Underground

Have you ever met the love of your life on an underground train? Wait, what am I talking about? People are dying. No, give me a break; I can fantasize as much as I want. We indulge in these old romantic stories to restore purpose into the lives left drained and meaningless by the crisis. You would do the same. 

Everyone knows where they were when the crisis was first reported. There had been various stories circulating prior to the release but for most it was nothing more than conspiracy theorist hysteria. We remember it now - but back then we slept behind a veil of innocence; like a soft teal net by the bed. I must have heard about the story a week before it officially broke. I was warned about it at work.

Anyway, I was on the underground on a Monday morning when I scanned through the news on my tablet: trying to juggle a hot plastic cup of coffee in one hand and briefcase on the other. The grave headline finally caught my eye; a Monday like no other; we're all going to die. It had my attention for a moment but this felt like nothing more than sensationalism and clickbait. I knew the facts and it wasn't supposed to be this bad. I jumped on the first train and grabbed myself a seat closest to the door. Briefcase between my feet, coffee sandwiched between my legs: I pored my eyes upon the news. There were various commuters in front of me doing the same. Every somber line burning into their bright eyes. The headlines continuously referenced an old virus from 1918, followed by lists of methods to stay safe. The prime minister would be making an announcement later that morning. Give me a break, I had thought naively. 

19 May

It has been a few days since the first few cases were reported. Nothing catastrophic has happened. No hysterical rush to live in caves and hide away from the human race. Tabloids recycle the same old content every day. And they are advising us to avoid public transport if possible. Not possible.

 

 

21 May

Things at the clinic have changed since the announcement. Fear has appeared and angst rips through the air: but life on the underground has remained the same. People don't know what has started to roll out on the planet and I have no intention of telling people how bad it's going to get. The train still heaves with busy commuters in the early hours of the morning: rushing around with a robotic efficiency. Evening trips back are the same. The journeys we take in the early hours of the day and the evening are unlike any other trips you take on the tube. They are not like the brisk afternoon trips (a dreamy Spring slumber) nor are they the relaxed weekend routes (an electric ballroom of chatter). During those trips you see smiles, and the conversation amongst you is always brimming with a subtle pleasantry. But on the early morning and evening weekdays, the trips mirror each other. Opposite ends of the same chain. Everybody sits quietly, glum faced amidst a melancholic air. We sit, fixated in our own worlds - avoiding eye contact and staring haplessly into the abyss. It is like we are all dead.

 

22 May

One week in and still no reported deaths, and yet it hangs over us with an eerie presence. Yesterday's papers are somewhat oddly left lying on the floor. One wonders if the neglect has spurned from fears of the crisis. The front pages peer up like the dead with ghostly reminders of the threats which start to infiltrate our dreams. I am not frightened. I am concerned. There is a haunting sense of danger in the air. Dim fluttering lights on the stone walls, the smooth hum of automated trains, the unusually hushed calmness of the others who share this carriage. People sit further away from each other now. Two seats away from each other rather than one. Somebody just coughed. Everyone tenses up but I know better.

28 May

Things have started to feel a little more realistic now. The clinic has turned into a stock market. We rush, shout and carry data across the floor like lives depend on it. They do. We must find a cure.

 

02 July

Tired from the early commutes. 7 Days a week. Roads are strewn with solid blocks of traffic for miles into the horizon. Everyone is trying to get out now but with no destination. The clinic demands my presence, and the train is now the only way to travel. The government has kept the tunnels extremely clean. The air feels cool and filtered. The walls have been scrubbed, the floors sparkle with bacterial scents. There are plastered posters dotted on the underground which detail hygiene and safety. Holograms emit from little hubs which show the correct procedures. Most notably though, the entrance barriers now have gel dispensers which ooze a disinfectant onto your hands. You just hover your hands underneath it and the liquid sinks into the skin on your palms. It's the biggest joke. Everything is just a facade; this virus has nothing to do with hygiene. It's already in us. We're living in the biggest day and age of placebo trickery. 

