Are you travel-phobic? Meet a train terrorist exploding a bomb.
Excerpt
1
He looked at the sleek shiny train and wondered if he was actually going to get on it. From a distance, and only in his imagination the idea of traveling without destination had seemed adventuresome – an attempt to put something new in his life. But now that he stood ready to embark his heart sank.
His aging body quivered, and he knew that he was afraid. But he didn’t know why and he didn’t want to find out. It seemed like going to – he knew not where – would drop him off the end of the world and he would be lost. Not for a while but forever.
His body desperately wanted to turn around and leave this empty place. The hollowness that engulfed him when he remembered that he didn’t have a destination had flooded the train station with dread that he didn’t want to know about. He just wanted to run.
‘What a joke’, he thought mixing sympathy for himself with bitter irony as he usually did, turning it into disrespectful pity. ‘This middle-aged body can’t run. It’s starting to get used up. It’s energy and endurance are compromised, what with cancer surgery only five years ago’ – all of which was a serious exaggeration but perfectly expressed his feelings.
These thoughts almost convinced him to leave. He turned away from the train and took a step forward. What stopped him he didn’t know? The second step never happened, trapping him in the void of indecision.
His brain curdled making him light-headed and unsteady – which deeply embarrassed him for he was ashamed of weakness. He tried desperately to take hold of himself, to stand steady.
A hand took hold of his arm.
“Are you all right?” A woman’s voice said, her gentle perfume just barely noticeable.
“Yes, yes, I’m fine, thank you,” he said gently pulling out of her grasp. But he heard the touch of irritation in his voice and he was deeply embarrassed treating her kindness that way.
By the time he turned in her direction she had disappeared. He didn’t even know what she looked like, or how old or beautiful she was. He hadn’t wanted to see her eyes and feel ashamed to see pity there. Yet he felt steadier now and wanted to thank her. But she was gone.
“All aboard.”
He found himself getting on the train vaguely sensing that he did so mostly out of obedience and embarrassment than because he had made a choice. In the search for his bedroom he was in a daze, feeling uncontrollably swept along by others until he finally stumbled into the door of his assigned compartment.
“1379,” it read.
He ducked in, closed the door and more fell than sat on the couch profoundly relieved finally to be hidden from others.
What was he doing? He’d had a fear of traveling most of his life. He was trying to break free not only of this fear but also of all the constraints in his life. But where was he going? By what insanity had he imagined doing this?
He was shaming himself with these questions. But he couldn’t stop scathing queries from torturing his mind for having gotten into this frightful dilemma. What was he to do now? He was on his way into oblivion. And now that he was here there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
‘I could hurry and get off,’ he thought. Though the prospect of walking the gauntlet of piercing eyes that would see his shame made him cringe.
The train started to move sending his heart racing with fear. Now there was no turning back at least for now. Of course he could get off at the next station and go home. But that would be worse than never getting on the train at all. Immediately returning home he would have a hard time believing that others didn’t see right through him to the horrible truth, that he was travel phobic.
“Oh, what have I done?” He shouted out loud.
It had all started six months before. He could have blamed Samantha and he did at first. But he knew all too well that his powerful reaction to her suddenly dumping him was his own business. She’d just been the trigger. He deeply wished that he could blame her more successfully. But in the fifty-one years of his life he had unfortunately learned that his feelings belonged to him and not to those who stirred them up. His feelings were so intense sometimes it was knowledge he didn’t want. He was ashamed of the weakness that overcame him when he was very upset. These internal earthquakes deeply undermined his confidence in himself. But the worst part, which he could never entirely admit was that he felt helpless to do anything about it.
Samantha had not been his perfect mate. She was hard and aggressive on the outside. Though on the inside she was soft and sentimental, which he discovered taking her to bed for sex on their first date. He realized that she was as sex-starved as he was starved of love. Her tough exterior was there to shield her vulnerable insides. They began a relationship that lasted for over two and half years.
