Despite my desire to leave once the repairs to the sky chariot had been finished, I agreed to wait a few hours more before we left the safety of Steeldome for the long road ahead of us. The rest would do both Wildfire and myself some good, as we were still recovering from our injuries incurred from the trip out to the Power Station, and the fight with Rivets in the Tower. It also gave Stonehoof the chance to finish any trading he wished to do with the locals. After our recent efforts in helping the ponies of the Dome, much of the distrust they had felt towards outsiders had vanished. All it took was nearly dying by radscorpion venom, yeah, not going that route again anytime soon. The large gray earth pony was out doing just that, stocking up on as much ammo and supplies as he could for our upcoming trip. He’d mentioned hearing of somepony selling rare types of ammo before he left and had gone to check up on that as well. It’d be nice to have a few more rounds for my revolver than what I had currently. This left Wild and myself to lay about inside our temporary quarters in the Dome, something neither one of us was good at, it seems. The mare sat across from me on a old worn yellow couch checking her battle saddle’s rifles. She’d hardly said two words since the fight with Rivets, the crazed mares words having struck the pegasus hard.

I looked away from my friend and sighed softly to myself. It was clear her past mistake troubled her greatly, but until she decided to talk about it, there was little I could do and I wasn’t about to force her to talk about it and reopen a wound that ran deeply. Laying my head down upon the arms of the couch I was resting on, my mind began to wander to the tasks that still lay ahead. For all that I had done, I was somewhat further away from Ebony than when I started. Wild had said the trip would take us only a few hours by air, and we should reach Kanter City by nightfall. It seemed the best time to approach the city at least, with guards patrolling the walls and griffon mercenaries circling from the air. We’d land in the small half-built town of Sticks under the cover of darkness and use the subway tunnels Wild had used to escape the city before to sneak inside. Once we got past the hazards and ghouls that she said lived in the tunnels, it would only be a matter of finding my sister with my Pipbuck. It was a long shot, but it was also the only shot I had at finding Ebony.

“How can you trust me?” Wild’s question snapped me back from my thoughts and broke the silence that had built between us over the past few hours. I glanced across the room to the orange-winged mare, a partially rebuilt rifle laying between her hooves, its twin propped up beside the couch where the saddle lay. Though she had her eyes fixed upon the parts, it was clear she wasn’t really seeing the parts.

“You’ve given me no reason not to trust you, Wild...should I not?” I asked her. She looked away and frowned, rubbing one of her forehooves into the couch and nudging the barrel of her rifle with her nose before looking back to me. While I haven’t known her more than two or three days, this did not seem typical for the pegasus. I decided to press on, “You saved Stone and myself at the well, and you’ve gone out of your way since then to help me now. Despite what you might say, I think you really want to help.” Just then the front door opened to our temporary home and Stonehoof trotted inside. The gray stallion stopping as he noticed the uncharacteristic look on Wild’s face and perked his ears towards me.

“I thought after what Rivets said -” she began, but I quickly cut her off, sitting up on my couch to turn and face her better.

“I don’t trust what Rivets said, Wild. The mare was out of her mind, talking about voices in her head.” I held up a hoof to the side of my head and made a circle in the air (the universal sign for a crazy pony). “It was also pretty clear she was twisting the words to suit her point of view, and one thing I’ve learned from working in security is that there are always two sides to every story.”

“It's true,” she said, looking down to her hooves on the couch, her long red mane falling across her face hiding her green eyes from me.

Stone quietly shut the door behind him with a light kick and shrugged his heavy packs off his flanks to lay them in the floor; judging by the sounds coming from inside, he had good luck with his trading.

“I know and I’m fairly sure Stone has managed to figure enough of it out himself.” The gray pony nodded his head slowly as he looked over to Wild with a patent smile. She jerked her head up to look towards us both, a surprised look in her green eyes.

“Do you want to tell us about it?” I wasn’t sure if I should have asked it, given how she’d reacted before when I’d pressed, but she had brought it up this time. For his part, Stone remained silent, sitting down beside his packs.

“You deserve to know who you’re traveling with,” she began, hooves working on her rifle as she spoke. “When I mentioned to you yesterday morning that I’d been given files on Steeldome, I hadn’t said why. The Enclave had known about Steeldome for some time, but only recently had they decided to take it for themselves. I was given the plans, because I was the one who was supposed to plan the entire attack. But I never was one to just sit idly by. Rivets was right when she told you I led the attack on the town, along with twelve other pegasi and the fire support of the sky chariot.” She looked up to me, green eyes fixed upon my face as she continued, “You know I was a soldier of the Enclave, a Wing Commander. I won’t bother saying I was just following orders, as that excuse has always sounded weak to my ears. I knew what I was doing and could have said no. We’d been told that Steeldome was under the control of the Steel Rangers and that it held secrets that would help us feed our people.”

“How’s that?” Stone asked from the door. I’d managed to figure it out after the talk we’d had at Crossroads a few nights back but let her explain it to Stone.

“Like I told Shadow at Crossroads, raw materials for weapons and armor are hard to come by in the clouds. But so is food, and there’s barely enough to feed each city in the Enclave and rarely is there any to spare. What food we grow ourselves is dependent upon the pegasus towers that were built near the end of the war by Rainbow Dash and scattered across Equestria. I have no real idea how it works, so don’t ask; to be honest, I don’t think many know how it really works, but so far as I’ve been able to tell, it doesn’t work very good. There have been strict laws in place to control the population of each city, so same sex relationships are encouraged by the government, earning a pony special food. Families are allowed one foal, unless they have family in the military. That earns a family extra rations and the right to have another foal. But even then, it can still be very tight, and some accidents happen.” At the word “accident,” she closed her eyes and rubbed a hoof against her cheek before continuing.

Stone and I shared a knowing look. I’d already been forming a low opinion of the Enclave, but it was dropping with every passing second. Neither of us interrupted the tale, although Stone moved over towards Wild and sat down beside her, the pegasus opening her eyes and looking up as she heard him approach. A slight smile formed on her lips before it faded and she continued her tale.

“Fuck, anyway, I’m sure you're wondering what any of this has to do with Steeldome. Well, about eight years ago, a dragon attacked the city of Windfall, north of Stormport. I’d just been promoted to wing commander and was one of three Wings sent to try and help our neighboring city. By the time our sky chariots arrived, it was far too late. The dragon had left and what remained of Windfall was falling to the ground.” I idly wondered how that could be, since from what little I knew of pegasi cities was they were made of clouds, but decided to ask another time.

“We could have saved the city in a few days, since it would take weeks for it to crash into the wasteland. But it seemed the damned dragon wasn’t finished with the city, and was intent on its total destruction. Or maybe it was just coming back to kill us, who the hell knows. Whatever its reasoning, we didn’t have anything heavy enough to take it out. No Raptor was within a hundred miles of Windfall, and I doubt the Enclave would have risked one. Our commander ordered us to save as many of the wounded as we could and retreat. We lost half the population to the attack, and the rest were horribly wounded.”

“When we arrived back in Stormport, we contacted the Enclave to report what had happened and request help with the refuges. There was barely enough food for us, let alone over two hundred survivors.” I could see where this was going. “They regretfully informed us that there was no food to spare and told us to do the best we could. They’d send help as soon as they could...basically, they told us to fuck off.”

“So, when somepony found information about what Steeldome had been in our pre war records, a recon team was sent down to check it out.” With a loud snap, the barrel of her rifle slid home into the body of the weapon. “The report I saw showed a number of Steel Rangers in control of the facility, with a few of their acolytes in salvaged security barding, as well as the facility’s automated systems. There’s no love lost between The Rangers and the Enclave; they’d happily take any chance to kill one another.”

"So ya’ll attacked,” Stone said simply, and the mare nodded her head, working the remaining parts of her rifle into place with practiced ease as she spoke.

“So we attacked. We dropped in at night, using the dark to cover our approach to the Dome. The automated defenses took down two of my fliers on the approach, but we managed to destroy most of them. Once we had hooves on the ground, we blasted our way inside through a side access hatch the recon team had spotted. Didn’t take much; I suppose the builders never intended this place to fend off an attack. Inside we started taking fire from what I thought was Steel Rangers acolytes. We...killed several of them as we pushed our way into the Dome.” She let the rifle rest beside the other as she reached over and picked up the saddle with her mouth, setting it between her hooves she reached for a screwdriver to work on it. Stone sat beside her, watching the pegasus work, ears perked to listen to her story.

“We started taking casualties: four killed, with three more wounded, but able to fight, so we pressed on. We all knew what was at stake, and how much Stormport needed the food. It wasn’t until we started into the center of town that I began to sense something wasn’t right.” Her hoof worked the screwdriver to tighten up anything loose on the metal harnesses for the rifles of the saddle, “I started getting reports of civvies running for cover. The Steel Rangers were never known for keeping anypony around who wasn’t able to fight or wasn’t useful to them in someway, so this was unexpected. Despite them being dirt ponies, we would never stoop to killing innocent ponies.”

“I ordered everypony to hold their position while I tried to figure out what was going on. Bluesky was running back to cover when he took a shot to his wing and went down. I went out to drag him back into cover...,” the screwdriver she held began to shake as her words spilled out more quickly, “...I never saw the filly, just the security guard...he - he must have been trying to protect her, fuck I dunno. I thought he was getting ready to fire on Blue or me...I snapped off a quick shot...just to force him into cover. The filly stumbled in front of the security guard...”

I closed my eyes and lowered my head; beside the door Stone reached a hoof up to remove his worn hat from his head, the gray earth pony reaching a hoof up to lay it against her shoulder. I had some idea of what to expect, but not that. Across from us, Wild let the screwdriver drop from her hoof and Stone easily caught it before it could roll under the couch.

“After that...I pulled my team back to the wall and returned to Stormport.”

“Wild, it weren’t yer fault. Ya rightly didn’t know...,” Stone started to say, but the mare wasn’t finished, and cut him off.

“When we returned to base, I was told I had been mistaken, that I hadn’t seen a filly, but an enemy combatant getting ready to kill Bluesky. They wanted me to change my report, to keep quiet about the whole thing. Fuck them, they tried to give me a Celestia damned medal saying I’d saved the life of a wounded soldier.” Grief was giving way to anger now. “I told them where they could stick their fucking medal and was relieved of duty and dragged off to a holding cell. They told my family I had been infected by some surface disease and needed to be quarantined.”

“They told me I could either change my story or become a Dashite. Either way, they’d be sending another team down to finish what I’d started. Fuck me, we’d become little better than the damned raiders.” Her stormy blue eyes narrowed. With a half sob she glanced back to her flank and the odd mark she bore upon it.

“I told’em where to go fuck themselves, so they branded me a Dashite. Took four of them to hold me down while a fifth burned away my cutie mark and branded me a traitor. After that, they tossed me into a cell until they could be troubled with letting me go to the surface or killing me. Luckily for me, Bluesky and most of my wing had heard what had happened, I was only in the cell for a few hours before they came for me.” She looked from Stone to me, “With their help and the help of a few pegasi who seemed to know what was going on, we took our equipment and the sky chariot back to the surface. I wasn’t going to just let those bastards get away with murder.”

“So, you fought the second team?” I asked, head tilted to the side. That was quite the risk.

“You bet your plot we fought those bastards.” The mare narrowed her eyes and growled. Beside her Stone snorted softly, smiling at the fierce temper of the pegasus. “They’d just started attacking the Dome when we caught up with them. Pinned between the surviving security ponies and my wing they fought to the end.” With a stomp of her hoof, she looked away.

“After the fight, Shortfuse thanked me for what we’d done...I didn’t understand it; she knew I was the one who lead the first attack, but she was thanking me.”

“Everypony makes mistakes, Wild. It would have been easier for you to just walk away from what was happening, or to simply go along with what the Enclave wanted you to do. But you didn’t,” I said, looking squarely into those stormy blue eyes, seeing a hint of tears ready to fall but held back, “You fought to fix your mistake and I think Fuse respects you for that.”

“Shadow’s right, Wild. Ya did what ya thought was right for those dependin’ on ya. But when th’ truth became clear, ya did th’ right thing. If ya hadn’t, a lot more innocent pony’s would’a died.” Stone reached a hoof up once more and turned Wild’s face back towards us, or rather himself, “Rivet’s was just tellin’ it twisted-like; she didn’t know th’ whole story. Ah reckon both Shadow and ah have no trouble with trustin’ ya.”

“Like I already said, you saved both Stone and myself when you didn’t have to. I wouldn’t leave the fate of my sister in the hooves of a pony I didn’t trust,” I added to Stone’s words, smiling over to the pegasus as she looked between us.

With her story told, the winged mare looked as if a heavy weight had been lifted from her back, and within an hour was mostly back to her old self. With the help of Stonehoof, the two managed to finish reassembling her battle saddle and were now replacing the rifles into their metal holsters. She’d told us a good deal of her past in just that one go; still, I wondered what had become of her fellow pegasi that had defected with her. And how had she ended up in Kanter City? At the moment, I let those questions go. She had told us as much as she was willing to, and I’d trust her to tell us the rest when she was ready. The three of us looked up as a hoof knocked upon our door.

I rose from my place on the couch, leaving them to finish tightening the screws on her weapons. Walking towards the door, I opened it to find two ponies standing outside our temporary home. Both I knew fairly well given the short amount of time I’d been in the city.

Shortfuse still sat in her chair, something likely never to change for the middle aged orange unicorn. She looked rested given the events earlier in the day, with fresh bandages wrapped around her right shoulder and hoof.

Beside the mare stood her daughter, Gearhearts. The young filly was looking up to me with a grin full of youthful energy and joy. Her white coat was once again covered in grease and other dark stains. She still wore her saddlebags, with tools and bits of machinery tucked into the worn packs. Her mother was about to speak, but Gearhearts managed to speak up first.

