Big Sky Country
Destination Unknown
Big Sky Country
Admiral Biscuit
It was still dark when the train arrived in a yard and got broken up. She was vaguely aware of the locomotives being cut off, then the jerkiness as blocks of cars were cut off and moved. This was not the morning wake-up she’d expected; usually trains sat in the yard for a while before they got switched.
Sweetsong stayed put until she was fully awake, then stuck her head over the side to see what was around. She didn’t have the best hiding spot, but unless car inspectors actually climbed the ladder on her car, they wouldn’t see her.
Who knew how long she’d be in the yard, though? Grain could go a long time before it went bad; her block of cars might not be a priority. It was dark, and nighttime was the best time to leave the train unobserved. They couldn’t catch her, but if they didn’t even know she was there, they wouldn’t be wary, and it would be easier to get another train.
She was on her hooves when the car jolted, and she held her position as the slack got taken out, then ducked down as her block of cars cleared a cut on a parallel track.
A few moments later, she got shoved back through another switch, next to a long string of tank cars.
Once the switching locomotive had dropped off the cut of cars, she jumped off the grainer and darted under the tank cars, which wasn’t really a safe place to be, but it would give her a chance to see if anything was coming on the next track.
There wasn’t, so she took off, getting above the reach of the yard lights as fast as she could, then scanned around to find the best place she could spend the rest of the night.
Just across the road was a Walmart, with a big, flat roof, a perfect spot to sleep. People never went up on the roofs of buildings at night, and there was usually a parapet to hide her from anybody looking up.
She just had to be careful; on rainy days the roofs often flooded. She didn’t know why; they had drain pipes and scuppers. That was also a potential danger in some railcars; mostly they weren’t sealed up on the bottom all that well, but water could pool in places and make a car untenable.
•••
Laurel, Montana had an old Northern Pacific caboose by the railyard, and a big park near the center of town that was popular with retirees and dog-walkers in the morning and school children in the afternoon. There was even a pool that was open to the public, although according to the lifeguard, the public didn’t include ponies.
She wasn’t offended; human pools were chemically and had filters that clogged if they got hair or fur in them. Public fountains were much better to bathe in; she could get herself rinsed off before anybody kicked her out.
Adults had more money to give, but the kids were more enthusiastic to see her and talk to her and pet her and listen to her sing, and while they didn’t have enough trees to make a proper obstacle course, she wasn’t that great an acrobatic flier anyway. A simple course was better and safer.
An older couple offered to treat her to dinner at the Pelican Cafe, which had a delicious rainbow trout despite being far from any proper lakes. The deer heads mounted on the walls were creepy, even though she knew that humans hunted them with cars and guns. She didn’t feel the need to keep a trophy of the fish she’d caught for dinner, or the prairie grasses she’d snacked on, or the box that a pizza came in.
Sweetsong could have spent the night in town; the old couple offered to put her up at their house and there were also hotels, but she wanted to get back on the rails again, and needed to scout out a route and a likely train while it was still light.
Tracks went north, east, and west; west was where she wanted to go. There was a highway bridge over the tracks, which was an option. As she got close, she found that there was another railyard further along, and even better there was a long train in the yard being fueled from a tanker truck.
At first, it looked like it was facing the wrong direction, but as she flew over looking for a car she could ride on the other tracks, she realized that it had a pushing locomotive at the rear and two pulling locomotives at the front, and it was actually facing the correct way.
It was a tank train, and she couldn’t ride a tank car. But it had a couple other cars in it that she could, a single beat-up hopper between the front locomotives and the tank cars, and even better, another one at the rear.
She knew that those were supposed to keep the crew safe from the tank cars, as if one hopper would do much if the train derailed and caught fire. But that was the rule, and it would work to her advantage. At a guess, they’d put one on each end so no matter which way the train got pulled, it would be protected.
•••
A tree just on the other side of the yard made for a decent perch, a place to wait until the fuel truck rolled up its hoses and drove off. Once it was clear, she crossed the tracks and climbed into the hopper. This one had a hole and a void space under the slope sheet where she could hide, and once the train got moving she had every intention of seeing if she could get into the locomotive. It had worked once, and it might work again.
