Flesh Eaters by Ellie Douglas
Copyright © 2018 by Ellie Douglas
www.authorellie.com.co.nz
PASSING THROUGH
Darren was all alone in the fifth car. He’d moved from the sixth when a couple of teenagers had got on at the Cambridge stop. The two young boys filled the car with enough loud music and colorful verbal language that Darren decided to get up and take stock of the next car. To his surprise it was empty.
Darren sat in the middle row and propped his legs onto the seat in front and pulled out his book. He’d only turned the page of Blood Brothers by Larry Grey when the lights went out. Then they came back for a minute before going out again throwing the car into complete darkness. He left the book face down on the empty seat next to him and slid across the seats until he was facing the window.
Darren pressed his face against the cool glass to look outside the window only to realize it was a sea of darkness void of any discernible landmarks. He assumed it was a city-wide outage and he figured he’d find out more once they arrived at Bramble, the next station. He tried phoning his wife, but he wasn’t getting any bars on his phone so he gave up and put it back into his pocket. He sat there, with his face still pressed against the glass, wondering when the power would come back on.
Darren was startled out of his thoughts when he heard the doors opening from car four. He tried to see who it was that was entering, but in the inky darkness he could only see a faint dark figure moving against the lighter wall. It appeared to be the slender, tall frame of a woman. Darren kept watching, hoping for the lights to turn on so he could catch a glimpse. Then he remembered his cell phone. He dug into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He turned the flashlight on and lit up a narrow part of the aisle. The figure was indeed a woman, and dressed in a sharp business suit.
“Thanks for the light. I nearly wet myself when it went dark. I don’t understand the power outage, do you?” Melissa sat next to Darren and stared at him as if she was studying a fancy restaurant menu.
“No idea. I think the entire city is out though. Well, at least from the looks of it from here. What made you come up in here in the dark?”
“I came from the fourth car. There wasn’t anyone left in there. I didn’t want to be alone. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, of course I don’t mind. Where are you heading?” Darren changed the subject, noting how nervous the woman seemed.
“Home,” Melissa said. Her words came out in gapped breaths.
“Where is home?” Darren encouraged her to continue talking.
“Phoenix Station,” she practically whispered.
“I see. You have seven more stops to go.”
“How on earth do you know that?”
“Look above the seat near the exit door on the right. Do you see the map? That’s how.”
“Oh!” Melissa said, then added, “but it’s dark. How can you read that from here?”
“Oh no! It’s dark? Really? Why didn’t anyone tell me?” Darren tried to get a giggle from her, but she was far too nervous and scared.
“Please. Tell me how you did that. I’m not in the mood for jokes. Please.”
“I have been traveling this train for the last five years. I have memorized every stop. You shouldn’t worry so much. It’s just a power outage; it will be back on soon. My name is Darren Cunningham, what is yours?”
“Melissa and, and, um, I have my reasons for being scared in the dark. Just please don’t leave me, OK?”
Darren found it so odd that a grown woman would be this terrified in the dark, and presumed she’d had something horrific happen to her. He did his best to keep her calm while his mind flicked to his wife. He grew anxious knowing how jealous his wife became. If she knew he was even talking to another woman his head would be on the chopping block. Darren looked at his cell phone. He still had no bars.
They both jolted at the sound of the doors opening from carriage six. Darren watched as two lights darted in every direction, as if a Parkinson patient was handling a torch. He swallowed hard and hoped it wasn’t the two wayward teenagers. His hopes were squashed flat when the two fully entered into the car and headed right for them.
Darren felt Melissa move a little closer toward him, and he could feel the tenseness in her. He could almost feel the tingles across her arms as the two rowdy boys got closer. Darren leaned over to Melissa and whispered, “It’ll be OK. They’re just a couple of drunk kids.”
“Either of you got any smokes?” The lankier of the two asked.
“I don’t smoke,” Darren answered.
“How about you, hot stuff?” the taller boy asked while shining his cell phone torch in her face.
“I don’t smoke either,” Melissa said while she scooted even closer to Darren. Darren’s thoughts drifted to his wife. If she saw him now she’d conclude her own scenario and presume Darren was cheating on her. He instinctively pulled back a little.
Jeff, the taller of the two, loomed over the seat and hovered before opening his mouth to speak. His breath reeked of alcohol. Suddenly the dark train pitched forward, racing toward Bramble Station without slowing down. Darren seemed to be the only one that noticed.
Jeff turned awkwardly to face his buddy Tom. “Let’s go into the other carriages, there’s bound to be someone that smokes.” Tom didn’t reply, and Darren could only assume that Tom had nodded in the dark. It was hard to see anything, even with the cell phone torches.
The lights came flickering on and Melissa nearly jumped right into Darren’s lap. Darren moved back more, but soon found himself against a partition. Melissa eyeballed the two drunken teens and watched them walk themselves unsteadily toward the doors to enter back the way they had come, into car six. Then she cast her eyes toward Darren and noticed his two-tone hair coloring of dark blonde with blonde highlights.
