November 1st, 19:03.
Nov. 5th, 2006 09:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
secret_history“What’s going on?” a man in a yellow jacket wanted to know. He had his arm around a younger-looking woman with blond hair in a ponytail whom Mickey took to be his wife, who was carrying a small baby in a sling at her waist. The baby, mercifully, appeared to be sleeping through the whole ordeal. “Why haven’t any of the officials shown up?”
Mickey shrugged. “None of us are really sure what’s going on, and I don’t know where the STM employees are. The conductor isn’t even on this train anymore, so it’s up to us to fend for ourselves.”
“Are you in charge, then?” the man’s wife asked tremulously.
Mickey hesitated for a moment. If she agreed, then she was sealing her fate and making herself responsible for all these people. Then again, no one else was stepping forward, and she was the only one who seemed to have any kind of plan. If she appeared to be reluctant to take charge, then someone less qualified might try, or might simply challenge her authority later, at a more crucial juncture, and get them all into trouble wasting time when there wasn’t any to waste.
She nodded. “Yes. Yes, I am in charge here. At least until we can get above ground again. After that, we’ll see.”
“So what do we do?” another voice, also male, but she couldn’t see much further from where she stood. She’d switched off the Maglite to conserve the batteries.
“Uh, well, so far the plan is to walk to the nearest station and use the ladders there to climb out. We can’t all just mill about here, though. We have to organize ourselves into groups.” She raised her voice to be heard above the rising murmurs in the crowd. “Excuse me! Can I have everyone’s attention?”
The murmuring continued, heedless of her shouting. Finally Marco stuck his fingers in his mouth and let out a shrill whistled, which got everyone’s attention, sure enough. She flashed him a grateful smile.
“Okay! Now that I have your full attention, I need you to keep focussed on me so that we can get out of here quickly. I’d like everyone to form up in groups of roughly ten people. Wait! Don’t go yet!” she yelled before people could start moving. “Wait until I’m done! I need everyone with mobility problems to identify themselves. Anyone at all who has any kind of problem with walking, please make it known to the people around you.
“OK, maintenant!” she switched to French. “Est-ce qu’il y a des gens qui ne comprennent pas l’anglais?”
There were a few shouts from the back which she took to mean “yes.”
“OK. Parce que ça va nous faire perdre beaucoup de temps si je répète tout deux fois, est-ce qu’il y a des gens qui peuvent traduire pour ceux qui parlent seulement français?”
More shouts, so she nodded. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about the unilingual francophones for now. If they wanted to bitch about official languages later, that was their prerogative.
“Hey, on s’arrange-tu par wagon de metro, ou quoi?” someone called out.
“It’s not really important,” she answered. “If you’re more comfortable grouping yourselves by metro car, then by all means do that. We’re aiming to do this as painlessly as possible. My one rule is that every group should have at least one person with impaired mobility, so that everyone gets a fair chance at being helped out. Got it?”
“Ouais, on a compris.”
“Good. Everyone group up now, then once you’re with your group stay still. I’ll come around and check every group before we set out to make sure everyone’s accounted for. If you want, pick one person per group to bring up any concerns with me.”
Marco, Rhandir and Marlene all stuck very close to Mickey as they waited for everyone to sort themselves out. There was very little to do until the crowd had stopped milling about. Mickey was privately hoping that the more “take-charge” personalities would assert themselves in the smaller groups, giving her the opportunity to coordinate with only a handful of people rather than with all two hundred-odd passengers. Her throat was already starting to feel raw from all the unaccustomed shouting she’d had to do: her voice didn’t carry well in the first place, and the accoustics in the metro tunnels were absolutely abysmal. It was like shouting into a pile of bales of wool: everything was muffled and distorted.
“Everyone from our car is already together in a group,” Marlene confided in a stage whisper. “Should I go wait with them, or can I stay with you? I don’t like wandering around in the dark by myself.”
Rhandir patted her reassuringly on the shoulder, making her jump like a startled deer. She reached up and straightened her eyeglasses which had been knocked askew and gave him an unreadable look. “Don’t worry, Mrs. D. You want me to walk with you? I’m going to be sticking around with you folks, since I don’t really like the people in my metro car. They all keep giving me funny looks, like I’m some sort of freakish alien with two heads.”
