The Trotting Dead : Assemble Towards Fillydelphia

by Tyler-the-Brony

Part 4: Twin Discoveries

Vinyl dug through the ground with both her front hooves, glad that it had rained just the other day so it could be soft on her scarred hooves, still hopeful there might be salvageable potatoes this far down from even the rotten others. Upon seeing that there wasn’t even rotten mush in the ground anymore, Vinyl sighed and trotted away, hoping that corn would be good for supper again.

Vinyl walked for about five minutes before she started to hear the others again. Once she was over the summit of the moderate hill that separated their recent vegetable farm discovery from their current camp a fair few minutes later, she was surprised to see Rarity being swarmed by both Flitter and Dinky.

“What’s up? You find a new weapon or something Rare?” Vinyl called out to the group, causing Derpy to turn her head back towards the group as well, ever the volunteering guard though she was.

“Better. Rarity found some Grapes. And quite a fair share of corn seeds too. We’ll have more than enough for an old world size crop once we settle.” Flitter smiled up at Vinyl, causing Vinyl to smile in turn.

“Good that we’ve got variety, cause the potato hunt only yielded 2 more edible ones.” Vinyl explained as she shrugged her saddlebags off and rolled her shoulders.

Derpy flew over the group a moment later, landing a short ways away and trotting back, picking Dinky up on her back as she did.

“We’d better head out. This farm is tapped. With the corn I got a few days ago, the potato’s Vinyl collected yesterday and today, and the Grapes Rarity was able to sniff out, we have enough for 5 days if we really stretch our tolerance for certain vegetables. Seeds are no good to us if we can’t settle, and while this place could be farmed, it can’t be protected by just us.” Derpy explained, shifting the weight of her spears about as Dinky leapt off and cartwheeled around.

“Where do we head though? Right into Fillydelphia? It’s been 7 months since the Trotters showed up. By this point, the place could be crawling with more Trotters than we have seeds…. No offense Vinyl.” Rarity added, worried she might’ve upset Vinyl talking about the possibility of a dead Fillydelphia again.

Vinyl shook her head and steeled her gaze on the others.

“We have to consider that possibility, no matter how bleak it makes any of us feel, not just me. I don’t see where else we could find decent food though. Back where we came from is the Foal Mountains, and there’s no guarantee Hollow Shades would have anything even if we doubled around to it. Even if Fillydelphia got looted, I’m sure there are some spots that got missed or some spots others could never reach.” Vinyl nodded at the others, hoping they’d understand what she meant by the last part.

“Sounds like you want to try your idea out at last Vinyl. Let’s do it.” Flitter smiled, hoping this really could prove to be a permanent adaption to their scavenging like they all hoped.

***

Three crudely stitched cloaks, made from different sized bed sheets, were spread apart a ways on the ground in front of Vinyl, Flitter, and Derpy on one side, with Rarity on the other. The smallest cloak was Vinyl’s, with Flitter taking the next largest, and Derpy with the largest cloak overall. Sweat poured off of Rarity and Vinyl as they held down three a single Trotter on each cloak.

“These ones should have at least a half decent amount of blood left in em. They only had tiny bites on the ankles, and no other injury where they’d have bled.” Derpy spoke out, hoping to give what they were doing a greater sense of reality.

Flitter merely nodded and danced back and forth on her hooves, in both fear and anticipation of what would happen next. Vinyl looked up and over at Rarity, who nodded in turn.

Vinyl loudly exhaled, extinguishing her magic completely as Rarity proceeded to hold all 3 Trotters down on the ground alone. The strain on her face instantly increased and the struggling of the Trotters became much more noticeable. Taking only two short breaths, Vinyl trotted forward and flared her horn bright again.

Vinyl blew an immense hole through the entirety of each Trotters skull, instantly allowing their bodies to go limp on the ground. Rarity heaved as released her magic at last, trotting forward slowly afterwards, unsheathing her blade as she did.

Vinyl efforts had not been in vain as Derpy’s assumption had been right. A large amount of blood and grey brain matter was splattered across the top portion of each cloak underneath the corpses of the Trotters.

Vinyl now backed away from the cloaks to give Rarity the space she needed to work. Rarity twirled her blade about each of the Trotters, looking for the indications she needed. A few minutes later, Rarity held her blade in place above her and looked over at the others.

“Most of the arteries are still intact on all these Trotters, with only a few portions in the legs ruptured and the obvious destruction of most of the parts that run through the head. I’ll gut them too so we can spill their guts for an additional mask of stench. It’ll be bad at the start, but if we spend long enough around it, the stench eventually won’t bother any of us.” Rarity explained, as she leveled her above the stomach of the first Trotter, the tip of the blade turned mildly to allow everything underneath the cut line to spill out with ease.

