Free Silver by Steven Savile Page B

across his mind. Of all the “last things” he had expected to flood his final moments—beautiful women loved and lost, friends betrayed, lives taken and saved—cursing a make-believe deity hadn’t so much as registered as a possible farewell-to-the-flesh thought.
    He thought about throwing himself down and lying flat on his stomach between the tracks and praying there wasn’t a trailing hook dangling from the train’s under-carriage to gut him like a fish and drag him all the way back to the city center.
    The headlights were huge now, filling the tunnel. The tunnel itself wasn’t wide enough for him to press himself up against the wall. He looked down at the wheels, then at the tracks and at the curve of the wall, and realized it was his only chance. The horn blared again. Despite the shriek of the breaks the train wasn’t slowing anywhere near quickly enough to save his life. He had seconds to think.
    Move.
    One chance.
    It all came down to the width of the tracks and the aerodynamics of the train itself. All he could do was pray there was an inch to spare.
    Ronan Frost hurled himself sideways, hitting the ground hard, and wedged himself into the narrow gap between the iron rail and the concrete wall. He rolled over onto his right shoulder, face pressed right up against the cold concrete. He tried to stop breathing and melte had secohe wall, making himself as thin as possible. The horn screeched in his ears, so close it could have been inside his head. He closed his eyes, willing himself not to flinch. The wind battered him up against the wall. Suddenly an incredible force tried to peel his head up into the train’s path.
    Ronan gritted his teeth and pressed his face into the gravel. The vacuum caused by the displaced air and the train’s momentum tore at his hair. His screams were lost beneath the madness of the hellbound train. An agonized sob tore between his teeth. He resisted every impulse to throw his head back to relieve the pain, knowing that it all that was saving his life.
    The duh-duh-de-duh duh-duh-de-duh of the wheels filled his head.
    He couldn’t breathe.
    The wind displaced by the train pummeled the Irishman up against the concrete wall, and he loved every damned second of that pain because it meant he was alive.
    And then it was gone. The train had passed him, and he could breathe again. He lay there for a full thirty seconds, listening to the mad rise and fall of his own breathing, then pushed himself to his feet. He thought about going deeper into the tunnel, chasing the woman up the service stairwell to the surface, but she’d be long gone by the time he reached the top. Still, there was no way she could know he’d survived. In her place he would go back to the apartment to finish what he’d started. He had to assume she’d think like him.
    Ronan Frost walked unsteadily toward the light.
    He felt a warm, wet stickiness on his cheek and reached up to feel out the damage. He pulled his hand away and looked at it. There was more blood than he would have expected. The gravel had cut up the side of his face.
    As he came out of the tunnel, the first of the next wave of commuters had begun to file onto the platform. A few of them looked at him curiously; the others adopted the Ostrich’s if-I-don’t-see-it-it-doesn’t-see-me attitude, deliberately not looking his way. That was what the city had become over the last few years. A decade ago a good Samaritan would have come to the end of the platform to help him up while someone else went for help. Today they watched him suspiciously as he climbed unsteadily back to the platform and walked toward them. He couldn’t blame them. He knew what he must have looked like, battered and bloody and, he realized, still holding the Browning in his right hand.
    Ronan holstered the gunspant>
    Walking back toward the entrance he hit the speed dial on the earpiece, but he’d lost the network down in the tunnel. He pushed his way through the barriers, ignoring