Ruby Beacon was awoken roughly by her superior as the tent around them was being dismantled. Eyes bleary and ears still ringing from her first experience with gunfire, she barely could make out the words ‘moving out’ from Field Surgeon’s mouth.

They were rounded up by troopers wearing those full body camouflage suits and bird masks she almost envied. Spore-proof, I’m sure. She didn’t linger long. Her ponies were herded into a self-pulling carriage made of metal. It smelled like rubber and chemicals inside, but the wooden benches lining the walls were comfortable enough. Field Surgeon yelled at one of the soldiers with feather plumes in that Griffon tongue they shared, then sat beside Ruby, relief and dejection in equal measures across her face. “What’s the story?” Field didn’t turn her head at the question, just flicked an eye at her.

“They’re taking us south, that’s the good news.” Ruby nodded and gestured for Field to continue with her chin. “The bad news is they’re taking us. It’ll be a while before we get released, it sounds like.” She rubbed a hoof against her nose, sitting on her haunches like a cat. “They only know what we told them. They’re scared, you can hear it in how they talk. They’ve seen the bloomers, no context, who knows what they must be thinking? I can hardly blame them but damn it all.” Ruby gave her a somewhat assuring pat on the side with the flat end of her foreleg and listened to the steady rumbling sound of the carriage’s engines pistoning to life with burbling purrs.

Feldwebel Romy Quirin ran his hand across the dashboard of his truck, air chuffing out of a bull-snout as he let a grin cross his face behind the upsized and suction sealed gas mask making him sweat like a whore in church.

Romy’s compatriot in the passenger seat gave him a sideways look. Gefreyten Knechten Bitrus Sonja mirrored Romy’s features; cloven hooves for perambulation, brawny features, a seven-foot build and a bull’s head for a face. Unlike Romy, his horns were shaved down, the goat-like protrusions just stump flat under his helmet. Romy, on the other hand, had a curly pair which poked out of the bottom of his helmet and concealed his hair-tufted ears under their swirling horizontal growth. “Bapheloghast, Saint Ludovic1 and the rest of those false shepherds be damned. My god will always be the purr of my flatplane V8,” Romy all but purred as his free hand gripped the acceleration lever and cranked it as the convoy began to move. His fellow filataur2let out an aggrieved snort.

“You survived all these years in this fucking men’shiy’s army, earned yourself the respect to grow your honors again and you waste it by being a truck driver lusting over his vehicle. I’ll never understand you, bratan.” Romy turned to his brother soldier and clapped him on the shoulder.

“When have you ever given a damn about understanding me and my motives?” Romy’s eyes snapped forward as he asked his question, tunnel vision taking hold as he focused on the poorly paved dirt road and the drawn carriage ahead. Baseline human infantrymen filled the back of the wooden cart. The mixed squad was behind them; mostly filitaura like him, but a few others, too. A svelyc from Moltestry, a few pistrimen from the Tyrannic and an aljabur3 from… somewhere. He wasn’t quite sure where she was from. He didn’t bother to deduce it; the road was his mistress, and she would punish him harshly for deferring his attention away from her. Bitrus took the opportunity to keep up the conversation—Romy threw him a passing grateful look.

“I started giving a damn when you started outranking me. It’s humiliating,” he snarled into a canteen before drinking greedily from its contents. Any human soldier would’ve said the thing was closer to a fuel container than a canteen in heritage. Romy snorted at that. Funny, that. “I find it humiliating that you have your honors intact. It is miserable.” Bitrus smacked his lips and adjusted the mask hanging on his neck. Romy grinned at his companion and ran his tongue over his blocky teeth.

“You’ll get there one day, bratan. Might take a while, but that’s part of living.” Bitrus chuffed again. nose twitched and he looked out the window at a corpse on side of the road. It was infected with the same virus as the equines what had attacked them those few nights ago. Infantrymen were throwing trash at the body as they passed, he could see it in the mirror and from the bits of debris flying out the vehicles ahead of them.

“One thing I’m grateful for,” Bitrus began as he reaffixed the rubber mask to his face, “an enemy we can hate without invoking Gaia’s1 misery.” Romy hollered with joy at that, clapped his bratan on the shoulder and sped up to meet the mileage of the convoy ahead.

The convoy came to a halt with salty air wafting through their air filters. Thin strips of wood held together by wire—sand fencing, one of the Subalterns identified them as—followed the length of the dirt road on their left, with debris-rampant coastline stretching out for almost a mile past them. As he stood with a pair of binoculars, head poking out the top hatch of his command vehicle, Kvetoslava Shalev only made passing note of the little bits of trash, the fencing, the makeshift rafts. His eyes were on the horizon and the wooden whale cutting across the drink with billowing sails. She was a barque—three masted sails were aloft and catching tailwind while spurts of water shot off from cannons on her middle decks.

“Emergency ship. Can’t translate the text, isn’t Escalian or any other written language I’ve seen,” Slava hollered to the subaltern hanging off the starboard ladder of the command vehicle. Emergency? She asked. He turned a passing glance at her, nodding in the process. “Firefighting ship. Three masts. She’s a big girl for her class, too, probably a crew of forty at most.” He stowed the binoculars in a satchel on his waist and threw a passing salute at the ship before slamming the hatch down.

