Chapters Prologue - Dead Ponies Walking
Derpy awoke in her bed at about 7:46 in the morning. She was tired, but reluctantly got up out of the bed. She looked in the mirror at her mane, it seemed as if a tornado had hit it. She felt miserable, so she decided to go fix her mane while having some muffins and morning coffee cooking. She went to her drawers and got out a robe and put it on, then went to the kitchen to get the muffin mix, and put it in the pan. After it got in the oven, she hastily got some coffee mix and put it in some hot water and mixed it up.
"I probably should put this in the microwave." She said. She turned grabbed the coffee and put it in the microwave and shut the microwave door. She then grabbed a remote to turn on the TV, as she did that, she turned it to the Equestrian News channel, and ran in the bathroom to fix her mane.
As she was doing so, she heard the oven go off, so she quickly ran to it and rubbed her eyes as she got the muffins out of it. She put three in her mouth and literally swallowed them whole. Then she grabbed her coffee and started to drink as if it were a 5th beer bottle (Sorry for the crappy analogy xD). She ate another muffin, and almost spit it out when she heard the Equestrian Alert System going off.
"What..the.." She said as she walked over to the TV.
"Holy Crap," The news pony said. "This just in, a certain flu virus has been unexpectedly released, and is spreading quickly and...WHAT THE BUCK? This was two days ago?? Everypony you must run to shelters quick, WHAT...WHAT THE BUCK IS THAT---AHHHH!!" The news pony was then pounced on by another pony. The other pony, as the news pony was screaming, ripped the news pony apart while eating bits and pieces of flesh. At this point, the screen was covered in blood and all you could hear was screaming as the screen went black.
"Well, that was a bit graphic for the news channel." Derpy said, taking another sip of coffee. She walked to the window and dropped her muffin on the ground at the sight. "Oh crap, " She said again. "they were right." Derpy trotted over to a wall on the side of her house covered in pictures of her and her family, then picked up one hung on the wall of Dinky. This revealed a button that said 'IN CASE OF EMERGENCY PRESS BUTTON FOR ARMS , She pressed the button and it revealed several tons of massive, heavy, lethal weapons. From M12's to AT-4's, there where tons of guns, knives, ammo, and first aid kits in stock each for a particular purpose. She grabbed a machete, desert eagle, and M249 and filled a backpack full of ammo and supplies. She got a digital map with a waypoint set do her house, she got some small beacons for setting other waypoints. After securing the weapons and putting a picture of Dinky in her backpack, she put on a vest and kicked her door open.
"Time to kill some zeds." Derpy said, grinning and aiming her M249 at one.
Chapter One - Aquire Partnership
As Derpy walked out the door with her weapons ready for use, the zeds noticed her and started making their way forwards. Derpy held up her heavy weapon for a moment. It was a large .50 Caliber M249 Hoof-Held SAW. It was capable of tearing through 5 heads at once. It fired about 3 rounds per second. It used incendiary ammo as well as regular ammo. It had a strap, which is what Ditsy used to keep it with her, while wielding her machete. She slowly took out the huge, sharp knife, and held it as if it were a baseball bat.
"Come at me you pieces of horse crap!" She shouted. One of the zeds trotted towards her. She threw back the knife and hurled it right between the undead ponies head. It penetrated deeply, cracking it's skull wide open, and sprayed blood all over Derpy. She wiped off the blood and yanked it out of the skull. She shook off the bits of brain tissue and threw the machete at another zeds neck, ripping a large, gaping hold in its throat and disconnecting it's spinal cord. She took out a pistol and shot more zeds in the face, killing them off one by one and clearing the area temporarily. She took her machete back and kept walking.
She made her way through to a safe area. There she walked up the dirt road to a cottage. It looked like Fluttershy's. Derpy saw boards on the windows, she was happy that Shy was safe, but it quickly changed when she walked closer, she saw one of the windows open and the boards torn off with some crooked, rusty nails sticking out. Not only this, but the stream of blood that was left behind. As Derpy got closer, she could hear the sounds of flesh being chewed, and the strong stench of iron. She gave her respects to Fluttershy, who, as she now realized, was dead; and left the cottage hastily to find another safe area.