Vinyl lifted her sunglasses up off her eyes, concentration heavy in her features. Flitter stood stock still beside her, blinking as she looked at each Trotter in turn. On Vinyl’s other side stood Derpy, her wings flared out and Dinky on her back. Vinyl had argued to leave Dinky out of this the first time and Rarity had looked worried about it, but Derpy and Flitter insisted Dinky was already having an abnormal childhood and that she needed to fully understand what would be eventually necessary from her too.

Rarity cleanly sliced the first two Trotters open across their abdomens, allowing a large amount of blood to flow out from the gash and down onto the cloak. Slowly, the bowels then rolled out of each Trotters gash and down across the midsection of the cloak underneath. Flitter narrowed her eyes as she saw this and Derpy gagged a bit, but each held their place.

As Rarity cut open the third Trotter though, a minor expulsion of irregularly coloured gastric juices surprised her and she jumped back as she steadied her blade before her, expecting another reaction from the Trotter. As it merely laid there, bleeding and losing it organs as the others, Rarity regained her former composure and trotted forward to see what had caused the expulsion.

Vinyl trotted forward to join Rarity in her investigation, a burning desire to understand more about the Trotters and what could stop them or kill them, or even just slow them down. As Rarity peered down at the still bleeding Trotter, she sighed. Vinyl looked questioningly down at her cousin as she turned her head back to talk to her.

“Burst appendix. Would’ve at least hospitalized the colt before. I guess when he died, the appendix stopped pulsing as a warning of the burst because his brain wouldn’t register it anymore. It must’ve just stayed ready to burst until it got hit hard or slashed, like I just did. Jot that down as another medical abnormality these things have.” Rarity explained, looking over her blade as she did, clearly looking for an irregularity from the recent surprise in her last slash.

Vinyl nodded and stared down at the corpse, more questions about them on her mind then ever. Shifting her sunglasses back down, Vinyl trotted over to the first of the three Trotters on the cloaks, who appeared to have run out of organs to lose and blood to bleed from his abdomen.

“We need any more blood on these cloaks Rare? They smell and look rank already. Plus, I can’t imagine how much more we can really hope to get out of these after blowing their heads off and emptying their chests.” Vinyl prodded the husk of a Trotter with her right front hoof, jiggling what muscles and limbs had yet to be severed or blown off.

“I’ll take the legs off quickly, then we can be sure. Go grab all your gear. We’re gonna have to head out soon. It’ll be light soon, and we’ll still have to move slow to fool Trotters once we get near.” Rarity told Vinyl as she surveyed the horizon, which was beginning to show a faint hue of sunrise.

Vinyl nodded and trotted quickly back over to Flitter and Derpy, jerking her head back towards where they had stashed their gear a half hour previously.

***

Vinyl sighed with relief as she hefted the last torso of a Trotter into the crudely dug hole nearby, completing the very odd effigy others might see it as. Rolling her shoulders to shift her bandolier about, Vinyl galloped back to the others a short distance away.

As Vinyl galloped over, Flitter let out a short bird call as a sign of warning to Rarity, the only pony who could lift Vinyl’s cloak up without the risk of touching it. Rarity whistled back and raised Vinyl’s cloak up slowly off the ground in her magic, careful to allow only a few drops of blood to drip off onto the ground below.

Vinyl slowed as she reached the others, lowering her head so Rarity could slide the cloak over her easily. A quick flash of darkness over Vinyl’s head and the feeling of a damp cloth being draped across her shoulders and neck told Vinyl that Rarity was done. Using her own magic now, Vinyl shifted her hood off to look at the others properly.

Flitter’s cloak dragged on the ground around all her hooves, so she would have to watch her steps carefully or risk tripping herself or others up. This design difference allowed her to be a little more liberal with her steps, as well as more easily hide a large weapon underneath her cloak. The spears were intended as the absolute last option, but they had to still be able to use them if need be.

Derpy’s cloak was sized to allow Dinky to ride on her shoulders, with and additional sheet stitched along its back to allow Dinky to see and move if the situation required it. Because of this, Derpy’s spears were bound at her sides instead of across her back, though the straps could be pulled loose by Dinky easily if she needed them in her hooves quickly. Dinky carried only her hatchet now, as Derpy couldn’t risk the off balance of another spears weight in her steps when stealth would be required.

