Sunlight danced sharply through the trees and into the cabin of the train as it coasted along the tracks. It was high summer and soon the leaves would be falling, but for now, they held the contented attention of Jake Rickshaw through the square pane of glass that accompanied his seat.
Jake loved to take the train. Whenever the schedule allowed, he did all of his business traveling by rail, by far preferring the various bumps and jostles of transport at ground level rather than thirty-thousand feet above it. In fact, it was the place where he got his best thinking done.
The train was scheduled to reach Bangor in another hour, and was thus far running very much on time. The six hour trip south was one that Jake was very familiar with and, as always, he found himself feeling a little disappointed on this final leg of it.
When the train began to slow, however, Jake was pulled from his thoughts as he watched the passing trees come to a still.
Raising his head, Jake peered quickly around the train, seeing that none of the other passengers seemed to have taken any notice, or if they had, did not care. He did note that the car was unusually full. Jake leaned curiously toward the boarding side of the train, hoping to see any signs of a station that he had previously ignored. But as soon as it had completely halted, the train had again begun to accelerate.
Jake slid back into his seat and fumbled in his bag for the mystery novel he had been reading. When he sat back up, with book in hand, he let out a shriek of surprise. A tall, gaunt gentleman was sitting in the previously empty seat beside him. The man turned to regard Jake with an apologetic smile.
“Forgive me,” he said in a kind but gravel-filled voice. “Is this seat taken?”
“No, no,” Jake said with embarrassment. “It’s not. I’m sorry, I just looked down and…you startled me.”
“Please do not apologize,” the man said in a diplomatic eloquence that had the faintest hint of a foreign drawl behind it. “It was my fault for…sneaking up on you so.”
“Forget about it,” Jake said with a smile, turning his attention to the book in his lap. It wasn’t that Jake did not like making small-talk with strangers, it was simply that he did not like making small-talk with strangers on a train ride. Or anyone, for that matter. Train time was Jake’s time, silly as it may sound. So when the stranger continued to chat after a moment, it put Jake on the irritated offensive.
“A pleasant day, is it not?”
“Very nice, yes,” Jake agreed with a flat nod at his book.
“I do not get around to these parts of the world near often enough,” the man continued. “The scenery is beautiful.”
Indeed Jake agreed with this, and it was one of the main arguments he made when trying to excuse his small fear of flying to anyone inquiring. He did not, however, voice any of his thoughts to the gentleman, but merely nodded again.
“It is always astonishing to me to think that people will consciously choose aviation over a locomotive as a means of travel, or better yet, the automobile. Is that not the beauty of traveling? To watch the world change before your eyes as you are moving.”
“You’d hardly believe it, wouldn’t you,” Jake said, hoping that a more syllabically-endowed response would satisfy him.
“Indeed,” the man said. “I sometimes forget how fulfilling a train ride can be.”
“I’m sorry,” Jake said, looking up from his book, “but I’m trying to get a little reading…”
When he looked into the man’s face, silence gripped his words. Having not looked at him fully before, Jake now wiggled in his seat uncomfortably. The man was of an indeterminable age. Not because he looked well-preserved, but because he seemed to actually shift up and down the scale of time as Jake looked at him. He had completely forgotten what he had been in the middle of saying as he peered into the gentleman’s eyes, which were of a color that Jake had never seen before, and would probably have trouble ever having to describe again: a shade like all the colors of an artist’s palette who was painting a forest scene that have been swirled together but not quite blended. The most unnerving part was that the eyes seemed to look directly at Jake, but right through him at the same time.
Jake dropped his gaze immediately. He felt the stare of the gaunt man beside him and continued, “I’m sorry, I have to get by you. Restroom,” he mumbled.
Moments later, Jake was splashing cold water on his face in the lavatory. After giving himself a good long stare, he had decided to forego the reading and try to get in an obviously necessary nap before they reached the depot in Bangor. Perhaps the convention had been a little more stressful than he’d realized.
