The seat was hard beneath him; the train jostled ridiculously.
But as it did so, he felt her beside him, and the train could have spun in circles for all he cared.
*
For a while, he stayed awake. As the train made one quick stop, he noticed a road sign.
Natal. 80km.
They would hold the course that far, explore through the day, and decide exactly where they wanted to be. Maybe they’d start off by heading to Punta Negra and try surfing, as Natal had suggested.
He twisted and planted a light kiss on the top of her head. She made a little noise and snuggled closer against him.
He started to fall asleep and struggled against it—he had grown afraid of sleep.
Sleep brought dreams. And the dreams were never good.
But his exhaustion, the movement of the train, were too much to resist. Eventually he slept.
And as he had feared, he began to dream.
The dreams always came with noise first—that whistling sound, the sound of the bombs coming.
Then there would be the explosion as they hit the earth. A softer sound would follow—that of the earth falling back like rain upon the area the bombs had hit.
Then there would be screaming—the cries of those who had been hurt. A commander’s voice would call out, urging the men to take cover, to regroup, to find the wounded.
That night, he was down on the ground. He’d headed out from the safety of a wall to drag in a fellow soldier who’d been hit with shrapnel. It was hard going over the rough terrain, pulling a big man with his gear. But River got him behind the wall and was inching out again when there was another explosion.
The wind shifted; black powder and earth and dust were whirling in the air as if they were all part of some man-made storm.
He saw someone—someone coming through the haze. He could still hear men screaming and shouting, but in the midst of it he heard something else.
Laughter. Innocent laughter. The kind of sweet and innocent laughter that belonged to a child, from a little girl’s lips.
And there was the child. He could just make her out through the powder-mist clouding the earth and sky.
She was with a woman. They didn’t know; they didn’t know they were walking right into a war zone. He tried to reach out—tried to find his voice and call out to them. But he was choking; powder was in his lungs.
Then he felt as if another bomb went off, as if he was pitched forward.
He woke as his head butted into the seat across from him.
The train, he realized, had stopped.
“We’re somewhere,” he said, “I’m not sure that it’s Natal yet. Rough stop. Are you all right?”
He was speaking to no one. Natal wasn’t at his side.
He halfway stood, looking for her. She’s gone to the restroom, he thought, or perhaps to the café car.
A few people were gathering their things to disembark. A woman walked by as he searched for Natal—when she passed him, he could see outside. Maybe Natal had stepped down to the platform already to check out their circumstances. Maybe …
Natal wasn’t on the platform.
But the men in blue were.
Three of them now. He saw the man in the blue suit who wore the blue hat, the man in the blue suit with the bald head, and now, another one too. This one had a tuft of blond hair and wore a black shirt beneath his jacket.
They were talking to someone, he saw. He strained his eyes to see more clearly.
It was the drunk. It was the wretched drunk he’d encountered outside the restroom. And he was pointing to the car where he and River had engaged in their confrontation.
River swore softly beneath his breath and grabbed his backpack. Natal’s things were gone.
Had she left him again? he wondered bleakly. Had she actually seen the fight and been afraid of what she must surely see now as his penchant for violence?
No. He remembered her eyes, her face … the way she had looked at him.
You will always find me, she had told him.
And he would; he believed that with his whole heart.
For the moment, though, he knew he had to get the hell away.
Maybe Natal had seen them and warned him—but he hadn’t heard her. Maybe she had moved quickly, knowing full well that he could escape easier on his own and that they wouldn’t be after her. That had to be it; he was certain that she cared as much for him as he did for her. And she did have faith in him.
The men in the suits were coming toward the train. River walked quickly, heading to the car behind the one he was in.
People barely noticed him. Some were dozing. Some were reading papers and a few were playing electronic games on their phones or squinting and staring out the windows to see where they were.
Looking out to the platform when he reached the next car, River saw that one of the men had already boarded.
River kept hurrying through.
In the next car he came across the sleepers. First—the cheap sleepers. He thought about finding an empty bunk and sliding into it.
No.
They would think to look there. Only idiots would refrain from checking the obvious and he was certain that these men, whoever they were, weren’t idiots. They were here—somehow, they had followed him here. How, he didn’t know. He’d used cash for the train tickets. He hadn’t seen them when he’d been at the station. He knew he hadn’t been followed.
They were determined and thorough, he thought. They’d questioned cashiers at stations around the city. They had described him.
That was the only explanation.
The train lurched back into motion. The men were all aboard.
He hurried to the rear of the sleeper car and entered the next; it was filled with compartments—real compartments, with doors that closed.
River opened one; a woman saw him and screamed.
He closed the door quickly.
Even if one were open, River thought, the men would surely check each compartment, just as they’d check every bunk in the coach class.
River kept moving. He had to pull hard to open the next door; it led into a container car. Boxes were piled high here; he had to maneuver to make his way through them. Seeing a clearer area at the end, he hurtled over one box to reach it and then ran the remaining length of the car.
He came to another car. There were more boxes.
And crates.
Crates filled with chickens.
He didn’t mean to—he accidentally knocked over a crate.
The chickens squawked in agitation; the sound of their distress was loud.
River kept running, hoping he’d created a few obstacles for the men in blue suits.
He had—but turning back he saw that, although they had been forced to slow down, they were still coming.
And as he moved on, he heard one of the doors sliding open when he had barely made his way through the next door.
They were right behind him; they were almost upon him.
He began to run again, leaping over a box in his way, pressing past a sleeping conductor in the last of the cars.
Then, he was at the end of the train.