Chapter 3
There was no pain more than what I felt underneath that bridge. Even in my coma I seemed to still feel pain. I had no idea why because it seemed that one would feel nothing when they were unconscious. My leg was pulsating slightly underneath the bandage that was poorly bound. Beneath the layer was a red tint with blood from the wound that I had received from the insane thing that bit me. It was not in much danger of a normal infection though because the radiation killed most of the bacteria and infections that used to exist. The only problem now was that it may get irradiated and create a tumour which, of course, would have to be surgically removed. The shoddy maintenance job with my leg had left it in a bad way. After my mishap in the courtyard I had had to be carried away.
w past me and into my ears. The noise was familiar and made me feel like I was flying which I probably could have done if I had used my magic for levitation. My lips were dry and parched from a distinct lack of water. I knew that I was awake but I hadn’t the energy to move. My breathing was normal but I couldn’t open my eyes to show Osiridium that I was conscious. I couldn’t speak nor move any limbs. This was starting to get unnerving. I began to breathe heavier against my will, I was afraid that I might be dead and that I wouldn’t actually wake up.
But the hyperventilation seemed to work in my favour. Osiridium noticed my state and stopped what he was doing. He grabbed my shoulder and shook me a bit. I could feel a few drops of liquid hit my face which I guessed were tears but I couldn’t be sure. “Can you hear me?” said a recognisable voice. I tried my best to say something but nothing came out. I felt my throat croak quietly until something finally emerged:
“…so glad you’re ok!” I opened my eyes.
“YOU’RE ALIVE!” he threw his arms around me and pulled me up till we were on our back legs. He squeezed me tight and I looked into his closed eyes, a feeling of ecstasy washing over me. Oh how wonderful it was to see my best/only friend again. I could hear him laughing through sobs of joy. He seemed more relieved than I was at my recovery. He released me and I staggered back a pace from the sudden release of pressure. I lowered myself into the proper standing position before speaking to him jokingly.
“So how long was that?” I asked.
“About four hours!” said the blue stallion, wiping away the tears hoping that I hadn’t seen them.
“Wow, that’s a personal best!”
“What for?”
“Time in a coma,”
“Oh, ok,” I laughed at the fact that he didn’t get the joke and was now ruined, anyway.
“So how was it? Without me?”
“Erm, kind of scary.”
“Cry-baby!”
“No, I just mean that I thought you were going to die!”
“You still cried!”
“You’re my friend that I have known for eight years, do you think that I would not in this sort of situation?”
I was stumped. He made a good point and I silently agreed with him because I would have been the same had it have been me in his shoes. I had been like that once when he was knocked unconscious for only one hour! Just goes to show how emotionally secure I am.
“Fair enough,” I said very slowly, my eyes pointing off to the side.
“Don’t you just feel like the asshole?”
“Don’t rub it in,”
“Alright, alright!”
“Can we just get going?”
“Fine.”
Going was slow when we left. The area was surrounded by steep near vertical walls that held next to no grip. My leg was impeding progress and began to twinge every time it hit the floor. After about five minutes of trying to climb the sides we remembered that we were unicorns and we could just teleport out. Osiridium pointed this out and disappeared from my side, only to appear above me on the ledge half a second later. “Come on,” he said, a little impatient with me now. I tried my best but the fight had taken it out of me and I hadn’t the energy to perform the required spell. Osiridium rolled his eyes and encompassed me in his magical aura. I smiled apologetically in his direction before being transported by his side. “Sorry about that,” I said sheepishly.
“Not a problem.”
Being handicapped was starting to become a large problem. I elevated my back leg and walked on three to stop the pain. This did come at the price of being embarrassingly slow and cumbersome. The weight on my exhausted shoulders didn’t help. It was only then that I noticed that Osiridium was perfectly fine. According to recent memory, Osiridium should have a large chest wound. But he didn’t. He was walking at his normal pace; there was no blood, no scars and no visible organs. What had happened when I had seen him crash into the room that I had been held captive in approximately 5 hours ago? Had I been drugged and seeing things? Or had I been hallucinating with all of the pressure that was being exerted upon my brain? The thought that I hadn’t seen properly what was going on was a little shaking. Osiridium stopped and waited for my sluggish approach. I blushed in mild humiliation and kept walking, Osiridium alongside.
