Chapter one: Triggerhoof
“You gotta be fucking kidding me!”
Triggerhoof looked up, over the cracked and broken marble counter and towards the sign above. It listed many different departments of the hospital, to make it easier for other people to find their way around. There were departments for eye problems, heart problems, stomach problems, muscle problems, lung problems, back problems, and even a department for psychological treatments. Each category was divided in dozens of sub-categories, some of which had faded or fallen off. Triggerhoof scanned the sign with his eyes once more, and scowled.
“How is it even possible for humans to have that many problems. Are humans that weak?”
He was talking to no one and nopony. He stood alone on cracked tiles in the vast entry hall of the hospital. Around him, the building was decayed. No window was left intact by the chorus of nuclear blasts that had sounded years ago. Potted plants were either dead, or had overgrown their pots. The dust in the air was clearly visible in Triggerhoof’s flashlight beam. Triggerhoof did one step forward to give the sign a better look, and then, as if on cue, some plaster from the roof showered dust all over the pony.
“Dammit!” he shouted in his gasmask, as one tile fell upon his helmet. Luckily it wasn’t a big part, so both his head as well as the visor of his gasmask remained unharmed. Triggerhoof silently wondered whether his mask would protect his lungs from asbestos cutting them apart.
If it works for radioactive particles that you can’t even fucking see, than should damn well protect against a puny bit of dust.
Triggerhoof shined his flashlight upon the sign again. Where should he start looking? He realized he was thinking very optimistically; neither he nor General Johansson knew whether or not this location had been raided yet. For all he knew, the place could already have been picked clean by other Heat Seekers, or whatever the hell other surviving groups called the soldiers who scavenge supplies for them.
But that shouldn’t stop Triggerhoof from trying to find at least something. The pony unfolded one of his wings, reached underneath his weapons, and inside his saddlebags. After some fumbling, he pulled out a piece of paper, capsuled in a layer of plastic to protect it from the radioactive dust. It was a list with all the medicines Triggerhoof should find. Triggerhoof knew that a lot depended on him, for his home base was in dire need of some more medical supplies. Wiping the dust off the visor of his gasmask, the pony strained his eyes to read the words written in the doctor’s neat, ornate handwriting. After some minutes—more minutes than he would like to allow his attention to be diverted—he put the paper away again and sighed.
The doctor should have done better making a list of the things he doesn’t need.
Triggerhoof hoped that his memory wouldn’t fail him, and ventured onwards. Clad in his protective suit, painted in green and grey—the colors of the landscape outside—anyone else should have trouble moving around, let alone breaking into a trot, but it wasn’t the first time Triggerhoof was on a mission on Ground Zero. He moved with relative ease, scanning the cracked walls and the dusty floor of the hospital, letting his flashlight beam dance in front of him. He didn’t expect much resistance. Even though not even General Johansson knew where hostile forces had set up their home base, this close to the city, only a fool would set up any form of permanent settlement. The fallout, dust storms, and background radiation would make life very miserable.
Suddenly, a small crackling sound came from Triggerhoof’s left hoof. He knew it was not the sound of cracking tiles underneath him. It was the sound of his Geiger counter. After a quick curse, Triggerhoof raised his hoof and glanced on the little, yellow machine. The needle was no longer on the zero, but luckily still in the green. This place was hot.
Checking the foundation of the steps first, Trigg walked up a flight of stairs. Whatever medicine he needed, it wouldn’t be in the entry hall. Numerous other chambers passed. They were bedchambers, operation chambers, hallways, and much more. All of them were ruined and decayed, with beds overturned, matrasses eaten away by insects, curtains tattered and waving in the winds.
And at every chamber, Triggerhoof stopped and searched. He searched and he searched, but always came up empty. After the twelfth failed try, Triggerhoof took a moment to think. Either this wasn’t yet the right floor, or the hospital had been picked clean of its medication. Triggerhoof refused to believe the latter, if only because of the radiation. Radiation has a way of chasing people away. The gamma particles that no man could see, feel, taste, hear, or smell were always dangerous, and always present. And sadly, radiation sickness was more common than the cold.
No, it was a strange matter; a hospital in the middle of a hot zone, but still robbed of its valuable contents, medicine, equipment—everything. No matter how hard he tried, Triggerhoof couldn’t wrap his head around it. The doubt and questions manifested like an inflatable beach ball in his mind, ready to pop.
