Shadows Read online

  Full-blown panic had gripped the train car in the wake of the conductor’s announcement. No one had assumed the crash position (for all the good it would do them during the train’s imminent derailment and buckling of its sixteen cars). Several passengers had their faces glued to the windows as the train screamed toward its destiny.

  “Why won’t this work? Why won’t this work?” a voice was repeating.

  She peeked over the seatback; it was the man who’d borrowed her charger, his attention focused on the phone in his trembling hand. The screen was still dark, even though it was plugged into the outlet.

  He looked up at Lucy.

  “Why won’t this thing work?”

  She shook her head and sat back down.

  “Lucy, what the hell is going on?” Manny asked.

  “We need cover,” she said.

  She stood up again.

  “Everybody listen up!” she yelled, her voice slicing through the buzz of the panicked discussions.

  Silence dropped across the train car like an anvil; two dozen sets of eyes burrowed in on her, making her profoundly uncomfortable.

  “We’ve only got a couple minutes,” she said, sweat slicking her back. “Go through your bags, find anything you can use to cushion the impact. Stick them under your clothes. Cover your heads with the thickest things you’ve got. Towels, T-shirts, sweaters, things like that. Protect yourself from the waist up as best you can.”

  The group stood frozen.

  “Now, dammit, now!”

  The ice of their terror cracked. Within seconds, the passengers were looting their bags, constructing their own makeshift body armor. Lucy did the same, rifling through her duffel bag. Around her head, she wrapped her VCU sweatshirt, the one she had brought to fight the chill in the convention center. Then she stuffed t-shirts and underwear and socks under her shirt to protect her abdomen. When she’d finished putting on her armor, she took a moment to gauge their location. The train was running due south; the danger was still ahead, when the train would hit that terrifying curve.

  “Manny,” she said, “see if we can get these seat cushions off.”

  They dug their fingers into the back of their seats and began prying the cushion loose; she didn’t know how well-secured they were. As they worked, Manny was breathing rapidly; sweat slicked his face. The poor guy was terrified. She reached over and touched his elbow.

  “It’s gonna be okay,” she said.

  Even though she didn’t know that.

  As the others worked, Manny pried the cushion loose with a mighty tug befitting a man his size.

  “Pull up the seat cushions,” she yelled, turning her head toward the crowd.

  Her heart thumped against her breastbone as she worked, not thinking about anything but the task at hand. To think too far down the track, figuratively or literally, would mean thinking about the fact that her life might be over in a matter of minutes. She pulled one loose and then another.

  The sound of sobbing cutting through the buzz reached her ears. It was the girl who’d been reading the novel. Her eyes were wet and her shoulders were heaving. She was pulling on the cushion, but it was not giving. Her grandmother was small and frail, paralyzed with indecision. Lucy could see it on her face, wrinkled like a relief map. The woman was still in her chair, her hands gripping the armrests so tightly Lucy could see the veins in her paper-thin skin.

  “Can I help you all?” Lucy asked.

  “Lord, yes,” said the woman in a voice scarcely above a whisper. Her gaze was fixed on the window, the landscape screaming by.

  She stepped across the aisle to the girl’s side. She was petite, thin, and had wire-straight, jet black hair that fell to the middle of her back.

  “It’ll be okay,” she said again, and this time she wanted to believe it. She didn’t want the girl to see how frightened she was herself.

  “Dig your fingers into the back here,” said Lucy, reaching behind the cushion.

  The girl mimicked Lucy’s actions, and together they pulled it loose.

  “Your turn, ma’am,” Lucy said, trying to hide the panic bubbling inside her. They weren’t far from the station now.

  After the grandmother stood up, bracing herself against the side of the car, Lucy and the girl pulled up her cushion. She lay one cushion down on the ground and handed the second one to the girl.

  “Both of you lie down,” Lucy said.

  The pair complied. It took the old woman a bit longer, but eventually, they were down together. They curled up against one another, tightly holding hands. The girl was slightly larger than her grandmother, and she curled her body around the older woman like a comma.

