A mare to keep

Chapters

The usual suspects
Hunter/Gatherer
Hungover
Lost

The usual suspects

Hark, another morning blooms in a forest without trees. I stretch my grimy hands out to the sides as the scintillating light invades my ramshackle shack. I take a second to absorb the overt silence and climb from my bed fashioned from old newspaper and a tarnished, aged mattress.

I strain my weary knees as I climb from the tortuous bunk and push the crude shape of wood out of the way.

I feel an enticing breeze, it entices me back inside, but there is one other I must attend to. I amble at a rather leisurely pace over the crest of the hill I have adopted as my homestead.

Once clear of the verdant veil I am able to see my only friend in my ever darkening, pitiless existence. I would forget my own head it if weren’t securely screwed in place. I pull my raggedy jean pockets out before I realise my blunder.

My relatively warm shack beckons me once more. I stop in my tracks after only catching a brief glimpse of my beloved friend. She is a quiet soul, the strong silent type. We get along famously. I reach the door of oddly shaped wood and flick it aside. I wonder through the cosy innards before my hand feels upon the small hemp sack I seek. I hook the svelte strap over my index and ring fingers and once more set about my morning report.

I climb over the steep verge and take a moment to admire the idyllic wasteland that surrounds my humble holdings. Here is dearth of life, barring me and my beloved friend, there is hardly any greenery left beyond the smoking fires that continue to billow off in the distorted reaches of my vision. I jog meagrely for my legs are busted and worn from the pure struggle for survival. As soon as I see her luxurious mane and calm expression, my own heart’s candent fire ceases.

My mind swarms with worry and my eyes dare not stop their darting lest I be surprised once again. Every morning I assure myself that my luck will run out eventually. I put forward my open palm and present my sweetest equine friend with a couple of sugar cubes. Her muzzle can’t really smile to me but I know she appreciates the thought. She licks my palm despite how filthy my hands are and quickly necks the pair of sugar cubes.

I place the tips of my fingers carefully on her snout and smile warmly. This is the same routine as always, it plays out the same way every day.

She doesn’t ask for much. I provide a pail of water for her thirst and caring ear for her worries. She used to confide in me a lot but recently she had become very secretive. After most of my failing race fell ill from a deadly new cancer treatment, survivors are few and far between. I crave the companionship the mare grants me, she is the only thing keeping me sane.

When she is ill, I focus on how to heal her. When she is hungry I find the food to satisfy her. She asks for so little, when in return she gives so much. I know I am overstepping a rule I have literally etched into stone, but I sneak another sugar cube to her and pet her smooth muzzle. “That’s a special treat, little missy. I don’t know if you know this, but it’s been a year since we first met. I’ll run out of these if I treat you good every day.”

She scoffs the final offering and flutters her ears as if there is danger close by. “Don’t guzzle them down so quick, Applejack, You know how much you complain when you get indigestion.”

Her pale orange ears prick up to my jesting. She bows her head over the stable door and looks up to me with eyes as big as dinner plates. “You’re going to put that bridle on me again, aren’t you?” She sighs.

I place both of my grubby paws under her cheeks and rub them furiously. “It’s a necessary evil, I’m afraid.”

Once more my appetite has emptied the parlour, rather old munitions crate, of food. I stay out in the back of beyond because the towns and cities attract them like bees to honey. By ‘them’, I mean the disfigured remnants that were ‘lucky’ enough to survive the necrosis caused by the magical mystery cure. I open the stable door with the slide of the bolt and allow the door to open.

Applejack wastes no time rushing into the inclement breeze. She immediately turns tail and runs for her abode when I return with a depressingly small carrot and the bridle she fears. My beloved friend is such a timid creature. As she nearly knocks me for six with her backward bucking hooves, I see her odd painted flank.

We rarely have time to discuss our histories. As soon as chance came to be, I would regale her with my lame, servile existence, and she would laugh. How she would laugh, it would make a refreshing change from her constant sulking. She stares disdainfully at the blockade in front of her, affronting her cowardice.

