Chapter 2: Advice

Daylight.

It felt nice to see the sun, and it was fair to say Littlepip never had. But the power of its light filtered down through the thick angry, cloud cover, turning a sickly color yet still brighter and warmer than the dull grey. The air itself looked somehow wrong in the light, off-color. But everything was illuminated. I could see dust and ash floating about the room and I could this was Littlepip's first time she full aware of the outside.

It made me want to hide under the window.

While we were working up the nerve to step into the outdoors, I saw Littlepip preoccupied myself with opening a locked chest I hadn't seen the night before. I offered to help but she politely declined. Inside was a very beautiful dress. The fabric was light, breezy and didn't sag. I had to admit, whoever made this was very skilled.

"Thinking about wearing it?"

"Maybe. It's the prettiest thing I've seen outside of the Stable. But it's too long for me."

I looked around. "I'm sure there must be some tailor out here. Somewhere."

"You're right." Carefully folding it up, she slipped it into her saddlebags.

Mindful of the sniper pony from the night before, we hid behind the cover of an overturned table, Littlepip used her magic to open the door. A tarnished bell hanging above tinkled cheerfully. Dimmed sunlight poured in. The sounds of outside flowed into the room. The twitter of birds, the far away sloshing of the river. Fresher air pushed back the stale.

Cautiously, I moved into the doorway and looked about. Post-apocalyptic Ponyville was a rotting skeleton of a once homey little town. Between collapsed demolished buildings, the streets were littered with rubble and refuse. And everywhere, graffiti covered the walls. The graffiti was not limited to outside; the raiders had defaced the Carousel Boutique. I turned from the doorway, my gaze following the lines of profanity that curled up the walls towards the rafters. And shrank back, swallowing bile, several dissected cats hung above like decorations. I had slept directly beneath three of them.

Littlepip place a hoof on my shoulder. "You ok?" I pointed up, and she quickly understood.

She took an involuntary step back, one hindhoof out the door.

BEEP.

"Did you hear that?

BEEP.

"Yeah."

We turned and spied the half-buried orange disk in the ground just outside the door. A little red light was pulsing on it. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

I knew what it was.

“CLOSE THE DOOR!” The voice came out of nowhere, tinny and mechanical but somehow full of urgency. I was already ahead of it though, shoving Littlepip back and slamming the door hard.

The explosion just outside tore the door off its frame, hurling it right on top of me! I crashed through a tattered vanity divider, smacking into Littlepip. “Ugh!!”

I was more shocked than hurt as I slowly dragged myself out from under the door. My ears were ringing. But I managed to help Littlepip to her hooves, and I was surprised to see my clothes were still intact. The raiders were waiting for us.

“Hurry. There are more on the way.” I could barely make out the voice; my ears felt like they were stuffed with cotton candy.

“Who are you?” Littlepip queried, but moved to throw her canteens over her neck while magically drawing out the combat shotgun. I followed her action and picked up the shovel and if a raider pony stepped through the door, I intended to take it down.

An entirely different voice replied. “Come out, come out, whoever you are!” The head of a raider pony slid into the doorway, grinning maniacally with something in her teeth. It looked like a metal apple. She tossed her head, it flew into the room at us, but the stem stayed behind in her teeth.

Before I could react, Littlepip dropped the combat shotgun and focused her magic on the metal apple, catching it and hurling it back out the door. The grenade barely cleared the doorframe when it exploded. Dust and splinters of wood few at us, getting in my eyes and slightly tearing my shirt. A tinkling erupted at my foot. Looking down, blinking the debris from my eyes, I saw the little bell from over the door had landed, mangled.

My eyes hurt, and I rubbed them to focus. Littlepip lifted the combat shotgun again while I edged towards the door. I could barely see the foreleg of the raider pony around the edge of the door frame, completely still. As I moved closer, Littlepip levitated the table so that it formed a barricade over the lower half of the doorway. Crawling up behind it, right beside me. Quickly popping my head up, I looked to see if the raider pony was still conscious.

The leg wasn’t attached to the rest of the pony.

"Don't look," I was going to say as I turned back but I was too late.

