Jennifer stared up at the overpass long after the train had gone, thinking about what she wanted to do. She wasn’t sure if the train was coming or going. Work usually ended at 5pm, but judging by the angle of the shadows, it couldn’t be much past 1pm right now, too early for people to be going home. Could it be an empty train preparing to pick people up? She decided it didn’t matter. At one end of the line would be an employment center, and at the other would be the residential section. Both would have food. The problem was distance. It was impossible to tell how far away it was. Even if she managed to get back on her feet, she wasn’t going to make it much farther.

The train was long gone and she still sat there, staring at the sky and trying to make up her mind. If she decided to go, she would follow the train, which was heading the opposite direction she was facing. That way at least veered away from the slums. But wouldn’t it be better to just sit here, close her eyes and drift off? Hope was a dream that led down a path of pain, with no guarantee of relief at the end. She had chased a false hope her whole life and look where that had gotten her. Despair was comfort and relief. At least she wouldn’t have to work hard anymore.

But old habits die hard, as Jennifer was discovering. She had lived her whole life striving and hoping, and it wasn’t so easy to change her ways now, even on the verge of starvation. A line from one of those stupid old books rose in her mind: ‘Despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt.’ She decided she wanted to at least find out.

She gingerly lifted herself to her feet, surprised to find it wasn’t as hard as she had feared. A few minutes rest had done her good. She set off in the direction the train had gone, which led across an open grass field, overgrown with chest-high weeds.

She followed in the shadow of the elevated railway, pushing through the high weeds as she staggered on. The ground here was pitted and uneven, the potholes hidden by the vegetation. She stumbled and fell a couple of times, bruising and scratching her arms and filling her clothes with burs, but she forced herself back up and plodded on.

The weeds ended abruptly as she came to the curb of another street. Beyond this street was an old abandoned industrial area. Metal buildings with rusting corrugated metal roofs and shattered windows. There had been a wire fence, but it had long ago collapsed and lay useless on its side. The burnt husk of some piece of loading equipment sat in one of the open yards.

She moved carefully over the fence and through the area, still following the railway. The ground was littered with debris and plenty of rusty nails and other scrap. She picked her way through them, taking care of her footing, given her wobbly state. She was up on her tetanus vaccination, but better safe than sorry.

At first the railway appeared to climb higher as she progressed, but when she looked at the lay of the land, the ground was actually sloping down while the track stayed at the same height. This struck her as odd. Why bother keeping the track level, when it would be more economical to have it lower to the ground?

Out of the corner of her eye, a loping dark figure darted out of sight behind one of the old warehouses. She instinctively snapped her head round to follow the movement, but missed catching what it was. She recognized the motion as that of a feral dog. Whatever it was, it was running away from her, which was good. Probably. All the same, she decided to veer wide around any blind corners. She perked up her ears and listened, suddenly aware of the eerie silence. Each step she took crunched under her feet, announcing her position.

Once she moved past the warehouses she saw why the land was sloping down. There was a broad, swift-flowing river cutting perpendicular across her path. The railway ran straight across it at a dizzying height, planting two of its sheer concrete legs into the water. The grass of the far bank reflected off the river, dying it a muddy shade of green.

“Impassible.” She muttered to herself, then laughed, realizing what she had said. “It’s simply impassible, but nothing’s impossible!”

She surveyed the river, watching as it curved gently away from in both directions, like a shield wall thrown up to keep her out. It was too deep, too wide and too fast. She knew how to swim, but not that well. Even if she was in her best condition, she wouldn’t dare try to cross it. In her current state, going in there would be suicide. She couldn’t tread water in a swimming pool right now.

She glanced at the sun, which had moved far enough past noon to indicate which direction was West. Like the train, the sun was retreating beyond the river, heading where she needed to go, but couldn't. The river flowed from North to South.

She had to cross and couldn’t do it here. Should she head North or South? She wished she had a coin to flip. She picked North on a whim. About 50 feet upriver she saw she had picked right. A rusty brown water pipe protruded from her side of the bank and jut straight across the river, camouflaged within the green and brown of the muddy water. The pipe itself was suspended several feet above the water, supported by abutments and a couple of concrete piers.

She went to the bank above the pipe and spotted the next obstacle. There was a circular fence built all around the pipe, sticking out in all directions like radial spokes. She spotted its weakness right away– a well rusted brown-orange padlock that closed the small gate in the middle of the fence. At this distance she could see the pipe itself was 3 feet in diameter, which should be thick and strong enough for her to cross.

She picked up a large rock from the river bank and then made her way down the muddy bank to the top of the pipe. As expected, she slipped in the mud and ended up sliding on her butt to the pipe itself, banging her tailbone and getting her legs covered in mud. The fetid smell of gently rotting vegetation and a faint whiff of sewage entered her nostrils. She rose and walked carefully over the pipe to the gate.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Even with her skinny arms, it only took three downward blows with the rock to knock the lock off. Ironically the lock held, but the latches themselves broke off the gate and fell on the pipe with reverberating clang, sending flakes of rust everywhere.

The gate squeaked open and she advanced three paces out over the water before she stopped, a sudden sense of vertigo assaulting her. This river was at least 300 feet across, and the round surface of the pipe curved treacherously away on both sides. Three feet wide seemed big when she was standing on solid ground, but now it was horribly narrow.

