//------------------------------//
// Chapter 16 And Into a Bigger Fire 
// Story: Undead Equestria 
// by Sorren 
//------------------------------//

        “Hello?” she called into the darkness, timid voice reverberating back to her after a short moment. The mist swirled all around her, snaking between her hooves and through her mane, sending shivers up her legs and down her spine. It gave her the illusion that she was moving, slipping away to Celestia knows where.

        It was the sensation of speed.

        “Hello?” she repeated, turning herself in a slow, full circle, not sure of what direction she was facing, or even which way she was turning.

        It wasn’t right. She felt no warmth, no cold, neither the ground below her hooves nor the breath in her own lungs, only a feeling of neutrality at its most concentrated as her eyes struggled for firm focus—the only sense she felt to have an actual hold on.

From the mist behind her, something growled, vocals like the grate of stone on stone. She spun in fear, possessionless, weaponless. “W-who are you!?” Her voice was quiet, like she had screamed into a pillow clasped over her face.

It growled again, driving her to stumble backwards.

“What do you want!?”

The menacing feeling died like curtains closed to the sun, and a lighter, more majestic power took its place. Off in the mist there came the faintest flicker of blue lights.

“Who are you?” Moon whispered.

Her eyes blinked open to grayness. Dull, filtered light shone through the small, round windows high up on the walls, casting little bubbles of light on the adjacent wall to the right, turning them a more golden shade of gray than the surroundings.

Coming to greater awareness, she found herself laying on her side, the ground around her cold and cruel apart from the unicorn-shaped spot where her warm body rested.

She was supposed to be watching for Snowglobe...

In a flurry of limbs, she scrambled to her hooves, slipping on the smooth surface below her. “What’s happening!?” Her mane fell into her eyes and she batted it away. “What’d I miss!?”

“Nothing,” Sage said smugly from the other corner of the quiet railcar. “Just relax a little bit.”

Moon slumped, doing as she was told, falling down to her haunches and letting her tensing muscles relax. “Where... why—” She tossed her eyes around the small interior of what appeared to be the luggage compartment. “I thought I was in the cab... why... why am I in the baggage car?”

“Brick brought you back.” She smirked a little and trotted up to Moon’s side. “You were so asleep you could have been dead.”

Moon blinked a few times, conscious of the energetic buzz in the back of her skull and the slight jitter in her limbs. “Wow... I feel...” She rolled her shoulders, feeling the urge to do a little hop. “Awake.”

Sage grinned. “How long was it since you last slept?”

“Purposefully?” Moon rolled her tongue against the inside of her cheek. “I think it was the night before we left Appleoosa. But, I think I did sleep a while after the griffons... when that roof fell on my head. I’m not sure if that counts though.” She frowned and pushed to her hooves, doing a little hop from side to side. Her body felt... light. “Where’s my bags?” she asked, realizing what caused the sensation of lightness.

Sage tossed her head towards the back wall where the bags lay discarded. “You looked uncomfortable laying on your side with your spine curving like a banana around those things.”

Moon sat back. “I was so kiboshed that you undid all my barding straps and I didn’t even notice?”

Sage snorted. “I could have tongue kissed you and you wouldn’t have noticed.”

Moon cocked a brow. “Did you?”

Sage flushed rather noticeably and glared. “No.”

Moon rolled her eyes, faking a casual tone. “Right, sorry. I forgot you only kiss dark-blue pegasi.”

Sage intensified her glare and her cheeks went from turquoise to vermillion. “We haven’t even kissed.”

“Where’s the others?” Moon asked, deciding to change the topic instead of bringing up the idea of spooning.

“Either in the cab or the next section of this car, behind us.” She flicked her tail at the flimsy door of the six-by-eight room. “Range and that Altic mare locked themselves in the secondary generator room we’re not using.”

Moon only rubbed her eyes. “How long have I been asleep?”

A shrug. “About eight or nine hours—it’s about five in the afternoon, evening, or whatever.”

Moon pushed herself up and stretched, stretching her hind and forelegs, bowing her back and pointing her nose towards the ceiling as she spread her stance and let out a moan of content. “How...” a yawn interrupted her as she lifted herself straight again, leading with her haunches. “How long ‘till Baltimare?”

Sage blinked a few times, drowsily. “Snowglobe says sometime around tomorrow morning or tomorrow afternoon.”

Unconsciously, Moon levitated her shotgun over to her from where it had been propped in the corner and absently began unloading the feed tube. “What do you think it’ll be like?”

Sage eyed the longbrass, blue shells as they levitated before Moon. “What it’ll be like?” she inquired

“Baltimare.” She ejected the last shell and pulled the trigger, coaxing a click from the firing pin.

“Hopefully not zombies.” She bit her lip for a second. “Why, are you worried?”

Moon sighed and slid a buckshot round past the loading ramp at the bottom of the weapon. “Sort of.” She hesitated. “What do you think the chances of Sunny and Willow being there are?”

“I’m sure they’re there if what Dusty—” She winced at the way Moon’s eyes darkened at the mention of the pegasus’ name, “—s-said is true. But, finding them in that giant city...”

Moon slid two more shells into the weapon. “It was a stupid idea, I knew it from the start—leaving to help the REA. We never should have separated.”

Sage’s eyes tracked every buckshot as Moon slid them into the weapon, hypnotized almost. “They were your friends?”

Moon nodded.

“Close?”

She only smiled at the turquoise mare.

Realization dawned. “Oh... you and the orange one?”

“How’d you guess?”

Sage half-smiled. “You lost a little of the spring in your step when those two left, and I doubt it was for the crazy mare.”

Moon worked the action on the shotgun and shook her head, accidentally causing the turquoise mare to shy. “No. Willow’s not crazy. She may seem a little odd, or intimidating, but that mare would move a mountain for you if you asked her to.” She sniffed. “I’d do anything to see them both again.”

Sage clacked her teeth together. “I’d tell you that you’ll definitely see them... but you’re not desperate enough to believe me.” She gave Moon an apologetic look. “But there’s always a chance.”

Moon nodded slowly. “Thanks for being honest.”

Both heads turned to the backwards facing door as it squeaked open on a bad hinge. Yew, ears drooping and head low, plodded into the space, dragging the door shut behind her with her tail.

The brown mare’s eyes drifted to Moon, shallow with apathy. “Hey.”

Sage stood up rather hurriedly. “Well, I need to be checking on ponies...” She slinked to the door Yew had just entered through. “...erm, Jade specifically.”

Moon stared at Sage, baffled, as the turquoise mare made herself disappear, shooting Moon an apologetic look before she jerked the door closed with a little ‘thunk’.

Moon blinked a few times, a baffled expression tainting her features. “What’s eating her?” she asked Yew with a forced half-smirk.

Yew seemed to slump a little. “I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

Moon heaved a sigh and lowered herself to her belly, nodding for Yew to lay beside her. “Are you doing alright?”

Yew moved up beside Moon and practically flopped down to the floor with a look of exhaustion, a long breath wisping from her nose as she seemed to deflate like a punctured liferaft, limbs going relaxed, eyelids drooping in such despondency that Moon felt to be the happiest pony to ever live.

“...Are you okay?” she repeated, a little timid.

Yew rolled clumsily to her belly and rested her chin on her crossed forehooves. “Yeah...”

Moon cleared her throat quietly. “I’m really s-sorry about Dusty... he was my friend, too.”

Yew shook her head slowly side to side. “Don’t give me your sympathy... I don’t need it.” She took a painfully long breath. “I really don’t need it.” Her lips moved again, uttering the same words, only this time in complete silence.

Moon shifted uncomfortably. “Well, I’m here if you’d like to vent, or something.”

They both sat in silence, the only sounds the clickity-clack of the wheels on the rails and the hum of the generators in the car ahead. Moon swallowed in the semi-silence, the wet sound traveling up her neck and through her head until it reached her ears, louder than a stampede of buffalo.

“I thought he was dead...” Yew said after what felt like hours. She exhaled. “I figured he was dead, and I never thought much of it. He was dead, just like all the others, my friends, my parents... everyone else. It hurt for a little, but then it went away, just sort of went numb... Everyone else was dead, and I just got used to it.” Her eyes hardened. “But then he came back, and he wasn’t dead anymore. He was alive, living, talking, breathing... and dying.” Her tone remained flat. “It’s like losing him all over again, only this time it hurts more, because I was there, and I couldn’t do a single thing about it.”

Moon chewed anxiously on her tongue. “That...”

“And Esekiel.”

“Esekwho?”

Yew pinched her eyes shut. “I lost him too.”

Moon hesitated. “Your... special somepony?”

