The Last Moron On Earth

Who is left to hear of the great secrets of mankind.

Do you know what I know?

I have known for eons.

Look at you.

What do you see?

Do you know what *They** did?*

How much do you hate?

"Mmmmmm....s'not enough...."

I slowly came to, groggy and sore. Despite that being a recurring trend since....well, admittedly a few months since before the horsening, for once I had no idea why. Taking slow, deep breathes of the cool, dry air, I was content to just lie in peace and keep the world away, if not for a few more minutes.

The world is a dick, and had other plans.

"Hey. Heeeeeeeey. You dead yet?" A small voice accompanied sharp prods in my side; I was unsure if they were trying to rouse me or just wanting to kick a corpse. I slowly cracked open an eye, barely making out the assailant in the flickering, low light.

"Oh hey.....Orange...." I remembered the shiny and old ones' names, and there were like a billion of the little scamps, how was I supposed to learn them in an afternoon? Despite the acknowledgement, she kept up her prodding. "I'm not dead...You can stop poking me....please.....please stop poking me."

"Miss Winter said to get her if you stopped breathing, not if you finally woke up. So get up and go talk to her, ya big goofball."

I was content to simply lay back and rest. Though the cool air carried chilling breezes, the highway pavement was still rather warm, having baked all day in the sun, and made a damn fine bed despite its rough form. Also, everything in my body screamed against the prospect of getting up, so laziness won out. Though the prodding continued for some small time after, she eventually stopped and walked away, leaving me alone, in short-lived silence.

The heavier click-clack cadence of Winter's hoofsteps approached from somewhere behind me, and stopped upon reaching me. With a light pomf, she sat down beside me, and sighed deeply.

"Hey."

One word, just the single greeting, and it was pretty....strange. She sounded concerned and relieved all at once, and yet....tired. Absolutely exhausted. Funny, given I was the one who had a stroke-neurysm. I slowly rolled from my side to lay on my stomach, giving her my attention and response.

"Hey yourself."

"You scared the hell out of me. First we thought you'd just tripped, but I noticed the twitching and thought you'd gotten zapped. Sage said that it was likely you'd been bit, but we couldn't find anything nearby that would have. We all ditched the carts, but you didn't have a....well, any new scratches on you. Not any we could find, at least.... At first you were writhing around, mumbling nonsense, and then you stopped....stopped everything; you stopped moving, talking....barely even breathing. I didn't think you'd wake up."

Woah shit....

"Well...I'm awake now," I croaked out. I softly chuckled, and continued. "Don't know what happened, all I know is I feel like I got thrown under a train, and I'm a little hoarse."

"Moron," she said, lightly punching my shoulder. I got her to laugh, so despite the light tap shooting jolts of pain over my side, I still count that as a victory.

"I'm not kidding, though. Throat feels like sandpaper, and my heads beating like a....I dunno, shit....it hurts."

"Well, come on," she said, rising to her hooves before helping me up. "Lets get you over with the rest of us."

I was going to question why I wasn't set up by a fire they'd made, but given that they'd had no clue what was wrong, and doubted my survival, I guess the separation made sense. I wouldn't want to set up camp next to a corpse, especially not with a ton of kids nearby.

Still sucked having to walk.

I awkwardly limped my way to the fire, seeing a pot of some funky smelling soup and decided to stick to water. Filling a metal tin, I tried to balance myself on three aching limbs and hold the cup up, which was carried out with the grace of a wobbly field sobriety test. Still, the cool water was a relief to my parched throat. Gathering up the proper strength to speak, I openly asked, "So...what bites without teeth and incapacitates a horse for a few hours?"

Given that nearly everyone else was already asleep, I looked to Winter, who shrugged, and to the orange one, who suggested ghosts. Seeing a standing figure just behind  them, I asked their opinion.

"Non es....de Solis"

At the deep rumble that was clearly an older man's voice, Winter and orange practically jump, and turned to face this new being. Standing just outside the campfires's light was another being like us. Well, similar to us in that they were a horse, but different in that they were almost completely concealed beneath a rough brown cloak. At our noticing of his presence, he lowered his head at Winter, and spoke.

"Morz Kertah...?"

The night was completely silent once again.

Being dumbstruck by confusion, I decided that winter, the more eloquent of us, should be the one to respond. Probably a mistake.

"What in the hell are you saying." Smooth....

