EXODUS

Dildofarmer, February 23, 2014; 11:58 / FB 18372
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EXODUS

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Ok well this is my third story. Like my first two, it’s long and wordy. Also like my first two, it is not particularly innovative. My first story was about a gang of ferals who meet a predatory animal. My second one was about a fluffy with an abusive owner. This one is in the genre of ‘feral fluffies struggling to survive.’ Not original ideas for this site, but ones that inspired me. My take on this theme is that fluffies are what they are and do what they do, and sometimes that makes them totally unfit for life on this planet. If that’s not a metaphor for the angst of the human experience, then I don’t know what is!

*************************1************************

Rusty leaned his head down and carefully disgorged the wads of greenery from his cheek pouches. They seemed even smaller and more full of twigs than when he had scrounged them up. He turned and brushed the small pile of grass, stems and leaves from Nibbles’ back, and again he was disappointed. It all looked so meager in the dim light slanting into the makeshift den. Rusty and Nibbles had been out in the cold, hunting down the remaining patches of tough clover and crabgrass that still clung to the sprinkler heads on the broad, brown lawns. These pools of green were sadly shallow once he and Nibbles pulled them up. The younger fluffy had plucked a few waxy, bitter rhododendron leaves and put them on his back, but Rusty knew they were near-inedible. He spent longer than necessary brushing the pile together before raising his eyes to meet the rest of the herd.

“Haf nummies,” he offered them. The other fluffies shuffled forward, slowly at first but after a few seconds they were shoving each other, squabbling and scarfing up whatever mouthfuls they could before being jostled aside. Nibbles and Wendy had already taken mouthfuls of clover and grass and begun chewing. Pregnant Bridget panted and grunted as she levered her pink bulk forwards to inspect the pile - she won in weight but lost in speed, and in the end only came up with a meager few bites of fodder. She turned towards Rusty and puffed her cheeks out. It made her sunken, drawn face seem frightening in the dim light. The bags under her sallow eyes quivered as she confronted the tired older male.

“Dese not enuff! Not enuff num-num! Wan’ moar nummies! Bwiget haf tummeh owwies tuu wong!” she said, her voice growing even more shrill than usual between snarfing and chewing noises.

Rusty took a deep breath before trying to explain himself. He was exhausted and had been dreading this.

“Wusty twy to fin’ nummies, but gwassies nu good,” he said. “Wots of hoomans, an’ cowdies, an’ dawkies come. Nu can fin’ nummies.”

Bridget didn’t even seem to hear him. She humped forward a little more, and Rusty saw that her limbs were shaking as she tried to bounce in frustration, but her swollen belly foiled her. She wheezed and panted between words.

“Dese not enuff! Wan’ moar num-num! Hahhh! Bwiget haf tummeh owwies! YU GIF BWIGET MOAR NUMMIES!” she gasped. Wendy turned her head away from the squealing, angry dam. Nibbles stared with wide eyes right at Bridget and Rusty and started to sob around the mouthful of dry greens he was chewing.

Rusty tried again. “We twy tu fin’ nummies, but nu can fin’ wots of nummies bef-”

Bridget again seemed like she couldn’t hear him. Gobbets of half-chewed grass and stems burst out of her mouth as she screeched. “NU WIKE! NU WIKE COWDIES AND HUNGWIES! WAN’ NUMMIES!” she paused to gasp, then “NU FEAW GOOD! NU WAN’ TUMMY OWWIES!” She made weak, abortive attempts to swing her hooves at the stallion.

Rusty gaped at Bridget from six inches away as her eyes lost focus and she started to pant and flail her stumpy little legs around the sides of her pregnant belly. He stuttered and tried to back away from her but found that she had cornered him against the stuccoed wall of the makeshift den.

“Wusty t-t-twy to fin’ moar nummies after sweepies, bu-”

“NEE’ NUMMIES! HAHH! HAHH! NEE’ NUMMIES! GIF NUMMIES!” shrieked the pink fluffy as her body began to shudder and spasm. Rusty knew that something was very wrong, but he couldn’t do anything but stare at the pregnant mare’s face as her eyes rolled up into her head and lips peeled back from her teeth. “WAN’ GO HOME! WAN’ GO HOME! WAN’ NUMMIES!” she howled, and then gritted her jaw shut tight and made a hideous groaning sound while wrapping her limbs down tight against her belly and sides. She contorted as if she was trying to raise her midriff off the floor and Rusty saw her tail lift up over the bulk of her body.

He heard a wet splattering sound and saw Cricket frantically backpedal away from Bridget’s hindquarters and moan in dismay.

“Nuuuu, Bwiget make poopies!” bleated the lavender mare.

The pregnant mare started weakly slapping herself in the belly with her hooves and raving. The stench of shit immediately filled the den, followed by a peculiar musk that Rusty had only smelled a few times. She flexed her spine, straining to lift her head and hindquarters, then bore down again like a crazed, fat pink inchworm.

“Huuuu! Huuuuuu! Bwiget wan’ daddeh! Bwiget sowwy! BWIGET WAN’ BWANKIE! HUUUUU! HUUUU!! SOWWY, DADDEH! BWIGET WAN’ GO HOME!” howled the unfortunate mare as spasms wracked her round body. Her face was livid, and a trickle of blood burst out of her nose and she started jerking her head up and down spastically. She let out a full-throated scream and flailed as her starving, pregnant body began to renege on the promises it had made. Sticky, grey-green fluid mixed with blood spurted fitfully from her hindquarters, then trickled out, then spurted again as another tremor struck. Nibbles hid his eyes behind his hooves and began to wail while the other fluffies in the den flattened themselves against the cold walls and looked away or burst out crying as they watched the starved mare miscarry. Bridget’s hoots, howls and screams reached a crescendo, and a tiny pink and turquoise package slid out of her rear end and fell into the pile of mucus, gore and feces under her tail.

“NU WIKE! NU WIKE! GO ‘WAY!” screamed Cricket, kicking at the strings and gobbets of fluid that had landed near her.

“Heeggh, HUUUU!” the dam gargled, sticking her tongue out as far as it would go before drawing it back, “Heegghhh! Nuuuu!” she drooled and gasped for a second, then tensed up every muscle in her body again. This time another foal was squeezed halfway out of her body accompanied by another helping of slime and a dark mass of blood. The fluffies stared in horror as Bridget spastically scrabbled halfway to her feet and then fell down again.

“Haggghh! Hewp! DADDEH HEWP BWIGET!” she said one final time, then “HARRRkkkKKK!” as all four of her legs churned the air frantically, then stood straight out from her body, and then went completely slack. A second foal slid out into the muck next to its sibling, while a third one sat just barely visible, its head not fully out of Bridget’s birth canal. They looked more like grubs than foals - their pink and grey skin was visible through a thin coating of down, and their limbs were pitiful little twigs. They wiggled for a short time, making nearly-silent croaking noises, and one by one went still.

The only sound in the den was the mewling of lost Cupid’s second foal, who had still not opened its eyes or said a word since the death of its mother. Cricket lay on her side sobbing silently and tried to soothe the little thing by hugging it, but it obstinately chirped like the newborn that Bridget’s offspring would never have a chance to become.

Rusty stared at the face of the dead mare, its eyes simultaneously sunken and bugged halfway out of its skull and the last drop of blood from its snout stubbornly hanging there. Things had not always been like this. Once he and his little herd had been very happy - at the old den, the safe-place, where there were plenty of nummies and none of the fluffies made the Longest Sleep. It had not been a pleasant journey.

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Forces beyond Rusty’s understanding had created an idyllic life for his herd at the old den. The city had steadily grown, devouring chunks of land, paving them, and slapping down buildings where cows once grazed. Developers had rolled the dice over and over, and there on the outskirts of the little city a garden center had sprung up. A big, sprawling place, it was skirted by a vast parking lot and a half-acre of terra cotta flowerpots, concrete birdbaths, sundials and hardy outdoor crops. On the other side of the building a row of great greenhouses sat seething with water, heat and life the whole year around.