~~~
After a few minutes of traveling, Derpy arrived at another safe place, after travelling a long, lonely road from the cottage. The area had some houses, with clear signs of recent corrosion and decomposition, due to fungus, moss, iron oxide, and other natural occurrences. She looked up and saw a figure standing with a small weapon pointed at her, staring directly at her.
"Wh..who are you?" It said in a trembling voice. "H...how--tell me now o..or I'll shoot!"
Derpy wasn't scared, mainly because the pony's hoof was trembling, his face was red, and she could tell it was his first time aiming a gun at somepony. She still took her precautions.
"Hey look, I'm not trying to hurt anypony, alright?" Ditsy said. "I just need to find some survivors."
"And how do I know that I can I tr-trust you??" he asked, walking closer to Derpy with the gun in gripped tightly in his hooves.
"My name is Derpy Hooves," Derpy responded.
"Oh Celestia...I heard you wouldn't harm a thing!" the stallion said again puting his gun down, then quickly raising it again.
"You heard I wasn't capable," Ditsy said with a low tone of voice.
"Well yes that but...I mean I don't want to---" he said again before being interrupted again.
"I get it, now we need to get back to a safe house before the zeds hear us," Derpy snapped. "Do you have place to stay?"
"Yeah," the stallion said, holstering his gun. "There's another stallion with me."
"Alright, what's his name?" Derpy asked
"Big MacIntosh."
~~~
After the conversation, the stallion showed Derpy the way to an old-looking house and led her inside. There was nothing upstairs.
"Now remember," the new guy said, "what is said in here stays in here, unless told otherwise,"
"Got it." Derpy replied.
"And another thing," the stallion continued. "There--" He stopped as he looked up at her. He started to stare at her intensely.
"Is there something behind me?" Derpy asked, putting her hoof on her knife.
The stallion snapped out of his daze. "Oh...sorry I, uh...just step this way," he quickly said.
As they walked slowly down the long staircase, Derpy began to observe him.
Welp, hes a dark shade of grey, his mane is several shades of grey **NO 50 SHADES REFERENCE**, his cutiemark is...a gun...and his name...
"Hey, I never caught your name, or age for that matter." Derpy said.
"My name is Gunny," Gunny responded. This confirmed that his gun experience very high, he had just not ever had the thought of shooting somepony, or at least somepony that was alive. This also gave Derpy some comfort, that he wasn't just some cold blooded killer.
"And your age?" Derpy said.
"I'm about 17," he said.
"I'm 16 almost 17, my birthday is in a couple of weeks, it kinda sucks now that I think of it..." Derpy said.
"I'm sorry, ma'am...I didn't know..." Gunny replied.
"It's okay...why did you call me ma'am?" Derpy asked
"I just thought it would be...you know...respectful...?" Gunny said, blushing slightly, which nonetheless confused Derpy.
"I don't need respect. Just call me Derpy, okay?"
"I'm...sorry," Gunny said. They continued walking downstairs to the safehouse.
Derpy and Gunny continued to walk down the long staircase. As they walked, the pair got to know each other.
"So, Gunny," Derpy said, "where did you shooting?"
"Well," Gunny replied, "I usually did it at home, but sometimes I would head over to the Ponyville archery range, but they have a special place for mechanical weapons, like pistols and stuff. So, they let me in the class, along with three other ponies. Speaking of which, you're about to meet one of those ponies. He's apparently pretty popular."
"Well, that would explain a lot," Derpy said.
"Yeah...haha...excuse my stupidity," Gunny said blushing from embarrassment.
"Don't worry. I like stupid ponies!" Derpy said. Gunny stared at her for a minute with a blank face. "I guess that could have been worded better...Anyway, back to the point...at the firing range there was you, Big MacIntosh, and the other two?"
"Both of them were mares. They both had cutie marks that indicated a talent for music. One had a Canterlot accent with a grey coat and black mane. Her cutie mark was a treble clef. And the other had a sixteenth note as a cutie mark, she had royal and right blue streaks in her hair, and she had a white coat and red eyes." Gunny responded. "Oh and the grey one...Oct--octo...octa---"
"Octavia?"
"Yeah, her. She had purple eyes."
"And the other one was Vinyl right?".
"Yeah! I remember now, we talked for a bit and we introduced ourselves to each other, I just didn't remember that was like...a month ago."
"Mm-hm."
