Chapter 2: No Plan Survives...

I watched as Orphic crawled back into the world through the entrance to the apparently empty supply cache. With all the shit going on right now, I did not need to find that the only contingency we had was empty! I kicked at a shelf behind me with a hoof, denting it, but not accomplishing anything productive.

This is bad. This is really fucking bad. Until then I hadn't had the chance to stop and think about the situation, but now it was increasingly harder to push the enormity of it to the side and focus on the here and now. I scraped a hoof on the hard, stone, floor of the cave and took a deep breath. Okay, practical concerns, my line of thinking began. I brought my left arm up and glanced at the Pipbuck's clock, trying to figure out how much time had passed. The way the day turned out had distorted my sense of it beyond where I could give an accurate guess.

The glowing green utilitarian numbers read 1900. Was it really that late already? Our first priority then, was to find somewhere to sleep. This location would be concealed normally, but under the circumstances I couldn't take the chance that they'd come back and find us. After that we would need to take inventory of our supplies, ration out food and ammunition, and then...

I exhaled, and rubbed a fetlock across my face. I couldn't think what to do afterwards yet, still determined to take things one step at a time. Silenced and buried by a cool collected exterior and the calmness of training was the knowledge that there was nowhere left for us to go now.

A voice from outside, a familiar one thankfully, jarred me out of those thoughts. “Are you coming?” my new charge asked timidly. I straightened up and my face fell back to its familiar neutral expression. I could make it out on my own, but Orphic wasn't a survivor. If I was going to keep him from getting himself killed, I needed to give the impression that I knew exactly what I was doing.

“Yes, I am now,” I replied quickly, as I moved over to the short hole in the wall. It was time for me to re-enter the wasteland now; to have my years of training to pay off as I stepped back into the fading daylight and became a real soldier. I wasn't sure where I was going, or how I would get there, but one burning missive remained. No matter what had to be done, I would keep the two of us alive long enough to make them pay.

I got to my hooves, my muscles weary and barely obeying anymore. Orhpic stood nearby, watching expectantly, trying not to shake like a leaf. He was looking at me with eyes begging for direction, but too tired to ask. I addressed him as I began walking. “We don't have much time before nightfall. We need somewhere to sleep.”

“But what about here?” he asked.

My patience was wearing very thin with him already, and that didn't help. I couldn't yell at him again after what we just saw, not now. But at the same time, I had to repress the urge to do so. “Too risky. They might come back,” I answered in a tone that I meant to brook no argument.

Normally, that wasn't easy to do with him. He wasn't the most confrontational pony aroun...really he was downright passive most of the time. But get him in a debate that he thought he was right about, and all bets would be off. Not this time at least. His slumped posture and broken gait as he began to follow was all the reply I needed, or that he felt like giving. In the long run, low morale wouldn't be efficient for survival, but for the time being, I could take some small solace in the knowledge that his despair meant he would defer to my judgement.

It was the smart choice. With some luck, it might just keep him alive.

I can admit it in hindsight, I had no idea where we were going. Briefly, I considered dragging us back to the ruined town we'd scavenged earlier in the day, whatever it might have once been called. That would have taken far too long though, and put us at risk of having to go near home-...what was left of it, I winced and retreated mentally from that-, which could have meant a run-in with raiders.

Slowing to a trot, I held up my Pipbuck and checked the local map once again. Thankfully, I'd been in the area before, so even though I couldn't remember the trees and rocks themselves, the greatest survival tool I could have asked for did it for me. If only that feature was more useful right now. There was nothing around that would serve as shelter for the night, just as there was nothing the last two times I checked. The gesture was honestly partially for Orphic's sake. At least I could let him think we were on the right track.

But for those of us actually trying to make sure of that, the Pipbuck was being less than encouraging. We'd already walked for an hour, by now almost completely in the dark, and I was still mostly hoping to be able to find some shelter from the elements and the wildlife. One of the rules of wasteland survival was against us in this though. Being out after dark even in the safest places was dangerous, between mutated animals and other things I'd heard come out at night, but there was a simpler concern as well: light. With no Moon or stars to provide light, it was all too easy to lose one's path and wander around in circles for hours, at best. At worst, you'd trip on a rock or fall down a hill, breaking a leg.

