Destination Unknown

by Admiral Biscuit


Hobo

Destination Unknown
Hobo
Admiral Biscuit

Destination unknown. Where the train was bound—where her gondola was bound—she didn’t know. Couldn’t know. She might get shunted off in the next yard, or she might ride all the way to California or Maine or Florida.

Sweetsong didn’t carry much in the way of personal belongings. A faded Army blanket, saddlebags with toiletries and space for food on one side, and a folding guitar on the other. Humans were very clever; while it didn’t sound as good as a proper guitar, it was compact.

•••

Rail yards were dangerous; rail yards had cameras to watch the trains and lots of people who might spot her, who might kick her off the train. Just like the bridge, patience and stealth was the key; she nestled into a corner under her blanket, just another piece of leftover rubbish in a gondola. Not as good as hiding in the hole on a grain car, but better to escape from if she had to.

Grab her blanket and fly. Humans had helicopters, angry mechanical dragonflies. Those could follow her in the air but couldn’t go in trees, and they wouldn’t chase her anyway. She’d watched some other train-riders get arrested once, back before she knew what she was doing. She’d found what she thought was a safe spot crouched down in the well of a container car, invisible except from above, and they’d done the same. And they’d been undone by a bridge, or maybe a camera mounted on a pole. It didn’t seem smart to stop a train to kick off stowaways, but they had.

She’d heard the green-shirted man crunching across the ballast and had correctly deduced that he knew she was there, that the same person or camera who had spotted the other riders had also spotted her, and while they had no option but to try and run, she took to the sky, taking a path that their boxy trucks with their flashing lights couldn’t follow.

Two days of hiding on a mesa, not trusting any trains that came through, nibbling on the tough, unsatisfying plants of the high desert. She didn’t know how long they’d search, and there was nowhere to hide, not until a brief rainsquall blew in, and she followed the tracks as best she could, finally finding a big railyard filled with identical hopper cars, a sea of anonymity. Nobody could check all of them.

•••

Her ears perked as prime movers wound up, and the engineer sounded the horn. The engine note deepened and the train started banging as the locomotives pulled the slack out of the couplings. As the noise got closer, she tensed, then her car jerked and started moving, and it wasn’t time to celebrate yet; she still had to pass through the yard and it was possible the delay hadn’t been just a crew change and the locomotives getting fuel, they might have been replaced by a switching engine that was going to split up the train and set it in the yard.

Sweetsong preferred being near the front of the train so she could clearly hear what the locomotives were doing. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, and her car was where it was, near the tail. At least it left her well clear of the diesel smoke.

The wheels banged across track joints and had a different tempo across switches; the sounds around her changed as the train passed blocks of stationary cars and moved beyond the yard, and then the sounds changed again as the train left the yard behind and moved out into the world.

She poked her head up, then rolled her blanket and strapped it to her saddlebags. The immediate danger of discovery was over; she might have to make a choice if and when the train stopped, but for now she was clear. She had a ride, passage to wherever. Buildings near the tracks were giving way to trees, and bridges were being replaced by level crossings; she was out of the city and in the country, a mare on the move.

Sticking her head up above the edge of the gondola violated the usual mantra of attempting to be unseen, but Sweetsong liked to see where she was going. She could estimate by the locomotive’s horn when they’d come up on road crossings, leaving her only at risk for people on bridges or cars on parallel roads.

With her gear strapped on, she could move quickly if need be, so being spotted was only a minor inconvenience. She’d learned a lot since she’d had to hide on the mesa: always have her gear ready, especially when the train was stopped, for one. Pick rides carefully; high-value cargos were more likely to be watched. Be cautious in switchyards and ready to bail at a moment’s notice.

The rail line ran southwest, and it stayed double-track. Typical Midwestern fields came all the way up to the right of way, corn and soybeans and hay, and occasional woodlots on one or both sides of the tracks. 

She heard the change in the wind noise around the train and ducked back below the side of the gondola as a northbound freight roared by, sending a brief gust of grit in her direction.

Did they see me? They might have; the locomotive sat high enough they could see down in the car, but the two trains had passed at speed; the crew would only have had a fraction of a second to spot her.

Trains ran really close by each other, and having that much steel flashing by just inches from her made her nervous so she moved across the gondola and stuck her head out the other side. Another field, a cluster of trees, then a decent sized lake with the train running right up against the shoreline.

A few bumps in the lakefront were wide enough for houses, and they’d been uncomfortably crammed into the available space. She should have ducked down, especially since the train was slowing, but the other train was giving her cover.

Except it wasn’t, because it had passed, and she’d been so focused on the lake she hadn’t noticed.

Real smart, Sweetsong. She ducked back down as the train passed by the end of the lake. There hadn’t been any houses on the other side, and only a couple of road crossings for the short lakefront access roads, so she probably hadn’t been spotted. She was ready to jump if the train stopped, but it didn’t.

