Surviving the Collapse Omnibus Read online

  Kate closed her eyes and leaned against the corner wall, her right hand still wrapped around the pole to keep her steady and her left clutching the phone. She wasn’t sure how Mark would take the news of the parole hearing being moved up to today. He hated her going almost as much as she did.

  The phone buzzed, and Kate smiled as she read the text.

  Hey, mom, sorry I didn’t answer. Throat hurts bad. Could you get me some popsicles on the way home?

  Kate typed a reply, but before she hit send, the train jerked to a stop and flung her into a cluster of bystanders. The wheels screeched loudly, the grinding metal matched only by the screams and gasps of fear, confusion, and pain as bodies were slammed into walls, the floor, and each other.

  Kate let go of the phone and thrust her arms out to brace for the fall. Her palms struck the floor hard, and a sharp pain flashed in her elbows and shoulders. The same momentum hurled her luggage forward and slammed it against her back. Finally, the screeching of wheels ended, and the metro stopped.

  Groans, heavy breaths, and screams pierced the air in random jabs. Kate lifted her head and saw that she lay on top of the legs of the man in the black trench coat she had stood next to, who quickly stood, heeling Kate in the chin. She gritted her teeth through the pain and rubbed it vigorously.

  Dozens of other bodies slowly lifted their heads, looking up in confusion.

  “What’s going on?” A voice filtered through the air. “Why did we stop?”

  Another chimed in. “Did the power go out?”

  Panic escaped worried lips, and once it caught the surrounding ears it spread like wildfire.

  “What happened?”

  “Is someone coming?”

  “I have to get home!”

  “I have to get to work!”

  “Please… help.”

  The last plea was nothing more than a whisper, and Kate turned around, still rubbing the red mark on her chin. The elderly woman in the pink sweater sat on the floor, her back flush against the wall and blood dripping down her forehead.

  Kate rushed to the woman’s side, and the old woman lifted a shaky hand and grabbed Kate’s arm. Her grip was weak, her hand cold as ice. “I-I can’t get myself up.”

  “It’s all right,” Kate said, trying to find the source of the gash beneath thick curls of grey and white. “You have a cut on your head. Does anything else hurt?”

  “No,” the old woman answered, her voice shaking.

  “Can you remember your name?” Kate removed her jacket and placed it around the old woman.

  “Grace.” She closed her eyes and swallowed. “Grace Nettles.”

  “Okay, Grace, I’m gonna try and sit you up. Is that all right?”

  Grace nodded, and Kate turned and smacked the calf of the man who’d kicked her. “Hey, help me get her into the seat.”

  Trench Coat spun around, his hair disheveled with tiny wisps of what looked like a toupee sprouting wildly into the air. He blinked in annoyance at Kate and Grace and reluctantly dropped a knee and grabbed Grace’s left arm.

  “On three,” Kate said. “One, two, three!” The pair lifted Grace in coordination, and she clung to Kate’s shoulder as they guided her to an open seat. She collapsed into the chair, her frail hand immediately searching for the tender spot on her head, then grimaced when she found it.

  Grace retracted her finger quickly and examined the blood on it. “Oh, my.”

  “It’s okay,” Kate said, trying to see if the woman’s eyes were dilated. “We’re going to get you some help.” She grabbed Trench Coat’s attention. “Hey, look after her while I find the metro worker on board and see what’s going on.”

  Trench Coat jerked his arm from Kate’s hold and stepped back. “Listen, lady, she’s not my responsibility. I’ve got my own problems.” He took one step before Kate pulled him back.

  “There isn’t anywhere you can go right now.” Kate squeezed his arm tighter. “Stay with her. Make sure she doesn’t pass out, fall, and hurt herself again. Got it?”

  The man lowered his eyes to the wings on Kate’s pilot uniform. When he lifted them, the tension in his body relaxed, but he still jerked his arm away in defiance. “Yeah, all right.”

