Fallout Equestria: S.T.A.L.K.E.R

by aegishailstorm

Chapter 1: Nyet, Wasteland is fine

Chapter 1: Nyet, Wasteland is fine

Click.

Click click.

Click.

"Ah, the sound of a Giger counter ticking away. We are all familiar with it, are we not? The unnerving monotone beep that informs you of a danger you cannot see. Radiation. And yet that stuff could almost considered a respite compared to the crap I've got to deal with on a daily basis..." Nikolai spoke bitterly to the others around the waning campfire.

"Aye, I think we all understand that." A man who went by the nickname 'Irish' responded cheerfully. People called him that because he was from northern Ireland, he was one of the many other's in the Zone that went by an alias. The reason for this was simple, to ensure that the authorities couldn't track him if tried to go back to the outside world. He, like so many others, had come to the Zone in hopes that he could strike it rich.

Like so many others.

The truth is, most would be luck to simply break even within the Zone. If the business of hunting for treasure here could be equated to anything. It would be the drug business, and they, the Stalkers, were at the very bottom. The metaphorical coca farmers. Their work was hard, and their lives usually brutal and short. But they went on with it nonetheless.

"Are you attempting to make philosophical conversation?" A man in a faded green containment suit asked, he voice muffled by the air filtration system in his suit.

"No, I am simply stating something which I believe we can all understand in one way or another." Nikolai responded with a huff.

"Oh well, save me some Phesdodog chops will you? I've got to take a piss, I'll be back in a moment." A man dressed in black and blue armor grumbled. He got up and hobbled into the bushes.

" 50 Rubles says something happens to him." Another man in camouflaged ski gear betted. The man in the containment suit facepalmed. " You should not talk like that about your allies. Who knows, one day he might end up saving your life." In total, there were 6 people clustered around the campfire.

Emphasis on, 'were'. It turns out, the guy who had made the bet was right after all. A few seconds after the man in the blue and black armor had disappeared into the bushes, those around the fire heard the shriek of a bloodsucker. They all looked at one another, " I believe I ought to get going!" Irish said with a laugh, he and two other Stalkers gathered their things and took off in the opposite direction. That being southwards, away from the danger. The man in the hazmat suit stood up.

"Nikolai, is it? Would you mind escorting me out of this place before that thing over there decides to come and take a bite out of me-" He was interrupted when a 7 foot tall bipedal creature with a mouth akin to that of an octopus and glowing eyes dashed out of the forest and knocked him over. Nikolai was smart enough to get up and start running. He re-donned his GP-5 gas mask as he ran.

"Hey, are you alright back there!?" He shouted, the only response he got was two gunshots from what sounded like a 9 millimeter parabellum handgun of some kind. They all sounded the same at a distance.

"I'm gonna presume not." He unslung his AK 101, an AK-pattern rifle chambered in 5.56 NATO, and looked around while still on the move. The 'Bloodsucker' that had killed the other 2 people didn't seem to be following him. That was good. Not for the people that had been left by the campfire, he meant good for him. Bloodsuckers were dangerous, but they weren't too smart.

Nikolai had gotten away from the campsite, and was now heading north again. Towards the old vehicle graveyard. When the first Chernobyl disaster had occurred, all emergency and military vehicles used during the containment process had to be abandoned on account of the high level of radiation they were exposed to, and now emitted.

As he neared the graveyard, he suddenly ground to a halt. He had noticed that the road ahead didn't quite...' look right.' He reached into a coat pocket and drew a steel bolt from within, he gently tossed it in the direction of the aberration. To his expectation, an invisible force caught the bolt a few feet from the ground and bounced it away. The patch of ground was home to a gravitational anomaly. A low power one, judging by the distance which the bolt was repelled backwards. But, an anomaly nonetheless, Nikolai had heard far too many stories of people being torn apart by these gravitational aberrations to try and get around it. He reached for his belt and pulled out a small device which looked like a radar screen taped to the side of a dosimeter. He raised it up and sure enough, the field of anomalies was bigger than he had anticipated. The detectors screen showed a patchwork of green splotches ahead of him. The green representing the anomalous activity.

