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Bennett liked quiet. Monitoring the controls for hours on end, alone save for the constant hum of the engine – the sound of life, he thought, on his more contemplative days – didn’t faze him. It meant time to think. Time to dwell on what karmic force, what deity of the hundreds he didn’t believe in, had chosen him.
He knew how well he had it compared to almost everyone else on board, let alone the planet that hadn’t made it on. Here he was eating sushi in the control room with a 270-degree view outdoors, heat turned to a balmy 20. He was a margarita away from pretending he’d really made it to Tahiti. If he headed down to the Night Car now they’d hasten to serve him one, never mind that it was a few minutes shy of noon.
And the part they rarely said out loud, because it was so much easier to block it out and just keep going. The people they’d left behind. Again, Bennett was lucky. He’d taken his losses early: early enough for Wilford to pluck him from despair and accord his life a purpose. The man may have been a sociopath, but he was the reason that Bennett was alive, working with possibly the only woman on this train who could have kept it running.
He recollected the way Melanie had flinched this morning when she received the call from Jinju, smoothed out so quickly that anyone else would have missed it.
Her brow had creased as she updated him: yet another fight breaking out in Third, alongside violence in the Tail and some of Second refusing to work. And DiMarco still hadn’t been able to fix the sub-train since it’d malfunctioned from C0701 on down, which would make dealing with anything in Ag-Sec or Third a total pain.
Mel would handle everything in heels and a teal blazer, with a smile on her face.
“You’re working yourself too hard,” Bennett told her more and more often lately, but they both understood there was no better choice. Neither he nor Javi had the composure or the constitution to act as the voice of the train day in, day out, selling the most audacious scam since Madoff.
So he watched as Snowpiercer’s epistocrat crisscrossed her kingdom. He kept her secrets, and he whispered in her ear, and it horrified him sometimes how much power he had over the last remnants of the human race.
Bennett finished the last of his nigiri as Javi, whistling, dropped into the seat beside him. “Any trouble?”
“Not with the engine. The usual problems downtrain, though. Brawls in Third and slackers in Second.”
“Busy day for Mel. And with Fight Night tonight too.”
“Yeah.” Bennett frowned as he stood up, a thought occurring to him. “Javi, I’ll be heading downtrain for my break. Should be back in a few hours. Don’t drop dead while I’m away, alright?”
Fight Night had been Bennett’s idea initially. “If you’re running a dictatorship, Mel, you have to give them bread and circuses. It’s how you sedate the masses.” It had sounded so natural when he’d pitched it, leaning over her shoulder as she drove Snowpiercer.
It seemed anything but natural now, as Melanie arrived at the Night Car to the combined eyes of Ruth, Lead Brakeman Roche, Miss Audrey, and one of Miss Audrey’s bartenders – Cory? Clay? – scrutinizing her. For their own reasons, none of them had been particularly enthused by her announcement of the event. They would go along with it, with her plan, because it wasn’t really hers. It was Mr. Wilford’s.
“Two hours to opening,” she said breezily. “How are the preparations going?”
“Fine on our end,” said Miss Audrey.
“Ready on ours.” That was Roche. “We’ll have Brakemen stationed at each of the exits, and several in the crowd to ensure the fighting doesn’t spill over. I’ve had to call in a dozen extra shifts to make up the manpower. If you could keep it from getting too rowdy...”
“We’ll try our best,” said Miss Audrey. “I don’t control the crowd.” She threw a borderline accusatory look at Melanie. Melanie ignored it. Audrey felt license to act bolder than most because of her history and connections, but there were limits to how much Melanie could allow her to get away with. Could allow any passenger to get away with.
“Rest assured, Hospitality will keep a close eye on proceedings.” Ruth cleared her throat. “We’ve had a last-minute drop out. I’m getting a replacement. It shouldn’t be too much of a fuss. There were almost eighty people signed up to the waitlist.”
That made a hundred or so from Third Class who were willing to risk significant physical injury for a chance at an upgrade. Bread and circuses, indeed.
“Excellent,” said Melanie. “Mr. Wilford will be pleased to hear that all arrangements are in order.”
“Melanie. Can we have a word?” Audrey beckoned.
Melanie nodded, following Audrey into one of the alcoves leading to the Night Car’s private compartments – the ones Wilford had once intended to curate as his personal brothel, an array of debauchery to suit his every paraphilia. Melanie had made sure they were used for better ends.
“I don’t like this,” Audrey said bluntly.
Melanie raised her eyebrows. She let a moment pass before speaking, as she’d come to find useful for projecting an air of command. “You don’t have to like it. You just have to run it well.”
“It’s transparent. It’s an obvious ploy to pit Third against each other, and let First and Second catch their fill of poverty tourism while we’re at it. I know this is Wilford’s idea, Melanie. It has his fingerprints all over it. Divide and conquer – that’s his play.”
“Your point?”
“I’m not asking you to go against him on this. Whatever you may think of me, I understand that influence is a limited currency. But think about it. The Night Car is what that it is today because of you.”
“Switzerland.”
