Chapter 2: That Haunted Melody
editors/Co-authors
VoxAdam
“This is a land of broken dreams. And this forlorn, little railroad is one of those dreams that never came true.”
Richard Beneville, Nome, AK tour guide.
“"Aeon War Syndrome isn't losing your mind. It's losing your friends. It's losing your family. It's losing whatever hope you might have had left. They say war is hell. I've seen hell. This is worse."
Someone from Cthulhutech, I don’t know.
PHL PSYCH DOSSIER
SUBJECT: JOHNATHAN JOHNNY C “NNY” PHILIP HEALD III
HISTORY: Heald exhibits marked anti-authority and antisocial tendencies, in combination with firearms enthusiasm. College psych eval indicate suicidal ideation, violent tendencies, paranoid episodes, severe trust handicaps.
Heald was hospitalized in July 2013 after a stress-related breakdown, in which he went AWOL from college after a violent assault of his roommate and said roommate’s girlfriend, claiming “The fuckers deserved it.” He disappeared from his college in Spring 2013, resurfacing as a lookout in a remote national park, delusionally claiming to be a “wolf whisperer” and having been photographed alongside wild wolf pups. Subject underwent treatment and successfully applied to a different college in Spring 2014.
He came to PHL attention, however, upon news of both HTF and PHL involvement. Subject was witnessed holding a knife to Bureau personnel, but willingly took the knife off his throat so as to send the Bureau employee to PHL interrogation.
Upon Celestia’s announcement of war, he volunteered for the National Guard, as did the pony (see:FIDDLESTICKS APPLE) he had allowed to board in his house. Heald shows exceptional resourcefulness, marksmanship, dedication, determination, and duty, but reports of cruelty at PER sites just keep piling up.
Investigation into wartime trauma and its effect on his mental state is still pending. Thus far, he proves to be a fascinating case study. So many aspects of his personality can be contradictory. A passion for the arts, frantically swinging between introversion and extroversion…
Still. I’m glad he’s here with us and our counselling department. Not in a “We’d-all-die” sense, but a “He’d-die-without-us” sense. Something tells me that taking him off his meds and leaving him among HLF would not end well.
Dr. Red Couch, PHL Psychological Counselling
Snowshoes
Snowshoes didn’t like getting off the base on business. Especially not for Kgalakgadi’s little pet projects. Which outsiders - like the somewhat overweight human with large triceps and nice hair, or the yellow earth pony with the blue mane that were for some reason on this mission - would say was weird for a pegasus.
Pegasi were usually free spirits. Inclined to flights of fancy.
Snowshoes, however, unlike many pegasi who saw a snowstorm like the one approaching as a casual annoyance, was much happier fluttering around the very large hangar of the base, working on a prototype aircraft inspired by the works of one Prince Blueblood, or possibly in a nest (yes, she was a pegasus, she’d heard all the jokes) of blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals.
Which, coupled with her instinctive dislike of confined spaces, meant that she didn’t like it in this little PHL plane built on half-understood engines barely out of the testing phase, sitting across from the two outsiders from the east coast. And she definitely didn’t like being taken off-base in the middle of a project of hers to reverse-engineer Heliotrope’s suit. Nevermind that the notes Heliotrope made were scratchy, and that Heliotrope’s mouth-and-wingwriting was unreliable at best. Nevermind that Heliotrope could use weird terminology and would always code her notes and provide half-finished guides. Nevermind that Heliotrope had a tendency towards paranoia.
She’d been busy on the most humiliating part of the project, too, when you weren’t actually working on the project, you were working on starting. When you were working to actually work, but making an infinitesimally small amount of progress.
Also, as a favor for Heliotrope, she’d been working on a module that’d create a decoy upon Heliotrope going invisible. Which, again, had not been helped by Heliotrope’s informal language. The bad mood that hung over her was not helped by the cramped confines of the trucks, or the fact that she barely knew any of these people. She’d seen them around - Amuruq Jackson could often be found staring over the base with his sniper rifle, a big Ulfberht. Vera was… Unapproachable at best, and went damn near rabid when you talked about her family. Actually, everyone but Sandalwood and Darryl were various flavors of unapproachable.
The short, squat human with the mop of brown hair was off talking to Amuruq. She’d pegged the short man as a moronic sexual deviant - he was a bit too touchy feely, and there were odd touches to his mannerisms.
“So you met Romeo?” the short human - Johnny C, apparently nicknamed Nny - asked.
“Me and my old Samoyed did, yeah,” Amuruq said. “Heh, here’s Romeo just being surprised at Fluffy’s, y’know, well, fluff.”
“What an amazing experience,” the short human breathed. “Meeting a wild wolf playing with dogs. You know he had dog back in his family sometime, right?”
“Seriously?” Amuruq asked.
“Yeah, black fur, that’s a mutation,” Nny said. “You gotta breed wolves into your sled-dogs, to keep the pool fresh, y’know? And black fur was great for blending into forests. This is why huskies have black spots on their faces. I seen it.”
“Well, yeah,” Amuruq said. “I knew that. You learn a lot working the Alaska Zoo as a teenager.”
“Did you meet the funny river pups?” Nny asked.
“Course I did.”
“Awesome! I thought you were saying Romeo was a wolfdog.”
“Nah,” Nny said.
Snowshoes knew everyone in there but him and his mare.
“What’s your story?” she asked.
“Nny and I came up to help out a friend on the base,” the yellow mare said. “And then someone thought it’d be a great idea to come all the way out here.”
“I thought it’d be a vacation, Fiddlesticks,” the stocky human - Nny? - said. “Then again, I do kinda have doglike loyalty to others…”
“Huh?” Snowshoes asked.
“He’s saying he’s loyal to anyone with a kind word,” Fiddlesticks said.
“That’s not… bad…” Snowshoes said.
“What’s bad is why I’m like that,” the human named Nny said. “See, back in college I had this mental break-”
“Bad news,” the pilot said over loudspeaker. “We’ve got word that there’s a real big storm coming, maybe something brewed up over behind the Barrier, so we’ll have to touch down by Galbraith Lake.”
There was a pause.
“Yeah,” Snowshoes said. “Those clouds ahead don’t look good.”
“They’ve got a vehicle stored in the hangar, so at least you guys can stop up by Point Rotgut,” the Pilot said.
Snowshoes let out a gasp of joy.
“Aw, yeah!” cheered Sandalwood from a seat nearby. As always, Sandalwood was fully clothed, wearing an old pony-made snowsuit that had been patched with duct tape. “Been forever since I got to stop there.”
“Need I remind you this is a scientific mission?” Kgalakgadi asked, Sharon and Spurred Weld folding their arms, staring at the other nine of them.
“Need I remind you this is the perfect time to get some fresh air?” Snowshoes retorted, and bumped hooves with Sandalwood. While they disagreed, plenty of times, if there was anypony she could trust… It was Sandalwood. Her best mate.
“Where’s Point Rotgut?” Nny asked, peering out the window. “Didn’t see it on any of the maps.”
From experience, Snowshoes knew what he was seeing. Miles and miles of green, snow-covered forests, scarred by the pipeline, a road, and the long railroad winding through the wilderness. A forlorn, lost length of trackage.
Running through miles of nothing.
“Point Rotgut’s not really a… a on-the-map place,” said Amaruq.
“Then…” Nny started.
“It’s what we call Pump Station 3,” Amaruq explained. “The Prudhoe Bay Rail Extension has a maintenance area near the Dalton Highway, and it gets lonely up there, so some enterprising guy made a rotgut distillery. Turned into a stop, and now there’s a small town. Besides, after all the work building the line, there wasn’t much of a place for all the railworkers. Had to take up shelter on the line, and they didn’t have the money to leave.”