Darren was staring back at Melissa and he noticed her dark eyes. He found himself agreeing with his inner voice that she was a pretty woman, one that would earn him a knock on the head if his wife, Suzy, caught him looking. He diverted his eyes toward the outside. Looking through the window was pointless now that the train lights were back on. All he could see was himself. Through the reflection he could see Melissa studying him, which made him very uncomfortable. She looked at him with her cold fearful eyes like she was going to attack him. He turned sharply and spoke a little too loudly, “They are gone now.”
Before Melissa could answer Darren the train’s lights went out again and her ears picked up a scream, followed by another that was much closer and much louder. She tried to pinpoint the direction of the scream and immediately her mind went to the drunken louts.
“Do you think they just attacked someone?” Melissa moved closer to Darren again. When she spoke her voice sounded frightened. Darren shone the torch toward her face and he could see in the glow that she was on the verge of tears. He would never understand women. He didn’t feel like there was anything to be crying over.
“I think those two drunks would be incapable of attacking anyone.” Darren said trying to reassure her.
“Well what was the screaming for then?” Melissa was squeezing herself closer to Darren as she spoke, and he wasn’t enjoying it. All he could visualize was his wife scorning him.
“I dunno. I guess I’ll go find out,” Darren offered as a means to get away from the crazy woman.
“NO!” Melissa howled, and Darren could feel her body trembling. He instantly felt guilty for wanting to bolt away from her. At the same time he did feel a sense of urgency to find out what the screaming was about.
“No? But don’t you want to know?” Darren quizzed her as gently as he could.
“Well, yes of course. But I don’t want to be alone in the dark and I don’t want to go with you because someone in that next carriage could be waiting with a knife and kill us.”
Darren ensured the light was now facing away from his face and then he rolled his eyes. He wondered what this woman had ever endured in her life to be so terrified. He was pretty sure she would be scared of her own shadow. It made him laugh to himself as he remembered the scene from Lost in Space when Dr. Zachary Smith thought he saw a monster and screamed, only to realize it was his shadow.
Darren wanted to burst out laughing; he felt powerless with guilt over wanting to help. He knew then and there that it was his wife sitting on his shoulder, like the stern uptight angel of his conscience watching over him. Watching over his every move. His every thought. He felt frustrated. Then, out of nowhere a loud male voice shrieked from car six. The lights had flicked on for a few seconds, before once more flicking off and throwing them back into complete darkness.
“What was that?” Melissa asked while grabbing a fistful of Darren’s white shirt.
“Without going to see I won’t be able to tell you, so I have to go have a look. You’ll be fine right here. Do you have a cell phone?”
“Yes, but the battery died before I even got on the damn train. Please don’t leave me.” Darren felt Melissa’s grip tighten on his shirt.
“Look, I need to make sure no one’s seriously hurt. How about you lock yourself into the bathroom?”
“Yes. Sure, that is a good idea.”
“Melissa, you’ll have to let go of my arm and let me out.”
“Sorry,” Melissa cooed with an embarrassed tone to her voice.
Darren stood up and took the lead. He shone his cell phone out front and took Melissa’s eager hand. Her hand was sweaty and hot and Darren felt very uncomfortable holding hands with another lady. He quickly made his way to the bathroom, pulled open the door, and gently pushed Melissa inside. “Lock the door and I’ll come back for you soon.” Darren went to walk away when Melissa grabbed his arm roughly and pulled him back.
“Don’t be long I really hate the dark.” Darren pulled himself free and turned to face her.
When he did, the lights flashed on again and he was able to see Melissa. She had the door almost fully closed and only her head was poking out. “I promise you I will be back as soon as I can.” Darren watched her close the door and heard her lock it. Then he made his way to the doors leading into carriage six.
He opened them and peered into blackness, trying to adjust his eyes to the stygian cauldron of car number six.
THE DRIVER
Myer McKenzie was out of his engineer’s seat with his bloody face pressed up against the window of the door leading into the first car. With no one at the controls, the train was barreling ahead with no one to stop it. The only working lights on the train were the instruments and the glow of the train’s headlight. The lights were casting bright yellows and reds on the silver buttons of Myer’s jacket.
The door to the engineer’s booth was locked from the inside, and Myer was the only one who could open it. He hit the door with an open palm and squished his face occasionally against the round glass window. Myer would stop and turn and slap the control panel with an open palm, then circle around and hit the window again. He had no idea how to open the door. Not anymore. Not since he was taken over by the virus.
Myer smelled fresh blood six cars away and couldn’t get out of the booth to satiate his hunger. He grew angrier, speeding up his circular pacing and hitting the controls.
This time he kept hitting the controls which turned the lights on and off. He stayed that way for a long while.
