It was quiet. No one seemed to want to answer that.
Leon could faintly hear conversations leaking through from the next carriage down. Possibly the exact same exchanges going on here; strangers, overcoming their natural instinct to exist in a private bubble, were turning to each other and pooling information.
‘I wonder how that train driver is?’ said the lady with the long turquoise nails.
That’s when they heard the first sounds of a commotion coming from the carriage up ahead of them.
The old man leaned out into the aisle and looked forward. Their door into the foyer between carriages was open, but the door beyond that, into the next one, was closed.
‘There’s something going on up there.’
Leon squished over Grace’s legs to get into the aisle.
‘Leon, please . . . stay put!’
He ignored his mother. ‘I’m just gonna have a look.’ He stumbled into the aisle, standing in front of the old man. The noises coming from the carriage ahead were growing louder. Voices. Raised over each other. The commotion sounded to Leon like the start of a fight. He could imagine that. The atmosphere was charged and tense. There were tired people, stressed people, drunk people, all crammed into these carriages all the way down, and none of them was getting a shred of information about what was going on outside in the big wide world. He could well imagine some hapless ticket inspector being confronted by an angry mob, perhaps given a hard time, pushed around.
He stepped forward, towards the door. It was open, whirring and clattering softly, trying to close itself, but held back by a kink in the rubber floor runner.
‘Leon, please come and sit down!’ snapped Mum.
The voices up ahead in the next carriage were getting louder, but it didn’t sound like a fight to Leon now. The voices weren’t raised in anger . . .
That’s panic.
Through the small, scuffed, Perspex of the closed door leading to the next carriage, he could see people getting out of their seats quickly, clogging the aisle. Coming this way.
‘What’s going on?’ asked the bearded guy who said he worked for a news site. He was young; his beard was neatly clipped – the kind of trendy-looking hipster that seemed to populate every lifestyle banner-ad.
‘Uh . . . it looks like everyone’s coming this way!’
The bearded guy was suddenly beside Leon. He leaned round him to get a look. ‘Looks like a bloody stampede!’
Leon caught sight of an old woman in the next carriage tangling with someone and falling down into the aisle, and a younger woman trying to step over her and falling down too as someone from behind her pushed hard to get past.
‘Shit! Something’s going on! They’re running from something!’
The old man at their table turned to Jennifer and Grace. ‘Come on, ladies, get up!’ He stood up and turned to face down the carriage. ‘Everyone! Get up and head back! HEAD BACK!’
His voice seemed to carry some authority. Leon imagined he might work in a courtroom, maybe as a clerk, maybe a lawyer or something. The aisle quickly filled with people, not stopping to ask why they were moving, but instinctively reaching for coats, briefcases, laptops.
‘Go!’ bellowed the old man. ‘All of you! Leave your things and . . . GO!’
Leon looked back through the window of the closed carriage door beyond the joining foyer. Someone, a thickset man with cropped hair and tattoos up the side of his neck, had managed to pull himself from the logjam of tangled limbs in the aisle. The door, sensing his proximity clattered open for him.
Now the sounds weren’t muffled any more.
There was screaming coming out of there: desperate, high-pitched get me out of here screaming. The man staggered through the open doorway into the space between the carriages. He caught sight of Leon staring at him.
‘SOMEONE’S GOT IT!’ he bellowed.
Leon spun round. ‘Mum! Grace! Move!!’ he barked. He yanked on Grace’s arm and pulled her up out of her seat. Mum followed suit.
Meanwhile the hipster quickly squeezed past Leon towards the clattering, whirring door and grabbed the handle of it.
‘What are you doing?’ said the old man.
The bearded guy braced his shoulder against the frame and pushed the door across the opening. It resisted stubbornly. It might not be able to rattle fully closed, but having sensed a passenger, it was damned if it was going to be prevented from opening up. The whirring motor complained as the hipster wrestled to close it.
Over his shoulder, Leon could see the man in the foyer beyond staggering towards them.
‘Shit, we can’t let them in!’ hissed the hipster. With a savage jerk he pulled. The motor gave up resisting him and the door rattled closed just as the tattooed man reached them.