 

06 July

 

There were delays getting onto the train this morning. Roads have closed down, and a large influx of commuters have clogged the tunnels. I used to feel like a statue in a fast-moving world; now I feel like a fast-moving figure in a world of stone. This reportedly happened at 5am this morning, a couple of hours before I even arrived. That is the news on social media anyway. When I arrived into the tunnels, the engineers were on site mending a couple of automated machines. The floor was busy with exasperated travelers and their iron eyes. There is a tall woman with stale blonde hair, red cheeks and musky gym attire. A man with scruffy chestnut hair and crumpled green jacket. An elderly couple with large gas masks. Gas masks. What is wrong with people?

 

July 10

 

What has truly been fascinating is the thinning out of crowds; much like the dying blades of my own hair. When I started this journal, we were packing the carriages like sardine cans. We were trapped rats in mechanical cages: quietly mediating our fate. Now we have room to spread our legs, stretch our arms and fold our elbows on the armrest to sleep. We defy the rest of the population as prioritized commuters. We lose numbers of fellow commuters because it has become too risky, and they have opted to get away and escape. At least, that is what we tell ourselves. The alternative is terrifying.

 

July 12

 

I make my coffee at home now. The luxury of buying a drink before work from a shop is a distant memory. So, I sit on the spacious tubes with a drink and try to enjoy what we have. The lights twinkle above us like artificial stars. The tracks cackle with electric, reminding us that the artificial efficiency is still running smoothly. The trains roar into us like great mechanical titans: and we pretend we are safe.

 

July 14

 

My eyes are burning; they are blackened stones of charcoal. Matchsticks would not keep these heavy eyelids from falling. I do not know what keeps me up at night, though I know it not be fear. We are all nervous however one starts to feel that this crisis does not affect them after a while. It has wiped carriages out and yet, here we sit, rumbling around in our seats every morning. Our numbers are steady now and the shrinkage appears to be slowing. I am starting to recognize each passenger on the daily trip. And then they paradoxically merge into one hazy bar - a row of faces and thick jackets and boots. Who are they? Survivors. V.I.P. Steady, calm humans on the outside and ravaged, frenzied animals on the inside: plagued with fear and grief.

 

July 16

 

Still tired. Tempted to pop back onto the sleeping medication. I have to say that this particular atmosphere is bringing it all out again: those dark predators who haunt the most fragile parts of our mind. I feel like I want to start drinking in the morning again. I could clean my teeth with a can of beer. Wash it down with whiskey. Put it in my cereal bowl. Oh, who am I kidding? I could portion some out into a hipflask: hide it in my coat, discreetly taste the sweet tantalizing party on my tongue when no one is watching. I'll pack my other pocket with spearmints. They would never know at the clinic. I tease myself with this idea for the entire journey until I finally snap out of my senses. Not again. I already have one apocalypse to deal with.

July 18

 

For a while, the bland, blackened rainbow of tunnels whizzing past my windscreen puts me under a state of melancholic hypnosis. I think about how we are already buried alive. How we are probably deeper than the mass graves built above. Which stations are they on top of? No one knows. I fall asleep for a few moments. When I wake up, I consider the thought of whiskey with my coffee. Just a taste. I leave two stations early and walk the rest of my journey.

 

July 22

 

The numbers are dying down again. Bad choice of words, perhaps. People are actually dying. The carriages are a pocketful of commuters, separated across the train as everyone tries to get as much space as possible. At least the days of wide spread legs are no longer an issue. Why do people still catch the train to work in the face of such darkness? I know why I do. But why do they?

 

July 28

 

Today is a day I cannot forget. I was sat idly staring through the windows, listening to the eerie movements of the train. I looked up and there she was, at the front of the carriage, a scarlet supernova. She had long red hair which swooped down her back like a trail of embers. Milky white skin, scarlet lips, and green goblets of fire for eyes: the kind of shade which shot out like daggers. She was standing with one hand clutched to the ceiling, the other holding her phone which she watched nonchalantly. I had never seen this sort of beauty before. Everything about her radiated vibrancy, and I felt as if the entire carriage was suddenly lit up by a rush of colour. I watched her in awe for a few moments, her figure contrasted against the grey mundane grid lock of this train. The train halts to a stop and I suddenly drop my tablet and the coffee falls with it. I reach for it but when I look up she has gone. The doors close and the train starts to resume moving. She disappears before I can even look up to the window and find her.

