OCTOBER 27
ALBERTA HIGHWAY 40
Fort St John, BC, had been a bust. The only thing they found there was more supplies, which was good of course, but no more ponies, which did nothing for their spirits.
On the positive side of things, the GPS was working, and providing a route for them, plus estimated time of arrival at their next destination. Max had taken all the overrides off, except ferries - no sense driving hundreds of miles to find a boat he couldn't figure out how to use blocking his path. Toll roads and such weren't a concern, though.
He'd been tempted to just plug in Paris and follow that route, stopping only when tired or needing supplies and/or repair, but the route didn't take them promptly south as he'd wanted - it was more of a diagonal path across three Canadian provinces and half the midwest. His preference was to go straight down through either British Columbia or Alberta, into either Idaho or Montana, then Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois, and then they'd be 'home'.
There wasn't a route through BC that didn't involve backtracking further west again, so Alberta it was.
Unfamiliar with the cities and towns in the Canadian prairies and foothills, he'd thrown a virtual dart at a place that looked to be a day's worth driving from Fort St John, and landed on Hinton, Alberta. It showed as being on the Trans-Canada Highway, which he'd once heard was kind of like an interstate, so at least it had that much going for it.
The highway he was currently on, however, was not at all an interstate. He was used to the two-lane blacktop from the couple thousand miles he'd already driven, but the view was breathtaking. The road rolled and twisted through the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and between the hills and valleys and the glacial rivers, he was figuratively kicking himself for never having vacationed in the area. Hopefully once life is as close to normal as we can make it, there'll be time to enjoy stuff like this again.
Duncan was curled up in a tight little ball on the passenger seat, finally sitting - or in this case lying - as a pony should. He was also asleep at present, having lost the battle to stay awake as a passenger for so long. Max also had a suspicion that Duncan had been burning the midnight oil, too, concocting some oddball contraptions using the truck's toolkit and the various things they'd obtained throughout their journey.
Max found himself blinking and nodding, and mentally cursed at himself to stay awake. Don't start thinking about nodding off or you'll do it yourself, he chastised himself.
He forced his head to look back and forth across the mirrors and the dash, checking everything out to make sure it was all working properly. He glanced over at the GPS, suction-cupped to the middle of the windshield so both ponies could see it, and noted that a town by the name of Grande Cache was a couple dozen miles ahead.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a brightly-colored thing flash past the windshield, and instantly shot bolt upright, putting both forehooves on the wheel. Whatever it had been, it was way too close for comfort, and his reflexes took over, stabbing a hoof down on the brake pedal as quickly as he could react.
The truck's tires howled, sixteen of them locking up and drawing four parallel black lines on the asphalt road surface. Duncan was jarred awake, shrieking "SHIIIT!!" as he slipped free of the seat belt and tumbled into the passenger-side footwell.
The motor and transmission automatically geared down to assist in braking, roaring and grumbling as it went, and the truck stopped in far less distance than a semi-truck had any business doing - and kept itself in a straight line, to boot.
Max was panting, chest heaving as he clung to the wheel, hoof stamped down firmly on the brake still. He looked over at the footwell after a second. "Sorry! You okay?"
"I think so-ow!" Duncan exclaimed as he began to untangle himself. "Hitting this stupid thing on stuff hurts." He gestured to his horn.
Max pulled the parking brake handle, put the transmission in neutral, and bailed out of the cab, intending to see what he had hit, or almost hit.
He was stunned to see a snow-white pony galloping at full speed towards him from past the back of the truck's trailer, her pink mane and tail trailing behind her. He opened his mouth to greet her, but a hoof came up and smacked against his jaw with a resounding crack.
Duncan, having disembarked too, came around the front of the truck to see the new pony standing over a felled Max. She still had her hoof raised up in the air, shaking it at the orange Earth pony. In addition, feathered wings were spread wide from either side of her barrel, and she was trembling with rage all over. "Y-you could have killed me!" she hollered at Max with a face full of anger.
