Chapter 4
The night air above Summerside Military Base shimmered as a massive portal shrieked into existence, spewing arcs of magical, otherworldly energy onto the concrete below.
Dozens of zombies that had the misfortune of being directly beneath the portal or became attracted to its howl from nearby were instantly vaporized by a blast of magical lightning as a small, equine figure fell flailing and screaming from the vortex and face-planted in a pile of singed clothing.
Twinkleshine awoke to the dying light of the portal, vanishing as quickly as it appeared. The smell of burning fabric and melted Kevlar pricked her nostrils as she pushed herself up, body bruised and head spinning.
“Celestia save me” … Twinkleshine thought groggily as she made it to her hooves.
As her mind began to clear, the events that led up to her rather ungraceful landing began to swirl up from the depths.
Each memory was like a far-flung puzzle piece that had to be pulled from the deep and re-oriented before being added to the big picture.
As the picture grew clearer and clearer, however, Twinkleshine liked what she saw less and less.
The strange guidebook in the Canterlot Library.
Moondancer’s spell.
That horrible glowing maw.
Twinkleshine’s stomach churned. Something had gone horribly wrong with Moondancer’s spell and now she was…
“Where am I”?
She tried to bury her rising anxiety as she forced her disoriented brain into gear and looked around.
A brilliant full moon shone down on the surrounding land, illuminating rolling green hills studded with trees that formed a bowl around where she now stood.
Closer in, tall gray walls stood between her and the inviting hills, creating what Twinkleshine figured was some kind of compound.
To her left and right where several low buildings. The two on her right reminded Twinkleshine of the Royal Guard Barracks outside Canterlot and if this was a similar place, then the two buildings on her left could well be the armories.
In each of the four corners was what looked like a silvery-grey watchtower.
“So a Royal Guard outpost then”? She mused. “Why would that strange little book send me here”?
"and where are the others"? she wondered.
Twinkleshine had heard of things like this before. Gag books with a spell on them that would teleport the reader to some pre-set location or even into the story itself. They were popular as prank items for surprise birthdays and the like.
In fact, there was a store in Canterlot that sold comic books like that. Perhaps one of their gag books had ended up in the library somehow.
“But why a guard outpost”? Twinkleshine wondered.
Without any answers, she returned to looking around for any clues to why, and more importantly it occurred to her, where.
At the far end of the compound, a tunnel led underneath the hills and out beyond them to where Twinkleshine could make out just a hint of water flickering in the moonlight.
Behind her, there was a gaping hole in the gray wall where a large tracked vehicle that reminded Twinkleshine of a construction crane had presumably smashed through before rolling on its side.
Between Twinkleshine and the strange vehicle, however, a massive figure stood with its back to her.
It was the same size, if not slightly larger than a Minotaur and it certainly had a similar albeit somewhat blockier shape and build.
Twinkleshine considered calling out to it but a nagging feeling in the back of her mind made her hesitate.
She was about to approach the creature instead when she noticed nearly a dozen smaller creatures with similar Minotaur-like builds standing around the bigger one.
Of those, nearly half were facing her and for the first time, Twinkleshine became keenly aware of two things.
One, over the sound of crickets and the soft breeze that ruffled her coat, a chorus of low, eerie moans and snarls were emanating from not just the creatures behind her, but from all around the compound.
And second, the eyes of every creature facing Twinkleshine glowed a terrible, maleficent red.
One creature in particular, seemed to be staring straight at her from the far side of barracks, its horrid eyes boring into Twinkleshine’s as her blood ran cold with a rising sense of terror.
Surrounding her, all over the compound and dotting the hills that had once seemed so peaceful, twin pinpricks of evil red light seemed to stare back in a way that was both listless and somehow predatory all at once.
The anxiety that Twinkleshine had buried deep within turned to outright terror and came racing up to her throat as she stumbled back with a choked whimper of fear only to trip on the tatted remnants of a charred uniform.
There was a harsh growl from behind.
Twinkleshine’s blood froze and with and an overwhelming sense of dread, she slowly turned to look through the dark, gaping doorway of the nearest armory.
Out of the murky gloom, a pair of terrible, red globes glared back at her.
With a strangled cry, Twinkleshine spun and tried to gallop away from the horror in the dark.
Instead, she tripped again with her legs thoroughly tangled in the charred uniform.
Heart hammering in her ears, she finally freed herself from the offending garment with a frantic kick as the creature emerged from the armory.
