Moon bowed her head towards the locomotive’s muzzle. It sat before her and Brick on the tracks, humming warmly in the chill air.
The cool wind whipped at her mane and bit into her coat. Though it was almost noon, murky, gray clouds blotted the sky and the wind came in gusts from anywhere between ten to thirty miles an hour.
High up in the operator’s cabin window, Snowglobe bowed her head back to Moon. There was a deep clunk from the engine’s transfer case and it began to roll backwards.
Moon levitated the two-way radio up to her mouth. “I’ll contact you if needed.”
From here, Moon could see Snowglobe levitate her own radio through the glass. “Got it,” she replied shortly. “I’ll back us up a quarter mile and wait there.”
“Ten-four.” Moon smirked and clipped the radio back to her barding; she had always wanted a good excuse to say that. She turned herself around on the tracks and looked at the distance to travel by hoof.
Snowglobe had brought them within a quarter mile of the wall surrounding Baltimare, though Moon had insisted no further. Trusting the army was like expecting a mosquito not to bite you.
Brick stepped up beside her, the chaingun mounted on his back as menacing as ever. He seemed less grim than she had known him to look previously. Now, his face read firm, determined. It was as if he had been given a purpose to focus on, something to drive him. Though... he could have just been squinting to see the wall ahead; it was all rather hard to tell when he never spoke.
The engine now drifting away behind them, the hum fading into the wind, Moon and Brick started forward, setting a casual pace along the elevated track.
She had been right about the elevated tracks. Once they had entered the city, the tracks had been left with nowhere to go but up or down. Some of the freight lines had remained ground-level, tied into railyards, and some commuter lines had dropped down to become subway lines. The line she and Brick stood upon now was a commuter line, spanned above the city for efficient and fast civilian travel.
Only the central city had been contained by the REA’s protection wall, leaving business districts and suburbs alike to rot in despair. Though, what baffled Moon about it all was the lack of ruin, and the lack of despair. Hardly any buildings had been burnt or destroyed, and much unlike Canterlot, which was a mess of destruction and ruin, the streets of Baltimare almost seemed tidy and undisturbed.
It was as if everypony had just gotten up and left.
...Or turned into zombies without a fuss. Zombies... they were everywhere here. All along the streets below they either stumbled around or stood dumbly in states that seemed to resemble sleep on some primal scale.
“Have you ever wondered why they don’t starve?” Moon asked.
The brown stallion’s ears flicked and she watched his eyes travel downwards from the tracks to the streets below. After a moment, he nodded.
Moon continued to watch them as they walked. She felt an odd mixture brewing inside her. They were such curious creatures, though they no longer disgusted her. Her mind had accepted them as what they were and now, to her, zombies were just sort of a thing she didn’t like. They were like a crappy next door neighbor: you really couldn’t do anything about them so you just dealt with them and hoped they eventually moved away or died in a housefire.
“Any ideas as to why?” she asked after a moment.
He nodded, then let his eyes droop.
Moon frowned in thought. “They sleep?”
A nod.
“Yeah...” She thought it out. “I kind of had the same thing in mind. But, I mean, they have to eat something. I mean, they’ve killed off most of the ponies by now and they don’t eat each other. Sure, sleeping may conserve energy, but they still need to eat... so, what do they eat?”
Brick rolled his eyes, unsure.
“And, it’s crazy how they don’t eat each other,” she continued. “They have to have something in their brains that tells them not to eat other zombies, right? The part that makes thought, maybe?” She shrugged. Her words were starting to sound rather stupid. “I really don’t like the idea of those things thinking.” A shudder wracked her frame at the sudden, horrifying thought. “What... what if they remember who they were?”
Brick looked over at her and shrugged uncomfortably.
She let out a long sigh, eyes drifting somewhere off into space. “Just to think... Every one of them... they were a pony once.” Her eyes focussed on a distant tuft of cloud. “Every one of them had a story... had a name, a family.” She looked over at Brick. He walked along with his ears folded, looking straight ahead. “And I’ve killed so many of them... I can’t help but think...”
Brick flicked his ears and turned his head to glare at her. His look was cold and exasperated. “Really?” it seemed to say.
“What?” she protested.
His eyes flicked to the chaingun on his back, then back to her, brows narrowing.
She winced. “Oh, sorry, Brick... Yeah... I remember Appleoosa... and the gun store.” She flushed. “I really don’t have any room to complain, do I?”
He maintained the annoyed expression on his face and shook his head.
Moon folded her ears. “Sorry...”
There she had just went, worrying about herself again. Brick didn’t speak, but that certainly didn’t mean he was emotionless. It hadn’t really occurred to her that he had felt bad for the ponies—well, zombies—he had killed. And she especially hadn’t known that it would be a tender subject. It was just another thing to add to her mental list of tender subjects for certain ponies.
Moon looked up at the barrier; they were nearing it now. She forced herself to stop daydreaming; now was the time to focus. She squinted at the eight feet of steel erected across the track, off to the right and left where it grew much taller. “Do you see any guards?”
Brick shook his head.
They came to a stop ten feet from the blockade, ears perked, eyes wide and seeking.
Moon’s belly turned over. Off in the distance, she could hear the patter of gunfire—loads of it, whole truckloads of ammunition. “Hello!?” she yelled. “Is anything there!?”
Brick glared at her. “What are you doing?”
She rolled her eyes at his implied question and opened her mouth to yell again, but the breath she took came out as an eep instead when a bullet whizzed by and pinged off the track rail behind her. She jumped like a startled cat, and in less than a second, had her shotgun levitating before her.
Her eyes darted around for the source of the shot. The chambered round in her weapon was a slug, which gave her a range of anything within two hundred yards, though with accuracy only up to about fifty.
Her eyes found the source to be a yellow stallion roughly fifty feet away to the right, aiming a rifle clumsily with his hooves.
“Hey!” she screamed. “Are you thick!?” Ducking her head down, what little that would do, she looked for means of shelter. Nothing. The tracks were barren, devoid of any shelter; there wasn’t even a railing. And the hordes of zombies below cancelled the idea of trying to jump or shimmy down a support column.
Brick glared daggers at the stallion and aimed the chaingun.
Moon waited to see his head splatter. Instead, another pony, this one a gray mare, moved up beside the stallion. The mare up on the barrier took one look and the two of them stranded down on the tracks, then turned promptly and smacked the stallion upside the head. “What in Celestia’s name is your problem!?” a shrill voice rang out.
Moon sighed in relief as she watched the mare rip the rifle from the stallion’s grasp and deliver a section of verbal degradation.
Finished the the trigger-happy stallion, the mare slammed the rifle back into his grasp and turned to look back down at Moon and Brick. After a moment, she set a swift trot across the wall over to them.
“Thanks!” Moon called.
The gray mare stopped once she reached the spot over the tracks and stared down at them with hard eyes, one ear cocked around her short, black mane. “Name and rank! Are you one of the reconnaissance crews!?”
Moon contemplated lying, but quickly tossed the disastrous idea. “We’re not with the REA!”
The mare frowned, seemingly in confusion. “Then where’d you get that weapon?” She pointed to Brick’s chaingun. “Those REA seven-point-sixty-two millimeters are rare to come by you know. We don’t just hand ‘em out to civilians.”
Moon tethered her shotgun back to her barding. “We found it!” She stepped forward and looked up.
The mare eyed them over once more, then backed away from the wall and out of sight.
Moon looked over at Brick. “What?...”
Brick shook his head and shrugged.
“Maybe—” A loud bang from the other side of the barrier startled her from her words and her hooves left the ground momentarily as she jumped. “Damnit,” Moon cursed quietly. “Every ti—” She jumped a second time as two, high-pitched whines filled the air and the two barrier doors began to fold inwards. It took her another moment of mentally cursing herself to realize that the sound was from the two electric engines used to move the heavy, steel doors.
Shrugging again, Brick stepped forward, almost casually, leaving Moon nothing but to follow.
The massive doors stopped only a quarter of the way open, barely leaving enough room for the two ponies as they entered side by side.
Moon was all eyes. Just inside the two massive doors was an elevated train station, a boarding platform on either side of the tracks, rain-sheltered by steel awnings.
She had to admire the army’s innovation. Entering the station from the outside required passing through into the trackwell, and the three foot concrete walls on either side of the twin tracks provided an elevated position for the guards flanking the doorway and an excellent choke point against anything coming through the gates.
The gray mare stood awaiting between the two sets of tracks just within the gate. Her gray uniform blended almost perfectly with her coat. The two, high caliber pistols strapped to the outside of either foreleg proved just a little intimidating as her horn glowed a soft color of aqua.
She stopped Moon and Brick with the stomp of a forehoof. “Stop, spread your front and hind legs exactly a foot and a half apart and do not move.” The gates had begun to grind closed as she spoke. “If any proof or reasonable proof of infection is discovered you will be shot on site.” The words were spoken firmly, and in a manner that suggested every other hour she gave the speech.
Moon tried her best not to feel uncomfortable as the gray mare inspected places she was sure she had never even seen herself. “Right front,” the mare would say, signalling for Moon to lift said leg. She went through the same process with the other three, then ran her hooves through Moon’s brown mane, lifted and examined her tail, even ducking down and crawling between her legs at one point to get a look at the flesh between Moon’s forelegs and her body.
All the while Moon looked around the station. There were five other ponies around, the idiot stallion included. She made sure to glare at him.
“Stellar,” the gray mare said, finishing her examination and moving on to Brick.