Even with the small light and map on the Pipbuck, I'd been taught that it wasn't a good idea if it didn't need to be done, so it was important right now that we find somewhere to safely get our bearings, and fast.

It was ten minutes later and with ten minutes less daylight that I saw the first promising sign. Just at the edge of my vision, nestled in the trees ahead was a large, boxy, shape. Checking my map, it was likewise in the dark there. Apparently we'd gone further in this direction than I'd been before.

Halting, I lifted my right hoof out to the side in a silent signal to my companion. Needless to say, he didn't get it.

“Why are we stopping? Is there something up ahead?” he asked tiredly, as he walked up beside me, leaned forward, and squinted into the twilight.

I facehoofed. “Yes, Orphic, there's something ahead, and this-” I hissed at him and waved my foreleg in his face exaggeratedly, “means I wanted to approach, silently.”

He replied indignantly, at a conversational volume, “How was I supposed to know?”

“SHHHH, keep your voice down. I'm going to go take a look. You sit right here until I get back,” I whispered, straining to keep it that way. “Actually, no, see that tree? Go sit behind it.”

In response he glared for a few seconds, but said nothing as he walked over to do it. Good, I thought, that will make this easier. Hoping that if there was anypony, or anything, in the shack that it hadn't seen that display, just now, I lowered myself and began walk in a slow spiral that would bring me behind the structure. Carefully, I moved from tree husk to tree husk, avoiding the dead foliage and dry branches that could give away my approach, and watching the small building draw closer. As I got closer, I could see more details of its construction. Even in the low light, it was apparent that the shack was the sort of scrap metal and corrugated sheeting home that made up the town, so it had to have been built after The War.

I wasn't here for history though, and it wouldn't do me any good now. Another feature that was much more apparent and important to me drew my attention: the single red mark on my EFS. By now I was ten meters or so away, behind an especially thick tree, ready to move up to the house itself. Peeking out from cover, I could see no light coming out through the window, but that didn't tell me very much. I crawled along the ground, and stopped against the wall of the hut, trying not to make a single sound. Switching the safety off on my rifle, I took a breath and steeled my nerves, before slowly standing to peek through the window.

There was no vicious raider or dangerous wildlife inside that I could detect, yet the red mark remained on my EFS. A moment later I heard the skittering sound and saw a small dark shape run across the floor. Letting out a sigh of relief, I stood and walked around to the door. Pushing against it with a hoof, it came open easily and I switched on the flashlight mounted on my wrist. The radroach inside scurried away from the sudden, bright light, but once it saw the pony behind it, came back hissing.

Unimpressed, I smashed the butt of my rifle down on the overzealous creature, crushing its shell and leaving it twitching, but no longer a threat. Orphic told me once that ponies before the war thought that roaches could survive anything, and expected that if the world ended, they'd keep on going. I chuckled, they live through Balefire bombs and yet you can just step on them.

With that taken care of, I waved the light around the room, examining its contents. The radroach moving in suggested that whoever might have owned the makeshift cabin hadn't been around for a while. The whole thing was just the one room I could see by the Pipbuck light, and even that was sparsely decorated. A rusty bedframe with a dirty mattress in the corner, some counters, and what looked like a few pieces of junk. Nothing useful on first sight, discounting the bed and the shelter itself, but I would need to take a closer look once we settled in.

Satisfied that the immediate area was secure, and the building, generously calling it that, would serve our needs for the night, I turned around and walked back to find him.

Proving its usefulness for the third time in a row, the green marker on my EFS led me back quickly to where I told him to stay. Thankfully, seeing as I would have been stumbling around in the night, blind as a bat if it weren't for it. With me trotting over to him, no longer trying to disguise my approach, he must heard me coming, and just before I reached the tree in question, a dark purple head leaned out from behind it. “It's clear, come on,” I informed him.

