When he woke, he wasn’t sure where he was. It took a few minutes for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He had vague recollections of waking before, off and on, the throb and swirl in his head forcing him back into sleep. Although there was no light, he could tell that there were things in the air, like dust and dirt, smoke and a kind of chemical vapour that choked his mouth like cotton balls. It was incredibly dark. So much so that he wondered at first if he was blind.
“How long have I been out for?”
The screen of the smartwatch lit and Orson’s eyebrows narrowed as he spoke.
“About six hours.”
“Nothing new.”
“I’m afraid not.”
Well, we can’t stay here forever
, he thought.
Jess tested the handle. It was not warm as before. He turned the lock and pulled open the door. A cool breeze flushed him in the face.
He pointed the smartwatch down the length of the tunnel and said: “light” and Orson projected a white beam before him. The platform was empty.
At the end of the platform was an emergency box, filled with various items. Jess threw aside the orange vest and reached for a flashlight and clicked it on.
Good old UV LED.
He pointed it down the tunnel and saw that a train was not far away, perhaps 100 feet down, though it looked odd – slightly tilted from its normal positioning.
Jess went down the stairs to the ground level and made sure to stay to the left, far away from the electrified railing. It wasn’t long before he reached the train. It was tilted because it was no longer on its tracks.
He had to see with his hands when he was trying to manoeuvre himself. He had to climb up a short ladder to get to the main section of the train. The floor in the cabin was metal; the walls at his sides were glass: splintered and cracked. His finger trailed along the vein-like fissures until he reached a handle at the end of the cabin. It was the old driver’s cabin, which still existed on some trains. He pulled it down and pushed open the door. Something behind it was blocking the full opening of the door. It would swing a few inches and then stop as it hit something not normally in its way. H put his weight against the door. It slowly moved; whatever was behind now slid away enough that he could squeeze through the opening.
The driver’s cabin was like a closet. It was no more than a few feet wide in all directions. As Jess moved out into the belly of the train, he could tell that the air here was better. It wasn’t as stifling, but the smells still existed, just fainter. There was no sound to be heard but a single hiss, like steam or gas escaping in exodus from its cage. He could see shapes in the darkness – advertising posters on the walls – and was beginning to distinguish between different surfaces. Metal and glass shone differently, even in the dark.
He knelt behind the door, reaching down to see with his hands. What was the thing blocking it? It was soft, but not smooth. Then he felt a round head, covered in hair that stuck to his palm, slick with something wet.
It was a body.
As he moved deeper into the train, there were more lifeless forms littered the length of the train like garbage, along with bags and parcels and other things he couldn’t quite make out.
“Can anyone hear me? Hello?”
There was no answer.
He touched the part of his jacket where the pocket was.
“Orson, do you know what’s going on?”
Orson’s voice came back through Jess’s smartwatch.
“Not entirely. All networks still appear to be down. I can’t get a signal. I managed to cache some data right before the network crashed though. There seems to be a lot of social updates from people who claim to have spotted an explosion on the horizon.”
“Oh God. Do you know if the boys had anything scheduled tonight?”
“Their calendars don’t indicate anything in particular, so we at least no there was nothing planned at least.”
The hissing sound continued somewhere up ahead. He had to make it to the back of the train and see if there was a worker on board, hoping there wasn’t. He moved forward slowly, feeling with each foot, one step at a time. He counted as he walked. The subway consisted of five individual cars, connected like sausages in a line. Throughout its length were bodies. The number of people reminded him that it was not rush hour when the train derailed.
There were enough survivors that several doors were pried open in each subway car, insinuating that some had managed to make it out. Still, he tripped over unmoving forms on the ground and dared not stop to see if they were all dead. There were no sounds, even when his foot collided with one of them.
He finally reached the last car and stepped into it, waiting momentarily for his eyesight to find something to anchor to in the coffin-like rectangular room. There were no sounds; all was still here. He took a step forward and his foot kicked something hard that bounded off the metal wall with a clamour. It noisily wobbled to a stop.
