"Dying to save a life is easy for the pony who dies. They don't have to wake up tomorrow, eat breakfast, go to the bathroom, and watch the morning news. The dead get their peace handed to them, while the living have to make it from the scrap and refuse left over."
-Unattributed
Whatever monster’s stomach I’d found myself in seemed to be taking its sweet time finishing me off. It was discombobulating, painful, and felt remarkably like being teleported by a barely functional Ace-user. As a matter of fact, I’d have said it felt exactly like being teleported by a barely functional Ace-user.
There was no time to brace, nor would I have really known what to brace with.
My aching body appeared two meters up and crashed, muzzled first, onto a concrete floor. I slowly flopped onto my side, trying to catch my breath. Five seconds later, another pop heralded the arrival of Hay Frost and Sang Froid.
Above me.
I tried to get a breath, but two hundred tons of unicorn landing on your ribcage makes that difficult. Sang Froid groaned and flopped off my stomach while Hay just lay there on my chest, rubbing her smoking horn. Coughing, I wrapped a foreleg around the slim unicorn and gently rolled her onto the concrete beside me. If I’d been a pegasus, I’d probably have been nursing a few shattered ribs, but as it was I was mostly just achey.
Looking up, I noticed a huge crowd of frightened ponies standing around us in a circle under the sharp fluorescent lights of the garage.
The garage.
We were in the garage.
Telly.
I grabbed for my juju bag and put it to my mouth.
“Telly?! Telly, you better be there!” I growled.
“She’s in here, Hardy. She’s with me,” Gypsy murmured.
“You had best mean she’s sitting up there waiting on somepony to come get her.”
“You know I don’t. Look, they were coming. We could hear them crawling up the walls. Those things that got the Biters are from a bad...a bad place. She jumped after she threw the paint...”
“Bitch!” I snarled, hauling myself to my hooves.
The crowd took a quick step back, which was probably wise because I’m sure I was looking like a whole encyclopedia entry on the topic of murder.
“Yeah, I deserve that,” Gypsy replied, softly. “Look, you’ve got things to do and I’ve got to shut this portal to whatever sun-forsaken cosmic hole these things crawled out of, then bust my way through the roof of the Castle. Without the control runes, I’m pretty sure I can move the File Cloud somewhere safer. You still need to get out of there.”
I swallowed and stared up at the ceiling of the garage.
“I swear, Gypsy...”
“I promise she’s going to be fine, Hard Boiled. It’ll take her a while to learn to make a body, but she’s with me and I’ll keep her safe. I think I can speed up the process a bit. I won’t let anything happen to her, and when she can talk, I’ll make sure you’re the first pony she speaks to. Right now, you’ve got to get your game face on. I’ve got incoming through the northeast floor of the garage in two minutes!”
“I promise you, we...are going to discuss this later.”
“That’s fine with me. With any luck, Telly will be there to help. You’ve got to move!”
I glared at the bag, then shoved it into one of my pockets.
“Lieutenant Sang Froid, go make for damn sure those stairwells are collapsed. I don’t want whatever was upstairs coming through here.”
Whether it was exhaustion or shock, Sang Froid snapped a picture perfect salute, then stared at his hoof for a moment as though it’d bit him. “Uh...right. Yes...Yes, Sir. Chief…”
The unicorn staggered off into the crowd in what might or might not have been the right direction. There was a small commotion on the other side of the ring of ponies, and then Taxi elbowed her way through.
“Hardy? What happened up there? Is there anyone else coming? Where’s Telly?” my driver asked all in a rush.
“Nopony...nopony else is coming,” I grunted, pulling my hat low over my face. “We’ll talk about it later. We lost the building. Sweets, I need you to stay with the survivors. Get the Night Trotter rebuilt. I should be back in a day. Swift, Lily, Mags, and I are going into the Wilds—”
“Wait, wait, wait! Hardy, what happened to Telly?!” Taxi demanded. “And...what did you say? Stay behind?!”
“Yes. Stay behind. Telly is…” I stopped and shut my eyes. It didn’t help much. I could still see the eyes of that berserk monster in the seconds before it was eaten. Intelligent eyes. Pony eyes. “Telly’s alive, I think. She’s in the File Cloud. Don’t make me explain that. Where’s Lily?”
“I’m here, Hardy!” Lily called, pushing through the crowd.
Now that I was on my hooves, I could finally see over the heads of the gathered civilians and the remains of the Detrot Police Department. The garage was packed, wall to wall, with all the various species who’d taken refuge in the Castle. There were a half dozen unicorns standing on the exit ramp and layering shields over the sliding metal doors, but it didn’t look like our aggressors had figured we’d give up the much more defensible keep in favor of a garage with only two exits.
Younger ponies crouched under their parents, watching me with wonder. Most of the adults carried heavily laden saddlebags, reminding me a bit of tourists headed to a campsite. Despite the diversity of creatures out there, they all wore the same bone-weary, exhausted looks on their faces. I hated seeing my fellow citizens looking like that. It made my talent feel like somepony had pepper-sprayed my flank.
I raised my voice so as to be heard over the mutterings of the herd. For all that the garage was crowded, it was still fairly quiet. I suspected the distant sounds of gunfire and strange wailing noises from upstairs were putting everyone off the desire for conversation.
“Everypony stay calm! We’ve got an escape route coming in under a minute! We’re going underground! Yes, that means diamond dogs!”
I heard a couple of fearful gasps. One of the mares nearest me swooned against a young stallion in an officer’s uniform who deftly caught her.