The garden store faced a strip mall across a paved street, but behind it was only a gravel alley and a big vacant lot - the skeleton of a deceased old farm, not valuable enough yet to be paved. The last remaining structure was a great old wire-and-timber chicken coop, twelve yards long and six wide. A Chinese elm tree had taken advantage of the shelter and sprouted up there, along with a copse of shrubs, ferns, and woody bushes that climbed up the chicken wire and gently fought for sunlight. A variety of animals had settled in the little copse over the years - most recently, a little feral herd of chattering, brightly-colored biopets.

For reasons beyond his understanding, Rusty himself was as necessary for the den’s existence as the chicken coop or the garden center, for he was smarter than your average fluffy pony. He had been born at the den, and he knew The Rules that would keep the herd safe. The Rules were that if you saw humans you should run for the den, hide and be quiet, and that you should never stray into the parking lot or the road.

Following The Rules, Rusty and his herd thrived. They would sleep late, frolic and forage around the old chicken coop, and only approach the garden center in the evening when it had closed for business and the staff had all gone home. There, in the twilight, the fluffies could sneak through a breach between a heavy plastic sheet and a chain-link fence skirting the east side of the greenhouses - a hidden doorway out of sight behind a composting frame. Once inside, they could pilfer trimmings and wilted plants from the composting piles and pluck blossoms from low shelves. It was a bounty that had sustained the small herd of fluffies through two of their short generations.

Blessed with courage and authority, Rusty led the nightly foraging missions. He was afraid of the spooky, silent nighttime environs of the garden center, and was perpetually hissing and whispering at his little squadron and inclined to cut their little ventures short at the first sign of trouble.

“Nu be woud!” he would snap, “Nu make noisies! Nu make poopies in nummies pwace! Take nummies an’ go!”

He knew, somehow, that his herd’s access to this mysterious human palace of water and food was a fragile thing. That was why it scared him so badly and so deeply when disaster finally struck.

It was a cool evening, and the little herd had spent the day hugging each other, playing games, and snoozing around the little thicket. Rusty watched his special friend, Wendy, gently but firmly push their colt, Winky, away from her for the umpteenth time.

“Nu! Babbeh nu haf miwkies. Mummah nu haf miwkies nu moar. Babbeh haf toofies, num on big fwuffy nummies.” Wendy shoved the maroon little earthie colt away, puffing her cheeks at him.

“Nuuu! Wan’ miwkies! Wan’ miwkies!” cried the little fluffy. He shuffled left and right, as if contemplating a dodge around his mother’s forequarters to latch onto a teat. He was obstinate, but had been smacked on the nose enough that he would no longer push it too far. His sister, Feather, was a more docile creature and would only curl up and cry during these arguments.

“Nu! Nu be bad babeeh. Num big fwuffy nummies. Nu miwkies fo babeeh wif toofies!” scolded Wendy.

Jumper’s foals were younger, and while they could all walk they would cry and soil themselves if they were separated from their dam, Cupid, for too long. Shell’s foals were younger still and could barely hobble about. Shell’s special friend Waggy would gently place them in the fluff on her back and tour them around the coop, the sandy berm and the alley in short little visits, babbling to them when they would chirp and cry.

Bridget, the new arrival, would launch into her favorite subject whenever she was around the other fluffies’ broods.

“Bwiget wiww haf best babeehs. Bwiget wiww wuv hew babeehs mowe den aww offew babeehs and wiww be bestest Mummah evew!” she would chatter to no-one in particular, eyeing the other mares. “Bwiget wiww gif dem bestest miwkies and huggies!”

It was a line of conversation that the other fluffies had become used to since the bedraggled, recently-impregnated mare had showed up at the old farmstead. She would go on at self-satisfied length about her cruel human daddy, who refused to let her have babies, and her subsequent escape and adventure to find a willing stallion in a nearby alley. She was quite different than the fluffies who had been born feral and would sometimes demand to be fed or tell them how wonderful her blanket or ball was before remembering she had left it far behind.

Rusty would make them all practice running to the coop: the little fluffy families and Bridget, the unattached stallion Nibbles and the two young mares, Elsie and Cricket. He would hiss at them and chivvy them along, and even if they would cry and complain, they seemed to understand how important it was to follow The Rules.

“Hoomans! Hoomans come! Wun to safe pwace!” he would say, even if there weren’t any humans to be seen. The fluffies would clamber under the weathered old timbers and chicken wire and cower in the underground den with its fluff-lined floor. The mothers would silence their foals, cooing and stroking them if possible or scolding them if necessary, and the fluffies would sit and listen until Rusty told them it was clear.

Rusty knew the fragile arrangement had been disturbed that night he took his untested little colt along on the foraging expedition. Rusty had been about the same age the first time he was shown the gap between the chain link and the plastic sheeting, but perhaps his offspring was not as cautious or wary. Little Winky had watched Jumper gently pull some blossoms off a low shelf and had innocently tried to do the same thing, but when he reared up to imitate the taller, older male, his little hooves had tipped the black plastic container over.

Rusty, Jumper, Nibbles and Elsie had watched in horror as the first pot clattered into the second, and the second into a third, until the whole front-loaded rack of potted flowers and plants had smashed down to the floor, scattering dirt and tiny plastic signs onto the concrete. Worse, Winky and Nibbles were so frightened by the calamity that they had hunched over and emptied their guts onto the concrete, bawling.

“WUN!” hissed Rusty and Jumper, as all the other fluffies were too scared by the noise to do anything but stand and mewl in their fear. “Wun to Safe Pwace! Take nummies and wun!”

“Nu wike woud! Fwuffy scawed! Nu smeww pwetty!” moaned Nibbles, slumping down and putting his hooves over his eyes until Jumper half-hugged and half-dragged him to his feet. The little pack of brightly-colored creatures waddled back down the broad aisles and clambered through the secret doorway. It would be a sleepless night for Rusty as he listened to his herd coo and snore in the fluffpile and wondered about the future.

******************3*******************

None of the other fluffies seemed disturbed the next day. They slept late, and then rose one by one and waddled out of the den into the sunlight, which was just barely warm enough to drive away the biting pre-dawn chill.

“Cwicket make big poopies!” grunted the little lavender mare, hunched over at the Poopie Place.

“Waggy gif babeehs huggies! Waggy wuv huggies!” chattered the khaki unicorn as he lifted one of his offspring from his mare’s fluff and embraced it, cooing and wiggling his rump.

Rusty’s little filly, Feather, had bravely ranged away north of the thicket and found a late-blooming dandelion. She was prancing with it and showing it off to the other fluffies until she crossed Bridget’s path.

“Bwiget wan’ num fwowa nummies!” bleated the pink mare, her swelling belly causing her to hump along a bit as she approached the tiny filly. The little foal stopped cavorting and cowered in fear as the pregnant earth pony came closer, then cried as Bridget held her down with one hoof and pulled the dandelion away from her.

Cupid and Jumper had found a plastic bag that would dance and waft about on the breeze, and were taking turns sitting with their foals while the other let the bag go and waddled after it to jump on it, which made them giggle every time. Nibbles was once again gracelessly sniffing at Elsie’s rump and asking to be her special friend, and she was again pushing him away, leaving him to rub his crotch with his leathery and cry. In short, the fluffies were carrying on as usual with the exception of their leader.

Rusty couldn’t stop himself from climbing carefully over the sandy hill and peering across the alley at the back wall of the garden center. It was open and busy, and the usual mysterious noises were echoing across the alley at him - thudding car doors, gurgling and hissing noises from the fountains and sprayers, and the chattering of human voices. He could see the secret doorway from the top of the sandy slope. It looked different to him somehow, and that made him afraid.