Although it was still dark, his eyes were beginning to adjust. Something shifted at the end of the car, followed by a sound of air being expelled; an intimation of breath indicating that he was not alone.
He held still and listened. It was getting up; a black shape; a man’s shape, tilting his head forward to see in the dark, just as he was.
The shape was familiar. Tall and bulky, he had a head shaped in such a way that it appeared that his brains were located in his chin. This was Bill’s train. Old Bill was one of the longest serving employees who still got to ride along with a few trains just to ensure that everything was working as expected. Jess felt relief at the fact that someone else was alive.
“Bill?”
The name carried across the length of the car. A single grunt came back and the shape of his co-worker came down headlong like an enraged drunkard inside the expanse of the metal and plastic tunnel of the innards of the subway car.
There was no time to grab anything. Jess did not ready himself. He was confused at what was happening.
“Bill, are you hurt?”
Their bodies collided heavily, flung back by Bill’s forward-moving weight. They went hard against the door that he had only recently entered. Falling to the ground, he felt the man’s hands clawing at his chest and face. His mouth came snatching down, just missing the skin of his face. With a hand, he grabbed Bill’s throat and held him back despite his thrashings.
He was strong and furious with rage.
Looking up, he saw the outlines of Bill’s bearded face, covered with dark grime. Blood was encrusted at the sides of his mouth. His shirt was the same as Jess’s: sewn and decorated with the city’s transit logo, on both the chest and shoulders. It was still dark but the shape and design was unmistakeable. He had been working in the job long enough to be able to spot the design in seconds.
“Bill, what’s the matter with you!” he said. “It’s me, Jessie!”
Bill was furious and howling. His form had somehow turned animalistic – back hunched, arms out in front of him as though ready for a fight. His head was twitching from side-to-side. It might have been waking in the dark tunnel after the explosion that had left him groggy and unsure. His limbs were slow, reaching out at the empty air in front of him as if he had been hurt and confused, but he was also ferociously angry, screams and angry grunts spilling out from his mouth like he had gone mad. His arms continued in laborious but determined movements. He smacked the walls beside him, seemingly out of frustration and overwhelming rage. He reached out with his hands and made biting motions with his mouth. Jess moved over to him to find out how badly he was hurt. Bill tried to bite him, grasping with his teeth the sleeve of Jess’s jacket. As he pulled away, he managed to tear the fabric enough that Jess had to pull back strongly to shake him off.
Bill was not fast and seemed rather harmless in the way that he was fighting, sort of like a wounded animal. But, he was relentless. No amount of persuasion seemed to snap him out of it.
“Bill, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
They rolled on the ground. Bill continued to blindly attack and Jess tried to fend him off with his arms crossed in front of his face. Bill made a sound that was vaguely like a word and Jess looked up, dropping his arms just enough so that Bill was able to swing out and slash his fingernails against Jess’s cheek, slicing him like some ferocious big cat. The searing pain felt like a curling iron had been pressed against his face quickly, and then pulled away. Bill’s mouth was snapping like a bear trap, open and closed. Jess’s arms were shaking from the strain of keeping the big man off him for so long. Soon, he knew, his limbs would give out. He let go with one hand and snaked it along the ground beside his body, searching in the dark for something to aid him. His fingers climbed over something on the cold floor, big and hard, about the size and feel of a brick. He picked it up and swung hard at the big lug’s head. It collided, and Bill fell backwards, a horrible animal-like shriek emitting from his mouth.
It should have knocked him out but the shadow that was Bill got up again, the angry growl rising once more. Jess had no choice, he swung again and this time heard a horrible crack. Bill slumped back hard against the far wall. Jess allowed himself to take a deep breath and let his arms fall to his sides.
He hoped he hadn’t killed him. He doubted it at least, but Bill was probably going to wake with one hell of a headache.
Then: a shift. The body moved, the arm came forward followed by a low groan.
Jess ran. Bill should have been knocked cold or hurt bad.
