“Please, let me talk to my wife,” begged the man from outside the circle. The officer begrudgingly signaled his troops to release him. The man rushed forwards to his wife and gripped her desperately in his arms, the two openly weeping. He broke off the embrace and took his wife’s face in his hands, staring her straight in the eyes. “I’ll find you when this is all over. I promise,” he insisted.
“Scott,” she pleaded, but he cut her off.
“Take Jonah, and do what we all need you to do. I can get by here, but I won’t be able to live with myself if you two don’t get on that train because of me,” he replied.
The wife shook her head, sobbing. She pressed her forehead into her husband’s.
“Professor, we need to go. I’m sorry,” interrupted the officer.
The man kissed his wife then knelt down beside his son, turning the terrified boy around to face him. Fresh tear tracks lined the boy’s puffy young cheeks as he stared at his father wide-eyed with love and confusion.
“Jonah, your mom’s a really important person, you know that? And Daddy needs you to look after her while you’re both away. Daddy’s gotta do some stuff here, but he’ll catch you up as soon as he can. Can you promise me you’ll look after Mommy until then?”
The little boy nodded, his unchanged expression showing how little of the situation he comprehended.
The man gave his boy and his wife one last hug before a soldier led him away and out of sight. The mother and son were swiftly ushered away through the hall’s main exit, with two soldiers helping the grieving woman to walk while a third carried her child in his arms.
Ripples of uncertainty spread across the rest of the hall, as anxious evacuees tried to fathom the precise reasons for the man’s eviction, wondering if they were next.
“Alright, let’s turn it around!” shouted the ranking officer, galvanizing his stalled troops and clerks back into action.
As they stepped into the main corridor, following the other processed evacuees out into the rear parking lot, the pain in Lucy’s abdomen flared up, making her bend over. Dan placed a protective arm around her shoulder, shielding her from the jostling crowd. She glanced around as they moved; many of the women her age bore similar signs of agony, but the older women seemed unaffected.
A row of empty troop-carrier trucks stretched out across the lot. Green-wristbanded people climbed into the backs, sending up their backpacks first then clambering in with the help of those already on board.
“Lists A one through nine this way, list B that way!” announced an officer through a megaphone, repeating the message as people streamed by.
Lucy counted about a dozen trucks in all as Dan steered them towards the lone B-lorry at the far end of the line.
Dan threw their backpacks in and helped Lucy up the steps. She swayed at the top, prompting an older woman to leap up and help her into a seat.
Lucy looked around at the other occupants of the truck; they ranged in age and ethnicity, but all had the same slightly shifty look and tended to avoid eye contact. Perhaps the word “freeloader” was echoing around their heads too.
“Move out!” came the order further up, followed by the sound of engines starting. Their vehicle sprang to life with a rumble and splutter, shaking its occupants then settling down into a juddering idle. The other trucks could be heard pulling away one after another while the last of truck B’s passengers were loaded.
Lucy stared out of the open back as they pulled away, passing the razor-wire boundary. Two Humvees with mounted gun turrets tagged on behind them, obscuring her view of the school’s shrinking American flag as it rippled defiantly in the breeze.
***
Lucy started to recognize certain buildings as they got closer to the train station.
With a lurch the engine suddenly cranked up several gears and the truck plunged forwards, sending its passengers jostling into one another. One of the Humvees pulled out and overtook them, its navigator pointing to something ahead and shouting as they disappeared from view.
Masses of people began to appear in the truck’s wake, standing amid uncollected bodies. Some protestors wore masks, others had their faces exposed, some had backpacks, others held baseball bats. Razor wire had been deployed along the sidewalks, keeping the angry crowd at bay as the convoy passed through. Ground troops hastily closed the makeshift razor gate as the last Humvee passed through. The crowd’s shouting was incoherent, but its anger was palpable. There weren’t just thousands of them, there were tens of thousands.
Truck B came to a halt amid a protective circle of two hundred troops who stood between them and the wire. Soldiers bellowed at Lucy and her fellow occupants to get the hell out.
