Destination Unknown
Alliance
Admiral Biscuit
Sitting up in the locomotive gave her a commanding view. Much better than she got in a freight car, normally. As they ran along the highway, she could look down on the cars and trucks that passed by.
The land around was getting hilly, building up to the mountains she knew crossed the western United States. She'd have to get on a different train to take her there; coal trains ran to and from the mines to coal-fired power plants. When they stopped to change crews and service the locomotives, she’d have to bail out and then maybe she could get her spot back or maybe not. Hiding in a railcar while the train got serviced was risky; hiding in a locomotive was foolhardy. Surely the crew that maintained them would look inside to make sure nothing had gone wrong.
That was a problem for later. For now, she had a comfy seat and a view down the length of the train—the nose of her locomotive was just high enough she could see over the tops of the empty coal cars.
•••
They stopped just past Merna, waiting for a grain train to leave a big loop of track by a grain elevator. In the West where it was flat and land was cheap, there were lots of loops for trains to load and then pull back on the mainline.
Grainers had plenty of hiding places, and that train was a possibility if it was still in the next yard when her train arrived. It wouldn’t be that far ahead. Plus, she knew that the train was loaded and she knew that grain was exported overseas from ports on the West Coast; she could potentially get on that train and ride it all the way to the Pacific.
She’d just play it by ear, as she always did.
Sometimes she’d pick a car with her best guess to where it might be going. She’d learned how to tell loaded cars from empties by how they sat on their springs, although that wasn’t always easy to spot if she was boarding a train that was already moving, especially if she approached it from the air. And she still had a lot to learn about how railroads operated, and what cars would go where; these cars could ultimately be routed back to the General Mills plant she’d passed or the big ADM complex in Clinton.
The land was getting hillier, and there were large portions that were left to tasty-looking wild pasture grasses. Homes and traffic on the parallel road got sparser and sparser.
The train left the highway behind, then ran up on an embankment and over the road and a small river. The Dismal River, according to the sign on the highway bridge. A moment later, they roared past a small, forgettable town, crossed another river, and then rejoined the highway.
There was a desolate sort of beauty to Nebraska, and Sweetsong started to feel the urge to fly out of the locomotive, to land in the inviting pasture grasses, to gallop up the small hills and be princess of the world.
And if she’d been riding in an open car, maybe she would have. There was a stream, there were plentiful grasses; she could fly along the rail line or trot along it.
But she could also sit in the chair and watch the few gauges that were powered up, feel the thunder of the locomotive, watch down the length of the train as it rushed for another load of coal to feed the hungry furnaces back East.
•••
Suddenly, they were back out of the desolation and the train was slowing. Tracks full of coal cars bracketed her train, and she saw railroad employees between the trains, their high-viz vests also stained with coal dust, so she slid the cab window back shut, then they were past them and the train was still slowing down.
The good vision the cab provided out its windows was a boon. She could see a yard ahead, and for the moment there weren’t any trains approaching, and nothing but fields on either side. Now was the time to take her leave.
Out the nose door was the quickest way, and a human would have climbed down the steps but she didn’t have to.
For a moment, she fought for equilibrium as the sideways momentum and the slipstream off the train fought her, then she was climbing away from the train, away from the locomotive she’d called home for this leg of her journey.
Once she was clear of the tracks and well over a wheat field, she took stock of her situation. A nearby water tower helpfully informed her that she’d found Alliance, and she got more altitude to get a better idea of the lay of the land.
Besides the yard she’d just passed, there were two more. Tracks went out to the northwest and southwest, both reasonable options for leaving town, and there were a lot of tracks and therefore a lot of trains.
A wye at the end of the first yard drew her attention; trains went through it slowly. If the center had been trees or even tall grass, it might have been a good place to find a ride; unfortunately, it was nothing but a wide expanse of gravel. There was a salvage yard off the western leg, but that still left her with some ground to cover if she found a suitable railcar.
Off the south leg, there was a bridge, and that was her best shot. Right before the second yard, which could be a blessing or a curse. Trains usually went through yards slow, but there were a lot of people who might see her boarding.
Sweetsong climbed higher, getting an idea of the more distant landscape. Both of the directions the tracks went followed a highway, although neither had a convenient bridge. To the north another loop of track around a grain elevator was a possibility, trains would take that curve slowly, both because of the tight radius and because they’d be loading grain.
That would be a problem for the morning. For now, she had to decide if she wanted to sleep in the rough again or in an actual hotel.
•••
Actual hotel won out in the end. She still had more than enough bits left from Chicago, Clinton, and Council Bluffs, and there was an Econo Lodge next to a coffee shop and a McDonald’s that was cheap.
It wasn’t much of a hotel room but it was good enough.
It felt weird to not have the bed rumbling under her, to not be swaying ever so gently on the rails. The locomotive had had a refrigerator in it with bottled water, and was that something that got checked and refilled every time the train stopped, or didn’t they bother with a DPU? Maybe she could have stayed hidden in it, maybe if she had she’d be on her way again and not in a cheap hotel on the outskirts of Alliance.
