Fallout Equestria: Second Wind

by TinkerChromewire

Chapter 2: Fast-Friendship

Google Docs Link

"Fast-Friendship"
Safety in numbers greater than one.

Everything I learned had turned my mind into a quagmire of ills, awoken to a world lacking altruism or any basic form of kindness that I could find. The closest I could ascribe as kindness was an act delivered to the mortally wounded green stallion in the form of a bullet from his companion Gangrene.

The ghouls had been a challenge, but they weren’t anywhere near as difficult as I expected them to be. Each one was felled with a few hoof strikes or a few rounds to the skull from my .38 revolver. Coated in filth and sick that decorated my once white pelt, my bandages were equally soaked, loose and heavy with bodily fluids. Having been referred to as a ghoul by the mare I had begrudgingly agreed to help, I felt it imperative to have no association with these flesh eating bastards. I was better than these things, I was still a pony. I was still a pony, alive and thinking.

Gangrene, a pale yellow grungy mare I had the displeasure of meeting under these circumstances, was taking choice parts of the armor from the freshly dead stallion in order to repair her own barding. Her armor looked like a puzzle of license plates from carriages, strips of cans riveted together, hunks of tire rubber, and a stop sign that had been beaten and reshaped to cover her left flank completely. The parts she was taking from Curbstomp filled in the rest of her armor, she took the heavily reinforced hoofball shoulder pads that had brutal and bloody railroad spikes jutting from the right shoulder.

After she was done, she began picking through his personal goods, electing what she would take or find useful. I hadn’t spoken since she killed the stallion while I had been finishing the last of the ghouls. "Look," she said in a soft manner, "you did more for him than I would have. There was nothing you could have done, we didn’t have enough supply to treat him. He was already dead."

The irony was that we were in a hospital, where healing should have been a focus, instead we had biters to deal with. I really didn’t like Curbstomp, he’d tried killing me the second he caught sight of me, but I felt guilty. Not that I couldn’t save him, but because I was glad he was dead. A strange sense of strength had filled me when he had died and to some extent with every ghoul that perished.

Discovering myself wasn’t very fun when I found things I didn’t like, and death was definitely not on the list of things I enjoyed. Or, was it more appropriate to say I shouldn’t enjoy that? It felt natural to get a rush or a thrill when someone that had wronged me expired. Dismissing these darker thought, I considered what I liked in the world outside of Necro-Net. This list was unsurprisingly short since I had only been awake for a few hours at most. The list was as followed;

Number 1.) Being alive.
Number 2.) Not being eaten, cut to bits and/or shot.
Number 3.) Inflicting bodily harm on vile, murderous abominations.

In summary, most of what I enjoyed was related with the first thing on my list, which was ‘Being alive’, which involved not allowing the mentioned things in Number Two to happen, and doing copious amounts of Number Three. It seemed fairly straight forward, and I’d have to update that list each time I found something I liked, it was a welcome distraction in this setting. There was no way everything could be as horrible as this hospital. I was sure of this.

I sat at the counter in the delivery room, in contemplation of things that came to pass, pretending to read the map while the pale unicorn finished her task of pilfering what items the green stallion had owned...before he’d been partially chewed and granted a coup de grace. He probably had very little, his battle saddle and shotgun were now mine, on loan from Gangrene.

"Alright, that’s all he had," the mare muttered, "you want his saddlebag?" Her offer was tempting, but its repulsive smell made me want to roll around in a bath of bleach for hours. I held out my foreleg, metal fingers flexing for it without turning my eyes in her direction. Looking at the greasy, sweaty sack would likely make me turn down the offer when I had no alternative.

"Shouldn’t we bury him or something?" It was like speaking a foreign language, kindness to the dead stallion that would have made me the likeness of his cutie mark, a bright and cheerful image of a crushed skull under hoof. A foalish suggestion, but he wasn’t like the bodies laying around the hospital like Nightmare Night decorations. Curbstomp had been alive just minutes ago, screaming, kicking, crying, and flailing around in desperation to survive.

"Bury him where? We’re in a building. It won’t do him any good. I’m not dragging his body out of here. Unless you feel like doing it, then he’s just going to rot here." She pointed a hoof to the ghouls I had dismembered not fifteen minutes ago, "Do you want to bury those too? Don’t be so sentimental, Doc. Now, do you want his saddle bag?" She was levitating the offered bag towards me while backing up at the same time, "Nothing could smell worse than his ugly ass. Except this rut sack." Didn’t she mean rucksack?

She was right on both accounts-- it was not practical to drag along a body and that sack looked like it had been loved too much by the filthy stallion. I was being sentimental to the dead. There was no way I’d be sentimental about this rucksack though. I was getting rid of it the first chance I got.

"Sure," with no alternatives, I needed something to carry supply; the pockets of my now soaked blood red doctor’s coat weren’t big enough to carry everything. With some effort and help from Gangrene, I was sporting the battle saddle over my coat as a harness and the saddlebag was on the side adjacent the shotgun’s mount. It was a cumbersome arrangement, but I bore it with little difficulty.

Now I had a saddle bag, it weighed a thousand pounds of disgusting and I could still smell that stench of ass all over it, unwashed and greasy as it’s owner had been. I didn’t think anything could smell worse. The only thing that could compare was what Curbstomp’s body would smell like once it began rotting. I folded my map away and stowed all my belongings into the saddlebag. The bag made a squelching sound, as if I’d just stuck my whole hoof into a jar of sour mayonnaise. I felt so dirty.

"Have you ever used a battle saddle?" The mare asked, tugging a strap around my flank and under my short red tail to hook it into the appropriate buckle. She wrinkled her nose and backed away at the fierce musk that stabbed her senses until her eyes watered, "You just stay down wind of me..."

"No, but it shouldn’t be too hard, right?" I patted the harness and withdrew my fingers which shimmered with a layer of grease blood. I offered a weak, wholly unreassuring smile. "I’ll get the hang of these lever things eventually. And I’m burning this saddle bag once I get a new one."

"Well I was under the assumption you were just mounting the saddle bags, you’re a unicorn, why not use your magic?" Her words were a chalk board grinding with a rake on my mind. I cringed visibly, laughing. If she thought I could use magic, why had she helped me put on the battle saddle in the first place? Oh, right, because I had no idea how to put a battle saddle on.

"I’m under heavy medication at the moment, my horn’s not working until it wears off." Whatever it was, it was long lasting and quite possibly a steroid of some kind judging by the strength I possessed. That made sense to me, it was plausible!

Gangrene slicked up her mane and straightened it to stand perfectly upright, "I hope you can direct me to some of that, it sounds like some strong medicine. It’s like Stampede, Buck, and Med-X in one package, given with how you handled those ghouls." She stamped a hoof, laughing softly; she seemed to be relaxed despite losing her companion just recently. This set me on edge. Or maybe it was the fact her mohawk reminded me of a buzz saw?

I had no idea what any of those drugs were, I was probably the worst fake doctor ever to practice malpractice semi-professionally. Party clowns were possibly more qualified. No, they were definitely more qualified to be doctors than I was. I laughed, the thought of a clown doctor was absurd enough to make my mood brighten.

"We need to get going, SteelGraft." Gangrene asserted, tapping a hoof to the outside of the doorway as she strolled out, taking a left turn down the hall. I skirted around the fresh corpse in the middle of the room, hopped over the still remains of the slain ghouls, and followed her dutifully.

The Nursery Ward was more open than the previous ward I had seen, and even had windows facing outside in the rooms we passed, letting light from outside trickle in to alleviate the darkness when the lights flickered or failed. The windows were too caked with dirt to see very many details outside. The buildings outside were all black silhouettes against the dim light filtered through a cloudy sky.

We were following the pitch of the building’s floor down, which was a steady slope at roughly a twenty-five degree angle. It wasn’t all that extreme. A bedpan disturbed by my hooves rolled down the hall and clanged off one of Gangrene’s dirty back hooves. She jumped and shot a glare over her shoulder at me and stomped on the bedpan to make it still.

"You trying to attract more ghouls?" She hissed between her teeth, "Not that I don’t doubt we’d handle them, it’s best to avoid trouble when I’m in front!" This completely sane advice was accepted with a blank and silent nod. She turned back to the hallway, trying to move in an alert and cautious manner. She was quiet, despite her armor rustling, and was far more silent than me. I may as well been following her playing an array of ten instruments in comparison to her.

