Page 8 of North

TWO

For a second, when she opened her eyes, Selah was back under a tamarind tree in Nigeria, sweaty, hungry, hurt…

Her skull throbbed as consciousness crept back.

No, not Nigeria.

Washington State, and oh wow, talk about trouble following her. Selah opened her eyes to darkness broken by shafts of sunlight piercing through shattered windows. Smoke drifted through the air, stinging her throat. Her body lay twisted against what used to be one of the train car’s oversized windows, now the floor.

Screams filtered in from somewhere—high-pitched, terrified. A child. More voices joined in, a cacophony of pain and fear echoing through the wreckage.

She pushed herself up, groaned as she pressed a hand to her head. Heat on her forehead, and her hand cooled it. But otherwise, she seemed intact. She sat up and glass fell off her shirt.

“Hello?” Her voice rose, feeble in the chaos.

Her phone. She searched the wan light for it but didn’t see it. Chloe! Oh, she’d be…Selah closed her eyes. God, please get me out of here.

“Selah!” The voice cut through the chaos. “Selah?”

She searched for the owner as she moved to her hands and knees, glass crunching beneath her.

James. The businessman from the dining car. He appeared in the twisted doorway, blood trickling from a cut above his eyebrow.

“Here—I’m here!”

His gaze landed on her, and a full breath rocked through her. Found. Not alone. “Are you okay?”

“I think so,” he said, now crawling toward her. “Can you move?”

She did a quick body check. Everything worked, though her shoulder screamed in protest. “Yeah.”

He reached her. “I smell smoke. I think the train’s on fire. We need to get out. Now.” He extended his hand.

She took it, and his grip turned solid and warm in hers. He made to help her back toward the dining car when she spotted her phone a few feet away, screen a web of cracked glass. She snatched it up, shoved it into her cargo pants’ pocket. The acrid scent of burning plastic filled her nose as James helped her navigate through the wreckage.

The dining car had split open, half of the car attached to the train, the other half ripped away. James guided her around a fallen table, past spilled coffee and broken dishes. “Watch your head,” he said, helping her duck under a twisted metal beam.

They tumbled out through the sheared-off section.

Outside, the morning sun illuminated a scene from her worst nightmares. Train cars scattered across the tracks like discarded toys, a few on their sides, others completely overturned. Smoke rose somewhere up ahead.

The river flowed some hundred yards away, and on the other side, the highway.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know.” James stood beside her, breathing hard, looking back toward the end of the train. Just a few cars down, it looked like the last cars had managed to stay on the track. “How far are we from Wenatchee?”

“Wenatchee?” Oh, right, the previous stop. “I don’t know.”

He was nodding, his hand against his wound, blood seeping around his fingers.

She spotted the waiter from earlier. He sat on the ground, dazed, bloody, and…Oh no. That’s when she spotted the protrusion he held—from his gut. What looked like a piece of metal sheared from the door.

Scrambling up, she limped over to him. “Don’t pull it out.”

He winced. “I⁠—”

“You’ll bleed out. Stay put. We’ll get help.” She shot a glance at James, but he’d gone to—oh no.