by neorenamon

Mad Sandow looked on as his pet Blackstar continued to fondle her own pet Roseluck as she was tied to the apple tree. She could feel his copious amounts of seed still leaking from her mareslit down her inner thighs.

"Look dollface," he said to them, "I better make sure the gang hasn't tried to get the choice pieces of meat before we do." He stood and turned as he added, "Just stay here with the new bitch until I return." As he walked by the two mares, she could feel his huge coarse hand grab her flank over her cutie mark and squeeze it hard. "I must say your flower cutie mark is one of the prettiest I've seen to date."

Roseluck sniffled and wept as she listened to him stomp off. She thought escaping the underground of the collapsed Ponyville would be much better than what it turned out to be: A monster's sex slave.

After a few moments, she could feel Blackstar's more modest breasts rub against her back as she reached around her torso to resume playing with the helpless mare's breasts herself.

"I'd say you were lucky," she whispered into Rose's ear.

"Lucky?!" she asked back in dismay.

"Yeah," she said, "Lucky. As long as I'm looking after you, you won't get eaten or murdered. All you have to do is stay submissive to Mad Sandow and do as I say."

"How can you monsters eat pony flesh?!" she hissed as she tried to look back over her shoulder.

"Don't you understand?!" she replied as she nibbled one of Rose's earlobes, "Ever since Discord upset the balance, the sunshine has never been dependable. Look at this sick apple orchard around us. Even with no pony tending it, it should still be doing better than this."

She looked at other trees through the branch in limbs her head was basically stuck in. The trees... didn't look so good. At first, she was only concerned about gathering what was left of the good fruit, but now that Black mentioned it, the trees didn't look healthy.

"But pony flesh?!" she continued.

"With the plants sick, the animals have also suffered," sighed Black, "We have to compete with them for what remains of the good plants. Eating animals used to be enough while they lasted. It literally takes thousands of pounds of plants to grow a cow."

"So?"

"I'm... I'm too weak willed to let myself starve to death," she sobbed, "But what choice to we have? Ponies are the only plentiful meat there is left around here." She placed her hands on Rose's shoulder as she whispered closer to her ear, "Eating pony meat makes me sick. I hate it. I hate myself for being reduced to a life like this. But Sandow saved me. Saved my worthless life. Just like he protects the members of the Block B Gang."

"There... must be a place where life has to be better than this," sobbed Roseluck, "Like Canterlot. It's not that far from here. Only a couple of days on our hooves."

The sound Black made was a cross between sobbing and laughing. "As soon as their mages detect I've been eating pony meat to survive, they'd put me to death as fast as they could get me to the executioner's block. That's what they do to all of us who did what they have to... just to survive another day..."

"That can't be right!" protested Rose, "Celestia would never..."

"She's not around any more!!" came the retort, "and no one like her was left in charge!!" Rose could feel the tears falling on her shoulder. "I just want to eat daisy sandwiches and have a normal foal... Is that so much to ask? But in the world damned by Discord..." She was crying too hard to say anything more.

"I have to believe that Celestia is watching us from somewhere... waiting to return to us... and save us from this hell," whispered Rose.

She wept for several minutes until she whispered, "If I leave him, I'd be dead within the week. As long as I keep in his favor, I swear I'll keep you alive as well... If that ever goes... we're both dead meat."

Rose realized that Blackstar was as much a prisoner of the Gang as she was now.

...

Mad Sandow soon came upon the little clubhouse they found in the apple orchard. He was letting some of his "officers" use the place. They were too lazy to just make do with the grass and dirt around them. Having a roof over their head made them feel... more important. But as long as they did their jobs, he didn't care if they were feeling smug and superior as long as they didn't try that crap with him.

But soon his nose was assaulted with an all too familiar scent. The smell of dead pony. There was something laying on the ground ahead that he hurried forward to look at. It was a body. A headless body.

"Jack?!" he asked to no pony in particular. Even without a head, he knew his gang well enough to know each of them by their build. He looked up to see the broken wall and the large hole in it. As he came closer, there was more mangled bodies laying around the sides of the place. It looked like they were chopped up by a small army or perhaps a huge monster, but there hadn't been signs of monsters in the area for weeks. Even in times like these, they tended to keep to wild areas like the Everfree Forest.

"WHO DID THIS TO YOU?!" he screamed at the sky as if it was going to answer him, "I'LL MURDER THEM!!"

Tossing all of the remains inside the building, he removed a silver lighter from his vest pocket and set the place on fire. About a tenth of his gang burned up with the crappy old treehouse.

