Page 114 of The Hitchhikers
No. Both her hands hit the side of his shoulder, shoving him. He’d been standing close to the edge of the trestle. There were no guardrails. He didn’t have time to balance. He stumbled to the side in a slow-motion drunken dance step. He flung his arms wide, trying to right himself.
“Jenny!” he yelled.
She didn’t move.
His weight was too much. His mouth was open, his face panicked. One arm reaching for the sky. Alice could see it all. He was tilting, sideways, gravity taking him, pulling him headfirst.
He was there, suspended, and then he wasn’t.
A long scream as he dropped.
Alice screamed too, hers joining the piercing sound of Jenny’s.
A thud, below. Rocks rolling, cracking into each other. Echoing through the ravine.
Then silence.
Jenny was on her knees, hands clasping the edge, leaning forward to look down. She shrieked his name.“Simonnnnn! Simonnnn!”The sound echoed through the ravine.
Alice got to her feet, limping closer to Jenny. The girl was going to fall too if she leaned out any farther.
“Jenny!” she called. “Move back.”
Jenny turned to look at Alice, her face streaked with tears, and her mouth open like she was still trying to scream but had run out of breath.
Alice reached her side and grabbed the back of her arms, tugged her up and away. Jenny sagged against her, stumbling as Alice led them off the bridge. She let go of her and moved to the edge of the ravine. There was a thin trail on the sloped bank. Animal or people, she wasn’t sure. She didn’t want to lose her footing either, but there was a chance he could still be alive.
She turned to Jenny. “Run to the highway and flag down a car.”
Jenny stared at Alice, her body shaking. She sank onto her knees in the gravel beside the railway ties, clutching at her heart. Maybe it was better she didn’t run anywhere.
“Okay. Just stay here.”
Alice made her way down the trail, keeping her body sideways, and leaning toward the hill so that her weight didn’t drag her. She slipped a couple of times and grabbed at the dry bushes, praying they didn’t break. She stopped, and scanned the hill below, but there was no sign of Simon. Then she found blood. Ruby red droplets on rocks, a smear on the dust.
She moved down farther, the trestle seeming far above now. She couldn’t see Jenny but thought she could hear her crying. She scanned the hillside below.
A flash of color. Simon’s shirt.
Alice stopped so fast she nearly lost her balance. She regained her footing, but her heart rate was off-kilter, staggering with fear. A few feet below her, Simon was lying face up on a part of the hill that had flattened to form a small shelf. Boulders had blocked him from rolling farther.
“Simon?” No answer. No moans or cries. He could be unconscious, but something about the way his body had settled. It didn’t look right. She felt her throat tightening.
She crept closer until she was beside him. His hand was flung toward her. She reached out to feel his wrist. Her fingertips pressed against still-warm skin.
She held her breath, waiting to feel a flutter. Maybe she had the wrong spot. She moved her fingers up his wrist. Pressed harder on the veins. She checked for a pulse in his neck.
Nothing.
His eyes were closed, his face bloodied from when she hit him, and maybe from the fall too because there was a deep scrape down his cheek, with small bits of dirt and rock embedded. There was another gash on his scalp, and his neck was at a strange angle, his feet flung wide.
She was going to have to tell Jenny. Would she try to escape? Alice had to talk her into turning herself in. Alice didn’t like the way Simon’s arms were twisted, and even though she knew he couldn’t feel it, she moved them beside his body and put his legs closer together. She turned his neck so that his body was straight. If it weren’t for the blood, he could be sleeping.
She felt stickiness on her own leg. In the shock of Simon falling, she hadn’t thought about her wound. She examined it now. Blood had soaked her sock and shoe. The entry hole was on the side of her calf. She couldn’t see an exit, but it was hard to tell with so much blood. She took her other sock off, pressed it to the wound, and wrapped it around.
There was no sign of the gun near Simon. It had either fallen past him, or he’d lost it on the way down. She thought about the knife and lifted the hem of his shirt. He didn’t have it.
Alice started back up the ravine bank, her breath ragged, her injured calf throbbing. She imagined she must be in shock, and she’d suffer more pain when that small grace wore off.