She was better at sneaking and careful movements. I may be able to move quickly to avoid a buzz saw or other threats, but delicacy wasn’t built for metal hooves on a hard surfaced environment. "You know, I’m going to guess that we attracted everything on this floor with the loudness earlier and everything we need to worry about is pretty dead." I just wanted to stop trying to sneak, it wasn’t working for me. "You could let me lead if you don’t want to be at the front."

"Is that your professional opinion?" The mare asked, casting a glance over her shoulder towards me. She stopped and stepped to the side, giving me more than enough room to pass her, "Go on, you know the way."

I passed her and shrugged, now leading the way down the ward hall, "Yes, I prescribe about 20% less sneaking and 50 CCs of less caution and bed rest for a week." The beds in the rooms we traveled by were less than stellar for bed rest, so I was suggesting we find a place where the beds weren’t occupied by skeletons.

Gangrene agreed, taking in a breath that sounded more like an inward sigh, "Yeah. You’re probably right. I just don’t want to end up like that moron." She relented, giving a shrug. "What I wouldn’t give for a week of sleep, I’d love to just laze around. This gets too much for me."

We continued along the ward hall, coming up on the nursery where they kept newborns, the walls were covered in patches of ice, so were the floors. Our breath came out as hot steam curling in plumes of cold white smoke between our lips--It was freezing here. Gangrene learned how slippery the floors were the hard way, she lost traction and slipped, knocking over a small medical table covered in tools. She latched onto me for balance, nervously chuckling.

"Wow, good thing you’re sturdy---" She had barely finished that final word in time, swiftly I gracefully joined her in a jumble on the floor and began sliding down the hall at a lazy speed. Bracing a rear hoof against an open doorway and discarded table I managed to stop us.

She didn’t laugh, so I did, a snort moving into a chuckle. The mare held back a laugh behind her lips, cheeks distended with the hot, rich air of laughter or a stream of hot curses. A soft jab in her side from a mechanical digit caused it to explode out into a forced giggle. She snorted and glared at me.

"That wasn’t funny, I don’t like being tickled." She whinnied plaintively, trying to untangle herself from me. Succeeding in unspooling her limbs from the snarl we had become, she looked around the hallway, noticing the ice build up. "It’s like a refrigerator in here. A working one at that." Was a working refrigerator all that surprising? Well, in this place, perhaps it would be.

The muscles under Gangrene’s pelt flicked, and she was beginning to shiver. Her breath came out in rolling, stuttered huffs. Her lips were starting to turn blue, and I thought briefly that her greasy black mohawk would begin trailing icicles. "I hate the cold..." She rasped huskily.

My fate was to get stuck to the floor, the blood soaked into my pelt and fabric of the bandages meshing into the patch of ice and forming a bond. My wrappings and the flesh beneath it clung stubbornly, stretched, and another staple snapped from the sutures holding my midsection’s wounds together and became a projectile that bounced off a nearby wall. I grit my teeth, hissing, "Shit! Gangrene, I’m stuck."

The look she gave me was as if she’d been struck with a trout that then insulted her ancestry. "What do you mean stuck?" She returned my statement with a question, one with a very obvious answer.

I wanted to be sarcastic, but I had no jokes prepared for when I got frozen to the floor. I rolled my single eye and searched for an explanation that didn’t involve insulting her intelligence. "I’m soaked in blood and it froze! I can’t get up without tearing my stitches." I hoped she’d understand and find some method of peeling me free; instead, she stared at me like I was speaking a language she did not understand, her brow arching on one side.

"Well, what am I supposed to do? You can just...I don’t know, tear a piece of the floor up?" She was shivering harder now, blinking a few times, "Why is it so cold here?" She dourly nickered, looking around for the source. She became still, her eyes reflecting a source of light that glowed. She returned her gaze to me, "It’s best you see this." She seemed eager.

"I’m preoccupied..." I tried squirming, the patented spitting and rubbing that I used on the card reader earlier only got me more hopelessly stuck. I pressed my nose to the floor, grumbling, only to realize soon after my mane was now frozen to the floor as well. This was the worst day ever. The first day I can remember, and I was going to spend it frozen to the floor covered in gore from a vast horde of ghouls I had slain. I had to have been incredibly cruel to puppies in a previous life to deserve this karmic retribution.

"Wait," Gangrene began, a smile cresting over her lips, "I’ve got an idea. We just need something warm." In this frigid part of the clinic, I ventured to say nothing was warm. Everything was likely to be frozen. Even the junk laying around was suspended in a gelid growth of frost build up.

"Where are we going to get something warm before---" I stopped speaking, my single eye rolling up to follow the pale yellow punk unicorn position herself over me, flagging her tail and flicking the short, frayed grease-trap to the side.

"What are you---"

Did I recall being horrible to puppies in a previous life? Well, to deserve what had just happened to me, I must have beaten foals /with/ puppies. Only the ultimate acts of evil could warrant the hot, steaming, completely unnecessary shower I had just received. I stood next to the unicorn mare who seemed quite proud of herself. What fluids I was dripping was still steaming with heat in the icy air.

We were peering into the ice-caked window of the infant’s nursery room. The nursery had a large viewing window, nearly the length of the rest of the hall, with thick layers of ice build-up. After a bit of scraping, we’d managed to get a decent look inside, and wished we hadn’t. There were large tanks, some toppled, snaking tubes filled with super-chilled fluid, and mechanical monitors mounted on each individual little chamber bearing a single foal in rows. The vital monitor on each infant read null, but every corpse was perfectly preserved. This was the source of the extreme temperature drop. A broken stasis chamber made to protect a generation from the fall. They’d been in stasis too long and the system failed, deep freezing them.

"So they ice-boxed the entire nursery. You doctors here sure know how to make a place look inviting, and your bedside manner was pretty good, all things considered." Gangrene was far too amused about the current subject at hoof. We were looking into a freezer room filled with rows of pony infants, all still and stiff, and I somehow smelled worse than when I first donned Curbstomp’s saddlebag.

"I didn’t do this," with an assertive growl I turned away from the haunting image of the countless tiny bodies, a brief flicker of regret and a hot flash of memory dashing across my mind. The room spun away for a brief second, I heard the laughter of foals, and a mare’s breath against my cheek, "I’m pregnant." she said to me, voice beaming with pride.

The world returned to me and I stumbled, my guts wrenching and doing curls in my belly. I reached over to steady myself against the wall, putting a slash of ‘claw’ marks on the layer of ice as my foreleg trailed down. I looked to the rows upon rows of restful infants. That was my memory. I was going to be a father? Was I a father? My pupil shrank and my heart fell into my bowels. I hoped it was just a nightmare, that my little lapse from reality was a side-effect of whatever drugs I had been on. "Popsifoals..." I grunted softly, laughing under my breath. "This is ridiculous, isn’t it? They almost look alive." Those babies could spring to life any moment and I wouldn’t be too surprised.

"Whoa, easy there SteelGraft!" Gangrene had moved to support me, wrapping her telekinetic grip against my side making sure I didn’t fall over, "You fall over and get stuck, we might have to wait awhile until I need to take a leak." She was shivering, more violently now. She was miserable, her teeth chattering. "Let’s get out of here before we join those kids and become part of the decor, huh?" She moved passed, brushing her side along mine and swatting me with a flick of her tail. "Come on, before your dick gets stuck to the floor."

The sincerity of my ‘ally’ was called into question, seeing as she had shot her own friend she had brought in with her. I had reason to believe I was just a resource for the time while I was useful. Empowered with the craving of a less freezing environment, I followed; distancing myself from the newest horrible nightmare made material.

Maybe if I closed my eye I could avoid seeing so much horrible, heartbreaking, saddening things? If I found more bandages I briefly considered binding my exposed eye shut. Yes, I would be blind, and with it, my life expectancy would plummet but perish the thought I might actually be briefly happy before an inevitable pit trap robbed me of what little sensations remained.

