Car Troubles

James' consciousness slowly returned to him like a fog lifting over the mountains. His fingertips slowly rubbed the carpet underneath his sprawled body. He felt the vibrations of machinery on his cheek and heard the chugging of a train. He opened his eyes and realized he was lying on a thin red and blue carpet with the base of a wooden bar table in front of him. He blinked a few times trying to take in all these inputs when his head started pounding.

James groaned in pain and touched the source on the back of his head and felt blood oozing from a wound.

“What the hell?” James remarked, still attempting to understand what was going on.

James slowly stood up, holding his bleeding head, and looked around him. He was on a train car that was set up for dining. There were tables, chairs, plates, and silverware strewn around the room as if there was a recent stampede through the car. He was standing in front of a tan wooden bar with napkins and various half empty glasses across the top. He slowly shuffled his way behind the bar and found a towel on the ground. He instinctively picked it up and wrapped it around his head to control the bleeding.

After securing the towel on his head, ensuring plenty of pressure was felt on his wound, he picked up a glass with a sip of whisky left and shot it down. He signed as the sweet, smokey liquid burned down his throat.

James looked down at himself and saw he was wearing his khaki pants, brown loafers, blue and white plaid shirt, and his navy-blue sport coat. He recognized all his clothes, but had no memory getting dressed this morning.

He continued to look around the chaotic room and saw cables dangling in front of the windows. The train had white walls with gray trim, with various symbols and signs for safety and navigation. He looked out the window and saw a forested landscape blurred as the train sped along. He could tell this was a long distance passenger train judging from the landscape and the fact it had a dining car.

“Why am I on a train? Where are all the people?” James said aloud.

James had no memory of boarding a train or planning a train trip or anything that would require him to be on a train. He had no clue where he was, but he knew he was nowhere close to home. James was having a challenging time remembering a lot of things. To spark his memory, he felt around his pockets and felt his wallet in his back right pocket but bumped his hand on a solid object on his belt.

He lifted his sport coat and revealed a black handgun seated in a holster attached to his belt. James looked at the gun inquisitively, not remembering why he had it. Did I always carry a gun? Am I robbing the train? That doesn’t sound right, James thought through his pounding headache.

With a throbbing and confused head, James stumbled his way to the door separating the cars and opened it. He stepped outside onto the small exterior walkway in between the cars. The rushing wind of the fast-moving train refreshed him slightly as he continued to slowly regain full consciousness.

James looked through the window leading to the next car and saw two men in dark, tactical clothes holding submachine guns. They were pointing their guns at a few dozen passengers sitting in the seats with their hands on their heads.

James instinctively squatted down and positioned himself so that he was not visible through the window. The sudden burst of adrenaline dulled the pain in his head and his heart started racing. The destroyed dining car now made sense and one of the gunmen must have knocked him out, causing his temporary amnesia.

James still did not remember anything from today, but he knew he had to do something. He remembered the gun on his hip and as soon as he thought of it, like a machine, he quickly unholstered his sidearm and pressed the slide back slightly to reveal the brass shell of a bullet secured in the chamber.

At the completion of this action, memories flowed back into his mind like a torrent of water. Memories of James manipulating different weapons, shooting various targets in various situations, sitting in a classroom learning about various attributes of firearms, all flooded his head. This resulted in another intense headache. James couldn’t quite remember the context of his apparent training but he remembered having some.

The pain in his head eventually subsided and he refocused on the situation, with newfound comfort that he had some training for these situations.

James slid the door open as quietly as he could. He saw that there was a small luggage compartment right beyond the door before the passenger seats. James inched his way through the door staying low and trying not to make a sound. Deep in his mind he felt the need to stay behind some sort of cover, as his training dictated. Following his instinct, James quietly moved to the left side of the luggage room.

He successfully made it without causing much sound. He then peeked around the compartment to see the gunmen. They had masks over their faces and were wearing black cargo pants and long-sleeve black shirts. Their gloved hands held intimidating looking guns that were going back and forth, ensuring compliance of the car full of terrified passengers.

James took a deep breath and thought. What the hell am I doing? Should I even get involved?

James was still combating the deep confusion of the whole situation, but something was drawing him to action.