They kept walking and eventually reached the door to the safe house. Gunny put his hoof on the handle and twisted it. He opened the door and revealed a huge underground room filled with munitions and food. But there were lots of pain pills. Lots of pain pills.
"Would you say, perhaps, you had enough freaking pain pills to last you your life?!" Derpy exclaimed.
"Well, we actually had more, but this is a couple of days with Big Mac, they don't last long." Gunny replied in a dull tone.
"Hey Gunny! Who was that?!" Big Mac shouted from the other room. It sounded like is mouth was full of cotton. He came out of a room with some pills in his hoof. He swallowed and shoved about ten more pills in. "Err whrr drd yrr frnd hrr?" Big Mac asked.
"Mac...." Gunny said. "She was was walking from Fluttershy's cottage and---" Big Mac spit pills on Gunny and blurted.
"Holy crap! That's Derpy Hooves!" Big Mac shouted abruptly as Gunny started wiping pills and spit off of his face. "I didn't know you were capable of using such weaponry!"
Derpy kicked him down and pinned him to the ground with her hind leg. She pulled out her pistol and aimed it at his head. "And you're fixing to find out if you don't learn how to conserve supplies and stop spitting on people. Now, would you kindly NOT piss me off and make some use of yourself?"
Both of the stallions were stunned by this behavior. Big Mac put up the container of pills he had and kept his distance from Derpy. Derpy knew she had earned respect from both the stallions, and she decided to use it to her advantage. She pulled out a waypoint indicator beacon, and started walking around.
"Crap, no signal to waypoint home. Gunny, I need you to come above ground with me and help me set a waypoint here, so we can get back to the house if we are lost looking for supplies," Derpy said. She grabbed an M4A1 and a combat knife off the wall and tossed the gun to Gunny, and threw the knife right beside his head making it stick into the wall. This, putting it lightly, scared the crap out of Gunny. He trembled as he took the knife out of the wall. Derpy held out her hoof to pick him up.
"No...I'm fine..." Gunny said. Derpy grunted and grabbed his hoof and pulled him up anyway. "Very rarely do I give another pony, especially a stallion, my hoof, so if I do, I don't let them decline my offer."
Gunny stood stunned for a minute. "Why me, then?" He asked. Derpy stopped for a minute.
"Figure it out," She responded, and then walked up the stairs.
Gunny froze for a minute, and then ran up the stairs to catch up with Derpy.
As Derpy and Gunny were walking up the staircase from the basement, they could hear the increasing volume of undead moaning. As they got about 4 steps from the exit, Derpy held up her hoof as a halt motion. Gunny stopped in his tracks. Derpy motioned him to get out his pistol, and he did so quietly but hastily. Derpy slowly opened the door peeking out around it and spotted the zeds they had been hearing half the way up.
"Okay, I see about um..." Derpy counted the zeds. "Four zeds." She said.
"That's good right?" Gunny whispered with some happiness in his tone.
"No, according to how much moaning we heard, that means that most of them are hidden, I would say there's about six or seven more." Derpy concluded. "So stay close."
"I'll have no problem with that." Gunny stated proudly. Derpy gave him a strange look, and once he realized what he said he corrected himself by saying, "I mean, that won't be hard because that's a basic thing and it's obvious and---"
"You calling me an idiot?" Derpy asked.
"No I...coglioni! " He said.
"idiota. " Derpy responded with a grin.
"Cazzo! " Gunny said back.
"porco demonio! " Derpy said again.
"Salute! " Gunny said.
"Bless me?" Derpy asked.
"Crap...okay back to the plan what are we going to do?" Gunny asked in a frustrated tone.
"Just follow me sweetums." Derpy said with a quiet laugh. Gunny laughed, but was still a bit pissed at his mistake. The two slowly made their way over to one of the zeds. Derpy took out her machete and slit it throat open and disconnected the nervous system from the brain. She slowly put the zombie on the floor and walked up to another, as she was doing so, Gunny stepped on a creaky board. This, unfortunately for the two, attracted the horde around the area. Derpy quickly swung her machete and sliced the zeds head clean off it's neck leaving a pool of blood on the floor where the head landed and a bunch on the ceiling before the corpse fell down.
