//------------------------------// // Idaho // Story: Destination Unknown // by Admiral Biscuit //------------------------------// Destination Unknown Idaho Admiral Biscuit Sweetsong almost slept through Idaho. She woke up covered in snow as her train slowly percolated through a rail yard. Instinct said to shake off the snow, but it would help her blend in, at least as long as she was in the yard. A clear spot on the floor of the car would be a dead giveaway, if anybody looked. She didn’t know how much she’d moved around in her sleep; her army blanket might not have much snow on it at all. But if she moved, she’d dislodge whatever was there. Gondolas were open-topped; worst-case she could fly out. There wasn’t a lot of the yard she could really see without moving, but she caught the tips of some pine trees in her peripheral vision, which suggested tree-cover at the end of the yard was possible, if there weren’t bridges. Her train jerked to a halt and she perked her ears, listening for human voices, engines running, the crunching of shoes on snow. Nothing close; she could faintly make out somebody speaking in the distance, and a radio playing country music. Plus, the ever-present rumble of diesel locomotives and the syncopated beat of railcars across joints and switches. Most yards didn’t have towers anymore for humans to watch over their fiefdom, but they did have cameras on poles which served the same purpose. Movement might be noticed, and she might wind up with a railroad bull rousting her out of her gondola if she moved too much. Grain cars gave her more cover than a gondola and she could have moved to one . . . but she liked the openness. If she got kicked off the train, so be it. She’d find another. Am I being uncoupled? She didn’t hear the telltale sounds of couplers or the hiss of air, but it was hard to say. Flying out would blow her cover, there was no way they wouldn’t see her. She could poke her head up, look around, find a good exit, get away from the yard for a while. Surely there was a town nearby, she could visit and make some money. But she still had leftover Flyin’ Hawaiian Pizza from Alibi Lounge, and if this was a through train she might make it to the Pacific in a day or so. Northern Idaho was next to Washington, and Washington wasn’t as wide as Montana. Patience was a virtue. A boring virtue, but a virtue nonetheless. She tucked her head back down between her forelegs and closed her eyes. Maybe if she fell asleep again, when she woke the train would be moving. ••• It wasn’t. Sweetsong had no idea how long she’d been asleep. Long enough for the snow to start turning to rain, long enough that the dusky light of early morning had become a greyish rainscape. The first few droplets that fell on her could have been a fluke, could have been a bit of meltwater dripping off her forelock onto her muzzle, but now she was fully awake and there were unquestionably rain droplets mixed with the snowflakes. It wouldn’t take long for them to dissolve whatever blanket of snow she’d picked up, not to mention that the floor of her gondola would soon be awash. I need to get out of here. Stealth was evaporating as fast as the snow, and at least it was an open-top car, she had the length to run up and then climb, she’d be spotted but there was nothing they could do about that. If she had to leave, if there wasn’t any nearby cover, she should fly back east, back the way she came. If they didn’t see which car she came out of—and they might not—they’d think she was intending on riding eastbound, and they’d watch those trains with extra scrutiny while paying less attention to westbound. There was still the possibility of subtle, if she wasn’t seen nobody would be watching for a pony riding the train without paying. A quick look over the edge, there might be a way to sneak out or a nearby grainer she could board and cuddle up there. At first, she thought she’d slipped on a patch of snow, but then realized that the train was moving again. Back down on the floor, under her army blanket, a shapeless bundle of litter at the corner of the car. The train went under a shed, and she smelled diesel fuel and saw the fueling stands as the train crept by, slowly picking up speed. Then she was back out in the open. Surely they had cameras in the refueling shed, and any moment now the train would stop and she’d be evicted. She’d poked her head out when she smelled raw fuel, and she’d ducked down again as quickly as she realized where she was. If they caught her, if they saw her up close, they’d know who to look for. The times she’d seen the bulls roust riders was always near a road, where they could get their trucks close. She had no intention of waiting around for the inevitable; it would take a minute for them to realize what they’d seen on the cameras or for an employee who’d caught a glimpse to report her, and then they’d have to call the train crew and the bull, which gave her a minute or two. She kept her blanket