“I told you I would get you out, and I am getting you out!” I continued. “We are not dying, today! These diamond dogs are safe, and they’ll be taking you to a place where the unicorns who fell during the Darkening can be awoken! Treat them as you would any officer of the Department! They will protect you! So says Dead Heart!”
I fell silent, and the crowd began to whisper to one another, but nopony was panicking. That was a step in the right direction.
“Hardy, I don’t know if we can do this,” Lily said, in a voice tuned to be inaudible to everypony else.
“We are doing this. Is the car ready?”
She nodded, tugging at the hem of her scrubs. “I...I put Iris Jade inside the truck. She’s wrapped in a sheet, and I don’t think anypony knew it was her. Mags and Swift are in there with her.”
“Good. Go get the engine warmed up. We’ll be with you as soon as the garage is empty.”
Shooting me one last fearful glance, Lily turned and disappeared into the crowd, which quickly made way for her. Turning to Hay Frost, I slid my foreleg under her neck. “Miss Frost? Are you alright?”
Her sallow face twisted with discomfort as she looked up at me. “I...I’m gonna be okay. I think I b-bounced us off a ward. Wish I had a n-needle…”
I lifted her to all fours. “The diamond dogs we’re about to go meet make a special blend of Ace that’s supposed to be pretty good.”
“Re-really?” she squeaked, her eyes lighting up with interest.
“I haven’t tried it myself, but I have it on good authority,” I replied. “Rest. You could use it.”
“Yeah...yeah, I really c-could. You could t-too,” she whispered, sitting back on her haunches and self-consciously rubbing the injection scars on her forelegs.
“I know, but my day isn’t over, yet.”
“C-can we still have that drink at Rascals one...one day, D-dead Heart?” she asked, giving me a coy look through her eyelashes.
“Yeah...yeah, absolutely. And thank you for keeping me out of that monster’s stomach.” I winked at her, then turned toward the corner of the garage the diamond dogs were likely to be coming through. Ponies parted in front of me with the sort of reverence I was starting to find desperately irritating.
All those eyes on me. Yeesh. I could feel myself developing a syndrome by the minute.
‘Can’t break down,’ I thought. ‘Stop it. Fight it. You survived. Those unicorns knew what they were getting into. Telly’s still alive, for some definition of ‘living’. Hold on until you’re in the truck.’
Unfortunately, no amount of scolding myself could keep the trembling out of my knees.
Taxi trotted up beside me, keeping pace. “Hardy, you’re losing your mind. I can tell. You never fake being this calm unless you’re about to go crazy. What did you see?”
“Nothing.” I shuddered, shaking my head as I sped up a little. “Nothing I want to talk about, Sweets.”
“Then will you at least tell me why I have to stay behind?”
I sighed and stopped for a moment, putting a foreleg around her shoulders. “Sweets, you may not like this about yourself, but we both know you’re a better leader than I am. You have to coordinate with the gangs. You have to make them work together. These Diamond Dogs can get us to the Skids, Sky Town, the Heights, the Morgue, and all points in between. We need a base of control and to be prepared to defend ourselves.” I squeezed her against me, and she turned her face against my neck. “Also...remember our deal?”
“About the car?”
“Yeah. Not just the Police Department anymore. You get the resources of all the major gangs in the city to fix the Night Trotter.”
Her body stiffened, and I swear I smelled a hint of arousal.
“I...I think I’ll stay behind,” she replied, then squinted at me. “Why are you taking Mags? Wouldn’t she be safer—”
“Jade has a soft spot for kids.”
“And you think she’ll be less likely to tear off your legs with your ‘daughter’ watching?”
“That’s the hope. Either way, Jade would never let a child come to harm. She’s safer with Iris than she is with you, whether I’m alive or not. I’m still going to have my anti-magic armor on. Speaking of that, somepony did go collect Limerence, right?” I asked.
She nodded. “He’s with the medical ponies and your armor is in the truck.”
“Good. Let’s hope the poor schmuck sleeps through this. I’d hate to wake up halfway through an evacuation with Ace withdrawal and a magical hangover.”
Ahead of us, the crowd opened up to an empty corner of the garage about ten meters across. Some smart pony had thrown down a few orange cones in a semi-circle to keep everyone back. I stepped into the open space, and Taxi followed.
“Precious! Precious, where are you?” I shouted over the heads of everypony. “I need you!”
The Prince’s powerful voice carried from some distance away. “Hard Boiled? Ah, yes! A moment!”
I rose up on the tips of my hooves, trying to see where he might be, but it turned out to be unnecessary; a second later, the old gentlestallion was lifted above the crowd on a folding metal chair by a combination of hooves and magic. He smiled benevolently as he was passed over the heads of all those ponies before being gently set down at the edge of the cordoned area. Snapping his cane smartly against the concrete, he rose and adjusted the lapels of his shiny jacket.
“Hard Boiled, Ah’dda loved it if ya'll kept me informed we’d be movin’ all these poor folk so sudden like,” he scolded, his milky eyes staring up at the ceiling. “Ah don’t hear gun fire up there. Lotta funny things moving around, though. How many did we lose?”
“I tried not to count. I’ll probably be trying not to count in my sleep for the next ten years. You, Sang Froid, and Taxi are going to have control of the department while I’m gone. Try not to choke the life out of Sang. He’s a prick, but he knows most everypony here. Can you manage that?”
“Oh, Ah think we just might. You’re not coming along, dear boy?”