Moon rolled her eyes. “No bites I didn’t know about?”
The mare’s eyes darted to Moon as she pulled her attention from Brick. There was irritation in her gaze, but it was masked by a teasing shine. “Nope, the only thing I noticed was a the bite I almost gave you.”
Moon’s expression froze, the only exception her eyes widening. Crimson color crept into her cheeks and she cleared her throat, eyes darting around, then to Brick. Had anypony else heard that?
Brick was smirking out of the corner of his mouth and Moon realized just how visible her blush was. “Stop it!” she hissed.
“Are they clean, Sergeant?” a stallion on the platform asked.
The mare backed out from under Brick, the aqua glow of her illumination spell fading. “Stand down; they’re good.”
Moon took a second to reclaim herself. Why did this keep happening? She growled under her breath, “I swear, I am the straightest mare in Equestria.”
The sergeant whistled and leaned in to examine the chaingun Brick wore. “Hey, Tubes.” She beckoned a bifocaled stallion over and pointed towards the weapon. “Weren’t those the models commissioned for the Las Pegasus guard?”
He leaned in and adjusted his glasses to peer at a near-microscopic serial number. “The very same.” His magnified eyes turned to Brick. “Where’d you get this?”
Moon answered. “A small town west of Appleoosa.”
The sergeant clicked her tongue. “I heard that shipment got botched.”
Tubes nodded. “A crate containing five went missing out of the sixty they sent down there from the factories. Dove threw a fit over it.”
Moon was daunted at the lack of ponies at what appeared to be a semi-major checkpoint. She jumped at the sound of close gunfire and her head snapped to the source.
Maybe fifty feet down the barrier wall, a pony had let loose with a mounted, anti-personnel ground-to-air cannon. No longer firing, the four barrels smoked as the stallion in the seat leaned back casually and lit a cigarette.
“I figured there’d be more,” Moon said absently.
The sergeant tore herself away from salivating over the chaingun. “Huh?”
“There are six ponies here... Aren’t you like, the army?”
The sergeant glared. “Drop the tone.” She flicked her ears dismissively. “The city’s been compromised north of here. All available forces are on the front lines.”
“W-what!?” Moon spluttered.
The sergeant sighed. “They came from underground. I guess the damned things are called changelings.”
Moon continued to balk. “Are you going to have to evacuate?”
“Evacuate?” the mare guffawed. “To where? Where’s there to evacuate too? The wagon pullers and hot air transport only have range to about Canterlot, and we all know that place is a shitcan.” She sighed. “We don’t know yet... we might have to abandon the city if things get any worse.”
Moon shook her head slowly.
“You chose a hell of a time to visit.” The sergeant attempted a smile, then sighed. “We’re in a real mess. We lost our lines faster than we could clear the buildings.” She pointed her hoof to the horizon where a cluster of tall buildings and a skyscraper could be seen amongst rising smoke. “Ponies are still trapped on the upper levels.” She pointed towards the skyscraper. “We’ve got radio contact with troops trapped inside with uncounted civilians on the twelfth floor of the Platinum Hoof. Our lines are currently about ten blocks beyond that, though we’re readying for another retreat and reform.”
Moon and Brick, astonished, exchanged equal glances. “Are you going to try to get them out?”
The sergeant nodded. “They’ve been thinking about skywagons, but there just aren’t enough of them and there aren’t any certified landing pads on the Platinum Hoof except for the roof itself.” The sergeant seemed to be talking to herself now more than anything. “With all other ranking officers focussing on the front lines, I’ve been left in charge of city evacuation shall the need arise, probably because it’s the least important on anypony’s list.” She sighed to steady herself. “The Platinum Hoof is tied directly into the civilian transit system; there’s a station on the twelfth floor, north side.” She pointed off down the tracks. “We’ve been prepping an engine and train.”
“This is crazy,” Moon murmured. She was a little unsure as to why the sergeant was sharing this all with her, but had to admit, the knowledge was nice. Maybe she just needed to vent
The sergeant turned and beckoned them with her tail. “Come on, let’s get off the tracks.”
Moon followed the mare, grunting as she climbed up out of the trackwell, hind legs dangling at the air for a second as she pulled herself up with the fore.
“Right now, this is a rally point.”
Moon tossed another glance to Brick. “So... why are you telling us this? I mean, we’re just civilians, or whatever you guys call non-REA ponies.”
The sergeant stopped them under the awning and turned back, taking up a stiff posture. “Haven’t you heard? In our time of crisis, all ranking officers are permitted to recruit civilians if they show clear signs of weapon experience and stable thought, shall the need arise.” She held out a hoof. “Sergeant Cloudstorm. Welcome to the REA militia.”
Unsure of exactly how to respond, Moon raised her own hoof to grasp the mare’s. “Moon.”
Cloudstorm released Moon’s hoof and turned to Brick, giving him the very same gesture. Brick took her hoof with a little nod, eyes darting to Moon for her support.
“His name’s Brick,” she answered.
“Sergeant!” It was Tubes. The stallion stood in front of a large radio set erected on a table under one of the platform awnings. A headset hung over his head, though he only wore one ear. “They’ve left us with a forty minute window! Once that time’s up, they’re shutting down the grid to infected areas to take stress off the generators!”
Ears perking, Cloudstorm trotted over to him. “I take it this affects us?” Moon followed.
Tubes nodded, still listening to the radio with one ear. “Without power, we lose our ability to operate the gates on the Platinum Hoof access track. And if we can’t get those open, then our train evac plan is as good as dead.”
Cloudstorm nodded slowly. “Okay, well, forty minutes should be enough time to get over there and key the gates.” She turned to an orange mare standing by who had been steadily creeping closer to listen to the conversation. “Head down to the armory and get one of those semi-auto twelves, drum magazine, and see if you can’t find any seven-six-two belts for the brown one’s gun.”
The mare gave a sloppy salute and scampered off.
Cloudstorm took a moment to breathe before returning her attention to Tubes. “Make sure—” A shrill whistle interrupted her. “What the?...” Her spun on one forehoof and cantered to the edge of the platform, looking off down the tracks.
Moon and Brick followed, ears perked just like everypony else’s in the station. Down on the line, an old black locomotive rocketed towards them in backwards gear, blastpipe roaring like an angry beast as the pistons pounded madly. As it neared, the staccato chug began to slow and seconds later came the squeal of the brakes.
The tri-axled engine slid backwards into the station and chattered to a stop, rattling like a box full of tools. There was an almighty hiss as the release valves fired off, washing steam across the platform.
“Loco!” Cloudstorm screamed, furious. “What is this!?”
A bulky, mustard-yellow stallion hopped down to the platform from the hoofplate, a sooty blue cap with the bill bent up atop his earth pony head, cocked sideways over his short, black mane. “Clouds,” he said in a voice that could have only belonged to a Manehattan pony, and a smoker at that. “I told you no.” He gritted the end of his cigar and rubbed his scruffy face, smearing soot along his cheek.
“What is this!?” Cloudstorm repeated, voice still as loud as before. “You should be coupled to that train!”
Moon couldn’t help but eye the peculiar shotgun embedded in a holster hung from the sooty stallion’s back. It looked like a lever action, though modified for use by an earth pony.
He narrowed his brown eyes at Cloudstorm. “Ya’ told me that this train sittin’ here was gonna’ be haulin that train down there, which was only s’posed to be three cars!” His voice seemed naturally loud, and as gruff and hard as stone as they came. “Now that train’s eight cars, and I still can’t get no doubleheader!”
Cloudstorm tapped her hoof. “Can’t you make do?”
Loco huffed and took a long drag on his cigar. “Yeah, sure, with another damned engine!” He tossed his head to the steaming mass behind him. “This mare ain’t no virgin and she’s seen more action than a brothel. Her valves are looser’n a mare in heat, and all it’s gonna’ take to make her blow her load of steam all over the place a good bump in the right spot.” He rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they used this fuckin’ thing in the buildin’ of the Ponyma canal!”
“What do you need!?” Cloudstorm hissed.
He huffed again and mimicked her tone, not managing anything but a high rasp. “What do I need!?” He pointed at himself, voice returning to normal. “What I need is a fuckin’ engine that can pull fifteen motherfuckin’ cars up a motherfuckin’ two-percent grade!”
“That is the only engine that’s not being used towards the containment effort!”
Loco stomped his hooves. “Then those ponies in that tower are fuckin’ meat! Or you can just have me pull three cars up there and start a fucking’ riot when they realize I can only take a third of ‘em.”
Moon swallowed. “I-I know where you can get an engine.” The second the words were out of her mouth, she wished she could take them back ‘Damnit, Moon! Think before you speak!’
“Where!?” the sergeant and Loco both demanded at once, dialing in on Moon.
“How close?” Cloudstorm urged.
Moon stood up straight. It was already too late to take it back. “Less than a mile.” She looked over at Brick. The brown stallion chewed his lip, but nodded. Maybe it wasn’t the best thing to do for their own interests, but it was the right thing... Maybe.
Moon levitated the radio from her barding.
“Snowglobe?”
“Yeah?” the mare’s voice crackled back.
“Now, don’t get mad...”
* * *
“Come on, Sunny!” They all stood upon the cloud far above him, the sun lighting their silhouettes.
“Yeah, come on!” a little blue pegasus yelled before breaking off into a fit of giggles. “What are you? Chicken!?”
From where he sat on the grassy knoll, Sunny flared his wings and glared up at them. “My mother said I can’t! My wings don’t work right and she says I’ll hurt myself!”
