Night Of Knives

Chapter 32

"Jacob," Veronica says, her voice frantic. "Jacob, wake up, please. Please, you have to wake up. Jacob, please!"

Jacob's world is pain. He is shaking. No, he is being shaken, someone's hands are on his shoulders, pushing and pulling. Veronica's hands. He opens his eyes, and his mouth too, to complain. It is night and he can barely make out Veronica's face as she kneels over him. There are tears in her eyes. A glittering curtain of stars hangs above her. He lies on a bed of rough earth and jagged stones, poorly cushioned by grass as dry as sandpaper. He can't remember why.

"Wha's going on?" Jacob manages.

Veronica takes a deep, relieved breath, then says, "They've stopped the train down the track, I don't know how exactly, but we heard shots. They're coming. We have to go."

There is a black man standing beside her, a man with a gun in his hand, watching silently, a man Jacob feels like he knows. He searches his mind and finds a dim memory of a train, a vague notion that they are being chased. He gets up. He feels like he is watching himself stand, a witness rather than a participant; he observes with admiration as his limbs coordinate to draw his battered body up into a gravity-defying bipedal configuration, and his muscles fight to keep him there. He has new bruises aplenty, but nothing seems torn or broken. His head has taken at least some of the impact of the fall. Jacob takes a single step and suddenly comes back to himself. It feels like imploding. He falls to his knees and throws up, his abdominal muscles cramp with agony as he retches and shudders. Veronica kneels and hovers over him, holding his shoulders lightly with nervous hands.

"I'm fine," he manages to say. "It's okay. I'm back." Then he is throwing up again. But when it is finally over he does feel stronger, as if he has purged himself of some weakness, left nothing but animal vitality. He can feel pain across a frightening amount of his body, but it is like he feels it through a cushion, he is aware of it but unaffected. Jacob staggers back to his feet and looks around. The lights of the train are dimly visible about a kilometre down the track. They are in a field of dry waist-high grass. About a hundred feet from the railway track he can see a sparse forest of withered, leafless trees silhouetted by moonlight.

"What do we do?" he asks Veronica and Lovemore. He remembers Lovemore again, remembers dangling from the edge of the train and letting go. He supposes he suffered a concussion in the fall. He feels physically capable again but his mind is like scrambled eggs, he is in no shape to make any decisions. At least they were right that the soldiers would not follow, the train wasn't moving too fast but nobody would throw themselves from it who didn't actually have to.

She says, "We run."

"I'm sick of running," he says petulantly.

"If you have a better idea I'd love to hear it."

Jacob looks back to the train and tries to make his brain work. He can see motion in the dry grass beside the tracks. Soldiers coming after them. If he can see them, beneath this hatefully bright moon, then they can see him, and hiding in this drought-shrivelled grass will never work.

"OK," he says. "Maybe we can lose them in the trees."

But either their motion stands out too sharply in the moonlight, or one of the soldiers has preternaturally good night vision. They can't have nightvision goggles, Jacob thinks loopily, they don't have any money for that, it would take a whole backpack full of Zimbabwe dollars to buy a single pair, and besides the country is under sanctions, no military technology sales allowed, that's why Gorokwe has to smuggle his missiles in from Russia - but whatever the reason, every time he looks over his shoulder, the rustling motion of the soldiers is a little closer.

Jacob is too unsteady on his feet to sprint, Lovemore is now moving with a definite limp, and Veronica is bruised too; the best they can do is jog. Their heavy footsteps rustle loudly, cutting through the slight whispers of the dry grass in the night wind. Even in pitch black the soldiers might be able to track them by sound. Ahead of them an open savannah of arid grass and trees stretches on to the moonlit horizon. Behind them, the soldiers are less than half a kilometre away and closing fast.