Following the remains of the ice patched hallway, walls covered in posters preserved under formations of ice and doorways completely iced over we approached the end of the building. There was a fractured wall with large chunks missing exposing a sheer drop into a chasm with sharp rubble mangled into gnarled teeth. The elevator shaft was a doorway into the vacant, tattered remains of the city outside, towering, leaning tombstones of old multi story buildings scraped the dark, oppressive skyline of smog and green haze. A subway train had run up from the ground, which was what probably had cleaved the building’s outer wall. There was no getting down to the first floor from this stairwell; it had collapsed into the long dead burnt black landscaping below.

What the buck happened? It wasn’t just the hospital that was wrecked, but the entire city was in ruins. It was like a massive explosion had scorched everything, leaving only charred remains of buildings to stand solemnly against a perpetually dim layer of smog. The forty foot drop into jagged spools of rebar and building parts was a bitter spice of vertigo to my growing discomfort.

"What happened to the city?" I had already asked the question before I could stop myself, my need to know was overwhelming.

The city looked like a war-zone, whichever city it was supposed to be was now just an oversized smoldering graveyard. Graveyards had a habit of getting overgrown with weeds and plant life when abandoned, but this was devoid even of that form of life. The sidewalks were jagged and twisted paths leading to ravines and ditches, the streets alongside them fared no better. Power poles lay along the ground half broken and scorched with power cables still like dead snakes. Places of business that lined the streets were gutted pits, vacant of goods or good company, blackened in the wake of devastation. Golden hues cast of in broken light filtered through the clouds to cast a radiant shine over the ravaged ruins of a place where I knew ponies and their friends walked together.

I spun to face Gangrene, my single eye locked to her pair. She looked at me with a mixture of disbelief and carefree smugness. She couldn’t relate to how I felt. "You’ve never left this hospital?" Her voice was toneless; she didn’t seem to take it as a genuine question and more like a statement of abject stupidity. "Everyone knows what happened, and you should especially know. You lived through it."

"I’ve never been outside my hospital ward. I’m also known to take long, unnecessary naps." I lied, I had to keep up the charade, at least until we parted ways. My eye rolled back to the cityscape, my head turning to join it. "I’ve never seen anything other than walls. And my memory isn’t very good." Peppering truth throughout a lie tended to give it some credit of believability, at least in my court it did.

"Cooped up in this place? And you’re not feral?" She cooed, moving to join me and proceeding along the floor, taking glances at the crumbled, ruined sections of wall where a slip meant embracing a forty foot drop to a jagged metal ruin. There were already corpses dotting the area outside, some which were impaled on protruding rebar and mangled pipes. "A long time ago, during the war, something terrible happened. I don’t know many details myself, all I know is that the zebra used something on us, something that nearly wiped all of Equestria barren."

Following close behind, I was caught between listening intently and staring toward the inner wall to distract myself from the pitted ruins outside. There was a cheerful but faded mural of foals and adults caught in blissful glee, the paint was chipped and torn, and where the heads of ponies should be, chunks of wall was missing, bullet holes evident at several points of impact. I glazed over this, finding little interest in the act of vandalism.

Gangrene spoke about the state of the world briefly, stopping mid-sentence to turn her attention to where bullet holes darted over the mural opposite to the gaping hole in the outward wall. Places where the wall was intact against the outside had their section of the mural protected from gunfire. It was the little things that stood out to her. I didn’t notice, being half blind, and would have just kept going if the yellow mare hadn’t stopped me.

Gangrene gripped my tail and tugged, "Wait," she gestured to the sections of wall torn with gunfire, then back to the outside world. "I think we’re in a shooting gallery." She indicated each missing section of wall, three in all, about twenty feet wide divided from each other by a support pillar extending to the ceiling above. There were bullet holes marring the mural where sections of the wall on the opposite side was missing.

I stopped to glance where she pointed then looked over my shoulder at her, "I doubt they’re sitting out there just waiting for a head to appear. Nopony would wait around. That sounds boring." Surely there was no way a sniper would sit out there for hours or days, crosshairs glued to the building, waiting for the opportune moment to shoot an unsuspecting scavenger or ghoul for what pittance belongings they had.

The dingy yellow mare shook her head with a snort, "Never underestimate what someone with bullets to spare and nothing but time will do." She hefted a small piece of debris and tossed it down the hall, striking the wall at the other end. Her telekinetic throw was rather impressive, the wall at the far end was a good seventy feet or so away. She did this several times, baffling me with this wanton means of attracting hostile attention. A wanton mare doing wanton things.

"What are you doing?" I inquired, my mouth hanging agape, "What if you attract the attention of something back there?" Her need for caution earlier had been abandoned for this.

‘Thwak,’ another piece of debris scarred a mark on the wall far down to the end of the hall from where we stood, "That’s what I’m counting on." She was smiling from ear to ear, concerning me that she may be less stable than I had earlier believed. She licked her lips again, whistling sharply, screaming out insults that bordered on obscene and flagrant. ‘Get your popsicfoals!’ was among the taunts she used in efforts to lure her prey.

Really? The sad tomb of the preserved foals being used as ‘bait’ to attract ghouls seemed pointless. I doubted the ghouls could even understand a single word she said, it was all just noise. Honestly though, why did I think the idea of a ghoul getting it’s cold tongue stuck to the icy glass outside the nursery room was funny? I must not have been the good pony I previously thought I was.

On cue, there was some rustling on the business end of the hall, which is the end we needed to be at to conduct our business; a pair of ghouls appeared, sniffing about for the source of the noise. These creatures appeared to have been patients. One was trailing an IV tube and the other had a small heart rate monitor clattering along behind it, some wires still connected to its chest cavity that looked like it had been opened like a cabinet, organs there splayed out in a bouquet of sickly functioning parts, the lungs and heart visible and seen to function. The lighting flickered, along the hall sporadically, making me think of landing lights along a landing platform.

Drawing iron, I prepared to deliver them to Tartarus before they could make good their nature only to be halted by Gangrene’s rifle butt pressing against my chest. "Wait." She rasped, watching them as they began their awkward, fumbling charge towards us. A few times I thought they’d trip and fall out one of the holes in the wall given their lack of coordination.

The ghouls had conquered half the distance before the one trailing the heart-rate monitor was felled and a thunderous crack echoed in the distance of the city. The body rag dolled, the top half of its skull broken off like a badly cracked egg. It tumbled out of the opening in the wall and dangling by its entrails and wires off the rebar jutting out of the ruined maw of the wall.

The second ghoul only made it to the next gap before the sharp-eyed sniper placed a round in the bade of its skull, the force of the round tearing the head from its oozing stump and sent tumbling the rest of the way to our hooves. I prodded at it with my finger a few times; its eyes still followed me. That was fascinating, until it tried to bite me, latching onto my digit. I shook my forehoof violently and swatted it to the floor several times before letting it loose out the hole on my left. It exploded in a visceral spray of grey matter echoing gunfire—that sniper was incredibly sharp.

"That’s why we waited; we have a sniper, a talented one. I’m guessing a Griffon." She wore a smug grin from ear to ear, the piercing in her lower lip shining in the flickering lights overhead. I had just noticed it, she had piercings. I overlooked so many things, which would have spelled my end if it wasn’t for the mare that looked at me with silent and justified smugness.

I gave her a cheeky smile, chuckling softly, "Okay, I was wrong. You’re sharp. Your wits have saved mine." I wiped the remaining gunk on my digits on her coat, much to her stark chagrin. The messy smear took on the attributes of a smiley face, because that’s what I had drawn on her flank. The artistic flourish of the jagged smile was my attempt to replicate the glowing faceplate on the back of my gauntlets. I did reasonably well in my own rights, considering I sucked at drawing.

She pulled away, delivering a swift kick to my side, "No touching! You have to pay for that." The jarring kick had little force but was quick as the swift bite of a viper.

Stumbling, I shot her a laugh, snorting as my side impacting the wall and I sagged, "So you’re a prostitute now? Ha-ha!" The mirth at this moment was stress relieving, and her expression framed in lines of grease, lower lip extended in displeasure, weighed down by a small ball bearing piercing made my remark worth the kick I received.

"I’m the mare that will use you as a bullet shield if you don’t stop laughing," She cooed viciously, narrowing her eyes at me with a very stern gaze. Then she smiled, "And that’s a promise."

For a brief moment I saw a flicker of the world around me, and she was somepony else with a pink bouncy mane and a wide, happy smile. I blinked and I was soon looking at the same faded yellow mare I had been looking at moments ago, the smile diminished. She waved a hoof in front of my eyes, "Equestria to Doctor SteelGraft, come in SteelGraft."

