A New Faith: Part 3: Chapter 34

That’s when she saw the tall black woman standing just behind Shahid’s followers. 

Where had she seen her? 

The woman was looking straight at Alia. Several scenes flashed across Alia’s mind. The first time she had seen this woman was on the morning they had found Nadeem’s body in the park. Alia had gone back to the crime scene to check on something and had seen this woman lurking on the sidewalk across the street from the park. The second time was when Shahid had started the riot in the warehouse district. This was that same woman who had quietly backed away from the rioters and vanished. In the statements taken from the rioters, several had described her as being with Shahid when the quarrel had turned violent. When Shahid was asked about her, he had seemed genuinely puzzled. He had shrugged and said that he had no idea who they were talking about. This was the third time Alia was seeing her. This was no coincidence! 

Then Alia remembered from the various witness statements that a large black woman had been seen delivering some equipment at the concert location a few days before Nadeem was killed. Her team had flagged this, but she had not seen any interview of the woman. They had not been able to track her down. What was her name again? Salma? No - Sara! Somewhere in the statements from the patrons at Shahid’s cafe, there was also a mention of a tall black woman who had come in a couple of times to check out the exhibits. 

Something clicked in Alia’s mind. Maybe it was a detective’s instinct. She just knew that Sara was the one she had been hunting. There was this moment of clarity when it all seemed to make sense. Alia couldn’t have articulated why she knew that Sara was Nadeem’s killer. But she knew. And she had learned to trust her instincts. There was something suspicious about the way Sara had moved or looked every time Alia had come across her.

Alia stared right back at the woman and in that instant Sara knew that Alia knew. Her expression changed in a flash. It rotated through fear, despair, and anger as Sara looked around for an escape route. She had to immediately get away from Alia! It was as if Alia was able to read Sara’s mind like a book. Alia reached out her hand toward Sara and shouted, “Hey you… STOP!” But Sara took off through a gap that had opened up in the crowd behind her. Alia sidestepped the smoking corpse of Shahid and started pushing through the crowd toward where Sara had gone. 

There was complete pandemonium. The cruel self-immolation of Shahid had broken the spell the crowd was under. Everyone was now rushing away from the scene in whatever direction they could. Within a few moments the square had emptied out and the only people remaining were the police. Led by Sonia, they were rounding up Shahid’s followers. They were in such a shock that they surrendered. Whatever Shahid had said to them had died with him. They hung their head in shame. 

While Sara was tall and big, she was definitely not fleet-footed. Alia was swiftly gaining ground on her. Sara knew that she had acted foolishly in showing her face at the riot. When she first saw Shahid’s online rant about Irfan’s death, all she had thought about was how to escalate this into another riot to further divert the attention of the police. 

She was ashamed to admit that the accident had evoked a momentary feeling of relief in her mind instead of pity for Irfan. What was wrong with her?! She loved to help people. So much so that she had made that the sole purpose of her life. The reason she was training to be a nurse and not a doctor was because she felt that a nurse is the one who truly cares for the patients. Doctors were like mechanics. They focused on the medical problem and not the person. The nurse is the one who looks after the patient with kindness. Nurtures them. And here she was feverishly seeking a way to escalate a tragic death into a far larger tragedy. 

Shahid had been a mere tool in her hand. His almost child-like gullibility would have been endearing to her in any other context. But ever since she had first seen his paranoid reaction to Nadeem’s death, she had taken full advantage of his fears by subtly feeding him ever more extreme provocations. At no point had she explicitly suggested any action to him. She had merely shared what others were doing on his social media feed. The magic of algorithms underpinning the social media feed had done the rest. Shahid had gone down the rabbit hole of jihad and had kept on going. 

It was as if she had activated a robot with the flip of a switch. Every now and then she had to feed this robot to ensure that the robot continued to grow more and more violent. She had not been responsible for the death of Santosh in any way. At that time, she hadn’t gotten a hang of the various things on social media. But, she had a strong suspicion that it was Shahid who had executed Santosh. She had seen glimpses of similar beheadings on his social feed. 

It was not just that Shahid was like a scared child but he was also somewhat dim. In a man’s body, this combination of fear and stupidity can be a deadly combination if appropriately manipulated. She and the social media algorithms had done just that. The problem was that she had overplayed her hand. She had explicitly egged on Shahid as he had picked online fights with the Jewish and Christian people. Sara was the one who had shared a couple of videos of mobs burning down churches in Pakistan on his social media feed. She had seen several other followers join him and to openly plan an attack.  

