Chapter 1: Lost in the Fog
Highway 502
Chapter 1: Lost in the Desert
Admiral Biscuit
I barreled along Highway 41, headed north from Moriarity. I didn't have any particular destination in mind; it was just a beautiful night for driving. Off to the east, I could see lightning flashing from the thunderstorms which had passed over a half-hour ago, leaving a glorious low fog in their wake.
I had the top off my CJ-5, but I'd invested in an auxiliary heater to make up for the anemic factory unit, and the warm air blowing on my legs helped ward off the chill. Real adventurers didn't mind a little cold, anyway.
Most of the fog was just above the hood, so I could see fairly well in front of me from the two off-road lights mounted on the rollbar. The headlights were useless, though; they just reflected right back at me. Sometimes, though, I'd run into a place where the fog was higher, and had to slow down to a crawl until I could see clearly again.
It was just after I passed through Stanley that I spotted a two-track I didn't remember ever having noticed before. It led off to the east, and I jammed on the brakes, stopping about fifty feet past it. A quick look in the rearview mirror revealed no other cars, so I shifted into reverse and backed up alongside the road.
It was more substantial than a farmer's access road, but only just. I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel while I tried to decide. I had a full tank of gas, my phone's GPS, and some snacks in the back of the Jeep, so I thought I ought to give it a go. Real adventurers aren’t afraid of the path less-traveled. I shifted the Jeep into four-wheel-drive, and headed off into the desert.
I was just about at the point where I was seriously considering turning around and heading back when I finally hit pavement again. The last few miles of the road had been very bad, and I was navigating it in nearly pea-soup fog at night. Stories of people getting lost in the desert and dying were floating to the forefront of my mind, especially when my cell phone inexplicably lost its signal.
The feel of smooth pavement under my tires was sweet, sweet relief. I shifted the transfer case back into two wheel drive, and got back up to speed. As soon as I saw a road sign, I'd have a good idea where I was, but worst case scenario, I had to be in a triangular area bounded by 41, US 285, and I-40; sooner or later I was bound to hit one of those roads.
I'd driven for about ten minutes, not seeing a single road sign, when a dark shape loomed in front of my Jeep. It looked like a bear. I slammed on the brakes and yanked the wheel to the right, tensing as I felt the Jeep briefly go up on two wheels before it bounded into the drainage ditch and launched out the other side. I spun the wheel straight—I hoped—just in time to land on a flat swath of ground. I didn't make it far—I wasn't going that fast to begin with—and both my feet were on the brake pedal, as I tried to push it through the floorboards. Rocks and shrubs loomed out of the mist, and I flinched back as a broken branch skidded across the hood and smacked the windshield.
As soon as the truck had come to a complete stop and my racing heart had slowed, I gingerly turned in a broad circle, easily finding my tire tracks. I looked at them over the hood for a moment, shaking my head in wonder at the close call, when an unwelcome smell began to make itself known. Hot coolant.
I left the truck running, even though the parking brake didn't work. The ground was level enough, it wasn't going to go anywhere. Small branches were jammed up against the grille, and one of them had managed to lance into my radiator. It wasn’t a major leak, but I wasn’t going to get very far like this. If it’d been closer to the top of the radiator, I might have chanced it, but it was about six inches up, just above the bumper.
Get back to the road while it still runs, I told myself. I jumped back in the Jeep, dropped it into four-wheel-drive again, and popped the clutch, sending a spray of dirt back as the Jeep dug into the damp soil. I kept it slow—I didn't want any more surprises—and took the time to shut down the Jeep, get out, and study my path across the drainage ditch rather than just go for it.
While I was scouting around, courtesy of my MagLite, I reconsidered my plan. I'd meant to leave the Jeep on the shoulder where it could easily be seen by passing traffic . . . but in the fog, they might not see it right away, and the shoulder was narrow—narrow enough I would run the real risk of being clipped by a semi in the night. I had no illusions about how that would end.
So I got back into the Jeep, and leaned back in the seat, pulling a blanket over myself. Hopefully the bear was gone. If there had even been a bear, and not some figment of my imagination that had caused me to go and do something dumb.
