When millions of ravenous monsters begin to rise from the dead, its up to Rainbow and a ragtag group of allies to turn the tide.
The unthinkable happens in the big city; millions are turned into ravenous monsters and flood the streets, devouring all in their path. Despite their advanced technology, the military can't stop them and survivors struggle with making it out alive.
Rainbow Dash is one of these survivors, and it is up to her and her ragtag group to try and turn back the tide of war.
"Man, people are stupid." Rainbow murmured through a mouthful of popcorn. "They could just get up and run away!"
"They don't even need to run." Sunset pointed out, picking apart a chocolate bar. "They could just speedwalk away, zombies are so slow to begin with!"
Twilight felt the need to add onto the never ending comments. "Really makes you wonder how the military is always failing to quarantine the outbreak," The nerdy girl tilted her head and watched as several soldiers in the movie retreated from a small group of undead, despite apparently having the upper hand in terms of firepower. "This movie just came out not three months ago! And I'm not too big an expert on Equestrian military technology, but even I know that they could have kept that outbreak contained."
"Like, seriously!" Pinkie flailed from her seat. "Look at those guys! They got all kinds of guns and stuff!"
"It's all a plot convenience," Sunset shrugged and leaned back. "How else would they have the world end? Realistically, we'd have the upper hand against them, they're slow and they shamble, have no coordination whatsoever, they're dumb! It's frustrating in these kind of movies."
Rainbow nodded along to it all. It was honestly silly, with all of the movies they watched that the military, despite being overwhelming in power, with thousands of soldiers and metric tons of advanced equipment at their disposal, they alongside millions of citizens are either killed or overrun by slow moving corpses with an easy enough weakness to exploit, and turned into the undead themselves.
"Man, if this happened in real life, we'd beat them, easy!" Rainbow snickered and tossed a few popcorn kernels at the screen. "They're slower than Tank for crying out loud!"
"That would be silly, Dashie!" Pinkie giggled and wobbled in her chair. "A zombie outbreak in real life? Pffft!"
"Even if that did happen," AJ looked over, "My family and I could hold them off on the farm," her voice was smug and absolute, a smirk growing on her face.
Everyone had a laugh about the idea. The undead becoming reality?
It was so silly of an idea...
It would never happen, right?
Right?
Everything going on outside told her otherwise.
Rainbow sat huddled up inside of the apartment building, her thoughts interrupted by the gunfire and screeching outside in the streets of Manehattan. Peeking out of the window of the room she took shelter in, she found the streets to still be in utter and rampant chaos, fires burned down other buildings and helicopters flew over attempting to pick up stray survivors on the rooftops, only to either be brought down by the monsters, or retreating due to the roofs being overrun before they could get there in time.
She clutched the handgun she had tightly, taking deep breaths to calm herself.
Manehattan was a mistake, she didn't know what she was thinking coming here.
"Damn it." The radio on her belt crackled with the messy sounds of a military channel being lit up with dozens of people contacting their superiors, reporting in barricades failing from too many infected, quarantines falling apart from similarly large numbers and too few staff, and unit positions being overrun completely. It wasn't reassuring, especially considering the local police precincts had already fallen...
It was both a good thing and a bad thing that the police had fallen as quickly as they did, she managed to get her hands on some equipment to help her make it this far. The handgun she scored was strange to get used to again, after so many years, but she adapted quickly for the sake of survival. The backpack was something from school, and held up pretty good so far; a MOLLE backpack that could be outfitted with an assortment of different addons. And the radio, which continued to crackle, her only means of keeping contact with any soul still alive in the city of Manehattan at the moment.
She wasn't sure where anyone had gone, the whole week had been chaotic for her and her friends and she still found it difficult to grasp onto the reality of the situation. Her hands trembled, and she peered out into the city streets from the fifth floor apartment she had hidden in.
The streets were a mess of construction equipment left behind, hastily constructed military and civilian barricades to stem the tide, and vehicles both crashed and stopped with few gaps to allow for quick travel. A helicopter passed overhead, and she heard the rumble from a couple of blocks down.
She steeled her nerves, and soon enough they came in one massive wave of flailing and screaming bodies. The air was deafened by the sound of so many voices, the ground shook from hundreds of stampeding feet tearing through the somehow narrow four lane street. Vehicles were crushed underfoot, and anything not bolted down or incredibly heavy was knocked aside or trampled by all of them. They flooded the road as they gave chase after the aircraft.
Rainbow couldn't stop herself from holding a hand over her mouth and staring in horror at the horde.
The honest to god zombies.
