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

by aegishailstorm

Chapter 13: 'For Worse'

Chapter 13: 'For Worse'

Nikolai was alone. He was in pain. And he was being hunted by cosmic-like horrors. He couldn't be happier. He limped past the front desk and began searching his way through the various clinics and offices. But, as he walked deeper and deeper into the structure, he began to notice that his Geiger counter had begun to tick again.

"That is not big issue." Nikolai murmured. He activated his weapon light and pied around a corner. There, scattered among the rubble, were the skeletal remains of dozens of ponies. Which wouldn't have been an eye catcher had he not noticed the fact that they all had cracked pelvic bones. Nikolai took a knee and scrambled about. He noticed trace amounts of a rainbowish liquid pooling underneath. His anomaly detector began to beep.

"Huh? That must be taint. Looks like crappy melted snowcone." He took a step back.

"What could have done this?" He examined them again. Then took at step back. He wavered over them, and examined the rest of the room.

"Blyat! These look old. Whatever abomination did this is probably in the dirt now." He sighed, and rested his arms on the sling of his rifle. There was nothing else around. And, he still had a broken leg. He needed to find a way to mend it quickly. Or he wouldn't make it out of this city alive. He liked being alive. And, more to that, he had an obligation to try and find his friend. He left the room and continued down the hallway. Listening to the faint howling of monsters and irradiated head winds outside. He passed some moldy posters on the way. Some cheery looking pegasus mare with the same mark on her flank as the medical kits and tents he had seen several times. The caption above was almost entirely faded away. But he could just make out something about 'doing better'. And war and peace. He almost laughed at the irony.

"Теперь, где?" He muttered under his breath. He checked a few more clinics, but couldn't find what he was after. Those magical splints still eluded him.

"Prehaps I will find them in the surgical section?" He wandered back around to the front office, and took a look at the building layout. A cursory examination revealed that the ER was the next floor up, just right off of a flight of stairs. Though, there was a pharmacy right by the front counter. Though he didn't think it would be stocking what he was aftet. Limping as quickly as he could, he made his way to the stairwell, broke the door open, and began to ascend.

As he reached the top of the stairwell and poked out into the hallway, he began to hear faint squishing and sloshing sounds. They seemed to be coming from all around him. They echoed through the second floor.

"They're in the walls..." Nikolai's mind thought. He shoved the thought away. Thinking like that would drive him mad. He walked along. Up ahead were more skeletons clad in decayed medical garb. A few radroaches scurried off of them when Nikolai drew closer. More cracked pelvic bones. Something was off about this place. He walked for a ways down the hallway, lit only by his flashlight, smears of taint on the walls. And the occasional sparking overhead light fixture.

"Here it should be." He poked his head through into a room, rows of stretchers lined the walls. A terminal sat attached to a nearby wall. It flickered, casting an eerie greenish-blue light across the rows of bloodied stretchers and curtains. He heard something sloshing in the back of the room. He poked his rifle light around a table. His radio crackled, playing a usually faint cheerful song which, under any other circumstances would have lightened anyone's mood. But in this situation

"...You make me smile like the sun, fall out of bed, sing like a bird, dizzy in my head, spin like a record..."

In the corner was a pony. With slick tarnished and dirty yellow fur.

Nikolai chuckled with uncertainty. " Hello?" It turned it's head. It had a somewhat innocent look on it's face, a patched smile, with blood red eyes that shimmered with a rainbowish light. It stared at him, no making a sound. And then, all hell broke loose.

In a flash, the creature opened it's face. Literally. Revealing a tentacle filled mouth full of razor sharp misshapen teeth. It let out an eldritch screech. And hurled itself at him like an octopus. Except far more unsettling. From all over it's body, more mutated limbs emerged, swirling in a mass of poisoned flesh almost as tall as him.

Nikolai screamed. His legs and arms felt like Jell-O, and, all of a sudden, his broken leg didn't seem to bother him that much. He limped backwards.

"BLYAT BLYAT BLYAT!!!" He sprayed bullets wildly at the abomination. Stitching it from midsection to whatever must have constituted it's head. It wailed, knocking over rusty medical equipment. He dashed out of the room. Quickly pulling out another stim pack and jamming it into his arm. Side effects be damned. His vision cleared, and the pain went away.

The Stalker ran down to the end of the hallway, then turned around and shakily snapped his AK 101 to the doorway. He froze when he saw the thing's putrid tentacle reach out from behind the doorway, it pulled itself out into the hallway, crumbling debris and broken glass under its body. From the bullet holes wheezed a swirling cloud of yellowish gas. He watched as it crumbled in him path. Practically deflating in the process. He sighed. But, as soon as the creature dropped. Nikolai heard movement in the vents above him, and when those tentacles burst through the sheet metal, Nikolai took off running so fast he would probably have made the Olympics.

