Blackout

Toast and Rook stood back from the generator as it powered up. The incandescent lights on the ceiling flickered as the power supply began to stabilize.

“Alright, now we can look for a back door out of here,” said Toast as he looked around the room.

The windows were caged on the outside with mild steel, unbreakable to anyone without a power saw.

Toast walked out to the reception area and paused.

“I’ll take a look upstairs,” said Rook, “Do you want to see if you can find a back door?”

“Yeah, sounds good,” toast replied.

As Rook moved up the stairs they creaked under the increased pressure. The infected outside began to moan more frequently.

Rook opened the door to the upstairs level and felt along the left hoof side wall for the light switch. Once his hoof bumped against the protruding surface he flicked the switch down.

The lights flickered on, illuminating the urinal-cake yellow walls. The pure white ceiling, skirts and cornices combined with the polished hardwood floors to create an unpleasantly drab feeling.

As he moved forward the wall to his right stopped and cornered away, revealing a large office.

To his left a side table spanned almost the entire length of the room. On top of it lay half a dozen black binder folders inter spaced with pictures of a mare and two children, a colt and a filly.

To his right the floor was barren. On the wall three pictures hung equally spaced from each other and the end of the wall on either side. The paintings were hung with a piece of white nylon string off a set of rusted nails.

The first image was a picture of Borenai during its first year as a mining town, dated 1968.

The second was a picture of an old warship with a tri-mast system and an arrangement of cannons, though only one side was visible.

The third was a picture of a black stallion with his foreleg around a tall, thin gray stallion with a brown mane and white growth close to the roots, at the bottom of the image two names were displayed, Jim and Mikhail.

At the far end of the room sat a mahogany desk with a padded, high-backed chair placed centrally behind it.
Rook walked behind the desk and pulled out the chair and sat in it.

On the desk, placed on a slight angle to the edge, was a diary that was opened to a paged that displayed the date 5th September, 2001.

It read:

The sickness began six weeks ago to this day. There is still no vaccine or cure.
I’ve been asking around, no one remembers who first procured the contagion. We all just hope that we won’t be the next ones to catch it.
Even my friend, Mikhail, who opened a clinic six months ago, admitted to me that despite his best efforts he had not been able to discover the nature of the sickness.
He told me yesterday that the infected ponies had been safely quarantined as they had been identified, though he also said that if the contagion continued to spread, localised quarantine would no longer have any effect. Something would need to be done to ensure the…

The entry ended abruptly.
Rook looked at the desk and saw that a pen had spilt some of its ink and rolled to its present location, where a pool of ink now lay. Someone left in a hurry, he thought.

He thought over the contents of the diary again.

“Morozov,” he said, “Mikhail Morozov, son of a bitch.”

He grabbed the diary and had a look at the window behind the desk. It wasn’t caged like the ones down stairs. Outside he saw another building positioned only a metre away from the window. Beyond that he saw another tunnel entrance.

Rook put the book in his pack and called Toast to his floor.

Together they examined a possible escape route and began to open the window; Toast stood on the ledge and leapt to the other building. Rook followed shortly after.

They ran to the edge and let themselves down and landed with a slight thump.

An earth shaking screech echoed throughout the caverns. A repetitive thumping sound grew ever nearer. Rook spun around to see what was making the noise. Instantly he turned again and began to run.

“Fuck!” he screamed, “It’s a mutant!”

“Shit!” Toast replied, “Go, run!”

Toast and Rook ran into the tunnel as quickly as they could. With every stride they took the mutant grew closer.

They dared not look back as the hulking mass of abnormally over-gown muscles and gnashing teeth shook the ground, with its heavy legs pounding the concrete.

A hoard of infected joined the fray between the mutant, Toast and Rook. The creature drove straight through the infected that stood in its way.

“That thing’s a fucking juggernaut,” screamed Rook.

“Shut up and run!”