"M-morz kertah?" He repeated, sounding more unsure. He turned his head towards me, and continued, "*O-oh, Lookayo n-non oorol*oh?"

"Well, I've got nothing. Any ideas?" He looked back at her, confusion evident on his face.

"Nope. Not anything particularly helpful, at least. Unless...." I turned to our mysterious guest, and began addressing him as best I could remember. "Soooo....sup? Ho-la, mi amigo, or Salood if that's your thing....Bon-jour mon'amie. Priy-er, privyet tovarisch. Hallo, uh, frond." He was smiling, but it was clearly the smile of someone who had no polite way to say 'dafuq did this guy call me?'. I continued on, at least as best I could, regardless. Foreign language is hard!

"Ah, ahlan...? Um....shit....sal-vay, ah...."

A spark of recognition flashed in his eyes, and he straightened up excitedly. With an equine whinny that sounded suspiciously like laughter, he continued, "Veneetayroy post meahll, eht *muhltah dahll. Sctahrr ehst tahhm feelix ehxtee*teray!"

My partial success had me elated as well. "Aww yiss, brute force does have real world applications! Try enough variations of hello and you're sure to find one that works!"

"Wha...but....Okat, so you tie your keys around your neck and forget where they are, but you know how to say 'hi' in a bunch of different languages?!"

"Yeah, well.... some would call it a misspent youth. Others, wasted electives. I call it preparation for the real world. Just, kinda screwing myself over as far as college is concerned but you know, horse apocalypse, so, whatever...."

"Ayea, ayea, *ehn*!"

"So then, what's he saying?"

"I have no idea!" The orange one laughed, and Winter just facepalmed. Facehooved? Whatever, communication was clearly an option. Getting his attention, I began, gesturing at myself and Winter, "We don't...", I shook my head vigorously "...understand....", before pointing to him "...your problems.". I pointed to the fire we had going, and then the sky. "You can stay with us for the night, if you need to." I then pointed towards the truck, and then the sky again, making an arc movement with my arm, "But we're probably leaving in the morning."

He kept grinning all the while, following my motions with a slight nod and an affirmative grunt, before responding with an enthusiastic "Non intellego!"

"I think he might be dumb. Maybe thats why the horse virus makes him speak in tongues. Heh, make him dumb on top of being dumb." Winter facepalmed again behind me, whispering something along the lines of 'you're really bad at this'. Well, I didn't see *her** stepping up to the plate....*

"Me-he ahbeoondum, sed confestim revenio!" He pointed off in a direction slightly left of the highway. After a few motions toward nothing for a few seconds, he gestured towards himself with an 'Arjentuhm armuhm'. With a slight dip of his head and a quick smile, he set off into the darkness where he had pointed before.

Orange spoke up first "You should go tackle him with your face."

"Yeah, sure, let me go tackle him."

"With your face!"

I couldn't help but laugh at the absolute absurdity of these last few hours, and Orange was content to join in. Nearly killed by something that doesn't exist and meeting a strange dude who doesn't speak a lick of English. "This isn't how I pictured the end of the world. What in the actual fuck is going on?"

"I'm just saying, we shouldn't trust people right off the bat, and we shouldn't just wait for him to come back."

"Why not? You trusted me and I'm awesome! We had a hella rad time and are a whole state closer to whatever mystery you're dreaming about. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, its my truck, so I get the deciding vote to move or not, and I can't feel anything but pain right now, so I say we stay." Winter was less than pleased at my eagerness to trust the weird horse dude. "Look....I'm sorry, its just....we've both had a rough day. Why don't we sleep on it, and decide what to do in the morning, yeah?"

Despite the craziness of everything going on, I was sore and extremely tired, and settled down to rest. Still, I was pretty content with everything that had transpired throughout the day, even the mystery regarding my incapacitation.  With any luck, tomorrow would continue with this recent trend of (mostly) good luck and an end to the bickering.

Daybreak brought even more soreness to my attention. Shivering slightly, I'd noticed that the fire died out some time in our sleep....

And apparently the horsening happened again, because everyone else was gone. Everyone and everything, I'd noticed. Looking for the keys around my neck, I was met with empty air and my ragged, dirty coat.

Fuckin' hell, man....Despite the absolute suckiness of being sore as shit and left behind in the middle of the Arizona desert....no, no everything just sort of sucked right now.