Of Dreams and Rust (7 page)

I bite my lip and look ahead, at the high pass. There is snow crusted on either side of the rails. It's odd, this soft beauty next to the hard metal snake of the rail. I wonder—

The world roars and a burst of fire flashes before my eyes. The entire dining car jerks and squeals, then flies up into the air, spinning like a child's toy. I am crushed and tossed, turned upside down and inside out, punched and jabbed and smashed. As the lights go out and everything breaks and flies apart, my ears fill with pleas and shouts and screams, some of which are surely my own.

Chapter

WHEN THE WORLD stops moving, I find myself staring up, not at the ceiling, but at the floor. On either side of me are shattered windows and bodies, bleeding and thrashing, groaning and crying. A hand clutches at my sleeve. Anji, bleeding from a deep gash on the side of her head, pulls herself closer. “Help me,” she says in a rasping voice.

Within this dining car, amidst the spilled dumplings and overturned teacups and napkins that flutter like flags of surrender, some of the soldiers are pushing themselves to their knees, helping their brothers do the same. Others lie still and broken. I grab one of the napkins and press it to the side of Anji's face. “Hold it there,” I say, hoarse and panting.

Someone grabs my hand. It's Leye, his wide, friendly face a mask of pain. He's lying next to me, with some of his comrades piled on top of his legs. “Are you all right?” he asks.

I do a quick inventory. My head hurts, but I am thinking, though not beyond the moment. My chest aches, but I can breathe, and my heart is beating fiercely. My ears are ringing as sharply as a shift whistle, but I heard what Leye asked. My limbs feel as if they have been pulled out of joint, but all of them are still attached, and I can move them. And my lips are buzzing with numbness and cold, but I can speak. “I'm fine. What happened?”

He slowly sits up, hissing as he tries to move the other men off him. “Derailment.”

“There was an explosion,” says Musa. “Could be an ambush.”

I glance over to see him on his feet. He moves carefully over to Leye and lifts the bodies of unconscious and dead friends to free his comrade's legs. I move in the direction of a trickle of cold air, thinking to escape that way, but only a narrow gap remains between the crushed window frame and the roof of the car. Beyond the wreckage there is a wall of rock, some twisted rail, scattered debris, a few bodies, and a lot of smoke.

“How could this be an ambush?” Leye asks as Musa frees his legs. “We're not even in Yilat yet.”

Musa shrugs, slinging his rifle onto his back. “Maybe it was an engine fire. Or maybe there was something on the rails? Colonel Boren was in the last car. We need to get everyone out, take roll, and get his orders. Maybe we can radio for help. There is supposed to be another train five hours behind ours.”

Leye nods, still holding my hand. I recognize the sweaty desperation in his grip—he is hurting and doesn't want to cry out. “And the girls?”

Musa impatiently wipes a trickle of blood from his short ebony hair and searches the ground for his cap. He grabs the nearest one and jams it onto his head. “We don't know how the other cars fared. We had one car of civilians and four carrying our men. First thing we have to do is get out.”

He wraps his arm around Anji and pulls her up. She leans on him gratefully, her slender fingers bunched in his coat. Her skin is pale, almost gray, beneath the mask of blood. “You're going to be just fine, sister,” he says, his voice gentle. “Can you walk?”

She nods, but her grip on him doesn't loosen. Musa looks down at Leye, who has pushed himself up to a sitting position. “Can you walk?” he asks his friend.

Leye grits his teeth as he moves his left foot. “It may be broken.”

“I'll help you,” I say, getting clumsily to my feet, wrenching my overcoat and skirt from between two limp bodies. The upside-down car rocks as the weight of all its surviving occupants shifts this way and that. I have a brief flash of fear, picturing us rolling down the side of the mountain, but I push it away. I let Leye lean on me as he stands up, keeping the pressure off his left foot. I put my arm around his waist. We are standing in space of the aisle, the backs of the bench seats crowding our shoulders, several unmoving bodies complicating our path to the exit. I try not to think too hard about how many of those slack, bloody faces were smiling a few minutes ago.

“Let's move out and see if we can't get these girls with the other civilians, and then we can find the colonel and get our orders,” says Musa. He leads Anji through the cluttered mess, careful not to tread on limbs or bellies. We have to step around one fellow, obviously dead, whose body is caught between two benches that were crushed together. I turn my face away, but when we edge past his hanging head and arms, my stomach clenches. The exit is blocked by a grisly tangle of steel and flesh. “We'll have to crawl out the window,” Musa says, gesturing to a few of his comrades who are moving toward us. “This one is the only opening that's big enough.”

I help Leye lower himself onto a relatively clear patch of the metal ceiling before joining him. Musa guides Anji down too. The window frame here didn't buckle, and we'll be able to crawl out. Musa calls to the others, “Whoever can walk, we need you to help the wounded out and get them clear of the wreckage.” He sounds strong and assured, even as a stubborn trickle of blood escapes from beneath his cap. Like Anji, he's hit his head, but he is paying it no mind at all. He puts his arm around Anji. She is crying, tears streaking through the blood on her cheeks. “You stay with me, okay?” he says, giving her a smile.

“Okay,” she whispers.

He strokes a tear from the corner of her mouth and holds her waist as she crawls out through the window, following close behind her. As the others scramble past us, I look over at Leye. Lines of strain bracket his mouth. “We have to find a way to get to lower altitude,” he says, watching the fog of the soldiers' breath. “We'll freeze if we're caught out in the open.”

