> Fallout: Equestria - Unburied
>  by BlueNinja
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Prologue
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	It was another beautiful day in Equestria.  Too bad it would be the last one Stonewall would ever see.  Of course, all the screaming and panicking wasn’t really helping him lock the scene in his memory.  He loosened his teeth on the grip of his gun, glancing around.  “Come on, three more blocks and we’re there!” he chided his charges.

Arpeggio nodded dully, the older unicorn carrying his filly atop the two bulging saddlebags he’d insisted on packing.  Their personal robot, a Stable-Tec design, was equally loaded down, but steadily trundling along at whatever pace Stonewall set.  Shouts and screaming bounced off the storefronts lining the street as ponies rushed up and down.  The rattle of somepony yanking closed a security gate drew his eye for a moment.

He looked up as another missile contrail shot across the sky over them, then around at the crowds.  Most of them know there’s a Stable under the city, he thought, switching off the safety of his saddle-mounted shotgun.  One provocation, and it’s going to be bloody and violent all over the place.  As if some malevolent entity heard his words, the horizon lit up in the direction of Manehattan.  Oh sweet Celestia, don’t let all these foals realize that was a balefire explosion.

With two blocks to go, Arpeggio stumbled over a piece of trash, Harpsichord tumbling off him and wailing.  “Don’t fret, little lady,” Stonewall said around the gun bit.  “Everything’s going to be alright.”

Another flash of light lit up the horizon, this time towards the south-east, from the slightly closer city of Fillydelphia.  “Balefire bombs!  The zebras are attacking!” somepony shouted.

Almost immediately, the throng of ponies, adults and children alike, descended into madness.  The town of Roam, named after the distant Zebrican city, wasn’t all that large by population, but it did house several companies’ financial experts, as well as being a major distribution hub for the agriculture of northeastern Equestria.  So that made it a target for a full-on, scorched earth attack like this.  The only question is, how far down the list are we, and how many more bombs do they have left before our number comes up?

Arpeggio stumbled back to his feet as Stonewall stood guard, gunshots and swinging knives already visible around them.  “Go, go!” the unicorn said, limping forward as quickly as he could.  “We have to get my daughter to safety!”

Stonewall nodded, already picking out targets in the crowd.  Biting down on the trigger, he cleared a path ahead of them, buckshot blasting ponies out of their path with casual disregard as he walked forward, Harpsichord cowering at his flank.  “We’ll be there any minute,” he mumbled around the grip.

A gunshot roared close enough for him to pick out the wielder, and he spun to the side, putting two rounds into the tan unicorn.  The unknown assailant burbled something, frothy blood spilling out of her neck as she tumbled to the ground, the pistol clattering to the sidewalk.  That was too close, Stonewall thought.  “Sir, do you require medical assistance?” the bot asked.

“Daddy!” Harpsichord cried, causing Stonewall to whirl around.  Arpeggio lay on the ground, blood spurting out from his shoulder.  “Daddy, get up!”  The gouts of blood were already weakening.

“Get her to safety,” the unicorn gasped out.  “Please.  Save my daughter!”  His head slumped to the side, eyes glazing over as the squirts slowed to a trickle.  Heedless of the blood, the filly threw her forelegs around him, sobbing.

“Bot, grab that pistol,” Stonewall ordered with a jerk of his head.  It hesitated a moment, but as Arpeggio’s bodyguard, he had authority to give orders.  It rolled over, picking the weapon up in its mouth.  “Shoot anypony who threatens the filly.”  Grunting, he undid the buckles on the saddlebag, tossing it onto his back. I really hope it doesn’t interfere with my gun.  “C’mon, Harp.  We have to go.”

“But, Daddy,” she protested, hiccupping through her tears.

“I’m sorry, but it’s too late for him.  He wants you safe, and I can’t carry you.  It’s only a block and a half away, see?”  He pointed one hoof down the street, where the brick face of the Roam branch of Royal Equestrian Arms stood.  “Can you keep up?”

On shaking legs, Harpsichord stood back up.  “I think so,” she said.  He started trotting forward, forcing the filly to nearly gallop as they moved through the street.  A riot was already starting in front of the REA building, and he started blasting their way through.  Pushing open the bulletproof doors, two more of the security squad also opened fire, forcing a hole in the crowd.

“Stonewall!  What took so damned long?” Knockout demanded.  As another pony in the crowd lunged forward, trying to force her way to safety, the elderly yellow unicorn dropped her pistol and pulled out a length of steel pipe, slamming it brutally up into the intruder’s ribs before shoving her back down the three stairs to the sidewalk.

“Don’t ask,” Stonewall said, backing up the steps, firing point-blank at any pony dumb enough to test him.  “Are we waiting for anyone else?”

“You’re the last ones,” Knockout said, smacking another unicorn hard enough to crack his horn.  “Let’s get inside.”

They backed inside, letting the robot lead Harpsichord to the basement stairs while they barricaded the entrance with the reception desk and the statue of Luna, before they followed along.  At the top of the stairs, Knockout stopped, putting a hoof on Stonewall’s shoulder.  “Go on down, I’ll make sure nopony else follows.”

As he opened his mouth to protest, she shook her head.  “My grandfoals are downstairs already.  Besides, my days are numbered no matter what.  I can stay up here and make sure no one can unseal that door, or I can follow along and be a drain on the Stable.”  Her graying tail smacked his flank as she lifted her pistol again and turned to face the door.  “Now get on downstairs.”

Stonewall nodded, feeling tears come to his eyes.  “I’ll tell your family what you did for everypony,” he said, wiping his eyes.  No more words needed to be said as he clattered down the stairs, nudging the safety back on just in case.

Four stories below the earth, he stopped in the concrete antechamber before the gaping Stable door, staring up as gunshots echoed down.  “What are you waiting on, an engraved invitation?”  He grimaced at the shout from Level, the Overmare, and trotted inside.  The massive door was already rolling into place as he came down the hallway into the Stable proper.  “Where’s Arpeggio?” Level demanded.  “Harpsichord just started crying, and the damn bot wasn’t helpful at all.” 

He sighed, sitting down heavily and letting the saddlebags slide off his back.  “Somepony with a gun shot him less than two blocks away.  He insisted on going through every room in his house, picking out all these damn knick-knacks and memorabilia.”  Stonewall shook his head, nudging the bags.  “I didn’t want Harp to show up here empty-hoofed, but I think half this stuff is useless.”

Level shook her head, pacing back and forth.  Her cutie mark was for the tool, just like her name, but her talent extended to making her one of the most obsessive ponies Stonewall had ever met.  “He was supposed to be our second medical pony, thanks to his time in the Colt Scouts!  Now we’re completely devoid of medical ponies!”

“Huh?  What happened to Suture and Staples?”

“I don’t know.  Their PipBucks won’t give me a location for them.  In total, we’re missing seven ponies we should have, and we have almost two dozen more we’re not supposed to.  Someponies couldn’t say no to their poor cousins,” Level said scathingly.

Stonewall sighed again.  “Well, if none of them have medical training, reprogram the damn bot.  The only thing Arpeggio ever used it for was having it do the yardwork and drive his car around.”

Level blinked at him in surprise.  “That’s not a bad idea,” she said, mulling it over.  “I just might have somepony do that.”  She started down the left branch of the hall towards the elevator.  “Oh, and put Harpsichord in with First Strike and her foals, at least for now.  She can’t live in an apartment all by herself, after all.”

Nodding, the security pony rose back to his feet and retrieved the bag.  Only after he had it situated properly did he realize he had no idea where Knockout’s daughter was living.  Right as he stepped forward, the entire Stable trembled.  The fancy entrance plaque tilted slightly off-center, and he briefly considered straightening it, before deciding to wait and see how long it took before Level noticed instead.

“Welcome to Stable 92,” he muttered.  “Home for the next ten years.”  The fluorescent lights reflecting from the blank metal walls gave him no sympathy as he headed down below to find somepony to point him the right way.

===---===

Ten years, one month, three days after the bombs

Stonewall stood in the Overmare’s office, along with Flashbulb and Souffle.  “So,” Level said, almost too quiet to be heard.  “According to the main computer, the radiation levels outside have fallen enough to safely leave the Stable.”

Flashbulb instantly shook his head, his electric-blue mane whipping around.  “Safe?  The entire town was devastated by a balefire bomb only minutes after we all reached the Stable!  We can’t possibly be better off on the surface than we are down here.”

Level opened her mouth to respond, only to have Stonewall cut her off.  “As unusual as it is for me to agree with Flashbulb, I do in this instance.  If the city was hit by a bomb, the only sensors the computer still has access to are in the stairwell, and possibly the building.  The rest of the town could be in far worse shape.”  The electric unicorn quickly recovered from the shock of having the security pony on his side, and was nodding confidently.  “Which is why we need to organize a scouting party to the surface.”

Flashbulb kept nodding for two seconds until his brain caught up.  “Wait – go outside?  You just said it’s a bad idea!”

“No, I said it’s a bad idea to move out of the Stable without knowing conditions on the surface.”  Stonewall leaned a little closer.  “It might be safe.  It might be deadly.  There might be a greeting party from StableTec upstairs waiting, or a squad of Zebrican soldiers.”

Level stepped forward, causing the two arguing ponies to back off.  “How many ponies are you thinking of taking?”

Sighing, the head of security thought it over.  “Myself, Flashbulb, Gale, First Strike.  Maybe Alfalfa, if she can leave the new crops for a few days.”

“A few days?” Souffle asked.  “Surely it can’t take that long!”

Stonewall shook his head.  “If we want to be sure the surface is safe for us to move out, then we’ll need to go over the whole town.  Sure, that’s only talking about maybe five square miles, but we’ll have to walk the whole perimeter, survey the damage to the infrastructure of the town, chart repairs, take soil samples,” he trailed off for a moment.  “The longer we take, the better it is up above.  Won’t take more than an hour if the radiation levels on the street are still too high outside the door for the sensors.”

Flashbulb looked between the other three ponies.  “I understand why we can’t bring the Overmare along, but why do you want me there?  You hate me, and the feeling is mutual.”

“I don’t hate you, I think you’re an arrogant blowhard.  But you’re good at your job, and you know more about what we can repair or salvage on the surface than almost anypony else in the Stable.”  Stonewall stared at him for a moment.  “Plus, if there is danger, you’ll have to be nicer to me after I save your flank.”

Huffing angrily, Flashbulb stalked to the door.  “Fine.  I’ll collect some tools that I’ll need.  I assume we’ll open the Stable door in the morning?”

“Six sharp,” Stonewall confirmed.  Souffle waited until the unicorn left before walking over and nuzzling her husband.  “Don’t worry, darling.  I’ll be careful out there.  I’ll be back in time to see whether our little Cinder Block is getting a brother or a sister.”

Level moved back to her desk, horn glowing as she closed the door and turned on a monitor.  “There is something else you should know before you head up above,” she said.  The monitor flickered to life, displaying a graph with several different colored lines.  “I know the Stable was built larger than usual, but even with that, we’re approaching maximum capacity.  Not on water or power, but space.  If we can’t move out to the surface, we’re going to have to start either double-booking apartments, or repurposing other rooms in the Stable.”

Stonewall sighed again, rubbing his muzzle with one hoof.  “I thought this place was designed for six hundred ponies?”

His wife nodded.  “It was, but the problem is the design.  It was intended for six hundred ponies in nice, neat families – two parents and two or three foals per apartment, perfect at maximum capacity.  But we had a lot of families with only one foal, and most of them have now grown up and want to get their own apartments and start their own families.”  She glanced down at her own swollen belly.  “Or already have.  Which means we are getting closer to requiring food rations, too.”

“Alright, I’ll keep that in mind.  What happens if we can’t move out?”

Level and Souffle exchanged a nervous look.  “Then, anypony with cutie marks related to construction gets to be involved in carving out new rooms out of the bedrock.  There’s a natural fissure no more than two hundred feet outside the southern walls of the Stable.  We dig through to there, and dump the extra rock down, and we can have as much room as we need.”

“We just have to get power cables, water pipes, light fixtures, doors, and all of that set up.”  Stonewall blinked as he considered it.  “Ambitious.”

Level smiled.  “Unicorn magic backing earth pony ingenuity can do anything.  Wasn’t that the motto of the Ministry of Wartime Technology?”

“Heck if I know.  I’m just a bodyguard,” Stonewall said.  All three of them smirked before he nodded a farewell to the Overmare, walking out of her office with his wife.

===---===

The next morning, five ponies stood in front of the massive steel door, waiting.  Stonewall glanced down at his PipBuck, fighting the urge to scrape his hoof against the concrete.  Alfalfa looked ready to sit down on the bench and take a nap.  When the door finally opened at five minutes after six, they all turned to glare at Flashbulb.  “Sorry, just getting everything properly packed up,” he said unapologetically.

Without another word, Level reached up a hoof, pushing the lever for the Stable door.  Flashing lights and a siren came on, making everyone flicker red and yellow as the door rolled ponderously aside.  Alfalfa gasped in surprise, taking a small step backwards as the lights outside came on, illuminating the desiccated bodies of at least a dozen ponies in the antechamber outside the door.  “Sweet Celestia, what happened to them?”

“Radiation poisoning and starvation,” Stonewall said.  The bit of his shotgun was in front of his mouth, every moving part freshly cleaned and oiled after ten years sealed in his personal gun safe.

“Couldn’t we have let them in?” the farming pony asked.

“Nope,” Gale said.  Flexing her wings, she darted out through the upper part of the door, whirling past the stairs and back again.  “My EFS doesn’t read anyone.”

Everyone looked at Stonewall, who just stared at the bodies for a long moment before stepping forward.  He calmly shoved the skeletons aside with his hooves, holding his breath as he stepped through the clouds of dust.  His own EFS was there in his peripheral vision, showing tiny green lines for his companions.  “Time to see the surface,” he said, staring up the stairs.

