It was almost a year into his employment when 'the incident' happened. 'The incident' is what the driver called it. 'The Incident' is what the other ticket attendants called it. 'The Incident' is what the management called it. 'The Incident' is not what the media called it.
The media called it a terrorist attack: 12 wounded and 1 dead. A ticket attendant – a teenager – his name was Thomas. He saved us, he saved all of us.
***
A man in a suit walked casually onto the train at 5.15pm as though he was coming back from work. Maybe he was. We may never know. He put his backpack down next to where he was standing. He got off the train three stops later and was not seen again. He left his backpack behind.
***
It was the middle of Thomas' shift and the middle of the train carriage in the middle of the train. Thomas was checking the passengers' tickets and scribbling confirmation on them. Thomas almost did not notice the backpack.
The black, nondescript backpack sat innocently on the floor. A young girl sat on the ground next to it. Thomas assumed the backpack was hers and continued down the train. He did not worry at all until near the end of his shift when he walked through the carriage and the backpack was still there. The young girl was nowhere in sight.
***
The train driver drove the train, as he always does, thinking about that ticket attendant. He was a good kid, a hard worker. He'd made his ambitions clear. It probably wouldn't even be long now before the management offered him training to be a driver. The train driver wondered if he'd be the one to train him. It had been a while since he'd had an apprentice.
***
Thomas double checked with the driver who told him to phone the British Transport Police. Thomas did what he was told and they told him to evacuate the area and stop the train. Thomas told the driver to stop the train. But the driver could not stop. The breaks would not work and the train sped on.
Thomas froze in fear as he watched the scenery hurtle past in a green, blue and grey blur with no hope of stopping. No hope of slowing down. No hope at all. No. Hope. Thomas felt icy terror sliver down his spine, his hand gripped so tightly to the top of the driver's seat that he could feel it cramping. If they could not stop the train, Thomas would die. Thomas and the driver would die. Thomas and the driver and all of the passengers would die.
Thomas stared at his last moments in the eye and decided that fear would not define them.
***
It wasn't often that the British Transport Police had an emergency call, but today was that day.
'Evacuate the area. Stop the train. We'll send someone out immediately.'
'What do you mean the train won't stop?'
'The train will not stop. The train will not stop.'
'The train will not...'
The phoneline breaks.
***
'It's idiocy. It's ridiculous. It's lunacy!' The train driver shouted.
It was the only plan they had, however. It was a good thing Thomas loved trains more than anything. It was a good thing he knew so much about them. It was a good thing he knew exactly what was wrong and how to fix it. The only bad thing was that he needed to get to the outside of the train. To the underside of the train. Thomas put a wrench in his mouth and climbed quickly out of the window without giving the driver any time to argue.
The force of the wind almost pushed Thomas straight off the train and into the tracks, but he clung on by the tips of his fingers. He clamped down hard on the wrench with his teeth, flinching at the metal scraping against his gums. Thomas clawed slowly, achingly forward towards the front of the train, where there would be no wheels to get flung under. Once he reached it, he was forced flat against the front of the train. It took Thomas a few tries to slip himself under the train to be able to see the underside of the carriage. He clung onto the carriage with trembling arms, hooking his feet into any holds he could find.
Clinging desperately with one arm, Thomas removed the wrench from his mouth and set himself to work.
***
Thomas' manager reviewed his employee files and found one of them stood out above the rest. Thomas seemed to be the best candidate for the programme to train as a train driver. He picked up the phone and rang Thomas' number. It rang and rang and rang. Thomas did not pick up. At that time, Thomas was already dead.
***
Thomas finished his work and climbed back into the carriage as quickly as possible, which wasn't very quickly at all. Once he reached the open window, the driver grabbed the back of his shirt with a large hand and hoisted him back onto the train.
'Take a seat, take a break, your job here's done,' remarked the driver.
Thomas' job was not done. He stood on shaky legs and tossed the wrench to the floor. Thomas would evacuate the carriage the suspicious backpack sat in. The backpack seemed even more suspicious as the breaks had been messed with.
He made his way to carriage C and, using the speaker, made an announcement, 'Please evacuate carriages B, C and D. Please proceed to carriage A or carriages E and F. Please do NOT go through carriage C. Stay on your side of the train. This is not a drill. There is a suspicious package in carriage C. Please remain calm and make your way to the end of the train.'
Everyone, predictably, did not remain calm.
***
'It could've been my son!' said a woman on the news when interviewed. Her son had been on the train where 'the incident' happened an hour before.
'It could've been my sister!' said a girl, sobbing at school. Her twin sister had been severely injured in the attack, although the injuries were non-fatal.
'It could've been me,' the train driver whispered as he sat at the dinner table with his wife and their three children and stared into the distance.
'It could have been me.
It could've been anyone.
It was not them.
It was not anyone.
It was Thomas.'
***
Pushing, shoving and pulling fits overcame the crowd and somehow it seemed carriage C was more crowded than ever. Thomas could not help but count the people in the crowded compartment. Twelve. Twelve people not including Thomas. Unlucky number thirteen.
In the rush and the panic and the confusion somebody knocked the backpack over.
The backpack's contents spilled out.
***
'I killed him, I killed him, I killed him. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I killed him, I killed him, I killed him,' she was crying. She had knocked the backpack over. It was an accident. It didn't matter. The outcome was the same as if it was on purpose.
The bomb sat on the floor, a comically movie-like timer attached to it. Red numbers ticked away, counting down.
00:13
Unlucky number thirteen. That was not enough time. That was not nearly enough time.
***
'What time did Thomas say he'd be home tonight, Jack?'
'He's working late, remember? He won't be home for a while. There's no reason to panic.'
***
'Everybody get back! Get back!' Thomas shouted.
The crowd pushed back against the walls and against the doors and attempted to force through the throng of people in the connected carriages.
00:03
Thomas heard the beeping and flung himself forward, fully covering the bomb with his own body. Nobody else would die. Just Thomas. He only had time for a moment of panic followed by relief before the pain and then the nothingness.
***
'He was my son,' a mother cried.
'He was my brother,' a sister sobbed.
'He was my boyfriend,' a teenager rasped through tears.
'He was my best friend,' a girl wrote in a diary.
He was gone.
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