27
CASSANDRA
“Why couldn’t I have chosen a safer career?” I mumbled as I jogged down the train.
That wasn’t fair. I had a safe career in marketing. I could have done that and only that in my life and I would have been totally safe from anything but the occasional paper cut. No escorting on the weekend. No strange men.
No mythical creatures coming to life before my eyes.
But that would have meant no Orlando—an impossible thought. I never would have found him if not for all of this. I believed in fate, and fate had led me to this point. There was no point in wishing for anything else.
I hope he’s safe.
The view of the car ahead moved to the left: we were beginning a curve in the tracks. Screams drifted from the other cars as the train creaked and groaned like an ancient machine. I threw myself against the left wall in the hope that my meager weight could keep it from flipping, but I could feel it moving, and I knew it would finally derail, that this was it, the moment where it all ended with my body mangled in a pile of wreckage.
The train leveled out, the screams died down, and we were back to a straight section.
I needed to hurry.
People were crammed in the dining car now, huddled in the booths because it gave them something solid to hold onto. I slowed down as I crunched through the sea of broken porcelain, and caught bits of conversations from the other passengers.
“What if the police can’t help us?” a woman asked.
The man across the aisle scoffed loudly. “The police aren’t our friends!”
“Speak for yourself.”
“Dude, wake up. If these guys are terrorists, then military protocol would be to destroy the train as quickly as possible. Just like they shot down Flight 93 on 9/11!”
A third person joined the argument: “That plane wasn’t shot down! It crashed!”
“That’s what they want you to think!”
“You’re an idiot,” the original woman said. “A hijacked train can only follow its tracks…”
Their voices cut off as I passed through the next partition: the one where Orlando had shifted. The rubber-and-fabric connector was in tatters, revealing open air. I stamped out any thought of falling off the train and passed into the observation car.
The remains of this car made the partition look undamaged by comparison. The ceiling had been peeled away like a sardine can, and the whole car wobbled on its wheels from the unbalanced weight. Bits of broken glass covered everything. The place where Sebastian had shifted into a dragon looked like a bomb had gone off: all the chairs were ripped free and scattered away, leaving an open space the size of a boxing ring.
Only a handful of people remained, but one of them was the kind old man. He stood against the wall to my right, holding onto an overhead bar and staring at nothing with a pissed-off look on his face. There was a tiny dab of blood on his neck from where Sebastian’s knife had been.
“Doing okay?” I asked, wiping the blood away with my thumb. He blinked and seemed to see me for the first time.
“I’m still here, sweetheart, aren’t I?” A genuine smile split his face.
“Have you seen the other guys? The bad guys, I mean.”
He revealed his other hand, which had been at his side: he now held one of the Uzi machine guns. “Pissants threw down their guns and ran. Probably cowering somewhere in the back. If they try anything else…”
His eyes narrowed, and he stared down the open car again. Even at his age, covered in wrinkles and with a hunch to his posture, he looked every bit the soldier right then.
“Don’t let me get in your way.” I stepped back into the aisle, glass crunching under my shoes with every step. The entire wall to my left was peeled open, revealing the terrain next to the tracks: 15 feet of open ground and then a hedge of trees, which whizzed by so fast I didn’t have time to make out any individual trunk.
Ahead of me was the open area where the dragon had shifted. Where the key might be.
Walking down the open aisle was a simple task, but the open air to my left filled me with dread. It was like standing next to a ledge at a great height: I expected a gust of wind to come along and sweep me into the abyss. I stood there for a long time, holding onto the last row of undamaged chairs, trying to gather my strength.
If the old man can be so courageous, so can you.
I took a slow step forward, and miraculously I wasn’t sucked off the train. I sidestepped and followed the wall on the right, pushing bits of glass ahead of me as I shuffled forward on cautious feet. I could see bits of cloth on the ground, which might have been Sebastian’s clothes when he shifted. The shreds were everywhere, though, and I didn’t see a key.
I continued into the open space, scanning the ground. I was in no-man’s land now, and there wasn’t anything close to a key! If it had fallen off the train we were all fucked.