“No. We’re going to draw these bastards off to buy you more time. Sweets knows the rest of the plan, or at least she’s good at improvising.”
Precious tapped his cane to his forehead. “In that case, it’ll be a pleasure working with ya, Miss Shine. Speaking of that, Ah believe our gem-loving friends are here.”
I blinked at him. “Buh? What?”
One of his ears twitched, and he stepped back from me. “Ahem...Ya may want to move.”
The ground under my hooves let out a deafening crunch like a whole barrel of hard candy being rolled down a hill covered in broken glass. I jumped away from the spot as a diamond dog’s shovel-sized claw exploded out of the asphalt, spraying me with hot gravel. The herd shifted restlessly behind us as the muscular limb withdrew into the hole.
A second later, a great poof of white mane poked out of the hole attached to a familiar, powder blue head capped with a conical hat covered in little pictures of balloons.
“Oh! Detective! Is it too late to join this party?” Slip Stitch chortled, levering himself out of the hole and somehow avoiding the smoking edges. With a deft flip, he landed on all fours, his lab coat flying.
“Ah say, Ah say, is that little Stitchy, Ah hear?” Precious asked, one ear bending in the coroner’s direction.
For the first time in as many years as I’d known him, Stitch looked like he couldn’t think of anything to say. When he laid eyes on the Prince, his jaw fell open, and he took a couple of stumbling steps forward, then flung himself down at Precious’s hooves in a bow so low his party hat scraped the ground.
“I...I am humbled in your presence, master!” Stitch squeaked.
Precious sighed and leaned his head in my direction. “Is that colt kneeling? Ah can’t tell. Ah told ’im to knock that crap off when he was twelve...”
Behind Slip Stitch, Commander Max was pulling himself out of the hole as it began to expand sideways. The noise was terrific, like a blender the size of a car munching through cinderblocks.
“Stitch, what’re you doing here?” I asked, grabbing the coroner by the scruff of his labcoat. “And hold the weird. We don’t have time for the weird.”
“Ah! Yes, of course,” Stitch replied, sweeping off his party hat and tossing it into the crowd. “Our mutual friend, here, Mister Max, sent a runner for me. He thought it might smooth things if all these ponies could see a friendly face arriving with them. I can think of no face friendlier than mine! I mean...except, you know—” He nervously jerked his head at Precious. “Now, then...let’s see how many ponies we have here!” Rearing up onto his hindlegs, he looked out across the crowd and made a little motion with his mouth, gently wiggling his hoof in their directions. “...four hundred, four ten, four twenty...erm... Six hundred and sixty-eight ponies, not including foals, if my eyes do not mistake me! Excellent!”
“Why that be excellent?” Max growled, picking at one of his teeth with the end of a bullet hanging around his neck.
“Oh! Because we’ve got plenty of room!” Ducking his head, Stitch whistled into the hole. “Make it approximately one point five meters across! We need a ramp with a twenty degree angle!”
From below, a diamond dog’s rough voice called, “Commander?”
Max put a paw over his jowled face, then said, wearily, “Ten minutes and he making me crazy. Ugh, listen to the mad cutter.”
“Oh, Mister Max, I would never make you crazy! I don’t care for competition!” Stitch cackled, snapping his party hat back on his head.
“Those beasties upstairs are going to be confused for a few minutes,” I said. “Telly unleashed some specialized magics from the File Cloud before she...” I trailed off, unable to say the words. I felt a strong leg around my neck and smelled the familiar scent of guitar wood. I laid my cheek on Precious’s shoulder. “I...I think she’s given us a bit more time.”
A diamond dog poked her head out of the hole, waving to Max. “Commander! We dig out, we dig wide! Have to dig as we go, but join main tunnel two hundred meters from building!”
“I take it that means we’re ready to go?” Taxi asked.
“We ready. Come ponies!” Commander Max said, waving to the frontmost members of the crowd of survivors.
Every eye out there turned in my direction.
‘You’re the Chief, Hard Boiled. Make them believe,’ I thought.
“Alright! Detrot Police Department! We survived this long! Now it’s time to get out of here! We’re going in three by three!” I shouted. “Anything you can’t carry on your back, you leave here! It’s one trip only! With any luck, it won’t go anywhere! I doubt looters are going to be very interested in it after what’s happened here.”
A thickset stallion at the front of the crowd looked sideways at his friends, then stepped forward. “Are...are we going to be safe, Dead Heart? I mean, safe underground?”
I admit, I had to think about my answer. From a practical standpoint, the truth wouldn’t have comforted them all that much, since I was fairly certain the Biters weren’t lacking for reinforcements. If there were another spy amongst their number, they’d never know until the creatures were beating down their door. Still, comforting lies were more likely to get them moving, and the underground was the closest they were probably going to be to ‘safe’.
“You want to stay here?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him.
The stallion looked at the garage ceiling, then back over his shoulder at all the ponies behind him.
“Ah. Right. Diamond dogs it is, then,” he replied with a slightly bashful smile. Turning to a short mare with a messy mane who had a foal riding on her back, he waved her forward.
----
One of the nice things about being a member of a herd species is that once you get them moving, there’s a fair bit of inertia. I stood beside the diamond dogs’ hole, one ear cocked for any movement from above, while maintaining my best ‘diplomatic’ smile. It’s a smile Taxi tells me I make right before she has to carry me home from the bar, but it works in most situations where I’m trying to con somepony into betting me I can’t drink a whole bottle of beer in under twelve seconds. It is a smile that almost never failed to pay my bar tab or keep a crowd of traumatized, frightened ponies from rioting.
