Letting Go IS For Suckers

He was asleep for now-

“What do I do when dad wakes up?” Magnolia asked me as we stood next to Magnetite. He was lying down in the bed, dead to the world. That was for the best. I didn’t know how long that the morphine would keep him asleep but it was better than nothing. I stroked his mane one last time.
“If he wakes up before I’m back, tell him that I’m finding help for him,” I paused. She always seemed older than she was. “I hate leaving but I know you’re capable. You’re my daughter after all.” Her ears peeled backwards and she drug her hoof over his foreleg.
“Mom, just be careful out there. I-” Her voice cracked, she tried to wipe away her tears with a foreleg before looking me straight in eyes.
“We’ve all been outside before, the radiation is basically all gone and it’s not like a windigo orgy outside anymore-” I got cut off.
“No-mom!” She shook her head and stuck her tongue out at me. “I’m like eighty percent sure that’s not a thing!” I just smiled at her. I would never let my child seem like they were homeschooled. Bunker schooled? “You know what I mean, DJ Pon3 said all that stuff about the dangers out there.”
“There’s a stable a few miles away. I’ll head there, should be back by tomorrow night.” I walked up to her. Without warning I threw my legs around her tightly. “Don’t fight with Poppy and make sure to water the plants.”
“Okay mom. Just be safe okay, you’re older than you used to be.” Maggie told me, as she eyed the rifle hanging over my back.
“Magnolia! You sure you want me to come back,” I told her sternly.
“Shut up mom, you know what I meant!” She shot back. Celestia, she was like me when I was her age.
“I do. And I love you for it. I’m gonna go say goodbye to Poppy.” I told her softly, my lips curled into the easy smile. I turned away, throwing one last look at Magnetite and Magnolia. She was sitting beside him, watching him closely. Please be okay when I get back! My chest tightened as I worried for him again.

---===*===---

I grasped the handle of the cellar door with my magic. The hinges screeched as the worn door swung open for the first time in months. You don’t have time for this. He doesn’t have time- He had told me to leave him behind. He told me that I just needed to find a doctor, quickly. I made my way up the staircase. The air was thick and musty, moisture was covering every surface. Our old house always messed with me. It was still standing, which couldn’t be said for every building.

Magnetite and I had ventured out a couple times in the last few years. So, we knew a little bit about the surrounding area. It was dead. Our family had been the only to survive the worst of it.

I opened the front door, and peered at the street. I clutched my rifle beside me. It was more of a formality. Nothing lived. All I knew was, the stable entrance was tucked into the hills to the north of town. It was early morning, the sun was still to far to the east in the sky. I pointed myself in that direction, collapsed houses, rusted carriages and withered trees lined the street. My lungs filled one more time before I started towards the old main street.

---===*==---

My ears turned towards the noise and I spun to face whatever was moving in the building beside me. I ran behind a post box nearby. The barrel of my rifle stayed positioned on the dark interior. It had only been an hour or so, and it was on the right side of the street. And then it pulled itself from behind the sales counter. I could make out a pony’s silhouette. Maybe it was another survivor? Maybe they knew where I could find a doctor? I had to try.

“Hello?” My voice made them stop rummaging.
“H-hi!” A raspy voice said to me from behind the counter. I saw the head of a mare peek over the counter. “Ooh! Are you real?”
“Very. Are you armed?” I barked out, my training for these situations came back to me. I missed rules of engagement for the first time ever. My breaths were shallow, I hadn’t been around any ponies other than my ponies since the bombs.
“No. If I come out do you promise not to shoot me?” She asked me haltingly.
“If you don’t attack me then, yes I’d like to talk to muzzle to muzzle.”
I pointed my rifle away from her as I heard her move around the counter, she was still obscured by shadows. “I promise not to-” Then the shadow stopped obscuring them.
“Fuck!” I screamed and back pedaled while raising my rifle back towards it. The thing was a corpse rotting flesh with a hole through its cheek. “Stay back!” I fired a shot at it as it spun around and ran into the building.
I didn’t even think about as I sprinted down the street. The broken buildings and rusted carriages, skeletons picked clean and bleached in my peripheral vision. I had lived here, I just couldn’t have imagined this place like this. That thing! It talked like a pony, but it was rotten through. The eyes moved but they were corpse eyes. What the fuck had been unleashed by the Zebras. I was almost at the end of the street when my lungs decided to quit. I turned around and looked behind me. The world was fucked.
“Well and truly,” I said in between spasms from my diaphragm.
No one was following me. Thank Celestia. I drug a foreleg across my forehead.
Shit. I was getting old. Still, I had a husband to save. Next stop, stable city! Stableville? Stabletown? Magnetite better not die, I spent a lot of time training him to laugh at my jokes.