“Best truck stop for miles,” Sandalwood said, a big smile on her face. “Almost as good as Sagwon.”
“Shame, though,” said Vera Low, the Russian woman who had torn most of her last name off of her tac-vest. “We had to build that through one of the last wildernesses in the world…”
“It wasn’t all that wild, considering the pipeline and the road,” Snowshoes said. “Or would you rather not have any fuckin’ power?”
“Come on,” Sandalwood said. “Dick move, Snowy. Dick. Move.”
Command had likely shoved her off on this…. mission, if you could call it that…. to get her out of their hair for awhile.
“Never said that,” Nny said. “It’s just… sad.” He paused. “Still. Least there’s good beer on the way.”
“It’s not about beer,” Darryl Joseph said. “Look. No matter how insignificant it seems, we’ve still got a job.”
“And then get schwifty?” Nny asked hopefully as the plane arced down to a forlorn-looking airport by a lake.
“And then get schwifty,” Fiddlesticks confirmed.
“Great,” sighed Spurred Weld, the unicorn stallion that had come along with them, a railroader unicorn before he’d left for Earth. Kgalakgadi had figured they’d need a unicorn to come along, “just in case,” so he’d reluctantly come along. “I’m surrounded by alcoholics.”
“Hey,” Snowshoes said. “How many people here aren’t alcoholics?”
“Don’t… just, just don’t do anything, don’t answer that,” Darryl sighed, facepalming. “I don’t want to know.”
This was probably for the best.
Twelve people disembarked the plane. Kgalakgadi, Vera, Snowshoes, Tomorbaator the griffon, Darryl Joseph, Spurred Weld, Emma Hayden, Amaruq, Sharon Minik, Sandalwood, and of course, Johnny C and Fiddlesticks.
None of them were happy, mind. It could have been a decent drive, but noooo...
They were offloaded into one of the trucks on the base, and headed down the Dalton Highway. Though “highway” was stretching it a bit. It was like one of the dirt roads from back home in New Hampshire, Johnny C thought.
...Okay, this was only a highway in the sense that a “tram,” as Alaskan mining operations had called anything from a gondola to a narrow-gauge railroad, was a wide-spanning railroad operation. It was a dirt road longer than Johnny C's home state.
“The open road, huh?” Johnny C asked.
Amaruq
It would have been easy to say that it was dark by the time Point Rotgut drew closer. But no, this was Alaska, so it had been dark the whole time.
Everyone needed a break to stretch their legs and take a piss, especially as they passed the large sign that had been pieced together from neon lettering taken aboard various evac ships. Black iron railroad tracks glistened under its light.
“So,” Sandalwood asked, “What exactly did you pick up on your instruments, Kgalakgadi?”
“Good question,” Kgalakadi said, adjusting his glasses. “I… don’t know. It lasted a short time, but when I read the printout it was such a massive spike of thaums that… I don’t know. It couldn’t be natural. Or an error. It was too...” He sighed. “It was like something had used a teleport to simply shift Equestria to earth for a second. Like a pinhole, and…” he gulped.
“What’re you saying?” Sandalwood asked. “We’ve been having thaumometers going haywire everywhere. Something about earth’s old magic waking up, are you sure it-”
“I think something came through,” Kgalakgadi interrupted, then whispered to Sandalwood. “And I picked this up twice.”
“Sounds like something followed them,” Sandalwood said.
“I was thinking the same,” Kgalakgadi said, and the two of them looked out at the road ahead. The lights of Point Rotgut glistened in the distance, through the snow.
Snowshoes whistled at that.
“Something’s wrong,” said Amaruq. His knuckles were white as he gripped the steering wheel. He was driving at a crawl, and the windshield wipers whipped across their view of the road.
“And that is?” Johnny C asked.
“This story,” Amaruq said. “The sign. It’s just…”
“Amaruq, have you been playing through Until Dawn again?” Spurred Weld sighed.
“Oh, come on,” Amaruq sighed. “Those are from Southern Canada! Just like loup-garou.”
“Kishtaka?” Spurred Weld suggested.
“...It’s. Not. The same,” Amaruq said.
“Wendigos-”
“Wait, what?” Sandalwood interrupted. “The Hearthswarming boogeymonsters?”
“No, it’s totally different,” Johnny C said. “For example, I’m pretty sure Windigos aren't created through cannibalism-”
“Some of them are,” Fiddlesticks said. “Grandma Astrachan said her great-grandma told her that she’d heard ponies got real desperate for food back then. Resort to being a carnivore, then... Windigo.”
“How have I never heard of this?" Snowshoes asked.
“Would you want to hear this as a filly?” Fiddlesticks asked. “I didn't know you weren’t supposed to tell ghost stories on Hearthswarming Eve till the pageant we had to do... And I ended up as one of the windigoes…”
“Your childhood sounds messed up,” Snowshoes said, shivering.
“Eh,” Fiddlesticks shrugged. “The ghost stories were fun.”
“Wait a second,” Snowshoes said. "I’ve tasted meat before. It was on a bet, with a griffon back in flight school. You don’t think…”
“Nah, that only happens in somewhere with windigoes,” Fiddlesticks said. “Least, that’s what Grandma Astrachan said. Long as you don't do it somewhere with lots of snow and ic-”
“...blast," Snowshoes sighed, looking out the window. “Ammy? You're sure they're a-”
“Yes! Can we... Can we focus for a bit?” Amaruq asked. “I just have a really bad feeling about Point Rotgut.”
“Ammy, it’s fine,” Darryl Joseph said, as their truck, rattling on the frost-heave battered road, drew up to a ragged collection of outbuildings and battered but serviceable structures in the middle of the snowy tundra.
“Looks like an open wound,” Fiddlesticks said, and Sharon glared at her.
“Outsider,” Sharon sighed.
“New Hampshire?” Fiddlesticks asked, raising an eyebrow.
Sharon just sighed again.
Fiddlesticks is right, though, Johnny C thought. It does... kind of look like one. He’d usually thought of Alaska as mostly forest and mountain, but this place was just surrounded on all sides by nothing. No roads other than this one, no flora or fauna besides a couple stunted trees just barely poking out of the thick snows, no suburbs, no isolated shacks from people who just wanted to be left alone.
Just this collection of buildings in the middle of nowhere.
It was a place that would look more at home in the wilds of Pandora - the one from Borderlands, not Avatar. The rails of the Deadhorse Extension had been overtaken by a sprawling wasp's nest of prefabs that had remade the junction for their own use. Wooden outbuildings clung to it like burls to trees. Somewhere in the middle of it all, he could see a group of green, slab-sided buildings that looked to be built for functionality above all else. (They were).
And, sprayed with vivid blue and pink paint, enchanted to glow by unicorn settlers, on the walls of a blue, corrugated roadside warehouse were the words: Point Rotgut.
It didn’t look like a welcoming place, to say the least. The street had been paved, and there visibly was electricity… but something gave Johnny C the idea that it was a luxury or indulgence here. Algae-lamps in blue and green lined the street, casting an eerie glow over the snowy border town.
Everyone that they could see hurrying by was wearing patchworks of old-world clothes (the kind with expensive material and lots of zippers) and crudely stitched cold-weather clothes made of anything on hand, from tree bark, to pelts, to old plastic. Almost everyone seemed to be armed, but even pre-war that had been fairly normal for Alaska. A large revolver could be a lot of use up here, especially on various large wild animals.
“See, Amaruq?” Darryl asked, as they drove down the main drag of the town. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
Darryl was right. Whatever disaster Amuruq had predicted of Point Rotgut was… not. Well, Point Rotgut was kind of a disaster in itself. ‘Shuttered’ was the only word that came to Fiddlesticks’ mind as she looked it over through a frost-encrusted window. It looked as if everyone in town wanted nothing so much as to burrow down in a hole with a lot of booze and never return to the world.