MOMMY, MONSTERS ARE REAL…
Someone was rattling at the door of car eight. It wasn’t just the train’s movement; something was trying to get through the door to feast on the living that sat terrified in their seats. No one knew what was going on except for one little five-year-old boy. He had seen the start, had tried to tell his mother about the monsters outside, but she wouldn’t listen.
Now, two hours after he’d first seen the monsters attacking people on the platform of Temple Station, he sat on his mother’s lap clutching to her for dear life. It wasn’t until the lights went on and off that his mother started to listen. She was questioning him over and over when all hell broke loose.
There were nine passengers spread out in different seats in that car. One old man grew tired of the rattling door. He got up and opened it, and seven undead stampeded through the door. The old man was knocked to the ground and trampled on by four of the monsters while two stayed behind and tore him apart like a school of piranhas. They degloved his entire body in less than one minute.
The little boy, Jake, with help from his petrified mother, managed to crawl up into the luggage compartment. He stayed there as quiet as a mouse, crying for his now dead mother. But it didn’t matter how quiet Jake was. The things worked on scent alone. They could smell his metallic blood and homed in on him quickly, although they could not get the luggage compartment to open up. Several of them hit it repeatedly. Each time they did little Jake screamed for help.
Light flooded the train, illuminating gore, guts, bits of body and organs that had splattered in all directions. The chairs were soaked with body matter, and the walls bathed bright crimson. The floor was slick, like olive oil, with body fluid, bile, and partially digested gunk. Jake could be heard screaming from as far back as carriage four. It drove the things mad. They pounded on the luggage compartment and growled loudly like a pack of hyenas.
Jake stopped screaming when the things stopped pounding on the compartment. He waited a few more minutes before opening the hatch. Slowly and carefully, he began to push open the compartment lid. When there was enough room he peered over the edge and his eyes grew wide in fright and his mouth opened into a series of howls. Multiple arms reached up for him, clawing and grabbing for his flesh. Jake could hear them as they hissed and growled like rabid animals. He leaned forward by accident and was grabbed roughly. He could feel their nails digging into his skin and ripping his flesh clean off as they pulled him out of the compartment. He felt numb and he went limp. His body didn’t even hit the ground; the monsters tugged and ripped him apart on his way down. In a matter of seconds he had been torn apart as if Freddie Kruger had carved him up himself. Bits of his body flung into the air and some of it stuck to the ceiling before falling with a gloopy sound as it hit the wet floor.
With no more live bodies remaining in that train car, the monsters circled back and forth in a wild frenzy like a group of drugged-up pigs rooting around for truffles. They would walk toward the car doors and slam into them with their bloodied bodies. They would then rush forward to the center and circle around each other before heading back to the doors. The fresh smell of blood had them feverishly sniffing around, eager and desperate to get into the other cars. If they continued smashing into the doors, they would eventually break them open. The monsters had lost all brain function and were acting purely on primal instinct, something pre-dating man himself.
REALITY BITES
The lights flashed on, startling Darren. He hadn’t expected the sudden brightness and it caused him to blink rapidly. His heart fluttered faster than he’d ever felt before. It wasn’t from the unexpectedness of the light blinking on; it was what the lights showed him. The entire car was covered with carnage that Darren could only assume was shot from a cannon filled with body confetti. He blinked long and hard. He didn’t want to see, yet seemed compelled to look. Darren’s eyes took in images he knew he’d never erase. Bits of body matted with hair, teeth, intestines, arms, legs, pinkish liver remains, brain matter, faecal and other liquid all splattered about as if a lunatic painter had a massive tantrum and turned over all his paints.
Darren almost slipped on the sanguine fluid as he took a step inward. Without warning, the lights went out again and he found himself having a panic attack fighting for air. His hands reached to his throat and he gripped tightly to his collar while trying to get air into his lungs. He panted futilely and heaved for air. His eyes bugged outward and a blood vessel burst, causing a spider-like pattern to spread across the whites of his eye. Darren stumbled backwards when he heard something slithering around at the far end of the car. As he moved backwards his arms reached for the door behind him. His feet slipped out from under him and he fell.
He could feel the sticky substance beneath him saturating his suit. He gripped onto a chair and pulled himself up. The sound grew closer and Darren panicked more.
“Get the fuck away from me!”
The lights flooded the car again just as he grabbed the door handle. He pulled the door open and caught a glimpse of the thing charging at him. His heart pounded in his chest as he leapt through the door to escape the monstrosity. He caught his arm on the frame, scratching it deeply. He yelped in pain, but managed to slam the door and then quickly turned to face the window. Darren braced himself against the door when the thing charged at it. The door rattled fiercely and Darren worried for a moment that it would break through. When it didn’t and the lights flicked off again, all fell silent. The only noise Darren could hear was his own labored breathing. He leaned against the door for what seemed like an hour. It had only been ten minutes. He took out his cell phone and tried his wife again. Still no bars. He used the cell phone’s torch and made his way to the bathroom. He frightened Melissa who screamed when she heard him approach. Darren waited for her to unlock the door and come out. When she did he accidentally shone his cell phone torch into her face. He noticed the smudges and streaks of mascara.
