Among the Living

Chapters

The World We Now Live In
Desperate Times
Taking Action
Leaving Sanctuary
Blood and Debris
Broken
Only Each Other
The Strong Ones
Interrogation
The Impossible Mission

The World We Now Live In

The world had used to be such a peaceful place, a time where conflict among ponies seemed extremely unlikely in society, and that any dispute or disagreement could be solved by the end of the day with both ponies left happier by the end of it, even making friendships stronger while doing so, with no-one being killed, maimed or left with loved ones taken from them in the process.

For Spike, that world seemed like a distant memory to him now, as so much has changed in so little time, that it wouldn’t have felt like it had only been 3 months since he had lived in that world, when he was happy, with the main priority of the day to have fun with his friends, not to protect them from either being eaten alive by walkers, or killed by bandits.

That is, if they don’t already do it themselves.

The world that Spike and everyone he cared about, had cherished, was taken away from them overnight, as on no significant night, for reasons that even now not even Twilight has figured out, ponies that had passed away were coming back to life, with only one extinct - to feed.

It was then when things turned ugly, as the ones who weren't killed in their beds had to endure seeing their loved ones being killed, only for them to come back and be one of those things, not being the pony they had known all their lives anymore, but a murderous zombie, or a walker, as we had soon come to call them.

He could still remember the night it all started, to be fair, it would be pretty hard for him to ever forget it, seeing friends he had just spoken to earlier that week getting swarmed by them, while trying to escape their home with Twilight erging him to run, that there was nothing we could have done for them, and that we should find the others before it was too late.

He had never seen someone die before, and he never would have expected it to be so graphic, so fast, remembering ponies insides gushing out on the street, seeing the life leave their eyes, only for the pony to rise up again as one of them after only a short time, one of the only differences being that the life doesn't come back in their eyes.

It was only there where he learned his first lesson in surviving - Aim for the head.
That was the only way to keep them dead, a lesson he knew would save his life one day, and he knew that it had to happen to him when his time came, for he sure as hell wasn’t going to become one of them.

They were lucky to escape the carnage, but not without experiencing losses of their own while getting out of the now burning town, filled with looters gathering as much supplies as they could, scared ponies not knowing where to run, and the most noticeable, the walkers now plaguing the streets, killing and ripping apart the ponies who weren't fast enough, some of which that still made Spike feel sick thinking about was the children separated from their parents.

He could still remember the ones he saw die that first night, examples being certain friends of his like Lyra, Bon Bon, Roseluck, and even the Cake family didn’t make it, but even though that bothered Spike deeply seeing them die, he stilled considered it awful not knowing who lived that night, if some of his friends were still out there, and if he would ever see them again.

The first night he still thought of it as the longest one of his life, spending all of it fleeing, praying that he could find his remaining friends alive and while so doing all he can to make sure he didn’t separate with the friends he did find along the way, namely being Twilight, whom he made sure she didn't stay out of his sight that whole night.

He had lost so many friends that night, he sure as hell wasn’t going to lose his sister.

He had seen how tensions were rising in the little camp they had formed in what once was Sweet Apple Acres, which they had now called home ever since Equestria went to hell, and he couldn’t tell anymore if the arguments between his closest friends were due to hunger, or as a way of handling their grief, for the friends or family they had lost.

His guess was that was probably a combination of both, as even he was feeling pretty moody the last couple of days, it would be impossible for the current situation not to get to you after a while.

One shining example of these “incidents” as described by Twilight would be what happened between Rainbow Dash and Applejack a couple of days ago, he wasn’t there for the whole argument as it was his turn for lookout, but when he came down to see what all the yelling was about, that was when things really picked up.

By the time it took Twilight and Applebloom to pry them off each other, Rainbow had managed to give Applejack a black eye, all while showing a few bruises of her one, making it hard to see who really won in this fight, not that he had any time to check in detail, as the two had quickly parted from each other, and from the crowd they had formed in the commotion, not seeing them again for a couple of hours, when their hunger finally made them swallow their pride and made them join the rest of us for food.

When Spike had asked Sweetie Belle what the fight was all about later that same day, she said she wasn’t sure, but she had heard that it could had been something to do with Rainbow accusing Applejack of trying to steal her belongings for some unknown reason, making it hard to believe it was actually true, but seeing as Applejack had just lost Granny Smith to the horde when it all began, it was pretty obvious she was in a vulnerable state at the moment, and it didn’t help having a paranoid and hungry Rainbow Dash accusing her of something she didn’t do, so it must had taken that to put her over the edge, leading to both not exactly better off in the end.

Applejack even said later on that it wasn’t even worth the black eye.

To be fair, it was understandable that Rainbow Dash was on edge as well, she was more worried than the rest of us about the ponies that still could be out there and whether they were still alive or not, and it was possible she had to do something to handle her stress.

We were all worried about who could still be out there, good or bad, as even though on that first night Spike and Twilight managed to find a number of their friends including Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, the now disbanded Cutie Mark Crusaders, now that had higher priorities to deal with than gaining Cutie Marks, as well as a few others, there wasn’t a lot of us left anymore, and they never found Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy the first night, and even though none of us would say it, we now had to assume they had died that night, no matter how hard that was to accept, especially from Rainbow, we had to move on and create a fortified camp instead of looking for them, otherwise we wouldn’t had made it.

Thus creating a settlement from the ruins of Sweet Apple Acres, away from the havoc and what our remaining friends could call home, where they could stick together, at a time where they needed to more than ever, continually making it stronger, building metal walls and fences to keep out not just the walkers, but the bandits that followed shortly after the apocalypse started, looking for supplies with no sense of morality anymore.

Spike wouldn’t even put it past them to think that they would kill their best friend for a can of beans.

Now after three months, the world he once lived in was long gone, now only living in a harsh and brutal environment with only more difficulties he knew he had to face, like where the next meal would come and what he could use to defend all what he had left in his life.

He could only take solace in the fact that he, unlike others, had a place to call sanctuary in the end of the world, and that he managed to have some of his family come with him to this new world.

Author's Note

Hey you guys, like I said in the description, I'm open to any criticism into how I can improve,as this is my first attempt of writing a story since I was a little kid, and I understand it probably comes a bit off as mediocre.

This story will mainly focus on the difficulties and hardships of surviving in a zombie apocalypse, how it would change people, and will include a number of times having Spike and others facing life or death situations and making difficult decisions in order to keep themselves alive. I hope you enjoy.

Next chapter will definitely have dialogue between characters, this chapter was mainly to set where this story is based and kinda as a back story into how the world went to hell and why they are now living in a fortified camp in Sweet Apple Acres.

Desperate Times

A cool breeze ran through the landscape of Sweet Apple Acres, showing the first signs of the winter months approaching, a difficulty upcoming that Spike didn’t even want to think about right now, just dealing with the problems already here.

However, it wasn’t an easy task for him to simply ignore the cold, seeing as he just started his shift as lookout, a job that had to be done on the main tower of the camp, and by extension, the coldest.

It may had seemed unwelcoming, but he thought he probably should have considered himself kind of lucky, it wasn’t the most difficult of jobs considering what the others were doing right now, all he had to do was look for danger and tell the others if he saw anything, that, or if he saw the group that headed out for supplies a couple of days ago, not very likely, as they were expecting them back way sooner, it could only be assumed that they either ditched us and took their chances, or the walkers managed to overrun them.

Either way, it meant little food for us, a resource that was drastically running short in the camp, and it was definitely beginning to wear us down the last couple of days, and if we didn’t make another supply run soon, it could definitely mean a problem, not even looking at how winter is coming.

Spike did try to be the chivalrous one in this problem, skipping meals to be able to give more food to others, but he knew he couldn’t keep this up, sooner or later he had to think of himself and eat something, or he might just pass out someday, that would be another problem to Twilights already overflowing list, not that she needed the extra stress, being the leader.

It had just dawned on him that this was probably the reason she stuck him with lookout duty today, Spike thought, he was definitely showing that he wasn’t eating as much, his scales were slightly paler, and he had to admit he was feeling a bit weak lately, so she probably gave him the job to sit around and not hurt himself, making Spike think that Twilight was actually really worrying about him about this.

He looked away from the area outside the fence and looked downward to see what she was doing, and he could truly see that she wasn’t looking so good herself, not because of food, but from what Spike assumed, lack of sleep.

Running this camp must be taking a bigger toll that he had once thought, and that thought make him instantly think of anything he could do that wouldn’t make him pass out from exhaustion, that could make Twilights role seem slightly easier, with no solutions coming to mind, aggravating him.

He took a quick scan of what his other friends were up to, noticing Applebloom helping Applejack repair a section of the fence that was damaged by the rain last night, and Rarity counting inventory to possibly help Twilight, before returning to his post, once again looking at the empty fields, just like yesterday, and the day before.

He hadn’t seen a walker in weeks, or anything to that matter, making it very hard to concentrate, the only thing keeping him up being the bracing cold up the tower, that you wouldn’t even notice on the ground, even it was only about 3 or 4 meters up, but Spike knew he had to keep vigilant no matter what, this job was more important than it seemed, and if had nothing else to do, he might as well do this one right.

It wasn’t all bad, at least here he was alone with his thoughts, with no one to interrupt hi-

“Hey Spike? Want some company?”

Spike broke out of his train of thought and pretty much jumped out of his skin at that point, and turned around to see a now laughing Rainbow Dash at the top of the ladder.

“Holy shit Rainbow Dash, don’t sneak up on me like that, you scared the hell outta me there”, Spike said, regaining his breath.

Rainbow Dash slowly stopped laughing, with a grin still plastered on her face and said,
“You know Spike, for a lookout, you aren’t very good at spotting ponies”

“Yeah,” Spike replied, “I was kind of in a trance for a moment there”

“You’ve been kind of in a trance for a while now, and we think its to do with you skipping meals” Rainbow answered in a slightly more serious tone, “All of us have noticed you have been weaker than the rest of us, and you doing this whole gentlemanly thing of giving away your food isn’t helping”.

“I’m not trying to be gentlemanly,” Spike argued, as Rainbow grabbed the nearby chair, joining him, “I just think other ponies need it more than I do right now, and I know we’re running out of food”.

“Yeah well, I didn’t just come up here to keep you company, I came to give you this, Twilight’s orders” She handed him a badly wrapped package, which he opened to find a few morsels of food inside, a sight that Spike was happy to see, even if he wouldn’t admit it.

“I told yo-”

“Don’t argue with me,” Rainbow interrupted. “This isn’t just Twilight's orders, all of us know you need it more than us right now, and we’re getting worried about you, so stop being a damn hero and eat already”.

Spike knew he was fighting a losing battle, and even he knew that she was probably right that he needed some right now, so he swore under his breath and began to eat what was in the package, much to Rainbow’s delight.

It was no cupcake from Sugarcube Corner, but at least it was filling, and that was all he needed right now, he could already feel his strength returning to him with every bite.

“Thank you,” Rainbow said “At least now Twilight could have one thing less to worry about, running this place is already hard enough”.

Spike looked to Rainbow. “So you’ve noticed it too?”

They both looked down and saw Twilight working with the others.

“We all have.” Rainbow said gravely. “She’s needs to sleep, but the whole supply problem is probably keeping her awake at night, I even heard her mutter under her breath that we might actually run out of food and water in a couple of weeks if we don’t do anything”.

Spike stopped eating, until Rainbow punched him on the arm and gestured him to keep going.

“What did I just say about being a hero?” Rainbow said with a playful smile.

“Fine.” Spike grunted while rubbing his arm. “But we do need to find more supplies, at least for the next couple of months until the orchards begin growing fruit again”.

They both looked over outside the gate and saw one of the remaining orchards in the fields, one of the few that didn’t burn, but hadn’t beard any fruit, due to the winter months approaching.

“What unlucky timing for the end of the world, right?”

“Yeah…” Rainbow muttered. “But I’ve been thinking lately, we aren’t the only ones around here who are hungry, outside the camp, I mean”.

Spike looked at her, confused, “We’re starving here, and you’re worried about the bandits?”

“No, not that,” Rainbow answered. “I’m saying that the bandits are hungry enough as it is, and are going to be even more hungry after winter, so where do you think would be the best place on the map to travel to find food during Spring?”

Spike’s face turned from confused to shocked when he realized what Rainbow was talking about, “...an apple orchard.” he responded.

“Shit... so you’re saying…”
“Yeah.” Rainbow followed. “In a couple of months, we are going to need weapons as much as we going to need food”.

“Oh fuck...” Spike said with a new sense of clarity. “Do you think Twilight knows?”

“I don’t know, but I am not looking forward to telling her”.

Silence then overcame the both of them, and Spike wasn’t certain into how long they were quiet, when Rainbow finally spoke, “You know, it’s weird…”

Spike looked away from the field and asked, “What’s weird?”

“You were a baby dragon not a long time ago, and now look at you.” Rainbow said, trying to change the subject.

Spike then did acknowledge that he had in fact grown in the last couple of years, to the point where he was even taller than his friends now, like a teenage dragon, remembering that it had been a long time since he needed someone to carry him on their backs in order to keep up.

It wasn’t just features in growth that Rainbow was talking about, it was also how he had changed since this whole thing had began, including the other ponies.

He had now carried a holster, holding a large knife on his waist, that he carried at almost all times, as well as others, as if it was as standard in this world, which it probably was.

It was then when Spike commented, “It’s not just me who looks different, look at you guys, especially the Crusaders”

Rainbow looked and saw that Spike did have a point, they too were taller, almost even catching up on her, and the point made that both Spike and the Crusaders were definitely not children anymore, was made very clear to her now.

“It’s probably a good thing you guys have grown up,” Rainbow said. “This world isn’t exactly child-friendly”.

They both shared a laugh and continued to keep lookout, at least this time leaving with a comment on a happier note, leaving them feeling slightly more cheerful.

However, their good feelings were cut short suddenly, when both saw movement in the trees, definitely from some kind of creature, too soon to tell alive or dead, for the first time in weeks.

Before Spike could get them, Rainbow grabbed the nearby binoculars and looked forward the area, saying nothing, until letting out a sudden gasp.

“What is it?” Spike asked impatiently. “It is a walker? Anyone we know?”

“Son of a bitch, it’s the supply group!” Rainbow yelled happily, “Our food problems could be over Spike”.

Spike grabbed the binoculars to get a clear view, while Rainbow yelled the others to open the gate, grabbing the whole camps attention.

But something wasn’t right.

They were moving towards the camp slowly, but still too far away to make out any precise details on whether they were actually even alive or dead, all they could recognise for definite was it was definitely some of the ponies that left a few days ago in search for supplies, ponies that were thought to be dead.

And it looked like that fact was true in some instance, as Spike saw more clearly, there was far fewer numbers than the group that left, and it could only be assumed that they didn’t make it, giving some sort of explanation that something clearly went wrong on the trip, causing their delay.

As the group trudged slowly closer and closer to the camps gates, Spike had a clearer sight on who was coming. He could finally tell that they were alive, not walkers, and that there was four ponies coming, out of the twelve that left, and it was apparent that they looked heavily beaten up, some even wounded, a fact he had to tell the others.

“Quickly!!” Spike yelled as he climbed down the tower ladder. “Open the gate!! They’re wounded!!”

A crowd began to gather, ditching any jobs they were in the middle of doing, as they knew these supplies were of top priority, and had to know if those ponies had died for nothing.

The metal gate opened, revealing the four wounded ponies staggering their way into the camp, almost at the point of collapsing, and it was clear they needed medical attention to some wounds they had gotten, not clear into whether it was a bite or not.

It was now shown that out of the remaining ponies, Pipsqueak, now called Pip, was one of the survivors, and was the leader of the supply group when sent off.

Twilight approached Pip, and asked “Pip, what happened out there? Are you okay? Are those bi-”

“Please... Twilight…” Pip interrupted, while showing he was clearly out of breath. “Before I can answer any questions, we need help. We barely made it here alive and we need medical attention”.

Twilight paused, but then nodded understandably. “Of course… Sweetie Belle, Applebloom. Please help them inside.”

As they walked inside with Applebloom and Sweetie Belles help, he added to Twilight, still out of breath, “And no, they aren’t bites.”

The door to the makeshift medical bay closed, and Twilight turned to the curious crowd of ponies formed, screaming question after question to her that it was barely audible, until Applejack screamed louder than the others to keep quiet or they’ll bring every walker in Equestria our way.

Twilight then spoke loudly to the crowd when they had all calmed down.
“I know you have questions. And so do I right now, but it looks like they’ve travelled through hell to get here, so they deserve rest and attention to their wounds before we ask them anything, so no-one bothers them until I say the time is right. Understood?”

The crowd began to disperse, and some ponies looked irritated by what she decided, but Twilight saw her friends had her back, they understood their questions could wait for a few hours, and that was all she needed, as she saw that in this camp, it was her closest friends outnumbering the strangers, both showing positives and negatives to it.

Positives being that there was little chance of mutiny, but negatives being that it was proof of how little ponies were left at this camp anymore.

Twilight then joined Applebloom and Sweetie Belle in the medical bay to possibly help in healing them, and while Spike decided to resume his post and walk back to the tower, he passed by Applejack who he began to talk with.

“Twilight was right about one thing.” Applejack said, “If they had to go through Ponyville, then they absolutely had to go through hell to get here…”

Author's Note

Yay!! Second Chapter!! And it's longer than the last one!!

So what did happen to the supply group to have them beaten up so badly?
Did they manage to find enough food to last the winter months?
And will I stop with these dumb rhetorical questions that the readers aren't really asking themselves?

Find out next Chapter!!
As always, please comment and favorite if you enjoying this story, and if you have any suggestions into how this story should progress.
Thanks!!

Taking Action

Hours had passed since the supply group had returned, the sun began to go down and even some ponies decided to call it a day and hope for news in the morning, all except Spike and his friends, who remained waiting outside the medical bay by a campfire, hoping for the door to open with news from Twilight, who hadn’t been seen since she went inside.

It was understood that no-one went inside without her instruction, and despite her friends curiosity into how bad the situation could be, they respected her wishes and didn’t allow anyone else to enter.

Sweetie Belle and Applebloom helped Twilight at first when they first arrived, but it was not long after they left her to do her work, as they all knew that it would been better off that way, and Twilight should had been left with full concentration. When ponies came to bother them hoping they both knew anything on the matter, it was Spike and Applejack who got rid of them, as although they were only inside for a couple of hours, it was a lot of energy according to them and they were too tired to deal with them, making them very appreciative for helping them.

It began to grow dark in the camp, the only light coming from the campfires and the small torches, as well as the only heat, seeing as the temperature was lowering more and more as the hours went by.

“How do you think it’s going on in there?” a shivering Rainbow Dash asked while moving closer to the fire. “Do you think it’s worse than we thought?”

“I don’t know,” replied Applejack. “But it’s really proving how bad it is in town right now, we’re really lucky to have a camp like this to live in, not like others”.

“We can’t think about that right now,” Spike joined in. “Everybody in camp saw what they were like when they arrived, how beaten up they looked, and they’re terrified, you can see it. It was hard enough for ponies to volunteer to go on supply runs”.

“Those guys did look like shit when they got here.” Rainbow added.

“They must have been, seeing as how tired the girls were when they left the medical bay” said Scootaloo. “They wanted to know just as much as us and they only managed five minutes with us before turning in like the others. Whatever happened out there must had been big...”.

Suddenly, the medical bay door swung open after many hours of being closed, revealing a tired Twilight Sparkle coming to join them, grabbing the groups attention.

“Twilight, are you okay?” asked Spike.