“It’s finished!”

Smiling back to the young filly, I heard my friends walk up behind me.

“Then it’s high time we got to going.”

Stone and I stood before the now fully repaired and flight-ready sky chariot. Its sleek black armored hull reflected the overhead lighting, giving the machine a rather deadly look. Both doors to the passenger compartment stood open, and I could see ponies standing on the other side of the chariot. All around us, the ponies of Steeldome had began to arrive to see us off, and though I knew only a hooffull of them, they all seemed to know me.

“I wish we could do more,” Fuse said from beside me. Turning, I looked to the mare and she smiled up at me, “You and your friends have done far more for Steeldome than anypony else in a long time.” She offered her unwounded hoof to me, and I took it gently, shaking it.

“I’d like to say we did it for the right reasons, but -”

“You did it to save your sister, something I can relate to.” Harvest said as he stepped up beside his mother, nodding his head to me he continued, “You didn’t have to try and stop Rivets, or push my sister out of the path of that bullet.”

“I suppose not, but my parents didn’t raise me to look the other way,” I responded, releasing Fuse’s hoof and smiling to both ponies before focusing on Fuse, “What will you do now?” I asked her. Behind me, I heard Stone walk over to help Wild into the pilot yoke of the chariot, as well as the energetic voice of Gearhearts as she tried to help the two.

“I don’t know; without my mother’s help, I am unsure if we can ever get the power talisman hooked up correctly to the generators. I think - I think it’s about time we stopped hiding behind our walls and maybe get out there and start helping.” My smile widened upon hearing those words and I nodded my head.

“I think the ponies of Crossroads would welcome your help.”

“Thank you, Shadow. Now...go save your sister.” Fuse said, with a nod of her head towards the chariot. I bowed my own head to both, and turned away.

As I approached the front of the chariot, Wild had just finished being strapped into the harness and was working a few of the controls built into the sides of the piloting yoke. She stopped, looking up to me as I drew closer, and grinned.

“Well then, kid. You ready to travel in style?” Beside her, Stone smirked and finished his work on the harnesses before walking around beside me. Gearhearts unplugged her hoofheld terminal from the side of the yoke and trotted back to her mother’s side.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I answered with a grin of my own. Wild seemed far more at ease around us now, “You sure you're up for this?”

“Pfft, just try and stop me.” Her wings flared out fully, the orange feathers glowing softly in the overhead lighting and giving a mighty snap downwards, blowing up dirt and leaves.

“Ah reckon we might wanna climb aboard ‘fore she takes off without us,” Stone said with a chuckle, a hoof raised to hold his hat in place from the sudden blast of air.

“Put on the headsets beside the seats, so we can remain in contact more easily with one another,” Wild called out as we turned away from her and walked towards the open doors.

With a cheer or two from the crowd of ponies, we climbed aboard. I expected our hooves to ring loudly once we entered the passenger compartment, but found them muffed by the sheet of rubber thrown across the floor. It was as black inside as it was out, the overhead lighting casting a dim glow upon the empty seats and our saddlebags laying in the floor.

We both found the headsets, and slipped them on over our heads. At first I heard nothing but static in my ear; then Wild’s voice came through.

“You colts ready back there?”

“Take us up, Wild,” I said into the mic. A moment later, the entire chariot rocked and I braced my hooves against the floor. We heard and felt a steady hum run through the length of the compartment below us. I carefully made my way to the edge of the doorway and looked out, as more dirt and debris began to blow away from below us as we rose into the air. Outside, ponies were waving to us as we rose higher, Shortfuse and her family among them.

As Wild began to turn us slowly away from the ponies below and point us towards the Dome’s outer wall, I was beginning to wonder how exactly we were going to get out (odd, I know, but I was a bit too excited to be finally leaving to notice that until now). A second later my unasked question was answered, as a portal began to open up atop the wall. Two doors slid back into releases within the wall itself, forming a perfect square. Well, it stood to reason that they had to have had a way to get the building materials into the dome somehow, and the front door was far too narrow.

Leaning out a bit from the doorway, I spotted Wild in front of us, flapping her wings steadily as she began pulling us forwards. As I watched, we passed through the widening gap and soared out into the evening skies of the wasteland. Looking back, the doors slowly began to close behind us, but I quickly lost sight of them as Wild once again changed our heading and we doubled back, skimming atop the surface of the hilltop and beginning to speed east.

Hang on Ebony, I’m on my way...

I closed my eyes as the warm air blew across my mane and face. Taking a deep breath, I smiled; up here the scent of ash and death seemed so far away, and I could almost imagine the world as it had been so long ago. Almost. Opening my eyes wide to look across the vast open expanse of the Povoni Desert, I could see for miles in every direction; at least, as much as the narrow open doorway would allow. Casting my eyes downwards to the rapidly passing ground below us, I watched the railroad tracks zip past; we were traveling so quickly, they were little more than a blur. Following them would take us directly to Kanter City, and with there being so few other landmarks in the desert, it made sense to follow them. Looking up, I scanned the landscape once more, but beyond cactus, rocks, sand and more sand there was little else to see. The odd building passed by below us, the ruins of a long abandoned train stop or maintenance shed. I wondered if the survivors who settled Crossroads had stopped at them, or if they had passed them on by as we had.

Looking further forward on the chariot, I craned my neck to try and spot the pilot of our new ride. The orange pegasus wore the kevlar yoke of the chariot, resting between her shoulders and in front of her wings; the feathered limbs rose and fell rapidly as she pulled us through the darkening sky. Upon her head was a black armored helmet. It looked oddly familiar, and I recalled her having another like it in her shack back near Crossroads. A piece of Enclave armor? She’d mentioned that the pegasi used a type of power armor. My thoughts were derailed a moment later as her voice came through the headset I wore atop my ears.

“Checking out my flank again, kid?” she said, turning her visored head back towards me, a grin dancing across her lips. I smirked back and shook my head at the mare.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Wild,” I answered back into my own mic. “How are you holding up?” We’d been flying for several hours now; the sky overhead was darkening as night fell. Before much longer it would be nearly pitch black. My first night at Lonesome Hoof came back to me, but I doubted Wild would need to worry about falling into a ditch or stumbling across a nest of scorpions while in the sky.

“Good; I’m not so out of shape that I can’t pull a skinny-ass Stable pony and one overweight earth pony a couple miles.” I could hear the grin in her voice and chuckled, glad that she seemed in good spirits. Behind me, Stone, who had been doing a little maintenance on his rifle, spoke up.

“Ah’m not overweight...just big boned is all.” The earth pony’s hat sat beside him, tucked under his saddlebags to keep the strong winds blowing inside the compartment from ripping it out. As I thought of said wind blowing into the chariot, I glanced back to the two air vents positioned at the top of the rear wall. The air was being pushed out through them, keeping the drag to a minimum, or so Wild had said. This was completely beyond me. It was enough that it worked or else I’d imagine we’d be slowed down by the drag.

“Oh? I thought you had a small d -,” the mare began, but I quickly cut her off before she could finish that comment; as it was, Stone muttered to himself and went back to working on his rifle.

“How much longer until we reach the city?”

“We’re nearly there now, its just over the next rise actually, if you want a look, ya might wanna move to the other door. I’m not taking us very close.” I nodded, then stopped, realising she wouldn’t be able to see me. I snorted and moved away from the doorway, stepping across the rubber covered floor (which I soon learned was to give the ponies inside traction to walk as the chariot moved about) to the other side of the compartment. Stone had already climbed to his hooves and was standing there, peering out into the darkening landscape.

“Never seen it?” I asked the earth pony as I settled in beside him in the doorframe, following his green eyes to the horizon ahead of us.

“No, can’t say ah rightly have. Ain’t a place a pony goes to for sight seein’,” was his response. Ahead of us, the ground began to rise sharply. We skimmed the desert floor as the ground climbed towards our transport, before sailing out across the edge of a cliff as the ground dropped suddenly away from us. We soared out across the vast open plains once more and at once I spotted it, a dark twisted thing jutting up from the wasteland. My eyes widened at the sight.

Before us lay the ruined metropolis of Kanter City, by all accounts the source of all the surrounding wasteland’s troubles, as well as my own. It was likely the prison to which my sister and the others stolen from my Stable had been taken. It was also the home of an army of raiders and their griffon allies, where ponies unlucky enough to be captured were brought for reasons still unknown. I narrowed my eyes and felt my ears swivel back at the foreboding mass of steel and stone we were circling.

Like everything else in the wasteland, time had not been kind to the once lively city. The outskirts of the city were a mass of small buildings and roadways, all dark and left to be reclaimed by the wasteland. Tall shattered towers rose up from the heart of the city, jagged rips and tears opening them to the night sky. Not a single one stood unbroken in some way, and all had had their tops sheared away long ago by the blasts that had killed the once-mighty city. For a moment, I was reminded of the Stable’s graveyard we’d built upon the surface. These twisted remains of the once mighty skyscrapers reminded me of the weathered tombstones. Oddly fitting given that for over a century and a half, this city had become a mass grave for the thousands of ponies that had died here, and, by all accounts, that were still dying within its borders.

The only signs of life from this far away were tall, dark pillars of smoke rising from between the towers. The red glow of fire burned within the city’s heart, hidden behind a massive defensive wall that had been built sometime after the bombs had fallen. It did not encircle the entire city, but only a small section of it, along with what appeared to be the train yards.

With a dip of Wild’s right wing, we began to descend from the sky and circle around the ruined city. As she took us southeast, we passed across one of the old highways that entered the city. Tearing my gaze away from the ruins, I looked below us. Ruined chariots lay everywhere upon the highway, some overturned, others simply abandoned. Many appeared to have been burned. They ranged in size from a small family wagon to larger buses and emergency vehicles of every type. I wondered how many of the ponies trying to escape their homes had died on the road below us when the Zebras unleashed their weapons on Kanter City.

My eyes rose and once more fixed upon the city as we passed by it. It was impossible to make out much more from this distance and in the darkness, but I knew one thing...it was huge. Even taking into account the fact that we’d only need to search the areas behind those walls, that still left us several dozen city blocks to search along with the buildings. A glance to the train yard made me wonder if they hadn’t already been moved somewhere else. I could make out a long black shape sitting within the yard, likely the train Stone had said the raiders used. Was the tunnel clear?

I sat down hard on my backside and watched the city pass by, before Wild turned us south, where we’d land and try and make our way into the city by the subway tunnels. I closed my eyes and felt my heart tighten in my chest as a single thought ran through my mind.

How the hell was I supposed to find my sister in all that?

Stone had returned to his weapon as we flew south, Kanter City growing distant behind us as we followed the dust covered roadway below. It would lead us to the subway station and our way inside the city. My mind wandered from the daunting task ahead of us and I watched the faded yellow lines of the road whip past, a rusted hulk of a chariot appearing and disappearing as we flew across the desert swiftly. Wild had taken us lower to the ground, attempting to avoid being spotted by any griffin patrols that may happen our way. Luckily our chariot blended in with the darkness of the wasteland, and any patrol would have to have keen eyes to spot us. There seemed to be little risk of discovery, and the further south we traveled the slower our speed became. A beep from my Pipbuck told me we were nearing our destination and a moment later Wild confirmed it.

“We’re here. I’ll need your help to find a good hiding place for the chariot.”

Sticks. As the town’s name suggested it was little more than a collection of half built wooden frame homes constructed in the dry arid desert for the rail yard workers of Kanter City. Its real name, I noticed, was to be ‘Steelhaven,’ as shown on a half-collapsed billboard. The little suburb had only begun being built when the bombs destroyed most of Equestria, and judging by the looks of it, a blast wave had toppled several of the homes here.

Dozens of unfinished wooden homes lay across the desert floor, several being little more than wooden beams sticking up from piles of sand. It really did look like somepony had simply tossed a pile of sticks down across the ground and left them where they had fallen. There were a few that had been finished however, but even these had weathered the ages poorly and the blast wave even less. Like everywhere else I had been, trash littered the ground between the ruins and the odd glint of metal hinted at something buried beneath the sand. I was just about to suggest we try and find another place to stash the chariot when I heard Stone call out through the headset.

“Ta yer left, near th’ edge of town. Th’ roof’s caved in on th’ home but ah reckon that’s a garage o’ some sort next ta th’ home.” I abandoned my door and trotted over to Stone’s, poking my head out to look at where the stallion pointed a hoof. Sure enough, there it was, and just as he said there was a sealed chariot garage beside the house.

Wildfire turned us slowly until she was facing the home, and began to fly towards it. Within seconds we were hovering barely a half dozen hooves above the home. From this angle, I could easily see inside the home, the roof having fallen in years ago. By the looks of the wooden beams, it had been due to rot. The home was a shell, only half finished rooms with no furnishings. The garage connected to the building, however, was in far better shape. As we neared the ground, I saw it was large enough for us to park the chariot inside, likely with room to spare. Wild began to lower us closer to the ground, and dust kicked up by her wings and whatever powered the chariot flew up into the compartment, causing me to snort. With a slight bump, the landing wheels of the chariot touched down and we were once more on the ground, the cloud of dust beginning to drift away on the warm breeze.

As soon as the humming below me began to die down, I quickly hopped out of the chariot and moved around to the front beside Wild. The mare looked tired, though she’d never admit it; her orange coat was covered in dirt and sweat. I stepped up to the garage door in front of her and looked around for how it opened. A latch near the ground seemed to be the most likely answer, so I placed my hoof upon it and pressed down. Nothing happened. I snorted and looked closer. Seeing it had rusted over, I applied more pressure until my ears perked to the sound of a soft click. I stepped back and the door began to roll up into the ceiling, revealing a dark room beyond. Turning on my Pipbuck’s light, I quickly shined the small beam inside and panned it from right to left.

