"Now," Gavin says, and breathes a hair more throttle.
The rear tires bump steel, skid a half-shoe, then bite tar. The van lurches forward as the locomotive's horn sits on their spines. The crossing arm behind them scrapes their roof and slaps down onto the trunk of the last waiting car, snapping in two with a wooden sigh. Ahead, a delivery truck's bumper grazes their sliding door and throws flakes like snow. The mailbox post takes their surviving mirror's last day and does not apologize.
"Clear enough," Rick says, too loud because the horn has made everyone temporary.
"Eyes," Madison says, because seeing is a job.
The engine erupts through the crossing behind, a steel wall moving at confident speed. Wind rips their wake; air punches the van's rear quarter. The shock makes the cracked windshield lay new spiderwebs across Gavin's sightline. He loosens his hands so his grip doesn't talk panic into the wheel.
"Soft pedal," he says, half to himself. He tests it—long travel, lazy bite. You're not gone. You're just a liar.
"Pursuit cut?" Rick asks.
"Look," Madison says. In the broken mirror oval, figures flood the rails and then change their minds all at once when the locomotive owns the crossing. One misjudges and tries the coupler gap. It makes a lesson that stays under the train where no one can see the worst of it.
Gavin slides right into a service lane that parallels the tracks—gravel shoulders, busted asphalt, jersey barriers scabbed with old caution tape. The lane is barely wider than the van. The train on their left throws heat and thunder; on the right, chain-link fences rattle and show rectangles of warehouses stenciled with numbers that used to organize comfort.
"Ride the wall," he says. He pins them a foot off jersey concrete. The van hums steady. The cracked glass makes the sodium lamps into stars someone smeared with a thumb.
A flatcar sits parked on a siding ahead, empty deck at cab-roof height. As they pass, a shape rises from behind a tied-down coil rack and sprints those last steps with sprinter form that makes no sense here. It leaps for the roof, fingertips combing air.
"Down," Madison says.
"Hold," Gavin says, because the only move is straight. The jumper hits the roofline with a slap, slides on dust and paint, claws at the rain gutter, and misses. It tumbles into the gap between van and jersey barrier and becomes sound only.
"Left elbow," Rick mutters to the world. "Don't think about it."
"I won't," Madison says. She doesn't.
The service lane kinks around a small yard office. A forklift sleeps under string lights that shrug in the wind. The train keeps pace—boxcar after boxcar giving them privacy they didn't ask for. Gavin eases speed with engine, not brake. The pedal will lie if asked big questions.
"Turn ahead," Madison says. "S-curve past loading canopies."
"Copy." He sets the first curve with a small left hand, then a small right, body roll like a conversation. The first canopy they thread is intact; the second sags, its steel skin peeled and hanging like a bad eyelid. A figure stands on the sag's far side and fumbles forward as if the canopy is trying to birth it.
"Roof," Rick says.
"Use it," Gavin answers. He grazes the sag with the high corner. Metal screams. The canopy lip bites the roof edge and shaves something that had just found a grip. Weight slides; nails skitter; the headliner sighs dust. Something bonks off the rear hatch and becomes history.
"Glass check," Madison says, meaning: can you still see?
"I have a slit," Gavin says. He tips his chin to find the cleanest V in the fractures. Lights smear; distance becomes more idea than fact. You can see or you can panic. Pick one.
The lane narrows between jersey barrier and stacked containers. The containers' corrugations run in tall ribs; condensation blurs them into silver. Some are branded with words that promised the world always came on time. Their doors wear seals that meant something this morning.
"Rebar," Madison says.
"Where," Gavin says.
"Left corner, at your head height—tag end out like a hook."
"Copy." He folds the useless stump of a mirror with a slap so the hook won't catch it and take the door skin as change. The rebar passes an inch from his window glass. He smells rust like pennies slept in water.
"Cables," Rick says. Loose electrical runs droop from a blown junction, black loops at shoulder height. He leans out his window and lifts the lowest with the towel bar as they pass, paying it over like line from a small boat. It clears the roof with a whisper. The next loop drags across the windshield and drops a streak of oil-black that turns the spiderweb into a night sky with a cloud in the wrong place.
"Pedal?" Madison asks, half a prayer.
"Holding," Gavin says. He doesn't test it again. He trusts engine and anger.
They break into a broader apron—container yard proper. Lanes paint themselves in dusty lines. Jersey barriers make alleys; a tower office looks down with dead windows. Far side: a gap back to surface streets, marked by two barriers with just enough space to pretend someone measured a van once.