“Just tired.” said Twilight. “It was hard work, but Pip and the others are resting easy now. Some of them had pretty bad wounds when they got here, it’s going to leave some pretty noticeable scars in the next few days. I’ll have to thank the girls for their help.”

“Did you manage to find out what happened before they passed out?” said Rarity.

“Most of them weren’t in the state for talking, but Pip managed to tell me while I was helping him. He told me that the town is completely overrun by walkers, but that isn’t even the worst part...”

“Bandits?” said Spike.

Twilight paused, but then nodded. “Yeah. It turns out things are worse than we first thought…”

The group along the campfire looked at Twilight in surprise, wondering what she meant by that.

“How could things possibly be worse? Having a town filled with walkers and Bandits sounds pretty bad already.” said Applejack.

“From what Pip told me,” Twilight began. “It really is. He even said he won’t be going back out for supply runs for a long time after this”.

Applejack looked at Spike, remembering what he had said earlier.

Twilight continued, “He told me that while the group was looking for supplies in abandoned buildings, they were ambushed by bandits, taking most of their supplies and killing a few of their own, and that they were lucky to get away. They learned that a group of bandits have been operating in town, killing any scavengers and taking their gear to survive, calling themselves ‘Hunters’.”

“Hunters?” questioned Rainbow. “Sounds like a bunch of assholes.”

Twilight gave a small smile for a moment, but then went on. “They said that there had to be about 20-30 of them, operating in some kind of base they didn’t manage to discover while out there, and while dealing with them, as well as the walkers attracted by the noises, it left only the four of them to remain, with only some supplies that could last us a while, but it could had a lot more if it weren’t for them.”

Spike looked around the group and saw many faces of concern, including himself, knowing that these ‘Hunters’ could be a huge threat for them.

Spike asked “Do you think these guys might come here, if they knew where we were?”

Twilight looked at him, almost making him think she was going to lie to make him feel better, but said, “I don’t know, it’s a possibility, but these guys aren’t like regular bandits, they have order, and they apparently aren’t very remorseful when it comes to killing, and it’s making them stronger every day, so we have to be prepared for if they do. We need weapons.”

The group went silent, knowing what had to be done, but it seemed no-one could speak, but after a few seconds, Spike had to say it.

“We have to go back out there, don’t we?”

Twilight looked at Spike with worry, and he could see she was genuinely scared of what Pip told her, of what these Hunters were capable of.

“Spike, maybe if we wait a while and think this through-”

“Twilight.” Spike interrupted. He knew that this was the only option, even if he was scared too, but this camp wouldn’t last if they weren’t prepared, so he had decided.

“I’m going to go out there and get more supplies before winter comes.”

That statement stunned the group and kept them silent for a few seconds, before bombarding Spike with warnings not to go, that he was being crazy.

“Spike, let me get this straight.” Applejack said. “Twilight warns us of a deadly group of bandits that killed most of Pips group, and your first thought is to go back out there? Stop acting insane, you’ll be killed.”

“Applejack, Twilight said it herself.” Spike argued. “These guys are getting stronger everyday, so we need to get more supplies while we still can, so we could have a chance of defending ourselves. You know what Pip has brought won’t last us all of winter, this could be our last chance before the cold gets really bad.”

She opened her mouth to make a counter-argument, but found herself speechless. She knew he was right, Winter was coming closer and closer and this could actually be the last chance to get supplies before the snow really sets in. The only reason she could think of for him not to go would be that she didn’t want her friend to die.

Spike looked at Twilight, who said nothing, just keeping a scared facial expression at him, looking like she was thinking of every possible thing to say to change his mind, but finding nothing, so it was leaving her with an open mouth, with no words coming out.

“Twilight.” Spike said worryingly.”Say something…”

“I...don’t want you to go…you’ll be killed if you went alone.”

Spike sighed, knowing what what hell he was going to go through, but said,
“I know, but tomorrow, when everyone else wakes up, I’m going to ask for any volunteers and…” He paused. He knew it was a slim chance of anyone actually agreeing, but went on.
“And… if no-one does, I’m going alone. I have to.”

“You’re not going alone.” came a voice from the back. “I’m coming with you.”

Spike turned, and saw it came from Rainbow Dash.

“Rainb-”

“Don’t argue with me. You need all the help you can get.” she interrupted. “There’s no way I’m going to let some asshole try and kill you while I’m stuck here counting inventory.”

Spike opened his mouth to object, but he knew it was pointless. Her mind was made up.

“Thank you, Rainbow Dash.” he finally managed to say.

The next morning, Spike awoke hoping the whole idea of these Hunters was just a bad dream, and that he and Rainbow didn’t have to risk their lives, but he knew it was the truth, and now that everyone was awake, he had to ask for any volunteers to give better chances of survival.

He knew making this decision wasn’t helping with Twilight’s stressful role as leader, he could see when he got up that she clearly did not sleep much that night, probably thinking of any possible scenario of what could go wrong, of how she could lose both her brother, and one of her best friends, but he knew this was the only option, nobody else would say it.

While joining the others to eat breakfast, if thats what you could call stale bread, Applejack sat next to him, looking at him with almost the same expression as Twilight.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked him. “We could find out another way...”

“You know there isn’t,” Spike replied. “These Hunters are obviously stockpiling for the winter, so when spring comes and we are pretty much out of food, these guys could take down this place easily if they found it”.

Applejack looked down at her plate. “I understand.” she said. “I’m just worried for you. Rainbow as well.”

Spike was going to say something, but any words were shut out when Applebloom, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo joined them at their table. Only Scootaloo out of the three of them knew he was going, and he wasn’t sure how to tell the other girls.

“Mornin’,” said Applebloom. “What were you guys talking about?”

“I’ll tell you later.” Spike replied. He just wanted to eat, not have the same argument like last night again.

“Actually, Spike…” said Scootaloo, knowing what he was trying to do. “I don’t think you’ll have a chance to talk about it later. I think Twilight’s about to call a meeting about what happened with Pip”.

“Dammit…” Spike muttered to himself. He knew when Twilight had everyone together that it was his best opportunity to ask for volunteers, he had just hoped it could have been later.

Just as Scootaloo had predicted, Spike had seen Twilight move to one of the main platforms in the camp, higher than everyone else, calling for the camps attention, a task which was simple to do, as many ponies still were curious into what happened.

“Can I have your attention, please?” Twilight called out as ponies formed a crowd, stopping what they doing. “I know you all what to know about the supply group…”

Just then, question after question was fired at Twilight, not giving her any time to speak, which was then halted by Applejack, just as she had done the day before.

“Everypony, quiet.” Twilight announced. “Let me explain the whole story, and what we are dealing with…”

She took a deep breath and began. “Pip told me that his group was ambushed while collecting supplies, both by a number of walkers that were attracted, and by a group of bandits that have began to operate in town, calling themselves ‘Hunters’. Many of the group members were killed, leaving only the four of them that came here, still with very substantial wounds, meaning these guys mean business.”

Ponies in the crowd began to murmur, concerned for their safety, wondering if this camp was safer than what they first thought.

Twilight continued. “The remaining survivors did manage to bring some supplies, such as food, water and medicine, that could last us a bit longer… but it has been brought to my attention that getting even more at this time must be at high priority right now… Spike?”

Spike knew it was time. Twilight was calling for him to explain the situation, and it was as good a time as any to see who could help him. He rose from the table, leaving a confused Applebloom and Sweetie Belle behind, and made his way to the platform that Twilight was on, facing a concerned crowd, eager to what he had to say.

He looked at all the worried faces, then at Rainbow, then to Twilight, and began to speak.
“As you have already found out, the winter months are approaching, and it is getting colder every day now. These Hunters are getting stronger by the looks of it, and we need supplies in order have a better chance of survival, so, I am going to lead a supply group for one last run before winter sets in, when we won’t be able to.
I’m not going to sell this to you. It’s pretty fucked up out there right now, and there is a chance you won’t make it, but I’m asking if there is anyone who will volunteer to join me and Rainbow Dash into getting these supplies, so we could have a chance for the next couple of months.”

Spike heard whispers in the crowd, with no-one raising their hoof, hearing certain things like,
“he’ll get us all killed”, “these hunters are going to get here”, or “that dragon is insane”.

Spike was about to give up hope, thinking the chances of him and Rainbow Dash surviving out there on their own were very little, and after a few seconds of no response, no ponies volunteering, Spike was considering just taking the hint that it was just going to be the two of them out there, practically a death sentence.

That is, until one hoof of the crowd rose. A hoof, belonging to Sweetie Belle.

The crowd gasped, and turned their eyes to the only pony in the camp who was crazy enough to agree to such a proposal, thinking she had some kind of death wish.

“Sweetie Belle? What are you doing?” a panicking Rarity said, tearing her way through the crowd to get to her. “You can’t do this, you won’t survive out there…”

“Rarity, Spike’s right,” argued Sweetie. “This is our last chance, and they need all the help they can get. I have to go, you can’t stop me.”

Rarity looked like she was on the verge of tears, scared of what these Hunters could do to her sister if they got to her, but keeping a still worried expression, she said one thing.

“You’re right. I can’t stop you...”

She stared at the ground, unable to look into anyones eyes, Spike seeing that she was terrified beyond belief. But after what seemed like a lifetime, Rarity looked at Sweetie Belle finally and said,

“But you can’t stop me either.” raising her own hoof, to her sisters shock.
Spike couldn’t believe it. He had went from having two members on this run, to four, making him think that they could actually survive this, something that would make anyone feel better if placed in this situation, but not him. Now, he had three of his best friends to guard with his life, not just Rainbow Dash.

After the crowd remained in stunned silence, looking at the two sisters who agreed to partake in this dangerous task, they soon looked back up to Spike and Twilight on the platform, who were doing the same, they were as surprised as they were.

Spike considered refusing, not wanting to endanger his friends lives, but had to remember that he had to be strong about this, he asked for volunteers, and this was him getting them.

After a while, He finally managed to find his voice, and said, “Then it’s settled, we’ll-”

“Wait.” came a voice from the back. “I’m coming too.”

The voice was angry, and dark, making Spike wonder why this pony was even agreeing, he sounded like he was being forced into saying it, and he couldn’t even see at first who it was, until the crowd parted, revealing Big Macintosh leaning against the fence, eyes not looking up.

Spike was surprised that he managed to get at least one pony to volunteer, but now he had four, and the camp would have been plunged in stunned silence once again, if there hadn’t been a cry coming from Applebloom, rushing to her brothers side.

“Big Mac...no..” she whimpered. “Don’t do this, please...don’t leave us like Granny left us.”

“Applebloom, I’ll come back.” said Mac, trying to calm her down. “I promise.”

But Applebloom didn’t believe him, she even tried to do Rarity’s tactic and raise her hoof like the others, before being stopped by Mac, pulling her hoof back down to the ground.

“Stop..I volunteer… I said I volunteer!” she cried, before her mouth was covered by Mac.

“No she doesn’t. Spike, don’t you dare let her go. I’m not letting it.” yelled Mac. “Applejack, help me take her inside.”

If anyone else was in Spikes position they wouldn’t be throwing away any viable volunteers, they would take Appleblooms cries as a contract and force her out there, but Spike knew better than that, he knew Applebloom didn’t mean it, she was just worried for her brothers safety, so he had to end it there.

He didn’t have twelve volunteers like the previous group, but this was different now, they were now aware of what is out there, but at least five was better than one.

“Alright, It’s settled.” he announced, turning the crowds heads from the Apple family to him.
“I will be leading a supply group, accompanied by Rainbow Dash, Sweetie Belle, Rarity and Big Macintosh. There’s no turning back now.”

And he meant it. If he didn’t say it, then even himself would try and get out of it.

“We leave tomorrow.”

Author's Note

Alright, here's where things really start to pick up, and for once I'm actually making use of the Sweetie Belle tag I put on this story.
Next chapter, the group says their goodbyes and leaves the camp, making their way to town.

Until next time, thanks for reading!

Leaving Sanctuary

It was still only morning, but Spike was already exhausted and wanted to go back to sleep, after Twilight’s eventful meeting.

A lot happened in that short space of time resulting in him being responsible for a whole group of ponies for the foreseeable future, a task that seemed too stressful to handle for him, causing him to lay his head down on the table he had returned to, after the meeting ended and the small crowd began to disperse, back to their own jobs.

“I'm in way over my head,” he thought. “Why I just let Rainbow be in charge? She volunteered at the same time I did…”

He knew he had asked for volunteers, and truly hoped that anyone would step up and give them an actual chance out there, but now that it actually happened, Spike realised that although he hoped for help, he didn’t expect for it to actually come, leaving him not knowing what to do next, and wondering how in the world could he not had thought this scenario through?

As much as it stressed him out, Spike knew he couldn’t just stay still and wait for everything to happen as it went, he was a leader now, and that meant he had to think strategy, otherwise he would be bringing this group down and accomplishing nothing in the process.

He began to ponder in his mind of any possible areas which could provide useful supplies to scavenge, that no-one else could think of, at the same time taking into account whether these particular areas could be in the open, or a likely place where they could run into enemies, as dealing with them was a task that Spike that he wanted to do as little as possible while on this trip, gaining supplies should be at a high priority, another being of course to protect each other, and generally, have each others back.

While on the subject, Spike began to think about what would happen if they did run into trouble, and while he didn’t like thinking of what his friends might do in a life-threatening situation, he had to stop thinking of their best qualities, and now about the real world, thinking of their faults that could get them killed out there, as well as his own.

He had to think of his comrades individually, looking at their strengths and weaknesses that should be considered before going out there.

First of all, Rainbow Dash. While not announced officially, Spike considered her to be his second in command when on this trip, a status that while not discussed, he could tell by the look in her eyes that she was completely aware of that fact, and she was fully happy with that status. That meant when placed in a situation too complex to understand by himself, he would probably look to Rainbow for her insight, as he trusted her fully, as well as her judgement.

Spike considered himself lucky to have Rainbow in his group, she has proved to be quick, and vigilant of her surroundings, as well as became used to the prospect of taking out walkers by now, as Spike has, and he knew these strengths could prove useful out there.

But Spike remembered that he also had to look at her weaknesses as well, and searched his mind into ways of how certain parts of her personality could put themselves in danger, examples being that when Spike thought about it, he believed that Rainbow could sometimes be considered a hot-head, as well as arrogant at times, and he believed that if those traits could get the best of her, it could not only cost her own life, but possibly her friends lives while doing so.

Spike believed he was making progress; he was looking at all the scenarios of what could go right or wrong while out there, as a good leader should, as Twilight would, and it began to make him feel less stressed.

He spent the next couple of hours analysing his other partners as he did for Rainbow Dash, looking into certain points such as Big Mac’s strength and how it could help, and how Sweetie Belle has made great effort into her healing spells as well as other magic, as taught by Twilight over the last couple of months, making it useful if anyone could get hurt, but one point that made him more afraid than others is that he didn’t truly know if Sweetie Belle was truly accustomed to this world as others, he knew Rarity wasn’t, so the prospect of killing something was a topic that he genuinely did not know, he just thought because she was Rarity’s sister, she might have the same idea in her head, something that she had to get out if she wanted to live.

Also, Spike never really took it into thought before, but Sweetie was considered to be a very attractive pony, at least in his opinion, and if Spike thought this, then maybe these Hunters could think the same way, and if they truly are as twisted as Pip described, then maybe they won’t kill her because of this, maybe they will take her as prisoner instead, taking her to their own camp and-

“No.” Spike muttered under his breath. “I’m not going to think like that. I won’t let that happen.”

He knew it was a bad idea to not think of this, he should be looking at the real world, putting every scenario in mind no matter how vile, but this topic in particular was just too much for Spike, especially when putting Sweetie in thought.

He broke his train of thought when he looked up to see Twilight making her way to his table, now empty, making Spike aware that he had been thinking longer than he thought he had, possibly sitting in a trance for a couple of hours now.

“Hey.” Twilight said, taking the empty chair next to Spike.

“Hi…” Spike replied with a look of confusion on his face.

“What is it? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“It’s just…” Spike began. “based on last night, I figured you were going to come up with a huge speech trying to convince me not to go, but you look oddly calm today…”

Twilight gave a small smile. “I was going to, and I have to admit I was thinking up of few things to change your mind last night, but after we had that meeting, with all the others beginning to volunteer, I knew it was too late to turn back now, it might as well be set in stone right now, so I’m slowly trying to be okay with it”.

Spike appreciated that, and felt slightly more at ease not thinking he was abandoning Twilight by doing this. “Thank you.” he managed to say.

“And besides…” she said. “Your mind is made up, and I don’t want your possible last memory of me being nagging you…”

Spike saw she was still worried despite her trying, and said,

“Twilight, don’t talk like that. You know I’m coming back right? Me and the others. I’m gonna make sure of it.”

“You better…” she said, tears beginning to form. “I’ll kill you if you die out there…”

Spike came close and wrapped her into a hug, for one reason being to stop her crying, but also because in truth, he really needed one too.

“Fine, but you have to promise me something too...” he said, still locked together with Twilight’s arms. “When I come back, you better still be there when I do arrive. Don’t leave for any reason. You’ll be safest here.”

Twilight didn’t answer for a moment, but then nodded and said, “Okay… I promise.”

After a few seconds, they both broke their hug, and looked at each other.

“So how is Applebloom?” Spike asked, trying to change the subject. “She was pretty upset when Mac volunteered”.

Twilight looked at the ground. “Not good.” she confessed. “She won’t leave her bedside. And every time I do see her, she’s crying. She’s worried for Mac out there.”

Spike frowned; he felt as if he was breaking the remaining Apple family up, and he wondered if letting Mac come with them was doing the right thing.

“Am I doing the right thing here?” he asked Twilight. “Should I really be the one asking ponies to leave their families behind for supplies that might not even be out there anymore?”

“Spike…” Twilight said. “You made your choice, and so did the others. They all know what’s out there, and what the risks are, and I know Big Mac knows that too, otherwise he wouldn’t have volunteered. You can’t hold yourself responsible for what might happen.”

Spike knew she was right, but it didn’t make him feel any better. He hated knowing that Applebloom was feeling this way, and there was nothing he could do about it. The only thing he could possibly try to do would be to bring him back to her alive, him as well as the others.

After a moment, Spike decided to get up and make use of the hours he had left in this camp, and went to help the others with jobs around the area as he always did, trying to make himself useful after spending so long doing nothing.

The next morning, Spike had awoken to see the sun had risen enough to get into his eyes, it was time to go. No more talk, this was actually happening now.

He had risen to find both Rainbow Dash and Mac were already awake, gathering their bags, and other necessities for the road, namely weapons and food.

“You guys ready?” he asked, while approaching them.

Rainbow gave a small smile and gave a confident “Yes”, but Mac didn’t give the same courtesy, not even giving him eye contact, just giving a grunt and went back to arming himself, placing a holster with a large knife tucked away in it, around his back.

“What about you? Are you ready for this?” Rainbow asked him.

Spike hesitated, but then replied. “As much as I’m going to be… Are the others awake too?”

“We’re right here, darling.” came Rarity’s voice behind him, making him turn around to see not just her and Sweetie Belle, but also Twilight, Applejack, Scootaloo and even Applebloom emerge from the same place Spike had. They came to give their goodbyes.

Soon, him and others did as Rainbow and Mac did, and gathered supplies for their trip, arming themselves individually with the necessities for the outside world, as well as each of them putting on rucksacks able to carry the loot needed.

Spike picked up his holster carrying his own trusty machete, and placed it along his back, instantly available for any danger that may come close. That, accompanied by his sharp claws and fire breath, would not make him fragile to any short range attacks.
Long range attacks though, were an entirely different thing.