It was just a silly afterthought, the undead being real? How on earth could that even happen?! It was so unrealistic! And yet, right here, right in front of her, she was hiding in a room and watching through boarded up windows as a massive horde of bodies stormed through the street, creating such a deafening sound that caused every single nerve in her body to freeze up.
She honestly wanted to ball up and cry, and tell herself this was a horrible nightmare.
But she had already done that earlier in the week, when she got separated from her friends and was thrust into the worst time of her life. She had no choice but to abandon the search and hide, if only to get her bearings and try to figure out some kind of plan.
Rainbow was still working on that, if she was being honest with herself.
She pulled the magazine out of her handgun and looked it over again, and noted the full fifteen rounds she had to use. She took another look outside, at the hundreds if not thousands of undead stampeding through the street still, before disappearing a few blocks down in their hunt for human flesh.
More ammunition was required for survival.
Once things had quieted down 'relatively', she stood up and carefully peered out into the streets once again. There were no undead in sight, just a lot of blood, abandoned equipment, gear, vehicles, and so on. She could hear sirens in the distance, automatic gunfire, explosions, and even the scream of the horde that passed her by.
Aside from that, it was eerily silent.
Now was her chance to move if she wanted a chance at getting out of this city alive, and hopefully finding her friends. Rainbow wasn't sure where to even begin looking; Manehattan was a massive city, with an incredibly high population that only fueled the fires for the undead hordes cropping up. Millions of people, each one either getting devoured alive or added to the never ending wave of bodies that threatened the safety of the country.
A deep breath and she moved towards the front door of the apartment. She had to get moving, and hopefully with the radio on her back, she might be able to get some information or even contact some help. She wasn't sure.
The way out was clear once she exited the apartment and out into the hall, no blood, no bodies, no people. She still kept her guard up and started to move, flashlight turned on and handgun ready at her side. The radio was turned down to a more reasonable level, so as to not alert anyone or anything to her position as she moved.
Once Rainbow made it to the stairs, she slowed and aimed her gun.
When she made her escape to this building, there were more than a few bodies down in the lobby below. Perhaps failed attempts to get to safety, or just unlucky residents who were too curious for their own good. The way down was nerve wracking, and the blood stains on the wall and floor didn't help matters any.
The lobby was the same as when she entered, a scene out of a horror novel. The bodies, the blood, the shattered windows and busted down doors. What was once a fairly luxurious lobby for a nice apartment building had been turned into a slaughterhouse for the undead and unlucky souls within. Staff, residents, or just random citizens. She found the handgun in here, on a dead police officer who was kind enough not to lose it in the chaos.
She didn't see anyone or anything moving, no undead munching on the corpses. The smell, however, was still as intense as before, and made her nauseous. Somehow she had started to get used to it, and that made her feel horrible... used to the smell, the sight of pure unabashed carnage. Rainbow did her best not to focus on it, and instead rushed over to the front door and out int other streets.
Immediately she felt exposed, as if a thousand eyes were upon her the instant she set a foot out onto the bloodstained streets of Manehattan. The skyscrapers stood tall all around her, the clouds clouded over by black smoke as in the distance, many buildings burned in a desperate attempt by the military to burn the infected as well as any potential infectees to keep the infection from spreading. It didn't work from what she was seeing, as the entire city itself was in chaos.
Dozens of vehicles all around her had been abandoned, simple trucks and cars, luxury sports cars, police cars and public service vehicles; even some news vans had been set up and the recording equipment, abandoned by their recently deceased owners. Some of the roads had been blocked off by a few burning buses and large trucks, effectively cutting off travel for any survivors.
The undead however, knew no such thing.
Rainbow saw the same scene for several blocks in either direction, endless construction, barricades, abandoned vehicles, and half eaten corpses strewn about everywhere. Fires burned down entire buildings, people were still moving in the distance, and helicopters were flying to and from various points in the city, either evacuating survivors or airdropping in soldiers to try and fight off the infection.
The radio crackled on her shoulder, and she turned up the volume briefly.
"Attention all units! Attention all units! We have been given new orders! Evacuate the city at all costs! Whatever survivors are nearby and able, round them up and transport them to the Manehattan Stadium immediately! I repeat, all surviving military and civilian personal head to the Manehattan Stadium for evacuation! The city is lost!"
Rainbow's body shook at that. The situation was so bad that they had to retreat? She swallowed the iron lump in her throat until it slammed into the bottom of her gut, and she stared northward where the horde had gone. From what she remembered, the Manehattan Stadium was north in the city, near the city's center with all of the highest buildings and most of the city's influential and wealthy people. The stadium was probably the largest in terms of block size, it could hold a fair amount of people inside of it so it didn't surprise her that it'd be used as an evacuation point.