“I can’t think why,” Marlene said softly.
Mickey narrowed her eyes at that. Was it possible the woman was being sarcastic? Marlene hadn’t struck her as being possessed of any kind of a sense of humour, just as a pale little mouse of a housewife, too frightened to do anything except jump at shadows and perhaps live vicariously through her university-age son. Well, it looked like she might have underestimated her. She watched with something akin to amusement as Rhandir gallantly offered his arm to Marlene, who accepted it with the grace becoming a member of minor royalty, and the two strolled off, arm in arm, looking for all the world as though they were enjoying a leisurely constitutional in a posh garden somewhere.
“Okay, that was weird,” Marco said flatly.
“I don’t know. People deal with stress in very different ways. I guess Rhandir’s just trying to make the best of a bad situation.”
“No, I meant her. I totally thought she was, like, boring and whatever, but I think I was wrong.”
“Yeah, you too?”
“If this whole day happened just to teach me not to underestimate people, I will be seriously pissed off. At least Sara probably knows that I’m stuck in the metro by now, if she’s been keeping up with the news.” He stopped as a thought struck him. “Do you think she’s safe? I mean, with all the shit that’s happening up there, and she was meant to be downtown defending her thesis today... you don’t suppose she got caught up in the trouble, do you?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed as honestly as she could. “But Sara’s a pretty resourceful woman. She can totally kick my ass even on a bad day, right? And she can handle herself. She probably saw the trouble coming and got the hell out of its way before anything really bad happened. She’s probably waiting for you at home, anxiously watching the news. Or maybe she’s not worried at all and just popped a DVD of the last season of ER into your television.”
He laughed weakly at that. “Yeah, maybe. She’s not the type to freak out over nothing, that’s for sure. I wish I could know for sure.”
“Maybe we can find someone to lend you their cell phone so you can call home.”
It looked to Mickey as though everyone was settling in by then, so she switched on her Maglite again, and motioned to Marco to stay with her. It wasn’t that she wanted him as a bodyguard... well, okay, she did want him as a bodyguard. There were all sorts of weird people in the metro at the best of times, and times of stress like this brought out the worst in a lot of people. If she felt safe with him on regular work days, then she felt a damned sight safer with him now. He didn’t seem to mind being relegated to the role of very large bulldog, and stuck close by her elbow, making himself look as large and muscular and imposing as possible.
She made a point of stopping and chatting with each group, making her way slowly toward the back of the long line of people. She was pleased to see that everyone had not only followed her instructions, but had instinctively paired off within the groups themselves: families had stuck together, but even lone passengers had sought out a partner, much like the “buddy” system she had been taught as a child at summer camp.
A young woman in her mid-thirties stopped her by laying a hand on her arm. “Uh, excuse me, Miss?”
She turned. “Yes?”
The woman looked more than a little harassed, which was no surprise, seeing that she had two children in tow: a girl who looked to be about nine or ten, and a small boy no older than three who was bouncing up and down on his toes and tugging urgently at his mother’s coat sleeve.
“Yeah. Are there any other people with young children around?”
“I think so, why?”
The little boy was bouncing even more energetically now, and his mother had to pull her arm away, much to his dismay. He began to whine inarticulately as she did so. “I know this hasn’t occurred to anyone who doesn’t have young children, but we haven’t had access to a bathroom in over six hours.”
“Oh.” Mickey was beginning to understand the bouncing now. “Uh, I guess that is a problem. I guess kids can’t really hold it that long, eh?”
“Uh, no.” The woman gave her a meaningful look. “If I might make a suggestion?”
“Of course. I really hadn’t thought of this, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, okay. There must be other people with little children in the same situation, or with diapers that need changing or whatever. I’m going to take Billy over to the back of the train and let him go in a discreet corner. Otherwise he’ll just have an ‘accident’ and that’s not going to be fun for anyone. Any other mothers or babysitters who want to come with me are welcome.”
Mickey nodded in relief. There was no one quite like a mother of small children for taking charge of situations no one else knew how to handle. “I’ll point them in your direction when I find them.”
