Kanter City, a city of the dead and the damned. Its streets and buildings were as silent as a tomb as we stood gazing up at them; a fact I found rather fitting, since the once mighty city had ended up becoming a grave for its original inhabitants. Their ashes had long ago mixed with that of their city’s, blown across the parking lots and sidewalks, and into high rises and shopping malls. My friends and I stood beside the stairs leading up from the subway, and simply stared at the twisted towers above us as they rose up into the thick, cloud-covered sky.

The black pits of hundreds of windows stared down upon us like the eyes of a radscorpion, while rusted metal support beams sat exposed from the sides of the buildings, the walls pitted and cracked. One thing nearly all the buildings had in common was the lack of their upper floors, the blast wave from the balefire bombs having ripped them free and tossed them to the streets below, killing anypony unlucky enough to be out in them. I imagine a great many had died in the streets, given the panic I had heard on the audio tapes from the twins’ recorder.

Those same streets that had run between the large buildings were now a hellish maze of decaying structures and debris; chariots of every size and shape littered the roadways, along with chunks of fallen buildings, rusted metal scrap and the charred bones of the dead. Half-melted, broken lampposts ran along the sidewalks. Bent signs and broken stoplights rose from the rubble in spots, like tombstone markers. Like much of the wasteland I’d seen thus far, tufts of dark down grass pushed up between the cracks of the pavement, waving in the humid breeze blowing in over the walls, and providing the only color other than gray and black.

Trotting slowly away from the subway entrance, I craned my neck back and stared up at the remaining floors of the buildings before us. Movement from one of those many dark windows caught my eye and I quickly turned my head to look. A yellowed curtain fluttered in the wind, flapping lazily from where it had hung for who knows how long. I stood there watching as yellowed papers darted out from the window and slowly floated down to the streets, disappearing behind the ruins of another shattered structure. I lowered my gaze and stared at the streets before us and the shattered chariots lining the sidewalk. Most were blackened and overturned from the blast; some, however, retained their original colors, though only on the sides facing away from the heat wave. Behind me, my two friends began following me through the maze of twisted rusting hulks.

A large number of them were simply personal carts, likely driven here before the final moments by ponies desperate to escape the city, but there were also several emergency vehicles. As we walked between them, hooves making soft clattering noise upon the pavement, I looked a few of them over. I saw police carts, with faded black and white paint on their rusting surfaces; along the end of one I could still make out “To Protect and Serve.” I saw several large fire engines: masses of orange and brown rust, rubber hoses long since rotted away. We carefully walked around an overturned ambulance, its back doors having been ripped off, either by the blast or by surviving looters and raiders. Like the others we had passed, the insides of the carts had been salvaged; broken radios, busted electronics and the brittle bones of the dead lay in heaps. The carts had formed a protective barrier around the smaller personal carts. Despite it all, they had still tried to protect those ponies they had sworn to look after. Even from a balefire bomb.

It’s what security does, protect ponies...I had told Rose. I glanced to the Riot Armor I wore, my name written across my chest along with the number of my Stable.

“We should get moving before a patrol stumbles upon us. I’m rather surprised we’ve not seen any sign of them yet,” Wildfire said from beside a charred police cart, blue eyes scanning the cloud covered sky for any sign of flyers. I looked up from where I stood and scanned the upper floors of the towers myself, looking for any signs of life.

Stonehoof, meanwhile, was picking his way through a nearby cart; a taxi, judging by the remaining faded yellow paint and lettering across one door. He had found an old briefcase and had opened it in the hopes of finding something usable, or at least something that we could sell when we returned to friendly territory. The large gray earth pony looked back across the street to the subway tunnel, then slowly around the buildings we stood between.

As I watched my friend shove a few bits of scrap metal into his saddlebag, I noticed a bent street sign behind him. It was the remains of a crosswalk sign. Despite the rust, the broken glass screens, and signs of melting, it still seemed to be working. A faded green glow came from behind the remains of dirt-encrusted glass, half of a trotting pony showing it was safe to cross the street.

“Ah reckon yer right, Wild, but do either of ya rightly know which way we should be goin’?” Stone asked, as he worked his way between the rusting carts towards where I was standing. Wild glanced back to him before answering.

“I’ve been giving that some thought while we were on our way here. Well, at least while we weren’t running for our lives from an army of ghouls.” Good times, I thought, as she continued. “The most likely place we should check first is where I was being kept a couple years ago. It seemed to be the raiders’ central prison for ponies they captured within the wasteland, and it held a large number when I was there. As luck would have it, it isn’t far from here.”

“Alright, sounds like a plan,” I said as I lifted my right hoof up, working the controls on the side of my Pipbuck. I switched the screens and settings to start searching for my sister’s tag, or for any pony from Stable 45. Chances are if I found one, I might find the others, or at least learn where to find them. My friends watched silently from beside me, both ponies keeping a careful eye out around us as my Pipbuck updated its tracking information. For a moment, I held onto a small hope that a message would flash in my E.F.S. with a marker, but it was not to be; instead, a number of red dots flashed into being within my vision, only a short distance away down the street we stood upon. “It didn’t find my sister, but it did find trouble coming our way,” I said to them, pointing a hoof towards the end of the street, “Wild, lead the way to that prison.”

“Alright, just remember: watch your step and keep the noise down. As bad as the wasteland is, this place can be far worse,” the mare said, her stormy blue eyes passing from Stone to me before she turned her head away and started trotting forward. I glanced to the rusting carts and the bones of the dead.

We followed her across the street to the other sidewalk and between two towering, ruined highrises. The alleyway she led us into was dark and as trash- and rubble-filled as the street, perhaps more so. As we entered, Stone cast a quick glance down to the end of the road towards where our company was coming from. We could all hear the sound of rough voices and crude laughter. The gray stallion’s hooves were making far more noise than either Wild or mine, but I doubted they could have heard him over the noise they were making. We had slipped fully into the alley long before the first raider would have come into sight, so I was sure we’d gotten away clean.

With a final glance behind me, I turned my attention fully on the narrow space we were walking into, which reminded me of the subway tunnels. It was narrow and felt enclosed, and, looking up, I saw the reason for that. The sky above was indeed blocked out; one of the building's upper floors had been ripped away in the blast and had fallen in between itself and its neighbor. A large section remained intact, wedged between the two structures, with bits of debris from the building along with items from inside it lying scattered across the alleyway. Broken office chairs, battered filing cabinets and desks, blown-out terminals, and lamps were just some of the items sticking out from piles of a hundred year trash heap. There were personal effects as well: picture frames with their photos rotted away by time, coffee mugs with faded lettering across them, and broken reading glasses. Small reminders that this city had once been home to ponies.

It took us longer to reach the end of the alley then I expected, thanks largely in part to the rubble. At one point, it had piled up to the third floors of either building, which somepony long ago had dug a hole under. While neither Wild nor I had any issues, Stone’s larger frame got stuck twice while wiggling through. While I expected Wild’s crude humor to kick in, it remained distant and after a bit of pushing, we managed to push/pull our friend free. As we started back towards the end of the alley, I began to hear a loud buzzing, and glanced worriedly towards the sky. What now? A radwasp? Or radfly? Since nothing darted in to kill us, and my two friends seemed unworried, I gave up looking for flying killers. Finally, we reached the end of the alley, and the dim light of the cloud-covered sun seemed welcoming- at least, it would have if it wasn’t lighting up a gruesome sight within the street.

Bodies hung from the street lights, swaying in the wind, causing the poles to groan as the weight shifted. I stared up at the rotting bodies of ponies and felt my stomach roll, but I kept its contents where they belonged and simply scanned the dead. Mares, stallions, colts, and fillies all hung in different ways along the street. All bore some signs of abuse upon their broken bodies, and all had been mutilated after they had died; at least, I prayed they had died before somepony had begun carving them up. The annoying sound I had heard was from hundreds of fat, black-bodied flies buzzing around and crawling over the battered forms. Once again, I felt the concern for my sister rise, but also anger. Anger that anypony could do this to another. Anger that somepony hadn’t put a stop to this. What kind of sick fuck do you have to be to gut a small filly?

A hoof gently laid across my shoulder and I looked back to Wild, the pegasus standing beside me, “There’s nothing you or anypony else can do for them,” she said softly, an odd note in her voice. Nodding her head towards the end of the street and the ruins of what appeared to be a hotel, she added, “We have to go through that building to reach the next street.” Dropping her hoof, she stepped past me and out onto the street. Not once did the orange mare raise her head towards the bodies as she trotted across the street and into the cover of an overturned wagon, turning to wait on us.

I gazed once more to the thin, wasted forms of ponies hanging around me and sighed softly. With so much horror in this new world, was there anything on the surface for us anymore? Was there any hope? Stone stepped up beside me and stared at the bodies above us, the large earth pony grunting softly as he looked to two young foals; an ash grey hoof came down upon a piece of trash, crushing it in his anger.

“Raiders aren’t ponies no more, Shadow. Best keep that in mind; makes killin’ ‘em easier and what they do easier ta understand,” Stone said softly, before he too trotted past and off towards the wagon Wild stood beside.

As he walked away I mulled over his words; I’d yet to face raiders again since my Stable, and I had no trouble killing them then. Would I now? Looking up at the bodies and seeing a young colt no older than Sugar spinning slowly by his neck, I somehow doubted I would. Lowering my eyes back to the street, I set off after my friends.

The hotel must have been impressive in its day; the entrance into the building had been tucked under large support columns that held up the front of the hotel. The space formed a place where carriages and carts could be brought and their passengers unloaded in any sort of weather. The doors themselves sat within the center of the covered area, large double doors that looked large enough to allow a dragon to walk inside. Gold trim and frosted glass formed large windows along the wall on either side of the doors, giving a impressive view of red carpeted floors, crystal chandeliers, and a large oak sign-in desk flanked by twin spiral staircases leading up. Rich looking chairs and couches had allowed guests a place to relax while waiting on their rides or just to watch the ponies coming and going from the hotel. At least, that’s what I imagined it must have been like.

Now, the columns were pot marked and pitted from countless bullet holes, and stained with what I had come to know was dried blood. Spent shell casings lay among the years of refuse that sat piled up against the crumbling columns. Shards of glass littered the ground before the rusted and twisted window frames, spots of gold paint still visible below the orange oxide covering. The doors had long ago been ripped free from their hinges and lay propped up inside the vestibule. Stepping over the glass shards, we entered the weathered room and I looked over the filth. The oak desk was still in place, but had massive gashes carved into it, along with the always present holes from gunfire. It also looked as if somepony had attempted to set it on fire. Of the chairs and couches, they had been set ablaze more easily than the desk, and their charred remains lay piled through the room upon the stained moldy carpet. The stairs still remained, and lead up to the upper floors of the hotel, though judging by the gaping holes in the ceiling, I expected much of the upper floors had long since rotted away. The entire room smelled of rot and smoke. Wild turned back to tell us something when red dots began appearing in my E.F.S. Either they had just moved into range, or I had. As she started to open her mouth, the sound of laughter reached our ears, coming from a hallway just behind the stairs.

In a flash, my friends dove into cover: Wild stepped out into the hallway, ducking into a small room whose door had been hacked apart, the orange mare disappearing into the darkness. Stone, for his large size, ducked down between the stairs and the desk, rifle held in his mouth and pointed towards the hallway. I lagged a few seconds behind my more world-savvy friends, and ducked down behind the desk, pressing my armored back into the chipped wood. Splitters dug into my exposed coat and I gripped my shotgun’s bit tightly in my teeth, ears perked towards the sound of laughter and voices. It was hard to say how many there were, as the red dots seemed clustered closely among themselves, and the voices rose and fell as ponies tried to talk over others.

When nopony appeared, I checked my E.F.S. and saw that none of the red blips had moved much from where I had first noticed them, but they had spread out a bit. Enough for me to be able to count; there appeared to be around...shit, fifteen. I then noticed a single yellow marker in the middle of the red. Wild’s head appeared from the doorway of her hiding place, and she scanned the hallway beyond, laser pistol held in her mouth. She leaned back and nodded her head towards us, causing Stone to stand and, as quietly as he could walk, around the stairs and aim his rifle towards the voices.

I rose a second later and moved between them, aiming my shotgun towards the dark hallway. Like the rest of the hotel, the hallway was a mess; the walls had been covered in crude words, mostly profanity and lude comments about mares. I ignored it and whispered softly to my friends, “I suppose that’s the way we have to go?”

“Of course. Fuck...it’s never easy,” Wild said with a hiss, eyes narrowed on the hallway, her pistol lowered as she looked to myself and Stone, “How many?” When I told her, the pegasus’ wings stood up and she swore, “Fucking hell...there’s no way we can take that many without somepony hearing or one of them escaping.”

“Should we find another way?” Stone asked, rifle still aimed down the hallway. The stallion’s green eyes watched for any signs of movement; I just hoped he’d warn us rather than fire. Wild was right; if we started a fight now, we’d likely be swarmed by raiders in a matter of minutes.

“Only other way is several blocks down, and it’s in a more populated area of the city,” Wild answered, as she lowered her frazzled wings. “We could try and find another way, but it will take time, and give the patrols more chances of spotting us.”

“Is there anyway past these raiders?” I whispered to the mare; I wasn’t about to give up yet, and wandering around lost in this hellhole was a surefire way of getting captured or killed, or both.

“...It depends on where they are in the room ahead. We just need to go past the door into the kitchen and down the hallway into the storage room. There’s a fire escape door there; it’s rusted shut, but it can be opened if you know the trick,” she finally answered. after several minutes of thinking over the problem. How she knew so much about this place was a mystery; somehow I doubted the raiders let their captives just wander around freely. Pushing that to the side for the time being, I looked back towards the dark hallway and the sound of voices.

“Alright, either way we go, we run a greater risk of being found out, but this way seems to offer the best reward for getting to where we need to go.”

Nodding her head in agreement, Wild stepped out from the closet she had hidden in, and began slowly moving forward with us close behind. We moved far slower this time, careful of where we placed our hooves on the floor, for trash (like everywhere in the wasteland) was everywhere. While I doubted these raiders would hear much over the noise they are making, it was better to not take that chance if we could help it. After several minutes of walking along the hallway, we at last reached an open doorway along our left side, light spilling out from within and the sound of voices growing louder. A quick look around revealed that if a pony came out of that door, we’d be spotted. There was no place to hide, no other door that wasn’t closed or blocked, and no pillars or large enough heaps of random junk.

“I swear, that cunt is seein’ things, Rampage. She said the desert floor actually sunk into the ground. I slapped her for even botherin’ me with stupid shit,” a loud voice from inside the room was saying. The others seemed to be laughing at what was said, or talking among themselves. I could hear the rattle of bottles, as someponies drank, and I also smelled something burnt; it smelled familiar, but not.

Wild inched closer to the door, while Stone and I stood back; she was the least likely to be heard, and most knowledgeable about this place. The mare stopped, as the sound of hooves came from the doorway, but after a moment they quietened down and she moved just a bit closer, until she could glance inside.

“Yeah, one of my patrols said they heard some explosion down in the subway... fucking ass ghouls probably just blew themselves up. Good riddance,” a second voice, far deeper and rough, answered the first. With a start, I realized they were talking about the cave in. So it had been seen and heard in the city, but it seemed nopony thought much of it. We’d either been lucky or someone up above was keeping an eye out for us.

Wild was now standing at the edge of the door, kneeling down close to the floor to reduce her visibility to anypony inside just glancing over and spotting her. Whatever she saw caused her to tense up, her wings fluttering and tail bristling out, but she remained still. Stone and I shared a look, before looking back to our winged friend as the raiders carried on with their conversation and drinking.

“I shoulda had the cunt blow me,” the first voice responded with a crude laugh, followed by several others, “Hey...maybe that one fucker was there and finally died. Bastard shoulda been dead a long time ago.”

“Maybe... you wanna go down into the tunnels and find out?” the deeper voice asked, and the room quieted down a bit to that. I wondered what they were talking about; somepony was inside the city maybe? In the tunnels? It wasn’t one of the ponies from my home; by the sounds of it, whoever it was had been causing them some trouble for awhile. Still, it could have just as easily been a crazed member of their own group doing it for shits and giggles.

Wild slipped away from the doorframe and walked carefully back to us, glancing behind her as she did so. “They’re all gathered in the middle of the room. Most have their backs to the door, and it appears they’ve all been drinking for some time. We should be able to move past them if we move quickly and quietly. I’ll go first, Shadow second, and Stones last.” It made sense; we were both light enough on our hooves that we could likely sneak past without being heard. Stone on the other hoof...well, he was his name sake. If things went south, at least we’d all be in one place instead of split if the raiders came charging out.