...In retrospect, this explained the various bars all over town, each one adorned with scavenged neon in a multitude of languages. And the closed windows that seemed like nothing so much as the heavy-lidded eyes of an insomniac that wished for just a moment’s peace.
“Ain’t it great?” Sandalwood asked, a big smile on her face.
“No,” Fiddlesticks said quietly. “Being honest, it seems pretty horrible here. This is just… this looks like somewhere I’d go to die of alcohol poisoning or frostbite.”
“Or drinking alcohol that’s the same temperature as it is outside,” Emma added. “Nny - you’re young, so-”
“Twenty-seven,” Johnny C said, unable not to look at Point Rotgut. “It’s short for Johnny.”
“Point is,” Emma said, not listening and likely not caring, “Don’t drink booze out in the cold. Nearly lost my throat to-”
“So that is why Emma sound like Girlfriend Doctor from Venture Brother,” Vera said, earning a glower from Emma. “This place… was never plan. American PHL, Canadian and American government… they needed quick route to petrol in Dead Horse.”
“It’s actually called that?” Fiddlesticks asked. “...Dead… horse? Sounds like an HLF camp.”
“Used to be,” Darryl said. “Though as HLF go, we kinda neutered them.”
Fiddlesticks, Snowshoes, and Johnny C glanced over at him, alarmed.
“Not even remotely what I meant,” Darryl elaborated. “We… came to an agreement. They keep the gas going, don’t touch our ponies, we don’t touch them. They won’t do anything like Lovik-”
Vera’s eyes blazed with hatred, and Johnny C would swear, to the day that he wrote this story, to the day that a South African war criminal would start reading a copy of said story after quoting Ladd Russo as he beat up a PER woman, that Darryl did, in fact, whimper and squeeze himself back into the seat like a puppy. Possibly one of the Funny River wolf pups that had been rescued near Denali, but that was too far south, and probably way too specific.
“Lovikov?” Johnny C asked. “Hate that bastard. The day he ended up on the same coast as me was a pretty bad one. I’ve shot a few of his goons before.”
“Good,” Vera spat, and now it was time for Fiddlesticks to shrink back against her seat. “Anyway. The workers, a lot of them didn’t have the money to buy their own homes after all this. Or, well, a lot of them didn’t have the money to get out of alaska. The cities were crammed, and a lot of weird stuff can happen out there.”
She sighed, and looked over at a bridge through the middle of Point Rotgut that transients were using as a temporary roof over their heads. “No side of the tracks more wrong than under them,” she said.
A beat-up train, headed by two EMD-f7s (one bore the number 1500 on its waybill) rushed over the bridge, trailing snow like a running wolf. It coated the sides of the buildings in the alley it rushed through, and the side of the truck facing the bridge was buffeted in a gust of snow.
For a second, Amuruq couldn’t see anything.
“So I was wrong,” he sighed.
“That’s putting it lightly,” Emma smirked.
“It’s just… I had a bad feeling, alright?” Amuruq asked. “Look. We’re in the middle of nowhere, there’s a huge storm, and we’re gonna head further out to the middle of nowhere on some zebra’s hunch-”
“It’s not a hunch,” Kgalakgadi said, as they inched towards the very edge of Port Rotgut, past a narrow scattering of outbuildings. “I’m telling you. The instruments. Do. Not. Lie. Something’s out there.”
“What, are you gonna try to make all the wolves eat newfoals?” Emma asked sarcastically. “Again?”
“I didn’t have the resources to make it work!” Kgalakgadi protested.
“...Not helping your case, bruh,” Sharon Minik sighed. “Seriously, that’s just superstition dreamt up by-”
“You do realize you’re in a van with two unicorns and a pegasus, right?” Fiddlesticks asked.
“What about me?” Kgalakgadi asked.
“And we were mythical before Equestria found us,” Johnny C added. “Point I think my friend’s trying to make here is, skepticism sounds weird.”
“I’unno,” Fiddlesticks shrugged. “I can’t think of any human legends about talking zebras. I mean, there probably is one, but we’d have to ask someone from Africa.”
Let’s just skip about an hour and fifteen minutes forward from this Tarantino-esque conversation and assume that the twelve people in there kept driving for a lot longer.
And that Amuruq, who’d been driving a long time, switched out with Sharon Minik, who’d been rather suspiciously quiet.
It had been only getting darker. Up here, night could last for weeks. Sometimes more than a month. The human from New Hampshire was lying against the pale yellow, blue-maned mare, and everyone seemed rested. Except Sharon herself.
Who wasn’t happy. But then, who was?
The snow was pounding down on the flat, icy tundra that surrounded the road, and Sharon was hoping they got to the next station soon. Not for rest - they’d likely make it up to where Kgalakgadi’s instruments were indicating soon enough that she wouldn’t need a break from driving. But it was tiring to be away from civilization.
“Look alive, everyone,” Sharon said, the truck trundling down the isolated old road. Civilization, the cities they all remembered, almost seemed to be distant memories as they inched closer and closer to Prudhoe Bay and Deadhorse. “We’ll pass Sagwon in about ten minutes. Amuruq? You got a bad feeling bout this one too?”
Amuruq, who was half-asleep and reading his copy of ‘A Wolf Called Romeo,’ just mumbled something incoherent in Inuktitut and flipped her off.
Nobody responded. They’d been driving too long, and everyone had retreated into various pursuits. Fiddlesticks, the New Hampshire mare, was gently strumming her fiddle in a relaxing lullaby. Johnny C was also reading a book, bobbing his head along to the music. Emma had fallen asleep, Vera just didn’t care. Darryl was fiddling with something on his phone.
Snowshoes was sketching.
Kgalakgadi was busy on his instruments.
Everything in the general area was almost serene. Well, except for whatever the truck would hit in ten seconds.
The sign for Sagwon was coming up. It was, perhaps, one of life’s great ironies, that Sharon had family in Sagwon. They’d been teachers looking for a job, so they’d taken up the job in the little town that had grown up around the pipeline and railroad.
She wondered if she’d see them soo-
Thu-thump
Was that an elk?
The truck drew to a halt, skidding through the snow.
“The hell?” Amuruq yelled.
Couldn’t be. I only saw it out of the corner of my eye.
“I think I hit something,” Sharon said.
“Well… why would you…” Johnny C asked, confused.
“Friggin’ city boys,” Sharon sighed.
“Motherfucker. I’m from the woods,” Johnny C said. “You have any idea how many deer dad killed with his Ford? I know deer hunters without as many kills.”
“So it has no emotional impact?” Amuruq asked.
“Not really,” Fiddlesticks said. “Would you be mad if I ate a monkey?”
“Not really,” Amuruq said.
“Then no,” Fiddlesticks said.
“We’re Inuit,” Amuruq said. “Me and Sharon both. That’s not how we do this sort of thing.”
Johnny C looked at Amuruq and shrugged accomodatingly. “Okay,” Fiddlesticks added.
“No arguments? No verbal sniping?” Amuruq asked, surprised.
“Nope,” Fiddlesticks said.
“I knew there was a reason I liked the two of you,” Amuruq said as they filtered out into the snow. The lights of Sagwon glittered in the distance.
“Where’s the deer?” Sharon asked, confused.
“Let me try,” Johnny C said. “I have a flashlight.”
The ensemble Johnny C was wearing on his head would’ve looked silly in any other situation. Okay, it looked silly in this one, too. He was wearing an old hat meant to look like a stuffed husky, with a pair of ski goggles worn over its eyes.
He pushed them down, and shouldered his rifle. Thumbing on his flashlight, he stalked down the road.
The snow whistled around him. Fiddlesticks was trotting at his side, scanning the horizon. She tightened the strap under her hat that kept it from being tugged off by the wind.
