
I grabbed the front of his shirt and lifted him from his chair. 'Tell me!'
He was frightened senseless. I dropped him onto his pillow, my eyes skimming the control panel. Under a button covered with red plastic was a hand-lettered sign: emergency hydraulic stop. I smashed it with my fist and grabbed for the lever where the sign said, descend, east span. I leaned back and pulled. It didn't give.
'No!' the tender yelled. 'It's got-'
I bent my knees, grabbed the lever with two hands, and yanked it toward me, hard. It jerked away like an ornery gearshift when you've missed the clutch, gave a bit, then pulled loose, and I nearly fell over backward.
'— to stop before you bring it down.'
A hydraulic whoosh from deep inside the bridge slowed the huge piston that was pushing the span upward. A second later, from somewhere inside the motor, there was a clangor of metal. The span was just reaching its peak, and it jolted and quaked. Below us, in the belly of the mechanical beast, sparks shot from the motor housing, orange bursts reflecting off the water below. The span lurched to a stop, first pitching, then yawing, the vibrations reverberating through the metal. Beneath my feet I felt the main bridge sway.
I looked out the window of the shack. Pam Maxson had lost her grip. She slid down twenty feet, her face scraping the metal. She caught hold again, a death grip on the hot steel. There was a grinding of gears, and the bridge shuddered again and began its descent, and again she lost hold. The Bertram gunned it and just made it through, a bare-chested fat man at the wheel blasting his air horn and screaming obscenities.
Pam's slide slowed, but still she could not hold on. She slid another ten feet and was bleeding from the nose and mouth, a crimson trail across the steel. Then the span shook once more and stopped dead, electrical sparks crackling from the heavy cables strung along the railing. From beneath us, a puff of gray smoke drifted like a cloud from the motor housing.
'Shorted out,' the tender said, shaking his head mournfully. I'll hook up the emergency generator, but it'll take a bit.'
I ran from the shack. The drivers had stopped their honking. As the main bridge continued to sway they held their steering wheels in white-knuckled grips. A ten-foot gap separated the main bridge and the tilting span. Nick Fox saw what I had in mind, moved toward me, and started to tell me to forget it, then changed his mind. If I didn't make it, so much the better for him. I ducked underneath the traffic gate, took three giant steps, and leaped across the gap, landing on all fours on the span. I scrambled upward like an overgrown monkey. When I stopped, I latched onto the grating with one hand to steady myself and reached up, toward her, with the other. She was ten feet above me and three feet to the side. An instant later, she lost her grip again.
She clawed at the grating as her slide began, and she called my name. 'Jake!'
I'm here, Pam.'
'Jake, I can't hold on.'
Still clinging to the grating with my left hand, I reached out with my right and caught her by a wrist. I pulled her up next to me, her feet dangling helplessly. I inched my hand up her arm, then slid it around her back, gripping the back of her head, pulling her face next to mine. Blood seeped from two gashes in her forehead, smeared her hair, and ran down her face. The back of her neck was clammy with cold sweat.
'Help me, Jake,' she whimpered. The color had drained from her cheeks. Her face was a ghostly pallor streaked with red. 'Kiss me quick…'
Stunned, I didn't move. Clinging to me, she hoisted herself up and kissed me, at first softly, with parted lips, and then harder, our teeth scraping. I tasted the warm sweetness of her blood…before I die.'
'Hush, now. I've got you. You're not going to-'
'Take me away, Jake. Don't let them-'
'I'm going to get you help. The best doctors, the best hospital, the best-'
Suddenly the span shuddered again and, with a clatter of meshing gears, began a slow, balky descent. She pulled away, digging her feet into the grating. She climbed out of my grasp, dragging herself up again. 'I've seen the best, Jake. It doesn't work. I am what I am.'
I caught her by an ankle, but she jerked it away. She clambered up, hand over hand.
'Pam, there's nowhere to go.'
Still, she climbed toward the sky, and I followed, overtaking her a few feet from the top of the span. Hanging on again with one hand, I grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her to me. As Pam turned she clenched her right hand into a claw and raked my face with her nails, now ripped by the steel. She drew four tracks of blood from my forehead to beneath each eye. Instinctively, I let go of her hair, my hand shooting to my face. My forearm collided with her shoulder, knocking her off balance, and I heard her gasp. She had lost her grip. I reached for her as she skidded by me and our hands touched, but only for an instant. I grabbed for her, but my timing was off, and she slid past me, her head glancing off the grating. Farther she fell, trying vainly to hold on, slowing down, but only for a moment. An instant later, she disappeared into the blackness between the raised span and the bridge.
I waited for the splash, but there was none.
There was no scream, no plea.
There was just the heavy, deadweight thumpety-thump of body on metal. I pressed my forehead into the hot steel and looked through the grating. In the milky reflection of the moon off the water below, I looked into the guts of the motor. She was pinned in the gear housing, feet first. Her face was twisted into a grotesque mask of fear. She extended an arm upward, toward me or toward heaven, I couldn't tell which. Slowly, the span descended, the gears churning, and her body disappeared into a mammoth, oily black-toothed wheel that groaned and creaked as it dragged her into an unseen crevice.
I heard her scream.
A piercing wail of pain.
And then silence except for the sound of the bridge itself.
I waited an eternity for the wheel to emerge from its turn. When it did, the crusted blackness ran wet with crimson. The wheel chinked and chawed and then clunked to a stop, spitting out shards of linen, obscenely red. It came to a stop and, with a final jangle, expelled the bony stump of an arm and a clenched fist.
I closed my eyes, said a silent prayer, and wondered if one without a conscience could have a soul. When I opened my eyes, the bridge had lumbered into place, and the gates lifted. I scrambled to the catwalk, cars zooming by, one nearly clipping me.
The old bridge tender was jabbering frantically into his phone. Nick Fox leaned on the railing, mouth agape. 'Jesus H. Christ,' he said. 'As bad as anything I saw in 'Nam.' He took off his suit coat and ran a hand through his hair. 'You're a little pale. You okay, Jake?'
I was not okay.