Wild lightly stepped back to the door and waited for her opening to dash across to the other side. Each of us would be exposed for only seconds, but it would be enough if just one of the raiders in the room turned to look. But factor in them being drunk and we might just be able to dance across. Stone followed closely behind me as I hugged the wall, inching up behind the pegasus whose ears were perked towards the doorway, wings twitching as she waited for her chance. The sound of laughter once more filled the room beyond the door, and echoed out into the dark hallway.

I almost missed it, blinking just as Wild took off across the opening, hooves making barely more noise then when she had walked. The orange mare drew herself to a halt and turned to face us, eyes fixed on the doorway. We each held our breath, as we waited to see if she’d been spotted, but after a minute or two, it seemed she had judged the moment correctly. The raiders beyond seemed unaware that we were just outside their room.

Working my way closer to the doorway, I edged my face around the corner and peered into the room and stopped breathing. What few horrors I had seen thus far had done nothing to prepare me for what I saw in that room. Raiders sat around a large room that was nearly equal in size to that of the dining hall back home. It was the hotel's kitchen, or it had been. Stoves and refrigerators each took up a wall, with countertops of rusted steel and half broken tables and chairs making up the majority of the room. Like all the other places I had been, it was a mess of trash and debris, but also blood. The source of the blood was hanging from the walls, ceiling and across the counters: bloody bits of meat. I nearly vomited, and swallowed the acidic bile back down my throat. The smell was horrible, but what made it all the worse was the type of meat. A flank hanging from the ceiling had a cutie mark upon it. Sweet Celestia...they are killing and eating ponies in a fucking kitchen. Charred flesh was the unknown scent I had caught earlier; it was just that it had been cooked with spices or something added which had thrown me off track.

A hoof poked me from behind and drew my attention away from the horrors as I looked back to Stone. The earth pony had a grim look on his normal pleasant face and we locked eyes for a moment. Neither of us spoke, but I managed to gather my wits enough to calm myself. I’d remembered Jacobs saying a raider was likely to either kill, rape, or eat you... I had thought he was joking, but what I’d seen in that room was no joke. Was that why my Stable had been attacked? For food?

Ebony.

I turned back to peer around the doorway, focusing on the raiders instead of the room and what hung all around it. They looked similar to the ones who had attacked Stable 45; crude armor covered parts of their bodies, a mix of steel and cloth and all covered in rust, gore, and dirt. Spikes and blades covered parts of the armor, and all carried several weapons, from pistols to assault rifles and swords to axes. The majority were earth ponies, but I saw a small number of unicorns in the mix. All were male. Two, however, stood out from the crowd.

The closest to the door was a sizeable unicorn, sitting with his front hooves atop the table he slammed an empty beer bottle atop, rattling its neighbors and sending them clattering across the table top. The pony was easily larger than Stone, muscles seeming to almost burst from his body and straining at his dark red coat. He wore battered security barding across his massive frame, dented and scored from use and lack of repair. All across his armor he wore belts holding a mix of bladed weapons, from small daggers and knives to large meat cleavers. Over his hooves, he was wearing metal claws that looked sharp enough to carve open a radscorpion’s carapace. Upon a cracked shoulder pad, somepony had painted a crude sword embedded in a pony skull, a symbol repeated on several ponies sitting near him. A gang marking?

The other raider of note was a equally as large, a tan earth pony sitting at the other end of the table from the unicorn. He wore what appeared to be the remains of a suit of power armor, as badly dented and mutilated as the other raiders’ armor. An equally large collection of bottles sat around him, and he tossed one away into the face of a raider sitting beside him, showering the stallions face with shards of broken glass and causing him to fall away yelling. Laughing, the earth pony turned away and regarded the unicorn. This pony’s face was a mass of scars, and one eye was nothing more than a black pit. He wore a battle saddle across his ruined power armor, fitted with heavy machine guns on both sides, the ammo feed running into saddlebags across his flanks. Like the unicorn, he too bore a mark upon his shoulder guard, only his was of a line of bullets.

Their attention seemed to turn from the table to something happening off in the corner of the room, and as all eyes turned towards the section of the kitchen, I rose up and made a mad dash for the other side of the door. It was an odd feeling, running across a doorway, almost like some childish game you’d play as a young colt, only this game was deadly real, your life and that of your friends depended on you not being seen. It took only seconds to cross the distance, yet those few seconds left me exposed for any passing eye to see.

Making more noise then my winged friend had, I rolled to a stop beside her, flanks pressing against one another as we waited to see if I’d been spotted. The seconds ticked by as I stared across the doorway to where Stone waited his turn; the earth pony held his rifle in his mouth, ready to fire it at the first sign of trouble. But it would seem the raiders neither heard nor worried about the hallway past their room, far too intent on whatever was taking place within the room. One of the raiders turned away from whatever the others watched and began looking for a still full bottle from among the many empty ones scattered atop the table. Both Stone and myself leaned back into the hallway and out of his sight.

As I stood beside the doorway waiting for the one stallion to look away, I looked back over to the two ponies I’d noticed earlier, likely the leaders of gangs or bands of raiders. The large muscle bound unicorn smirked and leaned back away from the table as he eyed movement off in the corner of the kitchen. He licked his lips and called out to somepony just outside my view, “Come on, Brute, stop playing around with your food! Don’t ya know that one’s up for the chopping block in a couple of days?” The unicorn chuckled and lifted a bottle of beer up from the table, out of the grasping hooves of the earth pony who had been busy searching for it. As the two argued over ownership of the bottle, I leaned a bit further out to see what was happening, and nearly fell out into the doorway.

Off in the corner, upon a stained battered table, was a young mare, chained to the wall and being raped by one of the unicorn’s bucks, judging by the tattoo on his shoulder. I quickly looked away from the sight, but I couldn’t escape the sounds. The laughing raiders had covered up the noise until then, when they all decided to watch the poor thing. How could I just sit here and let this happen?

Jerking my head back, I grabbed for my shotgun around my neck in my forehooves. The fuck was wrong with them? The fuck was wrong with the whole damn world? The raiders in the kitchen began to laugh once more, almost drowning out the sounds. I couldn’t just let this happen. I started to reach for the bit to my weapon when a orange hoof slid across the weapon and Wild’s blue eyes filled my vision as she leaned in close.

“There’s nothing we can do for her, Shadow. Luna above, I want to go in there and kill every single one of those fuckers...but if we do, we’ll be signing our own death warrants, and that of your sister’s.” She looked from my face to the doorway, hatred burning in her eyes as she stared at the two large stallions sitting at the table, laughing at the poor mare, “If we get into a fight now there’s no way we’ll be able to remain unnoticed. Even if we killed every asshole in there, the chance somepony nearby will find them or hear the gunshots is very good...and right now, the only thing we have going for us is the fact they don’t know we’re here.”

Damnit to hell...but she was right. She removed her hoof from my weapon, knowing I wouldn’t risk it, despite every urge to the contrary to just start firing. She was right. I let the shotgun fall back against my chest and calmed my breathing. This wasn’t the time or place to just kill them all. Movement from across the doorway alerted me to Stone getting ready to cross to us, then we could be away from this place.

Stonehoof inched forward as quietly as he could, his head poked around the corner of the doorway, watching the raiders as he waited for his chance. Most had gone back to watching the ‘show’ and ignored the doorway to their backs. As he placed a single hoof into the open space and began to trot across the opening, the sharp scraping of wood echoed from within the room as a pony stood up from the table and started towards the door.

Stone jerked his head back as well as his hooves, biting his bottom lip to keep from swearing as he did so. He pulled his rifle back up to his lips and edged back against the wall, Wild and I did likewise, but there wasn’t anywhere to which we could quickly and quietly run. The sound of hoof steps drawing closer caused my ears to flick, Stone pressed himself up against the wall as best he could and we waited to be discovered.

A twisted stallion stumbled into the hall, snorting to himself as he stopped in the doorway. His brown coat was filthy, and splattered with dry blood. Crude spiked armor plates were strapped to his forelegs, chest and neck, the metal rusted and in poor shape. A old shotgun hung across his side, the barrel sawed off and filed down. The smell coming off the pony was as bad as the odor of the kitchen; a mix of vomit, blood and unwashed flesh.

For the moment he simply stood there, swaying on his hooves, clearly drunk out of his mind. His scarred head turned first to the left, red blurry eyes landing directly on Wild and myself. I stood still, knowing he’d spotted us, but oddly hesitant to move. Blinking, he looked away and then across to Stone, where raider and earth pony stood staring at one another. Had he not seen us? Was he really that shit-faced drunk?

Scratching his chest with a fore hoof, the raider finally stumbled over to the wall across from the doorway, and proceeded to take a leak. Right there. I blinked, unsure if this was really happening as he emptied his bladder across the floor. It seemed so unlikely...but as the stream ended, he lowered his leg and stumbled back into the kitchen, sparing none of us a second look. In the kitchen, the crude laughed continued on, along with the noises from the corner.

“How did he...,” Wild whispered, one of her ears twitching as she attempted to understand how we’d not been spotted. Glass shattering echoed from within the kitchen as the raiders started tossing their bottles about. The sudden noise caused Wild to jump a bit and look uneasily towards the door.

“Don’t question it too much, let's just hurry and get the hell outa this place.” I answered softly, before waving Stone on across as I saw the raiders all turned to watch a fight break out between two of their friends. The ash gray earth pony wasted no time, and hurriedly crossed the opening. His hooves rattled more than mine, but luckily, the brawling raiders made more than enough noise to hide them.

Without looking back, we made our way further down the hallway until we reached another door, this one closed. By the look on Wild’s face I knew this was not something she’d expected and we came to a halt. The door had been padlocked; crudely but effectively sealing us inside the building.

“Shit...they must have added this since I escaped,” the mare muttered, placing a hoof against the old lock. Somepony must have either found it laying around the city, or simply removed it from another place. The screws used to hold it on the door and frame were far too large, and had damaged the metal plate. The padlock itself was a bit too small for the rest, and while it could easily be broken, it would make a lot of noise. Luckily, we had another option.

“I’ve got this,” I whispered, and moved up beside the door. reaching into my saddlebags, I withdrew my screwdriver and pins, before setting to work on the lock. It was hardly the most difficult of locks, but the fact it was so badly rusted over made it hard to turn the tumblers inside. I broke more then one of my pins attempting to get it open, but at last the lock snapped lose and I quickly removed it.

“Nice work.” Wild nodded her head before pulling the door open; the room beyond was filled with cardboard boxes stuffed with cans of food and bottles of water and beer. The raiders had started using the room for its original purpose. At least there wasn’t any meat stored here.

“Where to now?” Stone asked, taking a moment to add some of the food to our bags; every little bit helps, and I had no issue with stealing from raiders. I noticed Stone only took the canned food and left the bags; less chance of tampering, I suppose.

Wild stepped carefully around the boxes of supplies and over to a second door, this one unlocked, and she opened it with only a small groan of old hinges. Inside, it looked like a maintenance closet; moldy mops and brooms hung from the walls, buckets and bottles sat across the floor. But it was to the back of the small room that the pegasus went, to a metal round cover set into the floor.

“This leads directly into the sewers. Once we’re inside, the risk of running into raiders is low; they tend to stay clear of them.” As she spoke, Stone had found a crowbar from somewhere within the room (or his saddlebags; it was hard to tell with that pony) and pried the edge up under the cover. With a grunt, he popped the ponyhole cover up and onto it’s side, filling the room with the scent of rot and decay. Still, it was better then the kitchen’s smell.

Wild was the first one down. As I stepped closer, I saw a series of metal rungs leading down into the dark hole. While rusted and in places bent, they still seemed able to support a pony’s weight. The mare’s red maned head disappeared into the darkness; I was up next.

Swinging my hindquarters around, I worked my flanks down into the hole and began climbing down the rungs, keeping my eyes on where I placed my hooves. I doubted I’d like falling into anything that lay waiting on the bottom of this shaft. As my hooves touched the ground, I at once sunk up to my ankles in foul smelling sludge. I stepped aside from the ladder, gingerly moving through the thick stream of muck, and looked around. A single emergency lighting unit was placed just beside the ladder, so we had a small amount of light. The walls of the tunnel were made of brick and mortar, all old-fashioned stuff; clearly the sewers were older than most of the city above. I glanced back up to the ladder as I heard heavy hoofsteps upon them.

The hollow clang of the metal ponyhole cover sliding back into place echoed throughout the narrow tunnel, the cracked brick walls and ceiling showering us with dust from the heavy sound. Looking up the ladder, Stone twisted his hooves slowly to finish sealing the cover into place, cutting off the dim lighting and stale air of the storage room for the flickering glow of emergency lighting and the heavy odor of decay.

My friend carefully climbed down the twisted rungs of the ladder, being as watchful of where he placed his hoof as I had been. He attempted to be as quiet as he could but with his bulk, every time a hoof touched a metal rung it sounded as if a box of nails had been tossed down a elevator shaft. With a frustrated sigh, he simply gave up any attempt at stealth and quickly dropped down the last three steps into the sewage that filled the bottom of the tunnel, causing a splash. I winced and shook myself off as the foul water splashed onto my side. Stone grinned sheepishly to me before looking over our new environment.

The faint click of my Pipbuck’s light switch sounded as loud as a gunshot in the sudden silence that followed the ringing echoes, the narrow beam of light passing across the filth covered tunnel floor to the orange hooves of Wildfire, who stood several steps ahead of me. The mare shifted and turned to face me as I brought the light up to her face. With a flick of her hoof, the light on her chest armor flared into being and struck the gray coat of Stone. The earth pony had his head buried in his saddlebag, and within seconds had pulled out his lantern, already lit and surrounding us in its soft pale light.

We’d found ourselves in one of the hundreds of sewer tunnels that ran all across the city (or any modern city built in Equestria before the war). The walls were made of brick and mortar, with iron or steel reinforcement beams helping to support the weight of the roads and buildings above. Pipes ran along the length of the tunnel in various conditions: these had been bolted to the wall and likely had taken water, waste and power all across the city. Beside a collection of piping, further down the tunnel I spotted a battered emergency lighting system upon the wall, its lights shattered and cover broken. A quick glance either direction down the tunnel indicated that the rest of the lighting systems down here had met a similar fate. Shifting my hooves around, I felt, heard, and smelled the sludge I was standing in shift. Looking down, I saw I was hoof deep in the muck, a slow-moving layer of slime and other bits of trash washed down here by the rain. Judging by the steady clicking of my Pipbuck, it was also radioactive. I watched as a dead rat floated past and shivered in disgust. There weren’t enough hot showers in the world left to make me feel clean after this was over.

“We have to follow this tunnel for the next hour or so. With luck there will have been no collapses and we will come to a junction. From there we go right for another hour until we reach the water treatment plant, which is a block away from the hospital,” Wild said, stepping down the tunnel a bit to get a better look at the path ahead of us. The mare seemed unworried about the sludge and filth, but then again, she had used this to escape the city before.

“Can we take the sewers straight to the hospital?” I asked once I finished inspecting our surroundings. Wild moved further down the passage and panned her light across the walls and floor. Piles of garbage lay where they had been washed, the sludge flowing around them; one looked like it may have a body hidden below it.

“Not directly, no, that section of the sewers collapsed when the bombs struck the city. An entire block fell into the subway and sewer tunnels from the shock of the explosions, and the hole was filled in by the destroyed buildings; we’d never manage,” she answered, blue eyes seeming to glow in the light coming from my Pipbuck. “We’ll have to head back to the surface and cross the street. Then we’ll have to find a way back into the sewers. I know of one in that section of the city, but it’s been so long ago that I’ll have to get a look around first.”

Meanwhile, Stone had balanced his lantern upon his broad back and was checking over his rifle. He was wiping away a bit of the sludge from the weapon’s stock with a hoof when a loud splash from behind him caused the pony’s ears to stand upright quickly. Glancing over his shoulder into the darkness beyond, he shifted uneasily and gripped his rifle in his mouth.

A single red blip glowed from my E.F.S,. and I wondered if one of the raider’s hadn’t heard or seen us. If they had, then we’d be plot deep in mad ponies. The seconds ticked by and the ponyhole cover above us remained sealed. However, another splash echoed within the confines of the tunnel. I lifted my right foreleg up to cast some light on whatever it was and sighed in relief at what I saw in my Pipbuck’s dim glow.

It was just one of the most common pests in all of the wasteland, the radroach. The foal-sized brown bug skittered from the darkness of the tunnel and waved its antennas at Stone, wings buzzing as it sized up the pony. Its slick shiny carapace clicked as it moved this way and that on its hairy legs. I wrinkled my nose at the sight of the thing and lowered my shotgun that I had been holding tightly.

