Chapters Fallout Equestria: Omega
{One quick note before this story gets started: I have yet to find a standard of date or time of the pony universe. As such, I will be using the Roman Calendar in terms of months and days, but with the years set at Year 0 being the rise of Nightmare Moon (so the first episode of the show equates to Year 1000). From there, I’m pretty much just making some broad assumptions based on age, rough timelines, and whatnot to fit some other pieces together. Okay, background done. On to the story!}
Entry One: October 23rd, 1047
The alarm started buzzing in my ear, as insistent as any rooster had ever been back in my hometown, forcing me from the comforts of sleep. I groaned, shifting in bed and reaching out with a hoof to shut the damn thing up. It felt like it was far too early. The last week had felt like it was far too early.
My hoof finally connected with the clock, and it fell silent, finally letting me lie back and relax again. I was just starting to drift back into the sweet embrace of sleep when somepony shifted next to me.
“Shouldn’t you be getting up?” a soft, sweet voice asked, making my heart melt as it did every time I heard it on waking. I still couldn’t believe I was so lucky as to have won her heart.
“Soon,” I grumbled, extending a wing and wrapping it around her and dragging her warm body over to me, nuzzling her neck while she giggled and pushed weakly at me with her hooves.
“Cirrus, come on! You have work to get to!” she giggled, gasping for breath and pressing against my chest. She finally managed to open a small space between us, and catch her breath. “Your boss won’t be happy if you’re late again.”
Lofted Breeze, my boss. He’d already yelled at me four times in the last month for showing up a few minutes past the hour. Bastard could go hang for all I cared. It was as if he didn’t know how much newlyweds wanted to be around each other.
“Thanks for reminding me,” I grumbled, finally rolling out of bed and stretching. I could feel it in my bones: it was going to be another one of those days. I looked over my shoulder at her, my wife. A beautiful golden hide topped with an even more perfect light rose mane that framed a slim face with the most wonderful green eyes I had ever laid eyes on. I truly was the luckiest stallion in all of Equestria. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Cirrus, now go get ready! Lofted Breeze will be beating down our door if you’re late again!” she laughed, waving me away with a hoof before turning over and burying herself under the covers again.
I smiled at the lump that she became, then turned and started to pull on my uniform. It was a simple vest that had enough pockets for me to carry my tools, as well as a few personal items, and wouldn’t restrict my movement too much. Lofted Breeze was the head of the aerial division of RobCo, and was contracted to a lot of very interesting work with the M.A.S., M.W.T., and some even said the M.O.A. Even if that last wasn’t true, it was an important enough division that he drove all of us under him, a grand total of one hundred and five Pegasi, to what essentially amounted to slave labor.
In my left breast pocket went our wedding picture. It was absolutely perfect: a snapshot of the very moment we had been told to kiss. It was by far my most treasured possession. I made my way downstairs, grabbed an apple out of the ice box, slapped my hard hat on my head, and walked out the door of our small Manehattan apartment. At the end of the hall was the window I used as my usual exit.
The wind felt wonderful as it whipped through my mane, sweeping the dark blue strands away from my face. My forelegs were stretched out before me, the white fur on them tinged with red in the early morning sunlight. It was only a ten minute flight to the factory, far too short for my tastes.
All around me, the city was beginning to come to life, or at least to come out of the momentary rest it fell into during the night. The sky was beginning to fill with the morning work rush, and I was able to pick out a few of my colleagues here and there.
Before long, I was alighting on the ground in front of the massive granite edifice that was the local RobCo construction site. Inside was the project we had spent so long working on, and it was finally nearing completion. Lofted Breeze said that it was entirely possible we could be finished by the end of next month, if progress continued as it had been.
I walked inside and was instantly greeted by the cheery Earth pony mare that was at the front desk. If I wasn’t mistaken, this one was a recent hire. I couldn’t remember seeing her around before my honeymoon only four weeks ago.
“Good morning, Cirrus Swirl! Lofted Breeze was looking for you! He’ll be happy to know you’re on time this morning!” she said cheerfully, looking up from the stack of paperwork.
With a quick glance I spotted the logo of the Ministry of Wartime Technology. Seemed like they were hounding us again on this project. Every other week they’d been changing the specifications for this damn thing, and they couldn’t leave well enough alone and just let us finish the project.
“Morning, Raindrop. Thanks for the heads up. I’ll go see him as soon as I get clocked in,” I responded, putting as much fake joy into my voice as I could manage. I really did not want to have another one-on-one conversation with Lofted Breeze.
A row of other Pegasi were already in line at the clock-in station, so I had to stand in line for almost five minutes while they punched themselves in, every possible scenario of what Lofted Breeze wanted going through my mind. Granted, the chances of him praising me and giving me a raise, as well as a corporate job offer were almost nil, but a stallion could dream, right?
By the time it was finally my turn to clock in, I could clearly hear the sound of machinery being warmed up in the main work floor, not to mention the all-too-familiar sounds of workplace chatter. I swear, no group was more full of gossip than a team of a hundred construction workers that knew each other far too well.
Lucky for me, I got to miss the juiciest rumors and wander down the cramped hallways to Lofted Breeze’s oh-so-comfortable corporate office, complete with cushioned chair. Bastard was working us to the bone, and spent the whole day sitting in his office sipping a glass of two decade old whiskey. Probably had one of the half-dozen secretaries come up and ‘help him with business’ every day. And the bastard got paid the big bits for it.
I finally reached his door and knocked loudly. A muffled “Enter” responded. Bastard was even trying to sound corporate. I pushed the door open, and there he was, seated on his chair as if it were some sort of throne.
Lofted Breeze was a severely overweight grey Pegasus with a greasy green mane. There was not a single redeeming quality about him. Or, if there was, I had yet to discover it. “Raindrop said you wanted to see me, sir,” I said, standing just inside the doorway.
“Ah, Cirrus Swirl, just the Pegasus I wanted to see! Please, sit! We have a lot to discuss. I trust you’re already clocked in?” he asked me, his voice absolutely laden with fake enthusiasm. He liked me just about as much as I liked him.
“Of course I am. It’s company policy, sir,” I answered dutifully as I sat down. As if the bastard didn’t know.
“Wonderful, wonderful. Well, Cirrus, we have just received a wonderful offer from the corporate office in Fillydelphia. They need a few of our staff to head over there and give them a rundown on our progress. It seems that Applejack is starting to crawl down her Ministry’s throat about this project, and the Board wants somepony who’s been closely involved since the beginning to make the report. I think you are the perfect pony for the job!” Lofted Breeze exclaimed, clapping his hooves together as a smile spread across his features.
I felt like the floor had fallen out from under me. Sunrise and I had just managed to confirm the loan for our apartment, and had actually managed to make a few advance payments, and now this bastard was trying to transfer me! He knew exactly what situation I was in!
“Sir, are you sure? There are a lot of others that know the project better than me. I’m just a work grunt,” I protested, waving a hoof at the door, “How about Thunderclap, or Morning Shower? They’re both floor managers! They deserve this far more than I do!”
“Maybe, but I need them here to oversee the last bit of work. Their experience is invaluable, and I fear what will happen to our efficiency if one of them were to leave. You wouldn’t want to make this division lose any efficiency, would you, Cirrus?” Lofted Breeze asked me, his tone clearly indicating what would happen if I answered wrong.
“Sir, can I be honest?” I asked, leaning forward so I was looking over his desk. He sat back, his gaze showing surprised, but also holding a hint of superiority. He had me by the balls, and he knew it. After he nodded, I continued, “Sir, you know I just got married. Sunrise and I just got the loan from the bank, and we finally started making payments on our home. I can’t afford a relocation, not unless you pay me the bonus for this project now, since I won’t be a member of this team anymore. Sure, it sounds like a promotion, but I can’t afford the move. Please, pick somepony else. Blazewing has worked at least as hard as I have, and he’s admittedly been more punctual too. He deserves this far more than I do.”
“But that is just it, Cirrus,” Lofted Breeze said, his grin now spreading from ear to ear, “He does deserve it more, which is why you are getting it. You’ve been taking this job for granted, and don’t think I’m the only pony that’s noticed. Now, I told them to expect you in two days. You have today to clear out your things and make the arrangements. Good day, and good luck.”
With that, he reached out with a hoof, grabbed that damn glass of whiskey, and took a sip. I rose to my hooves, feeling my entire world falling out from under me. In only two minutes, this self-important mule had destroyed my entire life! Crawling back to my parents for help now would be an admission of defeat, something I could never do. Unfortunately, the only other option was enlistment, and I wasn’t the type of pony that had the stomach for the front lines.
Something inside me snapped, and I reached out, taking the glass from Lofted Breeze’s grasp, and drained it. The whiskey burned as it went down, but it felt good. It made me feel like I could do anything. The jackass had a suitably surprised look on his face. “You know what, Breezy,” I drawled coldly, leaning in close and putting the glass back down on the table, “You can take your offer and shove it up your ass. I’m through working for a self-serving, greedy, conniving little bastard like you. You can tell corporate to fly down here and suck your cock like those secretaries do. I quit.”
I turned and marched out of the room, savoring the image of that fat bastards expression of shock and surprise, slamming the door behind me. Part of me was terrified that I had just burned the only bridge that could get me out of this mess in one piece; Sunrise certainly wasn’t going to be happy. But another part of me, the one being reinforced by the whiskey, was proud of what I had done. For the first time with months I had managed to stand up for myself. I felt damn good, too.
I made it to the end of the hallway before the door opened behind me. “Cirrus, get back here! You can’t just quit!” Lofted Breeze shouted, “What the hell are you going to do without me? You need me!”
If I turned around to answer, I was sure that he would convince me to follow along with whatever he wanted. I knew I was making a stupid decision, but I was just so fed up with all of bullshit, so I just kept walking, turning the corner and making my way back to the main entrance.
Raindrop looked at me cheerfully as I came back into the main lobby. “So how did it go?” she asked with a smile.
I shrugged, walking past her to the door. “Fat bastard tried to manipulate me, so I quit. Have a good day, Raindrop. Sorry if he makes your life hell.”
She didn’t get a chance to respond as I kicked the door open and took off into the sky, making my way back home. The sound of the air raid sirens started from downtown, probably just another drill. I was so absorbed in thinking about what I was going to say to Sunrise that I didn’t notice the contrails streaking across the sky, arcing towards Manehattan and the surrounding area.
What finally got my attention was the flash off to my left and above me. I turned to look in surprise, but the bright light made it near impossible to see anything. It was like trying to stare into the sun. Cloudesdale was a few hours flight in that direction, but all I could see as the light faded was a massive mushroom cloud towering over everything.
“No… This can’t be happening…” I breathed, barely able to believe my eyes. In the distance, another flash split the horizon, then another, and another. Contrails started streaking up from the horizon in front of me as Equestria responded, sending her own missiles streaking towards the Zebra lands.
This couldn’t be happening. Nothing we had heard gave any possibility of any of this happening. We were winning, every report agreed on that. We had more resources, more soldiers, better training, better equipment. I was working on the fucking project that would guarantee our victory, and now this. It simply couldn’t be real. I had to be dreaming.
But I didn’t wake up as another megaspell went off, this one in the direction of Fillydelphia. It was far enough away that I was certain it was hitting the surrounding area, but the bomb was still large enough for me to see the effects all the way from here. No matter what I believed, or wanted to believe, the end had arrived.
Fear gripped my heart, almost making my wings freeze in mid-flight, and I did plummet a dozen feet as I struggled to regain control of myself, my hard hat slipping from my head to tumble to the ground below. I didn’t even notice. I wouldn’t help anypony by collapsing here. I put all of my strength into flying, ignoring the sirens, ignoring the mushroom clouds, ignoring everything that wasn’t ‘Get Home Now.’
It was a ten minute flight to Manehattan. I’d be lucky if I could make it there and still have time to get to a shelter. Sunrise and I didn’t have any Stable passes, we were too pressed for money to apply to the program, but we did have a spot in one of the dozen fallout shelters in Manehattan. It would have to be enough.
The city skyline grew steadily larger as I approached, but not fast enough. I strained even harder, the wind whipping at my face and bringing tears to my eyes as I tried to push past the limits imposed on me by a lifetime of complacency and laziness. I was a hard worker when I had a reason for it, but had never seen the point in working out. Why do that when I could hang out with my friends? Now, I was paying the price.
I was just coming up on our apartment when the first shockwave hit me, slamming into my back and throwing me against the unyielding brick wall of the apartment building. The wave of heat that followed tore the breath from my lungs, leaving my gasping and crying. It felt like my feathers were going to catch on fire as I struggled to reach a window, just to get inside out of the heat.
Just as suddenly, the wind and heat were gone, and I started falling. I recovered, but not before I was already two floors below where I needed to be. I launched myself upwards, hoping to reach the window before the next shockwave hit. I was barely in time as another blast of wind and heat hit me, launching me inside to careen off the walls and land in an untidy heap in the hall.
I dragged myself to my hooves, limping along until I was standing in front of our door. To my horror, it was already open. I ran inside, casting about and looking for any sign of her, my Sunrise. Everything was in disarray, dishes left on the counter, milk spilled across the floor, already evaporating in the intense heat.
Every room was the same scene: complete destruction. It was like some great whirlwind had passed through my home, tossing everything about like a giant on a temper tantrum, then left, leaving it all where it fell. I couldn’t find a sign of Sunrise anywhere, except for the missing portrait of us from her nightstand. It had been a match to the one I kept in my breast pocket.
Seeing that picture missing told me that she was gone, probably already to our shelter. Our neighbors must have taken her, told her it was too late for me. Part of me wanted to believe that she wouldn’t leave without me, but the logical part of my mind told me that we had learned not to wait for anypony in the case of an emergency. We had to get to safety first. That meant I didn’t have much time.
I ran to the bathroom and ripped open the medicine cabinet, then started tossing bottles about, looking for one very specific one. Finally finding it, I tore the cap off and swallowed a pair of pills, grimacing at the sour taste of fake lemon. I replaced the cap and shoved the bottle into one of my pockets. Rad-X was going to be invaluable, and I had made sure that we had a good stock of medications, just in case. My next stop was my dresser, which I carelessly pulled away from the wall, revealing a safe.
The one point of contention that Sunrise and I had was the fact that I wanted to own a firearm, just in case. She would have none of it. This had been our compromise. I pulled the key out of my pocket and stuck it into the lock, opening the safe. Inside was my simple nine millimeter. I was careful to keep it in good condition and went down to the firing range twice a week. It was the only time it ever came out of the safe.
I pulled the gun out and loaded it, stuffing it into my vest. I only had two extra magazines of ammunition and didn’t have time to grab the box of unloaded ammo. Hopefully, I wouldn’t need them. I turned away from the safe and started running. Flying wasn’t an option anymore, not with all the bombs falling and the shockwaves. I would have to run to the shelter.
On the streets, it was chaos. Ponies were everywhere, pushing against each other in their panic. It was almost impossible to see what was going on. Somewhere, somepony was screaming. It was a sound of utter despair, the kind you hear from a cornered animal on a hunt that knew all hope was lost.
Smoke was starting to fill the streets as well, though I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. I didn’t think Manehattan had been hit yet. At least, I hadn’t seen any megaspells come down. I was sure that I wouldn’t be alive if the city had been hit.
I pushed my way through the throng of ponies, fighting against them to get through. All I needed to do was make it to the train station on 34th. The fallout shelter was right across the street. It was only four blocks, dammit, but I couldn’t push through this panicked mass.
There was only one way I was going to get there in time. I lifted off, pushing myself into the air and flapping my wings. The smoke was thick and choking, and I could barely see as it made my eyes tear up, but I pushed on. I could endure a little pain if it meant I would see my Sunrise.
Ahead of me I could see the train station emerge out of the smoke. Sitting on the tracks was a train with hundreds of ponies pushing against each other, all of them screaming, as they tried to board. In the distance, hanging in the air like some symbol of fate, was a mushroom cloud. The megaspells were finally hitting us.
I immediately landed, and turned away from the train station. The shelter was right… there! I ran forward, hoping to beat the shockwave, and pounded on the door, shouting to be let in, that I had a pass.
For a full fifteen seconds, I thought nopony would answer. Then, against all hope, the door slid open, hooves grabbed me and dragged me inside, and the door closed behind me again, sealing us in darkness.
I was dragged downwards, underground. The smell of unwashed bodies and fear filled the air, making me want to gag, but I was alive. If nothing else, I was alive. We finally came to a stop in a small room that was lit by a dim red emergency light and I was faced with three large, and buff, Earth Ponies dressed in uniform.
“Show us your pass,” the one in the center demanded, a dirty grey Earth pony with a stark expression. Underneath that tough exterior, I could see his fear. This pony was close to the edge, and I was terrified at what a wrong answer might get me.
I dug through my pockets, searching for the small slip of paper that could very well mean my life. It took far longer than I wanted, since it wasn’t in my right breast pocket, or my left side pocket, or even my right side pocket. I grinned nervously, opening the vest somewhat so I could reach inside and check the few pockets that were on the inside.
The Earth pony’s frown deepened and I saw his leg lift, bringing a sidearm close enough for him to grasp. My hoof finally brushed against something that felt like paper and I grasped it, pulling it out and thrusting it towards him. “Here! This is it!” I shouted, my voice wavering, praying to the Princesses that it actually was.
The officer reached out and grabbed the slip of paper out of my grasp and looked at it critically. “Cirrus Swirl, work for RobCo?” he asked, arching an eyebrow at me.
“Yeah, that’s right,” I confirmed with a nervous nod, a weak grin tweaking the corners of my mouth. I was starting to sweat under the glare of these three severe ponies.
“You have a photo ID? I want proof that you are who you say you are,” the officer snapped, holding out his hoof.
For the second time that day, I felt my world fall out from under me. I didn’t have any IDs on me, I didn’t need them. Everypony at the office knew who I was. I started going through my pockets again, searching for anything that might work. My hoof finally came to rest on the picture in my left breast pocket, my wedding picture.
Slowly, I pulled it out, looking at it as tears formed in my eye. If this officer wanted to keep it, I didn’t know what I would do. My hoof shaking, I held it out, looking at the office with a worried expression. “This… It’s all I have,” I admitted, “She’s my wife.”
The guard took the picture and examined it, looking from it to me several times before handing it back. “Good enough,” he muttered, “It’s not like we could throw you out anymore anyway. Officer Tart, did we have a Sunrise Swirl come through earlier?”
“I… think so, sergeant. I think I know where we left her. Follow me, Cirrus,” the dark red pony to my left answered, gesturing to me with a hoof.
He led me out of the small room and back into the main area of the shelter. By now, my eyes had adjusted to the darkness and I could make out the mass of frightened ponies that were crowded into the room. I recognized a lot of them. It would have been hard not to, since we had done emergency drills every other week for the last two years. The only break I had gotten from them was my honeymoon.
Tart led me to a corner of the room where a small mass of ponies I recognized as being from my apartment complex were huddled together. As we approached, I saw them shift and a flash of golden hide tinted by red caught my eye.
“Sunrise!” I shouted, leaping forward past the officer. I was met halfway by her reaching hooves and fell into her embrace. Our lips met in a desperate kiss filled with the relief that we had found each other and the fear that we might not have.
“I thought you were dead,” she breathed, hardly daring herself to speak, when we finally separated, “I heard the sirens, then saw the first one hit… I thought I would never see you again.”
“It’s fine, I’m fine,” I answered, crying openly as I held her, “I made it back. I’m okay.”
Somewhere in the desperation of our reunion, Tart had disappeared. I didn’t even notice. All I had eyes for was Sunrise. She was crying with me, holding me close and running her muzzle through my mane. Underneath the overpowering smell of smoke, fire, and sweat, I could barely make out her sweet scent. It smelled like a garden of fresh herbs on a summer morning. Inside my chest, my heart melted. Despite everything, I still had her.