After a few moments, the group all found themselves fully stocked, each of them carrying rucksacks with suitable gear, as well as personal weapons for each of them to use, examples being Rainbow not only with a knife as standard, but also with a particular appliance scavenged for her use a couple of weeks back, a small crossbow designed to fit along a ponies wrist, able to shoot bolts silently and deadly, as she described, just like her.

Once that was done with, it was time for the second part, the goodbyes.

One by one, each pony went to their friends and families, giving tight hugs and telling them to be safe, examples being Rainbow and Scootaloo, Mac and the Apple family, and even Spike himself went to give Twilight one last hug before leaving.

“Be careful out there…” Twilight whispered.

“I will… I promise.” Spike replied, small tears even forming for himself too now.

The main gate began to open, revealing the dangerous world to the small group, and despite Spike and others seeing it numerous times through lookout duty, it felt different somehow, like before it was like a painting, but now it was real. They were stepping into the painting.

The five of them separated slowly from the others, stepping out of the camp for the first time in a long time, and heard the sound of the gates closing behind them.

Spike knew that it was last time he was going to see Twilight and a number of his friends for a long time, a period that he didn’t even know yet, and that made him all the sadder.

They were outside now, no protection as they once had, and they would be lying if they said they weren’t a little bit afraid right now.

Slowly, they made their way forward, moving further and further away from their safe haven, moving in the direction of the ruins of the town, full of the horrors that they do not even know of truly yet, only heard through the stories of the previous supply group, a group of twelve, with only four returning, making them aware of the dangers, and making them more afraid that this was only a group of five.

But each of them had a goal, a mission, this was to maintain the future of the camp, to save not only themselves, but the ponies that they care about.

They walked through the wilderness, and the adventure had truly begun.

Author's Note

Note: If you have trouble understanding what Rainbow's crossbow type weapon is, I choose to think of it like the wrist blades in the Assassins Creed franchise, weapons seemed to be designed around the wearers wrist, like bracers, and I thought of it to be the ponies type of weapon due to their lack of hands, otherwise it would probably just be a real crossbow.

Also, just adding, Rainbow with a crossbow? Without meaning to I am so making her the Daryl of this zombie story, not complaining though, Daryl's awesome, Rainbow's awesome, it seems like a good fit

Sorry this chapter seemed a bit boring, actual stuff coming next time, and trust me, if this goes the way I'm planning it, next time, you will has feels. You are warned.

Blood and Debris

It had been almost half an hour since the group had left camp, trudging their way through the wastelands, making their way forward to the ruins of Ponyville.

Not one of them had said a word since they had left, Spike figured they took a page out of his book and wanted to be alone with their thoughts, and besides, he didn’t think any of them knew what to say in this situation that might lighten the mood.

Spike didn’t know truly how they were feeling, he had decided to take point ahead of the group, and he wouldn’t dare turn around to see the facial expressions of his comrades, he was happier not knowing whether or not the others were as scared as he was.

While moving, Spike took awareness of a large portion of his surroundings, remaining vigilant at every little place such as the crumbling ruins of an old cottage or even through some trees, anywhere that could be a potential place for bandits to be able to jump out and ambush them, so that he could be ready every time and counter any move they might make; he assumed that was what the others were doing also.

It was strange somehow, all of them have walked this path numerous times, almost everyday for some of them, but it was different now; the surroundings had changed in a way. Homes of ponies had been reduced to ruin, some to which due to fire or looting, and the nature surrounding was becoming overgrown, taking apart what was left of the structures with grass and streams forming.

Spike knew this was the case for the future now, nature was going to take back the world, and although it could be considered beautiful when looking past it, he wondered what the town must look like now after all this time, when it had done all this to these remains in that period.

After a few moments of walking the beaten path towards town, they stopped to find a structure that hadn’t been completely destroyed as the others were that they passed, a small cottage, similar to the design of the one Fluttershy used to live in, and because they were still just about outside town by now, it was the perfect opportunity for a practice at searching through buildings, with the possibility of actually finding supplies that could prove useful.

Rainbow Dash stepped forward beside Spike and finally broke the long silence the group had managed to maintain since they left.

“What do you think? Should we have a look?”

Spike turned the group and agreed. “We should check it out. It’s the first real building we’ve seen since we left.”

Rarity nodded in agreement and they stepped off the path, towards the beaten down cottage. It had broken windows, the paint was thinning, and the previous occupants garden was showing the first stages of reclaiming the land, moss and weeds breaking their way inside, but it was still standing, and that was good enough to hold supplies in Spike’s opinion.

They positioned their way to the front door, with Sweetie reaching her hoof to the doorknob, only to be stopped by Mac, gesturing her to wait and stand back a moment, then proceeding to pound his hoof on the door five times, loudly and repeatedly.

“What are you doing?” Sweetie exclaimed, looking around to see if anyone in the area had heard, but before Mac could answer, a body broke its way through the crumbling door, revealing itself to be a walker, and before Spike could pull his machete out, it was already silenced by Mac, fully expecting anyone to come out, that was his plan all along.

“Checking if anyone was home.” Mac replied coldly, wiping the blood off his knife onto the grass, before placing it back in his holster.

Spike did not consider this tactic, and it was a good thing Mac did, otherwise that walker could have gotten them by surprise on their first attempt of scavenging.

“Nice going, Mac.” Spike commented, looking down at the body, seeing the red knife mark though the forehead courtesy of Mac, that managed to bring down the killer.

Mac did not reply, but looked forward into the now open cottage, the door was now chunks of wood and splinters underneath the walker.

The group walked cautiously into the building, spreading out to every doorway of any other room and within a few short moments of weapons armed, they concluded they were the only ones there anymore.

“Clear.” Rainbow confirmed, lowering her crossbow and unarming the bolts.

“Alright,” Spike announced to the group. “Spread out and start searching for anything useful to the camp, we leave in 10 minutes; that way we will be able to cover more ground before the sun sets.”

Rarity and Sweetie Belle made their way to the kitchen, looking for any canned goods that may had outlasted the previous owner, Mac searched the bathrooms, with the hope of finding any medicine, while Rainbow and Spike took to searching the upstairs, making sure the house was well and thoroughly checked.

Spike was so far finding nothing of value in one of the bedrooms he had been searching in, the only thing having any potential was a large chest sitting by the window, which by the time he managed to finally unlock he found to be filled with only old junk that wasn’t useful in the slightest.

He slammed the lid down in frustration and was ready to swear out at wasting his time, but then something outside the window caught his eye, making him forget of the useless chest. He hadn’t been able to see it before, but from at this altitude the view had became so much clearer, he was able to look over the hill from that window and saw the outskirts of the town.

At least, what was left of it.

Spikes assumption was true; nature was reclaiming this town as it did to the debris of the cottages outside the town. Vines and moss had spread like wildfire along the walls of some of the still standing but broken structures, and the roads between them had tall grass beginning to sprout through in between each stone. Without the usual maintenance of the ponies that had once lived in this town, it was becoming more and more different than the place Spike had once called home.

However, he couldn’t say the town was completely deserted, he assumed what was the going to be the first of many walkers were trudging along in no specific direction along the outskirts. It may had been only a few, and too far away to actually pose a threat, but Spike still felt uneasy, one reason being because he knew there was so many more out there as well as other threats the further they went into town, but also because of the recurring fact that if things don’t go fully to plan while in town, he as well as the others could just as likely become one of those mindless walkers, with no purpose, not being who you were anymore, just a savage animal.

Spike felt sorry for them in a way, it was hard thinking that they used to be something, that each of them used to have their own lives with their own families, but that didn’t matter anymore. Now only had to be considered a walker, a walker needed to be put to rest. You had to think like that, otherwise you wouldn’t survive. He hoped the others knew that.

After a while, they regrouped at the front of the house to present their findings, if this first house was a lucky one.

“Anything?” Spike asked the group, hoping they found more than he had.

Rainbow and Mac didn’t speak up, but it seemed the stuff of most value was in the kitchen, no matter how small it was; Rarity and Sweetie managed to find a few cans of food in one of the cabinets; not a lot, but it was something.

Spike knew he shouldn’t expect to find a jackpot in any of these houses, he had to take things slow and stockpile what they find, and at this point, he considered it a win that breaking into this cottage wasn’t a total bust.

“Alright, let’s move on. The town’s close now, so stay vigilant.” Spike told the others.

The group followed Spike over the hill to see what he saw, and Spike was sure he heard a gasp come from a few of them when they took in the sight he had earlier; they also couldn’t believe what had become of the town.

They moved forward to the town, and the next few hours went as followed, they took out any walkers that came close and moved from building to building searching for any supplies, never lingering, they wanted to move in and out to as many places as they could while the day lasted, while doing so staying behind any cover they can see to remain hidden, they may had not seen any Hunters yet, but they still didn’t want them to see them first.

Over time, each of their rucksacks filled slowly as they progressed to each building; it may had not been a lot from each place, but it was progress, and Spike knew if they kept this up for another day or two, it was possible they could find enough supplies that could last a while, or at least to pass the winter.

They found it wise to take out walkers there were only in single digits, in their twos or threes, never while in a herd. In that circumstance, it was hide in the building they were in until they pass, or be stupid and die.

This cycle went on for a couple of hours, and by that time, each member of the group managed to find some supplies from each trip, and took out a considerable amount of walkers in the process.

While the group went through their latest building, Spike found himself feeling slightly uneasy, and suspicious. The last couple of hours of plundering through had been, to the lack of a better word; peaceful, at least when comparing what they faced so far to what they had been described by Pip’s group.

He had expected Hunters and Walkers at every corner, at while there had been the occasional herd of 20-30 walkers trudging by at times, the group had mainly went walkers in small portions, nothing a group of five couldn’t handle, and one thing Spike couldn’t shake was they hadn’t seen a single Hunter yet, or any kind of Bandit for that matter, making him feel highly suspicious into what was really going on here.

Pip said these Hunters practically owned the towns supplies now, taking out any other groups who dared to roam their streets, who would risk death for food, but apart from walkers, the town was practically empty from anything living, raising only more questions for Spike.

Where are this guys? Did they just leave town searching for another town to plunder? Did they actually run out of luck already and the walkers got them?

These questions and so much more raced through Spike’s head, to the point of almost giving him a headache, but all thoughts left his head when a hoof suddenly grabbed his shoulder.
Spike turned around to see the pony who grabbed him was Sweetie Belle, with a look of concern etched upon her face.

“Everything okay?” she asked. “You look a bit stressed since we came into this room.”

Spike didn’t notice he and Sweetie were in this room together; he assumed she was searching with the others in the room adjacent, and that he was searching alone.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” he lied, but seeing Sweetie obviously could tell he was lying, he decided it was better off telling her the truth instead of trying to make her feel better.

“It’s just, don’t you think things have been running… a little too smoothly?”

Sweetie Belle looked confused. “I wouldn’t exactly call it smooth having to deal with these walkers.”

“I know, but you know what I mean,” Spike looked out the window. “Most of Pip’s group were taken out by these Hunter guys, and we haven’t seen one yet, it’s like they just got up and left. I’ve got a bad feeling.”

Sweetie got up and joined Spike by the window; taking Spike’s claw with her hoof, grabbing his attention, and she told him, “I know it’s suspicious, and I’m wondering what’s going on too, but frankly, I think it’s better if we just get these supplies and get all of us back home again with as less hassle as possible, so perhaps it’s actually better that we aren’t seeing any of these guys, it means we are standing a better chance out here.”

Spike felt that she had a point, they were lucky that they haven’t seen any Hunters, it made their job slightly easier; maybe even getting it done faster, and he appreciated Sweetie helping him see that.

“Thanks Sweetie,” he told her. “I guess I didn’t think of it that way.”

Sweetie smiled. “That’s what friends are for, right?”

“Right.” he smiled back.

They soon stepped back from the window, letting go of each other, and resumed searching the bedroom they were in, as the others were next door, except this time Spike felt slightly more at ease, mainly because he was somehow happy that Sweetie was with him, he felt that having her with him made him feel less stressed with the whole situation they were in.

He couldn’t quite explain why.

“You know, I never did thank you for before,” Spike said, changing the subject.

Sweetie again made a confused expression while working on emptying the bedside tables. “Thank me? Thank me for what?” she asked.

“Back at the camp,” Spike explained. “I was giving up hope anyone in the crowd would put their hoof up when I asked for volunteers, that me and Rainbow were going to have to go out here alone; then out of no-where, your hoof came up, then it went on from that. So, thank you, I know that mustn't had been an easy choice.”

Sweetie looked away from Spike, but even though he couldn’t quite make it out, he could had sworn he had just seen her blush slightly.

“You don’t have to thank me for anything,” she finally said. “You would had done the same for me, I know you would.”

Spike felt like it was his turn to blush, but forgot it all when Sweetie’s face had changed to a look of despair. Something was bothering her.

“I just wish Rarity didn’t volunteer after me, I can’t help thinking I’m putting her in danger by doing this.” she said.

“I know the feeling.” Spike understood. “But you gotta remember that Rarity made her choice to be here. She knows the risks and she chose anyway, like you and I did, so no matter what happens, you can’t hold yourself responsible. Twilight told me that.”

Spike wasn’t sure if what he said made Sweetie feel better, it was hard to tell, but he had to try something.

Although, any chance of any further discussion to look into that was completely interrupted between the two as Mac came to the doorway of the room. “Alright you guys.” he said in a strong, ordering voice. “Time’s up. Let’s go.”

Spike was annoyed. Not just because he wanted to finish that discussion with Sweetie, but also because he didn’t know if Mac knew who was in charge here.

Mac had always been a private person; he stuck to little words for as long as he knew him, and despite being Applejack’s brother, he really didn’t spend that much time with him. But ever since he had lost Granny Smith to the horde at the beginning of all this, it hit hard for him as far as he could tell, as it did for the rest of Apple family, and he changed as the world did. He became cold, and rarely smiled anymore, being even more of a private person than he ever did.

Spike wasn’t quite clear into why Mac volunteered to join this group, as far as he knew he wasn’t particularly close with anypony else, so why would he agree, and separate himself from the only family he had left? Spike couldn’t understand, but he wasn’t going to ask any questions that may change his mind on the matter.

At that time, they needed all the help they could get.

The pair proceeded to follow Mac outside the now practically empty bedroom, and joined Rainbow and Rarity in the living room.

“Got anything good this time?” Rarity asked. “So far this room has had nothing except only a few cans of beans.”

“Not much.” replied Sweetie. “But we did manage to find some aspirin by the bed, while we were in there.”

“Alright, if that’s all then maybe we should head on to-”

“Hold on, quiet.” interrupted Rainbow sharply. “What’s that sound?”

The group went silent, then suddenly heard voices, ponies voices, coming from nearby. Spike slowly creeped towards a boarded up window, peeking through the edges to the outside to see if what they heard wasn’t just imagination.

It wasn’t. Spike had seen a group of eight or nine ponies, armed with knives and other weapons, as well as a few unicorns that could possibly know combat magic, not far away, and they were heading towards the house. They had black armbands wrapped around each of them, and it didn’t take a genius to know that these guys weren’t friendly; they were Hunters.

“Shit. Everybody to the back room now and hide behind cover, they’re heading this way!” Spike erged as silently as he could to the others.

The group quickly picked up their bags and followed Spike’s orders. The back room was smaller, but it wasn’t in the open, if they were lucky, it was possible the Hunters could pass them without knowing. They hid behind anything they could find, such as tossed over tables and furniture, and went completely silent, trying to hear the Hunters voices.

“Me and my big damn mouth.” Spike cursed silently to himself, only minutes after feeling uneasy at the sight of no Hunters, now a whole group of them was heading their way.

They were getting louder, indicating that the group weren’t passing by, they had also seen this building had possible loot inside like they had, and they were coming to inspect, and by Spike’s guess, they would not be happy to see us.

They heard a door break open; they were inside. Spike turned to see Sweetie huddled in fear next to her sister; Rarity covering her mouth to make sure no sound is released, and Rainbow preparing to arm her crossbow, only to be stopped by Spike.

“Don’t.” he whispered. “It will make sound and won’t take out all of them.”

The voices were close now. By the sounds of it, they were now in the room they had been previously, if Rainbow hadn’t heard anything, they would had seen us by now, and there would be little chance of zero casualties, they were outnumbered and outgunned. Their best bet would be to keep silent, pray they don’t enter this room, and wait for them to pass.

Spike couldn’t distinctly hear what the conversation was about when they were outside, but seeing as they closer now, he began to hear the individual voices coming from the next room.

“Will you hurry up? I’m starving here.”
“Shut your mouth, you’ve been complaining all day. We’re all starving, idiot.”
“Just gimme my share of food and then I’ll shut up. We’ve been walking for hours.”

Spike found a stroke of luck in this situation. By the sounds of it, they weren’t looting, they were resting. If they were lucky, they might stay in that living room until they are finished and they’ll leave, as long as they kept quiet, they might get out of this with no hassle.

“Fuck. Do you have a can-opener?”
“I thought you had one. Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Don’t lose your shit, just look around, maybe there’s one around this place.”

“Shit.” Spike muttered quietly. All previous thoughts of getting through this with no hassle just went completely out the window, these guys were going to get in here in any second, they had to do something.

Spike looked around his surroundings, there had to be something, anything that could help get them out of this. A weapon, a distraction, anything; time wasn’t his friend right now, he had to think quick.

“Wait. What is that?” he muttered to his friends, grabbing their attention. He was looking across to a whole pile of furniture and other junk gathered up against one section of the wall in the room.

Except it wasn’t just a pile, it was a barricade. And it wasn’t piled up against the wall, it was against a doorway.

A plan shot into Spike’s head like a bullet, there was an exit in this room, barricaded so heavily by the previously occupants that it was barely even noticeable by the group, and right now it was their only form of escape. All they needed right now was the time to break through it.

“Guys.” Spike whispered his plan to the others, eager to listen to anything that may help. “Start moving that stuff, we need to get through that doorway, I’ll distract these guys and buy us some time.”

The plan was in motion. Rainbow and Mac began picking up anything slowly and moving them out of the way, taking down the barricade as quietly as they could, and at the same time trying to move fast, they had seconds unless Spike did something.

Spike tiptoed as quietly as possible towards the closed doorway of the back room, the only thing apart from a small hallway that separated them from the vicious Hunters closeby. While remaining crouched, he opened the door only a fraction, and peeked his eye through to see how far they were from them.

The majority were still in the living room, impatient and angry expressions edged upon most of their faces, while others were moving room to room, possibly searching for a can-opener, it was only a matter of time before they would progress their way to their room.

“It’s no use, looks like this place has already been looted.”
“Don’t be stupid. Boss said we own this town now. There’s no looters anymore.”
“Don’t you mean Bosses?”
“No idiot, I mean Boss. We all know she runs our camp solo, her so-called partner is just a lackey. Now keep looking, I’m dying here.”

Spike picked up a piece of debris next to him, a brick, and waited for his window of opportunity. He waited till all of them had their backs turned and threw it into the far room, still empty, hitting a window and shattering it, grabbing all Hunters attention. He quickly shut the door and heard the response of his actions.

“The hell was that? Walkers?”
“Shit. Let’s have a look.”

Now was their chance. Those guys would only have their attention for a short time, and they would need to get through that exit before then, or they’ll be dead for sure.

But it looked like they were almost home free, the others peeled away countless parts already, and now managed to create a small opening through the makeshift barricade to freedom. It was now or never.

“Alright, let’s go, let’s go” Spike whispered. “Now’s our chance. Let’s go.”
The opening was small, but there was no time to carry on, they had seconds, they had to make due with this.

