Apocalypse After Us

Blood dripped from under my armour onto the hot sand. I had a pair of ribs broken, but nothing more than that. Too little to worry about. I was still able to move, fight and drive.

Undoubtedly, the itch of burns and the smell of petrol coming from me were strong and annoying. Some could be long accustomed to this scent and a look of severe burns when the flesh began to look like molten rubber, contracting and cutting itself—but even those shied away from me and turned their noses. Like their muzzles could feel something other than concentrated snoot-snuff.

A few moments ago I had entered an old, dilapidated concrete building. It had once been a roadside diner, though its purpose did not really change with time.

I loudly struck a metal disc hanging above the doorway. “Do work. For a car. Any job,” were my words.

Having noticed me, the ponies just squinted and returned to their business as if nothing had happened. Some were drinking booze, the other sniffing snoot-snuff with masks put on their faces, but mostly everypony was arguing or eating maggots.

So either none of the locals had an extra car or nopony wanted to trust me a job. I could surely walk all the way back to the north on hoof, but it would take me a lot more time.

Not that I was in a hurry, though.

When I was about to leave, somepony whistled. Not out of surprise or something, but as an invitation to come closer. I turned around and saw a pony gesturing me to the corner. I made my way there, trying not to disturb the visitors.

The stallion, dressed in a robe sewn from different pieces of pony skins, sat on a mat spread on the floor. “Need a car, huh?” he asked. He wore a pair of lensless glasses and had some sort of chip threaded into the bridge of his nose. I glanced at three other ponies beside him. They boasted sloppy tattoos depicting a long set of numbers ‘1’ and ‘0’, and brand marks in the shape of a chip. “Say something, Calculator divide you!”

Sworn to the Horde of Zinc Calculator, aren't you.

I nodded my head at the others.

He took the hint. “Brothers, I gonna ask you to leave for now. I have to discuss the will of Calculator with this infidel.”

“And what we’re supposed to do, Bit?”

“Go kick foals or something! Piss off!” He gave one of them a bonk on the head. The three stallions hurried away, and their boss gestured me to sit down.

“A car. Full tank. No matter how many cylinders,” I told him my terms.

“I have an old buggy. It’s enough guzzolene to get to Wild Appleloosa or so if you drive on the Black Road…”

“No way.” The Black Road was an old caravan route from Fillydelphia to Petrolstation. It had earned its name for oil and turbid petrol that constantly poured from tank cisterns onto the sand, so over time a long black oily line appeared on the wasteland map. “The Black Road is not an option. It may suit battlewagons, but raiders will quickly intercept buggies or any other transport.”

“Well, then you’ll have to ask someone else for guzzolene. But I guess you’re no stranger to this,” he grinned at me. “And I’m no charity. Do one thing for Calculator the All-Cyphering, and the car is yours. I can even look if I have a couple of high-octane cans…”

My significant silence seemed to quite eloquently make clear all he wanted to get as an answer.

“Okay, listen here. There’s a heretic, stole from us a thing we had to put onto the altar of Calculator. You bring the thing to me...” He showed me a hoofmade map with approximate search radius marked on it. It was someplace in the middle of the desert nearby a dried-up riverbed. “You get the car. And yeah, I have one special wish for the case.”

I took out my own map and began to redraw some notes from his. As I had no normal paints, I had to use my blood, the more so because it soaked the piece of paper pretty well.

“This traitor has a son. Little cunt. He does love him so much, even more than his ma. Anyway, before you kill the heretic and return the artefact to Calculator, I want him to... suffer. Make it long.”

“Show me,” I put the map with some fresh notes back. “The car.”

“Don’tcha believe me, huh, do ya? Okay. Let’s go. You’re gonna love it.”

What could one like me see through the scratched glasses of military binoculars?

The desert. The endless white sands which were carried to and fro by storms coming from the Boundless Sea every few days. Sometimes they swallowed entire settlements. Other times they opened the way to some new places—to the delight of scavengers.

I used to know several ponies who dreamed of building a car that could cross the Sea. They believed that there were green forests and water, all the joys of life they had only seen in old pictures just waiting for them across in a distant faraway.

How funny.

I was looking around the area through my binoculars when I noticed a faint patch of light at the dried riverbed bottom. It was too far away and I could not say what it exactly was, but from a distance the thing looked like a trailer. It was about a kilometre or so.