She shook her head.

“Lifelong friend?”

Another shake.

“Oh...” Moon said dejectedly.

Yew lifted her head a few inches. “He was my only friend... That griffon saved my life, more than once... It was a sentimental thing, you know, survivor’s bond.”

Griffon: that was something Moon wasn’t too familiar of. From what she had heard, sometimes they weren’t the most pleasant of creatures. She had talked to one once, back in Fillydelphia, a female—she had been particularly unpleasant, and at the occasion of a business brunch, had possessed the worst table manners. Now, Moon was no pony for dinner fancies, but this avian had drawn eyes of others, belching loudly and ripping into her food as if it were a birthday present.

Griffons lived in different ways than ponies; they had their own ways and customs, which very well may have proved civilized to other griffons, but yielded mismannered and repulsive to ponies with the thought of civility to them.

They weren’t really brutes, just beings of lower standards, bound by word over money.

Maybe that was a good thing...

“I-I’m sorry, Yew... I don’t know to say anything else.”

Yew’s head had since rested back down in her forehooves. “Thanks for caring. Altic and Range... sure they hurt for him, but not like I do... Sure they knew him...”

“...But not like you did.” Moon felt the gravity of Yew’s distress slap her across the face like a sodden towel.

This was how she would look if anything ever happened to Sunny, any of them really, even Willow a little bit. Right now, the only thing keeping her going was the others. Had it just been her, she would have flopped to the floor and cried until it was all over. Only her determination to lose nothing more stopped the pain before it could wash over her like the high surf.

She tried to swallow the knot rising in her throat.

“Sunny...”


*              *              *


‘Sunny...’

Willow eyed the orange pegasus from where he rested within the darkness, knowing very well that her glowing eyes would give her away were he to cast her a glance. What seemed odd to her was the fact that she cared whether or not he saw her eyeing him. There was a painful self-consciousness nibbling at her spinal cord, every action performed in hopes of winning only one pony’s recognition, one pony’s praise.

His.

A little smile played across her lips in the dark—she knew he wouldn’t be able to see that.

The twelve of them hadn’t moved far from their point of entry to the subways. Corporal Sunbathe had led them down no farther than the station platform and stopped there, in the dark. Many of them had needed rest, literally in a state of exhaustion. Willow, being a little weary herself, hadn’t complained.

It had been four hours since they had been out of the light, some listening to the radio on Candy’s back, most sleeping.

Unable to sleep, Willow had listened.

The army’s attempts to quarantine and contain had failed, and they had now retreated to the south end of the city and had set up a choke point. From the transmissions reaching the abandoned group through the radio, it seemed that the army was losing two to three blocks an hour.

The orange pegasus, who had been resting with his head on his laced forehooves, one wing draped over his eyes, looked up suddenly, ears perking. Inexplicably, his eyes darted right to her in the dark. “Willow?”

She cursed under her breath, not bothering to look away and pretend that she had just been glazing. “Yeah?”

“...How long have you been looking at me?”

“Just for a moment.” The lie stung her like a rusty needle stabbed into a nerve.

Frighteningly, the resting bodies around her seemed to fade away, Sunny included as her pupils dilated.

She had been told not to lie.


-ooOoo-


“What do you say?” The green filly stood with her face pressed against the glass of the grocer, the ponies bustling about on the walk and street behind them hardly even giving either of the fillies a first glance.

The white filly beside the green shifted uncomfortably and sat back on her haunches. “I still don’t think it’s a good idea.” The green filly’s stomach growled angrily, and Willow winced. “A-are you sure, Dancer?”

The green filly bobbed her head like it was on a spring. “Please, Willow, you have to help me out here. I haven’t eaten in days!”

Dancer came from a much poorer family than Willow’s own. Her parents both worked as part of a labor union that specialized in the building of steel structures in central Phillydelphia, and often enough, their funds would run short at the three-quarter mark between the payment lines at the job offices. It hadn’t helped that four months ago, her older brother had been gusted off the steel structure of a skyscraper in progress. Unable to afford a casket, they had burned what was left. 

Willow sighed. “But what if we get caught?”

Dancer gave her a playful shove. “But we won’t.” She reached out and messed Willow’s short, gray mane. “Hey, your red’s showing again.”

Willow gave her mane a quick eye-over in the reflection of the grocer window. She was smaller than Dancer, a little smaller than most fillies her age, so Dancer, who was normal height, had been able to peer down at the roots of her mane. Dancer had been right—hidden amongst the gray strands of her mane was about a  half-inch of brilliant crimson.

She blushed a little and hung her head, reminded painfully of how her mane had used to look. After she had gotten her cutie mark, her control freak of a mother had decided that Willow’s hair color looked too much like blood. Whether it be of punishment for the inevitable, or for some sort of cruel, self-justification, she had bleached her filly’s mane and tail, but since she hated yellow almost more than she did crimson, the bleach had been left until Willow’s mane had gone white. After a week of Willow’s complaining that she looked like a snowball with a white coat and a white mane and a white tail, out of the goodness of her heart, her mother had gone out and bought her black mane dye at a discount store.

That had been two months ago. The dye had been cheap, and had washed out in the bath. Now all that remained of the previous black was a steely gray.

Willow just wanted it gone. She wanted her red back.

“Yeah,” she muttered.

“Do you think she’ll bleach it again?”

Willow sighed. “What do you think? She hates me for my cutie mark... I’m surprised she hasn’t branded it off or something.”

Dancer made a sour face, and her stomach growled again. “What’s her problem anyways?”

The white filly only shook her head. “She said real mares don’t want to grow up to cut ponies with knives.”

Dancer glared at her reflection in the window. Willow shifted—her friend did look really thin. “Well that’s dumb. Doesn’t she know that you always sew it up again?”

“Yeah...” Her high voice squeaked a little and she hurriedly cleared her throat. She looked for a way to change the topic. “Look, do you want to do this or not?” The words had hardly left her tongue before panic surged through her brain. Why wasn’t there a rewind switch on her mouth?

Dancer jumped. “Right!” She started towards the door of the large grocer and beckoned Willow with her tail. “C’mon!”

Willow followed, unsettled and nervous to the fact that she was entering a store with intentions to steal. Dancer seemed nervous as well, but the only pony that seemed to notice was Willow.

Her eyes scanned everything as the both of them brushed past an old couple in the doorway. This was one of the oldest stores in the downtown district. The checkered tile in the traffic areas had been worn down to a dirty beige that was the ceramic below, and the entire store, despite the fact that it was swept and mopped daily, appeared a dirty white-brown color, a musty smell to go with it.

Dancer had chosen this time to carry out her plan because the store was most busy right at high noon.

Willow simply followed as the green filly led her between ponies and shelves to an area more near the back of the store. After a moment, Dancer stopped, Willow almost bumping into her.  She threw a quick look around to make sure there was nopony near, then nodded to Willow. “Okay.”

Willow didn’t look, but saw in her peripherals as Dancer loaded her saddlebags with a few packs of oats, a quarter-pound burlap sack of salted sunflower seeds, and a candy bar or two for good measure. After a few more items, her bags were as full as they could nonchalantly get. 

Dancer nodded to Willow again, eyes darting about the store frantically as she swallowed her nervousness. “Okay. Your turn.”

Willow only tensed and closed her eyes as she felt the weight of guilt settle in in her left saddlebag, then the right. She didn’t know what it was Dancer was putting in the bags; she didn’t want to know. She was only doing this for her, only for Dancer, for her friend, because she and her family were starving.

It felt so wrong. She tried to convince herself that the pony who owned this store wouldn’t miss twenty bits worth of food, but stealing wasn’t right, no matter what. Ponies were supposed to work for the things they wanted—that’s what her father had told her... before he had left Willow’s mother, not even bothering with assets; he took what was his that he could fit in a wagon and rolled out like the plague had struck. But Dancer’s parents did work hard, and everypony had to eat.

“Come on,” Dancer said tensely. “Let’s go.”

Her joints were stiff. The tendons in her legs felt tight as Willow less-than-casually plodded after Dancer towards the front of the store. Every eye seemed to be on her. She panicked. Everypony knew what she was doing, and they were going to catch her, to stop her, put her in jail like her mother had said they did to terrible foals like her.

The brown pony who owned the store watched her through narrowed eyes over his narrow-frame glasses as she lumbered past the counter for the exit. Willow hung her head and pretended she hadn’t seen him, though she knew he knew she had.

She winced as she crossed the threshold, back out into the smog-filtered sun from the nearby coal plant, expecting somepony to grab her by the tail and yank her and her guilt back into the store or yell for her to stop. None of these two things happened, however, and in a moment, she was running behind Dancer as the green filly cantered down the sidewalk dogleggedly.