Nearly as soon as we entered the room, I heard a gasp from behind me. Sighing, I began to reply, “It's just a dead rad-,” is as far as I got before a blurred shape pushed past me and shot into the room like an equine bullet. “What are you-,”

“Look!” Orphic yelled from across the very small room, sitting in front of a square wooden box with a metal horn sticking out of the top. “This is an authentic Pre-War phonograph! By the time the war started, they were being replaced by arcanotech methods of media storage, so they're especially rare. This is a treasure,” he said, looking at it with something like a cross between a foal opening a Hearth's Warming Eve present and a pony who'd struck gold.

“I thought it was junk.”

“Junk?!” he physically recoiled with a look of disbelief edging on disgust. “Do you even understand the signifigance of something like this?”

“Nope. Play with it if you want, but I have work to do,” I replied flatly.

He harumphed and looked back to it. “I will examine it, thank you very much,” he shot back, trying his best to sound serious instead of excitied.

I shrugged, and kicked the door shut behind us. Whatever keeps his mind off things. Sitting down on my haunches, I took my saddlebags off with my teeth and set them down on the floor, emptying them to take stock. Meanwhile, Orphic was turning the thing and craning his neck to look at it from every side possible. I shook my head and turned my attention back to practical matters. Spreading the items out in front of me, I began accounting for them; combat knife, four extra magazines for my rifle, some rope, a canteen full of water, and three more bottles of it, though those were likely conaminated with radiation. In terms of food, there were five boxes of pre-war food, loaded to the brim with enough preservatives to make sure it was still good two centuries later. Probably on purpose knowing them. And finally the meat from the first radroach earlier.

Remebering that, I picked up the knife in my my mouth, stood, and walked over to the second one I'd dispatched a few minutes ago. Putting a hoof down on the corpse to steady it, I plunged the knife into it and began to cut away at the inediable exterior to get to the meat. Orphic looked up from his contraption with a quezy look that said he wasn't planning on eating it, but quickly looked back to his work, igniting his horn to cast some magic at it.

Wrapping the meat in the with other chunks from before, I put in my saddlebags along with the other tallied supplies. The smell drifting up from the knife made me wrinkle my snout and I immediately started wiping it off. The odor the roachmeat gave off was worse than its taste. And it tasted like shit. “Aha! I knew it, three hundred years...” I heard him say to himself, still fascinated by the discovery.

Even with the meat and the small amount from the cache, there wasn't enough to go around. At most, we would last a week if it was rationed carefully. And that wasn't to mention the more pressing concern: potable water. Without more of that, we would dehydrate long before we starved. Assuming we lived long enough to do either...

With shoddy weapons and limited ammunition, running into some of the meaner inhabitants of the wasteland would be a death sentence. I hadn't seen any of them myself, but I'd heard more than enough about manticores and other things that just got pissed off when you shot them.

Suddenly a sound came from the corner of the room, where Orhpic and his contraption were. A small scratching sound followed by what was undoubtably some sort of pre-war music. Orphic's grin at getting the old thing to actually work faded as we listened to the music. I couldn't say what any of the instruments were, but it was a happy song. No words, only an upbeat swinging tempo and lively rythym. I didn't need a history book or to know anything aout music to tell it was the sort that was meant to be danced to. Not a graceful dignified dance, but a care-free one they used to forget their troubles. That made it all the worse.

Neither of us made any move to turn it off. As the song kept going, he slumped further, after a minute lying completely prone on his haunches with his muzzle downcast, facing away from me. We sat there, waiting for the music to end, unable to bring ourselves to stop it before its time. Not too long later, the swelling song ended on a flourish and faded away. For a moment neither of us moved, but after a few beats, Orphic began to lift himself to his hooves, and pulled the arm off of the spinning disc with his magic.

Still facing away from me, I heard him ask in a small voice, “What are we doing?”