Triggerhoof let out a growl, walked out of the room, and slammed the door shut behind him with a bang. Triggerhoof walked on, but the door wasn’t very capable of handling such violence any more, and collapsed.
The next room wasn’t much of a room; it was a waiting hall. Triggerhoof could tell by the plastic chairs that were scattered about, not yet eaten away by the teeth of many destructive years’ time. A few lamps lay broken on the ground, and glass was all over the place.
Triggerhoof stopped. There was silence. The waiting hall had no windows, so darkness and silence reigned. The pony could feel something here. He didn’t like the silence one bit. Scanning the walls with his flashlight, Triggerhoof spotted something strange: footsteps. The dust on the ground had been stirred by someone. Triggerhoof followed the footsteps with the beam of his flashlight, snaking over the ground. The trail stopped at some rubble in the far corner of the waiting hall. But it wasn’t just rubble; it looked as if it had been stacked to form a miserable little hut with a roof made of a piece of linen, probably from one of the hospital beds.
Triggerhoof narrowed his eyes, pulled back the bolt of his assault rifle with his wing, and stepped closer—slowly.
The sound must have scared whatever lived in the hut. The pile of rubble stirred; a plastic chair tumbled down one of the ‘walls.’ A ball of rags tumbled out of it.
“Stop! Don’t move!” Triggerhoof called.
At first he thought he saw a skeleton, but it proved to be a man. Dirty, long tresses of hair hung down, as did his beard. He was covered in rags, crudely tied together from hospital linens. Of course, the sheets were far from white; they were grey, black, nasty. The man kept rolling and shuffling over the floor, as if he were cleaning it with his own garments.
Triggerhoof tried to follow his movements with his body, aligning the gun’s barrel with the shifting figure. “I said STOP!”
The voice hit the man like a hurricane. He stopped squirming about, and instead shuffled towards his ‘home’ as quickly as he could.
With one long jump, Triggerhoof stood beside the structure, and loomed over it. He brought his gun level. The man, shivering, looked straight into the barrel. “Pl-pl-please! Help!”
Triggerhoof snorted. “Why should I? I’m the one who needs help. Where are all the meds? Have people raided this place?”
The man squeaked like a mouse, and then curled up even tighter, as if he didn’t believe that there was somepony with a gun right outside his front door, threatening and asking strange questions. He didn’t say anything.
“I asked you a question,” Triggerhoof said. And to put more emphasis on his last words, he undid the safety catch on his combat shotgun, hanging snugly beside the assault rifle on his modified saddle. “Now answer it!”
With much visible effort, the tramp slowly turned around—although he didn’t stop trembling—and faced the intruder. “They kicked me out,” he said, hissing the words through clenched teeth. “They kicked me out and I want in again. I need the stuff.”
Triggerhoof did a step closer, all the while making sure to keep both his weapons aligned with the man. “What do you mean? What stuff?”
“Oh, oh, oh!” the man wailed, flinging his arms into the air. “The good stuff. The stuff that makes your head go WOOOOOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
Triggerhoof almost pulled the trigger with his wing to the man’s outcry. He barely kept himself in check. But he thought he was getting the picture now. He forced his voice to become gentle, although that was hardly possible, and said, “I can help you get the stuff. I’m looking for the stuff myself. Where is it?”
The man’s head traveled to the floor, until his nose touched it. “Down, down, down. They are all down, enjoying their stuff. And I’m up here, all alone and sad.”
Silently, Triggerhoof wondered how long this man had been on Ground Zero. Of course there was still radiation all around, but the man didn’t show any symptoms of radiation sickness yet. He still had all of his hair, and Triggerhoof couldn’t spot boils or discolored flesh, other than the filth he wore over his whole body. But Triggerhoof also knew that the man hadn’t long to live. He didn’t even have a gas mask. Within a matter of days, maybe one week, he would be fried from the inside by the radiation.
And so Triggerhoof mulled over the strange man’s words. Somehow, he knew he wasn’t going to pull any more information out of him. The man was a lunatic. I guess the radiation already taints his brain…
“I will go down,” Triggerhoof said. “If you show me where to go. Can you do that?”
