by A. L. Tyler
“Get up! Get up now!”
“Griffin?!”
He shushed her, and pulled her to her feet. There was screaming and more gun shots. Through the dark, Lena could see people moving through the trees. Griffin had her by the wrist, and he broke into a quick run, pulling Lena this way and that through the maze of darkness, looking over his shoulder and wiping the water out of his eyes.
Faster!
They ran together as fast as they could, with Griffin urging her for more and more speed. She tripped and caught her knee on a particularly sharp rock; it cut her deeply, and she screamed out in pain. Griffin didn’t wait for her to recover; he kept on dragging her until she regained her footing. After a while Lena could hear them over the steady pounding of rain—people trying to find them, chasing them. Yelling to one another and spreading out to net them if they doubled back. Griffin suddenly came to a complete halt. Lena turned and saw it; they were standing at the edge of rushing water. It might have been a small stream under normal conditions, but with all the rain, it had overrun its banks and was rushing at breakneck speed. Before Lena could even protest, Griffin had grabbed her arm and jumped in; she obligingly went with him.
They were surrounded by gushing, churning, muddy water; it was deeper and colder than she had expected for the area, and her knee stung horribly. She could feel every cut and abrasion she had received in the last few minutes prickling and stinging as the bitter water poured over her. She felt Griffin clinging to her arm with a death grip. She tried to tread water to stay afloat, but with the water moving so quickly and Griffin monopolizing one of her arms, she wasn’t having much success. She tried to flow with the water, kicking her legs to keep oriented upwards.
Soon, however, they hit a bend in the stream, and Lena went under. Water covered her head and her lungs started to burn from holding her breath for so long; she desperately fought Griffin for use of her other arm, shaking and twisting until he finally let go. She broke the surface and started looking around in the darkness, but she couldn’t see anything but water and trees rushing passed her as she bobbed along.
“Griffin!” She shrieked. There was no answer.
Her foot caught on something in the water and she went under again. At first, she thought it was Griffin, but as she reached down, searching for his hand, fear surged through her. Her sneaker was wedged between a couple of rocks; she couldn’t move either of them. She fought, trying to pull her shoe free, but realized it was a lost cause. She wiggled her foot free of the shoe and shot to the surface again.
“Griffin!”
She drifted along in the water for what felt like an eternity. Finally, she caught hold of some exposed tree roots near the bank and pulled herself out of the current and onto the muddy, gravelly ground. Shivering and afraid, she curled up next to the trunk of the tree. It was dark and she was having difficulty taking stock of where her injuries were; she could feel that her jeans had picked up a fair few cactus spines and pulled them out, wincing. There were a few small tears in the denim, but when her hand landed on her knee she knew she would need to find help at daybreak. There was a baseball-sized hole in the fabric just below her knee, and she didn’t dare touch the throbbing injury there. She huddled closer to the cold tree she was sheltering under; she couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t cry. She had lost Griffin, and she didn’t dare try to call out to find him. The wind was blowing again, making sounds like people chasing her.
*****
CHAPTER 10
She stayed awake all night, and by morning, her muscles were frozen stiff and a splitting headache all but immobilized her. With the sun finally peeking through the clouds and seeping into the damp world, she knew she should make her move. She would have to, sooner or later. She didn’t have any money or her cell phone, because it was all back in her travel bag in the sedan, and she desperately needed to talk to Howard. Just thinking about him made her want to cry; when he found out about what had happened, if anyone else survived to tell, he would assume her dead. It was his worst fear—the reason he hadn’t wanted her to go in the first place.
A sound cut through the forest, ever so slightly louder than the sound of the rushing water in the overflowing stream; tires on pavement. There was a road nearby. Slipping in the mud, Lena tried to get onto her feet. Pained choked the scream in her throat as her leg gave out beneath her. Tears streaming from her eyes, she knew she had to get to the road; gritting her teeth and refusing to acknowledge the searing pain, she forced herself up and started to walk. At a slow pace, she moved directly away from the river. She only had one shoe and her legs hurt terribly from not moving all night; she was covered with slime and mud from her trip down the river.
Soon, she had to stop for a break, and got up the courage to inspect at her injury. She really was going to need medical attention—the injury was so deep and her environment so wet that it hadn’t even scabbed over yet. The rock had probably gashed her clear down to the bone, but the pus and mud coating the injury thankfully saved her from knowing for sure. The three-inch cut had left her with a rather thick piece of pale skin, like a fish gill, that was flapping over the injury as she walked, and she had to look away to keep from vomiting.
When she finally reached the side of the road, and found it empty, she wanted to sit down and cry, but with the state of her leg, she knew she wouldn’t be getting back up if she did; it was all finally sinking in. People could be dead. Greg, Griffin, and her mother could be dead—everyone could. And it was her fault for dragging them out and into the situation in the first place. Howard had told her not to. Griffin had told her not to. Master Daray, Devin, and several other people had said it was a bad idea, and now here she was, standing on the side of the road, wallowing in blood and filth. It was possible that her stupid, selfish idea had killed more than two dozen people.