“How did you make it?” she finally asked me, letting me go so we could retreat to the corner and give the ponies around us a little more space.
“I was already on my way home,” I admitted, no longer caring about the events of the morning, “Lofted Breeze tried to transfer me to Fillydelphia. He used the excuse that the Board members out there wanted somepony who had been with the project to fly out there and give a report. I would have lost the bonus from working on the project if I accepted, so I told him to shove his offer and quit.”
“Cirrus… You didn’t,” she protested, placing a hoof on my chest, “Why?”
“It didn’t matter. We don’t have the money to move, so we were screwed whether or not I accepted. The company doesn’t have the money to finance moving its employees. Every spare bit was going to the war effort,” I answered, “And I was done with letting that self-important mule run my life. I’d wanted to quit for a long time, Sunrise. I didn’t because I needed the job, because we needed the job.”
She looked at me quietly for a long time, her gaze holding a disappointment I had never wanted to see from her. Finally, her gaze softened and she embraced me, leaning her head against my chest and wrapping her legs around me. I unconsciously unfurled my wings and wrapped them around her in return. “I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. Everything is gone. What are we going to do, Cirrus? I’m so scared.”
“I don’t know…” I admitted. To be honest, I was just as scared as she was. What was happening up there changed everything on the most fundamental level. “We’ll just take it as it comes, together. Like we promised.” I lowered my head and kissed her, trying to make her feel safe again. It didn’t help that I felt so inadequate to the task.
The sound of the bombs dropping lasted for hours. Several of the detonations were so loud and powerful they actually shook the shelter we were in, causing bits of dust and crumbs of rock to drift from the ceiling and cover us. There was no question that those bombs were hitting the city above us, destroying the place we all called home.
When the pounding finally faded to silence, it was echoed in our shelter. Somehow, the power was still connected, leaving us with the weak red emergency lighting. For another two hours, nopony said a word. Sunrise and I simply sat in our corner, holding each other close, finding solace in the fact that, if this was the end, we would meet it together.
The first words to be spoken after the silence were by a mare who asked a simple question. “What do we do now?” Her voice was shaking with fear when she said it, as if she was afraid the barrage that had lasted for so long would start up again at the mere breaking of the silence.
Nopony answered her. I don’t think anypony knew how to. Everything we had known was gone: Our jobs, our lives, even our homes. We had lost the security of the knowledge that the front lines were hundreds of miles away, and we could go about our lives peacefully.
Then, an idea struck me. It was something I vaguely remembered seeing in a survival class Sunrise had convinced me to take a few months ago. It was a sort of worst case scenario class that tried to teach us what to do should the city we lived in be attacked by a megaspell. The class had never addressed the issue of an apocalyptic attack, but a lot of the principles should still hold true.
“What have we got in the way of supplies?” I asked, looking around at the ponies closest to me, “How much food, water, and medicine? We need to take stock of what we have.”
It felt odd, taking charge like I was, but at least I had an idea of what I was doing. Nopony else seemed to know, so how bad could I screw it up?
After a few minutes, somepony finally answered me. “There are maybe four crates of preserved food, a couple cases of water and a couple first aid kits, mostly made up of radiation drugs,” they answered. The voice sounded vaguely like the Earth pony that had interrogated me when I had arrived.
“All right… um... distribute what you can to everypony. Try to keep the food and water equal. We’ll need to ration what we have. Does anypony here have medical training?” I asked, standing up and facing the crowd. They were starting to turn to face me as they realized who was speaking.
A few hooves shot into the air, but there were far fewer than I had been hoping for. “Okay, give the medicine to them. They’ll know best how to use it. For now, let’s just focus on getting the supplies distributed. If we can, everpony should be carrying at least one bottle of water and a couple of days’ worth of rations. Once that is done, we’ll think about the next step.”
The truth was, I barely knew what I was doing. I was running on half-remembered lessons and complete bullshit that happened to sound intelligent. If I was lucky, it would work, but I needed the time to think about what we would do next.
In the time it was taking for all the supplies to be distributed, a pony came up to our corner, pushing his way through the thick mass to approach me. As he neared, I could make out that it was the police sergeant that had questioned me on my arrival. “You seem to have an idea of what’s going on,” he stated. I could see the questioning look in his eyes. He wanted to be brave, and looked up to, but he was way out of his depth. The worst thing he’d probably ever had to deal with was the occasional robbery.
I shrugged, using the gesture to hide my own trembling. I wasn’t a brave pony. I was only on my hooves still due to a combination of adrenaline and relief. “I remember a couple of things from a class I took a while back,” I said, looking back at Sunrise and the rest of the ponies from my apartment, “I need to look out for my family.”
“Well, it’s better than everything else we’ve got. At least you’re giving these ponies something to do. But what do you think we can do? Those megaspells… Shit, everything is going to be gone,” he muttered, his ears drooping and his voice losing its hard edge. In that moment he became just another terrified pony, floundering in a world he knew nothing about.
“We need to be careful,” I said, reaching out and putting a supporting hoof on his shoulder, “If I remember properly, megaspells put out an incredible amount of radiation in a short time. We should be safe down here, but there really aren’t any guarantees. In a few days, the levels should fall enough so that we can at least get out. From there… We should head to the country. If the cities were the targets of the attacks, then the radiation will be much lower in the countryside.”
The buck nodded solemnly. “Then that’s what we’ll do. I’ll set up a rationing schedule for us down here. In thirty-six hours, we’ll head up to the surface and make for the suburbs. I know a few places where we should be able to get some supplies.”
“Ok. Thank you,” I said, nodding. It was all I could think to do. My mind was too terrified to consider any other possibilities. At least now we had a plan.
The hours passed slowly, and in almost complete silence, excepting the occasional cough or sneeze. Some ponies cried, but they did so quietly and in the comforting arms of their friends and family. Part of me had the bad feeling that many of these ponies weren’t going to survive the week.
The only reason I kept my sanity was because Sunrise was there with me, holding me. She kept insisting that I was doing the right thing, that I was right to give us a purpose, but I was less sure. I was just a construction grunt and knew nothing about leadership, but now all of these ponies were looking to me, simply because I had been stupid enough to open my mouth.
We spent most of those thirty-six hours wrapped in each other’s legs, simply trying to remind ourselves that we were still together, and indulging in the fantasy that somewhere, somehow, our families were safe, but I knew just how worthless those fantasies were.
I had been raised in the suburbs outside of Canterlot, in the shadow of the mountain that beautiful was built on, but my parents had told me of their intentions to move back to Cloudesdale after I moved out. That had been four years ago. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the image of that first explosion, and I knew in my heart that my parents were dead, along with the other thousands of ponies that had called that city home.
But my time to grieve drew short as the few police officers that were in our shelter started to rouse everyone. Time was up, and it was time to go outside and face whatever world was left in the aftermath. The child in me was convinced that we would find nothing but fire and ash on the other side of that door.
“Cirrus Swirl, I need you at the front!” the police sergeant, Just Heart, called out.
I smiled at Sunrise, gave her one last quick kiss, then pushed my way to the front. “What do you need, officer?” I asked as I arrived.
“I figured you should be one of the first out, since you have an idea of what to do once we get out there. I know I never learned what to do if Manehattan got attacked,” he stated, stepping to the side so I could make my way to the stairs.
I nodded solemnly and made my way towards them. At the base of the stairs were the few medically trained ponies that had taken shelter with us: one doctor, three nurses, and a veterinarian. They were each holding a bottle of Rad-X pills that would hopefully boost our systems enough to get us out of the city before radiation sickness set in. Barring that, we had a very small supply of Rad-Away.
The doctor gave me a few of the pills, as well as an approving nod, then let me walk by, Just Heart a step behind me. We made our way up to the heavy steel door that would open onto the square facing what had been the train station. In my mind’s eye, I could still see the mushroom cloud rising up in the distance.
I took a deep breath and hit the opening mechanism. With an anemic grinding sound, the door slowly slid open. The first thing that hit me was the smell of fire, smoke, and ash, followed immediately by a hot wind that made me cough and clutch my chest for breath. The air simply smelled… wrong.
With tentative steps I emerged out into the open, eyes casting about for a familiar landmark, but everything was hidden behind a thick haze. Before me, the train station was a twisted wreckage of metal and ash. Anything that had been wooden had burned down in the intense heat of the megaspells. The train itself sat canted on its side, the wheels completely off the tracks, some of them still spinning weakly in the wind. It was like a scene out of a horror movie.
“Goddesses above,” Just Heart swore as he emerged, “There’s nothing left…”
I nodded speechlessly, looking for any indication of where we should go. Something caught my eye, on the ground near the train. I approached it warily, curious. Once I was within a few feet, it was easy to make out the very clear outline of a pony. If I was right, it looked like a shadow, but there was nothing around to cast it. The megaspells had been so powerful, that they had incinerated anypony caught in the open, flash-burning their shadows into the pavement. I shuddered violently, tearing my gaze away and looking back at the train.
Looking at it I remembered riding it out to the country to visit Sunrise’s parents. If memory served me well, they lived far enough out that it should be safe from the worst of the radiation, and I knew how to get there from their station.
“We should follow the tracks,” I said, pointing, “I know how to get to a few places out in the countryside from some of the stations. If we stick to those, we’ll at least have a reference. Those bombs probably changed a lot of the countryside, so we can’t rely on our memory of how things looked.”
Just Heart nodded, then looked over his shoulder at the ponies that were now emerging behind us. “Sounds like a plan. Let’s get moving. I don’t want to stay here any longer than necessary.”
With that, we set out, walking along the ruined tracks out into whatever was left of the Equestrian countryside. Everything we had ever known was gone, but at least we were still alive. It was more than a lot of ponies could say.
{Well, here is the end of the first entry of Cirrus Swirl’s attempts to survive in the aftermath of the Great War. So many stories that I have seen have been about Stable Ponies, or soldiers in the military, or other experienced ponies (in some senses) being faced with the horrors of a wasteland long in existence (my other story included) and I wanted to see what an average pony would do in a wasteland that had just been created. I hope this was as fun for all of you to read as it was for me to write. Thanks go to Kkat for the original Fallout Equestria, and to Barrobroadcaster and Supergumgum for pre-reading and editing!}
Author's Note
Edits: I put this up before my second editor went through it (a combination of impatience and thoughtlessness.) So, many apologies to Supergumgum for jumping the gun on this, but I had a lot of stuff going on, and just wanted to start getting feedback on the story. The edits were mostly just small spelling, grammar, or clarity issues, so nothing major or story-related was changed.
Fallout Equestria: Omega
Entry Two: November 1st, 1047
I had severely underestimated how bad things had become. Either far more balefire bombs and megaspells had been launched than we had thought, or their effects were more far reaching than anyone could have ever predicted. Either way, the countryside did not prove to be safer, and the radiation levels were certainly not lower.
Our Rad-Away supplies were already gone, having been used up in the first two days to counteract the effect of the intense radiation from Manehattan. Our supply of Rad-X was next to disappear. Thank the Princesses I still had the small bottle from my apartment tucked away in my increasingly dirty jacket. I felt no small amount of guilt at keeping it hidden from the rest of the group, but as I had told Just Heart: I needed to look after my family. This small bottle was the only thing keeping the two of us as marginally healthy as we were.
That being said, I hadn’t been able to get the insistent taste of tin out of my mouth (no matter how much water I used to try to wash it out) and I seemed to always feel weak. It was easy to forget that all Rad-X did was boost a pony’s resistance to radiation, and didn’t cleanse it out of the system, and the hours spent without its help were hours I spent soaking in radiation.
I was also starting to worry about the rest of our supplies, namely our supply of fresh water. We had enough dry army rations, tasteless as they were, to last us for a while, if we were careful, but water was much harder to ration. If we were lucky, we had maybe three days left for the fifteen of us that were still together, and that was only because a few ponies hadn’t woken up over the last couple of days, though none of us had been able to determine a reason why, beyond the simple explanation of ‘because’.
The hardest loss to take was when one of the nurses hadn’t woken. As one of the few of our group that had medical training, they were almost invaluable, which meant they were the ones that got the few doses of Rad-X that we still had, excluding my personal supply.
I shuddered at the thought of the ponies that had passed away, making Sunrise squirm against me. I tightened my grip around her, letting her know that I was still there and waited for her to settle back down. Despite everything, and all the thousands, if not millions, of ponies that had been killed, I had never seen a body that close up before. At least the bombs had been more or less clean. No bodies had been left behind to stare at us, accusing us of actions we couldn’t stop. It was hard to think that it had only been barely more than a week.
We had followed the train tracks out of Manehattan, thinking that the countryside would have been more or less untouched by the weapons. We couldn’t have been more wrong. It seemed that the further out we went, the worse the devastation became, though that was an illusion caused by more remains being left behind after the blasts. The first train station we had found had been completely leveled, with only a few smoldering lengths of dense replacement railroad ties left behind. The station after that, while the structure itself was still there, had been reduced to a husk, with the roof blown completely clear and the inside scoured clean by balefire.
We had made a token attempt of searching for anything of use, but anything worth taking had been reduced to ash. The only potential source of anything useful was a sturdy black safe that had somehow survived the devastation, but it had been locked, and the key was nowhere to be found.
After hours of walking through the blasted wasteland that the surrounding landscape of Manehattan had become, we had finally happened upon a train station that wasn’t in total ruins. There had even been a shopping plaza nearby that we had investigated, and, to our great fortune, had found a game and hobby shop that wasn’t locked. Unfortunately, there was almost nothing of use inside. No extra food, except a few snacks left behind in the employee lounge, and no medicine except for some gauze and a single healing potion in a first aid kit, but at least it offered some protection from the conditions outside.
We’d been staying here for the last several days once it became clear that nothing had survived, and that trying to find our families was an exercise in futility. Some ponies had decided to try anyway; I honestly couldn’t blame them. That was when our group had been cut in half, with almost thirty ponies wandering aimlessly out into the countryside without so much as a map, not that one was going to be of any use anyway. What little of the country side I had seen was unrecognizable. I was used to rolling green hills and copses of bright, healthy trees. Instead, the few hills that were left were brown, and the trees had been reduced to so much tinder.
Sunrise had been one the ponies that had wanted to walk out there, since her parents lived nearby. I had only managed to keep her here by promising that their house would be the first thing we looked for once we left the shopping center, though with every passing day it was becoming harder to find a reason to leave. We were all weak and tired, no doubt a result of the radiation we had all been absorbing.
To be completely honest, I didn’t know what we were going to do. I had succeeded in getting us this far, but none of us was truly prepared to face the world we were now being forced to live in. A young stallion that had been in our shelter had spent the first night here convinced that everything was just a dream, and that he was going to wake up and everything was going to be fine. When we tried to explain that we weren’t in a dream, he refused to believe us until he finally broke down sobbing and crying for his parents. He was the first pony not to wake the next morning. Steady Pulse, the only real doctor with us, said he had simply given up on living.
The door to the small back room that Sunrise and I had to ourselves cracked open, the metal hinges grinding against each other as the abused metal was forced to move. I lifted my head from Sunrise’s shoulder, turning it to look at whoever was looking for us.
“Cirrus, I need you out here,” the familiar voice of Just Heart whispered in a feeble attempt to not disturb anypony else’s rest. If the squealing of that door hadn’t already woken them, it would be a miracle.
I sighed, not quite ready to face another day in this hell that had become my life. What I wouldn’t give to simply have to deal with Lofted Breeze again. I nodded at the dirty grey stallion before turning my attention back to Sunrise, who was looking up at me with those two beautiful green eyes, still half-closed in exhaustion. The grief and fear in that gaze made me wish that the young stallion had been right, and that all of this was just a dream.
“I’ll be back soon,” I whispered, kissing her lightly, “Get something to eat. We still have enough to last a while.”
“Be careful,” she whispered in return, reaching out with a hoof as if to stop me from walking out. Her voice was weak and labored, and I imagined mine was much the same. None of us were getting the nutrition we needed, and our lack of medication was starting to become very worrisome. Hopefully Just Heart needed me for something that would solve those problems.
“I always am,” I answered as I carefully separated myself from her, crawling out from under the threadbare blanket that was all we had to keep ourselves warm.
I was still wearing my work jacket, partly because it was all I had to keep hold of the few possessions I could still call my own, and partly because the temperature had been dropping rapidly the last few days, a result of the bizarre weather patterns we assumed were caused by the bombs. I stopped briefly on my way to the hallway by the small desk that was the only remaining piece of furniture on the room and delved into the drawer for my pistol, stuffing it into my jacket. I hadn’t needed it yet, but the world had already proven to be completely unpredictable. Being ready was better than being dead.
Just Heart was waiting for me, leaning against the wall and nibbling on the corner of a ration bar, grimacing at the taste, or lack thereof. “Princesses above, I knew these things were bad, but couldn’t they have at least added some sort of flavor?” he complained as he forced the bite down, a very noticeable lump traveling down his throat as he did.
“If they did that, it wouldn’t be as easy to make the damn things last,” I answered with a crooked smile, finding a little bit of peace in the daily ritual the police sergeant and I had started. It helped to keep us sane.
“I knew there was a reason I kept you around. Always have an answer for everything, eh, Cirrus?” Just Heart replied, grinning as he finished the ritual.
“Only if I can help it. What’s going on?” I asked, gesturing for the Earth Pony to lead the way.
He started walking down the dark hallway, limping slightly as he favored his left foreleg. His right had a bandage wrapped around it, just above the knee. A radiation burn had formed there and Steady Pulse had done what he could to treat it, but there was only so much we could do with the few supplies we had left, so the police sergeant was suffering with the pain, using only his strength of will to keep doing what needed to be done.
“Our water supplies are almost completely gone, and I think somepony stole some from the cache last night. A couple of the bottles are unaccounted for. Also, we need to figure out what to do about our medication shortage. If we don’t figure out something soon, this is going to get bad. We already have a couple cases of severe radiation poisoning, not to mention burns like mine. Steady Pulse said some of the more sick ponies are starting to lose skin and hair. We need Rad-Away, otherwise ponies are going to start dying, for real reasons this time,” he explained, his voice carefully controlled, for reasons I could understand. We were all doing what we could, and cooperation was the only reason we were all still alive. If somepony was stealing from the rest of the group, it couldn’t be good.
I sighed heavily, using the action to let out a lot of the tension and frustration I would have otherwise let out on Just Heart. It was an exercise that I had forced myself to adopt in the last few days, since getting mad at anypony out here wasn’t going to make surviving any easier, and losing my temper like I had with Lofted Breeze was an even worse decision. I had to be rational.
“Do we have any evidence that it was a theft? Could we have miscounted?” I asked, pushing the issue of medicine to the back of my mind. I’d deal with that later.
“No, it has to be a theft. I double check the figures every night before I go to bed. I haven’t told the others yet. They don’t look to me like they do to you. Most still see me as a police officer, rather than a victim like the rest of them. Like having a badge matters anymore,” Just Heart muttered, lowering his head slightly.
I felt a brief moment of guilt, since I was one of the ponies that still saw the dirty grey stallion as a police officer. It was hard to forget, considering his cutie mark was a police badge. “Okay, so we need to let them know that it’s happened, then ask who is responsible. They should know that we need to be careful about rationing water, so the guilt should make them confess,” I said, my tone hopeful.
“In a perfect world,” Just Heart snorted, “Nopony is going to say a word. They’ll be too afraid of the consequences, and you can’t go easy on this, Cirrus. There needs to be a consequence.” He came to a stop at the door that would lead us into the main room of the store, where everypony else was sleeping.
“What do you expect me to do, Heart? Summary execution? These ponies have nothing left to lose except their lives, and I’m not going to shoot somepony just for taking a bottle of water,” I snapped, my temper flaring for a moment before I wrestled it back under control, then continued with a more even tone, “I agree that there needs to be some consequence, but what the hell is that going to be? It’s not like we have a jail, or that bits are worth anything anymore.”