The room was empty: not so much as a single piece of trash littered the cracked stone floor. The walls were rotting, as was the roof, but it seemed safe enough. I waved Wild forwards and stepped aside as she pulled the chariot into the garage. Despite her lithe form and small size, I could see muscles rippling below her orange coat as the harness dug into her sides. With a final groan from the chariot, its tail end slide inside the doorway. Stone stepped out and trotted back towards the door to pull it closed, plunging us into near total darkness.

I turned and focused my light upon Stone as I heard a couple of soft clicks coming from his direction. Suddenly, light appeared from my earth pony friend; he’d dug an old battered lamp from his saddlebags (I swear, that pony carried a lot of shit in those things), and had lit it with a lighter. Holding the handle in his mouth, he lowered it to the floor between us, casting the room in a dim glow. I turned my Pipbuck’s light off and glanced to the worn pegasus working herself free of the harness. I started to go help when Stone walked over and began to ease the straps off her body.

“Well, that was right easier then I thought,” he said as he took the kevlar yoke from her back. The orange coated mare nodded her head in thanks and began working her wings slowly as she turned to face us both.

“Getting here was the easy part. Getting inside, past the patrols, finding his sister, and getting out again is the hard part,” she reminded us, and I had to agree with her.

After seeing Kanter City for myself, I could easily understand why Rose had tried to talk me out of this, and why Wild had said I was insane for even trying. Yet here we all were. I looked back to my two friends as they settled down beside the lamp; Stone had retrieved our saddlebags from the chariot and Wild was once more using hers for a pillow. Had I brought them along on a suicide mission?

“I just need a bit to rest, then we can make our way to the subway tunnel here in Sticks. From there it’ll be a few hours more to work our way back to Kanter City,” she said, as she lay her head back on her pack.

“It’ll be mornin’ by then; ain’t that a might risky?” Stone asked from beside her, digging around inside his own packs for a food and water. He offered the latter to the mare who took it from him.

“Day or night, doesn't make a difference in Kanter City. The place is crawling with raiders at all hours of the day. Regardless, they are more focused on keeping their captives inside then worrying about outsiders. They won’t be expecting anypony to try and sneak inside, especially through the subway tunnels,” she answered after taking a long drink from his canteen and pulling a cigarette from the pouch on her armor. Stone eyed the mare carefully as she started to light it, but she used the rough floor to strike the match and not his flank, “Wake me in a hour.” she said once she had finished her smoke, and laid down to get some sleep.

I settled down across from them to wait. As Stone began to eat, I decided to follow his example and turned to my saddlebags laying on the floor beside me. Once we entered the subway, I had no doubt we’d have to move quickly to avoid detection of whatever called them home, and once inside the city, well...best to keep my energy up.

Unbuckling the pack with my nose and hoof, I flipped it open and looked inside. I was far better equipped than when I’d left Stable 45 a few days ago. Several packs of food and water greeted me as I rummaged around inside. I decided to use up my older supplies first, since they had the best chance of going bad out here, so I withdrew the last of my food and water from home and began to unwrap them. The last of my fresh carrots and apples (fresh as of four days ago at least) were set down between my front hooves. Popping a carrot into my mouth, I began to chew as I looked for my last bottle of water; I still had my canteens and wanted to make room inside the pack for other items. As my mouth closed around the top of the water bottle I caught sight of something tucked into the side of my pack, and, setting the water down beside my carrots and apples, I returned to my pack and withdrew a small collection of pages carefully wrapped in a ribbon.

Hmmm, I don’t remember packing this...?

As I chewed on another carrot, I unwrapped the package and unfolded the papers. I found myself looking at a photo of Ebony, Sugar Pie, and myself. It had been taken during one of the Stable’s family picnic parties. We were on the orchard level, a large open area near the bottom of the Stable with large sun lamps built into the ceiling, similar to Steeldome’s own larger ones. I was sitting beside one of the apple trees, as Sugar happily attempted to climb my back and reach one of the apples growing above my head. Ebony sat smiling at the foal and was floating food from a picnic basket sitting beside her. In the distance I could see other families from the Stable with their own children.

Moving the photo with a hoof, I looked more closely at the smiling family frozen there. Then I noticed something else under it. Sliding the photo aside, I saw two sheets of paper. The first was a hoof-drawn picture by a young foal made with watercolors; two black blobs and one smaller pink one. A gray half circle around them. I remembered the day when Sugar had drawn this for me, it had been a birthday present; a picture of her happy home and her family. I smiled to the memory and gently pushed it aside. Below the well worn sheet of paper was another. This one had been drawn more recently, and with crayons. It was a map...more or less. On it was brown mountains, green hills and blue rivers. A gray dot marked “old hom” was in the center. Off to the left was a pink dot marked “nw hom.” To the right of old home was another dot, out among a sea of browns and reds, the last mark on the paper was in blue. ‘Mommy and Daddy.’

My eyes remained locked on that final marker, hoof rubbing the word ‘Mommy’ that had been written so carefully. I’d come so far, only to think of turning back now, the near impossibility of my task thrown into my face by the sight of Kanter City?

No.

No, I couldn’t give up now, not when I was finally so close. Not when there was even a small chance of this working. I had a promise to keep.

Across from me, Stonehoof finished his own meal and gently poked the pegasus’ side with a hoof, with a snort she woke and rolled over onto her hooves. Had it already been an hour? I looked back to the pictures between my hooves as I swallowed my last bite of apple.

“Alright, lets get going,” Wild said as she extended her wings out fully before tucking them back to her sides and looked from Stone to me. “The sooner we get started, the sooner we can get this over with.”

I couldn’t agree more. Picking the pictures up carefully, I returned them to my saddlebags and tossed the empty bottle into the corner of the garage along with the empty papers in which my food had been wrapped. Stone reached over for the lamp and blew the light out, casting us back into total darkness. After letting our eyes adjust to the darkness, I stood up and trotted towards the garage door to push it open with a hoof. The dim light of the wasteland night made its way into the dark room as the door rolled back up into the ceiling with a clank of metal. Dust blew past the open doorway and the wind began to pick up outside.

Stepping past me, Wild walked out into the open and scanned the ruined homes around us as Stone stepped up beside her, adjusting his rifle across his neck as he waited for me to join them. Following my friends, I pulled the garage door back down until I heard the latch click softly into place and releasing it, I turned back and walked up beside them.

“How far is th’ station?” Stone asked, placing a hoof atop his hat to keep it from blowing away in the strong wind. I looked to the cloud- covered sky for any signs of a storm. Beyond the normal gray cloud cover, there was no sign of rain, so at least we’d be dry this time.

“It’s in the center of town. Shouldn’t take us more then twenty minutes to reach it from here,” the mare replied, and started walking towards the north, following what had once been a road between the homes. Now it was merely a derelict maze of twisted timbers, sand, and metal.

As we worked our way towards where Wild said the station was located, I scanned the ruins we passed and began to notice something odd about them after a few minutes of walking. Stopping, I lifted my right front leg up and pointed the beam of pale white light upon the wall of a nearly finished house. Dozens of bullet holes stared back at me from the wall, along with a rust colored stain near the bottom and upon the pile of trash below the holes. Scanning left, I saw more holes in the wall, some larger than others. Stepping closer, I peered at the ground around the wall and my light passed across something white. Blinking, I turned back and froze.

A pony’s skull smiled back at me from amongst a pile of fallen wood frames and boards, its empty eye sockets seemingly fixed on me. I’d already seen my share of dead bodies thus far, so that was nothing new. What was new was the size of the skull: it was huge, easily three times the size of my own, a crude metal helmet sitting atop it. The other thing that shocked me was the teeth: pony teeth are flat, perfect for chewing our common foods such as grains and vegetables; these teeth were sharp, like a predator’s. Looking closer, I could see more of the body sticking out from the rubble, long leg bones and a massive rib cage. Bits of armor still clung to the remains in places.

“Shadow? What's wrong?” Stone asked. The earth pony had noticed I was no longer following them, and had begun walking back toward me. A bit further ahead, Wild had stopped and was looking back to us. As he drew closer, he caught sight of the skull and stopped, snorting softly, “Super Mutant.” He spat on the ground beside the skull and checked his rifle by reflex.

“Super Mutant? That’s a Super Mutant?” I asked. Three Horns had mentioned them bothering settlements north of San Ponsisco before, and Rose had mentioned them as well. Still, I hadn’t expected them to be so...large. And this was simply the remains of one! What had it looked like when it’d been alive?

“Ah heard a detachment of them Steel Ranger’s tried ta take th’ town for a base,” he answered, stepping closer to the skull. With his left hoof he poked at it lightly, causing the pile to groan a bit, “Been a right few years back when ah heard it. Supposedly th’ town was a Super Mutant town or lair. Th’ two sides fought and destroyed half th’ town that weren’t already destroyed.” He turned away from the skull and started back towards the waiting pegasus. After glancing once more at the skull, I followed behind.

Working our way down the half blocked road, I began to see other signs of the town’s recent past: spent shell casings littered the roadway in places, empty clips and magazines dropped where they had been tossed aside in the frenzy of combat. My hoof shattered a bottle that had been left in the open; perhaps a health potion? There were other bodies too, including more large skeletons wearing makeshift armor plating and helmets and wielding massive clubs and guns. Of the Steel Rangers’ dead, I saw only a single sign: a dented helmet sitting atop a metal pole shoved into the ground beside a mound of dirt; a makeshift grave marker for whoever was buried there. I’d seen images of the Steel Ranger’s power armor before in history books and new videos. This one’s eye lens had been cracked by the force of the blow that had caved in a side of the armor. I could only imagine what the pony’s head inside that helmet had looked like.

“Who won?” I asked as we passed the grave. It had been made behind a large empty lot; a sign beside the road said it was to be the town’s school.

“From what ah remember, ah don’t think either side won.” I looked back to my friend with a raised eyebrow and he explained, “The Ranger’s had th’ firepower and fancy armor, an’ the Super Mutants had numbers and brute strength. At th’ end of th’ fight, there was only a small number of Rangers left. Even though they had killed all th’ Mutants, there just weren’t enough of’ em to hold th’ town.”

All that fighting for nothing. I stared back to the helmet before it was lost to the darkness. Turning back to the others, I quickened my pace. Making our way further into town, I began to notice the buildings thinning out more and giving way to a large open area ahead of us. Judging by the light posts spaced along the smooth surface, it was some sort of parking lot. Still more signs of the fighting that had rampaged through the town were here: blast craters in the lot marked where grenades and other explosives had gone off. There were also more spent casings everywhere; it seemed the fighting had focused here. As I followed my two friends around a fallen wall, I spotted our destination and the center of the fighting.

A mass of ruined brick and steel lay within the center of the lot. It had once been a three story building, but was now little more than a pile of rubble. A ruined sign lay atop the rubble pile, reading ‘Tartarus Station’. Everything was littered with holes, and piles of broken Super Mutant armor were all around the ruins. Had the Rangers made a final stand here? More importantly, how are we supposed to get inside the tunnels through that? I frowned and was about to ask Wild just that when I noticed something in front of the station. A set of stairs descending downwards covered by a half ruined roof.

“The building was a office for the subway company that owned the town,” Wild pointed out ahead of me, “I dug around the rubble when I was here last looking for anything I could use. Found a lot of coffee mugs and filing cabinets.” She made her way across the open lot with Stone and I following close behind.

Placing my hooves at the top of the stairs, I looked into the dark pit before me. The wind which had been rising since we’d arrived blew across us and, despite the heat, a sudden shiver came over me. I don’t know why, but there was something about this place that set me on edge.

“Watch your step down here! While it’s stood for the past one hundred and fifty-plus years, I’d rather not take any chances. There’s debris and rubble everywhere and some of it hides pitfalls into an underground cavern.” A flicker of light from below caused me to blink and take a few steps closer to the stairs’ edge.

“Cavern?” I heard Stone ask from beside me, but my focus was on the sudden light that had flared up from below. It reminded me of the Power Stations hallways. Was there still power getting to this place?

“According to what somepony told me, there's a huge network of tunnels and caves under this entire area. Fuck if I know. All I know is that what he told me helped me escape this place.” With the soft clop of hooves, the mare began to descend the stairs.

As Stone and I followed her, I once more saw the slight flash of light from below, and, judging by the pause in his steps, so did Stone. As our hooves carried us down the trash-strewn steps, the darkness was broken by the weak glow from the emergency lighting. The bulbs that remained unbroken hummed softly as they attempted to light the area beneath them. I was amazed to see that, after over a century and a half, the emergency lighting still worked, but was further surprised to see a few of the light panels still glowing faintly as we drew nearer to the bottom. Let it never be said that ponies did not build things to last. I glanced to the stone pillars that flanked the large open doorway of the subway entrance. Dozens of cracks ran the length of the pitted supports, and, as I followed them, I saw they spread out from around the tops to cover areas of the ceiling.

As we reached the bottom of the steps, I noticed several areas where the roof had simply caved in completely, crushing anything that had been below. A light panel still hung by its wires at the edge of one such collapse, glowing faintly. I frowned and looked back ahead of me. They had held up this long, they shouldn’t fall over anytime soon - I hope. The shattered pillars and sections of the roof were likely not the result of age, as most appeared to be quite old judging by the century or more of trash that covered some areas. No, it likely happened when Kanter City was hit, the force of the blasts having caused small earthquakes.

Looking away from the broken sections of the tunnel, I turned ahead. Wildfire picked her way between the debris, her lighter frame giving her a bit of an advantage over Stone and myself (us earth ponies are not exactly known for our grace). A string of muttered swearing beside me proved that point, as Stone stumbled and nearly went sprawling across the floor as his hooves got caught in the piles of broken concrete. Helping steady my friend, we pressed on.

