Loyalty
Rainbow Dash walked through what was left of Ponyville. It consisted of little more than abandoned houses and stores; empty and half destroyed. She looked up at the overcast sky. Once there was a time when she could have cleared that sky in 10 seconds flat. Now she could barely walk, let alone fly. Not that she would want to, even if she could. Not when all the important stuff was down here.
Rainbow was starving. Her ribs stood out like rails in a fence. All the stored food had run out days ago and the fields weren’t producing anymore. She never appreciated Earth Ponies enough until they were gone. She hadn’t appreciated anyone enough. And now it was too late.
She didn’t know how long she had left. A few days? A week or so? Twilight would have known, but the Egghead was gone, just like everypony else. She hadn’t appreciated Egghead enough, either.
Rainbow didn’t know how far the disaster had spread, but in the months that had followed, nopony had come to town. Not even the Princesses had come. Everypony in town was gone. Dead because of her. I had to go faster, she thought. I had to be the best. I had to win at everything. I had to do something better than the Sonic Rainboom. It had worked. And now I’m the biggest criminal in Equestrian history.
It had taken her a long time to dig all the graves. She gagged at the stench of rotting flesh, cringed at hauling the decaying bodies, wept as she put friends who used to be alive into holes in the ground from which they would never emerge. But she did it anyways. Because it was her duty. Her duty to her friends. To all the ponies she had killed.
All the animals seemed to be gone, too. Certainly the ones who had been cared for by Flutters were gone. Those who hadn’t been killed outright didn’t last long. Guess there were downsides to being cared for by ponies. Once, a few weeks after the disaster, she had gone into Everfree Forest to see what had happened there. Everfree wasn’t natural by any stretch of the imagination and Rainbow wondered if perhaps things were different there.
They weren’t. The entire forest was a graveyard. Animals who took care of themselves were just as dead as the ones who had been cared for by Flutters. There weren’t even any of the ‘carrion eaters’ that Egghead said cleaned up the dead bodies in Everfree. Dashie wondered if she would be hungry enough to eat carrion. It turned out she was, but most of it made her sick and she stopped when the flesh turned too rancid. She found Zecora’s body near her home. Dashie buried her, too.
All the plants died, too. The perpetually overcast skies denied them the sunlight they needed and they gradually withered and died. She had a feeling that, even if there had been Earth Ponies to bless the land and care for the plants, disaster still would have struck. The sun rose and set each day, but it shone weakly through the cloud cover. Rainbow didn’t know if that meant that the Princesses were still alive, but part of her doubted it. If they still lived, why would they not have come to Ponyville at least once since the tragedy had occurred? It was just one more question that would likely never get an answer.
She passed Sugarcube Corners without stopping. All the food there was gone. Dashie had eaten the last of the food that hadn’t spoiled after hunger overcame the grief of losing the friend who had lived there. Now there was nothing there but bad memories. She had done the same thing at all the other homes and stores in town; eating her way through what was left of the food as she buried the dead.
Perhaps it was appropriate that the food had run out so soon after she had finished burying the dead. Like reality was saying that her job was done and now she could just lie down and die. She had spent a goodly amount of time down at Sweet Apple Acres while she was burying Applejack and her family. She ate her way through the apple crop as she worked. There had been plenty of food there for a while, but eventually it ran out, just like everything else. As hard as putting Applejack into the ground was, part of her heart died when she buried little Apple Bloom. Nopony deserved to die that young. Dashie made sure Apple Bloom had a ribbon in her mane when she buried her. Apple Bloom deserved to have ribbons.
Rarity and Sweetie Belle were buried next to each other. She did the same for Egghead and Spike. Scootaloo was probably the hardest. Scoots was practically a sister, the closest thing she had to family here in Ponyville. Rainbow cried a lot that day. She had put all of her friends together in a special part of the graveyard. She would be heading there later. She just had a few things left to do.
She made one last sweep for food. She wondered why she even bothered. There wasn’t any reason to go on anymore. She was scared, starving and alone. Everypony was gone and there wasn’t a single thing she could do about it.
Rainbow arrived at the library. She grabbed a few of the Daring Do books, the ones that were in the best condition and put them in a saddlebag that Egghead always kept in the library for book emergencies. She slowly walked out to the graveyard. It wasn’t hard to find the place where she had buried her friends. She had placed them all in a row, near the front, where they could easily be found. Rainbow stopped near the center, looked at the simple markers she had made and found that she still had a few tears left to shed. She pulled out one of the books, opened it up and began to read out loud.
Rainbow Dash did not have much time left and she would be spending it with her friends.