Chapter 23: Crossed Paths
Time had seemed to move on slowly after my talk with Reynolds and apologizing for my attack. With it only being the middle of the week, I had spent the past few days mainly with myself, Reynolds, and my younger clone. I had not gone to see Luna about my mental state, reasons for that is unknown even to myself. Something inside me just kept me from doing such a thing, and besides, I hadn’t really seen dark Chloe that much. Though I could feel a dark presence watching me. Yet as Friday grew nearer, the thought of going on some sort of adventure to find the possible remnants of humanity had constructed some kind of hope with in me.
Perhaps Reynolds, my clone, and myself aren’t alone. That maybe humanity can still be saved, or at least some fraction of it. Which brought me to think over the past few days about Reynolds cloning project, and the living representation of myself that was young Chloe. My supposed daughter. The younger version of myself, who really wasn’t me; just someone who looked like me. Which looking back on it now, over the past few days I had been actively avoiding her. I don’t know why but, I some reason felt...it’s hard to describe but it was like I was angry, repulsed by her really. She kept calling me Mom and Reynolds tells her that I am, despite the fact I feel no maternal instinct for this girl. I don’t know anything about her! Hell, I have only known her for less than a week.
Now I had to take her with me; on this quest to the state next door. I didn’t know how I felt about this. Some reason I kind of feel dread, some sort of guilt for feeling this way towards this smaller version of me, who again wasn’t really me. I wish I could’ve spent the few days leading up to Friday with someone else, or somepony. Quartz and Crystal were still gone, I had assumed Crystal returned to the McKinley vault to scrounge up the couple of scraps I said she could take to bargain with to raise money to pay off her debt.
Quartz however...I don’t know what happened to her. Inside me I feel as if the day we went out drinking, I must’ve done something that scared her off. Had I gone and hurt her? Or have just done something very stupid? Possibly both. I had only known the two of them for only a couple days, but I felt so attached to them. Then again, they were just tomb raiders. Mining and scrounging up whatever they could’ve found...had they used me?
No. No, they were too friendly...but...isn’t it a con-artist's job to play the victim into doing what they wanted? Dammit, I’m being stupid! The two of them couldn’t have possibly just been playing me for a fool, with what we had gone through in such a short period of time; how much they helped me get through those few tough moments. It would be the cruelest thing in the world if they were really what I had thought them to be.
As days drifted by and the time I had spent alone or with Reynolds and little Chloe. The parts I spent alone I had mainly been reading Reynolds journal, which I must say, that man knows how to write. It felt more like a fictional book I had been reading rather than a man documenting his day to day life. He even had bits where he actually rewrote conversations he and I had word for word, the old man really did have a strong memory. Like he had told me, the journal started around the time we had first taken shelter in the Mckinley vault during the Downfall and I had forgotten Reynolds himself had a family. With what he had written, I could relate to the pain he had felt during that time.
His wife and two sons, his youngest having been taken by the SOL virus which his wife shortly contracted afterwards. He had to abandon them during the outbreak in the Fema camp outside Fort Hamilton, he talked about how the infected; who became feral and violent minutes before death, overran much of the guards and began spreading the infection. He even went further to say that during those final moments of the infected lives, the sudden surge of adrenaline they experienced had allowed them to overpower many of the national guardsmen. He even went further into explaining that so many had turned so quickly, that he had to compare them something from an old film he had enjoyed called 28 Days Later. Though instead of twenty eight days the SOL infectees only lasted from five to ten minutes before seizuring and dying...and here I am thinking that’s all it took.
As I read about how feral and violent the victims were, it reminded me briefly of the traumatic horrors myself experienced during my time being escorted out of the NYC. I never personally saw one of them due to me being in the back of a military transport, but I heard them. From the bits of news I had watched during my early days in Vault McKinley before communication broke. New York City had been in a state of anarchy for exactly twenty four hours. I clearly remember the news anchor explaining that for every five minutes a feral died at least a dozen other people were already infected. By early morning, a city of millions had devoured itself entirely.
