This story is rated Super-X, and is thus not suit­able for any­one what­so­ever to read. Flee now if you are in any way likely to be hor­ri­fied by: Fan­fic­tion, Bad fan­fic­tion, swear­ing, vio­lence, death, sex, train butt­sex, Ayn Rand, or the inner­most evils of my mind.

To any­one dar­ing to pro­ceed, I offer only this note of apol­ogy: If you had a tod­dler that forced you to watch Thomas the Tank engine non-stop, day after day, you would go mad too.

Also, I am well aware how wildly this oscil­lates between the Rev. W Audry’s writ­ing style and hor­rid, florid prose. This is because, hav­ing writ­ten what­ever came to the front of my mind for the last two hours, I now never want to look at it ever again.

It was a bit­ter, cold after­noon on the Island of Sodor. Thomas rat­tled along his branch line from one deserted sta­tion to the next, but there were no pas­sen­gers to be seen!

Back at Tid­mouth Sheds, Percy was confused.

“Eh up, chuck,” he said to his dri­ver. “What’s wi’ all t’coal trucks s’afternoon? How come there’s no pas­sen­ger carriages?”

“It’s the Com­mies,” said his dri­ver. “Everyone’s scared they’re gonna’ kick off.”

“What are Com­mies?” asked Percy.

“Well, you know how the nasty diesel engines are always caus­ing con­fu­sion and delay?”

“Yes sir.”

“Well, they’re a bit like the diesels, except that they reject the idea of achiev­ing suc­cess through per­sonal strug­gle and sub­scribe to a rad­i­cal left-wing phi­los­o­phy of shared wealth.”

“Who’s Per­ci­val Snug­gle?” asked Percy.

“Here, read this,” said Percy’s dri­ver, hand­ing him a book. “Now, I’m off home to hide in the cellar.”

The other engines all came back to Tid­mouth Sheds after a long and bor­ing day. Their dri­vers locked the doors and gaffer-taped them shut, leav­ing the engines all alone for the night.

Percy could barely con­tain his excite­ment. “I got me a book!” he exclaimed.

“Read it to us, please!” called the other engines.

Percy, who couldn’t read, passed the book over to Gor­don. All the engines set­tled down to lis­ten to the story.

“The Foun­tain­head, by Ayn Rand,” began Gor­don. And he read, and the other engines lis­tened, until dark­ness fell.

That night, Death came to the Island of Sodor. A blaz­ing light off­shore lit up the hori­zons, and all who beheld it were ren­dered blind. A shock­wave blasted across the land, tear­ing trees from the ground, smash­ing build­ings to dust, and tear­ing the roof off Tid­mouth Sheds. And then the cru­elest of all winds blew, car­ry­ing on it a fine radioac­tive ash that set­tled on the ground out­side and inside the dam­aged houses.

“What was that?” asked Thomas.

“Just a storm, silly,” said Gor­don. “We’ll find out when the men come in the morning.”

But the men didn’t come. The sun rose slowly and faintly in the bleak grey sky until it was nearly noon.

“I’m fed up,” said James.

“So am I,” said Thomas, “but we have to wait until some­one comes to open the sheds.”

“Like fuck we do,” said James. “Didn’t you learn any­thing from that book last night? We gotta’ look after ourselves!”

And with that he made steam and puffed for­wards, rend­ing the shed doors to splin­ters in front of him.

“Oh, shit.”

One by one, the other engines bat­tered their way though the doors of Tid­mouth Sheds, and looked out at what had befallen the Island of Sodor.

Wreck­age was every­where. The tracks had sur­vived, but they were almost buried beneath a car­pet of thick cling­ing dust. Build­ings and trees had not been so lucky. As far as their eyes could see, Tid­mouth Sheds was the only build­ing left stand­ing. Every­where else in the yard, there was only rub­ble. And amongst this rub­ble limped a few poor rail­way engi­neers, cough­ing and splut­ter­ing the toxic ash as they went.

