Chapter 47
Chapter 47
The train continued to slow. At first Louis felt only a slight pull beneath his feet.
“Something’s wrong,” Gladice breathed.
She braced one hand against the corridor wall and held the pistol in the other. Blood and sweat streaked her face, and her loosened headscarf hung from one shoulder. Angelique stood close to Louis. She had buttoned her torn blouse unevenly. Her breathing had slowed, but Louis kept an arm around her shoulders and felt her trembling.
The carriage jolted again, harder this time. The brakes shrieked from the forward cars. Gladice swore under her breath and looked through the wired glass at the end of the corridor. Trees and signal lights passed beyond it. Pale lights appeared ahead beside the tracks.
“There’s a station.”
“Or a checkpoint.” Gladice kept the pistol raised. “Either way, we don’t have long.”
Louis looked back. Blood marked the floor all the way to Bell’s compartment. “We can’t stay on the train.”
“Of course we can’t,” Gladice said. “But if we jump from a moving train, we die. If we wait for a full stop, they’ll have men waiting to board. So we need to get to the engine before either happens.”
“We don’t have that much time.” Angelique’s voice was low and sharp. “The train is already slowing.”
Louis looked toward the rear corridor. Locked doors lined the way behind them. “We go backward.”
Gladice laughed. “Backward into what? More guards, more doors, and no way out.”
The train slowed more sharply. The carriage pitched them forward. Angelique caught herself against the wall, and Louis caught her by the arm.
Then he said it.
“We jump.”
Gladice stared at him. “We jump. From a moving train.”
“It’s slowing.”
“It’s still moving fast enough to break your neck.”
Louis looked through the wired glass again. He could make out a siding, a short platform, and a signal mast ahead. “It will be a hundred times worse if we’re still on it when it stops.”
Gladice cursed under her breath and looked at Angelique. “What do you think?”
Angelique closed her eyes and took a breath before answering. “He’s right. We can’t make the engine in time. And we can’t wait.”
“So we throw ourselves into the dark and pray we break legs instead of skulls?”
“Yes,” Angelique said simply.
The train jolted again and slowed more sharply. Metal shrieked beneath the floor. The platform lights and nearby buildings were now clearly visible.
Louis said, “It’s now or never.” He looked at Gladice. “We need to get the door open.”
Gladice shook her head, then hurried toward the side door at the far end of the compartment. Angelique followed, and Louis stayed beside her.
Gladice yanked the handle upward and pushed. The door opened a narrow crack. She drove her shoulder against it. The gap widened, but the door jammed. She cursed, stepped back, and kicked beside the latch. The door broke free and swung outward.
Darkness filled the open doorway. Wind and noise struck them at once. Gravel and wooden ties rushed past below. The brakes shrieked again beneath them. The platform and buildings ahead were close enough to see clearly.
“Fine,” Gladice said. “We jump now.”
She looked at Angelique. “You go first.”
Angelique did not argue. She went to the open door and looked down at the track. Louis stepped beside her. The train was still moving fast.
Angelique looked at him, then turned to Gladice.
“If I die,” she said, “kill them all.”
Gladice nodded. “I will.”
Angelique stepped back, bent her knees, and jumped outward in the direction of the train’s movement. She dropped from sight.
Louis moved toward the opening, but Gladice caught him by the shoulder and pulled him back.
“You can’t help her now. Go.”
He crouched at the open door. Gravel and wooden ties rushed past below. He pushed off and jumped outward and forward. The drop was longer than he had expected. His right foot struck first and twisted beneath him. His knee folded, and he crashed onto his hip and shoulder. Pain ran from his knee into his hip.
He rolled across the gravel. Stones tore his shirt and scraped his arms and cheek. The pistol came loose from his waistband and landed nearby. He stopped on his back and could not draw breath. He moved his arms and bent his left leg. When he tried the right, pain seized his knee.
Gladice hit the gravel nearby with a heavy thud. Louis heard her grunt and slide over the stones. He rolled onto one elbow and swept his hand over the gravel until his fingers struck the pistol. He picked it up and pushed himself to one knee. Putting weight on his right leg sent pain from his knee to his hip.
Gladice was nearby on one knee. She still held her pistol and was trying to stand.
“Angelique!” he called.
A figure moved farther along the track. It was Angelique, limping toward them with one hand pressed to her side. Her blouse had torn farther during the fall. She looked at Louis and nodded. Louis forced himself upright. His right leg nearly gave way when he put weight on it, but he limped toward her. Gladice came beside him.
The train continued toward the station. Its red tail lights grew smaller against the platform lights.
“We have to move,” Gladice said hoarsely. “They’ll be coming.”
She looked back at the track, then forward. Beyond the rail bed, the ground rose into dense pines and scrub that would hide them from the track.
“That way. Now.”
They crossed the edge of the rail bed and entered the scrub. Gladice went first. Angelique followed without looking back. Louis came after them with the pistol in his right hand. The ground dropped sharply beyond the scrub. Louis’s injured leg gave way on the slope. He slid over loose gravel and wet red clay, then caught himself with his left hand on a briar. A thorn tore across his palm. He kept himself from crying out and pushed himself back to his feet.
Angelique was already below him, steadying herself against a pine with one hand and lifting her skirt clear of the mud with the other. Gladice had stopped farther down the slope and turned toward them.
“Move,” she whispered. “Don’t stop. We need to get off the line of sight before they can get a search out.”