٥٠٢
I didn't sleep well, but I didn't get mauled by a bear, either, proving that there's a bright side to every cloud or whatever that saying is. Unsurprisingly, I was cold. My coat and a blanket weren't quite enough to ward off the chilly desert night. My cell phone was still completely without bars, so a quick call to AAA wasn't an option.
The Jeep fired right up, and I gave it a little bit of throttle to warm up the engine a bit quicker. Not too much—I was still aware of the coolant leak, and she'd be straining by the time I made it across the ravine. I watched the gauges intently, and as soon as the temperature gauge twitched off its peg, I slipped into gear and let it creep forward.
In the light of day, the drainage ditch actually looked a little more intimidating than it had the night before. I gingerly picked my way down the slope, putting the wisps of steam drifting over the hood out of my mind. When it was nearly level, I gunned it, figuring that the bottom of the ditch was likely tire-trapping mud, and I wasn't far wrong. The front wheels sank past the rims as they transitioned off the slope. As soon as the rear wheels hit, I was going to find out if I'd made the right choice, or a terrible mistake.
I made the right choice. The Jeep clawed through the mud like a champ, dug its front tires into the upslope, and began climbing like a mountain goat. When I got back to level ground, I turned as far off the road as I could, although the left side tires were on asphalt.
I shut it off and gave the steering wheel an affectionate pat. Now that I was back on a road, it was only a matter of time before the cell signal came back, or some good Samaritan stopped to help. And to make sure they got the idea, I unclipped the hood straps and folded it wide open, leaning it against the top of the windshield.
And then I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Only one car passed, some kind of an antique from the thirties. It reminded me of the cars in historical mob movies, with bulbous fenders and a somewhat aerodynamic shape; of course it was painted all black. It slowed down, and I began waving frantically, but then it accelerated again, zipping off towards the distant sunrise. I stuck my hand high into the air and gave a very enthusiastic bird to the car. I hope the driver saw it in his rearview mirror.
Other than that, the road was completely deserted. There were no signs or billboards to give me the slightest hint where I was, the radio played nothing but static, and my cell phone still didn't work. At least it was fully charged, if the signal returned.
If I'd had an idea where I was, I might have begun walking.
Off in the distance, over the open plain, I saw a pair of large birds circling, and that got me to thinking about vultures and my bleached bones being picked over. I picked up my phone for the zillionth time and checked for a signal, when I heard the unmistakable beat of a Jake Brake. I whipped my head around and saw the grille of a stub-nosed semi-truck bearing down on me. It blasted past, buffeting the Jeep, and as soon as it was clear, I stuck my head out beyond the hood, seeing the welcome flare of brake lights on the trailer.
I started jogging down the shoulder as soon as I saw the truck pull off the road, the foul smell of its exhaust only spurring me on.
As I got close, I was surprised about how small the trailer was—these days, you hardly saw anything smaller than a 53 footer, but this was probably between 30 and 40 feet long, and narrower, too. Like many old-fashioned trailers, the front had a slight aerodynamic curve. It looked rather dirty for an antique, but then again, having an authentic patina was in these days; maybe that included dirt and grime. It probably didn't help that the truck was puffing out oily smoke from its single chrome stack.
“Car broke down?” I hesitated for a second—girl truck drivers were fairly uncommon, but it was undoubtedly a female voice calling at me.
“Yeah.” I was close enough to the truck that I could see the passenger side window was rolled down, and the vent window wide open. That was a feature they ought to have left on trucks. “Busted the radiator.”
“Better hop in.” The door swung open, and I grabbed at the back of the window frame as I boosted myself up the fuel tank. I’d never been in a semi-truck before, but the absence of a grab-rail struck me as odd. Of course, when this truck was built, people were less worried about safety appliances.
“Thanks! I've been out here all night.” I pulled the door shut and turned to face the driver. “Not a lot of traffic . . . “
It would not be an exaggeration to say that my brain failed at that moment. Certainly, my capacity for rational thought just gave up completely, leaving the rest of the brain to fend for itself.
