To Rarity—
Darling, delightful, deceased.
Being dead is an odd experience.
Rarity wasn’t sure of how it happened. She wasn’t very sure of anything, anymore. Everything was dark and cold inside the cramped coffin in which they had buried her. It was highly musty to boot, and in general was just a disaster.
So, when the top of the coffin collapsed in on Rarity, it would have been a welcome relief had it not been at the expense of many pounds of dirt falling onto top of her. For the next hour or so, she excruciatingly clawed her way to the surface, only taking the occasional pauses for air, before remembering she was dead and in no need of air.
After much forcing up through the three feet of dirt which had kept her under the earth, she broke to the surface. All along her matted and filthy coat, she could feel the cool night air brush over her.
“I’m absolutely filthy!” she cried out, despondent. Then, the hunger kicked in.
As a said effect from whatever rose her from the dead, Rarity was overcome with an insatiable hunger. She needed to feed on something she did not normally feed on; flesh. Didn’t matter what, although she had a craving for the species she had once been, back when she was alive.
Her former thoughts and gripes of being dirty began to fade from her mind, replaced by the urge to hunt and kill things that would scream for mercy as she ineffectively used her herbivores' teeth to rip chunks of flesh and meat from them.
She tried to move, but unfortunately for her, being dead tends to kill parts of your brain that you need to function correctly. One of her front legs twisted sideways, and she fell onto the wet, earthy ground beneath her.
Moaning in the way zombies usually do, but in a more lady-like fashion than one would expect from a corpse, Rarity straightened herself up. Her legs wobbled as she tried her best to stand up. Succeeding in this, she began to walk.
She put on hoof in front of the other, her recently deceased body still holding together rather well. She took another step, and was soon on her way down the hill.
Rarity couldn’t see in the traditional sense. Eyes are generally one of the first things that go when you die, so her eyes were rotted away, most likely eaten by small bugs or other spineless organisms. However, there was still a way for her to tell where she was, and where she should go.
Rarity’s hearing still worked just fine, her eardrums still intact, and her ratty ears not yet munched away. Her muzzle was also in fine shape, and her sense of smell was actually heightened by whatever had allowed her to walk the realm of the living once more. In addition, she could ‘sense’ where living things were in the same way when you close your eyes you can see light through your eyelids. Using a combination of these senses, Rarity cobbled together a working system of navigation.
Ambling down the hill, Rarity came to rest against a wall. Making a small grunt, a weird spike of information shot through her brain. It was the feel of fabric, and an excited shout, somewhat like a giggle. She dismissed this, and continued to search for food.
She didn’t have far to go. She heard a noise that sounded suspiciously like hooves over cobblestone. Sniffing the air, she smelt the unmistakable smell of not-dead pony. Sure, it was a dirty, urine-caked smell, but it was alive at any rate.
She trotted in the direction of the smell, certain a meal was hers. Unfortunately, she walked directly into a low wall, spilling over it. Rarity tumbled on the ground, rolling around and thrashing in confusion as she did this.
Her prey noticed this, and took off. Rarity shambled to her hooves, and growled, taking after the pony. Having the same trouble she had with running as she did walking, Rarity ambled in a sort of awkward, confused gate as she followed the sound of retreating hoofbeats and the smell of fear.
Unfortunately, by the time she reached it, somepony else had beaten her to it. The life force was ebbing away, and Rarity was going to go hungry. Unless...
She could smell the one who was feasting on her meal. It was another zombie, the stench of death was stronger from him than it was from the still dying pony that had been killed by whoever the zombie was.
Rarity had a brief flash of charging down a deadly beast, and she decided that she would have to do the same to this offender. “Ruffian!” she growled, gaining another spike of information about the life she lived while alive.
Rarity collided with the zombie, who was in the middle of tearing a huge chunk from the now perished pony on the ground, and sent him toppling. She stood over him, smashing a hoof to his chest, where there was the crack of bones. The zombie pony made a noise that sounded like a very disturbing hybrid between a pained shriek and a growl of hunger.
Rarity turned back to her prize, and inhaled the smell of blood. It was a nice smell, one that whetted her appetite. Leaning down, she daintily took a bite of the exposed muscles and organs, chewing throughly before swallowing. she licked her lips, enjoying the taste of blood, the hunger satisfied slightly. However, the main prize was yet to be enjoyed.
Rarity opened her mouth as far as it would go, and bit into the skull. She clamped her teeth down, closing her jaw as hard as she could, until she was satisfied with the crack of the bone. Ripping away this chunk, she enjoyed snacking on the brain.