Damian had a tough hard part of his own – as long as he wasn’t afraid – that he kept hidden from view unless he was threatened. Intrusive criticism or attacks upon him frightened him, but he didn’t feel weak. He knew what to do: leave or tell them to knock it off if he couldn’t exit. Generally in relationship to other people, not just women but men as well he shielded his secret need for a reliable intimate connection to others by being engagingly friendly, clever, interesting and other-focused. He was a good listener, and he could be very amusing and sometimes wise in his spontaneous retorts.
He’d dodged exposing his desperate need for love, and avoided travel all his life, though he never told anyone else. He arranged a career as an insurance broker that strongly encouraged him to live in one place in order to build a clientele who needed him to be dependable and available on a permanent basis. Other insurance salesmen might move their business to other cities and start up again. But he was never good at soliciting new clients. He was strong on the insurance side of his career and weak in the selling aspect. He made types of insurance available but didn’t aggressively market them. Selling felt very much like travel, something requiring absolute confidence in himself no matter how others reacted.
Muting his desire for adventure, and for intimate engagement with others left him pretending that he was friendlier, freer and more comfortable than he really was. Others felt an unexplained tension in him that made them feel that his often-perceptive understanding of them had a veiled threat in it. They couldn’t settle into an easy rapprochement with him, so moved on without deeply connecting.
All of this happened between the lines of communication where it couldn’t be discussed or resolved. It left him constantly disconnected, awakening his fundamental insecurity of never being safely engaged. This isolated estrangement was his place of fear in which he was ensconced by habit. He was constantly trying to escape from it. Travel was thus as much a flight from un-safety as an adventure into excitement.
2
Damian was headed for the dining car. He’d put on his blue jeans and a long sleeved, light blue travel shirt with two large pockets in front. The shirt dried in an hour or two and sported several breathable, netted openings for ventilation.
He’d spent the whole day sitting in his apartment since boarding the California Zephyr Amtrak train at Emeryville California in the morning. He was unable to read, preoccupied with shame about his fearfulness, occasionally escaping into barely conscious fantasy – where as a boy he used to hide when his mother wasn’t looking. A slightly opened mouth exposed his ‘daydreaming’, as mother used to call it rudely pulling Damian back into the practical work of consciousness with ‘Close your mouth!’
During the night he’d slept badly waking every hour or so, and then taking a while to get back to sleep. So he was un-rested and tired as he walked down the isle avoiding looking at others to prevent eye contact. He didn’t want them to see him in this embarrassing condition. His mind was full of disappointment in himself for doing absolutely nothing useful during the ten hours he’d been on the train. He hated the tentative looks people generally gave him, painfully aware that he couldn’t hide his feelings. No matter how hard he tried to stop them they spread out all over his face. So he hid by looking down at the floor when he was in a bad mood. He wanted to impress others, which almost never happened.
“Uh, mister? Will you help me? I’ve got to tell someone,” a man’s voice said. He was obviously afraid and in a hurry.
Damian didn’t want to stop, and tried to keep walking after a momentary hesitation. But this man gently insisted by putting a hand on his arm, which reminded him of the woman on the train platform.
“Excuse me but I think…I think maybe…”
The man’s hesitation is what most caught Damian’s attention. Though he didn’t realize it at the time this person’s broken reluctant speech reminded him of himself. He couldn’t ignore someone suffering from uncertainty as he did.
“Yes?”
“It’s something…dangerous I think.”
“What is?” Damian asked becoming alarmed.
“I probably shouldn’t say anything but…”
The man hesitated.
“If it’s dangerous you should.” Something was waking in Damian.
“Well this man…I mean his door drifted open…uh, I mean the door of his compartment. I couldn’t help but look in. He was kneeling on the floor, you know like…like…I don’t like to make trouble.”
“Come on, man, what was he doing?”
“He was praying to Allah.”
“How do you know?”
The man clearly did not want to answer that question. Damian guessed. He was Arab and didn’t want to advertise it.
“What’s dangerous about praying?”
Damian was becoming a different person.
“It’s what he said.”
The man hesitated as a couple sidled by the two men.
“Yes?” Damian queried when the man didn’t continue after they’d passed.