She stared at the body in shock unmoving. She had just taken a life, like I did on the bridge. All I could do to comfort her was by giving her a hug, which she returned. Tears slowing leaking from her eyes.

Sneaking out of Ponyville had been harrowing.

I was really thankful for Littlepip's PipBuck. Once she turned on something called E.F.S., it was far easier to determine where the raider ponies were, and to avoid them. Now that's killer app. Despite actively looking for us, the raider ponies proved less than adept hunters. Throwing a mailbox lid down the street or breaking an empty bottle against a chimney several yards away provided very effective in getting past them. We almost made it to the last house when the sniper pony started taking shots at us again. One shot grazed Littlepip's flank causing blood to flow. Fortunately, the wound looked far worse than it was, so patching it up wasn't to hard.

We crouched in a little gully, sheltered by trees, catching our breaths. Somewhere in the distance, I heard music playing again. The rumble from my stomach was much louder, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten in almost a day. I opened up the can of peaches I found earlier while Littlepip munched on an apple. She uncorked one of her canteens which we shared. I had just taken a sip when Littlepip's PipBuck detected something. Not coming from the raider town, but from up ahead, deeper into the hilly wood. Something else was coming towards us.

I re-corked the canteen and stood up, hefting my shovel. Littlepip lifted the combat shotgun, but had difficulty due to the pain from her wound.

"You ok?"

"Yeah. I'm good."

Everything went quiet. Even the music was gone. I started to make out a faint buzzing. We readied our weapons and prepared for what was to come. At first, nothing happened. Then it came, an ugly little flying creature, bloated and grotesque, hovering between the trees. It spotted me too, and shot a spiny dart through the air at me. I moved aside so it only tore my sleeve

"Follow me!" Littlepip said as she dodged be hind a tree, I was right behind her.

Her PipBuck made a crackling sound like the kind you'd hear on a radio. The PipBuck detected something that was “friendly”.

“I’m really sorry about what happened back in Ponyville. You're lucky you reacted quick enough. She would have killed you two.” It was that same mechanical, tinny voice that had shouted out the warning from earlier.

I watched in surprise as the sprite-bot fly up to our hiding place.

“Who are you?” Littlepip asked.

“A friend.” I raised an eyebrow. “Okay, a passing acquaintance. But one that doesn’t mean you any harm.” After a moment, “Call me Watcher.”

I regarded the sprite-bot critically. “Watcher. Okay...” We slipped out from behind the tree and started looking for where the bloated thing had gone. Not far away, near where the flying creature had been, I spotted a glowing pile of pink ash. “You do that?”

“Bloatsprites. That’s what you get when you mix parasprites with Taint. Can’t stand ‘em, myself. Glad to help.”

Meanwhil Littlepip found her apple, and levitated it up. “Thank you. And thanks for warning us about that... thing in the ground.”

“Mine.”

I blinked. “Y-you want my apple?”

Me and he sprite-bot laughed, I couldn't help myself since it was such a simple thing to identify. “No. He doesn't want the apple." I explained. "The explosive in the ground. It’s called a mine. it blows up when you get too close.”

"Precisely." Watcher agreed.

“Oh.” She took a bite of the apple. “That’s a very stupid name for a weapon.”

We laughed again. Soon after she joined us. “I really thought you meant my apple was yours. I’d share it if you wanted, although I don’t know what you’d do with it since you can’t eat.”

“Huh?” For having no emotion in its voice, the sprite-bot did a good job at conveying confusion.

“You don’t eat. Food. Because you are a robot, and you don’t have a mouth.”

The sprite-bot let out a chuckle, while I snickered. “Dude. The thing is hacked." I could tell she was very confused.

“Your friend's right. The sprite-bot isn’t actually me. I’m somewhere else; I just learned how to hack into these things to communicate. And look around.”

Now she was getting it. “Then that music...”

“Oh gosh no. I turn that crap off the moment I hack into one of these. You have no idea how old that music gets.” As an afterthought, the hacker-in-the-sprite-bot added, “Yet.”

"Tell me about it." I agreed.

“Oh, time’s almost up. Look, there are a few things you two are going to need if you want to survive out here. A weapon, armored barding, a bit of guidance... and most importantly, you need to make some friends.”

