And there I stood, holding myself up by the door of a carriage, my radsuit and mask glowing faintly with the splatter of the creature’s ghastly ichor and every inch of my body aching in pain from the beating I’d just taken. I’d also broken the seal on my survival kit and used one of my RadAway doses far earlier than I had planned to. But, despite all that, I wasn’t coughing up blood nor was fur peeling off my skin. My ribs all felt intact, though my chest still dully ached.

I was sore as hell, but I needed to keep moving. There were three places I’d likely find a new water talisman: The fire department, the police station, and the hospital. The military base on the outskirts of town was also a possibility, but considering that the glowing monstrosity I had just killed was wearing a uniform I was in no hurry to drop on by. Just one of these things was enough; I couldn’t imagine fighting an entire damn platoon of them.

There was still the very real possibility that none of these places had a functioning talisman. I very much hoped it wouldn’t come to that; I’m a bit of a snob about not dying of dehydration or radiation poisoning, as likely would be the case once I ran out of purification supplies.

As it stood, I was limping my way to the fire station and police department, which were located conveniently close to each other in the center of town. The medical center was farther north; having been built far later. That is to say, it was right smack in the middle of the storm swallowing up that end of town.

It was still strange to see the streets so empty, but I couldn’t afford to spend any time taking in the sights. I had already been snuck up on once, I couldn’t let that happen again, and especially while too frazzled to conjure up a basic telekinetic spell.

I should have turned back and waited until I was well enough to hold a damn rifle again. But I was impatient. And foolish. I didn’t even wait for night. Could have done some spooky, sneaky special-ops bullshit, or at least have had a ribcage that didn’t ache a little when I breathed in too hard.

But, again. Hindsight is 20/20 and I figured if the gunfire hadn’t drawn attention already it never would.

If only.

I’d made it another few blocks, before I came upon the remains of a long-abandoned checkpoint. It was an interesting hodge-podge of military and local police; with both police road barriers and military wagons clogging up the road.

And corpses, of course. Much more decomposed than those I’d seen on the road; these ponies had died after the world came to a screeching halt. Some of them were naught but collections of bones wrapped in the remains of uniforms.

There were a few tattered, bullet-ridden green canvas tents put up in a nearby shopping plaza’s carriage lot, and the pavement was littered with spent brass. I didn’t have to imagine what exactly they were spent on, but that didn’t explain why they would have seemingly turned on each other.

I had taken a moment to check to see if any of the helmets on the bodies would fit me, as of all the gear I had been able to legally (or otherwise) acquire, a military-grade combat helmet I could put my horn through was not one of them.

Something was wrong, though. There were a lot of bodies, but some of them were a lot fresher than the others. They stood out against the ragged skeletons littering the encampment the longer I looked.

I was so preoccupied with this new development that I almost missed the soft, rifle-shaped glow in the second floor of the building across the street.

However, even if I hadn’t seen it, the earsplitting crack of said rifle and the spray of concrete rubble the resulting impact threw against me a split-second later certainly would have gotten my attention.

I launched myself into cover behind a nearby police barricade, hearing the loud report of a bolt being cycled. The bastard had the high ground, and with my magic still frazzled I couldn’t return fire without exposing myself.

Another shot rang out, pinging off the barrier and shattering one of the few windows on the street that wasn’t already broken. I’d’ve been very content to sit there until my horn un-frazzled, but if my gunfire had attracted this wonderful new friend’s attention, there was no doubt he was attracting even more. But even if he was the only other survivor in all of Equestria, I didn’t have all the time in the world for him to run out of lead to sling at me.

I decided I had places to be and this kid didn’t seem to know how to aim. If I made a break for it, from barricade to barricade, I should have been fine.

He’d chosen a particularly cover-heavy spot to set up a nest, but maybe he was relying on the promise of supplies in the checkpoint’s ruins to bring fools like me into his line of fire. Still, though, I had plenty of options to maneuver.