When he returned to his seat, though, he found a little surprise waiting for him. The man had taken the seat next to the window, and had placed Jake’s bag and book on the aisle seat. He stood there for a moment, a little confused, before taking his new seat. The man, who paid him no notice, was busy looking out the window with great interest.
Jake tilted back his seat quietly and began to take a series of deep, calming breaths, hopefully inching his way towards a nap. A minute or so went by before the man again began to speak.
“I apologize if I have made you uncomfortable,” the man offered. “Sometimes when I find myself a little ahead of schedule, I tend to prattle.”
“It’s nothing,” Jake insisted, keeping his eyes closed. “No worries.” Jake’s heart had begun to pulse faster, though, and something within him seemed to be insisting that something was amiss in his situation. What exactly, he was not sure, but it was unsettling.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you again, but may I ask you a question?”
Jake thought momentarily about trying to act as though he had already nodded off, but knew that since it had only been a few seconds that the option was blown. “Sure,” he said, half lifting his eyelids, but not moving his head.
“It is just that. . .have you ever wondered about the emotion of fear in mortals?”
At this, Jake’s heartbeat again quickened.
“Particularly the fear of death,” he said in dark monotone. “It is most unreasonable, is it not?” After a slight pause during which the man had probably expected a reply, he continued. “As it stands, all living things eventually reach the point of transition in which they must leave their bodily vessels behind as so many dried husks. It is a known fact. Why do so many fear such a fact intrinsically? It makes even less sense yet when these same people find themselves taken by surprise, or angered when it finally happens? It does make my job ever so much more involved.” The man sighed.
Jake dared to look at him again, going against every wish of the pounding organ in his chest. The train was approaching a short tunnel, and as it submerged, the cabin was washed in darkness. Jake backed away from his fellow passenger with a shrill scream. In the window seat sat a visage of inky shadow. Its darkness swirled and flickered about it in wisps of ebony that seemed to have their own luminescence, giving a dark glow that revealed a face leaning against the window. It was the face of the traveler, that was sure, but his gaunt features had been magnified, appearing to Jake as a pale ghoul cloaked in the living night.
The train emerged from the tunnel, and the figure in the window seat changed immediately back to normal, as Jake sat horrified on the aisle floor. He was vaguely aware that his fellow passengers had taken notice of him, and a few looked rather uncomfortable.
The ghastly man looked down at Jake and beckoned him to return to his seat. “Please, Jacob. You are causing an unnecessary scene. Fear is a contagion.” All the while, the man seemed to speak without moving his lips, offering instead a rictus that bore far too many teeth.
If it occurred to Jake exactly how this figure had known his name, it was a thought overlooked very quickly by his lingering fright. He crawled in the style of crabs a few rows down the aisle before stopping out of sight of his seat.
A little girl with pigtails was seated beside him and she pointed. “Don’t be a-scared mister. My momma sez that when I get scared on the train just to hold my Binky.” She squeezed the tatty doll in her arms affectionately. “Do you have a Binky, mister?”
“Sweetie, leave the nice man alone,” said her mother, pulling her daughter carefully out of her aisle seat and into her lap. She glowered threateningly at the questionable looking man sitting in the aisle, undoubtedly ready to plant a spiked heel in his face should he happen not to be such a nice man.
Jake kept moving, eventually finding that his legs would permit him to stand, and found himself again in the restroom. Sweat beaded down his chest and underarms. He had never felt so afraid in all his thirty-eight years. The billowing specter was imprinted on his vision like a sunspot. He knew without a doubt what the man had really been when he had glimpsed him in the darkness.
“Death,” he whispered. Jake curled his knees up to his chest while sitting on the toilet seat. The monster had come to claim them. In a flash of mental clarity, Jake saw the entire train being derailed at a near point down the tracks. In a blaze of smoke and twisted metal, none of the passenger cars would hold any survivors, all of them swallowed by unforgiving wreckage and flame. Jake gulped. That thing out there was present to claim the souls of the countless departed. He tried to remember what he had ever heard about the spectral usher to the dead, but in his panicked state, Jake’s mind remained numbly blank.
