Then Came War (2 page)

Each time he held high hopes of staying with his mother in Queens. But those hopes diminished each time she was arrested.

The latest stint kept her in county and, by Foster’s count, she was now out.

He was sixteen now, old enough to make his own decisions and he wanted to be the one to help his mother.

But no, the state kept moving him about.

The latest set of foster parents was the final straw. They not only moved him out of New York City, they moved him out of the state. How was that possible? He had been moved to a tiny cottage style house in Connecticut with these latest foster parents— working father, stay at home mother, bible studies and republican parties.

No.

Not him.

Foster homes kept him from being stereotyped as the typical oppressed black youth, actually, Foster considered him culturally diversified. He had stayed with white families, Hispanic, Greek, Jewish. But the Lawrence’s . . . they were too much of a cultural shock for Foster.

So he booked.

They weren’t mean; they were just weird.

1950’s sitcom weird.

When Mr. Lawrence stated he was on vacation and that he and Foster were going to do some fishing in a boat, then head down to work on Mayor Noon’s Campaign, Foster said enough.

He went on line, checked the prison status of his mother, saw she was released, and took off before Mr. Lawrence could pack the car for fishing.

He left a note of thanks, filled his backpack with snacks in case he had to live on the street and headed to the train station on foot.

He arrived before most of the commuters, and just in case the Lawrence’s woke up and went out to search for him, Foster stayed hidden in the shadows.

***

Harry was already on the train as it neared Hartford station. He had boarded in Windsor and was one of the first on board. He got a good window seat in the second car and sat there. His hands rested upon his gift for Leo which rested in his lap. He looked only briefly out the window and then closed his eyes again, never seeing those who stood on the platform waiting on the Number 141.

And they were there.

All of them were there.

Ben, Lana, Abby, TJ and Tyler all waited on the 141.

They weren’t standing together; other commuters separated them.

They never saw each other.

Certainly Abby never saw Foster sneak up to the platform when the train brakes squealed out loudly. He squeezed in and stood next to her.

TJ and Tyler joked around. They spoke about the things they would do at the office. They were happy and bubbly, unlike the other zombie-like morning commuters who seemed to be going through the motions of their day.

TJ and Tyler were a contrast to Ben and Lana who didn’t even speak. In fact, they didn’t even look at each other.

Ben did take that latte though.

Abby clutched her purse to her chest, mouth on the edge of it to stop herself from crying. Occasionally she’d pull her sleeve down to cover the small bandage from her self-inflicted wrist wound. Embarrassed by it, as if it screamed out, ‘Look at this. Look at what I have done to myself!’

It was an injury no one else would have noticed or paid attention to or even cared about.

Foster saw it. He knew exactly what it was, especially with her trying to hide it. But he didn’t know her and it was her business. He just wanted to get on that train.

The 141 came to a halt to pick up the next batch of passengers at the Hartford Station.

The train was bound for Penn Station in New York.

The lives of Ben, Lana, Abby, Foster, Harry, TJ and Tyler were so different.

The happiness of the perfect father and son contrasted with the miserable lives of the unhappily married couple, the lost young man who needed to get away, the desperate woman who wanted to die and the lonely old man who just sought a reason to live.

All of them were so different.

But on the morning of April 25
, they all had two things in common.

They all sat in the second car and they all boarded a train that would forever change their lives.

CHAPTER TWO

Harry didn’t notice at first and neither did Abby. They weren’t all that experienced in riding the train. But TJ did.

“Something’s wrong,” TJ whispered.

Tyler looked up. “What’s that, Dad?”

TJ shook his head and stood up. “We’re picking up speed.”

“Maybe we’re running late.”

Another shake of his head and TJ looked at his watch.

“Do you feel like we’re moving faster?” Lana asked Ben. “It feels like we just kicked into another gear.”

Ben had his head back and popped open one eye. “I don’t think trains kick into another gear. There’s …” Suddenly he sat up. “We are.” He peered out the window.

The automated voice over the speaker in the car announced, “Approaching the New-Conn tunnel.”

“Wait a second,” Ben stirred more in his seat. “Why are we flying into the tunnel?”

Harry’s back felt adhered to the seat and he didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to know the train was flying faster than it should have been. It didn’t happen the last time he went to town. Maybe it was a new thing or the train was running late.

The rush of mumbling voices airing out concerns caught Harry’s attention and he looked around, trying to zoom in on what they said.

Total strangers, who not ten minutes earlier were quiet and didn’t speak, were now all asking each other questions about the train’s speed.

Something was wrong and a twitch hit Harry’s stomach with that thought. Aside from the speeding train, something else occurred that was odd.

Everyone’s phone started ringing.

The whole entire second car was filled with ringing cellular phones and people scurrying to find them and answer.

Why was everyone getting a call at the same time?

The voices of the passengers meshed together in their attempts to retrieve the calls.

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

“Mom? What’s wrong?”

“I can’t hear you.”

“What’s that?”

“I can’t hear. Our connection is bad.”

“What happened?”

“Hello.”

Squeal.

The darkness of the tunnel encompassed the train and the brakes hit so loudly the sound was piercing.

The sudden attempt to stop the runaway train created a rush of screams as those standing flew forward. Items were tossed about, cell phones dropped to the floor and Harry found his face pinned to the seat in front of him.

He couldn’t move back, he was smashed there by the force of the train.

It was trying to stop, but it couldn’t. It was still traveling full speed ahead, but not for long.

The train hit something and the force of the hit threw everyone into the air in different directions, tossing bodies about the compartment and causing even more screams and cries.

Harry heard the sound of crunching metal. He caught himself long enough to look up and come to the realization that it was over for him.

Car number two of the 141 jumped the track. It flew outward and smashed into the wall of the tunnel before landing on its side.

