New York City is a city of islands. Manhattan is the most famous, of course. Queens and Brooklyn share another one, and Staten Island….well, duh. And those are just the big ones. The only borough on the mainland is the Bronx.
There are a couple of ferries, but mostly this is a bridge and tunnel town. Can’t put a subway train on a boat, after all.
Right now, I’m in a tunnel. I got off work at 8:30 (earliest night I’ve had in a long time – price you pay to be a first-year associate at a Wall Street law firm, especially if you’re a woman), caught an R train at 8:45 at Whitehall Street-South Ferry to head on home to Bay Ridge. It’s now 11:00, and I’m still stuck between Whitehall and Court Street. For those of you who don’t have an NYC subway map on hand, that means I haven’t even made it one stop yet.
It also means I’m underneath the East River right now.
For the first half-hour or so, that didn’t matter. It wasn’t where I was stuck that bothered me, but the fact that I was stuck. I’m not usually claustrophobic, but when there’s nothing but tunnel outside the windows and I don’t know when I’m ever going to get out of that car, I start to get a little antsy. Still, could be worse. Those trains get packed flush to the doorframes at rush hour, and when you can’t lower your arm from the overhead bar without elbowing someone in the face and you’ve got nothing to breathe but what everybody else is exhaling, it gets a bit uncomfortable. The train was far from empty – only a couple of the seats were vacant – but it could have been a lot worse.
Nobody was saying anything, of course, or even really looking at each other. Out-of-towners think New Yorkers are rude and standoffish because of things like that – and I admit, we do like to revel in that reputation sometimes, when we want to feel badass – but don’t let it fool you. I’ve seen whole trains jump in with directions and even offers of personal guidance when some tourist looked a little too confused. It’s just that when you live someplace this crowded, the only personal space you get is when everyone ignores each other. I hear that the same thing happens if you put too many monkeys in a cage. Nobody wants trouble, so nobody interacts.
Now, we’re all New Yorkers. We know the score. Train delays happen. Still, half an hour is a long time to be stuck between stops. Muttering was starting to waft through the car – people were actually getting irritated enough to break the unspoken rules, which are more binding than written ones any day – when things started to go wrong.
9:15
“Attention Passengers.”
And we give him our attention. What else are we going to do? Besides, we can at least understand the announcement this time, and there’s an off-chance we might actually find out what’s going on.
“We apologize for the delay.”
As they should.
“There’s a train stopped in front of us, but we should be moving shortly.”
Liars. Still, at least we now have the proximate cause, if not the ultimate cause. Wonder what’s wrong with that other train.
Mollified, we start to settle down. Which lasts all of thirty seconds before the ceiling starts dripping. Cries of disgust fill the car, including my own. The water is filthy, and of course today is the day my team had a big meeting with a client. The business casual I usually wear I could just toss in the laundry, but this skirt and blazer are going to need dry-cleaning, if they’re not already ruined.
I jump out of my seat and grab a standing pole. Usually, someone would be quick to take a vacated seat, but no one seemed interested in sitting in the cold, muddy puddle that was forming where I’d been a minute before.
“You’d think they’d find a way to make these things water-tight,” I complained to the guy beside me, a middle-aged Hispanic man who looked like a construction worker. “It’s not like they don’t go above ground or anything.” Which they do, in case you didn’t know. There are quite a few places – mostly out near the ends of lines in the outer boroughs, but even in some places in Manhattan – where the subway becomes an El train. Thus the need for weather-proofing.
He grunts in agreement, then says: “What I wanna know is where the water’s coming from. It didn’t rain today.”
“Maybe the tunnel’s leaking,” Some kid suggests. The usual rules have been suspended – as long as we’re all dodging leaks and groaning about ruined clothes, we’re all part of the conversation.
“Don’t be silly, honey,” Kid’s mom says. “That can’t happen.”
Silly it might be, but nobody’s laughing. Like I said before, when there’s nothing but tunnel outside the windows and you don’t know if you’re ever going to get out of that car, thoughts like that aren’t funny. Construction Worker and I nod and make noises of agreement with Mom – and I, for one, really, really hope she’s right.
Now
After that, everyone settled in and got quiet again. The rules were back in place, now that the moment was past. Only it wasn’t.
9:40
The constant low growl that I’ve always assumed was the train idling goes silent. That catches all of our attention. When something has become the background noise to every day of your life, you notice its absence, not its presence.
“Attention passengers.”