James took another deep breath and leaned farther beyond the luggage compartment and raised his pistol towards the gunmen.

With confident confusion James spoke up saying, “Uh hey…what's going on here guys?”

The gunmen turned their heads towards James and after a moment of confusion from them, the passengers, and James himself; the gunmen pointed their guns at James yelling in a foreign language.

At the same instant the gunmen raised their weapons towards James, James automatically fired two rounds towards both of them. The loud cracks of the gunshots caused screams to pour in throughout the car. One of the submachine guns erupted and the clinks of bullets hitting metal sounded above.

After the moment of chaos there was a deafening silence, and the smell of gunpowder filled the air. James barely understood what occurred, but as his realization returned, he saw that the two gunmen were silently prone in the hallway of the car. The passengers held their breath in terror and confusion.

After a moment, James stood up and ran over to the gunmen’s bodies and looked at their lifeless eyes through the masks. He quickly looked around at a car full of frightened passengers staring at James with expectation.

“Is everyone ok?” James said as he looked around. No one seemed injured, bleeding, or otherwise hurt and received no response from his question.

After a few additional silent moments, he took his opportunity to ask, “What the hell is going on around here?”

Another moment of angst passed as the dumfounded passengers assessed the situation. Eventually a woman broke through wall of silence and said, “Terrorist have taken over the train! A bunch of men came through the train shortly after we departed and took us all into this car. We don’t know what they are doing but they had guns and bags and they were cutting all the brakes!” The woman pointed up at the dangling wires by the windows.

“Oh…wow,” James muttered under his breath. He examined the bodies of the terrorist again wondering what he got himself into.

He looked back at the lady representing the former prisoners and asked, “They didn’t say what they want? Did they hurt anyone?”

The woman shook her head and said, holding back tears, “No, they just started screaming at us and pointing guns in our faces. They gathered us into this car and didn’t say anything.”

“Weird…” James said quietly as he shook his head. He had no clue what he was doing here or what to do next, but as he stood in the center of a train car of terrified people next to two bodies of terrorists he just killed, he felt a little responsible for solving this problem.

Trying to figure out what a competent person would do in this situation James asked, “Did any of them look like a leader or someone in charge?”

James looked at the vocal woman expecting her to know the answer, but she looked away. He then scanned the car when a man spoke up frantically explaining, “There was one guy who was tall, and he didn't have a big gun or a bag and looked like he was giving orders!”

James was not very amused by the vague description and decided to follow up, “Ok, well could you be a little more descriptive? Did he have an evil hat, or an evil coat, or like a shirt that said, ‘I’m the boss’ or something like that?”

The man had a confused look on his face, not sure if James was joking or serious and stuttered out, “Um...I think he had like a suit, uh…like a business suit…not like these guys” The man gestured at the bodies at James’ feet.

“Ok, got it, movie villain,” James muttered as he realized he was not getting more information from the crowd.

James holstered his pistol and picked up one of the submachine guns from the dead terrorists as he figured the more firepower the better. Again, James instinctively pulled the bolt back slightly to view a chambered round and sent it forward with a loud mechanical clink. He figured that carrying two of these guns would not be practical, so he looked around at the growing less terrified and more concerned passengers and said, “Anyone know how to use a gun?”

James paused as he surveyed the even more concerned car of passengers and failed to elicit a response. “Well, there’s another gun here if anyone wants it to, you know, defend yourself. Try not to shoot me though,” James said with a slightly annoyed tone.

With that last comment he stepped around the bodies of the terrorists and started towards what he assumed was the front of the train. Before he opened the door a voice cried from the back of the car, “Who are you?”

James stopped and turned around in the doorway of the car and said confidently, “I don’t know,” and headed off into the next car.

Shortly after James opened the door to the next car, he heard someone yelling, “Wait!”

James turned around and saw a man wearing a dark blue employee uniform running towards him. The man opened the door and said frantically, “These people were cutting the passenger brakes to the train. That must mean they are trying to create a runaway train for some reason. You must make it to the control console at the front of the train and stop it. I work on this train, and we were told that if the train becomes a runaway, you must move the red speed lever down and press down and rotate the emergency brake valve clockwise to stop the train. Otherwise, we are all going to die.”

