The Other Side of Dawn

by John Marsden

  In less than a hundred metres I hit the bitumen road that Homer and Gavin and I had been on earlier. I was pretty sure that I was a bit ahead of the chase, so I turned left and ran along the bitumen. Being out in the clear was such a relief, not having to worry about branches or rabbit holes. For the first time that night the air felt fresh and bubbly on my face. Again I had a surge of hope, like a quick hit with an electric prod.

  I should have known better. It was so hard to work out what was happening, but I think a second lot of soldiers were coming along the road, looking for me or the others. The first I knew of them was when I heard a clattering of feet, as though a mob of horses with new shoes was belting along behind me. For a second I didn’t get it, but when one of them yelled, in his high-pitched voice, I had no more problems understanding.

  ‘Oh God,’ I gasped. I didn’t know if they’d seen me: I suspected they hadn’t. But they would in the next few seconds. I really felt that this might be it. There was no cover at all. I put on a burst of speed but I knew it wouldn’t last long. My reserves were gone. I was coming to the bridge over the railway line. The ground was shuddering in sympathy with the train. Most of the carriages had already passed. I could see them stretched away to my right. It seemed like a long train, pulling a heavy load, and it was struggling to get up the hill. As I ran over the bridge the last dozen carriages, all identical open trucks and all empty, started going under it, on my left. I could feel them beneath my feet. A couple of moments later the first of them started coming out the other side. It seemed to come out faster than it went in. But I didn’t hesitate.

  Chapter Nine

  Thank God there were no soldiers on these carriages, riding shotgun. I guess because it wasn’t a troop train. There were passenger carriages way up ahead, but at least a couple of dozen goods trucks between me and them, and I couldn’t see any soldiers on the passenger ones anyway.

  I landed pretty heavily. The train was grunting away at a slow pace, but it was quite a drop from the bridge, and there wasn’t much to break my fall. Just a layer of coal about thirty centimetres deep. I dropped vertically but at the last second twisted sideways, and put a hand out, mainly trying to save my bad knee. In point of actual fact, as Dad says sometimes when he’s trying to be funny, I don’t think there was any brilliant way I could have landed. I didn’t do much damage. Just a heap more bruises and aches and pains to add to the ones I’d already collected in this war. In some ways the worst thing was the sharp jabs from the lumps of coal, each leaving its own individual bruise.

  For a minute I stayed down in among the coal. If anyone had seen me from the bridge they’d be firing at me right now. Like people at a wedding throwing rice; I’d be saturated with bullets. All I could do was pray two big prayers: one, that they hadn’t seen me, and two, that if they did, no-one had a mobile phone or a walkie-talkie, for calling ahead of the train, or maybe even talking to the guys on it.

  I didn’t hear any bullets, but that didn’t mean a lot. The train was making such a racket getting up the gradient that I mightn’t have heard them anyway.

  Just as I couldn’t rely on the first prayer being answered, so too I couldn’t rely on the second. I waited a few moments until the train reached the top of the cutting, when it started surging forward. It had new energy as it came out of the hills and approached the flatter country. I dragged myself up and went to the front of the truck. With the greatest of caution I put my nose over the top and had a look. Ahead, the long line of the train curved away like a giant snake lying across the land. It had no lights. Just a dark shape in the darkness.

  I took a look behind.

  And wished I hadn’t.

  At first I thought I was seeing things. It was the slightest movement that caught my eye. As I gazed anxiously, my heart so big in my chest that it felt like it was suffocating me, I got the proof I didn’t want. A soldier flung himself over the side of the truck two away, and dived headlong into it.

  I knew he wasn’t the only one, because the movement I’d seen a moment earlier was the hand of another soldier in front of him, leading the way in the chase to capture me and become a hero.

  At least I hoped he was leading the way. If there was another one—or more—in front of him, I had no hope.

  I flung the pack off my back and knelt beside it, ripping the straps out of the buckles. The soldiers looked like they were unarmed—they’d probably abandoned their rifles when they jumped into the train, or maybe they’d damaged them—but that was too bad for them.

  I grabbed my grenade from the dark musty inside of the pack. We’d armed the grenades back in the clearing, the previous afternoon. I’d been nervous of it when I was running through the bush. We only had one each, but one would have been enough to blow me to smithereens. And one should be enough now, if I did this right. I just hoped I’d be more successful with them than Mr Pimlott, who’d blown himself up.

  I ran to the end of the truck. I ripped the pin out with my teeth, the way Ryan taught us, and stood up to throw it.

  A soldier was staring into my face.

  He was climbing out of the truck behind mine. Only the coupling between the two carriages separated us. It wasn’t much of a gap. I could see his face clearly. He wore glasses, which really threw me off-balance. I always associate glasses with serious, gentle people. Not logical, but that’s what I do. In the act of throwing the grenade, I hesitated. I knew I could lob it over his head, into his open truck, but if I did it would give him huge encouragement to make the leap into mine. I didn’t want him in there with me. But on the other hand I couldn’t stand around holding a live grenade for much longer.

  I threw it.