"Hey!" Duncan tried to interrupt.
"Don't you look where you're going?!" the winged pony railed at Max, who was still lying on the ground, dazed. He shook his head a couple times to clear it, then looked up at the creature verbally assaulting him. A long, wavy cascade of pink hair fell about her face, nearly touching the ground, mimicking her above-average-length tail. On her sides, where Max had the firehose icon, she sported a trio of... flowers?
"Can we back up and try this again?" Duncan again attempted to interject, actually getting in between the two ponies this time.
The mare looked contemptuously down on Max with a 'hmph'. "I don't wanna see him try to back anything up, judging by how he drives going forwards."
"Hi!" Duncan all but shouted, placing himself directly in front of her. "My name's Duncan. And you are?"
The pony finally took note of her surroundings and the unicorn standing before her. She looked him over, about to snap back with another smart reply, when realization hit her. "Oh my God," she blurted out, her expression changing dramatically to one of relief. "I'm...!"
Max slowly got to his hooves behind Duncan and moved up beside him. The mare looked back and forth between the two of them, her expression growing more and more apologetic by the second. "I'msorry!" she finally blurted out, her cheeks pinking up nearly as much as her mane. "It-it's just that... the first thing moving out here besides me, and I nearly get killed!..."
"I wasn't trying to hit you," Max murmured, "I was just driving down the road." Then realization hit him as well. "Wait... that was you, flying??"
"Well, duuh," she shot back, flexing her wings out to full open and back.
Max looked at Duncan, who was still looking at the pegasus mare. "Fascinating," the professor whispered.
"Look, I'm sorry for hitting you-"
"You didn't," the pegasus admitted, looking away embarrassedly. "It was just a reeaally close call."
Max blinked. "Okay then, I'm sorry for almost hitting you, but I wasn't expecting you or anything else out here on the road." He rubbed his jaw with a hoof again, then muttered, "And you didn't have to hit so freakin' hard."
"Perhaps now would be a good time to start over," Duncan tried one more time to gain control of the conversation. "Miss, I'm Duncan, and this is Max. And you are...?"
"Oh," she said, blushing yet again. "Sorry. Caitlyn."
"Hello, Caitlyn," Duncan smiled. "Are you from around here?"
She finally came to her senses and her ears folded back as she looked away. "Hinton," she nodded south-eastwards.
"That's where we were going to stop today," Max offered. "Are there any others there? Besides you?"
Caitlyn shook her head. "I'm the only one left," she murmured. "Everyone else is gone."
"Well, we're here now. Can we take you back to town?" Duncan suggested. "We are heading in that direction, like my friend said."
"I guess," she said hesitantly after looking over the two and their machine for a moment.
"In that case, please, come this way," Duncan said, gesturing with a hoof.
Max let his partner lead the mare to the passenger side, while he checked around the truck to make sure he hadn't flattened any tires with his panic stop. Satisfied the truck would still drive, he climbed aboard and belted in, finding the pegasus sitting in the space between the bunk and the seats, with Duncan in his usual spot.
"Looks like we'll be there in a little under 2 hours," Max declared, nodding to the GPS, as he pushed in the parking brake and started back underway.
"Two hours??" Caitlyn said with astonishment. "Psssh. I could fly there in 40 minutes."
"Yeah, well, you don't have to follow roads, I bet," Max countered.
"Did you really fly out this far from there?" Duncan asked.
Caitlyn shrugged. "Sure. Why not? I'm gettin' good at it after being alone for 5 months with nothin' else to do."
"You've been around the whole time?" Max queried.
"What?" came the response, with a quirked eyebrow.
"Let's try it this way," Duncan said. "How about you tell us what happened from your point of view, and then we'll explain what we know."