I dashed out from behind the barricade, and made it about five feet away from it before I found out that kid was a better shot than I thought. I heard the thunderous boom of the sniper’s rifle and felt my side split open at the same time. One of the lenses in my mask cracked as I hit the pavement.

“H-huaah-...” A groan of pain dribbled past my lips. The first “words” I’d spoken since… I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d spoken, actually.

I wasn’t still getting shot at. The kid must have been waiting for me to bleed out. I’ll admit, I was waiting for the same thing until I realised why I wasn’t dead yet.

He must have shattered the healing potion in my side bag. I couldn’t explain why my insides weren’t mush, but that at least explained why my radsuit didn’t have a blood-filled potbelly to it. I was alive, but I wouldn’t be for long if that kid with the rifle came down to check on me.

The healing potion kept most of my insides inside, but they weren’t going to stay that way if the sniper took a second shot. I slowed my twitching; I wasn’t getting anywhere fast with a bullet in my side. My best chance was to lure him down to me.

A good plan, as it turned out, as I soon heard his hooves on the pavement as he approached. I couldn’t see him from my lowly vantage on the cracked pavement, but sure enough I could hear him standing beside me, breathing heavily.

He rolled me over, thankfully not turning me by my fresh wound. I recognised him, easily. He was definitely no kid. Ages ago he was a schoolteacher. Barely looked older than the foals he was teaching, but now he looked like he’d been through the wringer. Not as aged as my curmudgeonly old ass, but he was still no spring hare. He looked like he hadn’t eaten in years. His face was gaunt, cheeks shallow and his limbs gangly. I couldn’t remember his name, though. I only saw him when I picked up the kids from school.

I kept still as I could. I felt him opening my bag, starting to rummage through it. Heard him sigh, probably because he found the healing potion he put a hole through. I was doing pretty well playing dead, until his hoof prodded the wound in my side.

“H-hrhh..!” I couldn’t stop myself from gasping in pain. All the self-control I had so carefully cultivated over the years couldn’t stop a bullet hole from hurting to high hell.

He tried to put another one in me, but without a perch to steady himself he had no chance to bring the rifle to bear. I swung my hindleg, knocking his free foreleg off the ground and sending him chin-first to the road he was standing on. Heard his jaw crack on the pavement, a pained groan creak out of his lips, his rifle clatter to the asphalt. Just like that, I was upon him.

The throbbing pain in my side barely registered as I wrapped a leg around his neck and pulled him back into my lap. There’s a big difference between a training dummy and a real, live, screaming pony but I had adrenaline and the stubborn will of an old stallion coursing through me. He beat his hooves at the leg wrapped around his throat, but the aforementioned rush and the thick radsuit I was wearing softened his blows. His impending brain-death from oxygen starvation probably helped, too. I could feel him growing weaker, more desperate with every blow. He was on the side of my mask with the busted lens, so I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him struggling to breathe.

His death throes finally crawled to a stop. I sharply twisted my forelegs, and heard bone crunch muffledly against me. The closest I’d been to another living pony in Celestia-knows-how-many years, and it took me not even five minutes to crush the life out of him.

It wasn’t any different than putting down that glowing abomination, was it? Nothing and nopony wants to die, and I couldn’t let myself feel bad for killing a pony who’d so recently tried to do the same to me. He wouldn’t have felt bad for killing me, would he?

I let the poor sap go, then crumpled back against the pavement with his limp body on top of me. I held my side and let myself have a good, long, loud swear. I could almost feel the slug dug into my ribs. There was no way I could have gotten that out there and then, not without magic, but eventually I’d groaned and screamed enough pain out of my system that I could sit back up, at the very least.

My mask’s left lens was cracked. I couldn’t see shit out of it, and I’d need somewhere out of the way to take the time to repair it. Now exposed to the musty air of the new world, I picked up the rifle that had so recently ripped and, as fate would have it, healed a hole in my side. It was an old and beat up thing, but then, I guess its late owner and I were, too. Who was I to judge?

