Back to Winter 2011 Issue
Back to Home

Christopher Shearer's work has appeared in Tarnhelm, From the Fallout Shelter, The Wildwood Journal, and Cemetery Dance, among others. In 2007, he received demonminds.com's Best Short Story award, and from 2007-2009, he received three Penn State University Best Short Story awards. He works as a freelance editor with Cemetery Dance Publications, PS Publishing, and Crossroad Press, and is currently an MFA candidate in Seton Hill University's prestigious Writing Popular Fiction program.

E-books available from:

iPhone & iPad formats:
Available wholesale from:

Big Pulp can be purchased from local and independent retailers through IndieBound:

T-shirts, hats, mugs, boxers and other items available from :

Saturday Station

Larry hit the brakes and the train began to slow. It would be close to a mile before it came to a complete stop, but already its chassis jumped and shook with the increased friction. He pressed another button and spoke into an old-fashioned microphone jutting from the control panel, announcing our impending arrival at Longview Terminal, a small station outside of Shale Lake. In the cars behind us, I imagined passengers grabbing their bags or finishing their coffee, folding their papers or shutting down their holobands. Sleet rattled the windows, at the same time bouncing off and coating each in a thin layer of fresh ice. The world beyond them wavered and blurred through its distorting veil.

“We may be here a while,” he said.

I gave him a look.

“Orders. Boss said everyone off at Longview.”

“Any idea why?” I asked. I tried to look out the window.

“They never tell you why. Layover probably. Maybe there’s backup on the line.” He hit the button releasing the doors, as the train came to a stop. Thick clouds of steam leaked from beneath, coating the station in a dense, white fog. “You ever been to Nightside?”

“Where?”

“Italian place near here. They’ve got good meatballs.”

A man in a crisp black suit passed by the window. A silencer in his hand.

“Will you help me?” I said.

“Help you what?” Larry could see the panic in my eyes.

“I need to get off this train.”

“What?” he said.

“I can’t explain. I’m sorry, but I need to get out of here now, without being noticed.” I didn’t want to drag Larry into this, endanger him, but I needed help, and he was the only one.

“Is this a joke?” he asked.

“No. Please.” I couldn’t hide my desperation.

Larry went to the window. The glass fogged with his breath, and a dark spot formed in that fog. He wiped it away, and the spot remained, fuzzy, ethereal. As he watched, it tightened and folded into a man. The man checked his watch and spoke into a radio clipped to his ear, then knocked on the window and signaled for Larry to open the cabin.

“You’re going to owe me,” he said. Larry pressed an unlabeled switch, and a section of the floor rose. “It’ll let you out beneath the train. Go.”

I started to thank him.

“Go!” he said.

---

“Must be the cold,” Larry’s voice sounded muffled above me. “Took me a minute to get the door open. Stuck.”

“You the only engineer?”

“Yeah. Other guy called off. His wife’s pregnant. I don’t know.”

I heard the agent’s heavy shoes in the cabin, and I began to crawl toward the rear of the train. The undersides of cars jutted and bent in stained twists of scalding metal. Tracks burnt my hands and knees, and I crawled faster to keep from touching them. Steam billowed around me, blinding me, and heavy footsteps punctuation the muffled voices just beyond, in the station.

As the metal cooled, it began to cling to my palms, and I covered them with my shirt’s cuffs, already soaked and blackened. I was beyond the station now, but I still heard them, the agents: in the cars, outside the cars, talking into their earpieces.

---

The train shook and then jutted forward, before beginning its slow march toward the next station. I’d listened to the passengers board and the agents retreat. “He’s not here,” one of them said only a few feet from where I crouched beneath the last car. I wondered how much time I had. Could I make it home, make it to Cheryl before they did? Or would they catch me as soon as the train pulled away, taking my cover with it?

An atonal chorus of metal against metal crescendoed as the train picked up speed, and I took off toward the nearest building, a pawnshop with two large glass windows, barred of course. I looked back over my shoulder as I ran. No agents in sight. I’d gotten lucky. Still, when I reached the shop I ducked inside.

A bell rang as I opened the door and the shop keep peered up from a viewer screen. He had a dense beard and shaved scalp. “Help you?” he said. I shook my head and pretended to look around. A battle raged inside of me. Me, the part of me that had always been, wanted to run, wanted to get out as quickly as possible, but Russell wouldn’t leave Cheryl. He knew—I made sure that he knew—she’d be safer if we left. If we took the forty-thousand quartos I’d given him and found a way out. Out of Shale Lake and away from the Bureau, but then it hit me. I was trapped. Russell hadn’t thought it. I realized myself. If they’d tracked me to Longview Terminal, they knew my identity, and if they knew my identity, then I couldn’t use Russell’s card. Couldn’t access his account. I, we, had no money, and without it, no way to escape.

Russell pleaded for us to get to Cheryl. We could take her with us: run, hide. I told him they’d find us, but he wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t leave her, especially now. I didn’t understand, but then, part of me did. And I agreed. We’d try.

Since leaving the University, I’d worked for the Bureau. Built my life both in and around it, until stumbling on something I shouldn’t have while poking around the classified files. That afternoon had changed everything. Revealed the truth, and destroyed my entire self. All my beliefs: gone. Everything: done. My whole life had been a lie. I thought I’d been protecting the world, making it better. Instead, I’d been one of many cogs set in motion for one purpose: money. I’d lived a lie for money. Betrayed everything I believed in for money. It didn’t matter to me that I hadn’t known. I should have known. Should have seen it.

