North of the plains lie the Sandhills; arid, hilly country. The human population is far surpassed by the cattle that graze there, but animals abound. Groves of spruce trees dot the terrain, giving hiding places to the creatures. Deer and foxes scamper between the groves, but they can be an unwelcome surprise for any drivers out late on the camelback roads.
A state highway and a pair of railroad tracks wind themselves between the hills and the prairie, a man-made divider of the land. The highway snakes westward, connecting the small communities. The railway runs alongside, atop its gravel rail bed. The towns are so sparse that you can be traveling for hours between settlements. Abandoned houses seated off the road only further impact the feeling of loneliness.
I had made the trip a hundred times before, always at night - as usual, but tonight I was running late, it was already after 2 a.m. As I left the city of my last stop behind I steeled myself for the long, dark drive ahead. I focused all attention to the edges of my high beams, seeking constantly for any signs of hazards. I set my speed at sixty miles per hour. Being late put me in a delicate dance between trying to make up any lost time, and being cautious: a wreck in this desolate territory could leave me helpless for hours.
One hundred miles separated the city behind me and the town of my next stop. The first thirty passed with little affair. With a new moon in the sky there was little to see. My entire world existed between the boundaries of my headlights, and the faint glow of my taillights behind me. Objects materialized in front of me to disappear moments later. Only slight hills affected the asphalt river I glided down. But the luminescent dotted lines floating in the middle, rarely broken by the double solid of a no-passing zone, were hypnotizing.
I could feel myself getting weary. Usually, I could stop and take a break on the side of the road. A short walk and a few lung fulls of the fresh night air rejuvenated me enough to continue. Not tonight. My tight schedule pushed me onward.
As I rounded a bend, a light illuminated the world in front of me. A diesel engine running backwards had it's light on. It was on the tail end of the section, assisting the lead engine by pushing the load from the back. By no accounts was the light as blindly bright as it's sister on the front of the engine, but it still put the pitiful amount of light I was radiating to shame. Everything beyond it's glow seemed to grow darker, making the road, and anything else ahead of me, hard to see.
We seemed to be traveling at the same speed, but it became apparent I was slowly overtaking the train beside me. As I finally passed the radiant beam of light, I could again see the road ahead. The click-clack of the rail cars did not help with the repetitive hypnotizing force overtaking me though.
Presently I noticed the train was not something I usually saw. The rail cars were not the normal hoppers, but passenger cars. I am still not sure of where those rails go, but I could not fathom at the time that anything but coal and train crews ever riding on that line.
The rounded, silver passenger cars piqued my interest. They seemed to lead on forever around the curves in the railway. Every circular glass window was dark, no sign that anyone lived inside was apparent. Suddenly a piercing wail echoed out into the darkness, a signal from the engine that they were nearing a crossing. I jolted in my seat from the unexpected interruption of the near silence, but I was once again fully alert.
I slowly gained on the train, only to end up on the outside of another curve and lose any progress of getting in front of the metal behemoth. We continued on like this for some time. A back and forth race to nowhere. A sense of comradery with the unseen passengers built up inside of me, we were all on a long journey through the middle of the night.
As the clock in my dash neared 3 a.m. we came upon a straight, and I pulled ahead. As I nosed ahead of the engine we entered a slight uphill grade, the solar flare mounted on the front of the engine lighting the entirety of the land ahead of us up.
Abruptly, a new light peeked from over the top of the hill. Another train traveling towards us on the adjacent track. The wail of the train beside me sounded again. The answering whistle by the oncoming train sounded distorted, possibly by the approaching Doppler effect.
The oncoming train's light blazed much brighter than my fellows. As it neared ever closer I feared I might go completely blind from the near perfect whiteness that shone from it's front. All detail disappeared into the burning orb. It's whistle sounded again, but it certainly didn't sound like a train whistle this time. The shriek that bellowed forth from it sounded human, a mix of crying and suffering - the sound of pure loss... or terror.
The sound didn't stop this time either, but grew in volume with the approaching light. More cries mixed with the scream. The terrifying cacophony crawled in my ears and reverberated inside my head. I stomped on the brakes while I tried closed my eyes to fruitlessly block out the light and sound but the train came on ever louder and faster.
Once my car had stopped I took my hands from the steering wheel and covered my ears, but I had to see what monstrosity was passing me. When I looked the lights of the two trains were nearly touching. The oncoming train hadn't been on the other track at all, but headed on a collision course.
The train I had been following all night sheared on contact with whatever was coming down the track, it split like a banana peel as the demonic screaming monster seemed to pass through it's middle. Sheets of metal flew in all directions as each train car was rend in turn. Flames leaped from the rails while lightning seemed to erupt from inside the train. Electrical tendrils reached out and fried the surrounding ground.
The destruction ground to a halt as the rear engine of the former train met it's demise. The screaming had stopped. The fiendish train-thing was left sitting still on the track, surrounded by wreckage. It's engulfing light now past me I could finally see it, but it seemed to lack any form. I could tell what I was looking at was supposed to be some sort of train, but I couldn't tell you why I thought that. It seemed to pulse, breathe, everywhere except where I looked directly.
Suddenly, the light on the thing began to dim, and with it all other light sources. My headlights gradually sunk back, even the digital clock in the dash seemed to be sucked away. My car's engine stalled, and I was sitting in complete darkness and silence.
I was too afraid to move, to do anything. I sat in terrified anticipation of whatever might happen next. Thoughts of dark, unseeing things gnawing at my flesh crept into my brain. Visions of clawed hands grasped out for me in the dark, limbs protruding from nowhere, their talons just shy of grazing me. But then it was over. My car was running again, the high beams shot out into the cold night, illuminating nothing but the road ahead. There was nothing on the railway, no wreckage, no fire, no train. My car's clock radio read 3:00.