Swinging his hoof at the thing, Stone attempted to shoo it away, but it seemed intent on attacking us. The brown bug snapped at my friend’s leg and missed, buzzing its wings, it started to move in closer when it found out why radroaches are not a concern of most wastelanders. Rearing back on his hind legs, Stone slammed his front hooves down atop the roaches back, his weight pressing it down into the sludge, cracking its carapace easily and pulping the soft bits inside.

‘Ah reckon we best get goin’ then. While one or three ain’t nothin’, places like this are known for th’ swarms large enough to kill a pony.” Stepping back, Stone snorted and wiped his hooves off on the wall, leaving a wet smear across the bricks, and glancing back to us as he spoke. The dead bug was soon washed away with the rest of the trash, lost in the flow of garbage.

“I’d also like to put some distance between ourselves and the hotel, in case at least one of those raiders gets drunk enough to think coming down here’s a good idea,” Wild added. Some had already reached the point of being drunk blind.

“I suppose there’s worse here than radroaches then?” I asked as we turned to leave, Wild taking point since she was most familiar with this place. Stone walked in between us, his lantern casting more light then our smaller ones, and I walked behind him. I already had a good idea of the answer to my question. While nowhere in the wasteland seemed safe, a bit of conversation would help us forget the kitchen.

“Oh yes, two headed flesh-eating giant rats, flocks of bloodwings roosting down here while the suns up, and feral ghouls,” Oh my. Wild spoke as she navigated the twisting tunnels and side passages of the sewers. If not for her, we would have been hopelessly lost down in this maze.

“Ah’ve had my fill of ghouls for today, thank ya very much, Wild.” Stone muttered, glancing back the way we had come, before looking ahead and to the mare in front of him, falling silent.

I had to agree: the subway train had been more then enough for me, but I also remembered what Wild had said about the sewers of Kanter City. A number of ponies had sought to escape their fate down here, only to seal it. The radioactivity had washed down here with them by storms a few days following the bombs, killing hundreds and turning some into the walking undead.

As we walked, I thought about the pony we’d left back in the hotel, and what her fate was to be. A part of me was shocked I hadn’t argued more with Wild, but she was right. If we had gone back in, guns blazing, we would have found ourselves outnumbered by Celestia knows how many more raiders from the surrounding ruins. And if by some chance we managed to make good our escape, then they would know somepony was loose in their city, and any chance of saving my sister would be tossed out the door.

Shaking my head, I looked back up to my two friends as I walked along behind them, hooves sucking into the thick sludge as we went, and tried to get my mind off the mare. We walked for over an hour in silence before coming to the split in the tunnel as Wild had said. The tunnel opened up into a small chamber, with four passages leading off from it, including the one we had just traveled. Ahead, the middle tunnel was blocked by a collapse made up of garbage and broken bricks. Both the left and right passage remained clear and it was the right that Wild trotted towards. We pressed on for another thirty minutes in silence before Stone asked.

“How do ya know some much bout this place anyway?”

“I became familiar with the sewers the last time I was here; it was how I escaped,” she answered, hooves stepping lightly in the muck, unlike Stone and myself who seemed to sink deeper into the filth. I was thinking very hard about burning my armor after all this was done, for I doubted I’d ever get the smell out of it from all I’ve been through. From radscorpion blood and venom to gecko bits.

“But how? Ah don’t reckon th’ raiders let their captives just wander about on their own,” Stone pressed. I had to admit, I had been curious about that as well; I could well imagine spending a few weeks just wandering around aimlessly in this place before finding any way out. But this place had likely already dug up enough painful memories for the pegasus so I had not asked. Wild looked up, as if she was about to answer Stone’s question when a sudden yellow dot appeared upon my E.F.S.

I swear, this thing is useless...

“Because I showed her,” a deep raspy voice said from my right. Blinking in surprise, I jerked my head around and came nose to nose with a ghoul. Glowing orange eyes locked upon mine as we looked one another over.

He was my height, and my build, though a bit lighter due to the loss of so much fur, hair and skin. His torn exposed flesh was dry, cracked and blackened, clinging to his bones tightly giving him a very skeletal appearance. While some of the ghouls in the train had been wearing clothing, he was dressed in full combat armor that appeared to be well maintained, worn markings on his shoulder guards and chest plate seemed familiar to me, but I couldn’t place them. A 9mm pistol was holstered to his left fore leg similar to my own revolver, he also carried a combat knife across his chest and a assault rifle floated within the glow of his horn, barrel pointed at my face. The chipped spiral horn had been half hidden beneath a dented combat helmet and the tangled mess that was the remains of his dark blue mane.

“So, care to explain why you three are in my sewers making enough noise to wake the dead? Cause I was having a fucking wonderful dream involving twins, a real bed and a bottle of Wild Pegasus,” the ghoul pony growled out in his raspy hoarse voice, cracked lips pulling back into a smile, revealing rotting yellow teeth.

“Looking for a group of ponies taken from a Stable,” Wild answered calmly, as if she knew the pony. She pushed her way past Stone to stand before the ghoul, blue eyes fixed upon his glowing orbs. “And hello Carrion, I see you're still as ugly as ever.” A smirk formed across her lips as she added that last part.

“Ahh...it is you.” Lowering his weapon, the ghoul regarded the pegasus and flicked his ears upright. Both were as burnt as the rest of him and one had a hole ripped clean through. His glowing eyes passed from me to Stone before settling on Wild, “So, who's the radroach bait and the old fat pony?”

Stone snorted and stomped a hoof at that comment, the ‘old fat pony’ adjusting his hat as he stepped up closer to Wild and the ghoul she was speaking to, ears laid back as he eyed the undead pony carefully. For my part I just kept silent and where I was; I mean, maybe radscorpion bait, but I could handle radroaches. Wild smirked and flicked her tail a bit at the names, eyes settling on Stone as he stood nearby before she turned them back to the ghoul and answered.

“The two muck ponies are Stonehoof and Shadow...and they are my friends.” The word ‘friend’ was stressed as she eyed Carrion, perhaps making it clear with the ghoul we weren’t to be disregarded. “And as much as I love this little reunion, the last time I was in the sewers I was nearly eaten by a swarm of giant mutant two headed rats...perhaps we can go elsewhere and talk?”

With a snort, the ghoul simply shook his head. I wondered if perhaps he wouldn’t still shoot us, or just leave us to our own devices, but after a moment of looking us over, he seemed to reach a decision.

“I’ll probably regret this...fucking smooth coats...,” he muttered. With a flick of his tattered ears, Carrion turned away from us and disappeared back into the hole in which he had been standing, half hidden behind a set of collapsed pipes and a rotting dark brown tarp that must have been washed down here years ago. The coloring of the tarp so matched that of the walls that the hole was nearly impossible to see unless you knew where to look. Even with our lights, the shadows seemed to blot it from sight.

“Charming fellow,” I said, lifting the edge of the tarp with a hoof. It went all the way down into the slowly flowing sludge, which had a layer of green mold or algae atop it; helping keep it held down was a long-since rusted metal rod. Somepony had gone through some effort to hide the tunnel, and I had a good idea who that was.

Beside me, Stone snorted, clearly not liking the ghoul. I looked from him to Wild as she stepped into the tunnel under the tarp. The pegasus paused to look back to us.

“He might be able to help us, so I’d suggest we follow him.” Without bothering to see if we agreed, she turned to followed the new tunnel and the rotting flanks of the ghoul several steps ahead.

Forget maze, the system of subway tunnels, sewers, and maintenance passages below Kanter City was a labyrinth, and not one I wished to try on my own. I’d quickly given up on trying to remember the twists and turns we had taken since leaving the hidden passage, but it felt as if we’d covered several miles underground. Luckily, my Pipbuck was managing to log the path we had been taking, along with retrieving an old map of the city from Celestia knew where and adding names to places I’d never heard of. The one thing I knew for certain was if we walked much more, we’d end up back in Crossroads.

When I’d asked Carrion how he knew which way he was going, he simply grunted and pointed a hoof to odd markings painted or carved into the stonework of the tunnels: marks that made sense only to the ghoul, and left us completely at his mercy. But Wildfire seemed to trust him, and from what I gathered it had been this ghoul who had helped her escape. I also remember Stone saying that not all ghouls were rabid blood thirsty monsters out for flesh, that some were still ponies under their rotting flesh. Was he really just like the ponies I had known all my life despite the fact his appearance made my coat crawl? Still, I’d always been taught not to judge a pony on looks alone. Should I be so quick to judge him?

After two hours of wandering through the dank tunnels, we at last reached the end of the latest passage we had been trekking down. It was remarkably dry, and a rusted metal door barred our path further. I was about to step towards the door when I noticed Carrion, who had been leading the way the entire time, had halted. I glanced to my friends, both of whom had stopped a few paces behind the ghoul, and took a step back myself, looking from them to Carrion with a raised brow. At last I held up a hoof and swept it towards the hall.

“After you.”

“Well... you're not as dumb as you look.” Flashing his yellowed teeth in that unsettling smile, the ghoul stepped forwards and made a show of stepping over something in the hallway. Looking closer, I could just barely see a thin wire running across the floor. Following it back towards the wall, I lost sight of it behind a pile of boxes and bits of trash that looked like every other pile of boxes and trash we’d passed. Wild and Stone carefully followed Carrion’s example, and when it came my turn, I saw what was sitting behind that pile. Three double barreled shotguns sat on the other end of that wire, each at slightly different heights. If a pony walked through that, they’d be so filled with buckshot you’d need a broom to get rid of the remains.

“Don’t step on the news papers,” our guide grunted out as he worked his way the final few steps to the door, his hooves never landing upon a number of rotting yellowed papers laying across the floor. I could just make out a circular shape below them, and a small nub at their center. Land mines. Seeing my look, the ghoul snorted, “Keeps away the salesponies.” And anything else. I suppose he had to be careful given his upstairs neighbors and the local wildlife.

The hinges of the door creaked as he pushed it open with a hoof; it didn’t seem to be locked. Why would you bother locking it when your welcome mat was lined with mines? As the door swung open, I saw half faded lettering across it, reading ‘Maintenance’. A dark room lay beyond, as dank and filthy looking as the rest of the tunnels we had passed through, but also as dry as the hallway, as were the crumbling bricks and metal pipes across the ceiling and walls. Like anything else down here, they were rusted, and many had holes in them with sludge leaking out that made my Pipbuck click steadily, but at least it stayed well within the green. Stone took a few steps into the room and grunted as he nearly tripped across a broken section of piping that lay upon the floor. Looking down, I saw more trash and rubble all across the ground and carefully picked my way further into the room after my large friend.

“Sorry for the mess, I don’t entertain guests often,” the ghoul’s rasping voice came from behind us. He had allowed us to enter before stepping inside and shutting the door. Shrugging off his patched saddlebags, he left them to thump heavily upon the floor. His assault rifle floated off his neck to settle upon one of a number of tables that sat around the room.

Most were half-rotted wooden tables shoved up against the wall beside the door, tools and weapons sitting atop most of them. As Carrion trotted between us into his home, I looked over to my right and saw another metal work bench, grenades and other explosives sitting atop it, along with more land mines and lunchboxes. It looked like a homemade bomb factory, which I suppose made sense if he was fighting a one pony war against the raiders.

Hanging along the walls between the pipes were a number of guns: from assault rifles to shotguns and everything in between. Most were in various states of repair and all had likely been taken from the dead hooves of raiders. There was enough armament here to equip two or three dozen ponies easily, as well as armor. Crude spiked armor lay in rusting heaps in one corner, while parts of combat armor sat atop creates nearby. It looked as if he was using the raider armor to repair the rest.

“So, you’re the first pony in a very long time to escape this hell hole, and what do you do? You trot back for a visit and bring friends! You’re either fucking nuts or fucking brave... either way, you’re just going to end up fucked.” I turned at the sound of the ghoul’s voice and saw he had walked over towards a rather odd item to be found in the middle of the sewers.

A recliner was sitting off by itself in room, nearby metal drums sitting along a wall with another door. The rusted drums bore the worn and half burned off universal symbol for radiation on their sides. A pile of empty glass bottles lay just beside the chair: some broken, some whole. Beer, whiskey, and Sparkle Cola bottles made up the majority of the pile. Lowering his deathly thin body into the stained cushions of the chair, he fixed his glowing orange orbs upon Wild once more, seeming to ignore Stone and myself. As he spoke, I noticed a hole in the side of his cheek, through which I could see his tongue moving. Oh, shit. I tried not to stare, but come on... after a moment, his armor caught my eye again. Something about it seemed familiar, but I just couldn’t place it. Like Stonehoof’s, much of Carrion’s armor had been repaired and replaced with other pieces from other suits over the years; only, I had a feeling he’d been replacing his suit for a lot longer then my friend.

“Wouldn’t be the first time, Carrion,” Wild answered, her fiery blue eyes locking with those of the ghoul’s. The mare smirked and tilted her head, wings rustling slightly as she did. “Why the fuck do you care?”

“Fuck if I know, I swore off giving two shits for ponies awhile ago. Just not often I find some trying to get into this hell hole; most of them are treasure hunters who think they're some sort of real-life Daring Do.” With a glow from his chipped horn, Carrion levitated a bottle of beer up from within the waste barrels that sat beside him. The bottle glowed a rather unhealthy green color, and my Pipbuck began clicking more loudly, “Most end up bleeding out all over my tunnels crying for their mothers. The dead can’t sleep with that noise.” Popping the cap of the drink, he tossed it aside and tilted it back and up to his lips.

Two things struck me at once at seeing this. The first, he was throwing away money. A large pile of caps sat beside his chair, and judging by the greedy look that was coming across Stone’s face, my fellow earth pony had seen them too. The second was the fact that most of what he was swallowing seemed to be running out of several holes in his body. Most spilled out the hole in his cheek, but also from smaller holes in his throat. The glowing liquid staining his already filthy armor and clothing.

“You three don’t strike me as the truly stupid type to try and search this place for loot. And since two out of the three of you likely aren’t into rape and cannibalism, I doubt you’re here to join the raiders,” the ghoul said, as he lowered the half empty bottle to the floor, glowing orange eyes looking us over. “But then, I’ve seen a few bitches with the raiders who could sodomize a buck with the best of ’em. So... why the fuck are you here?”

“As Wild said, we’re here to try and find a hoof-full of ponies taken from my Stable by raiders, my sister among them. Wild agreed to show me a way into the city, and I was hoping my Pipbuck would pick up my sister’s once we’d gotten close enough. We could then rescue her and the others,” I answered, stepping closer as I spoke. The click of my Pipbuck warning me of the radiation coming off those barrels but for the moment I ignored it. If he’d really been wandering around the city for years, then he might know a better way into that hospital, as Wild had said. His eyes landed upon me as he took another drink from his bottle, and I did not back down. In those baleful glowing orbs I could almost see the centuries pass by; how much had he seen here?

“Hope...,” Carrion snorted, and with a pulse from his magic he tossed the empty bottle across the room to shatter upon impact with the wall. Shards of glass raining down upon the floor in a shower of glittering pieces. His glowing eyes left mine at last and traveled across to Wild and lifted a filthy hoof up from the chair, “...I thought you of all ponies would know better. There’s no hope left in this fucking world.”

“Maybe not,” the pegasus said softly, stepping up to stand beside me on my left, blue eyes fixed upon the ghouls face, ears flicked back, “But he’s determined to do this, and has been given a number of chances to turn back. He will save his sister, come hellfire or hurricanes.” She glanced my way, a hint of a smile forming across her orange muzzle. “Not many ponies like that left in this world, Carrion. Besides, the kid wouldn’t have gotten out of Crossroads if I hadn’t helped him, and maybe I’m going soft.”

“She’s right,” Stone piped up, and stepped up beside Wild, tilting his hat back with a hoof. That same smile he had worn the day we met was on his muzzle as he turned his gaze from us to Carrion. “Ah been all across th’ wasteland, and ah can’t recall a pony quite so focused on somethin’ that ain’t about caps. Ah reckon any other pony woulda’ turned tail and ran just at th’ sight a’ this place but he’s as determined as ever.”

I smiled to my two friends, and bowed my head. I had been ready to throw in the towel upon seeing what we faced here, but a little reminder from my niece, as well as the strength I got from the two ponies standing beside me, helped me to settle those fears. If not for them, I would never have made it this far so quickly. A loud snort drew my focus back to the ghoul.

“Oh fucking hell, if any of you break into song, I am blowing us all the fuck up. None of you would have made it this far into the city if more than half of the raiders in this shit hole hadn’t left on some pillaging and rampaging,” Carrion grunted in response, and hopped off his seat. The ghoul trotted between us and over towards one of his work tables, orange eyes looking for something among the piles of random junk and half finished explosives.