•••
She wasn’t expecting the crew to board the locomotive at her end; trains were supposed to have more locomotives in the front.
She could abandon the train, or else see where it was going.
Maybe they were moving it into the yard, maybe they’d just fueled it here because there wasn’t enough room to do it on the other tracks.
Sweetsong could barely see from her hiding spot, and she didn’t dare poke her head out. They were moving slowly, crossing over switches, and she could tell by the sun that they were heading southeast. Back where she’d come from.
I knew a tank train was a bad idea. She’d gotten greedy, thinking she was going to get to ride in another locomotive, and now she was going to go back to Alliance—she was too close to the locomotive to bail out.
That wasn’t the worst fate; it wasn’t like it mattered when she got to the West Coast. Or where she arrived, for that matter. Maybe this time she’d hop off in Thermopolis and explore the hot springs.
The train crossed a now-familiar truss bridge and started slowing down, eventually coming to a stop on the other side of the river. She could hear the clanging of a crossing bell, and then heard a door slam—someone had seen her and reported her.
There wasn’t going to be a way to gracefully exit; she’d have to wait until they told her to come out and then fly off. If they were south of town, it was remote enough that she could get away from roads, and then formulate a plan from there. Gain some altitude and follow the rail lines from the sky, find a place where trains slowed down and she could get on another.
Most important was being sure she had all her things. She hadn’t taken off her saddlebags or rolled out her army blanket, since she’d been planning on boarding the locomotive.
Much to her surprise, nobody climbed up on the car and ordered her out. Instead, she heard the doors slam and the vehicle drive off, and then after a few minutes, the train started back up, this time going in the opposite direction. Back the way she wanted to go.
Back across the bridge, and this time it turned the other way, heading northeast, into the big railyard.
More switches and crossovers later, the train finally curved around another wye and started heading northward.
The tracks were in a cut, which gave her good cover, and they were still moving slow. She climbed out of her hiding spot and peered down the length of the locomotive’s walkway. Taped across the window to the cab door was a sign which said “Unoccupied DPU locomotive,” just like on the last one she’d ridden.
Sweetsong hopped off the end of the grain car, taking a brief flight to the locomotive’s walkway, then went by hoof up to the door and tried the handle.
They’d locked the door, but they forgot to close the window all the way, and she flew alongside and pried it the rest of the way open then closed it behind herself.
That was a good thing to remember; crews might often leave windows unlocked since there was no way to get to them without flying. Even if it was slid shut it might not be latched.
•••
Since she was on the end of the train, she didn’t have to look at cars in front of her. She could look through the big cab windows at the land as it passed behind.
There was only one track, so there was practically no chance of being seen. Especially after she draped the army blanket around her, covering her pink fur with the dull olive cloth.
The tracks ran straight for a while and then they started curving to avoid terrain. After a weird S-curve, the train went into a tunnel. This time she had some warning it was coming; she saw it in the locomotive’s rearview mirror.
It didn’t feel as claustrophobic inside the cab. She could see the light from the portal in front of her, and the cab itself dulled the echoing, plus the reassuring sounds and vibrations of the locomotive and the speedometer showing that they were still moving.
She also could see light in the rearview mirror as the locomotive got close to the tunnel mouth, and then they were back out in the open and she watched the tunnel portal shrink off in the distance, imagining how the train crews would see it the other way.
Of course, they had headlights to help them see. Her locomotive did, too, but they were turned off and it would be foolhardy to switch them on.
A few miles later, they passed a mixed freight waiting on a siding. He was going south, and she watched the switch behind her change, the signal turn green, and heard the other locomotive throttle up. Since the mainline was, for now, running arrow-straight, she saw it cross over onto her track as it faded in the distance.
It occurred to her as she saw the flashing red light on the end of that train that its locomotives had rearview mirrors just like hers, and if the crew had been watching them as she went by, they might have seen her sitting up in the cab. She knew that passing trains were supposed to watch each other and report any defective equipment or riders, and that she’d be wiser to just lie down on the seat or sit on the cab floor. That wasn’t fun, though; it was better to have a view of the world going by.