I pass my grubby mitt over her blatant tattoo of an orchard apple tree before I continue to stroke her along the back until I am in line with her beautiful emerald eyes once more.

She sniffs hard the air. “What’s the matter AJ? Is there something out there?” I fearfully ask.

As she worriedly turns her head and in turn forces my gaze to follow, she snatches the tiny carrot from my lose grip and scarfs it down without taking a single bite.

It would have seemed as if fate had brought us together for we both had lost all of our friends and all of our kin.

One year since, I was completely alone. I travelled to only the noise of my whistling and the occasional anguished cry or howl of the corrupted as they would prowl around. I was at my wit’s end when I met a shivering heap of oddly coloured pony. From that moment on, we relied on one another. I provide her with food and shelter whilst she keeps my mind in check. I was never really sure why she never ran away. Perhaps she was just as scared as me.

I go to embrace her muzzle before she races away from me, towards my ramshackle shack. I fear sometimes she might spook and send me into the clutches of the damned victims of the miracle cure. In a way, it is a blessing that we have both escaped the ties that once bound us. Carrying baggage around in a world where we much travel light is a foolish notion.

I do no run as I pursue my flighty friend or she will bolt from me again. I find her greedily snacking on the thickets of thistles that sprout from the musty cracked window to my shack. I have to pry her from the treats; I have no record of her medical history. If she suffered from laminitis, my archaic form of transport would be all but ruined.

She didn’t appreciate my rude conduct. “Do you have to be quite so rash?” She whines.

I look for a brief lapse of concentration and find it. I lasso the reins over her muzzle and position the bit next to her chattering teeth. It is indeed cold. I fold my arms and foolishly let the main headpiece plummet to the crisp summit of autumn leaves. I shiver for a moment before my beloved friend cottons on to the situation.

She dutifully bows her head down and collects the strewn out bridle from the leaf litter. She is probably under the false impression that I am out to scour the sweetshops for her sugar cubes. I think to myself. ‘She can keep on dreaming’.

She tries to speak with the bittersweet bit still caught in her teeth. “Tho, where are we going?”

I relieve her of the burden and slide my thumb to the back of her gum. She opens her mouth and the rest is the same as usual. Once tacked-up I lead her to what is left of a fence, merely a post really, and tether her to it. I know she is not some stupid mindless beast, but I know too well that she might dash away if so much as a raindrop falls on her twitching snout.

In this new world supplies are scarce. I am still searching for a saddle. For some reason I still believe our friendship goes beyond a symbiotic dependence on one another.

I fasten the cuffs on my denim-wool blend jacket and pace toward her fidgety face. I lean in to kiss her but she has seen me try this before. She veers away and leaves me to flounder in a shallow puddle of muck. I’m not sure, but I believe this setting was used for farming before the miracle cure cleared hospitals and culled entire countries.

She sniggers as she returns. She winks, hiding her majestic emerald eye. “Pffa, I hate the taste of this darn thing. So, I assume you have consumed everything edible. I wouldn’t be too shocked if I found that mattress to have a bite taken out of it. Where to, boss?”

I slip on the first strut of the destroyed fence section. She giggles but hides it quickly as I stare daggers back at her. I hate losing. On my third attempt I wobble at the top of the post before swinging my leg over her broad back and fetching the reins up.

My hiking boots were hardly adequate for riding but I planned on tethering her somewhere clear of the sticky flypaper city lest she provide a buffet for the screaming public.

I take a second just to get comfortable and bring my heels into her sides. “Ah, you know me so well. You know, four year old mattress has an acquired taste.”

She shoots around in a circle at first before plunging her best hoof forward into the mucky slush. She struggles a moment and panics insanely until she bombs it down the side of the steep verdant slope.

Soon we join a quaint dirt track and follow it to the very bottom of the hill. We round a tight bend in the trail and I am nearly thrown off of my seat. Luckily, I can thoroughly rely on my skittish, petty steed. Applejack has never let me down before. The noble creature has a way of negotiating the steep angles and perilous drops that pockmark our wonted foraging route.