His own pace was unwavering, but seven flights of stairs left the two unicorns and the other earth pony sweating and breathing hard by the time they reached the top.  The steel door was surprisingly still intact, though unlocked.  Splashes of long-dried blood decorated the walls here, where Knockout had made her last stand to protect the Stable and her family.  First Strike put one hoof on the edge of the dried brown stain where her mother had probably died, staring down at it while the others caught their breath.

“Right now, my PipBuck is reporting radiation levels.  One rad an hour or so,” Flashbulb said.  “Not immediately bad, but it will affect everyone in no more than a year, maybe two.”

Stonewall nodded, making a couple of hoof gestures.  First Strike levitated out a pair of pistols, stepping to the other side of the door.  They both turned to look at Flashbulb, who took two deep breaths before reaching out with his own telekinesis and shoving the door open with a bang.  More dust rose in the air as another group of pony skeletons flew across the room.  “Oh Luna,” he muttered, pressing one hoof to his mouth and swallowing several times.

Stonewall, First Strike, and Gale swept the next room quickly, the only other ponies long dead.  The others trotted out behind them, looking around the office.  Cubicle walls had decayed, being little more than cheap aluminum frames holding up particle board and cloth, but the steel desks were all still intact and rusted in place.  The gloom was thick, with no windows and no electric lights to brighten the room.  Stonewall moved towards the door he vaguely remembered leading towards the front of the building.  “I’ve got red,” he whispered.

Alfalfa and Flashbulb huddled together as the three security ponies converged on the door, trying to triangulate where the threat was.  The wind whistled outside the building, occasionally sending cold gusts down the halls as they snuck forward, their hoofsteps little more than soft clicks on the concrete floors.

At the doors to the lobby, they stopped, Stonewall peering around the doorframe.  The front doors were smashed in, the durable glass still in the battered and twisted doorframes.  Trash littered the lobby, and the thick smell of mold and rot filled the air.  Roaches the size of Stonewall’s head skittered around, hissing at each other and chewing on the luminescent mushrooms as the light of dawn softened the outside horizon.

That’s it?  Roaches?  They’re big, yeah, but I think the threat detection spell must be wacky.  Stonewall straightened up, turning back to say something to the others, when Gale sneezed.  Almost instantly, the roaches swarmed towards them, as everyone backed hurriedly away.  He stomped one underhoof, only then noticing the serrated, two-inch long mandibles that bracketed their mouth.  Oh, buck this.

He grabbed the bit of his shotgun, flicking the safety off and blasting away.  The first shell of buckshot shattered two of the roaches, causing a couple in the back to abandon the chase in favor of the easier meal.  Alfalfa screamed as one of them came out of the wall, tearing a chunk out of her hind leg before she could stomp it to death.  First Strike had already dropped her pistols, letting them swing from tether cables on her saddle, in favor of a pair of large knives.  Every time she sliced a roach in half, the two parts would continue to squirm and struggle, often lashing out at the other roaches.

When his EFS finally showed clear, Stonewall blinked at the time.  Only one minute?  Seemed like three times that long.  He cleared his throat.  “Everyone okay?”

“I’ll live, I think,” Alfalfa said, lifting her hoof so Gale could wrap a bandage around it.  “They don’t seem to be poisonous, but I’m going to be limping.”  She gingerly put weight back on the injured leg, wincing slightly.

“Alright.  Gale, head out to the street and take a good look around.  Tell me what you see,” he ordered.  Nodding, the older Pegasus trotted to the broken doors and leaped into the air, flapping hard to get above the level of the buildings.  The other four walked slower, and stepped out into the streets of a town they hadn’t seen in ten years.

The most noticeable thing at first was the dirt.  Caked filth coated every intact window and wall within sight.  Half the windows at street level were shattered, the shards long since ground down underhoof.  Rusted cans and scraps of plastic and paper lay in the streets.  Cars, broken down and stripped of anything useful, or simply burned in place, were scattered about in the streets and on the sidewalks.

The street signs were long since missing, but if Stonewall remembered, this was Eighth Street.  Arpeggio had died two blocks to his right, and city hall was a quarter mile to the left.  “Alright.  We’ll start with some buildings that would be rallying points for survivors.  City hall, the police station, the hospital.”

He was about to say more when an explosion rocked the air above them.  Gale’s body tumbled down to the street in chunks, her broken submachine gun smashing inches away from Flashbulb’s tail.  “What in Tartarus was that?” he cried out.

“My EFS has nothing,” First Strike said, taking a couple of steps up towards the east.

“Mine neither,” Stonewall said, stepping the other direction, towards Arpeggio’s body.  “Wait.  Southwest.  Two, four, I can’t count them.”

Alfalfa and Flashbulb were already backing towards the building and the safety of the Stable.  Stonewall covered their retreat, crouching behind the half-melted wreck of a car.  Ten seconds later, their attackers came into view.  Ponies, mostly earth ponies with a couple of unicorns.  All of them were dressed in scraps and rags, with leather and metal scraps sewn or riveted in place.  They all had numerous scars and injuries, and their leader had a necklace of bones dangling from her neck.  “Find that damn pegasus, and see if she had any friends!”

First Strike fired as they moved forward, her pistols almost blurring as S.A.T.S. helped her aim.  Six bullets tore into the leader, turning his head into a smear of grey and red.  They were still too far away for his buckshot to be effective, so Stonewall bided his time.  The ponies, obviously used to combat, ducked into cover, sprinting down the street at random, some of them firing back.  Of course, without PipBucks, their own shots were wildly inaccurate.

The unicorn fired again, taking down two more before having to duck down behind her cover.  Stonewall stepped out as an earth pony charged past him.  He ducked the clumsy knife swing, planting a solid kick right below her ribs before driving her to the ground.  His shotgun roared, swatting another crazed pony aside before a second shot opened her lungs to the outside air.

He dove back behind the car as a hail of bullets slammed into the wall behind him, brick fragments flying everywhere.  “Stable pony,” his attacker hissed, her forelegs still wrapped around her stomach.  Her knife was lost under the car somewhere, so he had discounted her as a threat.  “Going to get in there.  Then we can live the good life.  You can suffer and die!”

Her mouth lunged down towards her armor, yanking out a grenade.  He entered S.A.T.S. himself, taking a brief moment of nearly-frozen time to decide.  He could shoot her, but with her mouth already on the pin she could still blow him up if he wasn’t fast enough.  So instead, he targeted one shot on the grenade itself, before putting the next one on her head.  Activating the spell matrix, he experienced that peculiar slowing of time, where anypony with a PipBuck moved as fast as equinely possible.

The first shot sent the grenade flying, bouncing off the wall and somewhere on the other side of the burned wreck.  The second dissolved her muzzle from the eyes down to her neck, leaving her thrashing and gurgling.  Time returned to normal long enough for him to hear another attacker swear before the grenade exploded.

He glanced quickly at his EFS.  Two left.  Deciding to risk it, he backed up towards the shelter of a pair of newspaper boxes, blasting away at the car where another attacking pony cowered.  The bang, and the sudden burning sensation along his back made him realize that the boxes only gave him cover from one assailant.  Luckily for him, First Strike opened fire again, blowing off the horn of the unicorn who shot him.

“Get out of here, and we won’t kill you!” Stonewall shouted.  He couldn’t see the last attacking pony, but he heard a can rattling as it tumbled down the street.  As much as it pained him, he had no intention of letting this pony escape and tell others the Stable was still intact and occupied.  As hoofsteps suddenly clattered on the street, he lunged out of cover, entering S.A.T.S. and putting three blasts of buckshot into the unicorn attempting to flee.

One by one, they slammed into her, the third one breaking bone around her hock and sending her tumbling to the ground.  Before she could do more than scream in pain, six more bullets from First Strike blew holes up her body from flank to neck.

It took Stonewall a moment to come out of battle fugue.  “Clear,” he said.  “Ow, sweet Celestia that hurts!”  He looked at his back, seeing where the bullet had punched a neat hole in his armored uniform, right above his cutie mark.

“What do we do now?” First Strike asked, guns still levitating as she replaced their magazines.

He stared at the death and devastation in the street.  “We gather up their weapons.  Then we go back downstairs, lock the damn Stable door, and give it another try in ten years.  Maybe then we won’t have random groups of ponies slaughtering each other in the streets.”

She was silent as they checked each body, one by one, taking every weapon and bullet, and leaving everything else behind.  The leader’s necklace was made from what looked like Pegasus wing bones, and Stonewall ground each bone to powder underhoof before turning back.  “Do you really think that’ll happen?” First Strike asked.  She looked green at the thought of ponies taking flesh trophies from one another.

Sighing, he shook his head.  “Nope.”  Nothing else was said as they rejoined Alfalfa and Flashbulb at the building.  With solemn faces, they collected the pieces of Gale’s body, wrapping it in a plastic tarp meant to contain the soil samples.  Whispering an inaudible prayer over it, Stonewall shouldered the burden of his friend’s corpse, and descended back down to their Stable.  They sealed the door, turned off the lights in the entry chamber, and each pony silently vowed they would never set hoof back on the surface ever again.

===---===

War.  War never changes.

Nopony ever expected the end of the war to come the way it did, with fire falling from the sky.  Then again, nopony ever expected the war to begin.  It started as so many conflicts do, with ignorance and unintended offenses colliding, each side convinced they are more wronged than the other.  The common kindness is ignored.  Generosity is buried under hurt feelings and greed.  Honesty hides behind the solid wall of self-righteousness.

The end could have been foreseen, as it inched steadily onward with every failed diplomatic attempt, every death, and every casual insult towards the other side.  It came with a bang, but it was whispered for everypony to hear long before it happened.

War never changes, and perhaps neither do ponies.  Anger and hatred can live in any heart.  Jealousy and envy can spoil any relationship.  They are their own form of madness, and as Equestria’s last ruler knew, madness has its own momentum.

When the first balefire missiles were launched, the entire world dissolved into a chaotic swarm of robbers and criminals, every pony interested solely in seizing what little they could before life, as they knew it, was brought to a blazing halt.  The wealthy of Stable 92, those rich enough to build themselves a haven, barely escaped the riots in the Equestrian city of Roam, fleeing to the underground Stable protected by a small army of hired thugs while the poor and downtrodden tried to enact vengeance on them for the sorry state of the world.

Those events left the Stable dwellers so scarred that when the all-clear signal sounded, ten years later, a quick glance outside was all it took to convince them to stay in the Stable, waiting for further contact from StableTec before risking their lives to the wastelands.  And as the years slipped past, and only silence was heard, thoughts of the outside faded away, content to live in their self-contained paradise and forget the awful past.

But the rest of the world has not forgotten them.  And hatred has a legacy all its own…

==---===

StableTec Data Entry: Stable 92

Stable 92 was not originally on the planning list for Equestria, but was started instead as an independent project.  Multiple high-level staff from several companies affiliated with the Ministry of Wartime Technology learned about the Stable project, and pooled private resources to construct their own Stable.  Entry was originally set at one million bits per adult, and one half million per colt or filly.  Originally, only thirty-seven employees, half of them from Royal Equestrian Arms, started the project, but by the time Stable 92 was seized by royal decree, over four hundred fifty million bits had been poured into the construction project.

With the population of the Stable already self-selecting towards the ultra-wealthy, Vice-President Scootaloo added Stable 92 into the experimental list.  The intended population was five hundred seventeen ponies, to include two hundred forty eight unicorns, two hundred sixty six earth ponies, and three pegasi.  Of these, only forty-two were ponies either assigned by StableTec or sponsored by somepony else (indispensable family servants).  With a population nearly double that of a standard Stable, 92 was also significantly larger.  The Stable included: three residential levels, including a fully stocked medical clinic, four recreation rooms, two theaters, and a gourmet cafeteria; two industrial levels with a geothermal generator and taps to a natural aquifier, as well as several mechanical and electronic workshops capable of recycling and fabricating every part in the Stable; two agricultural levels, with both hydroponics and orchards; and a defensive armory including a shooting range.
> Chapter 1: Knock Knock
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rubble sat at the table, staring blankly down at her bowl of apple flakes.  Her eyes were half closed, and a lock of charcoal-colored mane slid down to block one half-lidded eye.  Right as her head started to tip forwards towards the bowl, a loud electronic screech filled the room.  “Gah!  I’m up, I’m up!” she said, sitting bolt upright and flailing around for the alarm clock.  Which, as her brain sped up enough to start recognizing her surroundings, was moving.  “Dang it, Dulcimer!”
 
Laughing, the unicorn sat down across the table, her own bowl of apple flakes settling down as the silver glow of magic faded away.  “Geez, Rubble.  You stayed up all night again, didn’t you?”
 
“Did not.”  The earth pony shoveled one spoonful of dry cereal into her mouth, crunching it and staring jealously at her friend’s bowl, wishing her own ration of milk hadn’t been used up yesterday.  “Only until midnight.”
 
Dulcimer shook her head, levitating a sweet, dripping spoon of cereal.  “At least you’re taking your job seriously,” she said around the mouthful.  “So is that new apartment block going to have your name on it?”
 
Rubble shook her head, crunching another bite of dry cereal.  “Nah.  I’m just laying out the power lines.  But that’s still important!”
 
“Speaking of important,” came a deeper voice, causing Rubble to turn around.  “Have you two seen Sparks?  The three of you have auxiliary security patrol starting tomorrow.”
 
“Sorry, dad,” Rubble groaned.  “Security again?  Didn’t we just do that last month?”
 
“It was four months ago,” Dulcimer said.  “But I think Sparks is already down in Electronics Lab Three, Mr. Block.  He skips breakfast when he’s in the middle of a project.”
 
“Thanks, kiddo.  I’ll see you two in the armory at nine, ok?”  With a professional smile plastered on his face, Cinder Block maneuvered his way back out of the cafeteria, nodding politely to numerous barely-awake ponies on his way.
 
Rubble groaned again, this time completing her faceplant into the full bowl.  “Dangit, why security?  It’s so boring.  All we ever do is wander around the Stable.  Hardly anyone gets into fights, there’s no irradiated monsters or zebra assassins breaking in to liven things up.”  Picking herself back up from the bowl, she snorted out an apple flake stuck to one nostril.  “Why couldn’t I have been alive fifty years ago?”
 
