Chapter 1 First Exposure

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The two or so thousand ponies that lived in the town of Desert Sage were going around their everyday business. It was what many would consider a beautiful day, but beautiful days were quite uncommon, so the townsponies were making what they could of it. Without the usual clouds and almost-constant winds across the flattened landscape, things were looking pretty great. Wagons rattled in the streets and foals played out in their front yards while parents sat back, enjoying the weekend for what it was worth. A small group of pegasi ponies flew overhead, lazily pushing the nearest cloud away from the sun.

It was just like any other town.

An orange, black-maned pegasus glanced up from the bench he was sitting at and sighed inwardly, pushing to his hooves. With a shake of his mane, he set off at a light trot along the road. Wagons bounced back and forth between buildings on the hard-packed earth as he walked, the ponies pulling them greeting one another cheerfully, maybe even a little too cheerfully.

After a while of wandering without much thought, the orange pegasus came to a small crossroads and stood to wait beside a yellow stallion, his black mane quite similar to Sunny’s.

“Morning, Sunny,” the stallion mumbled as the pegasus walked up to wait beside him.

“Morning, Notebook.” Sunny smiled halfheartedly at him. “How’re things?” A quick glance over the pony said a lot, and one of those things was that Sunny probably shouldn’t have been standing beside him for fear of catching something.

Notebook dropped his head and sighed. “Not so good; I feel like somepony just hit me with a shovel.”

Sunny silently agreed, quirking a brow; the pony didn’t look too good at all—his eyes were sunken and bloodshot and his coat was ruffled up and sticky-looking. “What’d you do, rub your coat in petroleum jelly?

Notebook ignored the quip on his appearance. “I haven’t been able to eat for a day... it all just comes back up. I picked this crap up from Canterlot, I know,” he grumbled. “Ponies are always sick there. The place was a big petri dish by the time I left. Feel bad for leaving my mother back in that horrid place.”

The traffic ceased and the two stallions set across the street. “Well I’m sorry to hear that,” Sunny said genuinely. “What were you doing in Canterlot? That’s halfway across Equestria.”

“Mother,” he mumbled, shoulders drooping. “Well... see you later Sunny.” With a shake of his head, he set off towards the park without a backwards glance.

“Will do?” Sunny watched the stallion go with a little frown and a cocked head. He’d known Notebook for... years. Notebook was being very... not Notebook.

Throwing the stallion and his odd attitude out of his mind, Sunny wracked his brain for something that could prove even mildly entertaining. It never made any sense to him; he would work all week for a few a shiny stack of bits with expectations of the weekend, only to reach the end of the workweek and find that the weekends themselves were just as dull, the only difference was he wasn’t making money. Sitting back and being bored was what being a cashier at a local choke n’ puke for.

A thought struck him, a rather primal one. ‘Muffins!’ That’s what he needed, a nice big case of delicious blueberry muffins. By far, the blueberries made the muffin, and considering there was nothing better to do today other than gorge on snack food, it was the most perfect idea Sunny had had all day.

The walk to the store didn’t prove to be a long one; small towns had their benefits. And in no time at all, he was pushing through the storefront door to the airlock room of the grocer. The air conditioning ruffled his mane as he left the tiled room and entered the actual store, the cool air soothing on his coat after the midday heat. The store was packed with ponies trotting around on their daily business: old ponies, mothers with foals, ponies on lunch break, and just about everything else. Of course the store was packed—after all, it was a Saturday afternoon.

Two young colts galloped by, laughing with delight as one chased the other. The two flew right by Sunny and crashed into an old earth pony, almost knocking him over and causing him to drop his basket.

“Hey you kids!” the earth pony snapped, fire in his eyes. “You watch where you’re going!”

“S-sorry mister,” stammered one of the colts before hastily sprinting down another aisle.

“Hey! wait for me!” called the other, following his friend out of sight.

“Kids,” the stallion muttered to himself, picking up his basket and heading off towards the checkout line. “Beat ‘em, every one of ‘em.”

Sunny’s attention was drawn away from the old stallion by a pink mare carrying a box of ‘Granny’s Homemade Muffins.’ He knew exactly where they were—aisle four, section three, middle shelf. He rounded the corner to aisle four and nearly galloped to section three in a foalish delight that would have proved rather embarrassing had there been anypony around to see. Silently, he pleaded for at least one box to be left; they always sold fast. To his immense pleasure, there proved to be one remaining box. Sighing happily, Sunny allowed his pace to slow. The box was there; everything was going to be alright.

Looking back down the aisle, it was quite a surprise to see another pony. Sunny shared a look with the blue mare directly across from him, his green eyes darting to the last remaining box, then back to her.

She looked at the only box on the shelf, then to Sunny. He looked at her, then the box, then back to her. Worst of all, she was smiling.

Without warning, the mare reared up and set off at a gallop down the aisle. Sunny took this as an immediate threat. Obviously, she was after the box, and he had gotten in grocery store fights with ponies on the Sunday bash before—it was always easiest if you grabbed the box and ran before they could catch you. Nonetheless, old mares knew how to swing a cane harder than one would think.

Sunny jerked forward, hooves fighting for grip on the linoleum tile. She may have started first, but he was closer. Hooves thundering, he scooped the box up by the handle as he passed and turned a triumphant look on the mare... who was still running right at him. At full gallop, the two collided in a tangle of limbs. Crying out in surprise, Sunny lost his grip on the box as the two of them crashed to the floor. Desperate to break contact with the mare, he scrambled away, flesh itching unpleasantly from the contact.

He picked his head up from the ground and gazed at the mare lying next to him. Her blue eyes stared back at him, dark brown mane obscuring half her face. She cracked a little smile and tried to clamber to her hooves, but Sunny was already on top of it. He pushed himself upright and beat his wings, propelling himself to his hooves and forward. With a leap, he dived for the box. His hooves were only an inch away when the loot was enveloped in a blue haze. Sunny made a desperate grab for the handle as the box shot right under him, though the effort only threw off his balance. Missing his target completely, he went sprawling on his face.

Head throbbing, Sunny rolled to his hooves, irritation prickling up and down his spine. “Hey! No fair!” he pouted, flipping around to face the mare. She stood there, the box levitating beside her, a cheeky smile adorning her face.

This wasn’t going to end well.

She must have caught the look in his eye, because the mare turned tail and hoofed it for the other end of the aisle. Sunny took off after her, hoping that he once again had speed on his side.

The mare made a hard left where the aisles merged and skidded around the corner, hooves skittering for traction on the polished floor. A second later, Sunny reached the corner, and instead of sliding to slow himself down, he jumped into it. Leaning hard, he unfurled his wings and gave them one hard flap, smoothly shooting the corner and propelling himself forward. He beat his wings a second time and lifted himself up into the air, gaining some ground on her. A slight pain in his spine told him he was pushing his abilities, but one more flap got him above the fleeing unicorn. With one swift movement, he drew his wings to his side and dropped clean onto the blue mare’s back, ignoring the uncomfortable burning sensation in that surged through his body as their coats touched; sometimes, muffins were more important than phobias.

Not expecting the sudden weight, the mare staggered and tripped, sending them both rolling into a pyramid of stacked cans.

Ponies dodged with indignant yells and surprised cries as asparagus landslide bore down on them, tossing a stray can or two every which way. Sunny pinched his eyes shut as the metallic rocks rained down onto him. Dazed, he opened his eyes to see a happy asparagus smiling at him from a can label.

After a moment, he pushed himself up out of the sea of cans with a clatter and looked around. Ponies stood in a circle around him, scowling and muttering to each other. The box of muffins lay on its side a ways away against a vegetable stand, thankfully un-crushed.

There was another clatter and a blue head pushed itself out of the pile beside his own. The unicorn looked around for a second before digging herself out, scattering more cans across the tile.

“Truce?” she panted, laughing a little as she looked at Sunny. “Didn’t... didn’t expect you to... fight for it.”

“Truce,” Sunny gasped, rubbing his brow where a can had struck him.

The mare looked around and let out a small chuckle, which quickly turned to racking laughter. Sunny couldn’t help but join in, not even knowing why he was supposed to be laughing—she was laughing, so it must have been funny.

“Dang it!” A tan earth pony stomped his way across the store towards the asparagus catastrophe, straightening his red vest with the greatest authority he could muster. “I just stacked all them cans!”

The blue mare quelled her laughter and brought her muzzle to Sunny’s ear. “Run.”

The two ponies scrambled out of the pile and galloped away towards the front of the story. Sunny skidded to a halt, stepping on a can and nearly falling. Remembering the muffins, he ran over to the shelf they had fallen against and scooped them up. Putting on an extra burst of speed, he went to catch up with the blue mare before the store employee blundering along behind them could catch him and stack of an asparagus jail to keep him in. The stallion stopped at the pile of scattered cans and let out an angry bellow at Sunny’s fleeing form, though didn’t pursue any further.

Sunny and the mare cut in front of a shopping couple who’d been waiting to buy a whole cartload of groceries. The blue mare smiled her best smile at that, and that seemed to work for reasons unknown to Sunny.

Sunny tossed the box up onto the counter and produced four bits. “I have money.”

“No, I insist,” the blue mare protested.

“Too late,” he said bluntly as the pony at the register took his bits with a bored expression and pushed the box back across the counter. Sunny took the case of muffins by the handle and headed for the door. The mare followed him. Sunny knew what she wanted; maybe if he ignored her she wouldn’t ask.

The two left the store and many prying eyes behind. Now with a box of perfectly delicious muffins, Sunny chose to head for the park. There was no better place to eat muffins but in the park, and every reasonable pony knew this.

His fellow grocery store escapee trotted along beside him. “Normally, a stallion tells a mare his name before he tackles her into a pile of cans,” she chided, driving a knee into his side just behind his front leg.

Right in the most sensitive spot. He winced and shied away.

“Fhummy,” he mumbled around the handle in his mouth. She rolled her eyes and levitated the box away from him. “Sunny,” he repeated for her. “Sunny Skies.”

“Well it’s nice to meet you, Sunny Skies.” She smiled and levitated the box down onto her back. “I’m Blue Moon, but the ‘Blue’ part is sort of redundant so just call me Moon.”

“Mother much of a Luna fan was she?”

The mare drove her knee into the same spot on his side. “Shut up. I swear, if I hear one more pony say I’m trying to copy Luna...” Shaking her head, she chuckled. “Call me Moon, please.”

Sunny was rather taken aback by her friendliness. He normally never talked to ponies outside of work, mares even less. He had spoken to a psychologist once: the bifocaled pony’s diagnosis had been ‘socially awkward’. Apparently, since his parents had been so protective of him, somehow they had managed to twist a screw loose in his brain, and it just so happened to be that that particular screw held together his ability to interact with ponies in a normal manner. Or at least... that’s what the psychologist had said.

“So are you new in town?” he asked; it was the best he could think of.

“Sort of.” She looked over at him, a little grin still on her face. “Moved here from Fillydelphia about a month or so ago—nice little town.”

“Little?” He shot the mare a look.

“Okay fine, city... big city.” She blew air out her nose. “I’d had enough. I was tired of stepping outside and having to walk across pony’s backs just to get to the store.”

“Yeah well, this is a nice little town... mostly” Sunny remained quiet, not daring to throw glances at Moon for fear she would see him throwing glances and imply something. Yet, despite his dismissive attitude, she continued to walk confidently beside him as if they were good friends on their daily walk.

“So are all of these muffins for me?” she teased, levitating to box in front of her again.

“Hey! I bought it,” he protested, realizing with sudden horror that she had the box in her possession.

“I might let you have one,” she teased. “Now stop whining and let’s find a place to sit.” She pranced ahead and towards the metal arch to the park.

Sunny eyed her curiously as he followed. She was a pony... she was a mare, and she was purposefully going out of her way to get to know him.

He shrugged. “Every day is a new day.”

And she had his muffins...

* * *

Sunny popped another muffin into his mouth as he lay on his back in the shade of an oak tree. He loved watching the clouds as they drifted across the sky.

“Sunsets are always so beautiful here, aren’t they Sunny?” The blue mare lay next to him gazing up as well. A half-eaten muffin rested beside her.

“Mhmf,” came Sunny’s muffled reply around a mouthful of muffin. Quickly, he finished chewing and swallowed. “Yeah.” His gaze drifted to the golden clouds on the horizon. “I guess I always just took them for granted.” The two lay quiet for a minute. Sunny reached for the box to take another muffin.

“Hey Sunny?” Moon murmured.

“Yeah?” The clouds had now turned a pink golden color.

“What’s it like up there?” Moon was gazing up at the clouds as well, a little smile on her face.

“Up where?”

Moon laughed and nudged him with a hoof. “You know.” She raised a hoof towards the sky and closed one eye. “Up there, in the sky. What’s it like to fly up there in the clouds? You know, without a skywagon or a balloon something? I’ve never actually asked a pegasus before.”

“I couldn’t really tell you.” He rolled over onto his side to look at her.

“What?” She turned her head to him, looking puzzled. “But you’re a pegasus. How can you not know?”

Sunny sighed. “It’s kind of a long story.”

“Well, go on,” she pressed. “I’m not in any hurry.”

She had asked the question. He hated answering the question. It was usually something he only told ponies he knew well once in a blue moon, not random mares. Nonetheless, he found himself thinking of how to put it best.

“Okay then...” Sunny tried to smile as Moon rolled towards him to listen. “When I was a foal, I couldn’t fly like all the other fillies and colts my age. Well, actually I couldn’t fly at all, and for a pegasus that can’t fly at all, living in the clouds seemed just a bit dangerous.”

Moon pulled another muffin from the box as he spoke.

“So when I was still young, my parents moved from their home on the outskirts of Cloudsdale to here. They always wanted to do what was best for me. They hauled me around to every doctor and specialist they could afford, but all of them said the same thing and turned me down. Said there was some sort of abnormality or disease in the muscles that supported my wings, a sort of birth defect, or some sciencey thing like that. Something to do with tendons too... But for some reason, only my wings. Most of them said I was lucky I could even walk. After a while I got used to the condition. It wasn’t that bad. After some work I was able to learn to fly short distances, but no more than a couple hundred yards at a time, and that’s pushing it.”

He let out a long sigh and gazed up at the sky. Sunny turned and look back at Moon. Her eyes shone sadly back at him.

“I’m so sorry, Sunny. I’m sorry I asked. That subject must be hard.”

“It’s fine,” he said flatly

Moon looked away and gazed back up at the sky. “It must be so hard for you though.”

Sunny sighed again. Pity... she was showing him pity, the worst of all emotions to be felt in anyone’s general direction. “No, not really.” She didn’t realize just how teasing her sympathy was. “You see, I was never actually able to fly, so I don’t really know how it feels, which means I don’t miss flying because I never have... If that makes any sense.”

Moon only smiled at him. “You’re a nice stallion, Sunny.”

A little taken aback by the compliment, he hastily reached over and popped a muffin into his mouth to avoid having to reply. He was not expecting Moon to shift and lay her head down in the crook of his belly. Sunny’s eyes shot open and he nearly gagged on the muffin. Moon sighed, closing her eyes against the sun.

He tensed and Moon lifted her head. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he muttered hastily, blushing. “It’s just that I don’t like ponies touching me... not really... at all. And you’re the first mare to... you know...” He rubbed the tip of his hoof against his face, going beet red.

“Really?” She cocked an eyebrow.

“No joke.” Sunny didn’t think it was possible to feel more awkward. His face burned as he scooted a little bit away from her. “It’s uh... it’s haphephobia, they said.”

“Wow.” Moon looked thoughtful for a second, then gave a little shrug and nuzzled her head back into his belly, driving another shudder up his spine. She closed her eyes again. “It’s so nice and quiet here; I like small towns.”

Sunny lay there, fighting the urge to push the mare away, instead watching the golden sun sink behind the horizon. A half eaten box of muffins sat next to the two. He could feel the warmth of the mare pressed against his flank. Sunny closed his eyes with a gentle sigh, somehow managing to overcome burning irritation of the mare touching his flank. He wasn’t quite sure what this day had amounted to, but it was certainly something different. Soon, despite the uncomfortableness of the mare resting against him, he drifted off.

* * *

Sunny opened his eyes to darkness and it took him a minute to remember where he was. Although, he was aware of the unicorn mare curled up in the crook of his body, sheltered from the cool night air. Sunny closed his eyes against the night, trying to remember what had woken him.

A low moan emanated from somewhere in the darkness and Sunny’s ears shot straight up. Chances were it had been that.

Slowly, he rolled over and pulled himself free from Moon’s grasp. She let out a little groan and curled herself into a ball, shivering slightly. Sunny could hear breathing, not just his own and Moon’s, but another, third source from somewhere out in the darkness... a raspy, sickly breathing.

“Hello?” he called softly, eyes straining to see in the feeble moonlight.

There was no response. “Hello?” he called a little louder. Sunny cautiously crested a small hill twenty or so feet away from the tree in the direction of the sound. A shadowy lump rolled over as Sunny neared The pegasus frowned at the other pony. Either he was drunk or baeten... or both. More cautiously, he paced a little closer to the dark shape, recognition dawning on his face.

“Notebook?” he asked in shocked confusion upon seeing the pony’s face. The stallion lifted its head and laid a sickly gaze on Sunny. “Are you okay?” Sunny asked worriedly.

“No,” he groaned, wincing.

“Moon!” Sunny called back behind him. Notebook’s condition seemed to have escalated tenfold since earlier today. Sunny was no doctor, but he was pretty sure eyes shouldn’t bleed.

The mare appeared beside him, seeming to almost blend out of the darkness. “What is it?” She looked down at the sickly stallion. “Oh my.”

“Go get help.”

“I don’t know, this looks really bad. His coat’s damp and... no,” she said in a foreboding tone.

“What?” Sunny was feeling nervous now.

“His eyes are bleeding.” She gestured a hoof to the pony, who was now hacking on something from in his throat, small streams of foam bubbling from his muzzle.

“Well we need to go get help,” Sunny stated. “I’ll stay with him. Go find somepony to help.”

“It’s the middle of the night!”

“So go bang on somepony’s door or something. He isn’t looking good.”

Moon nodded and blended off into the darkness, making for a distant street lamp.

Sunny had to confirm his suspicions by throwing another glance at Notebook. The stallion looked really bad. He was losing small patches of hair that shed off in the long grass and the flesh beneath his coat was veiny and pale.

“Just hang in there, buddy,” Sunny murmured, patting Notebook’s side with a forehoof. That had been a mistake. Notebook’s flank was soaking with perspiration, hot and sticky. Gasping, Sunny yanked his hoof away and dragged it across the grass a few times. Okay, no touching.

“Notebook, what happened?”

The pony’s throat rattled as he spoke. “Don’t know... just got really sick.”

“You’re a little more than sick, my friend,” Sunny half-chuckled.

“You think!?” A series of short spasms wracked his body. Slowly, they subsided, leaving the two sit in silence. The only sound to be heard was the heavy breathing of Notebook. Sunny guessed that, by the time he was able to hear the approaching ponies, about ten minutes had passed. He pricked his ears as the sound of voices and hoofsteps drew closer.

“Over here!” he called to the darkness. A moment later, four ponies appeared through the black screen. There were two ponies in medical barding and another wearing a utility harness who was brandishing a flashlight. Moon was a little ways behind them, quite content with glaring at the back of a white unicorn mare’s head. The mare in question levitated a doctor’s bag next to her. Her scarlet mane was tied back and hung over her left flank.

She set the bag down next to Notebook and immediately went to work, seemingly oblivious to Moon’s unapproving glare.

“Well, what does it sound like to you?” Moon insisted.

“I don’t know yet!” the white mare snapped back. “Let me look at him first!”

The mare nodded towards the large stallion with the flashlight “Brick, light.” The stallion obeyed, turning the amber beam on Notebook.

Sunny caught a glimpse of the buck’s face and backpedaled, nearly tripping on his own tail. Blood ran from his tear ducts and his eyes shone like empty windows; the pupils had grown so large that they threatened to consume the entire iris. The whites were deep pink and bloodshot, and a thin trickle of white foam ran from his mouth.

The mare gave a quick flick of her tail and flashlight pony set down his light and pulled a collapsible stretcher from his back. In two quick movements, he had it unfolded and on the ground next to Notebook. The three ponies approached the sick buck and gently rolled him onto the stretcher.

The stallion earth pony wearing medical barding reared back in disgust after they had finished pushing the stallion onto the vinyl frame. “Did you feel his coat?” he gasped, examining his forehooves.

Sunny and Moon sat back and watched as the ponies prepared to lift Notebook. They were about ready when the stallion rolled off the stretcher and jerked into series of violent spasms.

“Hold him down,” the white mare groaned, throwing her hooves up in the air as she glared at the writhing pony. The other two sprang into action, attempting to get a hold on the slippery stallion as the mare levitated a syringe from her bag. With a roll of her eyes, she jabbed it into Notebook’s neck and took a step back. The stallion let out a strangled scream and reared his head back, biting into the foreleg of the stallion in medical barding.

“Gah!” The buck reared back and fell on his rump, attempting to pull his forehoof free from the stallion’s gnashing teeth. He swung his free forehoof at notebook, but the white mare’s magic intervened and held it still as another bit of focused mana yanked Notebook’s jaw open.

“Sweet Celestia he bit me!” The stallion held his hoof firmly in the other as he glared at Notebook, who was now starting to go limp. “What in the name of Luna is wrong with ponies!?”

The brown earth pony ran back around the stretcher to retrieve his flashlight.and shone it at the stallion’s foreleg. There was a good sized mark where the skin had torn, blood oozing from the many little teeth marks.

“Better get that taken care of,” the white mare scoffed, flicking her tail.

“What am I supposed to take care of it with!?” he snapped. “A stick and a piece of string!? Most of the equipment is back at the wagon...” He trailed off, examining the wound. “Have you ever seen a pony do that before?” he muttered, rubbing his leg and turning to look at the pony next to him. Flashlight pony shook his head. “I hope whatever he has isn’t contagious.”

The hospital mare glared at the two ponies. “Hurry up and find a way to clean that so you can help me carry this thing.” With some effort, she levitated Notebook back onto the stretcher as the bitten stallion turned and started rummaging in his bags.

“I’ll help,” Sunny offered on a whim. Notebook was his friend, afterall. The mare looked at him and nodded. Flashlight pony took one end and Sunny took the other; the mare walked beside the stretcher to help balance it. Bitten pony hobbled behind the trio as Moon led the way, levitating the flashlight beside her.

The wounded pony hobbled up beside them. “Celestia damn it, I hope I don’t catch whatever that stallion had. I know he had something. I know it. Celestia damn me if its rabies or something.”

Moon glanced behind her. “Well whatever he had, chances are it’s already in your blood.”

“I know!” He swore at the ground. “I passed medical school, you know. The most I can do now is peroxide.”

After a short while, they neared the road. A covered wagon sat off to one side of the street, a red cross painted upon the canopy. When they reached it, Sunny and flashlight pony slid the stretcher into the back of the wagon. Flashlight pony snatched his flashlight back and crossed around to the front of the wagon to slide into the harness as the other two climbed up in the back.

“Hey, thanks for the help!” called the mare as the wagon pulled away

“Don’t mention it!” Sunny called back. “...Take care of him, please.”

Both he and Moon sat on the roadside, watching as the wagon drew further away, until it rounded a bend out of sight. “Well that was a little strange,” Sunny finally muttered, breaking the silence.

“You’re telling me,” Moon replied. “I haven’t ever seen anything like that happen to a pony before.”

Sunny frowned. “So what were you and that mare arguing about when you walked up?”

She shot him a puzzled look, then her eyes widened. “Oh that. We we’re arguing over symptoms and causes. You see, I worked in a clinic ever since I was a little more than a foal; my parents specialized in medical treatment.”

“So you’re a doctor?” Sunny asked.

“Well close... Pediatrician,” The mare folder her ears back and blushed. “Hardly even that.”

Sunny caught the movement. “Hey now. What’s so embarrassing about being a pediatrician?”

“Well... I was never really good at it.”

“Oh.” Sunny cocked his head to the side. “Well that’s too bad... I guess?”

Moon only shrugged. “Want to walk me home Sunny?” She didn’t smile when she asked, but just cocked her head and gave him a curious look.

The sudden change of topic threw him off guard, but he recovered quickly enough, covering the mental stumble with a small cough. “Sure.” Sunny gave a little beat of his wings and tried not to act too excited. There was a certain tone in her voice that he was pretty sure he had caught.

“Come on.” She chuckled, and started off down the walkway. The two walked for a little while in silence. Sunny shivered as the cool night breeze cut through his coat.

“Hey Sunny?” Moon asked, breaking the silence after a moment or two and turning her head to look at him. She pushed her long brown mane away from her face with a forehoof, blue eyes clouded with worry.

“Yeah?” Sunny turned to her and realized he had never really seen her cutie mark. Sure he had known it was there or skimmed over it, but he had never really looked at it. Her cutie mark was of a crescent moon. The thick sliver of white was surrounded by little stars here and there and a big poofy cloud covered one tip of the crescent.

“Do you think that stallion is going to be okay?” she asked.

He sighed. “If you mean Notebook, then I’m not sure. I met him a few times before and he seemed like a nice pony. I just find it hard to imagine anything like that happening to him, or anypony really.”

“What I don’t get, though, is what exactly was wrong with him. None of those symptoms made any sense. Ponies’ eyes shouldn’t bleed—that normally only happens in cases of blunt head trauma.”

“Yeah,” Sunny muttered, eyes fixed on his hooves as they walked on in silence once again.

A few more minutes passed before Moon stopped. “This is it.”

In front of them was a small house, no more than a two bedroom.

She turned and walked up the narrow pathway to the front door and Sunny followed a little ways behind, unsure of exactly how far ‘walking her home’ exceeded. Lucky, his question was answered as she stopped at the door and turned to face him. “Today was really fun.” She smiled to him. “You know, besides the whole Notebook thing.”

“Yeah.” Sunny returned the smile. “First time falling asleep in the park under an oak tree with a mare I’ve only just met.” A sudden thought struck his mind and he gasped.

“What is it?” Moon tensed.

“I left my muffins in the park!” Sunny mentally hit himself—he had forgotten the muffins of all things.

“Oh you!” she laughed, waving a hoof at him.

“I’m serious! I have to go get them!”

Moon just smiled at him and rolled her eyes. “Tell you what. I have something I need to do tomorrow morning, but stop by after lunch and we can go see if they’re still there.”

Sunny thought about it for a second. “But they then they will probably be…” He trailed off when Moon began to snicker. “Hey, what!?”

She laughed and brought her hoof to her face. “You are hilarious.”

“What?” It was times like this he often wished he had some sort f... mare decrypter thingy. Nonetheless, the meaning of her words slapped him across the face like a wet towel after a little bit of thought. “Oh!” He blushed. “Oh! Sure!” He gave a little flap of his wings.

“Okay then.” She grinned “See you tomorrow?”

“Definitely!”

Moon opened the door and stepped inside. “Bye.”

“Bye.”

Sunny almost squealed when the door closed, and he pranced in a little circle. He walked back down the path to the street and started off towards his apartment at a trot. This was something new.

His belly was a churning pit of worry and tension, but he was excited nonetheless. The idea that he had a chance to get to know a nice pony, a mare even, was a rather pleasant one.

* * *

Sunny walked beside Moon as they left the park. The whole day had gone perfectly. He had met with her an hour or so after lunch, both of them heading off to the park. Sunny made sure to check and see if his muffins were there. (They weren’t.) He had even run around the tree a few times to see if somepony had hidden the box. Moon had laughed at him and said he was crazy, again. The two had spent the rest of the afternoon lying around and sharing stories, little things—all those random things like childhood memories or embarrassing things they had done in the past.

Overall, the day had been something entirely new to Sunny. Conversations to him usually related to work and work alone. He’d never really stopped before to talk about himself.

“So what do you want to do now?” Moon nudged him and they set off away from the park. Ponies bustled by in the street as the two walked through town.

Sunny frowned “I don’t know... there really isn’t much to do in a small town.”

Moon glanced around at the few shops and stores. “Well there has to be something,” she pouted.

Sunny didn’t catch the last part. His eyes were trained on two ponies on the other side of the street. A white unicorn mare with a scarlet mane was setting a swift trot and a large, brown earth pony stallion followed close behind. Sunny stopped and Moon shot him a look. He raised a hoof and pointed it at the two ponies across the street.

Moon’s eyes widened. “Is that them?”

“Yep.” He recognized them as their friends from last night. Moon gave Sunny a little glance before dashing off across the street. “Hey! Wait up!” Sunny took off after her, meeting her on the other side to intercept the two hospital ponies. The hospital ponies pushed through a throng of mares crowded around a store front and nearly crashed into Sunny.

“What’s going on?” Moon demanded barring their way. “Both of you look like something bad has happened. I can see it in your eyes.”

The hospital mare glared at Moon and opened her mouth for a sharp retort, but she stopped when she realized who it was. The mare dropped her head and drew back her ears before glancing back at the mares they had pushed through, all of which were glaring irritably. “Not here,” she whispered, gesturing behind her. “Follow me.” The white mare took off again, leaving Sunny and Moon no choice but to gallop after her and the stallion.

“What do you think this is all about?” Sunny asked Moon as they trotted after the hospital ponies, dodging between shoppers and ponies out on afternoon walks. The two ahead of them rounded a corner into a small alley between two stores. Sunny and Moon followed a moment later and they finally stopped in the back of the alley, bathed in semi-darkness.

“Now, will you tell us just what the hay is going on?” Sunny stomped a hoof, more or less taking Moon’s approach.

The white unicorn mare glanced around to make sure they were alone. “We lost Notebook.”

“You what!?” Sunny could understand why Notebook would have died, but he never expected it to really happen. “How did you lose him?”

The white mare folded her ears. “Keep it down we can’t let this get out.” She sighed and looked up at the two. Non-flashlight pony stood behind her looking impartial. “We don’t know how we lost him.”

Moon broke in. “How do you just not know how a pony dies if he’s still alive when you get him?”

The hospital mare looked put out. “No, you don’t understand. We lost him, about an hour ago. He’s gone. He literally isn't there anymore.”

“Oh well that can’t be all bad,” Sunny tried to add, but hastily shut up when both mares glared at him. He shot a look to the mare’s assistant, who just shrugged.

Moon looked nervous. “This is bad, isn’t it?”

The mare nodded solemnly. “About two hours after the encounter, Sugar Apple got extremely sick, even after cleaning the wound. Nothing we gave him worked. The infection fought whatever we tried and absorbed magic like nothing I’ve ever seen before. At about eight hours, he started showing all the same symptoms as Notebook. Bleeding from the eyes, pupil dilation, minor hair loss, a dangerous increase in temperature, and an extreme case of aggression.” The mare hesitated. “About an hour after that, he tore free of his bindings and bit me.” She nodded to the brown stallion beside her. He leaned over and pulled back her staff barding to reveal a small mark on her back where a strip of flesh had been torn away. The skin around it had since turned black, almost as if the mare had tried to cauterize it.

Moon gasped and Sunny stepped forward. “So uh…” he tried to layer on casually “So when Notebook bit Sugar Apple, he ended up like Notebook. So…

Moon cut in. “How long ago did this happen?”

The white mare gave the stallion a flick of her tail and he went back to his normal stance. “About seven hours ago.”

“Wait? Then why aren’t you showing?” Moon cocked her head to the side.

“Yeah about that.” The white mare gave a little smile. “I had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen to me. As soon as I could, I washed the entire wound in an iodine concentrate. After that, I directly injected the wound with three times the highest prescribed dosage of penicillin, not recommended… and about twenty milliliters of formalin.”

“What?” Moon balked. “You injected yourself with formalin? How are you not dead!?”

The mare stomped “I don’t know! It should have killed me! But it was better than ending up like Sugar Apple! I watched as the infection spread from the wound! The flesh appeared to rot at a rapid rate around the infected area. I think that’s part of how the virus spreads. I figured if I found a way to stop the rot it might stop the infection. So far it appears to have worked. This may be a breakthrough. I doubt it works after long time exposure, but if it can be applied immediately, it slows, maybe even stops the virus before it can spread.”

Sunny’s head spun as the two mares argued. Moon stared into the white mares eyes. “But what if it doesn’t?”

The white mare turned towards her brown assistant and nodded. Slowly the stallion reached his head around and pulled a pistol from his saddlebag by the bit before he dropped it back in again.

Moon gave a tiny nod.

“I need to call in ponies who are more suited for this. Maybe from Canterlot.” The white mare hung her head. “This is way out of my hooves.” Perking up, she held out a hoof to Moon. “I haven’t introduced myself yet. I’m Willow.”

“Blue Moon,” she replied, taking Willow’s hoof

“And this is Brick.” Willow gestured to the stallion beside her, whom Sunny had recently known as flashlight pony.

Moon raised her hoof to Brick. “Nice to meet you.” Brick met her hoof with his and nodded.

Sunny felt left out of the whole introduction thing. “Um, Hi. I’m Sunny.”

“Nice to meet you too Sunny.” Willow bowed her head. Brick nodded again.

“So,” Moon but in. “You can call in those Canterlot ponies, and they can pull in and experiment with Sugar Apple. Right?”

Willow seemed to shrink. “We don’t have Sugar Apple… He um… escaped... Both of them escaped.”

Sunny was surprised Moon didn’t stomp on Willow right then. “What!?”

“They may be crazy but they can still run really fast.” Willow was crumbling under Moon’s angry glare.

“We have to find them!” Moon turned and set off, back towards the street, leaving Willow to silently regain her composure.

“Moon,” Sunny said quietly, trotting off after her. “Is this really our business. I mean... this is sketchy.”

“How they hay did I get roped into this?” Willow moaned. “I’m just a medical pony.” She put on a fake smile and the four walked to the end of the alley, looking out at the street. “Okay. This isn’t going to be that hard.” She chuckled. “All we have to do is find two crazy violent ponies carrying an unknown highly contagious disease, in a town of about two thousand ponies before they end up hurting or infecting anypony else, assuming that they would react the same way to exposure as both me Sugar Apple did and lose any form of reason or sanity they may possess in a period of eight hours or less.” Willows stopped to breathe. “If this gets out it’s going to spread like wildfire.”

Sunny pushed past Moon and Willow to the sidewalk. He looked at Moon, who seemed determined no matter what. “It’s really that bad?”

* * *

It was the afternoon of the next day. So far, nothing at all had gone wrong. The four ponies had searched all day and night, but hadn’t found anything. No slobbering crazy ponies as Willow had described Sugar Apple, nothing. It almost felt like the whole incident was just going to blow over... almost.

The four ponies were sitting around a table, more or less enjoying a meal in what was considered the town square by the locals. Ponies bustled to and fro around on daily business, a fountain bubbled in the center of the square, and a little to the left of that was an open well, powered by a hoofpump. Willow had Written Sunny’s work telling them to excuse him for the day. The pegasus had been diagnosed with a ‘strange sickness’, apparently. Willow had gotten a kick out of that.

“Things have been too quiet,” Sunny murmured, taking another bite of his apple. “I’m just waiting for somepony to start screaming.”

Willow sighed inwardly. “I’m really worried. I can’t get anything but nearby settlements on the line. It’s like something is blocking the Canterlot signal.”

“So no specialists?” Moon was picking at a salad.

“Nope.” Willow glared at her plate. “Whatever this is, until I can get a hold of somepony in charge, we are on our own.”

“Great,” muttered Sunny, finishing off his apple. A large open wagon pulled by two earth ponies rolled into the square. One of them was a lime green stallion, the other a yellow mare.

“I don’t get it,” Willow huffed. She reached over and stole an olive from Brick’s salad. The brown pony glared at her for minute before going back to his food. “How can you just lose communication with Canterlot?” Sunny thought that if Willow glared any harder at her food it was going to get up and run away. She dropped her head to the table and let out a moan.

“Are you okay?” Moon, who was sitting next to Willow, set a hoof on her back, a worried expression on her face.

Willow lifted her head and, much to Sunny’s horror, was bleeding from her tear ducts. “I was feeling a little tipsy...” she trailed off, staring at the table. “I’m not feeling so good.”

She dropped her head back to the table. Moon grasped Willow’s head with her hooves to look into her eyes. “Willow, your treatment didn’t work. Your body is reacting to the sickness!”

The mare wiped a foreleg across her face and her eyes widened at the blood smearing her hoof. “Oh... this is bad,” she moaned and seemed to deflate.

“Willow!” Sunny banged a hoof on the table

“Wha?” She jerked her head and gave it a shake, spreading small droplets of blood across the tabletop. “Right, okay... let’s see.” Willow’s bag sat next to her on the ground. She levitated it up beside her but her horn flickered and died and the bag plopped back into the dirt. The unicorn sat stunned for a second before she bent her head and heaved the bag up, spilling its contents onto the table. Brick sat and stared, wide eyed as the mare hoofed through a pile of medical supplies.

“Um guys,” Sunny murmured. Ponies were starting to look at them.

“Here!” Willow threw a bag of syringes at Moon. “Get out a hypodermic needle. One of the big ones.” Moon complied magically opening the bag and and levitating out a needle about the length of a pony’s hoof. “Take this,” Willow snapped, passing an unmarked bottle of electric blue liquid over to the blue unicorn. “I need you to measure exactly twenty milliliters. No more, no less.”

“What is this stuff?” Moon carefully filled the syringe to the twenty mark, examining the blue liquid as it was extracted.

Willow moaned grasping her stomach. “I don’t really know. We got a whole shipment of it by mistake about a week ago. It’s something foreign. According to the paper that came with it, it’s some sort of antibiotic. Targets the cells that the body doesn’t need and wipes them out. You should read the list of side effects.” She gave a little chuckle.

Moon looked skeptical. “Is it safe?”

The white mare glared back at her. “It’s an experimental drug that’s designed to eliminate every cell in the body except the ones that are essential to remain alive that was shipped to us by accident. Of course it isn’t safe! Now jab me with that needle before I get any worse!”

Sunny watched as the green stallion pulled out of the wagon harness and set off towards them. He wished the mares would stop speaking so loudly. They were really starting to draw a lot of attention.

“Right!” Moon jumped. She levitated the needle up, and with practiced precision, injected the blue liquid into the mare’s neck. The second Moon withdrew the needle, Willow let out an agonized scream and rolled off the bench to fall into a twitching heap in the dust.

“What did you do to her!?” a Stallion called from the crowd of ponies that was now gathering around the four of them.

Sunny watched as ponies ran across the square to see what was going on. “We have to get out of here!” Sunny caught Brick’s eye. The Stallion nodded and scooped up the twitching Willow. He threw her over his back while Moon magically gathered up the contents of Willow’s bag. With Moon trailing them, the two Stallions tried to push their way through the gathering crowd.

“Hey, stop!” called the green earth pony who had trotted over from the wagon. Sunny ignored him, still trying to push through the nosy crowd of ponies. “Stop them!” the wagon pony yelled. The crowd barred their way as if they were just waiting for an excuse to stop the four peculiar ponies.

“What are you doing!?” Sunny yelled back at the stallion. He could barely hear himself over the sound of chatter

“That mare is dangerous!” he yelled back, trotting up to the surrounded group. “She’s infected!”

Brick and Moon turned back to look at the green stallion as well. The crowd fell silent. “What?” Moon gave him a look that seemed to say, ‘Play along.’

“That mare is infected.” Sunny winced. This stallion was going to cause a riot.

Moon leveled her gaze dangerously with his, but couldn’t hide the surprise that showed in her face. “How do you know that?”

“I came from Canterlot, mare.” The mare who had been pulling the wagon with the green stallion pushed her way through the ring of townsponies to stand next to him.

Sunny saw no good end to any of this. It’s not like these ponies surrounding them would just let them walk away after the scene they had just shown. “What’s that supposed to mean? What does being from Canterlot have anything to do with this?”

The green pony’s eyes widened. “Wow, you folks haven’t heard?” He sighed, rubbing his brown mane. “I hate to be the pony to tell you this folks, but Canterlot is up in smoke.” There were gasps from the crowd and several ponies started muttering to each other. “Nopony knows what really happened; all anypony knows is that there was this disease that got spread around. Ponies went crazy and started eating each other. Me and my wife here...” The stallion wrapped a leg around the yellow mare and drew her closer to him. “...we got out before things got really bad, heard everypony talking and yelling over the radios. After a while we got out of range but the last transmission we heard, they were talking about trying to evacuate the city. Radios died after that. The Royal Army still can’t get that new technology stuff working.”

Sunny couldn’t believe what this pony was saying. He glanced back at Willow, who was still on Brick’s back. She had stopped twitching, but remained unconscious. Looking back at the green stallion, Sunny didn’t think it was possible for a pony’s eyes to open that wide. The stallion was staring around at the crowd, he gave a nervous gulp and continued looking around. He caught Sunny’s eye and slinked over to him, suddenly looking very scared. The crowd was starting to panic now. The group trapped in the circle was momentarily forgotten as the townsponies fought amongst themselves.

Moon and Brick gathered around Sunny and the couple from Canterlot. The green stallion dropped his head and folded his ears. “Look at them,” he whispered. His eyes darted around so fast that Sunny wondered how he wasn’t getting dizzy. “Look at their eyes.”

Sunny looked around at the crowd of ponies, who were still paying them no attention. Now that he thought about it they did look a little strange... The thought struck him. About half the ponies in the crowd looked like Notebook when Sunny talked to him two days ago. Most of them looked sick while others, seemed fine.

“What?” Moon asked, looking around nervously. “What’s wrong with them?”

Sunny explained to her. The green stallion jumped up and trotted towards a sickly looking pink mare. “Have you been scratched or bitten by anything?” he questioned as he trotted around her in a circle, examining her flanks.

“What’s wrong with you?” The mare turned tail and stalked away.

“This doesn’t make any sense.” The stallion was back at Sunny’s side now; his hooves jittered as he looked around at the wall of conjured ponies. “They don’t have any bites. Why are they sick?”

A brown pegasus hovered over the crowd and pointed at the momentarily forgotten ponies with an accusing hoof. A few feathers pulled free of his wings and rained down on the crowd below. “Hey! Them ponies is whisperin’ about somethin’!”

All eyes went back to the ponies trapped in the center.

The green stallion looked around desperately. He had meant to tell them about Willow, but had ended up trapping himself and his wife. Confused and scared ponies pushed in on them from all sides, yelling questions and making assumptions. The crowd mentality was in a dangerous place.

“This is bad Sunny,” Moon whispered, pressing up against the orange pegasus.

A loud scream echoed across the square and the questioning eyes of the group turned to a purple pegasus mare cowering on the ground next to the well. Sunny took off first, taking the first chance at escape. He jumped and unfurled his wings to glide the short distance over the crowd of ponies and landed next to the mare.

“What happened?” he asked as other ponies began to crowd around. Sure he was a subtle pony but all these obsessively snoopy townsponies were starting to drive him crazy. “Get back!” He flipped around rearing at the approaching mob. “For the love of Celestia give the mare some space!” To Sunny’s surprise, the crowd backed off a little. He turned back to the mare as Moon and Brick pushed up beside him. Willow still lay unmoving. “What happened?”

The mare looked up and raised a shaking hoof to the pump. Mr. and Mrs. wagon pony appeared on the other side of the mare. The purple pony whimpered. “The water,” she cried.

Cautiously, Sunny approached the pump and worked the handle. It took a little bit of effort, but after a few pumps he got the water moving. Small clumps of fur and pinkish water splattered to the ground at his hooves. Feeling his stomach turn over, Sunny took a step back. “Sweet Celestia.”

Moon cringed, then turned to Brick and levitated his flashlight from his saddlepack, much to the brown pony’s disapproval. The other ponies watched as she trotted up to the well and shone the beam down the narrow shaft. “S-Sunny you need to look at this!”

Nopony spoke as Sunny peeked down into the well. He could see two shapes; one was a white pony he didn’t recognize, but the other was a yellow buck. Notebook? Sunny shook his head, peering closer through the darkness. It was impossible. There was no way Notebook could have gotten in the well. Actually... there was. Chances were the white pony had been getting water or something and Notebook had ran at him him or her and...

The green Stallion peeked down beside Sunny and gasped. “Were those ponies… infected?”

Sunny nodded and swallowed a lump in his throat. “One of them.”

The green pony looked over at Sunny, eyes filled with worry. “You know what this means, right?”

Sunny’s mouth went dry at the thought. “I’m... I’m no doctor or anything... but, the sickness would spread through water, right?”

“Yep,” Moon muttered apathetically, pulling back the flashlight. She turned to the crowd. “How many of you ponies has had a drink from this well in the past eight hours?”

“Moon,” Sunny hissed in the mare’s ear. “This well doesn’t just feed to the pump. It has piping to all the buildings within four blocks of here. I know because I helped run one of the pipes last summer!”

Moon paled.

A dozen or so ponies raised their hooves to the air, some of them looking skeptical. Brick pulled his flashlight back from Moon and dropped it back into his bag. Sunny and Moon exchanged a worried look. The four of them were once again surrounded by the confused and prying townsponies. Sunny looked around frantically for a way to escape the unsettled crowd that was slowly becoming a mob, but any plan that he could think of required Willow being awake and mobile. Sunny threw a glance at the unicorn; that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

“What’s down there!?” a green mare called from the crowd, evoking another wave of jeers from the half-mob.

“Is there a pony in there?” A stallion pushed out of line and ran up to peer down the well.

They were pushed up against the stone ring of the well as the crowd surged forward, all trying to see at once.

“Look at their faces!” the same brown pegasus as before yelled. “They look guilty. They all know something and ain’t tellin’ us!”

Try as he might, Sunny could not think of a plan to get them out of this mess, and judging by the mood of the crowd, things weren’t going to end up very well if they kept up the way they did.

Why hadn’t they seen the blood in the water right away? Maybe... When Sunny had seen him in that well, he didn’t look like Notebook anymore. The pony’s body had bloated, his coat stretched tight over the swollen frame. It must have just... popped... or something, otherwise ponies would have noticed it earlier.

“Okay!” the green stallion next to him was glaring around wildly. “If you all back off, I will tell you!” Apparently, Sunny wasn’t the only one getting flustered.

Willow moaned and lifted her head from Brick’s flank. The earth pony brought his head around and gave the mare a soft nuzzle. “Insides burn like crazy.” Willow tried to lift her head further but it flopped back against the pony’s flank.

Green pony folded back his ears. “Look... there is a pony in the well.” There was a whole chain of gasps from the crowd. “One of those sick ponies from Canterlot.”

“What are you doing!?” Sunny hissed quietly. “Don’t tell them; you’ll start a riot!”

The green pony sighed and raised his head to the on looking ponies, ignoring Sunny. “Anypony who drank that water recently is going to go crazy... and most likely die... and that’s putting it nicely,” he added under his breath.

A deadly silence hung over the crowd. “Well I didn’t drink any,” muttered a sickly looking stallion near the front row.

“Yes you did!” a mare called from somewhere behind him. “I saw you raise your hoof when that mare asked!”

The stallion glared her daggers. “No I didn’t, that wasn’t me!”Many of the ponies had started to turn towards him. “I... I didn’t, I swear.”

The brown pegasus who had been hovering over the crowd to get a better view hit the ground like a sack of flour and the silence spell was broken. Several ponies turned to his limp body, horror etched in their faces. All at once the group broke apart; ponies ran to and fro accusing one another of drinking the water or just plain yelling to hear themselves make noise.

A brown unicorn ran a short ways away from what Sunny could now call the mob and turned to face them. “Forget this I’m getting down to the hospital to have those ponies fix me!” He turned tail and ran; several ponies stopped whatever they were doing and followed.

“No.” rasped Willow from next to Sunny. “They can’t get there. Safe. Others don’t know.”

Sunny gasped, he realized just why those ponies couldn’t reach the hospital. In the state the mob was in, all they would end up doing was burning the place down. If Sunny remembered correctly, the hospital had once been a Royal Equestrian Army medical facility. It was half the reason the town was here in the first place. He’d heard once that when the building had been converted to a public hospital, many of the old defenses had remained. “Come on!” he called to the group still pressed up against the well. “We have to beat them there!”

Sunny turned to run but the green stallion held out a hoof. “Wait.” He pointed towards his wagon, which was still parked near the table they had been previously eating at. Sunny turned to Brick, who gestured to the mare on his back and nodded.

“Okay let’s go!” The group galloped to the wagon and Brick laid Willow down in the back. He ran around to the front and slid into the harness next to green wagon pony. All around the square, ponies ran like frenzied ants. Sunny didn’t know how ponies could act like this. If something like this turned a bunch of normal townsponies into a crazy mob then Sunny was afraid to see what would happen when ponies actually started to turn like Willow said they would. Moon climbed up into the wagon to sit next to Willow and Sunny clambered up to sit on a stack of crates near the front. The two pulling ponies set off and the wagon started slowly. The yellow mare that the green stallion had called his wife climbed up and lay down in the back, almost casually.

Sunny felt exposed sitting in the front of an uncovered wagon, especially above the railing level, while a bunch of half-crazy ponies ran around doing whatever half-crazy ponies do. The wagon was moving about the speed of a trot when a gray earth pony jumped up onto the open back of the wagon.

Sunny jumped up. “Get off!”

“I’m not sick!” the stallion protested.

Sunny stared into the stallion’s eyes. From what he had learned, the eyes were the first to show signs of the sickness. The pupils were the normal size and no blood ran from the tear ducts. After a moment, he let his guard down. “Okay... fine”

They were picking up some speed now, but were still moving quite slow. Willow was now well enough to lean up against Moon; the two sat watching the frenzied ponies as they gained distance.

“Thanks,” the gray stallion gasped staring out the back of the wagon with the rest of the ponies. “What they hay is going on?”

“Hey look!” a mare called form the square, pointing a hoof towards the wagon. “That mare works at the hospital; they’re taking ponies there to help them!”

Sunny hung his head, silently cursing Willow for wearing her hospital apparel. The ponies still rampaging in the square all stopped as one and watched the wagon slowly gaining distance on them. Then one pony started forward, then another, and another. They followed, picking up speed. Some of them looked pleading, some angry, others were absolutely batshit insane and looked right on the verge of going Notebook.

Sunny looked down at the ponies pulling the wagon. “You two might want to pick up the pace a little.”

The green stallion grunted and Brick strained in the harness. What the hay was in this wagon? From the work the they were putting into it, it must weigh a ton. The two ponies were giving all they had, and yet the heavy cart was hardly noticing their effort.

Without really thinking, Sunny jumped down from his perch on the boxes and off of the cart. He braced his head against the heavy cart and started pushing.

“Sunny what are you doing?” Moon asked urgently.

“Helping,” he grunted, feeling the wagon gain some speed. The gray earth pony jumped down beside him and did the same. And with the two ponies in front and two in back the wagon really started to move, after a minute Sunny dared to look back just in time to watch the brown pegasus from before land square on his back. He barely had time to cry out as they tumbled to the dirt.

“Sunny!” He heard Moon call.

“Don’t stop!” he screamed. If they stopped now they would be swarmed.

The brown pegasus had Sunny pinned on his back. Hooves tramped the ground all around them in the ponies’ desperate dash for the hospital. “Get off me!” Sunny squirmed under the pony but his hooves remained planted on Sunny’s underbelly. Sunny screamed and kicked, his coat burning like fire wherever the stallion touched him.

“Just what are you plannin’?” Slobber and blood ran from the pony’s muzzle as he glared at Sunny from above, an animalistic glint in his eyes. He was already gone.

Sunny shrank back, shaking with fear. This pony was sick. “Please, let me go.” Oh Celestia, if this pony bit him.

“Just what did you and your friends do!?” The pegasus bellowed, spraying Sunny with blood and saliva.

“Please!” Sunny cowered in his grasp. “Get away from me. You’re sick!”

“Sick?” the pony cried, laughing maniacally. His pupils grew to the size of a bit. “I’ll show you sick!”

“No!” Sunny cried hysterically, on the verge of tears. The pegasus lunged for his face but Sunny threw up a forehoof. The crazed pony was plenty happy to bite into his foreleg and Sunny screamed as he felt skin tear. “Get off! Get off! Get off!” he cried, kicking feebly at the underbelly of the crazed pegasus.

Sunny mustered all the strength he could and, with a heave, managed to throw the biting pony off. The crazed pony landed in the dirt and Sunny scrambled to his hooves. Balancing on three hooves, trying to keep any weight off the hurt limb, he glanced around. The commotion was drawing more ponies now, coming to watch the scene from windows or storefronts.

The crazy picked himself up and made another lunge for Sunny. Sunny hobbled a few feet backwards and braced himself.

A shot rang out and a hole sprouted from the stallion’s chest. The brown pegasus seemed to fall in slow motion and landed in the dusty road with a poof.

A light blue pegasus landed next to Sunny and spat his revolver back into the holster on his leg. “You okay buddy?”

It took Sunny a moment to regain himself. “No, I need to get to the hospital.”

The blue pegasus gave an unsettled shake of his light brown mane. “What the hay was that pony doin’?”

Sunny could feel his leg burning, but didn’t dare look at it. “He was sick, a whole bunch are.”

“What are you talking about buddy?” He was looking skeptical now, probably wondering if he had shot the right pony. “Look, ah just shot a pony for you... an’ ah’ve never done that before... so you’d better not be crazy.”

“Don’t worry.” Ponies had started to realize what had happened and the area was quickly clearing. They must have been anxious to get away from the pegasus with the gun. “I’m not crazy. Please, just help me get to the hospital.”

He stood there for a minute more, contemplating Sunny. “Okay, then let’s get goin’. C’mon, ah’ll fly with you.” The pegasus spread his wings but all Sunny could do was hang his head.

“I can’t fly.” He really hated having to explain this to ponies.

The light blue pony frowned. “It’s your leg that’s gored not your wings. You can still fly just fine can’t ya’?”

Sunny didn’t think he could feel any more embarrassed. “I can’t fly; I’ve never been able to.”

The blue pegasus’ bravado deflated like a balloon. “...Well that sucks. Ah’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Sunny didn’t want to make a big deal of it. Ponies brave enough were starting to approach, staring at the brown pony’s form.

“Shouldn’t we do something about the pony ah just shot?”

Sunny shook his head. “No time.”

The light blue pegasus seemed skeptical, but nodded. “Let’s get going then.” The pegasus gave a flap of his wings and jumped nimbly into the air. He came down above Sunny and wrapped his legs around him. With a grunt from the blue pegasus, the two were off in the air, leaving the dead pony and questioning eyes behind.

Sunny fought the urge to buck and kick as the pegasus that held him tightly. It took all of his willpower to remind himself that this pony was saving his life. Nonetheless, the touch still burned. “Thanks!” Sunny called to the pony above him as they skimmed low over the rooftops. “What’s your name?”

“Dusty,” he called back. “Look ah don’t know what the hay happened back there but if helpin’ you gets me in a mess, ah’m gonna’ make you hurt.”

“U-understood.”

“Was that pony actually biting you?” Dusty sounded shaken and Sunny could understand why. Since when did ponies bite each other?

Sunny glanced down at his leg and cringed; the skin around the cut was torn. The flesh beneath was exposed and the wound burned in the wind. “Pretty sure.”

The hospital could be seen ahead, its silhouette rising up above higher than any of the surrounding buildings. Almost there. He wondered how the others were faring on the wagon. Speaking of which, where was the wagon?

Sunny scanned the streets below, and after a moment or two he spotted it. They were really moving now, flying down a narrow side street. Brick and the green stallion were giving it all they had and a group of ponies were giving chase. They took a corner out of the side street and onto the main that would lead them to the hospital. The wagon took the corner but lost traction and slid. A pony who was unfortunate enough to be in the way was hit and tossed away like a ragdoll as the heavy cart made the corner. Sunny cringed. That had probably just been some normal pony on their way home from work.

Sunny and Dusty were flying almost directly over the wagon now as they made a straight shot for the hospital. It was maybe two blocks ahead and nearing. The two flying ponies’ shadow was cast upon the wagon by the late afternoon sun; Moon looked up from the back and noticed the two flying above.

Her attention was drawn away when a green unicorn hopped up onto the wagon deck. The yellow mare reared up and kicked the pony off, but he was immediately replaced by two others. One of the ponies attacking the wagon didn’t even look sick. Some of them weren’t even infected, and here they were attacking ponies for a reason Sunny couldn’t understand.

Both the gray earth pony who had climbed onto the wagon seeking escape and the yellow mare tussled with the two new arrivals as Willow tried to roll away from their stomping hooves. One of the crazy ponies was sent flying by a well aimed buck from the gray pony. The yellow mare managed to tumble off the other with the help of Moon.

“What the hay is wrong with those ponies?” Dusty wondered aloud, now he looking down as well.

“The ones on the wagon are with me.” Sunny wasn’t sure how this was going to turn out. The wagon was almost at the hospital now but there were thirty or so mob ponies on their tail, running and jeering. Sunny couldn’t tell from here many of them were sick, but there was no doubting the infection was amongst them as a periwinkle tackled the stallion beside her an they both fell back.

“Uh, shouldn’t they be slowing down?” Sunny couldn’t see Dusty’s face but he assumed that the blue pegasus must have looked worried.

“Yes.” The speeding wagon was only a couple hundred feet from the front steps of the building now. Up a row of three steps there was a ten foot slab of concrete that led to glass-fronted walk-in. Moon jumped up on the crates in the front of the wagon and, with her magic, unhooked the two stallions from their harnesses.

“No way!” Dusty awed. “They’re crazy!”

Sunny couldn’t believe what they were doing himself. “Get us down there!” he called. Dusty didn’t question, and immediately started his descent. Sunny watched as Brick and the Green pony jumped out from in front of the wagon and let it overtake them.

The wagon barreled into the concrete steps at full speed and the front wheels exploded, sending shards of metal and splintered wood flying like shrapnel. The whole front end of the cart rose up into the air and sailed across the slab of concrete before the front entrance. With four ponies still huddled in the back, the wagon ripped through the front of the hospital and disappeared into the lobby with an almighty crash.

Dusty flew down through the opening made by the wagon and set Sunny down next to the mangled wreck. The wagon had come to a halt right in front of the check in desk. Brick and green wagon pony galloped in behind them gasping for breath. Hospital guests stood gaping as the party looked around the trashed entry hall. The receptionist sat behind her desk, acting as if nothing had happened.

Sunny looked back at the wagon-sized hole in the entryway; the sliding glass doors were lying off to the sides, their metal frames mangled. Worse still, the mob of half crazed ponies was nearing the steps.

He’d momentarily forgotten about them.

Willow staggered to her hooves in the back of the wreck and picked up her bag. She went to step off the back but instead landed on her face, spilling the contents of her bag across the polished tile. The unicorn scrambled forward and hooked a set of keys from the mess. “Here!” She flung the key ring at Sunny’s feet. “There’s a red box behind the checkout desk—use the key with the red button.”

Without a word, Sunny scooped up the keys in his mouth and half hobbled, half flew to the polished oak desk. With a flap of his wings, he soared over the counter to land on the other side. Quickly, he looked around for a box. It took a moment, but he spotted it on the right of the chair where only the greeter could have seen it. The old mare protested as he jammed the key into the lock and turned it. He ignored her, instead reading the warning label on the inside of the lid located above the big red button.

‘QUARANTINE’

There was a smaller label below the big yellow letters.

‘This security feature is to only be used in the case of a biological threat detection on or within the premises. Unauthorized use of this feature will result in termination of REA employment and a pending trial of terrorism and/or treason.’

The threat was outside the premises—that counted right?

Sunny pressed the button and a red light blared to life on the ceiling.

A recording of a mare’s voice blared lazily from the intercoms. “Please remain calm, a threat has been reported on the premises and we are going into a temporary lockdown. For your own safety, we ask that you remain where you are until the lockdown has been lifted. REA personnel are on site to ensure your safety.” After a moment, the message repeated. “Please remain calm, a threat has been reported on the...”

Metal barriers began to roll down out of the roof, clinking in the tracks set for them, obstructing every possible entrance to the building. A heavy metal barrier began to slowly grind out of the ceiling above the main entrance; this gate was big, meant to cover the whole area around the glass walk in.

The mob of ponies was almost to the entrance now and the barrier was moving far too slowly to drop in time. He’d taken too long...

Willow picked herself up and bellowed, trying to make herself heard over the commotion. “If they have red eyes shoot them! Nopony gets in!” Brick complied, pulling the pistol from his saddlebag and taking stance in the demolished doorway.

Dusty filled in beside him. “Stay back!” he called pulling out his own revolver. The ponies running at them slid to a stop, but a few decided to keep going. Brick fired a shot into the leg of one, sending the stallion into a tumble. The rest who had decided not to listen hurriedly turned back.

“You shot me!” howled the pony from the ground. He was pushing himself backwards, away from the brown earth pony.

Sunny looked out at the scared and angry crowd. Some of them weren’t even infected. He couldn’t just sit here and watch them be locked out there with those crazies. Jumping back over the desk, Sunny hobbled up to the two ponies guarding the entrance and pushed between them.

“Sunny, are you crazy!?” Moon screamed from somewhere behind him; he didn’t listen.

He was too busy looking at the eyes of the ponies in the crowd. “You,” he instructed, pointing a hoof at a pink mare. “You too.” The mare and a stallion Sunny had picked ran towards the entrance. The two guards parted to let them pass. Sunny sorted about ten more ponies before he heard Moon calling him. He spared a backward glance and was stuck by a jolt of terror; the barrier had almost closed.

The distance that remained between the top of the lowering gate and the ground was about the same height as Sunny was. Hurriedly, Sunny pointed to one more pony, who ran ahead of him before he turned to flee back to the building. The pony ahead ducked under the barrier and Sunny followed. He was halfway through when something tugged his tail. His hooves, still trying to pull him forward slipped and he fell to his belly. Another tug sent him sliding backwards.

Sunny threw his head back and caught the bloodshot eye of a gray pegasus dragging him back. The eye was pulped as Dusty fired a shot into the pony’s head, blowing out the back of his skull. Sunny scrambled forward, trying not to vomit as he attempted to clear the gate.

Hooves struggled for grip on polished marble and Sunny cried out desperately as the wall of steel continued to drop. It was going to cut him in two!

Brick dropped his gun and fastened his teeth in Sunny’s mane. Almost as easy as a pony would handle a sack of laundry, Brick hauled him away from the closing gate.

The barrier slammed down behind him and the links clattered as the ponies from outside immediately threw themselves against it. “Let us in!” cried a mare holding a sobbing filly by her side.

A mare who worked at the hospital stared wide eyed at all the ponies pressing up against the gate. “Why can’t we let them in?”

“They’re sick,” Willow rasped. “They’ll turn soon.” Finally the red lights on the ceiling died and the mare’s voice stopped drawling over the intercoms.

“What’s going on?” another pony in the greeting hall questioned. His face shone with confusion and misunderstanding as he glared around, first to the crashed wagon and then the new arrivals.

Willow let out a low scream and—with some effort—staggered over to the front desk. “Attention everypony!” her voice boomed over the intercom broadcasting all throughout the building. “There has been some sort of an outbreak.” The room fell to a hush, even the ponies beating at the gate stopped to listen. “Whatever this... thing is, it makes ponies go crazy. From what I have observed early symptoms include, but are not limited to, bloodshot eyes, bleeding from the mouth nose and tear ducts, confusion, general craziness, and dilated pupils. If anypony you know is showing these signs they are a danger to the entire building and need to be taken care of. Do not in any way come into physical contact with a pony showing these signs. As far as I can tell the virus is not airborne and only spreads through the means of physical interaction. Do not attempt to leave the hospital. As long as everypony complies we should be safe here. This hospital used to be an army facility facility used for medical studies. It is secure. We just have to stay here until the REA arrives. The alarm should have alerted them; I think the old systems are still tied to their broadcast relay.”

The crowd remained quiet as Willow flipped off the intercoms. She stepped away from the desk and immediately the ponies at the gate started their fruitless efforts of begging for entry.

“Sweet Celestia,” Dusty murmured, staring at his hooves. “Ah killed two ponies.”

“Sunny!” Moon called and galloped over to wrap him in a hug. “I was so worried about you!” The two separated. Moon’s eyes shone with happiness as she looked over the orange pegasus. “How did you...” She trailed off, eyes widening at the sight of his leg. The joy faded from her face to be replaced with horror. “Oh no.”

“That was one heck of a ride.” Willow half trotted, half stumbled over. She cast a curious glance at the blue mare. “What the hay is wrong with you?” Moon didn’t even give her a glance. Willow tracked Moon’s stare to Sunny’s leg and her face immediately darkened. “Dang,” she muttered dropping her head. “You know what this means right?” she asked him. Sunny gave her a solemn nod.

“What does what mean?” Moon’s eyes told the truth. She knew the answer but just didn’t want to believe it.

“Look at him,” Willow scoffed. “You know what caused that wound.”

Moon’s eyes had a strange look to them. “You can give him some of that stuff we injected you with right?”

“Look, Moon... that medicine only worked on me because I killed the infection before it could spread to my body. A little bit of it still found its way in though; that’s why I collapsed in the square. That chemical will only work in very early stages of exposure, and judging from his wound, it happened a while ago.” Willow couldn’t meet her gaze. Sunny could do nothing but sit and watch as the two mares argued over his life.

“Well, try it anyways!” Moon had lost all sense of reason; the sorrow in her eyes grew unbearable and Sunny was forced to look away. Why did she even care so much? She’d only known him for little more than a day.

Willow looked as if Moon had struck her. “Absolutely not! We have a very limited supply of this stuff; we weren’t even supposed to get it. Now I’m not going to waste any of it jabbing needles into a pony who is most likely already dead!”

Sunny couldn’t help but feel a hurt. That was a pretty heavy blow. “Ouch.”

“But what if he isn’t sick?” Moon shot back. Apparently, she wasn’t going to give up easily “Can’t we wait and see?”

Willow sighed and shot the mare a defeated look. “We’ll put him in confinement, but if he starts to go, we’re going to have to take care of it. I’m sorry Moon. It’s the best I can do.”

“Do I get a say in this?” Sunny asked.

The two mares turned to him. “No!”

“Come on Sunny,” Willow sighed, trotting over to the waiting elevator. “It’s not safe to have you standing around here.”

Sunny had no choice but to follow the white mare into the elevator. As the doors slid shut he caught one last glimpse of Moon. She gazed sadly back at him, tears in her blue eyes.

Chapter 2 Living

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“Can I come out yet?”

“No Sunny.” Willow spoke in same same, firm tone she had used to reply the ten-dozen times before. “You can not come out yet.”

“Come on it’s been two days. I’m fine!”

Willow heaved a sigh as she stared down at the pegasus through a solid layer of plexiglass. “Sunny, I’m not going to risk letting you out just because you’re bored, now you’re going to have to wait until I can find out exactly what is going on inside you.”

Sunny seemed to battle for wards for a second before ultimately giving up, shrugging his shoulders as he leaned against the wall. “Okay... I just don’t like this small room.”

Willow couldn’t help but to smile as the pegasus hung his head; he was just so cute. “It’s going to be okay, Sunny. Just give me some more time to go over your blood samples.”

The pegasus folded his ears and smiled sheepishly. “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have any muffins would you?” His eyes shone pleadingly at her through the glass.

“I’m sorry, Sunny.” Willow tried not to snicker, unsure if he was joking or not. “Muffins weren’t included in the building's food stock.” Sunny sat down hard and glared up at the ceiling. Willow didn’t think she could stick around much longer. She didn’t have the heart to sadden this pony anymore. He had those puppy eyes that just made you feel like you had done something wrong.

With one last look at him, she turned away from the window and set off towards the labs. She could make it up to him by getting the results finished as fast as she could.

A moan escaped her lips as she paced down the narrow hallway. Her insides burned; if she didn’t know better she would have guessed somepony had replaced her blood with acid. That medicine may have killed the virus inside her, but it had also killed a lot of things it shouldn’t have.

Willow had run tests on herself as soon as she had the time. The print-off the machine gave her had been terrifying. Her immune system had been almost totally destroyed along with many of her body’s small functions. Eventually her body would return to the way it had been. But in the meantime, she was just going to have to suffer. Whatever it was she had stabbed into herself, it was obviously deeply experimental. Nopony could have ever authorized it for use on ponies. As far as Willow was concerned, the dose she’d taken should have killed her.

“Hey Willow!” The white mare froze. Nopony else was supposed to be up here.

Coming to a complete stop, she glanced back to see Moon trotting up to her.

Willow rolled her eyes. “Moon, how did you get up here? This level is restricted.” Nopony ever listened to her. Even when she was in charge. Maybe it just came with being a short redhead.

Moon just smiled and batted her eyes. “Oh please mister guard pony, I’m a good friend of Willow’s and I really need to speak with her.”

Willow had to compliment the mare’s craftiness, even if it was done for poor reasons. “Fine. What do you want?” She would be having a little talk with her hospital staff, one stallion in particular.

“I want to know how Sunny is doing.”

Moon’s worried obsessions with Sunny seemed to be getting worse by the hour. Honestly, Willow didn’t know what the mare’s deal was. “I already told you yesterday. It appears that, miraculously, he holds some sort of immunity to the infection. But until I can be sure he isn’t somehow carrying the virus I can’t let him out until I run some more tests. I just can’t be certain yet.” Honestly this mare just would not take a hint.

“I’m just worried about him.” Moon didn’t really seem to be paying attention to her; her eyes looked to a spot somewhere next to Willow’s head.

Willow snorted. “I can tell.”

“Hey!” Moon glared. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You do know he doesn’t know?” Willow accused. It probably wasn’t the wisest idea to get into a scrap with Moon at this very moment, but Willow found her tongue to be stronger than her control.

“Know what?” Moon looked genuinely puzzled.

Willow deadpanned. “That you have been chasing after his tail like a kitten after a ball of yarn.”

“What? No I’m not!” Moon’s eyes hardened, digging into Willow’s, but the angry glare still wasn’t enough to hide her slight blush.

Willow wasn’t going to let this mare play that trick again; it had worked once in the alley. But this time Willow was hurting, tired, and pissed off. It wasn’t going to happen. “Look Moon, I wasn’t kidding when I said you can’t be up here. You need to get back to the first four levels where the rest of the ponies are. Five and six are off limits, even if you are good at batting your eyes.”

“...Fine.” Grudgingly, Moon turned and stomped off towards the stairwell and Willow let out the breath she’d been holding. Now was not the time to start an argument with an obsessive mare.

Willow set off again and rounded a corner down another hallway. More rooms crawled by as she fought on. Celestia everything hurt! Every time she took a breath it felt like somepony was poking needles into her chest. Every urge in her body was telling her to stop, but she couldn’t. She had vowed that no matter what, she would help ponies and that’s what she was going to do. Besides, there was no way she could sleep when there was work to be done. Ever since she had gotten her cutie mark she had known that this was what she was meant to be doing. And she wasn’t about to stop now just because she wasn’t feeling good.

Willow thought back to the day she had gotten her cutie mark. Even now, so many years later she remembered it like it was just a few days ago.

It had been a long day and she was walking home from school. She had still been a young filly when she earned her mark and had come across a stallion in the alley behind her house. He was lying on the ground twitching, his face contorted in pain.

“Are you okay, Mister?” she had asked.

“Help,” he gasped.

“How?” She’d known there was something wrong with the stallion form the way he was acting. Ponies didn’t normally lie on the ground when it was dirty.

“In my saddlebag... there’s a needle in it... inside a little bag,” he gasped. His hooves scraping narrow troughs in the dirt as he attempted to reach for it himself, falling just short.

“Okay, Mister.” The little filly dug through the bag and pulled out a smaller baggie. “This one, mister?”

“Yes.” His breathing was sharp and ragged, and when the stallion did open his eyes they glinted with something Willow would later comic to recognize as panic. “Now here’s what you need to do.” The stallion could barely speak. His voice rasped and caught in his throat. “Take the little cap off the needle, and if you look closely, there should be a vein, er, an artery in my neck that you can see. A big one, you might have to feel around for it a little. You need to make sure you poke the needle into that vein, okay?”

She’d screwed up her face and glared at him. This stallion had to be crazy; who would let a filly poke a needle into them?

Nonetheless, Willow nodded, “Uh huh, but Mister what if I mess up, why can’t you do it yourself?”

Despite the pain the stallion had managed a smile. “Because sweetie, I’m sick and I need my medicine.”

“Can I go find some other pony to do it?” She may have been an explorative filly, but poking needles into strange stallions’ necks was beyond her comfort zone.

“There isn’t anypony else here. If I don’t get help soon I’m going to be in trouble.”

She wondered what kind of trouble. Maybe he would have to do some extra work or something. Or he wasn’t supposed to be lying down right now. The worry niggled away at her, but she knew she had to do it. Something was wrong with this pony and he needed help.

“Okay... here I go.” The little filly levitated the needle up to the stallion’s neck, and after a little searching, found what she was pretty sure to be the vein he was talking about. Willow took a deep breath and poked the little needle into the spot. Almost immediately the stallion’s twitching ceased, and all at once, he went limp.

“Sweet Celestia I killed him!” Willow cried, backpedaling as her face lit up in horror.

After a minute, Willow built up the courage to creep back over to the stallion and give him a poke. She nearly screamed as he lifted his head and caught the little filly’s eye. “Thank you kid; you just saved my life.”

She still didn’t know exactly what it was that had been wrong with him, maybe some sort of allergic reaction. She had never seen him again. But at that moment Willow had felt so very proud she thought she’d burst with happiness. And from that moment on she had known what she wanted to do. She wanted to help ponies.

It seemed rather silly and cliché in hindsight, but it had worked out in the end.

When Willow had gotten home she had noticed her cutie mark and let out a squeal of joy. She felt so proud of her mark, a hypodermic needle crossed with a scalpel. She didn’t quite know what the scalpel part was for, but that would come in later.

As Willow continued down the hallway her thoughts wandered to the orange pegasus she was holding in confinement. If there was any possibility of study, this pony was probably the key to something bigger. She had seen it herself; the wound itself had held traces of the infection but from what she could tell it was just clinging to the flesh. In a way Sunny’s body seemed to repel whatever this thing was. She couldn’t be sure though; she had heard stories from other medical ponies of a sickness lying dormant in a host’s body for up to a month before revealing itself. Willow had never seen it for herself, but it wasn’t worth the risk. Hopefully Sunny would show full immunity. If he didn’t that would mean she would have to deal with Moon. That, and there was no way Willow could put the orange pegasus down. He had a rare personality, he was nice, reasonable, funny... cute.

Willow snarled and shook her head. No distractions. Now was not the time to let emotions distract her from work. Butterflies hung in her stomach and she couldn’t tell if the feeling was from the drug she had taken or something else.

Willow’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of movement behind her. She twisted to look back. “Moon I thought I told you to...”

Sugar Apple stared back at her from the far end of the hallway, only it wasn’t really Sugar Apple. His light red coat was matted and patched, spots of bare skin showing through where the hair had fallen away. His eyes were empty... hungry.

“...What?” Willow rubbed her eyes to make sure that it wasn’t some side effect of the medication.

His eyes stared blankly back at hers, bloodshot and red. His pupils had grown so large that they almost consumed the entire iris and a strand of drool dangled from his muzzle as he staggered forward.

“S-Sugar Apple?” How could she have forgotten about him? He had escaped them a while ago but she had never even considered that he may still be in the hospital.

The stallion let out a noise that could have passed for something between a shriek and a gurgle and started jerkily forward. Willow turned and galloped in the opposite direction, hearing the hoofbeats of the pony behind her grow faster. He had already bitten her once and she wasn’t about to let him do it again. She reached the door at the end of the hall and pulled frantically on the handle, it was locked. Of course it was locked! Everything on this level stayed locked! you were the one who locked it!

Willow tried to levitate her keys from the ring on her utility strap but her magic died and the keys snapped back to her side. Damned retractable cable; she still recalled the slogan on the box. ‘Guaranteed to NEVER lose your keys AGAIN!!!’

She still didn’t know what that virus had done to her, but one thing was for sure. It doused her magic like water on a campfire. She was beginning to fear that her magic would never recover.

“Damn it.” Willow twisted around and snapped the keys from the side of her flank and sorted through them until she found a small brass one. The key fit in the lock much to Willow's relief. Yanking open the door and letting go of the keys, she barged into the room, but something tugged at her side. Her body stopped but her hooves flew out from under her and she flopped over onto her side.

Sugar Apple was close now; she could hear his hoofbeats right behind her. Willow scrambled to her hooves and a wave of drowsiness hit her as dark spots clouded her vision. Her body couldn’t handle this. It was still recovering from the medical drain cleaner she had sent through her system.

She flipped around; he was no less than ten feet from her now. He galloped unsteadily down the hallway as if he were going to fall at any moment, if only through Celestia’s grace. It was then that Willow spotted what had caught her. She had left her keys in the lock and the retractable cable had reached its end.

‘Guaranteed to NEVER lose your keys AGAIN!!!’

Willow gave a desperate tug and the key snappped off in the lock. The whole ring of keys flew back at her on its retractable cable and struck a spot just above her eye.

She staggered shook her head, little stars sparkling in her vision as she backed further into the room. Sugar Apple reached the door, but Willow finally seemed to get a stroke of luck when the door started to swing closed so that it struck the slobbering pony. He lost his balance and crashed into a desk to the right of the door. Willow turned to run; this whole room was full of desks! She dodged and weaved among them as Sugar Apple resumed his chase. She made to spring over one, but, in her weakened state, didn’t quite clear it. Her hooves struck a desktop and she somersaulted forward right into another desk.

Honestly, Willow was starting to feel sorry for herself.

This was where the REA had kept files on most of their chemical experimentation. They had cleared out years ago but most of the supplies were still here, beakers, lab equipment. No chemicals though, sadly.

Willow rolled onto her back and scrambled up against a desk, the dark patches in her vision swelling and threatening to consume her irises. Growling, Willow fought away the weariness. If she went down now, that would be it.

Sugar Apple sprung off a desk and flew right at her, and without even a second though, Willow reached over with her teeth and yanked the drawer from the desk behind her. She brought her head around, scattering papers and a multicolored arrangement of pens as she swung the drawer. It struck the snarling pony’s head with a reverberating bong and a lot more force than Willow had intended.

The zombie let out a half snarl, half screech as its head snapped back and it crashed to the ground a few feet short.

In an instant, Willow was on her hooves. Adrenaline pumped through her aching body, channeling every bit of energy left in her system to her muscles. She galloped over to the momentarily-stunned pony and brought the drawer down on his head. He tried to scramble to his hooves but was knocked back to the floor by another blow. Willow didn’t let him get up this time. She swung again and cringed as the drawer bwonged off his head. This wasn’t Sugar Apple anymore. Any traits the stallion may have possessed were gone—replaced by what lay inside this crazy snarling creature. She swung again, and again, and again. On the fifth strike she felt something below her give and Sugar Apple let out a strangled scream.

Willow hesitated, maybe it was still him. Maybe his personality was fighting its way through the sickness. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she looked down at the stallion. He looked back up at her, face bloody, eyes filled with an rage no pony should have been capable of. No! There was no way he could come back.

She swung. She swung until blood spattered the floor and streamed from the end of the drawer as she pulled back for the next. She swung until she couldn’t anymore. Finally, Willow gasped and dropped the hunk of bloody metal. She could barely focus on her own hoof, the edges of her vision going black.

“Not this time.” She turned to walk away but stumbled and fell to her knees, her mind shutting down as the pain inside her became almost overwhelming. She had overworked her body, and it was punishing her for it. A needle of pain seemed to drive itself into her skull, forcing her to the floor. Willow stopped fighting and let herself lose consciousness.

Just a little nap.

Her vision went dark as unnatural sleep overtook her.

* * *

Twenty-five. This was the thirty-fifth time Sunny had counted. There were exactly twenty-five tiles that made up the ceiling. The room was rectangular, and as far as Sunny could tell the grid was four-by-six. So why in the name of Celestia’s saggy plot was there an extra tile!?

He was on the verge of killing those tiles.

He had lost track of time; there was no way to tell in here and the ponies who’d built the room hadn’t been nice enough to have put in a clock. Sunny didn’t know what the big deal was. He felt fine, and Willow herself had told him that he was probably immune. But she was doing her best to sort him out. After she had brought him here she had cleaned out the wound and cut out some small samples with a few protests from Sunny. Then she had given him a healing potion.

Healing potions were something else. A pony had to be rich on top of rich to afford one of them, and even then they were pricy. The only reason he assumed Willow was using it on him was because of the current situation. Drinking the deep purple liquid came with one of the strangest sensations he could imagine. There really wasn’t a good way to explain it. Sunny had watched in awe as the torn skin and flesh magically regrew and stitched itself back together.

Although healing potions worked well for quick fixes like cuts or fractured bones, they didn’t cure infection and were primarily designed to be used in emergencies when medical care wasn’t available.

“Whatever you do,” she had told him, “do not take a healing potion to mend a broken bone. If you don’t set the bone before you drink a healing potion it will grow back together in whatever position it’s in, and if that happens, you’re in a whole world of trouble.”

In the very short time that he’d known Willow, Sunny found himself respecting her a bit more with every passing minute. She may have been a little grumpy at times but that pony knew her stuff, and she used her expertise to help every pony she could.

“Hey, Sunny.” The pegasus jumped at the sound of a mare’s voice over the intercom. He jerked upwards in bed, eyes dancing over the perfectly white walls until they came to rest on the single window embedded in the wall across from the bed.

“Hi, Moon.” Sunny threw a casual wave at the mare in the window. “Did Willow let you come and see me?”

Moon’s eyes gleamed mischievously. “Well, let’s just say she didn’t invite me.”

Sunny couldn’t help but chuckle. “Don’t let her catch you up here or she’ll throw a fit.”

“So how are you doing Sunny?” Moon may have been smiling but her eyes showed the real worry.

“I’m doing fine.”

Moon rolled her eyes at him. “I mean how are you feeling, Sunny?”

“Honestly I’m fine; I don’t feel sick at all. I’m pretty sure Willow already told you that she thinks I’m immune.” He tried to avoid eye contact, looking instead to the crumbled bedspread and trying to straighten out a few wrinkles.

“I just don’t see why she can’t let you out,” Moon half-pouted. “It’s been two days.”

Sunny gave the mare a shrug. “She says that even though the sickness doesn’t affect me it may still be in my body.”

Moon looked back at him, heaving a sigh that crackled over the intercom. “Sunny, I’m just worried about you; I only met you a few days ago and haven’t even had a chance to get to know you.”

“Exactly,” he muttered under his breath before looking back up to her. “We’ll just have to wait and see, okay?”

Moon nodded, reaching a hoof up and brushing her mane from her eyes.

“Now you should probably get out of here before Willow comes back and kills us both.” Despite how bored he was, the last thing he wanted to do right now was cause more trouble for Willow. The mare was already feeling bad enough without having to deal with Moon. Sunny didn’t think Willow would do something too drastic, but she was cranky and he didn’t want to see what would happen if she found Moon here.

“Okay, Sunny.” She managed a smile. “I’ll see you when Willow decides to let you out, okay?”

“Sounds good.” He waved her off, flopping back down on his back with sigh. She liked him. Why did she like him? it was going to drive him absolutely crazy.

“Bye, Sunny.” With one last glance Moon turned away from the window and disappeared from view.

A slight buzz still hung in the air hung in the air. Sunny sat up, eyes widening in horror. “Wait! Moon you forgot to turn off the intercom!”

She didn’t come back.

Damn. If he didn’t die of boredom first, that sound was going to drive him crazy.

* * *

Moon rode the elevator back down to the main level, the classical music playing over the cheap speakers seeming rather off-mood for the occasion. Sweet Celestia she was bored. Bored was better than dead, but still.

The doors slid open and she stepped out into the entrance hall. The lobby was empty, minus a few ponies milling about without much purpose. Moon passed each one of them, their eyes meeting but neither party willing to speak. The wagon that they’d crashed through the front doors hadn’t moved from where it sat awkwardly to the side of the check-in desk. Reaching the main desk, Moon cocked her head at the same old mare sitting behind it. She was gazing out into space, her eyes unfocused. The setting sun shone through the glass entryway illuminated her beige coat and practically lit her eyes up as stared, rarely blinking.

Moon approached and sat herself down beside the mare, choosing to stare at the gate guarding the entrance alongside the pony beside her. “So... hi.”

“I wonder how the rest of them are doing out there,” the mare murmured back.

“Why are you still watching the door?” Moon asked. “No way anypony’s getting through that gate.

The mare didn’t even spare Moon a glance. “Oh, just in case.”

With a shrug Moon left the mare at the desk and trotted over to the gate to look out over the town below. The day was so peaceful it was unnerving. Ponies were dead; it wasn’t supposed to be peaceful. Buildings burned off in the distance the occasional scream or gunshot sliced through the air, but the bustle of town was dead. Further away she could see a few staggering shapes walking around buildings. One house near the very end of the town-length street was completely surrounded by the monsters, all pushing and battering at the walls and boarded windows.

It just didn’t seem right. She was sitting all safe and sound in here and ponies were dying out there.

The sound of rapid hoofsteps pricked her ears, and a second later a green stallion went galloping across the street directly in front of the hospital. His weary eyes were clouded with worry and fear as he threw rapid glances over his shoulder.

Halfway he past the hospital his gaze fell on Moon and the stallion almost stumbled. He slid to a stop, his eyes lighting up as he turned and limped towards her. He levitated a double barrel shotgun by his side. “Thank Celestia!” he half cheered, shaking his head as he neared.

Moon raised her forehooves and placed them on the steel links that made up the quarantine gate. “A-are you okay!?”

“Let me in,” the stallion choked as he reached the barrier. He cracked open the shotgun and checked the load. Apparently satisfied he closed it again, then looked over his shoulder. “Hurry. Those bastards can smell blood.” His eyes darted to a seeping wound on his hind leg. “They don’t give up.”

“I-I can’t.” Moon rattled the steel links with her forehooves.

The stallion’s ears folded against his head as his eyes filled with desperation. “Why not?” His voice cracked and he threw a nervous glance behind him.

Moon gulped. “The whole building is locked down. I don’t know how to raise the barriers.”

His voice shook as he tried to keep his voice level. “Look... if you don’t open this gate, I’m going to die. They’re everywhere out here!” He threw his forehooves against the gate and gave it a shake and a pull, gritting his teeth as if he could simply push it back up into the roof. “I can’t run anymore. You’ve got to help me!”

Moon swung around to point her hoof at the mare behind the counter. “Open the gate!” A few ponies who had been milling around in the lobby looked up at the exclamation, a couple of them trotting closer.

“Sorry hun.” The receptionist shrugged. “If I could I would but this button down here just closes it. Override’s somewhere upstairs.”

Moon balked. Did she not care?

The mare went back to staring into space, not caring that there was a stallion pleading for his life at the barrier.

Moon turned back to the stallion. His head was hung in bitter defeat. She could already hear the sound of rapid hoofsteps, and apparently the stallion could too. His head shot up and he turned away from the barrier.

“Celestia help me through this,” he muttered, raising the shotgun and taking deep, steadying breaths.

“I’m sorry,” Moon whispered.

“You tried... sort of.” He didn’t turn to look at her; his gaze remained locked forward, waiting for what they both knew was coming. In running to the hospital entrance, he’d manage to corner himself with a wall on either side. A sense of finality layered his voice as the pony tensed. “Figured I’d be dead by now anyways.”

The hoofbeats grew louder, and a moment later five infected ponies rounded the corner at full gallop. Moon had never seen them this far gone before; it was terrifying. Their eyes were deep red and bloodshot, swollen black pupils obscuring most of the inner eye. Patches of their skin had been torn away and hung in flaps from the crazed ponies’ coats. These things weren’t ponies anymore. Nothing shone in their dull eyes; they didn’t have any sense of reason or rational thought. They didn’t even appear feel pain.

“Somepony help!” Moon called to the ponies behind her. What was wrong with them? Why wouldn’t they do anything?

“You want some of this?” The stallion growled drawing back the hammers on the shotgun. “Well come and get it you fuckers!” The muzzle flashed and a well-placed buckshot blew apart the left side of one of the crazed pony's heads. It tumbled to the ground, blood streaking the concrete, but the others didn’t even slow at the death of a comrade. The stallion fired again and planted his other shell in the chest of a blue mare. The pony stumbled but stayed on its hooves somehow.

“Damn they’re fast.” The stallion cracked open his shotgun and levitated out two smoking shells.

Moon looked back to the lobby where ponies were watching in wide-eyed intrigue, their faces varying anywhere from worry to pure disgust. Only one of them showed any feeling of urgency in the situation; he was a blue pegasus with a sandy brown mane, and although he was galloping towards the gate, he probably wouldn’t make it in time.

She turned back in time to see the green stallion level his gun with another of the infected ponies. He fired and a yellow stallion dropped. He lined up his last shot, but the leader of the pack reached him before he could fire it off and tackled him up against the gate. The stallion screamed as the pony bit into his neck; his shotgun lying by his side. In less than a second the other two were on him and Moon could do nothing but watch in horror as they bit and tore at the green pony with unmasked savagery. Not only were the infected brutal about it, they almost seemed mad at the green stallion as they grabbed and ripped.

The blue pegasus slid to a stop beside Moon with his revolver ready. He fired three steady shots, one after the other, each one striking one of the beasts in the head until they all fell away.

The green stallion scrambled to his hooves on adrenaline, gazing around frantically as he picked up his shotgun. They’d gotten him good. The side of his neck was bleeding heavily, an almost steady drizzle of blood falling to the pile below his hooves. All over the rest of his body, patches of his green coat had been torn with the flesh below bitton or ripped free in dangling ribbons.

He looked down at himself and chuckled, “Well I’m a little screwed up.” the finality in his voice was terrifying on its own. He cracked the breach on the shotgun and levitated out the spent shell. “Should have gotten something faster,” he muttered. Sighing, he glanced over the weapon, then passed it stalk-first through a gap in the gate.

“What are you doing?” Moon asked.

The stallion turned his eyes to her. “I reckon I’m not going to need this anymore.” He started levitating shells to them; one after another they dropped to the ground on the safe side of the barrier. The green stallion looked at the pegasus, who hadn’t moved. “Thanks for trying, friend... what’s your name?”

The pegasus swallowed heavily as a shudder ran the course of his body. “Name’s Dusty.”

the unicorn nodded. “Dusty... Good name. I know you just saved me and all, but now you’ve got to finish it.” He grit his teeth. “I can already feel the damned poison.” As if his words had brought it upon him, the stallion’s horn flickered and sparked out.

Moon shook her head, looking between the green stallion. “W-what?” She shook her head a little faster. “No, we can’t shoot you!”

“Look at me!” he yelled at her, stomping his forehoof. Already his face was starting to pale, most likely from blood loss. “They tore me to pieces! I’ve seen what happens when they bite ponies! Do you think I want to end up like that?” The stallion sat down hard and heaved a sigh; tears pooled in his eyes. “But hey, I had a good run, right? The others didn’t make it, but I did. I lasted the longest!”

Moon looked at Dusty; the light blue pegasus still hadn’t moved.

“Please.” The green stallion lowered his head. “Help me out here.”

Moon hung her head, staring down at the decorative floor.

Moon squealed and scrambled backwards as a pistol barked right next to her ear. She had expected Dusty to protest, not just… shoot.

The pegasus stood still for a moment longer before returning the revolver to its leg holster “Two,” he muttered turning away from the barrier. “I’ve shot two ponies.”

* * *

Willow came to in darkness.Opening her eyes was a lot harder than it should have been her eyelashes stuck together with snot and heavy from exhaustion. Pushing herself up to a sitting position was even harder. It felt like she was glued to the ground as Willow forced her sore body off the floor.

She was aware of two things: One, every muscle in her body burned like fire. And two, her coat felt sticky.

She managed to get hind legs under her and rise. The room was completely dark; any light that had shone in from the windows before now was gone with the arrival of night.

There was a light switch around here somewhere. She needed Brick and his flashlight.

Willow started forward slowly, and no less than three seconds later, she slammed into a desk and nearly fell over onto her side. “...Ouch.” She made her way to one of the walls, managing to smack against that as well. Working her way along the wall in the darkness for a moment or two, she eventually came upon the light switch. Flipping it with her muzzle, Willow looked down at herself, and with a disdainful sigh realized just why she felt so stricky.

Willow looked examined coat in disgust. Her normal, smooth, white coat was stained red with blood. Had she been anypony else, she probably would have heaved. Luckily enough, Willow was somewhat used to being stained with blood. She looked over to where she had been lying. A pony-shaped patch of tile remained white in the otherwise red pool of blood that had spread across the floor from Sugar Apple’s crushed skull; she’d passed out right in it.

She groaned. “That’s the last time I perform brain surgery with a desk drawer.” Her entire right side was matted crimson and her scarlet mane was... well still scarlet, just sticky. Willow chuckled. Gingerly, she raised a forehoof to wipe the coagulating blood off her coat. “Ugh, this is grody.”

She needed a shower, now.

Willow left the room the way she had come in, minus the desk-jumping and gave Sugar Apple's beaten form one last look. She locked the door from the inside and closed it. Nopony was going to accidentally stumble across this scene and find a way to get themselves infected.

Why did everything hurt? Willow struggled back down the hallway to the elevator. She hit the call button and waited. Standing here was agony, every muscle in her body burned like fire.

After an eternity, the doors slid open and Willow stepped in. She hit the button that would take her to the fourth floor and the machine hummed to life. Floors five and six had tape over the buttons that somepony had drawn frowny faces on; it was maintenance's temporary fix until they could get into the elevator panel to disable the two buttons.

Willow thought back on that. This building hadn’t always been a community hospital. It used to be an REA experimental medical center. The fourth floor had been the living quarters for the staff. Levels one through three had all been basic medical. Floor five was mostly offices and six was communications. But when the REA had pulled out all the communication equipment had gone with them. Floor six was just an empty shell now.

The doors slid open on level four and Willow stepped out into a long hallway. A few ponies milled around outside their rooms, talking with one another and just burning time. Willow didn’t know exactly how many ponies had been in the building when it had been sealed. But her guess was somewhere around fifty or sixty.

A yellow mare squealed under her breath as Willow passed and covered her face with a forehoof.

“What?” Willow joked. “Is there something on my face?” The mare just stared. Willow tried her best not to laugh as the pony stammered. It wasn’t funny, but for some reason it was.

“Um, you kind of... blood. A-are you okay?” The yellow mare shied away as Willow smiled at her.

“I’m fine. Took a nap in a pool of blood.” This was too much, this was so funny that Willow was about to cry. The mare’s jaw just fell open and she gaped at the two-toned pony. Willow shrugged. “It’s a long story. You wouldn’t happen to know what time it is, would you?”

“Um, about ten, I think.” The mare backed up even further until her rump hit the wall.

“Thanks.” Willow trotted past the mare and continued down the hall towards her room. A few other ponies shot her startled glances as the passed but didn’t say anything. She reached the room her and Brick had been sharing and pushed open the door. Willow could hear the sound of running water in the bathroom. She groaned, stripping off her ruined barding.

“Brick! I don’t care whether or not you’re in the middle of a shower it’s my turn!” She barged into the bathroom and crossed to the shower curtain. With a yank she pulled it back to reveal nopony else but Brick holding his head under the jet of water. It had been a while since she had seen his cutie mark. It was usually covered by his barding. The brown stallion's mark was a spotlight. Like one of those big mouth-held ones that tunnel ponies used. He turned and gave her a curious look.

“I don’t care if you’re in the middle of a shower. Get out.”

Brick gazed coolly back at her.

Willow growled. “Look. I hurt, I’m covered in blood, and I’m tired. Now if you don’t get out I will climb in there with you.”

The stallion arched a brow and stepped to the side, nodding towards the space he had just opened up.

“Okay, let me rephrase that.” Willow glared daggers into the larger stallion. “If you don’t get out I will get in there with you and make you lick me clean.”

Brick tilted his head to one side as if he were going over his options.

Willow stomped her hoof. “Damn it Brick! Get out of my shower! Besides this is Sugar Apple's blood. If you did then I’d have to kill you.”

Brick looked back at the stream of water and rolled his eyes. He stepped out and Willow immediately moved around him and took his place.

She sighed as the warm water washed over her back, soothing her aching body. It took a while to wash all the blood from her mane so that it finally returned to its normal non-sticky crimson, the light blue streaks no longer hidden. The water felt amazing on her coat. She sighed again holding her head under the stream. How nice for the hospital’s electrical systems and waterworks to work even during an apocalypse.

If only.

The bathroom went dark, only to be replaced by the soft orange glow of the emergency system a second later. Willow nickered. Of all times this could happen, it had to happen now. Of course, she’d been expecting it eventually. It was a miracle that the power grid had remained up and running for as long as it already had.

She waited. The backup generators would be kicking in in, five, four, three, two, one…

Nothing happened.

“What?” she muttered. The orange glow remained. Suddenly, the water ran cold and Willow practically screamed. She threw herself to the side and tangled herself in the shower curtain. Staggering, she flopped out of the shower, the curtain followed her happily as it popped out of its spot on the wall and clogged her across the back of the head.

She groaned. Broodingly, Willow pushed herself to her hooves and reached over to shut off the water.

Out of the bathroom she went, stomping over to her dresser to get a set of barding that wasn’t soaked in blood. Why couldn’t she just have a break? Maybe some sleep. But no, now there was a faulty generator to deal with.

“Brick! Get your things. We’re going to the basement!”

* * *

The lights shut off.

Sunny blinked. It was dark in here. Really dark. He closed his eyes; it didn’t matter if they were open or closed—everything looked the same.

He had never really liked the dark. In fact, he hated it. Sunny looked sightlessly around the room, which now felt much smaller than it had been before. He could hear every sound, every breath that echoed off the walls.

At least the buzzing from the intercoms had stopped.

He tried to stay calm, but in the darkness his composure was quickly slipping away from him.

Minutes passed, maybe hours. Over time, his mind dragged him back to his past. Memories flashed by, faces he hadn’t thought of in what seemed like forever. Anything to keep his mind off the darkness. How long had it been? A minute? An hour? There was no way to tell. One memory stuck out more prominent than the others. He could see the faces—remember the names, the sights, the sounds. Anything to get away from this darkness.

It was his friend, Mango’s birthday party. Parents sat around gossiping with one another while the children played hide and seek. It was Mango’s turn to seek and all the foals had already ran off searching for a good spot to hide. Happy as could be, the little orange colt counted in the corner while the group of foals dispersed.

Sunny knew where he was going to hide. His hiding spot was going to be the very best. He sneaked around the edge of the house and pulled open the door on the side. It led down into a cellar. It was dark down there but Sunny wasn’t afraid of the dark like all those other weenies. He climbed down the stairs and looked around. There was a big trunk sitting in a corner. Sunny knew that it would make a perfect hiding spot. Nopony would ever find him there.

He climbed into the trunk and shut the lid.

This was the perfect hiding place. Nopony was going to find him. He was so clever. When they finally got tired of looking they would yell for him to come out. Then he would climb out and tell them where he had been hiding. Perfect.

He had never really been friends with any ponies in his town. They all made fun of him because he couldn’t fly. And the ponies who weren’t making fun of him didn’t want to be around him or they’d get made fun of too. He was only at Mango’s birthday party because his mother had made the pony invite him. But Sunny still liked to consider Mango as a friend, because his mother was so nice to him.

But little did he know the game up above had been delayed. It was present time, and everypony knew what happened after presents. Cake! The game was totally forgotten and what was it if that orange pegasus wasn’t there? He probably got tired and went home early.

Sunny stayed in the trunk for about an hour until he was finally sure that they couldn’t find him. He went to push up on the lid but it wouldn’t open. Sunny tried again but the lid only opened about an inch before it stopped. Sunny didn’t worry. Somepony would find him. Or maybe there was just something blocking the lid and he just had to push harder. He tried a few more times to get the lid up. Even twisting over onto his back and kicking it with all four legs. But it still wouldn’t move. Sunny cried for help but realized that down here nopony could hear him. He called again, still nothing. Now he was starting to get scared. He called a few more times hoping anypony would answer. Now he was terrified; it was hard to breathe in the trunk. And it was dark. Sunny couldn’t even see his own hooves. But he could hear his breathing.

“Help!” he screamed. But still nopony heard him. Maybe they were still having fun at the party. He couldn’t hear anything that was going on above, just the sound of his own breathing. The darkness suddenly seemed a lot more sinister than it had been and Sunny found himself wishing that he had never come down here in the first place.

Nopony had found him for a whole day. Only when Sunny’s parents had said they couldn’t find him anywhere did Mango’s parents decide to search their house. They had found a cowering orange pegasus in the chest in the cellar. The colt had been terrified. When they had tried to take him out he had screamed and kicked at them.

Later he couldn’t think straight; he didn’t even want to close his eyes because it would block out the light. His parents had taken him home but after that he refused to sleep in the dark and despite his father’s protests his mother had gotten him a nightlight...

Sunny jerked out of the daydream or night-dream—whatever it was. “Wrong memory,” he groaned. Anything but that would have helped. But not that. Now all he could think about was the dark.

Something seemed off in the room but he couldn’t place a hoof on it. It was too quiet, much too quiet. Sunny thought back to an hour or so ago. Willow had told him that this room had its own atmosphere.

Sunny gasped. “Nonononono, that can’t be right.” He couldn’t hear the fan—the fan that recirculated the air.

He groaned. No lights meant no power. No power meant no life support system. And no life support system meant no air. Combine that with a breathing pony in a small, airtight room and you had one soon-to-be-dead pony.

“Don’t panic, Sunny. Stay calm.” This was bad. This was really bad. “The more you panic the faster you breathe. The faster you breathe the more air you use and the more air you use you faster you die.” Not panicking. Not panicking at all. “Oh sweet Celestia.” This wasn’t working. He was panicking! “Take deep breaths, Sunny, deep breaths. Wait no! Light breaths! Breathe lightly.”

It took a while, but soon the calmness came. If only he could get of the dark! “Well this is okay. I’ll just sit here and talk to myself while waiting for somepony to come and save me before I die.”

With nothing else to do Sunny rolled back on the bed and closed his eyes. All he could do was wait... wait and breathe lightly. “Come on Willow, where are you?”

* * *

Willow followed Brick down the stairs, his flashlight proving very useful in the darkness. The only way to reach the basement without the elevator was to take the staircase from the lobby. The group had been bombarded by scared ponies trying to figure out why there was no power and had to force their way through the mob of ponies. On the bright side, Willow had found two maintenance ponies on the way down here who knew a whole lot more about generators than she did. Most of the staff had been out when the building was sealed but some still remained. She was thankful these two were here. The building manager had been absent at the time of the quarantine, leaving Willow, head nurse, the next highest in command.

“I don’t know why you’re dragging me into this,” the yellow maintenance pony muttered. “I just fix the damned lights.”

“Don’t complain Socket, let’s just get this done,” said the gray unicorn behind the earth pony.

“Honestly,” he shot back, “how do you expect me to know how to fix a generator?”

“Stop arguing,” Willow snapped back at them as the group exited the stairwell.

The basement was dark apart from four emergency lights on the ceiling. Willow pointed a hoof at the grey unicorn with the purple mane. “You, it's Snowglobe right?”

The mare nodded. “Yep, that’s me. Been in maintenance here for... quite some time now.”

“Good. So you know how to fix a spark generator?” Willow looked around the room. She didn’t even see anything that looked like a generator.

The mare scoffed. “Of course! I spent my whole life around these things. I know that what we got down there are some of the nicest generators you can get this side of Canterlot. Magic powered, four year lifespan, amazing output. They’re a new government issue.”

“So why don’t the damned things work?” muttered Socket.

Willow nodded approvingly. She’d known this mare had been in maintenance for a while, but she had never guessed that Snowglobe would know what she was talking about. For the love of Celestia, the last maintenance director had fixed the elevator buttons with duct tape and drawings of frowny faces. “Okay, so where are these generators?”

Snowglobe frowned. “Well, they were originally supposed to be installed on this level. But the generators the REA used were still here and they were too big to move. When this place was under construction they dropped those monsters in the basement then built the building on top of them. Those babies weren’t going anywhere.”

“So where’d they put the new ones?” Willow pushed. It was nice that this mare knew all this but right now wasn’t the time to hear all of it.

“They hollowed out another level. I don’t know how they did it without compromising the entire building but somehow they did. Either way the spark generators are one floor below us. All they did was cut the wires to the REA generators and run them to the new ones.”

Willow blinked. This mare was an asset. “So how do we get down there?” Without Snowglobe, Willow probably wouldn’t have achieved anything by coming down here.

Snowglobe pointed a hoof towards one of the big machines on the other side of the room. “Over there. There’s a staircase.”

“Let’s go then.” Without waiting for a reply, Willow crossed the room and came around the side of one of the two massive machines that dominated the basement. “Brick, hurry it up. I can’t see a thing!”

In the wan light of the emergency systems, she could make out the basic silhouette of the staircase down to the next level. Without thinking, she started down the staircase, then promptly tripped over her own hooves and found herself falling face-first into the darkness. Willow closed her eyes, expecting to hit the hard floor at any second. Instead of the sudden pain that was expected, everything went cold and wet, her senses plunged into murkiness.

Willow screamed and thrashed, inhaling a mouthful of water before she realized just what was going on. Resurfacing, hacking and coughing, Willow found herself treading water a quarter of the way down the stairwell.

Brick’s light shone his light down on her, eyes wide.

“I thought we were fixing generators not going swimming,” Socket scoffed.

Willow found her hoofing and pulled herself back up the stairs, her mane wet and dripping. Stale water streamed into her eyes, stinging them, and she shook her head to clear them. Socket chuckled at her as she stomped by.

“I’m going to throw you down there if you don’t shut up,” Willow snapped. The buck just laughed harder while Snowglobe tried not to. In cold vengeance, Willow slapped him across the face with her sopping tail as she passed.

“Hey!” Socket protested, shaking water from his head.

Willow sat down hard next to Snowglobe. “Let me guess?”

Snowglobe slumped. “Yeah.”

“Generators are—”

“Yep.”

“Any way we can—”

“Nope.”

Willow screamed and stomped her forehooves, though quickly regretted it as squiggles forced their way into her vision. “So, that’s it then?”

Snowglobe slowly shook her head, looking down at the churning waters. “There’s really no way to be optimistic about this.”

Willow groaned. “I’m just going to take a shot in the dark here and guess that they don’t work anymore?” This wasn’t fair. One thing after another, she just couldn’t get a break. “Does the basement have a pump?”

“Sure does.” Snowglobe sighed. “Runs off of electricity though.”

“Well that’s convenient. How are we supposed to drain our generator room if the generators used to produce the electricity to drain our generator room are in the flooded generator room!?” Willow scoffed, glaring down at the dark water. “I’d like to meet the egghead who thought that up.” How had she gotten caught up in all this? She was just a mare that worked at a hospital for Celestia’s sake! Who would have thought she’d end up in charge of a whole damned hospital in the middle of an epidemic?

“Well,” Snowglobe thought aloud, “we could see if those old REA generators still work.”

Willow raised her head to look at the grey mare. “You think they would still work?”

“Well, theoretically.” Snowglobe frowned and rubbed her chin. “We’d have to run the wires to them again. They most certainly wouldn’t be energy efficient considering they were used by the REA. Those ponies didn’t really have a need to conserve power. But I guess if we could get them running it would be better than nothing.”

“That’s wonderful.” Willow breathed a sigh of relief. “Let’s do it.”

“Okay, just let me make sure everything’s working correctly before we hook em’ up. Last thing we need right now is to blow every circuit in the building.” Snowglobe pulled Brick’s flashlight from his grasp with her magic and trotted over to one of the giant metal shapes. She pressed a blue button and a terminal built into the machine blinked to life, casting a green glow from its dusty screen.

Willow gaped. Those were the generators? They were huge! You could have stacked three ponies on top of each other and they would barely clear the top. And there were two of them! “Are we going to need both of them?”

Snowglobe laughed. “Oh goddesses no. The second one must have been either a backup or support. These things are massive.” She hit a button on the terminal and trotted around the machine looking it over and muttering to herself. After about a minute or so she trotted back over to them. “Everything appears to be working normally. The spell matrix is a little scrambled but I can fix that in a jiffy.”

“Is that it?” Willow frowned. There was no way it could be that easy. The generators were going to blow up or something. That was about how lucky she felt.

“Well... not exactly.” Snowglobe pulled open a hatch on the side of the giant machine and sighed. “I was afraid of that.”

“Exactly what do you mean by that?” Socket scoffed.

“What is it?” Willow groaned inwardly. It wasn’t going to go easily.

“Well...” Snowglobe hesitated. “This thing’s gem powered.”

Nopony spoke for a moment or two. “What in the name of sunbutt does that have to do with anything?” Willow asked.

“A little FYI, Snowglobe, we aren’t geeks like you. So you’re going to have to clarify things just a little bit.” Socket made sure to layer his voice with sarcasm.

Willow could tell from Snowglobe’s expression that the mare wanted to do nothing less than push the stallion down a flight of stairs. Lucky for her there was one nearby. “Okay fine.” Snowglobe sat down and motioned for the other two to do the same. Willow flopped onto her side, relieved to get the weight off her hooves. After her little cold bath her limbs seemed to burn more than ever. Brick sat next to her and Socket pointedly did the same.

“Shouldn’t have even asked,” Socket muttered.

Snowglobe tapped her hooves together. “Now here’s what we’ve got. The generators below us used to be spark generators. Notice how I say 'used to.' Spark generators don’t tolerate water too well. Either way, spark generators run off of magic. Unicorns charge them up kinda’ like they do batteries. Most of the process is still a secret that only the manufacturer knows. But from what I have learned, spark generators use unicorn magic to form something that ponies like to call ‘spark’. In turn, that creates electricity. I don’t know how. But somewhere in between magic and electricity something happens that the companies are really hush-hush about. Following so far?”

“Mostly,” Willow replied. “But keep going, this is interesting.”

“Yeah sure, generator one-o-one,” Socket muttered.

Brick was too busy eyeballing his flashlight on the ground in front of the gray mare.

Willow wouldn’t exactly describe it as cool, but interesting nonetheless. Snowglobe, on the other hoof, seemed almost ecstatic to be sharing her knowledge of generators. “I could fill these two beasts up with gems right now and hook them to the city’s power grid, and they would power the whole city. They might get a little hot and the gems would run out pretty fast. But it would work! Unlike spark generators, which only provide a set amount of power, gemstone generators will put out as much power as needed... to a certain degree. So the more power you use, the more gems you use. Now this is where our second problem comes in. This hospital drains a lot of juice. And considering these things were retired a long time ago there wasn’t much of a need to keep gemstones lying around.”

Willow frowned. “So do we have any gems?”

“Sort of.” Snowglobe rubbed her chin. “Well, let’s see. This Gemmy’s bin is about half full. If that other is the same, which I’m guessing it is considering that these two machines were designed to run in sync with each other. Then if I empty the contents of that bin into this one, we should have a full load.” Snowglobe closed her eyes working it over in her head. “At our current consumption rate, I’d say we’d get about a month of power.”

Willow nodded, that was perfect. “Good, that’s all we need.”

Socket looked over to her and tilted his head. “How is that good? I think only a month of power is pretty damned short.”

Snowglobe looked just as curious. Willow sighed. Shouldn’t have let that one slip “This building is a hospital, not a shelter. It’s only stocked with enough food to survive a crisis, not a full-on apocalypse.”

“Did you say apocalypse?” Snowglobe gasped. Socket’s eyes widened and his face changed from one of contempt to worry.

“Didn’t you hear?” Why did she have to bring this up now? Bad Willow. “This whole thing started in Canterlot. It’s not just here.” Both Socket and Snowglobe gaped at her.

Brick took the time to sneak forward and scoop up his flashlight.

“So... we’re a lot worse off than I thought we were.” Snowglobe swallowed, apparently struggling to take the information in. “I knew things were bad, but I kept thinking the REA was going to come rescue us or something.”

“A lot worse off than you thought? Pretty much. I doubt anypony is coming to rescue us.” Willow thought desperately for a way to change the topic. “So, Snowglobe? How could we cut down on power consumption? It wouldn’t hurt to drag out what we can.”

The grey mare shook her head as if clearing it. “If we had to do something I would suggest turning off the water heating systems first. Unscrew every light bulb you can, trip the breakers to sectors we don’t need, and shut down the elevators. You could turn off the main power grid at night as well. And... I hate to throw this out, but all the medical machinery and life support systems.”

Willow’s pupils shrank to mere pinpricks. “The life support systems!? You mean the ones that are keeping ponies alive?”

“Yes.” Snowglobe looked reluctant to continue. “Do you really think those ponies in intensive care have a chance? The ones that are in comas and on whatever other machines keeping them alive? If things are as bad as you say they are... and nopony is coming to help us. All that they are doing is taking up electricity and food.”

“There’s no way.” Willow stomped her hoof.

Brick and Socket sat a short distance away. The two stallions watched in silence, not wanting to interrupt but also not wanting to miss anything.

Snowglobe sighed. “Look Willow, I don’t like it either. But the only reason those ponies are alive is because of those machines. When the power runs out they are going to die. If things are as bad as you say they are, no matter what, they are going to die! It would only make sense to unplug em’ now and save the power. If we keep all those machines running they’re going to guzzle power and bleed us dry! We’d only be prolonging their deaths.”

Willow opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Horror dawning on her face, she sat back. Snowglobe was right, but she just couldn’t bring herself to say it. She couldn’t just pull the plug and kill those ponies. She was the one who had helped half of them. There was no way she just let them die. But... Snowglobe was right. It only made sense; unplugging them now would save power and supplies.

“Say,” Socket cut in, “if the powers out wouldn’t, you know...” He hesitated. “Wouldn’t they already be dead?”

Willow shook her head. “No. All those machines have an independent power source that will last about four hours. The only things in this building that don’t have backups are...” Every muscle in her body seemed to clench with fear. “...the confinement rooms.” The confinement rooms were the only things without an independent power supply.

Snowglobe cast a worried glance at Willow. “You okay? You look kinda tense.” She took a step towards her.

Willow jumped and nearly landed on the gray mare. “We have to get this generator going, right now!” She had left Sunny in an airtight room and had completely forgotten about him. How could she be this stupid?

Snowglobe put a comforting hoof around her. “Willow, just calm down a little. Okay? Tell me what’s going on.”

She forced herself to take a few deep breaths. “I have a pony locked in confinement. He is going to run out of air if we don’t get the power back.” He was in trouble. She knew it. That room was too small for a pony to survive in for long. How long had it been? An hour, maybe?

Snowglobe must have caught the urgency in her voice. The mare trotted back over to the terminal and hit a few keys. “Socket, I’m going to need your help.”

For once the yellow stallion didn’t complain. “What do I need to do?”

Snowglobe pointed a hoof towards a panel on the wall behind them. “Take the cover off that panel. Inside there should be six, four-gauge wires. Find a pair of cutters. You need to pull out as much length as you can and cut the wires. Those run down to the generators.”

“Got it!” Socket galloped over to a utility closet and crashed around inside. A moment later he emerged with a pair of wire snips in his mouth.

Snowglobe spared a glance backwards. “I would have recommended hoof held ones but those’ll work.”

Socket reached the panel, though he only frowned at the casing. “Hey brown pony!” he called. Brick lifted his head. “You got a screwdriver?”

Surprisingly enough, Brick dug in his saddlebag and pulled out a screwdriver. He trotted over to the panel and starting working out the screws while Socket stood back approvingly.

Willow paced impatiently. This was taking too much time. At this rate they would never get the generator going in time. “What are you doing on that terminal?” she pressed Snowglobe.

“This thing has some stupid security code on it.” The mare didn’t look up from the screen. For a minute Willow contemplated going up there to get Sunny now. She pushed the thought away. Even if she could manage to run up six levels of stairs in her current condition the door itself had an electronic lock. It would take no less than a plasma cutter and a battering ram to get that door open.

“Yes!” Snowglobe jeered pointing a triumphant hoof at the terminal. “I beat you! Now who’s smarter?”

“Hey Snowglobe?” Socket called. “There’s an extra wire in here. It’s black but it’s not marked and its thicker than the other ones. What should I do with this one?”

She didn’t even look back. “It's probly’ just a ground. Take it too. I might need it.” Snowglobe chuckled at the computer as Willow leaned over her shoulder, trying to figure out just what was so funny. “Your wimpy security can’t stop me,” she whispered to the terminal and hit a few more keys. Suddenly, Snowglobe went stiff, her eyes widening. “...Spark generators don’t need a ground.”

There was an earsplitting crack and a flash of blue light from behind them, right as the emergency lights cut out. All at once, everything went to complete darkness.

Willow couldn’t hear anything but she and Snowglobe’s breathing. The smell of ozone filled the air, sharp, mixed with the pungent smell of burnt hair. The only light in the room came from Brick's flashlight which sat on the ground a little ways away and the faint green glow from the terminal.

“Oh Celestia, what did I do?” Snowglobe whimpered, her face illuminated by the glow from the terminal. “He’s dead. He’s dead, I know he’s dead. I fucking killed him!”

“Socket?” Willow called into the darkness. The air around her felt warm, literally warm. “Socket?” Nothing. She could smell it. She didn’t want to think about it. “Brick, where’d you go!?”

As if summoned, the flashlight seemed to levitate up off the ground as the brown stallion retrieved it. He shone it briefly around the room, then trotted up to stand beside Willow.

Willow knew. She didn’t even have to look. She knew it was there. Snowglobe stared at the terminal screen, unmoving. Sucking in her breath, Willow nodded and Brick pointed his flashlight towards the panel. Slowly she turned her head to look at the shape on the ground. The limp form of Socket lay about five feet away from the wall, smoke rising from his singed coat.

“Socket?” Willow nudged Brick and the two approached the unmoving pony. She could still hear Snowglobe whimpering behind her. Brick held the light steady as they neared Socket. Slowly, Willow circled the smoking form until she could see his front. Despite her experience, she still gagged. Across his entire front his yellow coat was burned and blackened. So much electrical current had passed through the pony that his eyes had boiled in his skull. She had seen this once before when she was still in training. Smoke rose from his charred form and the smell of burnt flesh filled the air.

Willow turned away and walked over to Snowglobe. She put her leg around the shaking mare.

“T-that wasn’t a g-ground,” Snowglobe stammered, still not taking her eyes from the terminal. “That was the p-power cable for the emergency systems.”

“It’s okay.” Willow pulled the shaking mare closer to her. “It’s alright.” She tried to comfort the mare who shook in her grip.

“It’s not okay!” Snowglobe sobbed. “I just killed a pony!”

“I know how it feels,” Willow comforted. “But you have to get ahold of yourself.”

“How do you know how it feels?” She whimpered. “You haven’t killed ponies, you just watch them die!”

The comment stung like salt on an open wound. “You’re wrong!” she hissed, Silencing Snowglobe with one angry glare. “Look, I try not to think about this, but you need to understand. Two years ago, I was in charge of an operation on a stallion. It was a minor surgery.” As Willow spoke Snowglobe’s shaking subsided a little. “He insisted that we start, that he didn’t have time to wait around, but the pony in charge of the anesthesia was out. I was certified in the area so I volunteered to do it.” Snowglobe turned away from the terminal to look at her. “I miscalculated the amount and overdosed him. That pony never woke up from a minor operation because I screwed up. I fell apart for weeks, at times I wasn’t even willing to get up. I got fired and that’s why I moved here, because this hospital doesn’t do background checks! I faced lawsuits and fines, and I had to tell his wife how he died!” She grit her teeth. “But you can’t fall apart. You need to be strong right now. Because if you aren’t, then a pony that could be very important to all of us is going to die. Okay?”

Snowglobe wiped her eyes and nodded. “I’ll try.”

“No, Snowglobe. I don’t want you to try. I want you to do it. You are the only one that knows how to work this generator and if all you do is try then a good pony is going to die.”

A cold determination seemed to set in the mare's face. Her eyes gleamed in the soft green glow of the terminal. “Okay.”

* * *

Moon groaned as she rolled over for the twentieth time, the covers bunching up around her as she tried to get comfortable.

She wanted her normal life back. Just four days ago, she had been going to work, talking with friends, wondering what she was going to do when the weekend came around. And now, all of a sudden, she was locked in a hospital with a bunch of crazy ponies eating each other outside. It was hard to believe things had changed so quickly. Sure, her old life had been boring and repetitive and sometimes she had wished for something exciting to happen... but not this. This wasn’t any better. Ponies were dying, and going crazy, and killing and eating each other.

She thought back to the unicorn at the gate she had watched die. She could still see the fear in his eyes as he pleaded for her to let him in, the sadness in them as he lowered his head, waiting for the shot to end his life. All of this was just terrible. Ponies didn’t deserve this! When they had closed down the hospital they had killed ponies. There had been foals out there!

Moon rolled herself out of bed and crossed the room to the window. Like every other window in the building it was covered by a metal grate. The room was dark apart from the dull orange light that shone above the door. The power had gone out about an hour ago and hadn’t yet come back on. Why would it? Without ponies to work the plants the batteries had probably ran out or something. Whatever those ponies did to make power, they weren’t doing it anymore.

She gazed down at the town below. Little fires burned here and there around the town, like candles in the night. An explosion lit up a building about two blocks away from the hospital and Moon actually felt the floor shake. They were still fighting out there, what survivors there were.

“I wonder what’s going on out there,” she wondered aloud. She wasn’t going to be able to sleep tonight. There was way too much going through her mind. One thing was for sure, she was too restless. If she didn’t go do something now, she could have drowned in her own boredom.

Moon turned away from the window and trotted back towards the bed. Her eyes fell upon the dresser where the shotgun and some twenty shells rested. She’d figured keeping the gun would be a good idea. After all, there were zombie ponies outside and so far the only two ponies she knew who had guns were Dusty and Brick. And she doubted there were many here. This was a hospital after all, it’s not like ponies just kept guns lying around in a hospital.

Moon trotted for the door, but paused before she reached it. Her eyes flicked back to the gun lying on the dresser. “Are you crazy?” she scolded herself. “You’re just going for a walk in the hallway. You don’t need a gun.”

She couldn’t help but to cast it a backwards glance as she pushed out into the hall.

The hallway was completely dark apart from the emergency lights that cast a dull circle of orange light down on the floor every twenty or so feet. When Moon had spent the first night here she thought they would all end up sleeping in the lobby or something, but it turned out there had been enough guest rooms for almost everypony to have their own. She had tried to do a quick head count when everypony was still in the lobby and had come up with about forty. But if she added up the hospital staff and patients it would probably be a little higher.

It was... creepy walking down the dark hall, passing silently under the circles of dim orange light cast upon the floor. There was a horrible, horrible sinking feeling in her gut and a burning fear in the back of her skull; it was infuriating and terrifying and Moon had no idea where it was coming from. She’d never been afraid of the dark... So why was she afraid of it now? Every single nerve in her body screamed for her to run back to her room and grab the gun. It was as if all the horrors of the past few days were pouring out of her and manifesting themselves in this section of dark hallway.

Moon stepped out from under emergency lamp, trying not to think about the surrounding darkness and what it might hide in its depths. Moon chuckled quietly to herself. “Stop being such a foal. It’s just a hallway. There can’t be anything here.” She was almost to the next circle of orange now. She couldn’t understand why she was this scared. It’s not like she was scared of the dark or anything.

Moon breathed a sigh of relief as she stepped towards the comforting orange glow.

Then it was gone.

How could the light just disappear? Moon went into full panic mode. It was so dark she couldn’t even see her own hooves in front of her! The things in the darkness were closing in, surrounding her, she could feel it.

She screamed and ran, galloping through the darkness with no direction in mind. Just, away. The sound of hoofsteps came from somewhere ahead of her and she ran faster not daring to stop and turn around for fear of what lay behind. She collided into something that yelled when she hit it and both her and the unknown thing crashed to the floor.

“What the hay are you doing?” a stallion’s voice asked from beside her.

“Stay away from me!” she shrieked trying to scramble to her hooves. But a weight landed on her back pushing her back to the floor.

“Calm down,” said the same voice, this time from above her. Something in the back of her mind told her that the stallion was probably trying to comfort her but she was still too worked up to care. She tried to pull free from his grasp but he wrapped his legs around her flank and kept her belly firmly pressed to the ground.

“Get off me!” Moon snapped trying to push herself up again. SHe fought for a moment more, then went limp. The hooves that held her were firm but, gentle. He had her pinned on her belly, hooves splayed out at her side. Moon listened to her own breathing and the slow, gentle breaths of the pony above her.

“Moon, I ain’t lettin’ you up till you calm down enough to tell me what’s going on,” the voice said.

“How do you know my name?” Moon gasped. “I can’t even see my own hooves and you know my name. What’s going on here?” Moon tried to pull free again but the effort was pointless.

The stallion chuckled. “I’m good at rememberin’ voices.”

“Dusty?” Moon asked.

“Yep.” Moon couldn’t see the pegasus, but she knew he was smiling. A door banged open somewhere ahead and Moon jumped. A moment later a beam of light lit up the dark hall, bringing the two of them into focus.

“Just what the hay are you doing to that mare?!” a stallion bellowed, stomping up to them from a doorway and beaming the two with harsh, white light.

“Tryin’ to get her to calm down,” Dusty replied wincing in the bright light. “Hey could you by any chance take that light outta my eyes?”

The unicorn glared. “Do I look stupid to you? Now I’m gonna ask you again. What are you doing to that mare?”

Moon still didn’t feel right. She shook under the pegasus but found comfort in him being with her. She looked around at the hall, using the unicorn’s source of light to calm her fears. Nothing. She had just been going completely crazy over nothing... That wasn’t good.

Dusty looked puzzled. “Now look mister. I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, but I...” He trailed off and looked down at Moon below him. And then the way he was holding her. “Oh...”

Moon suddenly found the situation to be somewhat funny. She turned her head to the side and took a few deep breaths, trying not to laugh and trying not to blush.

Dusty rolled off her back and scrambled to his hooves. “This ain't what it looks like.”

The stallion looked unconvinced. “So tell me I’m wrong when I say this. Here I am, trying to get some sleep. I hear screaming in the hallway. I hear ponies running, and then I hear a crash and the sound of a tussle. So I haul my tired rump out of bed, get my light and come out here to see you on top of this poor terrified mare.” He took a step closer to Dusty. “Now tell me what I’m missing here?”

Dusty gave a little nervous chuckle. “Well, shoot. This does look a little bad doesn’t it?”

The unicorn stepped closer still until he was right up in Dusty’s face. “Things are already fucked up enough around here. We don’t need ponies like you in here.” Dusty backed away still trying not to look embarrassed but failing miserably.

A mare poked her head out of the door nearest to them. “What’s going on out here?”

The blue unicorn nickered. “We got ourselves a rapist here.”

“What?” Dusty gaped. “I am not! He just walked in at a very awkward moment.”

The mare scoffed. “Yeah, definitely awkward.”

“What I just saw proved otherwise.” The unicorn stepped closer to Dusty who backed away further.

“We should shoot you right now.” The mare spat from the doorway before slamming the door. “I’m getting my husband’s gun!” came her muffled yell.

Moon finally pulled herself together and took in the situation. Dusty could probably handle himself but a fight right now wouldn’t be the best thing that could happen. She climbed to her hooves and faced the accusing stallion. “He didn’t do that.”

He frowned. “Are you sure? 'Cause I saw...”

Moon cut him off. “Look I’m not stupid, okay. I think I would know if a pony was trying to… Look. I’m not stupid. Okay.”

The unicorn looked like he wanted to argue, but he lowered his hostility. “Look, I’m sorry. I just don’t like the idea of ponies hurting each other. And it really looked like he was trying to... You know.”

Moon’s tone softened. “It’s okay, okay? it was just a misunderstanding.”

Now it was the unicorn's turn to look embarrassed. He turned away from her. “I’m just gonna go back to sleep now.” He headed back to his room and closed the door, plunging the hallway back into darkness.

She spoke to where Dusty had last been. “Hey, Dusty? Do you have a light?”

“Yeah, one sec.” Moon jumped when his voice came from right next to her. She heard the sound of him rustling around in his bags. A little white light winked to life in his mouth bringing them both into focus. “It’s all I got.”

Moon rolled her eyes. “At least take that thing out of your mouth so you can talk right.” Before he could reply she levitated the light from his grip.

“Thanks.” Dusty was silent for a moment. “So what were you doing out here anyways?” The blue pegasus looked concerned.

“What? You mean besides being sexually assaulted?” Moon joked. She frowned at herself. Bad taste.

“What?” he choked. The look on his face was priceless. He threw his head from side to side as if looking for somepony else in the hallway.

Moon chuckled. “I’m just kidding.” She nudged the pegasus who was still looking quite flustered. “No, I was just restless so I figured I’d take a walk and maybe even go check on Sunny.”

“Well you certainly have an interestin’ way of walkin’.”

“Oh don’t worry,” she added. “I just had a minor nervous breakdown. It’s over now though.”

“Well that’s nice to know.” Dusty tilted his head to one side. “Did you say you were going to see Sunny?”

“Yeah, why?” The pegasus was looking at her as if she was still thrashing around on the floor screaming. “What’s so strange about that?”

“...Isn’t he dead?”

Moon glared in confusion, then her eyes momentarily widened. “No, he’s not, actually.”

Dusty gave his head a little shake, furrowing his brows. “That can’t be right. Ah’ saw him get bit.”

“Yeah, he did get bitten.... We’re being safe with him. He’s up in confinement on the fifth level.”

“Are you crazy?” he spluttered. The look Dusty was giving her was almost convincing enough to make her think that she was. “You’re keepin’ one of those crazy ponies in here?”

Moon sighed. She really needed to clarify things better. “Oh, no! I would never dream of it. Willow has him locked up. He’s fine. She thinks me may be immune.” She bounced on the tips of her hooves for a second, shooting the pegasus a little smile.

He dropped his questioning gaze. “Well that’s nice to know. I liked that pony for the whole ten minutes that I knew him. It’s a lot nicer knowing he’s not dead.”

“Yeah.” She was still worried about him. Willow said that he was okay but there was no way to tell for sure. She just felt giddy about the whole mess.

“Tell you what.” Dusty smiled. “You got me wonderin’ how he’s doing now too. Mind if I went with you?”

“What makes you think I’d say yes?” Moon teased.

“Cause I got the only light.” The pegasus chided, flapping his wings.

“It’s fine.” Moon laughed. “I’m just giving you a hard time. Besides, if I decide to freak out again it would be nice to have you around to tackle me to the floor.”

Dusty nodded and rolled his eyes. With no more words to exchange, the two started off down the hall, walking side by side, Moon shining the way with Dusty’s flashlight. It wasn’t much but it still lit up the hallway ahead of them.

When they reached the elevator she stopped by it and pressed the call button.

Dusty stopped and turned to look at her. “Moon, you do know there’s no power right?”

“What? Oh!” She nickered and stepped away from the panel. Something, sometime somewhere must have scrambled her brain. She was acting crazy. Freaking out in dark hallways, and now trying to use an elevator in a power outage.

Leaving the elevator behind, Moon scampered after Dusty towards the stairwell. Every time she’d try to meet the pegasus pony’s eye, he’d look away. It was starting to get to her. Maybe he was still embarrassed about what had happened back in the hallway. Probably...

Moon took a deep breath. “Look, I’m sorry about freaking out and screaming and making that pony think you were trying to have your way with me.”

“It’s okay.” He sighed. “It’s hard to read a pony by how they look. I would never touch you.” The pegasus froze and looked at her, his face going a little rec. “Well, I mean. Not that I wouldn’t.” He stammered. He went an even darker shade of red. “Not without your permission I mean.” He flopped over and threw his hooves over his face. “I mean only if you—“ He cut himself off and groaned.

Moon tried not to laugh but she couldn’t help it. Dusty rolled over onto his back. “I’m sorry.” He added not looking at her.

Moon wiped a tear from her eye. “It’s okay.” She tried to sound sincere but she just couldn’t stop smiling. The pegasus was hilarious. “I understand.”

Dusty gasped and looked up at her. “No not like that!”

She was going to cry; this was too funny. Moon broke out in laughter again as Dusty banged his head on the floor.

After a minute, Moon got control of herself and Dusty pushed himself back to his hooves. “I’m sorry.” Moon teased. “I just seem to have that effect on stallions.”

Dusty glared at her. “You are evil.”

Moon just chuckled. Soon enough, the emergency door to the stairwell loomed at them out of the darkness.

Dusty sighed as he looked at the little picture of a cartoon pony running downstairs away from a cartoon fire. “You aren’t going to ever let me hear the end of this are you?”

Moon chuckled and opened the door. “Nope.”

* * *

“You almost ready Snowglobe?”

“Almost.” Snowglobe had finished running the wires and was once again hitting buttons on the terminal. “I just need to reboot the spell matrix. This thing has been sitting on standby for who knows how long. There are some errors in the system. Magic is one thing. Technology is another. I want to smack the ponies who decided to try and put them both together and tell them how stupid of an idea it was.”

“Right,” Willow murmured. This mare’s machine-y talk was getting confusing. When it came to medicine she could tell a pony anything they needed to know. But machinery was out of her range of knowledge. “I don’t mean to come off as pushy, but could you please hurry it up a little?”

“I’m going as fast as this machine will let me.” Snowglobe huffed. Her eyes were still wet and Willow could understand why. She had had to pass Socket multiple times to reach the wires. She sniffed. “It’s my fault.”

Willow sighed and walked over to the mare. “Look Snowglobe, I’m not going to candy coat it for you. You screwed up. Socket is dead because you messed up. You messed up just like I did. But you can’t dwell on it. Especially now, okay?”

Snowglobe nodded and wiped her eyes. “Reboot’s done.” She sniffed, then stood up. She stretched briefly, then walked around the giant machine until she reached a switch. “Let’s hope this works.”

She took the switch in her mouth, and with a heave, pulled it to the on position. The monster hummed to life casting beams of rainbow light across the ceiling and walls.

“Is the floor supposed to vibrating!?” Willow yelled over the sound of the machine.

“Don’t know!” Snowglobe shouted back. “Never seen one of these in action before!” The room lit up as the recently dead lights blared to life. “It works!” She jeered. “Yes! I knew it would work!”

“Great work!” Willow cheered. Now that the power was back on she could take the elevator up to the fifth floor. Sunny’s room should have resumed its cycles but she still wanted to make sure. “Brick, go call the elevator!” The earth pony complied and trotted away towards the other end of the room.

Willow could see Snowglobe more clearly in the light. Her coat was a light gray and the mare had a short purple mane, but her tail hung down almost to the floor. She was frowning at the generator. “Those rainbows are a bad sign!”

“Why!?” Willow frowned. “I like the rainbows, they’re pretty!”

Snowglobe shot her a sideways glance. “The rainbows mean that the machine is leaking magic! You get magic when gems are broken down in a special magical process! Any uncontained, unrefined magic will manifest itself as a rainbow in open air! That means that this machine is leaking magic it’s supposed to be converting into energy! But whatever you do! Never look directly into the source of the light! You’ll go blind!”

Willow only heard half of her shouted explanation. “Look, I’d love to stay and talk but I have to go check on somepony!”

Snowglobe nodded. “Go ahead; the elevator should be working now! I’m gonna stay here and see what I do about these leaks!”

Willow smiled. The mare may still have been suffering from Socket, but at least work was keeping her mind off it.

“Thanks!” Willow called. She turned and ran for the elevator that Brick was holding for her. Thank Celestia. No more stairs!

“Don’t mention it!” Snowglobe called back. Willow reached the elevator and hit the button for the fifth floor. “If we meet up again I’ll have to tell you about that time I had to rewire a—” The elevator doors closed and cut off the rest of her sentence.

The deafening hum the generator was immediately cut off to be replaced by casual elevator music. Now that she had a moment to think, Willow realized just how tired she was. Every muscle in her body screamed with weariness and she leaned against Brick for support. Brick looked down at her and smiled, draping a foreleg around her neck to give her a sideways hug.

Wait? Had he smiled? Willow did a double take, but the stallion was looking straight ahead. She needed sleep. Imagining things definitely wasn’t a good sign.

Willow groaned. She had been awake now for two days. Not counting the brief nap she took after beating Sugar Apple to death with a desk drawer. Her bones were sore, her joints hurt, she had a massive migraine, and her insides burned like fire. She nuzzled into Brick's shoulder. This was comfortable; she could fall asleep like this.

“Why don’t you talk anymore?” she wondered aloud. The warmth of his body was comforting after the chilly air of the basement. “Back when we were kids I couldn’t get you to shut up.”

The brown pony just shrugged. Willow took a deep breath. He smelt like raspberries. “...Did you use my shampoo?” Willow looked up at Brick, who did nothing but flick his ears. “You did! Didn’t you?”

Brick shrugged.

“How many times have I told you that the blue bottle is mine?”

The elevator doors opened and Brick stepped forward, forcing Willow to stand on her own again. “I swear if that bottle is empty I will make you trot that rump of yours over to the store and get a new one, zombie ponies or not.” Willow pouted, following him out of the elevator.

The two set off down the hall. After a moment or two Willow heaved a sigh and gave the stallion a nudge. She couldn’t stay mad at Brick for more than a minute. He was like a really big kitten. Really big. He was almost a head taller than her.

She reached the end of the hall and pulled open the door that lead to the containment room she had Sunny in. Momentarily all traces of weariness were gone. If something had happened to the orange pony she would never be able to forgive herself. She was surprised to find Dusty and Moon already there. “What are you two doing here?”

Moon was in her face so fast Willow could have sworn she had teleported had her horn been glowing. “You have to do something!”

“What are you talking about?” From what she knew, Moon sometimes overreacted. But Moon looked like she had a good reason for it this time. It put Willow on edge.

Dusty trotted up and put a wing around Moon, who seemed to settle a little. “Sunny ain’t movin’.”

Willow froze. “No...”

“Open the door!” Moon bellowed at her.

“Right.” Willow reached the door as fast as she could and punched in the key code. Every part of her brain was yelling at her. How could she be so stupid? If she had remembered he was here in the first place this never would have happened.

Nothing happened.

“What’s taking so long!?” Moon was back at the window with her front hooves propped up on it.

Willow tried the key code again. Still nothing. “The lock must have restored to defaults in the power outage. I’m trying to get it open.”

Moon glared at her. “Well open it faster!”

“I am trying to open it faster!” She tried desperately to remember the default code but it wouldn’t come to mind. “Oh forget this!” Willow turned away from the door and waved Brick over. Much to his surprise, she plunged her head into his saddlebag.

“What are you doing?” Moon pushed.

Willow found the bit of the gun and pulled it out. “Imphrovishing!” She turned and fired the whole clip into the lock. Firing the gun jarred her brain and the sound rung in her ears. It certainly wasn’t helping her condition, and it definitely wasn’t helping her migraine. She dropped the gun and threw herself at the door. It didn’t budge.

“What can I do?” Dusty added as Willow shook her head to clear the stars.

She turned to Brick. “Open that door.” The stallion narrowed his eyes, then nodded. He took one look at the damaged lock, then reared up on his hind legs and threw himself at the door. The frame bent and the glass cracked, but it held strong.

Moon was staring at Sunny as if she could melt the window between them with her eyes. “Do something,” she whined, but with none of the previous venom in her voice.

Brick backed all the way up to the end of the room and drug his hoof across the tile. All at once, he charged, gaining as much speed as possible in the confined space. The stallion sprang into the air at the last moment and hit the door with all four hooves. The impact jarred the frame and the entire door tore free of its hinges. Brick kept on sailing, and a second later there was a crash from inside the cofinement room.

Willow raced into the room and hopped over Brick. “Good job,” she added before attending to Sunny. He was on the single bed in the corner. It looked like he had fallen asleep. Good, she thought. Maybe he’s just sleeping. Dusty and Moon filed in behind her.

“Is he breathing?” Moon pressed.

Willow checked his pulse; it was there, barely. Thank Celestia there was a pulse. Okay, breathing. Breathing...

He wasn’t breathing. “He needs help until we can get him on a machine!” Willow called. She couldn’t use any potion for this. And any drug that could have been useful was either in storage or not in her bag. “I need to get him breathing again.” She gasped.

Moon knocked her out of the way. “I can do it! You do your... Willow stuff.”

Willow shook her head trying to clear it, even if the trick had stopped working a few hours ago.. “We need a stretcher. We need to get him to intensive care on the first level.” She looked down at Brick who was still on the floor. “Brick, go get me a stretcher.” The stunned pony lifted his head and gave it a shake. At least it still worked for him.

“Uh, Willow?” Dusty muttered.

“What!?” She didn’t have time for this. Couldn’t he see that something very serious was going on here?

He pointed a hoof at the bed Sunny was on. “That bed has wheels on it.”

“Oh.” Willow froze, her train of thought broken. Wheels, bed downstairs, right. “Somepony help me push this!” She ran back over to the bed and grabbed ahold of the rail. Dusty grabbed hold beside her and together they managed to tug the bed away from the wall and out of the room. “Second floor, let’s go!” Willow went to put her hoof down for another pull but suddenly it wasn’t there. She landed flat on her face and the bed nearly rolled right over her.

“Get up.” Moon yelled nudging her with a hoof. Willow tried to get up but her body had had it. She had gone on this long but this was as far as she was going. The combined efforts of the last few days and the medical death she had sent through her system back in the square had taken their toll... again. This was the second time today her body had failed her. Maybe it was trying to teach her a lesson.

“Can’t.” She gasped, trying again to get her hooves under her but failing. Her vision went black and when she opened her eyes again lights were flashing by above her. She rolled over to look at an unconscious Sunny. She was on the bed, next to him. Brick was on her left and Dusty and Moon were pushing from the right. She tried to pick her head up but spots filled her vision and she blacked out again. It was a weird feeling. Willow knew what exhaustion was but had never experienced it herself. She could still hear everything as if she were in a dream but could see none of it.

“Willow, wake up!”

Moon was cranky, time to wake up.

Willow rolled over, preparing to push herself up only to see the floor rushing up to meet her.

Thud.

“I’m awake!” she moaned. “Why didn’t you tell me there was a floor there?” At least everything didn’t hurt anymore. Now it was more of a dull throbbing that filled her entire body. With Brick's help she climbed to her hooves. Moon was glaring at her. Again. Moon was the master of evil glares. “What did I do?” She couldn’t think. Her brain was still trying to sleep.

Moon stomped a hoof. “Willow, you’re the only one here who knows how to work that machine.”

“Right, right.” Willow stumbled over to the machine. Looking it over she found everything in order. They had managed to hook everything up right. It was operating the machine that they were confused about. She looked over to the control terminal and hit the little button that ran the routine. “There, all better.”

Moon pressed in beside her. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty.” It was a good thing Moon was here. At least she knew a thing or two about medical care. Willow knew that if she had had to hook up the machine without Moon in her current condition, she would have had to talk a pony through it. She turned away from the bed and immediately landed on her face, again. How many times could she fall down in one day? It was really starting to hurt. Maybe she could get Brick to carry around a pillow and throw it down wherever she was about to fall.

A green mare trotted into the room. Her curious gaze looking at Sunny and then down to the heap of pony on the floor. “I-is everything okay in here?” she stammered.

Willow recognized the mare. She worked here. “You.” She jabbed a hoof at the mare. “Watch the one on the bed. Near suffocation. Possible... possibly some form of infection. Try not to touch him.”

The mare looked skeptical but nodded and trotted over to the machine.

Willow climbed to her hooves again and Moon opened her mouth to say something. Willow stuck out a hoof to silence her. “Moon, I swear it by Celestia. If you give me crap right now, when I’m well I will tie you to a bed and force feed you a whole bottle of Ipecac. He’s going to be fine.” Bed, where was a bed?

Her eyes trying to droop shut any time she stopped thinking about holding them open. If she ever had to take that blue stuff again she didn’t know what she would do.

“What happened to him?” Moon was eyeing the orange pegasus with worry.

Willow sighed. She at least deserved and explanation. “When the power went out... the life support system in that room went out too. That place is airtight. The REA built it to contain biological specimens.”

Moon looked furious. Please Moon, not now. “Why didn’t you go help him?” Moon spat accusingly.

Willow already felt bad enough. She didn’t need another pony yelling at her about how she screwed up. “I went down to start the generators. By the time I was down there it would have taken longer to come back up than to stay down there and get them started.”

“He almost died because you were too lazy to go and get him!?” Willow cringed as the angry mare spat at her. “That’s real nice to know!”

“Look!” she spat back. “Do I look like I’m in any condition to trot my way up six flights of stairs?” Moon tried to speak but Willow cut her off before she could start. “It’s over! Stop dwelling on it. Sunny’s alive. I’m alive… sort of. And now with that said. I’m going to bed.” Willow turned her back on Moon and stalked out of the room. Fighting to stay on her hooves. Every step seemed to tire her more. “Damn medicine,” she growled. “Never taking that stuff again.”

The thought of a soft bed was almost enough to put her to sleep where she stood. She was going to take a long nap, and Celestia have mercy upon anypony who dared to try and wake her.

Chapter 3 Down and Out

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“Look. He’s waking up.”

“Yes, I can see that, Moon.”

Sunny could hear voices. They spoke confusing and disconnected words, but they were about him, or at least he thought they were. He opened his eyes and immediately closed them against the blinding light, turning his head to the side and letting out a quiet groan.

“Is he okay?”

“He was okay yesterday. Nothing has changed.”

Sunny opened his eyes again, this time a little more slowly. It took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the light, but it wasn’t long before a white room came into perspective. Not surprisingly, he was in a hospital bed. Something had happened. Maybe Willow was doing more tests.

Willow and Moon stood looking at him like a pair of anticipating and slightly hungry animals.

Sunny blinked and looked back.

“Uh... hi.” He gave a half-wave of his forehoof.

“How are you feeling Sunny?” Moon asked

“Okay I guess.” Sunny really didn’t know how he was feeling. Tired? There was a blanket over him. He reached his head forward and pulled it off. Several tubes ran from an IV stand down to his foreleg, which led him to his most important question. “Why are there needles in me?”

Willow snorted. “Well we had to feed you somehow. We could have put a tube down your throat but most ponies don’t like to wake up like that.”

“Wait, what?” Sunny wasn’t quite sure about the look on Willow’s face. “Why did you need to feed me?”

“You were asleep for quite a while,” Moon added.

“How long?” He didn’t like the sound of that.

Willow shrugged. “About three weeks.”

“Three weeks?” He pulled the IV from his leg. How had he been asleep for three weeks? Last thing he remembered was being in confinement.

“That’s what I said,” Willow drawled. Moon shot the white mare a glare. “Turns out after nearly dying of suffocation, your body put itself into something very similar to a coma; it had something to do with the virus in your system as well. Your body basically went into emergency shutdown mode. I could have caught it earlier and prevented your little nap but I was… away.”

“You mean asleep,” Moon spat.

Willow glared back. “Look I was in bad shape. Okay!”

“He almost died because you needed a nap!”

Before Sunny knew it, the two mares were now nose and nose with each other.

“Wait, wait, wait?” Sunny cut in before the mares could start an argument. “I nearly died? Again? A third time? After I nearly suffocated?”

Willow backed away from Moon and chuckled nervously, rubbing her muzzle with a forehoof. “Well. Technically... you died.” Sunny balked at her. “But only for a minute,” she added hastily.

“I died?” This was ridiculous. He had been living normally all his life and now all of a sudden he had been bitten, held in confinement for being bitten, suffocated, and then killed and brought back to life. Well, he assumed they had brought him back considering he was definitely, not dead.

“Your heart stopped a while after we brought you in here.” Willow threw a sideways glance to a brooding Moon. “She was the one that noticed it. If it hadn’t been for Moon you would be dead.”

Sunny couldn’t think of anything to say. His mind was still reeling. He had died! He had been not-alive for however long it had been. Just the thought of it felt stranger than the effects of a healing potion. He had actually been dead... then brought back to life again! Just thinking about it felt wrong.

Moon looked sheepish. “I was sitting in here... you know, thinking. I noticed some warnings on the machine. I knew they were bad considering they were red and blinking—obvious stuff.” She chuckled. “So I went and got Willow, who was able to do her… Willow things before anything else happened. I’m just an under-trained pediatrician. These kinds of things are really out of my league.”

Sunny smiled at Moon. “Thanks.”

Willow coughed, drawing a curious glance from Moon. “I wouldn’t recommend that.” Sunny had tried to roll over, but Willow planted a hoof on his belly. “You haven’t moved for three weeks. Give yourself a little while to recover.”

“Come on. I haven’t moved for three weeks. I can’t just sit here.” Sunny shrugged Willow off and rolled off the bed. Instead of the desired effect of landing on his hooves and standing, the second part of his plan failed him as his hooves buckled below him. His muscles stung and screamed for a good second or two, then next thing he knew, he was on the floor.

He tried to pick himself up but fell back to the floor. The two mares giggled at him as he flopped around on, trying to get his hooves under him, irritation building by the second. After another three tries Sunny finally gave up. His limbs might as well have been rubber. Even Moon was having a good laugh, despite her normal serious nature.

“Aren’t you supposed to be helping me?” Sunny looked pleadingly up at Willow who only laughed harder.

She leaned up against Moon for support and stomped one forehoof, shaking her head. “I don’t see anything wrong with you,” she teased. “As far as I can tell you’re just flopping around like a fish to entertain us.” Both mares cracked up and Moon flopped down next to him with tears in her eyes. Willow lost her balance and landed on top of her.

“What is so funny about this!?” Sunny half screamed, trying once again to gain his hooves.

This was a rather awkward awakening—waking up to find out he had died and come back to life. Now there were two giggling mares rolling around on the floor while he could only watch. “How long am I going to be like this?” he asked a cackling Willow.

Willow pulled herself together long enough to give a response. “Day or two,” she chuckled. Sunny tried to climb to his hooves one last time but failed miserably. With nothing else he could do, Sunny stopped trying to get up. He sighed as the two mares laughed at him. He didn’t understand what was so funny. He had just fallen down... four times.

Well, at least the two were getting along.

* * *

“Do you have any idea why Willow is calling us to a meeting in the middle of the night?” Sunny asked Moon as they walked down the semi-dark hallway.

Moon shrugged. “It’s Willow. Don’t expect me to know.”

It had been three days since Sunny had awoken in the recovery room. Nothing had really changed while he was in his coma-like thingy; Willow had said something more medicine-y but he hadn’t really been in good enough shape to care what it was she was talking about. Ponies still sat around with nothing better to do but act scared and bored at the same time. Mindless zombie ponies still wandered around outside in what he assumed was an attempt to find a way in... or maybe they were just wandering. They really didn’t seem to have any motives other than to try and take a bite out of whatever moved.

He wondered why they didn’t attack each other—like there was some strange way they knew whether or not you were one of them. Just thinking about it was enough to send shivers down his spine. If this really was an apocalypse, he had thought it all wrong. This was boring. Sure he was alive, and that was what mattered most. But being alive was almost... boring. Sometimes he would find himself wishing something would happen, only to strike the thought down. If something happened, it was going to be bad and that was the last thing they needed.

He knew they wouldn’t be able to stay here forever—that was obvious, but not thinking about it was much easier. Nopony liked to think about the day when they might die. Strangely, it didn’t seem like a pressing matter. One would think possible death would be rather high on anypony’s agenda, but really, it just felt like a thing that was coming, like that monday on the calendar where you had to pay bills but didn’t have the money—you knew it was bad and you knew you had to do something, but you just sat back until monday anyways.

Moon stopped walking, one hoof still in the air. “Did you hear that?” she whispered.

“Hear what?” He silently took back his thoughts of something happening. He didn’t want anything to happen.

“Listen.” Moon held perfectly still and Sunny did the same. The hallway was dead quiet. But now that he listened, Sunny could hear something. One thing was for sure: it was getting closer.

“I think it’s above us,” he whispered, looking up at the roof. It sounded like it was coming from the vents, definitely somewhere ahead of them. As it grew closer Sunny could hear the sound of metal banging and groaning.

Neither of the two moved as the sound passed over them and continued on down the hall.

“What was that?” Moon was crouched low to the ground as if she were expecting something to spring at her.

“I don’t know... Something big.” Sunny shivered. Now that he couldn’t hear it anymore, it seemed almost worse—like something was sneaking up on them. Sunny looked at Moon, who looked just as unsettled as he was.

“You don’t think that—” Moon started but Sunny cut her off before she could finish.

“Don’t say it. I don’t know. Come on, we need to get to that thing... whatever it is Willow wanted to do. We can tell her about it when we get there.”

“Right.” Moon gave herself a shake and they started down the hall again.

Sunny could tell that Moon was scared—he was scared even. They passed the elevator and set off for the stairwell; Moon said Willow had shut down the elevator to conserve energy, that and the lights, and the life support systems, but not Sunny’s; he’d gotten a guilty pleasure from that revelation.

The two climbed up to level five and left the stairwell. Another hallway stretched away in either direction. They turned left towards the room Willow had told them she’d be in. Sunny watched the walls. They were white. Maybe somepony could have painted them. They only painted hospitals all white because that’s what ponies thought clean looked like. That’s why all of those buildings were always painted white. Sunny frowned. That couldn’t be the only reason. Maybe white was comforting to most ponies. Or maybe white paint was just cheap.

“There you two are!”

Moon squealed and Sunny nearly jumped clear through the roof. Willow stood looking at them from an open doorway, an impatient look on her face.

“Don’t do that, Willow!” Sunny gasped. “It’s creepy enough around here without you jumping out at us.”

“I wasn’t creeping. I was just standing here quietly.” Willow shrugged. “Come on, everypony else is already here.” She turned around in the doorway and entered the room. Sunny and Moon followed.

The room was rectangular. White walls, of course. A rectangular table sat in the center and fake plants filled every corner. Three ponies sat around the table. Sunny recognized Brick and Dusty, but there was purple-maned, gray unicorn he didn’t know.

He took a seat across from Dusty, and Moon sat down beside him.

Willow walked around to the head of the table before taking her seat. “I’m assuming everypony knows why we’re here,” she said, then smirked. “I always wanted to say that.”

From the baffled looks she received, Sunny was pretty sure that most of them didn’t. The gray mare sat patiently as if she already knew what was about to be said.

“What ah’m wonderin’ is why you made me come up here when ah could be sleepin,’” Dusty jabbed.

Willow shot him a glare. “Because I didn’t want anypony else to know we are having a meeting.”

“So I’m assuming this is important?” Sunny asked raising a hoof; Moon batted it out of the air.

Willow nodded. “Yes, very. That’s why I have called you all here to speak with me.” She looked around the table at the five ponies. “We’re leaving.”

Dusty and Moon immediately burst out in protest while Sunny just balked. The gray unicorn looked a little surprised. The only one who didn’t seem to care was Brick, his expression remaining flat.

“Are you crazy?” Dusty gaped. “Why the hay would we want to leave?”

Moon was gazing at Willow as if she had suggested they all start eating foals. “I don’t see why you would want, or even need to leave. Have you looked out a window? Those things are everywhere out there!”

“Yeah, I’m sorry, Willow,” Sunny added, “but that sounds absolutely insane.”

Fire seemed to glow in the white mare’s eyes. “I know how ridiculous it sounds, but hear me out. I have been checking up on things, and I think that if we don’t leave now, we may not be able to leave later.” Now that she had everypony’s attention, Willow waited for one of them to interrupt.

“Go on,” Dusty chided. “You got all this attention. Now make do with it.”

Willow took a deep breath. “Yesterday I went around and checked the building’s resources. The three main ones that I was worried most about were water, food, and electricity. Some of the other staff members and guests noticed me snooping around. I think that they’re getting suspicious. But we’re in bad shape. At our current rate, the remaining food in this building is going to run out in about a week.”

“What?” Moon burst in. “You said this building was stocked for two months. We’ve only been here a little under one.”

“Exactly.” Willow sighed. “For one, we’re over occupancy. And I think ponies have been stealing food. I’m not the only one that thought of this place running out of food. It was pretty obvious. I’m pretty sure everypony has thought it at some time or another.” Willow looked around at the now-worried looking ponies. “I have also been speaking with Snowglobe, and according to her, that generator down there is only going to be running for about another two weeks.

“Well, give or take a few hours.” The gray mare shrugged

Willow shot a look to her. The gray mare glared back and stuck out her tongue. “Snowglobe, a few hours isn’t going to make a difference.” She looked back to the rest of them, her eyes worried and serious. “Here is where the problem is going to come in. We have about two weeks of power, and only one week of food.”

“I think I see where this becomes a problem,” Sunny said. He had heard stories about ponies who had ran out of food.

“Exactly!” Willow stomped her hoof on the table. “Ever heard of what happens when a group’s food supply runs out? A riot. Ponies will start going to the extreme just for the tiniest scraps of food.”

“She’s right,” Dusty added. “Ah saw it happen to a town further south a’ here. A lot more cut off than others. The food was shipped monthly to the town by a group of caravans. Well one time the shipment never arrived an’ ponies decided to wait it out. When they finally realized the shipment wasn’t comin,’ and that there was hardly enough food left to leave for the next town, ponies damn near killed each other just for what was left. The place was fit to explode by the time the next shipment made it.

“When ponies get hungry, they get nasty.”

Moon frowned. “But, you think ponies would try and work together to survive in a case like this?”

“Moon,” Willow looked at the blue mare, “I know you’re nice and all, but you can’t be such an optimist. The second somepony sounds the alarm on the food supply, and trust me, it’s going to happen, this place is going to go downhill really fast. That’s why we need to get out before it does.” The room was completely silent. Everypony was looking at one another just waiting for one of them to speak up.

Finally Snowglobe broke the silence. “Why did you pick us? I mean there’s like sixty other ponies here to pick from.”

Willow actually smiled. “Two reasons actually. One, you were the only ponies in the building I knew and felt I could trust.”

“Aw, how sweet.” Moon smiled fakely.

“None of your sass,” Willow snapped at Moon. “And two, because if we are going to get out of here, then we’re going to need ponies who can hold their own.”

Willow wasn’t addressing anypony in particular anymore—she was speaking to all of them as a whole. “From what I have seen so far I’m saying that Sunny and Moon can cope considering they were the first to discover the virus, and neither of them flipped out. I specialize in medicine, so that asset will prove useful if any of you manage to get savaged by something. Dusty is the only one here with any decent weapon training. Am I correct?” Dusty nodded. “Snowglobe is our fixer pony.”

“Gee thanks,” Snowglobe muttered. “I’m the fixer pony.”

Willow ignored her. “And Brick is... Well, he’s Brick.”

As Willow finished Moon seemed to boil beside Sunny. “So let me get this straight.” She spoke slowly, irritation seeping into every syllable. “You put together a group of ponies who would leave with you without even checking to see if it was okay with them first? Or even if they wanted to go?”

Willow banged her hoof on the table. “Would you rather die? And that’s the main reason I called you all in tonight—to see if you wanted to. But I can tell you this... if you stay here, you are going to die. There is no maybe. The food will run out. And you will either be killed by a mob, zombie ponies, or starvation, maybe even all three at once if things get really bad.”

Moon opened her mouth to retaliate but Sunny laid a gentle hoof on her, feeling a twinge uncomfortable. “You know she’s right. Just leave her alone and stop trying to cause problems.” She turned to look at him. “Please,” he added. She glared for a moment before looking down at the table.

“Ah’m with you,” Dusty said. “Things are gonna hit the fan, and ah’d rather be away from it when they do.”

Snowglobe spoke up. “I’ll go. I’ve been working this building on and off since I was a filly. I don’t want my life to end here.”

“I’m in,” Sunny added.

Moon nodded. “I’m in too.”

“Perfect.” Willow clopped her hooves together.

“What about Brick?” Moon asked.

Willow looked at the brown stallion. “He’s Brick. He goes anywhere I go.” She shrugged. “So it’s settled. We leave tonight.”

“Tonight?” Moon gasped

“Uh, ah’d hate to butt in here. But how do you expect to get out?” Dusty asked.

Willow pointed a hoof at him. “I was waiting for somepony to ask that.” She gave a little nod to Snowglobe.

Snowglobe cleared her throat. “Well, as you probably already know, this place used to be an establishment under the control of the Royal Equestrian Army. This building was used for the experimentation of medical…” She threw a glance to Willow, who just shrugged. “…of whatever they did. They did some weird stuff here. And like every building ponies do weird and secret things in, they left themselves an escape route. Well I know where it is. I found it, two years ago.”

Willow took over. “Snowglobe told me about it. It’s down in the basement. Big heavy metal door.”

Snowglobe nodded. “I don’t think it’s ever been opened but it’s still hooked to the electrical grid. That’s the other thing. That door’s electrical. So if we lose power, we lose our only means of escape. But as far as I can tell it all works. All you have to do is throw a switch and it opens... Theoretically.”

Dusty stood up, apparently satisfied. “Okay then, what’s the plan?”

“Is there a plan?” Moon looked accusingly at Willow.

“I was getting to that.” Willow waved a hoof in Moon’s direction. “If we’re going to leave, we need medical supplies, food, and preferably, weapons.”

“Ooooh! I have a shotgun in my room.” Moon looked like a foal about to present their show-and-tell project as she waved her forehoof in the air.

Willow gaped at Moon as if she had just changed colors. “Really?” Moon nodded and Willow snorted with laughter.

“Really!” she defended as Willow dropped her head on the table. “I got it from a pony outside.”

Willow regained herself and gave her head a little shake. “Wow, okay.” She chuckled one last time. “We need to get out of here before daylight. The last thing we need is ponies waking up and seeing what we’re doing.” She pointed a hoof at Snowglobe. “You go with Moon to get that gun and get down to the basement as fast as you can. Sunny and Dusty will head to the second floor and take what they can from the pantry. And me and Brick will stock up on medical supplies.”

“Wait a minute,” Sunny said. This didn’t sound right. “We’re going to steal from the already dwindling food supply?”

Willow sighed, closing her eyes. “Look, it’s going to run out no matter what. The point is, we need food. The only thing we’re doing by taking from the pantry is speeding up the process a little.”

“But if we leave they’re going to die.” Sunny knew this wasn’t right. He wanted to leave, but he couldn’t just leave all these other ponies here to die.

“Fine,” Willow groaned tapping her hoof. “I’ll leave a note explaining the situation and how to work the override for the barriers. I’m sorry, Sunny. I feel just as bad about this as you do, but there honestly isn’t any reasonable way to try anything without killing ourselves. Just look at the way the ponies in the square acted. The ones in here are probably going to act the very same way... It’s them or us.”

Sunny thought about it for a moment. He felt bad for even thinking it, but Willow was right. No matter how much he wanted to save those ponies there was no easy or rational way to do so. But Willow’s plan did make sense—tell them how to open the gates so they could at least get out to get eaten rather than die of starvation in here... No, that wasn’t right. There had to be some other way that they could help these ponies. It felt wrong to just abandon them. There was no way they could all come with them to the basement. The bigger the group the easier it was to get into trouble, Sunny knew that just from what he had heard and seen. Theoretically, he knew a lot of things. He had never really experienced many of his thoughts and ideas. But they were there; maybe a few were open for experimentation later on. But no, taking them was a bad idea. From what he could tell, Willow’s idea was the best... as immoral as it was.

“Come on, Sunny.” Dusty gave him a nudge. “Let’s get going.”

Willow stopped them before they could leave. “I want everypony down there in an hour. If you’re not there by then, I can’t leave you behind so I’ll have to go up there and get you. And if that happens then your rump is mine for a week.”

Dusty nodded seriously, but Sunny couldn’t help but to chuckle. “Ouch!” Willow snapped the orange pegasus across the muzzle with her tail. “What was that for?” Sunny rubbed his nose. Ouch. Willow was good at that.

She smiled. “For being you. Now get going.” Dusty and Sunny turned to leave and the two started down the hallway.

“Hey Sunny?” Willow called.

“Yeah?” He trotted back to the mare. Snowglobe and Moon were talking about something that they both must have found interesting on the other side of the room, leaving Willow alone to speak with him.

“Don’t be too late.” She smiled mischievously.

Sunny gawked. “Wait, what?” He glanced over to the other mares who still weren’t paying them any attention. Dusty had continued down the hall without turning to look back.

“Stop standing around.” Willow pushed him forward. “Get going. One hour, Sunny!”

“Right.” Sunny turned and took off after Dusty.His mind was still reeling when he caught up with the light blue pegasus.

“So what’s the plan?” Sunny asked, trotting next to Dusty.

He shrugged. “Well as ah see it—get to food storage, get as much food as we can carry, and get to the basement.”

Sunny chuckled. “Well that sounds like a good plan.”

“What?” Dusty looked at him defensively. “It is a good plan. Just keepin’ it simple.”

Sunny was really starting to miss the elevator as they descended the three flights of stairs to the second level.

“I need some saddlebags or something,” Sunny said as they pushed out onto the second level.

“Don’ worry,” Dusty drawled. “They most likely have a pair where they keep all the food. Gotta move it all somehow.”

Sunny knew by now that the cafeteria was just down this hall. Hardly any light filled the dark passage. Along with the elevator, the hall lights had been turned off as well. Now, only a single fixture shone brightly midway down the hall ahead. Sunny definitely needed to find himself something to carry food in. Dusty would be good—his barding covered most of his flank and hindquarters. Sunny chuckled; there were enough bags on his barding to steal the whole hospital.

“What’s so funny?” Dusty turned to look at him, his eyes shadowed in the darkness.

“Oh, nothing. I was just wondering if you could have anymore carrying space on that barding,” Sunny teased.

Dusty frowned. “Lookin’ at our current situation ah’d say mah bags are pretty handy.”

They had reached the cafeteria. Dusty turned and pushed through the door and Sunny followed right behind.

“We should have asked Willow where they keep the food,” Sunny muttered.

Dusty nodded towards the counter. “Ah’d bet it would be somewhere back there.” He trotted across the room and hopped the serving counter. Sunny followed him. Dusty crossed over to a door and tapped a hoof on it. “Ah reckon this is it.”

Sunny came up next to Dusty; the door had a plaque labeled ‘Food Storage’. He gave it a push but it stayed firmly closed. “Think we should have asked Willow for the key?”

Dusty rolled his eyes. “Move.” He pushed Sunny aside and pushed on the door.

“What are you going to do? Ask it nicely to open?” Sunny scoffed as the light blue Pegasus gazed coolly at the lock.

“Pretty much,” Dusty muttered. He pulled his revolver from its leg holster with a quick snap of his head and fired a single shot into the lock.

Sunny jumped. “Are you crazy?” he scolded quietly. A single hole was blasted clean through the center of the lock. “Everypony in the building must have heard that.”

Dusty reared up and planted his hooves on the door. There was a little crack and the door swung inward. “Worked didn’t it? Not like the lock was high quality.”

Sunny nickered. “Let’s just get that food before somepony decides to come and see what that sound was.” Sunny pushed past Dusty into the dark room and hit the lights. Cans were stacked on shelves all around the walls. Pallets and empty boxes lay on the floor in the center of the room. Willow wasn’t kidding. They really were almost out of food. Most of the pallets and boxes were empty. Really the only things left were the cans and a few bags of wheat and corn.

As Dusty had predicted, there was a set of barding hanging on the wall just inside the door. Sunny pulled it down and slipped into it. He shrugged; it wasn’t that bad, actually pretty comfortable considering he wasn’t used to wearing anything more than the occasional satchel. It even had places where he could slip his wings through. The barding covered his flanks, the black material clashing with his orange coat but blending with his mane.

Dusty, who had been looking around at some of the shelves looked over to him. “Oh how nice,” he teased. “You found some bardin’ that matches your mane.”

“Now that you mention it, it kinda’ does doesn’t it?” Sunny trotted over to the nearest shelf. “It doesn’t have as many pockets as yours, but it’ll do.” He flapped his wings, frowning a little as they rubbed on the reinforced denim and polyester mix—the bags would probably impair flight, not that it really mattered to him.

He took a can in his mouth and dropped it into one of the bags. Dusty started doing the same on his end of the room.

“These ponies are terrible,” Dusty huffed. “Where are the cinnamon apples? All they got here is...” He peered at a can. “Asparagus soup with diced celery. Who in their right mind would willin’ly eat this stuff?” He glared at the cans and scooped some more of them into his barding.

Sunny added a few more, not really paying attention to what they were. “What do you think’s going to happen once we get out there?” he asked.

“Ah wish ah knew.” Dusty continued collecting cans, sweeping them into his bags with his wing. “All ah know is that that pony ah shot off you was ravin’ mad an’ he wasn’t even that far gone yet. From what ah can guess, it’s not gonna be anythin’ pretty.”

Sunny stopped collecting cans and looked over that the light-blue pegasus. “Thanks, Dusty.”

“For what?” He stopped as well and looked over to Sunny. “What are you thankin’ me for?”

“For saving me.” Sunny looked at Dusty, now feeling quite awkward. “If you hadn’t shot that pony off me in the street, I would have died out there.”

Dusty shrugged and swept a few more cans into his bag. “Don’t mention it. If ah see somepony in trouble, ah can’t just sit back and watch it happen. Besides,” he added. “Ah’m the one who should be thankin’ you.”

“What?” Sunny shot Dusty a curious look. What could he possibly have to thank him for?

Dusty chuckled. “Well, if you hadn’t gone and gotten your leg eaten, ah’d have never even spared you a second glance. Remember how you asked me to fly you to the hospital? If you hadn’t of made me take you here I would’a been left out there with the rest of them.” Dusty shrugged and went back to filling his bags. “Ah’d be dead.”

“Wow,” Sunny trailed off staring at a can of applesauce. “Never really thought about it that way.” Dusty didn’t respond, so Sunny swept the applesauce into his bag and moved on to attack the corn. He remembered that flight now. Had he not been in a state of panic and pain, he probably would have squirmed out of the pegasus’ grasp. Damned haphephobia.

“Did you hear that?” Dusty whispered. Sunny looked over to see the pegasus poised perfectly still. Although his head didn’t move, his eyes darted all around the room.

“Hear what?” Sunny asked.

“Listen,” he whispered. Sunny tilted his head to one side, trying to hear whatever it was Dusty was hearing. His ears perked as he picked up the sound. He knew that sound. It was the same sound he had heard in the hallway with Moon earlier.

Sunny crouched low to the ground. “Dusty, it’s in the roof,” he whispered.

Slowly, Dusty’s eyes rolled up until he was looking at the tiled ceiling above him. He shook his light brown mane away from his eyes. “What do you reckon it is?”

Sunny opened his mouth to say something but the roof above them groaned. “What the hay?” Dusty drew his revolver and pointed it at the ceiling. “Thumfins up there,” he murmured around the handle in his mouth. The ceiling sagged and the two ponies backed away.

Sunny yelled as the entire ceiling collapsed, sending plaster and whatever else was up there raining down on them. He watched as Dusty disappeared behind a sheet of raining plaster.

* * *

Moon and Snowglobe trotted down the dark hallway side by side, tossing anxious glances around.

“You would be the last pony I would expect to have a gun,” Snowglobe said from beside Moon. A bright green glow emanated from her horn, lighting their path.

“That’s a cool trick.” Moon nodded towards the gray mare’s horn in an attempt to sway the conversation. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

Snowglobe looked puzzled for a moment before looking up at her horn. “Oh, that. My mother taught it to me when I was just a foal. I was afraid of the dark, so...” A blush hinted her cheeks. “She showed me a way to make it go away—comes in real handy when working with maintenance.”

“I bet,” Moon marveled. “I wish I knew how to do that.” Moon thought back to when she had been in the dark hallway. It would have been nice to know that spell then. She counted off the numbers on the doors as they walked on.

“I could teach it to you some time if you’d like.”

“Really?” Moon asked, smiling.

“Yeah. It’s not that difficult.” A lock of her purple mane fell into her face. Snowglobe tossed her head and flipped it back with the rest.

“Here,” Moon stopped in front of her door. “Give me a minute. The gun’s in here.”

“Kay.” Snowglobe sat down and turned off her horn.

Moon pushed through the door and turned on the light. The shotgun still sat on the dresser where she had left it. She pulled open one of the drawers and levitated out a set of saddlebags. Moon slung them across her back and filled one pocket with the twenty or so shotgun shells. She levitated the gun in front of her, looking it over. She didn’t know much about guns but this one looked like it must have been made for unicorns only. There wasn’t a firing bit on this one like the pistols had, and it was much too long for an earth pony or pegasus to hold in their mouth. There was just a mechanism that she could easily pull with her magic. She pressed a little lever on the side with her magic and the gun split at the middle. Two shells inside popped halfway out. She didn’t know much about guns, but she knew enough. This was a double barrel. She levitated out one of the empty shells and examined it. Twelve gauge, one of the big ones. She pulled out the other shell to see that it hadn’t been fired.

She continued to stare at it. After the unicorn outside the gate had given her the gun she had never unloaded it. It was scary to think that she had been sleeping next to a loaded gun for weeks. She returned the unfired shell and replaced the empty one, then snapped the breech closed and it gave a satisfying metallic click. Moon had no idea why, but she liked that sound.

She turned and headed towards the door, the loaded gun enveloped in her magic. She kind of understood how Snowglobe did her horn-light thingy. The magic from her horn was casting blue light across the walls. Maybe the spell had something to do with just using magic. She shrugged; Snowglobe could tell her later. She flipped off the lights and pushed through the door back into the hall.

“Snowglobe?” Moon couldn’t see the mare anywhere. The only thing she could hear was the creepy banging in the vents she and Sunny had heard earlier. “Snowglobe where are you?” The darkness was starting to get to her again. Something moved in the edge of her vision, and without thinking, she swung the butt of the weapon. There was a ‘thwack’ and the little shape darker than the rest cried out and thudded to the floor.

“Ouch,” moaned the shape on the floor.

“Snowglobe?” Moon asked.

“You hit me in the face,” she groaned.

Moon helped her up. “I’m so sorry. You snuck up on me.”

“Can you hear that sound too?” Snowglobe asked. She wobbled and leaned up against Moon for support.

“You mean in the roof?”

“Yeah,” Snowglobe groaned again. “Jeez, Moon... You hit me really hard.”

“Sorry,” she apologized again, blushing. She hadn’t meant to hit her. Well, technically she had, but that was before she knew that Snowglobe was Snowglobe... Thinking back on it, who else could it have been? “And yes. I do hear those noises. And I think we should get out of here before we find out what they are.”

“Right.” Snowglobe took an unsteady step forward. “Let’s go.” The two started forward, Moon still helping Snowglobe as they walked.

“Think you could get that light going again?” Moon asked.

“Maybe.” Snowglobe closed her eyes and bowed her head. A faint green glow erupted from her horn. It shone for a second then flickered out. She tried again and the light returned. It wasn’t as bright as it had been before. But it stayed. “There we go.” She gasped. “It’s a lot harder when your head’s still spinning cause somepony hit you with a gun.”

“Sorry,” Moon muttered for a third time. The stairwell was just ahead now.

Something banged in the vents above them and both mares squealed.

“There’s something big up there.” Snowglobe shook and pressed up against Moon.

Moon would have found it awkward, had she not been scared as well. She couldn’t see anything beyond Snowglobe’s circle of green light. Moon pulled back the hammers on her shotgun and Snowglobe turned to look at her. Something was going to happen—she could feel it. And it wasn’t just her freaking out in the dark this time. As if her thoughts had called it, a crash sounded somewhere down the hallway ahead.

“What was that?” Snowglobe crouched low to the ground, eyes gazing with fright down the dark hall ahead.

“We need to get to the stairs.” Moon nudged Snowglobe to her hooves and they started slowly forward. They made it a good thirty feet before Moon heard the rapid pounding of hooves ahead of them. She raised the shotgun and Snowglobe crouched down again.

“Keep that light going,” Moon whispered.

A pegasus appeared in the circle of green light and threw itself at Snowglobe with a screech. Snowglobe shrieked as the pegasus neared her. Not even sure if she was doing it right, Moon fired both barrels and the pony reversed direction in midair. It flew backwards and bounced off the wall, leaving crimson streaks in its wake. The recoil of the gun knocked it out of Moon’s grasp and it clattered to the floor.

Snowglobe stared wide-eyed at the still shape on the floor. “I-is it dead?” she squeaked.

Moon levitated the shotgun up from the ground. “I think so. I’m pretty sure I fired both barrels into it... I didn’t even know you could fire both barrels at once.” The gun felt like it had kicked her in the brain. “Now my head hurts,” she added.

Snowglobe scoffed. “Oh you poor thing. It must feel like somepony hit you with a gun.” The shape on the floor twitched and Snowglobe shrieked, pedaling backwards until she fell against Moon.

The bloodied shape rose to its hooves—well, three of its hooves. The maimed shape lumbered towards them, then fell on its face. What were these things? Moon cracked open the shotgun and replaced the old shells with new ones. The mangled pegasus rose to its hooves again and Moon raised the shotgun. She fired, being careful to only pull one trigger this time.

It didn’t get back up.

“We need to get going.” Moon pushed Snowglobe away; the gray mare seemed to be trying to hide underneath her. “I bet you everypony in the building heard that.” The two headed forwards again, stepping around the dead zombie pony on the floor. A moment later they reached the stairwell.

“How did they get in here?” Moon gasped as they descended the stairs. She was shaking. It was hard enough to help Snowglobe down the stairs without tripping and falling over her own clumsy hooves.

“It sounds like they’re in the vents,” Snowglobe replied.

Moon stumbled but Snowglobe held out a hoof and caught her. “Thanks,” Moon started down the stairs again, this time with more care.

Snowglobe nodded, then frowned. “There’s definitely more than one of them. I’ve been hearing those sounds all over the building today.”

The stairs stopped at level one. Moon looked around for a door, or something that would take them down further. “How do we get to the basement?”

“This stairwell doesn’t go to the basement.” Snowglobe trotted over to the door and pushed it open. “Basement access is across the lobby.”

“Is there anything out there?” Moon asked.

Snowglobe stuck her head out the door and looked around. “Nope. Nothing that I can see.” Moon trotted up to look out beside her. Snowglobe didn’t exactly clarify; nothing that you could see seemed pretty broad. She couldn’t see anything at all.

Cautiously they both left the stairwell and proceeded to cross the lobby. “Just have that gun ready,” Snowglobe murmured as they walked slowly through the darkness.

Moon looked at her. “You think they’re down here too?” Moon glanced around nervously. She could see some light now. Two white roof lamps shone over the check in desk, casting bright white light down on the floor around it.

“I don’t know.” Snowglobe didn’t sound too confident about anything. “The ventilation runs everywhere throughout this building. If they’re on the levels above us all it would take is for one of them to find a vertical shaft and they’d end up down here.”

“Oh, that’s nice.” Moon chuckled. She looked up at the ceiling to make sure there weren’t any zombie ponies jumping out at her. How were these things even getting in here? Willow had said that this building was built by the REA—it wasn’t like somepony had just opened a window for a nice breeze and accidentally let them in. And why the ventilation?

