Deadly News: A Thriller

You were in the third car at 2:17 that morning, when the train crashed.

At first there was a shaking, an unsettling, the lights of the train flickered like those lights are wont to do, and then came the derailment.

The noise was the loudest you’d ever heard. The seventh car left the tracks first, rebounded off the wall of the tunnel the train was currently passing through, and re-crossed the tracks, causing sparks, to the other side, where it collided with a train which was passing in the opposite direction.

Few ballets in history matched the elegance of this synchronicity.

The first car of the oncoming train plows through the seventh of yours, ripping it apart.

And the two join, as lovers, on the tunnel floor, in the midst of screeching, rending metal, and nascent fire and death.

And then it all reached the car you were in, and though you were gripping tight, prepared for the inevitable impact and rotation as the train derailed, you still weren’t ready for the violence which you experienced. And so it was that you found yourself, an indeterminate amount of time later, awoken by a slender young woman, who said she was Abby, and who helped you to sit up.

“Where are we?”

“Do you remember what happened?” she asks.

You look around. You’re outside the train, in a wider part of the tunnel, off the tracks. “The train.”

“That’s good. Yeah, we’re still here, just outside the train now. We’ve tried to pull everyone we could out, but there were only a few who we could reach. The tunnel…” She trails off looking in that direction.

You follow her gaze. The derailed cars did what was expected, breaking and collapsing parts of the walls which they collided with, effectively sealing off the tunnel from that direction. While Abby stares at this destruction, you turn your gaze to the other. There’s less damage, in the direction the train you were on was headed. That whole part’s derailed and on its side, but other than that, and a few broken bits of wall, it seems intact. It won’t take rescue workers long to break through that, you realize. “Abby.”

She turns back, focusing her attention again on the present, and you. She appears to look you over for any damage.

You feel fine, though your mouth and eyes feel like they are coated with paste. You wipe at your eyes, and your hand comes away dirty with something dark. Or maybe it was already there. You are lying in what amounts to dirt. You blink several times. “You said others?”

“Oh.” She puts a hand to her face, shakes her head. “Yeah. Come on, we should get back.”

As she helps you up, you realize she’s stronger than you expected her to be. “You got me out on your own?”

She gives you a half smile. “I’m the most capable, or at least the least injured in our little group. We heard you screaming, and I was the only one who could fit easily. When I finally found you, I was afraid to move you, but the fire—” she gestures toward the crashed train, toward an area with black smoke seeping out into the tunnel.

As you’re looking on, it appears as if the air briefly catches fire. You turn back to her. Screaming? You wonder what you might have said. “Strange, I don’t remember screaming.”

“You were out of it. Stopped once I started moving you though.” She chuckles, a quick, high chuckle. “Thought I killed you at first.”

Wouldn’t that’ve been something?, you think. Killed by attempted rescue.

“Come on, let’s get out of this smoke. We’re just over there.” She points to the collapsed section of the tunnel.

“Is that really safe?”

“Doubt any other trains will be coming through, but if they do, they aren’t doing it from that side.”

She does have a point. Though by now, they’d know there had been a derailment, and all trains through these or connecting tunnels would be stopped until the cause could be determined and a rescue attempt made. That could take hours if the damage was great enough.

She starts walking that way, and looks back at you. You follow.

“So,” you ask as the two of you walk, “how many are you?”

“When I left, they were trying to pull a few people from some of the further cars—the way the crash happened created a barrier of sorts that’s not easy to get through—so it’s possible there are more now. Maybe.” She sighs. “I hope. But there were eight of us when I left. Nine, if you count me.” She turns and smiles at you. “Ten, now.”

When you reach your destination, you see what she meant. There’s a door, and in front of it, created by the rubble, is a forking pathway. You are at one fork, and you can see both the doorway and the other fork. The other, looks quite large, taller than the door itself. This one, of which you are on the wrong side, is smaller, and higher off the ground.

“Can you fit?” she asks.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t look too small.” You turn to look at her. She’s wearing jeans, a light trench coat. She’s got a smudge of something dark on her left cheek, and the hair in her short ponytail is messy and loose. “You got through on your own?”

She grins. “Rock climber. C’mon, I’ll boost you up.”

The ground slopes downward as you travel the few remaining steps to the passageway, and as the two of you get right up to it, it’s now above eye level, and you find yourself staring at a wall made of metal and dust and broken pipes. Wires snake through the whole mess, and as Abby gives you a boost up, you pray none are live.

The edge is jagged as you grip it, and for a moment, as you pass through the small opening, the confinement, combined with the damp smoky air, is overwhelming. Then you’re through the hole and falling. You hold on long enough to flip your body feet first, then bend your knees as you land to absorb the impact.

“Everything good?” Abby calls.

“I’m fine. You need help—”

Abby comes vaulting through the hole before you can finish, and narrowly misses taking you out as she lands.

“Hell!” you shout from the ground.

“Sorry! God, I knew you were there, obviously, I just—” She shakes her head. “I didn’t even think about it. I wasn’t thinking. Sorry.” She smiles. “Fast reflexes.” She helps you up once more. This time, you notice the roughness of her hands.

The two of you proceed through the doorway, which is bent a bit, but otherwise unharmed. Looking up before you follow Abby in, you see where all the debris came from to make this wall. For a distance roughly three or four floors above you, the ceiling and everything above it have collapsed into this level. You pause, and look around. Was this from the seventh car?

“Everything all right?” Abby asks from the doorway.

You shake your head. “Yeah.”

She gestures with hers. “Come meet everyone. We found some kind of break room just before I left.”