Immune or not, after reading that information. I was grateful for having been rescued. Yet survivor's guilt was always a pain in the ass. Even if I knew for certain I could have done nothing. If a cure had been made, thousands still would have died due to the ferals beating the living shit out of people. Five minutes Reynolds stated in his journal, five minutes he described a man taking down and killing three soldiers despite getting blasted in the chest three times by a handgun.
Being underground during the fall I hadn’t even the slightest clue on how the world above was faring. Obviously society collapsed, but I had only witnessed the side of anarchy minutes before I was ushered beneath the Earth. My time above ground the disease was just that, a disease. It didn’t enrage people, no it only well...made them sick and die.
As I looked over the journal over the past few days, I skimmed through most of Reynold’s research notes. About the weird absurdities that made up the SOL virus, describing how the virus seemed to have been more engineered than it was natural. Or how his theories depicted that perhaps the virus did not come from Apophis and that perhaps it was indeed something man made. Theories that I contemplated myself over the week but couldn’t yet bring myself to believe it due to some of their contradictions. I never thought myself to be overly intelligent and admittedly I hardly ever think intelligently. It's just that how could something such as “magic” be man made when everything I had witnessed defied all the physics I’ve been taught in high school? Same went for if it was really alien in origin. I just...thinking about this stuff made my head hurt. It still does.
After skipping over many boring pages, I finally reached the more interesting bits of Reynolds diary. That being the day Reynolds ventured out to the surface for the first time. So lucky during the Fall, aside from the Chinese and Russians, the United States was smart enough not to drop weapons of mass destruction on itself. So really Reynolds, the others, and I could have actually left the vault at any point without fear of contracting radiation or dick growing mutations. So in the later pages of Reynolds diary, that’s exactly what he did. He explained how he had started to become a little crazy and talk to himself due severe cabin fever. So after decking himself out in some hazmat gear, something he dwelled on a precautionary measure.. He left the vault, which in this point in time was not buried beneath levels of earth just yet.
Further details I read talked about how Reynolds began teaching himself some basic carpentry with the help of Glenn and started to work on the foundations of the first ever human settlement built after the fall. This had also been around the time the first vat raised humans were being fertilized and born. The first person being Adam, that name made me roll my eyes at least ten times.
As I read through the many pages of Reynold’s diary, the first artificial human, Adam. Had basically become Reynold’s pride and joy. When Adam became the age of sixteen Reynolds had already gone to sleep in the cocoon for a decade while Adam, who Reynolds and Glenn educated on everything he’d need to know, raised two more humans. When Reynolds awoke, Adam was now twenty six and the kids he raised were both fourteen. Two more years later, one of the kids, who was a girl was pregnant, the sneaky kids went off and screwed in the woods and were also assigned each a tube baby.
And so the cycle continued. By this point this small village Reynolds had created was self sufficient and he only needed to appear every year or two to basically check and instruct them on what to do. By the tenth cycle there were over a hundred human beings, most from the population device along with a minority of natural borns.
Then the Remnants Division was discovered.
In all reality it was actually an army brigade. Fifty U.S. National guardsmen who had miraculously survived the fall by taking shelter inside the Kenway vault after the collapse of society. Fully outfitted with gear and weaponry, Reynolds talked about how the 1st Lt. Reinhard and Sgt. Rockwell used to brag about how they had working vehicles as well. Though honestly, here in my time in the Kenway vault I hadn’t found any military trucks or anything. So I assumed that the soldiers must have pitched them somewhere after they had eroded away.
Reynolds talked about how his starting village and the soldiers had a rocky start in the beginning but quickly became the best of friends. The soldiers acted as protection from the weird, mutated wild life that now plague much of the North American forests, such as wolves made of wood and large chimera like creatures made of animals that shouldn’t be in this part of the world. Such as lions mixed with tigers and goats. Possibly creatures from past zoos.
The world was a scary place. Especially when the Equestrian equivalent of Manifest Destiny started. Which meant the Equine empire, as Reynolds described them, started moving out west and well...that’s where I unfortunately stopped reading.