  When Kate turned to face the car, the majority of the crowd was already focused on her, watching what she’d done with the old woman. She glanced down at her appearance, wondering if she had blood on herself, but then slowly realized she was the only person on board with a uniform. She was a pilot, and despite the times, that still garnered respect.

  Kate cleared her throat. “Do we have a nurse or doctor on board?”

  A black hand rose above the heads in the very back, and it was followed by a high-pitched voice. “I’m a nurse.”

  Kate waved her forward. “All right, everyone, let her through.”

  With the old woman in better hands, Kate trudged toward the front of the train but then stopped after she instinctively reached for her phone, finding it missing out of her pocket. She spun on her heel, searching the ground for where she’d dropped it, and spotted it under one of the subway seats. She bent down to get it and pressed the home button, but the screen remained black.

  Kate frowned in confusion and pressed it repeatedly, but nothing happened. The crowd around her began examining their own phones in the same frustration. All their devices showed the same black screen.

  The back door to the train car was forced open, and a metro worker stepped through. His girth made him open the manual doors as wide as they could go, and even then he had to sidestep to get inside. “Ladies and gentlemen, please remain calm!” He huffed a labored breath. “Is anyone in need of immediate medical attention?”

  “We have a woman with a concussion.” The nurse stood, a bloodied napkin in her hand. “She needs to be taken to the hospital.”

  “I’m fine, really,” Grace said.

  The metro worker eyed the blood, and a thick gleam of sweat broke out on his forehead. “God. Um, okay. Is there anyone on the train that’s a nurse or a doctor?”

  “She is,” Kate said, pointing to the nurse in scrubs who had just addressed him. “Do you have any communication with the other trains?”

  “Um.” The metro worker licked his lips, the beads of sweat on his face worsening, and then looked back to the eager crowd. “No.”

  The crowd erupted in a series of gasps, groans, and curses. Hands were tossed in the air, and cheeks reddened from anger and the growing cold. The metro worker’s double chin wiggled as he struggled to find his voice among the angered crowd.

  “HEY!” Kate shouted at the top of her lungs. “HEY! LISTEN UP!” The fervor died down, and Kate pushed her way next to the nearest chair where she lifted herself above the crowd. “There isn’t any reason to panic. They have procedures for things like this.” At least she hoped so.

  “My phone isn’t working.” A young man lifted his device high above the heads of the crowd. “Like, it’s not even turning on, and it was working fine before the train stopped.”

  A series of grunted agreements echoed back, and Kate raised her hands to quiet the growing panic. “Mine isn’t working either. I don’t know why, but—”

  The train car rattled violently, and a bright burst of fire and light plumed into the northern sky. Gasps erupted in simultaneous spurts as heads turned toward the explosion. The blast rumbled in Kate’s chest worse than the turbulence in the jet. Kate knew the blast’s origin. It was around LaGuardia.

  2

  The elevated tracks rumbled from the explosion. Every face on the train stared at the rising plume of smoke that blended into the grey clouds that had again begun to spit snow. Once the rumble from the blast subsided, the growing dissent of panic took its place.

  Trench Coat was the first to step through the crowd. He shouldered people aside, his eyes fixated on the metro worker. “Let me off this train, now!” He thrust his gloved finger at the ground, his mouth tightening into a straight line.

  The crowd on the train latched on
to the man’s dissent, waving their broken phones in the air, demanding the same action. The hulking mob circled the metro worker and shoved Kate aside, squeezing her up against the walls with the old woman and the nurse who’d stepped up to help.

  Kate pushed back against the hysteria. “Enough!” The attention turned from the metro worker and back toward her, and she noticed the puffs of icy air from her labored breaths. With the power off, the heat on the train had stopped as well. The cold was already biting through her coat and gloves. “He’s doing everything he can, and he knows just as much as we do.”

  “So what?” Trench Coat flapped his arms at his sides in exasperation. “We’re just supposed to sit and wait for someone to come and get us off this thing?” He pointed toward the explosion. “That was at LaGuardia, which means it was a terrorist attack.”

