A group of friends are driving down the highway
late at night. They’re on their way home from a concert and after the long night of dancing
and partying, all of them are feeling quite tired. The radio is turned off, and after so
much loud music, the silence is refreshing. No one is talking at all, and in fact, the driver
notices that both his girlfriend sitting next to him as well as his friend in the backseat have
fallen asleep. The driver tries to make sure that he doesn’t do the same as the car moves down
the long stretch of straight, empty highway. The driver’s eyes start to grow heavy though. He
can feel the weight of sleep starting to press on him. He turns the radio on at a low volume, but
that only staves off the drowsiness for a moment. He can’t fight the approach of sleep any
longer, and his eyes start to close. As he drifts off to sleep, his foot presses
down slightly more on the accelerator. The driver’s head slumps to the side as
the car gains speed and begins to pull to the right where it crosses the white line
marking the edge of the highway. The tires dip off the road into the dirt and the sudden
change causes the driver to jerk back awake. He quickly swerves the car back onto the road. The
sudden jolt causes both the passengers to wake up. Is everything okay? The driver tells them
that he just swerved to… to avoid an animal in the road. That’s right, nothing to be
worried about. They can go back to sleep. As both of his friends close their
eyes and try to go back to sleep, the driver spots something. Lights have appeared
in his rearview mirror. It’s a pair of headlights. He didn’t notice a car pulling out or speeding up
behind him, but he must have missed it when he was dozing off. His heart is still racing from when
he drifted off the road, and he’s trying to regain his composure but it’s about to get a whole lot
harder because when he looks in the mirror again he sees that the telltale red and blue lights
of a police cruiser have lit up behind him. “Oh crap, oh no, oh no,” the driver says out loud. Everyone is awake now and aware of the cop behind
them. They grow nervous and start freaking out, not all of the activities they had partaken
in at the concert were, strictly speaking, technically legal in this state. “What
do we do?” the driver asks. “You’ve got to pull over,” says his girlfriend. The
cop car’s sirens come on, this is serious. But then something strange happens, they hear
a voice in the car, coming over the radio. It’s too quiet to hear but when the driver turns up the
volume, the message comes through loud and clear. It’s a gruff voice that keeps repeating the
same phrase over and over… “You better run.” How is this message coming over the radio?
They don’t know but the passenger in the backseat agrees with the voice, they’ve got
to try and run, they have to get out of here. The driver’s girlfriend is screaming to pull over.
The cop car speeds up and is right behind them now, almost on their bumper, its lights flashing
and sirens blaring. The driver doesn’t know what to do. Should he pull over? Should he try to
run? Everyone is yelling. He starts to push down on the accelerator but then thinks better of
it, there’s no way this old car can outrun a cop. Finally, he makes the decision to brake and
starts to pull the car to the side of the road. The police car comes to a stop behind them.
The sirens are off, but the bright lights are almost blinding. They sit in the car and await
their fate, but nothing happens, the car is just sitting there behind them. After what feels like a
long while, the door of the cop car finally opens. The three passengers watch silently as a highway
patrol officer steps out and begins approaching their car. The driver tells everyone to
relax, that this is going to be just fine, but the passenger in the back starts to panic.
He can’t get arrested, if he does it will mean that he loses his scholarship, he’ll get kicked
out of school, his whole life will be over. The highway patrol officer reaches the car.
Despite it being late at night, he’s wearing dark aviator sunglasses that cover half of his face. He
stands in front of the door to the car… and waits. The driver, feeling nervous and
afraid, rolls down his window. The police officer doesn’t move or react
though, he just keeps standing next to the car. “Umm… good evening officer,” the driver says.
No response. The driver turns and looks at his girlfriend in the front seat but all she can do
is shrug. He turns back to the highway patrolman. “Did we do something wrong?”
There’s another long pause but then the patrolman finally reacts. He bends
over and leans in close, sticking his head practically through the open window and putting
his tight-lipped face right next to the driver’s. “Do you… do you want my license and registration?”
