THE TRAIN STATION
THEY HAD GONE back to Svetlana’s apartment because they could think of no other place to go.
The door was sealed with a black spider-star, but Andrei unceremoniously kicked it in. It was freezing inside because the central heating had been turned off. It was routinely done when an entire apartment block had to be written off as a nest of the Enemy.
Otherwise, her family’s possessions had been left untouched. There was food in the larder, and the kitchen stove still worked. They made giant mugs of tea and ate bread and sausage, huddling under heaps of blankets.
Svetlana had lived in this apartment since the day she was born. Her textbooks still lay in an untidy heap on the desk in the corner of the living room that doubled as a dining table when her parents were on different shifts and the family did not eat together. The paper flowers she had made, scorched by the power of the Voice, drooped in the vase made of a jam jar. She could see into the kitchen where the family’s mismatched plates were displayed on the open shelves and the big table proudly bore the white cloth her mother had embroidered with a cross-stitch pattern. A fat-bellied kettle on the stove breathed out a thin ribbon of steam. The mirror from which the Voice issued was decorated with red cloth streamers that she used to wash by hand, reverently, on each laundry day. It was home. But it did not feel like home anymore. She saw shabby, cramped, sad rooms filled with worn-out furniture and knickknacks. She saw water stains on the walls. She saw a dim bulb in a dusty glass shade failing to dispel the clotted gloom of a winter day. She almost saw through the flimsy jousts and peeling plaster of the ceiling to the monsters breeding in the sealed floors. How could she have ever thought she was safe here?
The feeling of revulsion toward her family home came with a dollop of shame at her own treachery but also with a powerful wash of relief. It made what she had to do easier.
Andrei was deep in thought, staring into his mug as if it was an oracle. Svetlana surreptitiously studied him from under her lowered lashes. She realized that she had never gotten a good look at him. They had been either running or planning where to run next. There had never been time. He was a stranger.
Yet, he did not feel like one. She had never seen him until he called her “little sister” in the purple twilight, but somehow, he looked as familiar as if she had known him her entire life. Could they actually be related? The population of Loadstone Rock was knitted together by a complicated web of kinship—cousins, second cousins, uncles and aunts several times removed—so it was not impossible. But they did not look alike. Svetlana had large blue eyes and fine straight hair, so blond that it was almost white—a source of her private anguish as she inwardly compared her “straw” to Tattie’s dark, bouncing curls. Andrei’s skin was tanned and weathered, his hair black and his eyebrows looked like silken cords. Black stubble was showing on his chin. Despite this, he did not look much older than herself. Svetlana pegged his age as eighteen but only because this was the age of military draft.
He finally put the mug aside and cleared his throat. He seemed ill at ease, his eyes sliding off her face. She was also jittery, trying to steel herself for what she was about to say and casting about for the right words.
Andrei spoke first.
“Listen. Sveta . . . ” he said slowly, still avoiding looking at her. “I’m sorry but I . . . I need to go back. To my buddies. To my battalion. I hate leaving you but I . . . I don’t belong here. I don’t know what it is we are fighting. For my country. I can’t . . . can’t leave them. I can’t desert. Deserters are traitors. I won’t be a traitor.”
So much for not leaving me, she wanted to say but bit back her words, recognizing that he was right. Treachery to Motherland was the one unforgivable sin; loyalty to Motherland was the one supreme virtue. A promise given to an individual counted for nothing compared to that.
“I understand,” she said carefully. “Of course, you must keep on fighting. You are a soldier. Fighting the Enemy is what you do. But we are going together.”
Andrei started.
“What? No way! Kurskaya Duga is no place for little girls!”
Svetlana was so offended that she overlooked the incomprehensible place name.
“I am not a little girl,” she said haughtily. “I am going to be a nurse. Nurses go on the battlefield. But first I must go tell the authorities what’s going on here. The Enemy has penetrated the Speak-House and POP. They are killing innocent citizens. They have taken my parents. The Voice needs to know!”
Andrei stared at her with a strange expression, almost as if he recognized something in her he had not seen before.
“And how are you going to do it?” he asked.
“I am going to the City of Light. I am going to speak to the Voice. You are coming with me as my witness. This is more important than beating back another Wulfstan incursion. This is our fight now.”
***
After half-an-hour of back and forth, they decided on a compromise. They would go to the train station together. Andrei was rather hazy as to where he was supposed to go from there, and no wonder. The place he had named did not exist. Svetlana knew the geography of Motherland perfectly well, and no boundary town where skirmishes with foreign invaders were taking place bore any resemblance to whatever duga which was a ridiculous appellation anyway as “duga” meant “arc”. Svetlana was convinced that he would eventually shed his delusions and follow her to the City of Light.
The main station of Loadstone Rock was close enough to her apartment to be seen from the living room window. It was a large handsome old building, painted yellow, with a clock-tower and a waiting hall lined with benches where passengers in transit would nap until their train chugged to the platform. Svetlana pointed it to Andrei, and they started packing. A train ride to the City of Light could take hours or days, depending on the route.