Its eyes ablaze, the creature clawed its way towards Twinkleshine and as she stood frozen in morbid fascination.
The creature wasn’t a minotaur. In fact, Twinkleshine realized, whatever it had been, it wasn’t one anymore.
Zombies were a thing of sci-fi horror and Twinkleshine wasn’t a fan of either genre.
Unfortunately for Twinkleshine, her friend Minuette adored both.
Many a sleepover with the girls had seen Twinkleshine cowering under the blankets while Minuette told tales of ghouls, ghosts, and zombies.
Zombies…
The red eyed creature before Twinkleshine couldn’t be anything else.
It’s terrible growls and moans, the rotting flesh poking out from holes in its tattered uniform and hanging from its blocky yet emancipated frame, its movements, jerky and listless yet driven by a singular hunger for flesh.
But this one wasn’t tucked away in whatever part of Minuette’s mind it was that held her grizzly stories.
This one was here and now.
Twinkleshine’s pupils dilated to pinpricks as she shrieked in terror at the realization, just as she remembered how in all of Minuette’s stories that the screaming pony was always the dead pony.
Her scream became a choked gurgle as she backpedaled away from the crawler, wishing to Celestia that she could take it back.
But the damage was done.
Twinkleshine felt what little hope she had wither and die as all around her, a chorus of menacing growls and moans answered her cry.
Like ants to a dead animal, dozens of terrible red eyes began to close in around her.
With her heart in her throat and her mind descended into a haze of panic, Twinkleshine had a moment of clarity.
When Minuette finished one of her stories, she would sometimes end by saying; “You don’t have to be the fastest galloper, you just have to be faster than the other pony”.
And gallop Twinkleshine did, faster than she had ever gone before.
The walls of the compound became a blur as her vision narrowed to focus solely on the tunnel at the far end, beyond which the moonlight glinted invitingly off the water beyond.
If she could just make it to the water, all would be well.
“Can zombies swim”? Twinkleshine banished the thought before it could cement itself and galloped even faster.
She would look for a landmark, and if need be, flat out gallop all the way to Canterlot.
Then she was at the gate and there was a guttural snarl to her left.
A zombie on all fours lunged at her, and with an agility that surprised her even under the circumstances, Twinkleshine spun on her forelegs and bucked it in the head.
The zombie’s head exploded on contact with her hooves with a sickening squelch before the rest of the body dropped like a sack of rocks.
Her stomach churned at the feel of zombie brains coating her hind legs, but she was so close.
A sudden burst of confidence came to her at the sight of one of her demons splattered across the concrete.
“I might just make it”! Twinkleshine thought as the moonlight beckoned from the end of the tunnel like a ray of hope.
Suddenly, there was a piercing growl from directly in front of her and Twinkleshine stumbled back just as a zombie materialized out of thin air to swipe just inches from her muzzle with its flat, blocky, appendages.
“What in Tartarus”!? Twinkleshine yelped at the zombie that had appeared before her in as much indignation as fright.
“Zombies don’t have magic”! She whimpered at the Flanker as it vanished and came at her again with only an ethereal purple outline, blazing eyes, and moaning cry to betray its presence.
Whatever confidence she had gained melted away at this new threat and with more zombies closing from the front and rear as well as from both flanks along the outside of the wall, her only choice was to turn and run right back into the compound.
Twinkleshine was trapped, the zombies had encircled her and now the only way to go was into a corner beneath one of the metal watchtowers.
Exhausted, she bolted to the ladder and began hauling herself up with muscles that now felt like lead as the adrenaline from her dash to the gate drained away and the all-consuming panic returned.
The growls of her assailants gave Twinkleshine the strength to haul herself over the lip of the hatch and into the tower before collapsing in a heap.
There was nowhere left to go.
Suddenly, she heard a sharp click, like a heavy latch opening and closing and when Twinkleshine looked up she was blinded by a hard, white light.
-
Life had been going rather well for Sergeant Jack Winds, Or as well as one’s life could be going during a zombie apocalypse.
His zombie-proof elevated bridge between Summerside military base and the nearest town had been coming along nicely, He had secured more ammunition from the base’s armory, and on his way back from the bridge project, he had found some wild berries to compliment his MRE lunch.
But then he had to go and push his luck.
In an effort to further deprive the Beret Gang of whatever hardware was left at Summerside, Jack had gone back to the armory to check some of the unopened storage lockers in the back.