The man shrunk again. “No, no, no! They will kill me. They will shoot me on sight. No, I cannot go back in. Once you’re out, you stay out. That is the law. But… I would like to go back in, if only to get some stuff. But no. You must get the stuff and bring it to me.”
At once another one of those cryptic answers, Triggerhoof scowled. He didn’t like overthinking. He wanted things, especially mission objectives, to be crystal clear. He felt the rage building inside of him. Here he was, talking to a fool in a building full of radiation. He realized he was wasting his time, and he scolded himself for that.
“Oh, please, get me some of the stuff, and—“
But the man’s words were cut short by the buckshot that transformed his face into a red paste, painting his home the same color as Triggerhoof’s coat. The rest of the body finally stopped shuddering after a couple of seconds, but Triggerhoof had already turned around.
“Then I will find it myself, you sick bastard,” he said, as he reloaded his shotgun with his wing.
**
The tramp had said ‘down,’ so Triggerhoof went down. He thought he had already figured out the answer to the riddle; this hospital also had a bunker underneath it. But the rest of the tramp’s words worried him.
They threw me out… they.
Triggerhoof reckoned there were hostiles inside the bunker. But whoever they were, he couldn’t guess. If they would be like the miserable little man he shot, it would be an easy task of wiping them out, and getting the ‘stuff,’ which he knew meant ‘medicine.’
He walked through the empty hallways, leaving a trail of bloody hoofprints behind. It looked as if the color of his coat seeped down upon the ground. Upon noticing his trail, Triggerhoof stopped, pulled some linen sheets off a nearby bed, and wiped his hooves clean. He wasn’t worried about the filth; he was worried to get backstabbed. If there was one little, dirty, miserable man living in the hospital, there could be more—and they could be armed.
As he walked down the stairs again, going to the main hall, Triggerhoof went over the information one last time, but couldn’t figure out the man’s strange behavior. He had thought it was the radiation, but he had also reckoned that the man hadn’t been outside, on Ground Zero, for that long. The wretch kept shivering, and not only because of fear. No, the behavior of the man was the only question Triggerhoof couldn’t answer. He had never seen such behavior before.
Could it be poison?
The people who were alive back before the apocalypse would probably have walked towards the sign to figure out where to go. But of course, the bunker wouldn’t be visible on it. Triggerhoof had learned from the doctor that many hospitals, energy companies, and sometimes even public schools had built some sort of public safehouse or underground bunker, when they saw how foreign politics went downhill.
But only the smart ones did build bunkers. People might have called them crazy, lunatics, or—a more progressive term—‘doomsday preppers,’ but those were the people who had taken the hints and saw what was coming: total atomic annihilation. Silently, Triggerhoof wondered how many of them would be alive.
He crossed the entrance hall, all the while scanning it with his flashlight. He was looking for a utility room of some sorts, but it was cleverly hidden. Nobody wanted panic, so they had made sure that only the top surgeons and medical personnel knew of the bunker.
If this bunker would be anything like the one he called home, then the entrance or elevator should be located somewhere in the hospital, on the ground floor. As he searched, he threw one more glance at his Geiger counter. The needle was now in orange. The crackling sound had gradually intensified, but it had been so gradually that Triggerhoof hadn’t noticed it. If there would be a bunker in the hospital, he had to find it fast.
A few more hallways branched off of the entrance hall on either sides. Triggerhoof flapped his wings, covering them both in a minute. His protective suit was drawn tightly over his wings, so he could still fly around, although really long distances could become a bit of a challenge. He flew past a couple more waiting rooms, a couple of offices, until he finally saw something of interest. It was a sign which read: ‘Restricted area. Authorized medical personnel only.’ Triggerhoof tried the doorknob.
“Dammit!”
The door was locked, naturally, and could only be opened by a keycard. Triggerhoof checked his Geiger counter. There was no time. The big red pony turned around, braced himself, and bucked at the door as hard as he could.
The force of the buck made him rebound and roll forwards. With a curse, Triggerhoof got up, checked the straps on his gas mask, and tried again.
THUMP! The same result.
Now Triggerhoof had enough of it. No time for fucking around! He jumped up, let out a whinny, and charged head-first into the door.
With this savage headbutt, the weakened door finally gave way. It slammed open, and Triggerhoof was left with a pounding headache. As he came to a standstill, he reached for his head and looked back to the stubborn door.