They were running alongside a road, keeping pace with traffic. Then they passed through a small town and ran beside a cut of coal hoppers and after crossing a small lake, they began diverging from the road.
Another couple curves, a short tunnel, pastures full of cows who ignored the train as it went by. A few roads crossed over the tracks, but it was mostly empty land, big skies above and lush prairie below.
If she ever wanted to settle down, this was where she’d live.
They crossed another river on a deck bridge and then a road and then they were back in the open plains. She slid the locomotive window open and reveled in the blast of air and the smell of all the grass.
•••
They got sidelined just outside a small town. Sweetsong could see a distant water tower but couldn’t read it.
There was a wheat field right next to the tracks, and she had to fight the urge to just fly out of the locomotive and snack on some.
After a half hour of waiting, she gave into temptation. No crew were walking alongside the train, and she could see that the switch to her track had been changed back, which meant another train was coming through and they wouldn’t be going anywhere until it did.
She buckled on her saddlebags because it would be dumb to leave them in the cab, then checked one more time to make sure no crew were coming, checked to make sure that the cab door was unlocked and that the window was unlatched, then she hopped out onto the walkway and glided off between the uprights for the handrails, over the little ditch to the south of the tracks, and she was in the pasture.
Some ponies didn’t like eating food in the wild, as if it was significantly different than what they could buy at the market. Sweetsong liked the variety, and the ability to fend for herself. She didn’t need markets or grocery stores or pizza restaurants to survive, she could live off the land and sleep in the rough and let trains take her wherever she wanted to go. She didn’t have to work if she didn’t feel like it, she was a proper nomad like the pegasi of old, only owning what she could carry on her back.
She sniffed around the grass, finding the tastiest stalks and leaves, ripe but not yet dried by the sun, and then she reached under her belly and unfastened her saddlebags, slid them off her rump, and then started rolling in the prairie grass, stretching out her back in a way she couldn’t on a train.
An oncoming train blew its horn at a distant crossing, surely the one they were waiting for. She’d seen the process when the other train had been waiting for hers; she had time. Still on her back, Sweetsong stretched out her wings and pushed against the ground, holding them for a moment before tucking them back in and rolling onto her belly. Another mouthful of grass, then she stood up, still chewing, and trotted back over to her saddlebags.
She heard the train blast its horn again, practically beside her, and watched a foolish pickup truck race it to the crossing, barely clearing the plow on the front of the locomotive. The engineer blasted his horn in anger, and she wondered if he was going to radio the crew of her train and explain his near-miss.
Her locomotive would have a radio in it, and she could turn it on and listen to the trains talking.
She grabbed her saddlebags in her mouth as her train started moving, took a short flight to the walkway, let herself back into the cab, and settled back down on the conductor’s seat.
•••
After it left town, the tracks curved away from the road and followed their own path through fields and pastures. Sweetsong raided the mini-fridge in the nose of the locomotive for a bottle of water.
As the terrain undulated, the train skirted the edges of rocky outcroppings, ran through cuts and across fills and a few short tunnels when there wasn’t a way around. Sometimes they came along a road, then they’d veer off on their own course again.
The few towns the train passed were tiny, gone in an instant. A couple intersections and a small cluster of buildings at most. Beyond that, she didn’t see the normal collection of distant houses and barns across the open land.
Sweetsong rummaged through the cab, exploring. Warning stickers and labels all over the back of the cab; above the windshield the locomotive model and weight—four hundred sixteen thousand pounds. Next to that, the reporting marks, wheel diameters, warning lights, the road number again, safety tags for the conductor or engineer to mark broken or dangerous equipment. She found the radio and turned it on.
There was a lot of sameness to the scenery, almost as if she wasn’t going anywhere at all.
Montana was a big state, and it would take a while to cross it, especially since the train wasn’t going in a straight line. Then came Idaho and Washington or Oregon, depending on where she crossed, and then the Pacific.
The train radio helped; even if train crews weren’t chatty and some of the voices were simulacra that counted wheels as the train went by, every message perked her ears. She didn’t know which train hers was: they’d identify themselves by the numbers on the lead locomotive and she hadn’t thought to fly down and read those when she’d been scouting out the train.