Hours later, the sun had gone down and the gravel alley was bathed in unearthly orange from the streetlights. Rusty had climbed back up the berm and laid down with his head peeping over the top. It was chilly outside, and the brownish-red pegasus felt silly for waiting, as if he were a scared foal hiding its eyes with its hooves. Sooner or later he would have to go take a look. He quickly found out that he was not the only one growing impatient.

“Yu go get num-nums nao?” said a voice behind Rusty. He jumped a little, and shuffled around to see Bridget standing a ways behind him. “Bwiget wan’ moar fwowa nummies!”

Rusty was tense and grew angry at being surprised, particularly by the greedy ingenue.

“Bwiget go haf nummies in Safe Pwace!” he snapped.

“Nuuu,” bleated the gravid pink mare, “Bwiget wan’ moar gud fwowa num-nums! Bwiget nu wan’ dummeh weafie an’ gwassie nums!” She stuck her tongue out.

“Bwiget steaw fwowa fwom Fevva dis bwight time! Bwiget is meany mawe, take nummies fwom babeeh!”

The pregnant mare snorted. “Dummeh babeeh nu nee’ fwowa nums. Bwiget nee’ fwowa fow make bestest babeehs! Bwiget wan’ fwowa nummies!”

“Bwiget go back to safe pwace an’ nu mowe be stupit an’ meanie!” Rusty lost his temper, and before he knew what he was doing, he found himself rounding his hindquarters on the pink mare and kicking two hooves full of dirt, sand and rocks at her. Gratifyingly, she waddled off in tears. Unfortunately, she was replaced by Nibbles. He was looking morose.

“Nibbews wan’ haf speshul huggies wif Ewwsie, wan’ speshul fwiend, but she meanie fwuffy an’ say nuuuuu.” He looked into Rusty’s eyes sadly, and shifted his weight a bit. His right front hoof moved down and rubbed at his crotch a little.

Rusty turned away, looking down across the gravel alley at the back of the garden center. A chilly wind blew.

“Wusty, you teww Ewwsie tu wet Nibbews haf speshul huggies? Nibbews am gud fwuffy, am gud stawwion an’ wan’ haf speshul huggies.”

Rusty ignored the ivory stallion and stretched his stiff muscles before trotting back down towards the little thicket. Nibbles followed him, mournfully rephrasing his request every few feet. It was going to be a long night.

In the end, Rusty chose solid, dependable Jumper and nimble, quiet Cricket to come with him to the secret doorway. His cohorts sensed his nervousness and didn’t chatter as they rambled down the bank and across the alley. Instead, they turned their dopey eyes back and forth as Rusty clumsily pawed the flap of plastic sheeting away from the terminal prongs of the chain-link fence. Despite his fear, the trio of fluffies were able to slip into the garden center and fill their cheeks and backs with fodder without any trouble, but the rust colored pegasus noticed that the mess from the previous evening had mysteriously vanished. He imagined huge humans taking away his herd’s bad poopies like a good mother fluffy, but knew somehow that wasn’t the case.

***********************************4*********************************

He didn’t have long to wait. Around thirty-six hours after little Winky knocked over the flowerpots and squirted his foolish terror out onto the floor, the general manager of the garden center stood wringing his hands in the middle of the gravel alley beside a thin, bearded man in a navy blue jumpsuit. Two employees wearing bright green aprons were busy with a roll of chain-link fencing, stiff wire ties, duct tape and sheets of tough black plastic. It was just after dawn, and the air was cold enough that the two older men could see hints of breath as they spoke.

“Well,” rasped the man in blue, standing shoulder-on and showing the portly manager his iPad, “There’s no charge for my assessment, which is that there are between six and twelve fluffy ponies living behind your store. Based on the deposit of droppings, they have been here for a good long time. Cutting them off from their food source might do the trick.” he gestured at the busy employees. The man in blue had recovered a few pinches of brightly-colored fluff from the prong-ends of the fence and shown the manager tiny hoof-prints in the mud next to puddles of runoff.

“No, I need this dealt with, I can’t have these things running around and,” the manager faltered and waved his hands irritably at the fence, “bothering customers and causing trouble.”

“Well,” said the man in blue again, “we offer removal plus coverage. That way you don’t have to worry. Three hundred eighty plus tax and materials will cover you until February first. We’ll get rid of the infestation, and if you see what-all sign of them afterwards, you call us on up and we’ll take care of them for no further charge.”

Salesman’s banter came easy to the man in the blue coveralls - while he was talking, he tilted his iPad towards the pudgy manager and handed him a slim silver stylus, gesturing meaningfully at the bottom of the screen.

The manager in the apron murmured to himself and scribbled at the ipad with the stylus. He awkwardly reached out to shake the grizzled exterminator’s hand, bobbling the iPad back and then clapping his pudgy fist on the exterminator’s and patting the blue-suited man on the opposite shoulder.

“So what happens now?” asked the aproned manager, waving his hand at the bushy thicket over the little hill.

“I’ll show you,” said the exterminator knowledgably, turning towards a weathered pickup covered with bright advertisements and decals. With a series of clanking noises, he drew out a heavy iron ring, very much like a big hubcap, adorned with a set of eight dangling wire hoops and eight shiny springs. In the middle was a tiny black box, a display screen and a stubby antenna. The bearded exterminator set it down in the alley, twenty yards from the garden center employees, and knelt down next to it.

“Snares, you see?” The man in blue had a slow way of speaking that the manager found comforting. “This is a smart set. It will call us when it catches something, and I”ll have some of my boys come around to have a look.”

“You take them alive?” said the manager, watching the exterminator’s gnarled fingers open the snares one by one and snap the triggers down against the springs.

“Not so much alive as intact. If we’re lucky the whole pack may end up snared here. If not, my crew will learn what they can and we will take further steps. Dealing with this sort of case is actually easier than, say, termites, but it can get messy. Now then,” the bearded man in the blue jumpsuit rose stiffly back up to his feet and pulled a tiny, colorful container out of his pocket. It had a bright red lid and a cartoon of a rosy-cheeked kid eating spaghetti on the side. The exterminator peeled the lid off and placed the container carefully down on the center of the iron hubcap. Finally, he pushed a button and was answered by a beep from the center of the iron ring as the trap came awake.

***************************5************************
Later that day, the fluffies came awake as well. Once again, they rose late and ambled out of the fluffpile to empty their bladders and bowels, frolic in the weakening fall sunlight and play their foolish little games. Their leader was still a bundle of nerves despite the successful raid of the previous evening.

“Wusty nu wowwy,” said Wendy, “Wook, babeeh is gwow big an swtong!” she cooed, reaching out with one porky hoof to roll her giggling stallion child over. “Dummeh hoomans nu fin’ fwuffies.”

“Otay, Wendy. Wusty wiww nu make wowwies. Speshul fwiend am gud fwuffy.” he said kindly, but inside he still felt tense. He did not like the thought of making his foals or mare sad with his concern.

Immediately on rising, Bridget waddled over to the nummies-pile and fished out the best leftovers for her breakfast. She gobbled, swallowed and belched contentedly.

“Bwiget wiww haf pwettiest babeehs. Bwiget wiww be bestest Mummah evew!” she announced loud enough to wake up the dozing Elsie and Cricket. Outside, a thin breeze was blowing through the chicken coop and thrashing the lower limbs of the elm tree against the rusty old chicken wire. The wind paused and shifted in a dancing pattern, ruffling the manes of Waggy and Shell as they ambled about at the crest of the sandy hill overlooking the alley. Shell was chattering to her offspring as they nestled in the dense fluff of her pudgy back.

“Babehs nu faww! Babehs nu faww!” she chortled, turning her stumpy neck about. Her four foals chirped and squeaked at her, with the biggest and most developed managing an occasional word. She bumped into her mate, who had abruptly stopped walking and was sniffing the air with a strange intensity.