Moving a bit deeper into the tunnel, the lighting remained sporadic at best, and I found myself leaving my Pipbuck’s light lit. As we worked our way through the entrance halls, I looked to the walls which still bore old half-rotting posters and signs: pictures of smiling ponies with their families boarding subway trains for bright, sunny places, and another one for a new line of designer socks. I smiled a bit at the picture of a dark red mare wearing knee high black socks; she looked a bit hot. really. Moving further, we passed vending machines that had long ago been emptied (though it didn’t stop Stone from checking). More posters appeared with wartime slogans like, ‘Everypony must do her/his part for the war!’ with the three types of ponies sitting on the cover all wearing hard hats and smiling. ‘Better wiped then striped!’ was of four Steel Rangers standing in the middle of red-eyed zebras. This one had been shot up, holes in both the Rangers’ and Zebras’ heads.

The tunnel forked as it began to descend into the earth once more. The new tunnel went off towards the west and was blocked by a large cave in, chunks of the roof and wall having fallen. As we trotted past, I glanced back and thought I saw a shoe sticking out from the rubble. Perhaps it had just been the lighting.

As the tunnel began to open up, dividers sectioned off the tunnel, metal posts jutting out to block out path. Looking closer, I could see a slot atop the dividers for coins and a cracked screen showing ‘Error’ scrolling across in large red letters. This must have been where ponies paid to get into the subway, but Wildfire simply flapped her wings and sailed across the rusted posts. With a kick of our hooves, Stone and myself easily leapt across them and onto the other side, landing with a clatter of hooves on stone. My ears twitched at the loud sound as it echoed throughout the station, but after a minute, it seemed there was nopony to hear it.

After a few more minutes of working our way between cave-ins and piles of trash, we finally reached the subway station itself, and ‘Sticks Station’ flashed up on my Pipbuck. The roof rose sharply as we entered the station, giving an open feel to the room. I looked away from the ceiling and to the room itself. The loading platform in the center of the room was dotted with fallen sections of the ceiling, along with benches and trash cans for the ponies who would have sat waiting on their trains so long ago. Two tracks ran between the passenger platforms and disappeared into the tunnels going off in both directions: North to Kanter City and South to...who knows. A raised walkway crossed the tracks, allowing ponies to move between both sides of the station safely, lined with bent and rusted railing that would have kept ponies safe from a fall onto the tracks below. Near where we stood, I saw several sets of windows along the wall. Above them was a sign stating ‘Tickets’. I could see rooms behind the cracked glass, but it was too dark to make out much.

We followed Wildfire as she trotted across the room, her hoofsteps echoing far quieter than ours within the large room. As the three of us neared the tracks, Wild looked off towards the northern tunnels. One had collapsed long ago, while the other remained clear. I also noticed a section of the second floor walkway had collapsed onto the tracks, forming a makeshift bridge across to the other platform. More trash had gathered upon the tracks, washed or blown there over the years.

I glanced to the southbound tunnels and saw both had been blocked by collapsed ceilings. Only one direction to go. Wild walked out across the broken section of the walkway and dropped down onto the tracks themselves. The pegasus looked back to us over her wing and shoulder.

“From here on out, we run the risk of encountering ghouls, so try not to make any noise if you can help it. I’d rather not have to deal with the fuckers.” Stone dropped in beside her and adjusted his rifle strap, flicking the safety off.

“Ah reckon ah could go anotha’ couple months without dealin’ with ‘em myself.” Following their lead, I nosed the safety off on my shotgun and decided to remain on the side of the tracks for the time being, walking slightly above them. I checked my E.F.S. once more, and saw it remained clear. Unless the tunnels affected my Pipbuck like the mine had, I should be able to spot anything long before it could surprise us.

As we set off down the tunnel, I looked back into the station as we passed several rows of seats, a few overturned and broken. My steps faltered as a single feature stood out to me: a foal carriage sat beside a bench. Somehow this single item had resisted the wear of time largely intact; its light pink frame and body were free of dirt, and while the cover had a few holes in the white cloth, it was mostly in place. Laying on the floor beside its rusted white wheels was a stuffed pony and plastic bottle. For a moment, I almost wanted to go look inside, with a sort of morbid curiosity about what I’d find. With a snort and shake of my head, I turned away and trotted after my friends. The walls of the tunnel soon obscured it and the station from sight.

The next two hours were spent simply following the subway tunnel north. With Wild’s warning in mind, we kept the conversation to a minimum and little of note happened. It seemed we had trotted miles along this single tunnel. At one point we discovered signs that somepony had once called this place home. Built upon the ledge I walked along had been a door: it had been forcibly removed and lay within the doorway on its side. Inside we found what had once been a maintenance room of sorts for the subway workers to repair the tunnels and tracks. Work benches and rusting tool boxes had been pushed into a corner to make room for two dirty mattresses in the opposite corner. Around the makeshift beds lay empty bottles of beer and health potions along with a few wrappers for food. Stone poked around for a few minutes as Wild and I kept watch on the tunnel. Before we set off, the gray earth pony had found a few caps and 9mm bullets tucked under one of the mattresses, along with a magazine of questionable content. He stuffed it into his bag, saying it was just something to read... yeah, right.

The further we traveled, the fewer overhead panels worked. Most had simply broken, littering the tracks below them with shards of glass, while others had fallen in and now lay across the rails. Only the emergency lighting remained glowing dimly. Beyond the sound of our own hoofsteps, every so often my Pipbuck would begin to click, warning me of nearby radiation, but just as quickly it would go silent once again. Not long after discovering the first doorway on the side of the tunnel, we came across another, this time on the wall between this tunnel and the next one over. The door was shut and locked; however, my skills with lock picking would be useless here, as the door had one of those electric locks, the kind you needed to enter a code in before the door would open. I could have tried breaking that code, if the control pad hadn’t been broken. It looked as if somepony had taken a sledgehammer to the thing. The keys lay across the floor and the wiring had all but been ripped out. We did not even stop to waste our time.

We were just entering our third hour of walking when the tunnel ahead became blocked by a large cave-in that covered the entire width of the tunnel. I groaned and shined my light upon the pile of rubble. There was no way we could get around this; we’d have to try and back-track. However, something about this collapse caught my eye as my light passed over the center of the tunnel. The end of a subway car was poking out from the debris, still sitting on the tracks. A reflective sticker flashed from the rear doorway that hung loosely by a single hinge, the faded white words, ‘Emergency Exit’ written across the yellow lines. As I pointed my light towards the opening, I could see further up the car and into the next: it looked as if the entire train had somehow survived the collapse and ran the length of the tunnel, perhaps even past the cave-in. As my light shifted from side to side, I could also make out shapes within the car itself, likely the seats for the passengers. Was that something sitting in them...with a start I realized what it was: several dozen bodies still lay in their seats after all this time. Wild stepped up beside the door and looked inside, and after a moment turned back towards us. Neither Stone nor I had moved any closer to the train.

“Okay, this is the only way through the collapsed section of the tunnel. The train goes back over a dozen cars, but we’ve only got to make it through seven of them before we can exit the train and continue up the side of the tunnel. Once on the other side it’ll be another hour or two’s walk until we reach the Kanter City Subway Station.”

Lovely.

Reaching up to her chest, Wild pressed something on her armor and with a click, a light appeared, casting its dim glow into the pitch black train car; it was similar to my own Pipbuck’s in color and brightness. Why hadn’t she been using that all this time? With a light flap of her wings, the pegasus landed lightly upon the doorframe of the mostly buried car, kicking up a layer of rust and dirt. Without a second look back, she plunged into the darkness.

Stone carefully approached the open door of the train and shone his lantern into the darkness beyond. We could both make out a pony skull sitting on the floor not a few hoof steps away from the door. He muttered softly to himself and shook his head, before sitting the lantern down atop the step. Neither of us wanted to enter what amounted to a large tomb. But we both had our own reasons for doing so, and with a grunt the earth pony placed his front hooves upon the edge of the opening and pulled himself up into the doorway.

“Ah’ll never hear th’ end of it, if ah let that pegasus go where an earth pony won’t.” Leaning over to grip his lantern in his teeth, he stepped inside and was swallowed up by the darkness of the car.

Taking a deep breath from the dry stale air of the tunnel, I walked up to the back of the train car and hauled myself up, just as Stone had moments ago. The light from my Pipbuck danced about wildly as I moved. As I got my hooves back under me, I steadied the light and shined the narrow beam into the compartment beyond. As I had expected, there were two seats to a row and nearly a dozen rows to the car. Not all were taken, I saw; there were a number of empty ones within this car alone. But there were just as many with bodies sitting in them. Not far ahead, I could see the backside of Stone as he gingerly made his way down the alley between the seats. He was stepping carefully, trying not to stomp on any bones laying in his path, of which there were quite a few.

Steadily, I began to follow my friends through the car, carefully watching where I placed my hooves lest I step on somepony’s remains accidentaly. There was a fair number of personal items laying across the alley between the seats: broken reading glasses, newspapers, a bottle of half empty water (the contents having turned dirty over the years being open), and the odd hat, beyond those few items, there was none of the trash I’d seen out in the tunnels. I didn’t imagine ponies often came this way, nor was there enough wind or water to push the waste into the car’s only entrance. As I worked my way further into the car, I meant to just look ahead, focus on making it through this without looking to the seats beside me, but I stumbled over a suitcase sticking out from the row next to me and went down on my front knees with a grunt. As I rose, my eyes glanced to the right where the case had tripped me.

The owner of the suitcase still sat in his seat, and judging by the large skull I guessed he had been a stallion. The tattered remains of a suit on his upper body could just be seen in the light of my Pipbuck. A dirty gold hoofwatch on his right foreleg flashed in the light. His skull rested at an odd angle, empty sockets staring out through the shattered window of the car.

Getting back up quickly, I walked towards the exit, glancing to the next row of seats I passed. There was a collection of bones across the two seats: two smaller skulls beside a larger one lay near the bottom of the row. Had they been taking shelter there when the tunnel collapsed? A family? The edge of my light was just enough I could see rusting toys on the floor between the leg bones. Had they been escaping the city or going towards it? I suppose in the end it really didn’t matter for them at the time. I moved on through the car.

I reached the next car a few seconds behind Stone and Wild, who were already waiting near the doorway to the third. The mare didn’t seem to pay much attention to the dead she walked beside. But then, this was her second time through here, I reminded myself. As I crossed into the second car I noticed a shower of dust come from the ceiling. I looked up following the trail and blinked. The roof of the train had been beaten to hell and back by the falling tunnel; it was a minor miracle the entire train hadn’t been flattened by the vast weight of the stone slabs resting atop it.

As I looked back down, I saw Stone had made it further ahead of me in the car, the stallions eyes fixed on Fire just a few hoofs away from him. Shaking my head, I started to follow him through the car when my left hoof brushed against something soft. Looking down, I saw a blue stuffed bear laying face down on the ground, white sequins glittering like gems in the light of my Pipbuck. I also saw a rotting limb not far away from the toy and stepped back in surprise.

Pointing my beam of light to the body, I saw it was a young foal, no older than Sugar. The body lay on the floor beside a pile of bones; oddly, he looked as if he had simply laid his head down atop the skull of another pony and died, but judging by the look of his body he’d only died recently. His coat had nearly completely fallen out, with only tufts of white fur remaining in patchs. His mane and tail were in a similar state, with strands of light blue hair falling across his thin body. Leaning down, I picked up the stuffed toy and laid it beside his outstretched hoof before turning away to catch up with the others. I had taken only a few steps when I noticed a red dot appear on my E.F.S. and stopped. Where the hell had it come from? It was right...

“M-mOmMy...is ThAt yOu?”

I froze, eyes wide as the low gravelly voice of a young child reached my ears, one hoof halfway raised to take another step slowly lowered. Oh sweet Celestia no... Slowly, I turned my head to look over my shoulder at the faint green glowing eyes of the dead foal as he stood up, looking towards me. He took a few stumbling steps forward, one hoof wrapped around the bear as it pressed against his dry cracked chest. My eyes were drawn to where that blue plush animal rested, where a large open wound in the young colt’s chest allowed me to see inside his body and the small ribs beyond, the rotting organs working within his body. Stonehoof’s words back at Crossroads came back to me then.

“They were ponies once, same as you or ah, but somethin’ happened to ’em. The balefire that killed so many changed ’em. They’re stuck between livin’ and dead. Their bodies rottin’ and decayin’...right nasty sight.”

Ghouls...this was a ghoul. There really was a fate worse than death. The ghoul foal spoke again, almost sounding tired.

“YoUr Not mY MoMmy...”

“No...I’m not...” I said, trying to keep my voice steady as I turned around to face the undead pony as he took another step closer, “Where’d you come from?” I glanced back to see where the others had gotten to, and was relieved to see Stone making his way back towards me from the third car. The answer from the foal made me turn back to face him.

“We WeRe RiDiNg ThE tRaIn... MoMmY sAiD oUr HoMe WaS gOnE aNd We HaD tO gO sOuTh To FiNd A nEw OnE...” was it just my imagination or did I see tears in his eyes? My E.F.S. warned me this foal was hostile, but I couldn't bring myself to raise my shotgun to the pitiful sight. He could barely stand, his rotting legs shook so much, “... I tRiEd To WaIt On MoMmY... bUt ShE wOn’T gEt Up... I wEnT tO fInD fOoD witH tHe OtHeRs... bUt ThEre’s NoNe lEft. Can yOu hElp Me?”

I had no idea how I could help him. I was about to reach into my pack and withdraw some of the dried food I’d gotten in Crossroads when something the foal said hit me.

“Wait... others?” I asked, looking back. The foal had dropped his stuffed bear on the floor and it had rolled over beside my hoof. His head was pointed down towards the floor and his entire body was shaking.

“Foooood...” the word came out in a low growl from the small body. Suddenly my Pipbuck began to click like mad as it detected higher levels of radiation. I took a step back in shock as the foal’s head rose slowly, eyes glowing a baleful green and a wicked smile on its shockingly sharp looking teeth.