“I've been tallying-”

“That's not what I meant!” he stomped a hoof as he spun around to look me in the eyes. His were red and full of silent tears, and his voice lowered again as he started such that I had to strain to hear him. “What are we going to do?”

“We're going to survive, Orph. There are other towns out there. It won't be the same... Not at all, but there's somewhere for us.”

We were both silent for a while after that. Eventually he must have drifted off on the bed, before we could set up watches. I sighed at that. We would have to the next day, but for that night it looked like I'd be staying up for a while at least. I sat down against one of the rickety walls with my carbine laid across my legs and my eyes on my EFS. It'd already been the longest day of my life, and the prospect of sleeping wasn't something I felt I'd ever do again anyway.

I woke with a start the next morning. Apparently at some point I had given up my watch and fallen asleep, though I couldn't remember doing it now. My joints cracking and sore body protesting, I stood up from where I had drifted off the previous night, laying against one of the ramshackle walls. Following the sound of soft snoring, I saw Orphic still asleep, somehow resting on the filthy mattress we had found the night before. I guessed he was too exhausted to care then.

I held up my hoof to check the time, and saw the display give out the hour, impersonally. The Pipbuck clock had no opinion on the matter, no regard for the concerns of those reading it. Of course not; it was a machine, and a near perfect one at that. It had ticked by every single second of the last two and a half centuries, undeterred by ponies cursing it for moving too quickly or slowly, and by apocalyptic war as well. That clock currently showed a time of 0845, much to my chagrin.

Not only had I fallen asleep technically on watch, but overslept as well. I was almost glad Orphic was asleep so he couldn't see this. Unfortunately that would need to be rectified. I got to my hooves, stretching out my legs and torso, and walked slowly over to the bed. Pretending I wasn't going to take some small pleasure in this despite the circumstances, I stood over him, waiting for a moment, then prodded at him with a foreleg.

The slumbering form of the dark violet unicorn shifted slightly, but gave no other indication of waking. I showed him some small mercy, giving him a harder jab with my hoof. This prompted only a annoyed grunt and a sleepy plea for five more minutes. Alright, I gave him enough of a chance, time to get him up. I put one hoof under the thin, ratty, mattress on one side of him, then another on the other side, and flipped it clean over.

Immediately, I was rewarded by the stallion yelling some incoherent version of, I'm up! I'm up! while trying to sleepily lift the mattress up and off of him and scramble to his hooves. After calmly waiting for him to stop, he stood across from me with an annoyed, half-awake, frown. "What was that for?"

I replied flatly, "You needed to wake up. I'm going out, so you need to be on the lookout."

Orphic Tome rubbed at his eyes with a fetlock. "...going out?"

I gave a small exasperated snort without even meaning to. There was just no time for this. Waking up as he pleased and being ready to fight or flee was a luxury he could no longer afford. And yet, explaining that, while he was still in the process of waking up would have nothing but a waste of time. More so than at any other time at least. "Yes, out. Going to do some reconnaissance." In response his eyes started to close again, so I shoved a hoof to his chest and shook him. "You need to be awake in case somepony comes this way."

His eyes opened more at the movement, though he still had the expression of irritation that only somepony who's used to deciding their own easygoing sleep schedule can manage. "Alright, yes, fine I'll stay up."

"Good. If I don't come back in a few hours, assume I won't at all."

"There's a chance of that?"

"There are probably still raiders out there. It's a real possibility." The effect on his face was immediate; he started breathing heavily, his ears drooped, and his eyes took on a fearfully lost quality. Seeing his distraught expression reminded me that I had to make sure he wasn't going to have a mental breakdown. At least not until we were somewhere secure and defensible. "I doubt they'd find me though. Just a precaution," I intoned neutrally, hoping that by not trying to make it sound reassuring he would take it as a legitimate tactical assessment.