I blinked a second time and raised my eyebrow, "Why are you...?"

"You blanked out there for a second. Did you even hear what I said?" She seemed unhappy about the idea of having to repeat herself. She turned her head to spit when I shook my head, giving a huff, "I said I know how we can get past the sniper."

That was great! A way to get through the shooting gallery! "That’s great," I exclaimed and made my thoughts physical words, "How do we get through? What’s the plan?"

She leaned in close and told me the plan. It wasn’t surprising that I did not like this plan in the least bit, because it meant going back up the icy and dangerous hallway of frigid doom and retrieving the heavy metal table I had thrown not but an hour ago. It still had ghoul gore all over it, and it also brought me to be near where Curbstomp’s body was. The smell was still lingering despite the fact the body was...gone.

Did ghouls rise from the dead? Well, I doubted that since he had been shot in the head, but I did recall the only corpses I’d found were almost all skeletons and none were fresh. Those were old, his was new. But why would it just vanish? In some Necro-Net games, defeated opponents would just vanish. But this was real and that place wasn’t. Skeletons lingered for Luna’s sake.

My interest piqued, I abstained from it to keep on the task at hoof. I lifted the heavy metal table complete with its own pedestal and turned to venture down the incline back to my companion. The trip was taking a long time and the cumbersome table took the dimensions of a bobsled in my mind. I slammed it down and began pushing, picking up speed in the frigid section of the hallway and riding it down the rest of the way, failing to stop it before it took out the rest of the wall at the bottom. The solid wall buckled but did not break but was far less solid than it had been. I laughed, patting the foul tattered foam top.

"That wasn’t too hard," I was pleased with myself, Gangrene however was unimpressed. She picked herself up after diving for cover away from my joy ride."Hey, I got it here, didn’t I?"

She rolled her eyes, "and nearly jumped it out the hospital on a joyride. And nearly killing me? Stallions and their unending stupidity..." She bitterly remarked on the gender, shooting me a dangerous glare. "I’d expect more common sense from a doctor."

"I don’t have any sense at all." I joked, of course I still couldn’t feel anything, but she didn’t know that. Tapping one of my digits to my face I still felt nothing. I probed my nose scientifically.

"At least you’re honest..." She shook her head."Are you going to eat that?" Gangrene purred at me, watching me go nearly one knuckle deep into my own nostril. She looked mildly amused, "Because ghouls don’t eat..." She tried to finish her phrase, "Nose candy."

My digit left my nose with such speed I may have rivaled a Wonderbolt in flight, flinging the contents of my nose against a wall, more viscous black fluid and red, stringy saliva. "No, it was purely...scientific..." I squished the remaining leavings between my digits and wiped it on some exposed foam on the table.

"Perforatorial studies?" She assumed, waving a foreleg dismissively and drawing her rifle from her back holster and holding it close in her telekinetic field. She appraised the table for a few moments and kicked it with her hoof, then raised her rifle, cocked the lever and shot the table. The table didn’t even budge, the top shuddered and the foam top bore a new hole. To me it didn’t look like it’d be good cover, but I wasn’t keen on the seeing of detail.

"I don’t think this is very good cover," I asserted, not wanting to put my life on the line using something that couldn’t stop a round from her Varmint Rifle.

She tried to push the table over, but lacked the strength to upend the entire thing. She grunted, then glanced to me with a growl, "you mind?"

"Not really..." I smiled and used a single hoof to push the table over, the metal crashing the the floor with a cantankerous thud. It was easy for me, like it weighed nothing. "This thing’s not that heavy. Lifting isn’t your thing, is it?"

"If I had power hooves bolted to my forelegs I’d be strong like you, but that’s a bit uncommon, even around Detrot." She spoke off hoofedly, placing the rifle into its sling across her back and straightening her mohawk like some form of ritual. She even levitated a broken piece of mirror out of her saddle bag to aid in the erection of her mane. How anyone could be that vain in this situation? "I’d use my Telekinesis, but I’m tired. So you do the heavy lifting."

So Detrot was the name of this city, according to what Gangrene had just said. What I knew of cities before the fall was limited, I could scarcely remember my time in Necro-Net and all details of my past were hazy at best. Half blind in life and in memory was not the combination of a hero, but a senile stallion. I’d inquire about the city’s name further later; all I could gather was that the city was now dangerous beyond reason.

After her preening, Gangrene finally got around to inspecting the penetration of the table; it had gone through the foam top and had gotten lodged or deflected inside the metal pedestal cabinet build in at the bottom. She pointed a hoof down the hall I had dubbed ‘The Gunnery Run’, "we’re going to use that as cover to get to the end," she explained. "Also, for being a doctor of holes, your diagnosis was very shallow."

"Notice that the hole was not in a pony." I returned fire, and succeeded in garnering a giggle from my companion.

"Gotcha," she replied, patting the table, "I’m sure you know what we have to do here."

"Hug it like I was a fetishist for chest high cover?" I was very attached to my life at this moment, so this table was quickly going to be added to the list of things I enjoyed. Actually, cover in general was going to be added to the things I enjoyed. Number four, cover of the chest-high variety.

I was going to have to drag the table across an uneven and deadly hall with three gaping sections of wall missing facing the outside. A forty foot drop to a jagged mess of rebar and a sniper positioned somewhere in the ruins using this ‘gallery’ for target practice. Piece of cake...or maybe pie. I was actually more fond of muffins. Screw it, they were all equally delicious.

We began to travel past the first opening in the wall, and my body strained to keep the steady momentum. The table jarred and skid along, pushing debris and rubble out of the way like the scoop on a coal run locomotive. I only cleared half the gap before I had to stop, I couldn’t get the table to budge. Either I was caught on something or I was running out of steam. Our broadside was exposed, and sitting still as a target warranted the impact of a bullet to strike the table. ‘Plink!’ The shot echoed not a second after, off into the distance of the ruined cityscape.

"What’s the damn hold up?" Gangrene hissed, hunkered next to me for cover. I could read her expression; it said ‘move your ass.’ She prodded me with a hoof, gritting her teeth, "you run on batteries or something?" I recalled a saying, "a mare’s best friend ran on batteries," but that had been an insult and the friend that ran on batteries was a replacement for a stallion’s place in the bedroom. It didn’t apply to this situation.

Another impact struck the table, this one rebounding inside and spiraling through the right corner to sink into the wall. It narrowly missed one of the faded caricatures of an adult pony beaming a smile at me from the wall. I began to push again and this time the table began to move, clearing the first gap and giving us a moment to rest behind the first support pillar. "Heckling me won’t help me push the table any faster," I muttered, resting my back against the table which was holding up surprisingly well.

We rested there for a few minutes. Gangrene was preparing her rifle and checking how much ammunition she had left. I was staring at the mural, the blissful expressions of foals and their parents playing in a park sent cascades of emotions drowning out my senses into the greener pastures of long forgotten memories. I couldn’t distinguish memories from the simulation of Necro-Net and what could have possibly been my own memories. Rolling hills and green trees topped with a pleasant and edgeless sky, bordered only by the bullet-holes and chipped paint mutilating the happy scene.

"Mind telling me a little about yourself?" I asked bleakly, the thoughts hopscotching through my mind had made me ultimately questioning if waking up had been a good thing.

I needed a distraction, one that would make me focus on something else other than potentially losing my life to a sniper. "A mare that takes charge is common, but I’m not used to seeing one so battle hardened. You’re also more educated than your late companion." I put on an air of calm and pushed my own feelings aside to seem less afraid. "A gang seems to be the last place I’d expect to see a mare like you." She had the makings of a military mare in my opinion.

"Now’s not the time to flirt, Dead-head." Gangrene grunted, snapping the bolt action slide on her rifle back and checking it’s mechanisms before reloading, "flirt after the job’s done." She didn’t seem displeased, focused on making sure her weapon was ready. She pulled some black grease from her hair, oiled parts of her gun then fixed her mohawk. "Do you think you can push the table the rest of the way?" The concern in her voice was almost as heavy as the table.

