My Little Metro: Chapter 6
“When we choose a path, fate does not follow. It comes to meet us.”
My leg bothered me soon after continuing along the E line. Even that short sprint from the dropbears had put unnecessary strain upon it. I could feel that the flesh hadn’t quite mended yet; stitches had been applied and the healing potion still worked furiously to keep up with the exertion of survival. Even then I knew it’d be a long while before I could feel like my limb wasn’t coming detached with every step I took. At least now we’d been walking at a sedate pace for the last two hours and I hadn’t put much weight onto it since our mad dash over the bridge. The E line stood mostly abandoned until it swung back around southeast and met up with Section 12, the line that would take us straight into Bucklyn. Until then, who knew what would be in our way? The tunnels of the Metro always had a way of surprising ponies, whether from freak cave-ins, new tunnels dug by mutants, the movement of bandits and creatures. No two trips into the Metro’s depths turned out the same way.
Fortunately, things seemed predictably horrible and lifeless so far. E line didn’t fail to be uncomfortably damp and cool, though that and the pains in my body kept my mind away from darker places. We passed only a few side passages which Sidewinder ignored, and once were disturbed by a lone drake that saw us coming and growled before running. Our meager headlights were the only thing standing between us and total darkness, not that there was much to see on the constant blank walls. The river of pipes above and around us continued unabated. The only other features were us and those less fortunate than us. Many other stalkers used this tunnel, but didn’t clean it of their refuse… or their corpses. I watched Sidewinder brusquely check the torn body of what seemed to be a young mare stalker, the flesh stripped away almost down to the bone around her ribs. Some mutant (or particularly starving pony) had even cracked open her skull case and devoured the fatty richness of her brain. With her body tangled amongst a few stalagmites surrounded by glowplants, I imagined her final moments desperately trying to use the rocks as a meager shelter before falling prey to some horrid beast.
While the sight turned my stomach and even made Sunny Side sigh with disappointed disgust, Sidewinder just gave the whole scene a once over and moved on when he found nothing to scavenge. It occurred to me with a flash of grim insight that I’d perhaps be expected to do the same if we found ourselves on our own. Living in a station gave us a modicum of shelter and protection, even as the world outside grew darker and more hideous by the day. While daily tribulations and fear surrounded me from the day of my birth, I’d never had to literally poke through a dead pony’s pockets to find essentials. I wondered how it was our society fell so far. Weren’t we once the paragons of friendliness and goodwill in the world? According to our histories, even the Great War barely touched our shores until the end, when the bombs and megaspells rained from the skies. Now, we weren’t even sure if we were the only intelligent beings left in Equestria, perhaps all the world, yet still we slipped further away from our old ideals. In times like this, I felt all the more blessed to have a friend like Sunny Side and a father like Cinder Block. Only bright spots like those kept hope alive that we could reclaim our heritage, even in the face of utter extinction. At the very least, we lived with the hope that no matter how terrible we ourselves became, we’d always value our friends.
Our new friend Sidewinder, however, gave me some doubts. He proved to be rather talkative, though only to himself. He hugged the walls and attempted to stay blended with the shadows as if he didn’t have two inexperienced ponies tromping alongside him, and he muttered almost constantly in that deep, droning buzz of a voice. It sounded like a religious invocation, or a unicorn worrying over a complicated spell. I heard many interesting and disturbing things from him, and was content to just listen to what he had to say. At the very least he seemed more interested in babbling than trying to kill us, which I was fairly sure he’d attempt to do at some point. Sunny Side, however, was unnerved by Sidewinder’s peculiarities and at last blurted out his discomfort.
“You’re just… a crazy pony, aren’t you?”
I almost laughed. There were better things to exclaim after two hours walking in the cold and dark with a clearly unhinged pony. Sidewinder did laugh, though it was more of a disturbing low-pitched chuckle.
“When you live alone in the Metro, being crazy is one of the few ways to entertain yourself,” he said, snickering. He then fixed Sunny Side with a very serious stare, eyes going wide enough to ruffle the pegasus’ feathers.
“I also touch myself sometimes.”
I shared a very confused look with Sunny Side.
“That’s… good?” my friend replied with a nervous smile.
“No, it’s boring!” Sid replied. “I’ve learned all my own tricks by now.”
Sunny Side fell back into uncomfortable silence.
“Oatmeal…” Sidewinder murmured as he scurried back into the dark.
I chuckled, glad for the levity Sidewinder provided even if I still fretted about being shot in the back. So far he’d kept his word, but would his mind soon turn on us like Sunny Side’s might? I made sure to hang back behind the strange stallion, using my little light to make sure he was always ahead of us. I noticed him pick up something once or twice, but I wasn’t sure what. It could’ve been anything from a stray bullet to a piece of lint. At odd intervals he’d stop dead in his tracks, reach into a specific pocket, and toss out a small metal screw on a length of string. I wondered if perhaps he was fishing for invisible creatures, but the operation became monotonous and uneventful after every throw resulted in him simply drawing the line back and continuing on.
While he was engaged in this activity once, a howl from behind echoed through the tunnel. We raise our ears and straining our senses. Nothing came, but we all knew sooner or later something would.
“Cerberus is hungry,” Sidewinder muttered. “His many heads are always hunting.”
We let the implications sink in. Always, always you walked a fine line between hunter and hunted in the Metro. In a way, I’d released Sweet Dreams from the eternal game of cat and mouse we played with the new monsters that ruled our world. Were the Dark Ones a sign, I wondered, that the gods had truly abandoned us? Were they the next generation of beast that would at last extinguish the vestiges of ponykind and rule this new, frozen world? I wondered about those dark wings and long horns casting shadows over our once great cities, spreading over the seas to the other lands. I saw their terrible, brooding shapes lording over a planet that’d once been the home of dragons and griffons, zebra and deer and so many others for thousands of years. The old stories spoke of so many distant lands, ruled by so many different races apart from ponies. Worlds within worlds. All of them ended in an instant when the world stared into the face of terror and blinked, and the war to end all wars began. All of it burned to ash, replaced by wild uncaring magic and bloodthirsty monsters. An entire world of wonder and life doomed to an existence as an irradiated ice ball, tyrannized by mutants and Dark Ones. Such an ignominious fate was too terrible to contemplate, and only strengthened my resolve and soured my temper the more I thought about it. I imagined Sunny Side noticed the way my brow was furrowed, as he snapped me from my reverie.
