Driving a train sounds like pretty exciting work, right?
It’s really not.
When you’re taking your licensing course, you get a sense of excitement. You feel like your part of some long legacy of train conductors. You imagine yourself dodging train robbers or having to solve a murder mystery, meeting guests for drinking in the dining car as they ride the rails to California or Texas. In reality, most trains haul cargo these days.
Like many others, I found myself hauling freight cars through the dark of night.
At this point in time, most things on the train come down to pushing buttons and trying not to hit people or things on the track. Run the horn every time you come within 100 feet of a crossing. Make sure the tracks are in good shape. Note any damage or signal malfunctions in your logbook. Get to your destination and drop your cargo. Rinse. Repeat.
I do the 6p to 6a run, and most of my route is done in complete darkness. The train rolls on while I sit at the controls, and Roger would take over every few hours so I can stand out on the platform and have a smoke or eat something out of the fridge we keep in the back. We don’t haul passengers, except for cattle sometimes, so there’s no dining car or sleeper car or people besides Roger to talk to.
After tonight, I guess I won’t even have Roger.
I’m pretty new at this, Roger only having worked a few months longer than I had, and I had no idea about Track 54.
All the tracks have mile markers, and between track miles 53 and 55 is, you guessed it, Track 54. It runs through a deep stretch of wood, and the track is the only thing that’s not trees and dirt for about 20 miles. It’s a lonely stretch, and it gets a little creepy out there sometimes. Roger says it’s bullshit, but I could swear you can see things in the woods watching the train as it goes by. The good thing about the woods is that they’re only 10 miles from the depot we use to drop off cargo, so once your there, your almost half done with your shift.
Tonight, though, was a little different.
I was sitting in the passenger seat, browsing Reddit on my phone when I heard Roger swear and cut the breaks on. I braced and looked out the glass, sucking in a breath when I realized why he had stopped. It’s not uncommon to get stuff on the tracks, trees, or animals sometimes, but this was definitely something we would need to call in.
There was a body on the tracks.
Roger keyed up the mic and called it in, “Engine 13 here on track 54,” he glanced at the metrics on the screen, “.5, reporting a body on the tracks.”
The line went dead for a few seconds before someone came back from dispatch.
“Engine 13, come back. Did you say a body on the tracks?”
“10-4,” said Roger, “a human body on the tracks.”
More static before someone came back over, a different someone than the young woman who had answered before.
“Is it a living person or a dead body?”
Roger squinted at it for a moment, “Does it matter? There’s a body on the tracks!”
“It’s the difference between Calling the police and calling an ambulance. So yes, it matters.”
Roger sighed, glancing left and right at the woods before handing me the radio.
“Keep these numbnuts updated while I go check what kind of body this is.”
Then he climbed out of the train and moved to the front. I could hear him calling the person on the tracks and getting no response. The body appeared to be sleeping there, arms and legs splayed out over the ballasts, but I couldn’t tell if they were breathing or not from the cab. Roger didn’t seem to want to leave the train side and investigate, probably wondering if this were a robbery of some kind. It’s not as common for people to block a track and rob a train these days. Our cargo is mostly cement powder and cinder blocks, maybe some quarried stone, and various other things like AC units or unrefined oil. Not really something a train robber could get away with easily.
The handpiece crackled back to life as the older voice asked if we were still there.
I told him we were, and that’s when he asked for our location again.
The way he asked made me feel anxious.
He sounded relieved that I had answered and hesitant to have my location.
“Track 54.5,” I told him, eyes still on Roger as he walked closer to the body on the tracks.
Silence for a good ten seconds. I watched Roger creep towards the man, almost comically. My eyes cut to the woods for half a second, thinking I had seen movement in the trees. Was it an optical illusion? The only light was the big headlight, and it made things in the peripheral look weird sometimes. Roger was nearing the track when the mic cut back in and made me jump.
“Drive over it.”
I stared at the handpiece in surprise.
“What?”
“Drive over it and get the hell out of there. No one is supposed to leave the cabin after track 50. Did no one tell you that?”
I looked back up to Roger, now poking the body with his foot, before turning back towards the train.
“No, I’ve only been a driver for a few months. Roger and I…”
But as I watched Roger coming back, I saw something long and white come galloping out of the woods and snatch him up. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. It looked like a collection of white pipe cleaners formed into some kind of weird animal and left in a backpack for a few days. It snapped up Roger in its mouth and was over the tracks and into the woods on the other side before I could get a good look at it.
Roger was there one minute and gone the next.
“Engine 13? Engine 13 respond!”
“Something got Roger!” I yelled into the mic, “He went out to check the body, and…”
“Get that train in motion, now!” Yelled the man on the other end of the radio.
I pushed buttons, threw levers, and the train started moving again. I heard the wheels tear through the body on the tracks, a wet and meaty sound, and soon had it up to forty miles an hour again. I felt my breath coming out in hitching gasps as the forest careened around me, but the creature never made another appearance. I could still see that thing as it cantered across the tracks. I could still see Rogers’ face creased in terror as it grabbed him and took him into the woods. I suddenly doubted they would ever find Roger, ever find the body I had chopped up beneath my wheels, and I knew there would be no sign of the creature at all.
When I pulled into the depot an hour later, there were people there waiting for me.
People in suits from the Department of Transportation.
They told me I had done the right thing. They told me I had been very brave and had saved my company millions of dollars in assets. They made me sign a lot of things and told me to take some time off before coming back to work if I still wanted to work. They advised that I not talk to anyone about what I had seen and made me sign a paper saying I wouldn’t.
Well, I guess I fucked that up, didn’t I?
It’s been a week, and I still see that thing when I close my eyes. I researched that stretch of track, and the woods surrounding it have seen many disappearances. There are also more than a few stories about a strange creature that lives there. A hiker recently went missing there, a man with dark hair and a thick beard who was wearing jeans and a blue shirt the last time anyone saw him.
A man I would swear I saw laid across the track that night the Roger was taken.
The Line keeps calling to ask when I’ll be back.
I just don’t know if I can ever drive through those woods again.
After someone sees this, I may not have to worry about that anymore.