I stood with Jack in the middle of the railway track. The gravel under my feet pulsed as the train thundered closer.
Oh God. Please stop, please stop, please stop.
Jack threaded his fingers through mine. It was as if he could sense the tension building up in me.
“Hold tight and don’t let go,” he said.
He was holding the torch over us with his other hand. His eyes blazed and glowed with the light of the flames, but there was something more—something driven, and solid, and purposeful. At first, I couldn’t put my finger on it. And then it hit me.
Do you believe in your own magic? I had once asked Jack.
I stopped believing. After Lily.
But I was watching the profile of a man who believed, and I gloried in the moment we were sharing, come what may.
“Jack’s back,” I said.
“What?” His voice was swallowed by the metallic squealing of the carriages as the train’s headlights bore down on us. The tracks thrummed as the locomotive came hurtling along the tracks, full speed ahead.
Jack swore under his breath. “It’s not going to stop.”
“Why not?” I started waving my hand over my head. “I’m sure they can see us. We’re all lit up.”
“It’s a freight train. If the driver’s fallen asleep, or they don’t have eyes up front, we’re screwed.”
The train was approaching us at an alarming rate. And so were the cars. We could make out the rectangular patch of light reflecting off the number plate on the first one.
“Here.” Jack handed me his torch. “Get yourself and the kids out of the way.”
“What are you doing?” My stomach churned as he got his rifle out.
“Stay on the other side. All of you. It will take a while for the train to pass. The men won’t be able to get to you.”
“And you? Jack, you need to get off the track!” I was shouting so he could hear me over the rumble of the train.
“Go, Rodel. Now!” His command moved me to action.
“Keep your torches up.” I huddled the children to one side. “Keep them up there,” I said to thirteen kids who’d had to hide all their lives, and who, in that moment, needed desperately to be seen.
My eyes darted from Jack, to the train, to the van that was barreling for us. Pale ribbons of dawn were bleeding through the eastern sky. Jack pointed the rifle skyward. He fired a shot, opened and closed the breech to eject the casing, and fired another. The sound reverberated across the open plains like a boom of thunder.
The van came to a slow halt, its lights staring at us like a predator stalking its prey.
That’s right, you fuckers. We’ve got firepower, so BACK OFF!
The crack of gunfire seemed to have alerted someone on the train too because its powerful thrusts slackened. There was a loud screeching as the brakes hit, but it was still going way too fast to keep from slamming into the man on the tracks.
“Jack!” I cried out. There was a collective gasp from the children as it hurtled by us in a blur of rust and metal, snuffing out some of the torches in a blast of air. It came to a standstill, the front car stopping several meters from us.
The silence that comes after something loud and thunderous ceases is grand. It magnified the emptiness of the surrounding plains. The beast we had chased so hard to catch, groaned and creaked like a dragon that had run out of steam. Jack had managed to flag it down, but all I felt was a sick hollowness in my heart. I stood there frozen as the minutes ticked by, staring at the bright blue cargo that had halted before me, trying to remember how to breathe.
The sounds of metal sliding against metal jarred me out of my shock.
“Rodel. Over here!” It was Jack.
Relief. So profound that it jump-started my heart; the blood started flowing in my veins again.
The kids found him before I did.
“Haraka! Haraka! Quickly.” He put out the torches that were still lit, snuffing them in the ground as he lifted the kids into a boxcar. It had louvered sides, with slits instead of solid metal on all four sides.
“I talked to the driver,” he said. “I’ve paid him to get us to Wanza.” He was in full-on adrenaline mode, clueless about what he’d just put me through. He held out his hand, waiting for me to take it so he could hoist me into the car. “Come on, Rodel. Stop dallying around. I told him to get going. There’s no time to waste.”
“I’m not dallying around!” I wanted to weep, and I didn’t know if it was from anger or relief. “I thought that you . . . you—”
There was a sharp whistle, and then the train lurched.
“Rodel?” Jack rubbed his shoulder, rolling it forward and then back.
“You hurt the other one?” It wasn’t the shoulder he’d landed on when we’d encountered the van.
“I really need to stop getting out of the way like this.”
He said it so earnestly, the corners of my mouth tilted. “How do you manage to make me smile, even under the worst circumstances?”
“I’m glad my injuries amuse you.” He lifted me into the boxcar before hopping on beside me.
“There are goats in here!” I exclaimed. The floor was covered in hay, and goats were crammed in the pens around us.
“It’s a livestock car.”
“It smells like one too,” I noted. Jack had left the door open, so the stench wasn’t too overwhelming.
I did a quick head count of the children. All there, all accounted for. The little girl I’d carried had bloody knees, but apart from that, they seemed all right. They stared out through the slits, their pale eyes on the van that had inched closer, clearly visible in the early morning haze. It was the one we’d seen on the way to Magesa. The second one was coming up behind it, covered in dust.