"Gap," Madison says. "Tight."
"A letter slot," Gavin says. He threads them toward it.
The train on their left throws a horn for a road three blocks up. The air shakes their ribs and makes the cross-threads in the windshield dance.
From the right, new motion: three figures come out from under a scaffold, not running, but angling, low and quick, like players cutting across a zone. One palms the jersey barrier and launches, planting a foot on the barrier to boost—parkour that learned a worse religion. It touches the roof, skids, and sticks a heel in the gutter.
"Bar," Rick says, stabbing up through the headliner tear. The heel lifts, then kicks back, and the bar bounces off ribs above them with a gong that comes with a little rain of rust.
"Underhang," Madison says, eyes on a small maintenance catwalk that crosses between containers just before the exit gap. "Low. You can shave it."
"Copy," Gavin says. He shifts his line two inches and keeps speed steady, letting the catwalk's support angle come to him the way good passes come when you stop chasing them.
The heel on the roof braces. Nails gouge paint. The catwalk kisses. The heel loses. Something thumps rearward and then becomes scrap that perhaps the world will trip over later.
"Two more," Madison says, counting the cutters. "Angles are getting good."
"Angles are our only god," Gavin says, and wishes he hadn't said god because it tempts the universe.
They reach the gap. It's a U of concrete, edges chewed, rebar teeth showing where a truck already guessed wrong. The space between barriers is wider at the bottom than the top; the top is scored with paint the color of regret.
"We fit," Rick says, and then he doesn't add the question mark. Growth.
"Hold your breath," Gavin says, because sometimes a stupid ritual makes bodies smaller.
He lines the van. Left slider kisses concrete with a steady shhh. Right fender kisses the opposite. Paint makes a chalk line of their passage. The cracked windshield ticks as stresses choose tiny paths through glass.
They pop through onto a service street that sits lower than the main drag, a cove of asphalt that smells like tar and burnt brake. Up to their right, a ramp threads back to River Avenue. To the left, the service street dives under a short overpass and into a darker, narrower cut that promises a way out if you believe in consequences.
"Up or under?" Rick says.
"Under," Gavin says. "Less eyes." He takes the darker cut. The train's horn fades behind industrial corners. The night here is thicker; sound is closer; their own engine is the most honest talker in the room.
"Objects," Madison says. The beam shows pallets scattered, a spool of cable on its side, a stack of pipe that rolled and stopped like it is pretending not to be a trap. Overhead, a sign warns about clearance numbers that make their shoulders lift like it matters.
"Left of the spool, right of the pipe," Gavin says. He studies gaps, not shapes. He puts the wheel there.
The cracked glass makes the world into facets. A new crack winks across and joins a friend. A bead of water trapped in the lamination catches light and becomes a star for a second.
"Something on the hood," Rick says. The wiper cowl has collected a gift: a lump of flesh and cloth from earlier that chose to ride. It vibrates there, twitching like an animal reconsidering its life from a new angle.
"Not a priority," Gavin says, and means it, and hates that he means it.
Under the overpass, a half-collapsed banner droops into their lane. It's printed with a logo and the word FAMILY in letters that have not earned their bigness tonight. The banner slaps the windshield and smears the ink, turning FAMILY into AM LY, and then into nothing as wind tears it away. The letters leave black ghosts in the cracks.
"Exit," Madison says. "Up ramp ahead—tight chicane."
"Copy." He gives them a patient right-left, the body rolling like a nod. The van answers. The pedal sinks when he tests it this time, lower than before, and the bite is a suggestion delivered by a tired teacher.
"Brakes are gossip," he says.
"Good gossip or rumor?" Rick asks.
"Unreliable source," Gavin answers, and saves the rest of the pedal for a day when he has better leverage.
The ramp curls them toward a chain-link gate that hangs open like a mouth misbuttoned. Beyond: a short straight that feeds back to a neighborhood intersection flanked by a shuttered diner and a tire store that looks suddenly like a church.
"Light," Madison says. "Red. No cross-traffic."
"Red is a habit," Gavin says. He takes it. The tires hum. The cracked glass makes the red smear into a wine stain and then they are under it.
Something snaps.
It's a hard metallic clack under the hood—latch deciding it's a citizen. The hood jumps an inch, flutters, and then stands up like a hand shutting off the world.
Air rams the open hood. It slams vertical and stays, a black wall at forty, the windshield gone to blank.