“Hey! Four eyes! You wanna go fuck up an army?” A Manehattanite accent yelled, as Sugarcoat worked in repairing her rifle. She ignored it, continuing to pry the misfired casing out of the rifle's chamber.
Triple Sec tried to kick the door door open, Sugarcoat yelped, dropping the gun. It clattered to the floor as the Orange let himself in, cursing and hopping on one foot, holding the other in his hands.
“Don't they teach you to manners in Manehattan?”
“You're one to talk. Thought you wanted to go chase Sombra's Legion. But instead you're here, hiding like the rest of this damn town.”
“I’m planning to go save Lemon, yes. But I need a working rifle before I do that.”
Triple Sec looked at the mess of parts covering Sugarcoat's bed. Various bits of black metal in varying conditions, with greatly varying origins littered the girl's bed – surrounding like a halo what once was a bolt-action rifle.
“Yeah. I guess you do. That’s why I came to get you. Nobody else here has the balls to go and actually avenge my brother.” The boy sighed, brushing his messy ginger hair out of his face.
“My condolences. Now, if you excuse me, I need to figure out how to replace a trigger.”
Triple Sec didn't move and continued to stare at Sugarcoat's makeshift workstation, and the miscellany of parts within it. He had an idea.
“Which is something I can't do with you looking over my shoulder. Please leave before I have to throw you out.”
“I got a truck.”
“Good for you. Take a drive instead of a hike, I don't really care."
“I mean I got a working pickup truck. Like, right here outside.”
Sugarcoat looked up. “How?”
“Jacked it.”
“Does it have fuel?”
“Like, duh it has fuel. I'm saying you and I take it before Applejack figures its gone. If I drive fast enough, we ought to be catch those Sombra assholes before they get back to their base, right?”
“Correct. But that doesn’t solve the fact that I don't actually have a working ranged weapon anymore since Braeburn confiscated my pistol.”
Triple Sec shrugged, and then reached into the duffel bag he had slung over his tracksuit jacket. “Here.” He said, tossing Sugarcoat a revolver. “Take it. It was Cointreau’s and since he don’t need it anymore, you do.”
Sugarcoat caught it, holstering it immediately. “Thanks. Though getting to Sombra's fort and back is at least a two-day journey by car. Hypothetically, we could actually intercept them, since they would be on foot or bicycle. But, do have any rations and supplies? I don’t really want to starve half to death again.”
“Yeah. I stole enough for three people for a week each. So, are we going or what?”
“We might as well. It's the best the chance we have of actually rescuing Lemon Zest.” Sugarcoat said, getting up to unlock the room's cabinet. From it, she removed her coat and backpack, donned both and holstered her knives.
“You ready or should-”
“Let's go.” Sugarcoat said, “No sense in waiting around then.”
They left the battered cabin and Triple Sec was correct, he did possess what was disputably a truck, hidden behind the building itself, half-covered up by a pile of dead branches. Those they brushed off, and climbed into the cab. The machine smelled faintly of apples, and apple accessories - gunpowder, for instance. Triple Sec reversed it out of its hide, and nearly managed to flatten Braeburn on way.
"Hey, what the fuck?" The sheriff yelled, The hell y'all get a pickup from?"
"We going to avenge this moron's death. Feel free to come along!" Sugarcoat explained as the truck barrelled through the town.
Fifteen minutes into the journey and Sugarcoat was deeply regretting her decision. Applejack's truck – which she had inherited from her brother, Big Mac, which he had inherited from his father, Bright Mac, in a tradition that probably went back another three generations – had suspension that felt like an I-beam wedged between two lumps of cement. The bright red Frankenstein of a car – made of mismatched pieces of parts, paneling and wood planks – handled horrifically and skidded back and forth down the pothole-filled road on glass-smooth tires. The air conditioning was long-gone and the deathtrap relic of a vehicle’s seatbelts were worn to thin strands of cord. Somehow, the contraption still possessed an intact cassette player, which Triple Sec had declared his – and subjected the surrounding landscape to Blackfoot, at a volume high enough to drown out even the rumbling clanking of the car’s makeshift roll cage.
Sugarcoat kicked herself for letting Triple Sec drive. Seemingly unaffected by the truck’s bone-cracking shaking, he sped down Appleloosa Hill, toward the grey expanse of sand, and toward Sombra’s Legion. Trying to distract herself from the near-lethal car sickness, Sugarcoat stared at the ramshackle floor of the truck. Once she noticed the hole in it, revealing the tarmac blurring by only inches below, she closed her eyes, hung onto the office-chair armrest, and tried not to be sick.
The alleged truck screeched to a halt minutes later, jolting Sugarcoat into the dashboard, which was fortunately padded in case of just such an incident. Sugarcoat looked up, unrolled the window, and threw up.
“Next time, I’m driving.” She coughed, once finished.
Triple Sec, meanwhile, looked no worse for wear. He was green, but he had been born that way. Looking through the binoculars he had borrowed from Sugarcoat, he said, “They’re not following.”
“Who?”
“Apples. Sure, they can see us – a bunch of them are camped out by that creepyass graveyard forest of theirs, but they aren’t chasing us. They’re just there, watching.”
“Good. Why did we stop exactly?” Sugarcoat said, looking up at the surroundings – a bloodstained stretch of road, with a scorched and sandblasted Porsche lying to one side. Just looking at the ruined car made Sugarcoat feel sicker than she already was – something looked off the way the two burned corpses looked emptily out at the desert, and at her.