Marco sniggered into his collar as they moved on. “Makes me glad I don’t have kids.”
“Don’t knock it. That woman might be one of our better allies in this mess. Why do I get the feeling it’s going to take a lot longer than I thought to get all these people out of here?”
“Maybe because coordinating hundreds of people always takes more time and effort than you think?”
“I guess.”
The young woman had been right: every single parent and guardian with children under five was in the same predicament. The two babies on the metro were both crying at top volume now, the kids were overtired, whining loudly, and pulling at their harrassed parents’ clothing. The lack of ventilation in the metro cars hadn’t helped much with cooling the place down, and the presence of nearly two hundred warm bodies was already making the tunnel feel stuffy and uncomfortable. Mickey cringed. This was turning into a nightmare, and they hadn’t even started walking yet.
The good news appeared to be that the elderly folks were being taken care of by the good Samaritan types who’d been on board the train. The guy with the broken leg turned out to be a college athlete who’d sustained his injury on the field and was more than capable of getting around by himself on his crutches. None of the elderly people appeared to be completely unable to get around: it was mostly a question of lack of speed and stamina rather than any major disability. The elderly who made use of the public transit system were usually still pretty steady on their feet. In an age when very few people bothered to offer their seats to their elders anymore, if you couldn’t stand upright on the bus or the metro without running the risk of falling over and possibly breaking a hip, then you simply arranged for a different mode of transportation. Or you simply didn’t go out anymore.
It took much longer than Michaela would have liked to get all the children sorted out, the groups arranged in some kind of walking order, and everyone issued with instructions that weren’t contradictory or nonsensical. She dealt with the miscommunications and the naysayers as best she could, letting Marco sort out the more belligerent ones simply by being large and imposing, and by the time she’d made her way back to the end of the line-up that she’d arbitrarily decided was the “front” she was feeling all but exhausted. At least several people had cell phones which they were able to use as very weak flashlights (the LED screens were great for that), although reception in the tunnel had become so bad that it was impossible to connect to the outside world at all.
“So which way are we heading?” Marco asked her.
“I think Atwater is our best bet,” she answered. “We’re somewhere between there and Guy-Concordia, so your guess is as good as mine. I just picked Atwater at random, for lack of a coin to flip.”
“Okay, Atwater it is. Is this the right direction?”
“That’s what the green-and-yellow signs say.”
“Oh, right.” Marco looked a bit sheepish. The signs were ubiquitous in the metro tunnels, and if you had nothing better to do than stare out into the darkness while the metro raced by, then at least you always knew what station you were coming to.
Michaela took a deep breath, then turned to face the long line of expectant humanity behind her. The sooner she got this show on the road, the sooner they’d all be out of there, and the sooner she wouldn’t have the weight of two hundred souls on her conscience. At least in her job she only had to deal with one person at a time, and had a nice artificial phone line to keep her separate from the unfolding drama. This was a whole other kettle of fish.
“All right, can I get everyone’s attention once again, please?” she waited for the general hubbub to die down. When it didn’t she felt her shoulders sag. Marco helpfully put his fingers in his mouth and whistled as loudly and as shrilly as he could once more, and everyone subsided. “Thank you!” she said, as much to him as to the crowd. “Are there any last-minute problems that need to be addressed before we get going?”
Another low murmur ran through the crowd, but no one seemed inclined to raise any issues, so she pressed on. “Okay, good! We’re heading toward Atwater metro station. It’s central enough that most people should be able to find their way home from there, and there are at least eight bus lines that are within walking distance. It also takes us above ground near downtown, but not so close that we’ll be in the middle of whatever crisis seems to be taking place up there. With any luck, it will have been long since resolved since the last time we had any news, but just in case it’s not I want to steer clear of it as much as possible.”
When there were still no objections she continued. “So I want everyone to stay with their groups. Walk two or three abreast, and make sure no one is walking alone. If you run into any kind of trouble, call out and we’ll come to help you. I’ll be up here in front, and the guy taking up the rear is called Rhandir. It shouldn’t take us more than fifteen minutes to walk the whole distance. Under no circumstances should anyone lag behind. Like I said: if you have a problem, sing out. We’re all in this together right now, and sticking together is our best shot at getting out of here without any further incident. Got it? Okay, good. Let’s go.”
