Fallout Equestria - No More Tears

by Darkstarr48

Chapter 2

Everypony held their breath as they expected to be overcome with flesh melting radiation, however, not a single Geiger counter made a click as the door stood open, revealing a rocky passage lined with charred black skeletons, easily identifiable as equine remains.

“At least they died quickly” Wendy said taking a deep breath.

“We don't have all day!” the Overmare reminded us, shoving me towards the door. I shot her an irritated look as I willed myself forward, passing through the gear shaped doorframe and out into the cold tunnel. My brother followed me, then Rusty. we looked back at the stable. The Overmare saluted at us and operated the controls and began to shut the door.

I gulped and watched the door roll shut, sliding shut with now less shrill screech, displaying a pristine “24” on the front of the door. I glanced up the corridor, keeping my head on a swivel. I was paranoid and scared of being out of my home. I didn't trust the low visibility of my mask, even though only friendly, green dots were on my E.F.S. Except for one which was flickering red and green from inside the stable. It had done this before on rare occasions and I never found an explanation for this. I eventually regained my composure and our party continued blindly up the pitch black corridor.

I heard the sound of rock tumbling around and the thump of a body dropping. I turned towards the sound and flicked on my pip-buck light.

“Owwwww” Wendy whined as he peeled his face off of the ground. He inspected what he tripped over and made an audible gulp upon discovering he had just crushed one of the charred equine skulls.

“You alright?” I asked helping him up.

“Uh. Yeah, yeah... Only napping.” he stammered looking away to hide his face, flushed in embarrassment. I smile and go, come on then, lets keep moving, to which he nods.

The three of us kept walking for a few yards before coming to a double sided cellar door with light streaming in through loose cracks. I look at Wendy and Rusty and ask, “Ready to see the surface?” I received three tentative nods. I take a deep inhale, eliciting a deep hiss from my mask before opening the door. Bright natural light flooded in, and in a flash, we all found ourselves on the ground covering our faces with our hooves. I'm the first onto my feet, peeking my head out of the cellar door and looking around with my eyes squinted. As I let my eyes adjust to the light, I'm joined on each side by the rest of my party. Once my eyes finally begin seeing more than white, I let my jaw loosely hang open.

I surveyed the vast landscape, totally devoid of life. I was awestruck by how barren it is. Overcast grey clouds above, and nothing but brown desert as far as the eye can see, interrupted by deep black tarmac in stark contrast to the landscape dotted with withered shrubs and the occasional charred stud protruding from the ground marking what had once been the foundation of a house.

“I don’t know whether to cheer, or cry.” Wendy said flatly, absorbing about as much about the landscape as I did. “What do you think Rusty?”

“Dead. Flat. Hot.” Is all he could muster with a clear lack of enthusiasm.

“Barren” I say in agreement. “Well, lets get moving.” I sighed as I take out a photo taken from this exact spot from 150 years ago. I switch between the photo and the landscape. I sighed again. The photo looks so happy and green. The skies are clear, and surprisingly there along the road used to stand a small residential town, eerily abandoned by its inhabitants in the photo, and wiped entirely out of existence in reality. I looked up at the sky. Still overcast. “Hmm, that's strange, no break in the clouds anywhere, think its because of the radiation?”

“What radiation?” Wendy said removing his mask and tapping his pip-bucks rad meter.

“Good point.” I replied, eyes still fixed on the sky. I took off my mask as well and put it in my saddlebags. I helped Rusty, who was fighting with the straps again.

"If everything's been destroyed, why the pristine door?" Rusty asked looking back at the wooden door with shiny new hinges.

"Good question." Both my brother and I said. I trotted back up and inspected the hinges. "These have been oiled recently." I observe, wiping some oil from the joint.

“And the woods been stained too” Wendy added as he runs his hoof across the sanded wooden panel.

I nod and trot back away from the door. “We had better get a move on if we're gonna get anything done.”

I looked up and down the road, eyeing the cracked tarmac striped with yellow lines down the middle. It looked almost like a bumblebee. Neither of which I had ever seen before. Except for in my books of course. As the others looked along the lines in confusion, a smile spread across my face. I'm the only one who knew that the cracked asphalt had ever served a purpose.

"These were used to make travel with ground carriages easier. Kept them in lanes to make sure they didn't get crowded." I say digging through my saddlebags. My brother eyed me curiously while Rusty's vacant expression remained unchanged.

"What're you doing?" Wendy asked, watching me search my inventory.

