Destination Unknown
Clinton, Iowa
Admiral Biscuit
The castle was small, really just a watchtower, but being up there and watching the sun rise over the trees was inspirational and she started singing.
Sweetsong usually started with songs she knew—Equestrian or human—and then once her voice had warmed up, she'd sing about her journey or places she’d whizzed by. The golden dome and the rainstorm, the busy intermodal yard, waking up on top of the covers with her head in the pizza box and having to wash her mane again . . .
Then, when a crowd had begun to gather, she packed up and flew off the castle. It wasn’t fair to people who wanted to climb to the top and look around if she was hogging it.
Pragmatically, she’d also get more money if she was where people could offer it.
She stayed until noon, giving a brief airshow for the small crowd that had gathered to hear her sing, and then flew back to Vitales. There was nothing wrong with eating pizza two days in a row, after all.
The day staff was just as welcoming and friendly as the evening shift had been.
•••
The US 67 bridge was south of the rail yards, and as good a place as any to catch a freight train as it made its way past. Time was on her side: there was plenty of daylight and lots of trains to pick from.
Sometimes flat cars were good to ride, depending on their load. There could be nooks and crannies to hide in, sometimes only visible from above. One time when she was feeling especially bold, she’d ridden between yards at the front end of a bulkhead flat, completely exposed to anybody who was looking but she had a great view and flying off was easy: straight over the side when the train slowed down.
She’d also spent most of the trip worrying that somebody would spot her and report her, and worrying that the cargo might shift forward if the train stopped suddenly, which had encouraged her hasty exit.
Experience had taught her to recognize which grain cars had hidey-holes and which didn’t even have floors. A mixed manifest freight rolled under her, and once the locomotives had passed, she stuck her head down and looked down the length of it. Slow-moving, plenty of possibilities, and she was bold and full of pizza, so she took the earliest car she could ride, even though it was only five back from the locomotive.
Getting through the steel supports on a moving train took practice and finesse, and luckily she had both.
Some hobos called the kind of grainer she found a Cadillac, not for its ride comfort but for its high side sills and flat floor. She didn’t have to crawl into a hole to hide; instead, she could ride out more in the open and not be noticed. She was safe from watchers on bridges, too; the slope sheets and roof hid her perfectly.
She settled on her belly and watched out the side as they rolled past a couple factories and a steel storage yard, wondering why the ballast for all the side tracks was a yellowish tan instead of the varying shades of grey she was used to. Maybe it was a local rock that could be gotten cheaply.
•••
The train went mostly west, sometimes bending around obstacles real or imagined. Opposing traffic was heavy and she had to keep more hidden than she would have liked, at least until the locomotive passed.
In the front, she could hear what her train's engines were doing, and got a warning as every grade crossing came up. More frequent horn blasts meant a town, and she kept low for those, but couldn’t help her curiosity. Her coat wasn’t that dissimilar to the grain car’s paint, a sort of rusty pink that was kind of beige-ish, at least when blurring by at 60 miles an hour.
Maybe she was overconfident, maybe that wasn’t true, but the train wasn’t stopping and green-shirted men weren’t searching for her and that was what counted.
Sweetsong glanced up at the sky. There were some low clouds, another option if she needed to escape. Helicopters could chase her, but they couldn’t find her in clouds.
•••
No individual field was worth observing, but the pastiche of them zooming by was. Modern metal barns or dilapidated wooden ones, what crops were planted, if they had a woodlot. Sometimes she saw tractors out in the fields, green and brick-red mostly, and a few of them were real monsters with eight wheels and locomotive-high. Sometimes she saw pastures with cows or occasionally horses, all used to the sight of passing trains.
She couldn’t help but whinny as she passed horses, and sometimes they’d look up in confusion as she whisked by.
Sweetsong snapped her head back as a freight barreled alongside, close enough to touch but she’d lose a hoof if she tried. A blast of air off its bow and then a blur of freight cars, seen and instantly forgotten as it roared past. One box car banged by with a flat wheel, and for an instant she got a glimpse of another rider, also cradled in a covered hopper, leaning up against the ladder and watching out her side.
He had a phone-camera up, she’d caught that. If she’d known he was coming, she would have waved.
Where was he going? Where had he come from? And did he wonder the same about her? Sometimes she saw other hobos waiting to jump a train, but she usually didn’t try and associate with them. She could have, and maybe sometimes it would be nice to have a partner, but she didn’t like the thought of having to make herself ground-bound. Crouching in the underbrush and galloping up to a car on the train didn’t feel safe, and humans couldn’t bail off the train if it was moving like she could.
She shifted her weight as the train rounded a curve and roared under an overpass.
It wasn’t just the worry about getting on and off trains, but where to camp. Humans couldn't nest in the tops of trees or on a roof; from what she’d gathered they sometimes even burrowed under loading docks and platforms and the idea of sleeping like a mole terrified her. Even the hole in the shotgun grainers made her nervous, although she’d come to terms with that. She didn’t always get the best ride, and sometimes had to sacrifice comfort for stealth.
