Once, there were more than 7 billion ponies in the world.
The Pony race ruled supreme.
It's dominance - taken for granted.
I find it hard to picture that world now.
The plague was unlike anything we have ever encountered before. It came out of nowhere, spreading undetected, it's only symptom; a tiny cough. We think Patient Zero became infected in Canterlot, but we can't be sure. At the time we spotted it, 10 percent of the world was infected. Even then, we didn't take it very seriously. But everything changed when it mutated and ponies began to drop dead in the streets. It rapidly became the greatest threat our species have ever faced. Governments united in an extraordinary attempt to find the cure. But it wasn't enough. Civilizations collapsed... the plague keeps killing!
Now in the lab, isolated from those whom we tried to save, ethics and morals long gone... the cure is all that matters now! It evolved so damn fast, we are close! We just... we just needed more time...
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in medias res
"Shit, sir! Genetic instability detected!" Shining screamed to the head scientist, Paramecium. "The cure's going down! Damn it!"
"Insert more genetic stabilizers! Fend the infected off! We need more time to take care on the living! Use the cellular accelerator! Shining Armor!" he called, instantly bringing Shining towards his side. "You and me, we gonna' need to fend off these zombies. The living need help, the walls are gonna be busted! Let's move!
Shining followed Paramecium to the weapons storage to get a few guns. There was a SCAR-L, but Shining didn't understand latest Z-COM technology, so he stuck on horn-attached blasters, one that his deceased sister invented. Paramecium on the other hoof simply took a hoof-held battleaxe and a body-attachable turret. He attached the turret to his back, winced at the slight pain and configured it to blast anything that moves with a cold body signature. "Ready, Shining? Blow the damn door up!"
Shining placed a hoof-charge and planted it on the front gates. In an instant it blew, sending waves of trotting dead flying back and crashing on broken brick walls, killing a few. The horde didn't hesitate to attack at the new line of defenders and approached them in a striding speed. But they were too late, as Paramecium's turret activated and instantly shot at hundreds of zombies, sending them flying back once again and creating a pit in which most of the attackers fell at. Shining remembered his horn-blaster and activated it, and his body surged with magical power as a pulse of plasma went incinerating every single thing in it's path. But the zombies were agile, while the pulse wasn't, and they avoided it with precise quick movements, while their slow brethren at the main gates shouted in agony as their body decayed and perished.
Suddenly, a living guard got flung away, screaming "AALLIICOOORRNN‽ OMG! RUN!" The other guard stationed at the post nodded at Paramecium, and took a horn-blaster. Shining wondered who it was, since Celestia and Luna had been taken to the divine realms for safety. But his question made a very negative answer: it was his wife, Cadence.
Memories rushed back to him as he got reminded of his past happy life with his wife. Prior to the virus, he had worked as a scientist, but everything changed when his cure hadn't worked and the dead reanimated. Cadence died in the hands of her very own scientist army, although they were infected. She had begun to reanimate herself and rose, commanding the Canterlot part of the zombie horde.
Paramecium's turret tried to shoot down the alicorn, but alicorn zombies had very high magical powers and still had common sense on magical abilities. Cadence 'blinked' in and out of everywhere, constantly appearing behind guards and slitting their throat. Screams echoed as little fillies watched in horror as the princess of love began ripping guards apart with her bare hooves. Paramecium looked beside and found Shining Armor staring into the bright sky. He nudged him.
"Shining, we need your concentration! Use the horn-blaster and try to hit the damn thing! All our guards are dead and it's approaching us!" Paramecium's turret hit nine bullets into Cadence's chest, stopping her wingpower and disabling her mobile wings. Shining armor came back to sense and tried to blast the falling Cadence, but in an instance she 'blinked' behind both of them. "SHINING, DO IT NOW!"
"SHINING, SHOOT! SHINING!!!!!!"
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"James, tell me. What is that?" Whooves asked as he got a demo of the new vaccine for HIV that his lab partner, James, constructed. "It looks like a vial of feces mixed with blood. Why, Calcelmo will deny this a vaccine! Besides, you used plutonium extract on this shit! Who knows? Maybe it'll reuse the Cytopathic Reanimation symptom again! Remember? The fucking thing made ZOMBIES!"
