Free The Serene Invasion by Eric Brown Page B

footbridge, but there was no sign of pursuit. Periodically they came to the grimy windows, and every time they did so Ana ducked and edged along beneath the window. As they approached the last one, however, she chanced a glance through. Kevi Nan was standing with his back to the window, smoking a bidi and shouting orders to his cohorts. Ana ducked.
    “What?” Prakesh asked, fear in his voice.
    “Kevi,” Ana spat. “But he didn’t see me.”
    “Ana...” Prakesh looked fearful, clinging to the ledge like a baby monkey. “How do we get down from here?”
    “Don’t worry. Follow me and do just what I do, ah-cha?”
    They inched along the ledge, over platform two and approached platform one. At the end of the footbridge was a loose drainpipe, its metal streaked with slime, which descended to the platform. She had once climbed up this to reach the roof of the signal box – but the rickety section of the pipe was above the level of the roof, and now it would be the first section they’d have to negotiate on their descent.
    A minute later they came to the pipe and Ana paused. She looked back at Prakesh and smiled. “We are doing well. They have not found us. Let’s rest before we climb down, ah-cha?”
    Smiling bravely, Prakesh nodded.
    She scanned the platform. A train was due in, and platform vendors were preparing for the rush. Chai-wallahs jostled each other for the best positions, along with kids selling trays of biscuits, cigarettes and lighters.
    “We’ll wait till the train pulls in,” she told Prakesh, “and climb down then.”
    Concealed by the crowds alighting from the train, they would squirm across the platform and through the gap in the fence. In Ana’s mind she was already free, and recounting their escape to their friends in Maidan Park.
    Two minutes later she heard a distant, mournful hoot and the Lucknow Mail eased itself into platform one. Doors sighed open and, amid a cacophony of vendor’s cries, a thousand passengers surged from the carriage and along the platform.
    “Follow me!” Ana cried.
    She clung to the slippery drainpipe and slid down painfully, pausing at each joint to rest and look up. Prakesh was just above her, the corrugated soles of his feet gripping the curve of the pipe.
    She set off again and looked down. The next section of the drainpipe was where it was loose. She looked up and said, “Prakesh, the pipe just below me will not take the weight of both of us. Let me go first, and when I shout up, you follow, ah-cha?”
    “Ah-cha,” he said, peering down at her.
    She reached the loose section and slipped down carefully, feeling the pipe wobble with her weight. She reckoned she was about three metres above the concrete platform, and would have risked jumping but for the constant to-and-fro of commuters directly below.
    She felt herself tip slowly and looked up in time to see the pipe come away from the joint just above her head. For a long second she was held in the perpendicular, like a monkey balancing on a pole, and then the drainpipe dropped outwards like a felled tree. Down below, Ana caught a glimpse of startled commuters moving to avoid her. She let go of the pipe and leaped, falling painfully on the soles of her bare feet and rolling. The pipe clanged down beside her, hitting the concrete like a tubular bell but missing her by a fraction. The crowd flowed around her, muttering their displeasure, but Ana was oblivious.
    She leapt to her feet, looked up and down the platform in case her sudden arrival had alerted Kevi Nan and his men, then peered up.
    Prakesh was clinging tearfully to the pipe high above, his descent halted. There was now a two metre gap in the drainpipe between the boy and the next section of pipe. He peered down at her, eyes wide and wet with tears.
    “Ana,” he called down pitifully, “don’t go!”
    “I won’t!” she cried. “Listen to me – you’ve got to jump, ah-cha? I’ll catch you.”
    “I can’t!”
    “You must. There’s no