The clackity-clack of the train wheels on the track woke me up. My head hurt, and I put my hands on my face, trying to recall where I was. I thought about it for a moment and realized what the noise I was hearing signified.
“Are you okay?” an unfamiliar voice asks from in front of me. I feel hands picking me up from the wooden floor. I rub my eyes a couple of times and open them slowly.
“Hey man, I asked, are you okay?” the voice asks again, this time with an insistence in the tone that told me the voice originated from a woman, though I did not recognize her voice.
My eyes, wide open now, begin to adjust to my surroundings. Finally, I look into two beautiful brown eyes and answer, “I think so. But where am I? What’s going on? Who are you?”
She smiles a weak, sad looking pretend smile, illuminated every second or so by the fluorescent bulbs lining the wall of the underground tunnel our train lumbers through. It was like a strobe light at a bar, blinding everyone for a second, then going completely dark. Still, the image of what you’d seen last was burned into your retinas for just a second until the next brilliantly lit image took its place. I blink hard and look to my right, noticing that the sliding door on the train car is slightly open. Ah, well, that explains the strobe effect.
The woman stands about a foot away from me, cupping my neck and face as she helps me to my feet. While the train rocks back and forth, I stabilize myself by putting my hands on her shoulders.
“Take it easy, soldier,” she said. “Do you have a name? And, if you know your name, who are you, and what are you doing here?” she asks, her face no more than a few inches away from mine.
“My name is JD. What’s yours?”
“My name is Lillis, it’s short for something really long, but I prefer to be called Lillis. Well, JD, do you know why you’re here? Or how you or I even got here?”
I shook my head. Apparently, she didn’t know anything or was hiding what she knew because she didn’t want to share. But in the strobe light that slapped at us through the open door, I could also see a measure of fear in her face and hear it in her words, her voice, and her tone. Therefore I made a snap conclusion that she didn’t know any more than I did.
“All right, well, let’s back up. Where were you, and what’s the last thing you can recall?”
“I was eating dinner with a friend in the Green Zone, at a hotel that still served actual food, and I spilled a drink on my dress. I excused myself and went to try and wash it out. A waiter appeared who told me the washrooms on that floor were out of service, and he directed me to a service elevator around the side in a corridor that was only used by staff. He said the washrooms on the second floor were still open. I thanked him, got onto the elevator, and pushed the button for the second floor.”
She stopped speaking for a moment, took her hands away from my neck, and looked off a bit into the distance, which was only about 15 feet because of the underground tunnel in which the train we were on was traveling.
“And as soon as I pushed the button, a dense, orange smoke filled the elevator. So I started pushing a bunch of buttons, trying to get the elevator to stop so I could get out because I started to cough heavily, and it was hard to breathe. Then I woke up here. What about you?”
I shrugged and nodded my head a little bit as I answered.
“Same story. Green Zone. Elevator. Orange smoke. Woke up to your hands helping me stand.”
I paused there because I knew exactly where we were and where we were going. I hoped I didn’t transmit that information by how I looked around, taking in our surroundings, but this woman was intelligent. Lillis looked directly into my eyes as she asked the only question I didn’t want to answer.
“You know what this is, don’t you?”
I wasn’t going to lie.
“Yes. This is the train to NoWhere.”
Her eyes got big, her hand went to her mouth, and she fell to her knees.
“No!” she screamed. “I’m not ready! How could they do this to me? I’m young! I can still produce offspring for the company. I was even hoping to do it with my dinner date. He seemed like the type the company would accept as a donor.”
I knew the company didn’t care about what Lillis said. All they cared about was profit. While Lillis was muttering to herself about how she was too young to die, I looked out and realized the train was beginning to slow down. The strobe effect began to slow, and I started paying attention to the markings on the walls as the train passed. There were numbers, and they were counting down. I knew we were nearing the terminus station where one of the company’s demanufacturing centers was located, and sure enough, the train began to slow.
“Look, I’ve heard from a friend, who has met people who escaped from these trains,” Lillis shouted in my left ear.
“That’s impossible,” I replied, yet my mind was racing, wondering.
“No, it’s not. Look at the space between the train and the tunnel wall.”
Was there room enough for us to jump? If I was thinner, I could make it. For years I had bulked up on company steroids because people in my line of work sometimes had to hurt people, like, REALLY hurt them. So, I was only too happy to comply. I liked it when the company wanted me to hurt the people hurting the company, and I was always willing to do so.
“I think I have a plan,” she said, as the noise level decreased because the train’s speed decreased with every clackity clack. “I have actually seen the schematic drawings for the train that we’re on . . .”
“What do you mean, you’ve seen the schematics for this train? That’s some of the company’s highest, most closely held secrets, right? Everyone knows that! Wait, uh, that must mean that you were . . .”
“Yes. I was the company. Point of fact, I worked for the company in the office of the chief executive, thus my privilege level and access to a place that still served animal meat. You’d be surprised what I know about the company. I found out things they didn’t want me to. So now, I’m here with you. And we’re on the train that takes people to NoWhere.”
“But how is that possible?
“Who knows. No one will ever know because when they ask, they disappear.”
“Into NoWhere.”
“Yes. Into NoWhere.”
Suddenly, she looked a bit like a caged animal as she spoke.