Dulcimer favored her friend with the look usually reserved for patients in straightjackets.  “You’re insane, you know that?  I’m quite happy life in the Stable’s not like episodes of Agent Muffin.”  The gray earth pony waved one hoof dismissively.  “Some days I don’t know why I’m friends with you.”
 
“Because no one else would help you try to build that ridiculous instrument on your cutie mark,” Rubble replied, grinning.  “Come on, I need to bring my work down to Shovel and let him know I’m back on security patrol.”
 
“I’ll catch up.  When I’m done with my delicious, milk-covered breakfast cereal,” Dulcimer taunted, getting another protesting groan from her friend.
 
Rubble trotted to the back of the cafeteria, dumping the uneaten food into the recycling chute.  It had been a hard lesson for the first generation to learn, that absolutely nothing could go to waste, but after forty-five years in the Stable, recycling was a part of daily life.  It was another thing that Rubble disliked about her life, the idea that nothing she ever got was really ‘new,’ everything had been used by somepony else at least once.  Like the PipBuck on her fetlock, which had been her grandstallion’s, Stonewall.
 
Sighing, she trotted down the halls, heading for one of the several stairwells connecting the levels.  Shovel was probably out in Expansion Two along with Blueprint, and they really hated her being late.  Oh, they appreciated her work well enough, but Rubble tended towards being a night owl instead of an early riser like the rest of the construction crew.
 
She rounded the corner to find them right as her PipBuck beeped eight o’clock.  “There you are,” Blueprint said.  “Stayed up all night doing your plans again?”
 
“Not all night,” Rubble protested.  “I did get a lot done, but, um.”  She stopped took a deep breath, and spat out the next words as fast as she could.  “Dad put me on security detail again.”
 
Shovel and Blueprint both chuckled.  “We know, he told us already.  Give me your work.  If you keep updating them when you’re off-shift, just have your PipBuck transfer them whenever you see me during patrol, alright?”  Shovel smiled, before reaching out a hoof to tousle Rubble’s mane.
 
“Geez, alright!  Hoofs off, auntie!”  Rubble backed away, shaking her head to try and get her mane back in some kind of order, and trying to ignore the snickering from the other members of the construction crew.  “Here’s the file.”  A few quick button presses on her PipBuck sent six hours of carefully detailed work over to Blueprint.
 
“Looks good.  Go do your week of security, and then come on back, alright?”  Blueprint grinned, holding out one hoof, which Rubble bumped after a moment.  “You’re still the best on the team for knowing when a section’s going to collapse, and we’ll need that to start up Expansion Three.”
 
Nodding, the gray earth pony backed away.  “Yeah, it’s only a week, right?  No problem.”  Walking back down the hallway, she eventually rejoined the pre-war section of the Stable, all metal walls and duller, scuffed surfaces.  She sat down for a moment in the hallway, looking back at her cutie mark.  “What kind of dumb cutie mark is a pile of rocks, anyway?” she muttered to herself.  With another heavy sigh, she resumed her travel across the Stable.
 
Dulcimer and Sparks were already waiting in the armory, looking over the assortment of guns laid out on the counter.  The blue unicorn sent a disdainful look in her direction before levitating a beam pistol next to his head.  “Mr. Block?  Where’s the ammo?”
 
Cinder Block stuck his head out of the back office, where the really impressive guns were stored.  “It’s on the range.  Everyone ready?”  Dulcimer was already fiddling with a submachine gun, so Rubble quickly grabbed a battle saddle with a rifle.  Of course, she picked that model because it had a bayonet.  She knew just how poor a shot she was.  “Good.  Out to the range.”
 
The shooting range was the only part of the original Stable not covered in gleaming metal.  Instead they had simply bored a mostly-square path into the rock, packed in some of the extra dirt, and left it alone.  Paper targets, already rather tattered, swung back and forth as the door opened.  They took their spots behind the counter, waiting for Cinder to unlock the ammunition lockers and pass out their ordinance.  “Alright, you get only one clip each, so make every shot count,” he told the trio as he set magazines on the chipped plastic barrier.
 
Taking a deep breath, Rubble stared downrange at her paper target.  The outlines of a zebra soldier were still discernible, though the head was nearly obliterated by now.  She took the bit in her mouth and squeezed the trigger.  Sparks’ target whipped back and forth as her bullet hit it instead.  He glared at her for a moment before focusing, his beam pistol charring a pencil-sized hole in the paper.  Dulcimer’s submachine gun chattered away, blasting a neat line of holes through the zebra’s flank.
 
Grimacing, Rubble corrected her stance and tongued the trigger again.  A massive boom shuddered through the entire Stable, causing the lights to go out, and knocking all four of them to the floor.  A moment later, both Dulcimer and Sparks horns glowed with light.  “What in Tartarus was that?” Sparks muttered.
 
Without a word, Cinder was at the lockers, pulling out more rounds by feel.  “Take these.  That came from above us.  Check the Stable door, then do a patrol sweep starting from the top level.  I’ll meet you up there.  Go!”  Rubble almost fumbled the extra ammo for her rifle before getting it in place, and raced after the others, pausing only to grab a baton.
 
The Stable was dark, the only light coming from unicorns.  Dulcimer was shoving her way through the crowd, the scrawnier Sparks following close behind her.  Both of their weapons hovered above their heads, the magical glow shedding more light.  In a matter of moments, Rubble was in front of them, her broader shoulders shoving through the crowds and shouting at everyone to remain calm.
 
They went up the stairs at a steady trot, stepping out onto the almost unused top floor of the Stable.  Aside from the door, and the storerooms of surface supplies, there wasn’t anything up here, so it should have been silent.  Instead, a multitude of pony voices were shouting and screaming, all of it jumbling together to be completely nonsensical.  An earth pony stepped around the corner, wearing tattered clothing dotted with metal scraps, and paused.  “For Luna!” she suddenly screamed, and charged forward, a cleaver clenched in her teeth.
 
Rubble fired on instinct, and for once, she hit the target.  The rifle round smashed through the pony’s sternum, sending her crashing to the ground, the gleaming knife spinning across the floor until it stopped inches from her hoof.  “We’re being attacked,” Dulcimer said, her voice a disbelieving monotone.  “How could anypony get in here?”
 
Her question went unanswered as three more ponies rounded the corner, all of them wielding improvised clubs.  They charged at the three security ponies, who opened fire right back.  This time, both of Rubble’s shots missed, and she had to settle for impaling the charging stallion on her bayonet, accepting a painful whack across the back as he gurgled out his last breath.
 
More invaders were charging in, and Rubble darted forward, sticking to one side of the hallway to give her partners a clear line of fire.  With her baton in her mouth, and the bayonet strapped to the rifle, she blocked and countered and stabbed and ducked, all of it in multi-colored shadows cast by unicorn magic.  Somewhere after six, she lost count of how many of these bloodthirsty invaders had fallen to her, and it came as a surprise when the hallway in front of her was suddenly empty of living opponents.
 
Behind her, Sparks screamed, and she turned to see one last unicorn mare slicing wildly at him with a serrated knife.  Without stopping to think about it, Rubble hurled the baton, hitting the attacker right in the tail hole, and distracting her long enough for Dulcimer to shove the submachine gun against her neck and hold down the trigger.  Five rounds turned the unicorn’s neck into ground pony before it clicked on empty.  “I’m out of bullets!” Dulcimer shouted, backing up and dropping her gun.
 
Silence ruled the hallway for a moment before the door to the stairs opened.  Sparks nearly took off Cinder Block’s mane, the beam passing less than an inch above his head.  “Sweet Celestia,” he muttered, staring at the carnage in the hallway.  “What happened here?”
 
Sparks opened his mouth to talk, but the only thing that came up was bile as he fell to his knees.  Rubble swallowed heavily, fighting the urge to empty her own stomach.  “I don’t know, dad.  We came up here, and these ponies were all shouting and attacking us.  They all look half-starved and diseased.”  She paled as another thought struck her.  “Could we get contaminated by them?”
 
“Get ahold of yourself!” Cinder said.  “Check the Stable door.”  Rubble and Dulcimer both nodded, trying not to breathe too deeply, and started picking their way forward over the bodies of the dead.  At the T-junction, they paused to gather their courage before stepping into the open.
 
They could barely make out the Stable door.  The massive steel gear had been blown sideways, warped by the explosives used to breach the entry.  The reinforced wall on one side was also cratered and cracked, leaving an opening wide enough to fit three ponies side by side.  Weapons ready, they strode forward towards the door, letting Dulcimer’s silver magelight illuminate their path.  From the door, the outside hallway faded into darkness..  More death reigned here, ponies too close to the explosives now splattered and charred, pieces thrown back all the way to the stairs.
 
“Well?” Cinder called to them.
 
“No more attackers here,” Rubble said.
 
“I hear more gunfire,” Dulcimer replied.  “From up the stairs.”
 
Two sets of hoofsteps came from behind them as Sparks and Cinder moved up to the door to join them.  “Alright.  We’ll-“  He stopped as the lights flickered and most of them came back on.  “Right.  You three, go really carefully up those stairs.  Make sure there’s not another group of ponies all set to attack us.  If there is, get back here.  We can hold them off here.”  He started pulling out more ammunition for them, the 9mm rounds glowing as Dulcimer slotted them into her empty clips.
 
Rubble looked at the stairs, then back to her father.  Her back ached, and she was feeling the pain of several shallow cuts on her forelegs from the combat.  He gave her a reassuring smile, and tossed his mane towards the saddle shotgun he wore.  “I’ll be right here.  More ponies are on their way.”
 
The three of them nervously stepped through the shattered door of their home and towards the stairs.  “You know how I said I wanted to see the surface?” Rubble whispered.  “I think I’ve changed my mind.”  Dulcimer just nodded.
 
Moving up the steps, they paused at every other landing, listening intently.  The gunfire was sporadic, and as they grew closer to the surface it came interlaced with screams and shouts, still somewhat unintelligible.  The room at the top had a giant hole battered through a side wall, either by explosives or angry ponies with bludgeons.  The combat seemed to be coming from the rear of the building, so they picked their way through the rubble, carefully climbing over collapsed sections until they were up on the second floor.
 
Rubble knew they weren’t exactly being quiet, what with all the loose concrete underhoof, but the tan mare shooting out the window somehow hadn’t noticed them coming.  Maybe their hoofsteps were covered by the loose bits still falling throughout the building, courtesy of the explosion?  Either way, she stopped about a pace away, leveling her bayonet at the mystery pony’s back.  “Lower the gun, nice and slow.”
 
The unicorn froze, the orange glow around her gun remaining, but she very slowly turned her head to stare at them before lowering the rifle to the ground.  “You don’t look like a fanatic,” she said.
 
“Neither do you, but better safe than sorry.  Dulce?”  Rubble gave a slight flick towards the gun with one hoof, and Dulcimer’s silver glow grabbed the rifle and yanked it away.  Sparks was already at the window, looking out on the combat below.  “See anything?” Rubble asked.
 
“More crazed ponies,” he said.  “Whoever the other ponies are, they’re smarter and better armed.”  He backed away from the window frame to look at them.  “I don’t think we have time to conduct an interrogation with them shooting up the street outside.”
 
“The better armed ponies are Roamers,” the tan unicorn said.  “Like me.  Those other ponies are fanatics.  They go on about Luna, and how this is their divine duty, and nonsense like that.  They’ve been real interested in this building for the last two months, but this is the biggest group we’ve seen yet.”  She raised one hoof from the floor, gesturing to the Stable barding they all wore.  “Though if any of us knew there was a Stable under here, maybe we would have too.”
 
Rubble stepped forward, raising a threatening hoof and causing the unicorn to shy away.  “If you’d blown open the Stable, you’d be dead right now,” she said.  The two stood and stared at each other until another trio of gunshots broke the silence.  Rubble stepped back, moving over towards the windows and peering out.  She took in the street, staring at the half-collapsed apartment building across the way.  “Hey, Dulce, you think you could pull down that billboard?”
 
Sparks glared at her.  “We all know I’m better with magic than she is,” he grumbled.  As the combat continued to rage below, one side of the faded, bullet-scarred advertisement glowed with his yellow magic.  It twisted, leaning towards them, and bricks started to tumble away as gravity took hold.  The sign, along with several hundred pounds of building, crashed down in the midst of the attacking ponies.  Several of them were killed outright, while others were merely injured, leaving them easy pickings for the other side.
 
“I just hope that was the right thing to do,” Rubble said.  “Now, what do we do with her?”
 
Swallowing heavily, the unicorn remained silent as they argued her fate.  “You can’t just mean to kill her,” Sparks said.  “She’s disarmed!”
 
A nullifier ring floated out of Dulcimer’s barding.  “We could take her back.  Interrogate her.”
 
“If these townspeople are friendly, we’ll just anger them,” Sparks continued, his eyes flashing with anger, “and there’s no telling if that’s actually all of them down there!”
 
“It’s not,” the unicorn said.
 
“Shut up!” all three Stable ponies chorused in ragged unison.
 
Rubble put one hoof to her forehead.  “I’ll wager, for the moment, that they’re friendly.  We can’t just let her go yet, since she know where we came from.”  She paused, and turned back towards the unicorn.  “What the hay is your name, anyway?”
 
“Brass.  I’m the one that fixed up all those guns and keep the town stocked with ammo.”  She shrugged.  “It’s a living.”
 
“Whatever,” Dulcimer said.  “I’m going to take her rifle and help gun down the rest of those nutjobs.”  Rubble paled a little at the thought of more death, but nodded.  “Sparks, you want to help?”
 
His mouth opened and closed twice before he heard a scream of pain from outside.  “I … yes.”  Without another word, he moved to the window, his beam pistol floating off to one side as he fired down at the fanatics.
 
“So.  Stable, huh?  Lucky you,” Brass said, lowering herself to the floor.  “These ponies seemed to know you were down there.  Suppose you’re all going to come out now?”
 