It was almost impossible to find incendiary material in Sequoia. The sole energy source in Sequoia was electricity. There was no need for gas or oil at all. Using paint thinners was a brilliant idea of one of Shahid’s followers. Even then, they struggled to come up with a way to ignite it. There were no lighters or matches lying around. Someone got creative and managed to use the induction stove to get some piece of paper smoldering and then used that to ignite the thinner. Full marks for effort and creativity, thought Sara. Too bad, it was not being deployed for something worthwhile. 

At the last moment, she had decided to join up with Shahid’s group and go to the religious district. She had been curious to see how far they were willing to go. She couldn’t really believe that they would actually act out their plan. That curiosity had gotten her on Alia’s radar. That was so stupid! She should have stayed back in the crowd to observe. But like a moth pulled to a light, she had been pulled toward the spectacle that was to become Shahid’s death. Now she was in trouble. She had to shake off Alia, for starters. She was quite sure that Alia didn’t know who she was, where she lived, and what work she did. She was also confident that she had not left any material traces anywhere when she had killed Nadeem. 

All these thoughts were rushing through Sara’s mind as she ran away from Alia. It was quite apparent that there were not many places to hide in Sequoia. She couldn’t barge into any building as that would just limit her options. Stores, shops, and restaurants would be too crowded and slow her down. More importantly, there was no way she was going to out-run Alia. Damn that cop! Alia was literally bounding over barriers like a champion athlete. Maybe, she did that in her spare time. 

Something flickered in Sara’s consciousness. She knew this area vaguely. The religious district was close to one of the corners of Sequoia and just beyond it was the railway station. In her delivery work, she had been there to pick up and drop off freight pallets. The train was fully automated. It came from the coast to Sequoia and from there it made a full circuit of the other two cities along the sides of a triangle and passed via Sequoia back to the port. This was the sole freight connection of the three cities with the rest of the world. She knew that the train, usually, came from the port at night. If it had been going toward the port, then the geofencing alarm would have been tripped because she would be leaving the designated zone. Then Alia would know who she was and it would only be a matter of time before Alia put together the evidence to charge her with Nadeem’s murder. But if the train went on to the other cities, then the geofence alarm won’t be triggered and she would have a chance to vanish again. And an electric train would certainly outrun Alia. If only she could get on it. 

Sara veered to her right and put all her heart in one last sprint to the station. Alia was like an automaton. She simply upped her pace. It was barely hundred meters to the station and Sara saw that the train had almost finished unloading and the robots were starting to close up the compartments. She summoned every particle of energy and ran like hell. Her very existence depended on her escaping Alia. Her life was flashing through her mind when she reached the robots and with one last titanic lunge she leapt through a closing door into one of the compartments that had recently been emptied. She heard the door snap close and collapsed on the floor, completely winded. 

Within a few moments, she felt the lurch as the train moved. She was still gasping for breath, but she was relieved. She had managed to escape from Alia’s clutches. She had no idea what was going to happen next. She would worry about that later. Maybe, all she had to do was simply go around the train’s circuit and get out when the train passed through Sequoia again. Or maybe she could start a new life in one of the other cities. She was not sure if that could work. But then, there were three million people in each of those cities. No one would notice a new face. Maybe, she could even go back and forth between the two cities for a few days and then when things had died down in Sequoia come back by the train at a later date. Yes, that felt like a reasonable plan. She started to relax. 

The train must have been accelerating rapidly because Sara could feel herself being pressed back. That’s when she heard the thump on the ceiling of her compartment. Maybe, it was just something flapping around the compartment. Maybe, it was a branch of a tree hitting the train. Who knew what kind of terrain the railway traversed, anyway. It was dark inside the compartment but there were some dim lights embedded in the walls - probably, to guide the robots around. As her eyes got accustomed to the misty interior of the compartment, she saw that it was quite large. About 20 meters long and 5 meters wide. It was mostly empty but there were a few pallets stacked up at one end of the compartment. She was - in fact - leaning against one of them. 

There was another thump from the other end of the compartment. This one was unmistakable. It was no branch. Someone was trying to open the trapdoor set in the ceiling. Damn her! Damn her! It had to be Alia. Somehow she must have clung to the train and then climbed up to the top. Sara panicked all over again. She was trapped. The doors were closed and even if she could somehow get them open, she was too afraid to jump from the fast train. 

