doing. Wondering what is causing this. He’s sure that there are people who are being assigned jobs in finding out what is happening up there. He can be pretty sure that the government its self is trying to figure out who is behind all this, surly it’s their jobs to find out why people are self-combusting everywhere, and why flashing lights are causing these combustions.
Maybe it’s the government who is behind this. Maybe that’s why he heard gunshots earlier on, maybe the National Guard did show up, but they decided to finish off what they couldn’t finish with the beacons alone. Either way, Ray finds himself lost in more conspiracies. He’s used to thinking the worst, but for the first time in his life he finds himself living in the worst, living in every thinker’s worst nightmare. A world where power has overtaken and technology is obviously at fault. How else can he be safe underground? How else can these beacons not touch him under a hundred feet of concrete? It must be satellites, or a virus that hasn’t made its way underground, but surly if it was a virus then him and the people who were once up top, but now find themselves underground would have spread the viral pathogen around by now.
Ray looks down at his wrist. The once flashing light is not flashing anymore. The flashing had stopped for the time he had been underground, so a virus is out of the question. He’s safe underground, and if this thing was air born, he wouldn’t be safe, considering the amount of open grates and sewage pipes would have let the virus in by now, his wrist would be flashing, and he would have exploded.
The further he walks the more light he can see. It’s evident to him that he can see the maintenance area for the metro from here. It seems that New York’s underground tunnels of sewage and train tracks come quite close to each other. He already knew that anyway, it doesn’t take an historian to know that New York’s underground is just as congested as New York’s over ground’s skyscrapers and roads.
After a few more minutes of walking he decides to make his way down one of the service hatches towards the metro. He is greeted with some lighting, as the train tracks remain silent with a distant echo of the wind. The sight of the empty rows of tracks sends a shiver down his spine. He can see the dust in the air, a monument of the trains that not too long ago would rush down these parts at a hundred miles an hour. Some of them going to Brooklyn, others to Manhattan, all them going somewhere, now none of them going anywhere. He carries on walking straight down the tracks; he spots a faint light approaching. It startles him as he feels the tracks below his feet rumble. Could it be that his theory on the trains not running anymore be wrong? He stops dead in the center of the track and kneels down. He puts his dirty hand on the copper track and feels the vibrations. With every second passing he feels the vibrations grow stronger. The light that was once far away is now edging even closer to him, then the sound kicks in, a sound that Ray will never likely forget. It’s the sound of a speeding train accompanied by screams of terror. He quickly jumps off the track and rolls into a dirt ditch. The ditch is dirty with a distinct smell of wet concrete. He looks up and spots scaffolding. He realises where he is. They recently announced they were extending the underground rail network, he must be clamouring for his life in a workman’s pit. He can hear the train approach as he makes his way up to catch a glimpse of it pass by. Within seconds he sees the train pass just above him as he hugs the dirt. What surprises him isn’t the fact that the train is there at all; it’s the fact that the cabins passing him are on fire, each one of them ablaze with a tremendous heat. He can see the windows of the cabin and inside are terrorized faces of men and women screaming in pain. They smack their hands against the window as the train
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