Five Score Divided by Four: Highball

by RRBrony

Ch 4 On The Ground

Ch 4 On-The-Ground

*Bang*

*Bang, bang, BANG BANG*

The sound of someone banging began to rouse me, my head was still reeling and everything felt murky. Like I was wading through jello or something.

"Yeah, who is?!" I yell trying to sound annoyed. I didn't want anyone to know what was going on.

"Dude, Ben!! You've been in there for like 20 minutes, what's going on with you?" Came the familiar voice of Garret in a somewhat urgent and lowered tone.

"Man, I was trying to…. You know what, I'm not even going to say anymore on that subject." I say in embarrassment.

"Thank god, I don't want to know and now my brain is filled with all kinds of things that you could have followed up with that statement. Damn you man. I didn't want those images in my head." He said with disgust in his voice.

After a moment I heard the sound of soggy mud being walked through indicating that he was walking away from the port a potty. While still laying on the floor I wipe my forehead with my left hand and breathe a sigh of relief that I managed to dodge a bullet.

All things considered, it wasn't looking too good for me. Taking everything into account, it became clear that the cutie mark appearing was just the beginning of whatever was going on. The sudden appearance of the hair along with the ears indicated that I had a limited time before something else would change on my body.

“Well, I’m pretty sure these changes mean something but damn, I’m out here in the middle of bumfuck-nowhere working on a derailment hundreds of miles from home and safety.” I say quietly to myself.

I let out a long frustrated sigh and began to pull myself to my feet. I feel a little stiff in my legs and feet but I’ve got bigger things to worry about. The rain has gone and things are getting better with the weather which means we can hopefully get back to work.

That thought sparks a small amount of hope within me, the idea that we could get the job done soon would be the break I needed. I stretch my sore and achy muscles and let out a loud yawn as I open the door to the port-o-shitter.

Just as I make it to the section truck I hear the distinct sound of a mic being queued up from the truck's outside CB radio speaker. “Alright guys, we’re going to have a briefing and then we’ll get back to it.” The roadmaster said.

I can’t decide if I’m relieved or annoyed that I have to go back to work, but I know the sooner things move along the better off my current predicament will be. I look down at my feet and see I’m standing on my tip toes, yet I’m not falling on my face or all over the muddy ground.

I force my feet back to normal and make my way towards the briefing site with a shake of my head. That spark of hope surged at the realization that after the track rebuild and ballasting that I’ll be homeward bound. It made me step lively towards the meeting point, anxious to get it over with.

* * *

“Well that briefing took way longer than I ever thought possible.” Garret said with an annoyed tone.

“I know right! It turned more into a whine and bitch session about the sleeping accommodations than the actual dangers, hazards and issues we’ll be facing to get this mess fixed so we can go home and relax.” I say in a grumpy tone.

The briefing should have been maybe twenty or so minutes to discuss the plan and what our roles would be. But noooo, it took an HOUR!! A freaking HOUR to get through the briefing! I don’t have the luxury of burning time, I need to get out and get home before some other thing changes on my body and I get poked and prodded to find out what’s happening to me. I hate seeing doctors and being in hospitals.

“On the bright side, we got an extra hour of double time because of it.”

“I don’t know man…. I really need to get out of here. I’m dealing with some shit in my personal life and this derailment is really fucking it up.” I lower my voice and say, “I’m experiencing some physical changes that are worrying me."

"Dude, why don't you tell the roadmaster you need to leave?" Garret's tone was lowered and tinged with concern.

"He's going to want to know what the hell is going on and I'm just not prepared to tell anyone yet. Sorry, that includes you."

"Well, I don't know what to tell you. But if it's that bad you should really get out of here and go see a doctor."

I screwed up my face at the recommendation. "I'm not sure they can help or explain what's happening."

He looks at me with a worried expression with an underlying tone of utter confusion. "I mean, unless you're turning into BigFoot or you're secretly an alien I highly doubt that they can't help you."

I give him a deadpan look.

"Oh....."

"Yeah." Was the only thing I could think of to reply. It didn't confirm or deny what was going on. But hopefully let him know that things were beyond the doctor's help.

After an awkward silence ensued, I point with my right hand thumb that I would be getting to work unloading the track panels. During the night more heavy equipment was trucked in that could deal with the soft quicksand like mud that would ensnare machinery not equipement to handle it. We had to get the crane and flat cars with the track panels off the other main so they could run trains.

* * *

A clattering of chains and whining of cable for the last time signaled that the track crane had dropped the last track panel. Thankfully for me, it was the last one for the project. After that panel was dropped on the ground I began helping them secure the crane to be moved back into the Belen yard and clear off the other main.

It felt like a year had passed by as I unloaded the track panels, but a quick look at my wrist watch told me that only about two hours had passed since I first started unloading the panels. It didn’t help that my legs and pelvis were screaming at me as if I had taken a munday and smashed them with it.

Speaking of munday’s, I walked over to the section truck and grabbed a ten pound sledge hammer before heading towards the second track panel. I was hoping they would have been half way done with the track laying, but a quick inspection showed that instead of drilling holes in the rail and bolting bars they were being welded.

“Well, I see that we aren’t going to be getting done anytime soon.” I mutter under my breath. I take a deep breath in and let it out. “I just have to get through this…… I can hold out. I know I can.” I think to myself.

I jump in the middle of the ongoing work with a determined face and hell bent on getting out of here. Once again time began to move along, it almost felt like an out of body experience, as if I was just a passenger watching a first person movie. The work was moving along at a snail's pace, but one panel after another was placed, welded and we moved on to the next one.

Suddenly a sharp pain in my lower back brought me from the weird state I was in. I was swinging a munday at the time of the intense pain, I slowly stood back up and grimaced in pain. I took in some sharp and deep breaths trying to regain my composure and not draw attention to myself.