She desperately looked around and noticed that there was another trapdoor above the stack of the pallets she was leaning against. She scrambled up and pushed hard at the trapdoor but it did not budge. Stupid! Stupid! It had probably never been opened in a long time and was jammed shut. She braced against the stack of pallets and pushed with her back into the trapdoor. Abruptly, the trapdoor opened and she almost got pulled out. The hinge was on the back-side of the trapdoor. With the airflow along the roof, the first tiny gap had been sufficient to snap open the trapdoor. 

A blast of air hit Sara’s face and she gingerly raised her head out through the opening. Instantly, her eyes started streaming because of the airflow. It was like being in a blizzard. It was not particularly cold but the air speed was such that it took her breath away. She debated whether this was a good idea. Just then, she felt a hand clutch at her ankle. By this time, Alia had managed to get inside the compartment from the other trapdoor on top of that compartment. She had spied Sara’s legs sticking out from under the trapdoor at the other end. 

Sara kicked hard and felt the hand slip off. She hoisted herself up and out of the opening. She was leaning heavily against the open trapdoor and prayed that it wouldn’t be ripped off. She crouched close to the surface of the roof and scrabbled around for something to hold onto. There was no way anyone could have stood on top of the train at that speed without getting knocked off. She was going to have to crawl. Her fingers found a handle a few centimeters away. She gripped it with both hands tightly and slowly leaned forward, away from the trapdoor. Cautiously, she took off her left hand from the handle and stretched forward. Even though it was not totally dark, she could barely see anything because her eyes continued to stream. She had to scrunch them so much that she might as well have closed them. That would have been infinitely better than trying to keep them open and see anything. 

About half a meter away, her left hand snagged the next handle. Clearly, the top of the compartments had handles built into them. God knows why. Maybe it was for robots to crawl around when cleaning the outside of the train. She sighed, more in her imagination, than in reality. She had no idea how she was breathing in that buffeting slipstream. She may not be agile, but Sara was big and heavy. Her heaviness had been a disadvantage when she was trying to run away from Alia, but now it was keeping her from getting knocked off the train. And she was strong. The years of lugging around freight had built up her muscles. She had no problem in single-handedly hauling Nadeem around. 

She put her head down and started climbing horizontally across the roof of the train. She knew that Alia was bound to follow her. She had decided to go against the airflow precisely because it would be harder for Alia to follow her. For starters, Alia wouldn’t be able to see her clearly. More importantly, Alia could have used the air flow to her advantage in gaining ground on Sara. This way, Sara had instinctively felt that she had the advantage on the lean Alia. All she could hope was that Alia would be knocked off the train. There it was, again. She was hoping for an innocent person’s death. Something was really messed up with her. 

After a few meters, Sara mostly felt rather than saw the front edge of the compartment. Right at the edge of the compartment, Sara sneaked a glance behind and cursed under her breath. Yes, Alia was very much still in pursuit. Although, as she had expected, Alia was most definitely making heavy weather of the chase. Her lesser weight meant that her arms and legs had to do a lot more work than Sara’s. Sara looked ahead and spotted the handles continuing on the top of the next compartment. She was going to have to stretch quite a bit, though, as the last handle on the compartment she was on and the first handle on the next compartment were easily more than a meter apart. More like two meters. This was going to be extremely dangerous. But then, there was no other choice! 

Sara grabbed the last handle with both hands and started pivoting her body around it so that she could grab the edge of the compartment by her leg. That way she could be perpendicular to the train and then stretch out her hand to grab the handle on the next compartment. The two compartments wobbled quite a bit relative to each other. It took her at least three tries to swing her free hand all the way across and catch the next handle. She finally caught it and for a few scary moments felt her body being twisted violently between the two wobbling compartments. She was forced to let go of the handle behind her and hoped that she could hold on to the handle on the next compartment with one hand with all the wobbling. She felt her body slam against the next compartment and put all her strength in stretching her free hand to grab the same handle with the other one. Somehow she got hold of it and pulled herself onto the next compartment. 

There was no way she was going to try this again with the next compartment. She had to get into this compartment and hope that Alia wouldn’t be able to survive this deadly maneuver from one compartment to the next. Better still, Alia would be too scared to even try. Sara shook her head to clear the blinding pain she had felt when her body had slammed against the compartment. She must have hit her head too. 