Mac went first, freeing himself despite his large size, then Rarity, then Rainbow. Spike followed through to the outside, about to join the others into nearby cover, preparing to get as far away as possible, before turning to Sweetie and erging, “Alright Sweetie, it’s your turn, push yourself through.”

Sweetie turned around at first, looking at the closed door and hearing the Hunters voices, then followed her way through the small opening of junk and furniture.

When the unexpected happened.

Some of the barricades contents finally gave in, parts of it collapsing, closing the opening made a substantial amount and falling on Sweetie’s back hoof. “I’m trapped…”she exclaimed, terrified.

“Shit…” Spike said. He wasn’t sure how loud the sound was, but he wasn’t hanging around to find out. He had to free Sweetie as soon as possible, he wasn’t going to leave her here.

He pulled at Sweetie’s hoof all he could, only managing to move it a little, but he needed more strength, some of the stuff fallen was extremely heavy, and hard to shift.

“Help me. She’s not breaking through!” he exclaimed to the others. Rainbow and Rarity quickly moved forward in trying to free her hoof, all while doing so Rarity trying to reassure her sister, as well as herself.

“Don’t worry Sweetie,” she assured. “We’ll get you out. Don’t just stand there Mac, come and help!”

The voices were getting even closer than before, they were running out of time, and Spike while putting all his might into moving Sweetie, turned to see Mac standing there, not helping them.

“Mac, what are you doing?” Spike barked angrily. “Help us free her!”

Mac didn’t move. He kept a cold expression, and looked like he made a decision.

“It’s too late.” he finally said. “Leave her, or we’ll all die.”

“What? No!” both Spike and Rarity told simultaneously. “We are NOT leaving her!”

Mac paused, then finally said, “Fine, stay here and die!”, running off and abandoning the group.

“That son of a bitch…” Spike said. “Forget him. Keep going!”
They pulled more and more, hearing the voices so clear now it could be assumed they were now in the hallway outside the back room, all the same forcing to them to work harder.

“Do you guys hear something?”
“Yeah… what is that?”

Finally, with their combined strength, the fallen furniture and bookcase was lifted. Sweetie’s hoof became free. They were all outside, in the open, and they had to get away as far away from the house as possible.

“Quickly, let’s get out of here...” Rainbow exclaimed to the others, running in the same direction as where Mac went, with the others following close by.

It didn’t matter now if the Hunters had finally seen them, Spike wasn’t entirely sure in knowing if they had been spotted in their attempt in freeing Sweetie, but all that mattered right now was running, moving far away from those murderers and finding a place to hide for the night.

They quickly ran in their group of four with Rainbow in front, charging down the main road and praying they didn’t see any walkers on the way there.

They weren’t quite sure into where Rainbow was leading them, for all he knew she didn’t know either, they could just be running to no particular destination, not thinking of a place suitable to go.

Sprinting at full speed was beginning to wear down on him, as well as the others. They couldn’t keep this up, they had to stop somewhere, but where?

“Spike…” Rarity panted. “What do we do? Where do we go?”

Spike wasn’t sure how to answer, but before he could say anything, a voice came yelling from the distance, at first it was assumed it was Hunters, but Spike soon saw looked around to see the voice came from Mac, yelling from a building, gesturing them to come here.

“This way, quickly! Get in before they see you!” he barked to them.

Spike couldn’t be more angry at what he was doing right now. With any luck, he would attract every walker and Hunter in town their way if he kept yelling. He had to stop him.

The group moved towards the building, not fully realising until they were up close that it was the building formerly known as Sugarcube Corner, it was so damaged and overgrown with weeds that it wasn’t fully recognisable by the group.

Quickly, the group piled inside and shut the door, hoping no one else heard Mac’s cries for attention.

It was dark inside, barely any of the surrounding were seen, only one thing was clear; this definitely wasn’t as each of them remembered as a happy, positive place.

“Lucky I saw you guys right?” Mac commented to the others while they panted for breath. “Any longer and those guys woulda caught up, wouldn’t th-”

Mac’s sentence was cut short, due to Spike slamming his fist into his jaw, and pushing him into the wall.

“You fucking abandoned us back there. You yell for us possibly attracting everything that wants to kill us here, and you call it lucky?” Spike said, anger deep into his eyes.

He was about to raise his fist for another attack, until Mac pushed him away, freeing himself from the dragon’s grip against him.

“What’s the big fucking idea?” Mac said, holding his now bloody nose with one free hoof. “You got her out didn’t you? You didn’t need me, so what are you getting pissed about?”

“Why the hell did you leave us there?” Rainbow added, her breath finally coming back. “You were just gonna let them get to us? What the fuck is your problem?”

“Guys…” Sweetie said, fear in her voice.

“She was going to get us all killed” Mac argued. “I’m not gonna let some girl risk me getting food for my family”.

“That’s my sister you are talking about!” Rarity chimed in, angry as the other pair.

“Guys…” Sweetie repeated, hoping for them to hear.

“I don’t care who she is. My aim here was to get supplies for my family so they can survive this Winter. Nothing’s gonna get in the way of that. I figured you guys wouldn’t get the job done right when I volunteered, I guess I was right…”

“That’s why you volunteered,” Spike realised. “You weren’t thinking of helping us, you were thinking we would screw up and get no supplies!”

“GUYS.” Sweetie said a third time, louder than the others.

“WHAT?” the angry group replied simultaneously, turning their attention to the scared girl, and soon saw what she saw, suddenly forgetting all of what they were arguing, changing their expressions to ones from anger to utter fear.

Like mentioned before, the inside of Sugarcube Corner was dark, they could barely recognise any surroundings, nobody but Sweetie Belle looked around to notice the body of a pony in the corner hanging from a rope.

The surroundings of the shop suddenly seemed clearer now, the group didn’t see her until it was pointed out, and for Spike, what he saw was something he knew he would never forget.

“Pinkie Pie….?”

Author's Note

Guys. Cliffhangers.

Anything to keep the reader invested I guess. I know Pinkie is a well loved character by many, including me, but I decided a zombie apocalypse wouldn't exactly be an environment she would thrive in, and I figured if I wanted this to be realistic, I had to stick by it, no matter how bad it was, thus explaining the feelsy cliffhanger.

Moving on, a lot went on in this chapter, while doing so surpassing my high score on the word count of this story (woo! *high fives self"). The group entered the town, it's all naturey now (last of us style), Spike and Sweetie had a meaningful conversation, introduced the Hunters to the story, and of course, the cliffhanger. All jam packed into one chapter. I hope you enjoyed.

Next chapter coming soon, with more stuff going down planned. (hint: Rainbow isn't taking the news about Pinkie well.)

Broken

No-one could breathe.

One of their best friends; a pony who they had not seen for almost four months now, constantly making them worry if she was out there or not, day in and day out, was now in front of them finally, giving them the answer they had refused to believe all this time.

The group just stared at the lifeless body hanging from a rope, unable to speak, seeing the once cheerful and happy pony, with the life just drained out of her face, it was unclear into how long she was there.

“It...can’t be..” Rainbow said, fear in her voice. Her usual confidence was gone right now, Spike had never seen her so frightened, so broken. Seeing Pinkie hanging dead right there made things too real for her, the reality of this world. Despite them always saying that Pinkie and Fluttershy were most likely dead in the first days of this when they couldn’t find them, she never truly believed it. Part of her always thought her friend somehow escaped the chaos, that they were surviving somewhere out there, just waiting to be reunited with…

In front of them was a living fact that it could never happen now.

They had forgotten completely now of the previous events of that evening; the Hunters, Sweetie almost getting captured, even Mac’s desertion was forgotten. When looking back on this day, the main thing that would come to mind for them now was the confirmation of Pinkie Pie’s death, the fact that they would never see her again after today.

“She...she has bites.” Spike observed, struggling not to break down. “She...must have...ended it herself.”

Rarity and Rainbow looked and saw that what Spike said was true. Her hooves and other parts of her hanging body had traces of dried blood plastered all around, and when truly looked it was clear this was due to bite marks, meaning she didn’t have long anyway.

The fear she must had experienced throughout that time must had been unbearable, Spike thought. The idea that she was alone, scared and with so little hope that she actually chose to end things on her terms made Spike feel sick, sorry that while he was in camp, she was here.

Spike heard the sounds of faint cries coming from Rarity, and turned to see her and Sweetie, grief-stricken in each others arms, tears pouring down their faces.

He knew they couldn’t leave her like this; they had to at least get her down before leaving this place for good. Slowly, he unsheathed his machete, walking towards the rope tied from the floor to the support beam she was on, the only thing keeping her up, preparing to cut her loose, only to be stopped by a mournful Rainbow Dash.

“No…” she whimpered. “Let me. Please…”

Spike looked into her eyes with the same grief, the same torture she was feeling. They both wanted things to be they were in the past again more than anything in the world at that moment.. They wanted no deaths, no responsibilities to deal with that could maintain their future, they just wanted to be with their friends, safe and happy. But from what was happening right now, it couldn’t be further from that, and they felt like it could never be again.

Any hope, no matter how far away it was, that the seven of them could someday be together again, was dead now.

Spike saw how broken down Rainbow was, she had always been regretful that she couldn’t find Pinkie and Fluttershy on the first day, and Spike couldn’t help think that she was blaming herself for her death.

He eventually handed his machete to her; she needed to carry out this final kindness a lot more than he did. No matter how small a gesture it felt like, it had to be done, Rainbow wanted to do anything to help her friend at that time.

She walked slowly to the tied rope attached to the floor, her legs trembling along the way, making Spike have the assumption she was going to collapse, and with one strong swoop of the machete, the rope was cut and Pinkie’s body fell to the floor like a ragdoll.

She didn’t let them see, but Spike could had sworn he had seen a tear run down Rainbow’s face.

He left the others there and walked over to Rainbow, placing his hand on her shoulder, mournful for Pinkie’s fate as she was.

“Rainbow, I’m so so-”

“Fluttershy’s not out there, is she?” Rainbow interrupted with sorrow, her eyes not looking away from Pinkie’s corpse.

Spike turned and looked at Rarity, seeing her tears fall on Sweetie’s head as she held her, and without speaking, knew that no matter how much it hurt, what Rainbow said was true. They had to stop pretending.

He looked back to Rainbow wiping tears from his own eyes, and after a few seconds, he finally had to accept it.

“No.” he spoke. “She’s not.”

Rainbow didn’t react to him, her eyes were fixed on Pinkie, measuring every detail of the torn down pony. The dried blood, her now pale complexion, even the faded traces of tear stains running down her face…

Spike knelt down to her body and closed her eyelids, not just because it was the proper thing to do, but also because he couldn’t bear seeing her stare at him like with those lifeless, scared eyes anymore. Even though he did this, it was still far to say she seemed like she was sleeping, the way she was, closing her eyes just didn’t do it, but at least she looked slightly more peaceful, and that was all he could do.

It seemed as if the rope had cut into her throat after some time, meaning the blood had been either drained or completely cut off from the brain, explaining why she hadn’t turned, the brain was as dead as it would be if she was shot in the head like a normal walker.

Spike had the overcoming fear whether or not Pinkie became a walker or not before she finally died. It was a question on how long it took for her brain to die, too long and it would had meant she turnt beforehand.

Spike didn’t want to think of his friend that way.

“I… should have saved her.” Rainbow finally uttered. “I failed her.”

It was Rarity’s turn to speak. She approached Rainbow with Spike and looked in her eyes.

“Darling, no…” she whimpered. “You didn’t fail her. That day, you did all you could to find the others while escaping, we all did. But if you stayed out there any longer, you would have died, and we needed you. You had no choice.”

It looked as if Rainbow was opening her mouth to argue, only to hear the sound of ponies voices coming from outside.

“Shit.” Mac called from the window. “It’s those guys from before. We must have been followed.”

“Fuck...not now…no...” Spike muttered. They must had heard Mac’s calling from before, the very thing Spike feared would attract enemies. They couldn’t deal with them now, this was the worst time to be put in a situation like this. His group was too fragile to be put in a fight at that time.

“I heard yelling from over here. Some guys tried to get the slip on us.”
“Fuckers tried to mess with us, they’re gonna pay when we find them.”
“Spread out. They must be close.”

“Spike…” Sweetie said, scared. “What do we do now? Do we hide?”

Spike looked around to his comrades. Mac was at the boarded up window, looking through, It looked like Rainbow could barely stand next to Rarity, and Sweetie’s eyes were fixed on Spikes, eager to hear what he had to say.

With careful thought, he nodded in agreement. “Same plan as before. We hide. We can’t fight right now.”

The group got up, ready to leave, all except Rainbow, she didn’t move a muscle from where she was sitting, she was too transfixed at Pinkie, just staring at her with sorrowful eyes.

“Rainbow.” Rarity said. “We got to go now. We can’t stay here.”

She didn’t respond. She didn’t even react. She just kept looking at her, something was keeping her attention.

“Dammit Rainbow, snap out of it!” Spike said. “We need you right now.”

Rainbow slowly turned at Spikes face. She was shocked, not even paying attention to anything else but the matter at hand.

“She’s…. holding a note….” she finally managed to say.

Spike and the group suddenly looked down to her, and was shocked into what he saw down at her body, clenched in her hoof.

It was true. Pinkie was holding a note, something she must have wrote before she… did it.

Curiosity overcame Rainbow over all things at that moment, even over the present danger that was outside right now. She had to know what Pinkie said.

What was she feeling before she did it? Was she angry at her? Did she blame her?

The Hunters were still out there, their voices growing closer, and angrier than before. It had seemed like they weren’t happy someone tried to fool them, and Spike didn’t want to know what they would do if they were especially angry.

“Screw the note, we have to get outta here!” Mac called out from the window. “The voices are getting closer!”

As much as Spike hated Mac right now for not being as sensitive of his friends death as he was, he knew he was right. Now wasn’t the time to read the note, they could do it later, right now they had to lose these guys.

“Rainbow, Mac’s right we-” Spike said turning back to Rainbow only to be lost in his own speech. He was seeing the note gripped firmly in Rainbows hooves, read fully by her, tears forming in her eyes. She had read it while he was turned, and it looked like it hit her hard.

Spike’s curiosity was overcoming himself now. He too was eager to know his friend’s final thoughts, and if she considered them to be responsible for her death.
He was about to walk over to read the note himself, only to be snapped back into reality to the present situation by Sweeties calling to him.

“Spike come on! I need you to focus!”

Spike’s mind went back into gear and was thinking of what to do, realising only now of the voices being closer and closer, only awaring now of how little time they had left to get his group back in tow.

“Where are these fuckers? It’s like they just vanished!”
“Don’t be an idiot. They’re here somewhere just keep looking.”
“Shut up. Keep talking and I’ll-”

The voices stopped abruptly, much to the groups confusion. They couldn’t have walked far enough not to be heard, they were as clear as a whistle a few seconds ago.

They stopped talking on their own accord for some reason.

“What’s happening? Mac?” Spike called to Mac facing the window.

“I don’t know, I can’t see anything from here,” he replied. “Try that other window, I’m getting nothing here.”

Spike silently tiptoed to the other end of the room to one of the opposite windows from Mac, with Sweetie following closely behind, also eager to find out what was happening.

He peeked through the openings of the wooden boards to try and spot the Hunters, with no avail. At first he couldn’t see anything, just an abandoned, and empty street, but before he was about to look away he finally spotted movement.

It was the Hunters. They were running in a direction far away from Sugarcube Corner. Spike considered that they must have gotten lucky at that moment, possibly they heard something that wasn’t us and they went to investigate it hoping it was.

This distraction was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for them, they could escape while their backs were turned to whatever hoax they were seeking, much to Spike’s glee.

Except something wasn’t right.

They stopped hearing the voices not because they ran away, but because they stopped talking altogether, meaning they stopped talking at first, and then ran afterwards. This wasn’t adding up.

The situation around Spike was beginning to dawn on him, placing one observation above all others much to his fear.

“Maybe they weren’t running…” Spike muttered to himself. “Maybe they were fleeing…”

Spike was beginning to find out to his horror that although the voices of the Hunters went quiet, the area wasn’t silent. All of them were so focused on hearing what they said that they blocked out anything else.

The sounds of birds chirping, tree leaves moving in the wind, or the faint sound of moaning growing closer…

“What are the talking about?” Mac said impatiently, wanting to know what Spike was seeing from his window. “Tell me what is going on right no-AHHHHHH!”

The group turned quickly hearing the sounds of broken wood and screaming from Mac to see a walker suddenly bursting in through the window Mac was at, with a several close behind, and attacked him while his back turned. The walker bited through Mac’s neck, spraying blood all around him, and leaving him utterly defenceless against the walker who proceeded to carry on biting through his flesh.

The group went to life, becoming aware of what was happening, a horde of walkers had went by their path while they were in here without them knowing, and because of this they were breaking through due to their lack of silence, and they had to escape.

“Spike! Sweetie!” yelled Rainbow, standing up with Rarity and talking in her usual voice. “Get over here quickly! We got to go!”

Spike reached for his holster for his machete, only to realise Rainbow still had it, leaving him with only his fire and his claws to defend himself with, that and what ever Sweetie had to help him with.

The two moved forward as more walkers piled inside, attracted by Mac’s screaming, the horde of what seemed like dozens were slowly breaking inside, they had to leave now, but before they could rejoin Rainbow and Rarity at the other side of the room, the broken window was flooded with intruders, forming slowly a wall of them, making it harder to get to them, the only option was fight or die at the current moment.

“Sweetie!” called Rarity, arming herself with her knife, as she became less visible through the countless walkers that stood between them.

Spike dug his claws into a walkers head, instantly killing it, while Sweetie, realising now wasn’t the time for silent killing, fired several shots of magic through her horn and taking out a number of them.

While doing this, Spike noticed more windows were breaking, allowing more of them inside, hearing to his horror the sounds of Mac utterly defenseless, being killed and eaten slowly by the walkers that surrounded him, until finally he could no longer be seen anymore.

“Spike! Catch!” Rainbow called out while she still could seen, throwing Spike’s machete through the air into a walkers skull, much to Spike’s relief not only because he really needed a weapon right now, but also because he hadn’t seen that walker, any longer he would had been done for.

He pulled the machete out of the walkers skull to quickly use it to cut another one down. He had his trusty weapon back again.

The group tried taking down as many walkers as they could, but although they managed to take out any that came close, more walkers came pouring in, rendering their efforts to be useless.

With every walker each of them killed with either magic, fire or a blade, more poured in through different entrances formed, making it almost impossible for the two pairs to even see each other, let alone get past to be reunited.

“Fuck…” Spike realised what had to be done, while charging his machete through a walker. “Guys! Just get out of here! We’ll find each other soon I promise!”

“What? No! Sweetie!” Rarity cried out. “Keep fighting we’ll be fine!”

“Don’t argue with me, I’ll take care of your sister, Rarity! But you have to trust me!” Spike replied while walkers were pushing them back all the further. “We stay here and we die! Rainbow! Get her outta here, that’s an order!”

He looked at Sweetie and saw her desperate eyes wanting to see her sister, but even she understood they had to split up, as much as it pained her.

“Dammit Spike!” Rainbow cursed hopelessly, hitting a walker with her crossbow. “You better survive out there you stubborn ass!”.

With all Spike and Sweetie could see anymore, they thought they could see one of the remaining windows broken by Rainbow, serving as an exit for the two, and indicating that they perhaps managed to make their way out the building.

Now it was their turn.

“Sweetie, cover me and I’ll break us through an exit!” Spike commanded to Sweetie.

He scanned quickly what remained of the building, trying to spot the most suitable way out, by that meaning, the one with the less walkers charging through.

