Only a madman would stop to open a wailing cardboard box. Who else would risk staying in such a place, sure to grab the attention of the horde? Maybe someone that had lost his heart, to the point of being able to kill and eat a creature capable of making such noises. But even in case you were persuaded to do good, how else could you believe that helping such a creature live would result in anything else, but a more expedient death to you both?
That all being so, then I finally lost it, and the loneliness that has haunted me during these months has finally broken me. The hour was early, the streets had been clear for the few blocks up to the source of sound. I identified the offending object and grabbed it immediately, seeking the ruins of the nearest Karaoke for its acoustic isolation.
If nothing else, the apocalypse did wonders for my physique. From my previous situation as a slightly overweight sedentary, who would get winded up from a few flights of stairs, now a couple of kilometers at a jaunty pace were a breeze. Luck having been on my side, I only had to cross a few blocks in order to find the familiar red colors which would give me protection.
This was always the worst part, entering a darkened, unknown building. Light wasn’t an issue, since I had enough battery packs to last me the next few months, but in these closed quarters, it was all too easy for some stray abomination to score a lucky hit. Even worse, the sounds from the box echoed violently now that we were in the dark, loud and sinister in the abandoned building. Sensing the seconds tick, I ran upstairs, past the unlocked door, and into the otherwise silent main foyer.
The place had none of the signs of a typical survivor hold-out: No barricades, no footsteps disturbing the dust layer, no blood-stains from their inevitable demise. Only disaster awaited those who stuck to a single place, and here I found a mostly intact area, the air stale, free of the characteristic stench of undeath. I quickly found myself inside one of the many rooms in the place, and finally allowed myself to relax, the dark much more comfortable than the open street.
Sitting down a bit to catch my breath, I grabbed my lantern, and turned my attention to the box. Other than the sounds from within, it seemed perfectly normal, the kind you’d get online deliveries on. However, the human sounds were unmistakable, and I wondered what kind of person would abandon their child in the middle of nowhere. Everything about it sounded fishy, like something my mind would use to trick me into some false sense of hope.
I had to get this over with. I unsealed the container, but where I expected a baby, my eyes found a small cartoonesque horse.
I had been around long enough to have seen stuff, the kind that sticks with you for weeks, but this was different. She – as far as I could guess – wasn’t some abandoned pet: Her eyes denoted intelligence, studying the lantern in my hand with curiosity and aprehension. She seemed sullen and terrified, not daring to scream anymore, but watching me with unsure eyes. I forced down my shock: however surreal it was for me, it had to be thousand fold for her. I searched my supplies for something I could give her, and found half of a bar of chocolate that I had been saving for a special occasion.
After making a show of eating some myself, I offered the rest to her. She was hesitant, but the unmistakable smell quickly got to her. She grabbed the piece, and munched on it slowly, but content. The treat seemed to cheer her up, and by that small electric light, she seemed even more out of place than before.
Sadly, I had no water, but this would be easy to solve. I slowly opened the door, making a point of leaving my stuff behind, and stepped into the hallway. As soon as I closed it, everything was black.
The darkness outside was palpable, a blanket that seemed to envelop the surrounding silence, frightening and safe. I didn’t need light. All these places seemed to have the same floorplan, and with nary a sound I found it: The Soda Fountain corner. It was one of the common models, a long dead machine which, when opened, would reward me with sugary syrup, and water bottles.
Thank god for their obsession with those things.
I had become proficient in opening vending machines of many types. This particular one wasn’t even locked, with a simple seal to make sure it hadn’t been tampered. Feeling my way around it in the dark, I did a little maneuver with a pair of clippers, and it opened like a flower, its contents mine for the taking. The design was so familiar, that in an instant I had in my hands a handful of syrup packs, and a freshly filled water jug. These would last me and the strange creature for a while.
I felt my way back, creeping with certainty to the only door from which light spilled softly. I stopped for a while, checking to see if any noise echoed in the presumably empty building: Not only for zombies, since us scavengers were hardly an honorable sort. Satisfied, I carefully opened the door.
“Gasp!” I heard come from the room.
