03

Outside Prague, Czech Republic

November 26

“Wait!” Eva pleaded as the officer closed in. “I’m Czech!”

He aimed the gun squarely at her head.

“I’ve got forty other so-called Czechs back there who say the same thing.”

Eva’s face lost colour.

“Forty?” she gasped. “But if one of them is sick…”

“Less paperwork for me,” he grunted.

Eva bumped into the wall. The officer half-smirked, like he was begging her to make a move, so he’d have an excuse to shoot. There was nothing to fight back with, nowhere to run, and no hope if she tried. She slowly raised her hands above her head.

There was a flash of movement, and suddenly a pair of arms wrapped around his neck from behind, pulling him back and off-balance. He thrashed to the side, swung a fierce elbow back into his assailant’s stomach, but still couldn’t get free. He was slammed into the wall, cracking the window to the compartment, but not giving up his gun.

He swung his elbow back again, once, twice, and the third blow connected with a crack. The grip on his neck loosened, and he pulled forward, free, face red with fury and stress.

Eva’s fist hit him so hard he slammed into the wall. For a moment, he had a look of confusion, like it didn’t make sense, what had just happened. But only for a moment. She finished him off with a blow to the face. He collapsed to the ground, glasses broken, eyes rolling and shut.

Eva looked up, saw a lean, scruffy man with ruffled blond hair, wincing at the pain in his ribs.

“Where’d you learn to do that?” he grunted.

“Here and there,” she smiled. “Thanks, I think.”

“Don’t take it personal,” he grinned, crouching quickly, scooping the gun out of the guard’s limp hand and giving it a once-over appraisal. “He’d be getting to me next, and I’m not even Czech. You coming?”

She glanced down at the unconscious guard, then to the back of the train.

“Not much choice anymore, is there?”

“Great! I’m Anton, by the way.”

“Eva,” she said.

Anton smiled back, then took off on a skittish, exploratory journey, down to the heavy doors at the middle of the train. A bright yellow sign warned them not to leave until they were sure it was safe outside; a friendly biohazard symbol served as the point below a question mark.

“I hope you like walking!” Anton beamed, and pulled the door open, just a crack at first. The cold air beat Eva in the face, making her squint. The rain was coming down fiercely now, the horizon a blurry mess of heavily slanted sleet pounding into the farmland.

Anton saw it first. He gripped Eva’s hand tighter.

The Bulgarian woman in the fur coat was backing away from the two guards who had shoved her outside. They had their pistols aimed, but the way they were closing in on her said they were doing more than just threatening.

The woman turned to run, covering only a few metres before two shots rang out, and she dropped to the ground in a heap, her coat spread out in the mud like the wings of an angel.

“Oh shit,” Eva and Anton said at once.

The guards turned back, holstering their weapons, but paused at the sight of the open door. The gruff one reacted faster, his eyes open wide as he charged at them, drawing his gun and taking aim.

“Don’t move!” he shouted, and Anton slammed the door, threw down the locking bolt just as a loud thump hit it. He and Eva dashed back to the unconscious officer, who was on the verge of waking up when Anton viciously kicked him across the head and into the wall.

“What are we going to do?” Eva asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Anton said, glancing up and down the corridors. “Let me know if you think of something. Now come on!”

He took off towards the front of the train, Eva close behind. The other passengers watched them go, some looking ahead, some looking back, waiting for the guards to calm the insurrection. None made a move to follow them.  

Eva and Anton ducked into a small compartment at the rear of a car, closed the door and flicked on the lights. He started rifling through cupboards like mad, dropping food packets, sterile pillows and sealing tape all over the ground as Eva peeked outside, trying to hear signs of trouble.

“Why are they shooting people?” Anton hissed. “Whatever happened to deporting?”

“Border’s wide open,” Eva replied. “You get thrown off the train, what’ll you do? Give up and go home, or finish the trip on foot?”

“I guess,” he conceded.

“The only way for them to be certain is to make sure we don’t make it anywhere on foot. I should have known this would happen, when they didn’t do the check at the border. We’re too close to Prague to just boot us out.”

“How far do you think it is?”

Eva shrugged.

“Close enough to try.”

Anton let out a gasp of joy and yanked a pair of heavy brown wool blankets from a low drawer, folding them over and tucking one under his arm. He shoved the other at Eva.

“Take this, and move fast!” he said, pushing his way out into the corridor, glancing back briefly before racing down to the end of the car, to another outside door.

“I have them!” came a distant shout, and Anton angrily slammed a fist against the wall, then turned his attention to a ladder instead.

“Let’s go! Quick!”

They climbed fast, up onto the slick steel roof. It was ridged to make it easier to scale, but the gentle curve was still steep enough that it was dangerously easy to fall, especially in this weather. Anton pointed back towards the tail end of the train.

“We’ll double back, get into the fields, muddy up the blankets and stay put till they give up and leave.”

Gun in hand, he led Eva down the length of the train, rain raising a deafening roar all around them. It was so noisy she wouldn’t know if someone were calling after them, not until a gunshot at least… But they were past the point of warning anyway, so she dashed forward, trying to keep her feet on course while the slick metal threatened disaster.

She felt a quick tug at her arm, and in an instant, Anton was falling sideways off the train, smacking his shoulder before disappearing off the edge. Eva dropped to her knees and leaned over the side, watching him roll to a painful stop in a ditch by the muddy field. He reached desperately for the gun, which had fallen a short distance away.

Behind her, guards were starting to get onto the roof, their loud shouts of co-ordination echoing past. She gripped her blanket tightly, and without pausing, jumped off the train, landing next to Anton. She flinched at the impact, felt like her legs might have broken.

“Anton!” she gasped, scuttling over to him. “Anton!”

He got hold of the gun, wiped it across his shirt to clean off the mud, and lurched to his feet.

“Blankets! Fast!”

She shoved the blankets into the mud, dragging them around. Before she could get very far, Anton grabbed her by the arm and pulled her further into the field, past a watery pool. She let the blankets collect all the filth they could along the way.

“We need them now!” Anton called urgently.

“Almost there!” she shouted back, but he wasn’t listening anymore. The guards had caught up with them, were starting to climb down ladders, urgent but confident.

Anton checked the safety.

“Leave my blanket. I’ll catch up.”

“Anton, wait—”

But her voice was drowned out by two sharp shots as Anton clipped the closer guard in the thigh. He fell, hard, into the tracks, and his comrade quickly slung his gun out and fired wildly towards the escapees.

Eva had cleared nearly ten metres when she tripped into the mud with a splash. She checked behind herself to see if anyone had noticed, but all she saw when she looked was a quick image of Anton, cornered by the enemy, receiving a bullet to the chest, and toppling backwards.