Neal shoots me an impressed look over her head, with a healthy dose ofyou-better-not-mess-this-upand a side-serving ofany-disagreement-you’re-having-is-probably-your-fault-because-she’s-amazing.
But it’s not that simple, of course. She’s right, and I’m right, and nobody’s right, and I’ve never been less sure of what to do in all my life. Back on the train, she looked into my eyes and told me that wherever we went, we’d go together. I want—Ineed—that promise to be true. Hearing her talk about going to Prague again—knowing she’ll go wherever she’s going with me—makesme feel like I’m taking my first deep breath of the day. I just wish I knew what Prague holds in store for us.
I follow the others to the road that’s busy with traffic, perhaps thanks to the evacuation. Mia, the smallest and least intimidating of us—at least until you get to know her—only takes a few minutes to flag down a car holding a middle-aged German couple, who turn out to be called Gisela and Luisa.
Mia’s breathless story about a man with a gun on the train does the trick. The Germans aren’t keen to hang about and ask for details when they have no way of knowing whether that imaginary man is still on the train or roaming the countryside.
We all have English as a common language, and Luisa uses it as she pulls back out into traffic. I can see her face in the mirror, and after a moment her eyes flick up to meet mine. But while Gisela is all sympathy, there’s an edge in Luisa’s eyes—something darker, a suspicion, perhaps—that makes me uneasy.
“We should take them to the police,” she tells her wife. “But I’m not sure where. The train has come from France, ja? The gunman will be French?”
“The border is behind us,” says Gisela absently, while looking at something on a tablet. I can barely see over her shoulder from where the three of us are crammed in the backseat. The cramped quarters are giving me flashbacks to my time in orbit, only this time Neal is shoved in on the other side of Mia.
“And we don’t want to go back to France,” Mia blurts quickly, her voice wavering. Her fear sounds real to me—I can see her white-knuckled grip on the edge of the seat and I’m not sure she’s pretending at all. “The train went through—through Lyon.”
Gisela looks up from the tablet, eyebrows lifting. “I am just reading that they no longer evacuate Lyon,” she says quietly. “They quarantine the city.”
“What?” Luisa nearly swerves into the next lane. “There are over a million people in Lyon!”
“And now,” says Gisela, eyes on the screen, “that is where they will stay.” She twists around in her seat to look back at the three of us, perhaps taking in properly for the first time how dusty and dirty we are. “Was it bad, what you saw there?”
“Yes,” I say, because there’s no point in lying.
She must read something of the truth in my face, for hers grows more solemn, and she hesitates a long moment before nodding. “I am guessing all your luggage is on that train.” She glances across at Luisa, who has her eyes on the road, then continues. “I know you should go to the police, make a statement, but I don’t think this is a good area to be in for much longer. This illness in Lyon …”
Luisa glances across at her for a moment, wary, switching to German, which she’s no doubt assuming none of us will understand. “Was machst du, Schatz?”What are you doing, darling?
Gisela shoots her a quelling look, then continues in English: “We are driving across the country to our home, it is near Dresden, do you know it?”
I can feel Mia hesitate at my side, and I’m quick to jump in. “That’s where we were going next, that’s where we were hoping to get a flight home.”
“I think you should come with us. Usually it is about seven hours, it might be a little longer with this traffic. We will take you to the station, or the airport, and you can arrange to go home.”
Luisa shoots her another look, glances at me in the rearview mirror—clearly not sold on us—and then accelerates a little more aggressively into the next lane over.
“Sie sind nur Kinder,” Gisela says, and though I certainly don’t feel like a kid, not after everything we’ve been through, I’ll take the excuse. No matter what we decide to do next, the fact that we’re “just kids” won’t help us if we end up back at the French border, talking to the police.
I look sideways at Mia, and she nods a fraction. Neal does the same. “Thank you,” I say. “Today has been so frightening. We just want to go somewhere we can catch a plane back home to ourparents. This was meant to be a safe holiday. We won’t be any trouble, you won’t even know we’re in the backseat.”
Luisa softens for that, and shoots her wife a long-suffering look. Then she’s watching me again, suspicion warring with something familiar that I can’t quite place. “Of course,” she says finally—and once she says the words, she doesn’t examine me in the mirror again.
Gisela maintains the peace by switching the radio to a local music station, and that precludes any chance of further conversation for the next hour. The countryside flashes by, and I try to press myself against the window to give Mia a little room—she’s crammed between two lanky, long-legged water polo players like the meat in a very cramped sandwich.
My back’s starting to really protest—funny how as soon as your life’s not in immediate danger, you find time to notice other things—when my daydreams are shattered by a violent bang from somewhere up ahead.
Luisa abruptly yanks the wheel to the right, sending the car out onto the shoulder of the road with a scream of brakes and the crunch of gravel, dust and stones flying in every direction.
My seat belt locks into place, sending a bolt of pain through my collarbone as it keeps me from crashing into the back of Gisela’s seat, and beside me I can hear Mia gasping for breath, wheezing helplessly as her lungs refuse to cooperate.
Out on the road in front of us is a white minivan lying on its side, blocking both lanes, windows smashed, trails of glass strewn over the road. It’s as if someone just yanked the wheel to one side as the thing was going full speed.
And oh, Deus, that’s a day care center’s logo on the door.
Luisa’s already scrambling out of the car, and the rest of us are quick to follow—we practically fall out as the doors open, and I can feel my legs shaking as I get my feet underneath me and stumble toward the van. I’m dimly aware that other cars are pulling up behind us, a series of bangs telling me some aren’t managing tostop in time, but my focus is completely on the van, and the children I’m terrified are inside.
Luisa and Neal were on the side closest to the accident, and they’re running with me on their heels—the underside of the van faces us, one of the wheels still spinning. The driver’s side door faces skyward, and a bloodied woman comes bursting through the shattered window, snarling and clawing at the air like a wild animal.
I slam into Neal’s broad back as he stops, and Mia slams into mine as we pile up like the cars behind us, and the woman sniffs the air, then starts trying to climb through the window, growling her displeasure at the tight fit. She must have hit her head, because she—