Maybe, if her friends had heard the same broadcast she did, maybe they'd be heading there as well?
She could certainly hope that was the case.
After making sure her handgun was loaded and ready to go, Rainbow steeled her nerves and made her way north, following the carnage left behind by hundreds of bystanders and military officials.
The street was so clogged, it made it difficult to traverse; all of the cars in her way, the bodies piled in body bags or left out from the horde devouring them, the random garbage and junk that added to the clutter. She saw a couple of humvees left behind, heavy machine guns abandoned, blood staining their interiors, wheels bent inward or otherwise disabled somehow during the fighting.
She hadn't run up on a single infected yet, or a survivor despite traveling several blocks. Were some hiding inside the buildings? Were they lurking in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to come out and run for it? She idly wondered how many even heard the broadcast, not many had the radio she did, let alone any period.
This was Manehattan! You didn't need radios to communicate, people had cell phones, but the cell signal had long since been lost over the week; too busy or just outright cut off completely by the infected.
Climbing over a barricade constructed of sandbags piled atop a few cars and cement dividers, Rainbow made her way to the next street and found much of the same carnage that seemed to fill every street. More cars, more bodies, and more fire. The smoke was so thick, it almost made it hard to breath, but she kept moving in order to get to where she needed to go.
Her friends were counting on her to survive... after all.
The bumping music and the raging crowd was enough to make any DJ that night feel pumped up and ready to keep blasting music well into the morning and afternoon. The building was practically bouncing on its foundation as the crowd of a hundred of so jumped in time with the beat, stomping their feet and losing themselves to the tunes.
DJ-PON3, otherwise known as Vinyl Scratch lived for this kind of reception, this kind of raw energy fueled her made her shows all the more powerful.
She never did toot her own horn much, but she knew she was damn good at this, she was a goddess behind the turntable, with her mastery of the musical arts at her fingertips and her keen mind and ears, she could win over hundreds with her sick beats.
She dragged it on and caused the crowd to roar, and then when the bass dropped...
It was like an earthquake of excitement and sound that rocked everyone and everything.
She could never get enough of it.
To her right, she had her companion, DJ-CarNaG3 who was currently adding to her amazing beats with his own unique twist on the already popular genre of music. He was a rising star under her tutelage, and she saw him making it in the world if he kept at it. She found his beats and rhythm almost magical, how he worked the turntable and sound setup was masterful, he was a prodigy in his own right, on the way to stardom in the nightclub scene.
The crowd loved him, and Vinyl was right there alongside them.
Shame how good things like that can so easily come to an end.
Vinyl Scratch stood inside of the very night club where she had spent the weekend, blasting away with some amazing tunes and rocking the house. The crowd was especially large this time, even more rowdy than she was expecting the night before. The people were intense, screaming and shouting, the building was rocking even more, the music pumping and filling the air with energy that only fueled the mosh pit of chaos in front of her.
Then her fellow DJ was yanked off stage and into the carnage down below, and her shades were splattered in blood and other fluids she had trouble identifying in the flashing lights.
It didn't take long before the music suddenly died on her with a sudden thump, and the flashing lights mixed in with the screaming crowd of terrified people only shattered the dream of a night full of dancing and wonder. Instead it was a bloodbath of monstrous proportions, with people ripping one another apart and stampeding monsters filling the nightclub. Tables were torn down, the counter was flooded with them, and people were being brought down left and right.
Amidst the chaos, Vinyl struggled to find her friend, but lost him in the darkness and flashing lights.
She didn't have much of a choice left but to abandon him and run to safety, and hope he somehow got out of it alive.
Over the course of several hours after Vinyl locked herself inside of the night club's security office, up on the second floor. The whole week she had spent inside of the club—it was one of her famous week long club hops—and she had little to no contact with the outside world, until recently. The world outside was a mess of chaos and destruction; there were crowds of monsters flooding the streets of Manehattan, attacking innocent civilians and bringing down entire blockades of soldiers who had been sent in to combat them.
The military was active in the city dealing with some kind of contagion that was turning people into ravenous monsters, from what she could understand. But seemed to be losing the fight; she watched the TV before everything went dark, and they were being pushed back somehow despite having the technological upper hand. She only had the security cameras to help her see the club and the city outside. She sat in the office, door blocked off and locked up tight, and watching in stunned silence as people were getting torn apart left and right, burned, shot, and blown away by military firepower, the undead, or one another in the chaos.
She had no idea what in the hell was going on and it wasn't helping her nerves any. She was alone in a dark room, watching as Manehattan crumbled around her. The alarms had been tripped some time ago after the zombie like creatures crashed through the fire exit, following something, or someone out the door, most likely the latter. The main dance floor was a bloodbath, with twitching and mangled bodies everywhere as pools of blood began to dry.
