April 27, 11:13 pm

Yes, accept the demands (95%)

Peter obviously wanted to refuse. Maybe he thought he could bully a teenager into doing what they want. Judging by his voice, the kid wasn’t bad. He was just afraid, and desperate to help a family member.

“I’ll do it,” Wayfinder said, before he could get nervous waiting and go to the cops. She wouldn’t give him the chance. “That house there, on the corner? Practically in view from here?”

Peter slipped under the pump, not difficult at their height, stopping a few inches from her. “If we separate, we’re screwed. Anything that goes wrong and we might not be able to get back together.”

She shrugged. “We’ve got the extra seat. One more pony isn’t going to stop us from making it to Denver. Just… listen for me. If I scream, drive the car over and grab me.”

She touched her hoof against his shoulder, silencing him. “If that kid calls the police over, we’re screwed. We can’t get away in my old beater. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t learn any spells for flattening tires and disrupting helicopters. They’ll catch us.”

She released him, scurrying out onto the sidewalk, then lowering her head to dart across the street. There would be no way of stopping the police from noticing her if anyone at the roadblock happened to be glancing their way at that moment.

Wayfinder didn’t so much as look back. She could already imagine Peter’s anger at her recklessness. If she were out of the car, Ruby might say something similar. But she heard nothing as she approached the house. No roar of an engine, no distant shouting.

The kid, James, had been right about the corner house. The windows were entirely covered with dirt, at least the ones that weren’t boarded up. Pieces of wooden siding hung disordered from the house, which had been entirely surrounded in a maze of tumbleweeds, brambles, and low brush. Even the walkway was narrow enough to scratch against Wayfinder as she scurried up it towards the door.

The rest of the street was in little better shape. Most of the homes had no lights on outside. One intact home had bars over the windows and a high fence all the way around, protecting it from the streets outside. Still, there was nothing to conceal Wayfinder’s approach but her speed.

She knocked once on the door, very lightly, then tugged on it with her magic. James was right: it turned without resistance. Not hard for her to see why, as it swung open: the deadbolt was missing entirely, and someone had stuffed the opening with debris to conceal the damage. The exterior surface had even been painted, though even in the dark it looked like a different shade.

“Hello?” Wayfinder shut the door gently behind her. She lit up her horn with a steady silver glow, illuminating an abandoned entryway. Trash lay everywhere, sacks and piles and rusty metal and discarded needles.

No way that kid had a relative here. No one could live safely in these conditions for very long, pony or not.

She glanced nervously back at the door, testing it with her magic again. It swung just as freely as before. She glanced out a narrow gap, searching for the approaching kidnappers. Peter was right, they’d grab her, toss her into a rough sack, then drag her away to do… whatever it was shady kidnappers did once they had you.

But there was no sign of motion outside—just an abandoned street and a black sky, without even nearby streetlights to illuminate the nearby homes.

Something shifted in the house a little further away, a slight squeak of wood, probably the pressure of a hoof shifting on the building.

She wasn’t alone.

“Hello?” Wayfinder turned back to the hallway, then focused. So many dangerous, gross-looking objects would be a problem for her if she could even still catch human diseases. But magic didn’t require her to touch anything. She pushed it all aside, trying very hard not to think about what she would be touching if she had to use her hands.

Which she didn’t have anymore, so…

The house didn’t have a second floor. But what it did have was a faint sign of motion from around the corner. Like a piece of shiny blue plastic, visible only for an instant.

“Hey!” When her attention surged, so did the light, going from the light of a small flashlight into a spotlight. The fading paint reflected back at them, glass and every other surface reflected back with that same even light. “If anyone’s in here, we don’t have a lot of time. Sooner or later someone else is going to drive up to that gas station and see us in the car. If they call the cops, our ride out is gone. Then the police can do… whatever awful thing they want. I’m here to help you.”

For a few seconds, only silence answered her. Then something moved in the room ahead, light hoofsteps on old wood. Whoever it was, they weren’t very large. Another mare, then.

“Help,” said a tiny voice. High pitched and shrill, echoing through the huge house. But from their size, even average human buildings seemed huge. “Why would you help me?”

Definitely coming from around the corner. A door had fallen out of its frame, propped sideways to block a turn. Wayfinder advanced cautiously, dimming the glow of her horn back to the level of a handheld flashlight. “Because they’re punishing the infected who didn’t go to the isolation zone,” she said. Quieter now, so that little voice would be less intimidated.

“I’m infected. My friends are infected. I think you are too. And we’re headed that way.”

“Strangers,” said the voice. She seemed further away now, muffled by layers of something. If she ran away, if Wayfinder came back without her… “You don’t owe me anything. You’ll run away like the last one did.”

