“Step back.”
“Did you get it?” she asked.
“Step back!” Thomas raised his voice. “I’m not going to say it again!” He could hear her feet sliding to the other side—the bottoms of her shoes shifting tiny grains of sand or dirt across the metal floor. She stopped. He could make out very little while peering through the vented side of the car. “Alright, lay on your stomach.” He noticed James now to his right—he had picked up his rifle and had it pointed toward the rail car. The woman dropped to her knees and lay forward. “Don’t move.” Thomas worked the lock with the key, and it fell to the ground. The heavy metal door was pulled to the side, and there she was. Her dirty, blonde hair—tangled, unkempt—appearing as if she had been pulled from a grave. Only that and her outstretched hands could be seen.
James moved his rifle more deliberately to her. “Slowly work your way back onto your knees, but keep your hands visible—out front the whole time.”
She did as she was told, her body shaking as she slowly pushed up from the ground. Her knees remained planted to the floor. “Don’t— Please don’t hurt me.”
James laughed lightly, turning toward Thomas with an impish grin. “Who the hell does she think we are?”
“Shut it, James!” Thomas snapped. “Miss, we’re here to help,” he softened his tone, “but being careful about it.”
Her shoulders dropped with relief, her body seemingly accepting his words as the absolute truth. She got up from her knees and began to approach them.
“I didn’t tell you to stand.” Thomas shouldered his rifle. “Get back on your knees!”
The outburst jarred the woman. Her eyes overflowed with tears, leaving trails within the dirt upon her cheeks. She retreated, throwing her hands out in front of her to shield any aggression. “I’m sorry— sorry. Please don’t hurt me.” She stumbled—her foot tangled in piled clothing before she fell backwards, slamming onto her ass.
“Hands!” Thomas screamed.
She struggled to free them. Reluctant. Her hips shifted. A black handgun. Crack! Crack! Thomas raised the rifle and responded with a quick shot to the woman’s chest. His rifle expelled the brass as he worked the action then slammed another round into the chamber.
Thomas turned toward where James had been, but he was now sprawled across the ground several feet back. His initial thought was to go for him, to see if he was alive, but the woman’s hand was trembling, lifting the pistol forward to finish the job. Another press of his trigger and the woman’s head jolted, never to be recognized again.
Thomas visually cleared the boxcar then rushed to James. His body lay still—his head bent awkwardly within the gravel. The eyes. Closed. The pulse. Thomas only felt his own. The pounding of footsteps startled him. “Where’s he shot?” one of the Guards asked.
“I don’t know.” Thomas managed to get the words out before he was pushed aside. “Are you a medic?” The man nodded while he tended to him, placing his hands against James’s chest. Come on, man. Where are you shot?
The medic worked over James’s bunched up clothing—covered in dust, hiding his injury. He balled his fist and rubbed along the sternum with the ridge of his knuckles to wake James from his bit of unconsciousness. “You hit or did you fall?”
James’s eyes began to flutter. His hand swatted the medic away, and then he grunted—the pain present in the stress of his response. He began to raise his back from the ground, but the medic laid his hand against his chest to keep him down. James gave in. “It burns,” he said, motioning toward his shoulder. His sleeve was straightened out, and a noticeable amount of the fabric by his shoulder was frayed—a bright red barely visible in the rut of the cloth. James hissed from the pain.
“You’re fine, man, just hang in there,” Thomas urged while hovering over the process. The medic maneuvered his fingers through the tear and ripped the sleeve away from the wound. A grazing.
“This is nothing.” The medic pressed lightly around the wound, causing James to wince. “It’s not even bleeding.” He took a small bottle of moonshine and gauze from his side bag and doused the wound with the alcohol.
“Damn!” James sucked air between his clenched teeth and turned away from the discomfort. “That shit stings.”
“You’ll just need to keep this thing clean.” He dabbed at the wound with a cloth. “Almost done.” He reached inside his bag again, removed a bandage, and placed it over James’s wound. “It’ll probably be sore— maybe. You’re lucky that’s all you got.”
James shook his head. “What the hell just happened? Trying to help her and she flips out like that. That lady lost her damn mind.” He attempted to gather his feet below him.
The medic kept him in place. “You need to take a second and relax.”
James exhaled, drawing it out to make his point, closing his eyes in protest, but ultimately agreeing. “Okay.” He pulled his knees in toward his body then lay back into the gravel, letting out another sigh. “Make sure that bitch is dead.”
Thomas and Eric approached the red boxcar. The pool of blood spread far beyond the corpse—her blonde hair matted with blood and wrapped violently around her face. How long had he been keeping her in here?
It didn’t appear to be too long. A nest of clothing in the corner. Two cinder blocks lined up as chairs— a wooden music box at the foot of another. An undercooked squirrel on a plate. Thomas leapt inside the boxcar. “Let’s take a look.”
“I’ll check her,” Eric said, as he followed.
Thomas rummaged through their belongings, and Eric moved over to the body, rolling her over. Her face…
“In here! In here! In here!”
“Hot damn! Where the hell’d they come from?”
“Just get in one of these apartments.”
“This one! James! Here!”
“We lucked out. Should take them awhile to find us.”
“Quiet… Something’s bleeding.”
“What?”
“Look. Blood here and some over there. Heads down this way.”
“Stay close!”
“Not a lot is it?”
“Tommy!”
“What?” … “It’s okay, sweetie.”
“It’s Almawt! Don’t you dare touch her!”
“We don’t know that.”
“She’s coughing up blood. Of course it’s Almawt.”
“James! She’s just a little girl. She’s not gonna make it here. She can’t…”
“They’re here damn it! She’s not gonna make it.”
“Then we got to get her out of here.”
“She’s not coming with us.”
“I’m not leaving her!”
“Listen! They aren’t gonna knock on that door and ask us to come out—they’re gonna take it down! We don’t have time to debate this. We have to go!”
“Come here… please, come here.”
“We don’t have time for this shit! We’ll never get outta here.”
“Then hold them off. I’m not leaving her, damn it. Please… Just come here, we’ll get you out. I want to take you someplace safe.”
“She doesn’t understand you.”
“Please come here!”
“Tommy! We gotta go, man. None of these people are going to make it. It’s us or them!”