“Okay, hear me out. The train is starting to slow down. If you look at the wall right underneath the lights on the tunnel wall, there are numbers. Those numbers are going down. Look at them in the next light. Do you see that? It is the number 114. There, there’s the next one, 113. That means we’re getting close to the terminus of this line. Now hear me out . . . look at the distance between this car and that wall. It’s maybe just large enough for us to jump and survive.”
“That’s crazy! We’ll fall under the wheels and be cut to pieces!”
“Yes. That is a possibility. But wait, I don’t mean let’s do it now. Keep looking at the numbers, and as we get to 50 or so, the train tracks will start curving to the left. After that, the tracks will curve to the left, and as soon as that tunnel wall gets far enough away that it’s safe for us to jump, we should jump.”
“Okay, sounds crazy, but let’s do it.”
“Good,” she said. “Okay, stand at the door, and wait.”
“By the way, how is the door open? Wasn’t it locked shut?”
“I disabled the internal lock and opened the door. I forgot to tell you that I’m also a safe cracker, the best the company has. How do you think we figured out every move the competition was making? Locks are my thing. It wasn’t long ago people kept all sorts of important stuff in safes. I love making locks, my bitch. Even the electronic ones like they had on that door.”
Well, that explained a lot of things to me. I thought I’d recognized her name. She’d been on my list for a while. It was funny that the company decided to throw us in the same train car going to NoWhere.
“I recognize your name! As an investigator for the company, and your name came across my desk once or twice.”
“I bet it has,” she said, her mouth so close to my ear that her breath tickled my ear hair.
I was glad she didn’t ask what should have been the follow-up question. She reeked of sweat mixed with hope.
“Alright, JD, we’re at 60, 59, 58, get ready to jump at 57 . . . JUMP!” she yells. I hit the rocky rail line ground with both feet and turned around. Lillis is behind me, and I catch her just as she hits the electrified third rail. That would have been the end for her since that third rail was what powered the whole train. I hear voices and look to my right. Several others are jumping from the cars behind ours.
I guess she saw the questioning look on my face because she shouted in my direction, “the underground has sent around instructions on how to disable the internal locks. Everyone knows the key sequence now! We’ll all be free of the company soon!” she looks around, her face frozen, like she’s a scared animal about to be devoured by predators on the vid screen shows the company broadcasts at night. “Look, we can’t stay here. With the train turning to the left, it will soon come to the NoWhere station, and the company men will realize we’re missing,” she yelled.
“Where do we go?” the others yell in unison.
“We can’t go back the way we came because we don’t know when the next train will come, and there is no room in the tunnel to walk. We will all be killed.” She turns around and points straight. “The maps I have seen say this tunnel only goes a bit further and then stops at an underground entrance to a mall. If we run, we can be there before the company realizes we’ve escaped the train to NoWhere.”
“Let’s go,” someone in the back shouts.
Another shouts something else.
“Hey, isn’t that guy a company man! Look at the tattoo on his chest!”
“He was on the train! They’re throwing him away, just like they’re throwing us away,” Lillis yells. “He’s with me. You all can go to NoWhere if you want. Not me.” With that pronouncement, she turns, smiles, and nods at me. “Let’s go, company man.”
“Right.”
I started to run at full speed, looking at the numbers going down as I ran. The strobe light effect is vastly different when you’re on foot. A lot less disorienting, that’s for sure. Finally, I could see an elevated platform and stairs leading from the rail bed up to the platform. I jump over the third rail and hit the stairs at full speed, bounding up them two at a time. I turn and help Lillis to the platform as the others follow. We run up another set of stairs, illuminated by skylights built into the ceiling far above our heads. Bounding onto yet another platform, which looks like a place where one could purchase access to the daylight, we see people, and then, with one voice, those people scream.
“Not good. We gotta get topside!” I yell.
“How?” Lillis asks as she runs to my side.
“I still have an all-access pass that they didn’t remove,” I said, pointing to my chest.
We run up another set of stairs, but the screamers follow. Someone behind us must have turned around and shoved or kicked them down the stairs. The noise as they fell like dominos makes a significant disturbance. I knew it would be enough to raise an alert. I also knew that the company would be discovering the escape from the train at any moment. I could tell we were still about thirty feet underground when to my right, I saw a bank of freight elevators.
“Come on, those are large enough to fit everyone!” I said to Lillis. “We’re close to the surface!”
She and I bound into an empty elevator ahead of the others. Standing halfway in and halfway out, Lillis yells and motions to the others, directing them into our elevator. Satisfied that we had all the escapees, I open my shirt and shove my chest in front of the optical eye scanner. It reads the tattoo and says in a no-nonsense voice, “Thank you, JD. Welcome back to NoWhere.”
“NO!” Lillis yells, realization hitting her just as the doors slammed closed.
I reach into my pants pocket, retrieve, and quickly slip on my mask just as the orange knockout gas starts wafting into the air.
“We’ve been wondering how you people have been escaping from the trains. Now we know. Oh, and Lillis, I didn’t lie to you. I told you that you were on my list.”
Right before she closed her eyes forever I saw a tiny light of recognition in her eyes.
“Yep, you have been on my list a while,” I muttered as the TyVek-suited moon men in their bright chartreuse suits opened the doors and started carting out the meat.
