“SHIT SHIT SHIT!” Ellis screamed, panicked, as he ran backwards to a staircase, away from the enraged mutant. Gunfire rained down on it, diverting its attention to the rooftop from where Nick and Rochelle spewed lead nonstop at its muscled frame. Though they didn’t seem to faze the creature much, they got it angered enough to forget its prior target.

Scootaloo gasped when the Tank shoved its enormous fingers on the ground and flat out ripped a large chunk of concrete straight out of the ground it stood on, heaving it over its head and launching it like a beach ball. The piece of masonry sailed through the air in an arc that would have ended up right on top of the two riflemen had they not scurried out of the rooftop the moment it left the infected’s hands. Instead, it collided with the wall, leaving a sizeable dent in the woodwork and scattering dust and mortar pebbles on the Cutie Mark Crusaders.

“THE HELL Y’ALL STANDIN’ THERE FOR?! GIT, YOU THREE!” Coach barked as he ran back into the scene, a white propane tank over his shoulder. He promptly threw it to the floor as soon as the trio sprinted past him and onto the walkway. Ellis, Nick and Rochelle lay down suppressive fire on the gigantic infected that had finished up climbing the scaffold exactly at the same time as the float began to play a particularly cheery sax interlude.

Coach shouted “FIRE IN THE HOLE!” and fired a shell into the propane tank. Nothing happened. The gas container didn’t have enough combustible in it to trigger the expected pyrotechnic show; only jets of flame came out. “SHIT!” he exclaimed, quickly retreating through the catwalk to the stairs. “I had to get an empty one!”

“SPREAD OUT, SPREAD OUT!” Rochelle yelled, backpedaling and frantically waving a hand holding a magazine in a ‘get away’ motion. The others wasted no time in running off down to ground level, Ellis with Sweetie Belle following him on instinct, while Coach and Nick had Scootaloo and Apple Bloom in tow. As Rochelle finally managed to reload and bring the weapon to bear on the zombie, she realized she had misjudged its speed, and she leapt back, almost managing to fully avoid a swipe of its arm.

But almost isn’t the same as completely.

The Tank’s fingers, smaller but just as solid as the palm they were attached to, impacted against Rochelle’s side, and the woman was sent staggering away, twirling on her feet in a mockery of a ballet move as she desperately tried to maintain her balance. The military carbine careened out of her hands and clattered against a wall.

“RO!” Ellis cried, pumping round after round against the Tank’s back, desperate to bring its attention to him and away from his injured teammate, while Nick and Coach both did the exact same with their own guns. The triple barrage of fire succeeded in distracting the monster from the downed woman in front of him, and it jumped down to ground level, eager to eliminate the source of pain. One muscled arm came down hard, aiming for the cluster of survivors, but they all ran to the sides, desperately dropping empty magazines to the ground in favor of full ones.

Sweetie Belle watched from afar, terrified. Her head pounded, her legs were wobbly, and she blinked forcefully a few times to hold her tears back. She had thought her traveling partners were big and strong from their first display against the infected, but this ‘Tank’ completely trumped them! To tear out stone from the ground as it did, that sure required an enormous amount of strength. She had flinched physically when Scootaloo’s savior was hit and sent sprawling, even though it was only a glancing blow – if that was just a scrape, a swing like that, if it hit full force, would demolish anything ity-bitty, soft and squishy like a filly!

Meanwhile, as they watched the intense battle of the humans against the gargantuan beast, Scootaloo and Apple Bloom hid behind the low wall surrounding the courtyard’s garden, barely able to breathe or move; their muscles had locked in place. The only thing they could do was watch with tremulous breath as the monster chased their alien brethren and find hope that they could get rid of it...

Hope that came through the realization that its movements were considerably more sluggish than before, and its roars were reduced to growls that, while still very intimidating, couldn’t compare to those roars from before. The red running down the perforations in its hide and leaving a trail behind it, left no wonder as to why.

Still, the mutated giant clearly showed it still had some fight in it when it slapped an overturned table towards Coach, who had run close to the tractor. However, its eyes were swimming, and its aim was off; the piece of furniture hit the speakers on one side of the float instead of the intended target. The music died off suddenly, drowned instantly by the angry chirps of the sparking equipment.

Houses of cards are constructs of possibly the flimsiest building material known to man, held up by nothing but a frail combination of friction and balance. Any change in the equilibrium, even the mildest vibration or gentlest air flow, suffices to send one sprawling to the ground in a pile of disorganized sheets of plastic paper.

Yet, despite this glaring instability, some people saw it fit to recreate structures taller and wider than themselves, buildings that defied the common sense that elements so weak individually could form up in so much grandeur. All it took was care and patience.

That was why Ernest Holly loved houses of cards.

A born Louisianan whose life’s highlight was an admission into the University of New Orleans and the tuition-free education it entailed, he never aspired for much: a calm life, a stable job and the few comforts he saw fit to have. His parents, old members of the humbler class of the state’s capital, made it the point of their lives to drill that into his head. They had many long-winded explanations full of examples and moral lessons; he eschewed all that for the simple concept that the bigger a card tower is, the easier it is for it to fall.

Three months ago, on the day after he graduated, grim news came. By the end of the week, he was left with Reverend LeClaire's Voodoo Shop – which, contrary to the name, was a grocery store – and his six year old niece. Both of them had been orphaned in a crash that took Ernest’s parents, his sister and her husband. He knew Steven, that stubborn mule, wouldn’t stop flying that monoplane of his for the world, even when the government issued an alert that people showing symptoms of the Green Flu shouldn’t operate vehicles.

He felt like his tower had collapsed, but on the first night, when little Sarah crawled up to Uncle Ernie’s bed because she was afraid of the dark and Mommy and Daddy weren’t home to make the monsters stay away, he saw the truth. Yes, a part of his castle had fallen, and some of his cards had been taken away, no one could deny that – but he had his own independent life, legal maturity and a source of income to set it back up. Meanwhile, Sarah didn’t have a base for mounting hers again, of all things; her tower had been tipped over and completely lost in the ditch of the fallen airship.

At first, the relationship was strained – Sarah had as much respect for him as he had experience as a parent –, but between keeping her well fed, overseeing her school life and comforting her while the wounds were still fresh, the child gradually eased herself into Ernest’s life. With the tender care he taught himself to mount the cards with, he rebuilt, the sole new piece he had been given now the pivot of his tower.