On closer examination, the trailer turned to be looking as if a routine landslide had discarded it down, and it hardly contained something valuable inside—or what I was looking for. The bastard and his pipsqueak could roam anywhere in these sands. Of course I could’ve just slit throats of those scouts and steal their car, but in the place that I wanted to go nopony would appreciate that. I didn’t aim at getting into troubles.

The wagon left the air of somepony bumping around the place. The ashes of a campfire and a cloth stretched over the sand to collect moisture seemed to have been set recently.

Perhaps the campfire was a week old. Only perhaps. But the moisture collector... I clearly observed the traces of night dew on it, and somepony should clearly have been around to collect the water.

I sniffed. Nothing unusual to the air: the midday heat, the burning hot stones, the dust. And a subtle odour of salt and a bitter-sweet smell of old bones above it all to complete the mix-up. There was however something... weak, but something you could not confuse.

The scent of morphine. The scent of hospitals and medicine. It was coming from the trailer, if only slightly dumped by some visceral reek.

I upholstered my revolver and cocked it. I cautiously approached the rusty door, then gave it a push. It opened with ease. Someone had recently used it.

I inspected the threshold through the open slit. There could be tripwires or something, and I would not want to die so stupidly.

There were none. Frankly speaking, the fact that it opened inside was quite strange, for the doors like this always opened outside. Somepony had altered it to make it more comfortable. Clever, but how much did it help him?

In a swift motion, I flung open the door and pushed my revolver forward. It was dark, stuffy and smelled of petrol and fresh shit. I went inside. My eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness, but the place turned out to be pretty boring: the hollow shell of a trailer filled with some garbage like broken dishes, ragged clothes and hell knows what else.

No furniture remained there but a plastic table and a couch with the pulled-out filler and sticking-out springs. I noticed a gun gun pouch on the table, which I immediately put to my belt.

Two ponies sat on the couch. Both had a sick skinny look, apparently suffering from hunger and thirst. My first thought was they were dead, but as I listened closely I could discern their low breathing.

Well, okay. One was adult and the other a petty colt not even worth to be meat. If they were the two I needed, the thing I was looking for could be theirs. I had to check this out.

“Shhh...” The skeletal pony who seemed older hissed through his pitted lips like a snake. “Hush now…”

He looked at me with his blind eyes.

“You one of ’em?” he croaked as he stroked the head of the foal. “Those worshipping the machine? The machine prints every day, oh yessh it does, printing and printing and printing…”

“I’m on my own.”

“Ah, so just a wanderer.” He smiled, flashing his rotten teeth and gums. “I’ve got nothing for you, wanderer.”

“No you do.” I grabbed the colt he was caressing and put the small body on the table. He weighed probably a little more than a light machine gun.

The stallion cocked his head to the wall and silently laughed. At least for a pony stripped to the bone, these convulsions he made could make up for laughing.

I pulled my knife out of the sheath hanging on my foreleg and gushed the foal’s belly with one swing. The smell of fresh blood oozed in the air.

The father paid no attention to what was happening. I pushed my hoof into the colt and began to rip some useless offals like intestines, kidneys and other parts inedible in raw condition. The only things I did not throw on the floor were his liver and heart. Taking the foal’s liver in my hoof, I went to his father and shoved it all into his mouth. He did not even try to spit out the piece of raw meat, caught in convulsing. I made him chew every little bit and swallow the mass.

“I won’t kill you,” I said as I grabbed and hold his bloody, insane muzzle in front of me, “until you say me.”

“Calculator the Almighty!” he didn’t stop cackling. “Why nopony ever looks around?” His words confused me a little. “Do you know what you’re looking for?”

“What I know is that you have it.”

“You! You have it! Haha!” He poked me with a trembling hoof and laughed. Was he talking about the gun?

I removed the pouch from my belt. Its shape was similar to a gun’s, but the weight was lighter. I wonder why I did not notice it earlier.

When I opened the pouch, I saw... a remote control... of some toy.

The pony stopped laughing. He sat staring at the rusty ceiling, drooling, licking the blood from his face.

“What did they take from you,” he croaked a faint whisper, “that you’re willing to take everything from others?”

There was a smell of petrol in the air. I looked under the table where it was the strongest and found a canister. It was only a half full, but that was well enough for me.

