Healing Wounds

(Turns out along with the U vampire mutation. E (earth pony) vampires, well some have increased physical strength. All vampires have increased strength. Just now some E vampires have even more strength.)

My ears twitched slightly when a slight whistle came out of nowhere. "Get behind cover!" I yelled pushing Noah behind a pile of crates. But I however didn't get behind it in time, getting caught by the syringe in my back right leg.

"Ow what?" he said puzzled, until he saw me pull the syringe out of my leg with my magic and then it evaporated. "Oh, sorry."

"It's not your fault I just wasn't quick enough," I said calmly putting 3 vaccine syringes in my leg. Bon-bon was able to figure out it takes 3 vaccines to fend off the venom from the syringe, before it could do either serious damage to the body or infect me with their venom.

"Are you kidding the amount of times you've saved my flank with that amazing hearing, well I'd be dead a long time ago if it weren't for that" he said clearly making it sound like it was a gift from Celestia herself.

"Stop it already" I said feeling the embarrassment creeping in. "Maybe you could tell Bon-bon I got hit and we have to head back early" I said feeling tired from the days scavenge I pushed the radio into his chest.

"Oh right, I forgot 3 of the vaccines make you sleepy."

"Yeah hurry up before I pass out." I mumbled feeling grumpy already.

"Fine you get going I'll catch up" Noah said waving me to move on up.

"Alright" I nodded.

I had nearly passed out due to sleep and possible exertion by the time I got back to base before finally reaching to our room. I simply flopped onto my bed. Moments passed and in a matter of seconds I was asleep. The dream I ended up having though was...disturbing, weird if anything else were to describe it. Noah got hit by a V-syringe, and we were out of vaccines. I felt the cold grip of fear take hold of me when I saw that. But before I could see what happened next I woke up. Feeling more disturbed than I had since this entire apocalypse, I went to the gym to work on my reflexes and help wake me up more.

I heard the door creak open and turned my head to see Bon-bon looking at me. "Hey Bon-y." I said cheerfully. Surprisingly I didn't get the same cheerful response.

"You should leave" she said in a dark and kinda angry tone.

"Wha- Why? What did I do?" I asked completely puzzled by her demeanor.

"Not what you did, what you unintentionally caused" she said her expression appearing less angered but still had a dark tone.

"And what is that exactly?" I asked feeling annoyed, by this sudden accusation . My previous feelings of scarceness and bemusement being gobbled up as I waited for her response.

"It's Noah he ran off for no reason, said something about you getting hit, and it being his fault."

I felt my jaw drop, ambivalent emotions running through me. The top three were anger, confusion and shock.

"Do you have anything that'll tell me where he went?" I asked trying to suppress the anger and shock in my voice.

"All we know is he went towards the south" she said flatly and sympathetically. "You better bring him back" she mumbled and from the tone in her voice I could tell that she was angry at no one in particular maybe it was me, maybe it was Noah. Bon-bon was simply just upset by these sudden turn of events. And who could blame her? I knew I was.

"Good enough, I'll be back as soon as I can" I said gravely, feeling more like a leader than I had since this whole fiasco started.

Where could he be? I wonderded to myself stumped. We haven't been here since the raid of an old lab our friend used to own. With that thought I figured out where he went. There it was, the 3rd floor lab our friend Steve used to own. The building was run down. Broken glass and equipment scattered all over, even on the outside pieces of broken equipment, chemical glasses and flasks lay sprawled across the ground. I stared at the old lab, feeling old memories slowly rushing back to mind. Biting my tongue I forced the thoughts out of my head, now wasn't the time for reminiscing I needed to find Noah. Slowly walking towards the building as I got closer I began to wonder Why would he choose a place like this to hide? No, more importantly why would he just up and leave like that?! That's just- just so stupid! I stomped, stopping in front of the building trying to avoid any broken glass as best I could. Taking one last look around me I looked at the building, then I entered. Hesitantly. The 1st floor had nothing besides a few corpse here and there, rotten from either weeks ago thanks to the raid we did months ago for research equipment. The second floor was empty mainly because it was used for storage. (records, broken equipment, etc) I didn't think I'd need anything in there so I just moved on up the stairs. I was careful when going through the third floor because the door to it was very heavily barricaded on the side of the door facing the stairwell. I let my mind wander while I searched, but not enough I would be caught off guard.