“We'll think warm thoughts,” I say, trying to resurrect his smile. I need him to give me that, just like Musa smiled at Anji. Somehow, when things are shattered, one curve of the mouth can calm a thousand fears. But Leye can only wince and nod. “Shall we go?” I ask.

We are the last in the car, or at least, the last who can move. Leye is bracing himself to inch forward on hands and knees when the air is filled with a
crack-crack-crack
. Near, far, piercing and echoing. Leye's eyes go wide, and I turn back to the window in time to see Musa fall with Anji in his arms. The others shout and reach for their rifles, but their blood mists the frosty air and they fall with crimson flowers blossoming on their chests and legs and faces and backs. I blink, unable to understand what I am seeing. I am huddled in this metal bubble as the people outside are cut down by an unseen force. My brain tells me we are under attack, but still I cannot comprehend.

Musa is staring at the sky, his reassuring smile gone.

Anji's head is on his chest. She is not crying anymore.

“No, no, no,” Leye mutters, his voice breaking and hitching. The thick barrel of his rifle skims my shoulder as he yanks it from his coat. Beyond the window the soldiers who escaped the train have all been hit, though some of them are still alive. A few are trying to crawl back to our dining car. One of them looks right at me, his dark eyes full of pleading. My own eyes burn as I read his silent scream—he doesn't want to die. It is wrong for him to die. He is barely a man. He has so much left to do.

But as I lunge, my hand outstretched, thoughtlessly desperate to get to him, Leye throws himself on top of me. “You can't,” he huffs, crushing me to the metal ceiling.

A second later the boy outside is snuffed out, the bullets jerking his body to the side. I realize Leye is holding me down before I understand that I am fighting him. We both freeze as several men walk into our field of vision, their fingers on the triggers of their rifles. There are at least twenty of them. Their brown caps are low, and they are a scruffy bunch. Dirty faces, scraggly beards, filthy, torn jackets. But even so, they are unmistakable.

Leye curses. “The Noor,” he whispers, sitting up and dragging me deeper into the car. “How did they know? This is a civilian train!”

From outside there are a few more shots, one at a time instead of the rapid-fire clatter from before. “The bastards are killing the wounded.” Leye's voice is high-pitched with terror and rage as he tries to maneuver us toward the back of the dining car, away from the windows.

My breaths come too fast and I am dizzy. My fingertips tingle and spots sparkle in my vision like snowflakes in the sun. The Noor. They killed Musa and Anji. They did something to the train. They are just outside, shooting wounded men.

Together, Leye and I wedge ourselves against the wall where the kitchen was, cutting our palms on broken pottery and glass. “Wen, I'm sorry,” he whispers.

“No,” I mouth. “I am.”

Disbelief laces my thoughts. I wanted to find the Noor, and so I have. I decided to betray my own people, and so I could. Right now. My heart is beating so hard that I cannot find space between the beats. I lean into Leye, who has tears running down his face as he tries to get his rifle loaded. But his hands are shaking too hard to allow him to fit the cartridge into the weapon. “If you point that at them, they will shoot you,” I say. And me, too. Look what they did to Anji.

“I'm not a coward,” Leye snaps, spittle flying from his lips. He wipes at his streaming nose and eyes with jerky, wrenching movements before returning his hands to his weapon.

Metal creaks and glass crunches as one of the Noor raiders slides into our car and stands in the aisle space. He is so tall that his head is level with the legs of the bench seats. He says something in Noor, his tone singsong, as he slowly walks up the length of the car, searching for survivors to kill, perhaps. I hold my breath and stay very still, but Leye jerks at the bullet cartridge, and it clatters to the floor. The Noor ducks around the hanging body in the aisle and sees us. He raises his weapon.

I put my hands up, and the Noor's mud-colored eyes dart back and forth between me and Leye, who is now trying to draw his bayonet. The Noor sneers and aims, squeezing one eye shut and pressing his cheek to the rifle, peering at us through the sight. And I can't. I can't let him shoot this boy in front of me. I lean forward on my hands, blocking his way to Leye, and say one of the very few Noor phrases that I know, the first one that comes to mind:
“Yorh zhaosteyardie.”

It means “I want to help.”

The Noor's brow furrows and he raises his head from his rifle sight. He jabbers at me in Noor, questions I don't understand.

I say, “Please.” I put my hand on my heart and extend my palm to him, which makes him blink with surprise. I grab Leye's bullet cartridge and throw it toward the Noor's feet as Leye curses again.

“What are you doing?” he cries, lunging forward. I knock his injured foot to the side, and he screams with the sudden agony.

I squeeze my eyes shut. “I'm trying to keep us alive,” I say. “I'm so sorry, Leye.”

The Noor comes closer and pockets the bullet cartridge, never taking his eyes off me and the soldier I am shielding. He fires a few more questions at me, and all I can do is shake my head and repeat the Noor phrases I know, even though they are meaningless in this situation.

“I have tea. I have medicine. I want to help. I will not hurt you.”

I say them over and over again, offering him my heart, my gratitude, my open palm, all useless nonsense. The Noor kneels, shaking his head as if he wonders why he's not shooting me, and calls out one of the shattered windows. He says a word I know—“
kuchuksivengi”
—the Noor word for “Itanyai,” which my father once told me translates as “small, dark-haired people.” The Noor turns back to me and says something else, but I shake my head. This is hopeless.