‘Hey!’ He thumped on the scuffed window with his fist. ‘Open the bloody door!’
The bearded guy had his hands wrapped round the handle, holding it firmly upwards in the latched position and against the frame. The motor whined and clicked persistently. ‘Someone help me hold this!’
Leon was the closest.
‘Leon!’ He turned at the sound of Grace’s shrill voice. ‘Come on!’ She squealed.
‘No! Help me here, mate!’ yelled the bearded guy. ‘Help me!’
Leon flapped his hand at his mother and sister. ‘Just go! Go! I’ll catch you up!’
‘LEON!’ snapped his mum. ‘YOU COME RIGHT NOW!’
‘Shit!’ grunted the bearded man as the door rattled and shook under the impact of shoulder-barging coming from the other side. ‘I can’t hold this thing on my own. Help!’
‘Mum! Just go!’ said Leon. He turned back towards the young man doing his best to keep the door firmly in place.
‘We got to tie this thing closed! You got string? Rope? Cable? Something?’
Leon shook his head. The old man who had been sitting opposite Leon joined them both. He loosened, then pulled the tie up from his collar and handed it to the bearded guy. ‘Use this!’
‘I’ll keep holding this – you tie it!’ said the young man. Leon nodded. He threaded the tie through the handle then round an emergency-brake handle beside the frame.
‘LET ME IN!’ screamed the tattooed man from beyond the Perspex. His eyes were locked on Leon’s. Wide, round, terrified . . . and completely bloodshot. ‘OPEN THE BLOODY DOOR!’
‘Sorry!’ replied Leon. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry!’
Others were now stumbling into the space beyond the tattooed man. They joined him, slapping desperately against the Perspex window.
‘Look at their eyes!’ said the bearded guy. ‘Do you see that? Jesus, they’re bloodshot! They’re haemorrhaging!’
The old man snatched the end of his tie from Leon. ‘You need to tie it off with a proper knot, lad.’ His big, clumsy, pale desk-job hands worked quickly while the door rattled under the impact of fists and palms and shoulders.
‘PL-E-EASE!’ someone screamed behind the window. ‘Please let us through!’
The Perspex was smearing with something. Sweat? Palm grease? Spit?
‘Done,’ gasped the old man. With a final firm tug, he cinched the knot tight. ‘That should hold for a bit!’
The bearded guy tentatively loosened his hold on the door handle. Immediately it flipped down, unlatched and the door tried to slide open a couple of inches. The tie went taut, the knot tightened and the door held there. Fingers immediately protruded through the narrow gap, curling round the rubber lip, trying to pull the door wider.
Leon heard the chorus of voices, a wide-ranging ensemble from shrill and feminine to deep and threatening, all begging, pleading, snarling.
‘Please . . . please!’ Leon found himself staring into the bloodshot eyes of the tattooed man, their faces just a couple of palms’ width apart. The man’s nose protruded through the narrow gap, his lips squished by the gap into a puckered kiss. ‘Come on, mate . . . please!’ he rasped. ‘We’re all goin’ to die in here . . .’
&n
bsp; ‘I can’t!’ cried Leon. ‘I . . . j-just . . . just go back! Please!’
The man’s fingers waggled through the gap just beneath his chin, like a spider emerging from its hunting hole. They squeezed through between the rubber and the doorframe, then his palm, then the whole hand suddenly thrust forward as a fist and caught the bearded man on the side of the head, knocking his glasses askew.
‘Shit!’ He took a step backwards.
‘Everyone get back!’ shouted the old man.
Leon did as he said . . . and now no one was holding the door. Just the tie.
‘Back up some more,’ said the old man. He pulled on the bearded guy’s shoulder. ‘Don’t let them touch you.’
Leon stared at the Perspex. So many different hands were slapping it, thumping it, punching it. Male and female. A flurry of rings, bracelets, gold watches, varnished nails. The Perspex was becoming foggier and foggier, smeared with spirals of hand grease, like the touch screen of some smartphone played with by a grubby-handed toddler.