Mickey shrugged. “None of us are really sure what’s going on, and I don’t know where the STM employees are. The conductor isn’t even on this train anymore, so it’s up to us to fend for ourselves.”
“Are you in charge, then?” the man’s wife asked tremulously.
Mickey hesitated for a moment. If she agreed, then she was sealing her fate and making herself responsible for all these people. Then again, no one else was stepping forward, and she was the only one who seemed to have any kind of plan. If she appeared to be reluctant to take charge, then someone less qualified might try, or might simply challenge her authority later, at a more crucial juncture, and get them all into trouble wasting time when there wasn’t any to waste.
She nodded. “Yes. Yes, I am in charge here. At least until we can get above ground again. After that, we’ll see.”
“So what do we do?” another voice, also male, but she couldn’t see much further from where she stood. She’d switched off the Maglite to conserve the batteries.
“Uh, well, so far the plan is to walk to the nearest station and use the ladders there to climb out. We can’t all just mill about here, though. We have to organize ourselves into groups.” She raised her voice to be heard above the rising murmurs in the crowd. “Excuse me! Can I have everyone’s attention?”
The murmuring continued, heedless of her shouting. Finally Marco stuck his fingers in his mouth and let out a shrill whistled, which got everyone’s attention, sure enough. She flashed him a grateful smile.
“Okay! Now that I have your full attention, I need you to keep focussed on me so that we can get out of here quickly. I’d like everyone to form up in groups of roughly ten people. Wait! Don’t go yet!” she yelled before people could start moving. “Wait until I’m done! I need everyone with mobility problems to identify themselves. Anyone at all who has any kind of problem with walking, please make it known to the people around you.
“OK, maintenant!” she switched to French. “Est-ce qu’il y a des gens qui ne comprennent pas l’anglais?”
There were a few shouts from the back which she took to mean “yes.”
“OK. Parce que ça va nous faire perdre beaucoup de temps si je répète tout deux fois, est-ce qu’il y a des gens qui peuvent traduire pour ceux qui parlent seulement français?”
More shouts, so she nodded. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about the unilingual francophones for now. If they wanted to bitch about official languages later, that was their prerogative.
“Hey, on s’arrange-tu par wagon de metro, ou quoi?” someone called out.
“It’s not really important,” she answered. “If you’re more comfortable grouping yourselves by metro car, then by all means do that. We’re aiming to do this as painlessly as possible. My one rule is that every group should have at least one person with impaired mobility, so that everyone gets a fair chance at being helped out. Got it?”
“Ouais, on a compris.”
“Good. Everyone group up now, then once you’re with your group stay still. I’ll come around and check every group before we set out to make sure everyone’s accounted for. If you want, pick one person per group to bring up any concerns with me.”
Marco, Rhandir and Marlene all stuck very close to Mickey as they waited for everyone to sort themselves out. There was very little to do until the crowd had stopped milling about. Mickey was privately hoping that the more “take-charge” personalities would assert themselves in the smaller groups, giving her the opportunity to coordinate with only a handful of people rather than with all two hundred-odd passengers. Her throat was already starting to feel raw from all the unaccustomed shouting she’d had to do: her voice didn’t carry well in the first place, and the accoustics in the metro tunnels were absolutely abysmal. It was like shouting into a pile of bales of wool: everything was muffled and distorted.
“Everyone from our car is already together in a group,” Marlene confided in a stage whisper. “Should I go wait with them, or can I stay with you? I don’t like wandering around in the dark by myself.”
Rhandir patted her reassuringly on the shoulder, making her jump like a startled deer. She reached up and straightened her eyeglasses which had been knocked askew and gave him an unreadable look. “Don’t worry, Mrs. D. You want me to walk with you? I’m going to be sticking around with you folks, since I don’t really like the people in my metro car. They all keep giving me funny looks, like I’m some sort of freakish alien with two heads.”
“I can’t think why,” Marlene said softly.