Once outside beside the subaltern—Piritta, once more—Kvetoslava pulled out the ponies’ hand drafted map. He traced the distance, matched the burning silhouette of Manehattan with a finger with the one on the map, then the markedly bubble-surrounded silhouette of Fillydelphia to their south. Sucking teeth, he rolled up the map. “What’s the word, cap?” He flinched a little.

“Filly is to the south. There’s,” he turned east, “forests to scrounge for supplies for a bunch of klom that way,” he turned back to the coast, “and an ocean to fish. Not certain we’ll find anything worthy of eating given the state of things so far, but I don’t think we’ll find a better spot anywhere else without tempting fate and wandering into a fight with a bunch of equine psycasters. Bad plan.” Slava shook his head. He pointed at the woods to their right, stretching eastward across the horizon, surpassed by city skylines on their flanks and the mountain at the forest’s back. Piritta sucked her teeth, arms folded under the gas mask carrier bag on her chest.

“We’re going to have to clear the forest for that.” Slava nodded. Piritta adjusted her mask. “I’ll pass the order down.” Kvetoslava watched the treeline with hawkish eyes as the convoy’s engines began to quiet and infantrymen filed out of the vehicles. A pit was growing in his stomach, but he ignored it. Slava collected his weapons from the receptacle on the inside of the door and walked with an itchy trigger finger to a nauseating briefing.

The sun hung hot overhead as the soldiers of the 107th felled the first trees and shrank back the treeline, inch by inch. Machine gun nests were eagerly set up by rolling up the canvas covers on wire-frame infantry vehicles. The guns were planted facing the forest with boxes of ammo tilting the trucks to one side by the weight of it all.

Feldwebel Romy Quirin had his frame-fitting chemsuit tied by the sleeves round his waist, the wooly undercoat of hair spilling out of his striped tanktop as he worked at the trunk of an oak. Gefreyten Knechten Bitrus Sonja stood watch beside him, chemsuit adorned plainly and with many satchels of ammunition strewn over his shoulders. Romy’s face was sweltering from behind his mask, but he found himself unable to complain when the first tree to land horizontally scattered a flock of blackened, wood-like birds and rodents that nearly compromised them. Bitrus and the other infantry acted quickly. Bitrus, with a 25mm flat-topped revolver, fired a shot into the crowd of matted fur and rotting teeth. Filitauri, with biceps bigger round on average than the smallest soldier’s waist, could handle the recoil of cannons. So they did. Bitrus’ revolver barked like localized thunder, and a cloud of birdshot painted the air with lead gnats.

There was a greasy stain and a hive of holes where there had once been an intimidating swarm of infected critters. Someone laughed. Bitrus calmly flicked the cylinder out. Someone else began to cry. He ripped a branch off the tree to use as a ramrod, ejected the spent shell and slipped a fresh one in from his belt. Orders were given again, and progress continued.The trees were pulled aside by the other company filitauri and Romy, alongside the other hatchet carrying soldiers, hacked at the wood.

The fighting was sparse for those first few hours. Romy was grateful for it because it meant his 20mm rifle could remain on his back and the rubber-handled woodcutting axe could stay in his hands. Then it wasn’t. The moment when the mood shifted was imperceptible. At one blink of his eyes, his axe was rearing back to split a trunk. At the next blink, the axe head was splitting the neck of a shriveled equine with matted green fur and wild eyes. All the energy from the swing transferred and the thing was bisected on the diagonal. In that moment, with adrenaline flooding into his system and hands shaking with cortisol, Romy felt in touch with his ancestry.

The air was out of his lungs and Bitrus was in front of him by the next blink. Bitrus’ sidearm belched smoke and birdshot. Romy slammed the axe into the ground and swung his rifle into his arms. It had a trigger like a grenade loop pin, a simple forward-backward thing that was sized adequately for clawed filitaur hands. It bucked in his arms and spat fire out the front. A winged equine exploded as it was hit. He took two steps backward and ran the bolt back on his rifle. The extractor snapped the shell out, and the 200-odd gram casing smacked into the ground with a tinny thud. Bitrus matched his backpedaling in lockstep until their backs were to the vehicles. They stepped aside and the machine guns opened fire.

The machine guns tore up the bloomers well enough, though they were limited to short bursts. For all his lack of experience, the junior officer under command did well to direct their fire, and but for a few seconds, the air was silent. Then, a chorus of reports of status. The disconcerting quiet was replaced by the din of troopers moving about their business.

In the back of their transport, Ruby Beacon stared out the plastic window stationed amidst the fabric cover at the carnage. At her side, Field Surgeon too watched, her brow furrowed. “Minotaurs,” she muttered. Ruby threw a cursory glance in her companion’s direction. Field matched it. “They have minotaurs in their ranks.” Ruby furrowed her brow at the observation, preparing a quip. Field beat her to it when she loudly whistled, drawing the eye of one such minotaur. It tromped over. Field Surgeon asked it a question. It answered. Ruby tuned them out as her eyes and mind wandered to the bloody carnage lying in mulched chunks outside.