"Alright Gunny, time to drop some carcassa! " Derpy said taking out her M249 and firing the .50 Caliber rounds blowing up heads left and right. Gunny took out his weapon and fired away at the zeds. While Derpy was firing at the zeds a different type of zed came up behind her and pounced her. She screamed and tried to get free of it's grip before it could hurt her. She gave up and as she was pinned by the thing, she quickly looked over the details. It was more muscular, it had long claws coming out of each hoof, covered in blood, saliva dripping from it's mouth and sharp teeth. It let out a horrifying screech as it got ready to tear Derpy apart. Before it could Gunny swooped in and tackled the zed, and proceeded with clubbing it's face in with the back of his pistol. With each sound of breaking bone and impact he hit harder until he literally broke through the skull, shattering it in to pieces, along with the brain. He flipped his pistol and fired accurately at most of the zeds, for the one he left off he threw a knife at it's face, allowing it to penetrate the zeds eye and stay in it, giving Gunny enough time to shoot another bullet tearing through the zombies face. He retrieved his knife and held his hoof out to Derpy, who was still staring at him in awe.
"You coming, 'sweetums?'" He asked with a grin on his face. Derpy grabbed his hoof and stood up.
"Yeah, I guess." She responded, taking out her Waypoint Indicator. "Alright I'll place this here and we should be good, now go back downstairs I'll meet you back there alright?"
"Okay..." Gunny said, he was still holding her hoof.
"What are you implying by the fact that you are still holding my hoof?" Derpy asked.
"Uhm...Well...I...Uh..." Gunny said, trying to find an excuse. "I didn't notice I was...!"
"Likely story, just go back to base and see what's next on our agenda, if there is nothing else, I'll make one."
"Oh..Okay..." Gunny replied, slowly letting go of Derpy's hoof and walking back down the staircase. As he disappeared from sight, Derpy smiled and placed the Waypoint Indicator down and walked back into the basement.
Chapter Four - Apocalypse Rising
Back downstairs, Gunny and Big Macintosh were listening for things on the radio, and mostly all it was were repetitive warnings and instructions telling everypony not to come in contact with infected individuals and wait in a safe-house until further instructions and blah blah blah, but of course nopony gave a crap about the whole 'instruction list,' all they wanted was a way out and a way to end the apocalypse. Big Mac and Gunny were just a bit annoyed with the delay of useful messages, but again the whole thing just started the night before, so there wasn't really much to look for and the only reason they had a place to stay was because Gunny knew the place very well.
As for Ditsy, she was looking around the area after she planted the W.I. (Waypoint Indicator from now on). She noticed that there were more zeds than usual, and more hordes. She spotted some binoculars on the ground and climbed down to pick them up. After the retrieval, she looked over to the town square, or circle given the shape it actually was. She saw a strange looking zed that was facing against about ten more. All of the ten were aligned in a straight position, like an army of some sort, and the one 'commanding' them, was a unicorn. Derpy observed the motions of all of the zeds, and concluded that what ever virus had taken over the bodies was not a normal virus. She assumed that it knew what it was doing, and was doing more than just inserting it's own deoxyribonucleic acid into the organisms, it was controlling them and taking advantage of their abilities. It seemed the infected unicorns, the ones with horns that had not rotted away, possessed an ability to create a sort of 'hive-mind,' controlling a group of zeds and putting them together in some order. The thought of this was a bit frightening, so she hurried back inside to meet with the others.
So far with Gunny and Mac, nothing had happened. Just repetition of the 'U.I.G.' or, Useless Instruction Guide, as they called it. They decided they would turn the radio on automatic for more important updates. Gunny heard Derpy trotting downstairs, and quickly ran to open the door. As he opened it Derpy came in panting as if she had just ran down a huge flight of stairs....which she just did...
"Are you okay?" Gunny asked, putting his hoof on her shoulder.
"Yeah...yeah...I'm...I'm okay." Derpy said, panting heavily between each word.
"What happened?" Gunny asked again, fixing removing his hoof from Ditsy's shoulder. Derpy kept him from proceeding in the action and answered his question.
"There's something up...with this virus...it know's what it's doing...there's---" Derpy said, before being interrupted by Big Mac.
"Slow down kid, catch your breath!" He said. He waited a moment for Ditsy to stop breathing so heavily. "Now, what's with the virus being different?"