I didn’t have any use for it, but I wasn’t about to leave it behind for someone else to find and shoot me in the ass with it, either. I ripped out the bolt and threw it down a storm drain. It was mildly surprising to hear a splash at the bottom, but I supposed you couldn’t have a storm like the one I’d seen without any rain.

I’d covered a lot of ground toward the center of town before I needed to stop again. Had carved a path through another few desolate, empty blocks when the pain started to really kick in. The storm was approaching too, but the burning in my side was the more pressing issue. I dragged my rickety old ass into a furniture wholesaler that still had its faded Nightmare Night decor hanging between the broken windows and the plywood backing them.

It was dark inside, much of the light coming from cracks and holes in the boards covering the windows… As well as patches of small mushrooms that were growing in the corners of the faux-rooms showcasing the wares for sale. They gave off a similar pale-green glow to the monster blood spattering my suit, albeit much brighter. My rad counter hadn’t seemed to find anything amiss about them, though, despite the soft glow they gave off, and it hadn’t steered me wrong yet.

I stalked through the store. It didn’t seem likely I’d have company, but better safe than sorry, even moreso then when I needed the peace and quiet to focus on tending my wound. Thankfully, as it was I was alone once more.

I stripped down. I felt almost furless without the radsuit on, but it was relieving, too, to not have it suckered to me with sweat. I was drenched in perspiration and a surprisingly small amount of blood. I probably stank like hell, too.

After wiping the dust off one of the mirrors strewn about the store I could see the damage. Sure enough, there was a lumpy, raw patch of scar tissue on my side where I got nicked. Didn’t seem large enough for a rifle round, but a bullet’s a bullet and fuck me if it didn’t burn like a real bastard.

I’d had enough time to clear my head and properly maintain a spell. Played around with a set of dusty old vases on an even dustier coffee table to make sure. Real quaint. There sure as hell wasn’t any room for novelty stuff like this in the bunker.

I swept all the dust off the table and set my medical supplies down on it. Luckily for me, only the potion was damaged — the rest of my provisions were pristine.

I bit down hard on a piece of broken picture frame. It was time to get the lead out, so to speak.

“You’re insane.” I remember Viridian told me.

“You’re pouring every last bit we have into that stupid bunker! You’re spending every waking hour building it! You don’t even know if you’re going to need it! You’ve just let the Ministry’s stupid propaganda brainwash you!” She was livid. I’d just signed for the water talisman.

“Are you even listening to me?! What the hell happened to you? To us? To this family?! Do you even care anymore?!”

“I do care. That’s why I’m doing this.”

“No, you’ve gone mad! That’s why you’re doing this.”

I let out a sigh. “Viridia-”

“No, don’t you ‘Viridian’ me!” She put her hooves on my chest and shoved me back from the porch. “This is the last straw. I’m taking the kids and I’m leaving. If you try to stop me, I’m calling the police. I know what you have in that damn, stupid bunker of yours, I’m sure they’ll be very interested to hear about all those guns. Those guns — Would you really do it? Kill another pony? Teach our kids how to shoot, how to kill other ponies? You’re utterly, utterly insane. If by some small, no, some gigantic, stinking miracle, you regain your senses and turn that stupid bunker into a wine cellar or something, the kids and I’ll be at my parents’, and maybe we’ll talk.“ And she slammed the door in my face.

Fifteen minutes later, a taxi arrived. Soon, the rest of my family filed out the front door with their luggage. Every single one of our children looked confused. Worried. She filed them into the wagon.

“You can’t do this. They’re my children too!” But there wasn’t much point arguing with her.

“Are they? What the hell kind of father are you to them, now? You don’t even know where they are, what they’re doing because you’re six feet underground every waking hour of the day!”

After she loaded all the luggage into the yellow carriage’s trunk, she turned back to me. “I’m going to file for divorce. I don’t know who the hell you are, but you’re not the stallion I married. You’re something else, somepony else entirely. You’re a complete lunatic, who’s spent his life savings, who threw away his perfectly happy life to dig himself a hole in the ground in his backyard to die in, and if the last few months are any indication you’re going to keep digging that sun-forsaken hole until you keel over dead!”

