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0530 HOURS (2230 LOCAL)
AMBASSADOR BRIDGE
DETROIT, MI, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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Doug Robertson was not a happy man. Granted, he wasn’t a particularly sad man: he wasn’t poppin’ pills like “those inner-city faggots who can’t deal when their dyke bosses raise their voices at ‘em,” in his own eloquent words. But still, there were times when he just wanted to pull his eighteen-wheeler off to the side, hop on out, give his atrophying legs (and subsequently, his sizable beer gut) a good shake, and just walk away without looking back. Just leave the big, metal bastard he was forced to drive, oftentimes on seventy-hour shifts, parked their on the side of the road for his employers to pick up. Or leave it to rust, he wouldn’t care. He’d just keep walking, probably find some small town like the one he’d grown up in, where the kids still ran after each other on bikes and built forts over creeks and ate those freezer pops that came in plastic tubes you had to freeze yourself until the cheap syrup coated their faces in reds, oranges, greens, and purples.

He didn’t know what he’d do for work once he found this town. Maybe fix up trucks, God knows he’d spent enough time around them in the last few years. He could start off small in the local garage and work his way up. Or hell, maybe he’d wind up washing dishes at the local greasy spoon, he didn’t care, just so long as he didn’t have to sit behind the wheel of a goddamned truck and wait for the fucking traffic on overcrowded-as-shit bridges anymore.

The beige, rusted-out Taurus in front of him scooted forward a couple feet, and Doug hit the accelerator, the big rig roaring victoriously as it greedily sucked down the precious few inches its patience had earned. Doug’s pulse climbed a few beats as a bit of bile rose up from his stomach in the form of indigestion, though he didn’t reach for the bottle of softchews on the dash just yet, still holding out hope that it would settle itself soon enough. God above. All this pain, all the traffic and the truck stops with filthy rooms and filthier whores and the kids who didn’t know him and the wife who divorced his ass because of the kids, all for what? So a party store in Windsor could stock up on paper plates and cheap, Chinese-made toys that wouldn’t last a week outside of their packages? This was what his life had come to?

He sighed and reached for the bottle of softchews on the dash. Looked like he’d be needing them after all. In reality, he didn’t usually much mind the job. It had sort of grown on him, become part of his definition of himself, like the trademark scruff that constantly coated his face, and the flannel shirt that just barely concealed his belly, and the Scooby-Doo bobblehead that constantly nodded at him as he drove, like it was saying: “You got this, big bud. Just keep it on going.” Except Scooby never talked like that, not that Doug particularly cared at that moment.

He grimaced as he swallowed the pasty chalk the softchew left in his mouth. Naw, he didn’t mind the job much; it’s just that being so close to one of their colonies always made him skittish, made him think he didn’t have much longer to be himself anymore. He snuck a peek in his rearview mirror at the gray, concrete walls erected around the nondescript, hospital-like building behind him, parked right on the shore of the Detroit side of the river. It looked so much like a prison, except that wasn’t quite right. Actually, it looked more like an asylum. An asylum for the incurable madness the ponies’ “magical” potion had triggered in the poor idiots dumb enough to walk into one of their bureaus.

Doug shook his head. If it had been up to him, every one of those little freaks would have been put up against a wall and gunned down. Let them smile and bellow that evil cunt’s praises right up until a 5.56 round to the back of the head shut them up, pow pow, and be done with it. Heartless? Not to him. He’d seen the emptiness in those smiles, the blankness in those eyes. His father-in-law had gone and had that done to himself, and the sight of the resulting “Newfoal” still sent shivers down Doug’s spine. He could still remember seeing the old man’s bifocals perched upon that snout as those cartoonisly-large, completely blank eyes had smiled up at him with their cold dullness. It was those eyes. Those eyes that would always be burnt away into his memories, their depthless emptiness forever gazing at him, usually in the moments right before he slipped into sleep. “Shoulda just killed ‘em all,” he muttered as he revved up the engine again to gobble down another foot of space. “Woulda been a mercy.”

In truth, Doug had been considering conversion at one point. Just an odd fantasy he’d entertained from time to time back when the world of ponies and the world of men had first met and the Bureaus had started popping up everywhere like Starbucks. He had dreamt of swooping through the clouds as a pegasus, or of lifting objects with a thought with unicorn magic. Though he might have settled for an earth pony’s strength, that particular race of pony just didn’t hold the same magic for him as flight and unicorn magic did. Of course, this was back before the reports came out of Newfoals earning lower and lower scores on intelligence tests, of their sudden fascinations with the Solar Princess that had granted them this “gift,” of their growing inability to recall even basic details of their lives before transformation, but for Doug, the linchpin had been when he looked into the eyes of the small, four-legged creature that had once been his father-in-law, and saw nothing he recognized. In fact, he saw little to nothing at all going on up there, except perhaps for that undying devotion to that evil princess bitch. In a way, he could be grateful to the old man for helping him dodge that bullet.

But dodged it for what? He thought gloomily, looking ahead into the filtered haze of the glow off the streetlamps lining the bridge, seeing nothing but a river of traffic stretching into the darkness for miles. For this?