“Stop being a foal and come on!” another yelled, poking his head over the edge of the cloud beside the others.
“I can’t!” Sunny repeated, now feeling a little angry.
Two of the colts leaned in close and whispered something to one another. They broke away with twin, evil grins. “Well then,” one voiced, “I guess we’ll just have to tell Spark that you like her.”
Sunny’s eyes shot wide in panic and he reared up on his hind legs. “N-no! Don’t do that!” Spark—his filly crush—was an understanding mare, but her finding out was still enough to basically ruin his life.
“Then fly, you foal!”
Sunny slammed his hooves down in the soft grass. “I can’t!”
They didn’t seem to care. “Get up here, Sunny!”
“Yeah, you wimp, get up here!”
“Get up, Sunny!”
He shook his head frantically. “I want to!” He felt tears at the corner of his eyes. “But I can’t! Please listen to me!”
“Get up now, Sunny!” The vision blurred and he felt a pair of hooves pressing down on him.
“I can’t,” he groaned.
The hooves shook him violently. “Sunny, get your ass up or we’re both dead!”
The urgency of the yell shook him out of his slumber.
Groggily, he lifted his head, a groan escaping his lips.
The surrounding commotion drove him to wonder how he had ever been asleep in the first place. Yells and growls filled the air, accompanied menacingly with the banging and groaning of steel as it was strained and abused. The floor below him rocked back and forth. Though he looked for the source of the sound, he couldn’t see anything too well in the semi-darkness, full night only kept at bay by a flashlight upon a seat and the emergency lights in the ceiling.
Emergency lighting? Where was he?
By the orange glow of the two ceiling lights on either side of him in the commontionous —aided slightly by his memory—he safely concluded that they were in a subway car.
He tried to sit up, though pins poked at his vision and he immediately began to sway. A white hoof planted firmly on his front kept him from tipping away to either side. “Oh thank Celestia!” Willow wrapped him up in a bone-crushing hug. “I so worried you would have died, then you wouldn’t get up.”
He thumped her on the back with a forehoof, eyes practically popping out of his skull. “Willow,” he choked, “air... need air!”
She released him to look at his face, smiling stupidly in the orange light. “Welcome back!”
He remembered his forehoof. Like turning on a light switch he became conscious of the pain in his leg and winced; it felt like somepony had skinned it and poured salt on it. Knowing he wasn’t going to like what he saw, he lifted his leg to examine the bite mark. The four little dots arranged in a trapezoid had now gone a blood-red color and expanded to the size of marbles. The flesh surrounding it had gone soft and pink under his coat, swelling slightly around the wound.
“Poison?”
“Something.” Willow hopped out of the way as two of the REA ponies hustled by exchanging a yelled conversation. “The best I could do for the time being was administer a general antitoxin; it didn’t do much, but it helped.” She sighed and looked at Sunny’s wound with irritation. “Unless you’re reacting allergically—which I doubt—I’m guessing you were dosed with some kind of sedative and possibly a hemotoxin.”
Sunny blinked. “Hemotoxin?”
Willow nodded. “Hemotoxin: destroys red blood cells, usually found in certain species of snakes or preying insects such as spiders, which leads me to believe that these Changelings could be blood drinkers.” She patted him on the shoulder. “You’re going to feel a bit woozy because of the spell I used on you.”
Sunny clasped his head in his hooves and groaned. “I thought you said you couldn’t do medical magic?”
“I never said that,” she said with a flick of her ears. “I just said I was never very good, though I did the best I could and I think I got it to work, but dizziness is a clear side-effect of lack of experience on the spellcaster’s behalf.”
“Get us moving!” Sunny’s head shot to Sunbathe, who was a bound’s-length away. She stood before an upturned floor hatch as she looked down, the hair along her spine pricked where it wasn’t covered by her gray barding and battle saddle.
An orange mare who had been ducked down in the hatch lifted her head as a little flash of light illuminated her features. She coughed at the rising cloud of electrical smoke and waved it away with a forehoof. “I’m trying!”
Sunny looked to Willow, now a bit on the confused side. “What’s going on?”
“We got the train moving and we were almost to the station when something went wrong with the electricals.”
Sunny gave a fearful yell and scrambled away from the window behind him as something heavy impacted the other side. He spun to see a white unicorn pressing itself against the glass. It pounded its hooves at the surface for a second, then reared back and slammed its head into the glass. The thing’s stub of a horn stabbed through the laminated glass and a spiderweb formed around it.
He turned back and fixed his fearful eyes on Sunbathe. “We need to move!” He remembered the rifle on his battle saddle, then remembered a second later that it was empty.
“We’re trying!” The golden mare sneered at him. The irony.
Both their eyes shot to the metal ceiling as a heavy banging sounded from above. There was a hiss and a thud and a small dent appeared in the roof, silt raining down into the car.
“Well hey,” Willow said with a worried, hopeful laugh. “At least they don’t have huge claws like they do in the movies.”
“The fuses are all shot!” the orange mare yelled. She tossed a few glass cartridges over her back and they shattered on the steel floor. Growling, she grabbed a bundle of wires in her teeth and yanked, neck straining. They snapped a moment later. “I’m routing the battery power directly to the motors!”
More of the safety glass began to crack and bend as the car they refuged in was surrounded. Sunbathe danced on the tips of her hooves. “I don’t care what you do, as long as it gets us moving!”
Sunny could barely keep up with the orange mare. She was tying wires off so fast with her hooves and teeth that she was one step below a blur. She paused to say, “Oh, it’ll get us moving, then bit down on the connection between two wires. There was a little crackle of electricity between her teeth and she spat out the wire, flicking her tongue. “I just have to bypass all the safeties.”
The back window burst inwards and the two ponies watching it opened fire. The changeling that had been shoving itself through the small gap fell limp, its body half in, half out of the window.
“Wire cutters!” The orange mare yelled. “Anypony have wire cutters!?”
Sunny shook his head at her, and so did Sunbathe and Willow, along with two more of the REA ponies and a civilian.
The orange mare hefted half inch thick cable and stared at it with repulse. “No knives, a saw, nothing?”
The entire roof above them folded in with a heavy bang and a crunch. At the back window, two more changelings were trying to fight past the gunfire.
“Shit.” The orange mare raised the wire and opened her jaw wide. Growling, she snapped down on the wire and ground her teeth. There was a bright flash and a pop from her mouth and the mare’s head whipped around to the side. Coughing and spluttering, she spit out the separated ends of the wire and ducked back into the hatch.
A moment later, there was a crackle and a dull hum as the fluorescents on the ceiling lit up casting everything back into clear perspective.
Sunny tried not to look out the windows.
There was another pop and loud hum from beneath his hooves that vibrated the floor. He staggered as the car lurched forward, only managing to stay up by grabbing one of the vertical bars connected to the ceiling.
The orange mare lifted herself out the hatch, then coughed and spat a gob of blood and four fragmented teeth onto the floor. She looked up at Sunbathe and gave her a pained, bloody smile with the left side of her mouth; there wasn’t much left to smile with on the right side apart from a few of her back molars.
Willow dug in her bag and levitated the mare a small needle wrapped in a white package, and in turn, the orange mare stared at it incredulously. “It’s for the pain,” Willow said. “Once the adrenaline wears off you’re gonna be in rough shape.”
The orange mare took Willow’s gift with a small nod and sat down against the wall, gasping for breath.
There were crunches and squelching sounds from the wheels as the car battled forward and Sunny could only assume what they were from. The electric motors whined with power as they hauled the car forward.
“Sweet Celestia.” Sunbathe let out a long, shaky breath, then slumped down against the wall beside the orange mare, who was stuffing her mouth with paper to stop the flow of blood. “I’m done with this subway shit. Just let me out.”
Sunny watched out the window with rising trepidation. Support beams were flashing by in the two forward lights, each one a little faster than the last. “I think we’re going a little fast.”
The orange mare spit out the paper to speak. “That’s our problem.” Blood ran from her lip and she coughed, spilling it down her front. “I wired the battery directly into the motors to bypass the fried electrical systems.”
Sunbathe widened her eyes. “What does that mean for us?”
The mare gagged and made a face like she was going to vomit. “That means this train isn’t going to stop when we ask it to.” She spat another glob of blood off to the side, landing it in the lowered part of the floor in front of the door. “There’s a whole series of points and bends at Platinum Hoof station... We won’t make it past there.”
Ember, who had been listening in on the entirety of the conversation, brought herself over from where she had been sheltered behind a rack of seats. “Any of you ever been in a train crash?” She sat down next to Willow and adjusted her hotsuit so as to sit more comfortably.
She was mostly ignored. “Well, can’t we just pull the power when we’re getting close?” Sunbathe asked.
The orange mare shook her head, wincing. She took this time to jab herself with the needle Willow had donated. “These systems were never meant to be overridden. Pull the plug and the motors go rampant. There’s still power to the Iron Hoof station because there’s still power in the third rail, but it’s the wrong polarity and—”
“Get to the point!” Sunbathe snapped. She was now watching out the window as well.
“If we get any unregulated power from the third rail it’s going head directly to the motors, and without any electrical control, they’re going to spin forwards. We’re going backwards!” She coughed. “If that happens, friction will pull us right off the rails and spin us around. We’ll go into a roll.”
The car blasted by an illuminated sign along the tunnel wall that read, ‘Platinum Hoof’. “Well,” Sunny pitched in unsurely, “I’m no master of physics here, but if we hit the corner fast enough, the car should just fall on its side and slide, right?”