“I’m just saying, Cirrus. We need to do something to let them know that this isn’t acceptable,” the sergeant growled, pushing the door open with a hoof and walking through.
We had cleared the display cases and stands from the floor to the walls, clearing up a large open space that we could use to sleep, eat, and generally live in. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than nothing. In the center of the room was the small space we had cleared out for a fire which we kept running using what little wooden furniture there was, as well as the cardboard boxes and game boards from the merchandise around us. If the world ever returned to normality, I’m sure the owner wouldn’t get too mad at us for doing what we needed to in order to survive, if the owner was even still alive.
A few heads turned to look at us as we entered, some of the healthier ponies rising to their hooves to meet us. All of them, even the healthy ones, looked weak and emaciated, the effects of the radiation taking its toll on their bodies.
“Good morning, Cirrus, Just Heart,” a young voice said from my side. I turned to face a young, grey unicorn stallion whose name I remembered was Bolter, “Did you sleep well?”
“As well as any of us can, kid,” Just Heart intoned as he trotted past, making his way to the closet where we kept our supplies.
“Would you mind waking everypony up for us, Bolter? We have a few important things to talk about,” I asked. Thankfully, the young unicorn always seemed willing to help, and somehow managed to keep a smile on his face all the time. I was grateful for the help, since most ponies in the group were too busy just trying to stay alive.
“Of course! Are we just gathering in the main room?” he asked, already turning to start on his task.
“Yes, that’s fine. Thank you,” I said, letting the young unicorn get on with it and wandered over to join Just Heart.
He was standing in front of the open door to the supply closet, a clipboard he had found in one of the desks held in the crook of one leg as he ticked off our supplies. The task didn’t take very long.
When he was finished, he handed the clipboard to me, and as I read its contents, I noticed the disparity immediately. Ignoring the absolutely deplorable state of our supplies in general, there were two bottles of water missing from our check last night, bringing our total number down to only fifteen bottles left.
“Shit, I hope they confess,” I breathed, the words barely audible. I didn’t want to have to punish anypony, and if they came forward, there was the possibility that I would be able to write it off with a warning and a reminder that we were all in this together.
The hard stare I was getting from Just Heart quickly stamped out that hope. “Even if they do, we need to do something. If we don’t, everypony will think they can get away with this,” he stated simply, his voice low enough that I was the only pony that heard him, then closed the door and turned to face the room.
I turned with him and saw that everypony was now awake and facing us, including Sunrise, who stood at the back of the room by the door that led to our office. I barely managed to contain another sigh. I didn’t want her to have to see this.
Everypony had an expression of expectation and interest. This was only the second time that Just Heart and I had had to make a general announcement to the entire group, so they knew it was important. The first time had been when the thirty ponies had wandered off into the remains of the world in search of family, and we needed to keep the rest of us together.
I took a deep breath, closing my eyes for a moment to collect my thoughts, then let the breath out, fixing everypony in a gaze I hoped was confident, or at least competent. “All right, everypony. Unfortunately, we have a bit of a problem. Just Heart just brought it to my attention that two bottles of water have gone missing from our supply, enough to drop our rations from three days down to only two. I hope that whoever is responsible steps forward and claims responsibility, since this threatens all of our lives, including your own. Just Heart and I are trying to figure out what to do about our supplies, but until then, we ask for you all to trust us,” I announced, wincing on the inside as worried expressions, and more than a few angry ones, passed through the crowd. After everything we had survived, they certainly didn’t deserve more bad news, but I wasn’t about to hide the truth from them.
Also, to my dismay, I couldn’t make out any faces that looked guilty, or any other sort of expression that might point to somepony being responsible. Then again, Just Heart was better at reading expressions than I was.
The ponies in the crowd were starting to shift uncomfortably, and I could see more than a few of them open their mouths as if about to say something. Finally, somepony did. She was a weathered old light purple unicorn mare who I vaguely remembers as being from my apartment, but I still couldn’t remember her name.
“Do you have any idea who might be responsible? Whoever did it should be thrown out of here for endangering all of us like this!” she snapped bitterly, her features twisting in anger.
There were several surprised, and angry, shouts in response to that, and I launched myself briefly into the air to calm everyone down. “Everypony, please settle down! Just Heart and I are doing what we can, but let’s not jump to any conclusions. I’m sure that whoever took the water had very good reasons, and we will definitely take that into consideration, but I am not going to force somepony out for trying to survive just like the rest of us. We’re all in this together, and if we stick together, we will survive.”
“Why shouldn’t we kick them out? They obviously care more about their own hide than they do about the well-being of the group, and I don’t want some selfish pony who’s just as likely to let me die as they are to help me staying in this group!” the old mare protested, “Besides, how are we to know that you or Just Heart didn’t take that water? You’re the only ones that look at that checklist at all! For all we know, you’re just saying something now to cover your own backsides!”
“I will not tolerate this sort of behavior!” Just Heart yelled before the mare had a chance to continue her rant, “Cirrus and I have been working hard to make sure everypony is provided for, and we gain nothing by stealing supplies from the rest of you. The simple fact is that this sort of behavior cannot go without some sort of action being taken, as it threatens the rest of us, but Cirrus is entirely right: we are not going to throw a pony out on their rump for a small issue like this. If you come forward and admit you were at fault, we will go easy on you, but if we have to search you out, the consequences will be much less forgiving.”
“How could you possibly consider this a small issue!” the mare shrieked, rounding on Just Heart, “They stole water ! Tell me anywhere nearby that has clean water fit for drinking! This is the exact opposite of a small issue!”
“Ma’am, I will ask one more time for you to calm down. As I said, Cirrus and I are working on the problem, but panicking and throwing blame around is not helping anypony,” Just Heart growled.
“We all simply need to remember that we have to rely on each other,” I added, trying to calm them both down. Just Heart was a terrific administrator, but had very little patience, and everything we had been facing these last few days had put everyone on edge, “So please, come and speak to me if you are responsible. I won’t force you to confess in front of anypony else. Now, that’s all we had to say, so if you will excuse us, Just Heart and I have some other things to discuss.”
The old mare looked like she wanted to say something more, but apparently decided she was better than that, and simply sniffed, raising her nose, and returned to her small pile of blankets. Most of the other ponies did something similar, trying to find some warmth as we tried to figure out what our next step was.
Only one pony remained behind to approach Just Heart and myself. Part of me hoped that it was the pony responsible for stealing water, but as soon as I saw that it was Bolter, I knew that any chance of that was almost zero. The young buck practically jumped to every word either I or the former police sergeant said, and I couldn’t see him doing something like this anyway.
“Did somepony really steal water?” he asked cautiously as he approached us, his head swinging side to side as if looking for somepony eavesdropping on the conversation.
“Yes, and we need to find out who. This sort of action cannot go unpunished,” Just Heart answered angrily. He looked to still be seething from the argument with the old mare.
“I… I can keep a look out here while you two do what you need to do,” Bolter offered, shooting me a conspiratorial look, “I might be able to see somepony using water they aren’t supposed to have.”
Just Heart and I shared a look. I wasn’t comfortable with the idea, at all. It meant that we were going to be spying on ourselves, unable to trust each other when trust was most important.
“I can’t make this choice. It’s up to you, Cirrus,” Just Heart intoned, finally turning away from me and wandering over to the front of the store and stepping outside.
I watched him go, angry that he was forcing this decision on me. I didn’t know what to do, or what was necessary. I didn’t want to have to order somepony to spy on others when I had just told them we all needed to trust and rely on each other. But I also knew that we had to discover who had stolen from the group. Water was simply too valuable.
“Fuck, how did it come to this,” I sighed, lowering my head in defeat, “All right, Bolter. Keep an eye out, but try not to draw attention to yourself. I want to wait and see if they approach us first. We have to at least give them a chance.”
The young unicorn nodded enthusiastically as he backed away. “Of course, Cirrus! You can count on me!” he said, turning and trotting over to where he kept his small bag of possessions.
I watched the buck go, jealous of his constant good spirits, then turned and followed after Just Heart. Outside, the sky was covered in thick, dark grey clouds, and ash was still falling, as it had been for the last week straight. It didn’t take a genius to know that everything falling from the sky was radioactive, but it wasn’t like there was any way for us to get away from it.
Seeing nopony nearby, since Just Heart was patrolling around a few of the other intact storefronts, I slipped a hoof into my jacket and pulled out my personal supply of Rad-X. The bottle was nearly empty, and I had only been taking half-doses in order to make it last. At least it was better than nothing. I popped the cap off and swallowed one of the tablets, actually enjoying the fake lemon taste. Anything was better than the dry army rations that were all we had to eat.
After returning the bottle to my jacket, I made my way over to Just Heart, who had come to a stop in front of a store we had stood in front of several times in the last few days. Many of the stores had had their windows or doors blasted off by the bombs, and we had scavenged what we could, but almost everything had been destroyed or damaged beyond repair. This small grocery store was the only store that had remained intact, and it was the one that would help us the most if we could only manage to get in.
So far, everything we had tried had failed. Somepony in our group, Bolter, I think, had tried to pick the lock using some bobby pins and a screw driver he had found lying around, but that had only resulted in broken bobby pins and a jammed lock. Next, we had tried to break the windows using anything we could find: bricks, poles, even our own hooves, but the windows had managed to survive several megaspell detonations. Nothing we tried was going to get through.
“We’re out of options, Cirrus. We either get in there, or we die,” Just Heart stated simply as I approached, trying to pull my jacket tighter against myself to ward off the chill in the air, “That food and water will give us the supplies we need to finally move on.”
“We’ve talked about this before, Just Heart. Even if we get in there, where are we going to go? I haven’t heard anything about anywhere safe, so unless you know something I don’t, we don’t have any goal to head towards. Wandering aimlessly out there is just as much a death sentence as running out of clean water,” I protested. We’d had the same argument countless times in the last four days, ever since Just Heart had decided we needed to leave. They always ended with both of us falling silent and trying again to break into the store.
Part of me felt like we were losing a part of ourselves every time we tried to break the door down, but I had had to resolutely push that part of my mind back. As much as I didn’t like it, Just Heart was right when he said those supplies would save our lives.
“It’s better than sitting around here and waiting to die. At least out there we’d be doing something,” Just Heart growled, pawing at the ground and leaning in towards the lock to examine it.
“It’s a moot point unless we can get in there,” I answered, slowly shaking my head.
“I know, I know. Dammit! This just makes me so angry!” Just Heart exclaimed in a rare outburst of rage, and kicked the door. To both our surprise, it swung open easily, like it wasn’t even locked.
We both jumped back in surprise, Just Heart pulling his sidearm out of its holster and aiming it into the now-open grocery store. “Was it always unlocked?” I asked, taking another cautious step back. Something about the entire situation was rubbing me entirely the wrong way, making me want to turn and run, but my responsibility to the ponies in that game shop held me rooted to the spot.
“No, it wasn’t. That was the first thing I checked,” Just Heart muttered around the grip of his gun, “I think we found our water thief though.” He was pointing at something on the ground, and when I leaned in to investigate, I could make out a clear hoofprint in the dust.
“Shit,” I muttered, “At least we know it wasn’t one of us.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I felt guilty. Everypony that was still alive was one of us, a refugee of an act none of us had wanted.
“Yeah. You have that pistol of yours on you?” Just Heart asked, shifting his gaze briefly to me before looking back into the grocery store, his weapon trained carefully on the doorway.
He was the only pony besides Sunrise who knew I had it. I had told him since he was technically the only pony left in our group that represented whatever was left of the law. The other two police officers had left with the group that had wandered off into the countryside. He had decided that it would be dangerous to tell the others, since it would give the impression that only those ponies with guns were in charge. I had wholly agreed with him.
I nodded weakly in response to his question and gingerly pulled the weapon out of my jacket. I didn’t know what I would do if I was forced to pull the trigger on somepony. To this point, the only thing I had ever shot with it were pieces of target paper at the firing range. Shooting a real, live pony, was something I knew might have to happen, but so far, I had managed to avoid it. It wasn’t like there were that many ponies out here anyway.
“Good. Follow me, and do what I do. I know a thing or two about this, and if we’re careful, violence won’t be necessary,” Just Heart said as he stepped into the dark building, obviously expecting me to follow.
I was only a couple of steps behind him as he made his way through the aisles of the small grocery store, covering the corners the dirty grey Earth pony wasn’t watching, and generally just trying to not run away screaming in fear. I couldn’t help but remember all the old horror movies I had watched as a kid, where the two characters walked into a dark, abandoned building without telling anypony, and then were never heard from again.
But this was reality, and it was already far worse than anything any horror movie I had ever seen had ever offered. At least in the movies, the rest of the world was still sane, and I had found comfort in the thought that all I had to do if I became too frightened was to walk out of the movie theatre.
Our search brought us to the back of the room, and the small door leading back to the manager’s office. “They’re in there,” Just Heart whispered, gesturing to the door and moving up beside it, motioning for me to make myself ready on the other side.
Once I was in place, Just Heart deposited his sidearm into its holster, then lifted a hoof and knocked locked loudly on the door. “Hello? Is anypony in there? I’m a police officer. My name is Just Heart. Can you come out and talk to us, please?” he asked, his voice gentle and understanding. It was a very marked difference from the anger and frustration I had seen from him not moments ago.
“P…Please go away,” a weak male voice answered from the door. It was shaking badly, and I could just picture a stallion hiding on the other side of the door, shaking in terror at the two ponies on the other side of the door.
“I’m afraid we can’t do that, son. Can you please open the door so we can talk properly? I promise, we aren’t going to hurt you,” Just Heart coaxed, leaning towards the door to make his voice easier to hear.
“Please. I didn’t mean to. It was an accident. I just wanted… I was so thirsty. I needed to be clean. I… I… I don’t know what’s happening,” the voice whimpered.
“It’s okay. I understand. But you need to understand that we needed that water to survive. Can you please come out here so we can talk? I’m sure we can come to a fair agreement for the water you took. If you do that for me, we’ll walk away, ok?” Just Heart pressed, a victorious look in his eye now that the buck had confessed to taking our water.
I had to admit to myself that I was relieved as well. The first thing I would do when I got back to the game shop would be to tell Bolter that we had found the thief.
“Nononononono. I can’t do that. Can’t come out. Others can’t see. They won’t know, won’t understand,” the voice said, becoming increasingly erratic and rushed as he spoke.
“What won’t we understand?” I asked, struggling to form the words around the grip of my gun.
“You don’t know! You can’t know! They said I was sick, that I was going to die, but see what they knew! I’m still here, and they aren’t! They’re all dead now!” the voice started to shout, then laugh almost maniacally.
“Who are they? How did they die?” Just Heart asked, “Was it the bombs?”
“Dead? Dead! They are dead! And you are mad they are dead! You’re going to hurt me! You can’t! I won’t let you! I’ll kill you to! Then I’ll be able to eat!” The voice practically shrieked, all hints of sanity vanished from the voice.
Before either of us had a chance to respond, the door flew open, striking Just Heart in the head and making him fall to the ground, stunned. I barely managed to step back in time to avoid the buck that came flying out of the door a moment later.
He landed on top of Just Heart and started to attack him, raining down blows with his hooves. The Earth Pony barely managed to get his forelegs up to protect his head and neck when the blows started falling. “Cirrus, help me! Get him off of me!” he shouted.
I reacted instinctively, darting in and shoving the buck off of Just Heart, but all I accomplished was turning the crazed stallion’s attention to myself.
He leapt at me, and I jerked back in response, my tongue finding the trigger of my gun and pulling it reflexively. The pistol kicked against my jaw, retorting loudly in the confines of the store, and the bullet struck the pony in the chest. His momentum carried him forward to collide with me, covering me in his blood as he struggled weakly, and bearing both of us to the ground.
“Thank you,” he breathed, then lay still, his corpse draped across me.
“Get him off of me!” I shouted, the shock of what I had just done settling in only slowly.
The weight of the buck on top of me disappeared a moment later as Just Heart pulled the body off, leaving it lying on the ground beside me. I scrabbled away from it, feeling myself start to hyperventilate. I had just killed somepony. He had been alive just a few minutes ago, but now that life was gone, ended by me.
“Cirrus, calm down and breathe,” Just Heart said, coming up next to me and laying a hoof on my shoulder, “I know what you’re thinking. It wasn’t your fault. He attacked you and you reacted. That is it. It’s not your fault you had to kill him.”
“He’s dead. I shot him, and now he’s dead,” I muttered between sharp breaths. I could feel tears starting to form in my eyes, and a few moments later I felt the cold paths they traced against my cheek. I turned my head to look Just Heart in the eyes, “Why, Heart? Why did I have to do that?”
“Easy, Cirrus. You’re going to be all right. You saved my life there, that’s why you had to do it. We have to look out for each other, remember. He was crazy, and threatened the safety of our group. You’re protecting them,” Just Heart said, albeit a little awkwardly.
I didn’t notice. My mind was locked up, and my gaze kept straying back to the corpse that had been a living pony before I had pulled the trigger. Even worse, he had thanked me for killing him. “Yeah, he threatened us,” I muttered, finally getting control over my breathing again. A wave of nausea swept through me as I looked at the body. “I’m going to be sick,” I stated as I twisted onto my side and vomited violently, dumping the meager contents of my stomach onto the floor.
“Feel better?” Just Heart asked, not unkindly. I could only imagine that he had gone through this as well.
“Yeah, a little,” I muttered, wiping my mouth with a hoof and rising shakily to my hooves, “Tell me I didn’t screw up, Heart. I can’t live with being a murderer.” My voice was pleading. I needed to know, desperately, that I had done the right thing.
“You didn’t screw up, Cirrus. You saved my life. Who knows what that pony would have done if he had hurt me,” Just Heart answered quietly, moving away from me and over to the body.
I followed him hesitantly. I wanted nothing more than to run, as far and as fast as I could, but I knew I had to face this. It was the reality of the world I lived in now, and running wasn’t going to change that fact. Like it or not, I had to live with the fact that I had taken a life.
“Would you look at that,” Just Heart mused as he examined the corpse, “I think this is what he didn’t want us to see.”
I could barely make out the green hide of the buck, since most of his body was covered in lesions, exposing the muscle beneath. Most of his mane and tail had fallen out, making him look like a zombie.
“What… What happened to him,” I asked, fighting back another wave of nausea. The body smelled like he’d been dead for days, instead of just a few minutes.
“I don’t know. Radiation sickness, if I had to guess, but I’ve never heard of symptoms like this. It looks like he started to rot, despite the fact he was still alive. Guess that explains why he was crazy. Simply bizarre,” Just Heart stated, shifting the body slightly. It squelched against the ground.
I shook my head slowly, still in shock, but slowly regaining control over myself. “Well, we made it this far. We should grab what we can and bring it back to the group. We can have a real meal tonight to celebrate the windfall. It will do wonders for everyone’s morale,” I said in an attempt to get my mind of the dead pony in front of me. It didn’t work.
Just Heart nodded enthusiastically at my suggestion. “Excellent idea!” he exclaimed, “You take that far side of the store. I’ll cover this side. Our priority should be healthy foods and anything hydrating.”
I nodded woodenly and made my way to the other side of the store, pulling a few bags off a nearby checkout lane as I went. It didn’t take long for us to collect as much food as we could manage, enough to last us days, if not weeks with careful rationing, and it wasn’t even half of what was in the store. We’d be able to come back tomorrow and collect more for a trip out. I now completely agreed with Just Heart. We couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t stay here.
Just Heart stopped me at the door, a pistol in his mouth. My pistol in his mouth. “Don’t forget this, Cirrus. Who knows if you’re going to need it again,” he said, holding it out to me.
I recoiled from the weapon. When before it had made me feel so safe, it now felt like it was something dirty. But Just Heart wasn’t moving, and he was blocking my way out the door with his body. His eyes held an expression that I could only call understanding. He did know what I was going through, and he knew best how to deal with it. I reached out tentatively and took the weapon from him, quickly settling it back into place in my jacket. It felt heavy on my side, but Just Heart was right. I couldn’t be too careful.
