Listen (Muted Trilogy Book 2) (19 page)

Jemma knew she was staring. Jack wanted to sneak onto a moving train? And he was excited about this? All right, admittedly, on some level, there was a part of Jemma that was curious about the logistics of it, about whether she could pull it off, about whether it could actually be done like it was in the movies. There were parts of her that wondered that about things like mountain climbing, though, and she had no desire to actually try it.

Then again, she’d had even less interest in being locked up as part of some sort of science experiment.

“Do you think that’s safer than hitchhiking?” she asked finally.

“I do, yeah. The tracks have to cross a lot of streets in this part of town, and not all of them have those gates, so the trains go really slowly. I’ve seen them stop completely plenty of times. Haven’t you?”

“Yes, but that part doesn’t worry me as much as getting caught.”

“We’ll be careful,” he sent. “We’ll do the research first. We need to look into this guy a little more anyway, and I’ll see if I can hack into the transit schedule. They don’t exactly post it openly.” Jack’s eyes were bright.

“You’re enjoying this a little too much.”

Jack reached across the table and took her hand, sending a surge of reassurance. “It’s a challenge, one that we’re choosing, if you’re okay with it. I enjoy those, from time to time, especially if I’ve been a bit stifled lately.”

Jemma remembered her anger at the fact that Jack had been denied his computers for so long. He was encouraging her to embrace her comfort zone with the planning, and the fact that some of his preferred his challenges didn’t happen to be legal was to their benefit in the current situation.

Plus, she couldn’t actually think of a better alternative for their getting to Birmingham. Even if there were a passenger train in the area, she wasn’t sure they would have been able to find a way to stay on board without getting caught.

“I’ll keep looking into Pratt,” she sent. “You start trying to get the train schedule and whatever other information you can on that.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Unlike when Jill had said it earlier, Jack’s tone was laced with warmth and affection, and he squeezed her hand before turning his attention back to her computer.

Jemma stared at her screen for several seconds, not quite able to concentrate on the senator yet. She started, instead, with looking into train hopping. She was quickly both reassured and more worried, somehow; it seemed many people actually did things like this, and with plenty of success, using the train system to travel all over the country. Others, though, had gotten caught quickly and jailed. It did seem, at least, as if the ones who were jailed had something else going on, drugs or alcohol or other impairments that kept them from being aware of their surroundings. She took a couple more minutes to bookmark the sites that seemed most helpful, then went back to researching the senator.

For a politician, he seemed almost boring. He didn’t seem to have any vices, at least not that the public had caught on to. He wasn’t married, but he wasn’t a known womanizer. He was educated, seemed to put thought into his stances, and he was consistent. He had to be fake, but Jemma couldn’t find any holes in his persona. She couldn’t find any references to his being connected to the area, other than the one visit a couple weeks after they’d been captured. He went home as often as possible, staying in D.C. only when he had to, working from Birmingham when his presence wasn’t required in Congress. Still, he was gone a lot during the week, and the upcoming weekend was their best chance of catching him without having to travel even farther.

She reopened her pages on transport, then checked in with Jack. “He seems like our best bet. We’ll want to be careful, of course, but I feel okay about trying, and it gets us away from Dr. Harris and Josh and the rest in the meantime. Any luck with the trains?”

“We’ve got a train headed in the right direction around 4am. We’ll need to be careful through Montgomery, because it does go through the city, but I found one that isn’t scheduled to actually stop. This bar closes at 2am, so we’ll have just two hours to kill, but I want to find a spot where we can make sure we have the right train and where we won’t be seen, anyway.”

Jemma swallowed. “All right. If we’re doing this, I’m going to need a little more caffeine.”

They’d finished another two sodas each by the time the bar closed, but by that point, they’d done all the research they could. Laptop batteries fully charged and backpacks packed once more, they started out for the tracks.

TWENTY

Strings

They kept to the back roads, following the route they had planned before leaving the bar.

“When we get out of town, to where we don’t have to be quite so cautious,” sent Jack, “we should try getting some prepaid phones. It would help a lot to have at least limited contact and data.”

“What do we need for that? I’ve never had a prepaid phone,” sent Jemma. “I started out on my parents’ plan, and then I got a plan of my own.”

“I’m not actually sure. We’ll figure that out when we get there. I used to do prepaid, but it’s been a few years.” Jack reached across the few inches that separated them to take Jemma’s hand. “This way.”

The quality of the buildings was quickly deteriorating as they neared the tracks; she could still see damage from the hurricane that had come through well over a decade before, and yards were unkempt in houses still clearly occupied. Fences were torn. The few businesses still present between houses looked questionable at best, signs needing repair, advertisements made from strips of cardboard. This was an area of town that seemed to be trying to do the best with what it had, and the contrast to where they’d napped earlier was almost painful, the thought of what could be done with what had been so casually abandoned hard to dismiss.

Jemma shook her head, trying to focus on what they needed to do. They slipped through an unmowed alleyway between two houses, crouching low to stay below the windows, then sat in the tall grass just yards from the tracks. They were nearly hidden by the grass, but they’d be able to see and hear approaching trains easily.

“Ours should be the first coming through,” sent Jack, “but we’ll check for the number before we get on. We want an open car, with space to hide toward the front or back of it. We want to give enough time for the engine to get past the bend up ahead, but not enough time for the end of the train to be in sight.”

“Right.” Jemma peered down the empty tracks. “How much time do we have?”

“A little over an hour.”

“Right,” she sent again. She was sitting next to Jack, the two of them facing south, down the tracks. Her palms rested against the prickling grass, her head against the hard surface of the house behind her, her body at an angle to avoid crushing the contents of her backpack. She let the sounds of crickets chirping and dogs barking wash over her, closing her eyes.