“Hey Snowglobe?” she asked.

“Yeah?” she responded.

Now that Moon thought about it, Snowglobe looked really creepy doing her horn-light thing. It cast shadows over her eyes while the rest of her face was illuminated in the light so that it looked green. “Do you have any idea how they could have gotten in?”

Snowglobe frowned. “I have a hunch. The intakes for the ventilation are on the roof. That pony we saw was a pegasus.” Snowglobe tilted her head to the side. “Do you think zombie pegasi can fly?”

Moon thought for a moment. “I think so. Willow told me that the virus kills a unicorn’s magic. But I don’t see why a pegasus wouldn’t be able to fly after they... turned.”

Snowglobe nodded as Moon spoke. “That makes sense. But here’s what I think—I think this building was made to keep things in, not out. We’re doing it backwards. So I’m guessing they’re getting in somewhere on the roof.” Snowglobe stopped. “Sweet Celestia... look at them.” They were near the check in desk now, under one of the two roof lights.

Moon followed Snowglobe’s gaze to the barrier at the entrance. “Well they definitely know we’re here,” she muttered.

Dozens of them were milling around outside the barrier. Some of them were unmoving and quiet, but others were staggering around letting out guttural grunts and other noises that may have once been words. One of the more active ones spotted the two ponies inside and threw itself against the metal grate. The rest copied the first one and piled up against the barrier as well.

Snowglobe stepped closer to the gate and cringed. “What could do this to a pony?”

“Snowglobe, I wouldn’t get too close if I were you,” Moon warned.

The mare ignored her; she moved closer still until she was less than a foot away. “I wonder what they’re thinking.” A pink mare snarled and snapped at her through the metal grating. She shoved her muzzle through the gate until blood blossomed from where the metal dug into her skin.

“What the hay do you think you’re doing!?” a voice called. Moon jumped and Snowglobe backpedaled away from the gate and fell on her rump. Moon looked back. It was the lime-green wagon pony. She hadn’t noticed him when they approached; she had been too busy looking at the ponies outside. He sat in the back of his crashed wagon with a yellow mare.

“What are you doing here?” Moon gasped, still frightened from the sudden shock.

“What does it look like?” the green pony scoffed. “Making sure nopony steals my things.”

Snowglobe cocked her head. “You could be sleeping in a bed... What do you have in that wagon that’s so important?”

The two earth ponies in the wagon exchanged a glance, then mare spoke up. “Look, I don’t know who you two are, okay, but I know what’s going on. Things are about to hit the fan. Just look at the signs, they’re clear as day. The power saving, the food rationing. We’re almost out of resources and you know it.” She looked at Moon and Snowglobe who gazed steadily back. “I knew from the moment I saw that white mare have a breakdown in the square we had to leave. She was just like the ones from Canterlot. That’s exactly what happened to them before they ended up like the ones out there.” She pointed a hoof towards the barrier. “After what happened in Canterlot, it was obvious that civilization is dangerous.” She glared at the green pony next to her. “But somepony thought it would be a good idea to stop and try to warn ponies in the town ahead.” She scoffed. “Now look at the shape we’re in. We’re trapped in a dying hospital with at least a thousand of those things milling around outside. Well I’ll tell you this, we aren’t going to starve like the rest of them. We were lucky enough to make it out of Canterlot alive and we aren’t about to die here.”

Moon glared. “You have food! Don’t you?”

The yellow mare drew a pistol and pointed it at Moon, who in turn raised the shotgun. “Ish you tell anyfony bout…”

The green pony held out a hoof and took over. “Oh, you’re a smart one. We should kill you now. If this gets out we’ll be swarmed.”

Moon glared. “You know it’s wrong!”

“I don’t care!” he shouted, voice echoing around the lobby. “Right now, all that matters to me is my wife, and our survival. And if that means fifty or so ponies dying now rather than later so be it! Now back off. And don’t you dare tell anypony!”

Snowglobe cut in. “Moon, we’re doing the very same thing. Maybe we should just—”

“No,” Moon cut her off. She never took her eyes off the green stallion. “I have a gun; your mare has a gun. If she shoots, only two ponies out of the four here are walking away.”

“Moon, we really need to get to the basement.” Snowglobe was glancing nervously around the lobby.

“Now hold on a minute.” The glared at Snowglobe. “What are you two going to the basement for?”

“None of your concern!” Moon spat.

Snowglobe opened her mouth to say something but the green pony cut her off. “If you two are going to do something that’s going to screw us over then I want to know about it.”

“Oh yeah?” Moon shook with sustained anger. The shotgun was feeling very light right about now, and the trigger seemed tempting.

“Moon!” Snowglobe insisted.

Moon ignored her, too angry at the green stallion to take her eyes away. “And you don’t think ponies would like to know about you little stash?”

He jumped down from the wagon and shoved his face in hers. “Don’t you dare.”

“Everypony shut up!” Snowglobe bellowed.

All of them fell silent and looked at the flustered Snowglobe.

She looked up at the ceiling, trembling. “Listen.”

* * *

“How much do you think you’ll be able to carry?” Willow asked.

Brick shrugged.

The two walked down the third floor hall towards medical storage.

“I’ll assume that means a lot,” she chided.

They reached the door marked medical storage and Willow tried to levitate the keys from her barding. She groaned; she had forgotten that her magic was still dead. At least the effects of that drug she had taken had worn off. She felt mostly normal again, and she was no longer falling over every ten seconds. What kind of a virus could do that to unicorn magic? Unicorn magic was one of the most powerful forces in Equestria, and the virus just snuffed it out like a candle. Once she had seen a mare who had actually managed to break her horn. The poor mare had been in terrible shape. It was as if something had died inside her.

Willow thought back on it. When the mare arrived she hadn’t known what to do. She had ended up calling in a specialist form Canterlot, who had miraculously regrown her horn. The medicine and spells he had used were still a secret to her. But even after the mare had her horn back, it was months before she could even coax a spark from it. Willow still knew her to this day... well, had known her; they had used to have lunch on the weekends.

She was probably dead now, or worse.

Willow reached back and grabbed her keys in her mouth. This was terrible. She was no more than an earth pony with a bone sticking out of her head. She sorted through the ring until she found a big key with a green handle. She struggled to fit it into the lock. Honestly, she didn’t understand how earth and pegasus ponies could do everything with just their hooves and mouths and the small amount of magic they possessed internally, conjurable through their hooves.

The key fit and she pushed open the door. This was one of the few rooms that always stayed lit. Shelves lined the walls, stacked with every kind of medicine imaginable, plenty of bandages and disinfectants as well, also healing potions and a lot of other magical remedies.

Willow found that she preferred the medicine over magic, but both worked about the same. Only magic did most of the work for you. But where was the skill in just making a pony drink a purple potion and have everything be all better? Sometimes a pony would request one or the other, and in very few rare cases only one or the other would work... or they’d be poor and have to go with traditional healing. Magical remedies were more expensive than they were efficient.

In the corner of the room sat two metal crates, rectangular with rounded edges. Both crates were about the length of her middle and if she stood next to one of them it would come about halfway up to her knees. Those were definitely coming with them. That drug had worked on her. She silently thanked the ponies who had accidentally shipped those crates to this hospital, instead of wherever they were supposed to be going, and then thanked Mitsy for forgetting to file the paperwork to send them back. If it hadn’t of been for that little screw up, she would either be dead or like the rest of those things out there.

She walked over to one of the crates and fumbled with the latches. After a moment of irritation she managed to undo them and nosed open the lid. Fifteen vials of electric blue liquid sat in a neat row. Black foam surrounded the fragile glass capsules, protecting them from damage. Each had a small label: ‘100ml’.

She reached back and pulled a vile form her saddlebag, the one she had used in the square. She carefully laid it down in its foam slot at the end of the row, making the total count of vials in the case sixteen. This was it. Thirty two hundred milliliters of this unknown medicine, minus the twenty she had used.

She closed the lid. “Hey Brick,” she called. The brown pony turned to face her. “Find a way to carry these.”

She closed the lid on the case and trotted to the center of the room. “Let’s see, what do we need?” Willow murmured to herself as she looked over rows upon rows of supplies. Making up her mind, trotted about the room, stocking her bags while Brick tried to figure out a way to carry the two cases.

“Oh yes, penicillin. We definitely need that.” She carefully added a case of the liquid to her bag. “Let’s see, what do I have so far? Peroxide, bandages, spellbound bandages, healing potions, painkillers. What else?” Willow headed over to another shelf. “Artificial adrenaline, antibiotics for what they’re worth.” She looked at her bags. There was still some space left. She reached another shelf and added some surgical tools and a box of hypodermic needles. She pushed aside a box of needles; at the back of the shelf were some old bits and pieces of stitching equipment.

Willow chuckled; she didn’t even think she had been alive when ponies actually used stitches; now, if a pony had the bits, stitches were completely obsolete. Healing potions and spells worked just fine for cuts and gashes. No, she wouldn’t need to be giving anypony stitches. Healing potions would be plenty. Some unicorns could even perform healing spells. She had tried to learn some of them, but hadn’t ever been any good, and they always tired her out really fast. Willow sighed; if her magic didn’t ever return, there wouldn’t be any need to know them anyways. It had been almost a month now and she could barely coax a spark from her horn. The last time it had worked at all was back when Sugar Apple had been chasing her.

“Earth pony with a bone growing out of her head,” she muttered glumly, then turned to look at Brick. “How are you doing over there?”

He had rigged up a kind of sling so that the metal cases hung on either side of him, his normal saddlebags slung atop those.

“Oooooh, Very creative,” Willow complimented. Brick just shrugged and collected a few things from the shelf in front of him. “I think that’s everything. Feel free to point out anything I missed.” Willow looked expectantly at Brick. He looked around the room and shook his head. Willow nodded. “All right then.” She had never really thought about it before, but medical supplies were kind of heavy. Well, four saddlebags full of them would probably have to weigh something.

Willow didn’t bother to lock the door as they left. It wasn’t as if they would be coming back.

The two set off down the hallway in the low light. She looked up at the ceiling; if they hadn’t of fried the emergency system they would at least have the orange safety lights. The hallway was starting to creep her out—every hallway in this building was, and considering this building was basically just rooms and hallways…

Willow froze; she could hear something. More or less it sounded like somepony banging on a sheet of metal. “Do you hear that?” she whispered to Brick. The brown earth pony nodded.

“What do you think it is?” Brick just shrugged and Willow shot him a glare. The two started forward again, Willow keeping her ears perked for a repeat of the noise.

They went on for what seemed like hours, which was little more than a minute in reality. “Look,” she said suddenly, agonized with the silence. “I know you can talk. I’ve heard you do it before. Now why don’t you just stop with all the body motions and at least talk to me.” Brick just shook his head. Willow sighed.

He used to talk. One would think that after knowing a pony your whole life he could at least talk to her. She couldn’t even remember his voice. The last time she had heard him speak, they were just foals.

Willow smiled, cruel and self-proclaimed witty idea popping into her head. She walked closer to Brick and nudged him. “You know,” she lulled. “I really do like you.” Brick cocked his head and shot her a curious look before shaking his head. “I’d never know how you’re feeling if you don’t speak to me about it...” Nothing.

Willow wanted to scream. What could she do to get him to talk? “Nah, you don’t talk enough,” she added, trying to get a response. Nothing. “Damn it Brick! Just say something!” Brick replied by shaking his head for a third time.

“Are you smiling?” He was laughing at her in his own silent way. She could see it in his eyes. “Stop that!” This wasn’t fair. He was teasing her! Willow wanted to kick him.

She sighed and they continued walking in silence.

They were nearing the end of this particular hall now. Up ahead it merged with yet another hallway.

And the sound was back.

Apparently, Brick could hear it too, because he stopped and readied his flashlight. Willow perked her ears. It sounded like two sets of hoofsteps. And from the ruckus they were making she figured that the two ponies must be in a hurry.

A moment later two ponies rounded the corner towards them. Brick flipped on his light, illuminating the two shapes. Willow and Brick dodged to the side as the two ponies skidded by.

Willow took up her best defensive stance as the two ponies whirled around, ready for some sort of conflict.

“Oh thank Celestia, it’s you two,” Sunny gasped.

Willow snorted; both Sunny and Dusty were white as ghosts. “What happened to you two? It looks like you both got in a fight with a sack of flour.”

“It’s a long story.” Dusty waved her comment away. “But we need to get goin’, now!”

* * *

“How did that thing get in here?” Sunny gawked.

Dusty holstered his revolver and looked down at the dead pegasus zombie. “Ah don’t know; but ah reckon this means trouble.”

“You think?” Sunny layered his voice with sarcasm. “That pony just jumped out of the roof and tried to eat me!”

“Ah’m pretty sure ah may have noticed.” Dusty looked up at him. “You know, considerin’ ah shot it an’ all.”

“We need to go.” Sunny checked his bags. They were almost full; maybe a few more cans would fit. “I don’t think that’s the only one.”

“Well what gives you that positive idea?” Dusty muttered.

Sunny collected a few more cans. “Because there’s a whole lot more of them outside, and if one found its way in, I could bet you more will too. Also, when I was on the fourth floor with Moon, we heard banging in the roof.”

“Right,” Dusty started out of the room. “Ah reckon we should be getting to the basement then.” The two left the storage room, Sunny doing his best not to look at the dead pegasus on the floor.

“We’re on the second level, right?” Sunny asked as they rounded a corner.

“‘course we’re on the second floor,” the blue pegasus shot back.

“Just making sure.” Sunny froze—he could hear something. It was coming from the roof, just like it had been when he was with Moon earlier. “Do you hear that?”

“Yes ah do.” Dusty sighed. He pointed somewhere ahead of them. “See that vent over there?”

Sunny nodded. It was hard to spot in the dull light but he could still see it: a metal vent cover in the ceiling about ten feet in front of them. “You don’t really think so?” he asked.

Dusty nodded and drew his revolver. “Wath thiff,” he slurred around the bit. The banging above grew louder until it was almost above them. The vent cover ahead of them burst open and clattered to the floor. A white pegasus flopped out of the ceiling to land in a heap; it would have been funny under any other circumstance. Dusty didn’t even hesitate. Before the thing could even get on its hooves the blue pegasus gunned it down.

Sunny cringed. He hated that sound. He had never really heard anything like it before: the sound a bullet made when it hit a pony. He couldn’t even explain it very well. It sounded like somepony dropping an egg on a tile floor, but a lot louder. “Jeez cowpony. Right to business there?”

Dusty holstered his gun. “Ah ain’t no cowpony. Try trainpony.” They set off again, stepping around the shot pony and the growing pool of blood.

“Really?” Sunny asked as they trotted along. He grunted; the bags were starting to feel really heavy. At least they would be going down the stairs with them.

“Yep. Ah may be good with a gun, but ah can do other things too you know.”

Sunny frowned. “Well yeah. I just never thought you would be a trainpony. I kind of just thought of you as that pony who shoots a gun.” Sunny chuckled.

Dusty smirked. “Pony who shoots a gun, huh?”

They had reached the stairwell. Sunny pulled open the door and walked in. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he added quickly.

“Shut up,” snapped Dusty from beside him. Eyes looking at—as far as Sunny could tell—nothing.

Sunny blinked, confusion washing across his face. “Look, I’m s—”

Dusty silenced Sunny with a hoof across his mouth. “Listen,” he whispered.

Sunny did as he was told. He could hear hoofsteps. Check that, a lot of hoofsteps, from below them. “Up the stairs, now!” Sunny jumped, startled by Dusty’s order. The light blue pegasus took and Sunny was left to follow.

“But don’t we need to go down!” Sunny yelled over the pounding of their hooves.

“Not unless you wanna’ get dead!” he yelled back.

“What if they aren’t zombies!?” Sunny gasped, turning onto the next flight.

“Then they aren’t going to take too kindly to us takin’ all their food!” came Dusty’s reply.

Sunny barely caught sight of Dusty’s tail as he rounded the the stairwell. The blue pony was nearly a flight ahead of him. Sunny groaned as he passed the marker for the third floor. “Dusty, for the love of Celestia, stop going up!” As he took to the next flight, his hooves slipped and he nearly tumbled backwards. Breathing heavily, his heart beating in his head, Sunny reached the top of the next flight.

“Hurry up damn it!” Dusty called; he was holding open the door to the fourth floor. Sunny raced through and Dusty slammed it shut behind him.

“Never again,” Sunny panted, collapsing onto his side. The door shook as something on the other side hammered against it and he shied away from it.

Dusty flopped down beside him. “To answer your question, yes, zombie ponies. But if you still aren’t sure you can always open that door and ask them if you really want to.”

“How do you know they don’t just really...” Sunny cringed as there was a meaty thud on the other side of the door. “...really want to get out?”

Dusty sat up. “Cause, ah’m pretty sure a normal pony would know how to open a door. It’s not like it’s locked or anything.”

“Right,” Sunny pushed himself up as well, looking at the ceiling, breathing heavily. “That makes sense.” Looking up at the ceiling with a hole in it... There was a hole in the ceiling. “Horseapples! They’re in here too.”

“Huh?” The blue pegasus looked around. Sunny pointed a hoof up towards the ceiling and his eyes followed. Dusty groaned. “We really need to get to the basement.”

“Says the pony who took us up!” Sunny forced himself up to all four hooves. “We should get going before that door stops being a door.” He shied away from it as it shook again. The two set off again. This time a little more winded than before. Dusty strafed a dead pegasus zombie fallen on the right of the hallway.

“Looks like we aren’t the only ones who’ve met our new guests,” he murmured, rubbing against the left wall to avoid the dead pony.

Sunny spared a glance at it and immediately wished he hadn’t. Somepony had really done a number on it. He cringed. where was its other leg? How could somepony do this, even if it was a zombie? It looked like they had shot it three times.

Sunny gagged; it smelt terrible. He turned away to look for Dusty, who had continued on without stopping. Sunny ran to catch up to him. “So, exactly—” He looked over in time to see Dusty’s head drop from view.

Sunny froze, turning to the spot where the pegasus had disappeared. “Dusty...” No, he hadn’t just disappeared; He’d fallen through the floor.

The tile below Sunny’s hooves lurched and he let out a cry as the floor gave way beneath him. He flapped his wings and fought for traction on the tile, but his efforts came a second too late as he plunged rump-first through the hole in the floor.

Despite the fact that he was falling, Sunny found it easy to think. Why would a floor collapse, especially in a hospital? Generally, hospitals were supposed to be safe places, and a structurally unsound building wasn’t exactly his textbook definition of ‘safe’. To be fair though, there were a bunch of zombie ponies crawling through the vents and falling out of the roof. Maybe that had something to do with it.

The landing didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would have.

“Get off me,” a voice growled. Sunny looked down to see the light blue pegasus pinned below him, his head twisted around to glare at him.

“Oh sorry.” Sunny rolled off the pegasus. “I was wondering why my landing didn’t hurt as bad as I thought it would.”

Dusty scoffed and pushed himself up to a sitting position. “Well thank your cushion.”

“Thank you, cushion,” Sunny answered cheekily. He didn’t understand why he felt so happy right now. Now was not a time to feel happy. They were shooting zombie ponies and falling through ceilings. Why was he so happy? Sunny reached out a hoof to pat Dusty. “Maybe you’re going a little soft. Can’t always be a hardened gun pony.”

Dusty glared. “You say one more word and ah’ll buck you so hard that your grandkids’ll grow broken teeth.”

“Understood,” he quickly replied, looking around. “Now where do we go?” Neither of them had died in the fall so he guessed they hadn’t fallen more than a single floor. He looked up at the roof which seemed to be sagging all around them, not just the part they had fallen through, but all of it. A part of the ceiling gave way, raining more white powder and plaster down on them. Sunny dodged out of the way as a whole section of ventilation fell from the roof and landed where he had been standing a moment before. He gaped; this whole floor was falling apart.

Dusty looked at Sunny and then to the vent that now lay in between them. “Whoa.” He shook his head and looked up at the ceiling, now looking quite irritated. “Why don’t you just drop this whole Celestia forsaken place on us!?”

A crash resounded somewhere upstairs and Sunny shied away from the hole in the ceiling. “Dusty, please don’t do that. It might actually happen.” Dusty just scoffed and shook some rubble from his mane. “You look like a ghost,” Sunny teased. The normally-blue pegasus was all white.

The now-white pony glared at him. “You don’t look any better.” He frowned. “And ah think it’s just about time ah started makin’ your grandkids bleed.”

“Let’s just focus on getting to the basement before you make my grandchildren bleed. Okay?” Sunny groaned. Falling through a ceiling and then having part of it dropped on you kind of hurt.

“Fine, it can wait.” Dusty stepped away from the pile of rubble. “Let’s git’ then.” Sunny followed Dusty, who was now running... again.

“Do we have to run?” he panted. “I thought we just finished running.”

“Yes, ah don’t think the door’s gonna last forever.”

They rounded the corner side by side. Sunny gasped as a beam of bright white light blinded him and covered his eyes with a forehoof. Both he and Dusty slid to a stop, bumping unsteadily against one another.

“The hay?” Dusty muttered, glancing to Sunny. They had run past the source of light and it was now shining behind them. They exchanged a look and as one they turned, Dusty readying to draw his revolver. But sunny held out his hoof. “Oh, thank Celestia it’s you.”

Willow snorted. “What happened to you two? It looks like you both got in a fight with a sack of flour.” Both Willow and Brick looked like they had grabbed their fair share of goods too. Willow’s saddlebags looked like they were overflowing. And brick had two metal cases strapped to his flanks like some sort of impromptu armor.

Dusty glared. Sunny figured he wouldn’t be the only one to get a good bucking tonight. “It’s a long story, but we need to get goin,’ now!” Dusty pushed

He made to set off but Willow didn’t move. “Why, what happened?”

“They got in,” Sunny replied, still trying to catch his breath. “I don’t know how, but they got in.” He was tired; he may have been a little out of shape, but he could still handle himself fairly well. But running up two flights of stairs loaded down with canned food would have done a number on anypony.

“I see you got food,” Willow mused.

“We did,” Dusty replied. “We also sprinted up two flights of stairs with it.” He chuckled. “Cans are kinda’ heavy.”

“Why the hay were you going up?” she questioned.

Sunny was starting to feel better now. His breathing had slowed and he wasn’t quite as tired. “They were in the stairwell,” he added. “A lot of them, below us.”

Willow stomped her hoof. “Who is they?” From the look on her face Sunny assumed she had a pretty good idea.

Dusty shook his mane and white dust rained down around him. “Zombie ponies, what else would we be makin’ a big deal about gettin’ in? Mice?”

Willow’s pupils seemed to dialate. “Are you sure?”

Dusty scoffed. “Pretty sure a normal pony wouldn’t jump outta’ the roof an’ try to eat me.”

Willow looked around at the three ponies in the hall. She folded her ears, then sighed. “It appears we have a few problems then—” She winced as something crashed on the floor above.

Dusty groaned. “An’ that would be the door not bein’ a door anymore.” He looked over at Sunny. “As you put it.”

“What door?” Willow looked around frantically.

“Well those zombie ponies chased us up the stairwell—isn’t that right Sunny?” Dusty looked over to Sunny who nodded. “And we locked em’ in there... well, we had em’ locked in there.”

“What!?” Willow looked like she wanted to pound them into the ground. “You two locked a bunch of zombies in the stairwell? The only way to get down to the basement without power?”

Sunny cut across the blue pegasus before he could reply. “Look, I know it’s nice to sit here and yell at each other, but we really need to get going before those things find the hole we made.”

Dusty nodded. “Right, let’s get to the stairwell then.” He and Sunny started forward, closely followed by Willow and Brick.

“Wait,” Willow trotted up alongside Dusty. “Didn’t you just say you locked a bunch of them in the stairwell?”

“Well yeah. But judging from that sound we just heard upstairs, ah don’t think they’re in the stairwell anymore.”

Willow shot both of them a curious glance. “You said you two ran up two flights of stairs? From the second level?” Both stallions nodded. “If you locked them in the stairwell after going up two flights of stairs you would be on the fourth floor...” She glanced between the two of them, narrowing her brows. “How the hay does that work? We’re on the third.”

Dusty nickered. “We took a one-way elevator.”

“What!?” Willow yelled, stomping her forehoof. “There isn’t any power. How did you take the elevator?”

“We fell through the floor.” Sunny said bluntly. Willow didn’t seem all too sated by the answer.

“This place may be old,” she muttered to herself as they trotted on. “But that doesn’t mean whole floors should just start collapsing.”

“Tell me about it,” Dusty muttered.

The stairs were just ahead now, the door glinting in the reflection of Brick’s flashlight. Sunny could hear noise all around the building now. Crashes and rapid hoofsteps sounded on the floor above.

There was a scream from behind them, much louder than the rest of the sounds. Brick jumped around and beamed his light down the hall behind him. A purple unicorn was being dragged down the hall by her tail. A zombie pegasus pulled her backwards, shaking his head and jerking the mare around as he pulled her away like a dog playing tug of war.

Willow went slack-jawed. “What in the name of—”

Dusty drew his revolver and fired. He missed on the first shot but the second stuck its mark and the crazed pony dropped.

The mare immediately curled herself up, muttering and whimpering under her breath. “Come on!” Sunny yelled, at least getting her to look up.

She blinked, glanced around, took one look at Dusty’s gun, then picked herself up and galloped towards them as if another zombie was right on her tail. “What was that thing?” she whimpered, eyes endlessly scanning the dark halls.

Dusty spat his revolver back into its holster. “What we’ve been hiding from.”

“Let’s go,” Willow insisted. She nudged Sunny, a little more firmly than he would have preferred. “Stairs, now!”

Dusty reached the door first and held it open for the rest of them, he and the mare entering last.

“What was that?” The purple mare whimpered once they were little more than a few steps in, looking all around the stairwell. Sunny listened; he couldn’t hear anything. Dusty had been right, they weren’t in here anymore.

“Quiet.” The blue-white pegasus slapped a wing over the mare’s mouth. “We need to be quiet.”

They set off down the stairs, Dusty once again taking the lead. But they had only made it halfway down the first flight before the purple mare, who had been traveling at the back, froze in place. “I heard it again” she whispered.

“Heard what?” Sunny stopped to listen, as did the others. “I don’t hear anything.”

“It’s in the wall,” she whispered, pressing her ear up against the wall next to her. “It’s like a banging... inside the wall.”

Seemingly without warning, the wall burst open and the mare screamed as a blue pegasus more or less fell on her. Before Sunny could even react it sprung, snarling. The mare screamed again as it forced her backwards into the railing. She leaned back trying to avoid its snapping jaws and both her and the zombie pony toppled backwards over the railing.

“What the—” he stammered. He cringed at the sound of the two reaching the bottom, their bones nothing more than twigs against the concrete below. “They’re in the walls too!?” He looked around at the others, all on different levels of the stairs. They looked just as shocked as he did. Even Brick’s normal, vacant expression seemed to show some sort of repulse.

“C-come on,” Willow stammered. They all started down the stairwell, this time much more slowly.

Sunny made sure to listen for more sounds in the walls. He dreaded reaching the bottom for he knew what would be down there. It was hard to understand what had just happened. One second she had been there, alive. Then next, just... gone, not alive. The only evidence that it had actually happened was a hole in the wall.

Willow stumbled and Brick held out a hoof to steady her. “Thanks,” she gasped. “Still a bit tipsy from that drug, I guess.”

Even though Sunny had known what would lie at the bottom of the stairs, he still wasn’t prepared to see it. The purple mare lay dead, her neck twisted at an awkward angle. The zombie pony next to her was no better off. Dusty muttered something under his breath as Willow slowly shook her head.

“I’m Worried about Moon and Snowglobe,” Sunny muttered, addressing nopony in particular, trying to draw his attention from the two on the floor. “Do you think they made it?”

Willow shook her head. “I don’t know. They didn’t have anything to do so it’s most likely they were ahead of us.

“Right,” Sunny muttered, trying to put thoughts of what could have happened to them out of his mind. “So why do the stairs stop here? How do we get to the basement?”

The white mare frowned. “I was getting to that. The staircase to the basement is on the other side of the lobby.”

“Oh well that’s great,” Dusty scoffed. “So what are our chances of it being the same way out there it was above us?”

“I don’t know what it’s going to be like out there.” Willow turned to Brick. “I want you with your light. If I could, I would make you take the gun while I hold the light. Buuuuuuut,” she drawled. “My magic still isn’t working so I’m about as useful as a horn-headed earth pony.” Brick glared at her. “No offense,” she added hastily, turning to Dusty. “How many bullets do you have for that thing anyways?” she asked

“About fifteen or so,” he replied with a shrug.

Willow looked around at the three of them. “So is everypony ready?” They all nodded. “Going out then.” She paced over to the door and pushed it open. Brick filled the space next to her, lighting the way ahead. Willow looked back at them. “Keep your hoofsteps light and keep an eye out for... whatever happens.”

Slowly, she stepped out into the lobby. Sunny and Dusty both followed. The lobby was completely dark except for the light from Brick’s flashlight and two roof lights that shone over the check-in desk.

Sunny looked up at the holes in the ceiling and the twisted ventilation grates on the floor. “Looks like they’ve already been in here,” he murmured. The others followed his gaze and Sunny heard Willow curse under her breath.

“I still want to know how they got in,” she growled.

“Ah think they’re in the vents,” Dusty added. “Been hearing all these bangin’ sounds all day, plus all of them are pegasi. Haven’t seen a single earth or unicorn zombie yet.”

“That makes sense. But how did they get in?” she huffed. They were nearing the check in desk now. The crippled wagon still sat in front. Five dead pegasi zombies lay around it.

Dusty whistled. “Looks like we aren’t the only ones that have been through here.” They continued forward to find two more bodies behind the wagon, their combined pool of blood only just beginning to clot.

Slowly, they approached the wagon from the side. Willow held out a hoof. “Listen.” Sunny was really tired of hearing ponies say that. Every time somepony said ‘listen’ something bad always happened. “There’s something back there,” she whispered. Sunny froze and the others did the same. If Willow hadn’t of pointed it out, he never would have noticed. He could definitely hear something; he couldn’t pinpoint what it was. But it was definitely coming from the back of the wagon.

“Ah got this,” Dusty whispered. Nopony moved as he drew his revolver and slowly approached the wagon, making sure to keep well away from it. He circled around until he could look into the back, taking a few cautious steps towards it.

“Careful, Dusty,” Willow whispered. The pegasus shot her an annoyed look, and at that moment all the lights in the lobby flicked on at once.

Blinding light washed over them as the room was brought into proportion. Dusty yelled as a gray shape flew at him from inside the wagon. His gun fell from his mouth as it drilled him in the chest. The crazed pony grappled with him, but Dusty rolled onto his back, and with all four legs kicked the biting pony away from him.

“Who turned on the lights!?” he gasped, trying to roll to his hooves. He made it about halfway up before he flopped back down on his back. “Damn cans,” he groaned. The gray zombie picked itself up off the ground with shocking speed. But instead of going for Dusty, it flung itself directly at Sunny.

At this distance, it was impossible to miss its features. Its eyes were deep red and blood covered its muzzle, running all the way down its chest like an untended nosebleed.

“Sunny look out!” Willow screamed.

With a yelp, he dodged to one side and the creature shot just to his right. It snapped at his flank and missed only by inches. Sunny shuddered; the sound its jaws made was terrifying. He imagined how hard a pony would have to bite to get their teeth to make a sound that loud. The pony who had bit him hadn’t really even turned yet. The bite he’d been given was probably only a nibble compared to what this one could do.

The zombie pony immediately spun around and made another lunge for him from behind. Sunny was forced to drop onto his belly to avoid being caught in its menacing jaws. A few feet away, Dusty scrambled across the tile floor, reaching for his pistol. The pegasus didn’t seem to be able to pick himself up off the ground in the position he was in. He must have been carrying more than Sunny had thought... Maybe that’s why he’d fallen through the floor.

Sunny felt a weight land on his back and he tried to pull forward. But he couldn’t, the creature’s grasp was like iron. By now, Dusty had reached his pistol. Lying on his side, head slightly lifted, he aimed down the sights with both eyes open.

So many things were happening that Sunny was finding it hard to process it all, his brain seeming to move in slow motion. Brick had his pistol ready and was training it on the pony on his back. Willow stood wide-eyed watching the whole scene unfold. Dusty aimed the barrel right at Sunny and fired. Sunny screamed and writhed, pain blossoming all through his body as he pulled free of the weight on his back. He jumped around to face it, prepared to ready himself for what it did next.

...It was dead, a clean hole through the left side of its chest. Sunny looked around at the rest of them. Brick shrugged and dropped his pistol back into his bag. Willow stood still as a statue.

“Sweet Celestia!” Sunny gasped; he turned to look at Dusty who had managed to get himself back to his hooves. “You’re crazy.” He realized just how close he had come to getting another, much more painful bite. The phantom pains in his body had faded now that the realization that the bullet hadn’t actually hit him was flowing through his mind.“...Thanks.”

Dusty chuckled. “Ah was a little skeptical bout’ that shot.”

“Why do you say that?” Willow asked. “That was a perfect shot.”

Sunny trotted over to the cart, trying not to think about just how far off Dusty’s shot bad been. “Dusty... thanks and all for that, but for the love of Celestia don’t you ever do that again.” He jumped at a rattling sound behind him and turned to see dozens of zombie ponies throwing themselves against the barrier.

“Don’t worry,” Willow reassured. “They can’t get in ... at least not this way.” She grimmaced at the snarling, mucus-crusted, bloody faces pressing up against the steel grate.

Sunny climbed up into the back of the wagon and looked around. He really didn’t know what he was looking for, more or less just exploring. Two more dead zombie ponies were back here. And at the back of the wagon, propped up against a crate was a green stallion. Well, mostly green. Sunny tried not to gag. It looked like he'd made a pretty good snack. Worst part about it was that Sunny knew this pony; it was the pony who owned the wagon; the one who had confronted them in the square. He had never even found out the green pony's name. Beside him sat a gun, its slide open.

He picked it up and turned to the others. “Look, I foumd a ghum.”

Willow cocked her head. “Know how to use it?” she asked.

“Short’ of.”

Dusty nickered. “Just don’ try an’ make any fancy shots near me with it.”

Sunny reached back and dropped the gun in a side pocket in his barding. “Don’t worry,” he reassured. “Doesn’t have any bullets. Besides, it’s you I should be worried about.” He gestured to the green pony in the back of the wagon. “He must have made a last stand here or something. I found the gun next to him." He tried not to think about the stallion. He couldn’t imagine thinking of any more ponies he had known being dead. He'd never really had anypony he knew... well, die; he still didn't know how process it. There was a churning in his belly that made him want to curl up on a soft, warm bed and groan until it went away, which he assumed was his own way of handling it.

Notebook...

Dusty looked sadly at the defeated pony. “He made one good stand, that’s for sure.”

Sunny jumped down from the wagon and they all set off again. Leaving the gruesome scene behind and passing the check-in desk, they continued on towards the basement access.

Sunny had no idea how, or why, he was coping so well. He had never really considered himself to be strong-minded. Ponies were eating each other, and instead of freaking out like most ponies were, he almost felt calm. But none of this felt right at all. From what he knew, Equestria was in shambles, or at least, part of it was. He didn’t even know if he could kill one of those… things. It wasn’t right... they still looked like ponies. For the love of Celestia, they still had cutie marks! They'd used to be ponies, just like him... normal ponies just like him, who had been turned into crazy, mindless, biting monsters. Except unlike them, he couldn’t even turn into one. What was so special about him? Why hadn’t he just died out there with the rest of the townsponies? He was nothing special; he was anything but. It was just pure luck that he had found Notebook in the park. If it hadn’t of been for that, he probably would have died out there with the rest of them. Some of the luckier ones may have gotten away, but there were a lot of those things out there, most of the town from the looks of it. Things would have also turned out bad for him if they hadn’t of run into Willow and Brick the very next day.

Yeah, he was basically alive off of luck and more luck.

A chilling thought suddenly struck him. What if all of this had happened because of him? He was the one who had gotten in a fight with Moon over a box of muffins, then chose to go to the park, where he had later found Notebook. What if they had never found Notebook? Would he have just died there? Or gotten up and stumbled away from town? Had having Moon go get the hospital ponies to take the sick pony into the middle of town doomed them all? Maybe, if he had never found Notebook, they wouldn’t even be in this situation at all. Notebook would have never ended up in the well. And all the townsponies would still be alive.

The thought alone made him want to cry. All of this was his fault, maybe not the thing in Canterlot. But everything bad that happened here, all happened because of him.

“Here we are.” Willow pulled open a metal door and they all stepped through into a dark stairwell.

More stairs...

After this, Sunny never wanted to see another flight of stairs again in his life. Brick pulled out his flashlight once again and lit the way. Sunny followed the brown pony down the stairs, the others behind him.

But what made him so special? Why was he immune, and as far as he could tell, nopony else? It wasn’t fair. He wasn’t anything. He had never done anything special, never achieved anything important. He couldn’t even fly. Why did he deserve to be like this when there were so many other ponies that were much more worthy?

The biggest loser in Equestria, and all of a sudden, fate was slapping a big sticker on him that made declared him chemically superior to everypony else... and it just wasn't fair.

They were nearing the bottom of the stairs now. Another door loomed just ahead. Brick put away his light, plunging them all into darkness. A moment later the door ahead swung open bathing the hallway in dull, yellow light. Immediately, a deafening hum filled the air, echoing around the narrow space.

It was a weird feeling. Sunny figured the basement would be dark. But upon entering the basement it appeared quite bright. Yellow lamps hung from the roof, casting their dull, yet still bright light across the dank walls. The deafening hum came from one of two large shapes in the center or the room. He looked around for Moon, but he couldn’t see her or Snowglobe anywhere.

“Where’s the way out!?” he asked over the sound of the giant machine.

Willow raised a hoof and pointed towards a spot on the other end of the room. A shelf had been toppled, spilling cans of paint and cleaning supplies across the floor. A wooden door was located where the shelf must have previously been standing. “That looks like the place!” she called.

“Where’s Moon and Snowglobe!?” he asked, looking around the room to make sure he hadn’t missed them.

Willow looked around as well. Along with Sunny, she also seemed worried. “I don’t know! But I think we should check that door before we get too worried! That shelf wasn’t toppled before, so I’ll bet they’re in there!”

Sunny nodded. Together they crossed the room, passing the noisy machines. Sunny was the first to reach the door, having to step over scattered debris and spilt paint to reach it. He reached out a hoof and pushed on the door; it swung open without resistance. The door opened to a small room. He let out a sigh of relief when he saw both Moon and Snowglobe sitting on a cushion near the far wall.

Moon jumped up and headed over to greet him. “You made it!” she said happily.

“Not only me,” Sunny replied as the rest of the ponies behind him filed in. Willow, who was the last through, shut the door. The sound of the loud machine was immediately extinguished. Sunny was slightly surprised to see that Moon had crimson stains on her coat, as if she had tried to wash out what he assumed was blood, but couldn’t.

Sunny looked around at the room. It must have been some sort of janitor’s lounge or something. Some seats sat against the far wall and fake plants sat in the corners.

Sunny had never really understood why ponies liked fake plants so much. They just smelt like plastic.

He figured the big metal door at one end was the way out. The room had carpet that had seen better days and the walls were a dirty white. His attention was drawn to a yellow earth pony mare in the corner. She was on her belly, her head resting on her hooves. Her eyes gazed sightlessly at a patch of wall. Well, eye, the other eye was obscured by her orange mane.

“Who’s she?” Sunny asked.

The mare lifted her head and looked around as if something had startled her before spotting Sunny. “Oh, I’m Butter Blossom.” She shrugged her shoulders before dropping her head back to her hooves. Her eyes were crusted with dried tears, her nose still running as she gave the occasional sniff to clear it.

“Is something wrong?” Willow asked her, appearing next to him to cast a worried look at the mare. Sunny looked to Moon, who just looked down at her hooves. Snowglobe seemed to be intent on examining the plastic plant.

Butter Blossom sniffed. “Did you go through the lobby?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Dusty added with a little flap of his wings. “There were a whole bunch of dead zombies everywhere. Did you guys do all that?”

The mare buried her face in her hooves and whimpered.

Willow gave Dusty a rough smack over the back of the head. "Would you shut up?" she hissed.

“Hey,” he muttered. “What gives? That hurt...”

The yellow mare picked her head up, now with fresh tears in her eyes. “W-was there a g-green one there?” She looked at them expectantly, fear flashing in her eyes.

Sunny sighed inwardly. He recognized the mare now... This was the mare who had come into town with the green stallion he had found in the lobby. This was his wife.

Slowly, he reached back and pulled the gun from his saddlebag. Nopony said a word as he laid it down in front of the mare. She stared at it for a second, eyes watering. The mare sniffed and closed her eyes, more tears flowing now. Sunny couldn’t watch anymore. He turned away and walked over to Moon who was now Helping Snowglobe watch the plant imposter. He was shaken, but it didn’t seem that he was the only one. Everypony in this room looked shaken. This entire ordeal was terrifying. He had no idea why he hadn’t collapsed crying like a foal yet. What was holding him together? It had to be something.

He approached Moon and forced himself to give her a nudge. “Hey, are you okay?”

Moon nodded. “Yeah, we just had kind of a hard time getting down here. Pretty crazy thought huh? Going down into the basement to get out of the building.

“Yep,” Sunny chuckled. “Down and out.” He joined the two mares with their silent interrogation of the plant.

Moon swept some dust from his coat with a forehoof. “Why do you and Dusty look so… dusty?”

Sunny looked back at his own coat. It was still full of plaster and whatever else had come from the roof. His normal black mane looked gray. “Oh that,” he chuckled halfheartedly. “We fell through the floor.” Moon just nodded. “So why are you covered in blood?”

“There were a lot of them in the lobby.” Moon sighed. “If it wasn’t for that green stallion we may have not made it down here.” Moon leaned up against him, mixing her blood with his dust. “We left him to die,” she added in an undertone.

Sunny took a step away from Moon, leaving her to stand by herself. He thought back to the mare in the stairwell. They had tried to help her. “It’s okay, Moon, I’m just happy that you made it.”

They stood there for a while longer, no longer really focusing on the plant. Somewhere behind him he could hear Willow talking to Blossom in hushed tones. This all seemed so surreal, like it was all a dream. And at any moment he would either wake up in the hospital or in his bed at home.

Sunny left Moon and trotted over to Snowglobe, who was taking her time to recline on the couch. “Were you guys the ones that turned the lights back on?”

She nodded. “That gemmy doesn’t have much time left. And looking at the conditions up there I figured those ponies would need as much light as they can get.”

He was hit by a sudden wave of despair. They had run… They had run and left all the other ponies in this building to die. What made them any better than the things out there. They had run, fled to save themselves and let dozens of ponies die. “Isn’t there any way else we can help them?” he asked her pleadingly. “We can’t just leave them like that. They’re all going to die if we just leave them. They can’t even get out.”

Snowglobe hung her head, looking about as bad as he felt. “I would have done anything else I could have. Full power was the best I could do. I’m sorry Sunny. I want to help too. But there is nothing else we can do for them now. “

Willow appeared beside them. “We’re all lucky to be alive. If I hadn’t of called that meeting when I did we would all still be in bed right now. We are so lucky, there isn’t even a word to describe how much luck we have right now.”

Sunny chuckled dryly. “So we live and they don’t because we’re really lucky. Well that makes me feel special.”

Willow looked around the room wildly. “This is ridiculous. Bizarre!” She staggered over to the cushion and flopped down on her back, forcing Snowglobe to move. “How did I get dragged into this?”

Moon sat down next to Willow, who glared at the blue mare for taking some of the space she had stolen from Snowglobe. “I’m pretty sure you were the one who dragged us into this," Moon jabbed.

Willow looked up at Moon, going cross-eyed. “No, you two insisted on knowing what was going on, then you drug yourselves into my problems.” She waved an exasperated hoof in the air. “Remind me to thank you for dragging yourselves in with me when I wake up.”

“No can do.” Snowglobe chided, she gave Willow a hearty nudge. “In case you’ve forgotten, there are a whole lot of zombie ponies up there, ones that could easily manage to stumble down here. Besides, that door is electric. And I don’t trust that gemmy out there very much. If we lose power and that door is still closed we’re going to be in a heap of trouble.”

Willow rolled up to a sitting position. “Fine,” she groaned.

Blossom stood up and approached them. She looked like she had, more or less, regained herself. “Is that really a way out?” she asked, pointing to the big metal door on the opposite wall.

“We’ll find out in a second.” Snowglobe called, trotting over to the door. With her her magic, she opened a panel on the wall to reveal a switch. The switch was labeled with a big ‘Open’ and ‘Closed’ sticker, with open at the bottom. “Everypony ready?” Snowglobe asked, looking around at the six ponies, all waiting eagerly. Snowglobe almost seemed to bounce with excitement.

Then her eyes flicked to another switch and widened in what Sunny could only describe as disdain. It had a much less pleasant label.

'Primary power transfer: 500 Amp switch.'

Sunny opened his mouth to say something, but found a lack of words. He shared a look with Snowglobe, who could barely meet his eye. With a little shake of her head, she yanked the auxilary power switch and powered up the junction box beside it.

She threw the next switch. There was a clunk from somewhere inside the door, and with a squeak and a groan, the heavy metal door swung open. A dark hallway loomed from the now open doorway. A single light bulb flickered to life just inside the entrance before flashing out.

Moon groaned. “Well that’s convincing.”

Willow chuckled inwardly.

Dusty looked around at all of them. “So, who wants to go down the dark scary hallway first?”

Willow nudged Brick, who reached back and pulled a flashlight from his bag. It wasn’t as large as his normal one, but it still looked big enough to cast a fair light. He tossed to it Dusty who caught it in his mouth. He blinked, frowned, then shot glare at Brick.

“Fhime,” the light blue pegasus groaned. "Smarth ath."

Chapter 4 Heading Out

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“How long is this tunnel?” Sunny muttered, his voice echoing off the dry, concrete walls of the seemingly-endless tunnel. He had no idea how long they had been walking for, but it felt like forever. Leaning a little to one side, he tried to peer between Dusty and Brick, who walked just ahead, the brown stallion shining his light off into the darkness ahead.

“Shoot, I don’t know,” Snowglobe answered from behind him. “Never been down here before.”

The tunnel was roughly the height of a pony, maybe with an inch or two to spare, and barely wide enough for two ponies to walk side by side. Willow had gotten tired of not being able to understand Dusty so she had made Brick hold the light—according to Willow, he didn’t need to talk.

Sunny threw a glance to the side, at Moon, then back at Willow, who was behind him with Snowglobe. “Do you have any idea where this tunnel goes?”

Willow just shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I only found out about this place yesterday.”

Sunny looked past Willow to the yellow earth pony in her wake. Blossom didn’t seem to be coping too well. She walked just far enough behind the group so that she was always submerged in semi-darkness, barely picking her hooves up as she slinked along at the back. Sunny looked to Moon and motioned towards Blossom. She shrugged, but gave him a nod.

He slowed to let Willow and Snowglobe squeeze by him and fell in stride beside the yellow earth pony. She was either pretending he wasn’t there, or was so far out of it that she didn’t realize he was there.

“Are you okay?” he asked, then immediately regretted it. She’d just lost her husband. How in Celestia’s name could she be okay!?

Blossom shook her head. “I should have stayed with him.”

Sunny thought for a moment. “It’s alright,” he finally comforted. No, it really wasn’t.

“No it’s not.” She was crying now, fresh tears running down her cheeks.

Great... He was really bad at this.

Sunny didn’t know a thing about making ponies feel better, but he was going to try nonetheless. He slowed and motioned for Blossom to do the same until they were hanging back in the darkness, away from the rest of the group and hopefully out of earshot.

“I know you’re feeling bad,” he started awkwardly. He really wasn’t any good at this. “But if you want to talk about something, I’d be happy to listen.” He tried his best at a reassuring smile that could barely be made out in the wan light.

Blossom sniffed. “I should have stayed with him,” she repeated. “He died... just to save me.”

“What happened?” Sunny mentally hammered himself with an invisible brick. He wasn’t supposed to make her recite it; the goal was to try and get her mind away from it!

“We were in the lobby,” she sniffed. Sunny couldn’t tell her to stop now that he had just asked her to recite it. “Me and your friends were… talking. Then all of a sudden a whole bunch of those…” she trailed off, staring at her hooves. Sunny sucked up his courage and laid a gentle wing across her back. The motion was enough to get her to lift her head. “Then all of a sudden a bunch of those things just… just started falling out of the roof. There were so many of them, ten, maybe more. One of your friends said something about the basement. We tried to head that way, but... there were just way too many of them. So he…” She stumbled and pressed her head into his flank. “He grabbed the gun. And he ran the other way and… and all those things followed him.” She bit her lip and shook her head, silent tears running down her cheeks.

He was really regretting having asked. All he could do was thank Celestia that the mare wasn’t bawling. “It sounds like he saved all of you.”

Hopefully he could wrap this up relatively soon. His wing was really starting to itch and twitch.

“B-but I should have been with him,” she stammered back.

“Hey listen,” Sunny stalled, trying to think of a way to comfort the mare, or at least try and comfort her. All he had managed to do so far was make her cry, and recite her husband’s death. One heck of a therapist he was. “If he gave his life to save you then he must have expected you to survive. You can’t fall apart now. Not after what he did. "

He gave a relieved sigh as he watched the mare’s shoulders slack.

“I can’t believe he’s gone,” she choked out, her voice hardly more than a whisper.

“Yeah,” Sunny muttered. “It’s got to be rough.”

Blossom looked at him, wiping tears from her eyes with a forehoof. “You haven’t ever lost anypony?”

Sunny shook his head. “No, honestly, I don’t even know how I’m coping. I went through life never having to deal with anything important at all. Never lost anypony, never had to make a hard decision, definitely never shot somepony. Then all of a sudden ponies are eating each other and I’ve been bitten, suffocated, killed, and then brought back to life again. I mean...”

She gasped. “You got bitten?”

He nodded and Blossom took a startled step away from him, shrugging his wing off her back.

“You can’t be with us,” she gawked. “You know what’s going to happen.”

“B-but I’m immune,” he added quickly.

Blossom lowered her gaze with him, folding her ears. “I haven’t ever heard of ponies being immune...”

“Promise! I got bit almost a month ago, and I’m not trying to eat you. And do you see a fresh wound anywhere on me?”

Blossom frowned, giving him a quick once-over with her eyes. After a moment, she seemed content. “It must be nice,” she murmured, looking down at her hooves. “If I knew that I could never turn into one of… them, to know that you couldn’t become that, I’d be happy.”

Sunny shrugged. “It’s not like I’m invincible or something. It still hurts when they bite you… like, a lot,” he added.

She shuddered. “I never want to see another pony get bitten ever again.”

Sunny gave her a curious glance.

“We were in Canterlot when strange things started happening,” she explained. “Everypony was talking about this group of crazy ponies who had rampaged down the streets the day before. Nopony knew what it was about. The next morning some mare was pounding on my door. She was all bloody and was crying. But I was afraid to open the door, cause’ I had heard about the crazy ponies, and she seemed pretty crazy. Then this other pony came up behind her and jumped on her. I just... stood by the door, listening to her scream as the pony... bit at her. And I was too scared to open the door. I realized, if things like that were actually happening out there, I didn’t want to be anywhere near there. So that’s when we decided to leave. We were almost out of the city when the REA showed up. At first they tried to screen the ponies who were leaving, but after a while they just started shooting them if they tried to go past.”

Blossom frowned. “They would do this thing where they would look at their eyes, and sometimes they would shoot a pony after they did it. But pretty soon, there were just too many. Ponies started to riot and the checkpoints started to break down... That’s when they started shooting ponies. No more checks, nothing... just a full quarantine. Everypony who tried to pass got taken out.”

“Jeez,” Sunny whispered. “That is terrible.” A thought struck his mind. “Back in the square, your husband said that they were evacuating the city... From what you said, it just sounds like they were shooting ponies.”

Blossom sniffed. “He was trying not to scare anypony. Imagine how they would have reacted if he had told ponies that the REA were just shooting ponies.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Sunny looked on ahead, thinking. “Those ponies up there, in the hospital... they all thought the REA was coming for us.”

Blossom shook her head. “They’re not gonna care about some little third-world town in the desert.”

Sunny sighed. “Yeah...”

“Yeah,” she repeated. “I’ve already seen my fair share of messed up things. Not too many ponies out this way know how bad things really are.” They walked in silence for a moment. “Some towns don’t even know at all.”

“So are you feeling alright now?” Sunny finally asked her.

Blossom nodded. “I can’t change what’s happened. But I can’t dwell on it either. I cried it out. Now, I think I’m done.” She forced a grin that looked a bit more like a sneer and shrugged. “T-thanks.”

“Okay," Sunny smiled, trying to look optimistic. “I should probably catch up with Moon before she gets jealous that I’m talking to you and not her.”

Blossom actually chuckled. “That mare’s a feisty one.”

“Why do you say that?” he asked with a little cock of his head.

She smiled. “She has strong opinions. And she sticks to them. We weren’t exactly getting along when… you know… lots of zombie ponies. Either way, I think she was pretty close to shooting me.”

Sunny didn’t want to press any further for fear of setting her off again, so it was left at that.

He and Blossom picked up the pace until they were trotting behind the group again. He was going to have to ask Moon about what her and Blossom hadn’t been getting along about. And why Blossom said that Moon might have shot her. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t imagine Moon shooting anypony, or anything for that matter.

He squeezed by Snowglobe to walk beside the blue mare again.

“How’d it go?” Moon asked quietly.

“I think she’s going to be okay. She’s just upset,” he replied.

Moon nodded. “I couldn’t ever imagine losing a pony that close to me.”

He looked over at her, taking in her appearance in the in the semi-darkness. A shotgun was strapped to the side of her barding so that it hung down against her flank, and her coat was dotted with patches of smeared crimson. “How’d you end getting blood all over you?” He asked, motioning towards one of the larger crimson stains.

Moon examined a spot on her flank. “It got a little nasty in the lobby.” She nodded towards the shotgun, which also seemed to have blood on it. “I kind of had to use it… a little bit.”

Sunny looked into her eyes. He couldn’t quite be sure in this light, but she almost looked... sad. Well, she probably was. What pony wouldn’t be sad with all this stuff happening at once? But... sad about something else.

But she was serious about the gun. He had to focus on not letting his mouth hang open. She had actually shot somepony. No wait, something. Still though... “Really?” he asked, trying to keep as much surprise out of his voice as possible. Her shooting something was so… un-Moon-ish. He hadn’t known her for that long, but she was a doctor. Doctors weren’t supposed to shoot ponies. They were supposed to make them better, right?

“Hey,” the blue mare replied defensively. “I can handle myself you know.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he added quickly. “I meant, you just don’t seem like the type of pony who would even think of touching a gun.”

Moon nodded solemnly. “Yeah, a month ago I would have agreed with you. But now, having it almost makes me feel safe.” She looked down at her hooves then added, “It’s not like I’m some crazy gun pony though.”

“I know,” Sunny replied. “But there are a lot of crazy gun ponies. There was definitely one back in the hospital. Dusty and I passed this zombie pony on the fourth floor that had been shot up. Like, really shot up. I mean, for the love of Celestia, they shot its leg off. And then they shot it in the head, or the other way around, couldn’t tell.”

“Heh, yeah...” Moon seemed to take a sudden interest in her hooves. “Sounds like what a crazy gun pony would do.” She half-chuckled, then flipped her mane into her face.

Snowglobe laughed bitteryly from behind Moon. “Probably somepony who likes to beat poor defenseless mares with a shotgun.”

Moon shot a heated glare back at Snowglobe. “And it’s a good thing that pony stayed in the hospital,” she growled.

Snowglobe just chuckled again.

“Am I missing something?” Sunny inquired.

“No,” Moon added quickly. “Let’s just be glad we all made it out without any of us being either killed or bitten.” Blossom sniffed and Moon cringed. “Mostly,” She muttered under her breath.

“Yeah,” Willow agreed. “Two was enough.”

“Wait? Two?” Blossom asked, startled.

“Yeah,” Willow tossed her head back. “I got bit about a month ago.” She chuckled, then rolled her shoulders, biting her lip as she did so. She walked with a certain stiffness that he would have expected from a pony a lot older than she was. She probably still had traces of that blue crap in her.

Blossom pushed herself in between Willow and Snowglobe. “Hey...” the gray mare muttered before dropping back to let Blossom take her place. “Fine, fine. Sheesh, just ask next time.

“Are you immune too?” Blossom asked with a frown and a roll of her eyes at the last second.

Willow shook her head. “No, I cured myself,” she replied simply.

Blossom’s mouth fell open. “...W-what?” She continued to gape. “You cured yourself?” She looked at Willow as if the mare had just exploded and glued herself back together again.

“Yeah,” Willow blinked a few times and shook her head. “Why? What’s so strange about that?”

Blossom explained, swallowing her momentary surprise. “When we were leaving Canterlot...” Sunny looked around. Everypony was listening to the yellow mare now “...we could hear the REA going crazy about an antidote. Well, trying to get one. That was back when they were still trying to contain sick ponies instead of just shooting them on sight. They had their medical ponies running around in a frenzy trying to find a cure for the sick ponies. If the REA couldn’t find a cure then how they hay did you do it?”

Willow’s ego seemed to visibly inflate. “Experimental drug,” she chided.”Didn’t even know what it was.”

Blossom chuckled dryly. “A small town hospital mare found a cure over all of the REA’s best medical staff.”

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?” Willow asked defensively.

“Hey! Ah think we’re nearing the end,” Dusty called from ahead. “Ah can see a door.”

“What does it look like?” Sunny asked.

Dusty tossed him a backwards glance. “Um… like a door.”

They all continued forward until they reached the end of the passage, conversation forgotten for the time being.

The door was made of metal, but it wasn’t as heavy as the one that had been back in the hospital. Still... metal.

Dusty stepped forward and gave the door an experimental push. “It’s locked.” He tried pulling instead of pushing, still to no effect.

“Move.” Willow pushed her way past Sunny and shouldered in between Dusty and Brick. “Back up,” she ordered sternly. “Give me some space.”

The two did as they were told.

“What are you gonna do?” Dusty teased. “Glare it open?”

Willow turned her head over her shoulder to glare back at him.

Sunny gasped and tried to fade it into a cough. He looked around, hoping nopony else had noticed. As far as he could tell, they hadn’t.

Willow’s eyes were glowing. He had only seen it for the slightest fraction of a second, when Brick had turned his light away, but he had seen it. Her eyes had been emanating a faint yellow light; there was no missing it. He gazed at her, doing his best not to look shocked. She looked back. The two of them shared unspoken words of worry before Willow broke contact.

She reached back and grabbed her key ring. “Keyths,” she mumbled around the ring.

“You think you’ve actually got the key for this door?” Snowglobe asked, her tone suggesting that she didn’t expect any of the keys to work.

Willow sifted through the ring and tried a silver one, then cursed under her breath and tried another.

About six keys later Dusty interrupted: “Uh, Willow,” he murmured, “ah don’t think that any of those keys are gonna work.”

Willow’s head snapped around to the side and she snorted at him. Dusty took a surprised step back, and contentedly, Willow turned away and went back to sifting through keys. She pulled out a big brass one and tried it in the lock. It made it about a quarter of the way in before it stuck. Willow growled again and head butted the stubborn door.

Snowglobe stepped forward. “Maybe I could—”

“No, no, this is the right key.” Willow waved Snowglobe away, then turned her attention back to the door. Frowning at the lock, she gave the key an experimental push, then grit her teeth. She growled, then pushed a little harder. Slowly, her legs started to tremble, her ears twitching here and there with irritation.

“Willow...” Sunny said slowly. “I don’t think that—”

With a grunt and a yell, Willow took a step back and smashed her forehoof against the key, apparently deciding to pound it into the lock. Four, strong hits later, the mechanism gave a broken little ‘click’ from within and Willow took an approving step back. “See. I told you it was the right key.”

“....Are you okay Willow?” Sunny’s eyes darted between his friend and the door. Something definitely wasn’t right with her. She had just broken a metal door with nothing but a single hoof. Her normal, balanced, reasonable attitude was nowhere to be seen, instead replaced by this jumpy impatient mare in front of him.

She turned to look at him, smiling. “I think so.” She turned completely around and delivered a heavy applebuck to the door. Something else inside snapped inside and the door screeched open, slamming against the wall on the other side. “I told you I had the right key,” she chided. Sunny just balked. He looked around to the others who all seemed just as shocked as he was. Even Brick looked mildly concerned.

“Er, Willow...” Dusty murmured. “You were supposed to pull... not push.”

As if to add, the last hinge still holding the door, tweaked around backwards, gave with a little groan and a snap. Like a drunkard sliding down the wall, the door did just that until it came to rest on the floor.

Willow pointedly turned around and stalked through the now open doorway, tromping over the poor door. Sunny gave himself a shake and followed, the others following close behind. From what Sunny could tell, it looked like they had crossed into a cellar. A single yellow light hung from the ceiling, filling the small space with its gloomy light. A wooden staircase on the other side of the room led up to higher levels.

“I think we’re in somepony’s house,” Snowglobe said quietly.

Dusty gave her a narrowed look. “What would an old tunnel from an REA hospital be doing leadin’ to a pony’s cellar?”

Sunny rolled his eyes at the two and nodded towards the stairs. “Well, let’s go and see.”

The stairs did indeed lead up into a house. Though it was night, the hallway he emerged into was well-lit; the lights set off little alarm bells in his head. The city didn’t have any power, so...

Snowglobe appeared beside him. Nodding to Sunny, and keeping her pace slow, she started to move forward, one hoof after the other on the soft carpet, leaving Sunny to follow a few steps behind while the others sidled into the hall.

“Do you know why there would be power here?” he asked after a moment.

She nodded. “Spark battery in the cellar, must be a pretty nice one to keep constant power for this long with all the lights on.”

Sunny frowned. “What if the lights aren’t always on?” He and Snowglobe exchanged a glance. They’d come out into a small living room that looked like it had been used quite frequently for just that.

Somepony cleared their throat loudly a short ways behind Sunny, a stallion, somewhat gruff by the sound of it.

Snowglobe snorted. “Well, saw that coming.” She sighed and folded her ears. “Don’t shoot us please.”

Sunny frowned at Snowglobe. “How do you even know he has a gun? What—”

“You make a single move and I’ll blast ya.’” the gruff voice growled from behind them.

“Nevermind.” Sunny shut up at the will of Snowglobe, who was giving him her best glare.

“Now turn around, now!” the stallion demanded. Sunny and Snowglobe both complied. If Sunny was correct, his friends would be coming along to the living room any minute now.

Moon was right on cue, trotting down the hall with little care for subtlety. “This is a nice looking place,” she declared happily, eyes darting all over the place. “Could do away with the wallpaper though. Uegh.” Her eyes fell on the stallion who seemed to be holding Sunny and Snowglobe at gunpoint. “Oh... uh, hello. This must be your house?” She chuckled, her ears folded flat to her head as the stallion glared unamusement in her direction. “Lovely wallpaper, by the way.”

The stallion opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again, giving Moon a small shake of his head before turning his attention back to Sunny and Snowglobe. “What the hay are you three doing in my house? And how the hay did you get in here?”

Sunny looked away from Moon and back to the accusing stallion. He looked old, his brown coat graying, deep lines etched in his face, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t intimidating. He wore an expression of concealed anger and was sporting a saddle of the likes Sunny had never seen before. Mounted to the saddle on his back was a rifle, it sat off to the right so that it ran adjacent to his body about a third of the way up from his belly to his shoulders. A curved piece of metal ran from the saddle around his front so that a bit hovered right below his mouth. It took Sunny a second to realize how it worked. After closer inspection he could see that a metal cable ran from the bit along the curved piece of metal, where it was then attached to the firing mechanism of the rifle on his back. The stallion could fire the rifle by biting down on the bit. Genius. Now that he thought about it, he’d seen an REA pony sporting one of these once.

Sunny looked back in time to see Willow, Brick, Dusty, and Blossom all file out of the cellar into the small hallway.

“What they hay is this!?” the brown pony spluttered. “What are all you ponies doing in my cellar?”

Snowglobe spoke up. “We came in through the tunnel in the basement.”

The poor stallion seemed to blow a gasket. “What Celestia damned tunnel in the ce--” He cut himself off, then sighed. “Oh, that tunnel... I’ve always wondered what’s behind that door.” He glared around at all of them. “What’s behind that door? Those bozos with the army paid me to live here because of that damned thing.”

“It’s an escape route from the hospital,” Sunny replied.

The stallion stomped his hoof. “I should have known!” He mumbled something irritably under his breath, then snorted.

Sunny shifted his stance with a nervous little glance to the others. There was an angry pony with a gun in front of them, who now happened to be talking to himself. That was a wonderful sign.

Eventually, the old stallion turned his attention back to the real ponies in the room. “Why are you here then? I thought all you ponies who locked yourselves in the hospital were all safe and sound in your little hidey-hole.”

Willow pushed her way forward until she was nose-to-nose with the weathered stallion, gun or not. “Look, I don’t know who you are, and frankly I don’t give a damn.” Sunny cringed; he wasn’t sure whether to be worried for Willow or the old stallion with the gun. “Things didn’t go too well in our little hidey hole,” Willow spat. “Me and my friends barely made it out alive. Now if you don’t want us here then fine, we’ll leave. But for the love of Celestia, don’t give us any more of your shit at gunpoint! Because I don’t want to hear it!”

Sunny’s mouth jaw went slack. “Willow,” he murmured under his breath. “You do realize he has a gun, right?” This wasn’t the Willow he remembered, not at all. There was no doubting something was up, but did he dare ask?

The stallion took a respectful step back from Willow. “Take it easy now. If seven ponies suddenly climbed up outta’ your cellar in this situation, you might get a little on the defensive side too.

Willow snorted and pointedly turned her back on the stallion. She was shaking, literally shaking; whether from anger or from something else, Sunny wasn’t quite sure.

“Er... Willow,” Sunny said, half hoping she would hear him and half hoping she wouldn’t.

Her head snapped around to reveal very angry eyes. Sunny had to resist the urge to veer away. The look she gave him was pure fire. It looked like a very angry ghost had wormed its way into the white mare’s body and taken over her emotions. She looked scary.

“Willow?” sunny repeated, lowering his head a little and cocking it to one side. “A-are you okay?”

Like a rubber band stretched a bit too far, the tension snapped, and then Willow was back to Willow again. “Sorry,” she murmured. “I guess… I’m just tired.”

“Well...” The brown stallion frowned, still looking a little unnerved by Willow’s sudden outburst. “I guess I can invite you to stay a while. Seeing as you brought your own food.” He motioned towards the stuffed bags carried by the two pegasi. “Come on then,” he muttered halfheartedly. “Follow me.” He turned and led them down the hall. A moment later they emerged into a sitting room. “And don’t touch anything!” he added in a snappy aftertone.

“So I take it you know what’s going on out there?” Sunny asked.

The old stallion snorted. “Well yeah, why else do you think I’d have all my windows boarded?”

Sunny took a good look around the room. The front door had been boarded up, along with the two windows on either side. The walls were papered with a dingy, yellow-brown striped paper. The carpet was also brown, but not quite as dark as the paper on the walls. Overall, it was a pretty brown place—not all too pleasant on the eyes.

The old stallion looked at them all in turn, summing them up, his eyes lingering a little longer on Moon. “Now I’m not too keen about having you all stay here. But since you’re here, you might as well settle down... and don’t touch anything.”

Willow sighed. “Good, would you mind telling me where I can sleep?” she asked, before turning to look at the rest of the group. “Sorry... but I’m not feeling too good.”

The old stallion rolled his eyes. After a moment, he shrugged, probably remembering Willow’s outburst in the hall. “Up the stairs, second door on the left.”

“Thanks,” Willow muttered. She turned and set off down the hallway. Brick watched her for a moment before setting off after her.

“Makes me wonder,” the old stallion murmured to himself, keeping an eye on Willow until she had passed out of sight.

“Excuse me?” Snowglobe asked. The stallion turned to look at her. “That saddle you’re wearing. Exactly what is it?”

“Oh this thing?” he looked back at his saddle and the rifle mounted to it. “It’s called a battle saddle. The REA started making them so that non-unicorn ponies could fire larger weapons. You can mount almost any weapon to one of these things.”

“That’s sort of what I was thinking, but still, I didn’t even know these things existed.” She trotted around the old stallion in a little circle, examining the saddle from what seemed like every angle. “You mount the weapon on it and link the cable to the firing mechanism on the weapon of choice. Then you can fire it from your back with your mouth. This is a genius design. I don’t know why I haven’t ever heard of one of these before.”

“Well yeah, basically,” the stallion replied,eyebrows a little raised. “I’ve seen ponies who’ve hooked up four guns at once on one of these things.”

“Where’d you get it?” Snowglobe asked, still looking somewhat awed.

“I was in the army.” Although the stallion spoke sorely, there was no hiding the pride that still shone in his eyes at the mention of the REA. “This was standard issue, but these ones were the best. They don’t make them like this anymore. Heck, I don’t even think you can find a battle saddle like this anymore. The REA recycles all of their old equipment.”

“Wow.” Snowglobe sat back, her eyes glued to the contraption.

The stallion cleared his throat. “Well, I’m guessing you all want to get some sleep. So let’s set up some sleeping arrangements. Now, I’m also guessing your snappy friend and that big fella took one of the guest rooms so that leaves one more. There is no way one of you is getting my room. So I’ll let you decide who sleeps where.” With that the stallion turned tail and headed off down the hall. “Oh yeah, and I got a pretty nice water heating talisman,” he called back. “Feel free to use it. Army pension hooked me up right. And don’t touch anything! ...apart from the hot water knob, I suppose...”

“Ah don’t need a room,” Dusty declared, glancing over the rest of them. “Floor’s fine for me.”

Moon trotted over to stand beside Sunny. “Me and Sunny can share a room,” she mused, giving him a soft nudge.

Sunny thought it over. “It might be nice to let more than two ponies share a room. There are five of us.” Moon just sighed and shook her head. “What?” Sunny asked.

Dusty brought his hoof up to his face. “Sunny,” he managed. “Take the room.”

“But what about you guys?” he asked Snowglobe and Blossom.

“It’s okay.” Snowglobe chuckled. Dusty stumbled over to a wall to lean on for support. “We’ll just sleep on the floor,” Snowglobe reassured, smiling. Moon was turning as red as a cherry.

Sunny frowned. “Are you sure? Cause—”

"Sunny!” Dusty cut him off. He stomped a hoof on the ground and hissed under his breath, “Just take the damned room!”

“Okay, take it easy. I’ll take the room, okay!” Sunny rolled his eyes. What was the big deal?

* * *

No rest for the troubled. Try as she might, tossing and turning and burying her head under the pillow, she just couldn’t. Her body ached and throbbed, every nerve ending screaming its disapproval. She’d soaked the bed in sweat by the time she’d given up trying to sleep

Now sitting at a small desk opposite of the door, Willow groaned, looking at the vial of penicillin in front of her. “It’s not working anymore Brick,” she fretted.

The brown stallion shot her a worried look from where he’d been lying in the corner.

Willow took a long look around the little bedroom. Why did the walls have to be white? She hated white. Every damned wall in the hospital had been white. She sighed, being grudgingly grateful for the room.

She let her head drop to the desk, her forehead pressing against the cool wood as he muzzle dangled over the edge. Her body felt all wrong. It literally felt like her innards were moving around inside her—throbbing, aching... burning. Her muscles ached and her bones hurt. And she could swear it by Celestia, anytime she wasn’t looking at her coat it started squirming.

There was something really wrong going on inside of her. And it scared her. Worst of all, she had a pretty good idea of what it was.

She had been too afraid to tell anypony. But, back in the tunnels, she could see in the dark. When Brick had turned off his light, or pointed it away, the tunnel had remained for her in a dim, yellow-gray haze.

“What am I going to do?” she muttered glumly. By far, the most confusing part about everything was how sturdy she felt. One would think that her body would be struggling to keep going, but it seemed to be the exact opposite. She felt strong, even if everything did hurt. She could feel it in her limbs, the raw strength that surged through her body. There was no easy way to describe it. Willow bet that if she wanted to, she could get up right now and run straight across Equestria.

Which was terrifying, because there was only one explanation for that sort of strength. Notebook and Sugar Apple had torn their way out of their restraints—artificial leather belts, one for every hoof to hold them to the bed.

Zombies were stronger.

She was stronger.

“I think I know what’s going on, Brick." She lifted her head from the table and turned to him. “I’ve still got it… I didn’t cure it.”

Brick nodded slowly, meeting her eyes for a second before averting his to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” she added. “I should have told you earlier, but I wasn’t sure then and I didn’t want to worry you.” She looked over to her barding which sat in a corner. All of those medical supplies, useless. The two metal cases sat on the floor a ways away; she tried not to think about them. “I can feel myself changing. Sugar Apple said it felt like there was something crawling in his skin... I’m starting to feel the same way.”

Brick got his hooves under him and paced over to her side of the room, sitting down a foot or so from her and closing his eyes.

Willow just sighed. “I’ve been taking the penicillin to do... something, but it’s not working anymore.” She tossed another nervous glance at the two cases. She couldn’t just waste it. The cold truth was that she was infected. And she was going to die. Either that or end up like one of them. “...I don’t want to die.”

Something seemed to click. It was the sort of gear falling into place that powered the machine designed to slap her into gear. ‘Stop whining about it and do something!’ it seemed to scream. An invisible pony dragged her to her hooves and forced her head around towards the metal cases stacked in the corner. ‘It’s all or nothin’, sister.’

Willow looked to Brick, then gave a brief nod towards the cases. “Go get me the vial I used last time. Get a needle and fill with thirty milliliters of the stuff.” Brick raised an eyebrow at her. “Yes, I know how dangerous that is,” she replied. Panic was starting to bubble up from the pit of her stomach. What if she didn’t wake up? There was a very good chance that this was going to kill her. She might die, right here. But, she was going to die soon anyways. There was no harm in trying. It could only be for the best.

She didn’t want to die. She really didn’t want to die. Right now, the most important thing to her was living, staying alive. She had managed to survive what had killed so many others. And this was it. She was here, now, and they weren’t. She couldn’t just drop out now. This was what mattered, living, just to move on to see the light of the next day. But if she was about to do this, and with chances this high of never waking up, the others at least deserved to know why.

She trotted over to the dresser against the far wall and pulled open the top drawer. It was empty. She slammed it back angrily, cracking the wood housing. She sifted through the others and managed to find a scrap of parchment and a quill, along with a small bottle of ink. She laid the paper out and looked at it, waiting for the quill to dip itself and start writing.

Willow groaned; no magic. With a gasp, she finally came to realize why her magic wasn’t working. It wasn’t because of the drug she had taken; it was because the virus had still been inside her. She had been sick this whole time!

“Stupid!” she growled under her breath. “Stupid stupid stupid!”

Growling the last bit of her self-anger away, she picked up the quill in her mouth and set to writing a note. It took a little while, and it was a little sloppy, but still legible. If this was her death note; then she wanted ponies to at least be able to read it. Hopefully it wouldn’t be her death note.

“You ready Brick?” she asked, not really wanting to know. The brown pony trotted over to her with a large needle in his jaws. It was filled with a familiar-looking electric blue liquid. He fixed his eyes on her, then gave a single, brief nod.

“Right, neither am I,” Willow replied with a small chuckle. “Okay,” She took a deep breath, “jab me.”

* * *

Sunny lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. No matter how tired he was, there was no way he could sleep. Not after tonight. He couldn’t stop recapping the entire day in his head. Everything from the meeting on had been nothing but havoc. Zombie ponies, ponies dying, falling through roofs, tunnels, and whatever else in between.

He felt bad... All the time they had been running or coming up with plans, he hadn’t helped at all. So far the only thing he had managed to do was get bitten. While everypony else had been surviving in the hospital; he had been in comatose. He hadn’t done a single thing to help. He was nothing but a burden trotting around behind the bigger and smarter ponies. He needed to do something that would make him worthy of the ponies he was with. Because right now...

The sound of the door opening broke his train of thought. He glanced up just in time to see Moon step in and close the door behind her. “This place has hot water!” she exclaimed happily.

“So I take it you had a nice wash?” he asked casually, deciding she was better to look at than the ceiling. Droplets of water clung to her coat and her mane was wet and sleek. It ran smoothly down her neck and flank. She really was better to look at than the ceiling.

“Sure did,” she replied, crossing the room with a casual gait. “A month in that hospital without warm water got old really fast. It was nice to finally have some hot water again.” Moon looked down at the bed and shot him an annoyed look. “Sunny, look what you did.”

“What?” He looked around. “What’d I do?”

Moon just rolled her eyes and pointed a hoof at the bedspread. “You’re still covered in dust.”

Sunny looked at his coat, then to his disheveled mane. “Oh, whoops.” He rolled off the bed and looked at the Sunny-shaped white spot. “Sorry,” he muttered sheepishly.

Moon waved away his apology with a forehoof. “Okay,” she chided. “Here’s how this is going to work. I’m going to get a new comforter, while you go and clean yourself up.”

“But I’m tired,” he protested.

She shot him a stern look. “I’m not asking. I’d drag you down the hall myself but I don’t want to touch your dirty coat until it’s clean.”

“Okay, fine...” She was giving him that look that seemed both cute and intimidating at the same time; there was no way he could say no to that. He trotted over to the door and pushed it open as Moon muttered irritably about the comforter.

He left the room and set off for the washroom, hesitating momentarily outside the door to Willow’s room. He was worried for the white mare. She had been acting strange ever since they’d reached the tunnel. She had gone to bed early because she wasn’t ‘feeling good’; it was a bad sign. Still though, he didn’t want to poke his head in and wake her up if she was trying to rest.

Against better judgement, he decided not to bother head and turned towards the bathroom.

Moon had been right; hot showers did feel good. Great actually. He realized just how much he had taken things like warm showers for granted. Only a month ago, a cold shower was about as much of a foreign thought as zombie ponies. But now a pony was lucky enough not to die, let alone shower.

Funny how things changed.

He enjoyed the water for a little longer before shutting off the nozzle. How did this pony have hot water here anyways? He had said something about a heating talisman, but what was that, exactly? With a shrug, he left the washroom, the source of the strange stallion’s hot water not really a pressing matter. He headed back down the hall, passing Willow’s room once again and debating whether or not he should peek in to see how things were. After a moment he decided against it. Right now, sleep seemed like one of the best things in the world. After today, he deserved it.

“I take it you had a nice shower?” Moon asked with an overflowing air of cheekyness as he entered the room.

“You were right,” he said in compromise. “Warm water is nice.” Trotting over to the bed, he flopped down on the new covers and immediately stretched himself out with a happy groan. “Do you think Willow’s okay?” he voiced aloud, staring up at the ceiling.

Moon flopped down beside him. “I’m not sure,” she said with a sigh. “But something is definitely up with her. You saw how strange she was acting. And what she did with that door back in the tunnels.”

Sunny scooted a little ways away from Moon; a foot of space was enough, right? “Yeah,” he added.

Moon noticed his movement and shot him a puzzled look. “What was that for?” she asked.

“What was what for?”

“Moving away from me,” she replied, managing to actually look offended.

“Did I?” Sunny tried to play it off coolly, but was failing miserably. He wasn’t used to ponies being close to him. Not like standing in crowds or waiting in line, but actually close to him. In bed was a place where he liked his space.

Moon dropped the accusatory glare and took up a softer expression, which was even worse! “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He tried to wave her question away. The look Moon was giving him meant that it definitely wasn’t, ‘nothing,’ to her. He sighed. “It’s just that… I’m not used to being near other ponies, okay. Like in the park, I felt so uncomfortable with you near me, well, on me. You have no idea how uncomfortable that was. Like, it was bad... like, bad bad.”

Moon seemed to contemplate him, the smile dropping off her face as she chewed her inner lip “Well,” she mused, “I guess I’m just going to have to get you used to it.” She rolled over a bit, scooting closer to him.

“W-what!?” Sunny scooted himself away, putting himself at the edge of the bed. “Sorry,” he added quickly, feeling a bit regretful for it and yet not.

“It’s not like I’m going to bite you.” Moon said with a roll of her eyes and a growing smile, edging herself up beside him once again.

“No, it’s okay.” He made to move further away, but there was no more room on the bed. His forehooves reached out for purchase as he lost his balance, but only came into contact with Moon’s coat. With a startled cry, he drew his hoof back. Over the edge he went, coming to a jolting stop on his back with a hit that shook the floor and rattled his brain.

Moon poked her head over the side at him. “Are you okay?” she asked, giggling. “Get back up here.”

“Throw me a pillow. I’m good,” he answered.

Moon looked down at him, a strange look gleaming in her eyes. “Fine then,” she said with an impartial little shrug.

“Wait? What’s that supposed to mean!?” Moon wasn’t the pony to just give up on something like that.

And then it hit him.

“No wait, Moon, okay you winI’llcomeback—”

The blue mare rolled off the bed and landed on top of him. Sunny gasped as the mare pushed the air from his lungs, his hind legs kicking out as he tried to worm his way out from under her.

“Hey there,” she said with a pleased chuckle.

“Nononono!” he cried, turning his head this way and that. “You’re crazy.”

“Maybe you should stop being so weird,” she teased.

“Hey, I’m not weird,” he protested, trying to push the mare off. He tried to roll over on his side so he could get his hooves under him, but Moon planted her hooves on his belly and pushed him back down. He gazed up into her eyes. “You’re a little close,” he murmured, trying to wriggle out of her grasp. “Moon, I am not okay with this!”

“I know,” she whispered.

Sunny stopped trying to squirm. He was hypnotized, her amber eyes sucking any thought from his mind. Her face was close to his... really close.

The hypnosis was broken by a bloodcurdling scream. Moon’s head snapped up as she looked around. Her eyes darted back to Sunny and she seemed to fight a small battle with herself before rolling off him. Sunny took the chance to scramble to his hooves.

The scream had come from Willow; there was no mistaking it. He’d heard that very same scream back in the town square, only it hadn’t sounded as agonized as this time.

“Was that Willow?” Moon asked, making a beeline for the door.

He nodded. “I’m pretty sure.”

Moon cursed under her breath. “I knew something was wrong with her.”

“I didn’t want to say anything.” Sunny followed her into the hall. Why hadn’t he checked to see if she was alright? Judging from the sound they had just heard, she definitely wasn’t alright.

Moon pulled open the door to Willow’s room and charged inside, Sunny following right on her tail. Upon entering, Sunny noticed two things. One, Willow was on the ground having some sort of seizure. And two, Brick stood stiff legged over her, an empty needle in his jaws.

It wasn’t hard to put two and two together.

“Don’t let her hurt herself!” Moon yelled, running over to Willow’s jerking form. “Hold her steady!” Brick dropped the needle and helped Moon hold the thrashing mare. If Sunny hadn’t known any better he would have guessed Willow was throwing a fit. She gave a strong buck of her hind legs that send Moon tumbling backwards. One of her thrashing forelegs struck Brick across the face and the large stallion went out like a light.

Moon picked herself up from the ground and looked at the still shape of Brick. “She’s strong,” she gasped. “Like... really strong!” Turning to brick, she gave him a firm kick in the ribs. “Wake up, I need you!”

Snowglobe and Dusty chose that moment to charge into the room, eyes wide and wary.

“What’s going on?” asked Dusty.

Moon looked down at Willow. The white mare was no longer thrashing around, but she was still twitching. “I don’t really know...” She dropped down next to Willow as Dusty and Snowglobe moved forward, taking a place on either side of the white mare.

The door behind them burst open and the old stallion barged in, battle saddle at the ready. “Just what the hay is all this damned noise about?” His eyes fell on the white mare held in Moon’s grasp and his eyes widened. “She’s got it!” he yelled, panic flashing in his features. Taking the firing bit of the battle saddle in his mouth, he took aim at Willow.

“No!” Sunny yelled. Without thinking, he threw himself at the stallion, knocking his aim off. the old stallion tripped over his own hooves and fired a shot off as he went down, Sunny halfway on top of him.

“Back off!” the old stallion growled, batting at Sunny with one forehoof as he writhed on the floor.

“You can’t shoot her!” Sunny yelled back. That stallion had been less than half a second away from shooting Willow. He had almost killed her! And he would have too.

The old stallion pushed Sunny away and scrambled to his hooves. “That’s what they all say,” he growled. “She may be your friend now. But wait until she bites you in the ass. I’ve seen it happen before, and trust me, I’m doing you five a favor.” The old pony snorted, looking at Willow’s unconscious form. “I knew she was infected from the second I saw her. How long ago was it?” he asked demandingly. Brick picked his head up and looked around, still looking dazed.

“A month,” Sunny answered.

“Don’t you lie to me!” he snapped. “The longest I’ve seen a pony last is four days. Now, she is in my house and I want you to tell me the truth!”

“You guys.” Moon gasped. “I got a bit of a problem over here.”

Sunny turned to look at blue mare. “How’s Willow? is she...” He trailed off. Moon was looking pale... very pale. His eyes darted over her form, then to the blood drizzling steadily down her right foreleg from a spot just below the shoulder.

“J-just a flesh wound,” Moon said with a nervous chuckle, wincing a bit as she lifted the leg off the floor. “Nothing too... nothing too serious.”

“Don’t you dare move,” Sunny heard Dusty growl.

“What do I do?” Sunny asked frantically, ignoring the confrontation behind him as he rushed up to Moon.

Moon flopped down on her side. “Check in Willow’s bags,” she gasped, caressing the wound. “She should have some healing potions. Thank Celestia we raided a hospital, because those things are hard to find.”

Sunny did a quick sweep of the room and spotted Willow’s bags in one corner. Brick was by Willow’s side, keeping a protective stance over the trembling mare. The old stallion stood observing the scene, doing his best to look impartial while Dusty glared at the old pony from the side. Snowglobe just stood by the doorway looked dazed. Blossom wasn’t even here.

As quickly as he could, Sunny dashed over to Willow’s bags and dug out one of the bottles filled with purple potion, then trotted back across the room and held out the bottle to Moon. She levitated it from him and uncorked the bottle with her magic. As quickly as she could, the blue mare downed the deep purple contents of the bottle.

“Thanks.” She finally gasped, fighting for breath. Sunny watched as the bleeding stopped and the wound began to stitch itself back together, the flesh and skin slowly stretching to cover the fresh wound. it was sort of like watching a wound heal over a course of weeks, though there was no scabbing involved here, and some of the meat and flesh itself was actually growing back.

Sometimes he really did envy unicorns.

“What they hay is wrong with you!?” Dusty yelled suddenly, glaring at the old stallion.

“She is dangerous.” The weathered pony pointed an accusing hoof at Willow.

“You shot Moon!” Dusty spluttered.

“It’s not like I was aiming for her,” the old stallion defended. “If your orange friend hadn’t of hit me I wouldn’t have missed!”

Sunny wouldn’t have been surprised if Dusty were to pounce the stallion right then and there; the light blue pegasus could have shot lightning bolts from his eyes. Sunny could feel something similar to anger building up inside him as well, though it was only covering the churning sickness in his gut. Moon had almost died. Six inches to the right and three inches up and she would have! Willow had almost died!

And the stallion still wanted to shoot Willow; Sunny could see it in his eyes.

“Then you would’ve shot Willow!” Dusty spluttered. “You don’t shoot ponies!”

The old stallion glared. “That time bomb isn’t staying in my house.” He took a step towards Willow but Snowglobe skittered into her path, her hooves shaking so bad that Sunny was surprised she could stand. “Get out of the way,” he growled, trying to push past Snowglobe.

“Don’t touch her,” Dusty growled. After what looked like a moment of internal conflict, Dusty drew his pistol and leveled it with the stallion.

The old pony stopped and turned on Dusty. “Put that gun away,” he commanded, narrowing his eyes and showing a rather daunting lack of fear.

“Ah won’t let you hurt her,” Dusty spat around his gun.

“I said put that gun away!” he repeated, leveling his rifle with Dusty. Moon pulled herself up to all fours and hobbled over to where the two ponies were having their standoff. The old stallion shot her a sideways glance. “Come any closer and I’ll shoot you,” he growled.

“You’re not going to shoot Willow,” Moon spoke firmly, taking a step closer.

The old pony made to turn her way, and for reasons unknown, Dusty chose that moment to shoot, his shot striking the weathered stallion square with a characteristic thwack. He stumbled and took the bit in his mouth, staggering around to try and get a bead on Dusty. The blue pegasus didn’t give him the chance. Dusty fired two more shots, each striking home, and with a hitch and a heave the old stallion crumpled to the floor.

Dusty dropped his gun. “Damn it!” he yelled. “Ah didn’t want to! Damn it! You made me do it!” He turned and propped his head against the wall, shoulders heaving.

Sunny cautiously approached the shot stallion. Blood trickled from three neat holes in a spot just below his heart and bubbled from his mouth and chest. “Celestia fuck me sideways.” He gurgled, or chuckled. Sunny couldn’t tell which. “Didn’t think he had it in him.”

Sunny could only watch as the old stallion closed his eyes. It was less than a moment before his breathing grew faint and a shudder wracked his body. A moment later he was still.

Sunny turned away. Somewhere in his heart, there was a sense of loss for the old pony, but strangely, no shock or horror. Ponies dying almost seemed to be becoming normal. It wasn’t that scary anymore.

What was happening to him? How could he watch a pony die and feel almost no remorse? It felt as if the old stallion had just disappeared, or left, but not died.

“Four,” Dusty murmured softly. His head thudded against the wall for a second time. “Damn it, that’s four.”

Sunny did his best not to think about the dead pony on the ground behind him. He trotted over to where Brick was still standing over Willow. The big brown pony looked up and nodded towards the white mare. Sunny sighed with relief when he found that he could see the gentle rise and fall of her flank.

“Did she take more of this stuff?” Moon gasped, levitating an empty syringe in front of her.

Brick just motioned towards the dresser.

Sunny followed Brick’s gaze and trotted over to the decorative dresser on the opposite wall. When he reached it, Sunny saw that atop it was a mouth-written note.

“Hey, look at this,” he called to the others. All of them except Brick came to his summons. “It’s a note,” he stated.

“What does it say?” Snowglobe asked.

Sunny looked down at the note. It was a little untidy; but he could still read it. Throwing a quick glance over the others, he cleared his throat and read it aloud.

“I am writing this letter because I do not know whether or not I will be able to tell you all later. I thought that I had cured the virus. I didn’t. The whole time, it was dormant inside me, held back but still there. The measures I took only isolated it, but it must have spread again, and recently too. So I made a choice. It was either end up like one of them, or take a chance with luck. I took a much higher dosage than I did in the square that day. If you are reading this note, I am either unconscious or dead. So I wanted you all to know that I tried to eliminate whatever it is inside me once and for all. But if what I did didn’t work, and I’m either dead, or haven’t woken up, I need you all to keep that medicine safe. it worked for me, for at least a short while. I did a little bit of paperwork digging before we left the hospital; whatever it was, it was shipped to us by accident when it was supposed to be heading to the REA. A special shipment for some pony named Striker. I think it’s important. You need to get it to ponies who know what they are doing. Maybe they can find something to do with it. I have high hopes that I will wake up soon with every muscle in my body hurting, but if I don’t, then I just wanted you all to know it was nice while it lasted.”

Sunny looked up from the note, his mouth dry after reading the paragraph, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. “...Signed, Willow,” he finished.

“So… what do we do?” Snowglobe finally asked.

Moon looked back at the still form of Willow. “Well, she definitely isn’t dead. So we wait a while to see if she gets better... and tie her up in the meantime.”

* * *

“Celestia, everything hurts,” Willow groaned. “I should really be used to this by now.”

Sunny turned his eyes to Willow; the white mare sat at the other end of the table, forehooves on the table and with her head on her forehooves. She looked absolutely miserable. Her blue eyes looked almost gray; the same went for her white coat, which had about as much luster as gray paste.

It had been three days since the whole incident upstairs, and nothing had really changed. The house was thiers now, he supposed. it seemed wrong to just... take it, but the owner was dead and it wasn’t as if the authorities were about to come knocking on the front door.

Willow took another bite of her freeze-dried mashed potatoes and swallowed with a pained grimace. The seven of them sat around the dining room table, eating what Sunny figured to be a late lunch. An awkward silence hung in the air, nopony feeling comfortable enough to speak. This was Willow’s first time down the stairs since she had injected herself and Sunny didn’t think she looked too good. Her normal white coat no longer shone, instead, looking more like a dull gray than white. The roots of her crimson mane had also managed to go gray in a very short time, leaving the first quarter inch of her mane a pink-gray color on contrast to the normally-brilliant crimson.

“I’ve heard ponies say something always hurts less the second time.” Willow chuckled dryly. “I don’t think so.” Her voice rasped, like a pony who’s been sick for a solid week.

“Are you feeling any better today?” Moon asked the sickly mare.

“I keep telling myself that I am,” Willow replied with a sigh. “Still... I suppose it’s better than being dead.” She trailed off, staring at her bowl of applesauce—one of the only foods she had been able to eat the previous day. “I think I killed it, and I think, I mean I know I killed it, because if I didn’t then I might as well have Dusty put a bullet in my head and cut me some of the pain.”

“Hey...” Dusty muttered, glancing up from his food. “That’s no jokin’ subject.”

Willow only flicked her ears. “It better work...”

Moon frowned. “I think that you managed to stall the rate of infection by isolating it first with immediate medical treatment. Are you sure that... blue stuff, really does anything at all? I mean, no offense, but blindly injecting it into your body isn’t a very good control test.”

Willow chuckled. “Moon, it wiped my immune system clean. If the virus survives while my immune system takes a digger… well then I guess I’m out of luck.” The white mare looked back at the faint traces of the wound on her back. It had healed up rather nicely and the flash didn’t look agitated anymore. “The bite wound looks a little promising. When it was fresh, the exposed flesh was... cauterizing. I can’t think of any other way to put it. This virus is smart. It takes over a pony, then builds up their body. The flesh around the wound, or at least, the exposed flesh, began to rot; at first I thought it would spread, but then it just stopped... But I think I know why now. That was its way of protecting my body. Think about it—dead flesh can’t bleed, a-and the rot itself doesn’t spread beyond what’s exposed!”

Dusty looked up from his food. “Ah lost my appetite...”

Willow flushed. “My bad.”

Dusty shrugged. “Well, Look, ah hate to bring somethin’ like this up now. But ah can’t let it go unspoken of much longer.” Silence spread as everypony fixed their attention on him. “Ah’ve just been thinkin’ it over. We can’t stay here. Ah’m guessin’ we walked no more’n a mile or two in that tunnel. That means we’re still somewhere in the city, and the city’s pretty messed up right now.”

Snowglobe nodded. “I had that idea nagging at my head. We don’t know at all where we are, other than a house with all the windows boarded up... somewhere. I was planning on asking that stallion before…” She stopped herself.

Dusty muttered something under his breath and continued. “Now, ah reckon we want to get out of the town. You know, considerin’ all the zombie ponies.”

“I kind of like that idea,” Sunny added.

Dusty gave him a brief nod. “Now, the nearest town is a ways away. But if we just sit here for too long we aren’t gonna have enough food to go anywhere.”

Blossom tapped her hoof on the table, drawing everypony’s attention. “Appleoosa is to the northwest. We came through there trying to get away from Canterlot. By the time we made it there, we were hearing from other ponies that Manehatten and Baltimare were in the same shape as Canterlot. But I don’t know whether or not those were just rumors. Either way, when we were passing through, the Appleoosa folks had already heard about the virus. They didn’t even want to let us in.”

Dusty pointed a triumphant hoof in the yellow mare’s direction. “Yes!” he exclaimed happily. “Appleoosa might still be there.” He frowned. “Shoot, but that’s a forever away from here.”

“Las Pegasus is closer,” Moon suggested.

Dusty shook his head. “No way. The bigger the city, the more dangerous it is. Las Pegasus has over a million ponies living there. If the virus did make it that far... that place is a death trap.”

“So far, I’m liking the Appleoosa idea the best,” Sunny said. “But you have a good point Dusty. How are we going to make it there?”

The blue pegasus scratched his mane with a forehoof, thinking. “There are a few smaller settlements between here and there. More or less, if there are, or aren’t ponies there, there should at least be some food and water. But Appleoosa’s too far away to make a straight shot for.”

“Water is a harder thing to come by in the Equestrian desert,” Snowglobe mulled. “It doesn’t rain much. Most of the rain clouds are flown over here by the weather pegasi. But I doubt that’s top priority now that there are zombie ponies everywhere.”

Dusty nodded. “Things are going to get dryer out here as time goes on without the normal imported rain. It don’t rain naturally too often.” He looked around at everypony. None of them seemed to have any objections. Dusty tapped his hooves together. “We may have to work out a plan as we go. But one thing’s for sure, we can’t stay here. This town is a timely death trap.”

“Agreed,” Willow croaked. “When do we leave?”

Moon raised an eyebrow, looking at the white mare. “You aren’t in any condition to be going anywhere soon.”

“Nonsense.” Willow waved her hoof at Moon. “Just because my entire body hurts you assume that I’m weak. I may get a little tipsy here and there but my muscles work fine. Besides, if I do decide to keel over, Brick can always carry me.” She prodded the large stallion beside her, who nodded.

Dusty looked around at all of them. “Ah don’t want to leave any later than tomorrow. The longer we stay here, the less food we have for the road.”

“Let me address an issue,” Snowglobe cut in. “Weapons. What’ve we got?”

“Ah’ve got about thirty rounds for Valediction,” Dusty replied.

Snowglobe frowned. “Valiwhat?”

“My gun.” Dusty motioned to the revolver strapped to his upper right foreleg.

“You named your gun?” Snowglobe asked, a smile breaking on her face as she tried to hide it with a forehoof.

“Yep, Valediction,” he replied simply.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sunny asked, shooting a glance between Dusty and a silently giggling Snowglobe.

Dusty scoffed. “What do ah look like, a dictionary? You’ll find out if you really want to know. Ah’m not explainin’ it; it’ll ruin the meanin’.”

“Okay, back to guns.” Snowglobe broke in. “Moon, how many shells do you have for that shotgun?”

“Sixteen,” the blue mare replied.

Snowglobe turned to address Blossom. “Do you have any ammo for that gun of yours?” The yellow mare shook her head.

“How about that stallion’s battle saddle?” Willow asked. “It’s still sitting up there in my room. I can bet you anything he had more ammo for that thing lying around here somewhere.”

"Perfect!” Snowglobe exclaimed. “Brick, could you go get it?”

Brick leveled his gaze coolly with Snowglobe’s, but didn’t move. Willow cleared her throat and gave the brown earth pony a soft nudge. He spared her a small glance, then got to his hooves and set off down the hall.

“Why does he only listen to you?” Snowglobe grumbled, flicking a lock of purple mane out of her eyes.

“Because he’s Brick,” Willow replied cheekily.

“So who wants to wear the saddle?” Dusty asked. “There’s no way we can just take the gun off and leave such a great piece of equipment behind. Besides,” he added, “that rifle’s a unicorn gun.”

“What does that mean?” Willow asked him.

“Means that without a battle saddle, only unicorns can shoot it. Just like Moon’s shotgun. It doesn’t have a bit on it because the firin’ mechanism is made for a battle saddle or other firin’ device. A unicorn can shoot the gun manually because they got their magic stuff. But we earth ponies and pegasi need a battle saddle to shoot one of those.”

“I don’t want to wear one of those things,” Blossom said. “Too tight—constricting.”

“Same,” Dusty added. “Ah got my gun, an’ that’s all ah need.”

Snowglobe cast a glance at Willow, who shook her head. “My horn may not work; but I’m not much for guns.” Willow said. “And Brick’s out too because he has to carry the cases.”

Snowglobe looked over to Sunny. “Well?” she prodded. “You don’t have a gun.”

“I’ve never shot a gun before,” Sunny murmured sheepishly.

“Don’t worry,” Dusty reassured, “you get used to it real fast.”

Sunny glared. “Not very reassuring, Dusty.”

“What time is it?” Willow spat out, seemingly out of nowhere.

“I’m guessing evening-ish,” Snowglobe replied, looking at the slivers of horizontal light shining in through a slit in the boarded window.”

“Right.” Willow gave her head a quick shake. “If we are going to leave, it would be best to do so in the morning, so we have as much daylight as possible.”

“Agreed.” Dusty stood up from the table. “Sunny can try on the battle saddle in the morning.”

“Okay everypony.” Willow stood up with a grunt of pain. “Try to get some sleep. We’re getting up early tomorrow.” She put on a big, fake grin that could have scared a foal away from the world’s biggest cookie jar, then let it slide off her face. “Ugh...”

Everypony stood up from the table. Snowglobe stretched with a moan of satisfaction, her belly almost touching the ground. Sunny couldn’t help but blink. Not a groan of satisfaction; A moan.

“Enjoying yourself there?” Moon teased the gray unicorn.

Snowglobe raised herself back up to normal height and threw a sideways glance at Moon. “No, but I bet you are.”

Sunny covered the smirk on his face, watching Moon’s blue cheeks go a shade of purplish red. Willow seemed to get a pretty good kick out of the comment as well, because she was leaned up against the wall, cackling breathlessly.

“Oh shut up!” Moon hissed, rolling her eyes. “I don’t swing that way.”

“Ah can’t wait until ah can fly again,” Dusty said, experimentally flapping his wings. “It feels like it’s been ages.”

Sunny deadpanned at the pegasus “Rub it in why don’t you.” He rolled his eyes away from Dusty, then threw a quick glance over the others. “So is that our plan then? Go outside, get out of town, try not to die, and get to Appleoosa?”

Willow nodded. “Sounds about right, but you forgot the part where something goes wrong and Willow ends up having something stupid happen to her.” She chuckled dryly. “Well, night everypony. I’m gonna have Brick bring the saddle down, then we’re both going to bed.” Willow set off for the hall.

Sunny looked around at everypony else. Moon caught his attention, her eyes gleaming mischievously.

He would sleep on the floor before he’d share a bed with a mare with that sort of look in their eyes.

* * *

Sunny squirmed as Snowglobe fitted the saddle to him, binding the straps tight against his belly. He winced as the gray mare gave one of the straps a hearty tug and flared his wings, fanning the air. “Take it easy. A pegasus still needs to breathe, you know.”

Snowglobe just chuckled. “If you’re going to be shooting a gun from it then it needs to be tight. Otherwise it’ll move and throw your aim off.”

“Don’t worry, Sunny,” Moon chided, examining the battle saddle. “You look good in black; it matches your mane.”

He looked back at the saddle and had to silently agree. Just like the bags from the hospital, it matched his mane pretty well. Why did he keep ending up with the black barding? He rubbed a sore spot on his flank with a forehoof. Moon had insisted on sleeping on him last night. Literally on him, despite his protests, the persistent mare had prevailed, earning herself a pony-sized pillow.

He’d hardly slept a wink, fighting off shivers and the occasional burst of panic. Honestly, the last thing he wanted to see right about now was the blue mare’s face.

Sunny heard the squeal of a nails as Brick pulled another board from the front door. Sunny no longer had to wear his can-filled bags. Snowglobe was now wearing his old barding over her utility harness. Both her and Blossom had split his load between them, Blossom filling her own bags. He guessed that the old stallion in this house had been in some real trouble when they arrived—there had been hardly any food left in the pantry when they had searched it, more or less, maybe enough for a single pony to last a week. Snowglobe had found a few boxes of rifle ammo in the stallion’s room. They were now safely tucked away in the side pocket of the battle saddle.

He looked around at everypony else in the room. They were all suited up and ready. Moon’s shotgun was strapped to her side. The night before she had sewn a series of fabric loops on the outside pocket of her bag, then filled the loops with shotgun shells for easier accessibility. Also, everypony was equipped with a jug of water, filled earlier this morning.

Safe water, from a tank in the cellar.

“Could you remind me of how this thing works?” he asked Snowglobe.

The gray mare nodded, looking him over to make sure the saddle was done up right. “So, on the bit that sits right below your mouth, is a firing mechanism. To shoot the gun, just take the bit in your mouth and bite down on the trigger. Now the bit itself has a small circle of free movement to provide more flexibility when firing. There’s a little lever on the bit as well, that’s the safety. It’s meant to be flipped by a pony’s tongue. If you aren’t shooting something, it’s on. Got it?” She gave him a stern look. Sunny nodded and the mare continued. “With the firing mechanism right in front of your mouth it would be really easy to shoot one of us by accident. But, other than that, it’s basically just point and bite. Aim your body the way you want the bullet to go. Since the rifle is mounted on your back, you should have a pretty good idea of where the bullet’s going to go. Rifle holds six shots. You can reload by yourself, but it would be a lot easier to have me or Moon do it for you. And that’s it really.”

Sunny nodded and experimentally took the bit in his mouth. Now that Snowglobe had pointed it out, he could feel the safety catch on his tongue.

Brick gave a heave and the last board came free from the front door.

Dusty trotted over and turned to face them. “Everypony ready?” He asked.

Sunny’s heart was racing. He had no idea of what they would face when Dusty opened that door. Hopefully not a bunch of zombies.

Willow shifted her stance nervously, looking around at the rest of them. One thing was for sure—this wasn’t going to be a picnic.

Dusty gulped, and opened the door.

Chapter 5 Running

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Undead Equestria
By: Sorren
Chapter 5: Running

See anything?” Sunny asked the blue pegasus poised in the doorway. Dusty didn’t reply. Instead, he took a step forward and motioned for them to follow with his tail.

After the gloomy light of both the house, and the hospital, the early morning sunlight was almost blinding. The rest of them followed Dusty out of the dwelling. This was the first time any of them had been outside since the infection broke out. Sunny blinked, his eyes finally adjusting to the new change of atmosphere. They had emerged out onto a small front lawn. Houses ran away on both sides of the street. He looked around nervously. As far as he could see, there weren’t any zombie ponies. Brick surveyed the street as well, Willow by his side. Snowglobe seemed to be more interested in the ground while Blossom and Dusty maintained vigilance. Moon stood nervously behind Sunny. The uneasiness of stepping outside seemed to have gotten to them all.

“Horseapples,” Dusty muttered.

Willow cast a concerned glance at the light blue pegasus. “What is it?” She looked around again to make sure Dusty hadn’t seen anything she had missed.

Dusty looked both ways down the street, then hung his head. “Ah know where we are. This is Jade Street. We’re almost smack dab in the middle of town.”

“What sort of an REA egghead would build an escape route right to the middle of town?” Snowglobe scoffed.
Blossom sighed inwardly. “So, now what?” She glanced at them all expectantly, her gaze coming to rest on Dusty.

“Well, ah could fly up an’ see the fastest way out of town.” The pegasus mused, glancing up at the sky.

Sunny looked up and immediately wished he could find something to hide under. “I wouldn’t recommend that.” Celestia, they could fly. He could see a few of them drifting by overhead. Well, one couldn’t really call it drifting. The zombie pegasi were flying, but just barely. They gained and dropped altitude rapidly with no clear flight pattern or purpose.

“Well that’s not fair.” Dusty stomped a hoof. “They can fly too?”

Willow nudged him and pointed a hoof down the street. “Well if Apleoosa is northwest, it wouldn’t hurt to start that way.” The white mare looked around at the rest of them expectantly.

“I guess it’s a start,” Sunny agreed halfheartedly. Jeez, he thought. They hadn’t even made it more than a few steps out the front door and they were already running into problems.

Dusty started cautiously forward. “Better than standing here waiting for the zombie ponies to find us.” Sunny could see how naturally Dusty was falling into the position of leader. Technically, nopony was in charge. But the blue pegasus seemed of the strong determined type that everypony was more than willing to follow.

“This is creepy,” Snowglobe said as they walked down the sidewalk. “I don’t see a thing.”

Sunny gasped as they crossed an intersection. In the distance, he could see the hospital. They hadn’t traveled nearly as far as he thought they had. “I think that’s where they all are.” He murmured, staring absently at the large building that rose up above all of the surrounding structures. Zombies crowded around it on all sides; a couple pegasus ponies circled the hospital from above.

“Sweet Celestia,” Willow awed. “They’re swarming the place like moths to a light”

They all looked on in horror as a green shape emerged onto the roof. The shape continued on until it reached the edge. Sunny couldn’t tell whether it was a mare or a stallion from this distance. He found himself hoping his brain was lying to him when several other shapes became visible on the roof as well, moving rapidly towards the green one. Right before the multicolored mass reached the green pony, it turned and plummeted from the rooftop. The others followed right behind, willingly throwing themselves after the green pony without even slowing. Sunny was saved the sight of them reaching the ground by building between them and the hospital.

“What is this?” Snowglobe whimpered. “This can’t be happening.”

“Come on,” Willow nudged the unsettled mare forward. The seven of them continued across the intersection. They were still in a neighborhood, this particular street sported rows of identical houses, all lined up within close proximity of one another.

Sunny couldn’t get his mind off of the scene he had just witnessed. Everypony they had left behind at the hospital was dead. They had left almost fifty ponies in a sealed building that was rapidly filling with zombie ponies.

“I wonder why we haven’t run into any yet,” Blossom wondered aloud.

Willow shrugged. “I dunno. You’re supposed to be the zombie expert, not me.”

Blossom deadpanned. “Just because I was there when it all hit the fan doesn’t mean I know any more than you do.”

“Just be glad we haven’t seen any,” Dusty said from the front of the group.

Moon fell into stride beside Sunny as the continued down the deserted street. Sunny noticed she kept throwing glances at the shotgun strapped to her saddlebags. He was reminded of his own gun and took the bit in his mouth. The idea of having a gun still felt strange. But it was a small comfort knowing that, if he really had to, all he would have to do was bite down and the rifle on his back would fire. But aiming was a whole different story. Aiming with nothing but his body seemed a little difficult.

Dusty stopped; causing the rest of them to stop as well. “Problems?” Snowglobe asked. Sunny looked ahead of the blue pegasus and realized just why he had stopped. Two zombies staggered down the street ahead, one blue, one brown.

“I recommend we get off the street.” Willow said. “It’s too open out here.” Dusty nodded. Without a word, he led them off the main street to one of the many houses. They sneaked through a garden gate into a backyard.
Sunny looked around at the fenced in yard. “Now what?” he asked to the group as a whole. “Hop fences?”

Dusty cocked his head. “Well, I don’t see any other way.”

“Sure, it’s easy for you,” Willow jabbed. “You and Sunny are pegasi. It might not be as easy for us earth ponies and unicorns.” She looked up at her horn. “And horn headed earth ponies,” she muttered broodingly.

Snowglobe trotted over to the fence and planted her forehooves on it. “It’s better than taking the street,” she mused. The fence was about as tall as she was when she stood on her hind legs. With a grunt and a heave she pulled herself atop the wooden fence and dropped down on the other side. With a shrug, Blossom followed. Sunny unfurled his wings and launched himself over the fence, Dusty right on his tail. This was one case where he was thankful for his half-working wings. He looked back in time to see Willow flop to the ground on her back.

“Lose your balance there?” Snowglobe teased.

“No,” the white mare moaned and picked herself up from the flowerbed she had landed in, flattened daisies in her wake. “I just thought it would be more stylish to try it a different way.” Brick dropped down neatly beside her, Moon came over last.

As they crossed the yard, Sunny found it hard to believe they were in the middle of some sort of an apocalypse. Everything seemed so peaceful. The early morning sun shone down on the well kempt backyard, washing everything in its golden haze. Dew shone brightly on every blade of grass and colorful flowers lined the fence. A few fluffy white clouds dotted the early summer sky. He could even hear some birds chirping somewhere in another yard. If this really was an apocalypse, as Blossom had put it, then why was everything so peaceful? The entire town seemed almost bathed in tranquility as thick as the sunlight that shone down upon it. Even when he had watched the ponies fall form the hospital roof, there had been a sort of peaceful silence to the whole scene.

“Should we like, check houses or something?” Snowglobe asked. The gray unicorn trotted over to the sliding glass backdoor belonging to the house’s yard they had invaded.

Sunny followed her. “Probably not the best idea, we need to get out of town as fast as we can.” He and Snowglobe peered through the glass door into the dark dwelling.

“What are you two doing?” Willow called.

Sunny threw her a backwards glance. “Just looking,” he replied. He turned back in time to see a strawberry colored mare throw herself against the glass with a resounding thunk. Snowglobe backpedaled with a little squeal of terror. But Sunny couldn’t move. He could only watch as the mare stumbled backwards, only to throw herself at the glass again. The mare struck with the same sound as last time, spreading little ripples in Sunny’s reflection. The mare shook her head; blood spattered the window from a violent nosebleed.

“Sunny, get away from there!” Snowglobe choked, still gasping for breath. The strawberry mare collided with the glass again, this time leaving a crimson smear in her wake. Slowly, he backed away, never taking his eyes from the insistant creature.

“Look,” Blossom pointed out. “There’s a gate to the back alley. No more fence hopping. Sunny, looking for a good thing to distract him from the sight of strawberry mare, followed Blossom’s gaze to a gate in the corner of the yard. As quickly as they could, the group left the yard through the gate, which did indeed lead to an alley.

After everything he had seen so far. That recent encounter had scared him the most. Seeing a pony reduced to such primal instincts that they acted like the common fly trapped behind a window. What could do this? Worse still, what could drive a pony to eat meat? Ponies were herbivores for Celestia’s sake. And yet, they ate ponies like they were a rare delicacy to be gobbled up. Sure, ponies still enjoyed things like eggs. But that was different.

Sunny continued on with the others, lost in thought. There was one thing he didn’t understand though. If the zombie ponies ate ponies, then why were there so many of them? If they tore ponies apart and ate them, then how did they survive to turn into one? Sunny discarded the unanswered questions. There were definitely plenty of zombie ponies. He guessed it was just another mystery of this whole mess.

He jumped, train of thought broken, as a trash barrel ahead toppled over. The lid rolled away and swirled to the ground. Everypony froze.

“What was that?” Snowglobe tensed.

Willow rolled her eyes. “What do you think? Something that’s going to try and eat us.”

“Keep your voices down,” Dusty whispered. He took a cautious step forward and drew Valediction.

A white filly staggered out from behind a trashcan and fixed its sickly gaze on them.

“It’s just a filly,” Sunny murmured. Nopony moved.

“Maybe it doesn’t see us,” Moon whispered hopefully.”

The little filly opened its mouth wide and let out a rasping squeal. It launched itself at them with terrifying speed.

“It sees us!” Sunny heard Willow’s jaded response. Dusty took stance and fired. The little zombie stumbled and fell, only to roll to its hooves almost immediately and resume its charge. The creature threw itself at Dusty, who dodged. It flew past him, almost taking a chunk of the blue pony’s ear with it. Snowglobe squealed and almost comically danced away as the filly collided with a trio of trashcans. Brick pulled out his pistol and fired three shots at the little pony trying to clamber back to its hooves. This time it didn’t get up.

“That was a filly!” Moon balked.

Dusty holstered his weapon. “That is, by far, the most disturbing thing… ah have ever seen.” The blue pegasus gazed down at the dead filly; saddening acceptance shone in his eyes.

“I-is it dead?” Snowglobe asked tentatively.

“It had better be,” Willow growled. “They shot it four times.”

Sunny had to turn away. For the love of Celestia, they had just killed a filly! This wasn’t fair! They couldn’t fight fillies. It was the same as walking around stepping on cute forest animals. There are just some things that you can’t do. Killing fillies, zombie or not, was wrong. He gazed back the way they had come. Fences stretched away on either side, with the occasional backyard gate. A multicolored group of ponies pouring into the alley from the street caught his eye.

“Y-you guys,” he stammered, taking a startled step backwards.

Moon turned her attention to him. She looked on the verge of tears. “What is it?” She followed his gaze. Her mouth fell open, horror reflecting in her eyes. Enough zombie ponies ran at them that Sunny couldn’t count them all.

“Run!” Sunny bellowed. He started walking backwards, never taking his eyes off the incoming herd. He wanted to run; but something inside wouldn’t let him. Dusty looked up to be greeted with the terrifying sight. Without much else to do, Sunny took the bit of the battle saddle in his mouth and flipped the safety catch with his tongue. He took careful aim and bit down. The rifle on his back discharged; the sound rang in his ears. An orange pony at the front dropped, only to be replaced by another. Sunny fired again, but missed, pitting a hole in the ground.

“Stop standin’ around!” Dusty bellowed. He fastened his teeth in Sunny’s mane and tugged the orange pegasus around. “Run!” he commanded. The two sprinted down the alley. Sunny could see the others a little ways ahead, having gained distance with a head start.

Sunny spared a glance backwards. Only to see the wall of rainbow colored death gaining on them. “I think we’re in trouble!” he yelled to Dusty and put on an extra burst of speed.

“Just a run in the park!” Dusty replied.

“Was that supposed to be a joke!?” Sunny gasped. He jumped over a toppled trashcan and nearly lost his balance. He righted himself with a flap of his wings. If he went down now, it was all over.

“What? You didn’t like it?” Dusty chuckled as they ran.

Sunny looked at the pegasus who ran at his side. “We’re about to die! You aren’t supposed to be making jokes!” The group ahead of them slid to a stop; he and Dusty nearly barreled into them. Sunny wanted to cry out in terror. Ahead of them, in the alley, was a whole new horde of them.

“Now what?” Snowglobe gasped. She spun in a quick circle, looking for any means of escape.
Willow responded by charging off to the left, directly at the wooden fence. She struck it head first and charged a hole straight through. Splinters of wood flew as the white mare disappeared.

“Willow’s got the right idea,” Dusty said. He jumped forward and ducked through Willow’s improvised gate. The rest followed, Sunny at the back.

He looked around. They were in yet, another back yard. Willow teetered on her hooves and gave her head a violent shake.

“Are you okay?” Moon asked, nudging the shell-shocked mare forward. As quickly as the group could, they all crossed the lawn to the back door of a red house.

Willow chuckled as they reached the porch. “I guess I am hard headed.”

Sunny ran to the back door. “Please be unlocked,” he pleaded under his breath. To his relief, it was. “Everypony inside!” he yelled. They all charged into the house as he held the door open. Brick pushed Willow in last, leaving only Sunny outside. Zombie ponies were now pouring through the escape route Willow had provided. Three tried to pile through at once and jammed in small space. With a splintering sound the fence came apart and dozens of them poured out onto the lawn. Sunny backed into the doorway and took aim at one. He fired at the pink zombie closest to him and she dropped.

Hey, he was getting pretty good at this. Dusty was right; you do get used to it really fast. He backed into the house in time for Dusty to slam the door. The entire wall shook as the ponies outside collided with the door.

“Celestia, there must be like thirty of them out there,” Moon panted. The door shook again; this time a small crack appeared in the center.

“Where do we go?” Sunny asked worriedly as he looked around the well kempt house. “We can’t go out the front door. There’s bound to be more of them in the street.” He panicked, seeing no clear way out.

The door bowed inward from another blow and they all shied away. “Anywhere but near this door,” Willow replied, fear reflecting in her voice.

Dusty made a motion for them to follow, and they trailed the pegasus down a hall. They emerged into what looked like the front room of the house. Sunny ran over to one of the windows by the front door and peeked out. Sure enough, there were a good deal more of them milling around in the street. The sound of splintering wood from the back of the house warned that the door wasn’t going to hold much longer.

“We need to get upstairs,” Blossom insisted.

“How will that help us?” Moon asked in a flustered tone.

“Just trust me!” The yellow mare turned and started up the staircase at the far end of the room. Sunny blinked; he hadn’t even noticed the staircase. With no other options, the six of them followed Blossom up the carpeted stairs. Sunny was starting to feel quite winded. Running down an alley had drained him pretty well. And now, his worst enemy, stairs.

What’s this idea?” Willow rasped as they peaked the stairs.

“Roof,” the yellow mare replied without looking back. They ran down a short hall and into a bedroom. Sunny slammed the door after everypony was inside. Blossom crossed the room to the nearest window and threw open the shudders.

There was a resounding crash downstairs. “I think they’re inside,” Sunny pressed.

“Come on!” Blossom called. She climbed out the window and on to the narrow, sloped ledge of the roof. Sunny went after her, not keen to remain in the house. The others climbed out behind them. It wasn’t easy walking on the slanted roof. The wood and hay shingling was loose underhoof. A single misstep could send a pony tumbling down the harshly angled rooftop. They climbed up to the point where the roof arched and everypony stopped to rest.

Willow sat down hard. “Great,” she said in between breaths. “Now we’re trapped on a roof.” The white mare laid down. Sunny could hear the zombie ponies stampeding around in the building below.

“It’s a little better than down there. Wouldn’t you agree?” Blossom panted. She lowered herself down and laid back against the slope of the roof. The zombie ponies down on the street spotted them and ran at the house, doing their scream gurgle thing.

Willow groaned and adjusted her position. The section of roof where the mare had been only moments before burst open and a snarling head crammed its way halfway out. The blue head shoved its way out further, stretching the skin on its face tight. Willow screamed and scrambled to her hooves. She almost overbalanced but Brick held out a steadying hoof. Willow stood gaping at the shape; her breathing was short and irregular. The eyes in the sickly blue head swiveled to look at her. The white mare shrieked again and brought her hooves down on top of the zombie pony.

“Leave me alone!” She bellowed. She brought her hooves down a second time; this time the head disappeared back into the hole. “What!?” The white mare choked. She looked around at all of them, eyes lost in disbelief. “The roof just tried to eat me!” she bellowed at them.

Sunny looked over at Dusty, who was no longer sitting on the roof. Instead, he was hovering a few feet above. “We need to get off this roof,” the blue pegasus implied.

“Easy for you to say,” Moon muttered dejectedly.

Sunny looked over at the next house. It wasn’t too far, six or seven feet at most. “Think you all can make the jump?” he asked them all in general. He knew he could make it; but the others, he wasn’t quite so sure about them.

“We could try,” Willow mused. She walked over to the edge of the roof, sizing up the jump. Before Sunny could even realize what she was doing, the mare braced her hind legs and sprung across the gap. She landed with feet to spare. Sunny was surprised at how fast the mare could change her mood. One second she had been freaking out after a pony tried to bite her through the roof. Then she was jumping roofs like nothing had happened. That mare was hard to understand.

“Are you crazy?” Sunny gaped at Willow, who was now on the next house over. The mare looked quite pleased with herself.

“Maybe,” she chuckled. “Either way, it’s not that hard, come on.” She motioned with her hoof for the rest of them to proceed. Moon walked tentatively up to the ledge. Sunny watched nervously as she sprung and landed cleanly on the other side. Dusty had no trouble crossing due to the fact that he could fly. This gap was plenty small enough for Sunny to soar over. He landed on the other side to turn and watch the others cross.

“One roof down,” Moon sighed. She gazed out over the stretching rows of houses. “About fifty to go.”

* * *

“We gotta take a break,” Snowglobe panted. “I can’t jump any more roofs.”

The afternoon sun beat down on them from above. Most of the zombie ponies that had been following them had disbanded. Sunny didn’t quite know how many houses they had crossed, but it was definitely a lot.

Dusty touched down on the roof beside the orange pegasus. “Everythin’ looks safe up there, might as well take a quick break.” He folded his wings. The light blue pony had been watching the skies. Somehow, they had managed to momentarily forget about the zombie pegasi until one had dive-bombed them. From that point on, Dusty had been watching the skies to make sure they didn’t receive any more surprises.

Sunny was grateful for the lack of pegasi zombies. He had spotted a few on the ground, wings too crippled to fly. From what he could tell, pegasi zombies were rare. Maybe for every twenty zombies they would run into one flying one.

“Are we near the edge of the city?” Willow asked hopefully?

Dusty frowned. “Ah’d say a little over half,” he replied.

Willow chuckled and rolled onto her back. “I didn’t think my legs could ever hurt so bad.”

Dusty looked down at the mare balanced precariously on the roof arch. “Only there’s a little problem,” he added. Willow pricked her ears along with everypony else. “There’s an intersection two houses down, then the park. No more buildins’ to hop. The only way ah see we could go from there would be through the park, then after that, a row of apartment buildins.’ But there’s a lot of them between here an’ there.”

“Think we’ll just have to make a run for it?” Blossom mused.

“I don’t see any other way,” Sunny replied. He looked in the direction Dusty had indicated, shielding the sun from his eyes with a forehoof. It looked like a long ways.

Snowglobe stood up and balanced her way over to Sunny. “After you fired those shots, you never reloaded,” the gray mare stated. She levitated one of the ammo boxes out of his saddlebag and set to reloading the fired shots.

“Thanks,” he said absently. His mind was reeling from the craziness of the day. And it wasn’t even over yet. He doubted it was barely even lunch time.

Moon stood up. “Okay, time to go,” she insisted, cutting everypony’s rest short. Nopony was eager to get going but they readied to move on nonetheless. They set off again, slightly rested.

Two more roof jumps later the seven of them found themselves looking down on a large crossroad. This was where the neighborhood road connected to a larger one with a T shape. The park’s wrought iron fence loomed directly across the street, the metal gates ajar.

“Anypony got a plan?” Dusty asked them all.

Sunny went over the options in his head. A good ten or so zombie ponies staggered aimlessly around in the street. A discarded wagon sat on the curb a ways away from the park gates. A thought struck him.

“I have an idea.” Everypony turned to look at the orange pegasus expectantly. “It doesn’t look like there are any of them in the park. If we can somehow make it across the street, then we could close those gates. I’m guessing those fences are about five feet tall. And I don’t think zombies know how to climb.”

Dusty tilted his head. The pegasus looked somewhat impressed. He shot a look at the wrought iron fence surrounding the park, then to the two large swinging gates under the metal archway. “I like that idea,” he said.

“We’ll need to plan a little better though,” Blossom added.

Dusty nodded. “Well, here’s what I think we should do. We need to find a way into this house.” He tapped a hoof on the roof they were standing on. “And decide something over a bite to eat.”

* * *

“I wonder what’s taking them so long,” Moon wondered aloud. She peeked out the cracked front door. From this angle she could see the wrought iron fence of the park, and the numerous zombie ponies in the street.

“Just wait for the signal,” Willow murmured. Sunny and Dusty were up on the roof. The plan was in motion; they were just waiting for the signal.

Moon unstrapped the shotgun from her flank and checked the load. She jumped at the sound of a pony jeering.

Blossom started forward. “That’s the signal.”

“Wait for Sunny,” Moon held out a hoof to halt the advancing mare. She nuzzled the door open a little further, waiting for the familiar orange shape.

Something caught the attention of the ponies in the street. One of them turned and snarled before sprinting off to the left. The others followed right behind. That’s when she spotted Sunny soaring down from the building above, towards the park. Well, she wouldn’t exactly call it soaring, more of a gracious fall. “Let’s go!” She kicked open the door and galloped out into the street. The others followed right on her tail. She looked up in time to see Sunny clear the fence to land ungraciously in the grass.

“Let’s make this quick!” Willow called

Moon looked around to see Dusty a little ways away, down the street. The pegasus hovered about eight feet above the ground. Zombie ponies crowded below, jumping and snapping at the tasty pony above.

“They’re like hungry fish!” Dusty chuckled in awe. He looked down at the mindless creatures repulsively.

Moon slid to a stop in front of the gate and turned to face the street. Brick, Willow, Snowglobe, and Blossom all charged by.

“Get those gates closed!” Moon commanded them. She took stance just outside the gates. A zombie pony abandoned the fruitless effort of jumping for Dusty and instead decided to try for the ponies at the gate. Moon leveled her shotgun with the charging pony and let loose with both barrels. The creature’s head flew in six different directions, fanning the air with a red mist. Its body hit the ground rolling. She snapped open the shotgun and ejected the two spent shells. She loaded two more and closed the breach; it gave its normal satisfying metallic click that Moon had come to like.

The mare was completely at peace in her mind. Shooting these things was like therapy to her. They weren’t ponies anymore. They were monsters. Whatever they had been was now long gone, to be replaced by these mindless biting creatures. Putting them down was like mercy killing.

“Moon, come on!” Sunny called. She backed through the gateway as quickly as she could. The shotgun never lowered, her eyes still poised for more possible threats.

Sunny and Snowglobe slammed the gates closed when she was through. They gray mare levitated a heavy chain through the two gates. A large lock clasped down on the two ends, ensuring that the gates would not be opening easily.

“We’re good!” Snowglobe called.

A moment later Dusty landed next to them. “Well ah think that worked out pretty good,” he said cheerfully. Zombie ponies piled up against the gates, snarling and screeching at the ponies just out of reach.
Moon looked around at everypony; they all sported some sort of a triumphant smile. Except for Brick, he was just making his… Brick face.

Sunny walked up to Moon and gave her a light nudge. “I’m still never going to get used to you shooting a gun.”

“Hey now.” She shot him a smile. “You can’t complain about me shooting them now that you’ve done it too.”

The orange pegasus flushed. “I still don’t think I’m ever going to get used to me shooting a gun.”

“Come on, you’re pretty good at shooting a gun,” she teased. Moon threw a glance at the gate and took a self-conscious step away from the hungry ponies.

“No time for celebration yet.” Dusty’s comment drew everypony’s attention. “Ah have a feelin’ this next part ain’t gonna be any walk in the park.” The pegasus chuckled silently.

Willow brought her hoof up to meet her face. “Dusty, that was by far, the worst joke I have heard since I was a filly.” Dusty just smiled and set off down the dirt path through the park. Like normal, the rest of them followed.

As they walked, Moon looked around at the luscious environment. The green grass shone in the afternoon sun. Trees flanked the path on either side, their leafy green branches partially blocking the sunlight and casting pockmarks of jagged light on the winding trail. It almost felt like an ordinary day. That is, if you forgot about the zombie ponies.

Moon sighed and glanced at her six companions. If they did manage to make it out of this town alive, how would they make it all the way to Appleoosa? And even if they did make it that far, what would they do if Appleoosa wasn’t even there anymore? They were basing their survival on a hunch. But it wasn’t all bad. Her old life had been boring and repetitive, but this, this was okay. Moon mentally scolded herself. She almost liked this better than her old life. What was wrong with her? Things were terrible. She wasn’t supposed to like it.

She looked over at Sunny; who was fiddling with the bit on his battle saddle. “Now don’t go shooting anypony,” she teased.

Sunny looked at her. “Don’t worry, safety’s on.”

Moon chuckled silently to herself. The battle saddle did match his mane. The black material blended almost perfectly with his mane and tail. The darker colors brought his orange coat into better contrast. The rifle was mounted on the right side of his back. It gleamed in the sunlight. The silver painted barrel protruded slightly past his neck. Moon found it hard not to laugh out loud. It sounded like a funny thing to think, but Sunny looked cool. And knowing the orange pegasi’s personality, cool was not a word one would use to describe him. And here she was, thinking he looked cool.

“So I take it you like that shotgun?” Sunny made an awkward poke at conversation.

Moon nodded and looked down at the shotgun, which was once again strapped to her left flank. The stained oak finish gleamed dully in the sunlight, the many dents and scratches rippling the sun’s reflection. “Yeah,” she replied. “It makes me feel safe. If that makes sense.”

Sunny nodded in agreement. “It makes you feel bigger…” He flushed. “Stronger,” the orange pegasus added sheepishly.

Moon looked around at the group once more. The moment of cheerfulness had passed to be replaced by a kind of sad realization, so basically, back to normal. “Do you think there’s anypony else out there?” she asked, only loud enough for Sunny to hear.

It took the pegasus a while to respond. Moon patiently awaited his answer, instead focusing on the trees as they walked. “There has to be,” he finally replied. The two exchanged a glance. “Right?” Obviously Sunny was just as worried as she was.

“I just don’t know,” she sighed. “We were in that that hospital for a month. I can’t imagine what’s happened while we were locked up. Look at what happened to the town in a single day. As far as we know, all of Equestria might be gone.”

“It’s just something we’re going to have to find out in time.” Tentatively, Sunny laid a comforting wing across the blue mare’s back. She couldn’t help but to smile. She knew he wasn’t comfortable with touching other ponies. Yet here he was, overcoming his uneasiness to try and make her feel better. Sunny was the nicest pony she knew. Actually, he was the only pony she had known before everything happened. The only one who was still alive at least.

Moon tuned in on a conversation Dusty and Snowglobe were having.

“So let me get this straight,” Snowglobe said, sounding mildly surprised. “Before all of this, you drove trains?”
Dusty nodded. “That’s right.”

“So tell me,” Snowglobe chided. “What is the safe pressure rating for a standard issue Steambuck articulated?”

Dusty frowned. “Was that before or after they rebuilt the wrappers and rapid release valves?”

Snowglobe grinned evilly. “Before.”

The blue pegasus replied without missing a beat. “Regulations say three hundred psi, but ah found that you can push it to four. That way, once you get up to speed you can run off momentum and save coal. Not only that, but you have pressure built for hills. But much higher and you’ll blow out the pressure release.” Snowglobe’s mouth fell open. Dusty seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself. “Ah can also tell you the short ton rating if you’d like, or how much of a difference on torque you would get just by decreasing the size of the driving wheels by a half inch and shortening the couplers.”

“No, that’s okay.” Snowglobe cut across hurriedly before the pegasus could continue. “I think I get the point.” The gray mare was going red in the face. Dusty chucked and flicked his tail. “I still know more about generators than you do,” she huffed under her breath.

Moon turned her attention to Willow, who appeared to be trying to coax brick to speak. From the look of frustration the mare wore, she was not succeeding.

Moon could see the fence at the other end of the park. Pretty soon they would be back to walking down zombie infected streets.

Sunny squinted ahead. “I have a feeling that this isn’t going to be easy,” he spoke glumly.

“Why’s that?” Blossom asked.

“Because so far, it’s been too easy.”

Dusty rolled his eyes at the orange pegasus. “Well if you say that then a’ course somethin’ bad’s gonna happen.”

“Just a little hard to think anything positive right now,” Sunny replied.

“You gotta’ look at the positive side, like...” The blue pegasus trailed off. “You just gotta look at the good part,” he finished awkwardly. They walked on.

“How many zombies do you think are going to be out there?” Snowglobe wondered aloud as they neared the gates.

Willow rolled her eyes. “Why do we keep calling them zombie ponies?” she said with heavy exasperation.

“What do you mean?” Sunny asked.

Willow cleared her throat. “Well, zombies are mythical creatures. Just things from old ponytales, story time monsters designed to scare foals. Zombies are creatures that pop up out of the ground, literally the undead.”

“I think I may see your point,” Snowglobe said.

Willow shot the mare an annoyed look. “The things we are dealing with aren’t dead. It’s not like they’re crawling up out of the ground. These are just normal ponies with some kind of a virus. They still bleed and die like any other pony. They aren’t any different than us, other than the fact that they eat meat and don’t seem to have any remaining intelligence. This is a virus, these aren’t zombies.”

Moon nodded. It did make sense. “Well, they act a lot like the story zombies. I think that’s why we started calling them that.”

Willow chuckled. “That’s just been on my mind for a while now. It was starting to bother me.” She sighed and cast a look around. “Hey Brick,” she muttered. “Could you dig me out a pain potion?” The stallion nodded and rummaged in her bags as they walked. He pulled out a little orange potion that he then gave to willow. The mare downed it dropped the empty vial back in her saddlebags.

“Trouble,” Sunny said hastily. He pointed a hoof towards the gate, where four zombie ponies were doing their… zombie things, which included stumbling around blankly.

Moon immediately brought forth her shotgun. “We’re going to have to go through them,” she said. Dusty nodded in agreement and drew his revolver. They walked forward until the mindless ponies were only about a hundred feet away.

“Hold it,” Willow warned. “We don’t want to get much closer; picking them off at a distance would be easier.”

Dusty holstered his weapon to speak. “Well let’s get em’ to run at us then.” He looked at Sunny. “Do some target practice. Try and hit one Sunny.”

The orange pegasus nodded, a little nervously. He took the bit for the battle saddle in his mouth and stood still. Dusty drew his weapon again. Sunny took a deep breath and the rifle on his back fired. Moon watched as one of the four ponies near the gate stumbled. It turned its sickly gaze to them and squealed.

“I think you hit it.” Snowglobe murmured. She shrank back behind the larger shape of Brick. The four ponies near the gate ran at them. The things may not have been the most coordinated; but they could still run really fast.

“I hate these things,” Willow muttered. She took a few steps backwards until she was standing behind the small defensive line they had set up. Sunny, Moon, Brick, and Dusty all stood at the front, waiting for the zombie ponies to come into range. The one Sunny had hit lumbered towards them at the front. Brick fired and it fell flat on its face. Sunny fired but he missed whatever he was aiming for. Brick dropped one and Dusty fired two more shots into one of the remaining two. The last was now no more than ten feet away. Moon aimed her shotgun and sent a round of buckshot into its flank. It tumbled to the ground leaving a trail of blood in its wake. Brick quickly dispatched it with a single shot.

“Well that wasn’t too hard.” Moon chuckled. She froze, slowly turning her head to look back. The others did as well. Screams and grunts reached her ears from the foliage beyond and several ponies appeared around a bend in the trail.

“You just had to say it,” Dusty muttered. Willow, Snowglobe and Blossom all hurried to get to the other side of their line of gunners. “This is gonna get bad.” Dusty sighed and began loading new bullet casings into Valediction.

Moon did the same, reloading her one spent shell. Three more of them ran at the group from inside the park. Moon figured they had learned how to climb the fence. As they neared, the four dispatched the incoming zombies easily. But Moon could still hear the sounds of zombie ponies. From around the corner ran more of them than she had ever seen together, too many to count. The multicolored wave of ponies was still a fair distance away, rapidly gaining.

Sunny took a step back. “Run or shoot?” he asked nervously. Nopony replied. “Run or shoot!?”

Dusty was staring at the incoming horde in unmasked worry. He dropped out of his daze and shook his head. “Both!” he yelled. The pegasus backed up, rapidly firing Valediction at the incoming ponies. Sunny, Moon, and Brick all did the same.

Moon was starting to panic. They were coming too fast. Plus there were way too many of them to kill. She cast a look to Dusty, who nodded. “Check that!” he yelled. “Just run!” As one, the four ponies turned and ran. The sudden movement took the three ponies behind them by surprise.

“Run like you did something to make Willow mad!” Dusty hollered. And so, once again, they were running. Moon cast a look back to see the zombie ponies gaining on them.

They left the park through a set of metal gates similar to the ones on the other side. Blossom slid to a stop.
“What are you doing?” Moon yelled.

The mare didn’t respond. Instead she ran back towards the gate. The yellow mare closed one of the double gates. Moon stood watching in horror. The others had stopped as well. Dusty was taking the time to reload his weapon again. But as the mare went to close the second gate, a zombie pony reached it and bowled her over. Moon aimed the shotgun and blasted the snarling pony backwards. Blossom scrambled to her hooves and finished pulling the gate closed. She set the latch and took a hurried step back.

“Let’s go!” she called. “That gate isn’t going to hold them for very long.

“Nice work,” Sunny complimented.

“Thanks.” The mare took a step forward and winced. Nopony else but Moon seemed to notice. They set off down the street at a fast trot. They were no longer trying to use stealth. Anything that appeared in front of them in the street was blasted.

Moon fell in stride beside Blossom. “Are you okay?” she asked.

Blossom shook her head. “No,” she croaked. “It bit me.” Tears ran heavy in her eyes. “It fucking bit me.”

Moon gasped. She looked around at her fellow companions, but none of them were paying the two mares at the back any attention. Both her and Blossom knew what came next. “Willow says the shortest it takes a pony to turn is about half a day.

Blossom shook her head again, looking at the ground. “It doesn’t matter. I’m dead. It’s over.”

Moon felt sorrow building up inside her. She hadn’t known the mare for very long. But she was like a member of their group. I can’t believe this, she thought. I’m thinking as if she’s already dead. “If we get Willow now then maybe she can—”

“More ahead!” Sunny bellowed. Moon heard the sound of more gunshots and turned to see a good dozen run out of an alley between two apartment buildings. Dusty and Sunny both unleashed fire on the incoming ponies. Sunny fired twice but on the third time his rifle clicked. “Snowglobe!” he yelled. “Reload.” The gray mare ran over to the pegasi’s side and levitated one of the boxes of ammo from his saddlebags.

“You got one box left,” she said. Sunny nodded, never taking his eyes off the incoming horde.

Moon looked back to see another horde pouring out of a nearby apartment building. “We got more coming in from behind!” she warned. Dusty looked back. Moon thought the light blue pegasus looked both annoyed and flustered at the same time.

“Time to get off the street!” Dusty yelled. He motioned for them to follow and sprinted for an apartment building. Moon fired backwards as they ran, not really aiming for anything in particular. Dusty pulled open the door to an apartment and the seven of them ran inside.

Once they were in, Dusty slammed the door and ran over to another just inside the main room. They were in some sort of a combination lobby hallway. “These rooms have windows,” he said, motioning for them to enter through another door he had pulled open. Moon trotted into the room and looked back. The door to the outside shook as it was bombarded by zombie ponies. Blossom was standing just outside.

Sunny looked questioningly at the yellow mare. “What are you doing?” He made a hoof motion for her to get in the room. “get in here!”

She trotted to the door but stopped right before entering. “Make sure you guys make it out of here,” she said. The mare slammed the door, leaving them in the dark room.

* * *

She propped a chair up against the door to ensure that the rest of them didn’t get out. She took a deep breath. It was now or never. Blossom turned towards the failing front door. Already it was only hanging on by a single hinge. She looked down at the bite on her upper right foreleg. She had been inches from closing the gate when the thing had hit her. Somehow it had gotten her. She chuckled meekly to herself. This was it. She was going to die.

“But not without a fight,” she growled. The door collapsed inwards and zombie ponies started pouring into the small room. She turned tail and ran for the stairs. They were right behind her. She imagined she could feel their breath on her tail. Without slowing, she took a hard left and started up the stairs. Blossom pushed as much out of her body as she could. The others had to make it out. She at least owed them that.

She shrugged off her barding to lessen the weight. “Horseapples!” she swore. She had left with half their food supply. It was too late now.

Four flights of stairs later she found herself panting for breath. Celestia, don’t these things ever get tired? Her body was screaming for her to stop. But she couldn’t, not now. She burst through a door at the top of the next flight. She was now on the roof of the building. Quickly, she slammed it behind her. She stood on her hindlegs and put her back against the door as the monsters threw themselves against it from the inside. She breathed heavily, the moments break allowing her to regain her breath. The door groaned and she leaned more of her weight against it.

Blossom looked around at the tar and gravel roof. There were buildings like this all over the place now. She preferred the older ones better. Once she had been to Ponyville. The roofs of all the houses there had been hay. They didn’t have any apartment buildings or anything like these new towns and cities. It was all urban now. She wondered to herself why she was thinking about houses at a time like this.

The door shook again and one of the hinges snapped. “Breaks over,” she gasped, still short on air. She left the door and ran over to the buildings edge. The next apartment was a ways away. She stood contemplating the jump. “I can make that,” she said to herself. It was only about ten or so feet. She looked back to see the top half of the door bulging outwards, the bottom half still connected. Zombie ponies tried to cram whatever part of their body they could through the rapidly widening space.

Tentatively, Blossom backed away from the ledge until she had a good twenty foot running distance. “Celestia save me,” She murmured. With a hard push she rocketed forward, putting on as much speed as she could muster. At the edge she pushed off hard. The world seemed to slow down. Blossom looked down as she flew. A dirty alley stretched by below. A few zombie ponies that had been milling around gazed hungrily up at her. On the street below, she heard a gunshot. They had made it out. Blossom felt relief wash through every limb in her body. She touched down on the other side. Her weak leg gave out and she tumbled across the gravel roof.

Slowly, the mare pushed herself back to her hooves. “Yeah!” she yelled. “Make that one!” The door on the roof she had just left burst open and zombie ponies poured out of the building like a bloody rainbow river. Blossom stood watching triumphantly as the horde dispersed from the staircase to spread out on the roof. The first four that ran at her fell short and Blossom jeered. The next that jumped however, landed half on half off the roof. It scrabbled at her, snapping wildly before it slid off the rooftop. Blossom took a nervous step back.

“Disregard what I said earlier,” she chuckled nervously. Great, now she was talking to them. A few more jumped at her but fell short. One almost made it, but struck it’s head on the roof and slid off. Then, they stopped jumping. More of them were still filing onto the roof. But they weren’t jumping anymore. Blossom took another step back. Something bad was about to happen. She could feel it. Then slowly, a blue one started taking backwards steps. It fixed its sickly gaze on her and growled low in its throat.

“No,” Blossom gawked. “No! You can’t do that!” she cried. “That’s not fair! You aren’t supposed to be smart!” The creature backed up until it was almost on the other end of the roof. Its fellow companions, or whatever they were, stumbled idly around in confusion. “Don’t you do it!” Blossom yelled, backing away further still. She reached for her saddlebags for something to defend herself with before she realized she had ditched them on the stairs.

“Great,” she chuckled. “I’m screwed.” She looked down at her leg. “Well, I was screwed anyways. But now I’m really screwed.” The zombie pony launched itself forward, unsteadily gaining speed, as it lumbered towards the end of its roof. It flung itself off the ledge and landed in a heap on her building. The others took hint and began to do the same.

“Out of all of you fuckers I had to get the smart one!” she bellowed. “Why me!?” Blossom backed up until she had no further to go. This was the last building in its row. There were no others to jump to, not even a way down. The zombie pony that had made it across the gap rose to its hooves and charged at her. She dodged and it when soaring off the edge of the building. But the others were now running at her, too many to avoid. Blossom looked back at the street below.

“Please Celestia,” she pleaded. “It’s now or never.” She turned towards the street, and jumped. Her mind went into a frenzy of thoughts and memories. Family, friends, places, sights, sounds, everything she had once held dear. Nothing was comprehendible but the wind in her mane.

She was filled with the most painful sensation she had ever felt. She heard her body crunch as it struck the pavement. A green zombie pony landed next to her, its neck broke on impact.

She had splayed on her side when she had landed. Blossom chuckled. The coppery taste of blood filled her mouth. Blossom looked down at her legs, now mangled and broken. A bone stuck out of one at the knee joint. The sound of more of the monsters hitting the pavement filled her ears, somehow making itself heard over the ringing in her ears. Her breath caught in her throat and she coughed blood onto the pavement. It hurt to breathe. Slowly, her vision began to fade around the edges.

“Didn’t catch me,” she gurgled. She rolled over onto her back, sending searing waves of pain across her body. Celestia’s sun hovered at its midpoint in the sky. Blood pooled in her mouth and nose and she was forced to turn her head to spit it out. She looked back at the sun, which was now slowly becoming darker.

Blossom closed her eyes. “I’ll be with you.”

* * *

“Where’d they all go?” Sunny wondered aloud as they walked down the deserted street.

Moon sniffed. “Blossom must have lured them.”

“Why would she do that?” Willow looked down at her hooves.

Moon realized they didn’t know. “Because,” she answered. “At the gate, she got bit.”

Dusty looked over at her, slightly shocked. “Well, she saved all of us,” he added awkwardly. “Ah give condolences. But if she got bit, then she’s dead. An’ she knows it too.” Snowglobe sniffed. “She’s gone,” Dusty finished levelly.

Moon let her mind wander as they walked down the once again deserted street. They had broken out of the room Blossom had locked them in. There hadn’t been a pony in sight. For a while they had heard jeers and screams, but they had stopped a few minutes ago.

“Look over there,” Dusty broke the silence. “City limits are just up ahead.”

“Finally we can get out of here,” Snowglobe said somewhat cheerily. “I’m sick and tired of this town.”

“Aw horseapples!” Dusty stomped his hoof.

“What is it?” Sunny asked worriedly.

“That mare had half our food supply with her,” Dusty looked around in frustration.

Snowglobe drew in air, letting it whistle through her teeth. “That is a problem.”

“Don’t worry,” Sunny added. “There are a few houses on the outskirts of town that I’m sure we can check.”

“What we really need is some more guns,” Dusty huffed. “And ammo. I have a whole eight shots left for my gun.

“Three here,” Moon added.

Sunny couldn’t believe the luck they had. They had made it out of the town with mere bullets to spare. So much could have gone wrong it was scary. But the real loss was blossom. She was part of their group. Sure she had only been with them for a few days, but she had still been a part of them, one of the very few survivors. And now their numbers were down to six.

Moon levitated the shotgun from her side and looked it over. “You know,” she mused. “I kind of like this thing. It’s pretty good at zombie killing.” Sunny still couldn’t believe Moon was very keen to guns at all. She just didn’t seem like the mare who would want to be near something like that. Well, a lot of ponies didn’t like guns. That’s why there were some towns where guns weren’t allowed. He had never been to places like them before. But in some towns guns weren’t needed. Everypony was nice to each other, and nothing bad ever really happened. He had heard somepony mention Ponyville being a place like that once.

Sunny remembered, that when he was a foal, things like guns didn’t even exist. It was only a while ago that some engineer pony had come up with the idea. And from there it had spread to all of what it was now. Some ponies still refused to acknowledge the things existed. Towns like Ponyville avoided them altogether. Sometimes, Sunny could agree with them. Guns were meant to do nothing more than kill ponies. But in this current situation, that was just what they needed.

“I have a great idea,” Willow said. Everypony turned their attention to her. “Once we get out of town, we find one of those houses out there. See if we can find some food and ammo. Then we sleep. I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m tired.

After running from zombie ponies all day, I need a rest.”

They all murmured their agreement.

Dusty unfurled his wings and flew around above them as they walked. “More unpredictable random stuff, here we come!”

< a thanks to doppelganger for ideas.

< I no longer have an editor; so bear with me if there are a few errors.

< If you are unclear of weapon design, please refer to my text wall previously posted.

< I'm not quite sure about the lines between teen and mature. If you think I am veering further into the mature section, please tell me. I'd rather be told by a reader than have my ass reported.

< Also, comedy tag? Some parts are funny, but I wouldn't really clasify it as comedy. What do you ponies think?

<Please, I urge you to leave comments.

< Also, tell me if you find any references. I'd like to know if anypony gets them.

<Thanks for sticking with me.

~Sorren

Chapter 6 Guns

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Undead Equestria

By: Sorren

Chapter six: Guns

“Look what ah found.” Dusty said happily as he dug around in the hall closet.

Sunny chuckled at the pegasus’ cheerfulness. After reaching the outskirts of town they had searched multiple houses. Most of them had been emptied. The last one they had tried to enter was locked up tight. But after giving Willow a minute with the door, they were in; and the white mare only had a mild headache. This house was stocked with all sorts of goodies. The pantry had proven sufficient enough to restock their food supply after they had lost half of it with Blossom.

“What’d you find?” Sunny asked.

The pegasus reached into the closet and pulled out something by the strap. “A gun.” He smiled.

Sunny looked at it. It was a gun, complete with a strap and holster so a pony could tether it to their body. Black finish, the thing looked half plastic. “It doesn’t look like the best gun,” Sunny poked.

Dusty frowned. “Well it’s not the best. But it still shoots things don’t it?”

Sunny chuckled. “Probably some hoofball-mom’s home defense system.”

“It’s not entirely the gun that’s the prize.” Dusty stuck his head back into the closet and pulled out a few boxes. “Ammo,” he added cheekily. “Three boxes of low caliber ammunition. Aaaaaaand,” he said eagerly. “One box of rounds for Valediction.”

“Hurray,” Sunny drawled. “Now we have more stuff to shoot stuff with.”

Dusty shot him a look. “Well fine then mister I-don’t-like-to-shoot-guns. Go and hang out with the mares.”

Sunny shrugged. “Okay, I’ll leave you on your quest for ammunition. Or whatever you’re doing.” Dusty just waved a dismissing hoof and buried his head back into the closet. Sunny chuckled and headed down the hall towards the kitchen.

“Look, I’m telling you.” He heard Willow’s voice from up ahead. “I’m going to cook them, and if you don’t want to eat them then you can go hungry.”

“It just doesn’t feel right,” Snowglobe protested. Sunny walked into the kitchen to see the two mares glaring at one another.

“What’s going on?” he asked idly.

“This mare is resorting to barbaric terms,” Snowglobe huffed.

Sunny shot Willow a, “What’s she talking about” glance. The white mare replied with a chuckle. “I’m cooking eggs.”

Snowglobe shot Willow an angry look. “In case you’ve forgotten, we’re herbivores.”

Willow shrugged. “Well yeah, but eggs taste good. It’s not like we’re eating an animal or something.”

“Snowglobe, a lot of ponies eat eggs,” Sunny replied cautiously. “Just like ponies drink milk. It’s not like we’re eating the cow. You know, just eating the stuff from the cow.”

Snowglobe sighed. “I just don’t want to be anywhere near eating something that came from something alive. It’s too much like them.” She made a hoof motion out the kitchen window.

“Well technically plants are alive,” Willow murmured.

Snowglobe glared. “That’s not the same!”

Willow lifted a hoof to cover her face in mock horror. “Okay, easy there. Don’t hit me mrs. perfect.”

Moon walked into the room. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“We’re talking about eggs,” Sunny replied.

Moon frowned. “Why eggs?”

Sunny shrugged. “What do you think?” Willow asked the blue mare.

Moon looked puzzled. “Think about what?”

“About ponies eating eggs,” Willow insisted.

Moon tilted her head to once side, thinking. “Is this a trick question? And why are you and Snowglobe looking at me like hungry animals?”

Willow chuckled. “No, it’s not.” She looked over at Snowglobe. “And stop looking at Moon like you want to eat her. We’re herbivores, remember?”

The angry gray mare stomped a hoof. “Would you stop that!?”

“Stop what?” Willow asked in the most unconvincing innocent voice Sunny had ever heard. Sunny stood back and tried not to laugh as Snowglobe glared daggers into the white mare.

Moon shrugged. “I really don’t see much wrong with eating eggs,” she replied cautiously. “It’s not like you gain any nutrients from eating them but they still taste good.”

Willow beamed triumphantly at the gray mare. “Ha,” she chided.

“That is it!” Snowglobe threw herself at Willow and the two mares fell to the floor.

“Bahahaha, help!” Willow chuckled. “She’s got me.”

This only angered the mare further. She continued to try and get a blow in on Willow. Sunny couldn’t quite tell what kind of a fight this was. It wasn’t a play fight but it wasn’t exactly serious either. Willow rolled onto her back and drew her hooves up close to her body. Snowglobe jumped on top, intent on getting a blow in on the antagonizing mare. Willow bucked out, bringing her hind legs up into her attacker’s belly. Snowglobe went sailing into the air. She struck the roof with a thud and landed on the kitchen table. One of the legs broke and the mare was sent tumbling to the floor with an assortment of plates and glasses.

Willow looked genuinely surprised. She scrambled to her hooves and ran to Snowglobe’s aid. “Are you okay?” she asked worriedly.

Snowglobe groaned. “You hit me with a roof.”

Willow frowned. “Well, you were the one that hit the roof, but yeah, sorry.”

Moon was staring wide eyed at the white mare. “Willow?” she murmured. Willow turned to look at her. “How did you do that?”

“You mean throw Snowglobe into the roof?” Willow asked casually. Moon nodded. “I don’t know, I guess Snowglobe doesn’t weigh very much. Maybe?”

Sunny snorted, everypony turned to look at him. “Sorry,” he said. “This just looks really funny.”

Dusty poked his head into the kitchen. “Is everypony alright? Ah heard a noise.”

“Yeah,” Sunny replied. “Snowglobe just hit the roof.”

Dusty nodded. “Okay then.” He made to leave, then did a double take. “Wait… what?”

Moon chuckled. “It’s okay, nothing major.” Dusty still looked skeptical.

“Oh yeah,” Willow added. “Would you like some eggs for breakfast?”

Dusty nodded again. “Sounds good to me.”

“I think you are out-ruled.” Willow batted her eyes at the stunned mare on the floor.

“You’re strong,” Snowglobe awed. Sunny could agree with the shell-shocked mare. Willow had thrown her like she was a bag of paper. He thought back to when Willow had charged right through the fence, or when she had broken the lock back in the tunnel. He couldn’t help but wonder what was up with her. She wasn’t normal. But he had known that since he had seen her eyes glowing in the tunnel.

Sunny couldn’t stand it anymore. “Willow,” he asked tentatively. “Is something going on with you?”
The white mare tilted her head to one side. A lock of her crimson mane fell into her face and she flicked it away. “No,” she replied dumbly.

Sunny sighed. “Come on Willow; you just threw Snowglobe like she was a balloon animal.”

Snowglobe chuckled and pointed a hoof up at the roof. “Look, I left a mark in the ceiling.” Sunny looked up. There was, in fact, a Snowglobe-shaped indentation in the ceiling.

Willow rolled her eyes. “Okay, if you really want to know, it’s going to take me a while to explain. Brick!” she hollered. “Could you come and finish the food?” A moment later the brown stallion trotted into the room. “Thank you Brick,” Willow shot the stallion a smile before turning back to them. “Let’s find a comfortable place to sit if I’m going to tell you this. Better get Dusty too.”

“I’ll get him,” Moon offered. She left the kitchen to go find the blue pegasus.

Willow led them to a sitting room. The mare sat down on a comfortable looking cushion and motioned for them to do the same. They sat on the opposite end of the room so each of them could look at Willow head-on. Snowglobe rubbed a spot on the back of her neck. “I think my neck must have hit a stud,” she muttered.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Willow said, sounding sincere. “I didn’t mean to throw you into the roof. It was an accident.” Moon and Dusty entered the room. Moon took a seat beside Sunny while Dusty remained standing.

“So,” Willow started. “You are all sitting here looking at me because I need to tell you exactly what the hay is going on with me. I think I’ll find this a lot easier to tell if you all hear this from the beginning. Plus Snowglobe hasn’t heard the full story yet.”

Snowglobe opened her mouth to say something but Willow shot her a look. “Snowglobe, I swear it by Celestia, if you interrupt me while I’m talking I will throw you through the roof.” Snowglobe decided not to speak. Willow tapped her hooves together. “Right, so let’s start from the beginning. When all of this broke out, I was the first to know what was going on. Mainly because I watched as Sugar Apple slowly turned into one of them. Then next thing I know, he escapes and bites me. I managed to quell the virus, or so I thought. I did stop it, for a while at least. I stopped the original infection before it could spread any further than the wound, with penicillin and formalin,” Willow smirked. “As Moon so greatly approves of, but two days after, I found myself turning. So I took a large dose of that unknown chemical. I just started calling it medical drain-o. So after taking that, I seemed to be fine, again. With that dosage I almost killed it. Almost, but it managed to stay hidden somewhere in my body. I started to feel its effects again back in the tunnel. So that night, as you all know, I took three times more than the last dosage of the stuff. That one nearly killed me, but it worked. I ran a few screens on myself last night. I am virus free.” She smiled around at all of them in turn.

“But that still doesn’t explain why you’ve been acting so weird,” Sunny said.

Willow nodded. “I was getting to that. But this is the part I’m not quite clear on. Now while I did eliminate the virus; I think I acquired some of its traits. Like for instance, the strength. I noticed that the zombie ponies…” Willow stumbled. “Damn it,” she muttered. “Now you guys got me saying it.” She waved it away and continued. “With them, strength seems to be an attribute; considering doors don’t seem to last very long if they want to get through them. Also, this one may come as a bit of a shocker, but I can see in the dark. So if I can, I bet they can too.”

“Whoa,” Dusty awed. “You can see in the dark?” Willow nodded. “That’s so cool.”

“Dusty,” Moon face-hoofed. “That’s not supposed to be cool.”

Willow shrugged. “Actually, it is kinda’ cool.” Moon rolled her eyes. “But, the point is that I somehow inherited the traits of our zombie friends. I don’t know how it happened. Even after the virus is gone, the effects it had on my body still remain. I’m just glad I didn’t inherit the desire to eat ponies along with the strength and eyesight. So there you have it,” Willow chuckled. “I’m half zombie.”

Moon shook her head as if she were taking in too much information at once. “So let me get this straight?” she said. “You somehow managed to get zombie strength, and the eyesight thingy, yet you have no desire to eat ponies?” Willow lowered her eyes and Moon caught the motion. “Willow?” Moon asked tentatively. “What is it?”

The white mare shuffled a hoof and looked back up at them. “I have plenty of self-control not to go taking bites out of ponies…. but…” Willow hesitated. “Meat does… it’s not bad.” She finished awkwardly.
Snowglobe gasped. “You...? Meat?”

Willow glared. “It’s not like I chose to! I inherited certain traits of whatever those creatures have. I guess I kind of got the whole meat eating thing as well.” Snowglobe continued to gape at Willow as if she were chewing on a foal. “Look Snowglobe, just because I can eat you, doesn’t mean I will. Somehow I bonded with the virus but still managed to maintain my pony traits. I can still eat fruits and vegetables. But I can also eat meat.” Every time the mare mentioned the meat eating part she cringed.

Sunny frowned. “So you’re not like… contagious or anything?”

Willow shook her head. “Nope, I am one hundred percent safe. Like I said, I bonded with the virus. Don’t ask me how, even I don’t know that. But it’s not in me anymore. I just have the after effects. So yes,” she smiled. “It’s still okay to hug me.”

Moon chuckled nervously. “No thanks. I would like to keep my ribs intact and un-crushed thanks.”

Willow took a sharp intake of breath. “I almost forgot.” She looked at Sunny. “You aren’t the only one who’s immune anymore.”

Sunny looked around; but Willow’s gaze was fixed on him. He suddenly felt a little uncomfortable. But he had no idea why. “Why’s that?” he asked cautiously.

“Last night I did some testing on myself. I took a sample from some of the blood on Moon’s shotgun. And I took some of mine. Apparently when I bonded with the virus I also, somehow, found some sort of immunity. The cells from the virus won’t even touch mine. Well, they will touch. But they won’t bond.”

“Hurray,” Moon drawled sarcastically. “We found out how to make ponies immune. Just have a zombie pony bite them. Inject them with a bunch of drugs and embalming fluid. Then inject them with more drugs and hope they don’t die. And then they might just be immune.”

Willow shrugged. “Maybe, or I might just be an exception. We can’t really know unless we get an actual specialist to look at it.”

Snowglobe stood up and stretched. Sunny thought she seemed to do it a lot. If he didn’t know any better he would say that she was over exaggerating it. Sunny looked at Moon, who rolled her eyes. She had been doing that a lot recently.

Willow stood up as well. “I don’t know about the rest of you.” She shot a teasing look in Snowglobe’s direction. “But I’m hungry.”

Dusty nodded. “Ah say we eat. Then we need to pack up and get out of here. We got quite a long ways to go, best to get started as soon as possible.”

* * *

“I’m just curious,” Sunny asked as they walked in the mid-day sun. “Is the road really the safest place to walk?”

Dusty shrugged. “It’s a wagon trail. Ah figure if we follow this, it’ll take us straight to the next town. Besides, Ah’ve never been the best at navigation. All I really know is that Appleoosa’s that way.” He pointed a hoof down the dirt road.

“Sounds good to me,” Sunny replied. He was getting used to the battle saddle now. At first it had felt big and awkward. The bit that hung right under his jaw had been driving him insane as well. But now he had gotten used to his chin brushing the piece of metal occasionally. Sunny was starting to have doubts that there was even an apocalypse at all. So far he hadn’t heard anything, seen anything, nothing. The only word was that of the two ponies who had pulled into town so long ago, and they were both dead now. What if they got to the next town to see all the ponies holding a big banner that said “FOOLED YA.’?” Sunny gave his head a quick shake. His mind was starting to wander. He was a little afraid of the ideas he might produce if he let it continue.

“Does anypony have a pair of sunglasses?” Willow asked, almost pleadingly.

Moon shot the mare a curious glance. “Why do you need sunglasses?”

“Because,” Willow replied. “I can barely see at all. The sun is blinding me. I think it has something to do with this night vision thing.”

“Sorry Willow,” Snowglobe said. “I don’t think any of us were thinking about sunglasses when we packed up.”

Willow nodded. “Right, well if you see a pair, please for the love of Celestia give them to me, before my eyes melt. I don’t care if they’re shaped like stars. I need them.”

“Sure can do,” Snowglobe replied casually.

Dusty sighed. “Ah really wish we had a sky wagon right now.”

Sunny frowned. “What’s that?”

Dusty chuckled. “What have you been living under a rock?” Sunny shot him a look. “Oh yeah right, you’ve never left Desert Sage.”

“Sadly, no.” Sunny hung his head. “Mind telling me what a sky wagon is?”

Dusty obliged. “Well, sky wagons are special wagons with magical talismans in them. They have to be pulled by pegasus ponies. They got really popular around the larger cities. One pegasus can usually pull a small to medium sized wagon fairly well. But if you get any larger than that then more are needed. The things either run off of a small generator or a spark battery. They’re meant to get ponies places, and pretty fast too.”

Snowglobe nodded. “It’s quite a genius design. Before sky wagons they had sky chariots. But with two pegasi pulling they could usually only carry the weight of about one or two ponies. The sky wagon uses magical energy to create an upward thrust, using the core structure itself as means of propulsion. With this, two pegasi can carry about ten or so ponies.”

Dusty looked puzzled for a moment. “Uh, yeah, what she said.” he added dumbly.

“Maybe we can find one.” Sunny aimed for a cheerful note.

Both Dusty and Snowglobe shook their heads simultaneously. “Not out here,” Dusty said

“You aren’t going find a sky wagon anywhere this side of Canterlot,” Snowglobe finished.

“Well okay then,” Sunny said. A sky wagon did sound pretty nice. Walking did get boring really fast. Sunny peeked into the back of a wagon as they passed it. Inside were two shot ponies. They had been dead long enough to start rotting. He shied away. The wagon had been heading towards Desert Sage. That wasn’t a good sign.

* * *

A day later, they were still walking. The sun was low on the horizon, casting them in shadow as they walked. A wooden sign on the road read. 'YOU ARE NOW ENTERING NA LE.' The middle of the sign had been torn away so that the name of the town was no longer decipherable. Sunny could see the faint shapes of houses in the distance. The town didn’t look very large at all. He guessed no more than two or three hundred ponies lived there, or, had lived there.

“Do you think there are ponies there?” Moon wondered aloud.

Willow shook her head. “Don’t know, I don’t see any smoke so I’ll take that as a good sign.” She nudged Brick. “What do you think?” The brown pony just shrugged. “I think so too.” Willow replied.

“The question is,” Dusty said. “Do we want to risk it? It would be nice to stop and refill on water and sleep for the night.”

“Maybe there’s a supermarket,” Sunny voiced aloud.

Snowglobe shot him a funny look. “We have plenty of food. Why the hay would you want to find a supermarket?”

“Because there might be muffins there,” he answered.

Snowglobe looked puzzled. “He has a thing for muffins,” Moon clarified. The gray mare nodded in partial understanding.

Dusty chuckled. “So what do you all say?” he asked them all evenly. “Town or no town?”

Sunny shrugged. “I could do with either.”

Dusty rolled his eyes. “Anypony else have an idea?”

“It seems safe enough,” Moon said. “It wouldn’t hurt. I say we go to see what’s up.”

“I guess we check out the town,” Dusty said.

* * *

“Seems safe enough,” Willow muttered in a perfect mock of Moon’s voice.

“Shut up!” the blue mare snapped. She fired her shotgun at a charging zombie pony and stopped to reload. “How was I supposed to know?”

“I don’t know, let’s see.” Willow reared up on her forelegs and delivered a heavy applebuck to a yellow zombie. “The fact that there were half eaten ponies in the streets and a big sign that said ‘condemned,’ right outside the town?” The pony she had bucked scrambled back to its hooves and charged at Willow again. The mare jumped into the air and came down right on top of the zombie pony. She drove it to the ground with multiple kicks to the head until she was pretty sure that it was dead. “Should have left me alone,” Willow panted. Sure the whole getting infected thing sucked. But the strength was amazing! She couldn’t wait to use the night vision to her advantage.

Willow looked around the narrow road for more of them. Shops ran down both lengths of the street. A clothing store, bakery, general goods, a couple café’s. Her eyes fell on a store with a large wooden sign on the front. It inconspicuously read. ‘GUNS,’ in big bold letters.

“Dusty!” Willow yelled. The light blue pegasus fired of his pistol twice, then turned to face Willow. She pointed with a hoof to the store. Dusty’s eyes lit up as he gazed at the old sign.

“To the gumn shtore!” he yelled around the gun in his mouth. More zombie ponies were swarming in from every direction, out of houses, alleys, two story buildings, everywhere.

“I think we may be in trouble!” Willow heard Sunny yell nervously.

“Don’t worry!” Moon yelled back. “From the look Dusty has in his eye, if we make to it that gun store we’ll be fine!” The group fought their way across the street towards the store. Moon dispatched two more as they charged. “They just keep coming!” She tossed the spent shells and levitated two new ones from her flank. “I only have four shots left!” she called in worry.

Willow had never really thought about it; but zombie hordes made a lot of noise. The little grunts and screams they made weren’t that loud on their own. And when you get fifty of them doing it all at once it almost became deafening.

Sunny fired his rifle at a pegasus pony swooping down at them. The shot struck it clean through the left eye and it thudded to the ground right in the middle of their group. “Nishe shot,” Dusty complimented. They had formed a rough circle. Willow and Snowglobe stood in the center while the rest of them stood facing every angle. Brick fired two shots from his low caliber pistol and dropped a charging unicorn. The gun store was still a good twenty feet away.

Willow watched as Moon fired off two of her last four shots. She cursed when one of them only skimmed her target. “Why are they all coming to my side!? I’m running out of ammo!” She loaded the last two shots into the double barrel. Willow could hear her companions shooting all around her, but she focused on Moon’s side. So far the heat of them seemed to be running at the side the blue unicorn was covering.

There was a click from beside her. “I’m out!” sunny yelled.

“That was the last box!” Snowglobe yelled back.

Moon fired at one that decided to try and jump at them from a building. The shot took out most of the creature’s underbelly, destroying its internal workings. It hit the ground with a crunch and began dragging itself towards them, a heavy trail of blood in its wake.

They reached the double wooden front doors of the store. Sunny pulled open one of the doors, which was miraculously unlocked, and they piled in. Moon used her last shot on a zombie running for the doorway.

Sunny and Dusty slammed the doors shut. Willow looked around the room. “Well would you look at that,” she said with mock cheer. “We’re trapped.” The only way in or out of the small shop was through the front doors, which were now being swarmed with zombies. The windows were barred, most likely to prevent robbery.

Dusty didn’t seem to mind. He looked around at interior of the store. “Look at all these guns,” he awed. Willow couldn’t see his mouth watering, yet. Behind the glass counter, guns covered the whole back wall. Pistols, rifles, and even more that Willow couldn’t even identify.

“You guys,” Sunny said nervously, glancing at the door. “We all know what happens to doors when zombies want to get through them.”

Dusty tore his head away from the firearm display. “Okay,” he instructed. “Everypony grab a gun.”

Willow hopped the counter and began looking for something to use. The others did the same. Moon cringed as the door behind them groaned. Willow looked for a gun she could shoot with her mouth. Her horn still wasn’t working well enough to levitate anything heavier than a piece of paper. But that was another sign that she had killed the virus, her magic was starting to return. Her eyes fell upon a rather large rifle with a mouth bit.

“What’s that?” she asked Dusty, pointing a hoof at the unknown gun.

Dusty gazed at it for a moment. “That’s an earth pony rifle, only meant to be used while stationary.”

“Sounds good to me.” Willow went to examine the rifle more closely.

“So what are we doing?” Moon asked. “Are we just going to sit in here and shoot things?”

Dusty shrugged. “I don’t see anything else we can do. There’s enough ammo in here to stack to the moon.”

Snowglobe looked around at the rows of guns. “Why would a small town have all these guns?” she asked. She nuzzled open a crate, which was filled to the top with unfilled magazines.

“It’s a small town,” Dusty replied simply, making it hinted in his voice that the answer was obvious.
The door cracked as one of the hinges bent. As quickly as she could, Willow lifted the rifle Dusty had described from the wall and set it on the glass countertop. “What kind of bullets go in this thing?” she asked.

Dusty stuck his head under the counter and pulled out a green box. He tossed it on the table next to her. “These ones.” He passed her two more boxes.

She pulled it open with her mouth and emptied its contents onto the countertop. Twelve, very large bullets clattered onto the glass. “Jeez Dusty,” she exclaimed. “What am I shooting with these things? Dragons?”

The light blue pegasus pulled a more compact looking gun from the wall and set it on the counter. “Hey you chose it, not me,” he chuckled. “Load up as many magazines as you can,” he instructed, switching to a more serious tone.

Snowglobe looked around at the guns skeptically. “What? We just shoot them until they stop trying to eat us?” She pulled a pistol from the wall. The mare handled the gun as if it were going to explode in her mouth. She set it down and levitated an ammunition box towards her. She reloaded Sunny’s rifle.

Willow looked over at Brick. He was sorting through a stack of crates in the corner. “What are you doing?” she asked, trotting over him. He didn’t respond. The brown pony pushed over a whole stack of crates, which toppled to the ground, spilling more ammo and weapons across the floor.

“Easy with the merchandise,” Dusty grumbled. Brick ignored him, instead he drug a large rectangular crate, which had been on the bottom, out away from the wall. Willow watched curiously as Brick lifted the lid away. Inside was the biggest gun Willow had ever seen. It was as long as her. Willow couldn’t imagine a pony being able to actually use it. It was huge. A small piece of parchment was taped to the bottom of the lid. Willow levitated it up to her, and read it.

“Here you go, standard REA issue. I don’t know why in the hay you would want this thing. Careful with this though. If you get caught with one of these you’ll end up on the moon. And if anyone asks, you stole it.

p.s. There are four extra boxes of disintegrating belts in the other crate; it’s got an X on it.”

“What’chya got over there?” Dusty asked curiously. He crossed over to them and nudged Willow out of the way to peer down into the crate. He let out a little scream and looked away. Slowly, he looked back. “Now I know I’m dreamin.’”

“Why’s that?” Willow asked. The pegasus looked like he had just been invited to speak with Celestia herself.

“Because,” Dusty replied, dumbstruck. “That there is a Mare-60 military issue Equestrian chaingun. Ah saw one of these in a magazine once.”

“How the hay are we supposed to shoot it?” Willow asked. “It’s almost bigger than me.”

Dusty smiled at Brick. “Ah got an idea.”

Willow snorted. “If you think it’ll work.”

Dusty turned to look at the others behind the front counter. Willow followed his gaze. Sunny and Moon were both loading small magazines. Moon was having a much easier time. Snowglobe was readying weapons on the countertop. “Snowglobe,” Dusty called. “Come help me with this.

The mare looked up and trotted over to them. “Yeah?” she asked.

Dusty pointed a hoof towards the machine gun. “Help me put this on Brick.”
Snowglobe shot him a look. “You’re joking, right?”

Dusty grabbed the gun by a handle and pulled it halfway out of the crate. He released it to talk. “No look, it’s already got all the tetherin’s and everythin.’ Ah just need your help figurin’ it all out.”

With some effort, the gray mare levitated the massive gun up to examine it. “It has the same setup as a battle saddle would,” she observed. “Looks fairly simple. Weight displacement looks fine. Bit’s already set up.” She threw a glance at Brick. “If we’re going to put it on him were going to have to rearrange those cases.”

Willow had gotten used to the bulky shape of Brick in the past few days. The two cases containing the unknown blue liquid were still strapped to his flanks. “I’ll let you two figure out how to get that working,” she said. “I’m going to go see what I can do to help Sunny and Moon.” She left them to their experiment and crossed back over to the counter. The heavy front door cracked again. This time a few nails pulled free of the wall. Moon looked up worriedly at the sound.

Willow found a few magazines for the gun she had picked out and set to loading them with the ammo Dusty had given her. She quickly realized that loading magazines was hard. She had to clasp the metal case in her hooves and load the bullets with her mouth, which was a tedious task. Willow wasn’t much for guns, but she wasn’t very shy of using them. If the need arose, she would gladly use one to save her life. And the need had arisen.

The door shook again and part of the wooden frame fell to the floor. Willow looked over to the two that were still fussing with Brick. “Are you two done turning Brick into a machine gun yet?”

“Almost,” Snowglobe replied. She grabbed a strap in her mouth and crawled under Brick’s belly to the other side of him. The brown stallion watched with mild interest, his face remaining impartial. Willow could see that they had taken the case on his left and moved it to his back. They had strapped the… Willow forgot what it was called. It was a really big machine gun. They had strapped the really big machine gun to his left flank so that it rested higher up. The gun itself had come all ready to be mounted on a pony. Willow could see that it had the same concepts as a battle saddle. A piece of metal curved around his front so that the trigger rested in front of his mouth. It was almost exactly the same as Sunny’s, except it didn’t use the saddle part.

“Oh yeah,” Willow told them. “There should be a box over there with an X on it. There should be more ammo for the gun in there.” Dusty nodded in acknowledgement.

Moon was looking worried. “You might want to hurry it up,” she warned nervously. “I bet we only get another minute or so out of this door.” As if her words had drawn a response, the door on the right buckled, the bottom half breaking free. Sunny tensed behind the counter, a good ten feet from the front door. A zombie tried shoving its way through the hole but Moon gave it a hearty blast with the double barrel.

Dusty trotted over, they had finally finished turning Brick into a walking gun. He reared up and pulled a shotgun from the wall. He set it down next to Moon. “Ah reckon this one would be better. Holds more ammo and it’s a pump action, specifically unicorns only.”

Moon looked at the double barrel that had been in her possesion since the hospital, then to the shiny new one. She shrugged and strapped the double barrel back to her flank. She levitated up the new one to inspect it. “What’s so special about it?” she asked.

“Nothing special,” Dusty replied. “But it holds eight shots instead of just two and is easier to reload. Shotgun shells go in the bottom, bullets come out of the long part an’ empty shells come out the top, that’s all that really matters.”

“I thought it was illegal for shotguns to hold any more than three shots?” Snowglobe mused, having come over to hear the conversation.

Moon started loading her new shotgun. Dusty turned to reply to Snowglobe. “Do you think the pony who owned this store gave a damn about what’s legal if he’s got that thing in here?” He motioned towards Brick’s new gun. The answer seemed to satisfy the gray mare. Dusty turned to face Brick. He cringed as the door buckled further, threatening to collapse inward at any second. “We want to save as much ammo for that thing as possible. Only use it when it looks like we might be in trouble.” Brick nodded and picked up a pistol from the countertop.