He just kept setting new records. It would have been awesome if the thing chasing him wasn't so terrifying. He ran back into the stairwell and sprayed down the hallway until the second creature was dead, it's corpse fell over the other. The air around the surgical room was thick with that yellow gas the creatures had emitted, and Nikolai was grateful for his GP-5 gas mask. He dodged back into the stairwell, and then proceeded down the opposite end of the hallway. He quickly made his way back into the ER, and, only after checking to insure that there were no more mutants inside, began looking around. Tragically, there were none to be found. He thought for some more time.

"Ambulances!"

He limped his way forward. Even military issue stimulant injections can only nullify the downside of having a broken leg for so much time. In the meantime, he was left to listen for the rattling and movement of more of those 'Hospital Horror's', and think of his zebra friend Flashpoint. And how he might track him down once he got out of this forsaken place.

After a ways, he came to a fork in the hallway. He turned right, and headed down a stairwell to the emergency vehicle reception station. He moved faster now. As he reached the midway point, he gazed out over the parking lot and out out towards the road, and the assortment of buildings beyond.

"Never will I ever say that a place like this is not scary. As soon as I get through this-" He whipped around and was met with another one of the snarling creatures at the top of the staircase, he let off a burst of rifle fire and it clattered to the ground, rolling and sloshing down the stairs. It left disgusting stains of rainbow colored blood as he backed away down the stairs. He limped past a freight elevator, and toward the garages and emergency entrances where the rusting ambulance fleet sat. Nikolai noticed another one out in the parking lot, not 10 meters from where he was, various medical supplies were spilled out over the ground. As well as a destroyed stretcher, and a shambling ghoul. Which he promptly executed before going to look through the mess.

"большой! спасибо мир! Good! Thank you world!" Lying in a tipped over medical box was exactly 3 of the splints. Excited, he greedily snatched them up and hobbled back to the garage. Not even bothering with checking for monsters, he snapped the splint around his broken leg. And reclined backwards from joy. A pale yellow magic enveloped the wound, he could practically the feel bruises going away and bones reasserting themselves-then fusing back together.

It was the highlight moment of his day.

Nikolai sat completely still for about 5 minutes, then experimented with moving around. He gave it another 5 minutes, and sat up, using a concrete pillar for support. He stumbled around, but was able to easily regain his footing.

"Heh, now this, this is a treasure worth killing over!" He was grinning madly. He went back to rummaging through the ambulances. Not being the most patient lockpicker, he opted to mostly just knock them off with his bayonet or crowbar. Once his joyous rampage and looting session had concluded. The Stalker had acquired himself enough medical supplies to qualify him as the combat medic for an entire platoon of soldiers. As well as a few other things which he would definitely be taking with him. But, needless to say, he wouldn't be needing to make any more 'medical' stops in the near future. He pulled out his PDA and began to think over his next move.

"I've got to figure out how to get out of this god forsaken city (Still not as bad as Pripyat) and find my friend. I suppose that will start with me retracing my steps..." He clutched his head in pain at the thought of going through that place and contending with those unsettling abominations again. But, there was a significant number of hellhounds in between him and where he needed to get. In a twist of sick irony, the damned creatures avoided the place. And, he been unfortunate enough to find out why. But fortunate enough to gun it down before it could do any real harm to him. Alongside 2 of its friends.

"It is like Alien from the movies!" He exclaimed, trying to cheer himself up. He found a place where the radiation levels were minimal, then sat himself down and ate half a pack of croutons and a shot of Vodka. Then sighed, redonned his mask, and walked back into the hospital.

The next 4 minutes consisted entirely of Nikolai chaotically running and gunning and screaming in confusion and running some more though the dilapidated ruins of Old Olneigh hospital, until he was back out on the other side and into the dreary and dark street.

"One of many great capitalist virtues!" Nikolai muttered to himself. " I choose when I do stupid shit! Not lazy statesman! And, I can relax afterwards knowing that I earned it!" He walked back to the spot where he had fallen from the fire escape earlier.

The Stalker searched around the ground level for another building to climb up. It was like his body was reminded of the fact that he was still young enough to run and gun his way through a mutant filled hospital, dodge hellhounds, and still be able to scale an 8 story stairwell, and still have the energy to kill another ghoul with a crowbar to the back of the head. Without someone else to watch over, he could go full Slavic redneck as hard and as long as he wanted. Nikolai stepped out into an apartment and looked out over the city through shattered glass. Panting, he reclined back on a dusty rocking chair. It creaked under his weight. Being meant for a pony half his size. Though, at this point he had lost almost all semblance of respect. No one would probably ever be where he was right then and there. And he deserved to sit down and take a nap.