Armor made sense, shouldn’t be too hard, although I shuddered hard at the thought of putting on a dead pony’s barding. I doubt it'd even fit me. I could probably sneak back to the bridge and strip it off the corpses there.

A weapon, of course. Ever since using it, Cager's shovel was pretty reliable, though I don't think I could take another life.

"Friends?" We'll we don't each other very well.

“What do you mean by guidance?” Littlepip asked.

The bobbing sprite-bot was silent a moment. “I’m going to take a shot in the dark here and guess you like books. Am I right?”

I shrugged.

“Well, yes. I...”

“There’s a great book for people traveling through the Equestrian Wasteland. I’m pretty sure there’s a copy in the Ponyville Library. Give me just a second... Okay, I’ve sent the tag for it to your PipBuck.”

Littlepip's eyes widened. “The Ponyville Library. You mean, that place we just barely escaped from? The town full of sick, psycho ponies? Are you trying to get us killed?”

“Look, you’ve got to trust somebody.”

"I do have somebody." She said turning to me with a smile. I was surprised, we just met, yet she trusted me. I smiled back. "Besides why should we trust you?"

“Oh, I dunno. How about the me-saving-your-life part? If I was trying to kill you, why would I have done that?”

Watcher had a point. But before either of us could respond. the sprite-bot burped static and began playing music again. It flew lazily away, as if it didn’t care we were here.

"Did you mean that?" I asked her. "Do you trust me?"

"Of course I do. You saved my life."

"But we've only know each other for like day."

"You've got a good vibe about you." She answered. "You're the kind of person who's willing to help others, even in the face of danger. That's someone I can trust."

"No one's ever thought of me like that before. Thanks."

"No problem." She responded. "Now come on! We've got a book to find!"

The Ponyville Library was in a tree. Literally inside a tree. A massive, gnarled tree bigger than most buildings had been grown in the middle of the town, clearly the project of magic, and hollowed out to be the public library. The south side of the tree was scorched black and dead. On the right, there were still a few leaves clinging to life.

Any hope our luck at the Carousel Boutique would hold out was gone when I looked up at highest balcony and spotted the sniper – an earth pony armed with a powerful-looking rifle. The rifle was attached to the balcony railing with a gliding swivel mount, allowing the raider to aim it wherever she could see. The only way to approach her would be from behind, where the door to the balcony and the narrow top of the tree blocked her line of sight. There were probably more raider ponies inside too.

Sneaking up carefully from the only direction that wouldn’t mean instant death, Littlepip was trembling with nerves by the time we reached the door. I placed on my hand on her shoulder with a reassuring smiles, which helped calmed her down. As silent as we could, we entered the library... and walked straight into hell!

Pony corpses everywhere! Not like the bridge where ponies had fallen in battle; these ponies had been mutilated, desecrated and put on display! Some poor pony’s body hung from the ceiling, head and hooves severed and flesh sliced open and pulled back to reveal the meat and bones beneath. Heads and limbs hung from chains like sick party decorations. The rotting body of a pink pony with a violent mane was mounted, spread-eagled over a bookcase with railroad spikes. Two had been driven into her eyes. On another wall, a torso had been skinned and sliced open, the pony’s entrails pulled out to decorate the shelves like streamers.

Blood and gore were everywhere, dripping from the ceiling and painting the walls along with the graffiti that had grown even more mocking and cruel. Between the bookcases, posters were mounted in shattered frames. Someone had painted over one of them with a crude but effective depiction of a nuclear explosion. Another was covered by a painting that was simply pornographic. Ashes littered the floor, mostly likely from burned books.

The room contained three cages, two large ones, and a smaller one hanging from the ceiling which was barely big enough for a pony. Captives -- filthy, beaten and misused -- were curled up inside, tied up with stained ropes. The two in the nearest cage looked at me pitifully and my heart wrenched painfully.

I saw Littlepip had to clench her eyes shut and bite her own hoof to keep from screaming. She backed against the door, heaving, unable to breathe properly, who'd want to breathe this air at all! I could tell she was about to through up. I pulled her mane back fast enough to avoid the vomit. The stench of it mixed with the reek of the room, assaulting me further.

