Dragons of the Subway

Rob’s mother leaned out over the tracks and peered down the subway tunnel.
“It should be here any minute.” Rob ignored her. She was too busy naming the rats. There was Leopold and Stanley and Dr. Livingstone. Dr. Livingstone was inspecting a candy wrapper.
“Damn MTA,” Rob’s mother was saying, “they should run more trains on this line. It’s ridiculous that we should wait this long.”
“Blah blah blah,” was all Rob heard. Dr. Livingstone picked up the candy wrapper and ducked under the third rail. The wrapper covered him and it looked as though there was a candy bar running along the floor. Leopold and Stanley, who had been fighting stopped and stood on their hind legs. Then they too scurried away. A breeze began to blow on Rob’s face.
The train was coming.
With the rats gone, Rob joined her mother leaning over the tracks. There was only blackness in the distance. The tracks made a curve right before the station so you couldn’t see the trains coming until the last second.
“Step back from the edge,” Rob’s mom said, but Rob was staring into the blackness. The breeze felt warmer than usual. In the distance something sounded like a growl.
Rob’s ears were listening for the sound of metal against metal, the screeching of an oncoming subway, but there was only another growl.
Then around the corner, Rob and her mother saw the beginning of light.
“Here it comes,” her mom said. The light grew steadily brighter and brighter as what they thought was a train grew closer. The growling grew louder.
But just when the train should have poked its head around the corner, shining two headlights into the station, there was a rumble and the lights in the station went out. Rob fell against her mother and together they stumbled back from the track. Their lungs were filling with soot and their ears filled with a low reverberation.
Rob squinted through the soot and blackness, something darker than the dark was passing by on the tracks. At its front was a cold fire. She thought she saw eyes in the fire but before she could focus had to blink away the tears of the burning soot. When she opened her eyes again she saw only dark.
Slowly, the lights of the station flickered on. Rob expected to find herself covered in a black dust but she was clean as ever. No one else in the subway station seemed to have noticed what happened.
“That was weird,” Rob said.
“Must have been a service train.” Her mother said, as she resumed her post leaning out over the tracks. In the distance Rob could hear the screeching of the in coming train. It sounded weirdly comforting. Rob looked down the tracks away from her mother in the direction the thing had gone. But she saw only black.
“Step back from the tracks dear,” said her mother, as the train pulled into the station.
Rob hurried to a window on the train and peered out. All she saw was graffiti and power cables as the train pulled out of the station. The train gathered speed as it rushed uptown. There, on the express track, was that a form? It looked like a darkened train but was it? Rob pressed her nose to the window.
“That’s not sanitary,” her mother said and pulled her back into the seat.
But before she had been pulled down, Rob could have sworn she saw eyes of fire staring back at her.