‘Don’t tango with a viper even if it has legs,’ the saying goes, and this mare was everything but my type. Still, at least she was fun for a vicious ruffian."I can try," doing my best to sound convincing, I cradled my head against the table’s underside. I wanted this to be over. I wanted to find out why I was awake. There was a reason for everything that had happened so far. I just didn’t know where to start looking--Maybe this mare would have answers for me? I sighed and rolled my attention to the tattered pillar behind the table.

The poster that stubbornly clung to the pillar behind the table was a recruitment poster for the Steel Rangers that promised glory and honor, but most of it was so faded that I couldn’t read it. That and I was looking at it upside down. Some full body armor like the one in that tattered poster would be useful. Also, why was a military recruitment poster in a hospital in the first place? I guess I didn’t want to go out there and be shot at again. I was just stalling now.

"We should invest in better body armor," I deadpanned, "I think several hundred pound medical tables will be in short supply outside the hospital."

"Only if you’re buying! Now quit stalling and get pushing." The bossy mare growled to me. That statement was accurate.

Complying with her request, the table moved under my force. This time it was a straight shot to the next pillar for proper cover, I hadn’t caught any snags along the ground and we had picked up a stowaway. One of the ghoul bodies from earlier, sans head, was now stuck against the table. It was the headless figurehead on our ‘airship’ and we were sailing on the wake of a cloud of refuse. The S.S. FML! It was an acronym for ‘Steam Ship Fuck My Life’. Several more bullets had sung out from the distance and stung the table--One shot had penetrated and struck Gangrene, pounding over the thick reinforced hoofball padding that guarded her shoulder.

"Fuck me! This table ain’t gonna last is it?" She rubbed the armor where her shoulder was and felt lucky that a thick and ugly bruise was all she’d have to deal with. "I’m downright Celestia blessed it just grazed..."

There was a growing trickle of red and black pouring down from where I propped myself--I wasn’t as lucky. I’d been hit, the same bullet had clipped me in the side to hit Gangrene. I covered the wound in my side and turned so she couldn’t see. "Yeah, we’re lucky..." I rasped, unable to feel the pain I’d just keep going until I couldn’t anymore. Celestia please at least let me be able to get her the rest of the way across. "I hope that whatever we find in the storage room is worth this."

We waited for ten minutes to gather composure. My bleeding hadn’t stopped, but it was slow, I was a can of water with a tiny hole poked in it. Applying pressure wasn’t working, it was still seeping through. Gangrene was too busy levitating her rifle out to take pot shots at the sniper to notice my condition. She took the ghoul body we had picked up and push a piece of it’s body out into the open to attract a shot then estimate where her target was to fire at them.

"How close are you coming to hitting them?" My question was met with a derisive snort from Gangrene. I shuffled my weight and pressed both hands against the table and dug my fingers in, "I think you’d get a better shot if we were out there."

The punk mare took a few more shots with her rifle before she leaned back, levitating her rifle back around the opening. "I’m running low on ammo and I can only guess where he is. I don’t feel like sticking my head into the noose to get a clear shot either. " She held out her rifle and examined it, cocking the lever with her magic, "I’ve got three rounds left. I really want to nail this guy."

"You’re assuming it’s a guy?" I deadpanned, leaning to pick up a tin can and throw it out into the opening. It clattered to the ground and rolled lazily out the massive opening and clattered to the ruins below. "Doesn’t that sniper shoot anything we toss or poke out there?" They were showoffs, either to us or to whoever could be with them.

"I don’t think they’d waste a bullet on a tin can." She affirmed, rolling her eyes, "And of course it’s a guy. No way would a female griffon be sitting out there pot shotting us for no reason! Ladies have class, you know." She was speaking from personal experience, clearly.

"Of...course," I pretended to agree, but wasn’t convinced on the sniper’s gender, nor did it matter to me. "Well I’ve got an idea..." I pulled out the magazine I had found earlier, one I had filled full of 5.56 ammo from the Veteran’s Wing. I pulled out a few of the bullets and held them out, "Varmint Rifles use 5.56mm ammunition, right?"

Blowing a limp part of her greasy mane from her eyes Gangrene took a look at the magazine and the ammunition. She levitated it over and began pulling the rounds out. "Yeah, this is great--I have to say, you may have saved our plots. Well, depending on your idea. You could have killed us too, so I’m not holding my breath."

Now it was my turn to make her feel uncomfortable--my plan would put us both in danger. My assumption was that the sniper was either running low on ammunition or was just toying with us. Which meant if we showed the ability to take them out, they’d be frightened off.

"Well, some men really do put on a show when they’re spineless." Gangrene agreed with my plan, which was astonishing to me. "Still, spotting their position from behind cover will be tough. You sure you can draw the fire so I can take the shot?"

That was the plan. I was going to use the table for cover and poke out my prosthetic hand topped with a nurse's cap we’d found among the remains of the dead ghouls from earlier. If the sniper took the shot, Gangrene would catch their position and lay down fire to scare them off. At the very least they’d need to change positions before trying to shoot at us again. In theory, we’d be alive and I’d only have a minor wound if I was unlucky. I felt I had a knack for being unlucky.

We set the plan in motion and I pushed the table out into the open of the third gap. Everything was going great, the sniper was taking shots at us, the table was deflecting it, and Gangrene was trying to carefully spot the sniper. Using the nurse’s hat and my prosthetic, I extended it out as if I were trying to ‘peek’ where the sniper was.

The sniper took the bait and the hat was blasted off my digits, Gangrene saw the flash of muzzle fire somewhere in the distance. She aimed her rifle and got up quickly to fire then lost her balance as things began to go terribly wrong. The floor around us sagged and began to buckle, the table began to tilt and lose itself out the open gap. The table couldn’t be stopped and we lost cover, a portion of the floor had also caved into the jagged mess below.

I had managed to grab something for cover, the corpse of the ghoul that had been the figurehead to our ‘table vessel’ and held tight to it, granting us as much cover as the frail tattered remains allowed.

Things went from bad to worse. The sniper wasn’t low on ammo, they were just waiting for us to slip up. This was their last window of opportunity to kill us, with ten feet of empty space on either side to mark as a kill zone. Round after round was unleashed in our direction, the corpse being riddled with bullets. Moving an inch would make this body worthless as cover, the rounds were sinking through anyway and slamming into me. Gangrene was taking cover behind me, her eye catching the flash of gunfire as it went off rapidly. She was trying to recover her footing, clambering to get to her hooves and duck behind me.

We were going to die. This was it. I was the only thing between the mare behind me and the sniper fire, I doubted I was very good cover. I couldn’t feel the impact of the rounds on my body but I could see the air around me filling with a spray of red and black ‘ink’.

‘Dead where you stood’ was probably applicable to my current state--I was dead but my body hadn’t fallen. The wound in my side was nothing compared to the damage I imagined I was suffering from the impacts. "Take the shot!" I belted out loudly, if my final act was going to be this, then Gangrene had to at least take the shot we had set up for! "The plan hasn’t changed! Take the damn shot!" A bullet whizzed past my ear and lodged into the wall.

The mare must have been considering fleeing, her eyes darting to the safety of cover just a single leap away. My words reached her like a slap to the face, she flinched then sprung to action with muscles tensed. She moved her rifle over my shoulder adjusted the sights and fired. The shot rang out. She fired again and again in the direction she had seen the muzzle flash. ‘KRAK!’ ‘KRAK!’ ’KRAK!’ She fired so many times I’d lost count, she had reloaded once by now. My ears were ringing with the scream of a million bells, a deafening roar that consumed all focus.

When the gunfire ended, the ringing in my ears remained. There was no more exchange between the sniper and us, then Gangrene pointed at the hazy sky, "Look! He’s flying away! I was right, bucking griffon pansy!" She laughed and howled with victory, firing a final shot towards our assailant before they had slipped completely out of sight.

I tossed the mutilated remains of the ghoul’s torso out into the ruins to join the table and followed the cheerful mare, unhindered by my injuries. I left a dancing mixture of red and black trailing behind me in thin lines. We had gotten this far, the end of another hall. "I wonder if traveling down a hallway will always be this fun." I mused aloud, feeling no different from when I had started my adventure despite the fact I’d been shot. I was likely going to be in a lot of pain once the drugs wore off. Which might be any minute now. Any minute.