A glance to her left and she peered into the feed of one of the outside cameras, and she could see parts of the city had caught on fire somehow, and helicopter were flying all around; medical, news, and military.
Was this really happening? Had she really been partying for a week straight while the city outside was burning down all around her?
She leaned back and looked at the main camera which showed the front doors, two sets of double wide doors that allowed dozens of people to come inside, but for some reason they were still closed. A glance at a camera showing the front doors outside revealed why. Several buses had crashed out front, blocking the front doors. Fires surrounded the front and sides, and crept up to the camera. The windows shattered, and burned corpses climbed out before giving chase to the few vehicles still able to move through the cluttered streets of Manehattan. Most of the roads were filled with crashed cars, blockades built by military and police, or desperate survivors.
Maybe that was why no one was able to get inside to safety, or why no one was able to get information about the outside.
This can't be happening. She pulled out her cellphone and hit the speed dial to her girlfriend, Octavia, she waited as the phone began ringing.
Ring ring... ring ring... ring ring.
"We're sorry, but the lines are currently busy, please try again lat-"
She shut the voice off and tried again, and again... and again.
Still no answer from Octavia, and she slammed the cellphone down on the desk.
"Damn it!" She slammed her fist down on the desk. Vinyl glanced around the room before she stood up, and ended up knocking over a fan before pacing around in circles. Where was Octavia? Was she okay? Did she get out alright?
Octavia was in the richer part of Manehattan, in her own penthouse that Vinyl sometimes crashed in when she wanted to, Octavia didn't seem to mind much, in fact she gave her a spare key!
She better be alright... goddamn it! Vinyl knocked over a file cabinet in her anger and panic, spilling its contents onto the floor.
She heard the clatter of something on the floor, which drew her attention. Her eyes focused on the object, golden in color and polished, large with several magazines lying next to it and a box of .50 Action Express rounds. It was a magnum of all things, inside of the club? She wasn't sure, but from what she remembered, the laws of Manehattan didn't permit private ownership of some firearms and this one was most likely ill gotten, probably owned by the night club's manager.
She knew how most of these clubs worked, you'd be hard pressed to find one that didn't have a manager delving into something illegal, so finding a firearm wasn't too impossible.
Considering what was going on outside, she found her hopes of survival going up once she picked it up. The magnum was heavy, but fit nicely into her hand despite its large size. She gave it a check and found the magazine easily held seven rounds. The spare magazines she had would serve her well alongside the box of ammo.
Vinyl needed something to carry it all in safely, but for that she needed her backpack, but it was in the party room downstairs which would be tough to get too, assuming the path was even clear to begin with.
Her essentials were in that pack, mostly personal items and such, but it'd help to have a pack with her to carry things in.
She stuffed the magazines in her pocket and the rest of the bullets in another one of her cargo pants pockets. Vinyl was glad she managed to keep herself from dressing too provocatively, and actually had some loose fitting cargo pants that were perfect to carry things in. That only left her top, which was cropped and exposing a lot of skin around her chest and mid-drift.
Vinyl knew how to dress, even in the darkness she knew what really drew in most of her male audience.
After making sure she was loaded up and ready to get moving, she went about unblocking the doorway. Hammer cocked, loaded, and her nerves steeled... she kept her one singular goal in mind.
Find Octavia!
She pushed the door open and peered out into the hall, discovering ruined light fixtures and bloodied halls. There were no bodies at first, probably a good thing—hopefully a good thing, she wasn't sure how well she'd be able to handle seeing a corpse, let alone one that might still be moving.
This whole thing honestly reminded her of those old horror movies she watched with her brother back home, when she was a kid. The old b-movie horror films about the living dead, coming back to feast on the living for whatever reason; black magic, a government developed virus, or just some alien fuckery. They were fun to watch and her overactive imagination tended to take them a bit too seriously, but in the end it was all actors and makeup.
But right now, it was the real deal, unless she was dead asleep or passed out on some drug kick that has her hallucinating.
Maybe that's all this was, and she was back at her own penthouse on a drug trip?
When she entered one of the halls and found a corpse lying against the wall, she gulped. Her heart rate accelerated, and she carefully aimed her new gun down at the body. Slowly, Vinyl approached, and she saw it was one of the night club's security guards. His face was torn apart, his arm missing, and his legs broken and suit ripped to shreds.
He didn't move, didn't breath, nothing.
The man was dead, and Vinyl almost threw up.