I stopped on Friday, the day I was supposed to go and meet up with Sonic and his family. Well Chloe and I were supposed to meet them. I was inside my temporary sleeping quarters in one of the castle spires. Tenth floor I believe it was. I had already packed some clothes which I stole from the Kenway vault’s laundry room which consisted of some nerdy gear and a couple military fatigues seeing that the vault was a combination of military and science alike. And my God, I normally don’t brag about myself but...girl, I look nice in fatigues. However, if there’s one thing I don’t like about them, it was the name tag on my breast. “Cooper.” The same name as my last, and being the unintelligent woman I am, I couldn’t decipher if it was the last name or first name soldiers had on their tag. Could it be either? I dunno.
Also I didn’t want to take it off as well, couldn’t figure out why. Maybe I subconsciously wanted to keep it out of respect for the previous man, or woman who wore it? I dunno. Point is though, it fitted me perfectly and looked very nice. I even found the cap to go with it! And for the love of God, they even had a few fitting bras. I never knew I’d cry tears of joy at the sight of pink undergarments.
I laid back on my bed and closed my eyes as I kicked my army boot covered feet in the air. Humming as I tugged at my collar and glanced down at myself and swam in the ego of how good it felt to be in freshly fitting clothes. “When are we leaving?” The sudden voice from my left sent me ten feet into the air as I released a startled shriek, torn from my moment of self admiring. I whirled around and looked to the bedroom door just to find Chloe, my tiny clone, resting against the door. “You’ve been creepily looking at yourself for the past hour,” I pursed my lips and felt my cheeks catch fire momentarily as I glanced away from the eight year old..
“S-sorry,” I shifted and got off the bed. I tugged the wrinkles out the fatigues from beneath my chest and swatted down my arms. “We’ll be leaving in just a second...M-mom here needs to just, uh...gather up some underwear for us.” I stuttered a bit.
The little girl frowned and crossed her arms and I grimaced a bit at the sight her scowl. For technically being only eight years old, she seemed to randomly shift to being that of a twenty year old at times. “I thought you already packed yesterday?” She asked me, her usual chirpy voice now coming out as hollow.
I sighed as she had caught me in quite the bind. It was true, technically we could leave at any moment and I’ll admit: I was nervous. My nerves were shot at the thought of leaving Canterlot and going down south to the next state, which was technically North Carolina. I’ve never been so far down in my entire life honestly, I’ve always thought of going across America when I was with my ex, but never got around to it. Now the thought of traveling across the post apocalyptic landscape, which honestly didn’t even look anything Dystopian like, unnerved me. Especially since it was with the purpose of finding others out there; others like me.
I finally took a deep breath and looked at small girl. “Chloe,” I said to her after composing myself, the girl perked up. “Wait outside while I gather my stuff.” She frowned again and sighed before stepping out the door and shutting it behind her. With her out sight, I smiled and straightened myself before turning and going over to the other side of the bed. There, laid a few bags containing books, some extra clothes and further down was a bottle beneath the bed which I had taken out from under.
I held the aforementioned bottle in my hands and stood back up as I shifted the whiskey shaped glass with a smile. Swirling the golden contents inside the glass, I examined the apple pony character on the tag which grinned happily at me. I snickered at the cuteness of the mare and muttered, “I’ll just take you for just in case.” Though before I placed the drink in with my possessions, I sneakily glanced over my shoulder before popping the top and taking a large gulp. I hissed at the pleasant burn of the alcoholic beverage and shivered with a smile before closing it off and sticking it in with my clothes.
“C’mooon!” The girl on the other side of the door whined and I replied with an annoyed whine of my own before I took my bag and slung it over my shoulder. Time we get on with this trip I guess, was my thought as I opened the door and glared down at the little girl. I’ve never been good with kids.
:[-]:
The blue unicorn and grey pegasus, which I vaguely recall their names being Sonic and Quill, waved their hooves frantically upon seeing both I and Chloe. With one free hand I waved my greeting in response to theirs just as smaller Chloe squealed upon seeing the grey pegasus and charged which granted me a belly laugh as the pegasus shrieked with fright.