“Y’know,” Fiddlesticks said, looking down at the thick snow beneath their feet. “I’d think that if ya hit a deer, you’d… y’know, find it by now.”
“Now that mention it,” Vera mused. “Weird.”
Sharon stared down into the snow, searching in the narrow area of road covered by the car’s headlights. She was shaking from the cold. “Well, we definitely hit something,” she said, inspecting the front of the car.
“Then where is it?” Fiddlesticks asked.
Vera and Johnny C flicked on the flashlights on their rifles, and scanned the nearby area. Fiddlesticks did not, in fact, have a rifle, so she simply flicked on the flashlight in the breast pocket of her jacket. Or at least, what humans had dubbed the breast pocket.
“What’d you hit?!” Snowshoes asked, fluttering out, unbothered by the snow. She held both hooves to Sharon’s collarbones, and shook. “What’d you hit?!”
“I don’t know!” Sharon yelled. “It looked like, I… I thought it was a…” she was shaking her head vigorously. “It looked like an elk! Caribou or something.”
“I’m not seeing anything!” Fiddlesticks called out.
“It was so real though,” Sharon said, eyes tracking Vera and Nny’s flashlights as they scanned the surrounding area. Wide beams of light cast themselves along the snowy tundra. “And then, how do you explain the front of the truck?”
Fiddlesticks looked over at her. The front chassis of their truck had crumpled a little, as if it had indeed hit a caribou, but there was one thing conspicuously missing:
Whatever it hit.
“Huh,” Fiddlesticks said. “I’m seeing tracks. There’s something… looks cloven there.” She peered down. “Well, this is going to be a bitch to explain.” The tracks abruptly stopped in front of their truck. It was as if whatever they hit had simply vanished upon impact. “The snow will cover this up for awhile.”
“Let me look at them,” Johnny C said. “Dad told me a lot about looking at tracks.”
“New Hampshire, maybe,” Sharon said. “How the hell would you know anything-”
“Dad’s well traveled, alright?” Johnny C snapped as he turned back towards the truck, casting his flashlight arou-
“Whoa,” Fiddlesticks said, and held a hoof to Johnny C’s folder. “Nny. Move that back to the left a bit. Bout an inch.”
“Why, what’s-?” Nny asked, and saw it. “Well. Fuck.”
There was a car stalled on one side of the road with its doors thrown open, half-buried in a snowdrift. From the looks of things, it’d veered off-road.
“That’s… that’s not normal, right?” Sandalwood asked, staring over at the car.
“No,” Darryl said. “It isn’t. Heald? Fiddlesticks, Snowshoes? We’re heading towards that other car.”
“That just raises so many questions,” Nny said, following the three of them.
“...Where’d you even keep that Kalashnikov, anyway?” Snowshoes asked, looking up at the Saiga MK-107.
“Backseat,” Johnny C said, as if that explained everything. Then his eyebrows shot up almost all the way to his prominent widows peak. “Wait a sec. You guys… you’re from Alaska, right?” he called over. “Tell me… anyone know what the tire marks here look like?”
“Course I do,” Amuruq said as he stared down into the marks left in the snow. “Whoever the driver was - wherever he is - he was running. He was driving too fast, so the car skidded around in the snow…”
“But what was he running from?” Emma asked, looking concerned, rifle ready-
“Whoa whoa whoa,” Kgalakgadi asked. said, staring over at her. “Why would you even-”
“Same reason as Nny, I bet,” Emma said. “And, ah, Amuruq? Sorry about laughing at you for having a bad feeling bout this.”
“Apology accepted,” Amuruq said, trembling.
“Wait a second,” Vera said. “Snowshoes? Does the pattern on the windshield look… familiar? Just fly up and stand on it.”
“Come on,” Darryl sighed. “That’s evidence. It’s-”
But, as Snowshoes alighted on the hood, the snow melting in her windswept mane, his voice trailed off into the realm of stillborn sentences.
“Oh,” Darryl said, as if reading something moderately interesting in the newspaper. Then, as if he’d just found out everyone he’d ever known and loved had died: “Oh.”
“Fuck,” Sharon spat.
Snowshoes’ four hooves matched the points where the windshield was cracked, almost exactly.
The sign for Sagwon was glowing in the late-night winter moonlight.
“Everyone. Back to the car. Minik,” Darryl said. “Get us to Sagwon. Now. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
“What’s going on?” Johnny C asked, gripping his rifle like a lifeline.
“I don’t know,” Snowshoes said.
“Why is it that when he gets a bad feeling we all listen, but when the inuit guy does-” Amuruq started.
“Actually, first, you… might’ve been technically right,” Darryl said. “Second - we’ve got something here. Don’t know what it is, but it’s something.”
“Do we mean the thing that I hit, or…” Sharon started.
“Maybe,” Darryl said. “I don’t know what it is. But I don’t think I like it.”
None of them did. The lights of Sagwon, Fiddlesticks noticed, looked almost like the eyes of some great beast…
They piled back into the truck, as it crawled towards Sagwon.
“Hello?” Darryl asked, thumping the truck’s radio. “This is investigation team Romeo. We’ve got… I don’t know what. I-”
“...lo? Snow….. thick,” someone said on the other end. “Ca…. *static* thing. Blizz… ...ference.”
“Great,” Emma sighed. “Storm’s screwing up the signal.”
“Actually…” Kgalakgadi wiped the sweat from his brow with one striped foreleg. “That might not be all that’s interfering with it.” He held up one of his instruments in his mouth, something that looked vaguely like a geiger counter, showing it to everyone else in the truck.
“Your instruments are screwing it up?” Sharon asked, looking down at it.
“Are they?” Amuruq asked. “The hell, man?”
“No,” Kgalakgadi mumbled, his jaw’s grip slipping. “Look at the needle.”
“...Oh,” Sandalwood said, eyebrows raised. “That’s… disquieting.”
“Exactly,” Kgalakgadi said. “We have to warn Sagwon!”
“I’m guessing that’s bad?” Fiddlesticks asked.
“Considering the PHL doesn’t have anything capable of that there, yes,” Kgalakgadi said. “Look. Here’s a little thaumoemotive indicator.” He held up a device that looked a little like a walkie-talkie. “There’s a thaum spike out here. I don’t know what could be causing it.”
“...I don’t know about that,” Fiddlesticks said. “What about that car? The marks on the windshield?”
“You can’t possibly be suggesting-” Tomorbaator started.
“She is,” Johnny C said, his face hardened. “Sharon, we’re getting to Sagwon.”
“I’m in command here, in case you forgot,” Darryl said.
“Unless we were going through some other town,” Sharon said, “We were doing that anyway.”
They clambered into the truck, and headed for the town.
Nobody looked enticed by the thought of visiting Sagwon, this time. Darryl was trying to use the radio, communicate them any way he could, but the storm had made him lucky to get in more than a syllable.
“Fuck,” Sharon said.
Which just so happened to be the train station. It wasn’t a big station, or anything that could even charitably be called remarkable. It was just a line of winterized prefabs, an almost halfhearted awning covering the platform.
The low orange, green, and red light of a departure board scavenged from somewhere in Europe hung above the platform, helpfully informing them that a passenger train wouldn’t come through for days.
“Nobody’s here,” Emma called from inside.
“Free liquor?” Snowshoes asked, hopefully.
“Was there part of ‘nobody’s here’ that didn’t get?” Vera sighed.
“If what I think happened here, well, happened,” Snowshoes muttered, “Dead men don’t complain.”
“They do,” Vera said.
Snowshoes just glared at her.
“Snowy,” Sandalwood said, walking into the station, “I believe she means some HLF cult?”
We’re all scared, Nny thought, as they headed indoors.