The room looks like someone has been living here: a dilapidated desk, some plastic crates, papers, what could be a bed. You look back at the door you just entered through. There is a lock. Would it have been unlocked?

There’s another door at the back of this room, which you pass through now. It is here that the other survivors sit in a circle—on crates or chairs or stools, one on the ground—around a small fire. You find this, the fire, strange, given the conditions just outside, and as you wouldn’t count it cool enough in here to start one. Though it wards off dark, you suppose.

An older man, with whom appears to be his wife next to him, looks up as you enter. “You found someone.”

At this, the others look up. At eleven o’clock, there’s the man, his wife. Then twelve and one are empty, then a youngish man wearing jeans and a button up shirt, suit jacket on one knee. Next to him is another man, a bit older, hair a bit messier, clumping together more than recently washed hair would. His chin, neck, and jawline are darkened with stubble, and the sole of his right shoe, which faces you at an angle and so perfectly catches the firelight as it rests atop his left knee, is worn smooth. The three remaining people have their backs to you, necks craned to stare. With the light the fire casts, the shadows over their features, you can’t make out much. All are women, or maybe that one, with the suggestion of a mustache and goatee, is just a man with long hair and slight build.

“I guess there wasn’t anyone?” Abby says, looking around the fire.

The wife of the man who first spoke shakes her head. “It was a body. Just a body.”

“Oh,” Abby says. She walks over to the empty spot at the fire, gestures for you to sit on the makeshift seat next to her. “Where’s the girl?”

The wife makes a gesture whose meaning you can’t decide. “Said she found a kitchen, crawled into a dumbwaiter to get there. In case she got stuck. She told us, I mean, just in case, then went back. I said be careful, but she went anyway.”

Abby nods.

When you sit, the man to your right, his wife now leaning on him, says to you, “You don’t look hurt. You’re not hurt, then?”

You shake your head. “I don’t think so. My right leg is a bit sore, or stiff, I can’t tell. Fine other than that.”

“Good, that’s good. We need healthy people.”

You expect him to say more, to elaborate, but he doesn’t. You notice something about him and ask, “You’re a doctor?”

He looks away from the fire and back to you. “How did you know? Yes.”

“Is that why you wanted to know if I was hurt?”

“I— Yes, I wanted to know if you needed treatment. I was a trauma surgeon, you know, in the military. Many years ago now.” He looks back to the fire. “We were so young, then. Time just changes. It keeps on changing.”

Someone bursts into the room, a girl, maybe thirteen, maybe slightly more. Her clothes are torn, and sweat drips visibly from her face and soaks the front of her shirt, turning it an even darker brown than the rest of it. She holds two bottles in each hand, clutched tight now to her body. You’re reminded of Indiana Jones for some reason. The smile on her face seems out of place, and through gasps of laugher, she gets out, “Wine! I found wine!”

“Yeah, let’s get drunk while we wait for rescue,” the man with the suit jacket on his knee says. He removes the jacket from his leg, shakes it out, refolds it, then places it in his lap.

“I only found four bottles. I think one is champagne. Not enough to get all of us drunk.”

“We need food,” Abby says, “not wine. Water. We could be here awhile.”

The girl shrugs. “Wine’s as good as water. I couldn’t find any water.”

“It won’t take that long,” the person—a man, you see now—with long hair says. He sits directly across from you. There is something in his face that’s familiar somehow. But if he was important, surely you’d recognize him.

“Oh,” the doctor says, with a smile that moves only his lips, “that’s what everyone thinks. ‘They can’t leave us in the trenches’—or the jungle, or the desert, or wherever the hell ever—‘for long. They’ll come soon.’ Sometimes they do. Not usually. These things always take longer than anticipated.”

“And no one anticipated this,” Abby says. “Not this.”

You turn to her. She speaks with more bitterness than you’d expect, and she’s staring downward, lips pressed together, shaking her head slightly back and forth.

The girl laughs. “Here, have some wine with your whine!”

“Jesus,” the older, scruffier man says. You suddenly find yourself thinking of him this way, ‘the scruffy man’, even though it probably isn’t how he normally looks. Even though it’s inadequate to define him.

You look back to Abby. “What happened? Do you know?”

She blinks, sighs. “No, I don’t know. It’s just—” she shakes her head.

You look around the fire. No one else seems that interested. The thirteen-year-old has set three of the bottles she was carrying down, and is now apparently trying to pry the cork out with her fingers. Where’d she find wine down here? you wonder. A kitchen, someone said? But there are more pressing matters.

“What?” you prod. “What is it?”

Abby looks at you. “Nothing, it’s crazy.”

“Crazier than a train exploding?”

She laughs. It’s too loud. “Yeah.” She looks you in the eye. “This— This sounds crazy, I know, but…”

Smiling, you say, “You said that. Tell us.”

There’s a loud pop. The thirteen-year-old lets out a yell of triumph. “Yes! Who wants wine?”

“Over here, honey,” says the doctor’s wife.

The girl picks up one of the other bottles she set down, peels off its foil seal, and walks around the outside of the circle toward you and the doctor and his wife. As she walks, she holds out the opened wine bottle as she puts the other bottle to her mouth, and, scowling like a wolf, latches her teeth onto the cork and worries the bottle back and forth. No sooner has she reached the wife, who takes the offered bottle just in time, then does the other bottle, cork still in the girl’s mouth, release its seal on the cork and let fly.

“Fuck!” the girl screams. It comes out more like, “Feegh!”, but you catch her meaning. Blood leaks from her mouth and the bottle drops. The women, next to the man with long hair, breaks its fall, and manages to fumble for it without spilling much. The amount that does spill foams on the dusty ground.