Ground Control to Major Twi
The machines beeped and buzzed all around Twilight, making faint clicking noises as she tended to them. A switch to flip here, a button to press there. Everything to keep the space station running.
She sat alone in the cockpit, biding her time, trying to keep things working. She seemed to be getting a steady stream of oxygen, which was good, but aside from that, there wasn’t much that hadn’t gone wrong.
She checked the radio to Ground Control Canterlot. Still dead, a droning little static sound that filled the entire cockpit with the biggest sense of unease and potential horror that had ever overwhelmed the poor unicorn in her entire life. Ten solid days of lost contact, and that wasn’t even the worst of it.
Ten days ago is when “they” had shown up.
Rainbow Dash called them the “astro zombies”, but they didn’t have a real name. All she knew is that a few moments after contact to Canterlot’s radio had gone out, the whole space station had gone deathly quiet. Former crew members, and some ponies she had never even seen before, just started attacking the surviving ponies. Ten days later... this is where they were.
The mane six (and Spike) had the extreme misfortune to be separated from each other, and had locked themselves into different section of the ship, keeping in contact via radio. Applejack’s radio had been out since the fourth day, and Rainbow Dash’s since the eighth; Twilight feared for the worst, but this was no time for worrying. She had to check in with the ones who were still alive.
Twilight moved a hoof over the complex control panel, and flicked a switch on next to a few blinking lights. The radio equipment set right to the side of her crackled to life, and she fiddled with some more knobs in order to fine tune the signal.
“Fluttershy?” she spoke into the microphone piece, hoping to everything she held dear that the pegasus would respond. “You alright?”
There was a small burst of static, and then a stammering reply was heard over the radio, causing Twilight’s contortions in her stomach to subside slightly.
“Y-yes...” Fluttershy spoke, almost quietly enough to make Twilight check the volume of her radio. “Yes, everything’s okay... none of them have come around since the last time, a few days ago... I don’t think there are any in this part of the ship anymore... have you been able to contact Rainbow Dash?”
Twilight stared at her equipment blankly for a moment, then replied with a small crack in her voice. “No.”
There was silence from the set, before another question with the same answer come across.
“And Applejack?”
This time, it was Twilight’s turn to be quiet. After a moment of silence, the unicorn responded with: “Look, I need to check on Rarity. Stay safe, Fluttershy.”
“Alright, Twilight. You too,” Fluttershy said, and Twilight turned away from her frequency with a quick tweak of the dial. The radio squeaked and squeaked, and after a moment, Twilight smiled. On the other side, she heard a scared yet still very alive voice.
“Hello? Twilight? Is that you?”
“Yes, Rarity,” Twilight told her troubled friend.
“Oh, thank heavens!” Rarity gave a very nervous giggle. “None of those... terrible things have attacked you since we last spoke?”
“I really doubt I would be able to talk to you if I had been attacked,” Twilight said, rolling her eyes. “We all know what happens when they... bite.”
Rarity did not respond for a moment, which lead Twilight to believe that the signal had been lost. Just before reaching to fiddle with the knobs in an attempt to get Rarity back online, she spoke.
“Well, I was just concerned for your safety; after all, this whole ordeal is rather... distressing, especially considering that Rainbow Dash and Applejack have not responded to your radio signals.”
“Yes, well,” Twilight said, refusing to think about the alternative, “They probably just have damaged equipment. Once we can find a way to get together, we’ll go and find them.”
“Yes,” Rarity said, although she sounded as though she didn’t believe it herself. “Yes, we will.”
“I’m going to go check on Spike now,” Twilight told the mare. “Sit tight Rarity, help’s gonna show up soon.”
“Alright,” Rarity told her in response. “You stay safe too, alright Twilight?”
“Of course.” Twilight turned the knob, moving through a few channels of static, before settling on Spike’s station.
There was nothing. No sound, so static, no anything. Just... nothing.
Twilight swallowed hard. Alright, nothing to worry about, just some damaged equipment. Spike’s area wasn’t too far from her’s, she could just go and check on him; everything was going to be all okay...
Before she could ponder anything any further, she heard a large bump from behind her. It sounded like a terrible scraping, metallic noise. There were a few loud bangs that resonated around the room, originated from where the rest of the noises came.
Slowly, Twilight swiveled in her chair, facing the door to the cockpit. The door was shuddering, and seemed... closer then before. Carefully, she walked towards the imposing metal square, breathing erratic as her magic levitated a slender chunk of metal covered in dried blood. She hoped that she wouldn’t have to use it again.
