Nightcrawlers (The Twilight Zone)

State trooper Dennis Wells takes shelter from a downpour at a roadside diner. As other customers arrive during the storm, he describes a massacre that he is investigating that occurred at a local motel. The diner patrons witness a near-collision between two cars on the road outside, and a Vietnam veteran named Price enters the diner. While Price is having coffee, he asks for a cold beer but the cook Bob tells him that the diner does not have a liquor license. When Price laments how a cold beer would taste good, a can of beer appears in his hand; when he comments that beer would only make him sleepy, it vanishes.

Wells strikes up a conversation with Price, lamenting that he wishes he could have gone to Vietnam. Price is compelled to describe how he fled and abandoned his unit during the war, condemning all of them to die in the jungle, and he relays that he often dreams a reoccurring nightmare in which his unit, "The Nightcrawlers," are hunting him down to exact revenge. Price explains that he and the other soldiers were sprayed with some kind of chemical that gave them the power of mind over matter, which he demonstrates by materializing a t-bone steak on the grill. The trooper, who suspects Price is a dangerous troublemaker, who may be responsible for the motel massacre, pulls his gun on Price but Price melts it with his mind. Wells then knocks Price unconscious. The diner patrons and staff then begin to experience Price's nightmare: ghost-like soldiers materialize, destroy vehicles in the parking lot, and then force their way inside the diner killing Wells. Price regains consciousness and finds a spotlight has been cast upon him. He then calls out "Charlie's in the light!" and the soldiers react by firing their rifles and killing him, thus ending the attack.

As Bob the cook is being taken away in an ambulance, he reminds the others that Price said there were still four more soldiers out there who had the same ability.

"Nightcrawlers" was based on a short story by Robert R. McCammon. It was scored by Merl Saunders and the Grateful Dead, featuring Huey Lewis on harmonica. Exene Cervenka of the punk group X plays a waitress.

• Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)

• "Nightcrawlers" at TV.com
• "Nightcrawlers" on IMDb