Ponies filed past me, some stopping very briefly to offer a quiet thanks or a tip of the head, while others just shot wary looks at Commander Max who was sitting beside me with his tongue hanging out, occasionally scratching himself. Slip Stitch and Precious were both cheerfully greeting ponies, offering quick hoofshakes as they kept everypony moving toward the hole. It was a strange scene, and I was fighting thoughts of the long term consequences of anything that’d happened in the last hour.
There were all those little letters to fill out with the names of dead officers and all of those funerals to attend. Iris Jade was always at the funerals of dead officers. Mercy, was I ever going to stop attending funerals?
Slowly, the room began to empty, row after row of ponies heading down the dirt ramp that was quickly being packed down by the passage of so many hooves. I could see flickering mage-lights deeper inside, providing a bit of illumination. One or two pegasi needed quick sedative spells to handle claustrophobia, and there were a fair number of sobbing foals, but Slip Stitch produced a seemingly limitless supply of ice cream sandwiches from somewhere on his person. It was as orderly an evacuation as I might have hoped for, considering the massacre in the throne room.
Strange thoughts kept creeping into the edges of my consciousness.
If we ever managed to retake the Castle, whose job would it be to mop up all that blood?
Is there going to be a pile of organs we have to sort through?
What do we do with all the ponies who don’t have enough left to bury?
Just keep smiling. Just keep smiling.
Face after face moved by in a slow procession. A row of various creatures in nurse scrubs came by after some minutes, hauling sledges behind them laden with unconscious unicorns and medical supplies. A sleeping filly had her I.V. bag dangling from the horn of somepony I presumed was her mother who lay beside her, both of them comatose, both looking far more peaceful than they’d any right to given the circumstances.
I was still waiting for the Biters to come around and attack the garage, but either they were dealing with the creepy crawlies Gypsy had unleashed or the confusion sown by that particular attack hadn’t worn off yet. A part of me was definitely banking on the first option, if only because Equestria has enough horrible creatures sliming around the countryside without adding things from other universes.
My vision became momentarily blurry, and a short mare with two fillies riding on her back paused for a second to give me a strange expression. There were only about forty ponies left, but she moved aside for another to get around her.
“D-dead Heart? Are you crying?” she asked.
My smile faltered for an instant, but then I had control again. Something trickled down my cheek. I quickly wiped my face on the back of my sleeve.
“I’m fine. Tough day, right?”
She looked like she was about to say something else when Slip Stitch appeared at her side.
“Miss Theremin!” he exclaimed, taking her by the leg. “It is so good to see you! And little Cookie and Candy are doing well, too! We’ve got a party planned for all the foals, and I would just love for you three to attend as soon as we get to safety. Come along! Mustn’t keep the foals waiting! We’re a bit short of macarons, which I remember are your favorite, but there’s plenty of cake and ice cream! I’ll be sure to make that up to you as soon as the sun is back!”
Stitch winked at me as he led the mare away, helping her over the lip of the pit still chattering at her as the two of them headed out of sight. Precious tapped his cane at the ground a few times, stepping around until he was beside me with his grand performer’s grin seeming to light up the room. If nothing else, it gave me a moment to clear my eyes.
----
A venerable and cantankerous griffin hen with a cane was the last creature out. Commander Max helped her over the edge, then directed one of his dogs to keep her moving. The second she was in, I called to the five unicorns keeping the shield over the door up. They were all leaning on one another, and the concrete around their hooves was drenched in sweat, but still they held.
“Hey! Time to go! When you hear three honks, drop your shields, move your flanks, and don’t look back!”
“Y-yes C-chief!” came a shaky reply.
I turned to my companions and freed my trigger bit.
“Taxi, you and Precious take care of the survivors. Max, close the pit the second the rest of these ponies are down.”
“Before you go, think you might want this.” The commander reached over his shoulder and hauled a boxy package on a strap around, passing it to me. I unsnapped the buckle holding the end closed and peeked inside. The silvery gleam of my shotgun’s enameled stock shined in the flickering fluorescent lights.
“Wish I’d thought to bring it into that fight, though I don’t know what good buckshot would have done against those Biters,” I muttered.
“There be a box of slugs in there, too. Probably stop Bitey monsters better than dinky bullets,” Max added.
“Thanks, Max. We’re heading out the other way. Hopefully we’ll draw some fire,” I replied, nodding towards where the working Anti-Megafauna Vehicle squatted in the corner of the building next to its partially disassembled sibling. I could just make out Lily and Swift’s worried faces through one of the thickened black windshields.
“We’ll have to come back for the other A.M.V.,” Taxi mused. “I still need the parts for the Night Trotter. I figured I’d have more time when I started the teardown. We’ll have to get a team to haul it, later on.”
“Well, I doubt those...things...upstairs will try to hold this place,” I said. “Be careful.”
“Ya are coming back, right, Mister Hard Boiled?” Precious asked, lightly tapping my foreleg with his cane. “Ah don’t want to have to officiate at ya funeral. Ah’ve already written sermons for two stallions with that name. Three would be too many for this ol’ achy, breaky heart.”
“I’d hate to disappoint a fair cross-section of people if I managed to get myself killed out there. Alright, this goodbye has gone on long enough. I’ll contact Tourniquet as soon as I get back.”
----
The A.M.V. had a face even a mother would have had concerns about. Its ugly, pointed contours and a profile like a bulldog that’d stuck his face in a wasp nest were supposed to scream menace, death, and violence, but the threat was somewhat muted without the weapons mounts loaded.