 

July 30

 

Life on the underground has flip-flopped from mundane banality to overt dramatics on a daily basis. Yesterday was the stunning girl. The day before that was the evacuation, the first I have ever heard. And today was the frail woman who passed out. What did she look like: Well she had a rather frizzy, orange set of hair and pale, freckled cheeks. She was a stale skeleton. Everyone is painfully thin. Whether it is the stress or the rations, you now see sharper cheek bones, twig-like arms, and on the rare occasion, hollowed eyes which contain the internalized sights of horror I cannot begin to imagine. It was just down the other end of the carriage and I saw her face flop into her lap. Then the movements of the train slowly rolled her off onto the floor, and there she lay lifelessly. The reaction from the few passengers here was quick, because nobody wanted to risk infection. Buttons were pressed, doors whipped open and several official looking paramedics rushed her out. Then we were evacuated once again. 

 

August 01

 

I catch the train with an almighty, newfound valour today. Forget the crisis. Forget the coffee. I am on my seat enthusiastically and immediately looking for her. She appears in my sleep like a saviour of the greyscale tedium. And on a daily basis, as the commute runs and fades to an end, it becomes clear that she will not be on the train today. My heart sinks. Let this disease just kill me then. I will live for her, I will die without. 

 

August 02

 

This morning was an eerie sight to behold; in all its creepiness. If I could have taken a picture, I would have. But the bright lights of a camera flash supposedly affect those who have succumbed to the crisis, breaking them into a fit. We learnt that the hard way. Anyway, what a sight. Between the early hours of 8am, I watched as the tracks stayed silent and the platform empty. A technical fault grounded the trains to a stop from a previous station, and before the occasional commuter arrived on the stony platform, I found myself completely alone. It was like I was suspended in a great, black vortex, where I drifted slowly through space with no one else but myself. A little voice told me that this was my punishment; this was my price to pay for my part in the apocalypse. I wonder if that voice should be as loud as it is. 

 

August 04

 

I have just seen the beautiful girl again. She sits with her legs crossed a few seats to my right. I watch her hazy reflection from the window opposite me, trying to imagine if her ivy ember eyes can see me. Who is she? Can she see me? What is she doing on this train? What are the odds of seeing the same person on the underground more than once? In answer to the last question, I admit that today's climate deems the odds in my favour. I don't want to watch her to her face, that might frighten her, so I gaze through the lights and reflection. If only I had the courage to speak with her.

 

August 08

 

I sit nonchalantly with a carriage to myself this morning. I perch over to the conjoining carriages like a curious bird and see one person per 40 seats. I am in a delirious sense of euphoria this morning; mulling over the events of yesterday. I had been watching the girl when our train had stopped. The electric had sparked out and because the whole system is automated there was no one to help us. Our doors were opened and protocol had taught us to evacuate; trudging through the dark tunnels to the nearest station. We marched silently like soldiers from war but then was my chance to talk with her. My whiskey from the morning had provided some courage.

'Why do you still catch this train?' I had said.

She looked at me with bright interest. Perhaps I was the first person who had spoken with her in days.

'I care for my Mum,' she said. 'And then I go back home and care for Dad. It's amazing. Even an apocalypse wouldn't bring my parents back together.'

I nodded.

'Why are you on this train?'

'Work.'

'You still work?'

'Oh, we have to.' I said ominously. 

I eyed her face while we spoke and internalized her beauty up close; the bullet piercing by her nose, the tender petal lips, her sweet smell of honey fragrance.

'I hear it's the chips we inserted into ourselves,' she said, raising her arm. She pointed at her soft skin underneath the wrist.

I nodded. 'Apparently it is.'

'Then staying clean has nothing to do with it?'

'It is the chip,' I agree.

'How old are you?' she said.

'109,' I reply. 'How old are you?'