“In a perfect world,” the mare grumbled.
“Hang on to something!” Sunbathe yelled to the others on board.
The tunnel walls gave way to open space supported by pillars. They blasted through a loading station oriented around a shallow, lefthand corner and sparks hissed from the wheels of the subway car as it pitched to one side. A moment later it returned to vertical .
Through the lights, Sunny spotted the corner the orange mare had been referring to. He was no expert, but his mind glued the facts together. A train going this fast would not make a corner that sharp.
All around in the station ahead, lights flickered and blinked, lighting up portions of other tracks, and in the very center, a massive support of concrete with a row of glass elevators fitted in the side.
He didn’t get any more time to think. The subway car hit the start of the sharp corner and he was jerked heavily to the left. Frantically, he grabbed a vertical pole and squeezed it for dear life. The car hopped and pitched left, balancing up on the leftside wheels as it left the track and set its own course across the concrete.
The ponies inside the car howled and yelled. Willow found her own pole to hold onto beside Ember and Sunbathe had gripped one of the seats firmly beside the orange mare. The others were close by, holding on to what they could as the floor started to become a wall.
He nearly lost his grip on the bar as the engine crashed down on its left side, what was left of the glass shattering and bursting upwards as the concrete below tore it to shreds. Sparks lit up below him as he hugged the bar with all four legs, teeth clenched. Why did subway cars have to have such big windows? Now, if he were to fall, the outcome would be similar to that of riding the world’s largest cheese grater.
Ember lost her grip across from him, her hotsuit proving a poor choice for holding firmly to steel. It was Willow who managed to catch her. The white mare’s hind legs wrapped around Ember’s middle and the mare’s eyes bugged out like the life was being squeezed from of her.
Sunny couldn’t hear anything over the scream of steel, but watching the scene was pure torture. Willow had both forehooves wrapped around the vertical bar that was connected to the roof and floor. She swung back and forth, face contorted in effort as Ember dangled below her, the tips of the mare’s hooves less than a foot away from the gap where the window had once been.
The entire car shook as it struck something, certainly not enough to stop it, but enough to slow it down. Sunny found himself flying forwards, his hooves holding on to nothing. He had barely gotten out half a scream by the time he smacked against another bar. He got one hoof around it, spun a complete circle, then fell to the ground which was the left wall of the train car.
It was by Celestia’s blessing he had landed between windows on a one foot strip of steel.
Something new was happening. He was sliding down the floor, which was actually the wall, to the wall, which was actually the floor. There was a crash and his belly turned upside down, and next thing he knew, he was falling up. His head smacked the roof, which was now the floor, and his vision went blurry. Again, the floor stopped being the floor and he found himself falling in another indistinguishable direction.
He caught one of the support bars with his brow and the lights went out.
* * *
“Snowglobe, I—”
“Shut up. I’m mad at you, Moon.” She glared out the windshield at the tracks whipping by. The stallion who had semi-vulgarly introduced himself as Loco sat just to her right beside the driver’s seat, gnawing at the end of the stub his cigar which seemed on the verge of burning right into his mouth. “And could you put that out?” she snapped, waving the putrid smoke away from her face.
Loco grumbled something and spat the stub out the open window to his left. “Fine, I’ll switch to vanilla. Before Snowglobe could protest, he drew out a new cigar and and silver lighter.
“What was I supposed to do?” Moon deflected.
Snowglobe turned back to her. “Oh, I don’t know...” She huffed and went back to watching the tracks. “You could have stuck to the plan and not told the army about our engine.” She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Which I might remind you is our only means of safe transport if this city goes south.”
Everypony but Moon and Brick had remained at the station at Moon’s request, and for good reason too; this mission seemed to be another suicide mission in a whole chain of suicide missions that they had been on so far.
Cloudstorm was along to lead the operation—which Snowglobe had learned had not been authorized by the army—and Loco had come to drive the train despite the fact that Snowglobe had already established herself as the driver.
She sighed and raised her forehooves to massage her temples. “So, just to recap this wonderful plan—we’re taking our locomotive, hooking it up to a line of passenger cars, driving it through a deteriorating zombie-infested city that happens to be a complete warzone to save a bunch of ponies stranded in a skyscraper, then drive back through a zombie-infested city?”
Cloudstorm, who had been half-asleep against the back wall of the cabin, nodded through closed eyes. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
Brick nodded from where he sat silently in the corner of the cab.
Moon’s eyes found Cloudstorm. “You’re kind of in charge here... Shouldn’t you be... awake?”
The sergeant only shrugged and remained slumped against the wall. “I was at the end of my shift when this whole bit of nonsense went down.” Her words started to slur slightly. “I’ve been on duty almost twenty-four hours now. If there’s sleep to take, I’ll take it.”
“Right here.” Loco pointed his hoof off to the left and Snowglobe’s eyes followed.
“Right where?”
Loco huffed a cloud of vanilla-scented smoke and rolled his eyes. “Move.” Without waiting for a her word, he moved over and pulled her out of the driver’s seat with surprising strength.
“Hey, what the—” She glared daggers at the burly earth pony as her legs kicked at the air. “This is my locomotive!”
He set her down beside the seat and settled himself in front of the controls. “Yeah?” Leaning back against the rest, he placed one hoof over the throttle. “And I highly doubt you know what buttons to push to make her scream the loudest.” He hit two switches on a control board to the upper left and a light ahead on the track went green. “Electronic pulses through the track designed to interface with any class switching system installed within the last ten years.” He huffed. “Never did like this layout. Who in their right mind puts all the controls on the left side of the cab?”
Snowglobe had to admit—Loco could drive; even when he wasn’t paying attention he could drive. His hoof never left the throttle as they switched off the mainline and onto a track that tied into a railyard. It was a moment before the view out the leftside window turned silver and Snowglobe realized they were passing a line of streamlined passenger cars.
Loco cut off the throttle and moved his hoof to the brake a moment later, nudging it softly whilst never taking his eyes off the track ahead. “We’re gonna have to make this fast.”
In less than a minute, the experienced trainpony had them through another switch and backing towards the line of silver cars they had just passed.
Snowglobe braced herself for the impact with the couplings, though felt rather silly when the engine jolted lightly enough to be missed completely if one hadn’t been expecting it.
Loco had seen it too. The gruff stallion smirked around his cigar and gave her a sideways look. Though she could see he was trying to cover it up, he was insulted. “You might crash the couplings, but don’t expect anything but the smoothest ride from me.” He smacked the airbrake and the engine gave a loud hiss as the lines purged, then gave Snowglobe a lopsided grin. “Loco’s still got it.”
Celestia, he was sizing her up!
Snowglobe crossed to the front of the cab and pushed open the door below the windshield that led to the staircase down through the nose of the engine. Once at the bottom of the steps, and relieved to be out of Loco’s presence, she pushed open the lower door to the windy and cloudy day. The door slammed against the side of the engine, ripped from her magic by the wind, and immediately her short, purple mane was thrashed.
Before she even stepped down from the platform above the wheels, she froze. Twenty fully armed and armored REA members stood before the engine in two lines of ten.
“Cloudstorm!” Snowglobe yelled backwards through the door. “I-I mean, Sergeant... I think these ponies out here are for you!” Cloudstorm had said this mission wasn’t approved. Were they here to intercept? As long as they got the engine back she’d be okay with it.
There was the clanking of hooves on metal steps, and a second later Cloudstorm poked her head out beside Snowglobe. “Who assigned you lot?” she asked with a frown, casting her eyes across the row of ponies.
Snowglobe made sure to listen as she trotted back to tie off the brake lines. A stallion at the lead of the group stepped forward with a courteous semi-bow. “Sergeant, we heard your radio exchange. We want to help. Every one of us is at your service, Ma’am.”
While before Cloudstorm had looked confused, now she wore a proud grin that hovered on the edge of cheeky. “It’s an honor.” She slated her expression. “Okay, ponies, here’s the deal. We will be traveling through infected portions of the city in order to reach the elevated station of the tower. I want you lined up periodically along the cars on the coupling platforms and on the roof. From what the stranded said over the radio, there’s a lot of ponies there who took refuge. What REA are with them are burnt out of ammo and the only thing keeping them alive is luck. I don’t care if we’ve got to turn this car into a Tetris platform, we’re getting everypony on this train.”
Snowglobe finished coupling the air lines and waved her hoof at Loco’s reflection in the mirror.
Cloudstorm nodded in affirmation to the group of twenty at attention. “Okay, get on board! We leave now.”
By the time Snowglobe was back on board, the engine was humming up a storm as it pulled forward. Loco was patting the console from the hotseat, grinning. “This engine sure is a beaut.” He turned his eyes to Slipstream. “The gauge is tellin’ me this thing only has a two hundred hours on the motor.” He slapped the dash, then went to business. “The points’ll lead us back to the main line. We gotta make this run fast.”
“Right...” Snowglobe fell back on her rump and looked around as they hummed off. All of a sudden, her presence seemed rather useless. Loco could drive an engine ten times as well as she ever could, and she was too damned scared to even pick up a firearm. Her eyes found their way to Moon, then to the semi-automatic, drum fed shotgun Cloudstorm had gifted her holstered to her barding, then to Brick with the massive chaingun. Cloudstorm had two nickel-plated pistols on either foreleg and Loco had his earth pony shotgun.
