Poe by Brett Battles

enough to scare the boy. He angled his path to the right, hopping over the nearby rails, and getting farther away from the moving locomotive.
    “Stop!” she shouted again. In case he didn’t understand, she tried, “Halt!” but she was wasting her breath.
    There was another whistle, this one much deeper and more powerful than the earlier police whistle. It was also coming from in front of them, not behind. Alex looked past the boy at the tracks ahead. Less than a quarter mile down, coming around a bend to the right, a train was heading toward the station, and appeared to be on the same tracks that she and the kid had just hopped over.
    The boy seemed to notice this, too, and moved again to the right, jumping over the next set of tracks. But as he went over the final rail, his toe caught the top, sending him flying through the air, his arms outstretched in front of him as if he were Superman.
    With a thud and a loud groan, he hit the ground less than a foot in front of the next set of tracks. Any farther and he would have cracked his skull on the rail. As it was, his right arm had smacked hard against the steel.
    “Ah, ah, ah!” He cried in pain, grabbing his arm.
    Alex reached him a few seconds later, putting a hand on his back. “Don’t move.”
    He tried to shake her off. “Let go.”
    At least he spoke English.
    “I’m not trying to hurt you,” she said. “I just want to see where you’re injured.”
    Reluctantly, he let her look him over. His forearm was definitely broken. It lay bent on the ground as if it had a second elbow. She gave him credit for not passing out from the pain. As she finished checking him, she noticed he was still clutching Romee’s red passport, and what appeared to be a small, zippered pouch with a floral design.
    “Were these worth it?” She ripped them from his hand and slipped them into her pocket.
    The train whistled again, and as she looked up, she realized they’d both been wrong. It wasn’t on the other track, but on the one the kid’s arm was now lying across.
    “Sorry,” she said, then grabbed his shoulders and lifted him up.
    Clutching his broken limb, he screamed. Alex ignored the howl, and half carried, half dragged the boy over the tracks, back to where the platform stopped.
    The train passed by with another blow of its whistle as she was setting the thief down. Seconds later, two police officers arrived. They paused for a moment, catching their breath, before talking to Alex in Ukrainian.
    “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t understand.”
    They tried again, but she shrugged and shook her head, so they turned their attention to the boy, barking at him in their native language.
    Struggling through his pain, the kid said something that made both officers look at Alex, then the one closest to her grabbed her arm.
    “Hey!” she cried. “What do you think you’re doing?”
    He whirled her around and started patting her down, stopping at the pocket where she’d put Romee’s pouch and passport. He pointed at the bulge and said something sharp and abrupt.
    She shook her head. “Uh-uh. No way.”
    He pointed again, and repeated his words more forcefully.
    She pressed her lips tightly together, and pulled out Romee’s things. She didn’t want to, but she let him take the items from her. He opened the passport, looked at the picture, then at her, and back at the picture.
    She didn’t have to understand Ukrainian to know what he meant when he spoke again.
    “Yeah, I know,” she told him. “Not me. That belongs to my friend.” She pointed at the kid. “He took it.”
    The cop ignored her and unzipped the pouch, revealing the tip of a wad of cash.
    His eyes widened slightly and he said something to the boy, who responded quickly and nodded emphatically. The cop turned to Alex, repeated almost the same words to her, while holding out the pouch and gesturing to the boy.
    “No, it’s not his,” she said, then pointed to herself. “It’s mine. Well, my