The Crashers

Chapter One

I.

The train crashed at 9:17 a.m. in a thump of metal pieces and breaking bone. That was when Kyle Jeong realized something was going wrong on the crosstown L Line.

Before that moment in the last car of the train bound for Camden, it had been an uneventful Monday morning. The car had its usual sickly-sweet odor of perfume, sweat, and vomit. The rest of the passengers were in step with Kyle’s expectations: positioned from one side of the car to the other, mindful of the space they inhabited. East Brighton City was a careful city where everyone knew their places, their stations. Space was important, especially on the train.

A middle-aged businessman and his thousand-dollar suit stood at the overhead rail, salt and pepper at his temples and well-manicured beard. He looked miserable as he ignored the hollowed-out, blond man seated diagonally from him, who looked at the older man from the corner of his eye. Twenty-something, he was a poor man’s James Dean with softened features and tattered, red kicks. He’d been tugging at the dog tags around his neck since the last stop.

The blond was also ignored by the tired waitress sitting two rows over, her lean legs crossed and honey eyes turned down. She played a game on her phone and tapped a slender foot on the ground. Ketchup and mustard were smeared on the edges of her faded-black apron. Behind her, a slip of a girl with a head of meticulous, black curls sat in a sleeveless, floral dress. Her long, dark body was made of elegant lines and bony junctures. She hugged her textbooks to her chest like a mother would her child. In the middle of the train stood a little girl with long, brown hair and a white dress. She looked around at the other passengers and smiled. No one seemed to notice her; she didn’t seem to belong to any of them.

Kyle sat silently amid them in his cheap clearance-rack suit, itchy at the sleeves that rode too high on his tattooed wrists. By 9:08, he was already sweating, feeling the fool he must have looked in his Oxford collar and blue, double-knot tie. Blue because blue meant truth and loyalty. It stood for all those things that potential employers liked to hear about in their white, sterile offices high above Camden—where he couldn’t afford to buy a sandwich, let alone live.

How Kyle had gotten the interview in the first place was beyond him. The call came from his buddy, Ben, who, with his toothy smile and weak work ethic, still drank his paychecks away at the same bar they used to haunt back at the police academy. Ben had left the force six months before the budget cuts and the layoffs began to take up a cushy job at Kyrios Securities. Kyrios had one of those clean offices in Camden and a position Kyle would be perfect for, which a half-drunk Ben explained one night after slapping a heavy hand on Kyle’s back.

It’s perfect, he said. I know a guy upstairs. When I mentioned your name and what we got up to back on vice, he flipped. They want to call you in, man. It’s perfect. Benefits, paid vacation time, 401k plan. Best decision I ever made to get off the taxpayer’s dime and go private sector."

They’re not going to go for me, Kyle murmured into his beer with a shake of his head. Corporate gigs don’t go to felons.

You’re not a felon, man. It’s not like you knocked over a liquor store. You’re—you know what you are? You’re a victim of circumstance. I’ve seen it happen plenty of times.

Tell that to Douggie.

Fuck Douggie. He had that shit coming to him. You, on the other hand... you got a higher calling. And it comes with a benefits package.

Even with the three years Kyle spent in Saint Angelo burning a hole in his job application, Ben made good on his word. One phone call later, Kyle had a 10:00 a.m. interview at Kyrios’ concrete spire, which overlooked the intersection of 42nd and Augustine.

The new suit—pulled off the rack at Macy’s after an hour spent staring at cuts and fits—was nicer than anything Kyle owned. But his shoes were old and had scuffed soles. They were the same ones he wore the night he and his cousin Douggie decided to break into the corporate towers being built on Madison and Lowery to pluck the copper wiring out of the walls. Douggie, who knew a guy who would pay them big money for copper, had promised an easy score...

