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The One Free Apple

by Lab Matt

Chapter 6: Part 1: Chapter 06

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Part 1: Chapter 06

Applejack used the Gravity Gun to move aside a few crates blocking her path and opened the door hidden behind them. She found herself in a basement, not sure where that basement was. It was filled with broken machines, torn books and scattered pages, a few of them stained with blood.

"What in tarnation happened here?"

She climbed the nearby stairs, which led to another wooden door. When she opened it, Applejack immediately recognized the place.

"It's Twi's library. Golden Oak!"

More books scattered all over the place. She even saw the corpse of a pony rotting underneath a pile of them, lit by moonlight coming from a window with torn curtains. She briefly took off her hat as a sign of respect to the dead. She placed it on top of her head again, walked toward the main door and opened it. The dark outside made her cringe; the small town was completely abandoned with a few collapsed buildings. In the distance she could still see her old home, Sweet Apple Acres.

"Ah'm back..." she muttered to herself.

She could hear moans and groans of headcrab zombies coming from alleys and abandoned buildings, so she proceeded cautiously and silently. The street had a few open Headcrab Shells on the ground, exactly as Rainbow Dash told her. She imagined ponies running, chaos taking over her hometown as rockets carrying mind-controlling mosters fell from the skies, killing many of them.

She stumbled across a tree, which had something that almost made her puke: the torso of a pony hanging hanging from a rope on his neck. She couldn't recognize him or her because the face was severely damaged and the lower half was missing, so she couldn't try to recognize the Cutie Mark either.

"Ah can guess why ya ended yer life here, pardner." she said before resuming her walk toward... Somewhere!

Many streets were blocked due to the amount of wreckage on the streets so, in order to proceed, she had to go through the abandoned houses. The first house she went through had the body of a pony with a dead headcrab attached to his head. She shivered.

"Back in Aperture Ah wanted nothin' but to go back home, but now..." she sighed. "Maybe Aperture wasn't that bad compared to mah hometown... Well, maybe not the test chambers, but the corridors outside the test chambers were indeed much safer!"

She froze in place when she heard a groan coming from behind her. Applejack turned around and saw a zombie headcrab slowly walking toward her. But this one was different from the others she met before in Station 7; the infection was in a much advanced stage, so the pony had a cavity on its chest, showing all the organs in there - none of them working. The exposed ribs had mutated as well and now resembled sharp teeth. Applejack placed a hoof on her mouth to prevent the only meal she had hours ago to escape.

"Now Ah've seen everythin'!" she grabbed the pistol with her teeth pointed it at the headcrab on the pony's head and shot a few times. Bad decision! The zombie headcrab fell to the ground with a whimper, but the sound of the shots attracted more of them. They came from upstairs, the front door and the main door. Soon Applejack was surrounded. She dropped the pistol on the floor.

"Damn zombies went and got me mad." she said, standing on her rear legs and grabbing her SMG. She started firing at the zombies, not caring where the bullets hit. A few of the headcrabs jumped from the head of their hosts and toward their attacker, but Applejack simply dodged and stomped on them. She kept firing, but the wave of zombies was never over. Suddenly the weapon stopped firing.

"What the hay?"

Her Hazard Suit displayed a message in front of her face:

OVERHEATED WEAPON

WAIT FOR IT TO COOL DOWN

"Aw, shucks..."

She dropped the submachine gun on the ground too. After looking around she saw a plank lying not too far away from her. She pointed her Gravity Gun at it, levitating it. She started waving her hoof around as hard as she could, making the plank hit all the headcrabs on the parasitized ponies' heads. Suddenly the zombies stopped entering the house.

"Apparently the sound of mah guns was attracting 'em." she looked at her gauntlet with the faint orange glow on her right foreleg. "Guess it's only you and me now!"

She got out of the house and followed the dirt path that led to the main square of Ponyville. She could still remember the layout of  her hometown, so she knew exactly where to go next. She then stopped from a second; she could have sworn she heard whispers coming from a nearby house but, when she pressed her ear against the wooden wall, she couldn't hear anything, so she just shrugged and proceeded.

