Chapter Six: Playing Fetch
Chapter Six: Playing Fetch
"Beyond the threshold, change for the worse, change nonetheless."
Truth be told, the trip to Dodge City hadn't been as much of a slog as I was expecting it to be so far. Make Do had explained that the trail between the two towns was a somewhat popular trading route. There wasn't much of an actual road per se, but a well trodden path through the barren land, sometimes through the old gardens of ruined houses of the subburbs. It made for a more 'as the crow flies' journey between the towns. From what I understood the roads were in worse shape here in Baltimare than they were around Dodge City, so it made sense here at least.
I'd lived in Baltimare for a few years before all the experiment, but it was kind of strange cutting through the outskirts, even in the state they were in now. This was a part of town that I'd never usually find myself in. Rows of homes intersected by stretches of empty fields, occasional energy substations, the burned out wrecks of caravans and wagons. Most of it looked like how I guessed it did the day the megaspells first went off, give or take a couple of centuries of decay. At least parts of Baltimare, from what I'd seen anyway, had been cleaned, rebuilt, an attempt was being made at moving forward. But here? No pony lived here, just passed through. Purgatory.
Carts still sat outside homes, mailboxes stood open, garden gates swung in the breeze. Most of the buildings, though showing their age, seemed in a lot better shape than those closer to the centre of town. If it wasn't for the charring and wear to everything it'd almost be like everypony just disappeared one day. I guess they kind of did, really.
I wondered idly why this whole area was so devoid of life.
It had been raining intermittently on and off since we'd left. This was the whole sad Earth thing all over again. I knew things had changed, but I couldn't believe that not a single Pegasus was even making an attempt at taming the wild weather! Though come to the of it, I'd not actually seen a pegasus since I left the facility. Bat Pony yes, Pegasus no. Funny.
Though to be fair, the weather as it was wasn't all too dissimilar to Trottingham, even when Pegasi were taking care of things.
By this point we'd been making a steady pace for a couple of hours. We'd left behind the suburbs and were walking the grey plains, following the path as it lead us towards distant woods. We'd passed a couple of ponies heading the other way, a trader and his caravan, but apart from that it had been just us and the sound of the rain.
Well, for me at least. Make Do had her PipBuck's ear bloom in and had been listening to the radio, if the bopping of her head was anything to go by. We still hadn't really talked all that much.
Off on the horizon I could see the tree line. Black, dead, twisted monsters, dense as anything. If I squinted I could swear I could see the odd living leaf or bloom trying to poke out. The path would cut through the woods and take us to a road following the Patapscolt River until we found a bridge over. From there it should just be a case of following the old road network straight to Dodge City. Sounded simple enough.
A flock of birds sprang out of the forest canopy, heading out to Celestia knows, cutting a stark shape across the skyline.
The plan was to camp out for the night once we got far enough into the woods. Make Do reasoned it'd be easier to find dry ground and shelter from the rain, and also give us a place to hide from anything unsavory that might cross our paths. I'd never really been one for camping, not even in my Filly Scout days, but it was only for a few nights. I'd just have to make do.
Ha.
That was that for the first few hours to be honest. We wordlessly trudged along the soggy path. I was thankful for my rain hood and jumpsuit, but my legs were totally soaked and my hooves were caked with mud. I was already looking forward to settling down the the forest for the night to clean myself up if nothing else. None of this seemed to bother Make Do, but I supposed it wouldn't, this was the everyday for her. I'd just be glad to be walking on paving again. Thankfully as we drew closer to the treeline the rain did begin to let up a little, going from a downpour to more of a drizzle. Even so, the sky only grew darker as daylight began to give way to evening.
The woods were more intimidating up close. Dark and dense, scorched trees intertwined making a hideous spectre of dead limbs. Birds called out from the depths, branches creaked and swayed in the wind. It was like it was telling us to keep away, like the landscape itself was hostile. If Make Do felt the same she certainly didn't show it, she was still happily trotting, occasionally whistling a tune as we went. That was a good sign of confidence, I think. Besides she's made this trip before, she knows what we're getting into, right?
Did she say she had made this trip before?
"Hey, Make Do?"
She didn't answer with words, but threw her head backwards over her shoulder to look at me. It would have been endearing if I wasn't still upset with her.
"You've done this trip before, right?"
"Oh yeah, sure. Maybe twice? Definitely once." She answered. "To New Dodge at least. Five years ago, give or take?"
Oh, fantastic. She's been near it half a decade ago.
"Great."
"New Dodge is really close to Dodge Junction, should be like an hour or two? Once we're over the river it should be pretty smooth sailing until the outskirts, the roads are all still mostly there."
Well, if she kind of knew what she was doing that was better than nothing I suppose. And she did have a PipBuck telling us where to go.
Was I being unfair? She was doing her best given the situation after all. I couldn't really ask for much more. I'd certainly not be doing any better if the roles were reversed. But also we'd not be in this situation at all if the roles were reversed...
This train of thought was getting me nowhere. I was just still irked by what she'd said outside of the Red Rein compound.
The plains gave way to sickly looking shrubs and dead leaves before bleeding into the woods. The well trodden route we followed taking the path of least resistance through the trees. Some were clinging to life but most were dead. Having said that, it still seemed awfully dark given the lack of any real canopy.
Twigs gave way under our hooves, dead leaves danced in the breeze. The call of distant birds and buzzing insects filled the air, bouncing off the trunks surrounding us. It was like walking in the woods in the dead of winter, minus the cold.
How farming worked without a weather schedule was beyond me. Maybe that's why most of what I'd seen was such a mess, you can hardly rebuild if the sky decides to tear everything down again on a whim.
The path meandered around trees and stumps, scragly bushes and rotted trunks. A couple of bird skeletons sat sadly in a twisted mess of roots not far off the track. Cobwebs and long dead ivy dangled from the branches, slowly ebbing back and forth.
"Darn, lost the signal, trees must be fucking with it." Make Do said, pulling the bloom from her ear.
"Ah that's a shame, Celestia forbid you don't have an excuse not to interact with me."
"Hey, I wasn't using it as an excuse! I was keeping up to date with the news, that's important!" She retorted. "Besides, it doesn't really seem like you want to talk all that much right now..."
I didn't reply to that, she wasn't entirely wrong. For a moment we again carried on in silence.
"Are you mad at me?" Make Do asked in a small voice. I heaved a heavy sigh.
"Yes, Make Do. I am mad at you. I am very mad at you."
"Would it help if I said I was sorry?" She asked sheepishly. I could see her ears splay out under her hood.
"What are you sorry for, Make Do? Are you sorry for getting a bomb strapped to my neck? Are you sorry for guilt tripping me here? Are you sorry for acting like an idiot?"
"Well, I guess uh, kinda, sorta, all of those?"
"You're awful, Make Do."
"I'm sorry, okay! I'm bad at this sort of thing-"
"Clearly."
"I panicked, alright? I was scared shitless and I panicked. I was angry at myself for fucking up this badly, and I guess I have a bit of my Dad's mean streak." She explained. "I'm sorry I blew up at you, but I need your help, and you said you weren't gonna help me. If you didn't help then we'd both be as good as dead..."
She sort of trailed off for a minute.
"Were you really not going to help me?" She asked quietly.
I pondered for a moment. Was I really not going to help her? She had, up until that point, been nothing but kind to me, and we were both up against the wall. I was scared shitless too, but was I really prepared to just not help her out given everything? Did I panic just as much as she did?
Probably.
"I don't know." I answered. "I don't know what I would have done, I was scared. I am scared."
"I'm scared too." She borderline whispered. "I'm glad you're here, Silver."
We carried on in silence, albeit a slightly more comfortable one.
The deeper into the woods we got the more difficult traversing the path seemed to get. Roots stuck up out of the ground, pits and long abandoned animal burrows dotted the ground, catching me off guard once or twice. Occasionally we'd pass some graffiti carved into the bark of the trees. Names of ponies on the same journey we were on, couples initials in hearts, dates. It was a reminder that we weren't really alone, certainly not as alone as it felt. Trade still happened, ponies still travelled, this world was still clinging to life.
The longer we walked the darker it got. The sun had passed below the horizon now, and with the cloud cover natural light was getting low fast. It was already a bit tricky to navigate, but it felt like I was stumbling more and more as I could see less and less distance in front of me.
"We should probably find somewhere to camp soon." MD suggested. I had no qualms with that.
She'd lit up the torch function on her PipBuck, so at least we weren't walking totally blind. The trees played with the light in strange ways, casting long shadows that seemed to move around us. The drone of insect wings was getting louder the further in we got.
MD suddenly thrust a foreleg out infront of me, both of us coming to a complete halt. She surveyed the area ahead with a steely gaze, looking out into the middle distance. She turned to me and put a hoof up to her lips, miming a shush, before taking my pistol in her magic aura and aiming it out. I folded my ears flat to deaden the inevitable bangs.
Sure enough, two shots cracked out in quick succession, followed by the sound of something splatting and retreating buzzing.
"Bloatsprites." She said, putting my gun back in it's holster. "Nailed the biggest two, scared the rest off. For now, at least."
MD closed the distance between the dead bugs and us, I stuck close behind her. A rancid smell became more and more apparent the closer we got.
"Well, that'll be that." She said. Illuminated by the glow of her PipBuck screen was the fetid, rotten, half eaten corpse of a Radhog, the ground below it sullied with old blood and mystery fluids. "Little shits were gorging themselves."
"That's lovely." I replied, trying hard not to gag. "Can we possibly go literally anywhere else?"
"Yeah, probably a good idea. Best be wary though, I don't think the Bloatsprites killed that hog."
"There's something else here?" I hissed, now very alarmed.
"Maybe." MD snorted. "Might be a good idea to find somewhere not so out in the open to sleep tonight. Come on, let's go."
We made a sharp departure from the path into the unwalked grounds of the forest. If I thought the path was bad, walking here was positively gnarly. Nothing had been beaten into submission by the constant wear of hooves, it was ever changing and never level, an actual struggle to get across. I was following MD blindly, if I lost track of her I'd have no idea where I was, and being lost in the woods, alone in the dark, was not my idea of a good time.
"Hey, look up there!" MD pointed after a few minutes of stumbling. She was lighting up a particularly large tree ahead of us. At some point, somebody had nailed down a load of planks between branches to create a platform, and an old tarp fluttered in the breeze above it as an improvised roof.
"Up there?" I whispered. "Is it... is that safe?"
A low, distant and perfectly timed howl answered me very well.
"Beats finding out whatever that is. Come on, help me find a way up." MD said.
We circled the base of the tree looking for a rope, a ladder, some way to get up. No dice. The platform was a good 40 hands off the ground, way too high to leap up from. There weren't even any low hanging branches to climb.
"MD I think this might be no good, can we keep going?"
I was wary of staying put top long, lest something find us.
"Hang on, I have an idea!" She replied, trotting away from the tree and to the base of another.
This one had fallen at some point over the years, leaning precariously against it's still standing companions. The top had torn away from the trunk, leaving it smooth and ramp like, ending in a splintered point. MD clambered to stand on top of the toppled plant, walking deliberately to it's end, a point that stood just about level with the platform, if a not insignificant distance from it.
She was going to try to jump.
"I don't think this is a good idea!" I intoned.
"Well, we've not really got anything else to work with right now, it's gotta be worth a shot!"