"Thank goodness those damned scientists created these things. Otherwise, the Stalking business would have ground to a halt a long time ago!" His voice echoed among the trees to either side of the road. But thankfully, nothing responded. Using the device, he found his way around the field. But as he reached the trashed barbed wire fence that lined the graveyard. Another dot appeared on his detector, this one glowed purple. That meant there was an Artefact in the area. The veritable lifeblood of Stalker's. He crawled around on his knees until he spotted something glowing in the grass. He reached out and knapped it up, placing it into a lead lined container for later. Nikolai headed into the graveyard as stealthily as possible. He crouched down behind a rusting BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle and tuned his radio until something came through.

"Hello there Stalkers, this is Zone FM. Broadcasting from the Cordon. I'd hate to interrupt our usual program, but it seems as though we've got an emission happening a bit sooner than we expected. If I were any of you, I'd take shelter!" The signal cut out. And a half second later, his PDA beeped.

'Emission: Take Shelter'

Nikolai cursed under his breath. "Damnit! I wasn't paying attention." He rose up and peeked over the row of rusting trucks. About 200 meters away was an old concrete guard shack. Nikolai took one more look around, and bolted. But as he ran he heard a cry that nearly made him jump out of his shoes.

"Монолит!"
A voice called out in gruff Russian. Nikolai quickly dove behind an old bus to find the source, but the orange glow quickly growing in the sky told him that he didn't have time for it. He got up and looked around. There behind a rusting fire truck he spotted a person dressed in a whitish-grey exosuit. He heard gunshots, although they weren't coming from the person in his sight. Roughly 10 meter's past him was another 4 Monolith soldiers dressed in similar kit. He took aim through the murky glass of a bus window and fired off 2 rounds, both struck the man center mass, but the man returned fire, almost unfazed by the hits. Nikolai brought his rifle up a bit more and shot him in the face, the 5.56 round broke through his visor and sent him sprawling in a bloody mess. There were more gunshots from the others across the way, Nikolai heard the sonic cracks as they flew by. He flipped the safety lever on the side of his rifle to full auto and sprayed the general area where the fire was coming from, another Monolith soldier fell, and Nikolai made a break for the shack.

All of a sudden, his anomaly detector began to emit a sharp tone, and the screen flashed red.

"Oi Blyat!" Nikolai screamed as a wall of black anomalous energy crashed into him. Sending his sanity tumbling. The world seemed to shift between 2 and 3D, everything spun. And then, all at once, the spinning stopped. But that was replaced with an insatiable headache. The world was still out of focus. But everything seemed to be... Different. He clenched his forehead out of nausea.

"Ah I need to sit down. "Nikolai took a knee and reached into his combat webbing. With some difficulty, he pulled out an IFAK, an emergency first aid kit. From this, he extracted pair of Ibuprofen tablets and downed them both with a swig of water from his canteen. He reclined back slightly and let the drug take effect. About a minute later, his head cleared.

"The miracle of modern medicine. Thank god." He slipped his mask back over his face and stood up. "This isn't the graveyard. What happened?" And then it hit him. "The anomaly! I've heard stories of people being teleported randomly by them. Even a few that went into them and just... Disappeared. Oh, oh no. Wait, but that's impossible-"

He was going to say that the anomaly couldn't have thrown him into some other dimension. But then he realized that next to nothing was known about how the Zone worked. People only knew how it behaved. Which was more than enough. But this didn't look like any part of the zone he had ever seen. His Geiger counter was still beeping, but it sounded different. It was more of a droning noise. Rather than the scattered clicking he was used to. Nikolai wasn't going to dismiss it, but considering that it was infrequent, he decided to focus on more pressing issues. Mainly, the fact that he had no idea where he was. He pulled his PDA from his belt and opened up the digital map. On it was a single icon, his current location. The terrain around him was uncharted and blank.

"Is that a structure?" He pulled out a set of binoculars. "It looks like one. Hopefully it shall have some answers."

The structure he had come across appeared to be what was once a cottage. surrounded by dead snags. It was surprisingly intact, albeit missing a portion of it's roof. It was surrounded by a little picket fence, which Nikolai sidestepped.

"What happened to this place?" He walked around it until he found an entrance, the door was wide open. It looked as though the hinge had been knocked clean off. He brought his rifle up and scanned the interior. The living room, kitchen, and bedroom were small, but nothing he hadn't seen in Eastern Europe before. The reading on his Geiger counter actually went down. He tried checking the contents of a few of the kitchen cabinets. But found that they were all empty. He tried checking around the living room again. And this time, he found what looked like an old computer monitor with a clunky keyboard attached to it. He tried booting it up, but he wasn't able to get anywhere with it. However, he did find luck with something else. Under a carpet he found a trap door which led to a safe.

