Forty-eight hours since the first infection.

♦ ♦ ♦

“..and here I thought I was being nice! I let her live with you, Wade, for a semester!” Her yellow-furred mom jabbed a fork at the stallion across the table, “a semester and she’s dropping out."

“I have to be hard at work sustaining you and Zoey!” His wing pointed a white feather at the pink teenage mare sitting between them. “And not to mention that cracked-out griffon sleeping on my couch!”

Zoey hated it when her parents argued, but that’s all she’s known. Ever since they got divorced when she was three, her life has been a constant back and forth between their two homes. Mom getting fired from her job, along with that damn-near useless griffon named “Kyle” she calls a boyfriend, has caused the pair to move back in with Dad. Kyle had money it is probably the only reason her mom stays with him, but he’s always out drinking with some buddies.

Don’t get her wrong, she loved finally seeing her parents together. It’s just not the way she had expected. The last time she saw these two share a house was in her earliest memory. The night they decided on a divorce. Mom had already planned where she was staying, it was only time that kept her there. Time until she and Dad snapped.

Push came to shove and one pony ended up receiving a nasty punch.

“...regardless, Zoey, do you think this is funny? Tuition is costly, Dear, and you just threw your one shot at making films away! All this ‘Green Flu’ business has gotten you paranoid.”

“I already had a scholarship, Mom. The flu is the reason I dropped out, yes, but it’s for a good reason. CEDA is terrified of the recently discovered disease, and me being in a college dorm does not bode well for my wellbeing.”

Zoey took a final bite of her cereal, before taking it and dumping it into the dirty, filled sink. She sat down, reclining back in her wooden chair as she heard her mother sigh.

“Carolyn, let bygones be bygones. We both knew the film industry was a gamble, and we now pay the price. Besides!” He squished Zoey with his wing, “she can finally go into the army, like her old stallion!”

“Never in a thousand years!” Her mom exclaimed.

“Go watch her on the gun range, she could end the war against the deers the second she joined the army!”

“She’s also seventeen, Wade.”

“She looks twenty!”

Her mom groaned, “Wade, please, you need to apply yourself–”

A large, pale unicorn stumbled into the room. Groaning, they looked at the three ponies sitting at the table in front of them.

“Wade! Wade, there’s a—”

The pale unicorn erupted into full spring, leaping across the table and slamming into Zoey’s mom. Her mom’s scream was quickly silenced when the pony bit onto her muzzle. The gory seen left both the unicorn and her mother’s faces unrecognizable. Wade yelled in horror, grabbing his M1911 from a kitchen drawer and frantically loading it.

BLAM!

BLAM!

The unicorn fell limp on top of her mom. Zoey stared, completely still, with wide eyes and open mouth. Her dad slid to Carolyn’s side, “Zoey! Call the police!”

Zoey didn’t move, “Mom.”

“Zoey!” He cried, “call the police!”

Zoey blinked, running into the hallway and grabbing the phone. She dialed nine-one-one and pressed the phone against her ear.

’We are deeply sorry, but an operator is currently unavailable.’ An automated voice came through the phone.

She dialed again, her dad frantically chanting in the background:

”You’re going to be ok. You’re going to be ok.”

She pressed the phone against her ear again. ’We are deeply sorry, but an operator is currently unavailable.’

”You’re going to be ok. You’re going to be ok.”

Again, she dialed: ’We are deeply sorry, but an operator is currently unavailable.’

”You’re going to be ok. You’re going to be o–” her dad screamed.

She dropped the phone, the wire narrowly keeping it from hitting the floor. She ran back into the kitchen, her dad and mom were reared up, fighting for superiority. Her mom won, pinning Dad to the ground and ripping his neck open with her herbivore teeth. She punched him in the eye, blackening the white fur around it.

”DAD!” She screamed. Her mom sat up from her victim, snapping around to look at the noise.

”M-mom?” Zoey whispered before Mom came tumbling toward her. The final few feet closed by a plunge from her Mom. She tackled Zoey, now pinning her to the ground and attempted to deliver a decisive bite to the—

BLAM!

Zoey’s mother fell limp on top of her, her once unmistakable face now gone, without a trace. Blood and gore littered Zoey as she gently pushed her mother’s corpse off of her. She galloped to her dad. His right eye was black, with him just barely squinting it open. His neck was worse, it was comparable to a water fountain.

“D-dad? Hold on, I’ll get the first aid!”

“N-no.” He coughed, his left eye pupil still showing its vibrant green color. “Remember how I use to sneak you into all those zombie movies when you were growing up?” He whispered.

“Yeah,” she sniffed.

“Remember how there was always that one overused scene where the group had to shoot one of their guys before they turned?”

“Y-yes,” she spoke, the lines were beginning to connect.

“I love you, Zoey.”

“I love you too, Dad.”

BLAM!

Forty-eight hours and five minutes since the first infection.

“To anybody who can hear me, stay in your homes. Martial Law has been authorized. If you are seen on the streets you will be shot on sight!” A helicopter flew by, the words echoing over the terrified and monstrous shrieks from below. It was not safe here. She was not safe.

"One, two, three, four."

shhhhhCLICK!