“Waggy smeww… Waggy smeww gud nummies. Waggy nu know…” he trailed off, his flat nose and brain working overtime. “Sketti? Waggy am smeww skettis!” Sketti!” He gasped, too excited to even pause as the intoxicating scent of tomato sauce and pasta blew around on the breeze. Shell stopped and sniffed too, and she immediately started to slobber when she finally caught the scent as well.

Like a graceless, beige hound, the stallion followed his nose over the lip of the hill. He saw the iron ring, with its shiny wire snares winking at him in the sunlight, and knew that this new strange thing was the source of the scent. Bleating semi-coherently to his mate, he clumped down the hill towards it with a cheerful wagging motion in his rump.

“Babehs! Daddeh fin’ sketti!” announced Shell to her foals. “Sketti am best nummies evew! Mummeh wiww num num skettis an’ make bestest miwkies fo’ babehs! Mummeh wuv sketti! Mummeh wan’ num sketti!” She was chugging after Waggy, but the going was slow as the fully-laden and front-heavy creature tried to negotiate the sandy slope. She was ten yards away when her special friend reached the iron ring. He had eased his chest up against the cold metal, and was straining his stubby neck to sniff the tiny cup of pasta without having to rear up and put his leathery hooves on the rim.

The clumsy biopet stepped directly on the snare’s trigger. It made a ‘plink’ sound as the spring retracted. The bright metal wire bit down around the unicorn’s left front hoof with the speed of a viper’s strike, instantly pinching a groove into his flesh with such strength that his lower leg started throbbing with trapped blood. The fluffy pony squealed and tried to jerk away, causing a tiny ringing noise as the short slack ran out against the iron hub. Waggy’s leg ignited with pain as the wire dug into his skin, and he swung clumsily around sideways and fell in a heap.

“YEEEP! YEEEP!” he squeaked like a foal and scrabbled in the gravel, “OWWIES! OWWIES! FWUFFY HAF OWWIES! NU WIKE!” The normally level-headed stallion panicked and thrashed for a few seconds, and then swung his head around to look for his rapidly-approaching mate with tears filling his eyes. As soon as he saw the fear on her face, he unconsciously hunched up his shaking body and spewed several spurts of diarrhea onto the alley surface.

“SHEWW HEWP SPESHUL FWIEND!” bleated the blue earth pony as she waddled up as quickly as she could, given her unsteady cargo of foals. She arrived at her mate’s hindquarters as he planted his unsnared hooves on the ground and held his front left leg out horizontally, gingerly tugging at it and moaning. Shell bobbled left and right, trying to figure out how to embrace her crying mate without spilling the foals off her back or stepping in his shit. Waggy calmed marginally down and figured out that pulling on the snare only caused more sharp pain and constriction. He hobbled forward until his nose was almost pressed against the cold iron.

“Muh-muh-muh- Waggy haf owwies! Waggy haf owwies in hu-hu-hoofie! Weggie nu wowk! Buu huuu huuu!” he squalled, squeezing tears from his eyes and mucus from his nose.

Shell gave up on trying to hug her agitated special friend with foals still aboard, and instead waddled around and forward to peer at Waggy’s front left leg. Her limpid eyes were starting to tear up from stress, but she could see the bright silver wire wrapped so tightly around Waggy’s hoof that it nearly vanished into his leg fluff.

“Sheww see widdle metaw fingy! Widdle metaw fingy gif Waggy owwies!” she blared. She scowled down at the wire, puffing her cheeks out and delicately stamping one of her porcine hooves on the gravel. “Nu huwt speshul fwiend, metaw fingy! Nu gif owwies! Nu be meanie to Waggy! Sheww wuv Waggy!”

She shoved forward suddenly and tapped the wire as fiercely as she could without spilling her crying, peeping foals. It just caused it to bite deeper into her mate’s limb and he squealed again like a crying rabbit. Shocked and scared, Shell backed away a few paces, sticking her own rear left hoof directly into the next snare over. Once again, a tiny bell voice rang out as it snagged her leg just above the leathery sidewall of her hoof.

Shell screeched even louder than her mate had, and hopped and jerked against the sudden agony of the binding wire. Her foals were tossed clear off her back like so much confetti. Waggy watched horrified as his tiny kelly green pegasus foal was bucked eight inches up off his dam’s pelvis and landed on the gravel in an unnatural looking faceplant. Its three siblings each were flung off with more lateral trajectory, bouncing on the gravel or skidding to a halt against the side of the rusty hub.

Shell hollered, shrieked and cried until her voice went raw. “YEEEEEEP! YEEEEEP! NU! NU! SHEWW HAF OWWIES! OWWIES! NU WIKE OWWIES! NU WAN’ HUWTIES! YEEEP!” As soon as she calmed down enough to stop wildly thrashing and kicking at the gravel, she gasped and violently hunched over, howling with her mouth open as her guts spewed forth energetically. “SHEWW MAKE SCAWEDY POOPIES!” She bleated.

The brown and green torrent from her hindquarters splattered in the gravel and inadvertently half-coated the unfortunate dark green foal, who was still lying awkwardly in the gravel, chirping in pain, with its head bent back nearly against its tail.

Waggy chirped in fear as his mind came to understand that his mate had been caught just like he had. He pulled the slack on his snared hoof again and twisted in an attempt to get closer to Shell, but it was not to be. Instead, he tried to help her in the only way he knew.

“SHEWW NU HAF OWWIES! NU HAF WEGGIE HUWTIES! SHEWW HEWP BABEH! NU WIKE!” he yelled, panting and sobbing.

Both adult fluffies were stuck fast. Their screams and cries finally caught the attention of Red, who had just become distracted with the usual antics of his tribe back at the old chicken coop. He ambled around in a circle until his ears were pointing the right way, and when he heard the next distressed squeal, he started pelting as fast as he could up the sandy hill between the chicken coop and the alley.

“Wha yu do, speshul fwiend?” asked Wendy as she sat hugging Elsie and her two foals. Rusty didn’t answer. Wendy grew anxious - she knew her pegasus mate well enough to know when he was really worried. After that, Shell’s louder cries echoed over the hill and caught the attention of all the nearby fluffies.

Nibbles immediately started crying. “Scawy! Nu wike scawy noisies! Nu make cwy!” he blubbered, planting his hind end down in the dirt and hanging his head. Jumper, on the other hand, nosed up and trotted after Rusty, calling after him, followed by Cricket and Cupid with her trio of foals, until there was a train of colorful little fuzzy shapes jogging up the hill.

Rusty reached the crest and looked down into the alley, and in the bright afternoon sunlight he saw Waggy and Shell thrashing and crying next to the dark iron hubcap. He hesitated as the weight of fear settled on his shoulders - somehow he knew that this was the doom that had been stalking him for two days. The humans had made their overture.

Waggy and Shell were rapidly becoming exhausted trying to cope with their predicament. Waggy had bit and bit at the metal wire holding him to the iron ring, but had only succeeded in chipping a tooth. Giving up on that, he awkwardly turned his tear-streaked face around, pulling his snagged left foot across his body, and was calling to his mate in between shaking fits.

“SHEWW! Pwease nu be huwties! Pwease wun fwom meany huwtie metaw fingy!”

Shell, two feet away, was hysterically trying to reassemble her litter. The little foals had all gone limp after being tossed off their dam’s back, and were alternately chirping, shaking, or crawling back towards her as best they could manage. Three had made into contact with her fluff, but the fourth had taken the bad spill and had been doused with diarrhea, and was lying too far away for Shell to reach, even if she stretched her snared rear leg out until the wire bit a bloody ring into her calf. She tried it twice and gave up, collapsing into a sobbing, shaking heap as her broken foal lay just out of reach on the gravel and chirped.

