Chapter 9: Of ghouls and zombies
"It's like a tight-rope. You could fall at any moment but you'll make it if you have good control."
Night dawned while we continued to trot towards New Pegasus which seemed like it was taking ages. "This would be so much easier if we had a Sky-cart that worked." Shadow grumbled. All the sky carts in the depot at Ponyville were inoperable leaving us no choice but to walk to New Pegasus.
"Agreed." Sunny and I said together.
"I think we're all getting tired." Sunny observed. "Hey look." She pointed a hoof towards a building with an open field behind it. In the field we countless solar panels used to harvest energy from the sun. The building was an earth pony solar power station. "Maybe we should check if in there is a safe place to sleep." We had few options. In the end Shadow and I both agreed and we diverted towards the power station.
The front door was operated by a button and cried out with a metallic screech as it reluctantly opened. We stepped in. I was surprised by the number of dead ponies that littered the reception. I scanned the room and eventually looked up towards a glass window that was to dirty for me to see through. But I thought I could see the silhouette of a pony looking down at us.
"Hey. Did you guys see that?" I asked. "I think somepony saw us come in."
"I didn't see anything." Shadow answered.
"Me either." Sunny replied also. "But we do need to stay sharp. Some of these ponies may still be alive. Or at least zombified."
I looked at my Pipbuck. It had named the array and the building separately. The building was Celestia One and the array was… well Celestia One Solar Array. Fitting name for a solar power station.
We continued looking around the room. Only two doors would allow us to continue but one of them was blocked from the inside by rubble. Oki Doki Loki. I lost a bobby pin trying to open the other door but we got through in the end. It led to a small room with a computer terminal and a staircase leading up and presumably into the room which overlooked the entrance.
The terminal was not locked luckily. And contained a single text file. A maintenance pony's report. "That complete idiot hasn't got a clue what he's doing. He's spent three days trying to get that damn control terminal working. He can't even tell that the terminal he's working on is for the security cameras. Who the hell made him head of the IT division?
Either way I hope once our team does get the array in working order he'll send power to the entire region and not just New Pegasus. We get paid per Giga-watts that reach New Pegasus and the EPR HQ but that asshole is greedy. The more power they get, the more he gets paid. But I don't think it's fair that those ponies should suffer without power while my so-called superior blows his money on gambling. Once we're done here I'm quitting and going somewhere where my expertise can be put to better use."
So this place was a power station. Sunny came down from the staircase. "It's open." We climbed the staircase and went through the door. It led to a small room with chairs and tables inside arranged in a way that made it look like a waiting area. On the left side was a big double door leading to the observation room above the lobby. Whatever was watching us was in there.
I approached the door and tried the handle with my hoof. As I did, the door burst open flinging me back against a wall. "Come and get it you…." Came a gruff voice that stopped when it realized we were normal ponies. "Hey you're not a zombie pony. Who the hell are you?"
"We could ask you the same thing." Shadow retorted.
"We don't mean any harm." Sunny said relaxing her stance. "We just wanted to check if it was safe to spend the night here."
"Well you may want to rethink that idea. As you can see this building is full of zombie ponies." I managed to get a good look at my assailant. He was a fairly tall stallion wearing combat gear. Also he was a ghoul. The raspy voice was my first clue. But I didn't fully realise until I saw that some of the skin on his face has melted away. One of his eyes was out of focus as well.
"What's a ghoul doing trapped in a power station full of zombies?" Shadow questioned.
"Okay first of all, I'm not trapped. I'm looking for someone, a friend. She's a ghoul like me not a zombie, at least not yet." I remembered what my friends had told me about how ghoul can lose their sanity and become mindless cannibals. "We were scouting the place out together looking for supplies when we opened a door into the array's control area. We got swarmed by the zombies who came out after us and we got separated. I just want find her so I can leave and have no reason to come back."
"Now that the entrance hall is clear, do you want us to help you find your friend?" I offered.
"Thanks. I appreciate that. Not many ponies respect ghouls." I guess that was either because they could go berserk at any time or just because they looked like they were melting. Or maybe it was a mixture of both. The ghoul led us through a door opposite to the one we came in by. We passed several corpses all melted and bloody. It was impossible to tell whether or not they were ghouls or zombie ponies. Eventually the ghoul stopped at a crossroad junction.
"This is where we got separated. We came from this corridor here and she went this way. I couldn't go back for her since we were both being chased." The ghoul pointed to the fork that went to the right to signify where they had come from and then to the fork straight ahead of us to show where his friend had fled.
"By the way we never asked you what your name is." I asked with a little guilt about our impoliteness.
"Don't worry I'm used to it. Just call me Merc." The ghoul suggested "That's all I am now, a lone mercenary." Before I could press the issue the ghoul, now calling himself Merc, had already set off down the fork leading straight ahead. We arrived in an open spaced, dimly lit room with a grated floor allowing us to see into the room below.
"Maybe she locked herself in one of those rooms down there." Shadow suggested pointing a hoof towards the grated floor. We all followed the only staircase into the room below us and began searching the individual rooms. Each room had a small desk and a terminal. Only one of them still functioned. I accessed it with ease the password was power. Go figure.
"He's really gone and done it this time. The power stations back-up generator is nuclear powered and what did he do? He overloaded it like a fucking Luna damn idiot. Once it exploded four of my team were instantly melted into green goo and they were the lucky ones. The remaining 5 were only partially melted by the radiation and were left as mindless monster ponies.
