The pounding of the rail joints woke me before dawn but I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I drifted. My body fell through the bed, through the train and leaked onto the track. Each splash became an insignificant spike desperately trying to hold down the rail as the wheels past over my remains. The noise grew louder; clack, clack, clack, knock, knock, knock, bang, bang, bang. The wind peeled my skin away. The shaking ripped my bones. I was losing my grip in the ballast. I couldn’t keep it together much longer.

I sat up breathing hard. The train was still, quiet except for the incessant tapping of the rail joints. Peering through the curtain, I saw a Spanish guardsman intermittently banging the butt of his automatic rifle against the window of each compartment as he moved down the train.

It was our wake-up call, on behalf of the Spanish Tourism Board and Generalissimo Franco. A platform light dimly flickered and I involuntarily yawned. Zita was already hurriedly arranging and rearranging the contents of the luggage on the seating area across from the bed.

“Good morning. I trust you slept well?” she asked, glancing around.

“I don’t remember,” I said, rubbing my face in the crook of my good elbow.

“That’s good. Let’s have a peek at your bandage then get you cinched up. We better retouch your face, too.”

We stepped off the train into a growing crowd of tired travelers. A faint, reddish thread separating the horizon from the eastern sky provided the only light. I looked across the barren fields surrounding us. The Pyrenees were not quite visible to the northeast, hanging like long, low clouds above the undulating foothills. The station house blocked the western view but the desolate southern vista made us feel desperately alone. There was no sign of life beyond the tracks, no beasts, no birds, no bugs. The border crossing didn’t belong to any world I knew.

“How much farther is it to Barcelona from the end of the earth here?” Zita asked.

The Hollow Man Excerpt 9

​The Hollow Man   |     The Hollow Man Series, International Espionage​

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