Off Track

by Neil Bullock

  “Oh, God,” Alice gasps behind me.

  My heart races. My legs propel themselves without my brain’s involvement. “This doesn’t change the plan. We need to get out. We just need to find a different way.” There’s no clear path out of here and as much as I feel for these people, I know there’s nothing we can do. The last thing I want is for one of them to grab at our legs as we pass, maybe pulling us over.

  Now

  When I reach the train I can no longer deny that it’s real, because I’m close enough to touch it. I can feel its presence, too. It may seem completely motionless, but there’s something keeping it suspended in mid-air like it is. It’s not exactly perceptible, but there’s something tangible about it all the same. A slight fluctuation in the air pressure, perhaps.

  “What are you?” I ask the train.

  It doesn’t respond.

  I reach out and place one finger tentatively against it and find that it’s cool to the touch. It feels like metal, but it’s impossible to tell what kind. The entire train is painted a shiny black, like an expensive piano. The only deviation from this color scheme is the bright white line that runs along the side of each carriage.

  I’m standing at the very front of the locomotive, which slopes almost to a point, like a bullet train. I walk along its length and find there is no door, no windows. Then I walk back the way I came, around the front to the other side. There’s nowhere for a driver to go. I crouch and look under the train. No wheels. Nothing to keep the train suspended like it is.

  Walking down to the place where the first carriage begins, I note the presence of a door. Finally, something explicable.

  It would be easy to jump to conclusions. Here before me is a train that should not be possible. A train floating three feet from the ground with no obvious place for a driver to go. A train that I dreamed about the night before everybody died. In my dream, I only remember seeing the train rushing along on its way to wherever a train like this one goes. I woke when it became apparent that I was not on board, but instead standing in front of it as it hurtled toward me. My eyes flew open when it plowed into me.

  Should I not climb aboard? Is it dangerous in some way? Was the dream a warning?

  How much of what has happened is related to this train? The fact that I dreamed about it the night before Alice’s death, and the fact that it is here now seems to suggest that everything that’s happened in the past few days is linked. How can that be? This isn’t the way the world is supposed to work. Things like this aren’t supposed to happen. This is nonsense. Perhaps the last week has finally taken its toll on me and I’m hallucinating. Perhaps I’m somewhere else, on the edge of death myself, and this is what my brain’s final horrible misfires look like.

  I close my eyes and relish the darkness.

  I open them.

  The train is still there.

  Survivors

  April 25th

  We manage to get out using a fire exit, run across the roof, then descend to the ground by ladder around the back of the building where it looks like deliveries are made. We walk slowly around to the front of the mall, not speaking. We’re both still reeling from whatever we just witnessed, but I’m clinging to the idea that 911 was busy because whatever happened was being reported by lots of people and when we get to the front of the mall, we’ll see a long line of ambulances and people in hazmat suits. We’ll be taken to hospital and everything will be fine.

  Except when we reach the front of the mall, what we see is not that. What we see is a parking lot much the same as it was when I arrived, except it is now the scene of a number of low-speed crashes. The area in front of the mall where there’s a playground for children, a small picnic area and a large, paved area with benches is dotted with mounds of blackened sludgy flesh. I can still make out the people some of them used to be, folded or contorted into hideous poses as they succumbed to their fate.

  We stop and stare.

  “They’re… are they melting?” Alice asks.

  I watch closely and see that, yes, some of the piles of black horror seem to be flattening out. Spreading. I see one working its way slowly down an incline, leaving a glistening trail behind it like a hellish slug.

  “Do you know of anything that could do this?”

  Alice shakes her head. “Not like this. Not so quickly.”

  “Could it be some kind of attack?”

  She doesn’t respond. She’s staring at the remains.

  “Alice!” I shout.

  Her head snaps to me. “Sorry. Yes, yes. Maybe something like that.”

  “All right. So why are we seemingly the only ones unaffected?”

  She frowns at that, looks around. “Are we?”

  “I think so.” I scan the area again, but there’s no movement that draws my attention. I realize I can hear the sound of cars idling, one of them only a few paces away. I walk in that direction and peer in through the passenger side window. On the driver’s seat is a puddle of black goo which has leaked into the footwell. Alice comes over. “It must not have been limited to inside. I wonder how far it goes?”

  “This doesn’t make sense,” Alice says.

  “How we’re not affected?”

  Alice once commented on my ability to be calm in a crisis, complaining that she’d had to endure endless terrifying situations as part of her medical training to learn that skill, and I seemed to possess it naturally. It’s not innate, though. I did learn it, but much earlier than Alice, and much more privately.

  “Exactly.”

  I ponder this. “Do you think there are any survivors left inside?”

  “I think there have to be. I don’t know of anything that would work this way, to kill a mall full of people, plus everyone out in the parking lot, but leave two people alive.”

  I pull out of my phone. “All right, let’s see if we can attract someone’s attention.”

