north of where she had parked on their way to Oregon City. Running in fear. She craned her head around, assessing the streets to see if there was an easy maneuver that would allow the driver to drop them off instead of going all the way home. That thought evaporated when the low, stumpy concrete balustrades that bordered the bridge began to whip by her window, and the road grade sloped noticeably higher.
And fire engulfed the back half of the taxi.
They were already on the bridge, and, a moment later, when Diana’s brain caught up to what was going on, she realized they were also under attack.
Even before she could turn to assess what was happening on the road behind them, the sounds of squealing tires and crashing metal erupted close behind them. She turned in her seat. Flame and smoke filled the rear window, but she couldn’t tell if their car was actually burning or if the fire came from another source behind them. The taxi swerved, shoving Diana against the passenger door. Looking across the seat to her granddaughter, she asked, “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Hannah said. She turned to press her face against the window on the driver’s side. “I think he’s back.”
Diana caught the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror. He cocked his head over to look out his sideview mirror. “Hells bells,” he yelled. His face went white, and he slammed on the brakes while cringing over the steering wheel, like he was dodging something coming at him from above.
Diana slapped the back of his seat with her palm and yelled, “Don’t stop! Whatever you do, don’t stop!”
The taxi went into a skid on the wet roadway, its back end sliding to a twenty-degree angle before coming to a complete stop. Another crash reverberated behind them. Thinking an out-of-control vehicle was about to crash into them, Diana wrapped an arm over Hannah and tensed up. Instead of a collision, there came a sudden silence. The droning sound of rubber on asphalt, the chunk, chunk of tires on bridge plates was gone. Instead she heard, in the distance, a car horn bleat, the patter of rain on the roof, the thump of windshield wipers.
Suddenly the rain patter stopped, and a shadow swept over them.
The cab driver rolled down his window and stuck out his head to look behind them. When he didn’t see anything, he turned his gaze upward and let out a keening cry. Beating the frame of his door with his fists, he found the handle and opened the door. He fell out onto the wet roadway, landing on his knees directly onto the yellow centerline. Babbling something incoherent, he looked skyward, stood up and ran away.
The darkness slipped away. Gray light and the sound of rain returned.
Looking out the back window through smoke and steam rising off the blackened trunk, Diana watched the driver run in the direction from which they came, his ponytail whipping back and forth, as he tried to run and look over his shoulder at the same time.
“Nana, what’s happening?” Hannah appeared more curious than afraid.
“I’m not sure, sweetie, but I want you to stay right where you are.” She unhooked her seat belt and pulled herself up to look over the front seat. The keys were still in the ignition. “I’m going to move up to the front seat, and we’re going to get out of here.”
She reached for the door handle and pulled. The passenger side door opened, and she stepped from the car. Standing in the right lane, Diana could see that the taxi sat mostly in the center right lane with the driver’s side bumper poking into the oncoming lane on the left but not enough to stop traffic, which continued coming from the opposite direction, though at a snail’s pace. On the other hand, there was no traffic on this side of the bridge.
Diana turned to look behind the taxi. What she saw caused her to stagger backward into the car door. She held on to it for support, as she gawked at the string of mangled, burning cars strewn from her location more than halfway across the bridge to the connecting roadway on the western side of the river. Her eyes followed more than a dozen streams of smoke into the air, up to the cloudy, darkening evening. A drop of rain hit the corner of her eye, startling her, breaking the grip the apocalyptic scene held on her.
As if suddenly awakened, Diana’s head jerked