Mickey narrowed her eyes at that. Was it possible the woman was being sarcastic? Marlene hadn’t struck her as being possessed of any kind of a sense of humour, just as a pale little mouse of a housewife, too frightened to do anything except jump at shadows and perhaps live vicariously through her university-age son. Well, it looked like she might have underestimated her. She watched with something akin to amusement as Rhandir gallantly offered his arm to Marlene, who accepted it with the grace becoming a member of minor royalty, and the two strolled off, arm in arm, looking for all the world as though they were enjoying a leisurely constitutional in a posh garden somewhere.
“Okay, that was weird,” Marco said flatly.
“I don’t know. People deal with stress in very different ways. I guess Rhandir’s just trying to make the best of a bad situation.”
“No, I meant her. I totally thought she was, like, boring and whatever, but I think I was wrong.”
“Yeah, you too?”
“If this whole day happened just to teach me not to underestimate people, I will be seriously pissed off. At least Sara probably knows that I’m stuck in the metro by now, if she’s been keeping up with the news.” He stopped as a thought struck him. “Do you think she’s safe? I mean, with all the shit that’s happening up there, and she was meant to be downtown defending her thesis today... you don’t suppose she got caught up in the trouble, do you?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed as honestly as she could. “But Sara’s a pretty resourceful woman. She can totally kick my ass even on a bad day, right? And she can handle herself. She probably saw the trouble coming and got the hell out of its way before anything really bad happened. She’s probably waiting for you at home, anxiously watching the news. Or maybe she’s not worried at all and just popped a DVD of the last season of ER into your television.”
He laughed weakly at that. “Yeah, maybe. She’s not the type to freak out over nothing, that’s for sure. I wish I could know for sure.”
“Maybe we can find someone to lend you their cell phone so you can call home.”
It looked to Mickey as though everyone was settling in by then, so she switched on her Maglite again, and motioned to Marco to stay with her. It wasn’t that she wanted him as a bodyguard... well, okay, she did want him as a bodyguard. There were all sorts of weird people in the metro at the best of times, and times of stress like this brought out the worst in a lot of people. If she felt safe with him on regular work days, then she felt a damned sight safer with him now. He didn’t seem to mind being relegated to the role of very large bulldog, and stuck close by her elbow, making himself look as large and muscular and imposing as possible.
She made a point of stopping and chatting with each group, making her way slowly toward the back of the long line of people. She was pleased to see that everyone had not only followed her instructions, but had instinctively paired off within the groups themselves: families had stuck together, but even lone passengers had sought out a partner, much like the “buddy” system she had been taught as a child at summer camp.
A young woman in her mid-thirties stopped her by laying a hand on her arm. “Uh, excuse me, Miss?”
She turned. “Yes?”
The woman looked more than a little harassed, which was no surprise, seeing that she had two children in tow: a girl who looked to be about nine or ten, and a small boy no older than three who was bouncing up and down on his toes and tugging urgently at his mother’s coat sleeve.
“Yeah. Are there any other people with young children around?”
“I think so, why?”
The little boy was bouncing even more energetically now, and his mother had to pull her arm away, much to his dismay. He began to whine inarticulately as she did so. “I know this hasn’t occurred to anyone who doesn’t have young children, but we haven’t had access to a bathroom in over six hours.”
“Oh.” Mickey was beginning to understand the bouncing now. “Uh, I guess that is a problem. I guess kids can’t really hold it that long, eh?”
“Uh, no.” The woman gave her a meaningful look. “If I might make a suggestion?”
“Of course. I really hadn’t thought of this, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, okay. There must be other people with little children in the same situation, or with diapers that need changing or whatever. I’m going to take Billy over to the back of the train and let him go in a discreet corner. Otherwise he’ll just have an ‘accident’ and that’s not going to be fun for anyone. Any other mothers or babysitters who want to come with me are welcome.”
Mickey nodded in relief. There was no one quite like a mother of small children for taking charge of situations no one else knew how to handle. “I’ll point them in your direction when I find them.”
Marco sniggered into his collar as they moved on. “Makes me glad I don’t have kids.”
“Don’t knock it. That woman might be one of our better allies in this mess. Why do I get the feeling it’s going to take a lot longer than I thought to get all these people out of here?”
“Maybe because coordinating hundreds of people always takes more time and effort than you think?”
