The Last Carriage
Alex swapped his backpack from one hand to the other, and gazed aimlessly ahead into the huddle of passengers, without actually looking at any particular person. A skill acquired by most Londoners over time, sometimes even unknowingly. He’d become quite good at it.
It was a carriage much like any other at rush hour on a weekday evening. Cramped, hot and uncomfortable, with commuters wearing expressions that ranged from indifference to exhaustion and despair. If Alex was really lucky, one of those commuters would suffer from some condition - or simply from poor hygiene - that caused body odour. That seemed to be the case today, Alex noticed, as an unwelcome scent floated through the carriage to his nostrils. He tried not to grimace. That was another law amongst commuters; as well as eye contact being a no-no, and small talk is practically forbidden, any irritant was to be ignored, be it a screaming child or the undesirable odour of a fellow passenger.
Turning away slightly from who he believed to be the source of the eye-stinging smell - a tall, gangly teenager, his arm draped casually over the handrail above him, seemingly oblivious to the dark and damp stain spreading across the underarm of his t-shirt - Alex scanned the occupied seats and wondered if any of them might become vacant at the next stop. Normally he didn’t mind standing. It was only a twenty-minute journey, if that. Today, however, his feet were hurting like a bitch. His girlfriend Jenny had bought him a new pair of trainers for his birthday last week, and he'd chosen today to break them in, a decision he'd soon regretted. He had not sat down for more than a few minutes at a time today. He worked as a runner at a production studio, so most days required him to be on his feet a lot, but today had been non-stop. From scouring the city for obscure props to fetching endless lattes, his Fitbit told him he'd clocked up over 18,000 steps so far.
The train now approaching the next stop, Alex watched and waited, ready to jump into any seat that became available. Two did, but he was too late. Before he’d taken so much as a step towards the nearest vacated seat, a young woman who’d been standing nearby beat him to it. There was another further along and Alex almost made it, but a man in a suit - how the hell anyone could wear a full suit in this heat was unthinkable - clutching a copy of the Evening Standard, had swooped in from out of nowhere. Alex sighed and edged back to the rail he’d been leaning on. He peered through the grimy, splattered window at the end of the carriage, and into the equally grimy window of the next carriage. Half empty. Or half full, depending on your perspective. But why? He’d jumped on at the last second before the doors closed and hadn’t had time to choose or even notice the emptier carriage. But why had no-one else on this one chosen it?
The question continued to bother him until the train reached the next stop, and when it did, he noticed a curious thing. The throng of commuters that were waiting along the end of the platform made their way to the doors of the next carriage, on seeing how empty it was. However, shortly before the doors opened, many of them would turn on their heel and make their way to Alex’s carriage or the one further up. A few would stare for a moment with a confused expression, and again, get onto one of the other carriages. Alex frowned as he watched a lady reach to push the button to open the doors, change her mind and draw her hand back, and simply stare at the closed doors. They opened a moment later as a couple of passengers got off, and the lady made no effort to move aside. Simply continued to stare.
“You getting on or not, love?”
Alex watched as a disgruntled, tired looking man moved around the lady to get on. She blinked a couple of times and made her way further up the platform. Alex watched her for a moment, then turned back. A handful of commuters were stepping through the doors of the quieter carriage, one of them pausing for a second, then shaking his head slightly, a confused expression briefly passing across his face, before taking a seat. The rest continued to cram themselves onto the busier carriages.
Fuck this.
Alex didn’t know why so many of his fellow passengers were behaving so oddly, but what he did know was that his feet were screaming at him to sit down, and the stench permeating the air around him, coupled with the heat, was giving him a headache. He pushed through the bodies in front of him to get to the doors before they closed, but before he got that far, a young woman clutching her baby stepped on, her partner behind her, wrestling with a pram. Another man squeezed himself in a split-second before the doors closed behind him
“Excuse me,”
Alex said in a slightly impatient tone as he manoeuvred around the pram and reached out to hit the ‘open’ button, without much hope. Too late. The train was moving. Still, it was only a couple of minutes until the next stop.
The train stopped. After a minute or so, a voice informed the train's inhabitants over the tannoy that there were delays, due to a signal failure.
Shit.
He looked around. His feet throbbed and there wasn’t even a rail nearby to lean on anymore. His mild headache had turned into a near-migraine, and he was pretty sure he had no painkillers on him. He could feel sweat trickling down his back and on his brow, and swiped the back of his hand across his forehead. Looking again through the grimy window, the next carriage looked more attractive than ever. Maybe he could slip through the separating doors…why not? It’s what they were there for, right?