Screams drifted up the train, preceding the next turn.
Before I could move, the wall lurched away from me and the floor tilted me toward the open air. I cried out as my feet slid out from under me. Glass punched me in the back, a hundred individual pricks of pain that scraped and twisted as I slid across the ground.
I looked up and saw the peeled-away section of the car directly ahead, and the open terrain beyond.
I screamed again and flailed around for something to grab, but my hands only touched glass, cutting the skin on my arms and palms. The sound of all the glass cascading across the floor was like television static in my ears, and I kicked my legs in a desperate scramble for purchase. I looked around; nobody was near but the old man, and he’d fallen over by the partition.
As I neared the open air, I realized I was about to die.
The train trembled and bounced up and down, and for an instant I was weightless in the air. I slammed back down on the bed of glass and somehow turned it into a sideways roll, and as I slid toward the chasm on my belly my right leg hit the wall, stopping me. I was straddling the end of the wall, with my left leg hanging off the edge and the wind rushing by. With such leverage, I was able to push myself sideways until I was away from the abyss.
A few moments later the curve in the tracks ended, and the car bounced back to normal.
I closed my eyes and struggled to catch my breath. I couldn’t do this. Not with the incessant pounding in my head, and the dozens of streams of blood trickling down my arms and legs and neck, and the runaway train that I couldn’t escape. This isn’t who you are, the terrible voice inside my head taunted. The voice we all had sometimes, when we were in our darkest moments. You’re a coward. Too afraid to have a normal relationship, so you became an escort so you could establish firm boundaries. You’re too afraid to try anything risky in your normal job. And you’re too much of a coward to get off your feet and stop this train.
Tears streamed down the side of my face, because I knew it was true.
I reached out for my bond with Orlando, needing the feeling to help me go on, but he was too far away. Only a dim sensation now, a candle on the horizon. He was gone, and I resented him for it even though it wasn’t fair because this plan had been my idea. Even though he had his own risks to handle.
With nothing else to do, I wept.
“You okay over there, sweetheart?”
The old man’s words made me roll over. He’d gotten back up and was holding onto the seat in front of him, the Uzi back in his hand.
He hadn’t just given up.
He’d gotten back on his feet.
“Yes,” I said with a shaky voice as I pulled myself up on the nearby chair. I winced as glass stuck to my skin, and cringed even more as I brushed them off. As if things couldn’t get any worse: my left shoe had fallen off, so now I had one bare foot. I felt like a half-Japanese, half-Brazilian, female John McClane.
“Come over here,” he said, beckoning. “Get away from that awful gap in the wall. That’s why I’m hiding back here!”
“You’re not hiding,” I said with a pained smile. “You’ve got a gun.”
“Oh, believe me sweetheart: I’m hiding a little bit. Come on!”
He beckoned again, but I shook my head. “I’m not afraid.”
I took a step across the open part of the train, pointedly ignoring the lack of wall to my left. While I was on the floor I spotted something: across the open area, underneath a seat. I took one careful step, then another, and then I lunged across the space quickly, falling against the chair on the other end. I gripped it tight and knelt behind it.
On the ground, underneath a folded length of black cloth, was a ring of keys.
I grabbed it and pumped it in my fist victoriously. “I’m not afraid.”
I hobbled back across no-man’s land, and thankfully the train didn’t buck me into the hole in the wall. When I got to the other end I stopped to look at my bare foot; bits of thick glass covered it from heel to toes.
It’s only pain, I told myself as I plucked them out, yelping with each one.
The old man came closer, holding onto the backs of the chairs for support. “Oh dear,” he said when he saw my foot. “You should sit down! Let’s go into another car…”
“It’s fine,” I said, pulling the last shard out. There was more red than white covering my foot now, but none of the cuts were too deep. “Have you ever seen Die Hard?”
“What’s Die Hard?”
“Nothing. Come on--you can help me stop the train.”
I took him by the hand and led him through the partition, hobbling on my wounded foot.
“How are we gunna do that?” he asked.
“Trust me,” I said. “I have a plan.”