My Little Zombie: Brains are Magic

by spidersean

Chapter 4

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For a moment, all that surrounded Apple Bloom was still and shrouded in darkness. Something began to shift and rumble beneath her hooves. A keening siren wailed, piercing the stale air. The mere sound of it clawed against her mind and made her squeal in agony. As the siren swelled, she felt it tear away at her mind.

The darkness gave way to a blinding explosion of white light. It’s harshness burned at her eyes. Every fiber of her being urged her eyes to shut, but an ungodly force held them open. Her eyes rolled around lazily as the white sky turned red with a tidal wave of blood.

Something began to scratch at the corner of her eyes. White writing began to form in front of her. It slowly built up, scraping its way into view.

It vanished and darkness settled once more. She was stalking a yellow filly down the ruined city street. Her wheezy breath kept getting caught in her throat. When the filly finally noticed her stalker, she let out a scream that contested with the siren and ran away. Apple Bloom recognized who the filly was. She felt a twisted grin spread across her mouth and her lungs tightened, forcing out a series of ragged laughter. With a grim sense of thrill, she gave chase.

Once again, something clawed its way into her eyesight.

She found herself in a rotting, worm-ridden room. Her lungs clenched harder, more laughter escaping from her grinning lips. Her eyes watered from the pain and she desperately tried to stop. Instead, she just laughed even louder. The glimmer of a nearby metallic object registered with her. Something pink was in the reflection, but she ignored it. She picked it up and plunged it into herself repeatedly, again and again, never stopping or slowing down. Her inescapable laughter continued and the incessant siren grew even louder.

She suddenly felt herself gasp for air and release the metal weapon. The floor felt cold and damp with her blood when she collapsed upon it. The worms in the room began slithering towards her. A small, dark figure wearing a blue bow approached her. It was accompanied by an orange swirled into view, wearing a leather hat. They were both swiftly whisked away, leaving only dust in their wake. She felt tears stream down her cheeks and the siren ring in her ears.

When something began clawing it's way into her view once more, it tore and burned her eyes. She could feel blood pour out of her eyes, mixing with the tears.

The worms surrounded her and burrowed underneath her skin. She could feel them crawling and writhing around inside of her. When she opened her mouth to scream, more bugs rushed in to devour her tongue. Her vision grew dark as the siren deafened her.

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Apple Bloom shot up. She had awoken from her still-vivid nightmare in a cold sweat. Her heart still pounded in her chest. Normally, her dreams are nothing but dark empty spaces that she could never recall. However, every moment of the nightmare still clung to her memory with a vice grip. She could recall even the most minute of details.

Apple Bloom quickly took in her surroundings. She was standing in the middle of Pinkie Pie’s abandoned, barren room. All of the furniture had been removed long before she had decided to sleep there, so she had been sleeping on the floor. A slate-gray unicorn filly dozed peacefully near her, blissfully unaware of Apple Bloom’s state. The blue bow in the filly’s messy pitch black mane reminded her of the nightmare and made her shudder. However, the normalcy of things made her breathe a sigh of relief.

She cast a glance out of the single window in the room. The sun was just beginning to dawn on the horizon, covering the city in a pale white glow. There were no birds to merrily ring in the morning, however. She could only hear the distant cawing of crows. Apple Bloom reached into her brown saddlebags and withdrew her watch once more.

“Nine forty-two,” she read softly. “Ah guess it’s a good enough time to wake up as any.” She put it away and began to gently nudge awake the sleeping filly. “C’mon, sugarcube. Rise ‘n shine.”

A groan escaped the filly. “Aw, come on... It was just getting to the good part,” she said between an enormous yawn. She looked up at the older filly with heavy blue eyes. Apple Bloom chuckled. Reluctantly, the younger filly got to all four hooves.

“We got ourselves a big day ahead of us an’ Ah don’t think Ah wanna stay here for too much longer. So let’s hop to it,” Apple Bloom said with a smile. The filly responded with another yawn and a dreary nod. “If we hurry, we might rustle up some breakfast.” That perked the unicorn up. Apple Bloom let out another chuckle and both fillies began to leave Sugarcube Corner.

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“You never told me why you were acting crazy yesterday,” the little unicorn said after she swallowed her last bite of grass.

