Fuck Karma

Things that I have going for me:

• I always ride in the last car on the train. I ride there mainly because of laziness. It is the closest to the stairs at both the starting and stopping point.
• The back door of the train was not locked. Sometimes the last car on the brown line can have the operator door closed. Today the door was open.
• I came to work dressed to move boxes. I have on jeans, a t-shirt, my Colombia hiking boots, and I am carrying my hoodie.
• I came to move boxes so I brought my Gerber multi-tool. I use it to cut the shrink wrap on pallets.
• My wife is safely out of the largest population center in the Midwest getting surgery today.
  
  

Things that suck:

• I happen to be 25 blocks from my train home.
• I just leaped from a moving El and gashed my leg pretty bad.
• I’ve studied a western martial art for the better part of 13 years. It just so happens that the martial art in question (1500’s rapier combat) is primarily thrust attacks with a weapon that is basically useless when fighting the living dead, nor do I have access to any sort of weapon that resembles a rapier.
• I should be off today with my wife. The only reason I am in Chicago is because I had to come and unload books. Today was actually the start of a week’s vacation.

I do my best to hobble to the last station. The train continues on and then stops about 50 yards away. The station is close, but the stopped train is closer. People leap from the inside of the last car. No one but me was brave enough to do it before the thing stopped moving, but now I feel like a putz because I am the only one injured from it. The last guy out is hurt pretty bad, grabbing his neck, after him a few undead fall out and regain their footing. The injured man can’t move fast enough, he is descended upon.

I usher those that are ok to follow me. We move quickly to the Sedgwick stop. Some of them are sobbing others can’t believe what is happening, and we move without much talk – all of us are in shock. There are seven of us, two women, 2 children and three men. We make it to the El stop quickly and climb up the side. I turn back to see that the 3 that were feeding on the injured man are following, and the injured man’s death makes it four. I scan the area.

Let me chalk another thing that I have going for me. They are doing construction on this stop and the workers are gone. In fact we are the only ones on the platform but the workers left their tools. I find a small hammer that I quickly drop. I see the nail gun and snatch it up, but the compressor is electric and for some reason it isn’t functioning. I leave it for a small 2 x 4. I swing it once to check its balance. I turn back to the group of living dead when I catch it out of the corner of my eye.

It as if God himself has placed it there for my personal use. Too bad I don’t believe in God. Maybe karma feels bad about what it did to me. In any case the crowbar is exactly what I was looking for. The 2x4 hits the ground, the crowbar is taken up. The survivors of the brown line train have all left the platform. I could run, but judging from the sirens below and all the screams, I am safer up here.

I climb the steps back down to the tracks and start making my way toward them. My leg is bleeding and I think they smell it. They start to move faster and moan louder. I find a place to stand that isn’t separated ties, it is a patch of wood that is solid… I wait.

Cecil