Zombie of One

by Impossible Numbers

Ruby's Morning

The morning light crept up on Ruby, curled up under the sheets, watching the faded fabric wake up. Her brain already felt like cotton wool. She knew she’d struggle later.

All the same, a switched flicked itself on within her head, and she oozed out from the bedding before hitting the floor on all fours. For a brief cooldown in the morning, she’d be a little reckless.

Details trickled in like the hot cocoa brought up by a well-rehearsed butler. Today was Thursday. Tomorrow was Friday. Then, the weekend. School and school alone for a while, then she’d be free. Just for a couple of days.

The window had steamed up. So it was cold outside. Fall season. Ah… Nightmare Night. Soon.

Ruby rubbed her eyes and grabbed the nearest dressing gown. It was frayed and ripped in places, but she’d never abandon it. It was a survivor, just like her.

Across the landing, down the narrow stairs to the even narrower hall…

“I’m playing a game!” announced a proud little squeak.

Her cousin, Piña Colada, sat beaming in the middle of the living room. A cardboard model of a rocket sat at her hooves. Ruby noticed the little dolls next to it, none big enough to fit inside. Not that it’d stop Piña from trying to ram them in.

Ruby’s brain decided it wasn’t going to push itself very hard. She simply said, “Cool.”

“It’s called ‘Death Takes A Vacation’.”

Ruby wondered why Piña looked so proud about that. “Er… also cool?”

“And now everypony can go to the moon.”

Logic tended to shrivel and die in Piña’s presence, but Ruby was still a little reckless and so tried it anyway. “What’s the moon got to do with it?”

“Easy! If Death’s on vacation, then no one can die, because he can’t ended their lives.” Grammar tended to suffer the same fate as logic too. “If he can’t ended their lives, then nopony can die before they invent moon travel. Wheeee! Wheeee!”

Ruby left her to her games, on the basis that it would all become clear if she got a drink. Or she could get a drink and it wouldn’t all become clear, but in that case, she’d at least be refreshed.

And yes, the kitchen was exactly as she’d dreamed it. Same dirty sideboard, same dirty dishes, same lack of washing-up liquid. Dull-eyed, she turned on the faucet and spat in what little liquid she had. Then she grabbed a pad of sticky notes, wrote: “Need more wash-up liq.” on it, and stuck it to the window where anyone could see it.

Then she went over to the cooker and switched it on. Piled up the least-dirtiest frying pan and saucepans, dropped a couple of bread slices into the toaster, did… something or other… yawned… slowed… stopped…

She felt like she’d lived most of her life in the kitchen, even though she knew she hadn’t really. She’d barely been here more than a year or two. She guessed… she was feeling… really sleepy… had it been that long? There’d been a different life before then, but it no longer felt like hers.

A little later from the living room, she heard the sharp ripping of cardboard, followed by the first snuffles of Piña crying.

Then, from upstairs:

Footstep, footstep, footstep…

Ruby held her breath.

…footstep.

Ruby relaxed.

The thumps marched their way down the stairs, but Ruby didn’t look up from the frying eggs or from the bubbling baked beans. She did look up when she smelled smoke, and then hastily switched off the toaster. Time for the butter.

In the hallway, someone groaned.

Ruby scolded herself for freezing and immediately moved over to the sink to start washing up.

“Good morning, Big Sis!” squealed Piña. She sounded like she was holding back tears for her recently deceased rocket.

Another groan. Footsteps, slowly approaching.

Ruby didn’t turn around when the door creaked open. She’d already wiped three plates and was moving on to the dishes: best free them up for tomorrow’s breakfast.

She heard the footsteps slow down, struggle behind her, stop abruptly. A chair scraped back.

If only she could breathe right…

Then Berry’s voice croaked, and everything was normal again: “Myyy hhheeeaaad…”

Wordlessly, Ruby hurried over to a cupboard. Tomato juice, coffee beans, sour milk, and a couple of eggs. Powdery and syrupy things to add to the mix. She knew the routine off by heart.

“Oh, goooooooooosssshhhh…” moaned Berry.