  “Wait, though,” Alice says, holding up a hand. “If this was an attack, like you said, we seem to be immune. Or maybe there’s a delayed onset. But bringing more people into the situation might not be the best idea…”

  I nod, then then look around again. This place should be alive with movement, with noise. The fact that it’s mostly silent and completely still is starting to make me feel uncomfortable, like just the sheer absence of life is sufficient to rob me of my own. I pull up various apps on my phone and scroll through some pages of information. “Nothing in the news about this.”

  Alice nods as if she expected as much. “Not much of a surprise. Do you see any reporters?”

  I continue to tap at my phone’s screen. “Nothing on social media.”

  “Maybe try posting something?”

  I nod, then click on the Messenger icon and consult the list of friends who are online right now. There are several, and I select Martie, a cellist in my orchestra, at the top of the list. I tap out a message asking if anything weird is happening where she is and wait.

  Meanwhile, Alice starts pacing, checking cars, getting much closer to the rivers of ick than I’m comfortable with. I watch her while I wait for a response to my message, but the longer I wait, the more concerned I become that Martie hasn’t even seen the message. “What are you looking for?” I call to Alice.

  “Just looking. Trying to understand what happened.”

  “Just… try not to get too close, okay?”

  She mumbles something, then continues to watch the closest pile of sludge to her.

  I shuffle over to a raised flower bed and perch myself on the brick wall that surrounds it, then write the following message on Facebook.

  My name is Eden Lucas. I’m in Portland, OR with my friend Alice. Everyone here is dead, possibly the victims of some kind of attack. Does anyone know anything? Can anyone help?

  I read it back a few times, add some hashtags, then post it. When I look up, Alice is walking back toward me. “This is so fucked up,” she says.

  “What is?�
��

  “Nothing I’ve ever seen could do this. Melt flesh, turn it to that stuff,” she points at one of the gently flowing puddles. “Not this quickly. It’s like they’re rotting, but sped up many hundreds of times.”

  “No acids or anything?”

  “Not like this, no. This is organic matter decaying, not being burned.”

  I stand, then consult my phone. Martie hasn’t seen my message. Nobody has responded to my post. “What do we do now?”

  “I think we need to look for survivors.”

  I shake my head before she finishes speaking. “I don’t want to go back in there.”

  “You don’t have to. I will.”

  “Alice, no! Think about it. If these bodies are rotting, won’t they become a disease risk all on their own?”

  “That’s a myth. Dead bodies pose less risk than the living when it comes to transmission of disease. If we’re not already dead from the same thing that killed them, I think we’re reasonably safe.”

  I frown, frustrated. I want to get out of here, find someone in charge of something useful, like a hospital, and hand this mess over to them. I want to know what happened here, and I never want to come back again. “All right, but what if it’s an attack? What if there are people on their way here right now to make sure that it had its intended effect, that everyone’s dead?”

  That makes Alice hesitate, but I can see she’s not convinced, and honestly, neither am I. I think that kind of clean-up crew is good for the movies, but no purpose would be served by eliminating any witnesses to what happened here. Indeed, if it’s a terrorist attack, our retelling of what happened will form part of the purpose of the attack: scaring people. I add, “And where is everyone? If there are people alive inside, why haven’t they come out?”

  She blinks. “I don’t know.”

  I check my phone. Still nothing. “This is worrying me, though. Why has nobody replied to my post? I have a lot of friends who are apparently online right now.”

  That seems to set Alice’s mind on a different track. She frowns deeply, then her eyes bulge. She pulls out her own phone and taps the screen a few times. She puts the device to her ear, listens, waits, then repeats the same process three more times. “Mark isn’t answering.”

  Mark is her fiancé, and my worry kicks into a higher gear. I already wondered how far this extends, but I hadn’t stopped and really thought about it until now. “Shit,” I say, then call my mom with the same result. No answer. I try to tell myself that my mom doesn’t keep her phone on her. She could be out in the garden, she could be taking a nap or watching television. Not answering isn’t a sure sign of anything.

  “Come on,” Alice says.

  “Where are we going?”

  “My place.”

  I trail behind Alice for the first part of the journey. I’m struggling to get my head around what’s happened. Whenever I let my mind wander, it’s not the people who turned to black sludge that I think about, it’s the woman trampled underfoot as everyone tried to get out of the food court. She looked at me. I wished so badly that I could help her, but now it seems like she actually got the better deal. Not the best deal, though. That seems to have been reserved for me and Alice. Why do none of the news outlets have anything about this? Why has Martie not seen my message? Her icon shows she’s offline now. Why has nobody responded to my post on Facebook?

  I occasionally stop my obsessive thoughts and look around. The further we get from the mall, the more obvious it is that this wasn’t as localized as I want it to have been. Every street we turn down has more of those awful puddles of gloop. In every window I peer through and every car on the road. It’s as if the population of Portland was judged and found wanting, so this is their punishment. But what about me and Alice? Did we pass the test?

  Alice occasionally tries to call Mark, but her calls don’t go through. I decide against trying to contact mom again because I don’t want the feeling that is obviously building in Alice with every frustrated step, with every failed connection attempt. She’s going to explode if we don’t get to her place soon.

