The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands

by Sarah Brooks

There is a damp feel to the air, despite the heat. Gone is the customary stillness, replaced by the feeling that movement has just stopped, that something is waiting to happen. Her muscles tense. She feels Dima go still, his claws digging through her uniform into her skin. His ears flick back and his nose twitches. And then he begins to growl; a deep, warning noise that seems to rise up from his belly. Slowly, she sets the cat down. “What’s that?” she whispers to him. “What do you smell?” All the fur on his arched back is standing up, and his ears are flattened against his head. He is as disinclined as she is to go further into the shadows. She is the child of the train—she is not frightened of anything. She doesn’t need to run to the Professor like she did when she was small. If there is a bandit here she will expose him. A stowaway is no better than a thief. A stowaway must face train justice. She moves forward, slowly, holding the lamp in front of her, watching the pool of light grow. There is definitely something there, at the far end of the carriage, where a few old barrels still sit. There is a darker shadow that holds itself poised, a tension in its bearing just like Dima’s, as if it were a cornered animal. “You can come out,” she says in Chinese. “I … have bread, and water. If you’re hungry … I can help…” Silence. She repeats the words, in Russian this time. “It’s got seeds in it, the bread … It was made fresh yesterday.” The shadows are still, they are nothing mor...