James replied with a smirk. "I've checked every possible mutation outcome for the Cytopathic Reanimation symptom. Let me tell you. It's not possible once more. And even if we DO create another zombie plague, we have a gun to hold the spread. M60E4 with a PSO-1 scope, increased fire range, attached shotgun barrels and a hoof-held trigger mechanism. What else?" He strode over to the vial. "Look at it! It's perfect! I don't give a flying buck if Canterlot won't accept it, this is still a magnificent product!" He waved his hooves around, and accidentally bumped the vial, smashing it and pouring the liquid over an exposed cut on James' forehoof.
"James? James? What is wrong with you?!" Whooves asked as James began squirming in the floor, screaming and chanting words Whooves couldn't understand. "JAMES! Shit, James!" Whooves took the machine gun and tried to load it with a bullet, but James suddenly lunged at Whooves. He dealt a severe blow, but Whooves blocked it with the gun and bashed him with it, sending James tumbling back. An attack this weak would already be enough to kill a zombie on their last pandemic, but this time, James only shook his head for a couple of seconds, and recovered.
'BANG BANG!' came the sound as two rounds got fired from the machine gun, incapacitating infected James. Whooves sighed in relief. He turned his back and placed the gun on the pedestal, but when he turned his back again, James leapt up and made a deep cut in Whooves' croup, severely damaging him. James blood dripped onto the open wound, and Whooves screamed.
AAARRGGGH! AHAAAAAAAAAAAAARRrrghghRrrrrrrrrr....
Author's Note
Hey people! This is my third and first published story ever! I'm glad ya'll liking this story. The attack part is IN MEDIAS RES, or simply means 'starts from the middle'. Recently I've been reading both gorey, sadistic whlist being educational pandemic stories. Note: This fic is a crossover of L4D, DeadFrontier, and Plague Inc. (mostly Plague Inc.)
For the next chapter I'll be putting more descriptions of 'advanced' guns and attachments and put some medical stuff and advice, such as pandemic tips and those masks. Not just any masks: I learned some like the N95, R95, P95, N99, R99, P99, N100, R100, and P100 masks, and a PAPR. I've lately been learning these stuff from the story 'Flu Season' and constantly reading medical 'Morning Posts'. I've also planned to make this educational! Starting on chapter 2, read the author's notes incase you do NOT want to feel the same shit the CDC were feeling when James got infected.
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Uncommon typography signs:
‽ = !? combined into one, an Interrobang. Used to define surprise followed by confusion.
eg: "WTF‽"
⁂ = An asterism, or three asterisks placed in a triangle. Used to define cuts in a typed story/art.
■ = Alt Code 254, I use it to represent cuts and ends in the Author's Notes section.
◊─ = I only use these to mark the Prologue and the Epilogue parts
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The Plague - Chapter One
Patient Zero
Day One
Infected - 345
Dead - 7
Reanimated - 1192
Cure - 0.0001%
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Twilight happily flew by the first EquestrianLaboratories center set up in Equestria. She had been promoted to Head Scientist on the facility. Scientists were striding by the grass fields and talking to each other. Some noticed their head scientist flying in the sky, and waved. Twilight waved back. She was certainly enjoying the view of the magnificent, wide building. Then, she saw a glance of the pony whom she was searching: Paramecium.
Paramecium gestured for Twilight to land. She landed, and they started a conversation. "What's our most recent progress with the HIV vaccination and cure?" asked Twilight, who wasn't keeping in much track of the lab's progress. Paramecium replied with a frown. "All cure progress have been temporarily halted because 'Sir James the Infectonator Idiot' suggested we use condensed plutonium extract, and now we're decompressing it back... argh! We don't even know the effects of it, and this is the third time we've been using an element extract! I'm afraid..." he stammered a bit, " I'm afraid if... if he'll... make... make stronger zombies... again. Sure is a pain to see my... grandstallion... infected... like last time."
Twilight replied back with a smirk. "Don't worry! I thought we've listed every single known mutation to enable Cytopathic Reanimation, and so far Whooves reported that they have all been removed." But Paramecium wasn't even glad. He just became more worried. "Known? KNOWN? HOW ABOUT AN UNKNOWN MUTATION!" Twilight was slightly sent back at this sudden reply, but she was interrupted.