Next, he held out a bottle of water that was only half full. It was one of the bottles that the dead pony had stolen from us. “Clean yourself up. We don’t want the others to see you covered in blood. You can use a rag to dry off. They already think the water is missing, so it won’t hurt anyone to use it,” he said, shaking the bottle a bit, making the water inside slosh around.
I hesitantly took the bottle from him, using the water sparingly to tease the blood out of my hide, and doing what I could to wash any traces from my jacket. I couldn’t get all of it out, but I got enough that it wouldn’t be immediately noticeable. “Thanks,” I said weakly, nodding at the former police sergeant. He returned the gesture and stepped through the door and back out into hell.
Our return to the game shop was greeted with a great deal of joy and exclamations of surprise. We were practically swarmed by the ponies as they noticed the food we had brought back, and several of them quickly made off with a great deal of it to begin preparing a meal for the rest of us.
When the excitement had finally died down a bit, Just Heart managed to calm everypony down enough to tell them that we had an announcement to make. “I’m also happy to tell you all that the pony responsible for taking our water was living in the grocery store. When we confronted him, he became violent and attacked us. We made sure he won’t be a threat to any of us. However, I do ask that nopony here goes into the grocery store. Cirrus and I will be heading back later today, as well as tomorrow, to gather supplies. We won’t be staying here for much longer. We need to find somewhere with a supply of fresh water and a reliable source of food. We’ll stay long enough to gather our strength, but plan on leaving tomorrow,” he announced.
He knew I wasn’t going to argue with him, and the announcement was met with silence. It wasn’t a disagreeing silence, or even an unsure one. If there was a word for how the room felt, it was accepting. There was simply nothing to say, and they all knew that.
“You have things under control up here, Heart?” I asked tiredly. I felt exhausted, even though it wasn’t even noon yet. I knew part of the reason was what I had just been through, but I didn’t care. I needed to see my Sunrise, needed to hear her voice, and know that I still had a reason to keep going in this fucked-up world.
“Yeah, I’ve got it. Go ahead and see to your wife. Let her know that we’ve got food up here, will you. We haven’t been eating enough to begin with, and she’s been eating even less than us,” Just Heart answered, giving me a concerned look.
I nodded, letting the buck know I had heard him, and made my way to the door that would bring me to her. Just as I was about to close the door behind me. “Remember, Cirrus, I’m here for you if you need it. You’re the only reason we made it this far!”
Right, I was the only reason that almost thirty ponies had decided to wander aimlessly off into the countryside, leaving the rest of us behind in a fruitless search for families that were probably dead or dying. I was the reason that several ponies had given up on living, deciding that death was better than surviving in the living hell that was all we had left. Me deciding to take action was the reason I had been forced to pull a gun and kill another pony.
Tears were streaking down my face when I pushed through the door into the office, not caring if it didn’t close behind me. I didn’t even make it to my Sunrise’s side before I collapsed, sobbing, to the ground. I was filled with nothing but self-loathing, convinced that my choices had already led to so much death.
She was at my side in an instant, cradling me and cooing softly in my ear. “Cirrus, what happened? What’s wrong?” she asked softly, her voice and touch working their magic on me and allowing me to calm myself. “Did somepony get hurt? Please, tell me. It’ll be okay.”
“No, it won’t be okay,” I cried, burying my face into her neck. It was hard, but I could still make out the scent of fresh herbs underneath the sweat, ash, and grime that we had been living in for the last week. I took a moment to gather myself, then moved my head back to look her in the eye. “It’s terrible. I… I had to… I didn’t mean to. It just happened,” I stuttered, unable to actually bring myself to say it.
I felt a familiar shape pressing into my side and reached into my jacket, pulling out my pistol and throwing it into the far wall as hard as I could. I didn’t want it anywhere near me.
“Cirrus, what are you doing? What happened?” Sunrise asked, a fearful note creeping into her voice, “Please, talk to me! What did you have to do?”
“I… I killed a pony, Sunrise. Shot him right in the chest. He was going to kill Just Heart if I didn’t, I know it. He was crazy, and he wanted to kill us. He said he was going to eat us,” I blathered, completely losing control of my mouth as I simply spewed what was on my mind. Somehow, talking to her made me feel better, that maybe everything was going to be okay after all.
“Oh, Cirrus, I’m so sorry!” Sunrise exclaimed, wrapping me in a crushing hug an running her muzzle through my mane, grooming the twisted locks of my mane, “I know you never meant to use it, but like you said, Just Heart was in trouble. You’re a hero, like I always knew you were! You came back for me that day, after all.”
“I don’t feel like a hero,” I muttered, unable to stop another wave of tears, “I feel like a murderer.”
“The stallion I love is no murderer, and I still love you, Cirrus. We all knew that it would be dangerous out here. You’re just looking out for the group. If he attacked you first, you didn’t do anything wrong. It was self-defense,” Sunrise insisted, moving her head back and staring into my eyes.
As always, her green eyes held a kindness I had never seen before from any other pony, and knew I would never be able to find again if I lost her. “I don’t know what I would do without you, Sunrise,” I said, leaning forward to kiss her.
She returned the kiss warmly, and we simply sat there, holding each other for what seemed like hours. Being in her arms made me feel like myself again. I knew I was forever changed, but having a pony like her at my side made it easy to keep the change small.
I vowed myself that I would never allow myself to take a life again without thinking carefully about the consequences. I had met a few veterans from the front lines, sent back home from injuries too severe to allow for further combat. They were hardened, bitter souls in the bodies of young stallions and mares, and I did not want to become like them.
We were still lying where I had fallen when the door to the office slammed open, a very exciting Bolter on the other side. “Cirrus, come out here! You’re going to want to hear this!” he exclaimed excitedly before seeing the two of us huddled together. His face went bright red and he stammered, “Oh, sorry! Am I interrupting something?”
“No, you’re fine, Bolter. We were just resting,” Sunrise stated kindly, rising to her hooves and helping me to mine.
“Oh good,” the young stallion said, chuckling awkwardly to himself, “Oh, and the food is almost ready! It’s going to be so good! Actual food!” With that, he turned and took off down the hall.
“Real food? What does he mean by that?” Sunrise asked me as I made my way over to the wall where I had thrown my pistol and retrieved it, stowing it safely back in the drawer of the desk. As much as I didn’t want to have it, I couldn’t ignore the fact that I needed it.
“The water thief was hiding in the grocery store and forgot to lock the door when he ran back. Just Heart and I found it unlocked, which is how we found him. On our way back, we grabbed as much food as we could. We were supposed to make a second trip, but he may have just let me rest,” I answered as quickly as possible, not wanting to revisit the events of our trip there.
“Oh. Is making a big meal like this smart?” Sunrise asked as we made our way through the small hallway to the main room.
“Probably not,” I admitted, shrugging, “but we need it. It will make us all feel a little better, I think.”
We stepped through the door to find everypony huddled in a circle around Just Heart, who was cradling what looked like a radio in his hooves. As we entered, his gaze snapped up to meet mine and he gestured hurriedly for me to join him. “Cirrus, get over here! You need to hear this!”
I hurried over, pressing through the throng of ponies until I was at Heart’s side, and listened. Through the static of interference, I could make out an official sounding voice, repeating a message.
“To anypony out there that is still alive, this is Captain Swift Foot of the Equestrian National Army. We have set up a relief camp in the town of Bright Fields. If anypony is hearing this, we have food, clean water, and medicine. Message repeats: To anypony out there that is still alive…”
It was like a call to salvation from the Princesses themselves. Bright Fields was not far from where we are, maybe a day or two by hoof, and it was where Sunrise’s parents were from. If the Army was setting up a camp there, there was a good chance it had avoided the worst of the damage.
“I think I knew where we’re going to be heading tomorrow,” I said to Just Heart. Despite everything, I felt a smile creep over my face.
“I agree. We’ll get the supplies we so desperately need,” Just Heart answered, nodding as a smile mirroring my own split his face.
A few moments later, we were all laughing and celebrating, treating our meal like a party. We were going to get the help we needed, and everything was going to be okay. There were still ponies that knew what was going on, and that had a plan.
It felt good to smile again, and for a few hours, I was able to forget about a nameless green stallion that was lying in a pool of his own blood not two hundred yards away from our revels.
{ And here is the end of chapter two. As I work on this, I realized a lot of what I wanted this story to be, namely looking at the sort of terrible decisions that need to be made when everything has fallen apart, like deciding how to punish a member of a group that relies on itself to survive.
Fallout Equestria: Omega
Entry 3: November 4th, 1047
It was our third day on the road, trying to find the town of Bright Fields in the shattered remains of the Equestrian countryside. Every road and trail that we knew was gone, wiped away in the radioactive fires of the holocaust and leaving us without a single landmark to mark our path. At first, we had been confident that we were traveling the right way, since we were still able to use the remains of the railway line to get us close, but we had left the tracks on the morning of the second day, thinking we would find the army base by nightfall. Instead, we had become hopelessly lost.
The falling ash had been replaced by dirty grey snow as the turning of the seasons compounded the blanketing effect of the dust and ash thrown into the air by the bombs. It was already far colder than I remembered any winter ever being, and it wasn’t even officially winter yet, and the temperatures had proven to be fatal at night, much to our dismay.
We had believed that the army camp would be easy to find, and so had brought very little with us in terms of extra clothing or supplies to start a fire. What we had brought quickly became scarce, making us resort to using extra scraps of cloth and whatever else we could find to start fires. Some ponies even went so far as to scavenge off of the occasional body that we managed to find in the falling snow and ash, but I simply couldn’t bring myself to desecrate their bodies. They had been ponies once, and it wasn’t right to simply use them as a resource.
The first night out from the hobby shop we had spent in the ruins of a train station, but the second night found us out in the open, with no shelter but our own bodies to shield us from the cold. It had easily been the longest night of my life, spent huddled against the other for warmth, shivering as the biting winds tore at our bodies and sapped our strength. The following morning had left our numbers depleted by two, one of which who was the elderly mare that had argued to have the water thief exiled from the group. The other had been a young Earth Pony buck that had once worked in the bakery only a couple blocks from my apartment building in Manehatten. I could still remember the constant smile he had on his face when I came in to pick up a loaf of bread every few days. We had never truly known each other, but had chatted a bit when I was in the store. And now he was just another victim of this hell I world had become.
There were only twelve of us now, all starving and cold. What extra food we had managed to grab from the grocery store hadn’t lasted nearly as long as we would have expected it to, and twelve hungry ponied could go through a lot of food very quickly. I doubted that we’d survive another night in the open. To make matters worse, my supply of Rad-X was gone, as was the supply from our cache, which meant we no longer had any sort of medication to protect against radiation, which put all of us on a very definitive timer. We had to find the army base, since their radiation meds were our only chance for survival.
We had found shelter and huddled together in the meager remains of a small, isolated farmhouse that had been completely blasted apart by the bombs. The roof and two of the walls had completely collapsed, so we were taking shelter in the corner where the two remaining wells met, trying to escape from the biting wind as we rested. I didn’t want to tell anypony, but I was starting to become very worried. Sunrise wasn’t doing very well, and every morning it was becoming harder to get her to rise. At this point, I was almost certain that the only reason she kept going was because of my determination to survive. All that meant was that I had to work even harder to keep climbing to my hooves every morning.
In spite of the severity of our circumstances, and my own worries at our chances of survival, I still had high spirits. The Army was still there, which meant we still had some leadership. If they had survived, then Equestria was still here. Everything was going to be all right. It was going to be tough going, that much was abundantly clear, but we had survived. That fact alone gave me the energy I needed to keep going.
But none of that energy or belief was going to be worth anything if we couldn’t find the damn camp without freezing to death. As much as Just Heart and I had tried to keep everypony’s spirits up, I couldn’t deny that we’d been wandering aimlessly for the last day and a half. It was exactly what I had been worried about when we were still holed up at the hobby shop, and now it was our reality.
“Cirrus, you all right over there? It’s time to get moving again,” Just Heart’s familiar, level voice intoned, breaking into my thoughts and dragging me back to the present.
I turned my head to fix him in a tired gaze. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. You have any clue where we are?”
“Cirrus, I’m a Manehattenite born and raised. This is the longest I’ve ever been outside the city, and the farthest outside it I’ve ever been for an extended period. For all I know, Canterlot is right around the next hill,” the dirty grey pony chuckled with a shake of his head.
“Well, let’s see if somepony does. I’m not looking forward to the prospect of wandering around out there without any idea of where we’re going,” I said, separating myself from Sunrise and helping her to her hooves.
The wind immediately cut into me, making me shiver and attempt to gather the tattered remains of my vest closer about myself, though there was so little of it left that the action did nothing to keep me warm. The sudden movement also brought back the nausea I’d been fighting ever since my supply of Rad-X had run out. I took a moment to get my stomach under control, then looked to Sunrise. Her normally bright hide was dull and lackluster, and her eyes no longer had the spark of light that I was so used to seeing from her. She was suffering much more from the radiation than I was. If we didn’t get medication soon, I had very little hope for how long she was going to last.
It took us a long time to finally get everyone up and ready to move, but we also had a moment of good luck when a pony said that they thought they knew where we were.
“I can’t say for sure, considering how different everything is, but I think I recognize this farmhouse. I think Bright Fields is only a couple miles to the north of here,” he explained carefully, his voice quiet, “I don’t want to mislead anypony though…”
“It’s better than what we have, and it’s a solid direction to follow,” I quickly answered to reassure him, “Once we’re under way, I’ll do some scouting from the air. If we are that close, I should be able to find something.”
"You're sure you'll be able to fly?" Bolter asked me, his voice shaky. He looked exhausted, and it was easy to tell that it wasn’t because of lack of sleep. The radiation we’d been absorbing was taking its toll. It had already started to show on some of the others, even me. I noticed some of them walking weakly, losing patches of hair on their coats and manes. We were running out of time, fast.
"I'll be fine," I answered him. I flexed my wings a bit to show him and be sure. I had lost a few feathers off of both wings, but nothing more than normal. I had to tell myself it was just normal molting and nothing serious. "If the base is still intact, I should be able to spot something from the air. It can't be far from here."
“That’s what you said yesterday, Cirrus,” another pony, a deep blue unicorn buck that had once been a restaurant manager, growled at me, “And look at how well that turned out!”
“It wasn’t for lack of trying. Everything out there is the same color. I’m trying to find an army camp that’s going to be covered in a layer of this grey shit we’re calling snow that we’ve been trudging through. If you think you can do better, why don’t you sprout wings and try!” I retorted a bit more harshly than I intended.
Bolter took a step towards me, drawing my attention, and put a hoof on my shoulder, “Cirrus, I don’t think he meant it like that…”
I looked back to the buck, and sure enough, he had taken a step back, a hurt look on his face, and I instantly regretted the fact that I had snapped at him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” I apologized, lowering my head in shame, “We’re all on edge, and I’m doing what I can to get us there. If we had a two-way radio, finding this camp would be easy, but we don’t, so we have to make do with what we have.”
The buck grumbled something that might have been an acceptance of my apology, but otherwise said nothing, and merely bundled his threadbare coat a little tighter and looked off into the distance. I wanted to say something more, but it was obvious that there wasn’t much to be said. We set off a few minutes later.
The only sound as we traveled was the sound of the howling wind, which made every single step a struggle, but still we continued on.
Roughly twenty minutes after we started out, with no sign of any sort of civilization, I knew it was time for me to take to the air. “Sunrise, I have to take a look from the air,” I said to her, coming up on her side and wrapping a wing around her.
Her nod was almost imperceptible. “Okay. Be careful, my love,” she whispered, the first words she had spoken all day.
“Always,” I whispered back, giving her a quick kiss before giving myself some space and launching into the air.
It was even colder up high, and the winds were much more unpredictable, cutting across my path in sudden gusts that made it extremely difficult to control my flight. Several times, I was almost driven to the ground by sudden gusts that threatened to put me into deadly spins. I had never been a particularly athletic flier and it was hurting me now. The result was that I spent fully half of my time in the air simply fighting to stay there. The other half was spent combing the ground for any sign of Bright Fields and the camp.
After only a brief time in the air, I began to feel my body seize up, the cold quickly sapping what little strength I had. Speed was now of the essence. My wings were getting stiff, and flapping them felt like I was waving a pair of bricks attached to my sides. I had only a short amount of time to find anything before I would be forced back to the ground out of sheer exhaustion, but I would force myself to stay in the air for as long as I possibly could without hurting myself.
That amount of time ended up being far less than I expected. It couldn’t have been more than half an hour before I felt the last of my strength draining away. I cast one last, desperate look towards the ground, praying for some sign of the army camp we needed, but nothing but a solid pall of grey met my eyes.
In that brief second, my attention drifted from the winds around me, and a gust of wind swept across my path, smacking me unexpectedly to the side. In my haste to correct myself, I overextended my left wing, which then caught another gust and sent me into a spin. I was very swiftly disoriented, and the constant buffering from the wind made it near impossible to correct my path. I resigned myself to the inevitable and drew my head in close to my body, keeping my wings extended only enough to control my crash, and waited for the ground to meet me.
I hit the ground hard, the cold snow stinging as I slid through it before finally coming to a stop twenty yards later, completely breathless. My breathing returned in fits and starts, and I was coughing weakly as I struggled to fill my lungs again. When I was finally able to gulp down a breath of air, I lifted my head to look around. I could make out a few hills on the horizon, but otherwise everything appeared as a uniform grey color. I didn’t have a clue which direction was what.
The unfamiliarity of my surroundings made me start to panic, and my heart started to pound in my chest as I realized I didn’t have a clue where the rest of my group was. Tears came to my eyes as the thought crossed my mind that I would never see Sunrise again. In desperation, I started running, quickly working up a sweat as I galloped towards the nearest hill. It was stupid, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. The only thought in my head was that I needed to get to some high ground and find out where I was.
As I crested the hill, I cast about, searching for anything I could find. A short distance away, maybe a couple hundred yards, I spotted a collection of dark shapes moving through the snow drifts, cutting a path across the countryside before me.
“Hey! Over here!” I shouted hoarsely, my voice cracking. My exhaustion, coupled with my complete lack of strength, made it hard to produce any sort of volume over a normal speaking tone, and none of the shapes seemed to react to my voice. “I’m over here!” I tried again, waving my forehooves in the air, trying to get their attention.
Again, they showed no signs of recognizing that anything was happening. I started running towards them, quickly losing my footing in the powdery snow and ash and tumbling head-over-hooves to land in a tangle of limbs at the base of the hill. I struggled back to my hooves, looking for the ponies, but could see nothing.
“No, please. We need help,” I whispered, unable to find the strength for anything louder. I stumbled forward, now crying openly, my spirit breaking after coming so close to finding what we had spent so long searching for, only to fail because I didn’t have the strength to keep going.
My limbs were shaking badly, managing only a few steps before I collapsed into the snow, unable to carry me any farther. The sobs came openly, and I did nothing to stop them. This was where I was going to die, forgotten and alone. The snow would cover my body in a few hours, and nopony would even know that I was here.
Exhaustion was claiming me, and I was just about to close my eyes for what I knew would be the last time when I thought I heard a voice. It was faint, and the wind distorted the words, but it definitely sounded like a voice. I fought to open my eyes again, perking my ears towards the sound and straining to make anything out.
“I know I saw something over here! I’m checking it out!” it said with a fierce tone of determination, “We’re out here patrolling to help ponies, and I’m not going to leave one to die in the snow!” It sounded close, maybe only a dozen yards or so, but that might as well have been on the moon.
The response was too far away for me to make out the words, but the tone sounded unhappy, almost to the point of anger.
“The Captain can go hang if that’s how he feels about it!” the first voice proclaimed, now much closer, “I signed up to help ponies, and Celestia as my Witness, that’s what I’m going to do!”
