Hell train, p.5
Hell Train, page 5
“The darkness is making you anxious,” said Gina from nearby. “Just calm down, dear. Everything is okay.”
“No. No, it’s not right. I’ve been through this tunnel a dozen times, and it doesn’t take this long. We should’ve come out the other side by now. I… I need to get off the train. I need to…”
Xavi moved in front of the seats and held her again. She tried to fight him, but he wouldn’t let go. “Clip, it’s okay. It’s okay. Stop fighting me.”
All is calm. All is well.
No, it’s not. Something’s wrong. I can feel it.
Help me, Clip-Clip.
Clip screamed. “Turn the lights back on. Turn the lights back on right now!”
The lights came on, flickering for a moment before settling.
Everything was fine. She was panicking for no reason.
Xavi held her by the shoulders and looked at her. “Clip, you’re fine. You’re okay.”
Clip was panting. She wrung her hands together; they were covered in sweat. She felt like she was standing upon the precipice of panic, and she had to take a step back before she fell, because when she panicked, things only ever got worse.
Everything is okay. It’s only my brain telling me it isn’t. Fuck you, brain.
“I… I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not having a very good day.”
Gina sighed. “I don’t think any of us are, thanks to those hooligans.”
“But they’re gone now,” said Xavi, kissing the side of her face. “Relax.”
But she couldn’t relax. Something still felt off to her. Something still felt wrong.
She turned and faced the window. It was still pitch-black outside, the train still inside the tunnel. They should have exited by now.
It makes no sense. Are we stuck?
No, it feels like we’re moving. The train hasn’t even slowed down.
Clip moved over to the window and tried to make out the tunnel walls outside. Somewhat foolishly, she stretched upwards and thrust her arm out of the gap.
“Whoa,” said Xavi. “Pull your arm back in. What if—”
“There’s no air,” she said. “There’s no air rushing by. I can feel the train moving, but… but it’s not moving. Not really. There’s nothing outside, and it’s too quiet. I can’t hear the tracks.”
“Come on now, dear,” said Gina. “You’re going to frighten Harley.”
“I’m okay,” said Harley, but his voice was on the wrong side of anxious.
Xavi was shaking his head and looking at Clip as though she were mad. “We’ve been through a stressful situation, baby – and I’m sorry for handling it all wrong – but everything is okay. You’re just panicking.”
Clip pulled her arm back inside and glared at her boyfriend. “Try it! Stick your hand out of the window and tell me everything is normal.”
He pulled a face. “I’m not sticking my hand out the window. I’m likely to lose it.”
“I need you to do it, Xavi. I need you to see.”
“Clip, come on, let’s—”
“Please! If you want to tell me I’m overreacting, then put your hand out the window first. Do that, and I’ll listen to whatever you tell me.”
Xavi let out a long, irritated sigh. He turned to Harley and handed him back his Rubik’s Cube. “You hold on to this for now, chico.”
Knees on the seat, Clip clambered out of Xavi’s way as he moved to the window. The look he gave her was condescending as hell, but she forgave him. She knew she sounded crazy, but she had travelled this route enough times to know the tunnel should have ended. How did Xavi not realise it too?
“If I lose my hand,” he told her, “you have to marry me and look after me forever.”
She folded her arms and nodded. “I promise.”
With an unhappy grunt, Xavi took off his orange puffer jacket and draped it over the back of the chair. He then tiptoed in front of the window and stuck his hairy arm out through the gap. For several seconds he said nothing, gave no reaction. He just stood there on his tippy-toes with his arm halfway out the window. Then he pulled his hand back and gave Clip a look that told her she was right.
“You felt it, didn’t you? You felt that it’s wrong.”
He shook his head. “Nada. I felt nothing.” Clip grunted, and she was about to sound off, but then he put his palm up to quieten her. “No, I mean I felt nothing. It was like sticking my arm into outer space. I couldn’t feel the air rushing by. I didn’t feel cold or hot. Just… nothing.”
Gina cleared her throat. “What are you two saying? You’re both mad.”
Clip shook her head. “We’re not mad, Gina. Do it yourself if you don’t believe us. Something isn’t right.”
The woman put an arm around Harley. “I will not stick my arm out of a moving train. I think we should all just calm down before we get carried away with ourselves.”
“Something’s wrong,” said Clip. “Something isn’t right. It’s too quiet. There’s no breeze. We should have left the tunnel by now.”
“Something isn’t right with you,” said Gina in a tone that was probably as mean as the woman could manage. “My advice is to—”
The lights went off again.
A bloodcurdling scream sounded in the next carriage.
Clip groaned in the darkness. “Still think everything is fine, Gina? Because that doesn’t sound like fine.”
All is not calm. All is not well.
CHAPTER 5
The lights came back on but seemed unsure of themselves. LED strips running above the aisle fizzed and flickered, exacerbating Clip’s headache. The advertising displays had gone black, and the destination tickers were garbled with red characters that made no sense.
I need to get off this train.
I want to go home.
The screaming in the next carriage had stopped, cut off abruptly by a choked gurgle.
Xavi looked at Clip, shaking his head slightly. “You think those idiotas have done something?”
