The Dead Trot

When Fletcher awoke, his head began to throb. Gingerly rubbing his temples with his hooves, he noticed Rainbow Dash huddled in a corner. She was rocking back and forth mumbling to herself.

"Come on everypony... smile, smile...smile. Fill my...heart up with...sunshine..."

"Rainbow, are you-" Fletcher stopped when he noticed the knife in the pegasus mare's hoof. With every pause in her mumbling, she made an incision on her wrists; they were completely unrecognizable from the amount of cuts and the freshly caked blood still seeming to ooze out with every motion Rainbow Dash made.

"Dear Celestia! What the hay are you doing?" Fletcher asked, unable to hide the panic in his voice.

Rainbow Dash slowly tilted her head towards the black stallion. He noticed that her pupils were dilated, and that her once bright cyan coat was now a pale brown from the loss of blood and the blood that had spilled upon her.

"They're dead," she whispered hoarsely, "they're both dead. My two best friends in the whole world. DEAD!"

She ceased cutting herself only to raise the knife and begin to approach Fletcher.

"Woah. Now, Rainbow Dash, just put the knife down. W-w-we can talk about this, r-right?"

"Oh, I'm afraid it's too late for that, murderer. You killed both of my friends, and now..." She licked the blade of the knife, causing a large laceration to form on her tongue, "YOU DIE WITH THEM!"

The crazed mare lunged at Fletcher, mouth frothing and eyes brimming with pure hatred. Fletcher dodged her initial assault, but his still present hangover drastically hindered his movement.

With every dodge he made of Rainbow's attacks, what little energy he had left drastically decreased. With one final lunged, Dash sunk home. The knife pierced through Fletcher's rib cage, causing him to cry out in agony. This caused the rest of the group to prematurely awaken from their drunken stupors.

"MURDERER!" Rainbow Dash screamed, "IT'S PAYBACK TIME!"

Rainbow Dash grabbed the blade from Fletcher's ribs and began stabbing him repeatedly. After ten seconds of the repeated brutality, Tail Spin sloppily threw Dash across the floor, away from his long-time friend.

"Dash! What the hay has gotten into you?!" Tail Spin yelled, anxiety rampant in his voice.

"Don't you dare interfere with his just deserts, pretty boy!" the crazed mare seethed.

Suddenly, a loud shot rang through the bar, and the side of Rainbow Dash's skull exploded into a grotesque pattern of blood and brain matter that splattered across the floor. By this time, everypony was awake and at full attention, staring at their freshly killed friend. Looking over, everypony spotted Gizmo, his magical aura surrounding a smoking gun. Tears began to well in the mechanic's eyes as the gun fell to the floor with a soft thud!

"Luna forgive me," he said, "I'm used to killing the undead ones, but...but that's the first live one that I've...I've..." Before he could finish, he vomited all over the now bloody floor.

The rest of the group crowded around the blue pegsus' motionless corpse. Nopony said a word; the room was as silent as the night is dark. They all stood there, staring at their slain comrade with expressionless gazes. They had all watched Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and all of their other friends die right in front of them; they simply had no more tears to cry. All that came from them after a while were dry sobs and empty weeping.

Twilight was in no mental condition to mourn, however, as she attempted to bandage up Fletcher's wound.

"This is pretty bad, Fletch, are you sure that you only need a bandage?" Twilight asked, her voice a mix of sadness and concern.

"I'll be fine, Twiley. I've had..." he cringed in pain as Twilight fastened the cloth around his chest, "...worse."

After disposing of the body and getting out what emotion the troop had left to give, there was no questioning the matter: they had to leave. After packing what supplies they could muster, they exited the alcoholic residence. Upon exiting said establishment, they spotted a few trotters wandering aimlessly through the streets. The living ponies were able to slaughter them with ease, considering that at any point, they could outrun them with breaking a sweat. Until, that is, they heard a low rumbling sound.

"Did y'all hear that?" asked Applejack.

Before anypony could answer, a nearby building exploded into a cloud of dust and debris. Coughing, the gang fanned the dust out of the air to see what had caused the damage. There, standing in front of them, was a huge, frothing, undead manticore.

"Oh you gotta be bucking kidding me!" flamed Tail Spin, sounding more irritated than frightened. The monstrosity before them roared with with terrible vigor as it charged towards the petrified ponies. Gizmo was the first to act. He lifted his pistol out of its holster on his flank with his magic and shot at the beast. The bullet hit the manticore directly in the shoulder, but it just kept charging closer and closer to the group of ponies.

"Move over, tech-face," Applejack commanded, "I'll take this critter down!"

She started the heavy Vulcan on her back with a swift kick to the starting mechanism. The air became filled with the sound of .50 caliber bullets being fired and shells clanging on the ground. The blood was a river flowing from the multiple bullet wounds on the manticore, but it acted as if the small projectiles were nothing more than a bee sting. A clicking sound from the massive back-mounted killing-machine didn't exactly reassure the group's hopes.

"Brace yourselves!" cried Gizmo as the ferocious beast plowed through the ranks of survivors like bowling pins. As the survivors landed strewn about the road, the monster before them roared with beastly vigor. As the team tried to regain their composure, the manticore charged again, this time at Twilight.

"Twilight! NO!" screamed Fletcher as he tried to gallop to her side to defend her, but gritted his teeth at the pain that shot up from the stab wound in his ribs. The monstrosity was getting closer now. Faster and faster it ran. Twilight braced for the cold sting of it's teeth in her flesh.

