NaNo :: Day 1 - 1,750/50,000
I.
With echoes of screams in his head, Tobias woke up in a daze. He blinked blearily at his own reflection on the dark glass, part of it concealed by the fog of moisture from his warm, wet breath. He blinked, and the tendrils of screams in his dreams faded, overtaken by the familiar chugging hum of the bullettrain. He blinked, and straightened, looking around him.
He had taken the Green Line train from Sector Seven to Sector Thirteen and had taken it more times than he could count. He was old fashioned in that he would have preferred to have walked, but it was a considerable distance between these two points and he was on a time crunch. Besides, all paths into Sector Thirteen were choked tightly with trouble; the gangs there held their turf tight like vices, constantly trying to turn it even tighter and tighter, without a care to the pressure it created. He liked to think that he could have handled those punks without a problem, but, again, he was on a time crunch.
He shifted in his seat, working out a soreness in his back, and frowned as those screams, barely faint wisps in his memory, were still creeping in his memory. What were they? A dream, obviously, but who did they belong to? The only answer that came to mind was clearly not the right one. These sounds were far too young, far too unfamiliar, and they rang with a different kind of pain, something more visceral and animal than the ones that kept him awake at night through adolescence. These were a haunted sort, a voice he didn’t know, a feeling he told himself was unfamiliar. Pure imagination.
You need more sleep, Gainswellow. Real sleep, in an actual bed, and not just catch-what-you-can slips of slumber in rickety bullettrain cars.
He tilted his head back against the headrest, which squeaked and was crooked and he could feel metal parts distinctly poking through it. The cars to Sector Thirteen were the worst; they didn’t bother keeping up maintenance on them, except just enough to keep them running. Tobias couldn’t blame them for neglect, either. Why bother fixing something when it was destined to be broken again? Only a small percentage of the damage was organic; the rest was done by the people who the bullettrains were supposed to serve.
Tobias eyed the other passengers from behind closed lids, not needing to actually look at them to see them. It would be all the usual characters, just in slightly different packaging. A young mother with a squirming, underfed, colicky kid that she desperately clung protectively to while simultaneously just wanting to throw him under the train itself. A few homeless fellows, all rags and dirty bristly hair, with a plethora of tokens of their trade: newspaper blankets, rusted tin cups rattling with change, piss stained army jackets, and scribbled, barely legible cardboard signs. Three suspect youths eying a thin wisp of a girl in a tight, short skirt who knew they were watching so they gave them a show that made them lick their lips and wordlessly plan just which darkened corner they’d stalked her into to show her their idea of a good time. Several ashen-faced individuals in various states of crumpled dress, either heading home from the arduous grind, or towards it, the same old routine day after day to bring home a barely substantial piece of gristled bacon.
And then there were those like himself. Unseen. Unnoticed.
Ghosts.
Tobias wasn’t from Analisia City, far from it, but instead of sticking out like a sore thumb, a country bumpkin, he’d discovered that he was more like the smooth fit of a well-tailored glove, sliding comfortably and easily against the subtle contours of this several fingered society. He was perfect for the sort of work he’d found himself stumbling into upon arrival, easily finding himself among the company of other ghosts, other people just sliding along under the surface of the bitter tedium of the big city.
He thought of the gun tucked in against his hip. His father’s gun. When he’d brought the Onyx Titanium with him, he had no idea he would be using it so often and so efficiently. And he wonders now, as the rusting bullettrain sped along its tracks through the darkening evening, if it would be used again tonight.
His ears filled then with a horrible squealing, harsh and abrasive, and he winced, feeling the screams of his dreams coming back into his consciousness with horrible sharp reality. It grated him down to his very bones, sharpening his marrow, making him want to call out in his own sudden pain between clenched teeth. He held it in, tight as a trigger, and slowly realized that it wasn’t in his head at all. It wasn’t even a scream at all, but, instead, the sound of the train’s brakes clenching onto the rails, plunging to a stop after its steady speeding.
Simultaneously, all the bodies in the car shifted forward, their inertia not yet having caught up with the stop, pitching them forward. A man in a business suit crashed into a girl in heavy make-up, a bum spilled out onto the floor. Tobias himself was thrown ahead into the seat ahead of him, his forehead smashing into an exposed metal bar, blinding him a moment with pain. A baby started howling and the curses and questions started to bubble up like a thick, vulgar stew.
