Zero-Five-Zero
Chapter 2
“Subject 98. Male, Unicorn. Possible cause of death, round to the side of the head.” One of the morticians dressed in a civilian hazmat suit. Said to his colleague, who marked it on a pad.
Clean up duty, after the fight last night, and this was fairly gruesome. Blood pooled everywhere from the .50 shredding the ones up front. I made sure to step around the congealed blood in front of me as I moved through the carnage. So far we had documented the types of equines. Two of them appearing to be the mythical unicorns and pegasi. The others just looked like a normal equine save for the smaller size and human like features. The normal looking ones, though, were significantly bulkier and bigger than the other two.
A couple of the guys had begun calling them ponies, for ease of speaking I suppose.
Stepping over a few bodies that hadn’t been secured, I made my way over to the mortician . The sun beared down, and despite the bodies having only been exposed for a few hours, the heat of the Afghan sun made this entire area stink.
The mortician, Jason I think he said his name was looked up from the pony body he’d been examining.
“Ah! Corporal McClure, how are you?” He asks, I don’t bother with formalities.
“Sarge wants you all to hurry up and clear this area. Drones are saying the nearest village is getting antsy and he doesn’t want to be here if the Tali makes a move.” I said, pointing my hand to general direction of Lucas.
“He can’t expect us to hurry this operation. We are dealing with an unknown species. Everything has to be carefully catalogued and collected!” Jason responded emotionally.
“Look, neither the Sarg, I, or the Taliban care about that. Just bag the fucking bodies up so we can get out of here before the Taliban decide to crawl out of their holes. We’ve been lucky so far, and I don’t want to push it.” I reply back. There was another reason besides the Taliban. My bed.
After we had called in what happened between us and the ponies, we were told to secure the site as they sent backup. I haven’t slept in nearly a day.
“But that’s simply not ho-“ Jason is cut off before he can finish his retort from someone calling for me.
“Hey! McClure! Sarge wants you!” It’s Bowlds, a couple of feet away. Grateful for the reason to get away from the mortician, I quickly run over to him.
“Yeah?” I ask.
“Sarge is over by Bravo convoy, something about more ponies.” Bowlds clarifies.
“Oh, god.” I can’t help but moan to myself as I take off to meet him at Bravo. Bowlds stays behind to take place in the group of Marines running security.
The second convoy isn’t too far up the road, a couple of meters. The convoy’s making up a barrier on the road. I make it there in less than five minutes, and I can see Sarge looking at the sky with a pair of binoculars.
Slowing down from my small jog, I stop behind him, as another Marine taps his shoulder to let him know.
He turns around to face me. “McClure.” He says.
“Sergeant Mitchell?” I respond.
“We’ve got more ponies in the sky. Knowing you’re from Kentucky, I wanted you to have a look. What can you tell me?”
He hands me the binoculars as I look up to the area he had been looking at. With binoculars, it’s not that difficult.
Two ponies in the sky. These two aren’t wearing armor. They were both wearing what looked like blue jumpsuits, the one on the right with a dark blue mane, and the one on the left with a fiery orange mane. Both of their manes seemed to be spiked up. They were both peering over the cloud with their large eyes and ears perked up.
But there was one major thing off about them.
“Are they… sitting on a cloud?”
“As far as we can tell,” Sarge took the binoculars from me, as he continued on. “Yes, they are in fact sitting on a cloud. What can you tell me?” He responded as he moved to another Humvee that was making the barricade.
“Tell you?” I asked.
“I know you came from Kentucky and worked a couple of years on a horse farm. I also know that dogs back on base like you. So… work your magic. What were their bodies telling you?”
I was perplexed, honestly.
“Uh, what can I tell you? Their ears were perked up. They were watching us. That’s kind of all I can tell you.” I replied.
“Sir,” Another Marine called. “One of them ‘s coming down.”
I turned around from my position facing the Sarge to see, that indeed as the Marine had said, one of the ponies was descending downwards.
It was the orange mane one, a pegasus, obviously. It seemed to glide down very slowly as it landed on top of one of the Humvees.
No one moved. The pony didn’t move, and all the Marines around me were just as confused as I was.
The pegasus folded its wings to its sides, as it moved around and sniffed the top of the Humvee. It did a small circle around the roof of the Humvee, its nose close to the top of the of it.
It raised its head as it moved to the side, hopping down to the ground. Everybody stood still as the small pony, barely three feet tall, started looking around.
The thing acted like a horse mixed with a dog, nudging a couple of Marine’s legs while smelling, still no one moved to do anything. I think it was just because none of us could think of something to do.
I mean right in front of us was a… alien. There wasn’t a lot we could do.
She, I’m just assuming it’s female, made her way to me, as she neared, she pushed against my leg as I just stood there, debating on what I should do. She moved back after she was done smelling me, and looked at the barrel of my rifle.
She chomped at it. She brought her teeth and mouth around of the barrel. And I reacted with adequate force.
I smacked her nose.
She pulled back as she shook her head vigorously and the small snout scrunched up. She stared up at me with a death glare as I stared back. This lasted for a few seconds before she looked behind her, back at me and then took off flying. Going, what looked to be back towards the cloud, As I just stared at her. I lost her behind some clouds about thirty seconds after she took off.
Sarge was the first to break the silence.
“What the hell just happened?”
“What the hell were you thinking, Spitfire!” Soarin yelled as Spitfire reached his altitude, his voice betraying a strong hint of anger. He had just witnessed he antagonize a bunch of the weird aliens, after all.
She flew past him, as Soarin kicked off of the cloud, quickly gaining on Spitfire.
“You could have been killed! Or worse! We know nothing about them!” Soarin yelled as he flew next to Spitfire, who calmly tilted her head and looked at him.
“Relax,” She cooly replied. “I had everything under control, and I learned something about them.”
“What could you have possibly learned that was worth risking your life for?” Soarin questioned.
“They’re pretty calm and understand fairness.”
Soarin could only look forward in confusion as the pair moved to get to the portal that linked this world and Equestria.