03 - Everything Starts Somewhere

This chapter's coming along a bit more slowly than I'd like, so expect some delays (which were warned about at the end of the first chapter). However, what I've got so far is good. So, in the mean time, enjoy a picture of Red Mist and an excerpt from the next chapter!

My wings refused to open, terror locking them against my sides as I scooted backwards on my back, aiming the shotgun at it in an attempt to ward it off. From the way the creature kept advancing, the effort was futile.

“P-please! No!” I cried at the creature, “Help! Please! Somepony help me!” I screamed, rolling onto my belly and getting to my hooves, “Help me—” my cry turned to a scream as another zombie pounced on me, fetid breath blowing across the back of my head as its rotten teeth bit and tore at my mane, its weight knocking me back down.

I didn’t hear the gunshot, but there was a sharp splat and the zombie on top of me went limp with a shudder. Its rotten corpse pinned me down, something with a feeling of wet goop filling my mane and running down the back of my head. I shivered and retched at the sensation.

Another scream left my lips as I thrashed and tore at the ground with my hooves, trying to get out from under the dead weight.

A low growl that somehow managed to roar above the sounds of battle made me freeze, a warm puddle of something I was certain wasn’t blood pooling around my hindquarters.

The crippled zombie was still advancing towards me.

My throat was sore as I cried out again, doubling my vain efforts to escape from beneath the slain zombie. The crippled one was advancing, eyes set only on me.

I cried out again, begging for it all to go away, to fade into some fucked-up hellish nightmare. I wanted to just wake up and return to my normal life in the clouds. Maybe Mist was wrong about me hiding out somewhere up there! Maybe I could hide the pregnancy somehow! Maybe I could just go and get an abor—No.

Everything fell away, the gunfire, the screams, the snarls, the dead weight pressing me down as that thought entered my mind. No, maybe my child was no more than a fragment of cobbled cells and DNA, but I was not going to give that up. I was not going to cross that line.

No matter what the cost was, so help me—another snarl tore me right back to where I was, the zombie a matter of yards away. Fear filled me again as I threw my gaze about, the abject terror replaced with a lesser bone-numbing chill that filled every fiber of my being.

No matter the cost, I was going to have this child! We were going to return to the surface and we were going to live happily ever fucking after! No undead monster was going to stop this mother even if she had to bash the damn thing’s face into mush with her bare fucking hooves!

And then I saw it. A single shotgun shell with a high brass bottom, just within reach.

EDIT: Update, due to extensive work on the chapter, the above excerpt might not come until later.