“Are you all right, Lockbox?”
“Hmm? What do you mean?”
“I noticed you getting all thoughtful back there again. It’s about that mare, isn’t it?”
His voice dropped to a whisper, and I followed suit.
“I still can’t believe it,” I admitted, my gaze going to the ground. “To think I almost led us both into a deathtrap just because…” I paused, making sure Sidewinder wasn’t listening. I couldn’t take that chance. “Just because I wanted to get to Bucklyn without delay. I’m the one who had us deal with the Guild and accept their proposal, and now… somepony is dead. It could’ve been any one of us, and it all would come back to me regardless.”
Silence draped between us like a curtain. For a long time there was nothing the clop of our hooves on the ground, the muttering of Sidewinder up ahead, the sound of his scurrying back and forth, checking every nook and cranny.
“I think what bothers me most is how little it bothers me,” I said at length. “What we are doing… it’s so important. Sweet Dreams didn’t have to die. She just did because she was greedy and we happened to cross paths. I cannot help but wonder how many other ponies will try to stop us. How many we’ll have to go through.”
I shook my head.
“Every pony that dies is one less to make our world the way it used to be. I’m no stranger to the Metro, but that was the first time I’ve really seen what it can make us do to each other. The first time I’ve seen us as enemies, and not just the world around us. Everything’s changed in such a short time. And I still walk forward, trying to do what I must. Shouldn’t I be breaking down, Sunny Side? Shouldn’t I be consumed with guilt? Shouldn’t I be doing what our ancestors would do and find a way to fix it?”
My friend couldn’t answer, except to say, “You’re a good pony, Lockbox. You’re stronger than me in many ways. I think… I think if your father were here, he’d do the same as you. Just… what he has to.”
It would’ve made me feel better, except he stared straight ahead as he said it and seemed disturbed by our talk. Perhaps I wasn’t wise to seem uncertain. I certainly didn’t feel like it. The way Sweet Dreams died would haunt me for a long time, I knew. The way blood streamed from her eyes, the look of sheer animal terror that comes when a pony simply can’t understand why they’re suffering so terribly. And yet I just put one hoof in front of the other, distancing myself from the memory like it wasn’t such a big deal. I felt torn between two minds. One cried out for forgiveness, for a way to bring back the life I’d inadvertently taken, no matter how “deserving” she might have been of death. The other gruffly pushed onward, justifying that it was her own fault; I was alive, she died, nothing more could be said about the affair, and in the end more important lives than hers were at stake. Since I wasn’t a blubbering wreck, I feared the latter stood victorious. Though my journey had barely begun I knew I’d already sacrificed a small part of my dream of a better world to save the last remnants of mine. I was willing to sacrifice other ponies. Worse, it felt strangely normal.
In my mind’s eye, an achingly beautiful pegasus turned away from me and went back to paradise, leaving me alone and cold in the dark.
/-/-/-/
We passed a crossroads where E Line split off, curving east-southeast. The other tunnel had been walled off in some distant year with rusty metal sheets and rebar. It seemed to me more of a cage than a wall, and I noticed a strange decoration at the top: a circle of twisted metal with a single sprite-light in the center. It glowed with an unearthly pale blue light.
“A charm!” I said with a spark of realization, surprising my companions. Sidewinder hissed at me to be quiet.
“Yes, a charm! A charm against the boogey-monsters that don’t’ care about bullets. Shut your trap and keep moving!”
We’d reached a darker, less civilized part of the Metro, where mutants were thick and dangers were high. No more errant sprite-lights lit our way and the tunnel was choked with collapsed sections of wall and veritable fields of glowplants. Strange sounds echoed from the blocked off tunnel, distant as a memory and just as haunting. Chagrined by Sidewinder’s reprimand I forced myself to look away from the strangely beautiful charm and followed my companions.
“We should be quieter here. These tunnels aren’t very nice, and I’ve seen evidence of bandits moving around,” Sidewinder whispered as we passed by another grove of glowplants growing right out of a pony’s skeleton. Just to be safe, I checked my stores of ammo. There were only four clips left for the Mule, not counting the two magazines of military grade bullets that made up most of my life savings. Twenty-two shots for my pistol and a hoofful of shotgun shells rounded off the collection. Sunny Side had considerably more, but I wondered if soon we’d be reduced to scavenging off corpses like Sidewinder.
The tunnel grew ever more claustrophobic as we continued on. The sickly green glow of the plants cast monstrous shadows from broken pipes and fallen debris, and the light echo of drafts through the tunnels lent an eerie atmosphere to them. I almost jumped when a drake scuttled out of a smaller hole dug into the wall by lurkers, once harmless rats mutated into hairless pink abominations that could kill a pony in sufficient numbers.
“Still a bit jumpy, are you? Don’t worry,” Sidewinder said, grinning over his shoulder. “It’s when the drakes aren’t around that you have to be really careful.”
Soon we came to another crossroads, with the fiercest obstacle we’d faced yet: a complete cave-in that choked the entire width and height of the E line. Our lights shone on the wreckage of a train that’d been caught in the disaster, but there was no chance of tunneling through it like Sunny and I had in our escape from the electric cat-beast. It too was clogged full of earth. The only other way was to our right, through a side tunnel that bypassed the main E line and went off south.
“Shit,” Sidewinder grumbled, scuffing the dirt wall with his hoof. “Now we have to go straight through fucking bandit territory… assuming something worse hasn’t eaten them all.”
He turned back and regarded us morosely.
“I don’t suppose you two are very good at staying quiet, are you? Rumor has it this whole stretch of tunnel has some pretty weird stuff going on.”
“Well, you’re supposed to be the expert,” Sunny Side answered, smirking. “Bandits and ghost tunnels getting you down? If you don’t have a plan we can always just go back the way we came.”
“Ha! As if. Don’t worry your little head.” Sidewinder leaped forward, bonking Sunny Side several times between the eyes with his hoof. “Your uncle Sid has it all figured out!”
Sunny Side watched Sidewinder disappear into the shadows of the side tunnel, somehow even darker and more foreboding than the E line itself.
