Chapter 1: Citizen of Bunker 108

When a citizen of Bunker 108 turns sixteen, he or she was deemed old enough to start "Reconnoitering".

Reconnoitering was dangerous work - not so much because of the Wastelander bogeyman that had kept me up at night as a kid. There were a ton of ways to die out there - windstorms and cold not being the last of them.

Always, when you went out of Bunker 108, you never knew if you were coming back.

Big Macintosh drew lots with me that day. "Mac", a seasoned vet, was all hard muscle and an officer to boot. I looked like a pencil in comparison - five foot seven, and one hundred twenty - seven pounds. I'm sure we looked like quite the pair as we walked down the long tunnel to the exit of Bunker 108, my home.

I was nervous as hell. I had never been allowed into the Wasteland before.

Yesterday had been my sixteenth birthday.

As we walked, I felt as if I were in a dream - or a nightmare.

I just hoped I didn't have to use my AR-15, even though I knew how. Everyone was mandated an hour's practice each week at the firing range, minimum. Chief Security Officer Shining wanted everyone ready - for what, I didn't know. We were told Wastelanders would kill for anything.

So we had orders to kill them first.

Conflicts with Wastelanders were rare, but Shining liked to keep a close eye on things. A "Kill First" policy prevented anyone from running away and letting others know that we were here. It was how we had survived for so long - unlike the others.

And that was what I was most nervous about - not the cold dry wind, the dead world, the red hazy sky stretching above, or the lack of a sun dimmed out by layers of meteor fallout. No - I was scared that we would find something outside, and I would have to shoot him.

We paused at the vault-like door. Large bold numbers, 108, pressed into the thick metal. For my entire sixteen years, that door had served as the barrier between safety and danger, known and unknown, fake and real. And now, I was about to go outside for the first time in my life...

Mac, the person I was partnered with, was twenty-four: tall, good-looking, with coppery skin. He went to the sun rooms often, because Officers were allowed longer light baths than civilians. Officers had other perks and signs of status: cushier apartments, more meal credits, and more days off. Shining did everything to incentivize the people who kept him in power. Everyone wanted to be an Officer.

Mac twisted the wheel, his muscles bulging beneath his desert cameo. It was cold dry out here in the entrance tunnel; we had left the safety and warmth of Bunker 108 behind. I hopped up and down a few times, trying to get some blood flowing. My own desert cameo hoodie bounced up and down on my head. The cold had killed a recon caught in a dust storm, two years ago. It paid to be careful.

The wheel groaned as it gave, little by little. Finally, Mac opened the door with a clang, pulling it slowly inward until the Wasteland outside was revealed.

The natural light, though dim, still blinded me. A cold rush of dry wind blasted my face. I raised my hand to shelter my eyes from the dust. As they adjusted, I could first make out distant red mountains, like upside-down, bloody teeth. I discerned, nearer than the mountains, crimson dunes that looked like as if they should be on Mars rather than on Equestria. A dilapidated, rusted crane lay half-buried maybe half a click out, where it had been since December 3, 2030 - Dark Day, the day when most of humanity, and most life, died.

"Welcome," Mac said with a sardonic grin, "to the Wasteland."

***

I followed Mac down the gravelly slopes of Canterlot Mountain, pulling my hoodie forward over my head to keep out the cold as best as I could. Late September in Southern Canterlot meant freezing temperatures every night.

Though I had seen countless pictures of the Wasteland before, I could not help but take it in with numb shock. All vegetation was short, squat, clinging for its life in the sandy, cracked land. Most everything was dead - truly dead. Life had fled long ago. I often imagined Old Equestria, like in the movies I watched from the digital archive. I dreamed of a nice, beautiful green meadow, the blue ocean sky, the bright, heavenly sun without a cloud to bar its light. I loved watching those movies, and spent hours in the archive living in a dream world and wishing I had born a hundred years ago and not in 2044.

We had been walking five minutes when Mac spoke.

"You're quiet, Spike," he said. "I thought you'd be excited about your first recon."

Mac was right. I didn't talk much. I just didn't see the point. I'd always been this way. Well, not always. My mom died when I was seven, which might have been the beginning of it. Then my little sister died, a few minutes later. My mom had been giving birth. In a harsh world, death came often.

We were out of sight of home by now. I shivered as a particularly chill wind blew. We passed a metallic trailer shimmering in the late afternoon haze.