“Why’d you have to take us here?” Fiddlesticks sighed, her breath wafting through the air like smoke.
“Huh? I… uh… how’d you hear me…”
“Y’all didn’t say anything,” Fiddlesticks said. “Wi’ yer mouth. You’re regrettin’ this, here n’ now. Plain as day.”
“I… thought it’d be nice,” Nny said, a little dejected, wishing desperately that he was bored again. “Visit alaska. Hike with lonely wolves. Find logging equipment in the forest.”
“...Is that really what you think my home state is like?” Sharon sighed. “Guys from Outside, I swear.”
“Hey, I read the books about Alaska,” Nny said. “I just wanted to relax. Enjoy the cold.”
“People like you,” Sharon said, “Never know what it’s like up here.”
“I have literally had my mustache freeze while skiing before, and I ski a mountain that kills people every yeah,” Nny said. “You don’t know what it’s like back home, either.”
“Fair enough,” Sharon said, shaking the snow off her coat. The wooden floor wasn’t exacty clean…
Except for a certain patch of wet floor over by the bathrooms. Under a model of a Shay locomotive, there was a bucket of soapy water. The presumably corresponding mop was lying on the floor.
“Who walks away in the middle of this, anyway?” Sandalwood said, confused.
“What do you mean?” Kgalakgadi asked.
“Somebody was cleaning here,” Sandalwood said. “Walked away right in the middle of it.”
“How…” Darryl asked.
Kgalakgadi looked at his thaumoemotive indicator. The cube was spinning in a small glass sphere surrounded by a block the size of a child’s flashcards, enchanted so it’d be easier for a native of Equus to hold it.
“Well, there’s definitely something…” Kgalakgadi said. “What do you think, Da…”
His voice trailed off. The device dropped from his hooves, his hoof TK evidently failing him. “Ohhhh, no.”
Johnny C looked over to Darryl. He was shaking. And, unnervingly enough, carrying what looked to Johnny C almost exactly like a thermite projector.
“...Should I be worried about this?” Johnny C asked.
Emma just looked over at him and rolled her eyes.
“There is a man with a flamethrower here,” Fiddlesticks said. “And I notice that most of the stuff here is flammable.”
“Dare,” Snowshoes said. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but don’t.” She was fluttering near his head. Shivering.
“Snowy,” Darryl said. “This… this is real bad.”
His hands were shaking like leaves. “I know the signs. This is…”
He headed out the door, throwing it open. Snow cascaded in, sweeping over the floor.
Darryl, still shaking, headed out. “Look,” he said. “What about this.”
Kgalakgadi backed away slowly. “Um…. Is he usually...”
“Yeah,” Snowshoes said. “I haven’t seen him this bad since Forward Oper-” her mouth clammed shut. “Later. We’ll talk that one later.”
“You are totally trying to find a better way to dodge that later,” Johnny C commented, as they walked into the street outside the train station. He noticed a nod from Snowshoes.
There was nobody on the street, pony or human. Admittedly, it was the middle of a frozen night - who would be out? - but there was no…
Anything, really.
The buildings were so encrusted in snow that they looked almost like giant snowdrifts. A windmill, meant for generating power in the intense cold, warbled slightly.
Another car was stalled in the middle of the road. Parked neatly, as well. One door hung open. It juddered against the car’s body, its drumbeat echoing in the wind.
Snowshoes shivered again.
“And… and y-you laughed at me for having… p-pants,” Sandalwood muttered through chattering teeth.
But there was no malice in her tone. Not even good-natured ribbing.
The lights blazed through the wintry, month-long darkness. Vera was scanning the rooftops through her rifle’s sights.
“Empty,” Vera said finally.
“Hmm?” Spurred Weld asked.
“All empty,” Vera said. “Bought a thermal sight awhile back. And I can’t see anything living in the immediate area.”
“...What the hell happened here?” Fiddlesticks asked.
There was a bar up ahead. Its doors were open, one of them swinging.
“Okay,” Amuruq said. “Is anyone going to make jokes if I say that now my bad feeling is back?”
Snowshoes shook her head.
“I’m guessing that one is a bad sign,” Johnny C said.
“Movement,” Tomorbaator said finally.
“Huh?” Emma asked.
“Movement. There is not a goddamn thing moving, here,” Tomorbaator said.
“What do you mean?” Kgalakgadi asked.
“I mean, look. There is no hint that anything’s… doing anything.”
“For the love of all that’s holy,” Nny said, “Please tell me we are not splitting up.”
Darryl blinked. “Well, why not? We could cover more of the town that way.”
“And we’ll get picked off easier,” Snowshoes added sarcastically.
“No shit, Sherclop,” Tomorbaator growled. He’d kitted himself out with what looked like an assault yoke. “Here. Mr. Heald-” he passed Johnny C something that looked like a grenade launcher. “Underbarrel bolas launcher. Pet project of mine.”
“What’s this for?” Johnny C asked, affixing it to his kalashnikov.
“Emergencies,” Tomorbaator said.
“Ah, guys?” Amuruq asked, shielding his balaclava’d face from the wind. “A thought occurs. You know that train we saw going through Point Rotgut? Those do double duty as passenger trains, because Prudhoe Bay and Deadhorse are, how to put this…”
“Barely a step above unincorporated townships?” Johnny C suggested.
Sharon gave him a flat, unfriendly stare.
“No, he’s right,” Amuruq said. “The population of these places is so low that it is barely a step above that. So either someone on that train we saw escaped…”
“Or whatever it was here happened recently.” Sandalwood finished. “Shi-”
“Did you hear that?” Tomorbaator yelped, jumping a foot into the air.
Six rifles (and one flamethrower) were shouldered in the space of a single moment. As had Fiddlesticks’ assault saddle, which slid out from a box she was wearing just above her barrel.
“The hell, man?!” she yelled at Tomorbaator.
“I heard something,” Tomorbaator said, as if that explained everything. “From the bar.”
He inclined his head, pointing towards a building that sure as hell looked like a restaurant of some kind. A sign, painted in black and yellow, simply read: “The Redoubt.”
Sandalwood
Was Sandalwood scared as they walked into the bar?
Absolutely.
It was like walking in the ruins of somewhere the Barrier had eaten already. There were few ponies of the PHL that hadn’t been present for a Barrierfall somewhere.
Sandalwood had been in one. In fact-
The ships - Gone. Stuck. Stuck on the coast, no way out, one hind and one front leg broken. PHL gone, her, alone, with the only humans in a vaguely caring mood towards her being utterly fucking nuts. An entire city, a mausoleum that wouldn’t be-
A staticky radio was crackling somewhere in the background. Sandalwood could see Snowshoes trying not to stare at it, though the disgust in her eyes was clearly aimed for the radio, not at her. For once, for bucking once, it was good not to have that slut, that frie-
‘Calm down,’ Sandalwood told herself as she trotted into the bar. ‘Keep it calm, Sandy.
This didn’t work when she saw the state of the bar. Dinners, tall beers and glasses of the finest rotgut that could be distilled in someone’s basements or in hidden, accidental spaces under the pipes or where two service corridors built to keep people out of the cold didn’t quite intersect right, forks and knives laid out as if the bar had been the site of a bustling evening after a long, hard day. As much as you could be said to have “day” here. It was night, now - it’d be night here for at least the next two weeks, and, and focus…
The only thing missing was people. The bar was empty as could be. Sandalwood reared up, inspecting a heaping plate of salmon.
“It’s still warm,” she heard herself say, her voice sounding as if it was coming from faraway. “Their dinners,” she said, sniffing one plate. “They’re… still warm.”
Krkrrkkhhkkhkhkkkkkhhh… the radio answered. Static. Weird, thrumming, static.
“That sounds… bad,” said the guy from New Hampshire, Johnny C. “Somebody shut off that damn radio.”
