//------------------------------// // South of Human // Story: Four Man Cheeseburger Apocalypse // by Dihinner //------------------------------// The loud whirring of a helicopter filled the air. Coach rose to his feet and observed his surroundings. “Aw shit!” he exclaimed when he realised where he was. He checked you see if he still had is chainsaw, which, to his dismay, was gone. Coach began to swear loud enough to wake Ellis, Rochelle and Nick. “Hey! It worked!” exclaimed Ellis. “It worked too well,” said Coach, “we’re back at the goddamn hotel!” “So wait, we’re back at the hotel, without our weapons, and now we have to get to Ducatel AGAIN?!” asked Nick. Coach nodded, “DAMN YOU JIMMY GIBBS JUNIOR!” Nick shouted, “why couldn’t you get us past the cars?!” “Hey calm down,” said Rochelle, “we’ve made it there once; we can probably do it again.” “She’s right,” said Coach, “we didn’t make it that far on dumb luck. We’re a team and nothing, Tank nor flood, will stop us from getting to New Orleans this time.” The other three survivors nodded and turned away from the fence atop the Vannah hotel rooftop, which was the survivor’s location. To their astonishment, they seemed to have found something that wasn’t with them on the first trip. “Ugh, where are we?” asked a dazed Twilight. The survivors stared at her and the other five ponies that unintentionally accompanied the survivor’s trip home. “Tell me I’m not seeing this,” said Nick. “Seeing what?” asked Ellis, “you mean the ponies? Yeah, I see them too.” The survivors stared dumbfounded at the ponies that were, at the moment, oblivious to their location. Another thing they noticed was that all their previous injured from the infected just days prior were gone. “Uh, where are we?” asked Twilight again as the realisation slowly started to dawn on her. “Savannah, Georgia,” said Coach. Rainbow dash blinked, “wait isn’t that the place where…” “Yep,” said Nick, “welcome to hell.” An uneasy silence passed through the rooftop before Ellis made a suggestion. “Maybe y’all could come with us ‘till we get back to Ducatel?” Nick pulled him aside, “are you crazy? They couldn’t last five minutes here.” “Well, they did ok with the Tank,” he replied in a harsh whisper. Nick sighed, “If they come with us, you owe me.” “Fine, fine.” The two turned back to the ponies, who have appeared to have made their decision. “I guess we could go with you,” said Twilight, “how hard can it be? You four did it and seam ok.” “Define ok,” muttered Nick under his breath. Coach sighed, “Ok, if y’all are going to come with us, you gotta remember some things.” “What things exactly?” asked Rarity. “Well, first is try not to shoot one another,” replied Coach as he walked over to a table by the doorway to the stairs. On it there were some pistols, crowbars and fire axes. The ponies looked at the weapons curiously. “What are those?” asked Pinkie pie as the pointed to the pistols. “Those are pistols,” said Ellis as he grabbed two, “y’all kill the zombies with them.” “Kill?” asked Fluttershy quietly. The ponies were uncomfortable with the idea of killing anything, but eventually they all grabbed something off the table to defend themselves with. Twilight and Rarity used their magic to operate the pistols, each of them held two. Rainbow dash, Pinkie pie and Applejack held a fire axes and a crowbar in their mouths respectively. Rochelle had pointed out some spare holsters under the table and they each strapped one or two onto their legs to hold the weapons when not in use. And finally, Fluttershy tried to use pistols with her hooves. “Uh, how exactly are you going to fire that thing?” asked Rochelle. To her surprise, Fluttershy somehow managed to fire the pistols only using her wings. “How the hell did you do that?” asked Ellis who was clearly confused, “are your wings like hands or something?” Fluttershy mumbled something but Ellis didn’t hear what, shrugging; he grabbed a first aid kit and an axe. He grinned at having a weapon that easily spelt doom on the zombies. After the other three survivors were set up too, they and the ponies walked down the stairs until they came across a door. Beside the door there was a sign that said ‘floor 7’. Coach chose this time to inform the ponies of the second thing they should remember. “Alright, now that y’all have your weapons, you’re going to have to use them. Also, don’t get separated, Smokers, Chargers, Jockeys and Hunters are behind this door. Y’all are going to need someone else to get them off. Any questions?” The ponies were silent and Coach opened the door. Behind the door there were infected, they looked much like the survivors. They had no deformities like the Chargers arm or the Smokers tongue, the only real difference was that they were a pale grey colour and were covered in blood. One of them turned to them as they stepped out of the door frame and ran up to them shrieking angrily. Ellis ran up the infected to intercept it and swung his axe, the infected’s head went flying across the hallway. The ponies were speechless as the other survivors followed Ellis down