I quickly scanned the room, but there was just the… thing, her eyes scared to the point of tears. Still, that outburst gave me a feeling, a hope I didn’t dare to entertain a few days back. With the door carefully closed, I sat down and looked her in the eyes, those otherworldly orbs which circled through thousands of emotions. I cleared my throat, and for the first time in weeks, I spoke.
“My name is Frank. What is yours, little one?” I tried to be soothing, but I think my mind had simply flushed the concept. Instead, I came as gruff and sour, maybe vaguely impatient.
She initially covered her head with one hoof, her other half paralyzed in what I hoped wasn’t fear. Maybe hoping that she could speak was just too much, but that was a reaction. Maybe with time–
“Applejack.” It was so quiet, barely a whisper, but in the silence of the karaoke room it fell like a bomb. She spoke. It sounded like something out of a eight year old child, but still: human language. Scratch that, it was goddamn English, with a vague southerly drawl.
Arthur Dent was certainly right: deciding to go mad was a terrific idea.
But even if that was my frayed psyche speaking, and I was just a crazy man talking to an empty box, the moment I saw that little face saying those words, that alien being so trusting and innocent, I knew that, real or not, I had found something. In that dreary place, she seemed to shine so bright that I felt I should cover my eyes, lest I be blinded on the spot.
“So, Applejack, where are you from?” I said after a while, sitting on the floor in order to look her in the eyes.
She seemed to clam up at that. I would too.
“Look, I know you must be scared. You are in a strange place, with a weird creature that took you to a dark room.” I stopped, considering how to salvage that line of thought. I decided to just be honest. “I found you in the middle of the street, and there are things out there that could hurt you.”
She looked at me intently, her eyes intense and unflinching. Suddenly, she brightened up.
“Okay mister, I believe you. My name is Applejack, I am 8 years old, and live in the Sweet Apple Acres. Do you know where I am?”
“You are in a city called Tokyo.”
“Weird, I think I would have heard about somewhere with weird things like you…”
Yeah, says the talking horse. “Don’t matter, we can think about a way back later. Are you hungry?”
At her nod, I produced a couple of bags of potato chips, and a pair of hard plastic cups I had found long ago. It was the only thing I owned two of, since no language barrier could hold against the universal language of Sake.
I mixed some sugary drinks for us both, and we both ate animatedly, albeit in silence. Feeling vaguely satisfied, I watched as she munched the rest of her food in the penumbra, the silence somewhere between awkward and fully realized, a comfortable companionship of opportunity.
She yawned deeply, her eyelids heavy. Stupid me, she had to be exhausted! I wrapped her with the blanket I found inside the box, and she soon fell to sleep. And after making sure that the door was locked, I too joined her into dreamland.
I woke to her sobbing. It wasn’t the desperate sob of those fearing for their lives, it was instead a small, unconsolable thing. I didn’t dare move: sometimes people – or ponies for that matter – just needed time to let things out. Having a stranger interfere would only mess things up. When she finally seemed to calm down, I stirred, shuffling noisily in order to catch her attention.
“Good morning!” I said as brightly as I dared, before lighting up my lamp again.
Applejack’s green eyes were red rimmed, but clear. She seemed like the kind of girl who had seen enough already.
“I hope you slept well, we have a full day ahead of us.”
She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, and sat up to look at me. I took some things for breakfast, and we ate in a similar silence as yesterday.
“I wanna show you around the city today,” I said, more to break the silence than anything else.
That caught her attention. “You mean Tokyo? What is it like?”
A living nightmare, I thought bitterly. “It is an interesting place, but you have to pay attention. Now running away from me, okay?” I tried for a parental, authoritative tone this time. She merely nodded. I packed my things up, leaving her blanket on top, and we set out for the day.
It was a clear spring day, the faintly dusty and the streets completely empty: As good a sign as any.
“Okay, like I said, this place is dangerous, full of bad things that walk the streets. They tend to group together, but sometimes you will find one alone. Because of this, we can’t stay at one place for too long, and must always pay attention. Right now, what can you smell?”
She scrunched her nose, trying to search for something, and deflated a little when she failed. “Nothing. I can’t smell the earth, or apples, but I don’t feel anything weird.”
I smiled. “Great. You will want things to stay like this. If you smell anything really bad, then they are near, and we need to get away.
