20160903

Day 852

Nobody's quite sure when the trains began to change, only that they did and that hundreds of thousands were changed alongside them - or rather inside them. Now the term "passenger" is synonymous with "parasite" and "monster", something akin to a locust that comes in London-bound swarms to eat anything and everything between the train and the station's edge. They seem too afraid to go any further.

Generally train stations can be avoided with ease, the tracks too in more rural settings where people prefer farm animals of whatever availability to carry them to their destinations. In cities and high density towns avoiding train lines is a little harder, especially in London where there are underground stops almost on every street.

London is practically a city for ghosts and locusts now, especially when the trains pull in every five minutes or less and their multitude of passengers spill out along the tunnels and escalators in search of fresh food. They don't seem to eat other passengers though they hiss and snarl at any from a different line to theirs. The worst rivalries seem to be between the Circle and Metropolitan for reasons beyond present knowledge.

As with any disaster or dramatic cultural shift, the native Londoners have adapted to the new predators in the very core of their city. New paths were going to be made that connected skyscraper to skyscraper, bypassing any need for the underground system and leaving the passengers to hiss and claw at any living thing that dares to walk past them. Unfortunately with so few unchanged people still inhabiting the area, the work is slow and the casualties are high.

No one in their right mind willingly moves to London in order to help rebuild the capital, in fact talks are being had by the Parliament (from the safety of somewhere in the Lake District) to move the official capital to another city or somewhere smaller and safer. The country would be rioting over this but the common folk are too busy trying to survive and the upper classes are too safe to concern themselves with anything but their own comforts.

And so the trains finally start to run perfectly on time, nothing on the tracks to delay them and nobody desperate enough to throw themselves in front of the speeding creatures. The signs in the underground repeat the same cheerful phrase of "All lines are clear. Service is perfect." to an audience that are forgetting how to read and learning how to hunt.

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