Ch. 14: Survivors, Past Tense

Applejack screamed as she threw her legs against the concrete floor, shoving her backside up against the wall.  She didn’t exactly know why—months of living with the trotters had taught her exactly why not to scream.  And this certain scenario was no different.  If anything, her outburst seemed to spur the trotter on.

It was only a meter or two away when Applejack took the first swing.  Although her hoof was stopped midway through by the chains, the thing stumbled a bit.  Seeing opportunity, Applejack used the wall as an abuttment to throw her legs onto the chest of the trotter.  This time, the trotter fell down.  Good.

But not good enough.  The trotter simply stood back up, growled, and moved, with startling speed, to Applejack’s head.  The mare jumped up on her hind legs, using her forelegs to push against the trotters weight.

Once more, Applejack screamed as she realized that the trotter was breaking her splint, and, in turn, her already broken leg.  Her arm went limp, and the other arm flew upwards in reacting terror. It connected with the trotter’s chin with a clank, and then a thud as the trotter’s lower jaw hit the ground  He—it watched it fall with an eerie, unnatural curiosity.

It turned back to face Applejack, then flung its body at her. It knocked her down, its legs flying about.  Applejack could hear sick cracks and pops as its legs hit the concrete—and sometimes her, but, like her terror, it wasn't enough distract her from something even more disgusting.

The smell.

Oh, Celestia the smell was awful.  It filled her nostrils, reminding her of the time when one of her cows had died and she hadn't noticed it until a month later.  Except in that case, the cow wasn't centimeters from her face.  Applejack didn't dare even breathe through her mouth, in fear that she would taste the rotting meat.

Then, her vision went black.

Had she passed out?  No, Applejack could still smell the foul beast, just...  Farther away.  Then the blackness literally rolled off of her.

Applejack glanced to wear the thing had rolled off of her to see a faint outline of the trotter she was just fighting.  It was now fighting something else.  Was it...  Her?  Was this some sort of out-of-body experience?  Then, as her vision adjusted, she saw that the "trotter" had a thick, mohawk-like main.

"Zecora?"

She watched Zecora stand up, the trotter beneath her still very much alive.

“This trotter, it will not attack.  Have you done something, Applejack?”

“Yeah, I…  Disconnected its, uh, lower jaw.”

Zecora furrowed her brow, then looked to the door.  “Come, Applejack,” she said,

“we must go.  The brothers will be back, this I know.”

Applejack tried to get up before tripping over the chains connecting her to the wall.

“Uh, Zecora?”

Zecora nodded, then trotted out the door, closing it behind her.

Applejack eyed the trotter that was still lying there.  What was wrong with it?  She almost felt a strange sense of pity, before realizing that it was its disability that had saved her life.  That still didn’t stop her curiosity, though.  Maybe it was something she did—the malfunction seemed to occur after she removed its jaw, maybe that removed its instincts to attack?  She couldn’t know for sure, but even so, she saw herself whacking the jaws off more walkers, saving lives, and, in the peak of her optimistic imagination, removing the plague entirely.

Then reality struck once more as Zecora returned and sawed off the chain with one of the tools from her found bag.  Applejack stood up, woozy and pained from the onslaught.  Once she regained her balance, she and Zecora walked out the room, glancing left and right of the massive hallway.  One side lead to a staircase, the other a lobby.  The two tried the lobby first, but stopped dead in their tracks when they realized there was a crowd of trotters towards the end of it.  Zecora pulled Applejack back before any of them noticed her, and they both set off in the opposite direction.

Zecora carefully climbed the stairs, then signaled Applejack to follow.  There was a similar look to the upstairs, and luckily it was all clear of trotters.  When they reached a fork in the halls, they went straight, trying some of the doors and finding that they were all locked.  They got to the end of that hallway, then walked back and tried the other hall.

This one was much shorter, and when they got to the end window, Zecora drew a saw out of her bag.

"What are doing?" asked Applejack.

