The next shutter hangs low over the cut like a ruler thrown by a lazy god. He goes belly-low and lets the teeth read straps, not skin. Sparks walk his ribs backward. Grit paints his cheek cold.
Hands lean from the parapet—curious, not kind. A utility knife skates the lip to make the hole meaner. He keeps chin down, elbows honest. The speeder's note stays thin and obedient, a string pulled tight between bad ideas.
Glue spit strings from shade and hunts the battery lash. He cracks the brass regulator a breath and lets hiss peel the bond into fish-scale curls. A head dips—too smooth, mouth coin-bright under dirty water.
'Rhett.'
He gives it steel, not breath. The pry bar's crown taps neat teeth into new shapes. The face leaves without keeping its name.
He clears the lip with a scraping comb and breathes a tunnel that smells like wet rebar. Chalk on ties says EAST twice in two hands. A third has written STAY ON THE LINE where nobody could miss it.
A niche coughs up a woman in visor and harness with a cable loop. Her weight shift is human—tired, ready to live. She plants across the gauge.
'Checkpoint, East post,' she says.
'On iron,' he answers, left palm up, right over the bar where arguments live.
The loop whips. He sights where cable belly crosses bright rail and edits its biography.
[WIND CANNON: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
Wire coughs loose, a bowstring made humble. Up on the parapet, a shadow tests courage with a radio. The radio mutters vowels that like the word Oasis.
He keeps the car straight and mouths 'East,' two fingers down to ballast. Old sign, old deal. She watches the trench behind him fill with patience that wants to be a river, then kicks the loop clear of the wheel. He pays her by not thanking her in front of her friends.
The trench spills to a short throat walled with stacked containers painted OASIS EAST. A flood tower sleeps, cord coiled and taped, a machine put away by someone who respects noise. People move at edges with human weight; none step into the gauge.
He holds the main. A frog clicks—permission. A woman counts, a man checks a chain, a boy gets hauled back by a hand that loves him. Rhett returns the favor by being weather: real, brief, ignoring them.
Past the yard, the line takes a ditch and a guard wall. A mimic crouches on it, perfect as a runner at the blocks. It springs for his neck and unlearns the hinge that makes the pose work.
[WIND CANNON: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
He watches iron, not gravity.
A pallet wall tries to be policy at the next crossing. A bead into a weld that believes the past still applies turns it to rumor. Screws ping the deck like rain in a bad language.
An underpass burns red at one corner—road flare learning to die. The man who lit it runs out of courage at the distance between idea and hand. Rhett shows him the hinge under the thumb.
[WIND CANNON: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
Chain-link squeezes the world to a letter slot. Beyond, a catwalk stitches building to building. A drop-net coughs and falls crooked when he shears the cone-hidden cable at the throwstand.
[WIND CANNON: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
The net kisses the deck and slides off to find a different story.
Wind turns; glue rides it. Something small wedges under the right wheel to make the deck climb. He drags regulator hose across its grin; the bond scabs and lifts. The pry bar teaches knuckles resignation. The car forgives the stumble and continues being honest.
[MECHANICAL FABRICATION: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
The cut opens to a coil pad leveled like a promise. He deletes the idea of stopping. Minutes buy distance; everything else is talk.
The corridor kinks into a straight run, rails truer than ruin deserves. Far out, the night gains a white grain—two beads through fog, low, steady, not fussy. He tells himself flood towers woke wrong. Air says horn before sound can carry it.
Not a car horn. Something with lungs.
He gives the motor a respectful yes and rides the line as if posture could convince physics.
The horn's first breath arrives downrail, a flat, deep vowel that presses on clothes. A second follows, shorter, impatient. Behind him, the chorus pauses like prey learning there's a new sermon.
A turnout looms: points honest on the main, a maintenance lead peeling into brush. He does not want brush. He does not want to test what the small motor thinks about wet leaves if the headlight belongs to a machine that forgot how to forgive.
The throwstand wears a padlock the size of a good argument. Old metal. He asks it to retire.
[WIND CANNON: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
The shackle blinks out of employment. He throws the stand and the tongue kisses with a sound that once meant safety. He keeps the main. The horn restates its case, closer, patient in the way mass is patient.
He rolls throttle back and lets the deck talk—listening for chatter that wishes to be failure. The speeder answers with the small confidence of a machine in its lane.
If it's a tower, the light blinks. If it's a train, it arrives as a thesis.
Wind lifts litter and tries to sell it as weather. He declines. He opens the door in front of him and pays with courage.
The line descends a long viaduct over water that was never a river. Crosswind writes its name on his jacket. He becomes bone and posture and makes the deck small.