“Yeah, the static’s not helping,” said Fiddlesticks, his marefriend with the gray hat.
“Bad ain’t the word,” Darryl said. “Besides.” He held up the thermite gun. “I could take it off the airwaves for all of y’alls.”
“Dare?” Snowshoes asked. “If you don’t mind, I don’t like having a flamethrower in closed quarters like this.”
“It’s a thermite gun! And I don’t like any of this, so I guess we’ll have to compromise,” Darryl snapped.
“Darryl,” Sandalwood said. “Out of line.”
“It’s just nerves,” said Johnny C. “Come on… guys. This is fucked, I think we all know it…”
“Well,” Snowshoes said, as per bloody usual, “Thank you, captain obviou-”
And it was at that moment that Emma - who had walked into another room just behind the bar - yelped like a startled dog, then stepped, no, staggered, no, flew backwards.
VERA
Fucking staticky american radios.
At the very least, back home in Oily Rocks, things worked. And at least when they didn’t, you could punch or duct-tape things into submission until they did. This was how her father’s old, piecemealed shotgun, the one he’d beaten into a bullpup configuration through sweat and aluminum had worked, anyway.
It was impossible to hear anything over that radio. At least the arguing of all the Americans and ponies she’d come with were doing a good job of drowning out that horrible static.
“The dinners are still warm,” Sandalwood was saying. Then, as usual, she was glaring at Snowshoes. It was a shame, really. From what she’d heard, they’d been great friends once upon a time. Emma, the pale and vaguely Irish woman with coppery hair, the one that held her M16 like a hunter but not a soldier, was heading into a back room.
Dangerous. But what did Vera care?
What did she care that a woman was filtering away, during a heated argument in a place that seemed to be actively cutting through their ability to reason…
Emma was opening the door.
I am not Leonid, Vera told herself. “Tomorbaator,” Vera said. The vaguely mongolian sounds of his name were awkward in her thick, partly Azerbaijani, partly Russian accent. “What did see?”
“Honestly?” Tomorbaator asked. “Haven’t a clue.”
“Wait. Really?” Vera asked, pursing her lips.
“I saw… a flash. Something like antlers,” Tomorbaator said. “Then... “ he reared up a little, shrugging as best he could. “Gone.”
“Maybe it’s the deer we hit,” Vera said, laughing, surprised by how uncertain she sounded.
“Yeah,” Tomorbaator said. “Maybe.” He groaned. “Fuckin’ staticky radio. None of this feels right. Y’know?”
“Tomorbaator,” Vera said, “We are in empty town in middle of nowhere, Alaska, above arctic circle. The nearest settlement is hour and a half away. Nearest military base is twelve hours away. Town looks like barrierfall-”
It was impossible for neither of them to notice how Sandalwood jumped at the mention of Barrierfall.
“-there is nobody here, and that radio is pissing me off,” Vera finished. “Oh, and you’re seeing things.”
Tomorbaator snorted. Emma was peering through one door, absentmindedly. The same way people do when they’re bored and are absentmindedly picking at a loose piece of wood, or loose sticker on a desk before ripping it apart purely on accident.
“I am not,” Tomorbaator snorted.
“Then what was it?” Vera asked, heading towards Emma. It’s for the best she’s here, Vera thought. Can’t imagine she’d be well off anywhere else. Definitely not on a battlefield.
Tomorbaator looked to deflate. “I don’t know. Whatever it was… it’s got magic.”
Vera’s head snapped towards Tomorbaator. Not ‘spun’ or ‘swung’, it was simply that one second she was looking at Emma, the next she was looking down at Tomorbaator. And, Tomorbaator could also hear a crack as she was suddenly looking down at him.
Did she hurt herself or something? Tomorbaator asked himself.
“Then why didn’t you tell us?!” Vera hissed down at him.
“Why don’t you just go smoke one of those scum ciggies Amuruq likes so much near the fuel for Darryl’s flamethrower?” Tomorbaator retorted. “Look at us. We’re a powderkeg, and everyone knows it. At the moment, we’re panicking over this town, and if I tell anyone, then-”
“Even if this is just a survey made to give fresh air and frostbite,” Vera said, “We have a job. And it’d help if you told us.”
“Fair,” Tomorbaator said.
Amuruq was hanging back, still reading that book.
“Thank you, Captain obviou-” Snowshoes was saying.
And then, suddenly-
EMMA
-Emma stumbled over something on the floor.
“Huh?” she asked, cocking her head, almost doglike. Had someone dropped a branch on the floor?
She fumbled for a light switch on the wall, and then, all of a sudden, the room was bathed in light.
This looked like a lounge of some sort, somewhere for people that wanted slightly more privacy. It’d been decorated with a piecemeal arrangement of furniture that looked to have been taken from all over Europe and wherever else. The couches looked vaguely comfy….
Something about it made Emma want to sit down, and-
I didn’t turn on the lights, Emma thought, her mind suddenly hazy, as if she was just barely awake.
The lights weren’t even on. There was just a glowing orb sitting in a hammered-metal lampshade, steadily growing brighter. Emma’s head hurt. She could just
float away. Something better is out there, Emmeline Joseph Hayden. A new name. A new life. Wouldn’t you like to forget it all, Emmeline?
Emma closed her eyes. It was as if the room was becoming indistinct. Cognitohazard, Emma thought, uncertain.
Forget how your dad was never there, though to be honest, there’s not much to forget. Forget the past, forget you and become better, happier. Embrace the light of a terrible, perfect smiling go-
No
The words rang out in Emma’s head, as if they were being whispered from the very base of her skull. Her vision went watery, and the orb seemed to grow bright. Brighter than the sun, brighter than anything else, so much that the room seemed to just be dark, thin outlines.
Don’t listen to them. They tell only lies. They killed all but three of us.
There was a shadow in the corner of Emma’s vision. The light seemed to fade around it. Something like a tree, its branches seeming to spread across an entire wall, but…
No. That was not a tree. It stood on several legs. Was it a deer?
NO! something called from inside Emma’s head, and she was not sure if it was hers. She needs this! She will love it, she’ll be happy, finally, finally happy!
But the light. It was blinding, hurting her. She needed darkness. Needed to be away from that awful, terrible, all-consuming li-
Emma fell backwards, over whatever it was that she’d first stumbled over, and all of that just faded away.
“The hell was that?” She mumured, before seeing something shaped vaguely like a tree branch on the floor.
No. While it was the same brown color she’d expect of a tree, there were some minor differences. The fact that it was covered in bristly hair that looked to have exploded out from under the skin. The stump of bone jutting out of the end.
The trail of what was not blistered red paint leading into another door.
The fact that something like colorful keratin seemed to have formed above the fingers...
She yelped, and staggered backwards, back into the bar.
SPURRED WELD
“Tartarus was that?” Spurred Weld yelled, his voice a deep, basso rumble. He had a very, very stallionly bark of terror.
“Something’s not right in there,” Emma stammered, pointing at the door.
Something about Emma’s tone of voice set Weld off. Liar. He’d learned a truth-telling spell from somepony named Blackpowder on the Last Ships. Okay, it wasn’t quite a lie, but there was something she clearly wasn’t saying.
“There’s an arm in there,” Emma said. “It’s… there’s blood everywhere! Just a trail of it, and it’s in weird bubbling clumps!”
Everyone shared a Look.
“I’m guessing that’s bad?” Johnny C asked. He was shaking, unlimbering his Ithaca 37. “One hell of a wrong, uh, agglutinogen, right?”
“Dammit, this is serious!” Snowshoes snapped at him.
“Yeah,” Fiddlesticks interrupted. “It is.” Then, quieter: “Let him have this.”
“I gave you the bolas gun for a reason,” Tomorbaator said, confused.