The smell was horrible, the scene was like out of a nightmare, and the screeching and screaming outside only caused her nerves to teeter on the edge. Those things could be anywhere, around any corner, waiting to spring out or sprint towards her and take her down without giving the girl a chance to fight back. A swallow and she moved past the corpse, and continued to move through the hall with her gun raised and listening to the sounds around her.
The hall was empty and luckily for her, Vinyl Scratch was able to navigate her way towards the party room in the back, which was down the stairs and to the right... which was also near the emergency exit.
The party room was in sight now, just down the hall and the door was open! She kept her gun level and zeroed in on it, her pace sped up and she quickly turned into the room.
The party room was a chaotic mess, but organized like how she remembered it. It seemed the infected hadn't rampaged through the room just yet. The discarded clothes of her friends lay on the couches and chairs, the stench of booze, weed, and sex lingered like a bad air freshener. She ignored most of it for the time being and instead hunted down her bag, which was buried among the junk somewhere.
"Come on, where is it, where is it?" She needed it! She couldn't leave it behind, not while the world was going to hell around her. She tossed aside clothes, empty snack wrappers, even a couple of chairs in her search. Vinyl was scratching at her neck most of the time she searched, trying to get rid of an itch. "Damn it!"
Where?
Where was it?
She had forgotten completely about what was going on outside and focused instead on the bag, the dull gray backpack that had been her companion since her early days of being a DJ.
Once she threw a jacket aside, she discovered her pack buried under someone else's pants and pulled it free with a grin.
"Finally!"
A sudden growl near the door alerted her to something, and she suddenly remembered why she was holding a magnum in her hand, and what was going on outside.
At the door, she saw...
She saw her friend, DJ-CarNag3, standing in the door. His clothes were torn and stained with blood, his face was torn to pieces and his eyes... His eyes stared at her with hunger, and his maw, torn open and stained with blood, gurgled and hissed.
"P-Point?" She muttered as her shades slid down her nose, showing him in a clearer light. "Buddy?"
He threw out his arms and screamed at her so loud she almost dropped her loot, he kept screaming too and it caused her to backpedal just to try and gain some distance.
Her gun went up as fast as she could get it to go, and aimed it directly at him. "Point! D-don't make me shoot you!"
The DJ turned monster didn't listen, from the looks of things he wasn't even there anymore. Whatever had turned the others into ravenous monsters had claimed his soul as well, and he only hungered for one thing.
Her flesh.
The DJ stumbled forward before he sprang towards her, sprinting with another eat piercing shriek and jumping over the furniture to get to her.
Vinyl was back against the wall, bag dropped and gun raised.
"POINT!"
She pulled the trigger in a blind panic, and during it, she was aiming right at him.
The kick of the magnum was hard, and it sent Point flying back once it made contact with his flesh, specifically his forehead. His neck snapped back; blood, brain matter, and skull exploded from the back and rained down on the opposite wall, painting it in a rather grotesque manner. He fell backwards in a heap, and collapsed completely.
Dead.
Vinyl's senses were battered and she slumped down onto her knees, the gun falling into her lap, clutched by shaky hands. She just shot her best friend, and killed him.
Was that really him?
Something caught her eye and to her left, she saw the bag had spilled some of its contents. Several of the plastic bags drew her attention, and her already shot nerves suddenly gave her some ideas. She dropped her gun and hastily gathered up the bags before shoving them back into the pack, but left one out that she quickly opened up and stuck her finger into. Scooping up some of the contents, she brought it to her nose and after a moment's thought.
She inhaled sharply.
A sudden rush surged through her body, the shaky nerves plaguing her body and the anxiety muddling her mind disappeared, buried under a wave of euphoria and energy.
Zipping up the baggie, she stuffed it back into her bag and stood up. Magnum in hand and body calm, she felt her body re-energize as everything came into focus for her.
After moving out of the small homey town she grew up in most of her life to go and live with her estranged father in the big city, she wasn't expecting to become the heir to his company. Her life in Manehattan had its ups and downs; a brand new school, new and old friends alike coming together, as well as losing contact with a lot of people - her ex-girlfriend being one of them, and getting away from crazy magical shenanigans.
Life had improved a bit as she settled into her new life.
She has a job working for her father at his company, where she had spent the last few months climbing the career ladder way up to the top into the position she held now. She was making enough money to live in a comfortable apartment building in the better part of Manehattan, and had accumulated enough to retire early if she wanted to. The company made an incredible amount of money from its products, among other things.
Lyra Heartstrings had it going for herself right now.
It was nice, even if the things she did felt less than humane in the long run, at least considering what it was she was doing. The work she did would have left a bad taste in her mouth at an earlier age, but after a while the things she did came easier, her own morality began to slip out of the window and in the end, she knew it was necessary... more then necessary, actually, helped that it paid handsomely as well.
