Fallout Equestria - The Eerie

(Please note: Due to the usual FoE Writer stresses (lack of editors mostly) the first two chapters of "The Eerie" are much much messier in terms of editing then the rest of the series onward. This is due in part to these chapters being changed a great deal before the final draft and also due to the fact we didn't have our third set of eyes until Chapter 3. This is more or less a note from us to say that these chapters are dotted with spelling mistakes and little grammatical errors, we just want to say we are well aware they are here and we have plans to fix these chapters very soon.

Thanks for understanding!

~Darcy)

War, War never changes.

When war came to ponykind. The Penumbra Highlands underwent a monstrous change, the hunger of the Equestrian war machine clawed its way across the virgin cliffs and valleys, thousands of mines scarred the hills, hundreds of refineries bloomed and filled the skies with impure and hellish smog as the cities swelled with millions of souls desperate for a new start or just hoping to distance themselves from the horrors of war.

When the world was consumed by a bombardment of necromancy and impure fire, Penumbra was spared, its cities and towns survived the bombs and lived on all the while the world fell apart around them and the skies closed above them. The momentary peace was short lived as the clouds of fallout kicked from the ashes of a thousand dead cities blew into the mountains and conspired with the toxic smog of a thousand factories, untold hell spawned in the twisted and tainted peaks slowly the fog rolled into the cities and towns below and the hunger of thousand mouths  crawled out of the fog and consumed all they could find. held back only by a wall, a lighthouse separating the border of the mainland to the mountains and a single regiment of Rangers from nearby Alwhinny County that refused to abandon their post stood alone and held the line against the horde.

After the tide eased and the monsters returned to the mountains, the Rangers swore an oath to forever protect the world from the horrors that lurk in the fog, that oath still exists today, two hundred years after it was sworn, and the Rangers of Alwhinny still watch the wall, thanklessly keeping their weapons pointed to the endless night beyond the border.

Life still goes on years after the end, despite the region being shrouded in an endless blanket of demonic night eyes still gaze into the eerie, factions still mingle in darkness, the Rangers of Alwhinny still hold the line and above all else.

War, War never changes.

_______

Dear Sister.

Dad is dead.

Darkwater Down was attacked last night.

Please return home as fast as you can.

~Ashes.

_____

Written by DarcySupremest - With Assistance from PistolWhip

____

There was an odd sort of silence as we both looked over the fresh and neat pony sized mound of dirt underneath both our hooves. It was a morbid and somewhat fitting irony that the first time I had seen my sister since we were kids was standing over the grave of our father. I suppose neither of us had much in common but we were close as foals and I was surprised she was even able to make it back to Darkwater Down to help bury one last body. I suppose I underestimated how much my sister cared about our father, or, at the very least never expected her to have such  a heavy sense of sentimentality.

Neither of us were crying, but the silence was just as painful as if we were sobbing. My own desperation broke that silence quick enough.

    “You know he once said to me, if my body ended up on his doorstep, he’d refuse to bury me.” I said softly to the figure beside me.

I was prepared to let the silence be my reply but soon enough she spoke up “I’m glad you were decent enough to not mimic his wishes.” the voice was north-northeast cold, not unfamiliar, just harder than I would’ve thought.

From the corner of my vision I could see her head peer up and look towards our childhood home. A once grand albeit disrepaired homestead now lied in smoldering ruin, the cinders barely done crackling on the charred corpse of where I called home, every small gust kicking up the settled ash in mock imitation of the flames that levelled it. “What happened here?”

I looked up from the mound and toward her face which gazed at wreckage that was once a home and a place of morbid business “Not sure; the Rangers wouldn’t let me see the thing when they killed it. But it was a mutant of some kind, given the speed it moved I’d hazard a guess it was a manticore or something similar. Fire wasn’t it’s fault though, the Rangers burnt the place down trying to kill whatever it was.”

    “So nice of the Garrison to burn our house down.” she mumbled looking at the collapsed heap of blackened cinder blocks and soot caked stone that was once the morgue of our large house.

    “Word on the street says that it’s from Penumbra, that's why the rangers wouldn’t let anybody near it when it died.”

My sister pursed her lips in thought “That would mean there's some kind of hole in the wall.”

    “That's the prefered theory right now” I replied bluntly.

“Where were you during all of this?”

I gestured weakly with my head off into town “At the tavern, where the fuck else would I be? By the time I saw it attacking the house and ran back it was too late, I’d like to say it was quick but you know what Dad used to say,  it never is.”

