The Last Train

It was 4:50am and there was still no sign of the train. I was going to be late for work again.

My phone vibrated with a new text message. I imagined it was Mike, scolding me for not waking him up and kissing him goodbye. But Mike had been dead for nearly twenty years. And I’d been alone ever since. An old man, lost, tired, and alone.

The text was from the mayor’s office, a warning.

Curfew tonight: 8:30pm. Anyone caught outside after hours will be culled.

The culling. The government’s answer to over-population, global warming, food shortages. Population growth had outpaced technology, and all we could do was offer primitive solutions. Cull the herd. No one knew what happened to the bodies afterward. Rumor was that they were processed and included in food rations.

Back when he was alive, Mike had sworn he could tell whenever we got human meat. “It’s tangier,” he’d say, smacking his lips. 

Finally, the train arrived. I slipped my phone into my pocket and adjusted my backpack across my back, the straps frayed and torn. 

The subway cart slowed to a stop and I took a seat inside the empty cart. At the next stop, a student wearing Columbia Medical School scrubs came in and sat across from me at the other end of the cart, studying his textbook.

He reminded me of Mike when he was younger, with a kind face and short black curls that flowed in front of his eyebrows. His hands were smooth, his nails perfectly trimmed. The opposite of mine, which were rough, weathered, and jagged from decades of gnawing.

I checked my phone again: 5:05 am. I could hear my manager’s voice in my head, scowling at me for being late again, threatening to fire me. But losing a job didn’t scare me, not with a janitor shortage in the city.

The culling had resulted in some unexpected shortages. Forty years later and they were still working out the kinks. It wasn’t all a surprise, not really. The culling was supposed to be random, but we all knew it wasn’t. The lower classes had halved in size over the decades, while those at the top were almost unaffected. The result was the world we lived in today: an abundance of doctors, lawyers, engineers, and a shortage of blue-collar workers. The janitors, the staff, the help.

I thought about Mike again, waiting for his text message to appear on the screen like a miracle. But the screen stayed blank. No goodbye message, no begs for kisses, no Mike, and a phone that was nearly worthless, a shell of its former model. No Internet, no camera. The government had stripped those features a long time ago. If information is power, then lack of information is compliance.

The train rolled to an unexpected stop mid-tunnel. A minute passed, then two. Usually the conductor would come on to explain the delay: a track malfunction, a train ahead of us, something on the tracks. But the cart stayed silent.

After five minutes, a new text message from an unknown number appeared on my phone.

Please stay calm and remain in your seat. You are not its target. 

I knit my brows in confusion. The message quickly disappeared and my phone shut off on its own, a dead blank screen. I tried the power button, but it didn’t respond.

My cart mate was still deep in his textbook, almost unfazed by the holdup.

Suddenly the subway lights shut off in unison. Complete darkness. I tried my phone again, but still, nothing.

Then I heard a creaking sound from outside the cart—the tracks settling, or something else? Not two seconds later, a loud metallic bang as something hit the side of the cart. The cart shook violently. I could hear my cart mate jerk in his seat.

My hands shook as I tried my phone again, and again, but still nothing, useless.

The hum of the air conditioning died, leaving a silence in its wake that was thick and absolute. I put my phone in my bag and put my bag to the side, preparing myself to get up and investigate, but my knees trembled, unable to complete the task. And then a sliding noise cut through the silence, keeping me in my seat. I knew the sound well—it was the opening of the cart doors.

A steady stream of stale air flowed into the cart from the subway tunnel outside.

I sensed a presence in the darkness, something standing just outside the doors. Someone, or something, was about to come inside.

I held still, not daring to move or breathe or even think. I listened, and through the silence, I heard it as it came inside. It breathed steadily, almost a silent growl. 

Then the tapping of claws against the ground as it moved forward.

I heard my cart mate shuffle and rise from his seat. “S- sir?” he said, his voice shaking.

“Shh!” I spat out in a quick whisper. “Sit down. Don’t move.” My terror had quickly turned into defense. I was short, a grandpa badgering his grandchild to obey. And he did. 

The tapping of the claws grew closer until they stopped right in front of me. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there, and I knew it was large: five, six feet tall on all fours, and double that size on its hind legs. Its stale exhale crept forward and brushed my forearms.

Its growls vibrated off the cart walls, penetrating the stillness. It grew louder and louder as it sniffed the surrounding air, breathing me in. Its hot breath penetrated me. And then its hair grazed my forehead. It was rough, like needles against my skin.

I closed my eyes, embraced the darkness, the unknown, and accepted my fate. This was it, this was the culling, finally come to get me.

