The Show Will Go On
"Octavia! Tavi! Octavia!" Vinyl yelled out for her friend, desperately trying to climb up on to the stage to get Tavi's attention. Finally the earth mare tore her eyes from where the Princesses had vanished, teleported, abandoned Ponyville, and reached down a hoof to pull her friend up. The cannibalistic ponies roared and moaned, dragging themselves slowly and menacingly towards the panicked crowd.
"Oh god, look." Octavia rasped pointing her hoof out at Carrot Top. The long-dead pony was stirring, her blood-caked fur tinted sickly green, her eyes vague and unfocused. She moaned and shuffled towards the shocked and screaming crowd.
"They're Zomponies." Vinyl exclaimed, horrified, "But Zomponies are just fictional! For Celestia's sake, most of my video games have them! How…?"
"There's no time to ask questions." Octavia said, suddenly very serious, "I suppose the transferring of the Disease or whatever is through bites, so we need to get out of here, get home, grab some supplies and weapons, and run." Octavia tore her eyes from the crowd and looked at Vinyl for the first time since pulling her up onto the stage, and her expression went from somber to confused in about .2 seconds, "Why do you have a box on your back?"
Vinyl looked back at the gift, "Eh, I'll explain it all when we get home. Long story."
Octavia and Vinyl slipped out the back door of the Ponyville concert hall just as the roof began to cave and collapse from Zompegasi falling onto said roof.
"Thank Celestia, I don't think they're fast or coordinated enough to fly anymore." Tavi gasped as she and Vinyl galloped through the thoroughly infested Ponyville, dodging past Zomponies and through alleyways, getting themselves thoroughly blood-soaked as they sprinted past Zoms feasting and even a young filly - Dinky, Vinyl would later say her name was, sorrow etched into her face - with her entire back torso and legs missing, her lower intestine half gone and dangling behind her, one eye collapsed in its socket and her horn completely ripped off, along with part of her skull, leaving a gaping hole in her face, and her jaw broken, her tongue left to loll out of the side of her mouth. She was dragging herself through the streets, moaning and leaving behind her a trail of blood that grew less and less thick as she bled out.
But then, Zomponies didn't seem to need blood in their bodies to survive.
Tavi looked from Dinky and finally focused ahead of her in time to see Vinyl spin around and ram her hooves into an oncoming Zom's face, splintering the beast's nose and skull with a resounding crack. Vinyl lifted a hoof and drove it one more time into the Zom's head, it's skull shattering entirely and brain collapsing into a pile of splattered mush.
Vinyl was panting as she picked up her fallen gift for Octavia, shaking off some of the blood, pain and horror etched into her face, and turned her eyes on a paralysed Tavi. The latter's eyes were wide, her ears back, one hoof risen up to her chest.
Vinyl's eyes remained fearful, "You have to destroy the brain. It's where the Disease hosts."
Vinyl felt horrified at her kill, but she knew it was the only way, and only the first of many. She turned from the stilled corpse and began to walk forward carefully, Tavi beside her. The unicorn mare didn't like her friend being afraid of her, but she'd take that over Tavi being killed, or worse, turning into a Zompony.
Vinyl would sooner die herself than let that happen.