November 1st, 17:52
Nov. 5th, 2006 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
secret_history“Who the hell are you?” Mickey asked, her temper not improved by the fright the guy had just given her.
“Oh, uh, right. Sorry, I should have introduced myself first. Didn’t think of it. The name’s Randhir. Randhir Kumar. What’s your name?”
“I’m Mickey. Michaela Schmidt. That’s with a ‘D’,” she added with a smile, by way of apologizing for her earlier rudeness.
“Nice. Anyway, no one really seems to know what’s going on, but we saw the light in your car, and everyone in my car seemed to think that it would be a good idea for me to come by and see if you guys had any answers.”
Randhir grinned sheepishly again, as though he wasn’t accustomed to taking matters into his own hands, let alone breaking the rules of the STM by crossing from one train car to the next through the connecting doors. Mickey was fairly certain those rules didn’t apply in an emergency, especially since the train was stationary now, but she didn’t bother pointing any of this out to Randhir.
“We’re not really in a much better position than you to know what’s going on, but there’s some kind of crisis happening in the city. We listened to the news on someone’s Blackberry before the battery ran out, and it sounds like there’s violence breaking out and stuff like that.”
“Uh, wow. We didn’t think of that. There’s probably other people with personal organisers around.”
Marco interrupted. “Well, Mickey’s sort of trained to deal with emergencies.”
Randhir’s grin widened. “Oh, good. Well, that makes one of us, then. I’m glad someone knows what they’re doing around here. The rest of us are just kind of floundering around in the dark, if you’ll allow me to mix my metaphors kind of badly.”
Mickey was beginning to get the feeling that Randhir was the type who talked a lot when he was under pressure. Oh well, it took all types. At least the talkative ones were more likely to provide information amidst the tons of verbiage.
“Uh, yeah. Anyway, we’ve decided there’s no use staying here and waiting for the STM people to come get us. They’ve obviously got bigger fish to fry, or whatever. So we’re opening the doors, getting out, and heading out to the nearest station on foot.”
Randhir nodded. “Sounds like a good idea to me. I mean, no one’s come so far. Why wait when we can go? Uh... do we have to get everyone to come with us?”
“I don’t see why we shouldn’t.”
“Well, not everyone’s going to want to come, you know.”
Mickey shrugged. “We can’t force them if they really don’t want to, but I get the feeling that most people aren’t going to want to be left behind in the dark.”
“You’ve got a point.”
“So we need to get one door open per train car,” she said, thinking out loud as she surveyed the train as best she could in the gloom. “We should send one person in each direction to spread the news that we’re evacuating ourselves.”
“I have to go back the way I came. There’s no reason I can’t keep going and talk to the people in the other wagons.”
“Okay, good. Umm...” she turned and raised her voice. “Can I get someone to volunteer to go through to the other metro cars by the connecting doors and tell people that we’re getting out by ourselves?”
“I’ll go,” Paul volunteered.
Mickey hesitated. “Uh, I don’t know, Paul. I mean, it’s nice of you and all, but...”
“You think they won’t take me seriously?”
She shrugged uncomfortably. “Sorry, but yeah. You’re not exactly dressed to impress.”
She’d hurt his feelings, she could tell, but he hid his discomfiture pretty well, aided by the darkness. “Yeah, fine. Except I don’t hear anyone else volunteering. So I guess you’re stuck with me,” he said a little more belligerently than she felt was strictly necessary.
“Okay, then. Look, I didn’t...”
“What?”
“Never mind. I’ll see you in a few minutes, then?”
“Yeah. Fine.”
“Okay. Thanks, Paul. Remember to show them how to get the doors open in their cars.” She turned back to Randhir. “Do you know how to open the metro doors?”
“Uh, sort of?”
She explained the process quickly. “Just make sure no one goes wandering off on their own. Also, we need to find out if there are people who need help getting around. People in wheelchairs or on crutches or with some sort of mobility problem. And elderly people and pregnant women. Basically, anyone who might not be able to entirely fend for themselves.”
“Hey, most of the pregnant women I know manage just fine.”
“Maybe, but that’s not always the case. Just ask, okay?”
“Yeah, okay. What are you going to do?” Randhir wanted to know.