The city was like a death trap. Piles of rubble and narrow alleyways all accentuated the feeling of presence. It seemed that a pony could easily hide a whale here. I had to be constantly alert. This sadly meant that I was constantly aware of pain. Every once in a while, a few corpses would be seen in the streets, some with belongings. The scene was poignant, especially when I saw three small ponies. Three fillies lying dead on the floor in the middle of the road. Their bodies were slightly charred and their eyes were either degrading or gone. I could make out the colours ever so slightly. Blue, black, and burgundy. The black one had both back legs missing; the blue had a chunk of his chest ripped off revealing his grey ribcage and silent lungs. The burgundy one was a little different though. There was a clean line running from the side of the mouth, underneath the eyes to the very bottom of the ear. It was pink in colour with spots of black at irregular intervals. Pus leaked out at the corner by the ear and there were a few streaks of blood that had hardened and become a gritty mess all over the filly’s face. I tried my best to fight my curiosity but it eventually took over and I felt along the line. It was soft and thin with the slightest hint of depth. The cut seemed to get deeper the further away it was from the mouth which seemed a little odd. It seemed that this facial damage was intentionally caused. When I had my hoof touching just the very corner of the mouth, it opened slightly with me putting a minute amount of pressure upon the face. Instead of just the mouth, the entire side of the face also separated. I screamed as I realised that this was no usual incision. Somepony had cut the face in half. Osiridium turned when he heard my cry of terror and came sprinting back to me. “What? What is it?” I stayed silent; I couldn’t see a brain in there. Osiridium noticed the filly and pulled me away. The head returned gradually back to a closed position, making it look like nothing had happened.
I knew that that would cause me some trauma for a while. I couldn’t get the image out of my head now and it seemed that I would have to deal with it through intense thought focussing in order to make myself not think about it. I felt something tap my hoof and then slowly wrap itself around it. I had a good idea of who it was and my prediction was correct. Osiridium held my hoof in his. And the touch was ever so dainty that it was neither uncomfortable nor provoking.
I was lachrymose in this situation. It’s not that I hadn’t seen death before (I had dished out a lot of it), it’s just that I had never seen death like this. I could imagine the fillies having a happy life and aspirations and loving families, all lost in the mists of time and radiation. I turned my head and hobbled away from the scene in the aspired direction of travel. I couldn’t stand being there any longer or I would have cried. I walked as fast as I could down the road, tunnel visioning, not looking at anything other than the T junction that lay ahead. I was so hell-bent on getting to the road fork that I nearly tripped over a wild piece of rubble that happened to be in my way. I stumbled a bit and my concentration was broken. My back leg instinctively dropped down to stable myself but it was only met with excruciating pain and instant re-elevation. Osiridium had caught up with me and was walking alongside.
We walked for a long time. The light that marked the sun through the radiation clouds showed that it was about seven o’clock in the evening. The city streets were like a labyrinth it was hard to find ones way down a completely straight road with all the debris lying around the place. And what’s more, everything looked exactly the same. It was constant office blocks, flats, shopping centres, anything that a city usually had. There was one time I found an old crane in an abandoned building site that had a truck balanced precariously on the counterweight.
Rounding a street corner, I found myself stop and look straight forward in amazement. An elegant structure stood before me. It had small parts chipping off and a massive chunk was blown off but it was mostly intact; apart from the boarded up roof that totally didn’t look suspicious. I was awoken from my trance when a bullet whizzed past my head and ricocheted off the concrete directly next to Osiridium who jumped in unison with me. I looked at the top of the cathedral tower and limped about trying my utmost to dodge any oncoming shots. Osiridium sprinted forward, zigzagging his way towards the wall. I followed slowly and narrowly avoided another shot. Whoever this gunner was, he/she surely wasn’t a marksman. We pressed up against the wall underneath a spire so as to keep out of sight. “Do you have any idea at all about what that was?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“Nope, but my best guess is that these are just some raiders.” I thought for a way to deal with the nuisance. I looked around in my mind for anything that could help. I realised soon after though, and unstrapped the rifle from my back. I held it in my magic because of my handicap (which I didn’t like doing) and started snaking my way around the wall to my left, hugging the sandstone brick with my back.
“What are you doing?” Osiridium whispered.
“Taking care of some business.” I replied angrily.