The moment she came to the first trapdoor, Sara started hitting at the latch to get it open. She had a plan to deal with Alia. She was going to get in and then put some serious weight on it from the inside to make sure that Alia wouldn’t be able to open it. If need be, she would hang on to the bottom of the trapdoor in order to prevent Alia from gaining access. 

Alia had still not reached the edge of the compartment. Sara got the trapdoor open with a few choice blows to the lever and wrestled it open as the hinge was located toward the front of the train. She got in and slammed it shut. She was crouching on top of a stack. Finally, she could breathe normally. She gingerly checked herself for any broken bones or open wounds. Everything seemed okay. There were bound to be some ugly bruises tomorrow. But hey, she was black and bruises are invisible on black skin! 

She couldn’t find anything that could hold fast the trapdoor and decided that she was just going to have to use her own body weight to deny Alia entry. She firmly gripped the inside handle of the trapdoor, but relaxed for the moment. There was no need to hold tight until she felt the tug from Alia. Her panic subsided. She definitely felt safer now that she was inside the compartment and Alia was outside. The advantage was with her and she was going to make damn sure that she made it count for all it was worth. 

At least a few minutes had gone by and there still was no tug from the other side of the trapdoor. Hopefully, Alia had been deterred by the deadly gap between the two compartments. Sara had never wanted anyone to die. Well, except Nadeem, that is.  

For sure, she didn’t want Alia to die. In fact, she liked Alia. This young woman, just like her in most respects, seemed to be a good person, trying to do the right thing. Do her job. Why would Sara wish her dead. Another few minutes passed and Sara had started to worry that something bad had happened to Alia. She wondered if she should take a quick peek to see what the situation up top was. But maybe Alia was waiting for Sara to do exactly that and the moment Sara pushed up the trapdoor, Alia would be on it in a flash and get it open. Ughh… this was not feeling right. 

While Sara was imagining all kind of scenarios, Alia had correctly guessed that Sara would have barricaded the trapdoor and had proceeded as swiftly as possible to the second trapdoor located at the farther end of the compartment. She had pulled up that trapdoor and crept in quietly. She had to use all her strength to avoid having the trapdoor snap open in the slipstream and then slamming it shut against the airflow. She had landed on top of another stack and there was no sign of Sara anywhere. So far so good. She couldn’t know for sure, but she still felt confident that Sara had not been alerted of her entry in the compartment. 

Alia climbed down the stack and pressed flat into a dark corner. She had to get her heartbeat down to a reasonable level. The short but very strenuous journey on the roof of the train had her gasping. Her eyes had been watering all along. Catching her breath also allowed her the time to get her eyes dry and more importantly used to the gloomy interior space of the compartment. After a couple of minutes she slid along the stacks in the direction of where she expected Sara to be. Alia had pulled out a pair of handcuffs and kept them ready to snap on Sara’s wrists if she was lucky enough to catch her unawares. 

The compartment appeared to be more or less full. There were a few gaps where some of the stacks had been removed. Because of the stacks, Alia couldn’t really see where the trapdoor was and what Sara’s position was until she was almost beneath it. Cautiously, she peeked around the corner of a stack and looked up to see Sara’s torso sticking out over the stack. Sara was lying on her back on the top of the stack. Her head and shoulders were sticking out as she had to stretch out and grab the trapdoor’s handle from inside. Carefully, Alia formulated her strategy. She was going to have to climb the stack and then reach out to snap the handcuff on Sara’s wrists without making a sound. If Sara became aware of Alia, all she had to do was drop down on top of Alia. And Sara’s weight was sufficient to badly hurt Alia. So Alia, started climbing the stack a good couple of feet away from Sara. 

The train seemed to be lurching a lot more than before. Probably, it had been doing this all along, just that Alia had not noticed it. She was worrying about other important things - like not falling off and dying. Sara continued to be oblivious to Alia’s machinations. When Alia sensed that Sara’s wrist was within reach, she took a deep breath and stretched her arm all the way and in one smooth motion snapped the handcuff on Sara’s left wrist. 