"Deciding our route." I say producing a bag of bits and levitating out a single shiny gold coin. I point to the east. "Call it."

"Sun." he said as I flipped the coin. It tinked across the ground and rolled along a few feet before circling around and leveling it out Sun side up.

"Looks like we're going east." I say levitating the bit back into my bag and taking a step onto the road. I smiled at the familiar hardened surface that reminded me of the stable floor which I was already beginning to miss. I can't say I liked the strange dusty dirt of the outside. It crackled with each step, stained my hooves and make them itch. My brother looked around and joined me on the road. Rusty however stayed on the side where he could walk in the dirt. I levitated out a canteen and took a drink and passed it around. Rusty took it thankfully and guzzled half of it and passed it to my brother who took a sip and passed it back to me. We began to walk, following the pavement east.

After a few hours of trudging along the hot road, my pip-buck began beeping alerts about dehydration, and for that I almost felt thankful because it gave us an excuse to stop for a breather at a small ditch running alongside the shoulder. All three of us trotted down into the ditch and collapsed into our own individual heaps, again, passing around my almost depleted canteen which I finished off, pouring the last drops out onto my tongue before dropping the canteen beside me. I sighed in relief as my dizziness began to subside and the little red "H2O" icon disappeared from my stats screen. I looked up and around at the darkening cloud layer.

"What's happening? Why's the sky getting dark?" Wendy asked following my gaze up to the horizon.

"The suns going down above the cloud layer. Day is turning to night." I say flatly. Another fact that only I knew from the old stable history books. In the stable, We still used the terms day and night, but they were used to denote times for sleeping and times for work.

"How do you know this stuff?" Rusty asks. Wendy and I looked over at him with a look of surprise on our faces. This is the first time we heard him say anything other than "yep" or "nope". I guess that years of being shunned by all of the stable's community had left him as an introvert. He looked away shyly as if he feared that he stepped out of place.

"I've spent my whole life reading books. I always wanted to see the surface and... now that we're here, that endeavor doesn't seem too promising." I say trying to keep contact with his scared red eyes. He looked back at me with a simple nod and curled up on his side. It was then I realized that he wasn't scary in the least. In fact, he even reminded me of the head of the ministry of peace before the war, Fluttershy. I smiled and laid on my back, digging the small golden figurine out of my bag and turning it around in the grip of my magic. It was a family heirloom that neither of my parents had ever explained in much detail. My dad had said my great-great grandfather found it back on a trip to Stalliongrad. He said that it was probably pretty old, even by pre-war standards considering no one used swords for over 500 years before the bombs fell. I sat it down beside me as I rested my head on my arms and closed my eyes, heavy with the day's work.

"Sis?"

"Yeah?"

"Are we gonna die out here?" I frowned. Were hours away from any known civilization, which required backtracking at least ten miles of straight, featureless tarmac, we were out of water and low on food. I took a deep breath.

"I don't know, but to be honest, probably not." I say opening my eyes to look at my brother whose frowning at me as the sky reaches its darkest.

"Then explain to me what that is?" He motions to the west to a hill a mile or two away that's crested by a very faint glow. I raise my eyes to look at it. Perhaps it was somewhere safe, maybe even civilization. but it was too far away, we were all exhausted, and Rusty had already fallen asleep and the sliver of my being that was still afraid of him was begging me not to poke the bear. So I shook my head.

"We'll go check that out tomorrow morning, now lets just rest up okay? We need energy if we're going to survive this week."

"You're the boss, boss." he said laying down between me and Rusty. I nodded, and looked at my pip-buck. When i was little, I had a severe form of insomnia, so much so that I was prone to diseases due to a weakened immune system. I really didn't mind much, but my parents on the other hoof did. They made me use my technological knowledge to modify my pip-buck’s S.A.T.S. system to force sleep for a set amount of time. I never uninstalled it when I outgrew my insomnia and it had, in fact, come in handy on several occasions, this being one of them. I entered the command prompt for sleep into my pip-buck and set the slider to eight hours. I closed my eyes and rested my head against the ground. Letting my senses dull as I slipped into the tranquil buzz of S.A.T.S. induced sleep.

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Footnote: Level Up
Perk Added: Slim Frame - Your small size has given you +5 to sneak, and potions heal you 15% more, however, your limbs are crippled 25% more easily.
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I'd like to thank KKat for writing the original Fo:E for writing an unbelievably great story, and Somber, for writing Project Horizons, the story that pushed me over the edge and forced me to try my hand in writing.