Willow looked at the big brown pony and chuckled. “You look like a tank,” she teased. He just shrugged. Willow rolled her eyes, subtly failing at another attempt to get a rise out of the silent pony. She took hold of the rifle she had set up and looked down the sights experimentally. She could see a zombie pony trying to push through a hole at the bottom of the door. She sighted in on it, flipped the safety catch, and fired. She was rewarded with the crimson splash of its head turning inside out. The rifle bucked her, hard.

“Ouch,” she gasped, rotating her jaw to make sure she hadn’t pulled something.

“Gun too big for you?” Dusty chided.

“It kicks pretty hard; good thing it’s mounted.” Dusty took aim with a rather large mouth-held weapon.

“No,” she pouted. “I just wasn’t ready.”

Snowglobe hesitantly levitated a pistol by her side. “Point and squeeze,” she murmured. The pistol fired a shot into the door and Snowglobe let out a little squeak.

Dusty tensed. “When that door goes down, shoot anything that moves.”

“Sure thing captain obvious,” Willow jabbed. At that moment the right door gave an almighty groan and burst inward. The other door, not having anything to hold it in place, burst open as well. Moon was the first to fire. Her buckshot peppered the horde of zombies before they even had a chance to cross the threshold. And in a second, all havoc was unleashed. Everypony opened fire. Willow took careful aim with the rifle and sent a bullet right at a pink unicorn. Not only did the projectile hit the unicorn, it also hit four other zombies behind it. She took the kick much better now that she was prepared for it.

They mowed down the first wave but they just kept coming. “Snowglobe, reload!” Sunny yelled, picking up a pistol from the desk and firing with that. The gray mare dropped her gun and set to reloading for Sunny. Dead zombie ponies rolled through the open doorway. One sprung over one if its fallen comrades and flew directly at the counter. Moon blasted it with the shotgun and it fell short. Its head struck the glass counter, sending splinters of glass from the point of impact. Willow fired again and was rewarded with five more dead zombies.

“They’re lining up like bowling pins!” she jeered. Snowglobe finished reloading Sunny’s rifle and the orange pegasus took the bit of his battle saddle again, abandoning the pistol.

“How many are there!?” asked Moon. Her shotgun clicked and she set to the task of reloading. To Willow’s horror, slowly, the zombie ponies were advancing. They had pushed forward about halfway between the front door and the counter; and they were still coming. One of them broke off to the right and Dusty leveled it before it could sneak around to the side.

The blue pegasus dropped his gun to yell. “If they fan out we’re done for, now would be the time Brick!” The brown stallion stepped forward, almost casually, and took the firing bit in his mouth. The machine gun on his back blared to life. Empty bullet casings flew like popcorn kernels and the room was filled with the earsplitting noise of the automatic rifle. The wave of advancing zombie ponies was decimated, pushed back to the doorway. The high caliber bullets shredded anything unfortunate enough to be in way.

“Sweet Celestia!” Sunny yelled. “That thing’s shooting bullets like a garden hose!”

“Yeah!” Dusty jeered as the horde was shredded. “Get some!”

Willow fired once more, taking a few more. All of a sudden, it all stopped, the screaming, the shooting, the zombie ponies, everything.

“Bit quiet,” Willow murmured. Smoke hovered throughout the building, having accumulated from the gunfire. A zombie dug itself out of the pile of bodies stacked in front of the door and stumbled towards them. Willow still couldn’t believe these things could take the kind of damage that they did. The monster had almost been scalped by a bullet and chunks of its neck and chest were blown out altogether. And yet, it was still trying to get them. Sunny fired a single shot and it dropped.

Dusty chuckled, looking around at the scene. “Sweet Celestia, did you see all those zombies?” He trotted over to Brick to examine the weapon. Brick had only fired a good twenty rounds. And according to the ammo container connected to the gun, every container held a hundred bullets.

“No, I think I missed them,” Willow replied sarcastically. “Of course I saw them!”

Moon hopped the counter into the main room. She had reloaded her shotgun and was looking around cautiously. “I doubt that was all of them. We need to grab as much ammo as we can and get out of here before we have to deal with more of them.”

Willow looked at the rifle she had used. “You know, as much as I loved trying to bash my teeth out with this thing, I think I’ll leave it here.”

Dusty looked at the rifle and a curious look formed on his face. “Wait?” he asked. “Did you shoot that thing manually?”

Willow shrugged. “Yeah, why?”

Dusty gawked at her. “Willow, that thing’s designed to be mounted to a solid object. With a bullet that size, it kicks hard enough to break a pony’s neck.”

“Willow strength,” she replied cheekily.

“Oh yeah,” he jabbed. “I forgot, you’re part zombie.”

She shrugged off his comment and pulled a few boxes of ammo from under the counter. She didn’t really care much what kind it was, as long as it shot things. She dropped the boxes in an empty pocket in her barding. She laughed silently to herself. Medical supplies in one pocket, bullets in the other, what kind of a doctor was she?

“You know,” Snowglobe spoke aloud as they prepared to move out. “I was always fascinated by the way guns work. But I really don’t like shooting them much.” She set to the task of reloading Sunny’s rifle.

“Hold up a minute,” Dusty said to Snowglobe. He pulled a black rifle from the wall and brought it over to them. “Let’s change out Sunny’s rifle.”

“What’s the difference?” the orange pegasus asked curiously.

Dusty crossed to Sunny and undid one of the clasps holding the old rifle to his saddle. “Yours only holds six shots,” he clarified. “Also, it stores its own ammo. This new one has a newer mechanism. So that means it’s a lot harder to jam. It’s also clip fed.” Dusty pulled the old rifle from Sunny’s back and replaced it with the new. “The clips for this gun that we have here hold fifteen bullets. Plus, the advantage of the clip is that you can reload it by yourself. It’s still kinda’ hard, but you can do it.”

Sunny nodded in understanding. “Sounds good to me.”

Dusty finished hooking up the firing mechanism. “You’re all good.” He inserted a loaded magazine into the sleek black rifle. “Point and shoot.” He looked over at Snowglobe. “Find as many bullets for this rifle as you can. Since you kind of ended up being Sunny’s dedicated support pony, you should probably have some of his magazines on you.” Snowglobe nodded.

“Look at Dusty laying down the law,” Willow teased.

The light blue pegasus snorted and went back to loading his saddlebags with more ammo. He pulled open the crate with the X on it and set to filling his saddlebags with the spare ammo containers. Willow wondered just how much he was carrying. His bags were still loaded up with cans from the hospital. “Do you want me to carry some of that Dusty?” she asked him. “I do have the benefit of zombie strength after all.”

He shook his head. “Naw, but you could carry us out some guns. It wouldn’t hurt to have extras.” Willow nodded. She headed over to the wall and examined the rows of firearms. She realized there was a small problem. There wasn’t any more room in her barding. She looked around for something she could use to carry them. She found her solution under on one of the display shelves in the front counter. In the glass fronted counter was a set of saddlebags. A label in front read, ‘GREAT FOR STORAGE.’ Willow figured with a label that big, they had to hold something.

She walked over to the counter and tried the sliding door. Of course it was locked. She raised a hoof and kicked in the glass front. There wasn’t any time to fiddle with locks right now. Willow pulled out the bags and examined them. They were a desert tan, two large bags with smaller pockets on the outside. They were designed to be worn over the back, with a strap on the bottom to run around your belly. There were also multiple undoable straps on the outside that would suffice for holding larger guns.

Willow picked up the bags and slung them over her back. They would do quite nicely. “Hey Snowglobe?” she asked. The gray mare looked over at her. “Could you do my belly strap?”

Snowglobe rolled her eyes. “Really, why am I the one who ends up dressing you all?” She trotted over Willow and grasped the strap in her mouth. She ducked down below Willow for a moment and fumbled with the mechanism. Willow felt a little awkward with the unicorn’s head brushing her belly. Snowglobe finished and gave the strap a hearty tug, setting it tight. “There, all set.”

Willow shot Snowglobe a questioning look. “Why didn’t you just use your magic?”

Snowglobe flushed. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. “Because,” she finally answered. “I just wanted to, you know, use my mouth.” She gave a nervous chuckle.

“Well, um, thanks.” Willow replied awkwardly. Snowglobe went an even deeper shade of red. “I’m going to go get guns now.” Willow turned her back on the gray mare, trying not to blush herself. She headed over to the wall of guns and gathered four pistols. She dropped them in one of the larger bags, them and a few extra magazines. After a few minutes, Willow could have considered herself a walking armory. Both bags were filled with small weapons and extra magazines, all of which had been filled. The smaller pockets on the outside mostly held boxes of ammunition. Then she had two larger rifles strapped on either side of her, along with one on her back.

Dusty looked at her and chuckled. “Well why don’t you just take the whole store. Isn’t that heavy?” He motioned in her general direction. “You got enough guns there to arm a small town.”

She shook her head. “Not really.” She paused. “Well, I know it’s supposed to be heavy. But really it feels like I’m carrying bags full of toilet paper.”

Dusty shook his head, smiling. “We got ourselves a mobile armory.”

“We all ready to move out?” Sunny asked them all.

Willow nodded. “I’m ready.”

Everypony else agreed as well. Willow looked around at the rest of them. They were all stocked and loaded down with weapons. She caught Snowglobe’s eye. The gray mare hurriedly looked away. Willow couldn’t help but smile.

As a group, they left the gun store. Back out on the street, the sun was low on the horizon. Dead zombies lay scattered all around the front door. More milled around in the street, either having not joined the onslaught, or had simply arrived late to the party. One made the mistake of running at them and Moon sent part of its head in the other direction with a well-placed shot.

Willow couldn’t believe how temperamental they were. Zombies were totally unpredictable. Sometimes they would spot you and attack on sight. But sometimes you could trot right up to one and poke it in the eyeball and the thing would ignore you. But if one did decide to try and eat you, it wouldn’t stop until it either killed you or you killed it. They walked slowly down the main street, towards the other end of the town. Sunny, Moon, and Dusty walked at the front of the group, shooting anything that moved.

Willow fell in stride beside Snowglobe, who was trying her best to avoid her. “So how are you doing?” she asked, poking at conversation.

“Fine,” Snowglobe replied dismissively.

Willow smiled mischievously. “Get a nice peek?”

Snowglobe shot her a brooding look, her face going red again. “I’m not answering that.”

Willow gave her a firm nudge. “You know you’re cute when you’re embarrassed.”

Snowglobe balked at her, eyes going wide. “Are you really—” she stuttered. “Did you just…?”

Willow chuckled. “Maybe. But one rule, no more peeks unless I say so.”

Snowglobe stammered, at a loss for words. Her mouth dropped open. Willow walked ahead and gave the mare a flick with her tail. Willow looked ahead; they were nearing the edge of town.

* * *

“Find anything good?” Sunny asked Dusty as they dug through the crashed skywagon.

“Not really,” the pegasus replied. “Nothing but an empty can of beans and a couple low caliber rounds.”

They had been walking for the past three days. Dusty had been right about the water shortage. Without the imported rain from Cloudsdale, water was becoming scarce.

They had spotted the downed wagon from the trail. They had all agreed it may hold something valuable, and was worth scavenging. It had crashed on the side of a ridge, about halfway up a rather large hill. Dusty had said the detour on the way to Appleoosa anyways, so there was no harm in checking the wagon. To their mild disappointment, there was nothing in the wagon to be found. On the other hoof, there had been two rotten corpses.

Sunny found that skywagons looked nothing like a normal wagon. Instead of wheels, they had runners. Unlike most wagons, which were made of wood; the skywagon was made of metal and aluminum. It was also fully enclosed. Barely padded seats lined both walls and another row went down the middle. If four ponies squeezed side by side, they could barely fit in a row across the width of the space.

Snowglobe told him that this had been a twenty seater; that, and it took a pegasus team of four to pull it fully loaded. Its outer shell was painted a dull green and had once sported windows. They had all been shattered in the crash. From the look of it, Sunny could tell it had crashed rather hard. The entire metal frame had bent so that the skywagon had taco’d in the center.

“I wonder why they crashed,” Moon wondered aloud, digging through a set of discarded saddlebags. She levitated out a very large bag of bits and tossed the gold coins without a second glance.

Sunny spotted something tucked halfway under one of the cushions. He bent his head down and picked it up. He carried it over to a seat and set it down. It was a journal. Sunny flipped it open to see that there was writing in it. Only the first few pages had been used. He read the first entry.

<=ooOOoo=>

Canterlot is still on full alert. Something bad is happening. We saw the REA in the streets earlier. What would the Royal Equestrian Army be doing in Canterlot? We never have any problems here. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

<=ooOOoo=>

Sunny looked around at the others. They were still scrounging for supplies, not really paying him any attention. He read on.

<=ooOOoo=>

The entire city got infected with what everypony was calling some sort of a virus. Now I wish I’d left with the paranoid ones. They were right. I can see them walking around outside. Like they aren’t ponies anymore. Me and six other ponies are hiding in this office building. A sky wagon flew by about an hour ago. They were playing a broadcast. They said that the REA was setting up evac points all over the city, to help the ponies who were still trapped get away. The closest one they named was on the roof of a hotel not too far from here. The others have been talking. I think we’re going to try for it.

We made it! We actually made it to the roof. We lost Breeze along the way though. She was the only pony who was willing to talk to me. The only one that was as scared as I am. I saw those things corner her. But I ran away. I left her to die after she was the only nice one. I know there was nothing I could have done. But it still feels like my fault.

One of the flying pegasi is acting kind of funny. I think he may have that thing that everypony else is getting. But I don’t want to say anything. The last thing I want to do right now is cause trouble, especially when we’re on our way out of here. They took us up into the air about ten minutes ago. They say were going to Las Pegasus. Apparently it’s still safe there.

<=ooOOoo>

Sunny felt his own worry building as he read the contents of the journal. He turned the page. There was only one entry left.

<=ooOOoo=>

I knew there was something wrong with him. He turned and bit the flier next to him as we were crossing the desert. He pulled out of his harness and actually managed to end up inside the wagon. He bit me as well. Me and another pony managed to push him off. But it’s too late now. I’m starting to feel sick to my stomach and I’m starting to feel really cold. We crashed. With only three pegasus left flying the wagon, and one injured. They couldn’t hold all our weight. We crashed somewhere in the desert. I don’t know where. Everything’s spinning. But all the ponies on the wagon are looking at me funny. I think they are going to kill me. Me and the other pegasus that got bit. I know they are.

<=ooOOoo=>

Sunny reexamined the two corpses on the floor. One was a gray pegasus, the other an orange unicorn mare. Now that he looked closer, he could see that both had been shot.

Sunny fought the urge to vomit. Reading the stories of things happening was almost worse than actually watching them happen.

“Ah don’t think there’s much here,” Dusty said idly.

“The ponies who crashed this thing must have made off with everything of value,” Willow added.

Moon looked curious. “I wonder where this wagon came from.”

“Canterlot,” Sunny replied. She shot him a look. He passed her the journal. She skimmed it, her eyes widening as she turned the page.

“So,” she said absently. “Canterlot really is gone then. I had always hoped that maybe it was… it’s just gone.”

“What is it?” Willow asked, peering around Moon to read the journal as well.

Snowglobe sighed, looking around the battered interior of the wagon. “No way we’re going to fix this thing up,” she said, totally off topic.

“Dusty looked at her and chuckled. “Even if we could fix this thing up, there’s no way ah could fly it by myself. It takes twenty wingpower to fly this thing empty. Last ah checked, ah only pull about twelve.

Willow nodded. “That’s pretty impressive Dusty.”

The pegasus gave a cheerful flutter of his wings. “Well thanks,” he said.

“Think it’s time we got going?” Sunny suggested. He didn’t like being in the wagon. It made him feel claustrophobic, which was strange because he only got claustrophobic in the dark. He scolded himself. What was he thinking? He had been shooting zombie ponies the past few days, and he was scared of a crashed wagon.

“I’ve seen all I need to,” Moon answered.

“Not much to be found here,” Dusty added.

Together, they left the twisted wreckage of the wagon behind. Unlike the area around Desert Sage, the landscape here was rocky and jagged. Not much grew other than scraggly bushes and shrubs. Occasionally, sand filled rocky hollows where it had been blown in and trapped. Sunny could consider this a fairly inhospitable environment. Maybe that was why they hadn’t seen any zombie ponies for the last two days. Water was scarce; maybe they needed it just as bad as normal ponies did.

“Who’s up for a little rock climbin?’” Dusty asked with layered enthusiasm.

Willow snorted. “Sure, we climb the rocks while you fly around with your head in the clouds?”

“Hey now,” the pegasus chided. “Ah can’t help the fact that ya don’t have wings.”

“I should make you carry me,” Willow added jokingly.

Dusty stood in front of the white mare, sizing her up. “I think I could carry you. But I’m not so sure about the gun store on your back.”

Willow got a mischievous look in her eye. “I doubt you could carry me. I’m way too much mare for you to handle.”

Dusty grinned evilly. Sunny knew what was coming next. Willow had set herself up for this one. “Ah think you might be right,” Dusty said with mock thoughtfulness. “You’d have to lose about ten pounds first.”

Willow’s haughty expression was quickly washed away to be replaced with one of defeat. “Well,” she said dejectedly. “I had that one coming.” Dusty snickered.

“She’s not fat,” Snowglobe spoke up. “She just looks fat cause’ she’s always carrying all that stuff. She’s actually quite average weighted.”

Willow rolled her eyes. “Thanks Snowglobe,” she said, grinning slightly.

Snowglobe flushed. Sunny shot the gray unicorn a curious glance. Had she just stood up for Willow? Willow was like fair game in their little group. She picked on all of them and they all teamed up on her back. Now Snowglobe was defending her? Sunny decided to stop thinking about it. Nothing his newly-found friends did made any sense.

He found it rather funny how Brick was always there, tagging along behind them. None of them really ever gave him a second glance except for Willow. He was just kind of… there. He was like a big light brown blob on the edge of everypony’s vision. But if he were gone, they would all notice it immediately. The machine gun the size of a small pony gave him a little more of an impact now though.

They started up the rocky slope. Reddish-brown rocks jutted from the steep ascent every few feet. Sunny found the stones rather peculiar in shape. Instead of the normal smoothed rocks around Desert Sage, these were square and much more jagged.

His hooves slipped on a lose patch of shale and he slid back down the hill a pace. He walked around the loose section and continued on.

A minute later, they crested the hill. By now the sun was midway in the sky. It shone down on the harsh landscape, which provided no shelter whatsoever from the sun’s harsh rays. Sunny found himself feeling rather hot.

“It’s a little hot out,” Moon voiced his thoughts aloud.

Sunny looked out ahead and barely suppressed a moan. Rocky ridges like the one they had just climbed stretched on for miles. But much further beyond the ridges was a flat. And in the center of that flat was a small spot.

“Look!” Willow exclaimed, pointing a hoof at the spot Sunny had just noticed.

“Is that Appleoosa?” he asked.

Dusty nodded. “Ah think so.”

“Well let’s go then.” Willow took an insistent step forward. “It’s not that far.”

Sunny looked out over the rows of ridges and hills. Sure, maybe they weren’t too far away from the town. But climbing those ridges would triple the length of the walk. “Sure,” he chuckled. “Not that far.”

<=I have decided. I am changing to the 'Mature' tag. I could keep the gore down, but I can write the story with more effect and feeling if I use gore. So for any of you under 18, sorry :P

<=And I do actually still have an editor. Due to misunderstanding I stated I did not in the last chapter. Thank you Turtle.

<=Please, leave a comment or something about your favorite part. I want to see what the few ponies who read this have to say about what I write.

~Sorren

Chapter 7 Appleoosa

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Undead Equestria

By: Sorren

Chapter 7 Appleoosa

Sunny felt a hoof jabbing him in the side. “Wake up,” came the impatient voice of Willow.

“Ten more minutes,” he moaned, rolling to his other side to put his back to the white mare.

Willow prodded him again. “Take into account how easily I could break your leg.”

“Alright, fine!” He batted her hoof away with annoyance. Sunny opened his eyes, only to be blinded by sunlight. “Ouch, bright.” He closed his eyes hurriedly. Slowly, he opened them again, this time more prepared for the harsh morning light. He sighed at the site of Moon. She had slept using his flank as a pillow, again. He had pushed her off before he had fallen asleep. Of course she would go back to using him as a pillow, no matter what he said.

He nudged her with a forehoof. “Wha?” she asked, still half asleep.

“Didn’t I say you aren’t allowed to do that?” he asked her.

Moon raised her head to gaze at him, her mane disheveled from sleep. Stray stands of blue hair hung in her eyes and around her neck. “Sure you told me I wasn’t allowed to, doesn’t meant I listened.”

“Why do I have to be your pillow?” he grumbled.

She pushed herself up and planted her hooves on his belly. “Because,” she chided. “I know it makes you uncomfortable. Not to mention you make a soft pillow.”

Sunny sat up and looked around, taking in his surroundings. Everything looked different in the early morning light. They had set up camp here in the dark, having decided it would be too hard to descend the ridge at night. The flatlands stretched out ahead and below. The distant spot of Appleoosa could be seen as well. It was much closer than yesterday, but still looked a ways off. They had a good aerial view from the height of the ridge. Next to the town was a rocky outcrop, and from what he could tell, an apple orchard. From here, the trees looked green and healthy. Sunny found this rather surprising. Ever since the infection broke out, there hadn’t been any water. Desert vegetation had been suffering ever since Cloudsdale had stopped sending rainclouds, which was understandable due to the fact that Equestria was in shambles.

Something caught his eye. Smoke. There was smoke. His breath caught in his throat. “You guys!” he exclaimed happily. He pointed a hoof towards the grayish-black smudge above the town. “Look!”

Willow, who had been preparing her barding, looked to where he was pointing. She shrugged and went back to packing. “Already saw that while you were sleeping. That’s half the reason why I woke you up.”

“Killjoy,” Sunny muttered. He turned his back on Willow and gazed hopefully at silhouette of the town in the distance.

Moon trotted up beside him. “Think there are ponies there?” she asked him.

Sunny nodded. “There has to be.” He could hear the sound of the rest of the camp stirring behind him. Dusty was muttering to himself about food. Snowglobe was telling Brick something about the machine gun mounted to his flank. The brown pony had slept with his gear on.

“Hey Snowglobe,” he heard Willow call. “Want to help me out with the strap on my saddlebags?”

“S-sure,” Snowglobe stammered.

Moon leaned up against Sunny. He shot her a look that implied, ‘really?’ Moon shot her own look back. “What?” she asked defensively.

“Why are you so touchy?” he asked her, feeling slightly flustered. She nuzzled the underside of his chin, sending a shiver up his spine.

She flicked him with her tail. “You know exactly why.”

“I’m pretty sure I do.” He looked around awkwardly. “Oh hey, would you look at that,” he said hastily. “Dusty has my saddle ready.”

Moon started to say something in protest but he trotted away before she could finish.

Dusty looked up to see Sunny approaching. “Mornin’ Sunny,” he greeted.

“Morning Dusty,” he replied. “What are you doing over here?”

The light blue Pegasus motioned towards the supplies set out on the rocks. “Sortin’ through my bags.”

Sunny looked at the rows of items and supplies set out on the stone. There was plenty of food and ammo, a couple canteens. He also had just about everything else. “You were carrying all that?” Sunny asked, mildly surprised.

Dusty nodded. He examined his pile of miscellaneous items. He nodded again, as if he were slightly surprised himself. “Ah suppose all of this might have been a little much.” They stood in silence for a minute. “Ah guess I could leave the blender,” Dusty mused after a moment.

Sunny shot him a look. “Why the hay are you carrying around a blender?”

Dusty flapped his wings casually. “Well that’s simple, ah just…” he trailed off, staring at the electric blender. “Ya know, ah don’t reckon ah know.”

“Right,” Sunny said dismissively. “We leave the blender.”

Dusty nodded absently. “Right.” He stared at the pile of supplies a moment longer. “Ah think ah’ll get packed up now. Looks like everypony is fixin’ to leave.”

Sunny left him to his packing. Brick was sitting quietly, looking out over the barren landscape at the rising sun. Willow was sitting next to a very red Snowglobe.

“You’re evil!” Snowglobe whispered venomously to Willow.

Willow got to her hooves and walked forward. She snapped Snowglobe across the muzzle with her crimson tail. “What can I say?” she chided. “I’m Willow. You should know that by now.”

“What’s going on over here?” Sunny asked.

“Nothing really,” Willow’s eyes gleamed. “Snowglobe was just enjoying the scenery.”

“What!?” Snowglobe balked. “No!” she spluttered, searching for words. The gray mare was inventing whole new colors to blush.

“Willow,” Sunny joked in a scolding tone. “If we’re going to be traveling, Snowglobe needs to be sane.”

Willow hung her head in mock sorrow. “I’m sawwy.” She gave Snowglobe a heavy nudge, almost unbalancing the mare. She stumbled sideways to regain her balance. “I won’t do it again… at least not today.”

Sunny laughed; even though he had no idea what was going on. Sunny looked around. There wasn’t really any other pony around to talk to; and he doubted Brick would host an interesting conversation. Moon was still sitting where he had left her, staring out over the sunlit landscape.

Now that he thought about it, this place felt really nice. The sun shone diagonally across the rocks, turning them a bright orange-red. A butte in the distance cast a long shadow across the flat desert floor beyond. Even the weather was nice. Because it was still early in the year, it hadn’t yet gotten too hot. The temperature in the early morning must have been a perfect sixty. He closed his eyes as a cool breeze washed over him. Once again he was overwhelmed by a false sense of tranquility. Right now, there were no zombies. No shooting things. Just six friends camped out on a ridge with a lot of guns. Something redbacks did every weekend.

Sunny headed over to his gear and set to the task of getting ready. The battle saddle proved very difficult to equip on his own. Snowglobe spotted his trifles and trotted over to help him.

“Thanks,” he said as the unicorn mare fastened the straps that sinched the saddle to his back.

“Don’t mention it,” she replied modestly. She circled around to his right and checked the rifle. So far, Sunny liked it better than the old one. He hadn’t had to fire it yet; but he almost wanted to. The sleek black rifle was larger and lighter than his previous one.

“Is everypony ready?” Sunny asked.

“Almost,” Dusty replied, packing another item into one of his seemingly bottomless bags. He made a reach for the blender.

“Dusty,” Sunny said warningly.

He froze. “Oh, right.” He chuckled, going a little red. He moved past the blender and attacked the pile of ammunition.

Moon was still standing where Sunny had left her. He was worried he had done something to offend her. Sunny thought his actions over. He had been rather rude in response to her motions. She had taken him by surprise. He had always known that she had liked him; but he had never thought that she really liked him. The thought was rather uncomfortable.

Snowglobe seemed to take notice to Moon as well. The gray mare trotted over and gave her a hearty nudge. “Come on,” she said. “Get your stuff ready. We’re about to get going.”

The blue mare nodded in reply. She looked out at the scene one more time before turning away. Sunny was surprised to see her face clear, and expression cheery. He had expected her to have been crying, or at least look sad. He had been incredibly blatant.

Dusty took to the air to better examine the surroundings. In the bright sunlight, Sunny could only make out his silhouette.

Dusty pointed with a forehoof to a lower spot on the ridge, in the direction of Appleoosa. “That looks like an easy way down!” he called. “Once we manage to get off this ridge, Appleoosa’ll be no more’n a good hours trot!”

When everypony was ready, they set off. Willow took the semi-dangerous task of leading down the treacherous terrain. On the way up here, Dusty had been leading when a whole section of rock gave way. If he hadn’t of had the ability to fly, he would have been a blue splotch on the rocks below.

Sunny couldn’t help but smile every time he looked at Willow. He still couldn’t get over the fact that she looked like an armored wagon. Almost nothing of her white coat could be seen apart from her head and lower legs. There were six rifles strapped to her saddlebags. They hung lengthwise with her body. Many smaller weapons filled the inner pockets.

Brick was a pretty good sight as well. The chain gun tethered to his right flank was almost too much. The black enamel gleamed in the early morning sunlight. Sunny was glad to have Brick with them. Even a mindless zombie pony would have enough wits about it to be scared of that gun. There was no real way to say for sure, but Sunny guessed that the weapon weighed quite a bit. It was about as long as Brick’s body, with the exception of the barrel sticking out about an extra half a foot past his neck. The thickness of the weapon was a little more than that of a ponies hoof. It held a much more boxy shape as well. The ammo container hung from the side. A belt of gleaming bullets lead to breach.

Sunny had to marvel. It was a really big gun.

He fell in stride behind Willow as they descended the ridge. The white mare led them down a narrow trail on the edge of a sheer drop off. Sunny peered over the edge; it was a good two hundred feet down. This side of the ridge was much steeper than the one they had come up.

Dusty flew lazily at their level, out over the edge of the sharp descent. The pegasus seemed rather cheeky to be a pegasus at the moment.

“Be glad of your wings Dusty!” Sunny called out to him.

“Hey, you got some too,” he replied teasingly.

They reached a level spot and Willow made a motion to stop. They all stopped, glad of the short break. Dusty touched down beside Sunny and furled his wings. He and Willow seemed to be the only ones not winded by the descent.

“No fair,” Snowglobe whined to Willow. “You have your zombie endurance thing so you don’t get tired.”

“I’m also carrying a gun store on my back,” Willow replied, sitting down and causing the arsenal on her back to clatter noisily.

Sunny examined her closely. She hadn’t even broken a sweat. He was surprised at how fast her crimson mane had returned to its original color. The effects of the medical drain-o, as Willow had taken to calling it, had caused her mane to go gray at the base. Since then the hair had grown out an extra inch, leaving a gray streak in her mane.

Another thought stuck him. Willow was about his age. She had had that young-mare glow to her. But she no longer held that appearance. Her eyes looked sunken and dull. Her eye color had somehow managed to turn to a bloody orange. Her white coat didn’t seem to reflect the sun as well as it had that day in Desert Sage.

“What are you looking at?” Willow asked him curiously.

Sunny realized he had been staring openly at the mare and hadn’t even noticed her looking back. “Oh um…” He fought for words. Unable to think of anything, he decided to tell what he had been thinking. “I was just thinking of the way your appearance has changed ever since the first time I saw you.” He hesitated. “You look… older.”

Willow nodded solemnly, her eyes clouded with sadness. “Yeah,” she muttered. “I noticed too.” She looked at the ground. When she looked up, all traces of sadness were gone, to be replaced by her normal cheery aura. “Break’s over,” she declared. “Let’s go.” Willow nudged an indignant Snowglobe to her hooves.

Sunny noticed Moon looking at him funny. It wasn’t an angry look, more of a suspicious and curious kind of look. She hurriedly looked away when she noticed he had caught her eye.

Willow stepped up to the ledge and peered down. “It’s not that far down,” she commented idly. “It’ll just take a while since were climbing down diagonally.” She turned to face them. There was a loud crack as the ledge she was perched on gave way. Willow rolled her eyes and looked up at the sky. “Really?” she said, voice layered with anger and annoyance. The white mare disappeared over the edge of the cliff.

* * *

Willow groaned. She silently cursed her luck. She knew that she had fallen. And she knew that she hadn’t landed on a bed of pillows.

Vision still blurring, she looked around.

“Willow!” a voice called from above. Willow turned her head to the voice. She would have stood up had she believed she was in any condition to do so. Instead, she rolled over to her side, having initially landed on her belly. The movement sent a wave of searing pain through her body.

She cringed, fighting back the urge to scream. “Broken ribs?” she wondered to herself.

“Willow!” the urgent voice called again. This time she was able to decipher the voice as Sunny’s.

“I’m okay,” she croaked, not even able to produce more than a whisper. She coughed deep in her throat and spat blood onto the rocks. “Oh yay,” she chuckled dryly. “Internal bleeding? Check.”

She looked back up at the towering cliff face. She had fallen a good two hundred feet. Theoretically, she shouldn’t be alive. If she squinted, four blurry heads could be seen gazing down at her.

A bolt of unprovoked pain shot through her belly, informing her that something inside wasn’t too happy. She, rather painfully, reached back and fished a healing potion from her saddlebag.

She uncorked the bottle with her magic, glad her horn was finally performing well enough to conjure basic magic. Downing the deep purple liquid sent a wave of relief through her body, reducing the sharp jolts of pain to dull throbs. She could feel her ribs slowly lacing back together, the internal wounds healing themselves.

At times like this, she really loved magic. Of course magical healing was still a fairly new technology. It had only been invented by a very clever unicorn about a year ago. But the effect had been booming. The methods and spells had extended to every corner of Equestria in a matter of days. She thought back. Lots of things had changed recently. The creation and mass use of weapons, healing spells and potions, the urbanization of larger cities. It was almost saddening to see the way things were turning out. They were losing what made them ponies, instead enjoying the pleasures of life made easy and enjoyment of everything indoors. It was a good thing some places like Ponyville still shunned it.

When Willow felt the magic had run its course, she rolled onto her belly and placed her hooves gingerly below her. With some effort and much anticipated pain, she managed to push herself to a sitting position. The taste of blood filled her mouth. For some reason, it didn’t seem to bother her.

She jumped as something landed on the rocks beside her. She turned to face it and nearly overbalanced herself. She let out a sigh of relief. It was Dusty. “Don’t do that,” she gasped.

“You okay Willow?” Dusty asked worriedly.

Willow rubbed a slowly healing gash on her flank and winced. “Sort of,” she replied. “I have no idea how I’m not a Willow spot on the rocks. But I certainly can’t say it didn’t hurt.”

“It’s probly’ that zombie thing,” Dusty mused. “Think it like, strengthened your bones too?”

“Must have,” Willow tried her best to hold her forehooves steady.

Dusty cocked his head at her. “You sure you’re okay?” Willow nodded, not wanting to speak in case she were to spit out more blood.

Dusty raised his head upward. “Hey guys!” he bellowed. “She’s alright!”

“You need to get back up there,” Willow told him.

Dusty looked at her. “What about you?”

Willow waved a forehoof dismissively. “I’ll be fine. The healing potion’s taking effect. I’ll meet you at the bottom.”

The pegasus looked skeptical, but nodded. “Alright.” He smiled. “Just no more cliff jumping. Okay?”

“Only if you’re there to catch me,” she said cheekily.

Dusty unfurled his wings and gave her a look. He shot up into the air and began circling back to the others.

Willow let out a long exhale. “Worst luck in Equestria,” she muttered to herself. She looked up and tracked the most prominent route down the cliff face. If she was right, her friends would be reaching the bottom quite a ways to her right. There was no way down at her current location.

Willow didn’t know why she hadn’t noticed this until now. But they were on a plateau. Well, she had been on a plateau. Reaching Appleoosa required dropping down to the flatland. The way from here to Appleoosa was nothing but dry dirt and a few scraggly bushes.

They really needed to get out of the desert. Everything was drying up fast. Very little natural rain water made it this far west.

Willow stood up, wincing slightly. The potion may have fixed her body, but it hadn’t quelled the pain. The landscape here was somewhat level and proved easy for travel. She looked back at her monstrous arsenal. It was a weird feeling carrying all that weight and not having it be too heavy.

She had crushed the scope on one of the rifles in her fall. “Oops,” she muttered.

Willow set off along the edge of the cliff, towards the point where she assumed her friends would be reaching the bottom. She favored the right leg over the left, having hurt it in the fall. The bone may have been broken; but she hadn’t bothered to check before she had downed the potion. It might not have been the best idea; but was done now.

Willow began to hum while she walked. It wasn’t any particular tune. The various pitches and tones modulated with her current pace. She hopped a small trench and tried not to wince. Her stomach growled hungrily at her. Willow wished there was some food in her bags. Dusty had most of the food; and considering Dusty was about two hundred feet above her, food was not an option at this time.

Willow had never handled being bored very well. She would always find little ways to amuse herself. After about ten minutes, she found herself hopping from rock to rock. The goal was not to touch the sand. If she touched the sand, she lost. This had been one of her favorite games as a filly. Her mother had always told her she had the best imagination.

For the first time since the infection broke out, Willow thought about her parents. They lived in Fillydelphia. When Willow had decided she wanted to be a doctor, her parents hadn’t exactly been thrilled. She still remembered her mother’s gasp of terror at the sight of her foal’s crossed syringe and scalpel cutie mark.

Long story short, she had left them when she was old enough to leave. She left to follow her dreams, knowing her parents would never help her with what she wanted. She had trained for a while in Canterlot. But without financial support from her perfect parents, she wasn’t exactly drowning in bits. After a while, one thing led to another, and she wound up in Desert Sage.

Willow hadn’t yet heard any news about Fillydelphia. Honestly, she didn’t want any news. Good, or bad, it would just send her mind reeling.

Her hoof missed the rock she had been aiming for and she landed unsteadily in the dirt. “Damn,” she swore quietly. She rolled her eyes at her own clumsiness and came eye to eye with another pony. She cried out in surprise and backpedaled away from the surprising confrontation. She had been so busy looking at the ground that she hadn’t even noticed the pony she was approaching.

She peered at the pony more closely. It was a yellow unicorn, definitely a zombie. The odd thing was that it wasn’t trying to eat her face. It just stood there, staring blankly at her.

Willow took a cautious step forward. “Hello?” As she had predicted, there was no reply. It just continued to gaze slack jawed at her.

Willow was totally off guard when it sprung at her. She reared up to meet it but the zombie had the benefit of momentum. Willow was pushed over onto her back. Before she could even register what was happening, she was pinned. The yellow unicorn snarled and lunged at her face. She dodged and it got a mouthful of sand. It reared up for another go.

“No fair!” Willow protested. “I wasn’t ready!” She tried to think of a way to defend herself, anything. She had no means of reaching any of her weapons. All her hooves were occupied with keeping the crazed pony from tearing out her throat.

It lunged again and willow felt a sharp pain in her ear. She cried out, feeling blood run down the side of her head. This thing was going to kill her. She had one option… She didn’t like it one bit.

The zombie’s neck was right in front of her face. Willow pushed her head up, ignoring the tearing pain in her right ear, and fastened her teeth in the pony’s throat. With nothing else to do, she bit down hard. The coppery taste of blood filled her mouth. The metallic taste seemed to fuel her passion for freedom and she bit down harder. She jerked her head back and forth, trying to dislodge something vital. There was a meaty crack and more crimson liquid poured from the wound. It filled her eyes and nostrils, running down the sides of her muzzle and face.

Willow relinquished her grip to breathe. She could still feel the hard bite of the teeth in her ear. She lunged again and bit down on the already fatal wound. With as much strength as she could muster, Willow twisted her head to one side. Her efforts were rewarded with a crunch. The monster went limp on top of her. She pushed it off and scrambled to her hooves, gasping for air.

The yellow unicorn lay on the ground, its dead eyes staring blankly. Willow balked at the damage she had done. She had broken its neck with nothing but her jaws. She licked some of the blood from her face. The taste didn’t seem to bother her.

She looked around, then down at the dead pony.

Well, she was hungry.

Willow gasped, horrified at her own thoughts. “No!” she choked. “What in Celestia’s name are you thinking Willow?” She turned tail and ran from the scene, not daring to look back. After a moment, she stopped.

Willow examined herself, chuckling in disbelief. “At least you’re immune,” she told herself. She wiped a foreleg across her face, trying to clean some of the blood form her eyes.

She set off again. For good reasons, she no longer felt the urge to hop rocks. She still was in partial denial about what she had just done. She had just pulled out a pony’s throat and broken its neck with her teeth. She could still feel warm blood running down the right side of her head.

She remembered her ear. Reaching up a hoof, she touched it gingerly. “Ouch,” she gasped. It was definitely torn; she had felt that much.

Willow sighed and dug out another healing potion. She uncorked it and took a small swig. That should be enough for her ear. She returned the bottle and set to walking again. Her ear tingled uncomfortably as the skin was slowly stitched back together.

“Worst luck ever,” she said matter-of-factly to herself for the second time. If she was going to be attacked by surprise again, this time she would be ready. Willow dug in her bag for a moment and pulled out an automatic pistol and holster. She strapped it to her right foreleg for easiest accessibility.

“There,” she said to herself. “No more zombies catching me without a gun from now on.”

She looked up. From here, the shapes of her five companions could be seen. They were almost to the bottom. “It’s gonna’ be fun explaining this one,” she muttered, examining her ruined coat. Willow set off to meet the others at the bottom.

* * *

Moon looked over the edge of the narrow path as they descended the cliff face. It wasn’t that far down. But weaving a horizontal path back and forth all the way down took a while.

“Are you sure Willow’s alright?” Moon asked Dusty. “I don’t see her anywhere.”

“She was fine when ah left her,” the pegasus replied. He chuckled. “That is one tough mare. Falls off a cliff, gets up, downs a healin’ potion an’ trots away like she only just tripped.”

Brick kept throwing worried glances over the edge of the cliff. Moon assumed he was looking for Willow. From the point of Willow’s fall on, Moon had been carefully watching her step. She didn’t hold the same endurance as the white mare and might not cope as well with a couple hundred foot drop.

Moon spared a glance at Sunny. She was worried she had been much too persistent.

Sunny was a strange one. Before the infection, stallions had been all over her. She hadn’t wanted a single thing to do with any of them though. Somehow, she always managed to attract the wrong crowd. So now, she finally meets somepony she really likes. Then a zombie infestation breaks out and they both manage to end up in the same place. Good right? Turns out that particular stallion doesn’t want a single thing to do with her. She almost couldn’t even call him a stallion. He was still so young and innocent it was unbearable.

Moon silently cursed her trifles. Right now, this was the last thing she needed to be thinking about. Not getting eaten by zombie ponies was a little higher on the to do list.

“I am so tired of climbing things,” Sunny said aloud. “Those flatlands are looking really nice right about now.”

“I would like to get out of the desert,” Snowglobe added. “We aren’t even in the heat of summer yet. It’s just going to keep getting hotter from here.

Moon jumped down a small ledge. From here, the narrow trail doubled back, still leading down. They continued along the new route for a while.

“Hey everypony!” a distant voice called.

Moon stopped. So did Snowglobe, Sunny, and Brick. Dusty remained hovering above.

Snowglobe peered over the edge. “Willow, is that you!?”

Moon looked over the edge as well. About a hundred feet down, a pony stood looking up at them.

“No!” the mare called. “It’s the mailmare with your monthly subscription of ‘Stop asking stupid questions or Willow’s gonna’ come up there and buck the snot out of you!'”

“It’s Willow,” Sunny said matter-of-factly.

“How are you doing down there!?” Moon asked.

“Pretty good!” the mare replied. “You totally missed the party! I don’t recommend taking the express elevator thought. It’s a bit bumpy!”

“We’ll be down in a minute!” Snowglobe yelled in response.

“Feel free to jump! I’ll catch you!” Moon couldn’t see the white mare’s face. But she could guess Willow was smiling.

Snowglobe nickered. “I think I’ll pass on that one!”

They continued on along the ridge. Willow trotted below them. Sunny threw a glance down at her as they walked. “I swear,” he said quietly. “She’s the only one keeping us all from going completely insane.”
Moon frowned. “Why’s that?”

Sunny searched for a good explanation. “Because,” he finally answered. “She’s just so cheerful. But it’s not that kind of silly really annoying cheerfulness. It’s like she’s mean, but she’s nice. If that makes sense.” He paused. “Her sarcasm makes things funny.”

Moon nodded. “Yeah, I can see how that makes sense.”

Dusty hovered low overhead. “Yeah, she’s like that old curmudgeon down the street with the box of candy.”

Moon rolled her eyes at him. “Dusty, that didn’t make any sense.”

The pegasus shrugged and returned to circling above.

The group finally reached a spot where they could hop down the last few stones. Willow trotted up to meet them at the bottom.

Snowglobe let out a little squeal of terror. “What happened?” she gasped.

Moon balked at Willow. The used-to-be-white mare’s face was stained blood-red, along with her underbelly. Her whole front and forelegs were stained as well. A fresh pink scar ran along her ear.

Willow shrugged. “Got in a fight.”

“With what?” Dusty asked dumbstruck. “Were you tryin’ to drink a bucket of paint?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, a zombie tried to eat me.”

Moon pointed a hoof at the red-stained mare. “That still doesn’t explain the blood.”

“I ate it back,” she replied simply. She wiped a forehoof across her cheek, but only succeeded in smearing the blood further across her face.

Snowglobe approached Willow and looked the mare over sternly. “No word games,” she said insistently. “Just tell us what happened.”

Willow groaned. “Fine mom.” Snowglobe reached out a hoof but Willow batted it away. “Don’t touch me,” she warned. “The blood is contagious.” Snowglobe took a quick step back. Willow began her explanation. “A zombie jumped on me and pinned me on my back. It wouldn’t let me up so I bit its throat out.”

Moon would have taken the mare’s words as a joke had her face not been so serious. “You bit a zombie’s throat out?” Moon asked disbelievingly.

Willow nodded proudly. “Yep, snapped its neck with my teeth.”

Snowglobe gagged and hung her head hurriedly. Sunny cringed. “Okay Willow, that’s enough,” he said, sounding rather sick.

“What?” she asked defensively. “You were the ones who asked.”

Snowglobe shook her head slowly. “Willow, you’re crazy.”

Willow smiled. “Snowglobe, I swear if I wasn’t covered in blood right now that would turn you into a zombie, I would jump on you.”

Snowglobe rubbed her chin. “Now I’m kinna’ glad you’re covered in blood.”

They set off, walking towards the distant shape of Appleoosa.

“Tell you what,” Willow said to Snowglobe. “You find me a pair of sunglasses and I’ll make sure not to break anything when I jump on you.”

“Sounds fair,” the mare replied skeptically.

Willow looked over at Dusty. “I’m hungry,” she declared. “Got anything to eat?”

Dusty nodded. “Sure,” he reached back and dug through one of his bags for a moment. He emerged with a can of cooked carrots. He held it out to Willow, who took it thankfully.

“Wait? You’re actually hungry?” Moon asked. “Even after eating a zombie pony?”

Willow shot her a look. “I didn’t eat it. I just killed it with my teeth.” She turned to Dusty. “Can opener?”

The pegasus shook his head.

“Really,” Willow drawled. “You’re carrying a whole thrift store on your back… and you don’t have a can opener in there?”

Dusty opened his mouth the reply but she waved a hoof at him. “Never mind.” Willow levitated the can up to her mouth and bit into it. “One shecind,” she slurred. She set the can down on the ground and clasped it in her front hooves. She then took the can in her jaws and bit down. The top half of the can crunched. Willow pulled and the upper half came free. She spat it on the ground and levitated the now open can by her side.

“There,” she said happily, starting forward again.

Initially, Moon would have been surprised by the display. But Willow did so many crazy things now that tearing open a metal can with her teeth seemed fairly normal.

“A little hungry there?” Dusty prodded.

Willow smiled menacingly at him. “I can eat you if you’d like.” The mare spoke jokingly, the tone of her voice resurging them that she would never dream of it. But Moon couldn’t help a small shudder at the sight of the mare covered head to hoof in blood. Willow levitated a carrot to her mouth and munched it happily.

“So your magic works again?” Moon asked.

“A little,” Willow replied around a carrot. She swallowed. “I can levitate light things, but nothing heavy yet.” She finished off the can and tossed it aside. The crimson glow of her horn faded away.

Moon frowned. “Is that normal?”

Willow turned to look at her. “Is what normal?”

“Well, most ponies’ magic matches the color of their eyes. Your magic is the same color as your mane.”

Willow squinted. “What? No it’s not. My magic’s white. See” She levitated a small stone from the ground and brought it up to her face. Her eyes widened at the sight of the crimson glow and she absently dropped the stone. “Well, that’s new.”

Moon felt sorry for the mare. Willow wore a look of sad confusion. “Did it mutate with the virus?”

Willow shrugged. “Don’t know, but apparently my magic’s red now.”

Moon could tell that Willow was greatly unnerved. Her face was contorted awkwardly as if she were trying not to cry.

Sunny motioned ahead. “We’re almost there.”

Willow looked down at her coat. “I really need to wash,” she said flatly.

“What, you’re concerned about looks right now?” he teased.

Moon drove her knee into his side. “Not now,” she hissed.

Dusty shot her a resilient look, but nodded.

Willow continued. “I used to work at a hospital.” Every line was spoken in monotone. “Trust me; I know how hard it is to get blood out of your mane, or your coat.

“Willow,” Sunny said idly. “Sometimes, I just don’t get you.”

She shot him a halfhearted smile. “Good, you shouldn’t.”

* * *

The silhouette of Appleoosa loomed ahead. “Not too far now,” Sunny said cheerfully.

Their hopes were steadily growing. Appleoosa did in fact look inhabited. Smoke rose from the center of town and a barrier appeared to have been constructed around the small settlement. From their angle, train tracks could be seen running into town from the left, and out at the other end.

“I think we might be in luck,” Snowglobe said, peering at the constructed barrier.

Most of the area around the town were flatlands, dry and cracked form the continual heat and lack of water. Grass had once grown in this area, but without the springtime rain, it had all died off. A large apple orchard sat off to one side. A barrier had also been constructed around that, although not nearly as large as the one around the town.

Sunny idly kicked a small stone, sending it skittering across the cracked earth. The ground shook. Sunny froze. He looked at the stone curiously. Cautiously, he stepped forward and kicked the stone again. The ground beneath him shook.

Moon stopped to look at him curiously. “Are you doing that?” she looked at the rock, her expression unreadable.

“I-I’m not sure,” Sunny replied, dumbstruck.

“Sunny,” Dusty said quietly. “Stop lookin’ at the pebble, and look to the right.”

Sunny looked up and gasped; the others portrayed their surprise in multiple different articulations.

Four, very large shapes were rapidly closing in on them. A cloud of dust trailed in their wake.

“W-what’s that?” Sunny asked fearfully.

Dusty squinted at the monstrous shapes. “Ah’m pretty sure those are buffalo.”

Willow observed nervously. “You know,” she commented idly. “I really don’t like the way they’re running at us.” She chuckled but trailed off to a worried groan.

Sunny heard the metallic click of Brick readying his machine gun.

Snowglobe folded her ears. “Were shooting them, aren’t we?”

Dusty nodded solemnly. “Yep.”

Moon undid the strap holding the shotgun to her side and readied it beside her, the weapon encased in her magical blue haze.

Sunny took the bit of his battle saddle and flicked the safety. He silently pleaded for the massive animals to feign off. But, like anything he silently pleaded for, it didn’t really happen.

Now that the buffalo were in view, Sunny could make out their features. The lead buffalo’s thick brown coat was matted and black in whole splotches with what Sunny could only assume was dried blood. Its mouth hung open and drool swung like strands of rope as it gaped at them. The monster’s tombstone-like teeth could be seen through its drawn lips. Large, bloodshot eyes gleamed hungrily at the group. The other three shared the same appearance.

“Oh for Celestia’s sake!” Dusty bellowed over their pounding hooves. “The damned things are zombies!”

Sunny was the first to fire. The sight of the monsters closing in on him was terrifying. His rifle discharged and the round struck the beast square in the front. To his dismay, the buffalo wasn’t even phased. He fired again, still to no effect.

Dusty opened fire with Valediction. Moon lowered her shotgun and instead pulled out a pistol. Sunny fought the urge to hold his ears as Brick opened up with his machine gun.

The sheer amount of overwhelming gunfire took its toll the beast. It staggered and tumbled to the dirt.

Sunny would have cheered, had there not been three more. He turned to see Willow let loose with an automatic pistol, one of her better presents from the gun store. Her grip held firm and almost every bullet struck its mark. The left buffalo fell back and shook its head, having taken a generous amount of lead to the skull.

Brick strafed the other two with heavy machine gun fire. Willow nudged Sunny forcibly. “Run,” she insisted. “Run for the town.”

“Come on!” Sunny yelled, drawing everypony’s attention. Dusty shot him a quick look and nodded. He unfurled his wings and flew up to a safe distance. The pegasus fired down on the buffalo from above.

Sunny turned and ran for the wooden barrier of Appleoosa. Willow ran to his left and Moon right behind. Brick released his barrage of gunfire and turned to follow. Snowglobe ran beside him. The gray mare was attempting to check the load on the stallion’s chaingun as they ran.

“I didn’t even know buffalo could get infected,” Willow breathed heavily.

Sunny looked back at the behemoths trailing them. “Apparently they can.”

Sunny was beginning to pant. The fortified walls of Appleoosa suddenly looked a lot further away.

“They’re gaining!” Moon yelled worriedly.

Sunny looked over at Willow. Her face portrayed both anger and fear. Suddenly, her eyes lit up. The white mare reached back and dug in one of her saddlebags. A moment later, she emerged with a round piece of metal about the size of an apple.

“What’s that?” Sunny asked her.

Willow levitated the thing in front of her and pulled a small metal pin on the side. “Thing that goes boom,” she answered. She tossed it on the ground behind them. “The box said grenades,” she clarified.

“What do those do?” Before Willow could reply his question was answered. The grenade detonated directly below the left buffalo. The mangled creature tumbled to the ground in a mist of blood and fur. The radius of the blast also managed to reach the beast in the middle and its right legs were shredded. It crashed as well.

That only left one.

Dusty flew down to match Willow’s pace. “Nice job!” he jeered.

They were close enough to the town now for Sunny to see shapes moving atop the barrier. Another ten seconds and they’d be there. A surge of excitement shot through him at the sight. There were ponies there.

The buffalo trailing them howled angrily. There was a problem. Snowglobe was falling back and the buffalo had its eyes fixed on her.

Willow looked back and her eyes widened worriedly. The white mare planted her forehooves and skidded to a stop.

Sunny continued running, fear compelling to keep going. He looked back. “Willow!” he called. “What are you doing?”

She ignored him. Instead, she fell in place beside Brick, her smaller legs moving rapidly to match his long gait. “Keep running,” she instructed. The brown stallion nodded, looking determinedly ahead. Willow spared a glance at Snowglobe. The gray mare stumbled and nearly fell. She obviously didn’t have much of endurance for running.

Willow motioned for Brick to fall back and the two of them let Snowglobe overtake them. The beast was near feet from them. Its mouth salivated in eager expectation.

Sunny looked on in horror. He wanted to help but his legs continued to carry him forward.

Willow and Brick exchanged a glance. Then the white mare did something nopony had been expecting. She sprung into the air and landed on Brick’s back.

Moon balked. “What’s she doing?” she asked Sunny in awe.

Willow balanced precariously on the stallion’s back. She planted her feet against the machine gun and sprung from Brick’s back to the buffalo.

“She’s insane!” Sunny exclaimed.

“Leave her alone!” Willow bellowed angrily from the back of the beast. She brought her hooves down on the monster’s back.

It growled and tried to buck her off but Willow entangled her hooves in its thick fur and held strong.

Sunny was forced to stop when they reached the barrier of Appleoosa. A large wooden gate loomed ahead of them.

Moon, Snowglobe, and Brick stopped by his side and turned to watch Willow. Dusty hovered nearby, looking worried.

Willow undid the strap for her saddlebags and they were hurled from her back to land on the ground a few feet away from the entrance. The mare was now only wearing her hospital barding. The monster bucked again and Willow flopped down onto its head, still clinging to its matted fur.

Sunny wanted to help. But he couldn’t shoot for fear of hitting Willow.

“Do something!” Snowglobe said frantically.

Sunny took the bit in his mouth and aimed the rifle. Willow jumped in and out of his line of fire. There was no way he could make a shot.

The beast reared up and Willow was thrown up into the air. She reached the peak of her ascent and fell back towards the monsters open maw. Willow yelled profanities as she fell. The beast caught the white mare in its jaws and shook her like a dog would a chew toy.

“Shoot it!” Willow bellowed as the creature shook her. “Celestia damn it shoot the damn thing!”

Sunny had to try. He took careful aim and fired. Somehow, his aim held true. He was rewarded with a meaty thwack.

The buffalo opened its mouth in a painful bellow. Willow fell from its mouth and flopped down on the ground. She picked herself up and ran towards them. The buffalo stumbled, momentarily losing interest in the six ponies in front of it.

Sunny gasped as Willow came into view. The mare was covered with even more blood than before. Drool and mucus layered her coat and barding. The buffalo’s teeth had done numbers on her. Several large gashes ran the length of her body and her belly had distended on one side.

“Are you okay?” Sunny asked.

“No!” she replied. “Duck!” the mare ran directly at him and tackled him to the ground. The others obeyed her words and got down.

Sunny shrugged Willow off. “Shouldn’t we be running?”

Willow shook her head, face contorted in pain. “No.”

Sunny looked back to the buffalo in time to see it disappear. There was a muffled poof and a blossom of fire appeared in the buffalo’s belly. Blood and fur filled the air as the creature popped like a water balloon. There was a loud cheer from the barrier above.

“Thanks Willow,” Sunny said sarcastically. “You got blood all over me.”

The mare groaned. She spit out six grenade pins, her saliva mixed with blood. “Brick,” she choked. “Get me a healing potion.”

Brick nodded and headed over to her discarded barding.

“That was one heck of a show!” a female voice called from the Appleoosa barrier. “You ponies sent that Barreler straight to the moon!”

“You could say that,” Willow muttered, looking blankly at the grenade pins. She reached back and prodded the side of her belly. She gasped and hurriedly pulled her hoof away from the distended section. “Broken ribs,” she breathed. “Horseapples I’m torn up.”

Brick returned with a healing potion and presented it to Willow. The mare downed the purple potion and exhaled deeply. “A potion isn’t going to fix this,” she said worriedly.

“You all okay?” the female voice called.

Sunny looked up to spot the owner of the voice. A turquoise earth pony mare looked down at them. She sported a red headband and was fashioned with a long, dark brown mane and tail. She wore the red cloth around her head, but under her mane so that it was barely visible. It split her mane in the back, half of it running over, half of it running under.

“Sorry to hear about your friend,” she said idly.

Dusty cocked his head at her. “What do ya’ mean?”

The turquoise mare pointed a hoof at Willow, who was now sprawled on her side. “That mare got mangled. She’s gonna’ turn pretty soon.”

“Oh, no,” Sunny clarified. “She’s immune.”

The pony squinted down at them. “Say what now?”

Sunny returned her gaze. “Me and her are immune. I’ve been bitten once and Willow has too. But that was over a month ago.”

The turquoise mare held a puzzled expression, suggesting she didn’t believe a word he said. “I’ve never heard of a pony being immune.” She brought forth a rifle. “I’m having trouble believing you. The last ponies we let in here who said they were immune turned. That little mishap cost us five good ponies.”

Snowglobe stepped forward. “What kind of rifle is that?” she asked the turquoise mare.

Two other ponies came into view, flanking the mare they had been speaking with. She whispered something to them and they disappeared from sight. “Just a varmint rifle,” the mare replied. “Why do you need to know?”

Snowglobe flicked her tail. “Oh, well that can’t work too well for buffalo.”

Sunny looked down at Willow worriedly. The gashes on her flank had begun to stich themselves together. But the mare didn’t look in any better shape. Brick sat next to her. The stallion watched as Willow took a painful breath.

The turquoise mare glared down at Snowglobe. “What are you getting at?”

Snowglobe dropped the act. “Look,” she stated. “I take it you’re the leader of this settlement; and if all you have is a varmint rifle then everypony else is probably just as ragtag as you are for weapons. You need protection. You need guns. If you haven’t noticed, we have a lot of guns.” She looked triumphantly up at the mare. “Not to mention a Mare-60 Equestrian chaingun.”

Sunny watched as the mare on the barrier fought a silent battle with herself. Finally, she turned back. “Open the gate!” she yelled. “But keep your weapons trained. I still don’t trust them!”

The heavy wooden gate swung open. If a pony was careful, you could fit a wagon through the opening.

Brick nudged Willow to her hooves. The mare wobbled, but managed to stand. Surprisingly, she picked up her barding and re-slung it on her back. They entered the town and the door to the barrier was immediately closed behind them.

The town wasn’t very big. A dirt road ran down the middle and two story buildings stretched along its length on both sides. Wagons sat outside some shops, but didn’t appear to be in use. The road stretched on ahead before meeting another in a T. A large red clock tower sprouted from the ground midway through the town. Train tracks ran down the center of the town’s side road. About midway in the road, a pile of what appeared to be bodies burned. Putrid brown smoke rose into the air from the charring pile.

Ten ponies flanked their group, five on either side, firearms at the ready. The turquoise mare descended a staircase from the wooden barrier and trotted up to meet them. She addressed them in a formal tone. “Okay, I want all your weapons on the ground.”

Sunny looked around skeptically at their assortment of armaments. “Uh—” he started awkwardly. Willow cut him off.

The injured mare leveled her gaze with that of the turquoise earth pony. Willow’s expression was filled with such condescending criticism that Sunny was surprised fire wasn’t shooting from her eyes. “Do you really…” She paused for effect. “Want me to take my guns off?” She coughed and spat a blood clot into the dirt.

The instructing mare looked over Willow, then to the rest of the group. Her jaw lowered a small bit. “Never mind,” she stated. The mare didn’t look too comfortable with the six armed ponies in front of her.

“Don’t worry,” Willow reassured on a cheerier note. Her voice still rasped and every breath made her wince. “There are zombies everywhere. Do you really think we’d start shooting the first ponies we’ve seen for weeks?”

The turquoise mare shook her head. “You’d be surprised.” She rapidly changed topics. “I’m Sage by the way,” she said in a more friendly tone. “And I’m in charge of this settlement, more or less.” She looked over Willow. “I’d shake your hoof but…”

“I understand,” Willow added helpfully.

“Nice to meet ya’ Sage,” Dusty said cheerfully. Sage shot him a nod and smile. Sunny could swear he saw the pegasus blush.

“I don’t mean to be hostile,” Sage said slowly. “But about this mare.” She motioned towards Willow, who was now sitting down.

“Willow,” the white mare filled in for herself.

Sage nodded again. “Right, about Willow. I just saw her climb out of one of those thing’s mouth.”

“Is it the blood?” Willow asked semi-seriously. “Because it’s not all mine. My coat’s normally white.”

Sage ignored her statement. “I don’t believe any of this immune nonsense. I’ve seen enough ponies get bit to know they’re as good as dead in a day or two, sometimes hours.”

Sunny heard the slide of a rifle bolt. He looked around frantically, taking stance to put himself between Willow and the armed ponies.

Sage held up a hoof. “Hold your weapons,” she said, a hint of annoyance in her voice.

Moon stepped forward. “Look, we told you she’s immune.”

Sage stood her ground. “I’m not taking any chances.”

“Stop,” Willow interjected. Exasperation layered her voice. “For the love of Celestia, lock me in a cage if you have to. Please, just let me wash all the blood off me; and let me rest.” She motioned towards her left flank, which was awkwardly shaped. A section near the lower part of her belly bulged sickeningly. “I’m guessing I broke four ribs. Not to mention I severely injured something internal because I’m bloated like a dead animal.”

Sage thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “I have too much of a heart to shoot you, so we’ll make a compromise.” She addressed a brown earth pony. “Take her to wash up. But keep an eye on her. If I’m not there by the time she’s done then take her to the jailhouse.” She turned back to Willow. “And please, take off the guns before we put you in the cell.”

Willow faked a thoughtful expression. “I’ll think about it.”

After the earth pony led Willow away, Sage turned to the remaining five group members. “Is she always that intimidating?” the turquoise mare asked.

Sunny nodded. “Most of the time.” He noticed Sage kept throwing quick, nervous glances at Brick, who continued to stare her down.

Sage looked them all over one more time. She let out a masked chuckle before turning towards the rest of the town. The mare started forward and motioned for them to follow her.

“You all don’t mind staying in the same house do you?” she asked as they walked down the main road.

They all stated their indifference.

Sage reached an old wooden building near the T in the road and held it open for them. The five of them shuffled in. Sage followed them in and closed the door behind her.

Sunny looked around the room. It was actually quite nice. The floor was made of brown wooden planks, the same with the ceiling and walls. The only exception was that the walls were painted a sandy yellow. In the very center of the room was a large couch. A quilt covered most of the floor. From here, Sunny could see two doorways to different parts of the house and a staircase leading to the upper levels.

Sage cleared her throat loudly. “Before you settle in,” she said cautiously. “I’m going to have to ask all of you to strip off your barding. I need to check you all for bites.”

They all complied. Dusty hesitated for a moment but eventually began to undo his straps as well. They piled their assorted gear in the middle of the floor. Sunny slipped out of his saddle and rifle and added it to the pile, which was becoming surprisingly large.

Sage checked Brick first. The stallion looked out of place without the machine gun or metal cases on his flanks. The turquoise mare delicately circled Brick’s large frame, checking every inch of his body.

She approved of Brick and moved onto Snowglobe, then Moon. Sage moved for Dusty next and the pegasus shuffled his hooves awkwardly. Now he was definitely going red. Sage circled around to his back and lifted his sandy brown tail away to view his back legs. Dusty looked around awkwardly, trying not to make eye contact with any of them. Sage moved around to his other side and peeked under his belly.

The mare jumped and rather quickly finished the inspection. “No bites,” she declared. She threw a glance as Dusty and both of them flushed. “Moving on,” she stated awkwardly. She gave her head a quick shake and moved on to check Sunny.

He couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable as the mare examined his every inch. Sage stopped and peered closer at his left foreleg. “What’s this?” she asked.

Sunny looked at the spot she had mentioned. It was his old bite wound. The flesh was bubbled slightly and held a lighter hue than the surrounding skin. The orange hair had since grown back around the bite, but not as thick as the rest of the hair on his lower leg.

There was no excuse to be thought of so he told the truth. “It’s an old bite wound,” he told her.

Sage shot him a look. “Old?”

“I got it about a month and a half ago, back when the initial infection broke out.” Sage balked at him. “I told you, I’m immune.”

The turquoise mare was dumbstruck. “I’ve never seen a pony live long enough for a bite wound to heal before.”

Sunny rolled his eyes, feeling annoyance for what felt like the first time in months. “Because you haven’t met me. I haven’t met any other immune pony either. Except for Willow, but she gained her immunity medically.” He looked around for their good-humored companion before he remembered that she was somewhere locked in a jail cell.

Sage’s eyes lit up like a foal’s on Hearth’s Warming Eve. “You found a cure?”

Sunny motioned for Moon to take over. He didn’t know too much about this medical stuff. That was Moon and Willow’s thing.

“Not exactly a cure,” Moon clarified. “It’s an experimental antibiotic, incredibly dangerous. Willow almost killed herself the second time she took it. Also—”

Sunny shook his head vigorously. Moon had almost told Sage about how Willow had bonded with the virus. In their current situation, that probably wouldn’t have been the best course of action.

“She also what?” sage insisted.

“She also… lost her hair color for a few weeks,” Moon improvised quickly.

“When was this mare bit?” Sage asked.

Sunny wished the mare would leave them be. She was getting rather prying. “Same day as me,” he answered.

“Look,” Snowglobe interjected. “Are we like, playing twenty questions or something?”

Sage didn’t reply. She just backed up, surveying the five ponies with barely suppressed awe. “You’re a rather peculiar group,” she finally stated.

Now it was Sunny’s turn to be curious. “Why’s that?”

Sage rolled her eyes. “Well for one, two of you are pegasi.”

Dusty, who had decided to stop being red, cocked his head. “Is that anything special?”

The townspony nodded. “Most of the pegasus ponies have either turned or been killed. For some reason they’re a whole lot more susceptible to this virus thing than unicorns and earth ponies.

Dusty looked genuinely surprised. “Well that’s a bit of a shock,” he muttered.

Sunny looked around. A thought struck him. This was the first time he had seen Dusty and Snowglobe without their barding. This was also the first chance he had to glimpse his two friends’ cutie marks. Dusty’s cutie mark was a steam piston. Snowglobe’s mark was an adjustable wrench crossed with a blue bolt of electricity.

The door behind them opened and a pink unicorn mare poked her head in. “Sage,” she said urgently. The turquoise mare turned her attention to the new arrival. “There’s three fliers coming pretty close to the town. We’re all getting a little worried.”

Sage nodded. “Keep an eye on them. I’ll be there in a minute.” She turned to address the group in the house. “Hope you settle in nicely. I’m gonna’ go deal with whatever it is outside then go see your friend Willow. And I urge you to stay inside for now. It’s the smartest thing to do for the time being. Some of the ponies aren’t too friendly.”

She turned to leave. “Thanks,” Sunny called after her.

“Don’t mention it,” she shot back. The door closed and the mare was gone.

The room fell into an awkward silence. Dusty stared at the spot where Sage had disappeared. “Pegasus ponies die better than other ponies,” he muttered.

“Come on,” Snowglobe said cheerfully. “We made it! Let’s go get set up.”

Moon drug her barding out of the pile. “I call the top floor with Sunny.” She shot him a peculiar look.

Sunny looked awkwardly around the room. Dusty caught his eye. The pegasus smiled and nodded encouragingly.

“What? No!” Sunny protested. Dusty snickered.

Moon stalked up to Sunny and nudged him. “Let’s go get washed up. We’re both covered with blood and dirt.”

“Do these houses even have running water?” Sunny asked.

Dusty answered. “Yeah, ah visited here once. All the houses have runnin’ water. There’s a water tower somewhere around here. No hot water though."

“Come on,” she insisted. “You can help wash the spots I can’t reach.”

Sunny flushed. Dusty just snickered. Moon was making a scene in front of the whole group just to embarrass him. Thank Celestia Willow wasn’t here or he wouldn’t ever hear the end of it.

Sunny couldn’t bear it any longer. He gave. “Fine,” he groaned. “But only your back.”

He went away to wash up with a very triumphant looking Moon.

* * *

Willow scrubbed vigorously at her forelegs, trying to wash out the crimson stains.

The stallion had taken her to a bathhouse. Apparently, the houses didn’t have individual washrooms. Right now, she was the only one here.

She had asked Sage about the whole water issue. Turns out, the town had a natural well underneath it the size of Canterlot, according to her sources. ‘Why do you think the apple orchard’s still here?’ had been her reply.

Willow looked down at the section of her distended belly and prodded it gingerly. The swelling had since subsided after she had taken the potion. Little did the others know, she had been purposefully lying on her injured side to hold her ribs aligned while the potion did its work. The last thing she needed right now was for her ribs to heal up all crooked.

She never wanted to see another buffalo again. Those things had nasty teeth.

Her attention was grabbed by a pony loudly clearing their throat. Willow turned to see Sage observing her. “Oh good, you’re here,” Willow said cheerfully. “You can help me scrub my back.”

Sage contorted her face and reared her head back. “No thanks,” she said repulsively.

Willow shrugged and went back to scrubbing. “Suit yourself.”

“So I was speaking with your friends,” Sage started. “I noticed the orange one, Sunny I think his name was. Either way, he stated that both of you were immune. When I checked him, I found an old bite mark on his leg. He said he was bitten the same day as you. So I figured if you were telling the truth…”

“I’d have an old one too,” Willow finished.

Sage nodded. “May I check?”

“Sure.” Willow returned the brush she had been using to the bucket of red water. “It’s on my back, right behind the neck joint.”

A little cautiously, sage approached Willow. With tentative hooves, she parted the hair on the white mare’s back to reveal the wound. Teeth marks still remained, although dull and faded, it was definitely a bite.

Sage stepped back. “Well tie me to a rock and tell me to swim, you two really are immune.”

Willow nodded and went back to bathing. “Yep.” She wasn’t really in the mood for talking right now.

“I have one more question,” Sage insisted. “I saw you gulp a healing potion. Don’t those normally remove scars too?”

Willow nodded again. “Normally. The virus has effects that counteract any form of magic. Next time if you’re gonna’ let ponies in. If one of 'em’s a unicorn that can’t conjure any magic, they’re infected.”

Sage raised her eyebrows. “That’s useful to know.” She stood silently for a minute, creating an awkward silence while Willow continued her attempts at cleansing her coat. “So… about that jail cell thing,” Sage said idly. “You can forget about that. You’re fine to go with your friends.”

Willow turned and fixed her gaze on the turquoise mare. “Thanks,” she replied. Willow held the gaze a moment longer before returning to her fruitless task.

Sage turned to leave.

* * *

Sage walked the road through the center of town. Ponies greeted her cheerfully as she passed. She only returned the gestures halfheartedly.

She couldn’t get over that white mare. Something about her made Sage’s coat crawl. Something wasn’t right about Willow.

She suppressed a shudder. When sage had met Willow’s gaze, she had nearly been petrified. Sage had never seen eyes like that before.

Willow’s eyes were blood orange. Sage thought of a way to describe blood orange to herself. The color was like a mix of yellow and crimson. Like blood mixed into a bucket of yellow paint, but only stirred halfway so that wisps of crimson and yellow stood out from the patchy orange-ish mixture.

It was like her eyes had been yellow; but blood ran through them on the surface. Eyes were not supposed to look like that.

Sage reached the end of the street and climbed a staircase to the top of the barrier.

She heaved a long sigh and looked out over the barren desert landscape. The sun hung low in the sky, casting a lengthily shadow from even the smallest bushes.

“How’s it going Sage?” a female voice asked.

Sage turned to see the owner of the voice, a deep blue pegasus mare with a mane and tail so dark red that it could be almost portrayed as black.

“Hey Jade,” she replied with a heavy breath. “It’s going fine.”

Jade raised an eyebrow at her. “Doesn’t sound like it. What’s wrong?”

Sage heaved another sigh. Jade was the only pony she could really talk to. “I’m just worried about how this is all going to go. How did I end up being the leader of these ponies?” She hung her head. “Honestly, I used to be a caterer back in Canterlot. I’m not cut out for this.”

Jade unfurled a wing and hung it over Sage’s back, pulling the turquoise mare into a close embrace. “Look, Sage,” she started, her voice reflecting compassion. “I haven’t known you very long. But you sure as hay don’t remind me of some wedding planner or waiter. You took control when things were bad. When Braeburn and Silverstar left with their group of followers, you stepped up and took the roll of leader.”

Sage recalled the event. She had fled Canterlot in the heat of the whole mess and arrived at Appleoosa with the infection right on her tail. When she had approached the town, the townsponies had been in the act of constructing a wooden barrier. Back then, it had only been three or four feet tall. With her improvements, it was now up to six.

In the time of crisis, two ponies had stepped up and taken unofficial control of the town. Their names had been Braeburn and Sheriff Silverstar. They had run the town well. But two or so weeks later they caught wind of an REA outpost up north. They were all for it; but some of the townsponies had wanted to stay. ‘It’s safe here,’ was the argument. ‘Why would we leave?’

Sage herself had been one of the protesters. But the two leaders insisted, and so did about half the town. They were out ruled. So both the leaders and about half the town left with most of the weapons and supplies.

After that, the town had been left in complete shambles. That was when she had stepped up and took charge. With nopony else to turn to, the remaining townsfolk took her opinion without protest or thought and she quickly fell into the position of leader.

“I know,” Sage replied broodingly. “Sometimes… sometimes I just wish I hadn’t.”

Jade shot her a stern look and spoke determinedly. “These ponies need you. You’re the only thing holding them together. You can’t give up on them now.”

Sage smiled. “Thanks lieutenant,” she joked.

Jade rolled her eyes. “I told you not to call me that.”

Sage frowned. “Well why not? I already feed everything I do through you. You’re my best mare.”

Now it was Jade’s turn to smile. “Easy with the flattery there.” She trailed off awkwardly at Sage’s face and hurriedly changed topics. “So what do you think of our new arrivals?”

Sage shook her head slowly. “Odd.”

Jade tilted her head. “Odd? Is that it?”

Sage nodded. “Yeah, odd. For one, the white mare is crazy. The big brown one with the big gun won’t stop staring me down. And that blue pegasus stallion blushes every time he looks at me. Two of them say they’re immune to the virus and I actually believe them. The only normal ones are that blue unicorn and the gray one. But I think the gray one is swayed. She won’t stop looking at me like she wants me in bed. I don’t dare turn my backside to her.” She paused. “Yeah,” Sage murmured eventually. “One odd group.”

Jade seemed impartial. “All those guns they were carrying could prove useful.”

Sage murmured her agreement. She turned and shot Jade a small smile. “You can take your wing of my back now.”

Jade blushed and hurriedly lifter her wing from the turquoise mare’s back. “Sorry,” she murmured awkwardly, shuffling her hooves. “So that thing you’ve been worrying about,” she improvised, changing topics. “About the well eventually drying up with this drought. Then what?”

Sage heaved a sigh. “I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see."

<= As normal, A big thanks To Turtle for helping me work out a few flaws here and there

<= A gaint thanks to those forty or so of you that actually read this. I think I write this more for myself than for you ponies. :P

<= Oh and, I was curious as to what you all think so far. Name your favorite charecter in the comments please. Trust me, I really do want to know.

<= If it makes you feel any better, I have been neglecting Wrong Hospital to take the time to write this.

~Sorren

Chapter 8 New Plans

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Undead Equestria

By: Sorren

Chapter eight: New Plans

A white earth pony mare looked out the window of the skywagon at the passing desert landscape. Hundreds of multicolored specs dotted the ground below, all heading in one direction. She brushed a lock of her red and white striped mane away from her face and heaved a heavy sigh. Like normal, this reconnaissance mission had been unsuccessful.

The eight of them were currently on their way back to the REA outpost to present the bad news. Desert Sage had been a bust. The town had been totally wiped off the map, completely infected. They had landed on the roof of the hospital to allow the four pulling pegasi to rest. Attempts to scavenge the hospital had been made, but it to no affect. The whole place had been chocked full of zombies. They had had a rather close escape.

One thing was for sure. The ponies in charge weren’t going to be too happy. The hospital could have proved useful for medical supplies.

“Hey Candy,” A blue stallion chided. “What’re your plans when we get back to base?”

She turned with annoyance to the pseudo mares’ killer and shot him a heated look. “Nothing to do with you.”

He laughed mockingly. “What’s wrong Candy? Am I too much stallion for you?”

The other six members of the squad averted their eyes as she glared daggers into the stallion. “I told you already,” she growled. “I don’t like you using my first name. Go by the procedure.”

He shot her a sly smile. “Sure thing, Private Cane.”

The gray earth pony in the back of the skywagon groaned again.

One of the other squad members shot him a worried glance. “You okay Dodge?” she asked.

The gray stallion nodded. “Yeah, I’m just feeling a little weird.”

Candy fidgeted in her battle saddle. The entire squad wore them, with the exception of the medic. They no longer took the saddles off in the wagon like they used to before the infection. You never knew when a quick landing would find you surrounded by zombies.

Number one most important rule upon landing a skywagon, for the love of Celestia, protect the pullers. Without four pegasi to pull the wagon, you were what many of them would call, up shit creek.

Candy spotted the shape of Appleoosa off to the right and ahead. She never understood why they weren’t authorized to explore the town. Everypony in the REA knew that there were ponies living down there. For some reason, they blatantly refused to send a team in. The only excuse was a report deeming the location, ‘unsafe for exploration.’

Currently on board they skycraft, they had a medic, a heavy weapons pony, and six basic infantry. Candy was a member of the infantry and Dodge served as their big guns. The gray stallion wore a specially designed battle saddle modified to hold two light machineguns. He would provide covering fire while the rest of them picked off any stragglers with basic carbines.

“You know what I’m gonna’ do when we get back to base?” a stallion in the infantry asked.

“What?” a red mare—their medic, returned.

“First thing I’m gonna do is take myself off of these air missions. I’ve had enough of this flying nonsense. I’m not a pegasus; I shouldn’t be in the air.”

“Yeah,” a green stallion agreed. “That last call was too close. Those things were hopping off the building after us.”

“What the hay Dodge!?” an indignant voice called. “Back off!”

Candy turned her head around to see the disturbance. Dodge was on his hooves, blood ran in small lines from both tear ducts. He staggered towards their cherry colored medic, who hurriedly backed away.

“He’s infected!” she yelled warningly.

In no more than a second, they were all on their hooves, weapons trained on Dodge.

“Hold it,” the squad leader warned. “Careful where you shoot in the wagon. You hit a spark battery and we aren’t going to make it back to base.”

Dodge lunged forward, biting for the cherry mare ahead of him.

Candy’s eyes widened as Dodge’s teeth came down on the firing bit of his saddle. She dropped to the floor, just in time too.

The others weren’t so lucky.

The stallion’s dual machine guns blared to life, shredding anypony unlucky enough to be in the path of gunfire. Unfortunately, that happened to be all other six squad members. Candy covered her ears with her hooves and cried out in terror has her squad was, more or less, accidentally gunned down.

The blue stallion that had been teasing her managed to loose off a shot before his entire front was riddled with bullets. He fell to the ground in a series of violent spasms.

A clipping from the REA’s ‘Emergency Zombie Training Manual’ flashed in her mind. ‘Load your weapons with hollow point rounds. The creatures don’t feel pain, but hollow points will stop them in their tracks.’ It had come with a little picture of a bullet blowing out the back of a cartoon zombie.

Before his untimely death, the blue stallion had managed to plant a round in Dodge’s shoulder. The heavily armed zombie staggered backwards, relinquishing his unintended barrage of pony shredding rounds. It almost immediately lunged forward again, jaws snapping menacingly. Every time its teeth came together, a few rounds escaped the two machineguns on his back.

The cherry mare writhed on the ground. She had taken her fair share of lead and her middle section resembled that of a block of Swiss cheese. She pulled a pistol from her leg holster and emptied its contents into the infected pony. Dodge fell to the floor, dead, one of the bullets having pierced his skull. The cherry mare dropped her head back to the floor, eyes glazing over, having used her last wisp of life to fire the weapon.

Candy picked herself up and looked around the wagon. She was the only one left. Everypony else appeared to have been attacked with a cheese grater.

She cried out as the wagon pitched left. Candy hurriedly turned and staggered over the bodies of her companions as she made for the front of the wagon. The Plexiglas wind guard had been blasted to pieces by the devastating machinegun fire. Candy reached it and kicked out what was left of the plastic shielding.

The sight outside chilled her bones. She stood on the two foot wagon deck, gaping at the newly discovered carnage. Both of the left fliers had been hit. The closest one to her hung limp, suspended by the harness that was bound to the left and right bracings, blood trailing from his riddled form to be whipped away by the wind. The other pegasus had been shot through the wing and once in the rump. Without the ability to fly, he hung down below the wagon, suspended only by the whippletree jointing him with the dead flier, trying desperately to gain purchase with his one good wing.

The two uninjured pullers on the right struggled with the heavy weight of the wagon. The purple one closest to Candy turned and fixed his gaze on her.

He motioned towards the dead pegasus suspended in the air. “Cut him loose! He’s dead weight!”

Too panicked to question, she pulled out her standard issued knife and began hacking at the straps holding the pegasus up.

“No wait!” the injured one screamed. “I’m hooked to his saddle!”

The bindings snapped and the dead pegasus dropped away. To Candy’s horror, so did the injured one. He fell way from the wagon and spiraled to the ground, his good wing flailing uselessly as the dead weight pulled him to his death.

Candy closed her eyes tight. “Celestia forgive me.”

“We’re still too heavy!” the red pegasus in front yelled back at her. “Tell the others to start dumping gear or we’re going down!”

“They’re all dead!” she yelled back.

The lead pegasus blinked. It took him a second to regain his composure. “Well then dump them off! We are too heavy!”

Candy nodded fearfully and ran back into the wagon. She scrambled over the bloody mess a second time to reach the rear hatch. She pulled the release latch and the back door fell away.

Dodge was the closest to her. She bent down and fastened her teeth in his saddle strap. Trying to ignore what she was doing, Candy drug him to the back door and, with a shove, sent him spiraling away into the wind.

“Keep going!” one of the pegasi yelled. “It’s going to take a lot more than that!”

One by one, Candy pushed her fellow comrades’ bodies from the skywagon. The last to go was a light blue unicorn. Candy grabbed her by the saddle strap and drug her to the rear opening, the spilt blood working as a lubricant and sickeningly allowing the body to slide smoothly across the floor. She braced her hooves on the mare’s flanks and readied to push her over the edge.

The light blue mare lifted her head. “Cane,” she gasped. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth. “Help me.”

Candy’s breath caught in her throat. Celestia! She was still alive.

“Hurry it up!” Bellowed the pegasus. “We are about to die if you hadn’t noticed!”

Candy looked around the wagon in a panic. The only things left in here that weren’t bolted to the floor were her and the injured mare.

“Help me,” she repeated. “Please.”

Candy examined the mare’s wounds. She was toast. There wasn’t all that much left of her middle that didn’t have a hole through it. It was an anomaly that she should still even be alive.

“Please!” she choked, fixing her pitiful gaze on Candy.

Candy choked back a sob. “I’m so sorry.” She gave a heavy push and the mare slid from the wagon deck.

* * *

It was two days after the group’s arrival in Appleoosa. Sunny walked alongside Sage through the center of town. Despite the whole apocalypse thing, the overall aura here was somewhat cheery.

Sunny was surprised there weren’t hundreds of zombies gnawing at the barrier around Appleoosa. He decided to ask Sage. She was their leader after all; she should know these things.

“Hey,” he said to get the mare’s attention.

Sage turned to him. “Yes?”

“Why isn’t this place, like, completely surrounded by zombies?”

She shrugged. “Been wondering the same myself. But as I think you saw yesterday, we get a good ten or so stragglers every day.”

Sunny nodded. Every day a small amount of zombies managed to stagger their way to the town. They were always spotted by a pony on guard before they managed to reach the barrier though. That was why there had been a pile of burning bodies when they had first arrived. When he had asked Sage why they burnt them, her only reply had been, ‘So they don’t smell.’

Sunny watched as an earth pony stallion hauled a cart loaded down with apples from the orchard. “Don’t you ponies ever get tired of apples?” he asked idly.

Sage groaned with deep exasperation. “Don’t even bring that up. Half the ponies here would kill just for a single bite of something else.”

Sunny made a mental note not to tell them about their remaining supply of canned food.

“We can’t even make apple pies,” she added. “Town ran out of flour last month, and cinnamon… I really miss the cinnamon.”

He remembered taking a few cans of cinnamon apples from the hospital. Maybe he could give one of them to Sage as compensation for her hospitality. She hadn’t had to let them in, let alone give them a whole house to themselves.

Sage cleared her throat, creating an awkward feeling in the air. “I’m really glad you ponies came when you did,” she confided. “We aren’t exactly well-stocked on weaponry.”

He shot her a glance. “So you, need something from us...?” he prodded.

Sage rolled her eyes. “I was trying to be nonchalant, but since you’ve just gone out and stated it, yes, we need something from you. All those weapons the crazy mare was lugging around, you can’t possibly need them all. I’d like to ask that we use some of them.”

Sunny thought about it for a moment. “I’m not sure,” he mused. “Willow’s the one that carried them all the way here—you’d have to ask her.”

She flicked her ears at him. “I’ll check with her about it then.” She gazed up at the sky, her expression switching from contempt to puzzlement. She raised a hoof and pointed at a shape in the air. “What’s that?”

Sunny lifted his head, squinting against the sun to get a better look at it. He could tell that it was rectangular. That was about it; that, and it was rapidly closing distance between it and the town. “I’m not sure. Something big.”

Sage continued to stare up at the unknown object, her eyes steadily widening. “It’s coming our way,” she declared worriedly. Sage took a deep breath. “Big flying object incoming! Be ready for something!” she bellowed.

Sunny jumped. “Loud enough?” he asked sarcastically.

He was surprised Sage didn't have a battle saddle or something. She was their leader after all. It just seemed like the leader needed to be better equipped. She seemed like the type of pony who’d always have a gun.

Sunny eyed the shape again. He could now make out its color—gray. “Hey, I know what that is,” he exclaimed.

Sage shot him a quick look. “Well, spit it out.”

“It’s a skywagon. I saw one crashed out in the desert; only difference is this one is gray.”

The turquoise mare took a step back. “Was the one in the desert flying right at you?”

Sunny glanced at her. “No. Why?”

“Everypony out of the street!” she yelled.

Sunny cringed. “You’re... really good at yelling,” he complimented awkwardly, rubbing his ear.

Sage gave him a sideways shove. “Hurry up,” she said forcibly.

Sunny allowed himself to be led off to one side of the street. All the townsponies watched as the wagon grew nearer, maintaining a direct route to the town.

“Are they trying to land?” one murmured worriedly.

“Come on, turn,” another urged.

The wagon was now close enough for Sunny to spot the two ponies pulling it. The one front sported a red coat and mane, while the one behind it was purple.

Sage took a sharp inhale of breath. “They’re gonna’ land in the street.” She looked worriedly down the center road of town. Wagons were parked here and there along its length, sporting supplies and garbage, or in one case, apples. “Clear the street!” she instructed the townsponies. “They’re landing here!”

Dusty came up beside Sunny, wings flared and looking rather worried. “They’re in bad shape,” he commented, observing the wagon.

The skywagon pitched to one side and dropped a good ten feet before returning to semi-normal flight. The two pegasus fought to keep it in the air as they neared the town.

Dusty tilted his head to one side. “That wagon’s meant to be pulled by a team of four. Why’re there only two pegasi flying it?”

Sunny shook his head. “I don’t know, but they’re going pretty fast.” He watched, tension building in is stomach as the townsponies attempted to clear the street, pulling wagons off to the side and in between buildings.

Dusty shot Sunny a look. “Well of course they’re goin’ fast. They don’t have enough wingpower to hold that thing in the air. All those two pegasi are doin’ is steerin’ the fall.”

“Here they come!” cried one of the townsponies.

The skywagon skimmed over the wooden barrier with inches to spare, the rear skid taking out part of the railing. The lead pegasus missed a beat and the wagon dropped dangerously. It hit the road with a bang that shattered the windows and bent the frame of the wagon. Townsponies dodged left and right as the wagon weaved to and fro on the road. First it leered left, then right and up on a single runner and off to the left again. The lead pegasus gave a heave and managed to wrestle the monster of a skycraft back to the center of the road. The runners threw up dust as the wagon slid forward on momentum, the pullers looking ready to drop dead, only running with the wagon to avoid being run over.

“Wow,” Dusty mused as the wagon went shooting past.

The front corner of the skycraft struck a wagon that had not been fully cleared from the street. It’s contents of wood and foodstuff was scattered about the road as the wagon summersaulted into a building. Finally, the skywagon turned sideways in the center of the road and slid to a stop. It tilted and balanced on one runner for a moment before crashing back to earth.

“Yeehaw!” Dusty jeered, stamping his hooves. “That there was some nice flyin’!”

Neither of the pullers replied. Instead, they both flopped over in the dust, flanks heaving.

Townsponies began to surge forward but Sage held up a hoof. “Stay back!” she commanded.

A white earth pony mare with a red and white striped mane and tail emerged from what was left of the front of the wagon. She hopped down and landed belly first in the dusty road. “Never again!” she declared.

When the wagon had come to rest in the road, it had done so diagonally. Sunny and Dusty ran up to it to aid the landed ponies. Sage made to yell a command at them, but trailed off at the sight of the two pegasi.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” she told them strictly.

“Are you okay?” Sunny asked the pullers skeptically. The two ponies didn’t reply. The purple one tried to climb to his hooves but failed while the red one just dry heaved.

The pony with the two-toned mane picked herself up off the ground. She sported gray barding which Sunny recognized as an REA uniform. She also wore a battle saddle, a black carbine mounted to the device.

“Say,” Dusty mused, examining the wagon, then the uniformed mare. “You ponies are REA.”

The mare stood up tall. “Private Cane, first class,” she stated routinely.

Sage trotted up. “Don’t pull any of your REA nonsense here; that won’t get you any respect.”

The mare lowered her gaze. “Sorry. Name’s Candy Cane.”

“Fitting,” Sunny mumbled to Dusty. Candy shot Sunny a quick glare and the orange pegasus held up a hoof in apology.

“Don’t you REA skywagon ponies normally work in groups of eight?” Dusty asked. “Why do you only have two pullers and no other ponies on board?”

Candy didn’t reply. Instead, her pupils dilated and she no longer appeared to be consciously in front of them.

“Accident,” the purple pegasus gasped. “Big one.”

A dark blue pegasus with an equally dark red mane flew over to the wagon and peered inside. She leered away almost immediately. “Nopony in here,” she called to Sage. “Just a lot of blood.”

Sage frowned. “Blood but no bodies?” She turned back to Candy. “It all can’t possibly be yours. Heck, I don’t even see any cuts on you.”

Candy kept her eyes fixed on her hooves. “They’re dead,” was her only answer.

The dark colored pegasus trotted over to stand by Sage. “Any bodies?” she asked Candy.

The striped mare mumbled something unintelligible.

“We dumped them,” the lead pegasus replied, his red flanks still heaving. “We had to; there was too much weight.”

Sage paced around the wagon like a detective would a crime scene. Sunny guessed that being a leader of a settlement, she could do those kind of things and not look like a joke. “What was the REA doing so far west?” she questioned. “I thought they pulled out of here a long time ago to protect the settlements up north, or at least, that’s the rumour.”

Candy didn’t appear to be in the mood for questioning, but answered nonetheless. “They’ve mostly pulled out. A few small bases still remain. We were running a reconnaissance and scavenge mission to a place called Desert Sage.” She scoffed. “And technically, me telling you this is a total break in procedure.” Candy rolled her eyes. “Too late now. Either way, the REA is looking for medical supplies. They also told us to keep an eye out for a cure. Like we’re going to find one in some rundown hospital in a town in the middle of nowhere.”

Sunny and Dusty exchanged a glance. “Are you thinkin’ what ah’m thinkin’?” Dusty mused.

Sunny nodded. “I’m thinking about how Willow’s going to react if we wake her up from her nap.”

Dusty raised an eyebrow. “Wow, we really are thinkin’ the same thing.” He hesitated. “So who’s going to wake her up?” he asked seriously. They exchanged another glance.

“Well I don’t want to,” Sunny declared.

Dusty snorted. “I’m not doin’ it.”

The two stallions fixed their gaze on Candy. “Tell ya what,” Dusty improvised. “We tell the REA mare about the antidote thing…”

“Then let her decide whether or not to wake Willow up,” Sunny finished for him.

Dusty smiled. “Pretty good kid.”

Sunny deadpanned. “Dusty… I’m nearly the same age as you. You aren’t allowed to call me kid. I don’t think either of us classify as kids.”

Dusty waved his wing at Sunny dismissively, instead, switching his gaze back to Candy. “So who wants to tell the REA mare about the antidote?”

They exchanged a glance.

* * *

Willow batted away a hoof prodding her in the side. She shoved her head into the pillow. “Leave me alone,” she groaned, words muffled. The hoof prodded her again.

She pulled her face from the pillow and rolled over onto her back, eyes still tight shut. “Poke me again and the hoof comes off!”

There was a brief silence. “Don’t do it again,” the voice of Sunny warned.

“Ah wasn’t going to,” Dusty replied. The pegasus was a terrible liar.

“Well somepony has to wake her up,” an unknown voice declared.

“Can we like, go get Snowglobe to do it or something?” Sunny asked. “I think Willow likes her a little better.”

“Yeah,” Dusty added. “They definitely like each other more.”

“Have you seen that look thing they do?” Sunny mused.

“Oh yeah, definitely.”

Willow spoke up, still keeping her eyes shut. “I can hear everything you are saying. Thanks for jabbing me in my still-healing ribs.”

“What’s so wrong with waking her up?” the unknown voice asked.

Willow smiled to herself. She wasn’t tired anymore, but it was still fun to mess with them. She opened her eyes and rolled to a sitting position, stifling a yawn. It took her a moment to remember where she was. It felt strange not to be sleeping out in the open like she had been for the past few days. This was a small room, fashioned with nothing more than a bed and a dresser. A single light hung from the ceiling and brown shag carpet covered the floor. The walls were a deep yellow. Her memories returned. She was in the room she had picked on the top floor, in the house Sage had leant them.

There were also three ponies in her room, one of which she didn’t know. Dusty and Sunny looked at her, a little skeptical at having woken her up. To the left of them stood a white earth pony, her mane striped both red and white. She also sported a gray REA uniform and nothing else.

Willow gazed coolly at the unknown mare. “Who are you?” she asked contemplatively, but not rudely.

The mare cleared her throat. “My name is Candy Cane.”

Willow snorted. “Well that’s ironic.”

Candy deadpanned. “I am going to change my name,” she said flatly.

Willow rolled off the bed onto her hooves and examined the mare more closely. “No, no. It’s a good name. It’s just a little funny that you actually look like a candy cane.”

The striped mare had no response.

Willow turned to the two pegasi in the room. “So, what’s going on?”

Dusty motioned towards the red and white mare. “Candy had something she wanted to discuss with you.”

Willow shrugged and flopped back down on the bed. “I don’t know,” she mused good-humoredly. “My schedule’s pretty crammed.”

Candy cocked her head to one side curiously.

Willow reached out a hoof and thumped the mare on the chest. “I’m just messing around!” she smiled. “What do you need to talk about?”

“I heard you had means of an antidote,” she started.

Willow shot a glance at Sunny and Dusty. “Really?” she asked with mock surprise. She changed to a serious tone. “Why do you wanna’ know?”

Candy motioned towards her uniform. “I serve with the REA, as you can probably tell. I normally have my battle saddle with me, but the mare named Sage doesn’t want me to have it here.” She paused, as if waiting for Willow to say something.

“Go on,” she urged.

Candy seemed taken aback by Willow’s easygoing attitude.

“Are you always so charming?” Dusty teased.

Willow leveled her gaze with the cheeky pegasus. She raised her hoof and pointed at both Sunny and Dusty. “You two, leave,” she commanded. “Let the big mares talk.”

Dusty hung his head in fake submission. “Fine mom.”

Willow continued to stare them down until both pegasi had left and shut the door behind them.

Candy was tilting her head so far sideways Willow was surprised her neck hadn’t popped. “They told me you work with medicine…” She looked Willow up and down quickly. “I thought you’d be a little more…”

“Boring?” Willow suggested.

“Formal,” Candy finished.

Willow scoffed. “I used to be formal. Then the infection broke out. And that’s about the time I thought, ‘You know what Willow? Things are pretty bad. Ponies are dying, everything’s hitting the fan. If I’m going to wind up dead or eaten by some zombie, I might as well have some fun with it.’ Being an uptight prick isn’t worth it.”

Candy nodded in partial understanding. “Well… Willow. That’s… a good way of looking at things.” She cast a tense glance around the room. “So, about that antidote thing?”

Willow scooted over on the bed and motioned for the striped mare to sit in the spot she had cleared. “Have a seat,” she offered, more or less ordered. “I don’t want to explain this to you while you stand there and act all formal. You don’t have to be so uptight just because you’re wearing that uniform.”

Candy remained where she was. Willow motioned towards the bed again, this time more insistently. Candy shrugged and hopped up next to Willow. She lay down, resting her hooves in front of her.

Willow nodded like a pleased mentor. “See, that wasn’t too hard. Comfortable, huh?” she joked, before switching back to a more serious tone. “So I thought you REA ponies were all about strength in numbers; are you on a solo mission or something?”

Candy shook her head slowly. “There was a bad accident on the skywagon. I was the only one who survived, me and two fliers.

Willow frowned, looking genuinely sorry. She fidgeted, trying to find a more comfortable position.

“So tell me what you know about this cure thing. Considering I’m the only one left of my squad, that puts me in charge.”

Willow pondered the request. “Depends on what you want to hear first. Do you want to hear what I know of the virus? Or do you want my theories on a cure?”

Candy frowned. “Virus first.” She pulled out a small voice recorder and set it on the bed between the two. “Do you mind?” she asked Willow, motioned towards the recorder.

The white mare shook her head. “Nope.” She clicked her tongue, readying herself to begin. “The virus is a pretty long story, so I’m gonna’ keep it pretty brief. Before the virus spread across Equestria, I worked at a hospital in the town of Desert Sage. Majored in medical treatment and yadda yadda all that other official stuff. Either way, I was able to observe an infected pony as the virus spread. I treated him to the best of my ability. Sadly he still… turned. The subject was a middle aged stallion, average weight and height.” Willow paused to recall.

“The virus, while having minor physical effects on the subject, mostly attacks the brain. The physical effects are probably the most useful for noticing an infected pony before they turn. What I noticed with a recently infected pony was not much, other than a minor rotting of the skin. Infected ponies also seem to bleed around the eye and nasal area, suggesting head trauma.”

Candy nodded. “I was briefed on this. The REA was at least able to find that much out.”

“Good,” Willow said. “If I found that out, their scientists better have.” She shifted again, not comfortable with her current spot. “The signs were pretty obvious. I also noticed that the virus appears to repel unicorn magic. Infected unicorns can produce little or no magical effects. I have experienced this myself, having been infected before.”

“What?” Candy broke in. “You were infected? Are you saying that you actually cured yourself?”

Willow pondered the question, glancing between one hoof and the other. “Sort of, but I’ll get to that in a minute. So far, almost every hypothesis I have drawn, is with observation of myself. I was bitten by an infected individual approximately six weeks ago. Upon contact with the virus, I immediately applied means of medical retaliation. In an attempt to quell the virus, which I had observed spread in another pony, I injected myself with large doses of penicillin and a small amount of formalin.”

Candy, who had been drifting off, leaving Willow speaking to the voice recorder, perked her ears in surprise. “Wait? Isn’t that the chemical they use as embalming fluid so the bodies don’t rot?”

“yes it is.”

“Are you crazy!?” Candy balked. “You put that stuff in your body while you were still alive?”

Willow deadpanned. “Think about how ridiculous that question was. I’m not going to wait until I’m dead to inject myself with it.”

Candy flushed. “Yeah…” She motioned for Willow to continue.

Willow did so. “While this did work as a temporary cure, it only slowed my diagnosis. Two days later, I found myself experiencing the effects I had observed.” She paused. “To explain this next part, I’m going to have to backtrack a bit. A couple weeks before the infection broke out, we were accidentally shipped two crates of an unknown antibiotic. The crates carrying the substance were unmarked, and the drug inside was unspecified. The drug inside these crates was one I had never seen before. Inside each vial was a liquid that can be seen to the eye as an electric blue. At the time I was infected, I happened to have this very drug in my possession. Also at the time, I knew the aftereffects of the virus. I had nothing to lose; so I injected myself with the antibiotic.”

Candy was no longer drifting away. Her attention was fixed unwaveringly on Willow.

“What I found is that this drug is so potent, and in some cases, deadly, that it did destroy the virus, but only in its diagnostic form. After the virus comes in contact with the body, it mutates and takes control of the mind. Before this virus mutates, the antibiotic will work in a high enough dose. The first time I did not eliminate it. Over a period of one month I lived with the virus in me, under the impression that it was completely gone. Somehow, during that month, the virus had spread more slowly, affecting my body in ways that I still don’t quite understand, while leaving my mind untainted. It was only when I found myself with night vision and abnormal strength that I realized I was still infected. That night, I injected myself again, this time with twice the dosage I administered last time.”

“Whoa, wait?” Candy cut in. “Strength and night vision? You’re kidding?”

Willow smiled. “You really don’t know much about me sister.” Candy just rolled her eyes at the white mare. “Yes,” Willow continued. “Somehow, I seemed to bond with the virus. Don’t ask me how; I have no idea. From what I know of, I now have the ability to see in the dark. I also have abnormal strength. I believe this is because of a higher activation level in my muscle fibers, something in my brain. For example.” Willow motioned towards the dresser on the other end of the room. “I could juggle that dresser or smash it to pieces with nothing but my front hooves.”

Candy looked confused. “Are you saying you’re, like… a carrier or something?” She moved across the bed, away from Willow.

Willow shook her head. “Absolutely not. I bonded with it, then eliminated it. I’m not carrying it anymore…” Willow cocked her head and rolled her eyes to the top of her skull. “And I think that’s it.”

“I have to admit,” Candy declared, sounding rather surprised. “For your whole gung-ho attitude, I thought you’d be a bit more…” The twirled a hoof in the air, looking for a good word to finish with.

“Dumb?” Willow suggested idly. “Illiterate?”

The striped mare nodded. “Yeah, basically.”

Willow smiled to herself. “Hurray, I’m an intelligent psychopath.”

Candy frowned. “Who ever said you were a psychopath?”

She chuckled. “Just about everypony who knows me.” Willow prodded Candy in the flank with a forehoof. “Let’s just put it this way. When I first got here, I blew up a zombie buffalo by cramming six grenades down its throat while it shook me like a ragdoll.”

Candy’s jaw dropped.

“Not joking,” Willow defended seriously. “Ask everypony here; they’ll tell you the same thing.”

Candy appeared to be running out of ways to express her dumbstruck surprise. “There really are infected buffalo?”

“Definitely. They’re nasty things too. It takes a lot of bullets to kill them.”

The striped mare pushed herself up to a sitting position. “How are those townsponies even still here with those monsters out there?”

Willow shrugged, copying the mare’s movements. “They seem to be able to handle themselves.”

As if Willow’s comment had queued it, a distant voice reverberated from outside. “Flier! Flier!” it yelled. There were two resounding gunshots, and nothing more.

“I rest my case,” Willow stated levelly.

Candy cleared her throat formerly. “Now, I need to address something with you. We both know that I don’t know much about medicine, or viruses, or cures, or whatever.”

Willow flicked her tail. “What are you getting at?”

“Well…” Candy hesitated. “I believe the best course of action would be to take you and the antidote back to base camp. From there they’ll decide what to do with it, most likely fly you to Baltimare.”

Willow scrunched her brow. “Baltimare?”

“Yep.” Candy rolled off the bed to land on her hooves. “Baltimare is one of the last standing population centers in Equestria. Or at least, the last big one.”

Willow cheered silently to herself. “I thought all the major cities had been wiped out?”

Candy grinned. “All but a few; Baltimare is one.” She changed topics. “So, will you take up my offer?”

Willow pondered the thought. “And if I refuse?”

Candy levitated the recorder from the bed and returned it to one of the pockets in her uniform. “Well, regulations say to detain you, but I’m not stupid enough to try.”

Willow reached out a hoof and messed up Candy’s mane. “You know me better than I thought.” She stood up and sprung off the bed like a playful filly. “I’ll have to speak with my friends about it first.”

“Of course,” the striped mare clarified, nodding. There was a pause, in which the mare hung her head.

Willow frowned. The candy-colored mare’s composure was deflating like a balloon. Candy sniffed as tears ran from her face to drop lightly on the shag carpet.

That was one reason Willow had chosen this room over the others. It was the only one with carpet.

“I can’t,” Candy choked.

“Um…” Willow looked around awkwardly. “Are… are you okay?”

Candy shook her head, staring at her hooves. “No.”

Willow stood quietly where she was for a moment. “Well… that’s, too bad… or something like that.” Willow couldn’t think of a more awkward moment. One minute she was having an intelligent conversation, now the mare was crying. Had she said something?

The upset mare sat down and sobbed lightly.

Willow took a tentative step forward. “Am I supposed to like… say something?”

Candy looked up at Willow, her face contorted in distress. “Yes! You’re supposed to say something to make me feel better.”

“Well how was I supposed to know?” Willow asked in a defensive manner. “I don’t even know what you’re upset about. You just started crying.”

The striped mare took a shaky breath. “We’re supposed to honor our dead REA members. I just pushed them out of a skywagon. T-two of them were still alive…” She tried to continue, but failed.

“I’m not going to lie.” Willow shot Candy an apologetic look. “That sounds really bad.”

Candy stomped her front hooves on the ground. “You think!?”

Willow sighed and approached the red and white pony. “I’m bad with emotional stuff. Like, really bad.” She paused, thinking of the best way to proceed. “Do you need a hug?” she asked jokingly with a forced chuckle.

The breath was nearly knocked her as Candy wrapped Willow in a tight embrace. She winced as the mare squeezed her ribs. Willow rolled her eyes as Candy sobbed into her flank. She reached out and patted the striped mare lightly on the head.

“I was, kind of joking about the hug thing,” Willow murmured. She hoped the others didn’t walk in on this. She was Willow; she couldn’t be seen hugging ponies to make them feel better. “It’s okay,” she said, trying to put on a soothing voice. “You know, just try and wrap the hug up kinda’ soon.” She sighed. Why did this mare have to choose and have a break down while they were the only two in the room? Why not with Sunny? He seemed good at making ponies feel better.

Willow ran her hoof through the mare’s red and white striped mane. “Come on, stop crying… please?”

Candy looked up and met Willow gaze, eyes shining from fresh tears. She gave Willow’s neck a soft nuzzle. “You’re a really nice mare, Willow.”

Willow froze, before slowly looking down at the striped mare. “Wait… what?”

* * *

Moon watched in boredom as a zombie pony staggered towards her. It had its sickly gaze fixed on her, but for some reason was not running, or paying her much mind for that matter. It was just, watching her.

She sat atop the barrier, looking out over the landscape, the afternoon sun beating heavily down on her from above. There really wasn’t much to do in Appleoosa.

She had no idea where Sunny or the others were. She had seen Brick trotting around earlier, but he wasn’t around anymore. They were probably somewhere around the town.

Moon still couldn’t stop thinking about the way zombie ponies acted. They didn’t make any sense. For one, if they were so crazy, why didn’t they ever attack each other? For creatures that had no common sense, they seemed to know companionship, if nothing more than on an instinctual level. Something she had learned in Desert Sage was that zombies could run really fast, but that was only if they wanted to eat you. When they weren’t busy trying to bite you, the creatures mostly kept to themselves, staggering around aimlessly with no real purpose. One thing she did notice they did however, was feed on one another. Yesterday, she had watched as a townspony shot down an approaching zombie.An hour or so later, there had been two more of the monsters around the carcass, digging into it like normal ponies would a particularly good salad.

Moon heard hoofsteps on the wooden planks to the left and turned to see a night-blue pegasus walking towards her. Her mane was dark enough red to almost be mistaken for black.

“Hey,” the mare greeted cheerfully.

“Hey,” Moon returned levelly.

The dark colored pegasus fixed her gaze on the zombie Moon had been observing. “Strange things, aren’t they?”

Moon shook her head slowly. “I don’t get them.” There was a gunshot somewhere from the other side of town, breaking the quiet air. She had learned to ignore these. A shot always rang out every now and then. The ponies here didn’t like to let the zombies reach the barricade.

The pegasus gave a haughty snort. “I don’t think anyone does.” She turned to Moon. “I haven’t gotten your name yet.”

Moon met the mare’s deep purple gaze. “My name’s Moon.”

The pegasus frowned. “You’re the first Moon I’ve met.” She shrugged. “I’m Jade.” She held out her hoof and Moon took the gesture.

“Nice to meet you Jade.” Moon released the mare’s hoof, feeling awkward for a reason she did not know. There was something nagging at the back of her mind that she had to ask. She looked out over the landscape, purposefully avoiding eye contact. “You’re the only pegasus I’ve seen here,” she stated, allowing a questioning tone to seep into her voice.

“It would be strange if I wasn’t,” Jade replied without hesitation. “Before your group arrived, I was the only pegasus here.”

Moon squinted. “What? There’s like sixty ponies here.”

Jade nodded solemnly. “I know. Apparently, pegasus ponies dropped like flies when the initial infection broke out. The rest of them just seemed to disappear. There’s this rumor spreading from up north that most of the survivors just, flew away somewhere.”

Moon arched her brow. “Well why do they think that?”

Jade examined the zombie pony as it staggered closer. “That big floating city near Canterlot, Cloudsdale it was called. We got word from ponies up north that that place is totally gone, disappeared right off the map.

“How could a whole city just disappear?” Moon asked skeptically.

Jade shrugged. “Well it is a giant cloud. I guess enough pegasi could have like, pushed it away, or something.” She dropped the topic and the two of them sat in awkward silence.

Moon returned her attention the the landscape, eyeing nothing in particular and trying to avoid the gaze of the ever-nearing zombie.

“You ever shot a gun?” Jade asked after a moment

“Yes,” Moon replied immediately.

Jade shot her a sideways smile. “Really?” her tone suggesting she believed otherwise.

“Yeah.” She reached for the shotgun at her side before realizing she had left it at the house. Moon swore silently to herself. “Yeah, I’ve shot guns, and killed zombies. I used to use a double barrel before I got a better shotgun.”

Jade motioned towards a rifle mounted on the railing a little ways to the left. “Prove it then.” Her voice held that challenging tone that meant Moon could not turn her down.

Moon pointed her nose to the air and trotted over to the mounted rifle. “Fine, I will.” The rifle was mounted on a pivot, allowing use for earth ponies and pegasi without a battle saddle. Moon took the bit in her mouth and lined the sights up with the advancing zombie pony. It gazed back at her; if a zombie could look curious, that was how this one looked.

She took a deep breath and bit down. The rifle bucked a little harder than she had expected. She released the bit and rotated her jaw sorely. She was so used to absorbing any recoil with magic that she hadn’t been expecting the force from using her mouth instead. On the bright side, she had hit the zombie. It lay where she had shot it, dead.

“Nice shot,” Jade complimented.

Moon allowed herself a smug expression. “I told you I know how to shoot.”

Jade nodded and smiled, but didn’t speak. The two mares went back to looking over the landscape.

Moon found the whole meeting with Jade uncomfortable. There seemed to be some sort of unknown tension in the air. Jade cocked her head, as if feeling it too, and turned to look at Moon. “Could I ask you a serious question?” Jade asked after a moment.

Moon nodded skeptically. “Sure?”

The dark colored mare opened her mouth, only to close it again. She took a deep breath. “What do you think the best way to get a mare is?”

It took Moon a moment to understand the question. When she finally got it, her eyes widened in surprise. “Oh, no,” she laughed, blushing. “I have no idea. I’m not… You, really thought I was…?”

Jade shied away, somehow going red despite her dark blue coat. “Not you,” she replied hastily, her wings unfurling and fluttering nervously. “Another pony.”

Moon chuckled with relief and to shed the awkward feeling. “Okay, sorry. For a minute there I thought you were…”

Jade shook her head vigorously. “Absolutely not.”

Moon froze; she turned to jade and slowly raised an eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Jade’s face was beginning to match the color of her mane. “I mean… I-I don’t,” she groaned inwardly and dropped her forehead onto the railing. “I’ve got my eye on somepony else,” she said, eyes closed and head down.

Moon smiled. “I’m sorry. I’m just giving you a hard time.”

The mare lifted her head slowly. “I noticed.”

Moon flicked her tail. “But honestly. I have no idea how to help you with that question. I’ve never really… liked mares.”

Jade covered her face with a wing. “Sorry I asked.”

“No it’s okay,” Moon reassured. “It just took me a little by surprise is all.” Moon hesitated, not sure whether or not she should continue. She decided to press; what could it hurt? “So, who is it?”

Jade shot Moon a non-angry glare. “I’m not telling you!”

“Well why not?”

“Because it’s embarrassing.” She smoothed her ruffled feathers and folded her wings back to her sides. “Besides, I don’t really even know you.”

Moon raised a hoof. “Sorry. I was just asking.”

“Hey you two,” Moon heard a familiar voice call. She turned to see Dusty behind them on the ground. “Sage is rounding us all up. We’re havin’ some kind of meetin’ at the house. She asked for you and a pegasus named Jade, whoever that is.”

Moon hurriedly turned and set off towards the house without another word. “Nice timing Dusty,” she whispered to herself.

* * *

“There they are,” Sunny declared as Moon, Dusty, and a deep blue pegasus entered the sitting room.

“Yay,” Sage drawled. “Now we can start.”

Sunny observed the room from his spot on the floor. Sage, Moon, and Willow had jumped the couch like a pair of hungry predators would a rabbit. Moments ago, he had been introduced to Candy, technically, Private Cane. She and Willow kept exchanging glances that he couldn’t quite decipher.

Snowglobe took a seat to his right and the three new arrivals sat on the other side of the room. Brick sat formerly behind the couch, unmoving except for his eyes, which were vigilantly surveying the room.

Sunny looked around at the eight other ponies. For some reason, the meeting here reminded him of the one in the hospital they had had so long ago, minus the big table in the center and the horribly white walls. None of them bore any weapons apart from Dusty, who never seemed to remove Valediction. More surprisingly, Willow was the only other one sporting a weapon; it was the automatic pistol she had used on the buffalo. Even though she wore no barding, and stretched leisurely on the couch, the holster and pistol remained. The white mare’s eyes were calm and relaxed, but her ears were perked expectantly, as if waiting for a zombie to jump out of the roof at her.

All eight of them sat in a quiet circle, each waiting for the other to speak.

Sunny rolled his eyes, deciding to break the silence. “So what’s the whole big meeting thing for?”

Sunny’s hint was all that was needed. Willow clopped her hooves to draw everypony’s attention. “Okay, I call this meeting to something blah blah order something formal prick stuff yadda yadda. I have been talking with Candy, and she has a proposition for us, more specifically, me. But I wanted to include you guys because we’re like one big happy group of friends or something like that.” Willow turned to the striped mare. “You wanna’ explain?”

Candy nodded once, taking the limelight. “The whole reason I was out this far west, was because the REA was looking for some type of an antidote for this… thing. I was on a reconnaissance mission to the hospital in Desert Sage. Well, it was me and my squadron… On our return flight, there was a rather… bad accident. Long story short, everypony died, I didn’t die,” she said in a closed tone, silently warning them not to press. “I was informed of a cure by two stallions in your group and I’ve spent the last hour and a half with Willow, discussing a cure.”

Willow shrugged. “I’m pretty sure we only spent an hour of that time talking.”

Candy shot Willow a warning glance. “From what I’ve seen around base, this is by far the closest thing to a cure on record; if Willow is correct, which I assume she is. So if this really is what I see it made out to be, the REA is going to want this—bad.” She paused. “After some… persuasion.” The two mares exchanged a glance. “Willow has agreed to let me have a vial of the liquid. The problem is, I don’t know a single thing about medicine. I would prefer Willow to come back to base with me and help with the analysis. There’s scientists there that could use her help. But this leads to another problem; we only have two fliers and a damaged skywagon.

“Yeah,” Dusty murmured. “Ah noticed that your wagon kind of looked like a block of Swiss cheese.”

Candy nodded. “I have no idea how only one spark battery was hit, but I am one lucky pony.” She glanced around at the three pegasi in the room. “If I’m going to get back, I’ll need two more fliers. It takes about twenty wingpower to get the wagon in the air. With the weight of me and Willow, and preferably another pony for safety’s sake, we’re looking at a minimum requirement of twenty five wingpower. With a dead spark battery, it’s going to be more like thirty. My two remaining pullers average about eight each.” She looked around in turn at Sunny, Jade, and Dusty. “Would two of you be willing to fly us there?”

Dusty nodded immediately. “Sure.”

Candy looked to Sunny expectantly. He unfurled his wings and beat them once. “Sorry, I… can’t fly.”

Candy frowned. “Wow, really?” The flightless pegasi took a somber expression, nodding once. “Well…” Candy gave her head a quick shake, instead, turning to Jade. “Would you be willing to?”

The dark pegasus shot Sage a questioning look, as if asking her approval. Sage shrugged impartially.

“Yes,” Jade said after a moment. “I’ll do it.”

The striped mare smiled. “Good.” She clopped her hooves together, examining the two volunteer fliers. “Okay, new topic; wingpower. What can you ponies pull?”

Dusty tilted his head. “Maybe about thirteen to fourteen.”

Candy raised an eyebrow. “That’s pretty good.” She turned swiftly to Jade. “You?”

The dark pegasus bowed her head. “About six,” she muttered.

“Well that’s okay. That’s enough to keep us up.”

Sunny threw a quick glance at his own wings and sighed. They looked normal enough; they just didn’t work. A quick bout of resentment overtook him for a moment before he shoved it back down.

“So when are we leaving?” Willow asked.

Candy turned. “Well, preferably as soon as possible, but I would like another pony along for the ride, for the sake of extra guns.” She looked around at them, her eyes silently willing somepony to step forward.

Nopony did so; not even Brick, which was surprising, considering he never seemed to be away from Willow.

“Sorry,” Sage said levelly. “I can’t leave and I’m pretty sure you all know why.”

Willow shot an expectant look at Sunny. ’Well?’, it seemed to say.

Sunny rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably. “I really wouldn’t prefer it.”

“You’re the only one with a battle saddle,” Willow insisted.

“Yeah,” Snowglobe added. “I could fit it to take another weapon.”

“No thank you.” He hung his head, trying to avoid the prying eyes. He had just gotten here; there was no way he was going to leave already.

Willow deadpanned and stared at the orange pegasus. “Sunny,” she said once, flatly, her eyes speaking the real words.

He looked around, seeing no way to win. Nopony else appeared to be on his side and none seemed to have any protests to his going. Except Moon, she looked rather put-off, but didn’t speak up.

“Fine,” he groaned after a moment. He threw another glance at Moon. The mare shifted uncomfortably and turned her head away.

Sunny tried not to look at her. He really didn’t feel like taking a guilt trip right now. It was pretty obvious that Moon was head-over-hooves for him. Sunny really wished she wasn’t; he wasn’t the type of pony to go falling over, let alone receive a second glance. Why he didn’t like her back beyond normal friendship, he did not know. It had seemed like the best thing ever when he had met her that day in the store. He didn’t know what was wrong with him now. Ever since the infection, things had changed. He had seen so many ponies die, or turn to monsters—that he was afraid to be close to anypony, because if they died, which there was a good chance they would, Blossom as an example, it wouldn’t hurt him as much. Sunny believed this was why he was avoiding the unicorn mare. He couldn’t like ponies, because he was afraid they would die.

“I think the best Idea would be to leave in the morning,” Willow declared. Candy nodded in agreement. The two mares set to talking about the flight in low tones.

“Will you be coming back?” Snowglobe looked at Willow, concern reflecting in her light green eyes.

Willow smiled. “Of course I am. I’ve been with you ponies since the start of this whole mess. You’re the closest thing to family I have left.” Sunny and Dusty nodded their agreement; Willow had spoken well enough for all of them.

“So that settles it,” Willow said with a sudden change of tone, killing the sentimental feeling in the air.

Candy stood up. “We’ll pack up tonight. Get some sleep. We leave first thing tomorrow.”

Sunny was really starting to wonder why Willow called these things meetings. She was usually the one that did most of the talking. All of the decisions were made by her too. It had to be a Willow thing.

* * *

Sunny fidgeted as Snowglobe finished the adjustments on his saddle. He had been waiting patiently in a back room of the house as the mare did her work. The morning was tinged with the tranquil feeling of sleep that always came with an early awakening. In such a desolate environment, it was almost unnerving.

“There,” Snowglobe exclaimed, tugging one last strap heartily. “All done.”

“Thanks,” Sunny said halfheartedly, examining the upgrades added by the gray unicorn. He still had the sleek black rifle on his right. But now, on the left, Snowglobe had mounted a shotgun. She had said it was similar to Moon’s, only it was clip-fed and had a semi-automatic mechanism. Snowglobe had also hooked up a new mouth bit. Sunny now had the trigger for the rifle on the right, and the one for the shotgun on his left.

“We’re just going to an REA base,” he complained. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Snowglobe rolled her eyes. “I have no idea. Maybe the wagon could crash,” she suggested idly. “Look, that Candy mare just said she wanted extra guns. I’m just sorta’ making you more of a gun.”

Sunny threw a backwards glance at her. “Well… that’s an interesting way to put it… I’m not even that good with guns.”

“That’s because you haven’t shot them enough,” the mare replied simply. “Me, I love guns. I just don’t like shooting them. I’ll tamper with them and build them and modify them all day long, but I don’t like the bang part.”

“So you’re using me as some sort of gun tester?”

She cocked her head. “Yeah, something like that.”

He chuckled. “Fine, I’ll be your experimental gun.”

Snowglobe stepped back and examined him such as a mother would do after dressing her foal. “Looks good,” she declared with a smile.

Willow poked her head into the room. “You two done playing dress up yet? Everypony’s ready to go.”

Sunny started forward. “Yep, let’s get going.”

“To the skywagon!” Willow exclaimed dramatically before dashing away down the hall, her hoofsteps pounding loudly on the wooden floor.

“Well somepony’s excited,” Snowglobe murmured.

Sunny followed Willow out into the hall. By the time he emerged, Willow had already thundered around a corner. He continued on through the living area and out into the street, surprised he hadn’t seen Moon on the way.

The sun sat low in the sky, casting every aspect of the town into long shadows across the earthen ground. The street was what one could call busy, which was strange for this time of day. The skywagon sat in the middle of the street, where it had been left the other day. Dusty and Jade had already been tethered to it, alongside the other two fliers that had brought it in. Dusty held the front position next to the red pegasus, while Jade was set behind dusty, next to the purple one.

Candy stood beside the wagon, trying to act as formal as possible. The mare was forced to dodge out of the way as Willow bolted by, prancing like an excited foal.

“She’s crazy,” Sunny chuckled to himself. “Why do we even let her have a gun?”

Townsponies crossed to and fro as he approached the wagon. When he reached the skycraft, he couldn’t help but cringe. “Is this thing even airworthy?” he asked skeptically.

The entire front was completely riddled with bullet holes and all the windows had been blown out in the landing. The paint left on the wagon remained a dull gray-blue, standard REA colors.

“Yeah,” Dusty replied. “Ah had myself a look over it. There may be a lot of holes in it, but everythin’ else is fine.”

Willow hopped into the wagon from the back end and sprinted to a seat in the front on the right side. “I don’t care how many bullet holes are in it,” she declared, checking her barding. “As long as I don’t die in it I’m fine.”

Sunny hopped in as well, followed closely by Candy. He took a seat near the front, on the other side of Willow. Candy moved up and sat right beside the mare.

“You do have the vial, right?”

Willow patted her left saddlebag. “Sure do. Come on Candy.” She gave the mare a hearty nudge that almost knocked her out of her seat. “Have some faith in me.”

“I was just making sure. Just imagine how bad it would be to get up in the air, only to have to come back and get something. My parents used to do it all the time.”

Willow smiled almost ear to ear. “Do you have to go to the little filly’s room before we go?” she asked jokingly. “Once we’re on the trail, I’m not stopping this wagon just because you didn’t go.”

Both mares broke out in hysterical laughter. Candy rolled over onto her back while Willow stomped a forehoof on the ground, leaving small dents in the metal floor.

Dusty turned in the saddle to look at the two mares. “Am ah missing something?” he asked slowly.

Willow waved a hoof at him, holding back laughter. “No. Just, childhood memories.” She sighed heavily. “Yeah… not too many of those left.”

Sunny found himself able to relate to the whole, use the bathroom before the wagon ride thing. Those years seemed so far away now. Something about shooting zombie ponies seemed to rob you of those precious memories.

“Are ready to dust off?” the red pegasus asked irritably.

“Yeah, yeah,” Willow replied. “Just do your flying thing up there. We’re busy talking about things that don’t matter back here.”

The pegasus muttered something under his breath and turned away. Together, the pegasus team pulled the wagon forward, leading them to the end of the street. With some effort, the ponies managed to turn the wagon around to face the other way. The street ahead proved as an excellent looking runway. Townsponies lined up on either side of the street, waiting for the wagon’s takeoff. Sunny could only guess why they were so intrigued. They probably hadn’t seen anything interesting for months.

Sage trotted up to meet Jade. “I need your help running this place,” she said with a small smile. “Make sure you come back.”

Jade smiled back. “Don’t worry, I would never leave you.” Her voice was layered with such emotion that Sunny was surprised Sage hadn’t noticed.

The turquoise mare turned to leave. “I expect to see you back soon!”

Sunny jumped as a pony loudly cleared their throat to his left. He turned hurriedly to come face to face with Moon. She was reared up against the wagon, her front hooves propped in the window frame.

She grinned. “You almost left without saying goodbye.”

Sunny flushed. “Sorry…” The two shared an awkward silence.

“Don’t be gone too long,” Moon said after a moment, abbreviating it with a small forced laugh.

He nodded once. “I’ll try not to.”

Moon continued to gaze at him quietly. Sunny cocked his head, shooting her a questioning glance. Without warning, the blue mare moved swiftly forward and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Stay safe,” she said hurriedly, eyes twinkling. She turned and cantered off, disappearing into a building.

Sunny wiped the spot on his cheek, casting a quick look around. That had been… awkward. Thank Celestia Willow had been to occupied talking with Candy to notice. If she had seen that little exchange, he would be hearing it the whole ride and then some.

The pulling team started forward, slow at first, but steadily gaining speed. Sunny watched out his window as buildings began to slide by at increasing speeds. The runners of the skywagon ground on the dirt and the hoofbeats of the fliers echoed around the small enclosed space. The front of the wagon lifted well before the barrier on the opposite side of town and they cleared it with plenty feet to spare. The whole scene felt anticlimactic. He was expecting it to play out like things did in a storybook, with the wagon tilting or something interesting happening to leave the wagon clearing the barrier with only feet to spare. No, they had just taken off, and it had gone perfectly.

Sunny eyed the dry, dead landscape below as the wagon gained height, the town shrinking as they gained distance from it. This was the first time he had ever been close to anything that could be considered flying in ages. He couldn’t remember the last time he had flown, apart from that time Dusty had flown him to the hospital.

Flying had always made him slightly queasy. Being a pegasus with the inability to fly seemed to induce the minor fear of heights. He swallowed the rising bile in his throat and tried to ignore the churning in his stomach.

Willow scratched her mane, already having bored look about her. “How long is this flight?” she asked Candy.

The uniformed mare sighed. “Normally about three hours, but I had your friend Snowglobe modify the wagon. With one shot spark battery, there wasn’t enough magic to run the devices used for upward lift. So she diverted the battery for forward propulsion to the vertical generators. Average airspeed is a little less than that of a normal wagon. Unless the pegasi really work it, which I don’t think they should, we’ll be there in about ten hours. We’ll also have to stop somewhere for about half an hour to let them rest.”

Willow groaned, resting her head in her hooves. Suddenly, she sat up and turned to her saddlebags. Nuzzling open one of the pockets, she produced a can of peaches. She examined the can for a moment and nodded approvingly.

Candy’s eyes had gone wide. “Peaches?” she balked.

Willow grasped the can with her forehooves and pried the top end off with her teeth. She spat the shredded top out the window and levitated the can under her nose, closing her eyes and drawing a deep breath. “Yeah,” she answered, levitating one of the sweet slices to her mouth. “Why?”

“I haven’t seen peaches for months.” Candy licked her lips as Willow produced another slice.

“Want some?” Willow asked impartially. Candy nodded vigorously. The mare levitated a slice of peach from the can and held it in front of Candy’s face. “Open,” she commanded.

Candy leveled her gaze with Willow. “I’m not a foal; you can just—” She was cut off as Willow crammed a peach slice into her mouth.

“See,” Willow said, taking another one for herself. “Good.”

Candy chewed for a moment before swallowing. “Thanks…” she said slowly, as if unsure whether or not she really needed to thank Willow for shoving food into her mouth.

Sunny laughed quietly to himself as he watched the two mares continue to converse. Candy’s attempts to maintain a formal appearance mixed with Willow’s buck-anything-that-gets-in-the-way attitude created something along the lines of just plain hilarious.

“Keep an eye out for anything flying that isn’t us!” the red pegasus yelled to Dusty over the wind.

“Why’s that!?” the light blue pegasus returned.

“Zombie pegasi can fly! They can be real nasty to a skywagon crew if they get you in the wrong place!”

“You know,” Willow mused, rubbing her chin and turning to candy. “You’re pretty cool for an REA pony. I always thought they were a bunch of uptight rule junkies.”

Candy shrugged. “Most are. I normally am too. It’s just, with a lack of REA ponies around me, there isn’t really much initiative to walk around and act all pissy.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Willow changed topics. “How is the REA pulling through with this whole thing?”

“I’m actually not quite sure,” Candy replied. “The higher ups try and keep all the ponies that aren’t them in the dark, but I can tell that we’re hurting real bad. Everything I know, I’m basing off of gossip from other soldiers form other bases. We’ve got a few bases dotted here and there, and one really big one up north. The whole problem is, most of our ponies were off duty and off base when the infection broke out. In any state of emergency, any REA staff member is required to report to the nearest operations base to help with the situation. Not very many made it. The ponies that were on site at the time are just about the only ones we have; sadly, that was only about half. We’re using just about everything we have to defend Baltimare. It’s the last standing civilization point this side of Canterlot. The base we’re going to is on the verge of pulling out to aid the Baltimare defense. The REA’s pulling out of the southern regions altogether.”

Willow raised an eyebrow. “Things are really that bad, huh?”

“You can bet your tail they are.”

“So how are they on a cure?”

Candy shook her head slowly. “Now that, I have no idea, but they wouldn’t be asking us to look for a cure if they’ve already found a one.”