She took a hooful of steps back, her hooves sliding on the damp bark. Stopping for just a moment, she tensed and began a very short gallop to the top. It wasn't the most graceful leap I'd ever seen in my life, but it worked. She landed on the platform with a loud thud, the tree groaned as the inertia and new weight exerted itself, but ultimately held steady. MD slipped a little on the landing but managed to avoid wiping out completely. Finding steady footing, she dumped the bag off her back and exhaled.
"See, no sweat!" She chimed. "Now come on up, it's actually pretty dry up here, I'll get us some food ready."
My stomach rumbled. I hadn't eaten anything since that omelette this morning, and it didn't even feel like it was the same day any more.
I glanced between the fallen tree and MD up on the platform. If she could do it, I could do it. Probably.
I climbed tentatively up the trunk. It was wet, but the texture was still pretty grippy. I slinked up to the end, where I couldn't help but look down to the ground. It felt like a lot more than 40 hands from up here, the ground below seemed so dark and far away. I could really do without breaking a leg this early into our journey.
"Hey, you'll catch me, right?" I asked.
"Huh?" MD replied, looking up from the bag.
"When I jump, you'll catch me, yeah?"
"Oh, uh, sure." She said, getting up walking to the edge. "You can make it though, it's not as far as you think."
Easier for her to say.
I slowly shimmied back down towards the roots, in my head working out the flattest places for my hooves to go, coming to a stop once I felt the dead trunk flare out against my frog, there was no more space to go back.
I was not an athletic mare, but if MD did it then why shouldn't I be able to? I was sturdy, I was an Earth pony for Celestia's sake! I could do this.
I steeled myself, stared dead ahead, and galloped as fast as I could on a surface that unergonomic. The end approached much sooner than I was expecting, and I put as much force as I could into my hind legs, sending me up into the air.
I must have been airborne for only a fraction of a second before it became obvious that I wasn't going to stick the landing. I was sinking far quicker than I was closing the distance. My legs started windmilling as if it would have made a difference. The whole tree shuddered as I hit the side of the platform chest first, instantly knocking all the air out of my lungs. I scrambled for purchase with my forehooves as my hind half carried on it's momentum, swinging me under and threatening to drag me off all together.
"Help me!" I managed to breathlessly gasp, trying to claw my way up.
"I'm trying!" MD shouted, taking both my forehooves in hers and pushing by underside up in her magic aura.
After a bit more struggle I was firmly topside, scrunched up into a little ball and sucking in all the air I could, but not so much as to make my freshly impacted ribs feel like they were exploding. It was a fine art that I had not mastered in the slightest. Make Do flopped down beside me, panting lightly.
"Luna's tits you're heavy, Silver."
"Hey! I'm- an- Earth- pony. I'm not- heavy, I'm sturdy." I wheezed.
I was not that heavy. I was just built bigger than her.
Though actually now that I think about it, Make Do was small. Not tiny, but certainly compact for a unicorn. Smaller than average, anyway.
"Anything you say." She huffed. "I'm gonna grab us some food, feel free to join me once you've finished cradling your ribcage. I'm starved!"
MD carried on searching through the bag, struggling to find exactly what she was looking for, just as I'd thought. I couldn't help but feel a little vindication through the throbbing of my chest. I held my legs to my barrel, trying to soothe the pain as best I could. I would certainly be feeling it in the morning.
But right now, my stomach was rumbling. I tentatively extended my legs, slowly getting into a standing position. Where my legs met my barrel was protesting, but it was manageable.
MD was half tucked into an unfurled bed roll, poking at a can of something with a fork.
"I'd start a campfire, but probably not the best idea given we're standing up a tree." She said, mid chew. She floated the can over to me, it was a positively ancient container of steamed kelp. "Want some?"
I wasn't a big fan of kelp at the best of times, but beggars can't be choosers. I just didn't have anything to eat it with.
"Got another fork in there for me?"
"Nah, probably not, sorry. You can use mine though!"
I grimaced internally. This had been in her mouth. A gun I'd cleaned was one thing, but this had literally been in her mouth less than 30 seconds ago.
My stomach growled again. Beggars can't be choosers. I didn't really help her pack either, so I'd kind of made my own bed there. I'm sure using another pony's fork was far from the worst thing to ever happen. At least it wasn't Lugworm again. I stabbed a portion on the fork and put it in my mouth. It was cold, salty and slimy, almost tasteless but not enough to not be blandly agreeable. Still, it was edible at least, at the end of the day that was really all that should matter.
A fairly large canteen sat between us. I made sure I'd swallowed all my food before taking a swig. Nopony needs backwash.
"Maybe in the morning you can forage us some breakfast, put your skills to the test!" MD chimed. I murmured in agreement.
We passed the food and water between us for a little while until the can was empty. The sharp pain in my barrel had started to shift to an ever-present dull ache for the time being. It was quiet again, and it had only now just set in how physically exhausted I was. It was nice to have a moment to wind down.
The sky was dark now, the hazy grey light of day having given way to the blanket shadow of night. I couldn't see very far beyond our immediate surroundings.
"So, is it cool if you keep watching first?" MD asked, idly picking her teeth with a twig.
"Keep watch?"
"You know, be the lookout, while I sleep anyway. Then I'll take over." She explained. "We're still on the clock here so I wanna get back on the move ASAP. Probably be light enough a little after dawn."
"Uh, sure, okay. Given everything that's happened today I don't think I'd be able to sleep anyway." I replied. My hoof went to nervously poke at the collar before I realised that that would not be the best idea.
"You ever keep lookout before?"
"No, I've never really been camping much before, to be honest."
"It's okay, it's not so hard. You just gotta keep an eye out for any nasties, if anything gets too close just wake me up." She explained. "I'd go on shift first, but since you've got two good eyes I figure you'd see more than I can when it's this dark."
"'Two good eyes'?"
"Two's better than one." She said, pointing to her paler, milkier coloured eye. "This puppy is just for show."
I'd never really thought about it before. Her left eye was a very faint blue, a stark contrast to the vibrant red of her right one.
"Really? I just assumed you had Heterochromia!"
"Hetter-what now?"
"Nevermind." I said, shaking my head slightly. Truth be told I only knew what it was called because my friend Perfect's cat had it too. "You're really blind in one eye?"
"More like three quarters of an eye. I can tell light from dark, but anything more than that is just a kinda shapeless blob."
"Well, I never would have guessed, it doesn't seem to effect you at all!"
"Nah, when you've lived with it for this long you pick up a few tricks. Like did you notice every time we've been out together I've tried to stay on your right? 'Cause I might not be able to see anything trying to flank us from the left, but you can."
I hadn't noticed, but now that she mentioned it she did always seem to be slightly ahead of me and to the right.
"That's actually pretty smart."
"I wish I could say it was my idea, but having a tactician for a Dad really helped figuring stuff like that out." She explained. "Stuff like that, or only ever using the ear bloom in my right ear. The only thing I worked out by myself was to not rely on EFS too much, really. Dad probably would have told me that one too, except he never had one of these."
She lifted the leg her PipBuck was fitted on in demonstration, blasting me with light for a second.
"EFS?"
"It's sorta like a targeting compass I guess. Tells me the direction something living is in and whether it thinks it wants to hurt me. Actually should probably turn the light off, don't want to attract any more bugs." She elaborated, fiddling with the device until the screen went dim, plunging us into almost pitch black.
"That actually sounds like it'd be really helpful."
"Oh sure, it is when it's working right, maybe like 55% of the time." She huffed. "It's good in a pinch, but it's not something I like to rely on."
I nodded, she didn't really elaborate further than that. She used the lull in the conversation to get herself comfy in her bedroll, removing her jacket and the scarf around the collar. I hadn't noticed it before, but it had a countdown timer on the side, emailing a dull, low, orange glow.
I gulped. I could not afford to forget why we were on this journey in the first place.
She fidgeted with her PipBuck for a moment before settling herself inside the cover.
"I've set an alarm for 1am, you keep watch for me 'til then and I'll tag you out, hopefully we can both get some rest. Sunrise should be like 5, so we'll try and leave a little before then. Sound good?"
"Alright, I can do that." I confirmed.
"Awesome, I'll see you in few hours. You got this!"
She hunkered down, leaving me to survey our surroundings. Or at least what I could make out. The moonlight wasn't penetrating the cloud cover much at all, and now that MD's PipBuck light was out, this really was advanced darkness. I don't think I could see much further than a few trees distance in any direction. At least we had the high ground, though. But for the moment there wasn't much going on. The occasional fly buzzed past, the unanswered hoot of an owl sounded out. All I could do was stay alert as best as I could and hoped everything stayed uneventful.
At that point it dawned on me that I didn't have any way of keeping track of the time. I knew it was probably going to drag a bit, but I'd have no way of knowing how long I'd have left on my shift. Maybe that was for the best, it'd keep me on my hooves at least.
It also gave me plenty of time to think. I'd spent a lot of time with MD over the last few days, and to a lesser extent her Dad, but there was still a lot I didn't know about her, the conversation we'd just had proved that. How had I not noticed that she was partially blind? Was I really that self absorbed? In my defence, though, I think it's fair to say that I'd been going through a lot lately.
Her Dad, Mr. Goldwing, was a tactician. In what capacity I wasn't sure, but it tracked with what I'd seen of him. Maybe he was paramilitary or security for hire or something. That would explain the very battle worn looking armour, at least. And why she left it to him to teach me about guns.
If what she said about his mean streak was true though, I was glad I hadn't seen it. Yet. I knew he was stern, but I wasn't sure I was ready to see military level anger out if him. MD seemed pretty keen for him not to find out what was going on, but there's no telling what he'd be like if he found out his daughter was a walking bomb.
I thought about them for a moment. If he rescued her as a filly then they'd been together for a while. Before I interrupted their conversation at the kitchen table, it did seem like he had a lot of affection for her. Certainly more warmth than he had for me anyway. I could hardly fault him for that though, to him I was basically nothing more than a stranger who'd appeared at his house and was eating his food. Tartarus, he'd probably killed to earn that.
Now that was a scary thought. It hadn't really crossed my mind before that there would be people out for blood as well as mutant fauna. I'm sure Mr. Goldwing had seen and maybe even done unspeakable things. Swarfega was certainly prepared to kill us, albeit by sick proxy. The raiders who attacked MD's stable basically committed mass murder, hay, even MD herself killed something not an hour or so ago, and right in front of me no less! Not anything sentient, granted, but my point still stood. Violence seemed to thrive here.
Had MD killed anything sentient? She'd been surviving here a lot longer than me.
Would it change anything if she had?
There were really bad ponies about, dangerous ponies. Dangerous creatures. How much can I really fault somepony for coming out on top in a fight for survival?
Could I kill a pony if push came to shove?
My brain was whirring. I scanned the treeline. A distant low roar sounded out, and a breeze rattled the branches around me. I shivered a littke as it played across my shoulders. I shifted my weight and lay down on my belly to give my legs a rest, slowly and gently to not make the pain in my ribs any worse.
I carried on my watch.
"Silver."
"SILVER!"
An urgent shaking roused me. MD's face was almost pressed against mine, eyes wide. I instinctively went to yelp, but she pressed a hoof to my mouth, miming 'shhhh' with the other.
Branches cracked and rustled below and MD snapped away, gaze fixing on the source. She was holding her shotgun in her aura, magic quietly shimmering. She was looking back and forth between me and the ground.
