The Midnight Meat Train is a novelette written by Clive Barker. It was first published in the 1984 collection Books of Blood, Volume I. It was adapted in a film with the same title in 2008.
Description[]
Office worker Leon Kaufman has recently moved to New York City, a place that he long idolized as "The Palace of Delights". Since arriving he has become disillusioned and recognized his former illusions as just that, seeing the dirt and depravity in a city like any other. A man named Mahogany is killing people in subway trains, identifying as a "Butcher" in pursuit of "fresh meat."
Kaufman falls asleep on a late-night subway train to Brooklyn and awakens to discover Mahogany has killed people in the neighboring car and the train conductor is cooperating with him. After Kaufman kills Mahogany in self-defense, the train arrives at a secret station where ancient, withered humans board and consume the bodies. The creatures, the "City Fathers", are the secret rulers of New York for centuries, the people who founded and initially built the city. They eventually present Kaufman to the incomprehensible "Father of Fathers", who has lived here since before the first humans of America. One of them pulls out Kaufman's tongue, stating that he will "serve in silence", and recruits him as their new Butcher tasked with bringing them fresh meat.
Kaufman passes out as the conductor announces the next destination as "home". Kaufman is later awakened by the conductor in a secret, pristine subway station and helped off of the train as cleaning crews come on to cover up the events of the previous night. The conductor states that he has a lot to learn before he begins his job that evening, and presents him to the cleaners who look on him with a sense of reverence. He exits the station onto the streets in the early morning as the city is waking up and coming alive, falls down to his knees, kisses the ground, and swears his loyalty to the city.