Berry downed what seemed like an endless river of cider and wished not for the first time that it was something a tad stronger. Oh screw it, she wished outright that the cider was hard so that she could drink away her latest and final failure as a parent: she'd gone outside while drunk and angry, and got infected. That had been three hours ago, and the reported and well-known feelings of numbness had spread up from the bite on her right hind leg to well-passed her middle. The feeling of being hollow on the inside had already started and was growing stronger with each passing minute. No matter how much cider she drank in it just wasn't enough.
"Stupid. I am so dang stupid!" Berry pressed and wiped her muzzle with her hoof. For more than half a year she'd stayed sober, then this morning she downed every last drop of liquor she had left in the house in less than half an hour. She saw what had been done to her home, and it in combination with the alcohol made her furious. She reached into her kitchen drawers and dug around until she found the biggest knife she had, then told her little Ruby to stay inside and locked the door behind her.
Staggering around like...well, like an angry drunk, Berry yelled out a challenge at the top of her lungs and waited impatiently for the Shamblers to attack her. Three knife stabs to three right eye sockets later two of them came at her from in front and behind. She knifed the one in front of her and ended it, but when she bucked at the other she made the mistake of kicking it in the mouth. She broke its lower jaw, but its teeth on the upper jaw dragged across her leg and scrapped a fair bit of flesh away with it. After limping back into her house and cleaning the scrape up the numbness started spreading up from her leg, and drunk though she was she parenting instincts kicked in and she left Ruby Pinch in their house to protect her daughter from what would soon enough no longer be her mother.
"Not that I was much of a mother to her in the first place..." She lifted the mug to drink again, but discovered that it was empty and tossed it across the room, giving it an annoyed look as it flew and bounced off the wooden walls. She looked down at her purple body. "All the things I could have done with or for my daughter, and most of the time I was too deep in a bottle or my flask to even walk straight! She's better off without me."
A beating sound on the cellar's doors. Thump! Thump! Thump! It looks like I've been followed. At least that's one more that Ruby won't need to dodge for awhile. Ugh, we should have left back when the trains were still coming to here like Ruby said we should, but no! I wanted to stay and let the guards or the army handle it! If we left now, Berry waved a hoof and stuck out her tongue, making a silly face and mocking herself. ponies might loot our house before we came back again! The beating sound continued, more of them this time, or perhaps the same one but faster. Now it's far too late. It's obvious now that help isn't going to be coming.
"Mom! Are you in there?"
Berry flinched as if she'd been punched in the gut. No! Go back to the house, Ruby! It's not safe here! Not that it was really safe anywhere, but anypony that took a look around on the surface could see that it was definitely not here.
"Mom, what's wrong? I know you're in there! Please, let me in!"
No, Ruby. I don't want you to see me turn. I don't want to hurt you after I do turn! Tears began to leak from her squeezed-shut eyes.
"Mom, there's some of those things out here! They're coming! Please let me in!" Ruby's voice began to sound nervous rather than just confused and hurt.
"Ruby...you know what's wrong. I'm....I'm turning into one of them!" Berry called up to her daughter. I was stupid, Ruby. I got drunk again at the worst possible time for it and I ran out and I fought those things. "Go home, Ruby! Go home and be safe! Survive!"
"That's just it, mom! You're not infected!"
What? Berry blinked and looked at the bandage she had on her leg. Then why do I feel so numb? "When you got back after fighting those things you passed out on the floor! I gave you some of that painkiller stuff that dad used to give to patients after doing surgery on them and then cleaned you up. When you woke up again you said something about feeling numb and wanting to keep me safe and then ran out the door! You're not infected, mom! You're feeling the...morphic? Morthin? The morph-stuff taking effect!"
Morphine...wait, I feel numb on most of my body. How much did she give me?!
"Mom, they're really close now!!" Ruby informed her, sounding really scared. "Please open the door!" Berry tried to stand and found that she couldn't anymore, so instead she threw herself forward on the dirt floor and dragged herself across it with her forehoofs, barely feeling the edges of the wooden steps scraping her middle as she hauled herself up them and reached a hoof up to push the trapdoor up. Two inches open, three. She could just barely see outside as one of the Shamblers reached her little filly and grabbed her. Ruby Pinch screamed followed by her mother screaming in horror and then Berry Bunch snapped awake and banged her head backward against the cider keg she had been leaning against. She blinked blearily in confusion the darkness of the cider cellar and looked around.
Just a dream? But it felt so-
A thumping sound against the cider cellar trapdoor roused Berry Punch further and recalling the events that she'd dreamed and not wanting to risk ignoring what might have been a vision of the future coming true threw herself forward onto her stomach immediately and crawled forward. Her body, as it was in her dream, was numb, but the numbness was inching up her neck now, and her limbs felt weak and rubbery. Hold on, baby...mama's almost there!
Her vision, impeded by the already dark room seemed to go completely black for a moment and she faltered, but pressed on. One hoof after the other she progressed across the room until she reached the steps, then slowly dragged herself up the steps. Almost...there! She lifted a hoof to the wood of the trapdoor, smiling a little, and then her body betrayed her and she her legs gave out completely, dropping her to her stomach and making her slide down the steps to the dirt floor.
The thumping continued for a moment, then a voice that was certainly not her little Ruby muttered something about the pull-cord on the door being missing. What's the dream, I wonder? Berry thought as she lost all feeling in her body below the halfway point of her neck. Perhaps this whole nightmare is exactly that and this is just another drunken dream that I'll wake up from. That'd be nice... Her eyes closed as the trapdoor opened and sunlight streamed down through the hole.
"Welp, looks like miss Punch had the same idea we did," said a former member of Ponyville's weather team. "but for different reasons, judging from the color she's turning." He stated while watching her fur's previous grape juice purple fur turning a bit lighter with the exception of the bandaged area on her one leg that was soaked through with an all-too-familiar black ichor. "She hasn't turned just yet, though. What do you wanna do?"
There was complete audio silence to answer the Pegasus, save for the blowing of the wind through the apple trees' leaves. After a minute he nodded. "Yeah, I suppose that would be for the best. There's no sense in wasting a perfectly good 'guard dog' to look after the cider when we're not here to drink it. I'll go find a good chain and something to use as a collar." As he left the cellar to look around in the barn, his eyes briefly flickered green.
Meanwhile in town, a lone young filly ran out of the back alley behind her house and down the street. She looked around carefully, then sighed and there was a flash of green light. The Real Ruby Pinch had died on the third day of Ponyville's outbreak on her way to school back before Pony kind knew what it was really up against. Seeing a perfect opportunity to gain a steady source of food the Changeling that other ponies in town knew as the eccentric clock maker Time Turner switched forms and carried on with Ruby Pinch's day as if nothing happened.
But with her primary source of food now dead and soon to be a Shambler there was no point in keeping up the ruse any longer. Now it was time to move on.
But it intended to sample something that would likely soon be a rare luxury: the Apple family's home-made apple cider!
"Snag me a bottle too, will you?"