But nothing happened. The manticore's ferocious bite could still be heard ripping through something, though it wasn't Twilight. She slowly opened one eye to see what poor thing was at the end of the creature's assault. What she saw, she would never be able to forget. The manticore was ripping Spike apart; limb from limb, piece by piece, with Spike screaming in agony all the while. His pleas for help faded into a muted gurgle as he began to essentially drown in his own blood.

Tail Spin regained his balance and bounded into the air, unfurling his wings. Making a quick u-turn, he landed on the back of the manticore's neck.

"Yippee kiyay, motherbucker!" he shouted as he shot the beast in the back of the head with his wing-mounted guns. The creature gave one last cry before falling upon the crimson street: dead.

Before everypony could grasp the entirety of what had occurred, Twilight galloped over to Spike's barely recognizable corpse. As the purple unicorn got closer to her assistant's body, she realized just how badly he was injured. One of his eyes was missing, the other torn to shreds; all four of his limbs were mangled into impossible angles and positions. The worst part, however, was the gaping orifice in his abdomen revealing all that it contained; his intestines were strewn about him in a bloody pile emanating from said orifice.

Twilight vomited at the atrocious sight before her, but she still rushed to his side. Holding Spike's pitiful little body in her arms, the unicorn asked with tears flowing from her eyes, "Spike? Are you...are you there?"

There was no answer. The only sound that could be heard was the wind whistling through the abandoned suburbs.

Finally, Gizmo broke the silence, "Twilight, there's nothing more we can do for him. We need to leave. Now."

"Fine," the purple mare replied as she put down the mutilated dragon and began trotting behind the others. What the rest of the group didn't realize, however, was the evil grin that spread across Twilight's face as her eyes began to twitch maniacally.

"So where are we headed, anyway?" Gizmo asked.

"Our original plan was to go to Canterlot to get help from the princess, and I suppose Twilight wants us to stick to that plan," Fletcher answered.

"Wait. Canterlot? Why would you want to go there?" asked the bronze unicorn, dumbfounded by the response he had received.

"That's where the princess is, and I recon we can get some advice er help er somethin' from her," Applejack said, not sounding too confident that what she said was entirely true.

"No no no. What I mean is, why would you want to go where those things are the most rampant?"

"What are you saying?" Fletcher inquired, suspicion heavy in his tone.

"Listen. I was able to keep the TV in the bar going with my magic. Unfortunately, the only channel I could get it to was Clops News. You know how Clops News always bashes the government and the monarchy, right? Well, they had legitimate proof that these things originated in Canterlot, and by Celestia's decree, everypony was to leave the city, infected or not."

"You know nopony takes Clops News seriously, right, tech-face?" Tail Spin remarked, attempting to be humerus, but ended up sounding a lot more serious than she meant to be.

"All I'm trying to tell you is that I think with Twilight wanting us to go to Canterlot, I don't think she's as trustworthy as she seems," Gizmo hoarsely whispered to the others.

Fletcher swiftly grabbed Gear Head and pinned him against a nearby rock.

"The buck did you say?!"

"Think about it, Fletcher. Do you honestly think that in a crisis like this that news stations would make this stuff up? For Luna's sake, open your eyes! Your marefriend is obviously leading us into a trap!"

The blacksmith gave the engineer a powerful punch across the muzzle and a jab to the stomach. Gizmo cried out as he fell to the ground and curled into a fetal position.

"Don't you EVER talk about Twilight like that again! DO YOU BUCKING HEAR ME?!"

"He's right, you know," cooed a soft yet firm voice from behind them.

The ponies turned around to find not Twilight (who had been lagging behind since the incident in Fillydelphia a few hours before), but Princes Celestia; her eyes narrowed into slits and a wolfish smile on her snout. Standing next to her with a blank expression plastered on her face was Twilight Sparkle.

"Your highness! What are y'all doin' here? Shouldn't ya be in Canterlot?" asked Applejack.

"You impudent foals just don't get it, do you? My faithful student here played you all like a game of solitaire. All she had to do was get you to Canterlot without any of you finding out the truth, but since mech-brain here spilled the royal beans, I had to step in to make sure things went...according to plan."

The princess let out a maniac laugh that would've petrified even the most hardened stallions in their tracks.

Fletcher couldn't believe what he had heard. He and Twilight had known each other for years. After all that, she couldn't just throw that all away...could she?

With his head lowered, the blacksmith pony spoke, "Is all of that true, Twiley?"

A smirk appeared on Twilight's expression. "Yes. It's all true. No hard fealings, Fletchy. I did like you, but I like serving my princess and becoming immortal even more."

"You...you... you heartless BITCH!" screamed Fletcher, "WHAT THE HAY DID YOU DO TO TWILIGHT!?"

"I haven't done anything to her, stupid. She agreed to help me in my conquest because in return, she could take my sister's place on the royal throne."

"I don't think Luna will take to kindly to that idea," Applejack remarked.

"Oh, she won't be a problem anymore. You know that manticore you fought in Fillydelphia? I used a polymorphic spell on my sister, turning her into a manticore. Then, I had her infected with the virus and transported her to your location. I am so clever and devious, aren't I?"

As the ponies attempted to understand the severity of what they had heard, Celestia's horn began to glow; the green aura surrounding the party in a swirling torrent of magic.

Fletcher saw the magic swirling faster and faster. It was as if they were in the eye of a magical tornado. With a small poof, they were gone. Just as what was left of the swirling dust and debris died down, the sun set, signaling the end of the day.