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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/CIAHerpes on 2024-03-30 04:33:59.

Part 1

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1ahfzyl/i_found_a_living_train_that_slinks_through_the/

Part 2

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1azte0t/i_found_a_living_train_that_slinks_through_the/

Part 3

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1bo92wi/i_found_a_living_train_that_slinks_through_the/

The train’s wheels squealed to a stop, locking up with a deep exhalation of breath. The fungal smell from the pink flesh and black veins spiderwebbing across the walls increased abruptly. I felt the train rapidly decelerating under our feet.

Through the blur of motion outside the mucus-streaked windows, I saw a system of glowing, blood-red roads winding their way hundreds of stories up into the sky on thin stilts. Other roads tunneled deep into the ground. Constant traffic of what looked like giant, egg-shaped pods traveled across them in a blur.

Thousands of the windowless silver towers loomed on the horizon. Behind them, a few enormous ships that looked almost like dragonflies flew up into the coldness of space, while others descended, falling down from the bright chips of starlight with a fluttering of opalescent wings.

The wings stretched out hundreds of feet in both directions, as narrow as glass and filled with throbbing blood vessels under the translucent, shimmering skin. Like the aliens of the Collective Mind themselves and the train we traveled on, these dragonfly ships looked like some mesh of machine and flesh.

From the tails of those ascending came gouts of blue flames, as if they were space shuttles on their way to the Moon. Like some sort of blimp, the alien ships had carriages made of a glossy, obsidian-like material connected to their chests where I figured the passengers or cargo of this strange alien civilization must travel.

I saw the glittering of metal combined with fine, translucent veins on these enormous things. I wondered if perhaps the Collective Mind had even created the living train called the X77 in the first place using the same kind of technology.

If they had, they were advanced far beyond anything I had imagined. Humanity would stand absolutely no chance against such a species. I shuddered to think of what would happen if they reached Earth and found a world full of new subjects to dissect and conduct their horrific experiments on, before ultimately exterminating the whole species like an infestation of bugs, just like they had done on Brother’s planet.

I didn’t get to wonder about it for long when the doors at the end of the carriages opened with a whirring of gears. At the same time, the train came to an abrupt stop, its doors pulling apart, the black veins disappearing like dark dust in the frigid air of the Shadow Plains. Behind us, Cook continuously moaned in agony, his destroyed body smelling like napalm and burnt hair.

“Run,” Cook cried in a croaking whisper. “Justin, you and Brother need to get away…”

At that moment, the hunters of the Collective Mind oozed over the thresholds like alien centipedes, the many electronic components built into their bodies whirring and whining. Their countless unblinking eyes scanned us and the dead body of their comrade with a look of impassion.

Brother did not hesitate when he saw the enemy. He pulled my arm and yanked me out the door. As we sprinted away, he turned, firing a blast of lava at the closer of the two hunters. I glanced back, seeing it land on the abomination’s black flesh with a sizzling sound and a dripping of fat. It gave a shrill, banshee-like wail, which was answered all up and down the living train a few moments later by countless other hunters.

Brother’s plan worked. Both of the hunters from the Collective Mind slithered out of the train in a blur after us, leaving the burnt, moaning form of Cook propped up against the fleshy wall. His eyes looked glazed, as if he didn’t even know where he was or what was happening. He was seriously injured, and I wasn’t sure if he would make it back in the shape he was in.

We sprinted out onto a road that looked like it was paved with some red volcanic glass. It split off into dozens of smaller branching paths that tunneled into the ground, deep under the screaming of the grass and the spiraling black hole of the sky.

The hunters moved at a superhuman speed as Brother chose one path at random. I heard them behind us, their wet, slimy bodies giving off gurgling breaths. They rapidly closed the distance.

The red path narrowed into a tunnel only wide enough for Brother and I to run in single-file. Brother abruptly stopped, motioning me forward.

“Keep running,” he said, turning to fire another round at the hunters. To my horror, I saw they were less than twenty feet behind us now. At this rate, they would catch up with us in seconds.

The black smoke belched from the end of the obsidian rifle as he sprayed another blast of lava at the closer of the two hunters, the one with a mass of still-smoking, burnt flesh on the front of its tree-like trunk. It saw Brother with its many lidless eyes and gave a wail of surprise. Its hundreds of long, skittering legs pushed it up into the air. Its blue wires suddenly shone with an explosion of light. More of its cobalt-blue napalm shot out of sizzling holes that opened up like screaming mouths all up and down the wires spiraling around its body.

Brother’s fiery round sprayed the hunter behind it, covering the front of its legs. It fell forward with a wail as its legs melted, the flesh ripping open under the tremendous heat.

The nearer of the hunter’s spray hit Brother in the arm. He stumbled back, following after me with a grim set expression. His stony face showed no signs of pain even as I heard his skin sizzle like bacon and give off thin wisps of gray smoke.

“Go!” he yelled, pointing forward into the darkness and the unknown. Without hesitation, I sprinted ahead- my body sore and exhausted, my arm still gouged from the bullet wound I had gotten when I was first chased on the train, countless burn spots eaten into my skin. And yet, I knew I was incredibly lucky to even still be alive.

The tunnel quickly sloped down like the trail of a mountain, the road hanging over the massive chamber of dark, empty space that opened up for hundreds of stories beneath us. The alien hunter in front still trailed closely behind us. It gave its eerie banshee shriek. I heard responses from all around us in the darkness, including not far ahead up on the floating crimson road.

Brother glanced backward and forward with a grim expression in his colorless eyes. I saw we were trapped, surrounded on all sides. They would either burn us alive right here and now or take us to some cold alien laboratory where they would dissect and torture us like medical experiments in some death camp.

“Do you trust me?” Brother murmured in a barely audible voice, grabbing my arm with a grip like iron. I nodded. Before I knew what was happening, he pushed me over the edge of the road. I fell back, my arms windmilling, a silent scream suffocating in my throat. Still holding onto my arm, Brother jumped over the edge after me just as the hunters of the Collective Mind reached us.

As we fell through what felt like eternal space, I felt a blind animal panic take over, exterminating all rational thought. I saw there was a city thrumming and vibrating thousands of feet beneath us, the place the train had called Sugguroth. Great towers shaped like spiraling blades made of glossy black and red volcanic glass loomed thousands of stories, their many circling windows giving off a pale, white glow. My mind wouldn’t register what I saw until later, however, when I looked back with a more dispassionate and less terrified eye.

Clusters of hunters from the Collective Mind were gathered in circles. Hundreds of the black, writhing creatures huddled tightly together in groups, screaming up at the dark stone sky in harmonizing shrieks. Artificial lights gave off a white radiance that shone across the seemingly endless cavern.

Soft fungal root systems wound their way through the air like spiderwebs, each glowing with a pale silver like moonlight. The air whipped crazily all around us. I looked down, realizing we were falling right into the web of roots. Before I knew what was happening, they were all around me like narrow tree branches, grabbing at my body.

I felt a scream sucked out of my lungs as we tumbled through the thin strands that reached out and caught us like grasping hands. The narrow roots slowed our descent. We fell into tangles and knots, breaking through one layer after another until we finally found ourselves stopped. Like flies in a spiderweb, we were trapped thousands of feet above the ground.

My heart slammed over and over in my chest, the rapid beat ringing in my ears. I had thought I was dead. The sheer animal terror of falling still shook me to my core. Trembling and weak, I could only lay there on the fungal roots, hyperventilating and praying. I looked down at Sugguroth far below us, my stomach flipping wi...

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