It was a fifteen-minute walk from the hospital to the train station. It felt good, moving along in the dark with a purpose, in his element. The station building was an old Spanish-style structure, maybe eighty or a hundred years old. Terracotta roof and white walls and tall sash windows—more mission than station building, to Vincent’s eye. A silver passenger train with Amtrak livery was visible beyond it, the nose projecting past one end of the building, and on the concrete platform was a crowd of maybe a hundred people—fire evacuees from around the county—many of them with luggage that looked close to bursting. He could imagine the panic: the knock at the door, being told they had thirty minutes to leave. Trying to gather the things that counted. Trying to rank the value of the pieces of your life.

He moved through the open doors of the station building and out onto the platform. Hardly anyone was in normal attire, people everywhere bulked with layered clothing, trying to wear what they couldn’t carry. Lots of pale, shell-shocked kids. People holding pet cages and dogs on leashes. Others wandering dazed as if unsure how they’d got here, or just standing dumbfounded on the pale cross of their own shadow cast by the platform lights. People greeting one another with hugs and then talking shakily, that verbal tightrope above the fall into tears. Vincent saw uniformed Cal Fire staff and a couple of Amtrak Police officers over toward the track. The Cal Fire staff had clipboards, noting people’s details as they boarded.

Vincent tailed a group heading for the rear car, grateful for the night-time shadows and the crowds. Amtrak staff were trying to allocate passengers to different areas, but he ignored the instructions and maintained his trajectory for the back of the train.

It took him more than five minutes to cover the final six feet and actually board. An elderly woman in the line ahead evidently required all information to be repeated. A Cal Fire officer patiently explained that they were travelling south for ninety minutes down to an evacuation centre at Vandenberg Air Force Base. They would depart at ten, if everyone got on in an efficient manner. That last prompt seemed to do it. The woman climbed aboard, and the line moved forward, and finally he was on the train. The Cal Fire officer asked him for his name, and Vincent gave it. No reason not to. He apologised for having no ID, and they told him many were in the same position—staff at the Vandenberg end would handle the processing.

Vincent took a seat in the second row back from the door, and stayed at the aisle end of the bench. It gave him a narrow view of the platform from here to the front of the train.

Nine-fifty pm.