“Look, ya don’t have ta risk yer neck for us, just tell us how ta get to th’ hospital and we’ll be outta yer mane... err... so ta speak.” As Stone spoke, I had been wondering about the lack of ponies in the city; by all accounts, the place should have been a hornets nest of crazed equines. I’m sure whatever was left was still more than three ponies could handle on their own without dying horribly.

“I don’t stick my rotting neck out for anypony, not anymore,” Carrion said without looking back at Stone, his hooves pushing aside half finished bombs and broken weapons, horn glowing as tools lifted up from the table and returned to their spots along the wall. “I learned long ago it doesn't do any good.” A hammer paused as it floated before him. “They just end up dying anyway.” He muttered the last bit to himself, but we all still caught the words. I glanced to Wild, who simply shrugged her shoulders. The old ghoul turned his skull like face towards us, eyes fixing mine once more in that deathly stare, “The pegasus was just a weak moment. Go back, smooth coats; there’s nothing for you here but a painful death.” The hammer dropped back to the table with a clatter of metal and he started to push past us back to his seat a fresh bottle of glowing beer floating up from the barrels.

“Fuck you, you rotten bastard,” I grunted, eyes narrowed on his back as he paused near his chair. “I haven’t crossed this damned wasteland just to be told to turn back by a crazed loony ass rotting corpse. I’m sure you know what these raiders do to their captives, having sat down here and watched Celestia and Luna knows what horrors for the past hundred fifty years.” I stepped closer to him as I spoke, ears flat against my head. “I’m going to save my sister and the others from my Stable, so either point us in the right direction and shut the fuck up, or help us.” I slammed my right hoof down hard on the floor, cracking a rusting metal pipe that had laid there for goddesses know how long.

Silence filled the room as I stood looking at the ghoul’s back, eyes narrowed. Both Stone and Wild shared a look and kept silent, waiting for Carrion’s response. Perhaps it wasn’t the smartest move I’d made, insulting a ghoul in his own home, in his own city surrounded by raiders, but dammit if I hadn’t had enough. Slowly, Carrion turned his cracked horned head back towards us, orange glowing eyes fixing upon my face and narrowing to slits. Had I pushed too far? Maybe. But dammit, I wasn’t about to back down now. I stepped closer and stared the old ghoul down, not giving an inch of ground. I could hear my two friends shifting uneasily behind me, before the silent deadlock was broken by an unexpected sound: Carrion began to laugh.

It started off as a deep, wet chuckle, his decaying body twitching as he sat down on his rump. It began to turn into a full fledged laugh as the minutes ticked by, which sounded far more unsettling, like hooves drawn across a blackboard. His entire body rocked as his laughter echoed across the crumbling brick walls of the room, the edges of his eyes moist as tears began to form.

I blinked and took several steps back, tilting my head slightly at the odd sight of the ghoul falling down laughing before me. Of all the reactions, this was not one I had expected. Over the snorting cackles, I heard my friends trot up from behind me and into the edge of my vision. They both looked as confused as I; Wild sitting down as she watched Carrion all but rolling across the floor.

“So...should we show ourselves out then?” Stone asked as he looked from Carrion to us, a confused look on his face, likely mirroring my own. On the floor, the ghoul seemed to be getting his laughter in check and rolled over onto his hooves.

“You’ve got some balls on you, roach bait, I’ll give you that.” Carrion’s voice, while raspy and gruff, did sound a bit more friendly. “It seems Wild chooses her friends well,” he added as he started to pick himself back up from the floor, a fresh layer of dirt and grime coating his armor and coat from his rolling about.

Carefully, I neared the ghoul and offered him a hoof up. Looking up at me, he took it and I hauled him upright. As decayed and thin as his body looked, he still weighed a fair amount. He wiped a hoof across his eyes as I asked, “So, will you help us then?” While Wild had guided us this far, it was clear he knew this place far better then my pegasus friend, and might know where my sister was being held.

The smirk he wore slowly faded as he looked me over once more, as if he needed to re-appraise me from his earlier opinion. Standing this close, and not being surprised by his sudden appearance, I could see more of his armor, and realized why it looked so familiar. It was the same armor that the Cake twins had be wearing: Equestrian Army issue combat armor. Under all that dirt and dried gore that clung to his armor and uniform, I could make out threadbare badges, rank, and even a name. The largest of the patches was a shield-shaped mark bearing a scroll with the words “105th Equestrian Cavalry” across a green field. A metal chariot sat proudly in the center of the shield just above the scroll, a turret atop its armored body. A single faded yellow stripe ran across one shoulder guard, matching a dirt covered bar upon his collar; the rank of Lieutenant. Finally, across his chest was the name Heartfire.

“Just try and keep up, Roach Bait. I don’t wait for anypony,” was his only response to my question. He turned away and trotted towards his dropped packs and weapon.

I suppose that’s a yes.

Stone stepped around beside Wild, his back to the ghoul as he whispered softly to the orange mare, “How much do ya trust ’im? He seems a might... nuts.” The pegasus shrugged her wings and looked from Carrion to the earth pony standing beside her.

“He saved me when he could have easily left me to be feral ghoul chow, showed me the way out. He’s crazier than fuck, but I trust him.” She turned away from Stone to look to me, “He’s a better choice to lead us through this hell hole than me, so if he’s willing...”

“You’ve done a fine job thus far, Wild; don’t sell yourself short.” I looked from the mare to Stone. “Yes, he’s crazy as hell, but from what I’ve seen of the this place so far...I doubt anypony who stays here long can be called sane.” I glanced back to the ghoul as he floated his saddlebags back across his flanks. “Just keep your eyes open, but I think we can trust him. Why would he take us to his home then agree to help us into the sewers to find my sister, only to kill us?” Granted, that might just be what a crazy half dead pony in a city of insane raiders would do, but still.

“Since ya both done made up yer minds ‘bout this, ah reckon there’s not much ah can say to convince ya not ter. He makes me uneasy, and it ain’t bein’ a ghoul. Been ‘round plenty of ’em in my time,” Stone whispered, eyeing each of us as we turned back to follow Carrion. It seemed we’d be leaving via the door I’d spotted near his chair, and not the one we’d entered by. We’d not made it two steps out the door before Wild slipped up near the gray stallion.

“So, tell us, grandpa, what was it like when dirt was invented? I guess you tried eating it?” A orange hoof lightly poked him in the stomach as she walked alongside him.

“Damnit ta hell, ah’m just big boned is all,” Stone muttered and pulled his hat down across his face. “An’ ah ain’t much older then ya’ll.” Despite it all, I chuckled as the two continued to argue, even as we followed the ghoul back out into the sewers and whatever awaited us.

Once more, we found ourselves within the cramped confines of the sewers. The crumbling brick walls in this section of the tunnels were covered in a slimy black mold in spots, while in others they had collapsed completely and left holes into adjacent tunnels or even natural caves. I quickly lost count of the number of side passages and rooms we passed as we followed Carrion through the warren of tunnels. How anypony could build something so confusing and have it actually work for as long as Kanter City had been around boggled the mind. The ponies that had maintained this place must have done so for long enough that, like Carrion, they had become familiar with every corner of the tunnels. Or was it them that had left the odd markings Carrion used to navigate the twisting passages?

Without Carrion’s knowledge of the tunnels, or what those strange symbols meant, we would have become hopelessly lost within the first few minutes. I had no idea how Wild had managed to remember the small sections she had been in before. As we traveled further away from the heart of the city, the damage to the tunnels became more from age and neglect rather than from the bombs. We must have been passing through a section of the city that had escaped a direct hit from a balefire bomb, or else this part of the sewers had been far better built. A moment later, Carrion answered my unasked question.

“This part of the city was built only two years before the bombs were dropped on Equestria. A lot more care went into the layout of the underground sections of the city. They were also built to much higher standards.” Glancing to the walls, I saw the bricks had given way to molded concrete and reinforced steel rods. There was also less runoff from the streets above; the stagnant water and trash that had been so common before seemed largely absent.

“I can see why the citizens of the city fled down here; they must have thought they’d be safe,” I began, looking to the arched sections of the tunnel giving the roof and walls added strength. We must have been nearing someplace important for so much care to have gone into these areas. “This place looks strong enough to survive an earthquake.”

“That was the general idea; I used to live in Kanter City before the war started. As for seeking safety down here, they were just desperate ponies trying to stave off death for a few more hours,” Carrion said at the head of the line, the ghoul looking to what little trash that did litter the floor of this tunnel: a rotting suitcase, shreds of clothing piled inside, along with a dead radroach, “After all, I was there when it happened.”

Wild had mentioned ponies had died from the radiation leaking down from the streets above, while many others turned into ghouls, like those ponies back on the subway train. I glanced over the dimly lit tunnel and wondered how many more of those feral ghouls still lurked throughout the maze under the city: a large number, if it was to be believed that the raiders feared coming down here. I also imagined our own ghoul had something to do with that fear as well. With the amount of raider gear he had in his hideout, it was clear he hunted them down. Once more I wondered why he stayed in this place. Was it because he still felt this was his home? Did he have some reason to want raiders dead (honestly, who wouldn’t?)? Or was there simply some other reason to stay? Maybe he was just crazy.

Of course, like so many of my questions, those would likely remain unanswered. The only sound that reached my ears was our own hoofsteps, the splashes of water as we walked into the odd shallow pools of slimy water, our voices, and the odd groan of the aged ceiling.

“Shouldn’t we have taken that last left, Carrion?” Wild asked, looking back behind her. “That’s the tunnel leading up to the surface.”

“It’s not safe to be on the surface in this neighborhood anymore, not since the raiders set up a more permanent base in the hospital. It's one of only three buildings that survived the blast wave mostly intact. Here lately the place has been crawling with those bastards, unlike when you were here last, Wild. Back then they just used it as a place to keep their fuck toys and workers. We’ll stick with the tunnels under the area.”

At the name he used for the slaves, Wild’s ears laid back and she narrowed her eyes upon the ghoul. If it was possible for a pony to explode from just a look, Carrion would have done so, twice. A gray hoof rose up and touched the pegasus’ side, causing her to turn in surprise. She blinked as she saw Stone beside her and lowered the hoof she’d been about to plant in somepony’s face. The earth pony trotted along beside the mare and looked to Carrion.

“Then how are we gettin’ in? Ah thought a city block caved in th’ whole thing.”

“Yes, it did. Just before the bombs struck, the city was attempting to repair aged sections of the sewer and tunnel systems below the streets. They had just finished with this and the section under the hospital when the end came. Most of the older sections managed to hold up across the city, except for this one city block. They’d been removing some of the older supports to replace them as they had with other sections they’d worked on,” he explained as we walked. Besides a few cracks in the concrete, this section of the tunnels looked almost brand new, though the century old piles of garbage also sorta ruined it. “When the bombs were dropped on the city, the impact shattered those few supports left to hold up the buildings and down it all came. Recently, while exploring this section of the tunnels, I discovered a way through the collapse and into the surviving tunnel system on the other side. It’s tight in places and still risky, but far less than trotting out on the streets above with our tails hiked up.”

He wasn’t wrong about that, in the past twenty minutes alone a unsettling large number of red dots had appeared upon my E.F.S. warning me of enemies nearby. However, after a group passed across us, I remembered the fact it did not take into account different floors and realized those raiders had been on the streets above. After awhile I almost began to ignore the red flashing dots as they winked in and out of range, there were so many. But why so many? Were they looking for us now, or was this just the norm? I had a hard time believing the raiders could be this organized after what little I’ve seen of them. Wasn’t there somepony in charge?

“Carrion, what do you know of this shadowy pony in charge of the raiders? I’ve heard a few ponies mention him or her before,” I asked, breaking the silence that had settled between us all.

“I don’t know much; bitch stays on the top floors of the buildings the raiders control, but what I’ve seen is fucking unsettling,” the ghoul answered, not bothering to look back. We turned a corner in the tunnel and found ourselves walking across steel grating in the floor. Looking down, I could see a fast moving current in the waste flowing past, “She showed up only recently, ten years or so. Came in with a batch of raiders from out east someplace, Hoofington perhaps. Within a year she had the locals listening to her every word and was put in charge. That in and of itself is unusual. In case you hadn’t noticed, the raiders tend to not respect a mare beyond what she can do for them in bed or wherever else they decide to use them.” I heard a note of disgust in the ghouls rough voice.

“So what’s her goals then? Just rule over all the raiders in the city?” I asked, changing the subject away from what raiders did with mares, both for Wild’s sake and my own.

“Oh, I forgot to ask the crazy bitch when we were having tea and biscuits last saturday at the Kanter City social,” the ghoul snarked.

“You're such an asshole,” I shot back and rolled my eyes, our hoof steps ringing hollowly from the metal grating.

“It’s part of my charm...but if you really want to know, the bitch has some fucking plans,” Carrion stopped before a T junction, “Most of the raiders I capture tend to just yell obscenities in my face until I blow theirs off. Dumb assholes. A couple months back, one I caught was a bit more talkative. While what he said didn’t make a lot of sense to me, it was still a more original plan then just rape, kill, and eat everything in their path.”

“And what was this plan?” I asked, following the ghoul as he turned left down the junction.

“He told me ‘Madeyes’ was getting them ready to launch a crusade across the wasteland, and that all ponies would unite under her banner.” He grunted and looked to the ceiling, “They’ve already wiped out the smaller settlements near the city, and I’ve heard they are ranging further out now.”

“Th’ only thing that’s stopped th’ raiders from killin’ everypony in th’ wastes is th’ fact they are so disorganized and fight among themselves more then they fight us,” Stone joined the conversation, the earth pony looking a bit worried, “If’n this Madeyes character has really got ’em united, then that’s a big problem and somepony needs ta stop it.”

“The Enclave never believed anypony on the surface would manage to unite the scattered groups into anything more then small roving bands. Places like San Ponsico and Friendship City are oddities they said. I wonder how they’ll respond to an army of raiders,” Wild added, the pegasus glancing from Carrion to the tunnel ahead.

“From what ya told us, I doubt they’ll worry unless th’ raiders pose a threat to ’em.” Stone was likely right; I doubted the pegasi would bother with raiders slaughtering those ponies on the surface. Wasn’t their problem. “Ah reckon the C.S.E. might be interested in this bit of news.”

“Maybe...but we need to finish what we came here for before we start worrying about anything else,” I said, and the others went silent, focusing back on the task at hoof. First Ebony, then we could worry about whatever else.

Another hour passed as we made our way to this collapsed section of the tunnels. Nopony spoke as we walked, each left to their own thoughts. Mine of course lay with my sister and my niece. I prayed Sugar and the others from home had made it to San Ponsisco by now, or were somewhere safe from the horrors of the wasteland. It’d likely take us a few days to sort things out once we’d rescued Ebony and the others, a couple trips back and forth to Crossroads to get everypony back. Would the Sticks stay safe for that amount of time? Would there still be enough Stable ponies left to even warrant the trips? Ugh...I hated times like these, with thoughts of what those bastard raiders did or were doing to my sister wandering around inside my head.

It seemed as if we’d been walking forever, I began to pass my time counting the number of groups of raiders we had passed under. We’d just passed group number eleven when the tunnels began to change back to the brick and mortar, before ending completely in a wall of rubble. Both the ceiling and the floor had broken away beneath a ton of debris, odd personal effects sticking out from the pile. Picture frames, lamps, plates, foals toys, rotting books, bits of furniture and clothing; all the items you’d expect to find in somepony’s home, laying in the middle of the sewers, scattered about when their homes collapsed around them. How many had died in their beds?

Looking over the blocked passage, I couldn’t see how we were suppose to cross through this. Carrion began slowly walking along the blocked tunnel, as if searching for something, when he stopped suddenly beside the battered form of a large old refrigerator half hidden by the piles of stone and trash that had collected here. The white paint had flaked away over the years, and sizeable dents were pressed into its metal sides, but it looked otherwise intact. The ghoul pony reached out with a hoof, and with a couple of good tugs, managed to pull the door open. I glanced to my friends wondering what this was all about when dim light came from within the fridge. Did the thing actually still have power? The three of us watched as Carrion actually walked into the refrigerator and disappeared from sight.

“What in blue blazes...” Stone muttered before walking up to the still open metal box. Wild and myself quickly followed the earth pony forward and found a passage leading under the rubble. The back of the fridge had been removed, either cut out or broken during its fall, and a dimly lit room stared back at us from within, “Okay...that’s a might freaky.”

“We’d better hurry, Carrion’s likely halfway through by now.” Wild gently pushed Stone aside and plunged into the tight confined space. Like the ghoul, our pegasus friend was far more slender than either of us, and with barely a wiggle of her flanks, she worked her way into the dark hallway beyond.

