The rain was falling hard from the grey clouds hanging and drifting across the sky. On occasion lightning would arc from one cloud to another, or would on rare occasion strike the ground. The wind blew from time to time, cold and biting to any who did not wear sufficient clothing or perhaps had very thin fur.

A few four-legged figures with milky-white eyes or sometimes none at all took slow and stumbling steps forward across the mostly-open and grassy ground while others dragged themselves through the tall grass and shrub across the ground, sometimes leaving bits of themselves behind in the process. No birds flitted about in this place any longer. No animals came to dwell where the civilized had once tread as was common occurrence in times passed, and there were especially no travelers that dared attempt a short cut through the wilderness. There was a time when it was mostly safe to do such a thing, but in the modern world, only those without wings whom were desperate or suicidal attempted such short cuts.

Sadly it was not just the wild that had become the dwelling place of what the still-living called Shamblers. Many a small town and city were much the same way with few exceptions, and with each of those exceptions, life was hard and normally unpleasant. But to quote the still living captain of the royal guard:

"A life of comfort leads to letting your guard down. If you want you and what's left of your family and friends to survive, you'll never let your guard down or do anything you'd call another stupid for."

Shining Armor frowned as he looked almost down diagonally from a balcony of the Canterlot royal palace. Along the slopes of the mountain on which both the palace and the city had been built he could see the outline of hundreds of figures trying to walk or climb up to reach one of the last bastions of Pony life in Equestria only to slide or tumble back down again. Thank goodness.

As far as he knew, there were only three other towns and cities that still had the living dwelling inside them. All others were either filled with the dead and rotting, the Shamblers, or had been burned to the ground or deserted. One of these surviving cities was Cloudsdale.

Cloudsdale had suffered far fewer casualties than any other large dwelling place of Ponies for two simple reasons: undead Pegasai had no idea how to fly, and their cloud walking magic failed when they succumbed to the infection from bites or blood-splatter to the eyes, mouth, or open wounds. If any Pegasus returned home with a bite they would fall through the cloudcrete when they died, thus preventing spread of the Shamblers in their city.

Another other was Appaloosa, which was situated in a hot desert. Any Shamblers that wandered into the desert quickly turned in a regular sun baked corpse within three days to a week. This was not to say that Appaloosa was completely safe, but like most folk that lived away from the heart of Equestrian lands before the first few Shambler outbreaks, the moment the Appaloosans first heard of major trouble brewing elsewhere the whole town came together like a family. When more and more Ponies kept turning up day after day on the train telling the same story the townsfolk took action.

With the help of a few local tribes of Buffalo they began cutting and transporting stone blocks from an old quarry to the southeast of their town to build a wall two Buffalo tall. By the time the first of the Shamblers successfully made their way along the train tracks in pursuit of yet another train full of refugees (some of which who turned out to have already been infected and were placed in the town jail until they turned) the whole of Appoloosa proper was well fortified, and the townsfolk exhausted (but safe from Shamblers) from their efforts.

The farms and orchards were simply too large to include, but as stated before, most Shamblers never made the journey from the green lands of Equestria's core to dry and hot Appoloosa, so for the most part life went on as it had pretty much the same as before.

If only the same could have been said for Ponyville. Shining Armor thought, not for the first time, thinking of his sister, whom he'd not heard from in over a year. He could see Ponyville with the naked eye from where he stood, but all it took was a glance through a pair of binoculars to see that the living were no longer present in that little town.

Shining Armor wiped a single tear that traced down the side of his face and turned his head off in the direction of the Crystal Empire, where he knew Cadence was trying to keep everypony calm and productive.

The extremely cold weather between the Equestrian border and the Crystal Empire had a similar effect on the Shamblers as the desert did, except that rather than drying out and destroying the Shamblers it froze them near to solid instead. Any who journeyed from Canterlot to out there nowadays could look out from the train's windows and see several broken rows of stiff and stuck Shamblers to either (and sometimes upon) the train's tracks as they rolled atop the rails. A triangular plow had been added to the front of the train after the train's first return trip from the Crystal Empire (since the first widespread outbreak) to remove risk of derailing from running frozen Shamblers over.

