“We’re never safe. The man is always trying to keep us down. Tread on our freedoms. Fucking pigs.”

“Well,” Cinnamon says, “until a train comes, we got no other options but to lay low, keep our eyes and ears open.”

“You’re probably right,” Dredd replies. “We hide and we wait. It’s not like we can fight back without more bodies.”

“Fighting never solves anything,” says Cinnamon. “Movement is the best course of action.”

He draws on the silence, doesn’t offer a rebuttal.

Everyone stays hunkered down, one eye closed, the other open. Ears listening for footfalls. But they never come. All that comes is the morning dew, and nervous yawns anticipating the law to come barreling through the woods at any moment. The thin predawn light creeps in, turning the woods gray and the sky pink. A robin starts up; other birds take up the hue and cry, waking the world around them. Then, below the growing hubbub of chirps and caws, the distant crawl of a train. Something positive. Their escape.

Cinnamon starts shaking everyone awake. Stiff limbs unfold, working out the kinks, inciting the blood to circulate. Bodies get upright, emerging from their camouflage. Then everyone runs out of the wilderness, toward the berm of pale rocks supporting the rails.

Kneeling, Anne lays her hand on the cold iron. She feels the faint, almost subliminal vibration, which grows until she knows she is not imagining it. The train draws nearer, louder, closing the distance.

Cinnamon looks back to the woods. Seeing everyone standing out in the open, she waves at them to fall back, to kneel and hide and avoid drawing the train crew’s attention. She squeezes Anne’s hand, and Anne feels her warmth. Their eyes meet; they smile. Canary holds her brother and sister, one on each side, their little hands fidgeting with the sprouting weeds and fallen leaves. Trot sits beside Anne, and Dredd is alone, sulking in his own negativity. Everyone’s nerves are taut. There’s a certain energy that builds, anticipating a train’s passage. It never wanes, never gets old or commonplace. It is a rush of stormy weather traveling through your body.