Free Silver by Steven Savile Page A

think of a dozen less painful ways to commit suicide.
    Still holding the Browning, he dropped down off the platform. The tunnel was unlit, so twenty feet in it became a solid wall of black. He made sure he was in the middle of the rails and set off after her. Behind him a voice came over the PA system, telling them to get off the tracks. He ignored it.
    Ronan followed the woman into the tunnel and prayed to whatever god looked after Irish idiots playing on railway lines that the next train was cancelled.
    A dozen paces in the darkness became absolute. He stopped dead still, trying to hear her in front of him. He couldn’t. The darkness was filled with the sound of his own heavy breathing. “Don’t do this,” he called out, still not moving. He heard something then, a soft skittering in response to his voice: more ras. “There’s nowhere to run, and in a couple of minutes the next train’s going to make this tunnel pretty bloody uncomfortable for both of us. Come on, don’t make this any more difficult than it has to be.”
    He waited. Nothing.
    She wasn’t coming out. He tried to think. He was really beginning to wish he’d taken the shot when he’d had the chance. She was a professional, which meant, more likely than not, she wouldn’t be carrying anything that identified her or tied her in with whoever had hired her to give Fisher’s place a going over. But even professionals made mistakes. He’d taken her by surprise. She’d run before she could find whatever it was she’d gone there looking for—which meant it was still back there waiting to be found.
    He chewed on his top lip, took a deep breath.
    Ronan started to walk forward. He felt out each step carefully, scuffing his toe along the rough stones until he found the safety of the next wooden tie. One step at a time he edged his way deeper into the tunnel. He cast a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure the light wasn’t too far away for him to make it back when the skin along his forearms prickled. The air around him stirred ever so slightly.
    And then he felt it: the telltale tremor of the train shivering through the tracks. A moment later light swept around the corner. He saw her caught in the train’s headlights. She was no more than twenty feet in front of him, looking around frantically until she saw whatever it was she was looking for, and started to run toward the oncoming train.
    Ronan knew then he wasn’t going to need to take the shot. The train would do his dirty work for him—but there would be nothing left but blood and guts on the tracks for him to pick over, and only then if he managed to get out of the tunnel himself before the train sheered his body in two. He screamed at the woman. There were no words, just this raw explosion of sound from his mouth.
    Inside his cabin, the driver leaned on the horn. In the tunnel the collision of sounds was deafening: the screech of the brakes, the shriek of steel sliding on iron as the wheels locked and slid, the blare of the horn as the driver hit it over and over again, the maddening bark of the loudspeaker ordering them off the tracks, and Ronan Frost’s screams as he watched the woman running hell for leather straight at the front of the train.
    And then she disappeared.
    Just like that.
    One minute she was there, and the next she wasn’t.
    But there was no bloody detonation of flesh. No impact. No spray of blood across the headlights. No body strewn in pieces across the tracks.
    The sight kept him rooted to the spot a second too long.
    He felt the next breath die in his throat.
    Ronan realized he didn’t have time to run. There was no way he’d make it out of the tunnel and back up onto the platform before the train slammed into his back. He knew what she’d done; she’d run for one of the service stairways.
    He looked left and right. The entire tunnel lit up like midday by the onrushing headlights. He couldn’t see anywhere to hide. So much for that god , the thought flashed