Fallout Equestria: Diary of Lilac

Chapter 4

Ivory sat in the back of her wagon filing one of her hooves while humming to herself. Only occasionally glancing up at her newest purchase and noticing that she was keeping pace almost like a robotic creation. She wondered what to do with Thirty and whether it not it was wise to buy the purple earth pony, but she was fine when Ivory had purchased her, if a bit of a loud mouth. Ivory tapped her Pipbuck's audio recording function and said, "day log number seven ninety. Thirty still seems to be unresponsive, but she'll eat if you put a hoof full of hay near her mouth and I'm starting to question why. She started acting this way after we heard an ominous shot come from Prism's Auction House. I suspect that Thirty was brought in with a unicorn stallion, thirty-one."

Ivory then began to talk about her thoughts on the matter. Gill ignored her pony ramblings. Gill stared out at the cold snow covered plain as the big stallion pulled the cart. Gill, the grey diamond dog, rubbed his very furry shoulders and watched for any intruders with a small rifle in his lap. Unlike the ponies, Gill could see far at night. Farther than they ever could hope to. He could almost see to the horizon and, with Ivory's arcano-tech device, Gill could get the drop on any pony trying to sneak up and ambush the wagon.

"How far to Nestlebrook?" Gill asked the earth pony pulling the cart. He did not know why, but Ivory only bought earth ponies. Gill suspected that it had something to do with her inability to use magic and a fear of unicorns for some reason.

The burnt umber earth pony glanced back at Gill and said, "another night or two once we pass Eastwood Dam. I really wished Master Ivory would let us travel in the day. I can't see too good."

"You can't," Gill pointed a finger at the stallion, his digging nails were filed sharp enough that a pony could mistake them for tiny swords. Gill then pointed his thumb at himself, "Gill can. We travel at night so Raiders and Bandits don't see. 'Cause they don't see too good either. You're lucky Ivory let's you speak your mind. Other slavers cut your tongue out."

"I know, I know," the earth pony grumbled to himself and looked ahead, not caring about the weight of the explosive collar around his neck. "All I do is pull, pull, pull."

"I got Thirty to help you," Ivory said loudly, having turned off her recorder to listen to the conversation. "Not my fault she became like this."

Gill looked back at the purple earth pony and gripped his small rifle a little tighter as his free hand reached into his pants pocket. "I say we stop and hook her into spare pulling harness."

Ivory scratched her chin for a few moments and thought about it. "You know. That's not that bad of an idea. Let's try it. Joe, stop the cart."

"I hate that name," he grumbled as he stopped. "Just because you found me in a Pony Joe's doesn't mean that's my name. My name is-"

"Joe, 'cause you're a pony," Gill grinned at the burnt umber earth pony, receiving a roll of the eyes for a response.

*** ***

"Easy now," Gill said quietly, almost in a hushed whisper that was hardly noticeable, except for the faint cloud of ice when he spoke. Ahead of the pulled cart loaded with supplies was Eastwood Dam. No sane pony wanted to delve the depths of the concrete structure, and for good reason. It was crawling with rotting corpses that were once ponies, but neither were they dead. Kept alive by necromantic radiation and turned feral due to long exposure. To delve into Eastwood's depths was to invoke a short, brutal, and bloody one way trip.

Luckily for Gill, Ivory, Joe and Thirty, Eastwood's feral ghoul population did not roam the surface at night. The group was heading straight for a rusty chainlink fence that was better suited as a floorboard than the gate it once was thanks to time. The gate lay flat on the ground next to a flattened guard shack. In fact all of the structures surrounding the dam except for the power stations had been flattened by an air burst bomb detonation, or so Gill was told. The dam itself was a massive structure that Gill could not physically keep track of as far as the specific distance across. He knew it could be almost half a kilometer wide and to look over the edge was to invite vertigo as you looked straight down at the water still pouring out of it.

Gill, like all those in the Prism area, except for the ponies hiding underground, had heard of Eastwood Dam. The story goes that the feral ghouls who populate it keep it running and power the city of Nestlebrook, a shining gem in the frozen hellhole. No pony knows exactly why they kept it running, but it was obvious that it still ran.

Gill gripped his rifle a little tighter and silently flicked off the safety lever in case he had to shoot his way out. The rifle was found by Gill one day while traveling the Equestrian wastes. Before that he had been using bladed weapons and when he found a lead shooter capable of being wielded by a diamond dog, he cherished it and kept it as well maintained as he could.

Gill's gaze flicked left and right while he scanned for movement by the dam's occupants. Thirty and Joe slowly walked the cart so as to keep the noise down. Ivory scanned all directions with her Pipbuck's Eyes Forward Sparkle, a tool that allowed a pony to detect life sighs nearby and determine if they were friend or foe. It had one major drawback that was evident only to Ivory, it could not tell you what floor your target was on. The bone white earth pony gulped and adjusted her grip on a laser pistol when she scanned across the road ahead and found it was supposedly crawling with hostiles. But to Gill, it looked like any other rubble covered road he had come across in the frozen wasteland.

Joe and Lilac continued to slowly pull the carriage past the gate and onto the top of the dam. Joe cringed as the cart creaked quietly when the suspension absorbed a couple small bumps. Gill's, and every pony else's, ears were on a swivel as they attempted to find any hostiles. Ivory continued to scan the road ahead and the doors just to the left of the road.

Luckily, the doors did not open and the group managed to get halfway across the dam before encountering their first actual obstruction, a checkpoint built by the Equestrian military during the war. It spanned the width of the dam and was a fortified bunker with a tunnel leading towards Eastwood Resivoir and a gate allowing passage across the dam.