Oh fuck...

I grabbed for the firing bit of my shotgun as the tiny ghoul lunged towards me, front hooves out stretched for my face and mouth wide. I had just closed my teeth around the bit and started to raise the shotgun when a beam of red light lashed out from behind me and struck the ghoul in mid leap right in its ripped chest. With a dry crackling sound, its body turned to ash before my eyes and drifted to the ground between my hooves to pile up around the toy bear, bits flying across my face. Shaking my head to get the ghoul ash off me, I bumped into Stone who had been running towards me, rifle in mouth. Seeing the threat had been removed, the pony dropped the weapon back to his chest and steadied me with a hoof.

“Ya okay, Shadow?” he asked as I wiped off my face with my left hoof, and oh goddesses I could TASTE it. Behind him stood Wildfire, her laser pistol gripped firmly between her teeth.

“Told you, we have to be careful of ghouls... you could have gotten your dumb ass killed,” she growled around the weapon’s grip. I snorted a final time and was about to respond to the angry mare when my E.F.S. came alive. Red dots. Red dots everywhere.

“Give ’im a break, Wild, he ain’t rightly seen a ghoul before,” Stone said beside me, the gray stallion turning to face the mare who was walking towards us. I raised a hoof for them, but Wild narrowed her eyes on Stone before rolling them.

“Well, fuck it, he has now...so if you two are done playing...” As the two went about their usual arguing, the ponies who had been moments ago sitting dead in their seats began to rise up. Bones of the truly dead rolled off rotting hides and into the floor with a rattle, cracked hooves dragged others from below the seats. All had their glowing eyes fixed upon the three ponies standing in their midst. The sounds of shuffling hooves came from the car behind me, and my ears twitched in alarm. My two friends took notice of the sudden sounds around them and looked up in shock. As one, the mare and stallion whirled around and brought their weapons to bear upon either side of the car we stood within. I gripped my shotgun and turned to face the way we’d came. Half a dozen or more glowing green eyes glared back at me.

“Uh...guys...”

Wild followed my gaze to the rear car and swore colorfully, causing even Stone to blush. My E.F.S. was flashing red dots all around us, but the vast majority of them seemed focused on the rear and second car. The way ahead largely remained clear of hostiles, at least for the moment, although a few red dots could be seen coming towards us.

For a moment nopony moved nor made a sound. We all stood staring at one another, three ponies and dozens of glowing eyes locked on one each other. Rotting exposed teeth flashed in our lights. The decomposing bodies somehow managed to carry their owners onwards, despite being little more than stick figures with exposed wounds and bones. As the numbers rose, the click of my Pipbuck rose steadily higher.

The silence was shattered a moment later by a flurry of movement, as a single ghoul broke free from the others and lunged across the seats towards Wildfire. The mare twisted around and fired off two shots into the torso of the ghoul, sending it back into the seats, its flesh and bones sizzling as it disappeared into ash. Like a dam bursting, the rest surged towards us, their combined howling rattling the windows of the train car. Wild burst into motion and charged down the alley towards the next car up, the bright flash of her laser pistol lighting up the darkness around her in a red glow as two ghouls went down fading away to ashes. The loud crack of Stone’s rifle echoed within the narrow space as the round struck a stumbling ghoul in the chest, sending it to the floor. The remaining ghoul snarled and lunged towards the earth pony, only to be met by the barrel of his rifle being shoved into its open mouth before he fired and removed the orifice along with the rotting head it was part of.

The muzzle flash from my shotgun cast the face of a ghoul lunging for my throat in light. Its twisted, hateful features burned into my mind in that brief second: jaws spread unnaturally wide as it closed with me; flesh rotting off the skull, leaving muscles and tendons exposed. Its right cheek had either been ripped away or fallen off and was largely gone, giving me sight of its jaws and twisted black tongue. A broken horn sat upon its forehead between strands of its half-removed mane. Whatever color it had once been was now concealed by filth and decay. Time began to speed back up as the slug flew from the barrel of my weapon and into the face of my attacker. The shotgun slug flew between the thing’s teeth, knocking them out of its muzzle as the round punched into the back of its throat. With a sound like a melon, its head exploded in a blast of gore and bone.

The spent casing had hardly struck the floor when a second ghoul pushed the body of the first aside, glowing green eyes locking on me as it slashed out with a forelimb. Its hoof was broken and jagged, and sharp enough to slice through unarmored flesh. It passed so close I saw locks of my white mane cut free before my eyes. With a muffled growl, I brought my shotgun up to its face and squeezed the trigger, earning a similar display as the first. I couldn’t keep this up forever, however; more and more of the undead ponies were flooding into the back of the train from Celestia knew where.

As quickly as I could I continued to backpedal down the hallway of the train car, firing off another four shots just to keep the press of undead flesh off me. My ears perked as the sharp zap of Wild’s laser pistol and the crack of Stone’s rifle told me my friends had their own problems to deal with behind me. My E.F.S. showed three green dots about to drown in a sea of red. My right foreleg clicked angrily as the radiation levels in the car began to rise even higher, and warnings began to pop up in my vision. We might die from radiation poisoning if we weren’t ripped to pieces first.

“How we doing?!” I yelled out to my friends around the firing bit of my shotgun. As I backed up towards them I stumbled over the body of a ghoul with a bullet hole between its eyes. As I dropped to my knees with a grunt, another ghoul pushed its way forward and, seeing an opening to strike, leapt towards me in an effort to reach me sooner. I tracked its movements with my weapon, and fired at the apex of its jump. The round ripped open its exposed stomach and sent it crashing to the floor of the car, where two of its fellow ghouls fell upon it in a rapid feeding frenzy. Hooves lashed out at the withered form, sending bits of flesh in every direction. Sweet fucking hell... Climbing back to my hooves, I glanced back to Wild and Stone and my eyes widened …Celestia save us! The train car was alive with glowing green eyes, holes in the roof allowing the flesh-hungry creatures inside. Had they been atop the train the entire time?!?

“We’re SOOOOOOOoooooooooooo fucking fucked!!!” the pegasus yelled, words muffled by the grip of her pistol. Twisting her head wildly, the orange mare snapped off shot after shot into the ghouls closing in around her and Stone. If the shots didn’t turn them to ash, they knocked the ghouls back, buying us time. Beside her, Stone was rapidly emptying his weapon, his hunting rifle not doing as much damage as Wild’s laser or my shotgun. The small wounds it left hardly slowed the ghouls down unless he went for the head. To his credit, most of his shots were headshots, but it was hard to aim when more and more grasping hooves were constantly reaching for your flesh. We were moving through the fourth car now. How many more had she said? Six? Seven? Then what? A narrow walkway between the tunnel wall and train? We’d be just as easily washed away in the tide of undead as we had in the confines of the car...

“Ah’m out!!” Stone yelled, he tried to reload his weapon, but the press of ghouls didn’t give him enough time to even reach for his rounds, let alone the small clip below the trigger. The earth pony began using his weapon as a club, the butt of the weapon cracking skulls quite well. Wild swore and fired rapidly as I looked to my ammo count in the corner of my eye; I was half out.

“Just run!” I yelled, firing off two more rounds as the ghouls behind us flooded around the feeding pair on the floor, trampling them in their rush to get to us. One round tore a limb off a ghoul, dropping it to be trampled to death in turn. The other missed as a ghoul struck me from the side. With a shout, I stumbled forward, nearly being pulled into the mass of teeth and glowing eyes. Then I felt a tug on my tail and glanced back to see Stone’s teeth holding tight. Whipping back around, I emptied my weapon into the press of bodies, scrambling with my hooves to back up and right myself. Turning, I pushed Stone foward, Wild leading the charge as we galloped through the train car into the next.

I released my empty shotgun, the weapon slapping against my chest armor as we ran. I couldn’t stop to reload it; the ghouls would be on me before I could even open the drum. Reaching down, I yanked free my revolver and gripped the pistol tightly in my mouth for a moment. I thought about using a grenade, but it would just as likely bring down the rest of the ceiling atop us. Running beside me, Stone yanked out his knife and glanced over his shoulder. The thundering of our hooves was nearly overpowered by the hungry howls of our pursuers.

“Exit’s just ahead! Just one more car!” Wild yelled, egging us on.

Bursting through the final doorway, I spotted our escape route a second later. A side door of the car had been forced open, letting in the dim lighting from the tunnel beyond. With a surge of energy we rushed towards our salvation. Wild lept across the last of the seats between her and the exit, diving through the open doorway. Stone’s hooves skidded for a heart stopping second upon the metal floor of the car before they once more gained traction and he forced his way through the door, rocking the entire car as he did so. I followed him through a second later, my lighter frame giving me less trouble with the floor.

With a grunt, I lunged from the top of the car to the ground below, my speed sending me into the wall of the tunnel and ramming my face into a red and yellow pipe. Shaking my head, I started to run again as the snarling voices of the ghouls grew louder behind me. Wild and Stone were a few paces ahead, the earth pony trying to quickly reload his rifle as the pegasus snapped a fresh pack into her pistol. My hooves had barely taken me past the next car when a muffled roar ripped from within the train. My ears jerked up in shock as I looked back and stopped. The ghouls behind me had stopped as well, and were milling around the exit to their train as if confused by something.

Holstering my pistol, I quickly grabbed for my saddlebag and the spare rounds for my shotgun when a loud boom echoed through the tunnel. It sounded as if something large had struck metal, I was reaching for the bit to my shotgun when another boom thundered out beside me. I turned and watched in shock, heart pounding in my chest, as something within the train struck the sealed door and caused it to bulge outwards. With a muttered swear, I realized it looked as if a pony had actually bucked the sides of the wall out. Thick metal walls. Once more, the muffled roar came from within the car and with the shriek of metal the battered section of wall ripped free and sliced inches above my head to slam into the tunnel wall with enough force to embed it deeply. Looking back to the now open car, my jaw dropped open.

A truly frightening sight greeted me. Standing within the newly formed hole in the side of the subway car was a massive ghoul pony. In life he must have been a impressive sight, but in death, he was even more so. The undead earth pony stood a hoof or more taller than Stone and he simply towered over Wild and myself. Like the other ghouls aboard the train, his rotting body had not withstood the passage of time. Strips of his pale green hide hung from his body by patches of flesh, and raw muscles and bones could be seen across his sides and down his legs. Somepony had come across this monster before and had jammed a sword into its skull; I doubted it had ended well for the pony in question, as a rotting hoof was still attached to the saber like handle of the weapon. As it stood glaring down at me, I saw white specks moving across his flesh; with a twist of my stomach, I realized they were maggots. The clicking of my Pipbuck increased as the radiation levels began to shoot past yellow and into the red. We’d be dead within seconds, and somehow I doubted we had the firepower to down this thing before the other ghouls recovered enough to swarm us.

“Fuck... this... shit...” I snarled and grabbed at one of the grenades I’d hung across my chest as I started running towards Wild and Stone. The baleful glow of the large ghouls eyes locked onto me as I spoke and roared. Yanking the pin free, I tossed it back towards the milling ghouls, the small, round explosive bouncing between their hooves and towards the train. I closed the distance between myself and my friends who had stood staring. “RUN!!!” I yelled over the snarling ghouls, who had begun to give chase. The shout was enough to break the spell of fear that had gripped both of them, and they turned and began galloping madly down the tunnel. Closing my teeth around the second grenade I tossed it behind me, hearing it rolling across the ground to come to rest near the wall. It’d do more damage to the wall then the ghouls, but maybe it would buy us time to get a lead on them. As my head turned back towards the front, my eyes passed over that red and yellow pipe I had struck coming out the side of the train. The first grenade exploded and filled the tunnel with light and sound as sharp pieces of metal sliced through the thin limbs of the ghouls. Enough light for me to see the faded white letters running down the pipe.

Warning: Gas Line.

The second grenade went off a few seconds after the first. Pounding down the tunnel, we barely made it a half dozen steps before the entire tunnel seemed filled with fire and noise. The force of the blast picked me up from the ground and tossed me into the air, to land in a heap against the side of the train with a cry of pain. Wild rolled past, coming to a rest against the wall as pieces of stone began to fall around us.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid...

I weakly rose to my hooves and glanced back the way we came. Flames danced across the floor, casting a hellish light upon the scene. Bits of ghouls lay scattered about the ground, most on fire, while a few whole bodies lay in twisted shapes that somehow still moved. The train itself had been reduced to a blacked mass of twisted metal strewn with chunks of stone from the blown-out wall. Movement just behind me drew my attention to the ground, and I saw Stone slowly rising up, bits of burning metal and ghoul sticking to his armor and coat; somehow the earth pony had managed to keep a hold of his hat, and I smiled a bit. We’d survi...

A chunk of rock crashed down inches from Stone’s body, shattering the floor and sending shards of rock to cut into the stallions side. I quickly stood and started towards him when another rock struck the top of the train I was standing beside, caving in the top with a crunch of metal. I tilted my head back and looked to the ceiling above us. The cracks that I had saw all along the tunnel were beginning to widen, and as I watched, a sky chariot sized piece dropped from above and slammed into the ground behind the train.

“We have to reach the crossover junction!” Wild yelled from behind me as another section of ceiling dropped free and slammed into the burning wreckage, “If we don’t we’ll be buried alive!!”

Reaching Stone, I yanked him fully to his hooves and pushed him towards Wild. He needed little prompting to start running as the tunnel groaned under its own weight. As I was turning to go, I spotted something moving within the flames further down the tunnel...had something survived? A second later, the burning hulk of the monstrous ghoul pony stumbled from the wreckage, the sword still jutting from its skull.