At least they could retrieve their own clothes, shedding the tainted rags reeking of the Enemy. Svetlana breathed in relief when she put on her own fur-lined boots, a down parka with a fur collar and a woolen headscarf. Andrei found his warm greatcoat and his fur hat. They filled their rucksacks with bread and sausage and walked out into a swirl of white.
Snow fell in large fluffy flakes, seemingly materializing out of the mauve air. Svetlana relaxed a little. This kind of snow always calmed her down, bringing with it magic dreams of distant lands and exciting adventures. They walked in easy silence through the hushed twilight world, but the magic spell was broken as they got closer to the train station.
The first indicator of something being wrong was a woman stumbling toward them. She was big and dressed in a voluminous fur coat, but the coat was unbuttoned and flapped around her as if trying to escape. She slipped and fell into a snowdrift but instead of trying to get up she just remained there, face down, her shaggy sleeves spread out like wings.
Svetlana rushed toward the woman, but Andrei restrained her and approached carefully, turning the woman over with the tip of his boot. She was not dead as Svetlana had feared: she flopped feebly, churning up handfuls of wet snow and shaping them into accidental snowballs. Her eyes were missing.
She looked like Tattie when the girl had collapsed, felled with Andrei’s fire-stick, with two gaping holes in her blood-slicked face. There were no spiky stars, though. Either the woman had managed to tear them away or they had left her.
“Aunt.” Svetlana knelt by her in the snow. “What happened? Can I help you?”
The woman, giving no sign that she had heard, flapped like a gutted fish. A wave of commotion coming from the direction of the train station broke through the curtain of snow. More people ran pell-mell past Andrei and Svetlana and disappeared down the street. They were so quick that she could not be sure whether they had eyes or not. Andrei peered into the white confusion, while Svetlana tried to help the woman up. It was like trying to lift a flour-sack.
“Leave her,” Andrei yelled. “She’s gone.”
Svetlana was outraged. This was not how the People of Light were supposed to treat each other.
A new sound joined the cacophony of shouting, coming from behind them: a staccato rattling as if somebody was throwing handfuls of dry peas onto the pavement. It was accompanied by a high-pitched hissing.
“Kosmops,” Svetlana yelled.
Kosmops were the most insidious kind of the Enemy. They existed in three distinct generational forms. Starting with something that was human-sized and human-shaped—enough to deceive a casual observer—they quickly bred into dog-sized snarling predators who just as quickly whelped a legion of humanoid rats. The third, smallest generation was the most dangerous. They fouled grain supplies, gnawed through water pipes, and would often bring down an unwary child or kill a baby in the cradle. And then the cycle would begin anew.
Leaving the woman in the snow—she had finally subsided into an immobile hump—they ran toward the station. They almost collided with a solid wall of people who blocked the wrought-iron gate which normally would be unbolted and guarded by a Patrolman with a torch. Now the gate was half-closed and a bunch of people inside the station were apparently trying to close it completely, while the people outside were just as determined to keep it open and to push through. Shouts and curses filled the air. The pristine snow was being trampled into a filthy slush that sent some people flying off their feet. Children were crying, women wailing. From behind Svetlana and Andrei came the unmistakable rattle and hiss of the approaching kosmops horde.
Trains were the foundation of the regime of Light, its trusty mechanical soldiers that could never be corrupted by the wiles of the Enemy. Railway tracks linked all the corners of Motherland, spreading over her vast body like a web of arteries, carrying life-giving supplies: food, iron ore, wood, stone, and people.
When Grandma Olga was still alive, she would take baby Svetlana to the station to watch departing trains or would walk along the tracks as far as the outskirts of Loadstone Rock, following the bracing smell of hot metal and the soothing chug of locomotives. When the unclean noises of the Enemy at night kept her awake, Svetlana would strain to hear a plaintive train-whistle and fall asleep, knowing that Light was unconquerable. Seeing the station in chaos was almost as bad as seeing her father arrested.
Andrei, on the other hand, perked up, as if the fog of bewilderment that had wrapped him from the moment of their meeting suddenly dissipated. Squaring his shoulders, he made a path through the dense mass of people, yelling on top of his voice, “Let me through, Comrades! Important! Army business!”
Svetlana followed through the channel he cleared in the crush of bodies like an icebreaker cutting through an ice pack, wondering at people’s gullibility. Who did they think he was?
For that matter, who did she think he was?
The interior of the station was engulfed in a melee. If there were any announcements made by the loudspeakers, they could not be heard above the screaming and shouting. The air smelled of garlic and dirty clothes. The waiting hall was creepily dim—the electric lights were off, and the only illumination was of the winter afternoon trickling through the skylights in the roof.
Andrei, with the assurance of long practice, maneuvered toward the swinging doors leading to the platforms, but they were guarded by a line of Patrolmen who shoved back the human flood with curses and blows. Svetlana could not see their faces under the peaked helmets. Wasn’t this unbecoming behavior proof that they had also been infected?