The brain was marvelous. It was moist, gelatinous. The texture accented the taste, which was beyond words. Somewhat like raw meat, but so much more mucus and slime than a regular piece of raw meat. Not that she had known what raw meat had tasted like until a few moments ago when she had tasted her first pony to get rid of the hungering.
As she munched on the brain, the hunger that clouded her mind retracted, allowing for thought to form once more. There weren’t the flashes of thought that had occurred earlier, spikes of brain activity, brief moments and clips of a time long gone— these were coherent, non-hunger driven thoughts.
“Oh, I’m such a mess!” she said, the words coming out in a horrible rasping noise that was so different from her voice. Rarity didn’t know that, however.
Now pondering her thoughts past, she tried to remember anything from before she died. One thing struck out to her amongst the rest.
Generosity.
She looked down at the zombie she had struck down, seeing a very faint glow of life inside it. She guessed that all zombies had a bit of life, in order to walk around. The word generosity swum around her head. Elements... something about elements... she was an element?
Clearing her throat, she pushed the corpse to the other zombie. The zombie moved over and began to eat on the body. Rarity sighed, and continued to eat her own portion, not regretting her choice to share. She was the Element of Generosity, after all.
To Rarity—
Saying goodbye is hard through a mouthful of tears, not all of them mine.
The gloomy mists continued to pervade Ponyville, shrouding the entire place in an eternal dusk. Many of the buildings were still intact, but some had fallen to decay and ruin. This was due to most ponies being too busy getting chased by zombies for them to bother with refurbishing the houses and shops that comprised of Ponyville.
In the husk of what was once a sofa and quill store, three ponies sat around a fire. A black, agile looking pegasus; a brown, twitchy earth pony; and a blue unicorn. The first two were male, and the remaining one was a female. They were all unwashed, battered, and tired from the day.
“Didn’t this used to be your place, Davenport?” asked the pegasus.
The brown stallion dropped a plank on the fire. “Yeah, it was. Figured I might as well set up camp here with you two since it was a place I knew.”
“Well, thanks for letting us camp with you here,” the unicorn told Davenport, thankful. “So you and Thunderlane were trying to reach Canterlot before you found me?”
“Yeah,” Thunderlane said, with a tone of resentment. “But they blocked off the train tracks up the mountain, and I think they’ve got some sort of force field anyway. Plus, even if I just flew up there, I would have had to leave Davenport behind.”
Davenport smiled. “Hey, I wouldn’t leave you behind anywhere either.”
The unicorn smiled. “You seem like you two would do a lot for each other.”
“Yeah,” Thunderlane said, looking at his friend. “We weren’t really friends before this whole thing, but since then we’ve really looked out for each other.”
Davenport laughed. “Yeah, we’ve become fast friends. Say, didn’t think I caught your name,” he said, turning to the unicorn.
“Oh, it’s Colgate. I was the dentist,” she told them. “I used to live with Time Turner, did you know him?”
Thunderlane shook his head, but Davenport said “Yeah, I think I did know him. He came into my shop quite a bit. He was a good stallion.”
Colgate looked somewhat sorrowful. “Yeah... yeah, he was.”
“Did the sickness get him?” Davenport asked sympathetically.
“No, somepony set fire to our house right after everything started falling apart,” Colgate said. “Right after that other shop was lit on fire. And, well, he didn’t... he didn’t make it out.”
Thunderlane and Davenport exchanged glances, then scooted closer to Colgate. The stallions beckoned for a hug, and the unicorn gave them a suspicious look. “Come on, it’ll make you feel better,” Thunderlane said, smiling. Colgate shrugged, and was pulled into a hug by the two stallions. They were right, it did make her feel better, and warmer than the fire ever could make her feel.
“So, where did you guys go once everything started falling apart?” Colgate asked as Thunderlane snuggled his head into the crook of her neck.
Davenport cleared his throat and answered. “Well, we met at the train station after the last train left, and together we left for Canterlot. As we said before, it was already blocked off from anypony entering, so we headed back down here and hid out in a deserted house until we found you while out gathering food. Time we got back... well, you saw how it collapsed in on itself. So, we came here.”
Colgate giggled a sort of half. “Glad you did, I was still glad I hadn’t been attacked...”
The two stallions looked at each other, still embracing Colgate. “Well, I suppose it was only a matter of time,” Thunderlane said with a sigh.
Davenport nodded. “Yup, figured it would take just as long. Now that she’s onto us...”
Colgate had an expression of utter confusion on her features. “Figured you out? What are you two talking about?”
Thunderlane chortled horsely. “Oh, come on. No use in lying to us now, we know that you know.”