The town comes into view and the both of us are under no illusion of banquets or endless a la cart dinners. I happen upon a small copse in clear view of the town in disrepair and slow her blistering canter to a gentle sitting trot. Riding Applejack was unlike any mount I had ever tried before. She controls herself and has an amazing ability to warn me of impending stray branches before even I see them.

I dismount her among the trees and sling the reins over her snout. I secure her to a suitable tree and blow a kiss to her as I vanish off into the sombre town beyond.

Hunter/Gatherer

I had been so complacent that morning that I hadn't even noticed my rucksack digging painfully into my spine. I reach the town and meet the first obstacle of many. Any survivors who were foolhardy or just downright stupid enough would take up residence in towns and cities for they were closer to food. Before I tackle the dumpster that straddled the corrugated iron barriers, I zip open a side compartment and ready my trusty hammed in my grubby mitt.

I took care not to cut myself on the prongs of glass that project from the decayed dumpster for the disfigured people would smell the blood and come in their hundreds to feast.

I am just about clear when I hear a deafening whinny. I abandon the caution and thusly rip my calf open on a thick shard of glass. I hurry through my slight limp back to my noble steed. She has been startled by something. I fear one of the wretched corrupted had fancied her as a hearty meal. I follow her pinprick emerald eyes and find a harmless squirrel.

Already, I can hear the townscape ignite with the banshee screams and harrowing howls of the raging corrupted. I wrap my right arm under her chest and join it to my other arm that gently drapes over her poll. I need to calm her down. Such a pain is this timid friend of mine.

A searing pain climbs my leg and ripples up to my jaw. It was the tiniest of scratches, but there again I am a bit of a pansy. I notice I have dropped my hammer in my haste. I back cautiously away and keep my index finger pressed against my closed lips. “Shush. Be quiet Applejack. You know what those things will do.”

She shyly nods and settles onto her haunches. I cannot stress how important silence is in this world. It hides us from both fellow survivor and ravaged corrupted. I creep back to her side. She wearily turns her head and nibbles affectionately at my fingernail. I stroke the length of her long, platted mane and fiddle briefly with the brilliant red ribbon that ties the end and forms the neat little bunch.

I wince as I crouch to look deep into her fearful, flighty eyes. She sneezes all over my face before snorting loudly as she laughs at my snotty short black hair. She turns her head away and gazes apprehensively towards a small pillbox construction sitting at the foot of yet another hill. At his angle, the scintillating light highlights her cute freckled cheek perfectly.

I shrug my near empty rucksack off and unclip the main compartment. I gingerly grasp the bear trap from inside and tread carefully as I once more block Applejack’s fearful vision. I place the trap. I trust her instincts better than I trust my own.

She tilts her head up to look at me and pulls a mischievous grin. "Andy, I eat nothing but grass and hay. What if I, you know, have to fart?”

I playfully return to my rucksack and benignly glance into the innards. “We could always stuff a cork up there, if you think that would help.” I jab.

She lets out a demure nicker and munches the tallish grass in front of her. Not much grows anymore.

I shimmy back into the rucksack straps and scratch at the stubble on my chin. I turn back to her as I leave the haven of trees. “Don’t worry; I’ll be back in a jiffy.” I promise and couple with a cheeky wink.

Amid the ashen stacks of burned wood and charred land, the rusty old hammer is easy to find. I snatch it up and promptly gambol over the dumpster. I land on the other side and am immediately foiled by my haste.

I can hear the awful corrupted bleeding through the cracks in the fissure-filled town. I get as far as a shattered glass window before I collapse. I seethe as I grasp a pernicious shard of glass that is jutting out from my right knee. How foolish I had become. The noise was not for my startled mare, but the blood that hemorrhaged from me and formed tantalising puddles on the fissured asphalt street.