"Well," Derpy started. "I haven't got much to base a hypothesis on, but I have observations that I would assume are close. The virus seems to know what to do with pony powers; if it's an earth pony with muscles strong enough to survive the virus it becomes what is known as a Tank, or a Pouncer. If it's a pegasis, it will be able to fly if the wings are not corroded.
"But worst of all, if it is a unicorn, and the horn is still there...it possesses the ability to form an army, and it won't be disorganized, the virus knows how to use the magic, basic infected unicorns can create a mind-carrier over about ten zeds. But if it infected an alicorn such as Princess Twilight...who knows how big of a hive-mind it could create." Big Macintosh and Gunny pondered this for a second.
"So what you're saying is..." Gunny responded. "They are like aliens, with the hive-mind and all?"
"Yes, but more like the virus is, I think it's a living virus." Derpy answered.
"That's not possible!" Big Mac argued. "I may not know much science, but I do know that viruses are non-living organisms!"
"Non-living organisms? Doesn't that kinda cancel itself out?" Derpy asked.
"Well, you know what I meant." Big Mac replied.
"I do, and you know that the only place something like that could happen..." Derpy said.
"The Everfree Forest..." Gunny said.
"Right," Derpy continued. "We need to drag one of the zeds in here, and if we can get a unicorn off guard, we can probably use the magic in it's horn to our advantage."
"How are we going to do that, and the other thing?" Big Mac asked.
"Your strong enough, you can hold the zed, after I cut off the bottom jaw, and you won't get bit!" Derpy said with a smile. "And if we find a unicorn we can grind the horn and separate the magic essence from it. We can use water, magic won't be dissolved, but it's much less dense than water, and the bits and pieces of the unicorn horn."
"Alright, let's get this over with..." Gunny said with a huff.
~~~
As they walked out of the door there was one zed standing by, and fortunately, he was facing the same direction they were. Derpy took out her machete and hit the zed with the handle, barely breaking skin on it's forehead but leaving big evidence of a large impact, and then she swung the machete at it's mouth and almost got the jaw off. However...the machete got stuck in the bone, so Ditsy pulled back on the machete harder and harder. She heard skin tearing and bone cracking, but she didn't have time to notice when the jaw was going to disconnect, therefore launching her back a couple of feet from the zombie. The zed ran at her but noticed it couldn't eat her without it's bottom jaw, it stared Ditsy in the eye. Derpy noticed who it was and a tear ran down her eye. The other two didn't noticed as they shot it's arm and leg joints and tied it up to pull it back in the safehouse. Derpy buried her face into her bloody hooves. Only Gunny noticed her weeping.
"Derpy...what's wrong?" He asked. She slowly looked up at him.
"That was Dinky..."
"Who is Dinky?" Gunny asked once they got downstairs. Derpy slowly wiped her eyes of tears, and responded.
"When I was about seven...both my parents died, one after another. Their deaths were slow...and painful, and I had to watch the whole thing. Something happened underground, some type of...mining for a new element that was known to hold a type of magic that could heal anything, it didn't have a name, but those...those greedy asses! They were told of the danger...but they just wanted the element. Before we could notice, there was an explosion, they didn't notice how close they were to ground, and they caused a sinkhole to form under our neighborhood. Our house was at the edge, it was torn in half, me, my parents, and my little sister all fell in. I got a piece of shrapnel stuck in my arm. I can remember my parents telling me it was going to be okay, and we just had to wait for rescue. Then I saw my father trying to crawl up, he was fixing to give me a kiss on the cheek, and something fell on him. What I felt on my cheek...was his blood when his skull was crushed under rock and his eyes were popped and his bones broken...I remember hearing my sister screaming 'daddy!' and my mother weeping loudly. But along with the rock came more and more fragments of metal, falling all over my mom and my little sister...I can remember their screams, their agony, the blood shooting out from their bodies.
"When I was extracted from the zone, I could remember seeing a little filly looking at me. She was a unicorn, she knew magic very well, she healed my wounds, she helped me out, but the doctors never saw her, every time somepony else would come in, she would disappear...she wasn't a ghost or anything, she just never let anypony see her. When my time at the hospital was done, they put me in an orphanage. I was made fun of for my eyes, but I remembered they were normal, I went in and looked at myself in the mirror. They were crossed. Whatever element they had, was extremely radioactive, and when it isn't applied right, it does different things. I was considered a mental defective, an ugly retard who didn't have parents or anything live for. With the help of Dinky, I escaped the orphanage. She used magic to make me learn faster, and learn more. My intelligence, survival skills, strength, and more things were increased dramatically.