She looked down to the revolver in it’s holster on her inner-left foreleg. It was fully loaded, as it had been since Dusty had given it to her. He hadn’t left her with ammunition, so apart from the six bullets in it, she had nothing. “Valediction,” she muttered sourly. The situational irony tied to the name was painful. Why was it so hard? Levitate, aim, pull the trigger. Yet she was afraid to.
She was nothing but a tagalong—the gay mare who’s afraid of guns. The only reason she was alive was simply because she had been in the right place at the right time. Had she not received that message on the intercom to meet staff in the basement for repairs she would have died in the hospital. Without her friends, she was a zombie.
The floor below her vibrated warmly as the engines worked away, the throttle at full. “Aren’t you worried about gem consumption?” she asked with a little frown.
Loco shrugged. “A bit, but we’ve got enough.” He flicked his ears and grabbed the hat off his head, scratching his neck with the bill. “But if there’s one thing the REA has plenty of, it’s gems. We just don’t have anything to use ‘em on.” He flipped a switch on the console and a little light in the readout went from red to green. A second later, the signal light ahead did the same. “Hey Cloudsy, how much time we got left?”
If Cloudstorm had heard the tease, she ignored it as her eyes remained focused on the massive tower. “Enough. Just don’t let off that throttle and we’ll be fine.” She chuckled dryly. “Knowing the army, I’ll probably get a medal for being a hero and a court martial for using outside help to do it.”
Moon looked at Cloudstorm for a long while. “Do you think they’ll be able to save the city?” she asked in a near whisper.
“Don’t ask me,” the sergeant replied with a shake of her head. “I don’t want to jinx it.”
* * *
To the ponies at Platinum hoof—” Willow jerked to attention, head spinning like a top and her body aching like a broken heart. There was a soft groan of metal from below her as she shifted her weight away from her pained ribs. She couldn’t really see, not with the white light that flickered on and off in the darkness, just enough to be blinding. She stood up and rubbed her head, looking this way and that.
Ponies lay all around her in all different forms of disarray. Most of them were moving in some way, but a few weren't... How hard was it to survive a train crash? “Everypony okay?” she croaked, then grasped her head. “Shit... no more crashing things.”
The radio buzzed from Candy’s back as the striped mare leaned up against the roof of the tilted car rubbing her shoulder, Cotton right beside her. “—Get yourselves ready ‘cause we’re parking a train right up your puckered flanks!” There was a crackle, then the speaker switched to a formal mare who reminded her too much of the receptionist back in the hospital. “All ponies that are not already on the twelfth floor platform need to get up here. The train’s not going to wait!” She wasn’t talking like a receptionist. She was talking more like she was in the middle of running a marathon.
Willow didn’t leave much time for thought. She exploded to her hooves and tried to rally them all. “We have to go, now!” This was simply too lucky. Something would go wrong. Something had to. She spotted Ember leaned back against a seat, nursing a wound that had almost sheared off her good ear. Somehow she’d found a healing potion, and was looking rather greedy while drinking it. “Ember!” she screamed, running over to the mare. “We’re under Platinum Hoof, right? That’s what they said?”
Ember looked up at Willow and nodded, then winced. “Shit, I think I smashed my head through a window.”
Willow scanned the dozen or so ponies in the car. “Sunny!” She staggered forward in the flickering light, stepping over the bloodied body of a mare. “Sunny!” She yelled a little louder.
“Here,” came a choked voice. Willow spun on a dime to face him. He was on his hooves, but barely it seemed. The skin on his forehead had split along the left brow in a classic, blunt impact shear. “I am so tired of getting knocked out.”
She gave him a smile and a little nod before turning back and making her way around the scattered seats and recovering ponies. She kicked the emergency door open with a small grunt and hopped out into the much more comfortable semi-darkness of the subway central station.
The subway car had parked itself on the station platform. From the look of the carnage beyond, it had hopped the tracks, then gone into a roll up onto the station. The cars that had been coupled behind had sheared off in a different direction and accordioned up against a support pillar. Willow was once again struck by the awe of just how lucky they were.
Platinum Hoof Central Station lived up to its name. Even in the emergency lighting, the place was magnificent. There wasn’t a spec of dirt around and the polished marble station platform reflected whatever lay upon it, even in the mid-darkness.
Candy stumbled onto the platform, attempting to both carry Cotton and listen to the radio at the same time. She looked tense. “Willow, we’ve got twenty minutes, tops!”
Willow rubbed her head again as Sunbathe emerged leaning on Ember’s shoulder. “Okay, let’s go, now.” Twelve flights of stairs in twenty minutes? It sounded grim. “Everypony out here, now! We’re not waiting for you!” Sunny appeared immediately and the others began to exit in states as good as unscathed all the way down to practically missing a limb. Three remained, dead. Now, the question had arisen. “Think we can make it?” she asked Candy in a hushed voice.
Candy looked up from the radio, her eyes two orbs of worry. “I think so.”
Willow looked around. This had to go perfectly. It just had to. Across the station was a flight of marble steps that lead up. “Welcome to Platinum Hoof!” a sign declared proudly above the walkway.
Too good to be true.
“It’s nonsense.” Sunbathe whimpered under her breath, shaking her head to Candy. “We’re all too beat up to make it that far that fast... We’ll just be killing ourselves faster... Our chances are better if we stay here—find another way out.” Her words were enough to stomp out the flickering candle that was hope, and almost as one, the survivors slumped.
Willow examined those still alive. They’d formed in a circle, getting the brief from Candy as the ponies that did have healing potions guzzled them. Candy stood strongly on all fours, despite a swelling front knee. The fear was all but gone from her eyes, instead they boiled with determination strong enough to win a war. Cotton sat to her side, looking battered and out of place. Then there was Sunny; the flightless pegasus looked like he’d fallen into hell and dragged himself back out again. Ember was beside him, still wearing her silver hotsuit, her scared face matted with blood from her ear. Sunbathe looked the worst; everything about her screamed resent and fear. She’d rather be anywhere but here, but after all, they all would have taken that deal. There was only one civilian left, a blue mare that cried a little away from the group of REA ponies counting ammunition.
She felt bad for them. The enhancements to her own body allowed her to cheat out of most pain and at least physical misery, but these ponies had to suffer it on high. She stood a little bit away from the circle. They had to go now! ...But nopony moved.
So this was it? They were just giving up? End of the line? And she, Willow, was going to let it happen? No matter how she tried, she couldn’t bring herself to speak a word. Instead she took a step back, towards the platform. Should she go? If they didn’t, she would. She could made it. And so be it she’d drag Sunny along with her.
“You know what!” An orange mare declared suddenly, pushing to her hooves and racking a round into her battle saddle. “I haven’t even gotten laid yet. I am not dying here!” She showed a smile of broken and shattered teeth. “I can’t give up now.”
Sunny limped over to stand by Willow’s side. “We’ve been through too much to just die in a tunnel. I don’t care what they do, we’re going, Willow.” He actually sounded... disgusted.
Cotton stood up next, and despite a torn shoulder, made her way over to where Willow, Sunny, and the toothless REA member stood. “Call me a coward... but I don’t want to die.”
Ember was next. “Way I see it, if I die down here, I’ll never be cremated.” She gave a cruel little laugh and lit the pilot light on her flamethrower.
One by one, they all stood, until Sunbathe was left alone on the cold marble, bleeding, tired, and alone. She looked around and laughed once, bitterly, then began to stand. “Well fuck it.” She grinned, raising her head a bit. “I guess it’s worth a—” There was a guttural hiss behind her. She may have been injured, but she was still fast. Sunbathe spun on a dime and fired her automatic into the dark, six muzzle flashes lighting up the moving form of a green unicorn. It staggered, bullets ripping out its throat and face before it was lost to the darkness. Somepony flicked their light on, illuminating the twitching zombie on the ground.
Sunny gulped. “Where there’s one...”
“Go!” Sunbathe hollered, lunging forward in an unsteady gait. “Leaving. We’re leaving!” the others didn’t have to be told. As one they moved, Willow hanging at the back just to make sure everypony was making it.
It was astounding how fast Sunbathe had gone from a broken mare ready to die in a tunnel to a semi-fearless leader. She looked like she’d been thrown into a whirlwind holding a bag of glass shards. One of her automatics had been crushed in the saddle she wore, and either Sunbathe didn’t realize or didn’t care. Despite the battered groups’ assorted hardships and injuries, they took the stairs two at a time.
The stairs from the Platinum Hoof station led up into something Willow could only call a pre-station. The marble steps gave way to beige and red colored tile that stretched a grid pattern far across the floor. The place was one massive gift shop, and there, at the other end, were the elevators and decorative stairs. And of course, Elevators were out of the question considering they didn’t operate on emergency power.
Willow silently cursed the architect who’d designed this floor. Ponies were forced to walk all the way across the gift shop when leaving or heading to the station. She had to admit, it was clever, but it was also screwing them. As the their group thundered across the room, they passed preserved booths sporting trinkets and rugs and any sort of attire long since abandoned.
Time flies when you’re having fun. Willow snorted. She would have to rewrite that phrase. Maybe, time flies when you’re trying not to die.
It wasn’t long before they were to the next flight of stairs, then up another. Finally, they were at ground level. The final flight had broken off into a grand hallway that welcomed them to Platinum Hoof with some sort of a sign every ten feet or so; happy goodbyes were printed on the reverse sides. And there, at the end of the hall was a double set of wooden doors. Four ponies sat just at the end of the hall. Willow couldn’t see their faces, but from the way their heads were turned they definitely had their eyes on the thundering mass of ponies.