---===*===---

The hillside was anything but deserted. It was covered in ponies belongings. Carts, suitcases, carriages, bodies. I walked stepped around it, as I made my way to the stable tech facade. It was kind of a joke around town, that Stable tech was trying to keep a giant bunker buried in a hill right outside of town secret.
The wooden door had been ripped off the hinges. It was sitting under the little mine entrance they had built. I stepped inside. It was very dark in the tunnel. When I pulled a flashlight out of my jacket and hit the switch. A solitary beam of light peeled the darkness away… Bodies: mares, stallions, and foals they covered the walls and floors. Some were huddled together, others alone. They never showed that in the pamphlets. Again, I just took deep breaths and continued past the bones. And before I knew it the big old door was in front of me.
Slowly oxidizing steel, formed into a meter thick cog. Imposing from the outside, comforting from the inside. To the right of it there was a control console. My eyes pored over it, it had a bunch of dials and a keyboard and lever. When I pulled the lever… Nothing happened. Better just tell them the truth. It had been eight years. The Rads were all gone, and the long winter was over.
“My husband is dying! Please open up, I know these things have a microphone in them. We don’t want anything else. There are only four of us.” I pleaded. Somewhere in there were ponies with families, with lives and aspirations. Was my family worth even the risk. There was no way of telling time as I sat there pleading into a microphone that might not exist. When my mouth went dry from just talking I realized that it was futile. There were ponies in there, and they were assholes.
“I hope you all burn in tartarus! It’s over, we can start over, but if you don’t open the stable now, there’s no fucking excuse for cowardice.” My voice echoed off the walls and came back to me distorted.
“It was a supposed to be a blank slate! You hear me cowards!” I screamed at the door. I kicked the console with a foreleg. The clang reverberated but it changed nothing. If there were ponies in there, they were as good as dead to me. I’d rather they be dead ponies. Then I wouldn’t hate them. I couldn’t hate them. I let out a breath and turned myself around. I might have wanted them to burn in Tartarus, but I was never big on loitering, especially in tombs. I kept my eyes above the floor, as I trotted out the door, my hooves seeming to drag along the bottom.

---===*===---

It was later that day. I could see that as soon as I stepped outside again. The sun was about halfway over the sky, as far as I could tell through the cloud cover. I had begged and pleaded, and fired a gun in panic. There was no reason to not go back, other than than… them knowing that I’d failed. If I went home, I could at least spend some time with him and my daughters before he passed. So, not heading back would just be selfish. The only place I knew had ponies was Tenpony tower, but that was so far away.
My rump seemed to just fall on the earth outside the entrance. I was selfish, we had built a bunker for our family and not told anyone. Our neighbors had a foal the same age as Magnolia. Those stable ponies… I didn’t know how close to capacity they were at in there, but if they were living off stored food still then they could have fed more ponies. You really only needed a three year supply to last the worst of it. In hindsight.
I let my eyes drift towards the town. I had moved here after my term of service, Magnetite and I had found each other the night after we got back from the front. And, well, Magnolia wasn’t exactly planned. He had come from a big family up north, five brothers and sisters. His folks had raised him exactly like they had been raised - have enough foals to run the farm, sickles and plows pulled the old fashioned way. Magnetite never wanted that, he loved all the stories coming out of the big cities: arcanotech, earth ponies flying, and weapons that could make any pony equal to any other. He and I were about Magnolia’s age when the war began.
Radiant Springs, the hollow shell of a town sitting under me, hadn’t existed before the war. The land here was cheap, the soil rocky without anything worth digging for. So, when the demand for guns and bullets shot up, this place was picked to start supplying that demand. Cheap houses, soft wood, with plastic and refrigerators. Assembly line houses for ponies running assembly lines. It worked. When I was a foal, a train line was something you travelled to see, and electricity was a thing for ponies living in Manehattan and Baltimare. By the end, ponies had clothing and food beyond my parent’s wildest dreams. We were told to buy things that we didn’t need, and we did, and we said nasty things about ponies who didn’t have those things. About ponies who didn’t support Luna, or the ministries.
Sitting there on that hill, I realized the irony of Radiant - a town built by the war- was destroyed by it. The zebras launched the bombs, but we could have kept it from getting there. The walking corpses and the ponies sitting behind an impregnable steel door… There was no escape, the bombs could never get rid of what had happened before. The bombs had left the world worse than dead, there was no fresh world for my foals. I picked up a clump of loose earth in my magic, forcing it solidify, effort expended. Just before I loosened my hold again, little by little it fell back to where it had been at the start.