“I’m going to head down first and scout the tunnel alonside the train. I’m almost 100% sure that the current’s been cut off to the tracks, but it never hurts to make sure. Also, I want to make sure there’s no debris in our way, or anything like that.”
“Okay. See you in a bit.”
“Yeah.”
She waited until he was gone, and then was all business again. She went over to where the doors opened into inky blackness, and shone her flashlight into the shadows. So far so good: she couldn’t see anything that might impede their progress. Without needing to be told anything, Marco stepped up behind her and held out his hands. Using him as support, she very gingerly lowered herself inch by inch along the side of the metro car.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go first?” Marco asked anxiously as her foot slipped against the slick metal surface.
“A little late for that,” she said between clenched teeth. “I’m almost there. Hang on...”
She let go of his hands, pushed off and landed a few feet farther down, staggering slightly as she flailed for balance. The current was definitely off, which was a relief. She hadn’t especially been looking forward to having 70,000 volts of electricity course through her body. She retrieved her flashlight from where she’d shoved it in her belt, and switched it on again.
Everything seemed much quieter down here. Her footsteps were muffled, a whisper of rubber on damp concrete. Her next thought was of the conductor. What had happened to him? Or her? She tried to remember if she’d looked when she’d boarded the metro, but her memory failed. Funny the things you took for granted. She hurried along the tracks alongside the train, feeling dwarfed by the huge engine that loomed at least ten feet above her head. She’d never realised just how enormous the metro trains really were, since she only ever saw the top half when she stood on the platforms, and had never really paid that much attention to them in any case, taking it for granted that she would be transported from Point A to Point B without giving it a second thought. Now, with the huge shadow stretching above her, she was acutely and uncomfortably aware of the sheer amount of raw mechanical power that had been brought to a grinding halt.
She shivered, then pressed forward, the beam of her Maglite illuminating the path before her and serving mostly to accentuate the darkness all around. It wasn’t really all that dark, she tried to reason with herself. The orange emergency lights were still on, scattered every ten feet or so, but their radius of illumination seemed diminished, somehow, and like the small beam of her flashlight only reminded her more of how dark it was.
The silence lifted somewhat as the sounds of the passengers struggling to open the doors of their cars reached her ears, and she was comforted, feeling suddenly less alone in this alien subterranean world which she’d travelled through every day for years without ever really paying attention to it. Looking up, she could see shadows moving about in the windows of the metro as people tried to negotiate their way to the doors being opened. A moment later she was at the head of the train, her heart thudding in anticipation, of what exactly she wasn’t entirely sure.
She played the light over the window in the conductor’s booth, but could see nothing moving within. There was a ladder leading up to the door, and without hesitating she grasped the rungs firmly and swung herself up. She pounded on the door, the thick metal muffling most of the sound, and got no answer. She tried the handle, and nearly fell backward as the door swung outward, but managed to hang on by a thread and, more importantly, not to drop her Maglite. The booth was empty. A cursory examination didn’t reveal the conductor slumped unconscious somewhere, which at once relieved and worried her. She didn’t bother to look around, but slid back to the ground as quickly as she could, spurred on by an impulse she didn’t quite understand to hurry.
There’s nothing to be afraid of, she told herself as she quickened her pace heading back toward the metro car where Marco and the others were waiting. There’s no reason to be afraid. There’s nothing down here. It was an understandable reaction: the stress of knowing something bad was happening elsewhere but of not knowing exactly what was happening, of feeling out of control in unfamiliar surroundings. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all. Perfectly normal, she told herself reassuringly. Still, her breathing quickened, rasping harshly in her ears, and she felt her heartrate increase perceptibly as well. She’d feel better when she was back with the others, she decided. It was just her imagination running away with her, the way it always had since she was a kid.
Voices were filling the tunnel now, low murmurs coming from the train as, one by one, the car doors opened to let out the sounds from within. She hurried along, looking up at the windows of the train, looking for familiar faces. Suddenly a shadow loomed up in front of her, and she jumped away with a small shriek of terror.
“Sorry! Sorry, I didn’t mean to... I thought maybe you could use a hand down here.” Randhir fell over himself apologising. “I should have called out first, or something, I just didn’t think. I’m really sorry. Are you okay?”