“If he’s my uncle, then a thumper’s my sister,” he grumbled, and followed him inside. I took one look at the darkness within, and only went forward after a judicious recharge of my small headlight.
The side tunnel looked more like a cave than a proper pony construction. Dirt covered most of the concrete platforms. The walls were held back by little more than rotting timber. In one section, the wall had been penetrated by the winding roots of the mutant trees that choked the Stalliongrad. I wondered many times what the surface was like now, less a city and more a bizarre wildlife sanctuary. The stalkers and Rangers often brought back reports of wildly growing flora creating veritable jungles between the rotting skyscrapers, occasionally torn up by blizzards of unpredictable ferocity and magical anomalies. Anomalies came and went with unnerving irregularity, and were unstoppable when they appeared. Worse, some of them roamed the deeper tunnels of the Metro as if they possessed minds of their own. I hoped never to encounter one, though I wondered if my fever dream counted.
My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of trickling water up ahead. Sidewinder held up a hoof and stopped us from going further while he investigated. He didn’t seem to mind our lights as we shined them on his back, trying to look ahead. Either the danger was not reactive to light, or it’d already seen us. Once more he pulled out the screw on the length of string and tossed it forward every so often, testing invisible waters.
I saw Sidewinder pause at the very limit of our lights and flick his tail forward, egging us onward. We went, and as we crawled I felt something very strange in my head. A buzzing noise like there was a bee trapped in my skull began to pester me as I did my best to stay low and quiet. It only got worse the further I went, until it became a phantom vibration running through my skull. The lights didn’t reveal anything I or the rest of us could see, but the closer I came the worse the feeling grew. The sound of trickling water grew louder.
I gently scrubbed my forehead, trying to calm myself. It must’ve been leftover effects of my injuries, perhaps the numerous blows I’d suffered to my head. Celestia above, the last thing I needed was a concussion! The air of the tunnel felt thicker than normal and my breaths started to come in deep, sucking gulps. Sunny Side gave me a worried glance but said nothing.
“Ah ha,” Sidewinder said at last, pointing down another side passage that led to what appeared to be a checkpoint on a sewage line. Water dribbled down from the ceiling into slurry that stood stagnant and foul in a shallow canal. In some distant age it might’ve been used by technicians checking on Stalliongrad’s sewer system. Now it was a dirty little place for thirsty animals to have a drink. “Just a little fracture in the wall. Must be a storm going on up top, water’s leaking in through these pipes in the ceiling... funny, I could’ve sworn something else would be here.”
I wasn’t paying attention to the stallion, instead gripped in the depths of what felt like a premonition. My stomach felt queasy as my vision began to swim. I breathed hard and quick, eyes darting around the passage. There was another door across from the aqueduct, and I began staggering towards it.
“Lockbox?” Sunny Side asked, fluttering to my side.
“Something’s… something’s coming. Something’s close,” I whispered, feeling queasier as time went on. “We need to get out of here. We need to move.”
“Lockbox? What’s going on? I don’t… I don’t understand,” Sunny Side said, leaning against my side as I headed for the door with uneven, ungainly steps. Sidewinder gave me an odd look and turned towards the tunnel, then reached into one of his pockets. I watched him intently, wondering if he felt the same way I did. I saw the little string and screw come out again. The buzzing and nausea reached a fever pitch as he took a few tentative steps forward. I didn’t know where the sense of danger came from, where the ominous, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach originated. I just knew that simply by being here we made a grave mistake.
“No… No, don’t!” I gasped, but it was too late. Sidewinder tossed out the little screw. It twirled through the air.
It stopped in the air.
Sunny Side and I watched with bated breath as the tunnel just in front of Sidewinder began to glow with an unearthly light. The screw was yanked out of Sidewinder’s grasp and twirled in midair, then abruptly glowed red hot and melted away.
The buzz in my head was a terrible noise, drowning out everything else. I saw Sidewinder mouth a curse and felt Sunny Side drag me along into the side tunnel, kicking down the door as he went. Where there should have been a clang of metal there was only that damnable, droning buzz. It shook me to the core, shivering my bones and making my skin crawl. I felt as though I was in front of an incredibly loud music speaker putting out a mindless bass drum beat, yet still I was aware of my hooves propelling me forward into the cramped passage beyond the door. Sunny Side didn’t need to lean against me, and neither of us needed encouragement to run for our lives from the horrible whatever-it-was that came screaming down the tunnel.
I dared to look back and only saw Sidewinder silhouetted by a terrible bright light beyond the doorway, shouting something incoherently as he ran. The ground shook as if echoing our fright. Some… thing was at the doorway. I almost felt as though we were being watched, and the light was some baleful eye peering inside the cramped passage, amused by our terror. The rumbling buzz filled my ears, vibrating down in the core of my being, consuming all thought except to run. All sound, the world seemed reduced to that small tunnel that offered us such meager protection from the angry force of nature behind us. Somehow it seemed the faster we ran the less ground we covered, and I kicked my fight-or-flight reaction into overdrive, seeking to put as much distance between us and this terrible phenomenon as possible.
Just run, I thought. Run and run and run until there’s nowhere left to go, then turn and shoot the damn thing with all you’ve got.
I looked behind again, over Sidewinder’s broad shoulders, past his face that showed more professional concern than outright terror. The light at the end of the tunnel was softer now. Red, violet… pink, almost. It was in that more mellow, less-like-the-white-hot-rage-of-a-sun light I noticed something very peculiar. Our shadows were leaning towards the light. Like it was drawing us in.
Somehow it was that sight alone that seized me with more terror than anything else, and I put my body to running once again. The passage we charged through seemed interminably long and monotonous. We turned a corner, slammed a door shut, and still the light followed us. Were we actually going anywhere? Were we being sucked back in?
