I never should have gotten out of the shower. I never should have answered the phone.

It was Rishard. He needed me to pick him up at the train station in Glen Rock.

"Sure. I just got out of the shower. Let me dry off and I'll head over there."

I combed my hair, threw on an old pair of jeans, my brown hoodie and I ran out the door. He said the train would be pulling into the station at 9:30; it was 9 o'clock already.

The night air was pleasant while I walked to my car. It felt like April. It felt like spring. There was a moisture to the air, though, like it was merely seconds from raining.

I pulled up to the train platform at 9:15. I was early; very early as I would find out.

04/01/08 09:16PM
Hey I should be
there around 9:40.
***END***

"Great. Instead of being 15 minutes early, I'm almost half an hour early. Guess I'll take a walk."

There was a Starbucks down the road. It was still open. I got an iced coffee and walked out the door in time to see an unearthly electrical show in the sky. Heat lightning filled the night sky with an ethereal blue glow that contrasted against the still bare trees as they swayed in the growing wind.

The train platform was empty except for a young couple that waited on a bench a few hundred yards from where I stood sipping my iced coffee and admiring the lightning show.

I checked my watch: 9:34PM. Any minute now.

A man in a black raincoat walked up to the platform on the other side of the tracks and checked his watch. He was drinking coffee too.

Another text came in.

04/01/08 09:39PM
Did the math wrong.
Will get there at
9:50.
***END***

I continued to watch the lightning, which had increased in intensity since it started when I walked out of the coffee bar. It wasn't long before I felt the first drop of rain strike my wrist, followed by a few more of his cousins.

The warning bell began to clang, and I could hear the train's horn not too far off in the distance.

It pulled up to the platform just as the downpour began. The train came to a complete stop, and paused. The doors did not open; passengers did not walk off.

Then the doors did open. But the passengers did not walk off.

They stampeded. In a frenzy. Bloodied, mouth foaming.

Hungry. God, they were hungry.

They got to the young couple before any of us standing on that platform could comprehend and acknowledge what was happening.

They popped the man's head off his shoulders as he jumped between them and his girlfriend. He shouldn't have bothered - her guts were on the platform floor before his neck muscles even cleared his corpse.

I ran. Or, I started to, but the rain continued to pour, and the ground was slick. No traction. I fell forward, and continued to kick my feet out, hoping for some friction. But they were on me; they would have been on me anyway, there was just so many of them.

They grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me around to face them.

My phone started to vibrate. I had a text. The noise disturbed them and they backed away. I got to my feet and ran as I checked the text.

04/01/08 09:51PM
Whoops. Turns out I
got on the train that
stops at the other
Glen Rock station.
Can you meet me there?
***END***