'242.'

'You look so young.' I said, eyeing her slender pale face. 

She traced her nails over her own arm as we walked through the tunnels.

'I guess we all have to die at some point.'

'That's not why we installed the chips.'

Even through the darkness of the winding tunnels I felt like a beacon of light was burning by my side; this star of beauty wavering next to me.

'So, what do you actually do for work?' she said finally.

'I'm looking to cure the virus.'

Her eyes looked at me with awe.

'Are you close?'

'Perhaps,' I admit. 'We know it's the chip. It's like a computer virus. You don't catch it through the air.'

'Then how?'

I stared at the cold ground beneath me; the streaks of electric metal stretched out like bolts of lightning.

'All of the chips are part of an online database. The database is infected and it sends the virus out to the things inside of us.'

'Terrible,' she uttered softly. 'Where did the virus appear from?'

I didn't want to talk about it anymore. I wanted to learn more about her and savour every second of this walk without the prospect of imminent death hanging over us. As light appeared in the distance, we reached the next station and our journey had ended. Looking back, it's terrible that I didn't even get her name.  

Date

A breakthrough at work. I am on the train leafing through papers (actual paper) and thinking about what a travesty technology has left for us. It saved us and then abandoned us. Wouldn't it have been easier to die at the age people usually died at? Why did we strive to live forever? It makes leaving this world even harder.

I want to tell the girl about what it is; announce to her that we've found the problem and that maybe we can have a cure. As I leave the paper to one side, I pull out my tablet and breaking news appears on my front screen. My heart sinks.

Just revealed! Here are the faces responsible for killer virus.

There are several faces that appear with their names and information on the front page. They all wear lab coats. Eventually I see my face too.

I am angry but not surprised. The information was bound to get out one day. We were innocently testing what we could do with the chips when we inadvertently created the virus many months back. We're not the heroes I am trying to pose as. After all, why else were we trying this hard to fix it? I feel dreadful. Perhaps the girl may never talk to me again now that she'll know who I am: a man responsible for such bleakness. We have injected death into everyone. There is no escaping it.

August 16

I have spent a week hoping to see the girl and nothing. Each day is the gradual build up of tension followed by deflation; where is she? Everything is more dangerous for me now that my face is known to the public.

August 17

How am I alive? Today I was attacked. A man on the train recognised me from the newspapers and pulled out a gun, he aimed the weapon at me and fired. The bullet crashed against the side of the train as he staggered to one side with the rocking of the carriage. I had jumped up and darted for the opposite end, almost tripping over my feet. I don't know why I ran away, I should've sat there and let the bullet rip into me. Something instinctively pulled me up though and I rushed through the carriages trying to escape. I heard another shot as it shattered the window next to me; a cold blast of wind broke through the carriage as the automatic train continued to speed up. He screamed at me as I got away far enough, jumping from each carriage. The train rocked violently as it sped down the tunnels; the lights pulsating; commuters cowering into their seats. When I had gained enough space from him, I turned and saw him bleeding from his eyes in the distance; falling to his knees; struggling to stand up. I presume he was infected and had nothing to live for. I watched as he turned the gun on himself and fired. The train plunged into an eerie silence as the body lay sprawled across the floor. I stood, panting for breath. Why did I run? The bullet was for me. 

August 19

I haven't seen the girl again. I had thought that life was painting out one last romantic masterpiece for the curtain call. Maybe we would both die akin to a scene out of Romeo and Juliette. Or maybe we would raise a family in the wilderness of a post-apocalyptic world. I would live with my guilt of having created a virus which wiped out humanity - she would stay with me in a Stockholm syndrome kind of way after her anger had dissipated. But none of that has happened. We had a conversation about age, left the tunnels and never saw each other again. It is very likely that she is dead too.

The train bumbles upon the tracks and I stare lifelessly through the windows; lost in the dark walls. There is hardly anyone here anymore. I had thought I was above death for many decades; just as everyone else had. It is when I am thinking about this that I cough. I catch the air in my hands and see the specks of blood on my palms. I take a deep breath; I think we all know how this ends.