She hadn’t seen anything like it before. Even with their abrupt departure from Manehattan—it was different. There was urgency to their evacuation which prevented her from focusing on more than just the deafening noise and the escape, lackluster as an escape it proved to be.

Here, she saw it with her full attention. Fire clapping forth from long steel tubes and spitting lead rain at its targets. It was power—the kind not even the griffons at the prime of their industrial revolution were able to craft. A small part of her hoped, while the rest screamed at her to tread cautiously. The minotaur seemed to chuff at something Field said before giving a curt nod and stomping off in its usual fashion, weapons clinking on the interlocking clasps, belts and pouches lining its wide silhouette. Ruby found the medic with a proud look on her face as she sat back beside the junior Pegasus commander. “So?” asked Ruby.

“There may be hope for us yet.” Field had a mirth in her voice Ruby found lacking, even when she laughed alongside their comrades in hooves. The small part that hoped grew a bit bigger.

Princess Celestia, solar diarch of the sister throne of the Equestrian Monarchy, sank into her throne, a tense sigh blowing through her and making her feel like a deflating balloon. The throne room of the Celestial Castle was converted to a war room in the wake of the Everfree infection, and at present, was empty save for herself and the quiet, aged silhouette of Raven Inkwell, her faithful assistant. The earth pony with salt and pepper mane and white coat was hunched over a permanent desk fixture added in wake of the past month of outbreaks. A cot was arranged behind it, right up against the Solar throne in the centre of the room.

She chided the mare for her unwillingness to return home. The tired look in Raven’s eyes as she pointed out her place was beside her monarch ended the argument tersely. Celestia felt uneasy about it all the same, but reminder of how the mare’s family had died abroad several years prior and how she would be safer in the castle calmed her nerves enough to drop the matter. Her eyes fell on the empty throne paced equally beside her own ran a pang of sorrow through her heart like a spearpony. Her sister’s room seemed more like a mausoleum than a sleeping chamber the longer the days went by.

“Raven?” Celestia’s voice sounded hoarse. So much yelling today. Nobles trying to break the quarantine for their selfish aims, generals I need remind that the lives of our subjects can nary be thrown away, even in the face of this monumental tragedy…

“Yes, ma’am?” Celestia’s eyes fell on the pony. She held the weight of a dying nation’s paperwork on her shoulders. Celestia’s quietest recesses cried for the little earth pony.

“Has Commander Lance delivered any updates on Operation Beanstalk?” Had she the energy, she might’ve smiled at the silly name. An old habit of the Interior Ministry from the terse war years during the reign of Sombra over the Frozen North.

“Yes, ma’am.” Raven sifted amidst the papers on her desk, snapping out a thick sheaf of paper bound in twine. Using her teeth, she removed the wax seal and removed the first page. Celestia’s eyesight, not enhanced by necessity of circumstance, couldn’t make out the header. Raven cleared her throat. “Targets Victory, Tango-Tango and Mare have been confirmed as successful. Two of the three teams have reported back. Team Victor reports a 35% casualty rate and Team Tango-Trotter reports a casualty rate of 65%.” Celestia deflated a little further. Victory is victory, one could suppose. Her heart ached for the guardsponies lost in the engagements. She asked the status of the third team. “They never reported in at their scheduled time. Commander Lance has yet to declare them as missing, though. He did not say why.” Celestia frowned at that.

Rusty Lance was a veteran guardspony. He was given medals of valorous service for actions during the Changeling invasion and several skirmishes with the wilder fauna that could not be handled by the Elements safely. As part of his promotion, Celestia had played a long game of chess with the stallion. His greatest trait, and what proved to earn him that promotion, was his willingness to sacrifice his pieces. Never needlessly, but never with reservation. Service is sacrifice, your majesty, he had said to her. Dying in the line of duty is part of that sacrifice, should it be necessary. To see him hesitant to report this team as missing in turn made her hesitant. Had he finally lost it in the face of the crisis? Or was it something else entirely? “Would you have a courier sent to bring the stallion in for inquiry? This is odd behavior for him.” At her nod and preparation for departure, Celestia gave a quiet ‘thank you’ and looked out the nearest bay window to the night sky above. May Harmony find you well, Commander Lance, and your answer satisfying to my worries.

Author's Note

Considering moving the upload date up to Sunday or Saturday. Haven't decided yet! In any case, we journey on. Genuine feedback is impossible to find in the world but I like to think my introspection on the narrative of this story (or lackthereof) is helping me mold it into something more interesting. I dunno, though!

The thematic and tonal mix of Band of Brothers with the Walking Dead will probably become more apparent as soon as our characters are beyond the point where surviving to the next morning is their only concern. I also intend to touch on those themes at some point. This story hasn't been well received so far but I hope that whomever reads these words, you, I hope you, unknowable stranger, are enjoying my queer milslop.

Till next time.