The Beret gang was a mixed group of convicts and Canadian army deserters who had taken over O’Leary prison in the chaos of the outbreak.
Their territory stretched all the way from the lighthouse at Cape Rock to the southern outskirts of Alberton and they backed up their claim with the firepower of Summerside’s looted arsenal.
Bullets, however, are a finite resource.
In the Beret Gang’s attempts to wrest control of PEI’s eastern side from rival gangs, they were in constant need of more ammunition. Thus they kept coming back to Summerside to scrounge for whatever they had missed the last time.
Though on his part, Jack did not make things easy for them.
As a proud member of the Canadian military (and to his knowledge last surviving member and ergo highest ranking officer) of the 37th Royal Canadian Engineers Regiment, it was up to him to defend what was left.
A Claymore behind the door frame here, a landmine or two in front of the boom gate there, retreat to a safe distance, and watch the fireworks.
But the Beret Gang was getting tired of losing limbs and they were starting to play it safer.
Jack had been halfway between the barracks and the armory when the sniper spotted him.
He had been moving slowly as to avoid attracting the zombies still scattered around the base and had been caught out in the open when the first shot rang out.
The powerful, high-caliber round had smashed into the upper left half of his Kevlar vest, driving the wind from his lungs before plowing into his shoulder blade.
His first thought was pain, blinding, excruciating, all-consuming pain.
So was the second.
His third thought, however, was centered more on the sincere wish to never experience such a feeling again.
In accordance with that thought, Jack had hauled ass back towards the watchtower with his bridge, clutching his now useless left arm with his right and zig-zagging all the way in order to throw off the sniper’s aim.
So yes, life had been going rather well for Sergeant Jack Winds, up until he found himself trapped in a guard tower without even a rag to stop the bleeding and a great, gaping divide smashed in his escape bridge.
It would seem that the Beret Gang had finally decided to put him down for good.
What irked Jack the most, however, wasn’t the fact that he had been shot. He had come to terms with the harsh reality of the apocalypse a long time ago.
It was the simple fact that thanks to his good mood from lunch, he had overlooked the importance of returning to his base and restocking on supplies before heading out again.
Supplies like bandages, or extra food or that matter.
Jack could just see the camouflaged roof of his homestead above the hills and gave a sad chuckle.
"so close and yet so far away".
How long Jack lay there in the tower he couldn’t say.
It had been just after lunch when things went pear shaped and shortly after discovering the Beret Gang’s “modifications” to his bridge, Jack had passed out from the pain.
When he came to, the full moon was high in the sky and he felt drained, both mentally and physically.
Not only had he had nothing to eat or drink since lunch, but he was still losing blood.
Jack watched his life bloom in rust colored shades from his shattered shoulder and ooze down his vest to pool on the hard metal floor.
“So this is it then”? He mused with a sudden sense of sadness at the finality.
“I’m going to die”.
“Not by zombies, succumbing to the infection after a heroic last stand against overwhelming odds”.
“Nor even by an enemy bullet”.
“But by my own momentary flippancy”.
With a weary smile, Jack took in the beauty of the night sky for what he figured was the last time before closing his eyes.
Suddenly, a blood curdling half scream, half whinny pierced the darkness.
For a moment, Jack almost believed it was Death on his pale horse before he shifted and the stabbing pain in his shoulder brought him jolting back to the land of the living.
Propping himself up on his good arm, Jack could just make out what was happening in the darkness beyond the tower windows.
The undead were in the midst of their full moon craze as they chased a shadowy figure towards the front gates.
After a scuffle near the tunnel, the commotion grew in volume as whoever was being pursued turned and made a b-line for his tower.
“Got to hand it hand it to the Beret Gang”, Jack thought with a sigh. “They never leave a job unfinished”.
“Though they must think I’m dead of they sent a new, unarmed recruit”.
Cursing under his breath with each movement, Jack managed to pull his Mapplestrike assault rifle from the Alice pack leaning against the wall beside him with only his right arm.
“Let’s prove them wrong”. He thought grimly.
The shadowy figure hauled itself over the lip of the hatch and collapsed as Jack gripped the gun barrel between his legs, pulled the charging handle and activated the tactical light before propping the gun up on his kneecap.
“Let a guy die in peace will you”…
-
“Out of the frying pan and into the fire, ” Thought a resigned and utterly spent Twinkleshine.
