Episode 17: Conclusion

As with so many other things regarding the train, what happened next I recall in a confused blur.

The men returned in force, about six of them this time, trotting down the corridor, the silence broken. A pair stood by each of our cells, and we were pulled out one at a time. I had a growing pit in my stomach that told me we had made a huge mistake, that we were now in serious trouble. I struggled a little bit, and was shoved gruffly from behind in response. As I turned to face my aggressors, I heard a commotion from behind as John punched one of his own between the legs. His elbow raced up to meet the nose of the other one, and his other hand reached for the rifle that the other one had dropped. It all happened in one motion--I wondered how he could do that at all. It was like an action movie unfolding right before my eyes.

The guards by my sides hesitated, turning towards him. I wasn't sure what effect the rifle would have in this sort of limbo--I mean, we were already dead--but I was also sure I didn't want to find out. Adrenaline took over. I felt it course through my veins like mercury. Everything seemed to slow down around me. I pushed the head of the man on my right into the wall, and he fell to the floor. Before the next one could react, I was already driving my knee into his leg, and as he went down I delivered a set of knuckles to his teeth. He grunted as he slumped against the cinder block wall. I turned, my breath heavy.

Sarah's own guards were cast aside as well. I saw John dusting off his hands on his pants, kneeling over one of them. The other had a set of red marks on his face, presumably from Sarah's nails. She had a wild look in her eyes, as if she couldn't believe what she had just done. I almost smiled for a second. Amateur.

The smile dissolved though as another door opened somewhere in the distance. Naturally we had caused a ruckus, and I had a feeling that time was of the essence. It always was in the movies, wasn't it? We turned wordlessly down the hall, and ran forward, each of us with a rifle in hand. I had no idea how to use the bloody thing, but it was comforting to have some kind of defense against those who would not take kindly to our early departure.

We burst through the door at the other end of the hall, the one on the far side that we hadn't been through yet. It was dark on the other side, but a flickering fluorescence in the distance to our left gave us hope. Our feet padded quietly but urgently against the concrete. John, who was ahead of me and Sarah, came to a stop at the corner. He peered around, checking to make sure the coast was clear, and then took off full-force down the hall. We followed along him for several hundred paces toward another staircase at the end of the hallway. We passed by several doors, most of which had darkened windows. The ones that were illuminated made me nervous, but there was no sign of anyone else as we reached the bottom step.We took them two at a time. My heart pounded in my ears.

We burst through a cold steel door at the top of the staircase and into daylight. Sunshine beat against my face. I was so surprised, I almost lost my footing. We had done it. We had escaped. Of course I couldn't say with finality, but I had an overwhelming sense of euphoria. Something within me just told me that everything was okay. I slowed to a walk, smiling to myself as Sarah and John kept sprinting. We were in a field now, with rolling hills and waving grass. The sky was dark, as if a thunderstorm was approaching, but I was so happy to be safe. I cast my face upward, my eyes closed, my arms outstretched.

I heard the door slam open from behind us. Shouting. I frowned, and turned toward the sound. There was no reason to be shouting in a place like this. I could see guards. Rifles. There was no reason for rifles in a place like this. I took a step forward, my hand outstretched, my own rifle forgotten in the grass behind me. A woman screamed behind me.There was no reason to be screaming in a place like this.

Before me there was a series of flashes, and I heard what sounded like the world's best fireworks, and looked up again to find them. They had knocked me off my feet, and I lay in the grass, wondering where they were, how they could sound so close and yet be invisible to me. The smile returned to my face, spreading slowly with the warmth across my chest.

Then came the pain. My face contorted as I lurched onto my side. It felt like there were a dozens sharp knives lodged in my torso. I felt a tear roll off my face, and looked to see the flower it had fallen onto start to shrivel and wither away. I drew my knees to my chest. What remained of the flower turned red, as did the grass around it. Then everything slowly dissipated. The earth beneath me had been replaced with a scorched, cracked substitute. I rolled onto my knees. The pain persisted. The boots thudded towards me as I looked one last time at John and Sarah. They weren't looking back, though. They were racing away, as fast as they could. I didn't blame them.

A hot wind whipped past my face, blowing dry dirt into my eyes. When they cleared, the last of the field dissolved, along with my fellow escapees. I didn't feel anything, anymore. The tears left ashen streams on my face. I only felt the wounds in my chest. The boots weren't thudding anymore. I looked around to see a burning world, hot and black and a mess. The sky was the same angry, agitated colour. The only light around me came from cracks in the ground which bore lava. Occasionally one would burst, shooting up into the air. The terrain was mountainous, boiling and hostile. The pain in my chest intensified.

I was alone.

Episode 16: The Train

We figured it out from within the confines of our cells like this:

In another life, we had been people who did less than savory things without breaking any of the ten commandments. I had been into drugs and other such substances, and my life had sort of fallen on the wayside. Sarah had been with more guys than she could count, even after her memory came back to her, and John had been... well, as he put it, "a giant asshole."

