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They're just wind tunnels now. A gale flies gaily down them, whipping at the gravel and making the bolts rattle. It gusts up over the edges of the tracks and kick papers and stubs and crisp packets along the platforms, howling with delight as it goes. It bumps into the blue and white 3 sign that hangs above and creaks it back at a 30° angle. This is what the wind has always wanted it to be like. Before, there had been so many objects for it to work its way through and it was always being pushed around by the hurtling engines. Now it's free to play.

It whistles past a small hole in the wall by the kiosk on platform 4. Inside, a mouse shelters itself as he looks across the far side of the tracks to where the blackberries on the bushes that have grown up through the metal fence are just beginning to swell. This mouse is part of one of the few surviving families left here. After the people disappeared the food dried out and most had to move on someplace else. It's good being born so close to these bushes. He sniffs the air, pauses, and dashes down over and across the tracks to sink his teeth into the juicy fruit.

There are sounds and smells that taste more like memories than anything present. Gates clink with only the faintest of forces that they once had when people would barge through them in constant streams. Now, with atrophied mechanics, they pathetically try to recreate the sensation. Oil, that's been spilled from the bellies of the beasts whose stables these once were, slowly evaporates and fumes the air with distant ghosts.

Still the wind keeps blowing. It tears at already torn posters, dives into broken windows and skips in great strides along the length of the platform.

A door bangs itself repeatedly against a frame in recognition of its total lack of function now.

The cracked screen of a ticket machine occasionally blinks on and off, as if hoping to draw in moths.

The round-faced clock suspended above the tracks between platforms 1 and 2 still works, and ticks and tocks

around the entire station so that if you stand quite still for a few seconds its constant strikes become a deafening rhythm. [1,2..] It's unknown how this clock manages to keep ticking over but the clock would feel that it was down to its stout constitution and its inability to back down in the face of adversity. It was built to tell the time, and that's what it will keep doing as long as its cogs keep turning.

Weeds are growing up between the cracks in the platforms. The early scouts of a force that would, given enough time, reclaim all this back in to itself. For now they have their sights set on a nearby wooden bench that they can see their thick stalks wrapped around in weeks to come. Anchored high up in the wind, they'll pick and catch whatever they choose.

Soft crumpled polystyrene, dimpled cans, plastic bags and dust.

Burrowed deep inside the steps tiny insects feast and gorge on the wood that encapsulates them. They feed and reproduce, feed and reproduce, dissolving and consuming their surroundings in imperceptible but inevitable chunks. They'll always be there; anything other than their immediate environment is just so much nothing to them. For if the people come back with tools for smashing and cutting and reconstructing they'll still be here, alive. Them and the wind. Everything else will be crushed and caught and broken.

But for now, everything just moves in time to the beat of the clock and the steps of the wind.