Orphic simply nodded unsurely and dropped to his dock, watching the door as I left. I closed the flimsy door behind me and took a deep breath to mentally prepare myself. Solitude never bothered me much, and frankly I'd move faster and much quieter alone. There was fear though; deep, small, and tempered by cold determination, but there nonetheless. Stories of raiders weren't the most exotic of the ones the elders would tell about the wasteland, but they were some of the most brutal, horrifying, and...common. Of course there were monsters one or two spoke about with fear, but every single one who had seen wasteland life had some story about atrocities witnessed at their hooves. And every one without fail knew someone who wasn't around to tell it. If it came down to being captured, I was always assured that turning my weapon on myself would be preferable. It wasn't a thought I looked forward to, and if that was going to happen it would be with my very last bullet. That raiders died just like anything else was my main consolation as I took my first steps back into the forest, and back towards whatever remained of home.

All around were the dead trees of the forest, which would thankfully provide cover for my approach.Now that the mission had begun I nixed the musings and kept my attention squarely on my path and the EFS. No room for distractions right now. As a side effect however, the trip wore on my mental state, despite its disciplined attunement to long stretches requiring focus. Watching the same trees pass over and over made it almost a relief when the Pipbuck map informed me that I would be reaching the town soon.

Though climbing the hill again would have given me a better vantage point, there was too much of a risk that one of them would see me up there. I stayed behind a tree within sight of the nearest buildings and reached into one of my saddlebags. From within I pulled out one of my greatest finds from salvaging: a pair of binoculars. They weren't military issue clearly; according to Orphic at the time, ponies used to watch birds for fun and they were likely for that, but regardless they were a very useful tool. Checking my EFS to make sure nothing was going to sneak up on me, I peered through the beaten binoculars.

From my low angle, not much was visible besides the sides of some houses. Only in the small spaces in between could I see beyond, and what was there wasn't promising. Blood still covered the street in splotches, though the bodies were conspicuously absent. I couldn't hear anything from where I was, but I needed to know for sure. To my left the tree-line extended closer to the nearest buildings, and I would have a better view from there. Very slowly, creeping from tree to tree, I moved around to there, and lifted the binoculars with my hooves. Closer now, I could see a few red marks somewhere in the town, and through the lens I had a better view from where I'd moved. Still, despite large spots of dried blood and remains of burned and broken homes, there were no bodies to be seen. Sweeping over to where the red marks were congregated, my vision came to a larger two-story construction. This one made of logs and stones as well as scrap metal; one of the newer buildings we'd made. It was meant to be a sort of meeting place and dining area, but now...

I turned my head and looked away from the grisly sight, but I could still see it. The façade I passed every day had been partially painted with blood. A coat of dark maroon had been smeared and brushed haphazardly over the wood. I suppressed my gagging at the picture that wouldn't leave. There were chunks in it...

It was just too much. I stared down at the ground trying to count and memorize the cracks in the dirt. Whatever I thought I might find here, it wasn't that. And I knew it was just the beginning of what I'd see if I could get closer. No chance of that now though. There would be no survivors, and if there were that would have been worse yet. This place was theirs now.

A sudden moving light in my peripheral vision tore me out of my thoughts as I jumped behind the tree to make sure I was concealed. Immediately I readied the rifle slung across my chest, and peeked out to see what it was. As soon as my head was around the trunk, I activated SATS and froze time to a standstill. With the targeting spell's magic my vision zoomed across the barren field between us and into a raider stallion walking out from around the building nearest the tree-line. Highlighted in the glow, there could be no mistake about what he was, even in different circumstances. His armor was cobbled together and adorned with sharp spikes and vicious decorations. The old blood of past victims stained his armor and his thin coat alike, and the stringy remnants of his tangled mane hung down over part of his face. The other half covered in scars and decades of unrepressed manic rage. This was the thing that paraded in equine form. My Pipbuck tempted me. Over a 50% to hit the head from where I was. It would be so quick, and the world would be improved by one infinitesimal increment.

