Re: The Stowaway/The Terror
He hadn't run away on someone else's ticket for nothing. Charlie was bored stiff of being bored stiff. Of wide fields and open skies without a single street light to them after dark fell. Of girls who wore printed cotton dresses and boys who blushed at the idea of being something other than what their fathers had been before them. No matter what the deal with the train was, no matter why it had come to a stop and no matter why all those people had gone missing, it was something. It had vim to it. He had vim, far too much to come to a stop permanent, and the train would move when it moved.
The clatter and bang of the man moving around in the compartment didn't come to a stop at all. The man kept on banging and rattling and it was probably rude as all hell if Charlie had actually been asleep. Which Charlie wasn't. He sat up, and made a palaver out of yawning, stretching, rubbing non-existent sleep out of the corner of his eye. Deliberately. Charlie had been a shit-stirrer his whole life and he wasn't finishing now.
"Not a soul," he said, to the man with the respirator with the ghoulish fascination of seeing the end times walking around out loud. "What are you supposed to be?"