“A place for remembering. For working through grief.” Audrey smiled sadly. “Deep down, I know you have a different vision for this train.” She reached out a hand, halfway. Let it hang in the air between them. “Think about it, Melanie.”
Melanie watched Audrey go. She made sure nobody was watching, then gave herself a minute, cradling her forehead in her palms.
I know this is Wilford’s idea.
Blood running from her nose, the Breachman snarled and leaped at her opponent, a janitor, who danced out of the way with unusual agility.
Deep down, I know you have a different vision for this train.
The janitor responded with a blow of his own, catching the Breachman at an angle that made Melanie wince.
It has his fingerprints all over it.
Clutching her side, the Breachman tapped the stage. The crowd erupted into cheers as the janitor lifted his arms in victory, an expression like rapture on his face. He’d won. Fought his way through a bracket of blood and broken bones to Second Class, to a private cabin and a cushy desk job.
Melanie sighed from her perch in the shadows, where she’d retired after delivering the welcoming speech. Next time, she thought, she’d just do her spiel from the Hospitality Car.
The soles of her feet ached. Hunger was hitting her in full force. Between preparations for Fight Night and following up with the miscreants in Second and Third, she hadn’t eaten since the sandwich she’d scarfed down for lunch.
At least this part of the sub-train was still working.
She wanted to cry in relief when she finally, finally got back to the Engine Car. The door had scarcely slid shut when Ben was getting up from whatever model he’d been running, striding towards her.
“Mel!”
“You should be sleeping,” Melanie muttered. She tore her heels off and tossed them to the side. “Javi’s shift. We pencilled you in for the morning.”
“Mel.” Ben gestured at her, and she resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Water first, from the control room dispenser. It tasted heavenly. Always the simplest things.
“I’m going to assume you know how silly you just sounded.” Ben crossed his arms. “You look stunning, by the way.”
Melanie paused at his tone of voice. That little dip of his gaze...
She considered. It had been a while. Her head was buzzing from the mania of the evening, enough so to keep her from passing out immediately. And the mediation in Third had gone better than she’d expected.
“The sub-train.” She shook her head. “I have to get up early tomorrow to fix it. DiMarco’s...”
Ben placed a finger in front of her lips. “Shh.” Waited for her to trail off in half-hearted indignance. “It’s done. I fixed it this afternoon, while you were running around putting out fires. Happy Fight Night.”
Slowly, she set down her now-empty glass. That smile Ben was giving her, it evaporated the last of the tension in her shoulders.
“I’m a damn good engineer, Mel.”
Desire hit her like a voltage spike. Every nerve ending sang with awareness, as if desperate to assert that she was alive, untouched by the carnage she’d witnessed tonight. She all but dragged him into her cabin. The apocalypse could wait until tomorrow.
“I don’t want to think,” she breathed as she tore at his uniform. The thing had far too many buttons.
Ben understood. “Turn around.” He dragged her zipper down and whisked her dress off in one motion. Then his mouth was on her, driving every doubt from her mind.
Melanie didn’t deceive herself that she was a good person. But when he looked at her the way he did between kisses, like she was soft and gentle and capable of loving and being loved, she could believe that she deserved good. It was a dangerous feeling. It was a drug.
Propped up on her desk, Melanie whined as she brushed against her stack of documents. They were the last thing she wanted to think about. “Make me forget,” she breathed.
“As you command,” Ben murmured, and entered her.
Her breath hitched. She arched her back to meet his thrusts, her limbs finding their way to wrap around him, drawing him closer. She whispered his name again and again, as he granted her catharsis in touch. He was solid. He was someone she could hold at her most vulnerable, skin to skin, without a trace of deception between them.
On this train, that was a salvation.
Afterward they lay, limbs entangled, her head buried in the crook of his neck. She traced logic proofs on his chest, indulging in its steady rise and fall.
“Do you think they survived?” There, ex falso quodlibet: a law that used to drive her insane. “The ones who hid out in bunkers.”
From a contradiction, anything follows. Once Melanie allowed chaos in, she’d no longer be in a world with rules that she understood, and things she’d thought rationally impossible would come to pass. “I wish someone did,” she continued. “So that I wouldn’t be responsible for the fate of all of humanity.”
Ben ran a hand through her hair. There were any number of sweet nothings he might have chosen in reply. That she was doing well, as if well were enough to satisfy this responsibility. That it wasn’t her fault, as if blame and merit were luxuries they could afford. She loved him in that moment, that he refrained.
“I hope someone else makes it too,” Ben said quietly. “It’s a nice thought that we might not be alone out here.”
They both knew how unlikely it was – that surviving the initial Freeze up to now would be child’s play compared to surviving the centuries it’d take the planet to recalibrate, for Snowpiercer as much as for anybody else out there.
Even so, they were crazy for hope. There was little reason in it: with CW-7, there were far fewer differences between hypothesis and fantasy than they’d admit. Praying at the altar of empirical evidence was still praying. Yet every once in a while, Melanie was weak enough to partake.
She fell asleep warm that night.