  There was no other decision I could make really. I’d waited long enough. I threw it, then turned and ran. This time I didn’t pick up the pack. I figured if I was still alive after the explosion I could come back and get it later. I got to the end of the truck and started scrambling up it, then realised I’d waited too long for that as well. So I dropped down and huddled into the corner. At the other end the guy with glasses took the leap and dived into the diagonally opposite corner to me. For about one second we huddled into our respective corners, both covering our heads with an arm, waiting for the explosion. I took a little glance at him. The grenade went off.

  By then the train was choofing along at a fair speed. I’m not very good at estimating speeds, but I’d say it was doing nearly a hundred. The air was cold and the train was thundering, rocking backwards and forwards like a rodeo bull. When the grenade exploded it made a bang, sure, but not as loud as I’d expected. There was a big heavy thud and I felt my carriage twist and shudder, but it stayed on the rails. It seemed to drag for a bit, that was all. What did happen though, and what I didn’t expect, was another fireworks display. Not a nice pretty one where you sit in your deckchair and watch, going ‘ooh’ and ‘ah’, but a bloody dangerous one. Bits of hot metal went scorching into the air and started falling. You could hear the wild whooshing sound as they went up, then a scary wailing noise as they fell. Some of the pieces were big; most were small. The small ones were the biggest problem though. Only a couple of big ones fell near me, and I avoided them easily. But the little ones fell like snow, and were as hard as snowflakes to dodge. At least four bits landed on me and two of them burnt through to my skin. I gasped with the pain of it, but at the same time I knew I couldn’t sit around wailing for Savlon and Bandaids. The moment the worst of the shower was over I was up and racing for the wall again.

  I didn’t waste time looking behind. I knew he’d be there. There was a chance I’d got lucky and he’d been dropped on from a great height by a hunk of molten steel, but it wasn’t much of a chance. I wasn’t going to sit around relying on it.

  I shinned up the metal and rolled over the top.

  For a moment I hung, looking down. It was a horrible sight. The couplings were rocking and rolling. Below those I could see the dark track racing along. It’d be all gravel and sleepers and steel rails. One s
lip and I’d lose a leg. Another slip and I’d be ripped apart, crushed to a pulp.

  There was nowhere stable to stand. But I had to get across. I let myself down onto the narrow step, and turned, facing the gap. With my arms out on either side I took a hesitant step. My boot landed on a big buffer thing that was grinding against another buffer. I couldn’t get a good platform. ‘Look,’ I told myself sternly, ‘this is hopeless. You won’t get anywhere being nervous. Just charge across and be done with it.’

  It was like jumping a creek that you thought might be too wide.

  I took a deep breath and put all my weight on the buffer, but not for long enough to rely on it. With panic threatening to pull me apart I made a nervous leap, as big as I could manage, to the little step at the end of the next truck. Then, while I was on the roll, I kept going and reached for the top of the metal wall, pulling myself up till my head was over it.

  At that moment, just when I thought I was getting somewhere, I felt a terrific pressure on my left leg. Like it was being pulled out of its socket. Hanging onto the top of the wall I looked down. The soldier, still wearing his glasses, was glaring up at me. He looked like a crazy man. He was on the buffers, and he had the fingers of his left hand around the side of the carriage and his right hand on my leg, pulling it down like a truckie tightening a rope on his load. I gripped the edge of the wall even tighter but as I did I thought, ‘There’s no future in this’. I mean, what was I meant to do, hang on there till the end of the war? The guy with the glasses had all the advantage. With my back to him and no hands, I was helpless. If I was going to beat him I had to use my brains. But how?

  The pressure increased and I felt my fingers start to slip. He was strong, no doubt about that. Still not quite sure what I could do, I let my body relax, hoping to bluff him into thinking he’d won already. I think it did surprise him. I felt him change his grip, letting go slightly and then grabbing me again, a bit higher up. At that moment I kicked out with all my strength.

  I must have used a bit of force, because my body came right away from the wall. I know that, because I slammed into it again a moment later. But at the same time I felt my leg free of his grip. I scrambled up that wall as fast as a rat across a roof. At the top, as I went over, I took a quick look behind, hoping to see nothing, hoping the man had slipped through the couplings and was now lying in a mash of flesh and blood and bones back on the track. I wanted him out of my way, and fast. I felt so panicked by him, desperate to escape. But as I rolled over into the next truck I saw him come back up, grabbing at me. Bad luck for him, he couldn’t get a good enough grip before I was over and running for the front of that carriage.

  Up, over, run, up, over, run. I did it through that truck and two more, getting glimpses of him each time I scaled the next wall. He just kept on coming. As I ran and climbed I tried to think. I knew I’d soon be out of carriages. Each time I got to the top of another one I could see the passenger ones getting closer. There seemed to be about a dozen of them, and only seven or eight more trucks between us. This guy chasing me was tougher and stronger than me; well, tougher, anyway. I’d have to use my brains, I just had to.

  When I got into the next truck I didn’t do the sprint across its lurching surface like before. This time I crouched under the protection of the wall I’d just straddled. And waited.

  It wasn’t a long wait. Only a couple of moments later I heard his boots thump into the wall on the other side. His hands scrabbled at the dark steel. I looked up. His fingers were already over the top, gripping the thick edge. I got ready. I tried to think of my tired legs as springs, tried to imagine they were on springs. I summoned up all the energy I could find.

  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 explosiv
e, 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.