Now very alarmed, I crept to where MD was perched on the edge of the platform, my body protesting at the movement. A tree near us creaked, lumbering steps rumbling around us. My heart rate went up. It was still too dark to make anything out in great detail, but circling around us was a very large and gnarly looking bear, mostly furless and ridden with lumps and tumors, it's exposed skin marred by scars and scabs.
I inhaled sharply, looking to MD. She met my eyes briefly before flitting back to the creature.
It had raised it's head in the air as it paced, sniffing. It smelled us, it must have, but hadn't found us yet. It grunted, mouth open, teeth bared. I reached for my pistol as quietly as I could. It swung it's head around, trying to pinpoint our location.
It was huge, easily four or five times my size, maybe six. We wouldn't stand a chance.
MD spared me a quick glance. She pointed at her eyes, then to me, then to the bear. I nodded.
She gently put her gun down and slinked over to the still open saddlebag, leaving my peripheral vision. I didn't dare look away from the bear.
It was getting much closer to our tree, I could see it much more clearly. It had enourmous claws, five long, jagged spiked sticking out of each foot, kicking up dead leaves as it walked and carving gouges into the mud underneith. It was drooling, slobber trailing underneath it. I thought I'd met it's brainless gaze for the breifest moment. It was fucking terrifying.
It snorted, mindlessly snarling as it pointed it's nose towards us. I crept back from the edge, desperately hoping it wouldn't spot me.
MD closed back towards the edge carrying a couple of cans. She tore the ring pulls away from both with her aura, leaving the lids curled open but still attached. She took one in a hoof, twisted her barrel around, and hurled it as hard as she could.
It flew into the void, darkness consuming it not long after release. It brushed by twigs and ultimately clanged to a halt some unknown distance away. The bears ears perked up and it turned to face the direction of the sound. MD launched the second can, throwing this one higher, it's arc travelling further, until it to crashed into something.
The bear grunted and sniffed the air. I silently willed it to leave, jaw clenched.
Finally, with a roar, the bear departed for the direction of the cans.
We watched it trudge off into the night, leaving only a trail of massive pawprints and a train of spittle and broken branches. My heart was pounding out of my chest, I didn't dare move until I couldn't hear it's footfall anymore.
The crunching eventually faded into the distance and out of earshot. I slowly exhaled out of my nose, folding in on myself. None of this could be good for my heart, I was going to be scared into an early death at this rate.
MD was frowning in the direction the bear went in, left ear still pointed towards it as her right ear flicked and scanned all around. I'd heard that blind ponies had better hearing to compensate for their lack of vision, I wondered if that would apply to her too, if only a little.
She was tense for a while longer, then she slouched, ears relaxing.
The slouch did not last long at all. It couldn't have been more than a couple of seconds before she shot me the dirtiest look, boring right into me, and getting right back up in my face.
"You were meant to be on watch, Silver! Why the fuck am I waking YOU up?" She hissed.
I didn't have an answer. I didn't even remember falling asleep!
"Do you know what a Fibanda that big would've done to us?" She practically seethed, jabbing a hoof into my chest. "Stars above there'd be nothing left except fucking bones!"
"I fucked up! I don't know what happened, I'm sorry!" I whispered back. I really didn't know what happened, I wasn't even that sleepy!
"Yeah you fucked up, what if I didn't wake up in time? I need you to be on point Silver, this is life or death, we're not fucking playing around here!"
I shrank away from her. I messed up, I was sorry, what was I meant to do?
"You need to buck the fuck up, because next time we might not have the height advantage and it might not be a wild animal. Understand me?"
I nodded, a little teary eyed. I felt like foal being scolded. MD deflated a little and looked back out to where the 'Fibanda' had gone.
"Well, so much for tomorrow's rations." She sighed. "Hopefully it'll just move on once it's done with them."
She gave me a pointed, steely stare.
"I'm sorry." I said. It was all I could do, really.
"Don't let it happen again, okay? Just, there's no way we can do this thing if we're not on the ball."
Sniffing, I nodded again.
It really was lucky MD did wake up. I shuddered to think how differently things might have gone otherwise. That thing was looking for us, I could see it from it's face.
MD ran a hoof through her mane, making it stick up at funny angles.
"Go back to sleep, Silver. It's almost time to swap anyway." MD suggested. Not really knowing what I could do otherwise, I climbed into my bedroll. "And you're DEFINITELY foraging breakfast tomorrow."
I couldn't argue with that.
The next morning had been tense to say the least.
The rustle of fabric and the sound of a zip had woken me up, MD had been packing up, getting ready to move on. It wasn't quite sunrise yet, but I could tell it would be soon. There were actually some breaks in the cloud cover, letting streaks of dark azure sky peek through, a few stuborn stars still dotted around. I'd packed up quickly soon after and we'd carried on our way to Dodge. Getting down from the platform had been a lot easier than getting up to it, as it turned out. We were able to just lower ourselves down from the edge, saving any more drama. Saving ME any more drama, realistically.
We'd fallen into a bit of an uncomfortable silence again as we trotted. I could tell she was in a bad mood, not that it was unjustified. We were definitely moving at a more brisk pace than yesterday. We'd picked up the trail again after a few minutes of navigating the brush. That thing's pawprints were still embossed all over. Each one was about the size of my head.
For my part, I did at least manage to scrounge up a hoofful of Mutfruits to keep us going, hopefully proving I wasn't entirely a liability. Being an Earth pony I couldn't really eat on the go, but I jammed some in my pockets for later. I'd really need to get a saddlebag at some point as my suit's storage was pretty much at capacity now. Eating on the go wasn't really an issue for MD though, being a unicorn. She was idly chewing as we walked.
The further through the woods we went the less dense it seemed to get, space between plants opening up and making for a much less claustrophobic trot. In the daylight I was able to make out signs of life, too. Flocks of small birds, slowly encroaching moss, mushrooms that may or may not have been deadly, baby plant shoots fighting their way out of the ground. Even a couple of rabbits at one point, hopping away upon spotting us. Despite everything, this place was still fighting and alive. Maybe not thriving, but certainly not down and out. That could only be a good thing.
I was behind her and to the left again. After what she'd explained yesterday I couldn't help but notice that it was the formation we'd defaulted to.
I was nice to talk normally again yesterday, I'd gotten so caught up in the situation that I'd forgotten that she was, in fact, generally pleasant. It was a long walk in silence, and it wasn't nice at all knowing somepony was upset at you. I can only imagine she'd felt the same way about how I was acting for most of yesterday. I supposed I did owe her a proper apology at least.
"Hey MD, I'm sorry about last night." I starred. She threw her head back over her shoulder at me. "I think I was just a lot more tired than I thought, and I didn't catch myself falling asleep."
"Okay, apology accepted." MD replied. "Just please don't let it happen again? The wastes are really dangerous, especially at night. Anything could creep up on us."
"I won't, I promise."
I felt a lot better for saying my bit. In retrospect, I don't think I'd been my best for the last few days. Granted, I had incredibly valid reasons for not quite being myself, waking up to literal armageddon was a lot to deal with, but none of that was Make Do's fault. She didn't have to take me in or try to guide me through any of this, but she did. She might have had her own shit to deal with too, but who among us didn't. It was just bad luck that I got tangled up in it.
I think where it counted, she was a good pony. A little immature maybe, but a kind soul trying her best. Which actually begged the question...
"MD, did you really steal from Red Rein?"
"Bit of a non-sequiter there, Silver, but yeah I did."
"Okay, why?"
"Because those assholes deserve it! All they do is roll on into towns and take power by force, spouting their 'common good' horseshit. Anypony who doesn't just roll over and take it lying down gets shot. They're animals. Worse than animals." She spat. "They've been having reeeeal trouble getting into Baltimare though. When they posted the job I thought I could make some good money and get to leave them floundering, y'know, fuck with their operation since there's no way I could actually fight back against them. I never expected them to actually come after me, though."
"You thought you could steal from an army and they'd not look for you?" I asked, skeptical.
"I heard they were spread thin, okay? I thought they wouldn't have any pony to spare to come find me! I never thought Violene would fuck me over like that." She said darkly. "I know she's a bitch, but I never expected her to stoop that low."
I was aware there was some kind of bad blood between the two of them, but it clearly must have ran deeper than MD knew.
"So what did you do with the money?"
"Don't tell my dad, but I blew it all in the casinos in Fortune the same night." She said meekly, ears flat.
"You lost 50,000 bits at a casino? Celestia MD, that's insane!"
"More than that." She interjected. "I got caps for selling the stuff on, too."
I stared at her, incredulous.
"I know, I know, it's just..." She trailed off for a moment. "I didn't expect taking caps from them to feel so dirty. Like I was spiting them sure, but I guess the fact it had anything to do with Red Rein at all didn't sit right with me. Plus Dad never let me go in the casinos, I wanted to see what it was all about! Figured I could at least have a good time ditching all the money."
"And did you?"
"Oh fuck yeah I did! It was so exciting and grown up, you know? Like how I bet high society was way back! Made me feel like a real big shot for a night. 'Course, now half the town thinks I AM a real big shot, but I guess you already saw that, ahaha..." Her nervous giggle trailed off.
I'm not sure if I was expecting a more grandiose explanation or not, but I don't think I was expecting that. I'd kind of assumed she would have had an actual reason to steal the money, a half-assed act of with rebellion with pratically no fore-thought just for the sake of it was strange. Maybe even kind of childish, like an unruly adolescent.
"MD, how old are you?"
"19, why?"
Well, there we go. She was only a kid! When I was her age I studying at college and partying every night! Hay, I wasn't worried about being attacked in my sleep or where my next meal was gonna come from. I sure as Tartarus didn't have to worry about a hostile armed force invading my town. Well, not yet, anyway. I don't know if I'd have done what she did, but who's to say really. Everypony was young and dumb once.
"Just putting things together." I said.
I think I understood her more now. She'd been through some dire things for sure, but she was only just a mare.
"Did you win anything?"
"Hah, no. I'd never been to a casino before, remember? I had no clue how any of the games worked. And I was very, very drunk." She laughed. "I had fun losing though."
I was genuinely glad to hear that. The consequences would absolutely be something she learned from, this was still a pretty monumental fuck up, after all. At least I'd hoped she'd learn from it, that's what growing up is all about. But she was just a dumb kid doing dumb kid things, nothing new under the sun I guess, even now.
I sort of felt like I should have been a bit more shocked that somepony so much younger than me was leading me through all of this shit. But she'd kept me alive this long, I knew she was capable, more so than I. Just maybe I could keep her from making any more mistakes that end up with both our lives this close to the line.
At least her age explained why she was so worried about her Dad finding out. Though to be fair, I'd hate to see him pissed off and I barely knew him.
We carried on.
The sky had been getting brighter, I could see the sun coming up through columns of trees way out on the horizon. The splash of orange in the sky was a sight for sore eyes. I felt like everything had been grey and brown up until now. It was hopeful. Through the branches I could see the blue above, still cloud splattered but more clear than I'd seen since I'd left the Hub.
It had felt like ages since I woke up in that booth in the basement of the hub, but it had only been less than a week. I think.
Was that right? It didn't feel right, but it can't have been much longer. Everything had sort of just blurred together, time had sort of lost meaning to me between the insanity that was surrounding me. And I'm sure being a statue for 180 years might have fucked with my head a bit also, I couldn't rule that out.
I wonder what the results of the test would have been? What would the scientists have written?