Kyle had to buff and polish his shoes, wiping off the dust and grit from when they’d fled the security guard and Doug had pulled out the gun he hadn’t told Kyle he’d brought. He’d wiped away the evidence of his crime and the last three years in Saint Angelo while Douggie sat on twenty-five for organized crime and aggravated assault during the commission of a robbery.

Walking the three blocks to the subway station that morning, he remembered what Ben told him. You can do this. The practiced words came out of his mouth easily. You did your time. It’s a good gig. It’s a solid job. You deserve it. You did your time.

He straightened his tie, tugged his cuffs down around his wrists, and sighed.

The L train, as always, arrived right on time. Kyle boarded it silently, making his way through the ocean of elbows and knees to take his seat. Today, he decided, he was going to try to get things right.

Then at 9:17 came the crash—the stutter and lurch.

Metal scraping metal scraping bone. The grinding horror of steel coming undone. The train jumped the track at 9:18, and the whole car went into freefall. A suspension of gravity and understanding as the car turned end over end. Space began to degrade, broken down like atoms and sinew. There was an intimacy in this kind of violence, a suffering that spanned across the compartment in outstretched fingers and bent spines. Ribcages expanded and arms opened to embrace or protect or push away—the empty fight-or-flight platitudes. Somewhere in the center of the chaos, the little girl turned—spinning, dancing, her white dress fluttering around her—in the final crush of glass and steel.

It was then that Kyle Jeong realized he was going to die in the silence beneath East Brighton City.

II.

At 9:55, Kyle Jeong was pulled from the wreckage and pronounced the only surviving passenger. The paramedics moved him to a gurney and rushed to the guts of the Alexander Hills Hospital emergency room as its staff braced for the flood that followed. There had been 494 people on the L train and its adjacent platforms when it jumped the tracks and tumbled through concrete pillars to crush everything in its path. At 10:21, a blood-splattered nurse in pink scrubs ran into Kyle’s room shouting that they had another survivor coming from the scene. Then another, and another. By 11:36, Kyle was cleaned up and sent to the ICU. The news had already dubbed it the worst commuter train disaster in state history.

The 24-hour news cycle was awash in grisly scenes of charred infrastructure and human carnage. Screen tickers reported statistics and eyewitness accounts in jagged shorthand. Complemented by the speculation of anchors and guest panelists, excerpts from social media painted the scene in living rooms, office lobbies, waiting rooms, and behind bar tops. Details were slow to develop between police press conferences and statements from Mayor Deborah Sheldon’s office, but both offered condolences and prayers for the families. The Camden-bound train had jumped the tracks due to human error and spiraled into an oncoming train before colliding with the surrounding platforms.

Only five people survived the crash. They were squirreled away in the ICU at Alexander Hills. Lily McDaniels from Channel 8 called them the Camden Five. Nobody argued.

As East Brighton City held its breath, Kyle slept with taped eyelids and didn’t dream of anything safe or pleasant.

III.

Blood covered every inch of the last car of the L Line. It seeped into the broken upholstery and dried on the windows in a sweaty film of hand, shoe, and face prints. With so much blood, investigators arrived in hazmat suits and breathing apparatuses to minimize exposure to communicable diseases. The level of violence shocked investigators as they gathered bodies from their ragdoll rest—limbs splayed, heads caved in, and spines broken. On the other end of the tunnel, where dogs ran to the ends of their leashes by the flicker of emergency flares, the bomb squad searched for incendiary devices and homemade triggers. Crock-Pots with their lids taped shut, crude pipe bombs, makeshift explosives from cleaning chemicals. Anything.

Amanda Sidhari stood on what was left of a broken bench and watched the first responders zip black body bags shut and wheel them out on gurneys. Others carried out the small bodies of children and seniors one by one. In her two years on the EBC Anti-Terrorism Task Force, she had seen bomb threats, hostage situations, failed plane hijackings, and incompetent white supremacists trying to make improvised explosives. Never once had anyone succeeded or gotten further than renting the truck meant to carry homemade bombs to the city hall. Sighing, she tucked a sweaty piece of hair behind one ear. In the other, she heard her name over the radio at her hip.

