Fallout Equestria: Derelict Bay
Desperate Escape
So, you want to hear about Derelict Bay huh? Imagine a place that was abandoned by the goddesses and left derelict to rot until the end of time. Few venture in and fewer still return. It lies on the toxic coasts of Fillydelphia. The water is radioactive sludge and the sand is sulfur to the flesh. Don't think water would be a reprieve either, to merely touch it would melt the skin off your flesh and then eat away at your muscle down to the bone and Celestia save you if it rains. The acidic rain is like bathing in hydrochloric acid with a cheese grater. It's a place with no resources or anything of value or if it did it disappeared a long time ago. The slavers do not use it either, they abandoned it just like Celestia and Luna. Ah but that is where one smart enough (or desperate enough) could make use of Derelict Bay.
I pulled myself under the wire fence. I didn't have any time, I heard them coming for me and they were closing in. The mud squished under and I almost felt myself sink. Narrow columns of light waived erratically in the night sky, their flashlights were closing in and I could hear their shoutings. The gate was too low and the mud wasn't deep enough. If they found me I knew they'd stomp my skull in or electrify the gate with me under it! My masters were cruel but I don't know what came over me. One moment I saw I had stabbed my potential rapist with a pair of scissors and saw his twitching body and pooling blood on the floor, now I was running for my life or how much was left. I held my breath and tried to raise my mental barriers but nothing prepares you for self-inflicted pain. I pushed myself under the end of the fence and I felt the metal wires cutting and pulling at my flesh and coat. I almost felt the warm red blood but the mud was so cold, so very cold. I screamed as the last piece of skin begin ripped leaving a small bloody shred on the fence like a trophy. I saw the lights turn in my direction in the sky, my cry had alerted them to my whereabouts.
I had to keep going though. Derelict Row was off limits for the slavers but that wouldn't stop a griffon from taking to the sky and gunning me down or worse plucking me up and taking me back to be tortured to death. No, I needed to hide.
“This way!” One of my pursuers declared. I limped, the small tears on my back burned. “Get em' Hawkes!” I knew the name. My fears were correct, a griffon...
The rain dripped in places and I felt the hissing sting of it's acidic contents. I forced myself into another gallop when I heard Hawkes call from above threatening to flay me alive.
I threw myself into a small pile of rubble and debris in the vain hope of evading him. In vain it was because he landed with a heavy thud seconds later. Dammit, so this is how I would end...
“You'll make a nice pelt by my fireplace place, pony! Hahaha!” Hawkes laughed and crept around the debris pile. “I can wait all day... hell I'll get some sandwiches and we can have a picnic.” He added as he skirted around my hiding place.
I remembered the rain. I decided to goad him. “Could we have vegetable sandwiches? I don't like meat.” I said. Drip, drip, drip.
“Hehe I was thinking more of horse meat on my sandwiches for today.” He said continuing to strafe around me. Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip.
“Say, Hawkes, how does it feel?” I asked with a hint or bravado I didn't think I possessed. Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip.
“How what feels?” He asked but he seemed to start to notice the rain. Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip.
“To be melted alive.” I said and just as I finished my sentence the sky cut loose and the deadly torrential deluge fell to the earth.
Immediately I heard Hawkes scream in burning agony. I imagined his skin melting away and falling to the ground in sickly strips and his wings melting to their frame, disabling him from flying. He screamed while he could and then it died into pained gurgles and then it was nothing, he was finished. Now all I heard was the toxic rainstorm. In the storm I could barely make out the huddled mass of flesh that was- err had been Hawkes. He looked like an expiring beast. His flesh was falling off his bones like loose succulent meat but the once-intense pain was still prevalent on his face. His face, now a patchy mix of skin and exposed skull, reflected agonizing pain.
I breathed a shallow sigh of relief. He was dead, the slavers were halted and unlikely to pursue me but now I was in one of the most treacherous places in Fillydelphia. It was until later I felt a burning sensation in my hooves. I stopped and looked at them and the damp sand has made them bloody and scabby. The acid rain was being absorbed by the sandy ground of Derelict Bay. I needed to get on to solid ground.
....
My blistered hooves seemed to simmer as I pulled myself onto a collapsed roof that was just low enough to climb on. I huffed and huffed after the excruciating three foot climb but with my hooves it felt like seven. I tore off my slave rags and tried my best to bandage my hooves but at the very least it could shield me a little from the acid sand.
The storm subsided and I was granted a view of Derelict Bay. It was grim and dark but somehow it had a haunting beauty to it. The tide had come in partially submerging several buildings and damp sand blanketed much of the ground. I looked back at the hellscape of Fillydelphia, the reddish smog to the sky was not as present in Derelict Bay in fact there was a fog coming in from the ocean. The ocean scent felt sickly yes but to a mare that had been smelling smelters and boiling metal for several years it might as well have been a meadow of flowers.
"I will be free." I told myself and for once I could see the means to be free. It wasn't going to be easy and I wasn't coming out without scars but perhaps I could find a raft, maybe row myself to Friendship City. One way or another, I was going to be free...