“I don't even know what happened to my friends”.
"I didn't even get to say goodbye"...
The undead remains of the Canadian army swarmed beneath the tower, their growls and moans filling the night as Twinkleshine screwed her eyes shut, tears of fear and remorse streaming down her cheeks.
She covered her head with her hooves against the piercing light and waited for the end.
It never came.
Twinkleshine slowly uncovered her head and cracked an eyelid in anticipation of the glaring light.
What she saw instead caused her to open both eyes wide with fright.
Sitting slumped against the wall of the tower was what at first glance appeared to be another zombie.
It was bleeding heavily from its blocky left shoulder and wore a slack-jawed if somewhat stupefied expression that was partially hidden by a full beard and mustache.
his eyes weren’t glowing, though, and his skin though pale, still retained some color.
“Zombies were once living creatures”, a small part of Twinkleshine’s mind provided.
“This must be what all those monsters outside once looked like”.
Indeed the creature before her was similarly clad. he was wearing the same green military fatigues and sported a thick Kevlar vest like its undead counterparts still howling away beneath them.
The only discrepancy was that instead of a green military helmet, the creature wore what appeared to be a yellow construction helmet.
Another Minuette horror fact occurred to Twinkleshine which brought the fear that her momentary curiosity pushed aside racing back.
“Zombies are created when they bite a living creature or become infected”.
Looking back at the wound on the creature’s shoulder, Twinkleshine felt her stomach churn.
Whatever this minotaur-esque creature was, it didn’t have long.
And when that happened, neither would she.
-
Jack stared uncomprehendingly at the impossible creature before him.
The army had trained him to be ready for anything come hell or high water.
But what the tactical light on his gun illuminated was not in any training manual.
In fact, he suspected it wouldn’t be in any book that wasn’t in the section for ages six and under.
Lying on the floor in the beam of the tactical light was a unicorn.
Not just any unicorn thought, a gleaming white creature with a bubblegum pink mane, brilliant sky blue eyes, and pearly white horn protruding from its forehead.
It struck Jack as odd that the unicorn didn’t quite conform to equine proportions.
Though to be fair they were a creature of legend and fairy tales so how should anyone know what one really looked like?
The most noticeable feature besides the horn was the eyes.
Proportionally to the rest of its body, the unicorn’s eyes were massive, and the depth they held was uncannily human. They stared at Jack with a mixture of fear and curiosity.
Jack stared back for a moment more before the absurdity of the situation hit him.
It started as a small chuckle in his stomach that by the time it had worked its way up to his throat was a fully fledged guffaw.
"Death rides a pretty pink Unicorn!" Jack laughed, as he addressed the unicorn through tears of mirth, "Have you come to take me to cotton candy hell"?
Twinkleshine wasn't sure what to make of the minotaur-esque creature. All she could tell was that judging by the tone of its voice and facial hair that it was male. The Creature's laughing and what had it said about Death and Unicorns had put her on edge again, but she could see how every movement he made was jarring the wound and causing him the grimace through his mirth.
"Are you ok?" she inquired but of instinct before realizing what a silly question that was.
For a moment Jack could have sworn the Unicorn had just asked whether he was ok or not.
This sent another wave of mirth washing over him and another series of jarring stabs down from his wounded shoulder.
"I've been SHOT!" he replied between breaths. "Do I look ok"?
"Shot?" Twinkleshine asked, "like by a weapon of some kind?"
"Yes a weapon, and a big one at that"! Jack replied before a sudden thought struck him.
"does Death's unicorn have a name?" He wondered aloud.
There was a moment of silence before the Unicorn answered in a small,frightened, feminine voice.
"Twinkleshine".
Jack was silent for a moment longer before he burst out laughing a third time, the sound of his mirth aggravating the swarm of undead beneath the tower to no end.
"It's too much," Jack thought as tears ran down his cheeks. "The pale horse of Death is actually a little pink and white Unicorn mare named Twinkleshine"!?
"I guess since we're doing this, I should introduce myself". Jack thought as he shook his head in mirth.
"Sergent Jack Winds aka Stormy, 37th Royal Canadian Engineers, reporting for death"!
"Who would have thought dying was going to be this entertaining?"
Despite Jack's confusing laughter and the rather awkward situation on a whole, Twinkleshine felt a small wave of relief wash over her. he was injured but hadn't been bitten.
