One Bullet, Train

We went out for a good time yesterday so I’m not surprised that head my is throbbing. But it’s not like the normal hangover headache I’m used to. Those usually go away with a tepid glass of water, an aspirin, a greasy biscuit and a couple hours. It feels like someone has split my skull with an axe, my eyes feel like they have been inflated with air, so full that closing them hurts. But holding them open is worse because I am spinning. It feels like I just got off the tilt-o-whirl after three continuous rounds of riding. I did that ride once when I was a kid at the county fair in Nebraska and I hate to say, I barely made it to the trash can. Eyes closed, I think I am dying, I’m convinced I’m coming in and out of consciousness, and the worst part is I don’t know why.

“Breathe Sam”, I whisper to myself. That I must remind myself to do the most natural act is disconcerting. Panic is beginning to sting my face, “NO. BREATHE, Samantha.” I mutter, eyes squeezed shut painfully. I feel like I need to vomit but I am not about to do it on myself where I sit, wherever that is. I am not in the dorm room. Where am I though? I am going to have to figure it out, aren’t I? I need to find a bathroom first. I slowly open one eye, a tip from an old boyfriend, something he used to do when he was too intoxicated. “Okay, manageable…” I whisper to myself and apparently another unconscious girl, (or woman) in the bright blue upholstered chair next to the one I am in. As my one eye comes into focus, I see there are two more women, sitting adjacent in the seats that are facing back towards me and my neighbor. All of them unconscious or looking like they might feel an awful lot like me. They don’t look like me though. I am also young like they appear to be, but they are all dark haired with olive complexions while I’m a pale, freckled-faced strawberry-blonde. I stick out like a sore thumb.

I spent my entire life in the mid-west United States up until a few months ago. I went to a small-town high school and worked hard at my grades to earn a fashion scholarship, landing me in the UK for the last semester. I just knew from about the age of 13 that I had to make it out of that town. I refused to end up like Mom. Nothing was wrong with her at all, really. I just knew I didn’t want to also marry a jock from the same hick town and settle down in an old farmhouse on the outskirts where I would hang all my laundry on the line day in and day out. Living in small town, USA is kind of like the ‘Hotel California’, “You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.” All the pathetic small-towners who had mentally checked out served as a cautionary tale. At least past a certain age, if you’ve stayed, you’re just never going to go anywhere else.

My first semester was very enriching, just the culture alone. I’ve won the lottery with my roommates, Bridgette from Dover and Charlotte who is from New York City. They are creative and smart and neither of them are like any of the girls I knew from home with nothing better to do than gossip. We all have just recently traveled to Paris for a long weekend. Actually, standing under the Arc De Triomphe in a tulle skirt Bridgette made is the last thing I remember. I was looking directly up at the thick structure and pointing up in a silly pose that Charlotte had directed. No pictures can ever prepare you see the real thing. It felt so surreal, the whole of Paris did, actually. So picturesque, so dreamy. I had never seen something so beautiful.

Now, I am looking down now at my own lap. Still, only utilizing one eye. No tulle in sight, but the black leggings I had been wearing beneath them are there, and dirty. I am smudged with streaks of what looks like mud. The white tee I had tucked into the puffy purple skirt is also visibly dirty and the long, beaded necklace I had been wearing is gone. So are my pumps. We had been on an admittedly ridiculous expedition to take ‘Insta-worthy’ photos at the landmarks. As we reasoned, every college age girl visiting Paris would naturally need to do the same. I don’t suppose we ever made it to the Eiffel Tower – we were waiting on it to be dark so we would catch it all lit-up and twinkling. I believe I would remember if we had.

I turn my head to the right now, a glass reflection of myself is vaguely disheveled so I look through it to see a lush landscape whizzing by. It is so quick that it is nearly undecipherable. I can see the greens of nature and the browns of old structures, but I can’t tell what they are or where we are in my condition. The one thing that is for certain, we are on a train. The train we took from London to Paris was similar. High speed. You can see the distant landscapes okay, but when there are trees or buildings in the foreground, they pass in a blur. The quick movement only adds to my dizziness and now I have to close my one eye while I try to make it make sense.

When I used to walk to school or go on bus rides I would space out and forget to think. I would get where I was going with no recollection of how I got there. When something is second nature or routine enough and you don’t need to think about it, your brain moves on to more important things, daydreams or sleep mode. But I don’t think I did that. There was nothing mundane or routine about Paris. The sights, the smells. Everything was new and exciting. We had treated ourselves to some wine and charcuterie just prior to the Arc so I was admittedly, a little buzzed, but nothing too serious.