“Don’t worry!” I called out as Chloe clung to the pegasus mare. “She’s absolutely harmless...I think.” I chuckled as the pony calmed down and the unicorn, Sonic, laughed nervously and looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
I glanced at the stallion and shrugged before shifting the weight of my possessions to my other shoulder. “I thought it was just you who was comin’?” He asked me to which I replied with a second shrug.
I bit my lower lip before I replied, “She’s uh...my daughter?” I hadn’t meant to say it in such a questioning tone as the others, even Chloe, gave me awkward glances. “I didn’t want to leave her alone,” I quickly lied, which was fucking stupid. I didn’t even know why I was making up excuses, there was no reason to think that I would embarrass myself if I simply told the truth. Yet some reason, the truth just wouldn’t come out.
Sonic nodded and Quill shifted out of Chloe’s grasp. “Alrighty well, the train will be leavin’ in just a half an hour.” He smiled. “If ya’ll ready, it’d be right to leave now while they’re still good seats.” I quickly nodded my head in agreement, happy to off the subject related to Chloe.
I then gestured outwards. “If you could, please guide the way.” I tried my best to keep a pleasant smile, yet my cheeks burned red as I had gone and embarrassed myself anyways. I was a mess inside, with smaller Chloe with me and the thought of maybe finding more people out there, let alone traveling with ponies I had only known for a short while...I just wanted a drink to calm my nerves.
Sonic smiled and nodded his head, paying no mind to my fake smile as he started to head down the road towards the station .”Canterlot central isn’t too far from here. Stick close and we’ll be out on our way to Appleloosa in no time!” The pony beamed as his pegasus wife draped a wing over his back and they walked.
Chloe smiled widely and took my wrist gently, to which I restrained myself from yanking my hand away since she nearly made me leap out of my clothes. I blinked and looked down at the little girl who was beaming from ear to ear as she gazed up at me. “We’re really going to Appleloosa?” She asked me and my eyes widened, I had never thought to tell her where we were going. God, I’m such an idiot.
As we walked I looked away from the girl and nodded my head. “Yeah. We are,” I said softly as I forced another small smile. “Just for a couple days though.” I rubbed the back of my neck with my free hand as we walked.
Chloe had to skip a little bit to keep up with my longer strides and she giggled happily. “Have you been there before?” She asked me and I shook my head in response. “What’re we going there for?” she continued her questions.
I glanced at the little girl from the corner my eyes and curled my lips a bit before I responded, “I’m gonna go on a little search from something...treasure hunting you could say.” The girl’s eyes widened more as we stepped around a few ponies stared at us with confused looks.
“Treasure hunting?” Chloe muttered softly before speaking up, “Like Jack Sparrow and the Pirates?” The girl squeaked and this made my eyebrows raise and I glanced at her again.
“You know about Pirates of the Caribbean?” I asked the girl and her head nodded so fast I thought it would fly off into the crowd of rude ponies, their eyes still locked to us as if they’ve never seen a human being before. Which honestly, they most likely never had.
“Dad and I watched all of them many of times together!” Chloe hum and skipped a little higher as she tried to keep up, I finally slowed myself a bit so she wouldn’t have to. I smiled; a real one this time, and nodded my head.
“Which one is you favorite?” I asked as the girl raised up two fingers as she coughed and I chuckled. “You like the giant squid don’t you?” I continued and she nodded her head rapidly once more, her long hair flailing around like a loose mop. The sight of her flailing hair caused me to snort softly and reached over and brushed her hair back a bit from in front of her face, causing Chloe to scrunch up a bit before popping an eye open and glancing up at me. I blushed softly. “Sorry,” I said as I wondered why I even bothered to fix her hair.
