Tomorrow 7 - The Other Side Of Dawn (19 page)

The timing was everything. There would be that crucial instant when he would be, should be, balanced on the top. It would be the only chance I’d get. I had to take it.

I saw his head appear, the moonlight glinting on his glasses. He wasn’t looking down, thank God. He was looking at the edge that he had to roll over, looking at his fingers. Then, as he got his body up on the top, just before he rolled over, he looked down the length of the truck, searching for me I guess, trying to see if he was narrowing the gap between us.

That was my moment. I pounced, driving upwards like those springs were in perfect working order, using the platform of my legs to give me all the strength I could muster. I went for the shoulder and the hip, not through any logical plan, but because instinct told me they were the main points of balance for his body.
His centre of gravity.
Thank you, Mr
Pimlott
.

I lifted him clean off the wall, except for his hands. It was such a powerful position to come from, driving up underneath him. I had most of his body back over the other side before he knew what hit him.

But he clung desperately with those fingers. I could see the knuckles whiten as he took a tighter grip. Worse, I felt him start to come back up. I could hear his boots through the steel, kicking at the wall again, trying for a toehold.

My mind seemed to work at massive speed, like a Pentium processor. I sorted through about a hundred options in half a second. Then I remembered.

I reached into my pocket. Would it still be there? If not I was out of options, out of ideas.

My fingers closed on Ryan’s nifty little special issue lighter. I brought it out of my pocket. Quickly,
do
it fast, before he recovers his balance.
Quickly, quickly, faster, faster.

These things were designed to be operated with one hand. They were designed to be used by people like Ryan: saboteurs and
guerillas
. People like me.

I flicked the lever. I didn’t have to look for long to see if it was working. The little hot circle of light told me it was. I held it to the man’s hand.

It was horrible. He actually held on for a moment.
Until I could smell his flesh burning.
Then he let go with that hand.

When I applied the lighter to the other hand he didn’t hold on for so long.

He gave a scream, the only sound he’d made up till then, and I heard his feet scrabbling at something, on the other side of the steel wall.

Then, nothing.
Just the roaring rushing noises of the train, and the cold moon high in the sky.

I had a good view of the moon, because I was lying on my back looking up at it. The bare steel floor of the truck was cold, but I didn’t mind that. I’d collapsed gratefully onto it when the man let go. All that unnatural strength and energy left my body in a rush.

But I couldn’t stay there. I had to find out what had happened to him.

I forced myself to my feet and tried to climb the wall. Suddenly I didn’t have the energy. I ran across to the corner and waited for the train to lurch in my direction. As it took a curve to the left it pushed me into the corner and I used the momentum to get up the wall again.

Hanging onto the corner, resting on my elbows, with my feet up high on the wall and my bum sticking out behind, I at last got a look down at the couplings between the carriages. I don’t know what I expected to see. I think, probably nothing at all, just a smear of blood and a space empty of people.

If that’s what I expected, I was disappointed. To my horror, the man was
lying
there, on his back across the couplings, unconscious, one arm trailing down into the darkness.

He must have hit his head when he fell. It seemed like his hand was only inches from the gravel of the track that rushed by under the wheels at a million
k’s
an hour. I stared in horror. It sounds terrible, but I guess I had wanted him to be killed. All I’d thought about
was wanting
him out of my life: the quicker the better. But realistically, the only way that could happen was if he went over the edge, and at the speed we were doing, that meant death.

I couldn’t think. To give myself time I shinned up to the top of the wall and went over it. I stepped gingerly across the man and jumped the couplings. I figured at least now I could get my pack back. I knew I had to get it, and not only because these days I was more bonded with it than the Notre Dame guy with the hunch on his back. No, the main reason was that I still had the plastic explosive, a kilo of it. No matter what else was happening, right now I was in a unique position: on an enemy train rocketing through the darkness, with a burning opportunity to do exactly what Ryan wanted. Somehow I had to find a way to do some major damage while I had the chance.
Preferably without doing too much damage to myself.