A loud scream echoed throughout the building, followed by a - no, two gunshots. Then there was a roar, another scream, and then silence. Everyone looked upon one of the windows, and saw a silhouette of two ponies banging the glass of their room. Strange, thought Twilight. Is this another pandemic?
Everyone's thoughts came interrupted as a loud bang cracked the window. It was followed by two ponies jumping out of the room. They were ponies... weren't they? Their eyes were bloodshot red and they had pieces of decayed skin everywhere! They started to growl, and Paramecium went to his pocket to take a tranquilizer. But when one pounced and tried to eat a young mare, Twilight knew what they were: Zombies.
Quick as lightning, she teleported into the alarm room and rang the bell. It followed with her short announcement, "ZOMBIES! Get your guns!" Once she went outside, however, there was 19 or more zombies, and they were marching forward to the civilian park. She also saw Paramecium shooting them with a pistol, but with slight accuracy, leading to a waste. Oh no, she thought, Shining Armor and Cadence! The park! She noticed from the corner of her eye, a gun. No ordinary gun though, it was an M60E4 Machine Gun with numerous attachments. She held it with her hoof and tried to shoot the zombies, but with no avail. Half of them turned back, and headed towards Twilight. "Oh Celestia help me."
With instincts, Twilight grabbed the gun and aimed to the zombies. They were running at such a tremendous speed, and they weren't easy targets. She tried shooting them on the heart, but it didn't work, so she shot them at the head, and one limped down and died. She smiled. The zombies were followed by gunshots as each of them fell down to the ground, blood splattering all around. She sighed in relief, but stopped when she saw the zombies attacking the park guards. This isn't over yet!
While trying to avoid the dead zombies, she ran towards the park and shot every zombie in sight. Half of them fell and died, but there was still another 30 more, so she took a rifle from the nearest officer. With it, she aimed towards their heads, and they died with a loud groan. She spotted Shining Armor and Cadence at the far end of the park, unaware of what happened. "Shining!" she called.
Fillies watched in horror behind trees as people got killed and dismembered in such a violent way. As Twilight approached Shining Armor, she stopped when a very large zombie jumped from the trees. It had huge muscles and had less decaying skin, and it's blood seeped out from every wound it had. With a loud roar, it smacked Twilight with it's forehoof, sending Twilight flying far behind. But she was able to halt and started to fly. She flew back, took her machine gun, and aimed. Bang bang bang b-click click... the gun was empty! The large zombie didn't stop and threw a tree to Cadence, who glanced up, but it was too late. She got hit, instantly causing her to die. "NO!" Twilight shrieked in horror, and took a large sharp piece of wood and plunged it towards the zombie's muzzle.
The zombie only got enraged and tried to smack Twilight with his hooves, but she avoided them with intense care. She flew back, and delivered another blow to the zombie's muzzle, pushing the wood further inside. It died with a loud roar as the piece of wood penetrated it's whole head and skull. All the ponies watched in horror as they watched their princess of harmony kill the zombie. It fell down and crashed a few trees, but a trickle of blood from it's wound dripped onto Cadence's and Twilight's wounds. Twilight shrieked in pain and squirmed in the floor crazily, while Cadence chanted something and instantly reanimated. Shining Armor stared with aghast, and motioned to the ponies in the crowd to run. They did.
A crazy fight ensued as stallions tried to protect their little ponies with Shining Armor and let them escape, while on the other side a horde of infected ponies with no memory or upper brain personality began gathering by the hundreds. With three thousand zombies to just a mere hundred ponies, it was certain they would lose, but with quick organized strategies they overwhelmed the horde. Just when they started overtaking the upper hoof, the zombies shoved it back down, reanimating dead ponies and instantly bringing more and more into the horde and draining the ponies of their army. Soon it was down to two more living ponies, Shining Armor and Paramecium.
