Leon’s mom bit her lip.
Leon noticed there were a dozen faces looking their way. The sound of that phone call had carried. They were all looking at his mother for an answer.
“Tom… He… Well, he doesn’t normally panic easily,” she replied. “Something’s definitely happening over there.” A complete nonanswer. Heads ducked back out of view.
The woman with the nails rolled her tongue over her teeth beneath her closed lips. “Your hubby sounded terrified.”
“Something’s happening over here too!”
Leon craned his neck into the aisle. It was the woman who was calling for an ambulance. She was waving her phone around. “There’re no ambulances! None! They’re all out! I’m in a call-waiting line!”
Her words hung heavily in the air.
“OK, and now there’s this,” said the other man on the table opposite. He tapped on the screen of his phone. “I’ve got a BBC News notification. There’s some kind of terror alert in London that’s just been announced. All mainline rail stations have just been closed.”
“Mom…I’m scared,” whispered Grace.
“I know…just…just…” Leon could hear the heel of his mom’s shoe edgily tapping the floor beneath the table. “Just sit tight, lovely.”
Mom’s beginning to panic. He decided to help her out. He reached for Grace’s hand. “It’s OK, kiddo.” Normally she would have rolled her eyes at Leon playing the role of big brother. Instead, she clasped his hand tightly and gratefully.
“Including Norwich station!” A young man with a thick, dark beard and shoulder-length hair popped up like a meerkat beside the lady with the nails. “BigTravelGenieDotCom,” he continued. “They’re saying every single mainline station in the UK has just been closed. It’s not just London.”
“Hey! Does that mean we’re stuck here?” called one of the hungover city lads. “You saying we’re stuck, mate?”
The bearded guy shrugged. “I dunno. I guess so.”
“Ah, that’s just bloody great!” The city boy smacked a hand on his table, loosened his tie, and swore.
The old man opposite Leon leaned out into the aisle and craned his neck. “Can you mind your language back there, please? Swearing isn’t going to help anyone.”
“Piss off.”
The old man shook his head and said, “There’s a frightened little girl up here. Just keep it to yourself, all right?”
The city lad ignored him, picked up his phone, and checked again for a signal.
“Uh…look,” started the bearded guy. “I work for a news website. We collect and package news…”
Leon wasn’t sure who he was speaking to. It sounded as if he wanted everyone in the car to hear him.
“Excuse me…everyone? Down at the end, can you hear me?”
This far end of the car quietened down for him.
“OK, so…I work for a news website. We had this weird email go around just before I left work this evening. It was something to do with that African virus, a heads-up that we weren’t to post any stories relating to it without getting approval from our senior online editors.” He shrugged—that’s all he had. “I don’t know if that means anything, but…I thought I’d share it anyway.”
“Panic management,” said the old man. “They’re smothering the news.”
“Right.” The bearded guy looked down at Leon. “Mate, was it your phone we all heard?”
Leon nodded. “Yeah.”
“And your dad was calling from America?”
“Yeah.”
“He said something about the virus being airborne or something, right?”
Leon struggled to remember exactly what his dad had said minutes ago. He could only remember that he’d sounded really scared, that it had sounded like movie dialogue. Airborne though…yeah, he’d definitely used that word.
“Yes…I think so.”
“Then, it’s got to be over here too now. That’s what this station lockdown is all about. It’s infection containment.” He looked around at everyone. He grinned, looking sheepish and unsettled both at the same time. “Or am I just sounding like a paranoid idiot?”
It was quiet. No one seemed to want to answer that. Leon could faintly hear conversations leaking through from the next car down. Possibly with 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 car up ahead of them.
The old man leaned out into the aisle and looked forward. Their door into the foyer between cars 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 car 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 cars all the way down, and none of them were getting a shred of information about what was going on outside in the big, wide world. He could well imagine some hapless conductor being confronted by an angry mob, maybe given a hard time, pushed around.
He stepped forward, toward 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 his mom.
The voices up ahead in the next car were getting noisier, 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, window of the closed door leading to the next car, 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 ad.
“Uh…it looks like everyone’s coming this way!”
The bearded guy was suddenly beside Leon. He leaned around him to get a look. “Looks like a bloody stampede!”
Leon caught sight of an old woman in the next car 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 Leon’s mom and Grace. “Come on, ladies, get up!” He stood up and turned to face down the car. “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 car 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 anymore.
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 cars. He caug
ht sight of Leon staring at him.
“Someone’s got it!” he bellowed.
Leon spun around. “Mom! Grace! Move!” he barked. He yanked on Grace’s arm and pulled her up out of her seat. His mom followed suit.
Meanwhile, the hipster quickly squeezed past Leon, toward 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 toward 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 around the handle, holding it firmly upward 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 up!”
“Leon!” snapped his mom. “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!”
“Mom! Just go!” said Leon. He turned back toward the young man doing his best to keep the door firmly in place.
“We’ve got to tie this thing closed! You have any 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 around an emergency brake handle beside the frame.
“Let me in!” screamed the tattooed man from beyond the window. His eyes were locked on Leon’s. They were 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 window.
“Look at their eyes!” said the bearded guy. “Do you see that? Jesus, they’re bloodshot! They’re hemorrhaging!”
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 window 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 around 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.”
“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 backward. “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 window. So many different hands were slapping it, thumping it, punching it. Male and female. A flurry of rings, bracelets, gold watches, varnished nails. The window was becoming foggier and foggier, smeared with spirals of hand grease, like the touch screen of some phone 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. Through the foggy window, Leon could just about make out rough hand shapes. The smearing now seemed to have acquired a color. Pink—like some cheap hotel shower gel—smeared in artsy circles, like some primary school finger painting.
“Leon! Leon!” He heard the voice above the din. He turned to look down their car, now almost completely empty—his mom 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 backward, 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 center 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 gaping mouths…baring teeth and bleeding gums. And eyes spilling tears that were tinted pink like rosewater.
Chapter 18
Leon hurried down the empty car with the old man to join the others. The compartment at the far end was logjammed as the passengers from what Leon now considered to be their train car, C, poured into train car D.
His mom and Grace were waiting for him just beside the door to the compartment, and now they both reached out toward him and snatched at him as if worried he was about to turn around and head back into danger.
“Leo!” snapped his mom, 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 car 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?”
Leon’s mom nodded. She ducked into the foyer and tried the car 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 car. “It’s in here too!”
They all glanced at the door at the far end of their car. The noise of crying and wailing, the banging on the window, had subsided. Through the smeared window, 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 Leon’s mom. She had her arms wrapped tightly around Grace. “It could be passed by touch.”