In the special language of the household, Berry was “all partied out”. It happened a lot, so Ruby had plenty of practice when it came to putting the ingredients in a glass and cracking the eggs over them and pouring in the magical stuff and mixing them up with a spoon. Her horn spluttered a bit, but unlike most unicorns her age, Ruby had been a quick learner.

Treat done, she handed it over to the slumped figure over the chair.

“IIII waaannaaa goooooo…”

“Here, drink this,” said Ruby from rote. “It’s a potion. It’ll make you feel better.”

From the slumped heap, a hoof like a snake lashed out and suddenly the remains of a face appeared under lumps of mane. Berry didn’t drink the potion: she practically breathed it down her throat, slopping in her desperation.

While the groans worsened, Ruby busied herself with toast, beans, and fried eggs. By the time she’d piled up three plates and found space around Berry to set them down, the slumped figure was straightening up.

Berry shuddered. “Oh, it never tastes any better.”

“Is your head OK?” said Ruby politely.

“Like my brains are being drunk through a straw.” Berry rubbed her wrecked face so that no one could see her; only when she’d stopped moulding it did she reveal something equally wrecked but with a smile added. “Hey, isn’t that appropriate?”

“What?”

“For Nightmare Night. You know, ‘Braaaiiinsss… Braaaiiinsss…’”

Ruby flinched. She didn’t relax until Berry lowered her forelimbs again.

“I made breakfast,” said Ruby in a small voice, as though owning up to a stolen cupcake.

This time, some of Berry’s smile lit a campfire in each eye. “Mmm, and a delicious-looking one too. Put ‘chef’ on your future career list, kid.”

“OK. I will.”

Berry’s laugh tinkled. “Under ‘waitress’, while you’re at it. Sorry I don’t have any tips, unless you count me saying: ‘Relax.’ Sleep well?”

No, thought Ruby. Whereas “maybe” would have been a fair cover.

“Yeah,” she lied. She was sure Berry didn’t need to hear her problems. Even Ruby herself didn’t want to hear them. So long as things were normal, she was OK.

Berry gave her a sidelong look but didn’t push the subject. Instead, she yelled, “Piña! Grub’s on!”

“Actually –” began Ruby, to her own complete surprise.

Berry awarded her with all the attention she could spare, even hastily swallowing a piece of toast to clear her mouth’s in-tray.

And that was what stopped Ruby dead. Her cousin – much older, theoretically much wiser, and certainly more prone to smiling – was going to turn her into something. Ruby the Kid, she already was. Ruby the Kid she didn’t like. Ruby the Kid was a long time ago.

What else was there? Ruby the Baby, Ruby the Scaredy-Cat, Ruby the Foal-Who-Turned-Out-To-Be-An-Idiot? Ruby the One-Who-Didn’t-Want-To-Be-Here wasn’t an option.

In the face of Berry’s happiness, she felt wrong. She sat up to the table and toyed with a bean on the end of her spoon.

“– nothing,” she said. “Never mind.”

“Aw…” Despite everything, Berry reached across and squeezed Ruby’s forelimb with her own. “Poor little mite.”

Ruby didn’t dare recoil, even though she could smell Berry’s halitosis.

At least Berry had some sense: she let go at once as soon as Piña came barrelling in, singing, “Nightmare Night, what a fright, give us something sweet to bite…”

“Gosh, I remember that one,” said Berry happily whilst her little sister sat down opposite. “I sang it every time we went up to a house and knocked. Used to drive Goldie up the wall. One time, I sang it so much she chased me halfway across town.” She added, grinning, “Didn’t get rid of me that easily, though.”

“I’m gonna be a candy,” declared Piña as though announcing her presidency.

“Heh, cute,” said Berry. “Something to look forward to, come Nightmare Night.”

Piña frowned. “Nightmare Night?”

Sister or not, Berry paused in confusion. Then she shrugged and decided eggs were more important.

“So,” she said round her mouthful, turning to Ruby, “any ideas for costumes?”

Ruby shrugged.

“Gotta go shopping sometime.”

Again, Ruby shrugged. She had lots of ideas, but none of them wanted to get up onstage.