Then the outbreak hit New Orleans.

Even before they came, the infection wasn’t ignorable. CEDA had cordoned off New Orleans as a sanitary safe zone, and several evacuees came to a stop there. In fact, the triage zone they had mounted at the park was the origin of the vast majority of his clients, including the agency’s personnel. The cash began piling up even through the increase of the suppliers’ prices, and the reinforced safe doors the officials saw fit to provide his shop – “a token of recognition for your provision-distributing services aiding the well-being of the community during this time of crisis”, a pompous suit from CEDA’s office declared – served just as well to control the traffic and avoid the petty thieves that thought that they could take advantage of the crisis and leave with a chocolate bar or a soda can off the tab.

Ernest wouldn’t go so far as to be thankful for his good fortune, both because of its origins and the stress the more than doubled workload put on him, but he was happy nonetheless. His stack was growing, and slowly his tower gained floors as well.

But one night, things changed.

Due to a lack of permanent residents in the general area, Ernest often had Sarah make small deliveries in a one square radius or so. He figured that, since she never went too far and the authorities knew who she was related to, it would be safe. That evening, she begged him to deliver the groceries to the house of one of her little friends, whose family was cleared as immune by CEDA. He saw no reason to forbid it, and she left with a smile.

By that time, the knowledge of carriers wasn’t widely spread amongst those at New Orleans. The general line of thought was that only zombies spread the flu, if that's what it even was. They thought they were as safe as they could be for the moment, being within a sanitary zone.

That night, Sarah came back complaining that her head hurt. Ernest dismissed it as overexertion and sent her upstairs to bed with an aspirin in her belly and the promise of a day off. The next morning, he woke up spooning the little girl on his bed. He shivered madly under the sheets, feeling colder than he had ever felt in his life. He left her on the bed and went downstairs; there was work to be done after all, whether he felt under the weather or not.

With the arrival of a new batch of refugees, things were more hectic than ever. Usually, he tried to comprehend that these people were torn away from their homes, isolated from their loved ones, and tired from traveling. CEDA did the best they could, but that wasn’t enough to comfort them much. That morning, though, the talking, crying and yelling outside the reinforced doors added to the chills in grating on his nerves. With each customer that nitpicked about something or other, he became angrier. They should be glad he was still providing, not complaining about it! If they didn’t like how he worked, good luck finding another provider!

When Sarah started wailing on the second floor, it became too much; he had to go out for some sunlight, feel a breeze other than the stinky breath of the rabble that banged on his door, money or no money. The stress was too much to bear.

Ernest up and left his home without looking back. He never noticed that his niece-turned-daughter wasn’t crying like a normal child would, or that he had left the store’s door wide open.

As the hours passed, his aimless wanderings took him through abandoned houses, empty streets and vacant shops, eventually leading him to the riverfront in an abandoned part of the city. There, he stayed, the water’s gentle noises calming him down. He felt no need to sleep or eat, just... contemplate. His arms were getting heavier, and the soil sank under his weight more and more, but none of that concerned him. All that occupied his mind was how the little waves climbed over one another, stacking and rolling peacefully, like a mobile pile of cards forming houses, towers, battlements and castles of all shapes and sizes, all of them infinite and simultaneous. It brought forth memories of times not so long past, when his life and time were his own, when he didn't have to plan for and juggle the added challenges of people depending so much on him weighing his cards down, or the instability of his forced parenthood threatening to blow his structure off its base.

How much Ernest relished the nostalgic calm he was experiencing, the world may never know.

And then, there was the explosion. It came out of nowhere and was gone just as suddenly, leaving a befuddled and enraged Ernest in his wake. It was not because of the shock wave that made him stumble almost off the edge of the dock he had taken as his territory, or the piercing sound that would have made his ears ring like crazy were he twenty meters closer. No, what really threw the cards astray was how the blast made the water ripple and tremble, creating large parallel waves that interrupted and dissolved the original flow, breaking the houses he so admired just like a schoolgrounds bully's foot. The whoosh of the jets was a cruel mocking cackle to his ears.

How dare they disturb his peace?! He wasn’t bothering anyone! Oh, he would find them. He would find them, and then he would make them feel sorry for knocking all the houses of water cards down!

With those vengeful thoughts in mind, the former grocer set off back into the city. He never noticed how the bomb’s ripples washed off and died, and the water soon was back to its usual dynamics.

While in his mind it sounded like he was asking where the bastard pranksters were, however, in reality, the scene that played out was an enormous mutant growling, bellowing and swinging at a number of the infected that had overrun the park after his leave. The contents of the now abandoned store had caused the people to riot over the free loot, and even though the agents had no way to contain the situation, they tried nonetheless, but in their attempts, unsupervised carriers mixed with regular people. Previously restricted to quarantined households, the infection had closed its zombifying claws over New Orleans.

After he left the bushes behind, Ernest started losing focus. What was he running after again? He made an effort, but he couldn’t remember. Something about sand castles and business cards… He kept walking, trying to focus on the exercise so it could clear the cobwebs off his head, but even after he lost track of time in the effort, it didn’t work. Only when he realized it was futile, it came to his mind that he didn’t know where he was.

There was a man sitting on the curb. Ernest harrumphed to call his attention, but he didn’t lift his head. He tried talking, but the person remained still, quiet, lolling back and forth as if ready to fall asleep. Ernest moved up closer and nudged him. The man dropped to the ground, and stayed there. Maybe he was tired… In any case, all Ernest felt he could do was shrug and move on. Which he did, walking along the street and past the prone man.

A group of drunks didn’t hear him either. The lady with the baby carriage didn’t respond even when he put a hand on her shoulder; she just fell asleep to the floor.

Why was everyone so tired? Did the city have a late night party yesterday that he didn’t know of?

A bird chirped nearby. Ernest liked birds. Their nests were all branches weaved together, like houses of cards. They were like the card castle artists of nature. Where was it anyway? Oh, it was in that courtyard behind the gate! No problem, he could jump over it.

He called for the bird, looking up at the treetops and shingles, but it wouldn’t come down. Why wouldn’t it come down? Ernest had some good ideas and plans on building houses of cards and he wanted to discuss them. He called, he whistled and he chirped, but everything he did went unanswered. He began getting angry. So the arrogant little bastard was too self-absorbed with his own voice to talk to the public, huh?