Still myself frozen in the consideration afforded to me by the spell, I knew as soon as the thought emerged that I couldn't act on it. Only a one in two chance to hit, less than that it would be a lethal shot, and even if it was it would have accomplished nothing but bringing every raider around down on me. Reason and procedure won...as it usually did. I found myself almost wishing he was facing my direction and I could justify shooting him out of necessity. I broke out of the arcane targeting matrix and slid back behind the tree, cursing the raiders, the wasteland, and myself most of all. Waiting for him to safely pass took far too long, which only made my restraint more infuriating. I swore again that I would come back one day, while slinking back to inform Orphic of my findings. If it takes the rest of my life, I'll make them pay.

The trip back didn't seem to take as long as the way there did, at first anyway. Being unsure what I'd find had made it seem longer, for the second time in as many days. Now that I had a concrete answer, as terrible an answer as it was, time moved faster. No wondering or worrying, just emptiness for the moment. All I had to do then was walk back and explain to my friend that everyone he knew was dead and we could never go home again.

That brought out a sigh. Not an annoyed, indignant, gesture, but a deep one with all the air in my lungs. It was the only thing to do at the time. I marched on in a solemn way, as if to an execution, but not my own. When I reached the shack, it would be up to me to relay what I'd seen, and then come up with our next step. And I had absolutely no doubt that he was holding onto some hope that the raiders had moved on; that we would find survivors and rebuild and things would be normal again. I trudged silently through long-dead flora to an execution, and I was to be the executioner.

Fuck, now I'm getting poetic, I thought. It would have been a joke otherwise, but right now it was a bad sign. One that this was affecting me more than I could suppress. I brought the map up, hoping at once that I was almost there and still far away. Either way I'd have to go through something unpleasant, whether with Orphic or in my head. As it turned out, I was nearing the shack and would be there in just a few minutes. I put the hoof down and kept going.

As expected, it only took a few short minutes to come up on the small building. I knocked on the door. Immediately, I heard scrambling hooves and a familiar voice tell from inside. "Who is it?"

As if asking would help if it weren't me. "It's High Caliber."

The door opened instantly, and he stepped back to let me in, floating the pistol back into his bag. Can't fault him for that at least, I thought, very slightly reassured, but no more looking forward to what was next. I walked inside and set down my bags. "Bad news, Orphic."

"W-what...?" He sank down onto his dock and stared.

I shook my head, it would be easiest to just get this out. "They haven't left, and don't seem to plan on it."

"They won't leave?! What about everypony else?"

My stomach twisted. Why did he have to ask? I started slowly, and said as carefully as I could manage, "There is nopony else. Not anymore. They've stopped and we have no way to know for how long."

"Can't we do something?" There was blatant desperation in his voice and wide eyes.

I shook my head, pointlessly. We both knew we couldn't take it back. "We can live. There are other places in the wasteland."

His face twisted in a rare display of anger. "So that's it? We go somewhere else? What about mom, what about all our friends and neighbors?!"

"They're dead. If they're lucky."

The unicorn looked at me in shock, as if he couldn't believe I'd actually said it. He sank to the floor entirely and after a moment replied in a quiet voice, "That was cold."

"Yes, cold and harsh and pitiless. And if you'd listened to anything we'd ever been told about the wasteland you would know that's what it takes to get by."

"We're just going to give up on morality then? Do whatever to survive and forget about who we leave behind?" His tone was bitter and he still hadn't moved.

"I'll be as cold and pitiless as it takes to keep myself, and your dumb ass, alive. I'll leave the questions of philosophy to you." After that there was a silence. The two of us at each other for a solid minute, until finally he spat out a single word.

"Where?"

That was a relief. I didn't want to have to drag him out of there and wherever we were going next. Speaking of which, I still needed to figure that out. I pulled up my map to give me time to decide. The larger one had very few markers on it, a testament to how close to home I'd always been until now. One for there, not far from where we were now. Another one to mark the ruins we'd been searching yesterday. A prewar factory of some sort as well, but nothing promising. "We'll go back to the ruins and finish salvaging. There will be time to search everywhere now, so we may find more food."