Our redeeming factors, though, what launched us into the limbo of the train and not some mild level of hell, were the ways in which we died. We realized that that was what we all had in common; we had all died selflessly and without hesitation for someone else.

My case was the subway car. Even with my limited thought process and memory, I still could not understand what had driven me to do it, especially given the person I had been. Sarah had tried to talk herself out of a hostage situation at a bank, and had ultimately given police enough time to get to the scene to deal with the issue themselves. The process had cost her her life. John had been stabbed on his way home from the department store with his son. A homeless man who was deranged on something I had probably tried more than once tried to take the boy's hot dog, and then tried to walk away with him. When John stopped him, he got a bellyful of metal.

We all had a story, and we had all landed ourselves here. And here, I pointed out to Sarah, was a hell of a lot better than burning alive for eternity.

We somehow managed to laugh at that for awhile, until there was a slam of a door at the end of the hall. Our conversation, our laughter cut off as if by a knife, and our heartbeats quickened as the pace of the boots did. The bulb seemed to shake as the steps echoed closer and closer. I don't know if it really did.

Episode 15: The Truth

Of course, my mind didn't initially jump to the right answer. A million things ran through my head first; were they going to put us to death? For breaking a window on a train? Or did we do something else? Was it just because we were rebellious in general? What sort of totalitarian place was this train? How could they get away with this?

But as I chewed on this in contemplative silence, John suddenly voiced something that hadn't occurred to me at all. "You mean, we've been dead all along?"

That stopped my mind in its tracks, but only for a moment. Then a flood of memories came rushing back to me, knocking me over and sending me sprawling across the concrete floor. A small table, housing two mugs of coffee with the steam still rising over them, forgotten. There is the click of a lighter as we heat up a spoon on the floor in the corner. Since she brought it, she takes the first hit. She shutters in ecstasy as I snatch the spoon away for myself.

The memory shifts and I'm kissing her on my way out the door. She doesn't say anything as I smile absently to myself, the taste of her lips and something else still on mine as I skip down the hallway and down the stairs of the shabby apartment building. The door slams loudly behind me.

Now I'm waiting outside of the subway station. I've hit rush hour, running late after the business in the apartment. I adjust the tie that the employment agency gave me, which was one of the conditions of my parole. It suddenly felt very tight on my neck, and I didn't want to be there anymore. I recognized myself starting to trip, and slowed my breathing as best as I could. I could do this.

Then a curious thing happened. A woman's scream. A stroller. A dog barking. The subway coming.

What surprises me more than the fact that I acted is that I can actually remember being hit. I jumped onto the tracks, tossed the baby up into its mother's arms, and turned just in time to see the glaring lights on the front of the subway. The screech of the breaks filled my ears. The driver was standing in her seat, shrieking, anticipating the collision.

And then it hit me. My neck jarred. My body was lifted off the tracks by the momentum of the vehicle. Finally, blissfully, it slowed down and I was released, only to be flung onto the tracks. I bounced twice, feeling the skin being torn off of any exposed skin there was. At this point, I think I knew I was dead.

Sarah's words interrupted the memory. "... here because we didn't belong in heaven or in hell. We weren't good people, but we weren't so bad, either..."

I suddenly felt exhausted as the tears started streaming down my face.

Episode 14: Trapped In A Cage

I was led further down into the earth by a stone-faced man in uniform. I didn't bother trying to talk to him; no one seemed to have much to say to me. He led me down a dank, musty hallway towards a single, naked bulb that hung from the ceiling. It tried in vain to fight off the darkness, or at least keep it at bay. The thud of the man's boots echoed violently off the cinder block walls. We stopped before an opening in the wall, the one nearest to where we'd just walked from. I entered the cell wordlessly, and the bar door hurtled closed behind me. My hair stood on end on my arms and neck. His boots thundered away, until they were nothing more than a rumble in the distance.

Without their intrusive sound, I could hear the drip of water on the floor somewhere nearby, slowly, as if it was dripping with intent. It was to this sound that I closed my eyes in the cell, which was miraculously smaller than my room on the train had been, and sat on the bed. At some point, I guess I fell asleep.

I was roused awake later by the thudding of those boots again, bouncing off the walls and into the confines of my cell, my temporary sanctuary. They approached, a pair of shadows dancing past me, and then another cell door slammed shut. Then they faded away again, as mechanically and indifferently as they'd come.

This time, though, between the drops of water, I could hear sniffling, and the occasional hopeless sob into the otherwise silence. I thought I recognized the sound of the person. I stood up.

"Sarah?" I called to the bulb, gripping the bars and squeezing my face against them. The sniffling stopped, and the sobbing turned into muffled hyperventilating as she tried to calm herself. Before she could answer, though:

"What the Hell?" John called from another cell down the row. "That was you they brought in here?"

"Yeah... wherever here is."

"Didn't you guys hear what he said?" Sarah cried, the tears fresh and the efforts to stem them shoved aside. "Didn't he tell you?"