“For starters, you looked like you was gonna die. That and this was where Cointreau got shot by that dickhead in the helmet. I sorta wanted to, y’know, pay respects.” Triple Sec explained.
“Go ahead. I think I'm going to lie down in the back of the truck.” Sugarcoat said, climbing back into the pickup, using one of the bags her companion had brought along as a pillow.
Try as hard as she could, she couldn't keep her eyes closed, let alone sleep. The air itself felt stale as the sense of discomfort grew. Sugarcoat sat up, looked over at Triple Sec. The boy was busy hammering a post into the dirt beside the road – the pounding of the wood reminded her of the clunking of the truck – returning the nausea to her stomach. She looked back over at the car.
The skeletons were staring at her.
Or, at least, it seemed like they were. Their eyeless skulls and blackened papery skin seemed locked in perpetual scream – both realizing that something had gone terribly, horribly wrong. One held its arms out before it – they ended halfway down the forearms, in jagged stumps. That one was missing most of its face - as if it had been shot point blank in the jaw.
“I'm done.” Triple Sec said, “I guess my brother can rest a bit easier now that he's got a gravestone.”
“Were you two close?”
“Yeah. We were twins. Nobody could tell me and Cointreau apart, not even Mom and Dad. Course, we had to be close. Manehattan was a pretty shitty place to grow up. Me and him and our little sister were picked on pretty bad there.”
“I’m honestly sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah, I mean, it was a great city and all, but the people there weren’t exactly nice. They’d stab you in the back the minute you looked away.”
“I certainly know what that feels like. It was almost refreshing to leave all that behind. Until, well, they started doing it to me here too.”
“I guess I got lucky after when Mom sent me and Cointreau off to this place then. Can’t imagine what Manehatten is like these days. Though you said you’d been there, right? Is it bad?”
“I went with my previous girlfriend before the apocalypse. I didn’t enjoy the trip too much. Suri tried to steal a pair of high heels and managed to get us both arrested.”
“Shit, really?” Triple Sec laughed.
“Seriously. We broke up once we returned to Canterlot city. I gave up caring about fashion after that.”
“Sorry to hear that actually. I mean, dealing with Manehattanite cops is brutal to start with, and then getting dumped? Ouch.”
“I broke up with her. I’m glad she’s dead to be honest.”
“Fuck, you killed her?” Triple Sec said, taking an involuntary step back from leaning against the truck.
“Of course not, but that’s her car over there.” Sugarcoat said, pointing to the crashed convertible. Its number plate read “SUR1” and one of the corpses still wore said girl's favourite blue ascot.
“Huh. Nobody ever really cared to check who drove that thing. We just sorta figured it was haunted and tried to leave it alone.”
“Haunted? Ghosts aren’t real. I agree I feel uncomfortable just looking at it, but it isn’t haunted. That’s impossible.”
“Dude, I once saw Twilight shoot laser beams out of her eyes. If she says that shit’s haunted, I’m believing her.”
Sugarcoat glared at him, “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“She said you and her went to school together, right? And then she turned into a fucking demon? Magic is totally real, and Suri’s car is definitely haunted.”
“Yes, Twilight did try to steal Equestrian magic, which corrupted her and briefly transformed her into some kind of monster. Operative words being "Equestrian magic". From what I’ve seen, the portal to the fantastical dreamland of talking ponies doesn’t work anymore. Therefor, magic and all other supernatural phenomena are no longer possible.”
“Yeah, no. Explain how that thing is so creepy then.”
“Placebo Effect. You’re scared of it because you believe its haunted because everyone thinks its haunted. Furthermore, you subconsciously associate it with the deaths of your brother and pet dog, therefor cementing the idea of ghosts in your mind. It is not haunted, and I’m going to prove it.” Sugarcoat said, climbing out of the truck.
She walked over to the car, and started to search it. Its passengers, Suri and another girl, scarred beyond recognition, were completely and utterly dead. The glovebox was empty, and the boot of the car was locked. While inspecting it, Sugarcoat faintly heard something tick, like a watch. Putting her ear to the trunk, she heard the ticking grow louder – it was fast yet regular, and it was accompanied by the subtle scratching of a record needle.
“There’s something in there.” She said, “I’m going to pick the lock, and take whatever it is out, to show you that there is nothing special about this car, alright.”
Triple Sec shrugged, “Don’t come crying to me when those zombies wake up then.”
Dr Hoove’s screwdriver made short work of the lock. The trunk popped open to reveal two suitcases, and a small polystyrene crate. Sugarcoat loaded the suitcases into their truck, and then went to examine the crate. Inside it, was another box, wrapped in bubble wrap. Said box was about the size of her fist, made from ebony wood and decorated with delicate gilt filigree. One face was made of glass, revealing the source of the ticking – an intricate combination of gears and other machinery. The box also had a crank on one face, a large switch protruding from another, above a small plaque.
“Analogue Brown Noise Generator. Designer: S. Flare. And S. Polomare!” Sugarcoat read, noticing that Suri’s own addition was scrawled on separately with a silver pen.
“Okay. What does the box do?” Triple Sec said, his own pistol drawn in case any corpses had any funny ideas.
“It generates brown noise.”
“No shit, Sherlock. What is that?”
“It’s a subsonic frequency that causes nearby people to hallucinate and experience feelings of intense paranoia. In layman’s terms, it makes you think that there’s a ghost nearby.”
“Can you turn it off?”
Sugarcoat flicked the switch. Immediately, the ticking ceased, and a weight was lifted from her chest. She pocketed the box, and returned to the truck, making sure to get in the driver’s seat this time.