The door fell in with a loud BANG!, and a pony stumbled in, falling over its own hooves. Twilight shuddered in horror as she looked at its twisted face. An unknown pathogen had befallen he passengers after the original astro zombies had attacked them, and soon the whole crew had been infected, leaving only a few ponies scattered few and far between all across the space station. What had started as a wondrous delve into the depths of space had been turned into a complete nightmare.
The pony lurched back to its hooves, looking at twilight through rotting white eyes. The unicorn did not hesitate to plunge her serrated chunk of metal through its head. The zombie screeched in agony as it was impaled through, but soon in slumped over.
When Twilight first had to kill one of the zombies, she had felt a horrible emotion gnawing at her, knowing she never wanted to do it again. Through necessity, however, she had killed five others. She watched as her sixth slide to the floor, laying there, festering in rot and decay. She stepped over the body, heading over to the doorway, when something occurred to her.
“The food,” she whispered to herself. Rushing over to the stores of food that had been in the cockpit when she holed herself up in it, she opened the mechanical box, looking inside at its contents.
There was nothing left. Well, that wasn’t entirely true— there was a tube of some sort of paste at the very bottom, its contents oozing out, most likely crushed by some heavier food. She was going to need to make it to the food stores of the space station if she were going to hope to survive this. That wouldn’t be a problem; she could just take a slight detour to Spike’s area by heading down the left hallway instead of the right one, and go through the kitchen, and then head up to where Spike was. It was all so simple!
Heading down the hallway, she looked up at the lights above her. The florescent lighting flickered ominously, filling her with one of the largest senses of unease that she had ever felt in her entire life. Reaching the end of the hallway, she took a look down the left hallway, which ended in a large bolted door. There were two rooms that you could go to on either side of the hallway, the one on the left quite a ways down, and by contrast the one on the left was nearly right next to her.
Twilight broke into a swift trot, passing by the left door without so much as a glance towards it. She watched as the kitchen door grew closer, the florescent lights filling her with anxiousness, and her own echoing hoof-steps keeping her terrified.
As she walked up next to the right door, she noticed it had a plexiglass window on it. Peering inside, the mare gasped audibly at what she saw in disgust and horror.
It was just one astro zombie, but it was eating the carcass of a former crew member. The entire front half of the body was completely gone, so she couldn’t determine who it exactly it was, but it was a terrible sight to behold nonetheless.
Turning away from the scene, she looked at the imposing door before her. The door could be opened manually through a large circular hatch, but that would take the strength of a full grown minotaur, which she was sure at least one of the inhabitants of the space station had been. She, and any other unicorn, could simply open it with a little bit of magic. She did so, turning the large spoked handle, and peered into the kitchen beyond.
It had been mostly cleared out, as the first three days had been a mad dash for supplies. No pony had holed up in here, however, due to the fact that it opened into at least three other places without doors, and the astro zombie would have found meals in here all too easily. So instead, everypony still left alive opted to swarm the area and stock up on any supplies they could get.
Twilight searched around, ignoring the empty crates and deserted shelves. Settling on a small box full of essential freeze dried food items and other assorted stimulants, she used her magic to strap the crate to herself. If all went well, she’d be sharing some apple slivers with Spike soon enough...
Leaving out the other side of the kitchen, she took a few turns before she was turning to head down the hallway that would lead her directly to a door to Spike’s room. His room was right at the junction of this hallway and the hallway that she could have taken when she was heading to the kitchen, so it would be a simple jaunt back to her place, hopefully with Spike’s equipment repaired, so more talking could be done.
As she took her first steps into the hallway, she noticed a copious amount of debris and clutter spread all through the hall. There was even a lump that looked like...
Before she could see what it was, there was a deafening crash that echoed all throughout the ship, followed by the loss of gravity. Twilight felt her hooves leave the ground, and she watched as all of the assorted detritus rose as well.
Then, the lights went out.
There are many types of darkness; there is the darkness of a night sky, which is not dark at all, for there are many little stars twinkling around, and maybe even a moon or two; there is the darkness under your bed, which is not extremely dark, but can still be rather terrifying; there is the darkness of a closet, which is almost completely dark save for a little sliver of light at the bottom of the closet door; there is the darkness of a cave, which is an inky blackness through which one cannot tell the difference between eyes closed and eyes open.