The demands, the questions, the shrill cries of the baby, all thumped and ached against Tobias’ skull. Crumpling against the seat, he felt swept up with the unreasonable anger culminating and boiling in the small space of the car. “Shut up!” He shouted, futilely, his voice a harsh bark that barely seemed his own. “All of you! Shut up!”
The chaos was building, building, throbbing in his head. Sharp, nagging stabs of a woman harping, reprimanding. The low, bouncing, guttural threats of a young man. A bark here, a growl there. Tobias groaned, holding his head and curling over as it got worst. Building, building…
Tobias wanted to reach to his hip, pull out the Onyx Titanium, and fire a shot to get them all to just shut the frex up before he really gave them something to shout and groan, snarl and moan about.
His finger witched, but something else shot off before he did. A short, almost bright-sounding chime that drew everyone’s attention to the bashed-in speaker up in one corner of the car.
“The Analisian City Department of Transportation would like to apologize for the unexpected stop.” The voice burbling from the speaker was thick with crackling static and apathy. “There is an obstruction on the tracks-“
The announcement probably continued on to apologize again, dryly, unfeelingly, and to thank them for their patience and for utilizing there Inner Analisian Track System, but Tobias didn’t hear it. The car had erupted again, shouts and complaints and someone had even thrown an empty can at the speaker as if that would kick the train back into motion. A couple of youths started to shove each other in irritation, which would undoubtedly build into a brawl very quickly. The baby continued to wail so hard one thought his lungs would burst, and a haggard, used-looking woman standing underneath the No Smoking sign flicked her lighter and started a fag.
Tobias dragged a hand through his thick black hair and cursed softly when he realized it came back down with a smear of blood on it. He almost wiped it on his slacks, on his dark sweater, but he caught himself and wiped it instead on the back of the train’s seats. He was fairly sure that worse had been smeared there before. Then, he bent down enough to reach his briefcase on the floor, picking it up, and headed toward the door.
The announcement had also probably asked that the passengers all remain seated and wait patiently, that they’d be back to speed in no time, and, please, remain in the cars…
But Tobias hadn’t heard that part, either and, even if he had, he didn’t care. He had an appointment and preferred walking, besides. They were probably halfway there, and he’d rather risk being late on his own accord and the dangers out there in the slums than remain like a rat in a cage, like the rest of the car, quickly growing mad and angry, violent and belligerent like the very last dregs of humanity.
With a firm, hard jab of his elbow, enough of the sliding car doors moved that he could force open a gap large enough for him and his briefcase to slip through, which wasn’t difficult. Tobias was a tall, thin man and found it easy to slide through tight spots, both literally and metaphorically, another benefit to working his current occupation. He was instantly greeted with the cool evening air and, while it was in no way fresh, at least it wasn’t stifling that the atmosphere festering in the car. He took a moment to gaze around him, past the workers scurrying toward the front of the train and past the wall that separated the tracks from the city, where the signs of decrepit civilization poked over the barrier, into the hazy dark blue sky. He then glanced down at his watch. Half an hour. He had half an hour before he was supposed to meet John in some shitty Sector Thirteen motel. Not much time, so he’d better just get moving.
He didn’t get far, though, before some scrawny kid in an engineer’s uniform rushed up to him. “You! You there! If you’re getting off that train, you better be planning on helping out!”
The kid reached for Tobias’ arm, but he pulled it back, stepping away smoothly. “I’ve got places to go.”
“Yeah, so do we all!” the kid shot back with an annoyed firmness that surprised Tobias. It was almost a challenge, asking Tobias what he thought made him so special, what made him so much more important than anyone else on that train. He had an answer, but it was a poor one, unconvincing, one that would call up a chorus of voices rising up with their own comparable problems. Tobias paused, wondering if the engineer could say anything to convince him that helping them would mean something more important than helping just a cadre of pissant, ungrateful, undeserving, miserable slumworms.
Off to a good start! It probably helps that I've actually written this chapter before, but it was ages ago, and this is a new, hopefully better version. This is all I got typed up before work, but I hope to scribble out some more while I'm slinging coffee.
Eeeee.