Unease hung in the air. I glanced at my watch.
Twenty-three twenty-two.
– Young man, is “Kashirskaya” next? – asked the girl sitting next to me.
— Yes.
— Could we have missed it?
— Maybe.
Nothing surprised me anymore. Nothing except one thing: who needed me to be born in an unpredictable country at an unpredictable time. Everything else was small stuff, including a train that had lost its way in the metro.
— What the hell is this! — a woman’s shriek tore through the rattle of the wheels.
The shrieking came from a woman of ripe years, a mane of chestnut hair above a turquoise blouse strewn with sequins.
— Indeed, what the hell? — a man of intellectual appearance — tie around his neck — backed her up.
Those two phrases struck a spark of panic. Passengers jumped to their feet, started yanking the emergency brake, pounding on the glass and forcing their way toward the drivers.
The frantic ones drew attention. The quick-witted ones tried to work out who was driving the train.
Nobody managed anything.
The emergency brake turned out to be a dummy. Within a minute the ones pounding on the glass had had enough of it. The door to the drivers’ cab wouldn’t open.
— Open up, you bastards! — shrieked the most active of those pounding on the cab door. — I need to get off! Ah!!! Open the door!!!
— We gotta tear this fucking door off its hinges! — the collective decision lent purpose to their actions.
Three men lined up at the door. The biggest of the crowd, in a beige windbreaker and police-issue trousers with thin red stripes, took a step back… paused… and, with a running start, kicked the lock!!! The door cracked but didn’t open.
Screw it!
Another kick! And another!
Crack! Crack! Bam!!!
The door burst open and… damn it!... No one! Absolutely no one!!! The cab was empty and dark.
I couldn’t see from where I sat, but the reaction of the ones who’d broken in said it all!
— Who’s driving this train? Where are we going? Huh?!
Hysteria swept the carriage. With a shout of either “let it go” or “let me out!” someone smashed a window… and then what?...
Nothing.
Stale air crept into the carriage and the panic subsided. The passengers slumped onto the benches like miners after a Stakhanovite shift.
Time went on. The wheels clattered. The carriage swayed. Runaway Train raced onward.
