Big Mac silently chewed on a stalk of grass, making his way down to the Ponyville train station from Sweet Apple Acres. He wasn’t in any special hurry, though he had taken the time to run a brush through his mane and sand a couple of splinters off the edge of his harness. A long, low, mournful blast from the steam whistle of the Friendship Express told him the train was coming in, and he picked up his pace slightly, knowing his sisters would be arriving shortly from their business trip to Canterlot.
Then the whistle sounded again, a short blast to signal the brakeman should get off his rump and get to work stopping the train. Mac smiled softly, fondly remembering the days when he was a colt, listening to his Pa teaching him the signals while they worked the fields. Maybe one day he’d get the chance to teach Apple Bloom.
Of course, if Cheerilee ever changed her mind about starting a family….
Mac’s daydream was shattered by a series of blasts from the train, each short and shrill. Two, three, four….
Long one, please, just a long one, Mac thought to himself, ears perked up sharply as he heard the next whistle start. It didn’t help though; it was a fifth short, sharp blast, then a sixth, a seventh, they just kept on coming, like a chorus of choked-off screams warning all and sundry for miles around to get out of the way.
There was no way to tell from the whistle what exactly had gone happened, but Mac knew what that signal meant. Something had gone wrong, horribly wrong, and the Friendship Express was out of control.
He broke into a gallop, powerful legs pounding into the dirt and throwing up clods behind him as such niceties as ‘marked roads’ and ‘fences’ lost all meaning to the normally stoic stallion. His sisters were on that train, and he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to be there to help when it finally came to a stop.
No matter what it was that had gone wrong, that signal always ended with a train stopping. The only question was how many of the ponies on board would still be alive.
Mac burst into town just in time to see the train miss the curve leading into the station, meant to help bleed off the last speed coming up to the platform. The engine tried to make the turn and continue through the town, but instead it twisted and lurched into the air, like rampaging dragon leaping up to slam into some imaginary foe. The cars followed helplessly, scattering coal and timbers across the countryside.
Mac saw Apple Bloom pop out of one of the tiny windows in the side of a passenger car, wearing Applejack’s Stetson. She hopped out onto the sidewall of the twisting car, took a few short steps, and then leaped for the relative safety of the streets, where the train itself would be less likely to sweep her away. Mac ran for her, bellowing her name, but it was lost in the tortured wail of steel grinding on steel, wood splintering and shattering from the sheer force of impact.
Tons of iron and wood, propelled by a single construct of magic and steam, didn’t stop easy. Normally, it took two good strong brakeponies to run along the train, risking their lives at every step to manually set massive metal plates against the wheels and start the process. Even on the most advanced engines with automatic emergency brakes, like the Friendship Express, a full load took a quarter mile to bring to a halt from its standard speed.
Now, all that energy was driven into the ground, forced to come to a stop in the space of a hundred yards. The engine plowed into the ground like a meteor hurled by some angry god of the void, rocks and trees spitting out of the ground as they were cast aside. The cars behind it slammed into the engine, splintering and crashing together. The cars behind them continued the cataclysmic destruction, swinging around in a gruesome arc that cracked centuries-old oaks like toothpicks. There was no living thing left in the train’s wake, death and devastation gouged into the very soil on a scale that few ponies could imagine, and fewer wanted to. Luggage and the occasional pony with questionable luck, hurled through the air, flung clean of the wreckage, mostly intact until they struck the ground. Screams of agony filled the air from the dying, screams of horror from the friends of the dead. For a split second, time seemed to stand still, an instant of horror that would be forever etched into the minds of those watching it.
Big Mac was one of those ponies when Apple Bloom reached him, clinging to his powerful barrel. Then she wailed out the three words he was dreading the most.
“Applejack’s still inside!”
Horror was a paralyzing force. The knowledge that there was some titanic, impersonal force that could instantaneously sweep away all you’d known and loved, all you’d ever been or ever would be, was an effective catalyst for that sort of soul-numbing dread. But Apple Bloom’s report inspired a stronger force inside Big Mac, forced him to act. His mind wanted to shut out the world, but the words echoing in his ears crushed all thought of preserving his own sanity if it meant his little sister’s life.