Without looking any closer, I turned and followed Stone up the tunnel, leaving the ghoul to die on its own. Hooves pounding into the worn passage, Wild raced ahead of us, the light hooved pegasus dancing easily between the falling debris, wings tucked closely to her sides as she ran. I was running beside Stone, who I was beginning to overtake. The larger earth pony ran along the metal train, trusting it to keep some of the debris from falling fully atop him. Just ahead I could see the tunnel beginning to curve to the left slowly, and as it did so, a doorway took shape from the gloom; a flicking beam of emergency lighting shone down upon our salvation like a gift from Celestia herself.

The sight energized us all, and we redoubled our efforts to reach the narrow doorway. Gritting my teeth, I ran faster as pieces of the roof dropped all around us, sending up shards of stone in every direction. It would take only a single piece to slow us enough that we’d be doomed. Suddenly, my tail began to twitch like mad as something in my brain told me I needed to move aside quickly. Why, I have no idea, but I found myself heeding the sudden urge and stepped closer to Stone. Only a few seconds later, a massive metal support beam slammed into the spot I would have been in if I’d continued running straight. As my hooves clattered across the stone I once more felt the odd twitch from my tail and lunged forwards as another beam slammed down behind me.

Somehow I managed to stay one step ahead of the debris and was the first to reach the doorway. Without thinking, I closed my teeth around the handle and twisted the knob, only to feel it stop half way. Fuck! It was locked!! Spinning about, I brought my rear hooves to bear on the simple door and bucked hard. My shoes left dents in the metal door and I snarled. One. More. Buck! With a cry I struck out again and felt my body shudder from the impact; still the door refused to open.

“You Celestia-damned piece of shit! OPEN!!!” I cried out as I lashed out once more. I stumbled back into the dark room as my hooves shattered the lock and slammed the door wide open. I looked back out into the tunnel for my friends. Where were they?! A cry drew my attention to the tracks.

Wildfire was pinned to the metal tracks just in front of the end of the subway train. A piece of rubble had fallen close enough to the pegasus to pin her long tail, trapping her in place. She kicked madly at the stone with her hooves and tugged on her trapped limb. I could see tears in her wide green eyes; she must have been ripping the strands of hair out by the roots as she bucked to free herself, steel and stone raining down all around her. I started forward when a gray mass of muscle slammed into the trapped pegasus.

Like something from one of those action movies Bright had liked watching so much, Stone slashed through the red tips of the mare’s tail with his knife, the sharp blade cutting it easily, and, without missing a beat, the earth pony shoved his head under her hind quarters and pushed her up onto his back. With a flare of his nostrils the earth pony spotted me and began charging towards the safety of the doorway. I yelled and waved them onwards.

“Come on!! You’re almost here!!!” All around my friends, stones dropped down like rain, sending up clouds of dust. It would only take one to bring them both down, and I’d never reach them in time. As I yelled, my tail began to twitch, only far more wildly this time. Tearing my gaze away from my friends, I looked to the ceiling of the tunnel. The cracks had finished spreading and had come together. As I watched dumbfounded, the entire ceiling began to sag and dirt started to fall in through the cracks. I looked back to Stone and saw the look of fear in the earth ponies eyes as he lunged towards me.

I felt as if I’d been hit by a train as the two slammed fully into me, sending all three of us tumbling into the room as the tunnel completely collapsed in a deafening roar of stone, metal, and dirt. We were at once cast into near total darkness.

With a groan, I picked myself up from the floor and looked around the room for my friends. The only light came from my Pipbuck and Wild’s chest light. Luckily, it seemed nothing had been broken, and I lifted my right hoof up to sweep it around the small room we found ourselves in. Stone lay on the ground nearby, covered in dirt and a dust; beside him, Wild was picking herself up from the floor. The mare’s normally bright red mane was a pale gray in color from the concrete dust, her coat was a similar color and she sneezed twice. Shaking her head she limped towards me and placed a hoof on my shoulder.

"You okay, Shadow?" she asked as I picked myself up and nodded my head quickly to her question. As I looked her over, I saw blood running down her flank from her tail and winced.

"I'm fine, how are you?" she blinked and glanced back to her tail, seeming surprised at the sight of blood. There were a number of other wounds across her small frame: cuts from shards of rocks, plus a few bite marks from the ghouls that had gotten past her laser pistol.

Stone groaned and slowly rose to a sitting position, rubbing a hoof over the back of his neck as two beams of light turned on him. Like Wild, he had a number of cuts and gashes across his body. With a snort, the large stallion looked around for his hat, which must have fallen off during his desperate dive for safety.

"I'm fine, nothing serious really...could have been a lot worse," Wild said as she cast another look over to Stone. For his part, the earth pony was still searching for his beloved hat, having fished out his lantern from his pack (or a different lantern; it was hard to tell with that pony what all he had in those saddlebags). With a few sparks from his lighter, he had the room cast into a warm glow. With a grin, he spotted the battered head gear near the collapsed remains of the door. Rising up, he trotted towards where it had fallen.

“I’m afraid I nearly got us killed. There was this gas pipe running through the tunnel, and I didn’t see it before I tossed a few grenades at those ghouls...” I began meekly, but a orange hoof rose up and Wild looked back to me.

“I should have warned you about that, but I didn’t expect there to be any gas left in those old lines after so long. I suppose the collapse that had sealed the train in place had also sealed pockets of gas inside as well...”

“If ya hadn’t tossed them grenades, ah reckon we’d of been a meal for them ghouls about now. We’d never have made it this far with them on our tails,” Stone said as he neared the doorway.

I nodded my head and started to reach for a health potion to share between us. It should be enough to stop the shallow cuts from bleeding, and slow the deeper ones so we could use simple bandages. I froze as the clicking from my Pipbuck began to rise again, a sudden surge of radiation was detected nearby...but why only now?

Stone stood with his back to the fresh rubble pile and was leaning over to pick up his hat with his teeth when a pair of rotting hooves shoved their way through the mound of soil and stone. Wild cried out a warning a second too late as the sharp edges of the hooves slashed down across Stones flank, parting the flesh easily and cutting deeply. The earth pony dropped to the ground with a thud as the head of a ghoul pony pushed its way from the soil like some zombie from a horror movie.

Wild rushed to Stones aid, clamping her teeth upon his armor and trying to drag the larger pony away from the glowing fiend as it pulled more of its twisted body free. Somehow, against all the odds, the large ghoul had survived not only the explosion, but also the collapse of the tunnel. The sword that had been shoved into its head had broken off, and only the tip of the blade remained. Much of its coat had been burned away, as had the flesh below; charred muscle and bones made up most of the thing. How it was still moving was beyond me. But move it did, open jaws snapping for the warm flesh of either of my two friends. At least it did until my right hoof collided with its jaw and with a loud snap the bone snapped free.

“Stay dead!” I snarled and slammed my hoof into the things head again and again as my Pipbuck clicked madly. The distraction gave Wild the time she needed to haul the heavy earth pony away from the thing’s reach and press a piece of cloth to the bleeding wound in his side. I rose up onto my hind legs to bring both my front hooves down atop the things skull when it pushed its way free fully and tackled me.

We stumbled back into the room in a clatter of armor and bones. As we fell back, we landed atop a table that had been sitting in the middle of the room, and the thing’s weight broke it in two, sending us both crashing to the floor amid the remains. It snarled through its broken jaw and tried in vain to close its teeth around my exposed throat. I snarled and pushed back with my front hooves, trying to lift it off me as its own hooves slammed into my armored chest. My lungs ached as its weight crushed me into the floor, and the overpowering stench of cooked meat wasn’t really helping.

Wild appeared over its shoulder and slammed Stones knife into the back of the ghouls neck. Black, foul blood spurted from the fresh wound and splattered across my face as the mare began to saw through the burned flesh. I heaved the beast upwards, muscles aching, its flailing hooves striking the ground near my face and leaving a deep groove in the solid concrete. With a snort the ghoul shoved its head back and struck Wild across the muzzle with its skull, the broken sword tip barely missing her face.

I reached for the revolver I had strapped to my left front leg, trying to avoid this thing’s own hooves as I did so. Closing my teeth around the handle I yanked it free and slammed the barrel into the ghouls glowing eye, bursting the orb with the metal rod. I snarled around the trigger and squeezed it, sending a round straight through its skull and into its rotting brain. Not surprisingly, it didn’t stop moving, but it did pause. I pulled the trigger twice more, pulping whatever was left in between its ears and putting the damned thing down for good.

I groaned softly as I lay upon the floor. Why the hell did this shit keep happening to me? Opening my eyes, I stared at the cracked and shadowy ceiling above me. None of the lights worked in here, it seemed, and the only source of light came from Stone’s lantern that Wild had set nearby. My body protested any attempts at movement, and I remained lying where I was for the time being. At least I was still alive. Turning my head slowly I looked towards the fallen body covered by a tarp in the corner of the room (where Wild had found it, I had no idea, and was far too tired to question it). The ghoul lay still, its body no longer glowing with unnatural light or giving off high levels of radiation. I suppose it had to be alive to do that. Stone had called it a Reaver after he’d woke up the first time an hour ago. It was a pony unlucky enough to soak up vast amounts of radiation as he or she died, either having stumbled upon a area covered in the stuff or been close enough to ground zero for it to flash fry them in the stuff. Far worse fates than death...

“You're going to have to stop doing this.” The pegasus’ voice caused me to turn away from looking at the corner of the room and over towards my left. Wild sat near the lantern and the recovering Stonehoof. Both of my friends were covered in small nicks and cuts, all that remained of their injuries thanks to the health potions they’d used. Stone’s hindquarters was covered still in bandages from the thick slash he had received, but he was thankfully no longer so pale looking. I smirked to Wild and turned back to staring at the ceiling.

“Tell that to the Wasteland, it’s the one trying to kill me,” I replied as I tossed the second empty Rad Away pouch to the side, the bag striking the empty health potion bottle that I’d sat there a hour ago. We had to be going soon, even though our mad flight through the subway car fighting off the horde of undead ponies had nearly killed us. Oh, and that whole cave-in hadn’t done any of us any favors. Still, I didn’t want to wait too long; somepony had to have seen that explosion or the sudden sinkhole we’d made on the surface. At least we had spent the time we had resting and patching ourselves up, and I was fairly sure we could go up against a radroach and be sure of victory...maybe.

We spent the next twenty minutes gathering our gear and picking ourselves up. With the way behind us sealed off, all that was left was forwards. With a final glance to the room that had hours ago saved our lives, I stepped towards the shut door and carefully took hold of the handle in my mouth; needless to say it tasted like it looked and I hurriedly yanked it open, its long-rusted hinges groaning in protest at suddenly being asked to work once more after so long. Flecks of orange rust rained down from the edges of the door as it scraped against its frame to open. But open it did, and we exited out into a dark tunnel.

Plunging out into that darkness, I swept my shotgun around slowly and scanned the cracked and pitted walls, my hoof steps sounding painfully loud to my ears. Whether it was due to the lack of working emergency lighting or the events of the past several hours, this new subway tunnel seemed far more sinister than the last. I eyed my E.F.S. carefully, but saw no evidence there was anypony else down here with us; not that it had helped much on the train. Lowering my weapon slightly, I glanced behind me at the half finished passage behind me as it disappeared into the shadows. The change in features was startling and I could easily see where the workers had halted construction. Smooth ponymade walls gave way to a more rough cave like appearance. I raised my right foreleg and swept it across the walls nearest me, seeing shovels and pickaxes lying where they had been dropped. The wooden shafts were half rotted and the metal heads rusted to ruin. I saw other tools further down the tunnel, including a large earth moving machine with a clawed arm for scooping out loose rock and soil, and carts for hauling said debris away along the half finished rails for the trains.

Stone stepped up beside me, his gray coat blending in well with the darkness; he was lowering his rifle as he looked the way I did, taking a few steps closer to the wall and the ruined tools. As he passed, I noticed his bandaged flank, and was reminded of another pony: Appleseed and his sisters. I wondered how they were all doing. Hopefully it was better than us. Once more, the sound of Wildfire’s voice brought me out of my thoughts and I glanced over my shoulder to the mare.

“It stands to reason this tunnel follows the same route as the other, so it should lead us straight to the subway station under Kanter City, and from there up into the walled-off section.” The pegasus had holstered her pistol for the time being, making it easier for her to speak without having the grip of the weapon lodged between her teeth.

“Ah take it then, this here tunnel might lead us back th’ way we came once we have Shadow’s sister?” Stone asked beside the wall, pointing his rifle into the darkness beyond, “Ah recall seein’ this one blocked back at th’ station,” he added and I arched a brow. Shit, he was right, the other tunnel had been blocked.

“It is, but there’s another cross over further back down, we passed it a hour before we reached the train, remember?” the mare stepped between us and nodded her head towards the darkness.

“Well why in tarnation didn’ we take that one?” Stone snorted lightly with a swish of his tail.

“Because the last time I was through here, there wasn’t a small army of ghouls guarding the train and I knew the path already,” Wild replied with a poke of her hoof to the stallions chest, “And the door was locked and the keypad to open it destroyed.” she added.

“Ah’m all for pressin’ on, but don’t ya think we should make sure we gotta way outta this place?” Stone asked me, looking over the red locks of the pegasus mare standing between us.

“You're right, we should head back and check that out before pressing forward.” I said looking back the way we’d come from Tarturs station. I’d hate to save Ebony, only to find our way blocked as we tried to escape through this tunnel. Somehow, I doubted the raiders would let us leave via the front door.

So, once more we delayed our journey into Kanter City to ensure we had a way back out again. It still bothered me, and I grew silent as we walked along the half finished tunnel. While Ebony and the others had been captive for well over a week and a half now, the chances she was still alive grew slimmer with every passing hour. My mind screamed at me to turn around and charge towards the Kanter City Subway Station, but another voice stopped me.

The voice of reason.