Detective Sidhari, came Lieutenant O’Donnell’s thick voice. Grab Collin and get up here. The Feds arrived. Time to play nice.

The makeshift command center had been set up inside a trailer, backed onto the corner of Jones and Monroe behind the six-block barricade. Agent Harry Durocher from the FBI field office in Bloomfield stood at a long folding table, buttoned up to the neck in a blue shirt and brown jacket. On either side, officers and agents plugged into calls with local media outlets, hospitals and law enforcement. The language and phrasing was preapproved by the chief’s and mayor’s offices. They were meant to convey appropriate measures of sobriety and confidence. Amanda and Collin took their places beside O’Donnell at the table. Durocher cleared his throat and clasped his hands behind him.

Lieutenant O’Donnell, your people on the ground have done a good job of securing the scene in the last three hours, and the bureau thanks them for their dedication and professionalism. Just to get everybody up to speed, thirty minutes ago, bomb dogs found evidence of an improvised explosive device on the L Line track between Summer and 33rd. Right now, we just need to get out in front of this thing. We’re in talks with Mayor Sheldon’s office to try to limit what goes to the press until we have a clearer picture of the situation. This is the first terrorist attack in the city’s history, and we can’t afford to let this turn into another Boston.

So, what are we looking at? asked Lieutenant O’Donnell. Homegrown nut job, or somebody with ties outside the US?

Not sure yet. No organizations have come out to lay claim to this attack, so we’re not talking to the press. I’m waiting on the full postmortem before we start working on a profile.

Alexander Hills confirms they’ve got five survivors from the train, a reedy agent said as he hung up his phone. Three men, two women.

Can they be identified? Durocher asked.

Yes, they’ve all been ID’d. The agent flipped a piece of paper back and forth, trying to read his own handwriting. He adjusted his reading glasses. Clara Reyes, Bridger Levi, Adam Harlow, Norah Aroyan and Kyle Jeong.

What? The weight of history shrank the entire trailer into a white-hot point as Amanda snatched the paper out of the agent’s hand. Are you sure about that last name?

That’s the name the hospital gave me.

Is that important? Durocher sounded puzzled rather than irritated.

Reading and rereading the names, Amanda shook her head. He’s one of ours. Or, he used to be.

She didn’t say the other thing. That would have made things complicated. O’Donnell and Collin didn’t say anything about it, either. Swallowing, Amanda reminded herself to thank them later. For the moment, she bit her tongue.

Twelve hours later, after the marathon of reports and statements and press conferences, she left her desk at the station to lock herself in the last stall of the women’s restroom. There, she sat on the toilet with her head between her knees, took a deep breath, and thanked the god she hadn’t spoken to since high school for small favors.

IV.

It was the same sad parade on every channel: images of carnage and human suffering in the form of phone snapshots and candlelight vigils outside the police barricade. Damon White savored the taste of it—the sheer hideousness of the spectacle. Blood poured out of the television screen in grainy photos of mangled bodies, catching fire on social networking sites to the tune of public outrage. Every news story was another highlight to fill his gut with a strange, aching pride.

His tiny living room served as a shrine to newspaper clippings and printed articles. They were posted to boards above his corner work station and tethered to the photos of Rebecca he’d kept after leaving home by bits of string. What had once passed as a one-bedroom apartment in the Hull was now a cave with heavy locks on every door and black, plastic curtains taped to west-facing windows. Damon was tucked away behind reinforced steel and protective plating. He’d mounted a closed-circuit security feed in the outside hallway and fire escape.

Hidden inside his factory of nightmares, he watched his good work. Outside, East Brighton City held its breath and had no idea what awaited it.

V.