James took in the hurried and complex explanation from the train employee and said, “Hey, what about you coming with me and taking care of all of that stuff?”

The man returned a surprised, confused, and terrified look and stuttered, “But, but they have guns and are trying to kill us…I can’t, I can’t go with you!”

James, slightly annoyed, returned, “Well there is another gun back there. You can take that, and we can stop this train together. Sounds like a plan?”

The train employee continued staring at James with sheer terror at the thought of fighting the terrorists. He could not make out any reasons not to join James, but just shook his head in disbelief at being asked such an absurd question.

James, realizing this man was not going to help, gave a disappointed head shake and said, “Well if I screw up the brakes and kill us all, it's your fault.” And then turned and hurried off towards the front of the train, leaving the dumbfounded employee standing at the doorway.

James quickly made it through the next train car, struggling to move through the small space between the rows blue upholstered seats. As he entered the next car, his lingering thoughts returned about why he was in this train and how he knew how to do all this fighting. A sudden thought to check his wallet for a train ticket came. He laid down the gun he was carrying on a small table between a set of four blue seats and reached into his back pocket to pull out his wallet. When he opened the wallet, he saw a gold shield with an eagle on top on the left side of his wallet reading “Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

With searing pain piercing his head, he quickly grabbed his towel wrapped head as a flurry of memories returned. Memories of his training, driving, shooting, interrogating. All the missions he served suddenly emerged. The flood of memories stopped as quickly as it began.

“Oh, that's right!” James exclaimed aloud. The memories of him being a Special Agent for the FBI were suddenly clear and understood, as if he never forgot. However, even with the returning memories, James still did not know why he was on this train. He opened the folds of his wallet and saw some cash, his Washington D.C. driver’s license, a debit and credit card, and a few other random cards but no train ticket or anything indicating what he was doing here.

James took a moment to regain his composure and let the onset headache from the return of his memories subside. He took a deep breath and picked up his borrowed submachine gun. It was clear to James what he had to do, but he was still deeply frustrated at not knowing how he got himself into this mess.

James continued to make his way through the cars, each one ransacked with cut cables dangling on the sides. He knew that he would be closing in on the head car where the control center should be. He opened the door leading to the outdoor walkway between the cars and saw three figures standing in a smaller car that must have been the control center. He peeked in carefully and saw the windshield revealing where the train was heading. James noticed the previous forested terrain that the train was traversing started to show more buildings. We must be getting closer to wherever this train is heading, James thought to himself.

He saw one of the men staring out the front windshield standing behind an assortment of buttons, dials, and levers. He was wearing a business suit with his arms crossed. One of the other terrorists, in the black tactical garb like the recently deceased, was taking strange metal and plastic looking objects out of a bag and handing them to the other tactically dressed goon who was placing them in seemingly strategic locations.

James realized that those metal and plastic objects must be some sort of bomb. They are planning on running this train into something and blowing it up… James thought as he attempted to produce a plan.

I don’t know what kind of bombs those are but shooting at them is probably not a promising idea. James thought with his recently remembered status as a federal agent gave some comforting competency to his decision making.

James knew he had to act fast, and he did not want to trigger a premature explosion with a gunfight, so he came up with a plan.

James cracked open the sliding door to the control car and yelled, “Agent Nelson, FBI! You all are definitely under arrest!”

James quickly shut the door and leaned away as a volley of bullets shattered the small glass window and ripped through the metal door in his direction. When there was a pause in the barrage of bullets, James opened the opposite door and ran into the car behind the control car.

James positioned himself on top of one of the passenger seats to the side of the hallway and readied himself, hoping some of the terrorists would chase after him.

As planned, one of the tactically dressed terrorists opened the door and ran in with his gun pointed down the car. James quickly jumped on the terrorist shoving his own submachine gun into the terrorist’s neck. James drove his knee into the terrorist twice, attempting to get the terrorist to lose his grip on his own gun. The terrorists looked at James with fury and pain from the knee strikes, trying to breath with James’ gun driving into his throat.

In a desperate attempt, the terrorist fired a volley down the car from his submachine gun. The deafening roar of bullets made James’ ears start ringing in pain and the terrorist capitalized on that moment and pushed James off. James fell back onto the seat he jumped from and quickly pointed his gun at the terrorist and squeezed the trigger, releasing a barrage of bullets into the terrorist.