At least I had no problems getting to the pack, and no problems getting it on. I couldn’t see any enemy soldiers back here. The hand grenade must have done its job. And if there was anyone in the guard’s van, he was keeping quiet.
Smart thing to do, when saboteurs blow up your train bit by bit.
Or maybe he’d been chasing me, along with the soldiers.

I still hadn’t made up my mind what to do about the unconscious guy with the glasses. But when I climbed over the front wall of the truck where I thought I’d left him, he wasn’t there.

‘I must have miscounted,’ I thought.
‘Must be the next carriage.’

But as I crossed the couplings I realised I’d been right after all. On the steel step, to the left of my foot, was an unmistakable smear of blood.

What happened? Where had he gone? I didn’t know. But there were only two possibilities. Either he’d rolled over the edge, or he was somewhere on the train ahead.

I had to keep going forward, but now my mood was very different. A moment ago I’d been keyed up and keen, determined to do major damage to this train, win a medal for being brave, and make my parents proud. Now I was thinking, ‘I’ll swap the medal and anything that goes with it for a clear run up to the front of this mongrel thing’.

And I made another half-a-dozen goods trucks without a problem. The last two had lots of stuff in them: hundreds of empty five-gallon drums in one, with their lids in a
dumpbin
at the rear. At least there was a good passage down the middle, so it was easy to get through. The second was half-full of wooden crates. I didn’t stop to look at them, but I think it was machinery of some kind.

My nerves were more and more keyed up. Not only because I didn’t know what had happened to the bloke with the glasses, but also because I was approaching the business end, the part with the passenger carriages. I still hadn’t figured out how to destroy the train but I knew there was no point having a go at the empty trucks. The further up the front I got, the better. I kept thinking what I needed to do. Wreck the train sure, preferably the engine. Try to find out if anyone was in the passenger carriages. Then decide if I had the brutality or courage to blow them to high Heaven.

One more truck along, past a dozen coils of wire, and I thought, ‘What I really want is to put the whole line out of action, so they can’t use it at all’.

But I didn’t know how to do that.

There was only one truck between me and the passenger carriages. It was three-quarters full, with drums of chemicals. The writing on them was in a foreign language, so I couldn’t read it, but I could see the little ‘flammable’ symbol on each one. It meant that the train could become a pretty toxic bonfire if it crashed.

I made my way along the top of the drums. It was the only way to get over them. The train slowed down again quite suddenly, as we climbed another hill. With every kilometre I was going further and further from my friends, but I hardly gave that a thought. If I didn’t focus totally on this job I’d have no chance of surviving. Homer and the others might never know what happened to me. Assuming they’d survived.

I got halfway. I felt like a ballet dancer, stepping daintily, and getting more confident by the minute. I was convinced that at the speed I was moving I would have caught up with the soldier whose hands I’d burned. I assumed now he had been shaken off the couplings.

It was like a bad dream, a very bad dream, when he reappeared from behind the drums. He was like a ghost, a gaunt staring face, waiting for me. He’d seen me coming, and he’d hidden behind the drums at the front end.

I stopped dead and stared. I felt my own burns from the hot metal smoulder on my skin as he started towards me. They were like sensors, warning me. But I couldn’t move.
Just kept staring, unable to think of a thing to do.

He wasn’t much more than twenty drums away.
Then fifteen, then twelve, then ten.

At last I did something.
Backed up.
Not a brilliant career move, but I was grateful that my limbs were working again. For a full minute I’d been so paralysed by his ghastly white face that I couldn’t move anything. The rims around his glasses, the moonlight gleaming off them, made him look like an alien wearing goggles. One lens had cracked badly, which wasn’t surprising. It made him look even scarier.

I kept backing up till I bumped into the cold hard steel of the wall. I stood there trying to make my mind work, trying not to get hypnotised by his slow approach. I had to look away for a moment, to break his grip. I was helped by the train accelerating again into a sharp left-hand bend. We were both thrown off-balance, but him more than me, because he was standing on the drums. He had to crouch down and grip on the drums with his hands.