"One day though, she left, the filly. I don't know why, but I assumed it was for good reason, and kept on living. I couldn't dream of harming her, and now...I just cut off her bottom jaw and ordered her to be tied up....and I..."
Derpy started to weep again. Gunny quickly came down to comfort her.
"No Derpy, you didn't. That thing back there is not Dinky, that is her corpse taken over by a virus. Don't let guilt consume you, all you can do is hope that she died quickly. But if there is a cure, I promise you she will be the first one we cure, and I'm sure her magic will fix her...jaw problem." Gunny wiped the tears from Derpy's eyes and kissed her on her forehead. "It's okay...It's okay.."
Big Mac was nonetheless disgusted by the whole thing so he decided to check on the zed. But when he went back there, it was untied and it's jaw was grown back. Big Mac grabbed a nearby pistol and knife and shouted,
"OH BUCK IT'S LOOSE!!!"
The others hurried in to see that the zed had grown back all of it's joints and it's jaw. Gunny grabbed a Carbine and Derpy took out her machete.
"Dinky...are you still in there?" She asked. The corpse almost replied with a yes, but the zed quickly changed the attitude to seek and devour. The thing jumped on Ditsy, Ditsy rolled it over and sliced off both of it's arms.
"Dinky you can overpower it...take it over!" She shouted. The zed stopped and the corpse looked up at Derpy with a tear in it's eye.
"I'm....srrry....goodbrr..." It mumbled before turning back into a savage monster. Derpy felt tears streaming as she destroyed the corpse with her machete spreading gore everywhere within a sixteen inch radius.
They all stared at the corpse as it remained motionless and in pieces. Gunny quickly grabbed a syringe and extracted some DNA from the zed.
"Big Mac, get it out. Were done with this piece of crap." Gunny said. Big Mac nodded and drug the thing by it's leg to put into the trash room.
Chapter Six - False Salvation
After days of listening to the radio and going out day by day to get food nothing happened. It's summer time, 19 days in. An estimated 1,294,232 ponies have been infected. Derpy and Gunny have developed more of a relationship, Big Mac is less addicted to pills, and the radio still hasn't said a bucking thing about safety...only the U.I.G.'s repetition. Derpy was sitting beside Gunny holding his hoof and leaning her head on his shoulder. The relationship between the two was a bit odd. They kissed each other on the cheek occasionally, sometimes say 'Eu te amo' , I love you, and they held hooves, but there was still one thing left. They hadn't had a first kiss. As far as they were concerned, a 'first kiss' is when they are both kissing each other, that's a mouth to mouth, lip to lip kiss. As of now they were more concerned about the apocalypse.
"Okay I'm getting tired of this!" Big Mac shouted. "If they don't say something other than that bucking U.I.G., I'm going to---!" He was interrupted by the radio.
The Equestria Emergency Radio Broadcast (EERB) has issued a statement to all listening survivors of the apocalypse, Cloudsdale has been initiated as a rescue camp for all ponies. A large extraction of magic that was made approximately ten years ago has been used on Cloudsdale to support a solid surface for all ponies, extraction Air Balloons and Helicopters are in the listed locations: In Manehattan Airlift, In the Ponyville Flatlands---
Big Mac cut off the radio. "I think that's enough, we know where to go."
"What time?" Gunny asked.
"I probably should have listened more..." Big Mac said.
"Pfft yeah...no dip Sherlock." Gunny said.
Big Mac turned on the Radio, and unfortunately the channel had finished broadcasting the evacuation times.
"Well buck..." Big Mac said. He plopped down on a couch and laid down. "I need some sleep, I'd say the same for you two too."
Derpy and Gunny looked at each other.
"I'll take the floor tonight, you can sleep on the bed." Gunny said.
"No I will, it's fine, I'm used to rough situations." Derpy replied.
"Eventually we are either both going to sleep in the floor, or both in the bed." Gunny said with a laugh.
"Ooooh now don't yall get to wild up in there!" Big Mac said chuckling.
"Heh heh, yeah alright you just stay in your bed okay?" Gunny replied jokingly.
"I don't mind us both in the same bed." Derpy suggested.
"Wait what?" Gunny asked.