Which is why she continued to work like this, continued to do the things she did at her father's discretion to help improve life as she knew it. That's what she and the company focused on, improving the standards of the consumer through their products, which she wanted to do in her own special way.
After spending so many years toiling away in a shitty fast food restaurant, she had grown sick and tired of the tedious work she was doing. She grew sick of the way her boss, co-workers, and the customers treated her, as if everything was her fault. The sandwiches were cooked wrong, so she got screamed at. The drive through was too full and someone crashed, scream at her for not moving faster. Someone tripped in the men's bathroom, her fault for not cleaning it up.
She wanted to do something with her life, she wanted to do something grand. Not waste her life in a piss-poor place like that for the rest of her life.
So Lyra made her way to the big city...
Now Manehattan became overrun by ravenous monsters and she found herself fighting off most of her neighbors in her penthouse suite at the top floor, surrounded by endless hordes.
Lyra was sitting inside with a drink in hand and on the balcony when everything had first gone down, when the first reports flooded in over the TV about the outbreak in the lower east side in the slums, where she remembered most of the homeless population, on top of vagrants and bums lived. The virus had only spread from there and quickly among the already sick and defenseless population of criminals and junkies she knew that dwelled in the shadows.
At first, it seemed like a nightmare. Her alarm had gone off, and she had stepped outside to see the city slowly devolving into chaos.
News choppers filled the skies, capturing the chaos unfolding in the city streets as droves of undead monsters began pouring out of every nook and cranny, giving chase to the millions of people who stood little chance. They were almost herding them north through the city, forcing millions of refugees up the streets in dense crowds past police and the National Guard to safety. It was almost mesmerizing, watching all of the bodies slam into one another to flood the roadways, crushing anything and everything in their way to get at uninfected people.
Over the past week she spent hiding in her penthouse, she watched the city completely fall apart around her like a house of cards. The TV signal had gone out around the fourth day, replaced with an emergency evacuation broadcast that took over the radios and phones. The military had been called in shortly and flooded into the city with battalion after battalion. Military helicopters and other aircraft airdropped in soldiers and supplies, as well as some offshore navy ships. It seemed they were pulling out all they had to curb this rampaging onslaught of infected horrors.
But on the seventh day, it wasn't enough somehow. She could see buildings burning and filling the sky with acrid and toxic smoke, entire skyscrapers began to crumble into piles of rubble and ashes. The roads down below were painted in blood, brass casings and torn apart vehicles. The military itself was being pushed further north towards the location she was at, as forced retreats caused the infected to overwhelm any and all in their way.
Her area had remained relatively spared from the fighting further south, but it was closing in, and before long her portion of the city would crumble around her. Fires burned out of control, people were being devoured and turned into monsters to make the horde even bigger, and any armed forces were in full retreat, taking who and what they could with them in a desperate attempt to solidify their positions.
Lyra wasn't exactly lucky enough to be one of the ones evacuated, she hadn't left the penthouse for anything, not even when her neighbors had been forced from their rooms and were devoured by the few undead inside. She just barricaded the door, grabbed the gun she had bought a few months back, the ammunition, and fortified herself inside the room. Lyra had filled up the bathtubs and sinks with as much water as she could, and kept a lot of the valuables in the master bedroom; food and ammunition and the likes.
She may have grown up in a small hick town, but she wasn't stupid.
The city was in chaos and some people couldn't be trusted, especially in a situation like this.
After a while, Lyra had grown bored out of her mind trying to figure out how to get out of this. Her building had a helipad on it and she had gone outside to paint a help message on it, to try and get someone's attention.
She was still here though, so it wasn't very effective, unfortunately for her. But it was worth a shot to try it, even if no one saw it. Hopefully someone would see the message, if not today, maybe tomorrow... if she even stayed that long.
Lyra kept her eye on the skies, watching the choppers flying around dropping napalm in the nearby streets, burning dozens of flailing stampeding bodies, both living and dead. The bombings appeared indiscriminate, and she was sure that if this kept up the numbers of the surviving people would end up dropping the more the military tried to 'help them.'
Fear was giving way to paranoia, she could see it even from her tower. The ships were pulling away from the shore; nearby civilian boats that began to move out were being stopped by the navy, where boarding parties forced their way on board to make sure no infection had not made it on board while a vast majority had been completely shot and sunk.
She eventually needed to get moving, find a way out of the penthouse and to safety. From what she heard on her phone's radio before the power had gone out, there was a mass evacuation being held further north at the Manehattan Stadium, where she had seen dozens of choppers head for days ago. She figured it was already being used, so chances are, everyone's best bet of getting out alive was at the stadium.