Jack's introduction also confirmed Twinkleshine's hunch that the compound of horrors around them was or at least had once been a military base. Though her hope's of being near Canterlot or even in Equestria anymore were beginning to slip. She had never seen a creature like Jack before nor did she have any idea what a Canadian was.
"Perhaps that's what kind of creature Jack is". Twinkleshine mused.
Meanwhile, Jack's fit of mirth had re-opened the gaping wound on his shoulder and his blood was once more pooling on the tower floor.
The blood loss was starting to get to him.
"Listen," Jack slurred to Twinkleshine as he began to see double." Are we going soon, cause I'm not feeling too hot and I'm ready to get this over with."
Twinkleshine still couldn't quite figure out what the Jack was talking about. Where did he want to go, why was she so funny to him? None of it made sense.
The one thing she did understand, however, was that he was dying.
Casting aside any remaining shreds of reservation, Twinkleshine got up and trotted over to Jack who was now slumping back against the wall and murmuring to himself in a semi-conscious state.
"How can I help"? Twinkleshine said while giving him the most comforting look she could.
She knew a bit of first aid and failing that, she would make Jack as comfortable as she could, keep an eye on him, and hopefully, by the morning the nightmare howling away beneath the tower would have vanished with the sun's first rays.
Or even better yet, this whole ordeal would turn out to be a dream and she would wake up in Canterlot Libray, surrounded by her friends.
As she approached to get a closer look at Jack's shoulder, however, something he was mumbling caught her attention.
"Medkit was right there"...
"Stupid, stupid, stupid"...
"should have been paying attention"...
"So close and yet so far"...
The words "medkit" and "close" sparked a sudden hope in Twinkleshine.
If there where medical supplies nearby, perhaps she could save Jack.
A quick inspection of the tower and the heavy alicepack leaning against the wall yielded no sign of any medical supplies and with that, Twinkleshine's hope died faster than Jack was.
Beneath the tower, the moans of dozens of undead soldiers reminded her that even if all the medical supplies in Equestria where just below her, there would have been no way to reach them without being torn to pieces.
Twinkleshine felt her heart sink.
She had looked at Jack's shoulder, the wound was unlike anything she had ever seen or heard of before, even in her friend Minuette's most grisly horror stories and it made her stomach churn.
It looked like Jack's shoulder had been stabbed clean through with a spike. From the front, all Twinkleshine could see was a remarkably neat hole. But when Twinkleshine eased Jack forward with her magic and looked at the wound from the back, it looked like the spike had exploded on its way out.
What Jack really needed was a professional doctor, not her.
"But I'm the only one here aren't I" Twinkleshine sighed as the hopelessness of the situation settled in.
"If only my friends were here, Moondancer would have known what bones were damaged and where to start". Twinkleshine thought with wistful remorse.
"Lemon hearts always had a knack for dealing with stressful situations, and Minuette at least can handle blood better than I can".
Looking up at Jack once more, Twinkleshine suddenly realized the Sergent had stopped mumbling and was now deathly pale in the white light cast by the little flashlight on his oddly shaped weapon.
With a surge of panic, Twinkleshine leaped to her hooves and shook Jack's good shoulder.
"C'mon, stay with me!" she pleaded.
The thought of being left alone in this strange and frightening place had suddenly become more than she could bare.
For a moment there was no response.
Then Jack groaned and turned face Twinkleshine with a quizzical expression.
"You still here," He asked before chuckling softly. "Is there a queue at the pearly gates or something?"
"You said something about a medkit," she questioned gently. "Can you tell me where it is?"
For a moment, Jack's seemed to lose focus before slowly re-surfacing and replying.
"Oh yeah, tons of medical supplies, in my little hideout just over the hill, that's what makes it so funny you see."
Jack coughed, his throat dry with dehydration before continuing.
"I was feeling a bit too confident today and forgot that I'm just flesh and blood."
"Well old Jack rolled the dice and now he is paying the price". He finished before sitting back again with a sigh. "Wake me up when it's my turn for judgment".
"I'm so tired".
Twinkleshine shook Jack again and with a sudden surge of courage that she would later attribute to tempory insanity, She looked Jack in the eye and said,
"Where is your hideout?"
Jack barely seemed to hear Twinkleshine as he gestured out the window towards the hills before his head slumped forward and he fell still.
For a moment, Twinkleshine thought she had lost him, then she noticed the slight rising and falling of his chest.
It was now or never.
