//------------------------------// // Leaving Chicago // Story: Destination Unknown // by Admiral Biscuit //------------------------------// Destination Unknown Leaving Chicago Admiral Biscuit Chicago had entertained her with its museums and aquariums and planetariums and the former highest building in the world. She’d played on the Solidarity Park sidewalk and the Navy Pier and the Kedzie-Homan platform; she’d flown over a baseball game, ridden the El, seen a musical, and window-shopped at every manner of store. Three days after arriving in Chicago she’d decided that it was time to move on again, hid under a rail overpass, and hopped a Union Pacific freight out of the Cicero Yard bound for points west. ••• It felt like the city went on forever. Sweetsong thought she’d appreciated the scope of it from the air, but she hadn’t. Her train hadn’t had any open gondolas, but it had a grainer with a pony-sized hole in the supports for the slope sheet, and she’d tucked herself into the space. The railcar had been riding high on its springs which meant it was empty and would be going to the Midwest to refill with grain. Eventually. Once it got past the city that never ended. Another commuter train whisked by and she thought again about the advantages of taking that to the end of the line and then finding a freight to hop, but patience was a virtue, and even if her train was plodding along now, once it got out of the city it would pick up speed. The steel supports were not unlike the latticework of the bridges she so often called home. Sweetsong set a hoof on the end platform of the car then decided against it and settled back into her temporary nest, wondering just how far the city could go before it finally ended. Pegasi were champion nappers, and the gentle rocking of the car and the click of the wheels across switches and rail joints, combined with her safe hidey-hole were more than enough to lull her to sleep.  Every now and then, the train’s motion would change as it slowed for a signal or waited for another train, and she’d perk her head up and look out the hole to get a sense of where she was. At first, it was more city, and then it was fields and trees and scrub-brush. Sweetsong risked poking her head out the end; it was dusk and the odds of being spotted were slim. She couldn’t tell anything other than the direction they were heading. Her saddlebags had plenty of snack food and water, even if she’d had to overpay for it in Chicago. It was always a delicate balance to decide how much she needed to carry with her and how much she could forage on the way, how much she could count on the generosity of strangers and how much she should save for the next town, wherever the next town was. Outside of cities, she had plenty of forage available, and often had opportunities to graze when the train was stopped: as long as she stayed close, she could get back; freight trains couldn’t get up to speed quickly. Water was generally more uncertain, so she always prioritized that. There were plenty of ponds and rivers and ditches, but the water in them often couldn’t be trusted. She’d tried using water purification tablets, but that water tasted terrible. Bleach was better, bleach gave it a nice salty kick that she liked, but the instructions on the bottle didn’t tell how much she needed to use to make sure the water was safe to drink, and it was less convenient to carry than her little bottle of purification pills. Keeping the tablets for emergencies was smart, they didn’t take up much space in her saddlebags, but she’d grown accustomed to the advantages of bottled water or various free supplies in towns. Sweetsong moved out of the hole onto the end platform and settled in, nibbling on a granola bar as her train plodded towards the sunset. ••• A block of empty grain cars wasn’t a priority. She got set out three yards further down the line, then had to decide if she wanted to wait in the car until it got picked up again, or change trains. Unfortunately, her yard backed on a container terminal with lots of lights and lots of cameras, and on the other side was nothing but open fields. She could fly out of the car and maybe be seen, but she’d get away from the lights and cameras before anybody could muster a pursuit. Boarding another train, though, that was chancy. If she spotted the right car, and if it was close, and if the bulls weren’t paying attention to the cameras, or if she kept low, she’d make it. Sweetsong had a decent idea of how railroads operated, and decided that her train had been set out in this yard because something broke, and they’d want to get it out of the way as quickly as they could. She reasoned that the only trains typically stopping or slowing would be intermodal trains, and riding those was a last resort, just above coal trains. She had enough food and water in her saddlebags to last for at least another day, and if the train hadn’t moved by then, she’d reconsider. Her cars were on the outside yard track, so all the other container cars did give her pretty decent cover. ••• Dawn brought changing winds from the west, and she poked her head out of the hole and then climbed on the end sill, peering between the bracing to look at the weather. The yard was angled, and she could see towering thunderclouds to the west, along with occasional flashes of lightening. If I do decide to bail out, they’ll never see me during a thunderstorm. Although she’d be soaked through by the time she made it back to the last town they’d passed. ••• The steel nest in the car insulated her; let the weather sneak up on her. It felt like it was getting close, and then a gust rocked the railcar and the floodgates opened, some droplets even splashing into her nest. Outside, the yard lights all came on, fooled into believing it was nightfall. She didn’t hear the locomotive back into her train, but she felt the jolt. She almost didn’t hear the hissing of air through the brake pipe. If she hadn’t been tented under her army blanket, her head almost against the brake reservoir, she might not have. They’re charging the train pipe, and we’ll be on our way soon. They wouldn’t have aired it up if they were breaking up her train. Some yards had hoses stuck between the rails that they could attach to cuts of cars before the locomotives attached, saving time. She couldn’t hear the locomotives as they throttled up, and she didn’t hear the slack being taken out until it was a few cars in front of her, then the familiar banging of a train going into motion. Sweetsong only just had time to brace as the car jerked, slamming her against the steel, and then she was moving again. The train jolted across the switches in the throat of the yard, then started picking up speed, leaving the stacks of containers behind. Once the last of the lights faded behind her, she climbed back out onto the end platform, near the center of the car where most of the rain would miss her and watched the landscape unroll. A few small towns whizzed by, then an airport. The rain hid the runway lights, but she could see the sweep of the searchlight on the tower and knew what it meant. Every pegasus had to learn to recognize airports lest they get in trouble for flying in the wrong airspace or worse, get hit by an airplane. The tracks curved as they came into another small town, the first sizable town since the intermodal yard. A few miles further along, she crossed a river, passed a few fields, and then ran on a causeway along the shore of the same river. The line started curving through fields, and as the rain began tapering off, thundered across a series of bridges and islands over a wide river.  Shortly after crossing, she got shunted off into a yard again, this time being deposited next to a weird gold dome that looked like it wanted to be a fake sunrise. Sweetsong studied the facility. It was some kind of storage dome, fed by giant pipes. Possibly some kind of grain; there were a lot of grain cars around. It was possible that this was her grainer’s final destination. Leaving the train now was risky, but a cluster of bushes and stubby trees she could see off to the west would provide some cover. She hopped out of the latticework and looked up and down the tracks, not spotting anybody. Most people working in railroad yards wore bright yellow vests so they could be seen, which worked to her advantage. Neither of the main tracks had a train immediately coming, and it only took a few seconds to fly into the concealment of the underbrush. ••• She’d crossed the Mississippi, she learned. The staff at Vitales Pizza—just a short flight from where she’d left her grainer—were friendly and told her all about Clinton, Iowa. She learned that the gold dome was part of the ADM edible oils manufacturing plant, the town held an annual hot air balloon festival, and it had a small castle in Eagle Point Park. There was even a sawmill museum. Her spicy pizza was delicious, although she’d gotten more than she should have. Her waitress packed it up in a to-go box which was nice, even though pizza didn’t travel well in her saddlebags. Down the street and not too far from the train tracks she found a Quality Inn which looked okay and after some discussion decided to allow a pony to stay, which was better luck than she’d had at the Country Inn. The bathtub was almost as good as a proper spa, and she soaked all the road-dust off herself, used up all the towels and still didn’t get completely dry, ate one more piece of pizza, then fell asleep on top of the bed.