I poured it on the foal’s corpse, the table and some part of the walls. The petrol streamed down the floor and outside, mixing up with blood.

There was still some petrol left in the canister. I poured it into the mouth of this pony. He resisted and I thought I almost made him choke.

Having stuffed his belly with guzzolene, I got outside. My magic flashed in a spark, and the trailer caught fire. I thought I heard somepony screaming.

I even relaxed for a second. But then I looked towards the Sea.

A sandstorm was coming my way. Not the strongest I had ever known, but still dangerous. When the wind accelerated to high speeds, it lifted a cloud of sand into the air and carried it to the mainland. Gusts would knock you down and sand would blanket you to the gills, clogging into your nostrils and ears…

Good thing I had a yak skin with me.

If I had not set the wagon on fire, I would have taken refuge in it. But alas, I had to be content with what I had.

The stallion gripped the remote control like a relic.

“Calculator the Almighty!” he mumbled trembling in awe as he looked the trinket over. “The gates to the Kingdom of Fifty are opened to me! He will bless me! He will bless me!”

“Ahem.”

“Oh, yes, your reward!” He opened his shoulder bag and pulled out a gas mask filter. “Snoot-snuff! Fresh! And clean! You’ll love it—”

“Where. Is. My. Car.”

“Rejoice in what you have, infidel!” he cried and was about to tuck away the remote control to his bosom, but I stabbed his hoof faster than other fighters even knew what happened. He gritted his teeth, gulping a cry of pain. “Freeze!” he yelled.

Every visitor, everypony who ate meat or sniffed petrol and snoot-snuff, glanced at us. Well, no—those who were sniffing did not give a fuck about us.

“Where. Is. My. Car.”

“It’s been two weeks. Calculator’s armies don’t stay in one place! Come on, I gave you snoot-snuff, so the deal is done!”

I took the remote from him and pulled my knife out. The fighter did not flinch a bit, and none of his supporters did move a muscle. The wasteland was a huge place, and they would get a chance to take their revenge later.

Taking the snoot-snuff as well, I got up and went out. As long as this place did not belong to them, I knew that nopony would follow me. There could still be a pony that would cut their throats and eat their hearts some deep desert night.

The settlement was small. Only the fact that it was on the wayside of the Black Road helped it survive somehow. Caravans with guzzolene went to the north, ones with water and ammunition to the south. And this was the place where they 4 -______ steel or hoof crossbows.

“Look how many shiny little idols!” Tinker backed off the counter—a pile of garbage covered with foal skins—and started throwing any ammo he could find onto it. Bullets were scattered around the tent, and the dexterity with which the hunchback was digging through rubble was enviable.

In the end, he was able to find half a magazine for the rifle and three rounds for the revolver. If it was not for the fact that I was fucked up with a car, I would call it a great day. That aside, it was just shitty, but not too much.

Tinker would most likely give this remote thing to the Horde fighters either in exchange for something or just like that. Or they would just take it by force when they brought more soldiers here. Petrolstation was a fine piece of the pie. Who would not want to get the endless sea of free guzzolene?

The desert never stopped expanding, devouring everything that was on its way. It had consumed the ocean. One day it would consume the mainland.

I came from the north. When I had departed to the south, I thought I could find a place where it would be... quiet. Silent. I had been able to walk to the place where the shore used to be. Now there was just a huge cliff under which the ocean of sand raged. Sand and sand only, stretching up to the horizon.

I had known a group of madponies who built a ‘ship’ to cross the Boundless Sea. I did not know what had happened to them when they disappeared from my sight, but I watched them through my binoculars for a long time, until the sunlight began to dazzle me.

There was nothing in the south. No silence. No peace. It had weighed down on me even worse than it’d been in the north. So I had had to walk back on hoof as I had run out of guzzolene.

I had a car in Peatbog. Long ago I had hidden it in such places where no scum would ever guess to look for... I needed only to get there. There were another week and a half to Wild Appleloosa. After that, if I was lucky, I would get a train to New Appleloosa. Peatbog was in a stone’s throw away from there.

A gunshot rang out nearby.

I plummeted onto the sand and listened to what was happening around. Shots was a rare case in the desert; more often you could hear the roar of engines.

