Chapter Text
Buck hadn’t expected to end up in a disastrous accident when he boarded a train - the Pacific Surfliner - for what should have been a relaxing trip down the coast to enjoy some beautiful scenery and just relax, but if he had - and maybe he should have, considering the way bad luck and trouble seemed to follow him - he’d have expected something normal, you know, like a derailment.
He supposed that, technically, the beautiful train - all silver and blue - had derailed, but technically correct was the worst kind of correct and ‘thrown off the track because of an earthquake and plunged some indeterminate distance below the soft, sucking sand and earth along the coast’ was actually a far more accurate description of what had happened to him – to them .
Them because he’d invited along Tommy - they barely got any time together thanks to their conflicting schedules, so a rare day they both had off had just called out for a trip - and Eddie, because God knew he needed something to distract him from the - the situation with Christopher.
Buck had set up the entire trip, picked a place to eat when they got to the end of the line and some activities and he’d had the best of intentions, he really had, and so it seemed deeply unfair - but also not a surprise, exactly - that the earth had swallowed them up, instead.
“I need something else for bandages,” Eddie said, tone calm and even, like he didn’t notice the blood running down the side of his face and plastering back his hair. The quake had tossed all of them around. Eddie crouched amongst the injured; he’d sprung into field medic mode after the cars stopped falling and the earth fell in over them, when it became obvious there wasn’t going to be a fast exit available.
There’d been roughly sixty people on the three train cars that went with them down into the dark, cut off from the engine by the quake. Buck hoped the rest of the train had remained above ground, but it was equally likely that the other cars had been pulled down, too, just to a different depth and too far away to reach.
Eddie had sorted out the injured passengers and employees. One of the stewards knew how to remove the seats and they’d made a flat area at the back of the rearmost car for those with the most severe injuries.
He’d enlisted some of the other passengers to whip out their cell phones and keep the flashlights on; it provided the only illumination with the dirt, sand, and mud pressing close against all the windows.
People had donated extra clothes to form a barricade of sorts against the water - they’d fallen below the water level - creeping in through damaged sections of the train and the open doors between the cars, trying to keep the water away from the injured, God, he’d screwed up so bad, he never should have–
“Buck,” Eddie said, tone sharper, dragging Buck out of the spiraling recriminations in his own head. He was up to his wrists in some poor guy, doing– something. “I need more bandages. Something clean.”
“Right,” Buck said, shaking himself. He felt – wrong-headed in a way that was unusual during an emergency. He knew how to turn off the spiral of his thoughts during a fire. He didn’t fall apart when rappelling down the side of a building or dealing with a tsunami. He had no idea what was wrong with him at the moment.
He figured he could probably blame it on the blow to the back of the head he’d taken during the fall, when the sudden drop threw him up against the ceiling.
“Right, yes, I’ll go dig through the luggage,” he said; Eddie grunted in response, clearly distracted. Buck did not add ‘again.’ He’d been through every piece of luggage tucked away in the cars, but what else was there to do but look again?
Everyone with the kind of minor injuries he knew how to treat had already been treated. They sat, watching Buck go with their eyes wide and white all the way around. He’d been through enough emergencies to know they needed to look at him and find hope, and so he nodded and spared smiles where he could, and he went, because to sit against the side of a seat like he wanted to do would be an admission of defeat.
He moved to the other end of the car, water splashing around his sodden shoes with each step.
He stopped at the rear, assessing the damage one more time. The doors between the cars had been twisted out of their frames by something during the fall. They couldn’t close them or open them all the way. The sand and dirt had fallen in around them, partially deflected by the angle the cars had fallen and making it possible to crawl through a tight passage to reach the next segment of the train.
Buck crawled, water soaking through his clothes as he came out the other side. He went through the luggage he’d gone through already, grateful to have something to do with his hands; he had a creeping feeling, now that he’d had a chance to consider it, that Eddie had sent him off with a task for just that reason.
Eddie knew him, knew how hard it was for him to sit still in the best of circumstances and they were extremely far away from the best of circumstances.
He huffed a sharp laugh at the thought that he’d been assigned busy work in an emergency.
But there was nothing useful for him to do, and he knew it. The passengers in the car had been soothed as best they could, given snacks and drinks they’d raided from a cart that had happened to take the fall with them.
Some of the kids had even fallen asleep, lying across their parents and the seats. Only a few spots of light illuminated the long dark through the car, people on their cellphones, trying desperately to get a signal while buried under God only knew how much earth.
Buck nodded and spared a few words for them, making his way down the car, to the third and final segment of their train.
It was harder to get through to the third car. His fault. He hadn’t realized how deep they were in the initial aftermath of the quake. He’d assumed - wrongly - that maybe he could just dig them a path out.
The attempt had disturbed the careful balance of earth around them. Wet sand and dirt had flooded down into the cars. Buck had nearly been buried by it; Tommy had pulled him free before it could suffocate him and, after a few seconds that stretched like years, something had shifted above them and stopped the rush of earth, mostly.
It kept trickling, filling up the far end of the car and - Buck noticed - tilting it down, the extra weight changing the position of the car.
He could only imagine what would happen if - when - they got an aftershock, and set that aside. Thinking about it wouldn’t stop it and he needed to stay as clear-headed as he could. He blew out a breath and, braced, crawled his way into the final train car.
