Berry Punch and Lyra Heartstrings' Zombie-Filled, Blood-Splattered, Gore-Pasted Adventure (With Zombies)

Berry, Lyra and the three Apples sat at the dinner table in the farmhouse. Thunder roared in the sky outside, and flashes of lightning cracked across the sky at various points. Rain hammered against the old glass of the windows.

"So.. What's for dinner?" Lyra asked, a smile spreading on her face. Applejack rose from her seat as the bell on the oven gave a light beep. She began plating up the food as she spoke.

"I'm afraid there ain't much of a choice at the moment.. We got some baked apple slices, some apple pie, apple fritters, toffee apples, oatmeal with apple sauce, applesauce on its own, and.. Um.."

"Let me guess.. Apples?" Berry asked, her expression a little put-off, but mainly just disappointed.

"No, we got this." Applejack held up a single, small box of cornflakes. Lyra reacted immediately.

"I want that one." She yelped, pointing excitedly at the cereal which should not have even existed in Equestria, never mind the Apple Family's kitchen. Applejack shrugged and tossed over the box.

"I'll have some of the apple slices, please." Berry said, staring at the infatuated Lyra, who was inspecting the cornflakes box from every angle, scrutinising it meticulously.

After the food had been made and served up, Applejack sat with the rest of the group and tucked in, burying her muzzle into a steaming-hot apple pie. Lyra began munching down cornflakes right out of the box, ravenously gobbling down the cereal with a loud crunching and gnashing of her teeth. As for Berry, she simply picked up a slice of apple in her hoof, wondered how she and the others were able to hold things without fingers, and then decided she didn't care, taking a bite of the apple slice.It tasted rather good, she thought. The dinner continued on in silence, which was only broken by the pattering of rain and the tremendous rumbling of the thunder outside. Soon enough, the silence was too great to bear for a certain somepony. Unable to take it anymore, Berry snapped. She couldn't hold back.

"So, me and Lyra saw Granny Smith this afternoon." She blurted out, needing to kill the silence.

"You.. You did?" Applejack stuttered, her eyes lighting up. "Oh, thank Celestia.. We were all gettin' darn worried about the old gal, she's been gone for hours.. Where is she?" Lyra stared at Berry, horrified. Berry suddenly recalled exactly where Granny Smith was at that very moment, and turned a queasy shade of green.

"Um.. Well..." Berry began, her voice weak and shaking. She began to regret ever opening her mouth. How could she have been so stupid as to bring that incident up?

"I do hope she's feelin' okay.. Was she hurt?" Applejack asked, her smile a little faded. Berry gulped.

"Well, she.. She isn't exactly.. Uh.." She muttered, tripping over her words.

"She's dead." Lyra spoke up, ending the uncomfortable few minutes abruptly and unsympathetically. Berry flinched.

"Dead?!" Applejack gasped, tears welling up in her eyes. Applebloom, who had been listening intently, buried her face into Big Macintosh's side, the tears flowing freely. Even Big Mac looked pained at the news. "How? Please don't tell me that those freaks outside ate her up.." The orange-coated mare uttered breathlessly between sobs.

"Not exactly.. Well, sort of.." Berry explained. Or rather, made a poor attempt at explanation. Lyra cut in.

"Granny Smith was a zombie." Applejack began to openly weep.

"Well, she sort of-" Berry began.

"Berry smashed her head in with a baseball bat." Lyra mumbled. Berry's eyes shot wide open, and she began to panic.

"It's not like that, I swear!" She yelped. The Apples all stared at the two. Lyra turned and tried staring at Berry, then realised that she was also under accusation. She instead chose to stare intently down, avoiding the hateful glares.

"Y'all killed Granny? In cold blood, no less?!" Applejack spoke, her voice raising in volume. "And then ya come in here, expectin' sanctuary from the outside world?" Berry stared down as Lyra looked up. The mint-coloured mare gave a nod.

"Why not? I mean, you guys have a really big farm and plently of food and-" Applejack cut Lyra off by leaping over the dining table and swinging a hoof at her. It connected, sending Lyra flying across the room and smacking into the wall. The window-frame set into the wall above her rattled, a few nails coming loose. The window crumpled, glass cracking, as it exploded outward under the weight of the collapsing frame. There was a loud, gurgling moan, and a green, wrinkled mare stumbled through the window, dragging herself with her hooves. The mare's head was caved in and bloodied, only one eye visible on her head, the other crushed under a collapsed section of skull. Her toothless mouth moved uselessly, tounge lolling about as dark slime dribbled from her open maw.

Granny Smith was, in fact, not quite dead.

Applebloom screamed, darting into the living room and slamming the door as her Granny stumbled into the room.

"Oh.. She survived." Lyra muttered, edging toward the table on which the golf club and baseball bat both rested. Applejack stepped toward Granny Smith, her eyes blurred with tears.

"Granny Smith.. What did they do to you?!" She cried, pulling the walking cadaver close. Something fell off. A foreleg clattered to the ground, blackened blood spraying across the floor. Berry dashed over to Lyra's side. Her friend lay crumpled against the wall, blood trickling from a bruised gash on her head from the punch.

"Hey.." Berry hissed, nudging Lyra and whispering into her ear. "She can't bite, can she?"

"She couldn't bite you, so no.. She hasn't got teeth, remember?" Lyra replied blearily, watching the grisly spectacle.

"Sis.. I don't think that's the best idea.." Big Mac uttered quietly, watching Granny Smith's fruitless attempts to maul Applejack with a toothless, gummy mouth. Applejack stared at him.