Rubble just stared at her, silent as the stone around them, until Brass started shifting in nervousness.  “Not my call,” she finally said.  “Guess it’ll depend on how friendly your town is.”  She glanced briefly at the window as Dulcimer gave a quiet cheer at landing a difficult shot.  “And how many more of them are out there.”
 
“Fair enough.”  Brass laid her head down on crossed forelegs, ears flicking with each thud of her rifle and zark of the beam pistol.  “Hope you’ve got more food down there than we have up here.  Right now, it looks to be an awfully lean spring until the crops come in.  Even if we have less mouths to feed now.”
 
Wincing at the implication, Rubble shook her head.  “I don’t know.  We’re not exactly swimming in luxury down there.”
 
“Still safer than up here,” Brass said, sending a flat look at the window.  Try as she might, the earth pony couldn’t think of a counter argument to that.
 
The borrowed rifle fired one last time before Dulcimer withdrew from the window.  “They’re all down, either dead or unconscious.  I’m not going to shoot a completely helpless pony on her say-so.”  Now empty, the rifle was carefully strapped to her barding.  “So?”
 
Rubble gave her an annoyed glance.  “Why do I have to decide?  You’re both older than me.”
 
“Because your dad is in charge of security, so you have more experience with this than I do,” Dulcimer said.
 
“More – what?  My experience ends at helping Mai Tai stumble back to her room!”  Rubble paced back and forth, seething.  “Fine.  We’ll bring her downstairs, let dad decide.  But that means someone has to watch at the top of the stairs and keep everypony else out.”
 
Brass didn’t protest or fight as the earth pony slipped a restraining hobble over her forelegs, following them willingly enough as they picked their way back through the building.  “You kids sure you know what you’re doing?” she asked as they paused at the top of the stairs.  Rubble’s answered with a not particularly gentle shove.  “Fine, fine.  Just don’t make me make you regret this,” she muttered, picking her way down the chipped concrete steps.
 
At the bottom, they could hear muffled voices coming from inside.  “Dad?” Rubble called out.  “I’m coming back, with a … guest.  Dulce and Sparks are staying at the top of the stairs for the moment.”  The voices inside fell silent, so she guided the unicorn prisoner across the bodies of the invaders.
 
Inside, she groaned mentally.  Yes, Cinder Block was there, along with the kindly, wrinkled face of First Strike.  But beside them was the sourpuss face of their Overmare, Penny Pincher.  “Why are they up there?  Get them down here, so we can fix this!”    One hoof waved in the direction of the door.
 
Rubble looked at the massive steel plug.  Whatever those ponies had to breach the door had left it warped, bending the yard-thick metal barrier like a cheap aluminum washer.  “Unless we have an industrial forge we can move up here, that’s not going to happen,” Rubble muttered.
 
“And bringing one of those … those monsters here in chains might be a good start,” Penny continued, oblivious to the way Brass’ ears flattened or the open disgust of Rubble.  “But it’s only going to tempt more of them down here!”
 
“It only took them four tries to get in,” Brass said.  Penny opened her mouth to continue, only to have First Strike shove a hoof in it.  “There’s a village up there.  Well, a small one, anyway.  Roam never got hit with an actual balefire bomb, just a couple of regular missiles, so we can grow crops a little.  These fanatics,” she said, nudging one of the dead bodies with a hobbled hoof, “have attacked us three times before.  Smaller numbers, yeah.  They were coming here, and we were just in their way.  Last time, one of them must have found the way down here and made it back, because there were more of them than there were of us.”
 
Penny mumbled something around the hoof in her mouth, and after a moment of glaring it was removed.  “How many villagers are we talking about?”
 
“Can’t be sure without counting the dead,” Brass replied evenly, meeting the angry stare with a nonchalant look of her own.  “But there were fifty-seven of us, until those ponies showed up just before dawn.”
 
The Overmare considered this in silence.  “Rubble, how certain are you that the door cannot be replaced?  Even temporarily?”  Her voice had that slow cadence that meant she was busy calculating every Stable resource down to the nearest fraction of an ounce.
 
Rubble glanced back at the door.  “We might – and I stress might – be able to shove it back into place and put some shoring bars to hold it up.  But whatever they used wrecked the wall, the opening mechanism, and warped the door, too.  We’d need a brand new door, and I don’t think StableTec is going to ship us one.”
 
Nodding slowly, Penny looked down at her PipBuck and clicked through a couple of updates.  She looked up and stared at Brass for a brief moment.  “Take the restraints off her, Cinder, and bring her and your daughter to my office.  I need to collect a few other ponies and I’ll meet you there.”
 
Father and daughter exchanged a nervous look, but Rubble nodded and pulled out the key to the hobbles.  Penny was already walking away, horn glowing as she gave orders through her PipBuck to the Stable residents.
 
“Is that a good thing?  Or is she planning to off me personally?” Brass asked.
 
“We’ll let you know,” Cinder answered.  “Follow me.”
 
They took a slower, slightly circuitous route that avoided the main pony gathering places, but there were still too many ponies in the halls for Rubble to feel safe.  Almost universally, everyone they passed stopped and stared, and either started blurting out questions or demands to her father, or else immediately ran off to add more fuel to the rumor engine.  Sure, being on security detail sucked – all your friends avoided you until your week was over – but aside from Cinder, First Strike, and a few other permanent staff, everypony knew what it was like.
 
At the Overmare’s office, Boiler was already waiting.  Rubble didn’t have the opportunity to work with the head of her division very often, but she knew him well enough to read the look of terror on his face.  “Who’s that?” he asked as they walked up.
 
“Surface pony,” Cinder said.
 
“The Stable’s open?” Boiler asked in clear confusion.

Hold on, if he doesn’t know about the attack, then what has him so frightened? Rubble thought, fighting the urge to start scraping her hooves on the floor.  She was a professional, not some teen full of nervous energy.  The sound of a hoof scraping on the floor echoed through hallway, and all three turned to stare at her.  “Sorry,” she murmured.  So much for my professionalism, she thought bitterly as a blush tinted her face pink.
 
She was saved from further embarrassment as Penny rounded the corner at a brisk trot, Casserole at her side.  Without saying a word, the Overmare stepped around them, unlocking her office and leading everyone inside.  Taking her seat behind the horseshoe-shaped desk, she gestured the others to be seated.  “I think a quick round of introductions is in order.  I’m Penny Pincher, the Overmare.  The white earth pony there is Boiler, the green unicorn here is Casserole, and the two gray ponies are Rubble and her father Cinder Block.  Please, introduce yourself and tell us about the surface.”  Each pony gave a small polite nod as their name was spoken, before giving their full attention to the newcomer.
 
The tan unicorn glanced around.  “My name is Brass.  I maintain the guns and make new ammunition for the village up above.  I also hunt radroaches, wild dogs, and any other dangerous pests that rear their heads around Roam.”  She glanced around the room again before taking a deep breath and focusing on Penny.
 
“Outside, the whole world above … it’s in bad shape.  Raiders and bandits roam the wastes.  The skies have been overcast for longer than I’ve been alive.  Civilization is rare, though there are some worthwhile merchants.  We’ve been living here for the last five winters, just barely making enough farming to get by.
 
“Those fanatics, well, they’re new.  First batch of them showed up a year ago or so.  Snuck in during the night, slaughtered ol’ Naval Orange and his fillies before anypony knew they were there.  Each time they show up, it’s in slightly larger numbers.  Wasn’t sure what they wanted until a month ago.  They could have taken out half the town, but they were more eager to get past us and in here.  Just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to kill somepony while they were at it.”
 
Brass swallowed heavily, closing her eyes as she framed the next sentence.  “A year ago, there was near a hundred of us.  We were starting to get something close to civilization again.  There ain’t anypony left who can remember back before the war, and the bombs.  Most of us came from families who somehow survived on the surface.  A couple of us have parents who came out of Stable 98.”  Her eyes opened again, staring at Penny.  “We want to live in peace.”
 
They sat in silence long enough for Rubble to start scratching her mane, fighting the urge to fidget.  When the Overmare finally spoke, she nearly jumped out of her chair.  “Boiler, please tell everyone what you told me via PipBuck.”
 
The head of maintenance and construction still shot an uncharitable look at the surface pony.  “That blast damaged a lot of crucial systems.  We have workarounds for right now, but,” he paused to draw in a shaking breath, “the bottom line is that in six months, we won’t have power, water, or air.”  Casserole gasped in shock, and Cinder’s eyes went wide.  Rubble’s eyes were probably looking more than a little shocky right then, but the front of the Overmare’s desk wasn’t quite shiny enough to be certain.  “If we can shut down portions of the Stable, we can extend that a little bit.”
 
“Abandon the expansions?” Cinder asked softly.
 
“Actually, no.  We wired those up ourselves, and to my surprise, our standards are mostly higher than StableTec.  There’s random shorts all over the Stable, but the important part is the generator.  That blast warped some pieces we just can’t replace.  So long as the generator is running, it’s going to get worse.  The more power we’re drawing, the worse it’s going to get.  Once the power goes, so does our water and food.”  Boiler shrugged as he finished his report.
 
“How, um, how many ponies are down here?” Brass asked.
 
“Five hundred ninety three,” Casserole said.  “All of us have some experience with useful skills, but we’re not used to violence.  Is all of Equestria that bad?”
 
The surface pony stared at her, causing the mild mannered cook to start squirming in fear.  “I’ve lived through thirty-two winters.  I don’t know how many ponies I’ve had to kill, but I know it’s over a hundred.  Maybe two.”  She turned back to face the Overmare.  “It’s kill or be killed.”
 
“That’s not a skill most of us have,” Rubble said.
 
“You must have gotten pretty good at it,” Brass pointed out.  “That entryway had plenty of them killed by what looked like that bayonet of yours.”
 
Rubble looked down at the blade.  Blood from the combat had dried, and was starting to flake off in rusty-brown pieces.  Blood and other bodily fluids were splattered all over her coat and covered her hooves almost completely.  Her stomach rebelled in an instant, sending her tumbling from the chair, dry-heaving bile onto the floor.
 
A comforting hoof rested on her shoulder, and she looked up into sympathetic brown eyes.  “It gets easier, but never too easy.”
 
Nodding her thanks, Rubble lifted herself back onto shaking legs.  “Sorry, Penny,” she whispered.
 
“It’s alright,” the Overmare said, though her face showed her doubt more openly.  “The important question, then, is whether the surface here in Roam could support everyone from the Stable along with the villagers already here?”
 
Brass considered it seriously, face scrunched up as she tried to figure out the ability of the town.  “The surface?  Maybe.  It would take work, a lot of work, but yeah.  But … soon as six hundred ponies show up?  With Stable equipment and fancier clothes?  Every bandit, raider, and slaver in a hundred miles is going to hoof it in this direction.”  She fell silent for a moment.  “That’s what happened to 98.”
 
“You mentioned merchants,” Cinder said.  “Where do they travel?”
 
“Well, the last three groups have come from the south.  Somewhere around Fillydelphia, maybe south of it, heading up towards Manehattan.”  Brass looked somber as she considered it.  “But none of them have come back since we started seeing those fanatics.”
 
“Very well,” Penny said.  “Rubble, since you, Sparks, and Dulcimer are the only ponies who have currently seen combat, you’re also the only ponies I can trust with this.  Go south, find us somewhere safe, find us a way to get there.  And come back to lead us to a new home.”  Her voice cracked on the last few words.
 
“Not immediately,” Cinder protested.  “No, Overmare, this is a security matter.  If we’re going to send them out into the unknown, then by Celestia I’m going to make sure they’re properly equipped and armed for the journey.  They need at least a day to recover, and I need at least a day to talk to some of these other townsponies about what they need to expect.”
 
Penny’s mouth opened and closed several times, but she finally nodded.  “Cinder, draft more ponies, and have them take over guarding the stairs.  You can personally escort Brass back to the surface and set a new security policy.”  Her face fell, eyes gazing blankly at the monitors in her desk.  “Dismissed.  Boiler, please stay, so we can discuss energy rationing.”
 
With a protective hoof on her shoulder, Cinder guided his daughter out of the room.  “Go back to the apartment, get a shower,” he said.  “Get … whatever rest you can, alright?”  She nodded wordlessly, turning away and plodding wearily towards the stairs.  “Brass, if you’ll follow me?”
 
She passed dozens of ponies in the halls, ignoring their questions and oblivious to the wide-eyed stares at her bloody visage.  Reaching her apartment, she stumbled inside, slamming the door closed on her aunt Shovel.  The rifle and barding were dropped carelessly, abandoned where they slid off her body.  The PipBuck followed it as she stepped into the shower.  Icy cold water pounded into her back, slowly warming up as she stood there, pink runoff pooling around her hooves.
 
Shuddering, she grabbed for the shampoo, lathering furiously and scrubbing at every spot and stain.  They washed away almost instantly, but the water still ran two hours later as Rubble continued to scrub, with skin raw and eyes leaking a constant stream of tears.
> Chapter 2: The First Step
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dulcimer climbed the rickety stairs, emerging on the roof of the former Royal Equestrian Arms building, looking around.  Sure enough, Rubble was laying on her back, staring up at the gray clouds filling the sky, hints of orange and yellow beginning to bleed into the sky from the east.  “Didn’t think you’d be up here,” Dulcimer said.

“I thought maybe I should try and get used to the great outdoors.  Sitting up here and staring at the horizon is almost dizzying.”  She rolled back onto her hooves and walked slowly to one crumbling rooftop edge.  “It’s like you can see straight out into eternity if you stare hard enough.”

Dulcimer looked out towards the east, where the world slowly lit up under the filtered sunlight, her mind fighting to find the familiar walls.  She stumbled, her balance gone, and squeezed her eyes tightly closed.  “Yeah, sure.  I’m not sure I want to get used to it.”

“Me neither,” Rubble admitted.  “Celestia, I was such a stupid kid two days ago.  Oh yeah, adventures in the great outdoors, zebra terror agents and mutant monsters, super weapons and magic spells and heroism.”  She spat over the edge.

“Hey, two days ago it was just entertainment.  Don’t be so hard on yourself.”  Focusing hard on the cracked cement, Dulcimer stood up the walked back to the stairs down.  “Sparks should be up any minute.  Are we ready to go?”