My heartbeat slowed, preparing for my last moments. I thought about Mike, and what his last moments must have been like. I thought about our lives together, cut too short, and how afraid I’d been to move on after his death, to risk everything all over again. I’d wasted the last twenty years of my life, and now it was too late to turn back, too late to honor Mike’s memory by moving forward. I’d had my chance, and I’d failed, and now it was time to let go.

Suddenly, the growling ceased. The vibrations were gone. I opened my eyes and breathed. It was as if the world had paused for just one moment, and then the creature disappeared.

But then I heard it again. A loud growl from across the cart. It had passed me and moved on toward my cart mate. I could hear the young man nearly hyperventilating as it approached him.

I grabbed my phone from my bag and tried it again. This time, success. It turned on, flashing the home screen, an American flag. I opened the utilities app, pressed the flashlight.

What I saw when I shined the light ahead stopped my heart. The creature was humongous, furry, and gray, with the body and form of a gorilla and the head and snout of a wolf. It had large, blinding white fangs and transparent claws on its hands and feet that seemed to grow and shrink at will.

The creature walked toward my cart mate, saliva dripping from its mouth, preparing for the kill.

I tensed my grip on my phone and squawked out an objection. “Not him,” I said, “Take me.”

But the creature didn’t stop, didn’t even consider me.

My cart mate’s eyes froze with terror. The creature grabbed him and opened its mouth wide, unhinging its jaw in at least eight places, pools of thick saliva spilling onto the floor.

Every muscle in my body tensed with anger, hatred. Surprising even myself, I flew forward across the cart, cell phone in hand lighting my way, and pounded my free fist against the creature’s back.

But it was no use. The creature shoved me aside like a gnat, and I crashed backward into the opposite seats. My phone flew out of my hands and landed flashlight side up onto the ground, casting a harsh glare across the cart, like looking through the flicker of a projector light.

I strained my eyes to see through the glare, and I saw the outline of the creature as it slid the young man slowly down its throat, somehow swallowing him whole in one big gulp. There wasn’t even a drop of blood on the ground.

The creature licked its paws and looked at me, a large silhouette against the glow. It leaned down and sniffed me, and then, uninterested, walked out of the cart.

The cart lights flickered back on.

I sat there in a strange disappointed daze. Disappointed that I’d failed to save my cart mate, just like I’d failed Mike, like I’d failed myself. But unlike so many other times before, what came along with the disappointment wasn’t numbness or sadness. No, something else washed over me in that moment, cleaning me like new. I felt it as clear as I’d felt the fear not ten minutes prior. It was determination, a call to action I knew I couldn’t ignore.

I grabbed my phone from off the ground and pushed myself up. The cart doors started to close on me, but I stopped them with a terminator-like power that surprised even myself. I jumped out of the cart and onto the subway tracks below, welcoming the violent pulsating of my heartbeat.

Up ahead, I could still see the creature making its way down the dark subway tunnel.

I followed it, the small lanterns on the tunnel walls lighting my way. The tunnel air was thick, hot. I could feel my throat muscles contracting, the air struggling to go down. A thick dew coated my face, my arms, my body. I could feel myself getting both lighter and heavier at the same time, the moisture from my body seeping into my clothes.

The tunnel seemed to go on forever. No twists, no turns, simply a never-ending path straight ahead into nothingness, into darkness.

Finally, the creature stopped. 

From the creature’s right came a man. He was tall and thin, with long greasy hair, and he looked like he’d lived down in the subway tunnels his whole life.

The man held a long, electrified spear. He zapped the creature, forcing it into submission. Then the creature and the man disappeared into the tunnel wall.

I sprinted forward and came upon a large metal door in the tunnel wall that led to a small room. Across the top of the door was a small window. I peeked through, seeing the man and the creature inside. The man had chained the creature to the back corner of the room.

“Come on, give it up,” the man said, threatening the creature with his spear.

The creature growled, unwilling to obey. It opened its mouth wide and pounded its chest.

“Every Goddamn time,” the man mumbled, annoyed. He jabbed his spear into the creature’s chest, just narrowly breaking its skin. Blue sparks flew out of the spear and electrocuted the creature. The creature roared.

 “Out with it!” the man yelled.

The creature backed into the corner on all fours, its paws curled, its head down. Then it pulsated, heaving. All at once, like a cat coughing up a hairball, the creature threw up my cart mate, the body plopping down to the ground in one piece.