A bungalow flickers past with its door ajar, bus bars bare—someone did the decent thing and took the good pieces. He respects them by not stopping.
The horn finds him properly now. No ocean-diesel, no eight-axle sermon—still a real throat from a real mass that hopes rules matter. Twin beads fatten into a single stare.
Another turnout ahead: a siding short as regret, half hidden under sumac. Points sulk halfway. A crash-frame drop-bar sits beyond, raised, rope clipped for drama. The siding won't save him if it is truly short, but it will shove him out of a head-on and into a scrape he can negotiate.
He steps off at a run and shoulders the throw. The rod complains and then remembers love. Tongue home. The horn speaks again. The headlight rounds a curve with the dignity of a thing carrying work.
He rides the frog into the siding. Brush bites his shins. The siding kinks and dies politely against bumper timbers painted white the year a boy was born and never repainted. He bleeds speed so he doesn't gift himself into that wood.
The main a meter away glows now, rails glittering. The engine arrives: a small road switcher, long hood first, paint stripped to its memory, headlight steady. It sounds like a careful decision. A woman leans from the cab, sees the speeder, and adjusts her face through caution to surprise to anger to acceptance.
Two flats follow with cages strapped like thoughts you wouldn't say out loud. On the second, a flood tower rides folded, eyes dark. Chains clink; the train owns its inertia.
Rhett holds the siding just short of the bumper, hands visible. The engine rolls past with the slow pride of something that survived being killed. On the second flat, a harnessed man sits with radio and clean rifle, muzzle to deck as if threatening gravity. The radio says 'east post rider—copy' and becomes numbers he doesn't owe attention.
A tank car trails, hoses strapped like noodles to a grate. Then a caboose that isn't called that anymore but the word lives anyway.
As the tail clears the turnout, the horn gives one polite, irritated note that means you are welcome to survive. The train takes the curve and becomes past a meter at a time.
He breathes. The chorus learns the horn and pauses between hunger and new religion. Some will choose the train like moths choose bulbs. Others will keep remembering him like an unpaid bill.
He throws the stand back, puts the tongue where it belongs, noses onto the main. Rails hum permission. He feeds the motor. The city answers with a fresh page of ruin.
A pedestrian bridge ahead—chain-link sides, banners shredded. A cable strings from bridge to throwstand and across the rail: lazy sabotage by men out of bigger ideas. He pays it with the same coin.
[WIND CANNON: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
Cable spits spark and goes soft; the stand rings like a cheap bell. A child's voice above makes a noise that still wants to be joy.
He takes a shallow cut, chain-link tight, then a short tunnel that breathes like an animal. The far end opens toward a plaza paved nicer than ruin deserves, blue light brushing edges from somewhere not far. He rides the outer edge and lets iron judge him.
Beyond, the world drops into drainage with a narrow truss. Midspan, a lure with too many elbows tries to parasail on his deck. He peels it with the regulator and edits what's left with the bar. The truss hums. The river's cousin pretends to listen.
[MECHANICAL FABRICATION: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
On the far bank, a signal bungalow slumps with its door torn loose. Inside, a single deep-cycle leans like a drunk. He could take it. Be heavier and alive or lighter and faster. He chooses speed; time sells itself once.
A block ahead, the corridor narrows under half-standing overbuild. A new shutter hangs in a frame, bent for spite. The slot beneath is a liar: narrower by a thumb than the one that skinned him earlier. Silhouettes move on the parapet with the stiff walk of men awake too long. Chalk says EAST twice, then OASIS crossed out.
He tightens the strap one hole. Lays the bar under his ribs so it will hurt him in familiar ways. Drops cheek to timber and listens for the deck's truth. Behind, the chorus enters the last curve and decides to be a river again.
'Ride the light,' someone says far off, a woman he never met. The generator east holds a steady low.
He does not bargain with inches. He spends them.
The lip meets shoulders, then spine, then strap, then the part of breath that thinks it's owed a future. Teeth try to read him like a receipt. He refuses to be totaled. The buckle chooses violence and then loyalty. Blood goes warm where wood burns it along, a new smell writing itself under older ones.
He clears into a night arranged by clipboards and patience and still refusing to care what he thinks. Rails draw a thin, perfect line toward a white something that could be a yard light or a lie told by fog.
The chorus packs the mouth behind and practices agreement. Their sound meets steel geometry and becomes politics he doesn't attend.
He keeps chest to timber and hands where they can choose. The white thickens. Rails sing. Somewhere east, a horn answers itself once, not impatient, not kind.
He sets the speeder to yes and commits to the line men keep when they remember to move.