So now, to figure out why I am on a train with no ticket and no shoes. I am going to start with the bathroom. I won’t be able to do anything else without starting there. I use the armrests to press myself up from the seat. I am unsteady. Never mind the movement of the train, but my body is weak and shaky. Using only one eye again, I look around the cabin. I count five more pods of four seats each, like the group I am in, and every seat is inhabited by a woman. Most appear young like me, college, maybe high school even. One girl stands out because she is blonde. Her head is pressed against the cool glass. My guess is she is trying to find relief from this headache. Everyone looks sick, or they are still sleeping. One woman has a small puddle of something on the front of her shirt. My heart is racing now, from the physical exertion or the situation, I am not sure. Nothing about this is normal or okay. It must be adrenaline kicking in because I feel like I am beginning to wake up. My vision begins to clear, and I can open my second eye.

I step over the legs of the sleeping woman in the seat next to mine and now I am in the industrially carpeted aisle. My legs feel like they are made of silly putty. The door is only one pod of four seats away, I am using the tops of the seats as an intermittent handrail. I hit the exit button and the airlock door opens to the vestibule where the restroom is thankfully, unoccupied, and I move in as quickly as my buttery legs can carry me. Once inside I quickly lock the door before relieving myself. I have decided that I need to throw up. Even though the dizzy feeling has passed some, I have a suspicion that I have been poisoned and I am convinced that the best way to rid myself is to make myself do it.

Looking in the small dingy mirror afterward, I see my face is a wreck. The make-up I had so artfully applied was rubbed and smeared all over my face. ‘Racoon eyes’ is what we call this look. My hair is indeed disheveled, my long curls broken, frizzy, and even bigger than I had intentioned. My eyes themselves are bloodshot. I would assume I had pinkeye by the color of them. I lean over the sink, thirsting to death and wishing to wash out my mouth but I notice a blue plastic placard with a drawing indicating that the train water was not suitable for drinking. I cannot imagine that it can be worse than what I have likely already ingested so I use my hand to make a cup and sip from it, swishing and spitting. I do it again and swallow some. It doesn’t taste good but at least the extreme dryness of my throat is relieved.

I sit back down on the toilet, this time with the lid closed. I need to figure out what is happening and decide what to do next. I guess there is a possibility that I got black out drunk and hopped a train to Amsterdam or somewhere. The girls and I talked about spontaneity, and how fun it would be to just go somewhere on a whim. Our brief Paris trip had been planned since the second week of school. Lots of thought went into where to go, what pictures to take, what to wear. It was exhausting to think so much and then to actually make all the stops on the itinerary. Over a morning croissant, Charlotte joked we all needed to take a vacation from our vacation. But I have to think, if we had done this, we would all be here together. Being that I awoke in a train car with 24 unconscious young women, none of whom I know, I can only assume that I have been kidnapped. I can’t imagine another explanation.

Regrettably, I am not the daughter of a Liam Neeson character. Depending on the time of day, my dad was probably either mowing the 3-acre lawn, reading the newspaper, or scratching his bald head and beer belly in front of a televised baseball game. I let out a sigh. My head is beginning to feel a little less like a split log and a little more like the dull headache you get from skipping your daily caffeine fix. What I wouldn’t give for a shot of expresso. I stretch my neck from side to side. All my muscles are mysteriously sore.

I look out the small window to the whizzing landscape, this time we are far enough from whatever is out there to see the stone buildings of a country town. Country towns… I wonder if small villages in Europe were like the small towns in the US.

I am not able to make out any of the signs, after all they’re not in English. The only hope I would have is maybe in detecting what language they are. Spanish and French for example, look nothing alike, there are some words I would recognize of either of those. Some European countries put an English translation on the important signs at least, but not all countries want to be that accommodating. It would be nice to know which country we were whizzing through. I can’t count on the train’s signage. The trains in Paris were all equipped with “Sortie” signs overall the exits but all the would-be signs I have seen so far on here are wordless, either stripped of identification or utilizing only symbols.

I know I am not going to figure it out in here so I unlatch the bathroom door, illuminating the red light to green on the outside and step out in the small area where the luggage, if we had any, would be. That’s another thing that is suspicious, there is not any luggage on this train car. If any of us were legitimate travelers there would probably be at couple suitcases or a duffle bags between us. I look through to the next car, another one, full. All women again. The back of one of the girls’ heads looks like Bridgette’s distinct, curly artificially-auburn hair. I scan the car for signs of anyone else but all I can see are more sickly and unconscious women, so I slip inside to check.