The terrorist stood there in a moment of shock as blood started steaming out of the half dozen holes in his chest and fell backwards. James' adrenaline was through the roof and his hearing went dull and he could barely feel his fingers. He closed his eyes and took three deep breaths as his senses returned to him.

James stood up and looked at the hallway to the door leading to the control car and saw another terrorists standing there. James dived towards the body of the dead terrorists as another volley of bullets ripped across the car. Losing the element of surprise, James quickly rolled off the body onto the ground in between the seats.

He brought his knees up and readied a foot. The terrorist ran further into the car pointing his gun towards the seat James dived on but paused as he saw his dead ally. James seized the pause and drove his foot into the kneecap of the terrorist causing him to fall onto the ground. James quickly pushed himself up off the floor and mounted the body of the recently fallen terrorist and drove the stock of his machine gun into the masked face of the terrorist repeatedly. James pinned the arm of the terrorist that was hold his weapon with his knee and continued striking him until he felt the terrorist’s body stop resisting. Once James saw the masked face of the terrorist fall to the side and blood ooze through the black fabric of the cotton mask, he stopped his assault.

James got off the body and sat down on the passenger seats opposite of his deceased opponents and took several deep breaths to regain his composure. “One left,” James panted to himself in between breaths.

With a large exhale James picked himself up and headed towards the door that led to the control car. He opened the door to the exterior portion between cars and quickly made his way to the damaged door to the control car. He glanced through the broken window and saw the terrorist leader setting more bombs around the car. James slid open the door and held his gun at the terrorist who was crouching grabbing another bomb from the bag and said, “It’s over Hans, put your hands up.”

The terrorist looked at James with surprise and dropped the bomb he was holding in his hand, which made James wince. The terrorist leader was not wearing a mask like his henchmen, revealing his black hair, oiled and in a comb over. He had black goatee and looked to be in his 40s. His charcoal suit looked tailor-fit and recently pressed. He wore a white shirt and a black and gold pinstripe tie.

The terrorist stood up and looked at James with determined anger saying in an accent, “You cannot stop this. It’s too late.”

As the terrorist spoke, James glanced out the front window and saw the landscape quickly turning into a city. He knew that he had to act fast to stop this train.

With James’ gun trained on him, the terrorist said, “You American pigs think you can run the world. Destroy our homes and lives with no consequences. Well, we are going to show you how it feels to fear, to burn, to die. To have your comfort and safety taken away…”

The terrorist droned on as James tried to think of a way to get this man under control and stop the train.

“I’m sorry to hear about your concerns, would you like a complaint card?” James said sarcastically.

The terrorist fumed with anger at remark and started a rebuke when James yelled, “Holy crap! What's that!” pointing out the window behind the terrorist. To James’ amazement the terrorist reacted by glancing behind. James took the advantage of the moment and threw is submachine gun at the terrorist leader. The body of the gun hit the terrorist square in the face just as he turned back, and James quickly followed by charging and throwing a solid right hook at the terrorist’s jaw.

The blows stunned the terrorist and he fell to the side as James followed with a knee to the abdomen. The enraged terrorist leader quickly retaliated by grabbing onto James. The terrorist clinched James in a powerful hold and swept his legs. James, constricted by the terrorist’s grasp, fell onto the floor from the sweep and found himself underneath the terrorist leader. The terrorist then grabbed onto James’ throat and started choking him.

James instinctively grabbed onto the terrorist’s hands around his throat as his attempts to breath proved impossible. Quickly, James took his right knee and drove it into the backside of the terrorist, connecting with his balls. The terrorist screamed in pain and went limp for a second, in which James took the opportunity to push the terrorist off himself. James started coughing through the burning pain in his throat and rolled over to his side. James slowly stood up, breathing as much as he could, and turned around to see the terrorist leader slowly standing up as well.

The two looked at each other with pain and fury. James was able to strike first and sent a front kick squarely on the terrorist’s chest sending him back towards the door to the exterior of the car. The door was barely hanging on after the previous barrage of bullets and the recent impact. James charged at the terrorist again and sent his whole body weight onto the terrorist which broke the door causing them both to crash onto the exterior platform between the cars.