Thankfully, the shard had not cut me too deep. I pinch the blade where it is bluntest and drag it out of its patella tomb. I nearly faint as the spearing sensation courses up my spine. I galumph through the cumbering window display and negotiate with a freaky mannequin that poses gaily therein. After the slight altercation, I slip from the window ledge and end up sandwiched between a pair of slanted shelves.

I briefly survey the store for anything resembling food, a crushed or warped tin perhaps, anything would suffice. I am to leave empty-handed. I am on my way out when I hear something smash in the backrooms of the shop. I pause and firmly hold my hammer, ready to strike at a moment’s notice.

I approach the counter and peer over in some ill-conceived hope I would find something. Once more there are empty shelves and empty table tops. A shadow glides around the corner and something turns the handle. I back away with fright as awful screams split through my ears. The door busts open and a duo of the corrupted launch from the darkness it had shielded me from.

The portly shop owner has trouble vaulting the counter whilst his mere twig of a wife overcame the trifle with no issue. I am woefully underequipped. The hammer I wield is more for realigning Applejack’s shoes than dealing with the corrupted mobiles.

Nevertheless, it seems to me as if the door they had come from was locked. It may be a long shot, but locked doors usually brought the promise of food. The curse that vexes these people is translated through sweat. I have devised a simple rule for dealing with them, don’t.

The first symptoms the victim suffers are the loss of both hearing and hair. But they thirst for blood, they pine for it. I am a veritable vending machine at this point for my knee is gushing and my calf is seeping. The scantly haired corrupt woman lunges for my throat but I am too quick.

I take a clumsy step up to the window display before driving my blacksmith’s hammer through the bare cap of her skull. She spits out a wad of sanguineous fluid from her maw and her eyes turn back into her head. She collapses, dead. The best means to dispatch the corrupted was to destroy the skull. The anger was caused by the inflamed amygdala, a side effect of the mystery cure.

I taste something metallic as a warm droplet slides to the back of my throat. I retch at the horrid sensation and firmly grip the blacksmith's hammer.

I try to prise the head free of the skull as the portly husband bumbles towards me. He can scarcely squeeze through the narrow aisle. He brushes the empty wrappers and dusty cobwebs from the sides as he closes in on me. As he plods his maw releases great daubs of blood and saliva. I clean the hammer from the dented skull and feebly swing it into the assailing corrupted’s temple.

As soon as I deliver the pathetic swing I knew it would not be enough. I climb back onto the window display and snap the arm from the mannequin. From what I can remember of anatomy, eyes are pretty vulnerable. I shaft the appendage forward and send the flat of the fibreglass hand straight through the corrupted’s eye.

He joins his wife on the floor in a sort of touching reunion. I slip from the window ledge and my naked face nearly touches the hairy, flabby arm of the male corrupted. I jerk my head away and respectfully step over the victims of the so called march of progress.

I notice something peeking out of the man’s back pocket, a revolver. I snatch it with my fingerless gloved hand and continue towards the backroom. I wait at the aperture and whisper into the gauze of pitch blackness. “Hello? Is anyone in there?”

I feel foolish, probably speaking to the corrupted children of the shop. I have never fired a gun before. Back to my forgetfulness, I have left my torch back in my shack.

I feel around the dank nothingness until my fingers run across something cold and metallic. I dig my nails into various slots and holds until finally something opens. I lean down and smell the contents but alas there is nothing in it. Either that or it is a tin full of oats or wheat or something like that. In my sensory deprivation, I can smell the fetidly rotting bodies of the corrupt. They are doomed to be forever decomposing.

I conceal the six-shooter in the seat of my raggedy jeans before skipping over the fallen corrupted and sliding through the sunnily disposed display set.

Once out in the street I smell something entirely different to the stench of decay. It smells almost like a freshly baked pie, right out of the oven. I jog along with a far more apparent limp until I reach a fork in the road. In one direction, I hear the discontented public screaming and howling. I opt to avoid the corrupted when I can and start down a narrow alleyway.

I continue in my clumsy fashion, my foot triggers something. Once more my feet betray me. I hear a whip crack and I am helplessly hoisted upside down into the air. My momentum carries my weighty head into a brick wall and knocks my lights clean out.

