The van rides the rail, mirror folded—and then someone drops from the railing onto the roof.
The roof dents above Gavin with a drumhead boom. Nails rake metal and stay. The headliner bulges over his temple on each punch like someone breathing through cloth.
"Stay on line," Gavin says. He keeps the right rims on the curb, shoulder to the rail, hands quiet. Brakes lie; geometry tells the truth.
"Contact," Rick says, shoving the towel bar into the headliner to meet the fists. The pounding slides aft. Knuckles pop through fabric above the second row in a slow tearing bloom.
"Window," Madison says, twisting. "If an arm finds the crack—"
"Then it loses fingers." Rick grabs the bolt cutters, slides the passenger door a handspan. Cold noise knifes in. A hand gropes for the gap. He traps the wrist with the bar and pinches the cutters across two fingers. Crunch. The hand whips away, raking metal.
"Tree limbs ahead," Madison warns. "Low."
"Good," Gavin says. Branches slap leaves across the windshield; twigs drag the roof seam. The weight scuttles forward to avoid scrape, then back, hunting quiet metal.
A second body paces them along the rail at window height, hands skimming steel, eyes on the broken window like a slot. Madison brings the hammer up, elbow tight. The head lunges; her first strike rings the door frame; the second finds cheek. The mouth chews glass fringe and loses it to wind.
"Sign after the trees," she says. "Ped crossing."
The rider settles over the front seats, fists worrying the vanity light seam. Insulation shows like lint. The smell above them is hot pennies and wet road.
"Brace," Gavin says. "We take the sign."
He glides left a hand-span to put the roof rib under the blow and holds just enough speed. The bottom edge of the sign slices the night. Steel meets meat and paint. The cabin rings; the rider slides, catches a seam, slides again. A heel spiders the rear hatch and holds. Not off.
"Underpass in two blocks," Madison says. "Train spur. Low bar."
"Perfect," Gavin says. "We shave him there."
The pack along the rail learns as it runs, fingers mapping bolts. One long-jumps from a parked hood, scrapes down posts, vanishes with the sound of a rug on gravel. Rick jabs the towel bar up through the slit; the thing on the roof answers with a thump that drops dust.
The soft right rear walks; sparks spit from the gutter joints. Gavin keeps his shoulders loose so his hands don't talk fear into the wheel.
They roll down a slight grade where telephone poles lean like old men. On a porch, a woman with a bat on her shoulder watches them pass without lifting it. A bus idles two blocks off with its door open and no one boarding. The smell turns metallic—rail yard breath, oil and rain that hasn't fallen.
"Freeway glow's still behind us," Madison says, glancing in the side mirror's broken oval. "Wind's wrong. We can't count on smoke hiding us."
"We count on angles," Gavin says. He tests the pedal once—still there, softer. Spend nothing you can't win back. "Stay with me."
A jogger's stroller sits sideways in a crosswalk with a paper grocery bag inside; cans roll out one by one as if a slow hand tips the sack. Rick stares until the street makes him blink. "Don't collect tragedies," he says, giving Gavin his own line back.
"Good man."
The rider on the roof adjusts to every pitch like an athlete. When the sign takes them, it slides and claws back; when the bar peels it, Gavin hears the nails the way a mechanic hears a bearing failing. He files the sound in a place he doesn't want to keep.
They clear trees; chain-link opens to a yellow clearance bar stenciled 10'0". Scars say many thought they were special. Gavin pins the rims tighter to the curb to raise the body a breath. The first kiss misses by a finger. He edges left. The second finds paint. The third lands square.
The world goes loud. The bar peels the rider backward; nails scream; the towel bar jerks. The clinger tries to hug the beam, loses, and vanishes under wake.
"Clear," Madison says—and then a shape drops from the freight catwalk and lands on the hood face-first. The windshield jumps; a crack zigzags. It lifts its head, shrieks without lungs, and rakes the wiper cowl as if peeling a lid.
"Wipers," Rick says automatically.
Gavin hits them. The blades hammer the palms; the motor grinds and smokes. The soft pedal sinks another whisper.