Oh, they have our full attention.
“We’re experiencing technical difficulties.”
No shit.
“Please be patient.”
Like we have a choice?
The intercom switches off, and we’re left in silence. No one says anything. What is there to say? It’s not like we’ve actually gotten any new information.
You know, it’s funny what you can get used to. I never realized just how loud that engine was until it shut off. Now that it’s gone, I can hear something that I really should have been able to hear before. Actually, I probably could have, at least a little, I just didn’t notice.
It’s this creaking, groaning sound. Pretty loud, actually. But since it was coming from outside the car, it was masked by the internal noises – the engine, the hum of the fluorescent lights, the –
Wait.
Outside the car.
All around the car.
There’s a particularly loud groan, and the dripping – which never really stopped, some of the seats are brimming with dirty water – turns into a flow. Not a heavy one. Just a trickle, really. But it’s continuous, rather than the discrete drips of before.
The seats quickly overflow and join the runnels winding across the floor.
I step out of the way of one of the dirty little streams, cursing myself for not bringing a change of shoes to work. They’re flats! It’s a nice day! I don’t need to lug them around while I’m wearing street shoes! What an –
Then there’s a thunderous
CRACK!
And I stop distracting myself.
Now
Nobody quieted down after that. The rules were no longer relevant.
10:00
A sigh comes over the loudspeaker. Not a sigh of frustration or annoyance, but deep, shuddering fear. I have a mental image of the guy running his fingers through his hair, wishing he had something else to say.
“I guess most of you have figured out by now…we have an emergency situation.”
I guess we have. I’m ankle-deep in freezing siltwater. My shoes are long past ruined, but right now I’m more worried about my feet. They burned and stung at first, it was so cold, but now I can’t feel them.
“Everybody please stay calm. The authorities know what’s happened, and rescue crews are on their way.”
Sounds of relief and happiness come from around the car, but they’re muted and tentative. “On their way” isn’t the same as “here”, and we all know it.
“Wish I knew what happened,” I mutter. I don’t really mean for anyone to hear it, but Kid must, because he has an answer for me:
“The tunnel broke,” he says.
“Can’t happen, papi,” Construction Worker says. He’s trying to be comforting, and he’s doing a surprisingly good job. I’d be willing to bet good money he’s got a couple of kids at home. Or maybe not – considering his age, they may have moved out by now, or at least gone off to school. Still, you just can’t fake that drying-the-tears experience.
“They check these tunnels all the time,” Construction Worker continues. “To make sure that they don’t break. It’s just leaking a little. The tracks are electric, so they don’t work very well when they have water on them.”
He hunkers down so he can look Kid in the eye.
“Haven’t you ever spilled water or juice or soda on something, and it wouldn’t run right after?”
Kid makes a shamefaced glance at Mom, who raises an eyebrow, then looks back at Construction worker and nods.
“You see?” Construction Worker concludes. “The trains can handle water a lot better than your Mami’s…” He glances at Mom.
“Keyboard,” she answers.
“Than your mami’s keyboard,” he continues. “But there’s a lot more water. That’s all. It’s not a good thing, but it’s something they can handle. Okay?”
I want to believe him. I almost do. But the creaking and groaning has been joined by other sounds. I can actually hear the water pouring into the tunnel…and whatever those weird scratches and taps I keep hearing from the ceiling might be, they can’t be good.
Kid nods, and Mom gives Construction Worker a grateful look as he gets to his feet and starts to turn away.
“Mister?” Kid pipes up before Construction Worker.
“Yes, papi?” Construction Worker asks, turning back.
“You say the tunnel can’t break.”
“That’s right, papi. They work very hard and check very carefully to make sure it doesn’t.”
“But what if somebody broke it?”
10:30
“Hey, everybody! Listen!”
The voice over the loudspeaker is no longer a voice of Authority, no longer someone to give us instructions because he knows what’s going on. He’s just like us now – scared and waiting.
“I see lights up ahead! I think the rescue crews have reached the other train!”
There’s some cheering at this, but it’s still restrained. The people on the other train have been saved, not us.
As far as I can tell, the tunnel is half-full of water by now, and the river is still rushing in. The water in the car is halfway up my shins now, and it’s not just dripping from the ceiling anymore. The doors at the ends of the car are always locked since it became illegal to walk between cars, and those are pretty effectively watertight. The doors people actually walk through, on the other hand, aren’t nearly as well-sealed, and water is leaking in. You can tell how high the water level is outside by where it’s trickling in.