Just as I'd pulled myself into the truck, the driver—no doubt eager to get back on the road—leaned out and checked her mirror, revving the engine and shifting into gear without even looking at the controls. In and of itself, that wasn't so odd. I could do the same with my Jeep, and there was no way I had the seat time of a truck driver. What was of more concern was that the driver of the truck was unmistakably a Pony, ripped straight from the TV show. She had a dun-colored coat and a sandy mane and tail, and her cutie mark was a old-fashioned delivery truck . . . that was appropriate at least.
Author's Note
A One-Shot-Ober story
There is no highway 502 near Moriarty, NM.
Highway 502
Chapter 2: Highway 502
Admiral Biscuit
The semi rumbled under my seat, and in the mirror, I could see a big black cloud billow out of the exhaust pipe. I looked back over in the driver's seat, to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing, and she was still there, big as life. Her blue-grey eyes were looking right at me, and I gave a weak smile. It seemed like the thing to do.
I couldn't help but feel that she was as brimming with questions as I was, but was enough of a driver to not want to be overly distracted until we were back to speed, so I just watched her. I learned that she knew how to double-clutch, and that pony trucks had just as many gears as real-life big rigs.
Her eyes flicked back over to me. “What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?”
“No, I—“ I shook my head. This was probably all a hallucination, brought about by a night in the desert or something. But how to tell the real from the unreal? That was the real question. “Where are you going?”
“Las Pegasus,” she said. “But I can drop you off in Palomino. It's just up the road a way. There's a tow truck in town.” She shifted up a gear and leaned back in her seat, resting one arm on the windowsill, hooking her hoof just in front of the channel for the window. “Where are you from, anyway?”
“Moriarty,” I said.
“Never heard of it.”
“I'm not surprised.” I slumped back, trying to find a comfortable position. I couldn't think of a thing to say, and she wasn't much of a conversationalist, either, so we rode along in silence.
The desert looked the same as it had in New Mexico. Nothing but scrub brush and rocks and distant mesas, but it was a view I loved, and seeing it was somehow reassuring.
I was expecting Palomino to be a collection of ramshackle huts in a barren wasteland—blame too many Hollywood movies—but it turned out that it was a nice little town, filled with nice houses set back from the road, each one of them surrounded by flowerbeds. The homes themselves were two- and three-story adobe affairs, their flowing lines blending neatly into the surrounding desert.
There were fewer cars than in an American city, but the streets were hardly deserted. The sidewalks, unsurprisingly, were crowded with ponies going about their business. The truck driver kept up a good pace as she went through town, but she wasn't reckless. She had an air of calm competence.
“Well, here it is,” she said as she braked to a stop in front of a small garage. A weathered sign with a pegasus on it hung over the a single gas pump out front. Next to the small lobby were two service bays, and there was a row of abandoned cars parked along the property line. The air brakes hissed as she popped a switch on the dashboard, and without waiting to see what I was going to do, she opened her door and climbed out of the truck.
I waited until she had crossed the parking lot and poked her muzzle into the shop before I got out of the truck. That would give her time to introduce me, I figured, and maybe prevent a panic, although if all the ponies were as laconic as she was, I’d be fine.
I followed her into the shop, smiling at the familiar scents of grease and oil and gasoline. A tube radio was softly playing bluegrass or gospel; I couldn't tell which. Not that I would have known the song, anyway. The car up on the hoist had its differential cover off, and I watched in wonder as the unicorn mechanic lifted the stamped steel plate back into position, held it in place with a hoof while she started all the bolts with her telekinetic field, before spinning them in with a socket wrench. She ran them snug with her field, before torquing them by hoof.
The truck driver was paying the mechanic no mind; she was talking to who I assumed was the owner of the shop. The two of them bumped hooves, and the truck driver headed back towards her rig.
“Good luck,” she called over her shoulder at me.
“Thanks! Thanks for the ride!” I gave her a wave as she walked around the front of her truck, but I don’t think she saw me. The air brakes were released with a soft sigh, and the truck billowed out another cloud of smoke as it drove out of the parking lot.
I turned back around. The unicorn had started to fill the differential with a hose attached to a bucket pump, but her attention was fixed on me. I kept watching her out of the corner of my eye as the other pony leaned into the front office.
“Dusty! Me 'n your sis are going on a wrecker call out on 502.”