A car was approaching from her left. She stuck out her thumb, tears making dendrite patterns in the caking mud on her face, and the car, a small, blue, beaten station wagon, pulled over. The passenger side window rolled down in several fitful jerks to reveal an older woman with deeply tanned skin and a round face. Her eyes were sad and concerned, and much at odds with the upbeat Mexican folk music that was pouring out the open window.
“Está bien?”
Lena stared at her; she had a full, grandmotherly expression, like a character in a fairytale. In any other situation, she might have found it amusing that her fairy godmother was an illegal Mexican immigrant, but on that particular day, the joke was lost on her. She leaned down and looked at the driver; a younger man, perhaps the woman’s son, looking at her curiously.
“English?” Lena asked, trying to stifle her tears.
The young man shook his head. “No.”
“I need help.” Lena spoke very slowly. “Help.”
“Sí.” The old woman gestured to the backseat, and Lena got in. She didn’t know where she was going, but she was grateful to the people who were willing to take her there. She was getting mud and river stench all over the backseat of their car, and still, they seemed nothing but concerned about her. After about five minutes, Lena looked out the window and realized the scenery was getting familiar; they were traveling on the same road she had the night before, going into Crystal City. Her heart began to race; surely the ambush wasn’t still there?
She watched out the windshield, but didn’t see anything. It was all so different in the daylight. The cars and van were gone, as were their passengers. There wasn’t any evidence at all of a shootout.
Eventually, they arrived at the edge of town. The car pulled over in front of a newer looking two-story church. The young man got out of the car and led Lena inside. He disappeared for a moment, leaving Lena just inside the door. Lena had seen many Catholic Churches over the course of her travels; her father had taken her to Notre Dame and the Vatican, as well as several other spectacular churches around Europe, but like many churches in the United States, this one didn’t have the same breathtaking appeal. It was a humble place
of worship. It wasn’t a terribly big building on the inside; there were the usual depictions of Saints, Christ, and the Virgin on the walls. The green tile floor was clean and well kept, and though there were several chairs around, Lena didn’t sit. She was too dingy, and she didn’t want to mess anything up.
The young man appeared again with a priest, who gestured for Lena to follow him. She turned to the young man.
“Thank you…”
He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. He smiled, nodded, and left.
Lena was led down a series of hallways; the priest, who was a middle aged man with sparse hair and gentle demeanor, never said a word. He took her to a room with a sink and a rigid-looking cot. It might have been a janitorial closet at some point, but it was enough. The priest gestured for Lena to sit and then disappeared for a moment. He returned with a woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties, who was carrying a basket of towels and clothes. The priest left, and the woman closed the door behind him and set her basket down on the floor. She had green eyes and dark black hair, and was dressed very simply. The only jewelry she wore was a small cross pendent on a silver chain around her neck.
“My name is Dorotea. Welcome to our church.” She spoke with a very light Spanish accent.
Lena stood in the center of the room, still afraid of touching anything with her muddy body. “I’m Len…Abilene.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Abilene.” Dorotea smiled broadly, revealing straight, white teeth. “We have clean clothes for you, and towels so you can clean up. I’m a nurse, and I can help you with the cut on your leg, as long as it isn’t too bad. Are you in trouble?”
“No…I’m not in trouble.” Lena looked down, trying to straighten the mud-encrusted hem of her shirt. Her eyes snapped back up. “Is there a phone I can use?”
Dorotea looked her over critically. She gazed back at Lena, disbelief and kindness in her eyes. “I need to ask you if you were attacked? I can call the police for you, and the hospital if you need…”
“No. I fell in the river, that’s all. I don’t want a hospital or the police.” Lena hoped it sounded better to Dorotea than it did to her. To her it sounded like a lame lie, especially given that her knee had split open again from all her walking, and a fresh stream of fire-truck red blood was starting to pool in her one remaining shoe.
Dorotea took a few steps forward. She brought her hand up to Lena’s face, settled it just under her chin, and looked into her eyes. She was soft and smelled of incense and laundry detergent. Lena knew she must have smelled absolutely foul to the kind stranger offering to bandage her up. Then Dorotea pulled her into a hug. Lena wasn’t quite sure what to do.
“You’ve been through a lot, I can tell. But you’re safe here. You have the touch of God—there’s someone I want you to meet after you’re clean and rested. You remind me very much of him. So strange that two such visitors find our little church in such a short span of time.” Dorotea took a step back. To Lena’s horror, the white shirt she was wearing had smudges of mud on it from where they had made contact, but Dorotea somehow managed to smooth her shirt and continue to beam optimism. “But yes, we have a phone. Later, though. Now we need to clean you up and then you need to sleep some.”
Dorotea left Lena alone for a few minutes, and she did as best she could with the soap and towels to clean herself up. She managed to wash most of the smell out of her hair in the sink, then folded her old clothes on the edge of the basin and put on the clean clothes the Dorotea had brought; a worn pair of sweat pants and a tee-shirt that was a size too big. There was even a pair of worn shoes; they were two sizes too big, but at least she had one for each foot.
