//------------------------------// // Dawn of a New Day part 1 // Story: Live and Let Die // by Dihinner //------------------------------// Rain pounded down onto the deserted streets of a mid-sized city. Five figures walked down the street firing their guns or tearing off limbs of the infected with their machetes, katana or baseball bats. They frequently communicated with each other about what types of infected they saw or heard or what weapons or health items they discovered. They all shared a short laugh when a pouncing infected got its head burst open mid jump and soared past its intended target. Then, all of a sudden, the groans of the infected ceased and a single, terrifying sound echoed up the street. A saddening, pained wail echoed down the raining street that caused the five figure’s expressions to turn dead serious. One of them took out their fancy shotgun weapon and crept down the street to find the one that cried. He motioned to his fellow four companions that he could do this and went into the building that led to the safe location. There was a moment of silence and the sound of a gun being fired. The four relaxed for a moment, thinking that their friend had succeeded in killing the crying infected and continued to where their friend was undoubted waiting. By the time they got to the door way into the building their friend went into, they found a horrifying sight. A female infected with twelve inch long claws was brutally tearing into their friend; his throat had been torn open thus making him incapable of screaming even if he had lived long enough to try. The four turned their weapons onto the infected in rage of their friend’s demise as the infected turned to them and shrieked. The female charged towards them, her claws outstretched and swung them at the four. Its attack was quick and merciless. Before they even had the chance to fire a single shot two of them were clutching their intestines in their hands, one of them was torn in half and the last one was running for his life as the enraged infected chased after him. Just as he felt the infected’s claws rake across his back, ripping his spine out in the process, he let out a single, terrified scream… ************************************************************************************* Witch shrieked as she fell onto the floor as she awoke from her dream. It took her a moment for her to catch her breath. When she was breathing properly, she gazed curiously at the structure she was in. The main thing Witch noticed was how unnaturally soft the floor was, like a cloud. She blinked curiously and sniffed it. It smelt like fresh rain and ozone. Wondering where the other infected were, she called out to them and waited for a response. After a moment of waiting Witch frowned, usually Tank would have returned the call by now. He never was too far away from her. Witch sat down on the cloud like floor and wondered where Tank and the other infected were. Suddenly a strange whirring sound filled the room Witch was in causing her ears to twitch in annoyance. As the sound got louder, a tortoise flew into the room with a strange rotor on its back. Witch stared curiously at the flying reptile until heard someone calling from down a hallway. “Tank! You know you’re not supposed to go in there!” Witch blinked, “Tank?” she rasped. Suddenly a Pegasus flew into the room; surprising Witch and making her yelp in surprise and jump into the air. The Pegasus also jumped at Witch’s unexpected reaction. The two stared at each other for a moment before Witch spoke. The first thing Witch noticed about the Pegasus was its rainbow coloured mane. “Rainbow?” she rasped quietly. Rainbow dash smiled, “Yep, your buddies mentioned that you may take a moment to remember where you are.” Witch blinked and tried to recall the events that happened last night. ************************************************************************ “You’re not serious,” said Rainbow dash looking at Witch in disbelief, “How do you not know how to fly?!” Witch shrugged and yawned again. Rainbow dash groaned and sighed, “alright, so… you’re going to have to learn this fast because I’m not staying out here all night. Ok, first rule of flying, keep a steady pace.” Rainbow dash demonstrated by hovering in the air much like Screamer did. Witch spread out her wings, which was when Rainbow dash noticed that the end feathers were longer that they normally were on most pegasi. That and they seemed much more ‘finger like’ than normal too. Witch took a deep breath and started flapping her wings. Almost instantly she rose from the ground and started to hover. Rainbow dash smiled, “Hey, for somepony who says that this is their first time flying, you’re not too bad.” Witch shrugged and continued to hover. “Alright, second thing is flying itself. It’s easy, just keep flapping your wings and go in the direction you want to,” said Rainbow dash as she demonstrated flying around some of the scattered trees in the now abandoned park. Witch nodded and started to fly. She mostly soared through the air at first, occasionally gaining height from thermals, until