We pressed on, covering the distance more slowly than we had coming up the tunnels, but then, this one was more cave then tunnel. Water dripped from the ceiling constantly, and I wondered how this place had yet to flood. Pools of water were nearly everywhere, and several times we’d find ourselves splashing through a hidden pool in the darkness. We found more evidence of tools laying around as we went further in. Shining my light around, I saw rusting metal beams connected to the walls, likely the prelude to concrete being added to form the smooth walls. Ahead of me, Stone stopped suddenly and held up a hoof, causing Wild and myself to stop beside him. The stallion’s ears had perked up and he was listening to something. I was about to ask him what when my own ears twitched.

I turned my head slowly towards the source of the sound; it sounded familiar, like something I’d heard recently. My ears twitched and I tried to place that noise. It sounded like a low roar, but nothing I’d fought thus far had sounded so loud. Wild took a few steps forward and listened, the fiery mare having heard the same as us.

“Sounds like a river.” she said finally, turning back to look at us. Stone was nodding his head.

“Ah was wonderin’ if it wasn’t just me,” the stallion said, and stepped forward as well, holding his lantern a bit higher, “Ya said there were caverns round here. It could be a underground river, ah reckon.”

“The construction crews could have discovered it while digging, it would explain why they never finished this tunnel.” she took a few more steps when suddenly she dropped from sight.

“Wild!!” Stone was the first to react and rushed to where the mare had just been standing, skidding to a halt with a muffled cry as he held tightly to his lantern. He looked to be about ready to fall, and without waiting I lunged forward and wrapped my forehooves around his chest and hauled him back. With a grunt, we went down and for the second time that day I was nearly crushed to death by another pony.

“Well...I had no idea your barn door swung that way, Shadow.” The cocky voice of my winged friend said from above, and as Stone got to his hooves I saw the orange pegasus hovering just a few inches above my head with a smirk.

“Wild, thank Celestia, ah though ya fell inta’ a pit and broke yer neck or somethin’,” the earth pony said as she landed beside him, “Ah mean...its good ya wasn’t hurt.”

If I wasn’t in so much pain right now, I might have made a comment on those two...but yeah, the pain. Groaning, I rolled over onto my side and blinked a few times to clear the stars from them before I looked to Wild.

“What happened?” I asked as she turned away from the blushing Stone and trotted over to help me to my hooves. With a smirk she answered.

“The big dirt pony was right for once...I fell down a hole...just a very big one.” She stepped aside and pointed towards where she had been walking. Laying on the ground was Stone’s lantern; he must have dropped it when we’d fell. Carefully I approached the flickering light and stopped.

The tunnel floor dropped from sight into a jagged tear in the surface of the earth. The soft glow from Stone’s lantern cast the rough walls into a hundred shadows, but didn’t go even a dozen paces into the pit. As I shifted to raise up my Pipbuck, a stone dislodged from the floor and plummeted into the depths. I heard it clatter off the walls before that too stopped. Not even the beam from my Pipbuck seemed able to reach the bottom and I swallowed. That was some damn hole...

As I stood on the edge of the pit, I could hear more clearly the sounds of rushing water below me. An underground river must have been flowing below this tunnel for hundreds of years or more, the work crews likely having weakened the floor, allowed it to cave into the cavern below.

Raising my right hoof up, the light from my Pipbuck passed across the distant edge of the pit. It was far too wide to jump, and though Wild could easily fly across it, I doubted she could carry Stone. It looked like we would have to find another way out of Kanter City. I scanned my light slowly across the tunnel and stopped as the light struck something. I turned and trotted along the edge of the hole and came to where the subway tracks had been laid. To my surprise, they crossed the pit completely on a natural bridge of stone.

“I found a way across.” I called back to my two companions, and they quickly gathered around me to eye the bridge.

“Think I’ll just fly across,” Wild said after doing a quick check of the safety of our only means to cross the pit. The mare leaned over and poked a hoof at the rusting rails and the stone below them. It seemed time had eroded most of the rock below the rails, and there was only a thin layer between them and the sudden drop.

“Ah reckon it’s still a might bit safer than tryin’ ta make our way back ta Sticks on th’ surface,” Stone added, taking a few hoof steps across the rails, and I reminded myself that the pony had worked in a mine for years with his brother. If anypony knew if it was alright to cross, it’d be him.

“Alright, well I spotted the crossover room just on the other side of this death trap of a bridge,” the pegasus hovered just above our heads, wings flapping steadily. Just as I started to place a hoof upon the rails, she added “Try not to fall though, its been a long trip and I’m a bit worn out.” She smirked as I narrowed my eyes on her.

We managed to cross the bridge with no trouble beyond me looking over the side and wishing I hadn’t. It looked to be a very long drop into the waters below. I had no doubts that if anypony had fallen, they would be as good as dead.

Shaking off the unease, I looked back to the door we stood in front of and put away my screw driver and pins. The door had been locked, but I’d taken care of that. As I prepared to open it, I looked to the deep scars across the surface of the metal door; it looked like something or somepony had been desperate to get inside, and I made sure my shotgun was ready to fire. Gripping the handle in my mouth, I twisted it, and with a click the door opened and swung slowly into the room. It was similar in shape and design to the one we’d just managed to enter before the tunnel collapsed behind us. This one however was partly lit by emergency lighting, and by the looks of it had not been touched in over a hundred fifty years. Stone would likely have a field day looting the place of anything valuable. I was just about to enter when the smell hit my nose. Snorting, I shut my eyes, and images of a family huddled tightly together in Lonesome Hoof came back to me. That was never a good smell.

With a sense of dread, I entered into the room and shone my light across its contents. Metal tool boxes and rotting wooden crates were neatly stacked near the right of the room upon metal shelves. A few pipes ran along the same wall and out through a hole into the tunnel we’d originally passed through. I stepped in further to allow the others inside and turned to look to my left.

As he entered, Stone’s hoof brushed across something on the floor and sent the item rolling around between my hooves and off into the left corner. Looking behind me, I saw a yellow medical box upon the wall, its lid having been ripped open and laying in the floor dented. The three pink butterflies upon it had rusted and nearly faded completely away. Beside the lid were ruined medical supplies, dusty bandages and a broken bottle that may have been a health potion. I noticed a faded red stain on the floor (what a shock); however, this looked more like a hoof print. As I looked up, I saw another, and another leading off to the far left corner of the room, and spotted the item Stone had struck. A empty bottle resting beside a dried hoof.

Snapping my teeth around the bit for my shotgun, I yanked the weapon up and pointed it towards the bodies laying against the wall. Stone turned around from where he had been checking over the shelves to point his rifle at the same spot as I. Wild arched her brow and rolled her eyes.

“Really, not everypony in the wasteland is going to be a fucking flesh hungry ghoul.” Calmly she trotted over to the two forms and kicked the side of one. After several seconds of them not rising up howling for our blood I released a breath and lowered my weapon, “Hmm, interesting, this fellow use to be a pegasus,” Wild said, kneeling down beside the body she had kicked.

Nearing Wild and the two bodies, I saw they had both been dressed in the uniforms of the Equestrian Army: gray camo patterns over the flak armor they had. One was a mare, and judging by her build and the fact she had a horn rising up from a hole in her helmet, she had been a unicorn. She had a large dark stain on her chest, brown bandages wrapped around what had likely been the wound that killed her. She still had her sidearm strapped to her webgear, a 9mm automatic by the looks of it. Her head was resting on the stallions shoulder, the remains of her orange mane falling across the other ponies chest.

The stallion was indeed a pegasus, as Wild had pointed out; the remains of a feathered wing had been wrapped around the unicorns small body, holding her close as the end claimed them both. He seemed free of any injuries however. His helmet was sitting on the floor where he’d dropped it getting to the corner, a forehoof wrapped around the neck of the mare, the other resting near a fallen assault rifle. His mane was a short cut brown mass, that had fallen into his face and hid his eyes from sight. Both had name patches on their armored chests and not surprisingly both had the same name there.

Cake.

Lowering my gaze, I spotted a recording sitting upon the stallion’s chest beside his name and carefully reached out to take it from him. Its batteries had long since died, but perhaps if there was a message left I could still listen to it. Setting the recorder down beside my Pipbuck I opened a panel on the side of the device and took a cord out. It seemed to be a perfect match for the port on the side of the recorder, and within seconds I had downloaded the message the pair had left behind. I’d save it for later when I had time to listen. I stood up and looked back to the reason why we’d come here in the first place. The second door into the room. Stone stood beside it and was shaking his head.

“Door’s locked, afraid Ah an’t very good with that sort’a thing.” His green eyes fell upon the dead ponies again and sighed, “Never a right sight ta see dead ponies left ta rot.”

Standing up, I placed a hoof upon my large friend's shoulder and nodded my head slowly.

“No, it isn’t. But there’s only so much we can do for the dead of the past...I know I tried doing what I could for some I found. For the moment, we need to focus on the living.” I jerked my head back to the pair, “Mind seeing if they have anything we can use while I look at the door?”

Nodding his head to me, the gray pony walked past me to kneel beside the bodies and begin his search. He removed his hat before he started, and Wild stepped up beside him and offered him a hoof. I trotted over towards the other door and reached for my lockpicking tools before coming to a halt. It was one of those electric locks and required a password to open. With a grunt I sat myself down and looked over the keypad. Well at least it was a number instead of a word, and judging by the small screen, it couldn’t be any more than four or five numbers long. Still, I was a little worried about just randomly tapping away numbers in the hopes of getting it correct. Some locks disabled themselves after a certain number of incorrect tries had been entered. If this was one of those, then we’d be trapped inside here forever. I frowned and started to press a key when I thought of the dead soldiers in the corner. They had gotten in; had they known the code? Or had they simply come in the same way as us?

“Stone, you find any piece of paper with numbers on it on either of them?” I asked, looking from the lock to my friends in the corner. He’d retrieved a bit from the pair already, several spare clips for the 9mm pistol and a few bandages. The assault rifle lay propped up beside the wall now, the dust shaken off it and the clip removed. Despite the length of time it’d been down here, it looked in far better shape than my own.

“No, nothin’ thus far. How ‘bout this recorder?” he asked, reaching over to pick up the device in his mouth.

Well, it was worth a shot. I reached down to my Pipbuck and turned it to the message screen. A large number of recordings appeared in the display, but only three seemed recoverable enough to play. I pressed one of the buttons with my nose and the screen sorted the files once more. This time only those three appeared; two short files with a far longer one placed in between them. Well, might as well start at the beginning. Choosing the first file, I hit play and the voice of a young mare came over the speaker.

“Log Entry Number Two Hundred and Twenty Three. Not a damned thing has changed yet, we’re still sitting around waiting on orders from HQ. I swear, I’m going to die of old age before those prissy ponies decide where to ship us off to. A bit of good news though, my brother’s due in tomorrow morning with the rest of his squadron. Seems the 105th Equestrian Calvary is going to be backed up with a entire wing of pegasi air support. Honestly, I’m just looking forward to seeing my brother again; its been far too long since we were last together. Been even longer since we’ve seen mom and dad,” the voice sighed softly. “They never approved of us joining the army; they expected we’d take over the family business. But if somepony doesn’t stop these Zebras, there won’t be anypony left to sell to. Hopefully when we go back for Winter's Veil this year we can patch things up with them.”

The track finished and I grunted softly to myself. Not what I was expecting, but then, what should I have been hoping for? Hi, we’re screwed and here’s the number to the door. Thanks, good luck? Well, maybe the next two would have something we could use. I hit play on my Pipbuck. The sound of laughter and voices filled the room as the mare from before began to speak again.

“Log Entry Number Two Hundred and...stop, it Sweeps! Shit, girl, go nuzzle Brightwing’s cheek, the mare’s a filly fooler after all...Log Entry...ah, fuck it. Last night before we ship out, and once again my darling brother has dragged his squad and mine out for an all-nighter. Captain Honeywell’s gonna be ticked if we come back again late tonight, but eh, screw the ol’ maid.” As the mare spoke, I could hear giggling from around her, and the *tink!* of glasses as ponies toasted one another. “Speaking of my brother, he’s not changed a bit. Besides the hard drinking, he’s still a hard fighter; he challenged Sergeant Drillbit from second squad to a wrestling match. They’re suppose to start in a few minutes. How he got the owner to let them fight inside is beyond me. I guess I can’t complain too much though. Drill’s got a cute ass, and most of my squad seems to think so...” I heard a few more drunk giggles from the other mares with her before a chilling sound filled the speaker of my Pipbuck. Within a moment a second joined in, and another and all conversation stopped.

A chair skidded across the floor as the sounds of running hooves echoed from the speaker, murmured voices in the background. Behind it all was the mournful wail of the sirens. The voices began to raise as panic started to grip some of their owners. Suddenly, the voices began to yell and cry out as a distant rumble shook the speaker of my Pipbuck. After a moment, the mare spoke again, though not to her recorder, she likely forgot it was still running.

“Holy Celestia...this isn’t a fucking drill...” other voices around her began talking rapidly.

“What was that flash?”

“Did that come from base??”

“Carrot what's going on?” a young sounding stallions voice came from the speaker, sounding close to the mare and her recorder. He had to shout to be heard over the growing noise of panic.

“Brother...fuck...I - I think Cloverfield is gone...” For a moment all we could hear was the sirens and the panicked voices around the pair, “We’ve got to get out of here...they’ll target the city next, so if another missile isn’t on its way, it will be. We’ve got to get these ponies somewhere.”

“Red, get the rest of the squad and round up the ground pounders from my sister’s squad. Get these civvies ready to move and have them grab as much food and water as they can.” There was several minutes of rushed conversions and movements as the recording continued to play as the soldiers began to round up those few ponies in the bar with them. Outside, the sirens blared out their warning.

“Fillydelphia’s gone...so’s Manehattan!!”

“You're fucking kidding me...”

“I wish to Celestia I was, brother...I heard it over my radio just before it went dead. I think the army base was hit too...we’re next!”