Nodding, the earth pony joined her, picking their way down the stairs to the ground floor and the makeshift security post.  They greeted a grumpy Mai Tai and stopped at the top of the metal stairs, hearing someone tromping their way up.

“Morning, kids,” Cinder Block said, setting down a saddlebag.  “I brought you some more supplies and ammunition, along with some trade goods people volunteered.”  Sparks peeked out from behind him, laboriously setting down his own bag.  “Divvy it up between you, and be careful out there.”

“We will, dad,” Rubble said, giving him a hug with hooves that only trembled a little bit.

Dulcimer gave him a hug too, taking half of Sparks’ supplies into her own bags.  “So, where should we go first?”

Cinder turned on his PipBuck, transferring them a map file.  “According to Brass, the trading caravans have all come from somewhere south of Fillydelphia.  The city itself is still basically an uninhabitable irradiated ruin, but somewhere between Filly and Baltimare is something of civilization.  Calls itself the Confederacy.  Head there first.  Hopefully, you can negotiate with them to send guards to help us move.”

Sparks looked at the map.  “That’s over two hundred miles away!”

Cinder looked away, staring out a gap in the wall towards the smoky column where the bodies of the dead fanatics still smoldered.  “You have a better idea, I’m all ears.”  The unicorn winced, ears flattening against his skull.  “Yeah, me neither.  Even with everything we have, we can’t turn this town into a fort, not forever.  We need more friends than just the villagers up here in Roam.”

“Go out into the giant, irradiated wilderness, and make friends,” Rubble said.  “Sure, no problem.”

“That’s the spirit, my girl.”  He tousled her mane and grinned.  “If you run into trouble, or there’s something else you need, come on back.  Just remember, we’re counting on you.”

“Maybe if we’re lucky, you can find us a new Stable door,” Mai Tai muttered from her side of the barricade.

“Alright dad.  We won’t let you down.”  Rubble shrugged on the large saddlebag over her battle saddle, checked her bayonet, and turned towards the front doors of the building.  “Into the valley of death rode the six hundred,” she muttered under her breath.

Sparks tsked.  “Can we keep the melancholy to a minimum?  We haven’t even gotten half a mile away from home yet.”

They strode through the crumbling remains of downtown, stopping frequently to stare into collapsed storefronts, peer into toppled trashcans, and generally investigate the ruin of what had been their grandparents’ home.  As the urban center gave way to the houses and parks of the suburbs, pre-war architecture was even rarer.  The survivors had torn down whatever couldn’t be fixed, torn up the once manicured lawns to plant their struggling gardens and orchards.  Houses, in pairs or trios, sat surrounded by makeshift walls put together piece by piece out of crashed sky carriages and delivery trucks.

The residents mostly ignored the three Stable ponies aside from an occasional wave as they walked past the farms, and finally out into the wilderness beyond.  The highway still ran off towards the south, brown and yellow weeds forcing their way through cracks in the asphalt.  To either side of the road lay woods, the trees mostly dead and blackened, bare limbs clawing at the oppressive gray sky.

“Alright, I take it back,” Sparks said, breaking their silence.  “Now is the time for melancholy.”

Rubble snorted.  “It could be worse, I suppose.  Nothing’s on fire, or shooting at us.”

She blinked as a pair of red bars popped into her vision, slightly off to the right from the road.  “You just had to say something, didn’t you,” Dulcimer teased.  They crept to the top of the next hill, hoofsteps sounding loud enough to alert the farmers miles behind them.  In the ditch off to the side were a pair of wrinkled pink creatures digging in the dirt.  “Well, that’s not so bad.”

Hearing the words, both of them turned, sniffing at the air before charging up the hill.  Rubble leaped out in front of her friends, letting the lead beast charge right onto her bayonet, vicious rodent incisors snapping impotently inches from her muzzle as its blood poured over the road and her hooves.  A pair of zarks from Sparks’ beam pistol finished off the second one.

“Stable ponies one, creepy mutant wildlife zero,” Rubble declared.  Shaking off the corpse of the beast, they rolled them into the ditch and continued on their way.  As the day grew closer towards noon, the breeze picked up, the chill spring wind sending shivers through their bodies.

They stopped for lunch at a Donut Joe’s just off the highway, brushing rubble off the chairs and a table and pulling out packages of salad.  “At least we’ll have fresh food for a while,” Sparks said before faceplanting into his lunch, crunching loudly on a slice of cucumber.

“Yeah.  Dad said that the villagers even eat meat to supplement their crops.”  Rubble’s expression matched her friends’.  “I mean, I guess it’s not impossible for us to eat meat, but still, it sounds disgusting.”  She chomped on a celery stick and idly kicked a hoof under the table.

“Hey, quit playing hoofsie,” Dulcimer complained.

Rubble stared at her for a moment, then over at Sparks.  “Dulce, my hoof didn’t even come close to you.”

The unicorn paled, then kicked again.  A cockroach the size of her head came tumbling out from under the table, hissing in pain.  A whole chorus of hissing joined in, and their vision lit up with red bars from the direction of the swinging kitchen door.  “Oh, horseapples,” Rubble said.

Her baton came out as a horde of cockroaches flooded out from the kitchen, some of them bursting through the crumbling drywall.  The submachine gun chattered away to her left, and Sparks leapt up on a table to slice them in half with his pistol.  Rubble just settled for swinging the baton rapidly back and forth, jabbing with her bayonet where the opportunity presented itself.

In only a minute or two, the insect menace was vanquished.  The only casualties were their unfinished salads, now covered in splatters of cockroach innards.  “Suddenly, I’m not feeling particularly hungry,” Sparks said, shoving his food onto the floor.

Nodding in agreement, Rubble gave the place a last once-over.  Feeling nervous, she trotted over to the kitchen door and nudged it open with a hoof, letting the squeaky hinge bring out any last stragglers.  When nothing responded, she ducked inside, wrinkling her nose at the sour stench of the roach hive, and picked up two bottles of Sparkle Cola on the top shelf.

“Well, that was exciting,” she said.  “Let’s keep going.”

The afternoon stretched out almost exactly like the morning, only slightly warmer as the bright patch of clouds slowly slid towards the horizon on their right.  Not wanting to camp in the open, they pressed on until it had almost vanished, finally finding a gas station along the side of the highway.  The roof had almost completely collapsed, but a few minutes with PipBuck lights and a pair of cracked roof timbers was all Rubble needed to shore it up long enough to serve as shelter.

None too soon, either, as rain began to slowly patter down from the clouds.  They crowded into the building, huddling together for warmth and staring out into the nearly complete darkness.

----

Rubble awakened in the darkness, a hoof pressed over her mouth.  She fought the urge to twitch as she brought up one of her own, following it back to its owner, guessing from the size that Sparks had awakened her.  She was about to whisper a question when a crunch outside made her twitch in surprise.

A blink was all it took to turn her EFS back on.  A cluster of red bars filled her vision outside, and she leaned forward to peer past the half-collapsed doorframe as best she could.  To her surprise, they were rather easy to find, as two of the ponies were carrying torches, and at least two more were unicorns with weapons levitating.

“They were here, they were here,” one of them cried out.  “Luna, reveal them so we might send them to your embrace!”

Oh no, more fanatics, Rubble thought.  But how did they find us out here?  She turned her head to whisper something to Sparks, only to find yet another group of red bars off to the side of the building.

Reaching over, she used one hoof to turn his head to both groups of bars.  Now that she knew they were there, she could hear the quiet clink and scrape as this new group of ponies crept around the side of the building towards the fanatics.  “Remember, take out the stallions and try not to kill any of the mares.  They’re worth more.”  She shuddered, hearing this group’s leader mutter to his companions.

Two more minutes of agonizing waiting crept by, one long second after another, as the fanatics milled about under the highway underpass.  Their light was faint enough, but they appeared to be ransacking a campsite.  The raiders, or slavers, or whoever the more vicious ponies were, crept across the mostly barren shoulder of the farming road towards the fanatics.

When she thought they were out of sight, Rubble nudged both of her companions.  “We’ve got a good chance here,” she said.

“Chance to get away?” Sparks asked.  “Because I agree.  We’re lucky those other ponies weren’t home when we got here, or they would have been capturing us.”

“No, a chance to take out both groups.  We stay back in the darkness and shoot at them,” Rubble said.  “As long as you two don’t use your horns, they won’t know that anyone else is shooting at them.  Both fanatics and those evil ponies will think it’s just the other side.”

“Are you insane?” Sparks asked.

Dulcimer shook her head.  “I don’t like it, but I think she’s right.  Whichever group survives is still going to want to kill us, or enslave us.”  She pulled out her submachine gun and set it at her hooves.  “But I’m not as good shooting with my mouth.”

“You’re still better than she is,” Sparks muttered.  “Fine.  Just hope we can kill them all without having to get too close.”

Rubble nodded.  “I’m going to sneak just outside the doors.  In case they do find us, that way I can hold them off.”

One slow step after another, she crawled outside, every shift of her muscles expecting one of the raiders to turn around.  As she reached the outside and stepped sideways, they struck.  Three fanatics fell immediately to the gunfire, but they still outnumbered the smaller group of raiders.  But the raiders were more used to this kind of combat, remaining hidden in the scrub brush and the darkness, moving just enough with each shot to keep the fanatics from tracking the muzzle flashes.

Rubble took several deep breaths, carefully lining up on one of the red bars that marked a raider.  She couldn’t see him now, but that hardly mattered.  She bit down on the trigger, feeling the gun kick as the red bar vanished.    Two more fanatics died under gunfire before one of them thrust a machete through the neck of another raider.

With a zark, one of the raiders screamed as her eyeball flashboiled in her head.  “Behind us!” one of them screamed, ducking and cursing as a submachine gun burst wounded him.  Rubble took aim again, grazing a fanatic with a shotgun right after he blew the leg off a raider.  The next blast of buckshot spattered the building around her and rattled off her barding.

Trapped between the fanatics and the three Stable ponies, the last raider died cursing Luna’s name.  The shovel wielding fanatic who bashed his head in choked on his own blood as a beam shot tore open his throat.  The last three fanatics seemed to have at least some grasp of self-preservation as they ducked behind the concrete pillars of the overpass, firing blindly into the darkness.

Rubble crept forward, holding her fire and letting the fanatics waste their ammunition firing at her companions.  Alright, she wasn’t the quietest pony around, but they were distracted.  Reaching the body of one of the fanatics, she pulled the machete out of his mouth with a grimace and picked it up.  Ten more steps.  Then five.  Two.

Restraining the urge to scream in challenge, she lunged around the side of the pillar, thrusting grimly with the machete.  The unfortunate fanatic tried to turn, catching the blade evenly between the ribs and dropping the gun as her chest filled with blood.  Her body jerked on the blade as the other fanatic turned and opened fire.  Rubble pulled back, dropping the body and the machete as she cowered behind the pillar herself, then a chatter of bullets and a thump heralded the end of the combat.

She glanced around, seeing Dulcimer had come charging up the other side.  “Thanks,” Rubble said, bending over to pull out the blade and wipe it clean.  “I suppose we ought to salvage all the guns, right?”

“Along with anything else,” Sparks said.  He stared at the body of the raider leader, clad in metal spikes and leather straps.  “Celestia, I don’t even want to search him with telekinesis, let alone touch him.”

“Yeah.  Let’s just search the campsite and take all the weapons.  We’ll make one last sweep in the morning when the sun is up for anything we missed.”  Rubble trotted over towards the overturned truck where the raiders had dwelled, picking out a pair of fading healing potions from beneath an overturned chair.

The next morning, they gave one last quick sweep to pick up dropped ammunition, and walked back up the onramp to the highway.  There was a sniper nest in a burned out car, complete with a rifle all but falling apart, and with their looting complete they turned again towards the south.  Fillydelphia was still nearly eighty miles away.  Every day they spent out here was one more day for the fanatics to regroup and attack their Stable, so with heavy hearts and determined hooves they trotted down the road towards what they hoped would be home.
> Chapter 3: Bridge over Burning Water
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	The relative quiet of their morning was not to last, as they discovered.  “Damnit, that’s the third time!” Dulcimer complained.

“Third time of what?” Sparks asked, peering through a grimy, cracked window into a toppled bus.

The unicorn waved one hoof off to the left of the road.  “Out there, somewhere.  I keep having red bars flashing on my EFS, and then vanishing.”

Rubble tried to tell herself it was the chill morning breeze that made her step closer to her friend.  “I don’t suppose the highway could be haunted, right?”

Sparks snorted in amusement.  “Ghosts are just as fictional as modern-day zebra agents or giant mutant monsters.”  He trailed off and stared into the distance.  “Alright, now I’m seeing them too.  But there’s a logical explanation.  Wild animals on the edge of the PipBuck’s range or something.”

“What’s the logical explanation for roaches the size of your head, smarty pants?” Dulcimer asked, floating out her submachine gun to hover next to her.

He scowled, still staring at the yellow tufts of grass dotting the hillside.  “That local did say something about animals, right?  The wasteland isn’t all roving packs of crazy marauding ponies?”

Rubble snorted, climbing up onto the peeling hulk of a carriage one hoof at a time.  “She did say her job was keeping things like wild dogs and rats away from the farms.  I’m hoping that being the gunsmith is just a coincidence.”  She squinted off into the distance, barely able to see the top of the hill from the car.  Short of somehow getting up onto the bus, she wasn’t going to get a better view.

“Well, what can you see?” Dulcimer demanded.

“A whole lot of nothing.”  Disgruntled, Rubble hopped down to the asphalt, hooves cracking off a few more small pieces.  “Let’s keep moving.  Either they’ll attack, or they won’t.”

“If they do attack, will you actually manage to hit one of them?” Sparks muttered.  She didn’t dignify that with a response, just striding forward at an effortless pace that left the smaller unicorn panting for breath in just half a mile.