  “Press down on the cushion as hard as you can and hold the second cushion over your head.”

  “Hold these around your chest and neck, as tightly as you can, okay?”

  The girl nodded. Her lower lip was quivering. The grandmother’s eyes were shut tight and she was mouthing words, probably in prayer.

  “What’s your name?” Lucy asked.

  “Norah.”

  “That’s a pretty name,” Lucy said. “I’m Lucy.”

  “Are we going to die?” she asked.

  Lucy’s stomach turned at the question. She didn’t want to spook the girl, but she didn’t want to sugarcoat things. That never went well. Lucy’s life had been nothing but tragedy underneath a saccharine crust that she’d tried to pass off as truth.

  “We’re gonna protect ourselves as best we can,” she said.

  “You don’t talk like other grownups.”

  Lucy chuckled, a moment of mirth that drained away as she felt the train hit the curve.

  “Remember hold this tightly over your head,” she said. “It’s almost time.”

  “Will you lie down next to me?”

  She glanced at the grandmother, who nodded.

  “Yes.”

  She stood up and staggered as the train hit the curve at a dizzying speed. Manny handed her the cushion and they locked eyes. She searched for something to say, but the words would not come. Rarely had she felt so helpless, so utterly at the mercy of forces beyond her control.

  “Everyone down!” she screamed as she hit the deck, throwing an arm over the slight bodies of the girl and her grandmother.

  The train car groaned as the centrifugal forces now controlling it pushed it beyond its ability to remain wedded to the track. Then it happened. A hiccup in the train’s smooth glide followed by a gargantuan roar and the terrific sound of metal crumpling, a deep, bellowing sound. Three heavy thumps, like gunshots dressed in the deepest of bass.

  “Lucy!”

  She held Norah as tightly as she could, careful to keep the cushion over her head.

  Another deafening groan, this one a result of the sleek, bullet-shaped locomotive jumping the track. Its streamlined design helped the train make good time through the nation’s busy northeast corridor, but freed of its moorings, it had become a missile, pulling two dozen warheads along with it. The derailment bloomed exponentially, each collision between train cars worsening the disaster at a geometric rate.

  The coupling at the front of Lucy’s train car snapped away like a child’s toy, leaving it on its own, independent of the disaster engulfing the front half of the train. The force of the decoupling sent their car skidding across the parking lot fronting the station. Then it tipped over, scattering passengers everywhere.

  True to her word, Norah held the cushion firm as the derailment flung them across the compartment, the laws of gravity not operating as one would expect. Their bodies slammed into the side wall as the car rolled a second time. Lucy could not tell up from down, but she was still conscious and Norah was screaming, and those were all good things. It meant they were alive.

  Screams of pain and howls of anguish filled the passenger car, auditory nightmares that would haunt Lucy for the rest of her days. People were dying all around her; fate would decide who lived and who was seeing their last moments on Earth. And there was nothing she could do but hold on.

  The doomed train car was on its side now, sliding through the parking lot and scattering parked cars like bowling pins. Passengers were flung about the cabin like rag dolls; Lucy lost her grip on the girl. Her stomach dropped as she went airborne, freed, briefly, from the bonds of gravity. Then she really was at the hands of fate, as was often the case when death was nearby. In the vortex of sudden disaster, death didn’t care. Death was arbitrary and capricious. It would take a healthy teenager and spare a hundred-year-old woman. It felt like she was floating, hell, maybe she was floating, and the world sped up and came to a complete halt all at the same time. If this was the end, perhaps she would see Emma soon.

  Then the train car crashed through a bus vestibule, spinning on its horizontal axis until it came to rest at the edge of a café at the corner of the station terminal. The train car was cloudy with dust; the soft moans of the injured and the dying peppered the air. Lucy exhaled softly, afraid to move, afraid to try to move, lest she discover that she was paralyzed. The moment was frozen in time. She breathed in, happy to be taking in breath (another time, sweet Emma, we will meet another time).

