one of the younger men asked, shaken. “By regulation, we hand over the body at the next stop,” Crutch said. “But that’s five hours away.”
Five hours with a corpse in a sealed car, in the heat, during an outbreak. Anna knew that could trigger panic. The body needed to be wrapped and moved near the door where there was at least a little draft.
“Wrap him in what? This isn’t a funeral home,” someone snapped.
Then came what some later called the miracle of car seven. An old thief known as Old Man took off his quilted jacket—the only warm thing he had.
“Here. Misha was a decent guy. Let’s at least do this right,” he said. Others followed: one gave a shirt, another a foot cloth.
Within ten minutes the body was wrapped in an improvised shroud of rags. Professor Vorontsov quietly began reciting something in Latin. It turned out to be a prayer for the dead.
Even the thieves listened in silence, hats off. “He was a tailor on the outside,” Gray said suddenly. “Good one too. Left behind three kids.”
“His wife died of tuberculosis last year. He worried about those children all the time. Kept asking who would raise them now.” And so an improvised memorial began.
Everyone who had known Misha said one decent thing about him. In that car, full of killers and thieves, something human surfaced. By noon the train finally stopped for water.
The guards came for the body. But then something unexpected happened: the sergeant refused to take it. “Orders. We don’t move sick or dead from different cars. Handle it yourselves.”
“Handle it how? We’re supposed to ride with him to the end?” the prisoners protested. “Throw him out in the woods while moving or keep him. I don’t care,” the sergeant said, and slammed the door.
Silence settled over the car. Carrying a corpse in the heat for twenty more days meant guaranteed infection. Throw him out? But how?
“There’s a grate in the floor,” Colonel Karelin said unexpectedly. “It’s for cleaning the car. What if we pry it open?”
They got to work—using sharpened metal, nails, anything they had—to pry up the rusted grate. After two hours there was an opening wide enough to lower the body through. But first Anna said, “Wait. We should do this properly.”
“We’re not animals,” she added. She stepped up to the body, closed Misha’s eyes, and whispered something. Then she spoke louder so everyone could hear.
“Mikhail Petrovich Somov, tailor from the capital, father of three, died on the seventh day of the journey. He was sent to a place few return from, but he died as a human being, and we will remember that.” The body was lowered through the opening. The train was moving slowly, and they watched it roll down the embankment.
Somewhere out there, in the endless green of the forest, Misha the tailor was left behind. The first victim of car seven. By evening there were new sick men in quarantine—eight now.
Anna did what she could: gave them water with salt she had managed to get from the guards, and kept up what hygiene she could. But everyone understood that without medicine, this was a losing fight. Then came the second miracle.
A man everyone considered an informer approached her. Rat—that was what they called him. Small, quick, always listening. “Doc, I’ve got something,” he said, glancing around nervously.
“I kept it hidden.” He pulled out a wrapped bundle and opened it. Inside was a bottle of white powder—streptocide.
“Stole it from a medic at a transfer point. Planned to trade it. But…” “Why give it up?” Anna asked.
Rat shifted awkwardly. “My little brother died of diarrhea in an orphanage. He was twelve.” In those conditions, streptocide was worth more than money. It meant a chance.
Anna started using it right away. She dissolved the powder in water and gave it to the sick. By morning, three were better.
Word spread through the car. And strange things started happening. Thieves shared rations with the sick so they would have strength to fight.
Political prisoners organized shifts near the quarantine area. Even Jackal’s crew quieted down. “You know what’s happening?”