After a moment, Dancer led Willow down an alley between an old pawn shop and a grungy flower shop and stopped behind a dumpster overloaded with crushed pallets up against a crumbly brick wall, panting slightly.

“We did it!” she cheered in a slightly-refrained voice. “It worked!” She wrapped Willow, who had been looking around frantically to see if they had been followed, into a tight hug.

Willow shrugged her bags off like they were filled with fire ants once the hug was over and they hit the ground with a casual thud. “I-I can’t believe we did that.”

Dancer danced on the tips of her hooves in joy. “Mom’s gonna’ be so happy!” She gave Willow a playful shove. “Come on, lighten up.”

She flicked her ears. “S-sorry... I’m just feeling a little weird.”

Dancer frowned. “Sick?”

Willow nodded.

The green filly made a deject face. “Well that’s too bad... Hey.” She slid her head under the straps of Willow’s discarded bags and slung them onto her back over the others. “I’m gonna’ get this home.” She smiled. “See you tomorrow, Willow?”

Willow smiled back, but it came out as more of a leer. “Okay, see ya’, Dancer.”

“Bye...” the filly replied, a little thrown off by her friend’s lack of enthusiasm. She smiled again, then turned and disappeared around the corner.

Willow sat there for maybe five minutes, thinking, but not really.

Maybe it wasn’t so bad... She hadn’t gotten caught, and Dancer’s family would be able to eat now.

She left the seclusion of the dumpster and started back for the street.

No, it hadn’t been bad. She hadn’t stolen anything for herself. Only helping a friend in need. That couldn’t be wrong. Could it?

She tried to force a smile as she rounded the brick corner of the pawn shop and ran right into a firm, brown chest. All at once, her muscles locked, and a whimper escaped her throat. She knew who it was even before her amber eyes slowly scaled the pony’s chest to meet his angry, impatient face.

“Where is it?” he demanded coldly, eyes magnified slightly in his glasses so they looked like they were boring into her like lasers.

She tried to draw away, to curl up like a bowling ball, but his hoof snapped out and jerked her foreleg, keeping her upright and in front of him. “W-w-where’s w-what?” she managed to stammer.

He growled and gave her another yank. “You know perfectly well what, you little thief,” he hissed. Turning, he started to pull her away, back towards the store.

Willow half fought, knowing the stallion was easily stronger than her. Hardly anypony on the street paid her mind, and the ones who did only grinned knowingly or nodded courteously to the brown pony.

She remained silent as he drug her back through the door to the grocer, past the multiple checkout lines, and into the raggedy back office. He half threw, half shoved her down in front of a desk made of two-by-fours and particle board and stomped around to the other side to stand proper to her.

He glared at her for a good ten seconds, sizing Willow up while she tried to make herself look as small as possible. She could only look into his very angry, pink eyes.

“Do you think you’re cool?” he growled after a moment of silent intimidation.

She didn’t understand. “I—”

“Do you think it’s fun!?” The desk shook as he pounded his forehooves on the stained surface. Leaning forward, he bared his teeth at the cowering filly. “Running a store isn’t easy, you know! I’ve had to plywood two windows just this week because some little shits decided that they’d throw bricks from the street! Last month, the power cable snapped because there were too many Celestia damned horseshoes hanging from it, and it took the city fourteen hours to fix it; by then, all the food in the freezers had gone bad!” He was starting to go red like a beet. “And every day, you little bastards come in here and think you’re entitled to steal my merchandise! I have kids to feed you know!”

“I—”

“You’d better be sorry!” He snapped at her, muzzle so close she was sure he had been trying to bite off the tip of her snout.

She cried. Two sniffles and a sob, and the tears streaked her face. Clamping her eyes shut, she tried to hide her face from the stallion.

He gave a gruff sigh. “Come on now.” He frowned when she refused to look at him. “Hey,” He chuckled awkwardly, “you’d make a terrible thief...”

Still, she sobbed.

“Hey,” he said firmly, lifting her chin with a forehoof. “Stop the waterworks.”

Willow sniffed and swallowed a wet lump, focussing unsure, shimmery eyes on the bifocaled stallion. “W-what?”

He sighed again. “Tell you what, you promise to never do it again, and I’ll just have your parents come and get you. I won’t call the authorities on you.”

Willow’s eyes widened fearfully and she shook her head like a can of spray paint. “N-no! Don’t do that!”

He cocked a brow. “Call the authorities? I’m not. Didn’t ya’ just hear me?”

She shook her head again. “No, I mean my mom. You can’t tell my mom!”

He frowned at her for a second, eyes traveling to her cutie mark. “Say... I know you.” He bit his inner lip. “You’re Lily’s foal.”

Willow shrunk away like he had threatened her with a knife. “You... you know my mom?” Panic seeped into her voice like the stallion knowing her mother directly related to the end of Equestria.

The store owner made a confused face at the filly’s over-dramatic reaction. “Yeah... She stops by every day around five for a paper and a small bottle of cider.”

Willow was sure she was going to flop over dead any minute now, suffer a heart attack from panic. “Please don’t tell her.”

He shook his head. “You’ll never learn if you don’t get in trouble.”

Willow squeaked. “Then call the authorities!”

He positively balked at her. “You want me to send you to jail?”

She nodded frantically. “Yes. Please, just don’t tell my mom.”

The stallion scratched his chin with a forehoof. “You don’t want to get in trouble with the authorities—they’ll tell your mom anyways.” He gave her a reasoning look. “You’re gonna wait here until your mom gets here—” Willow’s gasp of horror nearly drowned him out. “—and then I’ll let her take you home.” His tone switched to something a little more intimidating. “What did you steal?”

“Nothing,” she lied.

An annoyed look crossed his face. “Look, Willow, yes I know your name, your mom rants about you every damned time she comes in here. Now look, I saw you and that green filly come in here with empty bags and leave with them full. Now you don’t even have any bags.” He tapped the desk impatiently. “So, what did you steal?”

“Nothing,” she repeated lamely, thinking and caring only of what her mother would do to her.

His glare intensified. “It was that green filly with you who has them, isn’t it?”

Willow shook her head. “No!” her panicked features seemed to say otherwise, though.

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t know.”

He deadpanned.

Willow tried to come up with a name, any name, just to satisfy him. Her eyes found the answer on the desk before her. “Her name was Screw...” She paused. “Screw Driver.”

His eyes drifted, almost lazily, to the screwdriver on his desk, and the accusing drive faded from his face. He stood suddenly. “Well that’s enough of that.” Trotting briskly to the door, he hardly cast her a look. “You can wait here until I can catch your mother.”

“No!” She ran up to him. “Please, Mr!”

He opened the door and backed out, making sure to give her no room to squeeze by in the event she tried to escape. “I don’t help liars.”

The door slammed in her face, then came the sound from the lock as the key was inserted from the other end.

It was like somepony has slugged her. Willow fell back on her haunches, eyes shimmering as fresh tears assaulted her.

That was it. She was dead. Her mother would come barging in and kill her, then bury her in the backyard with a headstone labeled ‘the filly who stole and lied about it’.

For three hours, she sat there in self-induced agony. Fearful that every voice was her mother’s, every sound was that of the mare about to open the door. After three hours of jump and shock, though, she had grown numb, and that’s why it was even more of a shock when the door did open, and a pony did enter.

The honeydew-colored mare stood beside the store owner with a little smile on her face, head stooped a little as if she were embarrassed and ashamed. “I’m really sorry Mr. Oakberry; I really don’t know what’s gotten into her.” She flipped her pink and orange mane and shifted her stance from the right foreleg to the left.

He shrugged, blushing the tiniest bit. “It’s fine, Lily. Every foal goes through the stage.”

She nodded slowly. “I know. Hey, thanks for telling me and not just turning her in or something.”

He tipped an imaginary hat to her. “Anything anytime, Lily.”

Lily’s eyes brushed over Willow for the first time and the foal winced at the amber gaze, hot as the sun.

Lily turned her back and motioned stiffly with her tail, signifying for Willow to follow. The store owner stepped aside as Willow drug her hooves past, and mother and daughter made their way for the exit.

The walk home was painfully-silent. It didn’t matter if the city was bustling, Lily didn’t say a thing, and Willow didn’t dare even try to look at her mother.

Ten minutes’ worth of a walk brought them to a small home in a line of homes that flaunted middle class like it was some sort of an achievement.