All I got out of him was a sullen "Alright." Picking himself up off the floor and putting his bags back on he stood waiting for me to take the lead. I didn't want to waste any time putting as much distance between us and the raiders as equinely possible. Hard as it was to turn our backs on home. I nodded and stood as well, walking to the door, and leaving.

The walk went silently, with neither of us feeling much like talking after earlier. About an hour passed of walking through the leaf-less trees before anything of note happened. The shack we started from was somewhat closer to the ruins than town was, but the only route available took us closer to danger than I was comfortable with. Once again as we walked I saw a red mark on EFS, followed by a second one. Ducking behind the nearest tree, I motioned for Orphic to do the same.

He did, but slowly. "What? More overgrown insects?"

I was about to snap at him to get down regardless, when I knew for sure it wasn't. Radroaches and mantises didn't speak. Far off yet, I could hear mocking laughter in two voices, just before two raiders, a mare and a stallion, walked out from behind a thick bunch of trees. Without hesitation this time, I lifted my rifle and fired a short burst across the two monsters. I couldn't tell if the mare was hit, but the stallion clearly was and stumbled behind a tree with a shout of rage.

I didn't have time to make sure. Next thing I knew the mare was leaning out of cover with a submachine gun in her mouth. There was barely time for me to duck back, as the rapid-fired stream of lead pounded against the other side of my tree, not two entire feet from me. A few trees away, Orphic was huddled under his own tree. I could have used his support, but there was no way I could convince him right now.

Eventually the noise stopped, but immediately, one of the target marker behind me started moving. It could have been heading straight for me! Hefting the rifle I peeked out and immediately activated SATS. A bloodthirsty raider, terrifying as any other, was running out from behind his tree, but not in my direction. Apparently, I hadn't hit the stallion in the legs, and his armor, makeshift as it was, must have offered some protection against the ironically small projectiles. He was running away, back the way he'd came. It was strange behavior from I knew of raiders at least; stories told about near-feral animals attacking ferociously and without mercy or thought. I chalked it up the the confusion of being in the trees. Without the advantage I had, they probably didn't know how many enemies they'd stumbled on, or where they were. It wasn't something I could count on for long with just me, but he wouldn't have the chance to set the rest of the dogs on us anyway. I targeted his back right leg, just at the knee, and fired a single shot in slow-motion.

Even with my practiced aim, the bullet-time magic accompanying the low, slow, boom only served to give me more time to kick myself for the miss. The bullet sailed past, missing him completely, and the world sped back into its normal speed. I ducked back seconds before the magazine clicked into the mare's gun and she ran to another tree. Her hoof beats mixed with those of the fading stallion's. Now we were on the clock. We had been passing close to the town now, and it wouldn't take him more than a few minutes to round up some friends and come back for us. The raider mare meanwhile still didn't have a sight on me, but her angle was better now. I leaned out again and squeezed the trigger for another burst at her current cover.

It stopped her from moving, but this was only wasting valuable time. The other raider would get closer to bringing the rest every second, and that would be it for both of us, if we lasted that long. I would need to reload soon, and between the two of us, a unicorn was going to win. There was one thing left to do that might get us out of this, loathe though I was to put our lives in his hooves. I stopped shooting just long enough to yell over to the cowering unicorn stallion I'd brought with me. "Orphic!"

His head peaked up, terrified, and his sidearm was still clutched shakily in his magic. In the brief time it took to do that, my opponent was aware, she was already leaning out and aiming at me. Time slowed again, this time mundanely as I looked at what could well be my death and threw myself backwards. As I fell, I had just enough time to wonder if it would be fast enough.

Bullets whizzed past in the air, my next thought was proof that I was fast enough, this time. While I was scrambling back to my hooves, more shots rang out, but these ones sounded different. A unicorn mare with her mane stuck into spikes to match the ones on her cobbled-together barding darted out from behind her arboreal cover. She wasn't fast enough this time. My shots riddled her torso, the mare dropping where she was and lying motionless. Immediately, seeing no other hostiles on EFS, I trotted over to check her body. Standing over her bleeding form, one thing was instantly clear: she wasn't dead. Things were never really that easy.