"Ookaaay," she said slowly, then thought back and began to speak. "It was a Saturday in May... the weekend after May Long, I think, 'cause me and my friends had gone to Banff for the weekend. Dad was on shift and said he'd be back in the morning, but when I woke up, everybody was gone, and I was like this."
"It happened while you were asleep?" Duncan wanted to know, and Caitlyn nodded yes.
"And you woke up on May... 23?" Max asked, pausing while he looked at the calendar function on the GPS. "So you were here from day one."
"Day one of what?" Caitlyn asked. "What caused all this?"
Duncan began telling the story. Max drove on, listening and realizing that Duncan had quite the memory for detail - bringing up points that he'd almost forgotten.
Caitlyn gave a little laugh. "Sure," she said. "Tell me another one."
Duncan smirked and raised an eyebrow. "What part of it do you find hard to believe, little miss pegasus pony?"
"I-" she began, then stopped. "There's no such-" After a couple of false starts, she set her hoof down and her mouth became a thin, frustrated line.
Max glanced over his shoulder at her. "You're telling me you've been flying around with wings that have no business holding you up at their size, and you're flying the B.S. flag on this whole deal?"
"It's just... so..." she said, waving her forehooves around in the air again. "Y'know?"
"Oh, we know," Duncan nodded. "Especially the whole-" he waved his hooves like she had "-part. Anyway. What have you been doing all this time besides flying? How have you survived?"
She shrugged. "Not hard to survive when you've got a whole town to buffet off of. There's literally nobody in my town. Pick a new house every day if you want."
"Is that all you've been doing?" Max asked, slowing down as they approached the town of Grande Cache. "Eating and flying?"
"Don't bother stopping," she said with a wave of her hoof. "There's nothing here. I've checked. And that's what I've been doing, while I've been flying... looking around for anybody else. Seeing if there's another person left in this freakin' world." Her expression suddenly changed, and her eyes went from one stallion to the other before her. "I..." she stammered.
Duncan looked back at her, somewhat surprised to see tears threatening to spill over.
"I'm...?" she said with a trembling voice. "You're...?"
Duncan nodded and put on a faint, but warm smile. "You're okay now," he nodded. "You're okay now. We're here. You're not alone any more."
Her eyes squeezed shut and she nodded, then gulped, holding her chin high, but finally the proverbial dam burst, and her forelegs gave out beneath her. She collapsed to the floor of the cab, sobbing openly.
Duncan turned to face forward again, with only a passing glance at Max. The two of them stayed silent as the truck moved on.
"Caitlyn?"
The pegasus pony lifted her head, blinking away the residue of tears, not knowing how long she'd slept.
"Caitlyn," Duncan was saying softly. "We're coming into town now."
She sat up and then put her forehooves on the center console in an effort to see out the windshield. They were indeed on 16 passing by the golf course, approaching the Safeway and Walmart on the left.
"Keep going," she said. "Me and my dad's place is up on Sutherland. Third set of lights, past the Tim's."
Max took what he could understand of that and counted defunct traffic signals. At the third one, he wheeled the truck into a right turn.
Duncan turned to talk to Caitlyn some more. "Can I ask a question?" he said, and without waiting for permission, went on. "How old are you?"
Caitlyn's eyes darted back and forth rapidly. "Eighteen," she said a little too quickly.
Duncan chuckled, and Caitlyn reddened as she saw Max's shoulders rise and fall in a silent laugh too. "Caitlyn, there's no law any more, no age of consent. I'm not going to 'card' you. I'm just curious, based on some of your mannerisms." Duncan winked, then went on: "Care to try again?"
Her ears folded back and she looked away, blushing and muttering in a tiny voice. "Sixteen anna half."
"Hey, that's nothing to be ashamed of. On the contrary, you should be proud of fending for yourself in this situation for so long."
Max found Sutherland Avenue soon enough - a curving, relatively narrow residential street, but rather than balk at taking the truck up there, he decided to try and get as close to the girl's house as possible, for her benefit. It wasn't as if he'd have to exchange insurance with the owners of any vehicles he scraped past.