She nodded, and I went with Applejack through the streets. We walked slowly, in a way savouring the view, and despite her obvious apprehension, she watched my world with fascination. I tried to posture myself as confident, but really, this place wasn’t as alien for me on a technicality.
“So, where are we going?” she finally asked.
“Nowhere, really. I am just showing you around.”
“And where are we?”
I looked at the several unknown buildings around me, so unknown, yet too similar for me to even try something. I would mangle the pronunciation anyway.
“In a neighborhood, I guess? Look, I don’t know the name of places around here.
“Oh, I see. Hey, what is that place?”
She pointed to a building with a huge marquee, weird characters written all the way across.
“An office building? I don’t know these things!”
“But what is written there?”
Damn, she had to find that out that soon? “Something? I don’t know…”
She looked at me mischievously. “You can’t read? Even my lazy brother had his letters way before you!”
I gave her a side look. “Of course I can read! It is just this infernal language.”
“So, you only know how to read some other made-up language?”
“No! This isn’t my home town, or my home country. The things you see written around? They aren’t on the same language we are speaking–” I stopped. “Hey, how come you can speak English?”
She gave me a toothy smile. “The same way you can speak Equestrian, I guess? I don’t really think that is as weird as me appearing here, do you?”
“Ugh, this dimensional stuff gives me such a headache… look, I was traveling when everything happened.”
“When what happened?” She trembled a little at the implications, her eyes seeming to look at the city in a new light.
“Of course, you wouldn’t know… I meant when the apocalypse happened. When the dead returned to life, and the living joined them. You ever heard a zombie story?”
She shivered. “Zombies? I remember big brother talking about them to frighten me.” She hesitated for several seconds. “Are they real?”
I chewed carefully on my next words. “I don’t know what you know about zombies, but they might fit. What have you heard?.”
She seemed lost in memories for a short bit. “They are really ugly ponies, who go after fillies like me. If they catch one, they bite them, so they also become a zombie.” Her eyes darted around. “Have you seen anything like this?”
Despite how serious she sounded, I just had to chuckle. “Yeah, I have seen quite a few. One day, a bunch of people like me became… well, ugly sounds great. Don’t ask me why, I saw a bunch of new reports but didn’t understand a word. I had the good sense to lock myself in, but things just started hitting in sequence, the failing broadcasts, the electric grid, all communications, all communications, I have no idea how my family is, I haven’t had news at all, any news! All I know is that they kept appearing, too many to count–”
I was hyperventilating. Applejack looked at me with great big eyes, slightly terrified. God, how had I survived so long without speaking? I took a few deep breaths, then a few more, until I could trust myself to speak again.
“Are you ok, mister? You should sit down…”
I took a final, deep gulp of air. “Sorry about that. I don’t really want to talk about it, but yes, I have seen a bunch. We should run into some sooner or later, but know this: They aren’t… real people anymore. Don’t try to talk to them, or hope that they won’t… turn you ugly. Just run, try to hide if you can, they don’t like to stay still for long anyway.”
She tilted her head a little, her eyes urging me on.
“I want you to tell me that you understand.”
“I understand,” she said earnestly.
“You understand what?”
“That I shouldn’t try to talk with the zombies, and that I should hide from them.” She puffed.
“Good! That is rule number one. Rule number two is: Stay close to me. This city is huge, and we can get lost very easily. Do you understand?” My tone brokered no argument.
“Keep close to you, got it!”
“Great! I don’t want to see you turn ugly, so if I tell you to run, run. If I tell you to leave, leave. And when I tell you to stay somewhere, you wait for me as long as you can. This is very important.”
She nodded vigorously. If she was anything like a human child, she would disobey me sooner or later. I just had to hope it wouldn’t come at a bad time.
“Great, good to see we are on the same page. Just one more thing: If for any reason, any reason at all, we get separated, I want you to head to the tallest building you can find nearby. I will do the same, and light up a fire. Even if we don’t go to the same one, you should be able to find me anyway.”
“Hey, good idea! I will do it, mister.”
“We are partners Applejack, never forget that.”
“Heh, partners. I like the sound of that… Frank.”
