Runaway train

When David opened his eyes, he felt like there was cotton balls behind his lids; they were dry and scratchy. He had hangovers before and he was used to the unbelievable dehydration, immediate confusion and headache that felt like one thousand tiny creatures burrowing out of his skull. This was worse than that. What he was not used to however, was waking in a place he didn’t recognize.

It was the screaming that finally woke him with a start. One thing to know about a group of screaming people: they make others scream and it only gets worse from there—panic begets panic.

He sat up, rubbed his eyes and dragged his hands down the 2 days of stubble on his face. The screaming men, women and children, drug him from what felt like the worst hangover he ever had. Despite it, however, it struck him that he had no earthy idea how he wound up there. He had been following the steps and was clean and sober, with the exception of a couple hits of a joint every now and then to calm the anxiety and panic disorder that he developed after serving as a Marine in Mogadishu and watching his whole platoon being reduced to red paste on his uniform. Survivor guilt is what the therapist said it was.

His training not far from the surface, he sought out the source of the panic; he didn’t need to look far.

Men and women were pulling the emergency stop cables which made a ding-ding every time they were pulled. A young woman was cradling her two crying children. One man struggled against another as he tried to climb from a window. David prided himself on nerves of steel but even he was keenly aware that something was seriously fucked and he was on his way to the Totally Fuckedvile train station.

First, assess the problem, Second, identify who is in charge. Assist or take over as the situation demands. He remembered his first aid training.

The rate that the trees were passing the windows, he knew that the rate of speed was well over a safe speed. He quick counted the number of people on the train and realized that there were dozens in this car alone and if there were 10 or 12 cars…. It would be a lot of lives lost if he couldn’t take control of the situation.

First though, he helped pull the man back in who was trying in vain to climb out the window, leaned his head out, and splattered all the cars behind them with a thick, viscous vomit. He used the back of his hand to wipe his mouth, spat and looked back to the man now lying on the floor of the train car.

“What the fuck do you think you were doing?” David shouted at the man he mentally nicknamed Coward.

“Where the hell you been, man? This train is out of control! We are all going to die and I want it to be my choice!”

“Look, I don’t remember getting on this train, all I know is that I am here now and all of us need to work together to try and stop the train or you’re right, we are all going to die. Now, you seem like a take charge guy; the type who can take charge in a situation. I need you to tell me what you know, then help me restore some type of calm here so we can try to stop this train.”

“Easy for you to say, you been out for the last 12 hours. You musta missed the announcement that said that we are all guilty in the sight of God and that the train will increase in speed until it can’t anymore, and that there is only so much track! Who ever did this is actively trying to kill us all.”

“Well, shit, I guess that settles it, we don’t even try to stop it, huh?”

“You know what, fine, it’s pointless and you should have just let me kill myself, but I’ll try” said Coward elongating the word try.

“Good.”

“You mentioned a voice on the speaker, what did it sound like?”

“Uh…Like a voice threatening, or promising, to kill every man, woman, and child on this train for some religious reason, the fuck you mean?”

“Listen, Asshole, I want to know who we are dealing with. Was is male?”

“Yeah.”

“Accent or no?”

“No accent”

“I know this is going to sound incredibly fucked up but….no, you know what, it’s the panic only.

“Look, I am a Marine, I have been in the most terrifying situations you could imagine. I have heard people tell me things that you wouldn’t believe. I am not asking because I want to be your friend, I am asking so I know more about the person trying to kill that little boy,” he said pointing down the aisle at a towheaded boy of maybe 10 who sat silently with his mother and a single tear running down his cheek.

“Fine! It sounded exactly like my voice!” Coward shouted too loud.

A woman a few rows up echoed that sentiment, “ No, it sounded exactly like my voice!”

Many more passengers all repeated the same story that the voice on the speaker was their own. Even some of the children said that it was their voice, but the younger ones said it sounded like their mother or father’s voices.

David had a sudden realization that if everyone heard that voice in either their own, or a loved ones, voice, this was not a natural phenomenon. He was not prepared for what this meant; he was a staunch skeptic. But as they said in the Corps, there are no atheists in a foxhole.

“Everyone, please, try to stay calm and I will do all I can to figure this out and get us off this train. But for me to do that, I need everyone to stay in their seats and try to remain as calm as possible!” He announced to the train car.

There were grumbles of dissent but most people took his authoritative tone to mean that he knew what he was doing. Regardless, most people stayed huddled together in groups of people they were comfortable with. Some of the older passengers comforted the younger ones.

There was something that David didn’t notice at first that was starting to push its way into his consciousness—a smell. It wasn’t unpleasant but it was familiar. It was the smell of almonds—it wasn’t a scent of burnt toast which could mean that he was having a stroke so he was happy about that. But almonds, he knew from his time overseas, was the smell of plastic explosives.

“Ah, David, you’re awake,” said his own voice over the speaker.

“What is this?! Why are you doing this to us?”

“You have all been found guilty and are required to pay the price for your crimes. The punishment, if you haven’t already guessed, is death.”

“You mean to tell me that you are going to blow up all these people—these children, for crimes that you feel they committed?! You’re sick and I will find a way to save them and stop you.”

There were murmurings from people all over the train car when he mentioned the explosives some people wailed and others seemed angry. It is interesting how people react so differently as a result of grief.

“You are really stupid, or blind, I don’t know which is worse,” said his voice over the speaker mocking him, “you haven’t even looked out the window yet. You would know where you are if that was the case. You wouldn’t bother me with such infantile questions.”

The cacophony of people climbing over each other in their seats to look out the window sounded like the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona. It was a chaotic sound of people climbing each other, shoving, swearing at each other and, finally, almost in unison, screaming out.

David’s voice laughed over the speaker. Everyone heard it as their own laugh, or a loved one’s laugh.

David fell mute. Outside the window, the landscape was burned black, trees like skeletons reached for the crags of an obsidian mountain. Fires burned from the ground. If it wasn’t for the pallid faces looking back at them, and the … things flying through the black and yellow smoke, he would have thought that there was some kind of blast that he and these others escaped.

All at once the memories flashed back to his mind. The train, the explosion, his preparations for the day. The searing heat when his explosives went off turning his skin to so much char.

He looked around and realized that everyone looked exactly the same as him—blackened, skeletal beings. They all looked at him through empty sockets. He realized then that he was the reason for this train trip being cut short. He was the reason that everyone on this train were headed to the same place. They were all in Hell and he was the cause.

“Oh, David, most of the people were saved by God, and those who were, well, I had to fill the seats somehow,” said his voice through the speaker,. Though it sounded like it was getting deeper and more sinister. The people around him began shimmering as if they were all a mirage. They twisted like the trees outside. They became the demons they actually were and they were coming for him like so many hungry mountain lions. He was in Hell, as he should be.

Dozens of talon-like hands grabbed him and started to snap him limbs off while they laughed at him; he was slowly dying.

When David opened his eyes, he felt like there was cotton balls behind his lids; they were dry and scratchy. He had hangovers before and he was used to the unbelievable dehydration, immediate confusion and headache that felt like one thousand tiny creatures burrowing out of his skull. This was worse than that. What he was not used to however, was waking in a place he didn’t recognize.