  We quickly determined that driving to Alice’s place was not feasible. We’d never have got either of our cars out of the parking lot, not with all the stalls and crashes blocking the way. The public roads are much the same story, so we’re walking. We both want to run, but there are too many slippery puddles of people.

  “Alice,” I call, stopping, squinting at something in the distance.

  She turns, still heading homewards, then stops, but says nothing.

  “I think something moved.”

  She turns to face the same way as me, then turns back. “A person?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  She starts walking again and I follow after staring into the distance long enough that my eyes begin to water.

  When we reach Alice’s house, we stop on the sidewalk, staring up the path that leads across the front yard. The place is immaculate as always, but there’s an almost palpable feeling of dread that surrounds the property. After a minute of this, I start to imagine my own version of this ritual. When you’ve walked God knows how many blocks and every person you’ve seen has melted into oblivion, it’s hard to remain optimistic about what you’ll find behind your own front door. Alice has to be steeling herself to walk up the path and inside. The only thing keeping me from breaking down right here is that Mom and Nana live sixty miles away, and that maybe this was just local to Portland. The longer nobody responds to my Facebook post, the less I believe that, though. I have friends all over the country.

  Alice finally starts to move forward. She’s apprehensive, but she fumbles her keys from her pocket as she walks. When she reaches the door, she slides the key into the lock and pushes the door open, then collapses to her knees.

  I can see it, even from the end of the path. The puddle is just on the other side of the door, like Mark was on his way outside when he was taken. Maybe he was trying to escape this, like everyone in the food court. Like the woman who was trampled.

  I run and crouch next to Alice, wrapping both of my arms around her. She remains stiff and immobile for a second, then shifts and grips me tightly as the tears start to flow.

  It’s dark when we finish cleaning up the remains. I’m glad Alice has hardwood floors and not carpet, but it’s still a wretched, horrible job. I manage not to throw up, but it’s a close call. I try to do most of it myself, because Alice can’t stop crying, and it seems like this isn’t something she should have to do. She insists, though.

  When we’re done, Alice sits at the breakfast bar in the kitchen while I turn on the television in the living room.

  “Shit,” I say without meaning to.

  “What is it?” Alice calls weakly from the kitchen.

  “News channels are all off the air.”

  There’s no response, but I imagine she’s probably inferring the same thing from this information that I am. I don’t know where these things are broadcast from, but I’m fairly sure they’re not all in Portland. That means this extends beyond the city. When I can’t get anything out of CSPAN on the television, I allow myself to think for the first time that maybe the worst has happened, and this is at least country wide. I try the CSPAN website on my phone and discover the radio section, but it’s just broadcasting silence.

  When I turn around, I find Alice standing behind me. “Do you want me to come with you to your mom’s place?” she asks, and I almost have to laugh. It took the end of the world for her to be the one to make the offer.

  Immediately, I feel horrible that I even thought that. I nod. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Of course not. We can leave at first light. I’m going to bed. You can sort yourself out?” Every few words she says have a minute pause before them, like she’s on the verge of losing herself completely, and who could blame her?

  “Sure. Good night.”

  She looks at me for a beat too long, then turns
away. She hurries out of the room and up the stairs when her eyes begin to tear up and her face begins to crumple into devastated, helpless anguish once more.

  Alice seems better in the morning, but I can only imagine it’s a veneer. She smiles weakly at me as she enters the living room, then proceeds to the kitchen and clatters around. I didn’t sleep. I lay awake thinking about the woman trampled underfoot, replaying the moment I lost sight of her over and over again. Wondering if she’s the only intact body left in the food court, a fleshy island in the middle of an ocean of decay. The more I focused on that image, the less real everything else seemed. Everyone dead? Not possible. I witnessed a disaster, sure. Something I may never understand, but it was only the mall. The memories I have of walking to Alice’s house are hazy and insubstantial, like we floated the whole way here in a dream. If I go outside now, I wouldn’t be surprised to find the world continuing as normal. Children playing, parents mowing lawns, dogs barking. Alice makes coffee and sets a mug in front of me. “Is this it, then? The end of the world?”

  And just like that, my fragile fantasy world is shattered. One thought I did have before my brain compartmentalized the events of yesterday is that perhaps there’s a genetic component to what happened. Alice’s parents died years ago and she’s an only child, but maybe if I’m alive, other parts of my bloodline are too. “I hope not.”

  Alice watches me, expecting more, then sighs. “Jeez, I’m sorry.” She’s apologizing for suggesting my family might be dead.

  I wave her apology away and take a sip of coffee. It’s bitter and strong. “When do we leave?”

  “Whenever you want.”

  “You still want to come? I’d understand if you want to be… here.”

  In response, she stands and walks over to the front door, the spot where her fiancé died. She pulls the engagement ring from her finger and sets it down in the center of the stain that still adorns the wood. To me, the act feels like she’s breaking off the engagement, giving the ring back, but I don’t question it. If it feels like the right thing for her to do, then it is.