I popped out of hiding just enough so that I could see only the forehead of the guard. I raised the optical scope to my right eye and lined up the shot, adjusted for wind and distance, breathe in and out a couple times, hold breath, squeeze the trigger. The bullet was ejected from the mechanism at a high velocity, passing straight through the skull, brain and more skull. He fell out of sight but I had no time to celebrate as I could hear voices coming from the direction of the massive doorway. I recognised the noise of a wooden bar being removed and the sound of wood clunking to the floor. I struggled away and only just managed to pull my tail in behind cover before a group of ponies stormed out. I tried to control my breathing for any loud noise would give us away.
We waited a few seconds while the pack checked around for the culprit of the noise. Suddenly, I heard an audible click. I swung my head around to see that Osiridium had just cocked a pistol. There were no longer any confused comments and silence ensued. I looked at him like he was crazy. “I’m just taking care of some business.” He stated, and he walked out from behind the corner, weapon hidden behind his back. “HALT!” (Stop) roared a stallion with the distinct noise of a cocking handle. I began sweating, what was Osiridium’s plan?
“Sie bewegen sich nicht oder ich werde schießen,” (Don’t move or I will shoot) said the voice. It sounded like it was wavering with nerves. Osiridium reached to scratch his leg (I had peered round the corner slightly) and was instantly picked up on it.
“NICHT MEHR BEWEGT!” (STOP MOVING!)
“I’ll stop moving ok?”
“Er, don’t try anysing!”
“I won’t, don’t worry,”
“Come mit us!”
“Why?” The guard looked around for help; he was obviously amateurish and must not have had much experience in the role that he seemed to perform. “I’d just like you to listen to me while I tell you that you will now die!”
Osiridium ducked down and used his magic to fire a shot straight into the heart of the gun wielder. He moved it slightly and fired again, this time piercing the lung of a mare. A final shot was ejected from the barrel and passed straight through the neck of the third and final bandit. I stood shocked at how calm he seemed to be throughout the entire ordeal. I found myself, jaw wide open, trying to regain my thoughts. The next thing I knew, Osiridium was pushing my mouth closed with his hoof and walking back and in to the Cathedral. I hobbled after him and entered the dark structure. The smell of Hydrogen Sulphide (H₂S) polluted the building and what was left of the stained glass windows proved unimpressive in its current state. An awful draft wafted through the room suddenly, probably from the missing roof, causing me to shiver unpleasantly.
“What do you think smells so bad?” asked the disgusted Osiridium, nose pinched.
“Smells like rotting eggs to me,” I said half retching even with nostrils held.
“It probably is now that I think about it.”
Osiridium approached a box and pulled off the top.
“Bloody hell!” He called, “Speak of the devil and it doth appear!”
“Goddammit, close that thing!”
“Ok!”
The box lid flopped down on top and blocked the hideous sight from view. I started laughing. It was quite funny how even in the dangerous wasteland, there are still things that exist and nopony knows why. I mean, why would anyone keep eggs for eight years? By the looks of things, that was the only thing there! The only thing that this bandit group has kept, are some rotten eggs! One had to laugh at that. I paced out and started to search the bodies. One wore a coat that had a box inside. On the front it said, ‘Premium Brand Cigars’. The coat also contained a pouch of six pins and a timer (which I kept) and an empty plastic bottle.
The gunner held a little more useful equipment; his assault rifle lay on the floor by his head with some minute blood splatters on it. He had a rope in his saddlebags including four clips of ammunition and an electric dog collar that had no batteries in the compartment. I then moved onto the final guard who had nothing but a box. There was a padlock that held it closed but no key was to be found.
Osiridium showed up after a more thorough search and came out holding an assault rifle and a key in mid-air. “I found this on the guy in the tower,” he said, holding out the key and rifle. I gasped and took hold of the mechanism. I placed it in the lock and twisted. The attempt proved fruitful, as the lock clicked open and I wrestled it off the narrow hole that it was placed through. The cap popped up on a brass hinge and showed an un-labelled switch. I gave it a bemused look and glanced at Osiridium who shrugged nonchalantly. I felt inclined to flip it but decided not to for fear of something bad happening. It was something subconscious that told me not to. “Let’s just move on,” I suggested nervously.