All for naught.

Worse off than things had been before.

I hadn’t expected an eden, but the idea of one had kept us going. And yet, if Magnetite hadn’t gotten sick I wouldn’t have left until we had to. No-one actually wanted to live here, the stable ponies could stay blissfully protected for a century and it wouldn’t change a thing.

My eyes caught a glimpse of something: A plume of smoke coming from the town. I hopped to my hooves and took a second take.
“A campfire,” I said aloud. The muscles in my neck tensed and I glanced at the sky for a moment. “It goes without saying.”

---===*===---

I kept my hoofsteps quiet, as I approached the fire. It was centered in the old park. Not a lot of places to hide in the park, all the foliage that once existed was long gone. On the flip side, even from the streets a couple hundred meters out I could see the group of ponies cooking food on the fire. It smelled oily and faintly of burned fuff. But it didn’t seem like it was from a can or a hydroponic soup, so it smelling a bit different was to be expected. There were a dozen or so ponies out there. They were dirty but they weren’t walking corpses. Good.
I put my rifle on my shoulder and started walking towards them slowly.

“Hello!” I yelled towards them. Heads turned towards me. They smiled at me.
A unicorn stallion lowered an improvised spear and waved a hoof at me.
“Howdy,” he said as the rest of them stayed where they were. “I’m Box Cutter, and this is my little herd.” He was wearing a worn out jacket that was missing foreleg sleeves.
“Do you have any doctors?” I asked him as he came to within a few feet of me.
He looked surprised for a moment, but I didn’t think much of it.
“Sutures was a surgeon before the war, why do ya ask?”
“My husband, he needs a surgeon bad!” My voice carried with it all of my desperation. His face lit up, and before I knew it he had run back to his group. They spoke a few words as I just took deep breaths of relief. This could be over soon! Good ponies had survived the bombs. Things could be set right! My eyes drifted towards the obscured sun.

“Thank you.”

