Post-Aponalypse (WIP)

The white biohazard sign on the patch the man is wearing on his sleeve is the only thing visible as he slowly creeps closer towards the waterworks. Not for the first time he curses the stupidity of his comrades. To get pulled off the street for speeding, on Day X of all possibilities...

He scoffs. No need crying over spilt milk. If he has to do this on his own, he'll give it his all. The dude bleeding out in the shrubbery next to the parking lot could attest to that, but the man imagines that talking with a slashed throat might be somewhat hard. He takes one last deep breath.

Time for his next step.

 

The security guard leans back in his chair with a content sigh. It is another boring night, and he wouldn't have it any other way. All the better to re-read his copy of The Coke Report. It's the new edition, the one Jim Woodsman brought out after his falling out with Beetle magazine, and while the security guard suspects that reprinting his bestselling book is mostly a moneymaking scheme on the former journalist's part, he has to admit that he'd do the same in an instant. Hell, he knows better than anyone that a true fan will buy anything the object of his obsession puts out into the world.

He has just started fantasizing about that drug-fuelled vacation in the Dom Rep the book always makes him dream about and that he never actually takes when the door rings.

He groans as he puts the book aside. About time that Timothy came back. Guy had been gone for a smoke break for almost half an hour now. A lazy swick of his thumb activates the intercom.

"Hey Tim, finally done? I was wondering what you were doing out there, bro."

To his surprise, the voice on the other end is, distorted as it is, clearly not the one of his partner.

"Hello? Thank God someone's there. I need help out here, there's a man down by the road, and I am not sure if he is breathing..."

The voice is nervous, and to the security guard it sounds as if whoever's out there is in real distress. More importantly, it sounds as if something might have happened to his colleague. He throws a quick glance at the monitor of the surveillance system but can't make anyone out. The way the voice trailed of it sounded as if its owner returned to what he suspects is an unconscious Tim.

The security guard quickly fastens his holster. Better safe than sorry. It doesn't do him any good. As soon as he opens the door, an arm reaches out. There is something glinting on its end, and before the guard realizes what is happening to him, there's a stinging pain in his chest. Then another stab. And another. And...

 

The security guard keels over and falls to the side as the man withdraws his knife. He quickly pulls the guard's gun from its holster and takes his key ring for good measure. He pulls down the black balaclava he is wearing and wipes the sweat that's dripping from his blonde hair off of his forehead. The hardest part is over, he tells himself. He is inside. Now for the grand finale. He steps outside again.

Soon afterwards, the cameras pick up a man dressed in dark clothes carrying several sportsbags into the building.

 

The man drops the bags next to the open basin and immediately goes to work on them. No time to open them the proper way. He simply cuts into them with hectic, jerking movements of his still bloodflecked knife.

The fabric part and reveals its cargo: A powder, white with red specks. The bags are filled to the brim with it.

Despite his nervousness, the man grins. It's really happening. He is looking at the instrument of final victory, and he knows it. He pulls a rebreather from a bag fixed to his chestrig. If there is one thing he doesn't want to do it is exposing himself to the weapon.

His mask affixed to his satisfaction, he throws a quick look down into the basin. The water is still flowing. Good. The urbanites won't know what hit them.

"Freeze," a voice wheezes behind him, and for just a moment he is shocked enough to do as he is told. It doesn't last long. Catching himself, he wheels around, already pulling out the stolen handgun.

Standing in the doorway is security guard. He is horrible to look at. Blood is still flowing from his stab wounds and out of his mouth and nostrils. He is swaying heavily, looking more dead than alive.

But he is also clutching his baton and slowly staggering closer.

"I hit the alarm," the dead man walking rasps, a sense of satisfaction creeping into his ghostly voice. "Put down the gun. I don't know what you were trying to do, but..."

With a sneer and a pull of the trigger the man wipes any feeling of triumph from the security guard. The sound of the gun going off in the room is deafening, but the screams of the security guard as the round tears through his leg are almost as loud.

With a kick, the man removes the baton from the fallen guard's hand. He is furious. At himself for not making sure that the guy was dead. But mostly at the guard for daring to act against the plan. For potentially ruining everything.

The kick to the hand is followed up with several savage blows and stomps to the guard's face and stomach.

"Don't know what I am doing, eh?" the man hisses into the dying guard's ear, "Why don't you take a closer look then?"

With that, he grabs his victim by collar and belt, and with a grunt of exertion he heaves him over the railing.

With satisfaction he notes that the guard is drifting with his face up as he starts pouring the powder.