“Know wh—MMMF!” Colgate started to say, but was soon cut off by Thunderlane pulling her into a kiss. He forced his tongue into her mouth roughly, running his hooves across her back while Davenport nipped at her neck.
“W-what are you doing?” she asked, pulling away from Thunderlane for a moment before Davenport jumped in for a kiss.
“Well, we knew you figured about about our little operation, so we’ve got to take care of you now,” Thunderlane explained, rubbing his hooves down further.
“What operation?” Colgate stammered as the vile stallions continued to work her over. Davenport took a lick across the side of her cheek, and she blushed. This was not something she felt comfortable with happening...
Thunderlane smiled. “Why, we take mares into our... ‘custody’ and, how shall we say, we ‘deal’ with them.”
Thunderlane shoved Colgate to the the floor of the ruined shop, and held her upper left leg down while forcing her head to the ground with his hoof pressed firmly on her horn. Colgate, while a unicorn, wasn’t very good with magic other than to levitate things, but the stallions didn’t know that. They assumed that she could attack back with magic like the other two unicorns they had dealt with.
Davenport held down the thrashing unicorn by sitting on her legs, and essentially lying down over her so he could hold her down completely. Thunderlane leaned down to her ear, and whispered. “We’re going to take turns, raping you, and then we’ll beat your brains out with a plank of wood, just like we did the others.”
Colgate’s heart nearly stopped. She was so terrified, that the stallions needn’t have held her down for her to be immobile. So it was a miracle when the unicorn heard the growling of the monsters that she had come to deal with.
“What the hell is that?” Thunderlane asked. Davenport shook his head, paused in his act of defiling. The growling grew louder, and there was a crash as a group of around six rotting corpses of varying ages stumbled into the remains of the building. The group was lead by a purple maned, surprisingly clean mare zombie. She walked with more grace than expected; where as the other corpses were mostly slow and stumbling, she as somewhat quick, galloping and moving fluidly where the others failed.
“Wait, are those zombies?” Davenport asked, his tone a mixture of horror and amazement.
“Y-you didn’t know that the dead were walking around?” Colgate asked in surprise. Both Thunderlane and Davenport shook their heads. Colgate just stared at the would-be rapists is awe. The zombies, however, had little time for this.
The corpses advanced on the three quickly, showing their bloodstained and rotting teeth. The two stallions tried to roll off of Colgate and scramble away, but the white zombie was far too fast. Her mouth clamped on Thunderlane’s left wing just as fast as the pegasus flared them open in an attempt to fly away. He screamed in agony as the former pony yanked him towards her, the bone snapping. He fell on his back, looking up the white zombie’s frontside. The undead mare lifted a hoof, and before Thunderlane could even scream, was silenced forever with a skull-splitting crack.
Davenport faired no better. He had tried to escape by running towards the lowest part of the crumbled wall, but the other five zombies had cornered him. Screaming one last time before they defended on him, he was made short work of.
Colgate lay trembling on the floor, and found to her dismay that she had wet herself. None of the zombies seemed to be going after her, however. Perhaps they were occupied with the others? Now was her chance to get away while they were distracted.
The purple-maned zombie looked at her bloodstained hoof, and held it out. From the group of zombies chowing down on Davenport came a small little filly zombie with a purple mane and a soft raspberry coat, happily running over to the lead zombie. She began to clean the blood from the hoof of the mare with her little tongue, lapping it like she had once done to a lollipop when she was still alive.
Colgate looked harder at the filly. Was that... what that Berry Punch’s kid? Berry Pinch? Colgate felt herself go ill looking at the zombie of her friend’s child.
The oddest thing about the hoof cleaning was that it didn’t seem to be anything demeaning, such as how a royal would demand a “lesser” pony to lick his shoes. No, it seemed nurturing, almost motherly...
Once the blood was gone from the hoof, the mare took a small piece of wood in her mouth, and opened the skull wide enough for her muzzle to fit in. Slowly, she bent down and daintily took a bit of the mushy brain inside. Colgate watched, transfixed in amazement as the zombie ate away fair more mannerly than she had even seen most ponies eat. When she popped back up, looking far less hungry than she had going into the meal, the little filly cleaned the blood from her mouth eagerly.
The zombie turned to Colgate, and the unicorn heard her heart pound in her ears. There was a cunning, somewhat intelligent look in the empty eye sockets of unliving mare. To her utmost surprise, the zombie opened her mouth, and said in a hoarse, yet distinctly ladylike voice, “You may leave now.”
Colgate got to her hooves, and shakily walked away. None of the zombies tried to go after her. Taking one look back, she could see that the mare was indeed rather nice-looking for something that she assumed had been long dead.
Colgate left the ruins of the building, silently thanking the beautiful corpse.
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