“At least it worked,” he said through gritted teeth.
And he had struck gold. Even though this chamber was also picked clean of any useful materials and medicine, Triggerhoof could clearly see where he had charged into: the security control room.
Broken monitors and keyboards with just a few keys left littered the room. This was where the medical personnel could oversee the situation, and coordinate the evacuation to make sure everyone got inside quickly. The bunker itself should be close.
And fair enough, there was an iron stairway leading down at the far side of the room. Triggerhoof looked back and checked his weapons, then he descended.
“Gotcha,” he whispered into his gasmask, when he reached the end of the stairs and saw the door in front of him. It looked almost identical to the one of Trigg’s own bunker: strong and indestructible. As Trigg looked at it, the gears in his head spun. There was no way of opening the door by force; it had to be opened by someone on the inside, or with very precise steel cutting explosives or equipment, both of which Triggerhoof lacked.
I should have asked that tramp on how to get in, Triggerhoof thought with a sour smile on his muzzle. Maybe they have a code, or a password or passphrase….
Triggerhoof looked around, but there were neither cameras nor an intercom like he had back at his own home.
That left him with only one obvious choice. Triggerhoof stepped forwards and banged on the door with his hoof. He positioned himself to the right, so when the door opened, Triggerhoof would first hear the people inside and get a picture of how many they were before they would spot him hiding behind the open door.
A clunk resounded, followed by a hiss like a snake, as the pneumatic lock disengaged itself. Triggerhoof was baffled for a moment. Could it really be that easy? Slowly, the heavy steel door opened and crept towards him. The sound of squeaking hinges was accompanied by voices and footsteps.
“What the fuck? There’s no one here,” a rough voice said.
“You think it is that fool Thomas?” another voice, one much higher and with a nasty undertone, said.
Boots shuffled. “If it is, I’ll make sure to smash his brains to pulp.”
I guess I saved you the trouble, Triggerhoof thought. He still listened, trying to figure out how many were there.
A third voice sounded. “No, I will be the one giving him what he deserves. He killed my love when he freaked out on his last trip, shot her to pieces right in front of my eyes. I couldn’t believe his aim was that steady, considering how many drugs he had taken.”
The one with the high voice guffawed. “That trip was legendary! I wonder what combination he tried out. I want some of that too. He completely lost himself, haha!”
“You think that’s funny, dipshit?” voice number three said, as loud and ugly as he could. “Let me give you a trip that will make you see stars!”
They were distracted. Triggerhoof seized the moment. With one jump, he moved from his hiding place into the open. With a second jump, he aligned his assault rifle with the three men and stood firm. A few seconds and some bullets later, the three of them lay on the ground, their bodies riddled with holes.
Triggerhoof took some time to study his enemy, to see whom he was dealing with. The bodies were filthy and weathered. They wore threadbare tracksuits or leather jackets, and one of them wore nothing but a ragged t-shirt. Triggerhoof doubted that they were part of the medical team that managed to get into the bunkers. No, they looked like they had been out on Ground Zero for a while, and Triggerhoof started comparing them with the other groups of wretches he had seen. They were the kind of people who used the anarchy of Ground Zero to become the worst versions of themselves. These people weren’t going to help anybody; they would shoot you in the back and loot your body. Raiders, thieves, outlaws, cutthroats, bandits—just a few names people had given to them.
They must have found some way into the bunker, Triggerhoof thought. But how do they keep themselves alive? What do they eat?
Not much, Triggerhoof saw, as their bodies were scrawny and their cheeks hollow. They wore gasmasks on their faces, but they were primitive models, lacking the full-face visor he himself wore. Triggerhoof was no fool. He knew that the shots might have alarmed the rest of the gang. He had to find a better position to set up a killing zone, or at least surprise them. But first, he took a look at their gas mask filters. They wouldn’t need them anyway.
Triggerhoof stuck out his tongue as he saw the dirty filters. They were of no use. Apparently, these raiders weren’t the brightest cookies in the jar—or bunker, for that matter.
Before him, there was a broken elevator, with next to it a stairway. It led deeper and deeper into the earth. The deeper one lives underground, the more protection one has from the radiation.
The cast iron stairs reverberated the incoming raider’s footsteps beautifully. Triggerhoof went for the direct approach. Against all logic but his own, he descended the stairs.