“Okay mom.”
She turned around and looked up at me. “You got a name?”
“Al,” I said.
“I'm Orchid Frost,” she said, sticking out a hoof. I bumped it politely. “And that's my daughter, Poppy Mallow.”
“Hi.” The unicorn gave me a half-grin, flashing braces at me. I waved back.
“You wanna get the wrecker started, while me and . . . mister? Al talk?”
“Sure, Mom.” The unicorn wiped her hooves off on a rag, and trotted out the door. As soon as she was gone, Orchid's eyes narrowed. “Just what in Tartarus are you? No offense, I'm just curious.”
“I'm not from around here,” I began.
“That's as plain as the muzzle on my face,” she said. “Where are you from? Prairie Fire—that’s the truck driver, in case you didn’t know—said you told her you came from 'Moriarty,' but I've never heard of that.”
“It's not in your world. I'm from another world.” As soon as I'd said it, I imagined how it would sound if someone told me that. Then again, if I'd been back home and a horse had come up to me and made that announcement, I might have been inclined to believe it.
And so was Orchid. She just nodded. “You got any money?”
“None that would do you any good,” I said. “Unfortunately.”
“Of course you don't.” She turned in annoyance as the wrecker bounced over the sidewalk beside the garage, nearly scraping the passenger-side mirror off. “Kids,” she muttered under her breath. “But you've got money that would do you good, right?”
I nodded. I always carried a few hundred bucks in cash, just in case.
“Alright. We'll worry about that later. Get in.” She motioned to the truck. “Slide over, Poppy. You're riding in the center.”
“But Mom, I want to drive.”
“Not this time.” I grinned as I slid into the truck. Even here, kids and parents were the same.
I didn't have a good frame of reference for how old the wrecker was, but it looked well-used. The seat had a blanket covering it, since the original upholstery was probably long gone. A crystal doorknob was on the shifter handle in place of the original knob, and the pull handle for the floor vent on my side was tied open with a length of bailing wire.
Poppy gave me a dark look as I slid into the truck. I just smiled back. Teenagers the world over had mastered that look, apparently.
Orchid slammed her door and shifted the truck into gear. Poppy looked at her mother and then at me, and scooched in my direction millimeter at a time. Satisfied she’d snubbed her mother enough, she braced herself with a hoof as Orchid slowed to let a car go past, before making a left turn onto the road.
Either the engine was woefully underpowered, or the wrecker was geared really low: I could have kept up with it walking for the first block, and jogging for the second. It was just as well; the seat springs were completely shot, and with no load on the suspension, it bounced me in the seat every time she hit a bump.
“How did you get here?” Orchid asked once we'd passed out of the town limits, and the wrecker had reached the blistering speed of thirty.
“I don't know,” I said. “I was driving my Jeep along a two-track last night. I turned onto a paved road, swerved to avoid a bear, and broke the radiator on a bush.”
“On 502?”
“Yeah, I guess. It's this road. The Jeep's maybe ten miles out of town.”
“I wonder. . . .”
“I bet Discord did it,” Poppy chimed in, ending her sullen silence.
“That's what I was thinking.”
“Discord? Isn't he reformed?”
“He was.” Orchid took her eyes off the road long enough to look me intently in the eye and drift over into the other lane of traffic. “But now that Lady Fluttershy's dying, he's kind of gone back to his old ways.”
“It rained root beer last week,” Poppy said bitterly. “I used to like root beer.”
“He thinks that if he makes enough chaos, he can somehow stop it from happening.”
I gawked at her. “Fluttershy's real? What about Twilight Sparkle?”
“Princess Twilight?”
“She's, like, Princess of Magic.” Poppy reached up and tapped her horn. “She wrote half my textbooks.”
“I know of your world,” I said. “Or one very much like it. One where Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy and four other mares freed Nightmare Moon.”
“Yes, that's what happened.”
“How long ago?”
“Like, over a thousand moons ago. That's ancient history.”
I began doing some rough calculating in my head, coming up with a workable number. If their lunar cycles were the same as ours—and if that's what they were counting—it would be somewhere between a hundred twenty and a hundred thirty per decade, so somewhere around eighty years ago would be in the ballpark.