“Well, what’d you find out?” Melissa asked while she held tightly to his shoulder.
“Nothing. I didn’t find out a damn thing. There’s nothing but empty seats on the other side of those doors.”
“Do you think it was just those drunken teenagers then?”
“I would say so. Come on, let’s go sit. I need to get off my feet. The train is jerking around a little too much. It’s making me feel a little dizzy.”
Darren took Melissa’s hand and again felt the dampness from her excessive sweating. He led her to the first row of seats and sat her down, and then he flopped into the empty chair next to her. His heart was still pounding and he felt dizzy, though it wasn’t from the train’s movements. Darren shone the torch toward the window and still saw nothing but his own reflection. He quickly shone the torch toward the ground.
“What do you do, Melissa?” Darren was fishing for a distraction. He didn’t want to think about what was on the other side of the car or what was now tattooed into his memory forever. He just wanted to catch his breath and make it off the train alive. He thought about ways to do that while he chatted with Melissa.
“I’m a telecommunications operator for an insurance company. What about you, Darren?”
Darren looked at his stained suit and wondered if she’d noticed. His eyes betrayed him as his cell phone light travelled the stains along the tops of his thighs to the bottom of his legs. When he realized what he was doing he shone the torch away and prayed the lights didn’t come back on. Explaining the amount of blood on him wouldn’t be an easy task.
“I am a branch manager for City Bank. Nothing fantastic, but it pays the bills.”
“What does your wife do?” Melissa asked so casually he thought for a moment that she was the one now distracting him.
“She’s a high school teacher. Are you married?”
“Me married? That’s a joke right? I’m only twenty-four. I don’t plan to get married for a while. Besides, you’d need a really stable partner for such a long commitment, and right now I’m…”
The lights unexpectedly came back on. Darren immediately tried to hide his clothing but it was of no use. Melissa’s reaction showed she’d seen. She was out of her chair and moving backwards, bumping into multiple chairs while more tears streamed down her face.
“Melissa, I can explain…”
“No! You lied to me. I know that what I heard meant something. Damn you. Why did you lie?”
“I just didn’t want you to panic like you are now. The thing responsible for what happened in that car is still in that car. I’ve never seen anything like it before in my entire life. It was grotesque. If monsters are real, then that thing is a monster. Honestly, I don’t know what the fuck it was.”
“Whoa, what? What did it look like and what did it do? Your damn suit. Jesus, your suit. It’s washed with blood. Oh my God, Darren, what happened back there?” Melissa’s eyes stared at the car door and she moved a little toward it before changing her mind and taking a step back. Darren grabbed her shoulder and put her back into a seat. He shushed her to be quiet. He was worried that that thing would smash through the door and eat them alive.
“Imagine a fetus. Then imagine it as a fully grown adult man. Now picture that with a bunch of torn skin and as gray and white as an elderly person’s hair. Something that has teeth the size of a bear’s, and nine inch long talons. Then you will have pictured what I saw. It was fast and strong, too. But it seems to be brainless. It can’t open the door. Not yet at least.”
“What do you mean not yet?”
“Well, I dunno really. I mean, what if learns how to somehow?”
“So, how are we going to get out of here?”
“We have to wait for the train to stop at a station.”
“This entire thing is so screwed up. I feel like we are in a nightmare.”
“Come on, Melissa, sit back down. You need to calm down and be quiet.”
“NO!”
“Melissa?”
“I want to go home now!”
Darren’s brain felt on fire. His throat was as dry as the Sahara Desert, and he stunk. He couldn’t believe the rotten smelling stench that was drifting to his nostrils. He wrinkled up his face and thought deeply about what to do. Then he realized there was the other car. He stood fast and rushed over to car door, and peered through the circular window.
“Wait, Darren. Where are you going?”
Darren mutely held up his hand. Melissa bit her tongue to keep from talking. She was shaking like a leaf caught in an autumn breeze. She moved toward Darren until she was pressed up against his back. Darren’s eyes grew wide and he felt uncomfortable with her body against his. If his wife caught him like this she’d cut off his dick. He inched to the left a little, and she followed like an unwanted shadow. He gave up and continued to look through the circular window. He couldn’t see any movement. It didn’t seem like anyone was in there. It was the car that Melissa had arrived from, so he felt reasonably certain that those things weren’t in there. The lights went out again and he felt Melissa grip him tighter than a vice. She pressed her face against his back and squealed as she held on for dear life.
“Fuck’s sake, Melissa, what the hell happened to you?” Darren asked as he moved away from the window and toward the middle of the car. It was like walking with a sack of potatoes attached to his ankles. The dead weight of her frightened body acted like an anchor.
