Crazy Dangerous Read Free Page A

fact, his thick, powerful legs pistoning under him, driving him after me, leaving his two thug pals behind and quickly closing the gap between us.
    Then I heard it again: that high-pitched shriek—the sound that had brought me back to my senses. I glanced across the valley as I ran and I saw what it was. It was the whistle of a freight train. I could see the train winding out from behind the hills, heading for the far end of the railway bridge.
    Which gave me an idea. And I think it’s safe to say it was the craziest idea I had ever had. It’s possible it was the craziest idea anyone had ever had. But what can I tell you? I was totally panicked. I knew if Jeff and his pals caught me, they would break me into little bits and then break the bits into even littler bits. I saw only one chance to escape them and, crazy as it was, I took the chance without really thinking.
    I ran for the bridge. Moving off the McAdams Trail onto the gravelly dirt along the ridge. Dodging through the sparse and scraggly trees. Running as fast as I could.
    I glanced back over my shoulder as I ran. Harry Mac was closing in on me fast. I had to go up a steep little incline to reach the end of the bridge and that slowed me down, and Harry Mac got even closer.
    Now I stepped onto the bridge, onto the tracks, and started running over them. The world dropped away on either side of me. Suddenly I was high, high up in the air with no escape route, Jeff and his pals behind me, the train coming up ahead of me, nothing but sky to my left and right. I kept to the center of the tracks, between the rails, between the edges of the bridge. My feet flew over old brown wooden ties that were strung close together with only small strips of grass and gravel between them.
    As I ran, I looked up ahead. I could see the train. It sent out another piercing whistle as it steamed along the ridge over the Sawnee, heading for the bridge’s far side. My idea was this: If I could run across the bridge fast enough, I would get to the other end before the train reached it. Jeff and his friends wouldn’t follow me because they couldn’t possibly be ridiculous enough to run across a single-track bridge with a freight train about to cut off their only exit.
    You can see what I mean when I say I hadn’t quite thought this idea all the way through. For instance, if I thought Jeff and his thug pals were too smart to run across the bridge with the train coming—well, then, shouldn’t I have been too smart to do it also? Just to save you the trouble of looking up the answer, it’s: Yes! Of course yes! What I was doing was absolutely insane! But with everything happening so quickly, and with the whole panic thing going on and my fear of Jeff and Ed P. and Harry Mac, I just wasn’t being very smart, that’s all.
    So I continued running as fast as I could, down the center of the train tracks, over the bridge.
    It wasn’t easy running over those wooden ties. I had to be careful not to catch my foot in one of the gaps, where I could’ve twisted or even broken my ankle, running as fast as I was. Also, some of those wooden ties felt kind of soft and rotten under my feet, as if they could break at any time. I didn’t know what would happen then. If one of them broke and I plunged through, would I just land on the gravel underneath? Or would I keep on falling down and down into the river below?
    Even in my panicked state, it was beginning to occur to me: this was a dumb plan. A really, really dumb plan.
    I was about to stop. I was about to turn around and run back. Then, amazingly, I felt fingers snag the collar of my sweatshirt. Startled, I whipped a look over my shoulder.
    You gotta be kidding me! I thought.
    But no, there was Harry Mac, his face red and twisted with effort, running after me, closing on me, reaching out with one hand to grab hold of my shirt.
    He’d followed me out onto the bridge. How crazy could anyone be? Didn’t he see there was a train coming? What was he, some