I trotted around to the side of the giant truck and stepped back as the passenger door swung open of its own accord. Lily peered down at me from the driver’s seat, one hoof resting on a button on the dash. The seat was higher than my head, but a set of stairs slid down and clanked into place.
“You going my way, stranger?” I asked, smirking up at her as I grabbed the railing and began hauling myself in.
“I’m going into the Wilds with a crazy pony and his crazy partner and the crazy ex-Chief of Police,” Lily grumbled, wrapping her forelegs around the steering wheel. “Stop joking and get in, before I lose my nerve.”
I tossed my shotgun in ahead of me, then dragged myself up into the passenger seat and settled into the surprisingly comfortable vinyl cushions. The compartment was enormous, but the dashboard took up most of the space. It was a vast keyboard with a million and one switches and toggles which spilled up onto the ceiling above both the driver and the passenger. How a pony was meant to find any particular function in the heat of battle was beyond me, but it must have worked well enough during the war.
Lily’s horn flashed and the stairs retracted, and then the door swung shut with a finality that made my stomach clench.
“Hey kid, you back there?” I called into the rear compartment.
My partner wedged her head between the front seats, her trigger bit tucked into one corner of her muzzle.
“Where else would I be, Sir?” she huffed. Something in her tone said she was annoyed with me.
“You alright, kid?”
“Yes...I guess. Ugh! Why did you put me on the bench during a firefight? You know I’m a better shot than most ponies. I could have—”
I put a hoof over her mouth, silencing her. Come to think of it, maybe it was the haunted expression in my bloodshot eyes that did that.
“Kid, there was absolutely nothing you could have done to stop what happened up there. I needed you working other angles. Are we ready to travel?”
Swift’s ears drooped, and she stepped back. “Yes, sir. Mags is napping, Chief Jade is still unconscious, the tanks are full, and we have some ammunition for all of our guns. I even managed to load the smoke grenade launcher on the roof.”
“Then get strapped in. This will be a bumpy ride. Lily? It’s go time. Beep the horn three times to let the unicorns know to drop their shields.”
Lily reached under the steering wheel and tapped the ignition button. If the Night Trotter sounded like a snarling timberwolf, the A.M.V. sounded like a whole pack armed with chainsaws and a perceived slight against their mothers. Lily touched another button and the sound dampened to a reasonable level.
“What was that?” I asked.
“The engine has twenty-five hundred horsepower, Sir. There’s a spell to keep it from deafening us. You’re supposed to turn the sonic disruption on first, you know,” Swift admonished.
“Sorry, I didn’t have long to study the book, here, but I think got the important bits,” Lily said, levitating a pink manual where we could see it.
Grabbing the gear stick, she put the vehicle into reverse and gave it a little gas. The entire truck lurched, violently, then sped backwards so fast I was thrown against my safety belt hard enough to knock the breath out of me. Lily squeaked and slammed a hoof on the brakes, forcing me back in my seat.
I planted my forelegs on the dashboard for support. “You sure we don’t need to stop for a study session? We can still take the hole if this isn’t doable.”
Lily massaged her neck with one hoof. “Oof. No, no it’s fine. I can do this. This thing is a little more powerful than Daddy’s pickup. Give me a second to get my head around it.”
A bit more cautiously, she depressed the accelerator again. The A.M.V. rumbled, backing out of the space in a slightly more controlled manner. With tentative taps on the throttle, she pulled us around to aim toward the shielded exit ramp.
“Sir, I just feel like I should point out that the course to learn to drive one of these at the P.A.C.T. recommends five hours of classroom training followed by fifteen hours on a closed course,” Swift said, quietly. “That doesn’t include training with how to use the weapons.”
“Kid, hush. Lily, you got this?”
“I...I’m pretty sure. If I don’t, well...that’s what we have bumpers for, right?”
“You’re filling me with confidence.”
Rather than respond, Lily honked the horn: three quick blasts. The shimmering shields around the gate vanished, and the unicorns sprinted, as best they could, for the hole. Taxi was there to help them, and Max caught one of the younger-looking mares before she could collapse from exhaustion, slinging her over his shoulder in one deft move.
“Hardy, when you’re ready, hit the blue button on your left. It says ‘exit’.”
“Right...got it.” I smacked the indicated button, and the metal gate began rattling up into the ceiling on a hidden rail.
“And...here we go!”
----
Strange as it might sound, there is something in cars that can bring out hidden traits of a pony’s personality. Somehow, having all that steel, aluminium, and rubber at your command reaches deep into the psyche and has a little grope around. Most are content to drive from work to home and back, never really exploring these depths, but some ponies don’t have that luxury. When these select few are put behind the wheel, they become a different person than they might otherwise choose to be, but that person is no less real than the person they present to the world every day.
Taxi is a brilliant driver, a genius with clutch and gear. I am a mad driver, Tartarus on wheels.
Lily was something else.
For all she might have been a lovely medic, an innocent little cherry farmer’s daughter, and a genuinely kind soul, I suspect she had only one thing on her mind when her hoof hit the gas pedal: vengeance.
----
I gripped the armrest of my seat so hard I could feel my knees creak as the A.M.V. veritably flew up the garage exit ramp. We caught a good half second of air, and I heard dual shrieks of alarm as Mags was thrown off of Iris Jade’s back and Swift had to clutch at her seatbelt to avoid being tossed into the ceiling. Shooting onto the street, I barely had time to register the wall of the building on the opposite side of the road coming at us full tilt before Lily hauled the steering wheel around and the tires dug in, slewing us sideways.