KA-BOOOM! A big firecracker sound came from nearby, and Ernest unconsciously yelled out, startled. Those pesky troublemakers had just scared him silly again! But oh, they just wait until he got his hands on them! He’d grab them by the scruffs of their necks and bring them to their mommas, and he would watch them get grounded! They sounded like they were on the other side of that gate he leapt over earlier. They were so dead!

When he got to the street, he growled in frustration. They’d gotten away! Right then, a loud burst of music almost caused him to rocket off his shoes in fright. It couldn’t be, it had to be a conspiracy! Forgetting about the first noise entirely, Ernest leapt back into the courtyard and-

OH MY GOD WHAT THE HELL ARE THOSE THINGS?!

Their bodies were composed of straight lines with jagged edges. Their eyes were crimson red, dripping with liquid hellfire. Stunted, leathery wings sprouted from their backs, as deadly as their sharp white teeth, visible from miles away. And worst of all, there was the luminous orange fog that came out of their bodies like anglerfish lures, ready to blind and trap whatever poor unfortunate soul was caught by them.

It wasn't the previous anger that led Ernest to run up and attack the monsters he saw. Neither were outrage or frustration to blame. It was fear; fear and conviction that, no matter how far he ran, these abominations would follow him to the end of the world. It was a grim certainty coming from the bottom of his heart, a baser knowledge that had waited for this very moment to rise from the deep.

But no matter how fast he punched, how accurately he aimed, or how hard he tossed the rocks at them, the wraiths dodged or ran, cackling demonically at his efforts. The sound hurt his ears and crushed his sanity, and with every peal, he felt himself getting slower, weaker, and more hard-pressed to respond, almost as if they were hexing him, leeching off his life. Even when he cornered one of them and actually hit it once and made it shut up, things got no less desperate.

He knew he couldn't fight for much longer. But he had to. There was a table right between him and one of the monsters. If he could just…

He missed.

The last-ditch gesture took its toll on his body. He felt the last of his stamina draining away as his arm lowered to the floor. His vision blurred. His whole body felt numb. But more than everything… there was silence. Blissful, peaceful silence. Just like he liked it when building a house of cards. It was comfortable, warming even.

With that feeling in his heart, Ernest closed his eyes. Maybe a little nap wouldn’t hurt, and he could make a big house of cards to show Sarah tomorrow.

She was a good girl, she deserved a present like that.

One by one, the bearers of the Elements of Harmony touched the floor. Their eyes opened as they did, and Celestia greeted their sight with a warm smile, her hair back to its normal, gentle ebbing. “Excellent work, my little ponies.”

“OH YEAH! I KNEW I COULD DO IT!” Rainbow Dash cheered, pumping a hoof in front of herself in a victory gesture. “Rainbow Dash has saved the day again!”

Rarity gave a small ‘ahem’. “Pardon me for dousing the flames of your excitement, Rainbow, dear, but while you, and all of us, played a part in this, I believe the one keystone to our success was another pony,” she remarked, looking over to Twilight. Said unicorn blushed, sporting a coy smile.

“Meh, who cares about who is responsible? We ALL have a part in this!” Pinkie shouted. “And for that success, I say we have a bit of a celebration!”

The smile on Equestria’s supreme governor grew a little, before it deflated. She hated spoiling anypony’s fun. ‘Then again, they’re not exactly necessary as of right now…’ She decided to leave the gleeful young mares be, opting for approaching the ethereal whirlpool.

Now that her control was back, she could distinctly notice the siphon effect. Her eyes closed, and her sense extended to the tendril coming out of her essence. Indeed, it did move to the center of the spiral, reaching a point where it concentrated, but instead of spreading out in a root-like formation like she expected, it vanished. She cocked an eyebrow at that. ‘Strange, mana doesn’t dissolve this simply. No, “dissolve” isn’t the right word, it’s actually disappearing entirely.’

Without noticing, she stepped fully into the pool on the ground. She focused her sense once more, sending a little pulse of energy towards the focal point.

The other ponies and dragon only heard a yelp of surprise when the ground under Celestia’s hooves disappeared and she fell into the suddenly opened portal she inadvertently triggered. The first pair of eyes that turned that way only saw the misty mana being sucked into the dimensional vortex, along with the tip of an aurora-hued tail, before it closed and the floor of the Ponyville library was as clean and magic-free as it normally was.

The entire process took all of two seconds.

Everything was nothing. The quiet would be oppressive if one had a sense of individuality, which she didn’t. Instead, she was just like her surroundings: blank, devoid and sterile.

But no, she could sense something, a tug in her direction. Direction meant it came from somewhere and pulled at something… at her. It’s not possible to pull at nothing, so that meant she existed. And if she existed, she was something. Something living, and capable of thought.

With that in her mind, her sense of existence was restored, along with her physical form, and it all came to her: who she was, her role in the world – ‘my world,’ she added as an afterthought –, what had happened, and how she had come to be here, wherever it was.

Celestia let the pull drag her for she didn’t know how long or how far; the alicorn clung to it like a lifeline, lest the void begin draining her sanity through the sheer sensory deprivation it evoked. After some time – whether it was a matter of seconds, minutes, hours, days, or even years, she didn’t know – it diminished in its strength. She pushed towards its presence herself, which took a surprising amount of effort.

She noticed something else. A tall figure, wearing a blue garment she recognized as similar to a pony’s suit, observed her from afar. It was too distant for her to recognize anything other than its stance - which was the same as that of the figure in the ancient texts -, the rectangular lump at one of its forearms, and strangely enough, a pair of eerie green eyes that seemed to glow unnaturally.

Before the pony could even reflexively call out to whatever it was, she felt a smothering pressure, like she was being pushed into a layer of rubber. Trying to rip it open as if it was a physical barrier rewarded her with an explosion of color, sound, and tact. She hadn’t realized how much she had missed it all.

A strong light hit her closed eyes, and she turned away, her brow creased. ‘How odd,’ she thought, for the simple reason that an ordinary lamp wasn’t strong enough to create such an effect, and her sun didn’t due to her alignment with its magic. She flipped her eyelids open, and her sight was rewarded with the blurred sight of a gray texture. The ghostly light coming from a lone fluorescent lightbulb high up on the wall, didn’t do much to illuminate the cold, wet room the princess lay on.

