The Grass Ain't Always Greener

by WorldWalker128

Canterlot Lower District - The Punished

Canterlot Lower District - The Punished
(Less than three days later)

Fayla, one of the few remaining 'Punished' (as the twenty six had jokingly called themselves) scrambled down a garbage-littered alleyway, gasping for breath and looking anxiously behind her. Fear was plain on her face, blood old and fresh stained her fur and feathers, and the sword she'd been given on the dawn of their first day outside the walls was broken and lost somewhere a few blocks back. Breathing a sigh of relief, she stopped to rest against the brick wall.
Things had started out well for them. On the first day they'd waded through the undead as if they were farmers harvesting wheat from the fields, and when the sun began to set they broke into two of the houses and then used some heavy furniture to barricade the door before bedding down for the night. The next day was much the same, only they'd found a police station that had better weapons, some stale snack food, and some First Aid supplies. It also had about fifteen undead locked up in the various cells, and three officers in the same state. They were dealt with and then tossed out into the prison carriage parking zone out back.

__ __ __ __ __

"These things are what we've been afraid of all this time?" a Minotaur named Bard scoffed. "We've butchered more than twice our group of these guys in less than two days!"

"You can talk." the youngest of the four Unicorns said, rolling his eyes. "you won't turn into one of them if you get so much as half a bite from them!"

"If you're worried about that, then why did you and your pals come along?" Fayla asked, wiping her dirtied weapon on the side of a couch before sheathing it and opening a pack of crackers pilfered from a busted snack machine. "You'd have been nice and safe behind that wall."

"To get away from my mother." Bard snorted and laughed while the Unicorn scowled. Fayla raised an eyebrow and also smirked. "It's not funny!" he declared loudly. "You don't know my mother! Ever since I moved out she's been harassing me about grandchildren, and this whole plague thing has only made her more insistent!" Adopting a poor imitation of his mother's voice he quoted "'Son, with our species on the brink of extinction it is your duty as a young, strong stallion to aid in repopulating this fine country!'"

"Dear sweet Luna! Did she actually say that?" Fayla asked.

"To my never-ending embarrassment, yes." he replied while pressing a hoof to his face. "In front of seven mares and Princess Celestia, no less." Bard fought to keep another laugh down by clamping a hand around his mouth, but the shape of his eyes told it all.

"My grandmother treated my father like that, too." Bard finally managed, still smiling. "When my mother had me and my three younger sisters, she was thrilled."

"Family. What can ya do?" Fayla shrugged in response. She'd never had that issue with her folks.

"Nothing except be patient and love them." Bard said, patting him on his shoulder a little harder than he meant to.

__ __ __ __ __

Fayla turned her gaze to the sky and watched a wild cloud drift by. As it did so she smiled at the recent memory, and then quickly it turned to sadness and disgust. They'd saved her life and how had she repaid them? She'd left them stranded on the second floor of a two story diner. It wasn't like that. Stop blaming yourself! A voice within told her.

"Dead is still dead. There's no way they could have survived those maniacs!" she shot back, recalling a mix of ponies with wooden or metal pegs to replace their missing limbs and a talonfull of Minotaur (some of which were also missing limbs and in one case half her face). Their weapons ranged from weighted nets and clubs to wood-axes and cross bows. None of them had carried swords or any other piercing weapon save for their ranged ones. Their faces were empty of expression and they all wore armor fashioned from wood or padded cloth and the occasional few sporting pieces of the Canterlot guards’ armor.

__ __ __ __ __

Fayla looked down an alleyway to her right. She raised her left leg and motioned for the others of her team to enter it. She then turned around and watched their backs while they passed her, then joined them in bringing up the rear of their troop. They passed several locked doors, and stepped over one bloody and splintered door that had been broken down from the inside. Bard held up a fist and cautiously leaned forward and looked inside. Ten seconds passed, and then he motioned for one of their two Unicorns, a former guard named Bright Steel, to follow him. Bright Steel nodded and raised his weapon a little.