“You think the deliverymen fired those shots?” a voice came.
“No way,” another voice said. “Our prices aren’t that bad. At least, I believe they are fucking good. They always get cheap drugs, and in return, we get moldy food. We should be the ones shooting them.”
Yes, keep talking, keep talking, Triggerhoof thought, then I know exactly where you are. He could hear their footsteps on the iron.
“No, it’s not the deliverymen. Maybe it’s—“
But both raiders would never know what theory the first one would propose. They met Triggerhoof, who was waiting for them. Then they met the barrel of his gun. And then they met the buckshot with their faces.
As the echo of the bang rolled further downwards, Triggerhoof looked at his carnage.
“Two in one shot,” he said with a grin. “I must be in shape.”
He continued down the stairs, until he came upon a door. It was a thinner and weaker version of the giant blast door which sealed the bunker from the outside world. Right next to him was another room, but there was no light over there.
I guess they didn’t manage to power up the whole bunker, Triggerhoof thought. Just a part of it…
The door was locked, but that was an easy problem to solve. Triggerhoof knew those doors inside and out, so it didn’t take him long to find the lock. He aimed the barrel of his combat shotgun at the steel lock, turned his ears away, and fired.
The door swung open. Triggerhoof could blink once, before he saw the firing squad in front of him.
“FIRE!”
Of course the bandits were alarmed by the shots. Triggerhoof had just enough time to scold himself for forgetting that when the bullets began to fly. He jumped aside into the darkened chamber, but not quick enough. He felt a sharp pain in his ear as a bullet tore right through it. Blood trickled down upon his cheek, but the pain numbed that feeling.
Triggerhoof gritted his teeth—he had been through worse, far worse. His flashlight jumped around the dark room. He saw large racks stacked with metal boxes, a forklift, and some other unimportant things. He jumped, and took cover behind the racks. His enemies were slow to follow, so Trigg scanned the boxes quickly. It was just as he thought, for the boxes all bore red crosses.
Medical supplies!
“Find him!” a gruff voice said from outside. Then Triggerhoof turned off his flashlight. Darkness would be his advantage.
He quickly moved further into the hall, making sure to keep his hoofsteps light.
“There, there, I got him!” The voice was followed by a burst of machine gun fire, lighting up the dark hall like a stroboscope lamp.
“Fuck!” Stealth was not Triggerhoof’s strong suit. He felt a bullet fly through the hairs of his tail. Triggerhoof changed the direction in which he was walking, then stopped.
“Come out, come out, my little pony,” a raspy voice said, as if they were playing a game. “Come out, and then I have a little treat for you… A leadburger!”
Triggerhoof rolled his eyes, a gesture that no one could see in the dark. He heard boots shuffling closer. As silently as he could, he fumbled into his backpack.
Not silently enough. Shots fired, bullets ricocheted off metal boxes, letting sparks fly like fireworks.
Once again Triggerhoof changed his position. But he couldn’t do that forever. Soon, they would have him cornered; he had seen that there was no way out of this hall on the other side.
“Why don’t you come over here?” the raspy voice said. “Then we will give you a nice brush and you will look pretty. A brush with swords!”
Grunting softly at the insult, Triggerhoof reached back and dug through his pack with his wing. By his estimations, there wasn’t much hallway left for him to hide in. He kept searching. “Yes,” he whispered, as he drew out the night-vision goggles. Slipping it over his gasmask, he put the goggles on and pressed the button.
“Whoa!” One of the raiders was almost standing next to him. They had advanced quicker and quieter than Triggerhoof had anticipated.
“HAHA! Gotcha!” the raider shouted, and let the bullets fly. Triggerhoof had just enough time to dive into a roll. The bullets struck not him, but the raider walking next to the trigger happy one.
“Dammit! Watch your fire!” the leader said.
“Yes, but he was right in front of—“
A heavy boom ended the argument; a pistol shot that was not intended for Triggerhoof, but for the raider.
“Man down,” the leader said, and he chuckled.
These guys are nuts, Triggerhoof thought, as he watched the troop of filthy, scrawny raiders through his night vision goggles. There were about two dozen of them, maybe more. They were all fanned out, walking in a line further and further into the hall in between the large racks of boxes.