Sunbathe skidded to a stop just before the doors, a yellow mare barring her way with a worried expression. Willow stopped beside the both of them as their hoofsteps died down to a more gentle clatter.
“Come on,” Ember growled below her breath. “Let’s go!”
“What is it!?” Sunbathe snapped to the yellow mare, patience non-existent. “Why aren’t you on the twelfth floor?”
“The lobby’s locked down. They got in.” Her eyes were sunken and sallow. The other three looked the same way. “We ran the wrong way, locked ourselves in here. The rest made for the station.”
“Well then let’s go!” Sunbathe moved up and braced her hooves on the pipe that the survivors had bent around the door handles.
“E-excuse me?” The mare fell off to the side without resistance. “N-no wait, no! You can’t open that. The lobby’s full of them!”
“Die in here or face dying for safety, your choice.” Sunbathe grunted as she tried to unbend the bar. She stopped for a second to dig a small pistol from her saddlebags then tossed it on the floor before the mare. “There, now you’ve got a gun.”
Willow moved up to help, but just then Sunbathe gave a heave and the bar untwisted. She moved up beside Sunny instead, sitting just close enough to him that their coats brushed.
“Ten minutes!” Candy stressed, grabbing the pipe with Sunbathe, the two mares freed it from the door handles and kicked open the double doors.
It was magnificent, the feeling only slightly undermined by the infected milling about. The ceiling was easily eight stories high, every inch of chiseled stone that had been hung from the walls leading up to form an arch and pillar system on the roof that served for both decoration and structural integrity. There were six elevator doors on either side of the place running from the entryway to the massive reception desk made of polished redwood. And there, to the right of the desk, was a red sign depicting a staircase with a down and up arrow.
Ember screeched a battle cry, then lunged forward. Willow didn’t try to count the zombies in the lobby, but there were a lot. It was by luck that the path between them and the stairs wasn’t crowded. Sunny’s rifle barked and blew the brains out the side of an infected mare’s head. Willow had to admit he was getting pretty good with his aim. She’d love to have him with the semi-automatic shotgun they left Appleoosa with.
Next thing she knew they were all on the move. Ember ran in the lead, strafing both sides with streams of fire that built them a somewhat effective wall of protection. Sunny picked off zombies with single shots from the rifle, proving very effective with his aim. Sunbathe walked just behind Ember, her working automatic firing in bursts. Willow used her hooves. A mare jumped through the wall of fire at the toothless orange mare and Willow met the zombie with a furious yell. She hit the mare like a tank and tackled her to the floor, smashing her esophagus with both forehooves before battering her face in.
The survivors gave her worried looks. Willow couldn’t blame them either.
They managed to reach the stairs without loss, though more than a couple of weapons had clicked on empty and the infected they were holding back were steadily creeping closer. Ember reached the steel emergency door first and yanked it open, ushering everypony else inside. Willow and Sunny were dead in the middle of the pack as they pushed into the tight stairwell and started up the concrete steps.
“Clear!” Sunbathe gasped, half-dragging a civilian into the stairwell. Ember jumped back in attempt to pull the door closed, but a red hoof lodged itself between the door and the frame. Ember struggled with the door for a second, then shook her head.
“Get clear!” The burnt mare sprang away from the door and chomped down on the bit of her flamethrower, pointing the nozzle at the doorframe. The nozzle hissed, then spat a small drizzle of fire, and that was it. Her eyes widened in horror as the red hoof wrenched the door open and a bulky stallion charged into the stairwell.
Willow was already at the top of the first flight by the time she realized what was happening. All she could do was yell as Ember backpedaled, then tripped over the first step leading up the stairwell and rolled like an overbalanced log onto her back at the base of the stairs. The red stallion’s eyes never left her as it charged.
Sunbathe lunged in from the side, seemingly from nowhere. Although the zombie stallion was twice her size, she still hit him with enough force to knock them both up against the wall. They both bounced off the wall and went to the floor. Ember scrambled to her hooves and took a short step forward before backing off again, eyes wide and scared.
Sunbathe and the infected pony resembled little more than a swirling mass as they sparred on the floor. Somewhere in the middle, Sunbathe lost her ground and wound up on her belly, the zombie above pinning her shoulders as it tried to steady her enough to make a lunge for her neck.
Willow yanked the pistol out of its holster on her foreleg, aimed down the sites right as the thing reared its head back, then tried to fire an empty chamber. She dropped the gun as her mouth fell open to scream.
Its jaws clamped down on the back of Sunbathe’s neck and the mare screamed like a terrified filly. She squirmed and writhed, chomping down on the bit of her battle saddle. One remaining riffle on her back chattered to life, ripping holes though the zombie’s neck. It screeched and pulled back, taking with it a good chunk of torn flesh.
Willow stared blankly down the stairwell as Sunbathe threw the dying, twitching zombie off her back and began to stagger up the stairs, crying, shaking her head as her uneven hoofsteps echoed around the small space.
“Thanks...” Ember said dumbly, offering her shoulder to Sunbathe. They traveled at the back of the group; Willow made sure to walk just ahead of them, that dull, empty feeling still filling her gut. Sunbathe’s blood drizzled down the silver leg of the firesuit in a thin line that trailed on the floor behind the two. The golden mare’s coat began to drain of its color, going a more sickly manilla.
They’d only managed to get halfway past the second floor when the sound of the door failing below echoed up the stairwell. Ember groaned as she limped up the stairs, almost fully supporting Sunbathe. Her injuries were getting to her it seemed. Willow stopped, readying to move back to help them.
“Stop!” Sunbathe choked She pulled away from Ember at the top of the second flight and staggered up against the wall. “Stop! Just go!”
Ember acted like she wanted to argue. “I... I’m sorry...” She swallowed and took a step away from Sunbathe. “T-thank you.”
Sunbathe nodded as she pushed herself away from the wall and eased towards where she could look down the stairs. “Go, now.”
Willow couldn’t bring herself to look back as she fell in behind Ember. The burnt mare wasn’t sobbing, but she looked close. her eyes were shiny and wet, tears right at the brink of falling as she made a choking sound in her throat. “It’s okay,” Willow said in a small voice, trying to comfort her friend.
A single gunshot echoed up the center of the stairs. Willow almost staggered. Then there was another, and another. Zombies screamed and howled, and soon those gunshots became small bursts of automatic fire. Even upon reaching the seventh flight, Willow still heard the ominous click of a firing pin striking air.
Sunbathe screamed. It was a terrible, blood curdling sound that sent shivers up Willow’s spine and forced her to fold her ears. Ember gave a dry sob. Sunbathe screamed again, and again... and again. It wasn’t until they hit the tenth floor were Sunbathe’s cries cut out. Her last scream was cut off with a gurgle, then the only sound was thundering hoofsteps.
Nopony deserved to go out like that. It was a hero’s death that ended with nothing but agony... It wasn’t right. No matter how much death she’d seen, Willow still couldn’t swallow the fact that the timid, golden mare with the long brown mane was laying six six stories below, most likely being torn limb-from-limb by those things.
Nopony deserved that.
Willow left Ember behind. With an internal growl, she put on as much speed as she could, forcing energy she barely had into moving her hooves. She passed the others, one by one, gritting her teeth as she charged. She wanted her body to quit, to fail, but it wouldn’t; it just kept going on. She lost track of what flight she was on, simply running. She blew past Sunny, and he yelled something to her that didn’t make it from her ears to her brain.
“We’re a minute past the deadline!” Candy yelled, starting to stagger. “Still... still no word on the... the radio.” She cursed breathlessly, then gave a buck that sent the radio tumbling down the stairs behind her before putting on an extra burst of speed.
Willow ran right past the number twelve on the wall and was halfway to the thirteenth floor before somepony yelled for her to come back. In somewhat of a daze, she turned and started to head back down. Strangely enough, it was harder to go down than up.
She ended up running beside Sunny as they poured out onto the fourth floor in a carpeted hallway lined with offices. There was nothing, no ponies living nor dead. The halls were just empty. Willow took it in stride. Empty was better than full of zombies.
“What kind of a... maniac!” Sunny panted. “Puts a train station twelve stories in the air?”
“The kind with a lot of money,” Willow panted back.
The hallway they were currently in broke off into something more along the lines of a plaza, a wide, domed hall that ran through the center of the building. Benches sat back-to-back down the middle length of it and colorful decorations had been painted on the tiles then glazed over.
The mare they’d picked up down at the lobby entrance, who so far was proving to be the most athletic of them all, rocketed around the corner, skidding on the tile out into the plaza, a gray stallion right on her tail. Suddenly, the chatter of a machinegun filled the cavernous space and Willow got a rather unpleasant sight of the mare’s guts blowing out. Her hooves slipped out from under her and she landed with a thud on her side. The stallion right behind her skidded to a stop and tried to turn back, but a single bullet struck him just above his left eye and his head snapped back. Down he went.
“Cease fire!” Candy hollered, sliding up to the corner and waving one hoof down the hall.
“Cease fire!” a mare yelled farther down the call. “Cease fire! They’re ponies!”
Willow stepped around the corner beside Candy with a grimmace. Those two had died for nothing. There were ten or so REA ponies lined up at the end of the plaza, a barrier of benches erected before them and the station platform behind that. A mare sat behind a machinegun, barrel smoking softly as she stared out ahead with a horrified expression.
“Where’s the train!?” Sunny yelled, hopping over the body of the mare and the spreading pool of blood. Willow followed, choosing to step around.
“It’s not here!” One of them yelled as they neared.