  The girl.

  Norah.

  “Norah!” she called out.

  “Yeah,” came a small voice in reply.

  “Are you okay?” Lucy whispered.

  “I think so.”

  “Can you wiggle your toes?” Lucy asked.

  “Yeah.”

  This simple act filled Lucy with relief. There would be bad news ahead, of this she was sure, but it was good to start this nightmare with something positive.

  “How about your grandmother?”

  “I don’t see her.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Yvette.”

  “Yvette!” Lucy called out. “Yvette!”

  She listened carefully. No reply.

  “We’ll find her in a minute,” Lucy said.

  “Did you wiggle your toes?” Norah asked.

  Lucy had not. She was too afraid to. Paralysis was one of her greatest fears; she could not fathom not being in control of her body. When she had been in Afghanistan, she had feared paralysis far more than death. But she could not lie here like a frightened puppy, a deer frozen in the headlights that was this horrific train crash.

  “Do it,” Norah said.

  “Okay.”

  She sent the signal down her leg and wiggled her toes. Tears of joy streamed down her face as her body responded to her commands. As she wept, other sounds in the train car began filtering through. Pleas for help and grunts of pain and tears of despair swirled together in a symphony of suffering.

  “We need to check on your grandmother,” Lucy said. “Stay where you are.”

  Lucy pushed herself up to her feet and did a quick self-assessment. Small cuts and scrapes striated her arms, but she was otherwise okay. The same, unfortunately, could not be said for Norah’s grandmother. Their double seat had broken free during the crash, crushing her against the side of the train’s outer shell, which had crumpled inward. Her head was twisted at a grotesque angle; blood pooled underneath her. Lucy crawled toward her and pressed two fingers to the woman’s neck. No pulse. She lay her hand on her chest, but she wasn’t breathing. There was a blanket bunched up on the floor, and Lucy pulled it over the woman’s upper torso and face. She said a small prayer for the woman. If she had suffered, it hadn’t been for very long.

  “Come with me,” she said, using her body to block Norah’s view of her grandmother’s untimely end.

  “Where are we going?”

  “See who needs help.”

  “What about my grandmother?”

  Lucy carefully considered her response.

  “She’s badly hurt,” Lucy said. “We need to get her to the hospital.”

  The train car on its side had a disorienting effect. Lucy was standing on the spider-webbed train car window. Across from her was the man who’d wanted to call his family. He wasn’t moving. A twisted piece of metal had pierced his abdomen. Lucy had been a nurse long enough to know that there was nothing she could do for him.

  Manny.

  She crossed the aisle back to her seat, gingerly stepping around a spear of metal that had spiked from the floor as the car had blown apart.

  “Manny!” she called out.

  A groan.

  “Manny!”

  “I’m good!”

  Manny was underneath their seat, which had buckled and flipped over.

  “All your parts working?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’m going to lift the edge and you crawl out.”

  “Got it.”

  She knelt down on her haunches and tucked her hands under the edge of the seat. After a mental one-two-three, she drove her weight into it, lifting it clear of the ground. It was much heavier than she expected, and she could only lift it a few inches.

  “Now, Manny.”

  The big man began wiggling his way out of the cavity; just as her muscles gave out, Manny had moved out far enough to bear the seat’s weight. When he was clear, she let go, and the seat crashed to the floor with a terrific thud. He was cut and scratched to hell, but he appeared to be okay.

  “You’re bleeding,” he said to her, pointing at her forehead. He handed her a crumpled napkin from his pocket. She pressed it to her head for a few seconds, surprised to see the amount of blood that soaked it.

  “Who needs help?” she called out, turning to face the car.

  The replies came in bulk.

  Time to do a little triage.

  “Listen to me!” she called out. “If you can walk, get clear. I’m a nurse. Are there any doctors or nurses who can help?”