"We must escape," she declared, with no room for negotiation, "through the pool.  Better to hurt thyself then die as a fool."

"But..."

Zecora shot her a glance and Applejack dropped it.

Once the locks off of the window were sawed off, Zecora dropped her bag onto the pavement two stories below and backed up.

Applejack flattened against the wall as Zecora thudded down the carpet, out the window, and...

Splash!

Applejack breathed a sigh of relief before Zecora yelled up.

“Applejack, you must come now!  I fear I may have been too loud.”

Applejack looked out the window to see Zecora frantically swimming back to the edge of the pool.  It didn’t matter how cryptic Zecora’s message was, the scene still instilled fear in her.  She drew an intake of breath, backed up, and leapt out of the window frame, hitting the cool water with a sound that was muffled by the water that filled her ears.

When Applejack finally breached the surface, she glanced around for Zecora.  Finally finding her, she sunk back into the water as she realized the meaning of Zecora’s words.

Behind the zebra stood a huge mass of trotters, at least five times the crowd they had seen in the lobby.  And while they mostly were converging on one point, some seemed to have noticed Applejack’s companion, and were now banging on the glass windows that separated the room from the outside.

Applejack turned around in the water, swimming as quickly as she could in the opposite direction.  When she got to the edge, she pulled herself up to the ground and ran towards the woods.  Then she stopped, turning around.

Zecora was running after her, signaling to keep going.  The glass behind her had already broken, with trotters pouring out by the dozens.

Together, Applejack and Zecora ran towards the woods.  Applejack occasionally looked back to see the Trotters getting further and further away, until the trees completely obscured them.  But they still pressed on for what felt like three kilometers, until Applejack finally collapsed.

Zecora looked down.  “We must keep going, Applejack.  They will catch up, and we shall be sacked.”

“I…  I can’t run.  I just…”

Applejack thumped her head down, and Zecora sighed.  “Fine,” she said.  “We shall stay.”  There was a pause.  “But until we escape, we are not safe.”

Applejack made an unintelligible noise in response, and both the pony and zebra sat in silence for fifteen minutes.

“They should have caught up by now,” said Zecora, interrupting the silence.  “The trotters no longer in tow.”

Zecora stood up, beckoning Applejack to do the same.  She tried, her three good legs struggling to support her weight.  Zecora stared at her broken leg and held up a hoof, signaling for Applejack to wait as the zebra dug through her pack.  After a few seconds, Zecora retrieved a wooden splint.  Taking out her old one, Zecora put Applejack’s new splint in.

“I hope it’s not true what they say about horses’ limbs, or else your future looks very dim.”

Applejack looked down, willing herself not to think about the old mare’s tale.  It was just superstition anyway, right?

Zecora and Applejack walked another ways away, until Zecora announced, in her singsong manner, that it was time to pack up.  They set up a sleeping bag for each of them, with Zecora taking the first watch.

“What d’you think happened back there?” Applejack asked from her makeshift bed.

There was a silence.

“To those guys I mean.  Who were they?”

Another silence, but this time it was broken by a response.

“They were alive.  That much can be said.  But that was the past, I’m certain they’re dead.”

“Do you think we…”

Applejack trailed off.

“Not directly, but pay it no matter.  You did not murder, you shall not get sadder.”  She continued, as if she was reading a speech she had prepared beforehand.  “You’re a survivor, Applejack, you’ll do what it takes.  You’ll save yourself, no matter the stakes.  I’m alive as well, that much is true.  That’s because, in essence, we’re all just like you.”

Zecora’s cryptic message couldn’t be any more clear to Applejack.  Everypony was alive because they were survivors.  They were, to some degree, ruthless.  And the trotters would just slowly pick off the ones who weren’t strong enough.

Sooner or later, Applejack thought, I'm bound to meet a true survivor.  Somepony who does better in this wasteland than they did before it happened.  Somepony whose ruthlessness and cunning could not even be envisioned.

She could only hope that this pony wasn’t a reflection.