“Well I don’t want to alarm anyone unnecessarily. But he was saying a death prayer. I mean my Arabic isn’t great. But I distinctly heard…”
The man hesitated.
“That’s not something to hesitate over,” Damian insisted growing more alarmed. “Where’s his compartment?”
“But are you sure we should get involved without proper authority?”
“Get involved? You’ve got to be kidding. If this man…”
Damian didn’t finish. This wasn’t a time for words. His best resources had been marshaled. What had only moments before been self-doubt and shame disappeared from his heart and mind. He was becoming someone else. If he’d thought about it he wouldn’t recognize this person as himself.
He followed the man forward back the way he’d come away from the dining car.
“I think it was this compartment,” the man said pointing.
The door was closed.
“I was looking for a conductor when I ran into you,” the man said. “But I couldn’t find one. But I guess we need one now to go any farther here.”
In moments of crisis when Damian’s vulnerabilities were not directly exposed he was very forthright, even aggressive in how he met the world. Though he never gave himself much credit for these rare events. This was one of those moments.
“Go find him if you want,” Damian replied impatiently. “But I’m not waiting to die if that’s what happening here.”
Without a moment’s hesitation Damian carefully tried the door handle to see if it was locked. It wasn’t. He opened the door suddenly pretending he was entering the wrong compartment. When he saw an Arab-looking man standing over an opened suitcase he knew what he wanted to say.
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry. I thought this was my com…”
His apology was interrupted by the terrifying vision of what looked like plastic explosives and a detonator in the suitcase. The Arab reached for the suitcase as if to do something before he could be stopped. Damian lunged at him shoving him away, slammed the suitcase shut, and grabbed it just as the Arab pulled a four-inch knife and lunged at him. He swung the suitcase in front of him to catch the knife-thrust. It penetrated the case shoving Damian backward by the force of the man’s lunge. The Arab tried to extricate his knife from the suitcase, but Damian’s falling away prevented him.
“Help me!” Damian shouted to his companion, who was backing away. The attacking Arab stared momentarily at the other Arab with disgust, then at Damian with hatred in his eyes. Then he bolted away toward the back of the train.
“Stop him!” Damian shouted.
Two men in the Arab’s direct path of escape backed up against the window to let him go by.
“He’s a terrorist!” Damian shouted.
That word galvanized them. But it was too late. The Arab was by them. In a last ditch effort to stop the man Damian threw the suitcase as hard as he could. It hit the Arab in his calf and heels tripping him to the floor. The two men easily caught up with him and held him down.
“This man attacked me!” The Arab shouted. “He barged into my compartment and stole my suitcase!”
“Is this right?” One of the men asked beginning to doubt Damian.
“Here, let me show you,” Damian replied, opening the suitcase to reveal the explosives. “He was going to blow up this train and all of us.”
“Holy shit!”
Two security guards were quickly summoned and took the Arab into custody. The train slowed down. The police were notified as they approached the next stop, Green River, Utah. They called the FBI who ordered the train authorities not to stop the train at Green River. They would meet it at the next stop, Grand Junction, Colorado, which was a little more than two hours away.
Damian was starved. Yet he was feeling terrific. He’d saved the lives of perhaps hundreds of people. He was the hero of the day, though no one at the moment seemed to be paying the least bit of attention to that. To be so heroic had never happened to him before and he wanted to celebrate, for people to know. He looked around for the man who had helped him.
“Do you know where that man went who was with me?” He asked a conductor.
“Which man is that?” He replied.
“The Arab guy who warned us all. At least I think he was Arab.
“I don’t know anything about an Arab guy who warned us all.”
“But we’d all be blown to bits if he hadn’t spoken to me.”
The conductor looked at him suspiciously.
Completely stunned and baffled by this strange look, Damian was suddenly thrown back into his doubtful shame of the hours before the incident. But he still retained pride in what he’d accomplished so he spoke out in protest, something he normally wouldn’t have done.
“Why are you looking at me that way? I saved everybody’s ass!”
“I’m sure I don’t know what happened,” the conductor said. “I was just told to stick close to you until we arrive in Grand Junction.”
“Stick close to me! What the hell is going on? I save the train. And you’re acting like I’m some kind of criminal.”