‘Oh my God . . .’ the bearded guy shook his head. ‘The poor bastards . . .’
‘Come on,’ said the old man. ‘You too, lad!’ Leon felt the old man’s hand on his shoulder.
The chorus of wailing, crying, screaming . . . If Hell was a real thing, he imagined it would sound like this. It must do. Through the foggy Perspex, Leon could just about make out rough hand shapes. The smearing now seemed to have acquired a colour. Pink . . . like some cheap hotel shower gel . . . smeared in artsy circles, like some primary-school hand painting.
‘Leon! LEON!’ He heard the voice above the din. He turned to look down their carriage. Now almost completely empty. Mum and Grace . . . waiting for him at the far end. Both of them crying and frantically waving at him to come join them.
‘Come on,’ said the old man. ‘Standing around here won’t help those poor sods.’
The bearded man nodded, and stepped dizzily backwards, bracing himself against a head rest. He shook his head and winced.
‘You OK?’ asked Leon.
‘Yeah . . . yeah.’ He rubbed his temple. ‘Just . . . took a punch.’
The old man waved his arms at the two of them to get moving, and they began to jog down the centre aisle, stepping over abandoned briefcases and handbags as they went. Leon turned to look back and saw one last glimpse that he knew was going to haunt him for the rest of his life, however long that was going to be . . .
Faces. One above the other . . . pressed up against the tiny gap between the door and the frame, from the floor, almost all the way to the top. Young and old, male and female, white, brown, black . . . all of them with the same wide-open oval mouths . . . baring teeth and bleeding gums. And eyes spilling tears that were tinted pink like rose water.
CHAPTER 18
Leon hurried down the empty carriage with the old man to join the others. The compartment at the far end was log-jammed as the passengers from what Leon now considered to be their coach, C, poured into coach D.
Mum and Grace were waiting for him just beside the door to the compartment, and now they both reached out towards him and snatched at him as if worried he was about to turn round and head back into danger.
‘Leo!’ snapped Mum, using a voice that hovered indecisively between anger and relief. ‘I told you to come with us!’
‘You OK?’ asked Grace.
‘I . . . I . . . yeah, fine.’
‘Your boy’s all right,’ said the old man. ‘But it has got to be that virus on the news. That’s what’s going on. Somebody in the coach ahead must have had it.’
The young bearded man was panting and sweating from the last couple of minutes of exertion. ‘It’s so fast . . . it’s insane.’ He turned to Leon. ‘Thanks for helping me . . . What’s your name?’
‘Leon.’
He puffed air. ‘I’m James.’
The old man looked back over his shoulder at the far end door. ‘Ben.’
‘Guys,’ said James, ‘can we get off the train? Maybe we should get out?’
Jennifer nodded. She ducked into the foyer and tried the coach door. An orange light glowed to the left of it.
Locked.
‘The doors are all locked!’
‘They always are between stations,’ said Ben. ‘The driver needs to flick an emergency override or maybe someone needs to pull the emergency handle.’
‘Jesus! Just pull the window down,’ said James. ‘We can climb out—’
‘No!’ said Leon.
‘What? Why?’
‘Dad said it’s airborne. Like snowflakes or something, floating in the air.’ He pointed out of the window. It was pitch black outside. Not a single light to be seen. ‘It’s right out there.’
James jabbed a finger down the carriage. ‘It’s in here too!’
They all glanced at the door at the far end of their coach. The noise of crying and wailing, the banging on the window, had subsided. Through the smeared Perspex, there was no longer any sign of movement.
‘But at least it’s contained beyond that door,’ said Ben. ‘For now.’
‘It’s bloody airborne!’ said James. ‘I heard his dad’s call too! Airborne means we could be breathing the virus in right now!’
‘He said flakes,’ said Leon.
Ben nodded. ‘That’s right . . . he did. Which means we can see it. And if we can see it we can avoid it.’
They all glanced again at the dark windows, and all came to the same conclusion at the same time. ‘First light, then,’ said Ben. ‘If no rescue services come for us during the night, then tomorrow morning when we can see, we’ll walk. How does that sound?’