Before noon, they stopped at the top of a hill.  The slope below them was gentle and mostly straight, as the road ran down towards the remnants of a village.  Most of the buildings were crumbling or collapsed, save two directly on the other side of the intact bridge.  What worried them far more was the massive barricade, built of carriages and trucks, that spanned the road between those intact buildings.

“There’s somepony down there,” Dulcimer said.  “Walking along the inside of the wall.”

Sparks nodded, but gestured to the river.  “Doesn’t look like we can exactly go around, though.  Those banks look awfully steep, and that water is probably freezing.”

Rubble shrugged; the buildings were too far away for her to make out more than the slightly fuzzy outlines.  “Let’s hope they’re friendly.  Don’t think it’s fanatics, they don’t seem the wall-building type.”

Picking their way down the road, they stopped several times to stare at the wall.  The pink pony inside clearly spotted them when the pacing stopped, another orange pony popping up on the wall briefly before vanishing again.  Reaching the bridge, they stopped one more time to look into the depths.

Technically, the water below was only a stream, too minor to even be mentioned on their pre-Stable maps.  But the water looked deep enough to cover Sparks, if not Rubble, and chunks of fallen debris turned it into churning rapids.  “There’s a gap between the bridge and the buildings,” Dulcimer pointed out.  “We could run for it.”

“While they’re shooting at us?” Sparks asked.

“It’s a valid second option, unless you feel like climbing,” she replied.

“Ho there!  If you’re crossing our bridge, there’s a toll,” the pink stallion called out.  “Fifty caps each!”

Rubble looked blankly at her companions.  “Caps?  What, like bottle caps?”

“Duh!  Where’ve you been, living under a rock?” The pony leaned forward slightly as he shouted at them, the barrels of the rifles on his battle saddle tilting up towards the sky.

“A building, actually,” Sparks said.  A moment later, Rubble’s bag glowed yellow as his magic pulled out several of the firearms they’d collected the previous night.  “We don’t have any caps, but we do have this selection of weaponry.”

Turning his head, the pink gatekeeper spoke with whoever was on the other side.  “Sure, we can work out a trade.  Come on across.”

Even though his guns weren’t pointed in their direction, the three Stable ponies still felt nervous crossing the wide open expanse.  It looked like every vehicle crashed on the bridge had been somehow dragged away to become part of the imposing gate.  An entire pockmarked side of a delivery truck creaked open as they approached, and the pink stallion hopped down, gesturing them inside.

Two other ponies, a blue and blond earth mare as large as Rubble, and a three-legged tan unicorn mare, waited.  “Alright, let’s see the goods,” the pink one said.  Sparks floated out two of the guns, arguing back and forth, and finally adding the sharpened shovel to the exchange in return for a weak healing potion.  “So, where you ponies from?”

“North,” Rubble said, avoiding the question.

The unicorn snickered.  “She got you there, Double.  Relax, he’s just trying to find out if you’re going to be repeat customers.  The last batch of traders left two months ago, and he was hoping you were them.”

“Were they headed up towards Roam?” Sparks asked.  “Because we spoke to some of the townsponies there.  There’s some new group of raiders terrorizing the whole countryside north of there.”

“Ah, damnit,” Double said, smacking a hoof into the ground.  “And she was so into me, too!”

The larger earth pony just shook her head, shoving the gate closed.  “Don’t mind my little brother, he’s just desperate for someone other than his siblings to talk to.”

“Shut up, Bubble,” the pink one hissed.  “You’re ruining my reputation.”

“You have a reputation?” Rubble asked, frowning as two of the three bridgekeepers burst out laughing.  “So, who is everypony?”

The unicorn grinned.  “Double, Bubble, and Toil.  We maintain Hopeless Bridge here for the traders going north to the various little towns like Roam, and for the scavengers coming south to try their hoof at raiding the glowing rubble of Filly.”  Toil gave a small bow after her name.

Sparks followed the introductions with his eyes.  “Shouldn’t there be a fourth one of you?”

They grew silent, Bubble staring morosely at the concrete beneath her hooves.  “We don’t talk about him anymore,” Double said.  “So, will you ponies be coming back this way?  Trying your luck in Filly?”

“Not intentionally.  We heard about someplace called the Confederacy?”  Rubble tried to make it sound curious and hopeful, rather than desperate.

“We’ve heard of them.  Most of the traders have started going down there, if they can avoid the Ripper gang,” Toil said.  “If we ever can’t run this place, we might head that way ourselves.”

“You might want to,” Dulcimer said.  “Those raiders?  Roam’s lost half their ponies in the last six months, and they just keep coming.”

All three bridgekeepers exchanged another worried look.  “Well, we’ll keep it in mind.  If you do come back, see us again.  Better here than trying to cross the Narrows.”  Seeing the confused look on their faces, Bubble grinned.  “Some ponies tried making a bridge downstream a couple miles, back before we came in and cleared out the roaches here.  Something else has taken up residence around there, dunno what, but nopony goes near it anymore.”

“We’ll remember that,” Rubble said.  “Thanks for the hospitality.  It’s not what we were expecting after the last ponies we ran into.”

Double shrugged.  “It’s a lot easier for us to just trade with everypony who comes through.  Safer, too.  Usually.”  He pointed down the street, where another truck-side gate waited.  “You can head out that way.  Good luck, and don’t get too close to the craters in Fillydelphia.”  He grinned, sitting back on his hind legs and waving his forehooves in the air.  “They say it’s still haunted by the glowing ghosts of the dead!”

With an unamused glare, Sparks led the way to the gate, waiting for Rubble to push it open and allow them back out into the wastes.

---===---

An hour later, they paused at the top of a hill, Dulcimer glaring off to the left of the road.  “Back again?” Rubble asked.

“Yeah.  I’m starting to wonder if my PipBuck is glitching or something.”  She rapped the metal casing with her other hoof, wincing as it bounced off her arm.

“Oh, for Celestia, don’t do that,” Sparks complained.  Bending down, he pulled out a cable and connected their PipBucks together, magically clicking the little buttons.  “No, it seems to be working fine.”

“So I suppose next you’ll tell me that orchard over there is haunted?” Dulcimer complained.

Sparks opened his mouth to reply, only to stop as Rubble stepped towards the side of the road, trigger in her mouth.  “Thought I saw something,” she mumbled around the grip.  As Sparks opened his mouth again, a lonesome howl trailed out from the trees.  “We need to find shelter.  Now.”

Rubble smacked the trigger mechanism out of her face, already striding down the road.  Both unicorns started cantering to keep up, horns alight as they prepared their spells.  Half a mile went by, then a mile, and aside from the shifting number of red bars pacing them along the left and an occasional ethereal howl, no sign emerged of their pursuers.

The smaller unicorn was the first one to start flagging, panting harshly.  Sparks’ smaller legs and body just didn’t leave him with the same reserves as Dulcimer, let alone the earth pony stamina of Rubble.  His horn faded, all his concentration needed just to keep up with their pace.  Before long, Dulcimer was weakening too, breaths coming in sharp gasps.  Reluctantly, they all slowed down, trying to catch their breath.

As though waiting for this, the first of the animals appeared on the edge of the wild woods, slinking through a bush and staring at them with glittering, hungry eyes.  The dog growled, baring teeth still stained with the blood of whatever victim it had last eaten.

The crack of a gunshot echoed back from the trees.  Rubble’s bullet missed, shredding several leaves above the canine’s head before it ducked back into the concealing foliage.  Feeling slightly better, they continued walking, still recovering.

But the animals refused to leave them alone.  No more than ten minutes passed before the next howl went out, now echoed from the right side of the road as well.  And just to make matters worse, the sun was setting, the bright patch of clouds almost completely blocked by the skeletal trees to the west.

“We need to get somewhere more defendable than this,” Rubble said, craning her neck as they reached the next hill.  “It looks like there’s a building or something at the bottom of the hill!”

Dulcimer likewise stretched up, trying to see to the bottom.  “Gas station,” she said between gasps.  Think it’s safe?”

“A wall to our back is an improvement over now,” Rubble replied, yanking on her gun trigger.  A spray of blood decorated the nearest black tree as she winged one of the dogs.  For a moment, their tormentors ducked back into the trees, but the volume of their barks and howls increased.  Sparks stumbled over a pothole, and she quickly stepped over to support him.

“It’s a mile away,” Dulcimer protested, though she kept up her tired, staggering trot.  Rubble didn’t respond, focused on keeping Sparks up and moving.

By the time the building came in sight, the braver dogs were ducking out of the trees and nipping at their hooves, despite the ill-aimed kicks and better aimed bayonet slashes.  They raced past the rust-streaked fuel tank outside the station, backing towards the long-destroyed double doors as the pack of dogs spilled out into the twilight.

The leader of the pack was a huge dog, more closely resembling a wolf.  Actually, for all I know about the outdoors, it is a wolf, Rubble thought desperately.  Her teeth were aching on the machete handle, and her bayonet dripped a steady tempo of canine blood.  Leaning against one doorframe, Sparks had his laser pistol above his head, trembling as he fought to remain standing.  Dulcimer kept her own gun in her mouth, too tired to trust her magic to hold it.

Pacing forward around the edge of the tank, the alpha’s basso growl make all their hackles rise with the implicit threat.  “You want some of this?   Come get it!” Sparks shouted, voice warbling.  His first two shots came nowhere near the target, but with the two dozen dogs in the back, none of them completely missed.  Dulcimer also bit down on her trigger, the spray of bullets narrowly missing the alpha and punching several holes in the fuel tank.  Greasy, rancid liquid came pouring out of the holes, spraying several of the lead animals and momentarily breaking up their ranks until they realized it was not an attack.

At least, until Sparks fired again.  The unicorn had stopped, taken a deep breath and closed his eyes, and finally used his S.A.T.S. to target the huge alpha dog.  Who was covered in still fairly flammable fuel, which the blazing beam of light instantly ignited.  With fuel still pouring from the giant tank, it was a matter of seconds before every fuel-coated dog was ablaze.

Then there was a massive sucking WHUMP of air as the fire raced up the small torrents of fuel and into the tank.  Air rushed towards the blaze as it spread to the trees around the edge of the rest stop clearing, the deadwood igniting almost immediately.  All three ponies were knocked to their knees, Sparks’ pistol clattering against the chipped concrete as he collapsed.  A moment later, one piece of the metal frame came crashing down, completing the destruction of the gas station roof.

Rubble shook her head, trying to clear the ringing out of her ears.  The concrete and asphalt of the gas station was a small barrier, assuming the broken pumps weren’t still full of fuel themselves.  A sudden gust of wind filled her vision and her lungs with black smoke, and she coughed bitterly, trying to shield her nose with her fetlock.

“We have to get out of here!” she screamed.  With some effort, she got one forehoof under Sparks, forcing him up to his knees.  His eyes were glassy and unfocused, which was doubly bad because unlike her, he’d actually paid attention in Medbot’s first aid class.

“Why?  The sprinklers will put out the fire soon enough,” Dulcimer shouted back.

Getting her head and neck under Sparks’ barrel, Rubble lifted him onto her back, braced between her saddlebags and her neck.  Turning around, she smacked the other mare across the muzzle.  Even pulling her blow, it was almost enough to knock Dulcimer over.  “We’re outside, you stupid twit!  There are no sprinklers!”

Shaking her head and wincing, Dulcimer stared at the wall of fire.  Already jumping from tree to tree, almost out of sight around the edge of the gas station, it would cut off their only avenue of escape in minutes or less.  Nodding, she staggered around the building.  One dog whimpered as it tried to crawl away on legs showing exposed bone, oblivious to their presence.  Rubble didn’t even spare the effort to kick it as they rushed past.

Half an hour later, the road rose over a drainage tunnel, the small creek full of a few inches of water.  They crawled inside its shelter, shoving aside garbage and natural detritus to clear their way until they were encased in darkness.  For hours, they dozed, half-awake in fear as they listened to the roar and crackle of the flames outside.

---===---

Somewhere before dawn, Rubble lifted her head.  The dim circle of the tunnel exit had completely vanished, the light from the fire extinguished.  She shivered suddenly, feeling cold water along her hooves and pooling against her barrel.  “Crap.  Wake up.  Wake up!”

She turned on her PipBuck light, nudging the other two into groaning consciousness.  Ash-choked water swirled past them all, minor pieces of debris breaking free of the thick mud coating the bottom of the tunnel.  “Come on, it’s raining or something.  The water’s rising, so we need to get out of here!”

Sparks rose on shaking legs, taking two steps towards the exit they had crawled out of, only to stop and back up.  “Not that way.  The water’s deeper.  We need to get upstream.”  With no room to turn around, Rubble started backing upstream, peering awkwardly under her barrel and over her shoulders.  But she didn’t see the obstruction until running into it.

Dulcimer dropped to the bottom of the tunnel, shining her light further forward.  “It’s blocked.  There’s still a storm grate intact here.”  She wormed forward a little bit, her horn scraping Rubble’s worn armor.  “Can you get any higher?”

Grumbling, Rubble tried to spread her legs further, pressing against the curved sides of the pipe, at least enough for her friend to get past her.    The unicorn squinted against the rushing water, half obscured with compressed trash and plant debris.  “What if I kick it?”

“I don’t think it’s rusted enough to budge, so let’s make that plan B,” Dulce muttered.  One of her multitools floated out of her bags, the plier jaws poking and prodding at the wire covering.  “What about getting out the other way?”

“Not unless you’ve suddenly developed the ability to breathe underwater,” Sparks said.  Taking a few steps back that way, he shone his light down.  “And it’s getting higher.  The other entrance is completely submerged by now.”

A metallic screech filled the air as one corner of the grate peeled away, letting in a rush of freezing water with it.  Teeth chattering, Dulcimer’s hold on the tool remained steady as she scraped at the thin bars of the grate, wearing them down until she could break their fragile hold.  But with each one freed, the water level rose a little faster, until every broken strand was submerged.

“Alright, enough, I’m kicking the damn thing free,” Rubble said.  Backing up, she nudged the shivering unicorn forward, and braced herself.  It was cold enough she had to lock her knees to keep them from shaking, and then she lashed out with a full force kick.