How do you know he's even here? the voice in my head asked me.

"He has to be, where else would he go to mope about this?"

But he could be some where else hurt , dying, injured,or maybe even dead. Heck for all we know he could be one of them right now. Besides even if he were you wouldn't kill him if it came to it.
"It won't come to that" I argued. "I won't let it, we've lost enough already I'm not losing my best friend to these things"

I'd been searching in silence so far and was staring to have my own doubts of Noah even being here. Maybe he really isn't here, I thought biting my lip.

That's when I heard footsteps. My ear twitched, and silently I tracked the source.

Turning a corner I found about 12 vampires crowded around a door. One turned and hissed at me. I took aim and shot. Direct hit, although they all know I'm here now. Darn, just what the doctor asked for.

"Hey bloodsuckers come at me!" the stupid looks they gave me were priceless.

"Now you sure that was a good idea?" one asked me with a hiss, as it licked its lips approaching. Well that's just great they can talk now! Only good thing that comes from this is that it makes good research. (Aside from that annoying hiss), I'd say this situation is pretty bad. But! I have an idea: Reasoning. Sure this maybe an apocalypse but reasoning never hurts right? I tried to convince myself as I approached.

"Sorry I can't understand what you're saying may want to fix that hissing noise" I said my ears twitching. "So who's the pony you got trapped behind the door hm? Or rather what exactly are you trying to get behind the door" I asked maintaining my distance.

They didn't answer.

OK. New approach. "Better question, why isn't that door opened yet?" I asked backing up a bit as the vampires got closer. A mare pony with a dark grey coat and lime colored mane looked away.

"What is it?"

The mare vampire keeping her gaze down looked embarrassed to say what was on her mind. Now that I looked at the rest of the group so did the others.

"What's wrong?" I asked my assailants again.

"W-We can't open the door"

They couldn't open the door?. The reason they hadn't advanced into whatever was in that room was because they couldn't open the door. Staring blankly at the group of U-vampires I felt a small crack in my face forming.

Then I fell over laughing. "You can't open a door? That is really funny considering there was 12 of you, you should've had the strength or at least the magic to break through," I said in between fits of laughter. The growls I got in response made me stop.

Oooh yeah, looks like I reminded them of the dead guy back there. Hearing faint clicking I instinctively turned punching the vampire behind me as I firmly dug my hoof into his skull I heard a cracking sound before the mutated pony fell to the ground with a thud, his body motionless.

"I'm not that stupid. You can't sneak up on me. See these?" I said wiggling my ears, "They're way more sensitive than you think" I stated using my magic to lift the gun out of its holster.

"Now, let's quit talking. And start fighting." A feral growl was all I needed to reassure me that this talk was well beyond over. Pulling out my other gun a 2.34mm rimfire I grinned as the vampire unicorns began stepping towards me, their own weapons down, not bothering to lift them up since they believed they could close the distance no doubt.

"Come at me you blood suckers."

Instantly each of them split up charging at me from all sides, but I'd been prepared for this. Pulling out the third handgun that had been on placed on my other side I opened fire, jumping back just in the nick of time as one of the vampires lashed out at me firmly earning the ghoul a bullet in its skull. Within a matter of 10 seconds they were all dead, and not a scratch on me. I immediately rushed over to the door opening it with my magic, and then heard the clicking of a shotgun barrel. Looking up I slowly raised my eyes to see the barrel's mouth was pointed directly at my the side of my head.

