by Jack Heath
If the ambulance driver knew Tony was clinging to the back of the vehicle, they didn’t show it. The ambulance swerved around a corner and he nearly tumbled sideways off the board.
06:20This was the most dangerous thing he had ever done. Mum and Dad had treated several kids with cracked skulls from trying to ride behind cars. Some of them had even died. And Tony didn’t even have a helmet. If Mum and Dad found out he had done this—and he somehow survived the journey and the flyrus—they would murder him themselves.
The shrieking siren was driving him crazy. His eardrums felt like overripe fruits about to burst. The noise was making him dizzy.
06:00Or maybe it wasn’t the noise. He was starting to feel really ill now. The air seemed to be freezing even though it was a bright, sunny day. His sinuses felt like they were packed with glue. He could hardly swallow because his throat was so constricted.
The virus was killing him. He didn’t have much time left. He tightened his grip on the tow bar. The metal was slippery in his sweaty hands. If he lost his grip, he was dead. The road was a blur beneath the wheels of the skateboard.
05:35And suddenly it was getting harder to hold on. The road was sloped upward now, so Tony’s arms and hands were fighting gravity.
Wait. Uphill?
As the ambulance turned another corner, Tony saw it. The hospital, perched atop the hill like a medieval castle. Luck had been on his side for once. He was nearly there.
But he was so tired. His brain felt like it was made of steel wool. When he looked down at his straining arms he saw that the bruising had spread. His veins stood out like tattoos.
04:30The ambulance rocketed up the winding road. Tony felt like he was on a roller-coaster. He couldn’t hold on any more.
I’m sorry, Mum, he thought. Sorry, Dad—
04:10The ambulance stopped so suddenly that he slammed into the back of it. His brain quivered like jelly inside his skull, the world around him sparkling at the edges. He fell onto the road and lay flat on his back, unable to move, staring up at the blue sky. Shane’s skateboard rolled away back down the hill.
The two paramedics circled around to the back of the ambulance to open the doors and froze when they saw him.
03:50‘How did you get there?’ one demanded. The other looked up, as though Tony might have fallen from the sky.
Tony didn’t have the strength to respond. He felt like his arms and legs were bound in iron chains.
‘Take him inside,’ one of the paramedics said. ‘Quick. I’ll get the other one out.’
The other paramedic picked Tony up without hesitation. He must have been vaccinated—he didn’t look at all scared of the flyrus. The world swirled around Tony again and he tried not to puke as the paramedic slung him over his shoulder and carried him through the front doors of the hospital.
03:00The room was full of people—old, young, thin, fat. Some were pale, others were bleeding, but none looked as sick as Tony.
The paramedic hauled Tony over to the triage desk.
‘No idea where this one came from,’ he told the receptionist. ‘Found him out front. Looks like the final stages of flyrus.’
02:30‘Tony!’ a voice shouted. A voice Tony had thought he’d never hear again.
Mum, he tried to say, but the word wouldn’t come out.
‘You know him?’ the receptionist said. ‘You can fill out the admission paperwork.’
01:50‘Later,’ Mum said. She was wearing scrubs, with a stethoscope dangling around her neck and a blue cap concealing her hair. She pushed a gurney towards the paramedic. ‘Put him on this.’
The paramedic dumped Tony onto the gurney and ran back out to the ambulance. Mum pushed the gurney out of the waiting room and down a corridor onto a ward.
‘You’re going to be OK,’ she said. ‘I promise.’ Tony’s eyes were blurred, but he thought his mother was crying.
00:35The ward was full of other patients hooked up to IV drips with breathing masks on their faces. Mum rummaged in a cupboard, grabbed a shrink-wrapped syringe and rolled up Tony’s sleeve.
‘You might feel a little pinch,’ she said. But in fact, Tony didn’t feel anything at all. He just lay there, holding his mother’s hand as the cure entered his bloodstream and began its work.
