Dear Diary,

Today I woke early and waited patiently. The hail had melted and there hadn’t been much new snowfall during the night, which was what I was hoping for. Our disappointingly poor progress yesterday was getting me worried about our mission today.

Luckily, we received some good news over breakfast: last night Katie had gathered the last parts she needed to make her latest invention, and would be returning to her workshop starting this morning. Since her workshop was far south of here, we parted ways as soon as we left the warehouse. While her departure from the group left us one pony shorter, it eliminated a liability and possibly deadweight from our party just before embarking on a mission that would likely require group agility.

I knew that going into the airport wouldn’t be easy. Many of the ponies we’ve met spoke of the Airport in fear, but all we knew for sure was that there would be zombies. Lots of zombies, of course, since a few zombies wouldn’t be enough to warrant such fear. There had to be a sea of zombies out there, based on the traffic that airport got before the war.

“Are you absolutely sure you want to go in there?” I asked as we got ready to leave.

“Absahlutely!” Grapevine exclaimed.

“If it means rescuing our stablemates, we’ll do everything it takes,” said Dmitry.

“Okay,” I said. “Then let’s go in there and make it count. Do you have any idea where they could be?”

“Not in the slightest,” said Grapevine. “They’re pro’lly holed up in some cranny somewhere. We’ll hafta do a clean sweep.”

“Unless we can find some clues to their whereabouts, said Dmitry. Hey, what’s the chance that the security cameras are still working?”

“Pretty slim,” I replied, “Though that’s a start.” I suppose we could start at the security office, wherever it is, and maybe stock up on ammunition while we’re there.

“That’s the spirit!” chimed Grapevine. “Now let’s go, time’s-a-wastin’!”

We parted ways with Katie, who said she needed to go back to her workshop somewhere to the southeast. The rest of us headed north, and we didn’t have to go far until we spotted the wide snow-covered plain that held one of the runways.

“Okay guys, I think we need a plan,” I said. “Now, if what Gaucho and the ponies back in Sandy Shades said, there’s gonna be a heck of a lot of zombies in there. If that’s the case, then going in through the front would be a terrible idea since it was so heavily trafficked. Let’s go in through one of the concourses so we can slip in unnoticed.”

Dmitry and Grapevine thought it was a good idea, probably because it was one of the only things we had that vaguely resembled a plan.

There was a fence around the runway, but we happened to be near one of the main gates and Dmitry made quick work of the lock. We then trotted along a service road that ran along the edge of the runway area. We could see the big white control tower marking our destination in the distance. The whole time I kept my head low, fearing that an airplane might swoop overhead and decapitate me with one of its wings. Consciously I knew this was unfounded since no more planes would ever fly here, but like my similar fear of getting hit by a car when walking down the middle of the road, it simply persisted out of habit.

“Hey, look at that.”

Dmitry pointed to the control tower, where we could see what looked like a few pegasi flying around it. They wore some kind of dark uniform, as if they were elite flyers or something.

“Huh,” I said. “Are those shadowbolts?”

“I dunno,” Dmitry replied. “It’s unlikely. I mean, why would they be down here, and why would they be flying around the tower like that?”

Meanwhile, Grapevine was busy fiddling with the radio on her pipbuck. Channel surfing-- just for fun, I guess, but there was admittedly little fun to be had when all the stations were static, mixed in with a couple of distress beacons and repeating messages. Suddenly, she stumbled upon something that sounded like words:

“This is Tortoise-6 to Hare-6, Radio Check, over.”

“This is Hare-6 to Tortoise-6. Radio Check Lima Charlie, signal strength 4 by 5, over.”

“Roger. Requesting status update on recon, over.”

“Recon complete. Tangos appear to only occupy Control Tower Building, nothing else. Energy rifles confirmed, also in possession of three large weapons, believed plasma cannon or energy minigun, experimental Novasurge unlikely. Bridge to parking garage is booby-trapped, assault from garage not recommended, over. Be advised, tangos appear to possess at least one hostage, over.”

“Roger. Prepare assault on east entrance to Control Building. Send papas one at a time to minimize fire exposure. Regroup before entering, then engage Battle Drill 6a.”

“Roger. Wilco, over.”

“Good luck, Sergeant. Out.”

“Didja hear that?” Grapevine exclaimed. “They’ve got hostages!”

“And they’re in the control tower!” Dmitry said. “Silver, do you know how to get there?”

“I think it’s over by the parking garages,” I said. “But we should stick by our original plan and go through the terminal, then disarm the booby traps on the bridge. If we approach it directly, we might enter a war zone.”

“Good idea,” said Grapevine.

“Do you think we’ll have enough time to take the long way?” asked Dmitry. “We don’t know if those ponies on the radio are friendly or not.”

“The fact that they seem concerned about the hostages indicates that they’re not raiders,” I said. “Besides, it sounds like they’re launching their assault from the ground floor. The pegasi in the tower will probably try and keep them from getting to the top, so their inevitable battle should buy us some time.”

“The longer we stand here, the less time we’ll have ta save our friends!” said Grapevine. “C’mon, let’s go!”

And so we ran. Of course, we had to stop our breath a few times, but our friends from Hare Squad bought us some time by delaying their attack (one of their fireteams got lost in whatever building they were in).

As we approached Concourse A, where they had all the regional jets, I started to hear some growling among the snow. I abruptly stopped and motioned for my companions to do the same.

“Hold on,” I said. “We’ve got company.”

I prepared a shotgun and looked around, but I didn’t see anything. Then I checked my pipbuck’s EFS combat targeting spell. There were several red ticks in the area representing hostile elements, but I couldn’t see any actual creatures. The spell directed me towards a heap of rotting flesh lying on the ground, which it labeled ‘Feral Ghoul.’ I didn’t know what that meant, (probably just a more formal name for ‘zombie,’) but the EFS said it was hostile, which meant I had to kill it. Even though it was lying motionless on the ground, my pipbuck said it was at full health. Thinking back to our first encounter with zombies on the freeway, I knew it would ‘wake up’ and attack us at some point. I wondered how close I could get before it did…

A few yards, apparently. Then it began to rise and I had to shoot it. Still, it startled me to see something that looked so dead come to life, so I fumbled a bit and lost control of my gun for a few seconds. By the time I had recollected myself, the zombie was beginning its mad dash towards me, and several of its friends were also awakening from their slumber. I backpedaled rapidly and began firing, aiming towards its head because I presumed it was the weakest spot.