For the first time, her eyes reflected something rare, marvelous, something more alien than the language around me, far more than her appearance, even weirder than the fact she was a talking horse. It was something I judged extinct from my life, simple and precious: trust. I almost fell weeping at the spot, but really, that wouldn’t be fitting of our newfound partnership.
The shadows through which we walked seemed to lighten up, if just a bit.
We eventually came by a market. It was a small, neighborhood one, but it would have to suffice. For a while, these places were the best source of food I could hope, but I was certainly not the only one. Also, all the fresh produce made them smell bad enough to mask the smell of any undead which might be lost inside.
I asked if she prefered to wait outside, but Applejack asked to follow me. I gagged at the pervading smell, but she seemed perfectly fine.
“Is anybody here!?” I asked, loud enough to echo through the room, but not too much for it to spread through the streets.
“Hey! You scared me. What was that for, what if one of those ugly humans appeared?” She looked indignant.
“If one appeared, we would be able to do something. Better than having them pop from behind a cabinet or something. Now we know it is empty.”
“Maybe. But really, tell me that stuff before you do it.” She seemed vaguely offended, even if understanding my reasons.
I sighed. “I have been alone too long. I will try to keep that in mind. Anyway, help me find any intact cans, packs, maybe water bottles.”
She nodded her head, and turned towards the shelves. Much was gone, but there was still enough for me to be picky. Part of me felt lucky, but really, that was only so, because so many died in the first two days. No people, means no scavengers, means plenty to find in places like this. I am sure that I could pick most appartment buildings around, and find resources too, but that felt too morbid for me.
Applejack was a great help. She couldn’t see the higher shelves, but her keen eyesight would catch things I would never be able to see myself. And, I much admit, having someone else made me feel safer somehow. Not that she would do any good, but just knowing that you weren’t alone was enough to make me stop jumping at shadows.
With her help, we manage to secure a couple bottles of water, canned vegetables, and even a pair of candy bars that had fallen under a display. At one point, she saw something just outside my light radius, and ran out of sight. I felt my heart beat faster then and there, for some reason I can’t explain, but she returned, and the feeling soon passed. I made sure to have her stick closer to me though.
All in all it wasn’t a great haul, but it was plenty to last us for a few days. Having everything secured in my bag, we leave to search a place. And as we walk the deserted street, I suddenly caught myself humming, creating a familiar tune I thought I had forgotten.
The night was crisp and clear, the full moon bathing the city with its soft, pale light. I decided we could camp outside today: Given the last few days, I was sure enough that the horde was still quite far, and I was willing to risk it. Besides, Applejack seemed more comfortable with the outdoors for now. We drank our water and munched on our candy, sitting at the riverbank, to watch the city by the moonlight.
“Applejack?”
“Huh?”
“Do you eat grass?”
“Why are you asking?”
“In case you ever need to. Horses eat grass in this world, I am fairly sure, but humans simply don’t.”
“Oh that’s weird. My brother is always trying to make me eat that, but I hate it! It tastes gross.”
Kids. “Lets hope it doesn’t come to that… You and your brother, you are close?”
“Eh, he watches over me. He is nice, but he can also be very mean when he wants to. Most of the time he is just busy bucking apples… Do you have any brothers, Frank?”
I had to compose myself before answering. “Two, younger ones. Also, an older sister. I… haven’t heard from them.”
She paused a bit. “How far is your home from here?”
“Too far. It is almost on the other side of the planet, and there is a whole lot of water on the way.”
“I guess… we are both stranded, right?”
“Yes…” we fell into silence, there was nothing else to be said. She eventually curled up to sleep, but I held myself, watching over her sleep with a feeling of peace.
Things fell in a rhythm, so similar to the one I had gotten used to, but yet so different. Yes, having to find food and lodging for two was a hassle, but really, she more than pulled her weight. After we found her a nice headlamp, she became incredibly bold, and more than once I woke up to find she had scavenged something as a gift.
Applejack turned out to be a morning… person? Or can I say pony? Anyway, she was up much before me, so it was that I got used to being woken up. Hearing a “Good Morning, Frank” became a common occurrence. It felt nostalgic, having someone that cared about me, but it certainly didn’t went one way. I went back to shaving, and even made an effort to eat well, enough for us to eat decent food on occasion.
