Chapters The Trotting Dead - Book One, Volume One - A New World
Deputy Sheriff Twilight and her partner, Rainbow Dash had just left a bar after a rough night of book-organizing. If anything, the drink was more for Dash, given that she hated re-organizing just about anything, especially books.
Now, re-organizing faces, on the other hand...
But none the less, they were walking home after rocking out at the karaoke machine on the stage and having a few shots, a Tom Collins or two, and each a margarita on the rocks. They were quite a bit out of sorts, so Twilight decided to make things easier and let RD crash at her place until they sobered up.
However, one stallion, whom had been done in a while ago, stepped in front of them. "And where do you think you ladies are going on such an evenin' like this, drunk as Granny Smith on Sunday?" he asked in a heavy southern accent, showing he fit in around these parts.
Dash had her hoof on the holster of her Peacemaker, ready for a fast-draw showdown, and she was prepared to do it drunk. Her trigger hoof began to get itchy for a bullet to fly, but subsided her growing anxiety. Best let Twilight handle the talking.
Twilight said in a bit of a slurred voice, hoof on her own revolver, "We're walkin' home on an evenin' like this, drunk as Granny Smith on Sunday."
Little did the girls know that the opposing drunkard was also ready for a fight. They didn't expect for him to take the initiative, and so was able to take a shot at Twilight. She fell back a bit, horn glowing, while Dash fired at the colt who took a shot at her friend.
"Twilight, are you okay?" she shouted worriedly. Twilight began to get back up slowly, and the magical aura around her horn faded.
"I'm fine," she said. She held her hoof out, showing her friend the 9-mm slug that had been slung at her. "It hit my magic shield."
Just then, the colt got back up from the ground and fired again at Twilight. This time, she wasn't prepared, thinking him to be dead, and so felt a sharp, tugging pain as the bullet pierced her lower chest. She spun about thirty-five degrees to face her friend, then fell down as blood spewed from her mouth.
Dash instantly fired another round at that damned idiot. And another. And another. She wanted to make sure he didn't get back up. She then turned to her friend, now oozing blood all over the street. Ponies all around began staring after they heard the initial shot ring out. Dash cradled her friend in her fore-legs, saying everything would be alright, fighting back angry tears. She finally looked up and said to one of the bystanders, "Well, don't just stand there, call an ambulance,get a doctor, something! She's bleeding out!"
Dash yelled out, "Officer down! Officer down, somepony get me an ambulance!" Twilight's badge fell from her work shirt and onto the ground. Dash picked it up and placed it in the left pocket of Twilight's shirt.
Dash kept comforting her, and Twilight said back with a weak voice, "Tell... tell my daughter... and Spike... I love them so very much..." She kept fading in and out of reality and finally fell unconscious.
Twilight kept waking up and falling asleep in a hospital bed. She could tell it was a hospital bed by the shape and feel of it. Dash was standing there next to her, holding a vase full of flowers. "Hey, your awake! Sorry the others aren't here, we all kinda have busy schedules and didn't expect to see you wake up in here."
Twilight couldn't move, couldn't reach out to touch her friend's hoof.
Twilight finally croaked, "I gotta tell ya, Dash, that vase is mighty somethin'!" Twilight blinked, then looked over at the vase, which was now full of a bunch of crummy old dead flowers. "Wha..." she said in shock. "Dash... Dash, hey, gal, is you in the John?" she called out.
Her friend didn't answer.
Twilight pressed the button on the side of her bed labeled "Nurse", but after a few minutes of pure silence, gave it up. "Nurse," she called out faintly. She tried to get up out of bed, the IV tube still stuck in her arm, and fell over. She struggled to get back up, all the while crying out, "Nurse!" When she got back up again, she braced herself and drew the needle from her arm swiftly. It began to bleed, so she bent down, picked up an unopened package of sterile gauze and placed in the crook of her elbow. She found some medical tape also lying on the ground and began to tape the gauze to her foreleg.
She staggered over to the door, turned the handle, and tried to push it open. The door wouldn't budge, so Twilight to decided to give a bigger shove. She finally cracked it open just wide enough for her to slip through it. She analyzed what was blocking it from moving in the first place: an overturned hospital bed, splattered generously with dry blood. She recoiled, not from the blood on the bed, but the mangled, gnarly, rotting corpse propped up against it. She then noticed there was something in its hoof. No, she new what it was. A Colt .45 semi-automatic, with the barrel grasped by the fallen pony's teeth, with the back of its skull being what splattered the bed-- blood, brains, skull fragments, the whole nine yards.
Why would he commit suicide, she thought after analyzing its masculine facial structure. What would give him a reason to blow his own brains out? Twilight couldn't grasp it, couldn't put her hoof on it.