She felt her silence wasn’t being friendly enough, though, so she added, “I don’t mind.”

“How about an angel?” Berry winked, and Ruby frantically stared down at her plate to avoid it. “A halo, a pair of fake pegasus wings, a bedsheet that’s not too dirty, and viola! Or voila, or whatever. You got the guardian level down pat.”

“Er… thanks.” The thought of what her friends would say if she turned up looking so sappy…

“What about you, Big Sis?” piped up Piña through a spray of toast bits.

“Me? Oh, I’ll be a devil. Goldie can’t have all the diabolical fun, now can she? Hey,” Berry continued, nudging Ruby’s elbow, “we could find some poor sap’s shoulder to sit on. Saves walking around all night, huh?”

“I thought you didn’t do trick-or-treating,” said Ruby, who couldn’t help herself – the idea tickled the edges of her mouth. “Dinky says only foals do trick-or-treating.”

“Well, I’m young at heart.” Berry laughed and put one of her toast slices onto Piña’s plate: her sister had just dropped her own onto the floor trying to wrestle it into her mouth. “Besides, Dinky doesn’t know everything, now does she?”

Ruby had wondered that herself. Of all her classmates, Dinky was one of the few unafraid of long words, and everyone knew she’d read her way through most of the Golden Oak Library. If she didn’t already know everything, she definitely would soon.

“She said grown-ups mostly go to parties,” she added, with a hint of reproach. Not that it worked: Berry in a good mood was impervious to shame. She was beyond reproach. In a way.

“Hm,” hummed Berry cheerfully. “I think that would be a good idea. But, since it’s not Nightmare Night yet, time for another day at the market for me. Oh, and school for you two, obviously. Try to look on the bright side, eh?”

“I eated destiny,” said Piña. OK, Ruby definitely knew that one was faked, but Piña got her mane ruffled and a loving kiss on the cheek anyway, because Berry suddenly came over all weak-kneed and shiny-eyed within five yards of her sister.

Helplessly, Ruby finished her breakfast, waited till the others had burped in contentment, stacked everything up on the non-existent off-chance Berry would wash up for once, then grabbed her prepared-last-night satchel and let her legs walk her out the door to school. Trapped. Doomed. Destined.

---

Ponyville School was – unlike its stablemates across the country – one of the best places in the world for children. For one thing, the place was a private little slice of paradise wisely watched over by the all-powerful, all-loving, and all-knowing schoolteacher Cheerilee, a young mare who could bandage all cuts, never ran out of sweets or smiles, and knew the answer to every question.

Best of all were its glorious recesses, a time of freedom and fun within the garden-like playground. Here, foals played, foals gossiped, foals forged alliances and made enemies, and foals basically learned the gentle art of being eased into the hurly-burly of adulthood.

There were lessons too, but they were just a way to pass the time.

This recess, Ruby felt her strength come pouring back in. She was now ready for destiny’s best role: Ruby the Skeptic.

“It’s called ‘Save the Monsters’,” explained Dinky in the face of Ruby’s doubt and raised eyebrow. The immoveable shield to Ruby’s unstoppable bullet.

“Who’s going to join that club?” she said casually.

In secret, she and the other girls were thrilled. Today had been a good day: Sweetie Belle had come outside loudly wearing and claiming credit for something her sister had stitched together; Scootaloo had run herself ragged trying to take off, giving everyone else a perfect chance to heckle and jeer; and there was talk of some more Cloudsdale pegasus foals transferring to Ponyville, which excited everyone and at least let Scootaloo off the hook.

Dinky the Bookworm coming up with something incomprehensible was the cherry on top.

“Oh, lots of ponies will,” she assured them, “once they understand it.”

“M-m-m-monsters?” Piña trembled where she stood. “Y-y-y-you m-m-mean N-N-Nightmare Night m-m-m-monsters?”

“If they’re an eligible and endangered species,” said Dinky, nodding.

The others either stopped to translate this or stood in awe at the thought they’d never had.

“So…” said Apple Bloom doubtfully, “…vampires and ponywolves and ghouls and things are, like, Trottingham Tangs?”

“What?” said Ruby.