While the pair searched the inside of the building for anything useful the remainder of their thirteen calmly watched both the entrance to their alleyway, and the exit. Although it was clear and quiet for the moment that could change very quickly. Especially if Bard and Bright Steel ran into any trouble indoors and started yelling like a pair of morons.

Just like team one not five minutes after we first separated. Fayla thought with an eye roll. Fortunately either Bard and Bright Steel had either not found anything unfriendly inside, or else had dispatched it quickly and quietly because only a few minutes later they came back.

“There was nothing of interest in there besides half a bottle of South Shore Fire Whiskey.” Bard held the scavenged bottle of hot cinnamon alcohol up in one hand by its neck and grinned. A few others in their group also grinned, but most of them made an unpleasant face. That particular type of alcohol burned the second it hit your tongue, burned on the way down your throat, and burned on the way out as well. Frankly, Fayla did not see the appeal. Bard took some cloth out of a bloodstained saddlebag that Bright Steel had scavenged from a house they’d raided earlier and wrapped the bottle with it before sticking both back inside the saddlebag he’d taken the cloth from. He’d neglected to acquire any shot glasses, but with none of them being sick it didn’t much matter as far as he was concerned.

Proceeding further down the alley and checking the other doors as they went and finding two more unlocked (one was a jewelry store and the other was another small home that probably belonged to the jewelry store’s owner at one time. Neither had anything of particular use in them) their group exited the alley and once more found themselves on a street. There were several undead stumbling about, but they were quickly dispatched before they even had time to react. Wiping the rotted bits of flesh that had stuck to their weapons on the side of a cloth-covered abandoned souvenir booth they created a box formation and headed to their right away from one of the three main roads that ran from the entrance of Canterlot to the royal castle. Half an hour later they stopped in the remains of a small market square and searched the booths for anything of use, but there wasn’t much. Only one rusted can of pears, some silverware and a half-drank bottle of water were discovered.

Hmm. Fayla frowned at the booth that they’d found the can of peaches in. It looked like it had been not so much ransacked as razed. The support poles for the cloth shade had been broken, the cloth was torn in multiple places, and the booth itself had been partially smashed. Having been one of those that had made it over the Upper District wall in the early days of the infection she’d seen rioters and looters acting as if they’d completely lost their minds. A booth or several getting smashed, along with the surrounding buildings’ windows wasn’t an uncommon sight, nor were the scattered corpses in varied states of decay or skeletons. But something about this particular area just didn’t seem right. Normally in a riot everything would have been smashed to some degree. This place though, wasn’t like that. Most of the booths that were damaged looked as if they’d been clumsily pulled apart rather than purposely destroyed. Still, a good number of the buildings not made completely of stone that we passed had their windows boarded up. I was a bit distracted with escaping this place back then to think about my surroundings very much. She shrugged, putting it from her mind.

“Canned pears, huh?” Bard grumbled, snorting. “What I wouldn’t give for a fresh bale of barley…or fresh anything, for that matter!”

“Unless we stumble across somepony’s backyard garden I doubt we’ll find any here in Canterlot. There’s probably some dried and preserved stuff in the grain warehouse near the train station in this district, though.” Bright Steel commented.

“How do you know that?” the other unicorn in their group asked. “I thought guards only patrolled the castle and streets of the Upper District.”

“Normally yes,” Steel confirmed. “But on the occasion when we’ve done something our commanding officers weren’t too happy with we’d be tasked with some of the more boring positions for a month or so as a lesson. A little over a year ago I got reported by a fellow guard named Star Shine for-” he stopped, blushed a little and coughed. “Well, let’s just say that it wasn’t entirely my fault and leave it at that.” His blush faded and his face became serious again. “There’s a ladder by the backside of the warehouse that leads up to the second floor. It’s locked, but it’s a simple padlock. It shouldn’t take much for us to break in.”