The EFS only allotted me a few ‘action points’ that I could spend on using it before I needed to recharge, and boy did those run out quickly! After just two shots in EFS, I had to switch to aiming my gun manually. This made shooting the zombies rather difficult because I hardly had any practice shooting, and what little I did was mostly with pistols. I guess I missed plenty of shots, but between the three of us, all the zombies on this section of the tarmac were dead within minutes.

“Phew!” said Grapevine. “Glad we’ve got that over with.”

“Silver, you should probably switch to a different weapon,” Grapevine advised me. “That shotgun doesn’t fire fast enough, and you nearly got clawed by those zombies!”

“Yeah,” I said as I reloaded my shotgun, then placed it into my bag and took out my assault rifle.

“Yeah!” Dmitry exclaimed. “Now we’re talkin’!”

“I shoulda used a couple of mah grenades,” Grapevine said.

“No, it was good that you didn’t,” said Dmitry. “We’re surrounded by jet engines and service vehicles. You’d have set half the tarmac on fire!”

“Ah like fire,” Grapevine muttered absent-mindedly, before shaking the thought out of her head and refocusing. “But if it keeps y’all safe, ah won’t.”

Then after a pause, she asked, “Can ah use mah grenades inside the terminal?”

“As long as neither of us are within the blast radius, then knock yourself out,” said Dmitry.

“I think we should all prep some grenades,” I added. “I’m expecting a literal sea of zombies in there. Anything we can do to thin out the herd.”

We found a door into the terminal, and Dmitry picked the lock with ease. We found ourselves at the end of the Concourse, but if I remember correctly, it was one of the shorter ones. A mass of sickly, rotting animated corpses soon arrived to greet us with their ghastly groans, but the three of us were prepared. We unleashed all we had: grenades, flamethrowers, and assault rifle fire. Our vision was obstructed by a continuous orange glow of flames and sparks, yet we kept shooting into the crowd. A silhouette of a pony emerged in the flow, I shot it down. Another emerged, Dmitry shot it down. Two more emerged, Grapevine doused them in flames. Eight more show up, we lob a grenade. It was hella scary, but the adrenaline made the experience exhilarating as we held our line against the onslaught of zombies. This process continued until the mass had slowed to a trickle, then stopped altogether. We collectively breathed a sigh of relief now that we were out of immediate danger.

After the battle was over and our weapon barrels no longer glowed, Dmitry stooped down to loot the corpses.

“No,” I said. “We don’t have time for that. Come on!”

We raced down a hallway until we reached a room with two escalators and a staircase. At the top of the escalators stood an enormous abomination of an equine, a gigantic zombie made up of three zombies melded together. Protruding upward from its colossal rotten potato of a body were three heads, and protruding downward were six pairs of hairy legs, each bent outward at a 90 degree angle and appearing more arachnid than pony.

Hoping it wasn't a hydra, I targeted one of the heads. So did my friends. Except we didn't each target a different head like I was sort of expecting; two of us targeted one head while the third targeted another, leaving one head free. I couldn't really tell who was shooting at what, but in the heat of the moment it didn't really matter. After taking several repeated blows, the head eventually exploded into a burst of gore. I waited for a few seconds, half expecting it to regrow, but fortunately it didn't. Then we made quick work of the others.
I suppose the huge rotting pile of a corpse would have had something useful to loot if we had looked close enough, but we continued on because we were pressed for time and the thing was disgusting. I also didn't know how a beast that big would carry loot, unless it had swallowed something in the course of a rampage. But then we'd have to cut open the chest, and...
No time for that. Gotta stay focused on the mission. After climbing the stairs, we were now in the B concourse, which was the shortest part of the airport. There were a hoofful of zombies scattered about here, but we cleared them out easily with a quick sprinkler spray of gunfire across the room.
We advanced into a large atrium which connected the B and C concourses to the main terminal building, where we came upon a huge mass of zombies. Some of them began to charge at us, so we cut them down. But the noise alerted the rest, who began shuffling towards us, some of them began making huge running lunges. We tried gunning them down, but there were too many, and some of them started getting far too close for comfort.
"Fall back, fall back!" I yelled, and then turned tail and bolted. I felt selfish for running away from them on a whim like that and worried that they might be too entangled with zombies to get out. I considered going back and trying to help them, but fortunately when I looked back I saw they were doing exactly what I told them: running.

We retreated into the B concourse where I ran behind a row of chairs. I figured that some sort of a barricade would be useful, even though I was aware I was also cornering myself: In the nook that was ‘Gate B1,’ if the zombies ended up surrounding us then we would have no ways to escape except through the door to the jetway (which was most likely locked), or to smash the windows and jump out.

The plan hinged on the cooperation of my friends who, luckily, were good at picking up on hints and following ‘directions.’ Shortly after I arrived and took up position, they also arrived and took up position alongside me. Together, the three of us squatted awkwardly on the seats, peering over their backs towards the long wide corridor where the zombies were fast approaching. Then I realized that one of our gun barrels was not like the others.

“Grapevine! You have a flame thrower. Get up and go guard our left flank!”

She seemed confused and hesitated.

“Ummm,”

“Just do it, or it’s all our asses!”

Okay, that was not the best response, but it was in the heat of battle and I had bigger worries than hurting somepony’s feelings. However, she awkwardly got up and staggered over to the space left of the seat benches.

“This good?”