She expelled a long breath, shaky with relief and annoyance at how jumpy she’d allowed herself to get. “Yeah. Don’t apologize. I appear to have worked myself into quite a state. Just my imagination running wild again. So is everyone on board with this?”
“What, the evacuation? Uh, yeah. I mean, no one objected when I told them what we were doing, anyway. So I guess that means everyone’s coming.”
“Good.”
She stood still for a moment, trying to marshal her thoughts. She wasn’t used to coordinating a whole bunch of untrained people. Cops and paramedics and firemen were not only used to following directions, but they also had pre-established protocols to adhere to, which made life easier for everyone concerned. That very obviously wasn’t the case here. Somehow it looked like the responsibility for getting everyone out in one piece had fallen to her, and that was fine, for now. She supposed she was as likely a candidate for that as anyone else.
“Right,” she said briskly. “How many people with mobility problems have we got?”
“About twenty. Mostly old people,” Rhandir said with the unconscious dismissiveness of most young people who thought they’d never get old, “but there’s a guy about our age with a broken leg. Two pregnant women, and a whole bunch of little kids.”
“Oh, Lord. I didn’t think of children,” Mickey mentally cursed herself for the omission. “How many kids? How old?”
“Two babies, three toddlers, about five kids who’re somewhere between eight and twelve, and a couple of thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds who think they’re grownups but aren’t really. Everyone else is fifteen or older and don’t look like they’re going to have any problems handling themselves.”
“Okay. Well, the teens can be trusted to handle themselves, even the younger ones. Are all the kids with their parents?”
“Most of them, as far as I could tell. They’ve each got at least one parent, or some kind of responsible adult, anyway.”
“Good. That at least sort of solves that difficulty. Now we have to find a way to get all these people onto the tracks without anyone getting hurt.”
“Should be easy enough,” Rhandir said. “Get some of the stronger people out first, and leave some up in the cars. One guy lowers the old person, or whoever, and another guy catches them on the way down. With one guy on either end, the distance you drop isn’t so huge that it becomes a problem. Kind of like a human ladder, only not quite.”
“That’ll probably work,” Mickey agreed, with the uneasy feeling that there was something she wasn’t seeing. “After that we’ll have to take stock of the situation again, and maybe split people up into groups so that everyone isn’t milling around and getting in everyone else’s way.”
“Sounds like a bridge we should cross when we get there. Uh, anyway, maybe we should go find that friend of yours and tell him the plan, eh? He can coordinate from up top.”
After that, even Mickey had to admit that the whole process went remarkably smoothly. With everyone working toward the same goal, the elderly, the infirm and the very young were all lowered with little incident to the floor of the tunnel. Having seen the very worst humanity had to offer in the course of her duties as an emergency dispatcher, Mickey was impressed with the way everyone was pulling together in this crisis and rising to the occasion. It took the better part of half an hour to get everyone safely off the train, and her heart was in her throat more often than she’d have strictly liked as the last passengers had to descend more or less unaided, but eventually everyone was on terra firma, and she felt her blood pressure return to normal.
Now she felt better-equipped to handle the barrage of questions that had been coming at her almost since the start of the evacuation procedure. She’d had to wave most of the queries aside then, promising to address everyone’s concerns once they were all safely on the ground. Now she cleared her throat, acutely aware that everyone was watching her expectantly.
Well, she thought, here goes nothing.
“Oh, uh, right. Sorry, I should have introduced myself first. Didn’t think of it. The name’s Randhir. Randhir Kumar. What’s your name?”
“I’m Mickey. Michaela Schmidt. That’s with a ‘D’,” she added with a smile, by way of apologizing for her earlier rudeness.
“Nice. Anyway, no one really seems to know what’s going on, but we saw the light in your car, and everyone in my car seemed to think that it would be a good idea for me to come by and see if you guys had any answers.”
Randhir grinned sheepishly again, as though he wasn’t accustomed to taking matters into his own hands, let alone breaking the rules of the STM by crossing from one train car to the next through the connecting doors. Mickey was fairly certain those rules didn’t apply in an emergency, especially since the train was stationary now, but she didn’t bother pointing any of this out to Randhir.