James nodded. ‘Sensible.’
‘We don’t know how it’s spread,’ said Jennifer. She had her arms wrapped tightly round Grace. ‘It could be passed by touch.’
Ben ran a hand through his thinning grey hair. ‘Yes, that’s a possibility.’ He looked at James and Leon. ‘Did that man with the tattoo touch either of you?’
Leon shook his head. Ben looked at James. ‘You?’
‘No . . . I . . . no, I don’t think so.’
‘Think? Or know?’
James scratched at his beard then adjusted his glasses unnecessarily. His eyes darted from Ben to Leon. ‘I . . . well, he threw a punch at me. I mean . . . it was only a glancing blow. Hit the arm of my glasses rather than me.’
Leon felt his arm being tugged. It was Mum, pulling him backwards from the young man. ‘You need to step away!’ she said sharply. ‘Right now!’
James looked incredulously at her. ‘What the—?’
‘You can’t come into the next carriage with us.’ She softened her voice. ‘I’m sorry.’
He snorted humourlessly, shot a glance over his shoulder down the empty coach. ‘I’m not staying in there!’
‘Actually, she’s right,’ said Ben. ‘Just to be on the safe side, James.’ He nodded at the young man’s glasses. ‘I’d remove those as well.’
James instinctively reached up with his hand to remove them but Ben intercepted. He grasped his arm. ‘Don’t touch them . . . just shake them off.’
James nodded. He took a few steps back into the coach and shook his head like a wet Labrador shaking its coat. His spectacles flew off and landed softly on one of the seats. He turned back to face them, blinking. ‘There, is that better?’
No one said it was.
‘Now . . . what?’
‘Just stay where you are,’ replied Ben.
‘I’m not staying here!’ James looked at Leon for support. ‘Mate?’ He stepped forward and reached out a hand to him.
Leon recoiled.
James stared at them all. ‘So? What? I-I’m, like, quarantined?’
‘We’ll go into the next carriage,’ said Jennifer. ‘You stay here . . . just for a bit. And we’ll see.’
‘We’ll see? What does that mean?’
‘She’s right,’ said Ben. ‘Whatever happened in the other coach . . . it happened quickly. Just wait and see .
. . for a bit.’
A bead of sweat rolled down the side of James’s face and into the bristles of his beard. ‘How long? Five minutes? Ten?’
‘Just for a bit,’ said Ben. He gestured at James to back up a step or two. ‘Just sit tight, catch your breath. I’ll take this lady and her children through to the next carriage then I’ll come right back, OK?’
James looked hurt. ‘Come on! For God’s sake! I saved us! It was my idea to block the door!’
‘I know. And we’d all now be like those poor sods back there if you hadn’t,’ replied Ben. ‘We’re grateful. It was quick thinking.’ He smiled. ‘Just sit tight. I’ll be back in a minute.’
‘We’re not abandoning you,’ said Jennifer. ‘It’s just a—’
‘Yeah, yeah . . . I get it,’ interrupted James. ‘Just a precaution. Fine . . . OK.’ He glanced once again down the length of the coach. It was entirely still and quiet down there. The door still held closed by Ben’s office tie. James wiped his eyes with the back of his hand then slumped down on to the nearest seat, letting his head roll back on to the headrest. He closed his eyes and stretched his long legs out into the aisle. He looked like an advert for First Class.
‘That’s it, James . . . Make yourself comfortable.’ Ben smiled.
The rest of them stepped back into the compartment until the door’s sensor decided it was clear and it rolled smartly shut, thumping against the rubber stopper. James stirred and opened his eyes, then settled again as he realized the door was going to do that anyway.
‘We should probably tie off this door as well?’ said Jennifer, very quietly. She looked at the old man. He nodded.
She looked at Leon. ‘Leon? Have you got a belt or something?’
He shrugged. ‘No.’
‘I have,’ said Ben. He reached round his belly and pulled off a long leather belt. He quickly glanced through the scuffed and scratched door and saw that James was watching them warily.
‘I know what you’re doing,’ they heard him say. ‘Go on, then, if you’re going to do it.’