Nightmare to Earth

by bobdat

Chapter Three: No Containers

Darius awakened me after four hours. I didn't feel too tired, as happens when you don't get enough sleep, so I simply took up my post and sat quietly until the rustles of Darius getting to sleep subsided.
The musical calls of the things were what I was listening for, since even though the sky was illuminated with brilliant stars, they didn't cast enough light for me to see anything beyond my feet. There was no sound, but for the occasional movement from our sleeping party, for four hours. The sun rose brightly and burnt through the early mist, leaving the day looking like a sunny one as I finally turned to wake my companions for another day's walking.

Mayumi was already awake, which didn't surprise me, and Darius was slow to rise. We set off as soon as we'd eaten, following the road and covering our exposed necks to avoid sunburn.
We passed a scorched road sign, which had miles marked. Mayumi inspected it.
“We should arrive by the end of today.” She said, sounding a little more optimistic. This was news to me, I'd expected a much longer walk. We had to be within thirty miles of wherever we were heading to arrive so soon.

The things attacked twice, either side of lunch. Both times it was just a pair, easily dispatched by Mayumi. She seemed very suspicious of them and always took a good look around after the battle, probably searching for more, which was sensible.
I guessed it was mid-afternoon when we finally spotted the sea. It was little more than a strip of blue, glinting on the horizon, but it was definitely where we wanted to go. Pre-Nightmare Moon, the coastline had been densely populated, so we took a small detour to arrive at a sandy beach between two wrecked towns.

What struck me first were the piles of scrap metal and wood at the high tide mark. At first I thought it might have been beach barricades, but the Professor enlightened me without my asking.
“Probably from further up the coast, washed down here.” He said, turning over a sheet of corrugated iron. “Looks like it's from buildings.”

I walked up to Mayumi, who was checking the whole area.
“Is there where the boat will come?” I asked, looking at the horizon hopefully.
“Yes, but we'll have to board a smaller boat which will shuttle us to the main one. It's too dangerous to dock the large boat.” She explained curtly, without looking at me.

Cover of darkness was required, apparently, because the smaller boat finally appeared once the sun had set.
“Okay, come aboard.” Someone said, so we all carefully waded out to it and found ourselves pulled in.
Mayumi was last on, and she did a quick sweep of the beach to make sure we weren't followed. We had to row until the sea was too deep to be waded in, then the engine finally started and we began sailing towards a silhouette.

“They journey will take two days, so just sit tight.” The person steering the smaller boat said. “You're lucky, we've found nothing but bodies on all of the other beaches we've visited.”
Mayumi replied quickly. “We were only attacked twice today, we must have slipped through somehow.”
“Maybe.” The man replied, a little sadly. “Seems that the coast is swarming with those things lately.”

We were the only people to be picked up, so we were finally taken to the main boat and told to climb rope ladders. The main boat was huge and seemed to be a container ship, but without any containers on it.
The mood was sombre as we were welcomed and shown to our cabins. The captain said that they'd only rescued seven people, including the four of us, in two days. The beaches were full of the things, but yet it was too late to tell people to stop coming. I was grateful that we'd made it, but Mayumi was suspicious.

“What if we were supposed to arrive? It's strange that we weren't even attacked on the beach while others were obviously overwhelmed by hundreds.” She said.
“It's just luck.” Darius replied.
“I don't think so. Something's weird about this. They could be tracking us, or using us to find out information.”
“They're not that intelligent.”

Nothing would reassure Mayumi, so the rest of us slept whilst she paced and theorised. Well, everyone else slept. The unbelievable frustration about my memory returned and I couldn't get to sleep. To try and counter the problem, I decided to run through what I could remember of my flight and see if any new details appeared.

My parents told me that Princess Luna had been rescued from the moon when they were children. Following that, there had been widespread outbreaks of people following her as some kind of leader. They said it started to spread over the internet, until a place called China decided to donate some land that Luna's followers could live in.

The next parts were harder for me to recall, because I hadn't understood them when I was a child. Something had happened which led to some countries being angered by Luna, who then revealed herself as Nightmare Moon.
Because of this sudden change in heart by the Princess, most governments became indifferent towards her, whereas they had once been supportive. This carried on for a number of years, and was the case when I was growing up.

It was only once I had left school that things got worse. Nightmare Moon proclaimed her desire to expand, and the Chinese government offered help. This sparked a conflict on the Chinese borders, which I'd read about in newspapers but not been very interested in. Her strange army made up of black, equestrian creatures that acted like ghosts had been strange, though, and caught my eye.