They both stood up and felt the rushing wind of the runaway train. James could hear helicopters above the train but remain fixated on the terrorist. The terrorist leader was the first to react this time and shoved James up against the guardrail protecting them from falling off the train. James could feel the top of the guardrail pressing into his back as the terrorist was trying to push him over the top. James grabbed the arms of the terrorist and using all his might to stay on the platform.

James’s legs were like concrete, and his abdomen muscles were burning trying to keep himself upright. James’ arms locked into the terrorist’s arms trying to push back with all he had. James knew he could not hold out for much longer, so he decided to use his head. James drove his forehead into the face of the terrorist which released the tension and caused the terrorist to stumble backward.

James the quickly threw back his jacket, pulled out his pistol, and from his hip fired three rounds into the terrorist. The cracks of the gunshots were muted by the rushing train and the impact of the bullets tore into the terrorist’s chest, sending him back to the guardrail on the other side.

The terrorist eyes filled with terror as his suit started to steep with red blood. James stumbled forward and with righteous vengeance in his eyes said, “This is your stop.” And kicked the terrorist leader over the top of the guardrail. The terrorist body quickly dissipated from sight as the rushing train continued along its path.

James, physically exhausted from the fights, looked back into the control room and saw a train station quickly approaching with another train stopped on the tracks in the distance.

James cursed under his breath, holstered his pistol, and stumbled into the control room frantically searching for the lever and valve explained by the train employee. He stood behind the swivel seat where he figured the driver would be and saw a lever with a red handle seated in a panel with numbers. He grabbed the lever and yanked it backwards which jarred the speeding momentum of the train. James lurched forward slightly as the train reduced its speed, but this runaway train was still rapidly approaching the stopped train in front of him.

James searched for the emergency brake and found a large red button with black text above it reading “Emergency Brake Valve.” James smashed the button and wrenched it clockwise. The train screamed at the application of the brakes, forcing James’ body into the controls. The sudden stopping of the train drove buttons and levers into his side and glued his face to the window. The bombs located around the car fell and smacked James and the control board as the sudden shift in momentum forced everything in the car towards the front.

“This is fun…” James sighed in pain as bombs were falling on him and his body adhered to the metal control console. James was able to see from one eye the quickly approaching stopped train on the tracks in front of him. James squeezed his eyes shut as the screaming train’s momentum slowly normalized and reached a stop.

James fell onto his back as the pressure of the stopping train relieved. The bombs and bags containing them rolled around the floor around James. As soon as the train reached a complete stop, he could hear a swarm of people yelling and running into the train.

James assumed that since he was not on fire or in multiple pieces that the train avoided smashing into the stopped train at the station.

A woman came through the hole that previously held the door to the control car and yelled, “Nelson! Are you ok!”

James had no desire to have a conversation with anyone at the moment, but he looked behind him and saw a Black woman with neat hair in a blue FBI jacket staring at him with concern and amazement.

“Uh yea, not too bad,” James groaned as he sat up and faced the woman. James did not know who this person was or why she cared about his well-being, but judging by the jacket she probably was a coworker.

The woman shook her head and came closer. She crossed her arms and said in a sassy tone, “You gave us all quite the scare. Why the hell didn’t you follow the communication protocols? A simple update would have been great, instead of you shooting up the train without a word.”

James had no clue what this woman was talking about, and his head started to pound from her excessive nagging.

The woman in the FBI jacket sighed and said, “Well…I guess you still accomplished the mission. You saved a lot of lives today.”

At the word “mission” flashbacks started flooding into his head. Reading over material of a terrorist cell growing in Minneapolis, listening to intel of a planned attack, sitting at a conference table receiving a mission briefing. All the sudden, James realized that he was assigned the mission to stop these terrorists from blowing up Chicago Union Station. And that the woman talking to him was the Special Agent In-Charge of the mission, Agent Monica Harris.

In partial amusement and shock, James replied, “Yea…I guess everything worked out.”

Monica shook her head and said, “Well you got a lot of explaining to do at the debrief.”

Then, with a sudden curious look at James, Monica said, “Why do you have a towel on your head?”