P23:4

P23:4

By Hero541

Prologue: To Whom it May Concern

Ten years. It's been ten years since it all began. Since I lost most of my friends and what little family I still possessed. They spread so fast that by the time we all knew what was happening, it was too late to stop them. They reproduced faster than we could ever hope to take them out, and most of us simply accepted that our time would come soon, and we would join their evil ranks. I'll never forget the day it all started, when this fear and panic began to spread and the dead took over Equestria.

It was slow at first. We had heard some news about ponies going crazy and trying to kill their families and friends, but we just passed it off as some sort of rumor. No pony with half a brain, no matter how crazy they were, would even dream about brutally murdering another. It wasn't until we began to hear about them trying to eat those they killed that we became worried. Not too long after it began to escalate, my parents began to panic themselves, and considered moving us out of town, as far away from civilization as we could get.

However, we never had the chance to leave. In only a matter of weeks, the dead began to show up here, most of them fairly fresh, ready to bite others and spread their evil plague. Most ponies didn't know how to spot the dead, and it wasn't until they were bitten that they understood it all. By that time, it was already too late, and they soon joined the legions of the undead. Luckily, my parents caught on quickly, and made their way to the nearest shelter they could, Sweet Apple Acres. Applejack and her family gladly accepted those who were looking to stay safe from the hordes, managing to take in Rarity, Sweetie Belle, Fluttershy, and Pipsqueak and his mother, Rose Blossom.

We were safe from the dead most of the time out there, only occasionally seeing one in the field, which Big Mac and Applejack would quickly dispose of. However, things in Ponyville were a living nightmare. We dreaded ever having to go on supply runs into town, and more than once we had an extremely close call with one of the undead. Pip almost got his leg bitten off by one when we went to Sugarcube Corner to grab some more food. Rarity was able to think quickly and used her magic to jam a knife in its head, which then revealed to us that the monster was actually Mr. Cake, who had obviously been trapped in the confectionery once he was turned.

If things in Ponyville were bad, though, things in Canterlot were worse. Almost the entire city had fallen victim to the dead. Even Princess Celestia, one of the most powerful ponies in the world, was ripped apart by the dead and eaten. Nopony knows what happened to Princess Luna though, and a few have reported seeing an undead alicorn with a gray coat and moon-shaped cutie mark around. Canterlot castle itself had been abandoned as well, having been overrun by the dead. Almost everywhere in Equestria, the living dead had taken over, even Cloudsdale, which was extremely odd, considering undead pegasi weren't really able to fly. All over Equestria, the dead ruled, and they still do today.

Like I said before, it's been ten years since it all started, and there are only a few of us left here on the farm. Granny Smith died long ago, an extremely hard loss to take for us all. Big Mac was bitten by one of the dead, but we managed to save him by cutting off his leg. He and Applejack are still around, but they are too broken mentally to really be what they were before. My parents passed away long ago as well, which just made already shattered world I live in even worse to have to bear. Rose Blossom and Pip were devoured by the hordes on a supply run about a year ago, and Sweetie Belle died from complications of giving birth to her and Pip's foal, a little filly I named Dash, after Rainbow Dash herself.

However, this isn't about me. This is about Twilight Sparkle, whose journal I found in her library when we were searching it for supplies one day. The tale of everything that has happened since the dead took over is too hard for me to truly tell, and I'm feeling all the pain of these last ten years as I write this now. However, Twilight's journal tells everything one could ever want to know and more about what it was like in the early days. I'm not sure if anypony will find this letter in the future, but I hope they will, along with this journal. We're preparing to move on, to another place in Equestria where they're saying it's more safe. I leave all this here so whoever finds it in the future can know what truly went on when this all began, and can know what it's really like to be afraid of the dead.

Sincerely, Scootaloo