“What happened since then?”
Poppy got a slightly dazed look on her face, like I'd just sprung a pop quiz on her. Orchid glanced at me, licked her lips, and began giving me a summary of the last eight decades of Equestrian history. She focused largely on earth pony achievements, although Poppy occasionally added in a few notable unicorns.
When the show I knew had taken place, the ponies had been on the cusp of an industrial revolution, and thanks in no small part to Twilight's tireless campaign to educate everypony in Equestria, their society had flourished.
Orchid had just started in on the rise of the great dirigibles, when we came across my Jeep, sitting right where I'd left it. Poppy turned on the beacon, and we cut across the road.
She expertly backed up to the Jeep, stopping five feet short. Poppy turned back and lit her horn, moving levers on the wrecker body with her telekinesis. Once she had it positioned to her satisfaction, Orchid backed up until the sling touched the Jeep's rear bumper.
I would have liked to see them hook it up without getting out of the truck, but the Jeep was too foreign to them. Orchid got out and Poppy followed; I was curious enough to join them along the side of the road.
Poppy let her mother attach the chains, then ran the winch and boom with her hooves, watching the Jeep intently. Once she was satisfied it wasn't going anywhere, she walked around to the front and put her hooves on the fender, leaning into the engine compartment. I saw her eyes flicking across the components, identifying them. For a moment, I wished I'd been driving my Cruze last night. That would have baffled her.
“All right.” She tugged the hood down and I strapped the latches.
“We've got to keep an eye out,” Orchid instructed once I was back in the truck. “For the road you took last night. I think I know where it is, and I think the portal will still be there. They usually last a couple of days. If not, you'll have to go to Canterlot and see if one of the Princesses can find a way to send you back.
“Yellow Jacket's Folly?”
Orchid nodded. “Most likely. Reality always was thin up there.”
She jammed the truck in gear and meandered back to our side of the road, occasionally checking her mirrors to see if my Jeep was still following along.
We got there quicker than I'd expected, but she was driving faster than I'd been. She had daylight on her side, and knew exactly where she was, despite the complete and utter lack of mile markers or road signs of any type. She crossed over the road again, which made me grit my teeth even though we'd only seen a couple of cars and one truck in all the time we'd been on the road.
All three of us got out and inspected the ground with the same diligence a detective would give a crime scene. Luckily, the wet ground had held the impressions of my tires well, and it was readily apparent that this was indeed the two-track I'd come in on.
“It's gonna be rough,” I warned Orchid.
“I know.”
She climbed back into the truck, followed by Poppy and myself, and we began crawling across the desert. The stiff suspension on the tow truck alternately bounced me off the door and into Poppy, despite my deathgrip on the door.
“You really need to invent seat belts,” I muttered.
“We have. This truck doesn't have them.” Poppy glared at me as I slid away from her for the umpteenth time.
We scraped through a narrow passage between rocks that had been no issue for my Jeep, but was a little tight for a wrecker. Orchid took it at a crawl, leaning forward in her seat until the rocks passed abreast of the cab, then she glued her eyes to the mirror. The Jeep was almost clear when I heard a familiar chime from my pocket.
Without even thinking, I pulled my cell phone out. Fifteen missed texts?
“What's that?” Poppy looked over at my phone with interest.
I gave her a devilish grin. “Oh, nothing much. Just a cell phone. I can make calls and send and receive messages from pretty much anywhere.” I brightened. “Hey, we're back on my world, if my phone works. You can just drop me off and head back to town.”
“Here?” Orchid stopped the truck and looked out at the vast expanse of nothingness that surrounded us. “Is this where you live?”
“On second thought, maybe closer to town would be better.”
Highway 502
Chapter 3: Home Again
At the back of my mind, it was nagging at me that there would be trouble if anyone saw them—but out here, no one would. Still, I needed to be somewhere where rescue would be close at hand; if they left me here, I'd be no better off than I was before.
As the truck jerked back into gear, Poppy tapped my shoulder with her hoof. “So, you could, like, make a call from here without wires or a sub-etheric transmitter?”