  There were no replies.

  Manny tapped her on the shoulder and pointed to the front of the train car. Her knees buckled when she saw it. A plume of flame was rippling in the corner like a little campfire. There would be no time for triage. Those who could get out would have to do so right now; many would not get out in time.

  “Everyone out, everyone out!” she yelled. “Fire!”

  She leaned down and yanked Norah to her feet, nearly pulling the girl’s arms out of their sockets. She scanned the compartment for the nearest exit. There was a breach in the train car where it had broken open as it had collided with the car in front of it. The opening, rimmed with jagged metal, look like the mouth of a snarling demon.

  Pushing Norah along in front of her, she pulled survivors to their feet and corralled them like cattle. Several could not move, and Lucy had no choice but to leave them.

  Triage was a bitch.

  A dozen survivors converged at the opening; not bad, given how cataclysmic the crash had been. One by one they slipped outside as the fire bloomed in size.

  “Get away from the train,” she said over and over, constantly glancing over her shoulder. The fire was spreading rapidly, filling the inside of the car with sweeping sheets of flame.

  Lucy waited until the last person was out, and then she, Norah, and Manny followed out into the smoky afterbirth of the train crash. The heat from the growing blaze warmed her back. Buried deep into her soul were the howls of people trapped in the growing conflagration.

  “Run,” she said.

  The girl’s head swiveled back to the doomed train car, but Lucy gently placed a hand on her cheek and kept her looking forward.

  “What about my grandmother?”

  Lucy locked the girl’s hand tight in her own and pulled her along. The survivors from their car sped up, jogging and then sprinting to escape the blaze. When they were a hundred yards clear, the car exploded, spraying the vicinity with scorching hot metal and glass. The blast wave pushed Lucy and Norah to the ground. It was a brutal second cut. Around her, several more people perished instantly, cut down by fiery debris ejected by the explosion.

  Lucy climbed back to her feet.

  “You okay?” she asked Norah for what seemed like the hundredth time.

  The girl stared blankly toward the burning wreckage. Tears streamed down her dirty face, caked with soot and ash.

  “Norah,” she said, clapping her hands to capture the girl’s attention.

  But the girl remained focused on what had become her grandmother’s tomb. She gave Norah a few moments to compose herself. To the east, two large fires were burning, belching clouds of black smoke into the sky. Then something new caught her eye.

  A large commercial jetliner was approaching from the north, low in the sky. It was descending rapidly, much too rapidly, and she understood grimly that the plane would crash. The wings wobbled from side to side as the pilots struggled to control the aircraft. She willed them to stabilize it; it was unnerving to watch the wings tip violently from one side to another. She could not imagine the horror the passengers would be experiencing as she stood here with her feet safely on the ground.

  The plane passed directly overhead, so low she could see the rivets bolted in the airplane chassis. Around her, dozens of people had craned their necks skyward to watch this new disaster unfold on top of their own. Lucy’s heart sank as the pilots lost their final battle with physics. The plane flipped upside down and clipped the top of an office building about half a mile to the north, shearing off one wing. The surviving fuselage spun wildly like a top before crashing beyond a ridge of buildings. It exploded on impact, sending a mushroom cloud of black smoke curling into the sky.

  As she watched the fire burn, she felt Norah’s hand slide into her own.

  “What happened?” she asked in a tiny voice.

  “I don’t know,” Lucy replied.

  They stood there in a vortex of death and debris and destruction, and for the second time in her life, Lucy felt utterly helpless and alone.

  3

  The students sat silently, shifting in their seats while their English teacher, Tim Whitaker, waited for an answer. He enjoyed doing this to them, waiting patiently for someone to respond, waiting until the silence became so unbearable that speaking up was preferable to the awkward quiet. They were reading To Kill a Mockingbird, discussing whether Atticus Finch, perhaps the most famous hero in American literature, was, in fact, a hero or if he was just a little less shitty than the other white characters populating Harper Lee’s novel.