The light pulsed, sweeping down the corridor and overtaking us. We staggered under a sudden sweep of dizziness. The ground gave way and my hooves felt nothing but air. I fell, gritting my teeth against the ugly feeling of my stomach crowding my throat. I saw bits of wood raining down next to me, Sunny Side flapping ineffectually. For an instant I saw the ground, murky and wet, the face of another dead pony, his skull bared in an eternal grin, rushing up to meet me-
/-/-/-/
I sat quietly at my desk, listening to the radio. There was nothing but blackness outside my door, but I didn’t care. What was playing was more important. It took some finagling, but I’d managed to acquire a recording of the final radio transmission our city ever received from the outside world. It was an infamous message. In earlier times, expeditions to surface outposts tried to answer it every so often, but it appeared the message was fully automated. I remembered this. I’d replayed this broadcast Celestia knows how many times in private. A message of utter despair and hopelessness, looping over and over for three whole months before finally cutting out. The last indication that there’d been anything living beyond the borders of Stalliongrad, and it couldn’t even talk back. One by one the fires of life had winked out on our lonely world, until we stood alone.
This is a high priority distress signal from Her Majesty’s Ship Quickstep, pride of the Equestrian Navy, broadcasting on all frequencies.
I stood as a young colt in the middle of a battlefield under a stormy sky, surrounded by twisted, mangled corpses of every species. Ponies, dragons, griffons, deer and zebra, buffalo and dog, all lay still in death. Cinder Block stood next to me.
“Father,” I asked him with a child’s ignorance, “what caused the War?”
My father looked down at me, his hard eyes narrowing down to slits.
“Greed, my son. Greed and fear took over the world. Greed for power and fear of it, too.”
We are adrift in the Hollow Sea and running low on supplies. We are unable to run aground. We’ve found no land free of the Blight.
I felt a stirring in the dark. She stood next to me, the yellow pegasus of my dreams. I reached up to touch her cheek. My hoof was drenched in blood. Before I could reach her, she spread her wings and flew far, far away, into the stars where Celestia and Luna dwelled, beautiful and free forever.
“Follow me,” she beckoned in a voice infinite in its kindness. Enchanted, I followed.
We’ve received no transmissions at land or sea, magical or otherwise. Unable to locate allied forces at any rendezvous points. No signs of life at any observed coastline. Negative results on all scry orbs and divinations.
“Lockbox!”
I skidded to a halt and looked over my shoulder. I saw Hunter standing behind me, powerful and defiant. He stood before a great light, and I rested in his shadow. Beyond him, the Dark Ones swarmed.
“Here! Get up! Stand with me and fight!”
For a few glorious seconds I stood next to my hero, braving all the horrors of the world at once. Creatures and mutants assailed me, Dark Ones swooped from the sky, but I didn’t care. I stood firm, blanketing the new world with death and bullets and blood. After all, if it’s hostile, you kill it.
Our current coordinates will be sent in burst transmissions at regular intervals. If anypony is out there, please respond. This message is set to repeat. Please…
I felt a feather light touch on my shoulder. I turned and saw a Dark One towering above me, wings stretched out, horn straight and sharp and proud. My mind melted and my bowels loosened with terror.
Stop… Death…
It stepped towards me like a living nightmare. I stumbled backwards.
You… Hear… You… See…
I reached up and slashed at the beast with my hoof knife. It ignored me and vanished, replaced by monsters. Mutants descended on me, and I fought for my life against impossible odds, falling to the ground. Sweet Dreams appeared and grabbed my hooves, pinning them to the cold concrete. She straddled me, holding me down and grinning manically through a broken gasmask. Blood streamed from her eyes. It dribbled down into my nose and mouth, making me sputter and choke. She laughed at my pain.
You… Hear… Must… Listen…
The shadows closed in, choking the life from me, swallowing me up. The last thing I saw was a glimmer of pink and yellow as the fair pegasus flew above the carnage, looking down at me with pity.
Is there anyone out there? Anyone at all? This is a high priority distress signal…
/-/-/-/
I woke up with a bitter taste in my mouth and a sting in my eye. I raised my head and felt incredibly wet. My geiger counter clicked quietly, alerting me of faint levels of background radiation but nothing that’d shave years off my life. First thing, establish where I was and if everything was intact.
It pained me to do so, but I scrambled up on all four hooves, splashing water all around and kicking the skull I’d seen on the way down. Apparently some other poor soul had found his final resting place here. This was starting to become a disturbing trend. My injured leg throbbed, but still held together. My still healing ribs gave me even more trouble. I took a short breath and gasped as pain shot through me, nearly paralyzing me with a cold rush of agony. That was all that was wrong, wasn’t it? It seemed so.
I looked around and found myself in a large, square room, the purpose of which I couldn’t really determine. It seemed to be nothing more than a place where things were dumped, such as the brackish, foul water that pooled beneath me. Underneath that was a soft, squishy material that seemed to be a mixture of soil and… other foul things. It seemed landing on this mess saved my life. The entire area reeked horribly, and it suddenly dawned on me that I’d landed in this muck. And my mouth had been open. That gunk. Full of dead things. Had been in my mouth.
I retched and spat, not caring how much it made my ribs flare up.
The others. I had to find them. My spare headlight still worked, and with its meager light and that of the glowplants that anchored themselves to the walls I found both Sunny Side and Sidewinder near where I’d fallen. They were both breathing, but seemed to be out cold no matter how much I tried to rouse them. With a bit of effort I dragged them out of the smelly water and deposited them haphazardly in a dry corner on a small raised mound of… well, I didn’t know what it was, but at least it was dry. I pondered how we ended up here. I remembered the strange, surreal chase we’d just endured from the bright, mysterious light, and it dawned on me that that was probably my first encounter with an anomaly. After all, if that wasn’t considered anomalous, what was? I’d have much more appreciated a strange light show or perhaps a weird sound instead of a horrifying apparition. Whatever its nature it hadn’t followed us down here, so I decided not to think about it too much.
I looked up the way we’d come, and saw that we’d fallen through a circular opening presumably covered by a grate at some point in time. Instead it’d been removed and wood planks covered it instead, which broke under our combined weight and sent us down here. I quickly checked myself for splinters; they’d been a bit of a phobia of mine ever since I was a colt. There was no way to get back up, so I searched around the walls of the room until I came across a gate, rusted shut.
Then I heard the growl.
“Oh, Princesses, no,” I whispered. “Just one moment. Just one moment to get it together…”
But I knew the creatures would give us no respite. I moved fast and ran to the gate, kicking at the rusty lock. The growls grew closer, louder. The gate clanged as I whaled on it, then finally turned and shot it open. My ears rang as the gate fell backwards. No time to worry about blocking it. I grabbed Sunny Side first, dragging him through and depositing him in the next hallway, then turned back for Sidewinder. I bent down and grabbed his vest collar in my mouth, lifted my head.