00:00
RUNAWAY TRAIN
30:00 Kelli-Anne stared at the sign.
FARE EVASION—IT’S A CRIME.
She knew the train cost money to run, and if one of the passengers rode for free the others wound up paying more. But she really, really needed to get home.
Her parents were expecting her, and if she wasn’t at her house soon, they would call her. She wouldn’t answer because her phone—and wallet—were in the bag which had just been snatched from her shoulder. Then her parents would panic, call the police and instigate a statewide manhunt. It had been a year since the flyrus was eliminated, but they were still ultra-nervous whenever she went out on her own.
28:30She looked left and right. The platform was deserted. No security guards, no cameras that she could see. It was just her, the howling wind and the cloudless sky. There wasn’t even a turnstile to jump over—just a post with a screen for her to tap her rail pass on.
It would be so easy.
Light glinted off something approaching in the distance. A foghorn honked. The train was coming. It was now or never.
28:00Kelli-Anne tapped her hand against the screen as though she were holding a rail pass, just in case there was a security camera she couldn’t see. Then she ran onto the platform just as the train was pulling to a stop in front of it.
The doors whooshed open. Kelli-Anne cast a guilty look each way and boarded the train car.
She was the only passenger in the carriage. The vinyl cushions gleamed stickily on the seats. A trapped moth fluttered from one end of the fluorescent light to the other. Words, probably obscene but completely illegible, were scratched into the plastic windows.
27:20Kelli-Anne sighed and sat down on one of the seats as the train started rolling. Not only had she lost her wallet and her phone, she had lost her status as a law-abiding citizen.
She wondered if all criminals started out on the right side of the law until something made them violate their own moral code. Maybe the person who stole her bag had been desperate for a meal.
26:50But no, it couldn’t always be like that. She knew kids who downloaded movies and TV shows without paying for them, and it wasn’t because anyone forced them to. They just didn’t want to pay, or wait for the Blu-ray, or watch any of the million free things instead.
So she guessed there were two types of criminal. Hopefully she was the kind who stole out of necessity rather than entitlement, but it was hard to tell. It probably always seemed like that to the person doing the stealing.
26:00The wheels rattled under the carriage. Kelli-Anne swayed from side to side as the train rounded a gentle curve. When the carriages were full of people, all rocking in unison, she liked to pretend that they were dancing to the music in her headphones. It was no fun on her own. And her headphones were gone, like everything else in her bag.
25:15Her favourite lip gloss? Gone. The autographed fantasy novel she had been reading? Gone. Her keys to her house, her locker, her bike lock? All gone.
She sighed and looked out the window at the daylight glaring down on the shipyards. The cranes were silhouetted against the distant coast like long-dead trees.
24:55She could hear a faint voice. For a moment she thought it was her phone—maybe she hadn’t disconnected the last call she was on—but then she remembered that she didn’t have it with her.
Kelli-Anne turned around. No-one in the seats behind her. Wondering if she was going crazy, she bent down to peer under the seats. Nobody hiding beneath them. She was definitely alone in the carriage.
24:00Maybe someone was talking in the next car along. She craned her neck, peering through the walkway which joined the two carriages. She saw no-one.
Kelli-Anne eyed the locke
d door which led to the driver’s compartment. He must be talking to himself—or on the phone to someone. It probably got pretty boring driving a train. No steering, no talking to passengers. Just the accelerator and the brake, and for all Kelli-Anne knew, the process was partly automated.
23:30The voice stopped abruptly.
Kelli-Anne was just wondering what that meant when the voice came back, this time much louder, crackling over the PA system.
23:00‘The next station is Grandstand,’ the conductor said. He sounded flustered. Perhaps he had gotten caught up in his phone conversation and had forgotten that a stop was coming up. ‘This train will terminate at Grandstand. Please disembark the train.’
The message was repeated twice more. Kelli-Anne frowned. This train was supposed to go all the way to Grenville, where her house was. Why was it stopping here? How was she going to get home?