He thought for a moment, and eventually nodded to himself. Yes, for this, he decided, because for all the pain and suffering, all the long lonely nights in motel beds that squeaked under his weight and behind the wheel of this God-forsaken machine, at least he was still Doug Robertson, and not one of those empty shells back there. Not one of those empty, multicolored things. He spared another glance in his rearview mirror at the concrete walls, lined every few yards with searchlights. He peered at the windows where one of the Newfoals would usually spend their days looking outside, smiling that goddamned empty smile down to…

What was that flash he just saw? What in the fuck was that flash he just saw!? There! Right there! Sleep-deprived hallucination, his fat ass! That was definitely a purple flash there in one of the upper-floor windows, and…just for a second…did he see the outline of somebody in them? Somebody in a doctor’s lab coat, their arms suddenly flying up in pain, a clipboard still gripped in their hands? No, no, that was ridiculous! Without their Queen (or wait, he meant Princess), Newfoals didn’t do anything but sit there in their empty little heads with their empty little thoughts, smiling their empty little smiles at the occasional passerby so…

A powerful explosion rocked the Newfoal holding building, and that same upper floor window he’d just seen flash disappeared in a shower of glass and concrete. In that instant, nothing else mattered to him, not the ex-wife, not the kids, not the idyllic little town out in the country somewhere, not even the driver behind him leaning on his Accord’s horn. Doug’s eyes were locked on his rearview mirror in stunned horror, as if it were showing one of those slasher films and the curvy little blonde teenager was about to head down into the dark basement. His stomach twisted again, not from indigestion, but from a deep, primal fear that every man feels when they realize something has just gone horribly wrong.

The feeling climbed as a bright yellow streak shot into the night sky, rising from the still-dissipating cloud of debris like a rocket, spitting off little bursts of magic as it arced overhead. Doug’s mind reeled with the sheer height and speed of the thing, his eyes rolling in his skull to try and stay on the little object. It’s one of them, he realized. Christ alive, those little four-legged cunts are turning on! Something activated ‘em!

The streak shot towards the river and levelled off, water shooting off to the sides in little, v-shaped jets as it focused on the bridge. Suddenly, inanely, Doug remembered his buddy talking to him one night. He couldn’t remember who or where, just that the guy was drunk and ranting about this governor fucking up the school system, and that mayor digging the city into a deeper hole, and most of all, about the bridge. How it was the ultimate testament to the rich owning America. How some millionaire owned it and kept killing bills to fund other bridges across the river to Windsor. How he never allowed city workers to inspect it since it was his private property.

How nobody had any idea if it would stand against a terrorist attack.

He had laughed then, chortled something about a terrorist attack probably being an improvement, the way things were in the city. He laughed now as he watched that little streak shoot towards the bridge, just as he was sure the Newfoal was laughing and smiling its empty little smile right up until it slammed into a piece of supporting strut just a dozen yards above the roadway. Doug’s laughter became panicked, hyperventilating chortles as he leaned out his cab to watch a magical explosion bloom over the bridge, sending the cars and screaming drivers that it hadn’t incinerated flying into the river hundreds of feet below, blinding him with cascading yellows, reds, purples, and greens. The driver behind him had stopped honking.

Everything happened in slow-motion after that, like in that shitty Keanu Reeves movie a few years back: Doug couldn’t remember the name of it. All that was in his mind was the multicolored ball of fire reaching up one of the towering support struts and out over the river, charred and blackened corpses dropping from beneath it to be cooled by the water far below. Something hit the top of his cab, bounced off, and landed on the rig’s engine compartment, still on fire. It took him a few moments after before he realized it was a human hand, the skin charred and blackened like a piece of chicken that had stayed on the grill for too long. He thought he saw the glint of a wedding ring somewhere amongst the burnt flesh. Then the streetlamps went out and the bridge was plunged into total darkness.

Doug heard the twang of supporting cables giving out on his right, and twisted in his cab again. The crippled supporting tower behind him leaned at an insane angle, slowly dipping towards the river with repeated shrieks of twisting metal, the roadway dipping with it. It’s gonna give, he realized, unaware of the crowd of shrieking people running by him, abandoning their cars in a desperate, futile rush for safety, both the drivers of the Accord and the Taurus among them. The whole fucking tower’s gonna give, and when it does...

He didn’t even have time to complete his thought before there was a final, defining screech of metal and the entire roadway tilted insanely. Most of the people around him were thrown over the guardrail, their screams drowned out by the continuous shrieking of the metal warping and twisting in ways it was never designed for. The driver of the Accord was among this unfortunate group, the back of his head striking the guardrail with a sickening, wet smack. The truck skidded sideways and hung itself precariously on the guardrail for a moment. Doug peered at the dark water far below, at how placid it looked. That surprised him; with the number of people he could see dropping to their deaths on either side. It reminded him of the times his parents would take him to the beach when he was young. Of days spent with sand wedged into every corner of his body, grinding against his skin with every flex of his toes, every motion of his feet, and not even caring. That’s not so bad, some small part of him remarked. That’s not so bad, as far as last thoughts go.

And then the guardrail snapped free. The rest of the roadway followed soon after.

Author's Notes:

Is it morbid that this came to me while crossing a suspension bridge just south of the Ohio border? Because seriously, I was just thinking about how to spice things up a bit while things build back on the Illustrious, saw the bridge coming up, and this entire chapter hit me in a flash. Weird, huh? And not concerning at all? Guys?

Hoboy...