She and Dan threw their backpacks out of the truck and leapt after them, Lucy’s abdomen burning with the impact of concrete underfoot. As she and Dan scrabbled to refasten their bags, specific chants from the crowd became audible.
“Let us on the fucking train!” came a cry from nearby, which was met with roars of approval and echoes of cursing directed at the evacuees.
“What about our goddamn rights? What about our rights?” came another cry from behind the wire.
“Come on, keep it moving!” yelled a soldier, giving Lucy a shove towards the station entrance. All along the way soldiers yelled at them, urging them forward through the open barriers and ticket hall and out towards the train.
The platform was rammed with people from the other trucks, all hurrying to find their carriage. “Truck B right ahead!’ screamed a soldier, straining to be heard above the crowd as Lucy’s pace slowed, unsure where to turn. Dan grabbed her hand, pulling her straight ahead and onto the carriage steps.
“Keep going! Move along inside!” came more bellowing from the soldiers below, furiously directing the passengers further into the carriages as more approached.
Theirs was the nearest and last carriage on the train. Lucy and Dan climbed the stairs to the upper deck where they flung themselves into the closest seats. The two turned and stared out of the window fearfully as the hordes of angry and desperate people surrounding the station began to escalate their protests.
Lucy’s eye moved to the razor wire directly ahead where a man was pulling off his shirt. He tore it in two and wrapped it around each hand before taking hold of the barrier and prizing the metal spirals apart, slowly edging forwards in-between the wire.
“Get back!” shouted a nearby soldier, Lucy reading his lips through the thick glass, but the topless man didn’t listen. The soldier smashed his rifle butt into the man’s jaw, sending him crashing backwards, the wire springing back viciously as the man’s grip slackened with the impact. He fell to the ground, blood immediately leaking from the scores of razor cuts across his body.
A retaliatory bottle flew out from the midst of the crowd and smashed into the soldier’s helmet, sending shards of glass into his cheek. The soldier reeled backward as two colleagues closed in to provide reinforcement.
The first warning shots rang out. Lucy’s eye darted over to a jeep where a marshal stood atop the hood, the recently fired pistol in his right hand pointing directly at the sky, a megaphone in his left hand.
“This is your final warning!” cried the marshal. “There is no more room on the train, but rations are available to you. The virus is over, the city will be restored soon. Disperse immediately or we will use lethal force.”
As the marshal lowered his megaphone and turned to climb off the jeep, a fresh gunshot rang out. He pivoted on the spot, off balance, as the bullet blasted into his shoulder, sending him crashing to the ground. A whistle sounded and the vehicle’s gun turret launched into action. The gunner fired suppression patterns into the crowd, sending the mob sprawling outwards as they trampled and crushed each other in flight, while tear-gas grenades exploded underfoot.
But as the plumes of gas spread among the crowd, a breach formed in the barrier. The wire to Lucy’s right had been cut, and desperate citizens now surged through the rupture. The nearest
turret began to spin around to halt the unstoppable tide, but it was too late: the crowd was among them now. The gunner pulled out his revolver and began to pick off advancing individuals, many of whom fell immediately, not being armed at all.
The adjacent Humvee reversed suddenly, wiping out two civilians. But before the gunner could engage the oncoming masses, a hail of bullets burst through the tear-gas smokescreen. An armored police vehicle surged through the perimeter, firing at soldiers and civilians indiscriminately.
The wire wrapped itself around the careering police truck. The vehicle strained as the razors bit into its tires and mangled around the axle, bringing it to a halt. But the truck had quashed a large section of fence, which the mob now poured through, immediately overwhelming the only remaining turret gunner.
A scrawny male civilian with his hood pulled up leapt onto the now-vacant turret and attempted to retrain it against the military, but was immediately shot down by the ground-level troops.
As the soldiers engaged the advancing mob in two-way gunfire, a third breach appeared in the perimeter and thousands more began to pour through the gap, knocking each other over and trampling the fallen underfoot as they raced towards the train.
