Samantha pulled herself up onto the corpse and I stayed behind her, trying to hold her steady. She screamed as she used her mangled foot to push herself up. I was worried the noise might have an avalanche effect and send the semi over whatever precipice it was hanging over, but I figured she couldn't help it.
She climbed up onto the second body in the cyborg ladder. I followed.
Two bodies fell at once. The impact jolted the semi enough that I let out a scream of my own, but we both held on to the corpses and continued climbing.
"You know, people pay good money to go mountain climbing on vacation," I said, hoping my sparkling wit would distract her from her agony and terror. "This is a lot better. This is going to be the new ride at Universal Studios." Samantha didn't tell me to shut up, so I figured that was a good sign.
Then she grabbed a cyborg part that wasn't meant to have somebody climbing on it. It came loose and she lost her grip. She fell down to my corpse, grabbed it, failed to hang on, and crashed to the bottom.
"That's okay," I said. "Let's just try it again."
She didn't respond, and I could barely see her through the smoke.
What if she'd broken her neck?
I climbed down and knelt down next to her. "C'mon, Samantha, you can do this."
She shook her head. "No, I can't. He tortured me… I mean, he really… his knife… I just can't do it. I've got nothing left. Get out of here. Please."
"Not without you."
"You can't carry me! Please, we don't both need to die."
"Look, I don't have time to get into the details, but one of the few possibilities for me getting a happy ending out of this is for me to bring you safely back to the love of your life. So we're getting out of this together. Don't argue."
"How are we going to do it if I can't climb?"
I considered that.
"I don't know. I'm still sort of hoping we'll be rescued."
The semi shifted and moved back at least two more feet.
"Maybe it's a really tiny cliff," I said. "We may be stressing out over nothing."
"Yeah, I'm sure Mr. Burke jumped out so he could drive the semi over a really tiny cliff."
"Don't be so pessimistic."
"Sorry."
"If we can't climb, we'll just have to…"
I left that sentence unfinished for a long moment.
Fly out? Teleport out? Wake up from a bad dream?
Shoot our way out?
Which of the corpses was it that nearly shot my foot off when it fell? I searched through the burning bodies as well as I could, yelping in pain about eight times, and found an arm with a machine gun on the end. Sweet.
I also found an axe with which to lop it off.
I did so quickly. Then I picked up the machine gun, let out my ninth yelp, and dropped it. The damn thing was hot.
"Sorry about this," I told Samantha as I took off my shoes and jeans. The next time Kyle questioned that whole "Make sure you have on clean underwear" parental command, I'd have an anecdote to share with him.
Using my jeans to keep my hands from getting burnt off, I picked up the machine gun, pointed it at the wall of the semi, and pulled the trigger.
The semi was filled with a deafening ratatatatatatat of machine gun fire and clangs as the bullets struck metal. Streaks of light burst through the holes.
I hate to admit it, but standing there wearing only my underwear, firing a machine gun, made me feel incredibly macho.
The bullets continued to chew away at the semi wall.
The semi slid backward.
I kept firing, hoping nobody was on the other side (unless it was Mr. Burke).
The machine gun ran out of bullets and I tossed it aside. We now had a really scary-looking opening with jagged edges that didn't look large enough to climb out without slicing ourselves to ribbons, but, hey, beggars can't be choosers.
The semi was still sliding. I looked through the hole and saw that we were indeed dangling over a cliff, that it was an extremely long drop to the ground, but that we'd smashed through a metal fence that was now twisted and within our reach. "You first," I told Samantha.
She wasted no time. She crawled over to the hole and I helped her through, removing a long strip of her left leg in the process. She grabbed hold of the fence and scooted toward solid ground.
The semi slid again, taking the fence out of my reach.
I frantically began to climb the corpses.
"Andrew!" I heard Samantha scream on the other side.
I didn't respond because that would have used up valuable climbing energy. I tried to think happy thoughts. Happy climby thoughts.
I climbed up the third, fourth, and fifth bodies. Only about a dozen left. No problem.
As I got halfway there, the semi picked up speed. So did I.
Helen, Theresa, Kyle, Roger, and Samantha were all alive, and damn it, I was going to join them. I climbed as fast as I could, eyes feeling like they were sizzling from the smoke, lungs burning, but not stopping.
I reached the second-to-last corpse.
Don't lose your grip. Don't lose your grip. Don't grab anything detachable. Don't grab anything detachable.
I reached for the top corpse, accidentally stuck my hand in its open, screaming mouth, but pulled myself up anyway.
And then I was at the top.
And then the semi fell over the edge of the cliff.
And then I jumped.
The semi smashed into the riverbank about a hundred feet below. I hung from the cliff face, holding nothing that felt remotely firm enough to sustain me. My fingers dug into the grass but I could tell I was seconds away from a nice long fall onto a semi filled with burning cyborg corpses.
Samantha thrust her hand at me. I grabbed it.
As she pulled, I tried to use my feet against the dirt cliff face to give myself some leverage. It wasn't really working. But since I hadn't died in all of the other times I'd vowed I wouldn't die, I sure wasn't going to die here.
With Samantha's help, I pulled myself most of the way onto solid ground.
In the distance I saw Mr. Burke limping toward us.
I was pretty sure he was holding a gun.
"Samantha! Watch out!"
A shot rang out.
I tasted several drops of Samantha's blood in my open mouth.
And then I fell.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Helen's Side
I OPENED MY EYES to red and blue flashing lights.
"Whe re are my children?" I demanded, sitting up in a panic. I was on a stretcher.
"It's okay, they're both in the ambulance," the paramedic assured me.
"My daughter was stabbed! You have to help her!"
"It's under control. You've been in an accident, but the other driver wasn't hurt, so just relax."
"I can't relax! My husband, have you seen him?"
"Ma'am, there wasn't anybody else in the vehicle."
"I know! He was in a semi."
The paramedic's eyes widened. "Okay, we've got police cars investigating that right now. But there's nothing you can do, so just relax." He gave me an injection. "Just relax."
Chapter Twenty-Eight
SO HERE'S WHAT happened.
I didn't plummet down onto the semi, shatt ering my bones into a million pieces and burning my flesh in the flames within. Instead I slid down the cliff face, scraping the hell out of my arms and chest, and managed to get myself steadied about halfway down.
It was way too steep to climb back up without the aid of a corpse ladder, so I was forced to stay there, helpless, until I heard vehicles approach overhead.
When the cops pulled me to safety, they were loading Samantha into an ambulance. I hurried over there as best I could, trying to see if she was dead.
She'd been hit in the shoulder.