He began to despair, knowing that the end was coming for all of the passengers of the train, who were all happily enjoying the ride and thinking nothing of their immediate death. Most of all, however, he was thinking of himself. Of how he would never again be able to take one of his beloved railway journeys. A stupid thing to preemptively miss when one’s life is flashing before his eyes, but he missed it anyhow. Jake began to cry, rocking back and forth on the toilet.
After a few minutes had passed, there was knocking on the restroom door.
“Excuse me, sir?” came a soft voice from the other side. “Are you alright? Some of the other passengers said there was a kind of disturbance. Sir, will you please respond. If you don’t respond, we’ll have to force the door for your safety.”
Jake eyed the door warily. “Yes.” His safety. If they only knew; they were doomed. All of them.
From somewhere within him, Jake felt a calling of self-preservation, one which will often occur to an individual who is certain that their mortality is in peril and have decided to do something about it. No matter how futile.
Jake rubbed the wetness away from his eyes and stood to straighten out his appearance. When he opened the door, the plump steward backed away from him, perhaps certain she was going to have to barrel down the door and pull some drunk or junkie from the small lavatory closet by force.
“Sir?”
“Yes?”
“Are you absolutely sure everything’s in order?”
“Yes, thank you,” he said somewhat urgently. “Stomach flu or something.” He brushed her stare off and looked sharply down the aisle, toward the connecting car. Somewhere up the line—it had to be one or two cars—would be the engineer’s cabin. If Jake could make his way inconspicuously to that car, perhaps he could clobber the engineer and engage the brakes before the train found certain disaster. All of this flashed quickly in his brain, and, under normal circumstances, he would probably have been quite proud of himself for it, but at the moment only the thought of saving himself was of importance.
“You may want to check on that guy up in seat 18, though,” said Jake as steadily as he could. “The one dressed in the black suit. He seemed to be having some trouble.” The steward gave a skeptical look over Jake’s shoulder and proceeded to brush past him.
Jake followed closely behind, and was somewhat surprised to see that Death was no longer in his seat. He was nowhere to be seen. While the stocky woman turned back to look at Jake imploringly, something snapped inside of his head and he shoved her down into the seat, turning to run the length of the car and to the large door separating it from the next one.
Jake fumbled with the latch and finally pushed the door inward. Stepping into the breezeway, he cast a glance backward to the steward, who was speaking haughtily into a small pocket radio. She looked extremely angry, and so Jake wasted no time in slamming the door behind him and entering the next car. So much for inconspicuousness.
Running as fast as he could, Jake clambered through the second car and opened the doors to the third. It was here, however, he saw the only thing standing between him and the continuation of living. A sturdy-looking man stood in the middle of the aisle and watched Jake with the eyes of a predator, or simply a man trained to act like one.
“I’m going to have to ask you to stop right there, sir,” the man said gruffly. Jake spied a small silver badge fastened below the man’s lapel that marked him as either transportation security, or maybe even a police officer. Jake did not see a gun on the man, but noticed that his hand was held at the ready next to his breast coat pocket. “Please turn around slowly so that I can walk you back to your seat and figure out what the problem is.”
“The problem?” Jake shouted. “I’ll tell you what the problem is, man.” In the middle of speaking, Jake’s eye was caught by the man sitting at his elbow near the doorway.
Grinning slightly, the morphing face of Death stared up at him, and shook his head in disapproval. “Jacob, come now. Have a seat.”
“This man. This man right here is the goddam problem. He’s here for all of us!” Jake shook an accusing finger at the haunting figure, looking frantically between him and the security guard.
At first, the guard looked confused, but then concerned, and he began to step forward through the aisle. “Sir, what man?”
Jake looked down and saw Death still watching him intently, but he also saw an elderly woman sitting fearfully close to the window, not daring to look directly at Jake.