"Go on," he whispers to the body, "take it all in."

 

 

"...attacks on waterworks across the country hit almost every major city tonight..."

"...White supremacist group Biowaffen Division claimed..."

"...Deadly coordinated assault on our infrastructure..."

"...Despite several victims, there has been no significant damage to..."

"...called the perpetrators losers and vowed to bring down the..."

"...two weeks after the heinous attack, America is still..."

"...first cases. The CDC declared today..."

"...seems to be a slow acting, custom-engineered variant of popular party drug Pon-E..."

"...crippled, as chaos in the streets grows..."

"...urged to remain calm..."

"...collapse..."

 

 

Now.

A car. It really is a moving car. Fast Hooves is staring in awe at the vehicle that is coming up the street at breakneck speed.

The young stallion had heard the rumbling noise of the engine for a while now, but had found himself unable to place it. The noise had seemed to come from somewhere in the distance, and at first he hadn't paid it much attention, but once he had realized that the mechanical growling in the distance was growing steadily closer, he had interrupted his morning run and ducked behind the reassuringly solid block of a van that had stalled on the old road years ago.

To now see a vehicle not so dissimilar to the ones he had seen standing still since his earliest childhood was something he hadn't even imagined since growing out of the age for make-believe adventures.

Without even really noticing it, he leans out further from behind his cover. The vehicle is a rather short affair, looking almost like a box on wheels. It is painted a dark blue color, but Fast notices that the car's exterior is riddled with what seems to be holes. He doesn't even notice the car slowing down before it has almost come to a halt.

Has the driver seen him? He should have left as soon as he saw the car coming. He curses himself. Perhaps the driver is just taking a short break?

*clack*

The noise makes the stallion cringe. This better not be what he fears it is. Trying not to make a sound, he lowers himself to the ground and peers through the gape between the van and the ground. What he sees makes his heart skip a beat and his ears flatten. He can see legs standing besides the car, legs that very clearly don't belong to any kind of pony.

He must have been spotted.

With a lunge he starts sprinting. The edge of the forest isn't far behind him, and if he can just manage to vanish in the underbrush before the creature from the car gets a good look at him, he is reasonably sure that he can shake it off.

He has covered barely half the distance to the woods when he hears a voice behind him call out.

"Pony!"

Now he has been spotted for sure. Branches scratch his sides and he squeezes his eyes shut as he dives headfirst into the forest.

"Pony! Wait!"

Fat chance. Branches crack underhoof as Fast gallops deeper into the forest. He'll have to reach the village and warn the others. A human so close to them can't be good. His uncle will know what to do. He just hopes that he can shake his pursuer and win some time.

 

Finally he makes it. The palisade of the village looms over him as he sprints towards the clearing where the settlement is located. Fast hasn't heard his pursuer for a while now, neither the sound of the human breaking through the underbrush nor shouts for the stallion to stop. Hopefully this means that he has managed to shake the unbidden visitor.

Ponies jump out of his way as he sprints through the gate and without slowing down heads towards his uncle's place. This might just be the one time were being related to the headstallion of the village pays off.

"Uncle Stern! Open up!"

Passers-by look on as Fast pounds his uncle's door with his hooves. They are used to the young stallion acting somewhat wild when he returns from his runs still full of energy, but they can tell that this time there is something different about him. Before anypony can approach him however, the door flies open and Fast has to jump to not get hit in the face. He scrambles inside as fast as he can and collides muzzle first with something hard.

Fast's eyes wander up the obstacle that stopped him in his tracks: Dark grey coat, an athletic body, a short-cropped mane and light blue eyes that give him a long suffering look.

"Oh, it's you." Eagle Eye says, and her voice makes it clear that she still remembers all those times he tried out for her scouts and that her opinion on his aptitude or rather lack thereof hasn't changed in the least.

"I should have known."

Under different circumstances Fast's heart would've sunk at her dismissive attitude, her inabillity to see him as anything more than a foal that tried his damnedest to get in over his head, but today there is no time sentimentalities.

"Ineedtoseemyuncle," he blurts out, the sentence leaving his muzzle so rapidly that it might as well be a single word.

"And I'll be there for you in a minute." The voice comes from behind the gray mare, who now steps aside and back into the interior of the room, leaving Uncle Stern to look down at his nephew.

Stern Hoof, as he is known to the rest of the settlement, cuts an imposing figure. The old stallion towers over most other ponies and despite his age having left some silver streaks in his orange coat, for the most part his fur is still impressively shiny. A big bushy moustache and piercing eyes complete the picture of a leader that is almost instinctually trusted.