And actually, if all the scientists were dead then why did the spell reverse after being dormant for so long? I'd been so caught up with everything going on I'd never really thought about how I was here today.
"Hey MD, you have my files right? From the Ministry Hub, I mean?"
"I have your application and some general observations from the start of the test, but not really anything else." She said. "The more detailed stuff was probably on that terminal in the control room. Why, what's up?"
Right, of course most of it would be on the control terminal that I'd locked us out of.
"It's nothing really, I was just wondering why I was revived. Like, why now, I mean." I replied, a little deflated.
"I don't really know, to be honest. The last log on the central computer was somepony shutting everything down for good a few days after you got put under. I had to bring emergency power back up to get into the labs from the surface, maybe that tripped an automatic safeguard or something?" She pondered, frowning in thought.
I was a bit disappointed. I don't know why, it didn't really make a difference to anything, but I guess I was just expecting something more. It was scary that somepony would just shut power down to the whole building, though. They must have known that there were ponies down there petrified. Why would they leave us there? If MD hadn't shown up, would I have just sat there forever? A lonely, crumbling relic of the old world, forgotten by everyone?
That was a sombre thought.
Maybe MD was actually right yesterday, maybe I did owe her.
I guessed that we'd be hiking for a few hours when we broke out of the treeline and back to wide open ground. There was an immediate breeze blowing a chill across my withers, but it was nice to not feel so closed in.
The last few miles had been downhill, and the ground was really sloping now, making the slippy surface just a little bit precarious, enough to have to think where my hooves fell.
Thankfully though, in the distance, I could see an honest to goodness road. It even looked mostly intact from here. No slippy mud, no twisting roots, no sharp vines. It may have been a bit sad, but I was genuinely excited to be walking on it after all this traversal.
MD said that down from the road the terrain met a river we'd need to cross. The road would lead us to a bridge, and from there we'd get to Dodge. I was looking forward to getting this all over and done with and getting this collar off. Obcious danger aside, it was tight and it chafed. It was heavy too, I was really feeling the extra strain around the base of my neck. Way out over the horizon, I could see the very top of one of those MAw weather towers poking up into the clouds. Fat lot of good it seemed to be doing.
Speaking of clouds, they sky was still relatively clear here right now, but the cloud cover seemed to be more solid in the direction we were going. It didn't look like it was raining though, as far as I could tell anyway. I was enjoying the dry spell.
We cautiously trotted down the hill, both trying to avoid tipping over and tumbling. The last thing my aching body needed was a head over hooves trip to the river bank. The ground was soggy but not straight up wet. It wasn't slippery so much as damp, almost clay like. I had to slow down a little because I was sinking into it slightly, a problem MD didn't seem to be encountering as badly. Having said that, we both had very muddy fetlocks. It was messy and tiring, but we pressed onwards.
It was incredibly mundane, but after trudging down the hill, finally climbing the verge and getting onto the road felt like a major victory. Yes up close it may have been cracked and pitted, but I don't think I'd ever take flat, level ground for granted ever again. I could have kissed it, but that definitely would have been going too far.
Having said that, with the road came all the trappings of roads. Old carts, fallen billboards, pot holes. Nothing terrible in comparison to where we'd just come from, but a reminder that things are rarely as easy as the seem. A lone Sprite-bot floated listlessly down the paving ahead of us. It had been a long time since I'd seen one. Not long enough, though. I was honestly surprised that it was still kicking around after centuries outside, exposed to the elements. Some things were just built to last, I figured.
To our left, the ground continued to drop. Further down below was a raging river, rocky and rapid. It was a horrible brown looking colour, junk and debris washed up on both sides of the banks. Among the trash lurked impossibly large crabs, light blue in colour, lumpy with growths. Gross. I understood that all the bad magic used on the last day had a dire effect on any creature it touched that didn't die outright, I just didn't understand why it had to make them all so big.
The closer we got to it, the louder the Sprite-bots endless parade of ministry approved music got. Back when I had my shop, this is all I'd be able to hear outside as they floated up and down the streets of Baltimare. It was infuriating. This one showed no interest in us as we passed, carrying on on it's noisy, annoying vigil. If I heard that music again before I died, it would be too soon. Even now it seemed like the shadow of the ministry's was inescapable.
I was enjoying the relative ease of walking though, we were practically strolling really. We were able to pick up the pace again, MD was hoping we could get there for the evening.
The road curved and weaved along, dancing along the river and cutting through the landscape. I couldn't help but imagine it in better days, packed with ponies travelling to and fro. I was a fairly recent transplant to the area, I'd lived in Baltimare for only a few years, and I'd never really explored the surrounding areas like this. I'd never been to Dodge Junction, or Fillydelphia, or Hollow Shades or anything. I'd always wanted to visit Manehattan, but never quite had enough bits. I wished I had just gone now, but I left it and now it was too late. Apocalypse tourism wasn't quite as appealing to me as seeing these places fully intact.
Over the gentle rushing of the wind I could hear something chittering. I couldn't quite place it, but there was definitely something around. My ears swivelled to try and locate it. MD had her earbloom back in, she said she wanted to keep up with the news, but the signal was screwy. She'd been trying her best to walk and fiddle with her PipBuck at the same time, which was kind of funny to watch at least.
We passed a rusted out motorwagon hauler and the chittering went crazy. My ears both pointed hard left, and my head followed.
The wall of the trailer had been completely eroded away, leaving the interior wide open. Inside, tucked amongst broken crates and old empty bottles was a camping chair with the degrading remains of a unicorn sat in it. And sat on and around the corpse was about a dozen Radroaches, about half of which were now looking at me.
Apparently losing interest in their carrion, one of them jumped at me, several others following suit. They were disgusting, bastardised chitinious masses the length of my whole leg, still dripping viscera from their maws. Luckily for me though, they were not as fast as their normal sized ascendants. I had just enough time to draw my pistol before they closed the distance.
Panicked, I pulled the trigger in their direction. Mr. Goldwing was right, moving targets were hard.
Cracks filled the air as I managed to nail the nearest one in the face, it's eye exploding into gooey green gore as the bullet tore through it's head. Two more bullets hit the roach behind it in it's legs, causing it to flail wildly. The fourth bullet hit one of the bugs further back square in the carapace, causing it to fall limp.
Bullets five and six didn't come, there were just clicks. I had totally forgotten to reload after MD killed those Bloatsprites yesterday.
Running out of options, I stomped on the closest one to me with such force it practically burst, spraying my chest and legs with it's insides. I reared back to stomp again, but a single blast from MD's shotgun took out at least three more of the things before I could bring my hooves back down. She pumped it once in her hooves and fired at the rest of them, sending roach parts and gravel flying back, I think she even managed to take out some of the ones still in the trailer as collateral damage.
The bugs that weren't already attacking scuttled off, buzzing towards the river and leaving us stood in a pile of messed up exoskeleton.
"Nice one, Silv! These guys would've probably gotten the drop on me if you weren't here." She beamed, winking her bad eye at me. "The system works!"
I nodded to her before looking down at myself. I was absolutely covered in their blood. It stank. I tried to scrape some off of my chest, but it was sticky and oozy. My neck hurt a little from the recoil and my ears were ringing. I was kind of surprised that even though I'd just killed something, multiple things, I was more upset about the juices I was lathered up in. I guess they were just bugs, after all. Big bugs, but still just bugs.
MD had trotted over to the trailer, looking over the bloated body, idly floating a couple of shells into her shotgun as she inspected it.
"Poor bastard. Wasn't the bugs that killed him though."
"You can tell?" I asked, still kind of distracted by all the crap I was covered in.
"Well, I've never known a Radroach to leave a bullet in the head."
My head snapped up and I caught a full glance at the body, albeit still at a distance. I felt no need to get any closer. It was a bloody mess, his head was thrown all the way back in a silent, permanent scream. It was easy to tell where the bugs had been eating away at his flesh, he was covered in bites dripping congealing blood and there were full on chunks torn from his barrel. Behind him there was a splash of dried blood on the remaining trailer wall. Flies buzzed all around him. It dawned on me that the horrible smell probably wasn't coming from the Radroach remnants I was painted with.
I gagged. A few times, to be honest. Since waking up in MD's house I'd vomited a lot more than usual. This time I managed to hold it down. Just. I couldn't bear to look at the body anymore though, so I turned away, I had no idea how MD could stand to be so close to it.
I'd never seen a dead body before, skeletons notwithstanding. But the skeletons just sort of made me sad now, this was scary, this was a murder.
"We should take a look around, see if he's got anything useful." MD suggested.
"We're stealing from a dead body?" I asked, surprised, tutning to face her. I knew she was a scavenger, but a graverobber too?
"Well it's not like he's going to be needing anything anytime soon." She explained, clambering into the trailer, the corpse lingering in my peripheral vision.
"I'm good, actually." I replied. I was not going in there. I couldn't fault her logic but I thought digging through the unicorns things would be incredibly grim as well as totally disrespectful.
"Suit yourself, finders keepers." She said, setting her sights on the contents of the trailer. I turned back around but I could hear her clanging around in there. If the smell was bad here and I only imagine what it was like over there, I couldn't think of anything worse than voluntarily getting that close to a corpse in that state. I glanced back over quickly, catching it in my eyeline. Maggots writhed in its eyes, dried blood marring the sockets.
I swallowed some bile and turned back away.
I needed to reload anyway.
Scraping as much goo as I could off of my hoof, I pulled out my pistol. Just like Mr. Goldwing had shown me, I pulled the cylinder out and pushed the plunger, six empty casings clattering to the ground. Now for the tricky bit.
Brushing past the Mutfruit, I rummaged in one of my suit pockets for a bullet. Carefully not to drop it, I pulled it out and inserted it into the empty chamber. I did this half a dozen times until the weapon was fully loaded, then I closed everything up. Good to go. I wait just another beat, and spun the cylinder with my hoof, filling the air with a satisfying whirr. Guns may be scary, but something about that just felt cool.
I really wished I had a speed loader though.
I could hear the ancient suspension on the trailer creak as MD jumped out of it and back on to the road, her hooves tapping on the surface as I looked back at her.
"Pretty much a bust, someone else got through it before us." She sighed. "Did grab you this, though."
She floated a saddlebag over to me, clearly well worn but looking sturdy enough. Much better than stuffing everything into my pockets at least. I didn't take it immediately, I was still uneasy about taking this dead stallions things.
"It's okay, it's clean." She said, sensing my hesitation. "Honestly, he not gonna miss it, it'd be a waste to leave it when you need it."
I couldn't really argue with that. It still felt a wrong, but it would just be sitting around doing nothing if I wasn't going to take it. I grabbed it from her aura.
"Thanks."
"No problem. Managed to grab these as well, better than nothing." She said, floating a healing potion out of one of her own pockets and an old box of apples out of her bag.
I made quick work of emptying the contents of my pockets into the bag, loose bullets in the bottom and the mutfruit sitting in a segregated flap inside. I placed the bag over my back and shifted my weight, getting it in a comfy position.
"Sweet, let's roll, we're making good pace." MD said, already starting to trot off. I cast a look back at the body.
"We're just going to leave him here?" I asked.
"I mean, yeah? We're on the clock here Silver, and to tell the truth I'm pretty sure he'd turn to slop if we even tried to move him."
This didn't sit right with me. He was somepony, he lived, he probably had a family somewhere. I didn't know who he was, but somepony did. We'd taken his stuff for Celestia's sake! I glanced between MD and the body. I wanted to do something for him.