---===*===---

“I happened to be in a hospital basement when the sirens started up,” Box Cutter told me as we walked back to the bunker. “The doors locked up, and the few of us on staff had enough supplies to get through the first weeks. After that, we dispersed as the the long winter began.”
“Is that what it’s gonna be called in the books written about this?” I asked as we turned the corner, we were on the street that I had called home for so many years.
“I like to call it that. Ash likes to call it Ragnarok, says that the first time ponies fucked everything up, that was what they called it. Back in the days before Celestia and Luna.” He finished with a sigh.
“You don’t think they’re around?” I said to him, my eyes searching for his reasons.
“Canterlot is worse than dead, the zebras did something to it worse than balefire. I reckon we’re in the same boat as those ponies before the alicorns were born, before discord popped out of nowhere. No gods, no masters. Free to do what we want, to be who we want to.” He got a gleam in his eyes, something about him didn’t add up. I wanted to know more though, I was about to introduce my family to his family? Was that what was happening?
“You think we have the freedom to be better? I mean, the world burned because we lost our innocence, became cynical and forgot what-” I was cut off by the sound of a gunshot and a scream of pain from behind me. One of Box’s group was hit, my ears rotated as I tried to find where the shot had come from. Oh, shit! My eyes saw the crouched form of a hooded pony firing from behind a fence in one of the yards a hundred meters or so away. I unslung my rifle and tried to aim at them, but they saw me and turned tail.
I didn’t know what came over me, maybe it was the idea that this asshole was trying to kill the ponies that were going to save my husband, but I launched into a sprint weapon raised. Hooded or not, they were going to fucking die. They were an earth pony, no telekinesis, so I had no doubt that I could get the drop on them as I ran past the stunned ponies dealing with their injured. I sprinted to the corner nearest to where they had shot from. My lungs expelled a breath, and I prayed to - someone - and looked around the corner. I spotted a tail as they hopped over the shorter length of fence in the back. Rifle raised I plugged the spot in the fence they should have been. There was a yell from the other side.
“Stop right there, and I won’t shoot again!” I yelled at them, sidestepping and approaching them. My magic grabbed the section of weakened fence and teared it from the ground. Sure as shit the pony was lying there. Gun forgotten writhing in pain, as blood flowed from their hip. Except blood isn’t black-
“Please don’t! Wait, you aren’t one of them!” She said in that raspy voice I had heard before.
“You have exactly half a second to explain!” I cycled the bolt on my rifle. Eight rounds remaining in the magazine, a bit mostly forgotten part of my brain clung onto that information. The brass casing fell to the ground as they looked at with wide eyes.
“You’re in great danger, those ponies eat other ponies.” She said with a gasp as her wound continued to ooze.
“You’re making that up! Why would they-”
“They aren’t right in the head, all I know is the only other pony that lived here is either over their fire or in their stomachs.” I gagged, dry heaves on an empty stomach. The smoke had smelled weird. I didn’t know how long it would take them to check on me. “They don’t want to eat us. they don’t want to fight a fair fight. They like slitting throats in the night. Mostly by making the other pony feel comfortable.”
“How do you know that? Us?” I asked yelled at her before grabbing the gun she had been carrying and stuffing it into my bag.
“It’s second hoof, some of the ponies we talk to have heard of them before… Us-” She hesitated as before I pointed the rifle between her eyes. “There’s a couple more like me, we’re out by the access road.”
“Is there anypony there that can perform surgery?” I watched her decayed eyes through her hood. “And don’t lie to me, they told me yes to the same question, half an hour ago.”

“I don’t think so, are you hurt?” She asked softly, seeming to hum with compassion out of nowhere.

“No, but my husband is dying.” I told her, if she was right, then I led a bunch of cannibals to my doorstep because one of them was a smooth talker. And a cult leader.

“We might be able to help you. All I know is, most of us are too old to fight. I-I’m thought if I killed one of them I could drive them off, but you! You’re a fighter, got all your skin too!” She wanted me to fight him and his group off. For all I knew this mare would stab me in the back at the first opportunity. She at least seemed to believe in good and evil.

“Just tell your ponies to come here. If I don’t make it out, just keep knocking on cellar doors around here. All I know is it isn’t like I thought out here. And so far it’s only been worse. Please change that. Not much a dying wish, but, I don’t really plan on dying-” I turned around and started walking towards the spot where they’d been bloodied. I was fucking done with this day.

The undead mare picked herself up and limped away, at least, that’s what I heard.

I turned the corner and spotted all of the ponies. Two of them had been hit, one grazed, the other had spilled a lot of blood on the cracked pavement. I trotted up to the lot of them, about thirty paces away. It hadn’t been a fast trot. Heads rose towards me, but mine stayed leveled at them. My face was placid. I was so close to home. A home I had made. Probably the last home in this town.

“Thank you for goin’ after them,” Box Cutter looked up and gave me a grateful look. “I heard the bang. You get em’ good?” He asked anxiously. Maybe I should have acted more rushed.

“Yeah, pew pew, all that jazz,” I laughed as I realized there were only eight ponies out there. Counting the dying one. “I got acquainted with a griffon during the war, they thought the whole war was fucking hilarious. The Zebras and us, blowing each other to scraps of meat over gems and coal. He always said he had a hard telling ponies and zebras apart. ‘You both go around making silly speeches, run around on those weird hooves, but most of all, you taste the same.’ Coincidentally, he was working for us at the time, but I offered to blow him. So I took him out behind the bar, and blew his head off.” I saw his eyes open wider and wider as I spoke. Behind his eyes, beyond that argument for amorality by some cosmic indifference, there was a moment of guilt. Plain as day. Plain as sin.