There were no shots anymore, but I remembered where it was coming from. About half a kilometre from here. I just had to climb the dune and see everything from there…

It was that time of a day when the huge red disk of the sun was just coming up over the horizon from the east. So it was about four o’clock in the morning. While all normal ponies were sleeping or collecting water from moisture collectors, I saw five wankers trying to storm a mountain. Or rather, a settlement hidden in the said mountain.

Judging by their looks, they were hooked for quite some time. With blue noses, glass eyes and the inability to think sensibly, they shot anywhere but the spotlight—a distinctive feature of any cannon fodder.

Those like them were usually sent on fighting reconnaissance. A true scout should have been around to watch what was happening through binoculars. However, the only fact that the defenders had firearms was enough for me.

A second shot thundered in the air and blew off an ear to one of the attackers. The shooters were just having fun. And the blue-nosed were just a good, moving target.

Given tire marks and oily spots on the sand, this settlement often received caravans. And all I had to do was get to Peatbog. If they did not take me as a guard to their truck, I would climb under the bottom.

But they would not let me in for anything; I had to do something useful first to prove my worth. For this, I was going to bring them a scout. There was an unspoken rule among settlements and camps of the wasteland: help those who interfere with your enemies. Reputation can save you at a critical moment.

The landscape reminded me of something. I could not yet remember what it was, but it was ancient. From times before the desert.

There was, in my opinion, only one point from which you could observe the main entrance: the tail of a plane towering from under the sand. It was not high enough to gain advantage in combat, but enough to be a good vantage point. Why good? Because if I were him, I would be able to spot someone coming under the tail of the plane and kill him.

The pony lay in a small depression in the ground. He covered himself with sand to make himself less visible. But judging by the dim light from the settlement, somepony was watching us too. The scout heard me only when I got down to it. The sand failed me. Before he could do anything, I stunned him with a blow to the ear and threw him off the hill, coming down after him.

Making a pony do what you need was very simple—aim a revolver at his head! The scout, though obviously nervous, did not try to escape as I was escorting him to the fortress. The attackers who had previously tried to kill guards with their hoof crossbows noticed me; I heard three more shots from the entrance, and the attackers were gone.

“Fuck! You messed it up!” cried one of the guards standing on the wall.

“Come on, Buttercup. You would’ve lost anyway,” the other ponies laughed. “Ask him who he brought here.”

“A scout,” I replied.

It called ‘guess which one is going to die faster from overdose.’ Sort of a game that sentries did love to play. And they tended to go pretty crazy if someone happened to mess with them playing.

“Bullshit! The one with syringes would’ve been dead in a few seconds, I’ll tell you that!”

An engine stuttered, and the gate began to slowly move aside, driven by the force of the bus.

Suddenly, “A caravan! Three trucks!” came from above the tower which had a spire similar to an antenna.

“What d’ya say?!” one of the guards shouted in return.

“Leave the gate open, you deaf fuck!” was a loud answer. Three flames flashed on the tower, and I heard beeps of car horns nearby.

“Hurry up, we’re waiting for guests,” they urged me, so I gave the scout a kick in the ass and went inside after him.

The interior of this place consisted of ruins belonging to a very old building. The walls were partly destroyed to make a parking lot for trucks. One of the sentries jumped off the wall and approached me, demanding to give all my weapons.

The balance of power was not in my favour. They had at least three soldiers with a flamethrower and firearms on the gate. And I guessed there was a machine gun on the tower. Not much of a choice for me. By that moment the scout had already been restrained and led somewhere inside.

“You stay here and don’t move, m’kay? If you need anything, save it for later. Got it?” said the pony.

I did not answer, looking around the courtyard which was big enough to fit a dozen trucks with cisterns in tow. And ponies here seemed to be engaged in sawing planes on separate sheets of metal. Apparently, the walls had been built just this way.

Why so many planes? More than anywhere else. And besides, there had to be was a military facility nearby, or where else did they get so many weapons from the war times?

I squinted at a shabby inscription on the wing of one plane. Imperial Airways. So many years had passed, and it did not collapse yet. Wow.

Airport. The whole place was an airport buried under the sands. I literally stood on structures of at least fifty meters in height and half a kilometre in length. And they certainly had more fighters down below, a clusterfuck of fighters. Now I could hardly call it a fortress, rather a true citadel…

There was another thing that worried me, though. These ponies did not look like other inhabitants of the wasteland. They looked healthy. They did not rave constantly about water. Their smell was not a fetid stench of meat. On the contrary, this smell... was something familiar, but I could not guess.