“please,” a whisper from one of the ponies, terrified to raise her voice, “help us.”

I tried to block Littlepip's view but she look forward with brutal determination.

“please... help!”

These were living ponies; they were right here in front of us, and they needed help. And I was as damned as these rotten raiders if I was going to make them beg again.

I could tell Littlepip felt the same way as she passed me the shotgun before pulling out the screwdriver and bobby pin and began working on the nearest lock. With a click, the metal cage door swung open. Inside, two ponies, bound and laying in their own filth. I she had nothing to cut the ropes with, so I pulled out the knife I took earlier and gave it to her.

“Are... are you for real?” The first pony stood shakily. “I-I’m free?”

Littlepip nodded, then glanced to the other ponies. I had no idea how I’d reach the one in the hanging cage. “If you could help us with...”

The pony shook her mane. “Oh no, I can’t stay here any longer. But, here, take these supplies. I managed to squirrel them away...” The pony dug into the floor with her hoof, revealing a pile of scraps laying on a dirty rag that amounted to her entire possessions. A can of diced carrots, a box of pre-war single-serve cake, a handful of bottle caps. It was a sad site to see.

“No, you keep it. You’ll need it more...” She paused, eyeing a shotgun shell in the pile. “Actually, we’ll take this shell. Thanks!” I handed her the shotgun so she could slide it into place.

The pony had already folded up the rag, picked it up and slinked rapidly out the door before we could say anything else. I looked over the second pony, who hadn’t said a word, and recoiled as I spotted the blood from the inside of her flanks. What had these raiders done!?!

Looking around, I took in the shape of the room, ignoring the horrors. (Above the front door was an aged fresco of a beautiful white winged unicorn. Celestia? I remembered Littlepip talking about her being a goddess. She had a book floating in front of her, her wings outstretched over a group of foals as they smiled up and listened to the story. Not only had the ponies been painted over with images of blood and knives, the fresco had been used for target practice, from bullets to flung excrement, making it shattered and stained.) The room was oddly shaped, with balconies and rooms branching (literally) off in all directions. I could hear the voices of raider ponies in the other rooms.

“I’ll be right back,” Littlepip promised the pony with a whisper. Then, levitating the combat shotgun, she moved towards the nearest interior door. I tagged along, hefting the shovel.

She jumped back as the door swung open at me. A raider pony stepped through and stopped, staring at me blankly. H had holsters were strapped to his flanks, one with a small gun, the other holding a blade whose edge was jagged like a saw. Before he could react I swung at him with the shovel.

The raider pony recovered quickly, dodging and swinging his head around and drawing out a revolver with his teeth (what, was he going to pull the trigger with his tongue?) just before Littlepip pumped two shotgun rounds into his face. I didn't flinch as his head turned into spaghetti sauce that splattered over his lifeless body. These were not ponies, they were sick monsters that needed to be put down! And God help me if I wasn’t going to do just that.

As I collected the knife and gun, Littlepip dropped the empty combat shotgun to the side. I passed the smaller gun to her. The revolver wasn't as powerful, but it was fully loaded -- six shots in a revolving barrel. And that was good, because there was no way the noise wasn’t going to bring every raider pony running.

The first three raider ponies galloped into the main library almost immediately, one of them crying out thrilled insults. Littlepip fired three shots at her head. The first two missed (and nearly hit me!), but the third found a home in one of her ugly red eyes and down she went. A second was about to fire at me (what do you know, they do shoot with their tongues!), that is until I shoved the knife in his neck.

I pocketed the knife and grabbed his gun as Littlepip poked her head around, levitating the revolver in the doorway. I got up and stepped fully into the doorway, looking for the third, spotting him on the far end of the main room.

The third raider pony lowered his head, a pool cue clenched in his teeth, and charged at me.

I blinked. “Really?” I took a single step back. The pony rushed at me full-tilt, and was nearly on me when the ends of the pool cue struck the doorway, snapping him to a stop. I fired the revolver point-blank into his head.

“Shouldn’t you ponies be smarter than that? You live in a library!”

As the body slumped to the floor, bleeding from the gaping wound through head, I turned to Littlepip.

"You almost hit me!"

"Sorry! You should've moved back!"