"Right here," Caitlyn said, gesturing with a hoof to a cream-colored duplex not far up the street. Max pulled up and stopped the truck.
The three of them climbed down and approached the building. The first thing they noticed was the myriad of trampolines surrounding the structure.
"Safety nets," Caitlyn explained when questioned, her wings fluttering slightly. "Don't laugh, it worked."
Getting past the 'safety nets', they entered the right-side door of the duplex. All the curtains had been pulled down - to allow light to enter during the day, since there was no power, Caitlyn told them. The fridge was duct-taped shut, with a stain on the floor in front of it that had been half-cleaned up.
"By the way," she told the stallions, upon coming across the fridge, "Seems like we can't eat meat any more. Or at least I can't. Made me retch."
"It's a species-wide thing," Duncan commented. "Heard it from the hors... oooh, I almost went there."
Max facehoofed as Duncan chuckled to himself and Caitlyn rolled her eyes. Duncan continued: "Anyway, we figured it out beforehand, but Alex the pony from Paris confirmed it."
"Paris?"
"Illinois," Max said. "That's where we're heading. They have a colony there. You're welcome to come with us."
Caitlyn's hooffalls up the stairs ceased, and Max had to stop to avoid bumping into her. Duncan collided with Max, though.
"Leave? Here?" Caitlyn wondered aloud. After a pause, she muttered, "I'll think about it," and resumed her climb.
Once they were on the upstairs landing, Caitlyn gestured left. "My room." Then right. "Dad's room. And the bathroom's straight ahead, but I haven't been using it since there's no water pressure. I've been, um, going... outside."
"Good a place as any," Max nodded with a practical tone. He obligingly peeked in the rooms indicated, and turned to Caitlyn when he was done. "So. What are your plans?"
She looked perturbed. "It's kinda sudden," she said. "I'd been hoping my dad would come back."
"Have you seen him since May?" Duncan asked, bluntly but softly. Caitlyn shook her head. "Then it's likely he was one of the ones sent forward in time."
"Can we... I mean, I checked myself, but before we go, can we check his work one more time?" she all but begged. "Maybe you guys can help me check the buildings out in detail, see something I couldn't from the air. Please? I just have this vision all of a sudden of him lying somewhere calling for help..."
"We'll help," Max said. "Where did he work?"
"Obed Mine," she said. "He's with SRD. He was working on the site. He works four days up there, four off."
"Hon, we're Americans, from a long way away," Max said as patiently as he could. "You're gonna have to spell things out a lot more."
"Oh. He's with the government. They were doing remedy...? Replan... Reclamation," she said, remembering the word. "The coal mine was shut down about three years ago, and they've been working to 'reclamate' the area ever since. You know, plant trees, make it look normal again."
"Remediation," Duncan offered.
"Yeah, that. Dad was supposed to work Wednesday-Thursday-Friday-Saturday that weekend. Then he'd be home Sunday morning and we could hang around and do stuff until Thursday, when he had to be back up on site. But he never came home. I looked all over that gawdamn site from the sky, but I couldn't spot a single living thing."
"We'll do our best to check it out," Max assured her. "Right now, though, personally, I need rest, and it's probably not a bad idea for all of us."
"Seriously? It's like four-thirty," Caitlyn said.
"Kid, we've been drivin' for 8 hours," Max told her. "It's real tiring, especially as a pony. So you two do whatever you want. I'm gonna put my head down." With that, Max went into Caitlyn's father's bedroom, hopped up on the bed, curled up with his chin on the pillow, and shut his eyes.
Duncan sat at the kitchen table with Caitlyn for a while, mainly to just listen to her and gauge her handle on the situation.
"I'm used to being by myself for four days out of every eight," she said with a shrug. "Dad's off at work, and I go to school and then my job."