An idea occurred to her. “Babehs…” she moaned, “Pwease… bwing sissy to Mummah.” She pleaded with them a few times but they just sat and cried. She turned around again, her mind sizzling as she tried the only other gambit that occurred to her. She reached out timidly with a front hoof and stroked the metal ring, flinching at first when she felt how hard and cold it was. “Pwease, metaw fingy… pwease wet fwuffies go an’ nu gif moar huwties…” she begged. The snare hub sat impassively. “Pwease,” she sobbed, “Babeh haf huwties an’ need huggies…”

Rusty had got about halfway down the hill when he understood that his friends were caught somehow by the human’s great iron ring. They couldn’t get away. His eyes flicked back and forth from Waggy to Shell as he tried to understand, but he was so confounded it took the sight of Jumper barrelling past him to prompt him into action. Gasping, he lunged after his most dependable companion.

“Jumpa hewp fwiends!”

“NU!” huffed Rusty, scrabbling to keep up. “NU GO! NU! STAHP!” he wheezed, until finally he just sideswiped Jumper’s hindquarters like a colt playing with a friend. The earthie tumbled in the dust and the pegasus took the opportunity to lunge ahead and stand in his path, panting.

“Why Wusty huwt fwuffy?”

“Nu go! Fwuffies huwt! Hoomans do sumfing bad fo’ fwuffies! Nu wan’ Jumpa go tu hooman fingy! Scawy!”

The earthie looked down at the trapped family and made tiny muttering sounds in consternation.

“Nu go!” Rusty reiterated. “Wusty hewp fwuffies! Yu keep otha fwuffies away! Nu wan’ aww fwuffies haf huwties!”

As always, Rusty’s force of will prevailed, and Jumper got to his feet and rounded on the approaching train of herdmates.

“WUN!” shouted Rusty, “WUN TO SAFE PWACE! HOOMINS COME! TAKE BABEHS AN’ WUN!” The Rules prevailed again, and the fluffies wheeled around and bobbled off towards the chicken coop again. They were wheezing and panting with excitement and fear, but they managed the about face with only a minimum of falling down and defecating. Once they were under way, he turned back to the stricken pair in the alley.

“Pwease! Pwease hewp!” cried Waggy as Rusty approached. “Haf huwties! Haf huwties an’ scawedies! Weggie nu wowk! Metaw fingy gif huwties!”

Shell joined in. “Wusty gif babeeh to Sheww! Babbeh faww! Babbeh faww an’ haf huwties! Nu can gif huggies to babeeh!” she sobbed, pulling miserably at her hind leg and pawing at the gravel in the direction of the broken-backed little dark green pegasus.

Rusty’s heart lurched to see his friends in such distress, but everything about this situation screamed of danger in his mind. He timidly approached the tiny shit-covered foal laying in the gravel, observing that it was totally clear of the bizzare metal object. He nosed the baby’s flopping head over, wincing as it jerked spasmodically and trying to ignore the clicking and rattling noises coming from its spine, and inched forward to deposit it in front of its frantic, crying mother.

She swept the baby up into her front hooves as she lay sprawled in the gravel and squeezed it, but the sudden motion made the foal’s head flop over the other direction. It stopped chirping and made a few croaking noises and squirted the meager remnants of its bowels out onto its mother’s fluff.

“Bekk.. bekk… akkkk..” said the foal.

“Widdle babeeh - widdle babeeh - widdle babeeh” chattered Shell inbetween frantic licks as she tried to clean her own feces off her mortally injured foal, “Mumah sowwy… mumah sowwy fow make babeeh faww… mumah so sowwy… sowwy for poopies and owwies! Mumah make babeeh aww cwean again and gif huggies untiw aww ouchies aww gone!”

Waggy felt a little relieved that his injured foal was in the embrace of its mother, but the relief was followed by a wave of anxiety and renewed awareness of his painfully snared leg, which was alternately throbbing or going numb.

“Wusty hewp fwuffy…” he implored, “Waggy haf weggie owwies an nu can move weggie. Pwease hewp an’ gif huggies.”

Rusty circled doubtfully around where Waggy was snared. He saw the wires wrapped around his friends’ legs, and matched them to the others winking in the sunlight around the great iron hubcap. He could smell the cup of cheap pasta, and although part of him wanted to lunge forward and devour it, it also smelled like fear and death. With great caution, he crept forward until he could see the bloody bite of the wire in Waggy’s leg. The tan unicorn sobbed and hiccupped as the senior stallion sniffed the wire and experimentally pushed it with his nose. The wire clanked against the iron hoop. Rusty lifted his eyes and looked into his terrified friend’s dopey, big-eyed face.

“Wusty nu can hewp yu, fwuffy fwiend. Wusty so sowwy. Meany hooman fingy haf got yu. Nu can hewp.”

“Nu! Nu say! Yu hewp fwuffies! Fwuffies haf owwies an’ need huggies!” Waggy scolded, standing up as best he could. He could see the defeat in the pegasus’s eyes, and it terrified him to the core. He would be stuck here with the wire gnawing on his flesh until… until what?

“Su sowwy, Waggy. Nu can hewp.” Rusty’s eyes filled with tears. He nuzzled the poor stallion tenderly and turned away. Waggy let out a heart-wrenching wail and buried his face in his free leg. Shell turned away from both of them, focusing her whole attention on her little broken-necked foal as it hacked and gasped its last. She had frantically licked the shit off it and was cradling it in her front hooves, rocking back and forth and singing.

“Babeh wiww be aww bettew, babeeh wiww wun and pway wif mummeh an’ daddeh.”

Her three other foals crawled into her fluff to sob and chirp, and to seek comfort at her teats. The chill wind blew a little colder as the sun dipped towards the horizon and the little fluffy family wept, shook, and tried over and over again to exchange even a moment of comfort. It was not to be.

**************************6*****************************

A thudding noise from the end of the alley brought Shell out of her waking nightmare, followed by the terrifying spectacle of Waggy twisting around as far as he could to hiss “Hoomans! Hoomans come!” in a voice strangled in fear.

Shell tugged at the vicious wire holding her numb hoof one last time. Its cold grip was nothing compared to the feeling that squeezed her heart when she remembered her foals. Her three precious living babies had just started learning to walk - they had never crossed the alley or ran for shelter on their own, and after crying and cowering in the lee of the iron ring for some time they were in no state. Shell shook them out of her fluff onto the scratchy gravel. The dead one was still clutched in her front leg.

“Babehs wun! Wun to safe pwace! Hoomans come!” She batted gently at their hind ends, trying to get them to move, but it was no use. Stressed, scared, and now plopped rudely back down for reasons beyond their understanding, the smaller two simply sat down and cried. The biggest and brightest one, the lime-green unicorn, was looking up at Shell uncomprehendingly as tears flowed from her eyes.

“Go to safe pwace!” begged Shell, waving at the sandy berm with her front leg. The light green baby appeared to understand on some level and scuttled a few steps towards the den, never taking her crying eyes off Shell. However, when the tall shadows of the humans fell across the little family, the tiny emerald foal was struck with terror and ran chirping back, marking the alley with a small trail of wet dung.

That settled, Shell turned around and peered over the iron ring. The great sky-ball was setting and the breeze was becoming uncomfortably cold. Two towering humans stood in the alley, radiating an implacable, massive terror. They were as close now as Shell had ever seen a human, and her mind was struck dumb by how huge they were. They were dressed alike in blue jumpsuits. The bigger one had dark, dark skin and was wearing a broad-brimmed hat. The smaller one was pale, its eyes were covered by shiny black shells. Waggy twisted this way and that, frantically trying to interpose his body between the humans and his family even though he was whimpering and shaking with fear and pain. The humans kept their distance and talked to each other in deep, gravelly voices.

“Nnnnyeah,” said the bigger human, waving a slim black smartphone meaningfully at the smaller one. “This is what I was talking about. Law says we gotta check the snares so we don’t end up killin’ somebody’s dog. This one triggered a couple hours ago. Don’t leave snares out for twenty-four hours straight and get us fined, understand?”

“Got it.” tolled the younger one as he pulled a pair of heavy gloves on. He accepted the smartphone from the bigger one and held it in his own shadow to peer at the screen while the bigger man pointed at it.

