Viral

by AnchorsAway

Chapter 17: Promise

---

They started coming in around twilight.

Whiplash wasn’t sure where they were all coming from, but he knew that something serious must have happened. From his hospital room, he watched the ambulances lining up outside the emergency room doors. The first one had come in almost thirty minutes ago. Now, they were coming by the minute.

The first one had been an older mare, probably mid-sixties. Paramedics rushed her into one of the trauma centers across the corridor, one of them holding a blood bag high over the elderly mare.

“Restaurant staff found her in the back alley,” Whiplash heard the hulking paramedics tell the doctor with his score of nurses crowding around the mare. They were poking and prodding her with their instruments.

“She’s got a diabetic alert bracelet. Says her name’s Maple Tree, home address here in Canterlot," the paramedic rattled off as the attending doctor assessed the patient. "Patient was unconscious and unresponsive when we found her, trauma to the jugular area of the neck,” the medic pointed out the wet bandage.

“How was her blood sugar level,” the doctor ask the paramedic, taking record.

“Blood sugar was normal. No sign of a diabetic attack. She lost a lot of blood, though, from the neck wound. We started a transfusion as soon as we got her on board the truck. Nasty wound that is.”

“Let's see the neck,” the doctor motioned, jabbing a pen at the bandage. A nurse gently unwound the wrappings.

When she had pulled the bandage away, Whiplash could hear the disbelief in the attending from across the hall.

“Bloody Tartarus. You're telling me she hasn’t already bled out with a wound like that! Sweet Celestia, it must be three inches deep at the least. Did your medics find anything else wrong with her?”

“Nothing. Just the neck wound," the medic relayed. "Besides that, her vitals are practically normal except for elevated heart rhythm. Confirm them yourself," he suggested. "No idea what would cause a wound like that, though. A mugging, maybe? Somepony with a knife?”

“Mugging? No way a knife can make a wound like that," the doctor breathed, probing the deep laceration. "Look at how ragged the wound is. It's torn. It almost looks like something bit her. I'm not sure how she isn't dead. Nurse, can you stabilize her?” he wondered. "They're calling me in room three."

And then they were gone, the paramedics galloping back to their ambulance as another call came in through the radio with a crack of static, and the doctor rushing to another patient.

It wasn’t long, though, before the next one came in, a long-maned teenager with piercings in his ear.

“I’m telling you,” he cried, gritting through the pain as he clutched his hind leg, a large, wet bandage snaking down it. “Something tackled me out the hedge. I didn’t see what bit me.”

Then another five minutes later, a stallion stumbling through the doors of the ER, clutching the side of his neck. Even from his tiny room, Whiplash could see the unmistakable smear of red dripping down his foreleg. The stallion collapsed at the admittance station, several nurses immediately running to his side and hauling him off to another room.

“Where did he come from?” one of the nurses asked, throwing a hoof around the delirious stallion.

“I think he just came in off the streets. Somepony call the relief crew, we’re getting backed up here tonight,” the other by her side ordered.

Whiplash was watching the ambulances outside pull up one by one, the medics practically wheeling each new casualty through the sliding door before running back out to speed off to another call. The staff was absolutely swamped, nurses and doctors arriving by the dozen from the upper floors to lend a hoof with the massive influx. Even a few of the janitors in grey coveralls were helping out however they could, running to grab saline bags, or more towels to soak up the blood that smeared across the slick emergency room floors.

"Where are they coming from?" a nurse wondered.

"I hear there is a riot downtown," offered another.

"What kind of rioters bite ponies?"

Through the chaos, Whiplash could hear a deep, low groan emanating from they were stabilizing the old mare that had come in first.

“Mrs. Maple?” one of the nurses tapped the pony’s boney shoulders before shining a small penlight across her eyes. “Mrs. Maple, can you hear me? You’re in Canterlot General.”

Mrs. Maple responded with another deep moan that rose from the depths of her chest, climbing higher and higher. She let loose a blood-curdling and unannounced scream that rattled across the ER. It was not like the screams Whiplash had heard in Ponyville. Not a cry of pain, or fright, or agony but a scream more akin to the howl of an animal, or a wild beast. Her back arched, her jaw opened wide, blood-stained eyes shaking in their sockets.

“Stars! I need a sedative in here!” the nurse ordered over Maple’s cry. “I think she is having some sort of seizure! I need a hoof here!”