Apple Bloom finished the mouthful of grass she had been working on for the past couple of minutes. It was long dead and probably provided no intrinsic nutrition, but it was something to keep her stomach busy for a while. The entire time she had been eating her meaningless breakfast, she’d been mulling over how to explain things to the younger filly who now looked up to her with curious blue eyes.

“Well, to be honest, Ah’m not really sure,” she began. “Ah reckon Ah was seeing things that weren’t really there.”

The gray filly tilted her head slightly in confusion. “Seeing things? Like what?”

“Well, shucks. Ah thought the room had fixed itself and everythin’ went back to the way it was long ago. Ah thought Ah saw a zombie too. Ah even thought...” she hesitated slightly. A breeze pushed gently past them. “Ah even thought Ah was somepony else.”

“Somepony else? Who?”

Apple Bloom gritted her teeth. “Not somepony Ah particularly care for... It don’t matter none. The point is, mah mind was playin’ tricks on me. Thinkin’ things that ain’t true.”

“But... Why would your mind do that?” the filly asked, raising a black eyebrow.

Apple Bloom sighed, “Because Ah made mah mind do it.” She took note of the confusion growing upon the filly’s face. “Ya see, Ah have this friend named Twilight Sparkle. She’s an amazin’ unicorn, super smart, an’ probably the most talented mare in all Equestria. Ah’ve known her even before the Infection came. She was Princess Celestia’s favorite student. She wasn’t too social, so Celestia sent her here to Ponyville. Soon enough, she was friends with everypony in town.

“When the zombies came, she tried to find a cure. She studied an’ studied an’ studied. Ah don’ even think she slept, she was so fixed on findin’ somethin’ to fix it. It eventually got to be too much for her on her own. Ah told her Ah was willin’ to do anythin’ to help her, anythin’ at all.

“She told me that she needed to know what caused the Infection to happen.” Apple Bloom pulled an empty vial out of her bag. “So, she gave me this here purple potion an’ told me to drink it here, in Ponyville. She told me a bunch of sciency, magicky mumbo-jumbo explainin’ how it works. Basically, it messes with yer head an’ lets ya relive certain memories, even if they ain’t yer’s.”

The little slate-gray unicorn stared at the ground, absorbing all of the information. The wind began picking up, pushing against them hard now. “...So, basically,” she began, “you’re here because you want to find out what happened that cause all of this. And you drank a potion that lets you see into the past?”

“Yeah, uh, Ah reckon that’s right.”

“Well... I guess that makes sense,” the filly said. She didn’t sound too convinced. “That explains why you’re here. Can it happen anytime? Does it make you go crazy every time?”

Apple Bloom shook her head slowly. She raised a hoof to lift up her hat and scratch the mess of red hair underneath. “Nah. Ah think Ah went crazy because the person Ah had a vision of was crazy. If Ah remember correctly, Twilight said it only happens in specific places. An’ that ah’ll know where an’ when to go. But honestly, if ya hadn’t showed up an’ led me there, Ah reckon Ah’d never find it.”

Apple Bloom suddenly blinked, remembering the question she had meant to ask for the longest time. She lowered the hat back onto her head. “Which reminds me...” she began, “how did y’all know where to go? What are y’all even doing here? These parts ain’t right for somepony as little as you are. Who are you?”

The smaller filly sighed a little before speaking, “Okay, I guess it’s only right if I tell you my story too. The truth is, I’ve always been here. This town is all that I can remember. I know which places are safe and which places aren’t. I’ve always known the right places to go, even if I have no explanation why. I’m just always able to tell where I need to be.” The filly smiled a little bit,”I guess you could call it my special talent.”

Apple Bloom took a step back, “But this place is so dangerous! How in tarnation did y’all manage to survive on yer own?”

“I wasn’t on my own,” the filly explained, “There were quite a few more fillies and colts about the same age as me that helped me out.”

“Ya mean there are more survivors?” A smile began to form on Apple Bloom’s face. She turned to trot off in a random direction. “Well, what are we waitin’ here for? Let’s go see the-”

“They're all dead now,” the filly interrupted Apple Bloom. The smile on her face instantly vanished. The one glimmer of hope she had was smothered in those four words. She slowly turned to face the filly again. The unicorn bore a countenance of sorrow.