"Hold steady." He downshifts and lets engine drag. The thing crawls toward the broken window. Madison punches the edge of glass with the hammer, making teeth, then drives the peen into its forearm. Cartilage cracks. It forces through anyway, skin on glass like wet tape.
"Cutters," she says. Rick slaps them to her knee. She slides the jaws onto ulna through the fringe and levers with both hands. The first bite skates; the second sets. She grits, Rick adds weight, the cutters notch, then shear a third. The arm angles wrong. Gavin gives a small left-right. The forearm slips free, leaving sleeve and meat. The clinger scrapes sideways and slides off into the gutter.
"Eyes front," Gavin says. The service road returns to River Avenue. On the right: docks and black water; on the left: houses with their open mouths for doors.
"Next safe we change the wheel," Rick says. "We've got a jack somewhere. If not, we steal one."
"We'll steal blessed," Gavin says.
They pass a shuttered body shop. A side gate hangs. A floor jack lies on its side like a dropped idea. Too exposed. They keep moving. Sirens thread side streets; a gas main moans low. Shapes learn curbs by shins.
Ahead, an old truss over a feeder sluice, then a wedge park and, beyond it, a rail maintenance yard: half-open chain gate, sodium lamps, a shelter bay with a pit and racks of long-handled tools.
"That," Rick says. "Walls."
"And a choke," Madison says.
"Two exits," Gavin says, spotting an alley gate beyond. He swings into the mouth. A city pickup idles crooked at the curb with the back door open. A toolbox gapes on the seat, sockets winking.
"Forty seconds," Gavin says. "Cross wrench. Jack handle."
Rick is gone before the sentence finishes. Madison watches both directions, hammer on her thigh like a trained dog. Gavin noses the van into the bay, right-right-right until the ruined rim is over the pit. He kills the engine. The blower winds down like a child.
"Time," he says.
"Wrench," Rick says, tossing a four-way into cargo and a jack handle after. He's in, he boots the door. "Go."
They spill to positions—Gavin at the dead wheel, Rick at jack point, Madison guard. Cold from the pit wraps Gavin's shins. He kicks chocks to the other rear and front passenger because geometry saves and kills. Rick shoves the jack under, finds frame, pumps. The van climbs; the rim sighs free.
"Lug caps," Rick says. He pries them with cutter tip. They skitter into the pit, gone. The cross wrench fits. Gavin sets two diagonals, then the others. Muscles talk; lugs move. He pockets them because asphalt eats small things.
"Wheel," he says. The tire peels off. Bright edges show where rim tried to be sparks.
"Spare?" Madison says.
"Underfloor," Gavin says. He feeds the jack bar into the winch socket and cranks. Chain unwinds; spare kisses pavement. He drags it on; studs find holes; spin and seat. Crisscross. Tight. The yard mouth changes sound—the chorus of bodies learning a new hallway.
"Three," Madison says. "No—four."
"How close?"
"Fifty feet and greedy." She steps to the bay edge where the pit gives her a half-wall. The first one runs low and silent. "Stop," she tells it out of habit. It doesn't. She lets it commit past the pit and rings its temple; it stumbles, then dives chest-first into the hole. Ladder rattles; sound drops.
"Two more," she says.
"Half a minute," Gavin says. Last lug bites; he bounces the wrench once more on each until each song matches. "Drop."
Rick cracks the jack clean. The van kisses ground. Jack free, tossed in. Doors. Seats. Key. Something hits the rear door and oil-cans it. Gavin drops the shifter.
"Left or right?" Rick asks.
"Right," Gavin says. "Alley gate."
He turns for the chain and the links lift in a small wind.
"Angle breach," he says, setting the nose to bully the diagonal like before.
A face pops up from the pit stairs onto the hood, upside down and grinning because it doesn't know better. Both hands slap the cowl and stick. Nails scratch glass.
"Madison," Gavin says.
"Got you," she says, leaning out with the hammer.
From the mezzanine windows above, a shadow detaches and falls without a sound.
The roof dents once, and the weight doesn't bounce.