I guess our silence answered for us, because she cried out again. Between heaves, I managed to put together something that scared me beyond comprehension.

"We're all dead."

Episode 13: The Conductor

I found out later that I had been conked by the butt of a rifle. Where the rifle came from, I had no idea--the men weren't carrying them when they yanked us off the train. Unless Sarah lied later... but that didn't make much sense.

I groggily came to in a room not unlike the one that the attendant had awoken me in with the snap of his fingers. This time, though, as the fluorescent lights blinded my bleary eyes, the rhythmic snapping before me burned like a nail being hammered into my skull. When I crashed back to reality and was able to focus, I was surprised that the snapping was not coming from the attendant, but a heavyset man wearing a conductor's hat and overalls.

There was no clipboard this time, though. No stopwatch, either.

"This is new to both of us so let's just cut the shit," he said gruffly. "I've never had to do this before. You and your little band of renegades have really screwed things up. You know that?

I was trying to understand what he meant, and I guess the blank stare on my face hinted at that. He cut himself off mid-ramble, muttered a curse under his breath, shook his head. He drew his hand down his face, rubbing his eyes, then took a deep breath.

"I'm here to make sure everything goes smoothly," he started again, slowing his speech. "The stunt you pulled in your train car--well, that's not as smooth. And so here we are. Dealing with it." He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Do you have any idea why you're here?"

I started to say something, then stopped. I had thought I was onto it, but the truth was, I had no idea. I frowned. Tried again to say something.

Nothing.

"You're here because... well, you don't belong anywhere else. You're not supposed to be able to figure this out... and I'm going to have to talk to the big man to see how to handle this. I've never had to deal with this kind of thing before, and Christ be damned if I'm looking forward to it."

He cut himself off again with a start, blushing as he took in his own words. Ears hot, he stood up from the chair, which creaked as if saying a thankful goodbye. He paused before he went out the door.

"If you've never been a praying man, I'd suggest probably starting now."

Episode 12: Can You See The Grass?

After the door crashed open, things sort of passed in a blur. We were forced out of the room, down the hall and off the train. John struggled, and they had to use force to get him to cooperate. I remember the blood trickling down his split lip, a splash of colour in the gray of the raid. Craning over my shoulder, I saw it on the carpet. The dark splotches were all I could focus on until they were out of sight.

The dining cart was empty for the first time since I had been there. It passed quickly, hazily, as the stern-faced men marched us through the far door. We were alone on the platform, the last of the other passengers being ushered in through the sliding doors. A few faces turned back to see us, and they were shoved forward with a stern words.

We were led around the side of the building. I cast an urgent glance over the edge of the concrete slab that was the platform, suddenly wishing desperately that I could see the grass. It was lost in the fog, a curtain over the vibrancy of the grass. Then we were next to a steel door, cool grey. It creaked open from the inside, no handle visible without. A flight of stairs. A landing. Another flight of stair--I could only tell our navigation by the steps as the light dimmed, then abruptly disappeared altogether as the door slammed shut. There was a noticeable cool, clinging to my skin and pulling at the hairs of my arms.

We came to a stop. We were stopped for a long time.

We were led inside, the fluorescent light blinding me. I remembered the light, the hallway behind the door. I felt a grim nostalgia set over me, and I felt like I was going to be sick. This hallway was almost identical to the one on the train, behind the doors at the far end of the room of the dining cart. My body stiffened as the memories returned to me. I pulled suddenly from the firm grasp on my right arm, turning to flee. Sarah's eyes met mine as I tried to free myself from the other set of hands on my left bicep.

Then everything went dark.

Episode 11: First Stop

I expected the car to be buffeted by wind, the sheets and hair of the people within blowing about like they were possessed. There was no change in the air, though--at least, not to its movement.

A rank smell enveloped the small room, causing all of us to cover our mouths and noses. It was a sickly sweet smell, like rotting flowers. It was overwhelming. I could imagine it oozing through the room, orange tendrils wrapping around us, reaching inside of us and infecting us from within. Hardly what any of us had expected to happen.

This was the first external sensation that I had felt since I had been on the train, and I assumed by the looks on the faces of my comrades that this was the case for them, too. I coughed, and suddenly the train shook back and forth as if in response. There was a screeching as we slowed down, and I crossed the room to lean out the window. Just ahead of us was a train station. There was no one on the platform, no one waiting to board. The fog seemed to subside a little bit as we ground to a halt, revealing the grim light of the lamp posts on the station.

We exchanged a look within train car 139. We had caused this, somehow. There had never been a train station before. The train had never made any stops at all, in fact. Now, moments after the window was broken, we were at a stand still. There was a commotion down the hall, and we could hear shouting as people were drawn from their rooms. I returned to the door, placing my ear against it.

The thundering of many pairs of boots, the footfalls heavy enough to produce a clear sound on the thick carpets, echoed through the hall. They stopped on the other side of the door, one by one. The bald man came to stand next to me, a terrified look in his eyes. I held my breath.

We waited.