"There is no minute!"

Eagle rolls her eyes and Uncle Stern looks more disappointed than anything else. No doubt they think this an immature outburst on his part. So he quickly adds: "There's a human on my trail."

"What?"

"Impossible!"

Stern snaps towards Eagle Eye. "You told me the convoy would pass us by!" he barks. The mare stiffens, but doesn't waver. "That's what my scouts reported. As of half an hour ago, they were still twenty miles to the west, going south. I don't see why they would swing around into our direction. This must be a mistake."

"There is no convoy, it's just one."

His uncle turns back towards Fast, who sees the mare letting out a breath of relief behind the headstallion's back.

"Just one? Are you sure?"

"Absolutely. I was on my morning run near the road when it drove up in a working car. I thought it hadn't seen me, but there was someone behind me when I came back here. I tried to shake them, but-."

The older stallion lets out a curse under his breath.

"Alright. Here's what we are going to do. Eagle, I want you to get your scouts and confirm that the convoy is still headed away from here. I'll grab the guards and try to bring the human he before it can get a good look at the village and get away."

"And what about me? What am I going to do?" Fast asks. The look that his uncle, already half out of the door, gives him makes the heart skip a beat. "You are going to stay here and sit tight. You've done enough damage for today."

 

The radio crackles to life. The voice that emanates from it is distorted, but the suppressed excitement in it is still palpable.

"This is Dansk. We found the traitor's vehicle. It's abandoned, but there are tracks leading into the forest. Seems like the bastard ran out of gas at last."

The officer allows himself a lazy grin. After spending the better part of two weeks chasing across what remained of the country, he is looking forward to returning home. Hopefully they'll have a proper next assignment for his unit. Having his crack assault troops used for what so far had amounted to a wild goose chase had left a bitter taste in his mouth. They should be on the frontlines, stamping out whatever resistance to the Northwest State that remained in the country, not on a glorified cross-country trip.

"Understood. Secure and hold, we will be with you soon."

"Looks like we finally got him, sir." his driver comments. "just when I am starting to get used to pissing in bottles."

"You know how it is," the officer replies, "The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away."

With a flick of the wrist he changes channels on the radio.

"This is Wickmann calling all vehicles. Prepare to dismount. We've got our runner."

 

Enough damage for one day. That stings. He hadn't WANTED to lead the human to the village. Hell, he had done what he had thought would minimize the risk of being spotted by the stranger.

Once again, he has disappointed his uncle. As if his inability to make it into the scouts hadn't been enough. He feels exceptionally alone as he sits in his uncle's living room and waits for the old stallion's return. His eyes idly wander across the bare wooden walls, focusing for just a second or two on a scratch on the wood here or a small hole there. He remembers how much they had impressed him when he was a small colt.

Most of the buildings in the village had been haphazardly built from pieces of material ponies could get their hooves on, scraps of boards and sheet metal. Not his uncle's cabin. A sturdy construction built from whole wooden logs, Fast had always suspected that it hailed from the time before. What exactly this time before entailed was unclear to him, since no one who was alive then seemed eager to talk about it, but from what Fast had gathered over the years it was the source of all the wrecks rusting on the old streets and the big empty buildings he could make out in the distance when he went on his morning runs.

Supposedly, there had been no ponies then. The notion was preposterous, of course; How would ponies know about these things when they hadn't even been around back then?

 

Eagle Eye keeps the organs that have earned her her moniker fixed on the landscape that soars past below her. She allows herself a sigh. For just a moment, she had allowed herself to become infected with the colt's panic. But once she was back in the air, the wind ruffling through her feathers, it hadn't taken long for her anxiety to dissipate and her usual collected mindset to reemerge.

She will have to have a word with Fast about how he had made her look in front of the chief. She knows from experience that the old man cares more about his nephew then he lets on. The false alarm could very well leave a negative impression of her team's abillities. more so if indeed a car managed to slip through their dragnet.

Of course something like this is impos-

She almost forgets to beat her wings as she stares in amazement at the stretch of the road in front of her.

"This better be a joke," she mutters.

Even with the several hundred metres distance, there is no mistaking it: There are new vehicles standing on the road, smoke still rising from their exhausts.

The very same vehicles that had been headed away from their little enclave now stood just a short distance away.

Stern Hoof needs to know this. Eagle dives down and away from the convoy, then swings around and flies for all she's worth, using the treetops as cover.

Had she waited a few seconds longer, she would've seen the armed men disembraking from the vehicles and moving into the woods.