"Thank you." I said softly. "The darkness of the afterlife is all that awaits you now. May you find more peace in that world than you did in this one."
It was an old last rite that Perfect had told me about ages ago when he was studying up on bedside manner. It seemed pertinent right now.
I caught up to MD and we carried on.
"I didn't know you believed in that sort of stuff." She said.
"I don't, not really." I answered. "I just wanted to do something for him."
I hoped she understood.
"Wait wait, it gets better! By the time I got back, right, the only route to his house had collapsed, so I had to tightrope walk over to him using a lasso he'd thrown!" MD chortled.
I'd asked her about what her day to day life was usually like in Baltimare. She was regaling me with her own follies and feats of derring do.
"So I cross all the way over on this rope, get to the other side and give him his order, and he just stares at me confused. Turns out he'd ordered the wrong thing and now we were both stuck!"
I giggled.
"So we're both standing outside his place on top of this building, and I get the bright idea to parasail down to the next floor and walk back from there. 'Course I'd never done anything like that before and didn't account for the physics of the whole thing, the rope snapped and I managed to swing myself straight through a window a good 20 floors up. Luckily it held just long enough for me to get back in on the next floor, but you can bet your ass I never messed around with tall buildings again. I ran all the way home covered in glass and got my dad to bring a ladder all the way back to town so this guy could leave. My dad was NOT happy, but everything was fine in the end. Never did take another job from him though." She finished, sighing. "So that's why I don't fuck with heights, that was TOO close y'know?"
"Yeah, I bet." I wasn't scared of heights, but I can imagine something like that would put the fear in anypony.
"Anyway, what about you, Silv? What's a day like in your horseshoes?"
"Me? Like, before all this?" I answered, a little perplexed
"Mmhmm! I wanna know what Baltimare used to be like."
"You don't wanna hear that, it's boring. How am I meant to follow your story up?"
"Come on Silv, I'm a Stable Dweller, remember? I'm sure it can't be any more boring than that." She chided. "I just wanna know what it was like."
"Well, okay, I guess." I conceded..
I thought back to my shop, to the Baltimare I knew. It was only a few days ago for me, really.
"Well, I'm a silversmith. I have my little workshop on Cloven Street, I live in the loft, I make trinkets and jewelry and repair broken pieces, stuff like that. Got a little showroom out the front and all. Got my regulars who'd drop by for a chat. I see my friends some nights, we go out for drinks or dinner sometimes. I read a lot, I write to my parents. I worry about money, but who doesn't? I worry about the war. Look how that turned out." I scoffed. "It was just normal, you know. Safe. At least we all thought it was. My own dull slice of life."
I internally winced. I missed that safety. I missed all of it. Even in retrospect knowing it would only have lasted a few more days, I missed it.
"That's about it really for my day to day. It was just a 9-5 but it was one I'd built. It was mine. Sorry, it's probably silly being so attached to such a banal way of living, but it's all I have- had. I'm nopony special really, but it's my life."
There were thousands of others just like me, tens of thousands. I was a needle in a needle stack. Was. But those thousands are gone now. I was still here. Probably the last pony around to have lived that life of normality, unless some other poor soul got petrified too, somewhere.
"It's not silly at all." MD replied. "Most sane ponies would kill to live like that."
"Really?"
"Silver, you had a real home, a way to make money, access to food and water, no monsters trying to kill you and nopony trying to take it from you. That's a pretty sweet deal." She explained. "Back in the Stable all I had to look forward to was repairing water filters for the rest of my life. And I'd still give anything to go back, to leave all this behind and have that security again."
She looked steely and solemn for a moment.
"I may be more used to living like this than you are, Silver, but I'm still scared. Anything can happen out here." She confided, quietly. "That's what makes ponies like us brave, we're scared but we carry on."
"I don't think I'm very brave, MD."
"Silver I'm pretty sure I can garuentee that the whole time you've known me has been the scariest of your life, right?" She asked.
I nodded.
"But you're still here. You didn't give up or run away or hide. You're out here still making a living in a world you don't know. I'd say that's pretty fucking brave."
Maybe I didn't run and hide, but maybe I wanted to. I didn't know if I was more brave or more stupid. I don't know if I'd even consider what we were doing right now 'making a living', but I didn't argue.
The road cut through some dense underbrush for a little while, and on the other side we emerged near a quite clearly still occupied building. It was an old cargo depot sat of some kind in an cut out embankment. It's aging walls had been patched with parts of old carts and roadsigns, and smoke rose from several barrel fires out the front. It's delivery door sat wide open, and it's old sign had been painted over.
Outta Dodge Rest Stop
We drew closer to it, and two ponies sat inside the delivery dock took notice of us and came out.
"Well shit, we got some honest to godesses travellers here, Rusty!" One yelled excitedly.
"Sure looks like we do, been a minute!" The other replied.
Two stallions were waving us over, one a stout grey Earth pony and the other a tall, taupe coloured pegasus.
"Hey there, Outta Dodge is open for business!" The shorter one beckoned. "Come set a spell, have some coffee!"
Moon and stars, it wasn't until the word left his mouth that I realised how desperately I needed a coffee. We hadn't stopped moving since sunrise and it was past noon now. It had been a very long couple of days, and the caffeine would be beyond welcome.
"I know we're on the clock MD, but we've not stopped for a while and I could destroy a coffee, like, right now. Please?" I asked. MD halted for a moment and inspected her PipBuck.
"What the hay, why not, we're closer than I thought we'd be by now." She smiled.
I did a little internal leap for joy. We adjusted our heading and made towards the building, the two stallions outside bumping hooves.
"Don't mention the cello or the collars, okay?" She whispered in my ear. "We don't know who these guys are."
I nodded.
"Thank you both kindly, been some time since we've had guests!" The pegasus said.
"You can say that again!" The Earth pony chimed. "Come in, come in, take the weight off your hooves."
The interior of the building had been completely stripped and replaced by something like a homemade café. A few tables were dotted around with cushions for seating, and some stacked crates served as a counter, complete with a set of mismatched stools. A lone Sparkle-Cola machine sat in the corner, flickering and buzzing. It was quite quaint, and actually a little bit cute.
"Name's Rover, thanks for stopping by!" Said the Earth pony, stepping behind the counter. His voice was warm, with a hint of a drawl. He was large and weathered, wrinkles marring his face, the grey scruff of a beard sitting on his jaw. He was sporting a very worn jacket and a cap that so frayed it flopped as he moved. "What can I get for you two?"
"Silver." I replied, perching myself on one of the stalls. "A coffee, please and thank you."
"I'm Make Do, make that two coffees, please!" MD added, leaning on the counter. Rover took notice of her PipBuck immediately.
"A Stable dweller, well ain't that something!" Been a long time since we had one of you under our roof." He said, looking surprised. "Two coffees coming up, Rusty will get right on it."
The pegasus, presumably Rusty, walked behind the counter and into a back room. Rusty looked a little younger than Rover, but not by a whole lot. He was tall and gangly and was wearing mechanic's overalls and a pair of reading glasses that had seen better days. A long, messy, gray mane flopped down his face, contrasting his short cropped tail.
"So what brings you two ladies this way?" Rover asked, wiping the counter top down. "This old road's been mighty empty as of late."
The clattering of metal and ceramic bounced out of the back room. I couldn't see what was happening but eventually I heard the constant low whine of a stove and figured coffee must be on now.
"We're heading to Dodge. Old Dodge, I mean. Looking for something to bring back to Baltimare, square some things up." MD said tacitly. "How come the road's been so dead?"
"Ah, everypony has been taking the long route ever since the bandits rolled in." He sighed.
"Bandits?" I asked.
"Buncha fiends broken off from Ponyville or the gorge or somewhere." Yelled Rusty through the door. "Camped up on the bridge and started charging a 'toll', if you can't pay up they shoot. And even if you do pay, I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them."
"It's totally killed our hooffall." Rover added, grumpily. "You're the first ponies we've seen in a couple of weeks now. Not even been able to restock with our regular merchants, all the traders have been taking the long road to get to the forest."
"The long road?" MD asked.
"It's a route that heads further west from New Dodge towards Ponyville then cuts back around north of here into the woods. Now it's a lot longer, but it's safer than dealing with those bridge terrors. If that's where you're headed, I'd suggest turning around and rejoining the route from there."
MD looked at her PipBuck for a moment before she grimaced.
"No can do, we're on a tight schedule, we'd lose almost a whole day going around." She said, looking at me.
"I don't know MD, this sounds really dangerous." I countered. Bugs and wild animals were one thing, but this was ponies with guns we were talking about.
"I get it Silv, but remember what we're working with here." She flicked her eyes down towards my hidden collar for a fraction of a second. "If we go the long way and get into Dodge and can't find what we're looking for then we're bucked, I don't know if it would leave us with enough time to look anywhere else. Walking back across the mud will slow us right down, too."
She lifted her PipBuck to me and showed me the map screen, lighting up my face in a sickly green glow. It was quite a hefty detour in all fairness.
"I get your point, but given the choice I think I'd really like to go the way where we don't get shot." I protested.
"Well, we could always pay the toll." MD pondered aloud, looking to Rover. "Do you know how much it is?"
"I have no idea Miss, but I'd say you're ballsier than me for even considering it." He laughed. "They're fiends, they'll take what they want from you and stab you in the back to say thanks."
"The last few ponies who did pass by weren't in a good way." Rusty piped up. "And they did pay the toll, from what I remember at least."
He emerged from the back room with his wings half splayed out, each one carrying a cup of steaming hot cup of coffee sat on a saucer. Effortlessly, he spread his wings at such an angle that the drinks slid off his plumage and smoothly onto the counter, coming to a stop in unison squarely in front of us both, not spilling a drop. It was admittedly a little impressive, graceful even, but I'd always had a bit of a soft spot for Pegasi.
"Thank you." I nodded to him, picking up the cup in both hooves. It was hot to the touch, almost too hot. I blew a breath across the surface and took a sip.
It was almost scalding, it was almost definitely instant, but it was coffee. And it was good, after everything that's happened the last couple of days. A delicious little bit of normality.
"So what, damned if we do, damned if we don't?" MD asked.
"We don't know that, we can go the long way around and once we get to Dodge we'll find-"
"But that's what I'm saying Silver, I'd love to just stroll in to town and find it first go, I really would. But suppose it's not there, okay, and we then have to look somewhere else and don't have enough time left to get home? Do we really want to risk that?" She drew a hoof across her neck for dramatic effect.
"Okay, but do we really want to risk getting ourselves shot?" I countered.
"Look, fiends we can at least fight back against, there's nothing we can do about the timer!"
"Maybe we could fight back, but there's only two of us, and we have no idea how many of them there are! Enough of them to close down a whole road for weeks!"
"Ladies, ladies, now I don't know what you have going on, but it sounds like you're getting worked up just talking yourselves 'round in circles!" Rover interrupted.
"Sorry." Me and MD both said together.
"Now it's no business of mine, but I really would suggest turning back and taking the other way, surely the extra time is worth your safety?"
"I really wish it was that simple." MD replied, hooves in her mane. She took a big swig of coffee with her magic and leaned on the counter.
"Well, how about we make it simpler?" Came Rusty's voice, slicing through the conversation.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Come now Rusty, we've talked about this." Rover said, almost pleading.
"I know, I know, but there'd be three of us, and I like those odds." Rusty rebutted, joining us at the counter and settling down on the stooll next to MD.