Or maybe she would have been caught and led off the train in hobbles, her picture telegraphed up and down the line so the bulls would know who to watch out for.
The television had plenty of channels and none of them were of any interest to her. Instead, she unloaded her saddlebags and took inventory, refilled her water bottle from the sink, and then stuffed everything back in.
She considered unfolding her guitar, but the desolation of Nebraska felt more a cappella, so she sang without it as the sun set and the light faded.
•••
Morning brought a McMuffin and two burritos for later. Several railroaders waited in line for their food, and she listened with interest to their radios. Neither of them tried to confront her which meant that despite her sloppy gondola dismount in Grand Island, nobody was looking for her.
They were just getting into their truck when she flew out of the store with her food sack in her mouth. It was a pickup with hi-rail wheels and a collection of tools in the bed, and as she gained altitude she wondered if she could hitch a ride on it. Every now and then she’d see one actually on the tracks, and while it wasn’t a train it went on the rails and that kind of counted. With the big rear window, though, there really wasn’t any place to hide, and as far as she knew the trucks didn’t go all that far on the tracks anyway.
She’d actually gotten to see one mount the rails once. She’d been sitting in a tree in Alabama waiting for a train to come along, and it had driven up onto the tracks and she started paying attention to it because she’d already learned that people did stupid things at railroad crossings.
It turned parallel to the rails, dropped down its rail wheels, and then took off down the tracks, passing below her before going around a curve and being lost to sight. Later on, she found out that sometimes they would inspect the tracks before a train went over, especially after storms. There had been a big storm, and she’d given up on the idea of finding a train and flown off to a nearby farm and sheltered in a half-collapsed barn until the storm passed.
Sweetsong circled around to watch what the truck was doing—if it was like when she’d been in Alabama, there would be no trains until the truck gave the all-clear. It didn’t try to get on the tracks; instead, it went off in the direction of the rail yard.
She flew southwest to the highway overpass she’d spotted earlier and after checking in both directions for trains and rail bulls, she settled on top of a pier and opened up her food sack.
She sacrificed some of a burrito to appease the pigeons, and then waited. There were lots of tracks and lots of trains to choose from, and one would be along that she liked sooner or later.
By noon, one still hadn’t arrived. She offered the rest of the first burrito to the pigeons, then flew back to the Econo Lodge—there was an Italian restaurant in the parking lot of the hotel that looked good.
They had a lasagna pizza, which was both confusing and intriguing. Humans were very experimental with food, she’d discovered, and especially with pizza. Nobody even seemed to agree on what the right style of pizza was, although every pizzeria she went to said theirs was the right style. It was always fun to experiment, and pizzas always left her with some food for later.
•••
Sweetsong hid under the 10th Street Bridge, the best place she’d found to hop a northwest-bound train. It was clear of the huge yards, and the only cover she was likely to get during the daytime—outside of town, there was nothing but fields and scrubby little bushes that barely provided any cover at all. The Southeast was best for hiding alongside tracks; the kudzu came up so close she could practically touch a train without being seen.
It wasn’t so far out of town that the trains would be moving quickly, at least that was the hope. And the body of the train would block any view from the railyard, keeping her ahead of the bulls yet again.
She stuck her head below the girders, checking up and down the line, watching a northbound train as it crawled through the wye. Lots of grain cars, lots of places to hide, and there wasn’t much chance of anybody looking up and seeing her.
The train crew might, so she ducked back under the girder and centered herself on the concrete pier until the locomotives thudded past, then stuck her head back down, watching and waiting.
It was picking up speed, accelerating into the plains, and as the first half of the train whisked by with no good car in sight, she started to consider second options, until she found a gondola full of scrap steel right in front of a grain car. The train speed was higher than she liked, but the gondola would give her more maneuvering room, and she dropped down as it went beneath, letting the grain car come to her, tucking her wings in around the steel supports as she dropped along the slope sheet.
Up ahead the tracks paralleled a road, she’d spotted that as she looked down the tracks, so she crouched down on the floor of the car, using her tail to brush a clear spot. Not as good a view as the locomotive, but the wind was rushing over her and that was the best way to travel.
The tracks were on a slight abutment, high enough that passing cars wouldn’t be able to see her if she kept low, so she unrolled her army blanket and spread it on the floor, choosing the front of the grainer to give any oncoming locomotive the least possible amount of time to spot her.
Sweetsong watched the tops of semi-trucks on the parallel road, and beyond them mostly circular fields with their giant irrigation booms. Humans couldn’t control the rain they got and had to resort to those, and she sometimes wondered if she could make bits as a rainmaker.
That was a lot of work, though; it was much better to ride the rails as a vagrant, going where she wanted and when she wanted and answering to nobody and nopony.
She dug the pizza box out of her saddlebags, opened it up and took out a slice while she watched rural Nebraska pass by.