I was about to retort, but I let it slide.

We walked into the room. It was a kitchen. On a table, surrounded by knives, was the body of what looked like an alligator. The raider pony I stabbed had been carving it up to cook (ponies eat meat?). A refrigerator. And oven. There were scattered books, but they were all unreadable. In one corner, mounted on the wall over several metal boxes of ammunition, was a faded yellow box with a pink butterfly symbol on it: a medical box? Though the box looked to be locked. There were knife-scrapes all over it where the raiders had attempted to get it open. It should still have a few some medicine and maybe even some gauze.

One picked medical box later, we quietly went back into the main room, the gun pocketed and the serrated knife strapped to my side. We moved to the open cage and sawed away the ropes binding the poor pony. “Go. You’re free. Get somewhere safe.” With a blink, I remembered the sniper pony, and quickly told her which direction to sneak away in. She nodded mutely and began to slink out. We moved to the next cage.

What I saw sickened me. A pony had been locked inside along with a decaying corpse. The pony was whimpering in her sleep, and had her tail wrapped around the ghastly body like a teddy bear.

Unlike the other bodies, I couldn’t tell how this one had died, for it wasn’t ripped apart. The body had lost all its coat, it’s skin was a sickening blotch-work of red and grey, flaking away. Its eyes were open, dry and staring in wrong directions. Its teeth were horribly yellowed, matching the few strands of hair left in its mane and tail. Odd, fleshy growths hung from its sides. At first, I mistook them for mutations, but then I realized I was looking at the pony’s wings! This was the body of a pegasus pony. Stripped of feathers and hair, the wings looked strange, even repulsive.

Littlepip screamed when the corpse shifted position and sat up, it’s eyes sliding around until they both focused on me. It was some kind of zombie!

The zombie blinked at me, then tried to get up, only to fall over onto one winged side as it’s hooves were bound in ropes like the others. It... she stared at us plaintively.

My mind was reeling. While leaving her here sounded right, freeing her managed to be the most coherent, if not the most sane.

Swallowing, I moved the knife down to her ropes. “Hold still.” I looked at her eyes and was quickly forced to look away. One of them was sliding again.

Littlepip approached. “Now if we let you go, and you try to eat me or my friends brains, we’re going to have harsh words.”

The two captives were free, including the zombie-pony, both of whom slipped away without an offer to help (although the zombie at least smiled at us, which was... deeply unpleasant), and we were trying to figure out how to get to the hanging cage when two more raider ponies appeared on a balcony above. One of them was a unicorn pony with a auto-fire. I grabbed Littlepip and dove into the shelter of a stairwell as the raider opened fire, spraying the main room with bullets.

At least I knew what type of gun the large clips were for now.

I waited until I heard him reloading, then dashed into the room, turning around to face him. As I did this Littlepip was focusing her magic on the bookshelf behind him. The glow from her horn stood out brighter and brighter as the raider lifted the reloaded assault rifle and took aim for my head.

CRASH!

The bookshelf came down on top of him, knocking him unconscious. The assault rifle fell to the floor in a rain of dead books. Something else showered down as well, thrown from the falling bookshelf. Knocking away a book that had fallen over it, I saw that it was an ancient, dusty pair of binoculars. .

I couldn’t see where the other raider pony had gotten to. Swiftly, I added the assault rifle to my arsenal, and the binoculars for good measure. Then I looked back to the balcony, considering it as a way to get to the cage pony hanging from the ceiling. If we could get up there, I thought, I could leap from it to the cage. That would get me close enough that I could see what I was doing while I picked the lock.

The second raider pony appeared back at the railing, a wicked grin on his face. With a hoof, he shoved forward an ammo box, then tilted it over. The lid sprung open and half a dozen orange disks poured out into the library below.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
BEEP! BEEP!
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
BEEP!
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
BEEP! BEEP!

Oh fuck!

We dashed as fast as our little legs could, leaping over the body of pool-cue pony and under the kitchen table, Littlepip using her magic to toss it over as a shield. The carved-up alligator felt to the floor with a thump

Behind the shield, the world became a huge flash.

When we emerged, the main room was a wreck. Fresh blood dripped down into my hair. Looking up, I saw the blast-torn remains of the pony in its twisted metal cage. I hope it was quick.