“We’re not really in a much better position than you to know what’s going on, but there’s some kind of crisis happening in the city. We listened to the news on someone’s Blackberry before the battery ran out, and it sounds like there’s violence breaking out and stuff like that.”
“Uh, wow. We didn’t think of that. There’s probably other people with personal organisers around.”
Marco interrupted. “Well, Mickey’s sort of trained to deal with emergencies.”
Randhir’s grin widened. “Oh, good. Well, that makes one of us, then. I’m glad someone knows what they’re doing around here. The rest of us are just kind of floundering around in the dark, if you’ll allow me to mix my metaphors kind of badly.”
Mickey was beginning to get the feeling that Randhir was the type who talked a lot when he was under pressure. Oh well, it took all types. At least the talkative ones were more likely to provide information amidst the tons of verbiage.
“Uh, yeah. Anyway, we’ve decided there’s no use staying here and waiting for the STM people to come get us. They’ve obviously got bigger fish to fry, or whatever. So we’re opening the doors, getting out, and heading out to the nearest station on foot.”
Randhir nodded. “Sounds like a good idea to me. I mean, no one’s come so far. Why wait when we can go? Uh... do we have to get everyone to come with us?”
“I don’t see why we shouldn’t.”
“Well, not everyone’s going to want to come, you know.”
Mickey shrugged. “We can’t force them if they really don’t want to, but I get the feeling that most people aren’t going to want to be left behind in the dark.”
“You’ve got a point.”
“So we need to get one door open per train car,” she said, thinking out loud as she surveyed the train as best she could in the gloom. “We should send one person in each direction to spread the news that we’re evacuating ourselves.”
“I have to go back the way I came. There’s no reason I can’t keep going and talk to the people in the other wagons.”
“Okay, good. Umm...” she turned and raised her voice. “Can I get someone to volunteer to go through to the other metro cars by the connecting doors and tell people that we’re getting out by ourselves?”
“I’ll go,” Paul volunteered.
Mickey hesitated. “Uh, I don’t know, Paul. I mean, it’s nice of you and all, but...”
“You think they won’t take me seriously?”
She shrugged uncomfortably. “Sorry, but yeah. You’re not exactly dressed to impress.”
She’d hurt his feelings, she could tell, but he hid his discomfiture pretty well, aided by the darkness. “Yeah, fine. Except I don’t hear anyone else volunteering. So I guess you’re stuck with me,” he said a little more belligerently than she felt was strictly necessary.
“Okay, then. Look, I didn’t...”
“What?”
“Never mind. I’ll see you in a few minutes, then?”
“Yeah. Fine.”
“Okay. Thanks, Paul. Remember to show them how to get the doors open in their cars.” She turned back to Randhir. “Do you know how to open the metro doors?”
“Uh, sort of?”
She explained the process quickly. “Just make sure no one goes wandering off on their own. Also, we need to find out if there are people who need help getting around. People in wheelchairs or on crutches or with some sort of mobility problem. And elderly people and pregnant women. Basically, anyone who might not be able to entirely fend for themselves.”
“Hey, most of the pregnant women I know manage just fine.”
“Maybe, but that’s not always the case. Just ask, okay?”
“Yeah, okay. What are you going to do?” Randhir wanted to know.
“I’m going to head down first and scout the tunnel alonside the train. I’m almost 100% sure that the current’s been cut off to the tracks, but it never hurts to make sure. Also, I want to make sure there’s no debris in our way, or anything like that.”
“Okay. See you in a bit.”
“Yeah.”
She waited until he was gone, and then was all business again. She went over to where the doors opened into inky blackness, and shone her flashlight into the shadows. So far so good: she couldn’t see anything that might impede their progress. Without needing to be told anything, Marco stepped up behind her and held out his hands. Using him as support, she very gingerly lowered herself inch by inch along the side of the metro car.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go first?” Marco asked anxiously as her foot slipped against the slick metal surface.
“A little late for that,” she said between clenched teeth. “I’m almost there. Hang on...”
She let go of his hands, pushed off and landed a few feet farther down, staggering slightly as she flailed for balance. The current was definitely off, which was a relief. She hadn’t especially been looking forward to having 70,000 volts of electricity course through her body. She retrieved her flashlight from where she’d shoved it in her belt, and switched it on again.