“I was raped,” she said. She was pressed up hard against his suit jacket and he didn’t hear her. Darren stopped, pulled out his cell phone, and lit the aisle up and wormed his way away from Melissa and she rebounded twice before she finally allowed enough space between them.
“I didn’t hear what you said. Why are you so afraid of the dark?”
“I was raped in the dark,” she sobbed. She became hysterical when a loud pounding on car door six came out of nowhere. She jumped so high that she almost touched the low hanging ceiling of the carriage. Darren took her into his arms even as his mind protested doing so. Flashes of his wife came at him like a speeding bullet and he had to push the images down. If Melissa lost it completely they would surely die. He had to keep her quiet, even if it meant embracing her in what could only be described as some feng shui kind of sexual entanglement. She was pressed so hard against Darren that there was no room left for an ant to crawl through.
“What are we going to do?”
“We’re gonna get out of here.”
“How?” sobbed Melissa, whose face turned sour at the taste of salty tears mixed with the stuff from Darren’s jacket.
“Lets start by getting you calm. Then we can walk through the cars, OK?”
“Then what? I mean, that won’t help us off the train.”
“Well, we are closer to the engineer’s room, so we can go straight there and make him stop the damn train.”
Melissa snorted up excessive mucus and nodded her head mutely. Darren waited for her to compose herself before leading her to the door. Together they hovered at the door, waiting in the dark.
“What we are waiting for?” Melissa shakenly questioned.
“I want the lights on first,” Darren said quickly.
Melissa didn’t reply. Instead she looked into the darkness of the car window and waited with Darren for the lights to come back on.
DEATH… BLOW BY BLOW
Further back on the train, in car twenty-six, seven people sat in the dark wondering why the lights were out. Some had heard distant screams, but none had gone to investigate until one bored twenty-something-year-old decided he needed to stretch his legs in the adjoining car. The lights came on and caught his bright, pink-tipped, bleached hair. It was long and spikey at the top, almost like a Mohawk only flat. He wore tattered black clothes and a huge safety pin swung from his waist clipped to his holey shirt.
He pulled open the door and moved forward but he didn’t get far. He was struck backwards. When he fell his legs caught in the doorway, effectively keeping it open. Looming over his fallen body was a disgusting figure that crouched on top of the punk. His screams were quickly silenced as the thing tore into his body. It happened so quickly that the onlookers could barely respond. It was like watching a time lapse movie, where something dissolved into nothing in the blink of an eye. A middle aged woman was the first to respond, jumping up and rushing to the car door leading into car twenty-five. She didn’t get very far, for that car was filled with ten of those things. As soon as she had the door open they were on her like buzzards on a snake.
With both car doors wide open, the room was overtaken in seconds. Suddenly, a thing lunged at Carl, one of the men in the car, grabbing his ankle and dragging him into the middle of the aisle. A younger lady who went by the name of Lena tried to yank the thing from him. The fight only intensified the attack. He pounded on the mutated nose of the thing, pulverizing it into a mushy rhubarb crumble. Lena kicked at it, but a hand grabbed at her shoulders, pulling her down fast. Before she could fend off what it was, two of those things were on her and biting everywhere.
Her flesh was ripped upwards, being torn from her like stringy melted cheese from a pizza. Blood spouted upwards and sideways, covering the back of the seats, the walls, and the floor. Her mouth was ripped from ear to ear. Another thing was grabbing at her nose. Her nose resisted a little at first, but the thing was strong and had it off her in seconds. It ravenously brought the bloody nub to its greedy mouth.
Her face was now unrecognizable. With decaying fingers they were poking right into her eye sockets, digging their fingers in and pulling them out loaded with bits of Lena, then bringing them directly to their bloodied mouths. They bit and shredded every bit of tissue, vein, and bone. Lena looked as though someone had poured gallons of red paint over her. Completely drenched in her own claret, she twisted, kicked, and violently convulsed as she died. But then something odd took place. Her body convulsed again, thrashed about the floor like a fish out of water, and then went still. Suddenly, she stood up, fully awake and searching for living blood.
Carl could only gasp as he watched the things devour her like lions on a zebra. Their frenzied feasting would be one of the last thoughts he had, as he watched them flay her skin into strips. He watched as they chomped and sucked at the remains of Lena before her corpse miraculously reanimated. This was no miracle, however. They all turned their attention to him, and he could no longer watch as his own flesh was being cleaved from him.
His body felt as though it was being forced into an excavator mulcher. He yowled out with each bit of flesh that was wrenched from him. A massive six foot five thing opened its jaws engulfing the top part of Carl’s head inside its mouth. He felt like his head had just entered that of a shark as its teeth gnashed his cheeks, ears, scalp, and neck. The bites came down fast and hard. Along with the violent shaking, he could feel things snapping, cracking and splintering. One second he could see, the next he was in complete darkness, covered in gore, slime, and the worst stink he’d ever smelled in his life.