Up the walk, still nothing. Lily unlocked the front door and held it open for Willow, eyes glaring the small filly into the unlit house. Willow sniffed as she looked around the entryway, knowing not which way her mother would take her. The sound of the door closing behind her jarred her attention, and she turned back to try and catch some sort of non-verbal hint as to what she should do. It was odd—her mother normally yelled when she got really angry. The fact that she wasn’t yelling suggested something was wrong.

Willow hardly had time to register the movement. Next thing she knew, she on her rump, face throbbing like an hour-old bee sting.

Her mother stood there, one forehoof raised in threat of a second strike. “What in the name of Celestia is your problem!?”

Willow scrambled away, sliding backwards with her forehooves. “I-I-I—” She lost her balance and sprawled on her back.

“Get up!” Lily stalked over to Willow and glared down at her, nostrils flaring like a cartoon bull. “Are you determined to ruin me?” she hissed lowly, circling Willow as she picked herself up. “How do you think it looks to other ponies when my foal is running around the city, stealing things!?”

“B-but I didn’t—” The hoof struck again, this time on her flank, right over her cutie mark. Willow gasped and jumped like she had been shocked.

“He caught you!” she bellowed.

Willow knew she should tell the truth, should make it all clear, but fear clouded her brain and told it to do only one thing: self-preserve, and denying all chance that she had done something bad, in her filly mind’s eye, set some sort of a safe ground. “I didn’t steal anything,” she whined. “He just grabbed me and said I did.”

Another blow. “Don’t lie to me!”

“I’m not.”

Two more. Her flank was starting to feel raw. It wasn’t a little slap like some mothers considered to be discipline, it was an all-out slew with the side of the hoof. The burning made her glad that her mother wasn’t a working-class pony, and didn’t wear horseshoes.

“Go to your room!” Lily bellowed, probably loud enough to rouse the neighbors.

Scrambling to her hooves, Willow scampered for her room on three legs, the muscles in her left leg cramping up. “I didn’t do it,” she gasped under her breath. “I didn’t steal.”


-ooOoo-


In her room—a space that had been intended as more of a small office—she had cried, and cried, and cried some more. It all came flooding out. Her mane and tail, she wanted her mane and tail back. She wanted her friends back, all scared off by her mother. Everything she knew was doubt, and for that she drew hate upon herself. Her stupid cutie mark had just had to come along and ruin her life. Mother had been snappy then, but never cruel, never spiteful nor hateful. She missed the hugs, the kisses, the latenight ‘I love you’s’ as her mother tucked her into bed, very occasionally reading her a story; to know that that had all changed because of a mark on your flank was almost too much to bear.

The punishments had gone on that night, three times her mother had ‘given her something to cry about’ for crying when she wasn’t supposed to, and then the ten after that in the following two days had been for waking the neighbors.

“You don’t lie to me,” had been her excuse. “You never lie.” The message, as if beaten into her through her face and flank, stuck. It was apparent that lying was a crime worse than murder, and punishable within fair reason by a full night of punishment that even questioning neighbors couldn’t put down. Stealing had been forced too, of course it had, but lying was the biggest no-no, the most punishable one.

“Willow?” Sunny asked skeptically. “Are you okay?”

Willow shook her head clear. “Y-yeah. I’m fine.” She tried not to think of how long she had been sitting there staring blankly at him while her mind played its cruel games.

The flashback had been random, useless, and the fact that something as dismissible as a little fib had summoned it caused her to worry for her own well-being. What if she locked up when she wasn’t locked in some confinement room or resting in a subway? What if she locked up when she needed to stay focused, to protect Sunny? She couldn’t afford it.

Willow noticed that Sunbathe kept tossing her unsure looks from where she lay beside the mare with the flamethrower. A good guess said that the mare was interested in Willow’s eyes, as anypony would be.

“Willow, something’s up.” She looked back to Sunny. He had lifted his head, and now looked at her through the dark, ears perked. “You’ve been acting strange lately.”

She shook her head. “I’m fine, okay.” Lifting herself, she stretched until both her forelegs popped pleasantly and made her way quietly over to Sunbathe. The golden mare looked pretty gray in Willow’s modified vision.

Sunbathe looked up as Willow sat beside her. “What is it?” she asked skeptically, but not without curiosity.

Willow turned her head away, purposefully not showing her eyes. “We should get going soon. I don’t think we can spare to wait much longer.”

“I was hoping to—”

Willow cut her off. “Have you ever dealt with these things before?” she whispered loudly. “They’re like bloodhounds. The longer you stay in one place, the faster they find you. We need to get moving now, or we won't be able to later.”

Sunbathe bit her lip. “I’m going to trust you.” She cleared her throat. “Okay everypony, break’s over. Let’s get moving.”

They moved fast. In less than a minute, all fourteen of them were gathered and standing at the edge of the station platform. Willow thought it was fairly interesting to watch how they naturally segregated. She, Sunny, Candy, and Cotton all stayed clumped together. The three civilians stayed to themselves, muttering quietly, and the REA ponies seemed to be trying to form some sort of seven pony formation. Silver was the only one out of place. She kept throwing glances between Willow and Sunbathe, not sure of which one she wanted more. Finally, she settled on Willow’s ragtag group.

“How sweet,” Willow chided, feeling some of her playfulness shining through. “You like us that much?”

“Whatever,” Silver groused. “You guys... just seem to know more.”

Sunbathe led them all, letting them all follow along at a parkstroller’s pace.

It only took Willow a moment to realize how annoying the REA ponies’ flashlights were to her. While she could see fine in the dark, they needed the powerful beams to see. The only problem was that the lights washed out her vision. Anywhere the lights shone, all she could see was a blinding yellow-white color. It seemed rather ironic that the flashlights were doing the exact opposite of their purpose for her.

She blinked a few times. The yellow color of her eyesight seemed to be morphing into a lighter color. It had to be the lights.

The subways fell perfectly into her definition of a creepy tunnel. All was quiet apart from the clop of the fifty-six hooves on the concrete trackwell. Occasionally, somepony’s hoof would set down on a track rail and cause an off-pitch ‘clank’. Willow had never understood why ponies found silence more creepy. Personally, she would have been a lot more scared if she could hear other hoofsteps and zombies roaring or hissing in the distance. Silence was, well... there was just nothing there, or there was, it was just being quiet and waiting to spring at you from the darkness and savage you. She bit the side of her tongue. Maybe that’s why ponies were afraid of dark silence.

“Willow,” Sunny said after a moment, “you’re doing that thing where you stare off into space and get that really distant look.”

She blinked a few times, then looked over at the pegasus. He strode beside her, something she hadn’t really been too aware of. “I was just thinking. You know, if you’ve ever been sitting in a meeting or something, and start to zone out, and when you come back to it you’re staring at a mare’s flank and she’s looking at you like you’re some pervert?”

He broke a little grin. “And you speak from experience?”

Willow opened her mouth, then closed it again, realizing just what he was getting at. “Hey now.” She shot the grin back. “C’mon, Sunny. You know me better than most ponies who’re still alive. I’ve met nice mares before.”

Sunny cleared his throat loudly and tossed his head towards Candy, who was muttering about something with Silver as the two walked along side by side.

Willow huffed and gave him a shove. “That was a little bit of mistake. Trust me, Sunny, it seemed good at the time, but now I can’t look at her without feeling awkward or imaging her lying on her back shooting that cute little grin up at me, her striped mane hanging around her face and her legs—”

“Okay,” Sunny interjected quickly. “I get it, Willow.”

She shook her head. “You totally don’t.”

He sighed, and his cheeks seemed to go a deeper shade of grayish-orange than the rest of him. “Yes, Willow.”

She shrugged and shot him a sly look. “If you’re not worried about me accidentally freaking out and snapping your neck like a toothpick, the offer’s there.”

Now she was sure he was blushing. “Just... stop, Willow. You’re going to give me a nosebleed.”

She laughed and looked away down the tunnel. “You are strong-willed. No single stallion with a fair brain in their head would turn down an opportunity with a decent mare for no charge.”

Now he was glaring at her. “It’s not that. It’s the touch thing, okay. Seriously, touching you makes me queasy and itchy. To actually have something of mine inside you...” He shivered.

She took the opportunity. “You’re shivering like it’d be cold or something. It’s actually very warm, Sunny.”

His head flopped down and his mane fell around his eyes, shielding his blushing face. “I’m done talking to you.”

Trying not to snort, she quickened her pace to move up between Sunbathe and the brown mare with the flamethrower. Sunny needed a break from her or he might actually blush himself a nosebleed.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Sunbathe said as Willow fell in stride, “why do your eyes glow?”

“I’m a hybrid.” Willow smiled. Something about the title just made her feel awesome.