“Assuming someone else hasn’t already done it and we make it that far; heads up folks, we’ve got visitors.” Another Gryphon stated before moving to duck behind one of the booths. The others moved to do the same as a trio of Shamblers made their way into the square. The Shamblers paused near the middle of the square and lazily looked around, their jaws slack and their eyes pale and glazed but otherwise mostly intact. One of them grunted and the trio continued walking again, slowly passing by Bard, who hefted his weapon and stood up behind them as they walked by. With three quick swings, he smashed their skulls like overripe watermelons and stood back as they fell to the cobblestones. Taking a minute to listen for any more ‘visitors’ they rose from their hiding places and discussed where to head next.

Their discussion was interrupted when they heard a distant scream, followed by two more ten seconds apart. All three had come from the same direction, and it did not take a genius for them to guess where it was coming from.

“The other group sounds like they’re in trouble.” Steel stated.

“Yeah, we heard. But we’re probably too far away to get to them in time. ” Bard said, his expression grim with a bit of pity mixed in. Looking away from the direction the screaming came from he glanced at the others. “You want to try anyway?” A fourth scream that turned into a gurgle rang out, and their whole group winced.

Fayla looked at Bard, and then looked off into the direction the screams came from, and then back to Bard.

“No.” The others’ heads whipped to her. Some were shocked, others disgusted, and the remaining few were relieved that they’d not been the ones to say it. “Let me ask you a few questions: how many Shamblers would it have taken to overwhelm them? Shamblers aren’t fast or smart, and most are weaker than we are. How many of them would have been needed to-” another short-lived scream pierced the air and Fayla paused. “to overwhelm their group so badly that nearly half of them are as good as dead now? I’ll tell you: too many for us to handle. On top of that their screaming is sure to have only drawn more to them, and that’s not including those we’d have to fight our way through just to get to them. We’d only be throwing away our own lives trying.”

Bright Steel shifted uncomfortably. He didn’t like the idea of going against what he’d been trained to do for the last several years of his life, but he also agreed with Fayla. They’d do no one any good (least of all themselves) by getting themselves killed trying to be heroes. Bard on the other hand, frowned.

“So what, we just leave them to die?! How would you feel if our positions were reversed?”

“But they aren’t and we may very well join them in that situation with no one to come to our rescue if we go!”

“Fine! You do what you want. I’m going!” Bard turned away from her and started jogging towards one of the roads leading out of the square. Bright Steel hesitated, looked at Fayla, then Bard, then nodded to himself and started after Bard, along with more than half of their group. Fayla scowled and shook her head, but followed as well, muttering that this was a mistake. But mistake or not, they’d survived this long together, and even with her arguing against going to the others’ rescue it didn’t sit right to just let them go and move on.

__ __ __ __ __

They should have listened to me. Heh, she smirked. Or perhaps I should have listened to me.

A rattling sound from an empty tin can tumbling across the cobblestone from back the way she’d come made her tense her muscles and inhale sharply, her eyes darting back down the alley. Dropping flat to the ground she rolled behind some old heaped garbage bags next to a metal door while clamping a dirty claw around her beak to keep from grunting from the pain of rolling over her recent injuries. Fayla breathed softly and listened for any further sounds. One minute passed, then two. When the fifth minute came Fayla relaxed a bit and was about to stand when she hear a cough followed by a subdued scolding from a second source.

If my father knew I was cowering from my enemies like this he’d be rolling in his grave! Still, he is in his grave, and I’m not too eager to find my own just yet. She reached down to one of the garbage bags and slit it open, hoping to find anything she could use as a weapon. Other than a bent butter knife, there wasn’t much and she dared not search more thoroughly for fear of making an audible noise.

“Come on, let’s go. If she were here, we’d have seen her when we came in.” complained a male’s voice from several meters away. “She probably flew away like the other two surviving Gryphons did.”

“Yeah…yeah, you’re probably right. Let’s head back.”

Fayla remained perfectly still for another two minutes, then risked peeking around the trash bags she hid behind. The alley was clear. Breathing a sigh of relief and ignoring the twinges of pain form her injuries she rose and continued heading back toward the Upper District region. They needed to be warned.