secret_history: (NaNoWriMo)
[personal profile] secret_history
Okay, this was it. So far, there had been no problems. For a first day on the job without his supervisor and trainer, things had gone pretty well. Luc Thibodeau wiped the perspiration from his forehead with the sleeve of his brand-new STM uniform. No unforseen problems, all the equipment was working according to specs, doing everything it was meant to be doing.

Why on earth had he agreed to take one of the busiest routes of the entire city? Not to mention the city’s oldest line. The green line was the first part of the metro ever to have been built, and as a result not only was all the equipment old and rickety, but some of the tunnels were, to put it mildly, damned scary. Still, he was holding his own, and it was a testament to his skills (or maybe just to the shortage of personnel, the nagging voice at the back of his mind told him) that he was being trusted with this run. Granted, it wasn’t rush hour, but it was still pretty important.

Okay. Ease up on the throttle, signal that you’re coming into the station. He glanced at the clock: 14: 27, right on time. Thank goodness. There were enough problems with the public transit system that cause the always-ignorant public to bitch about delays without his adding to them. Another thirty seconds before he had to decrease speed again, and he could see the light from the station ahead in the tunnel. In spite of the fact that he’d probably have to change his shirt on his break, he found he was enjoying this. It was a far sight better than the dead-end job he’d had before, that was certain. He knew now that he’d been born for this: a steady job, unionized, well-paid, and steady. So what if the hours were all messed up? The hours were still better than the shitty shift-work he’d been doing before, and even if he was still standing up for eight hours a day, at least the booths in the metro trains were more ergonomically suited to that than standing in an assembly line putting a rotor onto a small engine whose purpose he didn’t even know.

Yes, this job was infinitely better.

There was a flash of movement before his eyes as he began easing up on the throttle once more. A shadow, an unmistakable silhouette, darting right in front of him on the track.

“Hostie de tabarnac de calisse de merde!”

He slammed the emergency brake as hard as he could, heard the screech of metal against metal and the weird flashes of light as the brakes struck sparks from the tracks. He was thrown forward (as were all of his passengers, no doubt, who were very likely cursing at him even now) against his console, where he stayed for a moment, dazed by the brutality of the shock. Then he picked himself up gingerly, bruised and stiff, and reached for his radio.

“Ici le train 37. J’ai quelqu’un sur les rails, peut-être un suicide. J’vais voir. Faudrait une ambulance.”

The answer came back in a static-filled crackle. “Dix-quatre, Luc. On coupe le courant pis on t’envoie quelqu’un dans dix minutes, max. Fais attention.”

The passengers. His mind felt numb, but he managed to remember that he was hauling around a couple of hundred people who’d want to know why he’d just jolted the hell out of them. He switched on the PA system for his train. “Attention à tous les voyageurs. On est obligé d’arrêter le train pendant quelques minutes. Merci de votre compréhension.” There. That would do for now. He was under strict instructions not to say anything about suicides, after all.

He put down the radio, then reached over, pulled open the door and clambered down the small ladder provided for just such emergencies. To his surprise he found his heart hammering even harder in his chest than when he’d first had to hit the emergency brake. He switched on his flashlight, although there was theoretically enough light to see by already, and edged forward, trembling slightly as he did so. Maybe this was delayed shock, or something? He found he didn’t at all want to go and find whatever grisly carnage was there, lying on the now-inert tracks. Finally he spotted a human-shaped shadow sprawled between the tracks a few metres away from the front of the train.

“Hey, t’es-tu correct?” he called, knowing it was a stupid question. Of course the person wasn’t all right. “Tu m’entends-tu?”

There was no response, which made him conclude that whoever it was couldn’t hear him at all. He wiped the sweat that was pouring off him in rivulets away from his eyes with a sleeve that was already getting quite wet, and shuffled forward, training the sickly-yellow beam toward the prone figure. It was a woman, he saw now, wearing a brown skirt and some sort of dark top, probably a jacket, but he couldn’t really see at that distance. As he got closer, he heard a faint moaning sound coming from her. Oh, shit: she was still conscious, and probably in the worst kind of pain. Without bothering to keep the beam of his flashlight trained on her he hurried forward.

“J’men viens! Essaie pas de bouger!” he said, hoping she understood French. “J’ai déjà appelé pour de l’aide. Ça sera pas long, j’te promets.”

He stopped about a metre away from her, then approached more cautiously. He didn’t want to hurt her worse than she was by accident. What a way to be spending his first day on the job. Talk about your initiation by fire. He turned his mind away from that train of thought: how selfish was it of him to be worried about his first day on the job when there was a dying woman at his feet? She was moaning very loudly now, a horrible, wheezing kind of sound that didn’t falter or stop even as he approached. She must be in a lot of pain, he thought, even as he wondered how she had enough breath to be making that much noise.

He got down on one knee next to her, surveying the carnage his train had wreaked on her slender form. One leg was bent at an awkward angle, and both her arms were flung out to the sides. He started and then nearly vomited when he realised that what he’d taken for some sort of decorative trim on her sleeve was really a jagged bit of bone protruding from her arm which had torn through the fabric of her jacket.

“Calisse!” he swore under his breath.

The woman’s black hair was matted with blood. She probably had a massive skull fracture, by the looks of it. Obviously not fatal, since she was still twitching feebly and moaning even louder than before.

