No. 1, LAST TRAIN HOME
lana quinn
The last train out of Boston left at 7pm last night. I kept meaning to get my papers sorted and head North or West or something, but in Boston I remained. A few times I headed to the station, watched beyond the chain link fence crowned in barbed wire as people waited in line, funneled into cars, and left with their allotted suitcase and pack on the hour, each hour. Even in the dead of night, queues stretched to the turnstiles-turned-checkpoints and beyond. At first it looked like a TSA line, a few dudes in police garb working computers to check IDs and scan tickets. The last time I went there were rifles with PEQs, full kits, men with thick reams of paper on clipboards giving angered looks to weary passengers. Any urgency implied by worsening conditions was met in equal magnitude by a desire to be anywhere but inside that room.
It’s all quiet here now. The indifferent, vaguely disgruntled looks of lifelong Northeasterners sent my way walking down the street has given way to a look of somber understanding. Only a few shops still have their owners, the rest having been stripped bare by now. I was already living on rice and beans, not much changed there, but now that’s getting scarce too. Everything is getting scarce. Food, people, time. Electricity is up most of the time, there’s still the implication of a government, but at this point it’s just the barest of infrastructure. Water flows with an indefinite boil notice, which we all know will only end when the water does. Nobody wanted to talk about it. Nobody wanted to be the one to anger God.
Days go by. The quiet seconds drag on forever. A bit hungrier, a bit thirstier, a bit lonelier. Something’s got to happen. Something’s going to give.
I really wish I’d saved something about lockpicking before the internet went out here. I grabbed the big Wikipedia text file, a bunch of music and a few shows, a few games I wanted to keep around a bit longer. After fidgeting with a bobby pin and my former neighbor’s locks for a solid few hours, I decided a different technique would be necessary. I raised one foot up to the bolt of the door, running through the motion in my head so I don't kick another doorframe. One kick, five kicks. A shoulder bash that did more damage to me than it. More kicking. Each impact showed a little more give in the door. I look around furtively between them, still fearful Mr. John Doe will decide to return after a year away. Finally, the wood buckles beneath my boot and slams loudly as the hinges tear their screws from the frame.
I collected my scattered "tools" and placed them back into my rucksack. Admittedly, the bobby pins were likely doing more harm than good, weighing the extra ounce of aluminum hauled around against the total zero successful lockpicking endeavors I had set out on, but at least I could keep my hair up if I were any better at tying it. Walking through the empty house, I found that most of the useful belongings had either been taken or had gone bad by the time I reached it. There were a few cans of beans in the back of the pantry, as well as a half-full pack of water bottles, and there was a small assortment of meds in the master bathroom: acetaminophen, diphenhydramine, some Adderall, some gabapentin. Enough to be worth my while, but I still need a good deal more food.
After peeking out from behind the curtains to see if anybody was out front, I grabbed my now-full pack and made my leave. It was about twenty minutes of walking to get home, given that I didn't need to make a detour, which was certainly nothing bad. It was cloudy but it didn't seem as though it would rain, and so my journey would be plenty comfortable.