I was about to answer ‘yes,’ when suddenly a zombie lunged at her and she reflexively pulled her trigger. A split second later, a zombie thrust its forehooves into my personal space, and not knowing what else to do, I thrust my gun outward, holding it sideways, to block the attack. It worked and pushed the zombie away a few inches, giving me enough time to realize what was going on and what I should do. I then turned my rifle around so the barrel was facing outward and began to fire…

We kept shooting from our little barricade for... I don’t know how long. Five minutes maybe? But it felt more like fifty. A wave of zombies came, we mowed them down, we reload, rinse and repeat. I don’t know how much ammo we went though, but it was a lot. The end result was about a hundred corpses lying on the floor and twenty times as many empty cartridges as well. As we got towards the end we became exhausted, but it also became easier because the advancing zombies kept tripping over the corpses from the previous waves.

After we had a minute to catch our breath, I decided to press onward.

“Alright, let’s go!”

So we rushed forward, back into the atrium and then towards the security checkpoint, which was a total mess because everything had been knocked over. We had to be careful here since we still had to get through, slowing us down like a bog as we had to carefully trace our footing,
while also shooting at a few zombies rushing towards us from up ahead.

Beyond the confused mass of collapsed metal detectors and felled line stanchions, we found ourselves facing more oncoming zombies in a terrain that was mostly open, and very dark because there were no nearby windows. We hid behind two large conical support beams, which didn’t help us a whole lot since the zombies didn’t return our fire, but made me feel safer anyway while I was fighting them because at least I had cover.

Following that was a mad dash into the ticketing lobby. Here there was ample lighting and a very high ceiling, providing a sense of spacious emptiness when looking up. It was a very large and long room with ticketing counters on one wall and windows and doors leading to the street on the other. It was curved at the edges, which had the effect of making the entire room look like it followed a slight curve the whole way through. Luggage was strewn across the room, most likely abandoned during the craze of the bombing. Stanchions from the lines in front of the ticketing counters had been knocked down, but they were more spread out than they were in security.

The room was also crawling with zombies.

"Heeeelllllllp!"

The cry came from somewhere off to the left. There was a mob of zombies swarming around what appeared to be an obese red earth pony stallion.

We rushed towards him and felled the zombies like we were cutting through tall grass with a machete. Once there were no longer any zombies in the immediate area, we approached him.

"Wow, you saved me!" he exclaimed in amazement. "I thought I was done for. Thanks a million!"

"You're welcome," I said. But before I could say anything else, Grapevine interrupted us.

"Uh, guys... can we cut the chit-chat? I think we've got company..."

We looked and saw a massive wall of zombies approaching us in the distance.

"Holy shit," I said quietly. I whipped out my gun and prepared to shoot.

"Um... some advice, if I may..." said the stallion. "You might need that minigun over there."

He pointed towards a minigun which lay among what appeared to be a couple of suits of power armor.

"Does that even..." I asked, going over to investigate. I opened the magazine and saw that it still had quite a bit of ammo left. I then tried to lift the minigun to fire it, but was just barely capable of getting it off the ground.

"Mount it on the suits," Dmitry said as he came over to help me.

Together we were able to lift the gun on top of the power armor suits. The zombies were within shooting range now, so we pulled the trigger. The minigun took a few seconds to wind up, but then it unleashed a hail of bullets across the room. It took our combined strength to keep it steady, spraying a yellow jet of bullets towards the mob kinda like those pictures of policemen spraying crowds with fire hoses to break up protests. Moving it gently from side to side allowed us to spray the fire across the room, greatly thinning out the mob.

Grapevine covered our rear with her flamethrower, and together we quite literally lit up the room. We kept doing this until the minigun ran out of bullets and Grapevine's flame thrower ran out of fuel, but by this point we had culled the crowd down to manageable levels. From here we could just shoot them down with our regular array of weaponry.

After we couldn’t see any more zombies, the stallion let out a cry of relief.

“Phew!” he said, wiping some sweat off his brow.

I cantered over to him and asked him the most pressing question on my mind.

“What the HELL are you doing here!?!”

“Silver--” Dmitry scolded, but the stallion didn’t seem the least bit offended by my outburst.

“The name’s Carpetbagger, m’lady,” he said, tipping his hat. It was a fucking fedora.

“I travel the world collecting carpets,” he continued. “Day of the bombs I was up at Carpet-con in Vanhoofer. Figured I’d make a clean sweep down the west coast for all the carpets I’ve missed.”

He continued talking as he rummaged through his enormous carpet bag, a dusty red maroon sack with a gaudy floral design on it.

“I heard they were going to replace this with an updated design. Such a travesty. I mean, even though they’re trying to keep the same spirit of the original, it’s just not the same! Originals are always better than remakes, and this applies to carpets as well. I mean, have you even seen the updated design thing? I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad design, but it just isn’t nearly as iconic as the original. I’ve seen thousands of carpets in my lifetime and believe me, this is the finest carpet I've seen in a good while!"

I looked at the carpet. It did look pretty nice. I watched him as he took out a special kind of knife and began cutting a sample straight from the floor. Then I remembered where we were.

"Carpets!?" I yelled. "Carpets!? You almost got yourself killed in here, just for a piece of carpet?"

He replied nonchalantly, without even looking at me.

"Yeah, pretty much."

"Hey, that's an awesome hobby!" said Grapevine.

Carpetbagger had finished cutting his sample and now examined it in the light.

"Hmmm... I definitely could use a better sample. Perhaps one that isn't in the lobby."

"You could try the end of the 'E' Concourse," Grapevine suggested. "Not a lot of hoof traffic goes through there."

"That's a good idea," said Carpetbagger. He carefully laid the carpet inside his carpet bag, then closed the bag and hoisted it up onto his back.

"No. You can't go there," I objected. "It's too dangerous. We haven't cleared that part out!"

"Not to worry," he said. "I have you lovely ladies to protect me."

"We're not going to protect you," I said. sternly. "We have more important business to do, over there."

I pointed in the general direction of the control tower.

"In the parking garage?" he asked confusedly.

