[I walked into the psych clinic, looking for the room holding Cobalt Horn, a young colt being treated for trauma. Something about watching his family being butchered by infected. He had committed some serious and violent crimes in the outside world, so he was brought here: the Baltimare Psychiatric Institute.]
[Finally, I found his room: G354. I opened the door to see a surprisingly normal looking lad lounging on the bed at the far side of the room. A book was held in his hooves, and his horn was wrapped in a magic restraint. I stood for a moment before he spoke up.]
[He glanced at me before returning to his book.] “You the doc?”
I nodded.
“Great. Come in and shut the dang door. You’re letting the AC out.”
I chuckled and closed the door, then walked over and introduced myself.
“Quillin Words, huh? Can I just call you Quill?”
I said yes.
“So…You want to know my story, Quill?” [Cobalt set the book down.]
I chuckled and gave my reply, confirming his statement.
“That’ll be five bits.”
I sighed. The medical staff had warned me about this. I levitated five bits out of my pocket and put them into a small jar at the end of his bed.
“Alright, I guess I’ll go ahead and tell ya.”
I remember being there, you know. Every waking moment I spend, my mind wanders to those nights in the black hole that was Bridledale. Then my sleeping moments are spent having nightmares about it.
My dad, Splinter Horn, used to be in the military, so he knew what to do. He stockpiled supplies as soon as he got first word of the infection. Other ponies thought he was crazy, that there wasn’t anything bad coming. Heck, I thought he was crazy, that his survival training got to him in the head. But, when it finally hit our town, we had a full storage in a safehouse he had built with his own hooves on top of a huge tree in our backyard. We were safe from the infected.
What? Why do I call them infected? Because that’s what they are, you dingus. Ponies...just infected. So, the Infected. Call ‘em what you like...zombies, Zekes, Zacks, it don’t matter. They’re all the same.
Anyways, soon the entire town was in panic. We could hear the screams, you know. I think that’s what did my mom in. She went crazy after a few days of hearing the wails of her friends being eaten alive. We had to keep her in a separate room, tied to a chair to keep her safe. It broke my dad’s heart, it did; he loved her a lot.
As for him...well, having been in the military, Dad had heard and seen horrible things. I guess he was used to it.
My sister on the other hoof...she wasn’t. She didn’t go crazy like my dad, but she wasn’t exactly whole either. Her name Stella Horn. She...she was beautiful. I loved my sister dearly, and I wish that she had survived. Stella was always kind to me when others weren’t, always willing to be there for me.
It was her beauty that got her killed.
You see, once the epidemic took over and our area was considered a “Grey Zone,” there were still pockets of survivors. Most of us kept to ourselves, and only went out if necessary, like to gather supplies and help a wanderer every now and then. Others...didn’t exactly do that.
These were ponies we called the Crazies. Why? Because they were bucking crazy, that’s why. Those sons of bitches ran around, revelling in the apocalypse, slaying every infected they could get their hooves on. They were depraved ponies, always looking for more thrills. They would attack survivors like us every now and then, always raping and killing everypony. And people here think I’m crazy.
Oh, and did I mention they were cannibals too?
See, for some odd reason, they thought they could get the infected’s resistance to any kind of bodily harm by eating what they ate: pony flesh. Stupid bunch of dinguses, but that’s what they thought. They’d run around and every now and then catch a wanderer and well...roast pony for dinner.
My dad, he despised them. Being a survivalist, he made sure to cover his tracks so that the Crazies couldn’t find us. He even made the outside of our little safe house look like it had been attacked already; he covered it with blood and guts from different animals. He didn’t like it, I didn’t like it, and Stella as sure as hell hated it, but it was necessary.
Normally, the Crazies would pass by us like a dieting pony would a pile of hay fries. But one day, one of them got curious, and grabbed one of the guts lying on the ground next to our treehouse. Being an experienced cannibal, he knew immediately knew it wasn’t pony flesh. He knew that him and his fellow Crazies had been had, and they started attacking immediately.
Dad, he did the best he could. He fought them off using his rifle, then his knife, and then his hooves. But even a tank like him couldn’t handle the sheer number of Crazies. They overpowered him, tied him up, put a magic resistor on his horn, and moved onto us.
At first, I resisted. I punched and kicked, blasted with magic, and even bit the ear off of one to protect my sister. But, like my father, I wasn’t invincible. They tied me up, secured my horn, and sat me down next to my father.
Then...then they moved on to my sister.
I’ll never forget what they did to her, how they violated her, how the used her for their own sick pleasures. Neither will I ever forgive them for what they did. I suppose that’s why I never apologized for what I did after the war was over.
Anyways...long story short, after finishing with Stella, they moved on to mom. Surprisingly, she gave them the hardest time, being crazy and all. I swear, she came close to biting of the dicks of a couple of those bastards. Eventually, they gave up and killed her.
After that, they killed Dad. Then they had some more “fun” with Stella before finishing her off.
As horrible as it sounds...if she hadn’t been there to take that kind of treatment, I probably wouldn’t be here.
See, once they finished off Dad, one of the Crazies left his knife next to me before he went to rape Stella with the others. I picked it up and used it to cut the ropes binding my front hooves and as soon as I was free, I threw it into the backs of one of the bastards, killing him. As they yelled at me and started to advance, I ripped off the magic resistor and teleported away.
I ended up all the way in bucking Trottingham, in a huge hell hole of infected. Luckily, Dad trained me for this kind of thing, so I survived.
“And that’s how I ended up in here.”
What do you mean?
“Please, you’ve read the reports. You know what I did once I made it to the safe zones, what I did when the country was declared ‘safe.’”
For the sake of the conversation, let’s say I didn’t read the reports.
[Cobalt glares at me before sighing.] “Fine. After the war, I was still pretty unstable. I had recurring nightmares about the night the Crazies attacked, how they butchered my family in front of me, how they raped my sister. Eventually, I lost my cool.”
Meaning?
“Meaning that, using the skills I learned from Dad, I went hunting for the bastards who took everything from me: the Crazies.”
But surely the ones who killed your parents were dead?
[He shrugs.] “Say what you like. I saw those monsters on a television broadcast sobbing their eyes out as they were rescued by Equestrian Bio-Terror Response units. Playing innocent despite the crimes they committed. I couldn’t handle that.”
So you hunted them down and murdered them?
“Again, say what you like. I was dealing out justice.”
[With that he refused to talk anymore, so I decided to take my leave.
I later discovered that Cobalt had in fact murdered several innocent ponies, believing them to be the Crazies in his nightmares. I believe it was the psychological trauma that lead him to see what he wanted to see.
While I feel for the poor boy, I couldn’t help but wonder: how many others like him are there in this post-Resistance Equestria?]