The tall and graceful figure of my sister shifted in short strides over closer to the house as she looked more closely at it. I could tell in the way she stood and even in the way she breathed that as cold and uncaring as she normally was, she was in as much grief as she could muster. Her stride was that of a mare now, it was strange seeing it on her, the way she carried herself was like a forgery trying hard not to seem like one, overdone and memorized.

    “I can at least tell you the old bastard died with a rifle in his hooves, that's more than I can say for most of corpses that end up in this place.”

She nodded giving the jagged and rheumatic corpse of a house one last look before she gazed back at me, bowing her head down and lifting that strange red glinting eyeglass up to her head and slipping it over her left eye, obscuring the light blue behind a hue of hellish crimson, the glass flickering gently with scrolling lines of text and shifting symbols. Feeding her data that only the chosen like her were fit to comprehend.

    “I don’t suppose you will…”

I shook my head “Way too expensive, there's no way I can get the yard back to working condition now.” I paused “I went into town this morning before you arrived and had a chat with Father Pennywise, he said he’d take the land and look after the yard from now on.”

There was a gentle flurry of cloth as charcoal black cloak wrapped itself around my sister’s dark beige body tying up tightly and putting her back into a state of more presentable uniform. “Is he paying?” she asked flatly, her stance stiff and unyielding, the uniform suited her, made her seem half as mechanical as she was...is.

    “Dust, I’m not going to stick my hooves out and ask the goddamn church for money, I was lucky enough that the Father even took this, he’s got no experience in being an undertaker like Dad. I’d assume that if he wasn’t a stallion of faith he’d have never agreed to take this yard off me in the first place.”

She nodded in reply “Understandable, I can’t imagine ruined Graveyards are easy to sell off…” she sighed.

There was a brief bout of silence before she looked across staring intently with her unemotive eyes into my own“Where will you go now?”

I shrugged “No idea, to be perfectly honest I’m glad this happened, I never wanted to take over this place, the world is shitty enough these days let alone spending the rest of my life surrounded by dead bodies.”

Another ebb of silence took over as we stood across from one another. “You know...you could always come back with me Ashes, you’re decent enough with a rifle, I’m sure they’d take you in as a guard, that's more than most of the idiots back in Filly have.”

I shook my head “Thank you Dust but I’m not going to ask the stallion who sent an envoy halfway across the waste looking to hire you to give me the same treatment, I’m not like you, there isn’t a whole lot I can do to warrant that kind of kindness, I didn’t even stay in school.”

Another weaker nod “Understandable; Though that still doesn’t answer my question Ashes, do you even have a plan?”

    “Well, I do have one.”

Her hard eyes narrowed, shooting me a stabbing glare, with a flare of irate curiosity hidden behind those indurated pupils...“You don’t mean..?”

I nodded in reply “Yes Dust, I mean that.”

She shook her head disappointedly and heaved a sigh heavier than the coffin under the grave we stood on  “You’re an Idiot Ashes, you know he never approved of that.” She snapped curtly, she was always right, it was just the way she was.

    “Well he’s dead now, and so is the house, the morgue and the entire fucking graveyard Dust. Even if I wanted to spend the rest of my days wrapping corpses in linen and burying boxes in dirt, I can’t do it anymore regardless.” I reasoned, reasoning thankfully was something she rarely argued with, and more often than not lorded over me with.

She lifted her hoof to her face and rubbed it gently, (in an attempt to assuage the headache only her little idiot brother could possibly give her. “Lets not do this at our father’s funeral please Ashes, I don’t know when they’ll let me leave Fillydelphia again after this, I’d like to make this meeting as pleasant as I can.” She pushed out in exasperation, I was trying not to be difficult, but indignation ran in our blood, thicker in her’s.

I nodded,“You’re right, sorry…” I sighed wearily, looking over at the looming and towering concrete walls that hung on the horizon between the mountain peaks. Closing it all off from the world, quarantining more like, performing perhaps the most thankless but direly needed service in Equestria. As we spoke that commendable old Lighthouse that housed the Rangers spun, casting its mighty light giving gaze out into the Penumbra Highlands before turning its back and glowering out into the wastelands.

That familiar silence fell over us again, Like a heavy, uneasy blanket over our backs.

    “You know, when you told him I was thinking of joining the Rangers, he took me into the morgue and showed me two of them.” I began. “One was missing its entire bottom half, the other, her throat was covered in scratches and bruises, and I remember he walked to the one on the left and he said ‘This one was mauled by a mutant, this one choked on her own spit when the cancer in her lungs sent her into a coughing fit’.”