Like the last one did. Wayfinder reached the door, then pushed against it with her magic. Lifting so much weight was too much while also using her horn for light, but she could still get it out of the way, if she didn’t mind scraping the rusty hinge along the rotten wood.

Cloth hung over the doorway, thin but undamaged. Bedsheets, in several layers.

The room beyond was nothing like the rest of the house. Someone had cleaned it, laying down tarps and cloth over the damaged floor. They led to an oversized camping tent, which took up much of the room. Fairy lights hung around it, lighting the room with a gentle white glow.

In the corners were other signs of occupation: a propane stove near a broken kitchen window, surrounded by untouched crates of canned food. A camp toilet sat inside the nearby bathroom, with a little more sign of use.

Plush toys lay scattered on the floor, along with a stack of uneven cardboard boxes. She lingered near one of them, using her horn to illuminate the title.

“Hey, Catan. I loved this game when I was younger. My family stopped wanting to play with me when I got old enough that I didn’t lose.”

A sound like giggling echoed from the tent. Not quite the sound of a little girl Wayfinder expected: more like way a child would sound like from the other end of a bad cellular connection. “My brother doesn’t like playing with me anymore either. But it’s my favorite.”

The girl had retreated into the tent. More cloth lined the inside, stuck up against the walls with something sticky. Rubber cement, judging by the lumpy appearance. She sat on her haunches inside the tent, a filly about half as tall as Wayfinder by her shadow.

She has a horn too. More for our magical team.

“We’ll have to bring it with us,” Wayfinder said. She eased it off the pile with her magic, then tucked it under her foreleg. “Is there anything else you’d like to bring? It’s gonna be a tight squeeze in our car, but that’s okay. I don’t want you to leave anything important.”

“I’m not supposed to leave the house.” The girl sunk to the ground inside, along with a sound Wayfinder couldn’t explain. Like a large moth passing near her ear. But it was coming from inside the tent. “It’s dangerous, like you said. My brother said he saw other horses like me locked into metal livestock trucks and left in the sun for hours. And worse things he won’t even tell me.”

Wayfinder set the board game down as she reached the tent. A large square door already unzipped, thin mesh hanging to either side. White cloth on the other side obscured her view of the creature within, other than what diffuse lights left as her shadow. “James is the one who sent me,” she said, reaching forward with her hoof, and pushing the cloth aside. “He wants you to come with… us.”

She trailed off, staring in at the infected girl.

In some ways, Wayfinder’s guesses had been right. It was a “filly,” about half her size. She still somehow had braces on those teeth, though she couldn’t imagine how those could work with their transformation. Magic, obviously.

She was also a horrifying monster. Wayfinder felt sudden fear surge in her chest, urging her to flee. She jerked her foreleg back, tensing to run.

This was like that brief, awful moment at the university, when a thing that was definitely not a pony had hunted her.

Her hooves tugged on the soft cloth floor, and she nearly tripped over a stuffed moth lying on its side next to the tent, fluffy green face smiling up at her.

Inside the tent, someone whimpered, then started to cry. No lurch, no tearing through the tent, no snapping alien jaws. Just quiet sobs, head down. “I guess you should run away,” she said, voice split by tears. “B-before I get you.”

Get you. Exactly the kind of language a dangerous monster would use before it attacked her.

Wayfinder lowered her hoof, and settled onto her haunches just outside the tent. She focused on the flaps, pushing both out of the way with her magic.

The creature inside was frightening, yes. Her body was more black reflective shell than skin, with several holes that seemed to pierce all the way through her legs. She looked so thin that Way imagined she could see the pulsing of her heart in her chest just by looking at her. Her teeth were sharp, nothing like the flat of Wayfinder and her friends.

The girl looked up, damp tears staining her face. She looked like a predator, the same as Sam did. But her body language just didn’t match her appearance.

“I like your bracelets,” Wayfinder said. “Did you make those yourself?”

The girl sniffed, then broke into another pained sob. She lurched forward towards her, much too fast for Wayfinder to react.

No bite came, only the pressure of forelegs wrapping around her in a hug. The kid’s body felt as strange as she imagined it might, angular and sharp like hugging a piece of farm equipment.

It’s been a long time since anyone did anything nice to you. “What’s your name, kid?”

Her body shook with another desperate sob, washing over her from the tip of her transparent tail to her snout. “Hazel.”

Wayfinder touched her back as gently as she could. Like trying to show affection to a venomous insect. But even if she was a wasp now, she’d been a girl before. What would the police do if they saw you?

If they made the same mistake Wayfinder had, the kid might not survive to talk about it.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Hazel. My name is Wayfinder.” She reached down, gently squeezing her foreleg free. “Sweetheart, we can’t stay here. Your brother wants us to get you to safety, and I think he’s right to worry. If you come with me, I’ll protect you.” She lit up her horn, briefly flaring the light as she had before. “Is there anything you’d like to bring?”