Sunny returned his gaze out the window. This was one mess he really didn’t want to get caught up in.

~~~~~~~

This chapter only went through three rounds of editing by me without the help of anypony esle, so if there are badly noticable errors, I apologise.

Bear with me, I had to use this chapter to set up plot so if it were a little boring then sorry.

Yeah, that's all I have for notes... sorry for the wait, here you go.

~Sorren

Chapter 9 The REA... sort of

View Online

Undead Equestria

By: Sorren

Chapter 9 - The REA... sort of

“This is recon team six, requesting permission to land,” repeated Candy, speaking into the onboard radio. She released the button and turned to Sunny and Willow. “Only thing on board that didn’t get a hole shot through it,” she muttered.

Sunny gazed out the window at the rapidly growing shape of what Candy had called the temporary forward base. It was maybe a quarter of the size of Appleoosa, not counting the apple orchard. A few zombies milled around outside, not paying attention to much.

The flight had taken them a little longer than expected, having to stop for two breaks instead of one to compensate for Jade’s lack of wingpower and shorter endurance. It was now early evening and the sun hung low on the horizon, casting the proportion of the small camp in long shadows. From what Sunny could tell from here, the base appeared to be constructed of nothing but temporary materials. Large canvas tents dotted the area inside the chain-link fence, sporting flags, and some others, radio antennas.

The radio cracked and the voice of a rather official sounding stallion burst from the speakers. “Team six, you are seventeen hours overdue for arrival. Squad leader, please confirm your identity for safety procedures.”

Candy sighed, turning to them. “Time to play twenty questions.” She hit the transmit button on the radio, taking on a surprisingly formal persona. “This is Private Cane.”

There was a moment of silence while something was most likely worked over on the other end. “One minute team six.”

“Is that a problem?” Willow asked Candy with a tilt of her head.

Candy shook her head. “They’re checking the records for the mission; it’s all procedure.”

“Private Cane,” the stallion questioned. “Where is your squadron leader?”

The mare hung her head, hoof poised over the button. “Sargent Lime is KIA.” She exhaled deeply, closing her eyes.

“What about the next in command?”

Candy swallowed. “KIA.”

Another brief pause. “Private Cane, there were four soldiers of higher command than you on that flight. Are you telling me that all of your superiors are out of commission?”

Candy moaned, pounding her hoof on the floor of the skywagon. She took a deep, shaky breath. “Yes.”

“…Team six, you are cleared for landing.”

Dusty turned to the red stallion beside him. “You lead an’ ah’ll follow whatever you do!” he called. “Ah have no idea how to land one of these things!”

The pony nodded. “Just keep in motion with me and I’ll bring us down!” his deep voice yelled back.

The pullers brought the wagon around the camp once, before lining up with a small dirt strip near the right of the encampment and beginning their descent.

Sunny shifted uncomfortably, suddenly becoming very aware of his duel-gunned battle saddle, assuming the REA might not be too keen of him having it.

The wagon passed low over the chain-link fence, allowing Sunny a better view of the encampment. He had been right, there were no permanent buildings, only gray and green canvas tents placed in close proximity to one another. Numerous skywagons were parked in a dirt clearing within the fence. A large generator also sat near the front gate, producing power for both the encampment, and judging from the wires running in the other direction, the electrified fence. Gray-suited ponies trotted to on fro, each one appeared to have something of incredible importance to achieve, apart from a single group of ponies sitting around an outdoor table.

Overall, Sunny figured the landing went pretty well, apart from Dusty dropping the front end too fast and bending the frame of the damaged wagon further still. Before they even had a chance to leave the wagon, let alone fully stop, a bulky orange earth pony emerged from one of the larger tents. He set towards them at a swift trot, head held high and limbs so stiff they resembled willow branches.

As he neared, Sunny watched a scowl grow across the pony’s face and his eyebrows appeared to be trying to grow into his mane. Candy gulped and made her way out of the wagon, giving her mane a small shake.

Sunny cast a look to Willow. “I think we should get off too.”

Nodding, Willow rose to her hooves and started forward; he followed her lead, figuring Candy needed their support. Dusty and Jade pulled themselves out of their harnesses to fall in beside Sunny and Willow as they took quiet stance behind Candy, who appeared to be awaiting the arrival of the orange pony.

Casting a nervous look around, Sunny wanted to lower himself to the ground under the prying gaze of so many uniformed ponies watching them. In moments, thirty or so ponies had emerged from different tents, and the ponies at the table had decided to join the circle of surrounding the skywagon as well.
Candy stood up tall as the pony Sunny took to be the base commander neared.

The orange stallion glared condescendingly down at her. “Private, what is this?” His voice was heated with impatience and annoyance, as if he had previously been doing something important.

Candy met his piercing gaze. “What is what sir?”

He growled low in his throat. “Don’t play that innocent crap with me. Why do you return to base overdue, and missing your entire team? And with four civilians!?”

Candy was quiet for a moment. “May I explain sir?”

He grunted once. “Not out here.” He motioned towards a gray canvas tent with his tail. “This way.” He started forward, only to stop a moment later to look back. “All of you, fliers included.”

“Cheerful one,” Sunny muttered as they followed sergeant across the camp.

“Tell me about it,” Willow added.

“He wasn’t in charge of base when I left,” Candy whispered urgently. “He was the successor; something must have happened.”

Two ponies standing guard outside one of the larger tents parted the flaps as they neared, allowing them through and letting the flaps fall again after the eight ponies had entered. Four more soldiers stood inside the tent, one in either corner. Sunny wondered how they could stand like statues all day, he could never bear holding still for that long.

The commander motioned to his four ponies in the room, bringing them to life it seemed. “I want them disarmed, now,” he commanded, pointing towards Sunny’s group.

Sunny looked around frantically, suddenly becoming very aware of his battle saddle. “Wait, what?”

The commander made a choking noise in his throat that could have been a laugh. “What? Do you think you can just strut around a military facility toting guns about?

Two of the uniformed ponies approached Sunny first, most likely taking him as the biggest threat, and set to the task of removing his battle saddle.

“You ever seen a saddle like this?” he heard one murmur.

“Once,” the other replied, this one a mare. “This thing’s old. They were standard REA issue back when guns were still new.”

Sunny cast a glance to Dusty, who appeared to be fidgeting with something. He undid the strap holding the holster for Valediction do his leg. Hurriedly, he turned his head back and tucked the weapon into his mane, successfully managing to hide it. Sunny looked around, glad none of the guards had noticed.

He felt the weight of the saddle lifted from his back and turned to see one of the uniformed ponies carrying it to one corner of the room. The other moved on to Willow, removing her automatic pistol, much to the white mare’s protest.

The commander motioned towards Candy. “Hers too.”

Candy’s jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”

He shot her a warning look. “You went AWOL private.”

She gaped at him. “My skywagon crashed!”

“And then you returned with four civilians and no evidence of your squadron but a bloody skywagon!”

“I never abandoned anypony!”

The commander raised a hoof for her silence and turned to glare at Dusty. “Didn’t you have a weapon on you?”

The pegasus shook his head respectfully. “No sir,” he said evenly.

The commander narrowed his eyes. “I’m watching you.” He turned slowly, sweeping the seven disarmed ponies in front of him with a condescending glare, finally coming to rest on Candy. “Well, you wanted to explain. Now do it!”

She took a step forward, face red from anger, though when she spoke, her voice remained even. “During the Desert Sage mission, Private Dodge was somehow infected. He turned in the wagon. He went to bite our medic and he bit down on the trigger for his saddle… He was our big guns. Everypony died but me and the two fliers here with us.”

“So why are you still alive?” he asked slowly.

“Because sir, I ducked.”

“You ducked,” he said mockingly.

“Yes sir, I did—”

“Hold it!” he interrupted. “If they were all shot on the wagon, then where are the bodies?”

Candy gulped. “I… I-I discarded them sir.”

The commander didn’t have to speak, his eyes said it all.

“I told her to,” the red pegasus with the dark golden brown mane added quickly. “We would have all died had she not pushed the dead out of the wagon; there was too much weight. She had to, and I told her to do it.”

The commander held a dangerously cool face. “Continue your story, Private.”

She blinked, most likely surprised as the lack of reprimand. “T-two of our fliers and a spark battery were hit. We had to make an emergency landing in the surviving settlement of Appleoosa.”

“It’s true,” the red pegasus put in. “One moment we’re flying, the next, bullets are shooting everywhere and the two ponies beside me took the heat.”

Candy continued her story. “In Appleoosa I found two fliers willing to aid me in returning to base.” Candy threw a glance at Willow. “And possibly a cure.”

The commander blinked. “A cure?” He didn’t sound convinced. “Really?”

Willow stepped forward. “Yes. I can prove it with my own immunity.” She made a motion towards Sunny. “He has some sort of natural immunity that I don’t know how to analyze.”

“So you expect me to just believe you?” he asked. The commanded was treating this whole thing as If it were some big joke.

“Yes sir. I expect you to believe me. I have no reason to lie.”

“And why should I?”

Something flashed in Willow’s blood-orange eyes. “You’ll listen to me if you have any sense,” she said heatedly.

The stallion blinked again, and smiled. “You should really watch your tone,” he said dangerously.

Willow opened her mouth for a hot retort, but Sunny frantically shook his head at her. She stopped and took a deep breath. “What do you propose? I have means of it in my possession.”

The commander brought his hoof to his chin, mocking deep thought. “And I suppose you want me to go out of my way for this?”

“Look,” Willow snapped. “I came here share a possible antidote and maybe even help with a cure, not to get into a pissing contest with a cynical base commander that walks like he’s got a stick shoved up under his tail. But if you start a pissing contest I’ll play, and I’ll win.”

“Willow!” sunny hissed. “I thought I told you not to!”

The commander stepped forward, a certain gleam in his eyes. “Since the infection,” he started, almost casually. “The REA has gone quite lax on procedure. The former commander, as of yesterday, maintained procedure very well. As you know, the commander’s word is law. There isn’t enough organization on the REA’s part to do it any other way.” He paused. “Now I am going to investigate a bit further into your claims of a cure. I will have you and the pegasus sent to Baltimare for testing.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Willow mumbled.

“Now as put into effect yesterday, civilians are no longer permitted entry to the base or view of its inner workings. We would hate for it to get out how this branch of the REA treats civilians. ” He rallied his guards with a circular glance. “Take them to the edge of the compound,” he ordered. “Dispose of them, the pullers too; after this, they’ll run the minute they can.” The unruly pony turned to Candy. “I’ll speak with you later; we have some… business to talk before you are dismissed.

The seven of them all exchanged horrified glances, all coming to the realization of what had just been ordered. Willow began to spurt a chain of profanities at the commander before a rifle lined up with her head, thoroughly quelling her verbal assault.

Candy stepped out of the line, ignoring the rifles that followed her from the four armed guards. As she approached the commander, every muscle in her body trembled. The stallion looked at her with mild amusement on her face.

She turned to look back at the rest of them. “Run,” she said flatly.

Sunny squinted. “What?”

Candy flung herself sideways and tackled the nearest guard to the ground, taking them all by surprise. “I said run!”

Not bothering to question, the red and purple pegasi bolted for the exit. The commander drew I pistol and took aim at Candy. He fired, but missed, instead, striking the pony Candy was wrestling with. The other three guards readied their battle saddles. Sunny ducked as one took aim at him and Jade sprung into the air. She flew directly at the canvas ceiling in the tent, tearing a hole in it and disappearing into the evening air.

“Sorry!” she yelled back at them from out of sight. “I’m not dying here!”

“Go!” Candy bellowed as another stallion hopped on her to replace the one who had been shot.

“I’m not leaving you!” Willow bellowed, diving into the fray.

The commander stepped back and aimed at Willow, who had diverted the attention from Candy and was battling a stallion and a mare up close, always keeping herself away from their gun barrels. He held his fire, probably not wanting to hit another of his own, but continued to try and fine an opportunity to shoot.

Dusty drew Valediction as two more uniformed ponies charged into the tent through the front entrance. He fired and the air was filled with a loud crack as the rifle on the left pony’s back split. Apparently, Dusty was taking the non-lethal approach.

Willow bit down on the barrel of a blue unicorn’s rifle and bent it sixty degrees. The pony reared up and delivered a heavy kick to Willow’s face that sent the mare sprawling. The commander took aim.
Sunny charged at him, driving his head into the bulky pony’s flank. His shot missed, instead, pitting the ground a few feet away. The commander, having been so focused on Willow, lost his balance and flopped over onto his side.

While the stallion was stunned, Sunny turned to Dusty, who had succeeded in disarming another soldier. “Go!” he yelled. “You can fly out of here!”

“Ah’m not leavin’!” Dusty shouted back.

Sunny ran up to the pegasus and shouldered him forward. “Go! We aren’t getting out; you can still make it!” He could hear shouts and yells outside. Any minute now the whole camp would come pouring into the tent. “We’re immune! They aren’t going to kill us, but they’ll kill you! Now go!”

Dusty nodded once, the motion seeming to hurt him. “Stay strong,” he said glumly. Unfurling his wings, the pegasus sprang into the air and disappeared through the hole left by Jade. Just then, the tent flap burst open and five more soldiers rushed in with battle saddles at the ready.

Willow left Candy’s aid and charged them. The ponies dodged as the raging mare flew at them, instead spreading out in a circle. Willow flung herself on one and stomped the unfortunate pink mare to the ground. She turned on the others and took stance, low to the ground and poised to spring. Blood ran from multiple cuts on her heaving flanks, and one from her cheek. “Who wants some,” she challenged, putting on a maniacal smile.

A bullet pierced her side with a meaty thwack. Blood sprayed the ground near her belly and she staggered to the side. She turned to commander, who held a smoking pistol in his mouth! “Ouch!” she bellowed. “That bucking hurt you two-bit rent-a-cop!” She staggered around in a circle, shouting profanities. One hoof caught on the other and Willow tripped, flopping over onto her side.

“Willow!” Sunny called, running over to his friend. The mare Candy had been wrestling with released her grasp and the two picked themselves up, their fight totally forgotten.

The commander returned his pistol to its holster and surveyed the scene, then turned his gaze to the orange pegasus at the injured mare’s side. “Oh how nice,” he said flatly. He turned to the soldiers in the room that were still standing, which was about seven; four more were unconscious and one probably dead, killed by the commander himself. “Lock them up,” he ordered. “Put Private Cane in with them. That mare has performed mutiny.

We fly them to Baltimare in the morning.”

* * *

Moon trotted between two apple trees, two baskets of apples slung over her back and a shotgun underneath that. She emptied the load of apples into the nearby wagon and proceeded to the pump to fill the basket with water to haul back to the trees.

She honestly could not understand how Appleoosans did this most of the day. She was only on her third run and already bored out of her wits. It was all too repetitive; bucket of apples, bucket of water, bucket of apples, bucket of water.

She reached the line for the water pump, which seemed to be steadily growing longer, and took a place at the back, waiting. Ponies stood in the rapidly growing line, waiting for their turn at the pump and talking about whatever could pass as mildly interesting.

It was the day after Sunny and Willow had left, and her first day in the orchard; if she would be staying here, then it would be best to get into the habit of helping out.

A green maned, yellow earth pony caught her eye; he was looking right at her. She continued to look ahead, pretending she hadn’t noticed. After a moment, the young stallion trotted over to stand beside her in line, doing his best to act nonchalant, but failing terribly—she expected him to start whistling any second now. She spotted a group of stallions some distance away, the four them looking at her and presumably their friend expectantly. ‘go on,’ one mouthed to the stallion beside Moon.

Moon allowed herself a knowing smile. The yellow stallion’s friends were trying to goad him into talking to her, and judging by their overeager expressions, maybe a little something more.

“So um, hi,” the yellow earth pony said skeptically. “I’m Stacks.”

Moon closed her eyes and rolled them beneath her eyelids. She was bored enough to eat her own hooves; what would it hurt to see much she could mess with these ponies. She had done it quite a bit before the infection; hopefully she hadn’t gotten rusty. “Well that’s an… interesting name,” she returned.

Moon heard a low snicker from the pony’s friends and felt a sudden wave of sympathy for the yellow stallion.

“Yeah,” he added. “I used to stack boxes and pallets before the zombies… it stuck.”
Moon put on her best serious face. “Before the infection, I used to shoot ponies.” Just because she felt a little sorry for him because of his teasing friends didn’t mean she still wouldn’t have a little fun.

Stacks opened his mouth to say something but stopped. He tilted his head at Moon, a look of confusion on his face. He overcame the minor shock and shook his head. “Okay, that’s… cool. Well, I just saw you standing here all alone… and I figured—”

“No,” Moon interupted.

“Wait… what?” Stacks asked, going red.

She sighed. “The only reason you’re over here is because your friends are trying to get you to hook up with me so they stick things inside me.”

Stacks tried to stammer something, but Moon continued. “You know, and I know, that most mares wouldn’t throw a second glance at you or your friends, and not to gloat here, but I think I can say I look a little better than most mares.”

The stallion’s jaw trembled as he tried to think of something to say. His yellow face had gone as red as the apples in the trees.

Moon was thoroughly enjoying herself, but she did feel a little bad for him. His friends were going to give him quite a hard time after what she had just done. She could tell by the way they laughed; they were that other crowd that seemed to think swearing and breaking things was cool, unlike the stallion by her now. He didn’t really seem to fit with them.

“Tell you what,” she said after a moment. “I can tell you really need to impress those friends of yours, or you’ll never hear the end of it.”

Stacks asked her to continue with a look, still trying to force down the red in his face.

“Because I feel sorry for you, here’s what I’m going to do.” She stepped closer and draped her tail over his back. Leaning close, she whispered in his ear. “You can go tell your friends whatever you think they wanted to hear, and if they ask me, I’ll back it up. Now I’m going to walk away and act all seductive, and you can tell them what you want from there.” She pulled away and headed for the trees, purposefully swaying her hips. She turned and looked directly at Stacks’ three friends and smiled.

Moon dropped the act when she was sure she was far enough away that they couldn’t see or hear her. She dropped to the ground below an apple tree. Rolling onto her back, she kicked her hooves in the air, laughing hysterically. She hadn’t ever done something that crazy.

“That was awesome,” she gasped.

Before the infection, she never would have even thought about doing something like that. She had always been trying to make some sort of a reputation. Moon attempted to scold herself for what she had done. “That was a bad thing to do,” she said condescendingly. “You could give the townsponies the wrong idea.” She ignored her better self. That was fun! She lay on her back, hooves curled up to her belly, staring up at a plump red apple.

“What’s so funny?” a familiar voice asked. Moon looked up to see Snowglobe standing in front of her, looking down with a curious expression.

Hurriedly, she rolled over onto her side. “Not much, just messing with stallions.” Snowglobe raised an eyebrow at her. “Not like that,” she added.

The gray mare’s horn glowed as she picked the apple Moon had been staring at and sat down beside her. Levitating the apple to her mouth, she took a bite and looked over at Moon. “I’m worried…” Taking another bite of apple, she continued to look at Moon.

“Worried about what”

Snowglobe began without hesitation, as if she had just been waiting to confide in somepony. “I think we may be in trouble with the water.”

“Go on,” Moon prodded. Snowglobe now had her full attention. The mare usually knew what she was talking about, so chances were she had a good point here.

Snowglobe sighed. “The water from the well has a lot of sediments in it—flakes of calcium and a bunch of other little things like that. Being the certified maintenance pony that I am, I know this means that the pumps are drawing water near the bottom of the reserve. That means that we’re almost out of water and the pumps are pulling what’s left off the bedrock.”

Moon’s eyes widened. “Are you sure?”

Snowglobe folded her ears. “Would I be telling you this if I wasn’t sure?”

Moon jumped to her hooves. “Well we have to tell Sage about this right now!” She made to leave but Snowglobe stopped her with an outstretched forehoof.

“I don’t want to frenzy anypony. It’ll be like the hospital all over again if this gets out.”

Moon nodded briefly. “Okay, we’ll keep it quiet, but we still have to tell Sage. She’s their leader; if anypony needs to know, it’s her.”

“I thought this place was safe,” Snowglobe sniffed. “We’re going to have to leave. We’re going to run out of water here. Sage said there was a huge well under Appleoosa, either she was wrong or all this hot weather dried it up. When the water runs out…”

Moon placed a hoof on the fretting mare’s back. “Hey now,” she comforted. “We don’t know yet if the water’s really almost gone.”

Snowglobe seemed to take the gesture as an invitation to touch and rested her muzzle against Moon’s flank. “Really, how long do you think any well is going to last in conditions as dry as these?”

Moon pulled away from the mare. “A-heh… Not very long…” She cleared her throat, hating the silence and trying to ignore Snowglobe’s worried face. “Come on, we still need to tell Sage.”

Together the two mares left the orchard and made their way back to the town, not much of a walk considering the two weren’t too far apart. A ten foot path had been fenced in to allow safe passage from zombies between the orchard and the town. Soon they were back on the street through the center of town.

Moon spotted the pony she was looking for atop the barricade, near the gate. The turquoise mare was speaking with one of the guards. As of today, two pistols were strapped to both forelegs, courtesy of Willow’s stash.

“Well it’s a problem,” Sage said angrily to the pink guard as Moon and Snowglobe approached. “What are we going to do if there’s even more of them?”

Moon squinted at the two ponies as she climbed the staircase to the walkway above. “More of what?”

Sage turned to them as if startled. “Oh it’s you… We have a problem.” She pointed a hoof out to the desert. “Try not to alarm anypony yet—I want to try and figure out how to address this.”

“What’s the big…?” She froze. “…deal… That’s a lot of zombies.” In the distance, were hundreds of little rainbow specs. “Celestia, they found us.” There were too many to count, all lined up on the horizon.
“We, don’t have enough ammo to shoot them all,” the guard mare said worriedly.

Snowglobe gulped. “Are you suggesting we let them pile up? Would the wall even hold them back?”

Sage stomped her hoof on the wooden walk for effect, and was rewarded with a thonk. “Of course it will. I just don’t like the idea of those things right behind the wall.”

Moon stepped forward, watching repulsively as the colorful mass slowly neared. “Well, I don’t think we have much choice.”

“I’m going to have to tell her, aren’t I?” Snowglobe groaned.

Sage frowned. “Tell me what?”

Snowglobe sighed. “There’s sediment in the water.”

“And?”

“…That means the water in the well is so low that the pumps are pulling some of the sediment from the bedrock.”

Sage glared as if Snowglobe had just insulted her. “How do you know?”

Snowglobe stood proudly. “I’m a fully certified maintenance technician. I’ve dealt with enough wells to know a dry one when I see it. I spent almost a year with a groundwater drilling company near Dodge.”

The turquoise mare swallowed, turning first to the zombie ponies, then back to Snowglobe. She did this three more times. “No,” she stated apathetically. “This can’t be happening. . . We-we should have gone with Braeburn and Silverstar.” She flopped back on her haunches. “I screwed us.” A choked laugh escaped her vocals. “I totally screwed us all!”

“You can’t say that,” the pink mare replied. “You have no idea what could have happened to the others when they left. They’re probably dead. Have you heard any news from them?”

Moon just balked at Sage. “Why are you talking like we’re going to die? What’s wrong with you?”

Sage, at the moment, did not appear able to produce any form of intelligent speech.

The pink guard mare backed away slowly. “Yeah… I’m just going to leave you three to it.” Hurriedly, she made herself disappear.

Sage let out a strangled laugh. Reaching up, she pulled the strip of red cloth from around her head.

Moon gasped. Sage looked like a totally different pony. The image of Appleoosa’s leader vanished before her eyes to be replaced by a sad, lost mare. Her brown hair hung into her eyes and around her face where it had not before. What now sat in front of Moon was a tired and defeated mare.

“I’m done,” she choked, fighting back tears. “I can’t handle this anymore… I’m not cut out to run a whole settlement. Look, I screwed up; now we’re all in trouble because I wouldn’t leave.”

“Come on,” Moon said in an attempt at comfort. She cast a pleading look to Snowglobe, who only shrugged. “Well thanks,” she hissed, focusing back on Sage. “It doesn’t matter if we’re almost out of water and we can’t leave because hundreds of zombies are starting to surround the town. “We’ll do something.”
Snowglobe drew a hiss of breath between her teeth. “Well, when you put it that way it sounds really bad.

“You aren’t helping!” Moon snapped at her.

She sat back and raised her hooves. “Hey, sorry.”

A passing townspony slowed to a halt, balking at Sage in the mess she was in. Moon hurriedly herded Sage down from the barricade and behind a wagon, out of the sight of prying eyes. Last thing any of them needed was for the rumor that their leader was losing it passing about—it would be chaos. If there was one thing Moon had learned from the first day of the infection, it was that normal ponies turned into crazies in a state of crisis without any form of organization. Without some sort of leader, ponies crumbled and started to listen to whoever could yell the loudest, and that was usually the dumbest of them all.

“I can’t,” Sage whispered. “Somepony else has to help me. Jade was the only pony I could talk to and she left with the others.” She sniffed. “I’m not responsible enough to hold the lives of so many ponies in my hooves.”

“Man,” Snowglobe whispered in Moon’s ear. “Look at her—she’s not doing so good.”

Moon looked at Sage, who was now examining a pebble, completely oblivious of her surroundings. “No!” she stated, not sure of the meaning or where she was going. “No!” She grabbed Sage’s headband and slung it back over her head. “You have to hold together.”

Sage looked up unseeingly, her headband covering her eyes. “I’ve been trying… but what am I supposed to do now? We’re surrounded, with hardly any weapons, and almost no water. Food too, considering the water is the only thing keeping the trees alive.”

Moon had to agree that they weren’t in the best shape. “Just try and hang in there.” Reaching out, she adjusted Sage’s headband so as it no longer covered her eyes.

“Flyers incoming!” Moon jumped at the call from a pony on guard. “Four of them!”

Sage scrunched her brow. “Four? One’s uncommon enough.”

Moon bolted out from behind the wagon and up the stairs to brown stallion who had given the warning. “A skywagon crew?” she asked hopefully.

He shook his head, pointing out at the sky. “Just four pegasi. No skywagon.”

Snowglobe came up on her left. “Think they’re zombies?”

Moon peered closer. She couldn’t make out anything but the silhouettes of the four pegasi; the late afternoon sun shone nearly behind them, making it impossible to look directly at the ponies.

“No,” replied Sage, her voice once again firm, appearing to have regained her composure. “They’re flying to straight to be zombies. Zombies fly like they only have one wing.”

“Think it’s the skywagon group?” Snowglobe mused.

Moon nodded. “I think so… but where’s the skywagon?”

“Sunny and Willow too,” Snowglobe added.

The four of them watched quietly as the pegasi neared, not knowing what to expect. Moon picked out Dusty and Jade right away as they neared; they were with the other two pegasi who had flown in. Dusty fixed his gaze on her as they moved in to land, signifying that he spotted them.

The four pegasi landed a little to the right. Jade panted heavily, letting her tongue loll out of her mouth. Moon shot a worried smile to Dusty while Jade trotted up to meet Sage. Dusty on the other hoof, did not smile. He walked slowly up to Moon and Snowglobe, holding a gloomy expression.

“What happened?” she asked, mind clouding with worry.

“The REA aren’t the ponies we thought they were.”

He made to walk away, but Moon moved to block his path. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Dusty looked over at her, his eyes meeting hers levelly. They exchanged unspoken words that seemed to say most of what she was worrying. This was the first time Moon had actually seen Dusty mad. She had seen him flustered, or annoyed plenty of times, but right now, something different shone in his eyes, making the normally cheery pegasus almost unrecognizable.

“The REA is holding Sunny and Willow captive. They’re goin’ to haul them off to Baltimare for testing.”

Moon felt like she was going to pass out. Her vision blurred as a wave of panic and adrenaline surged through her body. “W-what?”

Dusty took an inpatient breath. “They’re gone; in the morning they’re going to be hundreds of miles away. The REA’s all screwed up. They tried to kill us.”

Moon looked around frantically, noting the worried expression on Snowglobe’s face. “We have to do something!”

“Damn it Moon!” Dusty snapped, stomping his hoof on the wooden planks. “It’s the Celestia damned REA! What, you think we can just go stroll in the place and go ask nicely for them to give us our friends back!?” He exhaled a shaky breath, turning away from her. “Unless they manage to bust themselves out, they aren’t goin’ anywhere but up north.”

* * *

Sunny glanced around the dark cage for what he guessed was the hundredth time. They had been hauled to a tent near the back of the camp. Since there weren’t any buildings here, animal cages served as cells. As the commander had put it, they were in captivity until they could be taken to Baltimare in the morning.

He tapped his hoof absently, receiving a light, metallic clack. Above him, there was a metal roof, below him, there was a metal floor, and steel bars held them both apart.

“Do you think she’s going to be okay?” Candy asked worriedly.

Sunny looked slowly over to the mare, only able to make out her silhouette in the dull moonlight shining through the open tent flap. “I don’t know,” he said flatly.

“Look, I’m sorry,” she apologized for the tenth time. “I had no idea you would be treated that way. The REA isn’t like this. He’s in the wrong.”

He scoffed. “Well, I guess things change.”

Sunny turned his attention to Willow. The injured mare lay splayed on her side against the bars of the cage, her flanks rising and falling slowly. Sunny had examined the wound, and although he didn’t know much about anatomy, he certainly knew it was bad. She had been shot diagonally from behind, a little ahead of her hind legs and right in the middle of her side. Blood had since caked her coat around the wound, and shone black in the moonlight. There had been an entry wound, but no exit, which signified that she still had a bullet buried somewhere inside her.

Reaching over, he brushed a lock of her crimson mane away from her face. “Hang in there,” he said quietly.

Willow opened her eyes, casting the faintest orange-yellow glow across the cage floor. “Come on,” she said, shooting him a smile and trying to sound optimistic, but failing. “It’s not that bad.”

Sunny gave his head a shake. He couldn’t get over the fact that her eyes actually glowed. They actually gave off light; it was very faint, but it was light, actual light.

He shot a look to Candy, who had retreated to the opposite corner, before returning his gaze back to Willow. “You can’t even move Willow.”

She rolled her luminescent eyes. “I could move.” She coughed once. “I’m not moving because I don’t want to re-open the wound. The only reason it’s stopped bleeding is because all the blood has clotted. It’ll break them all open again if I move.” She shifted her weight with a sharp gasp. “And I’m pretty sure there’s a bullet lodged in my intestinal track; my bowels are telling me something isn’t quite right.”

Sunny sighed, resting his hoof on Willow’s neck. “You’re lucky.” He paused, examining her wound. “Sort of. Any further forward and it would have been your stomach, or your heart, or a lung.”

Willow blinked her eyes in acknowledgement, unable to nod. “All of which would have killed me.”

They sat in silence for a while, the only sound that of their breathing in the small space and the occasional zap of a zombie hitting the fence outside.

Sunny hung his head, eyes tracking the ground. This wasn’t fair. What had they done to deserve any of this? They had come to the REA camp of their own accord, and presented them with a possible antidote. So what do they do? Try to kill his friends and then lock them in an animal cage.

A sudden burst of anger shot through him. Without warning, he reared up and slammed his forehooves against the bars, rattling the cage. “Somepony give her a damned healing potion!” he bellowed into the night air. “She is going to die! Don’t you care you useless piles of scum!?”He struck the bars again, once again shattering the quiet night air.

“Calm it Sunny,” Willow said as she exhaled. “You’re just going to make them shoot you.”

“Good!” he snapped back at her. “I hope they shoot me, and that damned idiot in the corner!” He pointed an accusing hoof at Candy.

“Shut up!” a tired voice yelled somewhere out in the camp.

Candy had pressed herself so forcefully up against the steel bars in the corner that they furrowed her coat.

Willow raised her head to look at Sunny, the movement procuring a slight grimace. “Sunny,” she said levelly, soothingly. “This isn’t you; you aren’t the angry pony I see right now. If there’s anypony that should be yelling and hitting things, it’s me. Just... sit down, and let what whatever happens, happen.”

Willow’s calm presentation seemed to calm Sunny, and he allowed himself a few deep breaths. “They can’t do this,” he added feebly, previous vigor gone. He turned desperately to Candy. “Can’t you talk to them or something?”

She only glared. “What do you think? I attacked fellow REA members and allowed the escape of three prisoners.”

Sunny scoffed. “They weren’t prisoners; he was going to kill them.”

Candy stomped a hoof. “You’re missing the point. I disobeyed a direct order and betrayed the commanding officer. I have officially thrown my ticket into the ‘Mutiny’ helmet. I’m surprised they didn’t kill me right there and then.”

He sighed, lowering his head back to the floor. “I’m sorry. All this is just, so... I don’t like small spaces either.”

Candy returned the sigh. “Things have changed. The REA is supposed to help ponies. It... it almost feels like they’ve given up, and just broken off into a band of rogues.... It can’t be this bad anywhere else. Watch, we’re going to get to Baltimare and they’re going to let you two go and—”

The room darkened as a pony’s silhouette filled the entryway, blocking out the grey moonlight.

Sunny turned angrily, expecting another gloating REA member. “What do you want?” he asked venomously.

Sunny didn’t understand why he was so enraged. This was abnormal for him. Normally, he was calm, and usually didn’t get mad very easily. Right now, he just wanted to find something and stomp it into the ground.

Suddenly, the moonlight was drown out as a pony pushed their way into the tent, creeping low to the ground.

“What do you want?” Sunny asked the dark shape heatedly.

“Shhhhh,” was the shaded pony’s reply as she slunk into the tent.

“Come to gloat?” Sunny growled.

The pony crept up to the cage and her features were drawn up in the moonlight. She was a unicorn, yellow with a white-blue mane. The room suddenly shone a light-blue as her horn flared to life.

“No,” the new arrival whispered.

Willow lifted her head halfway up from the ground. “Why are you here?” she asked with caution.

The yellow unicorn’s eyes went wide at the sight of Willow. “I want you to know that I don’t approve of this. Some of the officers have gone sour. If I could do anything to stop them, I would.” She threw a look around, then opened a flap on her saddlebags and levitated out a deep purple potion. “Your friend needs this,” she said, passing it through the bars.

Willow’s already glowing eyes lit up as they tracked the path of the glass vial, then she turned her head disbelievingly towards the mare.

The unicorn took a startled step backwards “Celestia...”she balked. “Your eyes... they glow like a zombie’s.”

“Correction,” Willow said painfully. “Zombie’s eyes glow yellow.”

The yellow mare shook her head disbelievingly, then took a step away from the cage. “I wish I could help, but the only thing I can do is wish you luck. So...” She turned to leave. “Good luck.”

“Wait,” Willow said hurriedly, turning the yellow mare back resiliently.

“Yes?” the mare asked skeptically.

“You need to bring me a pair of tweezers, pliers, anything to get this bullet out of me. I can’t just guzzle a healing potion and leave it inside.

The mare swallowed. “E-Excuse me?”

Willow rolled hr luminescent eyes. “The wound won't heal right if there’s a bullet in me. It’ll work its way further into my body if I just seal the wound, then I’ll just be screwed later.”

The yellow mare opened her mouth to speak, but only closed it a moment later. “Don’t you need anesthetic?” she asked evasively.

Another roll of the eyes. “I’d like anesthetic, but those pricks took all of my medical supplies.”

The yellow mare turned and left without another word, leaving them in silence as the tent flap swished shut.

Sunny didn’t think she would come back. He lay back down with a sigh and watched as Willow studied the healing potion skeptically. Much to his surprise, the mare did return, a pair of long, thin tweezers levitating by her side.

“Will this work?” she asked quietly, levitating the tweezers through the bars and holding them in front of Willow.

“Yeah,” the injured mare whispered back as the Tweezers dropped to the floor beside her. “Thank you.”

The mare nodded once, then turned and left.

Throughout the whole ordeal, Candy hadn’t said a word, or made a sound. She sat in the far corner of the cage, pressed up against the cold steel bars, Wallowing in what Sunny could only assume was pitty.

Willow looked to her wound, then to the tweezers. She sighed for what seemed like the tenth time that night. “I’m going to need your help Sunny.”

His head shot up. “What?”

“You’re going to have to get the bullet out.”

He shook his head vigorously. “No. No, i can’t do that.”

Willow flicked her tail irritably. “Sunny,” she said crossly. “I can’t jab a pair of tweezers into my flank and go digging for lead; I’ll be too busy trying not scream. Please, I need your help.”

Regretfully, Sunny nodded. “Alright... Is there way way I should do it? Or...”

She shook her head. “Just stick it in and dig until you find something little and hard. I haven’t been eating any rocks or anything, so there should only be one hard thing lodged in my intestines.”

He gulped. “Well... that’s nice.”

Willow grinned up at him. “I hope you aren’t squeamish.”

“No,” Sunny replied flatly. “I’m just not very keen to go digging inside my friend with a pair of tweezers.”

She smiled. “Remember that old game, Operation?”

He nodded, eyeing to tweezers.

“Good,” Willow levitated the tweezers over to Sunny. “Just pretend you’re trying to get the butterfly.”

The yellow mare winced as a strangled scream echoed throughout the camp.

“Should have gotten her some pain killers,” she muttered.

* * *

“Celestia... it’s gotten worse,” Moon said under her breath.

She strode beside Dusty as they circled the town atop the barrier.

It was the day after Dusty and Jade had arrived with the bad news. Since then, nothing had changed but the number of zombies gnawing at the wall.

“When did they all start showin’ up?” Dusty asked.

Moon rolled her eyes up. “I’d say about an hour before you did.”

The pegasus shook his head slowly. “Ah don’t get it. Somehow, they like, found the town or somethin’.... Willow would know. She was the zombie expert.”

Moon felt her heart drop as she was reminded of her two missing companions, Sunny more than Willow. She missed the pegasus, missed him more than she could bear. Just thinking about it stuck her breath in her chest and filled her belly with a sinking feeling.

Dusty flicked his tail and turned to Moon. “You have any idea why Sage is using us as her personal consultants now?”

Moon sighed. “Sage isn’t doing so well. I guess she’s just looking for help. She was never fit to run a settlement. She may look strong, but she takes that headband off and she’s a totally different pony.”

She looked down at a throng of zombies pressed against the barrier like sardines in a can. It seemed strange, but, sometime after the hospital, zombies had stopped being scary. Sure they could still eat you and you would die, but she had her shotgun and they were too stupid to hide. Looking down at them from the barrier like this had the same effect at looking down at a caged, ferocious beast. No matter how scary it is, it just isn’t scary.

Dusty stopped and perked his ears. “Ah hear ponies yellin’.”

Moon stopped as well, tilting her head to one side to listen with her left ear. She could definitely hear ponies yelling... lots of ponies yelling. “Sounds like some sort of commotion in town.”

Dusty blinked slowly. “I reckon we should go check it out then.” With practiced ease, Dusty sprang from the barrier and unfurled his wings to glide down to ground level. He landed smoothly and flapped his wings a single time for balance before re-furling them.

“Oh, sure.” Moon rolled her eyes as the pegasus smiled cheekily up a her. “Leave the mare to take the stairs. With a not-so-irritated huff, she trotted the extra ten feet to the rickety staircase and descended there.

The two cut between two buildings and emerged on the main street, where a throng of ponies had gathered in a semicircle.

“Jeez,” Dusty said as they neared the clamorous group. “It looks like the whole town is out here.”

Moon looked over the group of ponies with raised eyebrows. “I think the whole town is here.”

“There you are!” a recognizable voice called. Snowglobe trotted up and took stance on Moon’s right. “I’ve been wondering were you two have been,” she stated. “I still can’t find Brick. I haven’t seen him since word got out that Willow and Sunny were gone.”

Moon flinched. Another jab in the heart. “What’s going on here?” she asked Snowglobe.

“The townsponies are catching on,” the gray mare replied in a hushed tone. “What with the sudden water conservation and all the zombies outside. They’re starting to get antsy.”

Snowglobe shrugged. “Okay.”

“Okay...? As in, no breakdowns?” she pressed.

“Not so far.”

Moon nodded with relief. “Good. Let’s hope it stays that way.”

Sage stood atop a flat-decked wagon, which had been surrounded by ponies.

“What’s with this new water stuff!?” one yelled in a squeak.

“What’re we gun’ do ‘bout the zombies!?” another hollered.

Moon watched from the back of the group as Sage began to crumble under the barrage of questions and acquisitions. “Doing okay,” she said in a mock of Snowglobe’s voice, procuring a look from the gray mare.

Suddenly, Sage’s face turned hard and she stomped her hoof. “You want it straight?” she said in exasperation. “I’ll tell it to you straight... We're running out of water, and as all of you know, there are zombies surrounding us. Put one and two together and you have one majorly screwed town.

A shocked silence fell over the crowd.

“So... what do we do then?” squeaked a mare near the front.

Sage lowered her head. “I don’t know. That’s what I was trying to figure out.” She looked up, looking as Moon had seen her earlier. “I have no idea what to do. Anypony have a plan that will un-screw us?”

“Well,” a red stallion asked. “Can we shoot them? maybe—”

“Not enough ammo,” Sage interrupted.

Silence

Sage stood tall. “I’m tired of making all the decisions. You ponies are going to have to help me out here.” She stood quietly, saying no more, watching with absolutely no interest as ponies began to mutter and argue.

Before Moon could even contemplate what was happening, she was was standing in the middle of a full-fledged screaming contest. A few ponies shrank away from the arguing mass, taking the sensible side and not joining in on the chaos.

Moon balked. “It’s Desert Sage all over again!”

One burly stallion sporting a cowpony hat threw a hoof at another chewing on a cattail and the real chaos began.

Moon and Snowglobe dodged out of the way as two mares rolled by, biting and kicking at one another. Dusty jumped into the air and hovered above, out of reach.

Sage stood blankly on top of the wagon, staring off into space as the brawl raged on. A couple of doors cracked along the length of the street, anxious foals or mothers peeking out to see the commotion.

Moon stared ahead, her mind bringing her back to that day in Desert Sage which seemed so long ago, the day it happened. Ponies arguing, infection, killing, running.... zombies.

She took a determined step forward. It would not happen here; she wouldn’t let it.

Unstrapping the shotgun from her size, Moon levitated the barrel into the air. She loaded a shell with a metallic clack and fired. “Everypony freeze!”

Everypony froze where they stood. Two mares turned their eyes to her, one’s teeth fastened in the other’s mane. A stallion looked up from the other he had pinned.

“Damn, Moon.” Dusty whispered as he touched back down beside her.

Moon made her way through the shocked crowd of ponies and mounted the wagon, pushing Sage aside. She glared around at all the townsponies, smoking shotgun by her side. “Are you all stupid!?” she hollered. “Why don’t you all stop trying to kill each other, and try to find a way for us all not to die!” Moon pointed to Dusty for an example. “The pegasus ponies are fine; they can just fly away, but not too many of you are pegasus ponies, are you? And by not too many, I mean one. So pony up, and learn to deal with our problems instead of shoving it all on one pony!”

Panting, she lowered the shotgun and returned it to her side, then turned on Sage angrily. “Isn’t this your job?”

Sage smiled at Moon like one would to a lover. “Not anymore.”

Moon cocked her head, momentary burst of anger and adrenaline gone. “What’s that supposed to mean.”

Sage reached up and pulled the headband from her head, her brown mane falling into her eyes as the red cloth was pulled free. Moon stood frozen as Sage reached out and slipped the headband over her own head, adjusting it so it matched how Sage normally wore it: under the mane in the front, and parting it half over and half under in the back.

Sage took a step back and nodded approvingly, the same, loving, sad smile on her face. “Good luck Moon.”

Moon’s jaw fell open. “No,” she stated. Sage turned and hopped down from the wagon, parting the ponies ahead of her like magic as she headed for the edge of the crowd. “No! You can’t do this!”

Sage stopped and turned back to face her. “I’m sorry, Moon. But, I can’t do this anymore... Now it’s your turn.” With an apologetic look, she turned her back to Moon and continued on.

“But I never asked for a turn!” Moon stood in despair, watching as Sage stopped next to Jade, who seemed unsettled.

Had there been crickets in the crowd, they would be chirping. Moon stood on the wagon, looking fearfully out at the townsponies, all of whom were eyeing her expectantly.

She raised a hoof. “Give me a minute here.” She sat and ran her hoof along the headband. How could Sage do this to her?

Although she was silent, the townsponies held their vigil, as if in mourning for the retired leader. They waited for her first move, every eye focused, every ear alert. Moon spotted Snowglobe, who stood on the tips of her hooves. The gray mare smiled and nodded at her, a silent gesture of encouragement. Dusty was in the crowd as well, his face reflecting shock and disbelief.

It was now or never. Moon took a firm stance and looked out at the crowd. “Okay... Apparently I’m supposed to lead you ponies.” She sighed. “I don’t know much about leading, so bear with me.

“Something you all need to know: I used to be a pediatrician. I never planned on, or wanted to do this, but Sage left me in charge. And by Celestia, I’ll try my best. Now if I’m going to be leading you ponies, you need to know who I am... My name is Blue Moon, formerly of Phillydelphia.” She paused. “Now, I may not know much about running a settlement.” She levitated the shotgun up to her side. “But there are some things I do know—Staying alive, guns, zombies...” She worked the slide on the shotgun. “And how to kill them.”

The effect was of her desire. One pony stomped their hooves on the ground, closely followed by two more, then five. In less than a moment, every pony on the street was whooping and cheering for her.

Moon smiled lightly. “I should have totally run for elementary class president back in Phillydelphia,” she muttered. Raising a hoof, she quelled the cheering. Who knew winning the heart and minds of so many ponies was so easy?

“We need to deal with the problem at hoof!” She gestured roughly to the barricade. “There’s a lot of hungry zombies out there, and a lot of soon-to-be-hungry ponies in here. We need to do something about it. Now obviously, we don’t have enough ammo to shoot every one, so I need ideas.”

A pink mare near the back raised a hoof. “A distraction maybe? if we could get a pony to—”

Moon silenced her with a shake of her head. “No. I’ll never allow something like that. Think transportation.”

“Well, we’ve got wagons,” a green buck piped up.

“You think you can pull a wagon faster than a zombie!?” called another rudely.

Moon nodded. “He’s right. Wagons won’t do.”

Then from, the back of the crowd, Dusty raised his hoof. “How about a train?”

* * *

“Wake up!” a gruff voice commanded

“Gimme’ a minute,” Willow groaned, rolling over to put her back to the voice.

“Willow,” she heard Sunny whisper from a little ways away. “Just get up.”

“Come on,” another unknown voice growled. It was followed by a shuffling of hooves and creak of metal.

Willow flicked her ears, but didn’t move. Everything hurt, more specifically, her whole middle section. Her limbs felt fine, but every movement sent long shivers of pain up her belly. Willow associated the feeling with that of drinking kerosene, a drunken party trick she had once attempted that had ended in a hospital hooked to a stomach pump. Those had been her more invincible years. She had learned two things that night. One was that if it was combustible, it was not meant to be taken internally, which should have been common sense at the time. And that stupidity and hard cider did not mix.

Without warning, her entire body was racked with searing pain as pressure was applied to the wound, still was not fully healed from the potion. She screamed and, on reaction, threw a forehoof back. It collided with something soft, and the pain immediately subsided.

Now angry, she opened her eyes and sat up. She blinked, noting the numerous rifles trained on her head. The stallion she had struck glared angrily as he climbed to his hooves, blood running from both nostrils.

Taking in her surroundings, Willow recognized the cage from last night, now lit brightly by the early morning sun. Sunny and Candy sat off to one side of the tent, both shackled at the hooves.

Slowly, WIllow pushed herself to her forehooves, trying to ignore the rifle barrels trained on her head. She kept her movements slow and predictable, not keen to be shot again. “Don’t shoot,” she lulled to the unblinking ponies such as one would to a scared animal. “I’m not going to try and eat you or anything.”

The stallion she had clobbered took his place in line, ears folded as he looked around at his comrades, who seemed to find his ordeal rather amusing.

“Mare got your tongue?” one joked cruelly.

The stallion shook his head confusedly. “Her hoof hit me like a train.”

Willow bowed her head to him. “Sorry. You really shouldn’t have poked me there.”

The commander, whom she had met yesterday, entered the tent. He stomped officially to the center to nod at his officers. “Get her out of here,” was his stiff command.

The ponies barring her way moved and Willow started forward, favoring one leg over the other due to her injury. One of the ponies went to shunt her forward and she turned on him with a snarl.

“I can walk myself!” she spat, causing the stallion to jump back. He stumbled to a safe distance and trained his rifle on her.

“Yeah, point your gun at me,” the leered before turning away and continuing forward.

The commander smiled at Willow, but not in a good way. “You’re a strange mare,” he said idly.

“Why, she growled, stopping in the middle of the tent, her companions a few feet away. “Because your crappy shooting didn’t kill me? Or is it because you aren’t able to beat me in a pissing contest?”

She glared in triumph as the commander froze, his mind working a mile a minute.

Not much to her surprise, the stallion’s hoof flashed up and struck her across the muzzle. Trying her best not to cry out or wince in pain, Willow continued to glare into his amused face. He swung again, this time striking her in the brow. She held her glare, even as a trickle of blood ran from a cut on her head and into her eye.

The commander grinned smugly. “Oh, playing tough are we?” he motioned to two silent ponies on the right. “Cuff her.” He turned back to Willow. “Don’t worry, I went through your bag and found your “Antidote.” I don’t know what it is, and frankly, I don’t care. But it’s going with you and your friends in a box to Baltimare, where our best scientists will analyze both it and you.

Willow fidgeted as the two ponies cuffed her. She held her eyes on the commander, expression cool. Sunny and Candy watched nervously. “I hope all the REA isn’t like you,” she said rudely. “Because if they are, Equestria is so screwed.

The commander just shrugged. “I run things my way. For all I know, the next REA official you meet is going to kiss your boo-boos better and give you a cookie and milk. Here, we do things my way, and that’s how it is.”

The mare whom had helped Willow last night poked her head in the tent. “Sir,” she said quietly, throwing a quick eye at Willow. “The skywagon is ready.”

The commander nodded. “Good. Get those ponies and their junk on board, and then set for Baltimare. Let it be their mess. I don’t want a thing to do with this devil mare and her friend the deserter.”

The yellow unicorn nodded. “Yes sir.” She gestured with a hoof for the prisoners to follow.

Sunny and Candy shuffled over to meet the mare at the exit. Willow shot one last glare at the commander before following them.

Willow tried to cross the camp with as much dignity as possible as the yellow mare lead them to the skywagon, which wasn’t much—not with all the rifles trained on her and the way she had to shuffle in the hoofcuffs. Not with the uniformed officers that flanked she and her friends on either side.

She shuffled forward and pressed her way in between Sunny and Candy. The orange pegasus walked with his head aloft and wings partially flared, feathers ruffled. Candy on the other hoof, walked with her head low, her mane obscuring most her face. Hiding her face was not all too effective though, for her red and white striped mane was a dead giveaway to her fellow soldiers.

“Is that Cane?” WIllow hear a heard a watching stallion whisper to another.

“Yeah,” was his friend's reply. “Definitely... I wonder what she did.”

“Things are looking pretty grim,” Sunny muttered, shooting Willow a sideways glance.

“Yeah...” Willow rolled her eyes and spoke in mock surprise. “Who knew that Candy would accidentally hoof us over to a power-hungry sociopath.”

THe yellow unicorn mare led her around a corner towards a waiting skywagon.

“Do you think all of the army is like this?” Sunny fretted.

Willow shook her head, looking down at her hooves. “I don’t think they are. I’ve been around the army before all this. They’re Equestrian’s army, not a bunch of rogues with guns. It’ll be better in Baltimare... you’ll see.” While Willow was reassuring Sunny, she found herself not knowing whether her words were true, but hoping they were.

The pegasus sighed. “I sure hope so.”

The wagon they were led to was similar to the one they had flown here on. Only this one had no windows, except for two in the very front, and ran about three feet shorter.

“A prison wagon,” Candy muttered under her breath.

“Is this our load to Baltimare?” a blue unicorn mare asked, stepping down out of the wagon.

The yellow one nodded. “Yep.”

A yellow earth pony emerged next. “Well, get them loaded up then,” he said impatiently.

Willow had no idea how she managed to hold her tongue as she was shunted into the wagon behind her friends. Upon entering, she was lead to the back of a wagon, where a set of bars had been fitted, creating a small holding cell.

Willow fought the urge to block the cell door as the blue unicorn swung it closed. The bars fell in place with a clank and the latch was set, inoperable from the inside.

She could see why it was called a prison wagon. The back five feet of the craft was no more than a cage with soft-hard cushions on either side, while the front provided two, much more cushioned seats for the captors.

The yellow earth pony stallion trotted to the front wall and rapped three times with a forehoof.

With a lurch, the wagon started forward. Unable to see due to the lack of windows, WIllow had to reply on the churning in her gut to tell her that they were moving.

Willow did not know for how long she rode in silence. She had no sense of time without the view of the sun. It had been a while—certainly long enough for her to get bored.

“I’m so sorry’ Candy whispered from the very back of the cell, where she hid in the semi-darkness. “I never knew.... I never thought....”

“It’s best you keep quiet right now, Candy.” Willow said warningly. “I don’t want to end up saying something I’ll regret later.”

Candy opened her mouth, then closed it again. With a sniff, she hung her head and sobbed lightly. Willow looked away and uncomfortably tugged at her hoofcuffs; they were really starting to annoy her.

“Take it easy on her,” Sunny said flatly from the ground where he lay. “She meant good.”

“Shut up!” Snapped the stallion from the front of the wagon. “You’re prisoners, that means you don’t speak!”

Willow shook her hoofcuffs, filling the wagon with an obnoxious jingle.

“And stop with the chains,” he added. “It’s annoying.”

With a roll of her eyes, WIllow stood up and placed her hooves on the bars. “Why don’t you take them off me?” she asked innocently. “I think they’re pretty annoying too.”

It was the blue mare’s turn to speak. “Are you joking?” she scoffed. “we’re not taking your cuffs off.”

“Look,” Willow said bargainingly. “Take the cuffs off please, or I’ll take them off.”

The uniformed mare raised an eyebrow. “Is that a threat?”

Willow shook her head. “No, I am just telling you that if you don’t take these cuffs off, I’ll do it myself.”

“Good luck,” she laughed. “Those are quarter inch steel chains.”

“Willow,” Sunny said slowly. The pegasus was lying on his back and staring up the the ceiling, legs splayed and wings unfurled. “Don’t.”

She looked down at him. “No. I told her to take them off, and she won't.” She gave the chain binding her forehooves a tug, testing the metal. “So I’ll do it because these things are annoying me.” Raising her forehooves to her she bit down on the chain and turned her head to clamp down on it with her molars.

The REA ponies watched with amusement as she ran her jaws in a small circle, grinding the chain. She gave one hard bite, and a tug in either direction with her forehooves and the chain snapped in the center link.

The blue unicorn’s jaw dropped. “Did you just—” she turned in disbelief to the stallion.”She just broke the cuffs.”

He blinked. “Well... put a new pair on her then.”

Having rolled onto her back to gnaw at the shackles on her rear hooves, Willow snapped the second pair. She rolled to a sitting position and shot a warning glare at the two ponies. “You put a new pair on me and I’ll just break them again.”

“Please don’t,” Sunny groaned from the floor. “She is one-hundred percent serious.”

“She’s supposed to be a doctor?” the blue mare asked the stallion beside her, who only shrugged.

“Do me a favor,” WIllow said, fighting a yawn and curling herself into a ball. “Wake me up when you’re done being so uptight.”

“How far is it to Baltimare?” she heard Sunny ask.

“Far enough to get us out of the desert,” the mare replied. “Thank Celestia for that.”

“You ever seen a tree, desert pony?” the stallion asked, his gaze fixed on Sunny.

“Yeah!” the pegasus replied defensively. “Of course I’ve seen a tree.”

“How are you still alive anyways?” the uniformed stallion mused dangerously. “What makes you so special?”

Willow sat up intent to see the uniformed stallion’s motives.

The mare shot the stallion a look. “Don’t,” she said with annoyance.

He brandished a dismissive hoof at her. “Oh it’s nothing. I’m just making small talk.” To Sunny. “Go on, tell me. I’m curious.”

“Apart from being immune?” Sunny asked sarcastically, placing a thoughtful hoof on chin. “And apart from escaping Desert Sage alive through underground tunnels, and then hiking through the desert to Appleoosa. Then being caught by a bunch of sociopathic ponies in uniforms.” He looked to the yellow stallion. “Let me think.”

Willow smiled. Maybe she was starting to rub off on the pegasus. That sarcasm had been worthy of her own standards.

The smile wiped from the yellow stallion’s face faster than water off a duck. He fixed his gaze on Sunny and stepped forward threateningly. “Are you immune to bullets, smart one?”

“Back off,” his comrade warned, most likely knowing he wouldn’t listen.

Sunny shifted his position and Willow could tell from his body language that he already regretted speaking.

She refrained from jumping at the stallion right there and then. If a pony wanted to pick on her, it was fair game, but not her friends.

The yellow pony moved closer, poking the barrel of his carbine through the bars and training it on Sunny. “Let’s just say for a minute that you were trying to escape.” He smiled. WIllow heard the audible click of the safety catch.

That was all it took to set her on him. He was threatening and Sunny and it set her blood boiling. Before anypony could react, she was on her hooves and lunging towards the bars. The cocky stallion made to step back, but misjudged her speed. Catching the end of his carbine’s barrel in her mouth, she tugged him towards her until his face smashed against the cell.

“Hey!” he yelled, trying to pull free. “Stop it!”

He lunged for the firing bit, but Willow was a second faster. She yanked the barrel left just as a shot rang out. The steel in her mouth grew hot, but she kept her teeth tightly fastened. Now even more angry than before, she yanked hard on the barrel and was rewarded with a crack. The stallion screamed in pain as he was smashed against the bars.

“Omph gahlsh!” she yelled giving another tug. With a lurch, the barrel tore free of the carbine and Willow flew back to land on Sunny.

The yellow stallion stepped hurriedly back, coat red and bleeding in places where he had been pulled against the bars. “Shoot her!’ he bellowed to the mare beside him. “Shoot that freak!” He took the bit in his mouth, but Willow only smiled, knowing that the barrel in her mouth had destroyed the firing mechanism.

“No,” the blue mare said angrily. “You asked for that.”

He turned to her, looking on the verge of angry tears. “That was an unprovoked attack on a uniformed officer!”

“She was protecting her friend!” Blue shouted back. “Now cut the crap! Just because the commander’s gone crazy doesn’t mean you can too.”

Willow rolled off of Sunny and spat out her prize, watchig as it clattered to the floor. “Sorry about that,” she apologised, sounding the exact opposite of sorry.

“Thanks,” Sunny said quietly, directing his eyes to his hooves.

Willow reached over and messed up his mane, trying to ignore the bickering of the two REA ponies in the front. “I wouldn’t let anypony shoot you but me.”

Sunny smiled. “That actually sounds pretty good.” he made a quick movement for her mane, but she batted his hoof away before he could reach her.

“That’s because I’m a pony you can trust.”

Sunny met her gaze. “You really are.”

Something in the pegasus’ gaze made her feel uncomfortable for the first time in ages and she hurriedly looked away. “Let’s hope we catch a break break in Baltimare. I don’t know how many more things I have to break before they put me in a straightjacket."

Chapter 10 Zombies and Locomotives

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Undead Equestria

by: Sorren

Chapter 10 - Zombies and Locomotives

“Do you all remember the plan?”

Moon leveled her gaze with Dusty and the two, formal REA pegasi, which she now knew as Copper and Streak. The red one sporting a dirty, golden-brown mane and tail was Copper; the purple one with the white mane was Streak. Mind drifting off on a distant track, Moon wondered if that was even the purple pegasus’ real name. She was a wagon puller after all—Streak wasn’t all too original.

“Sure do,” Dusty responded cheerfully. He rubbed his chin. “If ah recall correctly, we fly to the train yard, take the train, an’ don’t die an’ shoot zombies.”

Moon felt the beginnings of a smile and fought to keep a straight face. She suddenly remembered something she had been meaning to ask. “So why are you taking Snowglobe again?”

Dusty grinned. “Because that mare can fix anything with nothing more’n a wrench and her own wits. She might not like guns all too much, but she’s one smart pony.”

“Oh, why thanks, Dusty,” came the cheeky voice of Snowglobe as she descended the stairs to the center room, taking the pegasus by surprise.

Dusty turned towards her, blushing slightly. “There you are,” he declared.

“Here I am,” she returned, reaching the group of four ponies and shrugging off her saddlebags, which hit the floor with the jingling of metal.

“Tools?” Moon motioned towards the bags.

“Yep,” said Snowglobe, sitting down and casting a casual eye around the room.

“Easy on the weight now,” Dusty warned the unicorn. “ Ah’m the one that has to fly you to the trainyard. From what ah was told, it may be some distance to the west.”

Snowglobe examined herself skeptically. “Weight,” she mused.

“No, no,” Dusty added hurriedly. “Ah mean, weight in the bags. Your body’s fine...” He hesitated, cocking his head to one side. “In fact, ah think you might be a little bit underweight.”

Moon whistled at the two, unable to help herself. Dusty jumped, and turned an even brighter shade of red, while Snowglobe just shot a glare. Copper snorted and turned away.

“You think your funny!” Snowglobe said heatedly, but keeping a joking tone in her voice.

Moon shrugged. “Sort of. I think it’s funny to be able to turn Dusty red whenever I want to.” She turned to her pegasus friend. “Like the time you saved me from myself back at the hospital.”

Dusty was now inventing whole new colors to blush. “Now don’t you ever bring that up again!”

Feeling rather cheerful—and a bit cocky despite the urgent situation—Moon turned to Snowglobe with a teasing grin. “Face it girl, I got all the game.”

The gray mare stood up. “Oh ho!”

Moon smiled evilly. “Oh, don’t worry. You have plenty of game... it all just goes the other way.”

Snowglobe wasn’t smiling anymore. She pushed herself forward and sprang at Moon. Although her face read angry, her eyes sparkled with laughter. Moon reared up to meet the mare and the two of them crashed to the floor. She struggled as Snowglobe tried to wrap her hooves around her neck. With a push, Moon rolled them over, putting her on top.

Dusty had been right; Snowglobe really didn’t weigh very much. The gray mare was much lighter than Moon was herself. The strange thing was, Snowglobe didn’t appear scrawny or small; she was just light.

Moon was sure she had the mare pinned. What she did not expect was the feeling of Snowglobe’s hooves on her belly, near her hind legs. With a heave, the gray mare launched Moon two feet into the air. She flailed her hooves for a moment before crashing back to the wood floor. In a second, Snowglobe was on her. Moon tried to fight back, but soon found herself pinned on her back, Snowglobe looking down at her triumphantly.

Snowglobe rested on Moon’s belly, forelegs braced at the blue mare’s sides and her front hooves on her belly. She leaned in close to Moon and smiled. “What was that you were saying?”

Moon laughed once, breathing heavily. “I’m not sure... something about you managing to pin me down despite how light you are?”

Snowglobe shrugged, tightening her grip as Moon tried to pull away. “I grew up with three older brothers.”

Moon rolled her eyes. “Well that explains a lot.” She turned to look sideways at the three pegasi who were still in the room. All three watched with mixed emotions of laughter and amusement. When they spotted her eyes on them, all three ponies turned away, suddenly becoming much more interested with something just out of sight. Looking back to Snowglobe, Moon leered back, noting the mare’s face suddenly much closer to her own.

“What are you doing?”

Snowglobe rolled her eyes to the left, then right. “Doing what?”

Moon squirmed uncomfortably. “You’re a little close.”

Snowglobe loosened her grip and lifted her head. “Sorry,” she apologised.

Both mares stared at one another, neither speaking.

“That headband works really well for you,” Snowglobe said after a moment, breaking the silence.

Moon chuckled awkwardly, raising a hoof to run it across the strip of fabric. “Yeah...”

She heard the sound of approaching hoofsteps a moment before Brick trotted casually into the room. The large stallion froze, eyes probing the two mares on the floor. He seemed to hit the rewind button on himself and reversed direction, leaving the way he had come.

Moon looked up at Snowglobe. “You can probably get off me now.”

Snowglobe, who was still eyeing the spot Brick had disappeared, jumped. “Right! Sorry.” She released her grasp and sprang nimbly to her hooves.

Moon climbed to her hooves, trying to act as casual. She had seen something in Snowglobe’s eyes and she didn't know whether to feel unsettled or just giggle. Making for the corner of the room, she retrieved her saddlebags and shotgun.

She didn’t really even know why she carried saddlebags. She hardly ever carried anything other than ammo in them, and her shotgun even had a spot to store shells on the left side. More or less, she just used the strap on the left bag to hold her shotgun. What she needed to find herself was some sort of holster.

The three pegasus ponies who had watched the ordeal left out the front door, trying to hold down smiles. Taking their lead, Snowglobe retrieved her bags and did the same.

With work to be done, Moon followed them, falling in stride beside the gray mare as they left the house and emerged out into the hot desert sun.

Outside, the street was crowded with ponies. To Moon, it appeared the entire town was out here, which would only make her job all the easier.

Moon trotted up to the three pegasi, who waited right outside the door, and addressed Dusty. “You can leave after I tell them all what you’re doing.”

Looking about, Moon realized the townsponies had noticed their emergence, and were muttering anxiously to one another. Making head, she started forward, offering a friendly greeting to a group of foals as she passed. Reaching the wagon where she had been so previously given her unwanted leadership, she leapt up to the elevated surface and took stance.

There was no need to call; the townsponies had already gathered around, every eye looking up at her expectantly. Sage and Jade sat by one another a ways off, saved from the blaring sun by a storefront awning.

“Okay!” she called, quelling any chatter that still remained. “Here’s the plan. I’ve been doing some research, and from what I have learned, there is a trainyard a ways to the west of here; this is our escape. Now my friend here, Dusy,” she motioned towards the light-blue pegasus who floated above the crowd, “happens to be an experienced trainpony. A small team of pegasi are going to fly to the railyard, and drive us back a train. That’s how we’re going to get out of here, everypony. Even zombies can’t stop a train.”

“Even if we do get out of here on a train,” said an older mare at the front. “Then what?”

Moon shook her head. “I don’t know. I have absolutely no idea what we’re going to do once we get out of here. All I know, is that we die if we stay here.”

“Hey Moon!” Dusty called suddenly. “Ah’ll let you keep talkin’, but we’re takin’ off!”

Moon waved her hoof at him. "Well don't let me keep you waiting. Go get us a train!"

Dusty dropped back to the ground next to Snowglobe. They exchanged a glance and Dusty motioned for Copper and Streak. With a single flap of his wings, Dusty lifted himself into the air and over Snowglobe. Fastening all four hooves around the mare, he lifted her from the ground, and they were off.

Moon focussed back on the ponies awaiting her word. “I don’t know when they’ll be getting back; it could be four hours, it could be a day, but we need to get ready for when they return. I want everything to go fast and smooth when they pull in. If there is anything you need to bring, leave it on the platform by the tracks.” Moon wracked her brain for what else she had already decided. “Food!” she declared. “I want as many apples as you can get from those trees. I also want as much water as we can take. Any container you can find—fill it with water. It’s no use to leave supplies behind; we don’t know what’s ahead... Does everypony understand!?”

An assortment of jeers and shouts greeted her ears as the ponies yelled their understanding. A moment later, the group began to break apart.

Moon spotted Brick lurking around the side of a building and motioned him towards her. Hopping down from the wagon, she met him halfway. “How are things going?” she greeted cheerfully.

He shrugged.

Ever since Willow had left, so to speak, the brown stallion had mostly kept out of sight. In fact, today was the first time she had seen him in quite a while.

She sighed. “I know it’s hard. I can tell how much you miss Willow. “ He nodded slowly as she spoke, eyes studying the ground.

Moon changed topics. “I need you to do something for me.” Brick’s ears perked. “I want you to go back to the house and pack everything up. You need to take it and put it on the platform, but keep it separated from the other stuff. Make sure you get what’s left of the guns, and what food we have left from the hospital—I think we still have a few dozen cans, but don’t let the townsponies see it; there isn’t enough to go around and they’d probably start a riot over it. Ponies can only eat apples for so long. Also, you really need to keep those cases with Willow’s antidote thing safe. I want them to be the first thing on the train. ”

Brick nodded firmly and turned to follow up her orders.

“One more thing,” she added. “You should probably put that gun back on. You’re going to get a lot of looks walking around, but I’d feel a whole lot safer knowing we have some firepower.”

Brick looked back at her, nodded for a second time, then set off down the street.

Moon watched him go with a soft chuckle. It used to be only Willow that the stallion would listen to. Maybe some of Willow had rubbed off on her, enough for Brick to listen to her. She had also been spontaneously put in charge of a settlement surrounded by zombies... Maybe he was just trying to give her a break.

Now that Brick was no longer in sight, she felt lonely. All of the ponies she knew weren’t here—Willow, Sunny, Dusty, Snowglobe... they were all gone. Brick was here, but he never really spoke to her, anypony actually. She was surrounded by ponies she didn’t know, who would all heed her words without a third thought of it.

Spotting Jade and Sage near the front gate, Moon unconsciously decided to head in their direction.

Moon was glad to see ponies bustling to and fro busily, collecting things that would prove useful. One mare was trying to take a whole china cabinet, but was quickly discouraged from doing so by her very tolerant husband.

Sage raised a hoof in greeting when Moon neared. “How’s it going?” she asked.

Moon glared. “Fine, apart from the fact that I’m leader of about sixty ponies and still can’t understand why.”

Sage shrugged. “You seem to be doing okay... better than me.”

Jade cleared her throat loudly, drawing both mares’ attention. “I like the whole train idea, but do you think it’ll work?”

“I’m not quite sure.” Moon ran her hoof unconsciously across the dark-red headband, remembering how it used to look on Sage. “It was Dusty’s plan. He said they always keep spare engines in railyards for shunting, or just for storage.” She cast a look at Sage. “What’s down the line from here anyways?”

The turquoise mare rolled her eyes to the upper-left, thinking. “I asked up on it once, talked to an old local. Next down the line is Dodge junction, then there are a few different directions from there.”

“I was thinking we could try and make it to Baltimare,” Moon confided. “Candy said that it was still standing.”

Sage frowned. “I think that—”

There was a loud bang as the front gate shook in its housing, sending little splinters of wood flittering to the ground.

“What was that?” Sage squeaked, shrinking back.

Jade unfurled her wings and sprang into the air to land on the walkway above. The gate shook again as something charged the other side, causing the pegasus to stumble.

Moon galloped to the staircase and scaled it four steps at a time, Sage right on her tail. She skidded to a stop at the railing and looked down. The sight below chilled her blood.

Below, a buffalo hammered itself against the gate. It stuck out, a big brown lump in the sea of rainbow shapes pressed against the barrier.

Sage groaned from beside Moon. “I’ve never seen one do this before.”

Moon levitated her shotgun from her side. “Well, it better stop.” She winced as the beast lunged forward again, ramming the gate with its head and shaking the planks below her hooves.

Jade flew out over the monster and pulled a low-caliber pistol from her leg holster. She fined down at the buffalo, striking it multiple times in the back and head. To the pegasus’ disdain, It didn’t even seem to notice it was being shot.

Taking aim with her own weapon, Moon fired a buckshot into the top of the beast’s head. For better or worse, she caught its attention. With a bellow of rage, it ceased its assault on the gate to glare up at her.

To her surprise, and absolute horror, the buffalo sprang into the air with about half the agility of a cat, its front hooves smashing the railing out of the way and crashing to the walkway.

Moon cried out, backpedaling frantically as the behemoth growled and snapped at her, hanging from the wall by its front hooves. “I didn’t know they could jump!”

“Me neither!” Sage yelled back, eyes as wide as saucers.

Ejecting the old shell, Moon fired another shot, shredding the left half of the beast’s face. Despite the two strong blows, it continued to try and haul itself up, glaring at her with its one remaining eye.

Jade landed behind Moon and gave a low shudder. “That thing jumped like it was on a pogo-stick.”

Trying to slow her breathing, Moon levitated a box of shotgun slugs from her saddlebag and swapped them with the buckshot. She aimed and fired, the recoil nearly knocking the weapon from her magical grasp. Bracing herself, she fired again, and again, and again.

Finally, the monster stopped growling and its front hooves stopped churning. It dangled for a second, bleeding onto the walkway, before its hooves slipped and the mangled beast fell from the barrier, flattening some fellow zombies below its bulk.

Townsponies had gathered around below, summoned by the gunshots. Moon looked down at them—her front spattered with blood—and smiled reassuringly. “No worries, it was just a buffalo; it’s dead now.”

Moon turned away from them and looked back to the desert beyond. More infected were still on the way. Already, they had a ten foot ring of zombies around the town, and it definitely was not going away. Somehow, Appleoosa had turned into some sort of a zombie beacon, and now they were swarming like moths to a light.

“Look out!” Sage yelled suddenly, causing Moon to jump and look frantically around for the cause of the warning. Suddenly, a turquoise shape bear-tackled her and the two mares sailed off the back of the barrier to land painfully in the street.

Moon shoved Sage of from atop of her and scrambled to her hooves, wincing at the pain in her back. “What was that for?” she asked angrily, glaring at Sage as she picked herself up.

Her question was answered when four gunshots echoed from above. A moment later, Jade blasted by with three scraggly pegasi on tail. The dark pegasus swerved to and fro, beating her wings frantically, trying to keep the zombies behind her from gaining.

Sage ran forward, following Jade from the ground. “No!” she hollered to the fleeing mare. “Come back this way!”

With surprising agility, Jade corkscrewed herself and turned one-hundred-eighty degrees, back towards Moon and Sage. The sudden movement threw off her pursuers and the three pegasi fought to reverse direction, managing to do so, but not quite as smooth as Jade.

Now that the mare was heading back towards them, Moon could see how panicked she really was. Her eyes popped, and a pistol remained clamped in her jaws, the slide locked and clip empty.

Suddenly, one of her pursuers lunged forwards and fastened its teeth in her tail. Jade cried out as she was yanked back. “Help!” she screamed, battling the three pegasi in the air, trying to avoid their deadly bite.

Moon dashed forward and took aim with the shotgun. She tried to focus on one target, but they were all moving too fast for her to chose. Taking a wild guess, she aimed and fired. The sickening thwack of the slug striking flesh signified she had hit something. One of the pegasi, a blue one, dropped from the sky. Unfortunately, it had not been the one she had intended to hit.

The zombie that didn’t have its teeth fastened in Jade’s tail broke off and dived at Moon from the side, intentions clear.

With something similar to a battle cry, Sage bolted forward, and with a spectacular leap, tackled the infected pony right out of the air.

Taking careful aim this time, Moon blasted the pegasi attacking Jade. It relinquished its grip and spiraled to the ground, its neck decimated by the slug. Without missing a beat, she swung the twelve-gauge around to the last zombie, which Sage had somehow managed to pin, and sent its head across the dirt.

Sage jumped back, startled. She swung her head left and right, mouth agape. “I-I just...”she looked down at her hooves. “I just fought a zombie with my hooves... Am I insane!?” she screamed rhetorically.

Jade landed near Sage and examined the teeth marks in her tail with contempt.

Moon glared around at the townsponies who had begun to crowd around in worry, having just missed the action. “Somepony watch the zombies!” she called, expressing the churning in her belly as anger.

A younger, cherry colored mare broke away from the group and galloped towards the front gate, pulling out a small revolver as she did so.

Moon swept her eyes over the twenty or so ponies that still remained in the street. “How many of you have weapons?”

She sighed when only ten hooves shot into the air. With a roll of her eyes, Moon turned to Sage. “Go find Brick and tell him never mind on packing the guns, we need to distribute them to these ponies. I think we have like... four rifles and maybe ten mouth-held weapons.”

Sage nodded and turned to leave, motioning for Jade to follow.

“We got a problem!” yelled the red mare from the barrier. “You know how buffalo usually travel in herds!?”

* * *

“I think I see it!” Snowglobe called, peering down at the jumbles of shapes in the distance.

“Ah hope so!” Dusty replied from above. “We only been flyin’ for six hours!”

The pegasus shifted his grip on Snowglobe and she tensed. “Don't try and drop me again,” she warned meekly.

“It’s not like ah tried to drop you,” he responded. “Besides, ah caught you before you hit the ground.”

“Barely,” she sulked.

Snowglobe had learned something new today; she really didn’t enjoy flying. Now she had two things to avoid, flying and guns.

Copper swooped down to fly alongside Dusty. “So what’s the plan once we get down there?”

Dusty began his descent as she shapes ahead grew in size. “Way ah see it, we find a train, make it work, an’ take it down the tracks to Appleoosa.”

The red pegasus rolled his eyes. “Good plan.”

Snowglobe scanned the railyard below, searching for anything that could prove useful. A quick examination proved the yard wasn’t much. Few buildings stood, apart from an old wooden station near the tracks, and some covered sheds beyond that. Several switches led away from the main line and tracks stretched out behind the station. Parked in a far siding was a row of boxcars, and on an adjacent track, four passenger carriages sat discarded.

“Switching station,” Dusty said to himself.

“Depends. Sometimes yards like this get left full of stock waitin’ for the next locomotive, or sometimes they got a yard full of engines waitin’ for the next train. Let’s just hope we can find ourselves a working engine down there.”

“I don’t see any trains down there,” said Streak, causing Dusty to wince at the word ‘trains.’

“That’s because they keep all the engines in covered sheds.” Much to Snowglobe’s horror, Dusty spared a hoof around her belly to point to a row of four large sheds at the edge of the yard. “Ah’m hopin’ there’ll be a locomotive in one of those.”

Snowglobe squeaked and hugged Dusty’s other hoof. “Dusty!” she cried.

“Oh, shoot!” Dusty hurriedly clasped his leg back to her flank. “Sorry,” he said sheepishly.

A short descent brought the three pegasi over the building near the tracks. Snowglobe braced herself for the landing, but found her action unorthodox as Dusty set her lightly down on the tar-and-gravel roof. She hugged the ground for a moment, savoring the solid surface.

Dusty grinned at her. “Come on now. Flyin’ ain’t that bad.”

She gave him a glare. “Yeah, and I don’t have wings.” She gave the surrounding rooftop a quick glance over. “What building is this”

Dusty sauntered to a hatch on the roof and yanked it open. The hinges squealed with protest as the conjured rust was separated. “Rail offices. If there’s an engine here, there should be records of it. Best to check here before we go runnin’ around the trainyard dodgin’ zombies.”

Snowglobe looked to the low-caliber pistol strapped to her right foreleg and hoped she wouldn’t have to use it.

Dusy flicked his tail in a motion for Copper and Streak before plunging through the hatch. With a shrug, Copper followed with Streak right behind.

Snowglobe edged herself around the hole in the roof, looking down at the three pegasi who peered back up at her. “I don’t have wings,” she reminded them for the second time today.

“Oh yeah,” said Dusty. He reared up on his rear hooves. “Well jump; ah’ll catch you.”

She pondered the length of the drop: about seven feet. “Okay, you’d better catch me.” Trusting the pegasus fully, she stepped over the edge. Her belly churned at the small drop and she turned over in the air, looking at a square patch of sunlight as she dropped away. There was a sudden deceleration before she found herself looking into Dusty’s face as he held her in his forelegs.

“Wow, you really are light,” he commented.

She gave him a roll of her eyes and dropped out of his grasp to land neatly on her hooves. “Thanks.” Rolling back on her haunches, she brushed down the hair on her belly that had been ruffled during her flight.

She glanced around the room, disliking how dark it appeared. Cheap plastic blinds were drawn over every window and the late-afternoon sun shone brightly through the tiny slits in the plastic sheets. Desks sat haphazardly around the interior of the building, portraying no real order.

A snicker drew her away from her examines of the room and over to Copper, who hurriedly wiped a smile from his face. “What’s so funny?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Copper flicked his ears in minor irritation of having been caught. “Nothing...” He snickered again. “I was just thinking about how fluffy your belly is.”

Still reared up, Snowglobe looked down at her belly and frowned. “Well... it’s nice to know you were thinking about that?” she worded the statement as a question.

Streak jabbed Copper in the side with her knee. “I always knew you had a thing for bellies, Copper.”

He turned angrily to her. “You aren’t—” He broke off, springing back and out of the way as a blue mare sailed at them over a desk. Her eyes bled and almost every one of her teeth had been broken. Copper reared up and deflected the zombie, sending it soaring backwards to crash to a desktop, splitting the wooden surface and scattering papers like party confetti.

In a second, Copper had his pistol out and trained, but Dusty flashed a hoof in front of his muzzle. “No,” he warned. “Ah think the things are attracted to loud noises.”

The red pegasus spat the weapon back to its holster. “Then what the hay are we supposed to do? Ask it to go away?”

The zombie mare picked herself up and gave her head a violent shake, spattering blood across the surrounding walls and floor. With a screech, she rocketed forward again to be knocked away by Copper a second time, who hopped backwards fearfully as the mare snapped at his foreleg.

“Well ah don’t know!” Dusty snapped back. “But ah don’t want more of em’ here!”

“Well then step up and do something!” returned Copper.

“Guys,” Snowglobe said quietly as the zombie stumbled back to its hooves. “It’s getting up.”

Dusty turned angrily to Copper. “Ah’m tryin’ to think!”

The blue mare crept forward, eyes glaring daggers of hate and hunger directly at Copper, who continued to glare back at Dusty. “Hard to think of a way to kill a zombie without a gun, huh?”

The zombie lunged and Snowglobe panicked. She snatched the nearest item from a nearby desk—which happened to be a carved steel-and-wood nameplate inscribed with the name, ‘A. Sherbert.’—and magically hurled it at the charging mare. With a sickening crunch, A. Sherbert buried itself in the mare’s left eye, reducing it to pulp. The zombie ragdolled and crashed to the floor between the two arguing pegasi.

Copper looked at the pony on the floor, then up to Snowglobe, mouth half-agape. “Damn, mare.”

Snowglobe eeped and backed herself in A. Sherbet's desk. She had always known she possessed a higher magical strength than the average pony, but she never thought she'd be able to do... that.

Dusty examined the dead pony with a whistle. “You just killed a zombie with a nametag, Snowglobe. I gotta’ give you credit for that.”

Snowglobe tried not to look at the sheen of blood drifting across the hardwood floor. “Let’s... let’s just go find a train.” Strafing the body on the floor, she began trotting around the vintage office for... “Hey, Dusty? What are we looking for again?”

Without answering, Dusty made his way over to a file cabinet and pulled open the top drawer. “Yard records,” he murmured, rifling through a row of manila folders. Copper and Streak just stood where he had left them, looking around in mild confusion.

Dusty slammed the drawer shut after a moment. “Ponyfeathers! There aren’t any engines here! We got plenty of old cars, but there’s no engines.”

Snowglobe kicked a chair angrily. So much for that whole plan. “So I take it we’re screwed?” With a burst of rage, she aimed her magic at a desk labelled, ‘Foremare’ and flipped it upside down, scattering papers and quills about. One of the many papers flittered through the air and floated towards Snowglobe. She snatched it, intent on shredding it, but stopped at the sight of an untidy scrawl on the front. Curiously, she turned the paper upright to read it. The letters were large and loopy, and appeared to have been written in a hurry.

‘Make sure this letter gets to the Foremare. The locomotive left in shed number three had been assigned to me. I am forced to leave it here for now and do not have time to fill out the proper documentation. A radio transmission came in from canterlot requesting all experienced engineers or ponies with experience in locomotion. There must be something very serious going on in Canterlot because an REA wagon flagged me down from the railside. They requested I ditch the locomotive, on the main line of all places, and accompany them on a flight to Canterlot to aid with an evacuation. The locomotive left in your shed was en-route to a scrapyard in Dodge where it would be decommissioned. If for whatever reason I do not return to retrieve the engine, you can send it down the line to Dodge, where it has been permitted to arrive.

~Gene Bramble

“Dusty!” Snowglobe called excitedly. “We have a train!”

The blue pegasus lolloped over to her and snatched the paper, eyes skimming it eagerly.

“Shed number three,” she stated as he read.

Dusty frowned at the paper. “It doesn’t say what make the engine is...” He shrugged. “Guess we’ll just have to find shed number three and see what it is.”

“Doesn’t he seem a little too excited to you?” Streak asked Copper quietly.

The red pegasus shrugged and responded quietly. “I guess he really likes trains.”

Streak nodded. “Of course he likes trains; he’s only got part of one as his cutie mark.”

Dusty led them out of the gloomy office and out into a sunlit trainyard. Rails ran all about, some rusted, some new, and abandoned cars sat, left in the occasional siding. Snowglobe cantered forward to catch Dusty, who was beginning to draw ahead. He looked over as she fell in stride beside him. “Hey,” he said. “You ever really worked in an engine?”

Snowglobe carefully stepped over a pair of rails, trying to avoid the grease-soaked ties. “No. Everything I know about trains and steam locomotion is one-hundred percent theoretical.”

He gave her a shrug. “Ah’ll show you a thing or two once we’re off.” He paused, cocking his head. “So ah’ve been thinkin’; we’re gonna’ have to hook up some cars to this engine before we take off.” He pointed off to a siding. “Ah’d say those four carriages in the far siding, and maybe some boxcars too. We could throw in some of those flatbeds for good measure.”

“Sounds like a plan.” She cast a glance to the two pegasi in their wake. “Things just might be looking up for once.”

Dusty unfurled his wings and fluttered them excitedly as they approached the shed with a big number three painted on the swinging doors in white, block lettering. “Oh, ah hope it’s a Buckwin.” He reached up and placed his hooves on the doors. Eyes closed, he gave them a push, whispering under his breath. “Please please please please.”

The heavy doors parted and Dusty paced forward, eyes still closed. Snowglobe trotted behind him, eyes adjusting to the gloom, Streak and Copper on her tail.

With a suspenseful breath, the light blue pegasus opened his eyes. He stared for a second, eyes momentarily glazing over. “Oh, Sweet Celestia...”

Snowglobe cocked her head, looking up at the engine. “So how are we... going...” She trailed off. The locomotive in front of her was... big. really big. The monstrous mass of gray, rusted steel stood twelve feet tall and sixty feet long, minus the coal tender. It stretched an average of seven feet wide from buffer to buffer and had definitely seen some better days. The boiler was dented and scratched and the buffers worn. Everything about the engine screamed old. “Whoa,” was all she was able to croak.

Dusty took a step forward and placed his hoof on one of the driving wheels, which was about the same size as him. “This...” He looked up, craning his neck to see to the top of the engine. “That is not a passenger train.”

“Well then what the hay is it?” Streak asked, sounding intrigued.

Dusty began to pace the length of the engine. “This here’s a Big Buck steam locomotive.” He paused to balk. “Built to haul large amounts of freight up the Canterlot hill without the need of doubleheading at a sustained speed of fifty miles an’ hour.” Copper and Streak just looked blankly at one another as he continued. “Weighing in at one million pounds in combination with the loaded tender it was the single largest articulated steam locomotive ever built for commercial use in Equestria...”

Snowglobe didn’t know if Dusty was horrified, or if he was just so excited he had forgotten to smile. “You okay?” she asked skeptically.

Dusty shook his head. “These were deemed obsolete years ago by smaller fleets of lightweight engines... They’ve been scrapping them for metal... Ah don’t think there are many of these left.”

Snowglobe rapped the side of one of the wheels and winced at the pain in her leg. “Well, can you drive it?”

Dusty looked at her and blinked. “Well, yeah... Ah think.” He looked over to the cab. “This thing is twice as old as me.”

Copper trotted to Dusty’s side, a curious look on his face. “I thought Equestrian Railroads put little hearts and things like that on all their engines?”

Dusty snickered. “They used to a long time ago. Then they just started doing it to passenger trains. This engine wasn’t made to look pretty—it was meant to take three-thousand short tons of freight from point A to point B.” He chuckled and trotted up to the entrance to the cab, which was about a pony and half just to the bottom deck. A steel staircase ran steeply up either side of the coal tender to allow a semi-easy ascent to the cab.

With a suppressed squeal, Dusty climbed the narrow stairs to the cab and Snowglobe figured it was in his best interests for her to follow.

Once inside, Dusty darted about the cab, inspecting every detail. He reached the boiler wall and froze, staring at the tangle of knobs, pipes, and gauges. The pegasus hissed under his breath, glaring at one the many gauges just as the other two pegasi entered the cab. “We only have seven thousand gallons of water; that won't do at all.”

Streak’s eyes widened. “Seven thousand gallons? And that’s not enough?”

Dusty shook his head, oblivious to her skepticism. “Naw, this thing has a twenty-thousand gallon tank.”

Copper just gave the pegasus mare a nudge. “I think he has it handled on his own.”

After a moment more, Dusty turned to face them. “Ah think we’re good. As far as ah can tell, everythin’ checks out. Ah just need some time to fire her up, then we can go pick up the cars and stop at the water tower before we set off.” He threw a gesture to the monstrous coal tender. “We have enough coal to get us plenty far. Besides, there isn’t any coal here.” Looking to Snowglobe next. “Think you could do a quick external check of the engine while ah get the fire goin’?”

She blinked. “I really don’t know much about—”

“Nonsense,” he interrupted. “Problems don’t really hide on these things; if you see one you’ll know.”

“Fine.” Climbing back down from the cab, she started her examines of the machine.

Once again, she was awestruck by the sheer size of the locomotive. This took big and made it bigger. She imagined it in comparison to the little pink engines used to haul small passenger trains from Canterlot. This engine alone was as long as four of those in a row; if you added the coal tender then another three would be required to span the full length.

It took her a good fifteen minutes to run a full circle of the engine, checking every wheel and axle for signs of wear or fracture. To her keen eye for detail, everything checked out. The engine had acquired its fair share of rust, but other than that, nothing looked wrong.

As she climbed back into the cab, Copper passed her with a shovel of coal and threw it into the roaring firebox. Dusty sat in the hotseat mounted at the right side of the cab, fiddling with levers and gauges. He would occasionally mutter to himself, then tap a gauge and give it a nod. A light hiss came from the boiler, echoing eerily around the brick shed.

Dusty sat back and smiled. “We’ve got pressure.” He rubbed his hooves together with glee. “Let’s go get those cars hooked up.” He turned a few knobs and cranked a horizontal lever around with a series of metallic clicks, then grabbed a larger lever protruding from the floor and yanked it back. A sound only describable as a thug roared through the shed and the engine lurched forward. The driving rods clanked and the pistons hissed. Torrents of black smoke surged from the stack like an upside-down waterfall. Dusty jeered and stomped the floor as five-hundred tons of ancient steel crept forward. Another thug roared through the shed, amplified by the blastpipe. Slowly, the engine crept out into the sunlight; the front of the mighty beast shining bright in the afternoon sun. Gigantic billows of thick, black smoke shot fifty feet into the air to be swept off to the right by a light breeze. The monster engine crept into the yard, rivaling everything around in size.

Copper wiped a line of sweat from his brow and added another shovel of coal to the firebox. Snowglobe just watched in silent amazement as Dusty brought the locomotive past a switch and cranked the same lever on the floor forward, slowing them.

Dusty looked to Streak, who so far had done nothing but observe. “Could you go throw the switch to the siding back there?” he asked.

She gave him a fast nod and flared her wings. Springing out of the cab, the mare floated to the ground and set a swift trot to the rear of the tender. She reached the switch for the tracks and pushed her weight on it. With a grinding noise, the tracks switched to the siding containing four worn-out passenger cars.

With the swift operation of about six different levers and knobs, Dusty locked the engine into reverse and brought it creeping back. He kept throwing glances out the side of the cab, adjusting the steam as he neared the carriages. At about twenty feet, he cut of steam and eased the break. The engine drifted to a near stop before connecting to the cars with a slight jolt.

Snowglobe gave Dusty a smile. “Smooth.”

He returned the grin, looking like a foal at their surprise birthday party. “Thanks.” He set the brake and waited for Streak to set the couplings. The mare disappeared between the tender and the cars and popped out a moment later, waving her hoof in the air. Dusty waved back and set the engine forward, now pulling the four carriages behind. He sat back and looked over at Snowglobe and Copper. “Would you two mind goin’ over those cars an’ makin’ sure that none of the manual brakes are set?” He chuckled. “I doubt it would make much of a difference if they were; this thing would just pull them ‘till the wheels busted off then pull them further, but we don’t want to do that.”

Snowglobe hopped up immediately, eager at a chance to help. “Sure.” She practically bounced to the back of the cab and tugged Copper after her with her tail. Together, the two climbed the coal tender and scurried their way across the top with the help of a small walkway. Snowglobe hopped down on the steel deck of the carriage and examined the spinning wheel against the railing; the brakes were off for this car. Four more to check.

She pushed her way into the old car and assured herself that she had seen better things at a junkyard. This car had a small hallway on her left and several, smaller private rooms to the right. Whole strips of the once-cherry wall paneling were missing or hanging off at odd angles and a few boards were torn up from the floor. Two of the windows were broken and one of the private rooms didn’t even have a door.

“Nice place,” said Copper, falling in beside her.

Snowglobe rolled her eyes and trotted further into the car, carefully stepping around the holes in the floor. She could hear the wheels clicking over the track joints below her hooves.

By the time they had finished checking the fourth car, Dusty had backed them up to a row of four boxcars. As they emerged out onto the small deck outside the car, Streak was just finishing setting the hitch. “Hey you two,” she said teasingly before spreading her wings and taking off, back towards the engine.

Copper watched her go with a frown before trotting forward and mounting the ladder to the reddish-pink boxcar. Snowglobe followed and they once again began the task of checking all the brake wheels.

Although the brakes on two of the five boxcars had been set, they had still been pulled by the engine before Snowglobe had disengaged them. Dusty hadn’t been kidding; that locomotive would pull anything, wheels or not. She and Copper sat atop the last boxcar, watching as they drifted towards two flatcars.

Snowglobe tilted her head to one side. “Why is he picking up two flatcars?”

Copper just shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he figured we’d need some.” There was another jolt as the boxcars coupled with the flatcars and both ponies peered down as Slipstream poked around the corner.

“Last one,” she breathed, finishing the latch, then looking up at the two ponies on the boxcar. “We’re good.” She gave Copper a smile. “Let’s get out of here.” There was a tinkling of metal below the closest axle of the flatcar and Slipstream knitted her brows. “What the...” She stooped down to peer under the car.

Snowglobe jumped, and nearly fell when a pony screeched from below. Streak fell back and a red unicorn mare followed, it’s jaws fastened in the purple mare’s throat. Streak fell onto her back and the unicorn released before diving on top and once again fixing its teeth in her neck. Streak delivered a heavy buck to the infected pony’s belly and managed to roll it off her. She sprang up and—drawing her pistol—emptied the entire clip into the zombie. The red unicorn stumbled forward a few more steps and fell dead in the gravel. Streak dropped the pistol and turned to look at Copper and Snowglobe, who had sat atop the boxcar dumbfounded. The whole ordeal had only lasted a couple seconds, but that’s all it had taken. Streak stumbled, blood pouring from the massive tear in her neck. She swayed left, then right, before flopping into the gravel.

Snowglobe readied herself to spring down to help the mare but Copper grabbed her tail and pulled her back. “No!” he said as she tried to pull away. “L-Leave her; she’s dead.”

Snowglobe tried to fight back tears of shock. Just like that... just like that she was dead. One second Streak was alive... the next...

Snowglobe scanned the yard to see exactly what she had been loathing to see—movement by a stack of old wheels across the yard. She pointed and Copper tracked her hoof. “Shit,” he whispered. He turned and sprinted back along the length of the boxcars, flapping his wings for more propulsion. “Dusty!” he cried, voice cracking. “Get us moving! Go, go! Forward!”

The engine started and the cars lurched forward. The sudden movement below her hooves took Snowglobe by surprise and she stumbled, moving her hoof for balance. It was only a second too late did she realize that she had stepped right over the edge, off the back of the boxcar. She screamed, losing her balance completely and falling from the roof. She crashed headfirst into the flatcar below and flopped onto her side. Hurriedly, she scrambled to her hooves but the edges of her vision immediately went black and she collapsed back to the car, blacking out completely.

She opened her eyes and groaned. There was a rhythmic clicking from the tracks below. Cautiously, she lifted her head and looked around, feeling like she was about to vomit. The car she was on was now moving along at a swift trot and Copper was nowhere to be seen. Slowly, she stood, her head spinning madly. “Copper!” she croaked. She examined the boxcar but there was no ladder on this side. There was no way she could climb it either; it was about nine feet tall. “Copper, come back!”

A drawn out rasp turned her attention to a zombie hurling towards her flatcar. No, check that—the three zombies hurling towards her flatcar, and far across the yard even more. her eyes drifted to the pistol on her inner foreleg. “No,” she told herself. No, I don’t want— I can't.” The three zombies hopped aboard the second flatcar. “Okay, fine.”

Magically drawing the pistol, she took careful aim and fired... and missed. A bolt of searing pain filled her head at the discharge and she almost dropped the gun. Apparently she had hit her head harder than she had thought. The front creature howled and lunged forward, putting on an extra burst of speed. Snowglobe cringed back, cowering. Suddenly, the zombie tripped and fell between the two flatcars and under the wheels in a spray of blood. She blinked, then laughed once at her amazing luck. The other two skidded to a stop and hopped from the car to land in a tumble.

“Yeah!” Snowglobe jeered as they fell back, being overtaken by the train. “I have a train! Beat that shit!”

There was a squeal from the engine ahead as the brakes were applied and the flatcar slammed against the boxcar in the couplings. “No!” she cried, voice little more than a squeak. “Nononono! Don’t stop! Please pleasepleaseplease no!” She hung her head, letting out a long sigh. “Crap...” She only had one option now—run.

“Damn you Copper!” she hollered, tentatively approaching the edge of the car. The zombies behind had realized that the train had slowed, and were once again running for her. She braced herself for the jump and prayed with all of her might to stick the landing. With a small hop, she left the flatcar and hit the ground running in a fairly smooth transition. She set a gallop for the engine, gradually overtaking the slowing boxcars and not daring to look back.

By the time she reached the carriages the train had completely stopped. From here, she could see Copper atop the locomotive, which was parked under a large water spout. The red pegasus grasped a rubberized hose in his mouth and pulled open a small hatch on top of the boiler.

Snowglobe hacked up a ball of mucus and spat it on the ground as she ran. Every breath was starting to hurt now, every hoofstep a jab in the side. She had never been much for endurance. “Dusty...” she panted to herself. “Why in Celestia’s name... why did you stop the train? Forget the water... we’re going to die.”

To her disdain, three more zombies burst out of the yard office and charged at her from ahead, forcing her to sling left to the third passenger car. She mounted the steps and barged through the door into the car. Slamming the door behind her, she reared up and placed her weight against the door. Three hard impacts to the other side nearly knocked her over and sent a splintering crack up the center of the wooden door, breaking the small window near the top.

“Damn.” Her legs burned like fire; running had never been her thing. Drawing the pistol again, Snowglobe hopped away and unloaded six shots into the door. At this range, it was near impossible to miss. She splattered the red one’s brain across the car behind and sent the green mare falling away in a tumble. Two more took their fallen comrades’ places and Snowglobe dropped them too. The last one charged the door and speared the thin wood on its horn, forcing the whole door into the room with it.

Snowglobe backpedaled as the door-on-a-horn barreled towards her between the rows of seats. She worked the trigger of the pistol but the mechanism gave a teasing click and jammed. Cursing the inferior weapon, she hurled it at the zombie, only to have it bounce off the door. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say the zombie had purposefully armoured itself. “I’ve had about enough of this!” she suddenly screamed, overtaken by a surge of anger. She charged forward and planted both forehooves on the door. She bucked and she kicked, and the zombie pushed and snarled. Somehow, she prevailed, and with an almighty heave, pushed the zombie backwards. Shoving both the zombie and the mangled door back out of the carriage, she gave one final kick that sent it tumbling to the gravel.

“And don’t come back!” Somewhere deep inside her, a filly squealed with delight. She had always wanted to use that line. Giggling like a schoolfilly, she trotted back into the car and made her way for the engine. A moment later, she had passed through the first car and scaled the coal tender. Dusty sat in the hotseat, checking the water gauge as it gradually rose.

The pegasus turned and gave her a smile. “Ah was gettin’ worried. Ah thought you got into some trouble when ah heard the gunshots.”

A bolt of anger rushed through her and a hoof lashed out, smacking the pegasus across his smug face. “You nearly killed me!” She stomped back and forth across the cab, venting. “I had to kill four zombies, with a gun!”

Dusty rubbed his face. “Ow... Look, we had to get water; speakin’ of which.” He peered at the gauge. “We’re good Copper!” he yelled. “Close up the tank and get back in here.”

Snowglobe remembered something rather important, the cursed herself for not having it at the front of her mind. “We have to go! There’s like, a hundred zombies out there!”

Dusty snickered. “You’re funny girl.” He hung his head out the side of the glassless window, looking back. “There’s no way there’s a hundred zombies out...” He trailed off, jaw dropping open. “Oh shoot!” he bellowed, withdrawing from the window. “There’s like a hundred zombies out there!” He reached over and disengage the brake. With lightning speed, he worked two knobs on either side of the boiler then jammed the throttle forward. A hiss escaped the boiler and the pistons heaved. Slowly, the engine crept forward.

Copper landed on the coal tender and rushed into the cab. “Dusty, you gotta’ get this thing going faster! They’re gonna’ catch us!”

Dusty gave him a hard glare. “You can get out an’ push if you want.” He gave his head a shake. “This thing’s as big as a buildin’; it takes a while to get moving.” He peered at one of the many gauges. “Say, where’s Streak?”

Copper just gave Dusty a shake of his head. “Dang,” Dusty whispered. “I was just startin’ to like that mare.”

The horde reached the engine in a multicolored wave of screams and grunts. They tried to hop at the ponies in the cab, but failed to reach. One decided it wanted to start a fight with one of the wheels and lost its head in the driving rod. Dusty drew Valediction on a pink mare scaling the steps and sent her back down in a trail of blood.

“Get off my train,” Dusty growled low in his throat before blasting another. No others tried to climb into the cab and soon enough the engine was moving faster than they could run. They fell back, snarling and snapping and giving dirty zombie looks.

“Yeehaw!” Dusty jeered, reaching up and sounding the whistle long and loud. The deep, ghostly chime of the whistle filled the early twilight air. Dusty blinked. “That is the scariest whistle ah have ever heard.”

Snowglobe had to agree as Dusty drew the cord again. The whistle was composed of six different chimes, all ranging from low and deep to high and piched. The six together created something Snowglobe could only describe as creepy. Dusty sounded the whistle again and her hair stood up on end.

“So, how long ‘till we reach Appleoosa at this rate?” asked Snowglobe. She stood still, admiring the power beneath her hooves and the rhythm of the locomotive.

Dusty frowned. “Well, the track curves around, so ah’d say about five hours.”

Snowglobe hung from the cab to watch the rails ahead. “Appleoosa here we come!”

* * *

“Where is that train!” yelled a frantic pony from the night.

“It should be coming,” cried another.

Moon peered through the darkness, eyes trying to find purchase on the moonless night. The sky above had a claustrophobic feel, acquired from clouds that seemed of unnatural origin. Small lanterns had been lit along the length of the road up to the front gate, but the feeble circles of yellow light reached no more than a few yards. The warm night air was filled with the raucous screams and calls of zombies.

Something was different with the zombies; they seemed faster, more violent than before. It was as if they could sense something, smell the fear of living ponies in the air. Worst of all, the only way she could distinguish one from her comrades was the color of their eyes. If you saw yellow, you shot it.

A drawn out scream from one of her own echoed through the night, followed by a dozen gunshots. “East wall!” a pony called.

Moon eyed Brick as he emerged onto the porch of the house they had used for their stay. He had mounted two high-beam lights to either side of his body and the white cones cast by them lit up wherever he turned. “Brick!” she yelled. The two lights turned on her and she looked away before she could lose the night vision she had obtained. “East wall, let’s go!” He raced to her side and she motioned him beside her with her tail, then they were off.

Moon had to admire the stallion's innovation as she ran by his side. He had the chaingun mounted to the right of his back, and the ammo container on the left. The feed belt ran over his back to the weapon. This combined with the two high-beam flashlights that shone his path proved for some very unlucky zombies.

They veered left and shot between two buildings. Brick’s lights lit the sight ahead as she charged the wall. Six townsponies stood upon the barricade ahead, dodging and bucking and shooting anything that moved. But even as the six worked as one, they were being overwhelmed. More zombies were hurling themselves over the barrier than they could knock back.

A green earth pony burst out of a building and fell in beside Moon. “They’re scaling the walls!” she cried, firing her battle saddle without even slowing to aim. “Things are getting really nasty out here!’

Moon screeched a battle cry and charged right into the heat of the mess. She raised her shotgun and sent the intestines of a red zombie across the ground like confetti from a party popper. Charging for the stairs, she scaled to the top of the barrier and blasted two more trying to creep over, away from the fighting six further down. “Push them back!” she hollered.

Brick’s weapon lit up the night from the ground and everything caught in the beams of his flashlights was chopped down like sandcastles in the stream of a firehose.

Moon ran to a white stallion’s aid a little further down. He had since run out of ammo and was now using the rifle as a blunt instrument. He levitated it in front of him, swinging and smashing anything to come near. A zombie pulling itself over the railing got a snout-crushing applebuck to the face and went sailing back down to land in the sea of multicolored shapes below. Blood stained his white coat and a long gash adorned his left flank. A zombie ran at him from behind, but Moon tracked it with the shotgun and blew its front legs off; another shot finished it.

The stallion turned to her, eyes wild. “Thanks,” he said in a gasp. Together, the both of them managed to hold their small section while Brick and the green mare helped the other six ponies further down.

Then, by some sort of anomaly, everything stopped. The zombies stopped growling, ponies stopped shooting, and the night went a near-perfect quiet. An eerie whistle filled the night, echoing off the ridge far away to return an even ghostlier sound than before. The sound cut the thick air like a hot knife through butter.

Moon looked to the sound. There in the distance, shone a single, amber lamp. The whistle sounded again, long and mournful. The silence spell broke and the night once again filled with sounds of chaos. “Yes!” Moon jeered. “That’s the train!” A different thought struck her; they had to somehow get to the tracks and hold from there. It would have to be a fast stop. She raised her head to the sky and screamed. “Everypony get to the platform!”

Moon cursed; she had warn the ponies watching the front gate. Determination set, she sprinted off. “Get to the platform!” she yelled to the ponies along the barrier as she passed, shotgun aloft, destroying anything in the way. The white stallion ran beside her, wincing in pain at every bound. Moon gave him a sideways look. “What are you doing?”

He shook his head at her. “I don’t have much time left. I’m going to help who I can before I die.”

Moon remembered the cut on the pony’s flank; he was infected. She swallowed a lump in her throat and pushed on, trying to focus on running. “I’m sorry... Thanks for the help.” Panic was starting to set in. The entire perimeter was disintegrating. Zombies climbed the railing behind her and gave chase. She fired blindly backwards, not even knowing if she were hitting anything. Any time spent not shooting was used to load more shells into the weapon.

Twelve ponies were still holding the front gate, but they weren’t going to last much longer; Jade and Sage were among them. Their only light were two lanterns atop the wooden gate, and as Moon watched one was kicked over by a zombie and burst open, lighting the whole top of the gate aflame.

Moon leapt from the wall and landed on all fours. “The train’s here!” she yelled, charging up to the group. “Retreat! Get to the platform!”

The slide on Sage’s pistol locked back and she spit it angrily back into the holster. “I’m out!” she called.

From here, Moon could see Brick and a large group of ponies already waiting on the platform. Suddenly, the tracks seemed a lot further away than they had been earlier. They were literally on the other side of town. “Fall back!” she repeated, managing to get the adrenaline fueled ponies’ attention.

Back at the tracks, the monster locomotive ploughed a trough through the surrounding horde of zombies, reducing them to no more than rancid fertilizer. The steamer smashed through the outer barrier in an explosion of wood and squealed into the town, undercarriage alight with sparks from the wheels grinding on the tracks below. Ponies began to load the locomotive before it had even fully stopped.

Moon took a second to balk. She had never seen an engine of its size before. It was massive! The whistle sang long and slow as the train came to a complete stop.

There was an almighty crash from the front gate as it burst open. A buffalo charged straight through, into the town, surrounded by at least a fifty normal infected. Townsponies scattered, falling back, but it was too late; they were in major trouble.

The white stallion whom had stuck with Moon to the front gate lunged forward instead of back. “Run!” he yelled, voice shaking. “All of you, get the hay out of here!” He levitated a bundle of dynamite from his saddlebag and lit the fuse with his horn. He waited for the surrounding ponies run free, then charged with a battle cry devoid of fear. He flung himself headlong into the wave of death, butting the first out of the way and bucking the second. Then he was gone, trapped beneath a mass of writhing bodies.

Moon ran, ran for her life, using the moment of time the unnamed stallion had leant them all. There was a ground-shaking explosion behind her that momentarily lit up the night and a moment later it began to rain ponies. Moon found herself running in the middle of the pack. Jade and Sage were on her right along with a few others.

A pegasus dropped from the sky and tacked a blue mare to the ground; nopony slowed to help as she was overwhelmed by the horde giving chase. Moon fired backwards, not knowing what she was hitting but knowing that she was hitting something. She grasped one of the kerosene lamps in the street as she passed and hurled it backwards. The pot shattered and lit the ground and zombies by the dozen aflame.

They were only a ways past halfway when the whistle of the engine sounded and the pistons began to hiss. “Come on!” Dusty called from the cab. “Ah can’t sit here any longer!”

Moon watched as the stallion she remembered by the name of Stacks cried out in horror. A buffalo in chase leered forward and fastened its jaws around his whole middle. The green stallion howled in pure agony as he was lifted into the air in the powerful jaws. The buffalo bit down and his whole middle collapsed with a crunch. Blood poured from the young stallion’s mouth and his eyes popped. Moon looked away with tears in her eyes. Her stomach churned and she lost what little food she had on the ground.

Just ahead, Brick took stance from the platform in front of the creeping train, braced for accuracy and weapon primed. “Move!” Moon ordered with a motion to Brick. The remaining ponies took her word and yielded to the left or right. One tripped and was gone the next second. The roar of the chaingun filled the air as Brick let loose, strafing the near-solid wall of zombies. Moon skidded to a stop beside the brown stallion while the others surged past, boarding the moving train.

Wherever Brick shone his lights, dozens of yellow eyes glared back. Moon fired out into the crowd and felt a deep satisfaction as two zombies were cut down. A buffalo with a single, green hoof hanging from the side of its mouth charged, but dropped under both Moon, and Brick’s fire. They held ground against seemingly impossible odds, hacking through zombies like they were weeds in a field.

“Come on,” she said urgently, motioning towards the cars behind, which were now scooting along at a fast trot. Brick ignored her. “Brick!” Frantically, she butted her head against his flank in an effort to get him to move, but he held, chaingun screaming away.

Brick took a step back, but now, the only thing keeping them from death was his rain of fire. Moon’s shotgun clicked on empty and she reached for more shells she didn’t have. Brick stepped back further and the circle closed even more. There couldn't be much more ammo in the weapon, he had been firing non-stop. The barrel glowed orange in the night and acrid smoke rose from the weapon’s every joint. Moon found herself pressed as close to the moving carriages as possible without touching them, while trying to avoid the zombies that were bieng hacked down no more than five feet in front of her.

With every flash from his weapon, Bick’s eyes lit up, wide and alive with fear. The gun clicked as the ammunition belt reached its end and Moon knew they were in trouble. In one Swift movement, Brick turned and fastened his teeth in her mane. He jumped back, dragging her with him like a ragdoll. The pony swung his head and tossed Moon onto the deck of the final car like a sack of laundry. He lunged after her and managed to land his front half on the car. His rear hooves churned air as he tried desperately to pull himself up. Moon shot forward and offered a hoof, and with her help, he managed to pull himself onto the car. The zombies growled and leapt, but none made the jump to the lower step.

“Celestia!” Moon gasped, flopping over on her side. “Don’t... do that!” She looked over to Brick, who had lain down beside her. Much to her surprise, he was grinning. He chuckled once, a soft sound, smooth as silk. She stood up and gave him a push, but only managed in knocking her exhausted self back over again; it was like trying to push a wall.

Brick didn’t show it as easily, but he was exhausted as well. The muscles under his coat were taut and strained, still working off the adrenaline rush. He breathed a sigh and rolled onto his back, the machine gun grinding against the metal deck below.

Snowglobe burst out of the car and looked down in horror at the two of them. Moon hurriedly sat up and gave a smile. “Don’t worry, we're fine.”

Snowglobe exhaled deeply and leaned up against the car, clutching her chest. “Celestia.... I thought you two were dead.”

Brick stood up and Moon leaned heavily on him for support. Her heart still beat in her head and every breath was a stab to the chest. “Think you guys could've cut it any closer?” she asked with relieved annoyance. “One more minute and we all may have been dead... What took you so long?”

“The track curved around on the way here; it took a little longer than we expected.”

“Sure.” There was an almighty crash from ahead as the engine smashed through the other side of the barricade. Zombies began to flow by like water around a boat and Brick backed Moon away from the edge with a protective forehoof. “Did you get all the supplies? she asked, looking back to Snowglobe.

She smiled. “Yep... ish... Most of them.”

Moon blinked in surprise. “I was expecting a whole lot less than most. You ponies moved fast.”

“Adrenaline seems to do that to ponies.”

Moon tilted her head back, sighing as the breeze ruffled her mane. The only sounds in the night were those of the engine ahead and the rhythmic click of the wheels on the rail joints below. “How many ponies did we lose?”

“I counted five,” Snowglobe replied. “I wasn’t really watching, so there could have been more.”

Moon just shook her head. “One more minute... One more minute and we’d all be dead.”

“Yeah, Dusty gave us full steam when he saw your muzzle flashes in the distance.” Snowglobe giggled. “Did you know this thing can go sixty miles an hour?”

Moon tapped her hoof on the floor ponderingly. “Think you could have gotten a bigger train?”

Snowglobe deadpanned. “Okay, for one, it’s not a train, it’s a locomotive. But, back when Equestria was having that real big industrial boom—when I was just a foal—these things were used to haul freight.” She smiled sheepishly. “Dusty told me all about it... Come on, let’s go.” She motioned them towards the carriage and opened the door. “Dusty will be glad to see you made it.”

Lanterns had been lit in the carriages so that they cast their light around the trashed interior. “Nice job, Moon!” a stallion jeered as she passed.

“Yeah!” a pink mare added. “The plan worked. I thought you were crazy, but it totally worked!”

She nodded self-consciously. “I did what I thought was best.”

A pony pounded her hooves on the floor of the car in applause, and after a moment, a few more joined in. Moon walked with her head aloft, silently wishing they'd stop their cheering as she paced through the car, Snowglobe and Brick in her wake.

Sage met her on the opposite end with a wide smile. “I knew that headband was lucky.”

Moon reached up and ran her hoof over the fabric strip on her head. “If you want it back then too bad; I like it.”

Sage shook her head with a light laugh. “No, you deserve it.”

“Besides,” Jade added from Sage’s side with a little smile and a twitch of her eyebrows. “It makes you look sexy.”

Blushing and mildly irritated, Moon pushed out of the car and into the next. She made her way through the other three cars, receiving about the same praise she had been given in the fourth. After what seemed like an eternity, she closed the final door behind her and crossed over to the coal car.

“Jeez,” she muttered. Snowglobe snorted at the indignant look on her face. Moon rolled her eyes. “What? It’s not like I want to be a celebrity or something.”

Snowglobe gave her a hearty nudge. “Don’t worry. They’re just excited. Give them a few hours and they’ll calm down.” She made her way over the covered tender with the help of a small ladder and walkway.

Dusty sat in the cab, hoof poised over a lever while a Copper fed a constant stream of coal to the firebox. “Hey Dusty,” Moon called, hopping down into the cab.

Dusty’s head shot around and he took on a relieved smile. “You’re alive!” he declared. “There were so many zombies ah couldn’t see where you’d gone... Girl, you sure as hay did shoot a lot of those things.”

She motioned towards Brick, who sat back casually, examining the cab, ears perked. “It was Brick who did all the shooting, him and that gun.”

Dusty wiped an imaginary tear from his eye. “Ah bet it was beautiful.”

“Actually, it was really scary. Wasn’t it Brick?” Brick nodded once at her question and flicked his ears. “He used the whole ammo case.”

Dusty adjusted a knob on the boiler, keeping one eye on the gauges. “Good thing we have more of them.”

He smiled and shook his head. “No. It took me forever just to name my gun. Ah’ll let you decide on a name.”

Snowglobe nickered and rubbed her chin. “Well then, I’ll have to think about it.”

Moon made to return to the carriages. “I probably should check on everypony and make sure things are going alright.” Brick and Snowglobe followed as she left the cab.

“Hey, Snowglobe,” Dusty called back. “Want to learn how to work this thing?”

Snowglobe’s eyes lit up like fireflies and she did a little prance on the tips of her hooves. “Yes!” She turned and darted back into the cab beside Dusty.

Dusty gave Copper a sideways look. “Me an’ Snowglobe can handle this for a while. You can go an’ take a break.”

“Okay,” the red pegasus replied impartially. He dropped the shovel and pranced quickly out of the cab to disappear over the coal tender. Obviously he didn’t feel as impartial as he acted.

Moon left with Brick, but once she had reached the first carriage, a thought struck her. “Shoot, I forgot to ask Snowglobe what we’re going to do about arrangements.” She looked to Brick. “I’ll be right back.” He nodded and continued on.

She turned back and climbed back over the coal car. A moment later she dropped lightly to the steel deck and started for the cab, but stopped short. Snowglobe and Dusty stood quietly in the cab, eyes trained on one another. Not wanting to be caught intruding, Moon backpedaled and dived behind a mound of coal. She shifted her weight uncomfortably as to not be jabbed by the sharp blocks. Slowly, she poked her head up to see that they had not moved. She knew that she was eavesdropping, but curiosity was getting the better of her.

“Go on,” Snowglobe said after a moment. “You started to say something, now finish it.”

Dusty rubbed the back of his neck, eyes darting about the cabin. “Well uh, so...” He paused, going little red.

Even over the sound of the engine, Moon could hear the two clear as day.

“Come on,” Snowglobe urged with a half-smile. “Spit it out.”

The pegasus cleared his throat loudly and ruffled his wings. “Well, ah was just thinkin’. Ah’ve known you for a while now, an’ ah just... Ah think you’re a nice mare.” Dusty stumbled over his next words and swore under his breath. “Look,” he declared, irritated at himself. “Ah really like you.”

Moon poked her head up a little further, feeling guilty.

Snowglobe blinked, taken aback. “Dusty... you do know that I’m...” She paused, searching for words. “Different?”

The pegasus cocked his head. “Well, how’s that?”

She blushed and brought a hoof up to rub her face. “I’m not much for... stallions, Dusty.”

“Oh.” His eyes went wide. “Oh! Well that's... too bad.” Hanging his head. “Well that’s embarasin’. Ah just tried to ask out a fillyfooler.”

“Dusty,” Snowglobe scolded. “That’s a terrible label.”

He gave her a look. “Well then what the hay else am I supposed to use?”

She began to stutter something but trailed off. “Well, I don’t know. Just, don’t use that.”

“Okay.” Dusty looked down at his hooves, then back up to her. He looked hesitant. “Well then... would you be willin’ make an exception?”

Snowglobe gave a loud snort of laughter. “You’re something, Dusty.”

“You aren’t supposed to laugh at me,” he stressed. “This was really hard for me to do.”

“Sorry, Dusty.” She cast a look around and Moon ducked down a little. She leaned in close to Dusty. “Don’t tell anypony I told you this. But, I’ve kind of had my eye on Moon.”

Moon wanted to die of embarrassment right there. She could have been perfectly happy to just die.

Dusty laughed, but it was forced. “Well that’s kinda’ funny because... You know, I was, you know, also, going after Moon.”

That’s it. If Moon were anywhere else she would have curled up into a ball and screamed and cried. Knowing stallions liked her was one thing. Knowing mares liked her was mildly embarassing, but still bearable. Knowing that both of her friends liked her was too much. Probably the only pony in their little group that wouldn’t love to get with her was Sunny. Even Brick would sometimes give her that look of his that would make most mares melt like hot butter. What the hay was so attractive about her? Some mare’s liked the attention, but she hated it. Good looks attracted every stallion not worth their weight in muscle and every one in a while, a pony she could bear. Looks were a curse. You shouldn’t like a pony for how they look; you should like them for who they are. A good looking partner was just a bonus.

Snowglobe closed her mouth, which had fallen open. “Well, that’s a coincidence. “

Dusty waved a hoof dismissively. “But ah stopped tryin’ a while ago. She’s got this thing for Sunny an’ ah don’t think she’s gonna’ break it. Ah don’t know what she’s goin’ to do if he doesn’t come back.”

“Yeah,” Snowglobe added glumly. “I miss them. It just isn’t the same without Willow and Sunny here.”

“Yeah...” Dusty perked his ears, switching topics. “So, just to be clear, your answer’s no, right?”

Snowglobe pondered the question with a light smile. “I wouldn’t say that.”

He tensed. “But ah thought... you said—”

“I’m a mare, Dusty, most of us can choose.”

Dusty shook his head confusedly. “Oh, well they always said that—”

Snowglobe cut him off. “Nah, that’s only for stallions. Most mares totally chose.”

Okay, Moon had to agree with Snowglobe there.

“So... is that a yes?” Dusty asked hopefully.

Snowglobe grinned and took a step closer to the pegasus. “Possibly.” She closed her eyes slowly in an obvious gesture. Moon was unable to tear her eyes away as the two locked in a kiss. She began to count the seconds in her head, taking every new number and using it as means of telling herself she was a terrible pony for watching. Moon found it hard to push down the uneasy churning her belly. She imagined herself and Sunny in that position, then hit herself on the side of the head to clear such thoughts. The two broke apart at sixteen and Dusty stumbled back, trying to fold his wings back to his sides. He beat them once, shook a couple feathers lose, and managed to furl them again.

“Yes,” she said. “But don’t expect any dedication. If I meet a nice mare I’m going for it.” Moon ducked down and made herself as flat as possible as Snowglobe turned away from Dusty. She sashayed across the cab and made her way over the coal tender.

All the while, Dusty watched her go, jaw slightly agape. “Dang,” he whispered. “Do all mares like her kiss as good as she does?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I had a lot of fun with this chapter. Did I mention I like trains?

Thanks for reading, comments are greatly appreciated and they fill me with a joy you could not imagine, so please, leave them.

~Sorren

Chapter 11 The Army, Zombies, and Everything Bad

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“Out!” the gray, unicorn stallion commanded, giving Sunny a hard push with his rifle barrel.

“Ow,” the pegasus murmured, hurriedly trotting out of the wagon as fast as the hoofcuffs would allow.

Willow was looking the guard over, most likely pondering the many different ways she could incapacitate him.

The stallion whom Willow had gone rows with on the flight stepped out behind the captives and pointed an accusing hoof at Willow. “Get a muzzle on her; she likes to use her teeth.”

“Why isn’t she cuffed?” a guard asked, looking at the four sets of broken hoofcuffs the mare was wearing.

He laughed angrily. “She was! She was cuffed four times! She keeps biting through them and I can’t get her to stop.”

Sunny was beginning to lose interest in the conversation. He was instead looking around at the many, multi-storied buildings outside the fenceline of the REA landing field. Baltimare had been one of the many cities to take very kindly to industrialization. The city was massive. The plot was covered with many tall office buildings and semi-skyscrapers. These were only at the very heart of the city, but of course, that’s where they had landed. Something that struck Sunny as peculiar: he could see ponies! They were everywhere. He could see them in windows, or even on the street, with no weapons.

The gray unicorn who had been arguing with Willow heaved a great sigh. “Look,” he said in compromise, “You and I both know that I’m not allowed to hurt you, so threats will do no good. Please...” He paused and looked to the pony behind the mare, who mouthed him Willow’s name. “Willow,” he added. “They aren’t going to make you wear cuffs in confinement, but I need them on you before I can take you across the city. Can I take the broken pairs off you?”

Willow nodded willingly. “I understand.”

The blue stallion who had flown on the transport balked. “What!? How-what-w... How!?”

Willow smiled at him. “All You had to do was say please.”

He gave her the most terrible of glares. “I hate you.”

Willow reared up to pat the stallion on the back, but he jumped away. Instead, she turned to the gray unicorn who was removing her cuffs. “But you are not putting a muzzle on me.”

The gray pony raised an eyebrow, then turned to the blue stallion. “Is she infected?”

“No, it’s some other thing. But she isn't contagious.”

The guard nodded, then turned to Willow. “You don’t have to wear a muzzle.”

Candy struggled as a pink mare drug her from the wagon by a chain around her neck. “You can’t do this!” the striped mare yelled. “I didn’t do anything!”

Sunny tried to approach the two but a burly stallion blocked his way. Briefly, he thought of escape, but the chances were slim. It would be the three of them, chained, against six armed guards. Not to mention they were in an REA base; there were bound to be plenty more ponies waiting to come shoot them. Escape really wasn’t an option.

“What do we do with the traitor?” the mare pulling Candy asked with a grunt.

“They radioed ahead with commands. She’s to be executed for charges of treason and murder of her squad.” The gray stallion pointed towards the brick side of a building a ways in the distance. “Take her to the wall.”

“No—” Sunny started, but Willow was faster.

“I swear to you, if you hurt her...” Willow gave the stallion an intimidating stare. “It will be the end of you.”

He gave her a genuine look. “I’m sorry, but they’re orders. Besides, she killed her squad; nopony’s going to let her get away with that.” He motioned towards the mare dragging Candy, then an orange unicorn stallion. “Take care of it.”

Sunny lunged forward, but was immediately taken down by a burly mare and shackled around the neck. He glared up at the stallion in charge from the ground. “Does she look like a murderer to you.”

He turned and gave Sunny a sad look. “No, she doesn’t.”

The two ponies dragged the mare the rest of the way to the wall and hooked the chain to a ring, then attached another chain and hooked that one to a different ring. They pulled out the slack and left Candy with hardly any movement.

“I’m not going to say it again!” Willow bellowed. “If you don’t stop this right now, I will do something about it!”

The two ponies left Candy at the wall and the orange stallion took aim with a battle saddle from a distance away.

Willow took a deep breath. “I told you to leave her alone!” With a scream, she reared up and kicked the mare behind her right across the jaw. There was a pop and a crunch and the mare dropped like a sack of flour, releasing Willow’s chain. Willow dashed forward while the ponies scrambled to arms. Although the gray stallion stood beside her, he made no effort to stop her. She butted another mare out of the way and sprinted for the orange stallion readying to fire, who didn’t even seem to realize the commotion.

Shouts and yells sounded, and uniformed ponies began to pour out of a nearby building. The stallion to execute Candy took the bit in his mouth. Candy screamed and pulled desperately on the chains binding her. He tightened his grip on the bit, taking careful aim. That’s when Willow fastened her teeth in his mane and yanked his head back. His neck gave a meaty crunch as his muzzle faced the sky and the life left his eyes.

Willow didn’t even blink.

“Yeah!” Sunny jeered as the mare sprinted for the wall with a dozen ponies on her tail. “Go Willow!” A sharp knee to the belly shut him up.

Shots were fired as Willow dashed for the chained mare, but luckily none of them hit. “No no no!” Yelled the gray stallion. “Don’t shoot! They want her alive!” Reaching the wall, Willow grasped the chain in her teeth and braced herself against the wall. The ring tore loose in a little spray of shattered block.

“Thank you, Willow,” Candy gasped as the mare broke the other chain.

Willow gave her a hard shove. “Go!” Both jumped as a bullet whizzed by and struck the wall. “Don’t worry, I’ll be a good distraction.”

Candy’s eyes sparkled. “Thanks, Willow.” She turned and ran, chains jangling behind her. Willow charged the group of ponies pursuing her. They had since switched to melee weapons and shock batons. Drawing as much attention as possible, she charged directly into the group of ponies and drove her forehoof into the face of the first one she saw. Sunny watched as Candy disappeared around the edge of the building. Willow went down under the barrage of electrical shocks and batons. The ponies swarmed on top of her in a writhing mass, and when she finally emerged, she had been double hoof-shackled and a muzzle had been fitted over her head. Two burly stallions attached chains to either side of the metal ring around her neck and pulled it taught from either direction. Willow struggled for a moment more, then gave up.

A mare scampered up to the orange stallion and stooped down to examine him. “He’s dead!” she called, standing up again.

They gray stallion in charge glared daggers into Willow, and she glared them back, unable to speak. The lightest of smiles crossed his face and he gave the tiniest of nods. Willow blinked and stood up a little taller. In a second, the smile was gone. “That was a bad choice,” he growled as the two stallions led her to him. He lunged forward and slew his hoof across her face. The cut that adorned her brow from the last time that she had been struck reopened and a line of blood ran into her face. She held the glare as the blood mixed with the wetness of her left eye and spread out in a dark-pink cloud.

“Dude,” a stallion whispered to a the mare beside him. “That’s hardcore.”

The stallion looked away from Willow with disgust. “Take them to the laboratory. Once they’re there they aren’t our problem anymore. That chemical stuff is in their crate of belongings and I don't want to dig for it, take that over there too.”

Willow and Sunny were both led forward, away from the center of havoc. Sunny was escorted by a cyan mare with a lime-green mane. Willow was flanked by two stallions, one green one blue. Sunny found it slightly insulting that he was automatically discarded as a threat.

“And if the mare breaks away again!” the stallion yelled from behind, “Shoot her in the leg!”

Willow shook her head violently, spraying both Sunny and the two ponies escorting her with blood. One of them growled and kicked her in the belly. She stumbled, but managed to stay on her hooves.

Sunny wanted to desperately to help her, to beat the life out of the two stallions mistreating her and be the hero. And it angered him that he couldn’t. Willow had saved his life enough times now that he had lost count. Without Willow, nothing would be right—he wouldn’t be alive. She was the only pony he really seemed to know. Since the night they had met in Desert Sage, she had saved him enough times to literally own him; she had saved everypony in their little group. Her quick thinking in times of crisis proved a great asset.

She raised an eyebrow at him and Sunny realized he had been looking over at her as they walked. He blinked and gave her a small nod.

Mind beginning to wander, he thought back to the friends they had left back in Appleoosa, wondering if he would ever see them again. They were hundreds of miles apart. He didn’t know how far, but it was far. All he knew is that he wanted to see them now more than ever. He wished he had never left.

The climate here was completely different. Baltimare was surrounded by fields of luscious grass and green trees. Not to mention it was near one of the biggest bodies of water he had ever seen. At least there wasn’t a water shortage here. The city was much better enforced than Appleoosa. A fifteen-foot wall surrounded the whole of the city, guard ponies posted every fifty feet. Every one-hundred feet, there was an anti-personnel ground-to-air machinegun. Sunny listened, and was able to hear some of them firing. He had no idea how they managed to keep all the flying zombies out, but somehow they managed it.

This place was dangerous. He could feel it. The more ponies you have, the harder they are to keep track of. This place had thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of ponies. It was a death trap waiting to happen.

Ponies watched from the sidewalks, or from windows as they were escorted through the streets, murmuring to each other or giving scared looks before backing away.

Willow walked with her eyes closed and head down as blood continued to run down her face and drip from her nose. The green pony escorting her looked over and gave the chain a spiteful jerk. She huffed, and jerked back, taking the pony by surprise and causing him to slip and fall on his side. A murmur of amusement emanated from the crowd.

The stallion picked himself and cast an evil look to his snickering companion. “Shut up.” He raised a hoof and brought it down hard on Willow’s head. It took all of Sunny’s willpower not to lunge at the green stallion and attempt to tear one of his limbs off.

“She’s a fun one,” the blue stallion on the right snickered.

“Oh, I’d love to find out.”

“Would you two idiots shut up!” Sunny’s escort snapped. “Now come on and lets get there. And I don’t want either of you talking about that shit in front of me.”

After about ten minutes with no real issues, the six reached a building that was a little wider than the rest, but not quite as tall. The name was posted in block painting above the door.

Bottle of Progress Laboratories

They entered the building to a well-polished lounge and cool air conditioning. An old mare looked over a pair of reading glasses at them from behind a polished-oak desk. Her eyes traveled to Willow, then to the drops of blood she was leaving on the clean floor.

“You heard we were coming?” Sunny’s escort asked.

The mare sighed. “Testing. Floor fifteen.” She motioned towards a waiting elevator across the lounge. The cyan mare escorting Sunny nodded and led them all over to the elevator. “Clean up in the lounge,” the mare said into an intercom as they passed her.

Upon entering the decorative box, Willow leaned forward and hit the button for the fifteenth floor with her nose. The green pony glared, and she glared back. He gave her a jerk, then smiled pleasantly.

“Mmmmmmf,” was her indignant reply. The doors closed with a ding and they began to ascend.

Sunny noticed the two stallions kept exchanging glances and mouthed words with one another. The green one nodded towards Willow. The blue one gave a flick of his ears.

At the fourteenth floor, the green one reached out and hit the stop button. The elevator slowed and the doors slid open. “What are you doing?” the cyan mare asked.

The blue one looked to her, then looked away. “We’re taking the stairs the rest of the way up.” Willow, who had been sitting quietly with her eyes closed, jumped and gave a muffled yell.

Sunny’s captor took a sharp intake of breath. “Y-you can’t do that.”

“Do what?” The green stallion stepped out of the elevator and tugged Willow in his direction. The white mare fought against them, but the two drug her easily across the polished surface.

Sunny lunged forward and wrapped his hooves around one of the chains. “You aren’t taking her!” The mare that was supposed to be in charge of him made no efforts to stop him, but she also made no efforts to help. He hid his face as the green pony poised a hoof over him. There was a sharp pain in his skull as the hoof crashed down on the top of his head. The next kick was in the belly, then the shoulder, then two more to the head. The next blow knocked out his senses and the world began to spin. He was picked up, hit a few more times, then thrown unceremoniously against the back wall of the elevator.

“Get back here!” he spat, trying to climb to his hooves. He caught Willow’s face of cold realization and horror through the final crack of the door. The elevator dinged and they began the slow ascent to the next floor. He turned to his captor, who had not moved. “What in Celestia’s name is wrong with you!?”

She shifted her stance. “I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

Sunny reared up and shoved his face an inch from hers. “Well why didn’t you stop it!?”

“I didn’t want to start anything.” She pushed him away.

Sunny was no longer trying to control the rage he had been holding onto. “After the way we were treated in the desert, I was hoping you REA bastards were good! You know, maybe only a few of you were corrupt and deserved to be shot, but no! I was wrong! You’re all a bunch of cowards and murderers! You’re monsters!”

She glared and matched his yelling voice. “You think I don’t know that!?” Averting her gaze to the floor, she sighed. “I know how screwed up things are. I just... I try and stay out of the way. Even if they won’t, I can still try and help ponies.”

It took every bit of self-control her had not to try and kill the mare. “Then why didn’t you help my friend!”

“I wanted to!” There was a cheerful ding as they elevator stopped at the fifteenth floor.

“We’re going back down,” he told her matter-of-factly. He reached for the button but she tugged him away.

“I’m sorry but we’re not. There’s severe penalties for attack on another officer.”

“And they aren’t going to get railed for what they’re doing!?”

“No!” she shouted, losing her temper. “No, they won't, because they’re close with the higher ups! If I even look at them wrong I could get myself a lifetime spent in a cage!”

Silently, Sunny allowed himself to be led down a narrow, white hall. Every nerve in his body screamed for him to attack this mare and steal her weapons, then go help Willow. If she didn’t come back. If they did what he thought they were doing...

The mare gave him a small nudge, steering him left, into a small room filled with rows of monitor banks. Two unicorns looked up at them from a small table. “Is he one of them?” asked the light-pink mare on the left. Sunny’s escort nodded.

“Well, where’s the other one?” the white stallion on the right asked. “Aren’t there supposed to be two?”

They cyan mare swallowed. “She’ll be here soon... They got held up.”

That was it. He couldn’t stop himself. In a flash he was on her. “They got held up!” he bellowed, spraying her face with saliva as he pinned her to the floor. In the back of his mind, he noted her sidearm was in reach, but she never went for it. “They could kill her!”

The pink mare bowed and trained her horn on him. There was a flash of green magic from her horn and he tried to duck. He wasn’t fast enough. The world turned upside down and twisted into a knot. Sunny flopped over on his side, gagging and choking, his mind spinning like a record.

Then as fast as the feelings had started they were gone, leaving him heaving on the floor, feeling like somepony had rearranged his insides.

The pink mare held out a helping hoof to the REA mare. “Disorientation spell,” she clarified, then turned to the stallion. “Grayhooves, take him to room number three; it’s the only one was have available so we’re going to have to put them both in the same one.”

Grayhooves gave her a skeptical look. “But when we mix test subjects—especially male and female—they tend to—”

“Yes, I know.” She waved him away. “If it comes to that issue we’ll have to deal with it later. There was also some drug or something they were talking about. We’ll have to check that out too; I doubt it’ll yield anything but we still have to check.”

Once again, Sunny allowed himself to be lead away down another hallway, now flanked by his original escort and Grayhooves. They passed doors and doors in the hall. Sunny assumed each one was a different confinement room. After a moment, Grayhooves stopped them in front of a door with a little three mounted on the wall beside it.

The cyan mare unlocked the ring from around his neck, then stooped down and began undoing the shackles. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, standing up again to look him in the eye. “I really am. But attacking them would have been treason; you know the penalty.” She nodded a farewell, then turned and left without another word.

Grayhooves herded him into the room rather rudely and gave him a forced smile. “Have a nice stay.” The door closed with a secure clunk, then gave a little hiss.

Examining his room, Sunny let out a little groan. This was the most boring room he had ever seen—more boring than the one at the hospital. The ten by twelve area consisted of nothing more than a bed against the far wall shoved into a corner. There was a small depression in the ground to the right where a drain had been fitted. Above the drain, a showerhead and one handle jutted from the wall. A toilet sat in one corner with a little retractable curtain by it. The floor was white, the walls were white, the ceiling was white. This was the most boring room ever. The ceiling didn't even have any tiles to count, just four fluorescent bulbs in a square. If there was any place to die of boredom, this would be it.

Making his way over to the bed, which was made with white polyester sheets, he flopped over on the soft-hard surface and buried his head in the glazed polyester pillow. He spotted the camera jutting from the ceiling across the room and looked away from it.

How could the REA do this? As a foal, he had sat through presentations in his school put on by the army. All the ponies were really nice and they all smiled, some even gave out candy. Even long after that, they had been a sort of idol to him; they were the ponies that kept Equestria safe. They were brave, and strong, and gallant, ready to lay down their lives to protect Equestria.

Wouldn’t that be nice.

Had they just stayed in Appleoosa, everything would have been fine. He would still be with Moon and Dusty, Snowglobe, even Brick, even if he didn’t talk much. There’d be Willow and Snowglobe’s fights over nothing. Moon would still be trying to jump on him every chance she got. Things would be normal.

Yet, here he was, locked in a room in a testing facility in a city hundreds upon hundreds of miles away. Baltimare was a long way from the desert.

Willow. They had taken her. They had taken her right in front of his eyes. The fear that had flashed in her eyes as she was dragged backwards away from the elevator.

He screamed into the pillow, pounding his hooves on the bed in frustration. Rolling over to face the ceiling, he took a semi-calming breath. He felt so helpless. There was nothing he could do but sit here and think of the worst but hope for the best.

For how long he lie there, he did not know. Without any means of telling time, time turned into an indistinguishable blur. Sunny was pondering the passing of an hour or so when the door made the tiniest of noises, breaking the deathly silence in the room. There was a hiss and the door opened. He sprang to his hooves excitedly as a familiar white mare was herded into the room to have the door slammed shut behind her.

“Willow!” he exclaimed happily, trotting up to her. She raised her head to look at him and the smile was wiped clean off his face.

Her right eye had been blackened and whites were bloodshot. Her nose had been bloodied, but had since dried to leave only stains around her nostrils. The ring around her neck had been removed to leave the area below sore and cut. She stood perfectly still, apart from her trembling hindlegs. Her ears were folded tight to her head, a look Sunny had never seen on her before. And large, blackening bruise marks adorned both flanks and her rump.

“I am going to kill everypony here,” she said in monotone, her voice brooding, dangerous.

Sunny struggled to find words. “Willow... are you—”

“No,” she answered. “I’m not okay.”

Looking back, Willow examined a purplish-red hoofprint on her rump. “Never... never had I imagined ponies could... would...”

Sunny averted his gaze to the floor. “I... I’m sorry.”

“I-it’s alright,” she stammered. “i-it’s not l-like it’s t-that b-b-big of a d-d-deal.” What composure she still held crumbled and she collapsed on the floor, a whimpering mess.

Sunny bolted to her side. “It’s going to be alright,” he said, gently placing a hoof on her back.

Willow let out a horrified gasp and jerked away. “Don’t touch me!”

Every preservative instinct in his body told him to back away, but he stayed rooted to the spot. “Willow, it’s okay. It’s me, Sunny.” He placed his forehooves on the ground in a peaceful gesture as she looked fearfully up at him. “I’m here.”

Willow pushed herself up and moved towards him a bit. “S-Sunny?” she whispered.

He met her unsettled gaze. “Yes.”

Sunny did his best not to flee as Willow sprang forward and wrapped him in a crushing hug. He closed his eyes, trying to think about anything but the fact that he was hugging another pony. Well, that a pony was hugging him. Willow sobbed into his flank, legs wrapped tightly around his neck. Tentatively, he reached up and draped his hoof around her back, the motion sending shudders up his spine. She was crying on him; he was going to lose it.

“It’s okay,” he lulled, nearly choking as she squeezed the breath out of him. “I’m here.” He moaned at a peculiar churning in his stomach. “Not trying to be rude, but could you wrap it up soon?”

She didn’t seem to hear.

He swallowed fearfully, feeling the sweat start to build on his brow. “Just... get it out.” he let out a gasping breath and tried to keep from hyperventilating. “Just... do it fast please.”

* * *

Willow lay awake, watching the gentle rise and fall of Sunny’s flanks from across the room. Even if the pegasus were awake, he wouldn’t be able to see her; the lights were off. She could tell by the way everything appeared dark-yellow in her vision.

Sunny was a good friend. He had comforted her, spoken kindly to her, been there for her. Tonight, he had pushed his space issues aside and offered to lay by her side. But she had declined, for his own sake; he had been relieved that she had not taken up the offer.

She hadn’t told him what had happened, but he knew. Unspoken words had passed between the two, and he knew.

She had never thought it possible. Something like that could have never happened to her... but it had. Thinking of the ordeal in her damaged state, her mind brought her back to a day of her childhood.

-ooOoo-

It was a dark afternoon. Dark clouds clotted the sky, but didn’t seem able to decide whether or not they wanted it to rain. This particular scene was an elementary schoolhouse. Young foals played on the rusty and beaten playground equipment, shrieking in joy while older, male students stood around in loitering groups, speaking of things they had heard from their parents or laughing at bathroom humor while the fillies made sour faces at them.

Nopony spared a glance for the crimson-maned white filly in the very corner of the playground, enthralled with a thick-backed book. Nopony ever paid that mare any attention. “She’s weird,” they would always say. Or, “She has a knife for her cutie mark. What’s that supposed to mean?”

But today was different. A group of the schoolyard’s biggest bullies were finding themselves bored out of their wits, and the quiet white filly minding her own business was a perfect entertainment piece.

Willow was pouring over a book devoted to teaching precision surgery that she had paid for herself. Her parents had absolutely forbidden her to study medicine, so she had bought her own book and studied it away from home every chance she got.

She was interrupted from the column on tactical incisions when a pink hoof stepped right on the book she had been looking down upon. Willow lifted her head to look right up into the smug face of Petunia, a filly she had learned to despise. Petunia was two grades ahead of Willow, and was almost always surrounded by her braindead followers.

“Hey freak,” the pink pony said venomously.

Willow sat up and glared at the older mare, who was nearly twice her size. (failing the third grade twice hadn’t helped that too much) “What do you want?” Willow asked broodingly, knowing they were here for only one purpose. The two ponies flanking Petunia—a filly and a colt—smiled stupidly down at her.

The schoolhouse bell rang in the distance and the playground began to empty, but Petunia and her two friends remained. “Oh, nothing.” Petunia grinned evilly. “What’cha readin’?” Before Willow could react, Petunia yanked the book out of her grasp and held it aloft for her friends.

“Hey!” Willow yelled indignantly, making a grab for the book. “Give it back!”

Petunia just laughed and shoved the smaller-than-average filly away with a single hoof, knocking her over. She skimmed the pages with amusement while her friends peered over her shoulders from either side. Slowly, a look of annoyance spread across her face. “What’s up with this stupid book?” she complained, slamming it shut. “There’s just weird pictures and a bunch of words in here. There’s not even a story. You’re just reading nonsense; no wonder you're so dumb!”

Willow sat up angrily, dusting her coat. “It’s not nonsense. It’s one of the most up-to-date books in that field you can get.”

Petunia smiled to her two friends, who nodded encouragingly. “Well,” she mused, turning back to Willow, “Maybe I’ll have to keep it and see what it is later.”

“Give it back!” Willow repeated, making another lunge only to be knocked back again.

“Make me,” Petunia hissed.

“Yeah!” her stallion friend mimicked. “Make her.”

Willow was angry now, and of course, she let it get the better of her. “Give it back you whore!” She didn’t actually know what the word meant, but she knew it was bad. Once, her father had used the word on her mother during one of their fights.

The smile disappeared from from Petunia’s face. “What did you say?” She flared her nostrils and backed Willow into the corner of the chainlink fence.

Willow hadn’t known what the word had meant, but Petunia sure had. “Um...” Willow’s rump his the fence.

Petunia moved uncomfortably close and her friends fanned out to the sides. “What do you say we teach this thing a lesson?” They chuckled their agreement and Petunia chose that moment to spring. Taken by surprise, Willow was tackled up against the fence. The burly pink mare managed to get in two blows to her muzzle before Willow was able to raise her hooves in defense, but they were pulled away a moment later by Petunia’s goons.

Willow could only cry out as all three of them bombarded every inch of her body with kicks and stomps.

“Call me a whore will you!?” Petunia screamed in angry bliss. “You’re the whore!”

-ooOoo-

She had been left that day, badly bruised and bloody, sprawled in the rain beside a sopping-wet and torn textbook.

But that had only been a beating. This, today, had been so much more than a beating. So much more. Her head was sore where she had been struck, where the gun barrel had been pressed. The skin stung where her mane had been pulled. The memory of the green one’s hooves squeezing her flanks, his hot breath on her neck.

Willow choked back a sob. She would make them pay. She would make them all pay. She would kill them all. Every single one of those REA bastards would die!

Grasping her head in her hooves, she let out an agonized scream.

“Willow?” came Sunny’s tired voice as he rolled over on the bed. She watched as he rolled to his haunches and looked blankly around, pupils swollen to the size of bits. “Willow?” he repeated. “Where are you?”

She sniffed. “I’m fine... Just... go back to sleep.”

The pegasus looked in the direction of her voice. “Willow... I know you aren’t okay. I... I couldn’t possibly know how hard this is for you. But if you need anything... If you need to talk, I’m here. Just no more hugs — you almost made me have a nervous breakdown.”

Willow wiped the tears from her face. “Thank you, Sunny.” She fought back another sob. “But I just need some time right now.”

Sunny nodded in her direction and curled up on the bed once more. “Just let me know.”

For how long Willow watched the pegasus as he slept, she did not know. Here, he was her only comfort, her only friend. In this place, he was the only pony she could trust, and...

It wasn’t just trust she felt.

* * *

Moon poked the cut apple around her plate with no real interest in eating it. She had no real appetite, despite her previously growling stomach. With a sigh, she pulled her attention away from the booth table and looked out the window. Rocky landscape slid by at what Dusty had told her was a smooth thirty-five miles per hour. The early morning sun shone over a distant ridge, directly through the window of the train carriage, lighting the car with a glowing orange-yellow light and illuminating every spec of dust as they flittered around carelessly.

In the booth across from Moon, a father and his foal slept, despite the constant chugga-chug of the engine. All around, the car was filled with sounds of sleep. But as Moon sat quietly, she could pick out the sounds of stirring.

The night before last had been hard, and ponies were still recovering. Moon had no idea why she was the one that always had to make all the hard decisions. Last night, a frantic mare had run to her, saying that a pony was bitten. There were plenty of other ponies on board with guns. But no, she had to be the one to do it. She had had to stand there, gun aimed on a mare who trembled in the corner, trying to hide the bite mark on her foreleg from view. Of course someone had to do it, but she had never imagined that that someone would be her. There was nothing right, nothing justifying about shooting a defenseless pony. But what was she supposed to do, throw the bitten mare off the train?

“Moon,” a voice whispered quietly.

She turned to see Snowglobe picking her away across the car and around sleeping bodies. “What is it?” she whispered back.

The gray unicorn motioned to the sleeping ponies, then to the door between cars. Moon nodded and left her seat. Following Snowglobe to the front of the car, the two exited. Snowglobe closed the door behind them and spat out the strand of mane that the wind had whipped into her mouth. The platform they stood on was almost large enough for two ponies to stand comfortably.

“So, what is it?” Moon asked.

“I just got back from the boxcars with Jade.” Snowglobe started. “We were counting the supplies.”

Moon nodded. “Good.”

Snowglobe half-smiled. “Well, anyways, Jade seems to be our math expert. She says if everypony conserves on water, and nopony tries to bathe, there should be enough to last about five days.”

“That’s pretty good.”

Snowglobe rubbed her head. “Also, she says we need to eat most of the apples before we even touch the water, otherwise they’ll go bad in the heat. I also made sure our supplies are good—they’re in the second car.”

“So they’re good?”

A nod. “Yeah. The cases with the drug from the hospital are there, and we still have some canned food.” She smiled mischievously. “I don’t want to give those away unless we have to.”

Moon laughed. “I think we still have some canned pears.”

Snowglobe’s expression changed. “Is it like... wrong of us to keep food hidden away?”

Moon thought for a moment. After some mild speculation, she shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. It’s not like it’s food in the bulk; it’s just a few cans of sweet stuff, not enough to feed more than a few ponies.”

“Yeah... I guess so.” She perked. “So how are things going?”

Moon sighed. “Good, I guess... This is hard work. Now I know why Sage quit. I swear, if I didn’t draw the line somewhere I’d be foalsitting and kissing boo-boos better.”

Snowglobe cocked an eyebrow. “It's really that bad, huh?”

“You bet it is.” Moon scoffed. “Some of these ponies are real gun-toting roughbacks—they understand. But then there’s mothers with foals, or rich and prissy ponies that don’t seem to realize what’s going on. Appleoosa must have taken some of these ponies in from somewhere, because they certainly weren’t locals.

Snowglobe just smiled and gave her a hearty nudge. “That’s why we have you girl.”

Moon pushed her away with a smile to match. “Don’t you start.”

The gray mare flicked her tail towards the front of the train. “I was just going to talk to Dusty about how far we can take this engine. Want to tag along?”

“Sure.” Moon thought back to her two friends’ encounter the night before last and suddenly found herself much more comfortable in the presence of Snowglobe, knowing that she might not be on the unicorn’s mind anymore. It was as if that awkward itch in the back of her mind had been scratched and she no longer had to act subdued.

“Can you believe it?” Snowglobe asked suddenly, striking conversation as they made their way through the cars to the engine. “Dusty’s going to teach me how to operate the locomotive later.” She took a blissful pause. “All that power, right at the tips of my hooves.” The mare looked like she was going to start salivating.

Moon smiled. “Well it looks like you two share a common interest.”

Snowglobe flushed. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

“Hey, Moon!” called a little green colt whom she did not know. He bounced excitedly up to her, levitating a cork gun aloft.

“Hey,” she greeted with a smile.

The young colt trotted along beside her as she crossed the car, pushing Snowglobe out of the way and forcing her to walk a little ways behind. “When I grow up I’m going to be just like you! I’ll have my own gun and everything!”

His praise set her heart aflutter. “Honestly, I’m not all that different from anypony here.”

His mouth fell agape as if she had just suggested they all jump off the train. “What are you talking about? The way you killed those zombies last night was awesome!” He raised his gun in a similar way to how she raised her own. “The way you saw that one zombie and, boom! Then you stood next to that big pony with the gun and you were all like, ‘kill em!’ And he was like—” The colt began mimicking machine gun noises. “It was totally awesome!”

“Well, thanks,” she exclaimed happily. “I was just doing what I had to.”

The colt fell back, half-turning away as they reached the end of the car. “I have to get back to my mom or she’ll, like, totally freak out. Bye!”

“Bye,” she returned with a parting wave.

“Got yourself a fan,” said Snowglobe as they left the second car behind and headed into the one just behind the tender. This car was a bit more classy than the others. It had individual sitting rooms instead of booths and a small hall down the right side.

Moon sighed in response. “I shouldn’t be an idol to anypony.”

Her friend just shook her head sadly. “You’re a better pony than you think, Moon.”

She laughed. “But that’s just the thing, I’m not. You know what I was thinking about when I first met Sunny?”

Snowglobe folded her ears. “I’m not sure if I should guess.”

Moon thumped her on the side. “See what I mean? That’s a terrible thing to want from a stallion like him. You know he’s still never kissed a mare?

But, then I fell in love with his innocence. At first it was sort of a challenge for me, and I think that’s why I stuck with it. Because I’d never really been denied by a stallion before.”

Snowglobe got that look about her. “Oh, so you got around.”

She flushed. “Not that much... But yes, I got around. I never really got myself a coltfriend. I just sort of... I never wanted one. The longest I ever stuck with a stallion was about a month.”

They both jumped as Copper burst through the door that Moon was about to open. Snowglobe and Moon reversed direction and made room for him as he stumbled drowsily into the car. “Oh, hi?” Greeted Snowglobe with a question.

Copper squinted at her and gave his golden-brown mane a shake, filling the air with coal dust. “Hey,” he returned. “I was just going to take a nap.” Throwing a glance to his coat. “And maybe find a way to clean myself off without water.”

Snowglobe’s ears perked. “Oh, here, let me.” Her horn glowed green and both ponies watched as she magically pulled the dust out of his coat and mane with a mini-cyclone. It spun around him a few more times, then whipped itself away out the window. Snowglobe performed this task a second time to get what she had missed and then tapped her hooves approvingly. “There, I think I got it all.”

Copper laughed and cracked a wide grin. “Almost as good as a bath. Thanks.” He reached back and scratched his neck. “I’m going to find a place to crash, Dusty’s been working me all night.”

Moon pushed him playfully out of the way and he slapped a wing across her muzzle in retaliation. “Then go to sleep,” she hissed, giving him another push. “You look like you need it.” She looked to snowglobe as Copper left them. “Where’d you learn that trick?”

She shrugged. “One of my brothers taught it to me.” She pushed open the door and ushered Moon through, then followed. “So would you do Copper?” she asked semi-seriously.

Moon gave Snowglobe dry look, then thought about it. “Yes,” she said with a little blush.

“How about Dusty?”

Moon knew what the mare was trying to get at. Of course her answer was yes, but she wasn’t going to say it now that the two were together. “Look,” she said with minor annoyance. “I’m really easy, okay. As long as they aren’t mean or an idiot or complete imbeciles... or too small, my answer is probably going to be yes.” She glared as Snowglobe snorted in laughter. “But it’s still on my terms, not thiers.”

Snowglobe patted her on the head. “Okay then, Moon.”

Dusty sat relaxedly in the hotseat, head tipped back and eyes half closed. Moon jumped down from the tender with a clatter—unlike Snowglobe, who hadn't made a sound—and Dusty looked up to see them. He greeted the two with the tip of an imaginary hat. “Nice to see you could stop by.”

Moon flicked her ears at him. “There are some things to discus.”

“Whoa then, straight to business.” He sat up straight. “Alright, what’s the word?”

Moon thought for a moment. “Well, you know that we need to get to Baltimare.”

He gave her a level look. “Then we’re lookin’ at a few days travel time. To get there, we’d have to go through Dodge junction. We’d also have to go through Canterlot, which I don’t recommend, you know, considerin’ it’s ground zero an’ all. We’ve got enough water in the boiler to get us to Canterlot and enough coal to get us a bit further, but we’re going to have to stop and resupply somewhere if we’re going to make it all the way to Baltimare. We should be able to stop in Dodge and get everythin’ we need though, then we’ll be able to shoot right through Canterlot without even stoppin’.” He shrugged. “Had it all thought out before you asked.”

Snowglobe raised a hoof like a filly in class. “Question. Can we climb the Canterlot hill in this thing without splitting the tracks?”

Dusty nodded. “Believe it or not, these engines used to run that line.”

“So how far is Dodge?” asked Moon, cutting across Snowglobe.

The pegasus sauntered to the window and pointed to a jumble of shapes far in the distance. “Ten minutes or so.”

Moon rubbed her hooves together eagerly. “Great.” The smile slowly left her face when her eyesight drifted to a mass of flying shapes in the air ahead. “What’s that?”

Dusty followed her pointing hoof, squinting for a better view. “Ah,m not so sure... If they’re movin’ then it can’t be anythin’ good.” He turned back to them. “Best to have a hot boiler ready for this.” The pegasus went for the shovel propped against the edge of the cabin, but before he could get to work, Snowglobe levitated a solid stream of coal from the tender to the firebox. Dusty blinked, then cracked a smile. “Well, alright then.”

Moon looked over them. “You two look like you’re preparing for battle.”

Snowglobe rolled her eyes. “Honestly Moon. We haven’t seen something flying yet that hasn’t tried to kill us. There’s a pretty good chance that those flying things—they’re going to try and kill us.”

Moon slumped. “Good point.” There was already tension building in her belly. Just the night before last, she had nearly died... like, three times. many of the other ponies hadn't been so lucky. So far, since Appleoosa, she had been dealing with one big, never-ending hardship.

She prayed to Celestia—wherever she was—for just one break. “Please,” she whispered, “Just once. Please.”

There was a heavy thud on the steel roof above and Moon’s hopes of a peaceful resolution went down the metaphorical drain. Snowglobe squealed and shoved herself into the far corner behind Dusty. “What was that!?”

Moon readied her shotgun and checked the load. “What do you think? Something here to kill us.” A metallic screech caused her to look up in time to see a pair of yellow talons tear through the steel like it were tissue paper. With a gasp, she tilted the shotgun and loosed two buckshots into the roof, leaving a dozen or so irregular holes. The talons withdrew and click-clacked along the length of the cabin, towards the back of the locomotive.

Dusty was shaking his head in blatant disbelief. “That there is a pile of buffalo shit! Did you see those claws!?” A deafening screech sounded from above and Moon nearly dropped her weapon. The skin under he coat crawled and the hairs along her spine prickled in forewarning. She stumbled frantically backwards as a brown shape dropped from the open roof at the back to hoofplate.

The creature was half-lion, half-eagle. It’s once-golden beak was now chipped and stained with blood, and very little of its plumage remained. It stalked towards the three frozen ponies, front claws—sharp as razors—clicking ominously on the steel below, muscles rippling under its matted coat.

Overcoming her shock and fear, Moon fired, drilling it in the shoulder. It jumped to the side as its shoulder turned into a mess of meat and bone and let out another terrifying screech. The griffon took a slash at the wall with its good foreleg and left four, ragged tears in the steel, allowing the sunlight to shine through.

Dusty drew Valediction and tried to fight off the jitters as the griffon turned its sickly yellow gaze on him. He fired, and the griffon stumbled again as a bullet ripped through its chest, then its wing. Another shot sheared off half of its beak. Still, it lurched forward on three legs, bleeding from multiple wounds and dragging a leg attached by no more than tendon and sinew.

Snowglobe had manage to curl herself so far into the corner that she resembled a purple and gray beechball. Dusty took stance in front of her, eyes flashing dangerously. Moon shook her head clear. She had locked up, again. It was a only a griffon, and here she was freezing up like a mouse under a snake’s eye. She jacked a new shell into the chamber and made sure to aim appropriately. One slug was all it took to paint the wall with its head.

Moon mentally hit herself. She had frozen up. She had frozen up with a gun trained right on the thing.

Dusty spluttered incoherent sentences behind her. “That was a damned griffon!” he managed to yell. “What’s a griffon doin’ in Equestria!?”

Snowglobe uncurled herself from the corner and looked fearfully at the body. “There’s always been griffons in Equestria; you just don’t see them too often because they like to stay secluded. There were a few towns that were mostly griffon.” She crossed the cab and hung her head out the glassless window, the pulled it back in fearfully. “Guys,” she near-squeaked. “There’s more than one.”

In a second, Moon was at her side, peering out the side of the locomotive. “No!” she screamed at nothing. “No! No, they can’t!” But they could. There was a whole swarm of them. And on top of all that, there were plenty of pegasi in the flock too.

Dusty finished loading Valediction and slapped the cylinder closed. “Well they are.”

A group of fliers broke from the massive cloud of infected ahead and swooped down toward the cars, showing incredible coordination.

Moon gasped. A cold determination set in her heart. There was no way she was going to let this happen. “Watch the engine!” she shouted to Dusty and Snowglobe before dashing off, heading for the cars. She scaled the coal tender, stumbled, almost fell, and continued on. Springing off the back of the coal tender, she clattered to the steel carriage deck, hooves churning, and burst into the car.

“Everypony arm yourselves!” she bellowed. “Griffons! We have griffons!” Almost immediately, a carriage door slid open with a bang and several ponies filled the small hall, weapons ready. one door opened and a mare peeked out before it slammed shut again.

A shotgun-toting pink unicorn lolloped up to Moon, putting on her best soldiers voice. “What’s happening?”

Moon pushed past her without slowing, forcing the mare to chase behind her. “Griffons, lots of them! We need to try to keep them off the train!”

Moon reared back as the window ahead of her blew inwards in an explosion of glass and fur. A male griffon smashed into the wall and landed shakily on its paws. It spread it wings, completely obscuring the small hall. Hardly missing a beat, it screeched and surged towards her, flapping its tattered wings madly and knocking lanterns on the walls off of their hooks. The pink mare behind Moon fired, but her shots only peppered the beast. Moon’s two buckshot rounds fared better, blasting out its middle and left eye. It stumbled backwards, screeching before stumbling, bouncing off the wall, and busting out a new window to fall to the ground sweeping by below.

“Mama!” a terrified voice yelled from behind.

The pink mare spun on a dime and glared at the little orange unicorn filly who had called from the middle of the hall. “Get back in the room!” she hollered, anger and fear in her voice. “Mommy has to protect the train. I’ll be back, don’t worry!”

“But mama—”

“Now! I need you to stay safe for me!”

Terrified, the little filly scampered backwards and back into one of the rooms, sliding the door shut behind her.

Moon addressed the pink mare, pointing to her shotgun. “Are you using birdshots in that thing?” The mare gave Moon a shameful nod.

With a nicker, Moon levitated a box of buckshot rounds from her bag and tossed it to the mare, who caught it. “Use those.” She started for the door to the next car. “You’re in charge of this car!” she hollered back. Not waiting for a response, she burst through the door and hopped the couplings to the next carriage.

The second car—basically a big metal and wood shell filled with rows of seats—was in absolute chaos. Screaming ponies fled over seats and through the center aisle. In the center of the car, two griffons savaged a green stallion. He howled in agony as the razor-sharp beak dug into his foreleg. The two griffons pulled separate ways and the limb tore free with a pop and a squelch. With a cry of rage, a yellow mare flew at the one still shredding the green stallion, a kitchen knife clenched in her jaws. She landed on the griffons back and buried the knife deep in its neck. With a hiss, the griffon threw its head back and clamped down on her throat. The mare's eyes went wide and her mouth opened in a silent wail.

Moon could only watch as the attacking griffon burst out through one of the windows, taking the yellow mare with it by the neck. A young stallion shot the other dead before it could flee as well. These new foes were terrifying — dangerous. They thought. They fled. They had enough of their brain to know the difference between life and death, and that made them very dangerous.

A shocked silence filled the car and Moon took advantage. “Find a way to block the windows!” she yelled over the wind. “We need to keep them out of the cars!”

Trying not to look at the destruction, Moon continued to move through the car. Her hoof slipped on something and she looked down. The green stallion lay there, bleeding out. His eyes were still open, but he was no longer seeing. he was breathing, but barely. Moon looked away and aimed the shotgun. Splinters of wood and blood flew as her shot hit its mark. They all looked at her, mixed expressions of sadness and fear. “Get to work.” She commanded flatly, loading a new shell.

It had been just like yesterday. It had to be done.

There had to be a better way to defend. She was no good inside like this. A sudden, helpful but dangerous thought struck her and she made headway for the end of the car. Once on the plate between cars two and three, she stopped to examine the situation. As the locomotive rounded a lazy corner towards the small town of Dodge, she was able to get a good view of the right side of the train.

More windows had been shattered along the length of the cars. Pegasi and griffons swooped in from both sides in a relentless bombardment. One would be shot out of the air and another two seemed to appear and take its place. A griffon dropped down on the roof of the third car and tore a whole panel right off the roof.

With a sudden swell of courage, Moon scaled the ladder to the roof of the third car. She stood up top, wind and gravitational pull from the corner threatening to tear her from the slick aluminum. A swooping pegasus tried to make a snack of her but she fired the shotgun and shredded its left wing. It fell short and thudded against the side of the car. Another griffon tried to climb through the hole made by the first but there was a gunshot from inside and it fell back to roll off of the roof and drop to the ground below.

Moon threw herself herself around in a circle, eyes wide, ready to shoot anything that dared look at her. To her surprise, the situation seemed to be containing itself. The fliers were falling back and the ones who still stuck around were quickly being dealt with.

A sudden deceleration caused Moon to stumble and use her shotgun as support to keep from falling. Her eyes widened frantically. The train was slowing down!

“Why are you slowing down?” Snowglobe asked the pegasus urgently. Dusty pointed frantically out the window at the tracks ahead. Snowglobe followed his hoof to a siding filled with a row of old boxcars. “I don’t see anything!” she called over the squeal of the brakes.

Dusty yanked a handle hanging from the ceiling by a chain and then cut off steam with operation of large lever above the seat. “The main line is switched into a sidin’!” The heavy chug of the engine ceased and the hiss of the boiler took over.

Snowglobe balked. “Well why are we switched into a siding?”

He gave her a wry look. “Ah don’t know, but we’ve gotta throw that switch before we hit the points!”

The engine was at galop-speed when Dusty cut the brakes. Snowglobe stepped up to the edge of the hoofplate, mentally readying herself for what she was about to do. She could see the switch ahead. It wasn’t too far.

“Whoa!” Dusty called, fastening his teeth in her tail and pulling her back. “Ain’t no way ah’m lettin’ you go out there.” He stepped up to the edge himself and looked back at her. “The second ah throw that switch, you give it full steam.”

She nodded fearfully and Dusty flared his wings, ready to jump. “Dusty,” she called suddenly, causing him to tense and look back. “Don’t die, please. I kissed my very first stallion two nights ago and I don’t want it to be the last time.

Dusty grinned and his face went a slight shade of red. “If ah come back you gotta give me more’n just a kiss.” He laughed at her face and then he was off, beating his wings frantically to overtake the train. Snowglobe hung anxiously from the window, watching as he overtook the engine and made for the switch, which was still a ways off but rapidly nearing.

Dusty let out a cry of distress as a horde of zombies surged out from around the boxcars in the siding ahead. Snowglobe ground her teeth as Dusty put on an extra burst of speed, dropping to the ground to dodge a griffon while continuing to beat his wings to speed his gallop. He reached the switch right as the zombies did. Not even bothering to draw his weapon, he charged right through the horde and threw all his weight on the lever. There was a grating sound from the tracks ahead as the points switched back to the main line. The whole lever snapped off under Dusty’s momentum and the pegasus went sprawling in the dirt. Then they were on him.

Snowglobe cried out, and readied herself to run to his aid, but miraculously, the pegasus emerged using the switch handle as a weapon. He swung the rusty switch handle like a bat, bouncing it off the zombie’s head then beating off three more. Dusty dropped the handle and ran, dodging as the creatures snapped at him. One made a lunge and he didn't quite dodge fast enough. His head was jerked around as the zombie got a hold on him. Dusty yanked, and managed to pull free. He stumbled away and crossed to the trackside, flapping his wings to keep himself upright.

Snowglobe could tell from here something wasn’t right. Dusty didn’t bother to try to make it to the cab. He beat his wings and brought himself a little ways into the air, then dropped like a sack of flour onto the platform in front of the boiler. Snowglobe could see half of him from here. He tried to stand from where he lay, a little back and above the front buffers, but fell back to his belly and rolled to the side, out of sight.

“Dusty!” Snowglobe yelled into the wind, seeing nothing but his tail. Without even having to think about it, she decided to go to his aid. First, though, she had to get the engine under steam. Turning to the interior cabin, she gave it a quick look-over before working the overhead lever above the hotseat, setting it to the furthest point.

The engine’s deep chug once again sounded and the cars behind clunked as their couplings were drawn taut by the accelerating engine. Behind, Snowglobe could hear the battle raging on, screams of pain and fear and hate mixed with the never ending staccato of gunfire.

Snowglobe turned back, ready to come to Dusty’s aid, and came face to face with a snarling, green pegasus.

The zombie glared at her in mid jump, mouth agape and eyes popping. A mere second and it would be biting at her throat. She ran her option’s analyzing every thought. Her pistol was on her leg, but she wouldn't be able to draw in time.

Snowglobe dived off to the side, magically working the lever for the firebox doors. The zombie didn’t even know what was coming. It hit the ground on all four hooves and slid across the hoofplate. Its front hooves collided with the steel lip and its body fell half into the fiery furnace. Snowglobe hissed and pushed it the rest of the way in with her magic then slammed the steel cover shut. There was a screech to match one of a griffon and the smell of burning flesh filled the cabin.

Not giving herself time to think about what she had just done, Snowglobe bolted to the rear of the cabin. She had to get to Dusty. He was hurt, and badly by the looks of it. She silently prayed to Celestia, asking to not have her fears confirmed.

Problematically, he was also on the very front of the locomotive.

Swallowing down her fear, she eased herself out of the window and managed to get her hind hooves on the lip a little below halfway up the boiler. Slowly, she worked herself along the edge, careful not to touch the steaming hot pipes along the length of the boiler but also keeping close enough to them so as she didn’t fall back. She dared not look down at the ground racing past below, or the churning driving rods directly beneath her. She found herself cursing the length of the engine at the halfway point. “Eighty Celestia damned feet,” she grunted. it had always been long, but now, climbing across it under speed with the constant threat of death six feet below, it seemed a whole lot longer.

After what seemed like forever, she passed the smokebox and dropped down to the small standing platform at the very front of the engine.

Dusty lay on his side in a small pool of blood, eyes half-open. Rushing to his side, Snowglobe placed a hoof on his flank. “Dusty!” she called over the roar of the blastpipe. There was no response. “Dusty!” she yelled again, shoving him.

The pegasus moaned and lifted his head. “You hit tha’ throttle?” he asked drowsily.

“Yes.” Snowglobe offered a hoof and helped him to a sitting position.

Dusty rubbed his head and gave it a violent shake. Snowglobe winced and closed her eyes as blood splattered her. The left side of Dusty’s head and neck were matted with blood. The worst part was that most of the pegasus’ left ear was completely gone, only a few tattered shreds remaining around the edges of raw, pink skin.

“Dusty, your ear!” she cried.

He swayed on his hooves and looked curiously at her. “What about it?”

Snowglobe dug in her saddlebag for something to stop the bleeding and emerged a moment late with the only thing she could find—a grease rag. It would have to do for now. “Snowglobe?” Dusty asked worriedly, looking at the dirty rag with contempt. “What... what about my ear?”

She flinched. “Well... It’s... it’s gone.”

Dusty blinked. “Excuse me?” He made a reach for his head but Snowglobe batted his hoof away. She pressed the rag against his head and drew a sharp gasp from the pegasus.

“Your ear is gone.” Despite the pegasus’ protests, she wrapped his head tight in the rag to stop the bleeding.

Dusty froze stiff and his eyes unfocused. “Ah got bit...” His jaw trembled slightly.

Snowglobe shook her head. “No.”

Dusty’s head flopped to his chest. “Ah’m dead.”

Grasping both sides of his head in her forehooves, she lifted it to look into his eyes. “No, you aren’t dead. You didn’t get bitten—you got your ear torn off.” He gave her a confused look. “Don’t you see? The virus never got in your blood. I saw; it grabbed you and you pulled away. There was never enough time for it to to spread to your body before the ear was pulled off.”

The pegasus thought for a moment, placing a hoof on the good side of his head. Suddenly, his eyes lit up and he collapsed to the floor with a gasp. “Thank... Celestia.”

Snowglobe leaned down and gave him a nuzzle on the cheek. “You scared the daylights out of me. I told you not to die and yet you still almost do it anyways.”

He grinned, eyes still closed. “So what do ah get for not dyin’ but almost dyin’?”

She rolled her eyes and flicked him with her tail. “We’ll see.”

Dusty sat up and cocked his head. “Is it just me, or are we goin’ really fast?”

Snowglobe, who had been wondering if a healing potion would regrow an ear, perked up. Her mane whipped her face and the track ties ahead were beginning to turn into nothing but one big blur. Thick, black smoke poured from the stack and the engine’s four pistons pounded. “I think so,” she replied.

Dusty flared his wings. “Well there’s a long righthoof corner comin’ out of Dodge junction and ah’d rather not hit it goin’ sixty.”

“Will we turn over?”

“Good chance we might if we’re goin’ fast enough.”

Snowglobe looked back at the small lip she had used to shimmy up here. She gulped. It suddenly seemed a lot harder to get back. Dusty looked back at her. “Ah can fly back to the engine, but ah can’t take you, not while we’re movin’ this fast.”

She gave him a shove. “Well then go. I can get back later.”

He gave her a nod, then was off. She didn’t watch him return to the cab, not sure if her strained nerves could handle it. Instead, she looked out ahead of the engine. The small town of Dodge was drawing close now. The water tower they would have been used to fill the tanks loomed ahead to the left of the tracks. And at its base, was a pair of griffons, slashing at the support beams.

* * *

“Are you feeling any cold sensations?” asked the pink mare. She sat behind a small control panel in the examination room, her lavender mane tired back and out of the way of her respirator.

“No,” Sunny said boredly with a fair hint of irritation, glaring at the white tiles in the ceiling. The sensors attached his legs and temples itched like mad and all he wanted to do was rip them off. He had given heavy protest at the point which they had begun to shave the spots on his coat for the sensors, but faced with another disorientation spell from the stern-faced pink mare, he had complied.

She made an exaggerated gesture at making a check on her clipboard and looked back up at him. “Do you have any trouble focusing?”

“No.”

“Have you noticed any alterations in your eyesight?”

“No.”

“Is there—”

“Look,” he interrupted, sitting up to glare at her. “Nothing about me has changed and my answer isn’t going to magically change to yes if you ask enough questions. I feel fine. And I know you know I’m not lying because you're reading the lie-detector right now.”

She gave him a look. “Well, I’m picking up abnormalities in your mood.”

He gave her a look worthy of Willow. “Yeah. Do you want to know why my mood is ‘abnormal’? It’s because I’m pissed. I try to help you ponies and you turn me into some sort of damned labrat and rape my friend. If I don’t have perfect justification to be incredibly pissed-off, then please tell me what’s allowed to piss me off! Because I have no fucking clue!” He threw his hooves up in the air with exasperation.

The mare let out a long sigh that hissed through her respirator and slumped in her seat. “Look, I’m sorry, but I’ve already told you; I don’t work with them. I work for Bottle of Progress, which has been seized by the army for their own reasons. I do what they tell me to do. I have no control over what the army—or their operatives—do or how they behave. They just hoofed you two over to us and asked us to do some scientific digging.”

Sunny just shook his head. “At least tell me that the drug we brought you is useful.”

She blew air. “Nothing yet.” He banged his head repeatedly on the wall behind him and she shot him a look, her horn glowing slightly. “Stop it.”

“You better hope she doesn’t get out you know,” he warned. “She cries, all the time. She says she’ll kill you all.”

The mare was unphased. “I’m sorry, but that isn’t my problem.” The intercom in the room beeped loudly and she rolled her eyes, crossing to the small box to depress the button. “Yes?”

“Patient twenty-six went feral; the treatment made it worse. I don’t feel safe keeping this thing alive in a cell. Get over here and run the scans so we can flame it before something happens.”

She groaned. “Damnit.” Hitting the button. “Okay, give me five minutes.” She flicked a little switch on the intercom “Someone escort number twenty-three back to his cell. I have work to do.” She turned and gave Sunny a stern look. “You stay here.”

Sunny glared her out the door. He wasn’t cuffed or restrained, and may have been able to try and sneak out, but the chances were slim. Besides, even if he could, he couldn’t leave without Willow. She wouldn’t cope without him, not in the state she was in.

No matter how hard he tried, he could not bring himself to grasp the idea that he wasn’t constantly under the threat of death. He had spent the last few weeks of his life killing zombies and trying not to die. Now he was some sort of a test subject in the fortified city of Baltimare. After his brief period of time with no laws, no restrictions, no rules of society to uphold, this was completely abnormal. The scary thing was, he would actually prefer trying not to get eaten by zombies with his friends then sitting here as a test subject.

The door opened and a pony dressed in a gray environment suit entered. “let’s go,” a female voice said firmly, muffled and distorted slightly by the respirator built into the suit.

Begrudgedly, Sunny and trotted over to the suited pony. The faceplate was reflective, and he could see nothing but himself in the glass. “You know I’m not contagious,” he said with a motion to the suit.

The pony ignored him. She stepped aside and ushered him out into the boredly-white hallway. He walked purposefully slow, taking his time and enjoying fully the hiss of annoyance from the mare behind him. He was in no hurry and had absolutely nowhere to go; why not waste her time?

After a moment, the mare moved up and fell in stride beside him. “Hey,” she said quietly, looking straight ahead. “I’m going to tell you something, but you can't react or respond or they’ll know something's up; there are cameras everywhere.”

He flicked his ears in acknowledgement and continued to look straight ahead.

The mare breathed, causing the respirator to hiss. “I’m trying to find a way to get you out of here.” He gave her a blink and a semi-raised eyebrow. She stopped in front of his door and punched in the code. “In!” she commanded harshly, giving him a hard shove.

Sunny allowed himself to be herded back into his room. Willow wasn’t here; she was probably still with Grayhooves for testing. He looked back at the suited pony who stood watching him. “Who are you?” he asked quietly.

She swung the door halfway closed, creating a blind spot to the cameras. She undid the clasps on either side of the headpiece and lifted it up halfway with a forehoof. A white face looked back at him, her red and white striped mane hanging in front of one of her blue eyes. “Be ready for when I come back.”

* * *

“Help defend from the roof!” Moon bellowed, spittle spraying from her bruised muzzle. Her breath came in bursts and her hooves thundered on the aluminum roof of the carriage as she raced towards the back of the car.

The engine had slowed substantially, and in a flurry of wings and hooves, things had hit the fan. There were four flying zombies for every way you could turn and hordes of them running alongside the cars, jumping onto the hoofplates of the cars or trying to climb through the shattered windows and torn walls. If a pony were to fall, they wouldn’t even hit the ground; they’d just fall into a screaming crowd of zombies like a rockstar doing a stage jump.

One thing Moon had learned the hard way about griffons: they didn’t just bite — they clawed. Only after they had slaughtered their prey did they attempt to feast. Moon prayed with all her might that the creatures’ talons didn’t pass the virus. Many ponies—including her—had been raked by the razor claws; the still-bleeding gashes in her back were a painful reminder.

The comforting sound of the engine suddenly filled the air and Moon breathed a sigh of relief. The car below her jolted, signifying that they were once again picking up speed. Soon they would be moving at speed again. She didn’t know how much more of this they all could handle.

On the first car, the pink mare whom Moon had previously met held strong. The left side of her face sported a deep gash and blood layered thick on her coat and mane. She blew one griffon in two different directions, then turned on a pegasus running from behind and smashed it across the muzzle with the butt of the weapon. She used the brief cease of attack to jam as many new shells into the weapon as she could. A griffon landed at the front of her car and tore up a roof panel. With a bellow of rage, the mare charged and both her and the griffon dropped into the car in a flurry of wings and hooves.

Moon sidestepped a diving pegasus and it crashed into the roof with a skull-cracking thunk and went limp. “Brick!” she screamed, loosing off two rounds at a pony clinging to the side of the car. “I could really use your help!”

She used the last shell in her weapon to blast another griffon. Levitating out four more, she began to reload, but was struck hard in the side and sent sprawling to the roof, stunned, shells scattered about. She tried to scramble to her hooves, but a blue pegasus pounced her, pinning her on her back. It lunged at her, jaws wide, but she held up the shotgun in defense and it got a mouthful of gun barrel. Looking over, she levitated one of the shells she had dropped right before it rolled off the roof and jacked it into the chamber.

“Not going to happen.” The pegasus’ head exploded in a crimson shower, coating her with chunks of bone and brain and whatever else. Moon coughed and rolled to her hooves, trying to reload her weapon.

A brown hoof presented itself to her and she nearly shot it off. She looked up to see Brick standing above her, his face the usual monotone. He wore the monstrous chaingun, sporting it almost proudly. “Thanks,” Moon gasped as he pulled her to her hooves.

From the rear of the train, a pony screamed. Moon watched from the third car as the green mare standing on the roof of the fourth was gored by a griffon’s claws. As she watched, dozens of pegasi and griffons swooped down to land the car.

There was a sinking in her stomach as she turned to Brick. “Ready?” He nodded and took the firing bit in his mouth. Zombies charged at them from the top of the fourth car, some running, some flying, some trying to do both. Brick trained the weapon and blinked once.

“You shoot them and I’ll keep them off your rump.” Moon finished loading her weapon and ejected the old shell with a work of the slide. Brick blinked in response, then freed Discord. The gun on his back roared to life like an angry lion, forcing Brick to steady his stance or have his aim thrown off. The garden hose of deadly tracer rounds swept the pegasi as they were leaping to the next car and turned them to mulch.

Moon squinted at the ammo box on the side of the weapon. Tracers, those were new. A unicorn pulled itself onto the roof to her left and she jumped. Trying to save ammo, she smashed it with the butt of the shotgun and knocked it back. A griffon screeched and dropped towards Brick from above and Moon trained her sights. It’s eyes gleamed in anticipation right before the buckshot blew them out. It cried out in anger and fell off course, missing the car completely and hitting the ground with a meaty crunch.

Brick cut his constant stream of fire and began shooting in bursts, aiming for individual zombies now. After a moment, nothing remained on the roof of the fourth car but hunks of what used to be zombies. Brick turned, and began strafing zombies circling the car, using the tracers as guidance.

Moon’s ears perked at a splintering sound from behind her. She spun to face the engine, shotgun aloft and ready to shoot anything that wanted to try and look at her funny. She was hit with a wall of panic and adrenaline, her mind working on all pistons. Around her, the world seemed to slow to a crawl.

Brick stood just behind her, face frozen in grimace of concentration. Beside him, two griffons were scaling up the side of the car. Ahead the engine was streaming through the two of Dodge. Zombies filled almost every foot of the street, all watching with dumb interest as the locomotive savaged the ones standing on the tracks. But her eyes were drawn to one thing above all others — the water tower to the left of the tracks. The support beams on the side of the tracks were broken, and the massive wooden barrel was falling diagonally towards the tracks, against the direction of the engine. Both the engine and the first car had already cleared the tower, but she hadn’t.

Moon couldn’t bring herself to move. She stood in frozen shock as the world continued to move at a soundless crawl. The scaffold holding the water tank began to snap and shatter as the second car nicked it as it slid by. The barrel atop snapped free from the frame and began to fall toward her, water pouring from the broken pipe in the bottom.

She snapped back to reality and was once again bombarded by screeches and gunfire. A shadow fell over the two ponies on the roof of the third car and Brick ceased fire to look up fearfully.

The tank hit right before where they stood and the entire roof crumpled like a tin can under its weight. Moon felt herself falling, and lost all means of her surroundings as water drenched her coat and filled her ears and eyes. Something hard struck her head, blurring her vision. She tried to take a breath but choked on water. Her body smashed against something, only to be whipped away to be smashed against something else. With what very sense remained, she registered the sound of one of her ribs cracking.

Her focus came to and she scrambled to her hooves. Looking around, she discovered she was now inside the train car. Water flowed around her hooves like a river and chunks of ceiling rained down around her. She looked up in time to see the heavy barrel of the water tower teetering on the roof directly above her. It tipped, dumping hundreds more gallons of water on her. Once again, she lost al coordination as she was thrown around like a sock in a washing machine. She found the floor and hugged it, dragging herself along it. Her head hit the wall and she rolled over onto her back.

She had crawled to the back of the car and was now clinging for dear life, trying not to be swept through the hole in the wall by the river of water running through the car. The roof above her groaned and several support beams snapped, casing its weight to sag. Moon tried to climb to her hooves, but the water pulled her hooves out from under her and she landed painfully on her back, looking up as more beams snapped. The wood paneling crunched and snapped from the walls as they bowed inward and the roof dropped a foot with a splintering crunch.

She gave up, going limp as wood began to rain on her. “Damnit.”

The main support beam snapped.

* * *

The mare stopped to listen. She was sure she had heard something. One of the pipes along the length of the steel hallway hissed as a release valve tripped. The sound had been nothing. She ruffled her cyan coat and smoothed her lime-green mane nervously. It was no turning back now.

Hoofsteps sounded ahead and she ducked left into a small maintenance wing of the hall. Quickly, she magically unscrewed the bulb from the light housing so as the only light was the faint baby blue from her horn. She dropped the bulb and hunkered down, waiting. A pony clad in REA barding trotted by casually, whistling a cheery tune.

When she was sure he was gone, she crept out and continued on down the way she had been going. Those two always came here. All she had had to do was follow them on her shift. They were still here — a couple of lazy slackers. Her eyes drifted to the REA issue pistol holstered to her leg, and then to the bowie knife in the sheathe on her flank. Which one to use?

She stopped outside a crooked-hung door and took a deep breath. She levitated out the pistol and screwed on the silencer she had stolen from the armory. Now convinced completely in her mind that this was the right thing to do, she reached out and pushed open the door. It creaked loudly on the hinges and she winced. Slowly, she stepped inside and shut the door behind her.

Two stallions sat on either end of a table in the middle of the worn breakroom, a couch on either side. A half-empty bottle of whiskey sat upon the ashtray-burnt table, right next to a deck of cards. The green and blue stallions were in the middle of a fairly-heated argument with each other over their hooves of cards.

The blue one looked up from his cards and gave her a dirty look. “What the fuck do you want? Can’t you see we’re—” His left eye blew out as her pistol whispered its response and his count of seventeen fluttered to the tabletop. The single brass casing from the gun tinkled on the concrete floor in the silence.

The green stallion cried out as blood splashed across his face. Dropping his cards, he held his hooves up in defense at his attacker. “What was that for?” he asked fearfully.

“Remember me?” the mare asked with venom.

The stallion squinted at her, his eyes widening in realization. “I-I didn’t do a-anything to you. What do you want?”

“It’s what you did to her.”

“What do you care!?” he shot back angrily.

Wrong answer. She took a step towards him, aiming the silent killer. “P-Please,” he stammered. “Don’t kill me, I ne—” The slide on the weapon worked and his skull crunched as the bullet struck him directly in the forehead.

She holstered the weapon and looked around, to the blue stallion and the spreading pool of blood, then to the green stallion poised awkwardly on the couch. Her eyes drifted upwards and picked out the security camera mounted on the roof.

How had she missed that? No matter, it was too late now. “My name in Mint,” she said to the camera. “Thirteen zero two one one, four three two... And I’ve just done Equestria a favor.”