I shook my head looking at the crumbling bricks of the morgue. “He did a good job, I’ll give him that, the desire to join the Rangers died hard that night, yesterday was the first time since I was fourteen that I actually thought about joining them.”

    “Why are you so interested in joining them Brother? If you know where they end up, why seek to join them?” she questioned sternly, brows furrowed in vexation towards me, the hapless and unintelligent little brother who just happened to be the only family left for her.

I smirked weakly, and an even weaker laugh escaped. I had tried to put on for my father’s sake. “Thats not what scared me away, what scared me away is what he said after he covered the bodies again.” I began my eyes staring watching the beam of light circle around the towering fortress lighthouse.

    “He said to me, these are the lucky ones” I started “He said; Ashes, do you know why we only occasionally get the bodies of Rangers? And I said ‘no’ of course.”

My sister knew the answer. Even if this place was no longer her home, everybody from Darkwater Down knew the kind of horrors that lurked beyond the Garrison walls. It was a question every child would ask, and every young adult would regret hearing the answer to. All the tales and rumours, the strange monikers and nicknames given to the anomalies beyond, it was a romantic childish dream to join the rangers, but everyone knew the truth before long.

    “They lose more bodies in Penumbra than they they recover.”

I sullenly shook my head to clear it from the grim memories this conversation invoked, pulling my gaze away from the lighthouse tower and back to her. “That night I had a nightmare that I was lost in the dark. that my flashlight wasn’t bright enough to push the inky black away from me…” I recalled aloud, the lucid imagery flooding back to me.

Like another coat of fur layering over my body, I could feel the anxiety wrap itself tautly around my frame “I could feel it, I could feel the darkness closing in on me, silently laughing as it strode toward me, ready to swallow me in black.” to think back to it made my back muscles bind up so much so they cramped around my spine, the unnatural clenching of my jaw, the constriction in my body affecting my circulation enough to tinge my eyes blurry.

I shook my head again, more vigorously this time and gave a weak forced laugh trying to break the quickly darkening mood. “I couldn’t sleep without a light on for days after that nightmare.” There was a tremble to my voice as I spoke, thoughts around here were unpalatable at best, the stiffness building in my neck was not uncommon. A by-product, some say of living so close to ‘it’.

Unnatural thoughts, irrepressible and implacable… You’d see it sometimes, in the tavern, all of a sudden a jovial, boisterous guy would go all quiet like, he’d gulp so hard you’d swear there was a tent peg in his gullet, his coat suddenly glistening as the icy sweat dripped from their pores.

“Exactly, why would you join them if they terrify you so much?” she replied snapping me from my stupor, I felt moisture in my bodily alcoves.

As I returned to my senses and the words she spoke, I could tell she was trying to not sound as if she cared. She was oblivious as to the episode that came over me, perhaps she was too young to remember the problems that befell those who lived here… or to mechanical to register it.

Clearing my throat and letting my heart rate fall I shrugged as nonchalantly as I could and looked at the mount of dirt which was now the final resting place of our father. “Not sure, I could say for the adventure and the honor, all that other bullshit but the truth is the steady paycheck is more tempting than that, and that's not even the reason I want to join.”

She shook her head and heaved a heavy sigh “Then what is?” her tone bitter and biting, implacable as ever with peon’s such as me’s choices.

    “I guess because I wanted to be like you, I mean you made a name for yourself here because of what happened, I wanted that, Dad was so stupidly proud of you, he bring up the latest letter you sent to him , show it off to every fucking person he talked to. I wanted that, I wanted dad to wave my letters around and brag about me, problem was I couldn't fix pumps or repair windmills, I could barely do math let alone get Darkwater’s electricity working again like you did, I mean you did so much for Darkwater Down, you’ve helped this town in more ways than I think anybody can count.” I peered at her red eyeglass which flickered and flashed a combination of secretive symbols and text. “The only way I can think to be even remotely as important and great as you are is to help protect my home on the wall, I feel as in some small way, guarding my home is the most a stallion like me can hope to ever achieve.”

She nodded, not just in reply. It was a gesture of understanding. “I won’t pretend I approve, but I do understand and I suppose I do sympathise brother…” she said striding to me and embracing me in perhaps the most genuine display of feelings I’ve ever seen from her.

    “Don’t die, and if you do please make sure your body at least makes it back.”

I gave a stilted laugh in reply and nodded into her shoulder before we pulled away “You’re starting to sound like him.”

