//------------------------------// // Ch 2 Wrecking it // Story: Five Score Divided by Four: Highball // by RRBrony //------------------------------// Ch 2 Wrecking it “Hey, wake up sleepy head.” someone said, shaking my shoulder with some vigor. “WHAT!?!” I squaked, flailing like a chicken who's just been plucked. “It’s dinner time dude. I just got our food from the Roadmaster's truck.” I finally recognized the voice as being my good friend Garret from Austin, Texas. “Oh, wait! You mean it’s already dinner time?! SHHIITT!” My tone filled with disbelief. “Yeah man, you practically passed the hell out once we got to the derailment site. That was like three hours ago.” Garret said in a bit of good natured ribbing. “I didn’t sleep all that well last night. The hellish nightmare I had was about a train crash that took place where I was the engineer and was a part of. Guess it was a premonition or something, still strange nonetheless. Also building all those track panels in the yard, getting them loaded and chained down to the railcars that were headed up to the wreck site took it out of me.” I yawn at the end of my explanation. “Huh, well the boss decided to get lotaburger for everyone. I just hope you like diet coke.” he says, holding up the bag and drink. I lean forward to grab it, only to get held back by the seat belt. I let out a chuckle. “Damn, I forgot that I flipped on the seat belt lock so that I could rest my head on the strap and not get in trouble if someone moved the company truck.” I unlock the seat belt buckle and then grab my food. Garret just smirks at me and shakes his head. “You’ve learned to master the art of sleeping in section trucks haven’t you?” “Well,” I twisted my neck, earning a satisfying pop, “ooofff, I can sleep in just about any position in these trucks, but my neck sure catches hell sometimes for doing so.” “Eh, there’s been a decent amount of progress since this morning. The damaged rolling stock has already been craned off onto the wrecking train with those special flat cars. Unfortunately they are still struggling with the engines. It seems like the heavy wash really soaked the area nearest them making it harder to get the normal tracked cranes in. They just got the on track crane that BnB uses for their bridge work. I bet some time soon they’ll get those engines off the rails and be ready for us to get out there to connect the panels together.” Garret updated me, reporting what had been going on. “Still sounds like a two or three hour wait until they get things squared away.” I say after a minute of silent sipping on my drink. I had already scarfed down my burger and fries during the update. “They’re saying by 11:45 pm everything should be good to go. The welders already torch cut the rails, which is surprising considering they didn’t get anyone else out there to help.” “I bet it’s because they are worried about having too many people on the ground with all of the other things going on. Wouldn't want get someone run over with a front end loader because they were in the way. Don't you think?” I replied in a more scholarly tone and manner. Playing on the inside joke that I was secretly upper management hiding in plain sight. “Maybe, but once the rails got cut the machines started cleaning the mess and filling in the massive washout. Well at least what they could. So it looks like once the crane is freed from engine duties we’ll begin to transfer the track panels from the rail cars onto the newly made track bed. Then we can begin getting the tracks bolted up and back in service again.” “Maybe I can salvage my shitty birthday weekend after all if things go according to plan.” I say with a tiny bit of hope in my voice. “GODDAMNIT!!!! You just FUCKED US!!” Garret says in an irritated tone. “Awww SHIT!!! I forgot the cardinal rule, don’t associate plans and going right with the railroad. Well I guess I just jinxed us. Damn, damn.” I shake my head wondering just how fucked we were going to be. It never failed, when someone would say things are going good or according to plan or being on schedule, something always happened to fuck it up. It was the "Murphy's Law" of the railroad and I had just invoked it. “Well, I guess we could use the extra overtime pay, also sorry that you have to celebrate your birthday cleaning up a wreck. Not exactly the best way to spend it.”Garret said, his left hand rubbing behind his neck. “Meh.” I shrugged my shoulders. “I mean I was probably only going to take myself out to a restaurant and spend it alone like normal. At least this year I am getting paid to have a shitty birthday.” I gave a halfhearted chuckle that wasn’t convincing anyone, least of all myself. “That’s depressing man.” I chuckled briefly before my shoulders sagged with a sigh. “Yeah, I know…” “Well I’m going to try and get some sleep, 11:30 will be rolling around