It keeps getting higher.
And those weird noises keep getting louder – things scraping and tapping on the outside of the car. It makes me wonder just what broken bits of tunnel are hitting the train.
Wait – what’s that outside? Something’s moving – with lights! Are the rescue crews here?
Now
This tunnel I’m in is called the Montague street tunnel. When it was built, there was an accident: a worker was sucked out of the tunnel, through the riverbottom muck, and out into the river. He made it to the surface, where he was fished out of the drink by a passing barge. I’d envy him, but even if that did happen to me right now, it’s eleven o’clock at night in the middle of January. I’d freeze to death long before anyone even came by.
If I was lucky.
10:45
There’s one final announcement, if you want to call it that. I guess somebody wasn’t paying attention and accidentally hit the switch: “Hey, that’s weird. Since when are flashlights…wait, those aren’t…holy shit!”
Then there’s a crunch of breaking safety glass, a scream that’s turned into desperate bubbling and blubbing by a tidal-wave rush of water, followed by an idiot electric buzz that lingers for a minute or two before crackling itself to death.
Which is when the lights go out.
Most of us scream at that, though Construction Worker camouflages it as a string of Spanish curses. Personally, I’m too confused to be startled. I’m just as scared as anyone else, though, maybe more, and I’m getting ready to be even more scared, all because I’ve noticed something wrong. Well, wronger.
The tunnel is completely full – the water is spraying in through the doors, so hard that it’s not safe to stand anywhere near them – and the emergency lights are dead both inside and out. It should be pitch-black. But it’s not. There are lights coming from outside. They’re blue and pink and quite pretty, but they’re not emergency lights or flashlights. What are they?
Then I see.
At first I think I’m going mad, but then everybody else sees, too. Kid starts screaming. Mom hugs him tight and turns his face into her shoulder so he doesn’t have to see, but he keeps screaming. Construction Worker pauses a moment in his cursing, then resumes – much louder and much more venomous. He runs to the windows and starts pounding on them, shouting challenges and insults – I think I hear him call the thing outside the window an “hijo de puta”. Maybe he’s trying to chase it away. If so, he’s the one who’s gone mad.
We know now what the conductor saw before the windows broke. We know that the train in front of us was never rescued. And we aren’t going to be, either.
Tentacles. They look like tentacles. They probably are.
They’re as thick as Construction Worker’s shoulders are broad, and they have suckers the size of my head, all lined with the chitinous hooks that have been scraping across the outside of the car for nearly an hour, and they’re glowing like something from the deep-ocean trenches.
Which is what they probably are.
Montague tunnel is right at the mouth of the East River. There’s nothing downriver but New York harbor, and what’s that but a corner of the Atlantic Ocean that we feel safe in? In all my worrying about tunnels and rivers, I didn’t even think about the ocean. Well, why should I?
So…from the deep-ocean trenches, yes, but somehow I don’t think it’s some dumb animal, scared up out of its usual territory. Don’t ask me why. All I can say is that it just feels right, and those words are blasphemy to me. In my job, you have to prove every point. I can offer some arguments – the way it found the tunnel under the muck, the way it found us inside the tunnel – but in the end, those get thrown out of court as speculation. In the end, it might be nothing but the five claws splayed in a starfish pattern around the end of each tentacle, the ones that look so much like hands as they test and probe the outside of the car, making the tapping noise I heard earlier as they look for a way in.
Now
Living in New York, you get used to the idea that today might be the day that your bus crashes, or someone pushes you in front of the train, or someone else drags you into some dark alley and leaves your naked body in a dumpster. Since 9/11, we’ve also had to get used to the idea that today might be the day that some God-bothering psycho blows himself up in 42nd Street station, or flies an airplane into your office building. We’re America’s face after all – we’re what the rest of the world sees when they look at us, and what our enemies want to punch.
And you do get used to it. After awhile, you don’t even think about it. Not because you’re in denial, but because, aside from a few precautions, there’s nothing you can do about it. Today might just be that day – so what else is new?
Now I’m starting to wish that one of those things had happened. It would’ve sucked, but I think it would’ve been better than whatever’s waiting out there in that black water.
Or maybe not. It’s hard to get worse than being raped and bludgeoned to death in a filthy back alley.
Those weird hand-like claws are getting ready to pry the doors open, and I can see the seams of the car start to bulge as the welds and rivets get ready to give way. Guess I’m about to find out.