Sara just stared at the handcuff that had appeared like magic. In that instant, three things happened - the train compartment bounced up yet again, Sara released her grip of the trapdoor handle, and Alia lost her balance. The result was that Alia who was still holding the other loop of the handcuff ended up yanking Sara right off the stack as she fell down. Alia let go off the handcuff as she tried to use both her arms to break her fall. Which she managed to do, but one of Sara’s legs landed heavily on her back as she fell down next to Alia. 

Like a cat, Alia sprang back on her legs and got in a defensive stance. Sara was utterly winded, both physically and psychologically. Somehow Alia had managed to get inside the compartment and handcuffed her without her being none the wiser. Wait though! The handcuff was on her left wrist but her right hand could still move freely. Ahaa! So Alia had fallen before she could snap the second loop on the right wrist. With that positive realization, Sara got up as quickly as she could and peered into the gloom. 

A swift kick swung through her field of vision, narrowly missing her face. Sara roared and lashed out with her fists. There was a satisfying crunch as one of her punches connected with something fleshy. That was followed by Alia’s grunt and then the next kick caught Sara squarely in her midriff. Ooof! It sent her crashing against one of the stacks. That hurt! Alia was trained and more importantly, not even remotely daunted by the advantage with respect to height, reach, and weight that Sara had over her. 

Sara struggled against the collapsed box loaded on to the stack. As her hand sought something to grab onto and pull herself to her feet, she felt a wooden rod. She yanked it out of its package as she got up and hefted it in her hand. Both her and Alia’s eyes had now gotten fully accustomed to the dim lighting inside the compartment. The survival instinct had fully kicked in and all of their senses were heightened. They saw each other as clearly as if they were standing in broad daylight. Each one was trying to assess their options. 

Neither had any idea of how far the train was from its next stop. What Sara had gotten her hands on was the handle of rake. She twirled the rake in her large hands and tried to take a swing at Alia’s head. It was a bit half-hearted. Sara knew that the teeth of the rake were sharp enough to cause a serious injury, even killing Alia. And also, there was not much space to swing the long handle of the rake without it getting tangled in packages. She jabbed at Alia to keep her at a distance as she tried to gauge from the corner of her eyes if there was a way to box Alia in somewhere until the train stopped. 

Alia was getting a bit frustrated to have to deal with the rake in such a tight space. As they circled each other warily, Alia almost tripped over something. It was the handle of another gardening implement. This time, a spade. With her right foot, Alia flipped up the handle expertly in her hands. Now both of them had weapons and little space to do much damage with them. It was a classic stalemate. Each waiting for the other to make that one fatal mistake that would give the other the advantage in this tableau. Alia tried a couple of feints with the spade, unsuccessfully. Sara was able to fend those off however ungainly it might have looked. She was not here to score points for style. 

All she wanted to do was get away from Alia. Sara pulled back the rake in a sharp movement to try to get some momentum going, when the back end of the handle hit something hard and there was the sound of something breaking. And then the door of the compartment started opening. Suddenly, Sara’s back was being buffeted with the air that was barreling into the compartment from the partially open door. The door seemed to be stuck after opening a few centimeters. 

Sara was scared. In desperation, she lunged at Alia but the sharp edge of the spade in Alia’s hand kept her pinned at the door. It was not just the wind gusting in, Sara realized. Along with it, big wet drops of rain were also getting in. For a second, she thanked her stars that it had not been raining while she was on top of the train. Else, her acrobatics would have been infinitely more difficult. Coming to her current predicament though, the rain was starting to make the floor slick and she had to make sure she was sliding on it instead of stepping around. A sudden bolt of lightning illuminated the entire compartment and especially, Alia’s face. It was a ruthless face, calmly calculating the odds of different tactics to overpower Sara. The rumble following the lightning was not far behind and Sara’s shoulders drooped a bit as the sound lashed her. 

Sara tried again and this time she was almost able to slip to the far side, away from the halfway open door. But at the last minute her left foot slipped and with a cry she almost found herself doing a full-blown split. The rake slipped from her hand as she tried to recover her balance. She fell down awkwardly and could feel her quads hurting because of a pulled muscle. She kneeled down trying to grab the rake again. But it was too late! Alia had taken full advantage of her misstep and leapt forward. She kicked away the rake and swung the shovel above her head in a threatening manner. There was nowhere to go for Sara and nothing to do, but surrender. This time the lightning must have practically struck next to the train because the blinding light and thunder clap assaulted them both in the same instant. Their skin tingled with static electricity.