She crossed to the couch and pushed the green stallion to the floor. They would be here soon. She had never planned on there being a camera. That had been a little bit of a screw up on her part. With a sigh, she grabbed for the bottle of whiskey and poured herself a glass.

“Cheers,” she muttered duly, downing the glass and pouring herself another. “Tomorrow you’ll be dead.”

Chapter 12 Out of the Frying Pan...

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Moon awoke to darkness. She lay on her side, a heavy weight pressing painfully against her ribs. A dull throbbing filled her head, and the rest of her body felt no better. She lifted her head slightly and the very small world began to spin. Nothing really seemed clear at the moment. She tried to push up but the pain in her ribs grew more severe as the weight above shifted. It took her a moment of observation to realize that a heavy beam of wood had her pinned. Above her, even more sections of paneling and debris blocked her view of anything.

From somewhere ahead, there was a long whistle, low and mournful into the quiet air

Moon gave a heave and managed to pull herself an inch forward. The beam above creaked and pressed on her side, causing a small whimper of pain to escape her vocals. She breathed deeply, then pushed all the air out of her lungs and pulled with her forehooves. After some strain and a few breathless curses, she managed to pull herself out of the debris.

“Sweet Celestia,” she whispered, looking around at what was left of the train car. It was nighttime; she could tell this easily due to the fact that the car no longer had a roof, except for a small piece near the front end. The full moon shone in from the right side, casting it’s white light over the savaged train car and creating ghastly shadows in the wreckage.

“Hello?” she asked skeptically. “Where is everypony?” The car was still moving, which meant the train was still moving, which had to mean that there were still ponies on the train.

Similar to the roof, the whole right wall of the car was gone, along with a section of the floor and half the seats. She could look down at the rails below from where she stood. Heavy steel beams ran below the car, connecting the front and rear chassis. Every window on the left had been broken, allowing the cool wind to whip her brown mane.

Forebodingly, Moon inched forward, stepping carefully around broken glass and bullet casings mixed with drying blood. Off to the right, the ground dropped off sharply and a valley could be seen far below. The wheels of the car clicked feebly on the tracks below, a low, almost mournful rhythm. Ahead, the engine chugged along steadily, the pounding of the pistons reverberating off the stone walls to the left.

As Moon crossed the devastated length of the car, a cold reality settled in on her. Something terrible had happened, and somehow she had missed it. The past events were nothing but a bur. There were griffons, zombies, water...

The engine rounded a shallow right corner and Moon got a good sight of the engine. An orange glow seeped from the cabin and below the wheels, under the firebox. The steady cone of amber light from the headlamp slashed through the night ahead, lighting up the mountainside and the beyond abyss. Moon’s eyes focussed on the light from the windows of the second car and she breathed a sigh of relief. Feeling a little less dreadful, she pushed out of the car to stand on the plates above the couplings.

The outside of the cars had fared worse than the inside. The steel railing had been reduced to nothing more than mangled scrap iron and the brake wheel had been torn off completely. Carefully making the transition to the second car, she walked forwards and pushed open the door, which only hung on one hinge.

This car had fared much better. Some of the windows had remained intact and there was only one pony-sized hole in the roof. In the middle of this car, all of the seats had been unbolted from the floor and arranged in a circle. Fourteen ponies sat around a gas lantern sitting on a stepstool. Among them, she recognized Snowglobe and Brick. There was the pink unicorn mare and her foal, the mother wrapping her child in a close caress. She was also glad to see Sage and Jade. The turquoise mare had her face pressed into the coat of the dark pegasus, who only gazed absently at the flickering lantern. All of the ponies had weapons, either tethered to them or resting on the floor beside them or up against the seats.

Snowglobe lifted her head and her eyes spotted Moon, going as wide as saucers. “Moon!?” she asked in disbelief. The others turned swiftly to look at her at Snowglobe’s outburst. Something seemed off. Some of them looked pleased, but others looked angry, and some didn’t even seem to care.

Moon walked slowly towards the lantern, feeling like she were about to step on a landmine. She took a seat to the left of Snowglobe and Brick. The brown stallion gazed at the lantern his face grim.

“Moon...” Snowglobe repeated. “I... I... I thought you were dead.”

Moon frowned. “Dead?”

It took the gray mare a moment to form a sentence. “Yeah, Moon... You’ve been gone for hours, like, sixteen hours.” She sniffed, wiping her nose. “I thought you’d been... dragged off.” A baby blue mare across from Moon choked back a sob.

Moon blinked. Sixteen hours? “I was in the third car. I was under a bunch of boards.” She tilted her head to the left and her neck cracked painfully. “I think it was the one—”

“The water tower fell on,” Snowglobe finished quietly.

Moon looked around at the small group of battered ponies. “Where’s everypony else?”

Snowglobe inhaled a shaky breath and looked away. Moon looked at the others, but none of them would meet her gaze. “Snowglobe?” she asked, her voice a little higher than normal. “Why... why won’t you answer me?”

The gray mare looked up, fresh tears in her eyes. “We’re it.”

Moon’s heart skipped two beats. “W-what?”

“We’re it!” she shouted suddenly. “There isn’t anypony else. We’re all that’s left! Us, and Dusty and Copper in the engine.” She wiped her face again. “You had disappeared by the time Dusty had gotten me off the front of the train and Brick was unconscious on the footplate.” The brown stallion beside her looked down as if he were ashamed of himself. The Mare-60 lay by his side, a spent ammo container beside it. “The only ponies who made it were the ones who hid or had enough ammo to not get eaten. There were too many. Once they got on the train it was over from the start.”

The small orange filly let out a cry and sobbed into her mothers flank. “I don’t want to die!”

The pink mare pulled her foal in tighter. “Shhh,” she said lightly. “I’ll try my best dear, but there’s only so much I can do.”

For Moon, reality had begun to set in, and it was horrible. “So, that’s it huh?” She felt her jaw begin to tremble, but stopped it. Fifty ponies were dead at her hooves. She had led them to this, and it was her fault. She might as well have lined them up one by one and pulled the trigger. Foals, parents, lovers... all dead. She hadn’t been good enough—strong enough—to save them. Appleoosa seemed like such a small feat now that they were gone.

“I hid with Sage in the first car,” said Jade quietly, never pulling her eyes away from the floorboards. “I’m a coward.”

Sage sighed and placed her hoof around the dark pegasus. “We fought while we could. Your decision saved us.”

Well,” said Moon carefully, “At least there’s some good news.” She motioned toward the half-healed talon marks on her back. “The griffons’ talons don’t infect you, because I’m not trying to eat any of you.”

The pink mare nodded and flicked her yellow tail. “I figured as much. We’d all be dead otherwise.” Now that she looked, Moon noticed that most the ponies around the lantern had plenty of cuts, some worse than others. But of them all, the pink mare had it worse off.

“Would you like a healing potion?” Moon asked her, eyes scanning the many wounds.

The mare’s eyes lit up. “You have one?”

“Yeah.” Moon dug in her saddlebag and produced a vial containing a deep, purple potion—which miraculously wasn't broken—and levitated it over to the pink mare.

Gratefully, she took the potion and uncorked it. Taking a drink, she breathed a sigh of relief, then passed the potion to the dark-gray stallion with an orange-black mane beside her, who was looking pretty rough as well. “That’ stuff always feels weird going down,” she muttered smacking her lips a few times.

The stallion finished off most of the potion, leaving a swig in the bottom. He looked at it, then to Moon, before sliding the bottle to her. “For your back,” he grunted.

“Thank you.” Moon took he bottle and downed what was left, feeling the familiar tingling sensation. She pulled out two more bottles and distributed them to the others.

That left her with two.

“You know,” the dark-gray stallion muttered in a gravelly voice, “I thought that the normal zombies were bad.” He laughed disgustedly. “Those griffons are like fucking... super zombies or something. I watched one of them tear open the roof like it was tissue paper and then turn a pony into silly string before I could even blink.” He pulled out a cigarette and lighter and struck the flame, sheltering it from the wind with a hoof. “Those things... What they hay are we supposed to do against those things?” He lifted his head, taking a long draw on the cigarette. He let out a sigh. “These things are amazing. Thank Celestia whats’isname pony came up with the idea for these little anti-stress sticks.”

“You’re putting it nicely,” the mold-yellow mare to the right of him muttered. “You didn’t watch two of your friends die in front of you.”

Moon massaged her head. “Please, I don’t want to talk about this.” She winced at the hurt look the yellow mare gave her. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be inconsiderate, but I don’t think I can handle any more of this right now.”

They all looked up as the door leading to the engine swung open and a pony’s silhouette appeared, walking towards them.

Snowglobe gave the pony a frown as he neared. “Dusty... who’s driving?”

The pegasus took a seat between Moon and Snowglobe. “Don't worry, everythin’s stable an’ Copper’s in there watchin’ if anythin’ goes wrong.”

Moon was unable to pull her eyes away from the bloody bandage wrapped horizontally around the top of his head. “What happened to your head?” she asked rather blatantly.

He gave her a squinted look, eyes brightening a moment later. “Moon! You’re alive!” He smiled, then lifted his hoof to the bandage, smile fading. “Oh... that. Yeah, ah uh... Ah lost my ear to a zombie.”

“I-is... Are you infected?”

He looked at the lantern for a long time. “Ah don’t know yet.” From beside him, Snowglobe began to shake. Dusty put a hoof around her and looked up at Moon. “We’ll find out in time. If it comes to...” He looked to the revolver on his leg.

Moon tried to tear her mind away from the gloom and focus on something else. “So were we able to resupply?”

Dusty shook his head solemnly. “No. We shot right through Dodge and the griffons stayed on us for another half-hour maybe. We never got coal or water.”

She growled in her throat. “So what does that mean?”

“If we don’t stop to take on water, we aren't goin’ to make it to Baltimare.”

Moon could feel that particular feeling in the pit of her stomach. “So... where are we going to have to stop?”

Dusty gave her a look, eyes flat. “Canterlot.”

* * *

“Willow!” Sunny called, bracing her hooves on the mare’s chest. “Willow, stop!”

The white mare thrashed wildly on the bed, screaming something incomprehensible. She gave a mighty kick with her hind legs that threw Sunny off from atop her and three feet into the air. Sunny landed on his belly on the rubberized concrete and it took him a moment to regain himself. By the time he had stood up again, Willow’s thrashing had subsided and she now lay curled on the bed, quaking.

Carefully, he approached her. “Willow... are you okay?”

She rolled onto her back, looked up at him, then quickly rolled onto her belly to hide her underside. “Yeah...” She was quiet for a moment. “Bad dream.”

Sunny rubbed his neck sorely. “Yeah, I could tell.”

“I thought I was tough.” The mare laughed cruelly. “Look at me... I’m a mess.”

Cautiously, he approached her side and laid down. It was time for one of those storybook motivational speeches that always seemed to work. “Willow, you’re the best pony — the strongest pony I know. Remember the very beginning? When we saw you running down that sidewalk like you had a pack of wild dogs on your tail? You knew the dangers, but you still did what you could. Willow, you’re the only reason I’m still alive — the only reason everypony who left that hospital with us is still alive.” He placed a hoof lightly on her neck, trying not to flinch too much at the bothersome feeling. “You’ve survived more than anypony I’ve ever even heard about. You’ve been bitten, injected with your medicine stuff, half eaten by a buffalo, you’ve fallen off a ridge, and you’ve even been shot.”

She pulled away from his hoof and nodded slowly. “Yeah, but all of those I was able to fix with a healing potion... I guess I just got high on myself, overconfident. I never thought that something like that could ever happen to me.” She sniffed. “I’m the dominant one! Me!” She broke off, sobbing lightly. “They took that away from me!”

Sunny winced and tried not to jump away as she buried her muzzle in his side. “It’s okay.” He drew a breath and tried not to think about it. A touch was one thing, but having her head shoved into his side just behind the forelegs was screamingly uncomfortable for him. He patted her neck again. “It’s alright... I guess... Just get it out, but do it kind of fast so you can stop touching me please.”

Of course, she either didn’t hear him or pretended not to hear him. He sat quietly, trying to ignore the itchy tingly feeling from his coat. He wished he could do something for her, anything. But sadly, there wasn’t a thing he could do other than try and give her some support. Even thinking about the ponies who had done this to her, he was filled with such a rage that he could imagine himself shooting them, and shooting them over and over again. They deserved death, no less than torture. In such a trying time for everypony, ponies needed to work together, not sexually assault each other.

Baltimare—the word itself was a sour of the tongue—a city without rule but filled with thousands of ponies. This place was a giant pit of anarchy with minor code enforcement making it no better, and the REA was responsible for it all. What was left of the REA was not what they had been. They were broken, corrupt, ruined; they were no more than a bunch of schoolyard bullies with guns and pretty uniforms. Some of the ponies he had seen on the way to the testing center—they didn’t know; they weren’t aware of what was really going on. They didn’t know what was happening beyond those fifteen foot walls and anti-air gunners. On the walk, he had spotted two ponies who seemed to have had a clue. A stallion and a mare had looked back at him, their eyes had said it all. They knew along with him that this wouldn’t last, and Equestria would never be the same again.

A repulsing thought struck him. The army had no checkpoints, nowhere to screen ponies entering the city. That could only mean one thing; they weren't letting ponies into the city. Baltimare wasn’t a safe haven; it was a quarantine. The doors to the city had been locked up tight and the key had been swallowed by some high-ranking officer. Thats why he and Willow had drawn so much attention in the streets—there were never ponies from the outside. An outsider in the city was about as common as a friendly zombie.

It all made sense now. Baltimare was never a safe zone. All it was was one big place to corral the living. The ponies here were the ones that were here when the city was walled off. Life for the ponies here was somewhat normal, because nothing out there was real. It was like reading about a war in a faraway land. You knew it was happening, but it never really hit at home.

For him, it was very real. It was all much too real. But he’d rather be out in the real than trapped here in this pseudo paradise. His friends were still waiting for him in Appleoosa. They had been with him from the start, and Celestia strike him dead were he not able to return to them.

Slowly, Willow sat up, blinking tears from her eyes. She coughed once as if nonchalantly putting off the whole ordeal. “Sorry.”

Unconsciously, he slipped off the bed and took an uncomfortable step away, then realized what he had done at the hurt look Willow gave him. To justify himself, he reached forward and placed a hoof on one of Willow’s outstretched forelegs. “It’s okay.”

“I’ll kill them,” she said with sudden venom, batting his hoof away. “I swear it by Celestia, if I find them—”

“Willow,” Sunny interrupted. “I promise you, that if we find them, I will kill them.”

She actually smiled a little. “Thanks, Sunny.”

He noticed that look in her eye and quickly searched for a new topic. “So, do you think they’re breaking any ground with what we’ve given them?”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. But I swear, if Grayhooves takes any more of my blood he’ll have enough to fill a barrel.”

“What about the drug?”

Willow folded her ears. “I don’t think it’s actually going to work.”

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

She seemed frustrated. “Well, I think my circumstance was just plain luck. I’ve heard them talking, about their research, discussing data strands or testing results. They’re making it sound like it’s just a really strong, dangerous antibiotic. If you remember correctly, it never actually cured me of the virus. I flushed most of it out myself before it could spread, then used the drug later. I have no idea what it did, but it never killed it. That stuff does something we don’t know about, but it isn’t a cure.”

Sunny was silent for a moment. “Well, then if they know that... why are they still keeping us?”

“Correction, why are they keeping me? We all know why they’re keeping you. You’re immune, I’m just some sort of bi-product of chem mixing. They didn't use any tactics on me. They actually gave me a direct injection of the virus, just to see of I would die.”

This was news to Sunny, and it wasn’t exactly feeling him with a tingly happy feeling. “Well, what’d they get from that?”

She shrugged. “It floated around a little in my blood before working itself out. I don’t have any idea of how to read all of this stuff. I think it isn’t taking to me because it already thinks I’m infected?” She squinted at her own comment. “Look, I don’t get very much of this stuff. My specialty is emergency work and surgery, not analyzation. Usually, back at the hospital, I had other ponies to do that part for me.”

Sunny looked at one of the shaved patches on his legs. “Well at least they know what’s going on with you. They won’t even tell me what’s going on.”

They both jumped as the door mechanism clicked. Willow was off the cot and on her hooves in a second, standing tense as the door opened.

The pony who stepped into the room was clad in a full-body environment suit. It was white and bulky and the helmet had a mirrored and tinted glass faceplate, obstructing the view of the pony inside. There was a lapel pinned to the suit’s front. ‘Grayhhoves’. A picture of the white stallion was just under the name; he was making a serious face at the camera.

Grayhooves stopped a little ways into the room and motioned for them with a forehoof. Willow rolled her eyes and approached, but Sunny was a little more skeptical. It was either Grayhooves, or somepony else. A little behind Willow, he approached. Grayhooves turned away from them and motioned for them to follow, leading them out of the room.

Willow gave Sunny a questioning look. “You think it’s—”

“Yes.” He had told Willow about Candy’s message to him, but neither were expecting her back so soon. Last thing they wanted to do was make a move when this was the real Grayhooves.

The pony slammed the door once they were through and herded them forward roughly. Sunny shot the pony a glare. “Stop pushing. I can walk on my own.”

Grayhooves didn’t respond, instead leading them forward, down the white hall, keeping them within the reaching distance of a foot. Willow walked low to the ground, eyes darting about nervously. She skirted a stallion as they passed one another in the hallway, pressing herself up against the wall like a cat trying to scratch itself. The passing stallion—one of the staff members—gave Grayhooves a look, but didn’t say anything.

Sunny moved up close to Willow and leaned in to whisper in her ear. “Where’s he taking us?”

Willow jumped and gave a little eep, then realized it was him and went slack. “I’m not sure. Either the elevators or the observation rooms.”

Sunny’s heart began to beat faster as they veered away from the hall with the sign pointing towards the observation rooms and instead followed the sign pointing the way to the elevators. It was Candy—it had to be.

A familiar pink mare with a wispy pink and white mane and tail backed into the hall ahead of them, closing a door behind her. She looked up and spotted the three, eyes immediately going to the suited pony. “Oh, hey there, Grayhooves.”

Grayhooves motioned towards Sunny and Willow, then swung his suited head to the right.

She frowned. “Oh, right. I thought you were off right now. I was just coming to see you in your room.” She shifted her stance and blushed a little.

Sunny rolled his eyes. “Well isn't that wonderful.”

The pink mare gave him a brooding look. “Really, stop being so cynical. It’s not like you’ve never done it before. Ponies gotta’ do it.”

He gave her a flat look.

The mare snorted. “Oh my gosh.” A wide grin crossed her face. “You haven’t! Ha!” She laughed again, then rubbed her eyes. “Sorry. It’s just, you know, you’re as old as me and—” She cackled, unable to complete her forced apology.

Grayhooves shrugged at the mare and pointed to his two captives.

The mare frowned. “I don’t know why you’re wearing that suit; they’re hotter than the sun and it’s near impossible to talk out of them.” She paused. “You were working on patient twelve again.” A nod from Grayhooves. “Yeah, suit’s a good idea. Better safe than sorry.”

Sunny shrugged off the mare’s rather teasing words and tried to think. It had to be Candy, Grayhooves would have said something by now. The pony in the suit was purposefully not talking.

They passed each other and the pink mare gave Grayhooves an expectant look. “Don’t be too long.”

They were nearing the next bend in the hall when another pair of hoofsteps reached Sunny’s ears. He looked back in time to see a white stallion trot around the corner and nearly run into the pink mare. “Oh, Cotton, there are you are,” he said casually. “I can’t find my ID anywhere, did you happen to pick it up? I would have sworn I left it in the lounge but—” He looked at her face. Her eyes were wide and mouth slightly agape. “What’s wrong?”

The pink mare now known as Cotton went white. She looked to Grayhooves, then to the Grayhooves at the end of the hall in the environment suit, then back to Grayhooves, then to the other Grayhooves. “Intruders!” she bellowed, coming to her senses. She spun and fired several green bolts of magic their way. Sunny and Willow ducked but the suited pony in front of them took one of the beams straight to the face. The green burst of magic reflected off the visor and shot back at the yielder. Cotton ducked and Grayhooves took the burst straight to the front. His eyes rolled in his head and he collapsed to the floor in a writhing heap.

“Run,” yelled a mare’s voice from the suit, muffled and distorted from the rebreather. Sunny didn’t have to be told twice. He turned and ran, Willow by his side and the suited pony a few feet behind, unable to keep up under the weight of the suit. Sunny skidded to a stop in the middle of a four-way intersection in the hallways, unsure of which way to go next.

“Left,” yelled the muffled voice again, taking the lead.

“Now I’m sure it’s Candy,” Willow commented as they ran in the suited pony’s wake.

Several red domes lit up on the ceiling and alarms started blaring all throughout the building. “Attention!” Cotton’s voice bellowed over the microphone. “Two patients are free from captivity and attempting escape with the aid of an imposter! Subject’s twenty-three and twenty-three B, orange male and a white female. Do not let them escape. Non-lethal force authorized!”

Willow laughed from beside Sunny as they ran, some of the old fire back in her eyes. “Looks like we’ve stirred the fire a bit!”

Sunny puffed, beating his wings to take some of the strain off of his legs. “Looks like it.”

They skidded around another corner and Sunny was relieved to see a waiting elevator just ahead. What were the chances of that? And, what were the chances that two guards armed with shock batons would charge into the hall to block their path? Pretty high.

The pony blocking their path on the left was an earth pony stallion, holding a sparking baton in his jaws. The other was a unicorn mare, wielding two batons. Willow charged the stallion on the left. He raised the baton but she batted it aside and hit him like a train. The suited mare lept at the unicorn and the two batons struck her faceplate, but only sheared off and went clattering away. The stallion screamed in fear and agony as Willow bit into the side of his neck.

“Willow!” Sunny ran forwards and tried to pull the mare off, but she wouldn’t budge. “Willow, stop, please!”

She released the stallion and turned on Sunny, teeth bared and running with blood. He jumped away like a scared kitten, shamefully terrified. The pony in that mare’s eyes was not Willow. It was something, but it wasn’t Willow. She took a step towards him, letting out a sound similar to something between a hiss and a growl, eyes hungry. In a second, the look was gone and Willow looked down at him worriedly. She looked at Sunny, who was still trying get his mane to stop prickling, then to the wounded stallion writhing on the floor, crying as blood spilled from the wound on his neck to pool on the white tile.

“Come on!” Yelled the suited mare, grabbing Sunny by the mane and yanking him towards the elevator. He stepped over the guard mare, who sported several shock burns on her flank and head. Willow followed close behind in somewhat of a daze. The three pooled into the elevator and the suited mare hit the button for the first floor, causing the doors to slide shut and cut off the blaring of the alarms.

“Candy!” Sunny exclaimed happily, now absolutely sure that the suited pony was the striped mare.

Willow looked at her reflection in the stainless steel paneling on the wall. Blood had stained her muzzle and matted her front, and when she opened her mouth it could still be seen on her teeth. “What am I?” she asked herself.

The suited mare unclasped her helmet and tossed it to the floor, letting her red and white striped mane fall free and hang around the the suit. “Jeez,” she muttered. “I don’t know how anypony can stand these suits.”

Trying not to focus on Willow as she tried to wipe blood off of her, Sunny instead focussed on Candy. “I knew it was you!”

The former REA Private gave him a smile. “I told you I was going to get you out.”

Sunny kicked the air and looked to the ground. “Thank you. You know, for getting us out, and saving Dusty back at the camp.”

Candy shook her head. “Don’t thank me for anything until we’re out of the city.”

Willow had just seemed to notice the striped mare and was wearing an expression of relief. “So you did make it away.”

Candy looked up, squinting at the blood staining the mare’s muzzle. “Yeah, thanks for that distraction... You saved my life.”

“Well I see you’re returning the favor.” Willow had done her best to wipe the blood off her face, but hadn’t succeeded very well. Now it was a reddish-pink stain across her mouth and front.

Sunny watched the floor counter above the doors switch to the number four. “Get ready.”

There was a sudden lurch as the elevator stopped. Willow tensed. “What was that?” There was a hum from up above and the elevator started to rise.

Candy stomped her suited hooves. “Horseapples! They’re taking us back up!”

Sunny frantically mashed the stop button on the wall panel, to no avail. “Well what do we do?”

“Move,” Willow commanded, not even giving him a chance to move before she shoved him aside. She raised a hoof and bashed it against the control panel, sending broken bits and pieces of the little buttons raining to the floor. Two more hits and her hoof punched clean through the sheet metal. She gave a pull and the cover yanked free from the wall with the spark of several wires.

Candy stepped forward as the elevator passed the sixth floor and examined the circuity beneath. “Okay,” she said looking at one of the fuses, “If we remove this fuse, then cut this and—” Willow’s hoof smashed right through the fuse bank in a shower of sparks. The hum of the elevator whined down and a red light blinked on the readout above the door before fading out. The panel clicked and the overhead lights shut off, casting the elevator into complete darkness.

“Willow!” Candy scolded, looking at the pair of disembodied, yellow-orange eyes.

“What?” she asked defensively.

“Why the hay did you do that?”

The orange eyes blinked. “What? I got the elevator to stop, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, but now we can’t see anything, Willow.”

“Well I can.”

Sunny remembered Willow’s night-vision. Of course she could see. “Do you have a light?” he asked Candy.

“No,” she responded sourly. “Willow, Can you pull off one of those light spells?”

“Nope.” Willow’s eyes turned up to face the ceiling. “Hold on, there’s an access hatch up there. Somepony give me a boost.”

“You help her Sunny,” Candy said from the direction of the control panel. “I’m going to see if I can salvage this.”

“No thank you,” he replied meekly.

“What?”

“Candy,” Willow said sternly. “Help me up. Sunny has a thing.”

He wasn’t able to see the mares, but he listened as Candy gave a grunt and there were some sounds of scuffling and a metallic grating. Yellow light spilled in through the roof, barely bright enough to provide enough light to see. “Got the cover off,” Willow muttered. A moment later her eyes disappeared from sight.

“Okay, pull me up,” came Candy’s voice. There was a grunt and some more scrambling noises.

“Okay, Sunny,” Willow said after a moment. “Get over here and I’ll pull you up.”

He stepped up to the hatch, which was faintly outlined by the yellow light above. “I can make it myself.” He unfurled his wings for what felt like the first time in ages and gave them an experimental flap. Everything seemed alright. Jumping up, he beat his wings, lifting himself higher, ignoring the tiniest twinge of pain in his back. His head smashed against the roof and he crashed back to the floor of the elevator with enough racket to wake the dead.

“Nice one, Sunny!” Willow cackled.

He picked himself up, rubbing his head. “Shut up.” Trying again, he got it right this time. Shooting through the hole, he landed neatly on the roof of the elevator.

From far above, a yellow maintenance light shone, giving them a dim light source, which seemed pretty bright in the solid black—kind of like yellow moonlight.

They had stopped inconveniently between floors six and seven with no way to reach either door. Candy pointed to a ventilation shaft about eight feet up. “We could use the vents. I read the blueprints and apparently they’re used to filter air through the shafts. They all lead to a system of air handlers on the first floor.”

Sunny frowned. “That’s too high to reach.” He knew he might be able to reach it, but there was no way he could get the others up.

Candy scratched her chin. “Well, there’s a vent every twenty feet.”

“So we need to lower the elevator,” Willow finished with exasperation.

“Why can’t we just pry open one of the doors?” Sunny offered, looking at the door to the seventh floor, which was only five feet above.

Candy shook her head. “They’re security doors. Hydraulic pumps drain to open them. If they’re closed, the only way they’re opening is with a terminal command.” She turned to look at the cable system mounted to the roof of the elevator. “Those urban horror stories where ponies get cut in two by elevator doors—these are the kind of doors that do that.” Her eyes skimmed over a steel pin secured to a red lever on the cable mechanism.

Sunny shrank back as she examined the metal pin. “W-what’s that do?”

Candy pulled the pin with her teeth and spat it onto the roof of the elevator. “Cable release.”

His stomach turned over as the elevator below him began to drop, the pulley wheel spinning madly. “Candy!” he screamed, clinging to the roof like a scared cat. “Why would you do that!?” Pipes and sections of the shaft blurred by, causing him to panic. They were going to hit the bottom of the shaft before they stopped.

There was a clank from the left guide rails as the wheels slipped out of their tracks, pitching the elevator sideways in the shaft. Sparks lit the air as the metal box ground to a cockeyed halt. “Candy,” Sunny gasped, picking himself up shakily. “I am going to kill you.”

She picked herself up, then pulled a stunned Willow to her hooves. “Later.” She plodded to the high end of the elevator and pulled a vent cover off the wall. “No time. Let’s go.”

Sunny winced as the elevator groaned, watching with impatience as Candy climbed into the vent, which was tall enough for her to stand if she ducked. Sunny climbed up next, turning around and beckoning Willow towards him. “Come on, Willow.”

She moved up to the vent and placed her forehooves on the lip. At that moment, the elevator below her slipped and shuddered down another five feet. Willow dangled by the lip for a second, rear hooves churning the air. Sunny jumped for her, but she slipped and fell back, out of sight. There was a loud thud as she struck the metal roof.

Sunny dashed forward to peer over the lip. “Willow!”

The mare rolled from her back to her side and groaned. The stripped elevator wheels squealed and the steel ground as the box slipped down a few more inches.

“Willow!” Sunny screamed. “Willow, get up!” Willow lifted her head and looked around, then dropped it back to the floor.

Candy shoved in beside him to look down. “Come on, Willow!”

Slowly, as the seconds ticked away, Willow picked herslef up. A trickle of blood ran from her head as she looked around, eyes blank.

“She knocked herself senseless,” Sunny whispered fearfully. Before Candy could stop him, he pulled himself forward and dropped the six feet down to the elevator, landing hard and coaxing another groan from the steel.

“Sunny!” Candy bellowed at him. “Are you insane!?”

He rushed over to Willow and tugged her to the spot below the vent. “Come one Willow come on Willow,” he breathed frantically. “Come on, go! I’ll give you a boost!”

She looked at him tiredly. “What?”

He was left with one option, and it wasn’t a good one. “Come on, Sunny!” Candy screamed.

Flaring his wings, he brought himself over Willow and wrapped his forehooves around her middle. Despite the uneasiness that assaulted his stomach, he held her tight and beat his wings, managing to lift the both of them a few inches. Something metal below snapped and the elevator dropped away, crashing and sparking down the shaft, the cable snaking by dangerously close. He flapped his wings frantically, lack of strength and practice showing profusely. There was a familiar pain in his back and wings, like a million tiny needles sticking into every nerve and muscle. He clenched his teeth as pain obscured his mind.

“Come on,” Candy urged as he drew near. There was a deafening sound from below as the elevator stuck bottom and the whole shaft shook.

Sunny pinched his eyes shut, trying not to lose focus. All his strength was being channeled into keeping Willow and himself in the air. He felt himself began to drop and forced as much strength into his wings as he could, crying out in pain. To his relief, Willow had made it a little easier on him by wrapping her hooves around his, but she still seemed to be out of it.

He was at equal height to the vent now. Candy looked at him fearfully, beckoning him forward. With the last bit of strength he had, black seeping at his vision and colorful specs popping in his eyes, he pulled himself up another two feet. Candy reached out and grabbed Willow around the middle to haul her into the vent. When Willow was clear he fell forward, catching the lip and flapping his dilapidated wings once more to push himself to safety.

Done. That was it. Done. His vision faded and when he came to a short moment later, he was on the ground. He couldn’t move. The cold steel of the vent practically burnt against his searing coat. His wings lay dead at his sides and it felt like somepony had twisted a pretzel out of his spine. A series of violent muscle spasm ran up the length of his body and he cried out again, hacking up mucus in the process.

Candy passed Willow a healing potion and the mare took it with minor confusion. Enough of her sense told her to drink it and her eyes seemed to refocus again as the magical potion fixed whatever was wrong in her head.

“What happened?” Willow asked, giving her head a little shake. She looked around and spotted Sunny in the low light, sprawled in the vent and looking half-dead. Concern welling up in her eyes, she rushed over to him. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he gasped before coughing violently. “Good thing you’re not too heavy.”

She scrunched her nose at him. “What?”

Candy pushed by Willow and helped Sunny to his hooves, supporting most of his weight. “You fell and hit your head. Sunny flew you back up to the vent.”

“Stop touching me,” Sunny snapped.

Candy took a sharp intake of breath. “Sorry.” She left him and he crashed back to the floor of the vent. “Sorry,” she repeated.

Willow cocked her head at that exhausted pegasus, mouth lolling open a little. “You... flew me?”

He gave a chuckle that transitioned into a cough. “A little ways.” His body ached; his wings felt like they had been set on fire, extinguished with a mallet, and then lit on fire again. Never in his life had he exhausted himself like this before. Swallowing his misery, he pushed himself to his hooves, standing a little unsteady but managing to stay upright. “Let’s go.”

Willow’s eyes once again began to glow faintly as they continued down the ventilation duct. “You carried me?” Willow asked, still dumbstruck.

“Yeah, just don’t ask me to do it again.” The tingly feeling in his legs left from touching the mare was one he could have gone without. He stepped on one of his wings and nearly fell, only saving himself by leaning on the side of the vent. They wouldn’t even furl to his sides.

Willow slowed to let him pass and instead walked beside Candy. The two began muttering about something, but Sunny was too out of it to listen. Candy broke away from Willow and pushed in beside him. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Yeah... I think—” He cried out as his forehooves churned air. He tried to back up, but it was too late, he slipped and fell forward. Candy tried catch him, but his momentum drug her forward as well. He found himself falling. Of course he was falling. There was a sharp pain in his head as he bounced off the side of the vent, then the rest of his body as he bounced around like a rubber ball. He struck something soft that cried when his hoof hit it; that had to be Candy.

Hopelessly, he tried to maintain the fall with his wings, but not only would they not reach half their width in the ventilation duct, they wouldn’t exactly move. He flipped over and at least managed to control his fall, looking up to the darkness as the wind whipped his mane around his face. His back struck something hard and there was a squealing of metal accompanied with the crunch of wood and plaster. Sunny pinched his eyes tight shut as the feeling of being in a blender overwhelmed him. There was another impact on his back and violent surge from his stomach, then it was over.

He opened his eyes to light. Out of sheer luck, he had somehow landed on a cot, and was now looking up at a blasted hole in the ceiling. From what he could tell, this was a confinement room, exactly similar to the one he had been held in. Candy had landed sideways across him, mane knotted and dusted with white plaster.

“Get off me,” he groaned angrily, shoving the striped mare to the floor. A mattress, what was the luck? They had fallen on a mattress.

There was a rattling and banging from the vents above, followed by a joyful shriek. “No!” he yelled trying to roll over but failing. “No nonononono!” He tried to roll off again, but his tired muscles refused to listen to him. Willow shot out of the vent like a bullet from the barrel of a gun and hammered him into the bed, crushing the frame and possibly his ribs. No longer able to speak, he just gave a low moan.

Willow sat up and looked around. “Well that was fun.” She looked down and spotted the orange pegasus she happened to be standing on. “Oh, shoot! Sorry!” she hopped off him hurriedly and scrambled away like she’d unsuspectingly stuck her hoof in a spiderweb. “Are you okay?”

“No,” he wheezed, rolling into his side and clutching his middle.

Candy looked up at the hole in the roof. “Well that worked... It’s not what I would have preferred, but it worked. I think we’re on the first floor now.”

“Who’re you!?” yelled a frantic voice, causing all three of them to jump. Sunny managed to sit and caught sight of a green buck backed into a corner, holding a toilet plunger out like a spear. His overgrown, orange mane was matted and shot out every which way; it looked like he had gotten in a vicious fight with a desk fan, then managed to get himself electrocuted. His mane also had premature gray streaks, along with his tail. He had two, rippled scars on either side of his back. But worst of all, it appeared his cutie mark had been bleached, or something. His coat was slightly rippled and lacked color where his cutie mark should have been.

“I-I-I’ll use this!” he threatened, voice shaking.

Candy held up her hooves in a gesture of peace. “We aren’t here to hurt you.”

He backed up further, plunger shaking madly. “H-horseapples!” He pointed to her environment suit. “You’re one of t-t-t-them!” His voice had a higher pitch than most stallions’, and cracked oftenly.

Willow trotted over to the door and banged on the wall, ignoring the green buck altogether. “How do we get out?”

The jumpy pony stopped shaking a little. “Y-you don’t. The doors are locked. They’re always locked.”

The buck was speaking so fast that Sunny was having a hard time understanding him.

Candy looked over to Willow. “Think you can get it open?” The buck suddenly lunged forward and smacked her across the face with the head of the plunger. He went to swing again, but Candy smacked it out of his grasp. It bounced away, rolling to a stop against the wall.

He eeped and retreated back to his corner. “Don’t hurt me!”

Candy gave him a confused glare. “You hit me with a plunger? Really?”

Sunny rolled to his hooves to interrupt, wincing in pain. “We aren’t here to hurt you.” He blocked Candy, who had retrieved the plunger and was making her way back to the buck, most likely to hit him back. “Don’t hit him back.” Back to the scared pony. “What’s your name?”

The buck pointed at himself. “My n-name?”

Sunny deadpanned.

“B-bl-blaze.” His electric blue eyes darted to the ceiling. “If you’re not here to hurt me t-then why did you drop out of the roof!?”

Sunny slumped as an unexpected wave of nausea hit him, but he was able to fight it off a moment later. He pointed to Candy. “She’s getting us out.”

Blaze blinked. “So, she’s not—”

“No,” Candy answered.

Blaze took on an eager expression. “A-are you b-b-breaking out?” Sunny was finally able to flare his wings and fold them neatly back to his sides. “Ooooh!” The green buck’s eyes lit up and he trotted around Sunny in a little circle. “It’s been forever since I’ve seen another pegasus.”

Sunny furrowed his brow. “Another pegasus?”

Blaze gave a little hop. “Yeah, I’m a pegasus.”

Sunny looked at Blaze, noting his lack of wings. “Care to explain to me how that works?” He looked to Willow to ask her a question, but the mare was sitting with Candy near the door, the two muttering urgently.

Blaze looked back at one of the scars near his spine and his expression deflated. “Well... I was a pegasus.” He folded his ears and hung his head. “They took my wings off.”

Sunny couldn't stop his jaw from dropping. Rage filled him at a very thought that somepony could do that to a living pony. Taking a pegasus’ wings was like taking an earth pony’s legs. It was a part of them. “Why would they do that?”

Blaze shrugged. “It wasn’t that bad. They put me to sleep for when they did it.” He kicked at the air.

Candy broke away from Willow and waved for Sunny’s attention. “I didn’t want to do it this way, but we have to get the door open.”

“You’re coming with us,” he stated matter-of-factly, addressing the green buck.

Blaze blinked in surprise. “I-I am?”

Sunny stood and nodded seriously. “I don’t plan on leaving you here to be tortured any longer.”

Candy backed away from the door, examining a square package she had placed there. “Are you sure it’s safe to take him?”

Sunny gave her a hard glare. “What do you mean?”

She shuffled her hooves. “Well, he’s a test subject... He could be dangerous.”

Willow stepped up beside Candy. “She’s right. The first floor is where they kept the biological testing subjects. Grayhooves took me down here once for some screening.”

Sunny couldn’t believe his ears. These two mare’s were actually willing to leave a pony here. He cast a glance to Blaze, who seemed to be trying to catch his tail. Maybe they only had their well-being at heart. “We’re not leaving him,” he said firmly.

Something in his eyes must have shown, because Candy immediately dropped her guard. “Okay, calm down.” She crossed over to the cot they had crushed and tilted it up on its side. “Get behind this.”

Sunny trotted over and hopped behind the bed with Candy. Willow joined them a moment later. “Why are we hiding behind a bed?” he asked them, beckoning Blaze over. The green pony complied and skittered over.

Candy produced a small device with a single button and set it on the floor before her. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want a bunch of shrapnel stuck under my flesh.” She reached up and pushed Sunny’s head down, then hit the button.

A sound similar to a board being snapped in two filled the room, but multiplied by ten. Sunny covered his head as shards of metal and ceramic rained from above. Another alarm sounded from somewhere and he groaned. That wasn’t good. No matter what, it would never be easy. Nothing could ever be easy.

Willow pushed the mattress aside and looked at the now-unlocked door. “We need to move before they get here. I doubt that’s the bingo call.”

Blaze seemed to be a little overwhelmed by the situation. His eyes stretched wide as he watched Willow kick the door out of its reinforced frame. “W-why’d you blow up the door? They’re going to come now!”

Sunny shoved the buck towards the door. “Well then let’s get out of here before they do.”

The four crept out into another hall, perfectly similar to the one they had left above. Like above, there was a door and a number every fifteen feet on either side. Candy pointed to a door at the far end of the hall and herded them forward. “That way!”

Blaze jumped, then ran the exact opposite direction.

“Blaze!” Sunny yelled. “What are you doing!? We have to go!”

“Your new friend is going to get us killed,” Willow complained.

“Let’s take him with us,” Candy said in a mimic of Sunny’s voice.

The green buck sprinted to a red box on the wall and used the little hammer on a chain to break the glass. “Not yet! I have to get her out!” He mashed the button and a fire bell joined the drone of the alarm. Sprinkler heads popped out of the ceiling, hissing as water rushed through the pipes, and all the lights on the keycode panels for the confinement rooms blinked green.

Candy slumped as her mane soaked through and hung around her eyes. “Really?” she glared up at the sprinklers. “Really?”

Blaze dashed back up to them, sliding to a stop and splashing Candy and Sunny with more water. Candy looked like she wanted to grab him on either side of the head and squeeze. “Why’d you do that?” Sunny asked.

Blaze ran by them and Sunny hurried to follow. “It opens the doors!” By now, random doors along the length of the hall were bursting open, scrawny or confused ponies stumbling out into the hall. Sunny dodged around an unsteady mare, only to have Willow bowl the pony over behind him.

“Sorry,” Willow yelled back.

The three of them were forced to slow as Blaze skidded to a stop ahead of them and yanked open a door. Willow looked back, jittering with impatience. “We have to go!”

Sunny stepped into the room to see that Blaze was standing in front of a yellow, earth pony mare. “Wish!” Blaze urged. “Wish, let’s go. We can get out of here!”

Sunny’s eyes were drawn to the needle lines up the mare’s left foreleg, then to the incision scars along her spine, neck, and belly. Once again, he was overwhelmed with a burst of anger and disgust towards the ponies would would do this.

Blaze reached up and grasped the mare by the shoulders. “Wish!” She only looked back at him blankly, her eyes wide and vacant. Sunny hardly registered as Candy and Willow filed in on either side of him. Something wasn’t right with the yellow mare.

Blaze wrapped the mare in a hug. “Please! Please, Wish! Come on!”

“Blaze!” Sunny screamed suddenly, mind rushing in terror as he watched the yellow mare spread her jaws. Before he had time to move more than a foot, she had her teeth fastened in Blaze’s neck. Blood sprayed from the buck’s neck as the mare he trusted so dearly tore his flesh like tissue paper. He screamed and tried to pull away but she released and bit again, this time a little higher up.

Sunny couldn’t move. What was happening was a sort of... horror, a nightmare.

Blaze managed to pull free and he stumbled backwards, blood pouring from the fatal wound in the side of his neck. “Wish?” he asked, trembling. “W-what did they do to you?”

The mare didn’t move. She stood there, staring blankly ahead, face soaked in blood. “Wish...” Blaze took an unsteady sideways step, then turned back to look at Sunny. “T-they killed her,” he slurred. “They...” His eyes rolled to the top of his head and he collapsed on the floor in a pool of his own blood. Wish stepped forward to sniff the stallion, then opened her mouth.

Sunny looked away. “Celestia...”

“We need to get out of here,” Willow said blankly, looking at the sight Sunny refused to view. “This place... This place is bad.”

“Let’s go!” Candy hollered, breaking the daze. Willow jumped, then grabbed Sunny by the mane and yanked him back into the hallway, where it was still raining.

“She just—” Sunny spluttered. “I can’t believe it.”

“Come on, Sunny,” Willow nudged him forward, causing him to shy away from her. “These ponies will get thiers.”

“Come on!” Candy yelled from ahead, shoving a spluttering pony out of her way and smacking another that got too close to her. “I just want to get out of here! Now get your idiot faces out of mine!”

Willow trotted forward and fell in beside the suited mare, giving her a tender look. “This isn’t you, Candy. I know you. Just take it easy.”

Candy huffed, banging open the door out the end of the hall and beckoning them through. “How do you know this isn’t me? You don’t know me.”

Willow flicked her tail now that they were out of the sprinklers, splattering the floor with water. “You’re stressed and agitated.” She smiled a little. “Besides, you can always tell who a mare is in bed. Trust me—I know you.”

Candy didn’t reply. Sunny stifled his laughter with a cough. So it really had happened! Willow did swing both ways. He would have to tease her about it later, get back at her for all the teasing she’d given him.

Willow butted the door ahead of them and it rocketed open, smashing against the wall and breaking free from the top hinge.

He rethought. Maybe it was a better idea to never bring it up.

Any second now, he expected to turn down a hall and come face to face with a platoon of armed guards. But, to their immense luck, they didn’t see a single pony with every turn in the hall apart from the occasional patient they’d freed.

Candy led them around a bend determinedly, eyes vigilant. “This is the was the way I originally planned us to go. You know, before we took the express route.”

They burst out into a colorful hall and Sunny had to rub his eyes to get them to focus. He had grown so used to white everything that color was a foreign sight. Two more doors later they found themselves entering the lobby through a side door. Sunny started forward, but Candy grabbed him by the tail and pulled him back, shaking her head frantically. She pointed to the two armed guards flanking the counter and and four more at the front doors. She led them quietly along the side of the lobby, keeping low and close to the wall. She then led them around to the a door labeled for use only by personnel and ushered them inside. Sunny had no idea how they weren’t spotted — the guards must have been blind; the three of them had made such conspicuous targets.

Candy closed the door behind her and let out a long breath, relieved. Sunny looked around the dirty room, taking in what very little it had to view. Two large contraptions sat against the far wall, humming noisily, held off the concrete by a series of small springs to prevent vibration. This had to be the air handling room Candy had mentioned.

There was a sudden burst of racket from outside the door and a stallion’s voice sounded from the lobby. “That’s them!” Sunny tensed. They had been seen — their little escapade was over. More noises and confused yells from the lobby. “Freeze! Don’t come any further!”

Sunny allowed himself a guilty sigh of relief when he realized that pony outside wasn’t speaking of them.

“I said don’t move!”

Candy trotted over to one of the air handlers and yanked off one of the ventilation panels. “They must have spotted the ponies Sunny’s friend let loose.” She reached her head into the large vent and dragged out an assortment of bags, then a familiar-looking, black battle saddle.

Willow pranced forward happily. “You’ve got my bags!”

“Quiet!” Candy snapped in a loud whisper. “They’ll hear us.” She looked back to the pile of supplies and nuzzled out a white medical case. She flipped the lid and revealed a neat row of healing potions. “With interest.”

Sunny flinched as two gunshots sounded from outside. “Get back!” hollered a mare.

Candy motioned Sunny over and pointed to the battle saddle. “Here, put this on.”

It was his old battle saddle, complete with the sleek carbine on the right and the shotgun on the left. “You realize this is going to turn me into a walking target, right?”

She slung the heavy device over his back and began fastening the straps. “Those crazies out there aren’t going to keep the guards busy for long, and when they wrap up, it’s standard procedure to do a full search of the area to neutralize all threats. I hate to say this, but it may be shoot or be shot.” He fidgeted as he yanked one of his belly straps tight, then reached underneath him for the other one.

He jumped suddenly and yanked away, nearly knocking her over. “Watch it!” He huffed a breath of air and took a slow intake.

Candy fed the strap around him and managed to shrug while doing it. “Sorry, forgot you were a stallion.”

Willow gave Candy a contemplating look before levitating her saddlebags from the ground. It only took a her a moment to strap on the light set of bags. She hopped twice, testing to make sure it was secure. Levitating the white medical box towards her, she slipped it through a strap on the left and cinched it tight to the side of her bag. From one of the pockets, she produced her small, automatic pistol and strapped it to her inner foreleg.

There were more gunshots from outside, mixed with yells and screams. Sunny tried to ignore it, instead examining the battle saddle and taking comfort from its familiarity. He remembered the way Moon had said that it went well with his mane and allowed himself a small smile. He checked the load in each weapon and was pleased to find the rifle magazine full with fifteen rounds and the shotgun full with eight in the barrel. Taking each bit, he tested the safeties, then checked to make sure the lines were taught.

“I’m ready,” he declared, swallowing his anxiety.

Willow took place beside him. “Ready.”

Candy stripped off the environment suit, her sleek, but muscular body damp from sweat. Her mane still wet from the sprinklers, hung at about the same height as her belly, the red and white strands glistening in the light. This was the first time Sunny had seen her without barding and his eyes were inexplicably drawn to her flank, then her cutie mark. Of course, it was candy cane—six of them actually, all crossing one another so it looked a little like a candy cane pinwheel.

Willow thumped him on the side of the head. “What are you looking at?”

He gave her a sheepish look. “I hadn’t seen her cutie mark yet.”

Willow glared at him for a moment, disbelievingly, then smiled. “You are too innocent, Sunny.”

Candy crossed to the door, hobbling on three legs as she tried to strap a pistol to one. She finished securing the pistol and held her ear to the door to listen. “Sounds like those ponies out there are getting their rumps kicked.” She huffed. “We let them out to die, great.”

“What do you mean, too innocent?” Sunny asked Willow with a frown.

Willow ducked her head a little. “Because, that mare’s hot enough to belong in a playmare magazine. You aren’t going to see a flank like that in a long time.”

Sunny looked at the spot Willow’s eyes were focussed: Somewhere around Candy’s rear legs and her middle. “So, are you saying I should be eyeballing her?”

Willow nodded. “Yeah, any normal stallion would. Heck, most mares would.”

Sunny rolled his eyes. “Any normal stallion, Willow.”

She gave him a friendly nuzzle, which he shied away from. “Right, I forgot you like stallions.”

He covered his face as Willow cackled. “If you really think I’ve got a thing for stallions then I might as well shoot myself.”

She shook her head. “Nah. I just like to mess with you.”

“Um...” Candy looked between the two of them impatiently. “Are we going to talk about Sunny, or are we going to get out of here before they kill us?”

Willow grinned behind her hoof. “Sure thing.”

Sunny dropped the smile and flipped off the safeties on the two weapons. “Let’s go then.”

Willow scooted in close to him. “Since you have the big guns, I’ll just kind of hide behind you, if that’s okay.”

Candy took the other side. “Don’t worry, Willow.” She smirked. “I’ll protect you from the bad ponies.”

Willow gave her a playful glare. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to protect you from my hoof in your face.”

Sunny smiled lightly. It was great to have the old Willow back. This was the happiest he’d seen her since her ordeal. It almost felt normal. Taking a deep breath, he reached forward and kicked open the door.

The lobby was in chaos. REA members, Bottle of Progress staff, and escaped patients ran around in a frenzy, attacking one another brutally. A red pony sprinted for the door with a cheer, only two have to bullet wounds blossom from his chest. He ran a few more feet and stumbled before dropping to the polished floor and sliding to a stop in a streak of blood.

A blue, uniformed mare beat a patient aside and came face to face with Sunny, eyes widening slightly. He lowered his head to her and mouthed the bit, giving her a clear warning. Her eyes shot to the bit for her battle saddle, but shone with the realization that she wouldn’t be able to reach it in time. She raised her head and screamed: “Armed target near—”

She took a shotgun blast to the front and when down in a bloody heap. Sunny took a moment to balk at what he had just done. He had just killed a pony. This wasn’t a zombie; this was a living, breathing pony.

“Sunny!” Willow bellowed over the racket, driving her head into his flank. “Move!” All guns had turned on him the moment he had fired the shotgun, the lobby seeming to freeze in place for a moment. The three of them bolted across the lobby, bullets whizzing by and pitting the ground at their hooves. Miraculously, none hit a mark. Sunny skidded into a corner behind the receptionist’s desk and the mare taking cover there eeped.

“Don’t hurt me,” the older mare pleaded, scooting away from Sunny as Willow slid into cover behind him with Candy.

“Come out!” A commanding voice yelled over a few stray gunshots.

“You first!” Willow yelled. She winced as several bullets tore through the desk beside her. “Never mind! Stay where you are!”

Sunny jumped up and fired both weapons, then ducked down again before he could even see if he had hit anything. A mare screamed somewhere and there was the sound of a small scuffle, then a gasp. “Would somepony help me out here?” a mare asked angrily. “I’m only shot through the damned leg!”

Sunny peeked over the desk to see a row of ponies, all with guns trained on them. A thick stallion raised a powerful-looking rifle and Sunny jumped down again. A shot rang out like the blast of a canon and Sunny cried out as blood sprayed his face and front.

“Who’s hit!?” he cried, looking fearfully at Willow, then to himself. Had it been him? He looked over himself. Was there a hole in him somewhere?

“Damn,” whispered the receptionist, looking down at the hole torn in her side. Her eyes rolled and her whole body hitched twice before she collapsed in a heap on the floor, leaving a smoking hole in the wood behind her.

While Sunny was sorry for the mare, he also felt a guilty relief that it had been the mare, and not him or Willow.

“Got it!” Candy cheered, voice muffled. She pulled her head from her bag, biting on two grenades. Willow took them both from the striped mare and magically pulled the pins.

“Special delivery!” Willow bellowed, tossing the grenades over the counter. She ducked down and covered her ears.

Sunny ducked as well, coming near muzzle-to-muzzle with the white mare. “Special delivery?” he scolded.

There were two loud bangs from the lobby and several yells and shouts of pain.

Sunny glared at Candy from his position. “Those grenades suck! They didn’t even blow up!”

Candy furrowed her brows at him and jumped as a bullet pitted the wall above her. “They aren’t made to make a big boom, they’re anti-personnel grenades. They’ll shred you with shrapnel if you're close but they won't bring a roof down on your head.”

Sunny jumped up and fired three more shots, receiving twenty in return. “Don’t you have a gun!?” he complained to Candy, watching as a lock of his black mane fell to the floor, having been shot off.

“Yeah, but I’m not about to go poking my head up to shoot it.”

Willow looked down at the automatic pistol strapped to her foreleg, then rolled her eyes. “Forgot I had it.” She pulled it from its holster and magically held it over the counter, firing blindly.

Sunny jumped as a surge of green magic blasted by his face. He turned his head to see a familiar dark-pink mare, Cotton, charging at them from the side of the desk, a small pistol clenched in her jaws. Without thinking, he spun and trained the rifle on her. The mare’s eyes widened in realization and she skidded to a sideways halt, dropping the pistol. Sunny fired and the bullet struck her in the upper hind leg. She crumpled and went down like a sack of flour, letting out a strangled cry of pain.

Sunny felt terrible. What had Cotton been thinking? She wasn’t a fighter—she was a lab junkie. She had charged him with a pistol, and he had shot her. He watched as she dragged herself across the floor with her forehooves, trailing blood, eyes streaming while she cried in terror. To bash at his already quakey conscience, he was struck with a cruel but effective idea. He tried to shut the idea down, but it was the only thing he could think of.

“Willow.” He jabbed the mare in the side to get her attention. “Can you pull her over here with your magic?” He pointed at Cotton.

Willow looked the the crying, bleeding mare with skepticism, but nodded. Her horn glowed a dark-red and Cotton was dragged towards them, screaming. Once she was behind the safety of the counter, Sunny rolled her over with the rifle barrel, not wanting to touch her.

Cotton looked up at him, terror in her eyes. “I’m sorry I experimented on you! Please, don’t kill me.” she covered her face fearfully. “What do you want?”

He bared his teeth at her. “Are you in charge of this facility?”

“Why would you—”

“Answer the question!”

“N-no,” she stammered. “The REA owns the facility, Grayhooves and me just run it.”

Sunny huffed. “Good enough.” He turned to Candy. “Hold her up.”

Cotton balked. “W-what?” Candy exchanged a glance with Sunny and understanding passed between the two. Candy worked her head under one of Cotton’s forehooves and lifted her, much to Cotton’s horror. “Put me down!”

“All of you, hold your fire!” Sunny yelled, praying to Celestia for this to work. Candy shoved Cotton over on the counter so her upper half was in sight. Sunny stood up cautiously, placing his forehooves on the bullet-scarred countertop. Countless guards and REA members barred the doorway. Most of the escaped patients lay dead or bleeding out on the floor. The ones that hadn't been shot down were cuffed to a bar at one end of the room.

Swallowing his doubts, Sunny leaned forward and pressed the barrel of his shotgun against the side of Cotton’s head. “Don’t,” she pleaded. “Please, for all of what you believe in, don’t.”

“Let us go, or she dies,” Sunny said in the firmest tone he could muster. He hoped his bluff would hold — there was no way, absolutely no way, that he could shoot this mare. Hopefully, the ponies with all the guns didn’t know that. Several metallic noises were coaxed from some of their rifles and Sunny felt his ears fold down. It wasn’t going to work. They were going to shoot him.

“Wait!” a pony called, causing him to nearly jump out of his coat. Grayhooves pushed out of the line, taking stance in front of the guards. “Don’t shoot—we need her!” He turned to look at them. “She has the passcodes to essential medical research that nopony else knows.”

The small mare in charge of the force swore under her breath, “Are you sure nopony else knows them? It’s not written down anywhere?”

“No,” Grayhooves replied urgently.

She looked to Cotton. “Yell us the passcodes.”

There was a long, awkward silence.

Despite her grimaces of pain and the hitching of her breath, Cotton managed to produce a glare. “Do you think I’m that stupid!? If I tell you, then you won't need me anymore, then you’ll shoot him and he’ll shoot me!” She choked back a sob. “Fuck you!”

The mare stomped a hoof. “Tell us!”

“Shoot me!” Cotton returned.

“I’m telling you!” Grayhooves yelled to them. “If she dies, we’re losing years of medical information, not just modern research, but old data as well—data we’ve had since before the breakout.”

“Please,” Cotton choked, whimpering. “Put me down. It hurts. It hurts.” Sunny nodded to Candy and the striped mare began to lower Cotton. He kept the shotgun trained on her head.

“Let us go, and she lives.”

Luckily, Grayhooves seemed to have seized control of the situation, and was handling it sensibly. “Let them go.” The mare whom had asked for the codes stamped over to him and the two took up a whispered argument. The assorted REA soldiers and Bottle of Progress staff members stood around, mingling idly with one another, waiting for their commanders to settle.

“Look,” Grayhooves stated after a moment. “There’s no way they can leave the city, and they know it.” He looked to the three anxious ponies and one terrified mare behind the check-in desk. “I know one of those ponies. She’s a good mare, but she’ll kill to save her friends. Trust me, I ran three psyche tests on her.”

“I can’t walk,” Cotton moaned. She looked down at the pool of her own blood and whimpered.

Sunny decided to use this to his advantage. “She’s bleeding out,” he said to the ponies. “We’ll give her the care she needs, but not here. If you don’t let us go soon, she’s going to die.” He blinked at Candy for her attention. “Could you carry her?”

Candy nodded and stooped down for Cotton. Sunny—rather awkwardly—helped the mare onto Candy’s back. Cotton screamed in agony as her leg twisted and the wound’s surface broke, sending new torrents of blood down her leg. With a worried expression, Sunny realized his bullet had torn completely through her left hind leg and had seated itself in her belly. He had really torn her up.

Willow dug in her saddlebags and pulled out a gauze pad, then realized the extremities of the wound and chewed her lip. She pulled out two more pads and a bandage. “Sorry about this,” she said apologetically to to Cotton before unrolling the bandage.

Cotton’s head rolled around and she looked back Willow. “Sorry for, wh—” She screamed as the white mare applied the two gauze pads to each side of the wound, then wrapped them tightly with the bandage. “Celestia,” she squeaked. “Shit... Kill me! Just kill me now!”

Keeping his shotgun on Cotton, Sunny led them out and around the counter, towards the front doors. “You aren’t going to follow us,” he said, sounding much bigger than he felt. The line of ponies parted as he and his friends left the counter and made their way to the door. All eyes were on them as they exited the building, out into the street.

Just to be safe, Willow closed the double doors behind them and bent the two steel handles around each other.

An injured and bleeding mare, a pegasus wearing two guns, a white mare covered in blood and another one that looked like a candy cane. They didn’t exactly blend in.

A curious buck trotted up and squinted at them. “Did you just break out of that testing place?”

“Yep,” Willow replied casually as she trotted along, procuring an annoyed glance from Sunny.

He cocked his head, looking a little skeptitive. “Well... are you dangerous?” For whatever reason, he trotted along beside them as they walked.

Willow shrugged and flicked her tail in Sunny’s direction. “Only if you piss off the orange one.”

The buck made distance between himself and Sunny, watching them from a distance. Sunny gave Willow a sour look. “Thanks.” Now they were drawing looks from everywhere. Ponies watched fearfully from windows of from street corners, not scared enough to run but not brave enough to approach them.

Cotton groaned and shoved her face into Candy’s neck. “I hate you ponies.” Sunny kept walking, wanting to get off the street as soon as possible. After a while of aimlessly wandering, he began to realize that Baltimare seemed to be one big maze of streets with ponies occupying nearly every inch of it. A small group of onlookers had begun to follow them, some looking curious, others a little shooty.

“We’re being followed,” he murmured.

Candy nodded. “I’d noticed.” She threw a glance to the mare on her back. “Look, we have to do something or this mare’s gonna’ die. She’s still losing blood — I can feel it running down my coat.” She gave a little shudder.

Cotton turned her head to glare at Sunny; it looked more like a pouty face. “Why’d you have to shoot me in one of the biggest muscles in my body?”

“Hey,” Sunny said in honest defense. “I was aiming for your girth. You’re pretty lucky I missed.”

Candy squinted at him. “Girth?”

Willow rolled her eyes. “It’s a spot right behind the forelegs where all of a pony’s vitals are.”

The striped mare’s eyes dawned in understanding. “Oh, the killzone.”

“Is that what the REA calls it?” Willow asked with an irritated flick of her ears.

Candy shrugged. “Well, they pointed to a picture of a pony and said ‘shoot there,’ so basically, yeah, the killzone.” She looked to Sunny. “Since when do you start using anatomical terms?”

He shrugged. “It sounded better than saying middle, and it wouldn’t have been right to say belly.”

Cotton lifted her head, but then slumped, eyes rolling to the top of her skull. “Great,” Candy said irritably. “She just went as limp as a cooked noodle.” She did a little hop to position the mare on her back. “Is she out?”

Sunny nodded. “Yeah, we need to get her fixed.” He didn’t think he’d be able to live with himself if Cotton died. She had kept him captive and run tests on him, but she had never been bad to him. She was just doing her job—that was no reason to hate her... or shoot her... or kill her.

“Hey,” a whispered voice called, the whisper proving to be rather loud. Sunny looked up, eyes darting around frantically. “Hey!” they voice repeated, a little louder this time. Sunny spotted the source of the call: a brown, unicorn stallion peeking out at them from the cracked lobby door of a multi-story apartment building.

“Go around the back.” He made a gesture with his hoof, just in case Sunny hadn’t heard. Sunny pointed at himself, then made a curious face. The stallion nodded frantically, then disappeared into the building.

Sunny exchanged a glance with his two companions, who had seen the exchange as well. “Well?”

“Think it’s the REA following us?” Willow asked.

“Yeah,” Candy added. “It could be a trap.”

Sunny nickered. “Well, we have to do something about Cotton and we have to get off the streets. We don’t have much of a choice.” Making up their minds for them, Sunny changed course and led them swiftly between buildings. In an attempt to throw off any ponies that may have been following them, he quickly led them around a small apartment and through another before making his way to the backdoor of the first.

The brown stallion was waiting for them anxiously by the rear fire-escape door of the building. “Who are you?” Sunny asked rather bluntly as they came to a stop in front of him.

“Did you really break out of Bottle of Progress?”

He frowned. “How do you know that?”

The stallion beckoned them through the door and into an unkempt hallway. “You three are all over the radio.”

Sunny gave him a long, untrusting look. “So, what are you doing?”

He led them up a steep flight of stairs. “Helping you.” He shooed some foals playing in the hall back into their apartment. “All of Baltimare is going to be looking for you. You need a place to hide.”

Candy huffed at the weight on her back as they hurried up the stairs. “So, what, are you some sort of thrillseeker or something?”

He threw her a quick look. “Pardon?”

“Most ponies aren’t too keen to go out of their way to help ponies that the REA wants stopped.”

The stallion took a moment to reply, taking them up another flight of steps. “That place was a bad place before the infection. I doubt it’s changed much. Anypony who made it out of there is a friend of mine.” He stopped them in front of room 5-17.

“Do you trust him?” Willow whispered to Sunny, watching with judging eyes as the stallion produced a key and worked it into a trippy lock on the door.

Sunny gave the tiniest of nods. “He seems genuine. Either way, I don’t think we have a choice. He’s offering shelter and if what he said is true, we’re wanted by the whole city.”

The stallion opened the door and beckoned them in quickly, throwing anxious glances both directions down the hall. When they were all in he slipped inside and slammed the door, sliding the deadbolt over and setting the chain lock. He took a deep breath and slicked back his mane. “It’s not much, but it’s home,” he said in a falsely-casual voice.

They were in a small, vintage-style apartment. The living room was combination of the dining room and there was a little walk-in kitchen behind the worn-down dining room table. The walls were clad with faded, wooden paneling and the carpet was a creme color, turned a little brown in the traffic areas from dirt and age. A short hallway led off from the living room, with two doors on either side and one at the end.

“Be warned,” a charismatic stallion said from a small radio on the kitchen counter, “The ponies we have just described are armed and extremely dangerous. They are said to have broken out of Bottle of Progress laboratories and are mentally unstable. If you happen to see these ponies, do not approach them or interact with them under any circumstances. Contact the nearest REA official immediately, and leave the area.”

“Oh, honey, you’re home.” A green mare with a pink mane trotted out of the hallway, a little smile on her face. “Have you been listening to the radio. There’s these ponies that—” She stopped in front of the brown stallion, one hoof still half-raised in the air. Her eyes widened in shock as they traveled over the four ponies behind him.

“What the hay is this?” she asked the brown stallion, who looked like he wanted to do nothing more than sink through the floor. “Those are the ponies from the hospital, aren’t they?”

“Well—”

“They are!” she yelled, not allowing him to speak.

“Surprise?” he said with a forced smile.

Sunny could practically feel the anger radiating the mare. “You know...” She fell back on her rump, suddenly flaccid. “It was one thing when you tried to raise that baby manticore, or let that runaway stay here, but they’re felons!”

Willow pulled Candy forward with her tail, past the green mare. “Sorry,” she apologised, sounding not at all sorry. “But I have to get this mare patched up before she kicks the bucket.” Candy lowered Cotton to the ground in front of a woven couch and Willow set to work.

“They’re not felons,” the stallion defended. He turned to Sunny. “You’re not felons, right?”

Sunny tried ignore the image in the corner of his eye; Willow digging in Cotton’s belly with a pair of forceps.

“They said the orange one was a murderer,” said the mare.

The brown stallion turned to Sunny. “Are you a murderer?”

Sunny took a moment to reply. “Well... I did shoot a pony... Three ponies...” Sweet Celestia. He was a monster. Killing zombies was one thing, but he had killed a living pony. He fell back on his haunches, eyes unfocusing. “I’m a murderer.”

What had he done? That mare he had killed, she could have had a family, a very special somepony. And just like that, he had taken all of that away from her. He remembered the look in her eyes as clear as if he had taken a snapshot of her final moment. She was reaching for the bit on her battle saddle, but she knew it was of no use; the pony in front of her was readied. Her eyes had sunken with the realization a second before she had raised her head to yell—to give her companions a warning. Then had filled her full of buckshot. She was dead. She was dead on his hooves.

“I’m a murderer,” he repeated blankly.

The green mare motioned irritably in his direction. “See, he admits it,” she snapped, rubbing in the fact that she was right.

“Sunny,” Willow called to him, never taking her eyes off of Cotton. “Come over here.”

In a sort of trance, he crossed the room to Willow and sat down beside her. “Yeah?”

“You aren’t a murderer. You were doing what needed to be done.” He tried to speak but she silenced him with a look. “If anypony’s a murderer, I am. I know for sure I’ve killed two ponies so far, and that’s not counting failed surgeries, or the stallion I OD’d.” She shrugged. “Honestly, you get to live with it. In a world filled with zombies, killing a pony doesn’t seem as bad as it used to be.”

“You’re not making me feel any better.”

“Give me those bandages,” Willow said urgently to Candy, her full attention back to Cotton.

“Well what do you suggest we do?” the brown stallion burst out angrily.

The mare sat back and threw out her hooves. “I don’t know! But just think of what’s going to happen if we get caught with them.”

“You and I both know that the army doesn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground!”

“Put pressure here!” Willow yelled to Candy.

The mare jumped into action and pressed down on Cotton’s wound. “Can you save her?”

“Maybe,” Willow tore a package of bandages open with her teeth while levitating over a healing potion. “If I had blood for a transfusion, then yes. But whatever she loses here, she isn't getting back!”

“We can’t throw them out!” the brown stallion yelled. “They’ll be killed!”

“And if we’re caught with them, we’ll be killed!”

Sunny blinked. His head spun like a top. “Please,” he muttered, completely unheard over the clamour. “Enough.” The stallion and the mare both burst out at once, yelling at one another. “Shut up!” Sunny bellowed. The effect was instantaneous — Complete silence. “Look,” he said, taking a deep breath. “We just broke out of a testing facility after being taken captive and abused and flown halfway across Equestria, where me and my friend were threatened with death multiple times. They raped my friend in the testing facility and stuck so many needles in me that I felt like a pincushion. Then, I got shot at and nearly blown up and fell down ventilation shaft after I nearly killed myself trying to fly. Then, I was turned into a murder and a fugitive!” He was practically screaming as he continued. “Can I have some damned peace and quiet!?” He stood stiff as a board, breathing heavily, face burning.

Willow looked up from tilting a healing potion down Cotton’s throat. “Damn... Sunny.”

The brown stallion looked pleadingly to green mare. “Please.”

She groaned, then huffed, a tiny bit of sympathy shining in her eyes. “Fine. But don’t expect me to be happy about it!”

The stallion’s ears folded and he gave her a thankful smile.

“Done,” Willow declared with relief. “I’ve done all I can for her. From here on, whatever happens, happens.”

“Let’s hope she makes it,” Candy fretted. “She’s the only thing keeping the REA from shooting us on spot.”

Willow sat back approvingly and pointed to a bloody and slightly-mushroomed bullet sitting on a small tray. “Want your bullet back, Sunny?”

He glared at her. “Well you’re funny.”

Willow rolled her eyes and flopped over on the carpet, uncoupling the straps on her barding and rolling out of the apparel. “I know you feel bad about shooting her.” She rolled onto her back with a yawn and drew her hooves to her belly, looking up at the swirl-plastered ceiling. “Sorry for that.”

Sunny sat down beside her, looking at her upside down face. “Well you look tired. I thought you had zombie strength?”

“Pffft!” Willow spun one hoof in the air. “Sure, but I still get tired. I’ll tell you what I’m gonna’ do though. I’m gonna take a shower and get this blood off me.” She heaved a sigh and something in her eyes seemed to change. “I don’t feel right, Sunny... I’ve changed. Since those stallions... I’ve been having thoughts, bad thoughts. Sometimes I’ll see a pony, and I’ll just imagine them dead, and I’ll imagine that I did it.” She sniffed, eyes welling up with tears.

Sunny sighed internally. He was really hoping she had gotten over it. “It’s okay,” he said with as much comfort in his tone as he could muster with his sour mood. Candy sat a little ways away, head turned away but ears perked.

Willow sniffed again, making a little sound in her throat. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to let a pony touch me.”

Sunny swallowed. “I-I know I should say something comforting here, but honestly, I don’t know what to say.”

Willow got a certain look to her that Sunny didn’t at all like, and she smiled up to him. “But I don’t have to worry. You’ll take care of me. Right, Sunny?”

He blinked and kneaded the carpet with his forehooves. “W-what?”

She blushed a little. “You know, you’re the only pony I trust. I know you won’t hurt me.”

He positively balked at her. “No,” he said, a little louder than he had intended. “No way.” He shuddered. She was asking him... She wanted him! “No,” he repeated for emphasis.

Willow rolled onto her belly, her face sunken and eyes shining with hurt. Tears were now flowing freely and Sunny winced like he had been struck. “No, I mean, I like you,” he improvised desperately in an attempt to save himself. “I just don’t like you that way.”

She let out a low whimper. “I’m trying to fix myself, S-Sunny... I-I-I thought you could h-help me.”

“Willow.” He went to place his hoof on her shoulder, but stopped right above. “I can’t even touch a pony without trembling. How could I possibly—”

“Forget it!” Willow jumped to her hooves, nearly sobbing and shaking with anger. “I know it was too much to ask!”

Sunny didn’t know what to do. This was all falling apart around him and he hadn’t even been the one to build the delicate emotional tower. “Well, yeah it was a bit too much to ask! You can’t just expect me to follow up something like that. I’m... Well I’m... I’m me!”

One second, Sunny was looking into Willow’s hurt and angry face, the next, Willow’s hoof was meeting his face. Stunned, he lay flat on bis back with his head ringing like a bell. Willow stood over him, face teeming with so many emotions he couldn’t even read them all. “I hate you, Sunny!” She kicked him in the belly, causing him to curl into a defensive ball. “You’re the only pony who could help me get through this. I should have known you were such a... spineless jerk!”

She went for another kick, but stopped herself. She let out a strangled scream and turned away, stomping off down the hall. She opened the door to the bathroom at the end of the hall and slammed it shut behind her hard enough to crack the molding.

“Wow,” the green mare whispered. “And I thought we had problems.”

Candy glared at Sunny from where he recovered on the ground. “What did you do to her?” She placed her hoof on Cotton to make sure the mare was okay, then refocused on Sunny.

He cringed, pushing back to his hooves and massaging his muzzle. “It’s hard to explain... She asked me to do something I can’t do.”

The green mare looked over to what Sunny could now safely call her husband and smiled triumphantly. “Guess who’s got to fix the molding over the bathroom door? And scrub the blood out of the carpet.”

“Sunny.” Candy wrapped her tail around his neck and led him to the corner of the room.

He batted her tail away. “What?”

She gave him a sad smile. “You know, Willow likes you.”

Sunny rolled his eyes. “I know she likes me, but—”

“No,” she interrupted. “I mean, Willow really likes you.”

“What?” he asked, feeling as the color drained from his face.

“Haven’t you seen the way she looks at you, Sunny? How she was so protective of you in the skywagon?”

Sunny shook his head in denial. “No. No, she can’t.”

Candy pressed. “But she is. In Appleoosa, we did a lot of talking. She looks alright, but once you break her shell, she’s an emotional train wreck. Sunny, Willow isn’t the type of mare to fall in love. She may meet a nice mare or stallion and get some fond feelings, but that’s it; they’re just feelings. Sunny, Willow doesn’t fall for ponies, but she fell for you.”

He shook his head in a panic. “No! She can’t. I’m a terrible pony to care for. I don’t like ponies; I can’t. She might as well be chasing her own tail.”

“I’m just telling it how it is, Sunny. Willow cares about you. She cares more than you’ll ever know.”

Sunny turned away and yelled at the wall. “I don’t want anypony to like me! I can’t like them back and somepony always ends up getting hurt!”

There was a banging from the adjacent wall. “Shut up!” an old stallion’s voice rasped loudly from the next apartment. “I’m tryin’ to take a nap!”

“You mean like Moon?” Candy shot back sharply.

“I—” He stopped himself and took a deep breath. “I am not ready for anything with anypony. I am not ready emotionally and I sure as hay can’t handle anything physical.”

She gave him a sad look. “I think you are; you just don’t know it yet...” She smiled and hung her head. “You best hope Moon and Willow get along if you ever meet up with your friends again.”

He scrunched his brow. “Why’s that?”

“Because you’re going to have two mares gunning for you, and it’s a battle you aren’t going to win.”

Sunny slumped. “Kill me, please.”

Candy rolled her eyes and placed a hoof on him, causing him to tense and look at her hoof like he was going to blow it up with his mind. “Sunny, Willow really needs a friend right now. She told me what happened to her while we walked. She needs somepony to be there for her; at least be that.”

She nodded. “I understand.”

“No, you don’t.” He looked her straight in the eye. “Can you imagine not being able to touch anypony? When you touch a pony, your belly churns and your flesh starts to crawl and all you want to do is get away? Not able to care for a pony, really care, because you’re afraid that they’re going to leave you? You want to care, but you can’t; you want to let ponies touch you, to... to be with them, but you can’t. On good days, I can touch somepony without freaking out. Then there’s days when even thinking about it almost makes me throw up.” He looked steadily into her widened eyes. “So no, you don’t understand.”

* * *

Sunny stood in the dark of the apartment outside the door to the guest room where Willow had taken refuge. He could hear her faint whimpers from inside, and a faint light escaped from below the door.

Candy and Cotton lay asleep on the couch. Candy had hoofcuffed herself to the wounded mare. Sunny allowed himself a small grin at the thought. Cotton Candy. Funny.

He took a shaky breath. Was he really about to do this? He wasn’t only going to try for Willow, he was trying for himself. Swallowing his doubts and fears, he pushed into the room.

Willow lay on her side, the covers below were shifted and crumpled. Slowly, she lifted her head from the tear-streaked pillow. “What do you want?” she asked in a voice little more than a whisper.

Sunny closed the door behind him and tried to think of how to proceed. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “What I said back in the living room was a little harsh.”

Willow dropped her head back to the bed and looked up at the ceiling. “No, don’t apologise. I’m the one that should be sorry. I asked you for something I knew you wouldn’t do, then got mad at you for it.” She sniffled, fresh tears begging to flow. “I said I hate you... I don’t hate you, Sunny.”

He plodded slowly up to the guest bed. “I know you don’t hate me.”

Willow closed her eyes and shook her head. “Yeah...”

“I know,” he said carefully, not quite sure how she would react. “Candy told me.”

She sighed. “Great, now you know.”

Sunny couldn’t bear to see Willow this way. She was always the strong-minded and strong-headed one. She was the one that seemed to keep everything going. Having her like this... This wasn’t Willow — this was some scared, insecure pony in Willow’s body.

Although he still dreaded the idea that Willow had a thing for him, he still found himself curious. “When did it start?”

She rubbed her eyes and smiled. “In the hospital, in Desert Sage. You were so cute in confinement. It was like watching a puppy in a box. You were just so energetic. Then I got to checking you every day while you were in your self-induced coma. It was my fault you almost died, and I felt responsible for you. You... you started to grow on me.”

He blinked. “For that long?”

She sighed. “I figured you’d end up with Moon, so I tried to ignore it. But then it was just me and you, here. And... you were there for me. It all just sort of...” She stopped, needing to say no more.

“Willow, you know why I haven’t taken to Moon?” She perked her ears at him. “Because I can’t let myself. It’s this fear I have. I’m afraid to get close to ponies because I’m afraid something will happen, and they’ll leave.”

Her eyes brightened the tiniest bit. “Sunny, I would never leave you.”

He placed his forehooves on the bed to look at her. “I know you wouldn't, but you could die, or I could. Everypony dies.”

She flinched like he’d lashed out at her. “I don’t have anything to say to that.” She shifted hesitantly, looking at him with contemplation. “Do you think you might be able to help me, maybe, try and get past this?”

Sunny thought for a long while, examining the bedspread. Willow didn’t press or make a sound as she patiently waited for his answer. “I can try to help. But I can’t, can’t, do anything extreme.” Fighting back his nerves, he climbed onto the bed and sat down beside Willow so as her belly faced him, not feeling comfortable enough to lay. He forced a little laugh. “You have trouble touching ponies... You sound like me.”

Willow shook her head. No, I can touch ponies, but I have to be the one doing it.” She was quiet for a long moment, just looking at him. “So...” She shifted, drawing her legs in close. “Do you want to try?”

He swallowed. “I’ll try... What do you need me to do?”

Willow exhaled a long breath. “Just... put your hoof on me.”

He stuck out his hoof hesitantly. “Are you sure I have to do this?”

She nodded from where she lay. “I think I’d kill anypony else.”

“Well, that’s a nice thought.” He readied himself mentally, then gingerly placed his hoof on her coat, near her front shoulder. Today must have been one of his good days, because he didn’t jump away like the mare was electric. Unlike Willow, who was only stable touching a pony, he was the exact opposite. Touching another pony purposefully was even worse than being touched. Still, his nerves screamed and a familiar itch filled his mind.

Willow tensed and she looked up at him, eyes momentarily clouded in fear. She blinked, then the fear was gone, instead replaced with uneasiness. “Move back, Sunny.” She closed her eyes tight as Sunny slid his hoof to her middle.

Sunny tried to take deep breaths. He was insane; he was absolutely mad. Touching another pony, what was he thinking? His self-conscious screamed for him to pull away, but his determination and dedication to Willow urged him to hold strong.

Willow had begun to shake, her eyes pinched tight shut, hooves churning the bedspread. “Do you want me to stop?” he asked worriedly.

“No,” Willow squeaked. She cleared her throat, then spoke in a voice closer to her own. “No, I just— No. Don’t stop.”

Sunny felt that if he got any more uncomfortable, something in his brain would snap and all of his emotions would flatline. He watched, almost in a trance, as his hoof reached Willow’s hind leg.”

Willow whimpered and he tensed. After a moment, he resumed, setting his hoof lightly on her haunches, right next to her scalpel and and and needle cutie mark.

Suddenly, Willow jumped and he ducked just in time for her hoof to whoosh over his head. Willow rolled to her hooves, snarling. She took another swing at him and he didn’t move fast enough. Her hoof struck his shoulder and he was thrown off the bed to land painfully on the floor.

He scurried backwards across the carpet. What had he been thinking? His chest heaved as he hyperventilated. His whole body twitched and itched with the ghost feeling of his hoof on the mare. What had he been thinking? Stupid!

Willow looked down at him from the bed, new tears in her eyes. “Sunny, are you alright? I’m sorry.”

Shakily, he climbed to his hooves, trying to fight the bad case of tunnel vision which was overwhelming him. “Yeah... sort of.” He tried to put weight on his leg but his shoulder screamed, so he held it a little off the ground.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened. I-I lost control. I just—”

“I understand.” He rubbed his shoulder. “Your hooves are like sledgehammers.” He winced as a shudder racked his body. “Nope. Not doing that again.”

Willow nodded, but looked slightly down nonetheless. “It’s okay... Thanks for trying... I can tell you’re really uncomfortable right now.”

He shook the hoof he had ran across her flank. “Imagine the most uncomfortable you can feel, then multiply that by ten. Whenever I touch somepony, it literally hurts my brain. It hurts, mentally... if that makes any sense.” He rolled his eyes. “So, do you think you’ll really kill somepony if they touch you wrong?”

She hung her head over the edge of the bed. “I’d like to say no, but I’m not sure. I-I tried to kick your head off, even when I knew it was coming. I’m... afraid of what I’ll do if I’m not ready for it... I know exactly what it is—it’s traumatic recall. Touch brings back the memories.”

Sunny nodded in agreement, but had no idea why. “Well, I’m going to head back out to the living room and get to sleep.” He trotted to the door.

“Sunny, wait,” Willow called quietly. She looked at him sheepishly. “Could you... maybe... sleep by the door?” She folded her ears. “It helps me sleep. You know, like in confinement.”

He smiled lightly and sat down in front of the door. “Throw me a pillow.”

Willow fell back and tossed him a pillow. “Thanks, Sunny.”

He grabbed the pillow and positioned himself comfortably. “When are you going to start being the leader again?” he asked, yawning. “I don’t like being unofficially in-charge.”

Willow reached over and shut off the lamp on the nightstand. “I don’t know. I sort of like you being in charge.”

Sunny sighed into the pillow. “Goodnight, Willow.”

* * *

Two stallions walked slowly through the dark undergrounds. Their two sets of hoofsteps echoed ominously from the tiled concrete walls, setting them both on edge. A steady drip of water leaked from a cracked pipe along the length of the ceiling, serving as some sort of cruel palindrome.

Both stallions were clad in official REA uniform and sported the standard issue carbine and battle saddle. It was only of dead unluckiness and a mischarged spark battery that only the one walking on the right—the red one—had a working saddle lamp. The light was mounted to the left side of his battle saddle, opposite of the rifle. Due to the fact that the REA was scraping the bottom of their ornamental barrel, these lamps weren't exactly quality; they weren’t even run of the mill. This pony’s lamp had been fashioned from a running light of a crashed skywagon and wired to lead-acid battery which he had to lug around like some sort of exercise weight. Lead-acid batteries were a thing only found in the beforetimes of magical energy storage and production, and worked at about twenty percent of the efficiency of a modern spark battery half its size.

The one with the light looked to the blue pony on his left, who hovered just a little out of the lamplight. “Did you hear that?” Although his whisper had been quiet, it filled the tunnels almost as if he had yelled.

They both froze for a moment, listening. Blue looked to Red and breathed slowly through his nose. “Why are we even patrolling down here?” They started forward again, passing dirty benches lain in a square around a tiled support pillar. He glared at a moldy sign as they passed it.

‘Baltimare Central Station’

“What the hay did they use this place for anyways? I was never from Baltimare... I hate this place and all the advancement crap.”

Red shone his light over a few benches and a stucco trashcan. “They’re called subways. The city of Baltimare had them built three years ago. It’s all new technology. It’s a whole system of underground railways. The rails were electrified back when they pumped power down here. For a while they tried the rechargeable spark battery design in the engines, but it was too inefficient. The only trains with onboard power sources are the money trains.”

“Money trains?” Blue asked.

“Armoured train cars. The best way to take money across the city was to transport it underground. They put old-tech gem generators on them in case there was a power failure.”

Blue skirted the body of a rather large rodent sprawled out on the concrete platform. “What’s the point of an underground train?”

He clicked his tongue. “There were too many ponies living in Baltimare. They tried to fix the problem by switching to skywagon transportation, but once the skies got too crowded, down was the only way left to go.” He shone his light along the length of a train car as they walked. In a way, it resembled a train, but had no stack or boiler. The resemblance was of a box on wheels, but the roof was rounded and rippled aluminum siding ran its length. “Once the buildings get taller than they are wide, you run out of room for ponies.”

Blue squinted. “How do you know all that?”

Red stood a little straighter. “I was Baltimare’s central district officer in transportation affairs. To be honest, I liked it all a lot more ten years ago, before all these advances in technology and industry. There was hardly any crime, no skyscrapers. Ponies were more interested in being ponies than trying to fill a bathtub with bits.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Blue, blowing him off. “Why the hay are we on patrol down here? I mean, nopony ever comes down here. What’s the point? You know they locked the access gate behind us? That’s like saying, ‘hey, go look for zombies down here, but if you find any, you’re boned because you can’t get out until the end of the shift.’”

Red only smiled. “That’s why I left the gates unlocked. Does it look like I want to die down here?”

Blue returned the smile. “Nice,” the two shared a hoof-bump.

With a certain casual stiffness, the two made their way along the length of the train car. The side and doors were inscribed with a big ‘BR’, the two letters blending decoratively with each other. Blue rapped on the aluminum siding. “Think they still work?”

Red shone his light away from the path and through the windows of the car, which had began to collect dust. “Definitely. They haven’t been out of commision for very long. If you supplied them with power then they’d probably start right up... Why were you wondering?” He continued to examine the car, noticing smears in the dust on the windows. “Hello?” he asked at Blue’s lack of response. “Did you—”

He was gone... Red spun left, then right, frantically shining the powerful lamp around the platform tunnel. “Jack,” he whispered loudly. “Jack, you better not be screwing with me because I’m going to tear you a new flank if you are.” He gulped.

Red froze as something warm dripped onto his head. Eyes widening, he backpedaled and looked down at the ground in time to see a small shower of blood rain to the concrete. His mind screamed for him to run like a scared filly, but his body wouldn’t let him. Shaking, he slowly panned his light to the roof above.

Jack’s terrified eyes shone down at him as he hung upside down, blood running down his face, his mouth open in a silent wail. “Run,” he choked, blood seeping from his lips. He pinched his eyes shut at a wet tearing sound and his vocals crackled. Three, black shapes stood on the ceiling like four-legged spiders, tearing mercilessly at the blue stallion. Red stood frozen in absolute terror as he watched one of the creatures sink its fangs into Jack’s back and tear out his spine with a crunch and a squelching sound. The pony went limp and blood showered from above.

He fought the darkness at the edges of his vision and instead got a terrible case of jitters. One of the three looked down at him with it’s red, orb-like eyes and bared it’s fangs, flaring a pair of leathery, decayed wings.

Red screamed and bolted, unable to use his weapon on anything on the roof. He heard the hisses of the creatures behind him as they took chase and ran faster, praying to Celestia that his hooves not falter. The light on his back picked up more movement ahead and he skidded to a halt, hyperventilating in fear. Improvising quickly, he ran to the train car beside him and tried to pry open the hydraulic doors. There were more sounds behind him and he expected a sharp pain in his back any second now. “Shit!” he cried.

He managed to shove through the crack he had opened in the doors, but lost his carbine on the way in. Not daring to spend an extra second to retrieve it, he forced the doors closed again. “What...” He breathed heavily, jaw trembling. His voice came out in a little more that a squeak. “What was that?” It was quiet now, unnerving so soon after the traumatizing experience.

Cautiously, he crept up to the window. Were they gone? He caught a flash of red eyes before they crashed into the window, sending a wave of spiderweb cracks through the glass and shaking the whole car. “Shit!” He fell back, heart racing faster than a rabbit’s.

There were several thuds from the roof and scraping sounds from the steel above. The sound of breaking glass sounded from further along in the car and, instinctually he ran the other way. Bolting between rows of seats, he could hear them behind him, hear the pounding of their hooves on the roof and the breaking of glass. His own hooves thundered, breath coming in painful bursts. Fear and adrenaline carried him twice the speed his body should go, but it wasn’t enough.

The end of the car was nearing now—a safety door and window. There was no other option. He jumped and lowered his head, never thinking twice. The window gave and his body rocketed through the space, left leg catching on a shard of glass still fitted in the steel frame. In an uncontrolled fall, he crashed painfully down in the trackwell. He tried to scramble to his hooves, but fell back to the ground. Blood matted the concrete below, and the stallion looked back at the gash in his hind leg with a fallen heart.

More carefully, he picked himself up, but ran no further. He could not put weight on his damaged hind leg. Blood splattered the ground below, running from the wound like water squeezed from a sponge. Painfully, he took a few hobbled steps forward, but stopped panting heavily. Every movement sent an agonizing bolt of pain to his brain.

Ahead in the tunnel, dozens, no, hundreds of reflective yellow eyes looked back at him, never blinking. One screamed and ran for him and he drew his sidearm, a revolver of preference. The first one fell, but two more took it’s place. There was no way back now, the train completely obstructed the tunnel and those things were still back the way he had come. He fired three more of the high caliber revolver rounds and struck two more down.

No way back, no way forwards. The realization of the situation dawned on him. No way back, no way forwards... He drew back the hammer of the revolver and turned it on himself. One of the monsters looked down at him from the window of the train car and bared its fangs. More crept along the roof.

The stallion reached back and flipped off the lamp, letting the battery die with a whine.

A lightning bolt of muzzle flash filled the tunnel, then all was quiet.

Chapter 13 Dusty - Part one

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“Y'all just keep your eyes open now,” Dusty murmured quietly, eyeing the city ahead out the cab window of the locomotive. The cool air whipped his mane and ruffled his coat, cooling the burning sensation under his skin. “Ah don’t know exactly how this is goin’ to go.”

Canterlot appeared as a sort of beacon, and a terrifying one at that. The city had grown much in the years. More platforms had been built upon the side of the mountain, bridges and platforms connecting large sections of the suspended city. The original palace and courtyard still remained in the center of the city, hardly even seen amongst the towering, new-age buildings surrounding it. Most of the upper mountain was now a maze of streets and large buildings. Canterlot had grown in the years, and it had grown fast.

The tracks they traveled upon curved on ahead through a semi-residential neighborhood, just on the outskirts of the suspended city. There was a fair count of houses, but apartment buildings were beginning to pop up here and there, the owners probably having been in the process of buying out the whole neighborhood.

The dawn was still in it’s earliest stages, the sun not having risen yet from the east, in this case, the right. The amber lamp of the locomotive cut a path through the early blue, shining off broken windows of houses and abandoned wagons. The morning was one of pure tranquility; even the normal chugging of the locomotive seemed quelled, as if it knew not to disturb the peace. A single zombie watched dumbly as the engine passed, it’s eyes alight with the glow of the lamp as its head tracked them around a casual bend.

Snowglobe leaned into the pegasus’ side as he gazed out the window, nuzzling his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Dusty, we’ll make it.”

“Yeah,” he said distantly. “Yeah... we will.” The gray mare at his side filled him with a sort of joy, but he really wished she’d stop.

“Dusty,” Moon said quietly, taking his other side. “What’s the plan?”

He stared at the monstrous towers of Canterlot for a moment, then looked away to Moon. It took him a minute to form what he was going to say, brain moving a bit sluggishly. “Right, well, uh... Let’s see here. Ah’ve been on this line before. Once the tracks enter the city, we hit an elevated track. After a while they drop and run underground until you reach a railyard near the edge of the industrial district. That’s where we’ll take on water and coal. Then it’s just a short run through a switching station an’ another neighborhood. We cross a bridge, an’ we’re out of the city.” He nodded to himself. “We should be fine through it all as long as we don’t stop an’ we keep the zombies off the train.”

Moon gave a quick nod and headed for the coal tender. “I’ll go tell the others.”

Snowglobe waited for Moon to leave before she spoke again. “Dusty, what’s wrong?” She looked over at him worriedly.

He shook his head. “Nothin’.”

“Now don’t lie,” she persisted. “Looking at you is almost making me feel down. Now, what’s wrong?”

He shook his head again, hardly even noticing Snowglobe anymore. His mind swirled, filling with old memories and thoughts. He let them drift.

-ooOoo-

He had experienced this daydream before, many times before. If he could have sighed, he would have. It felt the same as reading an old story you’ve read a hundred times before, but you could never close the book. The book had to be read.

It was a cloudy day, one greatly appreciated by the farmponies; protection from the searing heat of the sun was always well-welcomed in the fields, especially now, when there were apples to be bucked, carrots to be picked, and fields to be tended.

A young, blue pegasus watched with boredom from the second story window of the farmhouse at the working fieldhands—some of them his brothers and sisters—as they busied about in the fields. He smoothed his dusty-brown mane back, keeping it out of his eyes, and continuously furled and unfurled his wings. He glared back at the feathery appendages and muttered a curse. Stupid wings. The things on his back marked him as different, as useless.

For his whole life he had lived here, but hopefully not for much longer. Thoughts of leaving, of making a life for himself, clouded his mind. What would it take? What would it take to just up and walk out that door, to never come back? Guts said go, but smarts said stay; it was all a matter of which one called stronger.

The door to the quadruple-bunkbed room burst open and two young colts charged in, laughing and jumping at one another. They both stopped as they spotted Dusty, and the red one on the left glared at him from behind. “Aren’t you supposed to be outside helping?” he asked rudely.

“Yeah,” the other added — a brown colt. “It is harvest season in case you don’t remember, and everyone older has to help.”

Dusty ignored them.

“Oh yeah,” the red one chimed. “He doesn’t like to go outside because then he has to work and be around the others.”

“You mean he has to try to work.” They both snickered.

“You both shut it!” Dusty snapped back at them.

“What?” the red one asked. “It’s not my fault you’re a pegasus when the rest of us are earth ponies.”

“Boys!” a deep mare’s voice yelled from downstairs. “Leave your brother alone, if he wants to be useless then let him be useless all by himself!”

“Fine, Mom,” they both groaned in unison.

“Go find a cloud to run away to,” the red one hissed as he made for the door. “I don’t care if Dad likes you, you don’t fit in right.”

Dusty, being in a particularly bad mood at the moment, spun and lunged at them. The blue one dodged backwards as Dusty butted the red one and tacked him to the ground. “One more word from you an’ ah’ll beat you so hard you’ll wish Dad’d take up hard cider again!”

“Sky!” screamed the mare downstairs. “Knock that off right now or I’ll tell your father.”

“Go on an’ tell him!” he yelled back. “I dealt with you for too long! Ah’m leavin’!” He picked his half-cowering brother up off the floor and tossed him into one of the bunkbeds. “Ah don’t get no respect here!” The idea had been on his mind for months now, years even. Even as the words left his own mouth, he was shocked, shock that came with the little rush of adrenaline that urged one to hold strong. It was unknown how or why he had finally decided, but the deciding was done.

“Sky, you better stop being how you’re being!”

“Oh yeah sure, like ah can just do that!” he shot back, storming out into the hallway. The wallpaper was a striped yellow and brown. Luckily, most of it was covered by family portraits or trinkets, and in one case, a giant wagon wheel. “And stop callin’ me Sky!” he added. “Ah like bein’ called Dusty!”

“Now you listen here, Sky! You’re using the name I gave you whether or not you like it!”

“The hay I will!” He kicked the banister as he rounded to the stairs, nearly tripped, regained himself, then stomped down the stairs. Flaring his wings, he shook free a few ruffled feathers.

“You’re going to wake your father!” she yelled in a voice loud enough to wake the dead.

“Good!’ he screamed back, equally loud. “Maybe then he’ll beat some sense into you!”

As he reached the bottom of the stairs, a brown mare darted out of the kitchen hall and barred his path to the front door, which was about fifteen feet away across the entryway. “You always were trouble!” she snarled. “I told your father you would ruin this family, but would he listen? Of course not! If it had been my choice, I would have left you in a ditch for the wild hogs!”

Dusty rolled his eyes at her. This was her normal rant; he had heard it before. She would always start off with how she knew he would be bad, and how his father was an idiot for not listening. Then she would go on and rant about his physical limitations, and then it would just go on and on and on.

A dark-brown mare with a dark green mane and tail so dark that it appeared black in the shade, poked her head into the entryway from the sitting room. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing, Dearie,” said Mother with forced kindness.

The dark brown mare glared. “I’m older than Dusty; why are you still calling me dearie?”

“It’s Sky, Honey.” The mare smiled. “You call him Sky.”

Dusty flared his nostrils. “Why don’t you talk to Yew like she’s a pony instead of just some kid.”

Yew was his sister, birthed closest to him back in his mother’s busy years. She had age on him by about a year.

“—you never help on the fields. You’re not strong enough to do anything useful around here,” she went on. “You can’t handle a plow. You can’t pull a cart.”

There it was. He groaned internally. “It’s because I’m a pegasus!” He had told her this countless times, but the idea that he was different never would seem to sink in for her. “Ah don’t have the strength that earth ponies do because ah’m supposed to fly. How am I supposed to fly if I’m built like a tank with legs?”

She nodded her head in agreement. “That’s exactly why I told your father not to keep you.”

Yew stepped out into the entryway, scowling a little. “Why don’t you leave him alone. I’m tired of hearing you rip on him every other day.”

Dusty blinked. This was not part of the routine. He looked to his sister, the only pony—besides his father—who hadn’t shown hostility towards him for his uselessness. “Ah’d stay out of this if I were you.”

She stepped determinedly up beside her mother. “She doesn’t need to talk to you like that.”

His mother shot Yew the worst of glares. “You want to be in the pen with your useless brother? Well go right ahead! See if I care.”

The whole house shook as a door slammed down the hall behind the stairs. “What in the name a’ Celestia herself is all that damned screamin’!?” A large, amber earth pony stomped his way into the entryway, tired eyes glaring around at the three ponies before him. “All you ponies screamin’ just ruined any sleep ah’m gettin’ today.”

“Talk to your son about it,” the mare said heatedly. “He says he leaving. Well I say it’s about time. All he ever does is sit around and eat our—”

“Get out of here an’ leave these two alone,” he gruffed dangerously, giving her a warning look. “Ah’ll talk to him.”

The mare huffed, but kept her brains about her and stalked off towards the kitchen. The large stallion looked at Yew next, who now stood a little unsurely. “You too,” he said lightly, still holding an air of intimidation to his voice. “Ah need to talk to Dusty alone.” Yew nodded at his command and made herself disappear. He looked to Dusty last. “Come with me.”

Dusty chewed his lip. “Dad, I—”

“Keep it shut. Come with me.”

“Okay.” Dusty hung his head, falling in behind his father as the elder stallion made down the back hall.

His father opened the door to the very back room—Dad’s sitting room—and beckoned the worried pegasus in. Inside this medium-sized room were several rugs and painted pictures of landscape. The walls were brown, almost blending in the the cushions placed on the floor.

Dusty’s father sat near the far wall and Dusty took a seat across from him, shifting nervously. He had only been called into this room twice before, and both times he had left unable to sit for a week. Dusty eyed his father nervously as the amber pony settled comfortably and gave him a long look, as if sizing him up.

“So, ah heard that argument with your mother,” he stated matter-of-factly.

Dusty knew that the opening was rhetorical, and waited for the next part.

“So, is true what you said?” he asked, not with anger, nor disappointment, just with simple calmness. “You really thinkin’ of up an’ leavin’?”

Dusty thought his response over carefully before replying. “Well, Pa... It’s just that ah don’t fit in at all. You know ah don’t get any respect around here except from my older sister.” He laughed with tension. “If she could, Mom’d stop feedin’ me.”

The stallion tilted his head to the right, then left. “Ah can see what you mean. So you’re sayin’ you want to leave then?”

“Well...” Dusty examined the stitching in the rug. “It’s not like ah ever wanted to leave you all, but... Ah just don’t fit in here an’ ah just don’t see any point in hangin’ around a place where everypony glares at me like ah’m dirt.”

Shaking his head, Dusty’s father looked up towards the ceiling, eyes filled with resilience. “There’s somethin’ ah should prob’ly tell you that ah been puttin’ off for a long time now, longer than ah should have let it go. If you really are fixin’ to leave, ah need to tell you before you head out.” He ran a hoof through his whitening, mud-brown mane. Finally, he looked back to Dusty. “You ain’t my son.”

Dusty blinked. “W-what?”

He shook his head again. “Ah never told you because ah didn’t think you’d be able to take it. It pains me deeply to say this, but you aren’t my kid.”

“B-but how? Why?” Dusty stumbled for something reasonable to say. This was a bigger kick in the face than that time a cow had kicked him in the face, figuratively speaking.

His father groaned, looking at his confused not-son. “Ah know exactly where all my kids came from, and when ah made them. Ah know that your mother started bloomin’, but it wasn’t from me. Ah been watchin’; ah only ever had ten kids, an’ you make the unmade number seven.”

“Well then what... How did she—”

“Some time, when ah must have been away, your mother got around back in town. You see, she never liked you because you were her mistake. You’re evidence of her biggest screwup that she thinks ah may or may not know about. Now she don’t know that ah know, and ah plan to keep it that way.” He breathed through his lips. “That’s why you ain’t brown like the rest of us, an that’s why you’re not an earth pony.”

Dusty found himself, not sad or crushed, but angry, but he bit his lip and held his tongue. “So are you telling me that... that this whole time ah was just an... accident?” Having all of this thrown out onto the table now was terrible. It was like being told your coat was a different color, then looking down and actually finding it that color.

The old stallion stood up and approached Dusty. “Your mother may have gone and broken my heart, but ah’m glad she did.” He placed one hoof on Dusty’s shoulder and gave the closest thing he could ever give to a smile, a sort of half-leer. “Ah don’t care if you didn’t come from me. You’re my son, an’ ah still love you all the same.”

Dusty smiled up at his father. “Thanks, Pa.”

“Now, ah know you want to leave, an ah can’t blame you. I ain’t gonna’ lie, there ain’t really no place for you here, an’ after what you just heard... You can go if you want, but ah’m gonna miss you if you leave.”

Dusty sighed. “Ah’m really sorry, Pa, but ah just can’t stay, especially after what ah just finished yellin’ to Mom.”

The old pony gave a single nod. “Ah understand... You best be goin’ then.” He motioned towards the door.

Dusty stood up and made to turn for the door, not feeling the whole goodbye thing, but his father made a sudden movement, motioning for him to stay. The rough pony trotted over to a faded trunk and pulled open the lid. He rummaged around inside for a second and emerged. He closed the trunk and turned back, carrying a leather sheath.

“You should prob’ly take this. The city may be safe for a colt like you but the lands around here sure aren’t. You’ll need some sort of protection.”

Dusty’s eyes went wide. “Is that a gun?” He had only seen pictures of them in newsprint articles left over from his father’s readings.

The stallion nodded. “Sure is. Bought it a couple months ago, you know, when those engineer ponies first started makin’ em’. Figured maybe ah’d use it on that feller’ your mother slept with.” He laughed twice and sighed. “That was a bad joke...” He shook his head. “Nevermind that. Ah want you to have it.”

Dusty took the weapon and pulled it out of its holster. It was a revolver—silver with a stained redwood handle and ivory bit. His eyes drank in the sights of it for a moment more before he forced himself to shove it back into the holster. “Gee, Pa, ah can’t take this.”

“I ain’t lettin’ you leave unless you take it.” He took the weapon back and looked it over. “Besides, ah haven’t named it yet an’ ah figured that’d be your job.”

Dusty nodded. “Yeah... ah think ah might have a good name for it.”

“Well then, Son.” He patted Dusty on the shoulder again. “If you’re bent on leavin’, then you best be off. Ah hope we can see each other again someday.”

Dusty took the holster and strapped it to his right foreleg, frowning at the new weight. “Thanks, for everythin’, Pa. Thanks for bein’ there for me, most of the time, even if ah wasn’t really your kid.”

“Was the least ah could do.” He sat down and breathed a slow breath, examining one of the paintings on the walls. “Ah think it’s best if ah don’t escort you off.”

“Right.” He turned towards the door and gulped. “Until we meet again.” Without another word, he left his father’s room and closed the door quietly behind him. Turning down the hallway, he came face-to-face with Yew.

“Were you listenin’ outside the door?” he asked irritably.

She moved out of his way as he pushed past, and walked beside him. “Only for that very last part.” She flushed. “So, what happened. Why do you have a gun?”

“Ah’m leavin’,” he replied shortly.

She gave him a hard look. “You’re leaving?”

A single nod. “Yep.”

She nudged him and pointed towards the revolver strapped to his leg. “Well, where’d you get that?”

“Pa gave it to me.” Dusty wanted to shoo her way. He could sense what was coming next; Yew’s body language screamed it.

“Well I’m coming with you.”

He stopped in the entryway to look back at her. “No, you aren’t. Ah can’t let you come with me.”

She circled around and sat down in front of the door. “I’m not letting you leave without me.”

Dusty stomped a hoof. “You’re staying here.” He tried to push past her, but she barred his way.

“I said you aren’t leaving without me.” He tried to sneak past the other side of her, but she pushed him back. “You’re going to have to shoot me if you want to leave without me, otherwise you’re going to have me dragging behind by your tail.”

“Yew, please don’t—”

“I’m not changing my mind. I’ve stuck by your side since you were born. I’m not about to let you walk off without me.

Dusty nodded in defeat. He skirted her and crossed through the front door, exiting out onto a faded porch. Yew followed triumphantly right behind. He shook his head. All of this was happening so fast. It all still seemed like a dream.

Their mother glared at them front the edge of the porch where she had been overlooking one of the fields. “I hope your father beat some sense into you.”

Dusty turned towards her, the rage of his discoveries all pouring over. “You cheatin’, lyin’, whore!” he spat, bearing his teeth at her. Yew’s eyes widened beside him and she took a step back.

Before she could respond, he stomped forwards and kicked open the partition door, Yew in tow.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Yew asked as they left the farmhouse, and their screaming mother behind.

Dusty looked to the horizon ahead. “Nope.”

-ooOoo-

“Hello, Dusty? You okay?” Snowglobe looked at him worriedly.

“Yeah,” he replied hastily, taking up an alert stance. He let out a long breath, watching as it steamed ever so slightly in the cool air. “Ah was just thinkin’.”

Snowglobe crossed the cab and sat down in front of the firebox for warmth. “Anything special?”

Dusty looked out into the barely-dawn. “No. Nothing special.” He peered out the window at the ground below as the locomotive thundered quietly over a bridge. “Where is everypony?”

“What do you mean?”

“Ah bet Canterlot had close to a million ponies. So far, ah think ah’ve seen maybe two zombies. There’s no way they all got out.”

The engine gave a shudder and the steel groaned. “There there girl.” Dusty patted the side of the cab lightly, frowning up at a tear of steel in the roof. “She took quite a beatin’ from those griffons.”

Snowglobe looked up to the gauges, frowning slightly at them. “Anything bad?”

“Sort of. They managed to do some sort of damage to the smokebox. We also have a leak somewhere, but ah can’t exactly go climbin’ inside the thing to check for it under steam.”

The bridge gave way to an elevated track, carrying them further into the city.

“Ah haven’t been here in four years,” Dusty muttered, looking out over the city again. “A lot has changed.”

Snowglobe looked around. “How?”

He snorted. “For one, ah remember how the buildin’s used to be fifty feet tall and not five-hundred.”

“It’s crazy how fast the market took off.”

Dusty nodded once, slowly. “Yeah, and it’s scary how fast it all fell apart.”

There was a heavy clang from the engine and a sound like a mortar shell, followed by a loud hiss of steam. Dusty jumped and nearly levitated over to the hotseat. “Horeseapples, what now?” A quick examination of the gauges told them they were losing steam, and fast. He cut off steam, growling to himself.

Snowglobe materialized by his side. “What is it?”

He shook his head. “We burst somethin’...” He slammed his hooves down on the hoofplate. “Ah knew it couldn’t go easy!”

Snowglobe frowned at the gauges. “Well, can we fix it?”

“Maybe. It all depends on where it is and your skill.” He looked over into Snowglobe’s deadpan expression. “Yeah, we can fix it.”

With every rotation of the wheels, there was a hiss and a clank that did not accompany the engine well. Loathingly, Dusty set the brakes, listening to the squeal of the wheels on the tracks as the engine slowed. The cars in tow banged together with the sudden deceleration and engine lurched slightly.

Moon burst out of the first carriage and scaled the coal tender. “What’s happening?” She held her shotgun aloft, ready for anything.

“Put that thing down,” Dusty said irritably. “Somethin’s went wrong with the engine.” He set the brakes, the action accompanied by another hiss.

The blue unicorn tossed her head about frantically. “This is a really bad place to be stopped.”

The engine groaned to a halt, momentum killed by the slight upwards slope in combination with the brakes. The pipes hissed tiredly and steel groaned. The amber lamp dimmed slightly, no longer overcharged by the generator mounted atop the boiler.

Dusty crossed to the edge of the cab and peered down. “We’re in a better spot than most.” They had stopped upon the elevated track, about fifty feet up in the air. A small office building sat directly below. The track creaked a little under the weight of the locomotive, and Dusty found himself trying to recall the weight ratings of these tracks.

“Well.” Snowglobe retrieved her saddlebags from the floor of the cab and slung them over her back. “We might as well see what our problem is.” She made to the back of the cab and descended the staircase aside the coal tender.

Dusty once again looked around at the surrounding buildings. His eyes were drawn to something a little peculiar this time. A six story apartment building stood about a quarter mile away, but it wasn’t necessarily the building which had caught his attention. A series of sheets had been hung over the top banister of the building, each with their own letter painted on them in black paint.

‘HELP US’

As far as he could tell, the building was deserted, but at one point, ponies had been there. Pushing the thought to the side of his mind, he followed Snowglobe down the the maintenance walk alongside the track.

The two walked slowly along the right side of the engine, looking over the many pipes and seams. Dusty remembered something and gave his head a little shake. “Moon, pull the big handle on the roof back a little ways.”

“Okay,” called Moon, her voice a little muffled. There was the sound of the lever from the cab and a hiss of steam through the pipes. One pipe in particular along the engine’s length rattled and the burst of steam revealed what Dusty could easily identify as a leak.

“Okay,” Dusty yelled back to Moon. “Kill it!” The leak was above the first piston and a little ways back. Picking up the pace a little, he overtook Snowglobe and half-galloped to the spot. He allowed himself to balk at the sight. This must have been from when they had skimmed the mountainside. Although the engine could handle the corners, it still wasn't exactly certified for them anymore. On the way up they had brushed the mountainside, but he hadn’t thought anything of it.

Just behind the smokebox, the boiler casing had been dented and distorted. Dusty whistled. That alone could have proved fatal had the boiler been compressed. More scrapes and little dents ran along the side, the second worst case proving to be a split in the steel. The real problem was the pinched pipes just above the wheels. It was all coming together now. They had pinched the pipes, and one had finally blown from pressure. The others would have followed the first shortly.

“Wow,” Snowglobe muttered, falling in beside him. “That’s pretty bad.”

Dusty shook his head. They had fought of zombies and griffons alike, but it had been nothing more than a rock that had crippled them. “Think you can fix that?” he said lowly.

Snowglobe examined her cutie mark, an adjustable wrench crossed with a bolt of electricity. “Not my specific specialty, but yes.” She looked back to the twisted steel, then groaned. “But it’s going to take a long time. I’m going to have to let the metal cool, then I’m going to have to find a way to straighten the damage and seal—” She cut herself off and nickered. “A long time, like, twelve hours.”

Dusty patted the side of the locomotive. “You did your best.”

“What’s going on?” Moon called from the cab.

“We’re goin’ to be here for a while!” Dusty yelled back.

The mare pulled her head into the cab and ran around to the staircase. Dusty watched with a half-smile as she cantered up to him. “What do you mean?”

Dusty pointed to the damage and said no more. Moon shifted her stance worriedly, eyes sharp. “Here, we’re broken down here?”

“Damnit!” Snowglobe swore, kicking the wheel. She hopped away with a little eep and held her sore hoof off the ground. “The connecting rod is damaged.” She leaned forward and propped her head on the cylinder housing. “Make that a day.” She stood straight again and looked at the two flatly. “I need my tools... the big ones.”

Dusty cocked a brow at her. “You seem a bit on-edge.”

She nodded shamefully. “Of course I am. We’re on an elevated track in the middle of Canterlot with a broken-down engine. I think I have good reason to be a little stressed.” She pushed past Moon and Dusty and headed back towards the cab. “I mean, we’re in the middle of Canterlot; where the hay are all the zombies? This is honestly freaking me out.”

Dusty followed a little behind her. “Yeah, it’s odd all right.” He winced as a bolt of pain shot through his head. He closed his eyes and it was gone as fast as it had come. With a little more effort than should've been required, he climbed back up into the cab.

“Might was well tell everypony to take this time to rest.” Snowglobe said to Moon with a sigh. “We’ve got some down time.”

“Hey you two,” Dusty interrupted, rubbing the side of his head irritably. “There’s a sign on that apartment building over there, an’ for some reason ah really want to go check it out. You all can handle your own for a while without me, right?”

Moon frowned and scrunched her brow, but nodded. Snowglobe, however, gave him a glare. “You want to leave?”

He pointed towards the distant building. “Yeah, see that help-us sign? Ah’m thinkin’ there may be ponies there.”

“Well why do you have to go?”

He sighed, wishing the mare would stop questioning him. “Somethin’s just tellin’ me ah should go. You know how you get that feelin’ in you, an’ it just feels right?”

The gray mare gave him a long look, as if she were sizing him up. “Make sure you come back. You taught me how to work this engine, but I’m still not confident about it.” She smiled. “Besides, I still haven’t given you your reward for not dying.”

His heart took a painful plummet. “Yeah... ah’ll come back.” He looked over at Moon and she pursed her lips, giving him a prying look. “Ah’ll try not to be long.”

He flared his wings, which were surprisingly sore, and shook loose a few feathers. Without another word, he trotted to the back of the cab and jumped, taking to the skies. The cool air whipped his face and coat, chilling him. Everything seemed so tranquil, as if in mourn of future events.

He looked to the building. It wasn’t too far. The flight would be short.

-ooOoo-

“Would you stop playing with that thing?” Yew scolded, giving Dusty an annoyed look.

The colt holstered the revolver grudgingly and looked around their small camp. “Sorry, ah’m just bored.” He ducked a flame from the campfire as it spiraled off into the night. “Stop bein’ so bossy.”

Although Yew was only a year older than Dusty, she was pulling off the mother role pretty well. “Well, that’s not too big of a deal here, but you can’t just go pulling that thing out in public.” She laughed once. “A colt with a gun. What was Dad thinking?”

Dusty shook his mane, scattering the dust it had collected. “He wanted me to be safe. You know how it’s like its own world out here. It’s nothin’ like the times we’ve been in town.” He looked up at the moon. “There’s not any law out here keepin’ some pony from trottin’ up to us an’ beatin’ us dead.”

Yew shrugged her shoulders nervously. “Don’t remind me.”

Dusty gave her a smile. “You sound like a super-nice version of Mom.”

Yew batted a small stone at him. “I do not sound like Mom.”

Dusty smacked the pebble back, forcing her to duck. “You aren’t like Mom in the snappy way, but you’re bein’ all authoritative.”

“Well just imagine what trouble you would get into if I didn’t watch you.

“Hey, ah don’t need watchin’,” he protested.

She reached over and messed up his mane. “I’m your older sister; it’s my job to watch you.”

He laughed for a moment, then focussed on the ground. “Why did you come with me?” he asked, slightly down. “You had things goin’ fine for you back there. Ah’m sure Pa didn’t want you to leave.”

She shrugged. “I guess I was bored... Besides.” She flicked her tail dismissively. “I like you. I didn’t want to see you go all on your own.”

Dusty smiled a little as he drew a picture in the dirt with his hoof, unsure of what it was supposed to look like, maybe a dragon. “So then, where do we go?”

“Dodge is the closest place. We don’t have any supplies, so we’ll probably have to head there first.”

“Or money,” Dusty murmured.

Yew’s eyes sparkled a little as she reached back and dug in her saddlebag. After a moment, she drew out a small, drawstring sack and dropped it on the ground between them. The contents jangled as it struck the ground. “Yeah we do.”

His eyes widened almost comically. “Where’d you get that?”

“I’ve been saving it. Since Mom believed in the whole sharing all our money thing, I hid it under a rock a bit off the trail.”

He cracked a wide grin. “Girl, ah can’t believe you’ve been savin’ money.”

She gave him a playful push. “Because you never had enough sense to.”

He looked long at the fire. “Ah never thought ah’d be leavin’. It all just happened so fast.”

Yew shook her head at him. “Honestly, what did you expect to do after you trudged out into the desert with no supplies?”

“Well, ah—”

“You didn’t have any idea. That’s why I came with you, because I know that you, never, plan.” The poked him once in the chest with every word.

“Thanks,” he said in defeat. “Thanks, Yew. Thanks for comin’ with me. Ah would be lost without you.”

She placed a hoof over his back and drew him into a hug. “That’s right, little brother.”

He frowned over at her. “Hey now. You’re only a year older than me; stop callin’ me your little brother. We’re almost the same age.”

“Doesn’t matter, you’re still my little brother.”

The colt gave her a sly grin. “Want to bet?”

Without warning, she threw them both over on the ground and pinned him below her. “Sure.”

He planted his hooves on her belly and pushed up. “No fair! Ah wasn’t ready!”

She rolled off him onto her back, dodging aside as he tried to pounce her. “Well you should have been!” In one fluent movement, she twisted to her hooves and sprang, landing cleanly on the pegasus’ back.

“Hey,” he complained, flaring his wings in attempt to knock her free. She held him firmly, wrapping his forehooves tightly around his neck.

“Yew,” he choked, tossing his head. “You’re choking me.” He tried to buck her off but she wouldn’t budge. As a last resort, he reared up and dropped onto his back, feeling as the slightly-smaller mare squirmed below him. She released his neck to push up and he jumped, turning over in the air to land atop her.

“Ha!” he cheered, pinning her shoulders. The smile quickly vanished from his face at the sight of her eyes.

“Ouch,” she gasped.

Dusty hurriedly slackened his grip. “Ah’m sorry. Shoot, what’d ah do?” Her hoof flashed out and struck him across the muzzle, dazing him.

Yew jumped up and hoofball-tackled him backwards. He was carried into the air to land on the woodpile with a grunt. She jumped and landed with all four hooves on his belly. “Ha!”

He looked up at her, wincing in pain. “Now, that’s not fair. Ah thought ah’d hurt you.”

She nipped his ear and climbed off. “Ha, like you thought you could hurt me.”

“Well, yeah. Ah thought ah could.”

She stood up and helped him off the woodpile. “Yeah, well, you can’t.” She messed up his mane for a second time. “Rule number one: when a pony cries, don’t let them up until you know for sure they’re hurt.”

He rubbed a pained spot on his back, brushing away some shards of bark caught in his coat. “Ah’ll try to remember that.”

-ooOoo-

Dusty touched down on the roof of the apartment building just above where the sign had been hung. He steadied himself, then looked back at the locomotive in the distance. The monster engine still looked pretty big from here, a thin tendril of smoke seeping from the stack. It sat like a wounded beast on the elevated track, the cars behind it in ruin.

The gravelled roof of the apartment building looked as if it had served as some sort of camp. Tents lay scattered about on the roof, most of them toppled by the elements, but a few still standing. Not only were there tents, but emptied ammunition cannisters and torn or bloody casual apparel. There were a few REA uniforms as well, accompanied by damaged service carbine.

Dusty plodded forward, kicking aside a few empty soup cans. From the look of things, the roof must have been abandoned quite a while ago, but there was no sign of a struggle.

He made his way over to one of the still-standing tents, this one canvas. Inside was a camping pad and an old firefly lantern, the fireflies inside long since shriveled and dead. Empty cans and random bits and bobs lay around on the floor. With no real intentions, he kicked a few things around, looking with bored interest at the contents of the floor. He batted the bedroll over, and was mildly surprised to find a bound notebook. Curiously, he sat down and flipped it open to the first page.

It was a drawing, nothing impressive, just a building sketched in pencil. He flipped through a few more pages to reveal more drawings, and good ones at that. There was a full perspective of the city, a zombie, two foals looking excitedly at a pistol. He skimmed through a few more and hurriedly skipped back to one.

The drawing was of a slim mare, lying on her side, belly facing the viewer. Her legs were curled to her belly in a sort of elegant protection of herself. One eye was partially obscured by loose strands of her mane, and a dreamy, almost seductive smile adorned her face. She was missing two notches from her right ear and a bullet hole had torn clean through the left one.

Dusty whistled. Whoever the artist was, they were good. The way her mane hung around her face, the tips slightly curved, her long sleek, tail and that sort of half-smile that suggested she had just made a sly joke, it was perfect.

“Yew?” Dusty asked himself. It was her he was sure of it. He ran his eyes over her features. She looked as he remembered her, though much more thin and starved-looking.

It was Yew.

He shook his head. The chances of that were near nothing. He hadn’t seen Yew for years. But it could be her; she could still be alive. The artist had sketched her in the book after the zombie, which meant that she survived the initial infection.

His heart did a quick summersault, but the feeling quickly faded again. Desperate for more information, he flipped ahead in the book. About halfway through, the drawings stopped. Instead, a journal entry had been taken on this page. In a neat scrawl at the top of the page the writer had printed the word ‘Stuff’. None of the entries had been dated and Dusty gave a little growl of frustration at this.

‘None of us believe him. Two nights ago, some pony came along the street, beating on doors and saying that there were zombies in the city, like, the storybook-eat-your-brain kind of zombies. He said that they were attacking the inner city. Somepony called the authorities over and they carted him off, but it got some residents on edge. Well, it turns out he was right. Right now, I’m sitting here in my study, watching these things in the street. I never believed in these kind of things, but the only thing I can call these ponies are zombies. Mrs. Baker, the old mare in the apartment down from mine, tried to go out there. Celestia... they ate her.

‘Some of the residents on the lower floors have since gotten together and boarded up the doors and windows. Whatever this mess is, we’re going to sit tight and wait it out until the authorities clear it up.’

Dusty turned to the next page with curious eyes.

‘We’re holed out on the roof. Somehow, the things got in downstairs. But we have to be careful up here. The pegasus zombies that got infected, well they can fly, some of them. We have two ponies up here with us from the authority station, but they’re just as lost as we are. I swear, if they weren’t wearing baby-blue suits and guns, they’d be just as scared-looking as we are. There’s also a griffon up here with them. I guess these police ponies were taking it across the city when the stuff hit. He worries me; something in his eyes says he’s really dangerous. I’m glad the officer’s haven’t taken his cuffs off. I would have thought he’d just fly away, but I asked the officers about it and they said his wings were clipped, and that griffon feathers take a long time to heal back.

‘Things are pretty tense up here. There’s not much food or water, or weapons for that matter.’

‘A mare climbed the fire escape today. I have no idea how she survived being on the street, but she was tired and hungry and scared. And she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. The others wanted to send her off. Food and water is distributed evenly among us, and nopony was willing to give up their share, so I offered mine to her. I know it was probably a really stupid idea, and I’m probably going to go hungry now, but I had to. She told me her name. It’s Yew.’

Dusty grinned. It really was Yew. The chances were a million to one, but it was her.

‘At first I thought she was just pretending to like me so I’d give her food, but I’m not so sure now. She’s really nice to me. If this is some sort of a charade, well then she’s an amazing actor.’

‘Haven’t really written anything in the past two weeks. There hasn’t been anything to write about. It’s basically sleep all day to preserve energy and sleep all night to try and ignore how hungry you are. But recently, some of the other ponies have been talking about leaving. I don’t like the thought of it, but I have to agree. If we stay here any longer, we’ll starve.’

‘They made their decision. We’re leaving. As I write this, we are packing up what we need to take and preparing to make our way off the roof. Hopefully we don’t all get eaten by zombies.

Yew has a pistol, and she’s a good shot with it too. Good thing she likes me I guess.’

Dusty flipped the page, but there was nothing else; that was the last one that had been written on. There had to be more. The stallion hadn’t even said where they would be going. It had been a miraculous stroke of luck to find Yew, but that luck must have run out.

He slumped and folded his ears. This journal had been written only a couple weeks after the infection, they were now months in. He felt like lying down, waiting, but something stopped him. He picked up the journal and tucked it into the satchel hung around his back—he had left his saddlebags back at the train.

He backed out of the tent and looked around the roof once more. The stairwell door was just a few feet away and he crossed casually towards it. His eyes widened in excitement at the sight of a paper by the door, pinned to the roof with a rock. He had to study the writing for a moment before he was able to make any of it out. The paper had been damaged by the elements and baked by the sun, making the writing hard to read.

‘To the team we sent out: We could not wait for you to return with supplies any longer. If you make it back here, we have gone east, through the apartment blocks. There’s an authority station a little under a mile away from here. We’ll be there.’

Dusty thanked the paper with a little nod. That’s where they had gone. He thanked his luck again and flared his wings, feeling the tiniest bit smug that he could fly. He frowned out towards the east, where the rising sun was just beginning to peek out from above the ground far away. It wouldn’t be a very long flight.

-ooOoo-

“What do you say?” Dusty asked Yew, the two gazing at the farmhouse in the distance.

“We can’t just walk up to somepony’s house,” she protested. She cast a longing glance at the farmhouse and Dusty knew he had her on shaky ground.

“Look, we haven’t eaten all day. Here’s what ah think: ah think we trot up there an’ offer to work for em’ and do whatever they need for food or shelter in return.”

Yew sighed, slumping a little. “I guess we should try it.”

Dusty sat back and clopped his hooves approvingly. “Great, let’s go.” He started forward, leaving Yew no choice but to follow.

This was a small farm—much smaller than the farm they had grown up on, and there was only one field in which apple trees grew. The farmhouse was also a small, two story arc-structure; it wasn’t anything luxurious, but it served its purpose.

He spotted no ponies tending to the trees as they approached, which was very strange considering the apples in the trees were red-ripe and plump.

“Are they crazy?” Yew scolded, glaring out at the trees. “These ponies should have these trees bucked by now. In two days time those apples aren’t going to be any good.”

“Ah was thinkin’ the same thing.” He squinted at the dark windows. “Ah don’t think anypony lives here.”

“Nonsense, look at those trees. You can’t have apple trees that nice on an untended farm.”

The farmhouse appeared as a cozy little thing. It had been painted firehouse-red, which had since faded a little from the sun, and little windmills spun in the front garden.

Dusty paused skeptically as they reached the porch landing. “Well...” He looked over the vacant windows and the door with a big keep-out sign nailed to the front. “Maybe they just aren’t too friendly.”

Yew tugged at his tail. “Dusty, come on. I don’t want to find out if ponies are living here. I’d rather sleep on the ground hungry than get into trouble.”

He gave her an irritated look. “What could we possibly do or find that would get us into trouble out here?” He sighed at the look she gave him. “Fine, we’ll sleep out in the cold, hungry, instead of havin’ a chance at food an’ warm shelter.” He backed away from the porch and rolled his eyes at her. “You happy?”

“Yes,” she said, turning her tail on the farmhouse.

Dusty was still doubting his older-sister’s judgement as they left the farmhouse opposite of the way they had come. He scolded himself for not picking any of the apples for themselves, but it was probably for the best. If Yew did somehow happen to be right about whatever she thought she was right about, then they were better off. And even if he wanted to go back, he knew Yew wouldn’t let him.

“Do you ever get the feeling that something’s watching you?” Yew asked about five minutes after they had topped a hill, dropping the little farm out of sight.

“You mean other than you?” he scrunched his face, mocking thought. “Nope.”

“No, Dusty, I’m serious.” She scanned the rocky landscape, ears folded and eyes alert.

He rolled his eyes at her. “Sis, you are just one big bucket of paranoid today, aren’t you?”

“I swear, there’s something watching us. I can feel it.”

He reared up and waved his forehooves in the air “Oooooh, maybe it’s a zombie.”

Yew put a hoof on his head and forced him back onto all-fours. “Haha, shut up. That’s just some stupid story your older brother made up to scare the hay out of you because you were dumb enough to believe it.” She raised her snout. “There are no such things as zombies and there never will be.”

Dusty gave up on his efforts. “Sorry. Ah was just tryin’ to lighten the mood a bit.”

“Well yer’ doin’ a purdy good job!” jeered a rather goofy voice with a heavily-accented drawl.

Yew screamed and jumped about a foot in the air. Dusty jumped, startled. He spun around, nearly tripping over his own hooves, to face a mustard-colored buck looking over them both with a crooked smile. He had no idea how the pony had managed to sneak up on them, but here he was, smiling like somepony with a gun to his head was telling him to.

His coat was worn and patchy in spots, ungroomed and matted with dried mud. His unsettling smile showed about eight and a half remaining teeth and his breath smelt of dirt and rotten fruit.

“Shoot,” he said, letting out a giggle that transferred into a snort, “Did ah sceer y’all?”

Yew stood behind Dusty, breathing heavily with one hoof on her heart. “Yeah, you did!”

He sat back and scratched his ear with a hind leg. “Y’all were jus’ bein’ so talkative like, ah jus’ walked right up.”

“Dusty,” Yew whispered, “I don’t like this stallion.”

“Me neither,” he whispered back.

“Whach’ya whisperin’?” the pony asked casually, somehow managing to make himself sound very intimidating.

“Nothing,” Dusty said hurriedly.

The scruffy pony took a step towards them. “Oh yes you’s was; ah heard’s you.”

Dusty gulped. He held a calm face, but he was scared half-out of his wits. This pony was bigger and older than he was. He could easily overpower both him and Yew.

Acting as brave as he could, he wrapped a wing over his sisters back and led her backwards.

“Dusty?” Yew asked quietly, as they left the crazy pony, who only stared at them. “What are the chances of us meeting a crazy pony in the half-middle of nowhere?”

The buck that had been watching them go jumped and ran up to them again. “So where ya’ll headin’? Dodge’s jus’ a ways away.”

“Yes.” Dusty walked a little faster, hoping the pony would just give up and fall back, but he stuck by them.

“Well if yer’ headin’ fer’ town then you should know you shouldn’t go there unless you like bein’ around ponies.”

Dusty flicked his tail dismissively. “Ah’m pretty sure we do.”

“When did we trot into spooksville?” Yew asked irritably.

The crazy pony perked his ears. “Wasn’t spooksville you been through; that was my family farm.”

Yew glared daggers at Dusty. “I told you something wasn’t right. Mom and Dad were never lying—the ponies in the desert are crazy!”

The mustard buck shot right to her side. “Ah don’t like yer’ tone missy.”

Dusty drove a knee into Yew’s side. “Don’t mind her, she’s just mad at... whatever girls get mad at.” He pulled Yew close to whisper in her ear. “Don’t make him angry. This pony’s rabbit-crazy an’ ah’ don’t want any troubles with him. We’re almost to Dodge; just keep things calm until then.”

“How am ah doin’?” answered the stallion in an equally whispery voice in Dusty’s other ear. “Oh yes,” he continued, answering his own question. “Ah’m doin’ fine.”

“Are you now?” Dusty asked with an air of sarcasm.

He nodded frantically. “Oh yeah. Whole family’s doin’ great. But they’re a little worried about the graysuits.”

Dusty frowned. “Graysuits?”

“Yeah, the graysuits—Army ponies. They done showed up a few months ago ago askin’ question’s ‘bout the farm. Paid us three-hundred bits so they could bury metal things in the ground around the house an’ the field.”

Dusty pondered the crazy pony’s words. He had heard his father speak of the Army before. They were some sort of new force in Equestria, a branch of Celestia’s Royal Guard. His father had said something about Equestria getting too big for Celestia to manage herself, so she had to create branches she could manage to do it for her, and that the new army was to help her keep order.

“What metal things?” Yew asked.

“Ah don’t remember what’sit they were called. Some radio wave thingies.” He bounced happily. “Three hundred bits!” With that, he turned and ran, nearly tripping over himself.

“Three hundred bits?” Yew said with a frown.

-ooOoo-

Dusty shook himself back to the present. His head throbbed angrily at him and his muscles felt sore, but it was nothing he couldn’t bear.

He flew low between office buildings and apartments, eyes skimming broken windows and the dark depths beyond. A zombie charged up the the edge of an apartment balcony and looked long at him, open mouthed.

Dusty watched the thing with interest. “Go on,” he whispered. “Why don’t you jump?”

The enforcement station was looming just ahead and below. It was a dark blue building in the midst of white and gray. He raised his eyebrows slightly as he dropped towards the station. It was in the middle of a clearing, surrounded on all sides by cobbled street and flanked on either side of that by much-taller apartment buildings. It was two stories high, and sported a small landing strip for skywagons—only about fifteen feet in length, a landing there would be a push. The most shocking was that the surrounding streets were completely crowded with pastel zombies. Some wandered around aimlessly, while some batted half-heartedly at the barred doors and windows of the station.

Dusty drew Valediction as he neared, two pegasus zombie milling around on the roof in mind. Hovering just above and taking aim, he dispatched the both of them, both shots striking their marks. He did a full circle of the building before landing, not wanting any unpleasant surprises.

He set himself down near the access door the the second level. Rotting corpses lay around the door, practically glued to the rubberized concrete that was the roof of the building. He tried not to breathe too deeply as he stepped around dried blood pools and bullet casings.

The steel door had been smashed and bent in it’s frame, and proved rather hard to open as Dusty tugged on the handle. He took a breath, heaved, and managed to scrape the door open about a foot, just enough for him to squeeze in. He barely fit, almost getting caught at the wing joints, but managing to pull himself through to the other side. With a little less effort than before, he shut the door behind him.

He did a little bounce, turned, and took a step back into the darkness. His hoof came down on nothing but air and he found himself tilting forwards. Before he could even unfurl his wings, he was tumbling down a flight of stairs, head over hooves. He spun for a moment like a pony in a blender before thudding the the ground at the bottom.

He picked himself up with a groan, rubbing his aching head. Dead fluorescents hung from the ceiling in here. Even the safety lights near the exits were without power. He sat for a minute, giving his head a chance to stop spinning and letting his eyes adjust to the new gloom.

He crept forward, keeping his hoofsteps light on the traffic-carpet below his hooves. Dead terminals sat on desks or lined walls here and there, having since gathered dust on their screens.

The glass door to the Sheriff's office had been smashed and the door had been nearly torn off its hinges. The contents of the office had been scattered, papers and trinkets tossed about around the oaken desk. The shell of a weapon locker sat tipped on its side against the far wall, whatever weapons it had once held gone.

Some ponies had definitely made use of this place. Not quite sure what he was looking for, he continued on, locating the staircase at the other end of the building. He passed a few more corpses on the stairs, their smell putrid in the small space.

The first floor was more of a public grounds. The polished, marble floor which must have once shone under the light of the fluorescents, was now dirtied and stained with whatever had come since the infection. The station must have been abandoned in the midst of the chaos; riot gear had been thrown around and much gear had been hastily left, stacked against back walls or even thrown on the floor.

Morning light spilled through small cracks under the front, double doors, which had been barred and boarded shut. From outside, he could hear quiet groans and grunts, and every once in a while the door would creak in its frame as a zombie pushed up against it.

Dusty kept himself vigilant as he crept around the the greeting desk most ponies never wanted to be greeted at. More blood, more bullet casings, there were no bodies this time. He peered around, his eye catching a faint light. Yellow beams spilt from a doorway to the left of the desk. A sign above informed him that it was the greeting room. He drew the weathered revolver from its holster, teasing the mechanism. Quickly, he hopped over the greeting desk, making much more noise than he would have preferred and cringing at the way his hooves echoed on the marble.

In the waiting room, a single light bulb hung from a cord on their ceiling, lighting a small circle in the center of the room but leaving the corners dark. A pony lay under the light, its back to him.

“Hello?” he called around the firing bit, creeping forward. “Ish you’re a zomfie, pleashe tell me now.” He half expected the pony to jump up, but at the same time he knew that pony was most likely dead. Throwing caution to the wind, he trotted up to the middle of the room and rolled the pony over to face him.

A pony dressed in REA barding looked up at him, shot through the head. From the body’s condition, Dusty would say he was no more than a day dead.

He flinched as a spotlight flared to life from behind him. What the—” He jumped and flipped around, blinded completely by the light. “What the hay?” He tried to shield his face from the light with a forehoof.

“Drop the weapon!” A mare called from ahead, somewhere behind the source of the light. He turned to face her voice and a shot rang out, pitting the marble below his hooves. “Drop your weapon!” she yelled, louder this time.

With no other options, he dropped the revolver, wincing a little as it clattered to the floor. “There.”

“Get down on the floor.”

He glared. “Come on, you already—”

“Get down on the floor now!”

He dropped the the cold marble. “Right, sorry.”

“Slide the revolver over here.”

Knowing better than to try arguing, he reached out a hoof and shoved the revolver towards the light. It slid across the marble and out of sight. “Hey, if y’all don’t plan on killin’ me, could ah please get that back? It means a lot to me.”

There was no response. Dusty looked over to the REA pony and pursed his lips. “Let’s hope ah don’t end up like you just yet.”

“St-stand up!” the mare yelled, sounding a little unsure of herself. Dusty winced into the light, but was still couldn’t make out anything. “Kill the lights,” the voice said after a moment.

There was a click and the light blinding him shut off. There was another click and a hum and the roof fluorescents flickered to life.

Dusty found himself surrounded by four figures, and all of them were plenty intimidating. They smelt and looked of rotten blood and grime, their rifles and armored barding battle-scarred.

The one to his back-left was a light-blue unicorn mare. She leered at him, eyes hardly seen under her unkempt, white mane, stained brown with dirt and blood. She levitated two submachine guns on either side of her, safeties off.

The pony on his back right was a unicorn stallion, gray with a brown mane and tail. He wore a pair of wire rimmed glasses, the bridge held together with a strand of tape. He also sported a battle saddle with a basic-issue carbine on the left. The weapon on the right was much more peculiar—a rifle, nearly as long as he was, the barrel long and notched. A scope had been mounted on a swinging mechanism attached to the rifle so it could be lowered before his eyes.

The thing glaring at him from the left was what scared him most. It was a griffon. It’s fur was dark-brown and it’s hind paws were black, along with about half it’s back legs and the fluffy tip of its tail. It stood on it’s hind legs, aiming a rifle at Dusty with calm contemplation. It had flared its wings, which were both a magnificent and terrifying sight; they were a sort of mix between brown, red, and black, all the colors blending into one another in an uneven pattern of lines. From the shape and build of it, he could tell that it was male, but still found it hard to call the thing a he. The griffon also held a weapon by make of which Dusty had never seen. The rifle had been fitted with a stalk, a trigger just before the beaten wood. The griffon had one set of talons clenched on the wooden grip along the length of the barrel, and the other just behind the hammer mechanism, one claw on the trigger. At the point of which its coat gave way to feathers at its neck, the same went for its wings. The feathers were black, except for small patches of brown and red around its eyes and a cropping of red and black atop its head. It’s beak was a hybrid of brown and black and it’s eyes were amber, borderline on hazel.

Dusty found himself shrinking away. He didn’t want a single thing to do with that griffon. It looked like it could pick him up and tie him into a balloon pony.

The last one was an earth pony mare. She had a dark-brown coat and a green-black mane. A long scar ran up her face, right across her left eye, which had gone a milky white. There was also a small bullet hole through her left ear. She too wore a battle saddle, this one adorning twin-mounted automatic rifles.

His eyes widened as he stared at her. “Yew?”

-ooOoo-

“What are you talking about?” the blue colt protested, glaring at his sister.

She shot him an annoyed face for raising his voice, not wanting to attract the attention of any other ponies in the diner. “I mean, we should go to Canterlot.”

Dusty lowered his voice, keeping his head low to the table. “Why would you want to go there? It’s just a bunch of nonsense and fancy ponies.”

She fumed. “Dusty, it’s not like that. There could be something for us there.”

He thudded the table with a forehoof. “There’s something for us here.” He motioned around to the ponies in the diner. “Dodge ponies are okay with hirin’ kids. You think some city pony’s going to hire us? We’ll end up in some sort of jail or a hole for homeless foals. There’s work for us here.”

“Sure,” she snorted, “Grunt work.”

He rolled his eyes at her, something that was becoming a bit of a habbit. “It’s not like you’re gonna’ get a job that’s anythin’ better than grunt work. You could still be at the farm right now. It was your choice to follow me.”

She rolled her eyes back. “But ponies will hire us if we know what we’re doing. We could learn. We can practically be called adults as long as you ignore the fact that we’re about half a foot shorter than most ponies.” She shook her head. “Don’t you see? This is our chance to make something of ourselves.”

He waved his hooves in front of her face. “Hello, kids! We get to do that stuff later. For now, lets just stay fed.”

She performed some sort of cross between a laugh and a snort. “Please, we’ve been through enough to pass as adults. How long have we been working now?”

“Two months.” He groaned as he fell into her trap. “But—”

“That means we can handle ourselves.”

Dusty allowed his head to drop the the tabletop. “You know how it said in the papers how Canterlot is gettin’ all industrialized. Those poor pony folk work so hard they die.”

She kicked him under the table. “It’s not that bad.”

He shook his head. “You know ah want to run the trains down here. How do you ever expect me to do that in Canterlot?”

“Dusty, you can’t—”

He cut her off: “Don’t you ever say ah can’t. Now, ah don’t care what you want to do, but ah’m stayin’ around these parts.”

She looked distressed. “Dusty, don’t you see? I can make something for myself there, and so can you.”

“Ah don’t want to be some prissy city pony.”

The waitress stopped by their table holding a big cheesy smile—a little blonde mare—and set two adult menus down in front of them. “Are you and your date ready to order?”

Yew glared daggers at the mare. “He’s my brother.”

The mare nearly dropped the clipboard she was levitating. “Oh my goodness. I am so sorry.” she gathered herself. “Would you like to order now?”

Dusty looked up to her. “You should probably give us a moment.”

The mare gave a knowing nod and backed away. “Right. I’ll leave you two to it then.”

Dusty focussed again on Yew. “Ah’m sorry, Yew, but if you go to Canterlot, ah’m not comin’ with you.”

She crossed her hooves. “Well, it looks like we have a disagreement then.”

He smiled at her. “You can’t follow me forever.”

Silently, she slid out of the booth. “We’ll talk about this later.”

-ooOoo-

He stared at the brown mare before him, and she stared back. He tried to think of some sort of thing to say, but came up short. “Well this is cliche,” he muttered under his breath.

The brown mare squinted back at him. “Cliche?”

He parried her prying tone. “Yeah... the chances of me meeting you again...”

She held her confused look, her good eye examining every inch of his body. “I don’t believe this.” She looked back and slid the revolver left on the floor towards her with a back hoof and scooped it up with a forehoof to look at it. “Where'd you get this gun?”

“Pa gave it to me.”

The mare lowered her defensive stance. “Celestia... it is you.” before he could reply, the mare shrugged off her battle saddle and armour and dashed forward to wrap him in a crushing hug.”

“Oh how sweet,” the blue mare crooned with a bit of a rasp in her voice.

Yew drew back, eyes sparkling, the tiniest bit of worry nagging around the edges. “You’re... hot.”

“Whoa, mare,” said the gray stallion.

She shook her head. “No, not like that. I mean he’s burning up.”

“Yeah...” He decided to change the subject. “Why’s there a hole through your ear?”

“Why is your ear missing?” she countered.

“Why you got a scar up half your face?”

“Griffon claw,” she said with a swipe of her tail.

He grinned. “Doubt gettin’ clawed by a griffon made you any stronger.”

“Wanna bet?” she sneered.

He drug a hoof across the ground. “Do you?”

She sprang forward and Dusty reared up to meet her. The mare’s momentum prevailed and he was carried off his hooves to land with a thud on his back.

Her comrades rushed in to help—all but the griffon—but she waved them away. “Leave it!” she growled, struggling to hold the writhing pegasus.

Using her greater weight against her, Dusty, rolling them both over onto their sides, he barely had time to react before she released him and instead, wrapped her hooves around his neck. She tried to roll onto his back, but he managed to keep her off. Trying to save himself, he kicked her in the belly. She slacked enough to allow him to slip free and push her onto her belly. Pinning her from atop, he wrapped his hooves around her neck.

“Ha!” he called.

“Dusty,” she choked, hooves writhing below her. “You got me. Now let go; it hurts.”

“Rule number one,” he recited. “Never let a pony up until you know that they’re hurt.”

She stopped writhing. “Fine.” She sprang up with all four hooves. He struggled to hang on as she threw her body left. He found himself sliding down her right side, where her hoof came to meet his face. Stars filled his head and he closed his eyes at the pain of the surprisingly-heavy blow. When he came to, he found her on top with him on his back, shoulders pinned.

“Ha!” Yew shook her mane out of her face. “Almost.” She stepped off him and tried to smooth her ravaged coat.

The light-blue mare’s eyes darted between the two. “So, what, you two are friends now?”

Yew shrugged as Dusty picked himself up. “He’s my brother.” She gave the unsteady pegasus a strong nudge, knocking him back to the floor. “Who I haven’t seen in quite a while.”

SMG mare pointed between the two. “You two, brother and sister?” She snorted, trying not to laugh.

Dusty picked himself up again, more slowly this time. “It’s a long story.” He looked to Yew. “Not that ah ever doubted you or anythin’, but, how are you still...”

“Alive?” He nodded and she nodded back. “A combination of luck, smarts, and a little help from an REA armory, courteously left unlocked by the previous inhabitants.”

Dusty spotted Valediction still on the floor, and picked up the weapon to return it safely to its holster. Looking up, he examined Yew’s dual assault rifles. “Ah can see that.”

The gray pony took a step forward with subdued grace, his movements sleek as silver. “You said his body temperature was high.” He spoke in warning, but his voice leaked charisma like water from a soaked sponge. “That’s the first noticeable sign of infection.”

Yew gave the stallion a warning look. “I know.” She cleared her throat and turned to Dusty in a business-like fashion. “Are you infected?” She held a strict stance, but her good eye was shimmering with worry.

He pointed towards the bandage around his head. “Ah’m not sure yet. It took the whole ear, so...”

“There’s a chance the ear parted with your body before the infection had the chance to spread,” the gray stallion said coolly. He looked strictly at Dusty. “If you begin to experience dizziness or confusion, you’d better let us know. The beginning symptoms are very similar to those of the common cold, so it’s hard to tell at first.” He shrugged with a tiny grin. “It’s hard to believe, but the flu still exists in all this mess. You never know.”

Dusty nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

Yew nudged him. “Here, let me introduce you to my crew.” She pointed to the light-blue mare first. “That’s Altic, our gun toting, SMG dual-wielding psychopath.”

Altic glared. “Don’t push it, Yew. I can still hurt you with a gun without shooting you.”

Yew pointed to the gray stallion next. “That’s Range, if you can guess why.”

Range dropped the scope on his rifle, the mechanism giving a few hearty clicks. “Accurate up to eight-hundred yards.” He sprouted a cocky grin before magically raising the scope.

“I’m also pretty sure that he’s smarter than all of us combined.” She moved on to the griffon. “This is Esekiel.”

The griffon had since sat back on his haunches, rifle still gripped in front of him. He nodded his head once at Dusty, acting much less intimidating. “Hello,” he said in an oily, low voice.

Dusty nodded back, a little unnerved. “Hello.”

“And, last but not least.” She pointed towards Dusty. “This is Dusty, my little brother.”

Range whistled. “Well, that’s a one-in...” He paused frowning at the ceiling. “thirty million chance.”

“Whom I haven’t seen in years.”

“sixty-two million,” he chimed

Altic made a scene of returning the two automatics to their holsters with several metal noises and the swish of steel on vinyl. “Right, now can we get back to our plan of not starving to death?”

Dusty pointed to the REA stiff on the floor. “Was this your doin’?”

Yew sighed. “Sad to say that it was. He stuck with us for a while. Poor sap lost it. Tried to off himself and tried to off us when we tried to stop him.”

Range coaxed a click from his service carbine. “Said we were all left for dead. Well, it was either him or us.”

Dusty changed topics. “Have you lot been in the city since the infection?”

The four of them nodded and Range pushed his glasses back up his nose. “Fortieth floor of Progress Inc. when it all hit the fan.”

Yew gave Dusty an odd look. “Were you looking for me? And if you were, how did you find me?”

“Oh.” He reached back and pulled the journal from his bag. “Ah found this on the roof of that apartment.” She took the notebook with a down expression and flipped to the page with the drawing of her. “He had a journal,” Dusty clarified. “Said you were all leavin’.” He frowned. “Say, where are all the others?”

Yew closed the book. “All dead, except for Esekiel... They never made it across the city.”

Altic flicked her tail. “Yew had to put down her stud three weeks ago.” She snorted. “Found out why she hadn’t been getting any when his eyes started to bleed.”

The glare Yew gave Altic could have scared a zombie. “Yes, he was one of the survivors, and yes, he got infected.” She sighed. “And yes, that’s why I wasn’t getting any, and I think it was pretty courteous of him not to give me anything, like the virus... Yeah, I shot him when his eyes went red.”

Range raised a hoof like a know-it-all about to answer a question in class. “And that’s where I come in.” He rubbed his neck. “I was on the roof of the Chinley building, sniping the stumbers outside the palace gates, when I heard the shot. I knew there’d probably be zombies running for it, so I turned my scope, and there were the three of them on the roof of a diner.” He pointed towards Yew. “Yew here saw my scope and insisted I join them via message drawn on a markerboard.”

Yew grinned. “Last thing I expected was for him to come sailing off the roof on a damned paraglider.”

“Which he crashed,” Esekiel added quietly.

“It was my first time, okay. I think I did pretty good... It wasn’t my fault some pony had a paraglider on top of their business for sport. But I do give them credit for not paying any mind to safety, or airspace laws for that matter.”

Dusty found himself trying not to laugh. “What are you, some sort of ninja pony?

Range blew air through his nose. “That, I am not. I am simply a business consultant who gained access to the weapons locker for the CEO’s private guard.”

Yew flicked Range across the muzzle with her tail. “The owner of the company he worked for was into some really black-market stuff.”

“Hey!” Altic yelled, waving her forehooves around. “Not starving! Hello?”

Yew snapped back into her formal mode. “Right, come on.” She turned and beckoned them all with her tail. Starting out of the waiting room, she beckoned Dusty to her side. “You see, we’ve been trying to make our way out of here for quite some time, and given the fact that none of us can fly, that’s proven rather difficult.” She led them out of the waiting room and down a short hall to a flight of stairs.

“What about the griffon?” Dusty asked, looking back at Esekiel.

The griffon walking on all fours behind them snorted and took a swipe at the wall. “I can’t fly. I had been detained in the city, and to prevent my escape, those authority ponies clipped my wings like I was some sort of animal. I can’t fly more than ten feet.”

“So you see,” Range chimed in, cutting off whatever the griffon was planning on saying next. “We have been attempting other means of escape. And if we can’t escape to the skies...”

Dusty squinted as they reached a bottom of the stairs to be greeted by darkness. Yew hit a switch, bringing to life the dirty, incandescent bulbs along the ceiling.

The basement was roughly thirty by thirty feet. A small spark generator sat in one corner, humming quietly. Other corners were heaped with old riot gear and other outdated equipment that had been tossed down here.The far wall had been blasted open, and the middle of the room had been stacked with piles of dirt and stone.

“You see,” Range clarified, leading Dusty to a table covered with roughly-sketched blueprints. “There used to be an old tunnel system under the city, connecting the city’s prime utilities, hospitals, authority stations, banks, the whole works. Sadly, this station was never part of the loop.” He pointed to a rough square sketched on the paper. “That’s us.” His hoof slid a short ways to a much large square. “This is a branch of the Canterlot Archives, specifically designed for the safe storage of fund documentation and what holotape files that existed with new technologies.” He threw a quick glance at Dusty over his glasses. “You following?”

The pegasus nodded. “Mostly.”

Range nodded, then pointed to a line drawn through the big square. “This is the Hayfield utility tunnel, named after it’s designer and contractor, Herbert Hayfield. Now, the tunnel was shut down one year ago due to the fact that underground steam travel was both inefficient and obsolete compared to new advancements in gem-powered locomotion. Instead of running a third, electrical rail through the old tunnel, the city built a new tunnel adjacent to the hayfield tunnel, ten feet higher. The hayfield tunnel was sealed off, and the city had plans to concrete it, but lack of resources led to the tunnel being abandoned altogether.” He drew a line across the paper with his hoof from the small square to a spot a little past the large square. “We have dug a tunnel from here, to the Hayfield tunnel, two-hundred yards away. I had just finished setting the charges on the tunnel wall when you arrived.”

Dusty interrupted. “Speakin’ of which, how’d you know ah was here an’ have time to set up that ambush?”

Range pointed towards Dusty’s leg. “That revolver of yours isn’t exactly quiet. Then you went and made a whole lot of racket cursing at the door and falling down the stairs.” Range waved him away. “It’s lucky you came when you did. I planned on blowing those charges once we were ready in a few hours.”

Dusty examined the massive piles of dirt stacked around the room. “Just how long have you ponies been here?”

Yew furrowed her brow in thought. “Three weeks... a bit more maybe.”

Esekiel snorted. “Three weeks too long. We had enough powdered meals from our REA buddy to last a week; we made them last three.” To prove his point, his stomach growled angrily. “Seemed such a waste when we shot the army pony.” He growled, rolling his eyes. “Yew won’t let me eat him.”

Dusty flared his wings in surprise and let them fall limp to his sides. “Wha, eat him?”

Esekiel motioned towards himself with a talon. “Griffon. Hello. I’m not strictly vegetarian. I’ve got a curved beak for a reason.”

“I told you that’s an abomination,” Yew said shortly. “You can’t eat a pony we’ve been acquaintanced with. It’s just wrong.”

“And starving is okay?”

“Enough.” Range’s horn glowed orange as he levitated a wood chip from his saddlebag and put it in one side of his mouth, chewing on the end.

“Again with the eating wood,” Atlic drawled.

Range trotted over to a spot near the blasted basement wall. “It’s substance.” Magically grabbing two lengths of copper wire, he wove them together. One end of the copper length streaked off down the small tunnel, the other ran to it’s end near a small spark battery.

Yew gave the gray stallion a look. “You ready?”

Range sat back. “Sure am. I say we blast this hole now. We’re slept, hungry, and we’ve got eleven hours of daylight ahead of us.” He held up the length of wire not tied to the spark battery and held it over the positive terminal. “Is there anything we need to do before we depart our free-range prison?”

The three ponies and griffon exchanged glances and shrugs. “No,” Yew answered for them. “Spark us off.”

Range gave her a half grin and touched the wire to the spark battery. There was a little spark, then a deep bang from off down the tunnel. The ground vibrated and there was a sudden gust of wind from the tunnel, followed by heavy cloud of dust.

“Try to breathe through your lips,” Range warned, activating a flashlight on his battle saddle. “This dust will choke you.”

“Right,” Esekiel murmured. “Lips... I’ll certainly try that.”

Dusty found himself left out as Yew, Esekiel, and Altic flipped on similar devices. Not feeling the need to make a deal of it, he just fell in beside Range as he led them down the pitch-black tunnel.

The dirt and stone tunnel had been constructed of wooden four-by-four beams and other mismatched pieces of wood. It looked stable, but it was nothing pretty. He cringed as a wave of nausea hit him, but it subsided quickly.

It was about a minute of downward travel before they reached the end of the dirt tunnel. A brick wall loomed ahead in the light, partially blasted open.

Range growled as he looked over the outer tunnel wall. A hole, barely large enough for a pony to squeeze through had been blasted in the thick stone. While the surrounding blocks had been cracked and scarred, they had not moved. “I should have used a larger charge, but I was afraid of bringing the whole tunnel down.” he beckoned Altic forward. “Mind giving me a horn?”

She lit her horn with a smirk, pushing past Dusty to focus on one of the large blocks of stone which had broken free. “Anything for you, stud.”

“Please,” he grunted, channeling his magic at the same block, his orange mixing with her white. “Spare the blatant compliments. Praise from you is about the same as getting praise from a good-looking badger.”

She laughed, sweat beading on her brow as she pinched her eyes half shut and forced, horn glowing brighter. “You so want me.”

The block ground forward a few inches. “Sorry, but I’m not a masochist.”

The two grunted and the block shifted and fell away with a crash. “Oh yeah,” Altic said, panting. “I forgot, you like your mare’s tied up.”

Range wiped his brow with a forehoof and magically righted his glasses. He leered at the light-blue mare. “That can be arranged, if you want.” He turned away and pushed through the newly-made entrance, Altic right behind.

Yew crossed through next, grinning. “Thanks for the show you two.” Dusty followed close behind her, and stood aside as Esekiel squeezed through, the stone pulling at his sides.

Range shone his light around the tunnel, a smug grin on his face. “Welcome, everypony, to the Hayfield tunnel.” Altic whipped him across the nose with her tail and he magically yanked on her mane, almost knocking her over.

“What’s with those two?” Dusty whispered to Yew.

Yew shrugged. “Altic can’t stand Range and Range can’t stand Altic.” She frowned. “They must like that sort of thing, because they certainly do get along when they’re alone.

“So they have benefits?”

“Definitely.”

Altic shone her light down the tunnel to the left, then to the right. “Homey, isn’t it?”

The rounded tunnel walls had been lined with auburn tile, stained nearly black from soot and smoke. A quarter inch of water ran down alongside the tracks, trickling over the concrete and creating a somewhat spooky ambiance. The tracks in the middle were worn and rusted, the ties soggy and moldy from moisture.

Dusty tapped the tracks casually with a forehoof. “These are narrow gauge tracks.”

Range pointed to the left, where the tunnel stretched away, out of the range of their light. “West.”

“So, um, Range,” Dusty asked as they started down the tunnel, their hoofsteps echoing ominously. “You never told me the full of your plan.”

Altic gave Dusty a dirty look. “Great, now I have to listen to him talk some more.”

Range cleared his throat and silenced Altic with a look. “Ah, interested I see. This being a tunnel designed for steam travel, there had to be ventilation. Every five-hundred yards is a ventilation duct fitted with an air handler to draw out smoke, and a smaller duct to fill the tunnel with fresh air. To reach these air handlers, one must climb a ladder to a hatch in the roof that leads to a maintenance room.” He grinned. “Here’s the trick. We have to get in to one of those rooms and climb the ventilation duct to the surface. You see, there is no way out of this tunnel, all the old stations having been sealed off with brick and steel.”

“But that’s impossible,” Dusty protested. “I doubt one of those vents is more’n a foot and a half wide. There’s no way a pony can climb up that.”

“My thoughts exactly. You see, all the shafts are vertical... all but one. In one case, the ventilation duct had to be re-routed around a building's foundation. This shaft travels horizontally for a length of fifty feet until a ninety degree curve in which it runs up the length of a wagon park residing above ground, on a lower level of the city. That is how we will get out of here. Our kind griffon friend will cut us free of the vent and, voila.”

“How do you know all this?” Dusty asked curiously.

“A year and a half ago, before they shut down this tunnel, I was assigned to write a burglary scenario in the Hayfield tunnel. I basically know this place like the front of my hoof.”

Altic walked up on Range’s left, swaying her hips purposefully in an egotistic manner. “Tell him your plan for after we get out of the tunnel.”

Range glared at her, his eyes traveling to her rump and her cutie-mark of two crossed sticks with blur lines around them, then back to her face. “Very funny.” To Dusty. “I have no plan for once we leave the tunnel, for I know not what lies beyond the exit.”

Dusty jumped. “Wow, ah can’t believe I forgot to tell you earlier.” He examined one of the maintenance hatches as they passed under it. “Ah got a way out of the city.”

Esekiel, who had been walking a ways behind and balancing on the left rail, slipped and nearly fell on his face, “You what?”

Altic chimed in right after him. “Well why the hay didn’t you—”

“You do?” Yew cut the blue mare mare off. “It’s practically impossible to get out of the city. The streets are still barricaded from when the REA was trying to contain the infection. We’re out of the first barrier, but there’s still the second, and thousands of zombies.”

“Funny thing is, ah didn’t see any zombies when we were headin’ into the city.”

She deadpanned. “One, why the hay were you coming into Canterlot. And two, just because you see can’t see them, doesn’t mean they’re not there.”

Range gave Dusty a nudge. “Do tell us.”

Dusty stepped carefully over a dead rat with a little grimace. “We were headin’ for Baltimare. We got a train.”

Dusty nodded. “We as in, me an’ about fifteen other ponies... We used to be sixty.”

Altic frowned, managing to not look sinister this time. “What happened there?”

“Griffons.”

Esekiel flared his wings and beat them uncomfortably. “Yes, I know we griffons are nasty... I’d hate to meet one of us as a zombie.”

Dusty looked back at him. “Trust me, zombie griffons are the worst.”

“Did you come in from the south side?” asked Yew, changing the topic.

“Yeah.”

“That’s why.” She sighed. “To cover their retreat, the REA blocked the tracks.”

Range chipped in. “They had planned on destroying the bridge spanning the gorge on the northeastern side of the city. Without the resources to do so, they ended up blocking the tracks. Wagons, derailed railcars, two shunting engines. Everything.” He frowned at Dusty. “You know what section I speak of?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Long stretch of track past the railyard, just before the l-turn and the bridge?”

“Bingo.” Range sighed. “They seized up the wheels on the engines they left on main line and greased the tracks before it. I watched them from a rooftop. You’d need a crane to clear those tracks.”

Dusty found himself grinning. “Or a really big train.”

Range glared down the tunnel. “Sure, it’s a shame the REA took all the freightliners with them when they left. You’d need a miracle to push those engines off the tracks, especially with the wheelslip factor.”

Dusty grinned wider. “Ah don’t suppose an Equestrian Railways Big Buck four-thousand series could clear those tracks.”

He snorted. “Sure, if you could find one. They’ve all been scrapped, and the one remaining is sitting in a railyard somewhere in Las Pegasus.”

“What if ah told you there were two left.” Dusty caught Range’s eye and watched as the gray unicorn’s eyes widened in understanding.

“I don’t know whether or not I should believe you. But if you aren’t pulling my leg, then you are just about the damned luckiest pony alive in this apocalypse.”

He shook his head. “Ah wouldn’t quite say. We’re dead on the tracks right now.”

Range deflated a little. “Well, what’s the issue?”

“We pinched a pipe comin’ up the hill. It burst on us once we got a little ways into the city.”

“You’ve stopped on the elevated track?” Range asked with worry.

Dusty picked up his worried tone. “Yeah... why?”

“Those elevated railways are safe-tested for five-hundred and twenty tons, and if I’m correct that engine of yours weighs five-hundred loaded.”

Dusty rubbed his neck. “Well, uh, it’s a good thing we aren’t full on water.”

“But still, that much weight, sitting still—”

Esekiel made a cry of warning, sharp and loud, similar to that of an eagle. He jumped forward, pulling the rifle from the holster on his back and taking a two-legged stance. “Movement,” he rasped, aiming down the sights.

The four ponies tensed, readying their weapons. Esekiel parted his beak, glaring ahead into the darkness. There was a little squeak and a scuttling of movement as a rat darted across the tracks.

Altic screamed, voice cracking, and jumped back. “Rat!”

Range flipped his safety back on and smiled over at her. “Scared of rats are we?”

Esekiel’s eyes remained on the rat as it scuttled about the tunnel. “Hey, Range, do you think rats carry the infection?

“Theoretically... Why do you ask?”

The griffon lowered the rifle. “Because I’m hungry.”

Altic gagged and turned her head away as Range snickered. “I don’t think you should,” the gray stallion warned. “It very well could have traces of it on its fur.”

Esekiel groaned. “You are just determined to make me miserable.”

Dusty found his eyes drinking in the griffon’s rifle. Like he had noted before, it had a stalk, and a trigger just in front and below it. What was peculiar about it though, was that it did not feed like a normal rifle. It had a revolving cylinder, much similar to that of a revolver, but larger and with only five chambers. From the look of the weapon, it had seen its share of abuse, the stained cedar on the grip and stalk dented and scared. His eyes followed the rifle’s course as Esekiel returned it to the holster on his back and fell back to all-fours.

“Not tryin’ to be snoopy here,” Dusty said quietly, striking the griffon’s attention. “But what kind of a rifle is that?”

Esekiel grinned and ran a talon along the barrel of the weapon. “This is a revolving rifle. If you can tell, it was made custom for a griffon. You can’t fit it in a battle saddle and a unicorn could use it if they had enough practice. It was fabricated for my cousin during a civil war quite a ways away from here. He fell in battle and I got this along with a box full of possessions.”

Dusty nodded. “So, um, what’s your story?”

Esekiel snorted and rolled his eyes. “Story, heh. Came to Equestria and became a fugitive the third week I was here. Turns out, ponies like their local wildlife.” Another snort. “How was I supposed to know. When the infection hit, this nonsense that started with ponies mind you, I was currently being held at the very authority station we just broke out of, having been captured the day before for burglary.”

“Well you’re a nice cookie,” Dusty muttered.

The griffon glared. “I had to eat. How many places do you know where a griffon can get work?” Instead of waiting for an answer, he continued on. “They clipped my wings and were transporting me to a more secure environment when those things started running down the street. The authority ponies were nice enough to take me out of the wagon as they fled, and that’s how I ended up on that rooftop where Yew showed up later.” He chuckled almost cruelly. “I would have never seen this rifle again, but turns out the sheriff of that station had a thing for exotic weapons.”

“Well, ah’m sorta’ glad you're here. Not gonna’ lie; you creep me out a bit. But ah feel sorry for any zombie in your way.”

Esekiel looked down at Dusty, his eyes cold and level. “If you spend enough time around me, you’ll soon learn, I will do whatever I can to survive.”

“Heads up all.” Range flicked his light to a higher setting. “We just passed handler number twenty-seven; the next is just ahead.”

Altic stepped around a half-eaten rat with a look of sheer disgust on her face. “Of course there’d be rats down here.” She shuddered. “I hate rats.” She eeped as another rat scuttled out from under one of the track ties. In a second, she drew the two automatics, reducing the little black creature to a pile of red gunk with the dual flash of her weapons’ shortened barrels.

Range shied away. “Easy, Altic. Don’t get blood on my coat.”

“I don’t like rats,” she said angrily, reloading the two weapons. “Zombies are cake... but rats.” She suppressed a shudder.

“Calm it, Altic.” Range flicked his tail at her. “Rats aren’t going to hurt you.”

They walked maybe fifty feet in silence. Dusty scanned the tunnel ahead for any movement, quite glad to see nothing.

Yew perked her ears. “I hear something.”

Esekiel paused, the constant click-clacking of his talons on the concrete subsiding. “You’ve got quite the ear, Yew.” He shrugged her off. “I don’t hear anything.”

It was Altic who stopped them again. “I hear it,” she said fearfully. She shone her light ahead frantically. “I can not be the only one hearing this.”

Dusty perked his ears. He could hear something. It was a scuttling, similar to Esekiel’s claws on the concrete, but much more quiet. His eyes widened in terror as he realized just what the sound was. “Anypony think it’s a good idea to look behind us?”

Dusty tracked Altic’s light as she turned to look behind him. Her light shone down the way they had come and Dusty felt his jaw go slack.

“G-g-g-guys,” Atlic stammered, taking a step back, shaking in fear.

Rats, hundreds of them. They crowded the tunnel behind him, flowing over the rails like a black wave. Their little red eyes shone in the light, nothing but empty orbs.

Range turned around to look back, eyes widening substantially. “To answer your question, Esekiel...” He gulped. “Yes, rats can be infected.” The others had turned as well now, balking at the sight. “I believe it would be in our best interests to—”

“Run!” Altic screamed in a shrill voice. Her hooves blurred below her and she shot up the tunnel, practically leaving her coat behind.

“Yes.” Range turned away and took chase after the mare. “Take advice from Altic. Run!”

Yew fired the two rifles on her back, but hardly made a dent. Wherever her bullets hit, rats went up in little puffs of blood, but more just took their place. Dusty grabbed her by the tail and pulled her back. “Bullets ain’t gonna do no good! Come on, run!”

“Zombie rats,” Range panted. “What is Equestria coming to?”

Altic paused a moment to look back at them. “Come on!” she screamed. Her eyes literally popped from her head as she looked at the horde of little black creatures right on their tails. She turned away again, running just a little ahead now. “Rats. Why rats?”

“Because everypony hates you!” Range hollered back, wheezing. “Oh, wow, I am out of shape.”

“Now is not the time, Range!”

“Do you two always act like this?” Dusty panted as he ran alongside the others. Whatever he had, flu or not, it was having its effect on his body.

Yew shone her light on a ladder up ahead, bolted to the side of the tunnel. “Range, is that it?”

He magically righted his glasses to look at where she shone her light. “Yes!”

Dusty didn’t even bother to draw his revolver as Range took to the ladder, climbing it up the side of the tunnel. Six shots would be useless against the sea of rats behind them. He looked back to find Altic still running down the tunnel, past the point where the rest of them had stopped. “Hey, mare! Altic!” he called. “Come back!”

She skidded to a halt and looked back at him in mild confusion. “Are you crazy!?”

Dusty chewed his bottom lip as his eyes darted between Range, and the wave of zombie rats closing in on them. Yew chomped on the bit of her battle saddle and lit up the two rifles, tearing scars in the advancing pests. “I advise that you hurry, Range!” she growled.

Range pounded his hooves on the panel from the top of the ladder. “Horseapples! It’s padlocked.” He looked down. “Griffon! Cut this lock off.”

Esekiel, who had been standing back trying not to look completely useless, sprang into action. Flaring his wings to their full size, he managed to lift himself to the roof with some effort. Altic joined Yew in fighting back the rats. Although their barrage of fire seemed to slow the rodents, they were still coming, ten feet and gaining.

“Fucking zombie rats,” Altic said through clenched teeth, firing one SMG while she reloaded the other.

Dusty looked up in time to see Esekiel slash through the lock holding the maintenance hatch closed. The griffon shoved the hatch open and climbed through. A taloned arm reached out and pulled Range up through the square opening like he was no more than a stuffed doll.

“Come on!” Dusty yelled to the two mares. “Door’s open!” Without waiting for a response, he flared his wings and flew up to the roof to pull himself into the maintenance room.

Yew’s rifles clicked on empty and she jumped for the ladder. She pulled her way up it, the bolts groaning under her weight. “Altic, come on!”

“Crap, coming!” The mare retreated, climbing up onto the latter and firing her automatics down at the rats that had begun to pool below. She reached the halfway point as Yew pulled herself through the hatch. There was a clang as several rusty bolt heads sheared out of the wall. Altic’s eyes went wide in terror and she froze halfway up the ladder. She turned and looked back, down at the pool of rats that was beginning to form, piling up like water seeping from a geyser.

Range pushed forward and held a hoof out to her. “Altic, come on!”

Slowly, the mare crept up another rung, wincing as the steel groaned. “Don’t worry, Altic, it’s only an old, creaky ladder,” she reassured herself. “And if you fall off it you’ll be eaten by rats.” She crept up another rung and another bolt sheared away from the wall.

Range leaned out a bit further. “Come on, Altic, just a couple more feet.”

She hugged close to the wall, shaking in fear. “Heh, I guess you don’t hate me.” She looked down again and moaned.

“You drive me crazy, Altic, but it would hurt me to see you die. Now come on!”

Altic crept up another half a foot, biting her lip as the steel groaned its protest. There was another clang and the ladder fell away from the wall to lodge against the roof. Altic cried out and clutched on for dear life.

“You gotta’ move, Altic.” Range held out his hoof for her, sweat beading on his brow. “I can’t pull you up if I can’t reach you.”

“Damn rats.” The mare scurried her way up the ladder, now close enough to grasp Range’s hoof. She reached out, and the ladder below her dropped. With a cry, she leapt, propelling herself into the air. Range reached out and wrapped his hoof around hers just as she began to fall. There was a crunch and a clatter as the ladder crashed to the floor amongst the pool of rats.

Range smiled at the blue mare dangling from his hoof. “That was a close one.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah yeah, flirt once I’m not dangling for my life.”

“Right.” With the help of Esekiel, they pulled Altic up through the hatch, into the maintenance room.

Altic curled herself up into a ball as Esekiel closed the hatch below them, shutting off the sound of the rats’ relentless scuttling and squeaking. “Of all the monsters in Equestria... it had to be rats... It had to be rats.”

Range stopped down beside her, nuzzling her flank. “There now, we’re fine; you’re fine. Stop with the waterworks.” His expression softened a little. “Okay?”

She looked up at him, eyes wide and bloodshot. “O-okay.” She relaxed a little, her breathing slowing. “T-thanks, Range.”

Esekiel flicked a talon across the gray stallion’s ear. “And you said you didn’t like her.”

Range hissed under his breath. “Yes, she’s snappy and pushy and rude and annoying, and it drives me crazy! But it sticks to me.”

Dusty took the small pause to look around the room. It wasn’t much, dingy, gray concrete seeping from moisture. A small air handler sat in a corner, its mechanics rusted and seized from age. A vent, roughly two feet wide, ran out of the side of the machine and through the wall.

As if she had been watching his eyes, Yew trotted over to the vent and rapped on it with a hoof. “Esekiel, mind getting this open for us?”

Esekiel shrugged and sauntered over to the vent, raising the talons on his right arm and examining them. “These things aren’t invincible you know. They do get dull.”

She nudged him, her action proving about the same as nudging a brick wall. “Yeah, but I’ve seen you sharpening them on whatever’s around when you think nopony’s looking.”

He gave her a warning look. “It comes in handy.” Tuning away, he focussed on the vent and, with terrifying force, slashed downwards. He then did two horizontal swipes and one more vertical. There metal squealed and sparked and the side of the vent fell inward. Roughly, the griffon grabbed the sheet of metal and pulled it out of the way to toss it away to the corner of the room.

Dusty folded his ears. “Jeesh... Now that’s just scary.”

Esekiel stepped aside and beckoned them forward like a chauffeur. “Your ride awaits.”

Altic leered at him, having regained most of her composure. “A Griffon... with a sense of humor?” She snorted. “What planet are you from?”

Esekiel glared, giving her a push that knocked her on her rump. “Well excuse me for not trying to fit a stereotype. I could claw your ear off if you’d like.”

Altic picked herself up with a little less gusto than she had previously possessed. “Right, you could kill us all in ten seconds flat. I got the point.”

“Just a question,” Dusty chimed. “Are all griffons like you? Cause’ I only met the ones that were all zombified and they were pretty nasty.”

He looked to Dusty, then cast a sidelong glance to Altic. “No, half the griffons would kill you in ten seconds flat if you so much as sneezed at them. So you should feel real lucky that I haven’t slit your throat while you sleep.”

She looked a little fearful, but held her stance. “I’m pretty sure we both know why you wouldn’t slit any throats, especially not mine.”

Range cleared his throat loudly. “Esekiel, if you could do the honors.” He motioned towards the vent. “You need to cut us out at the end, and there’s not exactly room for us to go climbing around each other in there.”

The griffon looked at the opening for a moment, then nodded. “Okay.” he stooped down and shoved his head through the hole, dragging his body behind him and tucking his wings in close to his back. He stuck halfway in, grunted, sucked in his belly, then shoved himself through with his hind legs. “A bit tight in here,” he muttered.

Range followed Esekiel, removing the two rifles from the battle saddle and sliding them in ahead of him. Altic took after him while Yew removed her rifles as well. Dusty fell in next, followed at the back by Yew. The vent was a bit of a squeeze for a pony. Dusty felt bad for the griffon at the front. he must really be having troubles. He noticed claw marks in the steel as he pulled himself forward, illuminated in yew’s light. Obviously, the griffon was having a bit of trouble pulling himself forward.

“So,” Altic grunted as they shimmied forward. “What if this vent doesn’t lead where you say it does and we can’t find a way out?”

“Then you’d better learn how to swim through rats.” Yew said from the back. “Don’t curse us, Altic. We’re doing good so far.”

The five of them pushed through the vent in silence for about five minutes. Dusty found that the inside of the vent was very dirty, coated with soot and ash. Soon, his coat was stained and ruined, turned black from the soot. He assumed the others were faring the same way.

It seemed like a decade before he finally heard Esekiel call out, followed by the squeal of the ventilation shaft as it was torn through. There was a rush of fresh air and a burst of natural light around Altic, and he found himself longing to get out of the whole mess. When it came his turn to pull himself out of the vent, he nearly cheered. Fresh sunlight bathed his blackened coat and he flared his wings to shake out the soot.

Esekiel snorted. Fluffing up his feathers, he shook his whole body, filling the air with black dust. “Go first why don’t you,” he muttered. “You’re all lucky I was up front rubbing off most the soot.”

“Thank you very much,” Yew replied, shaking her tail with a flat expression. “It’s better than blood,” she muttered.

Dusty looked around. They had torn out of the vent on the roof of a parkplace for wagons. A few chariots and an old skywagon remained, its inner workings salvaged. Far off in the distance, his eye caught a plume of smoke, curling into the afternoon sky. They had traveled farther than he had originally thought. They were a good two miles away from the engine.

Range walked up beside Dusty, eyes squinted behind his glasses. “So, that’s our way out of here...”

Yew walked up beside them. “How are we supposed to make it that far across the city?”

Altic snorted, shaking soot out of her mane. “Beats me. I’ll tell you one thing though. I am not going anywhere near another tunnel.”

Dusty had momentary thoughts of moving the engine closer, but noted that they were nowhere near the tracks. Moving the engine would do no good. Also, Snowglobe probably hadn’t had enough time to fix the tubes yet. Speaking of Snowglobe.

He flared his wings “Hey, ah left some ponies back at the train, an’ ah need to go check on things. Ah’ll be—” Before he could continue, there was a heavy blow to his side, and when he came to, he found himself pinned on his back. Esekiel stood over him, looking down, his eyes cool and contemplative. One set of talons rested on his chest, holding him down with enough force to hurt, but not to draw blood.

“You aren’t leaving.”

“Ah, what the hay?” Dusty winced as the griffon’s grip tightened. “Easy with the claws. Those things are like knives.”

“Esekiel!” Yew yelled in a semi-outrage. “What are you doing?”

He never looked up, even as the mare butted him in the side. “I’m playing it safe.”

Dusty looked to the others for help. Altic sat back like she didn’t give a hoot if the griffon disemboweled him, and Range was contemplating the scene calmly, his two rifles mounted back in the saddle he wore.

“I’ve been backstabbed far too many times, for far too long.” He flicked his tail towards the other three ponies. “These three, they’ve earned my trust. You haven’t.”

Dusty gulped. “Could ah ask that you don’t open me like a can of beans?” A bolt of pain seared through his head and he pinched his eyes shut. When he opened them again, Esekiel was still glaring down at him.

“You can fly, which means you can find us a route.”

Dusty winced as the talons pricked at the soft flesh of his underbelly. “Ack, it’s fine.” He coughed. “But why you gotta’ go an’ throw me to the ground?” He tried to breathe lightly; the griffon wasn’t giving him any give.

“I’m sorry, Dusty,” Yew chirped. “But, I kind of have to agree with him. We could really use an eye in the sky.”

“I’ve never liked you pegasi.” Esekiel leaned in close. “Remember when I said I would do anything, to survive?”

“Right.” He gulped again. “Ah’ll stay with all of you.”

Esekiel loosened his grip a little. “Good... But a warning, lightweight.” He drove one talon painfully into the pegasus’ coat, causing him to cry out as blood welled around the area. “If you try anything, then I’ll slice you open like a bag of flour, and watch what pours out.”

Chapter 14 Dusty - Part two

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“I don’t like this,” Altic whispered.

The five of them walked down the middle of a litter-strewn street. Apartment buildings stretched away on either side of them, each separated by a dark alley; it was a stereotypical place to get screwed over, and Dusty was just waiting for somepony to whisper, ‘it’s quiet... too quiet’.

Where’re all the zombies?” Dusty asked quietly, very well aware of the jinx he could cause with those temperamental words.

They had left the parking platform in the distance, and had since made maybe a good four-hundred yards from it; the pace was slow, terribly slow. Although they hadn’t gone far, it had already felt like they had walked miles..

Range stopped for what Dusty figured to be the fourth time, eyeing the surrounding buildings through his scope. “I have a theory to that.” He shrugged and started forward again, kicking aside an empty drink cup. “Theoretically, the zombies would die off from hunger or wound infection after the first week or two, right?”

Dusty nodded. “You’d think.”

“Well obviously, this is not the case, because we’re somewhere near two months in, and so far, they’re all still here.”

“What are you implying?” Esekiel growled.

Range flicked his eyes towards the griffon. “I’m implying that these things have more than just primal instincts. They wouldn't be alive if all they knew how to do was eat and kill. You must wonder where they all disappear to?” He sighed at Esekiel’s flat expression. “I think they’re resting.”

Altic snorted. “What? Are you saying that you think these things are intelligent?”

Range shook his head. “Intelligent, no. But they have the basic necessities that an animal needs to remain alive. Think of a wolf; they eat, sleep, hunt, and seek shelter from the elements. These things, these, zombies, they aren’t as smart as wolves, because if they were, we would all be dead by now. No, they aren’t very smart, but they have instincts.”

Dusty nodded vaguely. “So, you’re sayin’ these things kind of act like wolves?”

Range groaned. “No, not like wolves. I’m simply trying to make a comparison. I’m saying, they’re getting smarter. These things used to launch themselves off ledges going after ponies standing on an adjacent building. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they don’t jump anymore. They have the preservation drive, which makes them much more dangerous.”

Yew coaxed a click from her twin rifles. “But they still run at you. Sure, they don’t throw themselves off of rooftops or high ledges anymore, but they’re still dumb enough to run at a pony with a gun.”

“Noise attracts them,” Range added. “They react to the smell of blood too. Gunshots don’t seem to draw them much, but sounds like explosions or heavy machinery will send them running at you.”

Dusty nodded in perfect understanding. “How’d you figure all this out?”

The gray stallion tapped his glasses. “I watched. Why do you think I’m still alive?” Continuing on the premise that his question was rhetorical: “Half the time, the damned things don’t make any sense at all. Collecting consistent observations is about as effective as trying to light a candle in a typhoon.”

They all skirted a large machine abandoned in the middle of the street. It stood six feet tall and appeared as a heap of steel on tracks. Dusty found his eyes wandering over it. It was rectangular in length with a round dome mounted atop; closer to the front, a large cannon barrel protruded from it and a machine gun was mounted just before a hatch.

“Is that what I think it is?” Yew marvelled.

Dusty nodded, eyes traveling to the exhaust vents in the back.

Eyes positively sparkling, Range trotted up to the front and pulled himself up on the metal beast. “I wonder how many of these babies Canterlot had.”

Esekiel tapped the armoured plate siding with curled talons, receiving a deep ‘bwong’ from the steel. “Exactly what is it?”

Range propped his hooves on the turret, peering at the cannon barrel. “This, my feathered friend, is an Equestrian-defense all-terrain combat vehicle.”

Esekiel gave him a dry look.

“It’s a tank,” Range clarified. “It’s based off of a new technology discovered about two years ago. At the time, the ponies sitting on the coal mines wanted to keep it all really hush, because it could have put them out of business, so they all paid out the flank to keep ponies quiet. About six months ago, somepony blabbed and they wound up dead in an alley, but by then, the secret was out. You see—”

“Range,” Yew said in a deadpan. “Skip the history lesson. Just tell us what the thing is.”

He flushed. “Right.” He adjusted his glasses. “It’s powered by something called magical liquid combustion. A group of scientist ponies found these underground wells of magical liquid, then from there, they set to the task of building a device that could utilize it. You see, this stuff, it can’t be drawn from like gemstones, and normal gemerators won’t run off it. Some pony I can’t remember the name of figured out that the magic could be drawn from the liquid if there was only a very small amount of it. In order to utilize enough power from the fuel, they had to build a device that could separate large amounts of it into small chambers and combine the magical power again on the other end. Well, that’s just what he did. It was a crazy thought; he proposed to use magical balefire to separate the magic from the container that was the liquid. Well, it worked... explosively. In short, this reaction drives a set of gears, which turns a shaft at very high speeds. It’s genius, and incredibly dangerous at the same time.” As he spoke, he worked at prying open the hatch, which didn’t seem to want to budge.

“Somehow, this stuff is formed in the ground, some sort of seep from friendship and love or something.” He grunted as the hatch screeched open an inch. “The stuff’s crazy efficient, but they ran into a bunch of issues when the consumption waste proved toxic.” He got the hatch up a little more.

“That was still a history lesson,” Yew said with minor annoyance. “How’d they fix it?” she asked next, curiosity grabbed.

“They didn’t. They held back a month and found a way to vaporize the waste with the exhaust. Instead of coming out as a black liquid, it comes out as a black smoke, still just as dangerous, only it disappears into the air. Everypony knew it was bad, but it was cheap and there wasn’t a lot of it.

“The virus hit before anypony could take it any further. The technology’s out there, it’s just rare.”

Yew crept slowly around the front of the metal monster. “Well, why’d they leave this thing in the street? If this thing really does move around like it looks like it does, there’s no way a zombie could get to you.”

“The tracks are all tore up on this side!” Altic yelled from the other side of the tank.

Range finally managed to wrestle the hatch open and he poked his head into the dark circle. “I wonder if anything’s salvageable.”

“Come on, Range.” Yew beckoned him. “Let’s keep moving. It’s cool and all, but we don’t have time.”

Range screamed and backpedaled, his hooves scrabbling for purchase on the smooth steel. He overbalanced and his hind legs shot into the air, then he was gone.

Yew sprang forward. “Range!”

There were three gunshots, muffled from inside the steel shell.

There was a clunk from inside the turret, and another, smaller click. Without warning, the cannon of the tank discharged. The front end of the beast reared up into the air as the muzzle roared. Dusty’s ears rang, stunned from the loudness of the cannon. Flame and gunpowder residue shot from the end of the barrel, and the whole front of a building down the street went up in an explosion of purple and green fire.

Before any of them could even begin to comprehend what had just happened, Range was pulling himself out of the hatch, his face smeared with grime, mane frizzled. Blood spattered his already-ruined coat. With a heavy grunt, he heaved himself over the edge of the turret and flopped down upon the top of the machine. Not even pausing to breathe, he clambered to his hooves and swung the hatch shut. The heavy steel creaked as it began to drop, but a purple creature lodged itself halfway out. The hatch slammed down on its middle section, pinning its head and forhooves to the top of the tank.

“Shoot it!” Range yelled, throwing his weight—which wasn’t much—upon the hatch to keep the creature from slipping out. The zombie lunged forwards, nearly tossing Range off the hatch as it bucked upwards. He held on, beating the thing atop its head with his forehoof as it tried to twist its head around to bite him.

“Shoot it!” Range yelled again, more frantic. Yew backed up to take aim with her rifles, but Esekiel was faster. In less than a second, he had the rifle off his back and aimed. The hammer dropped on the revolving rifle and a line of fire flashed from around the cylinder, accompanied by a crack and a bang that echoed around the streets. Range hid his face from the spray of blood and bone as she shot struck, pitting the steel of the turret below the zombie’s head.

The echo of the discharge reached them a second time, quieter. With another grunt, Range pushed the zombie back into the tank and sealed the hatch. “Damn!” he exclaimed, shaking off the blood that dripped from his head. He panted slightly and grinned, falling back on his haunches. “Theres... there’s zombies in there.”

He climbed down from the tank, looking just a little embarrassed. “In retrospect, sticking my head into a small, enclosed space with nothing but long-ranged weapons was a really bad idea.” He paused. “And then falling against the lever that turned out to be the firing mechanism for a cannon that had been loaded with a live round... Sorry.”

Dusty found himself gaping at Esekiel as the griffon returned the rifle to its holster. “What’s that rifle meant to shoot? Dragons?” he said half-jokingly.