The thing swung around, avoiding the other hungry mouths that wanted Carl for themselves. This one had him and he wasn’t going to be sharing. He dragged him along the middle of the car and headed through the opposite doors with his body dragging behind like a busted mannequin. He could feel the pressure on his neck building and that feeling of it beginning to tear away. The thing kept pulling, twisting, and biting with powerful jerking movements that tore at his cervical spine. Carl helplessly heard his bones snapping. The sound of breaking bones would be the last thing he heard as the thing tore his head off.
The thing held his head in its mouth as if it was showing off some prized hog. Then the monster dropped his head and as he moved away it snagged in the thing’s footing and was dragged along the ground, looking like a boney lizard’s tail as the savage made its way up the next aisle. Carl’s spine made a distinct rat-a-tat sound before it shattered into multiple pieces. The other things rushed for the remains of it like gulls on a fish.
The other mutants in the room were going berserk. Arms were being gnawed off, splattering fluid of all colors around the car like a burst pipeline. It had only been five minutes and that room and its passengers were completely eviscerated. What didn’t get decapitated had reanimated, joining the rest on the hunt for live bodies to gorge upon. In cars twenty-four and twenty-five the things were making enough noise to cause someone in the adjoining cars to open the doors to investigate. It was all the opportunity they needed.
HOME RUN
It felt like hours since the lights had been on. Darren could feel the vibrations from Melissa’s nervous twitching. “Soon,” he whispered. In truth he hoped it was soon. Another ten minutes passed and the lights came back on. Darren pulled the door open. “Wait here,” he demanded as he stepped into the car and looked around. He stood close to the door and purposefully made some noise by clicking the back of his cell phone on the railing of the closest chair. When nothing showed up he opened the door and pulled Melissa in.
Together they carefully walked down the middle toward the next door. Melissa couldn’t help but notice the speed of the train, and the hoarse Clickety-clack underneath her felt like roaring thunder matching that of her fast beating heart. Darren held onto the handle while his eyes searched wildly for what could be in the next car. He still couldn’t see anything. “Stay here,” he muttered. He opened the door and closed it swiftly behind him. His heart throbbed and he felt like he was being hit in the chest with a baseball bat. Sweat was dripping down his temples and plastering his shirt to his back. He swiped at his forehead with the back of his arm and looked around the room. This one was empty and had no signs of blood in it at all. He didn’t know if that scared him more or less. He made some noise, just to be certain. When nothing came at him he opened the door and pulled Melissa in.
The lights went out and Melissa pounced on him almost knocking him over. Darren wanted to push her off of him, but he knew that she’d only clamber back onto him. He took a deep breath and motioned forward. Darren had reached the middle of the room and stopped abruptly, causing Melissa to collide with him and freak out.
“Why’d you stop?” Her voice sounded muffled, and Darren realized it was because she was speaking into his back again.
“Move back some. I can’t hear you.”
Melissa stepped back an inch, but held on to Darren’s jacket with a forceful grip. “I asked why you stopped?” He didn’t answer for a few moments, which only intensified her panic. “Darren?”
“Please be quiet, Melissa, I hear something.”
Darren listened for more sounds. When none came he caught his breath. He waited for his heartbeat to return to normal before he carried on, silently praying for the lights to come back on. He had tried calculating the time between lights on and off, but they did so far too erratically. There was no discernible pattern, which only frustrated him. He continued toward the door. When he reached it he pressed his face against the window and looked into the blackness. He took a step back and accidentally stepped on Melissa’s feet.
“Sorry.”
“It’s OK. It didn’t hurt much.” Her voice was tight and sounded boxed with a distinctive strain to it. Darren was feeling a bunch of mixed emotions. His wife’s words kept penetrating his mind, reminding him that he shouldn’t be around this woman. He didn’t know what was scarier: the things on the train or the fact that his wife would scold him like a petulant child, even when she wasn’t there.
“Darren, do you think we can get out of this alive?” Melissa had spoken so out of the blue it startled Darren from his thoughts.
“That is what we’re doing. We are going to get off this damn train and notify the authorities. I promise.” Darren could hear his words, and even he thought he sounded skeptical. No matter how much he tried to sugar coat it, he knew he was trying to persuade himself as much her.
The lights came flickering back on, and Darren launched into action. He pushed opened the door, and this time didn’t tell Melissa to stay. She stayed behind with the door separating them. She looked through the circular window and watched with thunderous heartbeats pounding inside of her ears. When Darren pulled the door open, she practically fell into his chest. She righted herself but made no excuses. They walked quickly down the middle together and came to the last car door. Darren peered through and could see the engineer’s room with nothing between them but the open space and wind. Darren opened the door and took a step forward.
