The Sealed Tomb
The silence in the wake of The Voice's announcement was profound. It wasn't a peaceful quiet; it was the silence of a breath held too long, a pressure building behind the ears. The gentle, artificial light illuminating the cabin felt obscene, a cheerful denial of the cataclysm they all knew was happening just beyond the opaque windows.
The only connection to the outside was the rhythmic, hellish pulse of orange light that flared against the darkened polymer every ten or fifteen seconds. Each flash was a silent detonation, bleaching the cabin of all color and casting monstrous, leaping shadows that vanished as quickly as they came.
Lily had buried her face in Sarah's neck, her small body trembling. "I want to go home," she whispered, her voice a muffled sob against Sarah's skin. The words were a knife twisting in Sarah's heart. Home was likely gone.
"Shhh, it's okay, my love. We're safe in here," Sarah murmured, the lie ash in her mouth. She rocked her gently, her eyes locked with Tom's across the table. His face was a mask of stunned disbelief, all traces of his earlier vacation-mode grin completely erased.
"Tom," she said, her voice low and urgent. "What is happening?"
He just shook his head slowly, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed hard. "I don't… I don't know. It doesn't make sense. The scale of it…"
"Forest fires don't look like that," Jake said. He wasn't crying. He was staring, wide-eyed, at the pulsing window, his mind, so adept at video game logic and science facts, trying and failing to process this. "That's not how fire works. It was everywhere. The whole sky."
"Maybe it's a… a refinery fire or something," Tom offered weakly, grasping for an explanation from a world that still had rules. "A big one. A chain reaction."
"A chain reaction that sets the entire horizon on fire?" Sarah's voice was sharper than she intended. The pressure was making her claustrophobic. The train, once a marvel of spacious comfort, now felt like a sealed tube, shrinking by the second.
A sound broke the silence from a few rows ahead—a sharp, ragged intake of breath. The young man with the tattoos, Leo, was on his feet, one hand pressed against the blackened window as if he could feel the heat through it.
"Can anyone get a signal?" he asked, his voice louder than necessary, tinged with a frantic energy. He was holding up his phone, waving its blank screen. "Anything? I've got nothing. No service, no data, nothing."
His question acted as a trigger. All through the car, there was a rustling movement as people pulled out their own devices. Sarah watched as Tom did the same, his brow furrowed as he tapped and swiped.
"Nothing," Tom confirmed, his voice hollow. "It's not just 'no bars.' It's like the phone is dead to the world. No network found."
"The train has Wi-Fi!" a woman's voice called out from behind them. "The brochure said it has satellite Wi-Fi!"
People began fumbling with the touchscreens on the seatbacks, navigating to the network settings. Sarah watched the elegant older woman, Christina Garcia, perform the task with precise, controlled movements. Her face remained impassive, but Sarah saw the slight tremor in her finger as she tapped the screen.
After a moment, she looked up, her sharp eyes meeting Sarah's for a brief second before scanning the car. "The network is present," she announced, her voice clear and carrying. "But it will not connect. It times out every time."
A low groan of collective despair rippled through the cabin. Their last tether to the outside world, to news, to loved ones, to answers, was severed. They were utterly alone, blind, and deaf, racing through a nightmare.
"Why won't it stop?" a man's voice boomed. It was the sharp-faced businessman from the platform. He had stood up, his face flushed with anger and fear. "Why are we still moving? Conductor! Someone! We need to stop this train!"
As if summoned by the demand, the door at the end of the car hissed open. A man in a Northstar conductor's uniform stepped through. He wasn't the cheerful man who had taken their tickets. This man was older, his face pale and sheened with a fine sweat, his uniform cap clutched in his hands. His name tag read "P. Evans."
"Please, everyone, remain calm," he said, but his voice lacked the unflappable polish of The Voice. It was strained, human.
"Calm?" the businessman spat, taking a step toward him. "Our windows just turned into walls and you want us to be calm? What is happening out there?"
Conductor Evans held up a placating hand. "We are following standard safety protocols. The external atmosphere has been deemed temporarily unsuitable."
"Unsuitable?" Leo echoed, a hysterical laugh bubbling under the word. "Man, the world is on fire! I saw it! We all saw it! 'Unsuitable' is for a little rain!"
"What are the protocols?" Christina Garcia asked, her voice cutting through the emotional outburst with cool logic. "Specifically. What is the criteria for enacting them, and what is the procedure now?"
The conductor looked grateful for a rational question. "The train's sensors detected a rapid and extreme rise in ambient external temperature, combined with a dangerous particulate count. Protocol Alpha-2 is an automated response. The train will not stop. Stopping would compromise the integrity of the internal environment. Our priority is to reach the next secure terminal."
"What terminal?" Tom asked, standing up now too, putting himself between the anxious conductor and his family. "Silver Creek? What makes you think it's any better there than what we just left?"
Evans's composure cracked further. "I… I don't know, sir. My orders are to ensure passenger calm and well-being until we reach a designated safe point."
"Your orders from who?" the businessman demanded. "Get on your radio! Talk to someone! Find out what's going on!"
A look of profound helplessness passed over the conductor's face. "The comms… the long-range systems are down. We have internal train comms only. We can't… we can't reach anyone."
The finality of that statement sucked the remaining air out of the room. The conductor wasn't in control. The Voice wasn't in control. They were on a ghost train, running on pre-programmed instructions into the heart of an inferno, with no one at the helm.
The orange light pulsed again, brighter and longer this time. In its stark, momentary glare, Sarah saw the true face of everyone in the car. She saw the conductor's raw fear. She saw the businessman's impotent rage. She saw Leo's frantic, artistic despair. She saw Christina Garcia's icy, controlled terror. She saw her husband's protective fury. And she saw her son's brilliant, terrified mind trying to solve an unsolvable equation.
The light faded. The soft, fake daylight of the cabin returned.
The train sped on, its steady, high-speed hum now sounding like the monotonous dirge of a funeral procession. They were in the tunnel now. A tunnel of fire, and of fear. And there was no light at the end of it.