That night, I dreamed that my body was cracking from within and slowly falling apart, but those pieces of flesh turned into screws, stones, glass—anything but parts of me. I would desperately gather them up and try, without success, to put them back into my body. The cracks spread across my arms and legs, causing me to collapse to the ground, unable to move. Soon, the cracks reached my face and slowly shattered it; I watched as my teeth, my nose, and even my eyes broke apart and transformed into something that was not me.
And then I heard a scream in the distance and woke up.
I looked around, and dawn was breaking. For a moment, the walls and bunks around me seemed completely unfamiliar, so I got out of bed and gathered a bit of magic in case someone tried to attack me. Then I remembered the place and calmed down a little—or at least until I realized that the bag where I'd kept my food was gone. Someone must have stolen it while I slept.
Well, there was nothing I could do about it. In the distance, I could hear voices and the sound of running water. I left the room, following that sound, and found a bunch of people waiting in line for the restroom. I walked towards the end of it and waited. When my turn came, I went in. The restroom had three sinks and four occupied stalls. I headed to the only available sink, turned on the tap to splash my face, and saw my reflection. I looked quite thin, covered in dirt and sweat. I reeked even worse than before. I took off my shirt and saw several stained bandages covering my body. I removed them to examine the wounds I had sustained in the battle against Lancel; they hadn't fully healed yet. I touched one with my fingertip, and a wave of pain surged through my entire body. Some of them were oozing a bit of foul-smelling pus.
At that moment, I felt relieved that almost all the wounds were on my chest and stomach—with very few on my legs—meaning I could continue walking many hours without too many complications. Otherwise, I would have been forced to spend some of the bit of energy I had left healing myself.
One of the migrants occupying another sink had bandages covering his arms and part of his head. Unlike mine, his were clean.
"Excuse me," I approached him. "Is there an infirmary here?"
"From here, turn right and go to the end of the hallway," he told me.
"Thanks," I replied, and followed his directions. As expected, there was a line in front of the door, so I went to the end of it and waited. Hunger and thirst came back, though at least I wasn't tired anymore.
When I entered the infirmary, I saw several stretchers with men, pregnant women, and even children suffering from various injuries. Some had only bandages on their bodies, but others had amputated limbs and showed signs of torture.
Some of them were whispering.
They mentioned the name Ash more than once.
"Take a seat," a doctor said to me from the back of the room. I went over and sat in the chair facing him. I took off my shirt and showed him my bandages. Without saying a word, he removed them one by one, cleaned and disinfected my wounds, and changed the bandages.
"Take care of these," he gave me a pair of new bandages.
"Thank you so much for everything, doctor," I told him and left so as not to block the line.
I walked down the corridors and headed toward the kitchen. That was where it was the most crowded. I scanned the faces around me, trying to recall whom I had seen the day before, but I recognized only a few. I had a vague sense of having seen some of them previously, yet most were complete strangers to me. I did not see the people who were searching for their loved ones; both they and the faces in the photographs hanging around their necks remained blurred in my memory—their features blending together or merging with those of other people I had seen. I remembered, for instance, that one of them had a thick mustache and gaunt cheeks, but I couldn't recall who it was. Or I would doubt whether the nose I pictured on one of them was the right one or if it actually belonged to someone else.
Probably, even if I saw those missing people, I wouldn't recognize them.
"Here you go, son," the volunteer said, snapping me back to reality. I was at the front of the line by then, and he was holding out a bag just like the one from the day before. "Do you want some coffee?" he asked. I nodded; that caffeine would be a huge help for the rest of my journey. He handed me a Styrofoam cup filled with hot black coffee.
"Thanks," I said and stepped out of line.
I headed toward the dining hall, and among the people there, one group caught my attention: they, too, were asking everyone there if they had seen the people in the photographs hanging in their necks. But I was certain they were not the same ones I had seen the day before. I wondered how many such groups there were—how many people were searching for their loved ones in that tiny town, across the country, around the world.
"Like ghosts," I remembered that phrase Flirty had said.
"Come over here, my friend," and speaking of him, he was sitting at one of the tables, accompanied by some migrants I didn't recognize. "I thought you'd already left."
I approached them and took the only empty chair at their table.
"Were you here yesterday?" I asked them; several nodded and continued their conversation. They were sharing anecdotes about their respective families and joking about them. I remained silent, trying to remember them, but I couldn't.
I ate a little and saved most of my provisions for the rest of my journey.
"Let's go—the Devil waits for no one," said one of them, and we all got up and left. Along the way, we kept running into more migrants until we turned into a huge caravan of over a hundred people.
It didn't take long for us to leave that town and walk along the side of the road. The sun beat down on us relentlessly with a wave of heat that made us sweat constantly. Thirst returned, but I preferred to save the water I had left.
After what felt like several hours, we found the train tracks and stopped there to wait for the Devil.
Flirty and his group continued their conversation, and I remained silent, watching them and trying to remember if I had seen them before.
Soon we heard the Devil approaching and saw it on the horizon. We positioned ourselves alongside the train tracks, and when it drew close enough, we ran toward it and began to jump aboard. I stayed behind a little longer to help people climb up. I ended up jumping onto the last car, lamenting that I couldn't help the migrants who hadn't dared to make the leap.
There were so many people on the roofs of the train cars that looking flirty and his group seemed like a pretty complicated task, so I decided to stay in the last car for now. I sat down carefully, as the car's metal roof was scorching hot from having been under the sun for so many hours. I was sweating and growing increasingly thirsty.
I noticed a young woman of about twenty approaching the various groups of people in the car and asking them something. I imagined she was also looking for someone, but I couldn't have been more wrong.
"You wanna be my boyfriend?" She asked me as soon as she approached me.