He spotted his target and took out any walkers that were close by, Sweetie right behind him firing shots to anything behind him.
“This way Sweetie!” Spike said, climbing through the window. “You keep running by me no matter what. Got it?”

“Yeah.” Sweetie affirmed quickly.

“Good. Now let’s get the hell outta here.”

They were outside now, and it wasn’t much better than inside, the only advantage being a bit more free space to escape. Spike couldn’t believe how many walkers were around them, the town was practically empty a few hours ago, now it filled by with Spike’s estimate, around fifty or sixty, but he wasn’t planning on sticking around to do the precise math. They had to go.

They moved quickly through any spaces or openings in the horde, not slowing down for any reason, taking out walkers with their blades that came too close while they ran.

Spike and Sweetie charged through the crowd almost endlessly, not turning back to what remained of Sugarcube Corner, what it was inhabited with now.

They were lucky these walkers couldn’t walk fast, giving them a small advantage in escaping, it was the numbers that presented a real issue. Spike realised staying on the main street was a bad idea. They had to get out of sight from these walkers, and figure out a plan to advance from that.

While running with Sweetie close behind, Spike spotted his opportunity to escape, an alleyway, free of walkers with a fence they could climb over to secure their safety.

“Through here!” he gestured to Sweetie. They moved out of the road away from the horde to the alleyway, with a group of five or six in pursuit, the rest just moved on forward through the road, not having had spotted the pair run through.

The alleyway was narrow, and the fence was tall, but it was their best bet at escaping, they couldn’t keep this up for long and they needed to get off the street, away from any attention.

“Quickly, over the fence now!” Spike said while putting his claws together to give Sweetie a help up. She placed her hooves on his claw and with a swift push, he managed to get her over, much to his relief, but now was the harder part, the remaining walkers were right behind him and he had a tall fence to get over in seconds with no help, or he’d be done for, and he couldn’t let that happen and leave Sweetie alone.

“Spike, come on let’s go!” Sweetie called from the other end.

Spike didn’t have time for any screw ups right now, he had to get this right the first time, so with a short back up, he charged towards the fence and lunged his claws to the top, now he had to push with all his might to make the final way across to safety, and with the walkers edging closer and closer he couldn’t give up now no matter how hard the challenge was right now.

He pushed and pushed himself higher and with literally the walkers just about to grab his foot and pull him back down, he made and collapsed at the other side with Sweetie, not really taking into notice or even caring that he didn’t stick the landing very well.

But that didn’t matter right now, what mattered was they were safe right now, away from the streets and the walkers and inside an enclosed alleyway with the only exits being through that gateway that had walkers now clawing their way through the edges, and a doorway leading someway they weren’t sure, but it was their only choice right now, so he took it.

He regained his breath and looked over to Sweetie who was looked to be hyperventilating.

“You okay?” he asked, concerned.

“Mac’s dead….” she replied, still heavily breathing. “They got him… he didn’t even see it coming.”

“Sweetie…Sweetie.” he said, coming up close to her and looking into her eyes, trying to reassure her and calm her down. “It’s okay… we’re safe now, they can’t get us in here.”

“What about the others? Rainbow...Rarity...” she realised, worrying more. “We have to go look for them, they could be hurt right now. We need to go!”

Spike looked to the sky and knew that wasn’t an option; the sun was setting and there was no way they could find them in the dark, let alone without all the walkers on the streets.

“Sweetie, we can’t right now. It’s getting too dark. We’ll look for them tomorrow I promise, then we’re leaving.” he said, worrying himself of their fate.

“But…but-”

Spike stopped her talking by closing his arms around Sweetie into a hug; something they both needed right now, after the ordeal that was today. They only had each other to look out for at that moment, so Spike needed to let her know everything was going to be okay.

“I know it’s hard, I’m worried about them too.” he said. “But they’re strong. They’ll be okay, and even they know they can’t go searching for us in the middle of the night, they would be killed.”

Sweetie winced at the mention of anyone else being killed, but Spike continued.

“Look… back there I gave my word I would take care of you, and I mean to keep that promise, but to do that I need you to be strong too, for both of our sakes. I promise I’ll get us back to your sister, and Rainbow, and all of our friends, but you have to trust me, okay?”

They parted the hug and Spike looked back into Sweetie’s scared eyes, waiting for her response.

“Okay…” she finally confirmed. “I’ll try…”

“Good, I’ll try to as well.”

Slowly, they got up and turned their attention to the doorway opposite the fence in the alleyway, with a swift kick from Spike, the doorway budged open to reveal it was some kind of maintenance room of the business that ran in the building attached.

It wasn’t pretty, but it was indoors, quiet, with only one entrance being the one they came in, and most of all, it was secure with the fence and the doorway, leaving them undetectable by any other trouble, as long as they stayed quiet.

This was where they would stay the night before setting off tomorrow.

They slowly walked inside inspecting the contents of the room, and with Spike closing the door behind them he noticed a soft, sponge type platform lying on the ground, he wasn’t quite sure what for, but it seemed the most suitable to sleep on, based on what was left in the small room.

Him and Sweetie sat down on the platform, backs against the wall, exhausted of the work they went through today, they were happy to find something soft to rest on, seeing as they were expecting to be having to sleep on a cold, dusty floor tonight.

“Spike?” Sweetie asked, nexted to him, her eyes wearing heavy.

“Yeah?”, himself feeling tired.

“I’m glad you’re here. I mean, I’m glad I’m not alone here.” she replied, resting her head on his shoulder.
“I’m glad you’re here too.” he said with a faint smile.

The two began to drift off into sleep, the last thing Spike thinking while Sweetie was leaning against him, serving as a source of warmth, was the worrying of what the next few days were going to bring him, with dangers and complications coming from every corner, he chose to just focus on the now, being to stay by Sweetie till morning.

He didn’t see any of this coming.

Author's Note

I like to think I am raising a lot of questions so far, hopefully as a way to draw the reader in, always working as a good tactic in my opinion to make readers enjoy it more. For example:

Where is Rarity and Rainbow? How is Spike going to tell the Apples about Mac? What was in Pinkie's note?

And so on, but anyway, as usual, I really hope you enjoyed this chapter and please feel free to leave a comment, and favorite and like if you are enjoying where this Fic is proceeding.
Till next time, Goodbye!

Only Each Other

Spike awoke with a headache already forming, only when his eyes adjusted did he realise where he was at last. He was so used to waking up in his sleeping bag at camp that the maintenance shed the pair had chosen as refuge that night seemed strange, until his senses finally caught up with him.

The only similarity being it was just as uncomfortable.

He rose up after a couple of seconds and began to stretch his aching muscles; leaning against the wall all night didn’t make it easy to sleep, it could even be said that without Sweetie serving as a source of heat as well as comfort when next to him, it was hard to say if he would have gotten any sleep at all, so he had to thank her for that.

Now that she was on the subject of his mind, he stopped stretching and turned his attention to the still sleeping Sweetie lying on the platform, giving him a small smile at the sight of her. He hated to stop the picture he was seeing right now, and contemplated letting her rest for a little while longer, but decided he’d better not. She would be more eager to find the others than he was, especially for Rarity, and the sooner she got up, the more hours they could spend in daylight.

He gave her a gentle nudge, which was responded by an unladylike grunt, until her eyes slowly opened and met Spike’s.

“Hey…” she said, rubbing her eyes with her hoof.

“Hey,” he responded, still smiling. “Figured you would want to start searching as soon as possible.”

“Yeah, we should.” she said, letting out a yawn. “Sleep well?”

“It was...okay…” he lied, resisting the urge to stretch his aching back again when reminded of it.

“So by that you mean awful.” she teased, with a smile growing on her face, telling of his obvious lying.

“Awful.” he admitted. “What is that thing made of? Bricks?”

“I know right?” her voice wakening up. “It’s not as comfy as it looks, but I guess it’s more than anything else in here…”

“Yeah…” he agreed, giving the room a quick glance before turning back to Sweetie, still lying down. “We should at least eat something before heading out.”

She nodded in agreement, rising from the makeshift bed and making her way to her backpack, that she had left at the corner of the shed. She scanned the inventory of her pack, and through careful rationing, pulled out two cans of food, tossing one to Spike.

He inspected the can and let out a sigh. “Canned Peaches. What I’d give for a normal breakfast again for a change... “

Sweetie giggled while taking out her can-opener and talked sarcastically, “What? Sounds like a nutritious breakfast to me…”

“Oh, hilarious.” he commented, opening his own can and peering into the not so delicious meal in front of him. “It better be filling at least.”

They both proceeded to eat their food out of their own cans, not particularly enjoying it, but figuring it was better than being hungry. They needed their strength of course.

“So,” Sweetie said, making conversation as they ate. “What’s our plan for today?”

“Well,” Spike pondered. “If what I’m thinking is correct and we’re lucky, the horde we ran into may have moved their way outside town while we slept, hopefully moving far away from here, and perhaps because of this, the Hunters may not be taking any chances just yet, and might just stay where they are for the time being, giving us a distinct advantage in searching today.”

“Sounds good.” she replied. “I sure don’t want to run into any of those guys again. Yesterday was a nightmare.”

“It’s an assumption. I think yesterday we were too careless at what we were dealing with. Today we move quietly and quickly, find the others and then we’re getting out of here, back home.”

“You think we have enough supplies?” she asked.

“Enough to survive the Winter.” Spike replied. “I don’t want us here any longer than we have to. It’s bad enough I have to tell the Apples about Mac.”

Sweetie frowned at that comment. “Shit… I never thought about that, and Applebloom wasn’t taking things well when we left her, I can’t imagine how she’ll be when-”

“Sweetie.” he interrupted, guilt etched on his face.

“Sorry.” she said, realising she wasn’t exactly helping. “You ready to go?” she added, trying to change the subject.

He looked at his can, realising despite it not being the best breakfast in the world, it didn’t stop him from finishing it. He figured he was hungrier than he thought he was.

“Yeah. Better start moving now I guess.” he concluded.

The pair dropped their empty cans on the ground and prepared to move, each putting on their rucksacks and their holsters, and within a few moments, they were ready to move.

They stepped outside expecting to hear the sounds of walkers in the distance, only to luckily be placed in complete silence from the outside, meaning the horde was thankfully gone for the time being, making their jobs a little bit easier for now.

Sweetie made one step forwards only to be blocked first by Spike’s arm. “Just making this clear; if we get separated out there-”

“Spike.”

“Let me finish.” he ordered. “If we get separated out there, this is where we meet up again before sunset. Clear?”

“Clear.” she understood. “But hopefully, it doesn’t come to that.”

He nodded in agreement also deeply hoping that didn’t come true, and then let Sweetie free to pass finally, before both of them climbed their way over the fence and revealed the outside world once more.

Quietly, they peered their heads around the corner of the alleyway they were leaving from, and with close inspection, concluded he didn’t see any trouble just yet, putting the both of them at ease.

“Which way?” Sweetie asked.

“Let’s head back towards Sugarcube Corner and try and figure out where they would head from their direction.” Spike said, making his way away from the alleyway with Sweetie closely beside him. She looked uneasy at first from what Spike saw, looking in every direction possibly looking for danger, but then he noticed her look at him, and just like that she calmed down a little more, her facial expression relaxing a bit, like he was the reason.

He didn’t know why this was the case, but he was happy for it and he wasn’t going to ask questions about it, he didn’t want her to be scared. Although when Spike did think about it, he thought it could be possible he was the reason, perhaps she was more relaxed because she wasn’t alone. He knew he would be more stressed if he was stuck out here by himself, so it seemed plausible, he could even say he felt the same way Sweetie was.
But somehow, it felt like it wasn’t just that. It was like, he felt more relaxed not just because he wasn’t alone, but because, for reasons he couldn’t explain, was happy it was Sweetie Belle who was with him, not anypony else.

He genuinely couldn’t think of a reason why.

He had been seeing a lot of her lately, not since they started this trip, but since this whole thing started, the apocalypse. They both knew they were friends, perhaps even best friends, but he had to admit he didn’t hang around with them as much as he did with Twilight and the others, not for any particular reason, he didn’t have any kind of problem against them.

But when all of it did start, when the both of them moved into this camp with the others, it changed. It was hard not to see each other more often, not just Sweetie, but Applebloom and Scootaloo too, seeing as they were pretty much trapped in a confined space for months on end.

It’s not that he didn’t like it; in fact, it was one of the few benefits of this whole situation, spending more time with friends, and getting closer with them, much more than they did in the past, making Spike think of it as a small silver lining in an otherwise dark and gloomy cloud.

He was happy he was getting closer to them, they talked more, they worked together more at certain jobs, whether it was just lookout duty or repairing damaged barricades, and now Spike could actually say now he was as close to them as he was to his other friends, perhaps not just because of all their time together, but maybe because since this all started, Spike felt like he needed to hold on to what he cared about now, no matter how small it was, due to the risk now of it being taken from him.

That simply meant, Sweetie was family, and he would sooner die than let anything happen to her, or any of his family for that matter.

“Spike.” Sweetie whispered, breaking him out of his train of thought. “Look, walkers. Dead ahead.”

Spike looked forward and saw it was true. Two walkers, backs turned from them, they hadn’t spotted them yet thankfully, giving them an advantage.

“It’s only two. We can take them.” Sweetie said, looking for his insight.

Spike nodded, unsheathing his machete slowly. “Right. You take the one on the left, I’ll take the right.”

They moved quietly behind the two walkers, still silent enough to be unseen, and before they could react, Spike grabbed the mane of the first walkers head and jammed his machete through the back of the unexpecting walkers skull, taking it out instantly.

Spike turned and saw Sweetie took a different method; she took out the back knees of the walker first with her hooves, and while it was on the ground defenceless, that was when she made the finishing blow with her own knife.

“That was…. impressive.” Spike commented, surprised at her able to do it so simply, and perfectly.

“Thanks.” Sweetie replied, pulling her knife out and putting it back into her holster. “Applejack taught me and the girls; take out the knees first, and it can’t attack for a few seconds, but before it can, that’s when you take them out.”

She smiled, almost as if she was memorising Applejack’s exact teachings to the word and was reciting it in her mind.

“I gotta try that sometime. Thanks for the tip.” Spike said, re-holstering his own machete.

“Looks like not all the walkers left with the horde.” she claimed, scanning her eyes for any more. “We should keep our eyes peeled.”

“Yeah...” he agreed, still perplexed at the skill she had just performed, he had never seen Sweetie do something like that before, at least, he had never noticed it before.

It was… awesome.

Spike couldn’t help but become impressed with Sweetie and how she was taking this whole situation, and by extension, this whole world. Most ponies snap at some point, the whole thing becoming too much for them, and that’s what got them killed in the end. Usually this was the case for the ponies during the first couple of days, maybe even weeks, but it mostly came down to how much you were willing to survive, and how much you could adapt to being thrown into a place you weren’t used to, and the ones who could reach the end of that tunnel eventually after much endurance, and much loss, could actually have the potential to survive out there.

The weak ones didn’t last long. Sooner or later they broke, and that was when one by one they were wiped out, either by walkers, or the ponies who changed too much, by that meaning, forgetting who they were anymore, not having something worth surviving for.

He was happy this wasn’t the case for his friends, and while still on the subject; Sweetie. It was tough when it started for everyone in camp, they didn’t know what they were doing and they certainly weren’t used to the idea of survival of the fittest, there was even times where even Spike himself found it hard to find hope in the situation they were in.

But after some time, they past the point where the weakest ones died, they realised that they couldn’t act like nothing was happening out there, so they had to adapt to survive, meaning they had to learn to use weapons, to not be so trusting to anyone outside the group, and to only think of what could be in the best interests of the group, no one else.

So after months of all this, Spike believed that he and his friends weren’t the same as before, in some ways they were stronger, and more willing to survive by all means necessary, and through different experiences, they learnt new tactics in surviving, like how walkers acted, and how to take them down easily, bringing his attention back to Sweetie.

Spike could tell it was tough for her when it began; she rarely slept the first few nights, she never left her sisters side and generally was in a state of shock from what she had seen before she arrived at camp. It could almost be assumed she was also one of the weak ones, other ponies in camp just assuming she just wouldn’t last in the end.

But now, she ended up proving them wrong. She did adapt like him, and he couldn’t help but be impressed at how much she progressed from being scared to getting this far out here, even to the point of volunteering to go outside on this supply run for the sake of her friends. He had to give her some serious credit for that, she was a tough pony, and he appreciated her for that.

“Um, Spike?”

“What? Walkers?” Spike said, breaking his train of thought, looking around the area, only to see nothing.

“No, it’s just… you were staring.” Her face went a slight pink when she said it, as if she was somehow embarrassed.

Spike also went a deep red and quickly looked away, realising what he was doing without knowing. “Sorry... I guess I was kinda in a trance for a moment there.”

“It’s okay.” Sweetie replied, shrugging it off. “Look, we’re here.”

Sweetie pointed with her hoof to the now even more ruined structure of what once was Sugarcube Corner. The walkers from yesterday had reduced it to even more destroyed than when they first discovered it, even with a few traces of bodies taken down still lying down inside.

“Do you… think we should go back inside?” Sweetie asked.

Spike thought for a moment and concluded whatever was in there, whether it was Pinkie or Mac, it wouldn’t be doing them any good. “No, the place looks like it’s about to collapse. We should just keep moving.”

He looked in the distance, retracing the steps of yesterdays events, trying to remember clearly which direction the others travelled in before they escaped, so that later they could try and travel down their path and try and predict where they would have gone from there. It was their best hope.

“I think they went this way…” Spike considered, raising his claw in the direction down the road. “What do you think?”

Sweetie looked down the same way, uncertain. “Maybe, I’m not sure.”

“It’s our best hope. Let’s go.” Spike and Sweetie made their way down that path, looking for any areas that could perhaps stand out to them, and with that in thought, maybe the others did too.

The next few hours went by slowly, involving the pair moving their way through countless parts of town, finding nothing but a few walkers that came in their way, with no trace of anything living, only thing good about that being that they hadn’t encountered any Hunters all day, but still remaining the fact that Rainbow and Rarity had practically vanished in thin air.

They couldn’t yell out their names to find them, risking of any unwanted attention, making their job a whole lot harder, and no matter how many buildings they thought could have them inside, had absolutely nothing, leaving themselves getting more and more annoyed.

“Maybe they went back to camp…” Spike wondered, while leaving the entrance of their latest failed attempt.

“No…” Sweetie said in frustration, kicking a nearby trashcan. “If I know Rarity, she wouldn’t even consider leaving without me with her…”

“Damn…” Spike said, all ideas going out the window.

“Where to next?” Sweetie asked, for the hundredth time today.

Spike looked up into the sky, seeing the sun make it’s way down the horizon, and let out a frustrated sigh. “Shit… we gotta go back to that maintenance shed from before, it’s getting dark. We’ll try again tomorrow I promise. “

Sweetie Belle didn’t answer, just letted out a annoyed grunt and followed in Spike’s path back to the shed they slept in last night.

While walking, Spike looked and saw Sweetie annoyed facial expression facing the ground, not at him he hoped, but generally because of the feeling they had just wasted today and accomplished nothing.

“Look, Sweetie.” Spike said as they walked. “We’ll find them. It’s gonna be okay.”

Sweetie looked up, her face changing from annoyed to concerned. “But what if they aren’t? What if we can’t find them because something happened and-”

“Don’t talk like that.” Spike interrupted. “Those guys can take care of themselves, and even though we didn’t find them today, doesn’t mean we won’t.”

Sweetie didn’t answer for a moment, but after a few seconds she finally spoke. “Thanks Spike. I needed to hear that.”