Darren’s mind sped like a roller-coaster as the wind slapped him hard causing his eyes to water. The train was moving too fast and this worried Darren. He already knew they hadn’t made any stops and now he was seeing for himself just how fast the train was moving.
“Stay here, Melissa.”
“OK,” she winced.
Darren stood on the platform, not really sure of what he was doing. He could see the circular window into the engineer’s room but couldn’t see past that. He took a precarious step forward and stopped quickly to regain his balance, looking like a poised ballerina. He looked down and couldn’t see anything but blackness. There was not a single light to show his surroundings, and he wondered just how high off the ground he was. He hoped he didn’t fall. He shook the thoughts from his mind and focused on getting to the other side. He reached over to the guardrail and steadied himself before taking two larger steps. With his hands on the engineer’s door he peered through the window. He could see the gray overalls of the conductor. As he went to pull the handle to open the door, the conductor turned quickly and revealed the manifestation of Death. Darren almost fell off the platform. His hand pulled down the handle, and he instantly panicked, thinking to himself he’d just let the thing out. But the door was locked. His left foot slipped to the side. He grabbed the railing and pulled his foot back up. He took a long deep breath before looking back through the window.
When he did he was staring into the face of what used to be the conductor. Deep black eyes starred back at him. A bloody hand pounded on the window, threatening to smash it with the force of his hits. Darren was so taken aback he felt like he was having an out of body experience. Everything around him turned to gray, and a dizzy feeling washed over him. He backed up, retracing his steps carefully, but he couldn’t remember doing any of it. He just remembered being back inside the car and having Melissa yelling at him.
“Damn it, Darren! Snap out of it. Please, Darren. Wake up!”
Melissa slapped Darren across the face and quickly withdrew her hand and held it behind her back.
“Come on, Darren. Please wake up!”
Darren stood on shaky legs. He knew their fate. They were not starring in some big budget movie. This wasn’t a nightmare. This was reality, and he knew what would happen. With no one driving the train they would crash. If they were lucky enough to survive the crash they would have to avoid the things that wanted to eat them. He knew that and all he could do was stand there frozen. Eventually he came around, and when he did Melissa took in several gulps of air before she slapped him across the shoulder with anger for him leaving her like that.
“I’m sorry, Melissa. It isn’t good news. We’re gonna crash. We are probably going to die.” He spoke coldly and without emotion.
“Why are you being so pessimistic? You said you’d save me. So save me!”
“What the hell do you expect me to do? It isn’t like I can gain access to the controls. Not with that thing in there.”
“There has to be something. What about emergency breaks?”
Darren wanted to bash his own brains in right then and there. For a woman who was more terrified than a child being whooped, he couldn’t believe she had the smarts to remember something that he himself should have. He cursed himself while looking around for the emergency breaks. He spotted the bright red handle with a placard stuck to the wall above, in big bold words it read ‘Emergency Brake.’
“You better sit down and hold on tight.” Darren watched Melissa get into a seat and hold onto the railing. Then he grabbed a hold of the handle and pulled. A loud hissing and scraping sound vibrated through the floor and into the room, like fingernails down a chalk board. The train jerked forward but carried on at the speed it was going. The emergency brake failed. Darren didn’t know if he’d done something wrong so pulled the handle back and forward three more times. It still it didn’t stop the train.
He slumped to the floor in a crumbled heap and didn’t know what to do. Melissa looked blankly at him with more tears washing down her cheeks. Darren got up and walked to the wall on the right side of the train and shone his cell phone torch at the map. He attained it proved useless because he couldn’t know what stations they had passed. He had no idea when the train would crash. He pulled himself into a window seat and stared out into the darkness. Defeated, he started to pound the wall next to the window with a closed fist. He didn’t stop until his knuckles split and blood poured out.
“What are we going to do, Darren?”
“Pray for a miracle. Brace yourself for the crash that will happen. I just can’t tell you when.”
“What about jumping from there?” Melissa pointed to the door that led to the engineer’s room. Darren jumped up and rushed to the door, then yanked it open and looked out. He couldn’t see anything but darkness. He shone his cell phone light below him and couldn’t see much of anything. He couldn’t even make out where they were with the speed at which they were travelling. Everything underneath looked too blurry to make out. He rushed back to the wall of the map and searched it. He did some quick estimation of their speed, and then calculated the time they’d been riding. Double checking his figures in his head, he came up with a reasonable ball park of their location. If his calculations were correct they were heading toward the second to last station: Nile Station. He reached deeply into his mind and tried to picture that station. When he did, his eyes lit up and he grabbed Melissa’s hand roughly and dragged her to the door.
“What is it?” she squealed.
“We’re gonna jump. It is not going to be easy and we may break a few bones, but at least we will survive this fucking train crashing. It is flat out there. I’m pretty sure my calculations are correct and we’re coming up fast on Nile Station. We have to do it now.”
“I don’t think I can do it!”