"You folks need to get to Dodge right quick, am I right?" He poised. "And we sure as Tartarus could do with getting traffic moving this way again. I can give you a hoof clearing those bastards of the bridge, and we both win!"
"You wanna help us?" MD asked quizzically, head tilted.
"We don't need to get involved, Rusty!" Rover interjected. "They'll move on eventually-"
"So we should just hold tight a little longer? It's been weeks, Rover! Are we supposed to just let them carry on killing our regulars? Our friends?" Rusty yelled. "I can't just sit on my ass any longer, it's high time we did something about it!"
"Rusty please, it's not safe, I can't have you getting hurt, you or these mares!"
"Then let's make it safe! Things'll never get back to normal if we just let these assholes win!" Rusty retorted. "It's me we're talking about, they won't even know what hit them."
Rover looked concerned, but didn't reply. Rusty heaved a heavy breath out before looking back at us.
"So are we on?"
"Are you sure?" MD asked. "You're kinda... old."
"Hah, I might not be as young as I used to be, but I served as a sharpshooter for years, best in my unit. I still got it where it counts, I can be a pretty shadowy pony."
"You're a sniper?"
"You can bet your tail on it. Still got my service rifle ready and waiting." He grinned. "I don't know how many of these bastards we're dealing with, but if you ladies can draw them out I can pick them off. Between me and that fancy targeting spell on your PipBuck I bet we can make quick work of it. We get our road back, you get a quick and easy way to Dodge. That's a win all round, far as I'm concerned."
I seriously had my doubts. He may have been a sniper at one point, but he did look pretty old now. That and the fact that for this plan to work we were essentially meant to be bait, we were just there for him to get a clear shot. It sounded like a lot of risk for us and not a lot for him.
"Fuck yeah, sounds perfect!" MD chimed.
"Now just hold on a minute!" Rover bellowed. "Rusty, you mean to tell me your plan is to just dump these mares at the fiends' gates and let them take all the heat? I know you're a crack shot but that just sounds downright cruel to me!"
I nodded in agreement, the stallion was speaking reason. This was a stupid plan.
"I'd really like to not be anywhere near these fiends if I can help it." I added. "I'm not trying to get myself killed."
"It's not like I was gonna let them head in there unprepared!" Rusty groused, tapping his hoof on the countertop. "We got things put aside, and I figure this is as worthy a cause as any to donate them to."
"Hey now, we agreed that was for emergencies!" Rover frowned. "Rusty, these ponies don't know us from dirt, I cannot in good conscience ask them to go and fight for us!"
"Well, you ain't. I am." Rusty clicked. "And they don't seem too broken up about it."
"Look, if it means getting to Dodge on time, then I'm all for it!" MD replied enthusiastically.
I couldn't believe I was hearing this, another decision was being made for me entirely against my best interests. I understood the bomb collars could not be reasoned with, but playing an up close and personal part in a mass shooting was absolutely not the lesser of two evils here.
"Don't I get a say in this?" I burst out. "I can't do this, any of this! If these ponies are as dangerous as you say they are, then no way am I getting up close to them, let alone fighting them! Drawing them out for someone else to kill them is a horrific idea. Trying worm through by ourselves, which I still object to by the way, is one thing, but this is just murder!"
I took a big sip of my coffee before continuing.
"I get that these bandits may be bad ponies, but even if me and MD don't get killed being bait, surely by killing them off we'd be no better than they are!"
All I got in return were three dumbfounded stares. I had at least expected Rover to agree with me, but he too was looking at me like I'd grown a second head.
"I get the sentiment Silv, but fiends and raiders can't be bargained or reasoned with. If we leave them be they'll just carry on killing."
"Ya Vault dwellin' friend's right, Miss." Rusty interjected. "All a fiend knows is killin' and rapin' and stealin'. They're barely even ponies, if you ask me. They'd shoot you and your family first chance they got just for fun."
"He's right about that." Rover agreed. "Much as I don't want any of you to go through with this, it's the danger rather than the morals. Some ponies are just born bad, I reckon."
That really didn't make me feel any better about this plan at all.
"Okay, and what, me and MD are supposed to just walk up to these 'shoot now ask later' types and hope Rusty gets them before they get us?" I asked, incredulous. "If they're as dangerous as you all say they are, then you can count me out."
"No hope about it, I'm a straight shot, I'll put 'em down clean." Rusty clarified.
"I'm sure you are, you might be the best shot in the world, but if the fiends shoot first then it's us who's on the line!" I countered.
"She's right, Rusty, it's too dangerous. We just met these folks and you're asking them to fight and maybe even die for this?" Rover shook his head.
"I know it's dangerous, that's why I'm saying we gear them up. Give them the right tools and the bastards won't be able to touch 'em." Rusty smiled, raising his eyebrows.
"What do you mean?"
"We trade with all kinds here, got all sorts stockpiled. We can set you up with some armour, AP rounds, the works. Sure as shit be better that whatever they're working with on the bridge." Rusty explained. "You can keep whatever you take when we're done, consider it a thanks for the help."
MD looked at me pointedly.
"Come on Silver, you hear that? It's a total no brainer!" She beamed, egging me on.
"You'd be doing us a great favour. Hay, you'd be doing everyone in the area a great favour. I'm sure the folks in Dodge City will be thrilled when you tell them the bridge is clear." Rusty chimed in. "We can stop them now and nopony else has to die."
I hated this. I hated being dogpiled on. This wasn't a silly dare we were talking about, this was real life and death for everypony concerned. Truth be told, I couldn't believe how flippantly MD was treating the whole situation, she seemed more than prepared to march over and start shooting. Killing.
Is this what it took to survive in the wastelands? I know Make Do had said things could turn all 'kill or be killed', but it's one thing being told that and another being asked to voluntarily put yourself in that situation.
I knew these fiends were bad ponies. Bad was probably an understatement, I can't think of a word low enough to describe them based on what I'd heard. I didn't like it, but in the long run it sounded like we'd be saving innocent lives by removing them for good. But did I have it in me to kill one? Even if it would make the world a better place? Ends, means, justified? These three certainly thought so.
I didn't know.
I shot MD a concerned look. I think she could tell I still didn't want to go. It was lose-lose for me either way, either we run out of time or get shot. I thought about the corpse we passed on the road. I didn't want to end up like that, but I'm sure he didn't either. I'd never want to do that to anypony either, but clearly these fiends didn't have such qualms.
MD had gotten us this far, though. She'd had my back at every turn so far, there had been a lot of times where I could have died but didn't because of her. She seems to think we could do it, maybe I should trust her on this.
I closed my eyes and sighed. For the greater good, I could try. Wordlessly, I nodded at MD.
"Alright, let's do it." She announced.
"Well shit, thank you both kindly!" Rusty replied, pushing himself up from the stool. "I'll show you the stockroom, help yourself to equipment from there."
He kicked a door open and led us through. It was a small room lined with shelves piled with all sorts of clothes, boxes of bullets, potions, medicine, weapons, everything a survivalist could want.
"Y'all can take anything except the ketamine, that's mine." He winked. "I'm gonna go get ready, I'll meet you outside."
"And make sure you all come back alive!" Rover bellowed from the other room. "I'm serious."
I gulped. Easier said than done.
We were fully kitted out, I almost felt like I was in the army.
I was sporting a helmet and had traded my jumpsuit for an armoured vest that was currently strapped around my barrel. My bag was full of bandages, bullets, a few healing potions and some other assorted things MD said would be useful that I didn't recognise. We'd reloaded my revolver with Anti-Pony rounds, which sounded horrific, and filled one of my bag's pockets with a hoofful of spares. We'd also found a proper holster for me. To top it off I had a combat knife strapped to my chest, which I was really hoping I'd not have to use.
MD had found a battle saddle and mounted her shotgun to it, leaving her horn free enough that she'd also picked up a pistol as a side weapon. She was wearing an armoured vest too, but no helmet, she said she didn't like how they restricted her ears moving. She'd shovelled Celestia knows what into her saddlebag, but it almost looked full to bursting.
If I felt like I was in the army, Rusty looked like a hardcore veteran. He was dressed head to hoof in a set of matching armour, it was dark grey and had seen heavy use by the looks of it, the plates scuffed and scratched, battered. Pouches lined his barrel but left space for his wings to sit. On the chest plate it looked like he had painted the outline of Rainbow Dash's cutie mark for some reason. Weird.
The gun took centre stage, though. Strapped across his back was the longest, biggest gun I had ever seen, the barrel sticking out well past his chest and out in front of him. He had to carry it at an angle so that his neck wasn't in the way. It was huge. I'd not seen anything quite like it before. The main body of the thing was chunky and seemed to be emanating a kind of green glow. It was covered in tubes and wires. A large scope sat on top of it. It almost looked alien.
"Stars, that thing looks nasty." MD said, looking over his rifle.
"Well, it certainly ain't friendly." He chortled. "Plasma Sniper, it's an old Cloudsdayle Armoury pattern and it means business. Good thing you ain't the one it's pointed at."
"Yeah, no thanks, I've had more than my fill of plasma exposure." She replied. I didn't really know what she meant by that.
Rusty was leading us down the road to the bridge. We'd left the rest stop a little while ago, Rover seeing us off and telling us all to keep safe. He'd stayed behind to watch the place, though Rusty had told us that he really wasn't one for fighting. That made two of us...
MD's estimated from her PipBuck's map that the bridge was about a 45 minute walk away. We'd been making a brisk pace along the road for a little while now. I was silently dreading what was waiting for us.
We'd spent most of the short trip so far talking about the plan, if you could call it that. Despite their chatting, MD and Rusty hadn't really come up with anything more in depth than him splitting off to higher ground while we coax the fiends into his line of sight. I was hoping that between them, being ex-military in some capacity and the daughter of a tactician respectively, they'd have come up with something a little more thorough and thought out than that. Apparently not though. Rusty would fly ahead of us before we got to the bridge and scout it out so we'd at least know what we were dealing with. From there he would find somewhere to hunker down where he wouldn't be spotted. Then it was our job to get to the bridge and draw all the fiends out into the open so that between us we could get rid of them all. Rusty would try and take out as many as he could before we had to get our hooves bloody and finish off anypony he couldn't see. That was assuming they didn't just rush us on sight.
Godess, I never should have relented, we were going to get ourselves killed.
The road was lined with trees either side now, obscuring the river from view and meaning the fiends hopefully wouldn't see us coming too early. The further we headed the cloudier it started getting again.
"So, Dashite, huh?" MD asked.
"Yes ma'am, by default if nothing else." Rusty replied. I had no idea what they were going on about.
"Default?" MD replied, sounding a little confused as well.
"Well it was maybe 30 years or so ago." He started. "Was sent down on covert ops with my squad a ways out west from here when we got in a bad tangle with a Manticore, messed me up real nasty. 'Course, rather than help my team all ran off, saved their own hides. I was an 'acceptable loss', see. They just left me down here to die."
"Ouch." MD said.
"You can say that again. I woulda been killed for sure if Rover hadn't come along and found me, kind soul that he is. Had no reason to help me, but he did. Healed me up, took me in, been here ever since." He explained, voice low. "Now imagine that, you give everything in the line of duty just for your people to turn tail when you need them most. And then a total stranger you've been taught to hate comes along and does the right thing. Makes a pony ask certain questions, I tell you what."
Harrowing as that all sounded, I still had no idea what they were talking about.