She loaded her magazine back into the chamber. Slowly, she sat up, wiping her tears from her eyes. A few gunshots went off in the city below. Her nose scrunched at the smell of spent gunpowder merging with the polluted city air she was accustomed to. The stench of rotting flesh began to mingle with the smells, too. How many bodies were down there? Most of them were griffon and changelings corpses littered about, but there was the occasional pony in the destruction. Most of the ponies, it would seem, turned into zombies. But not even the zombies in movies correctly captured what the things truly were.

No, these were horrors. Monsters. Spawns of Discord himself.

Placing a hoof for balance, she leaned over the balcony and surveyed her options: a city-wide panic could lead to her getting bitten. The roofs seemed plausible for that there were no ponies, but she could fail a jump from one rooftop to another and fall to her death. If only she had been born a pegasus like her father.

"I miss you already," she choked.

She looked up, one of those monsters had succumbed to the outbreak midair and latched onto a still living pegasus as they plummeted to the concrete below. 'If I couldn't save my dad, then I will save somepony else's.'

She balanced on her back hooves just like her father had told her and aimed at the pair. The living pegasus's desperate attempt to keep the dead one from biting and punching him sent them into an out-of-control drop. It wasn't a reasonable shot she could hit, but she must do it.

BLAM!

She missed, the pair flew straight into the concrete, monster-zombie on top. The zombie indulged in their immobile feast, the pegasus couldn't even move, they had sustained a few broken limbs at least. Their life slowly faded as the chaos from other creatures hid them from Zoey's view.

She looked at her gun. That wasn't an unlucky shot; that was a failure. The second stallion she failed to protect within ten minutes of each other.

THU-CRACKKK!

A malformed griffon with blood and vomit staining their neck and chest crashed into a crate near the rooftop door. It spotted her and shrieked in rage. She didn't have time to waste, nor did she have the bullets.

She took a few steps back and hurled over the alleyway below her. She landed fine, but her right back-hoof had missed, tripping her to the floor. She groaned, pushing herself up.

"RAAAA!"

She spun around, falling back onto the ground trying to dodge the claw in front of her muzzle. The griffon's head slammed into the bricked railing, sending it plummeting to the alleyway floor. Zoey sat herself up. What should she do now?

A helicopter could be heard in the distance, actually multiple. Not just any helicopters, Black Hawks! The military is here! One of the many helicopters flew overhead, relaying a hopeful message:

"Evacuation will begin at Mercy Hospital. Avoid contact with any infected individuals. Nobody with cuts or bites will be permitted to leave the hospital until proven they are not infected."

"Well no shit we need to avoid contact with infected individuals!" she paused, "infected?"

She sat up, "If that term is to not cause panic, then it failed miserably." The chaos below had disappeared. Panicked screams only merely echoed down a few blocks. The brute force of the zombie-monsters was gone. Now only the stragglers remained.

In just under ten minutes, District Seven was overrun.

She stepped back, and galloped forward, jumping over the gap and onto the next apartment. This one had fire escape stairs running down the side of it, leading into a dark alley below. Each careful step she took creaked under the metal flooring. Some of those 'infected individuals' jutted their heads up. Groaning and yelling in frustration as she made her way to the final steps. They noticed the stairs connecting to the alley floor and charged up it.

She panicked, putting her forehooves onto the railing. She lept over it, dropping her gun to catch herself.

BLAM!

"Shit!" she grabbed her gun, the pair of infected hot on her tail. She ran into the streets, nearly running straight into an infected who was already charging at her.

She jumped over a corpse, why the pony hadn't turned she didn't know. The rest of the bodies, on the other hoof, sprang to their hooves and attempted to grapple her. A changeling infected lunged at her and grabbed her back hoof, tripping her to the ground.

"Get off!" she kicked the changeling square in the muzzle, the force completely decapitating its lower jaw. Blood splattered over her backside, but she was free. An accumulated seven infected ponies and one changeling were after her. The changeling she had kicked leading the charge.

With two bullets and no stamina left, she hurled herself through a broken window, a glass shard drawing blood from slicing her stomach. She heard the zombies jump through the window and into a shelf full of candy bars. Two of the infected struggle to push the thing off of them, while the rest continued their chase for her.

She locked herself into the back room behind the cashier register. A lone piece of wood kept the door from being opened. Not that the infected would open it, they settled on attempting to break the door down with their hooves. The door wouldn't hold, and she had no escape. The room used to be used as a storage area, with plenty of shelves of canned goods and water. She slid her back down the door, laying herself in a fetal position.

THUD!

Her ears flattened to her skull. She closed her eyes and wept.

THUD!

Her closed eyes pushed together harder. Her weeps turned into a stream of tears flowing down her face.

"It seemed a lot easier in 'The Trotting Dead.'" She sheepishly chuckled.

Author's Note

SPOILER AHEAD:

I had some issues deciding what I wanted Zoey's motivation and story to be. If you have read the Left 4 Dead comic, "The Sacrifice," then you know I nearly ripped it out word for word. Talk about being unoriginal.

But Zoey's canon backstory is perfect for the story she will experience and shape based on her actions. Reading this makes it obvious she won't die, a bit of a spoiler, in fact. Well, you read the disclaimer—sorry about that.

One more thing, these stories are getting shorter and shorter. If this keeps up, I'm going to start attempting to do multiple chapters at once.

I accept criticism. Tear me up, please!