"Alright, how do I get this open? " He unslung his rucksack and began to search through it, but found nothing useful. And he didn't want to waste a bullet trying to crack a safe with unknown contents. So he just folded the mildewed carpet back over it and hoped that there wasn't anything out there that was after whatever was in there. Nikolai scrambled back onto his knees.

"What else is there that I can check out?" His eyes drifted to some dusty pictures on the wall.

"Ah, what have we here, family photo's-" Nikolai nearly jumped out of his boots when his radio crackled back to life with a staticky signal.

"Hello again Stalker's! We're getting some reports of Monolith forces moving through the Old Truck Graveyard, I'd stay away from there if I was you." He breathed out a heavy sigh, and his breath slightly fogged up the mask's eye glass.

" Damnit, Дебіл, не треба так людей лякати! Moron, you shouldn't scare people like that!" Nikolai cursed in Ukrainian.

The voice replied with a chirp of, " Up next, we have a fan favorite, Bandit Radio!" He smiled and turned up the volume a notch. Then went back to the photograph, he carefully took it down and dusted it off. It was black and white, but he could still see what was on it. "What is this, small horses wearing clothes? Is this some person's idea of a joke?" He set it down on the floor and went back into the bedroom. He opened the closet and found something odd. A dress, but not just any dress, it looked to be the same one the mini horse in the photo was wearing.

"Well, this is just confusing. Surely there's more to this." He packed the dress into his rucksack. It looked like it had some value to it. After all, the 'S' in Stalker stood for scavenger. With his curiosity piqued, he left the cottage and headed out northwest down a gravel road.

After about 15 minutes of walking, he came to a sign, riddled with bullet holes. He could make out a big '52' which had been printed on it. Below that sign was another one, this one faced southwest, " Salt Cube City limits."

"Ah, I see. Is this going to be like Salt Lake City? " He said with a laugh. But as he looked further south, his laugh grew more and more uncomfortable. A kilometer or two off in the distance, he could see a collection of rotting skyscrapers, some looked like they were on the brink of collapse. As well as many smaller buildings, off to the east, a massive dome glowed with an eerie blue light.

"Like what you see?" A voice said behind him. Nikolai would have jumped, but he managed to keep his composer. He turned off the radio and turned too face whoever was there.

It was one of those miniature horses the tip his head was at shin level with Nikolai. A pony, perhaps? Yes, he'd go with that name. It had yellow fur and a ragged blue mane. It was wearing what he took to be some kind of improvised armor. A leather jacket with patches of metal built into the chest and forelegs. He looked off to it's side, and found that it wasn't alone, 4 more 'ponies' flanked a wagon which was connected to a fifth. The wagon was loaded with crates.

"It's not that bad if you look at it the right way." That was a lie. From the stories that he had heard, Pripyat looked better than that place.

"What are you supposed to be?" The creature asked him.

"I could say the same thing." Nikolai politely responded. He still kept his rifle in hand.

"I- we are ponies." His mind cried success. It wasn't often that he was right. He'd take his victories when he could get them.

"And we-" A second voice called from across the road.

"-Would like your shit. Please drop your weapons and make this easy for us." Another one of those ponies emerged from a ditch, it had something that strikingly resembled a sawed off shotgun in it's mouth. Nikolai facepalmed. "Of course it is trap. " He began to raise his rifle, when all of a sudden...

"Ah! Blyat! What is with these people and their music!?" He cursed as his radio somehow crackled back to life and began playing some over the top version of 'Katyusha' at a volume most sentient beings would consider earsplitting. And at the most inconvenient moment possible too.

Comments

[Knightstuckinadresser]

Good job on the first chapter

[Ciphers]

The voice replied with a chirp of, " Up next, we have a fan favorite, Bandit Radio!" He smiled and turned up the volume a notch. Then went back to the photograph, he carefully took it down and dusted it off. It was black and white, but he could still see what was on it. "What is this, small horses wearing clothes? Is this some person's idea of a joke?" He set it down on the floor and went back into the bedroom. He opened the closet and found something odd. A dress, but not just any dress, it looked to be the same one the mini horse in the photo was wearing.

[Madmadmad123]

Awesome love it cant wait for more

[MrFart23]

As I'm a Ukrainian, I really liked this chapter. I hope this story would see the final.