Read Devastation Road for Free Online Page B

brother.’
    ‘Yes, yes.
On je dobrý č lov ě k
. He is good man.’
    ‘Good,’ Owen said. ‘Well, he’s taught you well by the looks of it.’
    The boy nodded and faintly smiled, then he rested his elbows on his knees and started to pick at the remnants of bread still held in his hand, breaking it into tiny pieces and then rolling them
into balls before he finally ate them.
    ‘There is a war?’ Owen asked. ‘
Ein Krieg?
’
    ‘War?’ said the boy. ‘Yes.’ He laughed.
    ‘What’s happened? Who’s winning?’
    The boy started talking, something about
Nacisti
and
Rusové
, then
Ameri č ani
, his hand sweeping in and out – borders changing, tides turning.
    ‘No,’ Owen said. ‘English, please. In English.’
    But the boy didn’t have the English. He shook his head and batted the conversation away. It was hopeless.
    Owen tried something else, signalling around them as he had done before and getting the map out. He pointed at it. ‘Where are we? I need to know. Do you understand?’
    He handed the boy the sheets and the boy studied them one by one, discarding the unwanted ones on the ground willy-nilly for Owen to pick up.
    ‘
Jsme tady
,’ he said eventually, laying his fingertip at a point. His bitten fingernail circled an area to the top northern edge of the country. ‘
Jizerské
hory. Hory
.’ It looked like mountains. His finger tapped a spot.
    Owen marked it with the pencil.
    Not far north there was a thick line running west to east that might be a border, and towns and villages that he’d not heard of, each with two names: Reichenberg (Liberec), Gablonz
(Jablonec), Friedland (Frýdlant) . . .
    The boy was watching him closely.
    ‘You want home, yes?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Owen. He felt more desperate than ever. His instinct was to head north-west in the vague direction of England, but from what little he could remember of the geography of
Europe, he felt quite certain that Germany bordered the west and at least some of the north of Czechoslovakia, which meant that Austria, probably still under the Nazi regime too, must tuck around
the south of it. Together, he thought, they would form a clamped mouth around the country, the Czech lands already swallowed midway down the German gullet.
    The only other option seemed to be to head back into the heart of the country to Prague – but to do what? – or head out to the east in entirely the wrong direction, and as to what
lay there anyway, he wasn’t sure. Russia somewhere. Poland somewhere. Countries so alien that even their names – Hungary, Romania, Ukraine – filled him with unease. Poland, he
thought. Wasn’t that north, and bordering Czechoslovakia? Then he felt quite sure that the Poles had fallen as well.
    He felt everything within him sink; whichever way he went it seemed that he was trapped and he’d be caught by someone somewhere. They would think he was a spy or an escaped prisoner. He
would have to come up with a story of some sort. No one would believe the truth: that he didn’t know
what
he was doing there.
    His gaze lifted northerly up the map over the line that might have marked a border, until it reached that familiar name again.
    ‘You don’t know this place, do you?’ he asked Janek. He pointed at Sagan. It looked to be about thirty-odd miles north. Walking distance. Maybe a day and a half.
    Janek shook his head but he ran his fingertip up and down a route anyway, pulling a maybe-yes-maybe-no face, before nodding and handing the map back.
    Perhaps he would walk to Sagan, Owen thought. It was close enough and he was damned whichever way he went. Besides, the name had been niggling at his thoughts all day, the uncomfortable
sensation that he knew the name already, and whenever he let his eyes drift across the map, the name, for some reason, always pulled him back.
    He gathered up the bowls, spoons and pan and took them to the waterfall to wash them out, then refilled the boy’s water canister and slopped water over