I met the eyes of a lurker, standing in the passage opposite mine. The emaciated hairless monster stared at me with hungry apprehension, and I heard the beginnings of a growl starting in its throat.
The creature was half my size but twice as ferocious, and I knew it had friends on the way. With no time to chase it away, I just kept dragging Sidewinder back through the collapsed gate. I made it halfway through before more lurkers appeared around the bend, and then from the hole in the ceiling.
I’d just put Sidewinder down when they pounced. I still only had my pistol in my bridle, and its normally startling bang seemed more like an ineffectual pop as the lurker mob surged towards me. Three shots, three lurkers stumbled to the ground, the others scattering. They bayed at me with their odd, high-pitched squeals and snarls, gathering the courage to make another attack. They had no way to surround me. Still, I couldn’t just stand here and shoot forever. Either they or another monster would find us eventually.
I fired again; the lurkers jumped and shrieked. With the moment of respite I grabbed the fallen gate door in my teeth and heaved it up before me. In that same second the lurkers attacked. A sea of pink, foal-sized horrors swarmed into the passage, a whirling mass of claws and teeth. I pushed back with all my might, using my flimsy barrier as a battering ram. The tide surged up and almost over my little shield. Grasping talons reached through the gaps in the ironwork, scratching and pulling at my clothes and barding. I opened my eyes, found my vision filled with gaping, hungry maws and dumb animalistic gazes. I could see the hunger. They wanted my flesh.
“Fuck you!” I screamed in reply, and sent my last two shots into the horde. I hit something, but that wasn’t enough, and I felt my back hooves slide over the concrete. Below, above, to the gaps in the sides, they all pushed and squirmed, driven by that terrible, basic urge to feed. I kicked one square in the nose as it tried to squeeze past me, felt claws pulling at my mane. In a few short seconds they’d be all over me, pushing me to the ground as they went to feast on my comrades.
As if. I’m an earth pony. We feel the earth around us. We draw strength from it. That is our magic. I needed that now more than ever. I looked the squirming, roiling mass of death right in the face and bared my teeth in defiance. My ribs, my leg, it all was so unimportant when I had two helpless ponies right behind me. Even now, in the midst of the Apocalypse, some truths about ponykind could never be extinguished. I was an earth pony, and the earth was my strength.
I set my hooves against the ground, planting them firm in that faith. And I felt the magic coursing through my limbs.
“I… am… THE EARTH!” I screamed, and pushed.
The lurkers gave ground. A millimeter. An inch. They screeched in worry and confusion. I felt claws scrape on my hooves, ripping open my suit around my legs. Ignore it. Let it all fade away. The earth doesn’t care for the little legs that run to and fro upon it. It just is. It just moves.
And I moved.
The lurkers weren’t even pushing back now. They were too bunched up to gain leverage, and could only topple over one another as I kept up my slow, steady offensive. One lurker slipped beneath the gate, dazed. I stomped on its head as I passed by without breaking stride. I couldn’t be stopped. Wouldn’t be stopped. I felt invincible. The lurkers were just a bunch of featherweights now, tumbling over each other, squawking and squealing indignantly, back through the gateway and down into the muck. I propped the gate back up against its original moorings, watching the lurkers scamper back and forth in anger and confusion.
But they weren’t running. I could’ve stood there and held the gate all day with my renewed strength and faith in Equestria’s magic, but I didn’t need to. The extra incentive came when Sunny Side stood next to me and lit the room up with a burst from his guns, and the lurker horde went running at last.
The magic slid back out of my veins, replaced with cold, hard reality and the dull agony of old hurts. I collapsed against the gate, broke into a cold sweat from my recent adrenaline rush. My injured leg ached something fierce, my ribs stabbed into my sides, and my head pounded like a drum. But we were alive. I’d done it. I’d saved my friends with a little good old pony magic. I looked up at Sunny Side, and he looked at me. Sidewinder had come to as well. I knew they’d both seen it. They knew what had happened. Gently, Sunny Side knelt down and nudged me to my hooves, offering himself as support. I leaned on him, gratefully, and we all started walking again.
Nothing needed to be said.
/-/-/-/
“So how was your first taste of earth magic?” Sidewinder asked as we poked our heads into the maze of back rooms. We’d found a flight of stairs that we hoped led us back up to a place level with E line, and scoured the small backways and passages to try and get back to the main line.
“Better than sex, am I right?” Sidewinder prodded me again. I rolled my eyes and didn’t answer. I was in too much pain to really think. “It’s how I can stay so steady when I pretend to be a spider, or a bat. The earth listens to us still, you know. I can give you advice on that. Just gotta ask mama Nature and she’ll do things that’ll blow your mind. She won’t get rid of anomalies, though.”
“Whatever that light was,” Sunny Side said with a shiver, “it was strange. And I’m glad Lockbox was able to get up so quickly after it… did whatever it did.”
I didn’t tell them about the strange dream I had, pondering it deep within my own mind. The others hadn’t mentioned visions either, so I figured I was the only one who’d seen such things. I didn’t know how I’d recovered so quickly from the light’s… attack? Touch? But it’d saved our lives.
“I’m more interested in how Lockbox here was able to feel it coming,” Sidewinder said with a sly grin. I still stared ahead, unable and unwilling to figure out how that particular miracle happened. I hadn’t exactly gotten us out in the nick of time, but it was still a talent that I didn’t think was very common.
“I think little Lockbox here has a lot of things locked away,” Sidewinder continued, still grinning as he passed me by to scout out the next set of rooms. “You’re a mystery, my friend… and that’s good. Mysteries are the only things that survive down here.”
“Don’t worry about him,” Sunny Side told me. “I’m just glad we got out of there alive… but I am worried about what that thing was.”
“An anomaly,” Sidewinder replied over his shoulder. “You know, one of those weird things that we can’t explain but are invariably deadly and unstoppable?”