“A kind of apple,” explained Dinky. “I thought they were extinct, though.”

“How’d you know that?” Apple Bloom drew herself up; apples were her family’s business, and via childhood logic were therefore her business alone.

“I read it in a book once.”

“Oh, well, books,” said Apple Bloom, indicating that – compared to the word of her kinfolk – mere bits of dirty paper were the poor mare’s choice.

“Anyway, they’re kinda like that,” answered Dinky. “When was the last time you saw a vampire?”

“No one’s seen a vampire,” said Ruby.

“Exactly.”

“Because they don’t exist.”

“They don’t?” said Piña, suddenly hopeful.

“They might,” said Dinky.

“Oh, what do you think?” said Ruby, warming up to the sarcasm. “Too many lumberponies felled too many ancient castles and now the vampires are running out of natural habitat.”

“I’d just go down to the shops,” said Piña.

Ruby patted her on the head, not unkindly. “There, there, ‘kid’.”

“I would! You can get anything you want at the shops.”

“Within reasonable economic margins,” said Dinky.

“Yeah! You could probably get those too!”

The conversation waited for the echoes of Piña’s words to die of embarrassment. Then they realized it was going to be a long wait.

“So why are we saving monsters?” said Ruby. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“What?” said Dinky.

“They’re monsters.”

“Yeah,” piped up Apple Bloom. “Who wants things that eat ponies and chase ’em all the time?”

“They can be trained,” said Dinky calmly. “Just sic Fluttershy on them.”

A suspicion entered Ruby’s mind at this point. Everyone knew who Dinky’s mother was, and everyone knew she in turn had some very peculiar friends, because a pegasus whose eyes had minds of their own tended to wander off into strange company.

“Your mom’s been talking to Fluttershy, hasn’t she?” said Ruby.

Dinky inspected the sky innocently. “Maybe.”

“Now it makes sense. This has ‘Fluttershy’ written all over it.”

Piña’s brow wrinkled, as it so often did when faced with anything more intellectual than “What is your name?” She said, “But the placard thingy, it says ‘Save the Monsters’.”

“I was being thingy, figurely.”

“Figurative,” corrected Dinky.

“Oh,” said Piña. “Does that spell ‘Fluttershy’ backwards?”

“Well, it’d work, wouldn’t it?” said Dinky. “You get Fluttershy to train them so they won’t eat ponies, then you can go right in and save them from extinction. Even you have to admit it’s the perfect plan.”

“I can think of at least a dozen things wrong with it.” In fact, Ruby was being slowly seduced by the patient Dinky logic of the whole thing, but it would be breaking character to say so. “Er… and that’s why it’d never work. Better luck next time, Dinky.”

“Oh, OK. Wanna join?”

Around the circle of friends, several voices said, “Yeah!” or “OK,” or, in Piña’s case, “Fun-neeeeee…”

Ruby had to think about this before she could balance two jumping impulses. “I think I will join you,” she said slowly, “but only so I can see the look on your face when it goes wrong.”

Content in secret victory, Dinky shrugged and waved her off. “Well, I need someone to help me with the slogans. I don’t think mine are working just yet.”

“Like what?”

“Like: ‘A flesh-eating blob monster from the nethermost regions of Tartarus is for life, not just for Hearth’s Warming.’”

“Hmm, I see. That could definitely be snappier.”

“Cut the Hearth’s Warming bit, you mean?”

“It’s a start, it’s a start,” said Ruby reasonably. No point gloating, after all, now she’d made her point.

To her delight, she saw Dinky prop the placard against the school wall and reach into her satchel. Foals stirred around the circle. This latest blessing unto the congregation was what they’d been waiting for.

Reverentially, Dinky slipped the latest holy book out of her satchel.

“What ya got, what ya got, what ya got? Come on, Ah wanna see!” Apple Bloom gently but firmly pushed her way to the front.

“It better not be another boring dictionary,” scoffed Ruby, who’d last time discovered and secretly fallen in love with the word “tintinnabulation”.

“Puppies are nice,” said Piña.

