You 're a subway conductor and one day you realize no one has been riding your train for years . ( WP )

In hindsight, he should have figured it out sooner, there were so many signs. Ron Hawks raised the glass to his lips, feeling the cheap amber fluid burn as if flowed down his throat. So many signs that something was wrong. 
 
 It was the smell that finally did it. He could see that now. Subways he had run always had their own particular stink to them. Cigarette smoke, fast food, coffee. Sweat and perfume always permeated the fabric, soaking deeper than anyone could possibly clean. Bits of shit and vomit from the odd child or loon always found some dark unreachable corner where they would lay, ignored as they dried and decayed. Life had a smell to it, a smell that lingered and creeped with you as you walked the empty cars at the end of your shift. Except his train didn ’ t. At least, it didn ’ t smell like life. 
 
 He swished the burning fluid from cheek to cheek. He had never really quit, no matter how often he said he would. No matter how many times he told people he had gone dry. The bottle had always been in the back of his mind. A dark and patient friend waiting for him to crawl back. It ’ s why he took the job. That should have been the first sign. 
 
 16 years of screwing up. 16 years of bouncing from job to job, city to city after he showed up to one too many shifts reeking of booze. One too many sloppy runs. He had never killed anyone, never broke anything, never hurt anyone. God only knows how. It had kept him working, never quite screwing up to that point of no return, but given enough time, everyone could see he was an accident waiting to happen. Mathew ’ s hadn ’ t asked him about that, about his old jobs. That should have been a sign. 
 
 Late shift, one long run back and forth, night after night. No transfers, no turns, no other cars on the track. The prison track seemed like a miracle job. He could make the run shitfaced, not that he did, he was quitting again, but he could. No one bothered him, no one talked to him about the wife and children he no longer had. No one picked at old wounds. Just himself and the tunnel. It was…simple. 
 
 Prisoners and other supplies. That ’ s what they told him he ’ d be carrying. They told him he was working for the law. He should have looked into it. What kind of a place transports their prisoners in the middle of the night? By dedicated subway? He should have looked into it. 
 
 Ron grimaced as he took another gulp. The lines running across his face had always been older than the body that held them. They had grown even older that night. He took a moment to pour another glass. He downed it in one quick go and poured another. He should have… 
 
 He didn ’ t know why he had gone back that night. Minor malfunction, should have sat tight. They told him to sit tight and wait for the repair crew. But instead he went back with the passengers. It was stupid. He didn ’ t know how many there were, how they were held. He couldn ’ t see his passengers get on, another sign. Another reason he should have asked ‘ why? ’ 
 
 He could have been walking into a car packed full of unchained psychopaths. He took a swig and almost wished that he had. The guards, he had wanted to tell the guards what was going on. That was what he told himself at the time. Now, slowly poisoning himself in the dark of his apartment, Ron could admit the real reason to himself. It was the smell, he had to know why his train didn ’ t smell right. 
 
 With a gentle sob, Ron let his head rest against the hard wood of the table. There had been so many of them. Corpses, stacked like cordwood. Not even covered, just piled on the floor. Closing his eyes tight, Ron tried to shut out their broken and bloated faces from his mind. Their lifeless eyes stared at him in the darkness. The hard man cried softly into the wood. 
 
 Broken, every one of them had been broken. Every one of their dead faces was a mask of pain and fear. They stared at him from the pile with their limbs twisted and torn. Their skin shiny and bloated. Not just men. Women, men, young, old, every race, every type…children. Ron let out a soft wail of anguish. Children. Why were there children? Why would someone do that to children? 
 
 Like a coward he had rushed back to the front. He sat in silence and waited for the repair crew. Rushed back to his dingy apartment and his patient friend. 
 Months of work, almost two years, and he didn ’ t know anything about what he had actually been doing. Miles of track in the dark, no way of knowing where it truly began and where it ended. His checks were signed by a subcontractor. A middleman that stood between middlemen. They had told him he was working for the state. He didn ’ t know, not really, if it was true. He didn ’ t know if he hoped it was true. Five nights a week, for 19 months, he had been carrying bodies. Hundreds of bodies, thousands. Where did they come from? How could there be so many? How had nobody noticed this? 
 
 He didn ’ t bother with the glass. With desperation he gulped the stinging alcohol straight from the bottle, letting the searing liquid ’ s pain distract him from the faces that now haunted him. It let him escape for a moment. Just a moment. 
 
 Why were there children? 