As the teleportation daze faded away, she finally noticed a specific sensation: cold. However, it wasn’t the refreshing coolness typical of the breeze she loved to go out to her room’s balcony in the morning to feel; no, it was the sort of bitter, wet cold that was reserved for water of the streams on high altitudes, much higher up than even Canterlot. Looking down, she saw why: the place she had been sent to was flooded with enough water to cover just under half of her body as she lay on the floor.

As Celestia glanced around, she perceived a weight pulling down both on her neck and her rump. It didn’t take her long to find out what caused it. ‘Seems like this is really a “bad hair day” for me…’ Both her mane and her tail, usually almost incorporeal and floating in conjunction with her natural magic, were sopping wet, dangling limply from her body. She noted with intrigue that they were considerably heavier than when she bathed.

The place was littered with various pipes of all sizes, criss-crossing the entire to the ceiling, floor and walls, while a few were welded to a large contraption on the corner of the room. The walls were bare of any paint, being nothing more than pure, simple concrete. ‘A maintenance room, maybe a pump room?’ The constant droll of rushing water made her believe she was near a body of water, a large one at that. ‘Am I in a dam?’

“How’s that for easy prey, you son of a bitch?” a weak voice hacked outside. That tone… whoever it was not in good shape. She turned to a part of the room she hadn’t really looked at, and an empty doorframe greeted her eyes.

Eager for answers and concerned for this somepony that obviously needed medical assistance, the sovereign ignored the rest of the scenery and left.

The slumped monster didn’t move at all after it fell, but even then, it took Coach running past its limp body for the Crusaders to calm down enough to move. Scootaloo and Apple Bloom cantered back to the stairway, quick to join him and Sweetie Belle, the only one who had run under the walkways connecting to the door they all came in from. Neither filly dared to speak a peep as Ellis gently helped Rochelle up. “Y’all good, Ro?”

She nodded, grimacing slightly. “Yeah, I’m fine, just a bit bruised. Nothing broken from what I can feel.”

“That’s it, girl, walk it off,” the elder said encouragingly.

As Rochelle pulled out a yellow and white cylinder from her bag, the observing pegasus seized the chance to approach her. “Are you hurt?” she asked. “That looked really nasty.”

The woman grinned a pained smile. “Don’t worry, it’s gonna take more than one punch to bring this girl down!” she boasted, making a little pose while pointing a thumb at her own chest, suppressing the urge to moan out her discomfort. She had to stay strong, at least a bit longer. ‘I just hope we get to that damn bridge soon. I’m not sure I can take another one of these.’

The Crusaders stepped closer, but immediately pulled back when Rochelle pulled the tip of the cylinder she held, revealing a rather large needle surrounded by two plastic pads. It reminded them a bit too much of the vaccine seasons with Nurse Redheart, and the less said about those moments, the better.

Without another word, the human female stabbed the thin metal tube forcefully on her leg. “Heh, I’m not doing my cellulite any favors with this, but you guys don’t mind, do you?” she joked as she pulled it out after all the precious epinephrine had entered her body. Ellis and Coach laughed, while Nick allowed himself a quiet, non-sarcastic chuckle.

Scootaloo was amazed. She had always thought that nopony could ever hold a candle to Rainbow Dash, not even herself. And of course, her rescuer looked very unassuming and not nearly as cool as her idol. But… the filly was certain that the cyan pegasus couldn’t take a hit from something six or seven times larger than Big Macintosh, then inject herself with a needle longer than her own muzzle, and shrug it all off, all in the space of less than five minutes! If Rainbow Dash was coolness ponified, Rochelle was toughness in flesh and bone! She hopped to the front of the survivor as she threw the spent shot off to the side. “That was really cool!”

“Yeah, that’s our lil’ girl right here,” Ellis beamed. “Small like a button, tough like a nail.”

“Hey, who are you calling little?” Rochelle retorted in mock offense. “The way I see it, both Coach and Nick are taller than you, Ellis.”

The young man scowled, too deeply to be serious, in return. “Hey, now that’s not cool.”

Coach’s placating clapping drew the general attention. “Okay, kids, playtime’s over. We can sit an’ bully each other when we’re on the other side of that bridge.”

Sweetie Belle tilted her head. “Bridge?”

Coach’s gloved hand pointed a finger out to the horizon, above the low-rise buildings surrounding them, to an imposing structure not too far from their location. “That one over there.”

Further questions were stopped dead in their tracks when an explosion rocked the courtyard hard, the bomb having hit the ceiling of a building not fifty meters away. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle were thrown off their hooves and almost rolled down the steps, while the humans tossed themselves to the floor, Coach reflexively covering Scootaloo with his large frame. “OH COME ON!” Nick exclaimed, angry and exasperated. “Christ, these guys are such assholes!”

Rochelle sighed after she got up, staring at the busted barrel of her automatic carbine. “Just my luck,” she muttered as she removed the still-usable STANAG magazine from the gun. “Guys, I’ll have to go pistolero for now.”

“It’s fine, Rochelle, we’ll find you something else,” Coach reassured her warmly. “Now, let’s get it on, they ain’t gonna be waiting for us if they don’t know we’re here.”

The other six moved, the bald man taking point.

“Who’s not gonna wait?” Sweetie Belle asked, trotting right behind Nick as he jumped to the planks on top of the now stationary float. Coach and Rochelle had already crossed it, and were exploring the room beyond the still burning passage on the other side. Near the hole in the building was what Coach had pointed to first: a simplified picture of a house with a cross on its middle decorated the wall, an arrow next to it pointing to the ordnance-made entrance, painted by some kind-hearted survivor to guide others to an at least temporary safe shelter. The edges of the hole were still burning: it had to be a recent crafting.

The con man sighed in irritation, covering his forehead with one hand. “Look, I’m tired, hungry, my trigger finger is hurting already, and my three thousand dollar suit has more stains than I could ever wash off and a sleeve that I don’t think I can mend. Go bother someone else before I really lose my patience.”

The small unicorn took a step back, frowning. “Wow, no need to be so grumpy. I’m just asking.”

“No need? No need?!” The annoyance was very evident in Nick’s voice as he spun around to face the pony. “Look aroundja, it’s a freakin’ zombie apocalypse! The world’s gone to hell! If you ask me, I have more than one good reason to be ‘grumpy’!” he finished, flexing the index and middle fingers of his free hand in the universal ‘quote’ gesture at the last word.

