Once he heard someone mumbling something, Owen hurried towards the place where the noise came. It didn't seem to be much far away from where he was.
"Hey? Keep on talking to me so I can find you! Hey!?" He got no response this time and was worrying about the life of that person.
Owen wasn't an empathic person but he wasn't cold-hearted as well. There was no way that he would let someone die in that place.
Besides, that goodwill was part kindness, part selfishness.
The man knew that he would have more chances of surviving and get out of that train if he was with someone else. Also, he didn't know what caused the train to topple. Maybe it was just a mistake made by the person operating it, maybe an unpredictable accident… or someone could have made this on purpose.
Either way, it was better to have company in moments like that than to be all alone. Owen valued teamwork a lot since he was a manager and had to take care of an entire team of employees.
He passed for an entire wagon, holding his will to puke as he looked around to that terrifying scene while trying to find someone who was still alive.
"Hey!? I walked a bit more, okay? Can you hear me better now? Is there anyone alive here!?"
Suddenly, he heard a slurred and weak growl, that came right beside him.
Owen jumped to the side, tripping over something and falling on the ground, slightly cutting his arm on the process.
He let out a surprised scream as he looked at someone moving there. It was a person with an iron bar piercing his belly and he seemed to be still alive.
It was not a good thing for Owen to look, so he avoided his eyes and raised from the ground, walking with heavy steps forward.
'That one couldn't be saved. There is no way I could do something for him. There is no way…'
The manager walked some more through that wagon and was ready to choose between keep going further or return where he was and take the opposite way. At this time, he heard something coming from the next wagon.
"H-hey? Is anyone there?"
"I… I am here!" The person could shout something, coughing hard afterward.
Owen crossed his fingers, rooting for this one be in a better state than the other he just saw.
Limping and gritting his teeth to forget the pain, the manager kept going until the next wagon and once he got there he looked around and tried to spot someone.
He was going to shout something again, but he could notice a person moving in the wreckage of the train. He was under a couple of seats that disconnected from the train's structure and flew around.
Maybe that was the only thing that helped him to not be hit for a glass or metal piece and end up as hurt as Owen was. However, he seemed to be stuck in there.
"D-don't worry, I will help you!"
Owen reached the man, crouching beside him and taking a brief look to confirm that he wasn't seriously hurt. Then he started to take that wreckage off and release him from that suffering.
It lasted a few minutes until he could remove all the rubble, but Owen did.
"Are you okay, man?" He put his hands on his shoulders, looking intently at him.
"Y-yes… Oh gosh! I thought I would be dead by now!" He released a sigh of relief.
"What's your name?"
"I am Will. Professor from a university of the capital."
"I am a manager of the Commercial Sales Department of a certain enterprise. My name is Owen." He patted Will on the shoulders sometimes, as if to comfort him. "I know that we are in a hell of a situation right now and that there is a horrible scenario around, but we need to get out of here with as many people alive as we can, so I need you to don't panic."
Will nodded at his orientation. He seemed to be a bit dizzy, but that wasn't preventing him to comprehend what Owen was saying.
"I think I will go back to the other wagons behind. If you could keep going in the opposite direction, we can do it fastly. "
Will nodded slightly, feeling that he was about to cry at any moment, but he held himself. He had a headache as well, but he didn't know if it was the lack of glasses or if he hit his head.
Owen couldn't notice how discomforted he was and just thanked the gods for giving to him someone that wasn't in a catatonic state or that was too slow.
This way, after Owen and Will caught their breaths, they stood up and went in different directions to search through the place.
They agreed to meet again after they finished their research, in that same wagon.
Like this, they parted ways.
Will was still trying to absorb what was happening there. His mind was slowly starting to operate again at its peak.
When he found himself stuck on that pile of seats, feeling that all his body was being smashed and getting as thin as paper, he could swear for the life of his mother that it was all a nightmare and he had slept standing on the train.
Even after he got out of that cruel situation and was now wandering through the wagons of that destroyed place, he was still trying to sort out what was really going on.
'The last thing I remember to do was to approach the window and see something… What was it again? Ah! Yeah, that's it: the meteorite. That crimson meteorite of the news, I could see it in the sky, everyone else inside the train did, and they gathered there to see what was happening!'
He thought for some more time, barely paying attention to the disaster around him and just looking forward with his distant eyes.
If someone needed help on those wagons he passed for, they would probably be ignored by him.
'Anyway, I can't remember anything after the occurred… Does the train derailed and fell to the side or something like this?'
He put his hand on his forehead, reality finally hitting him hard. He stopped to walk for a while, his breath getting unsteady and his mind going wild.
"No… No, no! It can't be! Please, say to me that--" He interrupted himself once he saw his shaky hands covered with his own blood. He had hit his forehead and it was bleeding.
It was not too much blood, but enough to make Will lose completely his cool. He was going to panic there, but he heard someone moaning… below him.
'Huh?' He looked down and saw that he was stepping unwillingly on someone's trunk.
Once he realized it, Will jumped backward, taking off his foot immediately from there.
The woman he was stepping on before started to cough and she opened her eyes for a moment.
"If I don't die because of this… Then you will kill me stepping on… me… you know?" After that struggle to talk about something, she fainted again.
Will rushed towards her, checking her body to be sure that everything was okay.
She had some bruises and cuts, but nothing too concerning. She probably had inner issues with her body, but it was something that the professor couldn't know.
'I think I will need to drag her until the meeting point that I and Owen settled… Darn, that's not a good time to be so weak! It's better to let her here for the time being and go find more survivors, this way we can work together to bring her along.'
Still disturbed, Will persisted on find someone who was still alive, but that showed to be very hard.
After all the wagons he walked through inside the train, he could find just six survivors and that woman.
It was difficult to make people understand what kind of situation they were in and convince them to follow him along.
In the end, he could go through it, and they helped to bring that woman to the meeting point.
Owen was already there when Will arrived and he had other four survivors with him. It totalized 11 survivors except for them both.
Sarah, the woman Will stepped on, was starting to get conscious. Her mind was now returning very slowly and she was getting aware of the sounds around. She could feel her back laid on the ground and also the smell of things.
The lawyer wanted to keep her eyes closed, but she knew very well that she was in a dangerous situation and needed to wake up and be prepared.
Sarah slowly opened her eyes, she was looking directly at one of the windows that were the new ceiling.
Then, her eyes widened and she nearly let a scream out of her mouth once she realized that it was not imagination.
"H-hey, what's going on, lady? Are you okay?" Owen asked.
Sarah pointed to the big window.
"The skies… are dyed crimson!"