Chapter 22
NORA
Every channel remains silent.
A lamp torn from the wall rolls under the table, throwing one last arc of light across broken glasses before it settles. Outside, wind drives snow over the roof with a continuous low force.
Konstantin comes back from the sealed connector with his weapon held low. He turns me toward him where I am already sheltered behind the bedroom wall, his hands moving over my arms, shoulders, and the back of my head. "Are you hurt? Tell me about pain or bleeding."
"I'm not hurt, and there is no pain or bleeding."
His attention shifts toward the broken lounge before settling on me.
"I'd tell you."
"Tell me the instant that changes."
The red fire-protocol light washes one side of his face. He still has his weapon in his right hand. Snow pours through the narrow seam around the connector door, melting across the black vestibule floor where the protection car should be.
Every call fails. The protected radio carries a burst of interference so loud I flinch. He lowers the volume, tries three channels, and removes a second handset from the emergency case inside the desk. That one dies under the same wall of noise.
The carriage itself has remained alive. Soft ceiling lamps run on battery power.
Warm air moves through the vents, carrying the scent of butter from dinner alongside the sharp mineral smell left by the brake.
Water still runs from the kitchen tap. A local display reports thirty-six hours of heat at the current setting and twenty-nine hours of power.
"Can they find us?" I ask.
"The front detail saw the separation. They know the switching point."
"Can they come back?"
He opens an offline rail map. Our location marker blinks on a maintenance spur that curves west of the northern line.
The main train stopped almost a mile beyond the switch.
Red status covers the junction between us.
"The switch has been thrown back and locked," he says.
"The forward cars can't reverse until a rail team releases it.
Nobody reaches that mechanism in this wind. "
"What about the road?"
A narrow gray line ends three hundred yards from the spur. It exists for maintenance trucks and carries no public name.
Konstantin enlarges the map to study the location of our carriage against the road. "They released us where a vehicle could reach the line."
My mouth goes dry.
"So someone is coming."
"Someone intended to." He lowers every window shade on the road side, turns off the bright lounge lamps, and leaves one low light near the floor. Then he checks the exterior cameras.
Snow fills both screens. The rear lens shows track disappearing into a white torrent. Ice smears the side camera until the maintenance road becomes a pale shape without edges. Thermal view finds warmth from our wheels, the heating vents, and nothing else.
Konstantin brings me his coat. "Put this on. I have another before you argue."
"Of course you do." I slide my arms into the heavy wool. The lining holds his heat across my shoulders. He returns to the camera display wearing his shirt and trousers, with a second gun secured at his back.
For the next hour, we wait for people who never appear, listening through the wind for an engine and finding only ice against glass.
The storm keeps them away more effectively than Konstantin's guards.
Wind drives snow over the maintenance road until the depression vanishes from the thermal screen.
A tree falls somewhere beyond the siding, its crack cutting through the weather before the trunk strikes the ground.
Ice forms over the camera glass faster than the small heaters can melt it.
Konstantin watches every shift in the white field. He drinks no water, refuses the chair, and checks the radio at five-minute intervals without consulting a clock. I sit wrapped in a blanket with crackers in my lap, trying to obey his instruction to eat.
Adrenaline has left a metallic taste behind my teeth. Each time the carriage moves under a gust, I feel the coupling release again.
"Come sit down. You've been standing since we stopped."
"Not yet. The road is almost gone."
"Then staring at it won't bring the attackers closer."
"That is the intention."
His answer might be funny on another night. Here, he still hasn't sat or lowered the gun.
I carry the water to him. He takes the glass after I press it against his hand, though he keeps his eyes on the thermal screen while drinking. "If somebody was waiting on the road, could they reach us on foot or with a snow vehicle?"
"The ground drops into a drainage channel before the spur. They would need to cross open water beneath the ice and climb the rail bed in this wind. Thermal would see an engine before they reached the channel."
"Nobody can reach us tonight." He looks at me then.
The storm has trapped us with heat, water, and a bed while sealing everyone else beyond a buried road. We have time the person behind the sabotage never intended us to receive.
