Interlude 4: Carrying On
Life.
In spite of all odds, all obstacles, and all the horror, death, and destruction, life in Equestria continued. While much of Equestria had been wiped clean of life in the Megaspell holocaust, more than a century and a half ago, it was never really gone. Pockets of civilization survived on the surface, and many more ponies survived thanks to the Stables. As time wore on, Stables opened, ponies bred, and radiation levels dropped. Animals adapted, plants mutated, and insects seemed particularly hardy in the face of the apocalypse, especially roaches. While only a shadow of its former verdant, vibrant state, Equestria had endured.
Life in the Equestrian wasteland was never easy. Ponies living there faced daily threats from mutated aberrations, the magical radiation and taint that had twisted them in the first place, and even their fellow ponies. Slavers, for a variety of reasons, forced other ponies to work for them with no regard to their wellbeing, or else sold them to others to be worked. Bandits stole from other ponies when they couldn’t find enough for themselves, and killed if they felt they needed to, wanting to survive bad enough to deprive other ponies of their lives. Worst of all were the Raiders, completely devoid of morality. They slaughtered and tortured their fellow equines for amusement.
Having lived in the wasteland since it first became a wasteland, I experienced all of these horrors and more. Yet in spite of all of it, I endured too. Steel Rangers, insane ghouls, prejudiced ponies, mutant animals, raiders, and more; I had survived encounters with them all. Often it was just by a hair’s breadth, and I can’t help but feel like I have an unnatural amount of luck. Unfortunately, not everypony was as lucky as me.
As the years rolled on, I saw many of my friends succumb to the wasteland in one way or another. There’s a long list of them, and even the best of my friends were not immune to its poisons. Lone Star had once been an honest, loyal, and responsible pony, but the loss of his family and home to the Steel Rangers turned him cold to non-ghouls, and left him firmly in his Rottingtail persona. May meanwhile, could never let go of her grudge against the zebras, and in the end it cost her not just her mind, but her life as well.
May’s death was a bitter pill to swallow, not just for me, but for all ghouls. May’s efforts to treat and cure the ghoul condition had done great things to increase mental wellbeing and longevity. While Rottingtail and I could still employ some of her techniques, we ultimately weren’t as good at it, and the rate of feralism went up among the residents of Craterside as the years wore on. Each time Rottingtail had to put down a feral ghoul, it seemed like a little more of him died inside as well.
Craterside, while never able to reach the heights of the Trottingham Necropolis at its peak, still managed to do well enough for its part. Rottingtail trained a skilled militia, and normal ponies stayed well away from Manehattan’s blast crater, the area still far more irradiated than non-ghouls could handle. The community had a far easier time being self-sustaining when we didn’t need food or clean water to survive like most settlements would.
Even without the need for food or water, Craterside couldn’t exist in a vacuum, no matter how much the residents wanted to remove themselves from the rest of ponykind. The increased rates of feralism caused a need to bring in more ghouls from time to time so that the settlement could continue as a refuge. This meant we couldn’t just hide away and let the outside world think the village didn’t exist. As well, occasional attacks by mutated animals and raiders ponies would gradually deplete the munitions the settlement had. Replenishing them required either trade or scavenging, and both had their own risks.
Beyond Craterside, Manehattan continued to draw in more ponies from across the wasteland. The metropolis had once had a population in the millions, and because of that it was full of grocery stores, restaurants, and all manner of shops. This pre-holocaust abundance made the city ripe for scavengers, even with the risk of raiders, monsters, and radiation. As well, the buildings and debris of the pre-war city made excellent shelters and building materials, prompting the ponies who came to the city to stay there.
The influx of new ponies and the gradually diminishing radiation throughout the city, even around the megaspell crater, was the cause of some discord amongst the ponies of Craterside. Many were in Rottingtail’s camp. Although he never wanted to repeat the madness that Apex had done, he still distrusted non-ghouls and wanted to remain separated from them as much as possible. He was convinced that doing so was the only way to avoid another tragedy like Trottingham. The crater’s radiation was one of the strongest deterrents keeping non-ghouls out of town.
Other ponies, myself included, didn’t want to remove ourselves so entirely from the company of our fellow equines. Though we were ghouls, none of us wanted to set ourselves apart from regular ponies. Some craved acceptance from other ponies that they knew isolation would never grant us. Others felt that living tucked away like we were would only increase the suspicion and prejudice place on ghouls. They wanted to prove that they weren’t monsters, and that they could live among any other ponies in peace.
The growing rift between our desires, both individually and for the settlement in which we lived, put a strain on my and Rottingtail’s relationship. While he had been a great comfort after May’s death, it was becoming more and more clear that he wasn’t the same pony I had first fallen for back when I met him in Trottingham. I suppose I had always known that he was a changed pony after Apple Crumble died, but he was still my friend, and he still cared for me. I still cared for him too, but unfortunately he was past the point where I would be able to convince him to change.
Even if Rottingtail could have changed, I don’t think he wanted to. Like May and the zebras, he refused to forgive the ones he saw as responsible for the death of his loved ones. Just like May, he stopped making the distinction between the individuals and the group. He became not unlike those who refused to differentiate ghouls and ferals. Sadly, like May, his grudge would cost him dearly.