“Over here. Please,” I begged, forcing as much volume into the words as I could manage, which wasn’t much. I would have been surprised if a pony standing more than five feet away from me could hear it.
The sound of boots crunching through the snow reached my ears, steadily growing louder as somepony approached. “Okay, now I know I heard something,” the first voice grumbled to themselves, “Now I just need to find it.”
A few seconds later, the shape of a pony came into view. He was a fit Earth pony stallion with a black hide, and he was wearing a set of military combat barding. In place of a helmet, he was wearing a black knit cap on his head. When he spotted me, his eyes widened in surprise. “Hey, Sarge, I found a survivor over here! He’s a Pegasus too!” he shouted, turning his head over his shoulder to make himself heard by his comrades.
“Please, help us,” I groaned, trying to make it to my hooves.
“Easy now. You’re gonna be all right,” the pony muttered, stepping towards me and kneeling down beside me. He pulled out a canteen and unscrewed the cap, holding it up to my lips, then tipping it back.
Sweet, clean water filled my mouth, and I swallowed hungrily. It was more than I had had to drink in the last twelve hours, since our water supply had been reduced to almost nothing. The stallion gave me another sip before pulling the canteen away. “Careful. Too much too soon can kill you just as quickly,” he said, looking back over his shoulder towards the rest of his patrol.
“You better not be pulling my leg, Corporal,” a harsh voice barked as the Sergeant approached, followed by two other ponies.
The Sergeant was a light green unicorn stallion, dressed in the same gear as the pony helping me. Flanking him was a pink Earth pony mare whose uniform boasted a large red cross on a shoulder. The last pony was a brown unicorn stallion who looked at me with a disinterested gaze, as if he had seen thousands of ponies in my situation, and I was just another one to add to the tally.
“Look for yourself, Sarge. If we get him back to camp, we can still save him. He isn’t that far gone,” the black stallion insisted, “Come on, May Blossom, you know we can save him! I don’t want to leave another pony out here!”
A cold spike of fear was driven into my heart at those words. These ponies were considering just leaving me to die in the snow! “No, don’t leave me!” I protested, twisting out from under the black stallion’s hoof that was resting on my back in a supportive gesture, and tried to climb to my hooves, “We’ve spent the last three days trying to find you! You can’t just leave us!”
“We? Where are the rest of you?” The sergeant growled, taking a menacing step towards me, “Cause I don’t see anypony around here except for the five of us.” With him so close, I could easily make out the well-worn grip of the pistol that was shoved into the holster of his combat barding.
“There are twelve of us, including me,” I explained between gasping breaths, trying to keep a pleading tone out of my voice, “We survived the bombing of Manehattan in a fallout shelter and made our way into the countryside to escape the radiation. We picked up a radio broadcast a few days ago about an army camp in Bright Fields. We’ve been trying to find it ever since.”
“They picked up the message? I didn’t think anypony would hear that,” the distant brown unicorn mused. His tone was dismissive, despite the expression of moderate surprise on his face.
“You’re from Manehattan? Not from up there?” the sergeant demanded, nodding up towards the sky.
“Up there? I don’t know what you’re talking about?” I asked, looking up at the sergeant. Was there something going on with the rest of the Pegasi? Had some of them managed to survive the destruction of Cloudesdale?
The sergeant stared at me for a few moments, then his gaze softened. “Forget about it. You obviously don’t have a clue. You said your friends are nearby? What direction?”
“Are we seriously going to help them?” the brown buck asked with a toss of his head, “You can’t be serious? We’re already stretched to the limit as it is!”
“Can it, Wrench. I’ve made my choice, and Charcoal is right. We can’t just leave them here. Now, Pegasus, where were you coming from?” The sergeant snapped at the buck before turning back to me.
“My name is Cirrus,” I said, “And we took shelter in a farmhouse that we think was a few miles south of Bright Fields. We set off heading north, and I took to their air to try to find you guys and lead them there.”
The sergeant nodded, a knowing look spreading across his features. “I know it. Wrench and I will head south and find your friends. We’ll get them back to the camp and taken care of. Charcoal, I want you and May Blossom to get Cirrus back to camp. The Captain is going to want to talk to him,” he ordered.
The others nodded quickly in acceptance of the orders, and within minutes the sergeant and the brown buck, Wrench, were gone. Charcoal and May Blossom spent a few minutes making sure I wasn’t seriously injured, then helped me to my hooves. We started making our way through the countryside, pushing through the snow. The two ponies had to support me to keep me up, since I had lost so much of my strength, but together they managed to get me back.
The camp itself was nothing like what I had expected. Thick canvas tents had been pitched in tight, neat rows in the fields surrounding the town, with the buildings, or what was left of them, sitting beyond the tent city, too far away for me to be able to tell what they were being used for, if anything at all. Most of the tents appeared to be in use as medical tents or barracks, though the vast majority of ponies that I saw looked more like refugees than soldiers. An air of despair hung over the entire area. It felt like these ponies were just sitting and waiting to die.
I was led into a tent that already seemed to be full to bursting. Ponies were lying on almost every horizontal surface, and a haggard white buck was moving from place to place, giving what aid he could. He was wearing a dirty white doctor’s lab coat, along with a black knit cap emblazoned with the same red cross that May Blossom had on her uniform.
“Doc, we found another one out there. This one claims that he and his group picked up Swift Foot’s message on the radio,” Charcoal announced as they eased me down on top of a low table, “Sarge and Wrench kept going to find the rest of their group and will be bringing them back here.”
“How many more?” the doctor asked as he approached my side, pulling a stethoscope out of a pocket and checking my pulse.
“Twelve,” I answered weakly, “including me. We’d have been dead tonight if we didn’t find you.”
“If you lot are too far gone, you might be dead anyway. Radiation meds are at a premium right now, and that’s including the stocks we got out of the supply caches in town,” the doctor grumbled, “Lucky for you, you’re only suffering from a case of advanced radiation poisoning, which is still low enough for me to treat. A single dose of Rad-Away will clear you right up. Other than that, you’re malnourished and dehydrated, but we have enough food and water purification tablets to keep us going for a long time.”
He left my side for a few minutes to collect some supplies from a cabinet set against one wall of the tent, then returned carrying a packet of Rad-Away and a container of dried military rations. He handed me the Rad-Away first, which I eagerly slurped down. The fake orange taste, which usually made me want to gag, was probably the sweetest thing I’d ever tasted. Almost immediately, I felt some of my strength returning.
“Where are you going to put the others?” the doctor asked Charcoal as he handed me the rations.
I perked my ears up to listen while I tore the container open and started eating. It was bland and tasteless, but I didn’t care. I hadn’t had much of an appetite after the initial celebration when we had heard about the army camp. Just Heart and Sunrise had needed to force me to eat a few bites the last few days. After my close brush with death today, I was not going to let something like a lack of appetite to keep me from maintaining my strength. This world didn’t allow for that kind of an outlook any more, and I doubted that I’d ever really have much of an appetite again.
“It would probably be a poor decision to split them up, considering how much they’ve survived already. According to Cirrus, they survived the bombing of Manehattan in a fallout shelter,” May Blossom commented, the first words I had heard her speak. Her voice was lilting, with a sing-song quality that I would normally have considered beautiful, but I could hear a lot of pain underneath it, like it hurt her to simply open her mouth. I couldn’t blame her.
“I agree. We brought him here so you could patch him up and lower his rad levels. The Captain is probably going to want to speak with him. He’ll decide where to put him and his group,” Charcoal said with a nod, “If the Sarge gets back first, let us know where he brings them, all right?”
“Consider it done, Charcoal. Now, if you don’t mind, I have other patients to tend to,” the doctor said, turning away from us and making his way across the room to another pony, a light blue unicorn, who looked to be on the very verge of death.
“What do you say? Are you ready to meet the Captain?” Charcoal asked me jovially, a light-hearted smile spreading across his face.
“Do I have a choice?” I asked, more bitter than I intended, but my heart was yearning for Sunrise. Not knowing where she was, or if she was even still alive, was getting to me. I had left her out there in the snow, and was now lying here, in a tent that was warm with the body heat of everypony inside, with a full stomach and ample supplies of fresh water. Meeting some military officer was the last thing I wanted to do.
A hurt expression chased the smile away, and Charcoal floundered for a moment, his mouth opening and closing as he looked for something to say.
“Of course you have a choice. But letting the Captain now that his message saved somepony would do a lot for morale around here. It’s something we could all use,” May Blossom stated, her tone completely inflectionless, like she couldn’t spare any emotion.
“You’re right. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way,” I muttered, looking away from the two soldiers, “My nerves have been a little on edge these last few days. I’m just worried about my group. My wife is with them, and she hasn’t been doing too well.”
“I understand. Don’t worry about it,” Charcoal said, forcing a smile back onto his face, “Follow us, we’ll show you to the Captain.”
Getting back on my hooves was easy now, most of the symptoms of my radiation poisoning gone, and my strength returned almost in its entirety as a result. I was fairly certain that, without regular doses of Rad-Away, I would be back to that sorry state in just a few days, but for now, I felt better than I had since the day we left the city.
Outside, the weather seemed much tamer than it had only minutes before. The cold didn’t bite quite so deep and even the wind seemed to have died down. The thought sprang up in my mind that we might have finally survived the worst. Things were already looking up, and as much as they had already improved, things could only get better.
The Captain’s control center had been erected close to the center of the tent city, between a mess hall and another medical tent. It was also my first glimpse at how pressed for supplies the army was, since the tent shared a canvas wall with the mess hall.
When we stepped inside, it was to a scene of carefully controlled chaos. Three desks dominated the room, all of them completely covered in maps, reports, and other forms of paperwork. The only clear space on one of them was taken up with a bulky terminal where a mare was sitting, a headset perched on her head, furiously working, though I couldn’t determine to what purpose.
The Captain himself was standing by a table that held a ham radio that was also buried underneath a mound of papers. He was wearing a headset and was arguing animatedly with somepony on the other end.
“We don’t have the supplies to move the entire Division all the way to Ponyville,” he ground out, “And I don’t care what General Halftrack has to say about it! There are ponies out here in desperate need of aid, and about all this Division has left is medical supplies. I’m keeping us right here and helping where I can.”
There was a pause in which the Captain started to slowly shake his head. He stood in silence for several minutes, during which I could imagine he was being chewed out by some officer sitting safely in some bunker somewhere, then finally answered, “Come out here and see for yourself what the situation it. Nuclear winter is already setting in, and temperatures are already dropping to dangerously low levels. Moving now would consign half my men to death by frostbite. I’m not going to do it,” he snapped.
The exchange was making me awfully nervous. I had thought that the military knew exactly what it was doing. Now, I was learning that there was very little agreement anywhere, especially if a mere Captain was arguing with a General.
There was another pause as the other pony responded, but the Captain cut him off angrily, “If that’s the way he feels about it… Damn it! We lost the signal again. Radar, get it back, and let me know as soon as you do! Whatever is left of Command hasn’t got a clue what’s happening out here, and it’s apparently my job to educate them!”
The mare at the terminal nodded as she rose from the terminal and approached the radio. “At once, sir.”
The Captain finally turned away from the radio and spotted the two soldiers that had guided me here. “Corporal Charcoal, Private May Blossom, what can I do for you? Who’s this?” he asked, arching an eyebrow as he walked towards us.
“I think we had better let him explain,” Charcoal said, gesturing to me, “But it is good news, sir.”
“Another refugee then? Let’s hear it, and be quick. I might have that line back to Command any minute.”
“Uh, Captain Swift Foot?” I started timidly, my voice shaking. He nodded in confirmation, his expression neither annoyed nor encouraging, and I continued, “My name is Cirrus. I worked for RobCo in Manehattan before… all of this. I survived in a fallout shelter near the train station. Once we thought it was safe, we made our way down the rail lines, until we took shelter in a small shopping plaza about ten miles away from here. That was where we picked up your radio broadcast welcoming us to come here. I just wanted to tell you, that message saved us. Our supplies had just about ran out when we got it. The other two soldiers that were with these two are out there leading in the rest of my group. I flew ahead to try to find you and crashed in the snow.”
As soon as I mentioned the radio broadcast, the Captain’s expression softened. “You actually heard my broadcast? I didn’t think anypony was going to hear that. This is terrific news indeed. How many ponies are you?” He asked excitedly, a broad smile spreading across his features, making me realize how much of a boost this was for his morale. While we had simply been struggling to keep ourselves alive, this pony was responsible for the lives of hundreds. I couldn’t even imagine the strain it had to be on him.
“Twelve, including me,” I answered sadly, “We used to be a lot more. The elements have really taken their toll on us.”
The Captain nodded sympathetically. “That, I certainly understand. We’ve had more than our fair share of struggles with the elements. I don’t even want to think about how many we’ve lost…” he trailed off, his gaze turning to look over at the radio, “And still they’re trying to order us around, despite the fact that everything’s fallen apart!”
“What do you mean? I figured that since you managed to set up a base and still have authority here, that the government is still intact. I know I heard you speaking with a general when I walked in,” I asked, feeling my stomach drop out from under me.
“I’m sorry you had to hear that. The honest truth is that I’m awfully cut off from everything else. That was one of only two conversations I’ve had with command and the last was only five days ago. Everything’s in shambles, and we’re trying to figure the problem out. Those bombs knocked out an awful lot of our capability, and Command is scrambling to try to put everything back together. I’m sure everything is going to be fine,” the Captain said, his smile reassuring, or at least trying to be.
His words made me feel a little better, but I still had the feeling that there was something he wasn’t telling me. There wasn’t much that I could do about it, so instead I chose to believe him, since it was obvious that it was what he wanted to believe. “Oh, good. I was worried that there wasn’t anypony left out there. It’s scary, how empty the countryside is,” I said lamely, not sure what else there was to say.
“I agree. I believe I missed your name, though. You know mine, and I would like to know the name of the stallion that managed to return a little hope to this camp,” the Captain said.
“Oh, I’m Cirrus Swirl. And thank you, for offering us your help. I can’t imagine you have a lot of extra supplies here,” I said, hoping my tone sounded as grateful as I felt.
“Don’t mention it. The day I stop helping ponies is the day I give up on all of ponykind. I swore an oath to protect and serve, and that is exactly what I intend to do. With everything that has happened, saving the lives of my fellow ponies is the only kind of service that matters. I can’t imagine either side in this damned war is thinking about trying to mount an attack now,” the Captain replied with a wave of his hoof, as if to sweep away my concerns.
I was just about to say something more when the mare working on the radio announced, “Sir, I’ve got the signal back! General Halftrack is on the line!”
“Well done, Radar! Corporal, take our guest to one of the barracks that’s more or less empty. There should be a few on the western edge of the camp. When the rest of his group makes it back, bring them there as well. We’ll reassign a few medics to see to their needs,” The Captain ordered as he turned his attention back to the radio.
As Charcoal led me out of the tent, I could hear the argument between the Captain and the General pick right back up where it started, with the Captain arguing heatedly that there was nothing he could do and that the entire Division was staying right where it was. Hearing the exchange, I couldn’t shake the feeling that things were much worse than they appeared.
Outside, the temperature had dropped by a few more degrees as evening approached. Already, the sky was darkening, and the cloud cover made the light fade that much faster. We were making our way through the rows of tents when a soldier approached us.
“Charcoal, Sergeant Beet Root has just returned with a group of about ten survivors. He wanted to know where the Captain wants them,” the soldier responded excitedly, “He has them in one of the medical tents right now for radiation treatment. A lot of them seemed to be in pretty bad shape.”
As soon as the other soldier had mentioned that the others were here, I wanted to charge off through the camp and find Sunrise. After my brush with death, I wanted nothing more than to simply throw myself into her hooves and, at least for a few minutes, forget than any of this was happening.
“Thanks for letting me now, Crunch. I’ll head over there now and let the Sergeant now what the orders are,” Charcoal said, inclining his head to the other pony.
Crunch told Charcoal where we could find them, and we continued on our way, now taking a slightly different route to the area of the camp that was made up mostly of medical tents. It struck me then how bad of shape everything really was in. The smell of death of sickness hung in the air, making me feel distinctly uncomfortable. The few views I got inside some of the tents revealed rows of cots holding ponies that looked to be on the very edge of death. It was enough to make me think about how smart coming here really was.
I shook my head to dispel the thought. It didn’t matter how smart I thought it was, it was our only choice to come here. They had supplies like food, water, and medicine; all things we were running out of and desperately needed. Besides, I shouldn’t be surprised that things were bad. After what I had witnessed during my terrifying flight back to Manehattan that day, things should be far worse than they appeared to be. Sometimes I was still surprised that I had managed to survive at all.
The tent we entered was identical to every other one we had passed, and I would never have been able to pick it out. As soon as we stepped inside, though, my eyes were drawn immediately to a spot of golden hide, and I jumped forward, pushing past everypony in my way and crushing Sunrise in a fierce embrace.
She returned it, hugging me as tightly as I was her. I heard her sniffle and felt something cold and wet drip onto my shoulder. I released her and pulled back slightly so I could look her in the eye. She was crying, but they were tears of joy. “I thought I had lost you again, Cirrus,” she muttered, “I was so scared.”
“You don’t have to be scared anymore. We’re together, and we’re safe. Everything’s going to be okay now. I’m sorry I scared you,” I whispered back, leaning in and kissing her.
She returned it hungrily, wrapping her hooves around my neck. Had we been alone, it probably would have continued farther, but a cough from the sergeant brought us back to the present.
“As happy as I am for your reunion, some of us have work to do, Cirrus. The medics are taking care of your group, but everypony that’s healthy enough can’t stay here. Charcoal, what did the Captain say?” Beet Root asked, turning to look at the black stallion next to me.
“He told me to put them in one of the barracks in the western part of camp. He was happy to hear that somepony heard and responded to his message, so he wants them to be well taken care of,” Charcoal answered quickly.
“Good. Let’s get them there and get back to work. We still have a few miles of the perimeter left to patrol, and I don’t want to be out there later than we need to be,” Beet Root ordered, “As soon as the medics are done here, we’ll get the ones that are healthy out there and get them something to eat, then we need to be back out there.”
It didn’t take long for the medics to finish their work, but the results left me worried. ‘The ones that are healthy’ turned out to be only nine of us. Three ponies were too sick with radiation poisoning to go to the barracks with us, and the severe looks on the faces of the medics as they explained that told me that the chances of those ponies ever walking out on their own was slim to none. It hurt to realize that, especially after everything we had survived already.
One of them was a middle-aged, bright pink unicorn mare that had been very quiet about what her job had been, but I could only imagine someone with her careful movements and looks to have worked in a spa. The other two had been colleagues at the train station, the brown Earth Pony buck with the handlebar mustache worked the ticket booth, and the light purple Earth pony mare working with the cleaning crew to keep the trains in order. I had dealt with the buck often enough when Sunrise and I had gone to visit her parents, and it felt like a dagger twisting in my gut to see the look of grim understanding cross his face. But, as much as I wanted to, I knew there was nothing I could do to save his life.
We were escorted out of the medical tent and led through the slush-choked pathways through the camp. That was when it struck me how empty it seemed. Earlier, the stench of death and sickness had permeated the air, and what few ponies I had seen were confined to cots, but even so, this was a military camp. They had supplies, we had seen that, but I was now realizing that there should have been ponies walking around, seeing to whatever duties there were. With the world in the state it was, there had to be more to do than anypony could imagine to keep this place running.
Charcoal sighed when I brought the question up to him. “You noticed that, huh? I wish I had a good answer for you, Cirrus. You’re a good pony that’s worked hard at keeping these others alive. I wish I could tell you.”
“You’re just too soft-hearted to face the truth, Charcoal. You always have been. I’ll tell you what’s going on, Pegasus. The ponies you don’t see, the soldiers and other military attachés, they’re either dead or deserted. You want the truth, here it is: Equestria is dead. There’s nothing left, and most ponies have realized that. Sure, there’s a couple generals holed up in some bunker somewhere, and the Captain thinks he can still do something, but that’s it. This is the last bastion of the military,” the brown unicorn snapped, glaring at me and Charcoal in turn. His expression was grim, like he believed there was nothing that was going to prevent the fate that was in store for all of us.