Several other nurses were by her side, hooves trying to hold the bucking mare down, while the first tried fruitlessly to insert the needle of a syringe into Maple’s foreleg.

“Hold her still! I can’t find the vein!”

But they were helpless against her thrashing. The old pony who would have had a hard time carrying an empty saddlebag was shaking the medical staff off of her like leaves in a gale.

Nopony could have anticipated when the old mare reached out grabbed one of the nurses in her hooves.

And nopony would believe when Maple bit down on medical pony’s neck with a wet crunch, and it was at that moment, Whiplash knew that he had to leave the hospital.

The nurse bucked and kicked and howled, but could not shake Mrs. Maple. The old mare only clenched her jaw harder, her eyes locked on the pony caught in her grasp with a wild fixation. She shook her prey like a hound with a rag doll.

What happened after, Whiplash would only recall later as a rebirth, a demon being born into the world with screams, and blood, and teeth. What was once a frail, old mare had shed her aging and failing body to become something new, something sickeningly familiar.

Whiplash was tumbling from the skies above Ponyville all over again. He could smell the smoke, feel the floor of the motel crumbling beneath his hooves, remember the monster he had obliterated, now born again before him.

Thundercell.

Her name was burned in his head as he witnesses the transformation.

"Feldwing shot her." — Clipper's words. Whiplash suddenly knew why Feldwing would shoot Thundercell. There was a reason the Equestrian Defense Coalition was so interested in what he saw in Ponyville.

He had not killed a creature in the motel, but a pony, or something that had once been a pony. And they had been sent to contain it.

Only something had gone horribly wrong.

Whiplash was already out of his bed when the creature that had been little, old Maple lunged across the ER, tearing into a fresh victim. The nurse at her hooves little more than a shriveled husk of skin.

Everypony was scream: doctors, nurses, patients, himself.

Those who could manage to move ran. Those who could not, cast in immobile plaster and braces, cried and struggled.

Whiplash tripped on the clear tubes in his foreleg as he lept from his hospital bed, falling on his back and ripping out the IV with a healthy snap. The cast on his wing struck the floor hard but held, tears of burning pain squeezing from his eyes.

He got up, hobbling on his sprained hoof. Everypony was pushing and shoving. More of the black creatures, those turned, were tearing through the wards in an orchestra of screams.

Everypony scrambled for the exits, some holding colts, others carrying elders. Whiplash was washed away with the mob, the stampede a roiling river of fear and death. If he stopped, he would be trampled.

Somehow, miraculously, with a push of sweaty bodies and shouting, he was outside. Yet, he found no sanctuary from the ravenous infected as he stumbled into the hospital parking lot.

Everything was chaos. Ponies were running with no direction through the burning streets.

An ambulance hopped the curb, another turned pony clutching the roof of the vehicle. The driver tried to swear and weave around the crowd, barely missing the Wonderbolt and crashing into the side of the hospital in a shower of brick and metal. A swarm of the infected were tearing through the busted windshield before the paramedic could even unbuckle himself.

They were everywhere. Some were in the trees lining the boulevard in front of the hospital, their glowing, blue eyes watching for the next pony to stumble beneath them to pull them up into the branches in a shower of red. Others were lining atop the high rises swooping down on the fleeing crowd to grab their next victim. The night before them awaited with terror and teeth and blood.

Whiplash knew that there would be no containing them, no stopping them, not with their strength and ferocity.

He had to find Clipper.

They had to get out of the city, if it were even possible.

Bong!

The toll of the bell rang out across the capital through the pandemonium.

Bong! Bong! Bong!

Whiplash saw the tower in the distance, a white belfry that called the hungry, the needy, the orphaned.

Bong, the bell of the orphanage called.

Bong!

“Rose,” he gasped and took off against the crowd.

He couldn’t leave her, the little filly with nopony to call her own. He couldn't leave her behind.

“Hold on Rose. I’m coming.”

---

The Canterlot Castle communication center was as quiet as a tomb.

They watched the carnage unfold across the security cameras dotted around the capitol. The infected were bounding from building to building, snatching and taking up those fleeing the advancing horde that swept across Canterlot from the East.

Some cried — others shook — but nopony could look away.

“We’re too late,” Professor Lakeshore breathed. “Whatever happened to the Captain, they lost control of containment.”

"That's them." Romulus took several shaky steps away from the carnage on the monitor. "Them."

Lakeshore tried to calm the thestral. "Them?" But he already knew what Romulus spoke of. "The expedition?"