“I can’t see it being anything else, can you? We should go help.”
Gina cleared her throat and pulled Harley against her. “I’m staying here. I don’t want any trouble.”
“Probably a good idea,” said Xavi.
Clip nodded in agreement, but she couldn’t decide if the woman was selfish, cowardly, or merely responsible. Harley was clearly her priority, so perhaps she was right to avoid getting involved.
Getting involved in what, though?
Have those thugs finally stabbed someone?
Xavi looped his arm around Clip’s and started moving with her. “I have a feeling we won’t make our lessons today,” he said.
“I just want to go home to bed so I can sleep the rest of this horrible day away.”
“I’d be happy to join you, baby.”
“I bet you would. I still haven’t decided if I forgive you yet.”
“Yes, you have.”
They reached the end of the aisle, passing by the toilet cubicle, and they opened the passageway door. It led to a short walk-thru space between the carriages, a bit like an airlock. Xavi stopped and asked if she was sure she wanted to get involved. Earlier, she had wanted to avoid trouble. In fact, she had run away and locked herself in the toilet.
“I can’t sit around worrying,” she said. “I need to know what’s going on. Then we can decide whether to get involved. Evil wins when good people do nothing, and all that.”
Xavi. “I agree. Someone might need help.”
Inside the next carriage, everything was still.
A tall man in a thick green jumper stood in the middle of the aisle with a concerned expression on his angular face. Xavi started to ask the man what was wrong, but his words trailed off as his eyes fell upon a heavyset man lying face down on the floor.
The man in the green jumper dropped to his knees beside the unconscious man and tried rolling him over. When the task grew too difficult, he grunted and asked for help. “We need to get him on his back. He’s had a heart attack.”
Clip nudged Xavi, and Xavi sprang into action, kneeling on the other side of the prone man and helping to roll him onto his back. It took several attempts, but the two of them eventually managed it. The man in the green jumper got to work, unbuttoning the unconscious man’s collar and checking for a pulse.
“Are you a doctor?” asked Xavi.
“No,” the man said as he opened the unconscious stranger’s shirt and placed his hands on his bare, flabby chest. He began to administer CPR, making a grizzly noise – like that of meat being pounded.
“Tell me when,” said Xavi, and he positioned his face over the unconscious man’s mouth.
Green jumper administered several more chest compressions before stopping and barking, “Now!”
Xavi pinched the patient’s nose and breathed into his mouth. For several minutes, he alternated with green jumper, trying to revive the patient. Nothing much seemed to be happening.
Clip looked out of the windows but still saw only darkness. The motors hummed beneath her feet, but there was no sound other than Xavi’s exhalations and green jumper’s chest pumping.
“He’s not responding,” said Xavi after a while.
Green jumper said nothing; he just kept pumping away at the patient’s flabby white chest.
Xavi looked up at Clip. “We need help. Go get the driver.”
Clip nodded. She’d been frozen to the spot, watching helplessly while others tried to handle the crisis, but now was the time for her to contribute. A man’s life hung in the balance.
She edged around the three men in the aisle and hurried towards the driver’s compartment at the end of the carriage. Did the driver know what was happening? Could he see them on camera? Had he not heard the screaming?
Mudz and Kyle sat in the middle of the carriage, and they glared at Clip as she approached, but then they looked away. Clearly, they weren’t interested in helping. The opposite of Good Samaritans.
Other people occupied the carriage, too. A young black guy in a white shirt and purple tie sat near the back. His shaved head exposed a thick scar on top of his skull that must have been the result of a serious wound. In front of him, an elderly couple sat at one of the table sections, holding hands across the plastic surface. A sudoku book lay on the table with a biro clipped to the top of the cover. The old woman gave Clip a sheepish smile when she neared. “A terrible thing,” she said. “Poor man was just going about his day and then this happens.”
Her husband looked at Clip and nodded down the aisle. “Do you know if he’s okay, young lady?”
“I really don’t know. I’m going to fetch the driver.”
“You best hurry, then.”
Clip reached the end of the aisle and stopped in front of a narrow metal door. Raising her fist to knock, she hopped backwards in fright when it opened before she got the chance. The driver seemed surprised to see her, and for a moment he didn’t speak. His expression was distant, his eyes seeming to gaze in on themselves, but then he suddenly snapped out of it and gave Clip a thin-lipped smile. “Are you okay, miss?”
“A passenger has had a heart attack. You need to stop the train.”
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re inside a tunnel. I can’t stop the train. Show me to the passenger.”
Clip wanted to grab him and demand that he stop the train – and she wanted to know why this short tunnel was seemingly never-ending – but a man’s life was at stake, so she put that first. “He’s over here.”
Clip led the driver to the opposite end of the aisle, where Xavi and green jumper continued working on their patient. Nothing appeared to have changed.
“I’m Daniel Purvis,” said the driver. “I’m the train operator. How long ago did this man collapse?”
“When the lights last went out,” said green jumper. “He’s not responding.”
The driver nodded. “And you are, sir?”
“Paul Hopewell.”