properly maintaining pace without help from anything when Rainbow dash declared her ready to fly and get to her house, which was where she’d be staying until her and the other infected had a proper place to live. ************************************************************************************* Witch had the ghost of a light smile on her face when she remembered last night and her first time flying. Rainbow dash grinned when she figured that Witch had remembered heading out of the room, she asked her if she was hungry. Nodding franticly, Witch soon followed after the light blue Pegasus. ********************************************************************************* “Um, excuse me, Hunter? I have breakfast in the kitchen if you’re hungry,” the quiet voice said. It sounded kind and not too far away. Hunter groaned slightly at the voice, not an annoyed groan, just a tired one. He lifted his head slightly and faced his unseeing bandaged eye sockets towards the voice’s direction. “Ugh,” he groaned slightly, still recovering from the effects of the virus kicking in yesterday and the large amounts of tranquilizers given to him roughly twenty hours ago. “Where?” Hunter croaked. “Oh, um last night you and your friends were going to go to sleep in the park and my friends volunteered to let you stay in our homes for a while until you got your own home,” the voice said quietly. “Who are you?” Hunter rasped quietly. “I’m, um, Fluttershy. You were really sick yesterday and your friends said that you might not remember all of it.” Hunter nodded, he vaguely recalled speaking with Smoker yesterday about most of the day being wiped from his memory for some reason Smoker wouldn’t explain. Sighing to himself, he got out of the (what he assumed was a) bed he was in and tried to take in all of what was around him. The first thing Hunter noticed was the smell. The smell of what Hunter assumed was Fluttershy’s house smelt like the forest Hunter was in with Smoker before they met the others. It also smelt of various animals, including rabbits, birds and some other small mammals that’s name escaped Hunter. The other thing Hunter noticed was the sounds of the house; there was chirping, squeaking and the sound of a rabbit thumping its foot on the floor along with the light patter of rain coming from outside. Groaning to himself again, Hunter slowly walked across the floor, trying not to hit anything. Fluttershy looked at him oddly. “Um, are you alright?” she asked. Hunter shrugged, “If you call being blind alright then yeah.” Fluttershy stared at Hunter, yesterday she hadn’t known that he was blind and somehow he managed to follow her to her cottage without much assistance. Hunter seemed to notice Fluttershy staring at him and sighed. “I’m fine. It hurt a lot more when I took them out than they do not,” said Hunter. Fluttershy gasped quietly, “You took your eyes out?! Why would you do that?” Hunter shrugged, “There was nothing else I could do. I wasn’t in the right state of mind and whenever I opened my eyes there was pain. So, in my warped mind state, I tore them out. Unfortunately I was not prepared for the pain that taking them out would cause.” Fluttershy stared at Hunter in horror. Right in front of here was a possibly mentally insane pony who admitted to have torn out his own eyes, possibly with his own bare hooves. Needless to say, Fluttershy was terrified. Hunter, through three weeks of studying smell and sound in the more or less wild, had almost instantly noticed Fluttershy’s sudden terror from the way her breathing was paced and the odd smell of fear. Hunter growled slightly, scaring Fluttershy unintentionally and getting a mental picture of the room and spoke quietly, “Hey, I can tell you’re scared, hell, I probably would be too if I saw myself in a mirror but don’t worry. I’m alright now and I just want to find out where my friends are, alright?” Fluttershy blinked at Hunter, earlier she assumed that he was roughly sixteen or seventeen (human years) old. But the tone of his voice made him sound much older and much more tired than somepony should be at his assumed age. She was still terrified of him, no doubt about that, but she could tell that Hunter wasn’t trying to scare her. He just wanted to find his friends, simple as that. “Ok, I guess I can take you to your friends,” said Fluttershy, slightly calmer now. Hunter shook his head, his black mane that covered his eyes shifting slightly, revealing the dull white bandage around his empty eye sockets, “That’s alright, I can find the on my own.” “But, you’re blind,” said Fluttershy. Hunter grinned, revealing his sharpened and rotted teeth, “To deal with my loss of sight, I learned echolocation. I can get around no problem.” Fluttershy nodded, it was common knowledge that bats, which couldn’t see well, had echolocation. So it was plausible that a pony with no sight could learn how to use it too. “Alright, but their staying at my friend’s houses and I’m not sure if you know where they are. I guess I’ll take you to them,” said Fluttershy. “That would be appreciated miss…” “Oh, um, my name is Fluttershy.” Hunter