draped over her and popped her head up, looking at what was ahead. They were on the outermost track, and past a parking lot was a stub track, and a gravel road that ran alongside. More importantly was a collection of pine trees, the ones she’d spotted before. They weren’t much, but they were cover. She rolled up her blanket and scooched across to the far side of the car, where she could see the trees as they appeared and get a little bit of run-up before going over the edge. The wheels of her car bumped across the switch, and she saw the top of a pair of pine trees right in front of her. There was no time to see if anyone was looking in her direction, she focused on the blessed clearing between them, almost fifty feet wide and plenty of room to be out of the obvious view before she turned, forgoing her original plan and instead staying low, hooking to the southwest to follow a natural thin spot in the woods. A white Explorer with flashing lights rolled down the access road, kicking up muddy slushy grit in its wake, and then she heard the brakes of the train hissing. She’d gotten clear just in time. ••• She thought about sneaking up as close as she could and watching as the bull searched the gondola and didn’t find her, would he think that she had been imagined? But someone might tell him when he got back that they’d seen a pink pegasus fly off that very train, and then he’d know she was there. He might look around, wondering if she was so bold as to hop the very same train again, if she thought once he didn’t find her the first time he’d lose interest. It was smarter to not chance it, even if that meant she’d have to fly for a while, low at first until she was well clear of the yard, and then she could fly up higher and get a pegasus-eye view of where the tracks went and where she might be able to hide out and find another train. There were farms on the other side of the copse of trees, and she sometimes wondered what people thought as she flew by at low altitude. It was doubtful any of them would report seeing her to the bull, but just the same once she’d crossed under a set of power lines on big pylons, she decided to climb over a big hayfield and lose herself against the clouds before turning southwest again. ••• To her north, it was hilly and the tracks ran right along the edge of it. On her side of the tracks there were farms and fields and as she got further southwest it got more crowded with houses. As the weather cleared, she could see a river and a highway to her south, and angled more in that direction, just to be sure she was well away from the rails. She flew towards what she thought was a truck stop but instead turned out to be a weigh station. Sweetsong initially thought it was to make sure that trucks going over the bridge weren’t too heavy, but it was on the wrong side of the highway for that. As she got close, she realized what it actually was. She wouldn’t find any food there. Their parking lot had an okay thermal, and she used it to gain altitude. She knew some of the major truck lines, although not as well as she knew the big railroads, and read the signs on the doors of the trucks and their trailers. One of the trucks, carrying a big cargo on a special trailer with guide vans in front and behind caught her eye—it belonged to the Mareton and Driftfield Truckway, which sounded like a pony name if she’d ever heard one. Sweetsong had met a pegasus truck driver; she’d been riding the UP in Texas and gotten off the train just outside Amarillo because she was feeling grimy and saw a Pilot Truck Stop sign. She knew that they had showers there, and one thing that Texas and Oklahoma had been lacking was convenient lakes to bathe in. Since she’d already invested in the shower, it wasn’t worth flying anywhere else for a meal, so she’d bought a Subway sandwich and a Cinnabon and nearly dropped both in shock when she saw a fellow pegasus sitting at a table. She spent the night in the truck’s sleeper, gave and received her best wing-preening in months, and rode in the truck all the way to Tucumacari, where she caught another freight. ••• Sweetsong hadn’t meant to fly all the way to the next yard, but she had. It was called Yardly Yard which she thought was a stupidly stupid name for a rail yard, and everything around it was too barren to provide her with any cover at all. She saw the gondola she’d been riding in sitting in the yard; if she hadn’t been seen she would have been in an even worse position, so it was just as well she’d spent half the day flying. Maybe the bulls in this yard were paying close attention to arriving trains, so she’d want to get on well past the yard. Especially once she saw that to the west, there appeared to be several diverging tracks. That would be a problem for tomorrow. Now that she knew where the yard was, she broadened her circle and found an IHOP a few streets and a rail yard away. Pancakes were always good, and she hadn’t tried their tres leches pancakes yet.