Chapter 3: Deadly Pursuit (4)
Only the locomotive had an enclosed cabin. The twenty-plus meters behind it were open flatbeds stacked with logs, neatly arranged timber already occupying most of the train, each stack covered with black plastic tarps.
Where was this train headed—
South into Myanmar, or toward a border crossing?
My head throbbed—not just my temples, but the old wound at the back of my skull pulsed too. My lower back ached deep, hurting badly enough that my legs trembled and I had to bend over, hands on knees, to stay steady.
I couldn't walk anymore.
That was the simple truth.
Prolonged malnutrition, injuries, illness, exhaustion... my body's endurance was approaching its absolute limit. The string would probably snap within a day or two.
Continuing deeper into the mountains like this, I might die out there. No matter how I looked at it, this train seemed like my only way out.
Whether it headed south into Myanmar or toward a border crossing, either would be far safer than here. Southern Myanmar was relatively civilized—I could seek help from an embassy. And border towns had many Chinese nationals doing legitimate business; encountering even one could mean rescue.
Timber generally wasn't shipped back into Northern Myanmar—it was for export. The odds were high the train was headed to one of those two destinations.
I had to board this train.
I chose a spot near the front, climbed onto the steel frame about a meter off the ground, lifted the black tarp, and squeezed into the gap between two carloads of logs, several tons of timber pressing on either side.
I sat with my back against damp wood, pulled the plastic tarp tightly over myself, sealing myself inside.
The smell of rain, timber, engine oil, and plastic filled the darkness.
Oddly, it brought a kind of warm, suffocating sense of security.
Clutching my pack, chin on my knees, I endured wave after wave of pain and chills and drifted into a fitful sleep.
Even unconscious, it was restless—I kept jolting awake. The noise and vibration from outside lasted a long time as workers loaded more timber onto the train, securing it and covering it with tarps.
I woke drenched in sweat, shivering violently with cold. I was gasping for breath when someone outside shouted something in a foreign language, and the black tarp in front of me was suddenly ripped open.
No warning. No time to react.
Morning air flooded in. I squinted against the sudden brightness and saw a young man standing on the flatbed, one foot planted on the car floor, a large wrench in his hand, staring at me in open-mouthed shock.
He opened his mouth to say something. I grabbed his sleeve.
"Don't shout."
I exhaled a breath of hot, stale air, trembling hard, and lowered my voice.
"...Don't shout."
The young man frowned, looking down at me, and slowly pried my fingers off.
Done for.
I leaned back and murmured to myself:
"I should go home."
He didn't speak. I kept my head down, my other hand hidden behind the pack, gripping the dagger I'd taken from the hunters.
After several long seconds, he moved first.
A loud rattle—rainwater splashed off the tarp, some of it flying into my eyes. Total darkness engulfed me again. The young man had replaced the cover he'd pulled open.
The car shifted slightly—he'd jumped down to the gravel track. Banging on the car with his wrench to signal departure, he shouted in crisp, fluent Mandarin:
"Inspection's done! Let's go!"
...
For whatever reason, a fellow countryman I'd never met had let me live.
The freight train moved slowly, swaying side to side. It ran for a long time—probably over an hour—before I dared to crack the black tarp open just a sliver to breathe some fresh air.
The train wound through forest. Gradually, the terrain flattened. It began skirting the outskirts of towns and rolling past.
When we passed near a town, I seized a moment of cell signal and quickly turned on one of the hunters' phones. The real-time map confirmed the direction: toward a border crossing.
But the tracks didn't extend all the way to the China-Myanmar border. The train stopped multiple times for breakdown-related disputes and delays. I guessed this was an old railway, perhaps legacy from the British colonial era.
Rickety, with unclear ownership—some segments dug up, possibly controlled by different factions, only negotiated for short-haul freight trading.
After lurching another hundred-plus li in stops and starts, the train halted again. I estimated we weren't far from the end of the line now. Someone would be coming to take over the timber, which would make escape difficult.
The train sat there for two or three hours. I didn't rashly climb down—the driver and the men escorting the timber kept circling the train, making phone calls, smoking, and swapping boasts.
My stomach was knotted with nausea.
Duan Po had given me some candy. The very last piece remained. I unwrapped it and slipped it into my mouth, sucking in silence, waiting for the sickening urge to vomit to ease.
In the past few days—I'd lost track of exactly when it started—headaches, lower back pain, stomach cramps, nausea, recurring fevers... the symptoms had been piling up, getting worse.
Something was very wrong. This wasn't an ordinary illness.
Occasionally my mind would go hazy. To keep from nodding off and giving myself away, I'd press my shaking hands flat and pinch the flesh of my thighs, twisting hard.
Pain kept me awake.
Pain guaranteed that being alive was real, that I'd truly escaped—that it wasn't my imagination.
Pain was my friend.
I crushed my groans, swallowed them, over and over. Along with them, I swallowed again and again the saliva pooling under my tongue from the nausea.
Suffering in silence had become habit.
With a jolt, the railcar shifted. Continuous rocking followed—the train was moving again. A quarter-hour later, I pulled open the tarp. The landscape on both sides of the tracks had changed. The train was gliding through gentle basin country, progressing slowly through misty rain, vast fields of late-harvest crops stretching in the distance.
Now!
The train wasn't moving fast. I flipped over the side, rolled several times on the ground, and took cover behind a low embankment.
The people on the train had no idea. It clanked on, dwindling away, the plume of black coal smoke gradually dissipating into the clear autumn sky.
Silence settled around me. I lay flat on the ground, panting for a few breaths before slowly sitting up.
Vertical distance to the border: less than fifty kilometers.
Almost there... this time, truly almost there.