Tomorrow - 07 - Other Side of Dawn by John Marsden

Author:John Marsden
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Young Adult, Thriller
ISBN: 9780439858052
Published: 1999-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

The train was there with no warning. I still can’t believe I didn’t hear it, but then in peacetime I could never understand how people got killed on railway crossings. Like, how could you not hear a train? Well, at least now I knew the answer to that. I guess I was concentrating too hard on the job at hand. Dad would have been pleased with me. He was always saying I didn’t concentrate enough.

Anyway, I’d just stepped back from lighting the fuse, when I felt a push of cool air against me and realised a milli-second later that it was the train. Only then did I hear it. It still didn’t have any lights. I sprang back, grabbing my pack, then did a sort of half-turn and a dive down the bank. It wasn’t graceful but it got me clear of the engine. I deliberately kept rolling till the ground levelled out and I couldn’t roll any further.

I got up to run but at that moment the bomb went off. God the fuse had burned fast. Maybe the rush of air from the train caused it to go faster; I really don’t know. So just as I was getting up I was bowled over again. Bowled over and blown away.

By now I should have been used to the power of an explosion. I’d been in enough. But nothing can get you used to them. They’re such a shock to the body, the mind, the place where you have your emotions. It’s like you’ve been chucked into a coffee grinder and someone’s turned it on at full speed. You lose all control over everything. ‘Jump down spin around pick a bale of cotton.’ That’s a line from a song. You’re like an epileptic cotton-picker. You’ve been wired with electrodes and your limbs go into a dance you didn’t choreograph. It’s horrible.

The only good thing about it is that it doesn’t last very long.

I ended up on my back in a dump of bark and leaf litter, my bones loose in my body, my skin stretched and sore. I didn’t know where my pack was. I just knew that I didn’t have it any more. But at least I got a good view of the anarchy above. Bits of bark and branches were flying in all directions. Behind them were lines of white smoke, no patterns to them, just going where they felt like. I saw a thick huge white cloud billowing up in the centre of the wreck, then it started rolling, very fast, towards me. Suddenly I was in a fog and couldn’t make out anything any more.

It gave me the kick up the backside I needed. Before the fog I’d seen enough to know that the engine and the first couple of carriages had gone over the bomb before it blew up. So the people in them were probably OK. But they’d be madder than a staff room on Year 12 Muck-up Day. They’d be swarming after me with every weapon they could find.

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