-
It seemed like a millennium had passed since Twinkleshine and her friends had used Haycart's method to enter the Unturned Survival Guide. While some of the more vivid events like her friends disappearing into a red, glowing demon maw would be forever etched into her mind, one memory rose up from the depths as Twinkleshine wondered how she was going to get out of the tower and past the hordes below.
Lemonhearts had been looking at a section labeled weapons and while Twinkleshine had been looking through the "how to build a shelter chapter" with Minuette, Twinkleshine could remember Lemonhearts and Moondancer being interested in something called a Makeshift Rifle.
Lying on the floor where Jack had dropped it, was the strange gray and black weapon he had leveled at Twinkleshine when she had first crawled through the hatch.
While it looked different to the image she had seen of the makeshift rifle, the overall shaped and the way Jack had held it convinced Twinkleshine of its purpose as a projectile weapon.
Carefully picking up the rifle with her magic, Twinkleshine pointed the barrel out the hatch in the floor at the cluster of red eyes beneath her and began fiddling with the small catch on the side.
The latch suddenly clicked and the curved gray box on the underside of the rifle nearly fell into the horde of zombies bellow as Twinkleshine caught it with her magic.
The box was thin and as far as she could tell, filled from top to bottom with golden colored darts.
It dawned on Twinkleshine as she levitated the box back into the tower with a sigh of relief that one of these darts going at sufficient speeds would more than likely cause a wound like the one Jack had if it where to hit somepony.
Grunting in frustration, she managed to put the box back in its slot with another small click.
Twinkleshine then found a trigger behind the gray box, but pulling it did nothing.
The last remaining lever Twinkleshine hadn't tried was a handle sticking out from the side.
When she pulled it back, there was heavy and somehow satisfying click.
While she wasn't exactly sure what she had just done, something instinctual told Twinkleshine that the weapon was ready.
Aiming down into the sea of glowing red eyes, she pulled the trigger.
The rifle leaped in her magical grip as it spewed fire into the zombie horde bellow with a cacophonous roar.
Twinkleshine was in such a shock that she didn't let go of the trigger until well after the night had fallen silent.
Her ears rang from the reports as she looked over the lip of the hatch and was greeted by a scene from Tartarus.
Dozens of corpses lay strewn beneath the tower, their forms twisted and distorted by the terrible weapon in Twinkleshine's magical grip.
Levitating herself down from the tower, Twinkleshine landed amidst the corpses with a sense awe and sheer terror.
"What in Celestia's name would Equestria need something like this for?" Twinkleshine thought incredulously.
"If this got into the wrong hooves"...
For a moment, the zombie corpses surrounding Twinkleshine morphed into those of ponies, covered with blood and gaping wounds.
With a horrified whimper, Twinkleshine dropped the rifle like like it was a venomous snake and dry heaved onto the tarmac.
That was the final straw.
This world of horrors that Twinkleshine had found herself in could not be Equestria.
She had had her doubts since she arrived, but the tool of death that lay before her hooves could not exist in the land she called home.
A deep guttural growl caused Twinkleshine to look up sharply as the massive form of the Minotaur sized zombie she had seen earlier came lumbering around the corner.
It was even bigger and more terrifying up close.
At nearly three times Twinkleshine's height, the monster towered above her as it approached, it glowing red eye's boring into hers.
Suddenly, it stopped about twenty meters away and reached down with it's rotting yet massive, blocky biceps to pull a chunk of tarmac out of the ground.
Twinkleshine had never prided herself in lightning fast reflexes, but tonight was proving to be a night for firsts.
She darted forward as the mega zombie hurled its bolder at the spot where she had been moments before.
The boulder bounced across the concrete and plowed into a burning zombie that had just come stumbling around the corner from behind before crashing into one of the tower supports.
the burning zombie went up in a whoosh of flame that cast the Mega in a sickly orange glow a Twinkleshine charged it down.
Just before she would have collided with the Mega's legs, Twinkleshine spun to the left, dodged around him, leaped over the boom gate at the front of the compound, and galloped full tilt into the beckoning green hills.
Finally free of the compound of horrors, Twinkleshine felt her heart soar as she pounded up the grassy slope and around the compound with the faint, pinkish glow of sunrise starting to show in the east.
Her eyes roved back and forth along the ridgeline, looking for anything that resembled a shelter of some kind.
