//------------------------------//
// Infectious Start 
// Story: The Poncho Chronicles II: South Beach 
// by BRyeMC 
//------------------------------//

	When the guys reached the hotel, they all bolted to the cafeteria, hoping to find Poncho or the others. Lucky for them, Poncho was sitting in front of a mountain of food on a plate. Beside him at the head of the table was Fluffy Johnson eating almost the same as him. The girls were sitting at another table to the left of Poncho, talking about something making most of them giggle. Cannon rushed over to Poncho and quickly sat down in front of him.
“Cannon! Hey man, how was the game?” asked Poncho scarfing down food. The mention of Cannon made the girls turn around and look over at their table. 
“Oh, it was fine,” said Cannon as the rest of the dudes finally caught up to him, “I’m not here to talk about that. We saw a pretty sketchy thing out there that can compare to you, Poncho.”
Poncho ignored the comment. “What was it?”
“Well,” said Spike, who jumped onto the table to be at eye level with the others, “I saw two dudes on top of each other in the alley. I was about to say how homosexually gay that was, but I then saw drops of blood as the dude on top got off of him.”
“Well,” said Twilight, “what happened?”
“Oh yeah! I think he was literally eating his face off.” Poncho and the girls shrieked in horror.
“Eat yer face off? How is that even possible?” asked Applejack.
“I don’t know, AJ, maybe just bite their face and pull back?” laughed Rainbow Dash in ignorance. 
“I don’t know about you all, but I don’t want my face eaten off,” said Spike looking around the room, “I’m freaking starving. Ima get some grub.” He jumped off the table and walked into the populated cafeteria line. Wahlburn and some others quickly joined him leaving Cannon and Clyde at the table. The girls all turned around again, talking amongst themselves. Cannon took a sandwich from Poncho’s plate and stared at the TV overhead that was showing highlights of the earlier game.
“So, how was the beach?” he asked with a mouthful of food.
“Fantastic!” said Poncho looking up at him, “I-”
“Yeah, I really don’t care.” Cannon stole another item from Poncho’s plate then left. Clyde sat down in the seat in front of Poncho’s massive plate, with Fluffy to his left. He took some fries from Poncho’s plate and leaned back in the chair and watched the same TV Cannon was watching. He then glanced at Fluffy.
“Are you his tutor now or something?” he asked him. 
Fluffy laughed, “No, I was at the beach also today and saw Poncho with them,” he said pointing to the adjacent table, “so I decided to ask him if he needed a bro for the day.”
“Yeah, we had a lot of fun today, you should’ve came to the beach instead,” said Poncho swallowing a bunch of food.
“Same,” said Fluffy dragging out the word. Clyde leaned farther back on the chair, continuing his gaze towards the TV and occasionally looking to his right. After Fluffy finished his sandwich he looked at Clyde.  “¿Tú estás Clyde, verdad?” 
Clyde looked at him and anchored the chair back to the floor. It took him a few seconds to translate the sentence in his head. “Yeah, why?”
He leaned his head closer towards him. “Oh, well, a certain one over there was talking about you for most of the day today. Poncho and I were able to overhear most of their conversations because they all seem to talk really loud,” he whispered and pointed to the girls’ table. Clyde saw Poncho roll his eyes and resume eating.
“Really? Should I be glad or nervous?” asked Clyde ignoring Poncho’s gesture.
“Don’t worry, it wasn’t anything bad.”
Clyde smiled. “Good.” And they left it at that.

Night quickly approached the group as they spent all afternoon and evening talking away. They all decided to go to sleep at around ten. 
“Hey guys,” said Sticky as Rivs, Tyrone, Cannon, and him walked into an elevator. The elevators were rather small for the size of the hotel as it could only hold about a fourth of the party at one time. “Let’s not become a LeBrony when we grow up.”
Rivs laughed. “Yeah, he blows. I’d rather take my talents to Nola instead. I hear that place is pretty sweet.”
“Keep dreaming Rivs,” said Cannon and Tyrone. They all laughed.
Everyone was acquainted with their rooms in about a couple minutes. The rooms were all placed on the same floor so they wouldn’t be separated from each other. Each room consisted of a king sized bed with a decently sized TV on a table to go with it. Also in the room, was a comfy futon couch against the wall the TV was placed on. The rooms each contained an elegant bathroom that had two sinks and shower stalls. The most noticeable feature of the rooms was the view of the Miami skyline from their window and terrace. Everything was fine and dandy and all of them quickly fell asleep.

“Man, I’m really hungry,” said Poncho stumbling out of his bed and checking the room’s mini-fridge. Disappointed due to the lack of food, Poncho decided to go back to the cafeteria to eat a quick snack. He looked at the clock on the wall of his room. “Huh, it’s midnight. Guess I need my midnight snack!” He rushed out of the room, quietly closed the room door, and headed to the cafeteria. The hallways of the hotel were of course empty since it was the middle of the night, so Poncho was able to reach the lobby through the elevator in a minute. No one was in the lobby during this time, not even a check-in manager. He continued to the cafeteria and stood in line. There were only about three other people in the cafeteria ordering food making Poncho extremely happy. 
After eating his midnight snack, Poncho slowly walked back to the elevator. “Uhh...,” he said rubbing his stomach, “I think I ate too much for a snack...” He pushed the “Up” button on the elevator and waited for the door to open. As the door opened, a sound of crashing glass emanated behind him. Jolted, he quickly turned around and went back to the lobby. He looked around and saw no one. He searched for the source of the noise and saw the remains of a window on the far side of the lobby. From what he could see, there was nothing outside the hotel that would have caused the attack. 
“I guess someone tried to break in and fled.” He yawned, closed his eyes, and turned around to head back to the elevator. As he turned around, he ran into a solid object behind him. He opened his eyes and there in front of him was a rotten corpse of a stallion. 
The stallion’s skin was dark and torn away, showing flesh holes. His mane was nearly gone and his eyes were open, deathly, and devoid of a spirit. Before Poncho could react, the zombie pummeled him on the side of the head with his bony hooves. Poncho laid there, half-conscious, while the zombie looked down at him. Poncho closed his eyes and heard a loud smack. 
Unsure of what happened, Poncho opened his eyes and saw Still before him with the zombie on the ground. “Close one, huh?” he said as he helped Poncho up. Still was carrying a crowbar, which Poncho assumed was used to defend him. “We heard rumors pop-up about zombies being in South Beach, but this is ridiculous.” He went over to the counter and pressed a button. Soon, many hotel workers started to pour into the lobby. Most of them yelped at the sight and some even yelled “Yeah zombies!”. Still waved off their reactions and spoke up.
“Alright, my fellow workers, as you can see, a zombie, yes, a freaking zombie, attacked a resident and vandalized our hotel. We need to work together and fix the damage and make sure the hotel is safe. I want some of you to carry this, thing, outside and dump it somewhere. We want to make sure to keep this place a calm, safe, living space. It’s bad for business to have zombies about.”
The employees gave a cheer and quickly rushed to work, whether it was to fix the window or get rid of the zombie in the lobby. Still walked back to Poncho. “So, as you can see, we have a very busy night ahead of us. Make sure you try to be calm about this and try to not freak out the other residents. We’ll be on watch from now on until this zombie outbreak is over, so don’t worry about your safety. Promise me you won’t try to leave this hotel before zombies come and try to get you?”
Poncho looked at him and nodded. “I won’t say a thing.”