John grabbed and pulled me down to the floor, away from the window. “Stay the fuck down,” he whispered.
While we lay there, Frank and Philip rushed to cover up the windows with whatever debris and furniture they could get loose from the floor.
“Do they know we're here?” Mia asked.
“Doesn't matter, we ain't taking any risks. We need to survive for four more days until we reach Gehenna.” John responded.
They were quick to block the windows, and within a minute we'd all settled down on the floor, where we tried to discuss our next more as quietly as possible.
On the other side of the door, leading to the next car, we could hear the shuffling of Surveyors trying to get in. They knew we were here, which meant the Sentinels would be alerted very soon.
“They're behind the door,” Frank said.
“Can they hear us?”
“Don't know, but stay quiet anyway. They might not know for sure that we're here.” John said.
“What about your gun? If we just kill the surveyors, they won't be able to alert the Sentinels.”
“I don't have any ammo. Besides, that idea is fucking stupid.”
Even with the emergency lights dimly illuminating our car, it was hard to make out our surroundings, and with no idea how to turn them off, we could only pray that the surveyors didn't notice them either.
A few hours passed with none of us daring to speak up. All fearing that the Sentinels would come bursting in through the windows at any moment. The only one moving was Mia, and she only did so to check on John's leg.
“Do we have any antibiotics in the bag?” she asked.
Philip opened, and rummaged through a large travel bag. In the dark he couldn't see much, and after a minute, he decided to just empty the bag of all the random items they'd gathered on the train; Finally pulling out a box of pills.
“Amoxicillin?” he half asked, half said.
“That's all we have?” Mia asked.
Phillip nodded, and tossed Mia the box. She handed them over to John, giving him instructions on when and how many to take.
The first twenty four hours, each marked by an innocuous beep from Mia's digital watch. I couldn't get my mind off the name: Gehenna, it sounded familiar. It was definitely something I'd heard before, if only to be stuffed away in the back of my mind, polluted by pointless information I'd gathered throughout my life.
Forty-two hours passed, as counted by the beeps. People were getting restless, unable to stand up or move around without alerting the Surveyors. We still hadn't made a decision whether to stay on the train as we reached Gehenna, or to bail and try out our own luck elsewhere.
“Are we really going to listen to some cryptic message?” Philip asked. “Like, I don't want to be all pessimistic, but why should we trust them?”
“They're telling us to stay on the train, but do they mean as it stops, or now while it's heading there?” Mia asked.
“Does it matter, shouldn't we just do the exact opposite of what they tell us?”
“No, whatever happens, we're getting the fuck off this train when it stops, as long as there's solid ground to walk on, we're not staying a minute longer than we have to,” John interjected.
Sixty hours passed, and the void lingered outside our train, ever present, and full of unseen horrors. Despite the stress, I'd somehow managed to drift off to sleep. Though restless, it was a deep sleep occupied by an incredibly vivid dream of Gehenna. I saw it as an empty ruin of a city, trapped in the center of a steep valley.
Mia and Frank stood by my side with defeated expressions on their faces. As we observed our surroundings, a bright light lit up the gray sky, almost blinding us with its presence. I tried to lift my arms to block out at least some of the light, but I couldn't lift them. Something within the light had paralyzed me, surging through my body with intense pain.
As I winced in agony, my mind suddenly felt clearer than it ever had, and then I remembered. It was just a piece of fragmented information long since forgotten, that I'd learned during my childhood during some religious class. Gehenna, it was hell, and we were heading straight for it.
I awoke abruptly due to a high-pitched, glaring sound emitting from a speaker system, hidden in the ceiling. It jolted all of us to our feet in panic, as we tried to decipher what it meant.
“What the hell is that sound?” John yelled as he clutched his ears.
It was rhythmic, Morse code, just like before. Though, in the mess of static and distortions, I could barely make out the individual beeps.
After a couple of minutes, despite the mess of sounds, it became apparent that the sound was just a loop of beeps with a simple message played on repeat.
“Leaving Vacuus, stand by,”
“Leaving Vacuus, stand by,”
“Leaving Vacuus, stand by,”
“Leaving Vacuus, stand by.”
It was incredibly loud. Vibrating enough to loosen the already fragile barricade in front of the door and windows. On the other side, the Surveyors were trying to break through, and with a final push, the door gave in.
Dozens of them flooded in through the broken barricade, stumbling over each other in the process. All the while, they kept their eyes fixated on each of us, non-blinking, full of agony.
“Push them out!” John yelled, as he rushed at them with a stick, shoving the one furthest behind back through the door, then the next, but they kept getting back up.
The rest of us rushed to aid John in his futile attempt, but before we could even each him, every single window in the train shattered from the force of hundreds of Sentinels throwing their mangled bodies at the car.
Covered in shards of broken glass, I fell to the ground alongside Frank, who tried to use me for balance. A piece of glass cut my left eye, temporarily blinding me from pain.
As I got the piece of glass out, I saw the Sentinels digging their way through the broken windows; Turning to a viscous fog and poured in through each crack in our barricade, reforming themselves on the other side, just like before.