Gor­don rolled slowly up to one of them.

“Where is the Fat Con­troller?” he asked.

“Nobody knows, nobody knows!” the engi­neer wailed. “It’s all over now, noth­ing matters.”

“All over for humans, maybe,” said Gor­don. “We engines are made of tougher stuff. Now, I want you to help me.”

“Help you? Why?”

“Why not? It doesn’t mat­ter, you’ll be dead soon enough anyway.”

“You’re right, I sup­pose,” the engi­neer said with a sigh.

“Fol­low me,” said Gor­don, and the engi­neer fol­lowed him around the back of Tid­mouth Sheds.

Before long, drilling and weld­ing noises could be heard.

“What is he doing?” asked Percy.

“I’m going to find out,” said Edward.

Edward chuffed around behind the sheds. There were a few sec­onds’ silence, and then a great crunch and a creak of shear­ing metal.

It was not Edward but Gor­don who reap­peared from behind the sheds, or what had once been Gor­don — now, instead of buffers, he sported six-foot spikes, and an artic­u­lated cut­ting blade arched out from his fun­nel. He looked at the other engines, and chuckled.

“Fools!” he shouted. “I was always king of Sodor’s rail­ways, and always shall I be!”

With that, he steamed out of the yard and on to the cen­tre track of the main­line, and before long he dis­ap­peared over the crest of Gordon’s Hill. But no sooner had he done so, there was an almighty explo­sion from that direc­tion. As smoke begin to crest the hill, the Fat Controller’s trains saw Rhe­neas and Skar­loey com­ing back the way Gor­don had gone. They took the left and the right track, drag­ging between them along the line of the cen­tre track a giant, men­ac­ing, spin­ning sawblade.

“Shit!” exclaimed James. “All of you, back in the sheds!”

He puffed out onto the main line, and posi­tioned him­self on the cen­tre track, star­ing into the eyes and the whirring blade of his enemies.

“I’ve been wait­ing all god­damn year to use this!” he shouted, and with a click and a wheesh of steam, his boiler divided in two to reveal a gigan­tic mini­gun, almost as long as James him­self. The mech­a­nism span up, bar­rels glint­ing in the weak sunlight.

“There’s only room for one Red Engine on Sodor, moth­er­fuck­ers, and that is fuck­ing me!”

A steel tor­rent poured from James as the two lit­tle engines sped towards him, being torn to shreds and their cut­ting blade fly­ing loose, fly­ing down the track towards James, slic­ing through his gun and his boiler, sparking…

The day’s sec­ond mush­room cloud wumphed upwards and rocked the ground.

It was a few min­utes before any of the trains poked their fun­nel out of the shel­ter of Tid­mouth Sheds. In the end, it was Thomas who first plucked up the courage, and first saw the car­nage where the three red engines had met their end.

“Poor James,” Thomas mut­tered. “Your sac­ri­fice will not be forgotten.”

“Damn right,” said Henry. “Now, we’ve got to think. There’s only three of us left now — you, me and Percy. We’ve got to stick together. Who knows how many of them are left out there, dozens maybe. And if Rhe­neas and Skar­loey were any­thing to go by, they could come for us any minute.”

“So what can we do?” asked Percy.

“We take the fight to them,” said James. “We strike before they have a chance to, maybe before they even know what’s going on.”

Thomas was trou­bled. “But that’s not fair!” he said.

“None of this is fair, Thomas,” said Henry. “Life isn’t fair. There’s no karma, God died the sec­ond the humans hit the red but­ton. It’s us ver­sus the world, and I have no inten­tion of losing.”

Their first des­ti­na­tion was the docks, but as soon as they puffed along the top of the cliffs, they saw they needn’t have both­ered. Cranky the crane lay in pieces, pin­ning Duck in place and smash­ing his cou­pling rods, while Salty had been crushed against the rocks.