"Not bad for a pretty boy ghoul, doc," Gangrene congratulated me, "How are you holding up?" Just when I didn’t think she cared! She gave me a lookover, drawing in closer "You’re made of stern stuff, that was a hefty sum of ballistic abuse. It doesn’t look too bad." She took note of four bullet wounds, one in my foreleg, one in my shoulder, and two off center in my chest. "And the uh, medical tools in you...are a nice touch?" She was a comedian now too.

I was happy that she cared, which was stupid. I just met her and I hardly knew her. She was just using me to get what she wanted. "I manage," I offered up cryptically and trotted down the hallway, "the supply room might have supplies to patch me up. Lets go."

Another hallway, this one painted muted gray, through a set of doors that were labeled ‘Maintenance’ in bold stenciled letters. There was no shortage of debris and medical trash, wrappers, and other refuse. A single floor buffer sat discarded among sagging moldy boxes at the far end. A maintenance elevator on the center wall flanked a reinforced door with a card reader with a sign that read ‘Storage’. A broken security camera fizzled and sparked from it’s mounting on the wall, hanging in disrepair.

‘Please insert card,’ the familiar prompt, this time without a buzz saw wielding zombie to race against. I pressed my card against the reader, ‘Card Accepted. Welcome Dr. SteelGraft.’ The door shuddered and opened inward.

"Well, some part of this had to be easy." I walked into the storage room, followed by Gangrene. The lights flickered on in a shudder, one of the lighting filaments blew out once power came on, leaving the room dim.

A musky, dry, dusty storage room lined with shelves, cabinets, and lockers. The walls were a soft beige and the ceiling tiles overhead were jumbled in disarray revealing ventilation ducts. A terminal sat on a desk against one of the nearby walls behind the corpse of a rotting pony in a lab coat, long since dead with a piece of paper planted over their horn. Gangrene moved for the medical boxes mounted on the wall and began to ransack them.

I moved towards the body, scooting the chair it rested in back. It’s hooves slid off the desk and it slumped over. Propping the body, it was eased back into the chair. I took the paper off it’s horn. It was a note, written hastily in black ink on wrinkled white paper. I read it to myself silently;

Tattered Note:

"If you find this, then you’ve made it this far. I expected as much from you. Take the lock box I have left with this body, you’ll know what to do with it."

This was a cliche if I ever did see one. There was no way this note was addressed to me, or to anyone alive for that matter. Someone had placed this here for someone to find, it’s relevance was probably as old as the other notes and files I found. Color me jaded, but I didn’t expect to find a box on the corpse.

There was something on the body, sitting in it’s lap. A black box with silver banding with no discernable way to open it. It wasn’t like anything I’d seen so far. It was pristine, not a single scratch on it’s obsidian black surface. My blood and black ooze just slid off. Maybe this was relevant. The note was wrong about me knowing what to do with this strange box.

"How’s the ransacking going?" I asked while examining the body of the departed doctor, taking his ID Card and leaving the few caps I found in his pockets.

"It’s got plenty of supply. But I think I should take a look at you now." The mare cleared a spot to work on me and waved me over. "Now get over here, you’re bleeding on your...Everything." She arranged the supplies she was going to use on a flat surface nearby.

I stowed the box away in the grotesque saddlebag and sat down for her to work on patching me up. "This is nice, I was expecting you to tell me to handle it myself."

"Yeah, I don’t think telling a drugged doctor even one that specializes in holes to patch himself up is a good idea," she clicked her tongue to the roof of her mouth and leaned in, working on helping me out of the battle saddle and my coat.

Half an hour worth of sitting to deal with these wounds was possibly the most boring thing I’ve dealt with in my adventure. Boring was good though. I made small talk while Gangrene pulled each slug out of each wound, she even took the time to yank the medical tools out of my chest and strip the wire nodes off my pelt. She produced a bottle of Wild Pegasus Whiskey from her saddle bag, downed some, then sprayed it out between her lips over my wounds. "Gotta say, these medical tools sticking out of your chest aren’t painting you to be the best doctor," she chuckled as she wiped her lips on her foreleg.

"They hell are you doing?!" I recoiled back, but Gangrene held me still in her telekinetic grip. Relaxing, I sighed, "you got me. I’m a horrible painter." That earned a laugh from the mare.

"Your wounds are sterile now," she explained in passing. Gauze was packed over the injuries and bound in place with bandages. "And while we’re at it, lets change the rest of your dressings." That didn’t sound like a bad idea, I nodded simply and she went to work. The bandages I had been wearing since waking up were now bloodied and ruined, a fresh set would do me good.

“You know what you’re doing," noticing that she didn’t seem to be a slouch at handling injuries, I had to bring it up.

“I was a medic before I joined the Vipers," she answered while unwinding my old bandages to replaced them with a new set, "I picked up a few tricks from the Vipers too." Double checking my staples, she threaded a needle with some thin wire and set to work making sure my old wounds were closed. "Yeah, no idea why you just don’t use a healing potion or something. These wounds will take forever to heal naturally."

“You seemed like the medic type." I affirmed.

“What makes you say that?" She replied, snapping the wire and tying off a newly tightened stitch on my torso sutures.

"Because you care. When you shot Curbstomp you were low on ammo, weren’t you? There could have been more ghouls, something you’d need that bullet for. You didn’t let him suffer." That was kindness, even if it was death, it was better to not suffer. That made sense to me now that I thought about it.

The mare looked away, straightening her mane with her magic, “It wasn’t easy. As smelly, rude, and obnoxious he was, he was still kinda decent. Cruel, rough, but he’d never hit a mare. Took bullets a few times for me too..." Her voice was filled with hints of pain, she shook her head and wiped her eye with a hoof. "It was my fault he died, but you gotta be hard to live out here, you know?"

I nodded slowly, "Shame I’m not a mare...I still wouldn’t consider him decent. Colorful, maybe?" I wondered if I should tell her his body went missing. Telling her that might be confusing or unbelievable. I’d let her discover that herself.

A small vial of red liquid with a cork stopper was presented to me. "Drink this," Gangrene ordered simply. The cork popped off and the vial tipped to my lips. I drank as ordered and Gangrene pulled the vial away once it was half empty. She sprinkled the other half against my wounds. After a few moments she cursed under her breath. "Nothing’s happening! Is this potion bad? Can they even go bad?" She tried two other potions, cursing louder after each one failed to do anything for me. "Even potions work on ghouls!"

She came to the conclusion that either all the potions and healing supplies in this storage room had gone bad, or that they just wouldn't work on me. She took her shoulder pads off and used some potion on her bruise, the wound vanished and left no trace behind. "No, not duds. It’s you, SteelGraft. There’s something wrong with you."

In denial about whatever condition I had I attributed this effect to the drugs. Gangrene retracted her previous statement about wanting some of the drugs I was on and made it abundantly clear a drug like that was absolutely useless. Numbly, I agreed and tuned out whatever else she had to say about it. She changed the rest of my bandages, excluding the wrappings around my eye, they were still sort of clean, and went back to pillaging the storage room.

Thirsty for clues I returned to the maneframe terminal on the desk and quickly assessed it. No password required, just like the computer in the security check point, the user was still logged in. Their name had been ‘Mortician Muse’, and the information flashed across the screen in green hues.

Gangrene was emptying all the cabinets and shelves and anything she found useful. Frustrated to find two of the lockers locked she kicked them once before moving onto the next. stealing glances back to her, I saw that she’d found a few new lab coats and a set of surgeons scrubs in one of them.

The maneframe yielded it’s secrets plain as day, like a casual conversation topic between trusted friends. What was on the screen was alarming, a list of over five hundred patients on a roster, and next to each one there was a status. The first fourteen patients on the list were ‘Active’, most were ‘In-Stasis’, and some were listed as ‘deceased’. I stopped at ‘Patient 39’ and saw ‘Active’ next to them. That was ButterSquash’s patient number. I brought up the information on that patient.

Patient 39:

Name: ButterSquash

Bloodtype: AB +

Condition: Active

Medical Records: Suffered major trunk trauma, prognosis poor.

Allergic to milk.

Six year veteran of the Equestrian Military. Medical discharge.

Searching the other records, most were similar. All were veterans with poor chances of survival, all were critically injured and sacrificed their livelihood for the war, all of them were...like me. Things weren’t adding up. What was my patient number? With my luck I might have been one of the first fourteen on this list, their information had been purged from this terminal.

