Last Train
Picture the scene on a deserted midnight platform as a man waits for a train that is already late. Ten minutes, eleven, twelve; he abandons his clock-watching and paces as the girl laughs again. His teeth grate at the inanity of the overheard conversation; double her age and you wouldn’t be far off her IQ. Time passes slowly. It is the last train and, if it doesn’t come, he will be stuck here all night. Nowhere to sleep but a rubbish-choked length of concrete that stinks of piss and secondhand takeaway. The waiting room with its hard seats would have been preferable but that’s all locked up now. The girl is talking to someone else on her mobile and her voice carries. She does not seem worried that even the night cleaners have gone home.
“It’s not coming,” he hisses under his breath. “What do I do now?”
What indeed? Nothing to do but wait as the foghorn blonde pollutes the air with noise. There is no one else on the platform except for a hunched figure of undeterminable age and sex. Bundled in a filthy blanket, it appears to be drunk, stoned or asleep; it hasn’t moved in an hour at least. He looks at the clock and at his watch. Both stopped at exactly the same time as the clock on the Town Hall. Impossible; his scientific mind quashes the medieval superstition before it takes root.
“You just think that,” he says firmly. “Your mind’s playing tricks on you.”
Speaking of which.
The vagrant jerks convulsively and the blanket ripples as if something is trying to get out.
“What the hell?” His voice sounds strange but he gets no answer.
The girl drops the phone and her eyes are saucer-wide, her mouth open in a soundless scream.
He turns too late and then he hears it, a crescendo of sound sweeping onto the platform like a wave. The rats do not care that the last train never arrived but the live meat special draws them in their thousands.
It is not every night that they get such a treat.