A second police riot vehicle raced into the fray and a dozen self-styled militia men poured out onto the concourse wielding a mixture of handguns, rifles, and machine guns.
Through the stuttering gunfire, shouting, and engine revs came a second whistle, and the train lurched forwards. The mob spilled out onto the platform and began running towards the train.
“Jesus Christ, they’re gonna board us!” cried a terrified man a few rows along. The whole carriage lined the windows, staring in terror as hundreds of people poured onto the concourse, all running in their direction. Some quickly began shedding their backpacks and weapons in a bid to run faster.
As the twelve-carriage, double-decker behemoth slugged forwards, the mob began to close in on Lucy and Dan’s carriage.
“Help! Please help us! Wait!” cried a man so earnestly he could be heard through the thick glass of the upper deck. He was almost level with their carriage door now, closely followed by dozens more, all doggedly chasing the accelerating train. His arm extended out towards the carriage railing, a look of profound urgency widening his desperate eyes as his fingers homed in on the rail.
“Wait! No!” cried the man, before a burst of gunfire spurted out from the lower deck. He vanished from sight, along with the runners nearest him.
More gunshots; the deck below continued to fire. Lucy pressed her face into the glass, trying to see what was happening, but the window frame blocked her view.
“Lucy!” called Dan a little way behind her. She rushed over and joined him at the rear door, which was the end of the train. Together they peered out of the circular, hatch-like window and watched in horror. Bodies lay strewn across the concrete in race formation, dotted out like a track-and-field massacre. Behind them was a growing group of people arriving onto the platform only to realize the train had gone.
Lucy stared at the mob members; they were ordinary people, arms hanging limply by their sides, gaunt faces gazing back at her in disbelief as the train pulled clear of the platform.
The locomotive continued to gather speed, the sounds of gunfire and chaos giving way to the clatter of the engine as it cleared the besieged station and abandoned what remained of the city.
NINE
End of the Line
_________________________________________
Lucy awoke the next morning in the position she’d fallen asleep in, wrapped up in Dan’s arms. His chin rested on her head as she used his torso as a pillow.
San Francisco seemed a distant memory as the train snaked its way through the lunar landscape of the Rocky Mountains. But the boulder-strewn expanse was being invaded by a new color: covering the dark, rusty landscape were patches of the palest blue. Some sort of glistening moss or lichen was spreading across the region. Lucy felt a wave of nausea and guilt as the station scenes flashed back, and she pressed her head further into Dan’s chest, forcing her eyes shut. She couldn’t deal with it; not now. Maybe not ever.
Over the course of the day the train climbed the Jurassic hillscape, at times ascending into the cloud line where the sun’s light was scattered and reflected from either side of the carriage in a cold, bright, halogen shade of white, the bottom of the mountains disappearing off into the mist below.
Lucy’s nose caught the scent of someone else’s meal from a few seats ahead. As she walked to the luggage rack at the far end she noticed that other people were charging their phones and laptops using the train’s sockets. She rifled through her and Dan’s backpacks, extracting their phones, chargers, and some food.
“For you,” she said, returning to her seat and placing a tin of fruit in front of her partner. Like her, he hadn’t eaten since they’d boarded yesterday. Dan nodded, passively, his gaze fixed on the outside.
Lucy opened his tin of peaches and left it in front of him with a fork, before attending to her own portion. He silently ate his lot before retreating into sleep again. Lucy cleared away and put the phones on to charge.
Several more hours passed during which Lucy contemplated their arrival in DC, hopeful that Dan’s reunion with his father would help him with the loss of his sister, Kim. But Lucy herself was still reeling from the loss of Cassie. With no one to talk to – the other passengers were largely silent – she retrieved a notepad and pen from her luggage and began to write.