They're going to need to be dealt with at some point, but right now things are still shaky here.

Celestia and Luna had tried to keep the citizens of Canterlot calm, but had ultimately failed. The ensuing panic over the next week when a group of Shamblers were discovered inside the city led to nearly half of the population of Canterlot either being infected or killed by accident. In the end the princesses had to use their magic to teleport the remains of the royal and town guard and some two hundred-plus citizens behind one of the two walls erected during one of the times of strife in the past. They then commanded the Unicorn guards to bolt shut the gates and fuse them to the frame to prevent them from being opened again.

There was hesitation on part of the guards, for many of them still had family or neighbors or friends on the other side, but Luna, with tears of regret mirroring those of her elder sister trotted forward and did it for them.

As the days went by fleeing Pegasai stopped coming over the walls. Screams for help or of agonized pain as someone was eaten alive became fewer and farther between, and now, with a little more than fourteen months having gone by since then the only sound to be heard from the Lower District was the wind whistling down the stone alleyways, the rain dripping from overflowing gutters during a downpour, and if you listened carefully there could be heard the sound of slow and heavy clops that marked the hoof falls of an upright Shambler.

If anything good could have been said to come of that tragic and horrifying time (not that it was any less horrifying a time to live in today) it was the discovery that only Ponies were affected by the Shambler infection. Several Minotaur and Gryphons tourists had been bitten (or had a chunk torn out of them) before reaching and getting over the wall through one method or another, and to date none of them had Turned. In time, Celestia hoped to negotiate with the other races to gain military aid and eventually start taking back their homes.

But in the meantime we'll have to fend for ourselves.

Shining Armor turned away from the balcony's end and trotted through the palace. He nodded at any servants or fellow guards that he passed, but said nothing to anypony until he reached the sealed gates at the end of the Upper District. All along the wall several activities were taking place, most of them work.

Volunteer Pegasai were hauling sacks of soil taken from the valley surrounding the mountain to be used to plant gardens that would hopefully yield them enough food to last until the much hoped-for help from the other races came. Due to the undead being too stupid to know how to climb, fly, or use ladders the rooftops of both the upper and lower city would be used for planting gardens upon.

The Earth Ponies stood at the sealed gates occasionally thrusting between the bars with spears or other pointed pole weapons to kill any Shamblers that came within range and the Unicorns stood nearby to hurl the destroyed undead from the city and down the slopes of the mountain. The Unicorns also helped levitate wooden planks stripped from around the palace and the upper city (much to the chagrin of the surviving Noble families) up on top of the wall where several Gryphons and more Pegasai were busy building makeshift bridges from the top of the wall to the buildings closest to them. It was hoped by many that if a reliable rooftop bridge system could be made, they might not need foreign help to take back Canterlot City at the least, and could safely impale the Shamblers with long spears from the safety of a flat roofed single or double-story building. Currently they were two blocks out from the wall.

It's a decent plan I suppose. Shining Armor frowned. I can't help but feel a bit nervous about it, though. Most of those boards weren't made to be walked on. All it's going to take is for someone of the wrong weight to step on one and-

"Jeeze, Day Captain!" an exasperated sudden and close voice addressed him, nearly making him jump out of his fur. "I know our species is pretty much boned, but would it kill you to smile once in awhile? Your looking serious all the time is just depressing!" Shining's grim expression became a scowl. "Even that's an improvement!" A few trots away from him stood one of Luna's personal Bat-Pony guards (minus the armor that was standard for their uniform).

"Smile?" Shining asked, his scowl deepening but his volume lowering to a heated whisper as he approached the bat-pony mare so the others would be less likely to overhear. "How can I smile after all that's happened? After losing almost my entire family?! After watching my home city tear itself apart from fear and an undead plague?!" He turned away from her, looking once more at the sealed gates just in time to see a guard impale a Shambler through an eye socket. "You ask me why I don't smile." Shining laughed without humor. "What reason do any of us have to smile?"