Rarity carried Dinky’s spear across her back instead, as well as one of Vinyl’s knives carefully tucked away into a refashioned leather glove Rarity had saved from the Boutique. Her cloak was not recently created, but nopony there could deny its effectiveness after seeing Rarity’s solo forays for food into groups of Trotters, or smelling it up close.

Vinyl’s cloak was somewhat short on her, but she had dipped her tail and hooves in the excess blood from the Trotters early to make up for it. Vinyl’s hood also had a moderate sized section missing to allow her instant, unhindered access to a blast from her horn without needing to first remove the hood if an emergency arose.

Vinyl finished surveying everypony, shifted her hood back down, and pivoted herself around until she was looking down the road that lead straight into the heart of Fillydelphia. Flitter trotted up next to Vinyl, with Derpy and Dinky staying behind the two of them and ahead of Rarity at the back of the formation.

Vinyl breathed deeply in once, and glanced behind her at the decimated landscape they were now leaving, possibly forever.

“Let’s go.” Flitter spoke up, taking the first step down the road, Vinyl and the others following her example not long after, just as the sun finally peeked over the horizon behind them.

***

“Uarghh…” A Trotter moaned as Vinyl sloppily slid past him, intentionally adding odd weight to her steps to make them look strained.

The Trotter stood still for a moment after Vinyl passed it, but it quickly returned to its former path and paid them no more attention than it would a building.

Rarity sloshed her steps from side to side ahead, having traded formation positions with Vinyl once they had started passing Trotters within 2 minute intervals. Her magic lightly enveloped the hilt of her sword, ever ready to draw and slash at a seconds notice. Derpy kept her knife clenched in her teeth, occasionally mimicking chewing on it to further her Trotter illusion. Flitter had her hatchet drawn and held close to her under her cloak, shifting her steps to appear as though she had a missing leg to Trotters.

As Rarity had discovered alone and Flitter had hoped, the cloaks and the walking patterns, in addition to the silence, was enough to fool the Trotters so they could pass by the small numbers of them instead of having to engage every last one.

By now, the sun was just shy of hitting high noon and Vinyl’s team had managed to make it about 9 city blocks into the clearly abandoned downtown of Fillydelphia. Vinyl’s eyes scanned every building for any sign of the living or any indication of halted decay, still believing that Octavia and Silver could be holed up with Neon directly in the city itself.

As Vinyl swung her head from side to side to examine every apartment building and skyscraper and trusted her measured pace and pattern of steps to guide her for a few minutes without having to check where they were, she suddenly bashed headfirst into Derpy’s back, causing her to trip slightly and tear her cloak minutely near her left front hoof.

“Buck! My cloak ripped. What the Hades are you…..” Vinyl harshly whispered ahead to Derpy and the others, only to stop as she too saw the reason they’d stopped.

A crowd of at least 300 Trotters was a block ahead of them, clearly having bundled together from the surrounding building and streets. The appeared to be merely standing with the occasional wanderer amongst them, until a few of them glanced up at the sudden appearance of Vinyl’s team. As soon as a few of them took a step forward, it seemed the entire group mimicked them and began to move as a unit towards them, even though they’d have no clue that the group weren’t real Trotters until they were already deep into their midst.

“Buck! What do we do?! We can’t take that many down, and there’s no streets to duck down!” Derpy hissed back at Vinyl, fear heavy in her eyes as she shifted Dinky’s weight on her shoulders nervously.

Vinyl quickly shuffled forward to stand next to Rarity, igniting her horn as she did so. Rarity grasped her blade heavily in her magic now and prepared to draw it, intent to draw it as soon as one Trotter got a proper sniff of her. Behind them, Flitter gripped her hatchet tighter underneath her cloak, ready to cut through it at any moment. Derpy nodded to Dinky, who loosened her spears from her sides, glancing nervously ahead every few seconds.

A few seconds after each pony had prepared themselves to fight, a silver arrow whirled through the air and passed through the closest Trotters skull, coming clear out the other side and embedding itself in the street. Two more followed the first, each one taking down a Trotter with one blow.

Glancing quickly up, Vinyl saw a figure at the edge of the roof of a nearby abandoned sweets shop. The figure loaded two more arrows by hood and loosed them before glancing down at Vinyl.

“Hurry! Into the alley just ahead on the right! It’s clear, and I’ll cover you from the beginning of Them!” The stranger yelled down at Vinyl, directing her where to go with a quick point of a hoof towards the alley.

