The Trouble

From the Personal Journal of Bright Macintosh

I s’pose now’s the time to sit down and get as much of this down as I can, while it’s still fresh in my mind. While there’s still time. Just got word from Buttercup that she and the kids are on their way back from Manehatten now that the Trouble’s over with.

The Trouble.

It started as a joke, calling it that. Made a few of us laugh, eased the tension a little. Made the whole thing feel a whole lot smaller than it actually was. Wasn’t a disaster. Not a plague. Not a crisis. Just a bit of trouble, was all. Nothing we couldn’t handle. Nothing that couldn’t be dealt with in a timely manner.

Calling it that made us forget how many we’d already lost, and how many more we were gonna lose before it was all over.

Best get to it. Don’t want my jaw gettin’ sore before I’m done. Don’t wanna have to come back and finish this later. Best to just get it down in black and white and be done with it.

Seems like it was months ago, but it can’t have been more’n three or four weeks. The sun was goin’ down and I was passin’ out the pay to the hands when we heard this awful screamin’ comin’ from the Everfree Forest. Me and Burnt Oak took off with a few of the other hands, just to see what was the matter. We’d just hit the edge of the woods when one of the fillies from town came runnin’ out, screamin’ her head off. We calmed her down as best we could and pressed her for what the problem was.

That’s when we saw the blood.

Something had bitten the filly right on her flank. Nothin’ too big by the looks of it, but a bite all the same. She was bleedin,’ but not enough to worry about. Burnt Oak and I got her to Ponyville General just as fast as you’d believe and they contacted the filly’s mama… Honeysuckle, I think her name was.

I can’t recall the filly’s name. Just think of her as the Start now. She was the Start of the Trouble.

The filly calmed down and told us that she’d been playing just beyond the boundary of the forest when she’d heard a strange sort of… whispering coming from down the path. She’d investigated, and found a patch of dry, dead earth with a single, ragged tree sproutin’ up. She said there were apples hangin’ from it, but they looked all withered and dead.

That’s when she felt the bite and turned tail.

The doc examined the bite closely before confessing that he’d never seen anything like it… on a pony, anyway. I took a closer look myself and knew exactly what the doc was talkin’ about. I’d seen that kinda bite mark hundreds of times in my life.

Hard to miss what a vampire fruit bat bite looks like when you live on an apple farm.

But that’s the thing about vampire fruit bats; they don’t bite ponies. Not even in self-defense. Their fangs are too thin, too delicate to risk bitin’ through anythin’ tougher than an apple’s skin.

The doc gave the filly a clean bill of health and assured Honeysuckle that she’d be fine with a day or two of rest to calm her nerves. Burnt Oak and I agreed to head down the path the filly had found when we found the time and see if we could find this bat and get to the bottom of things.

Life went pretty normal the next few days. Big Mac was teachin’ Applejack more things to do around the farm and Buttercup was ready to drop little Apple Bloom any day. Looking back, I wish I could’ve had some sign of the things that were on the way. Maybe I could’ve relished those last days just a little more.

Honeysuckle wandered into town just after noon just a few days after the incident with her filly. I didn’t see her myself, but the ponies that did said she looked something awful, like she’d gone ten rounds with a timberwolf. They said she was rail thin, like she hadn’t eaten in days, and all covered up with sores and scratches. Burnt Oak saw her for only an instant before he bolted to get the doctor.

He said it was her eyes that were the worst. All bloodshot and twitchy, like she hadn’t had a wink of sleep in a long, long time.

I can’t recall who she attacked first. I know that by the time the doctors and nurses arrived, she’d kicked one stallion to the point of unconsciousness and bit four more. They had to hogtie her and gag her just to get her to the hospital. Burnt Oak volunteered to go to her house and collect the filly.

I had to get him good and drunk that night for him to even briefly talk about what he saw in that cottage. He’d found the filly locked in her bedroom, dead. Probably dehydrated, he told me, on account of all the dried foam on her lips. Her room was in shambles, probably from her trying to escape. He broke down, told me he couldn’t figure why a mare could do something like that to her own daughter. The rest of the house didn’t look no better, and there was an old tom in the corner, probably a pet.

It had been kicked to death.

Honeysuckle never got the chance to explain herself. She died in the night. Heart failure, the doc said. Heart failure and dehydration.

The mare had refused to drink any offered water. Acted plum terrified anytime anypony brought some near.

Couple days later, three of the ponies Honeysuckle had bit were in the hospital complaining about fever and cold sweats.

That’s when the Trouble really began.

When the magnitude of what was happening finally struck me a few days later, I packed up some bags and told Mama and Buttercup to take the kids and get to Manehatten with our cousins. To stay there until the situation was taken care of. Buttercup tried to fight, but we both knew she would go. The hospital was already full, and the chances of finding a proper mid-wife this close to delivery was a risk we couldn’t take. I saw them to the train station and waved them good-bye.

They suspended train service out of Ponyville the next day. Said they couldn’t guarantee employee safety in the midst of a plague.