The sudden deluge of water nearly bowled her over, and it did succeed in knocking Sparks off his hooves.  He rose a moment later, spluttering and coughing out water, yellow mane plastered over his eyes.  Bracing again against the water lapping against her barrel, she kicked it again, feeling the sharp twang as part of it snapped away.

Peering over her shoulder, she could see the grate still holding on by a pair of strands at the very top, the force of the water shoving it into the tunnel.  With the water up to her neck, almost covering both wide-eyed unicorns, she backed up.  With a deep breath she ducked under the surface, coming back up almost immediately and scrubbing at her eyes with a hoof.

The second time, her eyes remained tightly shut as she crouched under the water and backed under the grate.  She could feel the broken wire ends scratching at her armor, but somehow none of them caught on her saddlebag as she stood up, bending the metal.  The complaints echoed weirdly in the water, seemingly coming from below her as she forced it to the ceiling.

Breaking the surface, she took one last deep breath before forcing herself backwards against the weight of the water.  The force of the flow had slowed down now, with the tunnel full, and in only six agonizing steps, her rear hooves sank into mud.  She lunged towards the side, clawing at the rocks and the mud to rise up, sucking in lungfuls of sweet air.

It took several seconds before she could look around, searching for her friends.  On the other side of the stream was Sparks, the PipBuck light still glowing brightly along with his horn as he swept the water.  He was saying something, but the constant susurrus of raindrops drowned it out.  Somewhere at the bottom of the pool of water was a glowing spark, and Rubble’s water-logged brain identified it as Dulcimer’s PipBuck.

With another deep breath, she lunged back into the pool, and she stayed under for as long as her lungs would hold her before thrashing back to the surface.  No, now she’s on my left.  I got all turned around!  She ducked under again, and despite sinking under the weight of her equipment, met with no success the second time, emerging to find the light somewhere behind her.

Flailing her way back to the closer bank, she hurriedly started going through everything in her bags.  Guns, ammo, food, random electronic components – pill bottles!  Dumping the tiny collection of drugs into an empty Nuka-Cola bottle for the moment, she chopped off the bottoms of the plastic containers with her machete.  A hurriedly-cut strip from her jumpsuit served to hold them onto her face, tied tight enough to make her eye sockets ache, and she dived back in.  But this time, she could see.

Going towards the light was simple enough, and she bit down on Dulcimer’s collar with a burst of bubbles.  The mud sucked at her hooves as she fought towards the surface, dragging her friend along behind her.  Spots were dancing in her eyes before she reached the surface, but the moment her head broke water, the yellow glow of Sparks’ magic enveloped her, tugging her forward  and onto the soggy grass.

She lay there, breathing heavily, the temporary goggles flung aside as one unicorn fought to save the life of the other.  Head downhill, water leaked out of Dulcimer’s mouth as Sparks shocked her chest with his recharging spell.  On the third one, she convulsed, coughing madly and flailing against the rain and even the pull of gravity.  He rolled her onto her side, and Rubble moved close enough to stroke the sodden mane as she vomited.

They lay there, huddled in the rain, until wan, cloud-blocked sunlight started to finally brighten the sky to the east.  Leaning heavily on her larger friend, Dulcimer staggered to the top of the rise and back onto the road.  Limping forward, they stopped long enough to collect the hastily scattered belongings and take shelter in the still-standing half of a farmhouse.  Forlorn and weary, they cleared out the skeletal remains of the previous inhabitants, and curled up together on the remains of a bed to sleep away the morning.  The soft patter of rain lulled them into dreamless sleep.
> Chapter 4: Totally Rad, Baby
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	They slept until noon, waking as cloud-filtered sunlight came down through cracks in the roof.  The rain stopped at some point during their sleep, and they awoke with shivering muscles from the damp.  Leaving Dulcimer on the bed, the other two collected dead wood from outside, setting the wet branches aside and reducing a bookshelf to scraps.  One of the raider knives was put to use carving out a circle of tattered carpet, letting them safely start their fire on the concrete foundation below.

Coughing fitfully, Dulcimer spent the rest of the day dozing on and off.  “Just promise me that I’m never going to come that close to drowning again,” she begged at one point, eyes bloodshot and hollow from the memory.

Aside from a radroach crawling out of one wall, attracted by the light from the fire, their night passed uneventfully.  Feeling more refreshed, they stepped outside into another gloomy spring morning, staring down the road to the south.  Somehow the fire had indeed been halted, either by the sloping walls of the creek or by the rain, and the view of dead orchards were broken here and there by fields long since gone fallow.

They stopped for lunch in an abandoned bus, taking advantage of the shelter from the wind.  “How far are we?” Dulcimer asked.  One hoof scrubbed at the dark circles under her eyes.

“Thanks to our crazy run from the dogs, and then the fire, we’re actually about halfway to Fillydelphia now,” Sparks said, mumbling around his last daisy and sunflower sandwich.  Swallowing a bite, he gestured towards the back of the bus.  “Another forty miles and the road splits.  Part of the highway circles around the city, and the rest goes in.  We know they got hit by balefire bombs, so we can’t go too far inside the city without risking radiation poisoning.”

“I think we got enough of that swimming in that damn water,” Rubble said.  “But we can’t stick too far on the outside either.  That Ripper gang the bridge ponies mentioned operates somewhere around there.”

Both unicorns looked at her.  “How do you figure?  We didn’t exactly stop to interrogate them,” Sparks said.  His sandwich wrapper crumpled up in his magic and flew forwards, bouncing off the cracked plastic trashcan and down the stairs.  “Missed.”

“Well, it just goes to figure.  They can’t take the radiation any more than we can, so they’ll be outside the danger area.  But not too far, they need to be able to rob ponies trying to loot the ruins.”  Rubble shrugged, crumpling her own wrapper in a hoof.

“I suppose that makes sense.  So why should we risk the radiation?” Sparks asked.

“No, I think I get it,” Dulcimer said.  “We have some anti rad medicine, even if Rubble cut up the bottles.  When we see signs of the gang, we head into the radiation area just far enough to get past them.  Plus maybe we can find some good stuff along the way.”  She shrugged as they turned to stare at her.  “I’m just saying, I don’t think this Confederacy is going to help us for free.”

Rubble sighed.  “No, probably not.  But not everyone in the Wasteland can be bad.  Right?”  She glanced between her friends.  Sparks looked doubtful, while Dulcimer just snorted.  “Alright fine, maybe they can, but I’m still holding out hope.”  Her wrapper went flying towards the trash can, knocking it loose and sending it tumbling down the stairs.

It took her a moment to identify what was underneath it, but her hissed warning did make her friends freeze.  Crouching down as close to the floor as she could, she crept forward slowly through the dust.  A convenient advertisement for an amusement park somewhere was bitten by her teeth, and she inched it forward until she could slip the corner into a tiny gap on the top of the mine.  Only then did she relax, slumping to the floor before dragging the explosive to her and tearing off a strip to insert properly.

“OK, now that you’re done being all secret agent like, what is that?” Dulcimer asked, peering over the seat.

One gray hoof lifted it up.  “This is an anti-personnel mine.  Dad has a dozen or so in the armory at home.  And a trainer one.  I got pretty good at disarming the practice one after a while.”  After double-checking the paper strip, she slid the mine into her saddlebags, setting her inventory management spell to keep it separate.

“Well, that’s handy, I suppose,” Sparks said, sliding out of his seat with an uneasy look.  “Just try not to blow yourself up, right?”

She glared at him for a moment before stomping off the bus.  Squinting up at the bright spot in the clouds, she started walking, smiling as her friends bickered over which one was getting off the bus first.

---===---

They spent that night in an overturned delivery trailer, the inside filled with half-moldy mattresses and comfortable enough.  An hour after dawn, they stopped on the top of a hill, clambering over a fallen sign and the rusted mass of a dozen wrecked vehicles.

Below them to the east lay the ruins of Fillydelphia.  Skyscrapers clawed at the sky, one of them leaning drunkenly against a neighboring building.  On one part of the city a roller coaster stretched above the apartment buildings around it.  Three craters, still glowing from the power of the bombs, lit up the haze surrounding the city with an eldritch green light, and several columns of smoke rose from different portions of the urban sprawl.

“Well.  Suddenly I’m glad Gramps decided to take that promotion out of Filly,” Dulcimer said, wide eyes fixed on one of the craters.  “I think over there were the main factories.”  Her shaking hoof pointed towards the crater nearest the amusement park.

Rubble just nodded silently and started climbing down the multi vehicle wreck.  Glancing down the other road, she led them towards the city.  Before they reached the suburbs, they were forced to detour, as the highway had crumbled into weed-choked piles of cement blocks and rusting vehicles.  The suburbs were filled with the quiet sounds of insects and animals, all of them apparently hostile to ponykind.

Their path was also slowed by Dulcimer’s compulsive need to walk through every house and store that looked even remotely structurally sound.  By noon, they had covered only a mile through the suburbs, starting to close in on the denser buildings of the city, and yet had found only a hooffull of caps, two bottles of soda, and three rounds of ammunition too small for any of their weapons.

A little grumpy, Rubble sat down on a bus stop bench, the metal worn and rusted.  She pulled out the last of her fresh food from the Stable, and stared at the slightly wrinkled carrot and potato a little wistfully.  “I thought we’d get there before we ran out of food,” she said.

Sparks sat on the curb, leaning against a bullet-pocked mailbox and pulling out his own lunch.  “I think everyone expected we’d be able to find more food along the way.”  He stared around, the wide boulevard seemingly empty except for them and several overly amorous mosquitoes.

Dulcimer opened her mouth to say something, frowning and leaning back and forth.  “There’s someone over there in that apartment building,” she said, slipping her own lunch back into her bags.

Turning towards the tiny shopping building, Rubble shrugged.  “I don’t see anything on mine.”

Sparks frowned, taking a few steps towards it while chewing on his apple.  “No, she’s right.”  He glanced back at her.  “I think I should network our PipBucks together.  You know, so we can all see what everyone else does.  In case of situations like this.”

With food stowed again and weapons ready, they moved towards the building.  A grocery store, the entire front collapsed, took up the opposite corner from their bus station.  Attached to it along one wall was a florist, then a repair shop with a small parking lot.  Halfway across the intersection the yellow bar winked into view for Rubble and they spread out slightly.

The florist door was cracked open, the interior covered in dead, brown, crumbling plants, clearly empty.  Dulcimer motioned towards the repair shop.  The small door facing the street was blocked from the inside by a set of metal shelves, glass shattered out of the door.  Rubble crept around the corner, watching the yellow bar sliding aside in her vision.  The rolling door was blocked partway open by a skycycle, and she paused at the entrance, trying to let her eyes adjust to the light.

A small whimper echoed through the garage, making it difficult to pinpoint.  One hoof at a time, she crawled under the door, pausing as a faint red light emerged under one of the cars.  A slip of paper took care of that problem, and the rusty bear trap just past it was easy to disarm by tossing an empty tin can at it.  The yellow bar was straight in front of her, past the peeling door labeled ‘Office.’

There was another bear trap, this one closed around a clump of pony tail hair, but the door was partially open.  She nudged it a little bit, the almost pitch black retreating slightly.  A pair of eyes glinted in the darkness, but since they still weren’t hostile, Rubble nudged her PipBuck.  Harsh yellow light flooded the office, making the other pony flinch back as far as she was able.

“Sparks!  We need a medic in here!”  Rubble stepped forward, stopping as the trapped pony yanked out a knife in her mouth, waving it around weakly.  “Look, calm down, I’m going to open that trap and my friend can heal you up.”  She took another step forward, watching the scrawny yellow mare waver on her three good legs, the knife still firm between her teeth.  One more step put her within reach of the bear trap, clearly too strong for the unfortunate scavenger to open.

Bracing her hooves between the jagged teeth, she strained for a moment, pushing against the spring and bending down the jaws until they clicked back into place.  Yanking her injured leg back, the other mare fell onto her haunches, sagging to the floor.

Sparks was already there, his horn glowing as he examined the wound.  “This isn’t good.  It’s already infected, and badly.  Have you been here long?”  The mare opened her mouth, but no sounds emerged.  He looked over, flinching at the sight of her tongue before she snapped her mouth closed.  “Alright.  I’m going to cast a healing spell, but it’s not powerful enough to fix all this damage.”

She sighed as the spell took effect, shrinking the inflamed red lines creeping up and down her leg from the wound.  “Alright, so I’m guessing you can’t talk?” Sparks asked, rewarded with a somber head shake.  “Is there anywhere safe around here?  Somewhere with medical supplies?  I might be able to treat that, but not without better stuff than I can find here.”

The yellow mare didn’t answer at first, retrieving her knife and sliding it back into a leg sheath.  Rising gingerly onto her three good legs, she started limping towards the door.  “Look, if this place is far away, maybe I should carry you,” Rubble said, getting an annoyed look.

Their path took them through another mile and a half of city in a winding path, avoiding piles where businesses and apartment buildings had collapsed to block the roads, stopping several times to allow the poor mare to rest.  When they turned the final corner she sped up, towards a warehouse building.  Two ponies were on the roof near the entrance, pointing rifles in their direction, and the warehouse walls had been reinforced by stacks of cars pushed up against the building.

Reaching the door, she rapped out a pattern, and it opened to reveal bulky stallion the color of bricks, no taller than a colt.  “Juni!  You’re alive!”  He took her in a hug, releasing immediately as she hissed in pain.

“She needs medical care,” Sparks said, stepping forward.  “We found her stuck in a bear trap, and it’s been long enough for infection to set in.  I might be able to treat it, if you have the supplies.”

Before the stallion could respond, Juni sat back on her haunches and made several gestures with her uninjured leg.  The fierce scowl didn’t abate, but it did fade somewhat.  “My name’s Brickhouse.  Thank you for saving my sister.  I don’t know what we can give you for supplies, but if it’ll help, we’ll do what we can.”

“The name’s Sparks, and these are Dulcimer and Rubble,” the unicorn said, gesturing to his companions.  “The leg needs to be treated soon.  If it goes too long, she might die.”