soon.” Garret says before facing the front of the truck and leaning the driver seat back a bit. “We’ve got like 3 hours, more than enough time for a decent nap.” I say as I too lay back in my seat, forgoing the seatbelt. * * * I fell into a fitful sleep, it was like laying in bed and having your eyes closed. I wasn't exactly awake, but certainly not asleep either. I was caught in that god-awful middle ground of inbetween forgetting the world existed and still being able to cognitively think. Time was passing by but it was nearly impossible to determine how quickly it was moving in this current state. After some unknown and unspecified length had passed I finally felt myself getting closer to sleeping. My brain was beginning to go back to that bizarre dream of the pony involved in the train crash. I vaguely hear a sound marking the half hour. _ _ _ _ _ “...what did you do to her…” “Oh don’t worry, you’ll be joining her…” “For five score, divided by four...” _ _ _ _ _ I lurch forward slamming my head into the backseat of the front passenger and falling to the floor of the truck. “Fuck.” I mutter as I grab my head with my hands. Suddenly my thighs are itching a little and I scratch them, nothing feels off. But it’s got me puzzled as to why they are bothering me. I sit back up and get on my orange reflective vest, clear safety glasses and hard hard before opening the door and clambering down the truck, making a b-line for the port-o-shitters on the job site. The blue room isn’t the nicest smelling place and is very poorly lit, meaning that they cheaped out on the good port-a-potties. Regardless, I open the door and enter the blue room. Once inside I close the door and lock it, I pull down my pants and struggle to see anything using only the light from the massive portable lights outside. After struggling to see anything for a few minutes just using the dim light pouring into the blue I pull out my cell phone and I turn on my phone’s flashlight. Having revealed what was on my thighs I freeze at the sight that greets my eyes. “Oh, well isn’t that a barrel of laughs.” I say as I stare at the cutie mark emblazoned on my thighs. It was a driving wheel of a steam engine with a steam cylinder half covering it. I trace the cutie mark with the tip of my finger and a name suddenly comes to mind, “Iron Horse”, I say quietly under my breath. That name sounds vaguely familiar to me for some reason and yet I am struggling to put the pieces together as to why that is. I shake my head trying to reign in my brain, after all, this wasn’t time to ponder what made the name sound familiar. Right now wasn’t the time to have a mild freak out, yeah that seemed about right. I pull my pants back up and sit heavily on the closed toilet lid, leaning my head against the back wall. My breathing is slow but shallow as I avoid trying to inhale the smell from the waste I’m literally sitting on top of. My left hand covers my mouth and a little of my nose to help mitigate some of the smell. I start drumming on the top of the tank with my right hand in a slow and steady beat. This was my nervous habit and I was pretty anxious about this whole thing, because I knew I didn’t have those marks on my thighs earlier in the day. Hell, I know I didn’t have them this morning and I know for a fact that there was no way someone was able to ink something like that on me without me noticing. “I’m fucked.” I mutter under my breath. I slowly stand to my feet and open the door to the shitter, looking to make my way back towards the section truck. That’s when the road master pulled the bull horn and began calling out for everyone to gather around him. “Well, I guess I won’t get much time to worry about a cutie mark on my ass for a good long while now.” * * * The work briefing lasted about thirty minutes as he laid out our protection, the weather conditions, hazards and even the work plan for each team. Once he spelled everything out, he began to hand down the work assignments. Garret, myself and our foreman Mr. Morrison got assigned the task of hooking up the chains to move the panels and then bolting them up after getting them aligned. It wasn’t the most exciting job, but considering we didn’t have a lot of additional guys who could help spread the load. Once the meeting ended, me and the guys working with the section truck loaded into the cab. * * * The section truck lurches as we head to the nearest crossing to set the truck on the track. Setting the hyrail truck on the rails means we won’t run the risk of getting it stuck in the still soaked ground near where the track work is taking place. We come to a medium sized crossing and Garret pulls parallel to the track where Mr. Morrison and I get out to help line up the hyrail wheels to the track. It only took about two forward and backward moves to get the rear wheels lined up. Mr. Morrison pushes