I looked to Stone and he held up a grey hoof towards the opening, nodding. I lowered my head and entered. My saddlebags and bulky armor caught several times on bits of twisted metal that had punctured the metal hide of the fridge, but still I managed to make it through with little trouble. Once I had, I found myself within a dark room; the ceiling above had caved in halfway, this being what had fallen upon the fridge. Rotting carpets covered the floor, and bits of furniture were jumbled about everywhere. Turning back to the narrow opening, I shone my Pipbuck light through and spotted my friend’s gray face as he looked back.

“Ah reckon it’s gonna be a mighty tight fit...” he said, as he slipped his rifle up off his neck and tossed it to me. I caught it easily and sat it next to the wall against a wooden chair. He hoofed me his saddlebags next, before he even attempted to slip into the confined space. His own armor proved a challenge, but after a bit of twisting and me grabbing ahold of his mane to tug him through, he was soon standing beside me strapping his packs back down.

This gave me a moment to catch my breath and look around the room a bit more, only to find little of interest; either it had been picked clean by Carrion the first time he discovered it, or anything of value or use had been destroyed. Turning towards the far wall, I spotted both Carrion and Wild standing out in a hallway just past a doorway. Leaving Stone to sort out his packs, I stepped over towards the pair and looked out into the semi dark passage. It seemed we had found our way into the ruins of an apartment building, judging by the number of doors along the hallway, each numbered. Somehow, when the building fell, this floor had remained mostly intact, if slightly tilted to one side. Like the sewers, the emergency lighting still worked faithfully, if not a bit misleadingly, as the exits from this floor were blocked by tons of rubble. Carrion walked away from us as Stone approached, the ghoul checking the floor as he went.

“Watch where you step, the floor is weak in places,” he called out, as he made his way down the hallway, the floor below his hooves creaking ominously.

Had anypony been inside this place since the fall? Had the ponies who lived in these rooms survived and escaped the same way we had entered? Neither Wild nor Stone said a word, both looking around them cautiously. As the soft glow of Stone lantern reached the walls of the hallway, I saw hastily scrawled words in the peeling flowered wallpaper.

“The air burns. Water burns. Equestria is hell.”

The two ‘l’s trailed down the wall to a pile of bones, along the wall, his or her hooves pressing into the flaking wallpaper and lay at the end of the marks. Had they written that in their own blood? Fuck, I hated the wasteland. Carrion turned and trotted back to us, the ghoul’s horn lit and his weapon held within its magic.

“Alright, this place was very active with feral ghouls the last time I was through here.” Feral ghouls? He mentions them now? We all three looked at one another before Carrion cut off any protests we could have raised. “We still have a better chance of surviving them than an army of raiders. You saw the number up on the street with that fancy bracelet of yours, so buck up.” Point. Ghouls were nasty and fast, but at least they didn’t shoot back at you. “Only half the floor survived the collapse. Ahead there is what would have been the center of the floor, with four hallways branching off from the hub. There’s only one we can take, and it ends after a dozen steps. We enter into the room at the end, where holes have been punched into the next room over, which seems to have survived the collapse. We cross through two more rooms and climb out onto what was the fire escape. It held up enough to form an exit from this ruin and lets us back into the sewers.”

“How many ghouls?” Wild asked. Both kept their voices low, and I looked to the closed doors and the number of red dots appearing in my vision. Were they really just raiders above or were they ghouls around us? The skull of the dead pony just grinned back at me, as if to say ‘You’ll find out soon enough!’

Hate. Wasteland.

“At least a dozen, no more. This side of the building is hard to get into, unless you know where to look. The fire escape side is open to the sewers directly so more could have wandered in there,” he answered as Stone gripped the bit for his rifle.

More carefully than we had in the tunnels, we began making our way through the hallway, each hoof step causing the floor to creak and groan as we placed our weight upon it. Overhead, small showers of dust rained down upon our heads, reminding us the ceiling was holding back Celestia alone knows how much rubble. I had already seen signs of the roof sagging in places, where water had no doubt began to pool and weaken the already-weak structure. Carrion and Wild lead the way, while Stone walked in front of me, because the wide area of light his lantern gave us was far better there than at the end of the line. Not that there was much to see, beyond sagging ceilings, dust covered hallways, and broken bits of furniture.

I was surprised we didn’t see more bodies; the wasteland so loved to leave bodies where a pony could trip over them. But, beyond the one near the entrance, we came across no other signs. No bones, no blood, nothing. It was almost a bit unsettling really. If there had been survivors perhaps they had escaped...

Just ahead, I could see the junction Carrion had spoken of. As he had said, two of the four hallways were blocked by mounds of debris where the floors above had pancaked into this one. Only the hallway we were in and the one leading off to the right remained. Thus far, the red dots had left us alone. While there was a chance they were on the streets above, they had yet to move, like they were just standing in place. Somehow, I doubted raiders had the patience to just stand still for very long. I glanced behind us, seeing only our hoof steps in the dust and nothing else. I sighed softly and was turning around when my hoof sank into the floor with a snap of something breaking beneath it.

Yelping, I yanked my hoof back out and took a step back, ears perking as I heard whatever had fallen below me land far below... the ground under us was hollow? Creeping closer, I peered into the dark hole my hoof had made, feeling a slight breeze on my fur, as well as the reek of the sewers. The falling buildings must have broken through into a deeper section of the sewers, but how far down... wait. Leaning closer, I thought I could hear something moving down there.

“Shadow?” I looked up as Stone said my name. The stallion stood in the middle of the hallway, half turned back to look at me. Just ahead, Carrion and Wild had reached the junction, and were turning to find out what the holdup was.

I shook my head and stood up from the small round hole and nodded to my friend, “It’s alright, just stumbled a bit....” My words trailed off as I heard another creak and groan from the floor, followed by something snapping. My eyes dropped from Stone to his hooves, which seemed sunken into the floor as if it was mud. The earth pony blinked in alarm as he looked as well. He started to step back, but stopped as the ground groaned loudly.

“Ain’t no more fat jokes...” he muttered as he once again attempted to shift his weight and move from the sinking floor. He had barely raised a hoof when his other three burst through, the floorboards snapping like twigs as the heavy pony dropped from sight, only having time for a startled cry.

As Carrion stood and watched, Wild pushed past the ghoul and rushed towards the spot where Stone had been, the pegasus flapping her wings as she rose into the air, ready to dive down after the gray pony. The ghoul followed more slowly, likely expecting the worst for our friend, as I suppose I did as well. We both walked carefully towards the hole, not wanting to end up falling ourselves. I had just reached the edge of the tear when the floor began to vibrate.

Oh hell.

Leaping back, my hooves thumped heavily upon the floorboards as the spot where I had just been seconds before snapped and dropped from sight into the darkness under the building, but in doing so, it allowed me to spot a pair of gray hooves gripping the edge of the hole.

“Stone!” both Wild and I yelled in unison, relieved to see our large friend had managed to avoid plunging into the unknown. The orange mare circled overhead, green eyes filled with relief at seeing the earth pony’s face. She dropped down near the edge of the hole and frowned, before lightly placing a hoof upon the floor. She quickly rose back into the air when we all heard the groan coming from it.

“Ah reckon ah could use a hoof here...”

“There’s not enough space for me to drop in beside you, and I don’t think the floor with support me if I land and try and pull you up.” she called out to the pony below her.

“Don’t suppose anypony but me remembered to pack some rope?” he asked hopefully. It hadn’t exactly been on my list of items to bring with me from the Stable, and what little we had had been used to secure packs and make harnesses for the carts. Suddenly, a coil of rope landed beside me on the floor, surrounded in a soft pale blue glow. I looked over to Carrion as he picked his assault rifle back up and grinned, showing off those rotting teeth of his.

“Never know when your going to plummet to your death and need to get out.”

We wasted no time, and got to work securing one end of the rope to me, while Wild made loops to slip around both of Stone’s hooves. I took a few steps back, as she once more took to the air and flew over the pit and the grey pony dangling from its lip. Lowering herself down, she carefully slide the looped rope around Stone’s hooves, both grasping for it a couple of times as Stone attempted to keep from plunging further into the darkness. As the rope began to pull taught, I moved forwards to give them a bit of slack. Finally, he had both hooves wrapped securely and Wild landed beside me once more. The pegasus wrapped the lose ends of the rope around her battle saddle and was about to start pulling when Stone yelled out from the hole.

“There’s somethin’ movin’ around in th’ light below me.”

As if on cue, the red dots that had been with us for most of the trip through the sewers, that I had all but ignored for the past hours, that had been content to simply stand still began moving towards us. From all sides. I shared a look with Wild as we both heard the rasping hiss of feral ghouls beyond the dim light that surrounded us.

Hate.

Wasteland.

“I think we’ve pissed off the neighbors...” The words had just left my mouth when one of the doors across from Wild and I shattered into splinters. The rotting corpse of a ghoul flew from the spray of wood, and landed heavily across from us, near Carrion. The undead pony shook itself of the remains of the door and hissed at the armored pony. With a snort, Carrion leveled his assault rifle at its face and squeezed the trigger. Flashes from the muzzle light up the feral’s face as hot lead ripped it to shreds.

As the echos of the gun died down, I heard the sound of hooves slamming into the door next to Wild and me, and grit my teeth, “Lets get ’im up!” I dug my hooves into the floor and began pulling, while behind me Wild did likewise. Stone slowly began to rise from the edge. The ash-gray pony scrambled to help, trying to get his front hooves onto solid ground, but there seemed to be none for him to find. Every time he tried, he simply broke the flooring under him, and Wild and I grunted as all his weight was placed upon the rope.

“This isn’t working!” the mare yelled, as another ghoul stumbled in behind Carrion. The former Equestrian Army Officer turned and snapped off another round of fire. The walking corpse was riddled with holes, but that only caused it to stumble back, as three more stepped out from doorways nearby, their rotting heads lowered to the ground, eyes glowing red as they prepared to attack.

Noise from behind us caught my ear and I quickly looked back across Wild’s back. The doors we had passed had been pushed open, and a number of shambling forms were walking out into the hallway, red glowing eyes fixed hungrily upon us. It was quickly becoming the subway tunnel all over again, without the Rever. I really hoped there wasn't a Rever.

Spotting the threats behind us, Wild growled and reached back to unwrap herself from the rope. A ghoul lunged towards the mare’s hind quarters but she reared up and bucked it square in the jaw, shattering its face and sending it stumbling back.

“Get him out of that pit as quickly as you can! I’ll try and cover you!” With a final desperate tug, the rope was loose from around her saddle and she gripped her laser pistol in between her teeth and whirled around as the ghoul she’d kicked away rose to its hooves. Without even bothering to aim, she shot it through the remains of its face, the single bolt of energy burning away a glowing eye to fry whatever passed for a brain inside its rotting body. The corpse dropped to the floor after taking a few steps and realizing it was dead.

“Stone, hang on!” I yelled out (if I hadn’t been so worried, I would have facehoofed at that), the strain of the earth pony causing me to skid across the floor. With a grunt, I managed to halt the slide and take a few shaking steps back. The rope straining against my saddle bags where it’d been tied, and over the hiss of ghouls and report of weapons fire I heard the sound of canvas tearing. Shit! I snagged the rope quickly in my mouth and pulled with my neck, taking some of the strain from the packs.

Around me, Carrion and Wild fought off the packs of feral ghouls as they emerged from their hiding spots in the hall. Carrion’s assault rifle fired off in controlled bursts of fire, rounds tearing holes in the already gaunt frames of the undead. Wild’s laser pistol meanwhile cooked the flesh of whatever it struck, or simply reduced her target to a pile of ashes.

My neck strained at the weight placed on it, my hooves digging into the unsteady floor as I slowly pulled on the rope, drawing Stone back up. Slowly but surely, I began to pick up speed, and already I could see my friend’s worn cowpony hat poking up from the edge. How he’d managed to keep that on was beyond me. Soon his face followed and I saw him straining to help pull himself free, but as before, the rotting floorboards seemed unable to hold his weight. It seemed hopeless, until finally he managed to get a hoof under himself and start dragging himself up.

With some of the weight taken off me as Stone got some leverage on the ground, it became far easier to pull the pony up. The sounds of hissing ghouls around us were beginning to die down as both Wild and Carrion’s steady aim reduced their numbers. I had just taken a step back when I felt my rear end bump into somepony behind me. Thinking perhaps Wild had returned to help, I turned and instead saw a row of rotting sharp teeth bared at my face.

“Fucking hell!” I yelped out. The rope slipping across my tongue, leaving it burning as it slide out, I turned and was suddenly slammed into the floor by the weight of the ghoul atop me. Her teeth snapped inches from my nose as she waved her broken horn over my face. Behind me, I heard Stone cry and the unmistakable sound of crumbling wood. I had no time to see what had become of my friend, however, as my attacker’s teeth clamped down onto the neck guard of my armor. I could feel the ghoul’s jaws squeezing as she sought to rip my throat out. I struggled to get my hooves up under her and push her away.

A orange blur shot across me overhead, and I prayed to the princesses that Wild had caught Stone before he’d dropped. Finally, I managed to worm my hooves under the ghouls chest and pushed it back away from my face, it's dripping jaws snapping at my throat, teeth grinding against the armor plating. When I had enough room, I lashed out with my right fore hoof and caught the thing in the snout, breaking its nose and jaw. It reared back in surprise at the sudden attack and I bucked it off me with my hind legs.

As quickly as I could, I rolled over onto my hooves and reached for my shotgun, just as my attacker lunged for my face once more. I snapped off two rapid shots, sending slugs into the thing’s chest and front leg. Its momentum, however, carried it into me and we both went tumbled back to the floor, skidding near the hole. With a flick of a hoof, I pushed it off me before it recovered its wits and sent the thing plummeting down into the darkness. A quick glance down confirmed my earlier concerns: ghouls. Lots and lots of ghouls moved at the bottom of that drop. The ghoul I’d kicked down was quickly set upon by its fellows, ripped to pieces in a frenzy of hooves and teeth.

The sounding of flapping wings drew my attention back above me, where Wild hovered, straining to hold the large bulk of Stone aloft and keep him from meeting a similar fate as the ghoul. I saw the end of the rope, just at the edge of the hole and reached out to grab it in my teeth. With more strength then I thought I had, I stumbled back from the opening, snagging the rope in my teeth and scrambling to my hooves to start pulling Stone back up.

“Wild, I got the rope! Grab Stone and pull!” I yelled around the end in my mouth and dug my hooves into the floor. Wild released the rope and swooped in to hook her forehooves under Stone’s, the newly broken floorboards giving her the room she’d lacked earlier to reach him. With me pulling, she managed to rise into the air and began flapping for the other side of the hole. Behind me, I heard a ghoul hiss and I lashed out blindly with a hoof, relieved to hear it impact with flesh.

I watched, as Wild managed to pull Stone to safety and drop the pony back onto semi solid ground. The earth pony dropped to his knees and let out a sigh of relief as behind him Carrion reloaded his weapon.

“You can relax when you're dead, there’s more ghouls coming up from down below, we need to fucking move!” He turned as a door opened and two ghouls tumbled through, the assault rifle spewing rounds into the two forms sending them to the floor in a twitching heap as the shell casings clattered to the floor between his hooves.

Luckily, only the center of the hallway had fallen in, and the edges near the walls still looked strong enough to support my weight. Dropping the rope, I quickly ran towards the left side of the hall and hugged it. Carefully placing one hoof in front of the other, I managed to cross the narrow gap quickly, the hissing of ghouls acting as a good motivator.

Finally reaching my friends, I saw Carrion had left and looked over to Wild. The mare was busy coiling the rope back up quickly and tossing it across her back. A second later, I heard Carrion’s assault rifle fire further down the hall and Stone answered my unasked question.

“Carrion went ahead to make sure the path ahead was clear.” Rising, the earth pony brought his rifle up quickly and fired. I turned to see that the ghoul I had kicked had followed me across the narrow walk way. Its head exploded and the truly lifeless body tumbled into the darkness below.

“Well, lets not keep our guide waiting then,” I said, reloading my shotgun as Wild started down the second hallway, Stone following behind. As Carrion had said, the hallway ended suddenly where the ceiling and upper floors had caved in, blocking the passage completely. A door to our left stood open however, and we quickly entered, closing it behind us to slow any following ghouls.

I didn’t stop to look around the apartment; I was only looking for the hole Carrion had said was in one of the room’s walls. Sure enough, it stood directly across from us, leading into the neighboring apartment. We passed through and into another two before we finally caught up with our ghoul.

Wild had dropped back to fuss a bit over Stone. The earth pony had gotten cut up pretty good by the drop through the floor and his attempts at pulling himself up. The rope had also cut into his coat and flesh when he’d been pulled back and forth.