There was a knock on the door and Dorotea came back in toting what looked like an extensive first-aid kit. She had Lena pull up her pants leg, exposing her wounded right knee, and then set to work with the disinfectants. It stung so bad that Lena laid down so she didn’t have to watch as Dorotea wiped away the crusty mud and blood mixture and pulled thorns and bits of small rock out of her leg. But she moved very quickly, and faster than Lena would have thought, she was done. She looked down at her leg and saw that it had been wrapped up in clean, white gauze and bandages. She still felt sick, but the sight of the cleanliness of her once beaten leg afforded her some relief.
Dorotea waggled a roll of medical tape at Lena. “We’ll need to change the bandages twice a day, and I still think you might need the hospital, but we’ll see. We have ice for the swelling. Does it feel okay?”
Lena nodded. Her head was pounding with images of the previous night again; the glass shattering and going everywhere. She blinked, trying to make the flashback disappear. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Dorotea nodded. “Now sleep, and I’ll get you the phone after you wake up. You need to sleep first, because you look ready to fall over. Do you need any other blankets or anything?”
Lena looked at the sheets and blankets on the cot. “No, thank you.”
“Okay. You sleep then, and I’ll come to get you.”
“Okay.”
Dorotea excused herself from the room, and an ungodly silence fell around Lena.
She sat on the edge of the cot, trying to process everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours of her life. The room she was staying in now had green painted walls, just like her room at home. There was one small window on the wall opposite the door. The cot wasn’t very comfortable, but it was infinitely warmer and more comforting than the riverbank she had spent the night on. She laid down on her side and curled into a fetal position; she didn’t feel like she was done crying, but at the moment she was just too tired.
She woke with a start to the sound of metal grinding and shrieking. The sound was everywhere. The world was shaking, and she didn’t know where she was. As she tried to come to her senses, she called out.
“Dad?!”
She reached deftly for the light switch on the wall and flicked it. She was in a small room, but not a hotel…the train!
With a gut-wrenching lurch, the lights went out. The cabin tipped, and Lena heard the suitcases go crashing from the window side of the cabin into the door, which burst open on impact. She had been lying on the bed, but suddenly found herself slipping to the wall; her legs crumpled beneath her confused weight as she heard the window shatter and a rain of glass fell all around her. The cabin was still moving, grinding along.
She knew the train wasn’t on the track anymore, but it was still skidding along jarringly. She braced herself between the top and bottom bunk beds, which were now acting as walls on either side of her, and eventually the movement stopped. Everything went still and quiet, and the only sound she could hear was her own frantic breathing.
She tried to look around, but there was nothing to be seen. It was the middle of the night, and she was buried deep in the belly of a dead train, like a mouse swallowed by a snake. No one was going to find her here.
“Dad?” Her words didn’t so much as echo in the hot, velvety blackness. There was no answer, and she crept around the side of the top bunk and peered into the spot where her father should have been sleeping. She groped in the darkness, but could not find him. He hadn’t even been in the room.
Not sure if she was panicked or relieved, she settled back into the bed of glass between the bunks, unsure of what to do. It could have been seconds or days later that she heard the voice, so quiet and so frantic, babbling on in a language she did not understand. There was a light in the hall, which was now beneath her feet since the train had tipped, that Lena could see through the broken doorway. It was a flashlight.
“Here! I’m in here!” It wasn’t until she heard her voice crack that she realized she was crying. She thought the words had died on the dry air, but then there were people looking up at her through the door, pulling her out of her nest between the bunks, carrying her out of the train, and sitting her on the ground. She looked at the moaning figures around her, but it was too dark to tell who was who until the sun came up.
>
There were people missing limbs, people bleeding all over, and people with clearly broken arms or legs. The medical assistance crew had arrived some time ago, and Lena was finally pulled off to the side. A young man and a nurse had very carefully looked her over, checking all of her limbs for breaks and pulling shards of glass out of her skin.
Then the questions started.
“Who are you traveling with?” The man spoke in clear English, with a British accent that rang like a bell.
“My father. I think he was up in the dining car.” There was a ringing, buzzing sound all around her head.
“And your mother?” The young doctor was picking up a clipboard and flipping through the pages.
“She’s dead.”
“I see. She was in the dining car as well?”
Lena looked up at the nonchalant expression on the doctor’s face. “No…She’s been dead since before I ever knew her. She died when I was little.”
The doctor looked at her for a moment, as if trying to comprehend what she had just said, then called to the nurse in a different language. She came over and a brief exchange occurred before she walked away again. The doctor was looking back at his clipboard.
“What is your father’s name?”
“Collins. Aaron Collins.” She proceeded to spell the name out as the doctor searched through his pages.
He flipped through the leaves deftly for what felt like hours. “And you’re sure he was in the dining car?”
“No.”
The doctor looked up.
