The Dark Years

By Darkly Aura

It has been several years since the Reaper virus outbreak, it burned though Equestria like a deadly firestorm in a dry forest. Leaving nothing but death, misery and desolation in its wake. Many ponies were left without homes and loved ones, whole families were destroyed. During those 4 years ponykind was almost were wiped off the face of the planet. Now, as we pick up the pieces we must ask: why did this happen? Or how it happened? With that in mind, i wandered around a once a peaceful and beautiful world, listening to the stories of those who survived during the infection and faced the hordes of those that were infected with the reaper virus. These are their tales of their lives during the darkest days of the infection.

FILLYDELPHIA, LAVALIERE EMERGENCY CLINIC

[I arrived at the recently restored city of Fillydelphia, finding my way to the Lavaliere emeregency clinic. I take a sit in of the waiting room of the restored hospital as the many doctors and nurses hurry past to tend to the sick and wounded. I patiently wait for the end of Greyheart's shift, which was gonna be quite soon but the receptionist told me that a hour ago. I was about to get up and leave when a earth pony with a greying white mane approached me with a worn and tired smile. ]

Hello sir, the receptionist told me you wanted to speak with me. Sorry to kept you waiting for so long.

No need to apologize. Now, i understand that you were in ponyville [ Greyheart's smiled dropped and her face saddened instantly] when the first case of the outbreak occurred?

Y..Yes sir, yes i was. I was on my shift in the Ponyville urgent care that day, there was just me and one of the doctors that night. There weren't much cases so many of the other doctors and nurses went on break to see the new raising of the moon celebration.

What could you tell me about patient zero?

I..it hurts me to speak of that but.. but since you want to know, s..she was a little foal named Scootaloo. Since i was new to the care centre i did not much about her but i knew her parents and that was one of the CMC.

CMC?

Cutie mark crusaders. They were a club Scootaloo and her little friends made, they were always trying to get their cutie marks which often got the three of them in trouble. She was brought to the centre after she started to get terribly ill after she was bitten on the area above one of her hoof by a some kind of animal while she and her friends were trying to get their cutie marks.

Who brought her in?

Her mother, she was quite scared for her daughter. We told her to wait in the the waiting room while we took her very sick daughter to emergency.

When did the first attack happen?

About a hour after she was brought in, her condition began to quickly worsen. She started to have a severe fever, chills, increasing dementia and insanity, migraines and soon began to have severe seizures. We did the necessary steps to prevent harming herself. After seconds of violent trashing she suddenly went limp and went into a coma followed by brain death. After that we put her on a ventilator to keep her breathing. We realized that this was some kind of new virus or bacteria, cause i never seen one with theses symptoms or move this quickly. We left Scootaloo with her mother while we went to the lounge to try to figure what this was. After a few minutes we heard loud bloodcurdling screams, we rushed to the scene and what we saw horrified us. Scootaloo's mother was laying on the floor and her stomach has ripped open like a beast attacked her. The poor mares entrails were splattered all over it in a pool of blood, there in the middle of that nightmarish scene was Scootaloo who was just in a coma and brain dead few minutes ago. She was on-top of her mother and had her face buried in her mothers abdominal sac and tearing at her exposed organs. I thew up what i ate that day.

What did you do? did ya try to restrain her?

Me? oh..oh heavens no. I..I was too shocked and horrified to do anything. The doctor grabbed her and pulled her away from the dead mare and he held her to her bed. She was trashing and screamed, they sounded unnatural, ones you never forget. She was like a crazed animal! Just when when the doctor got control of the situation, she managed to get free and attacked the doctor, tearing a large chuck of flesh from his neck. I..I still can hear his screaming even to this day. I snapped out of my shocked state and threw the crazed foal off of him but it was too late, he already died from severe blood loss from the wound in his neck. Scootaloo quickly got up and began to charge at me, ran out of the room and closed the new glass door we installed in the rooms before she could get to me. She was banging on the glass and screaming, trying to get to me.

To my seer horror i watched scootaloo's mother slowly sit up and got to her hooves before she joined her daughter and began to bang on the glass, her organs falling out from her torn stomach as she did so. I realized that the glass wouldn't last so i fled, i never ran that fast in my life. I heard the glass shatter followed by hoofsounds as they began to give chase but i was already out of the centre. Unaware everything will change that day.


This is my first MLP fanfic, wanted to do based on my favourite book World war Z and one of my fav movies Quarantine, so i combined the two in this story, it will have elements from both world war z and the movie but will be entirely different. I will be making a survivors story in each chapter, one for each chapter and it will be quite long, there will be stories of what happened to the mane cast but will be mostly of chars i created for the story.