"What do you do?" Duncan asked, letting her continue to use the present tense uncorrected for the time being.
"Tim's," she said plainly.
"That's twice now you've said that. What does it mean?"
"You don't know what Tim's means?" she said incredulously. "Oh, right. Americans. Tim Hortons. It's a donut and coffee shop."
"Oh! I've heard of them," Duncan answered brightly. "I had a stopover in Toronto on the way to a conference in Boston a few years ago. Had a coffee from there. It was pretty good."
Caitlyn smiled. "The double-double: Canada's version of crack," she said.
Duncan didn't know what to say to that. "A-anyway," he carried on. "I was a professor at the university in Fairbanks, Alaska, and Max was a firefighter in Prudhoe Bay."
"That explains the fire truck," she nodded. "So you've found nobody else besides me?"
"One other fellow, but he was pretty determined to stay where he was. Being a native with a long local history, he seemed to be able to hold his own. Er, not that you can't. It's quite obvious that you can."
Caitlyn waved a hoof dismissively. "I know what you mean. I've met some natives before, they're pretty tough. They can handle themselves just fine. Dad used to make deals with a guy that still had trap lines out in the bush near here. He was a pretty cool guy."
"Right," Duncan said in general agreement. "So, um, what have you been doing for food? I don't see lots of supplies in here."
Caitlyn shot to her hooves, the chair skittering back. "Oh crap, are you hungry? Sorry, I should have asked. I just kinda find a place with some canned or packaged food and take what I need when I need it. I can go find someth-"
Duncan held up a hoof to try to get her to sit back down. "I'm fine, it's okay. I was just making small talk. I'm only hungry for information at this point." He smiled as she tentatively scooted the chair back in and sat down. "You'll find I'm quite the inquisitive person. Pony."
"They actually said we're supposed to be ponies?" the mare asked, looking down at herself. "I can kinda sorta see it, but ponies to me have long braided manes and bridles and stuff, and hang out in petting zoos."
Duncan laughed a little, holding up his forehooves. "I could try and do something with your mane if you like, but I'm still learning how to be adept with these."
Caitlyn just gave him a sarcastic smile.
Max opened an eye, feeling a presence over him as he regained consciousness. He was lying on his back, all four legs splayed out broadly. In between his legs were four white hooves, and a stern face with pink hair cascading down around it hung over his head.
"Hi," Caitlyn said evenly.
"Ungh," Max mumbled. "What time is it?"
"'Bout seven PM. We need to talk."
"'Kay," he said, trying to blink himself awake.
"Two things. Number one. You didn't ask if you can sleep in my dad's bed. The answer is, the couch is downstairs."
Max internally winced as he realized his gaffe. "Got it," he said, and tried to sit up, but forehooves suddenly stood on his forelegs to stop him.
"Number two," Caitlyn said as she stared intensely at him. "You guys said earlier it doesn't matter how old I am?"
"Right," Max nodded. His thoughts caught up with the fact she was straddling him on the bed. Oh God, don't be thinking what I think you're thi-
"Then don't call me a kid," she hissed, bringing her head close. "Got it?"
"Uh... got it," he acknowledged.
"Got it what?"
"Um... ma'am?"
She hmph'ed and let loose with a little smile. "Caitlyn will do. Kate is even better."
"All right then, ...Kate."
She nodded and pushed off him, hopping off the bed and stalking out of the room. She passed the doorway, where Duncan leaned against the jamb, smirking as he watched.
"You kinda deserved that," he told Max. "Both parts."
Max threw himself up to a sitting position, then climbed down off the bed. He paused at the door to rub his forelegs, where hoofmarks were starting to show, just above the fetlocks. On a human, he was sure there'd be bruises.
"Aw, shut up," Max said, heading down the stairs.
The next morning, Kate insisted on stopping by her old work before they went to search the mine area.
