It was long, it was bloody... And we barely won by the skin of our teeth.
It was unlike any danger we had ever faced: the Changling infiltrations, hostile buffalo tribes, even entire griffin armies were nothing compared to the Undead Menace. Ponies that had taken down hydras and Manticores scattered like roaches under a flashlight because the monsters were ponies this time. Ponies they knew: neighbors, lovers, coworkers, friends, even family. It was the smokescreen of Ignorance that let the disease got as far as it did... We barely made it back from the brink.
I suppose it does seem odd to begin a damage report with a philosophical statement. My name is Ink Blot and The Allied Nations Postwar Commission asked me to compile a report: interviewing ponies to discover death tolls, assess economic and infrastructural damage. Basically how many bits it'd take return Equestria to the way it once was.
The stories I heard varied as much as the ponies who told them: some fearful, others boasting with pride, others just happy to be alive. My employers threw it back in my face. They told me that my report wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. "We need cold hard data," the the chairgriffin told me, "not some shell-shocked bloke's life story". I tried arguing with the whole lot of them, saying that the damage done to life on this planet wasn't going to be told by the numbers of dead or the economic damage, but in the stories of those who survived. That, in order to prevent this from being labeled "just another" tragic event by future generations like the First Griffin-Pony War or for future colts and fillies to fall asleep listening to in history class. And to... hopefully prevent this from ever happening again. In my mind, we needed to take these ponies stories as part of our reports as well.
The majority of the Committee, however, did not agree with my point of view. I was laughed out of the room, mockingly told to go find a publisher. So I did; and one publisher at The Manehattan Gazette was willing to take a chance and publish what you are reading at this moment.
This is a chronicle of those dark times told by the ponies who lived them: Stories of triumph, stories of sadness and loss. Stories that many of us can relate to in one way, shape, or form.
Doctor Stable was waiting for me when I arrived outside Trottingham's Our Mare of Hope Hospital, where the infection began. This building now stands as one of countless monuments across Equestria to the battle that still rages in some parts of the globe to this day. The bodies and gore have long been cleared, the walls are sterilized, but are now coated in the grime of simple neglect, the building having been abandoned for the five years since Victory Day.
Despite the lack of gore or other clues to this building's horrifying place in the events that unfolded here, much is still apparent. IV stands lay scattered on the floor, hospital beds are overturned. We pass through a pair of fire doors, the glass shattered, and the door itself hanging off its hinges. The room we enter is recognizable to anypony who watched the news while it still broadcasted. It is the room of Patient Zero.
The bed still stands, though the rest of the room is trashed beyond recognition. Graffiti plastered all over the walls, one such piece citing, "This is where Celestia abandoned us" The Doctor sits himself down in a chair besides the bed, still unwilling to touch it.
I found a seat for myself, a overturned wheelchair, perfect for my needs. I unslung my trusty dictaphone from over my shoulder; the crutch for my lack of ability to write in shorthand. Clearing my throat, I started the tape.
So... Where do you want to start?
Why here of all places?
[The Doctor was visibly surprised by my question, giving it several seconds of thought.] This... this room is somewhere I'll always remember. The memories have started to fade already... thankfully. But what happened here, in this room, is something I will never forget till the day I die. I'd like to enjoy the remainder of my retirement not be plagued by nightmares and demons of the past.
Pardon my nosiness: you say you're retired? You don't look a year over fifty.
[The doctor chuckled for a few seconds and leaned towards me: his eyes seemed duller than the average pony.] The medical profession holds some of the most stress-filled jobs on the planet. Many ponies retire early and we don't have those "retirement benefits" the media said we had. We didn't get jack-squat for years of service to pony kind: just a party and a pat on the back.
The... events that happened here have definitely not treated me well. I'm making great progress with my therapist... but I could never hope to help a pony ever again. My mind isn't what it used to be... retirement is my word for, "indefinite leave due to mental trauma".
It's not like I'm not happy. My wife and son are still alive; we were reunited months after the chaos of The Panic finally settled down. Though, the trauma was harder on her than it was on me. She was never really the... most mentally stable of ponies. She often had emotional breakdowns on a regular basis. More than once she ended up in a state where she would bark like a dog instead of talking. [He started laughing for a few brief seconds] That's where she got the nickname Screw Loose around Ponyville... She didn't mind it at all. When I found her after we got separated... she was in "dog mode"... She's been like that since then, almost fifteen years.