“Ah…” Sunny Side said, his expression falling. We’d all heard stories about anomalies, but to see one up close was an experience unto itself. We’d just looked one of the mysteries of the Metro in its face and we’d been utterly unable to understand it. We’d just run and hoped it didn’t kill us. That was the world we lived in now. Strange, incomprehensible, and dangerous. Laws of nature had been broken during the War, and the world wasn’t working properly anymore. It wasn’t something that I enjoyed thinking about. But I’d felt it, deep down, the sheer wrongness that bled off that thing. Somehow, it’d sparked something deep inside me, letting me know that something terrible was nearby. Whatever it was, it wasn’t supposed to exist. It was a gaping, wandering wound in the spirit of our planet, appearing and disappearing at will. Whether it was a new entity or just a wandering vortex of wild magic, I had no idea. I just knew I didn’t want to see it again.
Was I somehow more sensitive to the destruction of the world than others? I started to wonder. Neither Sunny Side nor Sidewinder felt it the same way I did. It was the anomaly that’d sparked my strange reaction; that went without saying. But why? And how? What was it about the world that affected me so?
What was it about me that felt the changes in the world that much more keenly?
Sidewinder came to an abrupt stop ahead, holding out a lanky limb to keep us from moving forward. We found ourselves at a door with cans hanging from the ceiling.
“Alarm system,” Sidewinder whispered. “Keep quiet now, we’re close to a hideout it seems. If we have to sneak don’t look at the bandits. Look at where you’re going. Just one hoof in front of the other, and keep them in sight in the corners of your eyes. We all know how to stay quiet, so we should be good.”
We slid along the wall to avoid setting off the “alarms.” Sunny Side was hard pressed to keep his guns out of the way in the close quarters, and we resorted to carrying one on my back. We continued creeping through the next small hallway, turning off our lights to keep ourselves hidden. I could hear voices up ahead. Sidewinder said nothing, and we were all smart enough to keep our mouths shut.
We found ourselves in a small, dark room, beyond which was a large auxiliary tunnel that undoubtedly contained both a railcar and the bandits we’d been hearing so much about. The faint glow of a campfire peeked through the crack of the partially open door. I could even hear their voices if I listened hard enough.
“So I told her, ‘Fuck Hoofsa! We can’t survive eating the scraps other stations drop off the table. We need to put them on our lists or we’ll start starving too!’”
“You said ‘fuck’ to Auntie Buttercup?” said another. “You know she’s practically boss of the whole northeast section, right?”
“Well, I didn’t say it... but I was thinking it! We can’t touch the Monarchy, the Republic massacres anyone who goes south, and Hoofsa’s out to get us! If we’re going to survive we gotta show we aren’t gonna be pushed around. Now that Ruby Red’s here, this whole gang is gonna have to shape up.”
“What a bitch that Ruby Red is,” muttered another bandit. “Just cause she’s a unicorn she has Candy Cane by the balls. It fucking keeps me up at night! And what do the rest of us get? Overpriced hookers in Connemara.”
“It’s that Guild, and the Monarchy!” complained the first voice. “Fucking unicorn elitism is spreading everywhere, even among us salt-of-the-earth types.”
I turned away and looked around the room, finding little besides useless boxes and crates and bits of scrap metal. It was the cage that really got my attention though. It rested in the corner, and had a very large, very imposing occupant. We froze as we saw the large, yellow eyes open and turn towards us, finding us easily even in the dark. The pointed ears rose up, the sound of big lungs taking a sharp breath.
We came face to face with a Diamond Dog. He wasn’t big as far as Dogs went, but that still put him at our size, if not bigger. He’d been curled up with his formidable forearms hiding his face, which was scarred and pitted. A severe underbite made him look rather goofy along with that wide-eyed look he gave us. He didn’t say anything. We didn’t say anything back. He slowly crawled up to the rusty bars, peering at us. I’d never met a Diamond Dog before, but by all accounts there were little better than mutants… Hunter had sometimes told me about them, saying they kept to themselves and were extremely paranoid, preferring to hide and run from mutants and ponies alike. The ones that inhabited the Metro didn’t speak to ponies, though that was mostly because the only contact one might have with them was in the slave pits of the New Lunar Republic. Wild Dogs were extremely rare… their mutated cousins, cerberus and other vermin, kept them at bay and our perspective of them slanted.
In effect, I was ready to move on and just leave the creature to his fate. He wasn’t a pony, and likely would have clawed us open given half a chance. But then something extraordinary happened.
“Ponies… help… me?”
We froze. I locked eyes with the creature. Truth be told, I hadn’t given much thought to Diamond Dogs, considering them just another vaguely unsettling creature of the Metro. Their powers of speech didn’t necessarily lend them intelligence, or the worth that ponies had. When all you heard about a creature was that they were either hostile or stupid slaves of an evil government, your opinion of them didn’t exactly flourish. But I’d never had one up close, nor had they asked for help.
“Leave him,” Sidewinder whispered. “There might be magical locks on his cage. If we let him out the whole damn camp will know.”
“Ponies… help… me?” the Dog repeated. I wondered if he was genuinely asking for help or parroting speech he’d learned. I looked at Sunny Side, who seemed torn, unable to come to a decision.
“We… he’s in a cage,” he murmured. “If we leave him…”
“He’ll go to the Republic and we’re going to get to Bucklyn,” Sidewinder hissed. “If we’re getting out of here we do it now. I’m a Stalker, not a Ranger.”
I hesitated. Could we really just leave a defenseless creature to die? I was struck for a moment by the clear intelligence behind the Dog’s eyes; he clearly knew what was going on and what we were saying. Wouldn’t I want help if I’d been stuck in a cage and left to rot?
Follow me, a butter-yellow pegasus whispered in my ear.
“We have to go now!” Sidewinder hissed. I didn’t move. But I didn’t move to help either. The Dog sensed our indecision. He locked gazes with me, and didn’t like what he saw. His eyes narrowed, and he stood up, grabbing the bars of his cage. He rattled them loudly and began to huff and puff.
“Hey!” shouted one of the bandits. “Shut up in there!”
The Dog continued making a racket. My heart hammered in my chest. The Diamond Dog was spiteful enough to get us all killed just because we weren’t going to jump to his assistance!
“Shit!” Sidewinder said. “I’ll put this Dog down now…”
“Stupid Dog, I’m coming in there!”
Sidewinder paused, and then kicked me and Sunny Side away from the door, motioning for us to hide. We scrambled behind some unused boxes while Sidewinder took a post at the door.
