I Loved You At Your Darkest

Part Two

The Regal trudged along a back road, heading east at about thirty miles-per-hour. Thomas had been policing the child on his speed, saying, anything over twenty-five was too fast for these conditions. But the boy couldn't get to the train station fast enough. He feared what the voice had told him was the truth, or it would become the truth if he failed to get there in time.

The road signs that still directed traffic to the historic building were few and far between, but enough of them had survived to reassure the two travelers that they were on the right course. For the boy, the signs stood as relics from another life, reminders of a time when he was whole, not broken. It was as though he had traveled back to before his world fell apart, as if this long stretch of road were his memory lane.

The vehicle's headlights lit up the station's final sign that read Welcome to Logan Train Station - Two Miles Ahead.

A thick field of evergreens whizzed by; the overabundance of pine needles on thousands of drooping, snow-covered branches kept the station out of sight for the time being. Patrick searched for it, peering out his driver's side window every few seconds, waiting impatiently for that massive familiar building to pop up.

Fifteen yards ahead was another road sign; its yellow canvas reflected the Regal's headlights, which revealed a box-shaped graphic of a vehicle racing down an incline. Underneath in all uppercase letters it read CAUTION: SLOPE.

The Buick sped past the sign, and Thomas glanced over to Patrick to find his gaze swapping from the road before them to the thick trees at his left.

"Patrick? Did you see that sign back there?" the bird asked.

"No," the boy replied, peering over the steering wheel, gripping it with all his might. "What was it?"

"You need to reduce your speed. There's a drop-off ..."

When the road before them vanished, Patrick let out a gasp as the front tires lifted from the snow; in that moment of weightlessness, Thomas and Patrick lifted a few inches off their seats. The headlights dipped through the blackness of night, and the front end sunk into it, as if the car would fall for miles and miles, right off the edge of the Earth.

With his heart in his throat, Patrick watched as the headlights found the snowy road again, and, like a roller coaster coming off the peak of its track, the descent had the Buick accelerating.

Snow and dirt whipped from the Regal's four wheels as the nearly two-ton automobile raced out of control, carving a path down the weary road that had yet to see a plow.

"Brake, Patrick!" the owl yelled.

The vehicle's front tires locked up, spinning the back end around as it slid to the slope's bottom at nearly fifty miles-per-hour. The front tires took the car off the road, and the front end plowed directly into a reinforced telephone pole, obliterating the bumper, grill and hood, while the engine slammed back into the transmission.

The blunt impact had thrown the child forward with such force that, when the seat belt snagged him back, every bit of breath in his lungs escaped, while his legs, arms and head thrusted toward the engine, nearly pulling the boy apart at his joints.

As the car settled, and the telephone pole teetered, Patrick gulped and choked, trying like hell to bring oxygen back into his body. Streams of blood ran from the bridge of his nose and his lower lip, trickling down his chin and dripping over the waterproof nylon shell of his winter coat.

Thomas's synthetic feathers floated around the hazy cab. The bird twitched as he lay on the floor mat, fluttering a wing that no longer worked. He had impacted the glove box, leaving cotton stuck in the grooves of the metal door that hung open, swaying, barely attached to its hinges.