It wasn’t all flowers, however. typhoon season hit us hard, and I had to spend many days comforting her. We also got hit by a couple of earthquakes, and this time it was her that quelled my panic. I also became even more secretive, after another survivor decided she should be allowed to eat my “pet”. That was when I discovered that Applejack had particularly strong legs.
There were also the zombies. The first time she saw a straggler, she completely froze up. We stayed in a hiding place for two days after that one. We did get other encounters, but those were solved by creative rearrangement of furniture. More troubling, was the time I was forced to actually kill one, who was dangerously close of biting her. It was a clean stab with a bone knife, but it freaked the hell out of her. Knowing they aren’t alive is one thing, but seeing that? It seemed more than she was willing to take, and only after I threw my weapon at the lake did she manage to sleep next to me again.
Three days later, she smashed in the head of one that had gotten his hands on my backpack. She looked scared, but that seemed to trigger an interesting growth in her. She seemed to adapt to this life quickly, being somewhat resistant to trauma, but it took me months until she told me why.
“Dead?”
“Yes…”
“Oh, Applejack, I am so sorry…”
I think that was the first time we ever hugged. She trusted in me to take all those tears away, the pain of losing her parents so suddenly. She was young, too young to have gone through that already. It had been two years, but that isn’t the kind of trauma that went away so easily. A bitter part of me, however, made me remember how I’d never go through that, since I wouldn’t see them ever again.
As the weeks go by, we learn to confide on each other. She tells me about her world, about flying ponies, magical ponies, the Princess Celestia that watches over everypony. I tell her about airplanes, the wonders of crystallography, or how vapid I think all celebrities are. We can laugh at jokes, and even if she doesn’t care about much that I care, we share a lot in common.
Most of all, we talk about those we left behind. How her grandmother would scream at glass jars in order to make jelly. How my sister could sing to awake a dead man, only to kill him again with tears. About afternoons where we sat outside, listening to cars or birds, about the little nothings that compose our life.
We even shared our fears. The fear of being left alone, of not surviving, of surviving without purpose. Thoughts that one like she shouldn’t ever have to entertain, playing in the sun of her family’s orchard.
I wonder how I could have done it differently. Looking back, it had been all too easy, no close encounters to speak of, no running away from certain doom. In my time alone I learned how to be careful, and I did my best to instill that in her. But I should had known it couldn’t last forever. So it was that, one day, sleeping under one of the highways, we woke up to the stench of death.
“Frank, wake up.” Like many other days, that was the first thing I heard. However, her tone was urgent, so I shot up straight, trying to shake off the lethargy of sleep.
I opened my mouth to speak, but my nostrils were hit first. That smell, it had to be the horde. I looked around quickly, and seeing nothing on the river bank, knew the truth: They were on the highway above us. I dropped my voice to a whisper.
“Applejack, be quiet. They should be coming down through the ramp in a few blocks. Lets move out, they probably won’t follow us.”
She agreed with a nod, and in instants we were on our way through the river bank, moving as far from the access ramp as possible. In hindsight, it was obvious that they would catch our smell, but there are things that the half asleep mind simply isn’t prepared to process.
We set a brisk pace, and soon were lured to a false sense of security by the clean air. The wind blew from the river, nice and fresh, a breeze I should had learned not to trust.
After all, Zombies couldn’t swim.
We were feeling safe, so we climbed the hill, and felt like lady luck was smiling on us today. Right in front of us stood a cafe in almost pristine condition, a perfect place for some food. Those were always a safe bet, often having decent water stocks, as well as enough for me to brew a rare cup of coffee. It was a quaint little Starbucks, with plenty of windows, but only one entrance. We sat watching the way we came, just to be sure that we weren’t being followed. That might have even been a good idea, since we did see the group turning a corner, but not fast enough to notice it wasn’t the only one in the area.
I tend to refer to the horde in the singular, not because there is only one, but because one is indistinguishable from another. Instead, the zombies acted like a great flow of organisms, which moved, merged, and separated on occasion, following some unknowable whim from their rotten brains. When we turned to the exit, we found that leaving that way was impossible: We were already surrounded.