Esekiel gave him a level eye. “Yes.”

Dusty blinked. “Wait, yes what?”

“Come on,” Yew said suddenly, jerking them to attention. “I’d bet every zombie this side of Equestria heard that cannon; let’s not sit around and wait for them.”

As if her words had been a trigger, there was a gurgled scream from the way they had come, followed by a cacophony of others. There was a crash and the chatter of hooves on cobblestone that folded the ears of the five ponies standing around the tank.

Range positively fumed and dropped the scope on his rifle, taking a few steps backwards. “I would like to apologise for this.”

There was a splintering of wood and a shattering of glass as a group of colorfully-dreadful ponies burst out of a multi-story apartment. Range’s rifle discharged with a throaty bang, and a quarter-second later, the lead zombie kissed the cobblestone sprouting blood from its chest.

“Damn,” cursed the unicorn stallion. “I’m off mark.”

Esekiel rose to his hind legs and flared his wings. By now, Dusty had realized that the griffon did this for balance. Esekiel was still a daunting sight, standing four and a half feet tall. He fired the rifle into the group and had to beat his wings to keep himself from falling over backwards. The bullet zipped through the air and hit the lead zombie with a meaty thwack. There was a puff of red mist out the back end of the unfortunate zombie. Dusty couldn’t help but grin as five more behind it went down.

Yew made two quick motions with her right hoof and flicked her left ear. “Let’s go!” She stepped back, and the others fell in right beside her. Esekiel took the lead with Altic, and Range trotted backwards with Yew by his side.

Dusty drew Valediction, slightly confused at the sudden grouping. Seeing it as the simplest and most effective way to proceed, he took off from the ground and hovered a little over them. Esekiel gave him a warning look, but said nothing.

He couldn’t help but be impressed at his sister’s ability to command. She was a friend of these ponies, but also a leader. They followed her every command, seemingly without question.

While Range believed that zombies were getting smarter, they were still pretty stupid. The twenty or so of them that decided to charge at their little group had bunched themselves together in a tight group. Range fired the sniper again and cycled to his carbine as Yew let loose with the two assault rifles on her back.

It was like shooting fish in a barrel. The zombies at the front went first, some dropping dead right away while others ran on for a moment, their brains not even knowing they were dead yet. It was a few seconds before they had all met the pavement.

Yew tossed her head and turned, balancing on her hind legs for a moment. “We need to get off the street.”

What Yew had told him back in the Hayfield tunnel was now proving true: just because you don’t see them, doesn’t mean they’re not there. Zombies poured from the most unimaginable places, out of alleys, windows, dumpsters even. Dusty groaned as he watched a few pegasi dive out of an upper story window.

“Is this normal for you guys?” Dusty asked as Yew strafed and alley with gunfire.

The group of four below him broke apart and bolted for a three story apartment at the end of the street. “Pretty much!” Altic yelled, taking up the lead.

Dusty flew backwards above them, trying his best to keep an eye on the skies, since they pretty much had the ground covered. He was beginning to understand their tactics. Range served as their ranged attack, and often provided support. Yew served as their midrange with her twin assault rifles. Altic’s SMGs seemed best equipped for close-range encounters, and Esekiel... Dusty didn’t know what he was for—sort of a jack of all trades.

He sighted a pegasus as it barreled at Range from behind. Valediction discharged in his mouth, sending a bolt of pain through his head. A crack emanated from the pegasus’ wing as the bullet shattered the humerus and it went into a spiral and fell to the street for a cheesegrater landing.

Was his aim really that far off?

Six zombies flowed out of an alley ahead of them and Altic lit them up with her automatics, a little smirk plastered on her face.

It only took them a moment to reach the end of the street, but to Dusty it felt like an hour. This fleeing pace was one he was still relatively new to. Sure, he had run from zombies before—not a lot, but enough to prove as an issue.

Never had he felt fear so strong; not for himself, but for Yew, and Snowglobe and Moon and the others. No matter what, they had to go on—they had to live.

“Dusty!” Yew bellowed. She stood in the open doorway of the apartment building, the others already having crossed the threshold.

Hurriedly, he dropped to the ground and rushed through the doorway, firing Valediction at the mass that charged the front steps. The hammer clicked on an empty chamber and he jumped back.

Yew slammed the door once he was through and threw her back against it.

Dusty looked up at her from reloading his revolver. “Ah’m sorry. Ah was kind of out of it there.”

The whole wall shook as the creatures outside bombarded the door and Yew was thrown to the floor with a little ‘eep’.

Altic magically yanked at his mane, dragging him away from the door and into the dark building. “Well let’s not wait to see if you’re right.”

Dusty followed as Yew led them down a dark hall.

But what if I am?” Asked Range cheekily, flipping on his light.

Altic flipped on her own light and took off at a thunderous pace, forcing the others to keep up. “Blow me!”

At the end of the hall, they passed through a doorway labeled with a plaque that read, ‘laundromat’. The pounding of their hooves on the wood floor quieted as they crossed onto the checkered linoleum. Altic sprang nimbly over a loaded laundry basket, leaving Range to trip in her wake.

The stallion stumbled for a moment before regaining himself. “I’m pretty sure that you—”

A brown mare with a charcoal mane exploded out from behind a washer and tackled him to the floor. Range screamed as he slid across the linoleum, the mare biting and snapping at him as he held her face away with his forehooves.

It was Esekiel who reacted the fastest. In glimpses of Range’s light, Dusty watched as the gray stallion struggled in vain with the braindead mare. The griffon pounced with a war cry. He gripped the zombie with his talons and ripped the mare off of Range. Dusty watched in the flashes of light in the darkness as he raised her above his head, one set of talons clutching her neck.

The whole motion took no longer than a second, but Dusty saw it all with perfect clarity. Esekiel’s free arm moved to her lower body and and clamped tight around her belly. One talon turned one way, and the other the opposite way. He wrung the mare like a towel, twisting her nearly three-hundred and sixty degrees before her spine snapped and her ribs began to crack and stab through the flesh. Like she was nothing more than an expended magazine, he tossed her away, putting a spin on her trajectory. The zombie mare hit a double-stack washer and dryer with a bong and a crunch, toppling the heavy appliances.

“Range!” Altic cried, dashing back to where he lay. “Please tell me you’re not bit!” She shook him violently, knocking his glasses off his face. “Tell me you’re not bit!”

Range groaned and sat up. “I’m not bit.”

Yew went lax with relief. “Thank Celestia.”

He levitated his glasses and returned them to his face. “Skank got a bite out of my binoculars though.” His horn glowed orange as he pulled the pair of binoculars from their strap around his neck. One barrel was crushed, and the other had a clear bite mark in it. He tossed them away.

Esekiel shrugged away his terrifying display of power, his ruffled feathers flattening and the deadly look leaving his eyes. “A lucky pony you are.”

Range seemed to notice the griffon, and took a respectful bow. “This is the fourth time you have saved my life.” He gave Esekiel a halfway-grin. “I hope I’ll get to return the favor some time.” He winced at a crash from the front of the building. “How many seconds was that?”

Yew started forward, taking the lead. “Sixteen.”

A wide grin spread across Range’s face as they took up a semi-gallop. “What do I get for being close, Altic?”

“Whatever you want if we make it out of the city.”

They burst out of a fire door into an alleyway. Altic secured the door once they were through and Range dealt with the three straggling zombies milling about in the alleyway.

The markspony grinned back at Altic. “You do realize the extremities of the word, ‘anything’?”

The steel door to the alley nearly creased in two as something slammed against the other side. The middle hinge sheared away in a little shower of brick and a zombie shoved its head out through open space between the door and the wall, trying to fit its shoulders through as well.

Esekiel lashed out and swiped a set of talons across its face. There was a spray of blood, and even as it tried to pull away, another slash tore a gaping hole in its throat.

“Help me with this!” Yew called, drawing their attention away from the gruesomely-amusing sight. She had braced herself against a steel dumpster, face contorted in strain of effort.

Wordlessly, Dusty and Esekiel jumped to her aid and, together, they pushed the steel box in front of the quickly-failing fire door.

Altic allowed herself to calm slightly and shot Range a sultry look. “Anything short of choking me.”

Yew eyed the dumpster skeptically. “Let’s move.”

They were running again, down the semi-dark alleyway. It was always running. They rounded a corner between stacked bags of garbage and an old bedframe. Ahead was another door, which Yew led them through.

They had crossed into a diner. Rotten and decayed remnants of ponies’ lunches still rested on tables and drink glasses still littered the bar along the back wall of the building. From the looks of it, the place had been abandoned in a hurry. Nearly every window had been smashed, and a hole had even been torn in the domed, aluminum roof.

Dusty expected Yew to lead them on past the serving counter and out the front, but to his mild surprise, she brought them to a stop in front of the counter and bar.

Dusty took the break thankfully, breath stabbing at his chest. He literally had no physical endurance, not anymore. “Why are we stoppin’?” He leaned up against one of the booths.

Range hopped the bartop almost blissfully. “I’ll check the freezer.” He pushed through the stainless-steel door to the kitchen and disappeared.

“Food,” Yew said simply.

Esekiel set himself down on one of the bar cushions and placed his front talons on the ring-stained oak counter. “I could eat a cow.” He frowned a the face Altic gave him. “One of you ponies could probably eat a whole hayfield.” He chuckled lightly at himself, examining a bloodstained talon.

Altic took a seat beside him and thumped her hoof on the table. “Can it, birdbrain.”

Esekiel got a look about him, but before he could reply, Range burst out of the kitchen looking like a foal on Hearth’s Warming Eve. “Guess what?” he chided.

“You’re a coltcuddler?” Altic suggested with a shrug.

“You wish,” he scoffed. “Don’t forget: you told me anything.” He snickered at the wry look she gave him. “No. The cooler had a backup spark battery.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Cold cider and food!” His horn glowed and the door behind him burst open to accompany a food trolley loaded with all sorts of everyday food that was now a delicacy.

Dusty cast a quick look around at the others before sitting down between Altic and Yew. There wasn’t a living thing to be seen “Aren’t you all worried about the zombies?”

Range shook his head. “They disappear as fast as they come. If they lose you, they aren’t smart enough to track you down. If a pony is bleeding... well that’s a whole nother story. If you’re bleeding, you might as well be leaving pointy arrows behind you lighting the way you’ve gone.” He tossed the thought aside, digging in the food trolley from behind the bar and coming up with several colored tubs. “We’ve got vanilla and Rocky Road—”

Altic magically snatched the brown tub from his grasp. “Mine!”

Dusty more than gladly accepted a box of hayfries, the others receiving similar restaurant food.

Altic shrugged, pulling her muzzle out of the ice cream tub to look at the carrots placed before her. “It’s too bad you couldn’t cook them.” She set the ice cream aside and dug ravenously into the frostbitten plate of carrots. “Ith bether an’ gooth in a bagth,” she said around a mouthful of food, spraying carrot chunks from her lips.

Range ducked below the bar and came up again with a wide grin. His horn glowed and up floated a dozen glass bottled filled with a deep, amber liquid. “It’s our lucky day.”

Esekiel actually grinned a little as he grabbed one of the bottles out of the air and flicked the cap off with a talon. “Cider,” he complimented.

Dusty squinted over at Altic, who had already demolished half of the carrots on her plate. “Were you in Canterlot for all of this?”

“Yep,” she said casually. “It’s Dusty, right?”

Dusty nodded. “Yeah.” He realized this was the first time she had ever addressed him directly, the same with him to her.

She magically uncapped her bottle of cider and took a deep swig. “It’s obvious you’re trying to make smalltalk, so I’ll bite.” She slammed the bottle back down to the bartop. “I was an erotic dancer.”

Dusty, who had been about to take a bite of hayfry, stopped. “Huh?”

She grinned a little. “I danced in a club. It still blows me away that stallions will actually pay money to watch a mare get sexy on stage or on a pole while they drink hot cider.” She flicked her tail—a practiced movement, sleek and eye-drawing. “You have no idea how many tips I got.”

Esekiel snorted. “I think those mares that slink around the poles just look like confused firecolts.”

She gave him an angry glare.

Dusty nodded absently. He couldn’t help but think that the mare looked very nice, even covered in blood and dirt and soot. “Ah’m not gonna’ lie... if ah had bits, ah’d probably throw them at you too.”

Range gave Dusty a look over his glasses. “Step lightly, mate.”

Altic rolled her eyes at him. “Cool it. Everypony’s allowed to look.” She turned to Dusty. “I’ll tell you what the bouncers used to say. Look all you want, but touch and I’ll break your hooves off and ram them down your throat.”

He nodded again. “Got it.” He blinked the awkward expression off his face. “How’d you make it this far?”

She took another drink of cider. “Get this. I had heard all these radio broadcasts about these issues and a huge sickness in the central city. The club I worked at was a bit out of the downtown district.” She cleared her throat. “So it’s latenight; just about this time is when the broadcasts stopped. So, this real oddball at the bar goes crazy and hops the bar and starts eating the bartender. That was the very first time I ever saw a zombie.”

Dusty tucked into the hayfries as he listened intently.

“It was really another twelve hours before things really got bad. There were zombies, lots of gunfire... I hid under the bed in my apartment through it all. I don’t know how long it was, but when I finally crept out from under that bed, it was all quiet...” She stared down at the bar. “I was scared, and I didn’t know what to do. I spent a few days slinking around, dodging those things, running when they saw me. There were other ponies, but you couldn’t trust them. They’d rather shoot you in case you were infected then see if you were fine... Not to mention I looked like a piece of candy to any half-crazy stallion out there.”

Dusty made a motion towards her. “How’d you end up so...” He made another motion towards her. “You?”

She pushed a carrot around her plate with a distant expression. “It was maybe a week or so in... I was poking around this hotel, and there were these survivors. I was too scared to face them, so I hid in the janitor’s closet. They were two stallions. I listened, and there were these other ponies. I could see them out the door. There was a stallion, and a mare, a little short.”

The diner had gone quiet, everypony listening intently to the light-blue mare. Dusty felt a little bad for invoking this mood in her. Something about the way she was speaking leaked sadness like a wet sponge. Her tone lacked its normal on-top-of-the-world air, and was now low and meek, as if she were being forced to tell something she didn’t want to.

“At first, they just talked... But then the two stallions attacked them. They shot the other stallion and beat the mare down, took their guns. They pulled off her barding... The bigger one held her down and—” She choked back a small sob, eyes shimmering. “I was too scared. By the time I had worked up the courage to try and help, they had a gun to her head and... and...”

Range hopped the counter to stand beside her, resting a hoof on her shoulder. Take it easy, Altic.”

She pinched her eyes shut. “There was a fire axe on the wall. I snuck out of the closet and levitated it off the wall, and went up behind them. The first one didn’t even see it coming. The axe sank to the handle in the back of his neck.” She spat the line like she was mad at it. “The other one shot...” She shook in Range’s grasp. “Her guts sprayed me... That’s when something inside me changed. I pulled the axe out of the one I’d killed, and I swung. The first one hit him i-in the leg. He went down, and I swung again, this time in the side. He cried; he asked me to stop. But... I j-j-just swung, and swung, and swung.”

“It’s okay,” Range muttered as she leaned into him. He shot a glare to Dusty, and the pegasus made an apologetic gesture. ‘How was I supposed to know?’ he mouthed.

“If ponies could be so cruel... Then we’re no better than those fucking zombies!” She pounded her hooves on the bar in anger. “If I could kill a pony, kill a pony in front of their very eyes, hack them up with a fire axe, then I could kill a zombie. Now... now it’s just a matter of pointing, and pulling the trigger.”

Dusty realized his mouth had fallen open a little and he hurriedly closed it. “Shoot, ah’m sorry for—”

She straightened up suddenly, eyes cold. “This infection was the best thing to happen to Equestria in years. We’d forgotten who we were. There was no love, no morale. The ponies that lived, lived for a reason, I say. You need friends in this mess. Without friends you either go insane, or die alone.” She turned to Dusty. “Tell me, Dusty, where would you be without your friends? And don’t say you don’t have them, because I can see it in your eyes.”

Dusty swallowed. He was scared, scared that this mare was making sense. “Dead somewhere in the desert...”

“When this is over... if, this ever ends, we’ll be able to start anew. Ponies will learn to love and care and help one another, like we used to. I wasn’t alive in those years, but I’ve heard stories, stories of what we were like.” She wiped a tear from her eye and gave Dusty a perfectly-level look. “I know that this... all of this, has made me a better pony. How about you?”

He was at a complete loss for words. It felt like somepony had shoved an egg beater in his good ear and turned his brain to mashed potatoes and gravy. “Ah... ah don’t know.”

She polished off her bottle of cider. “When you find out, make sure to remember the past, to better the future. The only thing left for us is each other... friends.”

“She makes a good point,” Esekiel said quietly, never looking up from his talons, which were scratching something into the oak bartop. “This is a time of redemption, not just for ponies, but for everyone. Griffons, zebras, ponies... everyone.” He looked up at Altic with a new admiration. “You’re a wise mare.”

She laughed cruelly. “I wanted to be a poet. Dancing was just to get me the money I needed. I got stuck between point A and point B and I never picked up the pen.”

The griffon shrugged. “It’s never too late to start.”

Without warning, Dusty doubled over, a searing pain in his belly. To save the sight from the others, he leaned over, trying not to heave as the saliva in his mouth began to taste like salt. Another heave wracked his body and everything he had just eaten came back up, spattering to the floor.

“Yew patted him on the back. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he choked, head spinning.

Range clicked his tongue worriedly. “That’s not a very good sign.”

Dusty pushed Yew away and stood, a little shakily. “Don’t worry about me; ah’m fine.” He winced. His stomach ached and his head hurt, his limbs stiff and sore. The worry he felt in his mind was daunting, but he didn’t allow his body language to show it.

Yew sat back, eyeing him worriedly. “Dusty...” She sighed, shaking her head.

* * *

“It’s been hours,” Moon fretted, having just arrived to see the two mares. They all sat atop the first boxcar, looking out over the city.

Sage sat perfectly still, Jade leaned up against her. “How long has it been since those gunshots?”

“About half an hour.” She sighed. There had been a sound like a cannon blast, then a whole cacophony of gunfire. “There’s more than one of them,” she added.

Jade nodded, her ears perked. “It sounded like four ponies.”

“Think Dusty’s with them?”

Jade pointed to the building the pegasus had had disappeared to, then squinted off towards the left. “Maybe. It makes me wonder how he could have gotten so far from that building.

Sage shrugged. “Maybe he took a detour... A mile long detour.”

Moon stood, flicking her ears dismissively. “You sent for me, Sage?”

Sage brushed Jade off and scrambled to her hooves, making a small ruckus on the wooden roof of the boxcar. “Yes!” She trotted to the edge of the boxcar and started down a mounted ladder. “I wanted us to look over our supplies. I had already planned on having everything counted by the time you got here, but...” She cast a look to Jade and blushed slightly. “Cuddles ensured.”

Moon followed her down while Jade flared her wings and gently lowered herself to the track. “Makes sense.” She grinned a little. “So, did you even take a look?”

Sage frowned at the mangled remains of the boxcar door. It had been smashed and splintered, bent aside and torn from the tracks. “Yeah, it’s pretty bad.” She pulled herself up onto the lip with a little grunt and forced the door open. “There was some sort of fight in here. I had only peeked in the door.”

Moon made a sour face as she followed Sage. Blood had sprayed the walls and whole sections of floorboards had been torn up or smashed. Barrels of expiring apples lay scattered about the floor, many crushed.

Moon picked up a small movement in her peripherals and jumped, spinning towards the darkness at the end of the boxcar. Jade jumped and flared her wings with a little squeak. “What was that?”

The wooden floor creaked as the previously-unseen shape moved out of the dark corner.

Moon sighed. It was Brick, minus the machine gun. “Hey, Brick,” she greeted casually, squinting a little to see him better. “What are you doing in here?”

He rolled his eyes and sat back, nodding towards a trail of blood on the floor. Moon followed it with her eyes to an immobile shape sprawled out in a corner.

“Is it one of us?” Sage asked, taking a step forwards.

Brick shook his head.

“Zombie?” Sage suggested.

A nod.

Moon nodded back. “Right. Good idea clearing out the cars.” She noticed a small stack of good apples in one corner; that had probably been his doing.

Brick nodded with a grim expression. He turned back and stooped down over the limp shape. Fastening his teeth in the end of its mane, he drug it backwards across the floor in a smear of clotted blood.

Moon stepped around him as he headed for the door and plodded to the back of the car, squinting against the darkness. A wooden crate sat cockeyed against the back wall. With the aid of the light from a hole in the roof, she crept forward, spotting a trail of blood across the floor. The trail ran from the middle of the car to the back wall, then over and behind the crate.

The blood started little warning bells ringing in her head, so she levitated forth her shotgun, the blue glow of her horn lighting the surrounding air like a match struck in the dark. her ears picked up the sound of Jade and Sage muttering nonsense behind her, not giving anything a second mind.

She placed a hoof on the box, and with a bit of effort, tipped it away from the wall. It clunked to the ground and the front supports shattered, causing it to tilt and tip again.

Moon gasped. A purple mare lay on the floor against the wall, her flank rising and falling slowly. She sported several deep gashes on her back and face and a nasty wound on her hind leg.

Moon felt her heart skip a beat. Cautiously, she prodded the mare in the side with the barrel of her shotgun. Moon jumped back as the mare’s eyes shot open. They swirled in their sockets for a moment before looking up at Moon, the whites bloodshot.

She let out a long breath that gargled in her throat. “It’s about time.”

She coughed. “About time you found me.” Her eyes darted to the pistol on the floor. The clip was out and empty, the final bullet jammed in the slide of the weapon. “Tried to do it myself.”

Moon’s heart sunk. She sat back and sighed, the shotgun in her magical grasp suddenly feeling very heavy. “You know I don’t want to.”

The mare nodded ever so slightly. “It hurts.” She bared her teeth. “It hurts, in my mind. Half of me wants to die, and the other half of me wants to tear your throat out with my teeth.” She tensed and her pupils dilated. She bared her teeth and glared up at Moon. Then it was gone, and the mare was back to her pained self.

“W-why didn’t you call out?” Moon asked.

The mare closed her eyes and sighed. “Thought I’d bleed out... b-but I stopped bleeding. By then, I was too weak to yell.” She clenched her teeth as her body convulsed. “Soon would be nice,” she gasped.

Moon flicked the safety off. “I’m so sorry. I really—”

“Shoot me!” she cried somehow managing to push her front legs under her.

Moon took aim.

“Now!” Her eyes changed again and the threatening look was back, then it was gone again. “What are you w—” The weapon fired off in the dark, blowing out the mare’s skull and tearing a hole in the wall behind her.”

Sage practically materialized at Moon’s side. “What happened!?”

Moon ejected the spent shell from her shotgun, watching as it arced to the ground in a thin trail of smoke. “Infected,” she said in a voice just above a whisper. She turned away. “I’m surprised you didn’t notice me.”

Sage flushed. “I was talking to Jade.”

“Talking,” Jade added with a blush to match, “sure.” She tossed her head so her dark-red mane fell into her eyes. “We’re really rough on food here, Moon. We’ve only got two barrels of water left, but that shouldn’t be too much of an issue since we’re out of the desert. It’s the solids I’m worried about.”

Moon couldn’t believe the way in which the two mares had just shrugged the whole ordeal off. She had just shot a pony through the head, and they acted as she had done nothing more than scratched her ear.

Moon sighed and hung her head. “We’ll have to make do.” She looked back to the purple mare, leaking a pool of blood onto the floor from her head. “Come on. Let’s take care of her.”

* * *

“It’s going to rain,” Esekiel said, so surely that it may have already been raining and they hadn’t noticed it.

They currently paced over a hoofbridge spanning a large courtyard. The courtyard below was a sea of multicolored shapes. None of the group knew why there were so many zombies in that one spot, but they were glad that the mass hadn’t spotted them.

Dusty, who hovered along a little above the ground, looked around for clouds, which he spotted miles away. They were a grayish-black, and floated low to the ground, stretching away across the horizon. “How do you know they’re comin’ towards us?”

“I can smell it.” As if the sky was trying to back the griffon up, thunder rumbled in the distance.

Range made a sour face. “I don’t want to be caught out in that storm.”

Altic looked over at him. “Why not? We haven’t had rain in a month.”

“Exactly.” He levitated a wood chip from his bag and bit down on the end, holding it in the corner of his mouth. “Without the weather pegasi controlling the weather, things get pretty crazy. The weather goes rogue. This storm is going to be nasty. Without ponies to discharge the thunderheads...”

“Rain and electricity,” Yew muttered.

“We’re probably looking at a full-scale lightning storm,” Range continued. “It’s a good thing we’re all wearing metal.” Thunder boomed in the distance and he folded his ears. “That was sarcasm, just so you all know.”

They reached the end of the hoofbridge and wound up on some sort of campus. Buildings popped up here and there between sidewalks shaded by large evergreens sprouting from the browning grass.

“Okay, flyboy,” Esekiel cast a prying eye to Dusty. “You flew up and saw the sky back there. Which way?”

Dusty thought a moment, trying to work around the now-constant throbbing in his head. He pointed off between two, double story buildings made of tanned brick. “That way. We cross the campus, ah think it is, then come out in the streets. Then we have to go a few blocks on the streets before we can get to the tracks.”

Yew drew their attention with a quick toss of her head. “How are we supposed to get to the train if it’s where you say it is?”

Dusty acknowledged her with a nod. “There’s a maintenance staircase on every track support.”

Atlic gave a little sigh of relief. “Thank Celestia; I hate ladders.” She looked around at their puzzled expressions. “What? Who’s idea was it to stack a bunch of steps on top of each other and expect a pony to climb it vertically? Hooves aren’t meant for that.”

Range rolled his eyes. “It wasn’t a matter of ergonomics; it was a matter of getting a non-pegasus pony to go up with as little space and resources used as possible.”

“Still, I hate climbing ladders.”

Range got that look about him. “I don’t know, Altic. You could probably move up a ladder pretty fast if I put a bucket of rats at the bottom.”

She glared at him. “I hate you.”

Their crossing of the courtyard went fairly easily. Three times, Range had to stop them to pick off a zombie from a distance, but apart from that, the campus was dead.

No matter how much Dusty thought about it, he just could not wrap his mind around how zombies reacted to gunshots. He remembered back to Desert Sage, where several times, hordes of zombies had come running when they had fired their weapons. Then there had been times when they wouldn’t come at the sound of gunshots, or times when they would just come charging out of an alley for no apparent reason. It was a temperamental system, and you never knew what would trigger it.

Yew gave Range a nudge. “Mr. tour guide, what place is this?”

The stallion looked around with a half-frown. “What, this?” He read the answer from Yew’s deadpan expression. “It’s a school, an advanced school for learning the industrial arts. At the rate the roster would fill up for this place, you’d be lucky to get in if your grandparents signed you up when they were still bucking every night.”

“Is that where you learned to be such a know-it-all prick?” Altic jabbed.

Range grinned. “No no, all we had when I was a kid was a little something called a library. You graduated from elementary school, and from there on it was up to you.”

“Back in the day...” Altic drawled in an old, rickety voice. She grinned at him.

“Back in the day...” Range said dangerously, “young mares liked young stallions, and weren’t attracted to know-it-all stallions that were twice their age.”

She blushed at him, a little shocked, and drove a knee into his ribs. “It’s a thing,” she pouted. “I’m allowed to like ponies who are bigger and older than me.”

Now that Dusty decided to pay it mind, he noticed the differences between the two. Altic was a few inches shorter than the average pony, while Range was generally a little taller. The two had about a six inch difference between each other in overall height.

Yew groaned and pushed in between Range and Altic. “Honestly, do you two have to talk about sex all the time?”

Range craned his neck to look at Altic over Yew’s back. “Really, Altic. It’s like a waiter at a restaurant who waits us, and he’s like, ‘what would you and your daughter like today?’ And then we say something like, ‘we’re dating’. Then there’s that really akward moment before the waiter asks if we’d like some water.”

Altic rolled her bottom lip out at him. “It’s not that bad. Besides,” She switched to a more insistent tone, “you have no reason to complain about a mare as young as me, liking a know-it-all dorky pony like you.”

Yew hung her head and sighed. “And, they’re talking about sex again.”

“Are you even of age?” Range asked semi-seriously. “Or am I a statutory rapist?”

She snorted. “Barely.”

Range smiled and rolled his eyes. “Let’s make a compromise. You’re young and attractive and hot-to-trot, and I am one lucky stallion who still can not stand your personality.”

“Opposites attract,” Yew chimed.

Dusty didn’t really find much point in partaking in conversation, so he mostly remained silent. Apart from Yew, he didn’t know any of these ponies too well, and the last time he had tried to start a to start a conversation, Altic had a breakdown. He was a little surprised that he and Yew had not yet had the predictable, how-have-things-been talk. He and his sister had always had a sort of thing between them. They never needed words; just about everything about one another they already knew or discussed in body language.

It was relatively nice to experience no real issues on the wide-open campus, however, the bodies were another story. Zombie carcasses lay everywhere, strewn about the sidewalk and grass.

Range stepped carefully around a teal unicorn in a dried pool of blood. “I don’t like this.”

Altic walked with a little caution, but otherwise seemed unphased. “What’s there to worry? They’re dead.”

“Exactly.” Range peered closely at the bloated body of an earth pony. “But these bodies aren’t any older than a week.”

Esekiel flicked his tail with a dismissive air. “I guess we’re not the only survivors in a city of over a million, big shock.”

Amongst one of the larger piles of bodies, Dusty eyed the corpse of a mare in battle saddle. Her guts had been torn out and she had a single bullet through her forehead. She didn’t have the zombie look about her though.

From the way things looked, there had been a group of ponies. They had lost one, and shot her, then kept going.

It was another six-hundred yards before they came across the other used-to-be survivors. They all lay in a circle, surrounded by shot and charred corpses. There were three of them, all stallions. Two had been shot like the mare, but the third was little more than scattered remains; he had been the last.

Yew breathed a sigh. “Well, that’s it for them.”

For the rest of their trot across campus, there was nothing.

* * *

“Come on!” Snowglobe grunted, focussing with all of her magical strength on holding the two ends of a pipe together as she welded the seam with an oxy-fuel welder and filler stick.

“Come on you piece of—” A stray spark jumped from the pipe and landed in her mane, sizzling. She jumped back and batted the putrid-smelling flame out with a forehoof. “Damnit!”

Hurriedly, she went back to her weld before it had a chance to cool.

One thing she had learned about generators: kicking them normally helped. Simply kicking this engine was not the case, though she wished it were. Kicking this iron beast would only reward her with a broken hoof.

Finally, she finished the weld and sat back to examine her handiwork, rubbing a hoof across her brow.

“Looking good.”

Snowglobe squeaked at the foreign voice and spun, brandishing the still-lit torch as a weapon.

The red pegasus who had sneaked up behind her jumped backwards, nearly falling off the elevated track. “Whoa!” he cried. “Take it easy!”

Snowglobe went lax and put out the torch. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

Copper flared his wings and smoothed the ruffled feathers. “I didn’t mean to,” he said with a halfway grin, running a hoof through his copper-colored mane.

Snowglobe listened closely for the ‘bwong’ of the steel as it cooled and retracted. “Well, you did.” She shrugged with a guilty expression. “Sorry for trying to burn you.”

He returned the shrug. “S’fine... So, how are things going out here?”

She blew air out her nose. “Not good, not bad.” She thought for a moment, recalling a fact about the red pegasus. “You’re from that REA wagon that crashed, right?”

He nodded like she had stuck a sour note. “The one and only... considering all the others are dead.”

“Sorry.” Snowglobe folded her ears.

Copper waved it away. “It’s fine. It’s just sort of, why me, you know? I survived the infection, somehow, and now, the only of a dozen that lived... Apart from Candy, maybe.”

She nodded. “I worked at a hospital part time, mostly doing electrical maintenance. The day I was called in was the day they locked the whole building down because of the virus. I mean, I’m not anything special — I’m just lucky.”

He sat back on his haunches and spread his forehooves. “Aren’t we all?”

Snowglobe tested her welds with the head of a wrench, magically banging it against the steel. She grinned at the sound. “Perfect.”

Copper grinned and shifted on his haunches. “You’re quite the mechanic.”

Snowglobe was sure she picked up something in his voice and blushed. “Erm, sorry.” She tossed a wrench into the open toolbox by her hooves with a clatter. “But I’m taken.”

He got a puzzled look about him before realization dawned on his face. “Oh... Oh no.” He laughed. “That was a compliment, not a pick up line.”

Snowglobe glowered at the way the situation had just backfired on her. “Sorry... I figured, since you were a stallion and I’m a mare, and we were both alone, you would only try something because it seems that’s how it always works.”

“I don’t like mares,” he replied simply.

She blinked. “What?”

He rubbed his neck. “To put things in slang... I’m a coltcuddler.”

Snowglobe nodded slowly, her mouth forming a silent, ‘oh’. After a moment, she shrugged. “Good for you.”

He grinned at her. “Most find it funny when I say that.”

She shrugged again. “Well, I like mares... so... really not that much of a shocker. We’re both in the same boat.” She frowned at her metaphor. “Except we’re paddling different ways.”

Copper chuckled. “That’s one way of putting it.”

There was a deafening crack of thunder and Snowglobe jumped like a spooked cat, the hair on her back fluffing up. There was a chilled blast of air, and with it came a cover of thick clouds, blotting out the sun.

Copper unfurled a wing and slung it comfortingly over her back. “You’re fluffy,” he commented with a curious frown.

Snowglobe gave him a skeptical look. “Are you sure you’re not just telling me you like colts to put me at ease so you can catch me off guard in a situation where I can’t say no without making things really really awkward?”

He laughed again. “I’m still allowed to like you as a pony and not an object, aren’t I?”

They both tensed at the flash of lightning nearby.

Snowglobe’s mind was chocked full of controversial thoughts. For some reason, she was finding great comfort from Copper pressed against her, his wing over her back, his warmth. She felt good and bad about it at the same time. She felt bad, because it felt like a betrayal to Dusty, liking the touch of another pony, and good, because it was cozy.

Somepony needed to beat some sense into her. Either she was turning straight, or she had a thing for pegasi. Sure, Moon was still quite a sight, and Jade was eye candy. Recently, though, she had been looking at stallions, pegasi to be exact, the same way she looked at mares.

A raindrop fell her her nose and she sneezed.

Copper looked around at the cloudy skies, mane whipping about his face. “It’s getting pretty nasty.”

Snowglobe nodded and turned her back to the wind, shrugging Copper’s wing off and immediately wishing she hadn’t exposed herself to the biting wind. She took up a rather large wrench from the toolbox and fitted it around a bolt that fitted the pipe clamp to the engine.

With a bit of effort, she levitated herself up to the steel plate just above the driving wheels. “The good news is, I’m almost done.”

“Well, what’s the bad news?” Copper flared his wings to fly up and land beside her.

The rain started to pour.

With a little trick her eldest brother had once taught her, Snowglobe conjured a small shield over both of them. The rain struck the surface and ran across the magical sphere to pour over the sides in a thin sheet.

“No bad news.” She twisted the wrench. “Everything’s going...” She grunted, focussing with her magic to yank the wrench around. “Fine.” She tightened four more in silence, then levitated herself up to the top of the locomotive. Copper remained beside her to keep under the magical umbrella.

“What’re we doing up here?” he asked.

Snowglobe peered at the talon marks scoring the steel. “Dusty said we were having an issue with boiler pressure before we stopped, so I’m checking the safety valves.”

Copper nodded, then frowned. “I thought you said something about specializing in generators? How do you know so much about steam?”

She gave a little laugh, pacing across the top of the engine in the increasing wind and rain. “I specialize in all generators. What did you think they used to make power before gems?”

“Steam,” he answered flatly.

“Exactly.” Her eyes picked out something. The first safety valve had been damaged, bent over and crushed against the top of the engine. “Well that’s not good.”

Carter clicked his tongue. “Can you fix... whatever it is?”

Snowglobe shook her head. “No, we need a whole new one, and given the fact that finding a pressure release valve for an engine this size while stuck on a elevated track in the middle of a zombiefied city...” She let the sarcasm in her voice finish her sentence for her. “We can make do with one, but it’ll be temperamental and there’s a chance that the boiler could build pressure faster than the one valve can release it.”

Copper’s expression changed from mildly-intrigued to worried. “What happens then?”

Snowglobe looked up. “Boom.”

* * *

The explosion rocked the entire building as four ponies and a griffon took cover behind the walk-in kitchen counter of an apartment.

“There!” Range said, his voice rustled. “You wanted a door, Yew? There’s your door!”

They were reminded of the great urgency of the situation when the front door to the apartment rattled and shook.

Dusty scaled the counter and trotted through the clearing plaster dust and smoke to the now-gaping hole in the wall. The rain had seemed to let up a little bit, but still poured heavily just outside. The next building across was only half as tall as the one they were in now. Luckily, they also weren’t on the top floor of this current building. The next rooftop over was about ten feet below. The jump to the building was not a pretty one, ten feet over an alley seven stories down.

“What have we learned from this experience, Yew?” Range said irritably as he examined the jump.

“That you’re always around to blow shit up,” she answered with just as much rustle of the nerves.

“Until I run out of explosives.” He shrugged and shook his head frantically. “No, what we’ve learned is, when running from zombies, never go up!”

“Yew’s skepticism became prominent as she stood right before the jump. “Next time, we’ll stay on the street and get eaten.”

Range still managed to rant as he backed up and readied himself to take the first jump. “I always heard stories about ponies who went into some sort of retreat and allowed themselves to be trapped on a rooftop.” He drug his hoof across the fake wooden flooring. “And I would always wonder, how the hay would a pony be stupid enough to allow themselves to be trapped on a rooftop?” His eyes darted to Yew. “Well, now I know.”

Yew opened her mouth for reply, but Range chose that moment to rocket forward, hooves sliding a little on the rain-slicked floor. With a yell of either determination or fear, he sprang off from the lip and soared out into open air. He seemed to hang there, suspended for a minute, forehooves drawn up to his belly with his hind legs extended.

He landed ten feet below and rolled to the left to land painfully on his side, crying out. “Son of a whore!” he screamed, rolling in agony.

The door split down the middle as the horde assaulted the other side.

Dusty flared his wings and hovered up off the ground, floating himself out over the open space between the two buildings.

Altic jumped next, clearing the gap with feet to spare and landing nimbly.

“Come on!” Dusty yelled, trying to stoke Esekiel and Yew into faster action.

The door burst. Yew had the failing barrier covered, and opened fire with her assault rifles. Nonetheless, they advanced through the shredding fire of the hollow-point rounds, maintaining a tight group. If they were to fan out at this point, it would all be over.

Esekiel stood a little behind her, firing with his own weapon, the bullets tearing through rows of infected and pitting the wall in the hall outside the door. He seemed to be fighting a battle with himself, glancing towards the jump, then to Yew, then to the zombies.

“Go!” Esekiel yelled suddenly, grabbing Yew by the tail and yanking her behind him. He slid the rifle back to its holster on his back and stepped forward.

She tried to protest. “Bu—”

“Go now!” he bellowed. Lunging forward, he swiped madly with his talons, making himself some sort of hybrid between a griffon and a blender. By now, the seemingly never-ending horde had pushed the fist five feet into the apartment.

Yew shook her head and reached for the firing bit. “Can’t!” And she was right, at this point, she could not longer make the jump, not without running momentum. Dusty tried to catch her attention, but she didn’t seem to realize he was there. If only she would jump, he could catch her.

Somehow, Yew managed to avoid hitting Esekiel as he hacked and slashed, pushed steadily backwards.

Dusty felt terribly helpless. From here, he couldn't do a thing, and Range and Altic were ten feet down, unable to aid as well.

Esekiel and yew were pushed to the very edge of the building, fighting side-by-side, ringing up the body count.

Esekiel looked over to Yew, his face reading agonizing remorse. “I’m sorry for this.”

Yew blinked and looked over at him. “Sorry for whaaah!” She cried out as he picked her up off the ground.

Dusty’s world slowed, eyes unbelieving. Esekiel made to hurl Yew, throw her towards the door inside the apartment, and to her death. The griffon’s words flashed in Dusty’s mind, and only now did he understand exactly what Esekiel had meant. ‘If you spend enough time around me, you’ll soon learn, I will do whatever I can to survive.’

“Yew!” Dusty yelled, horrified. Esekiel had her over his head, talons clutched on her neck and back while her hooves churned helplessly at the air.

Esekiel slowed, his sure movements slacking. His head turned back, pained eyes focussing on Dusty. They darted to Yew in his grasp, then to the advancing horde. Dusty could almost sense the gears in the griffon’s head whirring.

When Esekiel looked back to Dusty, remorse read deeply on his face, his expression layered with that empty look of sudden realization.

He turned and swung the mare around, letting out a yell of physical exertion. Yew left his grasp, soaring out over the alleyway in a tumbling mass. She whacked to the building below and rolled to a disoriented stop.

Esekiel screeched and turned back to the apartment, but by this point it no longer mattered. He had spared his last few seconds on Yew. The first zombie struck him square in the chest; he managed to withstand the blow and tear its throat out with a yell and a grunt. His hind paws slid right to the very edge and he reared up flaring his wings. Spreading his arms out, he turned his head to the sky in a final cry. Lightning flashed, lighting his silhouette, every feature on his brown and black coat, every feather.

“Fuck me.”

The entire mass of the horde struck him and his paws slipped from the ledge. He soared backwards, out into the air. It was only a second before he disappeared into the prismatic waterfall. He fell amongst them, wings flared uselessly, eyes screaming.

Dusty looked away. The sound of body after body striking the pavement reached his ears, and he winced.

Yew had landed in a heap on the roof, moaning. Dusty landed beside her, helping her to a sitting position.

Miraculously, the remaining zombies who hadn't fallen had either given up, or were too smart to jump.

“Esekiel!” Yew gasped, pushing to her hooves unsteadily. She rounded on Dusty. “Where is he!?”

Dusty placed a gentle hoof on her shoulder and shook his head.

Tears filled her eyes almost immediately, and she shoved him away. “N-n-no! No, he can’t be dead!”

“Ah’m sorry, Yew.”

“No!” she screamed, running over to the edge of the building to look down. “No! he was the closest thing I still had to family!”

Dusty blinked, confused and hurt. “W-what? But, Yew, what about me?”

She backed away from the edge and glared at him through heaving sobs. “What does that matter!? You’re going to die!”

His eyes went wide. “Yew...” He fell back on his haunches, the cold realization finally hitting him. He was going to die. The infection was in him. He could feel it, spreading, altering him.

“Sweet Celestia... I’m gonna die.”

Yew seemed to realize the implications of what she had blurted, and her ears folded flat to her head. “Oh, Dusty. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“No,” he interrupted. “You’re right.” Suddenly going numb, he flopped over on his side. “Ah’d been tryin’ not to think about it... but ah have to face it.”

Yew nudged him back to his hooves. “There’s nothing I can say, Dusty. You’re my brother, and I’ll always love you.”

“We need to go!” Altic hollered to them over a clap of thunder. The rain had begun to pick up again, and with it came more lightning and wind. Range leaned heavily on her shoulder, his left front leg held off the ground.

“What happened to Range?” Yew asked.

“It’s either a really bad strain or a fracture... or both,” Range answered.

Yew threw a look to Dusty, then to the elevated track, which was only a block away. The engine crouched upon the tracks, the lamp slicing into the rain, lighting every tiny drop of water like a million tiny fireflies. “Come on, we’re close.” It was obvious she was fighting back the tears, the pain. her body shook and her breath came in irregular bursts.

Range looked around in a squint of pain. “Where’s Esekiel?”

Yew hung her head and fought back another sob. Dusty shook his head at Range.

“Damn...” Range shook his head slowly. “I’m going to miss that bipolar griffon.”

As they descended the stairs, there was no idle talk, no banter, only silence. Loss had struck them all, and Yew was taking it the worst.

Dusty felt numb, not the cold kind of numb, but the just-got-shot-and-going-into-shock kind of numb. Every sound seemed to be reaching him through a brick wall; his vision was blurred and under-contrasted. The world didn’t seem real, and if it wasn’t real, then what was the point of trying? Twice, Yew spoke something to him, and twice her words went completely over his head, lost in irrational thought.

He registered them hitting the street, and a while later, the maintenance staircase up the support beam to the bridge looming up ahead.

He was yanked back to reality by a sharp pain in his head.

“Dusty!” Yew said irritably, hitting him again. “I’m talking to you!”

He blinked a few times. “W-what?”

“There’s a pony calling you.” She motioned towards the sky.

There from above, a gray mare looked down at him from the elevated track. “Dusty!” she called. “Is that you!?”

“Yeah!” His voice rasped as he yelled back.

“Who’re those ponies with you!?”

“The kind that aren’t dead!” He hung his head and turned to Yew. “She was gonna be the one, Yew.”

She gave him a sad look, then headed off, leading the way. The track support was just ahead now, a metal switchback staircase.

His head throbbed again. Rubbing his eyes with a forehoof, he groaned. He rubbed a hoof over his eyes and groaned; blood matted his coat.

He was running out of time.

* * *

Excitedly, Snowglobe climbed the staircase alongside the coal tender to the hoofplate of the locomotive. “They’re back!”

Copper, who had been standing in front of the firebox, wings spread out as he warmed himself, jumped. “Who?”

“Dusty.” She magically turned a few knobs that Dusty had taught her the operation of, coaxing a hiss from the engine. Magically, she started floating coal to the firebox, layering it evenly, feeling the air around grow hot. Reaching over, she pulled the lever that activated the coal screw below the floor.

“Is the engine ready?” Copper asked, looking around.

“I never had time to fix the valve timer, but that doesn’t really matter at this point. It’ll still work fine.”

There was a blinding flash of light and a bang that seemed to shake the world. A power pole fifty feet away went up like a torch, liquid fire shooting down the wires and burning the rubberized outer coating.

Copper jumped backwards, rearing up on his hind legs. “Son of a..” His eyes darted about frantically. “We have to get off of this track.”

Snowglobe nodded. They were the highest thing within a half-mile radius. It was a rather unfortunate bonus that their engine was made entirely of iron and stood fourteen feet tall.

The wind picked up, throwing the rain horizontally against the side of the cab.

It was maybe five minutes before Snowglobe heard the clatter of hooves on the metal staircase leading to the cab, and four ponies charged into the small space. The first one was Dusty, then a brown mare and a gray stallion leaning heavily on light-blue mare.

“Dusty!” Snowglobe cried, meeting him halfway across the cab.

“Hey,” he said in monotone, avoiding her eye. He pushed by her and examined the gauges. “You’ve done good keeping things prim. We’re basically ready to go.”

She blinked, taken aback by his lack of... anything. “Y-yeah, but I can’t guarantee that nothing’ll go wrong. I made do with what I had, which wasn’t much. We just plain lucked out that this bucket had an oxy-fuel welder on board.”

“Good enough,” he said in the same monotone voice, avoiding eye contact with her completely. He reached up and sounded the whistle twice, then turned to the blue mare. “Run back down the train and make sure everypony’s on board.”

The mare gave a quick salute with and dashed off.

Snowglobe couldn't help but notice that all these ponies were absolutely filthy. They were sopping wet, but that didn’t mean they were clean. Their coats were stained with soot and grime and blood, and a bunch of other stuff Snowglobe didn’t even want to imagine.

The lightning struck again, somehow louder than it had already been.

Snowglobe crept up behind Dusty as he continued not to look at her. “D-Dusty?”

He ignored her.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothin’.” He Tensed up, shaking slightly, back still to her.

Snowglobe moved up beside him, placing her hoof at the base of his neck. “D-Dusty?”

“Ah’m sorry,” he whispered.

She shook her head in confusion. “Sorry for what?”

He heaved a long breath, then slowly turned towards her. His bloodshot eyes looked half-dead at her, their shine almost completely gone. “There was a cut on my belly... a small one. Ah figured it was just a scrape... It was that or the ear... ah don’t know which.”

It was like getting hit in the chest with a sledgehammer. Snowglobe stepped backwards, shock, and uncountable other emotions playing across her face. “No...” She looked at him in disbelief. His disconnected expression looked back, like he wasn’t really there. “No! Nonononono! Dusty!”

“Ah’m sorry,” he choked.

She lunged forward, pushing him against the wall of the cab, tears streaming down her face. “I hate you!”

He slinked back. “Ah’m... A-ahm sorry.”

“How could you!?” She pushed him again, but this time the brown mare pulled her back. “How could you make me care for you, then do this!?”

He only shook his head, eyes focussed on the ground. “Ah’m s-sorry.”

She collapsed against the brown mare, sobbing. “W-who the hay a-are you anyways?” she asked to the mare, trying to distract herself.

The mare stroked Snowglobe’s mane gently. “Yew. Dusty’s sister.”

Snowglobe glared at Dusty. “You never told me you had a sister.”

He still wouldn’t look directly at her. “Didn’t tell anypony... Ah thought she was dead—figured it wouldn’t be worth tellin’ anypony... After all, who would need to know about my dead sister?”

Snowglobe was out of words to speak. She had nothing—it was as if her brain had just shut down. She only sat there, quietly, until the light-blue mare returned.

“We’re good,” she said to Dusty.

Dusty nodded slowly and placed his hoof on an operating lever jutting from the floor, clicking it forward. “Ah need ponies to shovel,” he muttered quietly. “Two for the speed we’re gonna need.”

The light-blue mare looked at the gray stallion like she expected him to do something, and he snorted at her. “Sure, just let me shovel coal with my leg that I can’t stand on.” He shrugged and watched the mares go to work, carrying loads of coal to the firebox. “I really would help if I could.”

Dusty opened the throttle and the engine lurched forward, the cars clacking in their couplings.

The gray stallion got a sort of look about them as they headed off, and looked to the light-blue mare. “So, as Altic and I were discussing earlier, we still have a track to clear.”

The mare who had been addressed as Altic kneed him in the ribs as she walked by levitating a shovel of coal. “Not now, Range.”

He rubbed the spot sorely. “What?” I’m sorry, but I think that’s a rather large problem we have yet to deal with.”

Dusty motioned Range over to him, out of the other Ponies’ earshot. “You thinkin’ what ah’m thinkin’?”

Range nodded. “That you aren’t going to be able to clear those tracks without catastrophic damage to the engine?”

“Exactly.”

Range sat back and raised his voice. “That whole district beyond is a sea of zombies. They’re so thick you could cross em’ in a boat.” He sighed. “Believe it or not, but you stack enough zombies on the track and it can actually stop a smaller engine.”

Dusty leaned in to whisper something else to Range, but Snowglobe drew his attention. “What are you two whispering about?”

Dusty shook his head at her and turned away, back to Range. “This engine ain’t gonna make it much further. It took a beatin’ when we got attacked by griffons, and it’s as old as dirt as it is. Things are clackin’ an’ it’s leakin’ in spots ah don’t know where.”

“You’re saying we’re gonna need a new engine?”

“As much as ah love this old thing—she eats too much coal and drinks too much water. Even if we do fly her out of here, findin’ enough water an’ coal to go on is gonna be a task. No matter what, this engine ain’t gonna last forever, an’ ah’d rather leave her before she gives up on us.”

“Smart. But I don’t think we can find a working engine left in this city—the army cleaned Canterlot out.”

“Dusty almost grinned. “In a shed past the railyard at the end of the tunnel, is a first generation, gem-powered single unit.”

Range’s ears perked. “How do you know it’s still there?”

“Because ah locked it there last time ah used to work here, and it was still there when ah checked back about six months ago. You see, that engine was gonna cost me my job, so me an’ a few colleagues locked it in a condemned shed at the back of the railyard. Nopony would go near it ‘cause there’s asbestos warnin’s everywhere. Yard manager threw a fit when a state-of-the art engine went missing, never did find it... Ah think he actually got fired for that.”

Range snickered. “That is genius.”

Dusty shrugged. “Ah still got fired.” His face returned to it’s empty look. “It’s gonna be your job to make sure the ponies on this train get out of Canterlot.”

Range opened his mouth to say something, but hesitated. He nodded. “You have my word.”

Snowglobe knew that Dusty knew that she was there, but he purposefully kept his voice low. Altic and Yew were busy, hardly even noticing that the stallions were talking. Over the sound of the engine, she was unable to pick up their voices, and didn’t like the fact that she was left out of the conversation.

“Snowglobe, the gray mare behind me,” Dusty continued. “Have her get that gem engine working if it’s not ready to go. She can fix anythin’ if she knows how it works...” He looked around quickly. “And keep this all quiet. Ah know some ponies won’t agree with what ah’m about to do. It’s a gamble, but it’s the only way ah see out of it.”

Range nodded again. “Understood.”

They broke apart.

Altic glared at Range, asking the question Snowglobe had thought better of: “What was that all about?”

Range placed his good hoof on her muzzle and grinned. “Don’t worry about it. Just think about what happens when we get out of the city.”

Altic went a deep shade of red. “Maybe we’ll get a bed for once... The ground makes my back sore.”

Yew hung her head. “Two bits says I know what they’re talking about.”

Range grinned, ignoring her. “You never should have made that bet, Altic.”

She smirked, going on the defensive. “Please, I can handle anything you can dish out.”

Snowglobe had to leave; the built up tension was just too much. Snowglobe turned away and set a slow pace for the carriages. She wondered if Dusty would miss her presence. In his state, probably not. “I’m going to to talk to Moon,” she called out.

No response.

She sighed as she scaled the coal tender in the wind and rain, not even bothering to conjure her magical shield. They were moving quite fast now, still on the elevated track. Lighting struck regularly, lighting small fires to buildings and trees, only to have the rain wash them out a moment later.

Mane sopping, she pushed through the mangled door of the first car to nothing. Rain slicked the floor inside from holes in the windows and roof. She shivered; the rain really was cold.

Leaving the empty carriage behind, she moved on to the second. They were all in here, all twelve of them. It hurt her soul to know that they had started this journey with almost sixty ponies. Two fires had been lit on the wooden floor of the car, burning strips off wall paneling and remnants of what had been the seats before the griffon attack. The smoke wisped up to the ceiling and out a hole in the roof near the back of the car.

Moon picked Snowglobe out right away from where she sat with Jade and Sage near the fire. The pink mare whom Snowglobe had somehow not learned the name of sat with them, foal wrapped in her forehooves. Upon approach, Snowglobe realized Jade and Sage to be asleep, the dark pegasus wrapped tightly in the turquoise mare’s grasp.

“It’s about time we got moving again,” Moon said once Snowglobe had sat down, looking in a motherly way at Jade and Sage. “These two haven’t slept for days.” Her eyes sparkled for a moment before she looked up at Snowglobe. Worry immediately clouded her face. “What’s wrong? We’re moving again, so that means Dusty has to be back... Right!?”

Snowglobe sniffed. “That’s just the thing... He’s... H-h-he’s...” She couldn’t finish.

“Dead?” Moon asked, her voice squeaking.

“N-no.” Snowglobe slumped.

Moon’s features flooded with understanding. “Infected,” she whispered, eyes going unfocused. Her eyes drifted backwards to her shotgun tethered to her saddlebags.

For the second time this hour, Snowglobe let the tears come, crying openly. “Moon, I just don’t know what to do.”

Moon wrapped a hoof around her neck.

Snowglobe tensed. The weirdest sensation was filling her body. Her mane was fluffing out and every hair along her spine had begun to stand straight up. “Do you feel that?”

Moon frowned. “Feel wha—”

There was a flash of light and a crack of thunder that seemed to tear the air in two, leaving a painful ringing in Snowglobe’s ears.

Moon jumped into the air. “I think that hit us!”

Jade and Sage flew awake in a tangled mess and the pegasus let out her signature squeal. “What was that!?”

There was a sudden rush of air and the scenery outside the windows went dark.

Snowglobe trotted up to the window, fearing the worse. She breathed a sigh of relief. “We’re in a tunnel.”

“We’re on fire!” Moon yelled.

“What?” Snowglobe spun around. Moon’s words had been no lie. The whole back of the the car they were in was aflame, and the whole one behind that had already gone up like kindling. The fire whipped sideways from the forward momentum of the engine in the tunnel.

“You have got to be kidding!” Moon screamed as ponies fled around her to the front of the car. “There is no way we can be that unlucky!”

Jade balked at the quickly-spreading flames. “Did... we just get struck by lighting?”

“Somehow,” Snowglobe answered. She looked over to Brick for advice, who sat calmly in the corner of the room, the fire reflecting in his eyes. He was once again wearing the gun. Despite the urgency of the situation her mind wandered to a matter not really important at the time. “How much ammo do you have for that thing?” she asked trotting over to stand beside him.

He glanced to her, then reached back and tapped the ammunition container mounted to the weapon, giving a little shrug.

“Only one?” Snowglobe asked worriedly.

He nodded.

Snowglobe harrumphed. “I’ve been meaning to ask, if it isn’t too blatant... Are you mute, or do you just not like to talk?”

He only grinned.

“Damnit!” Moon screamed, pounding her hooves on the floor, looking like a schoolfilly in a temper tantrum. “Damn this luck! Lighting!? Really!? Come on—it’s just not fair!”

Smoke was beginning to fill the car, trapped in the confines in the tunnel. Although the wood was wet, it burned like dried pine needles.

“Are zombies and griffons not enough!?” she went on. “What did we do to deserve this!?”

Snowglobe trotted up to the brown-maned blue mare and placed a hoof on the small of her back. “At least nopony died this time.”

* * *

Dusty hung his head out of the cab window, straining to see down the tunnel in the light of the headlamp. Altic had fled to the back cars once the lightning had struck, leaving Yew to shovel coal alone. The feeding screw below the locomotive deck was doing much of the work, but extra was still needed.

Ears perking suddenly, Range limped over to the left side window and peered out. “How fast are we going!?” he yelled into the wind.

“About sixty,” Dusty replied.

Range pulled his head back in, looking rather nervous. “You’d better brace yourselves.”

“Range?” Yew asked.

The stallion sat back. “These tunnels have steel doors installed on either side. The army had them installed a few years prior with intentions of being able to lock down the city, were the need to arise.”

Dusty opened the throttle. “Let me guess...” The already-pounding pistons picked up the pace on the slight downward angle, aided by full steam from the boiler. “They’re wide open?” he pleaded.

Range braced himself against the back of the hotseat. “Locked and sealed. Who could have guessed?”

“A little easy on the sarcasm,” Yew said sourly, tossing down the shovel.

Range gave her a smirk. “Well, I was just—” The whole engine jerked like a wagon crashed into the side of a barn. Range’s head whipped forward, glasses flying, and he spun over the top of the hotseat like a pinwheel. He thudded down on the hoofplate, right on his bad leg.

Yew didn’t fare too better. He whole body shot forward and she toppled to the floor.

Dusty, having braced himself against the front wall of the cab, received only a small bit of shellshock.

Range screamed in agony from where he rolled around on the floor, muscles contorted.

The engine howled out of the tunnel in a rush of smoke and twisted steel, shedding remnants of the containment door like a second skin. The driving rods chewed up chunks of steel, clanking and screeching in protest. The burning cars trailed out next, the flame soaring now that it was once again exposed to fresh air.

Dusty stooped down to help Range up. “You okay?”

“No,” he gasped, barely making it to his hooves. His face was dead white. “Where’re my glasses?”

Yew looked around and spotted them in the corner of the cab. She brisked over and picked them up, then returned to Range and shoved them haphazardly onto his face. “Did you land on your leg?”

He nodded, eyes pinched tight shut. “Shit it hurts.”

The Big Buck was no longer traveling on an elevated track, but at ground level between factories and industrial buildings. This was one of the lowest places in Canterlot, and apparently it was also the dirtiest. It was definitely a more industrial district. While everything in Canterlot above had been nicely-colored, the buildings farther down were just about every color of the dirt spectrum.

Dusty didn’t like the way the engine pitched and groaned as it rounded casual corner at high speeds, but he couldn’t slow it now. If what Range and him had discussed was true, it wasn’t long before the army’s improvised blockade.

The rain had stopped for the time being, but thick clouds still blotted out the sun.

Yew gave Dusty a light nudge. “Where do we refuel?”

He nodded ahead. “There’s a coal and water tower ahead.” This was another lie. They had removed the coaling tower from the main line of this track quite some time ago. Now, most steam engines had to take on water and coal in a siding.

She fixed her eyes on him determinedly. “I’m with you till’ the end, Dusty.”

He shook his head. “Ah don’t want you around for when ah go.”

Yew gave him a hurt look, and intended to reply, but was interrupted. “We’re on fire!” Moon yelled, scrambling over the coal tender.

Dusty cocked a brow at Moon as she stopped before him. “What, how?”

“Lightning,” she panted. It was—” She stopped when she looked into his eyes. “Sweet Celestia...”

He blinked, feeling the blood as it ran from his eyes and down his cheeks. “Ah... only think ah got an hour at best.” His eyes drifted past Moon, to the railyard that was looming in the distance. He searched for the old locomotive shed amongst the others.

“I can’t believe this.” Moon tore her eyes away from Dusty. “Y-you can’t die.”

Dusty almost told her to stop right there and then. He didn’t think he could handle one more pony mourning for him before he was even dead.

She laughed, trying to cover pain with humor. “D-do you... do you remember that one time back in the hospital, in the hallway, w-when the lights went out?” she reminisced. “And you saved me from myself? And that pony thought y-y-you were...”

He went to place a hoof on her, but stopped halfway through the gesture. Something inside him was wrong. He wanted to hurt her. The mare in front of him made him angry, and he had to hurt her.

“Dusty...” Moon squeaked when she looked up at him and hurriedly scooted back, throwing glances to her shotgun. “P-please don’t. Not now.”

He took a step towards her, teeth bared, bloody saliva dripping from his lips. All he saw was her, and he had to hurt her, had to bite her.

“Dusty!” Moon yelled. She magically raised the shotgun, still not pointing it directly at him.

It was gone. Dusty fell back on his rump. His mouth tasted like copper and his head spun like a top. Both Yew and Moon looked at him fearfully. Range didn’t exactly looked scared, but unnerved nonetheless.

Dusty turned away in shame. “Leave me be.”

Zombies were now appearing quite commonly, alongside the track or lumbering around in the distance, some of them unfortunate enough to be standing on the track.

Dusty turned to Range. “You should get back to the cars. We’re stopping soon.” He gave the tiniest of nods in Range’s direction, and the stallion nodded back.

“Right.” Range stood up, balancing on three legs and nearly falling over. He sighed, and motioned towards Moon. “Blue mare.”

Moon pointed towards herself. “Me?”

“Yeah.” He breathed a long sigh. “I’m going to have to have to ask for your assistance.”

Moon cast a long look to Dusty, then nodded. “Sure thing.” She offered him her shoulder, and the two made for the first car.

“Dusty,” Yew said once they were out of earshot. “I know you. I know something’s up.”

He blinked, trying his best to look innocent.

“What are you planning?” she pressed.

He rubbed his neck. “It’s best you don’t know.”

She stomped her hoof. “Damnit, Dusty! I abandoned you once—I’m not going to do it again! This time, I’m going to stay with you till’ then end.”

He shook his head. “Ah’m sorry, but ah can’t let you.”

“No, Dusty, I can’t just le—”

“No damnit!” He screamed, taking a step towards her and feeling terribly guilty as she shied away. “This is what ah have to do! This is my time, not yours! And for everything Celestia still stands for, ah ain’t lettin’ you fall with me.” He softened his tone. “You still got a life to live, whatever of it there may still be left to live. It may be my time, but it’s not yours... not yet. Not now.”

Yew fell back, stunned. For what seemed like the first time in her life, the mare had no words to speak.

Dusty looked back at the gauges. Everything was in check except for the boiler pressure, which was high. He looked back to Yew, and placed a hoof around her neck, leading the saddened mare to the back of the cab. “Come on. Let’s get you back with the others.”

“Dusty,” she said meekly as he led her towards the carriages. “You know I love you, right?”

He nodded. “Ah do. An’ ah love you too.” He felt weak; his whole body trembled.

It was a moment before he and Yew dropped down on the coupling platform at the back of the tender. He heard yelling from the cars behind, and saw the smoke from the flame rising into the air. Everypony had pooled in the first car, Snowglobe and Moon amongst them. The two mares spotted he and Yew, and rushed to meet them on the platform of the car, just outside the shattered doorway.

Dusty released Yew as Snowglobe trotted up and nuzzled into his neck. “It’s just not fair.”

He rested his head on the back of her neck, drawing in her scent. “Ah know it’s not.” He wrapped a hoof over her back in a tight hug, which she returned.

He could have stood there forever, like that, wrapped in an embrace with the mare he could have very well come to love, but there was something that had to be done, and he was running out of time.

Regretfully, he pulled away from her. Her eyes tracked his hoof as it drifted to his right foreleg, and undid the straps holding Valediction and its holster to his leg.

“Dusty, no,” she argued meekly.

He passed her the aged revolver, and she took it absently in her magic. “This has been mine just about my entire life. Now ah want it to be yours.”

The mare sniffed. “B-but, Dusty, I don’t even like to use—”

“Then give it to Sunny,” he interjected. “Just... hold onto it... Ah sure don’t need to anymore.” He glanced back, ahead of the engine. The railyard was close now. It was time to make his move.

Dusty looked back to Snowglobe. “Promise me you’ll settle with a good mare, or stallion.”

She nodded and grinned just a little. “I promise.”

He looked over to Yew, who had so far remained silent. “And don’t you ever stop being bossy.”

Yew smiled sadly. “I never planned on it.”

“Good.” He stepped back to the coal tender and reached his hoof down, yanking the release lever on the couplings. The mechanism released and the cars began to drift away

Snowglobe balked at him. “What are you doing!?”

“Ask Range!” he called over the roaring of the wheels. “I explained it all to him.” He stood perfectly still, watching the gap slowly spread to a few feet. This was it.

The gap reached five feet.

“I love you Dusty!” Snowglobe called, tearing up again.

Ten feet.

“You’re the best brother a mare could have!” Yew called.

Fifteen feet.

Moon pushed between Snowglobe and Yew. “Just so you know, you were totally on my list of relationship possibilities!”

Dusty grinned.

Twenty-five feet.

Brick appeared on the roof of the carriage, a sad smile spread across his face. He stood up straight and raised his hoof in a salute.

Fifty feet.

Soon, they were nothing more than specs, drifting away into the mist. Then, they were gone, and that was the last time he would ever see them.

The engine was streaking through the railyard by the time he had scaled the tender and returned to the cab. His eyes picked out a familiar engine shed, doors still sealed and locked just as he had remembered them.

His attention drifted to the controls. The engine was at war with itself. The gauges danced, half of them high, and several running into the red.

“Too much pressure,” he commented to himself. Normally, the safety valves would handle this issue, but for some reason, pressure did not seem to be venting correctly. The coal screw below the deck still supplied the firebox with coal, and he pulled the lever to slow it.

Nothing happened.

He pushed the lever forward, then all the way back, but the screw still continued to work on its own accord. A quick glance to the pressure gauge told him that it was still steadily building. There was still a ways to go, and the pressure was rising too fast.

“I need to vent the pressure,” he whispered.

Frantically, he looked for other means of releasing pressure. Stuck by a thought, he reached up and pulled on the whistle, it’s chime screaming low and loud through the city. Next he opened the throttle wide, giving the engine full steam.

It was a mind-boggling sight: a million pounds of steel screaming down the track at seventy-six miles per hour.

The whistle cut through the city like a hot blade through butter, stirring every zombie within earshot and drawing them towards the sound.

There was just enough slack in the whistle cord for him to tie it around a pressure knob, leaving the whistle calling on its own.

Glancing out the window nearly stopped his heart. The engines blocking the track were just ahead, side by side. All he had to do was clear one track and they’d be set.

Readying for the impact, he braced himself against the front wall of the cab, and waited, heart pounding in his head.

The larger engine collided with the front of the smaller in an almighty clash of steel. The engine, while small, still weighed enough so as it was not casually batted away. It stuck where it was as the Big Buck augered into it. The frame of the smaller engine proved weaker, and crumpled like a soup can under the seventy mile per hour impact. The Big Buck shook as steel met steel, nearly lifting off the rails. The smokeboxes of both engines burst, filling the air with an explosion of smoke and soot. Wagon-sized chunks of steel rained about from both engines.

The smaller engine folded, smashed like a bug on a windshield. It’s wheels broke free of the axles and went flying like three foot, thousand pound frisbees, tearing through the trackside buildings like they were made of tissue paper. The engine folded in two, smashed between the Big Buck and its own coal tender, the middle blasting into the air as it was crushed in two.

The remnants of what had been the impending engine flaked away, strewn about like a thousand black bits hurled across the ground. Some shreds managed to get under the wheels, and the Big Buck shuttered as it flattened them, bouncing on the rails.

Dusty slumped to the floor. Miraculously, the engine had survived the impact, but definitely not unharmed. The smokebox had been completely disemboweled, along with the cladding on the superheating chamber. Black smoke poured around the cylindrical shape like a cocoon. Still, on the downhill slope, the monster machine was now traveling flat eighty.

Zombies. There were zombies everywhere, drawn from the inner city by the loudness of the engine. They ran behind the engine, beside it as it overtook them. Steel ground on the tracks below, only adding to their rage. The entire front of the engine was a mangled mess, the headlamp, somehow having survived, hung by a single wire, shining down and to the right, at the ground.

Through it all, the whistle cried its goodbyes into the gloom.

The gauges no longer read anything right; they spun and danced like ponies at a ball party. The only ones still functioning properly were the boiler pressure and water level dials. The boiler was nearly a hundred PSI past the safe limit, and hardly any water remained. Dusty reached for the water injector, but nothing happened. There was a powerful hiss of steam into the cab as the pressure plug melted.

He was driving a bomb. Without water, the steel boiler would stretch under the building heat and fracture, releasing all the pressure at once.

A stagnant gauge whirred to life as the front right piston exploded in a small burst of steam and steel, sounding like a small bomb. Rivets along the engine’s length popped and cracked. The boiler was now a hundred and fifty pounds per inch past what it was rated for; it could literally go off at any second.

Head spinning, Dusty flopped down in the hotseat, allowing himself to go limp. A sharp, left curve loomed ahead. At this speed, there was no way the engine would make the corner.

Ponies were right; your life really did flash before your eyes. Dusty sat back in the cabin, simply letting himself relax. A knob popped right out of the wall in a burst of steam and shot away like a bullet, but he hardly noticed.

He saw flashes of everything. His foalhood, leaving his parents, parting with Yew, growing up, work, jobs, mares, Desert Sage, the hospital... Snowglobe... Yew...

The Big Buck hit the corner at eighty and the wheels screeched, grinding against the rails. The steel groaned as the engine pitched dangerously to the right.

In a daze, he reached up and drew back on the throttle, cutting off steam to the pistons.

He felt it. The engine may have been able to flex in the middle, but that didn’t keep it from tilting up on the rightside wheels.

Dusty pinched his eyes shut.

The engine passed its centerpoint of balance and the wheels lifted from the track. A million pounds of steel hovered in the air for a second, suspended by momentum, before it smashed to earth in a deafening crash that shook the entire city. Steel and steam flew as the engine slid on its side, tearing up the earth and cutting through old apartment buildings like they were card houses.

The coal tender broke free of the coupling and slid away, parting from the engine for the first time.

Friction grabbed at the round top of the engine, and the still-spinning wheels faced the air as the mighty beast rolled to its back. Nothing obstructed the Big Buck’s path as it cut a swathe through the city, whistle howling. The earth shook again as it crashed down on the left side. Eighty more feet it slid before grinding to a stop in the middle of a large park surrounded by double-story buildings.

The zombies followed by the thousands, flooding the park from all directions like rising water engulfing an island.

The engine groaned and settled, steam leaking from multiple tears and gashes, the wheels that had not been destroyed in the crash spinning down.

Dusty blinked his eyes open, laying in a heap on the side of the crushed cab. Blood from a gash on his forehead ran into his eyes and mouth. He reached up a hoof from where he lay on his side and wiped it away. A sharp pain in his chest told him that there were broken ribs. He tried not to look at the bone protruding from the knee of his front, right leg.

By now, he figured he would have gotten over the fear, but it was still there. This was it. This was where he was going to die, in the wreck of a once-proud locomotive, alone.

He looked up through the window above him to the cloudy sky. The knob the whistle cord was tied to broke away, and the chime whistle died, the air going suddenly silent. His eyes darted to what was left of the gauges. The boiler pressure gauge still climbed. It had now gone past the red, and all the way back around to the zero. Dusty estimated it was somewhere around six-hundred now.

Slowly, his eyes drifted back to the window. As if aided by some terrestrial presence, the clouds parted, allowing the golden sun to shine down upon the engine through the window, lighting the inside of the crushed cab a beautiful orange-yellow.

The zombies were pooling now, pressing up against the engine and climbing up and onto the dented steel.

Dusty pinched his eyes shut. “Ponies always say something awesome here in the movies.” He laughed, coughing up blood in the process. “But I’ve got nothin’.” He thought for a moment. Slowly, a grin spread across his face. “Yippie-ki-yay motherf—”

The boiler ruptured, releasing thirty-million pounds of restrained pressure. The cylindrical shape of the engine blasted apart with such force that a shockwave trailed across the ground like ripples in a pond, shattering windows, tearing everything within a five-hundred foot radius to ribbons. It took a moment for the sound of the blast to catch the destruction it had caused, as loud as a thunder strike. Steam flew and a million pounds of steel took to the air, soaring off into the midst of the storm.

The steam spread from the boiler began to dissipate into the air, forming a rainbow in the sun’s rays that shone down upon the scene of destruction.

The city of Canterlot fell into silence.

Chapter 15 Out of the Fire...

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“Get up, Sunny.”

Sunny rolled over as a hoof prodded him in the side, snuggling further into the pillow. “I’m good.”

Willow prodded him in the side again. “Come on, Sunny. Sandy made breakfast.”

He felt her prod him again, and jumped up in an explosion of limbs and feathers, smacking her hoof away. “Must you insist on touching me?” he growled

She took a step back. “Sorry, Sunny.” She didn’t sound very sorry, only a little bit hurt. “Get up, there’s food.”

With a groan, he rolled out of the bed and dropped to the floor. He had gotten the bed tonight, courtesy of Willow. She had insisted he have a comfortable place to sleep since he had slept on the floor the night before. He had protested, saying it was selfish for a single pony to take a bed with room for two, but she had insisted and Candy had backed her up. He couldn’t complain, but it still would have been humorous to see Willow and Candy sharing a bed—it wouldn’t have been the first time.

It was almost scary how normal it felt leaving the back bedroom to the smell of breakfast in the kitchen. Candy lay back on the couch, still looking half asleep. Cotton lay near the window, one shackle locked to her right hoof, the other locked to the radiator against the wall.

The apartment had a very cozy look to it in the morning. The purple curtains were parted slightly, letting a swathe of yellow sunlight glide across the shag carpet and halfway up the opposite wall.

Sunny had been pleasantly surprised by the couple’s hospitality. The brown stallion—Lufty was his name—had done some magic getting the green mare to accept their presence, but now she seemed perfectly friendly as well, even going to the extent of making breakfast today. Sunny didn’t know if he could be as hospitable as they were being to three escapes hiding from the army, while holding a scientist hostage.

“Breakfast,” the green mare, Sandy, chimed. She gave a friendly nuzzle to Lufty, then levitated six plates from the walk-in kitchen counter. She trotted casually across the room to a small, rectangular table, setting the plates down, two on either side and one at each end. “Come sit,” she said cheerfully.

Yesterday—the first day of their stay—which they had spent lying around an apartment with nothing to do, Sunny had shared a talk with Lufty. The brown stallion had been living with this mare for two and a half years now. In their own eyes, they were married. Not wanting to get tied up in any of the mess that came with marriage, they had both agreed to not go through the rounds. Were anything to ever go astray with them, the separation would be made as painless as possible. Put in that perspective, it seemed like a pretty good idea.

Candy cracked a little grin. “Really, Sandy, you didn’t have to go and cook us breakfast. I mean, we’re already staying in your home. This is almost too much.”

She shrugged. “Nothing to it. I cook for Lufty all the time.” With a flick of her tail, she took a seat. “Well come on. Sit.”

Sunny and Willow crossed the room to the table, taking places on opposite ends from each other.

Candy hopped the couch and trotted up to Cotton. “Hungry?” she asked cheekily.

The pink mare snorted and glared at Candy. “Of course I’m hungry.”

Candy made a pouty face, producing a key from a small satchel hung around her neck. “Stop being so pissy.” She stooped down and unlocked the shackle fastened to the radiator.

Cotton stood up, stretched, then cried out and fell over onto her side.

“Careful,” Willow said from the table. “You got shot clean through the leg. Don’t expect all the muscles to work again just because you drank a potion. Healing takes time.”

Cotton picked herself up again, wincing, favoring her right leg over the bandaged left. “Well I’m sorry if I’m being pissy, but I’m not used to being shot in the leg and taken hostage.”

Sunny sighed as Candy helped Cotton limp over to the table. “I’m really sorry about shooting you. Really, now it just feels like you’re trying to make me feel bad.”

The two mares took a seat beside one another across the table from Sandy and Lufty. “She probably is,” Candy replied with a dirty glance to the pink mare. “After all, it was only her job to screw with ponies’ bodies and minds.”

Cotton glared. “Just because it was my job doesn’t mean I enjoyed it.”

Sandy plastered a big, fake smile on her face and tapped her glass with a spoon, drawing everypony’s attention. “Could we just all get along and have a nice breakfast?”

Sunny looked down to his food, letting the warm-sweet scent reach his nostrils. The food looked rather nice: eggs scrambled and cooked in with tomato and red and green peppers, dashed with salt and pepper. “Smells good,” he commented.

Sandy smiled. “Thank you, now try it.”

A little bit tense, the four of them tucked into their food, muttering compliments as Sandy took them with a little, satisfied smile.

“Good thing Snowglobe’s not here,” Willow said with a little chuckle. “Remember her whole beef with eggs?”

Sunny laughed. “I remember you left her silhouette in the roof.”

They fell into another silence.

“I was just thinking,” Willow said halfway through their meal, “about what we’re going to do. I mean, we can’t stay here.” She looked to Sandy. “No offense.”

The green mare nodded. “None taken.”

Willow continued. “And I can’t figure out which one I prefer more, on the run from the army, or trying not to die back outside the city.”

Sandy interrupted. “Wait, you ponies have been outside the city?”

Sunny nodded. “Yeah.”

“What’s it like out there, like, really like?”

“Terrible,” Willow answered immediately. “Zombies, everywhere. It’s dangerous to be anywhere near a town, and zombies flock to population points...” She paused. “No law. Whichever pony is pointing the gun is the one in charge. You’ve got to watch your back, for zombies, ponies, everything.”

“Food’s scarce,” Sunny added. “If you’ve got a big group, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble keeping anypony fed.”

Sandy blinked. “Wow... really?”

Candy, Sunny, and Willow all voiced their agreement.

She almost looked dumbstruck. “Wow... The REA had said there was an infection, and that ponies outside had gone crazy...”

Sunny couldn’t believe how in-the-dark these ponies were. “They’re not just crazy. They eat each other... The ponies outside are eating each other. Canterlot: it’s gone. I don’t know what other cities have fallen as well.”

Willow’s jaw fell open in the middle of chewing. “Is it you ponies who are so misinformed, or is it everypony?”

Lufty spoke up. “I’m pretty sure it’s everypony, or we would have known about it.”

“Lufty’s a snoop,” Sandy added.

He shot her a quick look. “I knew something wasn’t right. The city’s having food shortages, rolling blackouts. For Celestia’s sake we’ve got a giant wall around the city and things ramming their heads against it on the other side. Ground-to-air weapons are lined up around the city, and almost always firing at something, shooting ponies right out of the sky. We all know something’s up, a lot of us just don’t want to know what; the army doesn’t tell, and nopony asks. The ponies who live here were content with their quiet, boring lives. I think most of them just want that back.”

Willow shook her head slowly. “It will never go back. Equestria will never be the same, not after this...” She stared down at her plate. “After you’ve been out there, watched ponies die, watched ponies eat other ponies... killed ponies; I left fifty to die in a hospital... After something like that, you can never go back. What do you do? What do you do after you kill those things that used to be living, feeling beings? What do you after that? I can’t even look at a pony without sizing them up as something that I would have to kill, like it’s an instinct.”

Candy nodded slowly in agreement. “Ponies just seem a little bit less like ponies and more like objects when you’ve shot enough of them, zombie or not.”

The smile faded off of Sandy’s face to be replaced with a disgusted half-lear. “That’s-that’s terrible.”

Willow went back to her food. “I know it is.”

Lufty had a distant expression on his face, staring slack-jawed at Willow. Willow seemed to notice him and blinked, eyes darting left, then right. “Um... yeah?” she asked slowly.

He closed his jaw. “Is it just me, or are your eyes... glowing?”

Willow blinked a few times. “They probably are.”

“Could I just ask...” He shook his head. “Why!?”

Willow sighed. “It’s a really long and complicated story.”

“She’s a hybrid,” Cotton spoke up.

Sandy squinted. “A what?”

“A hybrid: that’s the only name I could think of. She’s like the reverse of a carrier. Somehow she’s bonded with the virus through a series of illegal antibiotic injections, but doesn’t experience the negative effects on the brain.”

Sandy and Lufty exchanged worried glances.

“And she isn’t contagious in any way,” Cotton added, calming the looks on both ponies’ faces.

“Hybrid.” Willow laughed. “Heh, I like it.” She fanned her hooves out. “Willow, the hybrid.”

“Seriously though,” Sunny intervened. “We have got to think of something to do, whether we find somewhere more effective to hide out or leave the city.”

“And what the hay are we supposed to do with this bit of scum,” Candy added, glancing in Cotton’s direction.

Cotton glared back at Candy. “I did what I had to!”

“You cut a pegasus’ wings off!” she countered. “I don’t care if they told you to test, that’s not testing. What about that buck’s sister!?”

Cotton stammered.

“What about her!?” Candy continued. “You turned her into a zombie, and she ate her own brother!”

The pink mare buried her face in her hooves. “I... We had to—”

“You’re a sick, demented mare, and I wish Sunny hadn’t botched his aim and hit you in the leg instead of the head!”

“Oh my,” Sandy murmured.

“Candy,” Sunny whispered. “Come on, she’s—”

“Scum,” Candy interjected. “Just like the rest of the ponies in charge of this nonsense.”

Cotton lifted her head to look at Candy, eyes puffy and red. “Do you think I’m proud of any of that?” She whimpered, tears running down her face. “Do you think I enjoy testing on ponies, hurting them... killing them? I did it because I had to, because I was told to make results.” She slammed her hooves on the table, baring her teeth at Candy. “Go on, hurt me, beat me until I can’t feel anymore!” She jumped back from the table and shoved Candy with a forehoof. “Do it!”

Sunny stood up, unsure of how to proceed.

Candy Glared at Cotton, her expression unreadable. The pink mare took a swing, and that’s when Candy made her move. She sidestepped Cotton easily and lowered her head, driving it into the pink mare’s snout. Cotton cried out and stumbled backwards, blood trailing from her nose. Candy launched herself forward and drove her hoof into the mare’s cheekbone. Rearing up, she delivered two more strikes to Cotton’s brow. Cotton cried out and charged forward, but Candy jumped and noosed her foreleg around the pink mare’s neck. She spun, and hurled Cotton away. The mare bounced off the floor and smacked against the wall.

Candy stood there, panting, glaring at Cotton as she slowly picked herself up.

Cotton stood after a moment, trembling, eyes darting frantically around to Candy and the four other shocked ponies in the room, blood dripping from a cut on her brow and bloodied nose. Her chest heaved once, twice, then she collapsed to the floor, sobbing into the carpet.

“Moor blood on the carpet,” Sandy said dejectedly.

Candy shrugged her shoulders, working off the rage that ran through her body and letting her muscles relax. “Sorry about the carpet,” she said coldly.

Sunny crept up beside the striped mare. “Candy... look at her. She hates herself.”

“And she should,” Candy spat. “Just look at what she’s done.”

Sunny let out a shaky breath. “It makes us pony to forgive, Candy. Without forgiveness, what are we other than those we’ve come to despise?”

There was a heavy pounding at the door, and every head in the room snapped around to the source. “Open up!” an authoritative voice yelled from the hall.

They all fell dead silent. Ears folded, Lufty trotted up to the door. “Who is it?”

“Army personnel to perform an inspection of the premise. You have five seconds to open the door or it will be opened for you.”

Lufty looked back at the rest of them, panicking. “What do I do?” he whispered.

Sandy looked around frantically. “Get the door,” she whispered back. She ducked low and motioned to the others. “Come on.”

Plodding as silently as possible on the carpet, Sunny followed the green mare to the back guest room, the other three right behind him.

“If you try anything,” Candy hissed in Cotton’s ear, “I will snap your neck.”

Sandy ushered them all into the back room, constantly looking back down the hall. “Find a place to hide,” she said urgently, closing the door on them.

Sunny muttered a curse under his breath, looking around the room. He thought of his battle saddle on the floor of the closet, but immediately discarded that thought.

Candy locked Cotton’s shackle to her own hoof, chaining the two mares together, then pointed underneath the bed. “Let’s go.”

Sunny ran to the closet and pulled the folding shutter doors open while Candy and Cotton struggled to cram underneath the bed; it would have been comical in any other situation. There was nothing in the closet except for his battle saddle and Willow’s bags, and a few blankets on shelf that ran across the top.

“They’ll see us in here,” Willow fretted. She tapped her hoof on the floor for a few seconds. “Got it!” She levitated the battle saddle and her bags threw them against the wall, then took the blankets and tossed them haphazardly over them so as they looked like nothing more than clutter in a closet. She pointed towards the shelf that ran across the top of the closet. “Get up there.”

He moved forward without hesitation, jumping up and hooking his hooves on the shelf, beating his wings to help him pull himself up and swing his hind legs around.

Willow looked up at him, then reared up on her hind legs and stuck out a hoof. “Okay, now help me up.”

Sunny blinked, then looked at the cramped space on the shelf. “Willow...”

“Sunny, now!”

Sunny grasped her hoof and pulled her up onto the shelf, cringing. He felt the familiar shivers and the tingle under his flesh as the mare settled against him. He lay on his belly, hind legs curled below him with his rump braced against the wall and forelegs folded. Willow lay back, her back pressed against his shoulder, mane falling over his coat.

“This is really uncomfortable,” he muttered.

Willow shushed him. “Listen.”

Sunny fell quiet, hearing only his and Willow’s breathing, the micro shivers of his body as he tried to remain perfectly still. Over the sound of silence, he picked up voices in the other room.

“What seems to be the problem?” he heard Sandy ask, an air of tension in her voice.

“We received an anonymous tip that there may be enemies to the REA on the premise,” a mare with a fairly-deep voice replied.

Sandy took a moment before she spoke. “Okay... that’s a bit strange.” Sunny could almost imagine her shrugging. “Well, feel free to look around; it’s just us.”

“Thank you for your cooperation.”

Sunny could only listen as the ponies moved about the house, listen and try not to think about how Willow was practically laying on him. Still, he could feel the minor panic setting in. His breath was beginning to quicken and his muscles were tensing.

“Take it easy, Sunny,” Willow breathed out her lips, most likely sensing his uncomfortability.

There was a creak as the bedroom door opened and a pony began to rummage around the room. Sunny was sure the ponies searching would find the two mares under the bed, and he anxiously awaited the sound of alerted yells or gunshots. It was a moment before the shutter doors on the closet slid open and a blue stallion poked his head in, eyes scanning the space below the two hidden ponies. His eyes drifted to the lump of bags in the corner, but he didn’t examine them closely. His eyes started to travel up, and Sunny tensed.

Clear!” the stallion called, backing out of the closet. Sunny and Willow both let out the breaths they had been holding.

“Clear!” the mare called from another room.

“Clear!” came another stallion’s voice.

“Willow,” Sunny growled quietly. “You have to get off me.”

“I can’t,” she said apologetically. “Just hang in there.”

“Well,” the REA mare said after a minute. “It must have been another hoax. Sorry for the misunder... standing...” She trailed off. “Is that blood?”

“Yes,” Lufty answered immediately. “Our uh, cat got in a fight with another cat outside and it bled on the carpet.”

“Where’s that cat now?” the mare questioned.

“Dead,” Lufty answered. “It died from the wounds.”

“You’re lucky it did,” the sergeant said warningly. “Animals have been outlawed since the food shortages.”

“Sergeant, this blood’s fresh,” the voice of the blue colt said.

There was a moment of silence. “Care to explain,” the mare said dangerously, “why your table is set for six ponies... when there are only two of you?”

Nopony spoke.

“Search again,” the mare called. “Check everywhere!”

Sunny stared curiously at Willow as her horn glowed red. “What are you doing?”

She made a shushing sound and levitated a pistol from her bag, flicking the safety off.

Sunny tensed. “Willow...” The closet doors opened again; the blue colt was back. He looked around the closet again, pulling the blankets away to reveal the battle saddle. His eyes widened a little bit, and he looked up, right into the barrel of Willow’s pistol.

“If you try and call out, I will kill you,” Willow said in a threatening tone Sunny had only heard a few select times—it still gave him the shivers, if pressing up against her hadn’t already been doing that.

The stallion’s eyes stretched wide as he stared into Willow’s glowing ones. Sunny could almost hear him thinking, running through options. He was wearing a battle saddle, but he wasn’t in any position to aim and fire.

“Please, don’t,” Sunny said to the stallion, throwing a glance to Willow. “I don’t care what you think; she’ll kill you.”

His eyes darted left and right, then he opened his mouth to scream.

The pop of the low-caliber pistol alerted everypony in the apartment.

“Shot’s fired!” the sergeant yelled from the living room.

Willow jumped from atop the shelf and thudded to the floor, Sunny right behind her, thankful for the break in contact. In only a few seconds, she had his battle saddle out of the pile and onto his back, yanking the buckle straps tight. She finished with him and slung on her own barding.

The guest bed flew up into the air, toppling upside down as Candy surged upwards. Quickly, she grabbed her stuff, practically dragging Cotton around behind her.

“Detain these two!” the other stallion yelled. There was the sound of a scuffle and the cries of Lufty and Sandy.

“No,” sunny muttered. This was their fault.

“Help me with this!” Candy yelled suddenly. She had braced herself against a standing wardrobe by the door, trying to push it over to block the entryway. Sunny moved up beside her, and together, they shoved the heavy wardrobe off balance. It hit the wall by the door and stuck cockeyed, breaking off the door handle and effectively blocking the entrance.

“Now what?” he panted.

The door shook for a moment as a pony on the other side tried to push through. “Open up!” the mare yelled. “You will be unharmed if you open the door and surrender your weapons!”

“Don’t do it!” Sandy yelled from the living room. “They’ve got a flamethro—”

“Shut her up!” There was a series of heavy blows and Sandy whimpered into silence.

Willow dashed to the window and smashed the glass out with her hoof, cutting her foreleg in the process. She struck the window again and the pane broke out of the frame and fell to the street.

“We can’t just climb down,” Candy protested. “We’re five stories up in the air.”

Willow grunted her approval. She dashed back to the upturned mattress, and wiggling under it carried it on her back to shove it half-through the window frame. “That’s what this is for.”

Cotton balked at Willow. “Are you insane!?”

The whole front wall of the bedroom exploded inward in a shower of plaster dust and five ponies stormed into the room. The leader was a pink mare, a little taller than normal. She was flanked by two ponies sporting assault carbines, and on the outside were two ponies in hotsuits, primed flamethrowers on their backs.

“Bullshit,” Willow muttered. “Flamethrowers... really?” She pulled Cotton over beside her and held her pistol to the frightened mare’s head. “Don’t come any closer!”

The pink mare examined the scene, her eyes observant, dangerous. Her short, yellow mane hung just above her eyes and tickled the back of her neck. “My orders are to bring you three back alive or dead. I really don’t want to have to kill you all, because I like to give ponies a chance, but I won't hesitate if I have to.”

“If you send us back to that place it’ll be as good as killing us!” Willow spat.

The mare shook her head. “That’s not my problem. I have orders—alive or dead, your choice.” The two ponies on either side of her clicked their weapons.

Willow shoved the barrel of the pistol against Cotton’s head, causing her to wince. “I will blast her brains out if you try anything.”

The pink mare actually smiled. “Nice bluff. You’re determined, and you’re smart; I can see it in your eyes. You’re too smart to shoot your own hostage because then you’d be dead, and you have too much of a heart to kill her in cold blood.”

Willow swallowed. “S-say that to him!” She tossed her head towards the stallion in the closet with his brains leaking onto the carpet.

The mare clicked her tongue. “It was him or you—I can understand that. I have no respect for what you have done, but I can see from your standpoint why it was necessary.” She paused. “And I just thought that I would inform you that your hostage is no longer an essential piece to us.”

Cotton paled. “W-w-what?”

The sergeant shrugged. “How long did you think Grayhoove’s lie would go unnoticed. It was only a matter of time before somepony tried to access the datafiles and realized that there was no encryption, not even a password.” She took an intimidating step forward. “You’re expendable.”

“Now!” Willow wrapped a hoof around Sunny’s neck and hurled herself towards the window. Somehow, she managed to get her other hoof around Cotton as well. Gunfire lit up the room as Willow hurled them onto the mattress. Sunny hardly registered what was happening as the white mare braced herself against the floor and shoved them off just as Candy scrambled past after Cotton onto the mattress. The entire room lit up in an explosion of fire as Sunny felt them leave the windowsill. Willow landed on his chest, then he was falling, watching the building shoot up into the air as flame poured from the window they had just left.

His head smacked against the mattress, which suddenly felt incredibly hard, and the steel springs stabbed into his back. His only-just-healed ribs creaked from Willow’s weight atop him and he clenched his teeth.

It took him a moment to realize that they were in the middle of the street. Willow rolled off him and hopped around, cursing as she swished out the fire on her tail.

Sunny rolled off the demolished mattress with a groan. “Sweet Celestia, I can not believe we just did that.”

Candy stood up, dragging Cotton with her. “We just—” A bullet whizzed by and pitted the ground at her hooves. She eeped, and jumped away.

The sergeant stood in the window above, aiming a rifle down at them.

“Run!” Sunny yelled, forcing them forward. Ponies watched and balked as the four of them sprinted down the street. After a few blocks, Sunny led them into an alley between two tall buildings.

“Stop,” Willow panted, lumbering to a halt and falling against a dumpster. “I... I can’t”

Worry clouding his mind, Sunny turned back and approached her. She was worse off than he had thought. Her hind legs were badly burnt; they only looked red now, but Sunny knew that in a few hours the flesh would start to peel like hamburger. She bled heavily from a gash on her rump where a bullet had skimmed her, and a quarter of her tail was burnt off.

Frantically, he reached into her bag and dug for a healing potion. There was a sharp pain in his hoof and he drew it back, blood welling from a cut. “What the...” He reached in again and pulled out a hoof full of broken glass, purple droplets of liquid clinging to the surface. “No...”

“No what?” Willow asked, falling back on her haunches.

Sunny dug frantically through the bag on her back, then let out a sigh of relief. “You only broke one potion.” He passed her one of the bottles containing the purple liquid.

Willow winced as she uncorked the bottle. “You had me worried there.”

“Weren’t they all in the case I gave you?” Candy asked

“They were,” Willow answered. “But I must have left it open after getting that potion for Cotton.”

Sunny watched as she downed the bottle with an expression of relief. “Are you going to be alright?”

Willow nodded. “Yeah, but let’s hope we don’t have to use any more. You had to pay out the flank to get healing potions because they never were very common. The only reason we had them before was because I raided the hospital’s stash, and that was probably fifty-thousand bits worth.” She flopped over on her side. “One does not simply find another healing potion. I have no clue how Candy got ahold of a whole case of them.”

Candy grinned. “Barracks. I made a quick stop before I saved you two.”

Cotten sat perfectly still, staring at her hooves. “They were going to kill me. I didn’t matter at all to them... All of my life working for the army, and they were willing to throw me away, just like that.”

Candy rolled her eyes. “Welcome to the army, sister.”

Sunny listened for hoofsteps at the mouth of the alley, breathing a sigh of relief when they faded away, having safely passed.

“Now what do we do?” Candy huffed. She glared at the pink mare she was shackled to. “Our hostage is useless. The most we could use her for now is a meatshield.”

Cotton scooted away from the mare, trying to put Sunny between them, but the shackles stopped her from doing so. “Don’t let her kill me,” she pleaded, hugging Sunny’s leg.

Sunny shook her off a little more forcibly than he had intended and stepped out of her reach. He glared at Candy. “We will not be killing her,” he growled.

Candy gave the shackle around her hoof a shake. “Any ideas?”

“He raised a brow. “Could we just let her go?”

Candy blinked, then reached back and dug in her saddlebags, producing the key for the shackles.

“What are you doing?” Cotton asked skeptically as Candy undid the shackle around her own hoof.

Candy slammed the key down in front of the pink mare. “Get out of here.”

“J-j-just like that?” Cotton stammered.

Willow propped herself up to look at the slightly-confused mare. “It was nice to be your captor, and part of me still wants to kill you for being my captor.”

Cotton looked around to the three of them with disbelieving eyes. She opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it again. She turned away, looking back at them, then bolted, the shackle still bound to one hoof jangling behind her as she disappeared down the alley.

Willow shrugged and leaned heavily on the dumpster. “Well that worked.” She chuckled. “It was like letting a fish go after you catch it.” Her eyes drifted between Sunny and Candy “Wha... you two have never gone fishing?”

Sunny slumped. “We still have a pretty big problem.”

“I say we get the hay out of this city,” Willow spoke up. “I’d rather brave zombies and hunger than this mess and other ponies like the ones who...” Her pupils dilated, and for a moment she was lost, jaw going slack.

“Yeah, sure,” Candy scoffed, unaware that Willow had stopped listening. “How exactly do you plan on doing that? Let’s just walk up to all the ponies stationed on guard and say, ‘hey, we’re wanted criminals, but if you don’t mind, we’re just going to scale your fifteen foot wall and run into that horde of zombies now’.”

“Way to be an optimist,” Sunny muttered.

“It’s funny, isn’t it,” Willow laughed, seeming to have regained herself. “This is the only place in Equestria, that we know of, that’s zombie free, and all we want to do is get the hay out of it.”

Sunny’s ears perked at a quiet jangling from down the alley, gradually growing louder. “Hey, Willow?”

“Yeah?”

“When you throw a fish back, are they supposed to swim back to you?”

“Help!” Cotton screamed, tearing down the alley at full pelt, eyes wide and panicked.

Willow squinted at the mare, a scowl plastered across her face. “What the hay is her problem?”

“It’s after me!” Cotton squealed, tearing past them and throwing herself in a standing dumpster. She ducked down amongst the garbage and slammed the lid behind her with a hollow ‘bwong’.

Willow pounded on the side of the dumpster. “Who’s after you!?”

Sunny scanned the alley, down the way Cotton had come, flicking off the safeties on both the shotgun and the rifle. It had to be something. He had seen it in Cotton’s eyes. It would take something a bit more traumatic than a hallucination to scare a mare to that degree.

He spotted it, whatever it was. It was about the same size as a pony, but was a rather disgusting thing. It was black, unlike any pony he had ever seen, and its eyes were orb-like and blue. It’s scraggly, gray tail was unkempt, and overall looked pretty sickly. It had fangs, surprisingly, yellowed from rot and stained red with blood.

Sunny would have continued to stare, had thing not been running right at him, hissing and snarling in a very similar way Sunny knew zombies to.

He fired the shotgun and rifle simultaneously. Somehow, he managed to miss the thing, which was scuttling around like a giant mouse. In comparison, it was like trying to stomp on a cockroach before it scuttled away after the lights were flicked on.

Sunny dived aside as the thing lunged at him, missing by a terrifying two inches. It ran headlong into the dumpster Cotton had taken refuge in and crunched in the side, causing the mare inside to eep. In a second, Willow had her automatic levitated before her. She fired just as the thing regained itself and rocketed away, making a fast circle back towards Sunny, her shots only pitting the ground.

This time he wasn’t fast enough. The creature struck Sunny like a bag of cement mix and knocked him up against the wall of a building. He cringed as it lunged for his neck, fangs menacingly sharp.

Willow caught it from behind, freezing the snapping jaws and razor-sharp fangs mere inches from the cowering pegasus’ face. With a grunt and a heave, she hauled the hissing and snarling abomination backwards as it tried and tried for Sunny’s throat, barely even caring that Willow or Candy existed at all.

Sunny couldn’t even blink. It had gone after the first pony it had seen, which happened to be him. It’s orby eyes hadn’t even left him except for when it had hit the dumpster, and even then it had gone right back to him.

“Now, Sunny!” Willow grunted. She spun, releasing the whatever-it-was and hurling it across the alley. There was a meaty whack as it struck the brick side of a building and fell to the ground in momentary daze.

Sunny fired once with the rifle and twice with the shotgun, watching semi-joyously as all three shots tore chunks out of the thing’s black hide. It screeched and flopped to the ground in a twitching mass, bleeding a greenish-blue substance onto the ground from gaping wounds. Its legs flailed violently as it tried to get up. For good measure, Sunny aimed a buckshot round at the angry creature’s head and fired one last time. The cries were cut short and it flopped over like a wet rag, bleeding it’s off-color blood onto the dirty asphalt.

Willow took a deep breath and gave a little chuckle. She trotted briskly over to prod the body, checking to see if it was still alive despite the fact that half of its head was splattered across the wall. “That’s weird,” she mumbled, running her hoof through the goop spreading across the ground.

Candy cringed. “Don’t stick your hoof in it, Willow.”

“It’s hemolymph...” she muttered back, shaking the blood from her hoof. “This is insect blood.”

The candy-colored mare squinted. “So, what? Thing’s an insect?”

“Well it’s certainly not a pony!”

Cotton poked her head out of the dumpster, ears folded, eyes darting around seeking for more danger. “I-it’s a changeling.”

All three of them turned to the pink mare. Candy gave a cocked brow while Willow bobbed her head impatiently, silently willing the mare to continue.

Cotton scrambled out of the dumpster and dropped clumsily to the ground. “Changeling,” she repeated, trotting up to meet them whilst shaking off the last of her fright with a few quick flicks of her ears. “They’re an insect-like species of... something.” She rolled her eyes. “I was never in charge of that department. They posses the ability to take on the desired shape of any other living creature of their size...” A frown crossed her face as she looked at the dead Changeling. “This right here shows that they can be infected.”

Sunny was still having trouble getting back to breathing normally. “Yeah, and this shows that they have a strong case of the munchies and they’re hard to shoot.”

Willow harrumphed. “Which means we’re more likely to die.”

“Maybe it was the only one,” Sunny said hopefully.

Cotton shook her head at him. “Changelings are known to travel in swarms of...” She trailed off, eyes drifting to the upper right, “...of about one to three hundred.”

Willow’s eye twitched and she took up a tense stance. “So... where are the other two hundred and ninety-nine?”

Cotton chewed her lip. “Well, let’s see, um... they like dark spaces, someplace with a ceiling; they make, like, cocoon things, kind of like a butterfly.”

“I thought you were a scientist,” Candy scoffed quietly, just loud of enough for Cotton to hear.

“Scientist,” Cotton spat back, “not an entomologist.”

“Subways!” Willow called suddenly.

Candy frowned. “What about them?”

Cotton paled. “The subways were shut down completely once Baltimare went off the grid—they sucked power like brothel mare’s suck—”

“Are you saying these things are under the city!?” Sunny panicked.

“They very well could be.”

He slumped. “Buck my life.”

Cotton started forward. “We have to tell somepony!”

Candy grabbed her by the mane and yanked her back. “Yeah sure, let’s just walk up to a platoon of guardsponies and tell them that there’s a bunch of deadly changeling zombies hiding in the subway tunnels, they’ll totally believe a bunch of ponies that just broke out of a physical and mental testing facility.” She flicked her tail. “Besides, we don’t even know for sure if that thing came from below the city.”

Sunny dropped to his belly and rubbed his temples with his forehooves. “Well if Cotton’s right, and they do travel in swarms, and if they are under the city... if one got out...”

The pink mare got a distant look about her. “Then so did the others.”

Willow’s jaw trembled slightly. “It might be happening all over again.”

* * *

Moon stared silently out the cab window as the landscape flew by on either side of her. Canterlot was a mere speck in the distance now.

Rain poured in torrents, and the wind howled at them from the side, whipping sheets of water across the glass as the wipers tried hopelessly to skim it away. Although it was morning, the sky was dark-gray, golden sun hidden behind layers of black clouds and filtered even further by the rain, setting the feeling that it was really no more than a half-moon night.

The hum of the engine sent a small vibration through her body, translating through her hooves from the paneled floor. it just wasn’t the same. While the old steamer they had ridden screamed of power, the heavy chug, the pounding of the pistons and the roar as the smoke rocketing from the stack, it’s warmth. This engine showed none of that; it scooted along like a jackrabbit with a steady hum from the gemerator room. The streamlined glass cab felt claustrophobic compared to the open cab of the Big Buck, and the combined breath of the ponies inside the cold cab fogged the insides of the windows.

The engine had been quite an object at first sight. It consisted of two cars, both spanning about forty feet in length. The first car of the engine was the cab unit itself, painted dark-red with a glossy paint and streamlined with a domed roof and hood. A silver stripe ran right down the middle of the engine and painted the steel all around the curved front windows of the cab. The same color of silver ran along the bottom on both sides, just above the wheels.

The car pulled behind the engine had the same color scheme: a line of silver across the roof and a thinner line along the bottom on either side. This car, as told by Snowglobe, served as a second unit and a baggage car. Since they were pulling nothing but the engine’s own weight, the second unit was useless, and had only been left coupled for the sake of extra space.

Apart from the engine actually working, nothing seemed to be going right. After their disconnected cars had drifted to a stop a little short of the railyard, those of them remaining had made the four-hundred yards to the sheds. The first one they visited had been the wrong one. Range, in his injured and half-out-of-it state, had not directed them to the right one. They had found the correct shed on their third try after busting off a lock that could have stalled Celestia herself, but not without loss. By the time they had finally made it to the shed—not exactly a zombie-free trek—and gotten the shed doors open, and after Snowglobe had spent the hour long task of getting the engine running, they had lost seven of their own. Moon guiltily thanked Celestia that the lost ones had not been tied to her in any manner.

‘What kind of a place is this?’ she wondered, ‘where I thank the goddess that the dead weren’t ones I know?’

Their number was now nine, and a foal. It was her, Snowglobe, Brick, Copper, Altic, Yew, Range, Jade, Sage, the pink mare and her foal, and a sky blue stallion named Carter.

A single tear ran down her cheek, sheering off at the bottom of her jaw and falling silently to the floor below. All the Appleoosans, all but three... they were all dead. How had she failed so catastrophically? It would kill her soul to lose anypony else. Now, everypony on board, she knew personally. The only reason she had been able to semi-bear the deaths of the so many others was that she did not know them, apart from faces that she would never see again.

There was Jade, the pegasus whom she had saved. Sage, the mare kind enough to let them into their stronghold, and the one to pass on leadership to Moon. Copper, formal REA turned firestallion by Dusty. Yew, Dusty’s sister. Snowglobe, Brick, the best friends she had ever met...

It was all just too much.

Snowglobe sat at the relatively simple controls, leaned back in the padded seat, head pressed against the left side window, breath fogging the glass. Brick lay just behind her, stripped of all barding and the monstrous weapon, curled up into a big, brown ball. Sage and Jade lay against each other near the back of the cab. Copper sat beside Snowglobe — he was the only one still awake apart from Moon.

The rest were back in the second unit.

Nothing felt right without Dusty. He had left them with only a single relic, which was currently strapped to Snowglobe’s right foreleg. It wasn’t fair, wasn’t right. He couldn’t just be gone, not after all the things they’d been through together. He was practically family, and just like that... he had been snatched away when they were at their weakest. As of now, the only thing Moon could look forward to was finding Sunny and Willow.

More than often in these last few hours, she had found her thoughts wandering to the darker side... What if? When it came to fire the shotgun again, what if she turned it on herself instead? Just like that, it would all be over. No more killing, no more pain, no more anything. Sometimes, it seemed so easy—a selfish, but easy way out of the whole mess. Then it would be their problem, not hers.

But that was no way to go. That wasn’t how she wanted to be remembered — not as the mare who couldn’t hack it and painted the wall with her brains right when everypony needed her most.

She had heard the term, ‘life isn’t fair’ for her entire life really, and up until this point, she had never fully understood it until now... until yesterday. She had used to complain when the store didn’t have the kind of shampoo she liked, or the snack she wanted. Now... she hadn't bathed in what seemed like forever, and she was lucky to eat at all. Now she had no right to complain about anything. It was what it was, and there was nothing she, or anypony, could do about it.

It had been... painful, leaving Canterlot. She had watched, unable to look away, as they cut through the wreckage. What was left over wasnt much. There had been scattered steel for a mile along the straight stretch, but nothing major. She had sobbed as they rounded the casual corner. It was a scene of death. Bodies lay scattered like confetti at the end of an extravagant party, skewering the ground, innards hanging from lights and power poles like streamers... It reminded her of some pony’s idea of a sick toilet paper prank, only it spanned over two blocks. At the very epicenter, had been the Big Buck, or at least what was left. The only thing remaining had been the side of the boiler that had been blasted into the ground and the front set of wheels and pistons about fifty feet away. A wheel there, a piece of a connecting rod there... all destroyed.

“Run,” Snowglobe murmured in her sleep. “We... we have to go.” She exploded out of her seat in a whirlwind of hooves. “What are you doing!?’ she screamed, flopping over to the floor.

Copper moved forward and gave her a shake. “Snowglobe, it was just a dream! Snowglobe!”

The others in the cab stirred, but didn’t wake.

Snowglobe’s eyes cracked open in the gloom and she shakily picked herself up off the floor.

Copper offered her a hoof. “Are you o—”

“Leave me alone,” she snapped, waving him away.

Copper backed away courteously, catching Moon’s eye. “I’m just gonna go,” he murmured, pushing past her and nudging open the door to the gemerator room. A loud hum filled the cab before he shut the door again, casting the cab back to semi-silence.

Moon sat quietly, listening to the pitter patter of rain on the windows and the whish of the hydraulic wipers. Snowglobe hunkered up in the corner, propping her head against the window and pinching her eyes shut. In the gentle blue light of display lighting, Moon spotted the shine on the mare’s cheeks as tears leaked from her eyes. The mare’s chest heaved as she fought back a sob, and she buried her face in the crook of her forehoof.

Moon crept forward. “Snowglobe... are you okay?” She placed a hoof on the gray mare’s withers.

The mare picked her head up and turned herself around to face Moon. She nodded, but her face said no. “What are we gonna do?” she whispered.

Moon sighed. “Baltimare... it’s all we can shoot for.”

“We don’t have any food.”

Moon was silent for a moment. “I know.”

“We left the case... the drug.”

“...I know.”

“All of them...” Her breath heaved. “How long before it’s us? how long before something happens, and... and...” The sobs overtook her, and she crumpled against Moon, sobbing into the blue mare’s neck.

Moon patted Snowglobe on the back as the mare’s hooves wrapped tight around her middle. “I know.” Returning the embrace, Moon nuzzled into the smaller mare’s mane. “The most we can do is what we can... You just have to hang in there.” She drew in the mare’s scent, musty and smelling of coal and gunpowder, but sweet. A thought struck her. “Should somepony be driving the train, or at least watching the tracks?”

Snowglobe drew back, blushing a little around the tears smearing her cheeks. “S-s-sorry. I need to stay in my place.”

Moon stared out the windshield ahead at the at the beam of light from the lamp mounted in the nose of the streamlined engine, the powerful beam lighting the droplets and casting flickering glares across the sheets of water battling with the wipers. “Do you want me to take over? I just have to keep an eye on the tracks, and I can wake you up if there’s anything.”

Snowglobe shook her head, a yawn forming on her face. No, I’m... I’m good.”

Moon deadpanned. “Snow, you haven’t slept since before the griffons—you’re practically dead on your hooves.”

Snowglobe flopped back down in the elevated airseat and shifted her puffy eyes to the controls, their blue glow reflecting in her green eyes. “No really, I’m fine.”

With a little smirk, Moon moved up and wrapped a hoof around the mare’s neck. Snowglobe laxed almost immediately, falling into the embrace and slumping against Moon. “No,” she muttered, eyes fluttering. “...Can’t sleep.”

Moon smiled and ran a hoof through the smaller mare’s purple mane. “Sleep; you deserve it.”

Snowglobe slipped from the seat and trickled to the floor, embracing Moon’s warmth in the chilly cabin. “Maybe just for a bit,” she slurred.

With a motherly smile, Moon wrapped a forehoof over Snowglobe’s back and pulled her in close. In seconds, the mare had dozed off. Moon turned her attention out the window, keeping watch ahead. “We won’t lose anypony else,” she whispered. “I won't let it happen.”

The engine pushed on through the gloom, rain pounding the windows as the wipers tried to battle it away.

* * *

Sunny looked anxiously at Willow as she peered through the binoculars. “What do you see?”

She flicked her tail at him. “Gimme a minute.”

Sunny sighed and looked out over the city. They had made their way to the top of a twenty story building near the southern wall of Baltimare with intents of a good scouting and vantage point.

Cotton had stuck with them, despite Candy’s protests and obvious repulse. Apparently, the changeling spook had really unsettled the pink mare, and she insisted on staying with them due to the fact that they’d dealt with zombies before. Sunny could argue that the REA was much better equipped for battling hordes of zombies than a few used-to-be citizens with guns, but he didn’t see the point. The truth was that Cotton didn’t want to speak the truth: she had lost faith in the army after they had tossed her aside as expendable goods.

Willow also had the theory that Candy was suffering from stockholm syndrome, a case in which the captive becomes attached to their captor—it seemed plausible.

Willow hissed under her breath, glaring through the glasses. “I can’t see any way around them.”

Sunny grabbed them from her field of levitation. “Let me see.”

From their point on this rooftop, they had a good view of the southern wall. The army certainly didn’t have lack of fortification. Ponies in gray uniform trotted busily back and forth across the walkway of the concrete and steel barrier wall. At regular intervals, large, menacing-looking stationary guns were mounted on wheel pivots; he took these to be the anti-air precautions due to the fact that the barrels were turned towards the sky.

The army had been smart. When they had contained Baltimare, they had not tried to enforce the entire city. They had mostly enclosed the downtown district, running their barriers around geographical strong points and encircling some smaller rural areas. The outskirts of the city had been left unprotected, allowing the zombies to claim all not inside the wall.

Candy snatched the binoculars from him. She held them up to her eyes and frowned down at the barrier. After a moment, she cursed and tossed them back to Willow. “It’s just as I thought.”

“Thought?” Willow asked.

“They’ve got everything covered.” She sighed. “Besides, even if we managed to sneak out over the wall, it’s not like we’re just going to trot right through the crowders.”

“Crowders?” Sunny frowned at her.

Candy blinked. “Sorry for the lingo. The zombies that crowd around the wall, somepony on duty started calling them crowders and the name spread through the forces like wildfire; it’s practically written in the lingo book now.”

“Skywagon?” Cotton suggested. “I have some pegasus friends that might—”

“No good,” Candy interrupted sourly. “Skywagons are only permitted to enter the city through a specific port, plus radio confirmation is needed for both entry and exit... We’d never make it past the anti-air.”

Willow growled. “Then how the hay do we get past ‘em?”

Sunny shuffled his hooves nervously, a rather insane idea striking him. “I have an idea...”

All heads turned to him. “Well go on,” Willow insisted.

He hesitated. “Well, we can’t get out by sneaking past, and we can’t get out on a skywagon...” He gave them a nervous grin. “We could always try going under the wall.”

Cotton’s eyes widened in terror, and Candy glared like he had just suggested she marry Cotton.

Willow nodded slowly, caught up in thought. “Possibly.”

Candy rounded on her. “What do you mean possibly?”

“Well—”

“Subways, Willow!” Candy pressed, placing her forehooves on either side of Willow’s body and looking her in the eye. “Dark and—”

Willow bared her teeth and head-butted the mare in the face. Candy reared back from the unexpected impact and fell to her rump, shellshocked.

Sunny panicked, ready to move forward to call Willow off; she had that look about her again. But before he needed to step in, that look died.

Willow stepped back, ears folded in shame. “I-I’m sorry,” she squeaked. “You touched me and I didn’t mean to— I’m sorry, Candy.”

The stunned mare picked herself up, a red mark prominent across her brow and muzzle. “Shit... that hurt.”

“Sorry,” Willow repeated. Her eyes shone with unshed tears. “Candy, I’m sorry, but you can’t touch me like that.”

Candy nodded absently. “Apparently not.”

The sorry look in Willow’s eyes vanished. “It’s not a joke,” she said dangerously, causing Sunny to take an unconscious step away from the pair.

Candy sobered up pretty fast. “Right, sorry.” She staggered a little on her hooves, wincing and rubbing her head. “But really, you’re insane if you suggest we actually take the subways. Remember the changeling?”

The four of them went back to looking over the city. “I really don’t see any other options though,” Candy pouted.

“Can I vote no on the subways?” Cotton chirped timidly.

Candy flicked her ears. “You can leave any time. Nopony’s forcing you to stay with us.”

Willow sighed. “Maybe we could—”

“Drop your weapons and turn towards me!” a mare screamed from behind them.

Willow clenched her teeth and her eyes burned with fire. “You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding me!”

“Now!” the pony screamed louder.

Slowly, Sunny turned with the others to face the mare. She was REA, earth pony, her orange coat shining in the sun from below her gray uniform, silver mane held out of her eyes with a tie. She was scared—her body language screamed it. Her legs shook just a little bit, and the barrels of her two carbines tremored slightly.

“Hey now—” Sunny made the mistake of taking a step towards her.

She clamped down on the firing bit and the hair in Sunny’s ears tickled his brain as a bullet whizzed by his head. “Don’t move!” she screeched, voice crackling.

Sunny froze to the spot, afraid to blink. Nothing was more dangerous, or terrifying, than a scared mare with two big guns.

Willow fumed silently as she glared daggers at the orange mare.

The REA pony turned her rifles on Willow with a quick jerk. “Put your weapon on the ground!” She motioned towards the automatic on Willow’s leg.

Resentfully, Willow pulled the weapon from its holster and tossed it on the ground, then looked over at Sunny. “Any plans?”

He frowned. “Plans?”

“Stop talking!” the mare yelled.

Willow ignored her. “Yes,” she said, raising her voice purposefully. “Should would actually lay down our weapons or should we just shoot this snoopy sack in the face!?”

The REA mare eeped and jerked her rifles back to Sunny. “Drop them!”

He glared. “It’s a battle saddle. Please explain how you suggest I drop them.”

Irritation flashed in her eyes, and the rifles drifted back to Willow. “Unbolt the weapons from his saddle and throw them on the ground!”

Willow grumbled something rather profane and magically yanked Sunny’s rifle from its slot on the battle saddle. She threw it to the ground with a sneer towards the REA mare, then did the same with the shotgun.

The mare checked Cotton and Candy, and once concluding that neither had a weapon, stepped back, swapping the glare of her rifles between the four of them. She yanked a standard issue radio from on of her bags and set it on the ground, depressing the talk button with her hoof. “This is Private Shores requesting a retrieval squad to the roof of the Pleasntstay hotel.”

“Forwarding to dispatch,” a squeaky mare answered.

It was a moment before a stallion with a cliche dispatcher’s voice responded. “Acknowledged, Private. Please state your form of emergency.”

Shores never took her eyes off the four of them as she spoke. “You’re not gonna believe this, but I have apprehended and captured the two escaped mental patients from Bottle of Progress, along with the mutiny subject, Private Cane and the awol scientist.”

There was a long moment of silence from the radio. “Private Shores, a team has been dispatched to your location. Keep the subjects in captivity until they arrive.”

Sunny’s blood had begun to boil at the way they had been titled. Mental patients? Awol scientist? Mutiny? There was some pony sitting somewhere behind a desk, thinking up relative words to make them sound bad.

“Shores, eh?” Willow said with the hint of a smile. “Cute name.”

The private glared. “Don’t speak.”

Willow went on like she hadn’t heard. “What’s your first name?”

“None of your business,” Shores snapped back.

Willow made a pouty face. “Come on, I don’t bite... much.”

“No.”

“Come on.”

“No.”

“Please?” Willow grinned.

The private growled and rolled her eyes. “It’s Silver, okay! Silver Shores.”

Willow nodded with interest. “Oh, I see now.” She smirked. “Orange coat and silver mane. Silver Shores, heh.”

Silver groaned. “Yes, now will you please shut up?”

Candy swished her tail for Silver’s attention. “How long do you think it’ll be before they dispose of you?”

Silver’s eyes drifted slowly to the striped-maned mare. “What in Celestia’s name are you talking about?” she asked irritably with a scrunch of her brow.

“I mean, how long do you think it’ll be until they’re going to throw you away like they did me?”

“You killed your squad!” Silver spat disgustedly.

Candy shook her head slowly, sighing. “I did no such thing.” She swallowed a lump in her throat. “I was betrayed when I brought back volunteers to help with a cure—these two.” Her hoof waved towards Sunny and Willow. “Then the army stamped me as a murderer and threw the two ponies I brough to help into that torture house called Bottle of Progress.”

Silver shook her head. “I can see what you’re trying to do. I’m not letting you go.”

“They took me hostage!” Cotton added desperately. “How is that awol?”

“You have no idea what you just got yourself into by making that radio call,” Willow said menacingly.

Sunny chipped in, seeing what the mares were trying to do. “They’ve killed or tried to kill everypony that’s been in contact with us.” This, of course, wasn’t true, but maybe if they just scared this mare enough...

Candy took a step forward and silver trained the rifles on her. “When they come to collect us, they’re going to ask you if we told you anything.”

Silver seemed to be growing rather nervous. “B-but you haven’t.”

Candy smiled sadly. Sunny had to admit, the mare was a good actor. “It doesn’t matter, to them; you’ll be a liability. If you say no, they’ll think we told you, and told you to say no because we said they’d kill you if you said yes, so even if we never told you anything, they’d still kill you because they can no longer trust you.” She shrugged. “So no matter what, you’re dead. Or they’ll take you to Bottle of Progress and liquify your brain, run zombie tests on you.”

SIlver rubbed her forehead in distress. “Told me what?”

Willow put her menacing look on, somehow coaxing a flash of yellow glow from her eyes. “You don’t want to know.”

Cotton smirked when Silver’s eyes widened comically as she balked at Willow. “But since you asked—”

Silver clamped the firing bit and took aim at Cotton. “I’shl shooth g’you!” She released the bit to talk. “I’ll shoot you if you say one more word!”

Sunny had to force himself not to grin. This method seemed to be working. Although none of them had discussed it, they had all seemed to silently agree. He couldn’t help but feel a little bad for SIlver—poor mare, she was terrified.

Silver took a long moment to breathe. “Why should I believe anything you four say? The REA wants you for a reason”

Sunny gave his best impartial look. “But is it worth the risk?”

Silver didn’t have the chance to answer. At that moment, the door to the hotel roof burst open behind them and and six ponies clad in REA barding and gear poured onto the hotel roof.

Sunny hung his head, listening as the hoofsteps of the gear-laden ponies drew nearer. They had been so close.

Silver got a panicky look about her as the six ponies took stance around the four held at gunpoint.

“Great work, Private Shores,” said a familiar pink mare with a yellow mane. “You got ‘em.”

Shores nodded back, smiling a little, her body language stiff.

The mare flicked her tail. “Take them down to the wagon.” She leered at Willow. “Last I saw of you was a burning tail and a crispy rump.”

Willow snapped at the mare, and immediately, every gun turned on her, metallic clicks filling the air. Willow was unphased. “And I suggest you back off before the last anypony sees of you is your tail flying off a twenty story hotel building!”

The sergeant shrugged, grinning out the corner of her mouth. “Not without you.”

Willow spat at the mare's hooves. “You’re lucky I’m not stupid enough to waste my life on yours.”

“Willow, please,” Sunny murmured.

Nopony spoke as the six REA ponies, and Silver Shores, escorted them across the roof and down the first flight of stairs to the top floor, where they then entered an elevator.

Sunny kept a close eye on Willow as they slowly descended, worried she would try something. He held his breath as Willow smirked mischievously. Swift like a cat, she lunged forward and smacked the forward wall with her forehooves, sliding them down the button panel and lighting up every button along the way.

The sergeant kicked her in the stomach and the mischievous mare collapsed to the floor, cackling in between gasps for breath. “So worth it!”

On floor seventeen, the doors slid open with a ding from the bell. An old mare with a walker balked at them from the hallway, eyes drifting from the mare on the floor to the seven ponies pointing guns at her.

The bell dinged again and the doors slid closed. They dropped to level sixteen and the doors opened again, the light in the sixteen button on the control panel blinking out.

“That’s enough,” the sergeant growled, stopping the elevator and leading them into the hall. She found them another elevator and they all loaded in. This time, the sergeant made sure to put Willow on the left side, away from the buttons.

Sunny was finding it rather hard not to snicker as Willow continued to mess with the sergeant, flicking her tail at the mare’s ears or making strange noises. Around floor ten, the sergeant had begun to ignore Willow.

The white mare looked over at Sunny and cracked a wide grin, tossing her muzzle towards the sergeant. Sunny shook his head. “It’s not worth it,” he mouthed.

Willow rolled her eyes, then turned back to the pink and yellow mare. She butted the sergeant in the flank and the mare fell against the elevator railing.

The sergeant growled and glared daggers at Willow. “Have you ever been shot before?” she threatened.

Willow grinned back. “Yes. It kinda feels like getting ploughed for the first time by an overeager stallion; there’s some blood and a lot of pain and it doesn’t hurt so bad if you don’t move too much.”

The sergeant blinked, struck off by Willow’s answer.

Willow took this chance to advance. “I doubt you’ve experienced either, ‘cause the holes you do have must be tighter than a vice with the way you strut around.”

One of the armed guards, a shorter mare, giggled, then hurriedly covered the slip up with a cough.

The sergeant bowed her head the tiniest bit to Willow. “That was clever, and I’m not going to try to stand you up. While I do want to chain you to a wall and beat you ‘till your coat matches your mane, I’m going to let you have that one.”

The bell dinged and the elevator doors slid smoothly open to the lobby. Several ponies had gathered around and were waiting for them at the bottom. It was amazing how fast news spread; one of them must have seen the ponies going up and, and with nothing better to do, gathered some friends and waited patiently at the bottom.

Willow glared and bared her teeth at a punk-looking stallion as they passed, causing him to back into his friend, who shoved him to the ground and snickered. Friends... At least Sunny hoped those ponies weren’t friends.

Two wagons sat waiting on the curb out front. One was a rolling box with bars fitted in the back, and the other was open. Sunny assumed they would be occupying the one with the bars. Of course, he had been right, and the six ponies herded them to the back of the jailer’s wagon.

Sunny looked at the sergeant with as level of a stare as he could as his friends piled into the wagon. “Where're you taking us?”

She shrugged. “I’m not taking you anywhere.” She pointed to two of the guards. “But they’ll be taking you to an REA facility on the other side of the city specially designed to hold enemies of the region.”

Sunny folded his ears. “Right then.” He lifted himself into the back of the steel-shelled wagon next, not intent on being shoved or thrown.

The sergeant turned to Silver, who had been trying to casually drift back into the crowd. “We need a pony for a ride along and I need to get back to command. Can you take this?” She asked it as a question, but it was clear that it was an order.

Silver gulped and nodded. “R-right.” She trotted forward, jaw trembling a little, and climbed up into the back of the wagon with Sunny and the others.

One of the guards slammed the door shut after her, the old steel hinges squeaking in protest, and fitted a key into the embedded lock. He and another stallion then moved around to the front of the wagon, out of sight behind a wooden wall lined with a thin layer of steel, and slipped into the harnesses.

Silver let out a little whimper sitting across from Sunny closest to the back gate as they began to pull away. “No,” she whispered. “no no no no no no! This can’t be happening.” She didn’t even seem to care about watching them, the guns on her back forgotten.

“Hey,” Sunny said quietly, trying to draw her attention. Silver didn’t seem to hear him. “Hey!” he repeated, louder. Nothing. As a last resort, he reached over and tapped her once on the head, quickly withdrawing his hoof.

She looked up at him, eyes glossy. “What?”

“They aren’t going to kill you,” he said.

She blinked a few times. “W-what?”

“They were all lies,” Sunny said reassuringly.

“Yeah,” agreed Willow. “Sorry, but we were trying to scare you into letting us go.”

The fear vanished from Silver’s face to be replaced with embarrassment and anger. “You evil ponies!” She slammed her hooves on the ground. “Why... why are you telling me this?”

Sunny slumped. “Well, seeing as we’re in the back of a jail wagon heading for some high-security confinement camp or something, there’s no real point in ruining your life.”

Silver closed her eyes, shaking her head and taking long, slow breaths. “Did you break out of Bottle of Progress with those kind of tactics?”

“No,” Cotton answered. “The one that looks like a candy cane dressed up as my partner—”

“And lover,” Candy chirped.

“—and snuck them out. Then the orange one shot me in the leg and they took me hostage to escape the building.” Cotton turned her eye to Candy. “He’s the only real friend I had. He lied to the army to save my life back in the lobby... Now that they know... he’s probably dead.” She spoke with a bitterness only achieved by betrayal.

For once, Candy looked at the pink mare with sympathy. “I... I know that must be hard.”

Sunny turned to Willow. “Can’t you like, kick a hole in the wall or bash the door off this thing?”

Willow rolled her eyes. “Well, I could, but there’s no point.” She pointed to the other wagon which was following behind them. “They have guns and a clear sight of us.”

Silver cleared her throat. “I’m still sitting right here you know.”

Willow snorted. “I know that, but you aren’t a threat.”

The REA mare blinked. “Excuse me?”

Willow pointed towards the rifles, which, as Silver was sitting now, were pointed towards the roof. “The way you’re sitting eliminates the quick use of your weapons in the confined space, and in about a second I could be over there and tearing your throat out with my teeth. Trust me, if I had wanted to kill you, you’d be dead by now.”

Silver shivered, eyes drifting to her sidearm. “That’s a lovely thought.”

“Do you still think we’re bad ponies?” Sunny asked suddenly.

The mare shook her head. “I don’t know what to think. I know the one you call Willow has killed ponies before...” She paused. “And from the report we all read on the Bottle of Progress breakout, so did you.”

Willow changed the topic before it could get nasty. “You ever fought zombies?” Sunny thanked her with a look.

“Yes,” she answered, sitting up a little straighter.

Willow shook her head. “Not sat on a wall and had target practice with them. I mean fought, battled them on the streets, ran from them.”

Silver slumped. “No.”

“Well you better learn.” She leaned in a little closer. “There’s changelings under the city.”

Silver deadpanned. “This is another lie.”

“We killed one in an alley,” Cotton answered. “We think it came from the subways, and changelings always travel in swarms.”

Silver shook her head like she didn’t believe a word of what they were saying, then changed topics. “Say,” she said to Cotton, “if they took you as a hostage and shot you in the leg... why are you so... open with them right now?”

Cotton shrugged. “They’re better than the army, that’s for sure.”

The conversation stopped there, and for the next twenty minutes the five of them rode in silence as they were pulled along through the city, civilians staring. It wasn't until they were in the heat of the downtown district that a disturbance began.

It started off simple enough: shouts and echoes reached them from ahead on the street. He could hear gunshots further off, but those were probably the air-to-ground rifles. Pressing his head against the barred window to get a better look ahead of them, Sunny spotted two mares battling in the street. And by battling, he meant battling. They rolled and screeched and pulled at each other’s manes. One definitely was playing the defensive role, doing her best to dodge the attacks of the other.

The stallions pulling their wagon picked up the pace and brisked to the scene. Pulling out of the harnesses, the two stallions proceeded to break up the heated tussle.

Sunny was rather glad they decided to not use the pistols strapped to their legs. Instead, each one took a mare and pulled them apart. Immediately, the mare who had been on defense backed away until she bumped against the side of the prison wagon, shaking her head. “She’s crazy!” she bellowed, mane falling into her face.

Sunny looked to the other mare who was still fighting the official. She yanked and twisted and growled, trying anything to pull free. “Let go of me!” she hissed, hooves scrabbling at the ground. She glared at the mare cowering behind the orange REA member, her bloodshot eyes dilating. “You’re dead!”

Sunny panicked. “Shoot her!” he yelled frantically. “She’s infected! Look at her eyes.”

The two stallions both turned to Sunny, faces reflecting shock. “Hold her tight,” Instructed the orange one. He took a step closer as the green stallion wrapped his hooves tight around the mare’s middle and held her still. “Sweet Celestia!” He reached for his sidearm. “He’s right!”

The mare lunged at him in the green stallion’s grip. “I’ll kill you!”

“Shit she’s strong!” Green cried, trying to hold her. The mare bucked and he lost his grip on her. She slunk away from him like a cat and hurled herself at the mare cowering against the prison wagon.”

Orange fired his pistol, emptying the clip at the mare. Four bullets tore through her opposite side, the rest missed.

The rabid mare staggered, breath gurgling in her throat as her lungs heaved like an angry bull’s.

“It’s true,” Silver whispered, eyes stretched wide. “The infection’s in the city.”

Green drew his own pistol and fired. He had much better aim than his colleague, and the rabid mare dropped like a wet sack.

The victim of the tussle fell against the side of the wagon, sobbing, holding a bite wound on her right hoof. “Please,” she whispered. “I need to get to a hos—” The green stallion took fast aim, and before she even knew what was happening, she was dead, sliding to the ground with a hole in her forehead.

Sunny cringed. He would never get used to that.

Green holstered his pistol, then turned to Orange. “Get on the radio and tell them it’s loose!”

Sunny didn’t like the crowd that was gathering around; they were giving him flashbacks of Desert Sage.

Orange looked to the short-wave radio strapped to his foreleg. “Shoot, it wasn’t even on.” He turned the little dial and it crackled to life. Immediately, a cacophony of voices flooded from the speakers.

“We’re getting our asses kicked down here!” a mare screamed, her voice crackling over the low-quality connection. “We need backup, now!”

“Captain!” a stallion screamed over gunfire. “What in Celestia’s name are these things!?”

Sunny realized that the gunshots he was hearing were not from the anti-air.

Green balked. “Switch to dispatch!”

Orange did so, and immediately the sound of gunfire clicked and clacked from the little speaker, fading in and out with static. Sunny heard it’s echo down the streets from deeper into the city. “Zombies!” a mare cried. “These things appear to be black and agile.” There was an explosion. “Shit! They fly. Cover that doorway!” Heavy panting. “We are pinned down in an apartment by a—”

“Pony down!” a distant voice yelled.

Sunny recognized the voice of the dispatcher. “Be advised we can not send you support at this time. All forces are currently dealing with the current situation.”

“We are going to die!” the mare bellowed.

The radio went silent.

“It’s out,” Cotton squeaked.

An old air-raid siren blared to life far in the distance, it’s wail cutting through the silence.

“Come on!” The green stallion fitted himself back in the harness. “We have to go!”

Sunny looked back for the wagon that had been following them, but it was no longer there. They must have turned off on some other street.

The patter of gunfire sounded again, this time much closer. Sunny’s eyes turned forward as four REA ponies ran into the street from an alley, shooting backwards as they ran. Six changelings came after them, darting around like cockroaches and making near-impossible targets.

The crowd scattered, ponies screaming. Sunny would never understand it. Why did ponies always have to scream in crowds? It just made everything much more confusing and caused useless commotion. But, ponies always did get stupid in numbers. His thoughts were interrupted as the wagon jerked forward and threw him to the floor.

Willow offered a helping hoof, which he ignored. “Any suggestions?” she asked meekly.

Candy fumed in her corner of the wagon as they thundered down the road. “We’re dead. It’s like the initial infection all over again.”

Willow smacked the mare with a hoof. “We are not dead!”

Sunny got back to his hooves, only to crash to the deck again as the two pullers dodged a group of ponies in the road.

“We have to get out of the city,” Willow said matter-of-factly. “Population is the number one worst place to be.”

The wagon wheels thundered as the two stallions pulling hauled them at full speed down the street, panting in effort. Ponies whipped by, running and screaming, some just looking confused.

Sunny lumbered to the front of the wagon and climbed up to look through the narrow bars to the two pullers. “Where're you taking us!?”

“Your destination!” Orange huffed.

“But that’s further into the city!” Silver yelled, panicking, moving up next to Sunny. “If you take us there, we all die!”

“Orders!” he yelled back.

Ahead, a hatch cover in the street exploded upwards, changelings and normal zombies pouring out like water from a geyser.

Green yelled and pulled hard to the right, taking the wagon and the orange pony with him. The front right wheel of the wagon demolished a newspaper stand as they cut close to the inside of a corner. “Screw orders!” he yelled. “I’m not dying for prisoners!”

Ponies dodged aside like self-conscious bowling pins as the jailwagon rocketed by. The horde pursued them at running speed, mowing down ponies in their chase for the wagon. Civilians ran alongside the wagon as they fled the wave of death. Some stayed back, sporting household-found weapons or the occasional pistol; they didn’t last long.

Silver braced herself, aiming her rifles out the back gate of the wagon and firing at any zombie or changeling that was in range with surprising accuracy.

“Go right!” Silver yelled to the stallions. “The street ahead’s a dead end!”

“Are you crazy!” the green stallion yelled. They were coming up on a T junction. The street that continued on ahead looked clear and zombie free. The right branch, however was a mess of fighting. REA and civilians fought up-close and personal with small groups of changelings and normal infected.

“I used to live here! Trust me, if we go straight we’ll be trapped!”

Sunny was tired of feeling helpless. All he could do was sit back in this caged wagon and hope nothing bad happened to them. Right about now, he was really missing his guns.

Trusting Silver, the pullers turned the wagon down the havoc-ridden street. Sunny had to brace himself against the bars as the wagon weaved to and fro between ponies and zombies. It was so surreal. They passed dead bodies, army ponies locked in battle, automatic rifles lit up on their backs. Some were bitten, others were still hanging in. many were on the ground, bleeding out from fatal wounds or in the process of being eaten.

“Shit!” the orange stallion yelled, jerking towards the other in the harness in an attempt to dodge a changeling. The black creature’s attack missed and it fell under the wagon wheels. The whole wagon bucked into the air as the steel-rimmed wheels crushed the fragile-looking zombie.

They were coming up on a four way intersection now, a subway station set diagonally between two streets just off the corner.

“This isn’t happening,” Silver whispered to herself. “This can’t be happening. We were supposed to be safe here. It can’t all go down like this in ten minutes. How’d we miss this coming?”

You saw the way they popped out of the ground,” Willow answered. “Somehow they found their way into the city through the underground.”

The entire wagon shook as a changeling hurled itself against the side. Sunny followed it with his eyes and it skittered over to the roof and dropped down to the back hoofplate, hissing and spitting at them through the bars. Sunny jumped back as it threw one hoof between the bars, swinging at him. The wrought iron steel groaned as the gate bent inwards.

Silver lined the barrel of one of her rifles up with it’s orb-like eye. The bolt worked and the hollow point round ripped out the back of its skull. The ejector spit out the smoking shell and the slide locked open. In slow motion, the changeling fell backwards and tumbled amongst the other bodies on the road.

Willow smirked a little and levitated a clip from the mare’s belt, replacing the old one and loading a new round.

Silver looked back. “What are you—” She looked to her rifle and flushed. “Thanks.”

At the front of the wagon, the orange stallion cried out as a changeling tackled him from the side. He went down in the harness and the wagon rolled over him. It happened so fast that not one of them had time to brace themselves. The harness wrapped in the wagon’s axle and the whole pivot jerked left. Without so much as a second of forewarning, the entire wagon rolled up on the right front wheel in a drunken summersault. The wooden wheel shattered under the pressure and the wagon skidden on one corner for a second before crashing down on its side, grinding across the cobbled street.

When Sunny regained himself, he was lying on his side on top of Cotton. He bled from a small cut on the side of his head, and one of his hooves ached painfully; not to mention he was sure he had re-cracked some of his ribs.

“Son of a...” Willow trailed off, coughing as she picked herself up. In the impact, the back gate had been smashed and the receiving latch had broken. It had fallen open, serving as a sort of ramp up into the totalled wagon.

“Come on!” Sunny yelled, scrambling for the back door. “Let’s get out of here!” Willow followed right behind him, dragging Candy by the scruff. “Hurry up!” Sunny danced on his hooves, tossing constant glances behind them. They had left most of the battle on the street behind, but it was being pushed towards them. The REA ponies had formed a line, and were now making a strategic retreat, covering one another as they fled towards the intersection. He picked out one blue mare in particular. Her single assault rifle clicked on empty and she broke from the line, sprinting towards them.

Silver rolled herself out of the wagon and flopped over on the ground. She had busted her right side rifle in the crash, the barrel smashed and sticking out of the mechanism at the back end.

“Give me your sidearm!” Willow yelled to Silver.

The mare picked herself, looking skeptically at Willow. “But—”

“Now!”

Silver slipped the pistol from its holster and held it out to Willow. “Here.”

Willow took the standard-issue pistol in her field of magic and slipped it into the pocket of her saddlebag.

Cotton was the last to crawl out of the wagon. The bandages on her injured leg were soaked with fresh blood and she was limping badly again.

The fighting group had fallen back to the intersection now, pushed back. “We’re losing our line!” a stallion yelled into the receiver of the radio box fitted on his back. “We are about to lose Holland street. If they push us past the intersection you’re going to have to re-station or they’ll reach you from behind!”

Willow supporting Cotton, they retreated, trying frantically to keep ahead of the line. The ragtag force of armed civilians and REA members fell back to the back of the wagon. “We need backup!” the stallion yelled into the radio. He looked up in time to spot a changeling who had broken their ranks. Ignoring everypony but the stallion with the radio, it took him down.

Sunny shook his head slowly. “We have to help them!” His mind was having trouble coping. So many ponies, dead, dying. Oblivious and worried mares and stallions looked down from windows of buildings high above.

“Teams are standing by to quarantine the compromised section of the city,” the dispatch stallion said from the radio of the dead stallion’s back. “ETA five minutes.”

A mare grabbed the receiver from the stallion’s body. “We can’t hold out that long!” The street behind her lit up with fire as an REA pony scorched the entire street with a flamethrower, lighting zombies up like torches.

She was right. Their numbers were down to nine, six REA members and three civilians, one with a pistol and two with rifles.

Willow seemed to have read his mind. Sporting Silver’s pistol, she ran forward to the wagon and pulled herself atop it. “Come on!” she yelled to the others, wielding the pistol. “Grab a weapon!”

Silver broke loose and ran to the line, falling in between two civilians who shot her grateful looks. The street ahead was a mess. Ponies ran to and fro, some heading for the line held by the REA. Sunny gasped as a mare in the line shot down a mare and a stallion trying to pass by.

Candy saw his look, and answered his unasked question. “Precaution. Once a section is quarantined, nopony leaves.” She tossed him one last look then dashed ahead, fitting the fallen stallion’s radio gear on her back. Sunny was wondering why she was doing this until he saw the rifle mounted to the saddle on the other side. She hadn’t been going for the radio, but the weapon.

“Help me out of this thing!”

Sunny looked around. It was the green stallion, lying half under the body of his dead colleague and tangled in the harness. Sunny looked around for help, but he was the only one left by the wagon, the others had moved up to help. With great repulse, he shoved the orange stallion over. Thinking twice, he unstrapped the dead pony’s holster and tied it to his own leg, checking to make sure the pistol had a full clip.

It took him a moment to help the stallion out of the harness, and by the time he looked up again, things had deteriorated.

Willow stood atop the wagon as the rest of them pooled around her in a semicircle, having been pushed back fully into the intersection.

“I’m out!” yelled a purple mare.

A stallion levitated a rifle clip over to her, never taking his eyes of the street. “Last mag. Make it count!”

Willow fired the pistol like a madmare, swinging this way and that, covering all angles. The slide locked back and she hurled the useless weapon at ping zombie.

“Fall back!” a stallion yelled over the radio on Candy’s back. “Fall back two blocks and reform!”

“No!” the radio commander yelled, raising his voice for the first time. “Our forces are not sufficient to cover that area!”

“Sir!” a mare screamed. “We’ve lost control on Hollock! They’re past! Repeat, they’re pa—” Her frequency cut out.

Silver’s eyes widened. “Hollock!? That’s the next street over!”

Sunny looked right, then left. Sure enough, he could see them, dozens, changelings, infected, pouring from between the buildings. He dashed to the back of the wagon and nearly tripped over a mare bleeding out on the ground. She had an automatic rifle on her back. “I’m sorry,” Sunny whispered, sliding the rifle out of its fitting and, with a little strain, reaching back to fasten it in the right slot of his. He grabbed the only clip remaining on her belt and backed away, her eyes tracked him, chest heaving, but she didn’t speak.

“There’s nothing you can do for her,” Sunny whispered to himself. “She’s too far gone.”

“Sergeant!?” a golden mare in their group yelled.

“Dead!” a stallion beside her yelled, firing the automatic on his back.

“Well then who’s in charge!?”

Nopony answered.

The radio cackled again. “Fletlock is compromised! We’re falling back!”

“Fletlock!?” the green stallion who had been in charge of their escort yelled. “We’re surrounded!”

Sunny felt rather sluggish. The gunfire had gotten to his head. The place was a complete warzone. The air couldn’t sit for less than a second without the boom of a rifle or the snap of a pistol disturbing it. Ponies screamed from deeper into the quarantine zone, some jumping from windows. Infected filled the streets, unsure of which pony to take a bite of first.

They were about ten seconds from being part of that chaos. From all three directions now, they were coming. He remembered something he had picked out earlier. “To the subway!”

As if he were their commander, the twelve or so of them broke their ranks and tore for the steel awning that signified the staircase to the subway entrance. Sunny was inexplicably reminded of pony behavior: in a state of chaos or confusion, whoever yelled the loudest was the one in charge.

The intersection turned into a mosh pit of death and chaos as they crossed to the walk. Sunny was unsure of who he ran with, but he hoped all of his friends were with them.

The light of the sun faded as he thundered down the steps in the lead, coming to a locked gate. He drew the pistol from the holster and held up the lock by the chain. It took three rounds to shatter the lock. He holstered the pistol and yanked the gate open, charging through with the others right behind him.

Willow was the last through. He slammed the gate shut and looked for means of securing it. He had broken the lock. “Willow!” he called, holding the two gates together as shadows started to form on the stairs.

They were ponies, zombies, some infected and halfway through the zombification process, all running for the gates. “Please let me in!” a mare screamed, tossing herself against the chainlink. Sunny had to strain to hold them. “Please!” she screamed from crying eyes, blood running down her cheeks from her tear ducts.

Sunny shook his head. “N-no. You’re infected.”

She screamed in rage and pounded her hooves on the gates as more ponies filled in around her. “I’ll kill you, you bastard!” One zombie tackled her from behind and bit into the back of her neck.

“Willow!” Sunny yelled. “Hurry!” He could feel his grasp on the two gates slipping. The green stallion and Silver came up beside him, helping him hold them off.

Willow returned with a steel bar levitating by her side. Quickly, she fed it through the two gates, then with a grunt and yell of exertion, bent the bar through the little steel squares and wrapped it around itself.

Silver took a step back, eyes wide. “H-how did you do that?”

Willow backed away. “Later.”

It wasn’t until they reached a bend in the tunnel did the yells and screams fade into the distance, and they chanced it to stop. Sunny looked around at all of them in the white glow of an emergency light. Willow, Candy, Silver, Cotton, they were all here. Along with them were seven ponies in uniform and three without.

“...are compromised!” a mare hollered over a staticky radio channel from the box on Candy’s back. “Setting evacuation points and sanctioning parts of the city!” Sunny recognised the mare’s voice: it was the pink sergeant.

“Turn that off,” the green stallion grumbled.

Candy reached back and flipped a switch on the radio, then put on a pair of bulky headphones tied to the device with a wire, only putting them over one ear. “I’ll keep an ear open.”

A golden mare pushed out of the throng of panting ponies, approaching Sunny and Willow. “Who’re you?” Her long, brown mane was muffed and untidy after the whole ordeal and a long cut ran up her cheek.

Cotton and Candy moved up beside Sunny and Willow. “The ponies that just saved your flank,” Candy said warningly. “Who’re you?”

The mare huffed. “Corporal Sunbathe.” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You’re Private Cane!” she spat. “I should shoot you now!”

Sunny intervened. “It doesn’t matter! None of it matters!” He shoved the corporal away, baring his teeth at her. “Unless we work together, we’re all dead! The subways are how the zombies infiltrated the city, and we just locked ourselves in them!”

Sunbathe swallowed, then turned to the others. “He’s right. We’re on our own down here.”

Candy looked up from the radio. “They’re evacuating the city and retreating to the south wall.”

“Away from us...” Sunbathe slumped for a second then stood up straight. “Ammo check, everypony!”

Sunny checked his pistol. “Nine, and twenty or so for the automatic.”

“Eight,” Candy called out.

None of the numbers struck very high.

“ten.”

“Six.”

“Twelve.”

“Two mags for the automatic,” a gray mare said with minor content.

“Thirteen on the belt.”

A brown mare wearing a silver hotsuit without the helmet flicked off the pilot light on her flamethrower. “Half a tank.”

Sunbathe sighed. “We’ll have to make every shot count... Okay, how many of you have lights?”

Three hooves went into the air.

Willow tapped Sunbathe on the shoulder. “I can see in the dark.”

Sunbathe turned back to Willow with a glare. “How in the name of—” She stopped at the sight of Willow’s eyes, glowing ever slightly in the semi-dark. “What are you?” she whispered.

Willow tossed a sly grin to Cotton. “A hybrid.”

Sunny looked down the dark, tiled hallway that led to the subways. “Well at least we’re out of the fire.”

Willow huffed. “And right into the frying pan.”

He squinted at her. “Isn’t that backwards?”

Willow blushed and gave him a sad grin. “I was hoping things would get better.”

Chapter 16 And Into a Bigger Fire

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“Hello?” she called into the darkness, timid voice reverberating back to her after a short moment. The mist swirled all around her, snaking between her hooves and through her mane, sending shivers up her legs and down her spine. It gave her the illusion that she was moving, slipping away to Celestia knows where.

It was the sensation of speed.

“Hello?” she repeated, turning herself in a slow, full circle, not sure of what direction she was facing, or even which way she was turning.

It wasn’t right. She felt no warmth, no cold, neither the ground below her hooves nor the breath in her own lungs, only a feeling of neutrality at its most concentrated as her eyes struggled for firm focus—the only sense she felt to have an actual hold on.

From the mist behind her, something growled, vocals like the grate of stone on stone. She spun in fear, possessionless, weaponless. “W-who are you!?” Her voice was quiet, like she had screamed into a pillow clasped over her face.

It growled again, driving her to stumble backwards.

“What do you want!?”

The menacing feeling died like curtains closed to the sun, and a lighter, more majestic power took its place. Off in the mist there came the faintest flicker of blue lights.

“Who are you?” Moon whispered.

Her eyes blinked open to grayness. Dull, filtered light shone through the small, round windows high up on the walls, casting little bubbles of light on the adjacent wall to the right, turning them a more golden shade of gray than the surroundings.

Coming to greater awareness, she found herself laying on her side, the ground around her cold and cruel apart from the unicorn-shaped spot where her warm body rested.

She was supposed to be watching for Snowglobe...

In a flurry of limbs, she scrambled to her hooves, slipping on the smooth surface below her. “What’s happening!?” Her mane fell into her eyes and she batted it away. “What’d I miss!?”

“Nothing,” Sage said smugly from the other corner of the quiet railcar. “Just relax a little bit.”

Moon slumped, doing as she was told, falling down to her haunches and letting her tensing muscles relax. “Where... why—” She tossed her eyes around the small interior of what appeared to be the luggage compartment. “I thought I was in the cab... why... why am I in the baggage car?”

“Brick brought you back.” She smirked a little and trotted up to Moon’s side. “You were so asleep you could have been dead.”

Moon blinked a few times, conscious of the energetic buzz in the back of her skull and the slight jitter in her limbs. “Wow... I feel...” She rolled her shoulders, feeling the urge to do a little hop. “Awake.”

Sage grinned. “How long was it since you last slept?”

“Purposefully?” Moon rolled her tongue against the inside of her cheek. “I think it was the night before we left Appleoosa. But, I think I did sleep a while after the griffons... when that roof fell on my head. I’m not sure if that counts though.” She frowned and pushed to her hooves, doing a little hop from side to side. Her body felt... light. “Where’s my bags?” she asked, realizing what caused the sensation of lightness.

Sage tossed her head towards the back wall where the bags lay discarded. “You looked uncomfortable laying on your side with your spine curving like a banana around those things.”

Moon sat back. “I was so kiboshed that you undid all my barding straps and I didn’t even notice?”

Sage snorted. “I could have tongue kissed you and you wouldn’t have noticed.”

Moon cocked a brow. “Did you?”

Sage flushed rather noticeably and glared. “No.”

Moon rolled her eyes, faking a casual tone. “Right, sorry. I forgot you only kiss dark-blue pegasi.”

Sage intensified her glare and her cheeks went from turquoise to vermillion. “We haven’t even kissed.”

“Where’s the others?” Moon asked, deciding to change the topic instead of bringing up the idea of spooning.

“Either in the cab or the next section of this car, behind us.” She flicked her tail at the flimsy door of the six-by-eight room. “Range and that Altic mare locked themselves in the secondary generator room we’re not using.”

Moon only rubbed her eyes. “How long have I been asleep?”

A shrug. “About eight or nine hours—it’s about five in the afternoon, evening, or whatever.”

Moon pushed herself up and stretched, stretching her hind and forelegs, bowing her back and pointing her nose towards the ceiling as she spread her stance and let out a moan of content. “How...” a yawn interrupted her as she lifted herself straight again, leading with her haunches. “How long ‘till Baltimare?”

Sage blinked a few times, drowsily. “Snowglobe says sometime around tomorrow morning or tomorrow afternoon.”

Unconsciously, Moon levitated her shotgun over to her from where it had been propped in the corner and absently began unloading the feed tube. “What do you think it’ll be like?”

Sage eyed the longbrass, blue shells as they levitated before Moon. “What it’ll be like?” she inquired

“Baltimare.” She ejected the last shell and pulled the trigger, coaxing a click from the firing pin.

“Hopefully not zombies.” She bit her lip for a second. “Why, are you worried?”

Moon sighed and slid a buckshot round past the loading ramp at the bottom of the weapon. “Sort of.” She hesitated. “What do you think the chances of Sunny and Willow being there are?”

“I’m sure they’re there if what Dusty—” She winced at the way Moon’s eyes darkened at the mention of the pegasus’ name, “—s-said is true. But, finding them in that giant city...”

Moon slid two more shells into the weapon. “It was a stupid idea, I knew it from the start—leaving to help the REA. We never should have separated.”

Sage’s eyes tracked every buckshot as Moon slid them into the weapon, hypnotized almost. “They were your friends?”

Moon nodded.

“Close?”

She only smiled at the turquoise mare.

Realization dawned. “Oh... you and the orange one?”

“How’d you guess?”

Sage half-smiled. “You lost a little of the spring in your step when those two left, and I doubt it was for the crazy mare.”

Moon worked the action on the shotgun and shook her head, accidentally causing the turquoise mare to shy. “No. Willow’s not crazy. She may seem a little odd, or intimidating, but that mare would move a mountain for you if you asked her to.” She sniffed. “I’d do anything to see them both again.”

Sage clacked her teeth together. “I’d tell you that you’ll definitely see them... but you’re not desperate enough to believe me.” She gave Moon an apologetic look. “But there’s always a chance.”

Moon nodded slowly. “Thanks for being honest.”

Both heads turned to the backwards facing door as it squeaked open on a bad hinge. Yew, ears drooping and head low, plodded into the space, dragging the door shut behind her with her tail.

The brown mare’s eyes drifted to Moon, shallow with apathy. “Hey.”

Sage stood up rather hurriedly. “Well, I need to be checking on ponies...” She slinked to the door Yew had just entered through. “...erm, Jade specifically.”

Moon stared at Sage, baffled, as the turquoise mare made herself disappear, shooting Moon an apologetic look before she jerked the door closed with a little ‘thunk’.

Moon blinked a few times, a baffled expression tainting her features. “What’s eating her?” she asked Yew with a forced half-smirk.

Yew seemed to slump a little. “I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

Moon heaved a sigh and lowered herself to her belly, nodding for Yew to lay beside her. “Are you doing alright?”

Yew moved up beside Moon and practically flopped down to the floor with a look of exhaustion, a long breath wisping from her nose as she seemed to deflate like a punctured liferaft, limbs going relaxed, eyelids drooping in such despondency that Moon felt to be the happiest pony to ever live.

“...Are you okay?” she repeated, a little timid.

Yew rolled clumsily to her belly and rested her chin on her crossed forehooves. “Yeah...”

Moon cleared her throat quietly. “I’m really s-sorry about Dusty... he was my friend, too.”

Yew shook her head slowly side to side. “Don’t give me your sympathy... I don’t need it.” She took a painfully long breath. “I really don’t need it.” Her lips moved again, uttering the same words, only this time in complete silence.

Moon shifted uncomfortably. “Well, I’m here if you’d like to vent, or something.”

They both sat in silence, the only sounds the clickity-clack of the wheels on the rails and the hum of the generators in the car ahead. Moon swallowed in the semi-silence, the wet sound traveling up her neck and through her head until it reached her ears, louder than a stampede of buffalo.

“I thought he was dead...” Yew said after what felt like hours. She exhaled. “I figured he was dead, and I never thought much of it. He was dead, just like all the others, my friends, my parents... everyone else. It hurt for a little, but then it went away, just sort of went numb... Everyone else was dead, and I just got used to it.” Her eyes hardened. “But then he came back, and he wasn’t dead anymore. He was alive, living, talking, breathing... and dying.” Her tone remained flat. “It’s like losing him all over again, only this time it hurts more, because I was there, and I couldn’t do a single thing about it.”

Moon chewed anxiously on her tongue. “That...”

“And Esekiel.”

“Esekwho?”

Yew pinched her eyes shut. “I lost him too.”

Moon hesitated. “Your... special somepony?”

She shook her head.

“Lifelong friend?”

Another shake.

“Oh...” Moon said dejectedly.

Yew lifted her head a few inches. “He was my only friend... That griffon saved my life, more than once... It was a sentimental thing, you know, survivor’s bond.”

Griffon: that was something Moon wasn’t too familiar of. From what she had heard, sometimes they weren’t the most pleasant of creatures. She had talked to one once, back in Fillydelphia, a female—she had been particularly unpleasant, and at the occasion of a business brunch, had possessed the worst table manners. Now, Moon was no pony for dinner fancies, but this avian had drawn eyes of others, belching loudly and ripping into her food as if it were a birthday present.

Griffons lived in different ways than ponies; they had their own ways and customs, which very well may have proved civilized to other griffons, but yielded mismannered and repulsive to ponies with the thought of civility to them.

They weren’t really brutes, just beings of lower standards, bound by word over money.

Maybe that was a good thing...

“I-I’m sorry, Yew... I don’t know to say anything else.”

Yew’s head had since rested back down in her forehooves. “Thanks for caring. Altic and Range... sure they hurt for him, but not like I do... Sure they knew him...”

“...But not like you did.” Moon felt the gravity of Yew’s distress slap her across the face like a sodden towel.

This was how she would look if anything ever happened to Sunny, any of them really, even Willow a little bit. Right now, the only thing keeping her going was the others. Had it just been her, she would have flopped to the floor and cried until it was all over. Only her determination to lose nothing more stopped the pain before it could wash over her like the high surf.

She tried to swallow the knot rising in her throat.

“Sunny...”

* * *

‘Sunny...’

Willow eyed the orange pegasus from where he rested within the darkness, knowing very well that her glowing eyes would give her away were he to cast her a glance. What seemed odd to her was the fact that she cared whether or not he saw her eyeing him. There was a painful self-consciousness nibbling at her spinal cord, every action performed in hopes of winning only one pony’s recognition, one pony’s praise.

His.

A little smile played across her lips in the dark—she knew he wouldn’t be able to see that.

The twelve of them hadn’t moved far from their point of entry to the subways. Corporal Sunbathe had led them down no farther than the station platform and stopped there, in the dark. Many of them had needed rest, literally in a state of exhaustion. Willow, being a little weary herself, hadn’t complained.

It had been four hours since they had been out of the light, some listening to the radio on Candy’s back, most sleeping.

Unable to sleep, Willow had listened.

The army’s attempts to quarantine and contain had failed, and they had now retreated to the south end of the city and had set up a choke point. From the transmissions reaching the abandoned group through the radio, it seemed that the army was losing two to three blocks an hour.

The orange pegasus, who had been resting with his head on his laced forehooves, one wing draped over his eyes, looked up suddenly, ears perking. Inexplicably, his eyes darted right to her in the dark. “Willow?”

She cursed under her breath, not bothering to look away and pretend that she had just been glazing. “Yeah?”

“...How long have you been looking at me?”

“Just for a moment.” The lie stung her like a rusty needle stabbed into a nerve.

Frighteningly, the resting bodies around her seemed to fade away, Sunny included as her pupils dilated.

She had been told not to lie.

-ooOoo-

“What do you say?” The green filly stood with her face pressed against the glass of the grocer, the ponies bustling about on the walk and street behind them hardly even giving either of the fillies a first glance.

The white filly beside the green shifted uncomfortably and sat back on her haunches. “I still don’t think it’s a good idea.” The green filly’s stomach growled angrily, and Willow winced. “A-are you sure, Dancer?”

The green filly bobbed her head like it was on a spring. “Please, Willow, you have to help me out here. I haven’t eaten in days!”

Dancer came from a much poorer family than Willow’s own. Her parents both worked as part of a labor union that specialized in the building of steel structures in central Phillydelphia, and often enough, their funds would run short at the three-quarter mark between the payment lines at the job offices. It hadn’t helped that four months ago, her older brother had been gusted off the steel structure of a skyscraper in progress. Unable to afford a casket, they had burned what was left.

Willow sighed. “But what if we get caught?”

Dancer gave her a playful shove. “But we won’t.” She reached out and messed Willow’s short, gray mane. “Hey, your red’s showing again.”

Willow gave her mane a quick eye-over in the reflection of the grocer window. She was smaller than Dancer, a little smaller than most fillies her age, so Dancer, who was normal height, had been able to peer down at the roots of her mane. Dancer had been right—hidden amongst the gray strands of her mane was about a half-inch of brilliant crimson.

She blushed a little and hung her head, reminded painfully of how her mane had used to look. After she had gotten her cutie mark, her control freak of a mother had decided that Willow’s hair color looked too much like blood. Whether it be of punishment for the inevitable, or for some sort of cruel, self-justification, she had bleached her filly’s mane and tail, but since she hated yellow almost more than she did crimson, the bleach had been left until Willow’s mane had gone white. After a week of Willow’s complaining that she looked like a snowball with a white coat and a white mane and a white tail, out of the goodness of her heart, her mother had gone out and bought her black mane dye at a discount store.

That had been two months ago. The dye had been cheap, and had washed out in the bath. Now all that remained of the previous black was a steely gray.

Willow just wanted it gone. She wanted her red back.

“Yeah,” she muttered.

“Do you think she’ll bleach it again?”

Willow sighed. “What do you think? She hates me for my cutie mark... I’m surprised she hasn’t branded it off or something.”

Dancer made a sour face, and her stomach growled again. “What’s her problem anyways?”

The white filly only shook her head. “She said real mares don’t want to grow up to cut ponies with knives.”

Dancer glared at her reflection in the window. Willow shifted—her friend did look really thin. “Well that’s dumb. Doesn’t she know that you always sew it up again?”

“Yeah...” Her high voice squeaked a little and she hurriedly cleared her throat. She looked for a way to change the topic. “Look, do you want to do this or not?” The words had hardly left her tongue before panic surged through her brain. Why wasn’t there a rewind switch on her mouth?

Dancer jumped. “Right!” She started towards the door of the large grocer and beckoned Willow with her tail. “C’mon!”

Willow followed, unsettled and nervous to the fact that she was entering a store with intentions to steal. Dancer seemed nervous as well, but the only pony that seemed to notice was Willow.

Her eyes scanned everything as the both of them brushed past an old couple in the doorway. This was one of the oldest stores in the downtown district. The checkered tile in the traffic areas had been worn down to a dirty beige that was the ceramic below, and the entire store, despite the fact that it was swept and mopped daily, appeared a dirty white-brown color, a musty smell to go with it.

Dancer had chosen this time to carry out her plan because the store was most busy right at high noon.

Willow simply followed as the green filly led her between ponies and shelves to an area more near the back of the store. After a moment, Dancer stopped, Willow almost bumping into her. She threw a quick look around to make sure there was nopony near, then nodded to Willow. “Okay.”

Willow didn’t look, but saw in her peripherals as Dancer loaded her saddlebags with a few packs of oats, a quarter-pound burlap sack of salted sunflower seeds, and a candy bar or two for good measure. After a few more items, her bags were as full as they could nonchalantly get.

Dancer nodded to Willow again, eyes darting about the store frantically as she swallowed her nervousness. “Okay. Your turn.”

Willow only tensed and closed her eyes as she felt the weight of guilt settle in in her left saddlebag, then the right. She didn’t know what it was Dancer was putting in the bags; she didn’t want to know. She was only doing this for her, only for Dancer, for her friend, because she and her family were starving.

It felt so wrong. She tried to convince herself that the pony who owned this store wouldn’t miss twenty bits worth of food, but stealing wasn’t right, no matter what. Ponies were supposed to work for the things they wanted—that’s what her father had told her... before he had left Willow’s mother, not even bothering with assets; he took what was his that he could fit in a wagon and rolled out like the plague had struck. But Dancer’s parents did work hard, and everypony had to eat.

“Come on,” Dancer said tensely. “Let’s go.”

Her joints were stiff. The tendons in her legs felt tight as Willow less-than-casually plodded after Dancer towards the front of the store. Every eye seemed to be on her. She panicked. Everypony knew what she was doing, and they were going to catch her, to stop her, put her in jail like her mother had said they did to terrible foals like her.

The brown pony who owned the store watched her through narrowed eyes over his narrow-frame glasses as she lumbered past the counter for the exit. Willow hung her head and pretended she hadn’t seen him, though she knew he knew she had.

She winced as she crossed the threshold, back out into the smog-filtered sun from the nearby coal plant, expecting somepony to grab her by the tail and yank her and her guilt back into the store or yell for her to stop. None of these two things happened, however, and in a moment, she was running behind Dancer as the green filly cantered down the sidewalk dogleggedly.

After a moment, Dancer led Willow down an alley between an old pawn shop and a grungy flower shop and stopped behind a dumpster overloaded with crushed pallets up against a crumbly brick wall, panting slightly.

“We did it!” she cheered in a slightly-refrained voice. “It worked!” She wrapped Willow, who had been looking around frantically to see if they had been followed, into a tight hug.

Willow shrugged her bags off like they were filled with fire ants once the hug was over and they hit the ground with a casual thud. “I-I can’t believe we did that.”

Dancer danced on the tips of her hooves in joy. “Mom’s gonna’ be so happy!” She gave Willow a playful shove. “Come on, lighten up.”

She flicked her ears. “S-sorry... I’m just feeling a little weird.”

Dancer frowned. “Sick?”

Willow nodded.

The green filly made a deject face. “Well that’s too bad... Hey.” She slid her head under the straps of Willow’s discarded bags and slung them onto her back over the others. “I’m gonna’ get this home.” She smiled. “See you tomorrow, Willow?”

Willow smiled back, but it came out as more of a leer. “Okay, see ya’, Dancer.”

“Bye...” the filly replied, a little thrown off by her friend’s lack of enthusiasm. She smiled again, then turned and disappeared around the corner.

Willow sat there for maybe five minutes, thinking, but not really.

Maybe it wasn’t so bad... She hadn’t gotten caught, and Dancer’s family would be able to eat now.

She left the seclusion of the dumpster and started back for the street.

No, it hadn’t been bad. She hadn’t stolen anything for herself. Only helping a friend in need. That couldn’t be wrong. Could it?

She tried to force a smile as she rounded the brick corner of the pawn shop and ran right into a firm, brown chest. All at once, her muscles locked, and a whimper escaped her throat. She knew who it was even before her amber eyes slowly scaled the pony’s chest to meet his angry, impatient face.

“Where is it?” he demanded coldly, eyes magnified slightly in his glasses so they looked like they were boring into her like lasers.

She tried to draw away, to curl up like a bowling ball, but his hoof snapped out and jerked her foreleg, keeping her upright and in front of him. “W-w-where’s w-what?” she managed to stammer.

He growled and gave her another yank. “You know perfectly well what, you little thief,” he hissed. Turning, he started to pull her away, back towards the store.

Willow half fought, knowing the stallion was easily stronger than her. Hardly anypony on the street paid her mind, and the ones who did only grinned knowingly or nodded courteously to the brown pony.

She remained silent as he drug her back through the door to the grocer, past the multiple checkout lines, and into the raggedy back office. He half threw, half shoved her down in front of a desk made of two-by-fours and particle board and stomped around to the other side to stand proper to her.

He glared at her for a good ten seconds, sizing Willow up while she tried to make herself look as small as possible. She could only look into his very angry, pink eyes.

“Do you think you’re cool?” he growled after a moment of silent intimidation.

She didn’t understand. “I—”

“Do you think it’s fun!?” The desk shook as he pounded his forehooves on the stained surface. Leaning forward, he bared his teeth at the cowering filly. “Running a store isn’t easy, you know! I’ve had to plywood two windows just this week because some little shits decided that they’d throw bricks from the street! Last month, the power cable snapped because there were too many Celestia damned horseshoes hanging from it, and it took the city fourteen hours to fix it; by then, all the food in the freezers had gone bad!” He was starting to go red like a beet. “And every day, you little bastards come in here and think you’re entitled to steal my merchandise! I have kids to feed you know!”

“I—”

“You’d better be sorry!” He snapped at her, muzzle so close she was sure he had been trying to bite off the tip of her snout.

She cried. Two sniffles and a sob, and the tears streaked her face. Clamping her eyes shut, she tried to hide her face from the stallion.

He gave a gruff sigh. “Come on now.” He frowned when she refused to look at him. “Hey,” He chuckled awkwardly, “you’d make a terrible thief...”

Still, she sobbed.

“Hey,” he said firmly, lifting her chin with a forehoof. “Stop the waterworks.”

Willow sniffed and swallowed a wet lump, focussing unsure, shimmery eyes on the bifocaled stallion. “W-what?”

He sighed again. “Tell you what, you promise to never do it again, and I’ll just have your parents come and get you. I won’t call the authorities on you.”

Willow’s eyes widened fearfully and she shook her head like a can of spray paint. “N-no! Don’t do that!”

He cocked a brow. “Call the authorities? I’m not. Didn’t ya’ just hear me?”

She shook her head again. “No, I mean my mom. You can’t tell my mom!”

He frowned at her for a second, eyes traveling to her cutie mark. “Say... I know you.” He bit his inner lip. “You’re Lily’s foal.”

Willow shrunk away like he had threatened her with a knife. “You... you know my mom?” Panic seeped into her voice like the stallion knowing her mother directly related to the end of Equestria.

The store owner made a confused face at the filly’s over-dramatic reaction. “Yeah... She stops by every day around five for a paper and a small bottle of cider.”

Willow was sure she was going to flop over dead any minute now, suffer a heart attack from panic. “Please don’t tell her.”

He shook his head. “You’ll never learn if you don’t get in trouble.”

Willow squeaked. “Then call the authorities!”

He positively balked at her. “You want me to send you to jail?”

She nodded frantically. “Yes. Please, just don’t tell my mom.”

The stallion scratched his chin with a forehoof. “You don’t want to get in trouble with the authorities—they’ll tell your mom anyways.” He gave her a reasoning look. “You’re gonna wait here until your mom gets here—” Willow’s gasp of horror nearly drowned him out. “—and then I’ll let her take you home.” His tone switched to something a little more intimidating. “What did you steal?”

“Nothing,” she lied.

An annoyed look crossed his face. “Look, Willow, yes I know your name, your mom rants about you every damned time she comes in here. Now look, I saw you and that green filly come in here with empty bags and leave with them full. Now you don’t even have any bags.” He tapped the desk impatiently. “So, what did you steal?”

“Nothing,” she repeated lamely, thinking and caring only of what her mother would do to her.

His glare intensified. “It was that green filly with you who has them, isn’t it?”

Willow shook her head. “No!” her panicked features seemed to say otherwise, though.

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t know.”

He deadpanned.

Willow tried to come up with a name, any name, just to satisfy him. Her eyes found the answer on the desk before her. “Her name was Screw...” She paused. “Screw Driver.”

His eyes drifted, almost lazily, to the screwdriver on his desk, and the accusing drive faded from his face. He stood suddenly. “Well that’s enough of that.” Trotting briskly to the door, he hardly cast her a look. “You can wait here until I can catch your mother.”

“No!” She ran up to him. “Please, Mr!”

He opened the door and backed out, making sure to give her no room to squeeze by in the event she tried to escape. “I don’t help liars.”

The door slammed in her face, then came the sound from the lock as the key was inserted from the other end.

It was like somepony has slugged her. Willow fell back on her haunches, eyes shimmering as fresh tears assaulted her.

That was it. She was dead. Her mother would come barging in and kill her, then bury her in the backyard with a headstone labeled ‘the filly who stole and lied about it’.

For three hours, she sat there in self-induced agony. Fearful that every voice was her mother’s, every sound was that of the mare about to open the door. After three hours of jump and shock, though, she had grown numb, and that’s why it was even more of a shock when the door did open, and a pony did enter.

The honeydew-colored mare stood beside the store owner with a little smile on her face, head stooped a little as if she were embarrassed and ashamed. “I’m really sorry Mr. Oakberry; I really don’t know what’s gotten into her.” She flipped her pink and orange mane and shifted her stance from the right foreleg to the left.

He shrugged, blushing the tiniest bit. “It’s fine, Lily. Every foal goes through the stage.”

She nodded slowly. “I know. Hey, thanks for telling me and not just turning her in or something.”

He tipped an imaginary hat to her. “Anything anytime, Lily.”

Lily’s eyes brushed over Willow for the first time and the foal winced at the amber gaze, hot as the sun.

Lily turned her back and motioned stiffly with her tail, signifying for Willow to follow. The store owner stepped aside as Willow drug her hooves past, and mother and daughter made their way for the exit.

The walk home was painfully-silent. It didn’t matter if the city was bustling, Lily didn’t say a thing, and Willow didn’t dare even try to look at her mother.

Ten minutes’ worth of a walk brought them to a small home in a line of homes that flaunted middle class like it was some sort of an achievement.

Up the walk, still nothing. Lily unlocked the front door and held it open for Willow, eyes glaring the small filly into the unlit house. Willow sniffed as she looked around the entryway, knowing not which way her mother would take her. The sound of the door closing behind her jarred her attention, and she turned back to try and catch some sort of non-verbal hint as to what she should do. It was odd—her mother normally yelled when she got really angry. The fact that she wasn’t yelling suggested something was wrong.

Willow hardly had time to register the movement. Next thing she knew, she on her rump, face throbbing like an hour-old bee sting.

Her mother stood there, one forehoof raised in threat of a second strike. “What in the name of Celestia is your problem!?”

Willow scrambled away, sliding backwards with her forehooves. “I-I-I—” She lost her balance and sprawled on her back.

“Get up!” Lily stalked over to Willow and glared down at her, nostrils flaring like a cartoon bull. “Are you determined to ruin me?” she hissed lowly, circling Willow as she picked herself up. “How do you think it looks to other ponies when my foal is running around the city, stealing things!?”

“B-but I didn’t—” The hoof struck again, this time on her flank, right over her cutie mark. Willow gasped and jumped like she had been shocked.

“He caught you!” she bellowed.

Willow knew she should tell the truth, should make it all clear, but fear clouded her brain and told it to do only one thing: self-preserve, and denying all chance that she had done something bad, in her filly mind’s eye, set some sort of a safe ground. “I didn’t steal anything,” she whined. “He just grabbed me and said I did.”

Another blow. “Don’t lie to me!”

“I’m not.”

Two more. Her flank was starting to feel raw. It wasn’t a little slap like some mothers considered to be discipline, it was an all-out slew with the side of the hoof. The burning made her glad that her mother wasn’t a working-class pony, and didn’t wear horseshoes.

“Go to your room!” Lily bellowed, probably loud enough to rouse the neighbors.

Scrambling to her hooves, Willow scampered for her room on three legs, the muscles in her left leg cramping up. “I didn’t do it,” she gasped under her breath. “I didn’t steal.”

-ooOoo-

In her room—a space that had been intended as more of a small office—she had cried, and cried, and cried some more. It all came flooding out. Her mane and tail, she wanted her mane and tail back. She wanted her friends back, all scared off by her mother. Everything she knew was doubt, and for that she drew hate upon herself. Her stupid cutie mark had just had to come along and ruin her life. Mother had been snappy then, but never cruel, never spiteful nor hateful. She missed the hugs, the kisses, the latenight ‘I love you’s’ as her mother tucked her into bed, very occasionally reading her a story; to know that that had all changed because of a mark on your flank was almost too much to bear.

The punishments had gone on that night, three times her mother had ‘given her something to cry about’ for crying when she wasn’t supposed to, and then the ten after that in the following two days had been for waking the neighbors.

“You don’t lie to me,” had been her excuse. “You never lie.” The message, as if beaten into her through her face and flank, stuck. It was apparent that lying was a crime worse than murder, and punishable within fair reason by a full night of punishment that even questioning neighbors couldn’t put down. Stealing had been forced too, of course it had, but lying was the biggest no-no, the most punishable one.

“Willow?” Sunny asked skeptically. “Are you okay?”

Willow shook her head clear. “Y-yeah. I’m fine.” She tried not to think of how long she had been sitting there staring blankly at him while her mind played its cruel games.

The flashback had been random, useless, and the fact that something as dismissible as a little fib had summoned it caused her to worry for her own well-being. What if she locked up when she wasn’t locked in some confinement room or resting in a subway? What if she locked up when she needed to stay focused, to protect Sunny? She couldn’t afford it.

Willow noticed that Sunbathe kept tossing her unsure looks from where she lay beside the mare with the flamethrower. A good guess said that the mare was interested in Willow’s eyes, as anypony would be.

“Willow, something’s up.” She looked back to Sunny. He had lifted his head, and now looked at her through the dark, ears perked. “You’ve been acting strange lately.”

She shook her head. “I’m fine, okay.” Lifting herself, she stretched until both her forelegs popped pleasantly and made her way quietly over to Sunbathe. The golden mare looked pretty gray in Willow’s modified vision.

Sunbathe looked up as Willow sat beside her. “What is it?” she asked skeptically, but not without curiosity.

Willow turned her head away, purposefully not showing her eyes. “We should get going soon. I don’t think we can spare to wait much longer.”

“I was hoping to—”

Willow cut her off. “Have you ever dealt with these things before?” she whispered loudly. “They’re like bloodhounds. The longer you stay in one place, the faster they find you. We need to get moving now, or we won't be able to later.”

Sunbathe bit her lip. “I’m going to trust you.” She cleared her throat. “Okay everypony, break’s over. Let’s get moving.”

They moved fast. In less than a minute, all fourteen of them were gathered and standing at the edge of the station platform. Willow thought it was fairly interesting to watch how they naturally segregated. She, Sunny, Candy, and Cotton all stayed clumped together. The three civilians stayed to themselves, muttering quietly, and the REA ponies seemed to be trying to form some sort of seven pony formation. Silver was the only one out of place. She kept throwing glances between Willow and Sunbathe, not sure of which one she wanted more. Finally, she settled on Willow’s ragtag group.

“How sweet,” Willow chided, feeling some of her playfulness shining through. “You like us that much?”

“Whatever,” Silver groused. “You guys... just seem to know more.”

Sunbathe led them all, letting them all follow along at a parkstroller’s pace.

It only took Willow a moment to realize how annoying the REA ponies’ flashlights were to her. While she could see fine in the dark, they needed the powerful beams to see. The only problem was that the lights washed out her vision. Anywhere the lights shone, all she could see was a blinding yellow-white color. It seemed rather ironic that the flashlights were doing the exact opposite of their purpose for her.

She blinked a few times. The yellow color of her eyesight seemed to be morphing into a lighter color. It had to be the lights.

The subways fell perfectly into her definition of a creepy tunnel. All was quiet apart from the clop of the fifty-six hooves on the concrete trackwell. Occasionally, somepony’s hoof would set down on a track rail and cause an off-pitch ‘clank’. Willow had never understood why ponies found silence more creepy. Personally, she would have been a lot more scared if she could hear other hoofsteps and zombies roaring or hissing in the distance. Silence was, well... there was just nothing there, or there was, it was just being quiet and waiting to spring at you from the darkness and savage you. She bit the side of her tongue. Maybe that’s why ponies were afraid of dark silence.

“Willow,” Sunny said after a moment, “you’re doing that thing where you stare off into space and get that really distant look.”

She blinked a few times, then looked over at the pegasus. He strode beside her, something she hadn’t really been too aware of. “I was just thinking. You know, if you’ve ever been sitting in a meeting or something, and start to zone out, and when you come back to it you’re staring at a mare’s flank and she’s looking at you like you’re some pervert?”

He broke a little grin. “And you speak from experience?”

Willow opened her mouth, then closed it again, realizing just what he was getting at. “Hey now.” She shot the grin back. “C’mon, Sunny. You know me better than most ponies who’re still alive. I’ve met nice mares before.”

Sunny cleared his throat loudly and tossed his head towards Candy, who was muttering about something with Silver as the two walked along side by side.

Willow huffed and gave him a shove. “That was a little bit of mistake. Trust me, Sunny, it seemed good at the time, but now I can’t look at her without feeling awkward or imaging her lying on her back shooting that cute little grin up at me, her striped mane hanging around her face and her legs—”

“Okay,” Sunny interjected quickly. “I get it, Willow.”

She shook her head. “You totally don’t.”

He sighed, and his cheeks seemed to go a deeper shade of grayish-orange than the rest of him. “Yes, Willow.”

She shrugged and shot him a sly look. “If you’re not worried about me accidentally freaking out and snapping your neck like a toothpick, the offer’s there.”

Now she was sure he was blushing. “Just... stop, Willow. You’re going to give me a nosebleed.”

She laughed and looked away down the tunnel. “You are strong-willed. No single stallion with a fair brain in their head would turn down an opportunity with a decent mare for no charge.”

Now he was glaring at her. “It’s not that. It’s the touch thing, okay. Seriously, touching you makes me queasy and itchy. To actually have something of mine inside you...” He shivered.

She took the opportunity. “You’re shivering like it’d be cold or something. It’s actually very warm, Sunny.”

His head flopped down and his mane fell around his eyes, shielding his blushing face. “I’m done talking to you.”

Trying not to snort, she quickened her pace to move up between Sunbathe and the brown mare with the flamethrower. Sunny needed a break from her or he might actually blush himself a nosebleed.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Sunbathe said as Willow fell in stride, “why do your eyes glow?”

“I’m a hybrid.” Willow smiled. Something about the title just made her feel awesome.

“You’ve already said that. Mind clarifying a bit?”

Willow thought for a moment, consciously aware that the other REA ponies were listening. “It means I’m half zombie.” Several rifles clicked. “Not contagious,” she growled through clenched teeth. “By some crazy shot of luck and an illegal antibiotic, I... somehow... bonded, with the zombie virus.”

Sunbathe seemed rather intrigued. “How does that work?”

Willow shrugged, trying to play it off as nothing. “Well, I’ve got the zombie thing, but I’m still a pony.” She was purposefully avoiding the smart talk. She had learned that the smarter you talked, the more inclined a pony was to ask more questions. “Zombie strength: that’s how I bent the bar through that gate. The glowing eyes, you know, because zombie eyes glow, that’s why I can see in the dark... I like the taste of blood.”

“What?” Sunbathe spluttered.

Willow rolled her shoulders. “Ever since I changed, to me, blood tastes pretty good. It’s like... a little like strawberry syrup, but less sweet and a lot more tart. And meat’s kind of like eating bloody sponge... It’s pretty good.” She tried not to laugh at the way Sunbathe was leering. “So I can kind of understand why zombies eat ponies, but the aggression is still unexplainable.”

Sunbathe closed her jaw. “So, you’re half a zombie, but when you look at me, you don’t want to chomp my neck?”

“Not at all.” She smirked in the darkness. “But it would be tasty.” Another rifle clicked and she tensed. “It was a joke, seriously, whoever’s making the rifle noises. Don’t shoot me, okay. I’m not going to hurt anypony.”

“How far can you see ahead?” Sunbathe asked, changing topics.

Willow snorted. “I can’t see at all with your lights shining. It drowns out my night vision.”

Sunbathe stepped back and turned her light to the side, shining it along the gray, tunnel wall. “How about now?”

Willow peered ahead. “All the way to the curve about five-hundred feet up.”

“No zombies?”

“Nope.”

She fell in behind Willow. “I’ll let you lead.”

Willow flicked her charred tail. “If you wish.”

It was maybe five minutes before her boredom took over. Counting concrete sections had gotten old fast. She found her solution to boredom in the brown mare to her right. She looked rather intimidating in the silver hotsuit, with two, large tanks mounted on her back that tied into a feed system.

“What’s your name?” she asked casually.

The mare turned her head and Willow reared back a tiny bit. “Ember.” The whole right side of her face was pinkish and bubbly under an abnormally-thin, brown coat and her cream-colored mane grew a little thinner than the left side. Her right eye swiveled in tandem with the left, though it was a milky blue, completely sightless, and she only had the lower half of her ear.

Willow nodded. “Fitting...” She cleared her throat. “I’m Willow.”

The mare turned her head back straight, hiding the burn from view. “Nice name.” She clicked her tongue. “How’d your tail get burnt?” Her voice was a lot higher than Willow expected it to be. It was high, but it had a damaged, raspy grate to it, like she had a bad cold.

“One of you REA flamethrower ponies got me as I was jumping out of a building.” She spoke proudly, trying to avoid an accusatory tone.

The mare smiled. “Sounds like one of us... fire hurts, doesn’t it?”

“Yes... yes it does... Not to be harsh, but it seems you speak from experience?” Willow regretted the question the moment she asked it.

Ember’s features darkened and her left ear folded; the right one just kind of twitched. “Sometimes, accidents happen.”

“Would it hurt if I asked?”

Ember shook her head. “No, it’s fine... It’s kind of funny actually. My mom would always tell me when I was a foal that if I played with fire I’d get burned.” She smiled again. “When I got my cutie mark, she nearly died... You can’t see it, but it’s a flint stone making a spark. Anyways, one day—I was still pretty young then, still living with my mother—I was messing with these oxygen tanks my dad used for his new oxywelder, and I guess it blew up. I don’t remember it too well, but when I woke up, I had burns... everywhere.”

Willow just now realized it. This mare was young, like, really young. She’d probably faked her birth date just to get into the REA. It was the burns; they made her look older than she really was. “Oh... are they worse under the suit?”

Ember nodded sadly. “I used to look really nice, had a coltfriend and everything.”

Willow clicked her tongue. “He wasn’t a very good coltfriend if he left you just because you got burned. You know what that means?”

“He only liked me for my looks,” she whispered. “I know. Trust me, Willow, just like that, you go from being the most popular pony in your class to the freak. You don’t find out how superficial everypony is until they hate you because you look different.”

Willow didn’t look at her. “I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t be.” Ember nodded slowly. “I can say that almost blowing myself up was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I didn’t know who I was. I was fake, and all that mattered was how long I brushed my mane in the morning. After they took the bandages off, I found out who my real friends were, and I could just be me. I joined the REA, and that’s about where we are now.”

Willow couldn’t help but smile. “That’s a great story. I don’t mean the burns or anything, but how you bettered yourself with the worst. Bittersweet.”

Ember chuckled lightly. “Thanks.”

“No, really. I used to work in medical. Everypony just seems to use their injuries as a chance to whine and act helpless and get paid time off work.”

She shrugged. “No sick days for me. Burning things is pretty fun.” She paused, looking to the barrel and feed mounted to the left of her neck and across her back. “The hardest part is not burning yourself or your teammates.”

Willow pulled her eyes—which were feeling a little odd—away from the tunnel ahead to eye the device. “How do you avoid burning yourself? I mean, you’re spraying fire from your back.”

In a swift movement, Ember clamped on a small device just below her chin and jerked her midsection downwards. The movement coaxed a series of clicks from the heavy device as the tube and igniter slid forward on a small track, clacking into place after a foot of travel. “Innovation,” she replied smugly.

Willow bobbed her head in approval. “Real killing machine. I would say it’s cruel, had you not been using it on zombies.”

“Yeah, well, it was never intended to be used on zombies, given the fact that, well, the bastards didn’t used to exist. The first instances of flamethrowers were designed to clear grasslands and heavy foliage. It wasn’t long before criminals bought them and started pointing the things at ponies. Next thing anypony knew, kerosine was being fired from REA manufactured weapons with the use of nitrogen. They were stockpiled, only authorized for use twice. Then the infection broke out, and the REA needed crowd control.