He made it to the back of the subway car – the last one – and flung open the emergency door. There was nothing before him but dark tunnel. Two metal railings glittered slightly like twin paths running off into a distance that was darkness and utter blackness.
More sounds were coming from behind him; a creak here and there, something moving back near the train. Jess knelt down and jumped off the end of the train. He was between the subway tracks, one to each side with a third on the outer edge of the tunnel, possibly electrified, maybe not. He didn’t want to find out.
He moved forward until he was completely enveloped in darkness on all sides with nothing but the echo of his feet indicating the way forward. His eyes strained to make out the shadowed outline of train tracks and tunnel walls in front of him. There was then a crash behind him: a thud and a clang of metal. Jess wondered if Bill fell out of the open doorway. He should have closed it, locked it somehow.
The animal-like growl told him he was not alone. He had been trying to predetermine the distance between the wooden planks that ran alongside the rails. They were spaced about two feet apart, with oddly-shaped debris and what felt like rocks lying in-between. The rocks didn’t help his balance. Now, he had to speed up and he missed the planks regularly, his feet turning awkwardly on the uneven ground.
He was moving as fast as he possibly could, yet it still sounded like whatever was behind was gaining on him.
“Stop it Bill!” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you!”
The hard slapping sounds were coming closer. Jess did not turn around.
A crash echoed out from behind him and suddenly the tunnel was awash in light. Jess stopped and turned. Whatever had been following him, clear only in that it had a human form, had fallen, an outstretched arm connecting with the third rail. Sparks flew out, lighting the area up and the thing's form jerked violently like a piece of thin kindling popping in a fireplace. Then the head started to smoke. The jerking slowed and his clothes lit aflame as though some unseen hand had lit a super-propelled barbecue lighter against the back of his shirt.
Soon, he was stilled, burning as though his hand were glued to the electrified rail – but a smell moved down the tunnel that made it seem more likely that his hand had been melted in place.
Now that Jess didn’t have to move quickly he felt along the edge of the tunnel furthest from electrified rail. There was a small walking ledge up there about two-feet wide and three feet up. Jess found the groove in the wall and hoisted himself up. It had been years since he received training for such things, but he remembered that the ledge was in place to chaperone staff and transit users along this narrow walkway during blackouts and other emergencies.
Before he started moving, he pressed the button on his smartwatch and it produced a very faint amount of light, but even to tell how much width he had and what he would have to be careful of, should he lose his footing.
The ledge may as well have been overlooking a huge precipice since Jess could see so little. He made his way slow and steady, uncertain how far he had to go to make it to the next station. It was so dark that he didn’t know if his next step would be on solid ground or not, so he had to slide each step forward along the ground to make sure. His head was still groggy from everything that had happened. His memory was just starting to piece everything together: his ears had heard what sounded like some kind of an explosion; a boom echoing in the tunnel ahead of the subway and it was as though the entire earth moved. He realized now that the train must have jumped. The top of his head still throbbed. He had a hand up against the wall, which seemed filthy by touch – soot and grime was everywhere. Thick wires, leading to lights that didn’t work were jutting out from the face of the wall, threatening to send him tumbling down into the darkness below.
It’s odd, the things that come to you in moments like these. The tunnel started to feel like an unending black cavern. He wondered if the power would come back on. Would he be able to flatten himself against the wall so that a train could pass? What was happening above ground? Was it the same, or worse?
He couldn’t remember when he had last kissed his sons. When they were still a family, Jess would creep silently into his son’s bedrooms and feel their chests to make sure that they were still rising and falling. When they were very young, it was easy. Almost nothing roused them, and he was safe to watch them sleep for as long as he wished. But now that they were getting older, it was an invasion of their privacy, albeit less so for Dustin who still straddled the fence between adolescence and adulthood.
Their mother treated Jess like a virus. She would drop them off every other weekend and say: “Try to have a good time, okay? Don’t infect them with negative thoughts and complaining and most of all, try to keep the drinking to a minimum.”