We walked on down another street and in through a park. Nopony could be seen there which gave me at least a small sense of security. There were dead trees poking out of the ground like inverted roots, branches sprawling in every which way that they could point but they were, obviously, not decorated with attractive foliage. The grass was turning grey and there was an unknown type of ivy encompassing the trees that were there. It was tinted dark red with orange leaves. Instinct told me that poison inhabited that parasitic plant. Even so, it was good to see some colour in the world that I hadn’t seen for a while (excluding blood).
We remained incommunicado for a lot of the walking. Osiridium was walking a little slower with the rifle on his back but at least he hadn’t offloaded it onto me. On the railing was an ACOG scope and a fore grip with a flashlight underneath the barrel. (I’ll cut to the chase because this is getting a bit boring isn’t it?).
A widely spanning toll gate marked the very edge of the city. The sun was half over the horizon and the shadows were a few metres longer than normal. I had managed the day on three legs but only just. The ones that I was using were beginning to shake under my own weight and a few blisters had popped up on the soles. I thought that any longer walking on them would have caused a stress fracture or something bad like that. I yawned loudly, Osiridium silently marching with me. “Should we stop?” he asked.
“Yeah, I don’t think that I can go any longer!”
“Understandable, let’s just drop our stuff in one of the booths and give our legs a rest,”
“You don’t know how ideal that sounds right now,”
“Well I can’t keep you walking like that all day now can I?” “Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know, can we just stop here,”
“Of course.”
We hobbled into one of the booths that seemed bigger on the inside. I instantly threw off my coat and made to unbuckle the brace that held my weapon in place. I sat down next to it, lungs stinging and heart pounding. Osiridium followed my example and closed the door before carefully placing his saddlebag on the floor for fear of the honey contained inside it smashing. We sat there, exhausted and in need of rest, one pony, can’t imagine who, with a severe injury.
“I’m gonna check my wound,” I announced.
“Er, are you sure?”
“Yes, I want to know what’s happened to it and if it has gotten any worse since we got going earlier,”
“Um, ok, whatever.”
I shakily reached my hoof down to the bandage. Pulling out the clip that held it in place, I unravelled the first layer, then the second. The blood that had escaped the gouge had dried and all that was left was a deep cavern in my leg. I could see the muscle tissues and sinews rent apart with stringy substances poking out of the sides. I closed my eyes and turned up my head, regulating my breathing so as not to feel sick. I looked again; this time I noticed the white line that was my bone. It had a tiny scratch down the centre and was probably one of the main causes of the pain. There were multiple gashes that seemed all the same, all showing the same things apart from one that was too far away from the bone to show it.
“I need stitches for this,”
“I couldn’t do that,” declared Osiridium.
“Why not?”
“I can’t live with putting needles anywhere near me or anyone else for that matter,”
“Well then I’ll have to do it,”
“Dammit, now you’ve made me feel bad!”
“It’s ok, I’ll do it.”
I asked for a needle and string from Osiridium which ended well. Osiridium only had a reel of unflavoured dental floss. The only problem was finding a needle. I searched every single pocket in my coat and Osiridium searched every single baggage compartment but the closest thing to a needle was an empty, unused injection in the bag. After some hard work, we separated the needle from the syringe and tied the floss around it. I gritted my teeth and touched the point to the flesh underneath my fur. Using my magic, I pierced it and pulled it through tight. I repeated this process, grunting slightly every time the needle passed through my leg. I did this with every other laceration before replacing the bandages and giving back what was left of the dental floss to Osiridium. He looked at it a little uncomfortably and just threw it away. Meanwhile, I was still getting over the fact that I had just stitched up my leg with a tooth cleaning wire.
“Do you want this?” The rifle hovered between us surrounded by the magical grey … magic, of Osiridium.
“You keep it,”
“I can’t fire it though,”
“Why not?” I groaned exasperatedly.
“I hate optical scopes,”
“They’re more accurate than iron sights,”
“I know but it just feels uncomfortable and iron sights have higher mobility,”
“And by that you mean…,”
“I just think that with optical scopes you can’t see anything outside of it whereas with iron sights you can see outside slightly,”
“Simple solution, take the sight off.” Osiridium pulled back the black metal mechanism and made a fool of himself, trying his hardest to remove the ACOG.
“I, I don’t know how,” he eventually said, embarrassed.
“Give it to me then,” he did so and I held the weapon in my lap. I placed my wrist on a twist that loosened the device before sliding it off the rail. It was then placed on the floor and I returned the firearm.