The brakes hissed and whined. Kelli-Anne looked out the window at the approaching platform, a slab of concrete under garish lighting and a white-tile ceiling.
Two uniformed transport police were waiting on it.
Kelli-Anne felt the blood drain from her face. Were they here for her? Had someone seen her get on without paying?
22:05She slunk down into her seat, low enough that they wouldn’t see her through the window. What was she going to do? She’d seen transport officers confront people without tickets before. Sometimes they gave them a pass if they had a driver’s licence which proved they were from out of town, or something. But Kelli-Anne had no ID at all. What would they do to her?
She took another peek through the window. A few passengers were disembarking and wandering around the platform, heads high, searching for signs. Kelli-Anne guessed that they hadn’t known the train was stopping here either.
21:00The transport officers didn’t get on board but nor did they leave. They just stood there, sipping coffee and chatting. Kelli-Anne hoped they would move on before the train started moving in the other direction.
20:00After a minute, another announcement came over the PA. ‘Doors closing,’ the conductor said. ‘Please stand clear.’
19:40Kelli-Anne was paralysed. If she stayed on board, there was no telling where she might end up. But if she got off and the transport officers were here for her, then they would see her and maybe arrest her. How had this gotten so out of control so quickly?
She hesitated too long. The doors hissed closed.
Something rattled behind her. The conductor was opening his door. If he saw Kelli-Anne, he would throw her off the train. She scrambled under the seat and held her breath.
She saw the door open. The conductor’s polished shoes clopped past her. He was talking on the phone.
19:00‘There must be a better way,’ he said.
Kelli-Anne could faintly hear the voice of the man on the other end of the line: ‘That’s not your problem.’
‘I could lose my job,’ the conductor said. ‘That’s my problem.’
He walked all the way through the carriage and disappeared into the next one. Kelli-Anne guessed he was sweeping the train to make sure no-one was on board.
She risked another peek out the window. The transport officers were still there. Waiting.
How was she going to get out of this?
She wished she had her phone so she could call her parents for advice or rescue. But if she had her phone she wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.
17:55The conductor reappeared. Kelli-Anne just had time to duck out of sight before he swept into the carriage, still on the phone.
‘That’s not enough,’ he said. ‘I want double that.’
The voice on the phone mumbled something.
‘Easy for you to say. You don’t have to leave everything behind and start over.’
The voice said something hundred thousand.
17:30The conductor hesitated for a moment. Then: ‘Fine.’
Kelli-Anne squirmed under the seat. What was she listening to? Something very illegal, by the sounds of it. If she was caught now, she might find herself in much worse trouble than getting handed over to the transport police.
The conductor disappeared back into the driver’s compartment. He didn’t close the door, which meant that Kelli-Anne had to stay hidden in case he looked back.
17:05The train groaned as it started moving again. She had expected it to go back in the opposite direction, but it kept crawling further along the track. Maybe she would get home after all.
She shrank back in alarm as one of the passenger doors slid open, revealing the wall of the tunnel as it slid by. The train was still moving very slowly, but seeing the tunnel roll past was unnerving. It was as though she had gone to the aquarium to watch the sharks, and had suddenly realised there was no glass between her and them.
16:40Obviously there had been some kind of malfunction. Did the conductor know?
16:30No sooner had this thought crossed her mind than the conductor emerged from the driver’s compartment and walked over to the door. Kelli-Anne expected him to pull out a wrench and start fiddling with the controls, but instead he stepped out into the tunnel and vanished.
Kelli-Anne gasped and ran over to the open door. She wanted to jump out after him—he couldn’t have jumped, he must have fallen, he might be hurt—but the train was accelerating. She didn’t have the courage to leap out, and every second she waited made it worse. The tunnel whirled past faster and faster. If she jumped now, she could break her legs or be crushed under the wheels.