I was the first to enter the room where Carrion had finally stopped. He was standing beside three bodies, feral ghouls judging by the looks of them, dark blood ran from a number of fresh holes from a assault rifle. Carrion had fresh wounds across his body as well, cuts and bite marks across his exposed flesh, and new dents in his armor. He ignored us, which wasn’t anything new, but he seemed focused on one of the bodies laying before him. As I stood watching, he leaned over one of the dead ghouls and pulled something off from around its throat.

“Rest, Berry. You've earned it.” The words had been whispered so softly I wondered if I’d even heard them at all. I was about to step closer when Stone and Wild trotted into the room behind me, their combined hoof steps drawing the ghouls attention away from the bodies and to us. He snapped out of his daze and looked back to us.

“Bout damn time you jokers get your asses in here. We need to hurry; soon as they realize we’re gone they’ll quiet down and go back to sleep.” He pointed a hoof towards the only window in the room, its glass long since broken and lost under a thick layer of dust. Beyond it, I could see the familiar tunnel walls of the sewer.

With the bodies of the dead ghouls behind us, the remainder of our journey into the sewers was largely uneventful save for a encounter with a couple of radroaches which we quickly dispatched with a couple of kicks and stomps of our hooves. By now, we were all becoming use to the dank foul smelling air of the sewer and slippery paths of the tunnels. If not for Carrion’s knowledge, we would likely still be wandering the multitude of tunnels, or making a mad dash across open ground on the surface. How he kept the sheer number of turns and passages memorized I’d never know, but then, he had been here for a very long time. The ghoul pony trotted a bit ahead of the rest of us, checking the path for traps and pitfalls we might not notice. I tilted my head to the now quiet ghoul.

After the fight with the feral ghouls, Carrion once more withdrew into himself, and spoke little with any of us. He’d called one of them by name, and I’d seen him remove the tags from around the dead ghoul’s neck. It had been wearing the same armor as Carrion, so was likely one of the soldiers caught in Kanter City when the bombs had fell, and, like Carrion, changed into a ghoul by the radiation and dark magics of the balefire bombs. I wondered how many others had changed with him, and if they’d all been like him originally. From what little I had been told, over time some ghouls simply go mad, and turn feral. Had that happened to all of Carrion’s friends?

I felt a bit of pity for the ghoul ahead of me, but somehow I doubt he’d welcome it. As I then focused on the tunnel ahead, I noticed it had become brighter than those we had been walking through. Looking up, I saw emergency lighting still working along the walls, and far more of them then I’d seen before. Once more the walls were made of solid concrete and reinforced with support pillars in places. I also began to see less trash and sludge along the floor; looking back, I saw we had been climbing a slow slope. That’s not to say the place was spotless: chunks of ceiling and wall still littered the ground in spots, as did the ever present rust colored stains of dried blood, but compared to the rest of the sewers, you could almost eat off the floor.

“We’re nearly to the hospital’s foundation. This tunnel rises up to the sub basement where the morgue, storage, and bomb shelter were located. Before the raiders arrived, the emergency exit door leading out into the tunnels had been sealed for over a hundred years. They opened them up so they could toss bodies out into the sewers, or send out parties to try and clear out the ghouls,” Carrion said, breaking his long silence. Looking just ahead of the ghoul, I could just make out another junction in the tunnel.

“Won’t it be guarded?” Stone asked as he trudged along beside Wild and me.

“Yes, and it can’t be opened from the outside, which is why we won’t be going in that way,” Wild said, the orange pegasus glancing from Stone to me. She shrugged a wing towards the split in the tunnel ahead. “Those two side tunnels go around the hospitals sub basement and back around to the rest of the sewers and tunnel system. We’ll be taking the right side tunnel around to a small alcove in the passage, where there’s a crack in the hospital’s foundation that runs up into the morgue.”

“Is that how you escaped?” I asked, ahead the tunnel leveled off and forked. We turned and took the right passage, I noticed that unlike the one we had been following, this one was not as well built. The toxic sludge had returned around our hooves in places and in others black mold creeped up the side of the wall. There were also a number of metal barrels and decaying cardboard boxes scattered about.

“Yes, I managed to - distract one of the guards long enough to get his weapons and made a break for freedom. When I was forced back down the stairs, I managed to lose them in the basement. I wandered around trying to find a way out and was forced to hide in the morgue.” I grimaced at that. What a bad place to be forced to hide. “When the guards left the room, I discovered the hole in the wall and worked my way out into the sewers.”

We walked along the crumbling passage for only a dozen or so steps before coming to the alcove Wild had mentioned, no more than a enlargement of the tunnel for a hoof-full of paces before it narrowed again. However, in this place, a pallet of empty barrels and tools had been left, likely from the planned repairs to the tunnel system of which Carrion had spoken.

Wild stepped away from Stone and moved towards the pallet, which was not completely against the wall as I had first suspected. The orange pegasus pressed up against the wall and popped her head behind the barrels. After a moment she pulled back and looked to Stone and I.

“Seems they still haven’t found the hole. Not surprising, really. Raiders are hardly the type to keep things clean.”

After pushing aside the pallet of barrels and crates, I saw the hole Wild had used to escape through. A sizable crack ran down the wall from the ceiling, likely from the original blast that had devastated so much of the city above. Over time, the crack had begun to widen as rain water from above ran down through the ground and began forming a pool at the base of the wall. Radroaches and other pests had worked their way through the hole, adding to the damage, leaving a hole just large enough for a pony to crawl through open near the floor. There had been just enough room between the wall and the pallet for a single pony to work their way free.

“Should we really have moved all that? What if the raiders find this?” I asked, shinning my Pipbuck light at the hole, the edges were uneven and in spots I could see bits of metal sticking out from the concrete.

“Since they started losing so many ponies down here, the raiders tend to stay away from the tunnels, unless there's a large number of them,” Carrion answered, the ghoul looking from the hole to my friends and I, “It’s the only reason Wild managed to escape. As you saw earlier, there’s more than just a single ghoul down here killing anypony foolish enough to enter the sewers. I’m just the only one who uses weapons instead of his teeth.”

“Ah rightly don’t think ah’ll fit,” Stone said, kneeling down to look into the cramped space, and bringing us back to the matter at hoof. He was already the largest of us, but with armor and saddlebags on he was even larger and his track record thus far with small holes was not great.

“It will be a tight fit, but I’m sure you’ll manage,” Wild responded, pushing him aside as she lowered herself down into the hole, tail wiping back to strike Stone in the nose. The mare easily wormed her way into the space; even with her armor and battle saddle on she somehow managed to fit through as if it was a normal sized space.

Twitching his nose, Stone watched as Wild slithered through the tight space, a blush coming over his cheeks as all any of us could see of the pegasus was her backside as it wiggled about. Despite it all I chuckled softly and Stone quickly looked away, muttering to himself. Carrion watched it all silently, the ghoul looking back the way we’d came as if expecting us to be attacked at any moment, which, given the state of the sewer and the number of creatures inside it, was a fair concern. After a few moments, Wild called out she’d made it and to come on through. I turned back to Stone and nodded at him to go.

“Go on, Stone. This way if you do get stuck, there’s somepony on both sides to help.” I smiled, hoping to reassure him, but he only looked doubtfully at the hole.

With a sigh, the earth pony dropped down onto his knees and worked his way into the space. Sure enough, it was a far tighter fit for the stallion than it had been for Wild, and almost at once he became stuck.

“Ah just knew it... and before any of y'all c’n say a word, I know. I need ta lose th’ weight,” he called out, voice muffled by the narrow space. His hooves pushed at the slippery floor to try and work himself free, but as much as he pushed, he remained stuck.

“Hang on, Stone.” With Carrion watching our back, I bent down and attempted to see where my large gray friend was stuck. It took climbing further in and pushing my head up near his flanks before I spotted the problem: one of the buckles on his saddlebags had become trapped within a jagged crack. “I see the problem, back up a bit, Stone.” Almost at once I realized my mistake, but it was far too late. With a grunt, the larger stallion pushed himself back towards me and squashed my face up towards the rough surface of the passage. I tried to speak, but all I could manage was something that sounded more like somepony having a stroke. I slapped my hooves at the wall and Stone, but either he failed to notice or didn’t understand.

“Hey, watch where ya place yer hooves, Shadow. That’s gettin’ a mite personal.”

The lack of air was “gettin’ a mite personal” for me, and I tried to pull myself back, only to release I was trapped against Stone’s rather large backside. Oh, what a way to go. I’d survived radscorpion venom, crazed robots, and acid-spitting giant radioactive geckos (yeah, that still wasn’t getting old). Yet here I was, being crushed by my friend’s backside.

Finally, I managed to work the buckle free by wiggling my nose around in the space I had to work with. Luckily he must have felt himself come free because he began crawling through the passage once again, releasing me from being pinned. With a grunt, I dropped back to the ground. Luckily for both of us, Stone did not become stuck again, and after a bit of muttered swearing, the earth pony disappeared from sight and into the room beyond with Wild.

Well, since I was already here, might as well get this over with.

I worked my own way into the narrow space, feeling the jagged edges of the rough walls and ceiling dig into my sides and limbs. It was also quite wet with all the stagnant water still pooling into the holes and low points in the passage, and I quickly became soaked in the liquid. Ugh. My hooves scraped at the stone under hoof and finally, after several seconds of wiggling, crawling and pulling, I slid free of the space and into a large dark room. A gray hoof came into view, as Stone offered to help me up.

Picking myself up with Stone’s help, I turned and helped Carrion the rest of the way through. The ghoul stepped from the crawlspace easily and climbed to his hooves. The room we were in was nothing special, just a large square space with a single doorway and a mound of trash and garbage and a very foul smell... wait...

“Did we just crawl into a bathroom?” I asked, wrinkling my nose at the scent. Unlike the age old scents of the sewer, this was far fresher and, as I looked around, I could see just how fresh. In fact, I was standing in it, “Oh shit...”

“Yes, it is,” Wild said. It was hard to tell if she was answering my question or being a smartass... knowing her, likely both. Upon further inspection, I saw drains in the floor leading to the sewers below. There were also metal gurneys piled up near the wall we’d just crawled through, helping to hide the hole from casual glances. Only somepony really looking would find it. It did indeed look like we were standing in one of the hospitals morgues; there were large vents in the ceiling, likely for refrigerating the entire room. Now it was the raiders’ shit hole.

As I wiped off my hoof on a pile of papers, Wild and Carrion had approached the single door and were listening for sounds beyond. A quick glance of my E.F.S. revealed a startling number of red dots all across my vision, but fortunately, none appeared to be close to us. Given the Pipbuck’s inability to show the difference in height, I wasn’t even sure if they were on the same floor as us. However, five new symbols appeared and I forgot about the filth covering my hoof and those red dots.

Five Pipbuck tags flashed before my eyes: Stable 45. Only five, but one of them was Ebony. Her tag was flashing there, away from the other four, and all just at the outer edge of my range.

“Shadow?” Stone’s concerned voice snapped me out of my daze and I looked to my friend, a smile spreading across my face.

“Ebony’s nearby, Stone... she’s here, in this place.” Before he could reply, we both turned at the sound of the door creaking open on rusted hinges. Wild leaned her head around the door, looking left and right along the hallway just outside. Beside her, Carrion held the door open with a hoof, while he floated his assault rifle beside him, ready to fire. After several seconds, the mare turned back to us and nodded her head.

“Alright, it's clear of raiders for the moment. I doubt they’d have any reason to guard their bathroom, so the only place we’re going to run into trouble is the bomb shelter and the exit door. The prisoners were being held at the south side of this floor when I was here last. It was the hospital’s bomb shelter, and as such has only a single large door, easy for the raiders to guard.”

“I’m picking up my sister’s Pipbuck tag in that direction, so they’re likely still using the room or another nearby it.” Only five tags; were the others dead? No, even if they were dead the Pipbuck’s would still show up. It was a feature for search and rescue, and I doubted they were damaged. Nothing short of a megaspell could damage a Pipbuck. At least, that’s what I’ve always been told.

“Alright, if things have remained the same, there should only be a small number of guards on this floor, and they will all be in the direction we need to go. There are normally between three to four guards near the emergency exit, but since it’s rarely used, they may have pulled them. The rest will be with the prisoners.” Wild held up a hoof as I approached the door, stopping me from stepping out into the hall. Her blue eyes settled on my face as she spoke softly, “Shadow, I know you’re eager to rush out there and save your sister and your friends, but we can’t go out there guns blazing. We’ll have the raiders upstairs down on us in a matter of minutes.”

“As I recall, there’s only one way down into the sub basement, a stairwell near the north side of the floor,” Carrion said, looking back from the hallway to Wild. “If the door’s still there, and if it could be barricaded, it would slow them down once the others noticed something was going on down here. Sooner or later, they will figure out something’s going on; it's better to start planning now rather than later.”

“Ah reckon we could use them there gurneys to help block the doors. Given th’ amount of trash coverin’ most of the wasteland, Ah reckon there’s more we could use down th’ hall.”

“There used to be a store room by the stairs that they used for old furniture and broken items in need of repair,” Carrion offered, and Wild poked a hoof at the ghoul.

“How do you know so much about the layout of this place? I thought you said the raiders had this place locked up tighter than a father had his daughter locked up on her sixteenth birthday.” Colorful as always, Wild.

“I haven’t been in here since the bombs fell,” the ghoul responded. When Wild only arched a brow, he sighed, “Fine... when my unit was stationed here, I got to know one of the nurses working here rather well, and we spent a bit of time in the storage room.”

“Way to go, Carrion,” Wild smirked, and looked back to Stone and I. “Well, this is your rescue mission, Shadow, What's the plan?”

“If we split up, we should be able to take the guards and seal the doors more quickly. Stone, go with Carrion and help him get that stairwell blocked tightly. It doesn’t have to hold them forever, just long enough. Wild and I will try and eliminate the guards as quietly as possible. We should probably take the ones out guarding the door to the sewers first, which will give you two time to rejoin us.” It was risky splitting us up into groups, but if we attempted to kill the raiders guarding the prisoners, one might raise the alarm. Likewise, if we attempted to seal up the stairs, the noise may attracted the raiders in the basement, or one might stumble upon us.

“Ah reckon that’s as fine as a plan as we’ll come up with, so let’s get it done. Sooner we save yer sister, th’ sooner we can get outta this city,” Stone approved, stepping over to the gurneys piled behind us. The earth pony started to sort which ones would be worth removing from the jumble. Within a matter of minutes, and with our help, the stallion had four wheeled gurneys sitting out in the hallway, each tied together with a length of rope he’d pulled from his saddlebags. We’d also managed to find a collection of old tanks used to hold medical gases and some metal boxes within a pile of junk just outside the door. All would go a long way to helping block the stairwell door.

“As soon as you’ve got that door blocked, join us quickly. We’ll need to make a hasty escape once the raiders upstairs realize what's going on,” I said, helping Carrion hitch the rope to Stone’s saddlebags. “I’m sure Wild and I can take a couple of raiders, but there could be more then she remembers.” The earth pony nodded his head as the ghoul unicorn’s magic finished tying the rope in place.

“Ah reckon yer both gonna be doin’ just fine. Carrion and Ah will hurry, though, just in case either of ya are feelin’ generous and leavin’ some raiders for us ta take out some anger on,” Stone answered with a grin, before placing a hoof on my shoulder, “Now, go get yer sister.”

I smiled back to my friend, and nodded my head once, as both he and Carrion started off down the hallway, the wheels of the gurneys he pulled squeaking rather loudly. Well, no reason to worry about that now. Turning to Wild, I jerked my head behind us.

“Let’s go.”

The raiders guarding the door out into the sewers were either bored, dumb, or just not expecting anything or anypony to come down the hallway towards them. Perhaps a mix of all three. Both sat with their backs to the hallway, staring at the door, a couple bottles of beer sitting between them. I could tell just by watching them from the corner of the hallway that both were completely drunk. Both were unicorn stallions. It was hard to tell what color their coats were under the heavy spiked armor and soiled clothing they wore across their bodies, but bits of pale green and tan coats poked out through holes. Both their manes and tails were solid black; perhaps they were brothers? The few words I could make out were badly slurred, and their movements were erratic, as if they didn’t know how to move their limbs. Their weapons sat on the ground beside them, being a badly battered pump action shotgun and a pair of handguns. I also saw a couple of knives on the green unicorn’s armor.

I looked back to Wild, who stood beside me near the edge of the hallway. The pegasus’s blue eyes fixed upon the two ponies at the end of the hallway, hatred burning in them. After a moment of staring, she looked away and back to me, making a slashing motion across her throat with a hoof, then pointing it back down to the pair.

I swallowed and nodded my head. I’d killed ponies before, like the raiders that had been attacking the Stable, but that had been in defense of my home and family. These ponies were unarmed, and for some reason that seemed to trouble me. Perhaps it was my security training trying to tell me to give them a chance to surrender. Even when it seemed highly likely that these two had attacked Stable 45. Beside me, Wild seemed to notice my hesitation and frowned. She leaned up and whispered into my ear.