When I touch the top of her head it dips back into my hands. It is Bridgette. It’s heavy as I catch it and attempt to set her right. She is out, sending me into a brief panic. It occurs to me that she might not even be alive, so I place my finger under her nostrils to feel her warm breath over my fingers and I breathe my own sigh of relief. I glance up and see Charlotte in the corner with her head on the shoulder of a stranger but there is no time to check her because I hear a noise coming from the cart before this one, the opposite direction of mine. I have only a moment to decide, can I get back to my seat unseen or should I duck here, hide under legs or the tray tables or something? They may not notice me here, but they would definitely notice me missing from the next cart if they are checking all the seats.

I use everything I have to propel myself swiftly through the airlock door, bent over and ducking as I clear it, so as not to be seen through the door’s window behind me I head for the next door and then then my seat. When I land there another girl who has woken up notices my arrival. I signal her with my finger over my lips, the universal sign for silence- or at least I think it is. She nodded and I closed my eyes, pretending to sleep. The sound of the door opening causes my heart to jump and eyelashes to flutter. I have to sell this: ‘I am unconscious, I am sleeping like all the others.’

The sound of the footsteps and two voices. Men. They are speaking what sounds like Spanish. It is hard to say. One of them sounds angry. “Puerto” I hear him say, I know that word at least. He saw the door. He knows someone came through it. My heart is pounding in my ears so loud I would swear they could hear it echoing through the whole car, but the men keep moving. I keep my eyes closed, pretending to sleep like I used to as a kid on the car rides home from grandma’s, so that my dad would carry me inside. Even though he wouldn’t likely be much help here, I wish my dad was here to carry me home.

So now I think I have a fair grasp on what is going on here. My friends and I, along with dozens more women were drugged, and kidnapped and are now being trafficked across what looks to still be Europe and by Spanish-speaking men on a high-speed train that shows no signs of slowing down. I might be the only one on here who has figured it out.

Now that I have heard the men pass through the car, I open my eyes to see the beautiful girl who I shushed only a few moments earlier blinking at me in confusion. I speak to her in English,

“Hi, I am Samantha.”

“Hi.” She says, her accent thick “Mi nombre es Elisa”

Elementary Spanish serves me well enough to understand her but the fact she answered me in Spanish leads me to doubt her ability to understand what I am going to say next.

“Elisa, me gusto. We have been kidnapped. Do you understand? Kidnapped. I don’t know how we got here or where we are going. Do you know anything?”

She shakes her head no. I can’t tell if it because she doesn’t understand what I said or if it is because she is answering my question. I shake my own head, mimicking her. Then she speaks.

“I am from Espana. I was at… meal… in Ma-drid” her speech is broken but it is English, and I am so relieved.

I nod encouraging her to continue but she has stopped with a look of concern and confusion, perhaps the weight of our predicament has landed on her too. I begin to speak to her again, but I am distracted by the blonde girl who is stirring. She opens her eyes and immediately vomits on the floor by her feet and then looks around apologetically before she realizes she is also not alone in her condition. She lifts herself up to squat in her seat and scans the car in confusion. Her eyes land on me, seated and looking at her. Then she looks at the rest of the car and a tear slips down her cheek.

“I am Sam, this is Elisa” I say to her as I gesture to the seat across from mine. Elisa waves quickly with a polite upturn in the corner of her mouth. It might have ordinarily been a smile, but a smile might be too much to ask right now.

“My name is Kim.” she said in a Scottish accent. “Where the hell are we?”

“We don’t know” I say, and another tear slides down her rosy cheek.

“We think we have all been kidnapped. What is the last thing you remember?”

“I was having a cocktail at a night spot in Brussels” she said. “I was on Holiday with my mum and little sister. I drank one drink and that is the last thing I remember” she finished through a panicked sob.

I want to console her, but I don’t want to leave my seat and walk across the car in case the men come back. I don’t want them to know I am awake. She looks out the window at the landscape as it whizzes by. The train stations come out of nowhere and visually smack you with a blur of gray and the occasional pop of bright signage. I still can’t read any of them. She shakes her head and closes her eyes. She is dizzy, I know the feeling well.

“We don’t know where we are, and we don’t know where we are going” I say, “One thing, I think I can say for sure, whoever has brought us here has not intentioned anything good for us.” I pause and wait to see if anyone will speak. When they don’t, I continue, “I think we need to come up with a plan to escape.”

The look of bewilderment that changes to acceptance is visual on both of their faces. As more young women are stirring, we communicate what we know until gradually the entire car is full of groggy young women trying to wrap their heads around the facts. Since none of us are secret agents and won’t be climbing atop the high-speed train like Tom Cruise to do reconnaissance and count our adversaries, the plan is to just take out any and every man that walks through the car using the only things we have, ourselves. The men haven’t come back in quite some time though. Normally, I would hope not to ever encounter them again, but now I am hoping they come back before we get where we are going.