“I guess.”
The young woman had been right: every single parent and guardian with children under five was in the same predicament. The two babies on the metro were both crying at top volume now, the kids were overtired, whining loudly, and pulling at their harrassed parents’ clothing. The lack of ventilation in the metro cars hadn’t helped much with cooling the place down, and the presence of nearly two hundred warm bodies was already making the tunnel feel stuffy and uncomfortable. Mickey cringed. This was turning into a nightmare, and they hadn’t even started walking yet.
The good news appeared to be that the elderly folks were being taken care of by the good Samaritan types who’d been on board the train. The guy with the broken leg turned out to be a college athlete who’d sustained his injury on the field and was more than capable of getting around by himself on his crutches. None of the elderly people appeared to be completely unable to get around: it was mostly a question of lack of speed and stamina rather than any major disability. The elderly who made use of the public transit system were usually still pretty steady on their feet. In an age when very few people bothered to offer their seats to their elders anymore, if you couldn’t stand upright on the bus or the metro without running the risk of falling over and possibly breaking a hip, then you simply arranged for a different mode of transportation. Or you simply didn’t go out anymore.
It took much longer than Michaela would have liked to get all the children sorted out, the groups arranged in some kind of walking order, and everyone issued with instructions that weren’t contradictory or nonsensical. She dealt with the miscommunications and the naysayers as best she could, letting Marco sort out the more belligerent ones simply by being large and imposing, and by the time she’d made her way back to the end of the line-up that she’d arbitrarily decided was the “front” she was feeling all but exhausted. At least several people had cell phones which they were able to use as very weak flashlights (the LED screens were great for that), although reception in the tunnel had become so bad that it was impossible to connect to the outside world at all.
“So which way are we heading?” Marco asked her.
“I think Atwater is our best bet,” she answered. “We’re somewhere between there and Guy-Concordia, so your guess is as good as mine. I just picked Atwater at random, for lack of a coin to flip.”
“Okay, Atwater it is. Is this the right direction?”
“That’s what the green-and-yellow signs say.”
“Oh, right.” Marco looked a bit sheepish. The signs were ubiquitous in the metro tunnels, and if you had nothing better to do than stare out into the darkness while the metro raced by, then at least you always knew what station you were coming to.
Michaela took a deep breath, then turned to face the long line of expectant humanity behind her. The sooner she got this show on the road, the sooner they’d all be out of there, and the sooner she wouldn’t have the weight of two hundred souls on her conscience. At least in her job she only had to deal with one person at a time, and had a nice artificial phone line to keep her separate from the unfolding drama. This was a whole other kettle of fish.
“All right, can I get everyone’s attention once again, please?” she waited for the general hubbub to die down. When it didn’t she felt her shoulders sag. Marco helpfully put his fingers in his mouth and whistled as loudly and as shrilly as he could once more, and everyone subsided. “Thank you!” she said, as much to him as to the crowd. “Are there any last-minute problems that need to be addressed before we get going?”
Another low murmur ran through the crowd, but no one seemed inclined to raise any issues, so she pressed on. “Okay, good! We’re heading toward Atwater metro station. It’s central enough that most people should be able to find their way home from there, and there are at least eight bus lines that are within walking distance. It also takes us above ground near downtown, but not so close that we’ll be in the middle of whatever crisis seems to be taking place up there. With any luck, it will have been long since resolved since the last time we had any news, but just in case it’s not I want to steer clear of it as much as possible.”
When there were still no objections she continued. “So I want everyone to stay with their groups. Walk two or three abreast, and make sure no one is walking alone. If you run into any kind of trouble, call out and we’ll come to help you. I’ll be up here in front, and the guy taking up the rear is called Rhandir. It shouldn’t take us more than fifteen minutes to walk the whole distance. Under no circumstances should anyone lag behind. Like I said: if you have a problem, sing out. We’re all in this together right now, and sticking together is our best shot at getting out of here without any further incident. Got it? Okay, good. Let’s go.”
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Date: 2006-11-10 05:00 pm (UTC)I suppose that was the point! We *know* there are zombies in the tunnels, afterall... Otherwise they might be relatively safe!