“Think of Ebony, of your friends.”

Just the mention of my sister’s name made me glance to the five tags flashing behind us, back down the hallway we’d came. Five tags. Out of over twenty ponies that had been taken. Friends, co-workers, ponies I had known all my life, or known their parents or children, likely dead by these raiders’ hooves. I narrowed my eyes at the pair sitting before us, seeing the blood stains on their armor. One had a metal loop of ears on his flank, tied to a belt. I looked back to Wild and nodded my head before standing up. I could do this, for them.

Together we worked our way as quietly as we could down the hall. Wild was far better at it than I; the pegasus’s naturally light frame seemed to make little noise at all when she wanted, unlike my heavier body. Still, neither raider seemed to notice their approaching doom, likely far too drunk to notice anything that wasn’t actively trying to get their attention. Even then, I doubted anypony would manage. Between the two, there was a pile of over twenty bottles. We both approached our targets slowly, waiting until we could both strike, not giving either anymore of a warning then we could. While neither of us carried a knife like Stone, we both had found ways to silently kill both guards.

Wild had produced a length of thin metal wire from her saddlebags, which she then wrapped around her hooves as she sat behind her target. There was just enough length left to wrap around a pony’s throat, and with enough strength, or skill, she could effectively strangle a pony. Add to that the fact that the thin wire could easily slice into the soft flesh around one’s neck, making the wire harder to get free, and it made it far deadlier. Nasty. I wondered if she carried that solely for this reason.

I would use my baton, which had seen little use over the past week I’d been on the surface. The thick metal shaft was commonly used to knock a pony out, or break a hoof or leg if need be. It could just as easily break a pony’s skull, a task I was going to attempt today, as I gripped the handle tightly in my teeth. Thankfully, neither guard was wearing a helmet. The greasy messes they called manes were jutting out in several angles from their heads. This close, I could smell the fact neither had bathed in... forever. I suppose I smelled little better, having been in the sewers for the past several hours.

A quick glance to my right showed Wild posed to strike, the wire held between her forehooves as she stood behind her guard. With her ears laid back she mouthed, Three. I raised my head, club ready to slam down on the raider’s skull, Two. I pushed aside my unease, these were no longer ponies, but monsters as Stone had said, One.

At almost the same moment, we struck. Wild rose up onto her hind legs and brought the wire whipping around the throat of the raider, the thin piece of steel digging into the flesh as she yanked back hard. I quickly lost sight of the rest as I brought my club down hard on the raider sitting before me with a resounding *thwak!* of steel meeting bone. The baton actually vibrated in my mouth, rattling my teeth and blurring my vision for a second. I had expected that when my eyesight cleared, I’d find a pony slumped over the floor, with a cracked skull leaking blood. However, I was to be disappointed.

The spike-armored raider climbed unsteadily to his hooves and turned to look at me, blood running down his forehead where I had struck him with enough force to crack his skull just behind his horn. How he was still alive and moving I wasn’t even sure, at least until I saw his eyes. Tiny pinpricks in a sea of sickly yellow, foam running from his open mouth. He was drunk and higher than hell... oh fuck.

With a single movement, the raider struck me across the jaw with his front right hoof, knocking the bloody baton from my teeth and likely taking a few of them with it. I grunted, and stumbled back as he approached me jerkily.

A quick glance towards Wild was all I could spare before the brute of a pony was in my face once more. My winged friend was having her own problems. While blood was running freely from her raider’s throat where the wire had sliced into the flesh, rather than having the good grace to die, the raider was bucking wildly, throwing Wild about as she clung to his back stubbornly. And that was all I could see, as the bleeding raider lunged once more at my face.

Ducking the clumsy blow, I returned the favor and struck back, earring a sharp crack as my hoof impacted his lower jaw and snapped his head back, splattering the wall behind him with blood from his cracked skull. But he simply laughed and jerked his head back towards me.

“Fucking hell...”

Another hoof lashed out from the raider, this one his left, plus it was surrounded by a spiked leg guard. I’d lose more than a tooth if that connected. I stepped away from the blow, and was forced back by another swing. At least they weren’t fast, and while they didn’t seem to feel pain, I was sure that when whatever they were on wore off, they’d likely die. They’d lost enough blood already. Just had to keep moving.

The unicorn raider lowered his head and charged towards me, meaning to gore me on his chipped ivory horn. I easily sidestepped the attack, and turned to watch him skid to a halt down the hallway, the crazed raider snorting and looking around confusedly. That gave me time to grab my baton and check on Wild again.

The pegasus held tightly to the wire wrapped around the raider’s throat, even as he slammed her into the wall. Teeth bared, the mare seemed unlikely to release her foe, no matter how many times he crushed her between him and the wall. Luckily, the battering was blunting most of his spikes, and Wild was quick enough to avoid getting impaled on them.

The sound of running hooves drew me back to my own fight, as the raider realized where I was finally. Blood was running into his eyes as it flowed from his head wound, while already his movements were becoming more sluggish and he looked paler than he had. However, the fight was taking far longer than we wanted, and making a lot of noise. If the raiders guarding the prisoners heard this, there could be help on the way.

Once more, the unicorn lowered his horned head, intent on spearing me through the chest as he galloped towards me. But this time, I had my baton ready. Once more, I easily sidestepped the crazed pony, but while also swinging my neck and head out, bringing the baton down hard across the unicorn’s neck.

The blow must have struck a weak point in the armor plating that covered his neck, either due to the poor condition of raider armor or just luck on my part. Either way, it did little to stop the baton from shattering bone on impact, and, like a puppet with its strings cut, he dropped to the floor. Not surprisingly, he seemed to be trying to get up, but his body did not respond to his commands. A confused look came over his face before his eyes glazed over and he stopped moving completely.

With a snort, I looked up in time to see the second raider rear back on his hind legs one final time before collapsing to the floor in a rattle of armor plates. Tiredly, Wild dug the wire out from the dead unicorn’s flesh and slid it up and over his face. Looking closer, I saw a large gaping wound in the pony’s throat, and shook my head. Shit, whatever they were on made them nearly impossible to kill.

“Fucking Stampede... makes these assholes nearly unstoppable.” Her orange coat was marred by dark red stains, blood coating her forehooves where she had held the wire and along her neck and face, although none of it seemed to belong to her. “At least they weren’t on Dash,” she grunted, unwrapping the wire from around her hooves.

“I guess that’s a common enough drug in the wasteland?” I asked, wiping my baton off on the dead raider’s soiled clothing. It would have to do. I glanced to the two bodies as Wild looked disgustedly at the wire she held before tossing it away. It was stretched thin, and looked ready to break in half at any moment.

“Yes, raiders are known to take a lot of shit before going into battle. It’s a little disheartening to the defenders when you blow a hoof-sized hole in your opponent's chest and he still manages to beat you to death with your own gun.” I nodded, well remembering the raiders that had attacked my home. They seemed unafraid of dying, throwing themselves into our lines of fire. They overpowered us by sheer weight of numbers.

“We’d better get moving, then. I’m sure their friends down the hall heard most of that,” I said as I slid the baton back into its place on my belt. Looking back down the hallway, I saw no sign of trouble just yet, but given how this entire trip was going I was sure it wouldn’t be long.

“We need to make sure we can get out first. It’d be a bit awkward if we retreated this way only to discover these fuckers didn’t have the key.” She made a good point, and I didn’t like our chances of trying to get five ponies to crawl through the hole we had while under fire from raiders. If any were even in any state to crawl.

So we spent the next several minutes searching our two dead raiders. Between us, we found three doses of Stampede (three red tablets with a black X across them), the pair’s weapons, including a badly rusted shotgun which looked to have been largely used as a club and two 9mm pistols with half a clip in each, a dozen or so spare rounds for both weapons, one health potion, and, lastly, a single key. Stepping away from the bodies, I approached the large metal door that stood between us and the sewers. As luck would have it, a single lock held the door sealed.

Gripping the key in between my teeth, I slid it inside the lock and turned, hearing an audible click as the bolt slid free. Looking the door up and down, I tucked the key away into my pack and pulled lightly on the handle with a hoof. At first the door seemed unwilling to move, but slowly it began to inch outward. I quickly stopped, however, as my ears caught the sounds of grinding. The door had been sealed for a long time, and the hinges had rusted over. It’d likely make a hellish sound when it opened, but it would open. With a slight shove, I closed the door back fully and locked it.

“I’ve been trying to think of a way to slip past the guards at the cell, but there’s just nowhere for us to pass by unseen, just a narrow hallway with no doors along it. We might get lucky if the guards there are as fucked up as these two... but we still run a risk of getting shot to pieces,” my winged friend said as she rose up from looting the corpses and turned towards me near the door. “If they heard all this noise, they could be looking for trouble to come to them.”

“We just need someway of getting close to them,” I grunted, looking from Wild’s face to the bodies lying between us. “Their armor is crap, enough so that if I was close enough, my shotgun would cut through it like it was made of paper...” I blinked and tilted my head, looking more closely to the armor the guards wore. Despite the layer of fresh blood, they looked undamaged. I smiled slowly.

“Wild...I think I might have a crazy idea...”

“This is the most retardest plan I’ve ever heard of,” Wild said beside me, as she looked me up and down, ears laid back and a frown on her muzzle. Finally, she just shook her head. “Remind me again why I can’t be dressed up as a crazed rapist?”

“There was no time to cut holes in their armor for your wings, and while it would have fit over them, you may need to use them,” I answered for the third time, as we trotted back down the hallway towards the ‘T’ junction. After that it would simply be a short walk towards our final goal. For the fifth time I adjusted the crude armor plating covering my body, my riot armor tucked away in one of my saddlebags. The raider armor was itchy, and smelled like dead raiders (which oddly was the same smell as a live raider). I was fairly sure the one I’d stripped had fleas, as I could feel something crawling across my black coat, and I shivered. Beside my saddlebags, I still wore my shotgun around my neck, with my revolver and baton within easy reach. While all my weapons were in good shape, the most damning thing was the Pipbuck. I couldn’t remove it myself, and nothing short of cutting my leg off would free it from my body. Wild had said that she’d seen raiders wearing Pipbucks before, so it at least could be overlooked.

As for my winged friend, she was dressed up to look like a slave, the cause of her constant questions and fluttering wings. I had a bit of trouble talking her into this because of the role she would need to play. It bore unpleasant reminders for her, and I promised we’d get it over with quickly. Still, even I had trouble wrapping rope around her neck in a makeshift collar, gripping the end in my mouth. Over her armored upper torso, wings, and battle saddle, she wore a ratty tablecloth we’d found in a closet. The moth-eaten, stained cloth hid much from sight, though the bulges of her twin rifles and packs could be seen if you looked close enough. Because of that, she would stand behind me as we approached the guards.

We’d both helped one another smear the blood we already wore across our exposed fur. That, along with the pests in the armor, was making this walk a very long one. The red dots shifted slightly as we went, although most appeared to be on the floors above, since we just passed through a dozen markers. The tags of my fellow stable ponies drew closer, along with six green and five red dots. More prisoners? Ahead, the hallway turned suddenly to the right. Just beyond that turn I could hear the sound of voices.

“Here’s hoping this works,” Wild muttered beside me, and, nodding my head, I silently prayed it would as well, before taking a deep breath. Gripping the rope in my mouth I started around the corner, making it look like I was pulling a weak, beaten mare along behind me, growling out threats to the huddled mass of orange fur. As my eyes went from Wild to the narrow passage ahead, I got my first good look at where my sister had been kept, or at least the door.

A large double door, much like the sewer exit, was chained shut by a simple padlock. Beside it, in a small room were five raiders, all male; one unicorn and four earth ponies. Only a single earth pony stood watch on the hallway, a rusted patched-together assault rifle sitting beside his hooves as he leaned against the wall. The rest sat at a table, playing a game of some sort. Empty bottles and cans of food sat across the table, along with a number of caps. For the moment, none of the ponies seemed to pay Wild of myself much attention.

Only when the earth pony on watch picked up his weapon did I make myself more noticeable, “Come on ya lazy bitch... keep moving,” I growled, and tugged on the rope in my mouth. Wild, for her part, simply stumbled and cried out as she walked behind and beside me. Two of the ponies at the table glanced up.

“What's this then?” the watchful guard asked, stepping towards us, assault rifle held loosely in his mouth. I wondered if the thing would even manage to fire; it looked to be held together by Wonder Glue and duct tape.

“Caught this one outside the wall... was told to toss her in with the rest of the trash,” I answered, slowing my pace as we neared. A couple more steps and we’d be good. Wild could hose down the sitting guards with her laser pistol, and I’d tackle the standing guard to the floor. With any luck, we’d manage to take them before they could fire a single shot. While her laser weapon was hardly silent, it still made less noise then my shotgun or her battle saddle.

The unicorn smirked as he tossed his cards back upon the table, earning groans from the ponies around him. He stood up and stepped around towards us. He was an honor to his kind, wearing rusty, blood-soaked armor with spikes and hooks (there must have been a raider store where they bought this stuff). His lime green coat was a maze of scars and old wounds, and one of his eyes was missing, leaving a nasty looking black pit. The other was a yellowish red, and he was wearing a rather unsettling smirk with teeth worse then Carrions.

“My, my... a fresh piece of ass for us to make use of.” His voice reminded me of a leaky steam valve back in the stable. With a glow from his horn, he lifted Wild’s face up where she had been hiding it behind her long red hair and looked closely at her, “Oh, there’s still a bit of fire in this one, boys. Been awhile since we had anypony actually squirm.”

The earth ponies chuckled as they turned towards us, giving lusty looks at Wild’s covered body, thus far the bulges around her midsection had gone unnoticed as most eyes were fixed on her flanks. From the corner of my eye I could see the mare’s teeth grind slowly as she fought back the urge to lash out. We needed to be a bit closer for her laser to kill in one shot.

“I was told she wasn’t to be touched until the boss got a ride on her.” I winced, both at the ride comment and the word boss. What the hell was this? A old gangster movie?

“Which boss?” one eye asked, slowly stalking around to the side of us, eyeing Wild more closely now... had he noticed the bags? Think quickly, Shadow... think, think, think...

“Bloodpiss.” At once the entire group just stopped and turned towards me. Even Wild had her head turned, an eyebrow arched as she looked at me oddly.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. What the hell sorta name is Bloodpiss?!

“I thought Bloodpiss fucked stallions only?” the raider who’d first spotted us asked and I looked towards him in surprise, “And ain’t he dead? Tried mountin’ one of them Super Mutants, only they turned the tables on ’im.” Six pairs of eyes all stared at me, waiting for some sort of answer.

“Well... this is awkward,” I muttered, earning a facehoof from Wild and confused looks from the raiders, which were not going to last long, judging by the narrowed eyes of the unicorn. He was likely the pony in charge, “Wild... change in plans,” I said, dropping the rope in my mouth. At the same time I bent my right foreleg up, the movement sending the shogun that lay across my chest upwards where my teeth could close around the firing bit.

By now, the raiders started going for their weapons, as they realized what was happening. Beside me, Wild’s feathered limbs spread out, knocking the cloth off from her body and exposing her battle saddle. The firing bit for the weapon jerked forward into range of her mouth and she reached for the trigger.

My teeth closed around the metal bit of my shotgun, and lifting my head, I slipped into S.A.T.S. to better aim at my target. With time slowing down, I saw the unicorn standing beside Wild, his horn glowing as he had pulled a hatchet from his belt. The chipped blade was coated in gore and rust, but despite that looked sharp enough to cleave through a limb, such as, say, my friend’s outstretched wing. I couldn’t imagine a worse fate for a pegasus then to be grounded. I targeted the unicorn, intent on saving my friend. However, she stood between me and a clear shot. Only his head was visible above her back, and S.A.T.S. showed only a small chance I’d hit my target. I growled around the firing bit in my mouth and locked onto another target instead with everything S.A.T.S. had; I would not let Wild down.

The glowing hatchet rose up slowly as I released S.A.T.S. Its downward swing would slam hard into my friend’s feathered limb, and if it did not cut it clean off, it would break the bone. Wild still had no idea of the danger, for her focus had settled on the rising earth ponies near the card table, her teeth gripping her firing bit for the battle saddle she wore, the barrels extending out from below her wings as they prepared to unload a torrent of death. From the corner of my eye, I saw the first raider notice us, bringing his assault rifle up to bear upon me, but there wasn’t any time to worry about him.