the driver asks. The patrolman doesn’t respond. He reaches up and slowly grabs the
side of his dark aviator sunglasses. He pulls them down, and the driver finds himself
staring into a pair of bright, red, glowing eyes. Evil eyes. Everyone in the car starts to
scream as the thing standing in front of them opens its own mouth to reveal a big,
black, gaping hole with no gums or teeth, a horrifying void in its face
that screams right back at them. As you may have already deduced, this was no
normal traffic stop, and certainly not a normal highway patrol officer. No, the entity that this
group of young adults encountered that evening was one that dozens before them had
the same misfortune of running into, and one that the SCP Foundation is actively trying to stop from engaging in its frightening
and dangerous behavior. This is SCP-973. SCP-973 is not one, but actually two separate
entities. The first, designated SCP-973-1, is a police cruiser that appears to be a model
similar to those used by actual state troopers during the early 1970s. And its condition is
much like you would expect for a well-used, nearly fifty-year-old vehicle, with much of
it being in an advanced state of disrepair. Eyewitness accounts of SCP-973-1
have described the police car as having numerous dents on the doors
and hood, cracks in the windshield, multiple rust spots, and a rear bumper
that looks to be held on with duct tape. The vehicle’s driver and sole occupant has been
designated SCP-973-2. This humanoid figure has an appearance that resembles a caucasian male
in his late forties. It is dressed in a state trooper uniform that, like 973-1, also looks to
have come from the early 1970s, and eyewitnesses have described him as being slightly overweight,
balding, and sporting a handlebar mustache. Both the anomalous car and its driver will
appear at night in a specific location along a particular US highway. It is unknown exactly
what will cause SCP-973 to show up on this road, but Foundation researchers have hypothesized
that its manifestation may be triggered when a vehicle accelerates over a certain
speed. You may think you’re safe then if you stay below a certain speed,
but unfortunately, you’d be wrong. It’s unknown exactly what speed limit infraction
will lead to SCP-973’s appearance, with reports ranging from 35 miles per hours all the way to 70,
but when it does occur, the driver will find that they are now a target. SCP-973 will materialize
roughly half a kilometer behind the targeted vehicle and will approach them at a high rate of
speed. SCP-973-1’s sirens will turn on and its lights will flash, as it also somehow broadcasts a
message into the targeted car that is picked up on the car’s radio, a message that urges the driver
to run, often accompanied by several expletives. In most cases, the targeted vehicle will abide by
the instructions over the radio and begin to flee, though it’s unlikely that this is due to any
memetic effect, rather it would seem that most run out of pure terror. SCP-973 will then pursue
the targeted car leading to a high-speed chase. No matter how fast the targeted car is
though, the SCP-973-1 police cruiser will always be faster, and it typically takes no
more than six minutes for them to be overtaken. SCP-973 seems to have no qualms
about ramming into the fleeing car, which likely accounts for the extreme
damage present on the patrol car. While it is unclear exactly what happens
once 973 forces the targeted vehicle to stop, either through their own choice or by being rammed
off the road, the results are quite disturbing. The vehicle that fled will later be located
somewhere near SCP-973’s spawning location, usually within roughly six kilometers of the road.
Whether the vehicles that are found that far from the road drove there in a panic or were somehow
transported there by anomalous means isn’t clear. What is clear is that the occupants of the
cars met a truly grisly fate. Their bodies will show signs of extreme violence
and assault, including evisceration, and some have been so badly maimed and mangled
that visual identification was impossible. The vehicles themselves are badly damaged,
showing signs of impact from another vehicle, and severe burn damage is
often present in the interior. So far over thirty-four individuals and
nineteen vehicles have been designated as victims of SCP-973, though it is likely
that the true number is much, much higher. Perhaps most terrifying of all, is
that some of the victims survived. The Foundation has recovered five individuals
from sites of SCP-973 attacks, who in addition to their gruesome physical injuries, also suffer
from varying levels of ongoing mental trauma. But why not just destroy the road that SCP-973
appears on, you ask? Well the Foundation had this same idea and in 1983, the section of
highway affected by SCP-973 was demolished in an attempt to stop it from manifesting. This
attempt failed though. All this led to was SCP-973 changing its location, where it immediately
began engaging in the same deadly behavior. Numerous attempts have also been made
to try and capture both 973-1 and -2. In one such event, several teams of SCP
Foundation containment specialists were dispatched to its section of highway with the
mission to subdue and contain the anomaly. After multiple attempts to get SCP-973 to appear
by driving down the highway at various speeds, a car carrying several agents was finally
successful, and they spotted the flashing red and blue lights of 973-1 behind them as the message
telling them to run began playing over the radio. With no further warnings, the anomalous police
car closed in on them, even faster than the agents were expecting, and immediately began ramming
into their car. A van filled with additional containment specialists was dispatched to the
area to help, and when they reached the area that the GPS tracked on the pursued car led
them to, they found that they were too late. SCP-973 had pushed the agents’ car far off
the road and was ruthlessly tearing their bodies apart. The arriving containment
team immediately began firing on 973 in an attempt to save their fellow Foundation agents. The team’s weapons appeared to
cause some injuries to 973-2, showing that it is perhaps vulnerable to
lasting damage just like the 973-1 vehicle is. In a post-mission interview, one of the
agent’s described SCP-973’s new appearance. “His eyes were red… and his mouth… it was just
a black hole. No teeth, no tongue, just a hole.” No other reports would come from this incident
though, as this agent was the only survivor. SCP-973 killed the other nine agents and fled the
scene. While it is believed that the Foundation team was able to wound the anomalous creature,
it was neither contained nor incapacitated in any real sense, and the next report of a
973 incident occurred just nine days later. SCP-973’s ability to seemingly
appear at a new location, and the difficulty it has shown in being
contained has gotten it a well-earned Euclid classification. The roughly 60 kilometers
of highway oh which it is known to appear is under satellite surveillance at all times,
and all traffic between 10 pm and 4:30 am is diverted along a non-highway
detour route, by force if necessary. Unfortunately for the SCP Foundation
and the general highway using populace, these security protocols have
necessitated frequent updates, because while the area that SCP-973 engages
in its predatory behavior on is well known, both the time of day during which it will appear
and the area it seems to affect… are expanding. Now go and watch another entry from the files
of Dr. Bob, like SCP-745 The Headlights, for another anomaly that will make you
question whether you should ever drive again at night. And make sure you subscribe and turn on
notifications, so you don’t miss a single anomaly, as we delve further and further into the
SCP Foundation’s classified archives.