“And I’m Xavi,” said Xavi. “I’m a medical student.”
“You can help this man?”
“I don’t think so. I think it’s too late.”
Green jumper – Paul – nodded in agreement. “We’re not getting anything from him. He was gone before he hit the floor. Painless at least.”
Dan put his hand on the seat back, as if he suddenly felt woozy. His collar was open, his shirt untucked. Dried blood stained the left shirt cuff, which was peeking out from beneath the sleeve of a navy-blue blazer. Wearily, he scratched at the back of his head. “What a tragedy. Did anybody know who he was?”
Everyone shook their heads.
Paul removed his hands from the dead man’s chest and sat back on his heels. “I was watching when it happened. It was like the poor geezer was seeing things. He leapt up into the aisle and started muttering something about a baby girl – or he was calling somebody baby girl, I don’t know. Either way, he was terrified, and then he just dropped dead.”
Xavi sighed. “Heart attacks are sometimes pre-empted by feelings of doom. It could also have been a brain aneurysm. The pressure on his brain may have caused hallucinations and confusion.”
Clip swallowed. Is that what’s wrong with me? Is that why I saw Richard in the mirror? Or why I keep hearing his voice?
Paul patted Xavi on the arm. “We did what we could, mate. We tried.”
Xavi nodded and smiled, but Clip recognised his sadness. This had been his first chance at being a doctor, and he had failed. Not that there’d been any other likely outcome.
Silence filled the carriage for several minutes as it probably sunk in that they were all looking at a corpse. Clip thought about the man’s wife, or family. Right now, they had no idea he was gone and might be expecting him home any minute – they were going to have a nasty shock. She felt a wave of remorse for them, whoever they were.
Now that the man was dead, Clip’s concerns turned to herself. “Why haven’t we left the tunnel?” she asked Dan. “What’s going on?”
“I… don’t think I should alarm anybody.”
Paul got to his feet, his thick desert boots clomping on the carriage floor. “Alarm us about what? What are you two talking about?” The more he spoke, the more it became obvious he was a working-class Londoner. He pronounced ‘about’ as ‘a-bat’. Clip studied the man for a moment and decided to trust him with something that would likely sound utterly mad. “We entered a tunnel several minutes ago,” she explained, “and we haven’t come out yet.”
He shrugged. “So?”
“So, I’ve travelled this route two dozen times, and the tunnel usually lasts a few seconds. It’s like we’re stuck inside.”
To her surprise, Paul didn’t laugh. Instead, he turned and looked out of the blackened windows, furrowing his brow. The elbows of his green jumper were padded with scuffed leather.
“Please,” Clip begged the driver. “Tell us what’s happening.”
“I don’t know what’s happening,” said Dan. “That’s the truth.”
Xavi put his arm around Clip and pulled her back a step. “What do you mean, you don’t know? You’re the driver. Tell us what’s going on. Why are we stuck inside this tunnel?”
“I don’t know.”
Clip moaned. “Stop saying that. There’s a dead man on the floor. You need to get us to the next station and let us off. Please, just… just get us out of this tunnel. Whatever is happening, make it stop.”
“I can’t.” Dan put his hands up before anybody else spoke. “You’re right. The train should have exited the tunnel by now, but… it hasn’t. All of my systems have gone dark. I can’t see anything up ahead – no other trains on the lines – and I can’t communicate with the signal boxes. The radio doesn’t work. It’s like we’re in the Bermuda Triangle.”
“Are you for real?” Xavi shook his head. “I mean, what are you saying right now?”
Dan folded his arms and sighed wearily. “The train is moving, according to my instruments, but we don’t seem to be going anywhere. It’s like we’re stuck in place.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying,” said Clip. She reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out her phone. Her hand was shaking so much that she almost dropped it.
“There’s no signal,” said Paul. “I already checked.”
Clip looked at her screen anyway, and let out a growl when she saw there was no network. She put her phone back in her pocket. “Mine’s dead, too.”
“And mine,” said the man in a shirt and tie, sitting towards the front. He had a laptop on his knees, but he slapped it shut dramatically. “I tried to call an ambulance when you guys were trying to revive him, but I couldn’t get a call through. Guess we’re in a dead zone.”
Xavi nodded at the man. “An ambulance never would have made it in time.”
“Yeah, I see that, bro. He went pretty fast, huh?”
“This is terrible,” said the old lady sitting with her husband.
“Poor sod,” said the old man.
Paul turned away from the windows. He was a tall man, with broad shoulders and cropped brown hair. A scar crossed his bottom lip that ran right through the stubble on his chin. “How long have you been a train driver for, Dan?”
“Train operator – I’m a train operator – but to answer your question, almost twenty years.”
“You ever experienced anything like this before? Ghost tunnels? Passengers having hallucinations? Dropping dead?”
“No, of course not.”
Paul sucked in a deep breath and pinched at the bridge of his nose, like he was running out of patience. “You say that like it’s a silly question, but what exactly is your explanation for what’s happening right now? Did we crash? Are we dead?”
“I don’t feel dead,” said Clip, and Xavi frowned at her. Probably because she had taken an absurd question so seriously.
