Prologue: To Whom It May Concern
Undead Nightmare
By Hero541
Prologue: To Whom it May Concern
A Letter to Any Survivors,
If you're reading this, then that means I'm not here anymore. Whether I'm dead or just not in the area, I can't say for sure. Hay, as far as I know, nopony will ever find this letter. I'm gonna leave it here anyway, just in case somepony in the future does happen to come across it, so that they can know my story and understand what happened here that turned my entire world upside down.
First of all, it's been ten years since the initial outbreak that caused the dead to take over Equestria and forced the rest of us to have to fight everyday to survive. Nopony ever could have seen it coming, and, hay, who could have believed it was possible? After all, corpses don't just come back to life and attack those who are still living, right? That's the stuff of pure fiction, or so we believed it to be.
Before the outbreak, things in my life were about as perfect as they could be. I had plenty of friends, two loving parents, and a more than bright future ahead of me, even if I was never entirely sure what I would do with my life after I was finished with school. Life in Ponyville was fairly normal, and occasionally my friends and I would get involved in all sorts of hijinks, if only to have a break from the mundanities of living in a small town. At home, my parents were always there for me, and were a constant reminder of how awesome my world was, a feeling I wish I still had now.
At first, all we heard about anything strange was the occasional rumor. Every now and then, somepony in the schoolyard would say something about his cousin in another town who heard from a friend of a friend's brother that something weird was happening all over, and that other ponies were becoming extremely violent towards one another. To us, they were just scary stories, tales that had no true weight behind them and were meant to put some feeling of fear into us. Eventually, though, the stories became more and more frequent, going from long distance hearsay to practically next door in only a matter of weeks.
I didn't really give it any thought prior to the shit really hitting the fan. After all, they were saying things about dead ponies starting to come back to life and eat the living. That couldn't possibly be true, and I wasn't about to look like a fool in front of everypony else who seemed to be so gullible as to believe in zombies or anything like that. It wasn't until my parents began to show signs of worry from the escalating rumors that I gave it any sort of recognition myself.
If there was one thing my parent weren't, it was worried. They were probably the two most happy go lucky ponies in all of Ponyville, and to see them actually concerned about what I thought were just silly stories was more than unnerving, to say the least. However, they never really talked to me about it, and that was probably for the better. But, looking back on it, I really wish they'd said something.
As the weeks went on and the rumors began to become witness accounts of attacks near or in Ponyville, my parents pulled me out of school and only allowed me outside if one of them was with me. I remember being so upset at them for doing that, for taking me away from my friends and forcing me to stay where they could see me. In retrospect, it was just them being concerned, but at my young age they were almost like tyrants, constantly monitoring me with eyes like a griffon. Unfortunately, this isolation meant that I had no real way to figure out what was happening anywhere in town, save for when my friends would come and visit to tell me about whatever they'd heard that week. Then, after about a month of being at home and forced to stay in my parents line of sight, I was finally able to convince them to let me stay the night at Sweet Apple Acres with my friends.
I'd never been so happy to be outside of my house in all my life, and I was determined to have a good time at the farm, come Tartarus or high water. Things were going absolutely awesome when we heard voices from downstairs talking really loudly. The three of us went down to investigate what the commotion was and saw Twilight Sparkle standing there, telling Applejack that Seaddle had fallen to them, and that they were beginning to spread all the way over to Baltimare and Manehatten.
We had no idea what she meant by "them", but with how panicked she seemed, we knew it couldn't be anything good. The next morning, my parents came to get me from the farm, and I told them about what I had heard from Twilight the night before. They didn't say anything at first, just stared at one another with worried looks on their own faces. After we got home, they began to check on all our food supplies and would take turns going to the store to get anything they felt we needed. Any time I'd ask what was going on, all I'd get was a hurried response of "Nothing, sweetheart. Just run along and play for a bit." Eventually, I got tired of them not telling my anything, and I screamed at them to tell me the truth, an act that I'm still regretting to this day.
They said that all over Equestria, bad things were happening and that ponies were starting to go insane and attack anypony they came across. From what they could gather, the incidents were far from isolated anymore, and they were preparing for when they'd have to defend our home from some sort of invasion. I didn't fully understand what they were saying at first. Why in the sweet name of Celestia would anypony try and invade our home, I'd asked. Even more pressing was the question of why anypony would attack another without some sort of provocation. I'd put it much less eloquently at the time, but the sentiment was the same.