"That trailers for dust storms," Mac said. "You never want to be caught in one. It'll be the last mistake you make."

We stopped in front of the trailer.

"Let's wheel around the mountain," Mac said. "We're taking the long route today."

I finally decided to speak. "What's the long route?"

"Finally, some goddamned curiosity. The long route goes all the way around Canterlot Mountain. It's about a five-mile course, total."

He walked on, and I trudged behind him. Mac was alright, for an Officer. He had a wife and a kid, and like me, he had never seen Old Equestria.

My father had. When he was ten, the government had put him and his dad, my grandfather, in bunker 108. My grandfather, Lorin Dragul, was a brilliant immunologist. The government took only the brightest, the highest-ups, and the people with the fattest wallets into the Bunkers. I hated to think of all those people who died, but in the end, it came down to whoever wrote the largest check had the biggest brain, or the prettiest face. Well over 99.9 percent of the nation was left outside to fend for itself when Ragnarok crashed down.

These survivors were called Wastelanders, and we did what we could to avoid them, and to keep them avoiding us.

Wastelanders weren't like citizens. For one, there were more of them. Wastelanders were brutal, barbaric, and did anything they could to survive. Like animals, they killed not just for supplies, but for fun. Sometimes men became lost on recons, and their bodies would be discovered weeks later, riddled with bullets and half-buried in red sand. I've known of four deaths in my lifetime due to Wastelanders. Sometimes, when Wasteland Raiders camped too close, Shining ordered them eliminated in the dead of night. Losses sometimes happened.

The E.G, Equestrian Government, left the Dark Decade with one hundred and forty-four Bunkers. Some Perished due to internal breakdowns, sure. But some were overrun by scared, starving people who wanted the huge stash of food and supplies the Bunkers held. Now, in the year 2060, only four Bunkers remained: Bunker 76, Bunker 88, Bunker 108, and Bunker 114. Bunker 114 was not far from ours - maybe fifty miles. It was sheer luck that it was so close and still running. During the Dark Decade, the E.G built a lot of Bunkers in the mountains because of nearby San Mariego, and Las Pegasus.

If there was a reason for secrecy beyond safety, I didn't know it. Bunker 108 was a center for "Xenobiological" research, which might have justified keeping its location under wraps. If such research were seized or destroyed, it would completely frustrate our efforts to understand what was going on at the Ragnarok impact site, over a thousand miles away in The Griffon Kingdom and Prance.

I was glad to be a citizen, living in a Bunker. We had warm beds, hot showers, and a safe life. Bunker 108 had a digital archive where millions of books, recordings, and movies were stored. I spent a lot of my time off there, listening to the music of the Old Equestria, watching the movies, reading the books. We had a commons with a pool and a basketball court, among other amenities, including the sun room - fifteen minutes of pure, lighted bliss, giving all Bunker residents their daily dose of Vitamin D. Everything was warm, everything was in its right place, and people were happy - for the most part.

Bunker 108 had a population of four hundred - there had been five hundred when it was filled to capacity in 2030. Chief Security Officer Shining was in charge of operations. He was a little harsh, but he kept things in order. I just tried to dodge him when he walked the corridors.

Mac and I arrived at the north face of Canterlot Mountain. As we walked, I stared at the distant red peaks. I was used to the confines of the Bunker, and seeing so much open space was surreal.

"Jesus..." Mac said.

I stopped short. "What?"

Face down in front of us, hidden by some wispy scrub, lay the body of a man, stabbed several times in the back. Small traces of purple slime oozed from the wounds. He wasn't moving.

Mac knelt down beside the man, placing a hand on his neck.

"There's a pulse..."

I wondered why Mac was checking for a pulse, and not shooting him. That was standard protocol; if you found a Wastelander, he or she was killed, end of story. But after looking at what the man was wearing, I saw why.

The number 114 was emblazoned on his sleeve.

"Is he from that other Bunker?" I asked.

For some odd reason, my eyes drifted up, focusing on a distant boulder. Something was off about it.

Then I Realized what it was. A woman's face was peeking around its side...

Author's Note

Whoo Chapta 1 !!! we numbah 1!!!!

Hello everpony this is the first chapter to the installment of Apocalypse not a lot of dialogue in this chapter sorry but intros is what makes the world go 'round... Anyways if you spot any grammatical errors, or questions or comments just hit me up on the comments section or pm me on anything that is bugging you guys...
HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY!!!!
*BroHoof*