State of Emergency Read Online Free PDF

thin cotton socks and her American straight-leg jeans did little to protect slender legs from the cold. She’d thought of packing a few things, but Wasyl had said it wouldn’t matter. They could buy what they needed—and they would need little, for they were soul mates.
    Rafts of evening commuters, recently disgorged from an outbound city train, flowed in a gray woolen sea. New snow hung heavy on the night air. The greasy smell of sausages and boiled potatoes drifted from the green kiosks up on the platforms inside the station. As a girl, Katya had thought Vitebsk’s stone breastwork and clock tower made it look like a palace. It was a fantastic place with interesting people—but she’d never met anyone as interesting as Wasyl.
    Of course, her mother hated him. It was not because he was nineteen and handsome and three years Katya’s senior—but because he was Ukrainian and often spoke of taking her to Odessa. He was a man with dreams and a real plan to get her out of their drafty flat in Pushkin—where she would surely have to live with her mother forever unless she found someone to marry her. Wasyl promised they would travel by train, rent a berth where they could sleep in each other’s arms and eat eggs and fresh green salads. Once in Odessa they could stay in his rich uncle’s beautiful dacha on the Black Sea. Wasyl had a friend with a fishing boat who’d promised him a job.
    It was perfect. All they needed was train fare—and perhaps a little sum more to tide them over.
    â€œThere,” Wasyl said, flipping a thick swath of black hair out of his face once they jostled their way through the doors and into the echoing marble main hall of the station. He pointed to a row of ATMs— bankomats in Russian—along the sidewall below a Soviet-era mural of dedicated factory workers and a sweeping Art Nouveau staircase. “We can get the money there.”
    The damp heat of so many people hit Katya full in the face. A woman with two toddlers on a dog-leash tether fell in beside them, the little ones in tiny wool coats chattering between themselves. A bent and wrinkled babushka shuffled along beside them, pushing a creaky metal cart and working her way through the crowd toward the same bankomats.
    A businessman in a sable hat and long black coat stood at the nearest machine and Wasyl crowded in front of the woman and her jabbering children to make sure he got to the next one first. He flipped his hair again and held out his hand for the Sberbank card.
    Katya reached in the hip pocket of her jeans and handed it to him.
    â€œThe PIN?” Wasyl demanded, sliding the card in the slot.
    â€œMy birthday,” Katya said, the heavy weight of guilt suddenly pressing against her shoulders.
    Wasyl sighed. “And exactly when is that again?”
    Katya shook her head in disbelief. Surely a true love would remember such a thing.
    â€œTomorrow,” she whispered, heartbroken.
    Wasyl did the math in his head and punched the buttons. The machine gave a faint pop.
    Katya thought she heard a child’s worried cry. At the same instant a molten ball of flame erupted from the bankomat, cutting Wasyl, then Katya, in half.
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    Ninety seconds later
Embarcadero BART Station
San Francisco
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    Jordan Winters leaned against the train window and shut his eyes against the stark interior lighting. He felt the swaying rumble through exhausted bones. Night shift sucked. By the time he got home his kids had already caught the bus and his wife was headed out to her shift at the hospital. But jobs were as scarce as politicians with backbone and he was lucky to have work at all. To make matters worse, the Pontiac had lost a U-joint the week before, so he’d been forced to take the train and then the bus to and from work. That meant another half hour on each end of his trip if he made the connections just right. At this rate, he got to see his wife fifteen minutes a day