“They can’t see you,” Jake whispered.
“Of course not, Jacob. Come now, you are scaring these poor people. Even that man there is mere inches from drawing his weapon and shooting you on the spot.”
“You’re all going to die!” Jake shouted. “We all are!”
Those must have been the magic words that the guard had been waiting to hear, because his hand shot into his coat jacket and pulled at what was surely a large-caliber weapon. Something had caught, perhaps the release on the holster, but for a moment the guard was obviously struggling, and Jake rushed forward to bowl him over. During the course of the loud collision, a few things happened: the guard’s gun came free and spun out of his grasp, Jake slammed his head into a seat back, and a noise like breaking glass filled the cabin.
Opting to reach for his gun rather than for Jake, the guard managed to let him slip past. Jake hit the door and frantically grabbed at the handle, which would not budge. It was locked.
Jake gasped when he saw a frightened face looking back at him through the panes that joined to the engineer’s car. Stepping back, Jake realized it was the face of a very spooked train operator. In his back step, Jake also saw a glimmer on the floor. The guard’s keys. And the most noticeable thing on the ring was a large plastic access card, which Jake had little doubt would grant him access through the door. He stooped to pick them up.
“Freeze!” commanded the guard from behind him. “U.S. Transportation Security. You are threatening civilian lives, sir. If you do not step away from the door, I will open fire.” There was no uncertainty whatsoever in the stony voice.
Jake hesitated, eyeing the slot next to the handle where the keycard must pass through. Next to it was a lock, as well. Jake did not have time to fiddle with keys, and knew that if he tried, he had better be able to do it while full of holes.
“Three…” said the guard.
Jake looked at the engineer apologetically.
“Two…”
“Okay,” Jake said. The guard paused, and in the next second Jake shot his hand precisely with the card, miraculously finding the slot. The card slid through with a sharp explosion. A green light flashed on the reader and Jake fell forward into the adjoining breezeway. The door slipped shut behind him, with more explosions following.
Jake knew immediately that he had been shot. Blood coated his right hand; his ribs were on fire. He fought nausea watching the ground slip by at an alarming rate. The junction separating the engineer’s cabin was not enclosed as were the other breezeways that Jake had passed through. Wind whipped through his hair in a deafening roar. The key card had tumbled out and onto the now distant tracks.
Pulling himself to his feet, Jake glimpsed back at the government guard through the blood-spattered glass of the closed door. Surely it had been bulletproof. Unfortunately, Jake had not.
The engineer watched Jake intensely.
“Let me in! You’ve gotta let me in!”
Jake pounded on the glass, leaving bloody fist prints on the pane. “There’s something on the tracks! Please let me in!”He began to lose strength, and finally found himself mouthing help to the engineer.
The engineer seemed to be struggling with the decision of letting an injured man die before him or letting a potential threat enter his cabin. Apparently, the engineer had a heart. He released the latch from his side and pulled Jake inside.
Not getting too friendly, he let Jake fall to the floor and asked him, “What in the hell is going on here? Tell me right now, or so help me God, you’re gonna bleed to death right there on the floor.”
“The tracks,” Jake spat. “There’s something on the tracks. It’s going to kill us all."
“What! How in the hell do you know that?”
“Death. I saw death in the seat next to me.”
“Son, are you on drugs?”
“Just let me stop the train,” Jake said, summoning some inner reserve of strength. He climbed to his feet and stumbled forward toward the driver, who promptly socked him in the mouth. Jake stumbled backward into the door. “You’re all gonna die.”
Realizing that there was no visible brake like he had seen in so many movies, Jake groggily stepped backward and released the hatch.
“I can still save me,” Jake slurred.
For a second the engineer looked like he was going to come forward and stop Jake, but finally the response to a potentially dangerous threat won out, and he let Jake step through the doorway and tumble off the side of the car junction.
As the train had begun to make an emergency stop in the distance, the dark figure loomed over a grit-toughened and bloody body lying facedown in the weeds.