•••
It was risky, but they were in the middle of nowhere, so she opened the nose door and stepped out onto the walkway, letting the wind blow over her, watching the ties flash by. Passenger trains didn’t have any outside platforms and the windows didn’t open.
They crossed a short bridge, and she could look between the ties to the creek below. It was disorienting and made her dizzy, but she did it anyway, then put her hooves back up on the handrail.
It was almost like standing on the fantail of a ship, watching its wake through the choppy sea. The undulating waves of grains and grasses, the rails narrowing down to a point behind her, and the wide open sky.
Riding in the locomotive was comfortable, but as the miles rolled by Sweetsong decided that on a day like today, she’d rather be out in the open, not in the confines of a cab. Even if it had comfy seats and bottled water and a flush toilet.
•••
She had to get back inside as they approached a road; it wouldn’t do to have people in cars see her and tell the crew that they had a stowaway aboard their locomotive.
•••
Another small town with abandoned stock pens and a decaying grain elevator, then they ran parallel to a state road, finally turning north and away from it, and eventually punching through a short tunnel.
Sweetsong reasoned that they’d have no way of knowing if she flipped the headlight switch on, so she did, getting a proper look at the inside of a tunnel for the first time. The walls were unfinished, roughly blasted through the stone, and then they were out in the open again and she turned the headlight back off.
She watched a low-flying airplane curve out over the prairie and then turn on its landing lights as it lined up with a nearby airport, which meant that they were getting close to a sizable town.
It was still light out, and paradoxically the locomotive would be more difficult to escape from than an ordinary railcar. Those usually weren’t inspected closely, but if the train stopped to change crews or be serviced, they would surely check the pushing locomotive to be sure everything was working. In theory, she could hide in the toilet cubicle, they probably wouldn’t check that, but she didn’t feel like spending however long it took for the train to get moving again hidden with no real escape route.
Of course, the train might not stop at all, might just go all the way through this town, too. The smart thing to do was be ready to bail out, but stay aboard as long as the train kept up speed. It would take it a mile or more to stop, which would give her plenty of opportunity to disembark.
•••
She hadn’t counted on it not slowing down appreciably until she was well into the city proper, a river on one side but houses and businesses and factories on the other, lots of people around who might see her.
Luckily, a highway overpass gave her some cover, and she jumped off the train alongside a public park.
She quickly gained enough altitude to spot where her train was going, across a long plate girder bridge and then into a wide open yard on the other side.
It did stop in the yard, so she’d made the right choice to leave it behind.
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Kryten:Its a banana.
Lister:Try Again.
Kryten:Its an invasion by small pastel coloured alien equines on a Minnesota farm.
11084115
11071193
Ah Jersey... the place where the denizens of Darkwood sought the refuge of the shade of demon trees to escape from
Well... she's not wrong, exactly.
Young lady did you just steal a bottle of water? XD bad filly.
Laurel, Montana had an old Northern Pacific caboose by the railyard, and a big park near the center of town that was popular in the morning with retirees and dog-walkers in the morning and school children in the afternoon.
You have "in the morning" twice in one sentence.
the north west is getting so sad. it is dyeing a slow death.
"near the center of town that was popular in the morning with retirees and dog-walkers in the morning and"
"near the center of town that was popular with retirees and dog-walkers in the morning and"?
"human pools were chemically and had filters"
Were chemically what?
I am glad Google Earth at least has place labels working again; I was able to find the town and then follow, at least roughly, the moves around the wye and such there. :D
"There was a wheat field right next to the tracks, and she had to fight the urge to just fly out of the locomotive and snack on some."
"then she hopped out onto the walkway and glided off between the uprights for the handrails, over the little ditch to the south of the tracks, and she was in the pasture."
"She sniffed around the grass, finding the tastiest stalks and leaves"
The first, that it's a wheat field, seems to be in conflict with the second two, that it's a pasture, unless I'm missing something.
"After it left town, the tracks curved away from the road and followed its own path"
"After it left town, the track curved away from the road and followed its own path" or "After they left town, the tracks curved away from the road and followed their own path"?