“Yes, you can. You want to survive, right?”
“Yes, but I’m scared.’
“So am I.” Darren grabbed Melissa around the waist and made a jump for it. It was so unexpected that she had no chance to prepare herself. They went flying out of the train and hit the stony ground just a hair’s breadth from the rail lines. They rolled into a ditch. Darren felt something warm running down his forehead and reached up to touch it. He brought his bloody fingers to his face and he could see he’d hit his head, although he didn’t feel any pain. He looked over to Melissa and noticed her body was curled inwards and she was moaning.
“Are you OK?”
“I … I think so. I think I twisted my wrist but nothing feels broken. Are you OK?”
“Just a head wound. But otherwise yeah, I think I’m OK.”
Darren brought out his cell phone and turned the torch light on just in time to see Melissa’s fisted hand as she punched him in his chest.
“What the fuck was that for?”
“I didn’t want to jump. You pushed me out of the fucking train and now I’m all cut up.”
Darren burst into laughter. It was contagious and both of them laughed for a minute before Darren heard a strange noise. He shone the cell phone light toward the noise and saw things moving fast toward them. He didn’t speak; instead he got up too fast and had to shake off the threatening vertigo. When he did, he grabbed Melissa to her feet and took off running.
“What are you doing?”
“Things… More of those damn mutants from the train. They are down there. We gotta keep moving.”
Darren ran with Melissa and came across the carpark for the Nile Station. He rushed in and up the ramp, dragging Melissa through without stopping for a breath. A few cars were still parked. Darren had an idea. He stopped and motioned toward one of the cars. He broke in and hot-wired it just as a group of those things headed toward them.
“Get in the fucking car.”
Melissa got in and Darren took off. He ran right into the things and kept on going. He didn’t know where he was headed at first, but the urgency grew and he had a destination in mind. As he drove through the little area of Nile, both he and Melissa discovered that those things were everywhere.
“Where are we going to go?”
“I’m going to get my wife,” Darren snarled and drove with resoluteness. When he finally reached his house, he rushed inside only to discover his wife was no longer his wife. He fell to his knees and hit the floor hard with his knuckles. Tears ran down his cheeks and he screamed out, “Why?” over and over. He looked up and watched his wife briefly. She was stuck outside on the patio, pacing from pool side to the large lounge windows. She could smell Darren and Melissa but she had no idea how to get back inside her house to get at them. Melissa tried to drag Darren back up, but she had no strength to pull him to his feet. She knelt down beside him and just let him sob for almost an hour.
“We really gotta go Darren. Please.”
“Why?”
“Because we will die.”
“What’s the point? My life is fucking dead without her. Don’t you get it…DEAD!”
Melissa didn’t know what to do. She stood up and rubbed her aching knees. She looked at Darren’s dead wife walking aimlessly yet aggressively into the window, and she wondered how long that window would hold. She raced into the kitchen and gabbed a cool glass of cold water and took it to Darren.
“Drink this and then let’s get the hell out of here. I don’t want to end up like them! Please, Darren!”
Darren looked up and watched his wife hitting the window and something snapped inside of his head. He snatched the glass of water from Melissa and angrily tossed it hard toward the window. It hit the tall dark-stained oak cabinet, smashing the glass and spilling the water. Melissa jumped with the sudden glass smashing and turned to see Darren’s wife thrusting her body viciously into the lounge window.
“What the hell, Darren? She’s gonna break through. Let’s go now!”
Darren was torn between loss and the reality of the situation. He knew he had to leave but something held him back. There was something about the way his wife bashed her head into the thick glass window to the way she looked at him with her black eyes. She was judging him, even as a dead monster she was still judging him. He was in their house with another woman and he froze. Unexpectedly, Melissa slapped him across the face. It worked. He snapped back into the present moment. He uttered, “Sorry,” then walked into the large hallway and at the entrance foyer he grabbed his car keys.
“We’re taking my Mercedes,” he managed to say between bouts of sniffing up excess mucus.
Melissa didn’t care what they took, so long as they got out of there. Her nerves were kicking in and she was on edge. She was unsure of anything and everything. Once they got into his dark blue Mercedes and she’d buckled up, the tears flowed freely and she couldn’t stop sobbing.
Darren had drowned her out, his thoughts on his wife, his house, his job. How everything was no more. He gave one more fleeting look at his house and then he drove away with purpose but without direction. He didn’t know where he was going. He just drove.
The End
[bctt tweet=”OCTOBER TERROR 2018 Short Story Award – Entry #3 ‘Flesh Eaters’ by Ellie Douglas @AuthorEllie – Enjoy all this terrific, disturbing material you have in your hands, lots of horror stories at your disposal for your dark delight and vote!” username=”theboldmom”]
On October 23rd we’ll close submissions and open a poll for the readers to choose their favourite one! You’ll have a week to make your choice and on October 31st we’ll announce the winner!!!