After a moment of silence, the unicorn spoke once more. “We were a great team, though. Three fillies, two colts. Since none of us knew what our parents looked like, much less what they called us, we never really had names for each other. We all found different colored ribbons to help identify each other.” She briefly gestured towards her large, slightly-tattered bow. “I was called Blue. My job was to lead everypony and show them where to go. I’d be able to find food, shelter, you name it. All because of my special talent.”

“Green was a very smart filly. She taught us all kinds of things. How to read, write, count, and even how to survive. Red was a very strong pegasus and the oldest out of all of us. He helped us fight off all of the zombies and taught us how to defend ourselves. I never liked fighting, so I never learned from what he taught me. He got mad at me for that a lot.

“Pink was a very kind unicorn. She’d never get mad at any of us and healed us when we got hurt. She was best friends with everypony and could always calm ponies down if they got too upset. Yellow was a colt who made us all laugh. Even though we were in the worst situations, the things he would say would make everyone happy. He was the youngest of the group and was good at sneaking around and fitting into places the rest of us were too big for.”

Apple Bloom approached the filly as she spoke, a frown growing upon her face. She asked the unavoidable question that had been gnawing on the back of her mind, despite the dread she feared the answer would bring. “What happened?”

The filly with the blue bow hung her head low. “I failed them,” she said simply, her voice cracking. She continued, “One night we were looking for a new shelter and I lead them to a cave. Something was telling me that it was a horrible decision, but it was safer than anywhere else. When the rest of us were asleep I heard something deep in the cave. I tried to wake the others up, but it was too late.”

The filly clenched her watering eyes shut and turned away, “I lead them into an infected manticore’s den. I managed to run away, but everypony else was ripped apart.” She looked back up at Apple Bloom. “I lead them to their deaths, Apple Bloom. I killed them.”

“Aw, sugarcube... C’mere.” Apple Bloom nuzzled the young filly with the blue bow closely and she reciprocated with greater strength. That’s all they did for a long, long while. Eventually, the younger filly’s sobs subsided. She pulled away from Apple Bloom and looked up at her with a faint smile.

“Thank you, Apple Bloom.” She rose a hoof to dry her tears, “It’s been a while since I had somepony to talk to.”

“Aw shucks, anytime for a friend. Where should we head off to next, Blue?”

The filly shook her head, “No. Not Blue. Not since that night.”

Apple Bloom gave the filly a frown, “Then what the hay am Ah supposed to call ya?”

The only response garnered from the younger filly was a shrug and a small smile. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

Something cold and wet plopped onto Apple Bloom’s nose before she could respond. A moment passed before the she felt the same sensation, this time on her blank flank. Her gaze turned upwards toward the sky and was met by a large gray cloud dominating the sky. As if on cue, a sudden downpour descended upon them. A bright flash and a loud clap of thunder cut through the air. The wind let loose a shrieking howl in response.

“Rainstorm! An’ it’s a biggun, too!” Apple Bloom yelped, trying to hold on to her hat. “We should find a place t-”

She stopped herself short. The filly she was addressing was nowhere to be found. Her eyes widened and whirled around, trying to find the filly. A dark mist had engulfed her, severely reducing her range of vision. The rain had gotten in her eyes, making lashes stick together.

She called out for the filly again and again, frantically searching around her. In the distance, she heard a siren wailing and echoing in the midst of the monstrous storm. Without any of the pegasus ponies to clear the sky, weather like this often ran rampant, appearing without warning and vanishing without trace. A chill went up her spine and she stopped dead in her tracks.

Slowly, she turned around. A flash of lightening illuminated her surroundings. She was only able to make out one thing: a mare with a bone-white coat. She was tall, taller than anypony should be, as well as skinnier than anypony should be. Her rows of razor-sharp teeth stretched into a grin that defied pony limitations. Most disturbing of all, however, were her two empty eye sockets that somehow seemed to be fixated on Apple Bloom.

Darkness instantly encompassed Apple Bloom once more. She desperately scanned her surroundings for a weapon, the filly, and, most importantly, where that thing was. But the darkness had returned so quickly that she wasn’t able to see a foot in front of her nose. Breath caught in her throat. Her heart pounded in her chest. A dull, aching pain in the back of her head made itself known. The siren in the distance rose again.

Another flash of lightening. She wasn’t able to find the pale mare anywhere, but she did manage to see something. Next to her shadow stood another, towering over the familiar shape. It was scrawny and tall, but it dwarfed Apple Bloom’s shadow. She’s right behind me.