“I’m sorry, sir. But they’ve already called the police and the FBI, and they gave instructions. I didn’t see what happened. I just know that the authorities said, I guess because you’re involved…I mean an eye witness they want to be able to locate when they arrive.”
“Well I’m going to get something to eat! You do what the hell you want to do!”
For a few moments Damian was furious. He turned and headed toward the dining car, the conductor following close behind. When he got to the dining car he had to wait twenty minutes for a seat. During that time all of his confidence and aggressiveness dissipated. He was stunned that no one seemed to know who he was. He’d saved everyone and yet he was being totally ignored. Maybe nobody knew. People were talking about the gossip that had sprung up about a terrorist on board. But no one knew very much about it.
He began feeling very depressed. Even when he did act like a powerful man it didn’t seem to matter. In fact somehow he’d become a kind of suspect, or at least somebody who needed watching. The wary eyes of the conductor were still upon him. This man stood in the galley talking to the waiters, which unnerved Damian. His triumph was fast fading away as if it had never happened.
“May I sit down with you?” A female voice queried.
“Oh, of course,” Damian replied, avoiding her glance. He had sunk back into his embarrassed place and wished she would leave him alone.
She sat down across the table.
“I saw what happened,” she said.
“What?”
He couldn’t believe what he’d heard. So he didn’t, reacting to her with the same disinterest with which the watching conductor had reacted to his heroism.
“I saw what you did,” she said gently.
It was then he recognized the subtle perfume of the woman who had touched his arm on the train platform.
“You did? I mean did you?”
A flush of intense embarrassment overpowered Damian making his face turn deep red. To receive what he desperately wanted and was convinced was lost forever and would never happen – attention to his heroic deed – completely opened his heart to her. But what came out for her to see was the shame that had cursed his whole life. He knew this is what she now saw in him, and was sure that she was profoundly disappointed. How could he be a hero looking weak and ashamed? Hero one moment and ridiculous fool the next.
All of this happened in an unbearable instant. Damian desperately wanted to start over again – and to run away as quickly as possible. Torn between impossible opposites he looked pleadingly at her in a momentary wish that she would remember his heroism and forgive his pitiful embarrassment. But this made him feel more vulnerably exposed to her. He panicked a little, started to stand, hesitated, and furtively touched her hand with his hand in a gesture of appreciation, stealing a touch of intimacy.
“I’m terribly sorry,” he said.
He stood and started to leave, but couldn’t leave her so rudely.
She looked confused mixed with sympathy.
“Thank you,” he said, turned and bolted in the direction of his compartment with the conductor hurrying after.
If he could he would have jumped off the train in abject failure, both to escape his extreme embarrassment and to punish himself for his weakness. It was the worst moment of his life.
Damian’s impulsive and erratic behavior began to convince the conductor that he was indeed part of the terrorist plot, what he thought originally when the police asked him to keep a close eye on Damian. After hearing Damian’s protests he had started to dismiss this idea as far-fetched. But now he wasn’t so sure.
It was with an ignored hungry growling stomach that Damian rushed into his compartment and plopped down on the couch in complete dejection. His empty stomach, his intense shame and self recriminations were so mixed up together he couldn’t differentiate them.
But one pure special thing hung strongly in his memory. As he stood fumbling with hellos and goodbyes through shame’s distorted lenses, looking down at that woman’s face he saw something he was completely unable to believe at the time. It was a look of patient sympathy. Her eyes were deep brown, soft and accepting, willing to believe. Though there was a pale overcast of sadness that clothed her strong steady orbs with a sense of grief. But this unhappiness was the lesser part.
If he could have had a clear enough mind to see that poignant moment in a more neutral way, he would have at least considered that she understood the mixture of shame and pride in him. Somewhere inside of him that possibility hovered. He hid the calming reassuring vision of her eyes in the deep recesses of his mind to try and save it from the gnashing of his self-criticisms that were sure to go on until Grand Junction.
Read more about FEAR: A Romantic Thriller and Don Fenn HERE.
Copyright 2008 Don Fenn. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
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