"Find anything interesting?" Gangrene croakede behind me. I nearly hit my horn on the ceiling with how high I jumped. She laughed, "You spook easy..."

Swallowing my nerves I shook my head, "Just patient records. I’m going to check the memos next."

"Ah, tell me if it tells us where anything else might be stashed," she rubbed her hooves together greedily.

The memos displayed by the terminal were the usual for a computer in a storage room. They had logs of everything put in the storage room, taken out, and little comments about the status of incoming shipments for the Nursery and the Veteran’s Wing.

Stable-Tec Delivery 23:

The ‘Stay-Safe’ stasis and shielding system for the nursery arrived. We’re working on installing it next week. At least this means the nursery will be protected in case any contaminates ever make it into the hospital. We can’t risk a repeat of the last incident.

Ignoring anything I felt, the next log was opened. Gangrene made an obscene joke about ‘Popsicfoals’ again and I snorted dismissively. The next log was interesting...

Missing Supplies:

To: Vanilla Manner

From: Mortician Muse

Some of my private things are vanishing from the storage room. I’m beginning to suspect it’s Bullet Sink confiscating my belongings again. He must be hiding my stuff in the contraband safe at the Veteran’s Wing security checkpoint. He’s just trying to get me fired! Who cares if I take Party Time Mintals? I can’t afford to lose my job, so could you get my things out of the safe and dispose of them before he shows Dr. Stable? I found the code to the safe, 840352. Thank you Darling!

"Well, there’s the code to a safe..." I muttered, casting a glance to the corpse that had been sitting at this terminal. I imagined they were Mortician Muse. I looked to the ID I had picked up off the stallion’s body and matched the name. ‘Mortician Muse’ was the name paired with a photo of him, a handsome blue unicorn with a russet mane that looked well kept and soft orange eyes. "He was cute..."

"Do you know where that safe is?" Gangrene inquired, pushing against me and laying both her hooves on my shoulders. "It has to have good crap in it, right? It’s locked!" Yes, locked things must have good things in them, that’s why they’re locked.

"It’s near where we first met, through the double doors near the security checkpoint. I don’t know exactly where the safe is, but you really don’t want to go there." I advised her, mostly because there was a zombie with a buzz saw lurking just outside the security door.

"What do you mean ‘I don’t want to go there’? Of course I do! There could be some really good stuff in there! Even better than the stuff we found here. Contraband makes me think big caps." Her face drifted closer to mine until we were almost nose to nose. She was so excitable when it came to talking about her income. My understanding failed at ‘caps’.

"Buh…?" I so eloquently phrased my question, eyebrow raised. Smooth, whoever I am, smooth. I stammered and managed to convey my thoughts clearly. "First of all, this is very uncomfortable…Second, I get your point. Third, what do you mean ‘caps’?"

Retracting her hooves she gestured in a wide arc, "Caps, moolah, cash. It’s money. I’m getting supplies to trade for caps to buy other things. You been cooped up here for what, over a hundred years? Probably more. I’m not a historian and I don’t keep calendars. You’re really behind the times."

A century since the war at least? A hundred years in Necro-Net to wake up to this. Maybe I was glad I didn’t remember a thing, I’d probably be too depressed to do anything if I could remember the past. "Back in my day we used bits, had green lawns, trees, and fewer zombies per square mile on average. Also, I’m pretty sure I was awesome."

"Alright, gramps, I get it. So why don’t I want to get these goods?" She sat back on her haunches and tapped her hoof expectantly.

"A zombie." I stated simply.

"Just a single ghoul? Easy as Sugar bombs to deal with that." She gave me a smug smile, "That’s the best you can come up with? I think you just want to get the goods for yourself."

If one of my eyes twitched, I couldn’t feel it. The audacity of this mare’s claim was unfounded. "That’s not the case. I don’t want to go back there. It’s a really dangerous ghoul, stuck behind the Security Door." This mare wasn’t getting the picture, she was keeping most of the supplies from this storage room. She was greedy and I couldn’t care less about these supplies.

Gangrene knickered dismissively and trotted through the door, "well I guess I will see you around, Dead-Head."

"What do you mean ‘see you around’?" I watched her, stunned.

"The arrangement was you help me get to the storage room and I wouldn’t shoot you. That arrangement’s done. I’ll see you around pretty boy." She winked at me and her flank vanished around the doorframe. "Enjoy the shotgun and saddlebag. You earned them."

That was that. It was just business. I had hoped she would stick around for a while longer, at least until we got to a town. Amassing all my worldly possessions was quick; shotgun, revolver, battle saddle, coat, hospital map, gun magazine, recording from SteelGraft, and doctor’s coat. Gangrene had left the spare lab coats and a few odds and ends I put into my saddle bag. Two spare doctor’s coats and a small personal medkit that Gangrene had left for me in an obvious location.

I gave the terminal a final look to see if anything else was important There were the final operations this terminal had been used to log, the oldest of them was a note about the state of the hospital’s generator failing and another about the security system having errors.

Security Flaws:

From: Jello Meringue

To: General Staff

There’s nothing wrong with how our security is functioning now that it’s in place. The problem is its sensitivity. The turrets targeted a security staff member for drawing his weapon. That’s not supposed to happen. Could we get somepony to take a look at that? Thanks in advance!

Well, that was useless. At least it gave me some closure on how Bullet Sink had died. More than likely, when the attack happened, he had been torn to shreds by the turrets for drawing his weapon. "What a morosely named pony. It’s like naming someone ‘Dies Horribly.’ "

Time for me to shove off and set sail. Everything was in order, I doubted I needed the hospital map any longer, but I kept it as a souvenir. The door to the storage room slid shut behind me and locked, the card reader even told me to have a nice day.

I pressed the elevator button several times, watching the floor number where the elevator was flash as it moved to my level. It still worked? "Looks like smooth sailing from here on out. Things are coming up daisies!" The elevator dinged and opened, the remains of several skeletons tumbled out at my hooves. "Of course..." I muttered softly, wading through the remains into the elevator.

Pressing the button for level one, the doors began to close. Then I heard a scream, a piercing, terrified scream that penetrated the whole building to reach me. Was that Gangrene? There was no one else in the hospital I knew of other than her. What do I do, just leave and forget I heard that or run out of this elevator and be a big damned hero and die horrifically to ButterSquash? Maybe my name was actually ‘Bloody Bits’.

I slammed my foreleg into the elevator door before it closed and peeled it open, threading myself through the door and bolting for the Veteran's Wing. What had taken me an hour to travel due to dangers I had to circumvent my hooves devoured in a loose grab of seconds. Past the ‘Gunnery Run’ where the sniper had tried killing us, up the incline, skidding up the frigid section of the hall and tripping into the divot where the floor was weak just before the double doors. I slammed headfirst through them, sailing into the foyer past the elevator room. I tumbled end over end and skid face first to a stop.

Yes, your hero has arrived, a projectile of flailing confusion whose face has become one with a floor. I could almost hear the booming applause and whistles of an approving audience to my valiant actions. That was probably the ringing in my ears.

The roaring sound of turret fire filled my mind with worry. On my hooves again I rounded the foyer, expecting to be face to face with my worst enemy, the zombie robot ButterSquash. What I found was surprising to say the least.

Gangrene was ducked behind the security desk, nursing a bullet wound in her side. The desk had been ripped apart and the painting on the wall had been shredded revealing where the safe had been hidden. The mare had her rifle drawn and had been firing upon the turret to no effect.

"What the hell happened?" I shouted over the turret fire. The turrets ignored me, even when I cautiously entered the security checkpoint. I grit my teeth, inspired by the knowledge I had of the security system, I plucked my ID from around my neck and waved it. "Off, shut off! SteelGraft, uh..." I looked at the ID and read off more of the ID, "Clearance Code Blue, Team S!"

The turrets both stopped and faced stock forward again, both barrels smoking. That was a relief, it actually worked. A flurry of curses shot from behind the desk produced by the rancid breath of the injured Gangrene.

An exchange of glances was shared before she went to treating her own injuries, downing several potions after she removed two metal slugs from herself. She hissed out and tightened her bandages around her side. "This really hurts...nng...good thing you decided to show up. No sign of your ghoul friend, but why didn’t you tell me about the Celestia damned security system?!"

"It slipped my mind. I didn’t think the turrets would just start shooting you!" I felt guilty, I’d been the one who activated the turrets in the first place.

