Rainbow Hazard

"Wha-what's out there?!"

"SHH!" Rainbow shushed Orion. "Just, everypony, be quiet."

I walked over to Rainbow with Aurora and Orion following me. I pressed my body against the door, as if between her and a wall I'd find protection. The shuffling hoof steps, we heard them get closer. Their erratic pattern echoed off the walls. As they got closer, we began to hear a noise, like a groaning. It sounded like it was a creature that just woke up after a long sleep, an "urrr" and "arrrruuhhrr" that droned up and down.

"What are we going to do?" I whispered to Rainbow.

She took a deep breath. "We're going to wait for a containment team to get down here. Until then, we're not going to make any noise, okay?"

"Okay."

What else could we do? We waited, separated from the dangerous and the unknown by a thin wall. The only sounds that broke the silence were our own breathing, the beating of our hearts and the grunts of the strange presence outside the room. What was it? It sounded like a pony but... wrong. Like nothing you'd ever want to see or meet, a distinct disturbance of fear made real.

"What are we gonna do? We're trapped in here, the lights are out-"

Rainbow grabbed Orion by the head. "Be. Quiet."

It was then Aurora said, "I found a light switch."

"No!" Rainbow whispered harshly. But it was too late. The lights in the room, emergency lights flicked on, illuminating the lab in a dull, red light. It was also bright enough to light a bit of the hallway beyond through the window that separated the lab.

"Stop! Turn it off!" Rainbow scrambled to get over to the switch and deactivate the lights. Not that it would help now.

Before the lights went back out, in the split second the hallway was partially illuminated, I caught a glimpse of the danger. Normally, identifying the danger made understanding it easier, alleviated fear. When you became aware of something, you could isolate it, find out about it and how to solve it. But then, there are some fears that you don't want to see, don't want to look at. Those are the things that look right back at you.

You're never really prepared to see your first zombie. Movies, video games, costumes, none of them prepare you for the real thing. It's not the fact that they're shocking or just outright disgusting; some of them are, most aren't. It's the ones that still have a trace of what they once were, something to remind others of what they were like before, that are dangerous. For in those few seconds when your mind is still trying to comprehend whatever it is you're looking at, the part of your conscious mind that wants to reach out, wants to communicate with this creature that should still somehow have a scrap of rationality that just isn't there...

Those are the seconds they reach out and bite you. I was lucky there was a glass window in the way.

I'm pretty sure it was a stallion, it wore a lab coat covered in darkened blood. A large chunk had been taking out of his neck and shoulder, some kind of a huge wound. Its coat was a pale brown that looked to be slowly turning gray, clumps of hair missing here and there. Its mouth hung open, blood smeared on its face whatever indescribable horror it had been through... or it had committed. The scariest thing that I saw though was the fact that I knew it had seen me. Because in a split second, it turned to face me through the glass. It looked at me through its one remaining eye and I knew it had seen me. The last "urrr" sounded eager.

The lights flicked off again.

"What was that?! What was that?!" I didn't know if it was my voice asking or somepony else's, all I knew was I didn't want the answer I knew it was going to be.

"Zombies," Rainbow said. Just like that, the creature let out a loud, droning groan, almost like a roar. It echoed off the walls and resonating throughout the facility. Seconds later, another groan, sounding like a group of them, came back.

Aurora shook. "Z-zombies? Like fr-from before?"

Something began pounding on the glass and the door. It was soon joined by others beating on our only means of escape. The sounds of dozens of hooves bashing against the walls, threatening to break in surrounded us.

"We need to get out of here. Now." Rainbow Dash no longer bothered to whisper. I looked around, trying to see a way out through the darkness but there was nothing. I heard a loud crash; the groaning grew louder.

"Urrr-urrrrraaa!!"

"R-rainbow?" my own voice squeaked. The zombies were in the room now, I knew it. They'd broken through the windows and we were all about to be eaten. I flapped my wings, trying to fly. Grasping the nearest wall, I tried to climb, panicking. "Somepony, anypony!"

Something grabbed me from the back. "AAAAAHHHHH!!!"

"Come on, get up!" Rainbow yelled at me. Suddenly, she lifted me up off the floor and into one of the air ducts. I was saved again. Just as soon as I was pulled into the vent, I heard the door to the room break and the zombies enter. Rainbow quickly replaced the duct cover just as the zombies began scraping the walls. "Keep moving. Stay close."

The four of us crawled through the vents on our bellies, the sound of the monsters echoing from below. “Where are we going?” Aurora asked.

“We have to get out of here. The facility's not safe," Rainbow said, leading us. Not safe? Understatement of the century.

"What about what that guy said? The one on the terminal thingy?" Orion asked.

"We're not prepared to handle this kind of outbreak, not without power. We'll need to find weapons, hazmat equipment, anything we can to defend ourselves with and then get word to the princess," Rainbow instructed. It was a solid plan but it required solidity to pay off. I couldn't even think about the next minute; just kept crawling, putting one hoof after the other.

In the cold and the darkness we crawled. Occasionally we saw light coming from the crakes in the framework or through grates on the floor. The sound of the zombies was everywhere. Passing one of the grates, I spared a glance to the floor below and immediately regretted it. There were dozens of them in the hallway below, wall-to-wall.

"Come on, you have to keep up," Rainbow pulled me forward. We traveled the vents until eventually I saw light in front of us. Rainbow punched through another grate and jumped out.

Nervously, I poked my head through. It was a larger storeroom of some kind illuminated by two cylindrical containers in the back. There weren't any windows and the door was metallic. There didn't seem to be any zombies either so I followed Rainbow and jumped down.

"Where are we?" Aurora asked.

"Storage area for the security guard barracks. There should be another bank of elevators nearby," Rainbow informed us. "But first, we need to check on the status of the factory."

"Status? Shit's bucked up, that's the status!" Orion proclaimed.

Rainbow didn't regard him; she went to a large locker on the side wall.

"What's in there? Weapons?" Orion asked, eagerness in his eyes.

Rainbow sighed and turned to him. "Security keeps spare supplies in here. I should be able to find some batteries, get a terminal powered up."

"Oh."

She pulled out a large, crystal-shaped device of some sort and then flew over to the terminal by the door. Rainbow opened a hatch underneath it and connected two wires to the crystal. Within a moment, it powered up and the screen came on.

Rainbow quickly typed in commands on the terminal's keyboard. "The network's still up but I'm not getting a signal from outside the city. Whoever attacked the factory wanted to make sure Cloudsdale was isolated, clever."

"What does that mean?" Aurora asked. "Who attacked Cloudsdale?"

"That I don't know yet. Could've been an inside job, disgruntled employee, pony that couldn't take it any more but this looks organized. Look here," she pointed a map on the screen. "With the power out, the lockdown's failed. The upper floors aren't sealed and the bulkheads aren't down."

I swallowed hard. "You mean... the top floors aren't safe?"

"Without the door locks and security measures, the zombies will be able to reach any floor in the facility. And with most of the staff panicking, they're going to try to get out from the main entrance on the first floor. Which means..."

"The zombies will follow them," Orion said.

"All the way up," Rainbow nodded gravely.

"So... we're trapped down here?" I asked, wanting to curl up into a ball again.

"Not exactly," Rainbow answered, turning back to the terminal. She keyed in another command and the screen zoomed into a lower portion on the map. "There's an emergency exit on the bottom floor. If we reach it, we can get out from there."

"But... the zombies," I started to say.

"Are there any air vents on the way there?" Orion asked, hopeful.

Rainbow put a hoof on the colt's shoulder. "No. But there is an armory."

Orion smiled.