This is a short story, it may have appeared in one of the "Year's Best SF" from David G. Hartwell or "The Year's Best Science Fiction" from Gardner Dozois collection, as I used to read those often.
The story details some passengers that are being ferried in a worm-like creature which was retrofitted with seats. At some point something bad happens and the main character needs to help hold one of the worms "arms" so that the conductor can inject it with something. At another point one of the passengers runs off the train towards a mountain, and some of the passengers follow them, the passenger was a woman that talked about something hidden in the mountain.
Answer
This is Good Mountain by Robert Reed. It was in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection
The world is made of living island, which travel around the ocean, until they eventually hit the Continent, and stick to it. Thus, the Continent gets ever bigger. Public transport is done by worm (as in, inside the living worm, which even has windows), and everybody has mockmen slaves, who seem to be like humans but bred to be barely intelligent enough to perform tasks. Now, as the Continent gets bigger and bigger, it traps rising bubbles of methane gas rising from the ocean under it, which leads to explosive blow-outs, which can devastate whole islands at a time, as they're basically made of living wood. Currently, these blow-outs get progressively worse, and the whole Continent is going up in flames. On the last worm, a group of travellers is racing ahead of the flames, trying to reach the coast and a ship to outlying islands.
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