“Anytime. I’m worried too, you know. Not just about them, about you as well.”

“Me?” Sweetie responded, looking confused. “Why are you worried about me?”

“Well, generally how you’re taking all of this.” he admitted. “I can tell being away from Rarity is stressing you out, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to you because of it.”

Sweetie looked like she was going to argue that she wasn’t, but after a few seconds she confessed. “I know I’ve been stressing out, but please don’t worry about me. Only one of us should be a paranoid wreck and I’m telling you it’s going to be me.”

They both chuckled at that comment, and by that it make the atmosphere seem a bit lighter, like the day didn’t feel like a complete bust at that moment.

After a couple of minutes, the pair found themselves back at the shed, with only minutes to spare before the sun completely set.

“Man, all that walking today made me tired.” Sweetie yawned, lying down on the spongy platform they had the previous night. “I think I’m gonna turn in.”

“Yeah me too…” Spike said, collapsing on the makeshift bed next to her. “That is, if this thing doesn’t keep me awake again all night.”

Sweetie gave a small smile, her eyes closing. “Yeah, if it weren’t for you next to me last night, I don’t think I would have gotten any sleep last night.”

“Heh. I thought that same thing this morning.”

The pair slowly let themselves become silent for a few moments after that, the long day of walking and searching had left them completely exhausted, and seeing as they hadn’t ate anything since this morning, it didn’t exactly do them any favours in gaining energy either.

“Hey Spike?” Sweetie whispered, next to him. “You still awake?”

“Yeah, I’m awake, what’s up?”

“Remember when we were little? When me, you and everyone used to hang out in Sweet Apple Acres sometimes in the middle of summer?”

Spike smirked, remembering those happy times. “How could I forget? I remember having to hold a big umbrella over Rarity’s head all day so she wouldn’t get sweaty.”

Sweetie giggled. “And you did it no questions asked, because you wanted to go out with her so bad…”

Spike remembered all the things he had done when he was a child, that he thought would make Rarity like him, and gave a small smile. “So you knew about that, didn’t you?”

“It was pretty obvious. I think everyone knew.” she said, letting out a small laugh, then pausing for a few moments, before she said, “Hey Spike? Do.. you still think of Rarity that way?”

Spike felt himself wake up slightly, surprised at the sudden question. “Um, why do you want to know?”

“Just… curiosity.”

“Well, I guess I kinda grew out of it a couple of years ago. Realised it was just a dumb childhood crush in the end, but it was okay because I learned I was just as happy just being her friend.”

Sweetie didn’t say anything for a moment at that last comment, before finally saying. “Hm, interesting. Well, goodnight.”

“Goodnight.” he replied, slightly confused at Sweetie for a moment, before tiredness finally kicked and he just shrugged off the usual behaviour and let himself fall asleep beside her, the small maintenance shed growing darker as the minutes went on.

“You guys go on ahead. I’m gonna check out this building a bit more.”
“Fine. Meet us back at camp in an hour. And don’t lose that special cargo you found, it could be worth something.”

Spikes eyes jolted open. It was early morning, and something familiar woke him, but he prayed those voices outside were just his imagination, that it wasn’t real, until he suddenly heard the sounds of hooves stomping on ground in the background, concluding his fear.

“Oh shit. Sweetie get up. There’s someone out there.” he said, nudging her awake as much as he could before stepping up to the entrance, machete in hand.

“hmph...what?” Sweetie replied, only waking up, confused.

Spike didn’t listen. Slowly, he opened the entrance of the shed and closed it behind him, and slowly climbed over the fence, peering down the alleyway. He had to see how many there was, to see clearly in how much trouble they were clearly in, if they had to run, or fight.

Slowly, he moved the end of the alleyway and peered around the corner, expecting a group of Hunters on the other side. The plan was, see what they were facing, and quickly get back to Sweetie without being noticed.

Except when he looked around the area, he saw nothing, not a living creature, not even a walker was in sight, leaving him confused. He could had sworn he had heard voices coming from outside. Was it really just his imagination? Could it had been like some sort of dream?

Spike was about to get up and head back to Sweetie, wondering what was going on, when suddenly without him knowing, something grabbed him from behind, latching on to his back, and before this sudden attacker could swing his knife down into Spike’s chest, he quickly acted and countered his move, throwing him off him into the wall, and causing Spike to drop his machete.

It wasn’t his imagination. A lone Hunter tried to take him down from behind, and if he didn’t react a few seconds more, he would be lying in a pool of blood right now.

Quickly, the attacker tried swinging at him again wildly with his knife when he got up, Spike barely had any seconds to dodge each swing, and grab his attackers wrist with his claws, squeezing as hard as he could to remove the ponies weapon from his hoof, and only after the attacker let out a scream of agony and wrists became bloody from Spike’s claws did he finally surrender the knife, letting it fall to the ground.

“You fucker!! You damn near broke my wrist!”

Spike’s small victory was short-lived as while he focused so much on one hoof, the other one was free and the Hunter used that to his advantage by punching Spike right in the nose, throwing him off the pony and onto the ground.

Before he could get up, the stranger pinned him on the ground, both of his hooves grasped around Spike’s neck, cutting off his air.

Spike tried raising his claws to stop him, scratching against his face leaving small cuts across the attackers face but with no avail in stopping him getting choked. He could feel himself getting weaker by the second, his strength against him, getting slower and less rapid, and soon, he felt was about to black out from lack of oxygen.

Although, through some sort of miracle, Spike felt his air return to him all of a sudden, his throat released and his attacker falling off him, collapsing on the dusty ground unconscious, the contents of his rucksack spreading all over the floor.

Spike gasped for air, his strength and wits coming back to him, and a saw a distraught Sweetie Belle kneel beside him, a broken bottle in hoof.

“Spike, are you okay?” she said, concerned. “I came out and this guy was attacking you, so I hit him with this.”

She held up the bottle, traces of blood smeared all over it.

“Yeah…. I’m fine…” he managed to say, still out of breath. “Thank you.”

Sweetie appreciated the gratitude and helped him up, before both of them turning their attention to the unconscious Hunter laid before them. On the floor next to him laid a notepad, a small rectangular box and a pair of hoofcuffs. Spike was confused at his choice of equipment, he had no food or anything on his person.

“Quickly, let’s get this guy inside before any more show up.” Spike said, picking up the contents of his bag. Sweetie agreed and grabbed the back hooves of the stranger, while Spike took care of the front.

Within a few minutes, they managed to make their way inside the shed with the unknown Hunter still unconscious beside them. Spike picked up a nearby chair and used the Hunters hoofcuffs against him, leaving him trapped in case he wakes up without them knowing.

“What do you think we should do with this guy?” Spike asked, inspecting the pony.

Sweetie gave no response, making him turn around, only to see tears forming on her face, the Hunters notebook in her hooves.

“Sweetie… what is it?” he asked, concerned. She said nothing, but just handed the notebook to Spike, with him wondering what had her so upset, he inspected the front page and scanned the words written, only when he reached the latest entry did his eyes widen, and he let out a gasp in shock.

“Oh fuck….” he finally said, realising the truth, and letting the notebook fall to the ground while he was in shock. “Oh fuck no….”

“Spike… what do we do?”

Spike’s eyes went to the ground, trying desperately for tears not to form, at the moment all was seeming hopeless, he didn’t have any idea of what to do in this impossible situation, a number of questions zooming past his mind, when looking back at what he saw.

There had to be some kind of mistake.

The notebook on the ground, had a log of notes sprawled all around it in messy writing, and while Spike and Sweetie couldn’t make out a number of those notes, they did manage to find one that stood out, written in fresh ink.

Findings Log:

Scavenged a small piece of weaponry in a from a dead Diamond Dog this morning, at least he was dead when we were finished with him. Could be worth something, it is specifically designed for non-ponies, or creatures with fingers.

Also, discovered a white-furred Unicorn with a purple mane last night, she tried fleeing but we got her in the end. Couldn’t put up much of a fight seeing as she was alone. Taking her back to camp as prisoner. Good thing too, the other ones don’t look too pretty anymore.

Nothing else to report.

Author's Note

I'm kinda running out of things to write in the Authors notes, so I'm just gonna keep it short.
Um....hope you liked the chapter.....upvote, favorite and comment at the bottom please.....um...something something.....blah blah... zombies are swell...
Bye!!

The Strong Ones

The camp was quieter now, it had been three days since Spike and the others left in search for supplies, and the longer they were gone, the more Twilight worried about them, thinking of what they were doing right now, and how long it could take for them to return.

She stared out into the landscape from the lookout tower, hoping to see something, any living figures to appear, just in the chance it could be her friends returning from their adventure, but in the small chance she did see something, getting her hopes up, it always turned out to be a small cluster of walkers making their way through, never her friends, and never her brother.

It was curious though, in the last couple of days the amount of walkers passing through were increasing, before Spike left, he did lookout duty countless times and never saw anything, not a creature for weeks at a time, but now, Twilight was noticing a change.

They now had to deal with four or five walkers approaching the perimeter a day now, all coming from the town, for reasons that Twilight couldn’t explain, and the numbers were getting higher.

Something was happening in town, and Spike was in the middle of it.

“Figured you’d be up here again.” a familiar voice called to her from behind.

“Applejack, if you came up here again to ask me to come down then you’re going to get the same answer.” Twilight said, a tired tone in her voice. “Since Spike left, someone has to do his lookout duty until he comes back.”

“Okay, firstly,” Applejack argued, grabbing a chair next to her. “Spike did more than just lookout duty. You’re only up here because you’re waiting to see something. That, an, this was his usual hangout, his stuff is here.”

Twilight didn’t respond, only clutching the blanket Spike used when some days up here were too cold, due to the winter winds, which became more rapid as the days went on, as the storm came closer.

“Look, sugarcube.” Applejack put her hoof on Twilight’s shoulder. “Ah’m worried about them too, you aren’t forgetting my brother’s out there too you know…”

Twilight didn’t think of that, it didn’t really occur to her that her and Applejack were practically in the same boat. All this time she thought she would be the one who would truly be losing something if things went wrong.

“... but staying up here all day isn’t healthy. You’ll freeze to death up here.” a shiver went down her spine as she was reminded of it. “They’ll come back someday, Ah just know it, and when they do, they won’t be going anywhere for a long time, seeing at how this weather is getting…”

They both looked up into the sky, and saw the dark clouds growing bigger every day, making the temperature fall with it. Autumn was finishing at a fast pace, and it looked like this Winter was going to be a fierce one, a problem that Twilight wasn’t looking forward to be dealing with.

Twilight thought about what she said, and soon the last few days were becoming clearer to her now, of what she acting like since Spike left. She had been ignoring her duties as leader, losing more sleep than ever, and it didn’t even occur to her that her other friends were going through something too.

Twilight felt ashamed of how she had let this happen, and looked at Applejack with apologetic eyes. “Applejack… I’m so sorry. I didn’t know I was getting this out of hand. It’s just, Spike being gone for so long is making me worried, and with the increase in walkers appearing it keeps bringing me the recurring fear that… that…”

Applejack could tell she needed one right now, and pulled her into a hug. “That what, sugarcube?”

“That… something bad is happening in town right now.”

Twilight felt Applejack’s grip get firmer at that last remark. She was expecting a lecture into stop worrying of what could go wrong, but what surprised her is what Applejack said next. “Ah know. Ah’m getting these bad feelings too, and it’s hard to ignore them sometimes, especially when it’s your family at risk.”

Twilight somehow felt slightly more at ease when Applejack said those words, like she didn’t feel like she was being paranoid about worrying about what was out there, and that Applejack was having the same thoughts. It made her feel like less of an outsider when looking at these problems.

Applejack continued. “But one thing I gotta remember when I think these thoughts, is that it must not make me weaker. The strong ones are the ones that live through this, they survive, and by worrying too much, it makes you vulnerable, not thinking straight, and that’s what gets you killed out there. Ah can’t let this get to me now, not after everything we’ve done, and Ah’m sure as shootin’ not gonna leave Applebloom behind cause of me breaking down now.”

Twilight understood what Applejack was meaning, but the next words Applejack said really put the message through.

“Spike would want you to be strong. So it would be easier for him to protect you.”

She looked into her eyes and realized she was right; Spike would come back someday, and to make sure she would actually be there to open the gate and welcome him back, she would have to be strong for him, to stop worrying all the time so she could have a genuine chance of making it out there, if or when this place wouldn’t be suitable anymore, a day that she hoped would never come.

“Thanks AJ,” she finally said, ending the hug. “I needed to hear that.”

Applejack gave a small smile, which Twilight returned. “Does that mean you’re gonna come down from here?”

“I guess.”

A sigh of relief left Applejack at that moment. “Thank Celestia, I didn’t know how long I was gonna last up here in this cold. I was ready to just leave you here.”

The cold air of the lookout tower became very real to Twilight at that moment, and the first thing she wanted to do now was to get to the nearest campfire as soon as she could before her blood would finally give in and freeze already. “I don’t know how Spike does this every day, amazingly knowing that he actually volunteers to do this.”

“Part of me thinks he only does it because it gives him time to think up here.”

While she climbed down the ladder, it did become apparent to her that although Spike did a lot of work in camp, namely building or repairing, or starting campfires, a valuable asset when having a dragon as part of the group, but when it came down to it, Spike always had time at some part of the day for lookout, no matter how small the time was.

I wonder what he thinks about when he’s up there so much, she thought, placing her hooves on the cold ground of the camp, and making her way a campfire, the warmth feeling incredible once she felt it against her skin.

“So Applejack finally convinced you to take a break,” a voice called to her, when looking she saw it was Scootaloo joining her and Applejack by the fire, sitting on a nearby log.

“Hey Scootaloo.” she greeted warmly, wondering how she was handling the current circumstances. “How are you?”

Scootaloo’s face went slightly less happy at that last question. “To tell you the truth Twilight, I’ve been better. I just spent the last half an hour trying to get Applebloom to eat something.”

Twilight frowned. Applebloom was taking Big Mac’s departure hard, maybe even harder than her thinking about Spike, now that she was really putting it into thought. Ever since she lost Granny Smith when this all started, she hadn’t been the same as who she once was, before they appeared.

When the world changed, the survivors had to change with it in order to cope, and as the days and weeks went on while living in camp, Twilight began to notice the change in ponies eyes, as well as her own. That meaning, the walkers seemed less scarier than when first seen, ponies became more accustomed and less afraid of what the next day brung, not entirely of course, but much more than when it began.

Ponies’ had to become adapted to survive, meaning learning how to defend themselves, techniques in basic survival and generally, being less afraid of the prospect of death in front of you.

It was a long process, and Twilight figured you needed first hand experience of this world, seeing the harsh truth of the outside so you could somehow get used to it, as well as a little bit of luck in order to change fully, while doing so trying to remain intact something of who you once were, it was all a method of balance.

Change too little, and you won’t survive out there. Change too much, and you become a shell of who you once were, with nothing true to keep fighting for, that was how Bandits were born.

As much as it pained Twilight to think about it, Applebloom never had that luck. She never truly developed as time went on, she still looked as terrified as when this all started, and never had any attempt of changing that, for her own sake, only thing coming to mind as a significant change at the beginning was her being able to get out of bed in the morning after the first week.

Twilight just hoped that she could do something to help her, to teach her how to survive in case something went wrong, otherwise she wouldn’t make it, that was a certainty, but she dared not bringing up that issue with Applejack, she couldn’t deal with an argument right now.

Although, part of Twilight thought that she already knew, and she was terrified of what could happen if something ever did go wrong.

She did have to hold on to hope though, that Applebloom had the potential to change for her survival, and that it just took time, longer than the others for it to take full effect, and so she could become less afraid of what the world was anymore. Like she said, if she could get of bed in the morning when not being able to before, then who knows where that could bring her in the future.

It made Twilight sad that with Mac leaving, it probably took a major hit in that area, damages that could take forever to fully repair. She hoped that when Mac returned safely through those gates, it could help her learn that surviving was possible out there, and those teachings could go on from there, so things could go to smooth sailing from then on, she hoped.

“How is she?” she asked Scootaloo. “Any improvement?”

She sighed. “Not much. When I actually can get her to talk, it’s all about organising a group to go out and get Mac back. She won’t listen to anything else.”

Twilight could tell she heard a sigh of disappointment from Applejack, followed by her saying, “Ah’ll try and talk to her again. There has to be somethin’ we could do to tell her the group is okay out there, maybe then she’ll be okay….”

Even Applejack sounded unsure when saying those words, as even herself couldn’t think of anything to mind that could get Applebloom out of her state of shock.

She tried reassuring her. “I think things will be better when the group comes back, when she can see Mac again. That could maybe help her, at least, help her enough to start eating again, then, it could go on from there…”

Applejack thought this through, and considered it could be possible, she had to think that way, it was her only hope. “It is a long winter, meaning more time to train her before we have to go back outside.”

She had a point. The winter meant the group were being forced into some very limited tasks for a proportional amount of time, but it also meant more time to better themselves before they had an actual opportunity to go out and start looking for food again, and Twilight had to ensure that included Applebloom as well.

At least with that plan there was hope, and it was better than doing nothing.

Applejack then left the group by the campfire, possibly making another attempt in calming Applebloom down, leaving Twilight and Scootaloo alone to think.

“Do you think what’s out there is a real problem to us?” Scootaloo suddenly asked, as if she was holding it in for quite some time now, leaving Twilight surprised at the sudden outburst.

“What do you mean? The walkers?”

“No, I already know about the walkers…” she replied, then facing Twilight with a concerned face. “I’m talking about those guys Pip’s group were talking about, the ones who took down most of them.”

Twilight wasn’t really thinking about them that much, when she considered all the things that could wrong for Spike’s group, she mainly thought of walker hordes or just basic Bandits, not this so-called group calling themselves the Hunters, she just thought of them as regular bandits, at least, that’s what she was telling herself.

“I… just figured these guys would be just, well enemies, but I haven’t really thought of them as a serious threat to us. For all we know, they don’t know we exist. Why do you ask?”

“It’s just, the other day, I was talking to Pip in the medical bay.” she admitted, eyes staring into the campfire. “I asked him how bad it was. He told me… these guys aren’t like regular bandits, that they are far more dangerous than any other of those scavengers out there.”

“What do you mean?” Twilight asked, her attention now completely captured.

“I don’t know, he was pretty vague about it, but I could tell he was scared even though he wasn’t showing it. All I know is, these guys were scary, and it would be very dangerous if we ever ran into them.”

Twilight thought for a moment, fully grasping on what Scootaloo was saying. She did already think these ponies may have been dangerous seeing as they could take down a whole supply group apart from four, maybe even thinking they were slightly more advanced than the average group of bandits, the ones who live in small numbers due to killing anyone who looks at them funny, but it seemed as if these Hunters were different than that, like they had order among murderers, allowing bigger numbers than other groups to arrive, and therefore making them extremely unsafe, and to Twilight’s fear, unpredictable.

It was puzzling though, bandits didn’t just decide to stop killing other ponies and work with them, they usually weren’t group friendly, and that was putting it lightly. Most bandit groups limited themselves to five or six creatures at best, anymore and there would be too many ponies to work with, to share with, to trust; sooner or later, somepony would die because of it. But happened to change that? Something, or somepony, had to have something to do with this, like a leader...Twilight thought.

Twilight got up from the campfire, not answering Scootaloo’s question. “Maybe I should go and talk to Pip myself…” she announced, expecting to be leaving alone, only for Scootaloo to follow closely behind, not letting the subject flow by so lightly.

“So you do think these Hunter guys could be a problem for us.” Scootaloo asked eagerly.