And that damn water talisman didn’t even last.

The memory hurt, but it was a lot better focusing on that than the pain of extracting a slug without anything to dull the exquisite agony such a procedure entailed.

As it turned out, it wasn’t a whole bullet. It was just a fragment, or at least, that was all I managed to dig out. Explained well enough why it stopped at my ribcage instead of tearing a hole right through me. It still hurt. Luna’s stars, did it hurt, but all that pain was better than having an unaccounted-for lead slug in my side.

I’d lost a fair bit of blood, too. It wasn’t life-threatening, but I definitely wasn’t in any condition to head back out, and I was safe enough there in the wholesaler for now. Judging by all the dust, nopony’d been inside in a long time until I showed up. I doubted I’d have company, and even still I’d barricaded the door anyway.

It sounded like it was raining outside, which was very strange. I hadn’t thought I’d taken that long to stitch myself up; didn’t expect the storm in the middle of town to have moved so fast.

Actually, “raining” isn’t a very accurate description of what I had been hearing. It was like the sky was trying to pound its way inside, tunneling through the roof. With the windows covered in plywood I couldn’t see outside, but if the storm was anywhere near as intense as it sounded I doubted I’d be able to see anything out there anyway.

Water was leaking in from under the front door. The blood dripping from my recently re-plugged wound dripped into the puddle starting to sprawl across the battered hardwood floor. The new red clouds muddying it aside, it looked murky. It was a disgusting pale-green, like the mushrooms sprouting around the store just without the glow.

I had been about to turn around and find somewhere to tuck in for the night when, faintly, through the thunderous sound of the maelstrom outside, I realised there was something else out in the rain. There were a lot of somethings. Like a massive flock of birds was tumbling in the storm; wings frantically flapping, guttural howls and the sounds of meaty impacts. It sounded like something in the storm was alive, and I had a horrible feeling I knew what that something might be.

But I was inside, it was out there, and both of us seemed perfectly content not to upset that status quo. The rain eventually took over once more, as the storm above me grew more intense. I started hearing thunder, too, just as fierce as the downpour it was piercing.

I’d heard enough by then. I picked my gear up off the coffee table I’d left it on and ventured deeper into the store. I found myself a lovely cubicle with no patches of glowing toadstools growing inside and decided that’d be a wonderful place to wait out the storm. The room wasn’t real, but the furniture was, so there was plenty of material to barricade myself in with.

It was a funny situation I was in. I had left my shelter to go build a fort in a ratty old department store. My inner child must have had the time of his life while I was pushing whatever furniture I had the strength in me to move around.

As worryingly intense as the rain was, something to it was calming. Especially as its ferocity drowned out the bizarre and unearthly flapping I’d heard within it earlier. Even the thunder eventually had grown familiar, if unnervingly frequent after a while.

But something was wrong. As quickly as this storm had rolled over, it should’ve left by then, I’d realised.
Through the downpour, I heard hoofsteps above me.
Many, many, many hoofsteps, now accompanied by the frantic flapping of wings. The ceiling above me seemed to groan and bulge at the center of the room that made up the wholesaler, and suddenly I felt very, very small as the muffled cacophony of groaning and hissing grew louder.

I had wondered how such a bustling suburb had become so desolate over the decades without becoming completely leveled by balefire, and now a flock of answers seemed to be perched right above my head.

I quietly geared up as the ceiling curved in more and more. I hadn’t had time to patch up or replace my lens but it seemed there wasn’t going to be any.

There wasn’t anywhere to go. The whole place was one big room and the cubicles didn’t have roofs.

As the ceiling collapsed, a torrent of rain, rubble, and rotting pegasi poured in from above, and all I could do was watch.

Author's Note

hey lol it only took a year

Sorry! I've been working on a lot of stuff and this has just been in the queue for so long.

I'm writing a lot of things and often get distracted. But it's here now, that's what counts, right?