They continued away from the tracks. Runoff had carved channels through the ground, and old vehicle ruts crossed the slope. The ground changed without warning between firm clay and ankle-deep mud. Water stood in the low places. Wet pine straw covered the higher ground and slipped beneath their feet. Mosquitoes soon whined around their ears and landed on their exposed skin. Frogs and insects called from the wet ground around them.
Louis kept moving. At first his right knee felt hot and stiff, and he shortened each step to keep weight off it. As they descended, each step sent pain from his knee into his thigh and hip. By the time he could no longer hear the train, he had already begun to fall behind.
“How bad?” Angelique asked.
She slowed and dropped back beside him. In the darkness, Louis could make out only part of her face. She was limping too and held her left arm tight against her side.
“I can walk,” he said.
She watched him put weight on the injured leg, then nodded. “Tell me when you can’t.”
“I will.”
They continued to walk in the dark for a long time. Louis could not tell how long. It might have been half an hour. He measured the distance by his breathing, the pain in his knee, and each patch of ground he could cross without falling.
Gladice altered course twice. The first time she took them through a shallow drainage ditch and up the far side into a stand of older pines. The second time she led them toward a low concrete culvert. They crouched inside it for several minutes. A truck passed over the road above them, and its tires sent grit down the slope beside the opening. Gladice waited until the engine noise had faded before moving again.
“We stay away from roads,” she said. “And houses, and anything lit. If they’ve got the jump point, they’ll lock the obvious lines first.”
Angelique wiped mud from one side of her face with the back of her wrist. “Do you know where we are?”
“No.” Gladice’s voice was flat. “But not far enough.”
Louis leaned against the cold concrete wall and shifted his weight off his right leg. The right knee of his trousers was dark with water and mud. The cloth below it had pulled tight over the swelling. He had never imagined, in all the years he had been raised to stand behind cameras, behind speeches, behind the unbroken surface of a life built on wealth and power, that he would end a night bleeding into rented shoes in the black backfields of Dixie.
Angelique saw him looking.
“Let me see.”
He shook his head. “Later.”
“Now.”
He did not argue and extended his right leg. Angelique crouched in front of him and felt along the trouser leg until her fingers reached the swollen knee. She pressed the swollen area. Louis sucked in a breath and pulled his leg back.
She drew her hand away. “It’s swelling.”
“Yeah.”
She removed her headscarf and folded it lengthwise into a broad band. She wrapped it around the swollen joint and tied it firmly without pulling it tight. The pressure hurt at first, but the wrap kept his knee from shifting as much.
Louis watched her work. Her hair had fallen loose around her face.
“Thank you,” he said.
She sat back on her heels and looked up at him. “We have to find somewhere to stop soon.”
“Not until we’re sure we’ve lost the sweep.” Blood and dirt covered Gladice’s hands, but her grip on the pistol remained steady. “Another hour. Then we rest.”
Louis tried to stand. He pushed himself upright against the wall while Angelique supported him under one arm. Pain ran through his knee when he put weight on it, then remained as a deep ache. They moved on. The ground gradually rose, and the pools became smaller and farther apart. Scrub oak began to appear among the pines. They climbed over the remains of an old wire fence tangled with vines.
Later they found an overgrown service track. Gladice followed it until she had her bearings, then led them back into the trees. Louis lost count of how often his injured leg slipped. Each time, Angelique caught his sleeve or forearm and kept him upright.
After they had walked farther, Gladice found a small abandoned structure beside the drainage field. It might once have been a pump shed or maintenance building. One wall was missing, leaving the interior open to the scrub and the field beyond. It offered little cover from that direction, but the floor was dry and the remaining walls blocked the wind.
They entered the shed. Louis lowered himself to the floor with his back against the inner wall. When his knee bent, his vision dimmed. He pulled the leg straight again. Cold sweat ran down his back. Angelique sat beside him. Gladice stayed at the opening with the pistol held low. She watched the drainage field and listened for engines or voices.
At last she sighed and sat with them. “We stay here until dawn. Then we move again.”
Louis leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. The world had narrowed to a point so small he was not sure he could ever find his way back to anything larger. He listened to the two of them breathing beside him, and it was the only thing that kept the darkness from feeling complete. For a time none of them spoke. He thought Angelique might have fallen asleep until she moved suddenly and touched his arm.
“Louis.”
He opened his eyes. She was looking at him. In the dim light her face was still shadowed and drawn, but there was something in her gaze that was not exhaustion or fear. He waited. Her hand did not leave his arm. “Do you believe we will live through this?”
He let his head fall against the wall and looked at her. “Yes.”
She nodded once and left her hand where it was. He could feel the warmth of her hand through his sleeve. “Good.”
Gladice watched them both from the other side of the narrow space. “Don’t do that.”
Angelique turned her head. “Do what?”
“Talk to each other like I’m already dead.”
Angelique said nothing, but she did not take her hand away from Louis’s arm.
“Join us,” Louis said quietly to Gladice. “It’s warmer.”
She gave him a look, then snorted once and came to sit on his other side. The three of them sat together in the dark shed, arms and legs pressed against each other, with the night full of damp earth, insects, and pursuit somewhere out beyond the empty fields.
It was not peace. But it was not alone. Louis let his eyes close again and tried not to think about tomorrow. There would be time for that when he could stand on both feet again.