"Please! She's the only family I have left!" A desperate Earth Pony father cried, clutching his daughter in his legs close to him while an armed and armored Gryphon glared at him. His daughter in the meantime was silent but for her rapid breaths.

"She's also infected, Pony! Look at her!" The Gryphon pointed a talon. "We don't want to kill her, but the longer you waste our time, the greater the chance that we'll have to! Now put her down and step back!"

"No! I'll not let you-" The Gryphon whistled through his beak and two more guards that were speaking to a merchant ran over.

"Separate those two! We need to amputate her back leg before it's too late." They nodded and stepped forward to wrestle the two apart. When the father refused to back down one of them knocked him on the head with the pommel of his short sword.

Pulling his half-moon axe from his back the first Gryphon separated the filly's injured leg from the other as best he could, then swung his axe through flesh, bone, and blood with a sickening squelch. The other two wasted no time and set to staunching the blood with their own bandages.

The first turned away and grabbed his stomach, feeling a little queasy. Soldier or not, this wasn't something one could get used to. Wind Gods willing, he wouldn't be forced to. In the meantime their latest 'patient' would need to be moved to the nearest medical isolation pen in case the emergency ‘surgery’ had indeed been delayed for too long and she still turned. The father would be returned to his tent until he came to. In the meantime it was almost time for those currently on border patrol to retire for the day and be replaced by someone else.

Each day half their nation’s standing army patrolled their nation’s borders, each day they slew at least a dozen of the undead ponies, though there were usually more. There were especially more when a new batch of refugees fleeing from Equestria would be found crossing the borderline between their two countries. Sometimes their pursuers were few, and sometimes there could be over two dozen, though fewer and fewer refugees were being found as of late.

When refugees first started arriving they came in droves, and there were many of them that tried to hide bite injuries on friends or family members in the hopes that maybe, just maybe their darling filly or colt or husband or wife might be some sort of chosen lucky pony to be immune to this plague. They never were, and it almost always ended with a new outbreak inside the makeshift refugee camps several miles within. After the fifth time in one week that it occurred every refugee was forced to strip naked before being allowed into Gryphona, even if their clothes and bandaged injuries had to be torn from them by force. Though only Pony-kind seemed to be turned into Shamblers when they died after being bitten, this did not prevent them from attacking the other races (and animals).

Supposedly this ‘plague’ will only last about ten to fifteen years tops, but it’s already gone on long enough! If the only invaders we had to deal with were the undead there’d be no issue, but all these immigrants are putting a strain on our nation’s food and general supplies. He looked at the father being carried back to his assigned living area and frowned. If it goes on for more than three or four more years the Ponies might find themselves being eaten by something other than their undead brethren!