“You’ve already said that. Mind clarifying a bit?”

Willow thought for a moment, consciously aware that the other REA ponies were listening. “It means I’m half zombie.” Several rifles clicked. “Not contagious,” she growled through clenched teeth. “By some crazy shot of luck and an illegal antibiotic, I... somehow... bonded, with the zombie virus.”

Sunbathe seemed rather intrigued. “How does that work?”

Willow shrugged, trying to play it off as nothing. “Well, I’ve got the zombie thing, but I’m still a pony.” She was purposefully avoiding the smart talk. She had learned that the smarter you talked, the more inclined a pony was to ask more questions. “Zombie strength: that’s how I bent the bar through that gate. The glowing eyes, you know, because zombie eyes glow, that’s why I can see in the dark... I like the taste of blood.”

“What?” Sunbathe spluttered.

Willow rolled her shoulders. “Ever since I changed, to me, blood tastes pretty good. It’s like... a little like strawberry syrup, but less sweet and a lot more tart. And meat’s kind of like eating bloody sponge... It’s pretty good.” She tried not to laugh at the way Sunbathe was leering. “So I can kind of understand why zombies eat ponies, but the aggression is still unexplainable.”

Sunbathe closed her jaw. “So, you’re half a zombie, but when you look at me, you don’t want to chomp my neck?”

“Not at all.” She smirked in the darkness. “But it would be tasty.” Another rifle clicked and she tensed. “It was a joke, seriously, whoever’s making the rifle noises. Don’t shoot me, okay. I’m not going to hurt anypony.”

“How far can you see ahead?” Sunbathe asked, changing topics.

Willow snorted. “I can’t see at all with your lights shining. It drowns out my night vision.”

Sunbathe stepped back and turned her light to the side, shining it along the gray, tunnel wall. “How about now?”

Willow peered ahead. “All the way to the curve about five-hundred feet up.”

“No zombies?”

“Nope.”

She fell in behind Willow. “I’ll let you lead.”

Willow flicked her charred tail. “If you wish.”

It was maybe five minutes before her boredom took over. Counting concrete sections had gotten old fast. She found her solution to boredom in the brown mare to her right. She looked rather intimidating in the silver hotsuit, with two, large tanks mounted on her back that tied into a feed system.

“What’s your name?” she asked casually.

The mare turned her head and Willow reared back a tiny bit. “Ember.” The whole right side of her face was pinkish and bubbly under an abnormally-thin, brown coat and her cream-colored mane grew a little thinner than the left side. Her right eye swiveled in tandem with the left, though it was a milky blue, completely sightless, and she only had the lower half of her ear.

Willow nodded. “Fitting...” She cleared her throat. “I’m Willow.”

The mare turned her head back straight, hiding the burn from view. “Nice name.” She clicked her tongue. “How’d your tail get burnt?” Her voice was a lot higher than Willow expected it to be. It was high, but it had a damaged, raspy grate to it, like she had a bad cold.

“One of you REA flamethrower ponies got me as I was jumping out of a building.” She spoke proudly, trying to avoid an accusatory tone.

The mare smiled. “Sounds like one of us... fire hurts, doesn’t it?”

“Yes... yes it does... Not to be harsh, but it seems you speak from experience?” Willow regretted the question the moment she asked it.

Ember’s features darkened and her left ear folded; the right one just kind of twitched. “Sometimes, accidents happen.”

“Would it hurt if I asked?”

Ember shook her head. “No, it’s fine... It’s kind of funny actually. My mom would always tell me when I was a foal that if I played with fire I’d get burned.” She smiled again. “When I got my cutie mark, she nearly died... You can’t see it, but it’s a flint stone making a spark. Anyways, one day—I was still pretty young then, still living with my mother—I was messing with these oxygen tanks my dad used for his new oxywelder, and I guess it blew up. I don’t remember it too well, but when I woke up, I had burns... everywhere.”

Willow just now realized it. This mare was young, like, really young. She’d probably faked her birth date just to get into the REA. It was the burns; they made her look older than she really was. “Oh... are they worse under the suit?”

Ember nodded sadly. “I used to look really nice, had a coltfriend and everything.”

Willow clicked her tongue. “He wasn’t a very good coltfriend if he left you just because you got burned. You know what that means?”

“He only liked me for my looks,” she whispered. “I know. Trust me, Willow, just like that, you go from being the most popular pony in your class to the freak. You don’t find out how superficial everypony is until they hate you because you look different.”

Willow didn’t look at her. “I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t be.” Ember nodded slowly. “I can say that almost blowing myself up was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I didn’t know who I was. I was fake, and all that mattered was how long I brushed my mane in the morning. After they took the bandages off, I found out who my real friends were, and I could just be me. I joined the REA, and that’s about where we are now.”

Willow couldn’t help but smile. “That’s a great story. I don’t mean the burns or anything, but how you bettered yourself with the worst. Bittersweet.”

Ember chuckled lightly. “Thanks.”

“No, really. I used to work in medical. Everypony just seems to use their injuries as a chance to whine and act helpless and get paid time off work.”

She shrugged. “No sick days for me. Burning things is pretty fun.” She paused, looking to the barrel and feed mounted to the left of her neck and across her back. “The hardest part is not burning yourself or your teammates.”

Willow pulled her eyes—which were feeling a little odd—away from the tunnel ahead to eye the device. “How do you avoid burning yourself? I mean, you’re spraying fire from your back.”

In a swift movement, Ember clamped on a small device just below her chin and jerked her midsection downwards. The movement coaxed a series of clicks from the heavy device as the tube and igniter slid forward on a small track, clacking into place after a foot of travel. “Innovation,” she replied smugly.

Willow bobbed her head in approval. “Real killing machine. I would say it’s cruel, had you not been using it on zombies.”

“Yeah, well, it was never intended to be used on zombies, given the fact that, well, the bastards didn’t used to exist. The first instances of flamethrowers were designed to clear grasslands and heavy foliage. It wasn’t long before criminals bought them and started pointing the things at ponies. Next thing anypony knew, kerosine was being fired from REA manufactured weapons with the use of nitrogen. They were stockpiled, only authorized for use twice. Then the infection broke out, and the REA needed crowd control.

“Well—” Willow’s eyes snapped back ahead. “Movement,” she hissed immediately. It had been something for sure, but now she couldn’t see a thing down the tunnel.

The chatter of metallic clicks shattered the silence as numerous weapons readied behind her.

Sunbathe flashed to Willow’s side. “What was it?”

Willow narrowed her eyes to peer ahead. “Something moved. I didn’t see what it was.”

Sunbathe stared incredulously for a moment, then looked down the tunnel beside Willow. The casual bend was maybe fifty yards away. Willow squinted harder. It was dark down here, really dark. Even with her modified vision, she could only see about as well as one could on a half-moon night. Everything was the very darkest shade of light-blue.

She blinked a few times. “Is there any sort of light ahead?”

“No,” Ember answered. “Why? Do you see something?”

Willow blinked a few more times. “Because everything’s looking blue to me.”

“It’s because your eyes are adjusting.” Cotton limped up, pushing in between Willow and Sunbathe.

Willow turned her now-blue vision on the mare. “Adjusting?”

Cotton nodded. “I’ve run tests on this. All eyes adjust to light, but normally, with expansion and constriction of the pupil. Infected eyes work a little differently, as to say, they’re more advanced. They’re incredibly sensitive to ultraviolet light. The more UV rays you experience, the more your eyes will try and filter the light. The exact opposite happens in the dark; when unexposed to UV rays for a given amount of time, your eyes will begin to adjust. Since the only natural source of ultraviolet is the sun, your eyes are going to assume you’re in the dark, so they’ll begin to compensate.”

“Isn’t that what pupils are for?” Willow asked blandly.

She rolled her eyes. “Your pupils still react in size to any source of light, but they’re also reacting chemically to UV rays.”

“So, that’s why the sun hurts my eyes?” she asked dumbly.

“Exactly.”

She blinked some more, trying to see if they would return to the normal yellow. “So why haven’t they done this before?”

Cotton bit the side of her cheek. “My guess is you’ve never been out of the sun for very long. After all the time you spent in Bottle of Progress...” Willow winced at the name. “The lighting gave off traces of ultraviolet, but nothing close to simulate the sun. Then that day locked in the apartment and a few hours on the street. You’ve been deprived of natural light for a while now. Your eyes, deprived of ultraviolet light, reacting to the lack thereof, are becoming much, much more sensitive.”

Willow figured she’d milk the mare’s knowledge. “Then why do they glow?”