“Well—” Willow’s eyes snapped back ahead. “Movement,” she hissed immediately. It had been something for sure, but now she couldn’t see a thing down the tunnel.

The chatter of metallic clicks shattered the silence as numerous weapons readied behind her.

Sunbathe flashed to Willow’s side. “What was it?”

Willow narrowed her eyes to peer ahead. “Something moved. I didn’t see what it was.”

Sunbathe stared incredulously for a moment, then looked down the tunnel beside Willow. The casual bend was maybe fifty yards away. Willow squinted harder. It was dark down here, really dark. Even with her modified vision, she could only see about as well as one could on a half-moon night. Everything was the very darkest shade of light-blue.

She blinked a few times. “Is there any sort of light ahead?”

“No,” Ember answered. “Why? Do you see something?”

Willow blinked a few more times. “Because everything’s looking blue to me.”

“It’s because your eyes are adjusting.” Cotton limped up, pushing in between Willow and Sunbathe.

Willow turned her now-blue vision on the mare. “Adjusting?”

Cotton nodded. “I’ve run tests on this. All eyes adjust to light, but normally, with expansion and constriction of the pupil. Infected eyes work a little differently, as to say, they’re more advanced. They’re incredibly sensitive to ultraviolet light. The more UV rays you experience, the more your eyes will try and filter the light. The exact opposite happens in the dark; when unexposed to UV rays for a given amount of time, your eyes will begin to adjust. Since the only natural source of ultraviolet is the sun, your eyes are going to assume you’re in the dark, so they’ll begin to compensate.”

“Isn’t that what pupils are for?” Willow asked blandly.

She rolled her eyes. “Your pupils still react in size to any source of light, but they’re also reacting chemically to UV rays.”

“So, that’s why the sun hurts my eyes?” she asked dumbly.

“Exactly.”

She blinked some more, trying to see if they would return to the normal yellow. “So why haven’t they done this before?”

Cotton bit the side of her cheek. “My guess is you’ve never been out of the sun for very long. After all the time you spent in Bottle of Progress...” Willow winced at the name. “The lighting gave off traces of ultraviolet, but nothing close to simulate the sun. Then that day locked in the apartment and a few hours on the street. You’ve been deprived of natural light for a while now. Your eyes, deprived of ultraviolet light, reacting to the lack thereof, are becoming much, much more sensitive.”

Willow figured she’d milk the mare’s knowledge. “Then why do they glow?”

“That...” Cotton paused. “That, we’re not too sure of. We know that it takes place in the iris, and that it’s a sort of chemical reaction. The effect is a very subtle glow. It has something to do with your enhanced eyesight, but... we’re all blank. The second the tissue leaves the eyeball, whatever’s happening in there stops—makes testing it nearly impossible, considering no tranquilizer known to pony will put a zombie down and once the host dies, so does the reaction...” She paused skeptically. “Maybe when we’re out of this, we could—”

“No,” Willow interjected.

Cotton deflated a little. “Well, why not?”

“Well, maybe I’ve developed a terrible phobia of examination rooms, because I was raped, in an examination room.”

Cotton winced. “I can understand how that—”

“No!” Willow whispered loudly, as loud as a yelled whisper could be. “You don’t!” Cotton seemed to have poked a tender spot and broken something. “Have you ever had a gun put to your head, and be told, and forced, t-to open your mouth, and all you can do is try to hold your neck straight so it doesn’t hurt! And all you can smell is his sick arousal as your nose rubs against his dirty underbelly!” The thought caused her to throw up in her mouth, and she swallowed the volatile acids with a grimace.

“Cotton folded her ears and tried to make herself look as little as possible. “I’m—”

“And when they’ve finished with you, both of them, and left you alone, and your whole body smells like sweat and spunk!” She shook, hooves struggling to continue to carry her forward. “And when you try to throw it up to get it out of you, you can’t! You can’t because you haven’t eaten in days! And you have to sit there and dry heave, knowing that you’re digesting it! And all you wish is that the shower had a removable head so you can at least clean yourself out!”

Cotton could have disappeared through the ground.

Willow’s breath came in short bursts, teeth clenched so hard she was sure she’d shatter them. A shiver racked her body from tail to eartip, and when it was over, she was sure a whole parade had just marched over her grave. The only thing that drew her from her rage-induced blunder, was the shine of liquid on Cotton’s cheeks as she walked along, head lowered, jaw trembling slightly.

Willow took a steadying breath. She had lost control, been taken back there, to the room for a second.

“I-I’m sorry,” Willow said after a moment. “I need to stop reminding myself of that... I need to remind myself it’s not your fault.”

Cotton looked up after a moment, wiping her face with a forehoof. “It’s fine, Willow, really. You’re handling it well, compared to the common reaction. You’re protecting yourself with hate, with anger. Most victims, well, they become distraught, disconnected, a crying mess curled into a ball in the corner.” She let out an ashamed and relieved breath. “But yeah, your eyes. Right now, they’re glowing, just a little, deep reddish-purple... That’s odd actually.” She leaned closer to peer at Willow’s iris and Willow resisted the urge to smack her. “Usually, zombie eyes go more red.”

“They used to be red,” Willow answered, “when I first went through the whole bonding thing. Then they went more orangish red later on.”

“Still,” Cotton murmured. “Usually zombie eyes are just yellow and sometimes red in darker environments. I don’t know what would add blue to the mix... I should be writing this down.”

She frowned. “Ever tested them in extreme darkness?”

Cotton shook her head. “No. They don’t do well in captivity. A zombie will kill itself with its own teeth or ram its head into a wall until it cracks if you try to confine them.”

“Well that’s problematic.” Her purplish-red vision allowed her to see clearly about twenty feet ahead, but beyond that, all she could really see were silhouettes.

“I’d suggest being careful of looking at any lights in your current state,” Cotton advised, still a little wary of Willow. “If you decided to look right at the sun with the way your eyes are adjusted now, you’d probably knock yourself out.”

Willow eased herself to the right, trying to see around the corner as she started through it. “I’ll keep that in mind.” Ahead, the tunnel sloped downwards. Willow wasn’t sure of why, but she didn’t like the thought of going down. “Why’s the tunnel sloping?” she asked quietly in a voice that traveled.

“This tunnel leads to New Central Station,” answered one of the civilians from further back, a stallion. “It was built under the station already there to serve as a hub for the city’s different metro lines. It’s also under the Platinum Hoof skyscraper, which has six stories of basement.”

Willow looked back at him. “So, from there we’ll be able to reach anywhere in the city?”

“Yeah, all the lines tie into it in some way.”

“Great!” Sunbathe voiced. “Now we can regroup with the REA.”

Willow shot a suggested glare to the golden mare. “Are you mad? The army’s backed themselves into a corner. If we head for them, we’re going to trap ourselves. We need to find a way to get the hell out of this city.”

Sunbathe glared back. “Are you questioning my orders?”

Willow simmered over to a boil. “Yes, I am, corporal. I tell you, whatever safe zone they have now, is not going to be a safe zone for very long... You ever built a dam out of sand on the beach?”

Sunbathe nodded skeptically. “Yeah... what does that have to do with anything?”

Willow flicked her tail. “Well, it’s easy to build the dam and fill it up with water, but if it breaks, then trying to build a new one while the water’s flowing everywhere is near impossible; it’s moving too fast to stop.”

“Don’t forget who you’re talking to.” Sunbathe rolled her eyes. “They need us.”

Willow stomped a hoof hard enough to send a jolt of discomfort to her shoulder. “Fourteen ponies dry on ammo isn’t going to help anything! No matter what, they’re not going to hold, and if they’re going to fall, I’m not falling with them.”

Sunbathe snorted and jumped ahead of Willow, bringing them both to a stop “That’s cowardice is what that is.”

Willow fought to keep her voice level. “I could hit you so hard in the muzzle your nose would shoot out your ass.” She stopped herself and took a deep breath. Threats would do no good at this time. “Yes, I am afraid to die, okay; deep down, we all are. But it isn’t cowardice to avoid a situation you know will kill you.”

The twelve others stopped to watch Sunbathe and Willow’s debate, muttering quietly on their own opinions. “Willow,” Sunny murmured amongst them. “Please don’t start any fights... not now.” Willow threw a look to the pegasus. He stood uncharacteristically close to an REA stallion, just in the edge of his light. She had to look away quickly though; the stallion’s light sent a bolt of unpleasantness to her brain.

She remembered that Sunny didn’t like the dark.

Sunbathe seemed to calm herself, maybe finding it wise after the shooty look Willow had given her. “Okay, fine. You go your way, my squad and I will go ours.”

Willow glared some more at the golden mare. The presented answer was not one she had been expecting. Splitting up was an idea that had never even crossed Willow’s mind. Taking fourteen ponies low on ammo and making them two groups only increased their chances of death.

“Actually...” Ember said skeptically. “I think we need to get out of the city. I almost died twice already; I don’t really plan on chancing it again.”

Willow started forward again, wanting to get the line moving. Standing around wasn’t advisable. If her presumptions were correct, these tunnels were full of zombies, and the longer that they stayed in the tunnels, the greater the chances were of the two parties meeting in a clash of lead and jaws.

“So, is that it?” Sunbathe scoffed, following just a little behind Willow now, the others dotted around her attempting to listen and look nonchalant at the same time. “The city starts to fall and we have a complete breakdown of rank and order?”

Willow flicked her tail. “Yep.” Her eyes drifted back to the tunnel ahead and she jumped like a scared cat, her movement coaxing more rifle clicks.

There was definitely something there this time, just out of the light so as the others couldn't see it. It was a changeling, undoubtedly. It walked backwards, just out of the range of the light cast by one of the flashlights amongst the group.

Something kept her from calling out. She watched it, studied it as it flared its wings and hovered, observing them from the darkness, sure that nopony could see it.

“What’s up with you?” Ember asked

Willow stared—at least from Ember’s perspective—out into the dark, kneading her inner cheek with her teeth. “Just... Just keep that thing ready.”

Willow looked back out ahead, past the changeling. There was a widening in the tunnel ahead where four tunnels merged with one. Swiveling her ears forward, she tried to listen for anything out ahead, but the quiet murmur of the others behind her ruined any chances.

“Quiet,” she snapped back at the ponies behind her. “I can’t hear.”

“Willow,” Ember pressed. “What is going on?”

Willow sighed and leaned in close to the mare. “They’re watching us.”

* * *

“Okay, third try. What you think of that mare?” The puce-coated pointed towards one of the REA mares as she walked ahead of them.

From where Sunny walked beside the civilian at the back of the pack, he looked over the instructed, gray mare. “Um... five, I guess?”

The stallion facehoofed. “You ain’t very good at this game.” He shook his head at Sunny’s bewilderment and adopted a mildly-irritated expression. “No, OJ, look.” He traced the mare’s haunches with a forehoof while closing one eye. “See the way it curves down the leg, and the way she carries it? Flank don’t matter if a mare can’t carry it right. She a nine.”

Sunny was still having trouble making heads or tails of the game, and exactly what about this stallion made him an expert. He would ask him to rate a mare on a scale of one to ten, then correct him when he was wrong.

“Okay,” Puce—as sunny had taken to calling him—said, pointing to the head of the pack, at Willow. “What’s she?”

Sunny sighed. “I’d rather not.”

Puce gave Sunny a nudge which sent a shiver up his spine. “C’mon, tell me what you think.”

He sighed again and looked sidelong at Willow, just in case she turned back and saw him. “Ten,” he said after a moment.

The puce stallion rolled his eyes. “Now you just screwing around. Brother, I tell you what, look at the way she carry herself; she don’t sway none. Ain’t no mare proud of herself if she don’t sway. Plus she small, so that costs her two points in the flankbook.” He shrugged. “I say four plus.”

Sunny exhaled slowly, irritation building. “Well, I say ten.” He remembered Willow and how she used to look, before her mane had faded from its brilliant color and before all the spring had faded from her step.

Puce seemed confused. “Look, OJ, she—”

“She’s fine the way she is!” Sunny snapped suddenly, causing Puce to jump.

He acted hurt and a little offended. “Geesh, sorry. I didn’t know you had no thing for her.”

“I don’t have a thing for—”

“Quiet,” Willow hissed backwards. “I can’t hear.”

Not feeling the drive to talk anymore, especially to Puce, Sunny quickened his pace a little so he could walk alone.

He couldn’t believe himself. Just the fact that a pony had poorly judged Willow and her appearance had angered him and driven him immediately to her defense. It was a lead weight on his mind to possess the knowledge that she felt for him, but the fact that he felt back was not one he wanted to embrace nor believe. Caring for somepony always led to hurt. Always. In Desert Sage, before the infection, he had been presented with options a few times, none of which he had possessed the drive or the guts to take up. For some reason, Moon had managed to get closer to him and further over his defensive wall in one day than three different mares had been able to in two and a half years; though, that could have had something to do with her strong determination and hardheadedness.

The tunnel opened out into a wide, dark space as the set of tracks they were traveling along merged with three others from different tunnels.

Sunny unfurled his wings, fluttering the ends nervously as the hair along his spine began to stand up.

Trying to see any more than fifteen feet was useless. All but one of the REA had turned off their lights to conserve power, and the only one on was a single, tungsten bulb hooked to a sixteen volt battery that lit up a dull circle ahead. The only one who could probably see was Willow.

Willow—she seemed to be acting a little funny. She walked in an almost self-contained manner, too graceful for her normal standards, though her head worked on a fast pivot, looking this way and that. She would focus on one thing, then another, whatever it was in the dark she was looking at. Sunny tried to trace her eyes, but beyond fifteen feet, everything was lost to him.

Sunny quickened his pace and trotted up past a sulking Sunbathe, taking up Willow’s left ask she walked. “You’re acting weird,” he whispered, just loud enough for her to hear.

Willow jumped at his words as if his presence surprised her. “Am I?” she asked tensely.

He gave her a flat look.

Willow beckoned him close. Sunny moved over, stopping when he felt his flank brush hers. “They’re surrounding us.” Her breath tickled the hairs in his ear as she spoke.

He blinked, looking straight ahead. “What?”

She shushed him. “They think we can’t see them... They’re waiting to attack.”

His ear flicked and he shivered. “Why... why are they waiting?”

“I don’t know. Don’t tell the others though; I think the changelings will attack if we discover them. Last thing we need is a panic, and we’re in no situation to fight them in this wide open space.”

Sunny grimaced and shook his head. “But what if they do... if they attack?” He smacked his lips, feeling his mouth going dry. “What if they attack?”

Willow motioned ahead with her muzzle. “There’s a train stopped on the tracks ahead. If we can just make it to there, it’s a good choke point.”

Sunny tried once again to battle the darkness with his eyes, only this time he knew something was there, and it scared him even more that he couldn't see it.

Them.

That he couldn’t see them in the dark, following, stalking, hunting...

“Bastards are smart,” Ember muttered.

“Who’s smart?” Candy asked, pulling off the radio headset.

Ember looked back. “Zombies... I swear, pretty soon the damn things are gonna’ be smarter than us.” The fear in her eyes shone like orbs in the light. Something told Sunny Willow had told Ember as well.

“I don’t like not being able to see,” a mare whispered.

A very faint gleam ahead caught Sunny’s attention. It was the reflection from the REA pony’s light off the glass of something ahead. On the tracks just a ways down the line, was a large, square shape. Sunny took this to be the railcar Willow had mentioned.

“What’s that?” he heard Cotton whisper behind him.

“I think it’s a railcar,” Candy replied.

“I’ll see,” a mare said smugly.

Sunny looked back to see her fumbling for the flashlight on her battle saddle. “No wait!” he hissed. “Don’t—”

The powerful, white light beamed away down the tunnel, lighting up the final car of the subway train.

The ring of changelings hissed at the light and scattered like cockroaches.

Somepony screamed. Willow’s shoulders tensed and she froze, along with the entire scene like somepony had hit the pause button to go get popcorn. All it would take was one movement to break the peace before the storm.

A rifle discharged, then two more. Other lights flicked on as the fourteen ponies switched into panic mode. The flutter of insect-like wings filled the congested, yet open space, growls and screeches joining in in a cacophony of menace.

“Run for the train!” Willow bellowed. She sprang forward on an invisible spring and bolted for the train car.

Sunny fired his rifle at a moving shape, the sound amplified by the concrete walls surrounding him on four sides. Changelings darted in and out of shadows cast by the tunnel support beams, waiting, it seemed, for a good opportunity to attack.

The others took after Willow, Sunny amongst them. Running doglegged and aiming diagonally ahead, he fired at whatever came into the light cast by somepony’s flashlight. He knew he had at least hit one by the screech and the spray of gray blood.

Willow had already reached the car, and stood on the hoofplate just inside the door, beckoning them frantically as she shielded the light from her eyes with a forehoof. Ember stood below, to the right of the door, flamethrower primed. Something moved near her and to her left, causing the mare to jerk the barrel of the weapon around.

Brilliant, orange flame lit the tunnel like a sunrise as the stream of liquid fire sprayed from the nozzle. It arced through the air like water from a fire hose, only with the exact opposite intention, splashing across the ground and support beams for the tunnel, washing across a dozen zombies, the flaming kerosine caking them in cocoons of fire. The now-burning changelings scattered like ants under a magnifying glass, screeching and hissing as they darted about like legged torches.

The kerosene fire lit the tunnel better than any light could, though Sunny really wished it hadn’t. When Willow had said ‘surrounded’, she had meant it. There were changelings, maybe four dozen of them, but beyond them, held back by some sort of changeling zombie will, were hundreds of mixed infected, and they all appeared to be closing in on the very unfortunate fourteen ponies.

What shocked him most was how they had managed to remain so quiet. He had never heard a thing.

Candy reached the car ahead of him and pulled herself up, then turned around and offered a hoof to Cotton to pull her and her injured leg up. Sunny was forced to wait on the tips of his hooves as a civilian mare went next, then two ponies from the REA.

Ember opened the nozzle again, using about three seconds to draw a rough circle of flame on the ground around the ponies now piling around the back of the train car.

The changelings hesitated at the fire, hissing and turning their heads. Sunny fired at the ones that dared cross, counting three dead now.

In the rush, he had lost track of how much ammo he had left.

The puce stallion had fallen behind somehow in the race, and was now only reaching the train car, eyes bulging like water balloons as he ran for them, empty pistol in his jaws.

Ember climbed to semi-safety next, the nozzle of her flamethrower still burning with excess kerosene.

That left Sunny, Puce, and an REA mare.

A changeling burst through the fire, flying at Puce from behind. Having already trained in on it, Sunny steadied himself chomped the bit, only to have the firing pin slam to a stop on an empty chamber.

Empty.

Puce went down ten feet away as the changeling landed with full force on his back, rearing back and going for the killing bite.

The REA mare ran to help him.

“No!” Sunny yelled, reaching for her tail a moment too late. The mare shot the changeling off an immensely grateful Puce and held out a hoof to help him up.

Two two disappeared in a mass of writhing, black shapes as the fire licked away, beaten down like beach toys caught in the midnight tide. The mare’s body went six different directions as the powerful creatures fought over her. The ones that got pieces fled before the others could steal the bleeding delicacies, and in less than four seconds the only thing left of the two ponies was blood splayed across the dirty concrete.

Sunny would have vomited had he not been frantically scrambling up to the hoofplate. Gasping for breath, he pushed himself up and whirled around to slam the door.

He never got the chance.

A changeling smacked him right in the chest like a bag of concrete, fanged teeth locking into his right, upper foreleg before he had even hit the ground.

He screamed, and in a second, Willow was there. Her hoof collided with its face hard enough to crush its eye. Her other hoof wrapped around its neck and cinched, yanking the changeling’s jaws out of Sunny in a rather painful and abrupt manner. She hurled the changeling off and it somersaulted through the air, striking the door frame and bouncing off to crash to the floor. It was up a second later, eyes fixed on Sunny’s writhing form.

Willow stood directly over him like a mother wolf protecting her pups. The changeling and its misshapen head tried to push past her, but she reared up and threw it into the ground. The floor shook as the creature crunched against it, then bounced back into the air to land again in a heap.

Ember rushed past Willow and the immobile changeling and slammed the door. “Move back!” she yelled.

Sunny felt a set of teeth fasten in his mane as the owner yanked him backwards across the grooved floor.

Changelings hacked and tore at the back end of the car as Ember backed up and spread her stance. The glass windows shattered as heads and bodies tried to cram themselves through the small openings.

Ember set the whole back five feet of the car aflame, turning the car into a furnace.

Willow released Sunny and yanked him to his hooves. “Come on, Sunny!”

Sunny tried, though when his right leg met the ground, the lightning bolt of pain that shot up it overrode the muscles, causing them to fail. The only thing that kept him from falling against the seats was Willow yanking him straight again by the mane.

“What’s wrong?” she asked urgently, eyes darting over his body. They came to rest on his gashed foreleg, blood running freely from the four marks in the shape of a trapezoid. “Shit.” Willow ducked her head. “Throw your leg over me.”

Sunny knew better than to protest. He slung his left hoof around Willow’s neck, strangely, not feeling uncomfortable in any manner. Willow stood up straight, lifting the bulk of his weight.

Ember covered the eleven of them with the flamethrower as they fled for the front of the train, delaying what seemed to be the inevitable.

“What...” Sunny said breathlessly, half hanging on Willow, “what happens when we reach the front of the train?” He pinched his eyes shut and let out a groan. A painful, prickly feeling was spreading throughout his body from his right leg, stinging like a million needles.

Willow huffed as she lumbered along with his weight, focussing half on the ground and half on the pony ahead of her. “We’ll improvise.”

Everything was starting to feel really groggy—Sunny compared the feeling to the gas used to numb patients at the dentist’s. “Willow,” he slurred, trying to keep his hind hooves from dragging.

“Yeah?” she asked.

“Are... a-are we gonna die here?”

He felt her tense. “No, Sunny, we won’t.”

Things were growing blurry now, sounds distorted. “How do you know?”

She shook her head. “Just because, Sunny.” She seemed to know something was wrong, because she readjusted him as she ran, taking more of his weight to the point of which she was almost fully carrying him.

His head lolled over a little and he had to force himself to hold it up. “What about me?”

Willow took a shaky breath between her panting. “Sunny, I promise you that as long as I am alive, nothing will ever happen to you.”

Sunny struggled to stay conscious; his eyelids were heavy. “How... can you... how can you promise that?”

“Now what!?” Sunbathe yelled from ahead.

“Because, Sunny,” Willow said, her voice ripe with emotion and determination. “I will always be there for you.”

“Willow...” All he wanted to do was sleep, but he needed to tell her. “Willow... I... you—”

“Block the windows!” somepony yelled.

“Cover the back door!”

Willow turned her head back to look at him, agonized with worry. “Always, Sunny.”

He tried to say more, but his lips felt like cooked sausages. There was a rush of nausea, then black.

* * *

“Okay, now push that one forward.” Snowglobe motioned towards a small lever on the control console.

Copper, focussing intently from his position in the driver’s seat, reached out a hoof and eased the lever forward. He was rewarded immediately with an increase in tone from the engine room as the generators sped up consumption.

“That’s the throttle,” Snowglobe clarified. “Now draw it back to where it was.”

Copper complied.

Snowglobe had spent the last thirty minutes instructing the red pegasus on how to drive the locomotive. She had started with basic braking procedures—it was always a good idea to teach a pony how to stop before you taught them how to go.

“Is that everything?” he asked, scanning the console.

Snowglobe nodded. “Now tell me what the safe stopping distance is for this unit at sixty miles per hour.”

Copper glared mutinously at the yellow air brake handle. “A thousand feet?” He shrugged.

“Fifteen hundred.”

Another shrug. “I was close.”

Snowglobe flicked her tail. “Yeah, and when it comes to not crashing, close doesn’t cut it.”

He sighed in exasperation. “Okay.”

She thumped his right shoulder with a forehoof. “You need to take this seriously. We’ll be reaching Baltimare really soon.”

Copper rubbed his shoulder. “So, just to get this straight, you want to leave the engine on the outskirts of the city?”

“Well there’s no way we’re driving right up to the REA with it.” She huffed. “You said it yourself—they’d steal the bits off a dead mare’s eyes. What do you think they’re gonna do when a bunch of poorly-armed survivors roll up to them in a mint-condition, gemstone-powered locomotive unit?”

“They’re going to want to expand their mechanical inventory,” he groused.

“And if what they did to you and Dusty is the case, we don’t want to all trot up there at once and take the chance.”

“So that’s why Moon and the big brown one are going and leaving us here to safeguard the engine?”

Snowglobe nodded simply. “They should be able to make contact with us within a two mile radius with the two-way radios I found in the emergency box.”

Copper went silent for a moment. “What if Baltimare’s gone like Canterlot?”

Snowglobe shook her head. “I don’t think any of us know... If it comes to that, we’ll just have to try something else.”

“What else!?” he snapped with sudden venom. “Baltimare was home to the second largest REA base in Equestria. The largest is Canterlot. If Baltimare didn’t make it, then no other place is going to have a chance.”

“We’ll find something,” she growled, leaning towards him with her muzzle. “I don’t care if it takes my entire life, but the last thing I’m going to do is curl up and wait to die.”

Moon entered the cabin through the generator room, catching the site of the two half-glaring at one another. “You two about to kiss?” she joked.

Snowglobe realized how awkwardly close she was standing to Copper, having practically been leaning over him to demonstrate the controls. “He’s gay, Moon,” she countered.

Moon shrugged. “So’re you, but that didn’t seem to stop you with Dusty.” Snowglobe winced. She had told Moon about her possible wing fetish with stallions, now it didn’t seem like it had been such a great idea.

Moon, noticing the look in Snowglobe’s eyes, wisely changed the subject. “How long until we reach city limits?”

Snowglobe peered out the windshield at the morning sun. “Three hours, give or take one in either direction.

“I just have to wonder,” said Copper, a dejected tone about him. “If it’s anything like Appleoosa, won’t there be stumblers all around the city?”

“Most likely.” Moon shrugged.

“Soooo,” he urged, “how do you expect to even get close to the barrier? Ask them nicely to move? Swim?”

Moon gave him a hot stare for his disrespectful tone. “I was planning for that. Canterlot had elevated tracks running everywhere. Once we hit the city, there has to be an elevated section of track with all the buildings around.”

Copper rolled his eyes. “It’s always guessing.”

“Well I’m sorry,” Moon huffed. “I’m sorry none of us are REA intelligence agents that know everything. The only pony who comes close to that is Range.”

Copper held up his hooves in a gesture of apology. “Okay, okay, take it easy. I just want something to go good for once. I’m lucky to be alive after this whole mess, and guesses and surprises are the last thing I want to see.”

“The last thing we all want to see,” Snowglobe corrected.

The rear cabin door swung open again, and this time Brick entered.

Copper chose to use the stallion’s entry as a chance to drop out of the minor confrontation, and he went to glaring at the sun out the window.

“Hey, Brick,” Moon greeted casually.

Brick gave his head a brief bow.

“What do you think of the plan?”

He shrugged and shifted his stance, eyes flicking to the right.

Moon sighed and rolled her eyes at him. “I know it could be better, but it’s all we’ve got.”

He closed his eyes and nodded.

Snowglobe, who had watched the exchange, grinned cockeyed at Moon. “When did you learn to speak Brick?”

Moon squinted, then softened her expression as the wording of the joke reached her. “We’ve been talking,” she said in playful defense.

Snowglobe quirked a brow. “Talking?”

Moon shrugged. “As close as talking gets with Brick.” She turned to the stallion. “You’ve still got fifty rounds for that chaingun, right?”

A nod.

Moon nodded back. “Good, we might need it.” She looked out ahead, the sunrise to the left casting a shadow across her face. “We might just be able to find an end to this mess.”

Chapter 17 Too Good to be True

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Moon bowed her head towards the locomotive’s muzzle. It sat before her and Brick on the tracks, humming warmly in the chill air.

The cool wind whipped at her mane and bit into her coat. Though it was almost noon, murky, gray clouds blotted the sky and the wind came in gusts from anywhere between ten to thirty miles an hour.

High up in the operator’s cabin window, Snowglobe bowed her head back to Moon. There was a deep clunk from the engine’s transfer case and it began to roll backwards.

Moon levitated the two-way radio up to her mouth. “I’ll contact you if needed.”

From here, Moon could see Snowglobe levitate her own radio through the glass. “Got it,” she replied shortly. “I’ll back us up a quarter mile and wait there.”

“Ten-four.” Moon smirked and clipped the radio back to her barding; she had always wanted a good excuse to say that. She turned herself around on the tracks and looked at the distance to travel by hoof.

Snowglobe had brought them within a quarter mile of the wall surrounding Baltimare, though Moon had insisted no further. Trusting the army was like expecting a mosquito not to bite you.

Brick stepped up beside her, the chaingun mounted on his back as menacing as ever. He seemed less grim than she had known him to look previously. Now, his face read firm, determined. It was as if he had been given a purpose to focus on, something to drive him. Though... he could have just been squinting to see the wall ahead; it was all rather hard to tell when he never spoke.

The engine now drifting away behind them, the hum fading into the wind, Moon and Brick started forward, setting a casual pace along the elevated track.

She had been right about the elevated tracks. Once they had entered the city, the tracks had been left with nowhere to go but up or down. Some of the freight lines had remained ground-level, tied into railyards, and some commuter lines had dropped down to become subway lines. The line she and Brick stood upon now was a commuter line, spanned above the city for efficient and fast civilian travel.

Only the central city had been contained by the REA’s protection wall, leaving business districts and suburbs alike to rot in despair. Though, what baffled Moon about it all was the lack of ruin, and the lack of despair. Hardly any buildings had been burnt or destroyed, and much unlike Canterlot, which was a mess of destruction and ruin, the streets of Baltimare almost seemed tidy and undisturbed.

It was as if everypony had just gotten up and left.

...Or turned into zombies without a fuss. Zombies... they were everywhere here. All along the streets below they either stumbled around or stood dumbly in states that seemed to resemble sleep on some primal scale.

“Have you ever wondered why they don’t starve?” Moon asked.

The brown stallion’s ears flicked and she watched his eyes travel downwards from the tracks to the streets below. After a moment, he nodded.

Moon continued to watch them as they walked. She felt an odd mixture brewing inside her. They were such curious creatures, though they no longer disgusted her. Her mind had accepted them as what they were and now, to her, zombies were just sort of a thing she didn’t like. They were like a crappy next door neighbor: you really couldn’t do anything about them so you just dealt with them and hoped they eventually moved away or died in a housefire.

“Any ideas as to why?” she asked after a moment.

He nodded, then let his eyes droop.

Moon frowned in thought. “They sleep?”

A nod.

“Yeah...” She thought it out. “I kind of had the same thing in mind. But, I mean, they have to eat something. I mean, they’ve killed off most of the ponies by now and they don’t eat each other. Sure, sleeping may conserve energy, but they still need to eat... so, what do they eat?”

Brick rolled his eyes, unsure.

“And, it’s crazy how they don’t eat each other,” she continued. “They have to have something in their brains that tells them not to eat other zombies, right? The part that makes thought, maybe?” She shrugged. Her words were starting to sound rather stupid. “I really don’t like the idea of those things thinking.” A shudder wracked her frame at the sudden, horrifying thought. “What... what if they remember who they were?”

Brick looked over at her and shrugged uncomfortably.

She let out a long sigh, eyes drifting somewhere off into space. “Just to think... Every one of them... they were a pony once.” Her eyes focussed on a distant tuft of cloud. “Every one of them had a story... had a name, a family.” She looked over at Brick. He walked along with his ears folded, looking straight ahead. “And I’ve killed so many of them... I can’t help but think...”

Brick flicked his ears and turned his head to glare at her. His look was cold and exasperated. “Really?” it seemed to say.

“What?” she protested.

His eyes flicked to the chaingun on his back, then back to her, brows narrowing.

She winced. “Oh, sorry, Brick... Yeah... I remember Appleoosa... and the gun store.” She flushed. “I really don’t have any room to complain, do I?”

He maintained the annoyed expression on his face and shook his head.

Moon folded her ears. “Sorry...”

There she had just went, worrying about herself again. Brick didn’t speak, but that certainly didn’t mean he was emotionless. It hadn’t really occurred to her that he had felt bad for the ponies—well, zombies—he had killed. And she especially hadn’t known that it would be a tender subject. It was just another thing to add to her mental list of tender subjects for certain ponies.

Moon looked up at the barrier; they were nearing it now. She forced herself to stop daydreaming; now was the time to focus. She squinted at the eight feet of steel erected across the track, off to the right and left where it grew much taller. “Do you see any guards?”

Brick shook his head.

They came to a stop ten feet from the blockade, ears perked, eyes wide and seeking.

Moon’s belly turned over. Off in the distance, she could hear the patter of gunfire—loads of it, whole truckloads of ammunition. “Hello!?” she yelled. “Is anything there!?”

Brick glared at her. “What are you doing?”

She rolled her eyes at his implied question and opened her mouth to yell again, but the breath she took came out as an eep instead when a bullet whizzed by and pinged off the track rail behind her. She jumped like a startled cat, and in less than a second, had her shotgun levitating before her.

Her eyes darted around for the source of the shot. The chambered round in her weapon was a slug, which gave her a range of anything within two hundred yards, though with accuracy only up to about fifty.

Her eyes found the source to be a yellow stallion roughly fifty feet away to the right, aiming a rifle clumsily with his hooves.

“Hey!” she screamed. “Are you thick!?” Ducking her head down, what little that would do, she looked for means of shelter. Nothing. The tracks were barren, devoid of any shelter; there wasn’t even a railing. And the hordes of zombies below cancelled the idea of trying to jump or shimmy down a support column.

Brick glared daggers at the stallion and aimed the chaingun.

Moon waited to see his head splatter. Instead, another pony, this one a gray mare, moved up beside the stallion. The mare up on the barrier took one look and the two of them stranded down on the tracks, then turned promptly and smacked the stallion upside the head. “What in Celestia’s name is your problem!?” a shrill voice rang out.

Moon sighed in relief as she watched the mare rip the rifle from the stallion’s grasp and deliver a section of verbal degradation.

Finished the the trigger-happy stallion, the mare slammed the rifle back into his grasp and turned to look back down at Moon and Brick. After a moment, she set a swift trot across the wall over to them.

“Thanks!” Moon called.

The gray mare stopped once she reached the spot over the tracks and stared down at them with hard eyes, one ear cocked around her short, black mane. “Name and rank! Are you one of the reconnaissance crews!?”

Moon contemplated lying, but quickly tossed the disastrous idea. “We’re not with the REA!”

The mare frowned, seemingly in confusion. “Then where’d you get that weapon?” She pointed to Brick’s chaingun. “Those REA seven-point-sixty-two millimeters are rare to come by you know. We don’t just hand ‘em out to civilians.”

Moon tethered her shotgun back to her barding. “We found it!” She stepped forward and looked up.

The mare eyed them over once more, then backed away from the wall and out of sight.

Moon looked over at Brick. “What?...”

Brick shook his head and shrugged.

“Maybe—” A loud bang from the other side of the barrier startled her from her words and her hooves left the ground momentarily as she jumped. “Damnit,” Moon cursed quietly. “Every ti—” She jumped a second time as two, high-pitched whines filled the air and the two barrier doors began to fold inwards. It took her another moment of mentally cursing herself to realize that the sound was from the two electric engines used to move the heavy, steel doors.

Shrugging again, Brick stepped forward, almost casually, leaving Moon nothing but to follow.

The massive doors stopped only a quarter of the way open, barely leaving enough room for the two ponies as they entered side by side.

Moon was all eyes. Just inside the two massive doors was an elevated train station, a boarding platform on either side of the tracks, rain-sheltered by steel awnings.

She had to admire the army’s innovation. Entering the station from the outside required passing through into the trackwell, and the three foot concrete walls on either side of the twin tracks provided an elevated position for the guards flanking the doorway and an excellent choke point against anything coming through the gates.

The gray mare stood awaiting between the two sets of tracks just within the gate. Her gray uniform blended almost perfectly with her coat. The two, high caliber pistols strapped to the outside of either foreleg proved just a little intimidating as her horn glowed a soft color of aqua.

She stopped Moon and Brick with the stomp of a forehoof. “Stop, spread your front and hind legs exactly a foot and a half apart and do not move.” The gates had begun to grind closed as she spoke. “If any proof or reasonable proof of infection is discovered you will be shot on site.” The words were spoken firmly, and in a manner that suggested every other hour she gave the speech.

Moon tried her best not to feel uncomfortable as the gray mare inspected places she was sure she had never even seen herself. “Right front,” the mare would say, signalling for Moon to lift said leg. She went through the same process with the other three, then ran her hooves through Moon’s brown mane, lifted and examined her tail, even ducking down and crawling between her legs at one point to get a look at the flesh between Moon’s forelegs and her body.

All the while Moon looked around the station. There were five other ponies around, the idiot stallion included. She made sure to glare at him.

“Stellar,” the gray mare said, finishing her examination and moving on to Brick.

Moon rolled her eyes. “No bites I didn’t know about?”

The mare’s eyes darted to Moon as she pulled her attention from Brick. There was irritation in her gaze, but it was masked by a teasing shine. “Nope, the only thing I noticed was a the bite I almost gave you.”

Moon’s expression froze, the only exception her eyes widening. Crimson color crept into her cheeks and she cleared her throat, eyes darting around, then to Brick. Had anypony else heard that?

Brick was smirking out of the corner of his mouth and Moon realized just how visible her blush was. “Stop it!” she hissed.

“Are they clean, Sergeant?” a stallion on the platform asked.

The mare backed out from under Brick, the aqua glow of her illumination spell fading. “Stand down; they’re good.”

Moon took a second to reclaim herself. Why did this keep happening? She growled under her breath, “I swear, I am the straightest mare in Equestria.”

The sergeant whistled and leaned in to examine the chaingun Brick wore. “Hey, Tubes.” She beckoned a bifocaled stallion over and pointed towards the weapon. “Weren’t those the models commissioned for the Las Pegasus guard?”

He leaned in and adjusted his glasses to peer at a near-microscopic serial number. “The very same.” His magnified eyes turned to Brick. “Where’d you get this?”

Moon answered. “A small town west of Appleoosa.”

The sergeant clicked her tongue. “I heard that shipment got botched.”

Tubes nodded. “A crate containing five went missing out of the sixty they sent down there from the factories. Dove threw a fit over it.”

Moon was daunted at the lack of ponies at what appeared to be a semi-major checkpoint. She jumped at the sound of close gunfire and her head snapped to the source.

Maybe fifty feet down the barrier wall, a pony had let loose with a mounted, anti-personnel ground-to-air cannon. No longer firing, the four barrels smoked as the stallion in the seat leaned back casually and lit a cigarette.

“I figured there’d be more,” Moon said absently.

The sergeant tore herself away from salivating over the chaingun. “Huh?”

“There are six ponies here... Aren’t you like, the army?”

The sergeant glared. “Drop the tone.” She flicked her ears dismissively. “The city’s been compromised north of here. All available forces are on the front lines.”

“W-what!?” Moon spluttered.

The sergeant sighed. “They came from underground. I guess the damned things are called changelings.”

Moon continued to balk. “Are you going to have to evacuate?”

“Evacuate?” the mare guffawed. “To where? Where’s there to evacuate too? The wagon pullers and hot air transport only have range to about Canterlot, and we all know that place is a shitcan.” She sighed. “We don’t know yet... we might have to abandon the city if things get any worse.”

Moon shook her head slowly.

“You chose a hell of a time to visit.” The sergeant attempted a smile, then sighed. “We’re in a real mess. We lost our lines faster than we could clear the buildings.” She pointed her hoof to the horizon where a cluster of tall buildings and a skyscraper could be seen amongst rising smoke. “Ponies are still trapped on the upper levels.” She pointed towards the skyscraper. “We’ve got radio contact with troops trapped inside with uncounted civilians on the twelfth floor of the Platinum Hoof. Our lines are currently about ten blocks beyond that, though we’re readying for another retreat and reform.”

Moon and Brick, astonished, exchanged equal glances. “Are you going to try to get them out?”

The sergeant nodded. “They’ve been thinking about skywagons, but there just aren’t enough of them and there aren’t any certified landing pads on the Platinum Hoof except for the roof itself.” The sergeant seemed to be talking to herself now more than anything. “With all other ranking officers focussing on the front lines, I’ve been left in charge of city evacuation shall the need arise, probably because it’s the least important on anypony’s list.” She sighed to steady herself. “The Platinum Hoof is tied directly into the civilian transit system; there’s a station on the twelfth floor, north side.” She pointed off down the tracks. “We’ve been prepping an engine and train.”

“This is crazy,” Moon murmured. She was a little unsure as to why the sergeant was sharing this all with her, but had to admit, the knowledge was nice. Maybe she just needed to vent

The sergeant turned and beckoned them with her tail. “Come on, let’s get off the tracks.”

Moon followed the mare, grunting as she climbed up out of the trackwell, hind legs dangling at the air for a second as she pulled herself up with the fore.

“Right now, this is a rally point.”

Moon tossed another glance to Brick. “So... why are you telling us this? I mean, we’re just civilians, or whatever you guys call non-REA ponies.”

The sergeant stopped them under the awning and turned back, taking up a stiff posture. “Haven’t you heard? In our time of crisis, all ranking officers are permitted to recruit civilians if they show clear signs of weapon experience and stable thought, shall the need arise.” She held out a hoof. “Sergeant Cloudstorm. Welcome to the REA militia.”

Unsure of exactly how to respond, Moon raised her own hoof to grasp the mare’s. “Moon.”

Cloudstorm released Moon’s hoof and turned to Brick, giving him the very same gesture. Brick took her hoof with a little nod, eyes darting to Moon for her support.

“His name’s Brick,” she answered.

“Sergeant!” It was Tubes. The stallion stood in front of a large radio set erected on a table under one of the platform awnings. A headset hung over his head, though he only wore one ear. “They’ve left us with a forty minute window! Once that time’s up, they’re shutting down the grid to infected areas to take stress off the generators!”

Ears perking, Cloudstorm trotted over to him. “I take it this affects us?” Moon followed.

Tubes nodded, still listening to the radio with one ear. “Without power, we lose our ability to operate the gates on the Platinum Hoof access track. And if we can’t get those open, then our train evac plan is as good as dead.”

Cloudstorm nodded slowly. “Okay, well, forty minutes should be enough time to get over there and key the gates.” She turned to an orange mare standing by who had been steadily creeping closer to listen to the conversation. “Head down to the armory and get one of those semi-auto twelves, drum magazine, and see if you can’t find any seven-six-two belts for the brown one’s gun.”

The mare gave a sloppy salute and scampered off.

Cloudstorm took a moment to breathe before returning her attention to Tubes. “Make sure—” A shrill whistle interrupted her. “What the?...” Her spun on one forehoof and cantered to the edge of the platform, looking off down the tracks.

Moon and Brick followed, ears perked just like everypony else’s in the station. Down on the line, an old black locomotive rocketed towards them in backwards gear, blastpipe roaring like an angry beast as the pistons pounded madly. As it neared, the staccato chug began to slow and seconds later came the squeal of the brakes.

The tri-axled engine slid backwards into the station and chattered to a stop, rattling like a box full of tools. There was an almighty hiss as the release valves fired off, washing steam across the platform.

“Loco!” Cloudstorm screamed, furious. “What is this!?”

A bulky, mustard-yellow stallion hopped down to the platform from the hoofplate, a sooty blue cap with the bill bent up atop his earth pony head, cocked sideways over his short, black mane. “Clouds,” he said in a voice that could have only belonged to a Manehattan pony, and a smoker at that. “I told you no.” He gritted the end of his cigar and rubbed his scruffy face, smearing soot along his cheek.

“What is this!?” Cloudstorm repeated, voice still as loud as before. “You should be coupled to that train!”

Moon couldn’t help but eye the peculiar shotgun embedded in a holster hung from the sooty stallion’s back. It looked like a lever action, though modified for use by an earth pony.

He narrowed his brown eyes at Cloudstorm. “Ya’ told me that this train sittin’ here was gonna’ be haulin that train down there, which was only s’posed to be three cars!” His voice seemed naturally loud, and as gruff and hard as stone as they came. “Now that train’s eight cars, and I still can’t get no doubleheader!”

Cloudstorm tapped her hoof. “Can’t you make do?”

Loco huffed and took a long drag on his cigar. “Yeah, sure, with another damned engine!” He tossed his head to the steaming mass behind him. “This mare ain’t no virgin and she’s seen more action than a brothel. Her valves are looser’n a mare in heat, and all it’s gonna’ take to make her blow her load of steam all over the place a good bump in the right spot.” He rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they used this fuckin’ thing in the buildin’ of the Ponyma canal!”

“What do you need!?” Cloudstorm hissed.

He huffed again and mimicked her tone, not managing anything but a high rasp. “What do I need!?” He pointed at himself, voice returning to normal. “What I need is a fuckin’ engine that can pull fifteen motherfuckin’ cars up a motherfuckin’ two-percent grade!”

“That is the only engine that’s not being used towards the containment effort!”

Loco stomped his hooves. “Then those ponies in that tower are fuckin’ meat! Or you can just have me pull three cars up there and start a fucking’ riot when they realize I can only take a third of ‘em.”

Moon swallowed. “I-I know where you can get an engine.” The second the words were out of her mouth, she wished she could take them back ‘Damnit, Moon! Think before you speak!’

“Where!?” the sergeant and Loco both demanded at once, dialing in on Moon.

“How close?” Cloudstorm urged.

Moon stood up straight. It was already too late to take it back. “Less than a mile.” She looked over at Brick. The brown stallion chewed his lip, but nodded. Maybe it wasn’t the best thing to do for their own interests, but it was the right thing... Maybe.

Moon levitated the radio from her barding.

“Snowglobe?”

“Yeah?” the mare’s voice crackled back.

“Now, don’t get mad...”

* * *

“Come on, Sunny!” They all stood upon the cloud far above him, the sun lighting their silhouettes.

“Yeah, come on!” a little blue pegasus yelled before breaking off into a fit of giggles. “What are you? Chicken!?”

From where he sat on the grassy knoll, Sunny flared his wings and glared up at them. “My mother said I can’t! My wings don’t work right and she says I’ll hurt myself!”

“Stop being a foal and come on!” another yelled, poking his head over the edge of the cloud beside the others.

“I can’t!” Sunny repeated, now feeling a little angry.

Two of the colts leaned in close and whispered something to one another. They broke away with twin, evil grins. “Well then,” one voiced, “I guess we’ll just have to tell Spark that you like her.”

Sunny’s eyes shot wide in panic and he reared up on his hind legs. “N-no! Don’t do that!” Spark—his filly crush—was an understanding mare, but her finding out was still enough to basically ruin his life.

“Then fly, you foal!”

Sunny slammed his hooves down in the soft grass. “I can’t!”

They didn’t seem to care. “Get up here, Sunny!”

“Yeah, you wimp, get up here!”

“Get up, Sunny!”

He shook his head frantically. “I want to!” He felt tears at the corner of his eyes. “But I can’t! Please listen to me!”

“Get up now, Sunny!” The vision blurred and he felt a pair of hooves pressing down on him.

“I can’t,” he groaned.

The hooves shook him violently. “Sunny, get your ass up or we’re both dead!”

The urgency of the yell shook him out of his slumber.

Groggily, he lifted his head, a groan escaping his lips.

The surrounding commotion drove him to wonder how he had ever been asleep in the first place. Yells and growls filled the air, accompanied menacingly with the banging and groaning of steel as it was strained and abused. The floor below him rocked back and forth. Though he looked for the source of the sound, he couldn’t see anything too well in the semi-darkness, full night only kept at bay by a flashlight upon a seat and the emergency lights in the ceiling.

Emergency lighting? Where was he?

By the orange glow of the two ceiling lights on either side of him in the commontionous —aided slightly by his memory—he safely concluded that they were in a subway car.

He tried to sit up, though pins poked at his vision and he immediately began to sway. A white hoof planted firmly on his front kept him from tipping away to either side. “Oh thank Celestia!” Willow wrapped him up in a bone-crushing hug. “I so worried you would have died, then you wouldn’t get up.”

He thumped her on the back with a forehoof, eyes practically popping out of his skull. “Willow,” he choked, “air... need air!”

She released him to look at his face, smiling stupidly in the orange light. “Welcome back!”

He remembered his forehoof. Like turning on a light switch he became conscious of the pain in his leg and winced; it felt like somepony had skinned it and poured salt on it. Knowing he wasn’t going to like what he saw, he lifted his leg to examine the bite mark. The four little dots arranged in a trapezoid had now gone a blood-red color and expanded to the size of marbles. The flesh surrounding it had gone soft and pink under his coat, swelling slightly around the wound.

“Poison?”

“Something.” Willow hopped out of the way as two of the REA ponies hustled by exchanging a yelled conversation. “The best I could do for the time being was administer a general antitoxin; it didn’t do much, but it helped.” She sighed and looked at Sunny’s wound with irritation. “Unless you’re reacting allergically—which I doubt—I’m guessing you were dosed with some kind of sedative and possibly a hemotoxin.”

Sunny blinked. “Hemotoxin?”

Willow nodded. “Hemotoxin: destroys red blood cells, usually found in certain species of snakes or preying insects such as spiders, which leads me to believe that these Changelings could be blood drinkers.” She patted him on the shoulder. “You’re going to feel a bit woozy because of the spell I used on you.”

Sunny clasped his head in his hooves and groaned. “I thought you said you couldn’t do medical magic?”

“I never said that,” she said with a flick of her ears. “I just said I was never very good, though I did the best I could and I think I got it to work, but dizziness is a clear side-effect of lack of experience on the spellcaster’s behalf.”

“Get us moving!” Sunny’s head shot to Sunbathe, who was a bound’s-length away. She stood before an upturned floor hatch as she looked down, the hair along her spine pricked where it wasn’t covered by her gray barding and battle saddle.

An orange mare who had been ducked down in the hatch lifted her head as a little flash of light illuminated her features. She coughed at the rising cloud of electrical smoke and waved it away with a forehoof. “I’m trying!”

Sunny looked to Willow, now a bit on the confused side. “What’s going on?”

“We got the train moving and we were almost to the station when something went wrong with the electricals.”

Sunny gave a fearful yell and scrambled away from the window behind him as something heavy impacted the other side. He spun to see a white unicorn pressing itself against the glass. It pounded its hooves at the surface for a second, then reared back and slammed its head into the glass. The thing’s stub of a horn stabbed through the laminated glass and a spiderweb formed around it.

He turned back and fixed his fearful eyes on Sunbathe. “We need to move!” He remembered the rifle on his battle saddle, then remembered a second later that it was empty.

“We’re trying!” The golden mare sneered at him. The irony.

Both their eyes shot to the metal ceiling as a heavy banging sounded from above. There was a hiss and a thud and a small dent appeared in the roof, silt raining down into the car.

“Well hey,” Willow said with a worried, hopeful laugh. “At least they don’t have huge claws like they do in the movies.”

“The fuses are all shot!” the orange mare yelled. She tossed a few glass cartridges over her back and they shattered on the steel floor. Growling, she grabbed a bundle of wires in her teeth and yanked, neck straining. They snapped a moment later. “I’m routing the battery power directly to the motors!”

More of the safety glass began to crack and bend as the car they refuged in was surrounded. Sunbathe danced on the tips of her hooves. “I don’t care what you do, as long as it gets us moving!”

Sunny could barely keep up with the orange mare. She was tying wires off so fast with her hooves and teeth that she was one step below a blur. She paused to say, “Oh, it’ll get us moving, then bit down on the connection between two wires. There was a little crackle of electricity between her teeth and she spat out the wire, flicking her tongue. “I just have to bypass all the safeties.”

The back window burst inwards and the two ponies watching it opened fire. The changeling that had been shoving itself through the small gap fell limp, its body half in, half out of the window.

“Wire cutters!” The orange mare yelled. “Anypony have wire cutters!?”

Sunny shook his head at her, and so did Sunbathe and Willow, along with two more of the REA ponies and a civilian.

The orange mare hefted half inch thick cable and stared at it with repulse. “No knives, a saw, nothing?”

The entire roof above them folded in with a heavy bang and a crunch. At the back window, two more changelings were trying to fight past the gunfire.

“Shit.” The orange mare raised the wire and opened her jaw wide. Growling, she snapped down on the wire and ground her teeth. There was a bright flash and a pop from her mouth and the mare’s head whipped around to the side. Coughing and spluttering, she spit out the separated ends of the wire and ducked back into the hatch.

A moment later, there was a crackle and a dull hum as the fluorescents on the ceiling lit up casting everything back into clear perspective.

Sunny tried not to look out the windows.

There was another pop and loud hum from beneath his hooves that vibrated the floor. He staggered as the car lurched forward, only managing to stay up by grabbing one of the vertical bars connected to the ceiling.

The orange mare lifted herself out the hatch, then coughed and spat a gob of blood and four fragmented teeth onto the floor. She looked up at Sunbathe and gave her a pained, bloody smile with the left side of her mouth; there wasn’t much left to smile with on the right side apart from a few of her back molars.

Willow dug in her bag and levitated the mare a small needle wrapped in a white package, and in turn, the orange mare stared at it incredulously. “It’s for the pain,” Willow said. “Once the adrenaline wears off you’re gonna be in rough shape.”

The orange mare took Willow’s gift with a small nod and sat down against the wall, gasping for breath.

There were crunches and squelching sounds from the wheels as the car battled forward and Sunny could only assume what they were from. The electric motors whined with power as they hauled the car forward.

“Sweet Celestia.” Sunbathe let out a long, shaky breath, then slumped down against the wall beside the orange mare, who was stuffing her mouth with paper to stop the flow of blood. “I’m done with this subway shit. Just let me out.”

Sunny watched out the window with rising trepidation. Support beams were flashing by in the two forward lights, each one a little faster than the last. “I think we’re going a little fast.”

The orange mare spit out the paper to speak. “That’s our problem.” Blood ran from her lip and she coughed, spilling it down her front. “I wired the battery directly into the motors to bypass the fried electrical systems.”

Sunbathe widened her eyes. “What does that mean for us?”

The mare gagged and made a face like she was going to vomit. “That means this train isn’t going to stop when we ask it to.” She spat another glob of blood off to the side, landing it in the lowered part of the floor in front of the door. “There’s a whole series of points and bends at Platinum Hoof station... We won’t make it past there.”

Ember, who had been listening in on the entirety of the conversation, brought herself over from where she had been sheltered behind a rack of seats. “Any of you ever been in a train crash?” She sat down next to Willow and adjusted her hotsuit so as to sit more comfortably.

She was mostly ignored. “Well, can’t we just pull the power when we’re getting close?” Sunbathe asked.

The orange mare shook her head, wincing. She took this time to jab herself with the needle Willow had donated. “These systems were never meant to be overridden. Pull the plug and the motors go rampant. There’s still power to the Iron Hoof station because there’s still power in the third rail, but it’s the wrong polarity and—”

“Get to the point!” Sunbathe snapped. She was now watching out the window as well.

“If we get any unregulated power from the third rail it’s going head directly to the motors, and without any electrical control, they’re going to spin forwards. We’re going backwards!” She coughed. “If that happens, friction will pull us right off the rails and spin us around. We’ll go into a roll.”

The car blasted by an illuminated sign along the tunnel wall that read, ‘Platinum Hoof’. “Well,” Sunny pitched in unsurely, “I’m no master of physics here, but if we hit the corner fast enough, the car should just fall on its side and slide, right?”

“In a perfect world,” the mare grumbled.

“Hang on to something!” Sunbathe yelled to the others on board.

The tunnel walls gave way to open space supported by pillars. They blasted through a loading station oriented around a shallow, lefthand corner and sparks hissed from the wheels of the subway car as it pitched to one side. A moment later it returned to vertical .

Through the lights, Sunny spotted the corner the orange mare had been referring to. He was no expert, but his mind glued the facts together. A train going this fast would not make a corner that sharp.

All around in the station ahead, lights flickered and blinked, lighting up portions of other tracks, and in the very center, a massive support of concrete with a row of glass elevators fitted in the side.

He didn’t get any more time to think. The subway car hit the start of the sharp corner and he was jerked heavily to the left. Frantically, he grabbed a vertical pole and squeezed it for dear life. The car hopped and pitched left, balancing up on the leftside wheels as it left the track and set its own course across the concrete.

The ponies inside the car howled and yelled. Willow found her own pole to hold onto beside Ember and Sunbathe had gripped one of the seats firmly beside the orange mare. The others were close by, holding on to what they could as the floor started to become a wall.

He nearly lost his grip on the bar as the engine crashed down on its left side, what was left of the glass shattering and bursting upwards as the concrete below tore it to shreds. Sparks lit up below him as he hugged the bar with all four legs, teeth clenched. Why did subway cars have to have such big windows? Now, if he were to fall, the outcome would be similar to that of riding the world’s largest cheese grater.

Ember lost her grip across from him, her hotsuit proving a poor choice for holding firmly to steel. It was Willow who managed to catch her. The white mare’s hind legs wrapped around Ember’s middle and the mare’s eyes bugged out like the life was being squeezed from of her.

Sunny couldn’t hear anything over the scream of steel, but watching the scene was pure torture. Willow had both forehooves wrapped around the vertical bar that was connected to the roof and floor. She swung back and forth, face contorted in effort as Ember dangled below her, the tips of the mare’s hooves less than a foot away from the gap where the window had once been.

The entire car shook as it struck something, certainly not enough to stop it, but enough to slow it down. Sunny found himself flying forwards, his hooves holding on to nothing. He had barely gotten out half a scream by the time he smacked against another bar. He got one hoof around it, spun a complete circle, then fell to the ground which was the left wall of the train car.

It was by Celestia’s blessing he had landed between windows on a one foot strip of steel.

Something new was happening. He was sliding down the floor, which was actually the wall, to the wall, which was actually the floor. There was a crash and his belly turned upside down, and next thing he knew, he was falling up. His head smacked the roof, which was now the floor, and his vision went blurry. Again, the floor stopped being the floor and he found himself falling in another indistinguishable direction.

He caught one of the support bars with his brow and the lights went out.

* * *

“Snowglobe, I—”

“Shut up. I’m mad at you, Moon.” She glared out the windshield at the tracks whipping by. The stallion who had semi-vulgarly introduced himself as Loco sat just to her right beside the driver’s seat, gnawing at the end of the stub his cigar which seemed on the verge of burning right into his mouth. “And could you put that out?” she snapped, waving the putrid smoke away from her face.

Loco grumbled something and spat the stub out the open window to his left. “Fine, I’ll switch to vanilla. Before Snowglobe could protest, he drew out a new cigar and and silver lighter.

“What was I supposed to do?” Moon deflected.

Snowglobe turned back to her. “Oh, I don’t know...” She huffed and went back to watching the tracks. “You could have stuck to the plan and not told the army about our engine.” She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Which I might remind you is our only means of safe transport if this city goes south.”

Everypony but Moon and Brick had remained at the station at Moon’s request, and for good reason too; this mission seemed to be another suicide mission in a whole chain of suicide missions that they had been on so far.

Cloudstorm was along to lead the operation—which Snowglobe had learned had not been authorized by the army—and Loco had come to drive the train despite the fact that Snowglobe had already established herself as the driver.

She sighed and raised her forehooves to massage her temples. “So, just to recap this wonderful plan—we’re taking our locomotive, hooking it up to a line of passenger cars, driving it through a deteriorating zombie-infested city that happens to be a complete warzone to save a bunch of ponies stranded in a skyscraper, then drive back through a zombie-infested city?”

Cloudstorm, who had been half-asleep against the back wall of the cabin, nodded through closed eyes. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

Brick nodded from where he sat silently in the corner of the cab.

Moon’s eyes found Cloudstorm. “You’re kind of in charge here... Shouldn’t you be... awake?”

The sergeant only shrugged and remained slumped against the wall. “I was at the end of my shift when this whole bit of nonsense went down.” Her words started to slur slightly. “I’ve been on duty almost twenty-four hours now. If there’s sleep to take, I’ll take it.”

“Right here.” Loco pointed his hoof off to the left and Snowglobe’s eyes followed.

“Right where?”

Loco huffed a cloud of vanilla-scented smoke and rolled his eyes. “Move.” Without waiting for a her word, he moved over and pulled her out of the driver’s seat with surprising strength.

“Hey, what the—” She glared daggers at the burly earth pony as her legs kicked at the air. “This is my locomotive!”

He set her down beside the seat and settled himself in front of the controls. “Yeah?” Leaning back against the rest, he placed one hoof over the throttle. “And I highly doubt you know what buttons to push to make her scream the loudest.” He hit two switches on a control board to the upper left and a light ahead on the track went green. “Electronic pulses through the track designed to interface with any class switching system installed within the last ten years.” He huffed. “Never did like this layout. Who in their right mind puts all the controls on the left side of the cab?”

Snowglobe had to admit—Loco could drive; even when he wasn’t paying attention he could drive. His hoof never left the throttle as they switched off the mainline and onto a track that tied into a railyard. It was a moment before the view out the leftside window turned silver and Snowglobe realized they were passing a line of streamlined passenger cars.

Loco cut off the throttle and moved his hoof to the brake a moment later, nudging it softly whilst never taking his eyes off the track ahead. “We’re gonna have to make this fast.”

In less than a minute, the experienced trainpony had them through another switch and backing towards the line of silver cars they had just passed.

Snowglobe braced herself for the impact with the couplings, though felt rather silly when the engine jolted lightly enough to be missed completely if one hadn’t been expecting it.

Loco had seen it too. The gruff stallion smirked around his cigar and gave her a sideways look. Though she could see he was trying to cover it up, he was insulted. “You might crash the couplings, but don’t expect anything but the smoothest ride from me.” He smacked the airbrake and the engine gave a loud hiss as the lines purged, then gave Snowglobe a lopsided grin. “Loco’s still got it.”

Celestia, he was sizing her up!

Snowglobe crossed to the front of the cab and pushed open the door below the windshield that led to the staircase down through the nose of the engine. Once at the bottom of the steps, and relieved to be out of Loco’s presence, she pushed open the lower door to the windy and cloudy day. The door slammed against the side of the engine, ripped from her magic by the wind, and immediately her short, purple mane was thrashed.

Before she even stepped down from the platform above the wheels, she froze. Twenty fully armed and armored REA members stood before the engine in two lines of ten.

“Cloudstorm!” Snowglobe yelled backwards through the door. “I-I mean, Sergeant... I think these ponies out here are for you!” Cloudstorm had said this mission wasn’t approved. Were they here to intercept? As long as they got the engine back she’d be okay with it.

There was the clanking of hooves on metal steps, and a second later Cloudstorm poked her head out beside Snowglobe. “Who assigned you lot?” she asked with a frown, casting her eyes across the row of ponies.

Snowglobe made sure to listen as she trotted back to tie off the brake lines. A stallion at the lead of the group stepped forward with a courteous semi-bow. “Sergeant, we heard your radio exchange. We want to help. Every one of us is at your service, Ma’am.”

While before Cloudstorm had looked confused, now she wore a proud grin that hovered on the edge of cheeky. “It’s an honor.” She slated her expression. “Okay, ponies, here’s the deal. We will be traveling through infected portions of the city in order to reach the elevated station of the tower. I want you lined up periodically along the cars on the coupling platforms and on the roof. From what the stranded said over the radio, there’s a lot of ponies there who took refuge. What REA are with them are burnt out of ammo and the only thing keeping them alive is luck. I don’t care if we’ve got to turn this car into a Tetris platform, we’re getting everypony on this train.”

Snowglobe finished coupling the air lines and waved her hoof at Loco’s reflection in the mirror.

Cloudstorm nodded in affirmation to the group of twenty at attention. “Okay, get on board! We leave now.”

By the time Snowglobe was back on board, the engine was humming up a storm as it pulled forward. Loco was patting the console from the hotseat, grinning. “This engine sure is a beaut.” He turned his eyes to Slipstream. “The gauge is tellin’ me this thing only has a two hundred hours on the motor.” He slapped the dash, then went to business. “The points’ll lead us back to the main line. We gotta make this run fast.”

“Right...” Snowglobe fell back on her rump and looked around as they hummed off. All of a sudden, her presence seemed rather useless. Loco could drive an engine ten times as well as she ever could, and she was too damned scared to even pick up a firearm. Her eyes found their way to Moon, then to the semi-automatic, drum fed shotgun Cloudstorm had gifted her holstered to her barding, then to Brick with the massive chaingun. Cloudstorm had two nickel-plated pistols on either foreleg and Loco had his earth pony shotgun.

She looked down to the revolver in it’s holster on her inner-left foreleg. It was fully loaded, as it had been since Dusty had given it to her. He hadn’t left her with ammunition, so apart from the six bullets in it, she had nothing. “Valediction,” she muttered sourly. The situational irony tied to the name was painful. Why was it so hard? Levitate, aim, pull the trigger. Yet she was afraid to.

She was nothing but a tagalong—the gay mare who’s afraid of guns. The only reason she was alive was simply because she had been in the right place at the right time. Had she not received that message on the intercom to meet staff in the basement for repairs she would have died in the hospital. Without her friends, she was a zombie.

The floor below her vibrated warmly as the engines worked away, the throttle at full. “Aren’t you worried about gem consumption?” she asked with a little frown.

Loco shrugged. “A bit, but we’ve got enough.” He flicked his ears and grabbed the hat off his head, scratching his neck with the bill. “But if there’s one thing the REA has plenty of, it’s gems. We just don’t have anything to use ‘em on.” He flipped a switch on the console and a little light in the readout went from red to green. A second later, the signal light ahead did the same. “Hey Cloudsy, how much time we got left?”

If Cloudstorm had heard the tease, she ignored it as her eyes remained focused on the massive tower. “Enough. Just don’t let off that throttle and we’ll be fine.” She chuckled dryly. “Knowing the army, I’ll probably get a medal for being a hero and a court martial for using outside help to do it.”

Moon looked at Cloudstorm for a long while. “Do you think they’ll be able to save the city?” she asked in a near whisper.

“Don’t ask me,” the sergeant replied with a shake of her head. “I don’t want to jinx it.”

* * *

To the ponies at Platinum hoof—” Willow jerked to attention, head spinning like a top and her body aching like a broken heart. There was a soft groan of metal from below her as she shifted her weight away from her pained ribs. She couldn’t really see, not with the white light that flickered on and off in the darkness, just enough to be blinding. She stood up and rubbed her head, looking this way and that.

Ponies lay all around her in all different forms of disarray. Most of them were moving in some way, but a few weren't... How hard was it to survive a train crash? “Everypony okay?” she croaked, then grasped her head. “Shit... no more crashing things.”

The radio buzzed from Candy’s back as the striped mare leaned up against the roof of the tilted car rubbing her shoulder, Cotton right beside her. “—Get yourselves ready ‘cause we’re parking a train right up your puckered flanks!” There was a crackle, then the speaker switched to a formal mare who reminded her too much of the receptionist back in the hospital. “All ponies that are not already on the twelfth floor platform need to get up here. The train’s not going to wait!” She wasn’t talking like a receptionist. She was talking more like she was in the middle of running a marathon.

Willow didn’t leave much time for thought. She exploded to her hooves and tried to rally them all. “We have to go, now!” This was simply too lucky. Something would go wrong. Something had to. She spotted Ember leaned back against a seat, nursing a wound that had almost sheared off her good ear. Somehow she’d found a healing potion, and was looking rather greedy while drinking it. “Ember!” she screamed, running over to the mare. “We’re under Platinum Hoof, right? That’s what they said?”

Ember looked up at Willow and nodded, then winced. “Shit, I think I smashed my head through a window.”

Willow scanned the dozen or so ponies in the car. “Sunny!” She staggered forward in the flickering light, stepping over the bloodied body of a mare. “Sunny!” She yelled a little louder.

“Here,” came a choked voice. Willow spun on a dime to face him. He was on his hooves, but barely it seemed. The skin on his forehead had split along the left brow in a classic, blunt impact shear. “I am so tired of getting knocked out.”

She gave him a smile and a little nod before turning back and making her way around the scattered seats and recovering ponies. She kicked the emergency door open with a small grunt and hopped out into the much more comfortable semi-darkness of the subway central station.

The subway car had parked itself on the station platform. From the look of the carnage beyond, it had hopped the tracks, then gone into a roll up onto the station. The cars that had been coupled behind had sheared off in a different direction and accordioned up against a support pillar. Willow was once again struck by the awe of just how lucky they were.

Platinum Hoof Central Station lived up to its name. Even in the emergency lighting, the place was magnificent. There wasn’t a spec of dirt around and the polished marble station platform reflected whatever lay upon it, even in the mid-darkness.

Candy stumbled onto the platform, attempting to both carry Cotton and listen to the radio at the same time. She looked tense. “Willow, we’ve got twenty minutes, tops!”

Willow rubbed her head again as Sunbathe emerged leaning on Ember’s shoulder. “Okay, let’s go, now.” Twelve flights of stairs in twenty minutes? It sounded grim. “Everypony out here, now! We’re not waiting for you!” Sunny appeared immediately and the others began to exit in states as good as unscathed all the way down to practically missing a limb. Three remained, dead. Now, the question had arisen. “Think we can make it?” she asked Candy in a hushed voice.

Candy looked up from the radio, her eyes two orbs of worry. “I think so.”

Willow looked around. This had to go perfectly. It just had to. Across the station was a flight of marble steps that lead up. “Welcome to Platinum Hoof!” a sign declared proudly above the walkway.

Too good to be true.

“It’s nonsense.” Sunbathe whimpered under her breath, shaking her head to Candy. “We’re all too beat up to make it that far that fast... We’ll just be killing ourselves faster... Our chances are better if we stay here—find another way out.” Her words were enough to stomp out the flickering candle that was hope, and almost as one, the survivors slumped.

Willow examined those still alive. They’d formed in a circle, getting the brief from Candy as the ponies that did have healing potions guzzled them. Candy stood strongly on all fours, despite a swelling front knee. The fear was all but gone from her eyes, instead they boiled with determination strong enough to win a war. Cotton sat to her side, looking battered and out of place. Then there was Sunny; the flightless pegasus looked like he’d fallen into hell and dragged himself back out again. Ember was beside him, still wearing her silver hotsuit, her scared face matted with blood from her ear. Sunbathe looked the worst; everything about her screamed resent and fear. She’d rather be anywhere but here, but after all, they all would have taken that deal. There was only one civilian left, a blue mare that cried a little away from the group of REA ponies counting ammunition.

She felt bad for them. The enhancements to her own body allowed her to cheat out of most pain and at least physical misery, but these ponies had to suffer it on high. She stood a little bit away from the circle. They had to go now! ...But nopony moved.

So this was it? They were just giving up? End of the line? And she, Willow, was going to let it happen? No matter how she tried, she couldn’t bring herself to speak a word. Instead she took a step back, towards the platform. Should she go? If they didn’t, she would. She could made it. And so be it she’d drag Sunny along with her.

“You know what!” An orange mare declared suddenly, pushing to her hooves and racking a round into her battle saddle. “I haven’t even gotten laid yet. I am not dying here!” She showed a smile of broken and shattered teeth. “I can’t give up now.”

Sunny limped over to stand by Willow’s side. “We’ve been through too much to just die in a tunnel. I don’t care what they do, we’re going, Willow.” He actually sounded... disgusted.

Cotton stood up next, and despite a torn shoulder, made her way over to where Willow, Sunny, and the toothless REA member stood. “Call me a coward... but I don’t want to die.”

Ember was next. “Way I see it, if I die down here, I’ll never be cremated.” She gave a cruel little laugh and lit the pilot light on her flamethrower.

One by one, they all stood, until Sunbathe was left alone on the cold marble, bleeding, tired, and alone. She looked around and laughed once, bitterly, then began to stand. “Well fuck it.” She grinned, raising her head a bit. “I guess it’s worth a—” There was a guttural hiss behind her. She may have been injured, but she was still fast. Sunbathe spun on a dime and fired her automatic into the dark, six muzzle flashes lighting up the moving form of a green unicorn. It staggered, bullets ripping out its throat and face before it was lost to the darkness. Somepony flicked their light on, illuminating the twitching zombie on the ground.

Sunny gulped. “Where there’s one...”

“Go!” Sunbathe hollered, lunging forward in an unsteady gait. “Leaving. We’re leaving!” the others didn’t have to be told. As one they moved, Willow hanging at the back just to make sure everypony was making it.

It was astounding how fast Sunbathe had gone from a broken mare ready to die in a tunnel to a semi-fearless leader. She looked like she’d been thrown into a whirlwind holding a bag of glass shards. One of her automatics had been crushed in the saddle she wore, and either Sunbathe didn’t realize or didn’t care. Despite the battered groups’ assorted hardships and injuries, they took the stairs two at a time.

The stairs from the Platinum Hoof station led up into something Willow could only call a pre-station. The marble steps gave way to beige and red colored tile that stretched a grid pattern far across the floor. The place was one massive gift shop, and there, at the other end, were the elevators and decorative stairs. And of course, Elevators were out of the question considering they didn’t operate on emergency power.

Willow silently cursed the architect who’d designed this floor. Ponies were forced to walk all the way across the gift shop when leaving or heading to the station. She had to admit, it was clever, but it was also screwing them. As the their group thundered across the room, they passed preserved booths sporting trinkets and rugs and any sort of attire long since abandoned.

Time flies when you’re having fun. Willow snorted. She would have to rewrite that phrase. Maybe, time flies when you’re trying not to die.

It wasn’t long before they were to the next flight of stairs, then up another. Finally, they were at ground level. The final flight had broken off into a grand hallway that welcomed them to Platinum Hoof with some sort of a sign every ten feet or so; happy goodbyes were printed on the reverse sides. And there, at the end of the hall was a double set of wooden doors. Four ponies sat just at the end of the hall. Willow couldn’t see their faces, but from the way their heads were turned they definitely had their eyes on the thundering mass of ponies.

Sunbathe skidded to a stop just before the doors, a yellow mare barring her way with a worried expression. Willow stopped beside the both of them as their hoofsteps died down to a more gentle clatter.

“Come on,” Ember growled below her breath. “Let’s go!”

“What is it!?” Sunbathe snapped to the yellow mare, patience non-existent. “Why aren’t you on the twelfth floor?”

“The lobby’s locked down. They got in.” Her eyes were sunken and sallow. The other three looked the same way. “We ran the wrong way, locked ourselves in here. The rest made for the station.”

“Well then let’s go!” Sunbathe moved up and braced her hooves on the pipe that the survivors had bent around the door handles.

“E-excuse me?” The mare fell off to the side without resistance. “N-no wait, no! You can’t open that. The lobby’s full of them!”

“Die in here or face dying for safety, your choice.” Sunbathe grunted as she tried to unbend the bar. She stopped for a second to dig a small pistol from her saddlebags then tossed it on the floor before the mare. “There, now you’ve got a gun.”

Willow moved up to help, but just then Sunbathe gave a heave and the bar untwisted. She moved up beside Sunny instead, sitting just close enough to him that their coats brushed.

“Ten minutes!” Candy stressed, grabbing the pipe with Sunbathe, the two mares freed it from the door handles and kicked open the double doors.

It was magnificent, the feeling only slightly undermined by the infected milling about. The ceiling was easily eight stories high, every inch of chiseled stone that had been hung from the walls leading up to form an arch and pillar system on the roof that served for both decoration and structural integrity. There were six elevator doors on either side of the place running from the entryway to the massive reception desk made of polished redwood. And there, to the right of the desk, was a red sign depicting a staircase with a down and up arrow.

Ember screeched a battle cry, then lunged forward. Willow didn’t try to count the zombies in the lobby, but there were a lot. It was by luck that the path between them and the stairs wasn’t crowded. Sunny’s rifle barked and blew the brains out the side of an infected mare’s head. Willow had to admit he was getting pretty good with his aim. She’d love to have him with the semi-automatic shotgun they left Appleoosa with.

Next thing she knew they were all on the move. Ember ran in the lead, strafing both sides with streams of fire that built them a somewhat effective wall of protection. Sunny picked off zombies with single shots from the rifle, proving very effective with his aim. Sunbathe walked just behind Ember, her working automatic firing in bursts. Willow used her hooves. A mare jumped through the wall of fire at the toothless orange mare and Willow met the zombie with a furious yell. She hit the mare like a tank and tackled her to the floor, smashing her esophagus with both forehooves before battering her face in.

The survivors gave her worried looks. Willow couldn’t blame them either.

They managed to reach the stairs without loss, though more than a couple of weapons had clicked on empty and the infected they were holding back were steadily creeping closer. Ember reached the steel emergency door first and yanked it open, ushering everypony else inside. Willow and Sunny were dead in the middle of the pack as they pushed into the tight stairwell and started up the concrete steps.

“Clear!” Sunbathe gasped, half-dragging a civilian into the stairwell. Ember jumped back in attempt to pull the door closed, but a red hoof lodged itself between the door and the frame. Ember struggled with the door for a second, then shook her head.

“Get clear!” The burnt mare sprang away from the door and chomped down on the bit of her flamethrower, pointing the nozzle at the doorframe. The nozzle hissed, then spat a small drizzle of fire, and that was it. Her eyes widened in horror as the red hoof wrenched the door open and a bulky stallion charged into the stairwell.

Willow was already at the top of the first flight by the time she realized what was happening. All she could do was yell as Ember backpedaled, then tripped over the first step leading up the stairwell and rolled like an overbalanced log onto her back at the base of the stairs. The red stallion’s eyes never left her as it charged.

Sunbathe lunged in from the side, seemingly from nowhere. Although the zombie stallion was twice her size, she still hit him with enough force to knock them both up against the wall. They both bounced off the wall and went to the floor. Ember scrambled to her hooves and took a short step forward before backing off again, eyes wide and scared.

Sunbathe and the infected pony resembled little more than a swirling mass as they sparred on the floor. Somewhere in the middle, Sunbathe lost her ground and wound up on her belly, the zombie above pinning her shoulders as it tried to steady her enough to make a lunge for her neck.

Willow yanked the pistol out of its holster on her foreleg, aimed down the sites right as the thing reared its head back, then tried to fire an empty chamber. She dropped the gun as her mouth fell open to scream.

Its jaws clamped down on the back of Sunbathe’s neck and the mare screamed like a terrified filly. She squirmed and writhed, chomping down on the bit of her battle saddle. One remaining riffle on her back chattered to life, ripping holes though the zombie’s neck. It screeched and pulled back, taking with it a good chunk of torn flesh.

Willow stared blankly down the stairwell as Sunbathe threw the dying, twitching zombie off her back and began to stagger up the stairs, crying, shaking her head as her uneven hoofsteps echoed around the small space.

“Thanks...” Ember said dumbly, offering her shoulder to Sunbathe. They traveled at the back of the group; Willow made sure to walk just ahead of them, that dull, empty feeling still filling her gut. Sunbathe’s blood drizzled down the silver leg of the firesuit in a thin line that trailed on the floor behind the two. The golden mare’s coat began to drain of its color, going a more sickly manilla.

They’d only managed to get halfway past the second floor when the sound of the door failing below echoed up the stairwell. Ember groaned as she limped up the stairs, almost fully supporting Sunbathe. Her injuries were getting to her it seemed. Willow stopped, readying to move back to help them.

“Stop!” Sunbathe choked She pulled away from Ember at the top of the second flight and staggered up against the wall. “Stop! Just go!”

Ember acted like she wanted to argue. “I... I’m sorry...” She swallowed and took a step away from Sunbathe. “T-thank you.”

Sunbathe nodded as she pushed herself away from the wall and eased towards where she could look down the stairs. “Go, now.”

Willow couldn’t bring herself to look back as she fell in behind Ember. The burnt mare wasn’t sobbing, but she looked close. her eyes were shiny and wet, tears right at the brink of falling as she made a choking sound in her throat. “It’s okay,” Willow said in a small voice, trying to comfort her friend.

A single gunshot echoed up the center of the stairs. Willow almost staggered. Then there was another, and another. Zombies screamed and howled, and soon those gunshots became small bursts of automatic fire. Even upon reaching the seventh flight, Willow still heard the ominous click of a firing pin striking air.

Sunbathe screamed. It was a terrible, blood curdling sound that sent shivers up Willow’s spine and forced her to fold her ears. Ember gave a dry sob. Sunbathe screamed again, and again... and again. It wasn’t until they hit the tenth floor were Sunbathe’s cries cut out. Her last scream was cut off with a gurgle, then the only sound was thundering hoofsteps.

Nopony deserved to go out like that. It was a hero’s death that ended with nothing but agony... It wasn’t right. No matter how much death she’d seen, Willow still couldn’t swallow the fact that the timid, golden mare with the long brown mane was laying six six stories below, most likely being torn limb-from-limb by those things.

Nopony deserved that.

Willow left Ember behind. With an internal growl, she put on as much speed as she could, forcing energy she barely had into moving her hooves. She passed the others, one by one, gritting her teeth as she charged. She wanted her body to quit, to fail, but it wouldn’t; it just kept going on. She lost track of what flight she was on, simply running. She blew past Sunny, and he yelled something to her that didn’t make it from her ears to her brain.

“We’re a minute past the deadline!” Candy yelled, starting to stagger. “Still... still no word on the... the radio.” She cursed breathlessly, then gave a buck that sent the radio tumbling down the stairs behind her before putting on an extra burst of speed.

Willow ran right past the number twelve on the wall and was halfway to the thirteenth floor before somepony yelled for her to come back. In somewhat of a daze, she turned and started to head back down. Strangely enough, it was harder to go down than up.

She ended up running beside Sunny as they poured out onto the fourth floor in a carpeted hallway lined with offices. There was nothing, no ponies living nor dead. The halls were just empty. Willow took it in stride. Empty was better than full of zombies.

“What kind of a... maniac!” Sunny panted. “Puts a train station twelve stories in the air?”

“The kind with a lot of money,” Willow panted back.

The hallway they were currently in broke off into something more along the lines of a plaza, a wide, domed hall that ran through the center of the building. Benches sat back-to-back down the middle length of it and colorful decorations had been painted on the tiles then glazed over.

The mare they’d picked up down at the lobby entrance, who so far was proving to be the most athletic of them all, rocketed around the corner, skidding on the tile out into the plaza, a gray stallion right on her tail. Suddenly, the chatter of a machinegun filled the cavernous space and Willow got a rather unpleasant sight of the mare’s guts blowing out. Her hooves slipped out from under her and she landed with a thud on her side. The stallion right behind her skidded to a stop and tried to turn back, but a single bullet struck him just above his left eye and his head snapped back. Down he went.

“Cease fire!” Candy hollered, sliding up to the corner and waving one hoof down the hall.

“Cease fire!” a mare yelled farther down the call. “Cease fire! They’re ponies!”

Willow stepped around the corner beside Candy with a grimmace. Those two had died for nothing. There were ten or so REA ponies lined up at the end of the plaza, a barrier of benches erected before them and the station platform behind that. A mare sat behind a machinegun, barrel smoking softly as she stared out ahead with a horrified expression.

“Where’s the train!?” Sunny yelled, hopping over the body of the mare and the spreading pool of blood. Willow followed, choosing to step around.

“It’s not here!” One of them yelled as they neared.

Willow’s mind jammed a cog somewhere “What do you mean it’s not here!?” She skidded to a stop at the barrier beside Sunny, eyes blazing.

“I mean it’s not here yet!”

Her mind didn’t quite seem to be registering the words spoken. “...Well then where in the name of Luna’s gaping asshole is it!?”

* * *

“Well then fix it!” Moon snapped at Loco

The flustered driver mashed the brake release with his forehoof, but it was already disengaged. “I’m tryin’!” He tapped the air pressure gauge, which was hovering at about four pounds. “We’ve got a break in the air line.”

Snowglobe practically tackled Moon out of the way to get at Loco. “Well can we fix it?”

Moon chewed her lip. They’d had to stop in order to throw another set of switches and manually override the gates. The brakes had engaged fine, but trying to release them was a whole different story.

Snowglobe and Loco had a rushed brainstorming moment that ended with them both nodding at the conclusion, then Loco dug under the console and pulled out a roll of duct tape a couple ring clamps.

“Cover us, Moon!” Snowglobe called behind her as she and Loco scrambled down the stairs in the nose of the cab.

Moon scrambled after them, levitating her shotgun and bringing it to bear as she reached the door at the bottom.

“Why would it break?” Snowglobe fretted as she ducked down low and peered under the engine as she walked. “It’s hardly even been run according to Dusty. Everything’s new!”

“Exactly,” Loco replied grimly. “Damn thing’s still teething it’s so new.”

There were a few zombie pegasi within shooting range, though they didn’t seem to be bothering anypony. Moon preferred to keep it that way as she strode to the front of the engine and sat back, scanning the tracks ahead. She looked to the nose of the engine and grimaced. The aluminum streamlining was crinkled and dented, smeared with dried blood and chunks of hide. “It probably wasn’t meant to be a zombie weed whacker either...”

Loco and Snowglobe had both disappeared, crawling underneath the engine. Moon sighed. They didn’t have time to wait.

“Well damn!” Loco’s muffled voice reached her from below the carriage. “There’s a dead pony tangled in the hoses. No wonder it ain’t workin’.” Moon jumped and spun as a gargled scream took over. She flipped the safety on the shotgun as Snowglobe’s eep of shock reached her ears. A throaty shotgun blast sounded from below the engine. “Shit... well it’s dead now!”

Cloudstorm hung her head from the window. “Come on! Every second we’re stopped here is another second we lose to our plan!”

It was only five minutes until the two finally emerged, though it might as well have been hours. Snowglobe and Loco pulled themselves out from under the engine, both looking rather content and a little dirtier than they’d been before.

From here their view of the Platinum Hoof was obscured, but she kept throwing glances to the spire that stuck out above the rest. Back up in the cab, everypony held their breath as the brakes disengaged and the engine began to roll forwards.

“Ten minutes late, ten minutes,” Cloudstorm was whispering frantically under her breath. “We’re cutting it too close!”

It wasn’t long until the open maw of the elevated station came into view and Loco let off the throttle.

Moon held her breath.

* * *

“Get me another magazine!” Sunny called over the roar of gunfire.

Willow threw him a tiny glance away from the scope of the carbine she’d taken from a dead officer. “Last one, Sunny!” She levitated the clip, ejecting the old one in Sunny’s rifle and slotting the new one.

For one brief second, Sunny closed his eyes. There were screams and shouts, orders mixed with cries of pain or fear. The air reeked of gunpowder so thick one could taste it by simply opening their mouth. His ears rung with the never-ending fire of at least thirty different weapons and the inequine screams of anger they brought. The purr of two light machine guns were the most prominent over it all, firing in short and precise bursts.

He’d never been in a warzone before, and now that he was, a sort of cold appreciation was all he could feel.

Sunny opened his eyes.

There were at least two to three hundred ponies on the platform. Out of that number he’d estimated only twenty of them to be REA, more unbelievably still was that there were hardly even enough weapons to distribute amongst the officers, let alone start arming civilians. Between them all, he counted fifteen rifles, ten pistols, one flamethrower, two light machine guns, and two snipers. Ammo was a whole different story.

The station platform was an excellent defense point; it was a wide, nearly three hundred foot long slate of polished marble tile with only one entrance: the fifty foot wide central plaza that ran all the way down the center of the twelfth floor and tied directly into the the center of the station platform at a ninety degree angle. The ponies in possession of firearms had lined up behind an impromptu barrier of benches and other bits of clutter gathered from the station.

The station was also a perfect place to get trapped.

Sunny aiamed as well as he could in the commotion. He tried to aim for the zombies other ponies weren’t already aiming for; it was useless to put a bullet in a zombie that was already falling. Every shot had to count, and hopefully they’d last out until the train arrived... if it was even coming.

Ember stood atop the barrier, spraying liquid death down upon anything within a twenty-five foot radius. Her presence and ring of fire was not just one of the few things keeping them from being overwhelmed, but it was a morale boost if anything to see the strong mare perched above them, fire glinting in the protective face shield of her helmet as she turned anything that moved into a four-legged torch.

Fighting all together like this, it just felt right. It wasn’t over a feud, or an argument, or any sort of resources. They were fighting for their right to live.

Sunny squeezed the bit in his mouth and nodded in slight confirmation as a silver mare’s head snapped back and she dropped. Her purple mane waved out around her for a second before settling on the bloody floor. Who had she been? Had she had kids? A husband?

He fired again and downed a stallion who looked old enough to be dead before the infection had even struck. Had he had grandkids? Maybe a wife or middle-aged kids who visited him on weekends?

Sunny gave his head a tiny little shake. Of all the times to get sentimental, now was not one of them.

Whenever he spotted a changeling, it became priority. From what he’d seen, changelings took zombie nastiness to a whole new level. It just plain didn’t seem fair.

“It’s not coming!” the yellow mare beside him yelled as she took aim with the light machine gun. Aiming with the handles, she pulled the trigger and fired a burst that cut down a whole line of infected charging from a doorway. “The train isn’t coming.” Again she fired, the stallion next to her feeding the belt. “The train isn’t coming.” She took a second to wipe the grime from her brow. “We’re dead!”

Nopony seemed to see the black creature that dived down from the roof until it’d tackled the mare back from the gun and clamped it’s fangs down into her face. The stallion beside her jumped away in shock and pulled a pistol from its holster. He emptied the entire clip into the changeling, the bullets going right through it’s scaly hide, through the mare, and pitting the marble below.

“There’s too many!” a burly stallion yelled as he backed away from the barrier. His carbine barrel was actually glowing.

“Gee, I had no idea!” a mare wearing some sort of flak jacket replied around the scope of her sniper rifle. “I thought we were going to invite more!”

“Somepony get that thirty back up!”

Sunny blinked. Nopony was taking over for the dead mare who’d been on the machine gun. “Got it!” he yelled, scampering over to the heavy weapon and heaving it back up onto the bench. A fragile-looking blue mare in REA barding skidded to a stop beside him and heaved the ammo container back upright. “I’ll feed you!”

Sunny took the two handles of the weapon in his forehooves skeptically and sighted it. Pulling the trigger, the thirty caliber bucked him like a mule and rattled his teeth. It fired off five bullets before the belt—which had been broken when the gun had fallen—ran out. Still, from those five bullets he counted seven kills, eyebrows rising a little. What had ponies ever had to use something like this for before the infection?

The little blue mare pulled open the breach and fitted the ammunition belt in the slot. She did something fast with her hooves that Sunny missed, then slammed her hoof down on the top of the gun. “Good to go!”

Sunny took careful aim and pulled the trigger. His entire body shook as he tried to keep the weapon in line, every bit of his strength keeping the barrel lined up. He let off and blinked through the plume of smoke at the trail he’d cut through the infected.

He did his best to strafe wherever the line was lacking most, beating back hordes of infected with the ear splitting chatter of the thirty caliber weapon. The blue mare sat dedicatedly beside him, feeding the belt through her hooves as Sunny spun the weapon this way and that. Once he got into it, started leaning into the shots, it really wasn’t all that bad apart from the headache.

“What’s your name!?”

He glanced over to see the mare looking at him with a curious eye. “Sunny Skies!” He looked back down the sites and pulled the trigger, clenching his teeth.

“Private Lance!” she returned once he’d let off the trigger. Her eyes looked him up and down, lingering for quite some time on the black saddle he wore. “...Where’d you get that saddle?”

“You mean the one I’m wearing!?” He yawned, ears popping painfully under the compression.

“Yeah!” The mare looked a little closer. “That’s a first edition combat saddle issued to high-ranking officers of the REA. They only ever made twenty of them!”

He’d never really thought about it, but now he was sure he’d never seen another saddle like his. The gun was starting to get hard to handle and he tried to go back to focussing on that. His teeth chattered it seemed even when he wasn’t shooting.

Lance seemed to hesitate. “Because that one was my father’s.”

Sunny’s heart skipped a couple of beats and he felt his mouth go dry.

“You came from Desert Sage, didn’t you?”

He nodded after a second. There were even more zombies in the hall now, too many to count. And the air around the barrel of the thirty cal was starting to shimmer.

“Is... is he dead?”

Sunny gave her a look. It was a look somewhere between pity and apology, and it said everything. He silently urged her not to ask how.

Lance averted her eyes. “I thought so...”

“It’s here!” Somepony cried. “I can see it coming!”

A few in the line broke away, and immediately the effect was clear as the somewhat meager distance between the barrier and seemingly never ending horde got a little shorter. “Stay in line!” Ember bellowed back at them, fire dripping down her front as it leaked from the nozzle. “Let the civilians board first! If we all run at once nopony’s gonna make it out of here!”

He could feel the heat radiating from the weapon in his grasp. The air shimmered from breach to barrel all around the weapon, yet there wasn’t time to stop and let it cool. As more clips ran dry, their defense seemed to be relying more and more on the two thirties strafing the hall. There was roughly twenty feet of no-pony’s land between the zombies and the barrier, but that distance seemed to be getting smaller by the second. From somewhere behind him, he heard the squeal of brakes.

“This gun’s gonna overheat!” he yelled to Lance.

The mare tossed a look around, then sighed and dug in her saddlebags and pulled out a pristine bottle of cider. She gave it a longing look, then smacked it on the edge of the gun and popped the cap off. Sunny watched the steam rise as she poured the apple-smelling liquid over the breach, then down the length of the barrel. He tasted apples in the air and the smell sent his mouth watering, but it did it’s job, at least for a moment.

As the seconds ticked on, Sunny found himself unable to even let off the trigger. His forelegs felt like jello and his ears rung. More than once he flinched as a smoking shell landed on his back or brushed up against his hoof. Every few seconds, their defense would crumble a little more. When ponies either got tired of standing and defending or ran out of ammunition, they’d back away and make for the train.

“Is there a damned zombie beacon in this station!?” Willow growled. “Hey, every zombie in Equestria, come to Platinum Hoof!” She’d used up her carbine and was now levitating two pistols which she fired in unison.

Ember was no longer being precise with her weapon. She sprayed fire out into the masses, forming a protective ring around herself as the infected actually threatened to pass her by. Sunny really hoped everypony was on the train, because at this rate, he gave their defense another twenty seconds.

“Sunny!” One of Willow’s pistols went dry and she hurled it out into the crowd. “We have to go!”

“Not yet!” Lance was looking at him worriedly. It looked like she was readying to bolt. There was gunfire somewhere behind him, and he realized that there were a lot of zombies falling from shots he couldn’t see. A glance back confirmed it. He didn’t catch how many, but a whole line of ponies in riot armor stood atop the train cars, firing down the hallway, over Sunny’s head as well. The thought was both pleasing and not.

A lucky zombie broke through what little defense remained and mounted the barrier Willow dropped it with the last round in her pistol.

Sunny couldn’t do much else but stare, hypnotized, down the smoking barrel of the thirty caliber. How many had he gunned down now? He couldn’t even count. Everywhere the weapon turned, anything in its path was ventilated, yet it still wasn’t enough. He could still hear the echo of the other thirty, but it came in bursts, slow fire. Before them, the bodies were actually starting to stack. They weren’t just littering the ground; they were stacking. He wouldn’t have ever believed it had he not been the one with his hoof on the trigger. Blood washed under the barrier and around his hooves like water just beginning to crest a dam, warm and pungent.

Two sharp blasts of a horn sounded behind him and a second later came the hiss of brakes disengaging. “All aboard!” somepony yelled in some sort of cruel irony. “Cash in your tickets for the long black train!” Well if that wasn’t a gloomy prospect.

“Sunny!” Willow smacked him atop the head with her forehoof.

The machine gun chose that moment to seize. The barrel melted down and the next bullet blew it apart in a wave of shrapnel that jerked the barrel up and rammed the two handles into Sunny’s chest. The slide tried to cram the next bullet in at an angle and the thirty caliber round jammed in the breach. All at once the powerful weapon went from an essential asset to scrap metal.

With nothing else to do, he turned and ran, Lance and Willow by his side. To his relief, and horror, he had been one of six ponies still trying to defend; the rest were cramming for the train cars, which were now beginning to creep out of the station. The other thirty cal had been abandoned by the crew, nothing remaining but spent casings and a smoking gun. With the loss of their last machine gun, the line crumbled, everyone still brave or stupid enough to hold their ground falling back. Ember hopped backwards off the barricade, then lit the entire row of benches aflame. The protective glass plating of her helmet had been cracked one way or another and the suit’s front had been blackened. Nonetheless, she took slow and precise steps backward, lighting up everything in front of her.

“Ember!” Sunny hollered, following Willow up onto the hoofplate between the second to last and last car. “Faster!” There was no doubt that the train was packed. There were so many ponies that some had actually climbed up onto the roof.

Everypony was on board as the train began to pick up speed, still moving no faster than a light trot. Ember was the only one still on the platform, and now Sunny could see she was moving as fast as she could while still laying down fire. She couldn’t simply just turn and run. The horde they had been holding off surged over the flaming barrier, going for the only pony still on the platform. Gunfire still sounded from above, the REA ponies unloading entire clips into the mass. It still didn’t help.

“Ember!” Willow yelled, hoof tapping wildly. Sunny made sure to stand just a little in front of her. Last thing he wanted was Willow charging out into that mess. With no ammo left in the weapon mounted to his saddle, nor the pistol on his foreleg, the most he could do was watch. She was only about fifteen feet from the train now, but she couldn’t just turn and run. She’d built herself a ten foot space bubble of fire that was rapidly shrinking. Were it not for the hotsuit she would have combusted from the swirling inferno.

Suddenly, Ember broke off. She hopped backwards, flamethrower still trailing slag as she reared up to make the run. Sunny almost expected it, really. At that moment, a zombie mare burst from the wall of fire, body completely ablaze as she landed square on Ember’s back. Ember jumped and tried to shake the zombie. Writhing, biting, it lunged and chomped down on a rubber hose running along Ember’s back. Flame blossomed from within the zombie’s mouth, then everything went up with a fwoosh. Flame licked across the platform and rose up into the air, swirling alongside the train.

Sunny closed his eyes as he felt the hair on his face begin to curl. He grit his teeth and sighed. Willow screamed Ember’s name, then slumped up against him.

He watched the fireball, shaking his head. He was getting so tired of the death. He’d only spent a few hours in the presence of the mare, but it’d felt like an eternity. It was hard to lose somepony you’d fought alongside.

Something moved within the dying inferno. Sunny’s eyes shot wide as pony stepped out of the flame, completely alight with fire that licked up their legs and body. The shape staggered forward, nothing but a ball of fire with legs and a head. “Willow!” Sunny yelled. “It’s her!”

The train was just rolling past as Willow stared open-mouthed at the flaming mare. A second later she took flight for the back of the train. Anypony unlucky enough to be in the aisle was tossed as Willow steamrolled past. Sunny followed in her wake, making hasty apologies.

When they reached the back of the train, Ember was running, still on fire, though Sunny could see parts of the suit poking through where the kerosene had burned away. The only issue was that she was running out of platform and the train was speeding up. Sunny waved frantically as Ember neared, reaching over the rail to hold out a hoof. She was right there, now at full gallop as they raced out of the station. The horde hadn’t given up either. It seemed as if all of the forces in Equestria had conspired to keep Ember off the train.

“Come on!” Willow yelled as she pounded the railing. She wrapped one hoof around Sunny’s waist. “You grab her I pull.”

Ember lunged and missed, falling back a stride or two. Sunny tensed. As cliche as it felt, there was only enough platform left for one more try, after that Ember would be meeting a very decorative wall. Ember lunged, and her hoof met Sunny’s with the smell of burning hair and the sizzle of flesh. Sunny screamed as he tried to pull Ember aboard. He’d forgotten about his injured leg, and he certainly remembered it now.

Willow heaved and yanked him back, and for one horrifying second, Sunny was sure he’d lost his grip. This wasn’t the case however as a silver fireball knocked him to the ground. He squirmed out from below Ember and beat away the fire that had lit on his belly.

Ember rolled onto her back and shook the helmet off with a deep gasp of air. The respirator had completely melted, along with the faceplate. The brown mare writhed and whimpered on the floor as her suit all but melted to the steel hoofplate below. The helmet tumbled away off the back of the train. “Get this suit off me!” Her eyes were glazed and her voice was parched, but overall she seemed okay.

Ignoring the dying flames, Sunny and Willow helped her drag her body out of the melted suit. Immediately, the smell of sweat and charred fur hit Sunny like a train and he almost staggered.

Ember groaned and staggered to her hooves, eyes watering. Sunny glanced over at her; she was....

Sunny balked. Ember had the shape of a mare he’d only seen in magazines. Vicious burns and scars covered most of her right side, if that even mattered... She had broad, strong front shoulders that led down to muscular forelegs. She was one step above toned, muscle visible under her flesh but in no way obnoxious. Her breast was firm, and like the rest of her, one, tiny step above toned. The way her belly curved drew his eye to her lithe midsection and muscular haunches. His eyes continued all the way down her back legs to her rear hooves. And all of this was in a mare that stood three inches shorter than he.

Willow tapped the side of his head with a forehoof. “I know Sunny, but you really need to show a touch of subtlety.” She reached up and closed his jaw for him. “You’re drooling.”

That snapped him out of it. he sputtered at Willow for a second. He was lucky Ember’s eyes were still too glazed to really see anything. “Water,” she rasped. “Water... now.” She shook her head and let out a crackly laugh. “I can’t believe I did that!” She perked her left ear and the remnants of her right ear kind of flicked a little. “That was so awesome! Dear Luna I thought I was dead...”

Sunny pulled his eyes away from Ember and watched off the back of the train as they left the Platinum Hoof behind. “Pretty soon, we’re just going to run out of luck.”

Willow sighed and propped herself on the railing beside him. She nodded and closed her eyes.

Chapter 18 A Bigger Picture

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Black Dove chewed the tip of her wing in thought as she watched the clouds race by below.

“Five minutes until touchdown, Marshal.” A gray stallion watched her from the partition door of the skywagon like he wanted some sort of recognition for interrupting her. She showed that recognition with an angry glance away from the window that made the stallion bow and close the door.

Dove sighed. She’d received a request from the Fleet Admiral himself three days ago, stating that her presence was required aboard the Celestia as soon as possible. And as if sending her Colonel wasn’t enough, the second transmission made it clear that the matter was urgent and she was needed in the very flesh.

“Sure,” she muttered under her breath. “Whatever’s convenient for you, Admiral. It’s not as if I have important matters at my own hooves here.” Time was short, and this trip was costing her. Baltimare was currently on the brink of being completely overwhelmed, and the worst part of it was that she couldn’t do a single damned thing to help them. Baltimare needed reinforcements; hell, it needed an entire army! But she didn’t have an army; she had what was left of one. And now, because she couldn’t do anything about it, there was a good chance that they would lose control of the only civilian-safe stronghold under REA jurisdiction; not only would it be a terrible loss, but the REA would also lose their recruiting grounds and any credibility as a civilian safeguard.

In the southwest, she had units defecting and there wasn’t a single thing that could be done about it without sending more ponies out there and risking the same downfall. Because of reports and heresay that ponies claiming REA jurisdiction were enslaving and raping whomever they pleased, wearing the uniform anywhere out west was a no-go. Everything was going downhill all at once, and it didn’t look good.

Scouting teams she’d sent to Las Pegasus still didn’t return, Canterlot was a complete loss, long given up despite its geological strongpoint, and to top it all off, pegasus ponies were becoming harder and harder to come by. Just gathering four to pull the wagon had taken plenty of leg-tweaking—something the Celestia-damned Army marshal should never have to do.

The skywagon dropped through the cloud layer as the pulling team began their descent. Vast, blue ocean spanned out beneath, the green shoreline far behind. From the gray smudge on the horizon that was Baltimare, black smoke rose like a distress signal she couldn’t answer.

Dove held on to the handle that dangled just below the window as they banked around for the line-up. Five ships floated gracefully in the still waters below, steam trickling from the stacks of the immobile vessels. “Oh look at me!” she mimicked in a pseudo, gritty stallion’s voice. “I’m Admiral Striker, and I’m important because I have a battleship!” She huffed and rolled her eyes. Four gunships surrounded a much larger vessel with a long deck across the top for landing and storing skywagons. “...I wish I had a battleship,” Dove muttered sourly.

The flight crew she’d managed to cobble together wouldn’t even be trusted to haul a wagon of feather dusters ten feet, let alone land safely upon the deck of a floating vessel. Dove held on for dear life as the skids hit the deck with enough force to knock her against the wall.

The landing proved one step away from the word crash. Dove staggered to the door, feeling a little rattled. Not waiting for it to be opened for her, as regulation stated, she butted it open and hopped down to the deck. Sighing, she flared her wings and took a moment to enjoy the cool ocean breeze as it ruffled her feathers. The enjoyment was short-lived however. Quickly, she folded her wings and brushed her white mane out of her eyes. She smoothed down a few rough patches on her graphite-colored coat, then righted her uniform. Striker still held on to the old ways, and last thing she wanted was him doing something stupid like trying to accuse her of improper etiquette. If avoidable, she always avoided wearing her uniform in general. The REA gray was just not meant to be worn over a black coat. The two colors clashed like crazy.

“Marshal!” A pony broke out of the gathering crowd and Dove recognized him immediately.

“Colonel Graham,” she returned formally, trotting forward to meet him. Sure the graham crackers on his flanks looked tasty, but he was anything but. “There better be a good reason for this.” Two armed guards took up position on either side of them, and Dove speculated whether they were there to protect her or to keep her in line. Knowing Striker, they were probably for the latter.

“I can assure you, Marshal, there is.” He motioned with his tail. “Admiral Striker is waiting below deck.” Graham acted like he wanted to lead, but a shooty look from one of their escorts forced him back to stand beside Dove.

A stallion led the way as Dove and Graham followed a little behind, two more taking up the rear. It was thoroughly aggravating getting stares from the staff and crew of the vessel as they navigated the corridors. Here, out of her jurisdiction, she might as well be a civilian. Somewhere from down a hall, she heard a wolf whistle that prickled the hair along her spine. If that had been one of her officers, he would be strung up by his hind legs and gelded.

Her escorts seemed to be taking amusement in her visible anger as well.

“Marshal... don’t start anything,” Graham whispered. “Striker’s word is law. He could kill us both now if he wanted to and nopony would do a damned thing about it.”

She glared at him, but nodded. Of course, Graham was right; she just didn’t like being told things she already knew.

“Marshal?” he said suddenly.

She groaned. “Yes?”

“Remember that forward message from Bottle of Progress about that pegasus stallion with full immunity?”

Dove’s ears perked. Maybe she would actually receive some good news for once. “Go on.”

“He’s been confirmed missing, probably dead. Apparently the location he was set to be transferred to was smack dab in ground zero.”

Hope shattered. “Well keep looking for him. Send out a radio transmission as soon as you can calling for an eyes out. If he’s found, I want him brought straight to me. No detours, no testing. Straight. To. Me. Understood?”

Graham nodded, but he wore the same look she did. Somewhere in the back of Dove’s mind, her sarcastic inner-self snorted in contempt. Heh, keep dreaming. They’ll find him. They’ll find him just like they found your husband and two foals who never passed the infection check.

“Shut up,” she hissed to herself.

The escorts led them around a corner and through a series of tight corridors that made the pegasus part of Dove rather uncomfortable. Eventually, they emerged into a large, domed room with a circular map that took up at least half of the space in the very center.

“The admiral is just inside,” said one of the stallions, nodding to a wooden door on the other side of the room. He took a step back, then motioned for the other two to do the same. The doors closed a moment later, leaving Dove and Graham alone.

“What’s this about?” Dove asked quietly as they paced their way around the giant map.

Graham shook his head. “Something important; that’s all I could get out of him.”

Reaching the door, Dove sat back and flared her wings. They were large, heavy things—a real mess to preen on her own. She flattened a few feathers, then folded them down against her uniform. Lastly, she adjusted her collar, then turned to Graham. “Well, how do I look?”

“Graham bit his lip for a second. “Permission to be truthful, Marshal?”

She cocked a brow. “...Permission granted.”

“Like you could use a break.”

Dove actually grinned. It was a fragile grin, but a grin nonetheless. She took a deep breath, then pushed open the door.

Admiral Striker sat behind his desk, staring off into space. Honestly, Dove was surprised he wasn’t salivating over a bottled ship collection or something just as cliché. His dull, blue-gray coat and his gray mane reflected his age better than any number, that, and the gray lining his chiseled muzzle. A single desk lamp lit his features, the rest of the room remaining in darkness. Whether he did this for effect, or if he was just trying to save power, she wasn’t quite sure. Her ears flicked as Graham shut the door behind them.

Slowly, Striker lifted his head from the desk and forced a casual smile. “I was starting to think you’ve been avoiding me, Dove.” Like his appearance, his voice hinted at his age. It was low, slightly raspy, but in no way had it lost its power or authoritative tone that could have made anypony wary to cross him. Striker had always been an amazing public speaker.

“Admiral,” she said with a tiny hint of annoyance. “You’ve been in service longer than I’ve been alive; it’s not very easy to forget you.” Dove helped herself to the only seat opposite of Striker, leaving Graham to stand back by the door.

Admiral Striker chuckled and leaned forward against the desk. “And somehow in this last year things all went to the drink.” He sighed, and for a second he was just an old stallion. “You know, I was going to retire today. I had it all planned out and everything. The quiet life. Now without the Princesses, I’m head honcho.”

She deadpanned. “So what does that make me?”

He smirked. “The other head honcho.”

Dove shook her head. “Right... Any word yet?”

Striker slowly blinked. “We have learned nothing new. Her last known location was traced back to Horizon Laboratories, but beyond that, we simply do not know.”

Dove groaned. “Okay, but what of Luna?”

“She is still unresponsive. Brainwaves are flat—a side effect of The Pulse. It seems we cannot awaken her without killing her.”

Dove grit her teeth. “How could anypony let this happen?”

Striker’s eyes flashed. “Foolish ambition. The correct safeguards were not established. They were meddling with magic beyond understanding, magic that possibly was never meant to be understood. It was foolish and dangerous, and nopony was willing to put their hoof down and halt such progress.”

“But The Pulse? How could—”

“It was overlooked, Marshal. A discharge of unbalanced energy, or bad magic, or whatever they tried to say it was. Out of everything in this land, magic is the most powerful, and in turn, the least understood. Even Starswirl himself only skimmed the surface. Tampering with something so powerful, and so sacred, had nothing but ill effects in store.” He fired a tiny, silver spark from the end of his horn. “There is magic in the mind, in us, in our blood. And like water, it can be polluted... if only they’d realized it...”

Dove stomped a hoof. “But if somepony had known what they were doing, somepony like—”

“They would have encouraged it!” Striker interjected sharply. He stared off into space. “Just imagine... imagine the ability to use magic to preserve the body and mind, forever, just like the princesses. For as long as anypony can remember, they have ruled Equestria, strong and mighty! It would have been the greatest breakthrough in the history of ponykind... Just think... to never have to die. So much has been lost in death, knowledge and skill we can never get back. if Starswirl The Bearded were alive today, this could have all been avoided! Death is a terrible, terrible thing, that robs us all of everything we’ll ever have... just imagine if we could stop it... What if we never had to say goodbye?”

Dove swallowed. There was something in the Admiral’s eyes. He was no longer sitting in this dark room with her. He was somewhere else, his eyes glinting dangerously with outlandish ambition. “Sir... Admiral, Sir... Did you kn—”

“This is not why I requested your presence!” he snapped suddenly, jerking back to reality.

Dove stared for a moment more. Had they been in the presence of her own forces, she would have pressed, but she wasn’t safe here and it definitely wasn’t the time. “Why am I here, Admiral?”

Striker sighed. “You are familiar with the Elements of Harmony?”

She nodded. “Of course. Remember, I’m the one that proposed to you that we try to—”

“I am aware.” Dove sat brooding as he continued. She was getting tired of being cut off. “Well then, as we both know, the bearers, are still very much alive. Much like the princesses, they do not age; part of their magical bond with the Elements prohibits it.” He sighed. “To the point... The bearers have been lost. Not killed, but lost.”

Dove scoffed. “How in the name of Celestia do you just lose six ponies?”

“Quite easily.” His tone grew bitter. “You bury them.”

“E-excuse me... Sir?”

A projector flashed to life in the corner of the room and Dove jumped with a soft gasp. On the opposite wall, a sharp image of Canterlot appeared, though the map was only a line-art representation that slowly rotated on a three-dimensional scale. The city, covering a great deal of the mountain and the land below it, was a sight to behold, even in animated representation. “Celestia wanted to ensure the absolute safety of the Elements. And to do that, three-hundred zebra workers were blindfolded and transported to the palace, in secret I might add, to build th...” Suddenly, Striker hit a button and the projector died. “Marshal, what I am about to tell you does not leave this room, understood?”

Dove ran her tongue over the roof of her mouth, hating the way it felt like sandpaper. “Understood, Sir.” Behind her, the door cracked open and Graham was ordered out of the room.

“Right.” Striker brought the projection back up. “Deep within the base of the mountain, a vault was constructed.” A yellow rectangle appeared within the representation of the mountain. “There is one entrance: a twenty-five hundred foot access tunnel driving vertically through the mountain from somewhere within the royal palace.” Dove’s jaw hung open as a yellow line drew itself from the top of the mountain all the way down to the shape in the middle. “Two griffon-crafted, five foot steel doors guard either end of the tunnel, enchanted by Equestria’s greatest spellcasters to be unalterable, and unbreakable. There is only one way to open those doors, and it’s with a spell—a spell only one pony knows.”

Dove’s heart seemed to go sluggish. “...Celestia.”

“Bingo.” The tunnel flashed red in the projection. “Now, it is strong belief, that the Elements, and a number of Equestria’s aristocracy along with a handful of VIPs, were sealed within the mountain before the Army lost control of Canterlot. There has been speculation that Celestia is in there with them.”

“Is it possible...” Dove speculated. “Is it possible that Celestia is simply waiting to re-open the vault once things are safe?” The very thought disgusted her, but at the same time it seemed logical.

“If that is the case, then it is a cowardly thing to do. But that doesn’t matter. What it comes down to is that we can’t get in, and we don’t even know what’s in there. Even if we could infiltrate the city, which, thanks to failure of your Army, is now impossible—”

“Hey!”

“—we still can not get into the vault.”

Throughout the entire conversation, Dove had felt her irritation steady rising. “Okay, okay, answer me this.” She waved her forehooves towards the projection. “Why was I never informed of this!?”

“Simple. You didn’t need to know.”

“What do you mean I didn’t need to know!?” She thumped the desk with a forehoof. “We can fix all of this if—”

“No, Marshal,” Strider interrupted, yet again.

Dove ignored him and went on. “We can fix all of this with the bearers. We can end this!”

“No, Marshal!” Striker bared his yellowed teeth.

“We can find a way to open the vault! Get into the—”

“The vault doesn’t matter!”

“But—”

“Even if we had the Elements, and the bearers of them, it wouldn’t work!” He growled quietly as Dove fell into shocked silence. “This is magic we’ve never seen before.” He hit a few buttons on his desk and the projector switched to an image of a basic unicorn. “There are all different types of magic: unicorn is the most understood, but then there’s earth pony magic, pegasus, zebra, griffon, changeling, unique traces found within the crystal heart.” An image of each flashed on the screen as he spoke them aloud. “All different types of magic, but they all stem from the same basic root.” He rubbed his temples as if the subject was stressful for him. “Every living being has magic contained within them. It’s in our brains, in our blood! And it’s a little bit different for everypony. We have come to understand nearly everything in our existence... everything but the very essence inside our own bodies.”

Dove chewed her lip. “Is there a point to all this?”

Striker glared. “I’m getting there.” He took a moment to compose himself. “Whatever was done... whatever caused The Pulse, it destabilized... something. It altered the magic within us, or at least the ponies in range.” He propped himself on the desk. “Have you ever wondered why the disease is transferred from pony to pony through physical contact? It’s because of the magic in their blood! Whatever it is, it’s tainting them, and it spreads and consumes whatever life magic it comes into contact with. My scientists have come to believe that this is a self-defense mechanism.”

“Self defense?”

“It is what we believe.” He tapped his button and the outline of a brain appeared, the entirety of it colored different shades of blue, though purple vein-looking things ran all through it. “Red represents blood flow, blue represents magic. These are two different scans of the same brain, one taken to detect blood flow, and the other to detect magical energy. Don’t ask me how it was done, because I don’t know. But this is exactly how the normal pony brain should look.” He pointed towards the cluster of dark blue. “As you can see here, magic is in the mind, making it more than just a saying. These are all new studies, but from what my best unicorns have devised, the brain is every pony’s source of magic, or so it seems. And because it’s in the brain...” He waved his hoof at Dove.

“It... transfers to the bloodstream?” Dove suggested meekly.

“My point exactly.” Striker clicked the button again. “This is the same brain after being exposed to the virus for a time of no more than three days.”

It was the same picture, only there was hardly any blue in it. The red veins still remained, having never altered, but what little blue remained hovered in little patches and wisps. “Notice anything, Marshal?”

Dove bit her lip. “What does gray mean?”

“Gray’s nothing. It’s just to represent flesh and bone to give you a better picture.”

“Where’s the magic?”

“I don’t know, you tell me.” Striker huffed. “Our initial thought was that the virus destroyed magic. But how? Magic is energy, which can never fade or be destroyed...” He looked up to her.

Dove’s ears were perked straight up. “...but it can change form.” She could barely hear her own voice.

“So, we ran another scan on a lower frequency.” Striker reached for the button, hesitated, then hit it.

Dove gulped. “What’s yellow mean?”

Striker eyed the image with contempt. “We don’t know.” He killed the projection, hiding the picture of the yellow, blotchy brain. “It’s something we’ve never seen before. It’s never been mentioned, documented, or discovered. But what we know, is that it’s invasive. When exposed to what we know as normal magic, it wins.”

“Wins?” Something about didn’t sound good.

Striker nodded. “To simplify things, yellow and blue don’t get along with one another. When exposed, they battle. And ninety-nine-point-eight percent of the time, yellow wins.”

Dove thought back to the orange pegasus that Bottle of Progress had contacted her about. “So, that makes the other point-two percent immune?”

Striker shook his head. “Again, we aren’t sure.” Suddenly, he ducked down under his desk and came up with a small, metal case. “If you ever speak of what I’m about to show you, I will have you killed.”

Dove blinked. “E-excuse me, Admir—”

“You heard me!” he snapped, slipping the latches on either side of the box. Dove watched in perfect attention as Striker lifted the lid and carefully extracted a vial of electric-blue liquid. “This, is a bonding agent. It was made by extracting magic from the blood of a pony that falls under the point-two percent anomaly. It’s a magic-bearing slurry designed by Equestria’ finest to stabilize magical energy.”

Dove could feel her mouth going dry again. “...So what does it do?”

“It builds us an army.” Striker returned the vial to the case. “In that vial is magic stronger than anypony knows. When that magic is mixed with the tainted magic that we find in the brain of the infected, then injected into a living host, we get a hybrid of both.” His voice was starting to get a little zealous again. “Imagine a pony fully immune to sickness and disease, but with all the strength and speed of an infected pony! We could have an army with superpony strength. We could—”

Dove stomped her hoof. “How can you be thinking of weaponizing this!?” she snapped. “Don’t you see this could be used for a cure!? If the blood of those who show resistance can be used to... bond—” The word tasted sour on her tongue. “—ponies with the infection, it can be manipulated to cleanse the infection completely!”

“It can not, Marshal! And even if it could, chances are we’d only be bringing back a vegetable. We’ve no idea if the infected hold onto their memories after they turn.”

“But what if they do!?”

Striker boiled over, both forehooves slamming on the desk so hard that the lamp shook. “It doesn’t matter!”

Dove staggered back from the table. “Matter!?” she spat. “How can you risk so many, just to make a weapon!? We need a way to end this, not kill each other better! We actually have a chance to end this and you want to turn ponies into weapons!? You want to give them the virus!?” She staggered on her next few words. “You’ve gone senile!”

“You are ill informed, Marshal. This will help us end this!” Striker’s voice was low, and now, instead of anger, there was nothing in his eyes but cool intimidation. “Maybe you need some time to think.” The door behind her burst open and two guards trotted in. “We’ll speak of this later.”

Dove wasn’t quite sure what she felt in her gut as she was escorted from the room. Her entire body tingled like she’d been swimming in icy water, and the cold, churning feeling in her gut made her want to keel over. Why had Striker even called upon her presence? Was it because he wanted her help? Because if so then he could forget it.

Bonding ponies with the virus to create super soldiers, or whatever Striker wanted them to be? Nothing about that sounded good.

She shivered. What would something like that do to a pony?

* * *

It was raining, though that put it nicely. Along with the rain came gale-force winds and hail the size of marbles. Moon sat against the wall in the back of the cab, watching Snowglobe gripe and wince at the clatter the hail made on the aluminum streamlining.

“The side of this engine’s going to look like a beach when this is over,” she grumbled.

Loco huffed and rolled his cigar to the corner of his mouth to talk. He’d chosen cherry-scented for the drive back. “It don’t matter how she looks. All that matters is how she performs. So what’s a few dents in an otherwise perfect body?”

Snowglobe gave him an exasperated, open-mouthed look. “You know, I can never tell if you’re talking about mares or trains.”

Loco just chuckled and blew a smoke ring at Snowglobe, who destroyed it with her forehoof.

As hard as Moon tried to find something to wallow about, nothing came to mind. Their plan had gone perfectly. They’d arrived at the station just in the nick of time, gotten everypony on board, and made it out in one piece. No mass number of ponies died, nothing blew up, nothing went wrong... It was too perfect.

So why didn’t she feel good?

It really didn’t feel like a victory. It felt just like leaving Appleoosa. There was relief, but that was about it. Moon’s hoof drifted up and pulled the band from her head, the one that Sage had given her as a sign of leadership. One hell of a leader she’d been. They were all dead now apart from a select few.

Moon hissed and went to toss the headband, but she couldn’t. Gritting her teeth, she looked at it for a long while, then slipped it back onto her head, hiding most of it with her mane. It was a reminder now. It represented her failure. She couldn’t just throw it away.

She was jolted back into things when the hiss of the airbrake filled the cabin. “Why’re we stopping?” She forced herself to her hooves. “We can’t be back to the station yet.”

Loco grunted. “That’s cause we’re not.”

Cloudstorm was nice enough to clarify. “Our lines have fallen back. The location you entered the city has been abandoned. All the civilians are being ordered to the docks.”

Moon blinked. “So... the ponies we left at the station will be here?” Her mind drifted to ponies like Range and Yew, that pink mare with her foal and Copper.

“They’ll be here, somewhere.”

The engine passed through a switching yard. Floodlights on either side of the tracks lit up anything and everything in the storm-induced darkness, REA ponies and civilians alike trotting this way and that as they tried to shelter from the weather. There were cheers and jeers directed at the engine, which Loco took in stride, blowing the horn a few times.

“This storm’s gonna be bad,” Cloudstorm muttered.

“Bad?” Moon raised an eyebrow as the hail all but put holes in the windscreen. “Isn’t this already bad?”

“This is nothing. Without pegasi controlling the weather, coastal cities get hit by the blunt of these storms when the clouds go rampant. We already got hit by one of these a month ago. I swear, the zombies even hid from it.”

A station was coming into view now, though the engine was at a crawl to allow ponies adequate time to clear the tracks. Countless REA ponies stood on the platform ahead, directing the masses towards a set of gates on the opposite side. Beyond the gates was a shipping yard and rows of monstrous warehouses that looked like they were meant to drydock battleships. Moon could see defenses being erected right before her very eyes. Steam shovels and unicorns were stacking slabs of concrete in place and rolling out chainlink fence, a small crew laying razorwire right behind them.

“Turn on the radio,” Cloudstorm commanded suddenly.

Loco did so, and immediately a whole babble of voices erupted from the console. Cloudstorm only shook her head. “Enter the code.” The stallion nodded and hit a few buttons, then cranked the knob around. A second later most of the chatter died out to be replaced by static.

“Marshal, do you copy? This is Colonel Waffles and I can’t make a move until I get your word.”

Cloudstorm snickered. “Waffles. I never could take him seriously. What sort of a parent names their foal ‘Waffles’?” She laughed a second more, then cleared her throat and wiped the grin off her face.

There was a sudden rush of static from the radio, accompanied by the faint voice of a mare. “Colonel, I don’t like that worry in your voice. What’s the situation?”

“Ma’am, an estimated sixty-two percent of the city has been compromised. The area to cover is too large for our forces to handle!”

“Well what is—” There was a crash and a grunt from over the airways. “Shit, watch it!” the mare’s voice cut out for a moment before fading back. “Sorry Colonel. We’re caught in one mother of a storm.”

“Marshal, if we want to have anything left we need to pull out and give up the city. If we try to defend any longer our forces will be scattered.”

It took the mare a full minute to reply, that time in which Moon was starting to think she had lost radio contact. “Fall back to retreat. Begin the evacuations—civilians first.”

“Yes... Marshal.”

The transmission ended.

“Shit,” Loco muttered. “Didn’t think it’d actually happen.” The engine screeched to a stop in the station. It was a dead end, stopping at a pair of buffers. “Well, this is where we get off.”

Snowglobe gave Loco a hard glare. “Well, what about our engine?”

Moon had to agree. “Er, yeah, we came here with it. We’d like to leave with it.”

Cloudstorm shook her head as she looked between Moon and Snowglobe. “The entire city’s being abandoned as we speak. You heard the order yourself. We’re closing up shop and locking the doors behind us, shutting down all our power. If you try heading back, you’ll get swarmed, and even if you make it to the gates, you won't be able to get them open.”

It took a moment for the overwhelming feeling of irritation to pass through Moon.

Snowglobe seemed to go blank. She stood stock still and Moon made a worried face at the mare. “Snowglobe... you okay?”

The little mare’s eyes were red, teeth clenched as she turned to face Moon. “This is all your fault!” she bellowed, causing everypony in the cabin to jump.

Moon dodged to the side with a surprised yelp as Snowglobe charged her.

“Dusty died so we could get to this engine!” Snowglobe lowered her horn and fired a spell at Moon. Not eager to find out what it was, Moon ducked to the side, and it was a good thing too. The ball of green magic whizzed right past her ear and blasted a football-sized chunk of metal out of the wall behind her.

“And now we’re going to lose it because you couldn’t keep your stupid mouth shut!” Cloudstorm tried to get a grip on Snowglobe as the mare charged moon, but the little unicorn wiggled out of the other’s grasp and barreled directly at Moon.

Without thinking, Moon levitated the fire extinguished from the wall behind her and swung it around. It sounded almost cartoonish, like a cooking pot being swung into somepony’s face. Snowglobe’s head snapped to the side and she hit the floor with a thud.

“What in Celestia’s name is wrong with you!?” Moon hollered, tossing the extinguisher away. “Dusty died because he got bit! It’s time you stopped crying about him; the rest of us have!”

Snowglobe turned her head to look up at Moon, her eyes a mixture of hurt and hate. A sharp cut adorned her brow, the same shape as the base of the fire extinguisher. Moon was sure she was going to hop back up, but to her surprise Snowglobe just curled up and sobbed.

Brick glared at Moon. What’s wrong with you? his eyes seemed to say, before he stopped down and gave Snowglobe’s side a soft nuzzle.

“I—” Moon stammered. “I... but she— I was angry and—”

“Shit happens.” Loco cut her off with a shake of his head and disconcerned snort.

Snowglobe sobbed openly, and the worst part was that Moon knew that cry. It was the cry of a lost pony. She’d heard too much of it. “Make it end,” she choked between breaths. “I can’t take it anymore!”

Moon shook her head as she looked down at the little mare curled against Brick. “This isn’t going to end.” She winced a little. Snowglobe’s left eye had burst a blood vessel and lines of red were snaking towards her pupil. She’d swung harder than intended. “We should head for the gates.” Now, if any, was a good time to change the topic.

Cloudstorm nodded, started to get up, then took a glance out the window and shook her head. “Wait until the train empties out a bit. This is basically the equivalent to a back door, and I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t want to stand in the rain. Give it five more minutes. Right now, with so many ponies, you guys could get separated at the checkpoint.”

“Wait, they’re checking for infection?” Moon asked with a little start. “That’ll take way too long!” She recalled Cloudstorm’s inspection just a few hours ago.

“Nah, they’ve got scanners.”

“Scanners? I didn’t think there was a way to check.”

The sergeant actually grinned a little. “There wasn’t until about a week ago. Then some scientist hiding out on a boat with the rest of the Navy came up with this crazy hard spell that almost no unicorn could pull off, but it could tell if a pony was infected. So the ponies that could do the spell enchanted hundreds of inventory scanners with modified circuits that let you scan the eyeball... or something like that. Anyways, don’t know how it really works, but I know it works. Damn thing’s a lifesaver.”

* * *

Willow was leaning on him, and for once, his mind wasn’t ringing any alarm bells. Her head resting on his shoulder didn’t burn like it should have. It just felt warm.

It was raining cats and dogs outside, and although the train had reached the station and everypony was heading out onto the platform, Willow had refused to go out and stand in the rain. Now, since the train had mostly emptied, they’d been left with their own booth.

Ember was the one who broke the silence. “So... are you two like...” She pointed one hoof at Sunny, and the other at Willow, then tapped them together with a little smirk.

“No,” said Sunny.

“Yes,” said Willow.

The two gave each other surprised looks.

“Yes,” said Sunny, a little bit sarcastically, right as Willow said no.

Ember smirked at the two of them. “It’s complicated?”

Willow huffed. “You could say that.” She flicked Sunny with her tail and he jumped, his face going a soft shade of crimson. How’d she known he’d been staring at Ember’s flank? Right now the mare was lying with the burnt side facing away from them, and it was a pretty good sight. She had a cutie mark of a flint stone and a strip of corrugated steel, a whole cluster of sparks darting out from one side as if she stone was in the process of being struck.

Sunny realized Willow’s eyes were on him, and he turned to meet them with a curious look. Her eyes... something wasn’t right with them. It wasn’t the fact that they were glowing; it was the fact that they shimmered. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it.

“Willow?” he asked softly, noting the fact that Ember was watching.

“Nothing,” she said in a choked voice. Turning away, she exhaled a shaky breath. “Excuse me for a moment, please.” With a grunt, she pushed to her hooves, and much to Sunny’s surprise, didn’t kick anything. She nudged open the door to the room they were in and turned left into the narrow hall against the wall of the carriage.

“Damnit.” Sunny closed his eyes and sighed. The situation just wasn’t fair. He couldn’t make a choice. He’d always been indecisive. It would take hours just to decide on what to eat sometimes. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to handle the situation, but it was that he didn’t know how to. Willow was, to put it simply, great. But so were his friends, so was Moon.

“What’s the issue?” Ember asked quietly.

Sunny’s ears perked and he opened his eyes, wondering if Willow was listening outside the door. Something told him she wasn’t. “She... really likes me,” he said with an awkward shift of his haunches.

Ember looked genuinely surprised. “Willow... you? I’m not trying to bash you or anything, but you really just don’t seem like her type.” Her eyes confirmed this with a quick look up and down his body. “Like, at all.”

“I know... it’s weird. It’s a long story, but I’ve saved her life before... and she’s saved mine more times than I can count now.”

“Well, do you like her?”

His words stuck in his mouth. He thought for a moment, then slowly opened his mouth. “Yes.”

“Then what’s the issue?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Really?”

Ember’s adopted tone stirred up an uncomfortable feeling in his gut. “Yes, it is,” he said crossly.

“Well then explain it.” She turned towards him and crossed her forehooves, laying her head on them like a foal preparing for a good story.

“It’s complicated,” he repeated dumbly as he attempted to glue together a quick brief in his head, something that wasn’t too revealing. “You see... there’s this other mare who really likes me. Her name’s Moon.”

Ember grinned, a tiny line in her features. “And do you like her.”

Sunny grit his teeth. “Yes. B-but not in that way,” he added hurriedly. “I mean, maybe a little, but I’m not quite sure where I’m standing there. I’m just worried about hurting her, both of them really. I can’t just choose, and if I don’t do anything, then I leave them both hanging... I really don’t see any way to win.”

Ember nodded slowly. “Well, you’re right. There’s no way to win. You’ve just gotta make a choice, Sunny. I know this sounds cheesy and cliche, but you just have to follow your heart. But its just going to eat you up until you make a choice. Somepony’s going to have to get the shaft, it just sucks that you’re the one that has to make the choice.” She rubbed her chin. “That is, unless, you don’t really want anything to happen with any of them, then I guess they’ll just have to deal with it.”

He shook his head then buried it in his forehooves. “I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what to do.”

“Then just give it some more time.” Ember gave him a brittle laugh. “I spent most of my life at the top of the social pyramid. Trust me; I know about this kind of stuff.”

“I’m guessing that was before you got...” He stopped himself.

“Willow, didn’t tell you?” She shook her head. “Yeah, it was before I cooked myself. I don’t know if you can tell, but I used to have the looks.”

Sunny chuckled. “Ember, you’ve still got them.”

She smirked at the swathe of crimson that ran under Sunny’s eyes. “Thanks. But nopony wants a mare who only looks good from one side.”

“I know some would.”

The smirk only seemed to grow. “Are you getting at something?”

“W-what, no!”

“You are such a virgin.” She snickered and closed her eyes before sitting up.

Sunny sat up as well. “We should go check on Willow.”

Ember’s grin shot from ear-to-ear. “You are! Sweet Celestia!” She cackled. “Survive the apocalypse and you’re still a virgin? Sunny, you are one of a kind!”

He felt close to nosebleed status as he made his way to the door and nudged it open.

“So let me get this straight,” Ember continued as they moved out into the hall. “You have two mares swooning over you, and somehow, somehow, you haven’t had a chance to sleep with either of them?”

“Yes,” he said tensely. Willow wasn’t in the hall, so he continued towards the exit.

“Well then who do you want to lose it to?”

He nearly tripped over his own hooves. “What— I don’t... I don’t know!”

“Pro tip,” Ember moved up beside him in the narrow hall. “You’re not going to last long at all your first time, so get some foreplay in. Get her going before you dive or else only one of you gets a happy ending.”

“...Just... enough, okay? Let’s just find Willow.” Folding his ears and lowering his head, he rounded the little bend in the hallway that led to the door at the end. Willow had definitely come this way given the fact that the door was no longer on its hinges.

It took a whole two seconds for his coat to become drenched completely once he’d stepped out into the rain. The station platform was mostly cleared out by now. On the far right, a short line of ponies were being ushered through a set of gates by two REA ponies in battle saddles.

“Right there.” Sunny’s head whipped around as Ember pointed off a little to the left. It was a rather pathetic sight, one that made Sunny’s heart trip and fall. Willow sat alone at a bench. It wouldn't have been all too abnormal without the rain soaking her mane flat to her head and the way she shivered.

“I’ll get us a spot in line,” Ember said, giving him a nudge in her direction. “You talk to her.”

Sunny nodded absently, starting towards Willow. His stupid mouth had done it for him this time. Though it still shocked him that Willow might have actually considered them ‘together’.

Without a word, he sat down beside her, thanking Celestia that it had at least stopped hailing. “Hey...” he said after a moment.

Willow didn’t look up. “Hey... Is it time to go?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” She pushed to her hooves and started trotting towards the gates.

Frantically, Sunny followed, slipping as he tried to keep up. “Willow, I’m sorry!”

She froze, then turned her head to look back at him. “It’s okay, Sunny. I know you are.”

Somehow, that made him feel even worse. “I like you, Willow, I really do!” He said desperately as he moved up beside her. “But I just don’t know what to do. I—”

“Sunny!” she snapped, grabbing him in forehooves he felt could have easily crushed him. “It’s okay, really.” She gave him a wan smile. “I understand. I’m just getting a little ahead of myself. I’ve got to remember that you’re weird, and I’m weird... It’s weird...” She shook her head. “Look Sunny, forget about it. I just overreacted.”

Ember waved them over from near the front of the line. Sunny was rather glad of the excuse not to reply. The issue seemed to have resolved itself, sort of. Ember had gotten them a space right behind a bulky brown stallion carrying a sleeping mare across his back. How anypony could sleep in this weather was beyond Sunny. The REA mare and the greasy pony beside her all added up to create a very awkward group. Luckily, they were all just under the awning that sheltered the platform from rain, but it was still twilight-dark around the station.

The ponies ahead were ushered through no problem. Ember stepped up to the gates first. A stallion wearing a bored expression levitated up a device that looked suspiciously like a price-checker. “Eyes open,” he said drearily, flashing the flickering beam is Ember’s eye a second later. The reader flashed red and let out a little buzz. Suddenly, the stallion stood a little straighter. “Ma’am, please—”

“Scan her again,” a uniformed mare said to the stallion with a roll of her eyes. “That’s the ditzy one, remember?”

Ember visibly relaxed as he scanned her again and the light on the side flashed green in accompany with a sharp beep. Sunny went next, and they waved him by. Sighing, he stopped on the other side for Willow. The one second wait between where the scanner shut off and the light flashed on was like limbo.

Willow stepped forward, tossed her mane out of her eyes, then let the stallion scan her. He hit the trigger, and a second later the scanning beam shut off, but it was at least three seconds before the light came on. Red.

“Scan her again,” the mare said boredly. The stallion did so, and again the light blinked red.

Sunny’s mouth went dry as he watched Willow’s eyes widen. “I’m not infected,” she said firmly.

The stallion rolled his eyes. “That’s what they all say.” Two ponies stepped in from either side, aiming battle saddles. “They’ll lead you around back.”

Sunny had a pretty good idea that ‘around back’ was really just a wall with a lot of bullet holes in it. “She’s not infected!” he blurted, stepping forward beside the stallion with the scanner. A third rifle was pointed at him from a pony in an impromptu watchtower.

“The scanner doesn’t lie,” replied the stallion.

Ember just stood back looking confused as the scene unfolded.

“Bottle of progress did a whole bunch of tests on her. She registers as being infected but she’s not any sort of carrier and she can’t spread it.”

The stallion snorted as if he was hearing bogus. Sunny had to agree that, had they swapped positions, he probably would have acted the same way. He stood stiff, beating himself up in every way possible for forgetting that Willow might not pass the test. Now that he thought about it, it was clear that this stage would have been a huge problem. How had he missed it?

The other line was still moving, but it was slowing down as the mare with the other scanner threw constant glances their way.

“Take her around back,” the stallion repeated.

“I can explain!” Sunny instead, putting himself between the checker and Willow.

“Forget this!” Willow snapped. “I’m going in.”

It happened in no more than a couple seconds, but it might as well have been an eternity. Willow took a step forward right as three different safeties disengaged. Sunny moved. He went for the closest target, which was a mare taking aim at Willow. With a powerful flap of his wings that stung up and down his spine, he carried himself into the air and powered all four hooves into her side. She yelped as he struck her and stumbled to the side. The two shotguns on her back discharged simultaneously and blasted a hole in the awning above as she overbalanced and fell to her side. Without missing a beat, Sunny was on the checker. Landing square on the stallion’s back, he locked his hooves down on the single carbine rifle in the stallion’s saddle and pulled the stallion to the left. The carbine went off and cut a line across the station wall before the cable connecting the trigger to the bit snapped.

Willow just stood there looking dumbstruck. The REA mare who’d been ahead of them in line was racing back now, shouting something.

Sunny yanked on the carbine and it came out of the saddle. Still holding the stallion, as much as it discomforted him, he shoved the barrel against the back of the pony’s head and took the broken trigger wire with his other hoof. The mare whom he’d kicked was now back on her hooves, and the other stallion who had been watching the gate had his twin rifles on Sunny. More were coming, but they were fighting through a scattering crowd.

“Surrender!” The stallion yelled, pointing his guns at Sunny.

Sunny shoved the rifle a little more into the back of the checker’s head, causing the pony to wince. “Don’t move or I-I’ll blow his head off!” Blood coursed through his body, laced with adrenaline and fear. If it came to it, he was afraid he could actually do it. He’d shot ponies before, but never at point blank. Never like this.

The mare moved over to Willow, who wasn’t doing much of anything, and kicked her to the ground. She pinned Willow with her forehooves then levitated a pistol from her belt, putting the barrel to the top of Willow’s head. “Let him go, now!”

“You shoot her, he dies!” The stallion in his grasp had locked up like a vice. Having your own rifle to the back of your head could do that, Sunny supposed. Willow’s eyes were on him. He didn’t dare look, but he could see it in his peripherals. Why wouldn’t she move? She could probably break the mare’s entire body with one hoof if she wanted to. Ember stood a ways away, eyes registering disbelief.

As if things weren’t hectic enough, a gray mare in REA barding charged right up to the edge of the scene and slid to a stop, levitating two, very intimidating pistols. “What’s going on?”

“Cloudstorm, this one’s infected!” The unicorn mare spat, never taking her eyes off Sunny.

“No she isn’t!” he yelled back. “She’s a hybrid!” He didn't exactly expect anypony to know what that meant, considering Willow had made it up herself, but the word sounded fancy enough to pass as something that could be legitimate.

“The scanner failed her?” The gray mare came closer.

“Twice,” the checker said in a choked voice. Sunny gave him a jab with the barrel.

The mare apparently known as Cloudstorm turned towards Sunny. “Nopony likes to die,” she said grimly, then added: “and nopony likes to see ones they care about die. But there’s nothing you can do for her. She’s—”

“No, she’s not!” He had to be careful. His hoof was itching to cinch down on the wire and spray them all. “And I’m not in denial either. It’s a medical thing that I can’t explain, but she isn’t contagious. Look at the bite on her leg. It’s months old.”

Cloudstorm narrowed her eyes, then turned to look at Willow. She glared at the bite, eyes widening in surprise a little as she looked at the scarred flesh. “Are her eyes glowing?”

“Yes,” Willow said flatly. her tone suggested that there wasn’t a gun pressed against the back of her head. “By the way, you got any sunglasses?”

Cloudstorm took a step back. “Scan her. I want to see.”

Scanner pony cleared his throat and motioned to the scanner on his belt. Cloudstorm rolled her eyes and levitated the device. Holding it up to Willow’s left eye, she hit the trigger, and like before, the light went red. She shook her head. “The scanner doesn’t lie. I’m not taking any—”

“Cloudst— I-I mean Sergeant!” A blue mare butted through the crowd, brown mane a complete, sopping mess. “Where do we—” She burst into the ring and looked around, her eyes falling on Sunny and going as round as shot glasses. “Sunny!?”

He couldn’t believe his eyes. For a second, he completely forgot about the situation as he stared into those blue eyes. “Moon?”

She made a move forwards like she was going to hug him, but Cloudstorm stopped her with an outstretched hoof. “You know him?”

Moon swallowed and nodded. “Y-yeah, I do. Her eyes found Willow and once again widened in surprise. “Both of them.”

Cloudstorm blinked, then looked to all three of them in turn. “The white one’s been infected.” A new pony moved in. It was Candy, though she wore a hood to hide her features. He’d kind of been wondering where she’d gotten to. He hadn’t seen her since they’d left the Platinum Hoof. Surprisingly, Cotton was nowhere in sight.

Moon shook her head. “No. She was bit like... three months ago-ish.” Her eyes darted to her shotgun. “She used this one drug on herself. It was blue, that’s all I know. But it made her a sort of mix. She’s got zombie eyes and strength, but she’s not actually one of them.” Moon blinked, then scrunched her face. “Wow, that sounded really stupid.”

“How do you know she’s not infectious?” Cloudstorm pressed, seeming to fight her own battle in her head.

“Because I had sex with her,” Candy said in a tiny voice, though it still silenced everypony.

Willow rolled her eyes. “Way to go. Now they know.”

Cloudstorm did a double-take. She focussed on the mare, then mouthed the words Private Cane with raised brows. Candy shrank back and Sunny gave Cloudstorm a shooty look. The gray mare blinked, then snickered. “This is the most fucking insane day of my life.” With one final chuckle, she straightened up and surveyed the scene once more. She took a deep breath, then shook her head. “Let the mare through.”

“Sergeant!” the mare pinning Willow yelled. “She’s infected.”

Cloudstorm’s eyes hardened. “You are speaking to an REA Sergeant, now that is an order!”

“I refuse that order!”

“What is your rank!?” Cloudstorm demanded in a forceful voice, stomping a hoof.

“Sergeant, Sergeant.”

The air went silent again. Finally, cloudstorm spoke. “Release your hostage, Sergeant.”

“No.”

Somewhere, a pin dropped. Cloudstorm slumped a little bit. “You know what, fuck it.” She turned one of her pistols, flipped it, and before anypony could even move, clogged the mare right between the eyes with the barrel. The mare’s levitation died and the pistol on the back of Willow’s head dropped to the ground with a clatter.

Then everything went up.

Sunny’s hostage tried to pull free, and on instinct, Sunny pulled the wire. The carbine lit up and ripped open the back of the stallion’s head before the recoil pulled it out of Sunny’s awkward grasp and sent it firing wildly until the clip dried out. The only of the three left standing took aim at Cloudstorm and the mare ducked just in time to avoid being ventilated. However, the six REA ponies charging in from behind her took the brunt of it and four went down on top of each other. The other two broke off and took cover.

Cloudstorm took careful aim with her other pistol and fired twice. One hit the stallion square in the chest, the other grazed his shoulder. He went down chewing the bit, guns chattering as they sprayed bullets every which way. Candy yelped and hit the concrete as one ricocheted off the awning and dug into her shoulder. Holding the wound and cursing like a sailor, she pulled out her pistol and fired the entire clip into the stallion’s twitching form.

All the while Willow just sat in the middle of it, staring at her hooves. “The gates are open!” Somepony shouted from the platform, and every REA eye that wasn’t on Cloudstorm or the shooting turned towards the masses flooding for the now unguarded gate.

“Freeze!” one of the stallions in the guard tower yelled. He gave the pony in the lead a whole quarter second to freeze before splattering him across the ground with a mounted machine gun. Somepony in the crowd yelled and fired a revolver at the guard who took a bullet between the eyes then slumped on the gun. Hooves still on the triggers, the weapon fired uselessly into the air, adding it’s staccato to the already flustered environment. More REA ponies surged from somewhere, and instead of using guns, they wore riot armor and wielded batons. Like two waves hitting one another, civilian mixed with soldier, and the melee began.

Sunny staggered over to Willow and pulled her to her hooves. “Come on!” He looked around for means of escape, though there seemed to be ponies everywhere now. Suddenly, Moon’s levitation grabbed him by the mane and yanked him away from the gates, towards where they had been trying to go. He went with it, half-dragging Willow as she moved along beside him. He only caught glances of his friends as they ran. He saw Brick for a second, carrying Snowglobe and Candy. Ember pranced along a little ways off as she tried not to look guilty. Cloudstorm was shouting orders to REA ponies charging into the mess like she hadn’t just started the entire firefight. Moon levitated her shotgun—a new, intimidating, drum-fed assault shotgun—ahead of her as she charged civilians aside.

Really, zombies were easier.

The Baltimare shipping yards had been converted to a safezone. Monstrous warehouses surrounded a small port that led inland. Sunny caught glimpses of steaming ships as they moved further in, no longer running but still moving at a swift trot. Every instinct in him screamed for him to greet Moon and Brick, but amongst the masses, he could barely even hear himself speak. Ponies shouted and shoved towards the pier, where skywagons were loading up civilians before heading south down the coastline.

“Where are they evacuating ponies to?” he asked Cloudstorm.

The mare’s eyes were a little clouded, but when she blinked it was gone. “I have no idea. We don’t have any safezones outside of Baltimare, at least anywhere near. The Navy has already confirmed that they don’t have the rations to take on civilians. My best bet is they’re setting up a camp somewhere.

“Attention!” an intercom blared suddenly, a nasally stallion’s voice washing over the shipyard. “Pegasus ponies are needed for evacuation. If you are a pegasus, you are required to report to the last warehouse southside of the docks and aid with evacuation attempts.”

Cloudstorm led them off to the side and to a small building. The door was locked, but she busted out the window with a hoof and unlocked it from the other side.

It looked like the building had been some sort of filing office for incoming and outgoing freight. It was only two rooms, the smaller being lined with shelves loaded down with boxes of files. Once they were all in, and after what seemed like forever, Sunny was finally able to take in the situation.

There was Willow, Ember, and Cloudstorm, though his eyes were stuck solely on his missing friends. Brick was laying Candy down, who was still cursing about the flesh wound on her shoulder. Snowglobe sat beside him holding her forehead. And there, sitting right in front of him, was Moon, her eyes wide and filled with what looked like disbelief.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” she muttered.

Sunny grinned and scratched the back of his neck. “So, I guess you made it to Baltimare... not really much of a sight.” Before he could move she was squeezing the air out of him. “Sunny, I thought you were dead!” she cried, nuzzling into his shoulder. Sunny grit his teeth and tried not to pull away. “And when I finally got to Baltimare the entire place was going down and I thought that was it! But you’re here, and you’re alive.”

Sunny couldn’t help but notice Willow. She sat in the far corner, staring at her hooves.

“It’s great to see you made it!” Sunny replied. As awkward as the hug was, it was still really great to see Moon again. His eyes scanned the group again, and he realized somepony was missing. “Where’s Dusty?”

Moon only looked away. His eyes turned to Brick, who shook his head slowly. Snowglobe whimpered dryly and leaned against Brick.

It was like getting hit with a sack of bricks. “Oh...” Sunny fell back on his haunches. “No way...” His mouth went dry and his vision fogged a bit. “He saved my life. He actually flew me to the hospital... How’d he—”

“He went out a hero,” Moon said sharply. “He saved us all.”

“Why’d you do that?” Sunny heard Ember whisper quietly to Cloudstorm.

“Do what?”

“You know, that. Save them. You might as well have shot yourself there for what the REA’ll do to you for that.”

“...I just felt the impulse. I like these ponies more than I should. Moon came all this way just to find her friends. That’s got to be worth something.”

To Sunny’s surprise, Willow stood and made her way over to stand beside him. “Nice to see you again, Moon,” she said tensely.

Moon blinked, then grinned, though there was confusion below the gesture. “Great to see you too, Willow!”

Before too much tension built up, he snapped it with a question. “So how’d you guys get here?”

Moon sighed. “That’s a long story, Sunny.”

* * *

Dove held on for dear life as the skywagon all but turned upside down in the air. Rain battered ruthlessly at the windows and lighting flashed out over the ocean. If she didn’t know any better, she would have said Striker had planned for her to get stuck in the storm on her return trip.

An extra strong gust of wind swirled in from the left and and the entire wagon jerked, throwing Cloudstorm to the floor. “That’s it!” Staggering back to her hooves, she made her way carefully to the partition. She kicked open the door to find the same stallion sitting there on the headset. His head turned as she entered.

“Mashal, these fliers aren’t going to make it back to base. Our best bet is find an area to land along the coastline!”

Dove leaned up against the wall for support, then thought better of it and took hold of a kevlar strap hung from the ceiling. “Are there any safe places in Baltimare?”

“The docks if anything. That’s the evac point. But we have to—”

Everything went completely silent as white light flashed through the windows. She smelt ozone and sharp, warm tingles ran up the tips of her hooves. The stallion gave a quick series of twitches, then dropped to the floor. It took her a second to comprehend what had happened.

Lightning.

She’d been on the weather team for six years. There was no mistaking the tingling in her ears and the burnt, almost clean scent in the air. She’d been saved by standing on the wooden floor panel, unlike the navigator, who’d been leaning on the metal shell, just like she’d been no more than seconds before. Her eyes darted to the plexiglass front, where the four inexperienced fliers were still battling with the storm, saved by the leather harnesses.

Dove felt a lightness in her gut, the kind she normally felt when she flew in for a landing a little too fast. They were falling. Worst still, smoke was filling the cabin from the very wooden panel that had saved her life. Dove moved to the side and lifted the panel, waving away the smoke to reveal the damage. There was nothing left of the spark battery and magical talisman system. Acrid smoke rose from charred and twisted wires that ran to the battery, little licks of flame escaping the power source as the plastic label melted away.

This wasn't just a storm. This was a full-fledged electrical storm.

The skywagon might as well have been a brick. No four-pegasus team could pull the weight of this wagon without magical help.

She slammed the panel back down and staggered to the door, struggling with the latch for a second before realizing it was tied into the electric systems. Ahead, barely visible through the rain, the lead pegasus disconnected himself from the harness and disappeared into the gray. His harness snapped back and tangled with the pony behind where he’d been. Straps wrapped around the puller’s wings and caught his legs. He struggled for a second, then the wind threw him up against the front of the skywagon.

Dove made a grab for the kevlar strap on the roof, but fell short and ended up landing on her face as the skywagon went into a spin. Navigational papers fluttered about, turning the small cabin into a blizzard, the navigator's body thumping around wildly as Dove held on to the only surface she could.

What if she were to die now? Dove started running through thoughts of who would take her place. Nopony knew her plans and her goals, because she hadn’t trusted anypony enough to share them. What about Striker? He would be an ultimate powerhouse if she was out of the ring. What they’d just discussed today—he was going to try to turn ponies into weapons. Maybe he’d called her out and told her his plan, knowing very well her puller team would crash in the storm. Maybe he wanted her out of the way!

It was the last thought that settled in her mind. She couldn’t die, and Celestia damn her if she did.

The wagon jerked as it returned to the correct angle; somehow it had stopped spinning. Dove picked herself up off the floor, then immediately hurled her food rations. Staggering, coughing, she made her way to the windscreen.

They were coming in for a landing...

The street ahead was a dark river walled off on either side by giant buildings. Somehow, they’d made it over Baltimare. Two pullers remained in the wagon harness; the one that was tangled had been disconnected. They were doing their best to bring the wagon down, but it was still going to be a hard landing with the rate they were falling.

The street wasn’t empty, either. Ponies ran back and forth, screaming, shooting, crying. Amongst them were her ponies in armor, shooting just about anything that moved. Upturned wagons signified there had once been a line they had been holding, but there was no such line now.

“Sweet Celestia.” Dove braced herself as the wagon hit the asphalt. Immediately, her legs buckled and she slammed to the wagon floor. Knocked free of her breath, she writhed and squirmed, clutching her chest with a forehoof as she tried to draw breath. The wagon screeched and scraped down the road, trailing sparks despite the wetness of the asphalt. The front end ploughed through the remnants of the wagon barrier, smashing out the windscreen in the process, before veering off to the side. The bottom of the wagon caught a bump in the road and in one swift motion, slammed over on its side. Dove landed on the battered navigator in a stroke of luck.

She was on her hooves before the wagon had even come to a complete stop. Panting, she staggered out through the broken windscreen, the rain soaking her down to the core in less than a second. Darting to the pullers, she tried to help the lead one out of his harness. The one behind him hadn't been so lucky. Dove refused to look at it, but from what her peripherals picked up she was pretty sure he’d been run over by the wagon.

“T-thanks, M-m-m-marshal,” the stallion quivered, staggering to his hooves.

“Get in the air!” Dove commanded. She walked around in a little circle, trying to get a hold on her bearings. The power had been cut to this portion of the city, leaving everything a disorienting mess. Back down the street where they’d landed, a series of gigantic spotlights cast their beams up into the rain. Somepony had been using their heads when they thought of marking the safezone.

Still a bit dazed from the landing, Dove took to the air, hovering a little off the ground. She knew the right choice was to make a beeline for the safezone four blocks back, but she just couldn’t bring herself to go. Below her, ponies swarmed every which way, zombies amongst them, even a few changelings.

Her eyes widened and settled on one of the black, insect-like creatures. “Not you guys too!” It outright ignored her and went back to tearing apart a hopefully-dead stallion.

She began to fly backwards, slowly at first, but rapidly gaining speed. There was nothing she could do this far forward. The situation was too far gone.

“Form a line!” Dove’s eyes darted to bifocaled stallion loaded down with an REA radio. He looked like he belonged behind a desk, not standing amidst a flooded street trying to direct troops. “Come on!” he beckoned frantically to a group of soldiers. “We have to help as many civilians as we can!”

“Forget it!” one yelled back. “This sector’s a lost cause. Fall back and save yourself.”

Despite the icy rain, Dawn’s blood began to boil. She grit her teeth and folded her wings, dropping down to street level. Her timing was perfect to intercept the group of four running for the spotlights.

“What do you think you’re doing!” Her voice was cold and scornful, resembling a stern mother who had just found their foal drawing on the wall.

“Saving my ass, now get out of my way!” The bulky red mare tried to push past, but Dove positioned herself in front of the mare and delivered a staggering headbutt.

“How about you focus on why you became a soldier of my army!”

“Look, I don’t give a rat’s ass about—” A flash of lighting brought Dove’s features into proportion, and immediately the mare’s expression went slack. “Er, M-marshal. What are you doing here!?”

Dove shoved the mare away. “Shut your mouth and help rally troops to form a retreat that’s actually going to make it to the docks!” She paused for a second. “And when in the name of Celestia did changelings come into play!?”

“A few hours ago.” The red mare was all business, and her companions seemed to be sticking by. “Nopony’s sure, but they came up from the sewers and subways and brought the rest of the infected with them. It’s why we lost the city.”

Dove snarled and turned away. Her presence was being recognized now, even by the civilians. There was a whole lot less screaming, and even a tiny sense of order as her forces gathered into broken ranks. “Form a line!” The street was a perfect choke point. There weren’t any infected upon them yet, but the trainwreck of zombies and ponies was barreling in their direction wasn’t far off. Those fleeing the infected were running as fast as their legs could take them, but the zombies were certainly faster. It was like watching the surf as one large wave washed over the smaller wave ahead of it. There was a clear line where survivors would be overrun and taken to the ground, one after the next.

“Ready!” Dove yelled. There were at least twenty ponies in the line now—a greater number than she had expected. Ponies stampeded past the line of soldiers and to safety. Dove stood firm, taking hit after hit as ponies shouldered past her. An orange stallion dropped to the ground beside her and spread the legs on a machine gun, lining up.

One zombie appeared in the crowd, but was blasted a second later. Ponies screamed and scattered, dodging the body like the plague. It wasn’t another second before another appeared amongst the masses, snapping at a mare’s neck. Down it went. Two more. Three. Four.

There were still civilians—plenty of them. But there was no way anypony could sort them out by this point.

Dove gave the order.

Twenty machine guns lit up the gloom.

* * *

Storytime was something else. Neither side could believe the other side’s story. Willow had simply listened while Sunny and Candy told of the whole ordeal. Cloudstorm listened in the entire time, her jaw steadily lowering at the exchange. At the mention of the passage through Canterlot, she looked like she was ready to fall over. Willow had been impressed herself.

Thankfully, Sunny had left out Willow’s experience in Bottle of Progress.

Then the quiet sniffling had come, primarily from Moon. Then the hugging... then awkward cuddling between Moon and Sunny. Willow couldn’t bring herself to watch. They smiled, they laughed, even Brick hosted a smile.

She hadn’t said much to Brick. He’d sat next to her, supporting her weight on his firm shoulder. The idea that she had hardly even thought about him in their time apart crossed her mind guiltily more than once.

She’d removed herself from the building and hardly an eye had turned. Willow told herself it was to find the ponies Moon had said were with them, but really she just needed to be away. Thinking she could be with Sunny was a joke. All along, she knew she was simply biding her time until the two reunited, but some, deep down and guilty part of her had wished that the blue mare wouldn’t return.

It was a dirty, malicious thought, and as much as Willow tried to beat it out of her mind, it just wouldn’t leave. What’s wrong with you? Moon is your friend, and here you are wishing her dead, you sick, disgusting excuse for a mare!

The rain soaked her coat and chilled her to the bones, glued her red mane to her neck and her tail primarily to the back of one leg. Anypony that was standing in her way either moved when they saw her coming or got butted aside. Something about the mare’s stride seemed to radiate her internal strife and churning anger. She made sure to keep her eyes down. Ponies didn’t need to see a mare with glowing eyes right now—it would cause a panic.

It was quite surprising how full the docks could really get. The entire yard was huge, but in contrast to the population of Baltimare, it might have well have been a pinhead. Wagons were already running evacuations, shipping ponies off to temporary bases along the coast. The lines were massive, and more ponies were entering the temporary stronghold than could she shipped out. It was fairly obvious that things would be getting nasty soon.

Commotion from a distant gate brought her around. Willow shook the destructive thoughts from her mind as she turned towards the sound. The sound was one she’d heard too many times not to know: chaos, pain and fear and panic all mashed together into a big ball of chaos.

So why were her hooves carrying her towards the mess?

As she approached, ponies flooded through the gate like water. The REA were doing little to hold them back as the single mare with the scanner tried to check every one of them. Unarmed and with an intolerant glint in her eye, Willow made her way up to struggle. One guard on the scaffolding above turned his rifle on her, but she gave him a dismissive glance and, after a brief glare, he turned back to watching the scuffle, no doubt waiting to blow out the brains of any unruly pony.

“What’re they so afraid of?” The voice rang out beside Willow, and she jumped. The words seemed more for the purpose of mockery than to serve as an actual question. Turning, her eyes fell upon a tall, dark blue stallion, his long, orange mane tied to his neck with a few strands of nylon rope. He wore a raincoat and hat. His glasses weren’t exactly bottles, but they were thick enough to prove the pony had less than stellar eyesight.

Willow shook her head and proceeded with the stallion to the fence to the right of the gate. A green mare some ways down the fence line gave a warning wave in their direction, pointing first towards the fence, then to the electrical wires she was soldering to the posts.

“Not sure. It might just be the crowd mentality.” She shook her head and peered out amongst the buildings, hoping for the stallion’s own sake that he wouldn’t say anything stupid. It was hard to see through the rain, but she could make out the muzzle flash. It was close.

“The city’s finally falling,” the stallion beside her stated. “It’s not going to be long before they reach this point.” His voice was scratchy, and high, the kind of voice she associated with a geeky mathematician.

“How do you know?” Watching the little bursts of light in the distance was as hypnotizing as watching light rain fall from the sky. They also seemed to be moving closer.

“I’m a situational analyst.” He scoffed, then shrugged his shoulders. “Well, I was. Twenty-twenty foresight. Told my friend the day of his wedding he was going to catch his wife with another stallion, and guess what.” A brittle chuckle escaped his mouth as he looked on, then tossed a sideways glance to Willow. “There’s only so much they can do to protect this area. You think electric fences and a few guns are going to stop an entire city of zombies?”

Willow shook her head.

“My point is made.” Suddenly, the pony lowered his head and brought it closer. Willow readied to clobber him. “I want your help.”

“Why?” Her question was brief and cold.

“Because I don’t want to die,” he returned with an irritable hitch. “And I’m guessing you don’t want to either.”

She was all ears. If he knew something, then she wanted to know it. Something about the stallion pulled at her coat, but he had a look in his eye that told her he knew something; or at least he thought he did. “Clarify a bit. I’m not going to agree to help you unless I know what I’m helping you with.”

A thin smile crossed his face. “I knew you’d say that.” His horn flared for a second, then he was all business. “How many ponies do you think are here?” he asked suddenly.

“I don’t know... too many to count.”

“Approximately fifteen thousand, and counting.” His horn flashed again, lighting his blue, almost silver eyes. “And how many do you think have been evacuated so far?”

Willow growled. “I don’t know.”

He pressed on. “A thousand in the past two hours.” He looked nervous now, both ears folding flat to his head. “This stronghold is not going to last an entire day. I’ll give it a couple more hours at best, but the REA can’t hold this position. Once the flying biters come the REA’s attention is going to be divided between ground and air, then it’s all going downhill. Let’s be generous and say we last another four hours here. That’s two thousand ponies evacuated. That still leaves thirteen thousand here. What do you think the chances are of you and all your friends, getting on a skywagon, and the same one at that?”

The anger started in her belly and boiled right up her throat. “How do you know about my friends?” She shoved her muzzle towards his, one powerful hoof clasping in the back of his rainjacket and lifting his forelegs off the ground.

“I’ve been watching you since you entered the gate,” he said desperately, struggling as his own jacket choked him. “You had guns, experience, and most importantly, an REA officer who’s fond of you.”

Grudgingly, Willow released him. “And?”

“And I needed your help,” he gruffed. “Soon... very soon now, REA Marshal Dove is going to have to give the order to pull her troops from defending this place. It’s going to be fast, and it’s going to leave the civilians here in more trouble than you could know. You see, from her perspective, the REA must live to fight another day. If they all die there, there’s nothing more she can do for Equestria. Pulling out is a sacrifice she must make. When that happens, everypony left here will die. We need to be out of here before that happens.”

As much as it hurt her to admit it, he was probably right. There was no way everypony was going to be getting out of here. Her confliction must have showed in her eyes, because the stallion gave her a stern look.

“Nopony’s ever survived in this world by being the hero! Either we live and they die, or we all die together. I don’t know about you, but I want to live. And don’t you go around telling ponies about this; if you do that it’ll only accelerate the degradation of what little order is left.”

She gave him the dirtiest of dirty looks, but nodded. “I really hate it, but you’re right.” For a moment she wondered if he were filling her head with nonsense, but so far, every word from his mouth was backed by the current situation. “...When do we leave?”

“The sooner the better. We need to commandeer a skywagon. Your REA friend can help with that. She’s high enough rank that she should be able to snatch you one with some fancy words. Where we go from there is up to you. But...”

Willow glared. “But?”

“But you have to take me with you, as in, keep me around once you’ve landed. You have guns, and you’re not the REA. I’m not a fighter, and I never will be. Once I leave the city’s protection I’m as good as dead. As much as I hate to say it, I need ponies to protect me.”

And he did. Willow had always considered herself a good eye reader, and behind those thick glasses of his, he was scared and desperate, looking for a way out.

An announcement blasted from the series of loudspeakers erected across the stronghold. “All available forces are requested at the east gate immediately. Compromise is a threat!”

“Come on,” Willow nodded off towards where she’d left her companions. “They’re going to want to hear this.”

It was a fast walk back to the storage building where she had left her friends. There were a lot more ponies there now, though the room they’d reserved as a group was still left only to them.

Willow barged through the door without an ounce of warning. Immediately, all conversation ceased as Willow stopped halfway through the doorway, the bespectacled stallion beside her.

They’d probably been talking about her... She shook the thought away before it could tick her off, then spotted five more ponies who hadn’t been there before. There was Sage and Jade, still connected at the hip it seemed, Range sat in the corner nursing his tweaked leg while Altic acted disconcerned about it, and Yew stood beside him, having jumped to her hooves at Willow’s entry. There was one more: a stallion with a reddish brown coat she remembered by the name of Copper. He’d been one of the REA pegasi from Appleoosa.

It was a full crowd.

“We found the others,” Moon stated, a hint of curiosity in her voice as she eyed Willow. “Where’d you go?”

“We’ve got to get going.” Willow strode to the center of the room and beckoned the stallion to follow her.

Sunny blinked at her. With a bit of effort, he pulled away from Moon and rolled to his hooves. “What’re you talking about?”

Willow nodded towards the blue stallion. “Tell them.”

Blinking at the prospect of standing before a bunch of ponies, blue stallion trotted forward to the center of the room. “Hello strangers,” he said in a high voice that lacked much of the bravado he had shown earlier with Willow. “I’m Foresight.”

Willow rolled her eyes at him. “There is no way that’s your actual name.”

He glared right back. “No, it’s not, but I like it and my real name sucks.” Clearing his throat he sat down and adjusted his glasses.

It was interesting watching everypony’s faces as Foresight told them the same thing he’d told Willow.

“So,” he concluded, adjusting his glasses for the fortieth time. “We need to leave before that happens. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I want to make it out of here.”

“Well shit,” Loco muttered, giving Cloudstorm a sideways look. “Think that’s true?”

The REA mare nodded slowly. “Absolutely. It’s indirectly written in every page of the rulebook... I’d do the same thing if I were in Dove’s position. I wouldn’t blame her for a second. What good is it if the entirety of the REA is wiped out trying to save an extra thousand civilians?”

“I’m getting tired of all this ‘civilian’ talk,” Moon growled. “We are civilians. We’re talking about them as if they’re... others.”

“Moon,” Sunny interjected sheepishly. “I think civilian is a broad term for ‘ponies who can’t protect themselves’. To be fair, I don’t think we fall under that category.”

“Civilians are dead weight,” Cloudstorm stated. “Yes, I know they’re ponies just like us... but think about it. There’s no room in this world for ponies who don’t know how to protect themselves. It was a mistake trying to protect them in the first place. A city where only ten percent can fight was never meant to be.”

She received more than one disgusted stare. “Says the mare who just shot another REA officer!” Cotton shot back. Candy gave the wounded mare an angry glare.

“Do you think I feel good about that!?” Cloudstorm snapped, bearing down on the mare. “No matter what, somepony was going to die there. I had to make a choice!”

“Excuse me,” Foresight tried to interject, his voice severely lacking any sort of power. “But we need to go... now.”

“Now!” Willow enforced, stomping her hoof and accidentally putting it right through the floor.

The clamour stopped as Willow stumbled and tried to pull her hoof out of the floor.

“Anyways, leaving,” Foresight stated dejectedly.

“Good luck getting a skywagon,” Sunny added grudgingly. “See the line by any chance? It’s like a water park on saturday afternoon.”

Foresight chuckled and turned towards Cloudstorm. “That’s where you come in.”

The REA mare froze. “What?”

“I need you to commandeer us a skywagon.” His eyes flicked out across the group. “Actually, make that two.”

“And how exactly do you expect me to do that?”

“You’re a Sergeant, aren’t you?”

“Not after today.”

Foresight waved a hoof at her. “But you’ve still got the name. All you need to do is get us to the front. Say we’re ponies of utmost importance.”

“No, I’m not doing it.” Cloudstorm sat back and crossed her forehooves. “Why do you ponies think I’m on your side? I’m with the REA? Why would I ditch them just to befriend a bunch of gun-toting survivors?”

Sixteen pairs of eyes fell on her, some skeptical, but most expectant and demanding. Moon was actually grinning a little.

“No,” Cloudstorm repeated. “No way.”

* * *

“I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

Cloudstorm had taken some convincing, and for a while after that she’d stomped in a circle and cursed everything but Celestia herself. Sunny strode beside her now, trying to walk as firmly and as official-looking as possible. His wings, while utterly useless, served as an almost carefree pass anywhere in the REA; everypony who could fly was commissioned for skywagon crews and given some sort of a rank. Copper took up the sergeant’s left.

With as much authority as her rank allowed, Cloudstorm stalked up to the row of soldiers guarding the REA access to the primary evacuation platform. “I’ve got VIPs here,” she stated in a loud voice. “Specials for the marshal herself, requested immediately.”

The dozen or so guards exclaimed looks, eyes scanning over Cloudstorm and the group of sixteen civilians with her. A moment later, all eyes fell on one pony with a little better dress code than the rest of them. She was a short mare, her crimson mane tied back in a bun as she positively glared at anything and everything.

“What if they don’t let us through?” Sunny muttered under his breath.

Willow’s voice came from behind him. “Out of everypony I’ve ever seen in the REA, this looks like the only one that is resistant to both bribes and blowjobs.”

Cloudstorm folded her ears and snickered, then recovered a second later. “We need to get to the platform,” she stated formally, coming to a stop just before the much shorter mare, who—much to her discontent, so it seemed—was forced to look up at Cloudstorm.

“And do you have clearance?” the mare demanded, striking down any chances of simplicity.

“Yeah!” Cloudstorm snapped back immediately, looming over the mare. “The Marshal wants them aboard and out of here, pronto! Haven't you been listening to the radio? These are VIPs!”

“They’re a bunch of civilians. What would the marshal want with them?” Suddenly, her eyes fell on Sunny, narrowing for a second before widening in shock. “I-is that him?”

Cloudstorm blinked and glanced to Sunny. “Uh... Yeah, yeah, of course it’s him. Who else do you think it is?”

Sunny tried not to act too surprised as the mare dutifully stood aside and ushered them through. “Am I who?” he asked Cloudstorm once they were out of earshot.

“No idea, but it got us through.”

Sunny would have continued to balk over the occurrence had the full size of the operation not been revealed just then.

They’d entered a through a set of doors onto a covered platform that had once been used for loading and unloading barges. The massive, concrete platform was completely crowded with ponies being directed into neat lines by uniformed officers. Every moment or so, a skywagon would swoop in from over the water and land upon the platform. It was hardly a moment before ponies flooded aboard and it was off again. There were ships too, though all had already left the docks and could be seen sailing away to the north as they battled the seas.

“How do you suppose we gain access to two skywagons?” the nerdy blue stallion muttered, pushing up beside Cloudstorm. “With a group of this size, we’re going to need two, unless you want to leave five ponies behind and still risk overloading the wagon.”

He received a glare from the entire group for his statement, though held strong. “He’s right,” Willow added quickly. “We need two.” All eyes turned to Cloudstorm.

The sergeant glowered and grit her teeth. “Oh what the hay—I’ve already signed my resignation papers and reserved a spot in line for the death penalty because you lot had to go and get me feeling sentimental.” She flicked her tail and waved a hoof backwards. “You wait here. I’ll get us two. Sunny and the red one, come with me.”

She started off at a brisk pace without waiting for an answer, leaving Sunny and Copper nothing else to do but follow.

Cloudstorm made a beeline right for the closest skywagon which was just in the process of loading. Again, she put on her authoritative voice. “For transport of VIPs at the marshal’s request I’m going to have to commandeer the service of this skywagon and crew.”

Every head turned at the words. Those boarding the wagon were immediately stopped and those already seated were hauled off indignantly. Not a single question was asked as Cloudstorm pointed to the small group of ponies at the edge of the dock. If anything, the wagon pullers looked relieved. Already they were showing early signs of exhaustion from the overwork.

“We’re not just stealing wagons,” Copper whispered in Sunny’s ear, “we’re going to be stealing eight pegasi as well. What the hay are we supposed to do once we get in the air? They’re going to know something’s up.”

Sunny shook his head. This was too much too fast. He was tired of running and planning and plotting and lying. There’d been too much of it in the past few days. It was so bad he’d lost count.

Cloudstorm acquired the second wagon as easy to the first, and it wasn’t more than five minutes later she returned to the group with two skywagons in tow looking guiltily smug.

“That went way easier than I expected it to,” Foresight commented with an impressed waggle of one eyebrow. “Now we simply board the wagons and be to the air!”

They were drawing the eyes of the crowd. Sunny glanced around skittishly as it seemed every eye was on him and the others. “Why do they get to go first!?” somepony yelled amongst the crowd, causing a whole wave of jeers and prying questions.

The REA ponies were smart not to reply ‘because they’re important’. The crowd was ignored as a whole, but the lines were getting messier and louder by the moment.

“I say we leave now,” Sunny chirped, trotting for the left wagon.

“Hold it, hold it.” Cloudstorm rubbed her head, then took a count of heads. “That’s sixteen plus myself. These wagons comfortably seat ten and there needs to be somepony with experience to work with the flight crew.

Candy stepped forward immediately. “I’ll take one if you take the other.”

“Good deal.” Cloudstorm waved towards the wagons. “Eight ponies on one and nine on another. I’ll be on the left—Cane take’s the other wagon.”

The entire operation went more smoothly than Sunny would have thought possible. He, Willow, Brick, Moon, Ember, Cloudstorm, Snowglobe, and Foresight took the one on the left, while Candy, Cotton, Loco, Range, Jade, Sage, Yew, Altic and Copper all ended up on the right.

“I can’t believe it was that easy. Three’s no way our luck’s this good,” Sunny said with a worried frown.

“It’s crazy how many ponies we’ve met since this thing started,” Willow said to Sunny, driving her elbow into his side.

He winced and gave her a dry look, then nodded. “We’ve been a long ways.”

“You guys had it easy leaving Appleoosa,” Moon said, plopping down on the other side of Sunny.

Willow grit her teeth. “And you didn’t have to deal with Bottle of Progress.”

Moon just rolled her eyes. “It couldn't have been that bad. I mean, at least it was zombie-free.”

“At least,” Willow said through her teeth.

Sunny gave Moon a frantic look and shook his head. She cocked a brow at him, but shrugged, and much to his disdain, leaned against him casually. Biting his lip, Sunny turned back towards Willow. “Can you believe we got off this easy for once?”

Cloudstorm waved a gesture to Candy then said something indistinct into an intercom, and a moment later the wagon jolted forward.

Sunny watched the agonized faces of the ponies in line for evacuation, guilt settling in his belly like a lead weight.

“It was either them or us,” Foresight said somberly, catching the look in Sunny’s eye. “I’m not proud of it either.”

Sunny nodded. “I guess.” As the skywagon took to the turbulent air and turned to head off down the coast, keeping just above sea level, his mind wandered back to the REA’s willingness to relinquish a skywagon after seeing him. ‘Is that him?’ they’d asked. Exactly who had they thought he was, and why was it important?

Chapter 19 Rest

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“I don’t care if you have to use a slingshot to shoot bullet casings, buy me some more time!” Dove snarled before tossing the radio receiver to the desk and and turning to the five uniformed ponies in front of her. “What are you standing around here for!? Get out of my sight, now! You have work to do!”

As they sidled out, Dove snatched up the receiver again and smashed the transmit button. “West gate, report!”

“Marshal, we are not good over here!” a stallion bellowed back, making himself heard over the storm and the gunfire. “Generators are flooded and the electric fence is down. There’s so many bodies in the razorwire the fence’s gonna fall down if one more of these bastards tries to climb it. We’re low on ammo. Pretty soon we’re gonna have to start throwing water balloons!”

Dove growled and shook her head. “North gate, check in.”

“Ditto east gate, Marshal!”

“Perimeter?” Dove asked, almost pleadingly.

“We might as well be using sandbags to hold back the ocean!” said a baritone mare. “They’re pushing so hard against the fences the ones in front are getting crushed through the bars!”

Dove fell back in her chair, eyes glazing over as the sound of hail pounding the roof faded away. She turned her head this way and that until she found the window. Rain poured down it in a solid sheet, though there was no missing the hundreds of ponies milling about in the shipping yard, waiting for a skywagon they would never get.

“Fliers!” screamed the radio. “Fliers inbound. Heads!”

If she waited any longer, she wasn’t even going to get her own ponies out of here. There were at least a thousand soldiers here at the moment, and not even all of them would make it.

Reaching for the receiver was like trying to shove her hoof through a wall of sand. Grasping device, she clicked the transmit button and took a deep breath. “Commence Shattered Hope. Light your fires and take to the skies. Lethal force authorized towards civilian interference.”

She dropped the receiver like it was hot, the death toll already ringing up in her head. ‘That’ll be twenty-two-fifty madam!’ the cashier declared. ‘No, not tens. Thousands! And don’t forget about the sales tax!’

Holding her gut, Dove staggered away from the table, knocking her chair over. “Damnit!” She lunged forward suddenly, shoving the radio off the the table then flipping the table over on top of it. “I am sick and tired of losing!” Over went the chair.

Still boiling, she hefted the radio and hurled it through the window out into the rain. Immediately, the ruckus of the storm was drawn into full proportion as ponies screamed and thunder clapped. The chair followed the radio, and the only reason the desk didn’t go too was that it was too heavy to throw.

Holding back a scream of irritation, she began to pace the room, hooves crunching on broken glass. Off in the distance, near the gates, fires lit one by one until they were towering infernos or orange and white light that battled the pounding rain. The fire would have to hold the zombies back long enough to get to the wagons.

She needed time to herself, time where she could just be herself and not have to be in charge of everything. But that wasn’t possible, and it certainly wouldn’t be possible here, confirmed by a white mare who had just butted open the door.

“Marshal. Our troops are requesting a rally point. Where should they go?”

When this was over, she would never make another decision in her life. “South. Tell them to head south down the coastline. We’ll search for new grounds to establish home base.”

“Marshal?” The white mare cocked her head. “Pardon me, but we’ve evacuated the civilians to the north.”

“I am aware. We no longer have the resources or the ponypower to look out for those who cannot contribute to our cause. Have the officers round up all who can fight at the evacuation sites and take them along with us. Leave the rest.”

It was obvious the mare was having a hard time biting her tongue, but nopony spoke against the marshal. She folded her ears and looked like she was going to protest, then turned away. Seeming to change her mind again halfway out the door, she turned back to Dove. “Marshal... they’ll die.”

“Do you think I don’t know that!?” Dove snapped, looming over the poor mare. “As much as I’d like to protect everypony, I can’t. I’d save everypony in Equestria if I could, but I can’t! Our world has changed. Those who cannot protect themselves have no place here. They must either learn to protect themselves or die. I can not hold onto a cause while protecting dead weight; it will only spell our demise. This city is a perfect example of what happens when we try to save too much! In order to do any good in this hellhole, we need to focus on the bigger picture. Perhaps if towns form we can help provide protection, but until then, civilians are no longer my problem or priority. From now on, we focus on the infection.”

* * *

For the first time in what seemed like forever, the sun was out. For the better part of the storm, Sunny had slept. He couldn’t remember the last time he had legitimately slept, which was probably why he had felt so good. It had also been a long time since he’d gotten to see the sunrise; that compared with the fact that he was seeing it from the air, the mist of the storm still hovering in the atmosphere and casting the most beautiful shades of pink and gold across the land, and the quietness of it all led him to think that this was one of the most amazing mornings he had ever seen.

It was kind of sad that it took a world-scale apocalypse to make you really appreciate a sunrise.

“Have you found a good place to land yet?” Sunny’s ears perked and his head snapped around towards the front of the skywagon. Most everypony was still asleep. Willow was up, staring out the window opposite of Sunny, though she hadn’t said a word. Moon and Cloudstorm were also up and sharing a murmured conversation at the very front of the skywagon.

“I think so,” Cloudstorm replied in a hushed tone. She pointed to an indistinguishable spot on a map rolled out over the navigation console. “This here is the Happyhorn Correctional School for Criminalistic Children. It’s got a wall with barbed wire and everything and a courtyard large enough to land and take off again.”

Moon frowned. “How do you know?”

Cloudstorm tossed a small glance towards Moon, then shrugged. “I sent my daughter there.”

Sunny couldn’t help but smirk as he watched Moon’s eyebrow shoot up into her mane. “You? Daughter?” the mare questioned.

Cloudstorm snorted. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m a bad parent. But that’s beside the point. I know for a fact that the entire school was on break when things went down, so it should be empty and all the gates should be locked. If nopony else had the same idea I’m proposing right now, then there should be an empty complex for our taking. Nonetheless it’s worth a fly-over. We need to find a place to let the pullers rest.”

“How do you know it was empty?” Moon asked.

Cloudstorm rolled her eyes. “Can’t take my word, can you?” With a dismissive flick of her tail, she silenced Moon’s rising protest. “It was parent week. All the little baddies were home with mom and dad. Well... most of them.”

Moon gave Cloudstorm a look. “Most of—”

“I swear it by Celestia,” Cloudstorm interrupted, “if you ask one more question I’ll punch your nose into your brain. If it comes to zombies, there’ll be ten, at the most!”

Sunny gave Willow a look, cocking a brow. Willow returned his look and shrugged. Sunny shrugged back.

He wasn’t worried about Cloudstorm doing anything that would screw them over. From what he’d seen of her, she was trustworthy. Moon obviously seemed to think the same as she slowly shut her mouth, though her eyes remained a narrowed.

“I’ll tell the fliers to change course,” Cloudstorm said with a little shrug, quick to dismiss the conversation.

Sighing, Sunny set his head down and rolled over onto his back, letting his wings splay out at his sides. There wasn’t much room for it in the cabin, but he made do. “Please, for the love of Celestia, tell me we get to rest. I am so tired of... everything.”

“No more big cities,” Willow said with a light sigh and an almost cruel chuckle. “No more cities.”

“How’re we just going to do this on our own?” Moon protested. “None of us have had anything to eat for at least a day. Already, we’re a quarter starved.”

Sunny shook his head slowly as the two spoke. “I feel like there’s something bigger going on here. When the guards let us through the gate, that mare said ‘is it him?’. They’re looking for a pony, a normal civilian. And it might have just been me. Think about it. All the research they did in Bottle of Progress.” Willow winced at the name. “The way I’m immune. What if they knew something we didn’t? What if there is some sort of cure... and I can help?”

Moon patted his shoulder, much to the pegasus’ discomfort. “Sunny. Don’t worry about that. We’re done with them.”

“But imagine if we could fix it!” He sat up. “Imagine if we could put it back!”

“We can never put it back!”

“You don’t know that!” It was Willow who spoke up, silencing Sunny before he could even speak. She squared up to Moon. “Friends, family... what if we could bring them all back?”

Moon opened her mouth, but didn’t speak. She only started into Willow’s eyes in semi-willing submission.

“We’ll be landing soon,” Cloudstorm said quietly, breaking the moment. Everypony onboard who’d been awake had been listening, and the silence that followed could have driven a pony mad.

* * *

Happyhorn was void of zombies, at least from first glance. More than a few milled around outside the gates, rotting bodies amongst them, yet nothing stirred within the contained courtyard.

Really, it reminded Moon of a school. The only thing that said otherwise was the stone wall surrounding the entire slew of buildings. Coiled razorwire spanned the top of the wall, and below it; happy depictions of smiling ponies prancing over rolling hills of grass and trees covered the worn stone, faded, but by no means any less colorful. Looking at the wall was comical on its own, though the longer she stared the more disturbing it seemed to get.

Stepping from the open door of the skywagon, Moon stretched each leg in turn, and just for safety’s sake, checked the clip on her shotgun. The REA model was nicer than anything she had ever used before; not only was it drum-fed, but it was semi-automatic and came with its own recoil-reducing enchantments embedded in small gemstones near the end of the barrel.

If a pony ignored the barbed wire, Happyhorn actually looked pretty nice! There was a fenced-in playground in one corner—without barbed wire—and further along there were different zones for all sorts of activities.

The two skywagons had descended side-by-side in the very middle of the compound. A large fountain sat in the middle of the yard; the stone carving of a proud unicron reared up on its hind legs seemed to gleam in the clouded sunlight. Although water no longer flowed from the spout, there was still a stagnant pool of water in the basin, most likely a collection of rainwater from the recent storms.