Fire and smoke exploded from the barrel of my combat shotgun as I squeezed the trigger of my first shot. The empty shell casing flew over my head as the solid round spun from the muzzle and flew towards its target. The round passed within inches of Wild’s back and slammed into the lowering hatchet, the weapon exploding in a shower of sparks and metal as the shell knocked the blade away and onto the floor. The unicorn raider blinked in surprise, as the force of the blow caused him to lose the grip on the weapon. He turned to look at me, just in time for my second shot to leave my weapon and paint the wall behind him with his brains.

The roar of Wild’s rifles echoed within the narrow room of the sub basement, eliminating any hope of going undetected, as well as the table and the earth ponies. High caliber rounds shredded the already abused wooden table, sending out two inch long splinters in every direction, slicing into the exposed flesh of the raiders. However, they wouldn’t suffer long, as those same rounds continued on through their pitiful armor and out their bodies to blow chunks out of the wall behind them.

I turned my head just in time to see the barrel of a assault rifle pointing at my face, and at that range, it would definitely be fatal. With a savage grin, the raider started to pull the trigger, only for his head to jerk back suddenly in a spray of blood. The trigger was jerked and the assault rifle fired harmlessly over my head, the rounds burring harmlessly into the ceiling as the body of the raider toppled onto the floor in a heap. Turning my head behind me, I saw Stonehoof standing at the end of the hallway, his smoking rifle lowering.

“Ah reckon Ah can’t take ya’ll anywhere without ya gettin’ into trouble,” my large gray friend said with a smirk, before letting his rifle drop back down to his chest by its shoulder strap. “Ah also reckon we’ll be havin’ a mite few guests to this here party afore too long.”

As Stone started walking down the hallway towards us, Carrion turned the corner and arched a rotting brow at the bodies laying nearby. The ghoul pony said nothing, however, and simply followed Stonehoof into the room.

Wild, meanwhile, had begun searching the body of the unicorn stallion who lay propped up against the wall, bits of his skull clinging to it from where I had shot him. It seemed he was the pony in charge here, and would likely be the one with the key. I glanced away from my pegasus friend and to the door, five tags and six green dots winking in my E.F.S.

“The door’s secure then?” I asked, as Stone moved up beside me, Carrion hanging back a bit.

“As well as it’ll ever be, Ah reckon. It won’t hold long...”

“It won’t have to,” Wild said, interrupting Stone. The pegasus stood up, a key held in her mouth. Trotting past us, she pushed it into the lock, and with an almost inaudible click, the padlock popped open. Pushing it off the chain with a hoof, she began to unwrap the chains from around the handles of the door.

With a grunt and the groan of aged hinges, the doors opened. I stepped inside and found myself standing within a room a little smaller than the Atrium had been back home. Overhead, a hoof-full of surviving light panels seemed to still be working, but only just, casting the room into a flickering glow. The ceiling was low to the floor, with just enough space for a pony to walk without being forced to hunch. Fortunately, the panels were built inside the ceiling, so at least you wouldn’t have to worry about smacking your head into them. The space was cramped, with support pillars dotting the room, faded and chipped reflective paint surrounding their bases and arrows pointing to the exit and to long-salvaged medkits. Refuse and bits of broken concrete lay scattered across the floor, along with makeshift beds of soiled clothing and old, rotting bed sheets. There were a large number of beds within the room, but only a small number of ponies. All told, there were sixteen filthy and deathly-thin pony shapes within the dark corners of the room, the dim light reflecting in their frightened eyes. The only noise within the room was the hoof steps my friends made as they followed me in, and the rough breathing of the prisoners.

“Sweet Celestia’s Grace...” Stone muttered as he eyed the pitiful shapes of the ponies around us. The stoic earth pony reached up to remove his hat as he scanned the room.

They seemed confused as to who had entered their small world, hanging back, afraid of what we might do; those that could, at least. A few lay still on their beds, and I was sure they were dead: I could see more bones against their coats then Carrion’s. At least, I thought them dead, until one opened his eyes, milky and unfocused.

Wild said nothing, but I could see her wings quivering as she stood watching. Movement from the corner of our eyes drew our attention to the left, where a single pony moved behind the pillars, using them to hide and stay largely unseen as he or she inched closer to us. I turned my head to watch as the shadowy form stepped closer. As I did, a brief flicker of light from an overhead panel lit up the form. She was a mare, young, though the scars and marks across her body could have belonged to a pony three times her age. A tattered blue and yellow jumpsuit clung to her skinny frame, with the number 45 on the torn collar, and a scorched and battered Pipbuck hanging around her left foreleg, barely staying up over her hoof. What’s more, I realized I knew this pony, or at least I had.

“Tassles?” I called out softly, taking a few steps towards the broken pony. As I did, she backed away hurriedly, whimpering. However, she froze when she heard me call out her name again, ears shooting upright. Wide, fearful, plum-colored eyes fixed upon my face, and I could see her trying to remember me. “Tassles - it’s me, Shadow.” At the name, the frightened pony inched closer into the light, and I felt tears at the corners of my eyes. Her face was bruised from being beaten, dried blood around her nose.

“Sh - shadow?” the battered mare’s voice was raspy and shaky, but she drew closer, as did several other forms from the shadows, two more wearing Stable jumpsuits as ripped and loose-fitting as the mare before me. Other ponies came into view, or rather were carried upon the shoulders of their friends or family; even the blind pony laying on the ground rolled over and inched closer.

Tassles moved right up beside me, eyes wide and still so very afraid, but of me? I didn’t understand, at least not until she lifted a shaking hoof and lightly touched my lower leg, pressing into my coat. I looked back into the mare’s eyes and nodded my head.

“It’s me, Tassles... I’m really here... I’m real.” She blinked, lip quivering, before she wrapped her forelegs around my neck and broke down completely, crying out loudly as she held tightly. All I could do was stand there and wrap a hoof around her back, holding her tightly and laying my head on her shoulder, “It’s okay... I’m here...” Stone and Wild stood where I had left them, the pegasus looking into the worn faces around her.

Carrion had hung back near the door, but a shadowy form stumbled out from the darkness and wrapped around the ghoul unicorn tightly, hugging him as he cried into the worn combat armor. Carrion sat back hard on his backside as the pony shakingly clung to him, wailing about his son, who hadn’t woke up this morning. The raiders took his body away. The ghoul looked uneasily to me; with one hundred and fifty years on his own, he’d likely never had much contact with other ponies, and definitely nothing like this. Or maybe he had... a long time ago. He patted the shivering pony, speaking softly to him.

“Stone... get... get the supplies we have and... start passing them out. Use whatever health potions we have for the worst ones...” my voice broke as I spoke. I was still holding Tassles’ crying form, her face buried into my mane as she wept, oh sweet Celestia. Another jumpsuit-wearing pony hobbled from the darkness. His left hind leg missing, his forest green coat was covered in cuts, and the tip of his horn was broken off, but a hoof-cuff cutie mark was still visible, as was the Security badge, so badly dented and stained, that hung around his neck by a thin wire. It was Turf, one of my missing security ponies. With the last of his energy, he smiled to me, missing a number of his teeth, before he saluted me.

“Knew you’d come for us... boss...” he managed, as he dropped to the ground before the pillar. “We told them... you’d find us.” I was afraid he’d died, but I could still see his chest rising and falling, unsteadily, but it seemed enough. And still Tassles clung to me, her entire body shaking until I was afraid it’d break the thin bones in her body.

Stone began pulling out packs of food from his saddlebags, hoofing them out to the ponies around him, as Wild helped those too weak to move to drink water and what few health potions we had left. My heart nearly broke as I watched Stone lift the pony who’d been crawling towards us from the ground with one hoof and get him back atop a bed. The other pony who had been laying beside him remained still; she’d never rise again.

Why? Why is this happening? Celestia... Luna... what have they done to deserve this? What has anypony done to deserve this?

As the minutes ticked by, Tassles sobs became softer and more shallow, until finally she went silent. Gently, I pushed her away with my hooves, holding them to her shoulders to keep her upright as I looked into her red rimmed eyes. The fur of her face was matted around her eyes and her red-tinted nose. Still, her hooves held to mine, unready to let me go.

“Tassles... where's my sister?” I asked. The mare simply sat there, ears folded to the sides; she looked so pitiful. I reached up and wiped away the mess from her face, “Tassles, where's Ebony?”

“Ebony?” she asked, still not looking at me as she sat there. I felt my heart beating faster as I nodded, despite the fact she wouldn’t see it.

“Yes, where is she...? She was taken with you and the others.” I tried to keep my voice calm, despite everything I had seen. The tag off to itself flashed in my vision, somewhere in this room. A shaking hoof rose up from the mare and pointed towards the far wall of the storm shelter.

“She’s in there... in there... they chained her to... to the wall...” Wild stepped in, and gently helped me free of the unicorns grip, nodding me away as she helped Tassles to sit down and offered her a canteen of water. I stepped back and watched for a moment before turning away and trotting towards the wall. I saw that there was a doorway there, the door long since missing. By the smell coming from the room, it was clear it was the bathroom for the prisoners. My sister was left in there?

I stood before the dark doorway and looked inside, the few panels that still worked inside casting more shadows than light, so that I couldn’t see anything or anypony within. But the tag continued to flash in my vision. She was inside, so... why didn’t I go in? I glanced back at the room, at the sight of three ponies I’d known all my life, broken into shadows of their former selves. Tassles had always been such a strong-willed mare, my sister’s best friend. The pony she was going to see about the final plans for the wedding. I looked away from the huddled form of the unicorn; her husband-to-be had been taken as well, but he wasn’t among the others. I couldn’t even imagine what they had gone through in the two weeks since they’d been taken from our home... what my sister had gone through. Turf was one of Bright’s friends; the two used to hoof wrestle all the time, or have races through the Stable hallways. I looked to his missing hind leg. He’d likely not race any more. Of the third pony, she sat numbly off to herself, huddling a battered body to her chest, a bloody Stable jumpsuit clinging to its form. Pip and Nip, twins like my sister and I, born almost the same year as us. They had a habit of finishing one another's sentences, and had worked in medical as nurses. Now, it looked as if Pip would need to finish her own sentences.

How they knew, I’m not sure, but both Wild and Stone made their way towards me, heads lowered, tears at the corner of their eyes (despite Wild’s insistent it was just the smell). I smiled weakly to my friends, before turning back to face the doorway. Movement from the back corner of the bathroom caught my eyes and I stepped forward.

“Ebony?”

Walking into the room, I should have known at once something was horribly wrong, but I’d failed to see those signs, signs my friends had already seen as they followed me into the dark dank hole. The only sound was of water dripping from the broken ceiling, landing into stagnant pools of foul smelling liquids. I ignored the smell of unwashed flesh, feces, decay, and rotting flesh. I ignored the single flickering emergency light that attempted to brighten the darkness of the room, and ignored the yellowed bones of dead ponies under piles of waste and trash. All this and more I ignored as I approached the lone figure within the room.

She’d been chained to the wall, as Tassles had said, two links of rusted metal running from posts driven into the stone wall. Water dripped from the orange-tinted iron chains, those same links disappearing into the shadows of the room where my sister lay, her Pipbuck tag flashing. That single bulb of light made it so I could only just make out the edges of my sister's body, laying among the garbage and waste of the prisoners, head propped up on a old jacket that had sat for the goddesses know how long in the filth. The lengths of chain ran from the wall to metal bands around her throat and left hind leg, both areas devoid of fur from how tight they had been around her body. She lay on her side, facing the wall, her arched back a mass of scar marks from whips and hoof alike. Her long white mane and tail was covered in filth and knotted. Stepping closer, the scent of rot and death hung heavily around the thin form, weeping white sores covering her hind quarters and midsection. Looking closer, I saw they seemed to cover large areas of my sister's body, the fur around them having fallen out, leaving bare pale skin below, dark red and blue veins visible just below it. Everywhere I looked she was bruised, and despite not wanting to, my eyes traveled to her hips and the dark marks around her tail. My heart broke as I saw what those bastards had done to her...

“Ebony?” My voice was barely above a whisper, yet it sounded loud within the near silent room, my hooves brushing aside piles of filth as I neared my sisters still form. The shallow rise and fall of her sides told me she was still alive. How long had she been left to rot here? Hours? Days? My anger grew as I thought of what had been done to her, but it quickly cooled as I saw movement.

At the sound of my voice, the figure shifted slightly, her head weakly rising from the floor to look back across her broken shoulder. Tears ran freely down my cheeks as her face came into the dim light, strands of her white mane clinging to her once-beautiful face, now a mass of bruises and cuts. Dried blood matted the coat around her mouth and nose, but worst of all was her horn. Or the twisted nub that was left jutting up from her forehead. Somepony had sawed it off while she’d been awake. The clicking from my Pipbuck told me I was near radiation, but I ignored it as she opened her eyes weakly, golden orbs blinking as she attempted to focus on whoever was in the room with her. She didn’t seem to know me, and that was more then I could take. I stumbled towards her, dropping to my knees in the pile of garbage she’d been forced to use as a bed.

“Goddesses, Ebony, it’s me... sister...” I leaned forward and wrapped my hooves around her neck, pressing my face into hers. The confused look melted from her eyes as my twin sister slowly smiled up at me. The steady clicking was the only sound in the room, nearly covering up the voice that asked a simple question.

“Little...brother...?” Her voice was raw; she could barely say a word without being forced to swallow. I turned my head away for a moment and closed my mouth around my canteen, and, unscrewing the lid with my teeth, I held it up with shaking hooves to Ebony’s lips. Wild and Stone remained near the entrance to the bathroom, silent. Watching.

“I’m here, sis... I’m here.” I slipped my right hoof under her head, and held it up so she could more easily drink. More water ran down her swollen lips then into her mouth, leaving lines of clean fur in her black coat, “You’re going to be okay, Ebony.. .I’m here to save you... I’ll get you out of this place.” As I stuttered over my words, the steady clicking of my Pipbuck grew louder as the needle rose slowly from the green and into the yellow. I sniffed and fought back the flood of tears that wanted to break free... I had to be strong for her.

Hoofsteps approached me slowly and stopped just behind me, a gray hoof gently laying across my shoulder, and I turned back. Stone’s kind green eyes stared back at me, a sad look in their depths with knowledge I refused to accept. He lightly squeezed my shoulder, as Wild trotted up beside him, her cheeks wet with tears. Both my friends already knew just by looking... already knew what I didn’t want to know... but I did know. I did. And I cried. The tears flowed freely down my cheeks as the last of my reserves shattered..

“Sweetie...?” my sister's voice asked of me, and I turned to look back into her face, my canteen falling from my hooves, the water spilling out from within to pool around us.

“She’s safe, with the rest of the Stable. I sent them east... to San Ponsisco... just like we always talked about,” I answered, locking my eyes with hers. She smiled slowly, and took another breath. Behind me somepony was crying, but I couldn’t tell who, nor did I really care. A gasp of pain made me reach out to grip my sisters tortured body. Even if we used every health potion we had...every Med X there was... there was no way to repair the damage. No hope.

After a few moments of silence between us, Ebony opened her eyes once more, her smile a sad one. A shaking forehoof came up to push away strands of my mane that had fallen across my face, something that so reminded me of our mother.

“I wanted to see you... one... last time, little brother...” A flash of pain washed across her face again, as if that simple sentence had cost her so much, and she moaned weakly, “Hu...urts so much... ple... please stop... stop the pain, little br...rother...” she said between bouts of agony. She had soaked up so much radiation... her body was falling apart.

“I can’t... I....” couldn’t. There wasn’t enough supplies to dull the pain... and then our eyes locked once more and my heart stopped. No... oh sweet Celestia and Luna... NO...

“Pl... ease... a... already.. .dead...,” I stared into her eyes and saw the pain she had gone through, was still going through... she was my sister... I... I couldn’t let her be in so much pain.

My eyes never left her face as I raised my left forehoof up, and lowered my muzzle to the gun holstered there, wrapping my teeth around the bit I unbuckled the weapon with my right hoof and slide it easily from its home. I lifted my head back up, and as the long barrel of the revolver came into sight, my sister sighed in relief and nodded her head as best she could.

Shakingly, I lowered the weapon to her head, pressing the cold metal barrel to her skull, or at least I tried; I was shaking so badly it wobbled around. Until a slender black hoof rose up from outside my field of vision and steadied the gun. My sister’s hoof. Our breathing slowed, and I could feel the unsteady beat of her heart against her chest as my own seemed to match its rhythm. I tightened my grip upon the pistol in my mouth, feeling the trigger and pulling back, the hammer slowly rising up as the chamber rotated.

“Lo... ove you... li.. little bro.. other...”

“I love you too... big sister...” My voice broke, as tears dripped into the pool of water under me left by the canteen. My sister smiled and held my gaze as I squeezed the trigger...

Welcome to Level 9!

Perk Added: Quick Draw: You can draw and holster your weapons 50% faster now.