Brickhouse led them inside.  It was dim, light coming in streams from broken windows near the ceiling.  A dozen ponies stopped what they were doing, all looking over at the newcomers and the return of Juni.  Halfway down the warehouse they stopped near a collection of mattresses behind a homemade still.  “Here, Juni, lay down.  So what do you need?”

Sparks waved one hoof in a hold on gesture, kneeling down beside her again and casting another diagnostic spell.  They waited in silence, broken only by the quiet hoofsteps of the other scavengers coming closer to watch and listen.

His blue head drooped as the yellow glow of his magic faded away.  “It’s worse than I thought,” he said quietly.  “If the infection was just in the muscle tissue, it’d be curable, though dangerous.  But it’s gotten into her bone.”  He looked up, shaking his head to clear his mane out of his eyes.  “I have to amputate, from the fetlock down.  If I’m lucky, it won’t have spread anywhere else in her body.”

Brickhouse’s eyes shimmered, and his lips wavered for a moment until he clamped them together.  “Tell me what you need.”

“How pure is the alcohol in that still?”

“Hundred twenty proof, I think.  Whitey could tell you exactly.”

Sparks nodded.  “Good.  I’m going to need a clean sheet, wash it in alcohol.  Bandages, a sharp blade and a saw,” he said, rattling off everything he would need.

---===---

Four hours later, the sleeping Juni lay with a bandaged stump propped up on a pile of pillows brought in by the scavengers.  Sparks lay beside her, eyes slitted open as he rested.  “Thank you for this,” Brickhouse told Rubble, as the two sat some distance away.  “I don’t know what we can do to make it up.”

She smiled faintly.  “Meeting you guys actually gives us a pretty good average on friendly ponies in the Wasteland.  If you know the city well, we wouldn’t say no to having a guide.  We’re trying to get south, to someplace called the Confederacy, but we’ve heard about bad gangs around here, not to mention the radiation.”

He laughed, a hollow and mirthless sound which even quiet felt like it filled the cavernous space.  “The gangs, the rads, the ghosts.  Filly’s a deadly place.”  He stared off into space.  “But it’s home now.”

Rubble stared at him.  “Ghosts?  Really?”

Grinning, Brickhouse nodded as he stretched out on the floor.  “They’re real.  Glowing forms of ponies, obliterated by the bombs, that can still strike back at you with the damned light of their souls.”  He ran a hoof down his barrel over a long, straight scar.  “Like this.”

She stared at the old, healed wound for a moment.  “Alright, I know I’ve already found bugs the size of my head, but still, that seems awfully hard to swallow.”

He shrugged.  “Believe me or not.  Mostly they stay around the craters.  Well, actually, they mostly stay around the old university, since it’s between two of the balefire craters.  We try not to go there too often, but pretty soon the irradiated areas will be all that’s left to get salvage.”  He dropped his head onto his forehooves, staring at the fading light from the western windows.

“Why haven’t you tried to go somewhere safer?” Rubble asked, looking around as everyone started settling in for the night.  Sparks had started drooling in his sleep, and Dulcimer floated one of the scavenger’s tattered blankets over him before claiming another mattress nearby.

He snorted.  “Where?  Too many gangs to move to the countryside.  Couple of us tried your confederacy, but they were born here.  The radiation does funny things to you if you’re conceived in it.”  He pointed over to where Whitey was setting up in another corner.  The albino unicorn had actually started glowing faintly in the darkness, dimmer than a torch or a PipBuck light but easily visible across the room.

Rubble sighed, laying her own head down and also sighing.  “That makes me wonder if they’ll actually be as welcoming as we hope.”

“I bet you’ll be fine.  You and your friends are perfectly healthy.”  Brickhouse gestured to his own squat frame.  “Not freaks like most of us are.”

“You don’t seem like a freak.  You’re just short,” she said with a smile.

“Uh-huh,” he replied, obviously unimpressed.  “And what about Whitey?  Or Juniper?  It’s not an injury, she was born with her vocal cords and tongue not formed right.”

“It’s, well, um.  Alright, Whitey’s a little weird,” she admitted, glancing over at the glowing head, everything else buried beneath blankets.  “But it’s not his fault, right?”

Brickhouse grunted.  “It got worse the last time he went into one of the craters.  Used to be he was just obvious.  Never goes out at night if he can help it, of course.  But like the rest of us, he was born that way.”

Her eyes stayed fixed on the pale white glow, the only source of light in the building now.  “So why didn’t the Confederacy want him?”

“Because he’s a freak.  They can’t stand the thought of what might happen if we joined their cities and actually started having kids, if that’s even possible,” he growled.  “They want everything to go back to how it was before the war.  No radiation, no monsters, no zebras, no freaks.”  He spat off to one side.

She lay there in the silence and the blackness, considering his words.  It was possible it was all just a misunderstanding, but it might also be their policy.  Even then, Rubble could think of a dozen Stable ponies who wouldn’t be terribly accepting either, starting with the Overmare.  It might not be the best place to settle down after all. 

But what other choice did she have?  They couldn’t move into the ruins.  The radiation would finish off whoever the raiders didn’t, and that wasn’t even counting the so-called ghosts.  Setting up on their own would be the same story, just like Brass said.  There were other Stables, but 92 had been one of the largest ones built, and they couldn’t just evict the current residents.

“Thanks for the information,” she whispered, closing her eyes as Brickhouse started snoring.  It was a problem for tomorrow, when they’d have to continue their journey.

---===---

The next morning, Sparks left Juni with a strict set of instructions on cleaning the wound site, and verified that she could actually remove the stitches herself when the time came.  While he was giving her a clean bill of health, Rubble and Dulcimer sat outside the front doors with Brickhouse and Whitey, looking at an old street map of Fillydelphia, covered in scribbles of pencil and crayon.

“So, if we go through here, we should be safe,” Dulce said, her hoof tracing a route only a street or two over from the amusement park.

“Long as you’re quiet.  The Rippers do swing through that area sometimes, and the rads can get mighty fierce,” Whitey said.  “But your other way is heading out of the city here, between the Rippers and the Fiends, and going twenty miles out of your way.”

“Over here, there’s a couple of markets.  We haven’t gotten to them, because of how close they are to the Fiends, but there might still be food in there.”  Brickhouse grinned, lifting the pistol now strapped to his foreleg.  “Still, I think we made a fair trade.”

Rubble was tapping it all into her PipBuck, marking off the areas.  Sparks would be able to download it from her, and then they would hopefully avoid the worst of the raiders.  “Thanks for all of the advice.”

“Advice is free.  Besides, you freed my sister from dying of thirst or disease.  It’s the least we can do.”  Brickhouse extended a hoof, shaking with both Rubble and Dulcimer, and finally Sparks as he exited.

“We’ll try to swing back through on our way north, if we can,” he said.  “I’ll want to check on her.  Once it heals, she should be able to use a prosthetic.”

“A what?” Whitey asked, blinking several times.

“A fake limb,” Dulcimer said, cutting off the other unicorn.

The albino grinned.  “Oh, alright.  That’s good.  She’s one of our best for finding food.  Like she just knows where the plants are still growing in the city.”

Brickhouse glared at the other scavenger.  “She does, Whitey.  It’s even her cutie mark.”

“Oh.  Yeah, that makes sense.”  He kept grinning, rolling up the map and trotting back inside.

Shaking his head, the red scav leader grinned.  “He’s an idiot, but he’s got his uses.  You three watch out on your way through the city, you hear?”

Rubble smiled back.  “We will.”  She held up her own fetlock, where a crossbow was strapped opposite her PipBuck.  “And you’re right, I think it’s a good trade.”

They gave a last wave to the guards on the roof before sliding deeper into the city.  Howls from the wind echoed through the street from the crumbled buildings, shadows stark and deep and cold.  Gunshots could be heard, their source lost in the urban maze.  They crept along as cautiously as they could.  The markets were only three miles away, in a straight line, but the wreckage of the war turned that into more than five miles through an obstacle course of rusting metal and crumbling concrete.

At the top of one pile of concrete, climbable with some difficulty, Rubble froze.  At the bottom was a pony, dressed in metal scraps and spikes tied together with leather thongs.  She had been quiet, or mostly quiet, but the ganger was staring right at her.  “Thought I heard something, probably a roach,” the ganger said, turning around and trotting towards a second one a block away, standing in front of the grocery stores that were their destination.

“Hope it comes out, they’re good eating,” the other one replied, rattling the door.  “Damnit, this one’s locked too.”

“Break the window?”  The first one suggested, pulling a nail-studded baseball bat from her back.

“It’s got bars on the inside.  Let’s try the next one.”  They turned, walking back towards a shrinking Rubble.  But somehow, neither of them looked up at the pile of concrete, their subconscious accepting her gray pelt and black barding as part of the wreckage.

“What’s happening?” Dulcimer hissed from behind her.  It was lost in the wind as the pair of raiders entered the store, the bell above the door jingling merrily for a moment before the baseball bat smashed it off the wall.

Rubble instantly ducked down.  “Raiders, two of them.  They said two of the stores are locked, and they just went into the third one.”

“We should wait here,” Sparks said.  “They can’t take that long, and Dulce can get us into the locked stores I bet.”

“These guys are raiders, they kill ponies,” Dulcimer argued.  “We can take them out now, when they’re not expecting it.  If they find us out here, they will kill us.  The only question is whether or not they get their buddies first.”

Rubble tuned out the bickering as Sparks hissed a complaint about her bloodthirsty attitude, and raised her head enough to see the store.  The door had been propped open with something, and she couldn’t hear the two gang members inside.  Hoping she wasn’t going to regret it, she lifted herself back over the top, freezing for a moment as a cascade of concrete gravel clattered down the pile and into the street.

Still no response came from the store, so she crept across the street.  Rags tied around her hooves muffled the sound of her steps, and just outside the door she paused again.  They were somewhere in the back, arguing over something.  As she snuck inside the door, the baseball bat smashed something to pieces.  “Fuck, just bits!”

“Hey, better than nothing.  Sides, we got two cereal boxes and a one of mash, so least we won’t go hungry.”  Rubble ducked behind the next set of shelves as they started for the door, stepping carefully around the scattered empty cans and bottles to come around behind them.

As the gangers stepped out into the morning sunlight, they froze.  Dulcimer’s submachine gun was pressed to the head of the unicorn ganger, while the laser pistol hovered back far enough cover both of them.  “Hi.  Drop your weapons,” Dulcimer said, grinning broadly.

The earth pony ganger immediately whirled around, the first laser shot going over his head, and impaled himself on Rubble’s bayonet.  The unexpected impact sent her skidding backwards on her plot, blood spraying on her as he twisted in pain on her weapon.  This isn’t how things were supposed to go, she thought bleakly.  A burst of fire echoed from the surrounding buildings.

Shoving the body free, she stepped over him and looked down at the corpse of the unicorn.  “Was that necessary?” she asked quietly.

“She tried to knock it aside and go for her weapon,” Dulcimer said.

Sparks swallowed heavily, not looking at the ruin of what had been a pony’s head.  “Baseball bat versus submachine gun is so fair,” he muttered.  “Look, can we just get their stuff and go?”

“That’s a good idea,” Rubble said, glancing down the street.  “Just in case any of them heard the shots.”  The golden bits, slightly beat up, were already sliding into Dulcimer’s bags along with the bat and another machete.

The next store, when Dulcimer finally opened the lock two agonizing minutes later, proved to be nearly fully stocked.  The bottom shelves of boxes were lost, destroyed by rodents at some point, but the higher two shelves proved out of mousey reach.  Fortified with three dozen boxes of pre-war food, a dozen bottles of soda, plus the additional sack of bits from this cash register, they snuck out the back door into the refuse-choked alley.  The neighboring store had a mere two cans in the way of food, but it did have a sawed-off shotgun under the counter that Dulcimer happily claimed.

Emerging into the morning haze, they could hear ganger ponies shouting angrily in the street.  They looked around for an escape, since one end of the alley was blocked by trash and the other led back out close enough for them to be seen.

Sparks pointed upwards.  The other side of the alley was a building, some business or apartment that stretched five stories tall, and directly above them was an open window.  He pointed towards a closed dumpster, then the roof of the grocery, then at the window.  Rubble considered it as an escape route.  Sure, the two unicorns could make it easily, they were both more agile than she was, and lighter.  She could probably make the jump too, if she could get a bit of a running start.

Of course, that would alert the gangers.  They knew the area better than three wandering Stable ponies, so if there was another entrance to the building, they might get cut off.  But they’d passed the front entrance, buried under that concrete pile, so they might just go straight through the building and out the other side to another roof and then to the ground.

Nodding, she led the way to the dumpster, hoping the rag-muffled clangs wouldn’t draw the ganger’s attention already.  Her leap onto the roof was not so fortunate, as the sliding gravel and trash caught somepony’s attention.  It would take them a little bit to break down one of the locked doors and get into the alley.  Hopefully that would be enough time.

Backing halfway across the roof, Rubble faced the window.  Galloping forward, she leaped into the air, barely clearing the window frame and tumbling into the office, toppling over a cubicle wall before she came to a halt.  “I give it a six point five.”

Rubble looked up, eyes wide.  Standing above her was a glowing pony.  Burnt and melted flesh drooped from the face, and she could see two ribs.  A shock of orange and yellow mane stood up in a Mohawk cut, and a beam rifle lay strapped to one side, the emitter seeming far too close to her face.

“You might want to run.  The Fiends like to take their prisoners alive.  It’s not pretty,” the melted pony said.  “Oh, and remember, you never saw me.”  With an arrogant wink, she vanished into a shimmer of air that was gone the next time Rubble blinked.

Dulcimer came flying through the air a moment later, landing on all four hooves and stopping next to her friend.  “C’mon, let’s go!” she said.

Sparks hit the window frame, smacking into the floor.  With blood leaking from his nose, they helped him up and clattered across the building.  They could hear random bullets striking the building, fired blindly by the furious gangers and fading away as they jumped out the opposite side of the building, landing on a bus, and from there to the ground.

By the time the Fiends circled around to the other side of the building, they were long gone.