The Equestrian Apocalypse

— Twilight —

After Twilight, Spike, and Rarity split from Applejack and Cheerilee, they discussed more about what was happening. While Rarity had not seen as much as Twilight and Spike had, she understood the severity. She was there to listen and be there for her friends in a time of need.

When they got closer to the station, they all noticed a smoke cloud slowly billowing over the treetops ahead. They realized it was in the direction of the station. This caused them to pick up their speed, fearing that there may be ponies actively in trouble. But as they got sight of the station, they realized it was too late.

The front half of the train was separated from the back end and sat down the tracks from the station. Only the caboose and part of another train car were visible from their view. The rest of the train was behind the station, yet they could see the smoke rising above it clearly now. They also noticed a few pony bodies lying beside the train engine. The window above them was busted, with a head-sized hole in the middle and hints of red staining. Besides that, the train engine looked fine from the outside.

They trotted up next to the platform’s stairs. The platform lay empty beside ashes from the inferno happening beside it. The only train car that was not visibly burning was the caboose, yet smoke trailing to it from the car in front of it indicated it did not have much longer. The first car in the detached back half was charred to a near crisp. Its roof and walls had collapsed inwards, creating a smoking black pyramid. There was also a bucket laying near the tracks on the opposite side of the burnt train car. A couple more were in the distance, lying on the grass by the nearby treeline.

“Somepony must have tried putting it out,” Twilight suggested.

“Well,” Rarity said, “looks like they abandoned the effort.”

“Might have had to.”

They turned their attention to the front half of the train down the tracks. She reluctantly trotted up to the bodies by the window with Spike and Rarity watching her back. One of them had what looked to her like a puncture wound through her neck and another through her forehead. The stallion beside her had a similar puncture wound through his cheek, right beside his nose. Twilight was slowly getting used to how grotesque these wounds appeared, but her natural sense of nausea started to make its presence known. She backed away from the corpses, shaking her head and wishing she was in some kind of delusion.

“Are you alright, dear?” Rarity asked, also disturbed by the corpse’s appearance.

“I’m … fine …”

She shook it off and returned to the bodies, cautiously stepped her hoof on the stallion’s shoulder to get enough height to see through the window and into the engine. Peering through the shattered glass, she saw specks of blood on some of the engine’s dashboard panels. She leaned up by the glass to get a closer look when a zombie stallion suddenly rose up from the floor and stuck his hoof through the hole in the glass.

Startled, Twilight didn’t have time to react before he grabbed ahold of her left shoulder. The pony reached out his other hoof through the hole, slicing it over the glass as he grabbed onto her other shoulder. He pulled his head forward, almost sticking it out of the window. She tried to pull away from him, but his grip was too firm. She looked to see his face. A conductor’s hat hung crookedly off the top of his head.

“Twilight!” Spike yelled.

Both he and Rarity rushed up, grabbing her thighs and pulling. It took a few tugs before she broke out of his grip, slipping on the corpse below and falling on top of Spike. The zombie conductor flailed his arms, reaching out and groaning at the group as she rolled off Spike.

“Spike!” she yelled, “are you okay?”

Spike shook it off and gave her a thumbs up. Rarity stood up beside them and checked Twilight’s neck and chest for any bite marks or scratches as she slowly picked herself up off the ground.

“Twilight, dear, are you alright?”

“Yes, I think.”

They all looked back at the conductor.

“What do we do now?” Spike asked her.

She looked back at her hatchet, then at Rarity’s stick, and finally, Spike’s taser.

"We can try tasing him," she suggested, "Maybe if you hold it for long enough, he will pass out."

She stepped forward with Spike and kept an eye on the corpses as the dragon stuck out his tongue and carefully aimed it up at the window. After a few seconds, he shot it. The prongs flew out but missed their mark. She helped him reload another set of prongs inside, and on the second shot, he nailed the zombie conductor.

The conductor fell below the window and out of their vision. This pulled Spike forward slightly, but Twilight was there to pull back on him. She held onto him for the next twenty seconds as they listened to the zapping sound of the taser. He decided he’d held it down long enough and released his claws from the trigger. Twilight disconnected from him and waited. Mere seconds later, the groaning resumed as the conductor rose to the window again. She noticed his odd motion when he did, and took note of his upright stance. The pony was not shifting left or right in the slightest, which was unusual.

She looked back at Rarity's stick and thought of a new plan. After the mare reluctantly hoofed it to her, she held it in her hoof as she trotted up to the window. She approached the conductor, who was once again flailing his forelegs out of it, and took caution not to get within reach.

“Twilight!” Spike shouted, “Are you crazy?! Don’t!”

“We have to, Spike!”

She swung the stick back, then forward with all her strength. The stick struck the window, immediately shattering the rest of the glass. She moved backward right after the swing, avoiding the conductor’s grasp as he reached farther out the window now. She swung the stick back again and repeated the process, striking the conductor's head hard. He fell back inside the engine and did not reappear. She rose her head and stepped over the corpses to see his body laying motionless on the floor.

“Okay.” She turned to face the others. “It’s clear now.”

They both looked back at her confusingly.

“Why does that matter-” Spike started, until Rarity held her hoof up in front of him.

“Twilight. You aren’t thinking about taking the train ourselves, are you?”

Twilight looked between the both of them. “That is exactly what I’m thinking. What other choice do we have?”

“Well, I hate to journey so far on short notice, but …”

“We aren’t going to walk there!” she cried, “We wouldn’t get there until tomorrow. We need to get there now!”

“But Twilight, none of us know how to drive this thing.”

“Yeah!” Spike barged in, “Twilight, we shouldn’t risk it. What if- what if we derail? What if we get stuck at high speeds? Oh no, what if we derail going up the side of the mountain?! I don’t want to die Twilight!”

