Peeking out. Looking both ways, her whole body vibrating with nerves. Thrown into a situation she’s never been in before, not even knowing where she is, going on instinct. Not seeing any motion, she looks straight across, searching for a break, for the next car to hide beneath. Closing her eyes, she focuses through the surging adrenaline. Get your shit together, girl, she tells herself. This is what you wanted. Takes a deep breath, opens her eyes, leans her head back in just as legs come from nowhere on the far side of the next track. Yard workers walking up the row. Stopping. Kneeling to search down the row. She fights the urge to bolt from cover and run. Not wanting to get caught, sent to jail. Have everything end before it even begins. She wants to face her life head-on. See this through.

She sees the single track enter off in the distance, splitting into multiple tracks on the left, then the right. Some empty, others with long rows of coupled freight cars. Beyond them, beyond all the steel of rails and locomotives and chain-link fence, are the welcoming woods, soft and green and vibrant.

Anne feels closed in, hunted by predators in the wilderness of the rail yard. If she were to envision an industrial hell world, it would look a lot like this.

Still sucking wind, trying to slow her breath, she feels her jitters turning to outright panic. She asks, “How do we get out of here?”

Cinnamon says, “Breathe. We’re close. Got a few more rows of cars and track to manage, then a stretch of bare ground to cover before the fence. Then it’s the woods. That’s what we want. But they’s gonna be a bull positioned somewhere, trust me. They know to funnel us where they want us to go.”

Trot asks, “How we get by them?”

“We wait as long as it takes. Then we cover ground. Watch. See where they go, and remember who we seen. Sometimes, there’s more than one. So when I give the word, we break for the woods and you-all follow me. The jungle ain’t far.”

Anne feels queasier than ever. Is this a test? To see if, when shit goes sideways, she and Trot will hold up or crumble under the pressure? Or might Cinnamon leave her and Trot as bait for the wolves so she can make her way to the jungle?