“Nicolas,” Coach said from unexpectedly close, putting a hand on the younger man’s shoulder, “calm down, boy. Keep your shit tight. She just asked you a question, nothing more. It ain’t like she’s the one to blame for all this.”

Nick scowled and lightly shrugged off the hand, moving ahead without saying another word.

His informal chief sighed. “I’m too old for this shit.”

“What’s his problem?” Apple Bloom, who had just joined her friend on top of the cart, asked. “He’s been nothin’ but mean ever since we met.”

“That’s just Nick being Nick. Don’t worry, he ain’t a bad guy.”

“That’s what Rochelle told us,” Scootaloo uttered as the Crusaders followed Coach off the improvised bridge and into the empty storeroom. “But…”

Coach laughed. “Yeah, he tends to rub people the wrong way at first. But lemme tell ya, if y’all want someone backing you up when you got a bunch of zombies right in your face, that someone’s him.”

The confident, friendly tone of his voice reassured the ponies by a good degree, and they moved quietly further into the building, backed up by Ellis. The destroyed room they had passed held nothing but broken wood and some empty paint buckets, serving as nothing more than an alternate entrance. A dark hallway greeted them next, the drab orange paint of the walls cracked both by its age and the tremors of the payloads being dropped all over the city. Off to the left, they could hear someone rummaging through clothes. They moved in to see a bedroom, Rochelle searching inside a wardrobe that she soon left alone.

Seconds later, Nick left the adjacent bathroom. He glared at the fillies for a second, then walked around them and out of the room in complete silence. Shrugging to each other, they followed, hooves clopping lightly against the wooden floor. Outside, Coach waited at the top of a staircase. Once all were reassembled, he started going down it, waving his shotgun about warily. The lower floor only yielded various rooms in complete disarray, none of which hid anything useful.

An open door beside the foot of the stairs led to a short back alley. The place looked reasonably untouched: a plant-littered wall stood on one side, the other one composed of the side of a shorter, wooden building covered in closed windows. Nick crossed first, followed by Rochelle, the Crusaders, Coach and finally Ellis. It was a formation subconsciously made to keep the most vulnerable targets away from the edges. It didn’t have to be explained or proposed, it simply came up in and of itself. Nick could say he was surprised when he thought back on it, before he dismissed the thought as really not important.

Once again, the way to the street was blocked, this time by a gate, so he passed the empty doorway in front of him and shone the improvised tactical light on his AK into the room that awaited them. Nothing but boxes in one end of the hall, and a door in the other. “This must’ve been a nice place to live before all this…” Coach muttered.

As Nick entered the following room, he couldn’t help but grin. He quickly snatched the metal cylinder from a shelf. “Pipebomb for me!” The recipe for the zombie-luring bomb had sure become widespread before the Internet went down.

“’Pipebomb’?” Scootaloo asked almost at the same time as her friends.

Nick ignored them, instead peering through the arch leading into the next room, which he identified as the foyer of an unidentifiable store, the contents of its aisles stolen long ago, either during the panic at the start of the outbreak or by lucky survivors a while later. Nick was quick to dispatch the three zombies inside the store, killing one before he was noticed and the other two before they could reach him, and with the area clear, the human motioned for the others to come in.

As Rochelle took an advantage of her reduced load to raid the red medical cabinet in the back room they were in, filling her bag with the few bandages and minor objects there were in it, Ellis moved forwards into the front room, rifle loaded and raised, and Coach kept an eye out for the back entrance, ears alert for the sound of anything banging on the wood of the now closed door of the alleyway.

The Equestrians moved about in silence, observing the humans do their self-assigned jobs. Apple Bloom walked to Coach. “Mistah Coach, how long will it be ‘til we’re in one of them ‘safe houses’ y’all keep talkin’ ‘bout?”

“I wish I knew, young’un,” he answered, not looking at her. “We’re all flyin’ blind here.”

The two short phrases greatly disturbed the yellow pony. ‘So we’re gonna have to stay outside with these… these zombies?’

Before her mood could plummet further, though, the man continued, “But there was a sign back there. Those ain’t painted around for shits and giggles; there’s gotta be somethin’ close by.”

That brought a small smile to Apple Bloom’s face, and Coach was glad he didn’t let it slip that he was trying to convince her as much as himself.

Sweetie Belle, to her luck, found that Ellis was a lot more approachable than Nick. “… so, noise and puke attract the zombies?”

“No, not jes’ pure puke, Boomer bile,” he explained, peeking at the street from the corner he was in.

The unicorn shifted on her hooves. “And what’s a ‘Boomer’?”

“Listen,” he said, lowering his own volume. “Can ya hear it?”

From her position, she could indeed hear grunts that she couldn’t describe as anything but ‘obese’, accompanied by sounds similar to burping and dry heaves, though she couldn’t pinpoint where it came from no matter the direction her ears swiveled to. The filly approached the window for a peek outside before Ellis could say otherwise… and was rewarded by the fright of a large mass dropping from high above right in front of her.

Sweetie Belle didn’t have time for anything before a veritable river of a goopy, oily substance coming from the exploding lump washed over her. The vile fluid disturbed almost all of her senses: her vision was blurred, the feeling on her skin was robbed of all sensation by the running liquid, but nothing compared to the smell – it stank to high heavens of rotten meat, expired soap and old sweat. And the taste, Celestia, the taste! ‘Ewwww! This is the grossest thing ever!’

“Aw, shit!”

Scootaloo and Apple Bloom turned to the entrance just in time to see Ellis run back behind the counter, holding their retching friend with one hand. Quickly, he deposited her on the floor next to him, taking position behind the waist-high barricade. “Y’all get ready now!” he warned, tense.

As Sweetie Belle did her best to contain her heaves, rubbing the clingy bile off her eyes while spitting it repeatedly from her mouth, the humans waited for the inevitable mass attack, eyes keen on all potential entrances and trigger fingers ready to pull down on reflex.

“Hello? Anypony out there?”

The lighting had diminished considerably, and the water splashing against Celestia’s legs felt like a current had started forming. The passageways had a bit of a low ceiling and were very narrow horizontally, obviously not designed for anypony her size to trudge through comfortably, and so she took care not to unfurl her wings or raise her head too high. The close encounter her horn had had with the rough concrete of a doorway not a minute ago was still fresh both in her memory and in her neck muscles.