the hallway. After a second, they too followed them. ************************************************************ Rainbow dash swung her axe at an infected, causing a large gash to applier on its chest. Her face and chest area were covered in blood. Applejack and Pinkie pie were in similar situations, although they usually had their eyes shut when they were killing the infected. Rainbow dash chuckled slightly as the shoved and infected out a nearby window. “How can y’all be laughing?” asked Applejack as she cut an infected’s legs off with her own fire axe, “were killing all these sick people.” “Well, it’s not like they will get any better,” Rainbow dash replied as the sliced another infected’s head off, “Ellis said there isn’t a cure. And they won’t get any better.” “Well, we’re still killing these people,” said Applejack a she sliced an infected’s chest open, revealing its intestines. She recoiled as it flailed around spilling it’s entrails along the floor before falling over. “This is just sick,” she muttered to herself, “but ah don’t want to die.” Twilight and Rarity were fairing slightly better in terms of disposing of the infected, they had the advantage of range. “So you have no idea what started the infection?” Twilight asked Rochelle as she shot down an infected. “Some people think it might have spread through livestock,” she said as she found a Magnum pistol and some pain pills in a side room, “found some pills!” she shouted to the others as she grabbed the Magnum. “Ugh, is there a… cleaner way of disposing of the zombies as you call them?” asked Rarity as she shot down an infected that was running down the hall. “This is as clean as you’ll be for a while,” replied Coach as he whacked another infected with a baseball bat. With a sigh, Rarity and the others eventually came across another stairway. As they stepped down, she noticed a large amount of smoke in the air. “Um, is something burning?” she asked Ellis. “Yeah, the building’s on fire, we better hurry,” he replied before he ran through the door way that led to the sixth floor. Again the group of ten fought through the floor of zombies until Fluttershy came across a jar of some sort. “Um, there’s a jar with some weird green stuff,” she said, just loud enough to be heard, “um, do I take it or…” “That’s a bile jar,” said Ellis as he checked the area, some sleeping bags were on the floor and an elevator just right to him, “y’all throw them at the zombies. Really helpful when you’re fighting a Tank.” Fluttershy grabbed the jar of bile and put it in her holster. She and the others then entered the elevator and began their decent down. Slowly, smoke began to pour into the elevator room. Suddenly, the elevator made a loud groaning sound and stopped abruptly. “Alright, there should be some guns just out this door,” said Coach, “grab them and watch out for the fire.” Coach then manually opened the elevator doors which made a loud cracking sound that accompanied by a collective shriek from the nearby zombies. The rushed out the doors and each grabbed a nearby sub machine gun that was lying on the ground floor of the hotel. “Here they come!” shouted Ellis as he opened fire on the zombies. Some of them accidently ran into the flames and ran around flailing their arms. Fluttershy recoiled slightly as an unlucky zombie ran head first into a fire to only get mowed down by Rainbow dash, who had figured how to fire the gun. The muffled gunshots shot through the room. Just a short distance away, Ellis found a room with a steel gun cabinet full of some chrome shotguns in it. Applejack, Pinkie pie and Twilight grabbed one along with Nick and Coach. Again, to Ellis’s astonishment, they were able to fire the guns. “You know, I’m not going to ask how you know how to use these,” he muttered to himself as he avoided a wall of flames into what looked like a kitchen. The table going through the center was almost completely engulfed in flames except two parts where they could safely jump onto and over. Applejack fired her shotgun and cringed as the infected’s head exploded, leaving bits of an orangey pink goop and skull fragments. Fluttershy was cowering behind Rainbow dash as she gunned down infected by the dozen. When they left the door on the other side of the room, they had passed the wall of flames and had a clear route to the entrance of the hotel, which was the location of the safe house. “Safe house ahead!” yelled Coach as they ran into the reception area of the hotel. Although there was not fire, the room still had smog from it. They cut down the remaining infected and made it into the safe room in one piece. When Ellis closed the door, he turned to see the five of the six ponies shivering at the encounter. Only Rainbow dash seemed remotely calm, but looked slightly shaken from it. Each of them were covered with blood and various other bits from the zombies. Ellis couldn’t help but feel slightly sorry for them. It wasn’t their fault they were dragged here with him and the other survivors. Sighing, Ellis decided to speak to them. “Welcome to Savannah, south of human.”