When Kyle Jeong woke up in the hospital, it was as if nothing had even happened. The nameless nurses who came in and out of his room at all hours of the day told him it was a miracle. Not a cut, scrape, bump or bruise to show for himself. The X-rays that had found his pelvis shattered and skull fractured had lied, it seemed. There were four other survivors from the train and nearly five hundred left dead, and Kyle didn’t have so much as a broken arm.

Everything about it seemed wrong as he waited in his room at the end of the hallway, watching the crews of hungry reporters parked outside. They looked up at his window expectantly, snapping odd photos and capturing fragments of footage to piece together for the evening news.

He closed the curtains, turned off the television, and tried to sleep.

The days melted into one another as Kyle languished in his room. Doctors kept checking on him, testing him, comparing the intake chart of broken bones and torn ligaments to the unharmed body before them. Ben came by once to give him a card, some clothes, and a pat on the back. Kyle’s aunts, uncles, and cousins never came to visit. He didn’t expect them to. After Douggie’s trial, no one on his mother’s side wanted to speak to him. With his father’s family still living and dying in a small Korean village, there was no one left to fill his days with well wishes or cards. It was probably for the best. He wouldn’t have known what to say to anyone if they did come. Amanda was the only one he missed, and even that made a mess of his insides—an unwanted guilt that he didn’t want to think about. Out of sight, out of mind.

Once Saturday arrived, a nurse came by with his discharge paperwork. Within the hour, Kyle found himself standing on the curb and staring into the sky. Smoking a cigarette, he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his black leather jacket and waited for a cab to take him back to Koreatown. Soon, a familiar, blue hatchback pulled around the parking cul-de-sac, coming to a halt just off the curb. Kyle took a step back and pulled the cigarette from his mouth to blow out a curl of smoke. The dusty window rolled down, and Amanda leaned across the passenger’s seat, looking him up and down from behind a pair of big, black sunglasses. Her face was unreadable. Kyle knew she did that on purpose, but he didn’t call her out on it.

Hey, she said.

Hey, he said.

Neither of them said the obvious thing—the thing that had to do with the three years they hadn’t spoken, the unreturned letter, the ugly questions Kyle didn’t have an answer for.

After a moment, Amanda shrugged. So... you need a ride home?

Every bone in Kyle’s body screamed no. He ignored them with a shrug of his own and flicked his half-smoked cigarette into the nearest bush. I guess, if you’re offering.

They did not speak on the way to Kyle’s rented hovel on Alabaster Road. He was grateful for it. He stared out the window instead of at Amanda’s slim hands on the wheel. They had found themselves here one too many times already: sitting in the silence of her car, going to and from bars or parties with superficial friends, not talking about the things that mattered. That was why, at the stoplight on Magnolia, she sighed.

I’m sorry, by the way.

For what? Kyle asked, pretending he didn’t know the answer. It was easier to pretend.

I never wrote you back, she said. That was really shitty of me, and I’m sorry.

You didn’t visit me, either.

I know. The stoplight blinked from red to green, and she stepped on the gas. I’m apologizing.

So, how is he?

How is who?

Glen. The dentist. If confronted, Kyle wouldn’t admit that he had asked around and found out from Ben. That would have been pathetic. He couldn’t handle that right now.

His name is Tim.

Same difference.

He’s okay. We’re not that serious, though.

He shrugged. Sorry, I guess.

She smirked. No, you’re not.

Not really.

After three more blocks, Amanda pulled to the curb outside Kyle’s building. He unbuckled his seatbelt with his thanks and ducked his head to climb out. She caught his wrist.

Hey.

Hey what?

I’m glad you made it.

Yeah, me too. It was only a partial truth.

If asked, he would say that her car didn’t linger outside his building, and that he didn’t watch her drive away. That would imply more than he wanted to deal with. He undressed, running a hand through his hair and retreating to the bathroom. In the mirror, he inspected himself for evidence of the crash.