Romulus nodded, beads of worrisome sweat sliding down his flared nostrils. "Yes," he grunted. "Them."

“Whatever contagion they pulled from those ruins,” Luna interjected tactfully, “it’s spreading fast. We must stop it before we lose the city,” she warned. "Sister?"

“Lose the city?” Celestia stuttered.

The loss of life was already going to be high. If they went out in force, both knew that number would only rise.

“We must call in our forces, Sister,” Luna pleaded.

Celestia was frozen.

“I need both of your consent, your Highnesses,” Brass Buckle reminded urgently.

Still, Celestia did not budge or take her eyes from the security feed.

"I—" Celestia's mouth worked wordlessly.

“Sister!”

“I — just —Luna —something—I'm sorry."

"We don't have time for this Princess," Brass seethed behind clenched teeth.

Do it,” the pearly alicorn gulped. “Send them all.”

Brass had his answer.

“Get our Wonderbolts in the air and divert all available ground resources!" he barked to his subordinates. "Instruct all forces to neutralize those infected with signs of contagion at all cost. I want our ground forces to push from the East and clear the city block by block,” he ordered. “And somepony get our gunships airborne!”

---

Inside the Wonderbolt hanger was abuzz with activity. The sound of pneumatic wrenches echoed in the chamber louder than the marching hooves as crews fitted squad after squad with their flightsuits.

Clipper stepped up to the fitting area as the engineers went to work assembling his suit. He couldn't help but feel alone with three empty spots beside him

"Hey, Lugnut!" he yelled to his technician over the clatter. "What's going on out there? Are we under attack?" Nearly everypony on the base had been mobilized, and the runway was filling up fast.

"You're the one with the orders," the grease-stained buck iterated. "You tell me. I'm just here to make sure you make it off the runway in one piece. Everything after that is your game, my friend." Lugnut wrestled his massive pneumatic wrench to the airframe connections, guiding the tool from bolt to bolt on its cables. "But I hear they've deployed the EUP Guard onto the streets. Something about a riot."

"Riot?" Clipper told himself. "Why would they need Wonderbolts to contain a riot?" The incidents at Ponyville weighed heavily on his mind. Could they be connected, he wondered?

Clip stepped out of the assembly area, falling in line with the rest of his temporarily assignment. Sliding on his helmet, whispers on the radios trickled into his ears.

"Is this a terrorist attack?" he heard somepony ask. "I heard something about insurgents."

"What do these orders on my directive mean? Neutralize afflicted?"

"Keep the chatter down," a squad leader was warning. "Keep the lines clear. We'll know as soon as we're airborne."

"You mean to tell me even you knuckleheads don't know what we're flying into? I hope I'm not in your squad," somepony else tried to chuckle.

All system checks came back green across Clipper's visor as the hanger door lowered with a rumble. Outside, the sky was heavily overcast, the sun having set below the horizon, leaving an afterglow across the clouds. The air burned purple and orange against the blackness that beckoned them.

The base was filled with a rising orchestra of angry hornets, the Wonderbolts' JUMPsuit engines humming with energy. Somewhere further up the runway, the order had been given. Clipper could feel the tremors in his hooves, smell their hot exhaust inside his helmet.

Suddenly, it was their turn, row after row taking off so as to space themselves. Clip's heads-up display gave the order, the Wonderbolt chasing after those before him.

He reached the edge of the tarmac, his engines screaming for more throttle.

Then he was in the air, the mountainside lit with multitudes of afterburners. Clipper adjusted his wings, battling the wash of JUMPsuits and riding the air currents higher up the mountain. They pulled left and up, following the curve of the mountain.

Granite walls flew by as they increased speed and gained altitude. Up and up they climbed until they crested the lower mountain ridge and came over the city of Canterlot, the roar of their engines a trumpet for their arrival.

“Stars,” Clip gasped. Even from a distance, he could see smoke and flames rising from the buildings ahead of them.

“Look out!” called a voice over the radio.

Clip barely had time to turn his head and dodge the giant, grey leviathan rising over the formation. Two airships glided slowly over the Wonderbolts, clawing their way along with their large propellers.

“Gunships?” remarked Clip. "Is this it? Are we at war?" From overhead came the low clap of thunder, Clipper wondering about rain when he heard the first callout.

“Contact!”

---

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

If the main OCs in this story were voiced, what would they sound like?