This was a darkness that was even darker.
This was a darkness in the depths of space, with no stars and no moons, enclosed in a metal deathtrap filled with all manner of disturbing and undead individuals. This was an absolute darkness.
The emergency lights turned on, filling the whole ship with a dim, dark blue light, but the darkness would not escape Twilight. She continued to gasp, her chest heaving, as she thought of the endless time that the power outage seemed to go on for. No pony had known darkness like she had, she was certain.
The gravity was still out, and she assumed some astro zombies had gotten into the artificial gravity generator and power room. There wasn’t much else that could be done but to drift along. Twilight carefully kicked herself off the side of the wall, letting her body slowly drift through the almost frictionless environment. She almost felt peaceful.
Then the detritus came, floating as various places in the hallways. There were a few planks, some cut wires, and a toolbox with with the tools floating all scattered. Some metal pieces of the hallway, and a few plastic panels were also scattered throughout the soup of the detritus, which lead Twilight to believe that somepony had been working on hallway contraction here when the astro zombies had attacked.
She bumped into a smallish object, no bigger than half of her torso, and she cringed. Turning slowly, she looked down at what it was.
It was Spike.
Twilight stared blankly down at her former dragon assistant. He was curled up into a fetal position, the gravity-less environment mercifully causing him to float with his face turned away from Twilight.
She put a hoof out to touch him, to do anything to make contact, to see if he were merely terribly injured. Her mind still seemed to refuse the inevitable, just as it had when Spike had not picked up the radio.
Wrong choice.
Lighting fast, Spike lashed out, sinking his fangs into Twilight’s leg. Screaming,t he purple unicorn lashed back, levitating the nearest piece of debris to use to bash Spike away. In a blur of magical swipes, Spike’s skull had been caved it, and he was floating harmlessly away at the end of the hall. Twilight was panting, and crying, her tears slowly shaping into little spheres as they floating away from her eyes and into the gravity-less expanse.
The return trip to her cockpit was a blur; she passed through the rest of the hallway, into Spike’s room, past his undamaged radio, through the hallway in which she could have gone down instead of to the kitchen, past two other branching hallways that spiraled away from the one that she was currently in, and finally, down the hallway that lead to her cockpit.
As she floated past the body of the astro zombie that she had slain earlier, there was a loud whirring noise, and the lights returned to normal. As such, the gravity was also returned, and she fell the floor, the dead zombie also landing on top of her. Shoving the corpse off of her, she dragged herself tot he radio equipment, frantically flipping the necessary switches and buttons in order to tune into the other parts of the ship.
“Fluttershy?” she spoke horsely into the microphone. “Are you there?”
No reply.
“Fluttershy!” Twilight was now shouting. “Please! Are you there? Don’t do this...”
No reply.
Twilight frantically switched frequencies, the radio making horrible squawking noises as she did so. “Rarity! Please respond!”
No reply.
Twilight’s stomach contorted. She had one last option...
“Pinkie Pie!” she shouted, trying to contact her only friend that she hadn’t been able to before, due to the astro zombie that had busted in to attack her. “Please, pick up!”
There was a moment of silence, in which Twilight held her breath, and then—
No reply.
Twilight screamed in frustration, throwing herself all over the control panel, her bite wound throbbing. THe radio squeaked and squabbled, making incoherent noises and static for a good amount of time, before a voice reached Twilight’s ears.
“Ground Control to Twilight Sparkle! Ground control to Twilight Sparkle! Do you copy?”
Twilight lifted her head, and looked all around, finally resting her eyes on the radio. “Yes?” she croaked, her voice hardly sounding like her own anymore.
“Good, you’re the first pony we’ve been able to contact, what’s the situation?”
Twilight took a deep breath, looking around. Where to start...
“It’s hell,” she told them, picking an adjective to best describe the situation, “It’s a complete nightmare.” She then proceeded to describe the past ten day to the ponies at Ground Control Canterlot.
“And then the gravity came back, and I tried to contact my friends, but all their signals were dead,” Twilight told the radio, tears forming in her eyes once again. “These things... they’re horrible, they.. they must be some kind of demons!”
The radio crackled for a moment, before a voice answered the distraught unicorn. She could hardly believe the words that were spoken to her.
“No Twilight,” Ground Control Canterlot told her. “You are the demons.”
And Twilight was a zombie.