The planes of his chest were smooth and clear of the bruises he expected to find. His arms were untouched. His fingers were still nimble. He sighed at the horrific doubt this left coiled in his belly and instead dwelled on the familiar safety of Amanda and her dirty, blue hatchback.

Chapter Two

I.

Adam Harlow had an appointment at 10:00—the same appointment he had kept for the last six months. At 9:03 on Monday morning, he got on a train bound for Camden, not feeling up to the challenge of driving through morning traffic. Had he started up his beloved Betty and pushed his way into the city, none of this would have happened. He had another group session with Dr. Bell to look forward to that Monday, in a room tucked away at the VA hospital. He would have been tasked once more with telling the group how he still saw guys with their brains blown out whenever he closed his eyes. There would be another evaluation with his therapist, and a new family of medications to try so he could finally stop shaking whenever a car backfired. Tugging at the dog tags around his neck, he took a deep breath. I can do this, he whispered to himself. I can do this. I can do this.

If Adam were lucky, Dr. Bell wouldn’t call on him to talk to the new members about the improvised explosive device, Afghanistan, and the day he tried to eat a gun and punched his ticket home instead. He had already told the story a hundred times before to the revolving cast of faces that came and went every few weeks. It didn’t need retelling. Three men had cooked in the sun while he bled into the sand and waited to die. Three men died and he didn’t. Six pieces of shrapnel tried to cut him in half, but missed. There was no God around to make sense of that.

On the train that morning, there was another guy standing at the railing; Adam remembered that much clearly. The man was older than Adam—maybe old enough to be his father—and wet in his dark eyes. He was gorgeous in a tired kind of way and grayed at his temples and the edges of his beard—gorgeous in a way that, in another time and place, would have made Adam fidget. He let his breath out, felt stupid, and looked away. There was no point in thoughts like that—in people he met on the street. People were beautiful and complete; he was a framework of scars and metal pieces, too broken and ugly to survive much longer.

At 9:17 there was a crash. The weightlessness of panic followed as the car turned over and over, putting the sky at Adam’s feet all over again. God didn’t show this time, either. When the world went black in the snap of tendon and bone, Adam knew it was for the best.

By Tuesday morning, after Adam slept intermittently through surgeries and stitches, he and his companions were moved from the critical care wing. When Adam awoke again in the afternoon, he found himself in a new room. The other four survivors had been relocated to separate rooms at opposite ends of the tenth floor. They were all poked and prodded, fed and fluffed by parades of doctors, nurses, and family members. The local news channels hovered on the grounds outside, hungry for the chance to interview the Camden Five. Lily McDaniels of Channel 8 fame hadn’t stopped hounding the hospital for the chance to interview the war veteran and PTSD survivor behind door 1014. She said it would make a fantastic personal piece. Adam never returned her calls.

The counselors had come to talk to Adam first. Given his condition, they said. He was a priority, they said. He ignored them just like he ignored his parents, brother and three sisters when they came to see him. Feigning sleep, he kept his back to the door and waited until he could no longer hear them breathing and weeping. It put a black and empty feeling in his gut to lie there and know how it hurt them. This wound was different from the one left by shrapnel and glass, yet the idea of talking to them hurt even more.

Once he got back on his feet, he left his room to wander the hallway where the other survivors were being kept. With the help of a walker, he peered through half-open doors to watch the others with their families and friends. It occurred to him that he didn’t even know their names, but he felt compelled to look. A teenage girl with a bandage on her cheek spoke broken Spanish into her phone and tried not to cry. Next door to her was the waitress’ room. She had a daughter with leg braces and a family that came by every day to crowd around her bed with tears in their eyes. Then there was the guy at the end of the hall with his tattooed arms, severe haircut, and no visitors. Adam always tried to stay out of his line of sight.