If being careless was the fuel for our troubles, then my next action was like lighting it up with a flamethrower. Zombies aren’t very keen on their senses, generally needing multiple stimuli to react. But they already had our stench, and they could see our forms moving through the very breakable glass on the walls, so as soon as I screamed for Applejack to run, they were whipped into such a frenzy I had never seen before.
As one the horde growled, crawling maniacally at the invisible barrier. I didn’t even think, bolting with AJ into the employee area. I thought about barring the door, but the glass crashing behind us made me think better. We crashed through the back door into a horribly tight alley. A tight alley surrounded by zombies on both sides.
Applejack came right behind me, scared witless, almost as much as me. Before she could even react, I grabbed her by the barrel, and threw her onto the firescape above.
“Remember, the tallest building!” I screamed. I doubted I would actually escape this situation, all I really cared was that she would be safe, at least for a while. But despite the horrors coming for me, all that I could see, if only for a moment, were her eyes. There were a maelstrom of emotions, swirling between hurt, betrayal, fear, hope, and something that just couldn’t be named. It was a look that told me all I had to know, all I wished to know for my entire life, that showed me the reality of life beyond mere survival.
Adrenaline kicked, so strong and powerful that my heart should had, by all accounts, popped from the pressure. I can barely recall my escape, despite how prominently it appeared in my sleep for the rest of my life. I broke windows, tore through walls. At one point I vaguely recall flying, defying gravity in a jump that should had killed me.
I bobbed and weaved, crashing into Zombies, throwing furniture to block their path, leaping between two windows across a crowded street. Whatever happened, at that moment I was invincible, untouchable, an avatar of the gods whose will couldn’t be denied. I eventually came to a shopping building, some fashion center which held no interest for me in my predicament. My great luck was to find a collapsed stairwell, above which they couldn’t touch me.
I was safe, atleast I seemed safe, but my collapsing mind and my collapsing body still agreed on one thing: Get to the rooftop, and light a fire.
It was slow going, climbing the stairs in my state with a bundle of foraged fabric, but I made it. My backpack had fallen to tatters somewhere along my dash, but, through providence of forethought, I left my lighter on my utility belt. AJ couldn’t be alone, she shouldn’t feel alone. I had to warn her.
I piled everything up on a nock, making sure it was sufficiently sheltered from the wind. I lit the blaze and It flared up quickly, singing my eyebrows, but I barely noticed that in my state. All that I saw was that, barely a moment after its light could be seen, a terrible, torrential storm started falling.
That was all I could take. I fell, catatonic, staring at the falling droplets, feeling beyond despair. Thunder fell from above, but why should I care? I would never be able to light a fire, not on this wet roof. Applejack would be lost, thinking I had died – why wouldn’t she – and I would never see her again.
And I had to see her, I had to be next to her, and shelter her. It had to be done, for I finally acknowledged something in me, the feeling that she had to be protected. It wasn’t basic human decency, it was something much stronger, a fire that couldn’t be quelled by this rain. I knew then that it would consume me, that burning desire to see her again. It would take over my life, and would make me die thanks to my failure.
Amidst those dark thoughts, the storm outside calmed down, and suddenly, so jarring it made me want to scream, an enormous, perfect rainbow shone above the city. Part of me, a part surely dead inside, wanted to be an artist capable of capturing that. The rest was too consumed by grief to even care. That aberration stayed there for a minute, or maybe a month, but it faded as the tempest resumed with double intensity. Just as well.
Time passed. Thunder stuck, repeatedly, the strong booms sounding like drums in the night. Lightning fell, illuminating the world.
However, nothing could compare to the unseen brightness, or the enormous, almost inaudible sound of Applejack, my Applejack, crashing through the roof door. She was scratched, her hair was a mess, and her eyes were wet and enormous, but really? I couldn’t care. She was here, and even my battered body didn’t protest as she tackled me in a tight hug.
“I missed you, dad.”
Only my heart skipped a beat. “I missed you too, my daughter.”
We wept, embraced, long into the night. And amidst the flashes of light from above, an even brighter one came from her flank, and my heart knew it was the most significant event of her life. And that, no matter how bleak things were, or where our lives went, we were here, together, and together we could face the world.