“And I keep this handy,” Johnny C said, pumping the shotgun to chamber a single 12-gauge slug, then forcing another into the breach, exactly like you weren’t supposed to. You know, for safety reasons. “For close encounters.”
“Shut,” Snowshoes hissed, “Up. People could be dead-”
“No,” Emma said, trembling. “They’re not.”
In literally any other war, this would be good news.
“Someone shut that fucking radio up,” Amuruq said, shaking unhealthily. “Shut it off. Shut the fucking thing off, motherfucker.”
He knew.
But this was not any war. This was not the Crystal War, where if you were really, really, horrifyingly unlucky, you’d get the desirable fate of being worked to near-exhaustion in some shithoof labor camp by someone who considered prisoners ‘useless mouths to feed,’ hated their job, and treated prisoners as labor. The Crystal Empire - where Spurred Weld had once been held prisoner - had at least been kind to him when he told them and that one slave, P-404, how to pilot airships. And Equestria had at least some ability to tolerate the existence of those different back then. Poor… P-404? Whatever her name was.
It gnawed at Spurred Weld’s heart that he couldn’t remember her name. Her real name.
He trotted through the room just as Amuruq shot the radio, listening to it devolve into tortured squeals and metallic, echoing groans.
“The hell was that for?!” Sandalwood yelled.
“I didn’t like what was on,” Amuruq said, an affected dispassion in his voice. “Come on. Let’s see what…”
They saw the arm. Immediately as they stared down at the malformed limb that never could have worked as part of any creature. An unnaturally bluish hue, like it’d had something like frostbite times a thousand. Stains of… something seemed to have splattered forth from the stump. It looked like it’d been human blood once upon a time. But it looked like it had cracked, somehow. Like… paint. It had swelled out in big clumps, some of which appeared to have bubbled up from the floor.
And there was a hoof at the end. Or… something that would’ve become a hoof. It looked like an armor pad someone might place on the back of a glove, except the hand had been bent backwards about 60 degrees. The thumb looked to have retreated into the remains of the hand, a small nub of flesh that looked like nothing so much as a superfluous fingertip protruding from just behind a knuckle. The other four digits had fused together, gnarled… but the ring and index finger’s last two joints splayed outward from the middle finger in a y-shape. Bluish fur looked to have burst up from under the skin, creating a network of bumps and cracks that made it look like the arm had been slowly pressed through a slow-moving series of dull blades.
“Bismillah,” Vera swore.
“...Ponified,” Fiddlesticks whispered, her voice a dry whisper. “There’s PER here.”
Amuruq bent down towards the stains, curious.
“You don’t know that,” Sandalwood protested. “You don’t-”
“As a matter of fact, I do!” Fiddlesticks yelled. “GOD! You and Snowshoes, just bicker all! The damn! TIME! I’ve seen people’s amputated limbs midway through ponification. You guys don’t like us, I get it! BUT LISTEN TO US JUST A DAMN SECOND, AND-”
“Same,” Johnny C interrupted, cutting off his friend. His skin, bruise-pale, had gone even paler. “It looks like the lower leg of this guy with an artificial hip I saw getting ponified.”
“Gross,” Spurred Weld said, but he couldn’t keep himself from feeling the slightest bit curious. “You wrote about that, didn’t you?”
“I did,” Johnny C said. “His leg just exploded! It was the-”
“AMURUQ!” Spurred Weld interrupted. “NO!”
Amuruq drew his hands back, lightning-quick.
Good reflexes on that one, Spurred Weld thought. “It’s been potioned,” he heard himself say, unnervingly calm. “You don’t know what those stains are like. Some of those bubbles? Might be full of potion. Might not be. The Potion was made to convert human to pony, and it does… weird things to viscera that someone leaves lying around. Most of the time, the severed limbs are highly toxic.”
Amuruq went so pale Spurred Weld swore for a second he could see blood cells moving in his circulatory system.
“...Fffffuck,” Amuruq said, wringing his hand reflexively.
“You never saw battle, did you?” Snowshoes asked. “You’re taking this worse than Em-”
“Don’t,” Sandalwood interrupted. “Just. Bucking. Don’t.”
“I thought he knew this stuff, though!” Snowshoes protested. “He’s one of us, he… he’s got the biggest rifle, he’s gotta…” a note of desperation began to creep into her voice.
“No,” Amuruq said. “I have seen battle. Over in Russia - I was at the back. Sniper. But, what can I say?” He asked bitterly. “I like it back here, and I might as well be blind in close combat. When the game doesn’t decide you’d be be-”
“He shot it off,” Darryl said, dispassionately.
“Excuse me?” Fiddlesticks asked.
“Bulletholes in the floor,” Darryl said. “He didn’t have a saw. So he shot his own arm off.”
“So where’s the rest of him?” Vera asked.
“Where’s the rest of anyone is the question,” Spurred Weld said, noticing splotches of blood leading to a door left ajar. They were just in the shadow of a roughly-cut table made of clapboard that leaned to the side, and a large cabinet looked to have collapsed just over one of them.
“So,” Sandalwood said. “We’re following a trail of blood into a dark hallway. This is going to end great.”
“It’s the PHL life, lass,” Fiddlesticks said solemnly.
Sandalwood just facehoofed.
“Nice,” Spurred Weld said up at her. “You got in… a good word… with the both of those harridelles. You have any idea how long I’ve wanted to do that?”
Fiddlesticks shot him a flat, unimpressed Look. It seemed that Spurred Weld was always getting Looks. What, what’d he say?
AMURUQ
Spurred Weld, Amuruq thought, was as tactless as they came. Which was why the unicorn, despite being able to talk - no, really, talk, he’d told a pipe not to bust and it hadn’t, no other repairs needed - to machines, had such a low-profile job.
Because he said stuff like that. Sandalwood and Snowshoes sniped at each other more often than not, but they cared about each other. At the very least, they had chemistry, they had an understanding of everything about their projects besides why they shouldn’t piss each other off for shits and giggles. Amuruq knew it, Vera knew it, Johnny C - who was a nice guy, really. Wait, hadn’t he been that guy that posted a drawing of Zephyr from the Wolf Conservation Center and a video from Tanja Askani on the We Love Romeo The Wolf group on facebook? And hadn’t Harry Robinson thumbed up his posts?
Yeah, that was him. Amuruq would have to ask him about that. We’re gonna be great friends, I can tell. The point was, everyone could see Sandalwood and Snowshoes had something. Except Spurred Weld, who, evidently, had less tact than you could find in a handful of snow.
“We follow the trail, though,” Darryl said. Amuruq had heard a lot about him. That he took to command like a pegasus foal to the air.
Evidently, this had been true. He’d assumed command here, no, not assumed. They’d all realized he was in command the whole time.
“Split up to cover more ground,” Darryl said. “And-”
Snowshoes made a coughing sound that was very definitely not the word “Bullshit!”
“Excuse me?” Darryl asked, raising an eyebrow. “Might want to get some medicine for that cough, Snowshoes, otherwise-”
“We’re stretching things enough having just Sharon and Kgalakgadi guarding the truck,” Snowshoes said. “Besides, if we split up, in an unknown area, we’ll just make easier targets.”
“That’s not how it works,” Darryl said, frowning.
“But we’re in a town that’s been deserted within the last four hours or so, and Tomorbaator says he saw something suspicious,” Snowshoes said. “Splitting up never ends well at times like this.”
Darryl sighed. “Fine.”
“I can head back to the car,” Amuruq said. Kgalakgadi and Sharon… Out there… together In the middle of a deserted town... “Anyone else?”
“Tomorbaator,” Darryl said. “And…” he looked thoughtful. “Emma, accompany the two of them. I’d say you’ve seen enough.”
“No argument here,” Emma squeaked, voice much less solid than she would have liked.