Only problem was, when Nightmare Moon began winning, she turned on her friends the Chinese. With nobody left to harm, and the fragile peace of the nuclear age shattered, Pakistan was the first to 'drop the bomb'. It had appeared on the evening news on a particularly warm summer's day, I could remember. Nightmare Moon survived of course, and nobody could work out what had happened. Then Nightmare Moon's forces entered Pakistan and started to spread.

First our army had gone to fight them, then the civilians had mobilised. I was exempt from duty because of my profession as a newly-employed miner. Just as well, because casualties were heavy and by the following summer, Nightmare Moon was sweeping south. Rumours were claiming that the cities were safer, so I decided to leave the rural mining town. No sense in being helplessly swept up. That was when I put on my dancing shoes and gathered my few belongings. I'd stopped contacting my parents when their phone was disconnected the week before.

I reached the city to the south just in time to see Nightmare Moon's forces arrive. It was like an earthquake, but I didn't see what they were doing. I hid in a basement which partially collapsed, only emerging when everything was silent. The destruction was awe-inspiring. I found Mayumi whilst scavenging for food in an abandoned supermarket, and she took me to the shelter where Darius was recovering from his head wound.

After that, we just survived. Mayumi dug my sword out of a weapons shop that had caved in, and we just collected food and supplies whenever we could. Darius told me he used to be a teacher, but Mayumi hadn't said anything about her past, which was unsurprising.

None of this told me anything about the irritating thing I'd forgotten. I was sure it had something to do with the earlier days, the stories my parents told me when I was curious. But when I was a child I was focusing on other things, not the story of how a strange pony Princess had arrived on Earth. This only frustrated me more because I was sure I knew it. Something they'd said was there in my mind. If only I could ask them, ask someone who knew. Like the Professor.

I waited until the next day, then caught up with him during his walk around the deck.
“You want to know about how Luna arrived? I'm afraid it's difficult for me to recall, I was only... well, twenty-two.”
“Just try, please. Anything.”
“I didn't pay much attention to it. There were some weird fanatics who were fans of a television show about ponies, some kind of new version of an older idea. Then they suddenly got pictures that appeared to confirm that their animated world was real, something about this pony on the moon. The pictures were from NASA and weren't faked, I'm pretty sure.”
“So this was the Princess Luna?”
“Yes. They sent an astronaut to search and found her, then brought her back to Earth for study. I remember watching the astronaut land on the moon on the television, actually.”
“And then?”
“Well, these strange fanatics all started following her and it evolved into a strange movement. They lived somewhere on a Chinese mountain, more and more of them, then mysteriously disappeared. The Princess turned into the tyrant Nightmare Moon who tried to wipe out humanity. I think she might've disposed of all of her followers, it would certainly have been easy.”

We paused for a moment and continued to walk. The deck was windy and a little cold.
“So then it just continued like that until a few years ago?”
“Yes. I can't really remember many details. Any of that ring a bell for you?”
“No... do you remember anything else about the mission? With the astronaut?”
“He was a national hero afterwards, but I think he was eventually killed. Revenge by some extremists for bringing the Princess back, or some stupid thing like that. It was in the news. As for the mission, the capsule was put on display in a museum, but it's probably been since destroyed.”
Everything he said was interesting, but none of it helped me to work out what I had forgotten.

“Thank you Professor.”
“Oh, it's no problem. I'm just sorry it hasn't helped you more.”
“The astronaut, his name was Tony something?”
“Yes, I think it was. Tony um... yeah. How do you know?”
“We had some old news tapes in our shelter that I watched. One of the reports was on his death.”
“Oh, well. I'll try and come up with his surname, but I don't have much hope. I'm getting old.”
I chuckled along with him.
“Armstrong.” He suddenly said.
“What, Tony Armstrong?”
“No, no. Neil Armstrong. He was first to the moon. Sorry I can't be any more help.”
“That's okay.”

The weather worsened as the day continued, so I spent the rest of the time in the canteen area of the boat. Some of the others were playing card games, but I didn't feel like it. The irritation of not being able to remember had killed my mood. I went to bed early and slept soundly, but something wasn't quite right. I was sharing Mayumi's misgivings, but I didn't know why. Before I feel asleep, I checked Darius' paper. It made even less sense than it had before.