As she galloped along the ridge, Twinkleshine passed under a wooden sky-bridge that at first seemed to be connected to the very watchtower where she had been trapped with Jack
As she went past,however, she realized that a good ten meters of so of the bridge closest to the watchtower had been destroyed.
Distracted as she was by the bridge, Twinkleshine almost missed what she was looking for, covered in ghillie netting and just below the ridgeline, Jack's shelter turned out to be a low and inconspicuous log cabin nestled in among the trees.
When she reached the door, Twinkleshine found it was locked.
This development stymied her for all of several seconds before she remembered that every second she wasted could be a second too late for Jack.
She turned her back to the door and then proceeded to buck it off its hinges.
Inside, Twinkleshine was greeted with a cozy setup that was completely lost upon her as she made a beeline for a stack of crates at the back of the cabin.
She levitated the lid of the first crate and was greeted by the sight of a red box with a white cross in the middle.
Grabbing the medkit in her magic, Twinkleshine stopped only to grab the blood bag that she had spotted underneath the medkit before galloping back out the door.
Instead of heading back the way she came, however, Twinkleshine took the ramp that led up onto the wooden sky-bridge she had seen earlier.
From the top she could see that to her left the bridge crossed the hills and stopped near a town in the distance.
To her right, the bridge made a b-line for the watchtower with only a mere thirty-meter gap between her and Jack.
She cantered up to the edge of the gap and levitated the medkit and blood bag through the tower windows before trotting back a good twenty meters.
With a deep breath, Twinkleshine galloped as fast as she could towards the gap and leaped into the air.
The Ground loomed nearly two dozen meters below her as Twinkleshine caught herself with her magic and levitated herself the rest of the distance.
Landing on the remains of the platform outside the tower, Twinkleshine took a moment to catch her breath before crawling through the tower window.
-
Jack had been drifting in and out of consciousness since Twinkleshine had left.
The roar of the Maplestrike had awoken him briefly, but between then and the present all he remembered were vague memories of the tower's dim interior and Death's Pretty Pink and White Unicorn.
Then the sun rose.
In all of it's warm, comforting glory, the sun crested the ridge that surrounded Summerside Military Base and bathed the compound in golden light.
As the moon vanished, so did the menacing red eyes as the full moon madness left the Undead hordes across PEI.
The whole island seemed to breathe a sigh of relief as a light breeze wafted through the tower window and tousled Jack's hair.
Suddenly there was a noise outside as a medkit and a blood bag came floating through the window and landed beside him.
These were followed by a gleaming white Unicorn with a pink mane and tail who came clambering through the window several moments later.
Jack stared uncomprehendingly at Twinkleshine as he watched her open the medkit and remove a bandage which she began to wrap around his shattered shoulder.
When she finished, Twinkleshine levitated the blood bag up to eye level.
As Twinkleshine consulted the picture instructions on the back of the blood bag, It dawned on Jack for the first time that Twinkleshine was levitating an object and that the same glow that surrounded the object also surrounded her horn.
Jack considered himself to be a man of science and prided himself in being able to explain, for example, why things went boom the way they did.
Twinkleshine's magic, however, seemed to take pleasure in mocking any scientific explanation that Jack knew.
So instead, he decided to try and go back to sleep as Twinkleshine finally figured out how the blood bag worked and got all the tubes connected in the right place.
Twinkleshine carefully inserted the needle into what she hoped was the main artery in Jack's blocky right arm before going to rummage around in Jack's alicepack for some tape she had seen earlier.
Upon finding the tape, Twinkleshine levitated the blood bag up to the ceiling of the watchtower and tapped the top end in place so gravity could do its work.
With that done, Twinkleshine felt a great wave of exhaustion wash over her.
"I did it". She thought sleepily. "I fought off the zombie hordes and saved somepony from becoming one".
"I think I'm getting the hang of this survival stuff." she said to herself with a yawn before curling up next to Jack and promptly falling asleep with Jack's alicepack as a pillow.
As Jack dosed off, the last thing he noticed were three sky blue stars on Twinkleshine's flank that seemed to be part of her coat. But the levitating thing was already too much for his exhausted mind to handle and he decided to save it for when he reached the afterlife.
Fortunately for Jack, his final journey was cut short by the bandage on his shoulder and the blood pumping through his veins from the blood bag.
Instead, he fell into a deep sleep, his dreams filled with the Grim Reaper and his pretty pink and white Unicorn coming to take him to cotton candy hell.