28 Days Later

Date: May 17, 2004
Time: 0800 hours
Location: Ponyville Equine Research Facility

Day One: Exposure

A lone scientist covered in a bloody and sweat-stained lab coat stood in the middle of his laboratory. He stood alone amongst his work, mixing samples of blood and the nerve-calming agent his former colleague had been so desperate to help him create and deploy.
"Bollocks, it was." he muttered to himself.
He sighed at seeing that the particular strain of a deadly virus still had the same effects on the agent. It didn't matter how many times he tried altering it and the virus, Ebola.
His test subjects were young foster foals who volunteered for his testing. They adored him for his kindness, generous application of anesthesia, and his father-like nature. Sadly, they were now driven to the point of madness by this despised disease. Their eyes were a striking pitchfork red. This was accompanied by blood oozing from their lips, their eyes, the nostrils, staining their already matted fur.
Every attempt the messenger of knowledge made to inject them with something new, they lashed out, tried to bite him, to kill him. To... infect him. It bewildered him when he tried to decipher how this virus even worked.
The unicorn was heart-broken. Everyday that a test subject was no longer able to be successfully restrained, he was forced by the government to put them down. Euthanasia usually couldn't be administered due to the thrashing of the test subjects. So, he would often be forced to either snap their neck with his magic (which he found a disgrace to himself, unicorns, and the test subjects alike), or to shoot them; firing a small projectile from a hoof-held firearm.
It pained him every time, and some days he wished his partner hadn't left out of disgust at what the two had created. The scientist also knew that if this virus ever broke out of the perimeters of this lab, he would become responsible for the destruction of his nation.
The scientist examined the small television that portrayed what the cameras viewed. No... something was wrong. Four screens were filled with nothing but static. Those four screens, which originally depicted the hallways leading to the lab entrance, were all but empty. He stole a final glance at the last camera shot. A group of ponies were congregated around one another. All three of them were pegasi, dressed head to hoof in black clothing. There were two stallions carrying crow bars followed by a mare with a camera.
Oh, no. he thought, for he knew now he and his test subjects were doomed. No, not the test subjects. The Infected. he knew in an instant that these were Children's Rights radicals, who despised the use of foals as the bases of experiments.
As the last screen went gray with static, he heard a loud banging at the door. He opened it gingerly, and suddenly found himself face down on the floor.
"On yer hooves, ya runt!" The accent was very cockney, as if from the downtown regions of Buckingham.
"Davenport, open de cages. Get these poor things outta here." The stallion, presumably the group's leader, delivered a sharp kick with his forehoof to the underbelly of the scientist. He then drew a hoof-gun, a Colt 1911, and put it to the head of the scientist.
"I should kill you were ya lay, you monster."
"No," the crippled stallion cried out. "You can't! You can't open the cages! They're infected!" Another kick came, along with an order to shut his mouth.
"The children are infected?!"
"Infected with what?" The leader said. The photographer took a few pictures of the conditions in the lab. To her dismay, it was quite clean and comfortable, which wouldn't help their case. The scientist ignored the leader and kept rambling.
"I said, infected with what?!"
The frightened stallion looked him in the eye at the same time the second male radical had opened a cage. "Rage."
A loud, agonizing scream erupted from the radical as a beady-eyed foal jumped onto him and took a chunk out of his wing.
"Get this fucker off me! Get 'im off!! Help!" he shrieked.
The last word was followed by another bite, this time to the shoulder. The radical threw the child off of him and began to spasm violently. He turned over and vomited blood and stood, his eyes bloodshot and angry. A loud gunshot erupted from the leader's Colt, striking the child in the throat. However, the stallion did not realize that the shot should have been reserved for either the now infected stallion, or himself.
The scientist kept screaming, "Just one drop! Just one drop is all it takes!! You've doomed us all, you stupid fool!!"
Then, the now turned radical turned on the shouting scientist, chasing him across the lab. He flung himself onto the scientist, bringing him down, beating him senseless, and then taking a bite out of his shoulder. The scientist kicked the infected off and began coughing crimson blood.
"Oh, shit! Get out! Get! Out!"
Almost instantly, he turned on his hooves and flew for the door. He shot the glass and flew through it. However, he didn't see his infected partner when she leaped from behind him. She latched her teeth into his ankle, sinking them in without a moment's hesitation.
"OH FUCK!!!"
The children, along with the two radicals and the now infected scientist, drew the leader down out of the window and began beating him senseless as his transformation began. Before he could fully turn, the photographer tore out his throat and spit it onto the ground. A torrent of blood poured from his neck and onto the floor.
Satisfied with their work, the group of about fifteen infected children and adults alike got up and began scanning the halls for an escape. They slammed doors and pounded on the windows until one finally broke.
At long last, the new world was theirs to destroy.