"Yeah... in the parking garage," I answered as I began nudging my friends towards a pair of derelict elevators.

"Oookie Dokie then," he said. "Wish you luck. I'm sure I can defend myself."

We crossed the bridge over the passenger pickup and dropoff areas, scurying towards the enormous parking garage that stood between us and the control tower. Although the terminal was cold, outside it was freezing and wet. The space between the garage and the terminal, was also covered by a large plexiglass awning that remained mostly in tact. This unintentionally created a wind tunnel, which channeled frigid gusts from a storm that was brewing outside.

I couldn't resist looking down, where two rival squads ducked behind concrete barriers and poles engaged in a heated firefight. One of the squads was an elite-looking group of pegasi decked out in special ops gear, while the others were a disparate collection of earth ponies and unicorns wearing standard army fatigues that were tattered and dirty. Despite being special ops, the special ops seemed to be losing the battle, and in desperation, one of them took out a plasma grenade and threw it.

One of the regular soldiers saw this and responded by throwing a regular frag grenade. The special ops responded by throwing a hail of plasma grenades, with an almost immediate response from their opponents.

"Holy shit, get down Silver!"

Dmitry tackled me, just as an enormous tsunami of flames erupted from below and blew across the bridge in our direction. After a few seconds, the flames passed and were replaced by soft waves of gasoline-scented billowing smoke.

"Thanks," I said as soon as I realized what he had done, but the merely replied curtly with, "We have to keep moving."

We crawled the rest of the way across the bridge until we were in the safety of the parking garage which, while colder than the terminal, was still very protective, quiet, and dry.

I surveyed the scene, half-expecting someone or something to be out there, but all I could hear was the wind echoing throughout the complex and the gentle crackling of the fires outside. Not satisfied with the apparent calm, I studied the possible dangers we might encounter here.

"Okay, I think we need to proceed very cautiously," I told my companions. "There could be more zombies in here, but we can't afford to hit any of the cars or else it'll start a chain reaction of explosions and kill us instantly. Just stay quiet and follow me. We'll try to use stealth and snipe them, one at a time."

We switched out our assault rifles for shotguns and crept down the dark halls of the parking garage. The eerie nature of the place only grew more apparent as we crept closer and closer towards the center, tip-toeing past row upon row of deceased vehicles. Many of the spaces weren’t completely filled, but there were enough cars to block our field of vision. I could hear the soft rumbling of distant explosions, the ebb and flow of the wind, and more closely, we could hear the sound of rain droplets or clumps of dirt falling from the walls.

It sounded exactly like I was inside a cave.

Closer to the interior, it became steadily darker. The eerie and pulsating noises were almost hypnotic, drawing us inward, closer and closer such that I let down my guard.

“Raaawwwggghhhh!!!!”

A zombie lunged out of the shadows, shoving me to the ground. I tried to get up and fight back, but it kept trying to claw at my face. Just trying to hold it back took all of my strength, and even though I would have liked to punch it, there was nothing I could do except waiting for my friends to save me.

Almost immediately after it had appeared, I heard the steady shots from their guns. Many of their shots just missed and hit the pavement, some of them barely grazing me, but eventually they wounded the zombie to the point where it stopped resisting.

I shoved it to the side and got up, about to thank my friends for their help but then more appeared, having been lured by the sound of our shots. I picked up my gun and started shooting, using my EFS to target their chests and make sure I didn’t miss. Accuracy was crucial in this moment, and I aimed directly for their hearts, thinking that would be the most effective at pushing them back, only to realize towards the end that they might not even have hearts, and that targeting them wasn’t really doing anything.

After they had all been shot, I looked at the others, but they merely nodded at me, so we kept going. Quietly we made our way through the complex, until we stumbled upon a small machine with flickering blue lights. Upon closer examination, it was merely a kiosk where you could go to pay for your parking ticket, which had at some point become damaged and was now malfunctioning. A tiny plume of smoke arose from a hole in its side about the size of a bullet, and the damage appeared to be quite recent.

The machine was close to a bank of elevators and a staircase. I tenuously began ascending the stairs, my steps becoming more confident when my companions followed suit. We climbed two stories, then I stopped to quickly catch my breath. I looked around, noticing that it was significantly lighter on this level. There were a lot less cars, meaning we could move around more, but we could also be attacked from almost every angle. It was also brimming with white misty fog.

Wandering through the fog, we stumbled upon a pair of zombies. They noticed us and shuffled towards us, but this time we were prepared. I was able to get out two shots into one of them before it got within striking distance of me, then I proceeded to club it with the butt of my gun until it collapsed. I shot it again to make sure it wouldn’t rise again, then I heard the growl of another zombie a couple of yards away. I repeated the process with that zombie, and then with another, but then found myself facing a cluster of several zombies. Luckily, there was a ramp going up to the next level behind me. I ran up the ramp, periodically stopping to shoot or to reload, and had thinned the herd down to a more manageable three or four by the time I got to the top.

I kept retreating and shooting until I had felled the last zombie, and only noticed my new surroundings while I was reloading my shotgun afterward: I was now on the roof. While the fog still covered the floor, the entire top half of the structure had been removed and replaced with the empty grey sky. For a pair of eyes that were still adjusting from the darkness of the floors below, it seemed very bright considering that the sky remained under a thick layer of storm clouds. It was also much windier, and colder, and little flecks of snow were starting to fall from the sky. I looked around and could not see either of my friends.

I wasn’t thinking, so I just assumed that they would catch up with me soon. I kept going, walking cautiously through the fog wary of zombies that might be lying in wait on the ground. I found a few, but each was alone and thus easy to dispatch. I kept walking at a steady rate towards the white tower which stood at the end of the garage: tall and imposing, flared outward towards the top part, and standing guard over the entire airport complex. At the top, a dark figure moved inside the windows, surveying the surroundings with the vigilance of a prison guard. I crouched down to cloak myself in the fog a few times to evade detection. I felt tense, like I was trespassing or trying to break out of jail.