For a time, there wasn't anymore news about Seaddle or Manehatten and the situations there. Then again, I was now always inside the house again, so I didn't hear a whole lot of anything anyway. Occasionally, I'd hear my parents talk about "them" in hushed voices, saying the the "infection" was beginning to spread from the larger cities and into the more rural areas in Equestria. Being left in the dark on something that seemed so pressing an issue wasn't something I liked to have to deal with, but as the weeks went by and the news began to take a turn for the worse, I started to try and block out as much as I could so I didn't have to think about it.
Then, we received news that Canterlot was being attacked by these insane ponies, and that the Princesses were nowhere to be found anymore. That little revelation sent my heart plummeting once I heard it. If the Princesses of the night and day, the two most powerful alicorns in all the world, couldn't stand against this threat, then who could? And what would become of the Equestrian Empire now that our capital was beginning to crumble? I actually began to lose sleep over all this worry, and feared that it would only be a matter of time till Ponyville was the next to collapse.
With Canterlot down, and even more cities falling all around, the frequency of incidents occurring in Ponyville began to increase. I didn't see any of the initial occurrences myself, but I was able to hear about them from my parents. From what they could gather, none of the attacks seemed to be fatal, and most of the victims simply reported having been bitten by another pony. Naturally, they would go to the local hospital to have their wounds treated so that they could return to their homes and jobs. However, as they began to break down and become more and more weak, they would always return to the hospital, a move that would spell doom for everypony there with them.
A few weeks of this went by, and eventually, the infected ponies began to die. Because it takes a rather long time for them to reanimate, they would be sent to the morgue almost immediately, and I learned much later that this is where the first major outbreak stemmed from. I will never forget the day it all happened, too. It haunted my dreams for months after it happened.
I was in town with my parents, helping them to gather supplies that we might need. We were making our way through the market square when we heard a horrific, blood curdling scream from a nearby building. My parents and I began to make our way over to where the crowd was gathered, doing our best to stay a decent distance away. We saw a pony step forward and open the door, only to watch him disappear inside, being torn apart and devoured by the horde inside.
Almost immediately, panic spread like wildfire through the town. All around us, ponies were running away, screaming as the dead began to swarm out from the building and roam the streets. My parents grabbed me as fast as they could and took to the skies, along with several other pegasi who were attempting to escape the madness that had overtaken our little town.
As I leaned over my dad’s back and looked down at the streets of Ponyville, I could only watch in horror as everywhere, ponies were being eviscerated and consumed by the newly reanimated dead. Screams like I’d never heard before echoed through the area, piercing my ears like a thousand knives. Chaos enveloped the town in only a matter of minutes, and even those who had been able to make it to some sort of shelter found themselves unable to hold back the dead. Fires began to spring up all over, adding even more shrieks of agony to the horrific symphony as ponies began to burn alive inside the buildings.
Seeing all the destruction and violence on the ground below me, I began to cry and lose a little of my own sanity. As I rode on my dad’s back, I closed my eyes in fear and began to try and wish all this away, hoping beyond hope that this was just some sort of awful nightmare and that I’d be waking up soon in my bed and have my parents come and comfort me. However, my hopes were all for not as the agonizing screaming became louder and louder, eventually punctuated by an explosion from a nearby building. The sound jolted me back to the harsh reality all around me, and I just did my best not to look over my dad’s side anymore.
Initially, I thought we’d be going back to our own house and barricade the place from the dead. However, I soon noticed us flying past our own neighborhood and out of the town, making for the outskirts of Ponyville. When I looked back to the area we lived in, I saw it completely surrounded by monsters and panicked ponies attempting to make their way out so as to not be devoured by the nightmare that had taken over Ponyville. After some time of flying, my parents descended and made their way for Sweet Apple Acres, where Applejack and Big Macintosh were assisting Rarity, Sweetie Belle, and Fluttershy inside the farmhouse.
After we’d landed and made our way inside, Applejack and her brother followed, bolting the door to keep any of the straggling dead from entering and attacking us. Once I hopped off my dad’s back and took a look around, I saw that everypony’s appearance matched my own, each and every one of them panicked and horrified at what they had just seen. Granny Smith eventually came out and helped to calm everypony down by giving them something to eat and drink. It wasn’t until after we’d finished settling down as best we could that Applejack began to explain what was happening.