“If you think that’s true, why are you still here? With that kind of attitude, I would have expected you to be one of the first ponies to leave,” I demanded angrily. I didn’t want to believe that we didn’t have a chance to survive. It simply couldn’t be true. Like everypony else my age, I’d grown up hearing the stories. Stories like the return of Nightmare Moon a thousand years after she’d been imprisoned and attempted to regain control, or stories like the time Discord had returned and transformed Equestria into his personal vision of insanity. For both of those, a few determined ponies had brought us all back from the brink and saved life as we knew it.
Admittedly, our situation was quite a bit worse, but even so, if we all worked together, we should be able to survive. There was no reason that shouldn’t happen. It was the pony way, or at least so I had been taught.
The brown unicorn, whose name I remembered was Wrench, was now glaring only at me. “You’re seriously asking me that, after everything you’ve survived? Just take a look around. Everything’s gone to shit. Ponies are dying left and right, and that’s not even taking into account that thousands that died when the bombs fell. I stick around ‘cause I’ve got nothing else left to live for. My parents lived in Fillydelphia, and that city is just so much radioactive rubble. I’ve got nothing left but the Captain.”
I could hear the pain lingering in his voice, his attempts to hide them under that rough and distant exterior breaking down. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. It’s just hard to imagine anywhere being worse than Manehatten. We were all there when the bombs started dropping, and barely managed to survive,” I quickly muttered, lowering my head in shame.
“So you think you got it the worst? It ain’t like it’s happened to fucking everypony. You’re a damn Pegasus, my guess is you had family in Cloudsdale, right?” he shot back pointedly.
I looked up at him, barely able to force my head to move in a quick nod. I was terrified of what he was going to say next.
“Well then I’ve got a newsflash for you: It was worse the your fucking Manehatten. Cloudsdale was the first thing those fucking striped bastards hit, and that city is just so many tufts of cloud now. Seems like Rainbow Dash really made an impression on them with those Shadowbolts of hers. ‘Course now everypony is sitting here wondering what the hell happened to her, or any of the Ministry Mares for that matter,” Wrench growled, looking up at the overcast sky, “I wouldn’t be surprised if they all ran for the hills and are now sitting pretty in some Stable somewhere. They always were the sort of ponies to look out for each other before anypony else.”
“That’s not true!” I snapped, coming to a stop so I could face Wrench directly, “I worked for RobCo on a project handed down directly from Applejack’s Ministry, and I know that when she got involved, it was to make sure that the project would save as many lives as possible!”
“And what was the damn project, huh? Did you ever find out exactly what it was you were working on? If the M.W.T. was involved on it, I can pretty much guarantee it was going to kill a lot of stripes, and then kill a lot of our own as the stripes tried to get at it. It’s the way this entire damn war has gone,” Wrench growled back, turning to face me. The severe expression was gone, replaced by one of rage. His eyes were narrowing as he glared at me, and I could feel the tension in the air.
But what he had said made me pause. For all the time I had spent working on the project, I really did have no clue what it was meant to do, not to mention that the specs and directions for building it had changed at least four times during the time we were working on it. “I can’t speak for anypony else, but in my experience, they’ve always had our best interests at heart. They’ve spent so long fighting for peace in Equestria, I simply can’t believe that they’d willingly hurt anypony.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me! Have you been paying attention to the war at all! The reason everything is this fucked up at all is because Twilight Sparkle and her damn M.A.S. designed and built those fucking megaspells! Add a little striped spying from that friend of theirs, and you’ve got the perfect recipe for death on a global scale! I’m telling you, the worst thing that could have happened is exactly what did happen. If Luna had just sucked it up and did her damn job, we wouldn’t have this fucking problem,” Wrench snapped, taking a few steps forward until the tip of his nose was only inches from mine. He looked like he was about to jump me.
“Private, stand down! We were ordered to give them our hospitality, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do!” Beet Root snapped, suddenly appearing at Wrench’s side. I was convinced he could have made a rock crack simply by looking at it.
“He’s the one that fucking started it!” Wrench growled, turning his head just enough to look at the Sergeant, “And I’m going to finish it.”
“You are doing no such thing!” Beet Root retorted sharply, stepping between the two of us, “You are still in this camp, which means you are still a part of the Equestrian Army. I am your superior, and you will follow my orders. Stand. Down.” His expression was one that brooked absolutely no argument.
All the same, I thought that Wrench was going to argue, but he finally deflated, his head falling to look at the ground, even if that severe expression was still there. “All right, Sarge. You’re the boss,” he muttered as he slowly turned and started walking again. I was about to follow after him when a hoof against my chest stopped me.
“I would have thought that you’d be smarter about picking fights,” Beet Root growled, looking me in the eye, “I’ve seen Wrench go hoof-to-hoof with three stripes and win before. He’s easily one of the best soldiers left in this camp. I look at you and all I see is a pampered city pony. He would have squashed you without a second thought.”
“I wasn’t trying to pick a fight. I was just asking a question,” I argued, my voice becoming more heated than I had intended.
“In the world that we’ve got left, that’s all it takes. Keep in mind how little we have left, kid. Everything is an accusation now. I would have thought that you’d understand that by now,” the Sergeant stated.
“What are you talking about? Why would I think that? If anything, now is the time that ponies should stand together. It’s the only way any of us are going to survive this!” I asked, fear gripping my heart.
Beet Root chuckled as she slowly shook his head. “Oh, if only the rest of the Pegasi looked at it that way. They could stand to learn a thing or two from you, Cirrus. You see those clouds?” he asked, looking up at the overcast sky.
“Yeah, they’ve been like that ever since the bombs dropped. I figure it’s something to do with all the fallout from the bombs,” I answered with a shrug.
“That’s just it. They aren’t. Within hours of the first bombs hitting, those clouds rolled in, sealing all of us off from the sky. What little we’ve been able to learn is that the rest of the Pegasi have sealed themselves off from the rest of us. Apparantly they’ve decided that it would be best to go it alone. After more than a thousand years of living and working alongside the rest of ponykind, they just sealed themselves off from the rest of us.”
I felt my stomach drop out from under me. It couldn’t be true, it simply couldn’t be. What reason did they have for cutting themselves off? They didn’t stand to gain anything! Everything I had ever learned had told me that the Pegasi survived by cooperating with the rest of ponykind, and now they were trying to live alone off of the clouds? It simply didn’t make any sense.
“What? Why would they do that?” was all I managed to get out past the deadlock that my mind was imposing on me. So many thoughts were rushing through my head that it was nearly impossible for me to organize them into anything coherent. All I knew was that I had just been told that most of my family had been killed in the first minutes of the attack, and anything that was left of it was now locked away on the other side of those clouds that were slowly killing us with their radioactive delivery.
“Who knows?” Beet Root grumbled, “All I know is that they aren’t opening up that sky anytime soon. All contact we had with them was cut off within minutes of the sky closing. From what I’ve heard, it’s the same all over Equestria, from Appleloosa in the south to the Crystal Empire in the north.”
“But, that doesn’t make any sense!” I protested, shaking my head and forcing my head to start working again, “They don’t gain anything by turning their backs on us! Where are they going to get food?”
“I don’t think they’ve thought that far ahead. They’re scared, just like the rest of us. Only difference is that they live far enough away to do something about their fear. Rest of us have to live with it,” the Sergeant answered with a shrug, “Now let’s get you lot to your tent. Rest of us still have a job to do. And those of you that are healthy enough will be put to work as well. As much as it may look like it, this camp isn’t a charity. We need everypony to pull their own weight if we’re going to survive.”
“Of course. We’re more than willing to help,” I answered with a nod as I fell into step behind him.
He simply nodded his understanding of my words.
The tent that was to be our new home was small and cramped with the eight of us that were still healthy crammed inside, but at least it was warm. Once we were settled, we were given some rations and water. It felt like a feast after what little we had had these last few days.
The relief at having found the camp put all of our minds at ease, and we actually managed to relax a little bit, and we all found a bit of our appetites again. For the first time in days, I actually had a good feeling for the future. We were together, we were healthy, and we had friends. That was all we needed.
I was just swallowing the last bite of my rations when Just Heart approached me. “You did a damn good job, Cirrus. Finding those ponies really saved us. I don’t want to think about what we would have done tonight had we not found this place.”
“You’re telling me, Heart,” I answered with a smile, “Somepony up there is looking out for us. That doesn’t mean life is going to get easy. We’ve got a long way to go before we can call ourselves safe. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to visit the little colt’s room.”
I rose to my hooves and strode past the black pony, noticing the look of respect on his face. It didn’t take a genius to realize that he thought we’d all be dead if I weren’t around. As I reached the flap that would let me outside, I turned to him. “I couldn’t have done this without you, Heart. I’m really happy you decided to open that door for me back in Manehatten.”
“I’m right there with you Cirrus. You’ve been all that’s been holding us together. Once your done out there, I have a few things I need to talk to you about.”
“Of course, I’ll be back in a minute,” I answered with a nod as I stepped outside.
I walked around the tent until I was hidden from the main pathways, but paused before I actually did my business. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted movement from a nearby tent. Curiosity getting the best of me, I crept forward. As I peeked my head around the corner to see what was going on, I wished I hadn’t.
A massive pit covered several square yards of the frozen ground, and it was almost full of bodies. Standing on the edge of the pit closest to me were a pair of soldiers, heaving corpses into the pit. I watched in horror as they heaved the corpse of a light blue unicorn whom I had seen not a half hour ago in the medical tent I’d been brought to. He was very obviously dead.
I backed away from the tent, trying to keep my meal from coming back up as the impact of what I had seen struck. These ponies were dealing with death on an unbelievable scale. I had seen how empty the camp was, and had noticed all the sick ponies, even smelled the stench of death hanging over everything, but I had never made the connection. This camp was nothing but a shell, with a few determined ponies holding it all together. As much as I wanted it to be, this camp was far from an answer to our problems. We’d be lucky if it would provide us with shelter for more than a few weeks.
My spirits fell as I realized our troubles were far from over. If anything, the struggle to survive this hell was just beginning.
{Apologies for the massive delay in this chapter. I’ve been really busy with school work (finals week was hell, as it always is), and getting home for the holidays kept me from sitting down and writing for a while. But, it is done now, and I’m going to be trying to keep myself to a more regular schedule from now on. With the new semester fast approaching, it should be easy to work some writing time into my schedule! Thanks, as always, go to Kkat for the original FoE, and thanks go to my wonderful editors Barrobroadcaster and MUCKSTER.}
Fallout: Equestria – Omega
Entry Four: November 28th, 1047
Living in the army camp was a definite improvement over trying to survive on our own out in the Equestrian countryside. On our own, we had been relying on the few scraps of collective survival knowledge in our group, but these military ponies were trained to survive, and they had a method to make sure they had everything they needed, or at least know where to find more of the things we needed, like medicine. But that didn’t mean that life was suddenly easy.
Radiation was still a problem, and while the rads were always in abundance, supplies weren’t. Everything was being rationed very carefully to make the stores last as long as possible, and Swift Foot ran the camp very strictly. If anypony broke any of the rules, they would be punished in the form of having some of their rations, such as food, medicine, or even water taken away. They wouldn’t allow anyone to die as a result of these punishments, but the threat of going hungry or thirsty, even for a night, was enough to make sure everypony behaved.
Even then, many ponies simply didn’t have the will to survive. Living out here was hard work, all the more so now that winter was settling in. It seemed like half of the work details we were assigned to were shoveling details in order to get rid of the quickly accumulating ‘snow’. Since our arrival, and my witnessing of the mass grave, another few dozen ponies had died in the last month, two of them ponies from my group. One of them had been an accountant for one of Manehattan’s smaller banks. I remembered him mentioning that he was hoping to find a cousin of his that lived in Ponyville, Filthy Rich. The other was a hairdresser from a salon. She had been a young, pink unicorn mare with what had once been a flowing blue mane, and she had held on strongly, but I had seen the reality of our new life eating away at her, until she was nothing more than an empty shell, at which point she has simply given up. Their bodies has been disposed of in the same way: simply tossed into a mass grave, with no ceremony or time for mourning.
I shook my head, chasing away thoughts of the dead and bringing myself back to the present. I wasn’t going to help anypony if I kept on worrying about the ponies that weren’t with us anymore. When we found somewhere truly safe, where I knew we could survive, I would finally have time to mourn
The sun was just rising, or so I told myself as I peered up at the endless cloud cover outside my tent. I could still barely believe that the Pegasi had completely cut themselves off from the rest of us. It didn’t sound anything like them.
“Morning, Cirrus!” A jovial voice announced from off to my side, so sudden I jumped.
“Oh, hey, Charcoal,” I answered quickly, coughing to cover up my embarrassment at having been caught so off guard, “Where are May Blossom and the others?” It was rare to see the Corporal without at least one of his squadmates, and while the Sergeant was nice enough, I couldn’t stand Wrench. He and I hadn’t been able to settle our differences after the scrap we’d gotten into our first day here.
“In the mess tent. I was already done eating, so I thought I’d swing by here to see how you all were doing before I meet up with them for our patrol,” he answered with a grin.
Living so closely with others for so long, not to mention my close friendship with Just Heart, who was good at this kind of thing, had instilled in me at least a partial ability to read others, and I could tell that Charcoal had more of a reason to come talk to me other than to see how I was doing.
“Well, we’re surviving, for now. Not much else we can do. So what do you really want, Charcoal? We’re an awful long way from the mess tent for a casual visit.”
The black stallion looked away from me briefly, his eyes searching for something off in the distance as he shuffled his feet. “I was that obvious, huh? Jeez, and I figured you for the type that believed everypony.”
“I’ve picked up a few tricks,” I answered with a shrug, “What’s going on, Charcoal? You wouldn’t come over here alone if it wasn’t important.”
Again, he hesitated. “I really hate to be the bearer of bad news, Cirrus, but I’d rather this come from me rather than from the Sarge, or, Celestia forbid, Wrench. Somehow the Captain learned that you killed a pony out there. I don’t know who told him, or why, but he knows, and he isn’t happy. Word is he’s going to have you taken down to the Command tent later today to, eh, discuss it. I’m going to tell you now, we’ve had a few others come by the camp before you made it that the Captain chased off. Turns out they had killed another group of survivors over some food or water or something. The Captain has been adamant that we aren’t supposed to allow anything like that.”
“But I didn’t want to kill him!” I exclaimed, only barely able to keep my voice at a normal speaking level. The simple fact that somepony besides Just Heart, Sunrise, or myself knew what had happened was surprising, but that that pony had told Swift Foot about it was simply unbelievable. “It was self-defense. I swear it, Charcoal! The only reason I had my gun out at all was because we didn’t know what to expect. The pony came out of the office and tried to kill us! I just reacted!”
“Cirrus, calm down! I believe you! Just explain it to the Captain, and I’m sure he will as well!” Charcoal insisted, reaching out with a hoof in an attempt to calm me.
Ever so slowly, I got myself back under control, but I was still worried. I had no clue what we would do if the Captain wanted me to leave. I couldn’t do that to Sunrise. Since we had arrived, she had finally started to get some of her color back, and she was more like the mare I remembered marrying again. Leaving so suddenly would destroy her.
“I’m sorry, Charcoal. I just… wasn’t expecting this. Thanks for giving me a heads up. I need to go get some things in order, and you should probably go find your squad. Good luck out there,” I said, my shock and fear being replaced with a surprising emptiness. It was barely dawn, and I was already exhausted. This was not going to be a good day.
I stepped back inside my tent that I shared with Sunrise and a few others. Most of them were already awake, if not up and moving around, preparing for the day ahead. There was a lot to be done, from cleaning sheets to going on supply runs with some of the soldiers that were still around. We were all expected to pull our own weight, no matter where we came from.
“Good morning, Cirrus. You all right? You look like you saw a ghost!” Bolter announced excitedly from where he was buttoning up his heavy jacket. There was one thing to be said about the military: they certainly didn’t waste their extra gear. All of us had been given functional winter gear, so at least we weren’t freezing to death any more.
“You could say that, Bolter. Some stuff came up that I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to deal with again. Would you mind taking care of carting those bandages from the storage tent to the medical tents on the north side of camp for me? I need to go speak with Swift Foot.”
“Yeah, sure. I can take care of that,” Bolter answered immediately, “Is… everything all right, Cir? You look really down.”
I let out a heavy sigh. If I was lucky, everything would work out well, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to know who had talked to the Captain. “If we’re lucky, Bolt. Just, take care of that stuff for now, and we’ll worry about later when we get that far. Thank for helping me out. I know I don’t show it much, but I appreciate it.”
“You’ve got a lot on your mind, taking care of all of us. I’m just doing what I can to help. Anything I can do to make life easier for you makes me happy,” he answered with a smile.
It was amazing, even after everything we had suffered through, that young buck was still so high-spirited. “How do you do it, Bolter? How do you keep your spirits up so well with everything the way it is?”
The buck thought for a second, then shrugged. “I just figure that things really can’t get much worse. We’re here, together, with friends, and we’re all looking out for each other. I just tell myself that things will get better, and it makes things a bit easier. That, and I know it makes others feel better if they see somepony else feeling happy.”
“Huh, well I can certainly say it helps me. If you don’t mind my asking, do you think any of your family survived out there?”
The grey unicorn paused, and for a brief moment, his usually unflappable good nature disappeared, as if a cloud was passing over him. “There is one pony I’m looking for. My older brother lived out in the country. I suppose it’s possible he survived, but, I couldn’t abandon everyone to go on a wild goose chase! I wouldn’t even know where to start!”
“Bolter, it’s okay. I’m sure he’s fine. If we get ourselves organized well enough here, I’m sure the Captain wouldn’t have a problem with letting us go out as a search party for others. Thanks for being there for us. Now, I really must get going. I don’t want him to have to send for me,” I answered, managing a smile for the young stallion.
“Thanks, Cirrus. Good luck with your meeting!”
I nodded my acknowledgment to him while I walked to the small area I shared with Sunrise. I collected my jacket and pulled it on while she watched me from the pallet we used as a bed.
“I’ll be back soon, love. I need to go talk to Swift Foot. Hopefully I won’t be long,” I announced, making my way over to her and nuzzling her neck.
“Okay, Cirrus. One of the doctors asked me to help them in one of the medical tents later. They said I have a calming effect on the patients,” she answered, giving me a peck on the cheek.
“I’ll find you there,” I whispered, then turned and walked away. I couldn’t waste any more time. I’d look a lot better if I approached the Captain on my own, rather than having him send somepony to fetch me. With luck, the entire problem would resolve itself. With luck, I would be able to talk about this without babbling like I had to Charcoal. No matter what I tried to tell myself, I still hadn’t really come to the terms that I had been forced to kill somepony.
Captain Swift Foot was seated at his desk reading something when I pushed my way into the command tent. Radar, the Earth pony mare that was never more than a few steps away from the Captain, was at her computer, typing away as she worked on some report or other. I drew myself up, trying to boost my confidence with the thought that I knew I was in the right, and strode forward.
“Captain, I think we need to talk,” I announced, coming to a stop in front of him.
He looked up in surprise, obviously not expecting to see me. “Cirrus, what are you doing here?”
“Somepony told me that you’d discovered something about me. I’m here to put any questions to rest. Whatever they told you, you didn’t get the full story,” I insisted.
“Cirrus, this isn’t something I wanted to handle now. But fine, if you insist, we can take care of it now. Radar, would you mind running down to the mess and grabbing us something to drink?”
The mare nodded as she rose from her desk and disappeared outside after grabbing her jacket.
