The right tires of the Route 04 bus bit into wet concrete, throwing up a rooster tail of gray road grit.
Two feet to the left, there was nothing. The canal was two hundred feet down, black and churned white where the wind caught the chop.
“Hold the frame!” Mac bellowed over the howl of the Detroit Diesel.
His left arm locked straight. The brass gears in his prosthetic wrist gave a dry, metallic scream as the clamp tightened around the steering wheel’s brodie knob. His knuckles were white against the worn vinyl.
Julian threw his weight against the passenger partition. The floor was tilted like a barn roof after a storm. His boots slid two inches before the rubber treads caught on the floor-rivets.
The six Liquidation Auditors stood motionless on the suspension towers above. Their blank parchment faces didn’t turn. Their eight-foot ebonite staves stayed leveled like spears.
Beneath the bus, the deck dropped another three inches with a sound like a freight car jumping the tracks.
“We’re sliding toward the edge, Kid!” Mac shouted. “I’ve got the gas pedal on the floorboards, but the front wheels aren’t steering on thirty degrees of air!”
