The Park Service: Book One of The Park Service Trilogy by Ryan Winfield Read Free Book Online Page A

You’ll be near enough to taste it, I tell you. Sweet Eden. Those lucky folks there get to go.”
    He nods toward another car hitched several ahead where a guide who could be Dorian’s twin, with a matching clipboard too, ushers two smiling women and one anxious man through the open car door. Before stepping in, one of the retiring women looks back, and for a moment we lock eyes. Then the door shuts and seals and the guide walks off with his clipboard.
    “In you go,” Dorian says, sliding the door open.
    I hesitate, remembering the elevator. “No windows?”
    He shakes his head. “Nothing to see.”
    Grabbing the handrail, I step up into the car.
    I turn, but before I can thank him, he shuts the door.
    The car is dim, a rail of pale LED lights running along the ceiling. Down the center, an aisle cuts through rows of metal seats facing forward and pointing toward a projector screen at the front of the car. Sitting on a seat in the front row is a water and lunch ration. I scoop them up and sit. It’s quiet, but at least I can hear a soft clanging as the lifts do their work outside.
    I glance around nervously, looking for more gas vents. The empty car makes me uneasy, so I keep looking behind me at the vacant seats. Finally, I get up and carry my lunch ration down the aisle and plunk into the farthest seat in the last row.
    I’m bored so I open my lunch—soy crackers, tofu paste, and, of course, algaecrisps. I open the crackers and snack on a few. Taking a sip of water, I realize I have to pee already. I go to the door to ask about a bathroom, but the door’s locked. No handle on the inside, no call button.
    “Great,” I mutter. “Guess I have to hold it.”
    The train jerks forward and stops. I catch my balance and head back to my seat in the rear. Another jerk, another stop. Then a steady acceleration that pushes me hard into the seat before leveling off and gliding along silent and smooth.
    Almost immediately the lights cut out, leaving the car in total blackness. The projection screen glows. A sepia flicker, a run of antique film counting down, 10 to 1. Then I’m barreling down an old iron track with snow-covered trees rushing past and a glorious alpenglow peak rising ahead as the train charges full steam into a mountain pass.
    This is a nice touch. It must be old film from a camera mounted on the front of an actual train. I’ve seen educationals showing footage from planes, and even satellites, but never anything this old. It must be really ancient footage, from before roads and cars and freeways replaced the trains, from before fighter jets and drones cruised through our polluted skies, from long, long before the War.
    I settle into my seat and pretend I’m the engineer guiding the silent train as it winds its way up, plowing through drifts of snow, snaking around bends in the tracks, crossing a trestle over a deep and rocky gorge, up, up, up—
    A single lighted headlamp boring into the past like an eye, sweeping across the landscape, the trees, the fast approaching night, following the tracks toward the bright northern star.
    The seat is cold and hard when I wake, its edges cutting into my thighs—certainly not designed by our engineers. The screen is dead now, the dim lights back on. I stand and stretch, walking to the front and checking the door again. I consider peeing on the floor, just to ease the pressure on my bladder, but decide instead to sit and wait. I feel the force of the train arcing left, and I stare at the blank screen and try to imagine the cars ahead, sliding along the tunnel, rushing like a giant worm deep underground.
    It happens so fast there’s no time to prepare—
    A vibration running along the metal floor and tickling my feet, a metallic warble followed by a screech, the sound of steel tearing open. And then I’m weightless for one quiet, suspended moment before my head slams against the metal seatback in front of me and the lights go out ...
    ... I come to in pitch-black