Angry Bird

by Thadius0

May 31st - 33 pills left

I have now realized that there is one important thing that it sucks to not have the luxury to have in post-apocalyptic Earth. Coffee. I'd neglected to pack any and had been a major drinker of the stuff back when I could. I mean, I had been cutting back for a while, but now that I'm in Denver, it'd be nice to have coffee when I wanted it, y'know?

Oh yeah, that's right. I ended up in Denver today! And I managed to pull up to the front of the museum of science, before remembering they had an adjoining parking lot. Granted, I'm parked pretty illegally, but I don't think anyone's around to care. Except Grace.

Grace is the other important thing that happened today! I finally met her! And let's just say...I don't think either of us were expecting each other. We probably weren't expecting something like ourselves, but I had no idea we were so...different.

The first thing that came to mind when I saw her after climbing out of the truck was the word pony, but it wasn't like any pony I'd ever seen before. Instead of just being a smaller version of a horse for a small child to ride around, she was...

Well, she was blue for a start. Sky blur fur, ocean blue mane and tail. She couldn't stand more than four feet high from hooves to the top of her head, and I realized I had a good foot of height on her.

Oh, she also had wings, like me, only, y'know, blue. Her eyes were green, and we stared at each other for a minute before she spoke to me.

"What are you, some sort of freaky hybrid?" she asked bluntly.

"Kinda," I said. "Cross a lion and an eagle, and you get a griffon. That's what I am. At least, that's my guess. And you look like a diminutive Pegasus run through a few coat changes."

"Sorta my thinking as well," Grace said with a shrug, or as good a one she could manage. "So you really think this place is your best bet for a more permanent base?"

"It's better than nothing," I countered. "Plus it's a landmark. Set up base in an important area with a radio broadcast, and you'll attract others. There are signs to this place." A thought struck me then, and I tilted my head as I asked my next question. "Come to think of it, where did you get your radio?"

"My parents have a place a few blocks from here," Grace replied. "They were preppers. Not that it did them any good, but once I managed to get there, I had all sorts of supplies and their radio. Started hearing you a few days ago, once I hit up a Radio-Shack for a big-ass antenna and attached it to the thing, but you could only hear me when your equipment got in range, I guess."

"Does it have a scanner?" I questioned, using one of the few terms I knew that could apply to such a radio. "Cause then you could pick up on signals other than guessing blindly."

"How do you think I found you?" she replied, looking smug. I huffed a bit at that, but that was about when Skippy bounded out of the truck and landed next to me, barking up a storm at this new person. Grace's ears folded back, and I couldn't blame her. Skippy could be loud when he wanted to be.

"Will you quit it?" I asked the mutt, and he whimpered a little before stopping. I swear, sometimes he's smarter than he should be, and sometimes he's as dumb as before. "Let him sniff you," I suggested to Grace. "That shows them you're friendly enough."

The blue pony put a forehoof towards Skippy, and the border collie sniffed not just her hoof, but drew close and started sniffing her face as well. After a minute of that, he barked and came back to me, sitting next to me and wagging his tail.

"Anyways, I'm gonna take a quick check of the place before I unload, see if I can't salvage the in-house restaurant before I set up shop," I informed the blue pegasus. Grace nodded and followed after me as I tried to push one of the doors open. With no success.

"I doubt it," Grace said as I moved to the next one. "All the power cut out in the house two days ago. Water's still going, but I don't know for how long." The second door was also a failure, but I found success at opening the third door. I held it open for the both her and Skippy, and we went inside.

"Well, one upside would be not having to wait in line or fork over twenty bucks to get in," I quipped. "Downsides are...fairly obvious. Let's get that old food set out for the birds-"

"Like yourself?" Grace asked.

"Har har. For your information, I am not a vulture or a savage." We made quick time over to the restaurant on the bottom floor, and quickly found the refrigerator had failed as predicted. Fortunately, the food had only just started to go bad, so it didn't smell so bad pulling it outside and tossing it into the street, pretty far away from the front door. There was a zoo nearby, after all, and shotgun or no shotgun, I didn't want to draw more attention to myself or this museum.

"Get this place hooked up to some solar panels," I mused as I looked around the empty museum. "And I could definitely use this. For now I'll keep my genny running on keeping my food chilled around here."