She also laughed, perhaps to help alleviate the emotion. She was cold, thats just how Dust always was, she, never dealt well with drama or emotion, I was thankful that this time she was at least trying her best to deal with it.

    “I just don’t want the next letter I get from you to be some notice that you died out there in those...horrible mountains, I can’t bare the thought of your body rotting away in the darkness.” her voice carrying the few semblances of emotion she could convey in her limited capacity for sentimentality.

We walked in silence together away from the graveyard and our home for the last time as we headed back into town. Though she wasn’t the social type my sister did try her best to visit every shop and every old family friend as we headed back to the square, the mayor even agreed to meet her.

Much of the town had gathered to see her off. I was not lying when I said was the jewel of Darkwater Down, the one great success story from a town of farmers and scavengers, whose most notable features are a cloudy grey river that runs down from the Penumbra mountains and of course our now ruined graveyard.

Soon enough some garishly crimson carriage clattered its way into town. It was pulled by two  stallions and on the roof sat a third stallion clad in some kind of poorly painted crimson red leather barding who leaned bored against a menacing machine gun attached the the roof of the carriage, the reins attached to the stallions who were pulling wrapped around his hooves.

With a flourish of feathers down came another figure. A huge light grey feathered griffin who had a mean look in her eye.  Clasped in those sharp angry talons was a huge weapon. I recognised it as another machine gun of some sort, but a large one, much larger than the one on the roof of the carriage. Something no pony would ever be able to fire without proper equipment, and here she was carrying it in one hand. Her chest and legs were covered in dusty and scratched but still immaculate looking dark blood red combat armour with the same symbol printed on my sister’s cloak. a large red eye open wide and staring.

In these parts Griffins were as exotic as they come, those beastial and puissant framed predators sent shivers down my spine. The strength and ferocity radiating from her setting her leagues above us pitiful ponies. I remember being caught off guard the first time one ever spoke, they always seemed too mythical in my mind to be be real, too impressive to exist in the same world as I did.

Apparently she noticed me staring and turned away, making sure to give me an unwelcome look. My sister nodded to this griffin as she climbed in, giving this griffin appropriately named Longbow a thank you before she turned back to look at me.

    “Give my regards to your boss.” I joked to her as she looked back.

She smirked and shook her head “I’ll do more than give my regards, I like to think myself a humble mare and I never ask master for much, but seeing as I have familial interest in the Rangers now, I’ll see what I can do to help out, surely when my master finds out the dire importance this wall and the Rangers represent for Equestria he will gladly find a way to assist.” she smiled tapping her nose with her hoof before climbing fully into the carriage “Farewell, and be safe little brother.”

And just like that the griffin closed the door with a slam leaning over and silently slapped the stallions pulling between their ears before she took flight and hovered over the cart watching intently as it rolled away from town and back south west toward Equestria proper.

I don’t know why my eyes watched the bodies of the stallions like they did. their bodies were bruised, up and down their broad backs were dozens and dozens of discoloured lines of ugly scarred flesh, their demeanors defeated and silent, perhaps even anxious and most definitely fearful.

They were thin too.

So very very thin.

******

It was raining when night fell. The tumultuous cascade of rain crashing down against the ground drowning out the ambience of the world, smothering my vision with sharp, smarting pellets of water, each splashing outward, like an armageddon of tiny mortar shells.

I was the only pony to be found at the small ramshackle shelter that night, there wasn’t a whole lot to see or do under there. As I waited for the carriage to arrive I kept my eyes occupied by staring at the drizzling column of water that manifested itself on the corner of the roof where the decades of water had rusted a hole right through the small carriage shelter’s gutter.  The rain clattering noisily on the corrugated sheet metal roof over my head, the discordant rush of patterns with each strike of water causing the aged alloy to oscillate softly.

I had all but zoned out when I heard hoofsteps to my left, I blinked and pulled my head up and peered over to the sound. Barely audible over the skyfall around me.

Slowly approaching me was a old stallion. He wore a faded and tattered business suit which was horribly soaked from the rain. His old wispy grey mane was however remarkably dry under an even older and even more worn hat,  and to top it all off he wore large black pair of tinted spectacles over his eyes as he hobbled toward me with a soft chuckle.

    “Horrid weather to be waiting for a carriage isn’t it?” he questioned me as he approached.

I gave him an uninterested shrug in reply “Horribly dark to be wearing sunglasses isn’t it?”