Looking back, Vinyl mimicked the point, and Derpy and Flitter each took off towards it, Dinky holding tight onto her mom’s back as she did. Once all three of them were safely in the air, Vinyl galloped forward and blasted away two Trotters the figure hadn’t gotten yet.

As another Trotter appeared seemingly out of nowhere beside Vinyl, it was suddenly decapitated as Rarity galloped up beside her, fierce determination to survive in her eyes as her sword once again drew blood.

Galloping forward, Vinyl and Rarity entered the alley not 30 seconds after Flitter and Derpy turned down it, hearing another arrow loosed behind them as they did. Pushing themselves to the limit of the endurance, Vinyl and Rarity managed to catch up to and gallop directly underneath Flitter and Derpy. A few seconds later, after hearing another three arrows loosed, a shadow passed over Vinyl and Rarity as the stranger flew above and ahead of them down the alley.

“This way! Follow me! I have a camp just outside Hollow Shades!” The figure gestured ahead with a hoof again, speeding ahead a moment later to show the way herself.

Derpy struggled to push herself faster through the air, Dinky’s weight combined with her spears clearly exhausting her. Flitter looped back and took Dinky from Derpy’s shoulders, allowing Derpy to rest for a minute and get her momentum back. On the street below, Vinyl and Rarity each had sweat pouring off them as their cloaks billowed about them like dragons wings.

Nopony let up in their pace, even when the paved streets turned back to grass, and the grass into swamp. Only after a solid half hour of pushing themselves at their speed limits once they had exited Fillydelphia’s borders did they dare break, and only because it was necessary. Derpy vomited behind a nearby tree as Flitter constantly attempted to straighten Dinky’s mane to keep herself occupied.

Rarity sat away from everypony else, in a meditative posing, hoping it would help her recuperate faster. Vinyl sat heaving through breaths in the midst of everypony, and the stranger sat a distance ahead of her, her breaths still strained, but far quieter than the others.

The figure flew about the group a moment later and gave a small flask of water to each member of Vinyl’s group, for which everypony was grateful. As Vinyl finished her water, she finally decided it was time to formally greet the stranger.

“Thanks for the save back there. You’re really good with arrows.” Vinyl smiled up at the stranger, hoping to come off as a good hearted pony right away.

The figure shook back her pink mane and smiled at Vinyl, shifting the quiver and bow she had strapped across her back as she did so.

“Glad to help a fellow survivor. We could use more hooves at our camp anyway, and you’re all clearly capable. I have no idea how just the 4 of you made it that far into the city, but it’s very impressive. Woo-hoo.” Fluttershy told Vinyl, smiling wide as she did so.

Realizing how their mysterious savior was now, Rarity immediately galloped over and hugged Fluttershy, silent tears streaming down her face as she did. Fluttershy let a few tears fall as well at the return of her friend, but moments later, they broke the embrace in order to get back on the road.

“My camp’s only about a 10 minute walk from here, and we’re certain to have lost that crowd by now. Let’s walk there. The rest of my group will trust you faster that way.” Fluttershy explained as she set off on an odd weaving path through the overgrown plants ahead.

***

Breathing heavy with anticipation, Vinyl entered the camp a minute after Fluttershy had exited her sightline, just as the yellow Pegasus had instructed her and the others.

The camp was in a large oval shape around a very well sized pit of clean water, with carts and carriages stationed evenly around and pointing in every direction, ready to flee or attack from any direction. They were thin wire lines between several of the carts and carriages, some of which had vegetables on them, while others had weapons strung up.

As Vinyl felt a smile spread across her face, she saw Flitter and Derpy come up on either side of her, Dinky already galloping off ahead of her mom, with Rarity off to one side with Fluttershy and a tall stallion who currently wore a black face mask.

Just as Vinyl felt she couldn’t be happier about what she’d found for her and her friends, she saw two familiar shapes ahead. One was that of a fully grown grey earth pony mare with a dark black mane and a treble mark Cutie Mark. The other was that of a young mare with a silver mane, glasses, and a silver spoon for a Cutie Mark.

As Vinyl felt tears of joy well up in her eyes, she saw Octavia and Silver Spoon look up at see her, and then proceed to mirror the shock she knew must be plastered across her own face right now. As the two of them suddenly began to gallop towards her, Vinyl whispered something that only she could hear;

“I’m home now Octy. I’m home.”

Comments

[Benny]

I keep telling myself I don't like crossovers, but then every time someone crosses something I'm remotely interested in, I get drawn in.

I'll be reading this shortly.

[tankmanbrony]

Excellent job i really like the story

[Fracturedheart]

I liked it! Glad FutterArrow made it(squee)