The Runaway

“Get up, man, get up!” A blurry man shouted repeatedly at a lifeless body, waiting for an answer.

The guy next to him gave him a shove. “I told you this wasn’t smart! Now look at him! We’re screwed.” Then he walked away in anger.

“Come on; you got to get up.” A sobbing lady pleaded.

The lifeless body was David. David tried his best to move off the ground but couldn’t. The world around him was spinning, and the blurred faces around him only confused him more. He slowly could feel again.

“Where am I? OUCHHHHHHH!” An intense pain raced towards his head and face.

“You’re probably in a lot of pain right now, but you must get up, or we all will die.” The woman finally stopped crying.

“I’m not dead already?”

David looked around and didn’t recognize anyone surrounding him. His vision was still unreliable, and his head wouldn’t stop thumping. He looked at his clothes and didn’t understand why he was wearing a jumpsuit. But, when he touched his head, the sight of blood on his hand made him lose it.

“Everyone back away from me! Who are you? What did you do to me?” He jumped to his feet for two seconds but fell back down onto his knees.

“We just need your help.” Another voice begged in a whisper.

“I can’t help you! Back off! Get off me.” David tried his best to remain conscious and remember how he got there. Everything felt like it was moving faster and faster. He closed his eyes.

“Where am I?” He said to himself. “Where am I?”

“You’re on a train?” He heard a little girl’s voice ask him.

“I’m on a train.” He repeated with his eyes closed, bouncing with every bump the train made.

“You’re going to save me?” The girl asked.

“I promise.” David instinctively said while reaching for his neck.

He quickly looked around the train car in a panic. With his vision returning he could see the train was filled with different passengers.

“Where’s the girl?” He insisted. Everyone around him began to shutter in fear.

“Tell me where she is!”

“We don’t have anyone!” Another man yelled back at him.

“We’re being too loud, oh my God, oh my God, they’re going to come in here. Oh my God.” An older woman rocking back and forth began to pray aloud, clutching onto a pole on the train.

“Just please fix this, don’t hurt my babies!” A hysterical young woman tightly held her children, covering their mouths.

David looked around and noticed the fear on everyone’s faces. Some people were motionless and in complete shock. Some were crying, and some were frantically trying to devise plans with one another.

“What’s happening?” David asked the man that woke him up.

“You told us that you were doing this for your daughter. You had a gun and told us to remain calm, but we had to die. That this train was not stopping for anyone here. I rushed you with my friends and hit you in the head and face with your gun. I’m sorry.”

David grimaced.

“But, that was before….”

“Before what?” David asked.

“Before we knew that you weren’t alone.”

David looked at the man’s trembling hand and realized he had a gun with one finger on the trigger.

“My daughter?” He couldn’t believe that he’d forgotten something like that.

“Don’t you remember anything?”

David checked his front pockets. Only a locked cellphone. Then his back pockets. A folded note.

It said, “I love you Daddi.”

David looked around, holding his head, unsure what to do. He had no idea why he was there and no idea why he was on this speeding train.

“Someone’s coming. You have to do something.” The man whispered and found his seat.

Everyone sat down as the train car’s door opened. A six-foot-tall bearded man quickly barged in with the same uniform as David.

“Bro, what the heck happened to you! Where’s your mask?”

“I - I - I” David could hardly breathe.

“Get it together, man. We have to do this for Hazel, remember?”

David nodded that he understood.

But, deep down, he knew he couldn’t remember anything.

And everyone’s time was running out…