He sighed.
“Ah, fear. I do not believe I shall ever comprehend it.”
Jake loved to take the train. Whenever the schedule allowed, he did all of his business traveling by rail, by far preferring the various bumps and jostles of transport at ground level rather than thirty-thousand feet above it. In fact, it was the place where he got his best thinking done.
The train was scheduled to reach Bangor in another hour, and was thus far running very much on time. The six hour trip south was one that Jake was very familiar with and, as always, he found himself feeling a little disappointed on this final leg of it.
When the train began to slow, however, Jake was pulled from his thoughts as he watched the passing trees come to a still.
Raising his head, Jake peered quickly around the train, seeing that none of the other passengers seemed to have taken any notice, or if they had, did not care. He did note that the car was unusually full. Jake leaned curiously toward the boarding side of the train, hoping to see any signs of a station that he had previously ignored. But as soon as it had completely halted, the train had again begun to accelerate.
Jake slid back into his seat and fumbled in his bag for the mystery novel he had been reading. When he sat back up, with book in hand, he let out a shriek of surprise. A tall, gaunt gentleman was sitting in the previously empty seat beside him. The man turned to regard Jake with an apologetic smile.
“Forgive me,” he said in a kind but gravel-filled voice. “Is this seat taken?”
“No, no,” Jake said with embarrassment. “It’s not. I’m sorry, I just looked down and…you startled me.”
“Please do not apologize,” the man said in a diplomatic eloquence that had the faintest hint of a foreign drawl behind it. “It was my fault for…sneaking up on you so.”
“Forget about it,” Jake said with a smile, turning his attention to the book in his lap. It wasn’t that Jake did not like making small-talk with strangers, it was simply that he did not like making small-talk with strangers on a train ride. Or anyone, for that matter. Train time was Jake’s time, silly as it may sound. So when the stranger continued to chat after a moment, it put Jake on the irritated offensive.
“A pleasant day, is it not?”
“Very nice, yes,” Jake agreed with a flat nod at his book.
“I do not get around to these parts of the world near often enough,” the man continued. “The scenery is beautiful.”
Indeed Jake agreed with this, and it was one of the main arguments he made when trying to excuse his small fear of flying to anyone inquiring. He did not, however, voice any of his thoughts to the gentleman, but merely nodded again.
“It is always astonishing to me to think that people will consciously choose aviation over a locomotive as a means of travel, or better yet, the automobile. Is that not the beauty of traveling? To watch the world change before your eyes as you are moving.”
“You’d hardly believe it, wouldn’t you,” Jake said, hoping that a more syllabically-endowed response would satisfy him.
“Indeed,” the man said. “I sometimes forget how fulfilling a train ride can be.”
“I’m sorry,” Jake said, looking up from his book, “but I’m trying to get a little reading…”
When he looked into the man’s face, silence gripped his words. Having not looked at him fully before, Jake now wiggled in his seat uncomfortably. The man was of an indeterminable age. Not because he looked well-preserved, but because he seemed to actually shift up and down the scale of time as Jake looked at him. He had completely forgotten what he had been in the middle of saying as he peered into the gentleman’s eyes, which were of a color that Jake had never seen before, and would probably have trouble ever having to describe again: a shade like all the colors of an artist’s palette who was painting a forest scene that have been swirled together but not quite blended. The most unnerving part was that the eyes seemed to look directly at Jake, but right through him at the same time.
Jake dropped his gaze immediately. He felt the stare of the gaunt man beside him and continued, “I’m sorry, I have to get by you. Restroom,” he mumbled.
Moments later, Jake was splashing cold water on his face in the lavatory. After giving himself a good long stare, he had decided to forego the reading and try to get in an obviously necessary nap before they reached the depot in Bangor. Perhaps the convention had been a little more stressful than he’d realized.