The arrival of the caravan took my mind off. Several trucks drove to the access point, leaving behind a black oily trail of guzzolene. But some cisterns in tow had nothing dripping. As far as I could guess, they were probably empty. What would be otherwise the point of carrying so little fuel that it did not even leak?

I got perplexed. If they were delivering guzzolene here, what were they taking back?

Somepony whistled. That was that soldier. Having attracted my attention, he waved to me to come closer. I did not keep him waiting.

And I understood now why some cisterns were empty: they were to be pumped with water. The water poured down on the floor in streams, but nopony paid any attention to it. And puddles of precious liquid were growing in size…

Why were they so blasphemous about water? They didn’t kill each other for it. They just treated water like it was... water.

Crazy fuckers.

The soldier stopped by a corner fenced off from the rest of the hall. He lifted the canopy. “The boss wants to see you. Don’t try anything stupid.”

I had no idea what was the reason to fence off a small piece of the room, but I stepped inside. Some folders, papers and other stuff filled up the space behind the canopy. The table with a monitor emitting a bluish glow was near the wall. A pony was working at the computer, but in the dark I could barely see anything.

“Would you take your gas mask off, Mister?” he said. I kept quiet. “All right, whatever. Come closer, please.”

I did as he said.

“You have a gun. It is not often that you meet a pony with firearms in the wasteland... Where did you get it?”

A silence was my response.

“From the north, I see. You can play silent as long as you want, but I can make a difference between a self-made and a good factory weapon.”

Unfortunately for him, it was not a factory one—it was custom-made.

“And since you are from the north, now you’re moving back, am I right? The watchers mentioned you had been walking from the south, Mister.”

“Leave misters for yourself.”

“As you wish. You have been walking from the south, that’s what does matter most.” The pony took something out of a table drawer. “I can’t give you a reward for the scout. You deserved it, no doubt, but... I can offer you a job, wanderer.”

I twitched my ears to show him I was listening.

“I can give you something to help you with your journey back to the north. But you will also do something for me in return.”

“Go on.”

“We need to bring one pony to the Crystal Republic. She won’t be a problem. We’ll provide her with everything she needs. Just try not to let her die.”

“Not interested.”

I turned around to leave, but the pony continued. “You’re going north when everypony is running south. The Horde, the Iron Birds... they all run away from there, but you go back. The fewer ponies around the more comfortable you feel, don’t you?”

I did not know why, but I found myself frozen in place, waiting for him to finish.

“Just listen. In the Republic they can fulfil any whim. Their possibilities are unlimited. You just have to get—”

“Try better.”

“So you’re interested now.”

I must have become too old if the first pony I met could so easily convince me to get on such nonsense. Fulfil any wish. Anything you want. I thought I had already heard that somewhere.

But on the other hoof... What if they would be able to give me silence?...

“So what do you think? I can easily provide you with a transport to get to Wild Appleloosa. Then, do as you see fit…”

“Haven’t agreed yet.”

“I’m not here to beg you. If you don’t need it, fuck out.”

The moment of silence.

“Where is your car?” Discord damn me! Why did I say yes?

I could definitely say that he was fucking smiling. “My caravan. I have more trust in battle wagons.”

“What is your name?”

A unicorn mare dressed in a rumpled grey lab coat stood before me, and she had asked me a question. This question. I seriously did not remember anyone being interested in it.

“Call me whatever you want.”

“Well, then...”

Her lab coat had a slight scent of medical alcohol, she herself of coffee. It took me a while to realize what it was, as well as that her entire town smelled of fresh herbs. They ate vegetables and fruits. I did not remember anyone in the wasteland eating them.

It was noon. The white-hot desert was flickering and wavering in a haze as far as eyes could see. At this time of a day, ponies crept to their shacks and silently waited for evening or night when it would be terribly cold. But the cold was much better than this hell of a Tartarus.

They had left me waiting outside the perimeter. Their boss had not been able to talk a place for me and this D... What was her name? Whatever. The caravaneers had refused to take us with them. So we would have to steal a ride. Not that it was so difficult.

“Gas Mask.” Why did they always look at the mask? I had a knife, a revolver and an assault rifle too. “Are we going or what?”

From behind the wall came a long whistle.