There were stations missed and erratic speeds and complaints from the conductor's cab. There was not, however, anyone who made the man slow down. The people were scrambling and screaming. Five of them couldn't get out alive. The luckier ones were sprawled out on the platform, waiting to be carried to the ambulances that were waiting upstairs.
Yellow tags can wait down here.
Ray, the motorman, will probably fry for this, of course. And in the end, he may not be the only one. His boss, Transit Authority President Alan Kiepper, has also squeezed a decade's worth of bad luck into the past year and a half. The Clark Street fire. The Brian Watkins stabbing.