“Arg! Nopony told me this wasn’t a straight shot!” Lily snarled, yanking her nurse’s cap off and letting her brilliant red mane flow down her shoulders. “Why did nopony tell me I had to turn?! I shouldn’t have to turn! Turning is for losers!”
I wanted to shout for her to slow down, but considering the circumstances, that seemed like a poor idea. Ahead, I could see the gates in the dim, reddish glow of the sunless sky. The headlamps played across the buildings, lighting them up like a fire. Smoke billowed from the walls, pouring out of the Castle’s broken windows. Something was moving amidst the fire and shadows, swirling upward against the direction of the wind: Biters.
Dozens of Biters. There was absolutely no way, considering the noise the engine was making, that they hadn’t seen us. A second later, the windscreen lit up with fire as bullets pinged off the shielded glass.
“Oh, crap! Lily, floor it!”
She didn’t need to be told twice. Burying the pedal in the firewall, Lily wrestled to keep us on the straight and narrow as the A.M.V. let out a furious howl. We were thrown against the padding in our seats, and the acceleration was enough to make my face ache as we flew towards the swarm.
A flash of light cut through the air and almost blinded me, but the windshield polarized instantly against the glare. I threw my hooves over my ears as the flash was followed a half second later by a ‘CRACK-OW!’ of thunder. It turned out not to be necessary; the sound was muted by the car’s insulation. It’d been a close call, but I can only imagine it was difficult to draw a bead on a target moving as quickly as we were, even with a lightning cannon.
Over engineered, overbuilt, and far too resource intensive to run with any regularity, the A.M.V. was just about the most impractical truck in the world for anything besides an urban war-zone. However, in an urban war-zone, we were nearly unmatched.
That didn’t stop an especially stupid Biter from trying to stop us with its face.
We barely had a glimpse of it swooping on the car before the windshield was coated in a thick layer of whatever the creatures used for blood. Lily shrieked as the front tires bumped over the monster, but she kept her hoof on the pedal as far in as it would go.
“Wipers! Wipers! Oh my Celestia, what was that thing?!” she gasped, jabbing a toe at the dash. I searched frantically until I found a button that I thought might be the one and slapped it. The glass glowed brightly, then let off a puff of smoke as the liquid burned off and the view ahead cleared. Another T-junction was quickly approaching. “Which way do we go?!”
“How should I know?!”
“You live in this city! I live on a farm! I shake trees for a living!”
“There’s a reason you’re driving!”
Swift shouted from the back compartment, “Didn’t you read the section of the manual on the navigation enchantments?!”
“Oh...um...right,” Lily muttered, poking a switch on the dash, and then her horn flickered and a crystal under the windshield lit up, projecting a glowing green map in front of her. Hauling the wheel around, we shot by the front gates of the Castle just as an explosion rocked the building, shaking the A.M.V. from side to side and even driving back the horde of Biters for a few seconds.
I pressed my nose against the window, staring out at a sight that filled me with a sort of divine terror: the sky above the Detrot Police Department was bleeding.
Even as I watched, the onion-shaped dome burst upward and a lash of liquid fire splashed down the front of the building, stripping away the white facade to reveal the ancient stone underneath. Debris as large as the truck smashed into the buildings across from the Castle. From underneath, a glittering, ghostly shape peeled away from the walls and began to lift into the air. Great ephemeral limbs sprouted from the File Cloud, flailing back and forth, snatching Biters from the air with all the ease one might swat a fly with a flame thrower.
I plucked my juju bag from my pocket, not able to look away.
“Gypsy, tell me you’re in control of this…”
“Loosely speaking, yes. I’m trying to close the gateway. I’ll head for the upper atmosphere. I don’t think these things can survive without air. Can I meet you somewhere?”
“Meet me?”
“Gonna hafta come down eventually. I need to find somewhere to broadcast from; the city needs music, news, and the good word from the front lines!”
“I...mmm...go to Supermax. Make contact with Tourniquet. You think you can do that?”
“Gimme a bit to work out the controls, but that shouldn’t be a problem, since we’re not worrying about somepony breaking into the security grid anymore. Gypsy, over and out!”
“Sir, we’ve got more incoming from the back,” Swift put in. “Gosh, those things are fast!”
Lily heaved the giant truck around the corner and I lost sight of the File Cloud, but I could still hear it out there, making a gut-wrenching wail as it moved away from the remains of the Castle. I can’t imagine what it might have sounded like without the A.M.V.’s noise reduction magics.
“Smoke grenades!” I said, pushing myself forward to study the dash. “We’ve got smoke, right?”
“We’ve got better than that, Sir! We have active camo and smoke grenades!”
The road ahead was narrow and blocked by the upturned remains of a ruined bus, but the navigation display flickered and the arrow rerouted us almost instantly into what looked like the side of a row of shops.
“Wait...wait, that’s a building!” I yelled, as though the machine could hear me.
“Trust the technology, Sir!” my partner called back.
Before I could add my precise thoughts on what technology had lately done to my life, Lily made the decision for me. She’d found another gear, and the almost unbearable engine noise grew until it sounded like a pack of lions having their tails flattened by a skyscraper-sized rocking chair. Preparing to meet my maker was starting to lose some of its novelty value.
