100TWC - Day 22: Online

A pair of honey bees hummed lazily from blossom to blossom among the weeds and wild flowers decorating the disused sidings. The day was still and hot, the afternoon sun a coruscating furnace in a cornflower sky.

Niall rested momentarily against the hot wood of the old cattle pens, watching the bees and soaking up the ambience of the old station. The trains, still regular users of the branch line, no longer stopped here. The local farmers sent their livestock by road now. The commuters had to make their way the four miles to the next nearest station.

From a nearby suburban garden, the sound of a child playing happily in the summer afternoon disturbed his reverie. He plucked a stem of grass from the path and set off toward the old stone footbridge further down the track. As a boy he had stood on that bridge and watched the trains, passengers and traders as they bustled and jostled around the busy station, making careful notes in his spotters' book. He wanted to relive that memory even if the only elements left to it were himself and the occasional speeding train.

The path started its slow incline to the shoulder of the bridge. He could hear the child's voice more plainly now, even though he was walking closer to the rural side of the station, leaving the housing estate behind. He could even start to make out the odd word. It sounded... surely not... it sounded like someone crying for help.

He broke into a run, heading for the low wall at the side of the bridge, and looked along the track, shading his eyes from the glare. Two hundred metres or so from the other side of the bridge, a young woman was lying across the track, waving frantically.

Guessing she must have been walking on the track side and twisted her ankle, Niall vaulted the wall and slid awkwardly down the bank onto the gravel. He checked his watch as he began to run toward the woman, ruefully remembering that he had no idea of the train timetable.

As he approached the woman he saw that she was not simply lying on the track. She was tied to it.

"Oh God," she yelled as he ran, "thank God! Please help me!"

Niall slid to a halt on the loose gravel and knelt down.

"What the hell?" he began. "Who did this? Why...?"
"Please," she gasped. "The train is due any minute. I'll explain later. Please get me out of here!"

Niall examined the knots. Although no expert, he was pretty sure he'd never seen anything like them before. Thick nylon climbing rope had been wrapped around the woman's waist and leg. Looped around both the steel rails of the track and the heavy sleepers, it had been tied in a complex weave that Niall struggled to comprehend.

Half-remembered scenes from silent movies and Wile E. Coyote cartoons flashed through his racing mind.

"I'll never get this undone in time," he panted, still breathless from his short run. "I'll have to cut it."

He pulled a pocket knife from his jeans and began sawing at the rope.

"It's no use," the woman yelled. "You'll never cut through all this - there isn't time."

A thousand metres away, around the bend in the track, a train whistle sounded urgently.

[ this story is continued later in the writing challenge - on Day 39 in "Out of Time" ]