That’s when I made my mistake, the one that set them after me. It wasn’t the first I’d ever made, and certainly hadn’t been the last. I apologized to Russell for what I’d done to him, but he understood. He knew me better than anyone ever had, just as I knew him. We’d merged. We were the same, but different. He was me, and I was him. I hadn’t needed to apologize, and he hadn’t needed to forgive me. I hunched my shoulders against the drizzled sleet and shut the door behind me. And we headed home.

I knew how the Bureau worked, and I knew we didn’t have a chance, but I’d promised Russell we’d try to get Cheryl, and the child, and we’d run. I owed him that much.

We kept to the side streets and shadows and made our way across the city. As the sun fell behind the tall buildings above Saturday Station, we neared Brownstone Lane. A languid darkness had settled over it. Behind us, the last rays of sun fizzled beneath a corporate tower. From the next block, behind a stoop, I watched the cars for movement, checked the windows of neighboring houses, everyone walking both this and that street. I knew where they’d be, where the agent’s would hide. If they’d hide.

And there was nothing.

It seemed wrong. Like a trap. I wanted to turn back, but Russell insisted, and I’d promised. Brownstone Lane was still, silent and still, as we crossed the empty street and came home.

“Cheryl!” I shouted, as we closed the door.

The house was silent.

I made my way from one room to the next. Everything was how I’d left it: neat. No sign of a struggle. “Cheryl!” I said again.

“Russell,” she said from upstairs.

“Cheryl. We need to hurry. Pack a bag.” I went to the kitchen cabinet and pushed aside a collection of cereal boxes. My heart dropped. I’d stashed my silencer there the first night. It was gone.

A heavy foot sounded in the hallway.

“Mr. Anderson. Or should I say, Mr. Leaf?” The agent stood blocking the door to the kitchen. He had my silencer in his hand. “Looking for this?” A smile lounged beneath his heavy brow. “Come with me.” He motioned with the gun.

Cheryl sat on our bed, her hands folded neatly on her lap. She had tears in her eyes. I started to speak when I saw her, but the agent elbowed me, and knocked me face first onto the bed beside her. I gasped for air.

Two more agents entered the room. And my old boss, James Harris, head of Cloud City’s Bureau division, followed them. His face betrayed nothing. “Charles,” he said. He grabbed the nearest chair and turned it toward the bed, where I’d just begun to catch my breath. Cheryl held my hand.

“I’m sorry,” I said to her.

“You should be,” he said. He held a silencer in his hand. “This little chase has been…interesting, to say the least. I expected you to run, but this. I never expected this.” He looked at Cheryl. “Does she know?”

“She knows nothing,” I said.

“How long do you think you could have kept this up? Playing house with someone else’s family? Living someone else’s life?”

Cheryl let go of my hand. “What’s he talking about?” she said.

“Yes, Russell…or is it Charles? I don’t know what to call you. What am I talking about?”

I looked at her and began to cry. “I’m sorry,” I said again. “I, Russell, only tried to do what was best for you…for the baby.” I looked into my lap.

“What?” Fresh tears dripped from her jaw and quavered in her voice. “Tell me what’s going on. I’m scared. Honey, I’m so scared.” I touched her thigh and tried to speak, but the words failed me. “It’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s okay,” she said. I looked her in the eyes, opened my mouth—

“He isn’t who you think he is,” Harris cut in. “He’s one of mine. Bureau agent…former Bureau agent Anderson.”

“But he’s—” she moved away from me. Like Larry, she knew. On some level she knew that I wasn’t Russell. Not completely. Not anymore.

“I don’t have time,” Harris said. Cheryl stood, and one of the agents pushed her back onto the bed. “Please stay where you are, Mrs. Leaf.” A fourth agent entered the room with a holopad. He handed it to Harris. “Is this all of them?”

“Why would I tell you?” I said.

“Because you’re here…for her.” He pointed the silencer at Cheryl. “And I don’t know if some sick part of you has turned hetero, or if you’re guilty over what you did to her husband…or if part of her husband is still floating around in that mess on your neck, but I’m willing to bet you don’t want to see anything happen to her.” He motioned with his gun and two agents grabbed Cheryl. She screamed. “So, Mr. Anderson, is this all of them?”

“The world deserves to know. It needs to know.”

“And who do you think would believe you? You have nothing. No evidence.” He gestured with the gun again. “It’s gone, all of it.”

“You’re destroying this world.”

“We’re making it better for those who count,” he said.

“You started these wars. You feed them.”

“We merely provide the means and the incentive. There’s a lot of money in war. Now, I’m a busy man. Is this all of it?”

I stared into his eyes.

“Fine,” he said, and shot Cheryl. “You don’t have to talk.”

---

As the next day broke over Saturday Station, I twisted in the chair, still nauseous from the anesthetic. One of the machines beeped, alerting an empty office to my consciousness—only my consciousness—while a Nifa shoe commercial played in the empty nurses’ station, and beneath it a red line broke the news. It’d come from an anonymous source and been published two days before in The Post Gazette, the world’s last printed paper.

 

Saturday Station by Christopher Shearer 1 2 3
and more great fiction and poetry available in
Big Pulp Winter 2011!

Big Pulp is available for the Kindle, Nook and other
e-reader platforms from Smashwords and in print from
Amazon, Barnes & Noble and many independent booksellers.

Available wholesale from Ingram Distribution.