"Halt!" a metallic voice shouted through ancient speakers that looked like they'd fall off their posts any second. Joe and Thirty stopped as an equally ancient light kicked on and bathed the wagon in a heavily yellowed glow, causing Gill to hiss and shut his eyes. "Who goes there?" the metallic voice rasped like rocks falling around a tin can.

Ivory sat up and held her Pipbuck leg in the air, shouting, "I need to get to my stable on the other side of the dam! Please, help us! There's radioactive snow everywhere!"

Gill and Joe remained silent. Thirty's gaze glanced left, right, and left again as she started to register her surroundings. However, all she saw was black was thanks to the ancient light. "Where...?"

"Quiet!" Joe hissed under his breath.

Thirty looked ahead as a rusty squeal pierced the air from ancient locks sliding open. The rusted gate built into the concrete slowly swung outwards with a groan, revealing an earth pony stallion in heavy combat fatigues and a battle saddle that caused Joe to wonder if he'd die from just looking at the rusty weapon. The once orange and blue stallion appeared like he stood too close to the blast when it had gone off. His skin was warped, shriveled, and missing in some parts, revealing a bright green glow underneath.

He quickly motioned the group towards him as he stepped aside. Thirty, however, whimpered as her ears folded back. "The fuck is that thing?"

"Shut up or we die," Joe glared at the purple and yellow earth pony. "Just ignore it and we'll explain later."

"Come on then," the glowing ghoul shouted. "Best get moving before a mob chases you down for stable access."

Thirty gulped and took a couple steps towards the strange creature. Joe took his cue and began pulling the wagon with her.

*** ***

Somewhere on the other side of Eastwood Dam, Lilac Oil stomped her hooves into the fridge snow and forced the wagon into an abrupt halt. She quickly looked back at the diamond dog in the driver's seat and shouted, "alright, what the fuck was that back there?!"

"Now she talks," Gill grumbled as he facepalmed. "Why now?"

The other side of the dam was much like the side they had just left; mostly flat with slow rolling hills and snow covering everything. The crisp night air cooled all of the ponies to the point that they were close to freezing if they did not move often.

Ivory half leaned over the wagon's side and waved at the purple earth pony. "Hello there! Did you have a nice trip inside your head?"

Lilac blinked in confusion, her head tilted to the side a bit as she began to wonder, [i['trip inside my head? She means that undead thing? Or something else? Why was there a road with a big gate? Where am I?!'

Joe looked over at Lilac with a small frown. "You look like your brain is about to explode from thinking so much."

"What the fuck was that dead pony?!" Lilac shouted at the top of her lungs. "And where is Princess Luna?!"

Joe facehoofed at Lilac. Ivory rolled her eyes, "ain't you never heard of a ghoul? Of course you stable ponies haven't. You got your heads stuffed in the dirt."

"A ghoul?"

"Ghoul," Ivory began. "A dead but not dead pony kept alive by zebra necromancy. Most were created when the bombs fell. Some go nuts and attack anything in sight, some stay sane and very few become glowing ones."

"And Gatekeeper keeps the gate closed across Eastwood Dam," Joe added for Ivory. "He stays in his tower and makes damn sure that gate is locked."

"Why not just shoot him like you surface ponies seem to do?" Lilac grumbled.

"Because that stubborn old colt is one hell of a shot and he's got one of these," Ivory said as she tapped her Pipbuck.

Lilac's eyes slowly narrowed as she stared at the mechanical device . She had seen them before, but only in the instruction manual before she had tossed it across the room. Lilac's stable did not receive any Pipbuck's, much to the annoyance of almost all the residents in there since a lot of the systems could only be accessed with the devices. And so only the maintenance ponies had one, but the one they had was scavenged from a different stable and locked to a pony that rarely left the engineering department.

"Lunaaaaa!" Lilac shouted at the top of her lungs. "Where are you?! Luna? Luuuunaaaaa?" When she received no response from the wayward blue alicorn, she frowned. Then screamed, "I'll find you and kill you for abandoning us!"

Joe facehoofed again and mumbled," I think she's nuttier than Gatekeeper."

*** ***

"Thirty!" Ivory shouted over the howling wind from the back of the wagon. "Where the hell did you take us?!"

Lilac glanced around at the snow flakes blowing at her from seemingly all directions and folded her ears back. "I don't know!" she shouted as a shiver deep in her bones ran up her spine into her skull. "I've never been to the surface before!"

Gill held his rifle tight and braced himself against the freezing wind. Eyes squinted shut to block out the wall of white in all directions. Joe on the other hand, was hiding under some blankets in the back, having let the new pony pull the wagon for a while under Ivory's directions. "I said left turn at the sign, LEFT TURN!" Ivory screamed at the purple earth pony.

Lilac gulped and quickly looked around again to get her bearings. Her heart began racing, pumping fresh warm blood through her system, as she remembered that Ivory could kill her at any second with the push of a button. "I..." Lilac looked left, then right, and finally back at the cart. The tracks made by her body and the cart were long, long, covered up. Leaving only white. "I thought I did!" she shouted.

Using her nose, Ivory brought up the map function of her Pipbuck and ignored the display saying hypothermia could start setting in any second. The map displayed their location far off course from where they should have been. Ivory was not pleased, but there was nothing she could do at the moment. Lilac was the only one that wasn't as affected by the cold it seemed.

Lilac took a deep breath and began pulling the wagon through the snow. The chilling wind whipped at her right side, nearly freezing it, but she pressed on. As she pressed on through the blinding whiteout, she began to see strange red flashes of light in the distance. The flashes lit up the snow for a split second and vanished before a few rapid flashes illuminated it. It seemed, to them, that they were heading towards a derelict sign.