The bandit who came inside looked surprisingly normal. Just a cobalt colored earth pony with a dark green mane, dressed in dirty clothing. I could see any number of the less well-off members in Exiperia in his place, just with much more grime and a nasty scowl. He didn’t look like a murderer or a monster. Just a pony with an attitude problem. He shined a light on the Diamond Dog, who growled and continued to rattle his cage.
“Shut up!” the bandit snapped, and stepped into the room.
Sidewinder was on him in a moment. The bandit didn’t even gasp as a heavy blow from Sidewinder’s hooves took him down. Sidewinder grabbed the falling body and laid it gently down, and then abruptly jabbed a hoof knife into the back of the bandit’s neck. The body jerked, twitched, went still. My mouth went dry. Sidewinder looked up at the Diamond Dog, who threatened to rattle his cage again. The bandits would know their friend was missing any second now. My stomach twisted as the reality of the situation struck home. Thanks to this Dog, we’d have to fight our way out.
The Diamond Dog pointed at the body.
“Keys!” he hissed.
“Bastard!” Sidewinder spat. “I wish we’d never run into you.”
“Hey, Blue Bird! What’s taking you?” one of the bandit’s friends asked. “You’re not talking to that thing, are ya?”
“Keys now!” the Diamond Dog growled. “I help!”
“I should leave you in there!” Sidewinder started.
No time. We had to make a decision. My head pounded, my ribs ached. Everything felt rushed and slippery, every moment slipping by bringing us closer to disaster. Arguing later, acting now. I leaped forward. “Sidewinder,” I whispered. “Wait.” I turned to the Diamond Dog. “You. You’ll help us?”
“I help!” the Dog said eagerly. “I kill them! I am strong!”
“Blue Bird?” asked one of the bandits.
“He must be taking a dump,” said another.
“Good,” I said to the Dog, tacking up and showing the Dog my Mule. “If you run, I’ll shoot you myself.”
Saying it sent me into a cold sweat. I didn’t know where that came from, and deep down I didn’t believe I’d be able to do a thing if the Dog abandoned us. But we were all in it deep now, and there wasn’t any other choice. I rifled through the bandit’s pockets as Sunny Side checked his guns without complaint, as if getting into a gunfight was a minor inconvenience. Loyal Sunny Side who, I realized, was following me into battle. Nausea and exhilaration wormed through my stomach.
We’re really doing this, I thought as I snatched up a small iron key. I’d never thought of myself as a warrior, much less a killer. But in the space of a few days, everything about me and my world had changed.
“Ho ho ho,” Sidewinder chuckled, his grin twisted and angry as he went to the door. “No spiders and flies on the wall today. Shall we be a hydra, a manticore?” He reached into one of his many pockets, tugging out a small, cylindrical object with a length of wire sticking out the top.
“Blue Bird, fucking answer me!” shouted one of the bandits. “Shit, I’m going back there…”
Sidewinder cackled as he pulled out a lighter and sparked the wire, which I realized was a fuse.
“Or maybe… a fiery phoenix!” he said, lobbing the grenade out the door and bracing it shut with his own body.
I heard nothing but a chorus of panicked shouts and screams as I jammed the key into the cage’s lock and yanked it open. A resounding BANG struck my ears through the door, jarring my eardrums. My blood froze, startled in my veins. The Diamond Dog leaped over me, following Sidewinder as he charged through the door, whooping and hollering as he tossed another prepared grenade.
“Come on, Lockbox!” Sunny Side shouted, taking flight and zooming through the passage.
Just a moment, I prayed. A moment to get it together.
No moment came. Time marched on, forcing me to act. I sprang to my hooves and stormed through the door.
I am the earth.
Once through, I could see a large half-cylinder shaped tunnel littered with crates and assorted goods, along with the scattered belongings of the bandits who huddled under cover farther back. A railcar sat on a small track that dominated most of the tunnel.
BOOM!
I felt my mane flutter in the shockwave of Sidewinder’s next grenade before I was bowled over by Sunny Side shoving me behind a large pillar. The pegasus took to the air, zipping back and forth in random directions as he kept the bandits pinned down with quick shots from his battle saddle’s rifles.
“Cover me!” Sidewinder shouted as he charged up the side of the chamber. I knew what that meant at least, and leaned out of cover, sending a barrage at the nearest cowering form. My bullets ripped through the thin wood the bandit had been using as cover. I didn’t see a pony die. Just a target drop.
If it’s hostile, you kill it.
The Diamond Dog bayed loudly as he charged into the midst of the bandits, pouncing on one who’d been stunned by Sidewinder’s grenades. Through the muzzle flash of my Mule I saw the Dog’s large, powerful claws come down on the earth pony’s head, pummeling him to death. Keep shooting. More movement, and I tagged it with a burst of gunfire. The pillar next to me exploded, hisses and snaps snarling right in my ears as bullets whizzed overhead. Shrapnel cut into my face as I ducked into cover, ears throbbing, head pounding. The tunnel was ringing with explosions, every gunshot in the confined space like its own little bomb going off.
Keep moving, I heard Hunter’s voice in my head. Shooting is like hide and seek. Cheat and hide again after they find out where you are.
More of my cover was blown away. Another of Sidewinder’s grenades exploded, and for a moment the gunfire slackened. Go, now! I sprang out of cover and rushed behind the railcar, poked my head out and fired again in tandem with Sunny Side. The pegasus fired off another two shots before he collapsed near the door, his still healing wing unable to take so much strain. Then I got shot.
I felt the impact, but was pretty sure it was stray shotgun pellets that did me in. I felt an explosion of pain over my front and I fell to the ground, gasping for breath. It was like a giant sledgehammer needle had been pounded into my chest. The impact spread through my body as I collapsed onto the hard rails.
I heard more shooting, more screaming. Then it stopped. The tunnel crawled with the eerie silence and the distant crackle of a campfire.
Then Sidewinder was in my face. “Get up!” he shouted. “Onto the railcar, go, go!”
“I’ve been shot,” I said dully. I’d never been shot before. It was a very strange experience. I thought it’d hurt a little more.
“You’re not bleeding, must’ve hit your jacket. Get up, go! More are gonna investigate!”
