Outbreak: The Hunger (8 page)

“Fi,” I say.  “Fi, are you okay?”  She raises her head and smiled at me. 

“That was kinda fun.”  I know she is trying to make me smile, and it works.  I hug her tight.

“Are you okay, sweetie?  Is anything broken?  Are you bleeding?”  I get her off me quickly and remove the backpack.  There is a medium-sized branch impaled through the mesh.  The clothing and her blanket are the only things that kept it from penetrating her.  I shudder to think of what could have happened and shake it off. 
No use worrying about what could have happened
, I think.
We’re still in the shits here
.  “Can you stand up for me?” I ask.  She does.  I turned her around, looking for cuts, or worse.  Other than a lot of bruises on her legs and a small cut on her arm, she’s fine.

I look around at the twisted wreckage of the train. Body parts and twisted metal are strewn all over.  The train had come apart like a toy.  There was nothing left that even remotely resembled the vehicle we’d been riding on for the last two years.

“Come on, sweetie,” I say, taking her hand.  “Let’s go help the others.”

7

You have to wake up… you need to open your eyes…

Frank’s eyes shoot open.  He is expecting to find darkness, but the brightness of the sun makes him jerk his head back as if he was slapped in the face.  He tries again, this time gradually opening them so they can accept the sunlight.  As he squints and tries to see around him, he realizes that he has very limited motion.  He tries to lift his head, but his neck muscles are failing him. 
What the fuck happened?
he thinks.  He tries to wiggle his fingers and toes and has no idea if they are moving.  He still can’t lift his head to see.  It’s becoming pretty clear that he can’t feel any part of his body.  It’s almost as if he is just a head laying on the ground with nothing else connected to it.  Then he thinks about his sons, Jeff and Rick, and tries to move again,  with no luck. 

“Okay, okay,” he says, trying to calm himself down. “I need to relax and think.”  He tries to focus on the last thing he could remember.  “The train,” he says in a raspy voice,  “I remember the goddamn train was going too fast.”  He tries to wiggle his toes again.  He also remembers seeing the guy with his daughter all the way at the back of train getting ready to jump.  “Fucking idiot,” he says out loud.  At least he thinks he’s talking out loud.  Come to think of it, he can’t hear his own voice. 

“The best thing,” he remembered telling his kids, “is to stay on the train.” 

Focus asshole
, he thinks, trying to get back to his memories.

“Jeff and Rick were sitting next to me as we got closer to the curve.”  Frank still can’t tell if he is talking out loud or not.  “They wanted to jump, but I told them just to sit there and brace themselves.  All trains have some kind of safety mechanism that prevents them from becoming a run-a-way train.”  Don’t they? 
Fuck
. His current situation kept interrupting his thoughts. 
Why the fuck can’t I feel my legs or arms, and where the fuck are my sons
?

Jeff and Rick are his seven-year-old twins.  He doesn’t get much time with them between his job and the divorce, but when they were together, they always had fun.  He is still very close to them even though he only gets to see them every other weekend.  They were good kids, and understood that Mommy and Daddy just couldn’t live together anymore.  He was glad to have a friendly divorce with no drama.

Yes
, he thinks excitedly when he begins to feel the fingers on his right hand wiggling.  He doesn’t have much mobility, but it’s a start. 

He remembers hugging the boys close as the train turned into the curve.  Everything jerked violently and he recalled Jeff almost being torn from his grasp.  “Oh God,” he says at the thought of Jeff being thrown from the train.  Where is he?  Did he hit a tree?  Is he wandering around out there looking for him and Rick? 

With his right hand, he begins to feel around.  He feels something cold over his right thigh. 
It must be part of the train
.  He attempts to move it, but it may as well have weighed a ton.  He then reasons that, since he can’t lift his head, he could possibly roll his neck side to side.  Slowly, he tilts his head to the left.  His eyes still aren’t focusing.  He sees some people walking around and a lot of twisted metal.  “Help,” he tries to shout, but realizes the only noise he makes is a faint whisper. 
Okay, they can’t hear me but I can hear them.  My senses are coming back
to me
.  This small victory brings a smile to his face.