There hadn’t been any useful luggage in there, either, but he could check again.
Besides, Tommy was at the far end of this car,
Tommy’s car had shifted to a nearly forty-five degree angle since last time Buck swung by - surely not more than ten minutes ago, he’d been ping-ponging back and forth for…some indeterminate amount of time, it was getting harder to think and he knew that indicated bad things about the levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide inside their little pockets of life - and he had to pull himself up using the seats, towards the spot of light at the far end.
He found Tommy - and the two teens who had enlisted themselves to help him - still bent over the remains of the radio system at the far end of the train car.
Usually, train employees used it to talk to one another, a closed system between engineers, conductors, and stewards. But it was still a radio, and a stronger one than anyone else had on the car. The radios in the other two cars had been crushed beyond usefulness by the fall.
Tommy had determined - and Buck agreed - that if they were going to get a message out to emergency responders, they’d get it out with the radio. Unfortunately, so far they’d had no luck.
“Hey,” Buck said, bracing his feet against seats on either side of the aisle and looking at the mess of circuitry and wires currently spilling out of the wall of the train. “You need anything up here?”
Tommy spared him a look and a quick smile. “A satellite phone,” he said, and Buck snorted. Tommy had already turned back to the work, working confidently with the electronics; apparently, he’d once been obsessed with CB radios. He said he’d known half the truckers who regularly moved up and down the coast, once upon a time.
It meant he had something useful to contribute to their situation, just like Eddie, while Buck–
“Hey,” Buck said, again, and cleared his throat, stomach twisting and sick. “I’m really sorry about–”
“Evan,” Tommy interrupted, not unkindly, but– tiredly. “An earthquake isn’t your fault. But I do need to concentrate, okay?” He spared another look over his shoulder.
“Right.” Buck scrubbed at the back of his neck with one hand. “Right, that’s– hey, do you have anything we could use as a bandage?”
They didn’t. Buck had the creeping suspicion he’d asked before. He swallowed it down, turned, and climbed back down out of the car.
#
No one had anything else he could use as a bandage. He spent some time in the middle car, trying to keep everyone there calm and hopeful. He happened to be talking to a little girl - she couldn’t have been more than six - when the first aftershock hit.
Getting everyone settled after that took time. He had no idea how much, but… but, after, he stood there and noticed that he was breathing faster, shallower, that each inhalation left him with the feeling that he hadn’t actually taken a full breath at all.
He stood there for a long moment, thinking about how much air they’d already used and lost, thinking about increased respiration rates when people panicked, when they were in pain, and all that oxygen just…running out.
There were, honestly, worse ways to die than suffocation. Especially when trapped underground with sixty other people. But death was still death and at least it won’t hurt as much as it could was a miniscule comfort.
He braced a hand on the back of one tilted seat, dizzy, and tried to calculate how much time they probably had left. He abandoned the math after a moment; they’d gone past the point where he could handle such calculations, so…
Not long.
Not long and he looked around the car, full of worried faces that had become familiar since the quake, and found himself moving without thought. His legs carried him down the aisle to the right and he climbed back through the door, into the medical car.
He found Eddie leaning up against one side of the car, legs stretched out and bloody hands in his lap. He had his head tilted back against a balled up jacket, eyes closed. Strange, dark shadows played across his face from the cell phone face-up on a pile of luggage beside him. Someone - probably Eddie - had covered the man he’d been working on with a few pieces of clothing.
Buck swallowed, clambered over the other people in the car, and sank down beside Eddie.
“I couldn’t find any bandages,” he confessed, pressing his back against the metal and his arm against Eddie’s.
“I couldn’t find the bleed anyway,” Eddie said; he sounded breathless. They both did. They were going to die, buried already, and Buck swallowed heavily, heart beating way too fast, a scream in his throat, he didn’t understand what was wrong with him, he didn’t get like this, he’d only felt like this twice and–
“Everyone else is– as good as they’re going to get,” Eddie went on, eyes still closed. “Until we get to the hospital.”
Buck covered his face with one hand, pressing hard against his skin. He couldn’t feel his cheeks. And he– wanted to scream, things in his head were getting jumbled and confused as the recognition of when and why he’d felt like this before flooded through him and–
He’d felt this - this exact emotion - watching Eddie get shot by a sniper and listening to the radio when the well caved in and–
And he couldn’t grab Eddie and pull him to safety now. He couldn’t fall down in the dirt and try to pull Eddie from the earth with his bare hands. He couldn’t do– anything, but–
“Hey,” Eddie said, quietly. He reached over and squeezed Buck’s hand, blood tacky between their skin. “It’s alright. At least we’re together, yeah? At least we can wait together.”
Something went through Buck like electricity. A sense of– calm, almost, washing away the panic he’d felt a moment before and replacing it with something… peaceful. He rolled his head to the side, finding Eddie staring up at the roof, eyes shining and mouth twitching with emotions, his words echoing in Buck’s ears as the air got thinner and thinner and–
And the car jostled and before Buck could even decide it was probably just another aftershock, light flooded in from above and someone, some angel, some impossible savior, shouted, “We’ve found them! They’re alive!”