  The car drew in a simultaneous breath at the word.

  “The power, our phones?” Trench Coat stepped toward Kate, the crowd parting in his path. “It’s all a part of the attack. They’re taking out transportation hubs.” He spread his arms and gestured around them. “What do you think they’re going to hit next?”

  Affirmations of the man’s words rang on the train like bell peals, the tides of consciousness shifting toward madness. Fear brought people toward the edge, inching their toes off the side. It wouldn’t take anything more than a stiff wind to knock them over.

  “You might be right,” Kate said, keeping her voice calm but her volume loud. “But panicking and bickering with each other isn’t going to get us off this train any quicker.”

  Trench Coat stepped backward, and the crowd deflated. Kate pointed toward the window, the faces in the crowd following her finger. “There’s a platform with a railing. It looks wide enough to walk on, and we can follow it down to the station.” She looked to the metro worker for confirmation.

  The big man nodded quickly. “Yeah.” He wiped the snot leaking onto his upper lip and gestured toward the narrow path. “We use it for maintenance. It should be safe.”

  A woman peeled her face off the window, and she tapped the glass, stealing everyone’s attention. “All the cars are stopped. Nothing’s moving down there!”

  The outburst triggered another series of teeth-chattering discord, but Kate clapped her hands together. “Hey! Let’s focus on what happens next, all right? And that’s getting off the metro.”

  Kate stepped from the seat, and the crowd parted as she walked to the metro worker. She pulled him to the side and kept her voice low and the worker close. “Can we open the doors without the power on?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded aggressively. “There are override latches on all the exits. And the electricity in the rails won’t be live since we’re not moving, so we shouldn’t have to worry about anyone getting hurt if they fall.”

  “Except for a broken leg,” Kate muttered to herself and then turned back toward the crowd, their attention split between the scene outside and the back of Kate’s head. “All right, listen up, folks! There are emergency latches on the doors that—” She turned to the metro worker. “What’s your name?”

  “Bud.”

  Kate refaced the crowd. “That Bud is going to show us how to open. The rails won’t be live with electricity, but I still want everyone to act like they are. Anyone who’s sick or hurt is going out first.” She eyed Trench Coat, who had hidden himself back in the crowd. “And anyone healthy enough to assist those people should.”

  Trench Coat rolled his eyes.

  For the moment, the tension thawed. Bud started at the front of the train, letting people off, and then worked his way back. Once Bud had left, the Grace tugged at Kate’s hand.

  “Good job, Captain.”

  Kate smiled. “Thanks. How are you feeling?”

  Grace sighed. “Wishing that I hadn’t lost my license.”

  The pair laughed, and the nurse stepped close. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  The nurse made sure to tuck them into a corner and kept her voice low as they huddled close. “We’ve got a problem.”

  “What is it?” Kate asked.

  “If the roads are blocked, that means emergency services are going to have a hell of a time trying to get anywhere, and that means anyone on board that’s hurt beyond minor cuts and scratches might be in real danger.”

  Kate looked to Grace, who had rested her head back on the glass, gently holding the rag up to her head where she’d been hit. She bit her lip and then looked down to the streets below, which were clogged with stalled traffic. “All right. So what do we do?”

  “If this is a terrorist attack, and from what it looks like, it’s a big one, then that means the National Guard and the Red Cross will be called to help assist. I volunteered for the Red Cross when I first got out of nursing school. Their protocol is to coordinate with emergency services to figure out where they’re needed most. If we can get any of the sick or injured to a police station, we’ll be able to track them down.”

  “There’s a police station on 21st and 35th Ave.” A young man, earbuds still in even though the phone in his hand no longer produced any music, leaned into their conversation and then stepped back when Kate and the nurse glared at him. “Sorry.” He lifted his hands passively. “Didn’t mean to pry.”

  “No, it’s fine,” Kate said, taking a step toward him. “How far of a walk is the station from here?”