I s’pose it was a plague, but I can only think of it as the Trouble now. Those three who checked into the hospital all died there, but not before one of ‘em bit a couple nurses. One of the nurses decided it wasn’t a big deal and headed home, directly ignoring hospital protocol. She and the one pony from the first attack to not go get checked out, ended up killing or infecting their entire families. The doctors were sure they could get a handle on things if they were just given enough time. The problem was keepin’ the infected alive long enough to try treatments on’em. Problem was, the infected showed the same intense fear of water Honeysuckle had which, combined with their inability to sleep, caused their hearts to stop after just a few days.

Like I said, the hospital filled up and the trains stopped runnin.’

And that’s when things got really bad.

Since there wasn’t a whole lotta farmin’ to do with all this going on, me, Burnt Oak, and the hands all volunteered to round up anypony infected and keep ‘em safe in the auxiliary hospital we’d set up in Town Hall.

The next problem we ran into was the simple fact that some ponies, just like that foolish nurse, believed they wouldn’t get sick and started hiding their bites from us. I recall that we were checking up on one family who said that nopony had been bit. They were lyin,’ of course. Their youngest had had a run in with one of his infected classmates, but the bite was in such a place that it could be hidden with a hat. He’d already been too far gone by the time his family finally brought him for help.

He had a pet rabbit. And he’d bit it. And it had escaped.

And that’s how we found out that the Trouble didn’t just affect ponies.

The Mayor ordered the town sealed off, posted guards, but there was nothin’ we could do. The infected rabbits started bitin’ other animals or gettin’ eaten and passin’ along the Trouble that way. You ever squared up against a full-grown bear, sleep deprived and dyin’ of thirst and filled with a kind of rage that almost seems supernatural? Because I have, and that ain’t what I’d call a good time.

We tried sending messages to the princess, but it was kinda hard to do when you couldn’t trust that the pony you were sendin’ down the road wasn’t infected and just desperate to escape. It started to feel like our only course of action was to wait it out. To just stand by and wait as all the infected died.

One night, Burnt Oak and me decided that it was time to check out that tree the filly had mentioned before. Maybe there was something there, some clue that could tell us how to cure the Trouble. We left in the dark so that nopony would see us and think we were tryin’ to flee.

As Celestia as my witness, I wish that we had run. Run to Manehatten. Run to my family. Ruuun Run to safety.

Oh, hell. Guess I’ve been writin’ longer than I meant to.

We went out into the woods and we found that patch of earth and we found the tree. Wasn’t like no other tree I’ve ever seen. The filly wasn’t lying. We could even hear the whispers she mentionnednededmentioned. Well, I could hear them. Burnt Oak just kept mentioning how deathly silent it was. Those vioces voices… they talked about the Trouble and I finally understood.

Ain't got time to go back and fiz every typo.

Ya see, we live in a world of sunshine and love and friendship, but that ain’t the natural way of the world. There’s a dark to every light, and that tree was the dark. Once a generation, it’s terrible fruit became ripe and it called out to someone to taste it. Sometimes the tree appeared in the Dragon Lands. Sometimes it appeared in Griffinstone. Sometimes it appeared in the middle of that big park in Manehatten. Once a generation, it appeared and called out for someone to eat one of its awful apples. And the one who ate the apple?

Well, I guess it was a kinda sacrifice. They got sick, they died horribly, and… that was it. That was the Trouble.

Once a generation, a plague must fall.

But for the balance to be kept, only one need die.

And by some cosmic screw-up, a damned fruit bat got to that apple before that filly that got called. And then, blinded by pain, it spread the Trouble to her.

It ain’t supposed tooooooooooooooooooooo aw come one Bright Mac just a little more just gotta hurry

The whispers told me that the Trouble wasn’t supposed to spread like that, that the balance could still be kept if one willingly ate an apple. Of one pony ate that apple then the Trouble would end. All those still sick would get better and that would be the end of it.

I know you’re readin this, honey.

I’m leavin this journal the first place you’ll look for me, out in the barn. Don’t stop readin. By now you’ve realized what I’ve done. I had to, for the town. For you and mama and the kids I had to please don’t be mad please don’t be sad please just gotta keep writin almost done

So thisrty im so thirsty im so tired

Ate the apple not long ago had to say bye to burnt oak he’s my best friend im gonna miss him wish I could’ve seen apple bloom

Sorry about the blood. Bit my tongue and it cleared my head a little. I’m gonna finish this and take my rope and head to our tree. I’m gonna tie myself to it and let the Trouble run its course. Don’t let nopony out there for three days. Don’t let the kids come see me. I don’t want them to see me like this. Just tell them I love them and I did this for them. Mama too.

Oh, honey, I’m so scared. And thirsty. But the thought of water chills my blood and I hear the train whistle that might be you I have to go I lobve you I love our son and oour daughters keep them away don’t come after me buttercup the kids need you

Tjrsty tired vsions blurrrrrrrrrrr

Btercu

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