"Whoever you are, we have to go back to the EQLaboratories gun compound!" shouted Paramecium as he tried to avoid deadly strikes from infected Cadence and Twilight. They still had basic upper knowledge, allowing them to retain knowledge of flight and teleportation. Shining nodded and gestured that he understood while also trying to avoid his sister teleporting across the battlefield. At once, they both leaped out of the horde trap and ran towards the facility. They were quickly over-striding the zombies when suddenly the whole horde stopped. The zombies twitched a bit, whimpered and vibrated, and suddenly ran ahead at full speed. "Mutation!" warned Paramecium. "They're getting faster by the minute! We have to move, NOW!"
With their remaining strength, they pushed themselves to their limits and finally found the EQL facility. Navigating through corridors and stairs whilst being chased by three quarters of the horde (the other quarter left to hunt other ponies), they finally reached a metal-caged door, and burst in. They locked it and took the weapons. Paramecium took a minigun, while Shining Armor took a horn-shaped pellet blaster.
"Don't touch that," warned Paramecium. "It belongs to our now-deceased head scientist Twilight Sparkle." Hearing those words, Shining Armor relented. "Twilight? She's my sister, for god's sake! What do you think?" He took the blaster thing and, to his surprise, it fitted on his horn. There was a label saying, 'for Shining Armor of the Royal Guard. A new type of horn-blaster from your sister!' "See? It's made for me!"
Paramecium frowned. He would be shot a payload of questions. "Why is Twilight here‽ Why is she 'head scientist' of the Vaccination Sector and who the buck are you‽ How do you know her, why the buck do you work here and why the buck is there zombies around every bucking corner‽" Shining Armor shot him a glare and wanted answers.
"Alright, alright..." Paramecium explained. "She was hoof-picked by Princess Celestia. A few years back we found something we called 'Cytopathic Reanimation' and it turned the dead and living to zombies. It infects your brain and makes you insane... only, much more insane. The creator, James Stanford, created a cure for chicken pox that became a zombie infecting plague. Lucky us the zombies were too weak and we killed them all. With his lab partner Whooves, they got transported to the HIV vaccination research center. Then... ah, you know. They bucked the whole project AGAIN with plutonium extract and it became a deadly virus AGAIN. Yes, the infection started one hour a--"
He was interrupted when the horde started to bang the door. Realizing there was no time to talk or guffaw, they activated their weapons and shot. The following horde became incinerated, but the two alicorn zombies teleported away, leaving Paramecium and Shining Armor alone.
"This isn't over yet..."
Author's Note
This chapter shows that if a zombie pandemic actually occurs, it would be surprising. Since the virus infects the brain, it's motoric and cognitive functions may fail. According to fictional and non-fictional stories, fact is that losing cognitive function renders you hungry due to losing the vital cognitive function. Because you also lose knowledge, there will be only one thing in your infected brain: EAT.
Since the heart is now not such a vital part (although it still transfers blood around), stopping the brain by shooting it in the head might disable it COMPLETELY and stop any activity running in it, rendering the body useless and stopping it. That's what is explained here: disable the brain, not the heart.
If you do not have a firearm if any of this happens, then I suggest you use something sharp. A thick bark (wood not dog) may do or maybe a nail bat. Knives won't work, they're too small, so try use something bigger, like a cleaver. This can chop the head off, decapitating it. And you have a head-chopping mechanism.
Viruses spread by infecting cells to make them 'factories', thus cell-multiplying and attacking your immune system, rendering you sick (sick is actually the immune system fighting, if it loses the sickness goes fatal.) Since the virus here is artificial and strong, it can, may, and will bypass the immune system by suppressing it. It will then go into your brain and infect it, slowly affecting stuff. If it is still in the early stages (you're not a zombie yet, normal virus) you may feel the consent to do stuff you usually don't do - like eating your skin or nails (although this virus has been constructed WITH Cytopathic Reanimation.) Once it hits vital cognitive functions, expect yourself to go to a sudden coma one day and wake up with no memory.
In 'Plague Inc.', actually, the virus starts with infecting your brain slowly and make you do stuff you don't usually do, followed by HUNGER. This may be true in the case of a zombie outbreak (you all know it's possible but never happened), and then by the time it mutates into a zombie-mutating virus, the people inflicted will change. But for this virus, it started with the reanimation symptom, thus rendering the inflicted instant transformation.