Dinky grinned, hoof still obscuring the cover. “Ladies, what I’m about to show you is not for the faint-hearted. I must ask those with weak constitutions to please leave the playground.”

“Quit messin’ around,” said Apple Bloom. “Just show us already!”

Around the circle – now a huddle – the cry went up: “Show us! Show us! Show us!”

“All right. Get ready for Nightmare Night, girls.”

She drew her hoof back.

Part of Ruby’s mind shot back in horror… then, when nothing happened, she leaned in closer. She could still feel it tugging at her brain like a frightened dog on a leash, but the rest of her wasn’t going anywhere.

Gasps and nervous giggles withdrew slightly from the cover.

There was no secret: Dinky could palm – or hoof – any book out of the library, either through honest protocol or through some of the most outrageous skulduggery imaginable. She’d once planted a book near the window, pretended to forget about it, and then snuck round the library to swipe it from the other side. Such acts were treated by the other foals much as early ponydom might have treated Prometheus’ feat of stealing fire from the gods and then giving its secrets to everyone else.

Even Ruby, who debated whether to tattle to Cheerilee or not, admired the bravery.

All the same, the cover bothered her. The body parts looked very realistic.

“A zombie comic book…” breathed Apple Bloom.

Dinky smirked. “They won’t even let teenagers borrow this one. I had to hide it in a book of ornithology.”

“What’s an orny?” said Piña.

Ruby, who was inspecting the edges of the cover instead of its very red picture, read aloud, “Volume Two?”

“Part of the Knacker’s Yard series,” explained Dinky.

“You mean there’s more?”

“Oh, yeeeeeees,” murmured Dinky in her best spooky voice. Ruby firmly told herself she wasn’t scared; she knew the smarty-pants unicorn fancied herself as a drama queen. She’d certainly read enough literature.

“Oawh, Applejack wouldn’t like me readin’ that,” groaned Apple Bloom, backing away.

Not that anyone cared – least of all Ruby, or so she told herself – but Piña started trembling. The picture made it very clear only naughty little foals read this sort of thing, no matter how grown-up they thought they were.

“Nothing’s wrong with it,” said Dinky in seductively reasonable tones. “It’s just make-believe, that’s all. None of it’s true. Zombies don’t exist.”

“Maybe they’re just endangered?” said Ruby sarcastically.

But Piña and Apple Bloom weren’t playing along; the former waddled off, leaking tears and whining, whilst the latter shrugged and backed off.

“Ah ain’t gonna tattle on you,” she said, “but Ah ain’t gonna do it neither. Sorry, gals. Some other time, maybe.”

“OK,” said Dinky, far too casually.

Well, at least Ruby wasn’t fooled. She knew for a fact that this was Dinky pushing her luck. If Dinky was discovered and still survived Cheerilee’s wrath, she’d never escape the far deadlier disappointment of her freaky-eyed mother when she got home. Dinky risked her soul at her peril.

Which was ridiculous thinking. They were just dumb stories.

“Ha,” scoffed Ruby, who liked to scoff. “What’s so scary about zombies? They’re just dumb, slow animals. Ooh, let’s tiptoe away and get a hayburger while we wait.”

Dinky looked relieved, but only for a second. “Exactly! Anywhere, they don’t have the charm of a vampire. Vampires are awesome.”

“And they smell.”

“And they’re total make-believe.”

“And how could they spread so fast, anyway?”

“It’s nonsense.”

The consensus weighed in Dinky’s favour. Inwardly, Ruby giggled and yanked at the chain of the stupid fear tethered like a dumb dog.

“Gather round, ye brief mortals!” intoned Dinky, summoning her best spooky voice again; shivers ran around the huddle. “Let us tell a tale of woe, a tale of fear against a foe, a tale of doom and death impending, in which there are no… happy… endings…”

Dinky’s “mwahahahahaaaaa!” scared Ruby a little, but she’d stay safe behind the disbelieving mask.

---

Comments

[Skywriter]

The friend group us delightful, but Ruby's awake home life is somehow more insidiously dreadful than the nightmares. I suspect this is the point!

[Bronycommander]

nice touch with the description of ponyville's school and...Dinky!