The Dead City

Part 1: ESCAPE

It is evening. Or maybe morning? Since the Cataclysm, the weather pegasi have neglected their duties, and the sky has been a pallid gray blanket for weeks. It rains occasionally, which distracts the bonewalkers, but mostly the city is blanketed in dark fog.

I have been alone for weeks. Manehattan is a ghost of a city, a graveyard of gnarled concrete and corroded brick. The city that never sleeps is now in eternal slumber.

My name is Shining Armor. It’s been thirty-two days since the Cataclysm. I can’t find my wife. I can’t find my sister. I’m not sure how much longer I can go on.

They never said how long it would last. They never said when it would be over. I’ve heard rumors that Canterlot is still up and running, but I can’t be sure. I pray that I trained the guards well enough to protect the city from the Corrupt.

I can’t say for certain that anywhere in Equestria is safe anymore. The Cataclysm annihilated what it could and devastated the rest. Then the Corrupt began to pop up, along with the bonewalkers. It took less than a week for everypony in the city to be killed...or worse, taken.

I am on the balcony of a downtown Manehattan apartment. My mane is matted and unkempt. My face is covered in stubble and dirt. I haven’t slept properly in weeks. I doubt anypony has.

Four weeks previously, Equestria had been normal. Then there was the Cataclysm, or as some ponies called it, Event Nightmare. Some said Nightmare Moon had returned. Others thought it a magical mishap. Whatever the cause, within a day ponies were dying and lands were burning black. Shadow overtook so many. Even I thought at first that Nightmare Moon had returned.

Nopony knows what really happened. And old stallion told me that he had heard a loud voice cry out on the day of Event Nightmare, mere moments before his daughter was Corrupted. Other than that, I know nothing. The clearest memory I have of life before is with my wife, Cadance, and my sister Twilight Sparkle on our honeymoon tour of Manehattan.

I remember waking on the Bucklyn Bridge, amid what I would come to realize was the end of the world. The bridge itself was clogged with scraps of the dead and debris from the fallout. I remember the twisted steel, the bloodied asphalt, and the low groans of supports that threatened to give way under the weight of the rubble on the bridge.

It would only be from the anecdotes of surviving ponies that I would discover what had happened.

Manehattan had become a city of the dead.

A sound tears me from my thoughts. I have nothing to defend me. My magic is gone. The sound is coming from the entrance of the apartment. I had swept the place before settling in, and I hadn’t encountered any bonewalkers.

That leaves one other possibility.

A Corrupt.

I dart inside the apartment and duck into an overturned cupboard, trying not to make any noise. I leave the door open a bit. The apartment is messy from neglect, and the smell of the dirty cupboard disgusts me, but I hold my breath.

It appears without a sound, and the air grows frigid. In the dark it would be invisible, a shadow among shadows. But as pale gray light streams through the broken windows, I catch a brief glimpse of its form through a crack in the cupboard. Its body is blacker than night and it seems to morph and shift by the second, fading in and out of sight like a ghost. Its eyes are red like fire and it makes no sound as it glides across the room. My spine tingles. Silent as a graveyard, the specter examines the spot where I had stood moments before, hovering there for several seconds. Sweat runs down my hide. My ragged jacket presses uncomfortably against my body, but I keep still. I don't want to think about what will happen should the Corrupt find me.

But I catch a break. Dusty sunlight breaks through the cloud cover, and the being vanishes. I wait several seconds, then breathe a sigh of relief, tumbling out of the cupboard. I see from the light that it is dawn. There is only one bridge out of Manehattan that still stands. The Wonderbolts destroyed the main three bridges days ago, and a survivor told me that the Trinket Tunnel was completely flooded.

The Celestial Bridge is the only bridge still standing. It is just a few blocks down the street from the apartment building. I’m low on food and almost out of water.

I need to get out of the city.

* * *

Clogged streets had never been uncommon in Manehattan. I'd been there a few times before, and every visit was accompanied by hours upon hours spent in hideous traffic that the city's streets had become so infamous for. Now the city is even messier. Carts, wagons, drays, and fallen buildings straddle the debris-choked roads and sidewalks, and every step I take chips and dents my hooves.

I can hardly keep my eyes open in the swirls of dust that pound my face whenever the wind picks up. The ever-present groans of straining steel and gutted iron unnerve me. Two more blocks. One more block. My athletic training from guard school is paying off, although we'd never taken lessons on what to do if the world went to hell. I never suspected such things could be.

I arrive at the final block, a tarnished square on the edge of the West River. The Celestial Bridge is ahead, shining like its namesake. Smiling, I place my hooves on the stone walkway.

Then I hear sobbing. Somewhere up the bridge, somepony is crying.

As I listen closely, the sobbing grows louder. It does not belong to a pony. It sounds metallic, like grating steel. Fog blankets the bridge. Then the ground rumbles. I hesitate for a moment, then ready myself for a fight. The crying stops. I hear a shriek. More rumbling. The debris on the bridge is shaking.

A shape bursts from the haze and slams into me, picking me up and carrying me off the ground. Startled, I look up and see greenish eyes on a very dusty head attached to a winged body that is black with soot. A pegasus. Her eyes are wide with fright. I yell in protest, but she does not listen as she flies me back across the bridge. The rumbling is now deafening. We collapse onto the street, hoof in hoof, and the pegasus barely dodges a shattered iron beam. The rumbling suddenly stops, and for the longest moment, the only sound we hear is the medley of our breath.

The bridge explodes, and from the river’s maw erupts a monster worse than any nightmare I had ever had in my entire life. It resembles a gigantic black caterpillar attached to a mound of pulsing, necrotic flesh. A horrifying roar escapes its mouth as black tentacles dripping with slime glaze over its body, as if it were feeling itself.  The monster is at least a thousand feet tall. Any taller and it would scrape the roof of the sky.

The bridge is gone. The water of the West River is churning black. The pegasus begins to drag me with surprising strength. My eyes are locked on the monstrosity, and I fail to hear what the pony is yelling.

Then blackness. Total. Absolute. We are tumbling down wet concrete. I fall back onto the pegasus, and we end up in a pile on the ground. My heart beats in my ears, and my breath is dry, scratching my throat whenever I exhale. In the blackness, I can make out my rescuer’s eyes, brimming with tears.

“I’m sorry…” she says. Her voice is timid and high.

“Don’t be,” I respond, brushing myself off. “You saved my life.”

“But I shouldn’t have had to! The creature…it was so angry…”

“Creature? You mean that thing?”

She nods. “I was talking to it, trying to find out what was wrong. I’m usually good with animals, but…”

Suddenly I recognize her voice. “You were at my wedding! You’re Twilight’s friend!”

“Yes, yes! I’m Fluttershy. I’m so sorry, Shining Armor, but when I saw you I couldn’t let the creature get you. Twilight would have been devastated.”

“Wait a minute…Twilight’s alive?”

She nods again. “Yes…I mean, I think so. She was looking for you, but Rainbow Dash and the others got them off the island…but they left me behind…”

My heart stops. “They got off the island? Out of Manehattan? Then why’d they leave you?”

At this, she looks embarrassed. “I was…so afraid. Ponies were running around everywhere, all over the place. I don't like crowds, but I wanted to find my friends. But I...I couldn't catch up to them.”

She begins to shiver, and I look around. We are in a darkened maintenance tunnel, one of several that connect the sewers beneath the city.

“It’s okay,” I lie. “Stick with me. We’ll find a way out.”

But from the look on her face, I know she doesn’t believe me.