"Your food?" Grace said before the realization crossed her mind. "Oh, yeah...lucky."

"What?" I asked with a tilted head. "How am I lucky?"

"You can eat meat, right?" she asked, to which I nodded, causing her to stick her tongue out. "I managed to pull a can of Spam open...just the smell made me nauseous." Then another thought seemed to strike her, and she slowly backed up. "You're...not gonna eat me, are you?"

"Nah, I make it a rule not to eat anything that talks," I said with a dismissive wave, causing her to let out a sigh of relief. "And it sucks for you that you can't eat meat, but hey, at least now we know the distribution of any supplies we find. I mean, I probably could eat green stuff, but you can't eat meat at all, so I'll handle disposing of it rather than let it rot if we find any packaged or tinned stuff."

"How gracious of you," Grace said, and the sarcasm wasn't lost on me. "So what knowledge do you have?"

"Oh, I'll have to show you, but I basically copied the Survivalist's Guide off the net while it was still working, along with locations of our major reservoirs," I said, leading the way out of the museum. "I also have water and some non-perishables, and plenty of food for Skippy here." Skippy let out a bark at that. "And some supplies from our ever-helpful friends at Wal-Mart."

"Oh good," the pegasus said. "Maybe now we might actually stand a chance at surviving in this empty world. I'll get a wagon and get my stuff over here, we can take over the museum together."

An hour or so later, I'd transferred the food and water from the truck into the kitchen of the restaurant, and camped out upstairs in the Fantastical Creatures exhibit the museum had been running before everybody vanished. It just seemed fitting. It'd taken me a few trips to move all my things up the two flights of stairs, yay stairs, but in the end I was situated in the part of the exhibit that talked about, you guess it, griffons.

"Henry?" I heard from out in the main part of the museum. I turned and walked out of the exhibit before looking through the protective transparent shielding that stopped toddlers from walking off of the edge, yet still allowed the museum to display gigantic skeletons for all to see without any hindrance. Down on the first floor was Grace the pegasus, looking around and calling my name.

"Over here!" I called from my observational post. She walked along and looked up...and up...and eventually saw me.

"How in the hell did you get up there?" she asked, and now I could see that she was dragging a little red wagon along behind her.

"Stairs," I replied. "They're hell on this body, but I'm getting better at conquering them!"

"So...what? Should I just set up down here then?" she asked, and I shrugged.

"I mean, if you want to, I don't see why not. We can pick up a second genny for your radio tomorrow, which'll do until we find some solar panels and get this place properly wired up," I said. She nodded and turned to the space exhibit, the clip-clop of her hooves echoing after her.

Once she was set up down there, we both recorded a new message for the radio.

"To those that can hear this, you are not alone. I am Henry." "And I'm Grace." "We too are survivors, and we're camping out in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science." "His idea, really, but I have to admit, it's a good one." "If you can make it to us, then we will welcome you with open arms." "You will, I'll have to welcome them with open hooves." "Please, if there's anybody out there to hear this...please hear us."

Skippy still prefers to sleep with me, though, and I think he's really taken to me by this point. Mutt's barely left my side during all the settling in here. I'm feeling sleepy after recording all of that, so I'm gonna knock off now.

Comments

[Crystal Static]

Still waiting for a sequel to the Betrayed...

~Crystalline Electrostatic~
11:14_9/25/2015

[smolbep]

6460732
Me too.

[Tonto the Trotter]

This is interesting. Yes. ^^

[bluemoon1996]

Drat..... Been beat to Griffin MC too

[Moon_Fire]

NICE!

My favorite Displaced author writing a PAP story! I will definitely read this!

[Gale Singer]

Shouldn't this be part of the Griffins After People verse?

See what I did there?

[Seeking Dusk]

A collection of feathers so far. A gaggle? A flock? Henry and Grace have a good start so far. And Skippy too, let's not forget him.

6461877

[Gale Singer]

6464061 #NoRegrets

[Jake Witt]

Close enough. I'm not laughing, but at least we have our trio/half group. Genny. Now ya got me thinking of Forrest Gump!

[Ahs]

Do thing an Everfree forest is growing somewhere in this after people world