On the Train

Third Reich, winter of 1943. Fascist ideology has turned to boot and rifle, tank and rail, pulling more and more of Europe into its borders and cleansing it of impurities and undesirables.

The Nazis are organized, industrious, systematic. They capture, sort, and ship the riffraff to camps by rail. Depending on their label, they are forced to feed the war machine as laborers if they are deemed useful, or the crematorium smoke stacks if they are not.

Joachim Rosen finds himself on such a train. He survived the last camp by being careful and unremarkable, and is grimly determined to survive the next the same way. But his plans and his resolve are shaken when another prisoner recognizes him from his life before and threatens him with dangerous truth, reckless hope.

There were, after all, always those who would not comply; those who chose to resist the machine—to fight, to flee, to die. On that slow and inevitable track, Joachim must choose whether to cling to his careful plan, or reclaim his humanity with a simple, courageous, possibly fatal gesture. Time is running out. He is reaching his final destination, on the train.

This short story originally appeared in the FIRST THRILLS anthology, edited by Lee Child, and is approximately 15 pages long.