“That...” Cotton paused. “That, we’re not too sure of. We know that it takes place in the iris, and that it’s a sort of chemical reaction. The effect is a very subtle glow. It has something to do with your enhanced eyesight, but... we’re all blank. The second the tissue leaves the eyeball, whatever’s happening in there stops—makes testing it nearly impossible, considering no tranquilizer known to pony will put a zombie down and once the host dies, so does the reaction...” She paused skeptically. “Maybe when we’re out of this, we could—”

“No,” Willow interjected.

Cotton deflated a little. “Well, why not?”

“Well, maybe I’ve developed a terrible phobia of examination rooms, because I was raped, in an examination room.”

Cotton winced. “I can understand how that—”

“No!” Willow whispered loudly, as loud as a yelled whisper could be. “You don’t!” Cotton seemed to have poked a tender spot and broken something. “Have you ever had a gun put to your head, and be told, and forced, t-to open your mouth, and all you can do is try to hold your neck straight so it doesn’t hurt! And all you can smell is his sick arousal as your nose rubs against his dirty underbelly!” The thought caused her to throw up in her mouth, and she swallowed the volatile acids with a grimace.

“Cotton folded her ears and tried to make herself look as little as possible. “I’m—”

“And when they’ve finished with you, both of them, and left you alone, and your whole body smells like sweat and spunk!” She shook, hooves struggling to continue to carry her forward. “And when you try to throw it up to get it out of you, you can’t! You can’t because you haven’t eaten in days! And you have to sit there and dry heave, knowing that you’re digesting it! And all you wish is that the shower had a removable head so you can at least clean yourself out!”

Cotton could have disappeared through the ground.

Willow’s breath came in short bursts, teeth clenched so hard she was sure she’d shatter them. A shiver racked her body from tail to eartip, and when it was over, she was sure a whole parade had just marched over her grave. The only thing that drew her from her rage-induced blunder, was the shine of liquid on Cotton’s cheeks as she walked along, head lowered, jaw trembling slightly.

Willow took a steadying breath. She had lost control, been taken back there, to the room for a second.

“I-I’m sorry,” Willow said after a moment. “I need to stop reminding myself of that... I need to remind myself it’s not your fault.”

Cotton looked up after a moment, wiping her face with a forehoof. “It’s fine, Willow, really. You’re handling it well, compared to the common reaction. You’re protecting yourself with hate, with anger. Most victims, well, they become distraught, disconnected, a crying mess curled into a ball in the corner.” She let out an ashamed and relieved breath. “But yeah, your eyes. Right now, they’re glowing, just a little, deep reddish-purple... That’s odd actually.” She leaned closer to peer at Willow’s iris and Willow resisted the urge to smack her. “Usually, zombie eyes go more red.”

“They used to be red,” Willow answered, “when I first went through the whole bonding thing. Then they went more orangish red later on.”

“Still,” Cotton murmured. “Usually zombie eyes are just yellow and sometimes red in darker environments. I don’t know what would add blue to the mix... I should be writing this down.”

She frowned. “Ever tested them in extreme darkness?”

Cotton shook her head. “No. They don’t do well in captivity. A zombie will kill itself with its own teeth or ram its head into a wall until it cracks if you try to confine them.”

“Well that’s problematic.” Her purplish-red vision allowed her to see clearly about twenty feet ahead, but beyond that, all she could really see were silhouettes.

“I’d suggest being careful of looking at any lights in your current state,” Cotton advised, still a little wary of Willow. “If you decided to look right at the sun with the way your eyes are adjusted now, you’d probably knock yourself out.”

Willow eased herself to the right, trying to see around the corner as she started through it. “I’ll keep that in mind.” Ahead, the tunnel sloped downwards. Willow wasn’t sure of why, but she didn’t like the thought of going down. “Why’s the tunnel sloping?” she asked quietly in a voice that traveled.

“This tunnel leads to New Central Station,” answered one of the civilians from further back, a stallion. “It was built under the station already there to serve as a hub for the city’s different metro lines. It’s also under the Platinum Hoof skyscraper, which has six stories of basement.”

Willow looked back at him. “So, from there we’ll be able to reach anywhere in the city?”

“Yeah, all the lines tie into it in some way.”

“Great!” Sunbathe voiced. “Now we can regroup with the REA.”

Willow shot a suggested glare to the golden mare. “Are you mad? The army’s backed themselves into a corner. If we head for them, we’re going to trap ourselves. We need to find a way to get the hell out of this city.”

Sunbathe glared back. “Are you questioning my orders?”

Willow simmered over to a boil. “Yes, I am, corporal. I tell you, whatever safe zone they have now, is not going to be a safe zone for very long... You ever built a dam out of sand on the beach?”

Sunbathe nodded skeptically. “Yeah... what does that have to do with anything?”

Willow flicked her tail. “Well, it’s easy to build the dam and fill it up with water, but if it breaks, then trying to build a new one while the water’s flowing everywhere is near impossible; it’s moving too fast to stop.”

“Don’t forget who you’re talking to.” Sunbathe rolled her eyes. “They need us.”

Willow stomped a hoof hard enough to send a jolt of discomfort to her shoulder. “Fourteen ponies dry on ammo isn’t going to help anything! No matter what, they’re not going to hold, and if they’re going to fall, I’m not falling with them.”

Sunbathe snorted and jumped ahead of Willow, bringing them both to a stop “That’s cowardice is what that is.”

Willow fought to keep her voice level. “I could hit you so hard in the muzzle your nose would shoot out your ass.” She stopped herself and took a deep breath. Threats would do no good at this time. “Yes, I am afraid to die, okay; deep down, we all are. But it isn’t cowardice to avoid a situation you know will kill you.”

The twelve others stopped to watch Sunbathe and Willow’s debate, muttering quietly on their own opinions. “Willow,” Sunny murmured amongst them. “Please don’t start any fights... not now.” Willow threw a look to the pegasus. He stood uncharacteristically close to an REA stallion, just in the edge of his light. She had to look away quickly though; the stallion’s light sent a bolt of unpleasantness to her brain.

She remembered that Sunny didn’t like the dark.

Sunbathe seemed to calm herself, maybe finding it wise after the shooty look Willow had given her. “Okay, fine. You go your way, my squad and I will go ours.”

Willow glared some more at the golden mare. The presented answer was not one she had been expecting. Splitting up was an idea that had never even crossed Willow’s mind. Taking fourteen ponies low on ammo and making them two groups only increased their chances of death.

“Actually...” Ember said skeptically. “I think we need to get out of the city. I almost died twice already; I don’t really plan on chancing it again.”

Willow started forward again, wanting to get the line moving. Standing around wasn’t advisable. If her presumptions were correct, these tunnels were full of zombies, and the longer that they stayed in the tunnels, the greater the chances were of the two parties meeting in a clash of lead and jaws.

“So, is that it?” Sunbathe scoffed, following just a little behind Willow now, the others dotted around her attempting to listen and look nonchalant at the same time. “The city starts to fall and we have a complete breakdown of rank and order?”

Willow flicked her tail. “Yep.” Her eyes drifted back to the tunnel ahead and she jumped like a scared cat, her movement coaxing more rifle clicks.

There was definitely something there this time, just out of the light so as the others couldn't see it. It was a changeling, undoubtedly. It walked backwards, just out of the range of the light cast by one of the flashlights amongst the group.

Something kept her from calling out. She watched it, studied it as it flared its wings and hovered, observing them from the darkness, sure that nopony could see it.

“What’s up with you?” Ember asked

Willow stared—at least from Ember’s perspective—out into the dark, kneading her inner cheek with her teeth. “Just... Just keep that thing ready.”

Willow looked back out ahead, past the changeling. There was a widening in the tunnel ahead where four tunnels merged with one. Swiveling her ears forward, she tried to listen for anything out ahead, but the quiet murmur of the others behind her ruined any chances.

“Quiet,” she snapped back at the ponies behind her. “I can’t hear.”

“Willow,” Ember pressed. “What is going on?”

Willow sighed and leaned in close to the mare. “They’re watching us.”


*              *              *


“Okay, third try. What you think of that mare?” The puce-coated pointed towards one of the REA mares as she walked ahead of them.

From where Sunny walked beside the civilian at the back of the pack, he looked over the instructed, gray mare. “Um... five, I guess?”

The stallion facehoofed. “You ain’t very good at this game.” He shook his head at Sunny’s bewilderment and adopted a mildly-irritated expression. “No, OJ, look.” He traced the mare’s haunches with a forehoof while closing one eye. “See the way it curves down the leg, and the way she carries it? Flank don’t matter if a mare can’t carry it right. She a nine.”

