Applebloom pushed open the library door and stepped inside, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo following behind her. Twilight Sparkle sat at a table, hunched over a book. Spike swept the floor. He looked up when he heard the door close behind them.
Applebloom sighed. "Scootaloo broke her scooter, an' — "
Scootaloo scowled. "I did not! That rock totally jumped out in front of me!"
She scowled back at Scootaloo. "Well, yer the one that drove over it, dummy!" She turned back to Spike. "An' we're lookin' for a book about scooters now so's we can fix it."
The three huddled and put their hooves together. "Cutie Mark Crusaders scooter doctors!"
Spike glanced over at Twilight. "I guess I can help you. I think Twilight's a little busy."
Twilight didn't look up from her book. "Did you know that Chancellor Puddinhead once sold four hundred acres of land to Unicornia for a box of truffles?"
He sighed, and led them over to the nonfiction section, pointing to one of the shelves. "You know how she gets sometimes." He blinked. "Well, maybe you don't, but she gets like a zombie when she's reading. Anyway, it'd be over here somewhere."
Scootaloo halted, and cocked her head at him. "What's a zombie?"
Applebloom and Sweetie stopped what they were doing, and echoed her question.
He shivered. "Only the coolest, scariest thing not-alive, that's what. They're dead ponies but they keep moving, and they eat ponies! And they're like, 'braaains!'"
Applebloom cocked her head at him. "But if they're dead, how can they keep movin'?"
He rolled his eyes. "'Cause they're zombies, that's why."
Twilight looked up from her book at them. "Spike, there is no such thing as zombies. Stop trying to scare them." She squinted at the bookshelf, pulled out a book about scooters and dumped it into his arms. "There. I think that'll help, girls. Remember to check it out if you're going to leave the library with it."
Twilight turned back to reading, and Spike shifted the book to one claw. Applebloom cocked her head at him. "How come they're zombies?"
He set the book against the shelf. "Well, sometimes a necromancer raises them with magic, but sometimes it's like a virus that ponies catch that turns them into zombies." He seemed to think a moment. "And there's always lots of them."
Applebloom thought about that for a moment. "How do ya stop a zombie, if'n they're already dead?"
"Well, sometimes you can trip them, but there's a lot of them, so that doesn't always work, so ponies that're afraid of zombies build zombie shelters."
Sweetie Belle shivered. "I'm afraid of zombies."
A light flashed in Applebloom's mind, and she pulled the other two Crusaders into a huddle. "Cutie Mark Crusaders zombie shelter builders!" She grinned. "We can make the clubhouse into a zombie shelter."
Spike smiled and shifted on his feet. "Maybe I could help. I know a lot about zombies."
Applebloom squinted, and scratched her chin. "I guess we do need somepony that knows about zombies." She stared at him for a few minutes, then smiled. "Okay, you can help."
Spike thrust a fist in the air and mouthed 'yes.' He lowered his fist and glanced over at the table. "I gotta ask Twilight first, though."
He plodded over to the table, and looked up at her. "Hey, Twilight?"
"Mmmh?"
"Can I go help the Cutie Mark Crusaders build a zombie apocalypse shelter?"
She turned the page, tone still distracted. "I don't see why not."
He grinned, and tore off after the Crusaders as they walked out the door. They slammed it behind them. Three minutes later, Twilight looked up from her book and glanced around the room. "Spike?"
Applebloom glanced over the supplies they had gathered — wooden boards, nails, a few worn wheels, and several jumpropes — and squinted. "So how d'ya build a zombie shelter?"
Spike shifted. "Uhh… I don't know. The windows are always boarded up, and sometimes they're made of concrete… and… uh… they do things to them so that zombies can't get inside."
"Like what?"
He squinted. "Like, uhh… zombies can't open doors. Well, some of them can't. And they can't jump."
Sweetie Belle raised her hoof, and waited a moment for him to look at her. "They can't jump?"
He shook his head.
"How do zombie foals play jump-rope?"
Scootaloo's face lit up, and she lurched forward. "Oh, I know what we can do! We got all this jump rope. If zombies can't jump, let's put it around the clubhouse!"
The other three murmured in agreement. Spike wrote the idea down on a scroll. The three screwed up her face, and thought. After several minutes, Applebloom cocked her head. "But what if there's a zombie pegasus?"
Spike's face fell. "I never thought of that."
"Maybe we should put marbles around the window, so they'll fall down?"
He grinned again, and scribbled the idea down. "Yeah, that's right. When zombies fall, they can't get back up." He chewed on the quill for a second. "But what about fast zombies? They can jump, and I think they climb, too."
Scootaloo glanced over the boards and the wheels in the mess, and raised a hoof. "We can make skateboards, and then we'll put them around where they'll slip on them."
He hesitated. "But what if they move them?"
Sweetie Belle squeaked and half-raised her hoof. "Maybe we could put icing on them, or cake batter, and they'll get stuck?"
He nodded and scribbled down the idea. They thought for a few more minutes, then Applebloom cleared her throat. "We better get started soon. What if the zombies come, an' we're not ready?"
The other three murmured their agreement, and the four of them picked up their tools and got to work.
Applejack trudged across the field toward the Cutie Mark Crusader clubhouse as the sun set behind her. "Applebloom! It's time for dinner!"
No response. She sighed, and kept moving toward the treehouse. That filly'd starve herself to death if she didn't make her sit down and eat once in awhile. It looked like they'd been busy; a pile of hammers, boards and various miscellaneous junk sat at the base of the tree. She wondered what they'd been doing all day.
About three dozen feet from the tree, her hoof caught on something underneath her, and she grunted in surprise as she tumbled to the ground. She twisted to get a good look at it, and groaned. They'd strung up a whole bunch of jump-ropes around the treehouse.
She sighed, and pulled herself upright. She had no idea what was going through those little fillies' heads some days.
They hadn't cleaned up very well, whatever they'd been doing. The next step she took, her hoof landed on something hard. She glanced down. A series of wooden boards with wheels attached had been scattered around the treehouse, each one slathered in a thick substance that looked suspiciously like cake batter.
She shook her head and tried to take another step, but the makeshift skateboard stuck to her hoof. It slid out from under her when she tried to walk on it. She tried to push the board off with her other forehoof, but it wouldn't budge.
She bent her leg at the knee, and made sure not to step on any more loose objects on her way to the clubhouse.
They hadn't covered the ramp in anything, at least. That was something. She half-walked, half-tripped up to the clubhouse and knocked on the door several times. "Applebloom, it's time fer dinner."
No answer. She reached down and turned the doorknob with her mouth, pushed the door open and peered inside. It was too dark to see anything distinct, but she saw three pairs of ears near the wall.
She pushed her hat down, and stepped forward. The next thing she knew, the world was upside down.
Hooves shuffled beside her. She groaned, her neck aching.
Scootaloo crept over and nudged Applejack in the head. "Uh, oh. I think we broke your sister."
Applebloom clenched her teeth. "But they were supposed to be zombie traps!"
Spike took a step back from her. "Maybe she's a zombie."
Sweetie Belle's eyes widened, and she backed up against the wall. "Zombie big sister!"
Four high-pitched screams rang out, and Applejack tried to cover her ears to muffle it. It didn't work very well.