Willow’s mind jammed a cog somewhere “What do you mean it’s not here!?” She skidded to a stop at the barrier beside Sunny, eyes blazing.
“I mean it’s not here yet!”
Her mind didn’t quite seem to be registering the words spoken. “...Well then where in the name of Luna’s gaping asshole is it!?”
* * *
“Well then fix it!” Moon snapped at Loco
The flustered driver mashed the brake release with his forehoof, but it was already disengaged. “I’m tryin’!” He tapped the air pressure gauge, which was hovering at about four pounds. “We’ve got a break in the air line.”
Snowglobe practically tackled Moon out of the way to get at Loco. “Well can we fix it?”
Moon chewed her lip. They’d had to stop in order to throw another set of switches and manually override the gates. The brakes had engaged fine, but trying to release them was a whole different story.
Snowglobe and Loco had a rushed brainstorming moment that ended with them both nodding at the conclusion, then Loco dug under the console and pulled out a roll of duct tape a couple ring clamps.
“Cover us, Moon!” Snowglobe called behind her as she and Loco scrambled down the stairs in the nose of the cab.
Moon scrambled after them, levitating her shotgun and bringing it to bear as she reached the door at the bottom.
“Why would it break?” Snowglobe fretted as she ducked down low and peered under the engine as she walked. “It’s hardly even been run according to Dusty. Everything’s new!”
“Exactly,” Loco replied grimly. “Damn thing’s still teething it’s so new.”
There were a few zombie pegasi within shooting range, though they didn’t seem to be bothering anypony. Moon preferred to keep it that way as she strode to the front of the engine and sat back, scanning the tracks ahead. She looked to the nose of the engine and grimaced. The aluminum streamlining was crinkled and dented, smeared with dried blood and chunks of hide. “It probably wasn’t meant to be a zombie weed whacker either...”
Loco and Snowglobe had both disappeared, crawling underneath the engine. Moon sighed. They didn’t have time to wait.
“Well damn!” Loco’s muffled voice reached her from below the carriage. “There’s a dead pony tangled in the hoses. No wonder it ain’t workin’.” Moon jumped and spun as a gargled scream took over. She flipped the safety on the shotgun as Snowglobe’s eep of shock reached her ears. A throaty shotgun blast sounded from below the engine. “Shit... well it’s dead now!”
Cloudstorm hung her head from the window. “Come on! Every second we’re stopped here is another second we lose to our plan!”
It was only five minutes until the two finally emerged, though it might as well have been hours. Snowglobe and Loco pulled themselves out from under the engine, both looking rather content and a little dirtier than they’d been before.
From here their view of the Platinum Hoof was obscured, but she kept throwing glances to the spire that stuck out above the rest. Back up in the cab, everypony held their breath as the brakes disengaged and the engine began to roll forwards.
“Ten minutes late, ten minutes,” Cloudstorm was whispering frantically under her breath. “We’re cutting it too close!”
It wasn’t long until the open maw of the elevated station came into view and Loco let off the throttle.
Moon held her breath.
* * *
“Get me another magazine!” Sunny called over the roar of gunfire.
Willow threw him a tiny glance away from the scope of the carbine she’d taken from a dead officer. “Last one, Sunny!” She levitated the clip, ejecting the old one in Sunny’s rifle and slotting the new one.
For one brief second, Sunny closed his eyes. There were screams and shouts, orders mixed with cries of pain or fear. The air reeked of gunpowder so thick one could taste it by simply opening their mouth. His ears rung with the never-ending fire of at least thirty different weapons and the inequine screams of anger they brought. The purr of two light machine guns were the most prominent over it all, firing in short and precise bursts.
He’d never been in a warzone before, and now that he was, a sort of cold appreciation was all he could feel.
Sunny opened his eyes.
There were at least two to three hundred ponies on the platform. Out of that number he’d estimated only twenty of them to be REA, more unbelievably still was that there were hardly even enough weapons to distribute amongst the officers, let alone start arming civilians. Between them all, he counted fifteen rifles, ten pistols, one flamethrower, two light machine guns, and two snipers. Ammo was a whole different story.
The station platform was an excellent defense point; it was a wide, nearly three hundred foot long slate of polished marble tile with only one entrance: the fifty foot wide central plaza that ran all the way down the center of the twelfth floor and tied directly into the the center of the station platform at a ninety degree angle. The ponies in possession of firearms had lined up behind an impromptu barrier of benches and other bits of clutter gathered from the station.
The station was also a perfect place to get trapped.
Sunny aiamed as well as he could in the commotion. He tried to aim for the zombies other ponies weren’t already aiming for; it was useless to put a bullet in a zombie that was already falling. Every shot had to count, and hopefully they’d last out until the train arrived... if it was even coming.
Ember stood atop the barrier, spraying liquid death down upon anything within a twenty-five foot radius. Her presence and ring of fire was not just one of the few things keeping them from being overwhelmed, but it was a morale boost if anything to see the strong mare perched above them, fire glinting in the protective face shield of her helmet as she turned anything that moved into a four-legged torch.
Fighting all together like this, it just felt right. It wasn’t over a feud, or an argument, or any sort of resources. They were fighting for their right to live.
Sunny squeezed the bit in his mouth and nodded in slight confirmation as a silver mare’s head snapped back and she dropped. Her purple mane waved out around her for a second before settling on the bloody floor. Who had she been? Had she had kids? A husband?
He fired again and downed a stallion who looked old enough to be dead before the infection had even struck. Had he had grandkids? Maybe a wife or middle-aged kids who visited him on weekends?
Sunny gave his head a tiny little shake. Of all the times to get sentimental, now was not one of them.
Whenever he spotted a changeling, it became priority. From what he’d seen, changelings took zombie nastiness to a whole new level. It just plain didn’t seem fair.
“It’s not coming!” the yellow mare beside him yelled as she took aim with the light machine gun. Aiming with the handles, she pulled the trigger and fired a burst that cut down a whole line of infected charging from a doorway. “The train isn’t coming.” Again she fired, the stallion next to her feeding the belt. “The train isn’t coming.” She took a second to wipe the grime from her brow. “We’re dead!”
Nopony seemed to see the black creature that dived down from the roof until it’d tackled the mare back from the gun and clamped it’s fangs down into her face. The stallion beside her jumped away in shock and pulled a pistol from its holster. He emptied the entire clip into the changeling, the bullets going right through it’s scaly hide, through the mare, and pitting the marble below.
“There’s too many!” a burly stallion yelled as he backed away from the barrier. His carbine barrel was actually glowing.
“Gee, I had no idea!” a mare wearing some sort of flak jacket replied around the scope of her sniper rifle. “I thought we were going to invite more!”
“Somepony get that thirty back up!”
Sunny blinked. Nopony was taking over for the dead mare who’d been on the machine gun. “Got it!” he yelled, scampering over to the heavy weapon and heaving it back up onto the bench. A fragile-looking blue mare in REA barding skidded to a stop beside him and heaved the ammo container back upright. “I’ll feed you!”
Sunny took the two handles of the weapon in his forehooves skeptically and sighted it. Pulling the trigger, the thirty caliber bucked him like a mule and rattled his teeth. It fired off five bullets before the belt—which had been broken when the gun had fallen—ran out. Still, from those five bullets he counted seven kills, eyebrows rising a little. What had ponies ever had to use something like this for before the infection?
The little blue mare pulled open the breach and fitted the ammunition belt in the slot. She did something fast with her hooves that Sunny missed, then slammed her hoof down on the top of the gun. “Good to go!”
Sunny took careful aim and pulled the trigger. His entire body shook as he tried to keep the weapon in line, every bit of his strength keeping the barrel lined up. He let off and blinked through the plume of smoke at the trail he’d cut through the infected.
He did his best to strafe wherever the line was lacking most, beating back hordes of infected with the ear splitting chatter of the thirty caliber weapon. The blue mare sat dedicatedly beside him, feeding the belt through her hooves as Sunny spun the weapon this way and that. Once he got into it, started leaning into the shots, it really wasn’t all that bad apart from the headache.
“What’s your name!?”
He glanced over to see the mare looking at him with a curious eye. “Sunny Skies!” He looked back down the sites and pulled the trigger, clenching his teeth.
“Private Lance!” she returned once he’d let off the trigger. Her eyes looked him up and down, lingering for quite some time on the black saddle he wore. “...Where’d you get that saddle?”
“You mean the one I’m wearing!?” He yawned, ears popping painfully under the compression.
“Yeah!” The mare looked a little closer. “That’s a first edition combat saddle issued to high-ranking officers of the REA. They only ever made twenty of them!”
He’d never really thought about it, but now he was sure he’d never seen another saddle like his. The gun was starting to get hard to handle and he tried to go back to focussing on that. His teeth chattered it seemed even when he wasn’t shooting.
Lance seemed to hesitate. “Because that one was my father’s.”
Sunny’s heart skipped a couple of beats and he felt his mouth go dry.
“You came from Desert Sage, didn’t you?”
He nodded after a second. There were even more zombies in the hall now, too many to count. And the air around the barrel of the thirty cal was starting to shimmer.
“Is... is he dead?”
Sunny gave her a look. It was a look somewhere between pity and apology, and it said everything. He silently urged her not to ask how.
Lance averted her eyes. “I thought so...”
“It’s here!” Somepony cried. “I can see it coming!”