A thick pink goo covered the body. The handler crouched down, wiping the goo away from the face. “Fresh young meat,” the handler said, smiling. “I don’t suppose big brother would mind if we kept a little for ourselves.” 

The handler grabbed an ax out of a locker behind him and chopped a leg off the body. He wrapped it in newspaper and threw it into the locker. The creature growled, salivating.

“Oh, stop your whining. You’ll get your share,” the handler said. “…just as soon as everyone else gets theirs.”

The handler threw the ax on top of the body and dragged it through thick plastic curtains into a hidden back room. Then the chopping began again. I winced at the sounds, one whack after the next.

The noise drowned out the creak of the door as I entered the room. I looked at the creature sitting there in the corner, chained, tamed. It no longer scared me. I didn’t see a monster anymore. Instead, I only saw an animal.

The electrified spear leaned against the locker in the corner. I grabbed it and walked through the plastic curtains, my grip tightening on it. My breathing increased, trying to keep up to the pace of my heartbeat.

The hidden back room was larger than the front. It had fluorescent lighting above and sterile white floors below. Sitting against the far wall were three large metal industrial bins, each with a sign above it indicating a different borough: Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn. In the room’s center, his back to me, the handler made his last chop to my cart mate’s body. He threw one arm into Manhattan, the other arm into Queens, and a leg into Brooklyn.

He finished divvying up the rest of the body parts and when he was done, he pressed a red button at the bottom corner of each bin. The bins vibrated with the sounds of grinding motors, sawing, chopping. The sounds pierced my eardrums.

Pink meat flowed down into clear plastic tubing below the bins. The tubes disappeared into the ground, the meat on its way to its final destination.

After a minute, the metal gears screeched from a lack of food. The handler pushed the red buttons again, killing the motors. The room fell silent.

The handler finally turned around and saw me. He jerked, startled at first. Then he looked me up and down and smirked, unthreatened. Blood covered his butcher’s apron, as well as his face, his hair, the floor below him.

“What’s this here?” he asked, amused.

I held up the spear, my arms shaking. I thought about all the times that Mike had joked about the meat rations, about how he’d always thought it was people meat. My stomach turned.

I tensed the muscles in my face and tightened my grip on the spear. I lurched forward. The handler fell backward onto the ground with one swift jab to the chest. My foot on his stomach, I held him down while I slid the spear deeper inside him. I could feel the spear penetrate his heart, tearing apart veins and muscles and bones.

Wide-eyed, the handler choked out his last breath, gurgling on the blood in his throat.

I released my grip on the spear and left it there, sticking straight out of him.

When his eyes finally closed and his body went limp, I breathed a sigh of relief. I stood there for what seemed like forever, unable to comprehend what I’d just witnessed, what I’d just done. 

In the room's corner, a large binder sat upon a desk. In a daze, I walked over and flipped through it, trying to break myself from my trance. Its pages were full of maps: subways, trains, underground tunnels, names and locations of what I could only guess were different handlers, different creatures. Toward the back of the book, an extensive plumbing network, diagramming where the meat traveled. All pipes converged to a single location just under Central Park. I flipped a few more pages. A large factory, an assembly line, a packaging facility, all underground.

Page after page, I studied each map like my cart mate had studied his textbook, memorizing each location, each handler, each creature. I must have been there for hours, but it only seemed like minutes.

When I was confident that I’d memorized it all, I dragged the handler’s body through the plastic curtains and into the front room, plopping it down in front of the creature. Then I took my cart mate’s newspaper-wrapped leg from the locker and dropped it down next to the handler’s body, presenting my offerings to the creature.

I yanked the spear out of the handler’s chest and held it at my side, unafraid, unthreatening.

“I think we understand each other,” I said, twisting the spear in my hand confidently. “And there’s a lot more where that came from.”

We looked into each other’s eyes, still, silent. Even the air seemed to depart. The creature finally nodded and then started eating. It started with the handler’s body, leaving my cart mate’s leg for last. This time, it didn’t unhinge its jaw. This time it tore the flesh, chewing, salivating, now enjoying its meal instead of simply swallowing it whole like it had been forced to do before. This time, there was blood. While it fed, I grabbed the keys from the locker and unlocked the creature’s bindings, freeing it from its chains.

When the creature was done eating, it walked toward me and waited, ready to obey, ready to work together, to become partners. It gnawed on my cart mate’s tibia, a puppy with a new toy, pink and white, the flesh and veins ripped clean from the bone.

I nodded, leading us out of the room and into the subway tunnels. Spear in hand, creature by my side, I walked forward into the never-ending darkness of the underground tunnels, ready, alive.