Sunny was still having trouble making heads or tails of the game, and exactly what about this stallion made him an expert. He would ask him to rate a mare on a scale of one to ten, then correct him when he was wrong.

“Okay,” Puce—as sunny had taken to calling him—said, pointing to the head of the pack, at Willow. “What’s she?”

Sunny sighed. “I’d rather not.”

Puce gave Sunny a nudge which sent a shiver up his spine. “C’mon, tell me what you think.”

He sighed again and looked sidelong at Willow, just in case she turned back and saw him. “Ten,” he said after a moment.

The puce stallion rolled his eyes. “Now you just screwing around. Brother, I tell you what, look at the way she carry herself; she don’t sway none. Ain’t no mare proud of herself if she don’t sway. Plus she small, so that costs her two points in the flankbook.” He shrugged. “I say four plus.”

Sunny exhaled slowly, irritation building. “Well, I say ten.” He remembered Willow and how she used to look, before her mane had faded from its brilliant color and before all the spring had faded from her step.

Puce seemed confused. “Look, OJ, she—”

“She’s fine the way she is!” Sunny snapped suddenly, causing Puce to jump.

He acted hurt and a little offended. “Geesh, sorry. I didn’t know you had no thing for her.”

“I don’t have a thing for—”

“Quiet,” Willow hissed backwards. “I can’t hear.”

Not feeling the drive to talk anymore, especially to Puce, Sunny quickened his pace a little so he could walk alone.

He couldn’t believe himself. Just the fact that a pony had poorly judged Willow and her appearance had angered him and driven him immediately to her defense. It was a lead weight on his mind to possess the knowledge that she felt for him, but the fact that he felt back was not one he wanted to embrace nor believe. Caring for somepony always led to hurt. Always. In Desert Sage, before the infection, he had been presented with options a few times, none of which he had possessed the drive or the guts to take up. For some reason, Moon had managed to get closer to him and further over his defensive wall in one day than three different mares had been able to in two and a half years; though, that could have had something to do with her strong determination and hardheadedness.

The tunnel opened out into a wide, dark space as the set of tracks they were traveling along merged with three others from different tunnels.

Sunny unfurled his wings, fluttering the ends nervously as the hair along his spine began to stand up.

Trying to see any more than fifteen feet was useless. All but one of the REA had turned off their lights to conserve power, and the only one on was a single, tungsten bulb hooked to a sixteen volt battery that lit up a dull circle ahead. The only one who could probably see was Willow.

Willow—she seemed to be acting a little funny. She walked in an almost self-contained manner, too graceful for her normal standards, though her head worked on a fast pivot, looking this way and that. She would focus on one thing, then another, whatever it was in the dark she was looking at. Sunny tried to trace her eyes, but beyond fifteen feet, everything was lost to him.

Sunny quickened his pace and trotted up past a sulking Sunbathe, taking up Willow’s left ask she walked. “You’re acting weird,” he whispered, just loud enough for her to hear.

Willow jumped at his words as if his presence surprised her. “Am I?” she asked tensely.

He gave her a flat look.

Willow beckoned him close. Sunny moved over, stopping when he felt his flank brush hers. “They’re surrounding us.” Her breath tickled the hairs in his ear as she spoke.

He blinked, looking straight ahead. “What?”

She shushed him. “They think we can’t see them... They’re waiting to attack.”

His ear flicked and he shivered. “Why... why are they waiting?”

“I don’t know. Don’t tell the others though; I think the changelings will attack if we discover them. Last thing we need is a panic, and we’re in no situation to fight them in this wide open space.”

Sunny grimaced and shook his head. “But what if they do... if they attack?” He smacked his lips, feeling his mouth going dry. “What if they attack?”

Willow motioned ahead with her muzzle. “There’s a train stopped on the tracks ahead. If we can just make it to there, it’s a good choke point.”

Sunny tried once again to battle the darkness with his eyes, only this time he knew something was there, and it scared him even more that he couldn't see it.

Them.

That he couldn’t see them in the dark, following, stalking, hunting...

“Bastards are smart,” Ember muttered.

“Who’s smart?” Candy asked, pulling off the radio headset.

Ember looked back. “Zombies... I swear, pretty soon the damn things are gonna’ be smarter than us.” The fear in her eyes shone like orbs in the light. Something told Sunny Willow had told Ember as well.

“I don’t like not being able to see,” a mare whispered.

A very faint gleam ahead caught Sunny’s attention. It was the reflection from the REA pony’s light off the glass of something ahead. On the tracks just a ways down the line, was a large, square shape. Sunny took this to be the railcar Willow had mentioned.

“What’s that?” he heard Cotton whisper behind him.

“I think it’s a railcar,” Candy replied.

“I’ll see,” a mare said smugly.

Sunny looked back to see her fumbling for the flashlight on her battle saddle. “No wait!” he hissed. “Don’t—”

The powerful, white light beamed away down the tunnel, lighting up the final car of the subway train.

The ring of changelings hissed at the light and scattered like cockroaches.

Somepony screamed. Willow’s shoulders tensed and she froze, along with the entire scene like somepony had hit the pause button to go get popcorn. All it would take was one movement to break the peace before the storm.

A rifle discharged, then two more. Other lights flicked on as the fourteen ponies switched into panic mode. The flutter of insect-like wings filled the congested, yet open space, growls and screeches joining in in a cacophony of menace.

“Run for the train!” Willow bellowed. She sprang forward on an invisible spring and bolted for the train car.

Sunny fired his rifle at a moving shape, the sound amplified by the concrete walls surrounding him on four sides. Changelings darted in and out of shadows cast by the tunnel support beams, waiting, it seemed, for a good opportunity to attack.

The others took after Willow, Sunny amongst them. Running doglegged and aiming diagonally ahead, he fired at whatever came into the light cast by somepony’s flashlight. He knew he had at least hit one by the screech and the spray of gray blood.

Willow had already reached the car, and stood on the hoofplate just inside the door, beckoning them frantically as she shielded the light from her eyes with a forehoof. Ember stood below, to the right of the door, flamethrower primed. Something moved near her and to her left, causing the mare to jerk the barrel of the weapon around.

Brilliant, orange flame lit the tunnel like a sunrise as the stream of liquid fire sprayed from the nozzle. It arced through the air like water from a fire hose, only with the exact opposite intention, splashing across the ground and support beams for the tunnel, washing across a dozen zombies, the flaming kerosine caking them in cocoons of fire. The now-burning changelings scattered like ants under a magnifying glass, screeching and hissing as they darted about like legged torches.

The kerosene fire lit the tunnel better than any light could, though Sunny really wished it hadn’t. When Willow had said ‘surrounded’, she had meant it. There were changelings, maybe four dozen of them, but beyond them, held back by some sort of changeling zombie will, were hundreds of mixed infected, and they all appeared to be closing in on the very unfortunate fourteen ponies.

What shocked him most was how they had managed to remain so quiet. He had never heard a thing.

Candy reached the car ahead of him and pulled herself up, then turned around and offered a hoof to Cotton to pull her and her injured leg up. Sunny was forced to wait on the tips of his hooves as a civilian mare went next, then two ponies from the REA.

Ember opened the nozzle again, using about three seconds to draw a rough circle of flame on the ground around the ponies now piling around the back of the train car.

The changelings hesitated at the fire, hissing and turning their heads. Sunny fired at the ones that dared cross, counting three dead now.

In the rush, he had lost track of how much ammo he had left.

The puce stallion had fallen behind somehow in the race, and was now only reaching the train car, eyes bulging like water balloons as he ran for them, empty pistol in his jaws.

Ember climbed to semi-safety next, the nozzle of her flamethrower still burning with excess kerosene.

That left Sunny, Puce, and an REA mare.

A changeling burst through the fire, flying at Puce from behind. Having already trained in on it, Sunny steadied himself chomped the bit, only to have the firing pin slam to a stop on an empty chamber.

Empty.

Puce went down ten feet away as the changeling landed with full force on his back, rearing back and going for the killing bite.

The REA mare ran to help him.

“No!” Sunny yelled, reaching for her tail a moment too late. The mare shot the changeling off an immensely grateful Puce and held out a hoof to help him up.

Two two disappeared in a mass of writhing, black shapes as the fire licked away, beaten down like beach toys caught in the midnight tide. The mare’s body went six different directions as the powerful creatures fought over her. The ones that got pieces fled before the others could steal the bleeding delicacies, and in less than four seconds the only thing left of the two ponies was blood splayed across the dirty concrete.

Sunny would have vomited had he not been frantically scrambling up to the hoofplate. Gasping for breath, he pushed himself up and whirled around to slam the door.