“You see there? Chief did his assessment this morning, said maybe a dozen critters but it doesn’t say where the den is. There’s two of ‘em, right? Let’s have a look.” The big man hefted a tool from his belt and advanced on the iron ring and the terrified fluffies.

“I meant to ask, Coop,” said the young human, “What the hell kind’a hammer is that?”

The big man chuckled ruefully. “‘That’s a rock hammer. Would you believe I have a degree in geology?”

Waggy spoke when the humans got close enough that he could look up at their faces. He had puffed his cheeks out and was trying to stand tall in the face of his fear. He stamped his hoof in the clay and gravel, but it made even less noise than the humans’ footsteps.

“H-h-hoomans nu huwt fwuffies! Hoomans w-w-weave fwuffies awone!” he said, but his voice was wavering and shaky and he had to sniffle after issuing his brave threat. He recoiled as the huge man strode up to him and knelt down, but the wire holding his hoof clanked one final time against the iron ring and in the end he could only crouch to get his body away from his looming opponent.

It wasn’t enough. The man clamped his gloved left hand on the cowering beige fluffy’s face and muzzle, and at last Waggy let out a sad, muffled cry that was snuffed out when the man brought the square, flat head of the hammer down in a blurry arc to the back of the fluffy’s skull with a wet cracking noise.

Shell echoed her mate’s sad, short wail when she saw his two left legs curl up tightly against his body and his two right ones extend straight out. His left eye immediately turned blood-red and rolled up into its lid, quivering. His ears fluttered as his mouth and anus simultaneously made uncontrolled spitting noises. The dark-skinned man hung his hammer on his tool belt while uncoupling Waggy’s rigid leg from the ring. Just like that, the unicorn was a brain-dead piece of meat.

“Got that bag? Hey! Kurt! Got that bag?” The skinny partner seemed only a little less startled than Shell at the swiftness and finality of the senior man’s coup. He jostled into action, pulling a sturdy black bag from his belt and snapping it open to swallow Waggy’s twitching corpse.

“S-speshaw fwiend! Nu be huwt!” moaned Shell. She was so afraid that her whole body was shaking. Once her mate’s twitching body was out of sight, she felt both the men peering down at her. “Pwease,” she said in a small voice, “pwease nu huwt babeehs. Good babeehs, nu do anyfing bad. Pwease nu huwt.”

“Sorry, bitch, it’s curtains for you and the good little babies.”

“Nnnnyeeeah,” said Coop, “Like I said, don’t get to talking to these things or it’ll never end. Just bag the little ones. I’ll show you a trick with this one.”

The skinny man stooped and reached out towards Shell with his left hand. She was more-or-less sitting on her thee terrified, crying foals, trying to cover them in her fluff and tail, but their chirps and squeaks were plainly audible. The snare around her leg clanked against the iron ring and cinched painfully into her skin as she tried to bat the man’s hand away. She missed. Bleating and wheezing in fear, she rallied and tried to bite, but her flat teeth and weak jaw only managed to mark the leather glove. He smacked her a stiff backhand blow to the snout that knocked her vertebrae together like canastas and twisted her around the fulcrum of the snare.

Two of her foals, the bright green unicorn and the dead, broken-backed little winged foal, were picked up in the same handful and tossed down the crinkly plastic maw in the blink of an eye. She managed to get back on her feet and engage in a clumsy tug-of-war over the next foal, desperately squeezing its squirming body between her front hooves. The human jerked it away as she howled, and the last whiff of sweet foal-scent vanished from her nose as she watched her offspring tumble end-over-end, letting out a spiral of milky shit before vanishing into the bag with its siblings.

The muffled chirps and squeaks of her foals thundered in her ears, and she watched horrified as a small figure squirmed inside the crinkly plastic, making a reversed silhouette of a foal’s muzzle as it tried to suck air into its mouth and nose. She could see its legs gradually lose the strength to push the crinkly material away from its tiny face. “Pwease,” she said weakly, tears streaming freely from her eyes as chest-cracking sobs pounded her body. All she could think to do was beg.

“Pwease! Gif babeehs! Pwease! Nu take babeehs! PWEASE! SHEWW SOWWY! PWEASE NU HUWT! SHEWW WUV BABEEHS!” she cried, her voice climbing up into shrill hysteria. She rounded on her last foal and screeched at it. “WUN, WIDDLE BABEEH! WUN TO SAFE PWACE!” She batted at it, sending it rolling a foot or so away from the iron ring and the looming human. When the little creature regained its feet, it was sobbing and chirping, but it scuttled off up the slope in the general direction of the chicken coop, marking the earth with yet another tiny, pitiful trail of droppings.

“God dammit!” growled the young man in the sunglasses. He straightened up and leapt after the fleeing creature like a student chasing a windblown piece of paper. With an overbalanced half-lunge, half-step, he brought his foot down on top of Shell’s last foal with tremendous clout. Shell unconsciously moaned as she watched a tiny crimson jet escape between the treads of the man’s boot and splatter in the gravelly clay.

“Awww! God dammit!” said the young man again, straightening up and hooking his foot over to examine his sole. Swearing a few more times, he scraped red gore, maroon globs of guts and bits of bright fluff into the gravel and stooped to jam the rag-like scrap into his bag. Coop stood shaking his head at his younger partner’s distress.

“Interesting way of doing things, Kurt.” he chuckled, flashing a set of bright white teeth. “That little guy was probably headed home, you know. Get the hook out of the truck, and I’ll get this one to show us the way.” Coop was pulling what looked like a spool of kite-string from a pocket, whipping loops of slack off the spindle.

Shell lay bonelessly on the ground between the two men, shivering and crying with her face pressed into her free front leg. She couldn’t stop the image of her last foal being stomped into jelly from replaying over and over in her mind. She didn’t notice when the younger man trotted off down the alley, but when the older one tied a loop of white cord around her neck and tightened it, she let out a startled chirp and looked up involuntarily. The dark man was peering at her from under the brim of his weathered old hat, and she suddenly realized that her snared rear hoof was free, burning and tingling as blood began to circulate in it for the first time in several hours. Mouth agape, she stared uncomprehendingly as the man backed several steps away.

“Ok, critter, you go on home! Go on home!” Coop took off his hat and waved it at her. She rose to her feet, shivering and shaking so badly that she involuntarily kicked little stones free left and right. Panting and wheezing, her fear-addled mind took an agonizingly long time to sort out what was going on. Her numb leg would not bear any weight, but she limped a few experimental steps forward, never taking her cried-out eyes off the human. He had turned his attention back to his smartphone, tapping on it with one finger. Shell bolted - or rather, since she was a fluffy with one deadened hoof, she waddled clumsily up the sandy berm on a direct course for the chicken coop. She did not notice the cotton cord trailing after her.

The big man was holding the spool in one hand, following the terrified little fluffy at a distance as it chugged towards the den. His partner joined him and they both silently approached the old chicken coop. Cord played out like Theseus in the labyrinth as the panting, sobbing fluffy struggled through the low gap in the old, rusty chicken wire and popped into the hole in the ground at the terminus of the old trench. Perhaps it had once held a pipe or a trough. Now it was the foyer of the fluffies’ den.

“Bust it down and net ‘em? Or spray ‘em?” shrugged Kurt.

“Nnnnnyope,” said Coop, “That’s breaking and entering. Can’t do that ‘til we contact the property owner. That’s the rules. No breaking and entering, breaking shit, no spraying poison without permission, understand? But we might be able to bag a few more, now, you watch.”

*****************************7********************************

The herd had been cowering in the den under the timbers of the old chicken coop for several hours. Just once he had gathered his courage and climbed the hill to look down at his captured friends, and the sight of them sobbing and huddling in the lee of the iron ring struck him with fear. He stood there briefly, whining to himself at the crest of the sandy berm, until the thudding noise of a car door somewhere nearby startled him and drove him back to the den.