Alex’s decision was made for him a few seconds later, when the baby of the couple that had just got on the train began crying. The mother did her best to soothe him or her, but the crying continued, louder than ever.
I know how you feel, kid.
His mind made up, Alex made his way to the small door, trying to ignore the ‘danger by death’ sign next to it. He pulled it open, and looked down, judging the distance between it and the next carriage. It was a pretty small gap. Without much more thought, he reached across to open the next door and stepped across before he could consider how fucked he’d be if he were to slip or lose his balance. Thankfully he did neither, and closed the door gratefully behind him.
He walked through the blissfully quiet carriage to the nearest vacant seat and sat down in relief, then rummaged in his backpack, searching for pain relief tablets without much hope. His hand closed around a rectangular box and triumphantly pulled out a box of paracetamol. One left in there. It was better than nothing, he supposed, popping it into his palm and grimacing as he swallowed it dry.
He looked down at his feet, and noticed both socks were stained with blood where the backs of his trainers had rubbed against his heels. With dismay, he saw some of it was on the shoes as well.
Jenny's gonna love that.
Alex sighed in exasperation and pain, leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.
Something's wrong.
The air. It didn't feel right.
One summer, a few years back, he had gone on holiday with friends in Scotland, and they'd hiked up Ben Nevis. Towards the top, where the air was thinner, he'd begun to feel breathless. Like he couldn't get quite enough oxygen, no matter how hard he inhaled. He felt that now. Like he was breathing that same thin, suffocating air. Only now it felt and tasted odd as well. Stale, almost.
There was something else not right, something that he only now registered. It was too quiet.
He opened his eyes and frowned. The silence that had been so welcoming just a minute or so ago was now unnerving. The train was still stationary, so no screeching or grinding, but even the hum of the engine couldn't be heard. His fellow passengers were equally soundless. Not so much as a cough or a rustle of a newspaper.
Alex looked at them in turn uneasily, and realised they were as still as they were silent. No foot tapping, no turning book pages, no shifting positions, no change of facial expressions...not so much as a blink. He looked at each one, then turned to the motionless woman sitting next to him.
“Excuse me?”
There was no change to her glum expression.
“Hello?”
Alex tried again, touching her shoulder gently.
Still, no indication that she'd heard or noticed him.
He turned his attention to a man sitting to his right, on the opposite row of seats, and noticed it was the same man who had asked the indecisive lady if she was getting on at the last stop. He was dressed in jogging bottoms and a t-shirt, and was looking straight ahead. Alex tried and failed to get his attention, or break him out of his apparent trance.
He stood up slowly and walked down towards the next set of seats, then the next. Every passenger was frozen. One young woman was holding a mirror in front of her face and touching up her lipstick, her mouth half-open. Another, a man in his thirties in a shirt and jeans, appeared to be caught mid-sneeze, his face scrunched up and his hand in front of his face. By the time Alex had reached the end of the carriage, he was feeling shaky. What the hell was this? Was it some elaborate prank? Maybe someone was recording this. He turned around suddenly and peered down the carriage suspiciously, half-expecting to catch some joker with his phone pointed at him. He saw no such thing, and made his way back to his seat. Before sitting, he looked through the stained pair of windows into the carriage he had come from. It was business as usual in there, as far as Alex could see. The crying baby was still being comforted by his mother, her lips moving as she offered soothing words. The lanky teenager was nodding his head to whatever was playing through his headphones, and a man standing next to him lifted his hand to his face to scratch his nose.
Alex went to sit down, part of him still thinking, or hoping, that this had to be a joke of some kind.
Of course, that's what it is! It's just some twat filming a TikTok, and if you freak out you're giving them exactly what they w-
There was a fly frozen mid-air.
It was in front of the seat opposite him. He thought it was his eyes playing tricks on him at first. Leaning forward he observed its intricate wings and multifaceted eyes. It was definitely a fly.
So what the fuck was it doing suspended in the air?
Alex stood up slowly and swallowed, his mouth and throat as dry as dust. The silence, the air, the statues seated around him with their frozen expressions...that had been bad enough, but this? The sight of the small winged insect was almost too much to look at. It was an affront not just to the laws of physics, but to his sanity.