“I don’t know yet,” said Twilight. “Maybe I’m overreacting, maybe I’m thinking of the worst possible scenario like always, but that’s why I’m going to Pip, it’s like, knowing your enemy, right?”

“Then I’m coming too,” Scootaloo declared, her mind made up. “I want to know just as much as you do, like what Sweetie’s getting herself into out there.”

Twilight opened her mouth to argue, but then considered it pointless, she was as stubborn as Rainbow, and to be fair, if she was also worried for her friends, then who was she to turn her away?

The pair entered through the medical bay doors, or formally the Apple family’s kitchen, and saw Pip still lying in his bed, along his fellow comrades who were asleep, maybe not as torn up as when they first arrived, but not entirely either. Pip’s front hoof was injured, leaving him bed-ridden for the last couple of days, and although it would heal eventually, it still wasn’t a pretty sight.

Twilight approached him, Scootaloo in tow. “Pip, I’m here to ask you a few questions about what you saw back in town.”

Pip gave a sigh, and looked at Twilight with his tired, with one blackened, eyes. “Didn’t you already give me an interrogation after we first got here?”

“I asked you a few questions about what happened to you, only after we helped you. I wouldn’t call that an interrogation.” she replied. “But that’s not the point. I want to know about the ponies who attacked your group, the Hunters.”

Pip suddenly didn’t look as tough at the mention of their name, almost shrinking under the covers, not that he would confess of course. “You don’t want to know about those guys, I already told that to Scootaloo when she bothered me yesterday.”

Scootaloo was about to get up at Pip for that comment, only for Twilight to raise a hoof, gesturing her to sit back down. “I know you told her that. But I do want to know about the Hunters, I want to know if we are in danger, and if we can have a chance against them.”

Twilight’s words were blunter and more direct than Scootaloos, and possibly that would help in getting the information out, Twilight hoped.

After a few seconds of Pip trying to calculate a counter-argument to get her to leave, he finally gave up. “Fine. I’ll tell you what happened, but it isn’t pretty.” He let out an annoyed sigh and prepared to tell his story, before finally adding, “And by the way, in this world, we are ALWAYS in danger, don’t forget that.”

“Noted.” Twilight calmly replied, eager to hear the truth. “Okay, now, what did these ponies look like? Did they have any distinguishable features to recognise them?”

“Not much. But one thing I learned from them is that the members of this group, when we saw them, each have some kind of black fabric on each of their person, like some sort of uniform. Some of them wore it on their hoofs, some on their heads as bandanas, just as long as they had it on them. I don’t know why.”

“That’s weird.” Scootaloo commented. “Why would Bandits care about fashion sense?”

“Because it tells ponies who they are...” Twilight thought out loud. “Think about it, these Hunters are wearing these black rags, as like some sort of calling card, so other ponies know they are Hunters, so they should be feared. These ponies are trying to spread fear to survive.”

“That’s… clever.” Scootaloo admitted, amazed. “Too clever for a bandit to figure out, how would they know how to do that?”

“I don’t know, but if they are doing this, then it means they are trying to make a name for themselves out there. These ponies are more complex than I thought, what exactly happened when you were ambushed?”

“Shit hit the fan is what happened.” he replied with a grunt, remembering that gruesome day. “We had supplies, things seemed to be running smoothly, only a few walkers in our way before we were deciding to head back. Then, out of nowhere, a bolt of magic sniped my friend right there while I was talking to him, and then things really picked up…”

He paused, almost having tears in his eyes, before wiping them off quickly with no comment on the matter, and continued.

“After that, a whole bunch of them just appeared from nowhere, before we could even react we were being picked off like animals before we could even reach for our weapons. Bolts of magic and arrows flew everywhere, I can still hear them scream in pain… and that was when the walkers appeared, from the sounds, making things so much worse, like an extra weapon in their arsenal to take us down.”

Twilight made a worried facial expression at Scootaloo, thinking that these ponies were truly as bad as she thought they were, perhaps even worse based on what she was hearing.

“But, wouldn’t walkers appearing from the sounds be bad for the Hunters too?” questioned Scootaloo.

“They did in some way, but for reasons I can’t explain, they were more focused on us than the Hunters, like they were camouflaged somehow… It all happened so fast I can’t really know the full details, all I know is these guys… they were animals. They shot at us and killed so many ponies from our group, with no remorse, no regret, even with smiles on their faces with every swing of their knifes… we were lucky to get away, even with these wounds…”

Twilight and Scootaloo had nothing to say from what they just heard, what could they have said? These ponies not only have no problem taking down innocent ponies for their supplies, but also have somehow found out a way to use walkers as weapons against them? It was horrifying, and bringing so much fear that these ponies could be a real problem if they ever found out about this camp, that it rendered her speechless, leaving the room in silence.

That was, until a terrified voice called out from behind them.

“THE HUNTERS ARE GONNA KILL MAC! WE HAVE TO GO GET HIM!”

The pair turned and saw Applebloom at the doorway, her hooves trembling and tears in her eyes. It was unclear how long she was standing there with both of them unknowing, but it seemed long enough for her to be feeling this way.

“Applebloom, please calm down… it’s going to be okay…” Scootaloo said, walking up to her friend in an attempt to calm her down, with no success. The pony just kept whimpering, perhaps not even hearing Scootaloo.

“Mac’s out there… where those Hunters are… we have to go out there and bring him back!” she cried hysterically, not thinking of the absurdity of that plan. Twilight tried to aid Scootaloo, walking up to her, only for her back away in response.

“Stay away! You let him go out there! You didn’t even stop him!” she screamed at her angrily, before resuming her crying.

“What is going on here?” another voice called out, revealing it to be Applejack. “Applebloom there you are, I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“Applejack… Mac’s in danger, we have to get a group to bring him back! If we don’t he’ll die like Granny Smith!”

“Applebloom, slow down. What are you talking about?”

“Applebloom heard Pip talking about the Hunters.” Scootaloo answered, still attempting to get through to her. “Applebloom, listen. Mac and the others will be okay out there, you just have to trust us…”

“MAC WON’T COME BACK IF THE HUNTERS KILL HIM!!” she screamed in retaliation, not listening at anything else.

Applejack went up to her and tried pulling her into a hug. “Applebloom, please… calm down... I need you to be strong for both of us. Mac will come back, but we can’t just leave the camp behind with too little ponies defending it, Mac wouldn’t have a home to come back to if we did that…”

Applebloom had none of that, she refused to listen to any reason, on how going out there would be a suicide mission, with a very slim chance of actually finding them in the huge dangerous town they had ventured in. “You don’t care about him! You don’t care if he lives or dies!”

She stormed off, leaving Applejack just standing there, her jaw dropping, with the faint look of tears running down her face, at the knowledge of how badly Applebloom was feeling about all this. She didn’t usually act like this, even with all this starting, but when Mac left, it must have been too much stress to deal with and finally pushed her over the edge. She just prayed she could help her.

Twilight put her hoof on Applejack’s shoulder with a concerned face, after witnessing her outburst. “Applejack, are you okay?”

Applejack didn’t answer at first, but then responded. “She’s… just too stressed out. Let her sleep it off.”

Twilight understood of what stress could do to a pony, she had experienced it enough in her lifetime. Acting so scared and paranoid that it doesn’t allow you to see any kind of reason, or seeing the ponies who are only trying to help, only being concerned with one subject and no other. It was no use trying to go after Applebloom, if anything, it might have made it worse. The only thing they could do right now was to let her go to bed, and try to talk to her in the morning.

She then decided that she too was tired, and it had grown dark outside without her noticing, being consumed with the idea of the Hunters that it made her forget how much time had past.

“Okay, I think I’ll go to bed too, and we’ll try and talk to Applebloom tomorrow.” she said, leaving Applejack and Scootaloo there, all while thinking of anything she could possibly say to her that could even have a chance in her seeing reason.

She made her way to her own sleeping mat and within seconds, her eyes became heavy and she drifted to sleep, just wanting to end this stressful day and just make it to the next one.

It was early when she was jolted awake.

“Twilight! Wake up, we have a problem!”

It took her a few seconds to register what was going on, for her mind to come back to her and her eyes become focused again, but when she did she saw it was Scootaloo, shaking her awake with panic in her eyes.

“Scootaloo, what is it? What’s wrong?” she quickly asked, it had to be bad, Scootaloo looked terrified right now.

“Look… look outside Twilight..” she stammered in response, turning her head to the lookout tower. “I heard noises, and went upstairs to investigate and… we have a serious problem.”

Twilight didn’t know what she was talking about, what problem did they have? What did she see? Whatever it was she had to see, how bad this so called problem was, and what she could do to solve it.

However, any thoughts of the matter went silent as she registered her surroundings, how everypony in the area was acting… they looked as terrified as Scootaloo, the ones who were awake looked they were in shock, and others were piling more and more barricades against the perimeter, as if to keep them in… or something else out…

It was then when she too heard the sounds, the unmistakable sounds, coming from the outside.

She turned to Scootaloo with a shock of realization in her eyes and prayed she that it had to be wrong. “How many?” she questioned.

“Too many.” she replied. “I don’t think they know we’re in here yet.”

She quickly jumped out of her bed mat, and ran without hesitation to the ladder of the tower, she had to see what they were dealing with, how bad of a situation they were truly in right now.

She peered out into the distance and let out a terrified gasp. Walkers. An entire horde were around the borders of their camp, too many of them to count, the moans of an army just surrounded them. They must had moved in their pack while we slept she thought in panic, wondering what to do.

Scootaloo was right though, they couldn’t see them just yet, as long as they stayed quiet, but the whole situation was too scary right now, if they drawed too much attention to themselves, then the camps walls and fences wouldn’t be enough to defend against this number of walkers, it would be minutes before they could overcome the barriers and attack, leaving no where to run, to escape. They couldn’t try and take them out, they didn’t have the firepower, or the numbers, the only option they had right now was to stay quiet and wait for them to pass through.

They had to be trapped for the time being. And it was chilling.

“Twilight!” a voice called to her from behind, turning to see it was Applejack, tears pouring down her face, hyperventilating, and looking like she could barely stand.

“I know, Applejack. I’m scared too…” she said, trying to put on a strong face at the apparent situation, and clearly failing, she felt like she was going to be sick at the sight of all these walking corpses, decomposed and blood-thirsty.

“No...no.. it’s worse… you don’t understand…” she whimpered out, putting Twilight into confusion. If THIS wasn’t the problem, what could possibly be worse?

“Applejack, what is it? What’s wrong?” she asked, concerned and already terrified, still thinking of what was happening right now.

“It’s Applebloom… she must had went before they appeared…” she let out, about to cry.

“What? What happened?” her eyes widening.

“I can’t find her… she’s gone…”

Author's Note

No Applebloom! What the hell are you doing!

Hooray for cliffhangers! In case you're wondering, this is the same horde that made their way through town, and this is them moving in the path of camp now, pretty much serving as a reason to leave the group trapped inside camp for the time being while Applebloom went and ventured out on her own to find Mac (good luck with that), so it kinda means Applejack can't follow her. (hooray for complications!.... sorry I'll stop now...)

I know this isn't the usual type of chapter I write, and I know the description says this is Spike's story, but just letting you know what Spike's doing right now is main focus, and what happened now is pretty much a setup for the future developments I have planned. You're in for a doozy by the way.

This chapter kinda focused on the type of people (or ponies) when in the apocalypse, and how they deal with it, meaning the two types of people. The ones who adapt to survive (by a little or a lot as explained) when they have to, and the ones who can't deal with this world and can't change, making them very unfortunate, and that it could only be hoped that they can change for their survival, being Appleblooms case. (Where will this go? How will she develop as we go on??)

Next chapter will be back to Spike and Sweetie with the unconscious Hunter, and that means.... INTERROGATION TIME HOORAY!! (last time I promise)

Interrogation

“What should we do with him?”

Sweetie didn’t answer. She just kept staring at the unconscious Hunter, the unknown pony that she already had burning hatred against, inspecting every little feature of this murderer, all from his black mane to his armband, trying with all her might not to take him down once and for all, only with Spike finally nudging her did it bring her out of her trance.

“Huh.. what?” she said, focusing back at the situation at hand.

“I said, what should we do with him?” Spike repeated, stealing a glance at the pony and for a second showing the same furious expression that Sweetie had a few seconds ago.

Sweetie was thinking of telling Spike to take his machete out and see how many he can be chopped into before finally dying, but with great effort, restrained herself. Even though these ponies apparently had her sister captive and wanted revenge in any way she could, she knew she was letting her anger get the best of her, and this pony was their best chance of saving her.

“We… get all the information out of him about the Hunters. Maybe he knows where Rarity is being held.” she decided finally, still seething.

Spike let out an exhausted sigh, not at her, but it felt like he was wanting her to suggest the machete idea, to give him an excuse to let out his anger at what these ponies have done. But deep down, past his anger, he knew she was right, even if it felt wrong not letting him hurt anyone anymore, to rid the world of the bandit lying on the ground before them.

Without answering back, Spike followed Sweetie’s order, and dragged the Hunter into the maintenance shed, not taking particular care into whether he was ‘accidentally’ bumping his head against the door frame, or digging his claws in a little too deep while carrying him, so much so he would be wincing in pain if he was awake.

With careful contemplation of the objects placed in the room, Spike dragged the Hunter to a nearby drain pipe fixed against the wall, and wrapped some nearby chains across both his front hooves, making him sit on his back with his trapped hooves behind him. It wasn’t the perfect prison, but it looked like he wouldn’t be getting out of there anytime soon, as well as the fact it didn’t look very comfortable from Spikes perspective, it was good enough; perfect for the interrogation.

With his job done, he stood up, leaving the still passed out Hunter therein for a big surprise when he woke up, much to Spikes satisfaction, and turned around to Sweetie, finding her rereading the ponies note again, her eyes scanning every word, as if there was some way they were wrong, that it wasn’t Rarity who was captured after all.

“Sweetie, It’s her. There’s no point in denying it.” Spike said, with a weary voice.
“I know… it’s just… it just can’t be true. You know what I mean?” she replied, dropping the note to the ground, ready for another batch of tears to roll down her face.

“Yeah. I know.” he understood, pulling Sweetie into a hug in an effort to calm her down, as well as himself. “But we’ll bring her back no matter what. I promise.”

He wasn’t sure where to even start with that promise, let alone even figure out where she was being held, but even so he felt he just had to verify to Sweetie as well as himself that they wouldn’t be going home until the problem at hand was dealt with. That meant confronting these Hunters and possibly putting themselves at risk.

After a few moments of silence with Sweetie’s hooves firmly gripped around Spike’s scales, she finally let go and realized something by the look on her face, and said something quietly.

“The note… said something about a package…”

Spike looked confused. Why was she concerned about that part of the message? It was hardly anything to do with the event at hand, and yet she still proceeded to pick the notebook from the ground once more and scanned the findings log with great speed.

“There… it was just written down this morning.” she said, pointing with her hooves to the report, basically shoving it into Spike’s claws, before she proceeded to the unconscious Hunter’s rucksack and began to rummage through the few amount of items that he had on them.

Spike peered down at the note, still confused, and reread the words that just a few moments ago made his blood run cold. He tried to look past the part of his friend being kidnapped to a group of bloodthirsty murderers and saw what Sweetie said was true, still not answering any questions nevertheless, but it was true.

Sprawled in messy handwriting, in the latest entry of the log, right next to the part about Rarity, showed the words:

Scavenged a small piece of weaponry in from a dead Diamond Dog this morning, at least he was dead when we were finished with him. Could be worth something, it is specifically designed for non-ponies, or creatures with fingers.

This may had been true and all, but it still didn’t answer why Sweetie had chosen to concern herself with it, and why was she rummaging through this guys stuff to find this ‘piece of weaponry’.

“Sweetie, why are yo-”

“I found it!” she declared, interrupting Spike and dragging a small wooden box out from the Hunters bag. “I think this is the package this guy was writing about.”

“That’s great Sweetie, but what does this have to do with Rarity?”

“Look, the note said it was from a Diamond Dog…” she pointed at the note, still in Spike’s claws. “ It said it was made for creatures with fingers! That’s you Spike! Maybe you could use it somehow…”

She handed Spike the box and gestured for him to open it, curious into what this weapon may be, but Spike just stood there still, concerned into why Sweetie was doing this.

“Sweetie, I-”

“Spike…” she interrupted once more, except it felt different this time, like she was out of this trance and instead was looking at Spike with pleading eyes, making Spike feel more concerned. “Please…”

It was then when things began to feel clearer to Spike now.

This may had been nothing to do with helping Rarity and figuring out this whole situation, but it didn’t mean she was ignoring it. This Hunter wasn’t awake yet, and that meant nothing could continue with solving this issue until he was. He knew all the answers, and all the leads that they had to go on, but until then, they were hopeless and had nothing to do until then, which was why Sweetie proceeded to occupy herself with this mystery package they had acquired.

If she didn’t do this, then they would only have the next couple of moments thinking, thinking of what Rarity was doing right now, if she was hurt or worse, to the point where she would just stress out on the fate of her sister, meaning she was only doing this to change the subject for just a little while, to occupy her mind on this particular subject until she had to go back to the harsh reality they were in, when this interrogation against the Hunter that laid before them began. Right now Sweetie was just asking for him to help for those few moments, so she wouldn’t have to stress herself out in silence in that interval of time.

Spike decided that she needed this, and it was better letting her feel less troubled before the work really began, when the Hunter woke up.

“Sure Sweetie,” he understood, opening the box. “Maybe I could use whatever is in here…”

Although whatever was in there wasn’t of genuine concern to him a moment ago, when he opened the box what he found exceeded his expectations a large amount, making the pair let out a gasp in amazement at the item they had found.

It was some kind of revolver, eight slots in the chamber, accompanied with a scuffed holster and a number of bullets able to be used. Like the note said, it was made for creatures with fingers, making a rare weapon in a country of ponies, therefore making hoof guns unable to be used for Spike, up until now being a slight disadvantage for the purple dragon.

“Wow… it’s perfect for you Spike.” Sweetie said, amazed at the peculiar weapon. “Guns aren’t usually found anywhere, and you got one you could actually use…”

This was true. Guns weren’t usually in high supply around here, the ones were found were specifically designed for hooves, not hands, not unlike Rainbow’s crossbow, and were mainly used by earth ponies or pegasi, seeing as unicorns had their horns for protection in that area. But finding a gun like this, a high caliber revolver, built for hands and capable of doing some real damage, it was rare, and made Spike feel lucky he chose to open the box and found this gem.

It looked old, and had been apparently fired a number of times before it was passed to Spike, making him wonder of the previous owners of this gun, and concluding the fact they probably didn’t lose it in the end, but instead it might have been taken from them at the cost of their lives, or perhaps it could have even been used to take their own when the world became too tough in the end. It was impossible to tell what stories this revolver had, but it didn’t matter now, it was his.

He clipped the holster around his waist, and for a moment, held the revolver in his hand, admiring the chrome surface and the designs engraved along the barrel, probably carved into it by a previous owner, before holstering it. His personal machete accompanied by his fire breath served as a deadly combination, but mainly for close quarters only, but now, he had this, a gun specifically for him, able to take out enemies from further away now.

It served the Diamond Dog well, but now, this was Spike’s revolver, and it could possibly even save his life one day.

“Hey… that’s my loot…”

It was clear that wasn’t Sweetie’s voice he was hearing behind him. It was rough, almost like he had gravel caught in his throat, but even so it was hard not hearing the fear in his voice when he said it, no matter how tough he was trying to sound.