“Bwiget wan’ outies! Wan’ see pwetty sunshine an’ haf wawmies!” scolded the pregnant unicorn.

Rusty puffed his cheeks out at the mare. “Nu! Nu outies tiww Wusty say is safe! Hoomans outside safe pwace! Hoomans get Waggy and Sheww!”

“Nu cawe! Wan’ outies! Wan’ make poopies!”

Rusty squared off with the truculent mare. He was resolved to bat her on the snout if she tried to push her way outside. Before he could speak again, a scrabbling sound at the den entrance made his heart freeze. It was a fluffy coming into the safe place - but the only unaccounted members of his herd were the doomed pair.

Suddenly, Shell burst into the den, hobbling down the chute. The other fluffies in the den were shocked to the core at her appearance, more so because they had never seen one of their kind in the grip of such terror and trauma. Her fluff was matted with tears, dirt and shit, and her eyes were wild and rolling, striking fear into her herdmates one by one as they witnessed her pain and fright. As soon as she saw her friends, she lunged at the closest one - Wendy, as it turned out - and unleashed a stream of crazed babble as she desperately held out her front hooves for an embrace.

“P-P-PWEASE! HEWP! PWEASE! Hoomans k-k-kiww! Hoomans kiww babeehs - an’ hoomans kiww s-s-speshul <gasp> fwiend an’ haf hu-hu-huwties! Babbehs <gasp> dead! Babbehs aww dead! Aww dead! Pwease hewp! Nu wan’ huwties! Nu wan’! <gasp>” sobbed the bereft blue mare.

Wendy could not bear to have the frantic, chattering, mad creature approach her. She backed away until she ran into the wall of the den, hooves up, preparing to shove Shell away. Nibbles started crying and flung himself down with his hooves over his eyes.

“NU! Scawy! Scawwwyyyy!” he bleated as the shell-shocked earth pony continued to gibber and wail, and then he lifted his hind end halfway off the ground and squeezed out two rapid-fire gouts of diarrhea. “Nibbews make scawedy poopies! Stawp make scawies!”

Only kind-hearted Elsie staggered forward to embrace her friend. Shell went completely slack with her front hooves around her friend’s neck and her cheek pressed into her warm peach fluff, but her eyes were wide open and staring sightlessly into the den as she re-lived the horrors she had seen.

“Sheww haf huwties an’ weggie nu wowk, an’ hoomans come and kiww <gasp> kiww Waggy, an’ gif him biggest owwies an’ - an’ - an’ he make w-w-wongest sweepies! <gasp> An’ hoomans gif biggest owwies to babeehs! <sob> Babbeh nu can move, an’ babeeh is cwush an’ make booboo j-j-j-! Nuuu! Babbehs! BABBEHS!” she raved.

Rusty walked up to the pair of distressed fluffies, trying to get Shell to make eye contact with him, but she wouldn’t focus and wailed, tears streaming freely down her nose as she sobbed and chattered. He nuzzled her, trying to speak soothing words into her ears, but he was startled by the white cord around her neck, which abruptly snapped up off the floor of the den and went taut, leading up and out of the Safe Place to the trench. As he watched in horror, it quivered and then bit into the fluff around Shell’s neck, much like the shiny wires had to her leg. He stared at it open-mouthed.

Shell’s chattering turned into a wordless, keening wail, “Nuuuuu! Huuuuuuuuu! Huuuu! HEWWWP!” as she was pulled towards the entrance by an unseen force. Worse, Elsie was dragged with her, as both fluffies instinctively squeezed each other tighter at this new horror. The others all jumped and chattered fearfully to one another and INDIGO spurted another jet of shit from his puckered anus.

Outside, Coop was pulling steadily on the white cord with one gloved hand while the other deftly whipped the slack back onto the little spool.

“Nnnnyeah, feels like I got somethin’. You get ready with that hook. They’ll hold on tight when they’re scared, but as soon as they see us, they’re as likely to let go.” said Coop.

“Awright,” grunted Kurt, gripping a long wooden pole with a thin steel hook the size of a man’s hand at the business end. He had slid it under the timbers of the old chicken coop so its wicked point lay near the trench. He gave the hook a few experimental twitches and turns as the white string danced and left and right.

“Don’t hook the one on the cord,” chuckled the big man. “We already got that one, understand?” Kurt snorted.

He gave a final slow haul, and Shell emerged rump-first from the trench, digging futile little furrows with her rear hooves and crying out with each rhythmic drag. Elsie was locked into a tight embrace with her, sobbing in confusion and fear as she was unwillingly dragged into daylight.

“Nuuu! Stawwwwp! Scawwwwwyyyy!” she cried out. “Pwease nu huwt! Wan’ stay in Safe Pwace! Nu wike! Nu wike!”

Kurt planted his feet in the sandy soil and set a wide grip on the haft of his polearm. He was a young man and gifted with coordination and reflexes, and so when he shrugged his shoulders and shifted his arms, the wicked steel hook flashed into position behind Elsie’s haunches and then mercilessly gored her just ahead of her right hip, punching into the muscles and tendons there and snagging. She immediately screamed into her friend’s face and began beating her stumpy legs spasmodically into the dust, throwing up little khaki puffs. She had never felt anything like the agony that exploded into her side, and she tossed about trying to find any leverage she could use to relieve the pain and get the hook out.

“Yeep! Yeeeeep! Yeeeeeeh!” she shrieked, then “Hennngh! Henngh!” as all the muscles in her torso flexed in pain.

“There you go! You got it!” rumbled Coop cheerfully. He gave one final double-arm-length pull on the cotton cord, hauling Shell fully out from under the timbers and onto the flat ground. Kurt grunted and pulled hand-over-hand on the hook, driving Elsie along with the cruel metal barb lodged in her guts as she let out a warbling cry of agony, surprise and terror.

“Nu! Nu! Nu! Huwties! Huwties! Pwea-kkk!” the thrashing fluffy’s head clipped off the underside of the weathered old wooden frame with a muffled crack, folding her nearly double as the sudden resistance mashed the hook a little deeper into her side. The concussed little unicorn did the herky-jerky in midair, burbling and spitting aimless syllables. The shock from a sharp blow to the skull, the terror of being dragged from her home and the pain from being lifted off the ground by the metal gore overcame her mind. Shit spewed from her hind end as Kurt levered her up and Coop clapped her flailing, shuddering body out of midair with his big hands.

Her pupils dilated wide open, and she feebly wrapped her front hooves around Coop’s left glove. Staring straight ahead into nothing, she planted her mouth tenderly around his thumb and started to suckle on it while making soft, rhythmic mewling and chirping noises.

“Muh.. muh… hehhh..” she squeaked.

She looked almost placid from the front, but her hind legs continued to spastically stir the air and her tail was jerking left and right like a writing quill in the middle of an angry letter. Coop had pulled out his strange little hammer, and with a sideways slicing motion he cracked Elsie’s occipital bone, causing her to finally go limp in mid-chirp with her mouth still on the drool-soaked leather seam of his glove.

“Kkkeghhhh…” she mumbled, her tongue going limp in her mouth.

Coop held on tight while Kurt leaned into his grip, tearing the barbed hook free of the corpse. The head of the tool clanked to the ground right in front of Shell as she lay sprawled on her side between two tufts of dry grass, followed by the twitching body of her friend, its eyes pointing towards each other in a gruesome rictus. Shell looked into her friends’ dead eyes, understanding that Elsie’s skull had been smashed just as cleanly as her mate’s. Then she stared at the stringy, wet gobbet of flesh still caught on the hook. She went limp as a rag except her mouth, which kept murmuring and working as if she, too, was nursing an imaginary teat. It wasn’t until the scene grew quiet that Kurt caught a hint of sound and leaned over.

“What’s it saying?”

“Wan’ die... Wan’ die... Wan’ die...” murmured the blue fluffy over and over in a tiny whisper. She had run out of tears.

