Read Sunfail for Free Online

himself than the conductor. And it didn’t. Even if something had cut the power to the subway, if there’d been some colossal clusterfuck in the control room or the entire grid had gone down, their radios should have been okay. They were battery-operated. He tried to think. Cell phone signals were mostly a myth down in the subway tunnels, but the MTA radios ran through transponders that were set up throughout the system. They were specifically designed to work down here. But what worried him most was that if the transponders weren’t connecting then they had a much bigger problem than just a blown fuse.
    “We can’t sit here with our thumbs up our asses. We’re going nowhere, so we’ve got to ship everyone out,” Luis stated the obvious. Sometimes you had to help yourself. It was standard protocol for a stalled train, and they were almost at the next station anyway. Even so, it took balls to insist on evacuating the train and traipsing through the dark tunnel to the platform. No one was going to be happy.
    “Right,” Jake nodded. “I’ll work my way back, let people know.”
    Luis followed him into the car’s main compartment, pushing through the commuters to the first set of doors. He unlocked them manually. Jake helped him tug the doors open, then turned toward the far end, ready to do the same thing in the next car.
    Behind him, he heard Luis call out above the miasma of grunts and complaints, “Okay, people, listen up! We’re going to evacuate the train. I need everyone to proceed toward me in an orderly fashion, nice and steady. There’s no rush, no one’s in danger. We’re maybe fifty feet from the platform. No need to push and shove. Just start walking toward me, take your time, and we’ll all be out before you know it. Sorry for the inconvenience, but let’s not make this any more difficult than it needs to be, okay?”
    Jake left the other man to it, moving through the narrow connection point from one car to the next. When the subway was in motion there was a certain thrill to it, being literally outside the train while it was hurtling down the tracks. Now it was a lot less exciting, but considerably spookier with the lights off in both directions and no distant rumbles of other trains moving through the tunnels nearby. That was odd.
    There was always noise down here.
    The silence was the eeriest thing of all.
    Jake entered the next car. A couple of cops were trying to keep everyone calm. He pushed his way through to them. It was already getting sweaty in there. Cramped bodies, uncomfortably hot conditions. “We’re evacuating the train,” he said. “If you guys could guide everybody through to the front car, we’ve got the first set of doors open. The conductor’s leading the short walk to the Times Square platform.”
    “Got it,” the shorter of the pair replied. He was a bull of a man with a notable absence of neck.
    The taller cop, a woman with close-cropped blond hair and angular cheekbones, frowned as her radio picked up nothing but static on the airwaves. “Any idea what’s up with the radios?” she asked.
    “Your guess is as good as mine.” The police radios worked on the same transponders as the MTA’s equipment, which should have made them rock-solid down here. “Someone will be working on it, though. They won’t like us being incommunicado. People get antsy when they feel stranded down here.”
    The cops nodded.
    Jake parted ways with them, continuing on down the length of the train.
    He found another MTA worker, the secondary conductor, midway down, and another set of cops in the final car. Between the six of them they were able to get everyone moving in an orderly fashion and keep the panic down to a bare minimum. Most of the commuters, once they were told it was just an electrical problem, settled into the usual monotony of gripes about the MTA screwing up yet again. Jake was cool with that. Better to bitch and moan than panic in the confined space of the tunnels. What