After one more check of the power display, Konstantin lowers his gun.
"The human threat can't reach us before the weather changes," he says.
His wording makes me look at the side camera.
Something small moves under the carriage.
It appears as a dim orange shape on thermal view, low to the ground near the forward wheels. At first I think ice has fallen across the lens. Then the shape crosses the track and disappears below the vestibule steps.
"Animal," Konstantin says. "Too small for a wolf."
"That's comforting in a limited way."
The shape doesn't return. A gust strikes the carriage hard, followed by a faint scraping at the outer door.
Konstantin takes a flashlight from the emergency cabinet.
He needs to inspect the track beacon mounted beside the forward step, because the local display shows power reaching it without confirming the signal leaves the antenna.
I argue against opening any door. He points out that rescue cannot answer a beacon it never receives.
He seals the inner lounge door, leaving both of us inside the narrow vestibule. Cold radiates from the exterior steel. The beam from his flashlight cuts through the window, showing only snow plastered against the glass.
"Stand against the inner door, clear of the opening," he tells me.
I do. He waits for the strongest gust to pass, opens the side exit a few inches, and braces one shoulder against it.
Wind forces the door wider.
Snow explodes into the vestibule.
A gray-brown body launches through the opening.
It strikes Konstantin's leg, scrambles over the wet floor, and throws itself under the fold-down seat beside me. Claws scrape steel. A narrow muzzle flashes in the low light, teeth visible as the animal twists toward the wall.
Konstantin closes the outer door with one hand. His weapon appears in the other.
"Don't." I seize his wrist before he aims.
"Move behind me. It has teeth, and we don't know whether it is sick."
"It's scared, not advancing. I have teeth too, but you don't shoot me for being cold."
"Nora."
The coyote tries to force itself farther under the seat. It is young, perhaps not fully grown, with wet fur clinging to thin flanks. Its ears lie flat. The tail stays tucked hard against its belly while its eyes track the gun.
It doesn't advance. It has made itself as small as its body permits.
"Look at it," I say. "It came through an open door, and now it's trying to disappear."
"Wild animals bite when cornered."
"Then stop cornering it."
Konstantin keeps the gun raised for another breath. My fingers remain around his wrist, every tendon drawn tight against my palm.
He lowers the weapon. "Behind the door," he says. "Now."
I step into the lounge. Konstantin follows without turning his back on the coyote and closes the inner steel door between us. A small wired-glass window shows the fold-down seat and a strip of wet floor.
The coyote doesn't move for several minutes.
We leave the vestibule light low. Heat from the carriage passes through the steel, taking the killing edge from the cold without warming the space as much as the lounge. I bring one of the fallen towels, but Konstantin stops me before I open the door.
"No contact, food, or reason to enter its space. We leave it where it is."
"I was going to leave the towel. You have a coat and still wanted another. The storm may stay all night."
"The animal can use the heat already passing through the door."
He takes the towel from me. Rather than open the inner door, he rolls it against the gap at the bottom of the steel where snowmelt has begun creeping into the lounge.
"This keeps the heat in for us," he says before I can challenge his motive.
Beyond the glass, the coyote raises its head. It watches him finish blocking the draft before lowering its muzzle onto its paws.
Konstantin angles the flashlight through both windows toward the beacon. Ice has buried the antenna, but its housing remains intact. He records the local fault and sends the emergency packet again, leaving it queued for the instant the interference breaks.
I don't smile. He would take it as encouragement.
We return to the lounge while the animal remains alone in the vestibule. The separation gives it shelter without asking it to trust us. When I check again later, it has curled against the wall with its nose tucked into its tail.
"You were going to kill it," I say.
"I was going to stop an unknown animal from reaching you."
"It wasn't reaching for me."
"I know that now."
His weapon remains on the table when he sits beside me at last. His shirt is damp along one shoulder where snow struck him. I unfasten the top buttons and push the fabric aside to check his shoulder. Cold has reddened it without leaving injury.
"A coyote had to make you sit down."
"It didn't make me do anything."
"You're behaving very defensively for a man who hasn't moved from this sofa."