She’d said that Twilight had been keeping her informed on what had been going on, and that, though she couldn’t explain how it was possible, the monsters we had seen in town that were attacking everypony were walking corpses. From what she could gather, nopony truly knew where this had begun, let alone know how to stop it. All she’d been told so far was that the dead were operating via some sort of odd virus, and that to be bitten by any one of those creatures would infect the victim, eventually killing them and causing them to come back to life as another bloodthirsty, ravenous organism. She’d said that Twilight had been commissioned to find a source and possibly a cure for this plague, but with how fast the virus had been spreading, her work had been impeded to the point of a total standstill. Now, with the dead infesting all of Ponyville, it seemed like there would be no possible way to be able to find a cure of any kind.
That news didn’t settle well within the group, especially with Granny Smith and the other members of the Apple Family. If she’d known about this virus the whole time and had know that it was beginning to spread, why didn’t she say anything to them about it beforehoof, they’d asked. Or, even if she hadn’t told the family, why not have her and Twilight tell the whole town about this so they could prepare for when it hit? Applejack explained that Twilight herself had been given explicit instructions not to tell anypony, and on top of that, Applejack didn’t believe her right away anyway. After all, who could possibly believe that some sort of malicious virus was spreading across Equestria that would infect a host, kill them, and then return them to life so they could ravage the world?
Applejack assured us that, for the time being, we would all be alright and that she had taken as many precautions in secret as she could for when the infected would try and get at us. She had fashioned a few rather crude weapons that we could use to fend off the dead should they encounter them. Along with that, she had been bucking apples as fast as possible so as to have enough food stored up to survive for several months if the infection wasn’t cleaned up by then. She assured us that the farm was perfectly safe as well, being far enough away from any town that they wouldn’t have to worry about too many of the dead coming out there. All the assurances she gave us did nothing to belie the true nature of her words, however, as she seemed less confident than anypony that this would be cleared up any time soon.
Life on the farm, for the most part, was fairly uneventful at first. Every now and then, one of the dead would show up and Applejack and Big Macintosh would go outside to take it down. I wasn’t ever allowed outside, though, and neither were Apple Bloom or Sweetie Belle. In fact, I think I may have been on a more strict lockdown there then I ever was at home before all of this began. Looking back on those first few months, I should have been more grateful to my parents for keeping me safe. I’ll never have another chance to thank them now, though.
The adults, save for Rarity and Fluttershy, would all take turns keeping an eye out for the dead during the nights. Almost every time I asked my mom or dad where the other was, they’d always say they were out on top of the roof, watching and waiting for any infected that may wander onto the farm. We three kids weren’t allowed to see any of the adults take out one of the dead when they did show up, always being sent upstairs and away from the sight of a skull being bashed in by Big Macintosh or a head being lopped off by Applejack. It took me almost a year to figure out the only way to kill them was to destroy the brain, and I never did thank Fluttershy for saving me that time...
As Applejack had predicted, the supplies only lasted a few months before they were starting to dwindle heavily. This was a horrible dilemma to deal with, as we had no clue how we could get more supplies. At one point, Applejack and Big Mac had almost suggested leaving the farm, heading out to possible Appleoosa, or even Dodge Junction if we could. Granny Smith refused, saying that not only would she never abandon her home, but that the road leading out could be completely impassable, especially for a larger group like ours. Eventually, they all settled on the idea of going into Ponyville to gather the supplies we’d need. That, however, had a very high possibility of being just as dangerous as leaving the farm and going to another town.
We hadn’t heard a single peep from the town in the entire time we’d been at the farm. We had absolutely no way of knowing if the situation in Ponyville was any better or worse, though from the increased amount of infected we had to deal with at the farm, we postulated that it more than likely wasn’t any better. Applejack had tried on multiple occasions to try and establish some sort of contact with anypony who might be left in town, but each and every time, she received no indication at all. After our supplies had completely worn away, they knew they had no choice in the matter. If we were to survive out here, we needed to go into town and get anything we could.
As per usual, my friends and I weren’t allowed on the supply runs at first. Usually, it would be Applejack and Big Mac along with my dad or mom to help carry things out in case they needed to make a quick escape. The first time they went out, we were all so worried about them, worried that not only would we not be able to get the supplies, but that the town would be so overrun that there would be absolutely no way we could make it in there at all. They did make it back in one piece, though, with the supplies and a few of the straggling dead they had encountered. My mom helped to get everything in the house while AJ and Big Mac took down the infected that had followed them back to the farm.
