"Shit," he says, as the strap tightens and the wheel lurches once, the van choosing which law to obey.
The rear lifts a whisper; the tail wants to step. Gavin feathers the throttle and steals two feet from physics. "Counter," he says to his hands, to the road, to the idea of motion. The bridge sign flashes blue-white ahead: RIVER AVE. BRIDGE.
"What's happening?" Madison.
"Steel strap on the rear axle. It's winding. If it locks, we spin."
"How fix?" Rick.
"Moving shear." Gavin angles right so the strap kisses the curb. They rake sparks. The sound is a zipper that hates them. The strap snags, tears a tongue of itself, then whips free and grabs again, angrier. The van fishtails a shoulder-width. He corrects.
"Not enough," Madison says.
"Underpass turnout," Gavin says. A triangular patch of concrete hides beneath the bridge's first pier—utility ladder, guardrail post, service box. "Nine seconds. We do not make it ten."
Rick bares his teeth. "Copy nine."
Gavin cuts into the triangle, nose toward the river. The van shudders onto rough concrete and stops skewed, rear wheel stuttering as the strap pulls tight and goes quiet, strength betting on a bind.
"Positions," Gavin says. "Rick—door, bar. Madison—watch high." He kills the headlights and throws hazards, two orange metronomes for their courage. Heat from the freeway smears the air. Sound changes under the bridge—river's hush under sirens.
They spill out. The strap dangles from the axle, a quarter inch of steel banding with bore holes; it's looped twice and feeding itself. Gavin palms the coil and feels the pull. He follows the strap's tongue to a place it wants to catch: a rusted eyelet welded to the guardrail post.
"Thread-through rip," he says. He laces the strap's free tongue through the eyelet, back around itself. "Ratchet me."
Rick flings a ratchet strap from the van. Madison's hammer ticks the door skin: two shapes above, on the bridge rail, peering down like cats thinking about gravity.
"Three o'clock high," she says. "They're deciding."
Gavin feeds the ratchet hook through the steel strap's bore hole, snaps it to the eyelet, runs the webbing back to the van's hitch, and sets the ratchet body to the hook there. He cranks once to take the slack. The steel band hums.
"Protocol," he says, because saying it makes hands smarter. "When I say yank, you two are in. I go first. Doors ready to slam."
"Two dropping," Madison says.
They don't drop; they slide, hands first, learning the ladder's rhythm instantly. Feet skip rungs. The first one lands wrong, rolls ankle, stands anyway. Teeth click.
Rick steps up and spears—the towel bar cracks collar, then ear. The head toggles and stays toggled. Madison hits the second on the wrist; bones jump under skin. The hand lets go of ladder. The body falls a beat and slaps concrete, then tries to rise without the argument people make after a fall.
"Nine seconds," Gavin says, and climbs into the seat. "Hold them."
"Yank," Rick says through teeth, as the first clinger stumbles into him again, faster for having learned the real distance. He knees and shoves it under the rail. It catches there, folding and unfolding like a bad jackknife.
Gavin drops the shifter to drive, wheels straight. He eases out. The ratchet webbing goes taut; the steel strap sings higher. The eyelet takes the load and gives him back a vibration that is a plan working.
"Now," he says, and adds throttle.
The strap shrieks. It stretches itself thinner than it wants to be and snaps with a report like a bat cracking a foul. The van jumps forward and kills slack. The ratchet strap goes slack, then whips the hitch. The severed band whips the undercarriage, kisses something soft. The brake pedal lowers under Gavin's toes a whisper—mushy.
"Soft pedal," he says. "We nicked a line." He pumps twice. Pressure returns, thinner. "We still have brake—treat it like it lies."
"Clear," Madison calls. "Rick!"
Rick disengages with a last shove that takes the clinger under the rail and into the shallows. It rolls once in river-smell and thrashes against rock. He vaults into the cargo, boots the door with his heel, and Madison slams hers as she climbs in. The second clinger hits the door skin from the outside with a flat slap and slides off, fingernails drawing chords on paint.
Gavin drives, clean, no chirp that would waste tire. They pop back onto asphalt and arc toward the bridge ramp. The strap stump skates harmless sparks for ten yards and then licks free and coils like a dead snake by the curb.
"Time," Rick pants.
"Under nine," Madison says, breathless with the fact.
"Good," Gavin says. "We'll need the change."
They climb the approach. The bridge throat funnels them between concrete rails in a narrow two-lane. The river below is black slate, moving even if no one else is. Smoke hangs in the span's lights like thought bubbles nobody wants to read.
Midspan shows trouble. Two cruisers nose to nose across both lanes, push bars touching. Their doors are flared as shields. Orange cones toppled like drunk chess. And across both lanes in a lazy S: spike strips—black ribbon with teeth.
"Roadblock," Madison says. "Teeth."
Gavin tests the pedal—travel long, bite late. You still belong to me, he thinks at the van. "Brakes are soft. If we hit spikes, we're on rims with no brake."