We stripped the raider bodies (what little was left of them now) of their armor. The armor was in tatters, but with Littlepips help we figured out how to adjust it to fit my body structure. The resulting outfit had a chest plate with pads for my arms and legs but there were no pockets.

My ands were darkened with blood just from working on it; every inch was covered in the flash-fried gore of dead ponies. I slipped it on; my stomach rebelled, but I didn’t have any more to throw up.

Since we had time I took one last look around. The raider obviously assumed we were dead. Looting the bodies garnered me a little more ammo. The gun from the earlier raider had been in bad shape to begin with, and was damaged beyond repair by the explosion. They seemed to collected bottle caps, which struck me as an odd thing to do. I left those alone. The kitchen’s refrigerator had a small stockpile of food: cooked alligator meat, a few skewers of barbecued fruits and what Littlepip's PipBuck identified as bloatsprite meat, a box of pre-war cake and some water that looked like it was bottled straight out of sludge river. We took everything but the cake and water; apparently, the raider who made this was a rather decent cook. With a second thought, I looked over the ingredients on the cake box and took it too.

The raider pony was in the main room was looking over his handiwork when we returned from the kitchen. One look at us and he fled up the stairs. We raced after him, our revolvers and ready.

He went through a door on the level above. I reached the top before Littlepip did, but caution made me skid to a stop before barreling through I held out my arm to stop Littlepip. If I was on the other side, I’d be waiting just to the side of the door, ready to take the head off of the raider who rushed through. With positions reversed, I was not going to make the same mistake.

A pony’s cry from inside, “aaah! Help!” changed the scenario. Especially since it sounded like a kid.

Standing to the side, I threw open the door. When there was no attack, we darted in. And stopped short.

The room was lined with more destroyed books on either side, and ended in a large window that opened onto a balcony. This room was decorated as disgustingly as the last, but filled with stained sleeping mattresses. Near the open window, a pony too young to even have her... cutie mark? (I hadn't been paying attention to it, but according to Littlepip cutie mark's showed a ponies talent.) lay on a mattress stained with so much blood it was nearly black. She had been brutalized and raped repeatedly, and her flank was covered in small burns where her cutie mark would have eventually appeared.

Her ropes were on the floor nearby, looking chewed through. And between us and her, the raider pony stood with a shocking hostage: the zombie-pony! It took me a moment to realize she must have flown in from the balcony; and it would have been her who gnawed the filly’s ropes free. Now, she was against a wall, with the blade of an axe to her throat.

A small part of my brain insisted on distracting me by wondering how the zombie-pony could have flown when her wings didn’t have any feathers. As if that was a more significant mystery than how she could be alive in her decayed physical condition.

My distraction was distracted by a nearby table. An ashtray with a smoking cigar told me just how the filly had gotten those burns. Rage welled up in me until I felt it would burst through my eyeballs. Next to the ashtray, two familiar metal apples rested on top of an book with a stylized pony skull on the cover. A second book, this one showing a revolver almost identical to the one floating next to me, had slipped to the floor where it rested against one leg of the table, along with several pencils and a filly’s lunch box. A smiling, gentle white unicorn with a beautiful lavender and pink mane stared back beneath the Stable-Tec logo. It felt odd that something so innocent-looking should be in this place.

My eyes turned to the pony raider with the axe in his teeth. For a moment I just hated at him, the room quiet except for the filly’s occasional whimpers.

Littlepip's words surprised me. “By Celestia, you’re stupid. Hard to tell a pony to back off, or surrender, when your mouth is full of axe, isn’t it? Maybe if you spent some more time reading these books rather than destroying them, you’d be smart enough to come up with a plan that actually allowed you to negotiate a way out of this.” The grenades levitated off the table; she dangled them between us. “One that doesn’t end with me shoving one of these up your tailhole! Mic drop!"

"Oh burn!" I held up my for her to fist bump, which she did. Glad she remembered what I taught her.

The raider was slightly confused before he pressed the axe blade tighter against the zombie-pony’s throat, enough to cut flesh, which split and pulled back. Something that might have once been blood oozed from the wound. The zombie-pony didn’t flinch or whimper, but the filly did both.

