Sleeper Seven (2 page)

It would have been fine if Stan had collapsed into a heap on the floor — the throttle had a spring-loaded dead-man's switch, which would have killed the juice. Problem was, he didn't completely collapse — his blood-pressure drop drained crucial flow from his frontal lobes, but it wasn't enough to completely take out his cerebellum at the base of his skull. This left him standing, barely, but also leaning forward with the weight of his torso pushing against the throttle, holding it open. The dead-man's switch was of no use — because Stan was not a dead man.

He was a zombie.

~ 3 ~

J
ess settled into an available single seat — a perk of being able to leave work at four — and after pulling out her iPad, slid her bag underneath it. Most days she took the Brown line home, but on days like today, when she wanted to get home quickly, she headed underground and jumped on the Blue line, which was a shorter trip but required a bus ride for the final leg.

By the time they rose above ground at Damen, she was engrossed in a medical article she was editing. This was a super-weird one about
Capgrass Syndrome,
where a patient believes their closest friends or even spouses have been replaced with body doubles. Even after editing thousands of medical articles, she never lost her fascination for these strange disorders; unlike many of the physicians she worked for, who only see symptoms, diagnosis, and course of treatment.

So it barely registered when she heard the groans and muttered "WTF's" of the passengers waiting to get off at Western as they flew by the station without stopping. Had she taken notice, she might have rationalized it away by convincing herself it was an Express train, and the asshat driver had simply neglected to inform them of that fact. Instead, she kept on reading, as the train picked up speed and began the familiar lifting and swaying motions she might have dreaded, had she been paying attention.

It was only when they barrelled past the California stop, accompanied by louder groans and general pissed-offedness, that someone started to notice that the horn wasn't blowing. When a train runs Express, the driver always blows the horn — a high-pitched beep — when coming into the stations, as a warning to the waiting passengers that they might want to step back from the edge of the platform.

She finally emerged from her book when she heard a woman telling those around her "This train's not stopping, this train's not stopping" over and over. This woman, on any other day, might have been shouted down as a nutbag, or as a neurotic stirrer-of-shit, except most everyone else
also
felt there was indeed something out-of-order that day; they knew the express announcement had never been made, and the express horn had never blown, and this free-floating anxiety now coalesced around this woman's words, such that they knew she was not saying, in effect, "this train is running express" or "this train is missing stops", but they knew
just
what she was communicating, and this knowledge washed over the passengers with a suddenness, and became:
This train is not going to stop, ever
.

An almost identical process of realization occurred in each of the nine train cars at just about the same time, give or take ten or twenty seconds either way. Jess' car, though third in line, was a bit late to the party, so to speak.

Looking up from her article, she immediately sensed the motions of the train, along with the anxiety of her fellow passengers, and her historical apprehensions regarding driverless trains flooded back with a vengeance, as that probabilistic wave function collapsed into her reality. Fear becoming fact also had the effect of reducing her anxiety, and she made a mental note of this, under the arguably mistaken notion that she might have a future block of time in which to ponder it further.

Although Jess had rehearsed the discovery of this situation many times, she had not actually planned what she might do as a consequence. A new theory also quickly filed away:
Would the planning of possible courses of action have resulted in her feeling more empowered now, while also reducing her anxiety in the past?
Seemed plausible, and she regretted mightily
not
planning beforehand, not so much for any historical anxiety reduction, but for the natural utility such planning might have provided in the present moment. In any case, something needed to be done, and the planning would have to be now; though clearly not an ideal time for it.

Ten seconds past the California stop, Jess decided that the driver
was
clearly incapacitated or insane, and so she must reach the head car and do...
Something
. She silently cursed herself for boarding the third car: she always avoided the first two cars as the Blue line terminus was O'Hare, and they were predictably full of passengers and luggage.