“Bouge pas,” he exhorted her again, unwilling to touch her in case he hurt her even more. He had very limited training in first aid, and if she was still conscious and breathing, then there wasn’t much he could do until the paramedics got there. He stared at her uncertainly, wondering if he should go back to his booth and call in what the woman’s injuries were, or if he should stay here so that she wouldn’t think he was leaving her all alone to suffer. “Inquiète-toi pas, on va s’occuper de toi, j’te promets. Tu peux-tu me dire ton nom?” he asked.

The woman continued to moan, and this time the sound took on a desperate, keening tone. To his dismay, she began to thrash on the ground in front of him, her broken arm twisting grotesquely and her good arm pushing at the cold concrete floor.

“Non, non. Bouge pas!” he repeated. “Tu vas t’faire mal!”

She paid him no mind at all, continuing to writhe and flail, until she managed to turn her poor broken body over on its side. He recoiled in horror as he saw the ruin that had once been her face: a deep gash had almost completely removed her cheek, exposing teeth and gums and muscle and sinew, and her left eye was destroyed, leaking white and transparent fluid down her blood-stained cheek.

“Criss!”

He overbalanced and landed hard on his tailbone. The flashlight went skittering away into the darkness where the yellow beam faltered and went out. The woman moaned, her jaw slack, saliva dripping freely from the side of her face that had been torn away when the metro hit her, or perhaps from the way she had landed. Her broken arm reached toward him in an almost supplicating way, and he felt bile rise, burning, in his throat. All notions of pity or sympathy had vanished in his revulsion, and all he wanted now was to get away from the loathsome sight. Even the thought of her touching him made him want to gag. He pushed himself along the ground, scrabbling with hands and feet, his legs suddenly turned to water and unable to support his weight. The roaring of blood in his ears almost drowned out the sound of the inhuman moaning that came from her torn lips.

Before he’d even scrambled a few feet, the woman sat up with a horrible scraping sound of broken bone against broken bone. He stopped moving, transfixed by the scene unfolding before him. This wasn’t happening. It wasn’t possible for her to move, with the kind of injuries she had. This wasn’t happening. He stared, disbelieving, as slowly, agonisingly, she dragged herself across the few feet of glistening concrete to where he sat —and reached for him again, the moaning in her throat sounding urgent now, almost...

Hungry.

He didn’t know why he thought of that, but suddenly he was completely, irrationally convinced that she was going to kill him, claw at him with those horrible broken torn and bloody fingers, and tear at him with the teeth that even now dripped with half-congealed blood and saliva.

“Laisse-moi!” he tried to shout, but it came out as a strangled whimper. “Vas-t’en! Non! Approche-toi pas!” he lashed out ineffectually with one foot, and felt his sensible black running shoe (one of a new pair he’d bought specifically for this job so that his feet wouldn’t get tired from standing all day) connect heavily with her shoulder, but she pressed on, undeterred, grabbed his leg with her good hand and used it to pull herself closer to him (or him closer to her, he couldn’t tell anymore).

He found his voice then and screamed as loudly as he could, thrashing wildly at her, kicking to free himself from her death-grip, his mind awash with terror. He felt her grip on his leg tighten, and he screamed again and reached out, overcoming his revulsion enough to grab both of her arms and try to pry her away from him.

“Arrête! Non!”

There was no use struggling. She was smaller and slighter than he, but she had him all but pinned to the ground now, and still the low moaning sound vibrated in her throat. In the distance he heard shouting, and guessed that the help he’d been promised was finally arriving, but it was too late. He shrieked loudly as, with a gurgling sound, she lunged toward his face and buried her teeth in the soft flesh of his neck.

Date: 2006-11-03 06:02 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] elanya.livejournal.com
This is awesome. Not only is there a nicely gruesome metro suicide zombie, but there is also all kinds of excellent French swearing that I can use for my own nefarious purposes!

I really like the bilingualism of the story, possibly because I can actually follow it :D Unlike the French I need for school, which is mostly stupidly technical writing about ships.

So, wooh my French is good for something!

Date: 2006-11-21 11:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kingalverez.livejournal.com
My low-level spanish skills, however, betray me once again...

Date: 2006-11-22 02:56 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] secret-history.livejournal.com
Hi there! Glad to see another reader who appears to be enjoying the ongoing zombocalypse. Welcome aboard. :)

Date: 2006-11-22 04:11 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kingalverez.livejournal.com
I like to think of it as the necropolypse, but sadly I've just plagiarized the term from zombiedefense.org (zombiedefense.org)...

Date: 2006-11-22 01:40 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] secret-history.livejournal.com
Ooh, interesting. I'm a lurking member of [livejournal.com profile] zombie_defense. Is that where you found this LJ? I know [livejournal.com profile] fearsclave put out the word about this a couple of weeks ago...

Date: 2006-11-23 08:49 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kingalverez.livejournal.com
Well... I'm a lurking member of [livejournal.com profile] zombiekillers, but was recently directed to [livejournal.com profile] zombie_survival (where I found the plug from [livejournal.com profile] fearsclave), neither of which is to be confused with the beloved zombiedefense.org (http://zombiedefense.org/), which I was directed to from a poster in [livejournal.com profile] zombiekillers. *catches breath*

Was that too much? I never know...

Date: 2006-11-23 03:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] secret-history.livejournal.com
Nope, not too much. I didn't realize just how many anti-zombie activism communities and sites there were out there until I started looking into it.

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