After their first run, they got a feel for what the situation was like in town, and we received confirmation of our fears. They had been lucky enough to find a quick way in and out by going around the east side and avoiding the dead. However, my dad had said that when he flew over the area, all he could see in the streets were hundreds of infected. There would be no way for us to reach some of the more vital areas in Ponyville to get supplies. At least, no way to do so without having to fight off the majority of the area’s dead.
Unfortunately, the supplies we managed to gain only lasted us so long, and we had no choice but to send out somepony to go and get more. This continued week after week after week. At first, I didn’t want to go out there and risk mine or somepony else’s hide in a run like that. It would have been absolute suicide, and I knew it! But, as time went along, I wanted so badly to go out there and do my part to help to keep everypony alive here.
But, no matter what I said or did, my parents still wouldn’t let me go out and help with anything. I became so tired of having to just sit and wait for somepony else to come back from the town. I told them that I could be a very valuable asset, that I could sneak into places that they couldn’t if they needed me to. But, for all the begging I did, it never got me anywhere. I still was stuck at the house, forced to watch the adults go out and risk their lives gathering the things we needed.
It wasn’t until we had two more members of our group show up that I even set hoof outside since we’d arrived here the day of the outbreak. Pipsqueak and his mother, Rose Blossom, had apparently managed to escape the confines of the town with a few other survivors. They’d made it through the hordes themselves, but their compatriots weren’t so lucky. They were the only two left of a group of five, the other three having been devoured by the dead almost as soon as they’d stepped outside. Unfortunately, the coming of these two brought an entire swarm of corpses to the farmhouse, and there just weren’t enough of the adults there to take them all on. Rarity refused to move, Fluttershy was too scared, and Granny Smith was too old, leaving just my friends and I and the other adults to take on the incoming swarm..
The three of us rushed out with whatever weapons we could find that Applejack left in the house, and headed outside to help fend off the horde. I don’t remember much about the actual fight to keep them at bay, just the occasional yell from somepony nearby who was alerting the rest of us to how they were doing. By the end of it all, I was sweaty, tired, covered in undead bodily fluids, and felt more alive than I had in a very long time. And the best part of it was, not a single one of us were bitten or fell to the dead.
After that, my parents allowed me much more freedom, as well as with Sweetie and AB. I wasn’t quite able to go on runs for supplies, but I was now allowed to stay up and keep watch for infected at night. It wasn’t easy at first, having to train my body to stay awake past a certain time, but soon, it just became natural to me. It was actually sort of odd that I slept better after the dead took over Equestria than before. Probably the constant daily stress of worrying whether or not I’d be alive tomorrow caused me to become exhausted all the time, or something like that.
After a year of being on the farm, Ponyville, as well as the rest of Equestria, was still swarming with the undead. Along with that, regular flora and fauna from all around had begun to die off, limiting even more our already dwindling resources. Even the trees on the farm were falling, robbing us of their plentiful fruit which had become a staple of our diet for quite some time. This meant that we needed to send even more ponies into town to gather supplies, which also meant that it was mine and my friends’ turns to go on runs, something I’d been trying to do since I’d finally learned how to fly a few months prior.
At first, all we were really used for was to keep an eye out for the dead all around while the others were in the back gathering up what they could. From what I could gather, over the course of the last year, a lot of the dead in Ponyville had moved on and out of the town. The streets weren’t filled with them like they had been when my parents and I had flown over the day of the outbreak. That doesn’t mean that we didn’t ever encounter any, though. More than once, I’d hear a moan behind me and turn to see a corpse making its way towards me and I’d have to swing my weapon and spray its brains all over the ground.
The first few times were tough, as I would panic any time one of them came near me. As time went along, though, I got better about that. After a few months of going on runs and dealing with the dead, I learned to keep an ear free all the time to listen for them wheezing and moaning. If I heard anything nearby, I always knew to have my weapon ready to hit them once they came around the corner. Very rarely would we ever have too many encounters with the dead, and even when we had to deal with multiple attackers, we always knew what to do and kept a cool head.
The dead were always a constant threat, but sometimes, they were the least of our worries. We had always had a feeling that there had been other groups around Equestria that were surviving like we were. After all, there are a lot of ponies in this world, and there had to be more than just a few who could be as resourceful as us. What we didn’t know, and weren’t expecting, was that there would be survivors who had taken refuge here in Ponyville. On one particular supply run, we had the misfortune of encountering them, and they were none too happy to see us.