Pushing through the crowd was like trying to wade through a river in flood. A jab of an elbow made Svetlana double over in pain. The people who manhandled her as if she were a piece of abandoned luggage were ordinary citizens: their eyes were clear of black stars, but maddened by fear, they were no better than the Enemy. The horror of discovering how fragile the forces of Light actually were, inside and outside the human heart, made her sluggish and stupid. Fortunately, Andrei seemed to be in his element. Quickly appraising the situation, he pulled Svetlana to the side. Around the hall, benches had been pushed to the walls and piled up with burlap sacks. They jumped onto the sacks and circumnavigated the hall, kicking away grasping hands and thrusting shoulders.
As they approached the line of Patrolmen, they could glimpse the platform through the swinging doors. A train stood there, its cars hung with clusters of people like human grapes. They were pushing and shoving to get inside and were being met with the equal counterforce of the passengers crowding the gangways and the ladders and pushing them out.
The situation was mysterious, Svetlana thought. Why were some people allowed to board the train while others were barred? She did not have much time to ponder this question as the human sea at the entrance to the hall heaved, and the gate was torn off the hinges by the irresistible momentum of the mob. It seemed the hall was already so packed that no more people could get inside, yet somehow, they did. The stampede was gathering force, mowing down the people already inside like an avalanche. Svetlana saw an older man stumble and fall. He was instantly buried under trampling feet. The screaming rose as if somebody turned up the volume on an invisible loudspeaker. No matter how pumped up with despair, it could not drown the dry rattling and shrill hissing coming from the outside.
Andrei squeezed her arm, the two of them balancing on the sack that shifted under their feet, its contents—probably beans or peas—rolling around. The Patrolmen at the entrance to the platforms were pushed out like the cork from a bottle of champagne. The crowd spilled onto the platform, pursued by the knot of creatures that entered the hall.
Svetlana’s mouth went dry. All three forms of Kosmops were present. Towering above the rest were tall humanlike figures wrapped up in their signature black trench-coats that were part of their hide. She knew that you could tell Kosmops from humans if you came closer, but in the dimness, they looked like well-fed Council bureaucrats from the Speak-House. Their retinue, however, instantly gave them away. Milling around their feet were snarling, slavering creatures that looked like bald dogs with oversized jaws and pink crania. The rattling came from them. Their tails were like those of rattlesnakes: flat, bare and with a series of hardened scales at the end. The intolerable high-pitched hissing was emitted by the swarm of the smallest form—two-legged rats whose fleshy puckered lips vibrated with the sound.
The massacre that ensued only imprinted itself on Svetlana’s brain in strobe-like images. The bald dogs sinking their teeth into people’s throats, blood fountaining black as the scant light dripping through the glass curdled to dusk. The two-legged rats leaping around, biting and scratching, two of them worrying at a baby plucked from its mother’s arms. The trench-skinned creatures fanning through the crowd, dragging away kicking and screaming girls. But the thing that she would never forget as long as she lived was that the Patrolmen, all of them holding electric torches, lowered them and stood aside, watching the slaughter and letting it happen. Even as Andrei was dragging her to the platform, she looked back, hoping to see a dazzling beam cut through the chaos of slaughter, but there was no Light.
Then, they were on the platform, running toward the train which suddenly stirred like a waking cat and emitted a soft purr that quickly grew into a rhythmic chugging. The wheels below its metallic skirts shuddered and kicked into action. A shrill whistle, promising travel and excitement, drowned the noise of people being killed.
Andrei caught a ladder just as the train was beginning to move. The ladder and the gangway between the cars were so packed with people that Svetlana wondered dully whether it would be possible to squeeze in two more. She felt strangely remote from what was happening, suspended somewhere beside her own body like an observer. She realized that she was in shock, the events of the last days catching up with her, but she could not summon the energy to care.
“I’m a soldier,” Andrei bellowed. “Going to the frontline! She is a nurse! Make room, Comrades!”
At the same time, he worked his elbows and knees, corkscrewing through the human mass. Miraculously, it worked. Where there seemed to be no free space even to drop a pin, a gap appeared. Squeezing and pushing, dragging Svetlana through the ranks of fuggy bodies, Andrei made his way into the car.
Its interior was a sea of people. This was apparently a long-haul train, so there were sleeping berths in small cabins, but their doors had been taken off to make more room. Each berth, meant for one, held at least three people squeezed together, the feet of those in the upper berths dangling in the faces of those below. The corridor running alongside the cabins was covered with old newspapers and entire families camped up there, sharing food and yelling at those who tried to make their way toward the far end where a flimsy partition hid the toilet bucket. Its stench added to the stifling bouquet of cigarette smoke, sweat, and fear that fogged up the car. Even though it was freezing outside, Svetlana immediately started sweating in the heat of so many bodies.
Andrei homed in on one of the upper berths. It was already occupied by two thin-faced lookalike women, but his stern demeanor must have frightened the twins because they mutely slid aside, folding themselves together like a fan. He pulled Svetlana up and they wedged themselves into the tiny space that looked like luxury to those on the floor, judging by the envious glances and muttered curses flung in their direction. Normally, Svetlana would be embarrassed by this lawless show of force—she was no better than anybody else and there should be an orderly queue, some authority to organize the people—but she was too tired to care. As the train lurched forward and the car swayed rhythmically, she hid her face in Andrei’s scratchy overcoat and fell asleep.