Then she thought, It was this, or a painful death, simple as that. She could tell by the way the corpse was maimed; these weren't strikes from any weapon, they were bite marks, scratches, and bloody hoof-prints.
Twilight still couldn't think of what was going on as she tried to find a way out of this slaughter house. There were bodies everywhere, and she began to feel sick to her stomach after the smell crept inside her nostrils. "Oh, Luna!" she cried out as she brought her hoof to her muzzle.
She came by the doors leading to the cafeteria and saw they were boarded, barred, and chained together, with blood on the doors that said, "DON'T OPEN! DEAD INSIDE! " She stepped a little closer and peered in through the little slit of open door there was. She caught a glimpse of what appeared to be rotting corpses walking around aimlessly, but then jumped back as several bloodied up and rotten hooves crammed their way through the tiny opening, trying to get at Twilight. "Dear Celestia, this can't be what I think it is," she said aloud.
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!
The Trotting Dead - Book One, Volume One - A New World
"Colgate, I got it! I got this stupid bitch, I'm gonna end her now!" said a little filly out loud. She stood over Twilight's body, with a shovel poised to strike.
Twilight said in a dazed, very faint voice, "Scootaloo... I found you..." She passed out, her head hitting the cobblestone underneath her.
"Hey, Colgate, it talked... It called me Scootaloo..." she said worriedly. Her older sister walked over to her after dispatching a gnarly, rotten pony standing next to her.
"Now, Lyra, you know they don't talk! I think we actually got a breather..." her sister replied back to her.
She turned around and fired her snub-nosed revolver again at another gory citizen of their town, striking it straight in the head. Blood spewed from the exit-wound and out onto the road. "Now, let's see to getting her inside."
Lyra nodded back and helped her sister lift Twilight's motionless body and carry her into a cottage two blocks down the road. Colgate shifted slightly and turned the nob gently. She pushed the door open and they brought Twilight into the living room, where there was a futon laid out onto the ground in case they ever had a visitor.
"Well, now we've got some pony to take up the spare bed," Lyra mused. Her sister walked upstairs.
After a few steps, she turned and walked back down. "You see to it that she's taken care of," she ordered her younger sister. Lyra nodded in return and began unbuttoning Twilight's uniform shirt to analyse the bandage she had only gotten a brief glimpse of.
She saw that it slightly red from blood leaking through and staining it. She wondered what was under that bandage. Was she bitten? Stabbed? Shot? Lyra couldn't tell and didn't want to take it off since she didn't know what would happen.
Lyra wasn't like most 13-year-old fillies. She wasn't nosy or stubborn. She did as she was told, no questions asked. She never told a lie, always kept her promises, and was one you depend on. And yet, her curiosity often got the better of her.
Lyra decided to put her hoof on the newcomer's forehead. It felt warm, quite warm. Shit , she said to herself. She then decided to make sure by bringing her hoof to Twilight's neck. It was somewhat cool, which gave her a relief. "Must've been the heat," she muttered. She analyzed Twilight a little more. She kept her eye on Twilight's badge for some time, eventually deviating her attention to the mare's Peacemaker. She was transfixed by its shining, polished steel barrel, particularly the business end.
"Lyra, sweetheart," Colgate called from the kitchen. Lyra's head snapped up, and she drew her creeping hoof away from Twilight's piece. "I need you to come help set the table. We want show hospitality to our new guest."
Lyra slowly got up from the living room floor and trotted into the kitchen. "Whatcha need help wit'?" she asked thoughtfully.
"M'kay, I need you to light the lanterns, but make sure the curtains are closed, kay?" she replied.
"Sure thing," Lyra called back sweetly as she set off to work.
"And then I need you to set out the plates and silverware, kay, sis?"
"No prob!"
Colgate began thinking to herself, Poor thing. Bon Bon's death mustn't have worn off that fast. She trying to hide, I'm sure.
Colgate's best friend, Bon Bon, had been infected with the virus Spike had spoken about, and was killed by it. Lyra never really was the same since, given that Bon Bon was like an aunt to her, they were so close. Colgate thought her pain was bad, but when she saw how her sister would cry herself to sleep at night, her thoughts turned. Now she had to make sure her sister would stay safe, clean, uninfected. She had to keep that promise, for Bon Bon.
"Hey, sis, I think she's awake!" Lyra called out. Colgate turned her attention from her thoughts to their visitor.
Twilight sat up on the futon, her eyes blinking and smarting, adjusting to the dimness of the candles and oil lamps. She looked around and took in her surroundings. She then cringed from the pain in her abdomen.
"Hey, there, stranger. Thought you was gonna turn on us."
Twillight looked up at the other unicorn lording over her. She blinked again and then saw that her revolver was on the endtable next to her. If she could just...