She went to her hands and knees and started to crawl, trying very hard not to think about what she was doing. She focused all of her attention on the pipe under her, placing one hand in front of the other. There were patches of peeling white paint still clinging to parts of the pipe, and it felt solid despite its rusty condition.

“Left hand, right hand, left hand, right hand.” She repeated under her breath as she crawled. She focused all her attention on the placement of her hands, trying hard not to think about how precarious her position was. The river flowed swiftly next to the bank, but as she made it farther out, the water slowed and grew calmer as it became deeper. From this angle, the water reflected the blue of the sky, but was black under the shadow of the pipe. She wore denial like mental armor. She refused to think about what she was doing. “Left hand, right hand….”

She made her fatal mistake when she reached the halfway point.

In the middle of the river, two sections of the pipe were held together by a number of bolts through a short metal lip that protruded out perpendicular to the surface. When she reached it, she hazarded a glance behind her to judge her progress. The pipe grew smaller as it approached the bank, and the reality of what she was doing forced its way through.

She was alone in the middle of nowhere, with death on her left and death on her right. No rope, no rail, just the narrow pipe between her and drowning. If she died here, no one would even know. The horizon line where the blue river met the green bank started to tilt and spin.

Her heart pounded in her chest, making her hands shake as intense vertigo seized her. She clung to the pipe with all her feeble strength as her sense of up and down betrayed her.

The river was tilting.

The river was sideways.

She held on as the river spun above her, threatening to dump her into the sky below.

A chunk of rust broke off in her right hand and she went down, banging her chin on the pipe and snapping her teeth together. She started to slide down to her right. She wrapped her left side against the rough metal in a desperate attempt to hold on. Her right hand and leg flailed in the open air over the black water below.

“Help! Help!” She screamed, but there was no one to hear her.

“Oh god, oh god, please–!” She prayed, but when had any god given a shit about her?

She clawed at the bolts that connected the two sections, slicing open her palm as she dragged it over jagged bits of rust. She continued to slide. An idea welled up inside her and she willed herself to say it aloud.

“No help and no gods. It’s just me and this pipe.”

She pushed away the panic and concentrated all of her attention into her right hand. She ignored the sensation of sliding, ignored the fear, and for that instant forgot about the river completely. Her whole world was the five fingers on her right hand. She placed them strategically over a bolt, two fingers on each side of the lip that sealed the pipe together. Only once she was certain they were secure did she allow herself to put her strength into that arm, pushing down with everything she had.

Her slide stopped.

She walked her left hand forward and grabbed another bolt. She walked her left leg back up, pressing first with her knee, then the ball of her ankle. At last she pulled herself back into precarious balance on the center of the pipe. She wanted nothing more than to relax and take a breather, recover her wits and–

“Go forward now.”

It was her own voice, and it surprised her. She hadn’t intended to speak, but something inside her saw the danger. She had pushed the panic back, but it still hovered on the edge of her awareness, ready to come rushing back in the moment she relaxed.

She got back on her knees and started to place one grimy, blood-slick hand in front of the other again, forcing her way forward.

“Don’t think. Left hand, right hand.”

She didn’t think about how slick her hands were, or how tired she was. She didn’t think about the metallic taste of blood in her mouth. She stopped thinking about the river and about death. For the rest of the journey she entered a state of perfect zen disassociation until she saw the muddy grass in the corners of her vision again.

There was another fence in front of her, and she used it to hoist herself back up to her feet. The padlock on this one was both new and on the other side. No way to break it off. This fence wasn’t a radial one like the other, but was anchored into a concrete base the pipe went into. Two side fences followed the sloped bank down until they entered the river, forming a flattened V shape that sealed her in.

She dropped down into the water and waded around the left side fence, getting soaked up to the waist. Her feet sank into the slimy ground under the water, the mud trying to suck off her shoes with each step. At last she scrambled up the grassy bank and stood on level ground again.

She had trouble making sense of what she was seeing. Not far from where she stood, a smooth service road ran parallel to the river. It had no potholes or cracks. New red brick buildings stood behind it, but their windows were filled with squeaky clean glass panes, not one of them broken or boarded over. No graffiti, no trash, no weeds… and no people either.

“What was I doing…?” she wondered, looking right and left. Her trek across the river felt like it had started a month ago. “Oh right, the railway.”

Back to the South, the elevated railway descended into the midst of the buildings, reaching ground level. She made her way to it in a daze, walking down the middle of the service road, leaving a trail of wet, muddy footprints behind her until she could see the tracks. She was about to walk out from behind a blind corner when she heard whistling.

She needed to stop dissociating and pay attention again. The nervous anxiety that almost killed her over the river served a purpose here. She needed to anticipate and play it safe to avoid people. She hugged the wall of the building closest to the track and peaked out around the corner. Next to a footpath which crossed the tracks stood a police officer. He hooked his thumbs into his pockets and rocked back and forth on his heels as he whistled to himself, killing time as he watched the path. He was facing away from her. His uniform was crisp and clean, a decorative tassel adorning each shoulder. He didn’t appear to be carrying a gun. Most importantly, he looked well-fed.

She had finally made it. Since he was standing guard, he must work here. That meant food couldn’t be too far away.