Where were they now?
He couldn’t help but worry that whatever had happened was bigger above ground. The last big blackout was enough of a scare for everyone even though it was over rather quickly. If a terrorist bomb or some other kind of catastrophe had happened, being underground was probably like being incubated from most of the damage, but that wasn’t going to help his kids.
All he could do was keep going and pray that they were okay.
His knees collided with a short gate that he didn’t see and the wall to his left vanished. He had made it to the next station, the open expanse of which glowed simply from the lack of confined walls. He went up several sets of stairs towards the surface level. Around him on the stairs, were the bodies of people who had seemingly collapsed on their ascent, their faces and hands covered with boils as though they had been burned alive. He stopped to check for a pulse on two youngsters – kids close in age to his own sons. Neither had a pulse but he shook them both the same. He sat one up and slapped him across the face, thinking that he had seen that work in some movie or documentary.
They did not wake, and he went up the rest of the way, viewing the carnage around him, wondering if perhaps it was some kind of transmutable disease that had killed them all. A dirty bomb or something dropped on the entire city. Some of them had frightful wounds on their body like they had been attacked. Perhaps it was just trampling, as they all struggled to get out of the tunnel after the accident below. Or maybe fire had scalded them. The last set of stairs leading up to street level was well illuminated from the grey sky but there were also more bodies here, the last gasps of some who almost made it up and out. Many were missing shoes that had seemingly melted into the ground.
It seemed to be night. The air was oddly cool but refreshing to breathe. There were so many bodies slumped lifelessly against the last rows of steps that there was no way for him to continue up without stepping on some, so he took a few, quickly grabbing them by their shirts and hoisted them aside, making just enough room to get by and up.
It was quiet on the street. There was a pharmacy on the corner and a set of crossed street signs indicated that he was in the heart of the city, right downtown. He looked up to see if he could locate familiar city landmarks but all he saw was a mix of dirty brown relic-like buildings and metallic skyscrapers that climbed up into the abnormally low cloud level. Flat grey snowflakes fell from the sky in waving swirls like tiny leaves gently parachuting their way to the ground. The usual onslaught of traffic was missing. He couldn’t quite determine if it really was night but it was an odd haze of darkness due to the thick soup of the sky that blotted everything out.
It wasn’t winter, Jess remembered. He tried to brush a large flake off his arm and it smeared along his flesh, leaving a dirty trail.
This wasn’t snow.
He pulled his smartcard from his jacket and tried to call Michael. There wasn't even a dial tone. He checked Toni too with the same result.
Cars were abandoned in the middle of the street. Some had been in accidents. He walked up to one, a black jeep with stickers on the back bumper that read,
How’s My Driving? Call 1-800-IDONTCARE.
Inside was a young man with curly blonde hair, a blue shirt and shorts: a surfer boy. He had slumped over in the two front seats in such a way that it appeared that he had decided to take a nap.
Jess tapped on the glass, hoping to wake him. It had no effect. He tried the handle, and it opened. The young man half fell out of the car. Jess couldn’t catch him in time before he collided with the ground. He tried to prop him up against the front wheel but the young man’s head kept lulling forward. He laid him down on the ground and closed his eyes, noticing a line of bubbled flesh around his neck. Some of the boils had broken open with a small trail of white puss fizzing on top of his skin.
Jess wondered what kind of catastrophe would result in such a result.
A terrorist attack? Biological? Nuclear? Alien?
His knee was aching and his heart was pounding.
Was this the sign that whatever it was that had killed everyone was now affecting me
, he thought?
His sons were constantly watching these bizarre movies with action superstars, who would fight off extraterrestrial invaders who were looking to take over the earth for unknown but malicious purposes.
He slid into the car and saw that a smartcard was attached to the dashboard. It had been running for who knows how long. The fuel was gone and the battery was dead. It didn’t really matter how it happened at this point. He had to keep moving. To reach the place where he was most likely to find his children was a walk of several hours – less if he could find a working car or bicycle.