"What did you think they’d do, play pattycake with me?" She was upset, working on patching herself up as quickly as possibly, grumbling all the while. "Look, thanks for showing up. You didn’t have to, our arrangement was over."

"Eh, I was starting to miss you. Besides, leaving a friend to battle a dangerous zombie or....play pattycake with turrets isn’t very nice." I humored her and moved around the desk, plopping down next to her. I held out an ID card, the one that had belonged to Mortician Muse.

She took the card and looked at it and hung it around her neck, "Friends, huh? What’s this," she asked, "an ID card for the hospital?"

"Yeah, in case you run into any more security while you’re poking around. Staff was supposed to keep ID on them at all time." I rolled my shoulders and got back to my hooves, examining the heavy safe. A dial combination lock and lever to open it. "What was inside?"

"No clue, I was too busy having a diet of bullets to open it up." She was shaking, downing a little bit of her whiskey to handle her pain and nerves. "Can’t afford to waste Med-X, but I’d love some pain killers right now..." Standing up, she moved me aside and licked her lips, entering the combination into the wall safe. "It’s pay day, this had better be..." She opened the safe and her eyes narrowed, "It’s empty." She muttered darkly. "It’s fucking empty!"

I peered over her shoulder, the safe wasn’t completely empty, it had a single piece of paper inside, a neatly folded and old journal page. "Well, there’s a paper in there..."

Raking the inside with a hoof she came back with the single sheet of yellowed and aged paper. She didn’t bother reading it and tossed it at me, "You can have it, it doesn’t look like a treasure map." She fumed as she trotted to the foyer, moved a skeleton off one of the couches and tossed herself down in it’s place.

The piece of paper was carefully unfurled and smoothed out on the bullet ridden desk. Looking back to Gangrene I laughed, it must have sucked for her greed to have gotten her into such a bind. "You sure I can have this?"

Gangrene whinnied, gesturing with her hoof and tongue rudely before rolling over on the couch. "Use it as plot paper for all I care. It’s nothing valuable to me...I’m going to rest a bit. Watch my back, will you?"

"Sure." We were friends after all. Loose friends. What I knew about her, I liked. Even her characteristic greed, it made her seem like a pirate. "Rest up, I’m just going to read this and deactivate the turrets." As much as I wanted to keep the turrets on in case ButterSquash made it through the door, it seemed the monster had given up. I’d feel guilty if someone else got hurt because they were left on. The door was intact, so he hadn’t made it through.

The journal was actually more of a poem, followed by a short excerpt from a journal belonging to a poet identified as ‘Nevermore’. That name seemed familiar, as if I knew it from somewhere. They must have been a published writer in my time.

Nature of War:
Empires strong and kingdoms long, families sweet and cities neat, war outlasts them all. Hate doesn't die, foul feelings linger, these things outlast time. Know this sad fact that will never change, that suffering doesn't end with death. Those remaining will continue slaying, friendships shattered to calls of retribution. Getting even equals no sides and only makes losers of us all.

I find it funny, truly I do, that this war has taken so much and gained us so little. The joy I found in years past were far happier than enduring what I’ve witnessed. I thought of cutting my losses and fleeing, but perhaps it’s better that I stay with the crew. Even if I am a liability, he wanted me to stay. So I said yes. I could never bring myself to say no to him.

Nevermore.

That wasn’t a bad poem, it was brooding, depressing, and bleak. It was like everything else. It was as if whatever higher power allowed this to happen thought to themselves, ‘How can I make everything not nice, ever?’ and then acted on it. All the colors of awful chewed up and vomited onto a canvas of everything good or clean. I thought of Gangrene and felt better, "Not everything is gloomy skies."

I waited half an hour, reading my copy of ‘Hoofshod Hotshots’ to pass the time and improve my knowledge on guns. Some didn’t stick and I had to reread the same article ‘Aiming and You’ several times. I double checked the security door to make sure ButterSquash was no longer around before I powered down the turrets.

I left the security checkpoint to loom over the yellow mare on the couch, shaking her gently to rouse her. "Come on, it’s been half an hour. We shouldn’t stick around here." Half an hour to recover was enough, right? Magic healing potions and bandages would make a bullet wound seem like an itch.

She threw a pillow at me hard, grumbling and sitting up, "What’s the rush? It’s not like there is anything here but skeletons and couches. That heavy metal ghoul you described is nowhere to be seen and we’ve both been shot to hell. I need a bit more time for the potions to fix me." She had a point. I wasn’t feeling tired, but she could use the rest. I wondered what time it was outside.

I took a seat next to her and leaned back, causing an explosion of dust to leave the couch’s padding. I let my single eye close, "Yeah, I think you’re right. Mind if I stick with you awhile?"

"You don’t even need to ask..." Gangrene whinnied, yawning with her hoof over muzzle. "I owe you a few favors, considering. We’ll head out for Greensvale Heights tomorrow. I got to trade for goods and you probably need to get your bearings."

Greenvale Heights sounded pleasant. Not every place was in ruins, I guessed. "Sounds good to me...Get some rest. I’ll keep an eye out." Literally, I only had one eye, after all. She snorted out a laugh and rolled over to stretch out.

An hour passed, Gangrene peacefully asleep. The soft sounds of the facility full of nuanced repetitions, feeding a sense of unease. Rattling pipes and hissing ventilation ducts. I kept watch on the security door, anticipating Patient 39’s eventual return. I draped a spare doctor’s coat to drape over the mare while she slept. The lights kept flickering, hurtling us into the pitch black darkness before coming back on. "This is a bad place to be sleeping..." I told myself.

With some time to myself, I reflected on everything that happened today. What I knew and what I didn’t. The world was torn apart in the war, according to my Necro-Net hallucinations before waking up. This was connected with the box I’d found in the storage room. Furthermore, I was a veteran of the war Equestria faced before the fall that caused all this. Over a century had passed since I was ‘asleep’. Why me? Why did I have to wake up?

An eruption of noise echoed the fall of all things simple once again, my thoughts on the world cut short by the security door spiraling end over end and cleaving the couch we sat on in half, missing both me and Gangrene. Patient 39, the thing of nightmares, had crashed through the door and hurled it, screeching out an ear-splitting squeal of anger and loathing. Gangrene was awake within moments.

"What the fuck is that?!" Gangrene shot up, eyes tracing up and down the nightmare made material that Patient 39 was. She wrinkled her nose and her eyes widened with horror, "Oh fuck, it’s...it’s one of those monsters!" She had some idea on what it was.

Her elegance with words was so impressive, I was beside myself in awe with how she spoke so freely. Sarcasm withstanding, I honestly still had no idea what that thing was. "Yes! One of those monsters. This is why we shouldn’t have COME HERE!" I said loudly as ButterSquash began to lurch after us. "And we’re leaving, now!"

Gangrene didn't argue, she was up and close behind when the first buzz saw sank into the couch where we had been sitting. That fucking thing was smart. It must have been waiting for me to turn off the turrets, that or I was giving the monster too much credit. The only thing I knew for certain was we had to get away...

---

Refer to Chapter 2 Progress Review

New Companion: Gangrene
A mare with the snapping personality of a Viper. She has training as a medic and is a crack shot with a rifle. Your teammates healing is improved by 25% while she’s in your party and she has a chance to notice environmental hazards.

It is rather unfortunate you still have no idea what you’re doing.

Comments

[Turtledude]

Good chapter. Mysteries and shit.

[2biscuitspp]

*door smashes open, patient 39 lurches through* "surprise mother fu***r!!" *buzz saw blades fly everywhere*
i find this story amusing. carry on
ps: all i can picture is steelgraft doing jack sparrow hand gestures at people/ponies.

[RevelRomp]

First off: I like the idea of Necro-Net in general. It's an interesting psuedo-afterlife.

Second: This chapter had me cracking up with laughter. <3 I am adding it to the list of fics I enjoy.

[erictheblue]

Well, that was useless. At least it gave me some closure on how Bullet Sink had died. More than likely, when the attack happened, he had been torn to shreds by the turrets for drawing his weapon. "What a morosely named pony. It’s like naming someone ‘Dies Horribly.’ "

oh, FYI, there's a character actually named "dies horribly" in the online comic Goblinscomic (.com) warning! it's extremely violent!