//------------------------------// // Today // Story: Fallout Equestria: Skyward // by romantis //------------------------------// The skull was separate from the rest of the body. That was a good sign, I thought - maybe it'd been kicked off to one side at some point. The path from the door led to an empty parking lot, ringed by a chain-link fence and a barrier. Most of the pavement and tarmac was covered in a thick layer of dirt and the fence leaned crazily. It seemed very strange, as if the whole place was somehow years old despite its modern construction. Maybe it was that old, and I was seeing the result of changing weather moving the ground about over the years. I stared at the fence for a moment, trying to work out exactly how many years. I glanced back over my shoulder at the door, watching it slowly shut itself, and was slightly shocked to see the outside of the building was scorched with blast marks. On a whim, I went back to examine the door properly from the other side. There was a box to its right, like a keypad but without buttons. A red light on it turned green as I approached, and I heard the locking mechanism move on its own. With a start, I realised that it was using the same kind of biometric magic as the place where I worked. Sure enough, the door opened when I tried. It was vaguely reassuring to think that I'd be able to return if all else failed, but vaguely disconcerting to think that this place's security spells were keyed to me. There was a steel plaque to the left of the door, one that I almost missed thanks to the blast marks. Engraved in it was a familiar logo: sans-serif text spelling out the word 'pendulum', only the 'd' was stylised to look like a pendulum itself. Beneath the logo was smaller text: 'site two'. I stared at the plaque a long time. Pendulum. I worked for them. This place... this was theirs. But I'd never heard about it. Why? Whatever answers I sought were buried, and I didn't have the tools to dig. I climbed over the barrier and followed the road for a long time. It sloped gently upwards, and occasionally the tarmac disappeared altogether beneath the dirt. I was left to keep walking in a straight-ish line until I caught sight of the next patch whenever that happened. The sparse vegetation was a reassuring sign of life - thorny shrubs and spindly trees dotted the landscape amidst the rocks. Past those, I could see pylons running roughly parallel to the road. They were bent out of shape, the cables snapped and dangling, and some had toppled altogether. That scared me. The implications of that scared me. The implications of everything scared me. By the time I reached the turning the sky had dimmed noticeably, and I reasoned that it was late afternoon. The highway proper was relatively clear of dirt, being elevated slightly on an artificial hill, but it was cracked and scarred. There were still no signs of shelter. Walking on the highway felt really... weird. Not bad, though I was exhausted. It felt like I was breaking a rule, and that somepony would be showing up to tell me off any minute. Or, alternatively, that I was going to get hit by a vehicle. I passed a couple of signs counting down the distance to Skyward, and that was reassuring. Another familiar name, except that this one was home. I was going in the right direction. Eventually I saw something different in the distance. There was a caravan sitting in the turnout - a roundish thing with two wheels and a single antenna poking up from the roof. I picked up my pace. It had once been painted a nice shade of blue, but the vast majority of that paint had flaked off and been replaced by patches of rust. One tire had wasted away entirely and the other was flat, slanting the whole thing slightly. The window had been smashed. I tried the door. It seemed stuck at first, but with a screech of metal that I suspected was the lock breaking it suddenly opened. I heard scuttling from within the gloomy interior and stepped back just as something jumped at me, flaring its wings. "Gah!" I shouted and swung my crowbar. It hit the creature with a crunch, deflecting the lunge. I didn't waste a second before swinging again, sending the creature sprawling back. It stopped moving. A second or two passed before my brain processed the spindly green pile of limbs as belonging to a praying mantis. I hadn't ever seen one with my own eyes before, but I knew that they were usually a lot smaller and that they didn't usually attack ponies. The barbs on its claws were wickedly sharp, like kitchen knives, and I realised just how badly the encounter could've gone. I gingerly stepped over the corpse and up the steps to the door, wary that there could be more creatures inside. Had it been mutated? Or had they always been capable of growing to such size? I didn't know enough about biology or the environment to understand the mechanisms at play. Regardless, the caravan was silent. The light switch didn't work, of course, but there was just about enough ambient light coming in through the windows for me to see. Corpses of small animals littered the floor, and there was a large pile of eggs on the bed. I tasted bile, and almost turned back then. What was I looking for? Food? Maybe a raincoat? Anything useful. There was a stained coffee mug on the table, next to a magazine titled "Future Weapons Today". This particular issue's subject was magical energy weapons, judging by the cover, but that wasn't what caught my eye. The magazine was dated two months into the future. Well, the future certainly was today. I left the magazine where it was and headed into the kitchenette. The taps didn't work. The cupboards were mostly empty. The perishable food had perished, but I did find a couple of cans of soup and a can of carrots at the very back of one shelf. In one of the drawers I found a can opener, and I decided to try the carrots there and then. Hours had passed since I'd last eaten - well, conscious hours - and, as the can seemed to be intact, I decided to assume that they weren't spoiled. A hiss of air escaped the can as I opened it. I was disheartened to see that the carrots had mostly turned to mush in the water, but ate them regardless. I found some empty saddlebags, into which I placed the rest of the cans and the can opener, and a thin grey raincoat