"What about you and your friend, then? I see you're a Stable dweller but your Earth pony companion doesn't seem to be." He asked, looking between us both.
"I was a Stable dweller, not for years now. Raiders saw to that." She snorted.
"Stable 5?" Rusty inquired, head tilted.
"Yeah, that's the one."
"My condolences, heard about that when it happened. Sounded like a real horror show." He bowed his head down.
"Yeah, well, time heals all wounds and all that. At least we can write some wrongs by this." She muttered.
There was that mean streak again. Far be it from me to chastise somepony for holding a grudge, especially over something as deplorable as what MD had gone through, but it was weird to see her talk so callously. It'd never crossed my mind before that she might be out for some kind of revenge.
"And what about you, Miss?" Rusty asked, looking back at me.
"Me? I'm nopony special." I replied. "I just want this to all be over."
"I found her at a MAs hub, she'd been turned into a statue during the war." MD explained.
"No kiddin'? Shit, now that's a tall tale I'd like to hear." Rusty said before looking around. "But maybe another time, we're coming up on the turn. I'm gonna take off while we're still hidden in the trees, you two wait here and I'll see what I can see."
MD nodded at him, and he began a short gallop, his wings opening and pushing him into the air, clearing the treeline and leaving my sight. It was just me and MD again, alone with a gentle breeze and the distant sound of rushing water.
"Ready to do this thing Silv?"
"I don't know MD, we haven't got a real plan, we don't even know how many of them there are!" I hissed. She shrugged it off.
"Well that's why Rusty is scouting ahead. Silver, this isn't my first rodeo, okay? We'll make it work. I'll go up front with the shotgun, you can hang back with the pistol and pick them off from a distance. Rusty's a military sniper and I've got SATS targeting on my PipBuck. We got this, no sweat."
"I'm scared MD, I don't like this."
"That's normal, fiends and raiders are scary. But they're also dumb as rocks, just hold your ground and don't lose your nerve. We got this, okay?" She said, putting a hoof on my withers reassuringly. "And if you really need it, I've got a saddlebag full of drugs."
I nodded. If she thought we could do this then the least I could do was try my best.
I spent the next few minutes mentally preparing myself to get into lethal combat. I didn't really know how to get myself in the right mindset, I'd never been in so much as a hoof fight before so this was going to be a big jump for me. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't fighting back tremors.
MD checked over her guns almost nonchalantly. I guessed she was a lot more used to this than I was.
A small step for her, a big jump for me.
Rusty came back into view, an old monocular hanging around his neck. He came to a halt above us, hovering in place.
"Alright, I scoped out what I could. Looks like there's about ten of them or so, there's a couple of tents I couldn't see into though, so possibly more."
Ten?! I almost bolted on the spot.
"The weapons they have mostly look like shit, but a couple of them might have had submachine guns, so be wary of that. They've got some pretty shoddy scrap walls for cover, you'll need to flush them out for me to see 'em, but shouldn't be a big deal, they'll probably all come runnin' out at the first sign of commotion anyway." He continued. "I found a rocky outcropping up the hill a ways, I'm gonna go get set up there and we're all good to go."
"Sounds like a plan, thanks." MD nodded.
"Just one more thing, it's pretty grim down there so just... steel yourselves. It ain't pretty."
With a small wave and a heavy beat of his wings, he ascended again, shooting off into the distance.
"What does he mean by that?" I asked. MD hummed for a second.
"Well, you know the whole 'respect for the dead' thing you have going on? Most fiends are like the opposite of that. It's actually more like a contempt for the dead." She grimaced. "There's going to be bodies, and they're not all going to be, well, intact."
"That's fucking vile." I said, scrunching my snout in disgust.
Not having the time, means, or even will to take care of a corpse was one thing, but to leave multiple dead bodies around somewhere you were living sounded not only absolutely horrific in a moral sense but also alarmingly unhygienic.
"Just, be ready. There's gonna be some fucked up shit." MD added. "We should get moving."
"Great."
We slowly started trotting again, heading towards the turn in the road. The trees began to thin out along the verge, bringing the slope to the rivers edge slowly back into view. After a couple of minutes the cover gave way entirely as the road reached a junction, a sign gave us our options.
DODGE JUNCTION 10
PONYVILLE 45 >
TOLL 500 BITS!!!
It had been crudely amended with yellow spray paint. A unicorn skull had been placed on top of the signpost, still bloody, the last vestiges of festering tissue still clinging to the bone like something out of a bad horror movie. Positively grotesque.
I held my nerve for now. We carried on past the sign as the road turned perpendicular to the water. Now that I could see the river clearly it was easy to tell it was a lot wider here than it was when we first saw it, but no more calm. It frothed and sprayed and eddied, the current obviously very strong.
Further down from us was the bridge, barricaded with a messy wall of scrap metal, old vehicles and fallen trees, with nothing but a small gap for passage. Between us and it was pure carnage.
The smell hit me first before I realised what I was looking at. Rank and sickly sweet, putrid and inescapable. It practically clung to my nostrils. My stomach churned.
The path before us was lined with the dead. There might have been dozens, it was hard to tell.
I'd heard about things like this happening during the war. But to see it for yourself is something else.
Lone corpses cut down mid gallop, heaps of bodies stacked up and melting together into great piles of decay, individuals strung up and left as sick displays. Some were missing heads, some draped entrails, some still dripped fresh blood from their wounds and others were rotted to bone. Swathes of bodily fluids clogged the ground, leaving hideous browny-red pools. Bullet holes riddled the paving, empty casings rolled under hoof.
'DONT FUCK WITH US' read graffiti on a billboard. A decapitated body had been hung by it's tail over the top by a rope, drained of blood from the gaping hole.
In the middle of the road before us lay the sad, tiny remains of a foal, still in the protective clutches of it's deceased parents.
A foal.
I don't think I can properly convey the sickness I felt. Past the obvious repulsion and horror, it was something that struck me in my very soul, burned into my mind. This was far beyond evil, this was a crime against life itself. The fact that any creature was able to carry out this atrocity was fundamentaly despicable, let alone one able to think, able to tell right from wrong. This wasn't a bugbear or a manticore blindly lashing out, this was by the hooves of ponies. I knew that there would only be more of this waiting for us on the other side of the bridge, too.
Unforgivable.
I grit my teeth and carried on following MD, willing myself not to be sick. Not here.
MD looked back to make sure I was still there. Half a life in the wastelands may have hardend her, but even she was looking decidedly paler than earlier.
We weaved between pools of blood and broken corpses, around abandoned wagons and carts, drawing closer and closer to the bridge itself. The ramp up had been barricaded with overturned vehicles and scraps of metal and wood. A guard standing in front of the makeshift wall spotted us, raving and yelling behind to presumably the rest of the fiends. We were to far away to hear what was being said, the chatter drowned out by the sound of roaring water. They knew we were here now, there was no turning back. I could only hope Rusty could see us from wherever he was.
A group of bandits popped up over the barricade, all toting guns. They looked almost exactly how I'd imaginezd, ragged, mismatched a d filthy. Some of them had what I could only guess was supposed to be warpaint splattered all over their faces and bodies.
"Don't take another step or I'll blow your fucking head off!" One boomed. We stopped.
My heart rate was through the roof. We spent a tense few seconds stood there, not moving.
"Toll's a thousand. Each. You got caps?" Another shouted.
"Sign says 500." MD shouted back.
"Sign's wrong." The third replied, pushing herself up off the top of the baricade. "Now are you gonna pay up or are you tryna paint the floor?"
A moment went by with the mare staring at us down the sights of her gun. She was a dirty shade of lilac and had black paint smeared around her eyes and striped down her sides. It must only have been a couple of seconds but it felt like all the time in the world.
The electric green ball of plasma slammed into her head, instantly reducing it to a smouldering goo that bubbled down her neck. Her limp body fell from the wall with a thud, crashing backwards. Two more bolts of energy quickly followed before any of the other fiends had time to react, one vaporising the guard stood in front of us entirely and the other splashing off the neck of one of the fiends on top of the wall, not killing him immediately but leaving behind a horrific caustic burn that ate away at his flesh, causing him too to fall.
Something inside of me recognised this as a horribly gruesome thing to witness, but beyond the discomfort of seeing it I didn't actually feel bad about it at all. These ponies deserved worse than they got.
"OH SHIT, AMBUSH!" One of the remaining fiends on the wall shouted. Another one opened fire, liberally spraying bullets in the general direction of me and MD.
Now panic set in. I scrambled out the way, galloping behind a wagon and clenching my pistol in my teeth. This was real now, we were being shot at. And I'd stupidly broken off from MD. Bangs and yells sounded off all around me as the clips of galloping hooves blended into the droning roar of the river. It was incredibly overwhelming.
"IT'S AN ATTACK, KILL THE FUCKERS!" screamed somepony from the camp.
Trying my best to steady my breathing, I peeked around the edge of the wagon, gun at the ready. I was trembling, adrenaline rushing through my system.
I spotted MD, she was pressed up against the barricade facing the bottleneck, poised and ready to take out the next fiend to exit. She wasn't waiting long before one ran out on her, an Earth pony clutching a pistol. Before he'd even had time to see her, she'd clamped down on the bit of her battle saddle and blasted two shots right into him, buckshot tearing away at his shoulders and barrel, spraying the wall in fresh blood and sending the fiend skidding along the floor.
"GET FUCKED!"
A couple more emerged over the top of the barricade to take his place, not hesitating to open fire. I ducked back behind the wagon, stray bullets splintering the wood but thankfully missing me. A couple more plasma bolts soared over my head, but I didn't see if they hit their targets.
The deafening sound of MD's shotgun filled the air again. I looked back over only to see a bloody but still very much alive unicorn swinging a golf club at MD. She was deftly dodging the blows, but the close quarters meant she couldn't line up a shot.
"You fucked up now, asshole!" The fiend landed a hit across her head, the shaft of the club deforming with the force, leaving MD dazed for a moment, stumbling back. He pulled back to swing again. I pointed towards him and pulled the trigger on my pistol. I didn't really have time to aim properly, I couldn't hesitate. I squeezed off four shots, my eyes closed.
I opened one eye. I'd managed to land two hits, leaving a pair of small holes in his flank that were gushing blood. I might have grazed his back too, but it couldn't say that he wasn't already injured from fighting MD. What I could say though was that he was now very aware of me, and that the bullets didn't seem to have hurt him at all, if anything he only seemed angrier! Apparently now losing interest in MD he began galloping in my direction, covering the meager distance in no time at all. I backed up, terrified, but nowhere near as quickly as he was moving.
"You wanna join the fun?" He sneered.
Club in his aura, he swung as hard as he could into my barrel. Even wearing armour I could feel my ribs crack, leaving me winded and reeling. He'd hit me so hard the club had snapped in two, bottom half tumbling to the ground not too far away from me. The pain was searing and instant, my ears rang and my vision went dark for a moment. I braced myself for another hit, but it never came, MD had run up behind him and unloaded a shell into him almost point blank, entering one side of his shoulder and exploding out the other. He fell, sending the club handle rolling.
She offered me a hoof and I grabbed it, steadying myself.
No sooner had I steadied myself on my hooves I squeezed the trigger again, a machete weilding mare was coming up behind MD's blind side. I hit her square between the eyes and she went down.
She was dead. By my own doing.