Everything seemed much quieter down here. Her footsteps were muffled, a whisper of rubber on damp concrete. Her next thought was of the conductor. What had happened to him? Or her? She tried to remember if she’d looked when she’d boarded the metro, but her memory failed. Funny the things you took for granted. She hurried along the tracks alongside the train, feeling dwarfed by the huge engine that loomed at least ten feet above her head. She’d never realised just how enormous the metro trains really were, since she only ever saw the top half when she stood on the platforms, and had never really paid that much attention to them in any case, taking it for granted that she would be transported from Point A to Point B without giving it a second thought. Now, with the huge shadow stretching above her, she was acutely and uncomfortably aware of the sheer amount of raw mechanical power that had been brought to a grinding halt.
She shivered, then pressed forward, the beam of her Maglite illuminating the path before her and serving mostly to accentuate the darkness all around. It wasn’t really all that dark, she tried to reason with herself. The orange emergency lights were still on, scattered every ten feet or so, but their radius of illumination seemed diminished, somehow, and like the small beam of her flashlight only reminded her more of how dark it was.
The silence lifted somewhat as the sounds of the passengers struggling to open the doors of their cars reached her ears, and she was comforted, feeling suddenly less alone in this alien subterranean world which she’d travelled through every day for years without ever really paying attention to it. Looking up, she could see shadows moving about in the windows of the metro as people tried to negotiate their way to the doors being opened. A moment later she was at the head of the train, her heart thudding in anticipation, of what exactly she wasn’t entirely sure.
She played the light over the window in the conductor’s booth, but could see nothing moving within. There was a ladder leading up to the door, and without hesitating she grasped the rungs firmly and swung herself up. She pounded on the door, the thick metal muffling most of the sound, and got no answer. She tried the handle, and nearly fell backward as the door swung outward, but managed to hang on by a thread and, more importantly, not to drop her Maglite. The booth was empty. A cursory examination didn’t reveal the conductor slumped unconscious somewhere, which at once relieved and worried her. She didn’t bother to look around, but slid back to the ground as quickly as she could, spurred on by an impulse she didn’t quite understand to hurry.
There’s nothing to be afraid of, she told herself as she quickened her pace heading back toward the metro car where Marco and the others were waiting. There’s no reason to be afraid. There’s nothing down here. It was an understandable reaction: the stress of knowing something bad was happening elsewhere but of not knowing exactly what was happening, of feeling out of control in unfamiliar surroundings. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all. Perfectly normal, she told herself reassuringly. Still, her breathing quickened, rasping harshly in her ears, and she felt her heartrate increase perceptibly as well. She’d feel better when she was back with the others, she decided. It was just her imagination running away with her, the way it always had since she was a kid.
Voices were filling the tunnel now, low murmurs coming from the train as, one by one, the car doors opened to let out the sounds from within. She hurried along, looking up at the windows of the train, looking for familiar faces. Suddenly a shadow loomed up in front of her, and she jumped away with a small shriek of terror.
“Sorry! Sorry, I didn’t mean to... I thought maybe you could use a hand down here.” Randhir fell over himself apologising. “I should have called out first, or something, I just didn’t think. I’m really sorry. Are you okay?”
She expelled a long breath, shaky with relief and annoyance at how jumpy she’d allowed herself to get. “Yeah. Don’t apologize. I appear to have worked myself into quite a state. Just my imagination running wild again. So is everyone on board with this?”
“What, the evacuation? Uh, yeah. I mean, no one objected when I told them what we were doing, anyway. So I guess that means everyone’s coming.”
“Good.”
She stood still for a moment, trying to marshal her thoughts. She wasn’t used to coordinating a whole bunch of untrained people. Cops and paramedics and firemen were not only used to following directions, but they also had pre-established protocols to adhere to, which made life easier for everyone concerned. That very obviously wasn’t the case here. Somehow it looked like the responsibility for getting everyone out in one piece had fallen to her, and that was fine, for now. She supposed she was as likely a candidate for that as anyone else.
“Right,” she said briskly. “How many people with mobility problems have we got?”
“About twenty. Mostly old people,” Rhandir said with the unconscious dismissiveness of most young people who thought they’d never get old, “but there’s a guy about our age with a broken leg. Two pregnant women, and a whole bunch of little kids.”