“Run t’the school!” He ordered Apple Bloom. “Get Cheery!” He galloped towards the twisted wreckage of the train as soon as he knew he wouldn’t trample her, ears canted towards the scene, ignoring the pleas and screams of the wounded in favor of reaching the one pony who mattered inside. When he reached the wreck, he realized that he had no idea of where to look next. He tried to find the car that Apple Bloom had climbed out of, but quickly found that it was hard to tell one of the passenger cars apart from another in their current shape.
No. Ah ain’t gonna lose you too, Sis, y’can’t leave me like this!
His heart raced harder, lungs heaving for breath, when he saw an orange hoof punch through one of the collapsed walls.
Ah knew she made it! Even Mac’s thoughts were panting as he rushed to help Applejack. She’d never… give up… like that!
He leaped up onto the side of the car, reaching in through the hole that Applejack had made and ripping a large part of the panel away, ignoring the agony as the splinters dug into his leg. He’d deal with that later, he had to get her out first, make sure she was safe. He pounded another hole through, trying to rip a passage large enough to get Applejack out. There was a distant roar in the sky, followed by a coruscating ring of colors as Rainbow Dash got word of the crash, and just who was on board.
Rainbow flew over the wreckage low, almost grazing it with her hooves. The rainbow wake behind her stripped off the outer loose layers, before she angled up into a loop to land next to Mac.
“She’s in here?” Rainbow demanded, grabbing hold of the hole Mac was still working on expanding.
“Eeyup!” He grunted, sticking his head in to get his teeth around a metal reinforcing band. He bit down hard, ripping up and twisting the steel bar with sheer muscle power. He’d pulled a house off of its foundation once, though he’d been motivated by a love poison at the time. Every year, he assembled the massive cider press, its ancient stone wheel larger than he was. The point being that Big Mac had no small measure of raw, unadulterated power at his disposal, and the willingness to use every ounce of it for his family.
That strength showed itself now, as the steel bent out of the way, exposing Applejack, half-dangling from a broken bench. She was pale beneath her fur, clinging to the bench with one foreleg, the other wiping across her brow to clear the sweat that was matting the fur by her eyes. Her hindquarters hung limply in the air, not braced against what was supposed to be the floor, not even kicking out for support on the ramshackle stack of luggage that Applejack had clearly used to get to the bench she was hanging from.
“Howdy Mac, Rainbow!” Applejack said with a pained wince. “Apple Bloom got out safe?”
“Eeyup,” Mac promised her. “Gotta get you out now.”
“’Fraid Ah can’t help too much with that,” she admitted. “Hit th’ bench on th’other side when th’ train dumped me down here, an’….” She swallowed hard, a trace of fear showing behind her false bravado. “Mac, Dash, Ah can’t feel Bucky an’ Kicks. Reckon Ah’d be hurtin’ like Tartarus itself if’n Ah could.”
“It’s going to be okay, Boss,” Rainbow promised her. “Mac, take her free leg, and whatever you do, don’t let go! I’m going to get under her so I can lift her out!”
Mac nodded silently, reaching in with both forelegs to hold his sister’s leg steadily, hoping she wouldn’t notice the blood from his injured leg.
“Y’r gonna be okay, Sis,” he promised her as he took most of her weight onto his cannons. “Reckon Princess Twilight’ll have you applebuckin’ in no time.”
“Y’r a lousy liar, Macintosh Apple,” Applejack smiled weakly. “Gonna be your turn t’buck the whole Acres this year!”
“Eenope!” He set his jaw stubbornly as Rainbow flew in and under Applejack, sliding up under her body.
“You know, this’d be sexy if you weren’t such a buckin’ downer,” the pegasus pointed out. “Wrap your hooves around my neck, Boss, start with the one Mac’s not holding first… okay, that’s good,” she added , flapping harder to start taking some of the weight off of Mac’s leg. “Okay… the other on one… two… three!” She gave a single, powerful flap of her wings that lifted her up past Mac’s head, AJ’s other foreleg clinging tightly to her neck.
“Okay,” Rainbow grunted, shifting her body up into proper form carefully, taking most of Applejack’s weight on her back. She fought to keep the confidence in her voice, but Applejack could sense the tremor in it, feel the speed of Rainbow’s heart pick up when the athlete had to struggle more than expected to keep her hindquarters from falling off of Rainbow’s flanks. “Okay, we just need to get you to the hospit-oh buck me,” she swore, looking down on the field and seeing that every doctor, nurse, intern, and even most of the orderlies from Ponyville General were occupied with the other passengers, whether hauling them out of the wreck or performing emergency triage right there in the streets.