The faint cough intensified as the owner of the voice shouted a strained “Over here!”, and she hurried down the hall, trusting her ears to guide her hoofsteps. The light she had brought forth on her horn wasn’t much help, as the dark sheen of the wet concrete seemed to absorb it. She could swear the place was a labyrinth.

She came across an open metal door, where the ill throes seemed to be coming from, and peeked inside.

The cold in her gut returned with a vengeance. Inside the room, the body of a familiar, primate-like alien creature floated on the water, face down, lolling limply when her hooves sent ripples towards it. The sheer amount of color escaping from its underside and head left no room for wondering about its vital state.

However, that sight was quickly forgotten when wheezing reached Celestia’s ears. Up on a section of the room above the water level, another similar being lay slumped against the side of what looked like a turbine. Its face turned to the floor, one hand holding a metallic L-shaped apparatus, the other clutching its stomach. Beside it, a crowbar lay forgotten on the ground, its curved end painted a dark red. It coughed, exactly as the winged unicorn remembered the nameless voice doing, and Celestia couldn’t climb the stairs fast enough. “Goodness, what happened to you?!” the winged unicorn asked as she hurried up the small steps leading to its location.

When it looked up, she winced, startled by how horribly disfigured its – her? – face was. The skin near one of its eyes was swollen and colored an angry purple, making it impossible to open. The other eye seemed to have been gouged out by the strike of a clawed paw, blood flowing freely down its roundish features and mingling with the dribbles of the vital fluid that came from its mouth. The garments it wore were filthy, stained with blood and a sort of greenish, dried substance she couldn’t identify. Its torso sported four round holes in a rough circle, above and to the right of the wound her hand clutched.

It was with unspeakable horror that Celestia realized the creature, whatever she was, was using a hand to hold its own innards inside its abdomen.

It coughed again. “That bitch over there,” it muttered in a definitely female voice as she pointed vaguely in the direction of the water. “God damn Hunter… bastard got me good…”

She was interrupted by a particularly vicious coughing fit.

It was the third time in a single day that Celestia was speechless. She gazed in the direction the finger pointed, then back at the injured being. “I…”

“… don’t worry about me,” the injured female said after the hacking subsided. “I was a nurse, I know what… I know my condition. A punctured lung, internal bleeding …” Another fit, which she waited out before resuming more calmly, “… perforated abdomen… Let’s - let’s just face it, I’m fucked.”

Equestria’s head of government wouldn’t believe she could be any more stunned. She had seen ponies at death’s door before – a sad side effect of outliving most of her peers and friends –, and they all shared an uncharacteristic tranquility, a sense of tranquility that belied their fate. However, she had never seen anyone with this many mortal wounds act so nonchalant, despite the signs of severe pain. It was as impressive as it was heartbreaking. “Can I… do something for you?” Celestia asked, her head bent down close to the almost dead primate.

“For me? You can stop worrying… and get out of here,” the unnamed female snarked. “This blasted plant is… it’s a death trap. Last… Last I heard, the naval base was safe. Go there, it’s not far. The military are…”

The fits were getting longer and longer.

“… they’re still taking in survivors.” Her voice was getting slurry, the blood loss slowly cradling her into unconsciousness. “Take the gun and the… the rucksack over there… may be something you… you can…”

The rest of the sentence was left in the air; the creature, almost dead, didn’t have the energy to finish it.

On a whim, Celestia flared her magic, trying to stabilize the unknown being’s vitals enough for her not to fall asleep. She had never been a specialist in the arts of healing, and doubted her capability to save the one she was talking to, but she might be able to keep her from expiring until she was done talking. She molded her mana, and her horn glowed.

To her surprise, the golden casing she expected didn’t appear around her patient, who jerked stiff, at the same time uttering a prolonged, agonizing gurgle. Her limbs and all of their subsections extended and flexed randomly as she spasmed on the floor, her nervous system gone on a fritz.

‘What?! No! This isn’t what’s supposed to happen!’

Celestia, shocked to tears, could only watch as her patient squirmed and convulsed like an ant under a magnifying glass for well over ten seconds, reduced to incoherent, hyperventilating whimpers. Finally, she stopped moving, her shape stiff and twisted like a tin can crushed underfoot. The alicorn couldn’t take the emotional strain anymore; she turned tail and bolted, breathing rapidly, threatening to sob. Her mind did not consider for a second the objects she was told to pick up, nor the sight of unnaturally sharp nails jutting out of the corpse in the water, or the questions of what a Hunter actually was, or what the creature meant by ‘survivors being taken in at the naval base’.

As if to mock the Princess of Equestria, a shrill, maniacal bout of laughter echoed through the tunnels.

Five former humans, two females and three males, rushed the storefront through the windows, and were quickly dispatched by the well-positioned Nick and Ellis. Over twenty tense seconds of no combat passed until Ellis felt it safe to as little as to wipe his ooze-covered trigger hand on his pants. “Weird,” he remarked as he lowered his rifle. “Where are all them zombies?”

“Beats me,” Nick responded. He pointed a thumb over his shoulder at the back of the store. “Guess bile doesn’t smell that nice on them.”

“Well, let’s take all the blessings we can get,” Coach said, leaving the cover he had taken in anticipation of the massive assault that never came. He set his Remington 870 against the counter, turning to the filly beside Ellis. “Hey, how ya feelin’?”

“Disgusting,” Sweetie Belle muttered miserably. “This gunk stinks so much, and it won’t get off my mane!”

“Take it easy, it’s gonna dry out soon,” he reassured her, standing back up. “Ellis, check outside.”

The mechanic did as asked, peering out a window to the street. “Nothin’ around, Coach. Ah reckon we should move while it’s like that.”

“I’m with ya, boy,” he agreed.

With the general compliance voiced soon after, they moved out to the street, this time with Ellis in front and Nick in the rear. The path they were in was once again silent, the effect of desolation enhanced by the amount of buildings with their windows and doors covered by large wooden plates. Rochelle tried prying one off with her hands, to no avail – they were deceptively well-nailed.

As Ellis peeked into a corner leading to a back alley, something caught his eye. “Hey, y’all, we really got a safe house close by!” he beckoned with a hand, his grinning face not turning away from the familiar sign sprayed on the wall in black aerosol paint. “We just gotta find a way around this fence.”

“There’s a door up there,” Rochelle pointed out, her finger extended to the roof of the adjacent building, a low-class apartment building. Indeed, an extension of it was one floor only, and its roof was low enough for a safe drop. "We can jump down from up there if we reach it."