He rolls his head to the right and gets excited when he sees Jeff’s shirt.  That bright red Spider-Man shirt gives him hope.  His adrenaline kicks in and he is able to free his right arm from the wreckage. 
Making progress.  Stay focused and get to your kids
.  He tries to prop himself on his right elbow, but his body still isn’t responding.  “Jeff… Jeff,” he whispers through his still-raspy voice.  Wait. His voice isn’t raspy he realized.  It’s almost a gurgling noise.  Frank panics. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see that man and his kid walking around.  He remembers them being the ones who jumped off the train before they hit the curve.    He sees them look at the ground, at the wreckage, at the trees, and into the woods. 
Why the fuck can’t they see me?  What are they doing over there? Sightseeing
?  He assumes they were looking for other survivors, but also figures there aren’t survivors up in the trees.  It wasn’t that bad of a train wreck.  His voice fails him as he tries to call out. 

“They don’t see us,” he says out loud.  “No one’s gonna rescue us.  It’s up to me.”

He reaches out with his right arm toward Jeff.  Bursts of searing pain shoot up and down his arm. He bites his lip.  He needs to make contact with his son to let him know he isn’t alone.  His fingers are inches away from the red shirt.  He finds the strength to roll his head more in the direction to where Jeff is.  That’s when he notices the odd angle at which Jeff’s head is lying. 
Come on, eyes. Focus
.  Ignoring the pain shooting along his arm, he finally manages to make contact with Jeff.  His fingers try to stroke Jeff’s hair as best as they can.  “Jeff,” he whispers. “Jeff, it’s Daddy.  We’re gonna be alright.” 
He’s unconscious.  I need to bring him back to me
.  So Frank does the only thing he can think of: he gently pulls on some of Jeff’s long hair. 
Thank God his mom ignored me and didn’t get his hair cut
.  No response.  So he pulls harder  to try to shock him back into consciousness.

As he pulls that second time, he feels his son move.  Frank smiles. 
Everything’s going to be al
…  But he realizes Jeff hasn’t moved because of his father’s touch.  As he pulls on his son’s hair, he realizes Jeff’s head is tilted back at an impossible angle.  He needs to know.  Frank keeps pulling only to find that Jeff’s head is barely still attached to his body.  A sheet of fiberglass from the roof of the train had torn off during the wreck and slammed into his son’s throat, nearly decapitating him.  All that is keeping his head attached is a thin flap of skin on the back of his neck. 

Frank can’t stop his hand and keeps pulling.  Jeff’s head continues to arch back until he sees his son’s lifeless eyes staring at him upside down.  The thin flesh-hinge gives way and Jeff’s head rolls from his seven-year-old body, coming to rest inches from Frank’s face.

Tears immediately well up as he looks deeply into his son’s lifeless eyes.  Flashes of Jeff as a baby come flooding into Frank’s mind.  His first steps, his first day of school, his fifth birthday party.  He wants to sob, but can’t find his voice.  He feels the world beginning to spiral.  He is suddenly having trouble breathing and starts gasping for air.  He is losing it.  He’s never been in shock before, but imagines this is what it must feel like. 

“No,” he says. “You can’t lose it.  Rick is still out there and needs you.”  The thought of his other son alone gives him strength.  He still can’t feel his legs or left arm, but the mobility in his right arm and hand was growing by the minute.  He knows it’s the adrenaline and that it won’t last forever, so he needs to take advantage of it right now.

He pushes himself up on his right elbow in order to get a better view of the scenery around him.  His search for his other son, Rick, ends as quickly as it begins.  Frank can’t handle what he was seeing.  It was too much for his eyes to process.  He starts.  There is a reason he can’t: both had been severed during the crash. About six feet away lay his one mangled leg, separated right below the knee.  It is so twisted and broken he can’t even determine if it was his left or right.  His other leg is nowhere to be found.  He looks down to see the stump where his right leg used to be.  There is only about two-thirds of his thigh there.  He doesn’t have time to panic.  He figures he didn’t have much time left to do anything.