Everything looked the same, but at the same time so different. As she walked toward her destination, she looked around, recognizing places and remembering how they used to be; the school that now had no teacher or students, the marketplace with either empty stands or stands covered in rotten food, Sugar Cube Corner with no line of clients waiting to buy the pastries baked by the Cakes and Pinkie Pie.

Pinkie Pie...

"Ah wonder what happened to her..."

She heard more whispers. They seemed a little louder right now, but she still couldn't understand what he, she or they were saying. After a few more minutes of walk, silently avoiding all the zombie headcrabs, she arrived at the main square, right in front of the town hall, which was the very definition of Tartarus: many metal stakes were pinned on the ground, all of them with trespassed and burning parasitized bodies hanging from them. There was a pile of hay and other materials burning below the bodies and stakes.

"What in tarnation is that?!" she shouted. Nearby zombies heard her and started to walk toward her. Unfortunately there were no nearby wreckage, so she would have to deal with them using nothing but her brute force.

Suddenly one fell to the ground. And other, and other, and other until all of them were dead. Applejack heard a manic laughter coming from above and looked up. Her eyes widened.

Standing on a open window of the town hall was a dark pink earth pony with a darker pink straight mane. She was holding a crossbow and pointing it at where the zombies where. She was still laughing.

"Don't worry, my dear ponies." she said. "Auntie Pinkie will make the pain go away!"

"P-Pinkie Pie!" Applejack called.

"Oh, hello there, little one!" she said, looking at Applejack with her blue eyes with widened pupils. "Sorry for the mess, I wasn't expecting guests!" she giggled while reloading her crossbow with apparently homemade wooden arrows. "Make yourself at home. Though I'm pretty sure you will want to leave soon!"

"Ah can't believe yer alive!"

"As alive as a damned pony in a damned city can be."

"Do... Do ya remember me?"

"I never forget my friends!" Applejack smiled. "Or, at least, I used to say that back when I had them." the smile turned into a corncerned look. "I'm all alone is this Celestia's tailhole! Your face is somewhat familiar, but... I'm sorry!"

"It's... It's okay, Pinkie! You've been through some hard times, Ah can't blame ya! But why don't you leave? Ah mean, there are better places to be than here."

"I can't leave!" Pinkie Pie said, looking at the dead bodies. "Not until I free all my old friends from this torment! I can hear them all the time, screaming, moaning in pain. When I'm awake, when I'm asleep, outside my head, inside my head... I need to save them! All of them!"

"Ah-Ah understand..."

Pinkie Pie shot another arrow, killing a zombie headcrab that was approaching Applejack from behind. "I need to get you out of here." she pointed her foreleg to a street to the left of Applejack. "Follow this road, it will take you to Sweet Apple Acres. I'll meet you there! Be careful and don't forget: if you want them dead, aim for the head!"

"Ah'll remember that!" Pinkie Pie closed the windows and Applejack ran down the path Pinkie Pie pointed at her. She smiled. "At least she is alive and that's all that matters for now..." she thought.

She heard another moan. But it was louder and lasted longer, almost sounding like a howl. Then she saw another one of them running toward her. And this scared her; they usually walked at a slow pace, they never ran. Then she noticed that this one was literally only flesh and bones; most of its body was already gone and all that was left were the bones and a certain amount of muscles; probably the less weight was what allowed it to run faster. The bones of the hooves had mutated and now resembled sharp talons. Applejack pointed was about to grab her pistol, but then she remembered she dropped it a while ago!

"Ah, hay!" she turned around and ran until she found a house with an open door; she jumped in there and closed it. The mutated zombie pony started slamming its body against the door while Applejack pressed hers against it too keep it from being opened. After a few more slams the zombie gave up. Applejack sat on the wooden floor and sighed in relief. She looked around and widened her eyes in excitement: lying on a table was another pistol, which she grabbed with her teeth. This one was a little heavier and had a longer barrel. There was a letter under the weapon:

"My dearest Roseluck

Sorry for leaving without telling you in person, but I just couldn't wake you up. You look so peaceful. Anyway, they need all the help they can in the battlefield. I don't know when I will return or if I will return, but I will keep you in mind all the time. Hope you do the same for me. This is my favorite weapon, I want you to keep it. Use it to protect yourself from the monsters and the bad ponies who want to send us all to jail. I hope to see you soon."