Dropping her iPad, she raced up the aisle as the other riders came to terms with this new reality. Reaching the emergency door at the end, she slid the handle clockwise and pulled it open, filling the car with a rush of wind and the squealing of steel wheels. Stepping between the bouncing, swaying trains, she reached for the forward car's door handle when suddenly a whoosh filled her ears, and all was plunged into roaring darkness.

They were back underground, racing towards the Logan Square station. Realizing she wasn't quite dead yet, Jess shoved the door open and stumbled into the second car as it shut behind her with a heavy spring-loaded
thwack
. Instead of the stunned silence of her car, this one exhibited a fair amount of wailing and crying, interrupted momentarily by her loud entrance.

Stepping over a man in a yellow hoodie crouched in the aisle, she passed one seated woman who, holding some prayer beads, made the mark of the cross. A smattering of other seated riders were hunched down, hands interlaced behind their head, airplane-crash style.
Well that's stupid
she thought to herself as she pushed forward. Most of the others were busy furiously calling or texting on their phones, either to 911 or their loved ones, depending upon their level of optimism. The remainder just sat silently and stared ahead wide-eyed, bracing for the end.

Fumbling past people and over the predictable luggage, she made it to the middle of the car, and looking ahead, realized she wasn't the only potential hero or heroine on this train. A crowd of people was funneling into the first car ahead of her, just as others began to stream in behind her. Like her, many others also apparently felt the need to get to the front car and do their own...
Something
.

The Logan stop streaked by as Jess inched forward, a few bodies from the next door. Trapped for a moment between two large men, she glanced out the window towards the platform, at the startled and confused faces whizzing by in a blur. One young woman, however, seemed to understand perfectly what she was witnessing. Jess' eyes locked with hers for only a second, but the look of horror on her face chilled Jess to the bone, because that young girl knew was she was seeing: she was seeing Death, happening right in front of her.

The girl's reaction motivated Jess to push forward harder, lest she succumb to the same impotent shock and awe, and she squeezed her way again into the swirling, black abyss between cars, her back pressed taut against the safety chain, as she maneuvered around three others and agonizingly birthed herself into the front car.

Ahead of her lay a sea of other struggling bodies —
My God, it's full of North Face logos,
she thought. After pushing past a few more people, she found herself stuck again, and so, reaching up, she leveraged a few convenient shoulders to vault herself up and over the seats. The steel grab handles in the seat backs made for a decent foot path as she stepped forward, her hands pressed against the ceiling to steady herself.

From her vantage point, she could see a solid block of people jammed up against the driver compartment door ahead. The black accordion privacy curtain prevented them from seeing Stan in his semi-catatonic state, so the writhing masses yelled and banged on the glass with their hands, briefcases, and backpacks; one enterprising young woman even used her aluminum Sigg bottle, all to no effect. The lack of space prevented any one person from gaining enough backswing to break through the double-layered security glass; instead they accomplished little more than polite taps. Streaks of blood appeared on the glass, as one man with a pocketknife desperately began slicing through the rubber seal surrounding it, cutting himself in the process.

It was clear she couldn't fight her way to the front of this crowd, and even if she did, she hadn't come up with any better ideas anyway. Her goal now became the nearest doorway. Flinging herself around the pole dividing the seats from the doors, she slipped into a small pocket, grabbed the red knob embedded into the ceiling, and yelled "Move back!" The crowd pulled back a few inches, giving her enough room to slip into place facing the doors, and she pulled down on the handle with her full weight, lifting herself off the floor. Through the knob, she felt the click of a spring-loaded mechanism as the doors automatically retreated into the side walls.

Swirling, sucking wind entered the car as the crowd pulled back further into the relative safety of the driverless train. Jess considered her options, mentally reviewing the route as the wind buffeted her face, but she couldn't recall any safe place to jump — there were no lakes or river crossings the whole distance to O'Hare. A platform suddenly appeared in front of her, populated with more shocked, blurred faces, followed by open space again. Throughout the previous two minutes she had thought only of the next immediate goal, and now, with some time to finally
think,
nothing came to her. Like a shark, though, she had to keep moving, or die.
Could I climb to the roof?
she wondered.
There were no more tunnels on the route, at least until the end of the line,
she recalled with a twinge of dread,
But once out — what then?