It did not take them long to leave after that. Instead, Wayfinder’s concern was rather the opposite: she wasn’t sure how she would pry the kid away from her. They did fill a duffel bag with what seemed like important items. An old phone, some pictures, a few toys and a bits of clothing. A school notebook… and the old copy of Catan.

Hazel was wearing a hoodie for the quick trip back to the car. It covered so much of her that she had trouble walking on her own.

But that was fine, Wayfinder just carried her on her back. The poor girl was so thin she barely weighed anything. Much easier than dragging Ruby around after her transformation.

No new lights had joined the plain white around the gas station as she approached. Sam had moved her car closer to the building, where it was entirely out of view from the roadblock. But that was all.

As she approached, someone stepped out from inside the little store, holding a radio prominently in one hand. He waved towards them, insistent. “Hazel, are you okay?”

The girl answered, shifting into motion on Wayfinder’s back. Something shook her hoodie, without enough force to move it off her shoulders. “Doing much better! Wayfinder seems nice!”

She wobbled, then flopped sideways off Wayfinder’s back, landing awkwardly on four legs. She hobbled forward, dragging the hoodie’s oversized arms.

“Don’t do that,” Peter said, emerging from the side door. “Kid, say your goodbyes from a distance. If you infect him—” then he saw Hazel, and he froze in place. “Mary mother of God. What’s wrong with her legs?”

“Her name is Hazel,” Wayfinder said, stepping between them. She levitated her bag off her shoulder, floating it towards Peter. “Fit this in back. She’ll sit up front with me.”

“Shit, if you’re volunteering.” He caught it in his magic, then turned to go.

The teenager looked about how Wayfinder expected him to—lanky and stretched, with acne on his face and outsized front teeth. He also watched Hazel without any of the fear Peter had shown. “We have to stay away,” James said. “But you’ll be safer there. You were wasting away in that old house.”

“I love you,” the girl squeaked, barely audible over the wind. She held out one leg towards him. “Be safe, James. And if you get sick, come find me.”

“As soon as it’s safe,” he agreed.

The engine came to life, and they were suddenly bathed in the bright red of brake lights. The driver’s window rolled down a crack, and Sam’s voice barked from inside. “The longer we sit here, the more likely we get unlucky. Time to get scarce.”

Wayfinder helped the kid around the car, and opened the passenger door. She climbed in after the kid, then levitated it shut behind her.

“Take care of her,” James called. “After our parents… she’s the only family I have. If you let her get hurt…”

But he didn’t know how to finish the threat. What was a pimply teenager supposed to do?

“If she gets hurt, it means we’re dead too,” Wayfinder called, past Sam’s seat. The other occupants all stared in Hazel’s direction—even Sam looked away from the road. “I’ll take care of her like I would of my own sister.”

“I knew you would,” he said, voice cracking. “When I saw you, I knew.”

Sam finally snapped back to reality. He straightened in his seat, turned for backroads, then pulled out. Only when they faced away from the roadblock did he switch the headlights back on.

He rolled up the window slowly, no longer looking in her direction. “I hope you… know what you’re doing, bringing a guest into the car,” he said. “Are you sure about—”

“Positive,” she said. She shifted her foreleg, placing it around the kid. “I don’t know what she is. You didn’t know what you were either. Does it matter?”

“No,” Ruby spoke from the back row. “We’re all victims of the same disease. We can’t help everyone, but we can help someone.”

That’s my Ruby. The girl she’d fallen for wasn’t going to be intimidated by someone looking ugly. Though at that moment, the girl kept her hood down, covering as much of her strange appearance as she could. The others hadn’t got a good look at her yet.

“We were checking the maps while you were gone,” Peter said. “We weren’t sure which way to go. Maybe you could be the tiebreaker.”

Wayfinder’s eyebrows went up. “How’d you tie with three people?”

“I think you should do whatever you think is best,” Ruby said.

Oh, right. Though she cared passionately about some things, her ex could be passionately ambivalent about others.

“There’s one way into the city from this direction,” Peter said. “I already know from the net they have a roadblock there. They want people to go in, but there’s no telling what they’ll do to us first. Will they be upset we drove? Maybe try to take our stuff.”

“But if we try to sneak in, we’re screwed if we get caught,” Sam argued, growing more energetic. His claws dug into the wheel, leaving deep imprints in the leather. “Maybe they’re jerks with us, but we aren’t trying to break into a military isolation zone. We shouldn’t try to break in.”

All eyes were on Wayfinder. Of course she had to make the tie-brekaing vote.

1. Use the intended entrance, accepting whatever the authorities might do when you get there.
2. Find another way in, even if it means taking some serious risks. Maybe magic could help!