“All right, Cirrus. Here’s my problem: it’s come to my attention that you killed somepony out there. The only reason I’m willing to listen to you is because I’ve seen your temperament and work ethic first-hoof. That being said, I have a policy of not allowing any murderers in this camp. Simply because Equestria has taken a hit that makes it difficult to maintain order does not mean that I don’t live by its laws, and I expect everyone within this camp to do the same. Now I want you to tell me exactly what happened from your point of view, and I’ll see how well it aligns with what I’ve been told.”
I explained everything to the Captain, starting with how desperate our situation had been in the hobby shop. I told him how Just Heart and I had found that the door to the grocery store had been unlocked the day we had heard his radio broadcast, so he and I had entered to investigate, and to take anything we could that would allow us to survive. Thankfully, the Captain understood taking from abandoned stores, if only because of how difficult it was to survive out there.
When I reached the part of the story where we met the crazed pony, I started to choke up, but forced my way through it, telling how the pony had seemed fine, if scared, at first, but had steadily become more unstable, until he had come out of the office in a craze, attacking first Just Heart, then myself when I tried to protect him.
“I fired my gun in self-defense, after trying to force him off of us hadn’t worked. He was completely crazy, and I simply reacted. Just Heart was sure he would have been seriously injured had I not done anything,” I finished, my voice wavering, “I swear to you, Captain, I didn’t want to kill him, but I had to look out for my friends and the ponies I was, and still am, responsible for.”
Swift Foot was watching me with a steady gaze, his face a completely emotionless mask, but I could see his mind working behind his eyes. After several moments of tense silence, he finally spoke. “This is where we have a problem, Cirrus. The story I was told led me to believe that you had killed this pony to get at the supplies he was keeping in the store, not that he was crazy or anything else. If anything, it seems like a convenient cover story.”
“What?!” I protested, “Please, Captain, I swear to you, I didn’t want to kill him! I’d never even pointed my gun at anything other than a firing range target before! Look, just… talk to Just Heart. He’ll agree with me!”
Swift Foot sighed and lifted a hoof to his brow. “Unfortunately, Cirrus, this is a matter of your word over somepony under my command. As their commanding officer, I need to show them that I am willing to believe them, so unless you can provide any proof that you are telling me the truth, I have to believe them.”
I felt my stomach drop. Here I was, being told that the one even partially safe place I had found was going to be kicking me out, simply because I had been forced to kill another pony. I dropped to my rump, my legs no longer capable of keeping me standing. I hung my head as the reality of my situation washed over me. “We’re going to die,” I muttered, shaking my head, “All because of some crazed, half-rotted pony.”
“What did you just say?” Swift Foot interrupted me, “Why would you say half-rotted?” Like I’d said some sort of magic words, he was suddenly interested in my story, and I realized it might be my only chance at making him believe me.
“The pony that attacked us was missing a lot of skin, and his open wounds looked badly infected, kind of like severe radiation poisoning, except past the point when the pony should have died. He even smelled like he’d been rotting for days, even though he had just attacked us,” I explained.
“Hmmm, that explains a lot. We’ve had a few ponies come through here with similar symptoms. Most of them went completely insane and had to be put down for our own safety. The few others that didn’t left on their own. The Princesses only know if the same happened to them.” He sighed heavily, only this time, he sounded relieved, “Well, Cirrus, if what we’ve seen from these ponies is consistent with all of them, you’re story has much more credence. If you were right in identifying what this pony was suffering, it is entirely possible that he had attacked you first. I apologize for putting you through this.”
“It’s… fine, Captain,” I answered, “You’re just trying to look out for these ponies. If you don’t mind my asking, who told you about all this? There aren’t many ponies, even in my own group, that know about what happened.”
“I was surprised when you mentioned Just Heart, Cirrus, because the soldier that brought this to my attention told me that it was him that said you had killed somepony. I don’t know why he would leave out details as important as the ones you just told me, but there it is,” Swift Foot explained.
My shock left me completely tongue-tied. Why would Just Heart tell somepony outside of our group that I had killed? It simply didn’t make any sense.
“I… I need to go find Just Heart, Captain. Thank you for listening to me,” I muttered, barely managing to get the words out past my confusion.
The Captain’s response was completely lost on me as I turned and made my way outside, nearly knocking over the returning Radar as I did. She shouted something after me about a hot drink, but I barely heard her, wanting nothing more than to find Just Heart and figure out what was going on.
How could he have done this to me? Just Heart was easily my closest friend, and he knew how badly killing that pony had affected me. He had watched as I broke down in the grocery store and tried to leave behind my gun, the only thing I owned that I could use to protect myself. Hell, he had even practically taken the blame for killing the pony when he told the others what had happened. And now he was telling soldiers here that I had done it.
It was stupid, thoughtless, and outright dangerous. We all knew how the Captain felt about lawbreakers, so Just Heart should have been smart enough to keep his damn mouth shut. The only hope I had was that he had been cornered and been forced to talk. If that wasn’t the case, then he had better have a damn good reason.
I finally found the stallion in the mess tent, nursing a glass of dark liquid. As I got closer to him, I could make out the smell of beer. “Just Heart, what the hell are you doing?” I snapped, grabbing the cup and moving it away from him, “It isn’t even noon yet!”
“Cirrus, what the hell!” he exclaimed, sitting back in surprise. His words were slurred and the stench of alcohol on his breath was heavy enough to make me feel queasy.
“Are you drunk? What the hell are you doing, Heart? This isn’t like you!” I stated as I sat down across from him, “We aren’t safe here, not yet. I’m still relying on you, and I can’t have you sitting around getting drunk. Where the hell did you even get it?”
“Hey, it’s not my fault that I need a drink!” he growled, reaching out with a hoof for the drink, which I made sure was still out of his reach, “And it’s none of your business where I got it from.”
“Do you know what Swift Foot is going to do if he finds out you’ve been drinking when there’s work to be done? Dammit, Heart, I thought you were smarter than this! And why the hell did you go and tell somepony what happened in that grocery store? I just came from a meeting with the Captain where he almost threw me out of the camp for killing that pony!”
“He did what now?” Just Heart asked, his ears perking up slightly and a little bit of light returning to his eyes.
I sighed. He was way too far gone for me to get anything out of him. I pushed myself away from the table, stepped outside, and grabbed a hoof-ful of grey slush. I walked back inside and slapped Just Heart across the face with the cold mess, hard.
He started sputtering angrily. “Cirrus, what the fuck was that for! Celestia above, that was unneccesary!” He was shaking his head wildly, trying to shake clear the slush and water that was clinging to his face, but he at least sounded a bit more clear-headed.
“It was entirely necessary, Heart. Why the hell did you tell one of the soldiers about the grocery store! You almost got me kicked out of the camp!” I snapped, “And now you’re in here drinking when there’s work to be done! What the fuck has gotten into you?”
He looked around sheepishly, as if he was just becoming aware of where he was. “I did what? Oh, shit,” he muttered, lowering his head to the table, “I knew I shouldn’t have trusted him. Dammit, I’m such an idiot!”
“What happened, Heart?” I asked, sitting back. I finally looked at the stallion, and realized how bad of shape he was in. The radiation burn he had gotten in that first week still hadn’t healed properly, and he kept it covered under his heavy jacket. I could tell by looking at him that it wasn’t the only burn. I could see the edge of another creeping above the neckline of his coat, extending partway under his neck. He was also keeping his mane hidden underneath one of the black knit caps that Charcoal preferred.
“It was Wrench. He approached me yesterday after the work day was over and offered to patch up our differences over a drink. He brought me out to the mess and we talked over some beers. He must have slipped me something, because I don’t remember most of that conversation. Sometime during the night, I must have told him about what happened at the grocery store. Dammit! I’m so sorry, Cirrus. I didn’t mean it!”
I shook my head slowly in disbelief. I knew the buck didn’t like us, but I didn’t think he had it in him to try to get us killed. “That bastard!” I swore, smashing a hoof into the table hard enough to send the beer sprawling, the dark liquid spreading over the table, “He almost ruined us! It’s like he doesn’t even realize how much we all depend on each other.”
Just Heart had an equally angry look. “That bastard is going to pay for this! He used me for his own ends, and I’ll be damned before I let him get away with it.”
He stood up from the bench and marched outside. From the way he was walking, it was obvious he still wasn’t entirely sober, and I worried about what he was going to do. I rushed after him, luckily catching him within a few steps. “Heart, calm down a second! If we go and explain the situation to Swift Foot, I’m sure he’ll understand and do something about it! He doesn’t strike me as the sort to simply ignore something like this!”
“No, Cirrus. I understand what you’re trying to do, but that fucker almost got you tossed out of here. Do you have any idea how much that would hurt the rest of us? The only damn reason we’re all still here is because of you! I am not going to just let this go!”
“Then at least give me a little bit of time. Right now, they are all out on patrol, and if you do something while they are out there, that puts us all at risk. Give me until tonight. If I can’t figure something out, I’ll let you do whatever you want, all right?” I was betting a lot on the fact that Swift Foot was going to listen to me. I really didn’t want Just Heart doing something rash. Hopefully just letting him cool off for a while would make him see things my way.
For a few moments, it looked like Heart was going to ignore me and chase after the patrol anyway, but the hard lines on his face finally softened, and he took a step away from the tent flap. “All right, Cirrus. We’ll do it your way, and only because of my respect for you. If it was any other pony telling me to wait, I wouldn’t listen. Go and try your diplomacy, I’ll be waiting.”
He strode out of the tent, and I followed after him, wanting to make sure he was going back to our tents. Sure enough, he soon disappeared inside the tent he shared with a few other ponies from out group, and I was confident I could leave him alone for a while.
Before I made my way back to Swift Foot’s tent, I made sure to seek out Bolter. I finally found the grey unicorn in one of the medical tents, organizing one of the medical cabinets while the medic worked on a few ponies with a range of injuries, from severe radiation poisoning to broken limbs.
“Hey, Bolter, you have a second?” I asked, stepping up beside the young buck.
“Yeah, of course, Cirrus. What do you need?” he asked me, a hint of concern in his voice.
“When you’re finished here, can you keep an eye on Just Heart for me? One of the soldier’s got him pretty drunk last night, and he still hasn’t recovered fully. I don’t want him doing anything stupid before I can get some stuff figured out.”
“Sure, no problem. Is… everything all right? You’ve been a little jumpy all day.”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just some bad news that it became my job to sort out. It may not seem like it right now, but everything is going to be all right,” I answered. I couldn’t decide if I was trying to convince him or myself.
“All right. Just remember, Cirrus, we’re here to help you. You don’t need to do everything on your own.”
“I know, Bolter, and I appreciate it. This situation is just a little… fragile, at the moment. I promise, once everything is figured out, I’ll tell you all about it. I hate keeping secrets, but right now, it’s the only thing keeping the peace.”
Bolter was quiet for several long seconds. “Makes you wish for everything to go back the way it was, doesn’t it?” he finally said, all traces of his usual jovial tone replaced by a sadness I had never heard from him before.
“I’ve wanted things to go back the way they were the moment I saw the first bomb hit, Bolter. Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do except look out for each other and hope that it’s enough. Thanks again for your help. With luck everything will be figured out by tonight.”
I left him without waiting for a response. I knew he would understand, since he was one of the few ponies that always seemed to know what was going on in my head.
The walk back to Swift Foot’s tent was long and cold, and the entire time I was simply going over what I was going to say to the Captain, but nothing seemed right. When I was finally standing in front of the flap, it was snowing again, though I hated calling the grey shit falling from the sky snow. I still had no idea what I was going to say, but I was out of time.
I took a deep breath to calm my nerves and stepped through the flap, trying to look as determined as possible. “Captain, we need to talk!” I announced, a bit more angrily than I had intended.
“Cirrus! What the hell are you doing? We already talked about what happened, and you’re fine! I understand the situation. What more is there?” Swift Foot asked, a look of utter surprise on his face.
“What more is there? How about one of your soldiers deliberately getting one of the ponies with me drunk in an effort to find dirt on us? How about that pony trying to get me killed because he simply doesn’t like me! Or do you not agree that exiling ponies from a safe haven like this is the same as killing them?” I snapped.
“What in Equestria are you talking about, Cirrus? I simply found out that somepony had been killed by you, and wanted to know the whole story. That’s all I care about!”
“But it isn’t all I care about!” A part of me realized I was quickly losing control of my temper, but I didn’t care. Wrench had attacked me, and threatened both me and the ponies that followed me. I couldn’t just let it happen. “Your pony tried to hurt us.”
Swift Foot sighed and lifted a hoof to his brow. “You aren’t making my day any easier, Cirrus,” he muttered.
“And you think mine got any easier when Charcoal showed up at me tent telling me that you knew I had been forced to kill? Or that it got any easier when I found out Wrench had gotten my closest friend drunk in an attempt to kick us out of the camp? From my point of view, I’m not being unreasonable, Swift Foot. I just don’t want the ponies that I’m responsible for to suffer anymore. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”
“You know Wrench is the one who found out?” Swift Foot asked, surprised.
“Do you take us for idiots, Captain? Just Heart remembers exactly who he was drinking with last night, and before you say anything, it was at that pony’s insistence. That sounds like a deliberate attack against us to me.”
“Okay, Cirrus, I can see why you’re angry. I’ll talk to Wrench and make sure nothing like this happens again. There isn’t anything else I can do. What’s done is done, and we have to live with it, all of us,” Swift Foot said in an attempt to calm me down, “Just promise me you’ll drop it as well.”
“As long as he doesn’t do anything else to us, I agree. I’m sorry I got so angry, but I almost had everything I’ve struggled for torn away from me. I’m sure you understand,” I answered, making an attempt to calm myself.
“While I do understand the problem, I would ask that you keep yourself a little more under control. I do have an image to maintain as the Commanding Officer here,” he answered sternly.
“I’ll do my best, but I can’t make any guarantees where my friends are concerned,” I said as I turned to leave, “Thank you for listening to me. Hopefully this will take care of the problem before it gets any worse.”
“I agree. As I said, I’ll be sure to speak to Wrench. If I make the situation clear to him, I imagine he will back off.”
I nodded my understanding and stepped outside, heading back to our tents to talk to Just Heart. The solution wasn’t perfect, but it was the best we were going to get. It would have to be enough.
To my despair, Just Heart hadn’t been the least bit pacified by the agreement I had come to with Swift Foot. He argued that simply getting Wrench to leave us alone wasn’t good enough, since he had gone to such great lengths to hurt us. It didn’t matter to Just Heart that it would solve any future problems; he was simply fixated on the fact that we had been wronged, and nothing was being done to make up for it.
I tried to make him see that there was no way to punish anypony anymore, considering we needed every individual working hard every day simply to survive. Locking somepony up would only hurt the rest of us. The only solution left was to forgive and forget, but Just Heart was too worked up to even consider that as an option.
The argument left me exhausted and worn out. Everything I had tried to make Just Heart see reason had failed, and considering our conversation earlier, I was worried that he was going to try something stupid. He was a good pony, but he often let his temper get the best of him, and acted on his own sense of justice, rather than what was best for everypony involved. I could only hope that he would realize how hard I was trying to make this solution work.
The evening meal was one of the few times where everypony that was capable, and didn’t have other duties to see to, gathered together. Some thought it was out of an attempt to build solidarity, but I figured it was just to make some tradition that we could all look forward to every day. Having something to live for was important at times like this, and knowing we could see and talk to friends who worked in completely different parts of the camp at this time was a good thing.
My usual place was with Sunrise, Bolter, and Just Heart. We were usually joined by a few other ponies from our group, and sometimes Charcoal would join us as well. He was the only pony from the camp that had made an effort to befriend us, and I tried my best to appreciate that.
Tonight, there was an unusual tension around our table. Just Heart reminded me of a coiled spring that could snap at any moment, and it lended a certain unfriendly atmosphere about our table, enough so that it was just the four of us that usually sat together. Nopony else even approached us.
I tried to keep an upbeat outlook during the meal, speaking with Bolter about his family and telling him about Sunrise’s and my life together in Manehatten. But Just Heart was sulking the entire time, picking at his food and generally ignoring everything going on around him. I hoped it would stay that way for the rest of the night.
The shift happened when Sergeant Beet Root and his patrol finally made it to the tent. Just Heart changed from being tense and introspective to somepony on the edge of exploding. I could see the small changes in his face, like his eyes narrowing ever so slightly, and the muscles in his legs contracting, like he was getting ready to jump somepony.
I laid a hoof on his shoulder. “Heart, calm down. Let’s just get through this meal. Everything will figure itself out.”
“I don’t think so,” he growled, shrugging my hoof of and rising to his hooves.
As soon as I saw where he was headed, I scrambled to my hooves as well and rushed after him.
He strode right up to Wrench and stood in the other pony’s way, stopping him from getting his meal. “Where the fuck do you get off, manipulating us like this!” Heart shouted in Wrench’s face, “Did you really think we would simply let you get us thrown out of this place? Well, I’ve got something to tell you. We have worked way to fucking hard to let some self-absorbed prick like you destroy what little of our lives we have left!”
For a brief moment, Wrench seemed surprised, but it quickly became apparent that the surprise wasn’t at the accusations, but at the simple fact that he was being confronted at all. The surprised expression quickly faded into a smug grin. “I’m just doing my duty. It is the Captain’s business to know everything and anything about the ponies that come here. I was just doing what was expected of me.”
“Heart, just drop it. This isn’t worth it. We figured it all out, and nopony got hurt,” I pleaded, placing a hoof on his shoulder and trying to pull him back.
“No, Cirrus! I can’t just drop it! I don’t care what kind of deal you worked out with Swift Foot; this pony tried to hurt us! What would you and Sunrise do if he had succeeded, huh? You’d probably be dead by now! That’s exactly what this fucker was trying to do: kill us!” Just Heart snapped, twisting out from under my grasp and stepping towards Wrench again. “So listen here, you little fuck. I want you to apologize to us for trying to hurt us. I want you to realize how hard we’ve had to work simply to survive, and to know that you almost undid all of that! Cirrus almost got himself killed looking out for the rest of us, and you don’t seem to care at all!”
“Why would I care about some stupid city Pegasus? And why would I apologize for doing my duty? Seems to me like you really haven’t figured out how this world works. I suggest you do that.”
It struck me that nopony else seemed to be trying to get involved. Beet Root was simply standing off to the side, watching the altercation with a surprised expression, like he had been completely blindsided by the entire situation. I sympathized with him; until this morning, I had been the exact same way. Swift Foot was watching from his table, a pile of paperwork lying forgotten next to his plate. His eyes weren’t on Wrench and Just Heart, though. They were on me.
“Heart, just fucking drop it!” I snapped, stepping forward again and trying to drag him back from Wrench, “I don’t care anymore! All I care about is watching out for you, for Sunrise, for Bolter, and for every other pony that came here with us. Please, just leave Wrench alone.”
“Fuck that! He tried to get us killed. Where I come from, that’s enough of a reason to arrest him, but out here, due process of law doesn’t exist. That leaves one option: make sure he knows never to try it again!” Just Heart snapped, shoving me off of him, and leaping at Wrench.
Wrench neatly sidestepped the attack and kicked Just Heart viciously in the side with his hindlegs. To his credit, Just Heart didn’t go down, but merely stumbled a few steps to the side, clutching his side and trying to catch his breath.
“You self-important son of a bitch!” he shouted as he leapt again. This time, he made contact, colliding with Wrench and bearing the other buck to the ground.
Unfortunately for Heart, Wrench had been trained as a soldier, and I remembered Charcoal telling me that he had gone hoof-to-hoof with stripe soldiers before. There was no way Heart stood a chance.
Within seconds, Wrench had completely overpowered Just Heart and help him pinned in a headlock. “You really need to learn to appreciate your betters, you conceited asshole,” he growled before looking up and towards Swift Foot. “What do you want me to do with him, sir?”