"Nap. Nyet, Nikolai! It may be almost past midnight- but you must not-" He blacked out in the chair, his rifle and rucksack slinking off to the side.

"Oh, huh? Gah!" He stumbled out of his napping spot and checked his watch. Five hours wasted, he had to get going. Nikolai rubbed the sleep from his eyes, drank a half liter of water, relived himself off the edge of the building. Repacked his magazines with the ammunition he had gathered in Dodge city and the military checkpoint. And began making his way north, further into the Old Olneigh and the mysterious green glows coming from Splendid Valley. He fumbled down the staircase, and quickly crossed the empty street below, taking shelter by some rubble, he pulled out his PDA and examined the topographical map.

"Ok, I am looking for something with magic green aura." He cursed under his breath and clasped his hands together. Then it occurred to him.

"Balefire craters! как тупо! How stupid!" He began heading west, towards the warhead craters. He passed by an old military convoy of armored vehicles with paint jobs that looked like someone had thrown an unfinished art abstract art museum at them. It was deeply out of character for their location. But, Nikolai theorized that their may have been some merit to their 'camouflage' back when they were operational. He spotted a the shape of a hellhound moving around in a trash heap just beyond them. So he decided to stay clear. He walked up on an on ramp and then began moving northwest towards the rest of Splendid Valley along a decrepit raised highway.

"Cейчас это..." As he came within 400 meters of the balefire craters, his Geiger counter and Anomaly detectors began to beep at the same time once more. Keeping in mind that it wasn't regular radiation. Off the northern side of the highway what he assumed was Splendid Valley proper. With rolling hills on either side, a strip of rocky ground extended roughly a kilometer and a half from one side to the other. The valley floor was postmarked with holes and caves, a pale yellow-reddish glow emanated from a few of them.

"More taint. A lot of taint. I mean, dear lord... Where did all this stuff come from? There must be lakes of the stuff down there!" He saw figures moving out in the darkness, more hellhounds. Occasionally, he'd catch sight of an anomalous plant growth coming up out of the ground. Just like the ones he had seen out in front of the hospital. About a kilometer outside of Old Olneigh, he caught sight of something that made him shutter.

There was another Balefire crater off in the distance towards the center of the valley. It seemed to have created a sinkhole. Suspended within and about said sinkhole was what looked like some sort of fortified military base. But, that wasn't what caught the Stalker's eyes.

"Are those... Unicorns with wings?" He took a look at the structure though his rifle scope, and counted a half dozen of the strange creatures. They were a mix of the colors green, purple and blue. They glowed with an eerie light as they flew from perch to perch, like guard sentinels. He watched as one fired a bolt of green energy at something. Though he couldn't see what it was from this distance.

"Huh, could it have been those things that took Flashpoint?" He watched as three more flew in from the west. All Green. He almost jumped out of his skin when he heard wings flapping behind him. It was almost like he could sense the creature as it flew over him. Nikolai hit the deck and hit under a rusted out pickup truck. It was a violent purple, and as it passed overhead, he heard a voice call to him.

"DO NOT BE AFRAID. FOLLOW OUR GODDESS. JOIN UNITY."

He shook his head in frustration, and realized that the voice was all in his head. The damn things could communicate telepathically. Disturbing, but nothing he hadn't come across before. Himself and other Stalker's skirmishes with Monolith cultists back in the Zone had given him a steadfast respect for the damage that telepathy could do to an unprepared or weak minded person.

However, this was like a mental audio recording on loop. The strange creatures had not, in fact, discovered Nikolai. But were rather telepathically broadcasting their message for all to hear.

"Боже милий. Dear god. Please tell me that Flashpoint was not carried into that place by those things." He kicked a bit of rubble off the raised highway and cursed.

"Blyat! I am going to have to go in there after all!" He extracted the magazine from his rifle, and carefully examined the steel cased Full Copper Jacketed 5.56 rounds within.

He shook his head in dismay, and went to his backpack for some robust steel cored brass cased ammunition. Though he doubted it would be much help against the horrors of the valley below. Alongside this, he still had a few nasty surprises waiting in his rucksack in case he really got into trouble.

"First Salt Cube City, then Glow, then Marshes, then Sunrise Military base, then Dodge city, then Hospital, and now this! Nuclear war is-a terrible!"

But alas, as much as he wanted to believe that this was the worst this Wasteland had to throw at him. He subconsciously knew that there was probably something worse out there. But little did he know he was about to meet one of those things in person.