What was he to do now? He could go guns blazing, but then he would only be able to gun one of them down, before he himself would die. As soon as the muzzle flash of his guns would announce the deadly bullets, they would see it and know where he was. He had to think of something out-of-the-box. Fast.
Triggerhoof looked at the forklift, and hoped that there was some fuel in it.
“Yo, boss,” one of the raiders said, “why don’t we just pepper the whole damn room with lead. Then we’ll be sure to get him.”
There was a hiss and the sound of a slap. The leader tried to see who had given that suggestion. Then he gave up, and said, “Who said that?”
“That was Peter,” another voice said back.
“Good.” The raider hissed a curse. “As soon as I can see your dirty face, I’ll kill you, Peter. I’m the one with the ideas. How dare you offer such a good idea instead of me.” He did an attempt to look at his men, but couldn’t see a thing. “That accounts for all of you. If you have a good idea, just whisper it in my ear, and then I will voice it. Understood?”
The other men grumbled their approval. The bold ones said ‘yes.’
“Now, let us kill a pony,” the leader said. “Everyone, take your position!”
The raiders shuffled on their feet, making sure not to stand in front of someone else’s gun barrel.
“Take aim!”
But the leader forgot there was nothing to aim at. It was still dark, of course.
“FIRE!”
The sound of the gunshots drowned out the rumbling of the forklift’s engine. Triggerhoof ducked behind the wheel, as he tried to speed up as fast as he could. In the flashes of light, the leader of the raiders saw the forklift approaching. But it wasn’t heading for the group. At the last moment, the forklift veered off, and slammed at full speed into one of the racks stacked full of boxes.
Before the raider leader could fathom what that ‘little pony’ had done, an avalanche of metal descended on him and his troops. He wanted to utter a cry or a curse, but his head became crushed underneath the weight of a supply box. The hallway was filled with screams and the crushing sound of bones. One or two last gunshots sounded, trying to overrule the clanging and banging of the boxes. Then, after a small echo, everything went quiet.
Triggerhoof jumped off the seat of the forklift, and immediately fell down. A sharp pain traveled like a cold lightning bolt through his body. He felt the wet blood underneath his hoof. Uttering something between a grunt and a curse, he tried to stand on his hoof, but found that he couldn’t. Luckily, he was a pegasus, so he flapped his wings and hovered in midair.
Ignoring the pain and the dripping of blood, Triggerhoof scanned the pile of smashed raiders for any survivors. There were a few stuck ones, a few free ones. It didn’t matter. Trigg gunned them all down. Just when he thought he had them all, he saw one more raider. A crate had fallen on his legs, and he was fumbling in the dark as if he could wriggle himself free. Making sure no weapons were within the raider’s reach, Triggerhoof slipped off his night vision goggles, switched on his flashlight, and looked him in the eye.
“Pl-pl-please don’t kill me,” the raider said. His voice was trembling, and he was obviously in shock. Triggerhoof noticed a puddle on the ground that wasn’t blood. Had that raider been crying? Unfortunately, the raider’s next words were poorly chosen. “I-I-I w-was just following orders…”
BANG!
“So am I,” Triggerhoof said.
He stepped back and looked at his foreleg, the one he had needed to steer the forklift. Two holes.
Could be worse…
Triggerhoof took a moment to bandage it quickly. It took him longer than he wanted. At last he finished the knot, nodded in satisfaction, and flew back to watch the crates. None of them had opened as they had tumbled down the racks, so the medical supplies should still be in mint condition. This was better than Triggerhoof could ever have hoped; crates full of medical supplies, unopened and untainted by radiation. The only thing was…
How the fuck am I going to find the stuff I need in this big damn hall?
Triggerhoof had no idea. Maybe he could go back to his home base and ask the general for a search-and-retrieve mission with the tank. But that would take even more time, and Trigg had seen the state of some of the poor devils back home; they would perhaps be dead even before he returned with the meds. In a sense, their lives rested on broad pony shoulders.
Of course he wasn’t going to wrap his head around it in the dark. There could still be hostiles in the rest of the bunker. Triggerhoof flapped his wings, checked the load of his weapons, and proceeded further into the bunker.