After a few breaths I slowly and painfully started walking towards the section truck to grab some pain killers. My normally long strides were rather short and painful, which made the trek to the truck feel like walking up a mountain for miles. While walking I looked down and saw that I was walking on my tippy toes with a wild looking bend in my legs.

“I see things are getting wilder by hour and there’s no end in sight.” I think to myself. There’s an inner battle waging on whether or not I want to see what all has transformed while the other part doesn’t even want to acknowledge that anything is happening.

Once I got to the truck I located my pain meds and took about four advil to make the pain go away and insure it wouldn’t come back up anytime soon. We were getting so close to getting everything buttoned up and getting out of dodge, the next thing we had to ballast the tracks. Which shouldn’t take too long and then it would be a simple tamping, regulating and calling it quits.

* * *

It was a few hours later, but finally the tamper and ballast regulator were finished leveling the track and building the shoulders along the side of the track. We ended up falling behind on this aspect of the job because we didn’t have a ballast train that we could run over the massive washout. It took almost three hours for the front end loaders to place enough ballast for the tamper to even lift the track up.

The end result was a total of three lifts to bring the track up almost a foot in order to pull the dip out of the track. I was beginning to get discouraged at all the setbacks, but finally sometime after 7:30 pm we were pulling up the Rip Rap train to dump massive boulders along the fill we had just placed.

I survey the landscape once again, a sense of dread fills me as the end results of mother nature's fury stares back at me. The track ended up having 300 feet washed out with a 20-30 foot drop at the steepest point and maybe a couple of feet at the edge of the washout. It honestly looked like someone took a vaguely U/V shaped hand shovel and cut right through the area, it was one of the reasons why there was such a struggle getting the machines to remove the wrecked train. Thankfully they ended up falling in between main one and main two, allowing the wrecking crane to get a decent amount of them with only the mildest of issues. Still, those tankers carrying extremely toxic/dangerous materials had to be removed before we could even begin to make the repairs.

I was standing about halfway up the cut on the south side, which was the direction the engine was coming from and headed northward. The plan, as laid out by the roadmaster, was to pull the entire train of Rip Rap across the 300 foot washout area and then dump the boulders one car at a time this way we would at least have coverage all along the base to help protect the new ballast and earthwork we had rapidly built. Then whatever we had left would be used to fill in gaps and strengthen areas that were most likely to be washed away if the water came back.

Garret and a female train conductor were down in the cut, Garret and her were “walking the train” through the newly laid track at walking speed, which is about 2-4 mph. All seemed to be well, nothing out of the ordinary. Then suddenly I felt a nagging sensation at the back of my head, which caused me to shake it. “Damn, I’m really struggling.” After having discovered a tail growing out of my ass and having a constant pain in my legs and back I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to make it to the end of the project before something truly bad happened to me.

A sudden premonition struck me as I felt intune with the very ground I was standing on, I felt the ground shifting and buckling. But I didn’t see anything, at first. It dawned on me that things had slowed down and the terror struck home as I could see everything happening in slow motion. The first of the two big locomotives was leaning to the left as the ballast and earth works began to crumble.

Seeing the pending crisis I galloped towards them, but it felt like I was trying to run through Jell-0, my movements seemed slow and labored as the falling engines and cars were speeding up. Still, I pushed through with the mantra, “Go faster! Be faster!” I suddenly realized I was running on all fours, using my hands and doing an awkward gallop-like motion, but there was a little extra speed from that.

I arrived mere seconds before the falling train would land on top of them, quick as a whip I spin on my hands and deliver a powerful double hoof kick. My left hoof connected with Garret and the right one the female conductor, hurling them up and away from me. But Sir Issac Newton is a bitch, because the force used to eject them from the danger zone meant that I was pushed muzzle first down into the mud. Thus laying me out flat and unable to flee.

Time, having been painfully slow throughout the ordeal reasserted itself, sounds came roaring back and my eyes became locked in the upward position where I had a front row, 4d cinema experience as the second engine came crashing down on top of me.

The sound of crashing steel, screaming standerby’s, grinding of metal on metal drowned out my own scream of terror. Which changed to one of pain. My world ended in pain and darkness.

* * *

Inside the company section truck Ben’s phone had several new messages, unread:

Text message: Tyler 3:30 PM:

Hey man, it's all good. Look I’m going to be up in the mountains for a bit. I need to sort things out.

Discord message: Hazy/Allen 6:00 pm

Ben, we’re good friends right? I really need someone to talk to. Shit’s getting real man.

Text message: Tyler 6:45 pm:

I’m scared, Ben. Things are happening to me that I can’t explain, I could really use a friend right now.

Text message: Tyler 7:30 pm:

Where are you Ben?

Is… is everything ok?

Discord message: Hazy/Allen 9:00 pm

Please…. I really need you. Don’t ghost me.

Author's Note:

It took me forever and a million excuses why I never finished it. But I did it!! I got it all finished off and I cannot be more proud of myself for getting this chapter completed. I also want to thank my friend Tyler who spurred me on to get this thing finished off/out.

Comments

[Trolley Car Brony]

Always happy to help! I’m glad you finally pushed and got this done.

[hyreia]

This needs an update! What's going to happen to my train ponies??

[RRBrony]

11444817
I'm glad you like this story. Sorry for the hold up. I'm just having a hard tome getting the next chaptertp work in my head. I will say that the next few chapters will be focused on a different character (which is where I'm having trouble writing. I know the middle and end but I'm struggling to introduce them.) Maybe in the next few weeks I'll get it done. But positive comments and interest my story helps motivate me, which I greatly appreciate. Stay tuned and.. ... well maybe poke me if I'm slow. Lol.

~Ben.