Never The End

Chapter 33 - Escaping

My legs buckled as we raced into the train station. There was a bustling crowd, everyone doing something; going somewhere. Jason pulled his hood up, just covering his face. I looked to the floor, trying to avoid catching anyone's eye. Paranoia was making it really hard to have the confidence to push past people.

We were almost running to get to the bench and wait for the train. All the blood drained from my body until I felt nothing. Each breath took all my energy, making each harder than the last. I had an agonising stitch - worse than I'd ever had before. Grabbing my side, I sat on the bench, sprawling out until I was almost lying across it.

Jason slumped onto a bench next to me.

As I looked around, I noticed people staring. I was still paranoid.... no one else knew what we'd done. Or did they? For all I knew, there could be a police officer ready to take us down standing by the platform. I had no idea. Scanning the area, I realised there was no one nearby who was even paying us the slightest bit of attention.

A loud rumbling pierced my ears as a large, yellow train stormed into view. "This is the one babe." Jason yelled over the roaring noise.

He tried to pull me up but my limbs went to jelly. My brain span as I tried to move my legs. Sweat poured down my face from the physical strain I was going through. I managed to haul myself up, with the support of Jason. As I leant against him, I felt his legs buckle slightly under my weight.

He helped me hobble a few meters before my pain got too much for me. "Jason, I can't."

"You can, just lean on me." He pulled my arm over his shoulder.

"No, really Jason. I think my leg is broken. It really hurts."

"It's not broken, babe. It's probably just swollen or something. Come here."

Before I could argue, he reached down under my legs and hooked his arms around me, before lifting me up and walking over to the train. As soon as the door opened, we boarded He grunted as he had to lift me higher to allow him to step across the gap, onto the train. I was carefully lowered onto a damp chair with chewing gum stuck to the poorly sown lining. It didn't matter; I was warm, safe; comfortable.

“Tickets please.”

Oh God. I knew full well that we hadn’t bought any tickets. I looked at Jason. He reached into his pocket. His face creased in confusion. He fumbled round for a moment. “Where is it?” He mumbled under his breath. “I’m so sorry sir but I think it must’ve fallen out when we ran onto the train. We nearly missed it so we were in a rush.”

“Would you like to buy a ticket then?”

“The thing is we only brought a fiver with us which we spent on the tickets.”

“You don’t expect me to believe that you only bought five pounds with you do you?”

“We’re going to visit my mum in hospital. We only needed five pounds... for the train.” He looked at his fingers. He grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “I’m sorry; we’ll get off at the next stop.”

The ticket collector nodded briefly. “Just make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

We watched him as he continued to hassle other train riders for their tickets. Everyone obliged. As we were at the back of the carriage, we didn’t have to wait long until he’d left the room.

“Jason, that was brilliant!”

He grinned. “Even in emergencies, I’m still a good liar.” He popped his collar and leant back.

“What are we going to do though? We said we’d get off at the next stop. We don’t even know what stop that is.”

“Yes we do. This train only stops once anyway – it’s a direct train!”

I widened my mouth in awe. “You’re amazing you know that don’t you?”

“Well, it has been said before.”

I smiled and leant my head against his shoulder. Despite what’d just happened, at that moment I felt completely safe. I knew that he would protect me no matter what. I didn’t know what we were going to do but I didn’t care.

“Get some sleep, you look shattered.”

I was completely exhausted. I huddled closer to Jason and wrapped my front arm round his waist. He put his arm over my hand and stroked my hair. “Don’t let the bed bugs bite.” He whispered softly into my ear.