Grabbing the emergency handle again, she lifted her body up and swung her right leg outside the car. Finding purchase on the rippled aluminum exterior, she levered herself up higher as her right hand groped about for a hold on the top of the car. Discovering a sharp lip where the aluminum exterior of the car was crimped to the roof, she grabbed onto it and found she was able to support her weight.

As she began to swing her left leg out as well, a hard tug on it caused her to lose her footing completely, and she dangled in open space as the steel lip cut into her right hand. Fumbling to regain her holds, Jess found herself feeling more pissed than terrified. Planting her left Fluevog-clad foot onto what she presumed was the face of her moronic "rescuer", she discouraged any further attempts with a satisfying, meaty stomp.

Clinging to the skin of the car, she noticed the next station quickly approaching and pulled her body closer against the metal. The platform's foot-wide blue safety strip flashed by inches beneath her heels as she felt a series of whacks on her hindquarters that almost knocked her from the train; several surprised commuters on the platform would later discover buttons ripped clean from their jackets.

The blue strip vanished, replaced by a blur of brown railroad ties set on top of a steep embankment. There would be no jumping off point here. She thought of the small driver's window: whatever was happening in that cab, she would have a better shot at dealing with it from outside than those futilely banging away inside. Slowly, she inched herself forward as the riders inside watched this new development with a mix of horror and disbelief. The rippled surface of the car gave way to the forward set of doors, which lacked any footholds — she would have to swing her way across the four-foot opening. Though her hands were now cramping, the pain was tolerable, considering she was a mere seven feet from her goal — that little driver's window. Letting her feet dangle, she tried to swing, but failing to achieve any momentum, finally resorted to inching her way across the chasm hanging by her cramped, bleeding fingers alone. Reaching over with her right foot, she found support once again, and slid into place hugging the car just in time for arrival at the next station.

Not wanting to repeat the abuse she received at the last station, Jess tilted her head back and startled the waiting crowd ahead with a shout of "
Get BACK!
". As they scurried out of the way, she was relieved to feel nothing on her sore rump but the wind.

Back in the open air, and knowing they were only a few stops from the end of the line, Jess quickly scooted over to the sliding-glass window. Finding no handles on the outside of the glass, she pressed her hand flat against it and slid it open.

Looking inside, she found Stan still bent over the console, throttle jammed under his torso, a trail of saliva leading from his mouth to a pool near the window. Thinking him dead, she found herself relieved: she was half-expecting to discover a maniacal driver with a death wish. Reaching inside, she grabbed a handful of his denim overalls and pulled his body towards her. As he slid sideways onto the floor, the throttle wound itself back, sending the passengers inside careening against each other in a violent, bruising group hug as the integrated braking system kicked in.

Jess didn't feel anything, however, being in mid-air and all.

~ 4 ~

T
he second she was thrown, time slowed to the point where she looked back upon the train, as it slowly receded from her, and believing the driver to be dead, began to worry about his family and how they would handle their loss. A moment later she recalled her own predicament, and snapping her head around, charted her current trajectory down the steep embankment. Time instantly returned, but just as the sound of the buffeting wind again filled her ears, a ripping, popping sensation banished it once more, and she was at peace.

She was fine, though: she hadn't hit anything, and looking down, was startled to see a body lying in the gully below. Pinned between two clusters of bushes, it was scratched and bloodied, with one arm bent at a grotesque angle. It looked more like a mannequin than a human, and she turned away with disgust, only then realizing the clothing seemed strangely familiar. Her gaze returned to it, and she thought to herself:
That's my body down there,
with a certain measure of dispassion that was almost casual.