As he did that I reached into my pocket and brought out the most useful weapon I had. That cigarette lighter was paying its way. If I got out of this I’d buy it a 44 of fuel and give it free drinks for the rest of its life.

But to have any hope of getting clear I had to pull off a giant bluff.

The drums just had the standard
screwtop
lid. I grabbed the nearest one and turned the cap. Thank God it didn’t have a childproof lock. I don’t think I could have coped with that. It resisted for a moment, until I broke the seal, and then it came off easily.

I heaved it over and started tipping the stuff out. It sure smelt strong. One of those intense smells like petrol or creosote or
Texta
. It might have been some kind of resin. It was thick like honey, but it poured easily.

As the train belted down a hill, the pool I’d created ran down the floor of the truck, disappearing among the other drums.

And it had an effect on the soldier. Maybe he’d read the writing on the labels and knew what it was. Or maybe he recognised the smell. He stood up again to get away from it, one foot on one drum, one on another, his arms spread wide to balance himself against the rocking of the train.

Then I showed him the cigarette lighter.

It worked quite well. The way he put his hands up and started stepping backwards, looking behind to see where it was safe to put his feet, made me wonder just what was in these drums. I squatted down, as if to light the fluid, and he retreated fast, this time not even bothering to look. He shouted something at me, but I couldn’t hear it above the clattering of the train, and I wouldn’t have understood it anyway. I stood up again, and gestured at him to keep going. He slowed a bit, kind of sulkily, like he’d decided I wasn’t going to light the stuff after all. I used the drums to take a leap to the top of the wall and leaned down, showing him the lighter, as though I was going to ignite it and drop it. He moved faster then. As he got to his end of the carriage I dropped down out of his view, onto the couplings, and jumped to the next truck. I knew I didn’t have much time. I’d run out of bluffs.

Three carriages further I came to my destination. By then I had no energy left. I’d taken each carriage at the run: the sprint down the middle and the scramble over the wall, till my ribs were aching, my legs had no drive left, and my arms wouldn’t lift any more.

I got to the truck with the five-gallon drums, and more importantly, the container with the lids. For a moment I just hung onto it, panting. The lids were my last chance. If this didn’t work, I was finished. I had nothing left to continue this fight: no strength, no energy,
no
spirit.

I glanced in the direction I’d just come, the direction where he’d be appearing. He was already there! I couldn’t believe it. I thought I’d run so fast and so hard. Nobody could have kept up with me. But unmistakably his two white hands, like long pale spiders, showed up against the black of the railway steel as he climbed over the other side.

I tried to steady my beating heart, steady my heaving chest, steady my trembling hands. I grabbed a lid, turned a little to get the right rhythm, and chucked it, just as his scalp bobbed up over the top.

It was way too high.
Missed him by a metre.
And I realised at once that I’d been too early. All I’d achieve would be to drive him back into cover. He’d just go back and find a weapon, or get reinforcements.

My good luck was that he was so busy climbing the wall he didn’t see my
frisbee
. So now I waited. At least I’d got the range, and at least I knew the lids would fly. They were heavy, much heavier than the ones we had at home, but that was good. I needed them to do a lot of damage. I wanted him to be balanced on the top, and I wanted a lid to smash him in the face, and I wanted him to fall off the train, even if it meant he was crushed to death under the wheels. I was too tired to fight him any more. It was either him or me, and I still didn’t want to die.

As he reached the top I let fly. For a second I thought I was going to wipe him out there and then. The lid looked like it was going to hit him right in the nose. But just like a
frisbee
it curved gracefully away and missed by a whisker.

He noticed that one. He looked up, startled. The next one was already on its way. He saw it coming and ducked. It missed by quite a bit I think, but I didn’t get a good view, because I was already grabbing at another one.