His rough elderly voice chuckled warmly in response as he walked himself under the relative dryness of the old carriage shelter “What’s a young stallion like you doing out here on a night like this?”

I leaned back against the freezing cold sheet metal wall behind the bench as he joined me in the shelter “Same reason every other idiot comes to this shelter, to join the Rangers.” I shivered softly as I replied “No offense to you of course.”

He nodded and laughed again sitting down letting out a grunt of discomfort as his old knees bent.

    “Admirable thing to do, joining the Rangers.” he said leaning into me with a warm smile. Despite his warmth there was something off putting about the old stallion, almost as if every action he made was a forgery or a lie.

    “Thank you?” I said unsurely in response taking his compliment.

He sighed; his face shifting to look out over the streets, his old eyes presumably straining to see in the intense dark “My sons were all Rangers, they all left the same time to join on a night not to different to this.” he gave a weak smile. “Youngest was fifteen, eldest was twenty.”

I nodded, not really listening but trying my hardest to seem like I was. I had never met this senior gentlecolt in my entire life in this town but despite all that I didn’t want to appear rude.

    “All seems so surreal doesn’t it?” he asked me, making me perk up. “Darkwater Down? Heck even most of the Ranger territory, seems so serene, almost like you could forget the end of the world even happened…”

I was beginning to wonder if the elderly stallion was going somewhere with his statement or had completely changed topics because he could tell I wasn’t really paying attention.

    “Our crops rarely fail, the water is cleaner, the Rangers do a decent job of scaring the undesirable types away...almost as if the war never happened. In fact that attack last night was the worst thing to happen to this town in decades and even then everypony has practically forgotten it already.”

I nodded, this time however I was actually listening to him.

He chuckled “My sons died up there.” he said “And the strangest part of all is that it came as a shock to me, as if I had forgotten that my sons had all wandered off up into one of the most dangerous parts of these wastelands, it came as a genuine shock to me and my better half when those letters came.”

“Oh wow...I’m so sorry to hear that.” I managed to squeeze out. It didn’t do much to stop the brief pocket of awkward silence, both of us took a moment to enjoy  the rain. A thankful reliever of the somber air between us.

“You know in some parts of the wasteland, foals are starving?  That some settlements cannot grow enough food because the soil is toxic and the water impure? That in some parts of the wasteland, mares and foals are at the mercy of bloodthirsty raiders, vile mutants and slavers?” he laughed softly shaking his head “And here in Darkwater Down well, the biggest problem I faced today is that the bread was two caps more expensive than it was yesterday.”

He gave another grunt as he pulled himself to his hooves and stood up beside me. “Those comfortable years I spent raising my colts with my wife, made me forget that, It made me forget that up in those mountain highlands where I let my sons go, their lives are so...hopeless that they’d think my life was comparable to that of say pre-war Ponyville or Manehattan.” He grinned up at me, his matured eyes barely held the soft warmth of life, dimmed by too many winters, I felt it in the back of my head it wouldn’t be long before that flame faltered, and those lights would leave his eyes… like they did dad’s.

Before he moved he twisted his head around and took something in his pocket between his teeth before tossing it gently at me, the considerably  heavy object fell into my lap, far faster than my horn could flare up to catch it in my magic.

It was a spark battery.

    “My youngest once sent me back a letter saying that in some settlements up there, batteries are worth more than clean water.” he said pausing looking at me briefly “Never quite knew what he meant by that, he never said.”

I nodded weakly slipping the battery into my saddlebag slowly with my magic “Oh, well thank you, this means a lot to me.”

“Think nothing of it my boy, Don’t spend it all in one place.” he chuckled spinning around slowly in place before heading out into the rain once more, taking a right and slowly hobbling off down the street, vanishing quickly into the darkness.

Almost as soon as he left there came a collection of heavy hooves on pavement and the rumble of wheels as a carriage rolled up stopping at the shelter. One of the stallions pulling it, a large muscular stocky type wrapped up in an old faded a rain coat peered at me “Ashes I presume?” his deep voice boomed to me over the rain.

    “The very same.”

He gestured weakly to the carriage he was pulling behind him and I quickly shot to my hooves and  headed through the pouring rain over to the door and pulling the rusted and strained metal hinges open.

    “Welcome to the Alwhinny Rangers kid.” he said with a weak but warm enough smile.

I climbed into the worn but still slightly regal interior sitting myself down on the plush leather seat sighing and letting my hind legs relax and stretch out in front of me.

As the carriage lurched forward, I noticed remarkably quickly how empty is was.