Assuming the dead hadn't already overrun it, entire hordes were moving through the city, following still moving vehicles, helicopters, and survivors before clashing like tidal waves, with bodies flying and buildings standing no chance from it.
Lyra looked down at her handgun cautiously, and at the bed where most of her gear was. The vest, pack, and her carbine, as well as the ammunition laying out.
She sat down in the chair and sighed heavily. "Goddamn it, I should have left like dad said." A rack of the handgun slide and she looked outside at the city, and down at the handgun again. "Fuck."
Becoming a pilot had been Spitfire's dream since she was a kid, learning to fly those big fancy jets her dad always told her about, the big freight planes in the military, the AC-130 Spooky, or the swift fighter jets he flew during the war, like the F-14's or F-15's. Didn't matter much to her, she just wanted to be a damn good pilot, and she spent most of her life training and studying to achieve that goal.
And by god, she fucking did it.
Now in her late twenties, she was in the Equestrian Military's Navy Air Wing, flying a little bit of every aircraft and learning how they worked. She was stationed in Manehattan for a while, before switching over to a specialty unit known as the Wonderbolts at an early age after impressing one of her superiors, and it wasn't long before she found herself in one of the most well-known and most decorated squads in the whole military.
The Wonderbolts.
Nowadays, she spent most of her time flying 'recon missions' over some countries to the far east, when in reality she was keeping terrorism at bay by dropping discreet packages on top of terrorist cell cave systems and small villages. With the new stealth aircraft they had, it wasn't too difficult, especially with how advanced technology had become over the past twenty years, what with drones becoming commonplace and weaponry getting more precise, especially bombs.
Being a pilot, especially one as recognized as she was, had given her a sense of purpose in life. She was protecting her country, her friends, and her family from enemies off their shores. And she couldn't be happier... while she knew she was far from a hero, she knew what she was doing was for the betterment of mankind.
Sadly that didn't translate into her current situation.
A week had passed since the order was given to move out, and she had no idea what was going on. At first, she and her squad had figured it was a drill, but when she left and saw most of Marefolk's navy packing up and every single ship stationed there sailing out to the open sea, she began to wonder what could possibly cause such a massive deployment. Every solder was moving, aircraft was taking off, and the gates to the base had been sealed completely.
She ended up being briefed alongside the others, and what she heard on day zero of the chaos shocked her to her core.
Spitfire could barely comprehend what it was she was hearing, she so badly wanted to ask if this was some kind of joke, but from the images shown on screen, and the look on her commander's face, it told her otherwise.
Spitfire had moved around and Instead of joining her comrades in the air — her jet had been left in the hanger, having been damaged during a routine exercise, she instead was told to fly one of the UH-60s. It was a fine aircraft, with two chainguns on the doors and plenty of room for a fireteam to sit inside, as well as supplies to carry into the battle.
So she took to the air after being loaded up with a fireteam, who were absolutely strapped.
It had been a week since then, and she had watched her home city fall apart around her, watched as buildings burned and her fellow soldiers were being brought down by tidal waves of monsters.
The monsters were infected monsters, former humans acting like feral animals on a bloodthirsty rampage across one of the most densely populated cities in the country. She couldn't believe it at first, but after having flown down low in the city, dropping soldiers and supplies off at various areas, and doing low attack runs and passes by entire hordes had told her all she needed to know.
Manehattan was under siege by a nearly unstoppable horde of monsters.
Manehattan had already fallen in the south, any holdouts or survivors were already devoured or added to the horde itself, which was slowly encroaching north, and were passing block by block in scattered groups around the city. The bridges, during the fourth day, had been completely blocked off with giant walls and gates, and any evacuations through that route had been cut off, and the trains as well had been stopped. The military was doing everything they could to contain the infection.
It didn't seem like enough, and Spitfire could only wonder what in the fresh hell was going to happen next.
It was the seventh day, and military operations had already gone out the window. There was a full retreat being ordered for all forces, and she had seen the ships off the coast forming into a massive fleet, carrying what survivors they had away. But she also saw a couple of cruise ships being utilized to carry survivors, what few that didn't get overrun that was. She saw one get completely swarmed before it could leave port, windows smashed, deck overflowing with monsters, and everyone board...
The ship couldn't handle the weight and soon went down under the water.
Eventually, she had gotten the order to evacuate a squad from a hospital that was being overrun. Unfortunately for her, things didn't exactly work out for her. One of the squad was injured and during the flight towards safety, the soldier...
He turned and bit one of her comrades, and he turned so fast she barely had time to react.