It was hopeless, and all we could do was to stand there in frozen panic, unable to think of any plausible escape. Mia and Phillip had sought cover in one of the corners, were they sat embracing each other, while John charged at the Sentinels wielding nothing more than a kitchen knife.
As the mix of Sentinels and Surveyors came at us, the alarm kept blaring, and I prepared for my quickly approaching demise.
“Leaving Vacuus, stand by.”
Suddenly an impossibly bright light filled the entire void, instantly turning the Sentinels to mere filaments of darkness lingering in the air. It persisted for minutes, completely blinding out any memory of the empty void we'd left behind, and then the speaker gave out a new message in the form of Morse code.
“Designation: Gehenna, 18 hours, do not get off the train,” the code said.
As quickly as it had come, the light faded. It took a while before our eyes adjusted, but once they did, we were greeted by a brand new world outside the windows.
The once empty void had been replaced by endless fields of bright-green grass, only contrasted by tall, blue mountains in the horizon, miles and miles away. The Sentinels themselves had all but vanished, while the Surveyors had turned back into lifeless corpses, now doing nothing more than littering the hallways.
“Whe-where are we?” Mia asked.
“Gehenna? Did we make it?” Frank asked.
“No, we still have eighteen hours left,” I corrected him.
I took a hopeful look out the window, and stared at the lush fields just out of reach. The ground looked so soft, and I contemplated for a moment whether it would be smarter to just jump off the train.
That idea was quickly put to rest as I got a look around the train, now filled with blissful daylight that had immediately changed the mood.
“Alright, let's head for the locomotive and try to shut this train down,” John said.
We quickly made out way through the train, littered with the fresh corpses of people that died weeks ago. Their connections to the Sentinels had been broken, leaving them limp on the ground with no direction.
Once we reached the locomotive, we were faced with a heavy iron wall blocking our entrance. A door with no handle, nor a keyhole to open it.
“Great, what now?” Frank asked.
“Maybe we can climb out one of the windows and get there from the outside,” John suggested.
Before we could even indulge the idea of climbing on the outside of a moving train, we were all shoved to the ground as the train rapidly lost speed. The tracks screeched as the wheels locked themselves in place, and we quickly came to a sudden stop.
“What the hell just happened?”
“We've stopped, but, there's no platform or anything outside.” Mia said as she peeked outside the window.
“Doesn't matter, get your stuff, we're getting off this nightmare.”
We returned to the dining car and picked up our bags, alongside any amount of food and supplies we could possible carry. We hadn't yet reached Gehenna, but considering the implications that we were heading straight for hell, this would be a safer bet.
For the first time in weeks, we stepped down on solid ground, with a brilliant green field only a few feet away from us. Phillip took charge, carrying what little medical supplies we had left, while John followed.
There was a decently brisk wind that felt great in otherwise hot climate, but the grass didn't seem to sway even the slightest. As minute a detail as it seemed, it warranted a closer look.
They were crystals, green, razor sharp crystals that from just a few feet away resembled blades of grass.
“Wait, don't-” I tried to yell, but it was too late, and Phillip stepped down hard on the field.
“Ow, fuck!” he yelled as the crystals cut through his shoes, into the sole of his foot.
The rest of us froze in our step as we saw Phillip pull back in agony, clutching his leg.
“It's not grass...” I trailed off.
“Fuck, it hurts,” Phillip groaned.
Mia instinctively ran to his aid and pulled of his shoe.
“Let me have a look,” she said.
There were green crystals embedded deep in his sole, covered in jagged edges, making it almost impossible to pull out without causing more damage.
“We've got to get you back on the-” Mia froze mid sentence.
The crystal was spreading, with tiny shards breaking off, embedding themselves into Phillips skin, tearing through it as they grew.
“Wha-what's happening?” Phillip stuttered.
Though the growth was slow at first, it quickly sped up, covering his entire foot within a minute, before proceeding up his leg.
“Get them off me!” he yelled in pain as Mia reached out to try to rip them off, but John stopped her before she could touch them.
“Wait, you'll get them on you too!” John yelled.
He pulled out his knife, and got ready to peel the shards off Phillip, but the crystal simply cut through the knife like butter, spreading onto that as well.
In shock, John stumbled back and dropped his knife. Mia once again tried to run over and help him, but we all held her back. All we could do was to stare at Phillip as the crystals dug their way into his body; His bones audibly cracking and his skin rupturing as they continued spreading.
He just lay there screaming in agony until the crystals got to his lungs, and before long, his entire body had been turned to rock.
Before we could process, or mourn our loss, the crystals started spreading along the ground, slowly making their way towards us.
“Back on the train!” John screamed.
As we got back onboard, we did out best to seal the doors and windows, but even then we had no proof it would stop the spread. The train had broken down, and with no way of getting it back up and running, all we could do was to wait as the green field of crystals spread onto the train, and to us...
...it's just a matter of time.
---
Credits
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