When he returned to his seat, though, he found a little surprise waiting for him. The man had taken the seat next to the window, and had placed Jake’s bag and book on the aisle seat. He stood there for a moment, a little confused, before taking his new seat. The man, who paid him no notice, was busy looking out the window with great interest.
Jake tilted back his seat quietly and began to take a series of deep, calming breaths, hopefully inching his way towards a nap. A minute or so went by before the man again began to speak.
“I apologize if I have made you uncomfortable,” the man offered. “Sometimes when I find myself a little ahead of schedule, I tend to prattle.”
“It’s nothing,” Jake insisted, keeping his eyes closed. “No worries.” Jake’s heart had begun to pulse faster, though, and something within him seemed to be insisting that something was amiss in his situation. What exactly, he was not sure, but it was unsettling.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you again, but may I ask you a question?”
Jake thought momentarily about trying to act as though he had already nodded off, but knew that since it had only been a few seconds that the option was blown. “Sure,” he said, half lifting his eyelids, but not moving his head.
“It is just that. . .have you ever wondered about the emotion of fear in mortals?”
At this, Jake’s heartbeat again quickened.
“Particularly the fear of death,” he said in dark monotone. “It is most unreasonable, is it not?” After a slight pause during which the man had probably expected a reply, he continued. “As it stands, all living things eventually reach the point of transition in which they must leave their bodily vessels behind as so many dried husks. It is a known fact. Why do so many fear such a fact intrinsically? It makes even less sense yet when these same people find themselves taken by surprise, or angered when it finally happens? It does make my job ever so much more involved.” The man sighed.
Jake dared to look at him again, going against every wish of the pounding organ in his chest. The train was approaching a short tunnel, and as it submerged, the cabin was washed in darkness. Jake backed away from his fellow passenger with a shrill scream. In the window seat sat a visage of inky shadow. Its darkness swirled and flickered about it in wisps of ebony that seemed to have their own luminescence, giving a dark glow that revealed a face leaning against the window. It was the face of the traveler, that was sure, but his gaunt features had been magnified, appearing to Jake as a pale ghoul cloaked in the living night.
The train emerged from the tunnel, and the figure in the window seat changed immediately back to normal, as Jake sat horrified on the aisle floor. He was vaguely aware that his fellow passengers had taken notice of him, and a few looked rather uncomfortable.
The ghastly man looked down at Jake and beckoned him to return to his seat. “Please, Jacob. You are causing an unnecessary scene. Fear is a contagion.” All the while, the man seemed to speak without moving his lips, offering instead a rictus that bore far too many teeth.
If it occurred to Jake exactly how this figure had known his name, it was a thought overlooked very quickly by his lingering fright. He crawled in the style of crabs a few rows down the aisle before stopping out of sight of his seat.
A little girl with pigtails was seated beside him and she pointed. “Don’t be a-scared mister. My momma sez that when I get scared on the train just to hold my Binky.” She squeezed the tatty doll in her arms affectionately. “Do you have a Binky, mister?”
“Sweetie, leave the nice man alone,” said her mother, pulling her daughter carefully out of her aisle seat and into her lap. She glowered threateningly at the questionable looking man sitting in the aisle, undoubtedly ready to plant a spiked heel in his face should he happen not to be such a nice man.
Jake kept moving, eventually finding that his legs would permit him to stand, and found himself again in the restroom. Sweat beaded down his chest and underarms. He had never felt so afraid in all his thirty-eight years. The billowing specter was imprinted on his vision like a sunspot. He knew without a doubt what the man had really been when he had glimpsed him in the darkness.
“Death,” he whispered. Jake curled his knees up to his chest while sitting on the toilet seat. The monster had come to claim them. In a flash of mental clarity, Jake saw the entire train being derailed at a near point down the tracks. In a blaze of smoke and twisted metal, none of the passenger cars would hold any survivors, all of them swallowed by unforgiving wreckage and flame. Jake gulped. That thing out there was present to claim the souls of the countless departed. He tried to remember what he had ever heard about the spectral usher to the dead, but in his panicked state, Jake’s mind remained numbly blank.