Hungover

When I awake I am still haplessly suspended from the trap. Blasted survivors, they must have been setting defences to ensure people like me didn’t steal their supplies. I dangle and sway and through my blurry vision I can see the six-shooter.

My first thought is not for myself, it is always for Applejack. I cannot see her anywhere, although it is taxing enough just to see the ground through my fuzzy vision.

I pass my grubby mitt over my head in case I am bleeding. I remove the hand and inspect the results. No blood.

I’ve always had a strong head. I stretch my arms as far down as they will go but I cannot catch hold of the revolver. I hear the corrupted howl as the moon rises over the townscape. In the forefront of my field of my vision, a small corrupted child rushes past the mouth of the alley.

My heart races, begging to escape the confines of my chest, and my breathing is erratic. I cannot move my legs; blood has rushed to my delirious head and fingertips. After a further sweep of my surroundings, I stumble upon the fact that the day is nearly over.

The moon hangs lonely in the sky and the shroud of night quickly mantles the once effulgent expanse. I shut tightly my eyes as the roof from which I hang complains. I hear a creaking and abruptly my head crashes down against the dustbin counterweight below.

I feel nauseous. I snatch the revolver by the very tip of my middle finger and hold it steady in my hands. I tremble as I try to aim the shaking barrel of the gun. It didn’t look like the survivors that had set the trap were in any hurry to glean their prize. I take a long deep breath in and pull the trigger. The chamber is empty.

I felt as if I am playing Russian roulette against myself. Mine is a sad and lonely existence. I pull the trigger again and then a third time. Again, nothing exciting happens. The magazine carries on turning until there is only one chance left. I close my eyes and squeeze the trigger for the last time.

The six-shooter erupts with a violent explosion. I fall flat on my arse and listen out for the inevitable screams and howls. I can hear them and they are getting louder and louder. sprint towards the dancing shadows until the worst possible thing happens. If I cannot outrun them I will be cornered. I don’t fancy my chances all that much.

I trip slightly over a loose paving slap as I sleekly leave the corrupted in my wake. I dive over the dumpster and as I land haphazardly on the other side, I hear Applejack scream.

I leap back into action and leave my rucksack behind. I make for the copse of trees and soon I see the cause for the disturbance. Applejack darts away as a corrupted hunter drags half of his body across the grass whilst his legs remain clasped in the bear trap.

My legs give way at the most inopportune moment and I fall face-first into a shallow bramble bush.

I can sense the fear in her screams and I can see the fear in her eyes. Finally she severs her reins and gallops quickly away. I can do nothing. I am without a weapon and without hope. My routine is left in tatters and my normal humdrum errand has gone sadly awry. I watch her as she disappears from sight.

I can hear the encroaching growls and howls and screeches and screams and keep my eyes closed for the end.

I am woken by a familiar whinny. I battle free from the thistle-bound bush and gaze onwards, befuddled by my beloved friend’s new found zeal. She rears up and liquefies the corrupted hunter before bucking away the assailing townspeople.

I am concussed, heavily bleeding and starving. All I can think of though, is how my shy little flower has blossomed. I clear the accursed brambles and long sticky grasses until I am abreast Applejack.

She leaps and turns to face me. She winks confidently. “Look Andy, I have no clue what a ‘jiffy’ is. But you can’t go around making promises you can’t keep.”

I look back at her and scowl. “Why don’t you keep your trap shut?! Not that you care, but I was ensnared in some dumb idiot’s crude idea of a trap. You’re an awful selfish monster, why haven’t I eaten you already?” I snarl.

I hear a volley of gunshots, though they sound like they are coming from miles away. I try to fight this inbuilt anger. It tests me; it makes me feel hatred for my beloved friend. I pull her head down by the mane and flick her cruelly in the eye.

My mind is not my own.

She brushes off what would usually send her packing. She trots over to a stump and lowers her back for me to board.