Apple Bloom screamed as loud as she could. She felt something wrap around her legs and pulled tight, rooting her to the spot. Something began to crawl all the way up her spine.

“Apple Bloom!” Another flash of light, though this time not from the skies above. The radiant, continuous light was coming from the horn a little unicorn with a blue bow. It shone so brightly that Apple Bloom felt the need to shield her eyes. Whatever was constricting her released its grasp, enabling her to sprint toward the filly.

“Hold on, Ah’m-a comin’!” Apple Bloom hollered through the howling wind as she got closer to the drenched filly.

“Quickly, follow me!” The filly yelled back. She turned and began to run off in the other direction. With renewed haste and an extreme desire to get away from whatever was stalking her, Apple Bloom quickened her pace. Against her better judgement, she cast a glance over her shoulder as she was running away. There was no sign of the mare whatsoever.

“Where are we goin’?” Apple Bloom called out to the filly.

“Someplace safe!” the filly’s voice called back.

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“C’mon, get inside! You’re just gonna keep getting wet out there,” the unicorn with the jet-black hair repeated to Apple Bloom. While she had gotten inside the moment she could, Apple Bloom simply stood staring slack-jawed at the building.

“What’s the hold-up? This place is safe! I’ve been here loads of times.”

Apple Bloom continued staring at the building in front of her. Its cherry-red paint had faded and peeled from its wooden structure. One of the walls had been torn right out. A thick layer of ash and soot covered the exterior.

“My old schoolhouse,” Apple Bloom finally managed to say. “Ah cain’t believe it’s still here.” She took a few tentative steps inside. The filly smiled, nod doubt happy that Apple Bloom finally decided to come inside. The hallway that she entered seemed more narrow than when she was a filly. Lockers still lined the hallway, but they were accompanied by broken pieces of wood and creeping vegetation.

There were only three doors in the hallway. Apple Bloom recalled from memory that the one closest to her lead to a bathroom, the door at the end of the hallway lead to the playground, and the last one led to a large classroom.

Apple Bloom turned to speak to the younger filly, but found that she had already wandered off to investigate one of the rooms. With a sigh, Apple Bloom began to head down the long, narrow hallway. Without the unicorn brightening the path, the hall seemed a lot darker than it was. Shadows danced against the walls and encircled her.

With each step she took, the aged floorboards groaned loudly in protest. The shadows continued to to grow darker and thicker. This, combined with the narrowness of the hallway, seemed to smother Apple Bloom. Her breath drew short and shallow. Nevertheless, she continued down the tight hallway.

The cheery voice of the filly called from the classroom. “Hey, Apple Bloom. Come here, I wanna show you something.”

“Alright, what’s up?” Apple Bloom said as she took a few cautious steps inside her former classroom. “Whoa! What in tarnation?” The unicorn, who illuminated the room with her horn, stood with a hoof pointing at the ginormous rusted school bell that laid in a small crater in the center of the room. A hole in the ceiling, most likely caused from the bell’s collapse, cause water to cascade down in a waterfall circling the bell.

The room itself was flooded; the water rose ankle-high to Apple Bloom. The desks had all been either crushed by the bell or near one of the doors. Old pencils and chalk floated alongside dead rats. The broken windows on the walls of the classroom didn’t help matters at all.

“Wait a minnit, what’s that outside?” Apple Bloom said, gazing out one of the windows at the playground she used to play on. Near one of the swings stood a wooden plank, planted in the ground and unwavering in the storm.

“Oh,” said the filly, growing somewhat somber. “I think that’s a grave. Somepony’s buried there.”

Apple Bloom turned to face the filly. Her countenance quickly turned grim, “Do y’all know who it is?”

“N-No. I never really read it, so I don’t know.”

“Please take me out there. Ah need to see who it is. Please.” Apple Bloom’s expression remained grim, but her orange eyes implored with the filly. With some hesitation, the filly agreed.

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The rain had slowed to a light drizzle, but the wind continued howling in Apple Bloom’s face. It stung for her to keep them open, but she kept staring at the plank of wood in front of her. She dared not take her eyes off it.

Slowly, she raised her hat off of her head and pressed it close against her heart. In the light of the young unicorn’s glow, the grave read one word that had been messily etched into it: “Scootaloo.” A crudely drawn heart lay beneath it. The wind howled in anguish and the rain soaked the two fillies to the bone.

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