As I approached the tower, it became harder to hide. The tower grew larger and more ominous while the fog subsided, leaving me with few options. Luckily, the garage itself could help me: on the side of the garage just left of the tower stood a large building on top of a concrete platform. I knew it was an office building for the Port Authority, but it looked like a fancy house, even having a porch with a garden in front of it. It gave me the perfect place to hide, under the concrete platform where it was dark and the pony up in the tower couldn’t see me. I wandered through the underbelly of that palace of bureaucracy, which apparently served as an employee parking lot for the offices above. The cars were slightly fancier than those of the travelers throughout the rest of the garage, and most of them still looked fairly serviceable. I giggled at the thought of trying to hijack one of them, but then realized that Dmitry might actually try to do it, and looked around at all the cars to see if he actually was.

It was at this point, when I was looking around me, that I realized that the others had not caught up to me. They had likely gotten lost inside the garage, or maybe they were just looking for me on the lower floors. I knew that the right thing to do would have been to go back and look for them, but at that moment I didn’t care. I was so close to our goal, the tower, and I wasn’t going to turn back now. Then I heard some thundering and went to the edge of the garage to see where it came from.

Apparently, the tower’s occupants had begun shooting at something on the ground with their laser cannon. A resounding clap, like thunder, could be heard throughout. Or maybe it was actual thunder? I looked at the sky and saw what I thought might have been a few flashes of lightning, but all I could tell for certain was that it was snowing a lot harder now than it had before.

I found a wall made of glass, separating the garage from a small room which contained three elevators and a couple of pairs of doors, one of which led to a short skybridge going towards the tower. I tried the pair of glass doors that was in the wall, but they were locked. I turned my rifle around and prepared to bash it into the glass, but then hesitated, fearing that it might set off an alarm and draw attention to myself. Then I figured it probably didn’t matter, so I smashed the gun’s butt into the glass and broke a small hole. I proceeded to break more holes until I had created a gap large enough for me to walk through.

The glass doors that led to the skybridge were also locked, but I couldn’t just break the glass because the shards would set off one of the numerous mines strewn across the bridge. I tried to pick the lock, but found it difficult, so I had to go upstairs into the office building and find a key. I eventually found one, and returned to unlock the door. Then I had to carefully disarm the mines one by one. Grapevine had shown me how back in the stable, but I was now expert. I wished she was there to help me, but I used it as an opportunity to hone my skills. I stayed low to the ground and moved very slowly and deliberately. It was tense. But it had to be done. After each mine I disarmed, I placed them in a pile against the wall. Eventually I had disarmed them all, and counted them: fifteen in all.

I would have just left them, but then I got the idea of using them to guard us while we slept. It seemed like a good idea, since we could just disarm them in the morning and they would wake us all up if anypony tried to attack. I had used enough supplies in the past week that I had room to store them all in my bags.

Then I heard explosions. It sounded like the battle was heating up again, so I hurried up and went inside the control tower. This was a hostage crisis, after all, so we had no time to waste.

I raced up a spiral staircase, then slowed to a crawl when I got to the top of the tower. Opening the door slowly and then sliding in, I found the control room to be mostly empty, except for three pegasi who were preoccupied with shooting at several ponies down below dressed in Provincial Guard uniforms. Seeing this gave me mixed feelings, because on one hoof, the guard protected our country, but… they did try to shoot at me. Twice. And extort travelers for passage. And they imposed martial law on the entire metropolitan area in the weeks before the bombs fell. And they robbed a refugee camp and left its inhabitants for dead…

Okay, maybe the Guard weren’t the good guys in this situation. But then… who are these ponies? There are three of them in this room, and probably more of them downstairs. They’ve got several laser guns, including what look like specially-made laser sniper rifles (now that’s something I haven’t seen before). Now what about their uniforms? Well, one was wearing a black officer’s uniform that I didn’t recognize, while the other two were wearing black power armor with a few blue spots and yellow lightning bolt trim… wait a minute-- are those Wonderbolts? What were they doing down here?

It didn’t matter. I wasn’t supposed to be in here, and they didn’t seem to notice me. With those ponies preoccupied with the firefight outside and my movements concealed by the ambient sound of gunfire, I swiftly scanned the room until I found a pony hiding in the shadows, slouching against one of the control consoles. I approached him, finding rather disappointedly that he was the only one. Still, he was a hostage, and I needed to rescue him.

“Don’t worry,” I said in a hushed tone as I approached. “I’m here to rescue you.”

“Silver Bullet?” he asked in a calm, raspy voice. “You’ve grown so much...”

I was stunned. I wasn’t rescuing some pony from my stable… I was rescuing a pale, middle-aged zebra in a lab coat!

“Wha-a-a… who are you?” I asked.

“Oh, my apologies, I don’t think we’ve met,” he said. “I am Dr. Zeitgeist, megaspell scientist for the Zebra Empire and close colleague of Dr. Balefire.”

“You...” I said. “You were his best friend...”

“Yes,” he replied. “I think I was his best friend. I suppose he was my best friend too, though I have never put much thought into it before. In all honesty, I think he needed me more than I needed him.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I am helping the Pegasus Enclave find a rare piece of technology called the SPP Control Chip. They secured me because they think I know where it is.” He chucked. “I actually have no idea. But as long as they don’t know that, they’ll think I’m still useful. And what are you doing here?”

“I’m looking for some other ponies from my stable,” I said. “I heard they came to the airport, then I heard there were hostages in this tower.”

“Hostages?” he asked. “Oh, there are no hostages here. I am here of my own free will, more or less. I could leave any time, but I choose not to for my own safety. As far as I know, I am the only guest these gentleponies have, unless they’ve taken some of the Testudos as prisoners, but I doubt that.”

“The Testudos?” I asked, confused.

“The guardsponies,” he clarified. “Err.. former guardsponies.They think they’re still the guard, but they’ve clearly gone off the deep end.”

There was a pause as we observed the carnage outside. Then he asked,

“Have you ever thought deeply about death, Silver Bullet?”