Spitfire was a lucky woman, and she had fired her pistol, killing one and wounding the other as the only surviving member fell out during the chaos.
Sadly for her, she wasn't paying attention.
The helicopter immediately went down over a news station, crashing on the rooftop and damaging her aircraft beyond repair.
Somehow, she survived.
Luckily for her, the area was abandoned for the time being, and she was able to catch her breath.
"Goddamn it." She muttered and gazed out into the streets, this was the first time she had seen the city up close and out of her comfort zone. The buildings were in shambles, the streets were filled with abandoned vehicles, garbage, and bodies... so many bodies, so much blood. A lot of military remnants could be spotted, and not a single soul was left alive.
If they were, they were hidden pretty damn well.
"This is insane, where did they even come from?"
She knew the origin was from the slums, but... the virus itself was a mystery if that was even what it was. No one had any information about who, what, or why. As far as everyone knew, it was some kind of biological terrorist attack on the city, and a damn effective one at that if she had anything to say on the matter.
She shook her head and ran a hand through her fiery hair. "Gotta get airborne, get the fuck out of this city." She touched her radio's broadcast button and hoped someone was listening. "This is Captain Spitfire, my chopper went down in the city. I'm on top of a news station with no support and no safe way through the streets. Any chance of getting a pickup?"
Static filled her radio and her ear, and no one responded after several minutes.
A sigh and she pulled out her handgun again, making sure it was loaded before turning around. Seems she was on her own for the time being, which sucked, but what could she do? Whine and cry about it? She had a mission, and that was to get out of this damn city, whatever it takes.
She moved around the wreckage of the chopper and over to the other side of the building, and...
"Well fuck me running."
In front of her was a news chopper, a fuel line laying nearby, and a few bodies. From the looks of the aircraft, it was in decent enough shape and could probably fly if she was lucky!
She ran over to it and immediately hopped in, being mindful of the bodies lying around her and checking it. At a first glance, everything was in working order, so with a grin, she began flipping switches and buttons to see if it would start. After a few moments of tinkering with everything and she heard the engine rumbling before she strapped herself in and started her take-off procedures. The aircraft took off like a dream, it was a little different than her other one, but this one would serve her well.
As the helicopter took off into the air, she grabbed the headset and tuned into the radio, and tried to find someone to contact.
"This is Captain Spitfire of the Wonderbolts, I crashed my heli but acquired a new one. I am currently airborne at the channel five news station in southeast Manehattan. Is there anyone in this frequency?" She turned the radio's frequency dial carefully, trying to find someone amidst the static. As she hovered, she could hear the rumble of the horde even from above, and it caused her nerves to bundle up in her stomach like an iron weight. Goddamn it, those things are insane.
It didn't take long before she saw the horde, pouring down one of the main roads and crushing anything underneath piles of flailing bodies that were forced forward. It was a wave of just infected monsters, each one screaming and wailing in search of... something, survivors, flesh, anything and everything that moved and wasn't a part of them.
It was terrifying how many there were...
"Bzzzt-crackle-hell-bzzt."
She heard something on the radio and finely tuned it some more as some of the hordes broke off to try and climb up and get her. But she navigated away, climbing up higher and paying no heed to them, instead she focused on the radio. "Hello? Repeat last?"
"Bzzzt-H-hello? Is someone there?"
"I read you! I'm with the military, I'm Captain Spitfire of the Equestrian Naval Wonderbolts. Can I please ask that you state your name and where you are?" The voice sounded younger than she expected, it must have been a survivor who had a radio or something. Maybe holed up somewhere in the city nearby, she wasn't sure how long the range was on this radio.
After some more static and the wailing of the monsters down below, the voice replied.
"My name is Rainbow Dash, I'm near the Manehattan City Bank, a few blocks from the Black Persian Nightclub."
Spitfire knew where that was, and she wondered how difficult it would be to pick her up. If it worked out just right, she might save a few lives today. "Alright, Rainbow. If you can, try and get inside and up top somewhere, I can try and pick you up and we'll both get out of here, sound good?"
"Sounds good to me, I'm gonna try and ge-oh shit! Something's coming! I gotta bolt!" The radio cut out, drowned in static.
Spitfire frowned and looked down, and she saw the horde crowding around below, each one trying to scramble over one another to get up at her. But they couldn't climb up, it wasn't happening anytime soon and she almost laughed.
Regardless, she had a new mission now.
There was someone left in the south part of the city, and heaven be damned if she was going to leave them behind.
With the location of the bank in mind, she navigated her helicopter towards it. She had to do what she could to find them, and get them out... hopefully, she could manage it with no problem.