An instant before impact, a light flashed on the windscreen that said ‘Energetic Deflection System Active!’. Rather than a jarring crash followed by all of my bones being turned to a thin paste, I felt a slight bump and heard shattering glass as we slammed into the structure at full speed. I caught a flash of the interior of some sort of cafe and the surprised face of a young mare who’d apparently been using a bag of coffee beans for a bed. A half second later, we burst through the back window and into the open air.
Bits of the cafe we’d just destroyed rained off the truck’s bonnet, replaced almost immediately by chunks of an unlucky newspaper stand. Ahead, a highway onramp beckoned with the possibility of freedom and the open road. My sense of relief lasted right up until something with a bright orange contrail crashed into one of the shops lining the street on my side of the vehicle. A moment later, it exploded, obliterating the building and filling the air outside with molten shrapnel.
“Kid, where are the damn smoke grenades?!”
“Center console! Two switches with a little cloud symbol under them! The camo is the big pink button above your head!”
I dived forward and hit both toggles, then pressed the pink button hard enough I was worried I might break it. A soft ‘thunk’ was followed by a pop and thick fog poured from the side of our ride, followed by a faint hum and the words ‘Active Camo Engaged!’ on the windscreen. I didn’t feel any more camouflaged, but the side view mirror had disappeared except for a slight shimmer in the air, along with the sound of the engine.
A warm lump of feathers landed in my lap, then scrambled underneath my coat.
“Egg-pony...I do not like this!” Mags whimpered, coiling her tail around my foreleg.
I ran a hoof through her mane, doing my best to calm the frightened griffin. “Me either, honey. It’ll be over soon.”
Another explosion sounded a bit farther off, along with the telltale rattle of heavy machinegun fire. I silently thanked Celestia that those things hadn’t thought to bring anti-machine rifles, else we’d have been in trouble. Assaulting a building doesn’t generally call for that sort of ordinance, but neither should it have called for mutant cannibal demon ponies.
We did, finally, have our answer as to what’d killed the griffins at the Moonwalk Hotel. Most likely the errant mob bosses as well. Considering what that knowledge had cost us, I couldn’t feel especially positive about it.
As we drove up the onramp, the highway ahead was almost completely empty. A few abandoned carts, cars, and even a bread van were lined up beside the road, but they were easy enough to avoid. Turning, I tried to find our pursuers, but they seemed to have either lost track of us or fallen back. Far away, a screech of fury echoed over the city.
We drove in silence for about two minutes, ears and eyes straining to detect the slightest indication we were still being chased. Even Mags had the sense to keep quiet, her claws digging into my coat as her tail lashed back and forth against her flanks.
“Kid? How long does this invisibility spell last?” I asked, finally starting to feel as though we might have managed to escape.
“We’re not really invisible, Sir. Just really hard to spot,” Swift corrected, poking her head up between the front seats. “Depending on how full the gem that was in it was, maybe five minutes. We didn’t bring any extras, did we?”
Lily shook her head. “I put some food, water, fuel, and ammunition in the trunk, but ‘go invisible’ crystals weren’t on the emergency shopping list.”
“No hope of using it to sneak by the dragons, then?” I asked, gently straightening a couple of Mags’s feathers. She stiffened from beak to paws, then went limp as a spaghetti noodle. resting her beak on my foreleg.
“We’re faster than most dragons right now,” Swift explained. “The large ones don’t fly very quickly and the smaller ones can’t burn through our armor. So long as they don’t know we’re coming, we should be able to outpace them.”
Lifting Mags off my lap, I set her on one of the heating vents. Warm air blew the fur on her belly into a poofy mess, and her eyes rolled back in her skull as she stretched out like an alley-cat across the dash. Unbuckling my seat-belt, I slid out of my seat and stood, watching as the city flew by around us. Lily was studying the navigation indicators on the vehicle’s heads up display with a slightly pouty frown that made me wonder what her lips tasted like. Even with sweat matting her mane to her neck and circles under her eyes, she was still beautiful.
Shaking the untoward thoughts from my mind, I forced myself to stare out at the city.
Dear old Detrot had not fared well in the half-light of the end times. I wondered, for a moment, exactly how many bodies were waiting out there to be discovered among the wreckage. How can a city or a world rebuild after so much terror and death?
Smoke trickled into the crimson sky from dozens of points across the land. I tried to pick out the Castle, but it was impossible with the thick cloud cover that was edging in over the horizon. Far away and underground, my best friend was doing goodness knows what to try to keep the survivors of the police department safe while I ran for the hills on what might well be an empty lead. Bad times.
“Lily, you have it together out here?” I asked. “I’m going to check on Jade.”
Her hooves quivered on the steering wheel, then tightened until the vinyl squeaked. Looking up, she met my eyes with the depressingly familiar look of a pony seeing a legion of ghosts for the first time.
“Hardy, I don’t even know what ‘together’ looks like anymore, but go do what you need to. My sister’s voice keeps reminding me that dreams are worth fighting for, but how am I supposed to have anything but nightmares?” Before I could answer, she exhaled sharply and slapped the wheel. “Ugh! Sorry. I told myself I wasn’t going to get into this self-pity stuff again. I just need to know where we’re going soon. It’s about an hour to the Wilds according to the navigation thingy, but all I told it was ‘out of town’.”
I pulled Taxi’s map out of my pocket and unfolded it, pointing to the circled ‘x’ where the pylon supposedly was. “Here. We’re going here.”
“Some of this is off road...”
Reaching out, I laid a hoof on her shoulder. She took a leg off the wheel to cover mine for a second. “You can do this, Lily. Let me know if you spot any fliers.”