“Let me show you.” I opened my contacts list, and began thumbing through. “I'll even let you talk, to prove this isn't some pre-recorded message . . . but you can't say anything about being a pony, okay?” Who would she want to talk to?
A sudden inspiration hit me, and I tapped a contact. “I'm going to let you talk to my buddy Danny. He works at the dealership that sold me my Cruze. He's a mechanic and likes old cars, so you can ask him mechanic-y stuff and that'll prove this isn't fake. Just let me talk to him for a moment.”
She nodded eagerly. I hit the call button, still working out what I was going to say.
“Al?”
“Hey, Danny, what's up?”
“Where were you last night? Monica texted me, said you weren't texting her back.”
“It's a long story, Danny. I'll tell you later. Hey, listen, you got a moment?”
“Yeah. I'm on lunch.”
“I've got a friend that wants to talk to you for a minute.”
“Uh . . . okay.”
I held the phone beside Poppy's head. “I'm not sure what your horn would do to it,” I said. “So let me hold it.”
“Danny?”
“Hello? Who is this?”
“it's Poppy. Poppy Mallow.”
“Where are you, Poppy?”
“I'm in the wrecker with Al. His Jeep broke. We're towing it back to his home.” She took a deep breath. “Do you—Al said you're a mechanic.”
“Yes.”
“I'm building a hot rod,” she said. “And I haven't got a whole lot of money to spend on it. I found a high-rise intake off an old tractor that I can make fit the engine so it will breathe better, and I'd have enough then to put a performance camshaft in it. Or do you think I should just buy the right aluminum intake for the engine, and change the cam later?”
“Well . . . I think—are you planning to use a turbo or a supercharger?”
“I wish.” Poppy sighed. “Maybe if I can win some races with the thing.”
“Go with the intake first. If the engine can't breathe properly, it won't perform, no matter how good a cam you've got.”
“Okay, thanks,” she said brightly. I put the phone back to my ear. “Danny?”
“Al? What was that all about?”
“I'll tell you later. I've got to go; my battery's dying.” I ended the call before he could ask any more questions.
“That was amazing,” Poppy said, looking over at me. “What about messages? Are they like telegrams?”
“Better.” I changed to my messaging app. “Let me show you.”
I'd gone through most of the functions of my phone before we got close enough to see Stanley. It was just as well; my battery really was dying now.
That wasn't the only thing low, either. The fuel gauge on the wrecker was hovering near empty.
“Orchid? What does this truck run on?”
“Gasoline.”
“That's what I hoped.” I pointed towards the nearing town. “Here's what we're going to do.”
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I was sweating bullets the whole time I was fueling the wrecker. Orchid and Poppy stayed in the cab, but I had the impression that they were watching everything around them intently. I didn't want to devote too many glances in their direction, lest I reveal that something hinky was going on, but if things were heading south, I wanted a chance to run before it was too late. I breathed a sigh of relief as the pump finally clicked off.
I didn't even get a receipt from the pump, just jumped back into the cab. Orchid fired the engine back up and roared away from the gas station in a cloud of blue smoke, following my directions until we came upon an empty parking lot that was well off of the main drag.
Poppy ran the controls from inside the cab, neatly setting my Jeep down. I unchained it, and motioned for Orchid to pull the wrecker forward. Once it was clear, Poppy lowered the boom while I tossed the chains into the locker on the bed, before returning to the cab.
“Are you sure you're going to be all right here?” Orchid asked.
“Mom, he's got his cell phone. He can, like, call anypony with it.”
“Be safe,” Orchid cautioned me.
“You, too.” I reached up and bumped hooves with her and Poppy. “And thanks for everything.”
“Maybe we'll meet again,” Poppy said. Her face lit up. “Ooh! I wonder if we can push small things through the thin spot? Sometimes that works, even when it's not big enough for a pony. I learned that from one of Princess Twilight's books.”
“I don't know,” I said. “But you can bet I'm willing to try.”
I watched as Orchid drove out of the parking lot and across the main road. My heart nearly stopped when I saw a police car rolling down the highway, but he passed them and went on his way, none the wiser.
I stayed there long enough to see the wrecker disappear down the two-track, before I turned back to my cell phone and punched in the number for triple-A.
To Be Continued....