“Oh, Lord. I didn’t think of children,” Mickey mentally cursed herself for the omission. “How many kids? How old?”
“Two babies, three toddlers, about five kids who’re somewhere between eight and twelve, and a couple of thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds who think they’re grownups but aren’t really. Everyone else is fifteen or older and don’t look like they’re going to have any problems handling themselves.”
“Okay. Well, the teens can be trusted to handle themselves, even the younger ones. Are all the kids with their parents?”
“Most of them, as far as I could tell. They’ve each got at least one parent, or some kind of responsible adult, anyway.”
“Good. That at least sort of solves that difficulty. Now we have to find a way to get all these people onto the tracks without anyone getting hurt.”
“Should be easy enough,” Rhandir said. “Get some of the stronger people out first, and leave some up in the cars. One guy lowers the old person, or whoever, and another guy catches them on the way down. With one guy on either end, the distance you drop isn’t so huge that it becomes a problem. Kind of like a human ladder, only not quite.”
“That’ll probably work,” Mickey agreed, with the uneasy feeling that there was something she wasn’t seeing. “After that we’ll have to take stock of the situation again, and maybe split people up into groups so that everyone isn’t milling around and getting in everyone else’s way.”
“Sounds like a bridge we should cross when we get there. Uh, anyway, maybe we should go find that friend of yours and tell him the plan, eh? He can coordinate from up top.”
After that, even Mickey had to admit that the whole process went remarkably smoothly. With everyone working toward the same goal, the elderly, the infirm and the very young were all lowered with little incident to the floor of the tunnel. Having seen the very worst humanity had to offer in the course of her duties as an emergency dispatcher, Mickey was impressed with the way everyone was pulling together in this crisis and rising to the occasion. It took the better part of half an hour to get everyone safely off the train, and her heart was in her throat more often than she’d have strictly liked as the last passengers had to descend more or less unaided, but eventually everyone was on terra firma, and she felt her blood pressure return to normal.
Now she felt better-equipped to handle the barrage of questions that had been coming at her almost since the start of the evacuation procedure. She’d had to wave most of the queries aside then, promising to address everyone’s concerns once they were all safely on the ground. Now she cleared her throat, acutely aware that everyone was watching her expectantly.
Well, she thought, here goes nothing.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Ye ghodz...
Date: 2006-11-06 02:24 am (UTC)Re: Ye ghodz...
Date: 2006-11-06 02:27 am (UTC)The best way to torture a character with a strongly-developed sense of civic duty is to hurt people for whom they feel responsible.
Re: Ye ghodz...
Date: 2006-11-06 02:31 am (UTC)Re: Ye ghodz...
Date: 2006-11-06 02:33 am (UTC)"Mickey Meets the Zombies" is still in-progress right now.
Re: Ye ghodz...
Date: 2006-11-10 04:48 pm (UTC)Also: "The silence lifted somewhat as the sounds of the passengers struggling to open the doors of their cars reached her ears, and she was comforted, feeling suddenly less alone in this alien subterranean world which she’d travelled through every day for years without ever really paying attention to it."
I don't always hate sentences that end in prepositions, but I'm just sort of highlighting anything that jumps out at me as I read through. How about "...through which she'd travelled every day without ever really paying atttention."?
Re: Ye ghodz...
Date: 2006-11-16 11:08 am (UTC)Re: Ye ghodz...
Date: 2006-11-16 01:18 pm (UTC)Re: Ye ghodz...
Date: 2006-11-16 02:49 pm (UTC)Surviving zombies is not just a question of speed, but for the unprepared it's a question of luck at first (a lot of luck), and then of applying what skills they have to the current situation.
A person with even a moderate running ability will easily be able to outpace and quickly outdistance a zombie. The real trick is to see them coming, and to avoid being trapped or surrounded by a large mob.
Re: Ye ghodz...
Date: 2006-11-16 02:46 pm (UTC)And yes, they are essentially cannon (or zombie) fodder. I figured on a busy metro there would be quite a few mobility-impaired people, elderly, and small children. The odds just aren't good that they would survive, is a sad fact.
Re: Ye ghodz...
Date: 2006-11-22 05:28 am (UTC)Don't leave home with out them.