“Spike, calm down!” she hissed, “Look ... I have read books about operating trains before. Sure, it has been a while, but I’m sure I can figure it out."

She watched as their worried expressions did not change.

“Please … please let me try,” she begged.

Rarity and Spike exchanged a nervous glance. Rarity closed her eyes and thought for a moment before replying, “Okay, Twilight. Try to get it started, and we can go from there.”

“Thank you,” she replied, opening the engine’s back door. She leaned inside, but she had trouble reaching the controls with the conductor's motionless body in the way. She also noticed that one of his hind legs was lodged inside the metal corner that connected the front dashboard to the wall beneath the smashed window. Now she knew why he had trouble moving around in the engine earlier. She observed his leg, wondering how in Equestria the stallion managed to get his hoof stuck in there to begin with.

She realized soon after that his body was taking up too much space in the already cramped engine, and if she were to attempt starting the train, she would need to pull him out. She called out to Rarity to help her pull him, but his lodged hoof would not budge. It was wedged in tight. They tried again with no luck.

“Try to free his hoof,” Twi suggested.

Rarity cautiously stepped over the conductor and grabbed hold of his hoof, where it met the wall. Despite her best efforts of twisting, turning, and pulling it, Rarity could not free his hoof.

“It’s not happening, Twilight.”

"Let me try-" she started.

“Twilight!” Spike shouted from outside, “Rarity!”

Rarity leaned out of the window. “Spike! Shush!!”

“Look!” he called.

She looked at where he was pointing. Three zombie mares were approaching the station, coming from the direction they had. Another pale stallion, a little bit farther away, was approaching from further up the tracks.

“Twilight, there’s too many. We have to go,” Rarity stated.

“We need this train!” she retaliated.

“Twilight!”

“Listen! You guys have your energy back, right?”

“Are you serious-”

“Rarity,” she interrupted, “Please. You can outrun them for a little while at least. Just take them that way and loop back around.” She pointed to the tracks behind them. Rarity looked at her as if she had just killed her family.

“Rarity, please.”

Rarity took a moment to think. Spike, who was listening in on their conversation, pulled out his taser. Rarity saw him through the window.

“No, Spike,” she said, “Stay here with Twilight.”

“No chance. I can’t let you do this alone.”

She didn’t have time to argue with him. She just smiled warily and thanked him as she exited the engine, grabbed her stick, and took off. The zombies were just pony-lengths away now, so they booked it up the stairs of the station's platform.

Twilight ducked her head beneath the window, listening for the groans and moans of the zombie ponies. After she heard them pass, she took a quick peak to ensure they were gone. Once they were, she stood over the conductor's body and searched his vest pockets for a key. After digging around for a second, she felt the key and pulled it out. She vaguely remembered the sequence to start the engine, so she took it and stuck it in the key slot. Turning it yielded nothing.

She pondered anxiously, trying to remember if she had missed a step until she saw the conductor’s stuck hoof. Underneath it was a large floor lever that had been pulled down by him. She ducked under the dashboard with her face uncomfortably close to his corpse. There was an icon above the lever, which she remembered as the train’s emergency brake system. If this was engaged, it effectively disabled the train’s start sequence.

The conductor had likely landed on the lever during a fight, which made things much more complicated for her. She tried again to pull the conductor back, but his hoof was not moving. She looked back at her hatchet, nervously realizing what she had to do. She grabbed it from its holster with her hoof and placed her other front hoof on his thigh for support.

She pulled the hatchet back and gritted her teeth as she swung. It struck the conductor’s hoof right where she wanted it, sinking in at a slight angle and making contact with the bone inside before stopping. She yanked to pull it out, but it was wedged inside. She used her right hind leg to press on his body for more support and tried again. This time, it popped out, sending her flying backward against the door hinges. She quickly uprighted herself and set up for another swing.

She concentrated on this swing even more than the first, and when she swung, the hatchet sliced through the previous cut. It contacted his bone again, but cut right through it and sliced his hoof off. Red blood spurted out on the engine's metal floor. After setting the hatchet back in its holster, she pulled on the rest of the conductor’s heavy body with all her might. Eventually, she managed to pull him into the doorway. She stepped over him and, while inside the engine, pushed on his lower half until his body slowly fell out. She watched it slide over the coupling, causing it to drop to the side of the tracks.

The engine floor beneath her was slippery from the extensive blood trail his body created. She tried disregarding the grotesque, dismembered hoof as she reluctantly pulled the blood-covered emergency lever up. She then turned the key back and tried it again. The engine rumbled to life this time, and the smokestack out the front window started spitting out steam.

The next step, to her knowledge, was flicking a switch on the dash to send power to the wheels of the train. However, she misinterpreted the layout of icons on the switches. When she flicked the switch, the bells on the train engine started dinging. She quickly turned it off and reoriented herself, closely following the remaining steps she remembered to get the train ready to roll.

After she was ready, she stuck her head out of the broken window. The platform was empty, and so was the station's surroundings. Rarity and Spike were nowhere to be seen. She meant for them to loop around the station within sight, but something might have gone wrong. Anxiety began creeping up on her. She pondered briefly before grabbing the handle hanging from the engine’s ceiling. When she pulled it, the train horn blew loudly. She blew it for a few seconds before letting go of the handle. After another fifteen seconds of waiting, she blew it again.

Fear and guilt started to build as she questioned whether she had made the wrong call. She looked back toward the station. After a few more seconds, she finally saw them rush around it. Relief set in as they ran towards her. Rarity gestured for her to start going as they closed in on the train cars. Twi released the brakes and pushed forward on the throttle. The train jolted and began accelerating as she watched them jump on the open car behind the engine. She looked back at the zombies cornering the station and watched as they slowly pulled away to safety.