Barring a few particularly pubescent weeks as an early teen, she’d never regarded diary-keeping as a worthwhile pursuit. But now it seemed appropriate – important, even – to document all that she could remember from the last two weeks. What had happened, who they’d seen, what they’d done. She tried to be as objective as possible, aware that it might one day form part of a historical record.
And so she penned it all, beginning with Cassie’s birthday drinks, through to Dan stockpiling goods that night, to the extortion and execution at the drugstore, to their neighbor dying just yards away from them, to the canaries, and becoming garbage-truck undertakers.
Her prose quickly became bullet points, such was her determination to cover every event and every departure from what had, up until recently, been her normal life.
We were attacked on garbage duty. Myles, my boss, came at me with a knife but Dan saved me.* We made it to the evac train.* Kim died – we found out by letter.* I think the army sterilized me.*
Events occurred to her out of sequence. The notebook quickly became littered with asterisks leading to separate pages where stub entries would be properly embellished.
She paused, the pen hovering above the page, and stared at her own words. I think the army sterilized me. The permanence of it, were it to be true, began to dawn on her. She flipped the notebook and turned it upside down, so that the back cover opened like it was the front page, and she began a new section.
If I die, and this book is found, it’s about my life. I’m writing it because I need to. This back part is about my childhood; it’s about life before everything went wrong – although lots of that went wrong anyway, and I’m not sure I’ll ever understand why. The front part is about what happened after the satellites failed. If I am never able to have children, I hope at least I can pass on my story.
Returning to the front of the notepad, she closed it, exhausted. She’d been writing non-stop for hours. She stretched her hand out several times; the muscles ached from gripping the pen. For all the cramp in her hand, some of the tightness in her chest at least had eased; it was a starting point.
She turned to Dan, who had pulled a sleeping mask over his eyes. His head was turned towards the window and a thin silvery tear-trail glistened on his cheek.
She looked at him and contemplated his handsome features: the stubble lining his jowl, the tiny furry hairs on the sides of his ears, the creases in the skin across his forehead. She missed him.
***
A
s the train gradually descended back towards sea level, Colorado’s mountainous terrain gave way to fields infused with pale blue reeds.
Around mid-afternoon the train slowed and a long, curving concrete platform came into view. It was speckled with more of the pale ‘lichen’ Lucy had seen earlier. Dan stirred at the change of pace and lifted his sleeping mask up. Lucy placed her hand on his, relishing the touch of his skin, and the pair looked out at the small group of people waiting on the platform.
Two expectant passengers stood side by side awaiting the train: a middle-aged man and woman, both smartly dressed and each with a wheeled suitcase. A lone police officer stood with them, his stern face, which was augmented by a thick handlebar moustache, jutting out from beneath a cowboy hat adorned with a sheriff’s badge. Here, there were no angry crowds, no soldiers, no razor wire; just the prim couple who were now preparing to board one of the A-list carriages further ahead.
The train slowed to a crawl but kept moving. The couple began to keep pace with it, realizing it wasn’t going to stop.
Lucy watched as the cop grabbed the woman’s suitcase and threw it into the foremost A-carriage. He shouted instructions to the couple while grabbing the man’s bag. The prim woman raised a hand to her abdomen – Lucy wondered if she had been sterilized too. She looked too old, surely?
A uniformed arm extended out from the carriage door and grabbed the woman’s hand, pulling her on board, then reappeared to grab the anxiously jogging man too. The sheriff hurled the second suitcase on board then slowed to a walk, watching as the train pulled away, giving a reciprocal salute to the soldier on the train before turning on his heel.
Lucy craned her neck as they passed him, watching the cop walk back towards his car, alone.
“’Scuse, Luce,” said Dan, breaking his vow of silence and edging out from his window seat, heading down the aisle towards the next carriage.
When he returned, a few minutes later, he said, “I overheard some of the A-listers talking next door. One of them was saying he had evidence that the virus was terrorist in origin, but the other was saying that her lab had eliminated that as a possibility because the samples they’d collected weren’t terrestrial.”
Convulsive Box Set Page 14