He never got the chance.

A changeling smacked him right in the chest like a bag of concrete, fanged teeth locking into his right, upper foreleg before he had even hit the ground.

He screamed, and in a second, Willow was there. Her hoof collided with its face hard enough to crush its eye. Her other hoof wrapped around its neck and cinched, yanking the changeling’s jaws out of Sunny in a rather painful and abrupt manner. She hurled the changeling off and it somersaulted through the air, striking the door frame and bouncing off to crash to the floor. It was up a second later, eyes fixed on Sunny’s writhing form.

Willow stood directly over him like a mother wolf protecting her pups. The changeling and its misshapen head tried to push past her, but she reared up and threw it into the ground. The floor shook as the creature crunched against it, then bounced back into the air to land again in a heap.

Ember rushed past Willow and the immobile changeling and slammed the door. “Move back!” she yelled.

Sunny felt a set of teeth fasten in his mane as the owner yanked him backwards across the grooved floor.

Changelings hacked and tore at the back end of the car as Ember backed up and spread her stance. The glass windows shattered as heads and bodies tried to cram themselves through the small openings.

Ember set the whole back five feet of the car aflame, turning the car into a furnace.

Willow released Sunny and yanked him to his hooves. “Come on, Sunny!”

Sunny tried, though when his right leg met the ground, the lightning bolt of pain that shot up it overrode the muscles, causing them to fail. The only thing that kept him from falling against the seats was Willow yanking him straight again by the mane.

“What’s wrong?” she asked urgently, eyes darting over his body. They came to rest on his gashed foreleg, blood running freely from the four marks in the shape of a trapezoid. “Shit.” Willow ducked her head. “Throw your leg over me.”

Sunny knew better than to protest. He slung his left hoof around Willow’s neck, strangely, not feeling uncomfortable in any manner. Willow stood up straight, lifting the bulk of his weight.

Ember covered the eleven of them with the flamethrower as they fled for the front of the train, delaying what seemed to be the inevitable.

“What...” Sunny said breathlessly, half hanging on Willow, “what happens when we reach the front of the train?” He pinched his eyes shut and let out a groan. A painful, prickly feeling was spreading throughout his body from his right leg, stinging like a million needles.

Willow huffed as she lumbered along with his weight, focussing half on the ground and half on the pony ahead of her. “We’ll improvise.”

Everything was starting to feel really groggy—Sunny compared the feeling to the gas used to numb patients at the dentist’s. “Willow,” he slurred, trying to keep his hind hooves from dragging.

“Yeah?” she asked.

“Are... a-are we gonna die here?”

He felt her tense. “No, Sunny, we won’t.”

Things were growing blurry now, sounds distorted. “How do you know?”

She shook her head. “Just because, Sunny.” She seemed to know something was wrong, because she readjusted him as she ran, taking more of his weight to the point of which she was almost fully carrying him.

His head lolled over a little and he had to force himself to hold it up. “What about me?”

Willow took a shaky breath between her panting. “Sunny, I promise you that as long as I am alive, nothing will ever happen to you.”

Sunny struggled to stay conscious; his eyelids were heavy. “How... can you... how can you promise that?”

“Now what!?” Sunbathe yelled from ahead.

“Because, Sunny,” Willow said, her voice ripe with emotion and determination. “I will always be there for you.”

“Willow...” All he wanted to do was sleep, but he needed to tell her. “Willow... I... you—”

“Block the windows!” somepony yelled.

“Cover the back door!”

Willow turned her head back to look at him, agonized with worry. “Always, Sunny.”

He tried to say more, but his lips felt like cooked sausages. There was a rush of nausea, then black.


*              *              *


“Okay, now push that one forward.” Snowglobe motioned towards a small lever on the control console.

Copper, focussing intently from his position in the driver’s seat, reached out a hoof and eased the lever forward. He was rewarded immediately with an increase in tone from the engine room as the generators sped up consumption.

“That’s the throttle,” Snowglobe clarified. “Now draw it back to where it was.”

Copper complied.

Snowglobe had spent the last thirty minutes instructing the red pegasus on how to drive the locomotive. She had started with basic braking procedures—it was always a good idea to teach a pony how to stop before you taught them how to go.

“Is that everything?” he asked, scanning the console.

Snowglobe nodded. “Now tell me what the safe stopping distance is for this unit at sixty miles per hour.”

Copper glared mutinously at the yellow air brake handle. “A thousand feet?” He shrugged.

“Fifteen hundred.”

Another shrug. “I was close.”

Snowglobe flicked her tail. “Yeah, and when it comes to not crashing, close doesn’t cut it.”

He sighed in exasperation. “Okay.”

She thumped his right shoulder with a forehoof. “You need to take this seriously. We’ll be reaching Baltimare really soon.”

Copper rubbed his shoulder. “So, just to get this straight, you want to leave the engine on the outskirts of the city?”

“Well there’s no way we’re driving right up to the REA with it.” She huffed. “You said it yourself—they’d steal the bits off a dead mare’s eyes. What do you think they’re gonna do when a bunch of poorly-armed survivors roll up to them in a mint-condition, gemstone-powered locomotive unit?”

“They’re going to want to expand their mechanical inventory,” he groused.

“And if what they did to you and Dusty is the case, we don’t want to all trot up there at once and take the chance.”

“So that’s why Moon and the big brown one are going and leaving us here to safeguard the engine?”

Snowglobe nodded simply. “They should be able to make contact with us within a two mile radius with the two-way radios I found in the emergency box.”

Copper went silent for a moment. “What if Baltimare’s gone like Canterlot?”

Snowglobe shook her head. “I don’t think any of us know... If it comes to that, we’ll just have to try something else.”

“What else!?” he snapped with sudden venom. “Baltimare was home to the second largest REA base in Equestria. The largest is Canterlot. If Baltimare didn’t make it, then no other place is going to have a chance.”

“We’ll find something,” she growled, leaning towards him with her muzzle. “I don’t care if it takes my entire life, but the last thing I’m going to do is curl up and wait to die.”

Moon entered the cabin through the generator room, catching the site of the two half-glaring at one another. “You two about to kiss?” she joked.

Snowglobe realized how awkwardly close she was standing to Copper, having practically been leaning over him to demonstrate the controls. “He’s gay, Moon,” she countered.

Moon shrugged. “So’re you, but that didn’t seem to stop you with Dusty.” Snowglobe winced. She had told Moon about her possible wing fetish with stallions, now it didn’t seem like it had been such a great idea.

Moon, noticing the look in Snowglobe’s eyes, wisely changed the subject. “How long until we reach city limits?”

Snowglobe peered out the windshield at the morning sun. “Three hours, give or take one in either direction.

“I just have to wonder,” said Copper, a dejected tone about him. “If it’s anything like Appleoosa, won’t there be stumblers all around the city?”

“Most likely.” Moon shrugged.

“Soooo,” he urged, “how do you expect to even get close to the barrier? Ask them nicely to move? Swim?”

Moon gave him a hot stare for his disrespectful tone. “I was planning for that. Canterlot had elevated tracks running everywhere. Once we hit the city, there has to be an elevated section of track with all the buildings around.”

Copper rolled his eyes. “It’s always guessing.”

“Well I’m sorry,” Moon huffed. “I’m sorry none of us are REA intelligence agents that know everything. The only pony who comes close to that is Range.”

Copper held up his hooves in a gesture of apology. “Okay, okay, take it easy. I just want something to go good for once. I’m lucky to be alive after this whole mess, and guesses and surprises are the last thing I want to see.”

“The last thing we all want to see,” Snowglobe corrected.

The rear cabin door swung open again, and this time Brick entered.

Copper chose to use the stallion’s entry as a chance to drop out of the minor confrontation, and he went to glaring at the sun out the window.

“Hey, Brick,” Moon greeted casually.

Brick gave his head a brief bow.

“What do you think of the plan?”

He shrugged and shifted his stance, eyes flicking to the right.

Moon sighed and rolled her eyes at him. “I know it could be better, but it’s all we’ve got.”

He closed his eyes and nodded.

Snowglobe, who had watched the exchange, grinned cockeyed at Moon. “When did you learn to speak Brick?”

Moon squinted, then softened her expression as the wording of the joke reached her. “We’ve been talking,” she said in playful defense.

Snowglobe quirked a brow. “Talking?”

Moon shrugged. “As close as talking gets with Brick.” She turned to the stallion. “You’ve still got fifty rounds for that chaingun, right?”

A nod.

Moon nodded back. “Good, we might need it.” She looked out ahead, the sunrise to the left casting a shadow across her face. “We might just be able to find an end to this mess.”