Crush Hour
A Japanese commuter has an unusual train ride.
The road is paved but narrow I hope we all get home Lenny Kravitz - "Where Are We Running"
Izumi wasn't exactly looking forward to the ride home. First she had to cover Yui's shift at the maid cafe and spend most of the evening being leered at and groped by the drunkards in town to get pissed at the cherry blossom festival. Her uniform had started to chafe by the time she got off, and her face hurt from faking a smile.
Which meant all she had to do was endure a train car packed full of sweaty commuters, including more handsy drunks, until she made it home.
And her feet were starting to hurt again.
Perfect.
She seems...irritated.
She works in a maid cafe. Worked.
The sad thing is that no matter how bad she thought it was going to be...
Yeah.
And there they were. Like peas in a pod.
Maybe mashed peas.
Slightly squashed peas.
Izumi tried to comfort herself by thinking of the pot of tea she'd have before she hit home. She ran over the steps of her little ritual in her mind, controlling her breathing.
It was hard to reach the proper semi-meditative state when you were crammed buttcheek by jowl with what seemed like half of the prefecture.
They timed the attack for a high-volume of travellers. The infection has a long incubation period, and it's transmissible about halfway through that through everyday contact, but carriers normally have a day between when they start to become symptomatic and when they're...gone.
So, what went wrong?
Cheap glass.
What?
They used a device that was supposed to aerosolize the chemicals. But it was made of poor glass. So when someone nudged his elbow, it broke, sending the concentrated agent into his bloodstream. At the intended dose, the stuff is bad enough. Concentrated? Well...just watch.
On the screen, the nervous young man had started pawing at his swelling chest, his tongue hanging out of an increasingly inhuman face. People were trying to get away from him as russet fur spread over him, as he raised his nose into the air, as his new claws pulled his shirt open, exposing his heavy breasts to the air.
One hand grasped a teat, and the other reached down, shredding his pants with one swipe. Something large spang forth, something the fox wrapped her other paw around, something the other travellers stared at in horror.
The virus only took a few seconds to convert the initial terrorist. Notably, it started ramping up as more and more people were infected. It seems to be a nonlinear function, of course.
Of course.
One theory is that the victims themselves become a source of hormones that they...emit into the air, making future victims more susceptible. Especially in confined spaces.
Cries of alarm arose from further up in the car, and Izumi, reluctantly, stopped thinking about tea. She stood on tiptoes and craned her head to try and get a closer look, making sure to keep a firm grip on her purse. Someone seemed to have started shaking up ahead, their head whipping back and forth. But why was everyone sounding panicked? Why were people drawing away? It wasn't like there was much room to give them, but they could at least -
Something landed on the lapel of the man next to her. He managed to get his hand out, scraped it up. Was it foam? Was the sick person flinging foam from their lips?
She took a closer look, and blushed. Definitely not foam.
Once, at work, she had been on her shift when some pervert pleasured himself under the table. Luckily, she hadn't been the one who had to clean it up. She had been there when the next customer slid into the booth and felt something dripping from the table onto her leg, and had seen the off-white texture on the floor.
There had been a lot of bowing and apologies. The police hadn't been too happy either.
The man apparently realized what it was too, because he blushed, grimaced, and reached inside his coat with his free hand for something to wipe his hand off with.
The cries from the front of the car grew louder.
Izumi tried to cringe, to make herself a smaller target. If only she had something to cover her head.
Someone was screaming now. Mixed in with it, there was a noise rather unlike screams, sounding like moans, or animalistic grunts.
Can any of the victims speak?
Yes, with difficulty. They prefer not to.
The other passengers were yelling for someone to call 119. Some had even managed to fish their phones out of their pockets. Some of them were dropped as they were converted.
It was easier for Isumi to tell what was happening, now. Even if she hadn't been able to see, even if there weren't the shouts - some of them about "kitsune" - there was still the smell. Even more unpleasantly...biological than the usual smell of the Japanese train during rush hour. Coppery, like blood.
Around the waitress, people were starting to flush. An inopportune movement, and someone's purse was crushed against her chest. She won some breathing room - literally - by worming her arm under it, and a little more by unclipping the purse and letting it fall to the floor. The owner didn't seem to notice.
Something sharp scraped against Izumi's shins.
What are they doing now?
For obvious reasons, the victims take up more space than your average commuter. So one of them, one of the ones with claws, had the bright idea to hang from the ceiling. Some decided to ride on the others' shoulders. And sometimes the shoulders of the regular passengers. Their first option, of course, was to...occupy the unconverted, or each other.
Ah...
Of course, this gave them greater range.
Greater range for what?
Well...are you familiar with the nature of artillery?
The situation was getting desperate. People at Izumi's end of the car were trying to cover themselves with their coats, jackets, clothes, anything, struggling to find room to move. The man with the stained lapel took a gobbet full in the face, and began sputtering.
No!
The waitress' eyes widened, and she tried to push herself back from him as his sputters turned to laughter. Big, open-mouthed brays, head whipping back and forth. He didn't seem to care that he was hitting other people in his mirth, that his short black hair was turning brownish and lengthening, into a ridge.
Izumi winced at the squishing noise that was his waist cinching in, the crack of his hips widening. Something was straining at his pants, and he reached down with now-clawed hands and fumbled them off.
It was a lot pointier than it should be. Redder, too. Light brown fur was spreading outward, and she could see the muscles flexing under the skin of his thighs. She couldn't see down far enough to get a look at his feet, though, but by the way he was shifting, they were clearly changing too.
Flecks of foam flew out of his lips, past the sharp teeth that hadn't been there moments before. He reached up and pulled open his dress shirt, massaging the growing mounds under his t-shirt with both hands, drawing moans of pleasure, interspersed with the laughter. And by the time Izumi registered her mischievous expression, the hyena had already shot a stream of milk onto her face.
No no no!
She swiped and pawed at her face, waiting for the changes to begin, and managed to get it clear enough to see just before the hyena sprayed her with her second tit. Then, just for variety, she began hosing Izumi's clothes down.
Nothing happened.
The waitress felt her assailant lean in and give a confused sniff. Then it shrugged, and began grinding itself against her body. Other converts - those that weren't otherwise occupied caught on, pressing themselves against her, pushing at her, smothering her-
At this point, the train arrived at the station, and the converts got off and began to...introduce themselves to the commuters.
Did they all get away?
Some of them had enough sense to lay low. The Special Forces Group is hunting them down, with assistance from local authorities.
What a mess. Who's responsible for the terrorists getting their hands on the virus?
We're still investigating.
Are there any other cases of immunity?
A few, but they're rare..
The...victims left the girl behind, correct?
Yes.
Can I talk to her?
Unlikely. After we found her, she never talked again.
"Crush Hour" 2013 Eualie "Nequ" Quentin Creative Commons By-SA-NC