There, on his back the whole time, is Rick, lying face up.  He has a piece of unrecognizable metal embedded in the left side of his skull.  Judging how far it is inside of him, Frank figured it must have slammed into his son at a tremendous force.  Sinking deeper into shock, Frank realizes there is also a metal rod from one of the seats stuck through Rick’s throat. 
Wait
, Frank thinks through the haze in his mind. 
His head is resting on my chest
.  He reaches over with his only functioning hand to grab the rod through his son’s throat.  He doesn’t want this to be the last image he has of his son.  He tries to yank the rod free.  When he does, he feels something pull inside himself. 

Ignoring the pain in his chest, Frank is determined to pull that metal rod out of his son.  He yanks harder and feels it give.  He also feels something tear in his chest. 
What the fuck was
… He realizes what he’s just done.  The rod hadn’t just torn through his son’s throat and pinned him to his chest: that rod had also gone straight through his own lung and created a seal, .  By removing the rod, he’s broken the suction that was keeping him alive.  His lungs fill with blood.  He smiles. 
What the fuck do I have to live for now?  My kids trusted and believed in me.  I told them to stay in the train.  They did.  Now they’re dead. Now we’re all dead
.

His blood continues to pour into his lungs and he knows he is drowning in his own fluids slowly.  He cries, hoping he will see his kids again in some afterlife that he know might not exist.  He fucked up and his bad decision killed his kids.  Jeff and Rick would never grow up and experience life, as theirs ended on a rundown train at the Austin Zoo one spring day.  He looks at Rick’s lifeless body lying on his chest one last time.  He tries to reach over to give him one last hug, but his body failed him.  He can’t help himself and smiles.

He sees that man and his daughter walking around and finds himself angry at them, but knows it wasn’t their fault.  It was his.

“I should’ve jumped,” Frank says between tears.  “We should’ve jumped.”

His smile fades as he lays his head down and stops crying.

8

“I can’t believe this wreckage came from the train we’ve been riding once a week for the last two years,” I mumble.  I look down to see Fi looking up at me.  I smile and bend down to give her another hug.

All around us are the twisted metal and shattered fiberglass remains of an object I once thought of as a symbol of Fi’s childhood.  Now, as I look around, I can’t identify anything that used to resemble a train.  Children and adults are both crying.  They are lucky.  If they’re crying, it means they are alive.  I see too many people who are now permanent parts of the twisted sculpture in front of me. 
Why did they stay on the train?  How could they possibly think they’d survive that crash?  I know we were only going around thirty to forty miles-per-hour, but they had to know we weren’t going to make that curve
.

I’m angry with the parents who kept their kids on the train.  I know they were paralyzed with fear.  I can understand that. But their kids... My thought trails off.  Even among all this horror, part of me can’t help but feel good.  I looked fear in the face and took an action that saved our lives.  I reacted quickly to a terrifying situation and lucked out.  I hug Fi closer to my leg. 

I hate the fact that she is seeing so much pain and suffering.  I want to shield her from this grizzly scene, but what would she think of me if we just walked away and didn’t try to help anyone?  I wouldn’t be able to live with myself or be able to look her in the eye.

The worst we see is a father and his two sons.  I remember seeing them on the train and I would guess they were about six to ten years old.  The father kept them on the train.  I remember seeing the one boy’s bright red Spider-Man shirt right before we left.  His dad was hugging him and his brother tight.  I couldn’t imagine what was going through his head as that train tumbled and the cars rolled over their bodies.  It was horrible.  The one son was decapitated and the other had a hunk of metal in the side of his head, pinning him to his dad’s chest by a metal rod through his neck.  I can only hope and assume that they all died quickly.  The odd thing is that the father’s legs were severed, yet there is nothing lying around his body.  It’s almost as if…

“Daddy,” Fi says.  “I’m thirsty.”    She won’t take her backpack off.  She’s told me she feels safer wearing it.