“Why not me?” Snowshoes asked.
Darryl glared at her. “Because you’re one of the only science personnel we have for this. You’ve been insubordinate so far, much less so than someone that’s barely from the same hemisphere as me.”
Johnny C rolled his eyes.
“Come on, Snowy,” Amuruq said, sighing. “Don’t. Just… just don’t.”
Amuruq headed out, towards the door. Glad to be away from that godawful charnelh-
Why did I think of it as a charnelhouse? he thought as he and Tomorbaator headed out.
“Emma,” Tomorbaator said, “What did you really see in there?”
Emma’s smile faltered. “What do you mean?”
“Spurred Weld was looking at you suspicious the whole time,” Tomorbaator said. “And I can smell lies.”
“Shit!” Emma spat. “You can?!”
“Not really, but you just told me you lied,” Tomorbaator said. “So. Spill.”
“Come on, Ammy,” Emma said. “Help me out here.”
Amuruq raised an eyebrow. Christ, he thought, only to realize he’d said it out loud. “No, Emma. Just. No. We have to be open about this sort of thing.”
Dammit. This was exactly why literally anything he’d done as a sniper in Russia had worked out. Because people had told him who to target. And, considering Amuruq would have been sending a friend request to Nny, if not for the fact that the storm overhead was screwing with Sagwon’s already terrible (if not nonexistent) internet, it was also what had made him more than a few friends.
More than a few people had said they owed Amuruq Jackson and his rifle each a few beers. Both of which Amuruq would then drink. Not too bad for a subsistence hunter from the arctic circle.
“Emma,” Amuruq said. “What. Did. You. See.”
“You went all glazy-eyed when you were heading into the room,” Tomorbaator said. “You had a-”
“Anyone hear that?” Emma asked, though there was a strange, alert look to her. “It’s like music, or something…”
“Stop dodging the question,” Amuruq snapped. “You saw something in there.”
“Come on, Amuruq, no need to be that snippy,” Tomorbaator said. “If you yell it out, do you think she won’t just not say it out of spite?”
“Why do you think I would do that?” Emma asked.
“It’s what I would do,” Tomorbaator shrugged. “And Amuruq here.”
“And neither of us think it’s all too likely you were in shock,” Amuruq continued, ignoring the interruption. “Your eyes glazed over like a newfoal’s, or-”
“Sharon?” Tomorbaator asked.
“What?” Amuruq asked. “That’s just silly. I know she hits the bottle at ramming speed, but-”
“No, goddammit, no!” Tomorbaator interrupted, pointing forwards with his taloned foreleg. “SHARON!
Their driver, Amuruq’s fellow subsistence hunter, was wandering down the street. Hood down. Coat unzipped. Hair plastered against her skull in the frigid weather.
Fuck.
She was shambling through the snow on uncertain feet, eyes glazed over. Hair frozen. Dragging herself through the deep snows of the road. Mouth slack.
And Amuruq ran for her.
JOHNNY C
“Any idea what we might find?” Johnny C heard someone ask. It took him a fraction of a second to realize it was him. His voice sounded calm. Too much so.
“No,” Snowshoes muttered. Then, under her breath: “Fuckin’ stupid horseapple-brained…’
Sandalwood just glared at her friend. She’d been manifesting a simple light orb from her horn. Any unicorn pony could do it, from what Johnny C had seen.
He bit his tongue. Why bother. Why fuckin’ bother? People were always like this. He’d piss them off, always. Oh, except Fiddlesticks! Fiddlesticks! He could almost hear his late grandmother in her broad South Carolina accent. You forgot Fiddlesticks!
Nothing about this seemed right. They’d been heading up the stairs awhile now, and the static from the radio had been getting steadily louder and more annoying.
“Where is everyone?” Sandalwood asked.
Nobodt had an answer. But then, nobody really wanted to in the first place.
Ponified. Is what Johnny C didn’t want to say.
The radio downstairs burst into life. Goddamn it was loud! Had there been speakers for that thing all over the building?
Sandalwood’s corona of purple flared around the doorknob, and they walked into a...
Oh God.
“Dear lord,” Vera breathed.
About six bodies were left in this room, collared to the floor by their necks, with the sort of heavy-duty chain collar used for large dogs or wolves. Somehow, that seemed almost like an afterthought. A woman lay slumped against a wall, by the door they’d just come in.
Snowshoes yelped at the sight, and fluttered backwards and upwards so fast her head bumped against the ceiling.
An Armacham-made HV Penetrator was slung over the dead, half-headless woman’s shoulder, and she seemed to be holding another chain collar and stake. Nothing could be said about her face, on the basis that someone had shot her, splattering the top half of her skull up against the ceiling. Everything about the bottom half, however, was just… wrong. There was almost a beatific smile on her face. Or was that a grimace? It was hard to tell.
She’d nailed someone to the wall with that Penetrator. Right through their throat.
“Fiddlesticks?” Johnny C asked, uneasy. “I’m not thinking she’s in a position to keep that thing.”
“...Agreed,” Fiddlesticks said, uneasy.
“What’re you….” Vera asked, as Johnny C picked up the Penetrator and gingerly placed it into one of Fiddlesticks’ saddlebags. He felt around for the magazines, placing them in another saddlebag as well.
“Um,” Vera said.
“What?” Fiddlesticks asked. “Saddlebags can hold a lot of things.”
There was a makeshift barrier at one corner of the room.
A note, stained with unidentifiable fluids and blood, sat on the floor.
“Are we the last ones left alive are we the last ones left alive FIND THEM WHY ARE THEY HERE
“Whatever psychopath is in here,” Sandalwood said, “Has to be pretty bad. Look, they were trying to escape from him, he…”
“No,” Fiddlesticks interrupted, holding up a foreleg.
“Excuse me?” Sandalwood asked.
Fiddlesticks gestured down to the collars. “This sorta thing happened to a friend once, and he passed out from the pain. Do you really think someone would willingly…” She looked up to Johnny C.
“Fuck no,” Johnny C said. “I’m thinking we don’t have a serial killer with a petplay fetish.”
“I’m not even going to ask why you thought of that,” Darryl said.
“Don’t. These people kept going beyond the limits anyone should,” Johnny C said. “Let’s say… whoever did this wasn’t trying to imprison them. He was trying to protect them - keep them here, the only way he could think of at the time.”
“Still not getting it,” Vera said.
“Don’t you see?” Johnny C asked. “It’s like everyone just walked away downstairs! He was trying to stop these poor bastards from following, but whatever did it, whatever compelled them, it was too strong!”
“Darryl?” Emma’s voice crackled over the walkie-talkie. “I don’t know what happened here, but whatever it is…”
TOMORBAATOR
“...It’s got Sharon!” Emma was calling into her walkie-talkie.
“What?!” Darryl bellowed into the other end.
Tomorbaator couldn’t hear the rest. He and Amuruq were sprinting towards Sharon, no idea what they could do, driven only by the knowledge that something must be done.
“Can you hear it?” Sharon was slurring through her teeth. “They’re… callin’ t’ us.”
“No! Goddammit, no!” Amuruq yelled.
Tomorbaator was rushing at her now. He had good eyes, better than any of the humans, and better especially than the ponies, and-
NEWFOAL!
Tomorbaator almost fell backwards into the snow. You never came back the same from even seeing a newfoal. No hint of who it might’ve been, only knowing that somewhere in their bodies, their minds, there’d been a person. The worst ones were the newfoals that Royal Guard had been testing new strains of potion on, because sometimes they’d come out half-cooked, ping-ponging from lunatic enthusiasm to positively gleeful at the prospect of killing themselves.
The look in Sharon’s eyes was a newfoal. That same glazed, hijacked beatific stare.
I’m not losing another friend! he told himself.