“Detain him in one of the empty tents on the east side of the camp. He has attacked a soldier of the Equestrian Army. We’ll hold a trial in the morning. I suggest that everpony here return to their tents and get some rest,” Swift Foot announced as he rose from his seat, “Cirrus Swirl, meet me in my tent, now.”
I was still in complete shock when I stepped outside. Just Heart was normally rational, and would at least take a step back if I asked him too. Hell, everypony in our group had the opinion that he and I saw eye-to-eye on almost everything. That was what made it so hard to believe that he had flat-out ignored me. Sure, I was upset at Wrench to, but that didn’t mean I was willing to risk our standing in this camp just for petty revenge. The fact that Heart didn’t care about that was not good news, for me of for anypony. I could only hope that there was something more to the story than any of us were aware of.
I reached Swift Foot’s tent far sooner than I wanted to, and stood outside in front of the flap, trying to stave off the conversation that I knew had to happen. The cold of the rapidly approaching night was quickly settling into my body, though, and within just a couple of minutes, I was shivering. The elements were going to force me into this confrontation, even if nopony else was going to do it.
With a sigh, I stepped forward, pushing the flap out of my way as I did. There was only one dim desk lamp lit that cast most of the room into deep shadows. The shadows seemed more ominous than I expected, like something was going to jump out of them at any moment and assault me. For the first time since arriving, I didn’t feel safe within the borders of the camp.
Swift Foot was the only pony in the tent other than myself. He was sitting at the desk, his face hidden in the shadows. He was leaning forward, his head resting on his hooves.
“Tell me exactly what happened in there, Cirrus. He is your friend, and you know him better than anypony under my command. I want answers. This is the only problem I’ve ever had with your group, but I cannot have my soldiers being attacked, for any reason,” he finally ground out after a prolonged silence, lifting his head up to fix me in a piercing gaze. I could see the lines of worry and concern etched into his face, but they weren’t for me. If anything, this pony was allowing me to see how he truly felt about what was going on.
“I wish I could explain, Captain,” I answered with a shrug, still trying to figure out exactly what I was going to say, “Just Heart is usually very rational. I was shocked when he ignored me. I… I can’t believe he would attack Wrench like that. Something’s wrong. I don’t remember him ever being that violent before.”
“That’s what I figured. You’re reaction in there was most atypical of you. I don’t recall ever seeing you lose your temper before, at least not in public. It’s one of the reasons I’ve been so willing to believe you. But Just Heart’s actions really shocked you, as much as they did the rest of us?”
“Yes, they did. I can try to talk to him again, if you want. I’ll make sure this doesn’t happen again,” I offered, hoping against hope that he would listen to me.
“I wish I could accept that, Cirrus Swirl, but the sad truth is that he attacked one of my soldiers, a pony in the service of the Equestrian Army. If it were anything else, I could be more lenient. As it is, the best I can do is put him on trial tomorrow. But understand, Cirrus Swirl, I’m only doing this because of my respect for you, and my respect for him, as strained as it might be right now.”
“I… I understand, Captain. I’m sorry I can’t give you any better explanation than what I gave you earlier today. He was only worked up because of Wrench’s manipulation of him. It’s a bad excuse, but it’s all he has.”
“We’ll address it tomorrow, Cirrus. But for now, I have a more pressing concern. You’re his closest friend, so I can’t run the risk of you doing anything to help him until tomorrow. Before you interrupt, I do trust you, but he is under military detainment, and there are certain rules that go along with that. I have to ask you to sleep under guard tonight. Once the trial is over, I promise, there will be no more action against you.”
For a few moments, I couldn’t think of what to say. I was still reeling from the events in the mess tent to really process that Swift Foot wasn’t going to let me spend the night with Sunrise. When my mind finally caught up, it was to the realization that I couldn’t say no.
In that moment, I realized how screwed up everything was. I didn’t feel safe in a military camp, my best friend was going on trial for looking out for us, and I was being forced away from the ponies I loved, even if for only a night, simply because he was my friend. No matter what was decided at that trial tomorrow, I knew we couldn’t stay here much longer, not with the way things were going. We needed to find somewhere where we could look out for ourselves, and if that place had these splits in loyalty, then it wasn’t safe. Everypony needed to be on equal footing now. There wasn’t any space for rank or superiority. We either worked together, or we died.
I felt my mouth curl in a cynical grin. “I really don’t have much of a choice, do I? If I say no, you’ll force me to sleep under guard. If I say yes, it won’t be anywhere near the rest of my group, am I right?”
“I’m only following regulations, Cirrus,” Swift Foot answered, looking taken aback. I took a little bit of satisfaction from that.
“Tell me, Swift Foot: what good are regulations out here? The entire world has gone to shit. Don’t get me wrong, I am very grateful for your hospitality. We’d all be dead if it wasn’t for you being here. But I think you have to realize that you can’t think of terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Sure, Wrench and the others were soldiers under you before everything fell apart, but with the way things are, we all need to look out for each other, on equal footing. Once we start playing favorites, everything falls apart, and that’s exactly what you’re doing.”
“I’m not playing favorites, Cirrus. I am simply following the rules I was taught during my training. There is nothing more to it.”
“Then tell me this: is Wrench being detained for his part in all of this? Is he going on trial for spying on me and trying to get me thrown out of this camp, which is practically a death sentence?” I snapped. I didn’t know where this anger was coming from, but it felt justified. Swift Foot had a suitably surprised look on his face, and I could tell I was hitting a raw nerve. The only question was whether or not he would understand my view, or if he would get angry.
“Of course he isn’t! He was the one that was attacked! He simply did what he did because he had doubts about your group. I agree with you that his methods were wrong, which is why I still plan on speaking to him about the entire issue. But this attack against me is entirely unwarranted, Cirrus! I’m doing my best to keep us all alive!”
“Apparently not, otherwise we wouldn’t have this problem in the first place,” I growled in return.
Swift Foot opened his mouth as if he were about to respond, then closed it again. For several long moments, the silence grew between us, and with it, I could feel a great chasm opening between us. I had made it firmly known where I stood on the matter of my own, and my friend’s survival, and it was a very different idea than Swift Foot had.
Before he had a chance to come up with something to respond, I spoke again. “I’ll agree to sleeping under guard tonight, if only to make things easier on the both of us, but keep in mind what I said, Swift Foot. The old way of looking at things isn’t going to work anymore, not in this world. Now where am I going?”
For several moments more, Swift Foot seemed unable to speak. After several times of opening and closing his jaw, he finally managed to force out, “I’ll have Charcoal show you to your quarters for the night. Thank you, at least for agreeing with me on this.”
With that, I turned around and walked outside. True to Swift Foot’s statement, Charcoal was standing outside.
“I heard the last bit of that. Seems you and the Captain don’t agree on some things,” he mused, tilting his head to the side.
“This whole situation is a mess, Charcoal. I’m more than a little unsure of what to do. And now even more ponies are getting dragged into it.”
“Well, that’s the way of the world. Friend of mine from before all this shit had the best way of putting it: ‘We mostly just claw our way from one mess to another and hope our ass comes along for the ride’. This is just another mess, and the way you and your friends stick together, I imagine everything’s going to work out all right in the end.”
“After all the shit that happened tonight, you really think that’s going to happen?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at the black buck.
“You never know. I’ve survived some really bad shit, and seen the Captain make some surprising decisions,” he answered with a shrug, “Now, come on. It’s cold enough out here to freeze the balls off a manticore.”
He led me to a small tent on the western edge of the camp, only a few dozen yards from the open countryside. It was a bare tent, with only a few empty cots and nothing else. It must have been one of the medical tents that we were in the process of cleaning out.
For a moment, the thought struck me that a lot of ponies had probably died in here, but I quickly dismissed that thought, since there wasn’t anything I could do about it, and dwelling on the lives of a few ponies I had never known wouldn’t do my any good. With nothing better to do, I picked a cot and stretched myself out, but sleep wasn’t going to come easy.
That night was one of the longest I had experienced since the bombs fell, even over the wait in the fallout shelter in Manehattan, wondering if there was going to be a world to come back to. That night was one where I knew exactly what I was going to wake up to, and absolutely nothing I could do would stop it from approaching. That simple fact alone was enough to keep me up until the small hours of the morning.
When dawn finally broke, it did so onto another cloudy, cold day. In almost every aspect, it was exactly identical to the day before, and the day before that. But in my heart, I could tell that this day was different. One way or another, nothing was going to be the same when the sun went down.
I dragged myself to my hooves, shaking my head in an attempt to wake myself up. I had gotten almost no sleep the entire night and felt like there was no energy in any part of my body. I strode outside to be greeted by May Blossom in her usual emotionless voice.
“Mornin’,” I grumbled in return, breathing in a large lungful of the cold air in an attempt to shock myself into wakefulness. It helped, but not nearly as much as I would have liked.
“So where is this trial taking place?” I asked her, shaking the last bit of melting slush off my face.
“The courtyard in front of the mess tent. Captain wants to do it as soon as possible. I’ll lead you there now. We should be able to get a bite to eat before we start,” she answered, already turning away from me and wandering down the pathway.
I followed after her as she led me to the mess tent. Inside, there were far more ponies than I had expected to see, no doubt a consequence of the impending trial. Most were gathered in their usual cliques, but as I moved to join Sunrise and Bolter, May Blossom stopped me.
“Not until after the trial,” she said evenly, “Captain’s orders.”
“I just want to say good morning to my wife,” I growled, “I can’t even do that?”
“Captain’s orders,” May Blossom repeated, “You eat with us this morning.”
As she pulled me away, I saw the look both Bolter and Sunrise were giving me. They had the look of ponies that desperately wanted to know what was going on. Sullenly, I followed May Blossom over to her table with Beet Root and Charcoal. Wrench, thankfully, was nowhere to be seen.
Charcoal tried to strike up a conversation with me, but I had no interest in talking. I simply wanted to get this meal over with, and then get through the trial. Anything else was simply a distraction. After a few stalled attempts, Charcoal finally stopped trying to talk to me and let me eat in peace, not that my meal tasted any good to me.
I ended up just pushing the dehydrated food around a lot while taking only a few bites. Even knowing I had to keep my strength up, I simply couldn’t focus my mind on food. Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait long.
Only ten minutes after sitting down, Swift Foot appeared, making the announcement for everypony to gather outside before disappearing again. I was immediately on my hooves, making my way to the tent flap and out into the cold morning wind.
Swift Foot was already standing at one end of the courtyard with Just Heart before him, flanked by two soldiers whose names I couldn’t remember. One was a light brown Earth pony buck. The other was a light blue unicorn buck that had a mean scar cutting across his face, making one of his eyes squint perpetually.
The Captain waited a few moments for everypony to gather and settle down, then announced in a booming voice I had never heard from him before, “Just Heart, you stand accused of assault of one of the soldiers under my command. Out of my own respect towards you and your friends, you are being tried as an equal in the camp, rather than as a civilian. What do you have to say in your own defense?”
I was standing over twenty feet from the buck, but even from here, I could feel his anger. If looks could kill, I had no illusions to the fact that Swift Foot would be lying dead from the glare Just Heart had leveled at him. “I think you fucking know what I have to say, Captain. That bastard was spying on us, he manipulated my by making me think that he was trying to apologize to me for his manners, and nearly got my closest friend, and the only reason anypony from our group is even still alive, exiled from the camp! In this fucked up world we live in, we have to look out for each other, and he was working against us. I had to protect my friends and the ponies I have assumed responsibility for. If that isn’t good enough for you, then the military follows very different ideals than I thought they did.”
“I see…” Swift Foot muttered evenly, “I can understand your troubles, Just Heart, but Corporal Wrench was acting out of interest for the safety of the camp. I agree that the methods used were dishonest, and he is going to be reprimanded, but I cannot punish him for acting in the interest of the ponies already here. Do you have anything else to say in your defense, or is revenge your only argument?”
“Who the fuck said anything about revenge? I’m just looking out for the ponies that trusted Cirrus and myself to get them this far! This wasn’t about getting back at him, it was about looking out for the ponies I care about!”
“Very well. In any other case, my sentence would be death for the unprovoked attack of a soldier under my command. However, it has come to my attention that your particular medical condition may have some bearing on your actions. In light of this condition, I will reduce your sentence to exile. Just Heart, you are no longer welcome in this camp. You have one hour to collect your belongings and say your good-byes to your friends. You will be given a small supply of food and fresh water, since it is not my intent to cause your death. This trial is adjourned.”
“Medical condition? The fuck are you talking about?” Just Heart demanded, “There’s not a damn thing wrong with me!”
“Stop lying to yourself. The sores are there for everypony to see. And keep this in mind, Just Heart: they just saved your life,” Swift Foot answered sharply, “And I suggest you start getting your things together. That hour has already started. I don’t want you here any longer than is absolutely necessary.”
I stood rooted to the spot, shock rendering my completely paralyzed. I had expected Swift Foot to be far more understanding, but instead, he had basically caused the death of one of my closest friends. In that moment, I knew I couldn’t stay her any longer without doing something that I would truly regret.
I was finally torn out of my reverie when Just Heart approached me, his expression still bearing the remains of his anger, but quickly being overtaken by shock.
“I can’t believe this just happened. I look out for my friends, and this is my goddamn thanks. Fucking bastard. And there isn’t anything wrong with me! Who gives a fuck if I have some radiation burns that are taking some time to heal? It isn’t screwing with my head. Dammit, Cirrus, what the hell am I going to do?”
“I don’t know, Heart, but I can tell you that you aren’t going to have to do it alone,” I answered. It was a brash thing to say, but it was how I felt.
“What the hell do you mean, Cirrus? You can’t seriously be considering coming with me, not after everything we went through trying to find this place! What about Sunrise?”
“I don’t know, Heart, but I do know that I simply can’t stand for this. It’s completely unfair, but Swift Foot is blinding himself to our side of things. Look, go get your things together. I’m going to go talk to Swift Foot, and then I’ll gather everyone in our tent. Meet me there in ten minutes, all right? If I can’t make the Captain see reason, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stay any more. Not with the way he’s running this place.”
Just Heart shook his head silently for a few moments. “Nopony could ever say you aren’t loyal, Cirrus. And damn am I proud to call you my friend. The tent in ten minutes, I’ll be there.”
I nodded to him, then turned and followed after Swift Foot. I could feel in my gut that I would leave that conversation either completely satisfied or entirely disenchanted with everything that the Captain was fighting for. Luck would decide which it was.
“I expected better of you, Swift Foot!” I snapped, pushing my way into his tent, not even caring if he was busy, “He is my closest friend! I’d be dead if it weren’t for him, and you’re throwing him out for one mistake! I honestly thought you’d take at least some of what I told you to heart.”
“Cirrus, what the hell are you doing here?” the Captain said with a surprised expression, obviously still catching up to what I had said.
“You know exactly what I’m doing here! You practically ignored me! Every single pony that came here with me has been following your directions without question. We pull our own weight, and we have even picked up some of the slack where your soldiers were falling short, and this is our repayment? What the hell did we do to deserve this kind of treatment?”
“I’m not punishing your group, Cirrus. I passed judgment on a pony that attacked one of my own. I’m sorry you don’t agree with my decision, but that’s the way it is,” Swift Foot answered evenly, finally bringing himself under control.
“And what happened to any of my advice! That was a military trial! If he had fought with some other pony that wasn’t a soldier, you would have overlooked the whole thing, or at least made the punishment something small. This is completely ridiculous!”
“He isn’t dead, Cirrus. The regs are clear: and civilian attacking a soldier is guilty of committing treason against Equestria. If I were actually doing my job, I should have shot him then and there. He’s alive solely because of what you said,” Swift Foot snapped, “So there you have it. Your words saved a life. That’s all you’re getting.”
I shook my head at him. How could he possibly be this dense? Just Heart was one of the hardest workers in the camp. By exiling him, he was cutting a significant piece of his workforce out. “I can’t fucking believe this, and I am not going to stand for it,” I growled, “You’d better prepare a few more sets of supplies, because I can’t live in this camp if this is your sense of justice, Swift Foot. If you aren’t going to change your mind, then I’m leaving, and I know there are going to be several ponies that will follow me. Unlike you, I’m not going to abandon my friend.”
I didn’t wait for the Captain to respond before turning tail and marching out of the tent. I had said my piece and made my decision. I couldn’t stay here, not with the direction he was taking the camp. He would never care the same for ponies whose lives’ he’d saved as for the lives of the soldier under his command, and that wasn’t something I could live with.
Before long, I was back at our tent, where Just Heart had all of his personal belongings packed. Sunrise and Bolter were sitting with him, completely silent. Charcoal was in the tent as well, presumably under orders to keep an eye on Just Heart.
“Cirrus! What happened, what did Swift Foot say?” Bolter announced excitedly as soon as I answered. Judging only by his tone, I could tell that he believed everything was turning out for the best.
“I’m done with that self-important mule,” I growled angrily, “He’s refusing to listen to reason, and his decision stands. I’m sorry, Just Heart, but I couldn’t convince him to let you stay.”
“Heh, it’s not like I expected anything to change, Cirrus. At least you tried,” Just Heart muttered.
“What happens next, Cirrus? We can’t just let him go off on his own? Luna only knows what’s out there!” Sunrise chimed in.
“I agree completely, and I already made it clear to him that I don’t intend to stay here as long as he keeps up this track of thinking,” I answered.
“Oh… I see,” Sunrise muttered, lowering her head to the ground for a moment and closing her eyes. I was about to say something to her, but I saw her gather herself and look back up, a light of determination in her eyes that had been missing for a long time. “I’m with you, my love. We can’t abandon Just Heart in his hour of need. I’m going with you.”
I couldn’t help but smile, but under the façade, I felt a small amount of grief as well. Sunrise had finally found something worth living for besides simple survival, but it had taken getting thrown out of the first safe place we had found to happen.
“What about you, Bolter? Since we don’t have any real place to go, I imagine that this is a good chance to get out to look for your family. I understand if you want to stay, it is safe here, but we’d love to have you along. You’ve been a great support to all of us,” I asked, looking at the grey unicorn.
Bolter was silent for several long moments, and I could see that he was thinking very hard. Finally, he looked up at me, the ghost of a smile on his face. “Of course I’m with you, Cir. You saved all of us. What kind of friend would I be if I abandoned you all now! Count me in! Together, we can overcome anything!”
My smile widened at that. It was terrible that this was happening at all, but at the very least, it was showing me that I truly did have a group of ponies I could call my friends.
“Thank you, Bolter. Charcoal, could I ask you to go and make sure that we get enough supplies for the four of us? I imagine that if something is being given to the pony that’s forced to leave, we’d get something as well,” I asked the soldier.
Despite everything, there was a smile on his face as well. “I’ll make sure of it,” he answered, “And let me tell you, Cirrus, it makes me happy to know that there are still ponies out here that are willing to look out for each other. I’ll make sure the rest of the ponies that came here with you are well taken care of.” With that, he disappeared through the tent flap.
I looked at my two closest friends and my wife, unable to stop the feeling of pride in my chest. These three were the reason I kept fighting to survive. Without them, I couldn’t imagine life being worth it.
Only a short time later, we had our supplies. The saddlebags were filled with enough food, water, and medical supplies to keep us on our hooves for a week, if we rationed it carefully. Hopefully, we’d be able to find a good source of supplies by the end of that time.
We said our goodbyes to Charcoal, the only pony in the camp that I was able to consider a friend, as well as the rest of our group, trying to reassure them that they would be safe in the camp, then stepped out into the frozen expanse of the Equestrian country side. For better or for worse, we were out on our own again, but all four of us had a reason to keep pressing on. We’d find a way to survive.
{And so we finally come to the end of another chapter.I apologize profusely for the massive, 6-month delay (didn't even realize it had been that long!) School kept me insanely busy, then moving back home for the summer and settling back into work screwed me up some more, but I am finally finding time to get back into a routine! Thanks, as always, go to Kkat for the original Fallout: Equestria, as well as to my wonderful editors/proofreaders MUCKSTER and Barrobroadcaster!}