“Twilight,” Applejack suggested. “Make it quick, Dash, Ah… Ah’m scared,” she admitted quietly. “Don’t feel right inside.”
“Right, the Library,” Dash nodded, about to take off when she heard an unexpected voice.
Mac’s head turned in the same direction as Rainbow Dash’s as he heard the same thing. A voice pleading from the engine of the train.
“Git her to the Princess,” Mac ordered Dash. “Ah’ll take care o’that!”
“Mac, wait!” Dash called down, but Mac wasn’t listening, jumping from one care to the next, heading for the mighty, still-smoking engine. She didn’t know much about trains, especially the latest ones. She only ever even rode them when she was expected to arrive somewhere with her friends, not before them. But even she knew that the engine shouldn’t still be burning, not after a wreck like this. Twilight had been very clear about that, the first time they’d taken the Friendship Express to Canterlot.
But Mac had told her to get AJ to help. And even if it was dangerous, he was probably the only pony who could get through the mass of steel between safety and the trapped engineer.
“Celestia damn it… hold on, Boss, this is gonna be a rough ride!” She warned Applejack, reassured and terrified in equal measures by the teary-eyed nuzzle she got before she streaked off through the sky towards the Golden Oak Library, where their best friend was probably already assembling a set of checklists for how to deal with this sort of emergency.
I just really, really hope that includes a few books on healing magic, Rainbow prayed silently, letting the buffeting winds hide her own tears of terror for her marefriend.
Meanwhile, on the Friendship Express, Mac bit back a yell as he landed badly on his injured foreleg, stressing the already-wounded muscles there. He kept going, hearing a stallion screaming from inside the engine. One more leap brought him to the now-empty coal car, and then to the engine car itself. He looked down through the window, and saw the pale yellow stallion on the bottom of the car.
“The engine, it ain’t stopping!” He called up to Mac, glancing over at the smoldering steel shell that was still rattling and shaking nearby. “The tank’s gonna blow!” He looked up at Big Mac, pupils dilated, ears back against his head. “Get me out of here!” He pleaded, standing up on his hind hooves and reaching for the door.
“Git down!” Mac bellowed down to him. “I’m bustin’ in the door!” He reared back as the stallion inside crouched down out of the way. Mac’s bulk came down full-force against the mighty steel door, cracking the lock and sending it swinging down into the cabin. Mac hopped down in with the engineer, bracing himself as the water tanks started rattling and hissing, the rivets holding them together starting to give under the strain.
“Climb out!” He shouted.
“No time!” The engineer whimpered. Mac looked at the tanks and saw that he was probably right. Any second now, the rivets could give way. If they were lucky, the tank would rip itself apart and they’d be torn apart by the shrapnel. There might be time for Mac to climb out himself, but that would mean leaving the engineer behind.
Mac took the other option, grabbing the engineer and shoving him out through the door, yanking it off of its hinges as a makeshift shield when he dropped back down. He heard the rivets popping loose, ricocheting off the sides of the cab, the door Mac was supporting against his shoulder, the engine itself, everything.
Lose pressure, lose pressure, *lose pressure!*** He begged silently, hoping beyond hope that the release would be enough to keep the boiler from exploding long enough for them to get out.
Instead, the high-pitched whine only got louder, the hissing more pronounced. Sweat poured off of Mac’s body as the heat built up even further, each loud spang of a rivet or iron band coming along with a shock against the door that drove it into him.
Then there was a great ripping, tearing sound as one of the heavy metal seams of the boiler came loose, flooding the cabin with scalding steam.
There was an instant, a brief moment before the pain, when Mac felt his coat growing damp with the superheated vapor. Then, paradoxically, he was soaked to the skin in burning agony, skin blistering and bubbling up beneath his fur, pressure building in his head. He fought not to scream, not to breathe, but the pain was more than he could bear silently.
As his mouth opened, his body was flooded with near-boiling water, condensing in his throat and lungs even as it raised blisters, forcing his airway to close off in a desperate attempt to save an already-dying stallion.
Mercifully, it was only moments later that the blackness finally took him.