**
There were definitely more raiders in the bunker, but they didn’t pose a threat to the well-armed pegasus. He had to land in order to fire his weapons, so he had been in pain several times. He stopped his salvo and leaned against the wall, dizzy from blood loss. Before him, the bullet-ridden body of a dirty slut slumped down, the surprise still etched on her face.
He had traveled to many strange rooms and had seen many junkies. Some of the rooms had been living quarters, often with raiders in them still tripping on their ‘stuff.’ One room had been a very strange one. There was blood all over the place, and various scalpels, tweezers, and other medical instruments lay scattered on the tables—obviously used. What troubled Triggerhoof was that he knew no one of the filthy raiders would likely have medical experience. No, Triggerhoof knew what the room was used for, as a fire burned in one corner, with a glowing, red-hot iron bar in it.
There was only one more room to check, the deepest one in the bunker, which was beginning to look like a tomb with all the bodies lying around. After a sigh through gritted teeth, Triggerhoof hovered over to the door.
Once again the lock wasn’t shotgun-shell-resistant. The door opened with a squeak.
“What the fuck is this?”
People in white lab coats, spotted with dirt and blood, were standing about. The women had taken cover beneath tables in the far back, while the men stood and watched Triggerhoof with bafflement and surprise etched on their faces. Triggerhoof couldn’t possibly make out whether they were relieved or mortified. The people in the lab coats weren’t certain yet either.
Everyone was standing still. The room looked like a picture; static. Triggerhoof saw that the room wasn’t much of a room; it was a laboratory. Glass vials and microscopes were standing everywhere. There were dozens of chemistry stations scattered all about with tubes and burners and strange, bubbling, colored substances. Triggerhoof didn’t need to ask anyone what they were making. Drugs.
“A-a-are you going to kill us?” a thin man with glasses asked Triggerhoof.
“I dunno,” Triggerhoof said. “First I want a clear view of the situation.”
The thin man cocked his head. He was shivering like a blade of grass in the wind. “Wh-what do you mean?”
Triggerhoof sighed. “What the fuck happened here?”
The thin man needed a long moment to calm down and get his voice to stop stuttering. He started telling, then stopped and retried several times. At last came the whole story.
“We are the last survivors of the apocalypse… a-a-at least in this hospital. When the bombs fell, everyone retreated to the bunkers, as we had practiced.”
“Go on,” Triggerhoof said, leaning against the door and keeping his guns trained on the lab coats.
“We waited for years, hoping that the background radiation would diminish. We wanted to go up, you know, and try to rebuild… something, anything. That, and our supply of food was running thin. It was the dumbest decision we had ever made. We should have done better to just starve to death. It was just… just terrible.”
“Just tell me what happened,” Triggerhoof said. “I don’t have time for pathetic stories.”
The man began stuttering again. “W-w-we encountered a group of raiders. They took us by force. Some of us they killed outright; I suppose those were the lucky ones. Th-th-they learned of the location of the bunker, and we had to lead them to it. Once we were all inside, they slaughtered the injured. All of them. But then they saw how we could serve them while still being alive. I don’t even know how long we have been making drugs for them, but it must have been years. S-s-sometimes they… they…” The man took off his glasses and covered his eyes with his hand.
Wimp, Triggerhoof thought, and looked at another person. He was also thin, but wore a beard. He took the hint, and finished the tale. “Sometimes, when the raiders thought that we weren’t working fast enough, they would get one of us and do… nasty things.”
“W-w-we could hear their screams all the way in the lab,” the man with the glasses said in a wavering voice.
Triggerhoof’s tense, combat-ready posture relaxed a bit. These people were no danger to him. He had saved them. In the silence that followed the tale, Triggerhoof looked at the lab coats one by one. “I’m looking for someone specialized in medicines who can help me to retrieve specific medication. Can somebody do that?”
“Most of us are trained doctors,” the bearded man said. Then he stepped back and waved his arms. “Just pick one.”
Triggerhoof scanned the crowd of doctors. Wherever his gaze fell, gazes were turned away. No one dared to look the rugged, blood-soaked pony in the eyes.
After some minutes, Triggerhoof made his choice. He drew breath to speak, but then a soft, delicate voice interrupted him.
“I will go.”
A pony, white, with only a few stains on her coat, stepped forward from the group. She had a pink mane that she wore in a messy bun underneath a nurse’s cap. She stepped forward and stopped much closer than Triggerhoof wanted her. He grunted.