It rounded a gentle curve as it passed through another small town, and then they were in fields again, and she stuck her head back up. She could see a water tower to the west, just too far away to read the name on it.

A few minutes later, the train raced through the village, and she waited until she heard the crossing bells fade off behind her before looking up again. Bigger cities went on for a while; most little towns were a cluster of houses and businesses and then right back in fields again. Sometimes when she flew over them, she could see new housing developments where fields had been. Those were rarely built near the tracks.

The train bent back to the southwest, and picked up speed.

•••

Indiana looked a lot like Michigan. Highways had welcome signs at the borders, but there weren’t signs like that along the tracks. Railroad divisions might span state lines anyway, she wasn’t entirely sure how they worked.

She knew at some point she’d passed into it, or maybe she hadn’t yet; as long as the train stayed on a generally southwest path she’d have to enter Indiana.

She was reasonably confident that the train would go through South Bend, and that was a decent-sized city. When she got there, she’d know she was in Indiana, and after that . . . she’d decide when she got there. For now, it was more fields and woodlots and occasional small towns that the train rushed through.

•••

After South Bend, the train turned more to the west, then began angling north. It also started slowing down, and the air started smelling weird.

It eventually came to a complete stop, and Sweetsong stuck her head all the way over the side, resting her forehooves on the battered gunnel of the gondola. She was in a barren area with sickly-looking trees on either side of the tracks, and could spot houses beyond them. To the front of the train, the ballast tapered down to a gravel parking lot next to a steel warehouse of some sort.

Another train honked its horn, and she glanced down both sides of hers, where there weren’t any other rails. If a collision was coming, she wanted to know about it in time to get clear, so she decided to risk flying up.

There weren’t any trains approaching on her track, and she could see the red signals for her train.

Just then, a locomotive emerged from the trees just in front of her train, and she flinched back in the air before realizing it was merging onto her tracks and that’s what her train was waiting for.

Even though it was risky, she landed on the roof of the boxcar and watched down the length of the train until the crossing cleared and the signals turned green. Sweetsong heard the familiar bass rumble of the diesels getting to work, followed by the banging of draft gear as the slack got pulled out of the train, and she landed back in her car after it started moving. 

She got jerked to the side as the train switched tracks, now in the middle of a trio. She was going northwest now, which meant she was bound for Chicago. Not exactly where she wanted to go.

They’d passed over some switches in South Bend, and maybe if she’d known the routes better she could have gotten off the train there, found something southbound. Or Chicago was a possibility, lots of trains went there. It was a big city and easy to get lost in if she wanted to.

The train made its way to grassy dunes, a highway on one side and steel mills on the other, with multiple sets of tracks converging from all sides, it seemed. A short silver passenger train zoomed by on a nearby line, a long intermodal freight on a parallel track rumbled by in the other direction, and her train started slowing down again.

Now it was a race against the clock. Disembarking in the middle of the rail yard during the day was risky, there were lots of people who might see her. After dark was better, even with all the lights there were shadowed spots and dark spots; she could fly out of her gondola and stay low, or climb quickly to get above the lights. It would depend on circumstance.

There were enough people and other trains it was really risky to have her head up above the gondola. After brief consideration, she moved to the leading edge of the car. That would give her a good view of trains approaching from behind, and make her impossible to spot from a locomotive going in the opposite direction.

•••

The train slowed again, and bumped across a set of switches. She leaned over the edge of her gondola and glanced around the boxcar in front, and they were approaching a yard, earlier than she’d hoped. There was a steel mill and a casino on the lake side, and under the elevated highway, she could see blocks of houses. Certainly not Chicago proper, but an industrial suburb. Not the best place to depart. 

Sweetsong decided to risk it. The train would stop or it wouldn’t; if it did, she’d just bail when it got dark. Keep her head down, the crew was unlikely to spot her if they broke up the train. She’d never seen people climb up on the gondolas to see what was inside.

To her surprise, the train didn’t stop in the yard, instead picking up speed again. At the far end, it crossed over a diamond and a maze of lines that led off in every direction, then slowly angled to the northwest.

Everything was dirty and gritty and smelled like rust and sulfur. Even the water in the small canals the train crossed over didn’t look right.

Things got better as the train continued north. The train passed another yard, and an elevated road joined on the right side of the train.

They were slowing, and the train was moving at no more than a fast gallop.

She could afford to keep her head up; the train was running on an elevated embankment, which meant that she didn’t have to worry about cars waiting for the train to pass seeing her. 

Past a decaying grain elevator, the train crossed a lift bridge and then rounded a curve under the highway. As her gondola rounded the curve, she could see another yard in front of her.

She’d pushed her luck far enough. There was a nice highway bridge to sleep under, with a wide-open truss deck and even a walkway underneath that would be the perfect place to relax. In the morning, when the sun was up, she could take stock of her surroundings, decide if she wanted to visit Chicago or not, and figure out which tracks led out of town.