The Trotting Dead - Book One, Volume One - A New World

Twilight continued on down the corridor, looking all around for a way out. She saw the stair-well door and looked at the sign to the right of the door telling her she was on the third floor. She walked up and pulled open the door. It swung open with a rusty squeak and Twilight winced, afraid some pony -- or something-- might of heard her. She slowly walked into the room, one that had a stair case spiraling down for thirty feet. She closed the door behind her and began to stagger down the stairs.

She was turning at the end of the first flight of stairs when she was greeted by a gut-wrenching pain in her lower abdomen. She unbuttoned her hospital gown to look at the spot where the pain came from. There, she saw, a large, white bandage spanning the entire left side of her underbelly. It was then that she remembered what happened. The gun-fight, her getting shot, then waking up here. She had just recovered from that sharp pain when she decided to try using the teleportation spell she learned over the week. That is, the week before she was shot.

She felt a sudden rush of wind and blinked as she saw herself disappear in a flash. She reappeared at the bottom of the stairs. She opened the door in front of her slowly, so as to not alert anything in this hospital that she might be here.

She crept out as carefully as possible. There, she saw it. A huge, heavy, iron door. She walked up to it, placed her hoof against the bar and pushed it open. It squealed loudly as she did so, but she ignored it.

She winced as the bright daylight blinded her eyes. She lifted up her hoof to block Celestia's sun, but soon grew accustomed to this new brightness.

Twilight walked out into the enclosed parking lot that lied at the back of the hospital; it was terrifying. Black plastic body-bags were lined up in even rows and columns, each reeking of its own form of putrid death and decomposition.

She saw one bag that appeared to be moving, squirming around on the ground. It was then that she noticed that each body-bag had a bullet hole in the area where the forehead would be located. All except this one. She decided it best to ignore it after she heard a raspy growling sound come from its occupant.

She came to the gate and began sliding it open. She opened it just enough for her to get out, then closed it behind herself. It was then that Twilight saw the exterior of the hospital. It was charred on on side of the building, and there was a large crater in the side of it, as though a tank had fired at it, or something similar.

She shivered and kept trotting, sweating already from the hot summer heat.

After a while of trotting in no particular direction, Twilight began recognizing the neighborhood around her. It was getting to part of town where her library was located. She pushed on, following all the right paths to her home.

She saw it from a bit of a distance, about six blocks down. Given that it was made out of a very, very large oak tree, her home sort of stuck out and was easy to spot from a good length away. She kept on going, but began to feel dizzy, the heat starting to get to her head.

She finally came upon the house, walked up to the front door, took the spare key out from under the garden pot on the porch step, and unlocked her door. She walked in slowly and surveyed her house. There was something wrong. Photos were missing off the walls in the entryway, and the tree echoed her hoof-steps ever so slightly.

"Spike," she called out. "Scootaloo, are you home?" She began to get worried. She walked into the kitchen first, and again noticed that something was missing, this time the knife holder that rested upon the counter. Or rather, it was there, but the knives were missing. Those were her particularly large and sharp knives, reserved for... emergencies... and so were always at the ready.

They were gone. She could tell that at some point or another, they left the apocalyptic remains of Ponyville. And she knew they hadn't been killed, kidnapped, or robbed, because no pony in their right mind would take pictures and photo albums of another family. No, they had left.

It was then that a terrible shock hit her. They had left...

Without her...

Twilight now knew how Scootaloo felt when her parents left her before she had adopted the little filly. All alone, abandoned by her family... They didn't even come back for me, she thought. She couldn't even believe that she had been abandoned by her only family, and even by her partner, Rainbow Dash, betrayed to whatever was the reason they left in the first place.

No, that couldn't be true. Some pony had at least tried to protect her, otherwise, why would there be a hospital bad blocking her room?

Get it together, Twilight, she told herself. She then began looking around her house to see if they had left her something. She walked up stairs to her room, climbed the ladder strapped to the hatch that separated the attic from the rest of the library. When she climbed up, she saw there was a pile of stuff on her bed, along with a single piece of parchment on top of it all, clearly written on. A note, maybe? she wondered.

She approached the pile. Instantly, she knew they never truly abandoned them. She first picked up the note and began reading it.

Dear Twilight,

Something terrible has happened. Some weird disease broke out and is destroying Equestria. Ponies... are bitten, infected and get really sick. I mean: blood vomit, diarrhea, intense fevers, and eventually, death.

But that's the odd thing. You see, once the infected ones die, after about five to ten minutes, they get back up. Nobody knows how, but they do. Of course, at first, every pony's thinking that it's a miracle and all. But, oh, they were so wrong.

Twilight, these ponies... or rather what was left of them... are no longer what the colts and stallions they once were. They turn into mindless, undead flesh-eaters. And it's really scary when it comes to killing 'em. You need to remember this next sentence, Twi:

It has to be brain, kay? Not the heart, not the neck, the brain. You can cut their heads off, but they'll still be alive... at least, their heads will. I have here everything you're gonna need, at least, in my opinion. For complicated reasons, we had to leave, but I made sure Dash went back to barricade your hospital room. We wouldn't be able to take you with us. I hope you understand. Take care, Twi.

Spike

P.S. If you want to find Scootaloo and me, we're headed to Canterlot.

That was it. She knew they hadn't abandoned her.

She then began looking at the pile of stuff. She saw her uniform, her brown hat with gold lariat tied around it, her badges laid to the side, and her Peacemaker. She saw canned beans, canned corn, and canned corn, along with a can opener. Next to those were about ten MREs, stuff that Spike had brought back with him after he was deployed. Spike was no longer the baby dragon everyone used to know him as. He was about the size of Big Macintosh, and often walked on all fours to fit in easier. He of course had grown wings, and was also able to belch streams of blue fire.

It was a unique gift Celestia had bestowed upon him, so his platoon would always have the upper hand in a battle. If they ran out of ammo, they just used Spike to scorch their opponents.

He also had tougher scales and could take a three inch knife and only suffer a two inch wound. He was much tougher, but not selfish like most dragons. Especially since that would never get any where close to Rarity, a mare that he had a slight crush on. Twilight didn't know her, though, yet believed she certainly wouldn't want to date a dragon.

But that didn't matter now.

Twilight looked at the three bottles of water, each holding seventeen ounces of the precious liquid. She tucked them into her saddle-bags that Spike had set out for her. She donned her uniform and pinned one of her badges to her chest. She pinned the other to her hat and then strapped on her utility belt. She slid her revolver into its holster and made sure she had plenty of rounds, another thing Spike left her. She filled one of the pouches with .45 Cal. cartridges and then proceeded to the door.

She put on her hat and walked out to met the world.

CLANG!