“Sometimes,” I replied. He waited for me to elaborate, but I became lost in thought.

“I have,” he said. “I am fully aware of my own mortality. I have been shot, and I believe I am dying right now. The Enclave can’t save me—they need everypony they have to defend this position. And even if they could spare a medic, they don’t have the supplies to save me.”

He showed me wound, a big glaring scar across his chest. A bullet had grazed him quite recently, at some point within the last thirty minutes, and it had cut deep. It was surrounded by maroon scabs of dried blood, some of which had also gotten on his clothing.

“I have been preparing for this moment for a long time,” he continued. “I have thought about death so much that the prospect of my own no longer bothers me. It is inevitable, and for all of the things I have done in my life, I think I deserve it.”

“I bear a great share of the responsibility for this war, which has caused the deaths of billions of sentient beings. Trillions, if you count the animals and insects. This war, which has caused so much loss of life, would most certainly qualify as a mass extinction. We were in the midst of one before, from all of the carbon and waste and deforestation and hunting of our industrial economies, but this war has made it clear to all who doubted it, that the actions of just a few species have brought forth an endless wave of death.”

“This is not the first time there has been a mass die-off of animals on our planet. There have been five before us, six if counting the war as its own, and each time there has been a gradual recovery… except for now. This time, the pace of death has been fast, outpacing anything that has come before us. Whether anything will survive is doubtful, but from what I have seen, oxygen levels don’t seem to be in any real danger and the ecosystem appears to be hanging on. I have even seen some new life growing out of this, and it awaits to be seen how it will fare, but I am confident that life, in some form, will go on. Although we don’t have exact numbers, it is likely that this extinction has not been the worst—it would take a lot to top the Great Dying of the end Permian with the killing of 96% of all marine life. It may be slightly unusual in how soon it occurred after the last mass extinction, a mere 66 million years ago when the average span between mass extinctions is 84.8, but there was a similar gap between the Ordovician-Silurian and the Late Devonian.”

“My point is that it is not unusual to experience mass waves of death on our planet. It happens cyclically, and is therefore inevitable. Therefore we should not be afraid, but welcome it—after all, we are witnessing with our own eyes a once-in-a-lifetime event, something that for years we could only speculate on. Just like the passing of a comet or an alignment of planets, we are witnessing the forces universe in action, we have front row seats to the spectacle that is the final act of the cycle of life: that stage which is death and rebirth!”

He threw his forehooves up in excitement, but brought them back down one second later. Even the slightest bit of physical exertion caused him massive pain, and I had begun to see the full extent of his injury.

“As you can clearly see, I have a deep personal interest in paleontology. When looking at the bones of our ancestors, I cannot deny a feeling of… fraternity… with our evolutionary predecessors.”

He reached into a bag and pulled out what appeared to be a bony white orb.

“I want you to have this.”

I took it in my own hooves and looked it over as he talked.

“This is the skull of ‘Dinohippus.’ At first glance it can easily be confused for that of a modern pony, but if you look closely, you can see differences. Its skull is pointier and boxier, its jaw larger, and its brain smaller, but still an equine nevertheless.”

It was indeed a skull. It was significantly more beastlike than any modern pony’s skull, but the resemblance was there.

“This particular specimen belonged to a young mare who lived 3.5 million years ago. Dinohippus was one of the first modern equines, in both anatomy and behavior: It used stone tools. It hunted with spears. It built huts. It used fire for cooking and warmth. It traveled across continents. It lived in bands of extended family. It had the beginnings of language. It may have even coordinated its hunting and cared for the sick and injured. All of these things, which we take for granted today, were pioneered by ancient equines such as this.”

“Her real name is lost to history, but I have taken the liberty to name her ‘Artemis,’ the feminine form of ‘Artamos,’ which means ‘Butcher.’ And a butcher she was, as the rest of her bones had been broken many times through combat. Ultimately, the butcher became the butchered after a critical blow struck the mare right through the ribcage. She was buried, in a cave, not by her own kind—they didn’t practice burial—but by another—the victor in combat, perhaps—who either greatly respected her as an opponent or thought she was one of their own. Most likely the former.”

“But who killed her? A more advanced form of equine, perhaps. There were many species of equines on the Earth in those days, all living simultaneously side-by-side. Contrary to popular belief, evolution is not a steady streamlined progression from one species to the next, but rather a patchwork of species on a timeline that spawn new ones to replace them. One species does not immediately go away once its successor arrives; there is often a lag in which they coexist before the old one is finally killed. Sometimes this lag is short, sometimes it’s long. In the case of Dinohippus, it took 1.8 million years to die off once Plesippus showed up to replace it. Artemis lived near the final extinction of Dinohippus. She lived while her genus made its last stand, fighting valiantly for precious resources against three others: Plesippus, its immediate successor, and the newly arrived twin genii of Hippidion and Equus—that’s us. Being outnumbered and physically and mentally inferior, Dinohippus was no match for the others, thus it met its tragic but inevitable end.”

“You see, the struggle for survival is a war—a war without end, and a war that will never change. We fight, we die, we all must do our part to help our side win. Just as empires rise and fall with the tide, so too do species. No species can resist, no matter how hard they try. Sooner or later they will all fall—yours and mine included. The fossil record is brimming with cycles of birth and death, and each species must eventually face its own extinction. In birth, many species ‘branch out’ from a parent species as a means to experiment with new traits to determine the ones that are objectively better for survival in a particular environment.”

“Artemis herself was a victim of evolution’s vicious cycle, but she was also a product: her genus, Dinohippus, was descended from Pliohippus, a sister genus of Hipparion. Both were descendants of Protohippus, and both competed to be its successor. Pliohippus won, Hipparion lost, and Plio went on to sire Dino. Dino in turn sired Plesi, but stubbornly refused to give up its position, so Plesi returned with its children, Equus and Hippidon, to beat the living daylights out of Dino so it could take its place. Eventually, Plesi went extinct, leaving only Equus and Hippidion. Now tell me, which of the twin genii eventually won?”