"You said you have a generator on here, right?" she said, galloping past the truck's trailer. "Light it up and bring me an extension cord." With that, she dashed to the back door, a set of keys in her mouth.
Max set to powering up the trailer's generator while Duncan spooled out the junction box and cable. When Duncan got to the propped-open door, he found the pegasus opening bottles of water and pouring them into the industrial coffee brewers.
"Help me pull this back," she said, stopping her efforts and indicating the countertop the brewers were on. Duncan helped her, and ultimately exposed the point where the brewers were plugged in to the wall.
"Plug these in," Kate directed. "They'll need about ten minutes to warm up." She then went back to feeding bottles of water to the top of the machines. "While we're waiting, you can take anything in here you want. We'll pack your truck full."
"Excellent," Duncan said, heading off to raid the shelves of the back room. Max sauntered up to the door, curious about what was going on.
"You guys need to have at least one last Tim's coffee before I lock this place up for good," Kate said. "Actually, do you have a brewer in that thing?"
"Are you kidding?" Max said, cracking a smile. "It's intended to keep firefighters on their feet. I'm surprised there isn't a spigot right on the side of it."
"Good. 'Cause we can take as much of the coffee as you can fit, too. Duncan's 'shopping' now, feel free to join him while I get this brew going."
Max propelled himself up from his leaning position against the doorframe, walking into the building and heading down the back room's aisles, seeking out his unicorn partner by the faint light coming from the back door.
"I never knew how they did all this stuff," Duncan commented when Max came upon him inside the room-temperature freezer. "Too bad we can't take any of these - they're surely bad by now. But a blueberry muffin would be great right about now."
"I hear ya," Max nodded, eyeing a tray of moldy sandwich buns. "Anything salvageable at all?"
"Lots of bottled water, soda pop, juices and such," Duncan rattled off. "Maybe some of the fillings and toppings for the donuts? Looks like most of the product was shipped in frozen, not made here."
"Fakers."
"Bah, they're all like that these days." Duncan peered at a couple of the trays inside the dim light of the freezer. "Maybe a couple of these might be edible, I don't know."
"Let's just start with the known good stuff."
"Fair enough," Duncan said. He found a cart and started loading bottled drinks onto it, while Max did the same with cases of coffee in cans and individual packets.
After they were done, Kate called them over to two tall cups filled with coffee. "Sorry, guys; no milk or cream, but I do have sugar or sweetener," she said.
"I guess I'll take two sugar," Duncan said, obviously lamenting the lack of dairy product.
"I take mine black anyway," Max shrugged. "I guess now I find out if this stuff really is as addictive as they say." He craned his neck to the counter where the coffee cup was, bit the rim of it, and tipped his head back, letting the drink wash between his teeth and into his throat - slowly, since it was rather hot.
"Not bad," Duncan said, having done similarly after Kate had doctored up his drink with the additives. "Thanks for this."
"Least I can do," she said with a smile. "I put the rest in a Take Ten, so we can take it on the road. You got everything you want from in here?"
"Yup," Max said, and Duncan nodded.
"Then let's go."
The generator was shut down, the cord coiled back up on its reel, and the door of the restaurant closed and locked - keys left in the doorknob. "I guess I don't have to worry about anybody else coming by and using these, right?" Kate said, smiling a little weakly.
The trio mounted up in the truck and began driving north towards the Obed mine, a couple dozen kilometers distant.
By 12:30, they knew what all three suspected all along. No creatures of any kind, besides them, were present at the Obed Reclamation Site.
"Sorry, Kate," Duncan said genuinely.
"It's okay," she sighed. "I just wanted to check one last time, just in case. I wouldn't be able to live with myself otherwise."
"We understand," Duncan spoke for both stallions.
"I left him a note on his bed, anyway. So if he comes back, he'll know I'm okay at least." She drew in a breath, trying to hide a sniffle at the same time, and then said brightly, "So! Where to?"
"South," Max said plainly. "Any road that gets us south."