11085763
I, for one, welcome our new Pony overlords.
11085812
Living in New Jersey is a Pyrrhic victory victory, and we all know it. Better to die than to live in New Jersey.
11086401
Not that long ago, our shop closed down for hunting season. Naturally, a few people asked if I was going hunting, and I said that I wasn’t planning to, I’d gotten all the deer I could ever want from the front seat of my van.
11086531
I suppose she did, although let’s be honest the railroad will never miss it.
11086667
Thank you! It’s been fixed
11089463
AlwaysDressesInStyle wanted that changed from the first time he pre-read the chapter, and every time thereafter, and I argued that it counted as a Silversism. Even if Silver Glow isn’t the narrator here.
I stand by my choice, but at the same time I did admit to him, in person, that he wasn’t the only one who thought it should be changed
Heh, fun google maps following of railroad lines, not as easy as following roads for cars.
Debatably, wheat is a pasture grass as far as ponies are concerned.
Correction made, thank you!
11090581
If I had a reinforced front end, or some sort of Mad Max ram/spike on the front of my jeep, I'd have all the venison I could eat! Of course, during hunting season, they're nowhere to be seen.
11090590
I sometime use that sort of construction, and I often use "chemical-y" or suchlike to avoid confusion.
11090590
...Okay, well, if it's deliberate, that's up to you, but, uh... I don't know what it means, sorry.
Oh! Okay, is it what 11090608 said? Chemical-y -- ah, and "Silversism" meaning "amusingly-if-you-understand-it misspelled", or something?
:)
And I imagine that having road signs and names and such displayed would be useful, aye, but eh.
Hm. Hmmm. Okay, good point. :)
Though I'm still not sure a wheat field and a pasture would be the same thing, particularly when describing ones seen on Earth? I'm still not sure what environment to actually picture her in, there, sorry.
No problem. :)
I love a pony discovering Americana.
11090608
I can tell you the ones they put on police Tahoes in the late 90s aren’t strong enough to take a deer at speed.
I thought of that (and my pre-reader also suggested it), but I’m stubborn
11092364
Yeah, basically that it smells like it’s full of chemicals.
More as a throwback to Silver Glow’s Journal, where she used words like that all the time, hence being called (by some of my readers, at least) a Silverism.
It’d be a mix of cultivated wheat fields and fallow fields that have whatever growing in them and which might have cows (or other farm animals) grazing in them.
Probably the easiest way to distinguish fields would be fields with cereals/grains (wheat, oats, etc.), fields with pasture grasses (alfalfa, clover, etc.), and fields with prairie grasses/wild grasses.
Which I realize doesn’t exactly clear things up
11092711
Thank you! It’s a fun topic to explore!
And a good virtual tour for people, too.
How long until a lawsuit comes?
If it's good enough for her (see picture below), it should also be good enough for little Sweetsong.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2012/11/19/157218.png
Source.
11121774
Unfortunately, ponies do not have legal personhood. Given that ponies are sapient, they should.
11228658
There are a lot of rules that would have to be reconsidered for ponies (and other Equestrian species), and it would probably actually be really difficult to best rewrite laws to deal with them. Probably a public pool in Montana is going to be one of the last to get the memo that ponies should be allowed in.
I feel like a teleporting unicorn hobo wouldn't be as good at hitching a ride as Sweetsong is.
Sure, they might be able to teleport into a locked car, but they wouldn't have the flexibility in observation that a pegasus would, (I don't think remote viewing is a unicorn talent) and they'd wouldn't be able to easily fly above or alongside a carriage to see what's inside since unicorn flight tends to be rather limited compared to a natural-born flier.
Pegasus supremacy, yeah!
I was wondering about that, but your other comment clears it up. Like 'deftly' and 'squiggly', the pool is 'chemical-y'.
11496022
I think you're right. Teleportation would be an advantage to boarding trains, but they wouldn't know what they're getting into (literally) until they were there. With some knowledge, they could pick empty cars at least, but that's about it.
Depending on how they can account for relative motion, a unicorn could probably board a train going quicker than a pegasus could.
I do love my pegasi.
That's very much a SIlverism (she said things like that).