I'm... sorry about your wife?
No need to be; she's still alive and well. She may be barking like a dog but she is still the same mare I fell in live with all those yea.... I just went off on a tangent about my wife when you're hear to hear about Zero. [He glanced over at the bed a foot or two away.]
It's quite alright. I want your story, not Patient Zero's.
I was called here from Ponyville General after he staggered into the atrium. They wanted someone who knew Everfree diseases and I was their stallion. He was already in, what would later discover to be, the late stages of infection. The doctors there tried their best to help him, but when I arrived he had already slipped into a coma and "died".
He was a stallion: earth pony, brown coat brown hair, brown eyes. We couldn't tell what the cutie mark was: the flesh it was on was mangled beyond recognition. The poor sap looked like he had been though the meat grinder. I was there when... when...
When he got back up?
It suprised the, pardon my lauguage, the ever living fuck out of me. He had no pulse for a good hour and we were rolling him down to the morgue when all of a sudden he started groaning and moving around under the sheet. The nurse with me pulled the sheet off of his head. He almost immidiately tried to bite her, snapping at her hand. When she screamed, security came running. When they finally got to us, he was off the gurney and shuffling towards us. In the scuffle to restrain him, he bit one of the guards in the neck... I did my best to save him but he was beyond my help... I still remember his face: the fearful look in his eyes as the life ever slowly drained from him.
Did he turn too?
Yeah, I wasn't there when that happens though.
In the end, we ended up strapping both of them to beds so we could try and figure out what exactly happened... For five days we tested and tested while they payed there shaking and moaning... Till she somehow got in here.
The activist?
Yes, that Celestia-damned pony-rights mare somehow managed to slip past security and get in here. Ibwas in the cafeteria when I heard her screaming. She was on the ground, Zero ripping into her stomach... The moment I saw that I ran. I ran out of the hospital and had almost gone six blocks when I finally stopped. I was, for the first time in my life, truly terrified. I'd just seen something would have ever seen: cannibalism was something you expect to see in the most remote parts of Zebrica, Not Downtown Trottingham. You don't normally see a pony chomping down on somepony's still attached small intestine like a Hearth's Warming Day feast.
[The doctor unexpectedly began crying] I didn't stay and help my comrades; I wasn't there when everything when to Tatarus in handbasket I ran crying like a little foal... [at this point, he degraded into unintelligible sobbing.]
[I sat there patiently, letting the stallion cry his eyes out. After about ten minutes, he finally started talking again.]
You know the old saying: "You don't know your true self till a situation arises"?
Yeah
I learned something about myself that day... I became a doctor because I geneuniely wanted to help ponies. But when a situation arose where ponies actually needed my help; I cracked. I ran from ponies who are most likely all dead now... all because I ran like a coward.... Mr. Blot.
I met Pipsqueak at popular bar in New Ponyville. After quickly getting ourselves a two-seat table, we begin the interview. We have to shout just to hear each other over the drunken revelry.
I'm here with Pipsqueak, a Trottingham native and survivor of the Outbreak there
It was chaos; the infected where crawling out of every nook and cranny, and everypony still with a pulse was doing their part to fight the rotting bastards. Everypony from Royal Marines, to house-wives, and blue-collar office workers was trying their damnedest to hold back the tide of those festering corpses with everything from military rifles to baseball bats and cleavers.
And You?
I was with the marines on the roof of the First National Bank.
You where with Colonel Evergreen and his men?!?
[Pip's voice suddenly filled with pride] Yes I was. He, himself, handed me a rifle and said shoot. We held off those buggers so that the sky carts could get as many civilians out of that nightmare as possible.
Back then, we didn't know that only head shots would take them down. So the fifty or so marines up on the roof were hardly doing hardly anything
And when did you evacuate?
When the walls were tumblin' down around our ears. The infected were about to bust through the gates at any moment. I was one of the last to leave, there was plenty of room on the cart...but he wanted to stay behind. The last I saw of Colonel Evergreen was him standing there... epically, a pair of pistols in each hand...[Pip paused for a brief second and sighed] I like to think he left this world on his own terms.