“Hey, I found us a water source!” She frowned at the algae growing around the corners of the fountain. “Might have to boil it though...” Moon stared up at the massive fountain. “Seems like a nice little place.”

“Yeah,” Cloudstorm said with a scoff, stepping up beside the mare. “Perfect for all the little rejects of society.” The mare’s eyes were dark as she stared at the statue. “Last time I was here, there was water shooting from the mare’s horn. It was pretty cool. Created this sort of abstract feel to the statue.”

“Okay, uh... everypony!”

Moon turned her head. Sunny was trying to give some sort of pep talk or something, which meant nothing good. Looking out over the crowd, the orange stallion counted heads. “Okay, there’s twenty-five of us, counting me. First thing we need to do is uh... scour this place for food.”

Twenty five?

Moon looked out over the crowd of ponies gathered around the orange pegasus. Sweet Celestia, he was right, and the scariest part was that she knew all but the eight pegasi that had flown the wagons.

On the topic of those eight pegasi, they were still unhooking themselves from the wagons, and from the varying looks of confusion upon the ponies’ faces, things may have been on the brink of getting out of hoof.

Giving Cloudstorm a nudge, Moon nodded towards the pegasi. “You better go talk to them, and fast. They probably thought they were flying an REA mission.”

“I’ll calm them down.” Cloudstorm pawed at the ground for a moment before standing, giving herself a quick stretch. “Most of them are drafted civilians—they’re hardly loyal to the REA anyways. There’s nothing anypony hates more than being taken from your family and made to fly a wagon.”

“Right.” Moon sat back as Cloudstorm trotted towards the group of pegasi. Watching the scene unfold, the muttering and and grumbling of two-dozen voices, Moon couldn’t help but worry. She remembered when it had only been the six of them. The larger the group, the bigger the hoofprint. And the bigger the hoofprint...

“Hey, Moon.”

Moon spun, switching off the safety on her weapon with an involuntarily bit of focussed magic and angling it towards the voice. “Yeah?”

Snowglobe stepped backwards, holding a hoof in front of her face. “Watch where you’re pointing that thing!”

Shrugging her shoulders, Moon fastened the weapon in its respective place on her left side and nodded towards her friend. “Yeah...?” She could see the uncertainty in Snowglobe’s eyes. The half-ring on her brow had since scabbed over, but it was still a painful reminder if their little clash on the train.

“I just wanted to say sorry... about what I did on the train.” Sighing, Snowglobe sat back on her haunches and rubbed the spot on her head with a little wince. “I kind of lost myself back there. Maybe a fire extinguisher to the head wasn’t the best way to bring me back to reality, but it worked for the time being.”

Moon could only bring herself to give another shrug. “I grabbed the closest thing I could... Anyways, I know I was brash about handling it. I’m just at the end of my nerves here, Snowglobe. For the love of Celestia, you know what we went through. You know what I failed to do.” Gritting her teeth, Moon turned away and began to pace around the fountain. “You know how I failed.”

“Moon... there’s nothing you could have done.” Snowglobe followed persistently after the mare, nudging her shoulder once she was close enough. “They were griffons! How could any of us have been prepared for griffons!? Zombie griffons.” She shuddered at the mention of them. “Nastiest things I’ve ever seen... At least you didn’t lose anypony you cared about.”

Moon winced at the jab. Snowglobe, in a way, was right. The memory of Dusty was still all too fresh in her mind, and it took a great amount of willpower to push it away. “And that’s something I’m thankful for.” Her eyes darted across the clearing, towards Yew. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how Dusty’s sister felt about his death. However the mare felt inside, she was doing a good job of hiding it.

“Alright ponies. Food!” Willow was shouting, shoving ponies randomly at one another as she paced between them. “Stick with a buddy and don’t die. We don’t know if this place is empty or not.”

Cloudstorm was done briefing the flight team by the time Moon approached, having chosen to ditch Snowglobe for the time being. Now wasn’t time to be sharing thoughts with the gray mare anyways.

“How’d it go?” Moon fell in beside Cloudstorm as the two broke off from the main group, heading towards the front end of the campus.

Cloudstorm shrugged. “Seemed a little worried the REA would come after us, but apart from that, they don’t care as long as they stay fed and don’t die. Two of them are REA and really haven’t taken too kindly to being kidnapped, in a sense. They might fly on us. I’m not really sure, but I hope they don’t, otherwise we’re down one puller for each wagon.”

Moon nodded slowly, biting her lip. “Why’d you leave?”

Cloudstorm’s ears perked, though her face remained expressionless. “Leave?”

“I saw what you did for my friends, Cloudstorm. Why’d you give up your position for just another couple of ponies crossing into the evac zone?”

The mare only shook her head. “Gut feeling. It just felt... right. I really wasn’t expecting it to turn into a firefight. After everypony started shooting, I knew that my times as Sergeant were basically over. And hey, I’d already helped you guys out once. Why not do it again?” Cloudstorm paused, bobbing her head slowly as she glanced back over her shoulder at the others. “That orange pegasus with you. He’s special, isn’t he?”

Now it was Moon’s turn to act unresponsive. “Special?”

“Yes, you know what I’m talking about. I heard all about the stuff with Bottle of Progress over the radio channels. Right before things hit the fan, Black Dove was desperate to find an orange pegasus by the name of Sunny.” Cloudstorm fixed Moon with a long, contemplating stare. “He’s immune, isn’t he? I saw the mark on his leg. That bite mark’s months old.”

Moon only nodded. “He is. He and Willow are both immune... though Willow’s something else. She’s this sort of... genetic mutation, really. It’s like she became a zombie without losing her mind. She’s strong like one. She eats like one... but she’s still sentient. She managed to get herself infected and took injections of some sort of antibiotic. I don’t know what did it, but it made her one of them. Her eyes glow in the dark and everything.”

“Moon, you do realize how important Sunny would be to the REA, don’t you?” Cloudstorm dodged Moon’s diversion tactic easily. “Whatever scientists are left after this whole mess are either signed up with Dove or with Striker out at sea.”

Moon stopped. “No. No, don’t even think about it. We are not giving him to them! They did stuff to him... and Willow, at Bottle of Progress. Willow flinches whenever a stallion takes a good look at her and Sunny’s afraid of anything with a pointed tip. He nearly passed out when Willow tried to inject him with a little dash of morphine for his wounds at the train station.”

Cloudstorm only sighed. “Yeah, but this is bigger than you know, and I’m pretty sure you know that.”

Moon didn’t reply. Instead, she fell back a little and let the former REA unicorn take up the lead. Cloudstorm seemed to know where she was going, following a trail towards a medium-sized building near the front gate. Moon could already read the sign above the door from here. ‘Admission’.

Moon frowned as they passed up the cafeteria, looking over her shoulder at the hanging sign and wondering if Cloudstorm had missed it. “Is there any reason why we’re heading to the front building, and not the cafeteria in search of food?”

Cloudstorm shook her head as she mounted the steps to the admission building and tested the door handle. “Other ponies will check there. There were snack and drink machines in the lobby, if my memory serves me right.” The handle didn’t turn when the mare tried it. Sighing, Cloudstorm stepped to the side and nodded towards Moon’s weapon. “Open it.”

In less than a moment, two buckshot rounds shredded the lock and the door swung open under the influence of Cloudstorm’s hoof.

Moon groaned and pressed her hoof to her muzzle as they stepped inside. The smell of rotting flesh assaulted her mouth and nostrils, so thick she could taste it. “Somepony died in here. Sweet Celestia that’s grody.”

Cloudstorm let out a long, slow breath, and Moon watched as the mare visibly shivered. “Maybe they starved...”

Moon turned and raised an eyebrow at Cloudstorm. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “Just... thinking about the ponies who were here when the infection broke out, is all.”

“...Did you know any of them?” Moon took a moment to glance around the room. It was dusty, but that was about it. Desks and chairs sat here and there, undisturbed for the most part. If she tried really hard, she could almost convince herself that the ponies had turned off all the lights and gone off on lunch break.

Cloudstorm gave another nod, this one much less assuring. “Yeah, I did.” Turning away from Moon, the mare started to pick her way through the offices. “Remember how I said I sent my daughter here? Well... I never picked her up for the parent week thing. I left her here with a hoof full of other ponies whose families didn’t want them around.”

Moon’s eyes fell on a droplet of water left in Cloudstorm’s wake, then another, the darkened patches sticking out plainly against the dusty floor. “Oh...”

When Cloudstorm spoke again, her voice was choked. “She would have been with me. She would have been with me if I hadn’t left her here. As bad as she was, she was still mine, and I left her to die out here, alone!” She stomped a hoof. “I was hoping that when we landed, there’d be other ponies... and maybe... you know, she’d be here.” Stopping just before the doorway to the lobby, Cloudstorm hung her head and choked out a sob, body trembling.

“You never could have known.” Moon gave the former-sergeant a light nudge with her shoulder. “It’s...” She tapered off. The last thing Cloudstorm needed to hear was ‘it’s okay’. “I-I’m sorry, Cloudstorm.”

Cloudstorm nodded. “I’m afraid. I’m so afraid. I left her all by herself to die. What if I walk around a corner and I find her on the floor? T-that rotting smell. What if it’s her?” Her voice was little more than a squeak by this point.

Moon didn’t speak. She gave Cloudstorm a rough shove to get her moving again and fell in stride beside the silently weeping mare. “I can’t answer that.” Moon bit her tongue to avoid saying any more, but nonetheless her words managed to slip out. “That’s why you brought us here, isn’t it?”

Cloudstorm huffed and met Moon’s eyes with a challenging stare. “You don’t have children!” She spoke with venom, the sadness temporarily shunted to the side. “If it had been one of your friends, you would have done the same. So don’t you go accusing me of anything!”

“I wasn’t accusing anything!” Moon said hurriedly, plodding over to a desk to rifle through its drawers. “You’re right. If it was Sunny, I would have done the same... Actually, I did do the same. I led an entire town of ponies in the direction of Baltimare just so I could get to him... None of them made it.” Once again, Moon’s hoof went to the headband she wore, not as a sign of leadership, but as a reminder of her failure. Sage was amongst the survivors, and often enough Moon found the turquoise mare staring at the red band hidden mostly by brown mane.

Moon’s trifles rewarded her with a half-empty can of salted nuts which she tucked into her saddlebags. Leaving Cloudstorm to do her own searching, Moon broke away from the mare, leaving the room through a small doorway and heading out into the main lobby. Across the room were the snack machines, but in the very middle was the source of the smell. A periwinkle stallion lay in a pool of solidified blood. What remained of him was grotesque and bloated. Somehow, the flies hadn’t gotten to him yet and there were no maggots to eat at the body, which only made the scene that much worse. The handle of a letter opener protruded from his neck as a clear sign of demise. Judging the scene before her, the body had only been here for a week or two.

“Hey!” Moon pulled her head away from the stallion on the floor, and much to her surprise, came nearly face-to-face with the body of a mare slumped up against the wall, her chest littered with small stab wounds. Grimacing, Moon stepped away. “There’s two dead ponies in here and it doesn’t look like the zombies got them!”

Cloudstorm came charging into the room, face contorted in worry as she glanced over the bodies. A moment later, the mare relaxed. “They look like scavengers.”

“So... do you think that means that that the ponies who did this are still here?” Moon glanced around the lobby, suddenly sure that she was being watched. The building had taken on a much more intimidating feel with her new discovery.

Cloudstorm shrugged, though there was no hiding the hope that shone in her eyes. “Maybe.”

The snack machines had already been emptied of everything but the bits in their trays, the locks having been cut and the contents removed. Paying better attention towards the ground, it wasn’t hard to spot the assorted candy wrappers strewn across the floor. “Somepony’s already had a go at the machines. Dry as a bone.” Letting out a low growl, Moon banged the side of the machine with a hoof, her mind already drifting to the can of nuts in her saddlebag. She’d undoubtedly have to share those.

“Found a couple protein bars!”

Moon turned towards the sound of Cloudstorm’s voice off in the next room. “That all?” She was about to follow when the rustling of paper pricked her ears. It was subtle enough to be caused by a light breeze, though not enough to go unheard.

Levitating her shotgun out in front of her, Moon crept back through the doorway she’d entered the lobby from, looking over the rows of desks still cluttered with documents. A floorboard creaked somewhere and that was all Moon needed to know. Without waiting any longer, Moon charged to the center of the room, brandishing her weapon wildly as she spun herself in a circle. Soon enough, her vision fell on a standing wardrobe in the corner of the room. An almost foalish smile crossed Moon’s face as she lowered her stance, sneaking towards it.

She’d eat her mane if there wasn’t a pony hiding in there.

Trying to focus two telekinetic fields of magic at once was a skill Moon had not yet mastered—last thing she wanted to do was try to pull the trigger on the wardrobe handle while trying to open the shotgun—so instead, she approached the wardrobe and took one of the brass knobs in her mouth. Bracing herself, she gave it a pull and hopped back, ready to decimate—

A rack of coats.

Simmering in defeat, Moon stepped forward and swung the other door open. “I’m too paranoid.” Sighing in exasperation, Moon turned away from the wardrobe and looked back over the room. “I don’t think there’s anyth—” Something cold pressed against the back of her head. There was no denying what it was, especially once the hammer cocked.

“One more word and you die,” a mare hissed in Moon’s ear. The voice was young, belonging to a pony little more than a foal.

“Easy,” Moon whispered, wincing as the gun barrel pressed firmly against her flesh. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

“You’re stealing food,” the pony hissed back. “My food.”

“Moon!?” Cloudstorm called. “Come check this out!”

It was just a filly; Moon knew it in her gut. Chances were a filly wouldn’t have the guts to shoot a pony in the back of the head... right?

Feeling the weapon start to shake, Moon made her move. Crying out, she swung her head to the side and telekinetically hurled her shotgun at where she assumed the pony was behind her. The pistol—something low caliber—fired, though missed completely. The shotgun collided against something much too hard to be a pony, and Moon realized she had only succeeded in slamming the weapon against the back of the wardrobe.

Spinning on one hoof, Moon swung blindly as she turned herself around, and again she hit nothing. Her eyes widened as she came face-to-face with the barrel of her own shotgun, only the magic holding it was periwinkle, not blue. Moon ducked right as the weapon discharged, firing a solid slug into the wall at the other end of the room.

It was then that Moon spotted her assailant. The dew-green unicorn looked too old to be a filly and too young to be a mare as she stared back at Moon from within the wardrobe, terrified eyes fixed on the intruder. Moon’s shotgun turned to face its owner, and in attempt to dodge death, Moon threw herself directly at the filly.

The little mare was fast. Again, the shot missed, though it was more because the pony wielding it was occupied with dodging out of Moon’s way. With the unpleasant crunch of wood against her skull, Moon fell to the ground as the wardrobe rocked back and forth from the impact. Before she could so much as recover, there was a splintering of wood and the wardrobe’s forelegs gave out. Groaning and growling, the heavy piece of furniture toppled forward as Moon tried desperately to backpedal from it.

Rolling to her hooves, Moon pushed off the ground with her forehooves and tried to spring clear. No more than a second after she’d left the ground, there was a splitting pain in her spine as the wardrobe struck her. Moon didn’t even get a chance to cry out before the air was knocked out of her, the wardrobe slamming her into the ground.

“Moon!?” Cloudstorm yelled, hooves thundering from somewhere across the building. “What the hell’s going on!?”

Groaning, Moon picked her head up from the floor and tried to squirm out from under the wardrobe that pinned her to belly to the floor. She was lucky enough that it hadn’t broken her spine, though that hardly seemed to matter now as she stared past the barrel of her own gun and into the cold eyes of its wielder.

Cloudstorm burst through the doorway with the furiosity of a hurricane, though skidded to a stop a second later, horror stretching across her face. “Rainy, no!”

Moon blinked in confusion, praying for any sort of distraction, anything to keep those five steel balls from ripping her skull apart.

The mare pressed the shotgun right between Moon’s eyes, the hot barrel sizzling against cool flesh as Moon tried to squirm her way backwards in a cry of agony. “Don’t move or I’ll kill her!”

Cloudstorm took a step closer. “Rainstorm... it’s me! Don’t shoot her!”

The mare known as Rainstorm threw only the smallest of glances towards Cloudstorm. “Who’re you!?”

“C-cloudy, Rainy.” Cloudstorm took another step. “Please, h-honey, put the gun down!”

Rainstorm shook her head. “N-no, you’re not her! Everypony else is dead! A-and she left me here to die.”

“Honey, I came back.” Cloudstorm was inching ever closer, trembling with every step. “I’d never leave you... I always knew you were a fighter. I knew you’d be okay.”

Moon couldn’t bring herself to open her eyes. She didn’t dare move. The filly standing before her had a very powerful gun and was probably scared enough to use it. It couldn’t end this way—not after all she’d been through. She hadn’t fought her way across Equestria to find Sunny, only to get to spend a few hours with him before getting gunned down by some paranoid filly.

The weapon began to tremble in Rainstorm’s grasp as the mare looked desperately between Cloudstorm and Moon. “Mom?”

The door exploded open from across the room, outside light pouring into the gloomy building as a pony stalked into the gloom. Altic appeared in all her light blue glory, dual SMGs held in her magical grasp. “I heard shooting! What’s—”

“Rainy NO!”

Altic had only brought her head halfway around when two rounds of buckshot and a slug blew the left half of her face apart. The mare staggered, then dropped to the floor, her SMGs clattering down beside her.

Growling, Rainstorm turned the weapon to Moon next, and the trapped mare could do nothing but cower at the smoke whispering from the breech and barrel. There was a certain resolve in the filly’s eyes now. She was going to shoot, and there was no doubting it.

Moon focussed her magic on the trigger of the weapon to try and keep it from firing. The filly fought hard, straining against Moon’s own magical force. Nonetheless, Moon was losing. Sweat beaded on her brow and ran into her eyes. Magic was much harder to produce through pain, and the wardrobe on her back wasn’t helping a single bit.

Dark blue fought periwinkle, though for how much longer was a very worrying question. Moon’s eyes widened a little when a light blue aura joined the battle over the weapon. Immediately, the barrel was yanked to the side. Rainstorm growled and fought to hold it in place, tugging it back towards herself in attempt to regain control of the weapon.

With a cry of exertion, Moon gave one last desperate push, closing her eyes in an attempt to channel every bit of magic she could. Suddenly, her horn sparked, then went dead.

The firearm discharged, though the sound was muffled by the flesh and bone of its wielder, the barrel pressed firmly against Rainstorm’s belly.

Rainstorm staggered, eyes widening as the shotgun dropped to the floor. Across the room, Cloudstorm stiffened in shock, the last traces of light blue magic fading from the tip of her horn.

Turning, Rainstorm took a step towards her mother. “Momma.” Her voice came out as little more than a foal’s whimper. Taking another weak step, she coughed, blood spilling from her mouth and nostrils. With one last cry, Rainstorm staggered to the side and fell against a desk, sliding down to the floor into the pool of rapidly spreading blood.

“Rainy!” Cloudstorm screamed, rushing forward and wrapping her hooves around the mare, blood or not. “No, no no no!” Tears running down her face, Cloudstorm pressed her hooves against the gushing entry wound in an attempt to quell the flow of blood. “You’re not going to die. Rainy, you hear me!? I thought I lost you once. I’m not going to lose you now!”

Moon couldn’t have moved if she wanted to. Her eyes remained affixed on the smoking shotgun abandoned on the floor, and the single shell beside it, still bleeding off the last traces of powder smoke.

“I’m sorry M-mom.” Rainstorm’s voice was little more than a whisper as Cloudstorm held the filly’s head against her body. “I thought you left me...”

“No, honey, no. I would never leave you.” Somehow, Cloudstorm managed speak through the tears that filled her eyes. “I came back... See, I came back! Now you’ve got to be strong. Be strong for me, please! Rainy, I can’t do this without you.”

Rainstorm closed her eyes and drew a shuddering breath, shedding tears of her own. “I waited for you. I waited and waited for you, even after the others left... I knew you’d come.”

Cloudstorm pulled her daughter closer, ignoring the blood that stained her coat. “You caused me so much trouble, Rainy, but I’ve always loved you.”

Rainstorm managed to produce a chuckle, though with it came more blood and a weak cough that sent a shiver down the mare’s shine. “I never did make you proud.”

“You always did, Rainy. I’m p-proud. I was always proud. I’m proud you w-waited for me.”

Nodding slowly, Rainstorm drew a shuddering breath and went limp. “Love you... T-thanks for c-coming... coming back.” The filly closed her eyes. “I’m sorry sorry I... shot your friend... Mom...”

“No, Rainy, no.” Cloudstorm gave the filly in her hooves a shake, Rainstorm’s limp body refusing to come to. “No, wake up! Please wake up!” Gasping, sobbing, Cloudstorm pressed her head against her foal’s chest, listening to what was left of Rainstorm’s heartbeat. Moon could hear it from where she lie, even over Cloudstorm’s whimpering sobs. Slowly but surely, the weak sound of life was fading to nothing.

It seemed like an eternity before Cloudstorm turned her shimmering eyes to Moon. “She’s—” Her eyes darkening, Cloudstorm sat up a little, relinquishing her grip on the cooling body. Suddenly, Cloudstorm’s magic pulled one of her two pistols from its holster. The deadly weapon levitated for a second, then turned on its owner.

Moon tried to struggle, to bring up any sort of a spell that could throw of the mare’s aim, but nothing more than a spark escaped her horn. “Cloudst—”

The pistol barked in the silence and a white flash lit up the room. A second later, mother fell upon daughter, and neither moved again.

Moon lay there until she heard hoofsteps upon the wooden floor.

“Celestia,” a stallion whispered, pacing slowly into the room. Moon knew that voice; it belonged to Range, and any second now...

Moon whimpered and covered her ears as the stallion screamed Altic’s name. He rushed to the mare, lifting her limp body off the floor and shaking her, screaming, crying for her to move, to open her one remaining eye.

Soon others came, but Moon didn’t hear them. She didn’t look at them or speak with them. A group of ponies lifted the wardrobe from her back, though there was no reason to move. Why would there be?

Mouths moved as ponies looked at her, word-like noises escaping their lips. Moon kept her eyes on her shotgun.

Drum-fed, semi automatic.

* * *

“How’s she doing?”

Willow shook her head as she returned from the skywagon. Snowglobe could only fall in and trot beside her, glancing worriedly between her friend and the wagon. “Willow, I asked how she’s doing.”

Willow grunted. “The mare’s in shock. Whatever happened in there fucked her up bigtime, okay?” She flicked her tail. “I came in there to find Range bawling over Altic’s dead body and Moon stuck under a wardrobe in front of Cloudstorm and a filly that I don’t know.” Pausing, she turned to Snowglobe. “Her shotgun was the weapon that killed both Altic, and the filly. It looks like Cloudstorm shot herself.”

The sun was just dipping down beyond the horizon. In preparation for the night, their party had prepped a bonfire in the middle of the courtyard using desks, chairs, and whatever else that was burnable from within the school buildings. Everyone was currently gathered around a stack of dry wood as Ember stood at the base, demonstrating how to properly use a flint stone.

“How long do ponies usually stay in shock?” Snowglobe frowned at Willow, her eyes glancing back to the wagon. Moon refused to talk to anypony, and had instead curled herself up in a corner of the skywagon, where she’d been for the past three hours.

Willow shrugged. “Could pass in a few hours. It could last a few days. Snowglobe, two of her friends just died before her eyes. One of them might have been from her own hooves even! I don’t know. The filly got blasted in the belly with a bolo slug. Do you know what those things are?”

Snowglobe shook her head. “No.”

Willow’s tone had changed to that of disgust. “A bolo slug is a shotgun shell that fires two steel slugs connected in the middle by a five inch steel cable. They’re specifically designed to shred tissue and lacerate whoever they’re being shot at.” A shiver ran the course of Willow’s body as she approached the soon-to-be bonfire. “...I think that filly was Cloudstorm’s. She said something about having sent her foal here on the flight and I checked both of their bodies. The two ponies are nearly identical save for the color of their coats.”

Snowglobe only nodded, her belly rolling end over end. “It would explain why Cloudstorm shot herself.”

The ponies surrounding Ember cheered as the mare managed to get the corner of a desk going. Grinning like a maniac, Ember swept her cream colored mane back with a forehoof and leaned forward to blow on the flame as it spread. After a moment, she stepped back and reared up on her hind legs, spreading her forehooves. “And then Ember came forth and declared, let shit burn!”

Despite the fact that she was determined to feel bad after the loss of two of their comrades, Snowglobe cracked a tiny grin.

It was kind of interesting to watch how ponies fell into their own separate groups. The eight pegasi who’d pulled the wagons stood in a small cluster on the opposite end of the growing fire, keeping mostly to themselves; somehow, Copper had found his way amongst them. Sage and Jade sat off to the side, the dark blue mare sitting behind Sage, both forehooves wrapped around the slightly-smaller mare. Somehow, those two had managed to survive together all the way from Appleoosa; they were two of the few.

Willow sat herself beside Brick, leaning against the larger stallion for support as she stared into the rising flame. Turning her head to Sunny, Willow waved him over from where he’d been staring at the fountain.

Foresight and Ember were sort of the oddballs, standing alone and refusing to meet the eyes of the others. Cotton and Candy sat beside each other, which was funny enough just because of their names.

Though, there were three missing from around the fire.

Glancing away from the rising flame, Snowglobe looked elsewhere, out across the walls and between buildings. It didn’t take her very long to spot three ponies off to the right. Glancing around at the others surrounding the fire, Snowglobe backed away into the evening gloom and started towards the group of three.

They were gathered on the lawn in front of the cafeteria—just about the only spot in the entire school that wasn’t paved over. Three ponies stood beside three fresh mounds of dirt, not one of them speaking to one another.

Feeling her heart well up in her throat, Snowglobe swallowed it down and forced herself to approach the three ponies. She nudged her way between Loco and Range, throwing a quick glance past the gray stallion to identify Yew as pony number three. Loco leaned heavily on a dirty shovel, staring with unbroken attention at the slab of wood that served as Cloudstone’s headstone. The foul-mouthed stallion had taken the time to carve an epitaph into the smooth surface of the wood.

‘Cloudstorm’

One hell of a mare and the best friend any stallion could ever have

No pony else had a heart a as strong as hers

In the end, she cared too much

Let Cloudstorm live on in those she was closest to

Though her body may be gone, her soul remains within us all, ever bright and cheerful

She was our hero

Snowglobe’s eyes widened as she looked back to Loco. She never would have guessed that the grimy stallion was capable of general niceness. Just watching the hardened engineer tear up was enough to force Snowglobe’s eyes to the ground. Beside Cloudstorm’s grave, there was another.

’Rainstorm’

She was stronger than most fillies

Stronger than most ponies, really

In the end, Cloudstorm loved her more than life itself.

May the two be united in death

Snowglobe contemplated asking how Loco had known the other pony’s name, though pushed the thought away as quickly as it had entered her head. Now wasn't a good time to speak, let alone ask a question like that.

Away from the other two was the third grave, the one which Range and Yew paid their tribute to. This one carried a much simpler message.

‘Here lies Altic’

She kicked ass

Snowglobe’s breath caught in her throat as a smile pulled at the corner of her lips. It was a weak smile, one that didn’t really belong, especially now. Even in the mare’s death, Altic’s tenacity and abrasive attitude would remain with her.

Snowglobe didn’t move. She wanted to say something... anything to try and console just one of the three ponies here, but what was there to say? Their friends were dead. She knew much too well how little words did for the pain.

It was Range who finally broke the silence. “She didn’t deserve to go down like that... She hadn’t even seen it coming.” Gritting his teeth, the stallion hung his head, letting his mane obscure his face. “Altic was a fighter. If anything... she should have breathed her last breath in combat. Not get blindsided like that!”

Yew shook her head. “She never knew, Range. She died happy, at least.” The mare took a long pause, long enough that Snowglobe started trying to think up things to say again. “I guess that makes us two.” There was a morbid tone to the brown mare’s voice, one that rang with defeat.

Range’s ears perked and he tore his head away from the headstone. “Which is why we stay together, Yew. I don’t want to be the last one left, and neither do you.” Reaching out, he pulled the mare into a hug, letting Yew’s head rest against his neck. “If we go. We go together. Got it? You and me, the last ponies out of Canterlot.”

Yew crumpled into the stallion’s embrace. Choking back a sob, she pressed her face into his neck. “I never thought we’d make it this far. I thought we’d end up in some alley, all out of ammo, and that would be it. I never wanted to sit back and watch us go one by one.” Suddenly, she straightened and gave Range a brief nod. “You and me.”

Range gave the mare a firm pat between the shoulder blades. “That’s right. Now lets clear up the water works. If Altic saw either of us crying, she’d give us something real to cry about.” Range nudged Yew towards the bonfire, turning away from the fresh mound of dirt at his hooves. “Come on. Let’s go warm up.”

Snowglobe found herself standing alone with Loco, who could have passed for a statue as far as any nearby birds would be concerned. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. So far, her conversations with the stallion had been short and rather vulgar. Trying to spin a topic was hard enough as it was. Nonetheless, after a little bit of mental strain, Snowglobe settled on something nice and simple.

“Were you two good friends?” Snowglobe winced as the last word left her mouth. That had been a horrible question!

Loco nodded. “Fifteen years,” he mumbled, chewing on the end of an unlit cigar. “Babysat Rainstorm, her daughter, for her on weekends before the filly started getting herself into all sorts of trouble in school. Momma was the authoritative type, so Rainy rebelled. Got kicked out of damn near every school in Baltimare. Real sweetheart Rainy was when you got to know her, unless she was having a bad day. Then you’d just wanna’ hit her.”

Snowglobe occupied herself with dragging her forehoof across the grass. “Oh...”

“I loved Cloudstorm like a lover. Never could get close though. She swore off stallions after the accident that turned out to be Rainstorm. So I was her friend, and she was mine. I should have been around for her... If I could have just stopped her from pulling the trigger!”

“Loco... I’m sorry. I wish there was something... anything I could do to help.”

“Sure is.” The stallion sighed and pulled the cigar from his mouth, holding it out to Snowglobe. “Got a light?”

She flinched away from the cigar like he’d pointed a gun at her, then let out a sheepish little chuckle. “O-of course.” With a small spark from her horn, the tip of the cigar sizzled to life.

Taking a long drag on his treat, the stallion turned one eye to Snowglobe. “Always keep a unicorn around when you need one. Snowglobe was it, right?”

“Yeah. Not very fitting, but it’s my name.” She shrugged. “Mother collected snowglobes, so...”

Loco nodded his head and turned away from the headstone he’d carved, looking out over the group of ponies surrounding the fire. “Well, Snowglobe. Thanks.”

Ears perking, Snowglobe gave the stallion a confused look. “For what?”

“Getting me out of Baltimare.” Pulling the cigar from his mouth, he offered it to the little mare beside him. Snowglobe coughed on the cloud of smoke that followed the nauseous cigar and waved it away. “Chances are if I hadn’t of gotten on the wagon with you ponies, I’d have died with so many others in the city. I hate that my friend died... I hate it more than anything, but mind you I’m still glad to be alive.”

“Uh... well, you’re very welcome!” Snowglobe took a step towards the fire and nodded for him to follow. “I’m glad to have you around.”

Loco grunted, starting off towards the fire with her. Shooting one last, resentful look at the two mounds of dirt he was leaving behind, he swung his head around to face Snowglobe. “An’ why’s that?”

Her eyes drifted over the large stallion’s figure. He was built tall and he was built thick; it wasn’t a husky sort of thick, but more of a big-boned thick. He still wore his earth pony shotgun thing, which was a feat of engineering on its own, but now he wore Cloudstorm’s duel pistols on either foreleg, just below the shoulder. Over all, he had a very intimidating appearance. She would hate to be on his bad side.

“Well...” she hesitated. “You’re loyal, for one, or at least I’m pretty sure you are. I’m an electrical engineer, but I don’t know a single thing about steam.” Grinning, she glanced towards the stallion. “You and I together could probably fix anything. And you also look really scary wearing those three guns.”

Loco laughed and reached towards Snowglobe, who instantly shied away. However, there was no escaping the mane-tussle coming her way. “Thanks Snow.” The stallion sighed, his breath rattling in his throat. “Cloudy believed in you guys. I don’t know why she did, but she did. The least I can do for you is stick around and do what I can... You guys give me a good feel.”

The atmosphere around the fire was a lot more cheerful. Now that Ember had gotten the entire pile of desks and poorly-written schoolwork lit up, everypony stood around the blaze as darkness settled in. Surprisingly enough, Sage had found herself a guitar and was currently playing a slow tune; it wasn’t sad, nor happy. It was something made for the fireside.

Snowglobe set herself down by the fire beside Sunny, gazing into the raging flames and the sparks that the inferno threw out into the night. She was sure Loco would sit beside her, but instead the old stallion trotted over to where Sage was and sat down.

“You play?” he asked gruffly.

Sage nodded proudly and gave the guitar one last strum. “My dad taught me a few chords. Never learned too much though.”

Loco nodded. “Your dad... he had good taste. Tell me, you know the words to that song?”

She shook her head. “Only the beginning. Besides, it’s a stallion's song.” She smiled up at Loco. “Do you know it?”

Nodding slowly, Loco turned his eyes to the flame. “Yeah.”

Sage’s grin seemed to smile. “Can you sing it?” Giving Jade a nudge, Sage sat up a little bit and gave the guitar a soft strum. How she managed it with her forehooves was a secret of earth pony magic. “Get your harmonica out, Jade.”

The dark pegasus did so without protest, reaching into her saddlebags and pulling the beaten instrument out. “Got you covered.”

“Right!” Sage jabbed Loco with the neck of the guitar. “Come on, sing it for me, big guy. I want to hear the words.”

Loco shook his head and took a step away from the mare. “I don’t sing in front of ponies.”

Sage scooted closer to him. “Come on. You know when the words start. help me out here. You’re a trainpony. Singing’s in your blood.

Loco huffed and closed his eyes. “It ain’t no happy song.”

“It’s bittersweet. Now come on!”

Shaking his head, the battered engineer stared intently at the fire, his ears perked. Snowglobe wasn’t sure of his intentions, but right as Sage hit a different chord, the stallion opened his mouth and grumbled the first lyrics.

“Have you ever watched the sky and wondered why?” Loco coughed and cleared his throat, his voice deep and surprisingly clear over the guitar. He sang with a sort of raspy slur, but it only fit the mood that much better. “Have you ever seen the clouds and wished them gone?”

Ember’s eyes widened as the stallion sang. Abandoning her spot by the fire, she ran around behind the ring of ponies and pushed in beside Loco. The stallion gave her a look of confusion, but she shook her head at him. “My grandad loved this song.”

Shooting Ember a smirk, Loco nodded and tapped his hoof for the both of them to start.

“Have you ever just wanted to leave—head to the sky?

To leave it all behind

If not for long?”

The ponies around the fire had gone completely silent. Loco’s deep, rumbly voice paired with Ember’s lighter, smooth tone blended into a spine-chilling harmony. Neither of the two sang with their eyes open. Loco and Ember worked as one, leaning against one another as the firelight danced over their features.

“Sometimes I dream of being free to live it all!

Sometimes I sing, hopin’ one day to climb that wall!

Someway I know, that death I can’t forestall!

But until then,

I’ll sing this song.”

Sage giggled in delight and put a little more power into her playing, closing her eyes and nodding to her own beat. Jade sat back on her haunches, her sole focus the harmonica held in her forehooves as she backed the song. Not even the crackling of the fire dared to interrupt the four ponies.

“My days are long—spent sweatin’ in the sun

My nights are slow when no one’s there to hold

Yet time goes by—faster than the old river runs!

Yes life drags on

Until you’re old.”

Snowglobe laid her head on her forehooves as Ember and Loco broke out into two different sets of lyrics at once. The words twisted and played off one another while remaining just different enough to hide both meanings. The two exchanged a smile as they sang, communicating with little nods and gestures as they exchanged lyrics.

After so much strife, one hardship after another, Snowglobe wouldn’t have cared if it all ended right here. Right here, right now... her life was perfect. She would give anything to hold on to this moment for the rest of her life, to simply forget what was and be here. It was almost how things had used to be.

* * *

Sunny threw a glance back to the bonfire as the surrounding ponies cheered their impromptu band. It was probably the least sane thing he could have done: walking away away before they could start another song. From the sounds of things, they were going to start another song, or at least Sage planned on it.

Sunny kept his ears folded flat to his head as he approached one of the two skywagons. Willow hadn’t been able to talk to Moon at all, though maybe it was because of the friction between the two, probably over him.

The evening breeze swept through Sunny’s coat, chilling him to the bone so soon after leaving the warm fire. Nosing open the door to the carriage, he trotted inside, peering through the darkness. “Moon?”

“Go away.” The mare’s voice came from the far corner, behind a row of seats.

He stood there for a moment, contemplating whether or not he should do as he was told. This was a conversation that was not going to be fun, and in all honesty the raging bonfire was much nicer and warmer than this cold, aluminum wagon. “Moon. It’s Sunny.” One hoof after the other, he made his way around to the back of the wagon until he came across the blue lump that was his friend.

“I said go away!” Moon snapped, hiding her head in the crack between the seat and the wall.

“Moon, get out of the corner.” Sunny sat behind her.

“No!”

There really wasn’t any way to get her out of the corner without touching her and Sunny’s hooves prickled just thinking about it. “Moon, everypony’s out by the fire having a good time. You should come join us.”

The mare only sniffed. “I don’t want anypony to see me crying... just go away.”

“Everypony already knows you’re in here crying.” Biting his lip, Sunny leaned forward and put his hoof on her shoulder, shaking off the heebie-jeebies that came with the contact. “I’m... I’m sorry, Moon.” He tried to pull her out of the corner, somewhat succeeding. “There was nothing you could have done.”

She rounded on him, teeth bared. “Sunny, I watched it all!”

He fell back on his rump as the mare spun and took a few steps back as she advanced on him. “I-I know you did, Moon.” His rump bumped against the back of the wagon and with a worried glance behind him, he realized he was trapped.

“Sunny, I watched a foal blow the brains of one of my friends across the floor with my own gun! I watched a mother accidentally shoot her own foal in the gut with my own gun! There was nothing I could do but lie there and watch as she pulled out her own pistol... and...”

Sunny was pressed firmly up against the wall, leaning as far away from the mare as he could, almost cowering.

“And it was all MY FAULT!”

Sunny threw his hooves in front of his face as Moon bellowed. He was positive that the music around the fire had stopped and the babble had died down.. “I-I don’t... Moon I—I could, no wouldn’t—”

Moon Threw herself onto Sunny, sobbing into his neck. “There was nothing I could do. I tried, Sunny! I tried. I tried to get out from under the wardrobe. I tried to pull the gun away from Cloudstorm. I tried to get Rainstorm to put the gun down. I tried, but I didn’t do anything right! All three of them died right in front of me and there wasn’t a single thing I could do about it!”

Sunny writhed and squirmed against the wall as Moon held onto him. He grit his teeth and tried to push her away. If anypony would have been watching them, it would have been easy to mistake Moon’s coat for something that was scalding hot and agonizingly painful to touch. “Yeah, yeah, okay!” He tried to duck under her to get away but Moon had gotten her hooves around his neck. “No hugs, please!”

“I just don’t know what to do anymore, Sunny! They needed me to be strong in Appleoosa and I couldn’t!” Her hooves tightened down on the pegasus’ neck and Sunny almost screamed. “Everywhere around me ponies always die. They always die, Sunny! Why do they all have to die!?”

Enough was enough. It didn’t matter if he was trying to console her or not. This wasn’t happening. Flaring his wings, he braced himself against the wall and shoved Moon away at the same time. The effect managed to break the mare’s grip on his neck, though not without a good amount of force. Moon soared a good couple of feet before slamming down on her back in the aisle, whimpering.

“Gah, Moon.” Sunny spun in a circle, neatly folding his wings back to his side and patting down his coat. “Don’t touch me!” Panting, limbs shaking, Sunny tried to calm his nerves. “You know I hate to be touched!”

At first, Moon didn’t pick herself up. Her flanks heaved as she settled down on the floor. The tears were gone, replaced with cold apathy. “I’m sorry, Sunny... I just don’t know what to do anymore.” Slowly as could be, Moon brought herself to her hooves. “Sunny, I don’t want to see you, or any of the others get hurt. I’m tired of watching the ponies around me die.”

Sunny shook his head. “We all are, Moon. There’s not much any of us can do about it. These things. Zombies, infected ponies... whatever everypony’s calling them—they bring out the worst in all of us. I don’t know about you, but I worry every day what’ll happen tomorrow, if I’ll live or die or if I’ll lose another friend.” He took a step towards Moon and set his hoof down by hers. He wasn’t touching, but he was close. “You’re the reason I’m still alive, Moon. Remember that day back in Desert Sage? The night we shared?”

Moon nodded, her eyes wide, expectant almost.

“If you and I hadn’t have shared that night, and hadn’t have come across Notebook, we never would have met Willow and Brick. We never would have made it to the hospital, and we never would have known what was coming. Moon, if I hadn’t met you that day in the supermarket, chances are I’d be dead... and so would you.” Sunny nodded out the window. “All those ponies out there—all those ponies who’re alive: That’s part of our doing. We’re part of the reason they’re all here. This may seem like a funny way of looking at things, but by surviving, Moon, we’ve saved countless others.”

Staring into Moon’s blue eyes, Sunny forced himself to take her hoof. “Moon. I started this with you. I need you to stay around, for me... otherwise I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Sunny...” She tightened his grip on the stallion’s hoof, leaning slightly towards the pegasus. “I took a train from Appleoosa all the way to Baltimare to find you. There’s no way I am ever giving up on you.” Her eyes darted to the ground. “I just don’t want you to end up like one of the others. What if it had been you to come in and check on the shooting and not Altic? I feel so good that she died and not you, but I hate myself for it as well! That poor mare got shot in the face, and all I can think of afterwards is ‘thank Celestia it wasn’t Sunny’.”

Things were getting into the danger zone now. Her muzzle was only an inch from his own. There was no way this was actually happening. The little pony in Sunny’s brain that was in charge of sounding the alarms bells was sleeping on the job, and things were about to get bad.

“...You worried that much about me?” Sunny blinked in surprise, and when he opened his eyes again she was a half an inch closer.

“Yes, Sunny, I did. I regretted letting you leave the moment you got on that skywagon... We stick together from now on. Deal?”

Their muzzles were touching now, and Sunny was too out of it to even pull away. “...Deal,” he whispered.

Moon pressed her lips to his.

Strangely enough, it hurt when ponies touched him. Usually, Sunny would describe it as a burning sensation. It made him want to get away from whatever was touching him, and usually if the pony kept it up, it made him want to hurt them. The only burning sensation to be had was one in his cheeks. There was a tiny fluttering in the back of his skull, and somewhere in his brain, the stallion had woken up and was ringing every bell there was in high alert. Sunny ignored it all, his ears folding flat against his scalp as Moon leaned into him. They were the same height; perfect height for kissing one another, he supposed.

Moon wasn’t letting up though. Sunny felt a forehoof drape around his neck, pulling him closer as Moon reined him in with surprising force. Sunny’s wings went slack, drooping down to his sides as he lost whatever resistance he had left. This was happening. This was actually happening, and for once he wasn’t afraid of it. Somehow, the problem he’d had since he was a foal has simply shut itself off for this very moment.

“Enjoying yourselves?”

Sunny jerked back into the real world at the all too familiar voice behind him. Staggering backwards, he turned halfway around and clobbered his head on a support beam for the roof. Falling to one side, he leaned against a seat and rubbed his head with a forehoof. “I...” Lifting his head, his muzzle came within inches of Willow’s. Unlike Moon, Willow didn’t look like she wanted to kiss him.

The white mare’s eyes glowed in the dark, as they normally did, but they held a fire in them now that could have melted through steel. “I heard yelling,” she said flatly. “I figured I’d come check on you two. I needed to give Moon a quick examination as well to make sure her spine hadn’t suffered any damage from that wardrobe.” Willow’s voice shook a little, though she held it together. “I figured, since she was still in shock, she might not be aware of any injuries that should have otherwise been brought to attention. To my delight, it appears she has made a full recovery.”

Sunny didn’t have any words. The very last place he wanted to look was into Willow’s eyes, though he couldn’t pull his own away. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale... He had to say something. “Willow... I—”

“Don’t worry, Sunny.” Willow turned away and closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, they were on Moon. “I-I’m sorry for interrupting you two. If you n-need me or anything, I’ll be outside.”

“Willow, wait!” Sunny took a step towards his friend, but Willow backed up, shaking her head at him.

“No, Sunny, just stay away from me.” She turned and ran, charging for the door at the end of the wagon. She missed it the first time and ran headlong into the wall, putting a heavy dent in the aluminum shell before righting herself and staggering out the door.

Sunny trotted halfway down the aisle after her, then stopped himself. Feeling weak, and suddenly rather sick, he leaned up against a seat and held his belly with a forehoof. “Oh, dear Luna not now. Not this. Why did she have to come in now of all times?”

“Sunny?” Moon placed her hoof on his shoulder from behind and Sunny jerked away with a wince.

“Nothing, Moon. Not right now. It’s nothing.”

The look on her face said otherwise. “Sunny... does Willow like you... like, like you?”

Sunny stomped his hoof and rounded on her. “Yes, Moon, she does! I’m the only pony she’s had to talk to for weeks! They locked us in a cell together. She’s gone through everything I have and we went through it together! Can’t you see why I’m so conflicted about all of this!?”

Moon took a step back, hurt shining bright and fresh in her eyes. “I—but... Sunny?”

“I can’t make everypony happy!” Snarling, Sunny turned his back on her and stormed out of the wagon. Outside, a light drizzle was just starting up, carried in by the winds. Of course, Willow wasn’t anywhere near the fire. Sunny didn’t feel like being around the others as he was right now anyways. It would, most assuredly, lead to even more disaster.

Even as his hooves carried him off towards the back wall of the campus, which he intended to take a nice, long walk around, his mind continued to wander back to the kiss; his first kiss.

As disastrous as it had been... he almost wanted another.

Chapter 20 Fight and Flight

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“Come on, come on. Move it. We’ve been sitting here too long! Get on the damn wagons!”

Sunny watched as Willow strode about the camp in the orange light of morning, kicking and poking ponies awake as she strode amongst the rows of bedrolls and blankets. The twenty-three of them had managed to exhaust Happyhorn of any useful supplies in no less than two days. There had been little food to be had within the compound. In his searches, Sunny had come across obvious signs of survivor activity—they must have lived here for quite some time before leaving. No weapons, no supplies, and no bodies.

The staff of Happyhorn had survived the initial infection, and in the process they’d bled the place dry. Sunny wasn’t quite sure, but there was solace in the fact that there had been other ponies living here at one point who could still be alive somewhere. Maybe the Happyhorn survivors had done something similar to what Sunny and his friends had done: escaped to somewhere better, preferably not Baltimare.

Thinking back on it, Sunny was actually pretty glad that he’d spent the first month of the initial infection in an unresponsive state. He hated to imagine, to even think of how it must feel hiding inside those walls knowing that every day there was less and less food to be had. By far, coming in at the end had been much less stressful on him.

“Get up!” Willow bellowed to one of the pegasi, slamming her hooves down on the concrete beside his head with such force that a spiderweb of cracks skewered out from the source of impact.

The pegasus yelled and rolled away from her, beating his wings as he tried to climb to his hooves. “Gah, what the hay!? I’m up, I’m up!”

Sunny flinched. Willow, for the most, part seemed to have control of her… powers, on good days. Really, there was no better word for it. She could chew through steel, crush concrete, eat and successfully digest meat and even see in the dark; if those weren’t powers then Sunny didn’t know what was.

Willow looked up and met Sunny’s eye. For a moment, they exchanged a glance before the white mare snarled and turned away, bearing down on the rest of the ponies who were still foolish enough to remain lying down.

A shiver ran down the course of his spine. The events of that night still burned fresh in his mind. After she’d barged in on him and Moon, Willow had proceeded to the admission building and smashed every desk, chair, window, and wall. Celestia herself must have willed the building to remain standing, because Sunny sure couldn’t see how it had survived.

He’d been afraid to even look at Moon with Willow around. Even when Willow wasn’t around, he still had trouble looking Moon in the eye. Their eyes would meet and Sunny would feel a swathe of crimson run across his face. He couldn’t look into those blue eyes of hers without imaging her warm lips pressed to his. The feeling was both a combination of discomfort and confusing pleasure that left his ears twitching and his legs shaking. Touch was something to be associated with pain; now he wasn’t sure what it was supposed to be.

“Pegasus!” Snowglobe hollered from a makeshift guard stand near the edge of the courtyard.

Sunny’s ears perked straight up and he spun, switching off the safety on the service rifle he’d commandeered from a dead soldier. His eyes scanned the air above them for a quick second before landing on a straggling shape in the distance. It flew with sloppy, irregular rotations of its wings that Sunny would have expected from a filly trying to fly.

His eyes darted to Snowglobe and Loco, who had taken last sentry watch for the night. The two sat next to each other, snickering and pointing at the useless zombie.

“Well they can’t all be winners,” Loco said with a chortle. Leaning back on his haunches, he reached around with a forehoof and pulled forth the shotgun he kept in the elongated holster on his right side. “This one’s mine.”

Watching the earth pony aim the weapon with his forehooves was one of the more interesting things Sunny had seen in the past two days. Loco sat back on his haunches as he held the weapon aloft with both forehooves, aiming down the iron sights.

“Ready?” Loco said, giving Snowglobe a soft nudge with his elbow. “Bolo slug.” He pulled the hoof trigger and the weapon barked, the shortened muzzle of the shotgun letting out a puff of smoke as it reared up in his grasp. There was a quarter second delay, then the pegasus screeched and flipped over in the air. It fell one way and its left wing went the other, the severed appendage falling towards the ground like a wet leaf.

“Ooooooh!” Snowglobe cheered. “You shot its wing off!” She frowned. “Shit... you shot its wing off.”

Loco sheathed his weapon and whistled. “Those little bastards are nasty. Who in the name of Celestia could have thought up something so… brutal?”

“Pirates!” Candy called from down in the courtyard, looking up at Loco. “Well, not exactly pirates… but pirates used them, but it was originally thought up by the navy. First it was called a chain shot—they used them to snap a ship’s masts. Then some genius came along and created guns. After that, it was nothing but a race to see who could kill each other better.”

Snowglobe gave Loco a parting salute accompanied with a short chuckle before climbing down from her perch. “What did we need all these damn guns for anyways? I mean, it sure is nice that we’ve got them… I think Equestria would be completely dead by now if we didn’t have guns to fight off the zombies, but why make them in the first place?”

Candy snorted and flicked her tail. “Not one to keep up on history and current events before the infection, were you?”

Snowglobe shook her head.

“Tension with the Griffons,” Candy said with a shrug. She looked back across the courtyard and waved Cotton over. “The prime minister of Gryphus severed all trade with Equestria, once upon a time. I don’t know the exact date, but it was because of sparring between the two’s military forces amongst the griffon cities. Ponies are looked at as lesser creatures by the griffons—they see us as small and weak. The only ponies they’ve ever really had respect for was the pegasi, but that was only because of a war thousands of years ago that nearly destroyed both races. Nonetheless, the REA had multiple outposts in griffon cities and a lot of Gryphus didn’t like it. One thing led to another, and an Equestrian company wound up gunning down a hundred or so armed civilians claiming self-defense. It didn’t settle well with the public and eventually led to the Minister’s decision to bar Equestria from maintaining forces in griffon territory in order to maintain his popularity.”

Sunny found himself trotting closer as Candy presented her story. He’d never actually heard the full details.

“Hey, Candy.” Cotton gave the striped mare a soft nudge from behind.

“One sec, telling a story,” Candy said to Cotton, pulling the mare into a sideways hug. “Now, that alone wouldn’t have been much of a problem... if he hadn’t of severed the trade route. Celestia was pissed. Griffons are the best blacksmiths, and some of the best farmers around, some of them even better than earth ponies. Equestria traded with Gryphus for food and iron, but without that trade, the majority of the eastern cities couldn’t support their populations. There were food shortages, riots. Celestia demanded the trade routes be re-opened and made the mistake of requesting with force.” Candy lowered her head and raised her hoof, a halfway grin on her face as she looked out over her audience. “She broke rule number one: never insult a griffon’s pride. She sent a small army across the ocean to demand the trade of food after multiple pleas. The griffons met them with resistance. Half our forces were killed and the other half were taken prisoner. Back then, ponies still favored using spears and swords, but the griffons had already embraced powder weapons. Equestria was still playing with the idea of using matchlocks and the griffons were already figuring out breach-loading.

“The Equestrians got slaughtered. Not a single griffon died in the spar. It was a heavy blow, and it was a rude wakeup call to the rest of Equestria. Guns were the next step to the future. After that it was a race to beat the griffons.” Candy shrugged. “If this infection hadn’t broken out, I bet we’d be fighting griffons right now instead of zombies. And of course, guns got popular amongst the civilians. I mean, it’s a stick that shoots a flaming hot piece of lead at whatever you point it at.”

“Wow,” Snowglobe muttered. “All that in ten years?”

Candy nodded. “Fifteen actually. The feud with the griffons really kicked off and fueled the industrial revolution and race for technological advancement, which, in turn, started higher food consumption within Equestrian cities and caused more tension. No matter what, it was going to get bloody.”

Snowglobe asked Candy something else, though Sunny missed what it was when a hoof jabbed him in the side. He let out a little cry of surprise and jumped to the side, turning his head to see Moon. His eyes widened for a second before he played the move off with a less-than-casual shrug and shift of his posture. “Cool story, eh, Moon?”

The unicorn nodded, then tossed her head towards the wagons. “Sure was. Come on.”

Sunny did as was implied, standing up and trotting over to Moon, who then proceeded to lead them towards the skywagons. The pullers were already getting hooked up for the flight. Throwing one look back to Candy, who was continuing on with her ramblings, Sunny kind of wished he’d stayed for the rest of the story. “History major back there...” He turned to Moon. “Why would the griffons pick a fight with the ponies who raise and lower the sun every day?” he muttered.

Moon scoffed and gave him a light nudge. “You still believe those fairytales?”

“Uh…” Sunny blinked. “I never really thought about it… It’s what they taught me in school.”

She only shook her head at him. “Stories, Sunny. Even the princesses themselves don’t have enough power to guide the sun and the moon at will. Celestia stays quiet about the whole thing, but Luna herself once told the media that the sun and the moon would move all on their own were they to step out of the way. The two princesses only guide the sun and the moon—keep them in sync. They don’t actually move them; they do that naturally on their own. Now, the crazy thing is, when Luna became Nightmare Moon, she did actually reverse direction of the moon with an immense show of raw power to eclipse the sun. The repercussions that followed lasted another fifteen years. All around the world the tides were completely off-whack and a bunch of other crazy things that I couldn’t even begin to explain.”

Sunny gave his head a shake and chuckled. “I think I learned more in the past ten minutes than I have in every year of school since I was born.”

Moon smirked. “Didn’t go to college?”

“Nope.”

“Got stuck in Desert Sage working a low end job?

“Yep.”

She nodded. “Ah. Figured it was something like that.” She patted her own chest with a proud little smirk. “Four-year degree in astronomy, Sunny. It’s why I’ve got a picture of a moon on my butt.”

Sunny nearly collided with Willow as the mare directed ponies to the two wagons. Panicking, Sunny froze in place, his eyes darting from Willow to Moon, then back again. Willow glanced between Sunny and Moon with barely-restrained malice.

“Sunny,” Willow said through her teeth, turning her attention to a smiling unicorn painted on the compound wall. “You and Moon can take the right wagon,” she said with forced sweetness, somehow managing to sound even more bitter in the process. “I’ll ride on the left.” Narrowing her eyes at Moon, she patted Sunny on the back. “You two need your privacy.” Taking one last moment to glower, she turned away and stomped to her respective skywagon.

Lucky enough for them, none of their pullers had ditched in the night, so they still had a full flight crew for both wagons. Sunny boarded the right wagon as he was told, Moon right on his tail. Copper and Foresight were already on board and locked in a conversation that made absolutely no sense without context.

Sunny took a seat near the back with Moon as more ponies boarded. Snowglobe and Loco came next. “Skies are unguarded,” the burly stallion declared. “Now it’s time to fly.”

Next came Jade and Sage, which Sunny assumed was all. There really was no bonus to losing two of their party, but it did make travel a little easier on the fliers.

Sage had kept the guitar, having found a case for it labeled with the stamp ‘PROPERTY OF HAPPYHORN STUDENT LIBRARY. PLEASE CHECK OUT BEFORE USE’.

Taking a seat ahead of Loco, Sage reclined and set her guitar case aside, propping it between the seat and the wall. Smirking, she turned around and put her forehooves on the back of the seat, setting her chin on them as she looked at Loco. “Up for some more songs later today?”

The older stallion scratched his neck and laughed. “What’re you trying to do, get us to start a band?” He reached forward and messed up her mane. “You and the pretty pegasus play a good folk tune. You all should take Ember and get her in on it; she’s got a better voice than me.”

Sage pouted. “But you’ve got the bass in your voice that goes perfect with Ember’s voice! We could start up Equestria’s first post-apocalypse band and become celebrities.”

Jade snorted and pulled Sage back into her seat, wrapping the turquoise mare in a tight hug. Her dark wings unfurled and wrapped around Sage as she nuzzled into the mare’s cheek. “We don’t need to be famous, Sage. I’m perfectly fine with just being with you.”

Sage hid her face with a forehoof and let out a fillyish giggle. “Jade, other ponies are watching.”

Sunny’s mind snapped back to awareness and he quickly looked away from the two, instead choosing to meet Moon’s eye. “Heh…” he said with a little shrug. “They’re cute together.”

The wagon jolted as the pullers pulled the slack from the harnesses and started forward, dragging the skids across the stone. Sunny watched as the wagon Willow and the others were on took off, clearing the razorwire with a few extra feet to spare before banking around to circle the compound while the other got into place.

He didn’t like the feel of leaving Happyhorn behind. It had been a safe haven, at least for the time being, but there was no point in staying in a place that offered no food. As much as the compound had to offer, it just didn’t have enough.

Sighing, Sunny watched the ground flash by as they took off and baked into the sky. He leaned his head against the window as the pullers steered the wagon to the southwest, further away from Baltimare, and hopefully the REA.

* * *

The rain had stopped; thank Celestia.

Dove strode quietly between the rows of canvas tents that they’d erected in a field a little ways off the coast. Droplets of rain still clung to the grass, shining like a million grounded fireflies in the dawn. Every hoofstep tromped a tuft of grass, scattering the liquid and soaking the charcoal mare’s hooves. The cold water sent shivers up Dove’s spine, though it couldn’t explain the knot in her belly or the tremble in her jaw. The air was heavy, literally heavy, and every breath tasted of rain, cold and sharp on the lungs.

Far on the horizon, smoke rose from the shadow of a city that was Baltimare. They were still receiving radio transmissions from the city. The evacuation had been messy. Casualties had been massive and the MIA roster could have rivaled a dictionary. Skywagons were still flying in and out of the city, extracting troops where they could and sometimes not coming back. Without the border defenses in place, the fliers were swarming about the city looking for easy prey. Changelings were the worst. The little bastards would pick out a single pony in a crowd and go for them and only them, until the death.

Dove tore her gaze away from the coastal city and instead looked out towards the coast. If she imagined real hard, she could see Striker’s fleet sitting out there, living on their rations and smirking at her and the rest of the REA. What she’d give right now to beat Striker to a pulp...

“Marshal, I’ve been looking all over for you!”

Dove hung her head as the muffled sound of hoofsteps reached her ears. Never a moment alone. “Yes?”

A gray mare in crimson medical barding that had once been white trotted up to her. “I don’t know what to do about the medical bay. We’re running out of supplies and those who’re in critical shape aren’t going to—”

“You’ve got bullets, don’t you?”

The mare blanched. “Um... y-yes, but...”

Dove dismissed the mare with a flick of her ears. “Problem solved. Save those who are worth it. Save the medication for those who can use it.”

The poor mare didn’t speak another word. Folding her ears, she backed away before trotting back towards the camp.

Dove let her shoulders sag; nopony was watching. The REA barding itched at her neck and pinched her legs. Ever since her return from the meeting with Striker, the uniform had seen everything from mud to blood. It was like wearing a rawhide.

She pushed herself to her hooves and started up the hill, towards the edge of the plateau and towards the ocean. There weren’t any tents to weave in and out of on the hill, so it was a fairly short walk to the summit. Upon reaching the top, it rounded off a little bit only to come to an abrupt stop before a rocky cliff face.

Dove sat herself at the edge, looking down on the waves crashing against the rocks fifty feet below.

She looked back at camp. Hundreds upon hundreds of tents spanned out over the field, protected by a makeshift fence and garrisoned, wary troops. In the very middle was the landing field, their remaining skywagons lined up in rows down either side; the remainder probably wasn’t enough to carry a quarter of the ponies here.

Not too far away from the landing pad, one of the few wagon crews still brave enough to make flights to Baltimare was coming in, only the lineup was all wrong. Only three ponies pulled the wagon, the fourth was nowhere to be seen, and the entire carriage yawed dangerously to one side as sparks and puffs of smoke escaped from the ventilation panels in the rear. Most likely, they’d overloaded the flight-assist systems to compensate for extra weight and the lack of one flier.

An alarm rang somewhere on the ground as the wagon came it. Dove tried to turn her head; she didn’t need to see this, but she couldn’t look away.

The skywagon came down on the left skids, and because of the poor lineup angle, immediately pitched right. It took less than a second for the giant tin can to go into a roll, crashing and smashing down the runway at flight speed before coming to a stop on its side. Ponies began to rush the wagon, helping those out who could walk and carrying others.

Dove looked back out towards the sea. They had asked her what to do. Zombies had been swarming all across the countryside, spreading from city to city. The princesses were presumed dead and all hope was lost, and then they asked...

“Marshal, what should we do?”

She glanced up from the doodle on her desk that had been occupying the last couple hours of her time. “Excuse me?”

The stallion stepped forward, removing his hat just as the two other ponies who stood on either side of him did the same. “Colonel Dove, Field Marshal Clean Cut has been reported missing last night. He was vacationing with his wife in Las Pegasus.”

Dove narrowed her brows and waved her hoof at them. “You called me Marshal... but I’m not his successor. There’s at least a dozen others in the REA that rank higher than me.”

The stallion averted his eyes to the ground for a moment. “Yes. They have all either been confirmed MIA or KIA. You are the highest ranking officer in the city of Baltimare at this time. An estimated seventy percent of our total military strength is present within the city at this moment.” He took a step forward, setting one hoof on the desk. “Marshal... the infection is coming.”

Dove swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded, wide-eyed.

“What should we do?”

It took her a moment to reply. “Protect the city. Hold our ground. We’ve got enough forces here to wait it out.”

The stallion nodded. “Understood.” Reaching back, he pulled a bundle out of his saddlebags and set it on the desk before her. “Your new uniform, Marshal.”

“You already picked it up for me...?” Dove shook her head. “T-this can’t be right. They can’t all be gone. How can they all be gone!?”

The stallion sighed. “Because half of Equestria’s gone. Marshal... we expect this epidemic to hit us in a matter of days. Its spreading like wildfire. Anypony who’s behind the lines are considered lost.”

She nodded, barely suppressing the squeak that so desperately wanted to escape her mouth.

“Seal the inner city. Build up the walls.”

What else had there been to do?

With a growl, Dove tugged at the top button of her uniform and only succeeded in ripping it off. She shook her head, then sighed, giving one quick jerk with her forehoof that opened up the front of the uniform in a little shower of buttons that pitter-pattered away down the slope.

Pulling the uniform off was like being able to breathe again. The sun shone warmly against her dark coat, kissing the flesh with its golden sympathy. She held it out in front of her, dangling it over the cliff face as she glowered at the insignia on the breast of the uniform.

“You’re not so special,” she said an undertone. “Look at you—a dirty suit that makes those who wear it powerful. Well look at me now. I’m nothing, so you might as well be nothing too. I don’t even need you.” Dove willed herself to let go, to let the uniform fall and be consumed by the hungry waves below. Why not? “...I don’t deserve you.”

“You know, you might need that!”

Dove tensed, her head whipping around as she searched for the source of the voice; it was Graham. He trotted towards her, hooves the same color as the wet grass. With a quick stretch, he sat down beside her. The breeze tugged at his brown mane, blowing it out to the side a little as he stared out over the ocean.

“What do you want?” Dove asked after a moment.

“Hope I’m not bothering, Marshal—”

“Don’t call me Marshal.”

Graham nodded. “Right, sorry... Hope I’m not bothering, Dove, but I figured you could use somepony to talk to. I know you’re taking Baltimare kind of hard... I mean, it was your hometown and all.”

Dove nodded and set the uniform down beside her, pinning it to the hilltop with a forehoof to keep the wind from stealing it away. “I tried. All I wanted was to keep them safe.”

Graham gave her a firm look. “You tried, Dove, there’s nothing you could have done about it.”

“But all those ponies died because of me!” She stomped her hoof, unable to look at him, not with the tears that were forming in her eyes.

“They would have died a lot sooner without you!” Graham countered.

“What about the soldiers? What about the REA? I destroyed it holding on to a stupid cause. All I did was give all those ponies in Baltimare an extra month and a half to live and false hope to die on!” She gestured back to the camp. “Look at us! This is Equestria’s last hope!” Turning fully, she motioned over the extent of the camp. “Equestria’s last hope is nothing more than a bunch of broken and tired soldiers camped out in a field!”

“Yeah, but—”

She silenced him with a wave of her hoof. “We’re not an army! We’re survivors! Just because we wear uniforms doesn’t mean we have any authority—we’re just another gang of ponies trying to survive. The REA is dead!”

“We are not dead!” Graham shouted.

Dove froze, shocked by the sudden change in his demeanor. Slowly, she turned to face him, ears perked, eyes averted.

“We are damaged, Dove.” He took a step towards her, putting a hoof on her shoulder. “We’ve suffered losses, and a lot of them, but we are not dead. We’ve got more ponypower, more knowhow, and more weapons than anypony else in Equestria. And I swear it on my grave, that I will not let the REA fall while I am still alive, even if I have to uphold it myself.” He tightened his grip on her shoulder. “And neither will you.”

Dove turned her eyes to meet Graham’s. “That’s what I’m afraid of. Every decision I make, everything I do—it always gets ponies killed. Every word of command that leaves my mouth leads to the death of hundreds.”

“And where do you think they’d all be if you hadn’t given the command to evacuate when you did?” Graham stared into her eyes, firm and unblinking. “You’re smart, Dove. You knew what had to be done. In times like these, sacrifices have to be made! It was either them, or all of us. No matter what, those civilians, all those ponies, they were going to die, and there wasn’t a single thing that you, or I, or anypony could do about that.”

Dove didn’t speak. She looked into his eyes, shaking her head as she bit her lip. He was right. Of course he was right. Graham had always been the voice of reason.

“We have got an army, Dove. An army with no place to go, and no family to go to. We’ve got the strongest army Equestria has ever seen, right here, right down there in that field. We fight for each other... to survive. All those ponies down there are looking to you for orders. You’ve held them together since the start of this mess, and you can hold them together now. Dove... don’t let them down.”

She shrugged his hoof off her shoulder and turned back to the sea. After a moment’s pause, she lifted her uniform off the ground and gave it one last look. Graham protested as she went to toss it away but she silenced him with a look. Holding the gray uniform out in the wind, Dove let it go, watching as the cold air took it away, blowing it out to sea.

“Why’d you do that?” Graham asked, his voice hardly more than a whisper.

Dove watched the waves as they rolled across the sea. Far in the distance, it was still dark over the ocean, but the sun was ever pushing it farther away as it took its natural place in the sky.

“Because I’m their leader, not their commander.”

* * *

Sunny’s eyes danced over the map laid across the console. There were so many little marks here and there on it, so many different choices... so many wrong choices. Happyhorn had been a lucky landing, but some of these other places he wasn’t all too sure about. Moon stood beside him, making suggestions and pointing the tip of her hoof to different spots on the map while he vacantly acknowledged her with little grunts and the occasional nod of his head.

Landing was was proving to be a lot harder than it had been the first time.

“Okay.” Moon rubbed her forehead as she spoke, throwing a little glance at Sunny. “We’ve been in flight for six hours now and we’ve been traveling at about... fortyish, you’d say?”

Sunny nodded. “Forty five.”

“Right, so that’s two hundred and seventy miles.” She pointed to Baltimare on the map. Cloudstorm had marked it off with a big red X—crude, but effective. “If we add that to the mileage of our last flight that puts us about... six hundred miles southeast of Baltimare, give or take a few in any direction.” Her eyes flicked to the compass on the console. A ruler levitated just an inch above the map, the pencil right beside it making a small mark. “That should put us near the town of... Waterwillow.”

Sunny glanced out ahead. There was nothing to be seen but thick, leafy trees and the occasional wagon trail cutting its way through the forests. “Are you sure we want to try and land there though? Last town we tried was infested with them.”

Moon bit her lip. “Well we’ve got to land somewhere. There’s nowhere to put these wagons down in the trees and there’s no way in Equestria we’re landing on the roads.”

Sunny only nodded in agreement. The roads were death traps; the zombies used them, literally. Every one they’d passed over, he’d seen clusters of multicolored ponies lumbering either this way or that. Apparently, it didn’t take a primitive being to figure out that walking on cobblestone and dirt trails was easier than trudging through the forest.

There were a lot more survivors than he’d originally thought as well. Smoke occasionally rose from inconspicuous spots and fields amongst the trees, or every once in a while he’d see a chimney smogging the sky or a small cluster of ponies that moved with too much organization to be zombies.

Equestria wasn’t dead, but it sure was up to its belly in shit.

Sunny glared at the map. “What would the safest place in Equestria be?”

It was Jade who answered. “Prison,” she said with a snicker, leaning forward in her seat to stretch. “You may not be free but Celestia forbid you make contact with another living soul... apart from the lunchroom. That place was just plain nasty.

Sage blinked and cocked her head at Jade. “You’ve been to prison?”

“Yeah... little things.”

“Like?” Sage poked the mare in the ribs with the tip of her forehoof.

Jade flushed softly and shrugged. “Bah, just... attempted murder.”

“Prison!” Sunny declared, spinning and pointing a wingtip at Jade.

The pegasus mare frowned. “Yeah, okay, don’t rub it in.” she shot a self-conscious look to Sage and shrugged her shoulders. "It was my coltfriend... Long story."

Grinning, Sunny shook his head. “No, I mean, a prison. There’s nowhere safer in Equestria!” He spun back around and occupied himself with looking over the map. “We could find a prison. Like Happyhorn, but, you know, bigger! An actual prison!”

Moon shot Sunny a look, but didn’t speak.

Sunny turned back to Jade. “Where’d they send you?”

The dark mare shifted, glancing between Sage and the floor. “Ashfield. High security. It’s a mares-only prison.” She gave Sage a look. “And before you ask... I tried to kill my coltfriend.” She shook her head, glancing out the window. “He hit me, so I grabbed a knife and... well, to say the least we broke up. He got a trip to the hospital and I got four years. I spent two of them in a cell with a mare who drowned her own foal; that ended when she tried to strangle a guard on duty and the other one shot her dead... good thing too—mare was totally twigged.”

Sunny grinned at Moon, who looked back and shrugged.

“No!” Jade declared, jumping to her hooves. “That place is a nasty place! I’m not kidding you when I say they sent the worst of the worst in Equestria there.”

“It’s just a building.” Sunny fixed his eyes on hers. “If it can get us safety then I don’t really care what it is. Is the place anywhere near here?”

Jade closed her eyes, biting her lower lip for a second. Her wings trembled softly at her sides until Sage stood up and nuzzled against the darker mare’s neck. “You said we’re near Waterwillow?”

“Twenty miles north,” Moon answered.

Jade nodded. “Right... well, Ashfield’s forty miles to the west outside a little farm town called Baker’s Pasture.” She took a step towards Sunny, who took a step back. “Please.” Wrapping a wing around Sage, she pulled the mare close. “Don’t make me go back there. It’s a bad place with bad emotions. You can’t just put all of Equestria’s worst in one building and not expect the feeling to seep into the ground. Just being there makes you want to do something terrible. There’s bad magic there!”

“I... kind of agree with her,” Moon added in a quiet voice, turning to look at Sunny.

Sunny glanced between the two, blinking in mild confusion. “I think you two are missing my point.”

“It’s a mare thing!” Loco shouted from the back of the cabin, a cloud of cigar smoke hovering around his head. The old stallion had a good snicker at the combined glares of Moon and Jade before going back to blowing smoke rings.

“The orange one is right!” Foresight dragged himself out of his seat with a roll of his eyes. “I was sure you ponies could handle navigation on your own, but apparently, it’s going to be an issue.” He trotted up to the front of the wagon and sat down, looking over the rest of the ponies on board. “If we want to land anywhere safe for more than a day or two then we’re going to have to land at Ashfield. If the place was meant to keep ponies in then it should definitely keep them out.

Jade shook her head and looked away. “But what if there’s zombies there?”

Foresight shrugged. “What if? Isn’t that the question we face with every landing?”

Sunny’s ears perked as the radio crackled. While Foresight and the others continued to bicker, Sunny moved to the console and scooped up the receiver. “Go ahead and repeat that for me.”

“I said, preparing to break cloud cover.” It was Candy on the radio. “We’re about to break cloud cover and begin our descent.

“No, Candy, we’ve decided against Waterwillow. Readjust to the west; we’re heading for Ashfield.” Sunny peered out ahead through the windscreen. He couldn’t see anything apart from the swirling clouds and the four fliers coupled to the wagon.

“Ashfield?” The mare sounded skeptical. “You mean the prison?”

“Sure do.”

It was a minute or two before Candy spoke again, in which Sunny had occupied himself with reading the list of REA frequencies that’d been taped to the front of the radio by its last operator.

“Okay, I’ve told our fliers to head for Ashfield, but we’re gonna go a quick fly over Waterwillow just to see how the place looks.”

“Sounds good.” Sunny hesitated for a moment, staring at the transmitter in his hoof. “So... how’s Willow doing?”

Candy sighed into the mic. “Not so good, Sunny.” She lowered her voice. “Won’t stop staring out the window—won’t speak. Sometimes I see her eyes. Sunny, I swear there’s murder in them... What did you do to her, Sunny? She flinches every time somepony says your name.”

He felt himself pale. “...Now’s not a good time to talk about it.”

“Okay then.” Sunny could almost imagine Candy shrugging her shoulders over on the other wagon. “I just worry is all. We’ve been—” Without warning, Candy stopped speaking. Her voice didn’t trail off or waver; it just stopped.

Sunny tapped the radio to see if he’d lost the signal, but they were still on the receiving end of the transmission. “Candy?” he asked.

No response. Of course there was no response. The mare was still holding the button down on her end.

“Luna fuck me sideways.” Candy’s voice was a lot quieter than it had been before. “I don’t know!” she yelled to somepony whose voice the receiver didn’t pick up. “Go, go, get ready! Change altitude now; get us back to five hundred feet!” The receiver on her end barket barked with a rush of static and a clatter that probably came from it being dropped.

“Candy!” Sunny pounded the radio’s metal casing and clicked the receiver a few times. She couldn’t hear him if she didn’t let off the damn button!

“Sunny,” Moon said sharply, placing her hoof on his shoulder.

Sunny tensed and jerked away, throwing his head towards Moon. “What?”

She pointed out ahead.

They’d just broken through the cloud cover, and from here he could see the town of Waterwillow... and it was alive. Zombies swarmed over roads and buildings like maggots on a corpse, nothing but multicolored blobs at this distance. What was most horrifying, however, was how many pegasi there were in the air. Maybe two hundred feet above and a little bit to the right center of the small town, Sunny could see the other skywagon. It already had a dozen or so pegasi giving chase.

“What in Celestia’s name is that!?” Foresight gasped, pressing his face against the window as he looked ahead and down at the mess. “I-it’s some sort of like... gathering point or something, or maybe there were survivors down there a-and they just got overrun, or maybe—”

“Get us up to them!” Sunny pounded on the small transit button that relayed his voice to the headsets the fliers wore. “Get us up there so we can help them!”

“Are you insane!?” the mare in the lead shouted back. She glanced back at the cabin, her mane whipping about her terrified face as she pointed a hoof down towards the town of Waterwillow. “Look at how many of them there are down there!” Static crackled over the line and distorted her words, the wind whipping at her mic, but there were no missing them. “They’ll shred us.”

Sunny leaned on the button and glared at her. “Get us to that other wagon, now!”

Already, more pegasi were taking off from the streets and rooftops, funneling into the air in a terrifying display of organization. Dozens... dozens of dozens. Sweet Celestia they’d stumbled into hell, either that or zombie heaven.

“Sunny!” Moon tugged at his barding, pulling him back away from the windscreen. “I don’t think they’ve spotted us yet. If we break off now we’ll be fine.”

Sunny shook his head, pulling away from her. “No, we can’t we’ve got to—”

“No, Sunny!” Moon, pulled him back again. “I’m not dying for them!”

He didn’t think. Some part of him, fueled by worry and whatever else wasn’t having this. He spun on one forehoof and clobbered Moon across the muzzle. The poor mare was so dazed that she stumbled backwards and flopped over onto her side. “Damnit!” he hollered down at her. “My friends are on that wagon and there’s no way I’m leaving them to that!” He nodded towards the pegasus cyclone that was spreading out and curving for the gray streak of aluminum in the skies ahead.

Panting, Sunny looked down at her, feeling the rage in his eyes and the heat in his glare. He looked down at her, his hoof tingling slightly. Had he just...?

He couldn’t meet the eyes of the others. Instead, he turned back to the console and mashed the button. “Get us up there, now! And if you try to disconnect from your harness, I’ll shoot you.”

The mare leading the puller team glanced back at him. There was fear in her eyes, pure and true, but she nodded. “Okay.” She glanced to the other three pullers. “Come on, lets doubletime it!”

Sunny didn’t hesitate any longer. He needed a good place to shoot from. He had six magazines for the carbine in his saddlebags, plus the one already in the weapon. That was one hundred and forty bullets. Nothing for short range though...

He nearly tripped over Moon as he turned to rush to the back of the cabin. Barely saving himself with a flap of his wings, he turned to look down at the blue mare. She lay on her belly now, glaring at the floor, biting back the tears that were coming. Possibly the worst part about the scene was that he didn’t feel an ounce of sympathy for her, not right now; he should have.

“You gonna use that shotgun?” he asked quietly, leaning down a little.

Moon turned away from him and shook her head. “Leave me alone.”

“Now is not the time for this!” he stooped down and pulled the drum-fed shotgun from Moon’s bag and set it in the custom rack on the battle saddle. It was a bit of an awkward fit, but the weapon settled firm and the firing mechanism activated with a soft click. “You just stay there if you’re not going to help your friends. I’ll make sure to remember this when it’s you who needs help.” He huffed and turned away from her. “If there’s one thing this has taught me, it’s that friends stay together, no matter what.” Sunny looked up to the others in the cabin.

Loco, Jade, Snowglobe, Sage, Copper, Foresight—none of them said a thing, but he could read their faces.

What was wrong with them? Was it his eyes? They were looking at him like he was something else entirely. Only Snowglobe seemed to really see him. Her eyes were different; they shone with encouragement. Hidden below the fear and the doubt was approval, and that was all he needed.

Sunny shook his head to clear the thought, then looked over all of them. He didn’t dare look at the cloud of pegasi that was filling the air right beside them. They were in the fray now and there was no heading back.

The radio from the other wagon was still sending. Nothing could me made out as shouts and yells poured over the speakers. Gunshots started to ring out, and that’s when Sunny looked back out ahead for the other wagon. The wave of death was steadily overtaking the aluminum shell, pegasus ponies diving left and right for the roof and windows.

There had to be a way to help them from here. Sunny tore his eyes away from the fray to look, scanning the walls and roof of the skywagon. There, on the roof, an escape hatch.

Without a word, Sunny ran to it, leaping up onto one of the seats to reach the handle. A quick squeeze of the jaw released the latch and the pressure outside yanked the door open to slam it down atop the roof. Immediately, swirling wind filled the cabin, trying to force its way down his mouth and nose. Sunny took a quick moment to ready himself, then jumped, latching his forelegs onto the brim and beating his wings to help pull himself up.

“Sunny!” Snowglobe rushed up to meet him right as he pulled his legs through the hatch and onto the roof.

Sunny forced himself to stand up, glaring against the wind. If he kept himself stooped low, he could avoid most of the wind drag and stand comfortably. Peering back through the hatch, he looked down to snowglobe. “Yeah?”

“Please don’t die.” She gave him a sort of half-grin. “It may not seem like it, but we need you.”

Sunny gulped. “Right...” Only now was the fear getting to him, now that he’d put himself and the others into danger.

There was a loud, angry screech from behind him and he ducked just in time for a pair of talons to go whizzing over his head. Sweet Celestia... it was a griffon. Sunny couldn’t believe his eyes even as he stood up and sighted the creature in. A griffon zombie!? He’d heard Moon talk about them, but this was the first time he’d ever gotten to see one.

One bullet was all it took. He’d missed what he was aiming for, but instead struck the thing’s wing. The massive griffon screeched and howled as it fell towards the ground, its limp wing trailing behind.

There was hardly time to stop and think. The pullers had done good; the two skywagons were no more than fifty feet apart in the air now, flying at the same level. From here he could see the ponies in the other wagon. He could see Candy standing near the front, the barrels of both carbines on her battle saddle smoking as she watched for more of the infected. Brick stood just behind her, firing the machine gun mounted to his back with short and precise bursts. Range and Yew worked as one—a terrifying sight to anypony who hadn’t seen them work before. The combination of these four ponies were enough to keep back at least fifty of their assailants, but there were a lot more than fifty.

Half the windows on their wagon were already shattered or had a dozen bullet holes in them. In all reality, skywagons weren’t meant to be attacked in the air. There was no good way to defend them.

Sunny looked no more. It was time to act. Gritting his teeth against the wind, he stalked his way to the front of the wagon and took stance right at the very edge, grasping a strap designed to tie down luggage and wrapping it three times around his hoof to hold him on spot.

He was fast and lethal with the carbine. A pegasus tried to land on the roof of the other wagon but he shot it down before it could. The beast let out a cry and fell to the side, smacking against the aluminum roof before rolling off the side to be taken by the wind. Down went another that was heading for the pulling team, and a third that was clinging to the bottom of the wagon.

For just a second, Sunny caught Candy’s eye. The white mare stood stiff, looking out at him with a disbelieving gape. After a moment, she stood up a little straighter and gave him a quick salute.

Sunny didn’t have time to return the gesture. He sidestepped a pegasus diving for him and blasted it with the shotgun as it flew by. Blood splattered his face and misted his eyes and mouth, warm and foul-smelling, but he blinked it away and searched for the next target.

There were too many. The skies were cloudy with the flying bastards.

“Bring us in alongside the other wagon!” Sunny bellowed, leaning over the front of the wagon to address the pulling team. A nod from the mare was Sunny’s only answer before he went back to scanning the skies. Something thudded down on the rooftop behind him and he turned in time to blast a pegasus mare away before she could even get all four hooves down.

Another head popped up from the hatch. The dirty yellow stallion grunted and heaved as he pulled his large body onto the roof, a fresh cigar held firmly between his teeth as the wind bit at the ignited tip, flaring it up like the end of a blowtorch.

“What’re you doing!?” Sunny couldn’t even find the time to look at the stallion as he spun this way and that, the rifle on his back discharging with terrifying accuracy.

“Figured you could use a hoof up here.” Loco slammed the hatch closed once he was up and took stance on his two hind legs. Using his forehooves, he pulled his shotgun from its sheath and held it out before him. “I got your back. Keep an eye out ahead an’ don’t let any of those fuckin’ corpses get on the other wagon!”

“What about your end!?” Sunny yelled into the wind, looking out ahead and firing off a few more shots from the carbine. A dead pegasus fell directly into the path of their wagon and smashed against the windscreen, shattering the plexiglass and sending a deep shudder across the wagon’s frame.

“I’m faster than I look!”

He could hear Brick’s gun chattering over the rush of the wind, and while it packed power and speed, it still didn’t do much for the countless swarms of pegasus ponies that besieged the wagons.

Sunny looked out ahead, and what he saw next scared him more than anything. Willow was on the roof of the other wagon. She wore no barding and carried no weapons, but she fought with more force than he’d ever seen from a pony. She spun this way and that, kicking and battering at anything that came near. She hopped nimbly to the side as a pegasus dived at her and kicked it in the ribs with both hind legs as it shot past. The zombie screeched as is ribs splintered and snapped and went spiraling away on the wind.

Another landed on the roof before her, attempting to fight its way forward through the wind. Willow jumped and brought herself down on top of it, all four hooves converging on the pony’s skull and crushing it into the roof. She kicked the twitching zombie aside before rearing up to meet the next one before it could even land. Both forehooves fastened on its shoulders and slammed it down onto the skywagon with such force that it shattered the windows below. In one fluid motion, Willow fastened her teeth in its mane and pulled. Something snapped and that was it.

She turned just in time to meet the griffon that had dived at her with a screech. The creature’s superior mass and speed won over and Willow went skidding across the roof on her back, stopping a few feet from the edge. She held her forehooves on the griffon’s chest, just barely managing to keep its snapping beak away from her face.

Sunny took a moment to aim. He was only twenty feet away now. Right as Willow heaved, he fired. The shot missed its primary target, but shattered the creature’s beak nonetheless. It threw its head back and screeched, but Willow’s forehoof silenced it as it smashed what was left of its beak back into its own head. With a gargled cry, it spasmed and went limp.

Panting, Willow kicked the limp body off her and picked herself up, turning to Sunny as their wagons pulled up alongside each other. “About time you stopped by!”

Sunny laughed, even as he reduced a small flock of pegasi to pulp with four bursts from Moon’s shotgun. “What, you thought I forgot about you?”

Willow blinked, then lowered her head for a second. “...I didn’t think you’d come.” Quickly, she perked back up. She glared at Sunny for a second, then sprang over to his wagon, clearing the three foot gap between the two skywagons with ease. “Sunny, what in Celestia’s name are you doing here!? There’s too many of them. You could have split for the prison while we had them occupied!”

Sunny shook his head. “That’s not how things work, Willow.”

The white mare fixed her crimson eyes on Sunny’s. They shimmered, though he wasn’t sure if that was just the windburn. “I knew you’d stay, Sunny.”

“Cover me while I reload back here!”

Sunny spun on his rear hoof and turned to Loco. The stallion stood on three hooves, cradling his weapon in his armpit while he used the other hoof to load new shells into the breach. His cigar had snapped, but still hung on by a shred of the paper. “How’re you doing?”

Loco glanced up for a second. “Shit’s going south! Whatever ya’ do, don’t look behind us!” He went cross eyed as he glared down at the broken cigar. With a roll of his eyes, he tore the broken half free and pressed the red-hot barrel of his shotgun to the end the cigar, puffing a few times as it reignited. “Fuckers made me waste half a’ damned quality cigar.”

Sunny blinked, then glanced up, looking at the skies behind the two wagons. “No...” What he was looking at wasn’t a flock or two of pegasi... it was hundreds. Hundreds upon hundreds of pegasi and griffons clouded the sky. “F-faster,” he muttered, staggering backwards until his rear hooves reached the front of the roof. “We have to go faster.” He turned to look down at the four pullers. “Faster! They’re right behind us! Give it everything you’ve got! Come on!”

“Sunny!” Willow grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him to face her. “We can’t outrun them!”

Sunny shook her off and pointed towards the other skywagon. “Willow, get back over there and balance the weight!”

She gave him a long stare. “Sunny, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? Sorry what?” Sunny watched as Willow jumped back over to her wagon. “Sorry for what!? Willow, damnit!” She gave him one last look before hopping down through the hatch. “Sorry for what!?”

Sunny didn’t have any more time to watch her. Quickly, he turned and started to pick off anything that got too close. He went through the rest of his magazine in five seconds, and by the time he’d slotted a new one, a dozen or so fliers were already nearing them. With Loco handling the ones that dived from above, Sunny took up a firm stance. He had to make every bullet count, and even then it wasn’t going to be enough.

He went through three magazines in less than a minute, but already they were overtaking him. The skies rained pegasi behind the two wagons, but whenever one fell, it seemed that there were two more to take its place. Soon enough, the rifle was forgotten as Sunny tried to make the last twelve or so rounds in the shotgun count. The others fired from the windows, picking off anything that landed on the wagons, but it still wasn’t enough.

This game was about to end. All it would take was one of the fliers to take a bite of any of the wagon pullers and they’d lose their speed, then it would be a buffet.

Sunny looked over in time to see Candy and Willow exchanging fast and tense words. The wind in his ears drowned the two out, but they were yelling over something. After a moment, Candy closed her eyes and nodded, jaw trembling as she stepped out of the way. Willow moved towards the front of the cabin and hit a small button on the console, lips moving as she spoke to the fliers. Sunny watched as, one by one, the ponies pulling the other wagon tensed. They exchanged glances with each other, muttering worriedly.

Suddenly, one of the lead ponies disengaged themselves from the harness and rocketed forward. The others did the very last thing Sunny would have ever expected.

They went down.

Sunny screamed as the other skywagon banked left and started towards the treetops. he bolted to the edge of the wagon and flared his wings. He could still catch them at this distance. It would be hard, but he could.

A strong pair of hooves wrapped around him from behind. Sunny yelled and bucked, screaming profanities as Loco drug him backwards. “There ain’t nothin’ you can do!” the old stallion yelled, dragging Sunny towards the hatch in the roof. “They did that so we’d make it! Now take the chance!”

Tears ran from his eyes as he watched the other wagon streak away. It banked around and leveled out, heading against the horde of zombies giving chase. The wagon was swarmed in seconds. The steel shell jerked and rolled, then started to drop.

Sunny didn’t move as Loco lowered him down through the roof and into the cabin. The knot in his throat made it impossible for him to swallow and near impossible to breathe. “No! We can’t just leave them!”

Loco shook his head. None of the others spoke, only watched as the silver shape in the distance spiraled towards the treetops. The infected didn’t even seem to care about the escaping skywagon. There were ten ponies to be had.

* * *

“Yes, you heard me.” Willow hesitated for a moment, her hoof lingering on the button. “It’s either everyone, or just us! They’ve got more ponies on that wagon and they’ve got Sunny.” She was talking, not only to the fliers, but to the other five ponies aboard the skywagon. “Say what you want, that pegasus is more important than any of us. Now, I’m not going to tell you again.” She glared out the windscreen at the four pullers. “Turn us around!”

There was some bickering amongst them, shouts of worry and cries of anger. The mare at the front right shook her head and reached back, unclipping the buckle on her harness. “I-I’m sorry, but I didn’t sign up for this!” The others yelled for her, but before anypony could stop her, she was gone, flying out ahead of the wagon.

Candy moved up beside Willow and pounded the console. “We’re losing airspeed!”

“Well then,” said an old stallion, glancing to the mare that flew beside him and shrugging his shoulders. “I guess that’s it.”

The mare looked back and chuckled. “Give ‘em hell, eh?”

“Oooha!” cried the a midnight blue mare in the front. “I knew one day I’d have to go but I never thought it’d be like this.... Son of a bitch.” With a powerful flap of her wings, she angled her body and steered them down, the others following in her wake as the wagon pitched forward. Immediately, the speed and momentum stacked up. “What do you say we give that other wagon as much time as possible!?” The mare rolled and banked to the side, guiding them around in a loop that turned the wounded skywagon directly against the flow of infected.

Willow braced herself against a support as they flew against the horde. It was like watching rain fall towards the ground, only the raindrops were a lot less pretty and a lot more deadly. One body after another smashed against the windscreen as the infected banked to attack the wagon, sending spiderwebs of cracks and blood across the plexiglass.

“Come on!” the mare in the lead screamed, dropping her shoulder and hammering a pegasus out of the way, using her entire body to propel the wagon forward. Her voice overloaded the mic and crackled over the onboard intercom, but there was no hiding the fear in it. “Come on, you fuckers! IS THAT ALL YOU’VE GOT!?”

The wagon shook and rattled as more ponies hammered against the outside, denting the frame and trying to pull themselves through the windows. Willow sat in the middle, breath tight in her chest as she watched the endless horde suicide themselves against the wagon.

“I’m going to disengage,” the stallion said in a panic. “I’m going to disengage. I can’t. I can’t do this. I don’t want to—”

“It’s okay, Sor,” came the comforting voice of the mare who flew beside him. “You’re with me. This may be it, but it won’t be for us.”

Shaking her head, Willow looked back at the others. Brick stood in the aisle, his eyes neutral as he looked back at her. Shattered glass and torn feathers flew all around him, though the stallion hardly moved. His eyes remained on Willow, and he smiled. Choking back a sob, Willow threw herself forward and wrapped her forehooves around him. There was nothing else to do.

Candy backed away from the crippled windscreen and found Cotton. She took the mare’s hoof in her own and sat back. “Not like this. Not here.” Cotton clung to the mare like a drowning pony clung to a life preserver, whimpering.

Range and Yew sat at the back of the wagon. Neither of the two spoke. They simply sat by each other as the skywagon weaved jerked. Range’s eyes were constantly darting about, posture tense, but Yew only hung her head.

Ember sat alone, leaning against one of the only intact windows and watching the trees rip by. She looked like a tired old mare riding the bus any other day.

“I can’t keep this up!” the lead mare yelled, choking on her own words as her vocals found their way into her breathing. Every inhale was a groan and every exhale brought forth a growl of exertion. She weaved and ducked, dodging one target after another. One pegasus swooped by above her back and fastened its teeth in her neck, but she bucked it off and shook its jaws out of her neck. The pegasus fell, taking a strip of flesh with it. The mare didn’t seem to care. Instead, she angled her wings and steepened the dive, bringing them into a spiral that threw off those clinging to the windows.

Infected were starting to group up near the windows now, flying as one to try and cling onto the side of the crippled wagon. As one, they attacked from the side. The mare on the right that flew beside the stallion screamed as a pegasus landed clean on her back. She bucked and writhed in the harness, but it wasn’t getting her anywhere. Willow could only watch as the zombie on her back lunged and fastened its teeth in her neck. It pulled and growled and jerked, and after a moment of this the mare’s spine gave with a meaty pop and she went limp in the harness. The stallion beside her screamed and threw himself to the right, knocking the zombie off the mare, crying and screaming at the same time as he tried to keep his wings moving.

He didn’t last. A griffon got ahold of him before he could do so much as cry out in surprise. In less than a second, he’d been pulled free of the harness and was gone, carried off by the feathered hybrid.

It was only the lead mare now, her midnight blue coat stained with her own blood as she steered them towards the treeline. Infected flew on every side of her, snapping at her forelegs and her wings, but she fought back, lashing out with every chance she got, battering away more beasts than the air had a right to hold.

Willow braced herself as the ground came looming towards her. They were in a near-vertical dive by this point, the wind buffeting her ears as it whistled past the window. The only thing keeping her from falling forward and onto the windscreen was Brick’s firm grasp. He’d wrapped one hoof around a support and the other around her.

The wagon shook and rattled as the wind buffeted at the lightweight frame. The steel groaned and creaked, and what few intact windows that remained were beginning to crack and shatter as the skywagon shook itself apart.

The intercom buzzed again, carrying the blue mare’s voice over the cabin for the last time. “This is Private Streakwing!” She cackled, her voice broken and loaded with more fear than a pony deserved to ever feel. She flared her wings to their fullest extent and angled her body upwards, attempting to do the job of four and pull the wagon out of a dive. “And I just wanted to say...” Her voice was heavy, strained. From here, Willow could see the tendons standing out on the mare’s neck, her brilliant wings shedding feathers in the turbulence. “Wanted to say... I’m still here! Heh... Fuckers haven’t killed me yet!” Then she screamed; it a scream of everything—rage, hate, fear, sadness, everything combined into one, blood-chilling cry.

The skywagon hurtled into the treeline at vision-blurring speeds, ripping through tree limbs and branches as Streak led them with unbelievable agility between towering oaks and greens. Streak kept on screaming, even as her mic overloaded and cut out, she kept on screaming. Her wings shed feathers by the dozens, primaries and secondaries tearing free of the flesh as she pushed her body past the point of no return.

One last, powerful flap was all it took to level the wagon out. Streak hovered in the harness for a second before her wings trembled and snapped backwards, folding against her sides with an agonized cry of pain from the mare that didn’t need to travel over the intercom to be heard.

The infected couldn’t handle the foliage at such speeds; they’d fallen back, far back, and those brave enough to try and keep up ended up skewered on branches or crushed against tree trunks.

The skywagon was nothing but a stone now, hurled from the sky and falling rapidly towards the ground on its own terminal velocity. The skids hit the forest floor and Willow slammed down to the floor of the skywagon. Trees tore by at light speed, branches snapped, ponies screamed.

Grunting, Willow heaved herself to her hooves just in time to look ahead. The trunk of a mighty oak glared back, standing strong and true in their path. There was no stopping. There was no dodging.

Willow found Brick and clung to him. She took a deep breath, and in that breath everything went silent, just for a second. Sunny would be okay, and that’s all that mattered. The pegasus had had the right idea; maybe he could help them fix this—meet up with some scientists or something and help them with a cure. He had the blood for it. He had to be the key.

The wagon met with the tree much too soon. The oak couldn’t even be humored with the thought of sparing a single inch. The front end of the skywagon came to a complete stop, folding up like an accordion, while the back end continued to auger the front end against the unforgiving bark.

The wagon may have stopped, but Willow didn’t. She closed her eyes as the cold, hard bark came rushing up to meet her.

Chapter 21 Mistakes in Leadership

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The world was a blur of colors, spots of black and red and green and blue all churning together like food coloring in a mixing bowl. The more Willow tried to make sense of it the more the confusing display swirled to a dirty brown. Try as she might, her eyes wouldn’t open; maybe it was the pain, or maybe it was the sticky crud gluing her eyelashes together. Nonetheless, nothing felt good.

How easy it would be to lie here, to welcome death. By all means, she’d earned the right to die pleasantly.

Her eyes may have been closed, but her ears still worked—she could hear. Hearing was good; hearing meant that she was awake, and awake meant that she was alive.

Baby steps.

There was another pony near her, coughing, shifting. Willow groaned out some sort of a response that had been meant to silence the pony, but it was no good. Instead, she focussed on the other pony’s breathing—sharp, ragged breaths and the occasional gasp and whimper returned to her senses. The pony was hurt.

Willow tensed. Maybe it was instinct, maybe it was something else, but it brought her to open her eyes.

Sunlight filtered in between the thick leaves above, casting drifting and morphing shadows across the forest floor as the breeze tugged at the uppermost branches. She’d been discarded in the open, lying on her side on the soft ground. There were pieces of the skywagon all about, a scrap of steel here or a sheet of aluminum siding there, scattered like corpses on a battlefield.

“Hello?” Willow croaked. Her voice was dry and harsh. Speaking was more of an effort than it should have been and her ribs stung and throbbed with hot, wet pain—some sort of a fracture, no doubt.

She forced herself to roll onto her belly, then attempted to sit up, moving one hoof at a time, until her hind legs were below her and her back was semi-erect. Then came the task of getting to all four hooves. It took a try or two, but after a quick push and a grunt of pain, she was up.

Where were the others?

Willow staggered forward a few feet, not sure which direction she was heading, then turned and spun back. There had been six other ponies in that wagon with her. Where were they!?

“Brick!” She choked out the words, wincing as her neck popped and cracked with every turn. “Ember!?”

There, parked against the trunk of a sturdy oak tree, was the skywagon... or at least what was left of it. The rear half had survived, but the front resembled nothing more than shredded foil and an accordion that had been stepped on too many times.

Willow did her best to run, though she only managed a sort of stagger, nearly falling twice in the attempt to reach the wagon. The lump was rising in her throat, working its way up from her stomach like a bad apple as she weaved in and out of the scattered wreckage. Celestia... she could already see a pony and their blood on the forest floor.

It was Streakwing. The brave, blue mare lay sprawled on her side a few feet from the front end of the wagon, still tied into the harness that had tangled with the broken remnants of her wings.

Willow approached slowly, trembling for reasons that escaped her current awareness—fear, possibly. The slow rise and fall of the puller’s flanks showed there was still some life left in her, but it was clinging in naivety. The mare’s neck was lacerated with cuts and bite marks, her forehooves adorning the same appearance. Her eyes were open, but unseeing, glazed over. She was little more than a corpse.

She forced herself to walk around the mare, not daring to look closer nor try and help. Streak was beyond saving.

Willow froze with one forehoof in the air as she neared the wagon, ears perking up. A light scratching sound met her ears, faint, but definitely there. There was light breathing too, perfectly audible in the cruel silence.

Without waiting to listen any longer, Willow blundered into the wagon, her hooves thudding on the metal floor. Her eyes went every which way, trying to take in everything at once. The sounds were from Candy, leaning over what was left of one of the seats as she held her head in her forehooves. She rocked herself back and forth, her striped mane obscuring her face. Behind her lay Range and Yew; Range didn’t move, but Yew was in the process of stirring with the occasional grunt or moan.

“Candy!” Willow struggled her way over to her friend and placed her forehooves on the mare’s shoulders. “You’re okay, thank Celestia.” She gave the unresponsive mare a shake, taking the time to glance around the wagon once more. “Where are the others? Where’s Brick and Cotton and Ember?”

Candy whimpered and shook her head. “They jumped early. Cotton. I don’t—she’s...”

“She’s what?” Willow started scanning the floor. Nopony wanted so say the word. It was bad luck. It was a miracle any of them had survived, but they just couldn’t—

There was a pink foreleg lying on the ground, sticking out from underneath one of the seats. The severed end still dripped blood, the crimson liquid running in a thin trail across the uneven floor.

Willow felt herself pale. Her stomach turned over and before she knew it, a concoction of saliva and the meek liquid in her gut was spattering to the floor. “Where’s the rest of her?” she choked.

Candy shook her head again, her voice coming out as little more than a squeak. “I—I don’t know.”

“Range?” Yew muttered from the back of the wagon, dragging herself across the floor towards her companion. She gave him a shake with one forehoof, trying to rouse him. “You okay?”

Willow had to fight to keep her eyes from glazing over. There were thoughts—dark thoughts—in her head, of that little pink mare lying somewhere under a tree as her blood soaked the forest floor.

“Candy!” she blurted, shaking the stunned mare. “I need you. Stay with me! Where are the others!?”

Candy shook her head and started to splutter a few words, but Willow tightened her grip on white mare’s shoulders, nearly throttling her. “Damnit, where are they!?”

“Don’t know!” she choked, pulling away from Willow and collapsing on the floor. “They're not her...”

Willow staggered backwards. “Brick!?” she called, turning her head towards the sky, screaming as well as her parched voice would allow through the torn ceiling. “Brick, where are you!?”

“Quiet!” Yew hissed. She was leaning up against the back wall of the wagon, one forehoof pressed to a gash in her side while the other helped steady Range, who was just now getting to his hooves. “They’re gonna hear you.”

Willow blinked, cocking her head at Yew. “Hear, what—”

“You think they just went away when we crashed?” She scoffed and pulled her hoof away from the cut to examine it. The flow of blood wasn’t anywhere near close to stopping. The cut was deep, gouged with an almost medical precision. Yew had gotten in a fight with something sharp. With a grunt, she fell against the wall, then slid down to the floor, still clutching her side. "Oh fuck, this is going to bleed me out."

Spurring herself into action, Willow rushed forward, levitating the flap on her saddlebags open and beginning to rummage around. She couldn’t help but glower at the red color from her horn—she missed her blue magic... and eyes, but the damned infection had taken that.

Red! What sort of a pony trusted a doctor with red eyes?

Sitting down in front of Yew, she found exactly what she was looking for and pulled out the box of healing potions. Or... what was left of the box of healing potions. Deep, purple liquid drizzled from the corner of the box, pattering softly to the floor. “No no no!” Willow flipped open the lid. Every bottle had met its end, leaving nothing but shattered glass stained in purple. Upturning the case, she emptied its shattered contents one to floor, the potion-stained glass jingling across wagon.

“No what?” Yew leaned back, closing her eyes. Already, her brown coat had lost a little luster.

Willow pulled her saddlebags from her back and dumped them both out on the floor, rummaging through their contents with her magic and forehooves. Bandages, gauze, antibiotics, chewable painkillers; none of this would do any good for an open cavity wound. “Come on, at least give me a bottle of disinfectant!” There, a bit of luck. Willow dug a brown bottle out of the pile and set it aside

“Oh yeah,” Yew mused, taking slow, deep breaths as she sat back and watched. “You’re a doctor, aren’t you?”

“Not without the proper gear I’m not.” Willow sat back, a soft shiver traveling its way up her spine. No potions or stitches and no staples... though she did have a needle. “Ha!” Willow levitated up the little needle and held it before her. It would work, but it would be crude and primitive... and dirty.

Turning around, Willow sorted a dozen or so strands of hair from her tail, then gave a pull. Yew just sat there and watched with mild interest, her greater attention on the opening in her side. Willow made sure to work fast, winding the hair up and feeding it through the eye of the needle. Oh, sweet Celestia, she was going to have to use the entire bottle of disinfectant on this. Just imagining all the places her tail had been was enough to make her squirm. When was the last time she had bathed? Last thing Yew needed was infection spreading to her internal organs; if she didn’t die now it’d be likely to kill her later.

“Stitching me up with your own tail?” Yew asked with a soft chuckle. “Sweet Celestia that’s crude. I mean, great innovation, but fuck.”

Willow nodded, more to reassure herself than to reply to Yew. Last time she’d actually had to give a pony legitimate stitches was back in medical school—it was the one circumstance in modern healing that cost more and was less effective than a healing potion. If it came down to anything, staples would be used to hold the wound for the healing potion to take effect.

Yew winced as Willow pushed the needle through the flesh at the start of the wound and started to pull the makeshift thread of crimson hair through after it. From there, it was just a matter of closing the wound, then she’d be able to focus more on clotting the blood flow.

Her eyes unfocused as she worked. She had to go find Brick. There wasn’t a trace of him in the wagon. For the love of Celestia she had been hugging him when they’d crashed! He’d probably been thrown from the wreckage like she had. What if he was out there somewhere, lying on the ground, bleeding, his—

“Gah!” Yew gasped and gave Willow a glare. “What in the name of medicine are you doing?”

Willow looked down to her stitchwork—it looked like some earth pony foal’s attempt at a patch quilt design. “S-sorry.” Feeling that tremble again, she pulled the thread back a few holes and went back to doing it right. Stab, pull, under, over, stab, repeat. Yew grit her teeth and pounded her forehoof on the floor as Willow, more or less, doused the wound with the entire bottle of disinfectant.

“You okay?” It was Range who spoke.

Willow spared him a glance before going back to her work, retrieving gauze and a roll of bandages. "Yeah... just a bit rattled I guess."

The gray stallion had taken a real beating in the crash, his coat scuffed and bruised. The barrel of his scoped rifle had been tweaked near the tip, bent a full sixty degrees to the right, and his left hoof was angry-looking and swollen.

He leaned forward and placed his hoof on Yew’s shoulder. “Where’d we land?”

Yew snickered and hung her head, cursing under her breath. “We didn’t land, you damned idiot, look around you.”

Range did just that, his eyes widening steadily as he took in the sights. “Yew... we can’t stay here. We’ve got to go, like, now.”

Yew grit her teeth. “Well no shit! My blood’s all over the floor. I don’t know how they haven’t found us yet.”

“Done!” Willow declared, stepping away and immediately leaving them to each other. She scooped up her medical supplies, piling them back into her bags before draping them over her back. Without healing potions, she might as well have just been a drug dealer for all the narcotic painkillers she could dispense. She’d hardly used any of her supplies from the storeroom in the hospital; it was rare for ponies to be wounded. Sure, they died a lot, but there was no such thing as a simple flesh wound by means of zombie.

She made her way past Candy, who was still staring at a blank patch of wall, her ears folded flat to her head. Out of the wreck and back into the sunlight. The forest floor felt wonderful below her hooves after the cold, hard steel of the skywagon. She had to find Brick. He was somewhere here. He had to be.

“Who’s that?”

Willow froze. The voice had been quiet, tiny, hardly more than a whisper... and right beside her. Slowly, she turned her wide eyes to the blue mare lying on the ground. “M-me?”

Apart from the weak rise and fall of her flank, Streakwing didn’t move, but her lips managed to move just enough to form words. “Can’t see...”

Willow found herself staring into the mare’s glazed eyes. They were blue, almost the same color as her coat. “You... did really good.” Willow bit her lip and reached for her saddlebags. She couldn’t just let the mare lay there.

Streak’s lips curled into a smile and she let out a sound that could have been a laugh. “Don’t mention it...” She was silent for a moment, then her ears twitched and her expression changed. “I can see light, blurs and stuff, but... I’m dead, aren’t I? Can’t... feel my hooves... can’t... breathe. Can't see anything but blurs.”

Willow had watched this too many times before. Streakwing was less than two steps from comatose. She hadn’t had the glory of dying in action, and now she was left with nothing but her own mind as her body failed to support it... It was one of the more terrible things that could happen to a pony, especially a young one... especially a soldier.

She found what she was looking for in her saddlebags. “Yes, Streak, you’re dying.” She moved closer to the downed flier, placing a hoof on the mare’s shoulder. The mare’s name was Streakwing; she’d called it out right before the crash—Private Streakwing. Knowing the mare's name made the situation all that much worse.

“Knew it.” Streak uttered the same sound as before in a pathetic attempt at laughter. “Hey... you’re the doctor, right?”

Willow bit her tongue for a second. “Yeah... I am, but if your wounds don’t kill you, the infection will. They bit you.”

“Yeah... I know.” The mare closed her eyes, thank Celestia. “I was... gonna ask if you carry any morphine.”

Willow glanced to the two needles she held in her forehoof. “You read my mind.”

Another attempted laugh. “Thanks. And after you do that... take my... tags. Give ‘em to the army.” Streak opened her eyes again, the glassy orbs below her lids angled towards the sky. “KIA has more closure... for family... than MIA, y'know?"

the tremble started with a little shudder that ran up Willow’s left foreleg, then transitioned its way to her spine where it took to the rest of her body. Before she could lose her nerve, she leaned forward, and with magic and hoof, jabbed both needles in the mare’s neck. “You’re very brave.” Crimson magic lighting up her horn, she levitated silver tags from around the mare’s neck and tucked them away in her saddlebags. “You saved se—” she caught herself. “Six... six ponies today. You flew like a champ.”

Streak smiled. "Yeah... remember that—Streakwing the brave. I sure did show them, didn't I?"

Willow backed away. "Y-yeah. Streakwing the brave." She couldn’t cry; it wasn’t a choice, but an inability, not since Bottle of Progress, not after that. Sadness found a way to manifest itself as anger... but this just hurt.

Streak muttered something else, but she was too out of it for her mouth to form proper words. She groaned and slurred a few more things, then slipped into unconsciousness, her flank rising and falling gently.

The morphine would get to her in another couple minutes.

A twig snapped somewhere behind her, somewhere in the treeline. Willow spun on her front forehoof, yanking her pistol from its holster, her levitation struggling to hold it steady. The delayed pain hit her a moment later, brought on by the sudden movement that mad managed to agonize her supposedly-fractured ribs, and she nearly fell flat on her face.

Brick stared back at her from the treeline, a battered-looking radio box hanging by its strap from his mouth.

Willow put two and two together. He'd woken up first and went scavaging, or maybe he'd been thrown free from the wreck and was just now making his way back. Willow didn't give herself any more time to ponder as she hurled herself across the clearing, closing the gap between them in a few seconds. Shoving the radio aside, wrapping her forehooves around him, she did her best to ignore the pain in her ribs that came with the hug.

"I thought I lost you..." Willow Nuzzled into his chest, willing the tears to come, but still unable to produce anything more than a dry sob. He put his forehooves around her and she melted, sinking into his embrace. "Brick, I thought were dead." Relief washed over her in waves, forcing back the worry and sadness and leaving plenty of room for anger.

With a growl, Willow wrenched herself out of his grasp and stomped her forehooves, aiming her refined rage at Brick. "I thought you were dead!" She snarled. "Damnit, Brick! Don't you ever do that to me again!"

Brick took one step backwards and lowered his head, folding his ears and averting his eyes to the ground. He pawed at the forest floor and glanced up at her, then to the radio, then back to her.

He really did look sorry.

Willow softened her expression and sighed. "I know... I know. You were just trying to help. I'm sorry. It's just... aaagh!" She grasped her head in her hooves and pinched her eyes shut. "You're the only pony from my old life that's still alive..."

"Hey!" Willow's ears perked at the sound of a pony calling out through the treeline. She knew that voice! "Brick, I found the dashboard compass! We also need to go, now!"

Ember burst from the trees in full gallop. It didn't look like there was a scratch on her; her burnt and scarred coat looked nicer than anypony else's at the time, and that was really saying something. “They’re back there!”

"Ember!" Willow called, beckoning her over.

"Everypony shut up!" Yew hissed from behind Willow in a hushed tone. She was hauling herself out of the skywagon, Range right behind her as he took careful steps on an injured-looking forehoof. "Are you trying to bring them all straight to us!?"

Ember went on racing past. “Wasn’t kidding! They’re back there!” Past Willow, past the skywagon and Yew, and right on into the forest she ran.

Willow shared a look with Brick, who blinked, then glanced in the direction Ember had come. Sticks and branches snapped and broke from somewhere within the trees and the heavy pounding of hooves on the forest floor was hard to miss.

Willow exploded to her hooves and nearly fell on her face for the second time in two minutes as she tried to take a bounding step after Ember. The only thing that saved her was Brick fastening his teeth in her scruff and hauling her back to her hooves.

“Time to go!” Yew hollered into the wagon. She reached back and tightened down a few straps on her saddlebags. Giving the bandages on her flank a quick once-over, she gave a quick sprint that brought her up beside Willow and Brick. Range followed right behind, ungraciously lumbering along on three hooves.

Willow skidded to a stop, turning back to face the wagon. They were missing one. “Candy!” Giving Brick a quick glance over her shoulder, she started back towards the skywagon. “Haul your shellshocked ass out of there right now before I—”

And there she was, scrambling from the metal shell as she buckled down the strap on her saddlebags. Willow nodded to the former REA private and turned back to follow the others. Brick had been kind enough to wait for her, and even kinder to run along beside her, giving her a nudge or a pull whenever she stumbled, which was a lot. Every time a hoof met with the ground, white hot needles of pain traveled from her flanks to her spine, and it was wearing down on her quick.

“Ember!” Yew yelled out ahead. “How many were there?”

Ember tossed Yew a panicked look over her shoulder. “Thirty or so. Way too many!”

“Thirty,” Willow gasped. She glanced over at Brick. As far as she could tell, his machine gun still worked just fine and was fully loaded. “Can’t we just stop and shoot them then? There’s enough of us with guns to stop them.”

Range shook his head at her, panting as he spoke up. “How many do you think... are in the area? They listen for gunshots... and come after them. We’d be killing thirty and... attracting a hundred.”

Ember slowed a little to fall in with the rest of them. “Where are we even going?”

“The prison,” Candy answered. Despite her greater training, she was starting to pant along with all the others. The worst part about it was that they weren’t even running all that fast, not with the wide range of different injuries and ouchies amongst them. “Ashfield. That’s where they were heading. If we can regroup... with them... that’ll be good.”

Willow went left around an oak tree while Brick went right. There was no trail to go by, and navigating the terrain was anything but easy at full speed. There were small ditches and ravines, thick patches of undergrowth that hid streams or ensnaring vines. It was actually quite pretty, if not ankle-snapping deadly.

“Candy,” Yew answered. “Ashfield's forty miles away. In our condition, that’s at least three days from here.”

Range snickered. “Not if we run there!”

Willow threw a glance over her shoulder. She could see them now. They were fast, but clumsy, tripping over every bit of exposed root or undergrowth and bouncing off tree trunks like ball bearings in a pachinko machine. Though as quick as they went down, they were back on their hooves and running again, the ponies at the front of the pack changing constantly as they gained the lead, then tripped and lost it to the ones behind them.

This was trouble.

“Brick,” Willow gasped. She was practically leaning on him at this point; the landing hadn’t done her well at all. “We’re gonna have to stop and shoot if they get any closer.”

“Wait.” It was Candy who replied. “I-I’ve got an idea.” Falling back a few feet, Candy reached back and pulled open the flap on her saddlebags with her teeth. With a grimace and tiny shake of her head, she reached into the bag and pulled out a...

Willow gagged and looked away from Candy as she tugged the pink appendage from her saddlebag. For the love of everything, Candy was carrying Cotton’s leg in her mouth.

Candy fell back, digging her hooves into the ground as she slid to a stop and turned. Willow didn’t dare slow down, but she watched over her shoulder as Candy reared back. The mare hesitated only for a second, and after that second was done, she flung Cotton’s leg out into the forest, right over the heads of the oncoming horde.

The first zombie’s head snapped up to watch the piece of meat and it tried to skid to a stop. The others collided with it from behind, bouncing and rolling across the forest floor. A green mare somewhere near the back of the pack reared up and caught it in her mouth. A blue pegasus stallion next to her growled and bit down on the other end. A third, yellow mare bit down on the middle, then they all dogpiled.

Zombie ADD

Willow turned her head away from the growling, writhing mass as Candy gradually caught back up with them. The poor mare was in tears, biting her lip as she ran. “b-bought us some t-time,” she choked.

Willow was so busy gaping that she almost forgot to keep running. She was so sure she’d seen everything, but she’d never seen one of her companions use the leg of her dead friend to distract a horde of zombies. It was one of the things she could have easily lived her entire life without seeing.

Still, they didn’t stop. The world became a blur as Willow ran alongside Brick, hopping logs and streams and whatever else, weaving in and out of trees. It must have been miles they’d ran. Willow wasn’t sure anymore.

Over time, the running became trotting, trotting became walking, then the walking became staggering. Willow couldn’t hear anything in the woods apart from the group’s own breathing and their own unsteady hoofsteps.

New things were happening every day; apparently, outrunning a horde was one of them.

“You guys,” Range said with a chuckle and a stupid little grin. “We just outran the infected.”

Yew rolled her eyes at him. “Yes, we did, genius, now don’t jinx it.”

“I’m not gonna jinx it,” he whined back. “I’m just excited. I thought we were all dead.”

“Heh... yeah,” Candy pitched in, fixing a teary-eyed gaze on Range. She could have melted him into a puddle with her look if she’d wanted to. “Good thing we’re not all dead. Only one.”

That shut them up.

It was some time before anything eventful happened, some more time for Willow to zone out. It was so easy to lose track of time. One second you were thinking... then the next—

“Look at that!” Ember called, trotting out a little ways ahead, pointing to something still hidden from Willow by the foliage. “I think we’ve found our place to stay tonight.”

“Place to stay?” Willow narrowed her brows, then looked up. “How could you want to stay anywhere? We need to get out of this forest.” Twilight was approaching, the sun far away on the horizon. They’d really been going on for hours, and she’d been zoned out the entire time.

Hours gone by, just like that... where had she been?

Breaking from the trees, she and the others came to a wide field of green grass littered with wildflowers of just about every color. And there at the end of the field, a little way up a hill, was a farmhouse. The paint was old and flaky, its white sheen faded to a more sickly yellow. The building stood two stories tall and was nice and big when it came to houses, probably designed to house a family and a whole workforce.

“Would you look at that,” Range mused. “A house out in the middle of the forest. What’s the luck of that? Bet you ten bits it’s either full of zombies or there’s a pony living there.”

Yew growled and gave him a harsh elbow to the ribs. “Don’t jinx it.”

Willow shrugged, eyeing the wildflowers as they streaked by. “What’s the luck of surviving a high-speed skywagon crash with a thousand zombies chasing you?” It was all rather pretty, almost pretty enough to make her forget the image of Candy hurling Cotton’s foreleg through the air. “What’s the luck of outrunning a zombie horde in the forest?” She frowned. “Lucky nopony else has found the place, I guess.”

“Willow!” Yew snapped, groaning and hanging your head. “Do. Not. Jinx! Us!”

No less than a second after Yew had finished her sentence, something moved in the second story window of the farmhouse.

Willow was starting to think she was unlucky as she squinted at the old house.

The muzzle of a rifle flashed from the window. Willow hardly had time to blink. She felt the bullet whiz right past her ear, shredding the air in its wake, then from behind came the distinct ‘thwack’ of a bullet striking flesh and a cry of pain.

Willow spun around on one hoof. There had only been one pony walking behind her.

Candy wavered on three hooves, one forehoof pressed to her neck as blood seeped from the wound, trickling down her coat. Her eyes widened and she fixed her gaze on Willow before glancing to the window the the farmhouse. She took one step to the right, then keeled over, disappearing in the long grass.

Willow stared at the spot she’d disappeared, jaw locked. She was only reminded of the current situation when another bullet zinged off a rock a few feet from her hooves. Yew and Range both ducked into the grass, Ember made a beeline for the treeline, and Brick, somehow, had literally disappeared. He was just gone!

Then she was sprinting, ripping through the grass in the direction of the farmhouse with pure hatred in her blood. Nopony took cheapshots at her friends.

The pony in the window fired shot after shot at her, but for reasons Willow didn’t care to make out, he missed every time, coming close only once with a shot that cut a few strands loose from her tail.

A fence had been erected around the house, but the garden wire did little to stop her as she charge headlong into the wire mesh. It entangled her for a second and she took a moment to stomp and kick until it let her go. Without missing a beat she was on the porch. They’d locked the door, but there was no stopping Willow as she threw her entire weight against it at full pelt. The inside of the doorframe blew out, splinters of wood and flaking paint filling the entryway as she slammed the door aside.

An old blue stallion stood just inside with a rifle. He didn’t even have time to get the weapon up before Willow was on him. One well-placed forehoof pinched the barrel of the weapon while the other hoof pummeled his face until it was bloody enough for her liking.

She didn’t stick around to finish him off. Up the stairs she went, smashing two more doors out of her way to get there. Into the upstairs hall she raced, levitating her pistol by her side as she stalked down the hall. A green mare stepped into view holding a bat in her teeth, but one look at Willow and she ducked back into the room she’d been hiding in. Willow fired off four rounds into the door the mare had taken refuge behind and heard a yelp from the other side.

Behind the next door was the bastard who’d been taking shots at them with a rifle.

The flimsy wooden door held up just as well as the others as Willow kicked it to splinters. Barging into the room, she sighted the pistol with the back of the tan pony’s head. He was still aiming the rifle out the window, leaning against a dresser to steady himself and look down the scope.

Willow went to pull the trigger, but hesitated. No, he deserved to see this.

The stallion was only halfway through turning when Willow clobbered him aside the head with a forehoof and threw him to the floor. Growling, teeth gnashing, she rolled him into his back and slammed her forehoof down on his throat. The pistol levitated before her eyes, the barrel pressed firmly to the side of his head. “How dare you—”

She was looking into the eyes of a colt, no more than ten or so. He gazed back at her, terrified, tears streaking down his cheeks as his hind legs kicked feebly at her belly. For a moment, her grip slackened as the shock ate at her thought process. Then she thought of Candy, lying in the grass, bleeding... maybe even dead. The gun barrel forced itself a little harder against the colt’s skull.

“Who under the sun taught you to shoot ponies who’re just minding their own business!?”

“I-I’m on guard duty!” the little green colt replied. “G-gramps said t-t-to shoot any pony or c-crazies that came towards the house.” He’d given up trying to shove Willow off at this point and instead was using his forehooves to cover his eyes.

Willow grit her teeth, panting, glaring hate into the colt’s eyes. “You shot my friend!”

Somepony screamed from behind her and Willow turned just in time to see the green mare from before, blood trickling from a flesh wound on her back, only she was in mid-swing with the old wooden baseball bat.

Willow’s head snapped around, blood misting from her mouth and nose as the bat met her face with a sound that no face should make. The pistol clattered to the ground as her levitation died. She staggered away, getting three hooves under her but missing with the fourth and careening to the side. She stumbled, bounced off the wall, then crashed to the floor. Blood from her nose and mouth pooling on the wooden floor. Her ears rung and her head spun, blackness and little green dots creeping into her vision as she tried to lift her head up off the ground.

“You bitch!” the green mare howled around the bat. She screamed then lunged. The bat came down on Willow’s already-fractured ribs and there was a wet crack from her side. Willow screamed in response and tried to roll away. Her magic reached out for the gun, but the mare’s hoof came stomping down on her horn, and all at once the magic ceased.

“What?” the mare hissed in Willow’s ear, putting her hoof down on the pistol that lay just in front of Willow. “Reaching for this?”

Willow coughed and spat another mouthful of blood onto the floor. Her tongue ran over chipped and broken teeth, easily fixable with a healing potion, of course, if she had one. Her face felt... off, crooked.

Willow’s eyes remained on the gun as the earth pony mare took it up and pressed it to the side of her head. Of course... a healing potion couldn’t fix a shot to the head.

“M-mom,” the colt said, stepping into Willow’s line of sight. “She wasn’t going to shoot me. I... I shot at her first.”

“Well of course you did,” the mare shot back. “You were defending your home!”

“But I shot her friend!” He stomped his hoof. “I shot her in the neck. She’s just trying to protect her friends!”

The mare disregarded the colt with a flick of her tail and checked the chamber on the pistol, snapping it closed again when she was satisfied.

Willow willed herself to move, to fight back, but she could feel at least two of her ribs poking at her insides, the broken nubs stabbing at her flesh. The pain was off the chart; she could get in a screaming contest with a mare in labor and win.

“Mom!” The colt took a step forward and drove his shoulder into the green mare’s side. “She’s a pony, not a crazy! You and dad told me we weren’t shooting ponies, only crazies, but she’s not a crazy!”

For a moment, Willow seemed to be forgotten as the mare turned to glare at the colt. “Yeah, and then your dad went and got shot, by a pony! There’s no laws any more, so what do you think ponies are gonna do? Kill each other.”

“But we’re shooting them before we can even talk to them!”

“Because what if they’re with Match Stick?”

“Not everypony’s with Match Stick, Mom!”

Willow found herself a little interested in the situation. Who was Match Stick and who exactly were these ponies? Of course, none of it mattered if this mare decided that she wanted to shoot her in the head, but it was a good way to take her mind off things.

The green mare glowered at her son. “If you’re so afraid to shoot ponies, then why did you do it in the first place?”

The colt seemed to crumple. He opened his mouth, closed it again, then hung his head. “Because I was scared! They had guns.” He turned away from her, looking towards the door. “They—”

Brick stood in the doorway, the machine gun on his back primed, the bit in his mouth. The colt’s jaw dropped and he took a step back, glancing between Brick and his mother as the brown stallion stroder further into the room.

Willow felt the mare’s grip on her tense, and in response, lifted her head a little. “You shot at the wrong ponies.” She spat up a little more blood and smirked a smirk of broken teeth. “You bitch.”

Range and Ember fell in on either side of Brick. Range even had the blue stallion that Willow had bloodied near the front door held before him, the back of his rifle placed to the stallion’s head.

Now that she thought about it, she hadn’t clobbered the stallion too bad. He still had both eyes and most of his teeth; the only bad wound was a gash on his forehead that showed a little bit of bone.

The mare only sneered at Willow before looking up, a slow grin crossing her face. “What, that’s it?”

Ember glared. “What do you mean that’s it?”

Behind Ember and Range, there were two clicks, coaxed from two automatic rifles held by two similar-looking brown stallions who’d just stepped into view.

Ember blinked, then glanced behind her. She turned back with wide eyes. “Well, isn’t this a clusterfuck.”

Range smirked at the mare and rolled his eyes. “What, you think they’re going to help you. Really, you should prepare yourself better for a standoff.”

The green mare glared daggers at Range. “Got you covered, don’t I?”

“Hold it right there!”

Willow let her jaw hang open a little bit. That was Candy’s voice. The striped-maned mare stood just at the head of the steps, aiming her two automatic rifles over the banister at the two brown stallions. Yew stood beside her, a pistol held in her jaws.

Willow groaned and tried to shift the way she was lying on the floor, but the green mare placed a hoof on her side and pressed down. Willow screamed as the pain returned, the ends of her broken ribs stabbing at the nerves.

Brick growled, actually growled, a deep rumble in his throat and stepped forward, his eyes narrowed hatefully as he sighted the mare’s head. He stomped his hoof, then nodded towards Willow and tossed his head to the side.

“Mom,” the colt whispered. “There’s a lot of them.”

“See what’s going on here!?” Candy shouted from across the hall. Willow could just see the mare between the legs of one of the brown stallions. “Everypony dies, all of you, if you make one stupid move. So why don’t you put the guns down!?” Blood dripped steadily from her white coat, running down her neck where it pooled around her right forehoof on the floor. She couldn’t stand like that forever—hopefully their attackers didn’t realize that. “I—we... we don’t want to kill you, but we will!”

The mare seemed to pale. She took a step away from Willow, though kept the pistol trained on her. “D-dad?” she asked quietly.

The blue stallion on the ground in front of Range lifted his head and tried to shake the blood out of his eyes. “Back down, Corn. It’s not worth it.”

She bit her lip. “Yeah, but—”

“You bimbo!” The stallion snarled through his broken teeth at her. “We lost! Now put down the gun before you get us all killed!”

Willow let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding as the mare lowered the gun, then dropped it. Immediately, Brick rushed forward and snatched it up. With one forehoof, he shoved the mare against the wall then moved to help Willow.

Convenient enough, there was a bed in the room. It most likely belonged to the colt, considering the Wonderbolt patch quilt, but Brick didn’t seem to care as he carried Willow over and laid her down on her good side.

The others had surrendered their weapons and were being herded into the room as well. Soon enough, all five of them, the colt included, stood up against the wall.

Candy staggered over to Willow and pulled her bags off, starting to rummage and coming out a moment later with some gauze and bandages.

“Glad you’re okay,” Willow breathed.

Candy smirked, even as she winced and pressed the gauze to her neck. “Thanks... I sure did get lucky though. Entry and exit wound, didn’t hit any muscles, arteries, or organs... I guess I was worthy of a second chance.”

“Who fired the shot?” Range asked bluntly, aiming the carbine on his back at each of them in turn.

The colt seemed to shrink under Range’s glare and he nuzzled into his mother’s grasp.

“The colt,” Willow said, groaning as she picked her head up. It didn’t want to stay, and quickly dropped back to the comforter. “He was told to.”

Range turned his eyes to the colt. “By who?”

“Me, you damned kook,” the old stallion snapped, wiping a forehoof across his face. Willow could see the pain in his eyes—no doubt that open flesh wound was stinging like mad. “This is our home and we’re going to protect it.”

Range tilted his head towards the old stallion and raised one brow. “So, you have your grandson shoot passerby?”

The stallion grit his teeth. “It’s more complicated than that.”

“Not like I’m in any hurry.” To prove his point, Range sat back and shrugged his shoulders, leaving Brick and Yew to cover the five ponies. “If you’re gonna shoot at anypony who gets near looking for a place to sleep in a world already as fucked up as it is, you must have a good reason.” He grinned, intimidation flashing in his eyes as he reclined. “Please tell.”

The old stallion narrowed his eyes at Range. “You lot are different from the stallions and mares in the woods.” His voice hardened. “So you can start off by getting me something to stop this bleeding in my head.”

Willow perked her ears, then flared up her horn, rummaging around in her bags until she found the most abused piece gauze sponge she had. He made sure to glare down Willow as she did. Honestly, she felt a little bad for beating his face with her forehoof, but to be fair, he had also had a gun. Nonetheless, he certainly seemed to hold a grudge, even as she levitated him the dressings.

“There’s ponies in the woods, hiding out, lots of them.” He pressed the gauze to his forehead and winced. “They’re scavengers, worse than the Celestia-damned crows. Wish the crazies would just come through and pick them off.”

Range frowned. “So, I’m just gonna guess here and say you’ve had problems with them?”

The old stallion nodded. “We used to be six... lost my son in law to a pony named Match Stick... killed him. Stallion runs some sort of a bullshit thing he calls a gang, out in those woods.” He thrust his hoof towards the window. “Used to run Waterwillow before the crazies overran it, now he still likes to pretend he owns something. There’s twenty or so of them. They want us to move out and let them have the house.”

Range nodded. “So, if there’s twenty of them and five of you, why haven’t they killed you all and taken the house yet? No offense old-timer, but you five don’t look like you can stand up to twenty ponies.”

Willow beckoned Brick over as the two stallions talked. The brown stallion lowered his ear close her head and Willow leaned up to whisper to him. “Is my face bad?”

Brick bit his lip, then nodded.

“How bad?”

He bit his lip a little harder and glanced away.

Willow swallowed hard, trying to keep her mind off it. “Okay, here’s what I want you to do.” Now that she thought about it, her words were broken and slurred, spoken through numb and swollen lips. “That stallion doesn’t seem all too concerned about the torn flesh on his forehead. Something tells me they got healing potions around here. Go check and see. I want my face fixed and I want my ribs healed.”

Brick nodded and slinked off. The stallion sure was sneaky when he wanted to be.

“They haven’t killed us yet,” the old stallion was saying, “because we’ve been holding them off!” He sighed and leaned back against the wall. “I built this house with my own hooves and I’m not leaving. Something about this plot of land keeps the crazies away—they don’t come here in hordes, no more than one or two, and I’ll be damned if I let some punk kids in a gang scare me off my own land.”

“So that’s why you had your grandson shoot at us?”

The stallion gruffed. “I told him to take out anything that moved. Those bastards said they’d be back tonight and I wouldn't put it past them to come out and finish the job. They want us out of here. They want the house and they want the supplies. I can see it in their eyes—they’re starving out there, as they should be.”

WIllow forced herself to sit up a little. “Really? There’s zombies everywhere, killing anything and everything that moves! There’s zombies out there, and you ponies are fighting each other?”

The old stallion gave her a brooding look. “See, you’re a smart one. You realize just how stupid this all is. Last thing ponies need to be fighting are other ponies.” He stomped his hoof. “But damnit, that’s how it is. Now, I’d like to kindly ask you folks to get the hell off my property so I can prepare for tonight, because I know they’re coming. They’ve come every night to try and flush us out, and I can tell you, tonight’s gonna be no different. We’ll shoot as many of them dead as we can.”

Willow shared a look with each of her companions—they all seemed to be thinking the same thing.

Range turned to the old stallion. “None of us are in any condition to leave. Willow’s got broken ribs, I’ve got a sprained hoof, Yew’s got a gash in her side that’s threatening to re-open, and Candy’s been shot through the neck.” He glanced towards Willow, then back to the stallion. “We’re not here to hurt you. We just need a place to stay.”

Willow nodded in agreement. “Can we all get along if we give you back your guns?” She glared at the green mare. “But I’m keeping the bat!”

Sweet Celestia... her face was broken. Her eyes felt misaligned...

The old stallion seemed unsure of himself. He glanced between Range and Willow, then settled his eyes on Willow. “If you stay, then you’re helping us.”

Willow chuckled. “Not gonna lie, I kinda like you, old-timer.” She forced herself to sit up fully, wincing and gasping as she did so. A torrent of blood drizzled from her nose at the change in position, staining her white coat. “You’re an old stallion trying to protect his family, and I can respect that.” She glanced out the window, out towards the trees. “If there’s really a bunch of punks trying to kick you from your home in the middle of a zombie invasion, then I want to see this for myself. I have seen a lot of things since this thing started, and I haven’t liked very many of them. If these ponies are what you say they are, then I’d be glad to see them dead.”

The stallion’s ears perked in interest and hope sparkled in his eyes, but he questioned her nonetheless. “You talk like you’re the good guys.”

Willow shrugged. “We are.”

“What makes you so sure of that?” He cocked his head to the side, raising both eyebrows. “We’re all just trying to get by. You are, we are... they are. Some just go about it in different ways than others.” He glanced at Range and snorted before looking back to her. “Match Stick thinks he’s one of the good guys, and look at him.”

Willow blinked, his question slapping her across the face like a wet towel. Were they the good guys? Could they even be the bad guys? She remembered standing there, back in the hospital, turning off the power and watching as the life support systems for a dozen ponies blinked out one by one, transferring power away from the main building to the access tunnels below the hospital and dooming everypony inside to their death, just for their own escape.

Willow began to tremble. The REA ponies she’d killed—they’d only been following orders. They’d commandeered two skywagons, dooming at least a hundred ponies to death by pulling those wagons out of circulation for the evacuations. The pullers could have easily made another five runs.

...Were they the bad guys?

Candy answered for Willow. “You do what you have to to survive.”

The old stallion nodded once, never taking his eyes off Willow. After a moment, he turned away. “Well then, since we’re all peachy now, we might as well introduce ourselves.” He pointed towards himself. “Name’s Corn Husk. Call me Husk, since I named my daughter Corn and we can’t exactly have two of those.” He nodded towards the colt. “That there’s Fertile Soil, though he likes it better if you call him Fersil for some stupid reason.” He nodded towards the nearly-identical stallions. “And those two are Mud and Muck, my eldest grandsons and the best damn fieldhands you’ve ever seen.”

The one on the left raised his hoof. “I’m Mud, he’s Muck.”

“Hey,” the other declared. “You’re Muck and I’m Mud.”

“Oh shut up, Mud.”

“Make me, Muck.”

Husk sighed and rolled his eyes. “Both of you shut up before I brand you with your own names.”

Fersil broke away from his mother’s side and made his way up to Range. “What sort of a gun is that?” he asked, wide eyed.

Range blinked, then looked to the rifle on his back. “It’s a sharpshooting rifle designed for sport five years ago.” He smirked, sitting back and adjusting his glasses. “Shoots a fifty caliber round, bolt-action, operated through a bit system—accurate up to a quarter mile.” He glanced back at the tweaked barrel. “Well... at least it used to be.”

Willow tensed as Corn approached her and hurriedly checked to make sure the baseball bat was nowhere to be seen. Her face hurt just thinking about it. “Go away,” she said quickly, laying back down on her side and turning away.

Corn sighed and closed her eyes for a second, leaving Willow to wonder just what was going through her head. “Look... I’m sorry for hitting you with a bat... twice... okay, three times. You’ve got to understand, I was protecting my foals.”

Willow harumphed. “They’re hardly foals.” Her face... she didn’t even want to see what Corn had done to her face. Hopefully, a healing potion would be enough to fix it.

“They’ll always be my foals.” Corn moved around the bed until she sat in front of Willow. “You didn’t have a family, did you?” She specifically avoided looking at the left side of willow’s head.

Willow closed her eyes for a second, thinking of Sunny, the others. “No... not a real one.”

“Well, it’s a lot different when you’re looking at something that came from you. I’d die for any one of them in a heartbeat.”

Willow sighed. “I know that feeling. I... my friends are more important to me than I realize. When I saw Candy get shot in the neck, I—”

“You don’t need to say any more.” Corn shrugged. “I understand. You were protecting your friends. I was protecting my family. As long as we can agree not to kill each other, I think we’re gonna be okay.” She bit her lip, then lowered her head a little. “Husk wasn’t lying... about tonight. They’re going to be coming. If they come, you guys are gonna get caught up in this thing.”

Willow fixed her eyes on the mare. “Let them come. If they really are what you say they are, I’ll kill them.” She sighed. “I know you’ve got healing potions here. I can tell by looking at your teeth—you’re as old as my mother and your teeth are perfect; that’s what healing potions do. They fix teeth, even if you’re drinking them for something else.” She fought back a shudder. “I sent my friend to go find one, but you’re gonna go get me one, right now. I-I can feel it... you ruined my face... you won’t even look at me. I can’t even feel it!” She huffed, misting blood from her nostrils. “For your own safety, you bring one to me right now.”

Corn opened her mouth, closed it, then nodded. “Right.” Giving Willow once last look, she turned and headed for the door.

For a good while, Willow lay alone, listening to the others as they talked, then left one by one. Soon enough, the room fell silent, leaving Willow with nothing but her own pain and labored breathing. Fucking baseball bats. Out of everything she’d survived, it came down to a baseball bat that had done the best number on her.

“Willow?”

Willow groaned and rolled over. Apparently, there was still one more pony in the room, one who wasn’t content with letting her sleep. “Yes, Candy?” she asked quietly, rolling back over to face the white mare.

Candy sat a few feet from the bed, reclined on her haunches, eyes on the floor. “I just wanted to ask if you’re... you know, doing okay.”

Willow opened her mouth for the normal snappy retort, but something stopped her. Candy had no right to be asking if anypony was okay, not after what had happened to Cotton. There was no hiding it—those two had had a thing going. They’d started off enemies in Bottle of Progress, and somehow, along the way, they’d bonded. It would have been wonderful to see them get together, if not simply to be able to call them Cotton Candy.

“I’m fine, Candy...” Willow said after a moment. “How about you?”

The mare shrugged, shoulders rocking softly as she bit back the pain. Willow knew all too well how it felt to hold back. “You know... doing okay. Worried... worried about the others and—”

“Candy,” Willow interrupted with a small shake of her head. She would have reached out a hoof to put it on the mare’s shoulder had it been easier. “You’re not okay. Just stop trying to hold it in.”

Candy looked up, tears in her pink eyes. “I—Willow I don’t know what to do. P-part of me was hoping that... that when I got shot, I was going to die. This is too much. I mean, ever since this thing started, it’s just been too much.” She was sobbing now, flat out sobbing. “I watched my whole team get shot right in front of me, I pushed one of my friends out of a skywagon while they were still alive! I’ve been through all this with you guys and I just don’t know how any of you do it! Part of me wants to go back to the REA, part of me wants to stick with you guys and part of me just wants to die!”

Willow was reconsidering her advice. Maybe letting it all out wasn’t very good at this point in time, especially not to her. At this point, Willow was pretty sure that she was the worst therapist in Equestria. “Stay with us, Candy. Please. You know how many ponies that are still alive I’ve known as long as you? Four.” She forced a grin. “Remember when we first met?”

Candy actually chuckled, a grin breaking through her expression for a moment. “Yeah... I do.”

Willow forced herself to sit up a bit, purposefully keeping the side of her face that was... wrong, faced away from Candy and trying to speak as clearly as possible. “Well I swear, once we’re both in good shape again, and once we’re out of this mess, we’ll do that again, okay? You and me, a soft bed, and when it’s done, we’ll cuddle.”

Candy looked like she was the one who’d been hit with a bat, and for a minute Willow wasn’t sure why. it took a couple of seconds for the realization to hit her like a train. She just lost her marefriend and you’re tempting her with sex, you dolt! her head screamed at her. What in the princesses’ name is wrong with you!?

“C-candy,” Willow stammered, “I’m sorry.”

Candy gave her head a tiny shake and forced a shrug of her shoulders. “It’s okay... Willow.” She glanced up, fresh tears in her eyes. “I just really need a hug right now.”

Willow grinned, half from relief, half from amusement. “Well, I’m here. Just watch out for the blood and be careful of my ribs.”

With a nod and a tiny grin, Candy took a step forward and practically fell on Willow, but she was gentle about it, pressing her muzzle into the other mare’s neck and wrapping her forehooves around her shoulders.

Willow closed her eyes, running a hoof through Candy’s mane “It’s okay. Just do whatever it is you need to do to feel better, then go find Brick and ask him what’s taking so long with those damned healing potions.”

* * *

Everything about Ashfield looked intimidating. From the three rows of wire fence topped with razorwire all the way to the fifteen foot main wall, which was also topped with razorwire, the place was just plain intimidating. As if the fences weren't enough, a giant... birdcage... thing had been erected over and around the near-perfectly square block of gray-black steel and stone that was the prison itself. It seemed that the enclosure cage was in place to keep pegasi prisoners in the courtyard; it would also do wonders to keep pegasi zombies out.

What really baffled Sunny was the lack of zombies around the place. If he looked hard and counted close, he could spot a whole twenty, all of which were just walkers. No pegasus ambushes here.

As far as prisons went, Ashfield was in buttfuck nowhere. The closest town was a couple miles away, but calling it a town would have been like calling a slingshot a lethal weapon. The only access to the prison was by means of a dirt wagon trail cut through the forest. The trees and foliage seemed thickest around here as well. From the air, he couldn't even see the ground.

"Looks abandoned," Foresight mused, propping his forehooves on the navigation console to get a better look through the windscreen.

"What makes you think that?" Sunny returned, squinting into the distance. "No zombies?"

"Exactly." Foresight whistled quietly. "Unless they're all inside or something."

Sunny shuddered. "No thank you... And thinking of inside... just how in the hay are we supposed to get in?"

Foresight glanced to Sunny, then shrugged. "How am I supposed to know? Do I look like the type of pony who'd know my way around a prison to you?"

Sunny shrugged and turned away. "Right."

"Yeah," Jade hissed playfully from where she sat in the front row. "I know you haven't been to prison. You'd have been somepony's cute little bitch on the first day."

Foresight flicked his ears, but otherwise seemed not to hear.

Sunny watched as the shape of the building grew before his eyes. "Well, we better figure out a way in soon. The pullers are getting tired and I don't feel like flying around in circles waiting for any nearby pegasus zombies to catch sight of us.

He turned away from the windscreen and looked back over the cabin. If he craned his neck, he could just see Moon's brown mane over the top of the back seat. His hoof tingled with the phantom memory of it colliding unceremoniously with her face. His father had taught him to never hit mares; it seemed rather silly to be remembering this now of all times, but his words had contained true merit. Mares did not take well to being clobbered in the face by the stallion whom they're convinced is supposed to be their mate.

He'd thought she was in bad shape after they'd lost Cloudstorm. Now... now he didn't even know what to call it. She wouldn't talk, wouldn't drink, wouldn't even look at anything specific. If the situation were much less dire, he would have gone out on a limb to say he'd knocked her brain loose.

Of course, he felt bad about hitting her in the heat of the moment, and sure he regretted it and wished that, somehow, it could be taken back, but he still agreed with his decision.

And to be honest, the loss of the others... especially Willow—hurt a whole lot more than the bruise on his right forehoof.

She was gone. After all they'd been through... after all they'd seen and done together, all the times they'd saved each other's lives... she was gone. As much as he tried to convince himself that she was out there, proving to be just as tough as she seemed and dishing out the pain, there was no denying the peril that she and the others had been in. There was no escaping hundreds of bloodcrazed pegasi. He'd watched the wagon dive through the trees.

...They'd all probably died on impact... At least those bastards hadn't been able to tear her apart bit by bit, grabbing and pulling and—

Sunny gagged and made a lunge for the window just in time to spew stomach bile down the side of the skywagon. Maybe if he'd had anything to eat the past day or two there would have been some sort of substance, but it was little more than half a mouthful of clear liquid.

They needed to land, and they needed food.

"Are you alright?"

Sunny pulled his head back into the cabin to see Snowglobe standing beside him, concern etched into her features. "Yeah, I'm fine... I was just thinking about—"

Snowglobe nodded. "I know... I can't believe it either." She sat back took a deep breath. "Sunny, the ponies from Desert Sage... they're just you and me now... well, and Moon, but—"

"Do you think she's going to be okay?"

Snowglobe folded her ears and threw a short glance over her shoulder. "You shouldn't have done that, Sunny."

"I know!" he exclaimed, sitting back and grasping the sides of his head with his forehooves. "I... she was trying to stop me from helping them. All she cared about was herself, and it made me mad."

Snowglobe sighed. "Sunny, she was worried for you."

"No, she wasn't," he said with a sudden rush of vigor. "She was worried for us. Having Willow out of the picture would have done wonders for her."

Snowglobe looked absolutely horrified. "Sunny!" she hissed under her breath, "how could you even think that!?"

"Because I've spent enough time around her to know how her brain likes to work. No way would she ever wrong a friend, but she's the type who'll sit back and let things go wrong if they benefit her, then get all depressy about it if it affects her in a negative way."

Snowglobe closed her jaw. "Sweet Celestia, Sunny, you're talking about Moon like you hate her guts."

Sunny closed his eyes and sighed. "I feel like she's only still around because she wants my tail." He huffed. "I mean, doesn't that seem a little extreme to you—stalking a stallion around during a zombie apocalypse? You guys told me the stories; she led an entire colony of ponies through Canterlot just to get to me, and that got them all killed."

Snowglobe swallowed uneasily and shrugged her shoulders. "To be fair, we'd heard that Baltimare was a safe haven... Look, Sunny. There's something about you that she loves; maybe it's your personality, maybe it's your good looks... Maybe it's that charming sense of naivety that you seem to possess, even after all you've been through, or your lighthearted attitude and the way you always look at the bright side. Or, maybe it's that little twitch of your right ear whenever you get nervous or the way your wings flutter at just the very tips when—

"Snowglobe..." Sunny blinked, wordless for the time being. Flustered? Most certainly. "We're talking about Moon here."

She cocked her head to the side in confusion, then seemed to snap out of it. "Right!" She sighed. "Anyways, Sunny, all I'm saying is that she tries so hard to impress you and make you like her. I don't see what the problem is."

"The problem is that—"

"There's no way in!" Foresight exclaimed with a stomp of his forehoof.

Sunny blinked and glanced out the window. He hadn't realized it, but while he and Snowglobe had been talking, they'd flown a full circle around the prison and were just starting into their second loop.

“There’s got to be a way in,” Sunny muttered to himself, moving to the window to peer over the rows and rows of steel bands that made up the cage around the building.

Loco snorted from behind him. “Sunny, it’s a damned high-security prison. It’s locked up tighter than a rich mare’s—”

“Okay, Loco, we got it,” Snowglobe interjected quickly. “No need to get colorful.”

Sunny took a step away from the window and looked back over the wagon. Everypony seemed interested except for Jade. The dark-coated pegasus mare was examining her forehooves, occasionally glancing up then pretending to have not made eye contact.

“Jade?” Sunny asked slowly, making his way over to her. Sage sat beside the mare, close to the window, but said nothing. Apparently, she was split between landing the skywagon and defending her marefriend.

The dark pegasus looked up, met his eyes for a second, then glanced away. “Yeah?”

"I know it must be hard, but we need to land. It's just a building. Whatever that place used to be—it's not that place anymore. Okay?"

Jade sighed. "You're not going to change my mind. But I also know that you're not going to leave me alone about it." Unfurling a wing, she leaned close to the window and pointed with the tip of her feather to a seemingly-indistinguishable part of the cage the front—or at least Sunny was sure was the front—of the prison.

"Okay..." He cocked an eyebrow at her. "That doesn't really help."

"Have the pullers fly towards it. There's a chip in the gate that interfaces with REA skywagons."

Sunny nodded to Foresight, who had been listening with his ears perked. The bispecticaled stallion nodded back and relayed that bit of info to the pulling team.

Turning back to Jade, he cocked a brow. "How do you know?"

Jade shrugged. "They flew me in and out of here four times for different court hearings. It doesn't take too long to catch on."

A grating buzz filled the cabin and Sunny perked his ears. Turning, he couldn't help but notice Ashfeild's very solid-looking metal cage, and how fast they were moving towards it.

Foresight hit a toggle switch on the console and a little red light on the panel turned to green. Ahead, just above what was fairly distinguishable as a gate, a green light flashed on.

Foresight nodded approvingly. "How'd you figure the place still had power?"

Sunny pulled his eyes and away from the gate as it started to rise and instead focused on Foresight. "I didn't."

The other stallion paled. "Well then... Lucky coincidence."

And just like that, they were in. He didn't need to provide any more instruction to the pulling team; the landing strip atop the prison was hard to miss.

There was nothing left to do now but cross his hooves and hope for the best.

"Sunny," Foresight said quietly.

Sunny turned in the direction of the stallion, wincing at the heavy jolt that came with the wagon touching down. "What is it?"

"If this prison is empty, then why do the systems still work if there's nopony to maintain the generators?"

"Maybe it's that group of mares pointing guns at us," Loco mused thoughtfully.

Sunny nodded. "Yeah, maybe— Wait what!?" Spinning, he looked out the window. Ten mares looked back at him, armed to the teeth and looking tough enough to to eat nails and piss vinegar.

His jaw wasn't the only to hit the floor.

The leader, he presumed, stepped forward, a megaphone levitating in her grasp.

"I don't know what in Celestia's name you vermin think you're doing here, but I'd suggest y’all get out here all lined up with your guns empty and your stallions ready and primed."

* * *

There wasn’t even any moonlight to see by. Midnight clouds hid the moon and stars, holding the cool, breezy night in complete black.

Willow stood a few steps down the hill from the front porch of the ranch house, breath slow and steady as she stared out into the dark. She could see, but nopony else could; good thing it was to their advantage.

To be honest, she could understand why Match Stick wanted the farmhouse as much as these ponies said he did. During the preparations, she’d helped Husk carry a barrel of lantern oil up from the cellar; the place had been stocked for a holocaust. Boxes and boxes of jarred and preserved fruits and vegetables lined the walls. The place had its own groundwater well and even a generator. The ponies living here had enough to feed themselves for another five years, easy.

Willow had seized a jar of spiced peaches for every member of her party, and sweet Celestia were they the best peaches she’d ever had. Husk didn’t know, but she had another four jars in her saddlebags right now.

It wouldn't kill them to share...

She had also been right about the healing potions—they’d had dozens. Much to the ponies’ protests, she’d guzzled two and a half of them to correct her face. Willow had refused to take a look at herself in the mirror, but once everything was fixed and fresh, and the bone in her face had taken on the proper shape—she shivered at the thought—she was feeling much better. Her ribs had been a little more touchy, but with some pushing and pulling—and screaming—they'd been properly realigned. They still felt rubbery and tingly from the aftereffects, but at least they weren't lacerating her insides. Yew had her Stitches out now and Range’s hoof was all better. What remained of Candy’s gunshot wound was nothing more than a pink scar.

And Husk and Corn would not stop smiling at her. It was like their presence was a godsend to the farmponies. To be honest, their glee looked a little malicious. It was starting to put her a little bit on edge. Nopony was happy about having to shoot other ponies, nopony.

But for now, things were actually looking up. Now, with her plan in motion, they might be able to avoid the shaft end of the deal for once. And if not... well, they were all back in good enough condition to run.

“It’s about time,” Corn whispered, shifting in the dark beside Willow. “It’s going to be wonderful to be able to relax when these freeloaders aren’t trying to kill us and steal our stuff.”

Willow nodded, turning her eyes to Corn. “Exactly. That’s why we’re going to kill them all at once.” The words left her mouth with a cruel simplicity, spoken without hesitation or afterthought... well, without much afterthought.

Corn shook her head and took a step away from Willow. “Your eyes... they’re like the ones on the crazies. What the hay is wrong with your eyes?”

Willow heaved a sigh. “I’m a hybrid of zombie and pony. Don’t ask how—it’s complicated. But that’s what I am. I got into the fray with the virus and wound up keeping the most useful bits from either side, particularly my sanity.”

“You mean there’s ponies that don’t change when they... you know, get bit?”

“One that I know of.” Willow shrugged her shoulders. “Now, we need to be quiet. They should be—” There, through the trees, she could pick out movement through the yellow haze. Anything within twenty feet she could see clearly, but anything beyond that looked like a dark picture with the contrast turned up just a little bit too high.

“What is it?” Corn whispered.

Willow slapped a hoof over the mare’s mouth and and narrowed her eyes. “They’re coming. Remember, this is all in the presentation. I want to at least give them a chance before we wipe them out.”

Corn narrowed her eyes. “But—”

She pointed her forehoof towards a spot in the grass. "Go, get ready."

Willow grimaced as she settled back down to wait for them to draw closer. If only she could really see herself right now. She was standing in the dark, ready to slaughter a group of ponies she didn’t even know on the whim of five ponies who’d shot at her and her friends and a mare who’d beaten her face in with a bat. Maybe she hadn't kept her sanity in the conversion.

One by one, the ponies emerged from the trees. They didn't bother hiding their presence. They laughed and joked, pushing and cursing at once another as they tromped in loose formation across the field. From here, Willow could count at least fifteen lit cigarettes and ten oil lanterns. Lucky for her, they weren’t sporting any flashlights; that would have made things harder.

“Yoo-hoo!” a stallion called, earning a chuckle from the ponies around him. “Farm ponies. You in there?”

"Lay it off!" another hissed.

Dead silence. Willow stood as still as a statue, keeping her eyes shielded from them with a forehoof. Last thing she wanted them to see was their soft glow or the reflection of their own lamplight in them.

“Think they packed up?” a mare asked, her muttered question carrying easily on the still air.

“Doubt it,” the stallion who’d yelled before replied. “They’re not that smart. They’re probably trying to trick us or something. Keep your eyes out.”

Willow didn’t like what she was seeing one bit. There weren’t twenty of them; there were fifty mares and stallions of all different age and shape making their way across the field, spread out in random groups and clusters.

“You said there were only twenty!” Willow hissed to the concealed shape of Corn.

Corn looked back at Willow and shrugged her shoulders.

“And keep an eye out for traps too!” another mare called. “Who was that stallion that got his leg snapped off at the knee in a bear trap last time?”

“You mean the one we had to shoot?” a stallion answered.

“Yeah, him.”

“Swift Sweep, I think it was. Marefreind threw a fit.”

"Can we not talk about him?" a mare muttered somewhere from the back of the group. "You're salting old wounds."

Willow grimaced. This wasn’t looking good at all. The males reminded her of a group of stallions that used to hang around in the park and wolf whistle at her as she walked by, so the urge to crush their faces into their skulls was quite present.

She couldn’t exactly see them with a forehoof covering her eyes, but she could hear them. Closer they came, either unseeing or uncaring. When the lead pony was no more than a guestimated ten feet from her, she uncovered her eyes to have a good look at him.

He was a unicorn, tall and surprisingly handsome. His coat was stone gray, rather well-kemp for a scavenger, and his long, crimson mane hung down the left side of his neck like silk, complimenting the crooked smirk he was shooting to the pony beside him. He wore a battle saddle fitted with both a shotgun and a rifle Willow didn’t know enough about to identify. Judging from the matchstick on his rump, this was the pony she was due to have a talk with.

And he’d spotted her too. His confident stride faltered for a second and his eyes stretched wide. No doubt he couldn’t see anything but a pair of glowing eyes. Willow couldn’t keep the smirk off her face as he rubbed each eye with a forehoof, then turned around and snatched a lantern from the jaws of the pony behind him. Holding it out, he advanced, eyes wide at first, but quickly narrowing once she came into view.

"I almost shot you." He gave her the most confused glare a pony could muster. "You know how to find zombies in the dark, don't you? Wait... who the hell are you?”

Willow smiled. Sweet Celestia, his voice was magic on the ears; it deep, but not so much so that it rumbled, instead flowing smooth and casually from his mouth with seemingly-practiced clarity.

“Oh, you know.” She shrugged her shoulders and arched her back, coaxing a pop or two from the joints that brought a sigh to her lips. “Just a traveler.” Willow glanced to her side, but Corn was nowhere to be seen. Perfect. “Is this your farmhouse?”

Match Stick took a few steps closer and sat back, placing the lantern on the grass between them. “Your eyes... are they—”

“Yes. Don’t ask.” Willow flicked her tail and tossed her Crimson mane out of her eyes with a shake of her head. “What’re you doing here?”

"You look like a zombie. How are you talking to me?"

Willow deadpanned. "Magic."

The stallion shot her deadpan right back. “I’m gonna ask you again; who are you?” He raised one eyebrow at her, the rest of his gang falling in behind him and muttering amongst themselves. They actually looked well-organized, and much cleaner than she’d imagined them to.

Willow sighed and rolled her eyes. “My name’s Willow, if you must know. Mind sharing yours?”

“Match Stick.” He glanced to the left, then the right. “Where’s the family that lived here?”

She shrugged her shoulders for a second time. “Around. I think they went out to town to pick up a carton of milk.”

For a second, Match’s eyes seemed to wander. “I miss milk...” He blinked, then gave his head a shake. “Hey, stop screwing with me.” He took a step towards her, showing his teeth. “If you killed them, then you’d better hope you have a good escape plan.”

Willow leaned back, raising one hoof in the air and glancing around at the surrounding trees. Her eyes flicked back to the farmhouse, then once again towards Match. “What do you care?”

The edge must have shown in her voice, because something in Match’s steel blue eyes hardened. “Because they had a colt.” He snarled, then nodded back to the others. “Kill her.”

“Whoa, whoa, wait!” Willow threw her hooves up as two ponies moved forward, with knives no less.

The first one took no time in lunging at her, of course, she was sloppy about it. Willow clobbered the mare over the head with her forehoof and smacked the knife out of her mouth. The other pony took the opening in Willow’s defenses to lunge at her face, but she turned before he could reach her and caught the blade in her teeth. His eyes widened as he stared into Willow’s and he attempted to pull the blade free, but she gave a jerk of her head and snapped the steel off at the hilt. While he was still distracted, she spat the piece of metal into his face where the flat of the blade bounced off his brow, then headbutted him right between the eyes. With a grunt, the stallion staggered backwards and fell onto his rump.

There mare was back on her hooves by now, but one look from Willow and she was retreating behind Match Stick while more ponies rushed forwards.

“Wait!” Match called, holding one forehoof out and seizing the advance of the others. He cocked his head at Willow, rolling his tongue in thought. “There's a gun on your leg, and you're a unicorn. You could have killed both of them, but you didn’t.”

“Well, yeah!” Willow spluttered. She bit down on the end of her tongue and grimaced—the blade had nicked it and she could taste the coppery tinge of her own blood. “What do you think you would have done if I’d killed two of your gang?”

Match shrugged. “Shot you in the head.”

“Exactly. Now why the hell did you send those two at me with knives when you've got two perfectly good guns?"

He shrugged and smirked at her. "Save ammo." The smirk was gone a second later. "Now, I'm not gonna stand here and play with you. What did you do with the ponies who lived here?"

"They're fine, trust me." She scoffed. "Like you should care. You're the one who wants to kill them."

Matchstick glowered at her. "Damnit, you've talked to Husk, haven't you?" He sat back, taking up a casual position that contrasted Willow's pounce-ready stance. "That old gizzard's talking out his flankhole."

Willow cocked one brow. "Are you or are you not trying to take their food?"

He sighed, closing his eyes. When he opened them again, he was glaring at the top of his head. "We're starving out here and they've got more food in there than they can eat." He stomped his forehoof. "That food is going to go bad before they can eat it all. They have a root cellar in there, you know. It's nearly as big as the house, underground! Husk was a paranoid old shit. He thought the griffons were going to attack so he stocked up."

She shook her head. "He took me down in the cellar... I didn—"

He silenced her with a look. "Don't treat me like an idiot!"

"Well you're doing it to me!"

He continued. "My colt used to play with his grandson. I've been in that cellar. I know what they have down there."

Willow didn't trust herself to say any more. Already, doubt was working its way into her mind. These weren't the same ponies Husk and Corn had told her about. And she was looking their leader in the eye, ready to give the order to butcher them.

Just hit the button to the left of her right forehoof; it wouldn’t be hard. Just hit it and be done with it.

Her eyes darted to the trees on the left. Three gun barrels glinted death in the wan lamplight. Behind her, concealed under the porch, there were two more. The others had moved in behind for the flank. It wouldn't take long for eight automatic rifles to reduce fifty blind ponies to meat.

Willow licked her lips, her tongue feeling a bit dry. "Corn's husband... what did you do to him."

Match Stick sighed. "We shot him. I'd like to say that it was an accident, but it wasn't. There was tension between us. As a scare tactic, I announced in front of the family, and all my own ponies, that we'd shoot whoever left the house. I didn't think any of them would have any reason to leave in the first place, so it was an empty threat... It was dusk. One of our scouts saw him approaching camp and put a bullet through the side of his head. I think he wanted to negotiate with me."

She bit her lip. "Well, was he armed?"

"Yes. He had a rifle and four extra magazines."

Willow's tail twitched. Just give the signal, a tiny voice in the back of her head whispered. The more you think about it, the more you're going to regret it, now give the signal!

She found herself staring into the stallion's eyes. They were the same color as hers used to be. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. What in Celestia's name was she doing!? No. No. No. No! NO! This was slaughter!

Match Stick was looking around now, his eyes scanning the dark trees. He took a shaky breath, then turned back to Willow. "This is an ambush, isn't it?" There was legitimate fear in his voice.

Willow nodded, biting her tongue.

"You're lined up with the others in the trees. Husk knew we had fifty ponies. He wouldn’t be willing to do this unless he knew he had us covered! That puts anywhere from six to eleven guns from every angle on us!"

Match Stick was one smart cookie.

Willow leaned back on her haunches and raised her forehooves. "I'm sorry... I-I didn't know it was like this. They told me you were a bunch of bloodthirsty psychopaths. They helped us, they fed us. What else was I supposed to do?"

The gray stallion was glancing more and more at the surrounding trees. The other members of his party seemed on edge too, muttering amongst each other and checking their weapons. "Please," he whispered. "Don't do this. Let us leave. I know every one of these ponies' names and I don't want to see them cut down because of a mistake I made.

"They're waiting for my signal." Willow gulped. "Turn around and leave. I don't want this blood on my hooves. I don't want any part of this."

Match Stick nodded his head in self-reassurance, making as small of a scene of possible of checking the safeties on his weapons. "Come on," he stated in a voice that carried through the night, tossing his head back over his shoulder and turning to face his group. "We're leaving."

The mare who stood to the right of him cocked her head to the side and shot him a conflicted look. "Match, you said we'd take the place tonight. We can't eat any more grass. We need food, real food."

He silenced her with a look. "Not tonight. Trust me."

Willow breathed a sigh of relief.

"What are you doing!?" somepony hissed from the shadows.

Was it too late to take back that sigh of relief? She was starting to think that she was really unlucky.

Corn came rushing out of the bushes, her hooves surprisingly silent in the grass for how fast she was running. She was lucky none of Match's gang were noticing her.

"You can't let them go!" she continued. "They'll just come back once you leave. They want to kill us!"

"No, they don't." Grimacing, she watched Match Stick rally his ponies up and wave off towards the trees. "They're just hungry."

"But it's our food!"

Willow rounded on Corn. "I know it's your food, you greedy old hag! It's more food than you could eat on your own."

Corn raised one hoof and glared, an expression of disgust crossing her face. "You sound just like him!"

Match Stick turned his head back to face Willow, his ears perked, then he spotted Corn. Immediately, his eyes widened and he went into an all new rush of trying to get his ponies to move.

Corn had seen his eyes fall on her as well. She turned to Willow and threw her hoof in his direction. "Call it, now!"

Willow snarled. "Those are my friends out in that field too. I am not ordering them to kill fifty innocent ponies!"

"Innocent?" Corn hissed back.

"Yes, innocent. They don't deserve to die."

“They want to steal from us!”

“They want to share with you!”

“It’s our food though!”

Willow fought the urge to scream. “It’s ponies like you!” she hissed at Corn. “It’s ponies like you who make Equestria such a terrible place! You could keep all of them alive for an entire year with what you have in there! For all you know, this could be over in a year! I know you don’t care, but I don’t want fifty dead ponies on my head!”

Silence.

Suddenly, Corn sprang forward. At first, Willow though the made was going for her, but a second later she realized the mare's intentions.

Her forehooves were already half-raised to protect her face, but Corn wasn't aiming for Willow; she was aiming for the hoof switch concealed in the grass between her forehooves. Willow's mouth opened in silent terror as she threw her shoulder towards Corn. It didn't do any good.

Corn's hoof came down on the switch, which let out the most menacing click Willow had ever heard.

A soft hum filled the air, and a second later four floodlights lit up the night, two bolted to each side of the porch, the other two hung in the trees directly across from Match's group. Stuck in the very center, the group would be completely blinded.

And that was the signal.

Match turned and and fixed his eyes on the spot Willow had been, his eyes dilated to mere pinpricks against the light that lit his face. His mouth hung slightly agape, his ears folded flat. He shook his head, disbelief filling his features.

Willow didn't know who fired the first shot, but it blew out the brains of the mare standing next to him, coloring the left half of Match's face crimson.

Muzzles flashed, rifles chattered, and screams filled the air. The fifty ponies trapped in the circle of light fired back blindly, cutting the air to ribbons and hitting nothing.

Willow fixed her eyes on Corn, who was sitting there looking as smug as could be. "What have you done?"

She grinned. "Saved us."

Match Stick was aiming at something, and Willow realized with a start that she could have looked right down the barrel of his rifle. The floodlights were casting both her and Corn's shadows over field, which meant he could see them.

Willow didn't move. As she stared at him, watching in her peripherals as one after the other went down in a mist of blood, she wanted to do nothing more than walk up to him and apologize. She could hear the distinct sounds of each of her friend's weapons. The loud rattle of Brick's chaingun echoed over the hills and penetrated the trees. Candy's duel rifles had a very distinct chatter, and there was no missing the deep echo of Range's markspony rifle.

How would she tell them?

Match Stick's rifle flashed and Willow waited for the bullet to come. Celestia damn her for this. Hot, sticky blood sprayed her face and Willow closed her eyes. It didn't hurt; it was actually relieving, being put down for her wrongdoings...

Wait.

Willow opened her eyes.

Wait...

The bullet hadn't been hers.

She couldn't feel anything but pity as she looked down at Corn's twitching body, a messy hole torn through the right side of her forehead, blood and brain matter fauceting from the back of her skull.

Her eyes went back to Match Stick. He stood there, somehow managing to look right into her eyes. His companions screamed and fell all around him, the sheer amount of gunsmoke filling the air outlining the murderous beams of light cast by the floodlights.

He shook his head.

"Stop firing!" Willow hollered, trying to make her voice heard over the battle. "STOP FIRING!" Her eyes scanned the grass at her hooves and she mashed the toggle off switch on the floodlights. Even without the spotlights, the muzzle flash still lit the clearing.

There were only about thirty or so of Match's ponies left, and that number was dropping every second. Those that weren't shooting were running for the trees were bedded down in the grass or hiding behind the ventilated bodies of comrades. A mare who stood near Match Stick in the center was pulling a grenade launcher from the jaws of a dead stallion. She yanked it out of his grass, then aimed it at a spot near the base of a tree where Much and Mud had bedded down. The weapon thumped, and an explosion lit up the night, providing just enough light to see the two stallions blasted separate ways into the night.

Willow had liked those two. They’d been funny and cheerful, sort of the comic relief of everything.

The mare loaded a new grenade and took aim at another spot amongst the trees, but before she could get the shot off, a well-aimed bullet ripped her throat out. The mare whirled around and fired at random, the discharge knocking her off her hooves and into a writhing heap in the grass.

Willow ducked as the smoking projectile whooshed over her head and smashed through the front door window on the house behind her. The resulting explosion blew out every window on the first floor and ripped the front door clean off its hinges. Fire blossomed from the center and took to the dry wood like a fish to water, crackling and snapping hungrily.

Willow turned away from the horror out in the field and back towards the house. "Candy, Ember, get out from under the porch! The whole house is going up!" She charged for the house, shouldering a snarling zombie out of the way that'd been charging at her from behind. Running up to the porch, she ripped off the wooden trim with her teeth and reached forward to drag Candy—who was still aiming down the sights—out from under the porch. "And stop shooting!"

Ember followed Candy out, looking a little shell shocked.

...Wait.

She'd knocked a zombie out of the way. What in Celestina's name were zombies doing here?

She turned back to the field. The raging fire climbing up through the house behind her was doing an adequate job of lighting the field from here.

And there were zombies everywhere. They filled the skies and poured from the trees at the bottom of the hill, rushing their way up the hill like water.

Yew hadn't been kidding. Gunfire really did attract them.

"...Something wants me dead."

Candy walked up beside Willow. "The others..."

Range, Yew... Brick. They were out there.

By now, Match Stick's ponies were getting themselves together, though there were only about twenty of them left. Willow wasn't sure what kept her from flopping over on the ground and bursting into tears, but her stomach was so heavy that she was sure it was about to slip down into one of her legs. Husk and Corn... they'd tricked her. They'd used her and her friends as a tool for murder. She’d talked her friends into it. Brick had been skeptical, but she'd talked him into it. How was she supposed to explain to him that he'd been gunning down ponies who were just trying to survive?

Match Stick was walking slowly towards the farmhouse. His eyes were open, but vacant, reflecting the flame. Behind him, what was left of his group started to fall to zombie hooves and teeth.

A silver mare with a blonde mane screamed around the bit of a battle saddle as she turned herself in a circle, strafing the hordes with two automatics. One launched at her from the side and snapped down on her neck. She went down under a pile of them, kicking and crying. The unicorn stallion next to her turned and made a dash in the direction of the farmhouse, but he didn't make it more than ten feet before a bulky earth pony mare grabbed him by the tail and pulled him back into the fray. Last thing Willow saw him do was pull a homemade-looking thing from a hook on his barding a flip to cap off. A second later there was a sharp crack that scattered the bodies all around the stallion and filled the air with the stench of charred hair.

"Willow," Candy hissed urgently, "we need to get going!"

She shook her head. "N-not without the others."

Candy looked out over the field and bit her lip. "Willow... if they're out there—"

"Shut up!" she bellowed, giving the striped made a shove that knocked her onto her side. Willow took a few steps forward, burning ash from the farmhouse raining all around her and lighting the occasional fire in a dry patch of grass. This couldn’t be happening.

It couldn’t.

“It’s not fair!” she screamed over the field. She hardly even noticed Match Stick shake himself out of his daze and rush to help the small group of ponies that was still holding their own amongst the sea of infected. "You've done this to me my entire life!" She pounded both forehooves on the ground and screamed. "Just once, PLEASE! Just once. YOU OWE ME!"

Willow had never really considered herself a believer in fate, but screaming at the higher powers was a really good method of venting.

And then she spotted them. The massive shape of Brick was unmistakable, even with the light from the fire washing out most of her night vision. Willow shot one look back at Candy, then bolted for the stallion. He was just a little ways down the hill, just before the deadly game of cat and mouse that was taking place. It almost reminded her of days out on the playground, the nerds and wimps getting their flanks handed to them by the big mean jocks, only now the nerds and geeks had guns and the jocks were a lot more hungry.

Brick was dragging a pony away from the fighting, one who didn't seem too happy about being dragged away. The gray stallion, Range, kicked and fought with Brick the entire time, screaming and thrashing as he grabbed and tore up large patches of grass.

"Brick!" Willow called, sprinting up to the stallion and skidding to a stop beside him.

"Let go of me!" Range cried, trying to unclip the saddlebags that Brick was using to drag him. "She's still out there. I have to get her. I said I wouldn't leave her!"

Brick shook his head, the action jostling the gray stallion in his grasp.

"Who?" Willow insisted. There was only one answer to be had... "Yew?"

Range started a whole new round of thrashing, and with a good heave, snapped the buckle around his belly that held his saddlebags. Before Willow or Brick could react, he'd scampered to his hooves and distanced himself, turning to face them. "She's all I've got left."

What little organization the survivors had been maintaining was gone now. Pegasi swooped in from the sky, dropping down on anypony too preoccupied to watch their heads. Those that remained had scattered, running in any any and every direction. It was ten on one, and a pony was lucky if they didn't have more than ten on their tail. For just a brief second, Willow caught a glimpse of Husk and Fersil disappearing into the trees at the bottom of the hill.

There was no sight of Yew.

Willow took a step towards Range, fixing her eyes on the stallion. He wasn't scared—he was absolutely terrified. His legs shook and his chest heaved as he hyperventilated. "Range, if you go out there, you're not coming back."

He took a step backwards to counter her step forwards. "I can't leave Yew out there. I said if we went, then we'd go together." He turned sideways, looking across the churning masses.

She shook her head. The tears just wouldn't come, but she wanted them to. "Range, I can't lose any more ponies! I just can't!"

He forced a grin to his face, managing to display at is genuine despite the slight tremble in his jaw. "I'm gonna come back... with Yew."

Just one tear, please! "But you can't promise that." Willow's ears folded flat to her head.

Range shook his head. "No, I can't."

And then he was gone. Willow watched the stallion gallop across the field into the fray, where he quickly became lost in the writhing mess of havoc. It was like trying to watch a single ant in the middle of a frenzy of hundreds.

"He's—" She turned to Brick. The stallion was running right towards her. Before she could get off even so much as a yelp, he'd ducked his head and wedged it against her belly. With one swift movement, he tossed her onto his back and was off.

Willow held on to his neck for dear life as he galloped at speeds that a pony carrying another pony and a light machine gun should not be able to gallop.

Past the farmhouse they went, and past Ember and Candy, who scrambled to keep up. A few zombies got the cheeky idea to follow, but Willow made quick work of them with her pistol. Surprisingly, she was pretty good at levitating and firing a pistol from a charging stallion's back.

They were heading up the hill, towards the east and towards the much thicker foliage of the trees that the infected seemed to have so much trouble navigating.

But they weren't the only ones. Maybe about thirty feet ahead and a little bit to the right, two ponies were running from a small cluster of infected that hadn't been kind enough to let them run in peace, and the infected were gaining.

They were both stallions, one of which Willow didn't recognize, but the other...

She pointed her hoof ahead and to the right, magically reloading her pistol. "Let's take a detour!"

Brick turned his head back to give her a terribly unamused look.

"Please..."

He sighed and rolled his eyes, steering off to the right. Willow readied her pistol and tried to steady herself. It shouldn't be too hard to brain eight zombies while riding a stallion at full speed, right?

The stallion Willow didn't recognize, an earth pony, had his head twisted awkwardly back over his shoulder to fire a pistol at his pursuers. Willow had learned from experience that the number one rule of running full pelt was to always keep an eye of where your hooves were landing; it was because of that experience that she wasn't all too surprised when the stallion stepped in a gopher hole and snapped his foreleg just below the knee.

She did her best not to look at him as he tumbled to a stop. Four zombies stayed back for the feast, the rest kept going.

Brick sprang nimbly around them, the steady thump-a-thump of his hooves breaking for a short second as he made the adjustment. There was only a good ten feet between them and the pack of zombies now, and that was closing pretty fast. Brick was outrunning zombies!

Willow took aim with the pistol. "Hey Brick," she said with a laugh, the off-mood humor coming to her in the heat of the moment. "We're chasing zombies!" She loosed off one shot after the other, taking a moment to steady herself before each one. Down went a pink mare, then a red stallion and pegasus with only one wing.

The stallion on the run glanced over his shoulder as Brick's thundering hoofsteps neared, and his jaw dropped as his eyes fell on Willow and her wide, semi-insane smile. Willow cackled and waved at Match Stick. "Need an assist!?"

Brick butted the zombie directly in front of him aside and Willow put a bullet in its flank before it could even hit the ground. Hey, they made a pretty good team; maybe she should hop on Brick's back and go on zombie shooting sprees more often—it could be a new sport.

Things had deteriorated down the hill. The survivors were either gone or dead, which left the dead and wounded lying in the field open for the feast. The farmhouse was a torch in the night, the flame rising three stories up into the air before tapering off to shimmering heat against the midnight sky, showering hot ash to the earth and lighting smaller fires that burned their way across the grass in Dalmatian patches.

Nothing remained but the mindless, and the mindless wanted more.

Right as Brick was galloping his way right on past Match Stick, Willow lunged to the side. Keeping one hoof around Brick's neck, she used the other to grab Match Stick by a strap on his barding. The stallion yelled as he was hefted into the air, his hooves kicking wildly.

"How're you doing that!" he gasped, dangling there beside Brick as Willow held him out with a single forehoof.

"Magic." It was a lot harder to hold him than she would have guessed. Even zombie strength wasn't meant for holding a full-sized stallion out to the side with one hoof. Brick didn't seem to be liking the extra weight either. His steady gallop had turned into an unsteady stagger. He panted and huffed, shaking his head from side to side; Willow could feel him starting to tremble. She supposed even Brick had his limits.

Match Stick didn't fight for long. He kicked and struggled for a moment more, then went limp. "I hate you." He turned his head towards Willow and she almost dropped him right then and there, though the act would have doomed him to death by pursuing zombie. "You killed them."

Brick was hacking and staggering by the time he reached the treeline. He stumbled and tripped through the undergrowth for another minute or two, then dropped, spilling Willow off his back and across the ground. Match stick just sort of flopped over. His eyes were open, but his muscles were limp. He was probably in shock. Who wouldn't be after that?

Candy and Ember tore through a bush to the left and almost missed the three ponies lying on the ground. Candy threw a glance back over her shoulder and managed to catch sight of Willow. Without warning, she planted her forehooves against the forest floor to stop herself and Ember ploughed right into the back of her.

The two of them went down a few feet away, panting and gasping.

"Are we..." Willow desperately tried to gain enough breath to speak. "Are we... far enough... away?"

"Yeah," Candy choked back. "They... went the other.... way. Went after... some... of the others."

Willow groaned, then let the sound taper off into a dry chuckle. "Oh fuck me." She picked her head up for a second, then let it flop back down. "For the love of Luna... they're dead... They're all dead. Shit, and it's all my fault too."

She managed to push herself to her forehooves, sitting on her rump. It was dark here, really dark. If it hadn't of been for her eyes, what little moonlight that was poking through the cloud would only provide enough light to see for a dozen or so feet.

They were all there, lying around her, breathing in the night air and exhaling their excess luck.

Wait... there were only three—Candy, Ember, Brick, where was Match St—"

The gun barrel that pressed itself against the side of her head quickly answered that question.

Willow closed her eyes and sighed. "You have got to be fucking kidding me..."

Candy picked her head up. "What're you—" Her eyes fell on Match Stick. "Oh..." She flopped back down on her side, uncaring as far as he body language went.

"You killed them," Match hissed, his breath tickling her ear as his hoof awkwardly held the pistol to the side of her head. "You killed them, all on the word of some old fart camped out in an old house in the woods."

Just hearing the words spoken boiled her belly and knotted her throat. It was that feeling you got when you screwed up big—the buzzing panick in the back of your skull combined with the lead belly feel, only it was that times a thousand. If she could have cried it all out, or simply exploded into a hundred different pieces right on the spot, she'd be happy. Both options had their own appeal.

But getting shot in the side of the head by a gang leader seeking revenge wasn't what she considered a good end.

"It wasn't me who gave the signal," she hissed back through clenched teeth. "It was Corn, the mother, who had a foal, who you shot in the head!" She winced as the barrel persisted to massage her skull.

"You still agreed to do it!"

"In the beginning!" she protested.

"So, what—" The stallion's voice gushed with malice. "—you're okay with slaughtering ponies as long as they're the bad guys." He snorted. "Here's a little newsflash, Willow, you're not any better than the rest of us. Your self-convinced sense of righteousness is the entire reason they're dead. All of them!"

Willow didn't speak. Trying to keep her breathing level, she glanced around at the others. Candy was examining her hooves, Ember was staring at a tree and pretending not to listen, but her ears were perked, and Brick was looking right at her.

There was a very angry stallion pressing a gun to her head. And they didn’t seem to care!

The look on the brown stallion's face scared her. His eyes were wide, jaw slack, ears folded. Slowly, his eyes drifted over to the chaingun he'd worn for as long as she could remember.

"How're you gonna tell them, huh?" Match Stick snapped, grinding the gun barrel into her flesh. "How're you gonna tell your little friends that you made them gun down a group of ponies who just wanted compromise!?"

Now Brick wouldn't meet her eye. None of them would. She glanced between her three companions, words tied down in her throat. Candy had finished looking at her hooves and was now putting every ounce of attention in her being towards fiddling with the bolt on one of her rifles. Ember wasn't beating around the bush; she'd just plain turned her back.

"W-why'd you guys let me decide!?" Willow managed to stammer out. "I'm not the only one who's allowed to have ideas! You could have spoken up any time!"

Still no response.

Match Stick gave her head another push with the gun. "Now you know how it feels. They looked up to you. They always do... until you get them all killed with a stupid choice." He snorted. “What have I got to live for now? I lost my colt the day it happened, my wife a week after that. And that group, those ponies you decided were the bad guys was all I had left!” She could feel him start to tremble, shaking and twitching. “How’d you like to know how it feels!? I feel dead! I feel EMPTY!”

And just like that, she snapped.

"SHUT UP!" She spun and snatched the gun away from him with her teeth. One good bite from her jaws crushed the slide with an almost pathetic snap and a creak and she spat the weapon to the ground. "I can't be perfect!" Before match Stick could react, she threw her head forward and felt the rather meaty squishy-crunchy feel of his muzzle under the assault of her forehead.

"I didn't want any of this!"

Match Stick seemed to fall to the ground in slow motion, blood pouring from both nostrils as his eyes rolled back in his head. Willow was on him in a second, stomping, kicking, feeling his flesh break, bones snapping under her hooves' influence.

"All!"

She swung a forehoof towards his head. With a gasp, he threw up his own hoof to protect from the blow.

"I wanted!"

She smacked his hoof aside and brought the other one down on his face, ignoring his cries and the all-too-familiar scent of blood.

"To!"

A misaimed blow crushed his windpipe with a cry and a gurgle from the stallion his eyes rolling to the top of his skull.

"Do!"

His horn snapped off near the base with a crackle and an agonized scream from Match Stick.

"Was!"

Blood was pouring from his mouth now staining the gray coat around his mouth red.

"Help!"

It was pooling in his face now, the flesh on his muzzle split and torn to reveal the bone and sinew below.

"MY!"

One last hit pulped his one remaining eye.

"FRIENDS!"

Crunch...

Panting, heaving, she stepped away from Match Stick's lifeless form, the sick, warm feeling of his blood coating her chest and both forehooves. "I HATE YOU!" she screamed at him... no, it.

"Willow..." Candy whispered. "I... You killed him."

Willow shook her head. "N-no. I-I-I just b-bruised him a little bit... taught h-h-him a lesson." She glanced down at her hooves, gagging at the sight of the grayish-pink goop on her hooves and the occasional sliver of bone that had mixed with the sickening concoction clinging to her fetlocks.

Candy took a step back, checking one of her rifles, most likely to see if it was loaded.

Willow took a step back as well, shaking her head. "I don't... But—I-I can't..."

The world was starting to spin, the trees starting to dance and blur as they melted into each other.

"I'm sorry... I... what's wrong with me?"

The world was sideways. Everypony was standing on the wall, which just so happened to be the forest floor. Funny, she could see the red and white mare standing in front of her moving and her mouth, but couldn't hear a thing.

And the forest floor was moving towards her pretty fast.