Vigilante

CHAPTER 47

Lee Bob looked at his watch, then got out of the car, opened the back door, and lifted Marcia out. He put her in the passenger seat, then came around to get me. He lifted me up with almost no effort and carried me to the driver’s side of the Cad, shoving me behind the wheel beside Marcia.

It’s hard on a man’s self-image to be lifted, then carried around and dumped like so much garbage.

“Da gran reve pesant, cher,” he said, looking at Marcia. “Da loup-garot, ca arrive.”

Then Lee Bob pulled out a vial of clear fluid and poured it on a rag.

He grabbed me by the neck and pulled me toward him, covering my nose and mouth with the cloth for the second time. He held it there until I began to lose consciousness, then pulled the rag quickly back. I was still awake but totally paralyzed. He reached across me and did the same to Marcia.

We were still parked in the dirt lot on a slight rise when I saw the headlight from the approaching Metro train. It rounded into view a mile away, coming toward us at over sixty miles an hour.

Lee Bob shoved me over, then crowded behind the wheel and started the car. I could see the train barreling down the tracks toward us. At sixty miles an hour, that would put it at the intersection in about a minute. Lee Bob had the car moving and was heading toward the track. It wasn’t even going to be close. He was going to beat the train by at least twenty seconds.

He pulled the Cad around the corner on San Fernando and drove it up onto the tracks just as the signal lights started flashing and the guard arm dropped both in front and behind us. Then he scrambled out of the front seat, pulled a thin curved knife from a scabbard on his belt, and slashed the fishing line holding my hands and feet. He did the same with Marcia.

“Bonne chance,” he said, then slammed the door and sprinted off the track. I could feel the car shuddering with the vibrations of the approaching train. The red lights across the street from us were clanging, the bar arm lights flashing. I was unable to move.

Marcia was staring dumbly up the tracks at the approaching train. We were both trying to claw at the door handles to get out but had no strength to accomplish it.

Then the headlights swept around the last bend in the track and the train was bearing down on us from less than a block away. The engineer saw us and started leaning on the horn. He was going way too fast. The train whistle kept blaring as the white headlamp on the lead car wigwagged back and forth, strobing the car as the train thundered toward us.

We sat there, staring helplessly, watching the end of our lives approach at breakneck speed.