“That’s how you get it off,”
“Thanks,”
“Just don’t ask me again or I’ll think that you didn’t listen, and don’t be facetious!”
“Ok, ok!”
“HA! I foiled your plan!”
“What plan?”
“Your plan to be facetious!”
“That wasn’t my plan,”
“Then what was it?”
“It was to get you to show me again how to get the scope off!”
“Tell me you’re not serious,”
“I’m not serious,”
“Good.”
Oh the conversations we would have. We decided that we needed food (obviously) and water (even more obvious). Onto the fire went a potato and leek soup rat pack along with a vegetable and rice pack. Creating another fire, we placed some water into an empty jar to boil and hopefully sterilise. I was in charge of the solid sustenance so I tried my best to heat each one through so as to correspond with the purification time of the water. When both were ready, I gave him the rice ration to try. He opened it, closed his eyes and tipped a mouthful onto his tongue. He swallowed the mixture and shook in disgust at the old ration pack. He then washed it down with a mouthful of water. My ‘food’ looked more like someone had been sick in a bag and filled it with grass and sand. I had never eaten a rat pack before so I turned my nose in disgust.
“Eat up,” said the blue unicorn.
“I can’t,”
“Why not?”
“It looks like sick!”
“Just close your eyes and swallow it, don’t worry about the taste because you can always wash it down,”
I said reluctantly, “Fine!”
I took a deep breath, shut my eyes and poured the ‘shit-in-a-bag’ down my throat. It slipped away through my oesophagus, solid particles sticking to the back of my throat and my tongue. I coughed and almost regurgitated what looked like a previous regurgitation, and tasted like it for that matter. I snorted, trying to wash it down with any liquid that was already in my body (in this case mucus). I gave up this plight and downed a fifth of my water. I wiped my lips and picked the rat pack up again. It looked even worse than before because it had a few larger bits of potato making it look like someone’s mashed potato gone wrong. They were dripping wet from all of the moisture soaked up into them and showed no sign of becoming any more tasteful than flour.
I had to force myself to eat the rest while Osiridium managed to finish his with little problem. Envious, I started to feel myself sulk. Irritation flooded my veins and the want for petty revenge for Osiridium enjoying his dinner more than me. I forced myself not to throw the excess from my pack into his water and just sat there in silence while we digested the meals. Mine didn’t sit well in my stomach though and I wanted to vomit so much at that moment. I had to go to my dark place and not focus on anything around me other than the thoughts in my head.
The sun had disappeared from view and we were now in total darkness. I illuminated my horn and pulled something out of an inner coat pocket. Flipping a page from my last tab, I started reading.
“What’s that?” asked a curious Osiridium.
“It’s just a book that I found a while ago,”
“How come I’ve never seen it?”
“Because you usually fall asleep before you get the chance to see it,”
“Oh ok. What’s it called?”
“Um, Archibald Ives, My Struggles,”
“You do realise that that means ‘Mein Kampf’ in German right?”
“Yeah, yeah but it was purely coincidental. It actually mentions at the end of the book how he has resisted doing a German translation because of the title,”
“Wait, you’ve read the end before the middle?”
“No, I’ve just read it three times before,”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because it’s a good book,”
“Can I just ask when you found this?”
“Er, do you remember when we were in that tunnel train system somewhere?”
“Um, let me just think back,”
“A crap tonne of ghouls nearly killed us,”
“Oh yeah!”
“Well, when I was searching the train I found it and kept it,”
“Ok.”
We lay there in silence, mostly. The only noises were our breathing and my pages turning every few minutes. In my head I was anticipating the next action of the stallion that featured in the book, Archibald Ives. I especially liked the part about him being held prisoner in Stalag Luft Drei where he was held for a very interesting period of his life. The book ends with a letter to his family scanned onto the back page announcing his death from a bullet wound to the back when trying to escape the prisoner of war camp. I felt a tear in my eye the first time I read it. It was stained a peach colour with fancy writing and mentioned the incident including the military’s sorrow for the loss of a unit.
I had read seventeen pages and I could feel myself starting to drift off. I would find myself reading the same sentence about three times before I realised that I was doing it. I placed the book down under my head after flicking the corner of the page to mark my progress. I lay may head onto the rough cover and closed my eyes, sleeping until the morning.