Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

aboard the train. At
the end of each carriage, a pair of them faced opposite ways,
covering the passengers with rifles. The man who landed facing
Myra filled the partition doorway. ‘Barbarian’ was
not an epithet, applied to him; he was tall and broad, he had a
beard and pony-tail gleaming with grease, and his jacket and
chaps bore smooth-edged, irregularly shaped plates of metal
attached to the leather with metal rings, a crude and partial
armour.
    ‘Hands on heads! Everybody outside! On to the
track!’
    Myra put her hands on top of her head and stood up and
shuffled sideways into the aisle. The steward-punk who’d
murdered the guard still had her covered, and was backing out
past the big fellow, whom he obviously knew. The businessman,
standing up, had a curiously intent look on his face. Myra
guessed instantly that he was about to make himself a hero, and
in a fortuitous moment of eye contact she shook her head. His
shoulders slumped slighdy, even with his hands in the air; but he
complied with the shouted command and the minutely gestured
suggestion, jumping out to the right and landing on the permanent
way on his feet and hands, then scrambling up and running across
the adjacent track to the low bank with the fence by the flooded
meadow.
    Myra raised her hands and stepped over the guard’s
buckled legs, edged past the barbarian and the steward and jumped
out. She landed lightly, the impact jolting her pistol
uncomfortably but reassuringly deeper down the side of her boot,
and walked across the track and up the bank, then turned to face
the train.
    People were all doing as she had done, or helping kids –
silent now – down to the broken stones. The Greens strode
or stood or rode up and down, yip-peeing, all the time keeping
their rifles trained on the passengers. There were at least a
score of the attackers on each side of the train, probably more.
About a hundred people, passengers and crew, had come off the
train. Somebody was still on the train and still screaming.
    Myra stood with her hands on her head and shivered. The sight
of so many people with their handsup made her feel sick. The
barbarians probably intended to loot the train – they must
know that some at least of the passengers would be carrying
concealed weapons, but they weren’t as yet even bothering
to search for them. The hope that they would be spared would be
enough to stop almost anyone from making an inevitably doomed
attempt to fight. It might just stop them until it was too late.
If the Greens intended a massacre they would do it, of that she
was sure, just when least expected. The Greens would manoeuvre
inconspicuously so that they were out of each other’s lines
of fire, and the fusillade would come. Then a bit of rape and
robbery, and a few final finishing shots to the head for the
wounded if they were lucky.
    One tall man in a fur cloak and leather-strapped cotton
leggings was stalking around from one group of passengers to
another, peering at and talking to every young or young-looking
woman. When he reached Myra he stopped on the slope just below
her, rested his hand on his knee and looked up, grinning. He was
clean-shaven, with long sun-bleached red hair tied back with a
thong around his brow. On another thong, around his neck, hung a
whistle. Beneath his fur cloak he wore a faded green T-shirt
printed with the old UN Special Forces motto: SORT ‘EM OUT
– LET GOD KILL ‘EM ALL.
    ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘you must be Myra
Godwin!’
    He had a London accent and a general air of enjoying himself
hugely. Myra stared at him, shaken at being thus singled out. He
recognised her, and she had a disquieting feeling that
she’d seen him somewhere before.
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘What’s it to
you?’
    ‘You got any proof of that?’
    ‘Diplomatic passport, jacket pocket, above the seat I
was in.’
    ‘I’ll check,’ he warned, eyes narrowing.
    ‘Oh, and bring my fucking Glock as well. You are in deep
shit, mister.’
    ‘We’ll see about that,’ he said. He turned
around and yelled at the big man who’d emptied her
carriage; he was still standing in the doorway, rifle pointed
upward.
    ‘Yo! Fix! Get this lady’s stuff out. From above
her seat’
    He didn’t take his eyes off her as the big man passed
him the folded jacket and he fingered through it. One quick
glance down at the opened passport, and he put the whistle to his
lips and blew a loud,