Free The Adamas Blueprint by Boyd Morrison Page B

make it without crashing into another car. He’d just have to make it to the next freeway entrance.
    He took the feeder road toward the Loop, the beltway encircling Houston. To his horror, he saw orange cones diverting traffic away from the freeway onto a temporary asphalt macadam.
    Houston’s ubiquitous construction strikes again, he thought. The macadam led to an intersection which merged into Westpark. The makeshift light was green, and Kevin made a tight left to keep heading in the direction of downtown Houston.

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    He thought about staying on Westpark the whole way and decided against it. Too many lights. He went under the Loop and saw that the feeder road was blocked here as well. He’d have to go up to Newcastle, which was the first road that would lead back to the freeway. He’d been on it just three days before and hoped it was still open.
    Kevin looked in the rear view mirror. The Pontiac was now only fifty yards behind him. The traffic was thinning out. Kevin floored it and accelerated up an overpass rising above several railroad tracks. By the time he reached the top, the distance between the two cars had opened to 100 yards.
    As he crested the hill, the Mustang coughed. Kevin ignored the old car’s wheeze. From his vantage point on the overpass, he could see Newcastle a quarter mile ahead. Fifteen feet to the right of the Newcastle-Westpark intersection was a railroad crossing which cut across Newcastle.
    The signal began to flash, but the gates were still up. Below and to the right of the overpass, he could see a train slowly moving in the same direction, parallel to Westpark, its engine a few hundred yards from the crossing. To the left, Newcastle headed toward the freeway. Just as he thought, it was clear. In thirty seconds he’d be on the Southwest Freeway and might be able to put some distance between him and the Pontiac.
    The Mustang coughed again. Kevin looked at the hood. No steam or smoke. It coughed again. In seconds the Mustang was sputtering, as if trying to catch its breath, the power falling off. Kevin glanced at the instrument cluster to see if the engine had overheated in the hot summer air. He gasped when he saw the gauges.
    The trip odometer read 295 miles. The sputtering made sense now. The fuel tank was empty.

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    In his desperation to escape, he had forgotten that he’d driven home without filling up. Now he’d be lucky to make it to the freeway before the car lurched to a stop. He needed to get something between him and the Pontiac.
    A ear-ringing blast startled Kevin. The train, which was 100 yards behind the Mustang, blew its air horn twice more as it approached the crossing. Kevin suddenly realized what he had to do and thought for a moment that he was crazy for deciding to do it so quickly.
    The gates on the right were lowering. The barriers were long, long enough to stretch across the two lanes on either side of the road, but they left a hole about fifteen feet wide. If a car was angled correctly, it could make it through.
    The Mustang continued to sputter. Luckily, the light ahead was green, letting the traffic on Westpark through. There were no cars between Kevin and the intersection. He didn’t want to tip his hand until the last possible second, so he drove as though he were going past Newcastle.
    Behind him, he could see the Pontiac closing the gap. The train was only a fifty yards behind him.
    He couldn’t be sure, but the distance looked long enough for what he planned. It didn’t really matter. He had no other options.
    Just before he reached the intersection, Kevin hit the brakes and wrenched the wheel to the right. The Mustang went into a four-wheel drift with its nose pointed at the crossing. For a moment, he could see the surprised expressions on Kaplan and Barnett’s faces as the Pontiac steered to avoid hitting him. Kevin floored it, praying that there was enough gas left to get him across the