"Sidewalk?" Rick asks. The sidewalk is a narrow shelf with a raised curb and a steel rail shoulder-high. "We take it, we scrape—maybe ride it past."
"We clip the rail, we flip," Madison says. She studies the spikes. "Any gaps?"
The strips overlap but not perfectly; there's a seam—four feet where two mats don't kiss. That seam sits one lane and a half left, tight to a cruiser's bumper. The cruisers' hoods still steam. The light bar on one winks dead, the other stuck on a single strobe that gives the world a heartbeat.
"Seam," Gavin says, eyes moving, geometry settling. "Angle from right to left, thread the hole, no brake, engine only."
"What about the men who set it?" Rick asks, as if names can save anyone. The answer is in the doors left open and the smear where someone slid.
"Gone," Madison says, as gentle as a verdict can be.
Gavin lines them in the right lane to buy room. The pedal is a promise he doesn't trust. He breathes. Straight hands; soft inputs; weight is truth. The speedo reads thirty-two; the van feels heavier.
"Belts tight," he says. "If I say heads down, heads down."
"Copy," Rick says. "I hate your copy."
They approach the cruisers. The seam is a coin on felt. Past the cars, the span dips toward neighborhood lights, then vanishes where smoke crowds the far bank.
On the sidewalk, a man in a reflective vest turns like a sunflower—toward them, toward the river, toward the idea of running. He chooses the rail and starts climbing it with surprising grace. His vest reads CITY WATER. He's missing a shoe.
"Don't look," Gavin says to himself. He looks anyway and forgives himself later, if there is a later.
At twenty-five he eases the wheel left, tracing a line no one painted. "Now," he says softly, mostly to the van.
The right tire kisses the first mat; teeth thunk against rubber and fail to bite because the angle is wrong. The left tire yawns toward the seam. The cruiser's bumper fills the windshield and narrates the math: too tight, too tight—thread it.
"Headlights," Madison says, as if light is a blade.
Gavin keeps his hands quiet. He aims the left tire's shoulder at the seam and lets the car's weight fall into the choice. The van slips between teeth like a letter between sharp pages. The left mirror kisses the cruiser's push bar and folds with a slap. The right rear tire catches three teeth and hisses; he feels it, a little collapse, but not all the air, not yet.
"Through," Rick says, voice too loud because volume is a spell.
"Hold," Gavin says, because spells like to be agreed with.
They clear the spikes. The left mirror hangs like a broken ear; the right rear is soft but not dead. The cruisers are behind, and the far slope invites. He tests the pedal again—softer, longer—then lets engine braking and a patient hand draw them down the grade.
"Stop or go?" Madison asks, because the end of a trap is the beginning of a debate.
"Go until we must stop," Gavin says. "Find cover past the foot."
The bridge hums under them, a long tense wire. On the far bank, the approach lanes are clogged with four cars nose-to-tail, lights blinking without reason. A bus kneels at a stop with its door open and nobody waiting. Farther: a mural of fish on a cinderblock wall, colors bright like a lie.
The right rear goes from soft to softer. The van's rear squats a hair. The steering shimmies a whisper.
"Rim in a minute," Rick says.
"Give me sixty seconds of not-a-minute," Gavin says.
A figure drops from the mural wall onto the hood of the first car in the clog. It doesn't look at them; it looks at the windshield below it and headbutts until the glass accepts a new reality. Another figure climbs the bus's stairwell on their hands, slow and happy.
"Left turn after the bridge," Madison says, scanning. "Service road by the water plant. Tall fence, maybe a yard with walls."
"Walls we can choose," Gavin says. He lines up for the off.
A shape emerges in their lane twenty yards ahead: knees, elbows, hands, moving like someone got the instructions for running and reordered them. It looks up and calculates them. It lowers its head like a sprinter, then gives up on rules and simply comes.
"Straight?" Rick says.
"Straight," Gavin says, because to swerve is to gift the river their side.
He holds the wheel steady. The shape hits the bumper, folds under, thumps the crossmember. The van hops. Madison shuts her eyes and opens them, because seeing is a job even when you hate it.
The service road mouth opens on the left. The STOP line looks ceremonial and kind. A chain hangs where a gate should be. The right rear tire flaps once like a fish.
"Angle," Gavin says. He sets them for the mouth. Ahead, beyond the service road, the street narrows between parked cars and a bus stop bench with an ad for a world that has never existed. On the bench a man sits with his hands in his lap like he's waiting on a ride that is on time.
"Brakes?" Madison asks.
"Brakes are hope; steering is truth," Gavin says.
And then the bridge rail on their right flashes blue with fresh light—the strobe of another cruiser coming onto the span from the city side. It blocks the lane they would need if the service road's chain doesn't give. The spike strips may have friends. The soft pedal lowers another whisper.
He has to choose: sidewalk/rail gamble or straight-through at speed.