Infection - Part I

Chapter 19.

It was some time into the journey that the train began to slow down. It was indicative of their arrival. 

The inside of the cabins of the train filled with the screeching of the breaks as the act of slowing down tugged on all of them. But there was one flaw at the end of this journey.

With the train being so full, it was also overweight.

The conductor ahead noticed this, seeing the rate at which they were slowing down. The pit of his stomach began whirling with fear as he already had full breaks engaged.

Behind the speeding train, a trail of smoke was left to clog and suffocate the tight tunnel. The driving wheels let out sparks upon sparks and from time to time, the light inside the cabin would go out before coming back on.

The smell from the outside slowly made its way into the cabin and it wasn't long before it reached Valerie. She smelled the air before furrowing her brows. "W-what's that smell?...".

"The breaks..." Devon spoke out. He looked around himself, hearing the sound of the brakes once again. "I think we're too heavy...".

In the control room, the conductor saw flickering lights ahead of him. He knew it was the station. They were still moving too fast to stop on time. "Shit..." he let under his breath.

Very soon, with the overheating of the brakes, they were to serve their purpose no more. A brake failure had occurred.

The screeching stopped as the conductor tried tirelessly to get the brakes to work. The smell of burning only further filled the cabin as the train rolled up to the stop and past it.

The passengers saw the lights of their exit come and go, and that was when panic ensued. 

"W-where are we going?..." Valerie voiced.

"We can't stop..." James spoke out.

In front, the conductor saw a barricade of wood mark that there was no further advancing. The works on the tracks were never completed. He widened his eyes as the train continued steadily marching towards it.

Seconds later, it crashed into the wooden wall, immediately derailing as further crashing into the wall of the tunnel. Sparks continued being emitted from the train as it scraped the wall of the tunnel with a few cabins being turned on their sides as they bent from the speed of the train. 

Seconds later, the train and its carriages managed to come to a halt as more smoke rose from the train. Silence.

The silence that followed was deafening.

Valerie, Devon, James and the rest of the passengers were knocked out unconscious. Some work up seconds after the crash, others in the minutes that followed and the rest never did.

Opening her eyes, it took a moment for Valerie to realise where she was. She felt a headache hit her like a bag of bricks as she took hold of her temples. "Fuck...".

Looking around herself, she was surrounded by darkness. Taking out her phone, she managed to get it to turn on. The screen was nearly totalled, with cracks patterning her phone, but it was still functional.

She turned the flashlight of her phone on and pointed it around herself. A train crash.

"What happened?..." she whispered under her breath.

Bodies upon bodies were piled on the ground and she saw James's and Devon's bodies beside her. "Shit... James?... Devon??".

There was a mere chatter outside the broken train, showing Valerie that there were some survivors.