“Does it hurt?” The white pony said, having completely mistaken the meaning of Trigg’s grunt. She further intruded the pegasus’s personal space, trying to get a closer look at the bloody bandages on his foreleg.
Another pony?! Triggerhoof did his best to hide his bafflement, but succeeded only partly. The white pony, however, couldn’t hide her shock, and her deep blue eyes shone with astonishment. Looking up, the white pony met Trigg’s gaze, when Triggerhoof jerked his hoof away. “I’m alright,” he grunted.
“My name is nurse Redheart,” the white pony said.
Triggerhoof turned around. “Let’s just go,” he said gruffly, and flapped his wings.
Nurse Redheart followed.
“A-a-are we free to go?” the man with the glasses asked Triggerhoof.
“Do whatever the fuck you want,” Trigg answered. “As long as you don’t stab me in the back.”
All the way towards the storage depot, Triggerhoof was silent, and that was driving nurse Redheart crazy. She had so many things to ask that red, well-armed pegasus. She looked down and stepped over the bloody corpses of the raiders with a small wince. She trotted to catch up with Triggerhoof, and then finally asked a question.
“What’s your name?”
But Trigg was not in the mood to talk. “Names don’t matter. What matters is the mission.”
“Is that why you’re here? Why… or how did you come here?”
Of course Triggerhoof flew towards this hospital, but he knew very well that was not what the pony meant. Triggerhoof snorted. “Same way you came here, I guess.”
Nurse Redheart remembered how she ended up on Earth; it was the most tragic day in her life. Although the exact reason and details remained elusive to her mind, the image she had seen was forever burned into her eyes. If it really had been so violent and extreme and powerful, then it made sense that more ponies became victims, whisked away from the face of Equestria to end up in this horrible, horrible world.
“Are-are you from Equestria too?”
“No more questions,” Trigg snapped.
“What mission were you talking about?”
“I said, no… more… QUESTIONS!”
Nurse Redheart would have liked to ask Triggerhoof some more questions, but didn’t dare to. From the looks of him, the red pegasus wouldn’t hesitate to shoot her and pick an other, less talkative doctor.
And so they reached the depot in silence, leaving many questions unasked and many riddles unsolved. They got to work. Nurse Redheart proved to know exactly how the crates were organized and which medicines lay in which crate. She winced at the sight of the crushed raiders, and looked aghast at their mutilated bodies and crushed skulls. Triggerhoof looked back, and saw that nurse Redheart’s face turned green. For a moment, Triggerhoof thought she was going to throw up, but she kept what little food was in her stomach in her stomach.
Good girl, Triggerhoof thought. You might last a day out there. Maybe two.
In a matter of minutes, Triggerhoof had found what he was looking for. His saddlebags were filled to the rim with medication, and he was already making plans in his head to do a search-and-retrieve mission, which he would lead, next to the general. He looked forward to ride in the tank again. He turned towards nurse Redheart. “We will be back to get the rest of the meds,” he stated.
Nurse Redheart jumped in shock. “But… what about us?”
“I dunno. Sing a song, do a dance, make something of your life.”
“B-b-but.” Nurse Redheart felt tears burning. Why was she crying? “I-I-I can’t… Take me with you.”
“Negative,” Triggerhoof said.
Nurse Redheart looked the stallion deep into his eyes. “Please!”
“Even if I wanted that—which I don’t—there’s no way you’re gonna make it through the area. Miles of irradiated, fucked-up, crater-ridden terrain lies between this facility and home base. You wouldn’t make it one mile.”
“B-b-but what else can I do?” Nurse Redheart poured every liter of desperation in her voice. She didn’t want to be left alone.
Triggerhoof turned his back on the pony and let out a long sigh. With a voice edged with irritation he said, “Look, just try to hold up here before we come back for the meds. Maybe, m-a-y-b-e, we can take you with us on the way back.” He shrugged. “But maybe not. In that case, figure something out with your friends or so.” Flapping his wings, Trigg headed for the doorway.
Nurse Redheart stomped her hoof on the ground. Tears streamed from her eyes. With a cracked voice, she said, “You’re no better than the raiders!”
Triggerhoof paused, if only for a few seconds. “Miss, I am well aware of that.” And with that, he put on his gasmask and left the bunker behind him.