I was hauled roughly to my hooves and tossed onto the railcar. The Diamond Dog ran for the gate and pulled a lever, prompting the door to swing outward with a huge noise of screeching metal. Sidewinder locked the only other door that led inside as Sunny Side dropped down next to me.
“Shit,” he breathed.
“Quite,” I agreed, trying not to look at the dead bodies scattered around the room. I couldn’t count how many there’d been, but I knew we’d only survived because we’d held the element of surprise, and Sidewinder had been quite liberal in his application of explosives. Don’t look, Lockbox… they were hostile, and you killed them. I squeezed my eyes shut, wanting to drown myself in justifications, when Sunny Side shoved me up.
“Hurry, let’s get this thing started!”
The moment I grabbed the lever that started the engine, setting it put-putting to life, Sidewinder leaped away from the door as it flew off its hinges.
A blood red unicorn mare with a burgundy mane stepped through the door, kitted out like a professional and with a scowl to match.
“What the fuck is going on in here?!” she demanded, just in time to dodge away from a barrage from me and Sunny Side’s guns. Sidewinder leaped aboard the cart as it sputtered and wobbled down the tracks. Sunny Side shook the engine cage and shouted “faster, faster!” as if that’d make it actually make it go faster, and the Diamond Dog just sprinted through the large door and vanished down the track. I turned back and fitted my pistol to my war rein, shattering a bottle right near the mare’s head as she tried to get a good look at us. I saw an assault rifle levitate above her cover.
“Down!” I shouted, and we all ducked as she blind-fired at us all the way down the tunnel as we picked up speed. I could hear her shouting as the bandit outpost receded into the distance.
“I don’t know who the fuck you are and I don’t care!” she shouted, magically amplifying her voice. “If I ever find you again, I’m going to kill you! Do you hear me?!”
“Must be that time of month,” Sidewinder said with a grin as the cart picked up speed. The Diamond Dog was seen at the edge of our cart’s lights, but then he vanished into a smaller tunnel dug into the earthen wall, gone into the shadows of the Metro without a word. I almost felt as though I should be angry he hadn’t even thanked us after he risked our lives, but then I realized how utterly tired I felt. The place I’d been shot was still paining me through the adrenaline rush, which was starting to come down.
Until I noticed we were already slowing down.
“Uh oh,” Sunny Side said, looking back at the engine that abruptly started pouring smoke. A little alarm chirped and magical wards in the tunnel walls zapped the engine case, frying the primitive electronics and annihilating the magical circuits. We gave each other glum, incredulous looks as the rail cart slowly but surely chugged to a halt. The shouting behind us quickly increased in volume. In perhaps the quickest railcart dismount I’d ever done, we were already charging down the tunnel. Yet somehow it felt less terrifying and more bracing, a shock to the system to get me going instead of frightening me to a halt. I’d never thought of myself as a warrior before. I’d never believed I could actually do all that I’d done today. And I still hadn’t gotten to the end alive.
“Don’t worry boys!” Sidewinder shouted. “Fate’s on our side! Bucklyn is just down the road from here!”
“All we have to do is get there intact,” Sunny Side said. It was only then I noticed he was bleeding from under his barding.
“Sunny!” I gasped. He gave me a grin in response.
“Don’t worry, it’s a ricochet… found a gap in my armor right at the neck… ah, fuck, makes running hell…”
He began to flap his wings instead, and I remembered my own injuries. I needed rest. Healing potions. Whatever help Bucklyn could give us. Bit by bit the tunnels were wearing us down, reducing our effectiveness with every successive calamity. I was so glad our journey was nearly done, I almost forgot that we were running (or rather limping and hobbling) for our lives.
“I know you can hear me!” shouted a magically amplified voice as we charged back onto the E Line and bolted for the final stretch. “The name is Ruby Red! It’s the last name you’ll ever learn! We’re comin’ for ya!”
“Nice girl,” Sidewinder remarked, tossing his mane like we were having a nice little trot in some light wind and sunshine. “Maybe we should invite her to dinner!”
We skidded to a halt before the great airlock door that sealed off E Line from Bucklyn Station. It was kept firmly shut to keep out refuse like us. That didn’t stop us from bucking it as hard as possible and yelling at the tops of our lungs for the guards beyond the door to hear us. We heard the bandits soon enough, charging down the tunnel with blood on their minds, shouting all the obscene things they planned to do to us.
“You were saying about fate being on our side?!” Sunny exclaimed, readying his guns.
“Now now, that doesn’t mean it’s gonna jump in and save the day,” Sidewinder said, his face painted with a shaky grin. “Sometimes fate is more in the role of moral support, you know?”
“How comforting,” I murmured, struggling to believe we’d make it out of this alive while simultaneously preparing for my last stand. I bit down hard on my trigger, feeling its foreign taste and strange texture fill my mouth. I wasn’t going to die here. Not so close to my goal. And it seemed fate agreed, because at that moment the airlock behind us screeched and squealed, great locks churning and hydraulics hissing as it swung inwards. Light spilled into the tunnel as if Celestia herself was standing right behind us. And still, I didn’t look back.
I could see by the look on Ruby Red’s face as she turned the corner that it was to our benefit. I wasn’t the first to fire, but fire I did, and she only escaped by telekinetically hurling another poor soul in the path of our bullets, and as he fell she was already gone, retreating with the rest of her ilk.
“Ruby Red, you bastards!” she screamed behind her. “You better watch yourselves! I’ll be waiting!”
I felt no peace. Just a strange sense of detachment. Friendly voices welcomed us into Bucklyn Station, but as I turned to our saviors, I felt no real sense of accomplishment. In the space of three days I’d become a killer and a not-so-savior. I’d been an assassination tool and a debt dodger, a fighter willing to leave a poor Diamond Dog to die. I alone had faced down an anomaly and resisted its effects long enough to save lives I felt mattered. I felt battered and broken inside, and as Bucklyn opened its gates to us, I just staggered in, wobbling past the guardponies and their big weaponized railcar. I nodded curtly to their captain, brushed aside any attempt at questioning. I wanted a bed. I wanted a hospital. I wanted the Rangers to be there so I could tell myself that my short, albeit terrifying journey was now done, and I could go back to tending my silly little Wall. I could go to sleep and wake up in the same room every day for the rest of my life.
Then I looked up and noticed every gun in the room was trained on me.