"Get out you vile beast" I immediately recognized the voice.

Feeling a wave of relief rush over me I grinned under my hoodie. "But i though we were best friends?" I said wryly.

"...Sam?" the voice behind the barrel said sounding surprised and almost...relieved.

I turned to him. "Who else dummy?" I flicked down my hood to prove it.

The next thing I new was the teal forehooves of my friend wrapping tightly around me in a hug. Which completely surprised me, Noah didn't do hugs. He never liked them.

"A vampire led me in here disguised as you. Said we could hide in here until activity died down around the building", he stated his tone sounding much more hoarse now.

Wait was he crying, Oh My Celestia he was. "But I noticed the red in his eyes, Once he realized I caught on he tried attacking me. He didn't bite me" he said lifting a reassuring hoof up to me as I immediately tensed up, his tears however didn't let up. Because the next thing he told me made me want to pound those vampire bodies into the earth.

"He just bit all the ones that were outside, I heard it. And I didn't do anything. I didn't move or try to stop him, I just- he moved so fast and the next thing I knew they were all turned" Noah said finishing with a whimper.

My lips went dry as I tried to think of the right words to comfort him. "Hey, its okay lets get back home before Bon-bon gets too worried." I began to stand up but he stopped me.

"It really is my fault you got hit." His eyes were puffy and sore from crying, he must've done a lot of that when all those ponies got turned especially.

"No its not. I just wasn't quick enough."

"It is though," Noah stated defiantly. "I was coming here to visit Steve."

Steve. Steve was a brown unicorn with a black mane. He had led research here on vampire fruit bats, trying to figure out what made them so quick and how they were so adept to the night. Why they were so addicted to apples in general as well.

Noah continued speaking, "I was going to say hi and check in on how his research was going. But I didn't know he was in an experiment with his recently new assistant at the time. When I flew through the window and smacked into that bookcase over there" he said pointing a fetlock at a destroyed jumbled up piece of wood.

"It caused Steve to inject the syringe into his assistant instead of the rat he was experimenting on." He paused, taking in a breath as he tried to hold back the tears that threatened to pour out of his eyes. "We didn't think anything bad, because it was a new serum and wasn't meant to do much. But when I stopped by to check in on him a few days later. Noah gulped shaking his head to clear the image of whatever vile thing had popped into his head.

"His assistant had become a vampire from the serum somehow. The assistant killed Steve and I don't just mean bite and drained his blood. I mean flat out murder, the poor guy was everywhere." He pointed to the red stain on the floor. "I took off running through the building. But that monster followed biting ponies and turning them biting and turning ponies within an hour and later minutes. Before long the entire building was turned, I had already escaped by then though nly to find it too infested to return to. And, well that's when I found you as quick as I could. You know the rest of the story."

I simply sat there, at a loss for words. Staring at Noah I could see the teal pegasus was tired, drained from today's events and coming back here had only brought up bad memories he'd forced himself to forget.

So I did what I thought would be the next best action.

I hugged him. And this time unlike all the others, he didn't push me away. I got up and looked at him forgiving his mistake. "I forgive you, what happened before this doesn't matter" I said direly wanting to change topics now that I knew what happened here.

"Now lets get going. Also lets not let this conversation leave this room."

He nodded. "Okay." And together we walked out of this vampire infested mouse trap with our weapons up, all the way till we reached base.

We now had a new found trust in each other. And I could tell, that I'd be learning more than what I wanted as the days went on in our little apocalypse.

Author's Note

This chapter was a little harder for me to write because of school. Meaning I dont have much time to write. I'll get workin on the next chapter as soon as i can. Also i want to address that I'm gonna put a 3000 word minimum per chapter starting on the next one. So chapter 4 might take longer to write than the 3 posted before it. Please try not to be cruel in the comments and I hope you enjoyed. Also if you dont get the chapter name, I'm healing Noah's mental wound he gave himself for starting the apocalypse.