We sit silently in our seats for some time pretending to sleep. It might be a half hour before I hear the airlock door and footsteps. No talking this time though, with my eyes closed it sounds like there’s only one. Before the tracks can make it through the cabin, I make the agreed upon signal, a soft whistle. All the young women spring to action lunging themselves at him. There is no time for him to react. His weapon remains on his hip, so I head directly for it while he tries to bat off the arms that claw at his face and beat him over the head. Now, I have a gun.

It only takes a couple of minutes before he is unconscious. I don’t think the gun is needed at the moment, so I tuck it into the back of my leggings. Elisa and a girl named Maria are pulling him by the arms to the back door to the bathroom where I had gone before. Two other girls, whose names I can’t remember now are helping with his legs. We are going to hide him in the restroom and wait for the next guy. But we don’t get to wait long. The four are still trying to maneuver the man’s dead weight around the accordion corner when the next one comes in. He starts to pull at his walkie talkie, indicating to me that there are more than two of them.

Kim kicks his hand, and a walkie talkie he recently loosened from its clip flies up and violently smacks the ceiling before coming back down on his head. It doesn’t knock him out, but it does stun him long enough for me to grab his weapon too. I use it to smack him in the temple and he goes down to his knees before falling to his face. Now four other girls are making work of moving his limp body to the restroom in the vestibule bathroom that comes before our car. Two down, but how many more to go? I hand the second gun to a breathless Elisa as she returns from the other side of the airlock door. She takes it apprehensively. In mid-west, small town America, guns are part of the family. If you’re not shooting wildlife, you’re shooting targets and usually at a young age. I realize that won’t likely be the same for a girl from Spain, but I am a pretty good shot. I shrug and she tucks it into the front of her pants making the same gesture.

One of the girls is reassembling the walkie. It only takes a moment, and we can hear a man’s voice. Maria translates,

“He is asking for Marco”, “Marco, come-in… come-in Marco” she elaborates.

I nod and signal the girls back to their seats. It won’t be long, and they will come to look for him. How long it takes might help us understand the number of traffickers left on the train with us. I don’t think we should discharge the weapons until we know how many are left. There are only 15 bullets in this gun, assuming they haven’t used any, I haven’t had time to check. It isn’t more than five minutes. We had shut of the walkie in anticipation of their arrival.

Two men at once this time. We jump to it. It is harder now because our focus is split between them. As they are being assaulted, I gather two more guns and place them swiftly under my own seat. I take a blow to the side of my face, not by one of the men, but just because I got in the way of one of the women. My ear is ringing. No wonder the other guy went down so fast, these ladies are brutal. Just another few minutes and the men are being dragged, this time to the luggage area rear to our car. Four men down. I hand the other guns to Kim and Maria, both of which respond with some combination of fear, disgust, and confusion. This time I offer a pep talk and show them how to hold them.

Now that we have weapons we are going to walk through the cars. Two groups split up. Half of the women are with me and Maria heading to the front and the other half are with Elisa and Kim, heading to the rear. The forward group will take out all the kidnappers until we reach the conductor and stop the train. The rear group will just clear the cars of any remaining kidnappers.

We work swiftly, Maria, the women and I. We have reached the front now, through five cars full of women. I can only imagine the train is completely full of us and I am angry. I have not needed to use the gun apart from a finishing move to render three more men unconscious. It is surprisingly easy to violently incapacitate these people. What is weird is how I feel good about it. There are two men in the engineer room. I am holding the gun in front of me while Maria opens the door. The men turn around with shock covering their faces. Maria and I don’t know how to stop the train so we decided before we entered that we would make them do it.

She directs them in Spanish, and I hold the gun on them, with a menacing look painted on my face. I don’t know what he is saying but he is not being agreeable. He is clearly stalling, making me suspicious that we could be nearing our destination. I think I might actually need to pull the trigger on this one. The second guy is clearly not a leader and looks much more frightened than the first guy. So I do it. I pull my finger to me and release one bullet. The loud noise instantly deafens me. My ears are screaming. Much louder than when I got hit in the head a few train cars ago. Maria is covering her ears. This was admittedly a very enclosed space to have done this. The conductor slumps over the controls. He is bleeding on them.

We are all momentarily stunned by my choice, including me. The other man has fear in his eyes and rightfully so. I must look crazed. I snap back to addressing the situation and scream at him,

“STOP THE TRAIN, NOW!” and Maria immediately translates in the same volume. He instantly goes to work on the controls. I push the conductor off his seat to the floor where he lands in a slump against the sloped train wall. I hold the gun on the remaining guy, and he continues to work. Elisa appears with Kim behind Maria at the door.

“All clear.” She says with a nod and she leans in to give me a hug.

“Thanks” she whispers in my ringing ear. I hug her back, but the train still hasn’t slowed down.