“Alright, let’s go, then,” Nick called, looking up at the sign above the door. “Gators Speakeasy… Wonder if I can find some booze here.” The empty doorframe, with the paint on its sides peeling off due to disrepair and old age, convinced him to correct himself. “Nevermind. It’ll be a miracle not to get tetanus in this hole.”

The paint job inside, a worn-down dark green, seemed to trap the feeble light of the smoky sunrise, which did not do his eyes any favors. His flashlight went on. “Ugh, let’s just get out of here,” Rochelle asked behind him, to the disagreement of no one.

As the now mostly dry and smell-less Sweetie Belle passed through a bunch of black trash bags piled up in the corner of the entrance hallway, her hoof hit something with a glassy ‘clink’. She looked down at what it was, and discovered a cylindrical jar full of a vivid green liquid, sealed with a red cap and covered with paper tags printed with tons of small letters. “Hey, I think I found something,” she remarked.

“What?” asked Scootaloo and Ellis at the same time.

“Check this out.” She rolled the glass towards herself. Her hornlight shone on its contents, casting a faint, alien green glow on her legs.

Apple Bloom ooh’ed at the display. “Y’all reckon what this doodad is?”

“This,” the Georgian said as he bent down, his hand clamping down on the object, “is Boomer bile. Useful crap.”

“You mean the zombie-attracting stuff?” Sweetie Belle asked, her eyebrow twisted into a tilde-like shape. “Why would you want that?”

“HEY, ELLIS!” a male shouted from above. “Quit horsing around!”

“Ha ha ha,” he deadpanned. He turned to the little ones near his shins. “C’mon, let’s catch up.”

As soon as Scootaloo could peek out at the second floor, Nick exited through a dilapidated doorway, fiddling with his rifle. “What’s the matter, you found some toys in there?”

“A stink bomb ‘nuff of a toy for ya?” Ellis said, nonchalantly holding the glass container up at eye level.

The shady man made to say something, but realized the jab had been turned on its head and against him, and promptly clamped his jaws shut. Instead, he narrowed his eyes and brushed past the lad with a disdainful ‘pfft’. “Love you too, Nick!” Ellis shouted at his back, to which he replied by flipping him the bird. The younger survivor just laughed.

The fillies, who had watched the exchange passively, spoke up. “What a grumpy-pants,” Sweetie Belle mumbled.

“What was that all about?” Apple Bloom asked, curious.

“Jes’ givin’ Nick what he got comin’ for him before Ro did,” the human answered smugly, already walking towards the roof access door his older companion had gone through. “He likes to give everyone shit, so we pull the rug from under his feet an’ he pipes down. Works every time.”

Somewhere in the back of their busy minds, Apple Bloom made a vague mental note to do something like that to Diamond Tiara when they found their way back to Ponyville. It sounded like a good anti-bully tactic.

Outside, something came to Rochelle as she took a cautious look at the empty back alley behind the building. “You know, that kid had a point. We're so used to dealing with a lot more zombies than this.”

There was another rumble, rather far away this time. Coach looked in the direction of the newest column of smoke he could see. “Guess the bombs got somethin’ to do with it.”

The woman shrugged. “Good guess as any, I suppose…”

“Yeah, with our luck,” Nick grunted, stepping into the dying sunlight, “that means we’ll be blown up before we’re ripped apart.”

Both dark-skinned survivors made it a point of ignoring the rambling man. As soon as Ellis arrived with his three escortees, Coach jumped down to street level beside a still-running generator feeding power to a spotlight focused on the graffitti, likely for nighttime visibility. “Hey, send me the lil’ ones,” he called from below.

Nick turned to the ponies at Ellis’ feet. “You heard the man, sweethearts.” Contrary to his words, his voice at the last word was anything but sweet, something they noticed easily. Him nudging Scootaloo’s rear end with his foot, as light as the gesture may have been, cemented the deal.

“You know, it doesn’t hurt to be nice sometimes,” the pegasus grumbled, looking down at Coach’s extended arms and missing the death glare Nick sent her way. Nearby, Rochelle snickered.

“I swear…” he mumbled under his breath, prompting the woman to laugh outright.

Ignorant to the chatter above, Scootaloo leapt down and into Coach’s arms, forcing the unprepared man to take a step back to maintain his balance. “Well, shit, you’re a bit heavier than you look,” he chuckled as he set her on the ground. She blushed, but he simply waved her off. “Shit happens, don’t get your panties in a wad over it.”

“’Shit happens’…” Scootaloo repeated, almost chewing on the words. Meanwhile, Ellis leapt lightly to the floor near her, catching Apple Bloom on her way down as Rochelle did the same with Sweetie Belle. “Er, mister Coach?” she beckoned, poking the man’s leg with a hoof. “What is this ‘shit’ you guys all keep talking about anyway?”

Even the ever so sour Nick couldn’t keep a straight face at that; he, Ellis and Rochelle all laughed both at the absurdity of the question and Coach’s flustered face. “Oh, c’mon, people!” he complained, embarrassed. When he realized none of the younger survivors would help him with his plight, he turned back to the orange pony. “Well, shit, uh, let’s just say it’s something that happens, ‘kay?”

“Okay,” Scootaloo shrugged. “But when does it happen? And what are ‘panties’, and why would they be in a wad?”

The level of the laughter increased. He felt his dark skin begin to redden. “God damn it. Let’s just go.” With that, he trudged on ahead, leaving three sniggering humans and three confused foals a small distance behind him. In the middle of the alleyway, his mood swung upwards in a split second. “Hey, it’s the bridge!”

The announcement made the humans quiet down like magic. “Holy shit,” Nick sighed, “I think we actually made it!”

As Coach checked an opening to the right, leading to a parking lot, they ran to his position, circumventing dumpsters and garbage bags, and indeed, a curved slope greeted them right outside the alley. A great number of infected littered the section of the road below the start of the bridge, milling like ants around a smashed car, the single intact turn signal flashing uselessly.

“Huh, guess we found out where they all went to,” Rochelle observed as they all moved back into the alley where they wouldn’t be noticed.

“… that’s a lot of them,” said an intimidated Apple Bloom. “How are we gon’ get past?”