The pair turned and saw what they expected. The stranger was awake, trying with all his might to free himself from the chains wrapped around his hooves when discovering them, but with no avail. He was clearly not going anywhere, but it didn’t stop him from trying with a panicked expression on his face, making himself look like not a smart pony, but a restless one nonetheless.

Spike looked at Sweetie and was surprised at the calm expression on her face, he was expecting her to lash out at him the first opportunity she could, a temptation that Spike himself was restraining himself against. Instead, her eyes just gazed at the struggling pony, her eyes piercing like daggers at his every movement, bringing Spike some solace that it was making the Hunter all the more afraid. Her face may have been calm, tired even, but her eyes told a different story when Spike expected, inside she was on fire, furious at this creature and all the acts he must have done in the past.

Both of them didn’t know whether or not this pony had any involvement with Rarity being captured, but Spike knew this wasn’t going to stop Sweetie from letting out that anger on him, and if Spike knew better, he would let her, otherwise he would be purely a deer in headlights if he interfered.

If it was any consolation, he probably deserved it, and Spike himself was feeling the same way as Sweetie.

“My friends…” the stranger cried out, finally giving up on the chains after several attempts of freeing himself. “My friends will come looking for me… they’re nearby, just let me out of here!”

The interrogation had begun by the looks of it. Spike may have not had much experience in this area, but even he knew the best course of action was to show no weakness and make this pony afraid above all else. That would be how they would get the information they want.

Quickly, he went right up into the scared ponies face, startling him while doing so at the look of a full grown dragon in front of him, and lied. “Yeah, I met your friends. They didn’t take long to fall, and if it makes it easier on us, now nopony knows you are here.”

He gave a dominant smirk at that lie, but inside he was praying he would fall for the trick, and he that he would be under the assumption that he was facing some dangerous adversaries right now, perhaps he was, but the look on his face by that comment gave Spike all the answer he needed.

“You’re… you’re lying…” he trembled. “What do you want from me? You took all my loot, just please, let me go!”

It was Sweetie’s turn to speak at that last comment, and the emotionless gaze she once had was replaced with a furious stare when she joined Spike beside him, close into the ponies scared eyes.

“You know about the Hunters, and we want answers about where your group is set up. Got it?”

“Hunters? I… I don’t know what you’re-”. That answer was quickly interrupted by a swift strike with Sweetie’s hoof, followed by a wince of pain, an uncomfortable bruise on the stranger’s face, and a look of astonishment from Spike at the sudden outburst he was beaten to.

“Ahh.. you bitch… you’ll pay for that…” he cried, although threats from him were seeming a bit unintimidating at that point, based on his current situation. “Okay, okay, I know about the Hunters.”

“Next time the hit’s coming from my claw, and I’ll bet it’ll a lot worse than from a ponies.” Spike warned, making sure this pony had the idea across. “Now, tell us about the Hunters. Who are you ponies?”

“We’re… we’re survivors… just like you.”

Spike grimaced at that point; they weren’t survivors, they were murderers, taking down innocent ponies who had just as much of a right to survive as they did, all for the benefits of their own, perhaps even just to spread fear rather than gaining loot.

The stranger continued. “We used to be in small numbers, just taking what we could to make it through each day, but then it changed one day, this pony, and her friend, found my group one day, told us that we would survive if we kneeled to her, and followed her rules. My friend suggested that this had to be some kind of trick, and decided that it was pretty dumb for two ponies to come here alone looking for slaves; except she wasn’t alone. When he reached for his weapon, a bolt of magic shot through his head, killing him stone dead with no reaction from this strangers while we were freaking out.”

Spike was still trying to remain tough and brutal against his prisoner, but even the thought of killing a pony with little hesitation, or even a strong facial expression, gave the pair chills up their spines.

“The bolt of magic came from a vantage point up in the trees. I guess they had us pegged the moment they saw us, and when their cover was blown, that’s when their other ‘soldiers’ emerged from hiding. Looking back on it now, I guess this was bosses method of recruiting, gaining numbers one by one, group by group until we had a full blown operation taken care of. I figured these ponies reinforcements were just like me, just another group brought in by fear until made loyal to her. At first, we felt like hostages, but soon, life became easier. Supplies were easier to find thanks to the bigger numbers, and no group ever crossed us because they were too afraid to take us on. Couldn’t take any chances though.” He smirked at that last remark, angering Spike.

“So you just joined this group just like that? Even though they just killed your friend in front of you?” Sweetie asked, silently judging the pony more and more.

“Whatever. I’m set up in a pretty good gig now, something that wouldn’t have ever been formed without boss, you know how bandit groups are, can’t trust each other let alone other clans…” The stranger responded irritably, with no regret. “If he had to die to make it happen, then I woulda put his ass into the ground myself to make it possible.”

Spike couldn’t help but feel slightly afraid of what these ponies were capable of, from the information he was hearing about them. This leader of theirs, she was smart apparently, making her more dangerous, and with the power to band even bandit groups together, it gave the strong leaders a strong army at their disposal, spreading fear across the land to make them feared and therefore untouchable, planting the idea in ponies minds that walkers aren’t the only thing to be afraid of, and ponies should run and hide when they see the ponies wearing black, making them practically invincible.

It was genius. Horrifying, but genius nevertheless as much as it pained Spike to think that way. This group meant business, building a name for themselves to make them the alpha dogs in this wasteland, through fear, inside the group and out.

However one thought kept creeping into Spike’s mind when hearing these words; the group operates in surviving by spreading fear to ponies so they wouldn’t dare attacking, giving them the opportunity to strike them down easily, but it wasn’t just for ponies outside the group it seemed, the fear that controlled the Hunters ran inside the group too as it seemed. The leaders used fear to recruit soldiers to their army, and using that fear further to mold them into the perfect killers, loyal to their cause completely because they would be either to afraid to take on their superiors, risking everything if they would fail, therefore giving these so called leaders complete control, not having proper comrades to run their camps like at home, but instead having pawns, following orders to the tee in fear of consequences.

But who were these leaders? How can they know so much to manipulate ponies to follow them?

Spike was about to ask when Sweetie beat him to speaking first. “You aren’t survivors like us… you’re animals. Killing innocent ponies for your own selfish reasons…” she blurted out.

The stranger gave a mocking sneer. “It’s just part of the job, and besides, if you could see some of the ponies we deal with, sniveling over their friends corpses rather than running away, then you would think the same. I’m just letting the weak ones die already so they don’t do it themselves, getting loot as a reward. I’m paying them a service.”

That final impossible comment was too much for Sweetie. She charged her hoof down the strangers head, allowing a small trickle of blood to flow down past his hairline, and a yelp of pain coming from the stranger.

“You dumb bitch! I’ll fucking cut you when I get out of here!” The stranger tried with all his might to free himself to attack Sweetie, and only when his back hoof managed to reach her almost by a hair, did Spike grab the pony’s throat as if he had just gave her a fatal wound.

“You don’t touch her, EVER. You got that?” he barked, his grip tightening and the pony gasping for air more and more, trying to reach his trapped hooves on the dragons claws to free himself, with no avail.

“F-f-fuck...y-you..” he wheezed with little breathes, earning a firm strike from Spikes fist, pushing him into the wall at full force, and looking so much more painful than any strike Sweetie ever gave, giving the pony a black eye as well as a few scratches while he regained his air against the wall, an even more scared face practically carved into him at this moment.

“I’m saying it again.” Spike raged a second time. “You don’t touch her, EVER. You got that?”. This time being much more convincing at threatening him, seeing as he practically cowered from Spike at the mere sight of him. “Now, answer any question she might have.”

He turned over to Sweetie and gave her a nod, indicating for her to go on. For a second, she couldn’t think of anything after the event that just transpired, but soon, she had her question.

“Where are you taking your prisoners?” she ordered at the pony, only to receive an angered stare in response.

“If you think you can just break into our camp, and took whoever pony we took, I can tell you now it’s a suicide mission. And besides, prisoners don’t last long anyway. Accept the loss and move on.”

That statement made Sweetie feel less strong, and couldn’t help but look less intimidating to their captive, but it only made Spike more fierce, the message to him being that time was against them, so they needed to move fast.

“She didn’t ask for a lecture, she asked where you are keeping the prisoners.” he thundered to him, almost raising his claw for another attack, debating whether this time it would be the final one to give him a concussion already. “Now, tell us where you took Rarity. The purple maned pony you wrote in your log.”

The pony looked afraid now, seeing now that this pair was serious about a rescue mission, and that meant giving up vital information. Information that would give severe consequences if caught. “Boss is gonna kill me… Please… I can’t say…”

“Tell us now! We’ll make it far worse a punishment than who this boss pony would if you don’t!” Sweetie threatened, her strength regaining thanks to Spike, with her horn ready to send a charge.
The pony now looked scared of the both of them now, and possibly was thinking of what could happen to him now whether or not he gave up this information, from what Spike observed. With a final sigh of desperation and possibly a small uttering of the words under his breath, “I doubt it.” he finally confessed.

“The hospital. We took it over a few weeks back and fortified it ever since. We hold the prisoners in the lower basement.” he confessed, his lips trembling at the thought of the information he had just released. “You can’t get in. Don’t bother trying.”

The pair didn’t bother listening at the warning that had just been told to them, Rarity had to be saved from these ponies, and they had been all the more convinced now from what they heard these ponies as well as their leaders were capable of. That surpassed any warnings or any threats given to them on the obvious impossibility of this mission, however clear it was for the both of them.

It seemed like that was all the information they needed right now, and even if they could have been more questions that could have been asked, knowing that they were on a race against time meant they couldn’t just wait around asking questions. It was time for a plan.

That being said, there was one more question that Sweetie just had to know the answer to, even though she she terrified that she already knew the answer.

“One last question.” She said, not in an angry way, or even demanding way, but with a blank expression that even so made the pony afraid of saying anything other than the truth. “Why do you take prisoners?”

Like said, the Hunter couldn’t tear himself away from the although the blank and cold expression on her face, her eyes screamed fury, and that meant he had to be clear with this one, no use of telling a lie to spare himself a beating, any attempt with that could possibly backfire horribly.

“We.. we don’t usually take prisoners. We.. usually kill them for their loot with no other purpose.” He expected a harsh response to that, only for the expression unchanging. “The ones we do take, they are usually for the labor we don’t give the time for, and they don’t last long anyway… but some of them… some mares we find… the ones who aren’t too broken about their appearance yet…”

That was when Sweetie gave a response to that, standing up with her eyes widening. “What…?”

“A pony’s gotta have a hobby, right?” he whimpered with a nervous smile.

That answer was what Sweetie was expecting to her fear, but even so things just felt too real at that point and the fact that this pony felt so at ease with that idea, as well as all the other countless atrocities he and this group were okay with, gave her so much anger that her horn began to charge in power as each second of realization went by.

She had so much anger towards this pony, as well as everything he stood for, and remembering that just moments ago this pony had almost killed Spike made her horn grow brighter in energy all the faster, seconds away from giving a devastating blow.

She closed her eyes, ready for the inevitable, angry tears pouring down her face, when suddenly a large crack of sound echoed throughout the room, the sound of the shot ringing in her ears.

She opened her eyes and saw the Hunter, a wound through his head and lying dead on the ground, a pool of blood forming on the ground below him. Except she had never fired her horn.

A moment of confusion at what just happened was followed by a quick realization as the ringing began to wear down. She turned and saw Spike; the revolver in his hand with a faint trace of smoke coming from the end. He had beat her into ending it, making her think that he too wasn’t taking all this information about Rarity lightly, he was just better at hiding his fear than she was.

After a few seconds of what happened, Spike finally lowered his gun, and slowly placed it back into his holster, aware now that this was the first time he had killed a living pony, a bad pony, but even so it felt so intense at that point, and he was sure he wasn’t going to forget it, even though at the start he was sure this was probably going to be the hostages fate from the moment he tied him up.

This may had been the first thing he had killed that wasn’t a walker, but now because of the mission they had before them, it seemed like it wouldn’t be the last one if things went wrong, as they usually did.

The mission. It dawned on him once more of what was going to happen, and how it had to be soon if they wanted to have any chance of saving Rarity, and although this task they had set towards them was clearly dangerous, with little chance of succeeding, being completely a crazy thing to even consider that could get them all killed, they still had to do it.

Spike promised from the start he would do all he could to hold on to whatever he had left.

He made a look of determination to Sweetie which was soon mirrored from her, knowing what he was thinking and said,

“Okay, I’ve got a plan…”

Author's Note

Badass Spike is Badass.
And is probably going to be doing a lot more badass things as we go on. So yeah. Probably should have just ended with that... *cough*

Anyway, so Spike has a new weapon now, as well as his personal machete! making him look a lot cooler now, seeing as he has an awesome machete and revolver now, doubled by the fact that HE'S A DRAGON. It's like every child's drawing they make when at preschool when told to draw their house (just me? okay..)
If you have trouble envisioning what Spike's revolver actually looks like due to my poor descriptive skills, then just think of like Rick Grimes awesome cop revolver that he like always has on him, expect with some awesome Celtic designs carved into the already scratched silver, making it look more like it had previous owners, with other stories to tell when owning this revolver, before they ultimately died.

Moving on, so next chapter they are devising a plan to break into Hunter HQ (aka the fortified ruins of the hospital, don't worry we aren't calling it Hunter HQ) and to save Rarity before ITS TOO LATE... all the while having numerous questions in your head like "Where's Rainbow and Applebloom?" "Who are the leaders of the Hunters?" and "Will Spike and Sweetie do more badass stuff?"

Till next time, bye!!

The Impossible Mission

“Are you sure about this?”

Spike wasn’t sure himself when he asked this question. This task was impossible, chances of things going exactly as planned were slim to nothing, and even he couldn’t say that it didn’t scare him carrying this out.

Sweetie responded with a determined face, with a hint of fear in her eyes as well. “I have to. She’s my sister.”

It was the exact answer he was expecting, and although he knew he had to do this as well, he knew he had to save his friend no matter what the cost, a very small part of him just wished the answer could have been different, that they could end this journey and go home, back to their friends, back to Twilight.

But hopeful dreams like that weren’t for now, he had to stay in reality right now, no matter how harsh it was. Only when the group was reunited could they go home. They already left someone who died, they sure as hell weren’t going to leave behind the ones who were still alive.

That is, if they were alive…

So much had changed since they left just a couple of days ago, and even if they made it out of this, Spike knew he was in for so much more in the next couple of days, no matter how impossible, and how much it killed him thinking of it.

Saving Rarity would be just the start, Rainbow would be next, then finding the supplies we lost in the process would be after, otherwise this trip would have been a waste, not even thinking of the dangerous trip it would take to get back.

And even if they did get back, after every impossible scenario to the next, each having a large possibility of death or worse, would it seem worth it having to look Applejack and Applebloom in the eye and say that their brother wouldn’t be coming home?

Like he thought, he was in for a hell of a few days, he just had to survive each one as they came along, protecting his friends every step of the way until he made sure they were safe, behind fences where the horrors outside couldn’t get them for now.

Only then could Winter begin.

That meant Sweetie too. Above all else he needed to protect her, he just knew it. He knew he needed all his best friends, but with her, it felt different, at times she helped him remember what the world used to be, when times weren’t hard.

He sure as hell wasn’t going to give that up without a fight.

He looked at her. Preparing and packing for the upcoming storm. Although when he explained the plan to her, she kept a strong face, ready for anything, and even though that was better than an angry response telling him of the insanity of carrying out such a plan, it still left Spike uneasy. Her face may had been like stone, but Spike could see through it, he could see past the veil and see the fear in her eyes, just like she could for him. They both had a way like that.

“Sweetie.” he called out blankly, causing her to pause her packing. “You know you don’t have to come with me. You could stay here and let me do this…”

Sweetie didn’t answer at first, just looking at Spike with hardly a change in expression, as if she was expecting him to say these words, and instead rose from the ground and stood eye to eye with him, her eyes no longer in fear.

Without saying anything, she struck her hoof on Spike’s arm, not hurting him due to his thick scales, barely affecting him physically, but surprising him at the sudden outburst nonetheless.

“We stick together.” she confirmed, her voice not leaving it up for discussion, but still wasn’t stopping Spike. “I’m letting you get away from me after all we’ve been through.”

“I just want to keep you safe.” Spike argued. “I would never forgive myself if I let you get hurt because of me being careless.”

“This my choice, and I’m choosing not to let my friends and family get killed while I wait here. Even if I do die, I’d be dying, fighting for them.” she countered, her voice remaining strong. “You need me to have your back out there, just like I need you....”

Spike paused, trying to think of something strong back to try and convince Sweetie not to follow him into darkness, but after a few seconds, only a few words came out.

“You’re right. I do need you. Which is why I don’t want to put you in danger…”

That sentence seemed to break both of them. Without a response, Sweetie pulled him into a tight hug, quickly making them forget what they were arguing about.

“I guess we won’t have a chance to do this when we’re outside…” Sweetie said quietly, her hooves still wrapped around Spike, not having the faint chance of letting go.

Spike knew what was happening was final; he couldn’t convince Sweetie to stay here, and that meant if he was going to walk into hell, Sweetie was going to have to be there with him, all they could do was look at the goal in front of him.

They just stare at each other eyes, both of them gripped together without saying anything after that, not even trying to think of everything that was happening around them, just thinking of right now, right here. They were so close together Spike could feel every little movement Sweetie had, her heart beating, her breath on his scales, their lips being inches apart…

No. They couldn’t right now. Not with everything going on.

Before anything else could happen, Spike finally broke the hug, bringing them both back into reality, even if both of them still wanted to finish that hug.

“We should get going. While the sun is still up…” he said faintly, not mentioning what just happened.

For a moment Sweetie looked slightly disappointed, but within a few seconds she understood, and gave a slight nod in agreement.

Whatever was happening between them, even if they both didn’t know, it had to wait.

The sun shot down at them the second Spike opened the door, causing them to shield their eyes and realise how little light their temporary camp had, a camp they will most likely not return to, even if everything did go as planned. Their mission had begun.

With one final look at each other, the pair set off on their journey, even more cautious on their surroundings based on the information they had received, not just from the walkers, but from the killers that apparently lurked around every corner.

The pony they had interrogated had said the Hunters fortress was located at the hospital, so that was their destination, even if every step felt like simply walking into the lion’s den.

The only thing setting them both straight was the thought of Rarity, and how much she needed them right now, her friends, and with that, it gave Spike the energy against an army, no matter how dire it seemed.

Questions still went through his mind through this journey through, with no indication in whether he would ever get answers to any of them.

Who is this group’s leaders, and how much of a threat are they alive? Is Rainbow Dash still alive? Was she captured too? Will we make it in time? Will we make it home? Can he keep Sweetie safe?

He was beginning to develop a headache with all these questions.

He said it once, and he would say it again, it was going to be a hell of a few days.

Author's Note

This Story is not dead!! :rainbowkiss: :yay:
Once again, I apologize for letting so much time go by without an update, and although this one isn't exactly as long as others, I'm happy I finally set myself down and got this done.
Thanks to all the people who stuck around, and rest assured this story is not being abandoned.

Moving on, next chapter will hopefully be a doozy, with the two making it to the Hunters fortress, with certain stuff going down that I'm hoping will be a shock (I'm vague, I know. But I don't like spoiling.)

On a sidenote, I like to think of Sweetie as the pony who brings Spike back to the ground, so he doesn’t lose himself, reminding him what he is fighting for, kinda like how the Doctor needs his companions, otherwise he would become dangerous with no one to stop him. (That’s right, I watch the show, and as you’ve probably guessed, I’m a huge nerd too :3)

Till next time!