They had a plan. Getting on the train sounded relatively easy, and she’d seen enough of them go through town to know they went pretty slow here. They’d get into a nearly empty car and take it safely as far as they needed to go, to a city that afforded them a bit more anonymity, where they’d be able to get more answers. They’d be able to find out a bit more about Senator Pratt while he was nearby, figure out whether he might be able to help them, maybe even risk contact, then go from there.

If he could take it from there for them entirely, that would be ideal. Maybe he’d be able to blow the whistle, take down whomever Josh and Dr. Harris and the others worked for, and have Jack and Jemma safely home by Monday. Then again, with the exception of her job at the library, little had gone that smoothly since the Event.

Not that everything had been bad, necessarily, but “smooth,” “uneventful,” “as expected”; these weren’t the terms Jemma would use, either.

“Jemma.” She started at Jack’s voice, feeling dragged out of the depths of a sleep she hadn’t meant to slip into. “Train’s coming.”

Remaining seated, she peered down the tracks, seeing the bright headlight in the distance. In the early morning silence, she could hear the deep rumble of the train, the faint, rhythmic clatter as it drew nearer. “We’re not standing until the engine passes, right?”

“That’s right.” Jack squeezed her hand once before letting go again. He shifted his weight to a crouch, and Jemma did the same, her heart pounding. She tried to swallow past the rushing sound in her ears, but her mouth was dry. She lowered her head for a moment, hoping to regain her equilibrium, but the rushing increased instead, the only sound she could hear other than her own breath, which was louder than it had been since before the event. She focused on that, on breathing in and out, deliberately, consciously, until the rushing noise finally slowed, until she could focus on her surroundings again.

Next to her, she saw Jack, his eyes fixed on her. She nodded once, ignoring the uncertain churn of her stomach, and they both turned their attention to the tracks in time to hear the train blare its horn.

The train had made little progress, Jemma noted with a start; her panic couldn’t have lasted more than a minute or so. She let out another deliberate breath and checked her stance, making sure she was ready to sprint toward the train when it was passing.

The horn blew again, repeating the same pattern multiple times, presumably at each of the streets it had to cross. Finally, the engine crept past them, the train seeming to approach slowly, then gain speed once the engine had passed. Jemma knew it was a matter of perspective, that the train couldn’t be going more than ten miles an hour, but up close, with tons of freight and metal and momentum, ten miles an hour seemed much faster than it had sounded when they were reading about it online.

Jack seemed to come to the same conclusion. “We’re going to want to be facing the other way. If we’re running against the way the train is going, we might hit the back wall, and that’s not gonna feel so great.”

Her stomach lurched again when they got into their new positions. She could see the engine moving out of sight. It was time to look for the car that would be their home for the next several hours.

“There.” Jack was looking backward, watching the cars of the train as they neared, and one of them, a plain, rectangular car with the graffiti that seemed to come standard, had its sliding door open. “Let’s go.” He waited a beat for her acknowledgment, then started sprinting along the train tracks, Jemma falling into step just behind him.

For several seconds, they were a few cars ahead of where they wanted to be, but the train was going a good deal faster than they were, and soon, Jemma could see an opening alongside her. She reached out and up, grabbing on to the door frame with one hand and the floor with the other as she pushed sideways off the ground. She was pulled forward, barely keeping her grip as the train gave her a burst of extra speed. She pulled herself inside, rolling out of the way just in time for Jack to fling himself inside in similar stages, panting.

Outside the door, the battered houses were giving way for more open parts of the city, and Jemma crawled toward the back of the car, not feeling steady enough to stand. In the dim light, she couldn’t quite make out the shapes around them, but there were barrels of some sort, she thought, taking up some of the space. Much of the car was actually empty, or nearly, with plenty of room to maneuver. That also meant, unfortunately, plenty of room to be seen.

“This corner, behind whatever these are,” she sent, reaching the destination she had in mind, the corner opposite the open door. Jack joined her, and they set their packs in front of them. They could just see through the spaces between the barrels, but with their muddied clothing, the dark backpacks, and the obstructed view the barrels offered, nobody would be likely to see them, especially not once the train picked up speed.

“We should probably stay awake while the train’s still in the city,” sent Jack, “but then I think we’re safe to get some rest.” The train blared loudly as it crossed another intersection. “We’ll be able to hear when we get to Montgomery, and we’ve still got a while to go after that.”

“Sorry I fell asleep earlier,” sent Jemma, leaning against him. “I didn’t mean to leave you to watch.”

She felt more than saw him shake his head. “We both know you were doing a lot more in that lab than I was. It’s no wonder you’re still exhausted.” He slumped down further against the wall, his arm along hers. “You can lean on me. I’m more comfortable than the wall. Probably.”

Jemma chuckled at his mental wink, feeling some of her tension evaporate. The train was still blowing its whistle, but it felt as if it might be picking up speed, and she could make out fewer buildings outside. She rested her head against his shoulder, and he leaned his own head against the top of hers. They stayed that way as the train continued out of town, the rocking motion and clacking of the tracks soothing Jemma further. Jack took her hand as they left the city behind, rubbing her thumb with his until he fell asleep. Jemma wasn’t far behind.

***

Jemma woke as the whistle blew repeatedly, the slowing of the train pulling at her stomach. She felt Jack stirring beside her. Outside, it was much brighter than when they’d drifted off, but Jemma couldn’t tell exactly what time it was. Jack sat forward, lifting himself using what definitely looked like some sort of oil barrel, trying to get a better look outside.