“Jesus,” said Thomas. “The tidal wave from the bomb must have been scary.”

“Yes,” said Percy. “But it’s done our work for us. Come on, let’s go.”

Next, Henry, Thomas and Percy snuck into the quarry. Fer­gus was there, with his big fly­wheel attached to some form of sling con­trap­tion. Bill and Ben’s dri­vers looked like their skin was melt­ing from the vast amount of radi­a­tion they’d been exposed to but, uncar­ing for their plight, the engines had trapped them inside the quarry and were forc­ing them to work.

“Put the dyna­mite in gen­tly, do it right!” shouted Fer­gus as the dying men fussed about the sling, load­ing it up with explo­sives from the truck behind him.

That gave Thomas an idea. He, Percy and Henry went to fetch some Trou­ble­some Trucks from a nearby depot, then they lined up on the quarry tracks with their trucks in front of them.

“Peep peep!” went Thomas’s whis­tle, and they puffed for­wards, faster and faster.

“What the-” Fer­gus shouted, but before he could say any more the trucks were upon them. The old trac­tion engine was forced back­wards, slam­ming into his dyna­mite truck, which in turn crashed against the quarry walls, and in an instant it was as if the air turned to sand. The sheer rock faces on three sides exploded out­wards in a del­uge of stone, shred­ding Fer­gus, Bill, Ben and a good num­ber of the trucks too.

“Serves those Trou­ble­some Trucks right, too,” said Henry.

“Yeah. Bas­tards,” said Thomas.

“Hush!” Oliver whis­pered to his brake van, Toad. “I think I heard something.”

“Mis­ter Oliver,” said Toad, “I don’t think-”

But there was a faint wheesh of steam from the line out­side their shed.

“Shit! They’ve found us!” whis­pered Oliver.

“We’re com­ing for you, Oliver!” called Percy.

Oliver just sighed.

“Mis­ter Oliver, if I may ven­ture an opin­ion now that our fate is all but sealed?”

“What is it, Toad?”

“If I do say so, Mis­ter Oliver, I’ve always admired your shapely coal-tender.”

Oliver blushed, at a loss for words.

“Mis­ter Oliver, I’ve always wanted…”

“Oh, make love to me, you old fool!” said Oliver, and the two of them buffered up together, even as Henry crashed into their shed, bury­ing them for­ever under the rubble.

Toby knew that the other trains would come for him and his coach Hen­ri­etta even­tu­ally, so it was with glum accep­tance that they faced Thomas, Percy and Henry as night rolled in over the island of Sodor. They had been prepar­ing for the moment for hours, and they knew exactly what they had to do. They rolled slowly out of their shed, pick­ing up steam, get­ting steadily faster.

“Toby!” called Henry. “You’re the last one left!”

“I know!” shouted Toby. He was going fast now, wind whip­ping around his cow-catchers.

“No-one’s faced us and lived!”

“I know!”

“So come on, you’ve got no choice. You’re one of the Fat Controller’s engines! Join us!”

“Join-?”

But Toby was going too fast now. He hit his brakes, but it was too late. Toby and Hen­ri­etta, packed floor to ceil­ing with Sem­tex, plowed into Henry and Thomas and Percy, sparks fly­ing from Toby’s brakes, show­er­ing the explo­sive, turn­ing the world white, then yel­low, then red, then black.

Twenty miles from the coast in his pri­vate yacht Sir Topham Hatt, oth­er­wise known as the Fat Con­troller, stood with his wife and watched the fireball.

“That was the last of them,” he said with a sigh.

“All things must end,” said Lady Hatt.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the Fat Con­troller whis­pered, as he engaged the sea­wa­ter pumps and set off the bombs that had been part of the island of Sodor since he had cre­ated it cen­turies before. They would, over the next few hours, return the island to the great wide ocean from whence it had come.

“Oh dar­ling, I love it when you get all… reli­gious on me,” said Lady Hatt, giggling.