I limp over to her, and with every step a get a little angrier. I grimace as the dull gunshots sound off in the far distance once more.

Applejack stamps her hoof on the ground as a warning. “More survivors are coming this way. Andy, I will wait for you but hurry.”

I feel this overwhelming haze falling over everything. It is as if I can sense the rich blood as it pumps throughout Applejack’s marvellous form.

I reach the stump and wildly leap onto her back. Before I could issue a single command, I sunk my teeth through her thick coat and pelt. She bucks her legs out but calms herself down uncannily.

She carries me effortlessly through the dreary fog of the night as a pair of headlights shredded the scarce wildlife and scathed the lacklustre wilderness. I drift in and out of consciousness until all I see is blackness.

When my eyes do peel open, this world’s greatest monster has opened fire on us. I feel warm sensations all up my back and along my right leg. I can feel the anger taking over.

Applejack forges onwards without ever darting or straying from the path. I hear her whine as a bullet catches her in the orchard tree cutie mark. We charge through a low-hanging branch. I huddle into her but still my face is littered with sap and bracken from the evergreen. I run my fingers through my hair and look in horror as my hair has shredded in great clumps from my scalp.

I know she can sense these changes in me. As a long time rider I know that a mount reacts to their rider’s emotions. If she could feel even a fraction of my hatred, she would have gone mad. She turns to look at me. “Hold on Andy, there’s a bit of a jump coming up.”

The group of survivors have cajoled us into a bottleneck. At the cap of the bottle is a wire fence. A stray gunshot takes the legs from right under her and she ploughs right through the barbed wire. Luckily, I am released from her broad back. I burden her no longer. I land awkwardly in the sparse balding grass beyond my mount and my hearing worsens. I can barely hear her frightful screams as she thrashes around in the unpleasant net.

Lost

Oh no, he’s one of them now. He always warns me to ‘steer clear’. It only takes one drip of blood, one bead of sweat, one drab of drawl, and you join them. Why couldn’t he for once follow his own advice? It matters not, I’m soon to follow.

The sharp barbs drag through my tender flesh. I hear my beloved friend roving and moaning on the plain of dearth leaf litter beyond the wire fence.

He has blood slathered around his shuddering lips. I cannot flee.

He approaches my prison of penetrating barbs. I pull away but the pain it throws me and the fear it freezes me to the spot.

The inebriate survivors from the town clamber from the truck. Some of them aim their guns at my blighted friend. The rest, they cruelly peel me from the wire fence.

I am in shock, there before me is a river of my blood. I kick meagrely and struggle facilely until I am dumped away from the bottleneck.

I see what I think to be impossible, the grizzled survivors two wonder through the wall of pain. I am woken from my dream dazed state as I see the barbed wires have followed me.

The blood, it runs in torrents from my smattering of cuts. I hear my beloved friend retaliating to the unfair odds that surround him.

I can’t do anything. I want to, Celestia believe me I do. Oh, how poetic. He’s never let me down but the moment he needs me, I can’t be there for him.

I hear a loud, awful noise. My friend falls onto his back. He seems somehow peaceful. I try to get up but my legs, they won’t carry me. I feel something cold stroke my freckled cheek and I panic. I need to calm down, he told me to stay calm. They’re gonna kill me if they think I’m corrupted.

I hear a click, but I still breathe. I turn around as quickly as I dare until I am facing a firing squad. I cry, I try to stop my tears but I don’t see the point anymore. It was just a normal day…

“Check her eyes, make sure she’s clean!” I hear one of the survivors bark.

“I can’t see ‘em.” I hear another answer.

I risk opening one eye and catch sight of one of the survivors. He is standing tall on the back of the truck. He shakes his head.

“Nah can’t take that risk. Put her down boys.”

The sights all train in on me. I look to my silent friend, who once spoke with jokes a plenty. I watch him do absolutely nothing as I do the same. The air runs still and the light, it fades.

The drunkards clumsily make holes in me. I scream, but stop, what is the point? Finally, one merciful soul sends a bullet into my skull.

Fin