Nick nudged the others out of his way, making a show out of pulling the pipebomb he’d swiped from the shop before out of his pocket. He fished out a beat up lighter with his other hand and lit the wick, causing the fire detector components wrapped around the metal cylinder to beep and whine loudly at the smoke, attracting the attention of the closest infected. “Chase this, you bastards!” He yelled as he tossed the improvised grenade right in the middle of the open area. The zombies, even those who had begun sprinting in his direction, turned right around to the source of the cacophony, crowding around it.

The explosion that followed was spectacularly gruesome, even by the survivors’ dulled standards of violence. The whole mob that had come around the pipebomb, angrily trying to stomp out the beeping, was completely annihilated, the closest ones almost vaporized, while the farther others were rippped to pieces. Torn meat chunks and blood droplets rained down upon the surrounding area, almost reaching their position.

But getting soaked in red was far from the top of their list of concerns.

The sound of the detonation was channeled by the alley’s walls, amplifying its already violent noise to a flashbang's levels. Much like the surprised humans did, the Crusaders closed their eyes on reflex, bringing their hooves to their sensitive ears with acute shrieks of pain.

“FUCK!” Nick cursed to no hearing ears: he wasn’t expecting that to happen, even though he should have seen it coming a mile away. How could he have been so goddamn stupid?!

The con man couldn’t hear the frightening bellow akin to an angry cow’s. The vibrations on the ground were cushioned by the soles of his shoes. A child’s gasp of pain couldn’t pierce through his tinnitus.

However, he did notice the crusty forearm that smashed into his face and chest, throwing him backwards and into a wall.

As he’d put it himself, he felt jack shit after that.

Light. Corner. Stairs. Lamp. Pipe. Everything passed in a blur, barely registered by her livid, panicked mind.

It took several minutes of running for exhaustion to override Celestia’s addled brain, only then allowing her to calm down enough to slow her frantic galloping down to a trot, and to a slow walk from there. ‘It wasn’t your fault, you didn’t know that would happen,’ she repeated mentally to herself as she pushed her way past a semi-ajar door. The mantra was anything but false: in all of her many years of life, nothing had reacted like that to a healing spell, even one cast by an inexperienced pony. It just wasn’t right.

Instead of lingering on her previous misdeed, the princess mare chose to focus on her current surroundings, which consisted of a large, warehouse-like space. Celestia knew nothing of how she’d gotten here; she could only remember having gone up several flights of stairs, a memory reinforced by the lack of icy water lapping at her legs. She knew she could have easily mistaken this location for Ponyville’s power plant, if not for two things. One, a barricade of sandbags and random furniture – no doubt taken from an office she could see on a corner of the room – was set in front of a large, closed door. Number two were the many skid marks all over the floor, along with splotches of the same color decorating some of the walls. Curiously, the vast majority of the random spills stopped right before the blockade, with only a few existing past it. As she went near one such stain, her nose twitched. ‘It smells like… rust.’

Confused, she followed the terracotta lines. Absentmindedly, she stepped around a corner, which greeted her eyes with a simple slope, sunlight filtering from a half-closed shutter at the top. ‘Finally!’

It took some effort for the unusually large pony to crawl through the narrow opening, the rough concrete scraping her sensitive underbelly all the way through, but at last, she found herself outside. The light was unusually harsh on her eyes after so long underground, but at the same time, it filtered comfortingly into her body, prompting the mare to stretch her muscles in relaxed delight. She could feel her pastel locks starting to ebb once more, though not nearly as vibrantly as usual. Celestia opened her eyes and glanced at them, and indeed, her longer hairs were still droopy, even though the water in them had dried off. They also looked slightly discolored, glassy even.

Filing those observations for a later time, she took note of her surroundings. She was in a large, walled courtyard holding a number of colorful, rubber-wheeled carts that she couldn’t identify. With some confusion, she noticed a red one, at the end of a long trail of scratches on the floor, was upturned; it had a dent on its side, as if it had been violently knocked and sent tumbling to its current rest spot. Its windows seemed to have been made of glass, which was currently shattered, its shards strewn all over the pavement.

The area was littered with more brownish skid marks, along with a small amount of small yellow metal cylinders. The curious royal tried to lift one up telekinetically to take a closer look, but nothing happened. Celestia quirked an eyebrow, further drawing mana out of her reserves, and the capsule started to smolder a faint red, the air above it gaining an undulating trait much more characteristic of intense heat than magic, until it shakily lifted a centimeter off the ground.

The alicorn cut off the levitation spell, causing it to clink hollowly on impact with the pavement. She shouldn't have had to use enough power to lift a baby dragon to make such a diminutive piece of metal move off the ground.

Her eyes moved automatically to the sun, which was almost touching the horizon, signifying either sunrise or sunset. It was noticeably smaller and a lot brighter than she was accustomed to seeing, but that wasn’t what made her uneasy. What did was that, barring the one-way lane of its rays shining down on her body, she couldn’t feel the slightest direct connection with it. It only added to her growing unease.

Before she could think any more on the subject or continue the inspection, a throaty snarl reached her ears, predatory in nature. It didn’t sound like any beast she knew of: the throaty timbre brought a manticore to her mind, but the pitch was closer to a timberwolf’s growl. Either way, she decided not to find out what it was; the beasts of Equestria’s wilderness weren’t intimidated by her – namby-pamby, as a dragon clan had put it once – appearance; she’d always had to bring her magic to bear to stop any and all attacks. With it acting as oddly as it was, she wasn’t sure what might happen to this beast were she forced to defend herself, and killing was far from an action she wanted to take.

Her wings unfurled, and with a leap, Equestria’s main sovereign took to the skies. The air, for some reason, felt thin, not giving her the whole stability she expected, forcing her to beat her wings faster to gain substantial lift.

Whatever animal was nearby had other ideas, though.

An abnormally loud shriek rang out, echoing in the large space of the courtyard, and a yell approaching at a very fast speed made her head turn. Her eyes caught the sight of a primate-ish creature, much like the one she had met earlier on, sailing the air in an arc towards her, its hands outstretched like a pouncing feline. It fell short when she gained more height, only managing to hook a finger on her left hind leg’s golden shoe, which promptly left her hoof to clink on the ground ten meters below.

The creature landed, and immediately leapt up a second time, but it was a futile effort, as its target had already moved well beyond its jumping range. The first living infected Celestia ever saw, ironically of the same mutation branch which she first saw dead, was left to screech and growl in hunger and frustration at the emptiness of the derelict water treatment plant’s parking lot.

Author's Note

KARMAAAAA-