Surviving Equestria's Queen

Halberd still bloodied from the countless zombies he’d carved through on his way up the mountain from the downslope village, Flash landed amid the defenders near the front gates. He was quickly met by a lieutenant, a grey unicorn mare with a purplish mane, who barked out, “Sentry, there you are! Where in Tartarus have you been?”

Flash held up his halberd. “Surviving the worst interrogation ever. My whole platoon went zombie, ma’am.”

“Damn it, that’s the fifth one.” She spat into the ground. “I don’t know what the higher-ups are thinking. We can’t hold these zombies off if we can’t keep a solid plan together for more than five seconds!”

“Yes, ma’am,” Flash said flatly, taking up a defensive position with the others and casually slicing a pegasus zombie in half as it dove at him. “What are our orders?”

“We’re to hold here as long as we can, then retreat to the front gates. Those ought to hold them off, at least the ground-bound ones.”

Her horn lit, sending a sword flying through the air to decapitate several more pegasus zombies. “Good thing these ones can’t seem to fly more than a couple dozen meters off the ground, or we’d really be sunk.”

“BRAINS!”

Flash’s halberd swung out, penetrating the throat of yet another zombie before his hoof kicked out to send it sprawling to the dirt. “We should retreat already; we’re going to be overwhelmed if we keep this up.” He pointed with his halberd towards the horde crawling along the train tracks, slowly but inevitably making their way up.

“Right. Sergeant, sound the call! All hooves, re--”

BOOOOOOOM!

Flash squeezed his eyes shut in time to avoid the flash of light as a shockwave blasted through them, sending dust and sand everywhere for several long moments before it faded, allowing him to look up to see what had happened.

The front gates were gone. Along with most of the fortified walls. What debris was left was covered in the purple signature of the Queen herself.

And yet, somehow he didn’t feel the least bit surprised. “Well, so much for that.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” the lieutenant groaned.

“Braiiiiiins…”

“Ngggggh…”

“Huungrrrrryyyyyy!”

As the two soldiers stood back to back fending off zombies, another pegasus soldier came flitting from the castle. “Orders from Queen Twilight, ma’am!” he reported, deftly flitting to the side to avoid the clumsy grab from an earth pony zombie. “We’re to set up a defensive perimeter further into the non-infected areas of the city, to hold them off.”

“Oh, sure, now she wants us to hole up and use walls, after blowing up our best defense!”

Those were the lieutenant’s last words as a group of zombies jumped onto her, tearing out her throat before Flash could intervene.

The remaining soldiers all around looked to him straight away for help. Sighing once more, he pointed with his halberd towards the train station further up the mountain. “This way, and for goodness’ sake, cover each other!”

“Flaaaaasssshhhh… braaaaaains!”

His halberd took the head off the zombified lieutenant as he began to flee. This was proving to be one long day.