Then, seeing what Twilight was planning, Colgate got up, walked over to grab her revolver, brought it over, and sat back down. She showed it to Twilight. "This what you lookin' fer?"
Twilight nodded spitefully.
"Well, look, you can have it." She tossed it onto the matress, making it bounce ounce towards Twilight.
She didn't even touch it. She stared at it in shock, suprised by how much these people were trusting her.
Colgate and her little sister got up and walked over to the supper table. Colgate called back, "Your welcome to join us, if you wants."
Twilight nodded and got up slowly. She sat down at the table, taking in the aroma of her food. She was about to take a forkful when her curiosity got the better of her. She took a sip of water out of the glass next to her in order to moisten her throat.
Setting the glass back down, she finally croaked, "So, what exactly is goin' on here? What was the deal with the..."
She used her hoof to make a motion at the front door, implying something that happened outdoors.
"Ah, yes. You see, we thought you was another one o' them trotters, so Lyra slung you over the head with her shovel. You might say that you were lucky she didn't crack your skull, 'cause that's what coulda happened." She took a bite out of her pasta and set the fork back down. Upon swallowing, she finished, "I suppose after supper, I oughta tells you bout all this mess."
Twilight had finally eaten some of her own food, wiped her mouth, then nodded, "Yes, ma'am, I'd appreciate that very much."
"Good, now both o' y'all, shut up and eat."
*******
"Scootaloo," Colgate began. She looked up from her plate and straight into Twilight's eyes. "She your daughter?"
Twilight was taken aback by the question. How did she know? Twilight nodded, her brows slightly furrowed. She began to clear her throat, about to speak, when Lyra decided to participate.
"You called me Scootaloo."
Twilight looked at the little filly in bewilderment. "How... Wha?" she began.
"When I knocked you upside the head, you looked up at me and said 'Scootaloo, I found you,' "
"Surely your mistaken," she replied in a raspy voice. She cleared her throat and said, "I wouldn't have--
"But ya did," Lyra interrupted. Her older sister began to get agitated
"Lyra!" she exclaimed. "Give her a chance to speak her mind,"
"No, it's fine. I just didn't understand at first, but that's okay. I must have been... oh, I don't know, just... assumin' stuff, I guess." She took another bite from her spaghetti and then set her fork down.
Pushing the plate about an inch from her, she said, "I'm mighty grateful your being this kind to me,"
"Anything to somehow earn ourselves some heaven in this hell, officer friendly. Didn't quite get a name, what was it again?" she asked.
"My name is Deputy Sheriff Twilight Sparkle. I woke up in the hospital earlier today, and I have no idea as to what's going on."
Twilight suddenly remembered something. "Those ponies... that you shot... why?"
Colgate cleared her throat. "I was gonna get to that sometime or another, wasn't I?"
Twilight nodded.
"Right," she said halfheartedly. "Well, you see, I'd have to go back about two weeks ago.
"There was a virus... nothing anybody had ever seen before. It was... terrifying... Ponies would get infected, and within a matter of about eight hours, would be dead. Those would be eight hours of pure torment. Blood vomit, one-hundred eight degree fevers, diarrhea, all sorts of nasty shit. But that wasn't all.
"Once you finally died, after about half an hour, you..." she winced and continued. "...got back up... All that you used to be was gone. The only thing left would be an empty shell of rotting flesh. You'd become a monster, nothing but a mindless, undead cannibal, eating anything made of meat, practically anything that walked and talked or something like it. The worst part was that if any pony you knew became infected, you'd have no choice but to kill them; you'd have to put a bullet through their brain. That was the problem, people would lose those close to them and wouldn't -- couldn't -- kill them. Sure, it was easy to kill the ones you didn't know, didn't care about, but no pony ever thought... never considered... it spread so fast...
But that doesn't matter now... You see, this virus... it spreads through bites... If you get bit, you're goner, might as well eat lead for dinner, if you catch my drift."
Twilight understood what she meant. "Suicide..."
"Precisely! But that's another problem, is that no one understood how kill the infected. You gotta take out the brain. Severing the head don't work. It has to be the brain. Cut their heads off, all you're creating is a problem on the ground. Remember, whenever you have to kill them yourself, get the fucking brain!"
Twilight just nodded. Not much else to do. Her thoughts turned to Spike and Scootaloo. Were they alright? And what about Rainbow Dash? She could never be sure...
"So, where you headed?"
Twilight's head snapped up. "Oh, what?"
"Asked where you's goin'."
"Oh, uh, Canterlot."
Lyra and Colgate looked at each other with worry. Colgate spoke up, "I wouldn't advise that."
"Why?" she asked.
"If you go there, you've got another one coming!"
Twilight was confused. What was she talking about?
The Trotting Dead - Book One, Volume One - A New World
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The Downsides of Immortality
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