He began to despair, knowing that the end was coming for all of the passengers of the train, who were all happily enjoying the ride and thinking nothing of their immediate death. Most of all, however, he was thinking of himself. Of how he would never again be able to take one of his beloved railway journeys. A stupid thing to preemptively miss when one’s life is flashing before his eyes, but he missed it anyhow. Jake began to cry, rocking back and forth on the toilet.
After a few minutes had passed, there was knocking on the restroom door.
“Excuse me, sir?” came a soft voice from the other side. “Are you alright? Some of the other passengers said there was a kind of disturbance. Sir, will you please respond. If you don’t respond, we’ll have to force the door for your safety.”
Jake eyed the door warily. “Yes.” His safety. If they only knew; they were doomed. All of them.
From somewhere within him, Jake felt a calling of self-preservation, one which will often occur to an individual who is certain that their mortality is in peril and have decided to do something about it. No matter how futile.
Jake rubbed the wetness away from his eyes and stood to straighten out his appearance. When he opened the door, the plump steward backed away from him, perhaps certain she was going to have to barrel down the door and pull some drunk or junkie from the small lavatory closet by force.
“Sir?”
“Yes?”
“Are you absolutely sure everything’s in order?”
“Yes, thank you,” he said somewhat urgently. “Stomach flu or something.” He brushed her stare off and looked sharply down the aisle, toward the connecting car. Somewhere up the line—it had to be one or two cars—would be the engineer’s cabin. If Jake could make his way inconspicuously to that car, perhaps he could clobber the engineer and engage the brakes before the train found certain disaster. All of this flashed quickly in his brain, and, under normal circumstances, he would probably have been quite proud of himself for it, but at the moment only the thought of saving himself was of importance.
“You may want to check on that guy up in seat 18, though,” said Jake as steadily as he could. “The one dressed in the black suit. He seemed to be having some trouble.” The steward gave a skeptical look over Jake’s shoulder and proceeded to brush past him.
Jake followed closely behind, and was somewhat surprised to see that Death was no longer in his seat. He was nowhere to be seen. While the stocky woman turned back to look at Jake imploringly, something snapped inside of his head and he shoved her down into the seat, turning to run the length of the car and to the large door separating it from the next one.
Jake fumbled with the latch and finally pushed the door inward. Stepping into the breezeway, he cast a glance backward to the steward, who was speaking haughtily into a small pocket radio. She looked extremely angry, and so Jake wasted no time in slamming the door behind him and entering the next car. So much for inconspicuousness.
Running as fast as he could, Jake clambered through the second car and opened the doors to the third. It was here, however, he saw the only thing standing between him and the continuation of living. A sturdy-looking man stood in the middle of the aisle and watched Jake with the eyes of a predator, or simply a man trained to act like one.
“I’m going to have to ask you to stop right there, sir,” the man said gruffly. Jake spied a small silver badge fastened below the man’s lapel that marked him as either transportation security, or maybe even a police officer. Jake did not see a gun on the man, but noticed that his hand was held at the ready next to his breast coat pocket. “Please turn around slowly so that I can walk you back to your seat and figure out what the problem is.”
“The problem?” Jake shouted. “I’ll tell you what the problem is, man.” In the middle of speaking, Jake’s eye was caught by the man sitting at his elbow near the doorway.
Grinning slightly, the morphing face of Death stared up at him, and shook his head in disapproval. “Jacob, come now. Have a seat.”
“This man. This man right here is the goddam problem. He’s here for all of us!” Jake shook an accusing finger at the haunting figure, looking frantically between him and the security guard.
At first, the guard looked confused, but then concerned, and he began to step forward through the aisle. “Sir, what man?”
Jake looked down and saw Death still watching him intently, but he also saw an elderly woman sitting fearfully close to the window, not daring to look directly at Jake.
“They can’t see you,” Jake whispered.