"Ah'm sorry for takin' the gun this pony gave ya, Roseluck!" she returned to the door and slowly opened it. The creature was nowhere to be found. "Guess it's safe!" but she said that too soon. The moment she stepped out of the house the crature, which was waiting on top of the house, pounced on her. It started to claw her, but the HEV Suit was resistant enough, so Applejack received no damage. Suddenly it fell on the ground, an arrow trespassing the headcrab on its head.

"There is no rest here in Ponyville." Pinkie said from the balcony she was standing on. "Always keep your eyes open in every direction!"

Applejack nodded and got up. Pinkie Pie disappeared within the building and Applejack resumed her run. Following the dirt path she soon reached her old home. It looked exaclty like the last time she saw, except the wood was a little worn out and pieces of the ceiling were missing. She looked around.

"Guess Pinkie hasn't arrived yet." she thought, then walked toward the old barn. She slowly nudged the big door open. It was pitch black, but she could still recognize everything. Well, almost everything. She turned on the flashlight of her suit to take a better look at what was that silhouette in the middle of the barn and gasped.

Standing in front of her was another of the ponies dominated by a headcrab, but this one was different; the headcrab on its head was black and it had three more attached to its body. When it noticed Applejack's presence, one of the black headcrabs deattached from the pony's hide and jumped toward Applejack, who dodged it. She shoot it then proceeded to shoot the pony, who fell to the ground, dead. What suprised her was the fact that the other headcrabs deattached themselves from the pony too. This moment of distraction was all the headcrabs needed to attack her.

One of them jumped toward her and was about to attach itself to her head when an arrow hit it and pinned it against a wall of the barn. Two other arrows pinned the remaining black headcrabs to the ground.

"Careful with those ones." Pinkie said, reloading her crossbow again. "The darker ones are poisonous! In order to survive I had to use the whole stock of antidotes from Ponyville Hospital just because a scratch from one of them."

Now that Pinkie Pie was closer to her, Applejack could see how life in Ponyville was; her body was covered in scratches and scars, she had spots of missing fur all over her and dried blood in many places. The concerned look returned to Applejack's face.

"Come with me!" she said. "I'll take you to the secret tunnels."

Pinkie Pie turned around and walked toward the orchard of dead apple trees. The sight of all her loved trees dead made her sniffle.

There were more empty Headcrab Shells all over the orchard, as well as a few zombie headcrabs. Pinkie pointed and shot an arrow to its headcrab head.

"Goodbye, Berry Dreams. You're free!" she whispered, then shot another one. "Goodbye, Shoeshine. You're free!" then another. "Goodbye..." Applejack heard her sniffle. "Mrs. Cake. You're free..." then another. "Goodbye... Mr. Cake... You're... Free..." she wiped the tears that appeared on the corners of her eyes and resumed her walk. Soon they arrived in a shack with a metal door that didn't existed last time Applejack visited that part of her orchard. "Here it is! We were working with the Diamond Dogs to build tunnels that would connect all of the hideouts of the Resistance, but the Overwatch discovered it and filled the tunnels with both poison gas and headcrabs. Nopony has ever seen a single Diamond Dog ever since. Down there is not safer than Ponyville. In fact, it's much worse, but it's the only viable option considering that anything walking in open field is a moving target for the Overwatch. Not counting the many races of aliens that are living here now too!" with some difficulty Pinkie Pie turned a handwheel, lifting the gate. After the gate was open, she held the handwheel in place. "Now go! Save yourself!"

"Will ya be fine?"

"Heh, I have been taking care of myself for a good while now, it's not just because you came here and stirred up the whole hive that I'll be in trouble! I've been in worse situations." she said with a smile. Applejack smiled back and went through the open gate. All there was in there was a hole with a ladder in it. "You're reckless, did you know that?"

Applejack chuckled. "Ah try my best to be careful, but those varmints simply won't let me!"

"Try not to get yourself killed. Many ponies out there need you, Applejack!"

Applejack's eyes widened when she hear Pinkie say her name. Pinkie smiled at her and let go of the handwheel, making the metal gate fall again.

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