“The war was a pretty scary time-” He never finished that statement as the rifle round blew his head to pieces.

The mare in that had a gun stuffed in her bag, she got to be the next one. I cycled the bolt as I watched the remaining ponies turn tail and leave their group behind. Another stallion lost their internal organs and a sizable chunk of their spin as the bullet tumbled through his insides. A that had been turning the skewer tried to run into one of the buildings at the side. She didn’t make it that far. These ponies were lazy, if they had hidden some of their number or carried a lot more guns… Then I’d be on the ground dying as well as them. I managed to put two more of them down. Before walking over to the pony that had been badly shot by the ghoulish mare. It was still early in the afternoon, I’d probably left eight hours ago.

“What went wrong with you ponies?” I yelled at them, their ears were ringing too if I were to guess.

“They saved me, made me family. You never lost everything. You will though. The wasteland consumes-” I silenced them with a rifle shot. These were mad dogs. With that griffon it had been an act of murder, these ponies though, it was putting down rabid dogs. I surveyed the scene, walking over to the ponies that still drew breath before plunging my knife into their throats one by one. In my heart, I wondered if they weren’t wrong. There were stables that wouldn’t open, walking corpses, and these Reavers. Not even the sun was pristine. The world was supposed to be wiped clean, only for the cockroaches of our own creation to remain.

When it was over, I wiped the knife on the fur of the last pony who’s throat I opened. The bunker containing everything I cared about was just a few houses down, I trotted there and walked to the door.

“Magnolia, can you unlock the door?” I spoke softly in the divot just beside the steel door.

“Mom, why were there gunshots?” She asked, the desperation and curiosity spilling out of her.

“I can give you the long version later, but, that DJ was right about monsters. I just think he was wrong about who the monsters were.” I finished and the door swung open. There she was, my beautiful daughter, someone who had to grow up out there. Our other gun was gripped tightly in her magic, and aimed at the doorway. Thankfully it was safetied as she dropped it to the floor.

“Did you find a doctor for Dad?” She asked softly, mindful of the gravity of the situation.
“I did the best I could,” My words caused her face to darken. I let a wry smile cross my muzzle. “But, I think we deserve the break.” I said as I shut the door behind me. I didn’t stop before wrapping my forelegs around her. “I’ll love you no matter what you do… Just promise me you won’t eat pony, please?”
“Mom, are you okay?” She asked as she huffed at the contact.
“Better than the ponies outside,” I told her as I gave her forehead a kiss. “Now promise me sweetie? Everything else I can deal with… Piercings, getting pregnant, bringing a zebra home, somehow-”
“I promise not to eat ponies! Celestia shit, did you get help from the stable?”

“No. But the Cavalry should be showing up soon, you might want to get some cabbage boiling for them. I would, but I need to wait out there for a few.” I told her before turning towards the door again.

“Don’t be gone too long,” Magnolia said as she watched me leave for the second time.

“Ehh, I don’t think they’re gonna be setting any land speed records.”

---===*===---

“This is why you don’t drink mouthwash,” I said to him as he woke up, finally.

“Wha-” He pulled his body up from the bed, just before I gently pushed him back down. “How long was I out?” I levitated a cup of water over to him. The stallion actually sniffed it before taking a sip.

“Seventy-two hours, give or take.” He looked behind me and yelled and pointed.

“Enceph, say something coherent.” The decaying stallion turned away from his book and looked Magnetite in the eye.

“Don’t feel bad, she tried to shoot Wallflower the first time they met,” Enceph said before going back to his book.

“He’s the guy who pulled you open and poured the potion down your throat,” I said simply before glancing down at his abdomen. “Feel better honey?”

“I-I… Yes.” His face was all kinds of confused, but he was alive.

“Get used to that feeling,” I said to him a smile written across my face. Whatever the world had become, it wasn’t a blank slate. No, there were dangers aplenty and it turned balefire isn’t very good at setting things right.

But, there were good ponies left.

And there was hope here, if you knew how to find it.

“Also, that look your face was priceless! ‘Ahhh, A zombie!’”

“Shut up Mirage!” At least, three different ponies said at once.

Author's Note

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