"Ain't none of my gang going to be scavenger chow," he cursed as he turned to walk away. He began walking in the direction he last saw his men with the other two mares. But he wasn't in too much of a hurry. There was more of his gang there. Surely they could look after themselves. There was no army remaining. No Guard to harass them. They were too tough for the monsters to hunt. Only the largest and most vicious monster would even think about trying to take his gang down.

...

It didn't seem very long before Applejack and her party came upon the main compound of Sweet Apple Acres. While it was is disrepair, it didn't look too bad from the outside. The doors on all the buildings were broken in, and she was sure anything remotely useful was looted from them months ago.

As she came around the side of the house, she could see a group of ponies gathered about the pump. Doc Turner was pumping the handle furiously as a line of Ponyvillers waited to fill their pails with the fresh water from the aquifer underneath the farm. Looking down at her arm, she noticed that Scoots had cried herself to sleep a while ago. And the one called Lilly she carried over her shoulder showed no signs of coming around herself.

Sweetie followed along behind in silence. She was too traumatized to make small talk.

"Goodness!" yelled the Mayor as she ran over, "What happened to you?!"

Turner stopped pumping as he looked at them as well.

"Gang attacked us," said Applejack briefly.

"Well where are they now?!" asked the Mayor in some alarm.

"Burning in Tartarus," she replied evenly.

She began checking on Scoots as the Doc came running over. It was a total relief that none of the blood on the pegasus filly was her own. There was no sign of external wounds.

"Give her to me," said Turner as he approached from the other side.

Applejack passed Lilly over to him from her shoulder to his arms, but only used her free arm to hold Scoots closer to her chest.

"I don't see any wounds," he said as he looked Lily over, "It must be some other blood on her."

"That's good to know," she replied, "It looks like Scoots is the same way..." She paused to look over Applejack before she exclaimed, "Wait, are those bite marks on you?!"

"Those monsters!" cried Sweetie Belle, "They're CANNIBALS!! They wanted to eat us!!"

"That's horrible," replied the Doctor, "What has Equestrian society been reduced to?!"

The Mayor placed her hand on Applejack's bicep as she said, "I don't know how to thank you. But whatever food we can find, we'll share with you as long as you're here."

Applejack just snorted as she carried Scoots towards the front door of the house.

"Going to clean up?" she asked hopefully, "I can't promise you a lot of water, but I'm sure there's enough for a good sponge bath."

"I'll get some water to them as soon as I'm done at the pump," he said as they continued to walk away and Sweetie quietly walked behind her. "And as soon as I take care of Miss Lily here," he added as he looked at the mare in his arms.

"I'll get Bulk to pump the water," said the Mayor, "You clean her up and make sure she doesn't have any small wounds we can't see."

"Very good," he said as he began carrying her towards the pumps. He still needed some water to clean her up with.

...

Scoots awoke to a splash on her side. The water felt cold and it came as a shock to her. She opened her eyes to see that she was in a large zinc bathtub, and that Sweetie was on one side while Applejack was on the other. The large mare was using water and a sponge to clean the blood off her hide. It was pooling in the bottom with the small amount of water being used to clean her.

"Scoots?!" asked Sweetie, "Are you okay?!"

"The horror," sobbed Scoots. She looked at Applejack who was still covered in blood. "Why isn't she cleaning herself first?!" she asked in surprise, "She's much worse than me."

"I asked her to go first," came the reply, "but she insisted you get cleaned first."

"A-yup," she agreed. For a second, Scoots felt like she was close to Apple Bloom again even though she was dead and gone. It felt like seeing the ghosts that came from Applejack's body was just a fading nightmare she suffered while sleeping in her arms.

"I wish... I had a big sister like you," sighed Scoots as she looked up to Applejack's shining green eyes.

"No," she said firmly, "Ya don't want to be around the likes of me. Only death shall follow me until my work here is done."

"DEATH?!" asked Sweetie.

"There is much evil in the world that must be cut away," she continued, "It must be removed before the world can return to a sense of being civilized an all. I am the knife that shall cut the evil out of Equestria's body."

"That sounds sad," commented Sweetie.

"And then I must remove the heart of darkness itself," she swore, "Either Discord or I must be the only one left after we fight. Those he's corrupted and slain must be... AVENGED!"

"But Discord's a god," whined Scoots, "How can you kill a god?!"

"Ah don't know yet," she replied, "But... I got no choice but to try."

"So... you're gonna leave us... like Apple Bloom did?" she said as she began to choke up again.

"When I'm done, her spirit will rest with all of the other dead. She didn't leave because she wanted to go. She didn't want to leave either of you all."

"So you can... speak to the spirits?"

"Not really sugar-cube," she replied, "Ah... just git a feelin bout what they're thinkin..."

Scoots grabbed her arm and cried, "I don't want you to leave us!"

"Ah ain't leaving til that monster Sandow ain't gonna bother y'all any more."