“Of course not, Jacob. Come now, you are scaring these poor people. Even that man there is mere inches from drawing his weapon and shooting you on the spot.”
“You’re all going to die!” Jake shouted. “We all are!”
Those must have been the magic words that the guard had been waiting to hear, because his hand shot into his coat jacket and pulled at what was surely a large-caliber weapon. Something had caught, perhaps the release on the holster, but for a moment the guard was obviously struggling, and Jake rushed forward to bowl him over. During the course of the loud collision, a few things happened: the guard’s gun came free and spun out of his grasp, Jake slammed his head into a seat back, and a noise like breaking glass filled the cabin.
Opting to reach for his gun rather than for Jake, the guard managed to let him slip past. Jake hit the door and frantically grabbed at the handle, which would not budge. It was locked.
Jake gasped when he saw a frightened face looking back at him through the panes that joined to the engineer’s car. Stepping back, Jake realized it was the face of a very spooked train operator. In his back step, Jake also saw a glimmer on the floor. The guard’s keys. And the most noticeable thing on the ring was a large plastic access card, which Jake had little doubt would grant him access through the door. He stooped to pick them up.
“Freeze!” commanded the guard from behind him. “U.S. Transportation Security. You are threatening civilian lives, sir. If you do not step away from the door, I will open fire.” There was no uncertainty whatsoever in the stony voice.
Jake hesitated, eyeing the slot next to the handle where the keycard must pass through. Next to it was a lock, as well. Jake did not have time to fiddle with keys, and knew that if he tried, he had better be able to do it while full of holes.
“Three…” said the guard.
Jake looked at the engineer apologetically.
“Two…”
“Okay,” Jake said. The guard paused, and in the next second Jake shot his hand precisely with the card, miraculously finding the slot. The card slid through with a sharp explosion. A green light flashed on the reader and Jake fell forward into the adjoining breezeway. The door slipped shut behind him, with more explosions following.
Jake knew immediately that he had been shot. Blood coated his right hand; his ribs were on fire. He fought nausea watching the ground slip by at an alarming rate. The junction separating the engineer’s cabin was not enclosed as were the other breezeways that Jake had passed through. Wind whipped through his hair in a deafening roar. The key card had tumbled out and onto the now distant tracks.
Pulling himself to his feet, Jake glimpsed back at the government guard through the blood-spattered glass of the closed door. Surely it had been bulletproof. Unfortunately, Jake had not.
The engineer watched Jake intensely.
“Let me in! You’ve gotta let me in!”
Jake pounded on the glass, leaving bloody fist prints on the pane. “There’s something on the tracks! Please let me in!”He began to lose strength, and finally found himself mouthing help to the engineer.
The engineer seemed to be struggling with the decision of letting an injured man die before him or letting a potential threat enter his cabin. Apparently, the engineer had a heart. He released the latch from his side and pulled Jake inside.
Not getting too friendly, he let Jake fall to the floor and asked him, “What in the hell is going on here? Tell me right now, or so help me God, you’re gonna bleed to death right there on the floor.”
“The tracks,” Jake spat. “There’s something on the tracks. It’s going to kill us all."
“What! How in the hell do you know that?”
“Death. I saw death in the seat next to me.”
“Son, are you on drugs?”
“Just let me stop the train,” Jake said, summoning some inner reserve of strength. He climbed to his feet and stumbled forward toward the driver, who promptly socked him in the mouth. Jake stumbled backward into the door. “You’re all gonna die.”
Realizing that there was no visible brake like he had seen in so many movies, Jake groggily stepped backward and released the hatch.
“I can still save me,” Jake slurred.
For a second the engineer looked like he was going to come forward and stop Jake, but finally the response to a potentially dangerous threat won out, and he let Jake step through the doorway and tumble off the side of the car junction.
As the train had begun to make an emergency stop in the distance, the dark figure loomed over a grit-toughened and bloody body lying facedown in the weeds.
He sighed.
“Ah, fear. I do not believe I shall ever comprehend it.”