The tablet he'd just taken. It had to be that, right? He pulled the empty box and blister pack out of his pocket and examined both. Nothing out of the ordinary stood out. It was a generic brand, within its expiry date, and at any rate, he'd taken the rest of the pack up until now with no issues. But if he was imagining all this other shit, wasn't it possible this was also a hallucination?
If not, and he really was sober and clear-headed, then what was going on here? And, perhaps more importantly, what was going to happen next?
Alex decided he didn't want to stick around and find out. Grabbing his backpack, he headed back to the door he'd come through, after stealing a final glance at the stationary fly. He yanked the door open and, seeing a passenger leaning against the second door, rapped his knuckles against the glass. Startled, the man turned around, then moved aside, frowning at Alex as he pushed the door open. The door safely closed behind him, Alex leaned against it and let out a shaky sigh. The man who had stepped aside frowned at him even harder, with an expression of mistrust, but said nothing.
Alex looked at him, then looked around the carriage, which seemed even busier than it had a few minutes ago, but he no longer minded. In fact he welcomed the sight. Even the crying baby was a relief. The train seemed to have begun moving again, although when exactly it had done so, he couldn't say.
Hesitantly, he turned back to the door and forced himself to look into the next carriage, and his eyes widened. The passengers were seated as they had been just a moment ago, but were moving now. The man in jogging bottoms pulled his phone out of his pocket and looked at it. The woman further down had resumed applying her lipstick, before fluffing her hair and putting her mirror away into a bag that lay at her feet.
Maybe he was losing his mind after all.
The train screeched to a halt. They were at Hendon Central. Alex's stop was the next one, but he'd had enough of this. He'd walk the rest of the way home, sore feet or not. He wanted to put as much space between him and that carriage as possible. He shoved his way through the door with less patience than usual, and stepped onto the platform, pausing only to look behind him briefly. No-one was getting off the last carriage, nor was anyone getting on. The small handful of people that gathered in front of the doors appeared to change their minds at the last minute, as the others had done, and opted for the busier ones.
------------------------------------------
Walking home, Alex replayed what had happened in his mind's eye. He just couldn't make any sense of what he'd experienced. He tried to dismiss it as a result of him being tired and overworked, an early indicator, perhaps, of the burnout that was common in his line of work.
One question, however, kept returning to him: If it had all been in his head, why had almost none of the other passengers wanted to get on that carriage?
------------------------------------------
Alex stared into his coffee, wondering for the twentieth time that morning if he should book a GP appointment. His sleep had been light and uneasy. From the fragments of dreams that he remembered on waking, most of them had been about his tube journey yesterday. In one dream, after going through the interconnecting doors, he'd gone to take a seat, only to find himself sitting motionless where he'd been seated yesterday. He couldn't remember what had happened after that.
“Alex!”
he heard Jenny shout from the bedroom.
He hadn't told her yet. Partly because he wasn't quite sure what to tell her; he hardly knew what had happened himself, or if indeed it had even happened. The other reason was that she had enough shit to worry about without adding her boyfriend's possible mental breakdown to her list of concerns. Her mum was quite unwell and had been in and out of hospital lately, and she was going through a lot of work-related stress due to restructuring and extra workloads. She could do without this.
She ran into the kitchen, clutching her phone.
“Look at this!”
she thrust it in front of his bleary-eyed face, as he stood up.
It took him a few seconds to focus on what he was seeing, and a couple more after that for his tired mind to process it.
21 DEAD AND 14 INJURED AFTER REAR-END COLLISION ON TUBE LINE
Alex frowned and continued reading, taking the phone from her to do so.
A collision due to a signal failure has lead to the death of all 21 passengers on board the last carriage of a Northern line train, as well as causing 8 major injuries to passengers on the next carriage. 6 also sustained minor injuries. The incident, which took place yesterday evening, between Hendon Central and Colindale on a Northbound train, is the first to occur on the London Underground since the 1970s, when -
“That's the line you took right? Yesterday evening? Shit Alex, that was a lucky escape...they would have closed the line after that, so you must have got one of the trains just before that one.”
“No,”
He said, slowly handing the phone back to her, his face darkened. The memory of the glum-looking lady who'd appeared not to notice him yesterday came back to him. The man caught mid-sneeze, and the motionless lipstick lady. And the others. All seemingly frozen in time. In their last moments.
He sat back down and picked up his coffee with a shaking hand.
“No, I don't think I did.”