The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands

by Sarah Brooks

She sniffs. How she has missed these acrid smells, the creaking mechanics of her train, the old familiar terror and excitement, the noise—so constant that she ceases to hear it until it is gone. How she has longed, these past months, for movement, for speed; she has craved it like the red-eyed men in Third crave liquor, gasping for the last drops from the jar, maddened to find it empty. But now that they are moving again the air vibrates with tension. She has heard the whispers among the crew. Too soon. Too soon for the train to ride again, why not wait for winter and the safer passage through the snow, when the land is drowsy with the cold and danger cannot hide amidst the trees? In summer the land is wakeful, hungry. It is too soon to take the risk. Not soon enough for her. But then again, she is too in love with risk, Alexei always says. “And who on this train isn’t?” she replies, and he has to acknowledge the truth of it; that they are—all of them—half mad with Wastelands sickness already, with a longing and fear that they would struggle to articulate but which beckons them to the Trans-Siberia Company. They are the ones who hear the Wastelands from the safety of their cities and homes, who cannot resist the call of the great train. They present themselves at the grand Company offices in their London headquarters, or on Baiyun Road or Velikaya Street, knock on the famous wood-paneled doors and stand before unsmiling, gray-haired men who regard them sternly and demand t...