the lever to lower the wheels on the track, I do the same thing for the front hyrail wheels but have to stop just above the crossing planks because the truck is not 100% lined up. Once the back end is on the rails, I signal him to back up and turn the wheel to the right. He backs up slowly and once the wheels are lined up I stop him and lower the front hyrail wheels onto the track. The front wheels are lifted off the ground and above the rail, unlike the rear wheels that just sit on top of the rail head. Once we completed setting the truck on I get on the rear platform of the section truck and ride point. All the way back to the washout I am giving hand signals to let Garret know that he’s clear and to keep backing up toward where everyone is waiting. As we approach the nearest guy on the ground I place my hand on the handrail and give control of the move to him. He’s on the ground and has a better idea where the truck should be staged. It was at this moment that my brain decided to think back to my…..MY….cutie mark(?!) on my flank. No brain, it's thighs, flanks are on ponies and horses. Fucking train derailment and sleep deprivation really have my head head awash with muddled thoughts. “That’ll do!” I hear the voice of the guy on the ground say as he waves his hand in a stop motion. I shake my head at the crazy thought that passed through my head, I just write it off as watching way too many pony episodes and reading waaayyyy too many stories on fimfiction that might or might not have a lot of plot in them. I walk further into the bed of the section truck and come to a top storage compartment, lifting the lid. I grab out the tag lines and chains with hooks for the track panel moves. I walk over to the side of the truck and throw them towards the ground, not wanting to try and hand down heavy, bulky chains that could injure someone if they lost their grasp. Once this is complete I make my way back to the end of the truck and climb off the steps. I see Garret is already getting some of the chains gathered up in his hands, I follow suit grabbing the other set along with the tagline. The flood lights and headlights are making some rather strange shadows causing a little bit of an issue with regards to walking and climbing up the other main track ballast line. “Did you want to get on top of the stack of track panels or did you want me to do it?” I say, directing my question to Garret. “I’ll get this car load of panels if you’ll get the next carload.” Garret says in a good hearted nature. He drops the chains on the ground next to the rail car and begins to climb up on top of the five high stack of track panels, once at the top I begin to hand him up the chains. The chains are wrapped around both rails on either end giving it four points of connection to distribute the weight evenly. The on-track crane’s boom and tackle lower to nearly the center of the panel where Garret hooks up the single master link connecting the chains to the lifting hook. With a steady hand the crane operator eases the levers back and pulls the slack out of the chains until there’s just enough pressure to pull them taught but not lift the panel. Garret does one final inspection before he climbs down from the panel. At which point Mr. Morrison takes point and is in charge of directing the operator on the move and being point man for it. Garret and I make our way over to the end of the track that the section truck is sitting on, being sure to stay away from the moving panel in the sky. “Well, it’s about 12:45 and we’re just now getting to put one track panel down.” Garret says. “I just hope all goes well and the weather stays at bay.” I say not really focused on anything. “Dude, you just can’t keep from screwing us can you?” Garret says with mock offense in his voice. “What?” I reply with a little agitation in my voice. “You just said you wanted the weather to stay nice, although being cold isn’t awful I think you just jinxed us again.” He says as the sound of pittering comes from water hitting the metal of the section truck. “Goddamnit, me and my fucking mouth.” I mutter as the rain begins to pick up all around us. The track panel is quickly put into the vacancy where the old track used to be. It was at that moment there was a brilliant streak of lightning and a thunderous boom that caught everyone off guard. “Get into the trucks!!” Boomed the roadmaster as everyone began scrambling to get off the tracks and into safety. Pouring rain, hurricane and tornado conditions aren’t a cause alone to stop working as per our rule book, but we can’t exactly work with lighting in the area. This was fine by me, as I don’t exactly like being soaked to the bone and having to work in miserably cold rain. Unfortunately, it meant that this was going to take even longer to get the track back in service and I realized time wasn’t on my side.