Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

commissars, Denis Gubanov in particular. She
wanted every chekist he could spare to get busy infiltrating and
investigating these demos.
    The partition doors hissed and thunked open. The guard came
through, a tall, stooping man in a uniform, with a holstered
pistol on his hip.
    ‘Tickets from Carlisle, please,’ He had a slightly
camp voice, gentle and pleasant. He smiled and checked the
tickets of the business executive sitting opposite and across
from Myra.
    „Scuse me,’ the steward sang out, behind him. The
steward was a small, scrawny youth in a white shirt, tartan
bow-tie and trews. Spiky black hair.
    The trolley rattled and jangled into the compartment. The
guard stepped aside to let it pass. As he did so the train
lurched a little, setting the trolley’s contents ringing
again, and the brakes squealed as the train came to a halt.
    There was a crackly announcement, from which Myra could only
make out the words ‘ trees on the line’.
    A ripple of derision ran through the carriage. Myra added her
hoot to it, and glanced out of the windows. There were trees
beside the line, to the right, but they were about a hundred
yards away, across a puddled meadow, On the other side, a sharp
slope, with trees above the scree.
    She heard a gasp from the steward, and a sort of cough from
the guard. A large quantity of some red liquid splashed across
the table she was sitting at, and some of it poured over the edge
and on to thelap of her skirt. Myra recoiled, looking up with a
momentary flash of civilised annoyance – her first
impression was that somehow the steward had spilled a bottle of
red wine over her.
    The guard fell sideways across the table with a shocking thud.
His throat gaped and flapped like a gillnslit, still pumping. She
could see the rim of his severed windpipe, white, like broken
plastic. His mouth was open too, the tongue quivering, dripping
spitde. His eyes were very wide. He raised his head, and looked
as though he were trying to say something to her. Then he stopped
trying. His head hit the table with a second thump, diminuendo.
    The steward was still standing, clutching a short knife in one
hand and an automatic pistol, evidendy the guard’s, in the
other. His shirtcuff had blood on it, as did the front of his
shirt. It looked like he’d had a nose-bleed which
he’d tried to staunch on his sleeve. It was surprising how
thin a liquid blood was, when it was freshly spilled, still
splashy, a wine-dark stream.
    The steward flicked his tongue across his lips. He waved the
pistol in a way that suggested he was not entirely familiar with
its use. Then, in a movement like a conjuring trick, he’d
swapped the knife and the pistol around and worked the slide.
Lock and load; he knew how to use it, all right.
    ‘Don’t fucking move,’ he said.
    Myra didn’t fucking move. She’d stuck her small
emergency-pistol in the top of her boot when she’d taken
off the holster with the Glock, which was now lying under her
jacket on the luggage-rack above. There was no way she could
reach either weapon in time. Nor could she blink up a comms menu
on her eyeband – the phone was in her jacket, too. The
other passenger, who was sitting across the aisle andfacing the
opposite direction, didn’t move either. Somebody, not a
child, in the Second-Class compartment was screaming. The steward
had his back to that compartment, and at least several people in
there must have been aware of what had happened. Without moving
her head, or even her eyes, Myra could see white faces, round
eyes and mouths, through the glass partition.
    She was thinking why doesn’t someone just shoot this
fucker in the back? Then, out of the corner of her eye, she
saw movement outside, along both sides of the train. Men and
women on horseback. Long hair; feathers and hats; leather jerkins
and weskits; rifles and crossbows brandished or slung. Like
cowboys and Indians. Green partisans. Barbarians.
    Far behind her, near the back of train she guessed, there was
a brief exchange of fire and a distant, thin screaming. It went
on and on like a car alarm.
    Every door in the train, internal and external, thunked open.
OK, so somebody’d got to the controls. Myra felt a cold
draught against the warm and now sticky liquid on her knees. The
colour washed out of the world. Myra realised that she was about
to go into shock, and breathed hard and deep.
    Some of the horsemen, dismounted, leapt