The guy in the expensive suit was in the room across from Adam’s, much to his cautious excitement. His paper gown showed the dips of his collarbone and the slimness of his wrists. He also had a wife who never left the hospital. She remained close at all times it seemed, leaning over at his bedside to run her delicate fingers down his chest. She was a statuesque woman with long, red hair and a serious nature that made Adam feel like an intruder. He scurried out of her way whenever their eyes met in the hall. He tried not to look directly at the couple in their room; it wasn’t his to look at. He always kept moving whenever the wife left the room. She’d look at him pointedly as she closed the door behind her.

On Saturday morning, the doctors signed the release forms and Adam was free to leave. He changed into the spare clothes his brother, Jamie, had left for him, gathered up his wallet and obliterated phone, and called for a cab. The local news teams were now pushed fifty feet away from the hospital entrance, held back by police barricades. Pushing against the plastic hurdle, the competing stations were eager to catch a glimpse of the Camden Five lined up on the curb outside—now in proper clothing and waiting for their respective rides to pull up and take them home. Five strangers in a quiet row, their eyes far away or turned to phones. Adam stared at the ground and waited for his cab to drive him back to his one-bedroom hovel in Jonestown. Getting in and giving his address, the hospital sped away in the cabbie’s crooked rearview mirror. He didn’t look back.

Adam made his calls to Bob from Bob’s Repair and Restoration. He stopped by the office to pick up his care package of get well cards from Darlene. He thanked her profusely when she came around from behind the desk to hug him, and he tried not to feel completely hollow. Home was quiet and cold by the time he got there. The bamboo in the kitchen window sat sallow from neglect. As predicted, the phone blinked at him from the coffee table with twelve messages from Mom, Jamie, Carol, Shana and Deborah—all frightened and pleading, praying to God via voicemail that Adam had driven into the city.

The sentiment made his heart jump. His fingers itched over memories of broken glass and screaming in the dark. He forgot about the box of cards and well wishes. Instead he found a spot between the bed and the wall to hide. All six feet and two inches of him folded inward like a wounded bird. Tugging at his dog tags, Adam remembered his mantra. He breathed through the panic and the hum of blood in his ears, and he said, I can do this.

II.

Clara Reyes was always running. She ran for nineteen years from the ghost of Lawrence Reyes, still haunting the childhood home she shared with her mother Doreen and her abuelita. The sky was blue the day her father died, as Clara remembered staring out the passenger side window of her mother’s station wagon on the way to the hospital. It was the kind of blue that signaled the start of summer, when the cicada song echoed in the shaggy trees of abuelita’s backyard and Clara’s shadow became long. There were no clouds. Blinking at the sun made white spots in her vision. Any other five-year-old would have laughed, but Clara was mesmerized by the patterns emerging behind her eyelids.

In the driver’s seat, her mother cried softly, wiping her eyes at stoplights and yield signs, but Clara didn’t yet know why. No one told her that her father was dead until she saw the doctor in the emergency room. He was a lanky man who was gaunt in his face despite his young age. There was blood on his blue scrubs, and he tried to lift Clara’s mother up as she slipped to the floor. Unable to support her own weight, the particles in her mother’s bones separated until she began to vanish into the cold, white linoleum. Clara had decided on linoleum as she superimposed layers of understanding over this scene at various later dates, because it was the easiest to clean blood off of.

The research assistant internship at the Bern Super Collider sat under her bed every night, waiting to whisper in her ear over breakfast and coffee. It would look amazing on her transcripts—a beautiful addition to her book of accomplishments. The book was of her mother’s design, nestled safely away on a shelf in California. Heavy and bound in thick leather, the journal’s pages were filled with the newspaper clippings, confirmation letters, scholarships, and blue ribbons that had paved the way to Clara’s collegiate career. Hundreds of students applied for the Bern internship each year, but only three of the best and brightest minds in the country were selected. The position could make or break a career, and Clara wanted it so badly that she could feel it in her fingers and toes. So, she put in her application and scheduled her interview with doctors Lassiter, Graham and Miyazaki, and she held