hanging on the back of a chair. Unfortunately it seemed like the wardrobe had been home to a hornet's nest at some point, which meant that the rest of the clothes in the caravan were ruined. I also found a flashlight ruined by batteries that had leaked long ago, and that was about when I gave up. As I left the caravan I almost stepped straight into the corpse of the mantis, but caught myself at the last moment. The air became tinged with a slight chill as the evening drew closer, so I put on the raincoat. All I could think about was water - what little there'd been with the carrots had only been enough to make me more thirsty. Really, the carrots were more than I should've expected to find - but I felt disappointed nonetheless. Disappointed, thirsty, and miserable. I couldn't shake the feeling that it was all somehow my fault, that if I'd just done something different, started walking in the other direction, anything, then things would be working out. What even were the symptoms of dehydration? How long before I collapsed? I kept putting one tired hoof in front of the other as my mind went around in circles. I was useless. Useless, and I was going to die because of it. There was a crack of gunfire from up ahead. I froze. Nothing. Couldn't see anypony. The gunfire continued. I wasn't able to judge exactly how close it was, but it was close. Gunfire meant ponies. It was perhaps my first almost-definitive proof that I wasn't alone. I kept walking down the middle of the highway and examined my options. Approach at a distance, keep quiet and evaluate the situation. Perhaps they were just shooting at bottles or something. Or animals. Worst-case scenario, it was a gunfight - if so, I couldn't afford to interfere. I'd have to talk to the survivors once it was over. I could do that. There was a pony lying in the road. I froze again when I saw them, but snapped out of it and ran to see if they were alive. From the blood pooling on the tarmac around her, and from just how still she was, I could tell that she most definitely wasn't. I felt myself shaking. "Oh, Celestia... shhhhhhhhhh dammit! No, what..." I rambled under my breath. What was she wearing? Some kind of armour? Metal plates covered in spikes and leather. It might've looked stupid were she up and walking around, but like this... it was just macabre. Like roadkill. Another gunshot made me jump. It wasn't coming from on the road itself, but down the hill to my left. I crouched low and approached the edge of the tarmac. At the bottom of the slope, amongst some rocks, there were ponies. Three of them, all wearing armour like the one behind me, all facing away from me towards the largest rock. I couldn't see what they were shooting at, not at first. One of the trio, a skinny buck gripping a knife in his teeth, said something to the one in the middle and ran at the rock. I strafed right to try and get a better view around the rock as the buck leapt over it. There was a shriek from the other side of the rock followed immediately by the deafening blast of a shotgun, and I ducked instinctively. When I looked back up, I saw that the pony had backed away from behind the rock. She wore a brown hooded cloak, levitated a shotgun, and was covered in blood. We made eye contact. "Fuck!" screamed one of the two ponies closer to me. "I told you not to... bitch, I'll rip your fucking spine out!" She fired a few shots straight at the rock. The mare in the cloak mouthed something at me, made a face, but I couldn't tell what she was saying. Run? Help? What? Something else? I didn't know. Part of me noticed that I'd sided with her without even thinking about it, without even knowing why they were fighting, and despite the fact that she was covered in blood. Okay, so, I could run. I felt like my legs would give out, but I could try. Maybe find a place to hide. This wasn't my problem. Hypothetically, though, I could run in with a- a crowbar, clock one of them before they noticed me, and run back out again. Even the odds a little. No, there were so many risks involved in that plan that I didn't even want to think about it. It wasn't my problem. It wasn't an option. I'd run. The closer of the two ponies, the unicorn who'd shouted, ducked behind a rock to reload. She looked up for a split second - right at me. I stepped back, feeling a sick sense of vertigo, but it was too late. "Hey! Hey!" she called, then said something to her friend. Running it was. I heard hooves on dirt as the unicorn climbed the hill. "Don't fucking move!" she shouted."Hey! Fucker! Stop!" I stopped and turned. Her pistol floated beside her, pointed in my direction. "Thought you could sneak up on us?" She glanced down and back up. "Dude, what the fuck do you want? You unarmed?" I thought about the crowbar in my saddlebags and didn't respond. She was too far away for it to be any use, though she was steadily walking towards me. "You know this bitch? Fucking answer me!" I weighed my options and shook my head. "This isn't a fucking spectator sport! Don't fucking meddle. Fuck, don't have time for this." She adjusted the aim of the pistol. I felt light-headed. Like I was asleep. Like I'd really been dreaming ever since I'd supposedly awoken, and was only just noticing. There was another shotgun blast, and for a second I was convinced that I was dead. Milliseconds trickled by as I realised that I wasn't, that it'd come from the bottom of the hill. The mare tore her eyes off me for a moment, diverting her attention to the noise. An unfamiliar clarity settled in my mind, like hooves finally touching the ground. I drew the crowbar and lunged at her. She was already looking back, eyes wide. I swerved just before she pulled the trigger, more by coincidence than instinct or intention, and the curved end of the crowbar connected with something solid. Magic exploded from her, a bolt of lightning pouring up from the ground, and she screamed, a frenzied shriek unlike anything I'd ever heard in my life. I stared as she convulsed on the floor, clutching at the stump where her horn used to be. The vertigo returned, and grew, far stronger than before. A final blast of the shotgun rang out. Much closer, and yet somehow quieter. The shrieking, too, fell silent. The black sense of falling in my chest reached my mind, and the vertigo took me.