15:15It took a moment for the gravity of the situation to sink in. The conductor was gone. She was the only person on board a speeding train. She had no idea where it was going or how to stop it getting there.
She ran to the driver’s compartment. The conductor had closed the door behind him, and there was no handle—just a keyhole. Kelli-Anne pounded on the door, just in case someone else was in there.
15:00‘Hey!’ she shouted. ‘Can you stop the train? Hello?’
No response.
An emergency call button was mounted on the wall beside the passenger door. Kelli-Anne ran back over to it. A sign said USE OF THIS BUTTON EXCEPT IN EMERGENCIES WILL RESULT IN A FINE. Kelli-Anne ignored the sign and pushed the button.
The phone rang and rang and rang. With a sinking feeling, Kelli-Anne realised that it wasn’t dialling out. She could hear the conductor’s phone ringing in the driver’s compartment.
14:05No way off the train. No way to stop it. Or was there?
Her eyes fell on the neatly packaged fire blanket on the wall—and the extinguisher hanging beneath it. It looked heavy.
She picked the extinguisher up. It was heavy. According to the label it was packed with compressed CO2. An alarm shrieked as it came off the wall, making her jump. The extinguisher slammed down on her foot and she yelped. Fortunately nothing exploded.
13:30She carried the extinguisher over to the driver’s compartment door and rammed the canister against the lock. The door rattled but didn’t open. She swung again, harder. The lock didn’t break, but a crack split the plastic coating on the door. Encouraged, Kelli-Anne hurled the canister with all the strength she could muster and it smashed a hole the size of a coffee cup through the door.
13:00Kelli-Anne reached through the gap and fumbled for the handle on the other side. Shards of plastic and splintered wood scraped her forearm. There! She twisted the metal handle and felt the lock click. The door swung open so fast she barely had time to get her arm back out.
Even in an emergency it was unsettling going into the driver’s compartment. She felt out of bounds, like the time she’d had to enter the boys’ toilets at school to find her little brother.
12:35She had hoped the controls would look like those of a car so she could figure out how to stop the train. No luck. There were four horizontal levers and two vertical ones, as well as a scattering of buttons and switches. Kelli-Anne could see that everything had once been labelled, but the labels had long since worn away.
S
he would just have to try everything until she found the brake. What was the worst that could happen? She grabbed one of the vertical levers up high and yanked it.
HONK! The noise made her squeak with terror. She would have been horribly embarrassed if anybody else had been there to hear her.
12:00‘OK,’ she muttered. ‘That’s the horn. Let’s try this.’11:50
She yanked one of the horizontal levers to the left. It clicked through a number of slots and the engine rumbled with renewed vigour. The needle in one of the many dials rose up and up. Before Kelli-Anne realised what was happening the train had accelerated to a terrifying speed. The tracks blurred as they were sucked under the train and disappeared.
Kelli-Anne yanked the lever all the way back. The train didn’t slow down, although it didn’t seem to be accelerating as quickly. That lever must be connected to some sort of gear system.
11:00With great fear she tried the lever beneath it. It clicked from the right side to the middle, which seemed to do nothing. When she tried to push it further, the engine hacked and choked as though it had tried to swallow one of its gears. She hurriedly put the lever back where she found it.
10:50Only two more levers to try. If neither one was the brake she would have to start trying the buttons and switches.
Then the train turned onto a long, straight run of track and she realised things were much worse than she had thought.
Something was on the tracks up ahead. At first it just looked like a shadow, a black spot on the horizon. But as the train rocketed closer the obstruction became clearer—a car, parked sideways across the tracks.
10:00Kelli-Anne screamed every swear word she knew. This was ridiculous! It was so unfair! Didn’t she have enough problems? Why had this idiot chosen this particular day to park his dumb car on the stupid tracks?
She wrenched the horn lever and held it down.
HOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNK.
The car didn’t move. Kelli-Anne grabbed one of the other mystery levers and hauled it sideways.