Equestrian Evil

As much as I hated to, I had to go back to the cannibal. Allowing him to be walking around with my team around would be a bad idea. Cautiously, I moved to the door and opened it carefully. Good; he didn’t follow me into the dining room. That also meant he might be lying in ambush in the hallway; I needed a strategy.

My hoof steps echoed out once more as I moved cautiously as possible down the dining hall. Sneaking was just not for a pony my size, but hopefully there wasn’t anything besides the cannibal to hide from. When I neared the door, I heard a low moaning coming from inside the hallways, as well as what sounded like shuffling of hoofs. I took a deep breath, then slammed open the door; aiming my mouth gun at the cannibal.

“Freeze cannibal!” Luckily I was a master at holding these weapons now, so my speech wasn’t even slurred anymore. Unfortunately, speech didn’t seem to matter to this freak; he continued to shuffle slowly towards me.

“I said FREEZE!” My threats fell on deaf ears as he continued to shuffle towards me, moaning the whole time.

“I’m going to tell you one more time before I open fire. Get. On. The. GROUND!” Unfortunately for him, he continued to shuffle slowly towards me. Before he could even blink, I fired off two shots into his chest.

“I warned you to- The buck?!” I watched in horror as he simply stumbled forward, and continued shuffling towards me. What in Celestia’s name was this thing?! Not wanting that thing anywhere near me, I fired another three shots into its chest. This time however, it actually fell back. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell if it was dead or not.

Cautiously, I moved slowly towards it; keeping my aim on it. It wasn’t breathing, so I bent down carefully and felt for a pulse. A sigh of relief escaped my throat when I didn’t find one. That sigh went from a relieved one, to a gasp of terror as the “dead” pony stood up and started skulking towards me again.

“Stay… Stay away from me!” I closed my eyes and shot randomly at it; as soon as I did, there was a sickening splattering noise, followed by a slumping noise as it hit the floor. My eyes opened to the sight of it lying on the floor; a bullet clean through its head, blowing through where its eye used to be. What the hell was that thing?

“Humph. Looks like Pinkie’s stories of Zombie Ponies weren’t all pony tales.” My spirits lifted as I heard Rainbow’s voice.

“Rainbow?! Where did you go? Where’s Fluttershy?”

“Calm down. One of those Diamond Dogs broke in. Fluttershy and I made a run into the west wing. She was worried about you, so I came to find you. The gunshots made it easy; I feared the worst. Anyways, I think its best we split up and look for another way out of this castle. I still have contact with Fluttershy over the radio; does yours still work?” Now that I thought of it, there had been no noises coming from it. Sure enough, when I checked it, I found that the batteries had managed to fall out at some point.

“Nope.”

“I don’t have backup batteries, so it looks like you need to be extra careful. Just start looking for clues about what happened here, and a back exit. If you find anything, find us in the other wing. Oh, and try and avoid the upstairs if you can right now. Me and Fluttershy heard footsteps up there, and there is no telling if its survivors, or these Zombie Ponies. Got it?” She walked back and forth as she spoke, obviously she was anxious about something.

“Eeyup.”

“Good. Oh, and if you do managed to run into any of the bravo team, tell them the plan.” She started walking back to the main hall, then stopped. “And keep Fluttershy’s gun. We’ll get her a new one somewhere in this house.” The door closed as her voice echoed out down the empty hallway.

I quickly found myself staring at the; what had Rainbow called it? Zombie Pony? Never once had I heard of them. Well anyways, I seemed to now be completely alone. Truthfully, I didn’t trust that zombie on the ground; it could still be “alive” for all I know. Somehow I was expecting it to stand up and walk towards me again. Luckily for me though, it seemed to be down for good.

When I turned around and saw the sight of the pony that the zombie had been eating, I nearly threw up. He was completely unrecognizable, and the only reason I could tell it was a male was his barding. Every bit of his was chewed on, and the only thing still recognizable on him was his cutie mark. The cutie mark itself had a bit of blood on it, but I could still clearly see that is was a video camera.

I sighed as I realized it was our Lunar Squad tech, Cam. I bent down next to his mutilated corpse and began to search through his belongings. The smell was horrible, but it payed off when I found two full clips of ammo. Also, in the camera he had with him, I managed to find a tape. Now I just needed a place to play it. Maybe it would give some insight as to what happened to the Bravo team.

My thoughts were interrupted as I heard a loud crashing noise from out in the dining hall, causing me to jump. It sounded as if something heavy had fallen somewhere in there; I only hoped it wasn’t another one of those zombie ponies. Another crash sounded out, this time accompanied by muffled yelling. I quickly made my way to the door; gun in my mouth, and opened it to see a grey earth pony laying on the ground dusting himself off. The rubble around him indicated that he had fallen through the roof floor above.

“You okay? I’m Big Macintosh, S.P.A.R.C, Celestial Squad.” He stood up, and began shaking the dust off of his coat. I couldn’t help but notice he seemed to be purposely covering his cutie mark.

“Yeah, glad to see someone with experience is here! I was making a medical delivery to Canterlot, and my carriage crashed. I was near this place when a group of crazed diamond dogs attacked me, so I ran in here with those… Things.”

“Looks like you and I are stuck here then. You want to learn how to use a gun real quick?”

“Uhm… I guess. I don’t know how useful I’ll be. Are those things really dangerous enough to have to kill?”

“Let’s just say you don’t want to see what it did to Cam in there. And technically… You wouldn’t be killing them.” He raised an eyebrow at me.

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s hope you don’t have to find out. Now do you want to learn how to use this thing or not?” He nodded half-heartedly to me.

“I guess, If I have to.”

“Okay. Wait here, I’ll go get Cam’s gun.” He nodded to me once more as I walked back into the room with the zombie pony, and Cam. Everything was the same, save for one detail; The zombie was gone, the hall empty of its body as well. The only trace that remained of it was a blood trail that lead to a door at the end of the hall.

No way was I following it, so I simply went over Cam’s body and retrieved the gun from near his corpse. I said my final goodbyes to my fallen comrade, then made my way back to the dining hall once more. When I stood in front of him, and dropped the weapon, I could tell he was a little scared.

“Is it hard to use?”

“Not too hard. The hardest part is learning to talk while it’s in your mouth. Other than that, you’ll just need to know the basics.”

“All right, let’s just get this over with.” I nodded to him, then walked over to him; extra gun in hand, and showed him how to use the gun properly.

It was a little hard teaching a civilian how to use a gun, but I managed it in just ten minutes. Unfortunately, talking is something you just have to teach yourself.

“An e et oin?”

“What?” He leaned his head down and placed the gun in its holder located on his chest.

“I said: Can we get going? I don’t want to stay in this place any longer than we have to.”

“Sure. By the way, I didn’t catch your name.” He paused for a moment before he answered. There was either something fishy going on, or he just hit his head a little too hard on the fall. I hoped it was the second one.

“Just call me Doctor Zentra.”

“What type of name is that?” He gave me a expressionless stare. “Never mind. Anyways, we should get going.”

“Agreed. I passed through this area on the way to the second floor. Follow me, I’ll get us upstairs.”

As he walked ahead of me, I finally caught a glimpse of his cutie mark. He was obviously a doctor, but not a doctor in the normal sense.

Right on his flank sat a image of DNA.