Harry went from one portion of the train car to another. When the car hit the wall he flew backwards and when it slammed on its side to the ground, he landed back first on top of a person. Cringing in pain, he opened his eyes and then raised his arms to shield himself as people rained down upon him.

The second car dislodged from the rest of the train and slid another hundred feet, creating sparks as the metal contacted the concrete at a high rate of speed.

Finally car two stopped and rested against a wall.

But it wasn’t over.

The rest of the train kept coming, each car jumping track, some rolling front over end, others side over side with each sequential train car coming to a devastating halt and smashing into the tunnel walls.

Train cars three and four rolled and landed length wise against the wall. The rest of the train cars piled up, barricading it in.

The entire 141 was like a collapsed house of cards, the cars smashed together, lying on top of one another.

That is, all of the cars with the exception of car two. The demolished and tossed train cars seemed to form a tepee and car two rested in the pocket of the wreckage. The only car not completely crushed.

CHAPTER THREE

There were some light dances of lights— sparks from broken wires, the flash of emergency lights that couldn’t stay on and the glow of the cell phones that weren’t beneath the mounds of people.

There were moans, not a lot, and Abby heard them. She was fortunate enough to be on top of the mound of people instead of buried beneath them.

She never lost consciousness. She may have lost her bearings when things happened so fast, but she was aware. She was so much aware that she clutched tightly to her seat. Her body flipped one way then another but she kept holding on until that final slam.

She was lying face down and she needed to get up. She could feel wetness on her chest but with her body so numb, she didn’t know if it was her blood or something else.

Using her hands as leverage, Abby lifted herself up some. Her mouth dropped open but she lost her breath. The scream she uttered was barely heard as she found herself face to face with the wide open eyes of another woman.

Clearly the woman was dead.

Panicking inside, Abby tried to lift herself from the woman. But she couldn’t get a footing.

“Hello,” she called out. “Is anyone else alive?”

“Yeah,” a man’s voice replied. “I’m stuck.”

“I’m trying to …” Abby stopped.

She heard it. At least she thought she did.

It was a loud and distant boom that was followed by another and then one more.

“What was that?” Abby asked, as if expecting someone to know.

“What was what?” the man asked. “I’m really stuck.”

“Are you hurt?”

“I don’t know.”

Then Abby thought she had it; her foot found a place and she was able to lift herself to her knees. When she did, the flashing light brought it into focus.

It was the little blue book bag.

“Oh my God,” Abby gasped.

The boy, the little boy that was on the train was carrying that bag. But where was he?

She looked around. So much was unrecognizable; she couldn’t get her bearings on where she was in the train.

“Little boy,” she called out. “Little boy.”

No answer.

Immediate panic consumed her. It wasn’t her child, yet she felt a mother’s pain over it. Her foot slipped some, but she was able to rest it upon something. Then she reached back, grabbing for a seat to hold on to. The train was on its side and as she pulled herself up she saw the people below her. They overlapped. Some moved; some didn’t. Everyone had just toppled together making it impossible for anyone to free themselves.

“Dad,” a young voice called out. “Dad?”

Abby gasped. It was the child. She knew in their car at least, there was only one child. But where was he? He was calling out for his father, but his voice wasn’t close.

Where?

The moment the train hit its breaks, Tyler’s father huddled over him, wrapping his arms around him. Tyler remembered burying his face in his father’s arms, holding on tight and his little fingers gripping his father’s shirt. But then they hit something and his father’s hold released.

Tyler flew out of his father’s arms, across the train car. He was so tiny he hit no one. He was like a perfectly thrown basketball, sailing in the small space. Just before the train  landed completely on its side, Tyler went seamlessly through the window.

Swish.

His hip hit the concrete first and, like the time he fell from his bike, his body skidded across the concrete and he rolled over and over. He could hear the train sliding against the concrete, the metal squealing loudly against the ground until it came to a stop.

Tyler was hurt. He could feel it, but couldn’t think about. Once his body came to a stop he looked up to see the remaining train cars careening his way, reckless, out of control with the cars flipping haphazardly.

Scurrying to his knees and then to his feet, Tyler was running before he was completely standing.

There really wasn’t anywhere to go, but he ran away from the certain impact that was headed toward him straight to train car number two. He slipped in a small space between the train car and the wall, brought his knees to his chest, covered his head and screamed.

His screams were buried beneath the crashing sounds of the tumbling cars.

How he escaped getting crushed was nothing shy of a miracle.

But he did.

Bleeding just a little from concrete rash burns that would radiate through him later, Tyler crawled out when everything stopped and grew silent.

He had to find his father.

“Okay, swell, I’m stuck,” Harry thought. He must have been knocked out because he had one doozie of a headache. He only hoped he hadn’t fractured his skull. His hands were free and he felt for his nose and then his ears. No fluid. Good sign. But then again, he was stuck.

Leo’s gift was digging into his chest due to the weight of the man on top of it, dead weight.

But had the gift not been there, Harry supposed he would have suffocated. Then again, Harry was a big man, tall, robust and strong too.

How he survived he didn’t know. Again he attributed it to his size. Of course, with his luck, at his age he probably had broken a hip and when the pressure of the bodies lifted he would be unable to move. Stuck in the wreckage, he would be one of those people emergency workers carried out on a stretcher.

But Harry wouldn’t scream. No way. No how.

That wasn’t him.

He took a second, took a deep breath and thought about his situation.

Peering left then right around the dead body on top of him, Harry assessed he was about six people deep.

Again, thinking, ‘swell,’ Harry looked for head room. He wasn’t packed like a sardine and that was a good thing. The car was on its side, but not completely. It was angled. If he could just slip out from the bodies, slide his back up against the wall, which was actually the floor, he could conceivably climb up. That was if his hip wasn’t broken.