"How can y'all say that?! This is Granny! She ain't dead, she's.. She's sick! She needs help, and we-" Applejack's pleading reply was cut short as something sharp cut into her neck. Apparently, the baseball bat's impact had shattered Granny's skull so severely that shards of broken bone had protruded out of the roof of her mouth. One of the sharper pieces of skull cut into Applejack's neck, ripping the flesh wide open. Blood began to ooze from the cut, as the slimy gore from Granny Smith's open mouth sloshed against the open wound, infecting it.

"What just happened?.." Lyra asked quietly, watching Applejack stumble back, her neck spurting dark red liquid all over the dining table as she fell back onto it. The farmer pony tried to cry out, but her throat was torn too badly, and she was choking. After a few moments, she stopped moving. Granny Smith stumbled over to the other end of the room, falling into a set of drawers and smearing blood across the clean wooden surfaces as she toppled aimlessly to the floor.

"Sis.. Applejack, are you all right?" Big Macintosh asked, shaking his sister's limp, lifeless body. There was a gurgle from her throat as she dribbled out a mouthful of dark blood, staining Big Mac's hooves. Her shook her again, panicked by now. "Applejack, don't leave me.. I can't run the farm without you.. With you and Granny gone, apple sales will go into freefall, the family will go bankrupt!"

Applejack's head raised back up with a slow, unsteady movement. Her neck cracked a little, blood flowing freely from her mouth and her open throat as she stared at her brother with empty, glazed-over eyes. "Aw, shit." Was all that Big Mac could utter before Applejack bit into his face, tearing away a huge chunk of bloody meat. He bellowed with pain, falling to the floor as his sister mauled him to death. The floor was pasted with chunks of flesh and pools of blood.

"Do you think we should.. Ya know.." Lyra spoke as the zombies all turned toward the two mares. Lyra motioned toward the weapons lying on the kitchen table. Berry shook her head.

"They'd reach us before we got the stuff.." She replied, helping Lyra back up onto her hooves. The two backed into a corner, both trying to come up with a good plan which didn't involve them ending up lying on the floor in pieces.

"You know what? Fuck this." Berry yelled, stomping forwards. She grabbed a dining chair, smashing it over Applejack's head. The undead mare stumbled back, shards of broken wood tearing into her. Berry continued to beat the slowly-moving zombie with the remains of the chair until she was nothing short of completely broken. Dropping the bloodied wooden wreck she had been using, she turned back to Lyra. "Well don't just stand there!"

"Um.. Berry?" Lyra uttered quietly, pointing behind her.

"Oh.. Oh fucking shit." Berry mumbled, turning slowly. Granny Smith was hobbling slowly forward, but that was not the main problem. The hulking, torn-up reanimated corpse of Big Macintosh was also lumbering toward her. He was partially ripped to shreds, strips of flesh hanging off his body and skin ripped to pieces in gruesome wounds. Berry backed away, tripping over Granny Smith's severed foreleg and falling to the floor with a painful thump. She looked up to see Big Mac looming over her, staring with cold eyes.

A wall clock smacked into the huge stallion's face, shattering against his skull and leaving his face pierced with pieces of broken glass. The minute hand of the clock lodged itself through his eyeball. Berry took a quick glance back to see Lyra picking up another object, which happened to be an ornamental statuette of Celestia. She chucked it at Granny Smith, and it knocked a good chunk of her head off with a meaty 'splat'. Berry crawled back rapidly toward Lyra, who had now picked up a broom and gotten ready to swing it.

"We can't stay here.. Come on!" Berry yelled, backing out of the house and running toward the barn. Lyra followed suit, dropping the broom and running as Granny and Big Mac continued to shuffle slowly after them.

Inside the barn, Lyra and Berry collected together the closest weapons to hand and stood their ground. Both mares were each holding a barrel of apples in front of them. As Big Mac and Granny stepped through the doors, they began throwing. The apples smacked into the two undead ponies, covering them in juices and debris as the fruit hit them and shattered. Granny Smith was pushed back, falling to the ground in a flurry of flying fruit projectiles. However, Big Mac seemed not to be having quite as much trouble. He continued lumbering forward as the apples smacked into him, smashing against his face and his body and doing little damage.

"It's no good.. The fruit's no good!" Lyra yelled, continuing to throw apples at the oncoming zombie. Berry disappeared to the side of the barn for a moment, returning with a large pitchfork.

"Use this instead." She said, chucking the farming tool to her friend.

"Where did you even get this? And why didn't we use it before?" Lyra replied, holding the pitchfork steady.

"I thought the apples would be a better weapon. There are more apples here than pitchforks."

"Oh, for fuck's sake." Lyra huffed, charging forward and ramming the pitchfork's metal prongs into Big Mac's face. The iron spikes went straight through his eyes and punched into his brain, damaging it quite badly. Big Mac collapsed, shuddering, as his brain overloaded and refused to work. Lyra tried to yank the pitchfork out, but it wouldn't budge.

As Big Mac was now brain-dead and Applejack was a smashed-up pulp in the dining room, only the fruit-covered Granny Smith was left of the undead Apple Family members. She currently shuffled about on the floor, covered with fruit juice and bits of smashed apple. Berry and Lyra sighed in unison, watching the hapless little failure of a zombie.

"What are we gonna do with her? The baseball bat didn't work.." Berry murmured.

"Wait there." Lyra said, trotting to the back of the barn. She returned with a large scythe, strolling nonchalantly over to the writhing little ghoul on the floor. Angling the curved blade downward and raising the tool upward, she took careful aim. In a split second, Lyra brought the scythe down on Granny Smith's skull, splitting her head open like a rotten apple and destroying her brain, stopping her weak shuffling. "There. Done." She sighed, trying to wipe some of the blood off her coat as she threw the saw to the ground and stood up. Berry just gaped. "Okay, so.. Let's go and get Applebloom." Lyra said, trotting back toward the farmhouse through the rain. Berry followed, a little concerned as to her friend's casual handling of the situation.