  The kid couldn’t have been older than twenty, but he had dark, puffy blotches beneath his eyes. It reminded Kate of scratches on a new car. “Less than a mile.”

  “All right.” Kate turned to the nurse. “We need a count of everyone that needs hospital attention. We’ll make sure those folks have priority off the train and get them to the police station quickly.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “I can help.” The kid finally removed his earbuds and pocketed the phone in his jacket. “Just tell me what you need.”

  “You run up and tell Bud to send anyone down with high-priority injuries or illnesses. Then collect any able-bodied people that can help. Tell them where we’re going. And try to get big guys. We might need the muscle to carry people.”

  “Got it.” The young man darted off through the open car doors and wove his way through the crowded aisles. Kate smiled as he parted. The kid had a good heart. He reminded her of Luke.

  The sudden thought of her son made her worry. Were the attacks isolated to just New York? Then she thought of Holly in the city, stuck in their apartment, alone with Mrs. Dunny. She needed to get home. She needed to make sure her family was safe.

  “Captain!” The kid called her from the second car, slightly out of breath as he jogged to the door. “We’ve got a pregnant woman up front who thinks she might be going into labor and one diabetic that’ll need his insulin shot in about an hour. He doesn’t have any on him, but he has some at home.”

  “Where does he live?”

  The kid sighed. “New Jersey.”

  Kate turned to the nurse. “Will the police station have any medical supplies like insulin?”

  The nurse grimaced. “Maybe, but probably not. The Red Cross will.”

  Kate returned to the kid. “Get the diabetic down here, and the pregnant lady if she can move.” She turned back to the nurse. “You go with the kid and see if she’s actually going into labor. If she is, we’ll need to find a wheelchair if the contractions worsen.”

  “Can you watch her?” The nurse said, handing Kate the bandage she was using for Grace.

  “Sure.” Kate sat next to the woman, who was concentrating very hard on the floor between her feet. She placed a hand on the old woman’s shoulder. “How are you?”

  Grace closed her eyes. “A little dizzy is all.” She swallowed and then slowly leaned back. “Feels like I just went on a merry-go-round.” She chuckled. “Haven’t been on one of those since nineteen fifty-six.” She turned to Kate, still smiling. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  “I’m not fr
om anywhere really.”

  “I imagine you travel a lot,” Grace said, gesturing toward the pilot wings.

  “I do.” It was one of the reasons Kate had become a pilot in the first place. As a young girl, she had dreamed of traveling around the world. Meeting new people, experiencing different cultures, living a life with nothing to her name but a backpack full of clothes and a map. But reality didn’t match up with those dreams.

  The parole meeting suddenly penetrated her thoughts, and Kate shuddered. She pictured Dennis, sitting in that chair in the middle of the room, looking at her. He was always chained by the wrists and ankles, but that never stopped her skin from crawling. Youth had a way of making you pay dearly for your mistakes, and Kate had paid in spades.

  “Dear, are you all right?” Grace asked.

  “Huh?” Kate looked over, slack-jawed, then tried to hide it with a smile. “I’m fine.”

  Grace took hold of Kate’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Thinking of your family? Well, don’t worry. By the time you get back to them, this will all be over.”

  Bud returned from the other train, raising his hands to address the crowd. “We’ve already got people moving. The platform is two blocks to our south. Everyone keep in a single-file line, and move slowly and carefully. No pushing, no running, and make sure you give enough space for the person in front of you.” He walked to Kate and Grace, extending his hand to the elderly woman. “Okay, ma’am. Let’s get you some help.”

  The nurse and the kid returned with the diabetic and the pregnant woman, who cradled her stomach as she waddled through the doors.

  A foot of space separated the metro from the emergency railing, and when Kate brought Grace to the precipice, she wavered. “Sorry. Another dizzy spell.”

  “I’ll go over first.” The kid jumped the gap with ease and held out his arm to help Grace cross. Kate handled her gently, but the kid practically lifted Grace on his own and landed her safely on the emergency walkway.