"I mean, it doesn't matter as long as we don't engage in sexual contact, and besides we are in a zombie apocalypse, who would be able to marry us, much less care about it?" Derpy said, justifying her statement.
"Well you have a point." Gunny said. Laying down on his bed, then he realized something. "Wait this is a bed for one pony..."
"Well your not fat are you?" Derpy asked. Her and Gunny looked at Big Mac.
"Why're ya lookin' at me?" Said the drowsy Big Mac.
"Nothing..." Gunny replied slowly. Suddenly he felt something soft rub against his side, he looked down and saw Derpy's wing.
"Sorry, heheh..." Derpy said, scooting in closer to Gunny.
~~~
Unfortunately, the two engaged in, minor sexual contact. Once Gunny woke up, Derpy had her arms around him and her nose at his chest. Gunny didn't consider it anything bad though, he went down to give her a kiss on the nose, but she was actually awake waiting for the moment to tilt her head up. When his lips came in contact, he noticed that her nose felt different, and he opened his eyes to see her eyes open up. She was smiling, and he found out why quickly. He wasn't kissing her nose, he was kissing her lips. He pondered this in his mind a bit.
Okay, so here's a girl you like, and your first kiss is in a bed before marriage, and she's slowly caressing your back, and this is as far as you go!
He pulled back to take a quick gasp for air, once he was done Derpy got up and pulled him out of the bed.
"Another?" She said. Gunny nodded quickly in response. Ditsy chuckled and kissed him again, it was more of a passionate kiss this time, more deep. The only thing they were both thinking was is it french kiss time? Welp, they just slept together, so why not? Of course Derpy was the first to motivate the idea.
Big Mac had just woke up and grabbed a pack of insta-coffee from the cabinet, and put on a robe. He came out to see Gunny and Ditsy kissing each other, and decided now wasn't the time.
~~~
As time passed, they got ready to take a look outside at what path they needed to take. Everytime Gunny and Derpy would cross paths, they would kiss each other and keep going as if nothing happened. Once they got outside they took a look at Cloudsdale and noticed something bad, a flying hiveminder---an Alicorn Zed--- was leading about 40-45 pegasi zeds up to Cloudsdale. This was a sign of the apocalypse getting almost too strong for the Equestrian race to handle. What everypony thought was a salvation, was just a lie.
All there was left to do was fight off the infected.
Kill everything
All three got their special weapons. Derpy with a Machete, Desert Eagle, and M249 SAW; Gunny with an M12 Nova, combat knife, and an M4A1 Carbine; Big Macintosh with a .50 Caliber Minigun and a fire axe. Derpy activated the W.I.S. (Waypoint Indicator System) The three took some supplies for short-term survival, and walked out the door. They walked up the stairs weapons loaded and ready to fire. When they got to the top Big Mac kicked down the door. alerting a whole lot of nearby zeds. Derpy quickly activated her global positioning system and triangulated her position.
"Fire at will!" Big Mac shouted pulling the trigger of his minigun. Derpy and Gunny fired their weapons at the zeds, and once they decreased in number Derpy motioned them to continue forward as she took out her machete. Derpy ran up a ram and jumped on to the roof of a shed, and leaped to the roof of a house. She jumped off and jabbed the knife into the back of a corpses head. The corpse screamed and fell down as Ditsy tore out the knife. She shoved her hoof inside it's head and tore out it's brain.
"How do you like this?!" She shouted to the zombies. She threw the brain in the air and fired a .50 Cal. Round into it, completely eradicating it and showering peices of tissue everywhere. She took out her desert eagle and fired a couple of rounds into nearby zeds. Disty took out the M249 and shot all the zeds in her sight with it. At this point, walls were covered in limbs, blood, and organs. With every shot about 245 mL of blood spurted out, with every headshot, piles of skull fragments and brain tissue was spread everywhere.
As for Gunny he decided to try to keep it less gory. He stabbed a zed in the throat. The zed slowly turned it's face to Gunny. It gave him a look, almost as if he were saying 'you're kidding, you're kidding right?' Gunny concluded that it was going to have to be a bit messy so he took the knife and tore it though the zeds chest, and then up it's jaw and into the brain. He took out his pistol and shot at another zed blowing a small hole in it's head, and knocking it dead.