She was a dusty pink unicorn with a cropped yellow mane, face and body plastered with warpaint. Her cutie mark seemed to be two red X's. Blood ran down her face from the wound on her forehead, green eyes still wide open.
I'd done it, I'd ended a life. Killed.
I didn't have a lot of time to reflect on this, bullets were still flying overhead. A fiend with a shotgun fired at us from a distance. I closed my eyes as shrapnel flew past us, cutting at my ears and neck. It burned, but I don't think anything significant landed, I'd have to check later.
That fiend too found himself reduced to a puddle of plasma goo just seconds later.
The rattle of a machine gun sounded off and I scrambled to get behind cover, though the sudden searing pain in my left flank indicated that I'd not been quick enough. I yelped and tumbled down in the open, splaying out on the ground in front of two more fiends carrying another shotgun and machine gun between them. MD quickly pulled me behind an old motorcart just in the nick of time as bullets tore up the paving where I was laying not a second earlier.
I gasped for air, wordlessly, dropping my gun. I'd been shot. I'd been shot. I stared down at the wound, it was a long, shallow gash that ended in a red hole just below my cutie mark, throbbing and spilling blood down my leg. It was a burning pain like I'd never felt before. I trembled, almost hyperventilating. I tried to move but I couldn't put any weight on my injured leg, slumping down against the side of the wagon, grimacing. Oh tartarus this was real!
My breathing was ragged, fast and shallow. MD grabbed my face and gave me a look over, she was mottled with blood and covered in dirt. Concern flashed on her face when she saw my leg. She was saying something to me, but I couldn't make any words out over the ringing in my ears and the cracks of gunshots. She reached into her bag and grabbed a small glass bottle, shaking out a little pill and looking at me. She spoke again, I still wasn't able to make out anything she said, and offered the pill to me.
I looked at it unsure for a second before a barrage of bullets tore through our cover just above our heads, dusting us with shards of rusty metal. MD ducked down to the floor and my ears folded flat. She shook her head and shoved the pill in my mouth. I swallowed it automatically, sticking to my dry throat for a second before it worked it's way down, making me wrech a little.
The bullets stopped flying just for a moment. MD took the brief respite to reload, sliding more shells into her shotgun.
As the pill dissipated in my stomach, I was feeling okay. Maybe a bit better than okay, actually. All the pain was melting away, and I was feeling more alert, more alive! I felt good. These must have been some high grade painkillers for sure, I'd never had anything work so fast! I scooped my revolver back up and pushed myself up onto my hooves, leg no longer giving me any trouble at all.
There was a flash of green and a scream, followed by the sound of sizzling. Rusty must've landed another hit.
No sooner had I stood back up, me and MD were both rocked by an explosion, the blast knocking us both over and tearing away our cover.
"Can't you shitheads do anything right?" Shouted a new voice. "Fuck it, I'll kill 'em myself!"
Scrambling back upright, I saw three fiends leaving the entryway and coming right for us.
Two mares, a Unicorn and an Earth pony trotted either side of a large Unicorn stallion. He was rough and weathered, a sickly green, wearing the cracked skull of an Earth pony on his head, cresting his horn. In his magical grasp he was holding a bunch of grenades. The leader, he must have been. The one behind all this horror, all this senseless killing. I saw red. He, more than anypony else, needed to die.
"This is how you do it!" He yelled, pulling the pin free from one of the grenades.
"Die you fuck!" I spat, squeezing off all the shots in my revolver. One. One shot. MD may have reloaded, but I hadn't. It whizzed by harmlessly, missing all three of them and embedding itself in the barricade behind them.
He laughed at me, a spiteful little giggle.
"Time to say goodbye, asshole!" He chirped, lobbing a grenade right at my hooves. I fell over myself trying to run away. Thankfully MD scooped it up with her magic and threw it back towards the fiend group. It exploded in the air before it could hurt any of us.
Simultaneously a plasma ball hit the Unicorn mare and MD fired on the leader. The former screaming and collapsing as the skin on her chest and forelegs melted away, and the latter jumping back, narrowly avoiding a cloud of buckshot. Me and the other mare locked eyes. She was a dull blue Earth pony, her mane braided, and she was carrying a knife in her mouth.
She lunged forward, galloping right at me as shotgun blasts filled the air. I didn't have time to grab my own knife before she closed the distance, but I instinctively ducked down, sending her toppling over the top of me. With her stumbing behind me, I quickly delivered the most solid buck I could, my hind legs crashing into her barrel and knocking her to the ground.
"SILVER!" MD cried. A grenade clattered to the ground next to me. I froze for a moment looking at it dumbfounded. Suddenly coming to my senses, I flailed, trying to dispatch the bomb in any direction. I kicked it behind me and started blindly running the other way. I heard the mare behind me screech for a moment before it went off.
Shrapnel flecked and tore past. I didn't think any of it got me too badly but it definitely shredded some of the armour around my back half and cut away at some of the skin around my hind legs and flanks. The blast wave crashed into me and threw me off balance, causing me to stumble and fall right at the hooves of the fiend leader.
"Hello, beautiful!" He sneered. He was wearing some kind of spiked horseshoe and had armour rising up his legs, his fur sticking out in tufts. He smirked and brought a forehoof down on my back.
The armour definitely did it's job, but it still hurt like Tartarus. My spine bent around the impact, and my already hurting ribs screamed. I groaned in pain.
Shotgun pellets flew past from MD's gun, nicking his face. He grunted and threw another grenade her way, I heard galloping and the jangle of her magic before it exploded, kicking up dust and gravel everywhere. I used this moment of distraction to pull out my knife, clutching it in my jaw.
Still tracking MD, he brought down his other hoof to stomp on me again. I twisted my head and faced the blade upwards, piercing his hoof right in the frog, going deep enough to scrape against bone. The sound was horrible, a wet scraping that I could feel against my teeth. He yowled and jumped back, the knife sliced out the side of his leg, leaving some of his skin flapping off. He dropped his remaining grenades in the process, pins still inserted, thankfully. I shakily stood back up as he inspected his injured leg, glaring at me intensity. He frowned, pulling a lead pipe off his back and trotting towards me menacingly, leaving a trail of bloody hoofprints in his wake. I slowly backed up as he did.
"You bitch, I'm gonna enjoy this." He muttered, spinning the pipe in his aura, smiling a sadistic smile. I nervously readied my knife.
I needn't have, though. At that very moment MD got a close shot on his rear, crippling his hind legs. Before he even had time to scream, a plasma bolt burned through his barrel, the searing ball of heat almost splitting him in two. His body smoked and twitched and he fell, the pipe clattering to the ground with him, his mouth open in a silent cry.
He was dead.
I deflated, letting out a breath I didn't know I was holding. This sadistic fuck was dead, he could never hurt anypony else ever again. We'd done it. I fell to my haunches in relief. I was sweating and hurting, everything sounded fuzzy, I was filthy. But I felt better for knowing we'd stopped this bastard for good.
"SILVER, BEHIND YOU!"
I whipped my head around as MD yelled. The knife wielding Earth Pony was mid jump towards me, chunks of flesh hanging from her face and neck. I didn't have any time to react, my eyes wide as she landed on top of me, grabbing my ear in her teeth and sending us both careening along the floor. She didn't let up her grip once. I pushed myself up and started bucking wildly trying to dislodge her, but her hold was firm.
"DIE DIE DIE!!!" She howled, releasing my ear and wrapping a hoof around my throat. I had no chance to recover before she plunged the knife into me, blade going straight through a weak part of my vest and between my shoulder bones. I screamed in agony as it pushed through muscle and sinew, my own blade clattering to the ground. She pulled the knife out and quickly brought it back down again into the side of my neck, slashing at jugular. She brought it down for a third time between my neck and my withers, dangerously close to my collar, pushing it down to the hilt, grinding on my bones.
I rolled over, desperately trying to push her off me, but she followed my movement, straddling me the whole way around until I was on her back and she was straddling me. She brought the knife down on me again, slicing right between my neck and my chest, cutting through the soft tissue and tearing between my throat and my ribcage.
Running on nothing but pure adrenaline, I noticed the handle of the broken golf club laying next to me, the shaft now sharp from the break. I grabbed it in a hoof and swung as hard as I could at the mare. The pointed end pierced straight through her throat and came all the way out the other side, dripping red.
She went slightly limp, gurgling, hooves reaching for her neck, chocking crimson spittle. I let go and she swayed for a second, I thought it was over until she began to weakly pound her hooves on my chest. Godess, she was still trying to fight! I writhed as she tried to grab the knife again, still not able to shake her off, even in the state she was in she stubbornly clung on. Gravely injured as she was, there was nothing but hate in her eyes, malice, contempt for my existence burning to her core. She wanted me dead, she would accept nothing less. Everything hurt, I was losing the strength to fight, I was pushing her back as much as I could, but it just wasn't enough, she was getting closer to the handle of the knife. She was going to end this.
By the grace of Celestia though, MD had other ideas. She rushed over and threw the mare off of me. Before she'd even had a chance to struggle, MD pulled the trigger and put her out of her misery, shotgun blowing her head apart like an overripe melon.
I could feel my own blood pooling underneath me, knife still wedged in my chest. I tried to get back upright, groaning with the effort, my whole body protesting. I managed a scant few steps towards MD before I fell back onto my haunches, woozy.
"Oh moon and stars Silver, you hang on, I'll get you patched right up." She said worriedly, trotting over and keeping me upright with a forehoof.
She looked in a bit of a bad way too. Her face was marked with cuts and grazes, a small fragment of shrapnel stuck out of her neck, her armour torn. We were both covered in blood, both our own and the fiends.
"Hey, we did it!" I weakly cheered.
"We did it." She smiled back. "You just hold tight, I'm gonna patch you up, okay?"
I nodded as she opened the flap on her saddlebag, rifling through it. I would be okay, MD was gonna take care of me. I just needed to lie down.
A shadow passed overhead as I slowly flopped out on the paving. Rusty touched down just by MD.
"You two okay? I circled around, I think we gottem' all!" He said, glancing to MD and then to me. "Shit, girl, you don't look so good."
"I feel it." I muttered in response.
"She's bleeding bad, help me out!" MD barked at Rusty before coming back to me. "We got you, Silv, don't you worry!"
"Hold on lil' lady, we'll get you fixed right up in no time!" Rusty agreed.
I could feel them working me over, wrapping the worst of my injuries in gauze.
"We gotta get that knife outta her." Rusty pointed out. "Can't give 'er a healing potion til' that's gone."
"There's bullets, too." MD added, before coming into my field of view. "Sorry, Silver, but this is gonna suck. I'm gonna give you some of this, it should help."
She levitated a needle of Med-X in front of my eyes before jabbing it into my foreleg and pushing the plunger down.
The effect was almost instantaneous, like the pill from earlier but even more potent. Pain ebbed away, leaving me feeling floaty and light headed. Exhausted, even. I'd been through a lot today, after everything that happened I think I definitely deserved a nap.
My eyes grew heavy as MD and Rusty buzzed around me, I knew I'd be taken care of. The world dropped away in a warm haze. There was too much to process right now, I just needed a minute. Just a little rest and I'd be right as rain.
Level Up!
New Perk (Silver Sterling): Old World Justice - If there's no justice there'll sure be no peace. You gain a buff to endurance and HP when fighting fiends, raiders and slavers.
New Perk (Make Do): Hot Potato - Send that thing back! Grenades thrown at you have a significantly longer cook-off time, so you can duck and cover or return to sender.
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