TUE, AUGUST 18, 11:03 AM
Anthony Sadler:
Still alive dad we’re in Amsterdam and staying at the A&O hostel. We will be here till Friday
Pastor Sadler:
Okay Son—how are you doing?
Anthony Sadler:
I’m great leaving wifi, talk to you in a bit
Pastor Sadler:
Okay
THU, AUGUST 20, 11:07 PM
Anthony Sadler:
Hi dad so it’s 8am on Friday here right now. We head out of Amsterdam to Paris today at 3pm and will get around 6pm. I’ll text you hotel info when I receive it
Pastor Sadler:
Okay son
FRI AUG 21, 4:43 PM
Anthony Sadler:
Call me dad
THALYS TRAIN #9364
Somewhere in northern France.
Five hundred fifty-four passengers on board.
Spencer is holding two fingers against a pulsing wound in Mark’s neck. As the train races through the countryside at over 150 miles per hour, he’s trying to plug the carotid artery because if he doesn’t, Mark dies.
Anthony watches from above.
If there are screams, Anthony doesn’t hear them; if the sound of wind rushing by the windows is loud, he doesn’t register it. He is totally focused. The terrorist is bound, hog-tied on the floor. Mark groans. Anthony feels as if the people lying there below him are the only other people in the world.
The carpet is covered in blood. There is so much blood. It is astoundingly quiet.
The bell that signals the train doors opening and closing is the only other noise, an eerie, antiseptic chirp. Anthony might as well be in the hushed corridors of a hospital. None of it feels real. Did we just do that?
The train moves along quickly, smoothly—normally—as if they’ve imagined everything that just happened. The motion is almost soothing. No one seems afraid. No one seems here. There are no extraneous people around Anthony except the ones who took part in the drama that just played out. No one except the ones he’s immediately concerned with. He seems to have blocked the rest from his mind.
He’s blocked a lot of things from his mind. Including some important things, like the notion that the terrorist might not have been acting alone—that there might be two more, or five, hiding somewhere on board, about to attack. There’s no good reason to think there’s only one. Still, as far as Anthony’s concerned, there’s only one. He’s become wholly absorbed with only this man, solving the problem that is immediately in front of him, and at the moment it is impossible for him to think about anything he cannot immediately see. His brain has walled itself off like a vault, only occasionally letting light in through the cracks and seams in the metal.
Alek is back—where did Alek go? He disappeared with the machine gun, but he’s back now, collecting ammunition and putting weapons in a bag.
Did that all really just happen?
Alek tried to kill a man. While Spencer was trying to choke him. Alek held the machine gun right up to the terrorist’s temple so that the bullet would have opened his head up and passed right into Spencer. Anthony had been trying to help subdue the terrorist when one of his friends almost killed the other. But the gun didn’t go off. Anthony doesn’t know why.
NO ONE WILL BELIEVE IT. Anthony’s not sure he believes it. It doesn’t feel real; it feels like he slipped into a video game character, his own thoughts not wholly relevant here, as if he were mostly a spectator of even his own actions. It is so quiet, and so calm, it is not yet possible to comprehend the fact that his life has just changed forever.
He takes out his phone and begins filming. He needs proof. For his friends; for himself.
He is not thinking about evidence. What he’s doing doesn’t feel like thinking at all really, it’s more like reacting.
He’d been reacting a moment ago when they were all tying the terrorist up and he heard a noise behind him. A groan? He turned, registered three distinct things all at once—a man in a soaked shirt, blood geysering across the aisle, and the man’s eyes moving toward the ceiling as if something important had gotten stuck up there.
Then the neck slackened, the chin collapsed into the chest, and the man rotated forward out of the seat.
Anthony watched it in high resolution and perfect detail, as if he were able to slow down motion just by observing