Big Macintosh had no concern for tactical assaults or containment of blood, all he wanted were dead corpses on the ground to stay dead. He fired his minigun everywhere there were zeds, tearing off limbs, driving holes in them, giving the whole area a red paint-over. He laughed as his continuously slaughtered zeds.
~~~
Once they finished off the zeds they all regrouped.
"That's the last of them, for now." Derpy stated.
"Boy...that...that was the most fighting I have ever done in my whole bloody life." Gunny said panting and snickering at the same time. Derpy went over to hug him, but suddenly he got drug down.
"What is that?" Derpy asked frantically, trying to pull him.
"I don't...aagh...I don't know it's got a hold of me and---" Gunny said. Then there was a sound of tearing flesh, and an odor of iron. Gunny's eyes widened. "GRAAAHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" He shouted.
"No Gunny NO!!" Derpy screamed, she tried to pull him, and heard more flesh tearing. Gunny screamed louder from intense pain. He pulled out his pistol and shot the zed that was biting him. Blood flung out of the corpses face and spilled blood in the large incision in his leg.
"Ditsy...I'm sorry." Gunny said.
"Ditsy? How did you know my name?" Derpy asked confusedly.
"I knew more about you than what people said." Gunny replied. "But now...I'm bitten, there's nothing to do now, I'm a dead pony walking..."
"No Gunny please..." Derpy said, her eyes watering.
"I'm sorry Ditsy...I love you..." Gunny said. He put the pistol to his head.
"No wait!" Derpy said. She rushed to kiss him. She knew it was going to be the last kiss she would give him so she made it count. When she was done she buried her face in his chest and started crying.
"One last thing..." Gunny said, dropping the pistol and wrapping his arms around Derpy for the last time.
"Wh..what is it?" Derpy asked, tears streaming from her eyes. Gunny wiped Derpy's face of tears and forgot about his own.
"You're eyes...they make you look hot..." Gunny said with a smile on his face. Derpy smiled and kissed him again.
"There has to be another way though, you can't just die now..." Derpy said.
"I have approximately 23 hours." Gunny said, "I'm going to suffer severe side effects, but I'll do it willingly for you."
"Thanks I...I love you too..." Derpy said. She gave Gunny another long kiss before getting Big Mac to carry him back in.
~~~
Victory costs...every time, you pay a little more...
Epilogue - In The Last Days
He knows what drives me...what I believe. That being a good soldier comes down to one thing....to one single question...
> What are you prepared to sacrifice?
"Every since that day, the day of Gunny's death, I have felt horrible. We tried cutting off his leg, and burning the bit that was still infected, but it didn't work, and I was the one who destroyed his corpse. All the time I wish I would have just kissed him one last time...I had only known him 20 days into the apocalypse. I feel like a failure...just like normal. Big Macintosh died a month ago, I watched him get torn to pieces by the zeds. There was nothing left for me to hang onto. I was the last one, and it was time to find a new group, with new ponies...the only thing I feared, will they die too?
"Raider activity has increased, the radio is out of battery, the charger is lost, the number of zeds are increasing, Equestria-wide supplies are decreasing, weapons are at an all time low, and worst of all...Our princess is dead. Celestia was eaten, along with Luna, their magic released upon the zombies could mean the end of anything alive in this world. Our race never evolved. When I was little, I was told tales of creatures called humans, who evolved and adapted to situations such as this. Our race didn't know how to do that, we have been the same for over 1,000 years, so much opportunity, and none taken.
"There is much more study to be done on this virus. I conclude it is from Everfree, everything bad comes from there, and there is much to be found out about this. I have survived this long, I don't think there is much of me left. I don't have many supplies left, my .50 Caliber M249 Saw is broken and rusty, no ammo left for it, my machete is dull, and my pistol is low on ammo. I sometimes wonder if I should just end it here.
"I remember a quote from Major Laurence Barnes...."What are you prepared to sacrifice? I would like to think of myself as a good soldier, but I wasn't prepared to sacrifice anything...I was only prepared to fight and take what was mine. I was wrong. I know that it is better for you to sacrifice your life for another pony, rather than live with the guilt of killing somepony."
Derpy put away her journal as she traveled up a trail to find a nearby campsite. The one thing that determined her fate...were they raiders?
Derpy Hooves/Ditsy Doo 251 Days into the ApocalypseEnd