Day 266 - Railroad

 RAILROAD

Prompt - Railroad : Write about a train and it's cargo or passengers

The train came to a halt.  Heads looked round, expressions changed.  Outside, to the left, was all fields, for kilometre after kilometre, with just the occasional house or barn to break up the stolid vistas of green veg and the softly waving assemblies of beige cereals.  Was that a few hills in the distance?  It was hard to tell.

To the right an ugly plug of functional grey engineering, some kind of processing plant.  Everyone had their own guess.  Cement?  Flour?  Waste disposal?  Nobody got it right.

The announcement produced a flow of sighs and groans across the four carriages.  A train had come to halt up ahead, blocking the line.  Nobody knew how long the delay would be for.  They would be providing updates when they got any news.  People looked at one another, shrugged or growled or slumped or, for one person, gave way to relieved laughter.  It was going to be a tedious afternoon.

In carriage A Janice Snow wore a look of deep embarrassment, for she knew how her three kids were going to take the news.  She didn't want to look into the eyes of loathing she was certain were being focussed on her.

In carriage B Ben Tester held the hand of Gerry Macefield and gave it a squeeze, while across the table Geraldine Baxter scowled at them in disgust.

In carriage C Marty Horsman emptied his bottle, grabbed another from the bag at his feet, and dealt a poker hand to his mates, Garth and Peewee.  While on the other side of the aisle Jaz Patel looked with envy.  He was thirsty.

And in carriage D?  There sat Carl Treadway.  He was a frustrated man.  Made redundant, thrown out by his girlfriend, reduced to returning to his parents' house to get a bed for a few nights.  And now here he was, fertile fields to one side, a grey behemoth of productivity on the other.  Carl took a gun from his bag.  Across the aisle the Revered Gillespie looked on in surprise, then worry.  He asked Carl what he was doing with the gun.

Ten minutes later all of the above, and two of Janice Snow's children, would be dead.  If the train hadn't stopped by those fields...?