A few in the line broke away, and immediately the effect was clear as the somewhat meager distance between the barrier and seemingly never ending horde got a little shorter. “Stay in line!” Ember bellowed back at them, fire dripping down her front as it leaked from the nozzle. “Let the civilians board first! If we all run at once nopony’s gonna make it out of here!”
He could feel the heat radiating from the weapon in his grasp. The air shimmered from breach to barrel all around the weapon, yet there wasn’t time to stop and let it cool. As more clips ran dry, their defense seemed to be relying more and more on the two thirties strafing the hall. There was roughly twenty feet of no-pony’s land between the zombies and the barrier, but that distance seemed to be getting smaller by the second. From somewhere behind him, he heard the squeal of brakes.
“This gun’s gonna overheat!” he yelled to Lance.
The mare tossed a look around, then sighed and dug in her saddlebags and pulled out a pristine bottle of cider. She gave it a longing look, then smacked it on the edge of the gun and popped the cap off. Sunny watched the steam rise as she poured the apple-smelling liquid over the breach, then down the length of the barrel. He tasted apples in the air and the smell sent his mouth watering, but it did it’s job, at least for a moment.
As the seconds ticked on, Sunny found himself unable to even let off the trigger. His forelegs felt like jello and his ears rung. More than once he flinched as a smoking shell landed on his back or brushed up against his hoof. Every few seconds, their defense would crumble a little more. When ponies either got tired of standing and defending or ran out of ammunition, they’d back away and make for the train.
“Is there a damned zombie beacon in this station!?” Willow growled. “Hey, every zombie in Equestria, come to Platinum Hoof!” She’d used up her carbine and was now levitating two pistols which she fired in unison.
Ember was no longer being precise with her weapon. She sprayed fire out into the masses, forming a protective ring around herself as the infected actually threatened to pass her by. Sunny really hoped everypony was on the train, because at this rate, he gave their defense another twenty seconds.
“Sunny!” One of Willow’s pistols went dry and she hurled it out into the crowd. “We have to go!”
“Not yet!” Lance was looking at him worriedly. It looked like she was readying to bolt. There was gunfire somewhere behind him, and he realized that there were a lot of zombies falling from shots he couldn’t see. A glance back confirmed it. He didn’t catch how many, but a whole line of ponies in riot armor stood atop the train cars, firing down the hallway, over Sunny’s head as well. The thought was both pleasing and not.
A lucky zombie broke through what little defense remained and mounted the barrier Willow dropped it with the last round in her pistol.
Sunny couldn’t do much else but stare, hypnotized, down the smoking barrel of the thirty caliber. How many had he gunned down now? He couldn’t even count. Everywhere the weapon turned, anything in its path was ventilated, yet it still wasn’t enough. He could still hear the echo of the other thirty, but it came in bursts, slow fire. Before them, the bodies were actually starting to stack. They weren’t just littering the ground; they were stacking. He wouldn’t have ever believed it had he not been the one with his hoof on the trigger. Blood washed under the barrier and around his hooves like water just beginning to crest a dam, warm and pungent.
Two sharp blasts of a horn sounded behind him and a second later came the hiss of brakes disengaging. “All aboard!” somepony yelled in some sort of cruel irony. “Cash in your tickets for the long black train!” Well if that wasn’t a gloomy prospect.
“Sunny!” Willow smacked him atop the head with her forehoof.
The machine gun chose that moment to seize. The barrel melted down and the next bullet blew it apart in a wave of shrapnel that jerked the barrel up and rammed the two handles into Sunny’s chest. The slide tried to cram the next bullet in at an angle and the thirty caliber round jammed in the breach. All at once the powerful weapon went from an essential asset to scrap metal.
With nothing else to do, he turned and ran, Lance and Willow by his side. To his relief, and horror, he had been one of six ponies still trying to defend; the rest were cramming for the train cars, which were now beginning to creep out of the station. The other thirty cal had been abandoned by the crew, nothing remaining but spent casings and a smoking gun. With the loss of their last machine gun, the line crumbled, everyone still brave or stupid enough to hold their ground falling back. Ember hopped backwards off the barricade, then lit the entire row of benches aflame. The protective glass plating of her helmet had been cracked one way or another and the suit’s front had been blackened. Nonetheless, she took slow and precise steps backward, lighting up everything in front of her.
“Ember!” Sunny hollered, following Willow up onto the hoofplate between the second to last and last car. “Faster!” There was no doubt that the train was packed. There were so many ponies that some had actually climbed up onto the roof.
Everypony was on board as the train began to pick up speed, still moving no faster than a light trot. Ember was the only one still on the platform, and now Sunny could see she was moving as fast as she could while still laying down fire. She couldn’t simply just turn and run. The horde they had been holding off surged over the flaming barrier, going for the only pony still on the platform. Gunfire still sounded from above, the REA ponies unloading entire clips into the mass. It still didn’t help.
“Ember!” Willow yelled, hoof tapping wildly. Sunny made sure to stand just a little in front of her. Last thing he wanted was Willow charging out into that mess. With no ammo left in the weapon mounted to his saddle, nor the pistol on his foreleg, the most he could do was watch. She was only about fifteen feet from the train now, but she couldn’t just turn and run. She’d built herself a ten foot space bubble of fire that was rapidly shrinking. Were it not for the hotsuit she would have combusted from the swirling inferno.
Suddenly, Ember broke off. She hopped backwards, flamethrower still trailing slag as she reared up to make the run. Sunny almost expected it, really. At that moment, a zombie mare burst from the wall of fire, body completely ablaze as she landed square on Ember’s back. Ember jumped and tried to shake the zombie. Writhing, biting, it lunged and chomped down on a rubber hose running along Ember’s back. Flame blossomed from within the zombie’s mouth, then everything went up with a fwoosh. Flame licked across the platform and rose up into the air, swirling alongside the train.
Sunny closed his eyes as he felt the hair on his face begin to curl. He grit his teeth and sighed. Willow screamed Ember’s name, then slumped up against him.
He watched the fireball, shaking his head. He was getting so tired of the death. He’d only spent a few hours in the presence of the mare, but it’d felt like an eternity. It was hard to lose somepony you’d fought alongside.
Something moved within the dying inferno. Sunny’s eyes shot wide as pony stepped out of the flame, completely alight with fire that licked up their legs and body. The shape staggered forward, nothing but a ball of fire with legs and a head. “Willow!” Sunny yelled. “It’s her!”
The train was just rolling past as Willow stared open-mouthed at the flaming mare. A second later she took flight for the back of the train. Anypony unlucky enough to be in the aisle was tossed as Willow steamrolled past. Sunny followed in her wake, making hasty apologies.
When they reached the back of the train, Ember was running, still on fire, though Sunny could see parts of the suit poking through where the kerosene had burned away. The only issue was that she was running out of platform and the train was speeding up. Sunny waved frantically as Ember neared, reaching over the rail to hold out a hoof. She was right there, now at full gallop as they raced out of the station. The horde hadn’t given up either. It seemed as if all of the forces in Equestria had conspired to keep Ember off the train.
“Come on!” Willow yelled as she pounded the railing. She wrapped one hoof around Sunny’s waist. “You grab her I pull.”
Ember lunged and missed, falling back a stride or two. Sunny tensed. As cliche as it felt, there was only enough platform left for one more try, after that Ember would be meeting a very decorative wall. Ember lunged, and her hoof met Sunny’s with the smell of burning hair and the sizzle of flesh. Sunny screamed as he tried to pull Ember aboard. He’d forgotten about his injured leg, and he certainly remembered it now.
Willow heaved and yanked him back, and for one horrifying second, Sunny was sure he’d lost his grip. This wasn’t the case however as a silver fireball knocked him to the ground. He squirmed out from below Ember and beat away the fire that had lit on his belly.
Ember rolled onto her back and shook the helmet off with a deep gasp of air. The respirator had completely melted, along with the faceplate. The brown mare writhed and whimpered on the floor as her suit all but melted to the steel hoofplate below. The helmet tumbled away off the back of the train. “Get this suit off me!” Her eyes were glazed and her voice was parched, but overall she seemed okay.
Ignoring the dying flames, Sunny and Willow helped her drag her body out of the melted suit. Immediately, the smell of sweat and charred fur hit Sunny like a train and he almost staggered.
Ember groaned and staggered to her hooves, eyes watering. Sunny glanced over at her; she was....
Sunny balked. Ember had the shape of a mare he’d only seen in magazines. Vicious burns and scars covered most of her right side, if that even mattered... She had broad, strong front shoulders that led down to muscular forelegs. She was one step above toned, muscle visible under her flesh but in no way obnoxious. Her breast was firm, and like the rest of her, one, tiny step above toned. The way her belly curved drew his eye to her lithe midsection and muscular haunches. His eyes continued all the way down her back legs to her rear hooves. And all of this was in a mare that stood three inches shorter than he.
Willow tapped the side of his head with a forehoof. “I know Sunny, but you really need to show a touch of subtlety.” She reached up and closed his jaw for him. “You’re drooling.”
That snapped him out of it. he sputtered at Willow for a second. He was lucky Ember’s eyes were still too glazed to really see anything. “Water,” she rasped. “Water... now.” She shook her head and let out a crackly laugh. “I can’t believe I did that!” She perked her left ear and the remnants of her right ear kind of flicked a little. “That was so awesome! Dear Luna I thought I was dead...”
Sunny pulled his eyes away from Ember and watched off the back of the train as they left the Platinum Hoof behind. “Pretty soon, we’re just going to run out of luck.”
Willow sighed and propped herself on the railing beside him. She nodded and closed her eyes.