“We did,” I answered. “Equus”

“Precisely,” he replied. “The genus Equus beat out the genus Hippidion. Both were competent creatures in their own right, but one was objectively better at tribal life. We, the Equids of Equus, had better speech, better brains, better dexterity—we were simply better. Hippidion, of course, had its own strengths—namely in raw strength—but you need brains, not brawn, to live in a complex society—so the Hippidion went away.”

In hindsight, I should have said something. I should have objected and called him out on the absurdity of his logic. I should have pointed out that the ‘forks in the road’ in the equine fossil record were spaced out and that it hadn’t been long enough since the last divergence for there to be another one. I should have pointed out that evolution takes millions of years, and in the big picture, the anatomically modern equines have only been in existence for a mere two million, and that we haven’t been around long enough for any significant change to occur. I should have pointed out how fallacious it was to apply his model to individual species when all his other examples focused on genuses, and how since how ponies and zebras are both part of the same genus, we’re technically on the same team—that we should be working together in this fight, not clawing at each others’ throats. I should have pointed out that there’s been so much interbreeding between ponies and zebras that he himself likely isn’t ‘pure.’ I should have pressed him more on specifics of just how many points of difference were was between us, and shown him how many of them were only cosmetic. I should have said something to stop him, but at the time his argument was just too convincing. It was well-reasoned and well-structured, complex enough to explain everything yet simple enough to understand.

Although I didn’t agree with his conclusion, I couldn’t help but see some truth in it. Maybe we ponies were inferior. Maybe we were inherently more violent and selfish, and maybe we were responsible for bringing about our own deaths. His argument was that since we ponies were going to die anyway, and since we were likely to die right now, I should just accept our extinction as fact and become complicit in it, or at least not attempt to interfere.

“Here is the point;” he concluded. “Ponies are obsolete. You had a good run, but all good things must come to an end. Now, with this war, we have been brought to a population bottleneck. The forces of evolution are determining who is truly superior, and ponies are very clearly losing. Anarchic and greedy, backstabbing and primitive, violent and unrepentant-- I had always suspected you were monsters, but not until my hometown became the front line of your war did I fully realize the depths of your depravity.”

“Now, I know this all may seem strange to you, to any eavesdroppers we might have, to anyone at all-- these are ponies we’re talking about: those cute, cuddly little lumpy horse creatures stuffed with sugar and cream. But for every cupcake you bake, every rainbow you place in the sky, for every sweet apple you pluck from a tree, there is a massacre hidden in the shadows. Your entire civilization is built on white lies. Just look at your cities: Canterlot, Manehattan, Las Pegas-- all built on appearances and deceit. She can’t really afford those luxury clothes-- she bought them with a credit card, which she pays for by using another credit card! He doesn’t really care about the orphans, he only donates money so he can signal his virtue to the world. They don’t really like each other-- they only pretend to like each other so they can hide their petty feud from the world! But in this city, you have the worst of all: those ponies you call ‘hipsters,’ who fetishize authenticity to the point that they merely make a caricature of it, reinforcing the social, economic, and political systems that they claim to oppose.”

“Once you understand this, then it is no secret why your cities are so devoid of morals and purpose. But it doesn’t stop at the suburbs; oh no, the depravity permeates your culture so strongly that its influence is felt even in the most remote village. Consider the ministry mares for example: all six of them once lived in Ponyville. But even these supposed paragons of virtue could not overcome their own base nature. The truth is that the ministry mares couldn’t stand each other; they only pretend to be friends for appearance’s sake. The ministry mares! Bearers of the Elements of Harmony, guardians of this kingdom. Supposedly they’re best friends, but under the surface all they do is bicker and fight. How come there’s so much overlap and redundancy between their ministries? It’s because they don’t trust each other to do their jobs. It’s because they seek to backstab and replace each other, to jockey for influence and the favor of the Princess. Remember when Goldenblood was arrested for treason? He was planning a coup! To overthrow the ministries and take power for himself. See, ponies are actually despicable, backstabbing creatures, you merely pretend to like each other while you plot sororicide in the shadows. Imposing rules of civility didn’t solve the problem, they only drove it underground. But now, with no rules and no society, your true nature has resurfaced at last. Without your Princesses to keep you in line, ponies run free and do what they’ve always done for centuries.”

I remembered the stable. I remembered the violence. I don’t even remember when it got bad, I just remember a clear difference between what it was like before and after. Life used to be normal, until one day it just wasn’t, and then ponies started dropping dead like flies. We all realized that the overmare was useless. She couldn’t keep control. Did she ever have control? She failed us when we needed her most. And then there was Balefire-- he only made things things worse.

By the time I left, the survivors were just barely hanging on. Half of them had become monsters, every bit as frenzied and soulless as those that they call ‘raiders’ here on the outside. Except in there, you couldn’t run from them. In the stable, you were trapped.

“You’ve seen what ponies do without leadership,” Zeitgeist continued. “They devour one another. If you need convincing, just look outside.”

Outside the battle raged on. A pegasus Testudo zipped by shooting at the Enclave troops. He was struck by a crimson beam from a laser cannon, causing his entire body to glow a dark red for a second. The white outline of his skeleton was visible within the glow like an eerie X-ray scan. Then the beam stopped, leaving the pony’s charred and ashy lifeless corpse. It then fell to the ground like a brick.

But the pegasus had gotten at least some comeuppance: one of his bullets broke through the cracked plexiglass window, hitting the laser cannon’s operator square in the eye, with tiny glistening glass shards making cuts around her mouth.

In the opposite direction, two of the Testudos were carrying a heavily injured comrade away from the battlefield on an improvised stretcher. An Enclave pegasus swooped by and shot both of them in the head, causing them to slump down to the ground and drop the stretcher. The injured comrade fell into a puddle on the ground, where a radroach crawled out of a drainage grate and began gnawing at the wounds.