Or just reliance on her wings; she’d taken chances on some rides knowing she could bail before the train even stopped. One winter in New York, she’d almost gotten caught on a CSX freight, but she’d heard the bull’s radio as he came close, giving her a moment’s warning.
Not long enough to grab her army blanket, and she didn’t want to lose it. Humans weren’t always smart about looking up, and she left her gondola and flew to the top of the box car in front of it, crouching down on the roof and listening as the bull told the head end that somebody had been mistaken, or if there was a hobo he was gone; all that was in the car was some dunnage and a wrinkled-up tarp.
She didn’t trust that he was really gone, if he’d felt the blanket he’d have noticed it was still warm. Until the train started moving.
Sitting on her belly on a boxcar roof wasn’t great, every time the train jostled it threatened to slide her off one side or the other, but she waited until she was sure she was clear and then swooped back down into the gondola, hastily stuffing her blanket back into her saddlebags in case the train stopped again.
It didn’t, and she’d ridden all the way to Tonawanda in that gondola.
•••
The train started slowing as it crossed a river into a large city: she caught a glimpse of a dam around a bend in the river and then they were on the far shore, baseball diamonds and a golf course on the north side and a power station with a big coal pile on the south. They went under a road, crossed the next at grade, then under I-380 and between a pair of warehouses.
The train held short of Beverly Yard in Cedar Rapids, and she curled up against the side sill and waited. Probably a crew change, which was nothing to be concerned about. There was a copse of trees off to her right which would be a good escape path if needed.
She could hear a van idling up front and brief snatches of conversation, not enough to make sense of it. A door slammed, then a change in pitch and the van drove off while the locomotives continued to idle.
She was close enough to the front she’d hear if they uncoupled, and they didn’t.
From the ground, from a van, what would they see? Maybe her ears, and that was it. In the fading light of day, what would that look like? Two triangles standing proud of the steelwork, nearly matching the paint . . . she was invisible.
The exhaust note of the locomotives deepened, the brakes on the train went off. This close to the front there wasn’t much warning as the slack went out and she almost bumped her muzzle against the end sill as the car jerked, then she was on her way again. Past a General Mills and a field right next to it—she considered how lucky that farmer was when it came time to market his crop. Straight through fields, then a slight curve and the train headed due west.
•••
The train stopped for good in Boone and got broken up, and she kept her spot until dark and then flew off. There weren't many good places to spend the night, not until she found a wrecking yard alongside the tracks with rows of automobiles to choose from. A sideswiped Traverse was as good a sleeping spot as any; most of the windows were unbroken and the seats in the back still folded down which gave her plenty of space to stretch out. It was her first time sleeping in a junk car and as she settled in she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it sooner; she’d seen plenty of salvage yards alongside the tracks.
•••
Sweetsong arose before the sun and flew a reconnaissance flight over the yard. During the day, that might tip off train crews to watch for her, but at night, with the lights from the yard, they couldn’t see her even though she could see them.
There was a train with locomotives backing up to them; she could get on now and take her chance that it left at a reasonable hour. Or she might be stuck all day in the yard, they might just be switching around the cars.
From her altitude, she could follow the rails with her eye, she could see where the track left the yard and curved, near a thick cluster of bushes where she could hide and wait for a train that was actually leaving. That close to the yard throat, it would be moving slow, and getting on board wouldn’t be difficult. There were houses on the south side of the tracks, but people who lived there wouldn’t be able to see her through the train.
Plus, if she waited until later, she could find a grocery store and get some more food and water. Her supplies were getting low.
•••
Some stores in Equestria painted their name on the roof so they were easier for pegasi to find. Humans mostly didn’t do that—water towers, airplane hangar roofs, and barns were the only exceptions she’d noticed so far.
From a lower altitude, though, she could read the advertising signs on the storefronts and on poles, and she found a Hy-Vee without too much trouble.
They didn’t open until seven, which gave her time to fly around town and explore some more. In the early dawn light, Boone didn’t look all that interesting, not until she found a small rail yard a block north of the Union Pacific mainline with an eclectic collection of passenger cars, freight cars, and locomotives. A sign on the passenger station said that it was the Boone and Scenic Valley Railroad.
They didn’t open until ten, and although they had a website, she didn’t have a way to access it.
She circled over it and considered. If she hadn’t found an outbound train by ten, she decided to come back and see what the B&SV had to offer. It looked like a tourist line, which meant it would go out and back and not connect with anything, but it might be fun for a day’s diversion if the pickings were slim. Plus, she’d learned that railfans usually gave deference to railroaders, which she was by the loosest definition, and she could use that to her benefit. Sometimes they’d give her bits to help her on her journey, and as often as not they were very familiar with local railroad operations. They knew which lines went where or when freight trains typically came through, and could tell her when a suitable freight was likely to arrive.