Free The Serene Invasion by Eric Brown Page A

drainpipe.
    They were on platform ten, in the very centre of the station, and from here they had to make their way to platform one and the unofficial exit in the fence.
    They set off, zigzagging between commuters, earning curses from some and swipes from others. Ana just ducked and laughed and, a safe distance away, turned and pulled a disgusting face.
    They raced up the steps and along the footbridge where, just a minute ago, they had concealed themselves from view. Two minutes now and they would be away from the station and across the Hoogli bridge to Maidan Park, a fine place to play cricket and watch the rich kids fly their kites, but nothing like the station for begging, stealing or finding a safe, warm place to spend the night.
    They came to the end of the footbridge. Stairs descended to their right and left. They turned right, but Prakesh halted her headlong descent. “Stop! Look, Ana...”
    The crowds on the steps were thinning now and Ana saw, staring up at them, the thin sly face of Kevi Nan, Sanjeev’s one-armed minion. He let out a piercing cry and darted up the stairway. Ana and Prakesh turned and ran down the flight of steps at their backs.
    Ana stopped. Ascending the steps, pushing roughly through the commuters, was another of Sanjeev’s greasy henchmen.
    She grabbed Prakesh and they ran back up the steps, turned left and raced along the footbridge.
    She was accustomed to running. Every day someone tried to catch her, arrest her, or chase her away. She was adept at flight – but usually there were only one or two people in pursuit. Now, it seemed, Sanjeev had mobilised his entire street army of pimps, crooks and hangers-on. She heard more than one cry from behind her, and from the stairways ascending to the walkway.
    Ana found Prakesh’s hand and pulled him close as they ran. “I know where to go. Follow me! They won’t dare to come after us!”
    The footbridge was enclosed in a shell of grey corrugated metal, the rectangular panels riveted together. Here and there the rivets had loosened, or been forced, and the corrugated panels flapped. Directly above platform three, Ana knew, there was a gap in the metal.
    She dragged Prakesh through the crowd until they reached the metal cladding and ran along until they came to the vertical gap, little more than a slit between the panels. In one swift movement she knelt and forced the panel outwards, revealing a gap that gave onto a supporting girder.
    “Follow me!” she said, and slipped through.
    She was out on the girder high above platform three, standing with her back to the drop and gripping a perspex window ledge to stop herself from tumbling backwards.
    Prakesh squirmed after her, grimacing as his t-shirt was snagged on a loose rivet. He pulled himself through, tearing his shirt and almost falling forward.
    Ana reached down and steadied him. Wide-eyed with fear, he stood with his back to the drop and edged towards her.
    “This way,” she said, and stride by sideways stride made her way along the length of the footbridge.
    Once before she had evaded a policeman this way, and her escape had become a legend among the kids of the station. The cop, a stick-thin youngster, had managed to squeeze through the gap in pursuit and follow her along the outside of the footbridge. He had gained on her, but he had reckoned without Ana’s daring. They had been directly above platform two, with the train just leaving the station, and Ana had waited until the very last carriage was directly underneath. Then she jumped the three metres to its cambered roof, landed with a jarring impact and lay face-down and trembling as the train flashed beneath the bridge and away from the station, carrying her to safety. She had jumped from the train at its first stop and caught a night train back to Howrah and to a hero’s welcome from her street kid family.
    She hoped they would not be forced to jump onto the roof of a train this time.
    She looked back along the length of the