smiled, thankfully not revealing his teeth this time, “Lead the way, Fluttershy.” ************************************************************************************* Charger calmly stared at Jockey as he hopped around the room he and Charger were temporally staying in. His short bursts of maniacal laughter were often cut off by mischievous giggles. At first it annoyed the hell out of her, but eventually she managed to deal with Jockey’s seemingly crazed laughter. Charger frowned, most had instantly assumed that Jockey was mentally unsound, but the other infected knew that Charger thought otherwise. “He’s hiding something under that laugh,” Charger often told the other infected. At first they just assumed that she was being protective of Jockey, as he was the youngest of the group besides Hunter. But then, one day when he ran off to intercept some non-infected that were getting dangerously close to the little clearing that was marked at theirs, (through a series of smoke clouds, markings on buildings and bile) Jockey had left to go disturb them. Naturally, Charger followed him. It was a bad day for Witch so Tank had stayed behind to comfort her, as she tended to do rash things during her migraines, and Hunter and Spitter had decided that they had nothing better to do and followed Charger. They silently walked (or in Hunter’s case, leaped from place to place) through the city and followed the crazed laughed that eventual would lead them to Jockey. By the time they had gotten close enough, there was a frantic yell from one of the non-infected and Charger, Hunter and Spitter saw him and Jockey falling down to the ground, with Jockey still latched on his head. Although she was freaking out on the inside, Charger just stared as the youngest of the group fell to his death. There was a sickening crunch as the body of the non-infected landed on the ground. Charger and Spitter stared in disbelief as Hunter sniffed around for signs of life. Suddenly, Hunter’s head perked up and he bounded towards dead body. Charger and Spitter followed him after a moment and couldn’t believe their eyes when they caught up to Hunter. There Jockey was, laughing triumphantly on top of the dead body, occasionally swiping down with one of his bloody claws to tear away some clothing and eat some of the corpse. Charger shuddered, when they were still hiding in the eastern American cities, they all had been at least partially insane. When they first arrived in Equestria (which Screamer had first and continues to call ‘Pony land’) one of the first things they had noticed (besides becoming ponies, a traumatizing experience in itself at first) was that they could think clearly. It took them two days to walk or fly properly and it took another day for Hunter and Spitter to scavenge food from a city. “Hyeeh, hyeeh, hyeeh.” Jockey’s crazed laughter snapped Charger from her thoughts as she heard someone walking up the stairs that led into the guest room that they were in. There was a knock on the door, Charger called out that it was opened and Rarity walked in. Charger noticed her eyes bulge slightly as she stared at Charger. Blinking in confusion, she turned slightly and noticed that there was a rather large leaf that was lying on the floor. “Ah, shit,” Charger muttered to herself. The leaf had previously covered up a rather nasty injury that another infected had given her in a fight for territory. Usually there was about one infected with the Charger strain every few ‘sectors’. Shortly before meeting up with Smoker and the others, Charger fought with other infected with the charger strain. It was mostly to keep their strength up but was also for hunting grounds. Most chargers were furiously territorial, with her being one of the few exceptions. During the fight Charger had most of her lower left face torn off, living mostly bone. She had left it like that until they landed in Equestria, when she found a decent sized leaf to cover it up and disguise it so it wouldn’t attract attention. Shaking her head and re attaching the leaf again, Charger smile weakly at Rarity. “Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt or anything,” Charger said reassuringly. “H-How did that happen?” Rarity asked, half in curiosity and half in horror of seeing the lower half of Charger’s skull. Charger shrugged, “We went through some crazy shit. That’s minor compared to some of Tank’s injuries.” Rarity nodded slowly, “Well I say Charger, you should have checked if the leaf was still there when you got up. Charger froze, as did Rarity. ‘She didn’t move her mouth,’ Charger thought, clearly disturbed. Jockey giggled slightly before it becoming an all-out maniacal laughter. “Did that come from you?!” Charger asked, surprised. “Yes, it did,” said Jockey, perfectly mimicking Smoker. Charger and Rarity beamed at the electric blue colt. “Did you know he could do that?” asked Rarity. Charger shook her head, “The Doc mentioned that he could talk, but I don’t think he knew the little bastard was a mimic.” Jockey cackled again, “Today is a good day,” he said in the voice of what sounded like a soldier.