I noticed Wild’s blue eyes fixed upon the speaker of my Pipbuck, Stone sat beside the two bodies with his head lowered, ears perked to the sounds as we listened to what amounted to the end of the world.

“Where are we going to go?” the young stallion asked, as the minutes ticked by.

“The new subway station isn’t far from here,” a new older voice said to the siblings.

“They have it up and running already?” the brother asked in surprise.

“Not completely, no, but they have one of the tunnels finished and have trains running to take workers out to that housing project out in the desert. If we’re lucky, the train’s there now and we get these ponies out of here.”

“Sounds like our best chance of making it out of this alive, let’s...” the mare’s voice was cut off as another pony spoke up from the background.

“Sarge! Some of the ponies want to return home...should we try and stop them?” It was a young mare’s, far younger sounding then the sister.

“No, if they want to die in their homes, let them. Get those willing to leave with us out here, we have to get moving now!” the mare answered. She was clearly respected by the others (her squad no doubt) and even her brother seemed ready to follow her orders.

As we listened, the small group of ponies began running through the streets towards the subway station, the siren blaring out the entire time. It was complete chaos as ponies tried to escape. Panicked screaming at times nearly drowned out the siren. Some ponies had simply broken down and were crying in the streets. Yet more ponies began to join the soldiers as they made their way through the streets and alleys.

“The highways a lost cause; there’s overturned chariots and carts on all the roads out, and ponies are fleeing into the desert,” a new voice was saying as the sister neared him.

“They can’t outrun what's coming.” her brother answered over the sound of running hooves, “Why don’t you come with us, officer?”

“Sorry, son, I’ve been called back to the station, the Chief’s trying to get a organized evacuation going”

“In this madness?” the sister yelled.

“I know its a doomed attempt, but my wife works in dispatch. I can’t leave her.”

“Good luck, officer,” the brother said, before he began moving beside his sister and the recorder.

“You as well.” The officer's voice faded as the group went past him. The older voice from the bar yelled out from a distance.

“There’s the station! Come on everypony, just a bit further.” The sound of hooves began to change in pitch as they raced down steps and into a tunnel, fading away. The pony with the recorder must have still been up top.

“Pound!” a voice yelled out; it was that older pony who had mentioned the station. “We’ve got a problem...”

“Only one?” the brother, Pound, said with a slight snort.

“The train’s already left the station. Seems somepony else had the same idea as us. I found one of the subway workers getting ready to run down the tunnel; he said it’ll take at least thirty minutes to reach Tartarus Station.”

“Fuck...we don’t have time for that, get them going down the tunnel as quickly as you can, we have to-” The brother’s voice was cut off, as was the sound of everything else, as something massive exploded.

The speaker of my Pipbuck actually rocked by the volume of the sound coming from it. For several minutes all we could hear was the roar of the blast and a powerful wind roaring through the speakers. I thought I could make out the sound of somepony crying out, but I couldn’t be sure over the noise. After a few more seconds the sound was cut off and the recording stopped, casting us once more into silence.

I sat there dumbly looking at my Pipbuck, my two friends in a similar state of shock. With a shaking hoof, I reached out and pressed the next recording. The voice of the brother could be heard, breathing heavily. Another sound echoed from the speaker, that of hooves beating against metal.

“We did what we could... made it farther than anypony else. But I think our luck’s finally run out. The last of our food and water is gone, Brill was carrying the extra when they got him,” the stallions voice broke for a moment, “Fuck...as if the radiation being washed down here wasn’t bad enough, there’s the damned undead.” A wet cough came from the speaker as the pony stopped once more. When the voice picked back up, he sounded far older, “They got Brightwing...the damned featherbrain gave me enough time to get Carrot to safety. It’s just us now...few more hours it’ll just be me.” A soft sob came from the speaker, “Those damned things ripped her open...just...shattered her chest armor and ripped out her lung. I’ve tried everything I can think of to stop the bleeding, but we ran out of health potions yesterday. I gave her the last of the Med X to ease the pain...but all I can do now is watch her die.”

“I hope that train reached the station, because it looks like they're the only ponies to make it out of Kanter City alive.” I sighed softly and lowered my head; his hope had been crushed as surely as the train had. “If anypony finds this, please let our parents know we loved them and we’re sorry...if by some chance you’ve made your way here from Kanter City, the lock for the door’s 1212 if you really want to try and risk the tunnels.” A snort followed those words, “Who the fuck cares...there’s likely nopony left alive to even hear this...” The recording ended suddenly and I glanced back to the ponies in the corner.

Rising slowly, I entered the numbers into the locking pad and heard a soft click come from the panel. The metal door slowly swung open easily then, revealing a undamaged section of the subway tunnel beyond. We had our way out.

Standing, I stepped out into the tunnel and looked back the way we had come and saw it was as clear as it had been. Looking the other way, I could just make out where the cave in had halted, smoke still rising from the pile of stone and metal. There did not appear to be anypony else around, so either they hadn’t come looking or they hadn’t gotten this far.

Stepping back into the room, I closed the door and locked it. No sense in letting anypony sneak up behind us, and just in case there were any ghouls left wandering the tunnel, I didn’t want them to find a way inside here. As much as the recording had shaken us, we had no time to waste and I started moving for the still open door, Wild rising up to follow me. Stone leaned over the two bodies and pulled something from around their necks. Small metal tags. Placing his hat back atop his head and securing the items he had removed from the siblings, he rose to follow us back into the hallway and the begin long walk back down to where we started.

Mindful of Pound’s final message on the recording, we kept a watchful eye on our surroundings, while I continued scanning my E.F.S. The dying pegasus had mentioned his fellow survivors trying to kill them after being exposed to high levels of radiation, and the only way those ghouls had of escaping the tunnel was back towards Kanter City. While I had hoped we’d killed most of them in the explosion and following cave-in, I wasn’t about to just go strolling through the dark, dank subway tunnel with my tail hiked.

As another hour slowly drew to a close, we at last reached the Kanter City subway station. The tunnel had begun to smooth out and become far more uniform in shape and size, as well as become far more intact. The walls and ceiling still bore signs of wear, with cracks and breaks in the concrete, but no signs of a collapse. Ahead of me, Wild raised a hoof and waved for us to come to a halt. The mare worked her way back towards Stone and myself, her hooves making barely a sound as they seemed to glide across the steel rails.

“Alright, up ahead is the station, which, if nothing's changed since I escaped its layout, is similar to Tartarus Station, only a bit larger in scale. There’s four tracks instead of the two and three levels to the station,” the pegasus began to explain. “Access to the other floors is via the stairwells located to the sides. I only know the right-side stairwell is usable and goes all the way to the streets.”

“Are the raiders known for using the station? Or should we expect them to be guarding it since you escaped by going this way?” I asked. Looking over Wild’s shoulder to the darkened tunnel, I could see it open out into the station itself not far ahead. Dim light glowed from the opening, suggesting some of the station’s overhead lighting still worked, but I could see little beyond the tracks and the loading platform from where I stood.

“They weren’t guarding it when I escaped... fuck, it was the only way I could have made it,” she admitted honestly. “I was in no shape to fight anypony when I reached the station.” She glanced back to where I was and frowned. This must have been hard on her, coming back to the place she’d likely been abused for...how long? She never really said, but I doubted it would take long given the kind of things I’d heard the raiders did.

Hang on, Ebony...

“Alright, we’ll scope out the station. If it looks clear, we’ll head for the stairs you came down and make our way to the surface. Once there, I’ll start searching for Ebony’s Pipbuck marker. If she’s in the city, I think it should locate her, but it may have a limited range,” I said, looking between them both before adding, “One last time, neither of you have to go any further. If you want to wait in the tunnel or head back to the crossover room...”

“Ah think ya know my answer, Shadow,” Stone said quickly, standing up from the tracks.

“I’ve come this far; fuck, I was nearly crushed by falling stone, eaten by zombies and turned into a glow rod by a monster pony. Might as well take the entire tour and get attacked by raiders.” Wild smirked as she flexed her wings, earning a snort from Stone; but also a smile.

“Well then, lead the way,” I said, waving my right hoof towards the tunnel and stood up to follow her. I turned the light of my Pipbuck off. No sense giving away our position this close to the enemy. Wild’s chest light had already been turned off, and Stone was storing his lantern back into his packs.

Wild carefully trotted down the tracks, hooves never seeming to make as much noise as the two earth ponies following her. She’d drawn her laser pistol and had it pointed out into the station as we reached the edge of the tunnel. I stepped up behind her. Glancing to my E.F.S., I saw a bit of static before it popped back up and displayed several red bars directly in front of us. I froze and blinked. Shit, we’re screwed.

I was about to draw Wild back into cover when she trotted out into the open and made her way swiftly to the edge of the loading platform, with a flap of her wings she rose up onto the raised platform and took cover behind an overturned bench before waving us up. Blinking, I looked back to my Pipbuck and the display there. Seven red bars stared back at me, one was even atop me.

It was then that I discovered another of the Pipbuck’s E.F.S.’ drawbacks: it didn’t have any way to display on what floors the threats were located. I groaned and shook my head before moving out after Wild. The trash covered tracks nearly tripped me twice before I reached the edge of the platform and quietly pulled myself up onto it. Scanning around, I trotted over to kneel beside Wild and whispered near her.

“I’m reading seven threats in the station, likely on the second floor.” The mare nodded as Stone quickly joined us. The earth pony propped his rifle up on the back of the bench.

“I ran into a few radroaches when I was here last, so it could just be them. Still, let’s try and be careful,” Wild whispered to us both before she motioned towards the far wall of the station.

Following her hoof, I looked across the open station and the four sets of tracks we had to cross largely in the open to the far wall. There I spotted the double doors leading out into a hallway. Beside the doors was a rusted sign depicting stairs going up. I frowned and looked over the station once more; like Tartarus Station, the overhead panels still worked, sending down narrow beams of light from the ceiling. Specks of dust drifted slowly through those beams to cover everything in a layer of dirt and decay. Overturned trash cans and benches were everywhere within the station, and there were far more personal affects scattered about: suitcases, makeshift personal wagons, and foal carriages. There were also a number of skeletons lying about the platform. I suppose others had sought to escape the burning city by taking shelter within the subway tunnels, only to die from the high levels of radiation they had been exposed to. At least not all had been transformed into ghouls, but of those who had...had they fallen upon their dying friends after the change?

After a quick scan of the station, Wild was up again, running across the platform. Opening her wings, she leapt into the air and sailed across the four sets of tracks to reach the far wall in one go. Landing lightly, she edged towards the doorway and looked through. Once more, she turned and waved us over.

“Show off...” Stone said with a grin, rising to his hooves. The large gray stallion made his way more slowly across the platform than our pegasus friend. Rather than dive off into the tracks four times, the earth pony sought out the overhead walkway and climbed the stairs leading to it.

With a quick look around, I followed behind him, climbing up the stairs while being careful to keep from dislodging any number of broken bottles and cans that littered them. Reaching the top, I looked around and found more bones scattered about. Bits of armor and a few guns poked out from the yellowing, broken pieces. I imagined they had once belonged to raiders who either had no idea what was down here or were too stupid to care. The ghouls had made short work of them, despite their advantage of armor and weapons.

We made our way across the platform, hooves kicking up puffs of dust that had gathered here for some time; though they had been stupid, it seemed the raiders had learned their lesson. Stone eyed the gear as we passed, but managed to keep moving and forgo his normal salvaging nature. Skirting a weak section of the platform, we reached the stairs and quickly trotted down them to rejoin Wild.

The doorway to the surface stood before me. Kanter City. Ebony, and the end of my search. A orange hoof reached up and pushed the right-side door open slowly, allowing us to look into the room. A single large set of stairs led upward, the room completely dark save for a beam of light making its way down between the steps. I blinked; the light was not coming from any panel, but from outside. I gave each of my friends a look. Each nodded to me; they were ready. This was it.

Gripping the firing bit of my shotgun, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. The stench of decay and death filling my nose and I snorted. Rising to my hooves I opened my eyes and pushed my way through the doors. Rushed towards the stairs, hooves rattling off the stone steps.

Finally, the moment had arrived...

My eyes snapped to the floor above as I raced, a broken beer bottle catching the light from above and turning it a deep amber. Behind me, I heard the light hoof steps of Wildfire as she followed me closely.

...This was it...!

Rounding the second floor, I gripped my weapon tighter and climbed higher, my heart hammering in my chest.

...The moment I find my sister...

As I climbed the third set of stairs, the grey overcast sky loomed above me, dim rays of sunlight filtering through small holes in the layer of clouds. I squinted in the light, the hours spent in the near darkness of the tunnel making even this little bit of light bright enough to blind. Setting my hoof onto the surface, I stepped out into the city that had taken my family from me.

Welcome to Level 8!

Bonus Perk Added: Pinkie Sense: You dunno how, why or what, but sometimes you get little tingling feelings in your body and they each mean a different thing. They might save you from a falling rock or frog, keep you from getting a muddy coat, or warn you of a falling princess. There’s no instruction guide, however, so good luck figuring out what each feeling means before it’s too late! Oh, they also don’t happen all the time, either, so you can’t depend on them to save your life every time. Yeah, this perk is sooooo random. Have another Perk to make up for this one!

Perk Added: Super Slam: All unarmed and melee weapon attacks have a chance of knocking down your opponent (or any nasty doors that get in your way). This does not affect ‘automatic’ melee weapons such as the Ripper or the chainsaw. The chance of knocking an opponent down is 20% while using an unarmed weapon or one-hoofed melee weapon. It also looks awesome to the mares while doing it.

Author's Notes:

Editor and Chief: TheGamefilmGuruman

Editor: Avi

Pre- Reader: MagicLlama

Pre- Reader: Bronyken

Original Cover Art: TimeForSP

Current Cover Art: MisterMech Go. Worship his work.