A shout from ahead caught my ear and I glanced up to see Sonic and his pegasus wife...Quill? I think her name was, looking back at us about twenty yards ahead. I waved towards them and motioned for Chloe to pick up the pace as I started to walk a bit faster to catch up with them. That is until something else caught my eyes from off to the right. A familiar light tan unicorn with blue eyes and a chocolate brown mane who had not been paying attention to her surroundings, came from the right and stepped out in front of me.
Without any time to react, at let off a loud, “Oh fuck!” and kicked the poor mare right in the side and fell over her. With a loud, feminine yelp I went over the the open and caught myself last second right as the unicorn did the same bellow me just as my bag of clothes, and single drink hit the ground. “Sorry!” I apologized and the mare shook her head and glanced at me.
I gasped when Quartz tilted her head. “Chlo?” She said in a questioning tone and tilted her head. I bit my lower lip and shifted my body a tad as I stepped aside and then back before straightening myself.
I cleared my throat and nodded. “H-hi!” I squeaked and then coughed. Sonic and his wife came back towards us, checking if we were alright to which I raised a hand and nodded. Quartz shifted up onto her haunches before pushing onto her hooves, she also nodded her head towards Sonic and assured them. I rubbed the back of my head nervously. “It’s been a handful of days,” I said to Quartz, “What’ve you been up to?” I asked as I carefully leaned over and scooped up my bag, which some reason felt a tad heavier.
Quartz glanced away and rubbed her left foreleg with her right and said, “I had been checking up on some family here in town. I recalled that I also had something I needed to do for work, that’s why uh...I had to up and leave ya in the bar like that.”
Chloe tugged on my pants and I lightly brushed her hand away. “Oh that was all?” I asked and Quartz nodded her head a bit. “That’s fine...sorry if I uh...did anything weird while drunk...”
Quartz didn’t look at me and she nodded her head. “You’re fine.” The unicorn smiled, something that I quickly noticed seemed forced. Though I didn’t press the matter but only thought about what might’ve happened. “I’m sorry to cut this short but...I really need to get going, my cousins and I had some plans...that need doing.” The mare quickly straightened herself out and nodded her good bye to me and rushed off.
Just then I had finally opened my mouth to ask if anything was wrong before before I could, she had galloped away. I blinked and watched the mare run off with confusion and let my arms fall to my side loosely. From what I knew, that wasn’t like her at all. Had I done something inappropriate to offend her?
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Sonic said suddenly and snapping me out of my train of thought, I shifted my bag in my arms and looked at him “but the train is gonna be leavin’ in fifteen minutes and we still have a street to pass through. So ah suggest we get goin’.” I gulped and nodded my head and slung my bag onto my back.
“Yeah...lets go,” I said softly before noticing something dripping on my back. Looking back, I saw my bag of possessions was soaked. The fucking whiskey bottle had shattered....
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Wow poor Chloe went through the wringer in this chapter. Hopefully she gets the help she needs next chapter.
Nooo! Not the whiskey!!
Things are getting interesting
Chloe just learned that when you're packing a glass container, you need to pack it properly so it doesn't shatter so easily. The clothes will need to be washed, soon.
... at least they're kinda-sorta disinfected now
Quartz's behavior was really fishy here though. Seriously, what has happened? We'll probably find out in due time, but it keeps bugging me.
Which is a good sign, because that means you still have my attention
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In Chapter 17, she kinda confused Quartz for her old lover Eva after their night of heavy drinking, and got a bit too friendly with her.
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And there I have my answer. My memory is terrible, so thanks! Still, that doesn't explain that extreme amount of awkwardness... at least for me. Ah well.
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Why is the run gone?! Why is the rum always gone?!
Wow. That is all I can say.
I love the lore this story has, makes you wonder on so many things. And the believability of characters and emotions makes this all such a great ride.
So much potential, but the damn hallucinations and mental instability ruined it for me.
This story is great, I finally got around to reading it and it kept me up late one night and then distracted at work all day today due to how much I love this story. Keep up the good work and keep updating please I understand about real life getting in the way and I hope you can push through to continue this even at a slow pace.
I anticipate the next chapter.
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There are many jobs at airports, look there.