And further still, I saw a group of zombies swarm another group of zombies, completely unprovoked, ripping the rotten gangrenous flesh right off of their faces and bellies with their bare teeth and gnawing at their exposed intestines like sausages. The fact that they were both zombies made no difference, as the cannibals continued to chew their way through the skulls of these other zombies, who had done them no harm.

For the first time in my life, I actually felt sorry for a zombie.

“Look at them. That’s how ponies are. You know. You’ve seen this. You’ve been this! Ridiculous, pathetic, aren’t they? You can save them from themselves. This is what Balefire saved you for. Silver, this is your destiny.”

“You will complete our life’s work. We did the legwork and killed most of them, and many more will die of hunger and exposure to the cold and the radiation. But there will always be holdouts. The ponies in the control Stables, for example, the ones that don’t have experiments: they are still alive, and they must be killed. Our taxonomic tribe can’t advance if they aren’t. And you… you have a talent for killing. Your destiny is to aid us in bringing about the extinction of ponies as a species.”

“No!” I said. “I won’t do it. I can’t do it. I may be a renegade, but I’m not a monster!”

He was visibly disappointed with my words.

“Very well then, Be that way. I had a feeling you wouldn’t take me up on the offer, but it was worth a shot. You’re all going to die eventually, so I guess it doesn’t matter how...

“But you see my point: you are free to kill anypony you please. There are police officers or courts to stop you, the laws are not enforced; out there it’s pure anarchy where you can do whatever you want with no consequences. Even in the enclaves of civilization and order that remain, they are so small and so spread apart that you can commit any crime, even murder, then run away and never get caught. How can they spare a search party when they barely have enough guards to fend off raids?”

“Look, if you only kill one more pony, then make it the pony who murdered your mother.

“My… mother?”

“Yes, your mother. She wasn’t killed, Silver, she was murdered. It didn’t happen by accident. Somepony created the circumstances that caused her to die. And I know it was a stallion because I know exactly who did it. But I’m not telling you who it is. That’s something you will have to figure out for yourself.”

I wasn’t sure exactly what happened next, but I didn’t say anything. I just stared at him, intensely, likely glaring, but possibly giving him the saddest puppy eyes he had ever seen in his life. If it was the second one, which I doubt because I never do puppy eyes, but if it was, then I think it might have been the most effective of the two.

Either way, it managed to wash away the pride in his face and replace it with either pity or guilt.

“Okay, fine,” he relented. “I’ll tell you. His name is--”

Suddenly, the side of his head erupted in a splash of blood as a stray bullet from the firefight tore right through his brain. He hollowly gasped, then collapsed. I caught his head in my hooves.

“Zeitgeist?”

No response.

“Dr. Zeitgeist!”

I grabbed his face and looked into his big grey eyes. They winced in pain, but focused on nothing. He may not have even been conscious.

“Dr. Zeitgeist!” I sobbed.

But it was too late. The bullet didn’t hit him in the frontal lobe, but it clearly caused irreparable damage and was probably fatal. Even if he was still conscious, the trauma would have been too much for him to say anything. He was dead, he had gotten his wish, and he would never tell me who killed my mother.

If I had been thinking straight, I would have just left. But in my grief, I was not. Instead, I figured I would try to cremate his body or something like that, as a way of paying my respects. We were surrounded by pavement, so burial was out of the option, and I didn’t feel like lugging his corpse down a dozen flights of stairs anyway. I thought about getting a lighter, but then I realized that I needed something stronger to burn his still-wet internal organs. So I grabbed a Moltotov Cocktail, then another, and then another, set them beside his corpse, and lit them. I smiled at the scene: six Moltotovs in a circle, their rags softly burning like the wicks of candles. It was like a candlelight vigil, but with only one pony in attendance and cut extremely short.
Then I produced a grenade, yanked off the pin with my teeth, pressed the lever, set it in the center of the Moltotovs, and ran.

The explosion was huge and probably jeopardized the whole tower. I could hear the screams of the three ponies still in there, but I didn’t feel any guilt. The officer was a goner, but the other two had armor, so they probably survived… or not. The flames probably burned their manes, seared their wings, and gave them third degree burns on their faces. You know? On second thought, they were probably killed… or dying, but it wasn’t something that spending thirty minutes immobilized inside a burning tower couldn’t finish.

Okay, was that the right thing to do? Well… no, not really. I mean, those ponies never did anything to me, but then again… the pegasi and their ‘Enclave’ wasn’t exactly doing anything to alleviate the suffering of the ponies on the ground. After all, what was this SPP Override Chip, and what, if anything, could it do to alleviate ponies’ suffering?

Then again, what was I searching for? What was I doing to alleviate other ponies’ suffering? Had I really left the stable to go seek help for those still inside, or did I really just leave to save my own ass?

In the end, I don’t think it really matters. The odds of coming across a murderer like that, or anypony for that matter, in a post-apocalyptic world where he has the head start is infinitely miniscule, nearly zero, because even if we did happen to be in the same place at the same time I might not notice or recognize him. He would have to have not changed his appearance at all, which would be insanely stupid for a fugitive to not do. If he went on to commit other crimes, then police evidence databases might provide clues, but ever since the push to digitize all the records, I’ll only be able to access them if the computers are still working. And even then, I don’t even know the first place to begin. I mean, he could be anywhere, maybe even on the other side of the country, or possibly in a different country, or even on another continent. It would take nothing short of an expert detective, a mountain of luck, and a series of incredibly contrived circumstances to find him.

And yet, I still feel inspired to get revenge, or at least some sort of comeuppance for what he did, not only to my family but for all his victims. So I’ll keep my eyes peeled on the off-chance that I ever come across him. For now though, I have to stay focused on my original mission: get to the Stable-Tec office and see if I can find anyone-- or anything-- that can save my stable before it’s too late.

Level up!

Level 5: Stable Delinquent

Next Perk at Level 6.

Stats:
Ponies Led: 2
Puzzle Pieces Collected: 2
Price of Silver: 10 bits per Troy Ounce