That brainless asshole has already left the problem to me and pissed off somewhere else. I've sealed off the back-up generator and the array control room to stop any more radiation leaks but I won't be around to fix this problem I'm getting to a doctor before the radiation sickness kills me too.
If anyone reads this, I've already set up the array's calibration. All that needs to be done is the array distribution network must be set to the "entire region" setting. This will distribute the power evenly across New Pegasus, Canterlot, Ponyville and the surrounding areas. P.S thank you."
When I finished reading I noticed a faint blue light coming from under the desk. I poked my head under and saw a sphere shaped object giving off a deep blue glow. As I shut down the terminal Shadow Reigns popped his head through the door and said "Hey. We found Merc's friend. Sadly, we were too late. Hey what do you have there?"
"I don't know. I found it under the desk." Shadow beckoned me to follow him to a different room. I stuffed the orb into my saddle-bag to investigate later.
Merc was kneeling on the floor in front of a corpse. I naturally assumed this was his friend. "Damn. Damn it all." His smacked his hoof against the floor in anger. "I'm going to miss you." I could see tears in his eyes, not exactly a pretty site, but it still signified how close Merc was to this pony. "Just give me a minute please. I'll meet you guys back in the observation room." The three of us said nothing and left the ghoul alone.
A while after we had left him Merc came back to meet us. "Okay I'm ready to leave now. Would you mind if I travel with you for a while?"
"Sure why not?" Shadow was the first to answer.
"Agreed, it looks like you could use the company." Sunny answered also.
"I agree too." I said simply. "But I have something I want to do here first." My friends all looked at me in confusion. I began to explain. "This station is still in working order. I found a message on one of the terminals in the office block. It had instructions on how to calibrate the arrays distribution output. We can send power to the whole region from Ponyville to New Pegasus."
"Well, aren't you generous?" Merc commented with a wry look on his face. "Okay but you'll need to be careful. The Array control room was where my friend and I found all those zombies."
Merc led us back to the junction and we followed the signs to the control room. We had just opened the door when a trio of zombie ponies leapt at us. One came close to me and managed to bite my neck. I howled in pain as Merc came to my side and pulled the zombie by its mane and Shadow finished it off with his pistol. By the time we had finished that zombie off Sunny had already dispatched the other two with her assault rifle battle-saddle. "Damn that's pretty deep." Merc said as he examined my wound. Shadow galloped to my side and began wrapping a magical healing bandage around my neck to cover the bite. He also handed me a healing potion.
"Drink this. It'll speed thing up." I nodded and took a long swig of the potion finishing it in two gulps. After a few minutes' rest I was ready to set up the terminal and was forced to hack it. It took me a few attempts and I eventually managed to distribute power as the scientist pony had hoped I would. I felt proud of myself. What I had just done was going to help a lot of ponies.
"Okay. Guys I'm finished." My companions gathered around in the control room. "It's still too dark to carry on traveling so I say we stay here like we planned."
"We have little choice." Merc commented. "But we should probably barricade ourselves in the observation room above the lobby just in case there are any more Zombie ponies left." Sunny, Merc and myself began piling furniture and pieces of rubble against the doors while shadow unfurled the sleeping bags and lit a fire.
"Can't sleep?" Merc noticed I was awake.
"No. A few things have bothering me lately." I answered cryptically.
"Do you want to talk about it? Maybe it'll help." Merc offered trying to sound kind under his gruff voice.
"You could be right. It concerns the reason me and my friends are out here. I'm a courier and about a week ago I was attacked for my package." I explained the event to Merc.
"You found this surprising? Lots of ponies would kill for whatever supplies or goods you deliver." Merc said clearly misunderstanding me.
"Would they kill for an oversized poker chip?" My question left Merc confused.
"Well you have a point there. But why were you delivering an oversized poker chip?"
"It was part of a set. But the attackers were only after the chip. I have no idea what it was for. That's why we are headed for New Pegasus. I want to find the one who shot me and ask him why the chip was so damn important to him and my client Miss Stable."
"You mean the same Miss Stable who runs New Pegasus? That chip could much more important than you think if she wants it."
"Maybe you are right. Well what about you?" I asked catching my ghoul companion by surprised. "I've told you my story. Now will you tell me about your friend? The one we found in the office block."
Merc seemed reluctant at first but eventually surrendered with a heavy sigh. "We were travelling companions. I met her when I was doing some protection work for a bunch of ghoul cultist on their way to The Underground Haven. She was one of them. When I finished my end of the deal she asked to leave with me. She said she didn't agree with the cultists anymore."
"I don't know why she wanted to come with me but we became really close friends during our time together. Shame it had to end like this."
"Sounds like she really liked you. What's the underground haven?" I asked.
Merc sighed heavily "It's an underground bunker inhabited by ghoul ponies. If a pony's body is decaying, then so are our minds. This could drive us insane. Some of us don't want to hurt other ponies with the insanity so The Underground Haven was established so ghoul ponies could live out their lives without potential killing somepony and eating them." I could see that Merc didn't want to talk anymore so I stopped and suggested we get some rest. Tomorrow we would reach the front gates of New Pegasus.
FOOTNOTE: Level up
New perk: Black Widow's Pony: You now have access to special dialogue when dealing ponies of the opposite sex.