"Sisters above..." a voice behind me muttered. The next sound I knew was him turning away, yet I approached. Her breathing was ragged, and blood leaked from some places and spurted from others, and through it she weakly tried to move. Her forelegs reached up at me as I approached, but not for help, not for an embrace. Her mouth was foaming pink, and her face was a mask of impotent hate. Even now, if her limbs weren't failing the nameless raider mare, she would have tried to kill me. I snatched up her gun, and rifled though her bag for ammunition. Weak flailing limbs beat against my legs, but to absolutely no avail.

The firearm was in poor condition, but I may have been able to repair it, I figured at the time. Taking anything of value, I walked back to Orphic who sat against one of the trees. He looked up at me, and asked simply, "Aren't you going to do something?"

"No." I pointed a toe at the second-hoof gun I'd set before him. "Take that. We need to leave. Now."

It was ten minutes before we heard the sound of distant hoof beats. Fifteen before the sounds were loud enough that I knew we couldn't outrun them. The two of us had been walking all day, and it had its toll. Neither of us were going to reach the ruins. And what if we did? It was barely a town in life, its corpse wasn't going to hide us from a horde of crazed killers.

"We aren't going to make it!" the stallion running beside me shouted. It was old news to the one with the map. I pulled it up, remembering there was one other option left. To the north was a Pre-War Robronco factory. Even though it was closer than the nearest ruins, it hadn't been scavenged from in my memory. We were told in training to stay away from it, due to dangers of radiation and the building being especially unstable after all this time weathering the elements. Of course, that wasn't good enough for some ponies. There were rumors, or really more legends, that foals who went off to explore it never came back. Though that was likely to keep them away, and there were other stories as well. All the way from monstrous creatures to it being haunted by the ghost of a Ministry Mare. Just stories for colts and fillies. And right now it was our best chance. "This way!" I shouted over, leading him towards it.

By the time five more minutes had passed, we could see the mob behind us, and the factory looming in front. No more trees covered us here, and the raiders had started taking potshots at us as we ran across the pavement surrounding the factory. Occasionally a bullet would strike the ground and throw stinging chunks of rock up, only to ricochet off in perilous ways. It would only take one now.

I didn't think we were going to make it. By now the pounding of their hooves on stone was all around us. I fought the urge to look back, for fear it would slow me down, even for a moment, and that they would be even closer than they sounded. But the closer we got to the factory, the fewer jeering taunts and threats we heard. The sheer utilitarian edifice of the factory was right above us now, and we ran up the wide stone steps to reach the front doors. A clanging sound rang from the wall next to me where a thrown crowbar hit the side of the building. Pushing myself for a the last few drops of energy I could muster, I galloped up and threw the doors open, waiting only barely long enough for Orphic to dart in as well, and slamming the door shut.

A lone stallion pounded on the door frantically. "Come out, bitch! I'll cut you to pieces!" I twisted the lock shut, and toppled over a rusty filing cabinet, throwing up a small cloud of metallic dust, and pushed it in front of the door for good measure. I stood on top of the cabinet and looked out one of the high, small windows on the door. The rest of the group was standing away, looking more angry than scared, stomping and kicking.

One of them shouted to the one still pounding at the door. "Leave it alone. They're fucked now anyway." That seemed to convince him, after giving it a few minutes to sink in, anyway. I turned and stepped down, looking at our surroundings briefly. The only important part now being that nothing here was an immediate danger, despite the disconcerting sounds of metal scraping on metal and occasional clanging from further inside.

The violet unicorn with me stopped his wheezing and looked up to ask me, "What do you think they meant? They can't have heard about this place?"

I dropped to my haunches, eager to rest for a few minutes at least. "I don't know. We'll just wait until they leave."

We sat in silence then, gaining back what energy we could. Meanwhile, deeper in the building we'd ran to for safety, old things moved.