It had been a fairly normal run for the most part. I’d only had to take on probably three of the dead while the others were gathering what they needed. I was keeping an ear out for the sounds of moaning as usual when I heard the door on the side of the building open up and close very quickly, followed by soft whispering of other voices. I asked who was there, and the voices suddenly stopped. Looking back on it, I should have been more careful with what I was doing and shouldn’t have been so quick to try and investigate. Then again, I had no clue that other survivors would be that hostile.
Almost as soon as I’d turned the corner to see what was going on, a knife shot past me, missing my head by inches. The shock of what had just happened still gripped me as a yellow mare tackled me to the ground and began to strike me over and over again. I called out for the others and they were there in almost no time, though as soon as they made their way in to see what the commotion was, three more ponies came out of nowhere and attempted to attack them. Big Mac was hit pretty heavily by another mare that came out of nowhere and he fell to the ground like a ton of bricks. On the other side of the room, Applejack was taking on a huge, hulking stallion who kept trying to hit her in the head with a hunk of wood that was filled with nails.
After a while, I was able to throw off the mare on top of me and I hit her in the head hard with my weapon. Once I knew she was out, I took on the mare who was still hitting Big Mac, stabbing her in the side with a sharp pole I’d found nearby. Right as the mare hit the ground, I saw Applejack manage a good hit on the stallion she was facing, quickly bashing his skull in once she had the opportunity. We only had a brief moment to breathe before we heard the groans from nearby and knew that in only a matter of minutes, that shop would most likely be inundated with the dead. Applejack and I hastily helped Big Mac up and made our way back to the farm, unfortunately without the supplies we’d gone there for in the first place.
After that incident, we learned to keep conscious of our surrounding at all times for more than just the dead. Any time we would hear anything that sounded like another group of survivors, the others would rush out almost immediately and all of us would investigate together what it was. Only on a few more occasions did we ever encounter any other groups, and we always would try and be diplomatic so as to limit the need to take the life of another. Most of the time, we were able to talk them down and reach some type of agreement. However, when we couldn’t make some sort of deal, that’s when we were forced to resort to murder. It always hurt me a lot to take the life of another pony, one just like us who was merely trying to survive and had made it this far, only to fall to another survivor.
The course of the years since the initial outbreak have more than taken their toll on us as a group. Granny Smith passed away about three years ago now, old age finally managing to get the better of her. Pip and Rose Blossom were both killed when we were attacked by a group of survivors. Sweetie Belle recently passed away as well from complications of having her and Pip’s foal, a sweet little filly who I’ve taken as my own daughter. Rarity’s not truly dead, but the loss of her sister finally sent her over the edge, and her broken spirit has lead to her becoming nothing more than a husk of her former, fashion obsessed, fabulous self. It’ll more than likely only be a matter of time until she passes away as well, I think.
My parents died two years ago, a burden that almost broke me physically and mentally. They both died of a bacterial infection that we didn’t have the antibiotics to cure. I’ll never forget sitting between the both of them as they lay there, their bodies so weary and frail, yet their love for me just as strong as ever. After they passed away, I shut down for a time, unable to believe that the very ponies who had helped and protected me all my life and through this horrific apocalypse were gone, just like that. I know they’re at peace now though, and they’ve finally managed to escape this hell that we are forced to call home. Both of them are buried behind the barn in nice, neat graves that I like to go out and visit every so often.
Right now, I’m preparing to move on from this farm, along with Fluttershy, Apple Bloom, and Dash, Sweetie and Pip’s foal. We’ve heard that Appleoosa and Dodge Junction are both fairly safe right now, both boasting rather large communities of survivors. The roads between here and there will more than likely be extremely dangerous, but I think we’ll be able to handle it if we play our cards right. I tried to convince AJ and Big Mac to go along with us, but they declined, pointing out that Big Mac couldn’t travel very well with his one wooden leg, and that they weren’t about to abandon their former home. I know that those two will stay and defend that house till they either die or are swarmed by the dead.
I don’t know who you are, whoever’s reading this letter right now. More than likely, we’ll never meet, but you never know. The one thing I can do at this point is wish you the best of luck in your travels. I know that if you’ve managed to make it this far, you’ve definitely got a good chance to make it further. Always keep an eye out, never let your guard down when you’re out there, and whatever you do, stay safe. Like I said before, I’m leaving this letter knowing that there’s a good chance that nopony will ever find it. However, I pray that when it is discovered, it’ll be a time in the future when others don’t have to live through the hell that my friends and I had to, that it’ll be in a world that no longer has to fear the threat of the living dead.
Sincerely, Scootaloo