“And...what should I do if I do see a dragon?” she asked.
“Pull over and get in the back. There are enough abandoned vehicles that if we catch them far enough ahead, we can probably hide ourselves until they’re gone.”
Turning back to focus on the road ahead, she nodded.
Tossing my coat and hat on my seat, I stepped into the back. The A.M.V.’s anterior cabin was about the size of my old dorm room at the Academy and lined with padded benches down both walls, each with a buckle above and a weapons rack below Swift was curled up on one with Masamane disassembled in front of her and a cleaning brush in her teeth. Across from her, a bony heap lay under a slightly dirty white sheet.
“Kid, you got any smelling salts on you?”
“Um...no, Sir, but gunpowder stinks. You could wave a bullet under her nose if you need to wake her up.”
“Sure, that’ll work. Where’s my armor?”
Swift gestured to a green locker wedged under one of the benches. I hauled it out and pushed the top open, finding my armor folded inside with a note pinned to it:
‘If you die out there, you better not leave a body. If I have to bring you back again, necromancy will be the least of your worries. - Sweet Shine, xoxo’
“My best friend, ladies and gentlecolts,” I sighed, plucking the note off and flicking it onto the floor, then beginning the laborious process of getting into the armor. Swift helped as best she could, and I was surprised to find I didn’t much mind letting her. After several minutes and with one final ‘ziiip’ up the back, Swift stepped back and I smoothed my disturbed mane.
“Sir—”
“Yes, kid, I’m doing this. No, I know this is stupid. Yes, I’m aware she’s probably going to find some way of injuring me even with the restrictor rings on her horn. No, that doesn’t change my-—”
Swift hooked her hoof into the neck of my armor and pulled me down to her eye height, giving me an even stare.
“Sir, I was going to ask if you want me to keep a gun on her.”
“Oh...yes, please.”
Releasing my neck, she trotted back to the bench she’d been sitting on and began quickly reassembling Masamane. I followed her with my gaze for a moment, then shook my head.
‘How quickly they grow up.’
Flicking my revolver open, I cocked out a bullet, sniffed it, then set it to one side.
“Mags! Get back here!” I called.
“I be warm!” she whined.
“Come on! I need a cute thing I can throw in front of a maniacal drug addict as a distraction!”
“Why you call me for that?!”
Shutting my eyes, I called on all of my considerable diplomatic skills and negotiating powers.
“There’s bacon in it for you!”
A second later Mags poked her head around the corner, then padded into the compartment, sat herself down at my hooves, and opened her beak expectantly.
“Nuhuh, you get paid after you do the work. I want some big kitten eyes, some purring, and if I survive, I’ll throw in a bonus from those meat snacks Swift smuggled on board.”
My partner made an indignant noise. “Sir, I didn’t smuggle any—”
“Kid, you want me to give her all of them? Because if I have to find them, I will.”
Swift’s ears sank, and she used a wing to point at an overhead bin. Flicking it open, I dug out a weighty paper package and stuffed it into my coat pocket.
“I’m not even going to ask where you got chicken in a police department surrounded by monsters,” I commented, then picked up my spare bullet and moved back to where Iris Jade lay, buckled into her seat with her head lolling over the side of the bench. I heard a soft click as Swift settled herself on her bench, pistol aimed at Jade’s forehead. “Are you actually planning on shooting her?”
“Sir, the first time I met her, she was assigning me to you hoping you’d make me quit the police department,” Swift replied, icily. “After we managed to barely survive bringing down one of the most dangerous crimelords in the city, instead of a medal, she locked me in a cage. I killed my best friend, lost my job, and ended up with wolf teeth. All the while, she was taking bribes and doing drugs. Her dealers sent the Princesses to the moon and made an eclipse cover the entire country and she covered for them! I also really hate bullies, so if she so much as breathes funny, I’ll blow her stupid horn off.”
I considered her words, then shrugged. “At least aim for an ear or a kneecap. We may need the horn attached.”
Sliding a hoof under Jade’s head, I lifted her into a sitting position. Her features were drawn, but she was breathing fairly normally to my untrained eye. I will admit, I was having the same feeling I always imagined that colt in that old fairy tale who’d volunteered to put a bell around a dragon’s neck so the people would always know it was coming must have had right at the climax. Of course, in the real world, there was less likelihood of the colt managing to stealthily bell the dragon, then run away and have a party with his loved ones, and more of the dragon catching the colt, tearing off all of his skin, cooking his organs, then letting him die to the charming jingle of a bell being added to the beast’s hoard.
Unclipping her seat-belt, I gently wafted the bullet under Iris Jade’s nose. Her muzzle wrinkled at the rancid ammonia scent, and she shifted in her sleep, but that was it. I gave her a shake for good measure.
“Wakey. It's time to taste the coffee and ashes."
Her sand-crusted eyes gradually opened. She studied me for a moment, then let herself sag in my forelegs.
“So...I’m dead then,” she whispered. “Eh, too bad. Still, I guess if you’re here already, that means somepony managed to get your sorry ass before I did. Knowing I outlived you makes it a little bit worth it.”
I grinned and dropped her.
She flailed at the air, trying to get some purchase before pitching off the bench. Jade hit the floor with a loud grunt, and then the rest of the dirty sheet flopped across her muzzle. Her hooves tangled in the cloth as she tried fitfully to get free.
“Nope! Still alive, Miss Iris Jade! The Chief of Police has need of your services!”