“Right. Kill her.” The revolver floated forward next to the grenades. “That way, there won’t be anything to block my shot.”

I could see the raider considering his options and not liking what he was finding. Dropping the axe from his mouth, he whinnied pathetically “I don’t wanna die!” and dashed for the open balcony, leaping over the cringing filly.

Littlepip sent four shots right into his ass. No way he'd get up from that.

Looking to the filly and the zombie-pony, Littlepip smiled grimly before turning to me. “There’s one left. Take care of the hostages. I’ll be right back."

"You got it. And I'm proud you remembered that."

With a smirk she turned and continued up the stairs toward the upper balcony and the sniper pony. While I stayed behind to free filly.

Better equipped and a lot more confident, we made our way carefully out of Ponyville.

Up ahead, I spotted a huge gazebo surrounding a marble statue of a rearing pony girded with combat barding, a sword in his mouth. The gazebo was relatively free of grafitti... and peeking through the binoculars, I could see why. The field of weeds around it were teaming with alligators.

Slipping out her newly acquired sniper rifle, (which I wont deny I was jealous of) Littlepip picked off a few. Their meat, I knew now, was safe when cooked; Slipping the sniper rifle back into its harness she slid out the knife and crouched up towards her kill.

An alert flashed on her PipBuck. Checking it, we discovered that it had labeled the gazebo in front of me: The Macintosh War Memorial.

Curiosity pulled us closer. Careful of alligators, I was close enough to read the inscription beneath the statue through my binoculars.

“In honor of Big Macintosh, hero of the Battle of Shattered Hoof Ridge, and his noble sacrifice for all of Equestria.”

As I lowered the binoculars, I caught sight of something else. A concrete circle sticking up from the ground, roughly halfway between myself and the gazebo, with a ponyhole cover. Littlepip turned her PipBuck back to the first radio broadcast on the list.

“...from those damned apple trees up near the Stable, and now he’s terribly sick. Too sick to move. We’ve holed up in the cistern near the old memorial. We’re running out of food and medical supplies. Please, if anypony hears this, help us... Message repeats...”

Pulling out my revolver, wary of alligators, I crept towards the cistern opening with Littlepip by my side. I was almost there before one of the beasts charged at us, its huge maw opening to reveal rows on rows of razor-sharp teeth. I fired twice into its mouth, it didn't go down. But it did make the beast think twice. The sound, however, brought more of them down on us. Pocketing the revolver in fright, I held them off with my shovel, Littlepip used her magic to pull open the ponyhole and dived in. I jumped right after her, sliding the cover over me.

"That was pretty epic!" I said, sliding to the floor, catching my breath.

"You're tell me." Littlepip agreed as she stretched, reaching into her saddlebag, she pulled two the barbecued fruit and bloatsprite skewer. She chose the fruit.

As we ate, I looked over the small underground chamber once more before I removed the skeleton from the lower bunk of the pair of bunk beds built into the wall, Littlepip beating me to the upper bunk. I tried not to think of the colt skeleton on the floor below me. The skeleton of his father was by the door. A sip from Littlepip's canteen took the edge off my thirst. It was almost empty; we had to be careful.

I remembered how, when Littlepip came downstairs, the zombie-pony was already gone, and had taken the poor filly with her. I hoped it was to someplace safe. I found it strange that the most decent pony I had found in the wasteland was already sort of dead. I also noticed that the assault rifle pony was also gone; he had woken up and freed himself from the crushing bookshelf. That meant there was at least one more raider still in the wastes, but I wasn’t the sort of person to kill anyone while they slept. Not even a raider.

I figured that if we slept here tonight, that would give the alligators time to wander away from the exit.

Until then, we would preoccupy myself with my new book. Slipping them out of my saddlebags, I looked it over, the one with the revolver on the cover. Guns and Bullets. Very straightforward. Littlepip took the other one.

“The Wasteland Survival Guide. By Ditzy Doo...”

"Hmm?" I looked up, "did you say something?"

"Oh no. I was just reading the title."

"Aah."

Author's Note

Chapter Two. I hope you guys enjoyed. Happy 4th of July.