“Nnnnyeah. I don’t think we’re going fishing again with this one.” rumbled Coop. Sliding his rock hammer into its sheath, he put a boot on Shell’s dark blue mane and yanked up on the kite string. Shell’s head was jerked up, but against the mammoth pressure of the man’s foot the loop of cord bit into her fluff and flesh and crimped off her carotid arteries, windpipe and jugular vein. She stayed limp as she was garroted until the trapped blood pounded in her head and her lungs seized, and her body made helpless, obscene humping motions. Her desperate, sad eyes grew glazed as she gave a final shudder and blew bubble of snot out of her nose with a gargling, sizzling sound. It took her a little over a minute to be strangled, and then she was tossed into the black bag that had already swallowed her mate, her foals, and the peach-colored friend who she had inadvertently dragged out of their home to their mutual doom.

“What now, Coop?” asked Kurt, slouching on his polearm.

Coop peered at the setting sun. “Ehhhhhh. This’ll be good for now. You go find the dumpster. I’ll update the file. If the Chief can’t reach the property owner, we’ll come back and set snares right here. We got Baxter street first thing in the morning.”

Kurt grunted and slouched off, carrying the hook in one hand and the bulging, crinkling bag in the other.

****************************8***************************

The fluffies in the den watched in shock as Shell and Elsie were dragged out of the den. They cowered as they listened to Elsie’s scream of agony, and they flinched when it was suddenly cut off.

“Nu wike scawy noisies!” moaned Nibbles. “Make scawy noisies go ‘way!”

“Nu wike poopies! Nu smeww pwetty!” added Cupid, waving her front hoof at the brown spume on the floor and wall of the den behind Nibbles. Her foals were either ambling about or sitting down and crying as she tried to restrain them. The other fluffies were sobbing and huddled against the den walls in twos or threes, breathing in the smells of terror and shit.

Rusty had been standing in the breach, trying not to shake with fear, and when the squealing and great human foot-treads had stopped echoing down the channel, he waited a long time before creeping up into the trench. He saw nothing but darkening sky, drag marks, and splatters of blood in the soil. The humans were gone, but he knew in his heart that they would return. He chugged around and back down into the den.

“Hoomans get Waggy an’ Sheww an’ Ewwsie an’ gif foweva sweepies. Hoomans nu… nu wike fwuffies. Hoomans come an’ huwt fwuffies an gif biggest owwies. Hoomans wiww come back, huwt aww fwuffies. Kiww aww fwuffies. Safe pwace nu safe nu moar.”

“Bwiget haf hooman daddeh. Daddeh dummy, say nu can haf babeehs. Bwiget wiww haf bestest babeehs evew!” bleated the pink mare.

Wendy was looking at her mate fearfully and seemed to understand what Rusty was saying. She looked at her two foals and then looked around at the walls of the den where she had been raised since she was a tiny foal. Big, sturdy Jumper looked back at his mate, who was still quelling the fear of her three little foals.

Red spoke louder. “Fwuffies nu can wive in safe pwace nu moar. Hoomans wiww gif owwies. Fwuffies haf go an’ find nuu safe pwace.”

Little Cricket’s teary eyes shot wide. “W-w-weave… weave safe pwace?” Nuuuu! Cwicket wuv safe pwace! Wuv safe pwace! Nu wan’ weave!”

Red looked sadly down at the small unicorn. “Hoomans wiww come an’ gif aww fwuffies wongest sweepies. Nu can hewp. Wusty fink since bwite time dat hoomans wiww fin’ fwuffies, huwt fwuffies. Now dey come an’ kiww aww fwuffies wha nu in safe pwace. Fwuffies nu can stay in safe pwace foweva. Haf go make poopies, get nummies. Wusty see hooman metaw fingy get fwuffies hu go outies. Hoomans see fwuffies wiv in safe pwace.”

“Nibbews nu wan’ weave! Nu wan scawwy outies!”

“Cwicket wuv Safe Pwace!” sobbed the despondent little filly.

“Jumpa wiww hewp,” said the brave stallion, looking levelly into Rusty’s eyes and puffing his cheeks out in the face of his fear and apprehension. “Jumpa nu wan’ fwuffies be kiww o’ haf huwties. Jumpa see dat hoomans fin’ safe pwace.” Hearing his trusty earthie friend say it, Rusty could hear that it was the truth, but he had no idea where his little herd could go.

The next morning, the fluffies woke up hungry, and finding that Bridget had devoured most of the stashed fodder, they tried to graze on the dry-edged leaves and tough grasses that grew around the old chicken coop. It was poor food for fluffies that had been accustomed to nightly deliveries of riches. After they ate, Rusty did his best to lead them off away from the garden center and the busy street, hoping against hope that he could help his friends against this catastrophe so great it had even destroyed The Rules. His special friend, Wendy, their two young, Jumper and Cupid with their trio of foals riding her back, pregnant Bridget, Nibbles and Cricket were all crying as they left their den for good.

Driven by Rusty’s conviction that houses and cars were dangerous and could disgorge a human at any time, the little tribe of biopets wandered north in the breezy cold into a semi-rural neighborhood. By noon they had walked farther than any of them could remember having gone in a day, trying to hide from passing trucks and skittering aimlessly from hedge to hedge. Fences tore tufts of fluff from their coats and cold gravel scuffed their leathery hooves.

“Nuuuuu,” moaned Bridget for the fiftieth time as Jumper butted her hindquarters with his head in an effort to shove her up the side of a ditch by a gravel lane. “Bwiget wan’ haf westies an’ nummies! Bwiget nu wan’ moar walkies!” Lazy and full of complaints at the best of times, the pregnant unicorn was tired and hungry, and her stubby legs were half-subsumed by her gravid belly. She would break down every thirty yards to cry, complain and scold the other fluffies. “WAN’ BWANKIE! WAN’ HAF WESTIES AN’ SWEEPIES AN’ NU MOAR WAWKIES! BUUU HUUU HUUU!”

Her mood was contagious, and the little squadron of fluffies made less and less progress between crying jags and tantrums. After they wandered to the end of the next fenced lot they were confronted with a broad, brown field with a small copse of fir trees in the middle of it. Nibbles’ rump plopped down into the gravel and he rubbed his front hooves in his eyes. “Haf tiewdies! Nu wike walkies! Wan’ nuu s-s-safe pwace! Hoofies huwties! Huwties!” bawled the white fluffy. Cupid’s eyes began to fill with tears as she looked at him.

“Kewpid haf tiewdies tuu. Kewpid babeehs nee’ miwkies, pwease nu moar wawkies.” she begged, turning her weeping eyes to Rusty.

Rusty sighed. “Otay, fwuffies go tu twees… fwuffies wiww haf westies undew twees.” he nodded in the direction of the little copse of firs. The fluffies trudged their way there, the rough ground and scattered, dead scrub making this last 100 yards of their journey cruelly difficult. The bright little creatures filed into the needle-bedded space between the three trunks and flopped down in various states of fatigue.

Rusty sat down between the boughs and looked doubtfully out into the field. Behind him, the fluffies settled in: Bridget was exhausted and angry, and would squabble at any other fluffy who came too close. Cupid, still sniffling, rolled onto her side and held her rear leg up so two of her foals could nurse. She held the third between her stubby front hooves and cooed to it while it fussed. Her mate, Jumper, was gamely trying to rally the fluffies.

“Cowt an’ fiwwy wan’ hewp? Hewp wook fo’ nummies!” he said to Rusty’s two offspring. The young fluffies seemed excited and a little scared, but were trying to put a brave face on.

“Mummah come wif fo wook nummies?” said Feather, reaching out with a timid hoof to prod Rusty’s mate, Wendy. Wendy stirred and got to her feet.

“Otay, babeeh, Mummah hewp.” she said, beaming down at her little filly.

The four fluffies bumbled out from under the green needles, and saw Cricket sitting a few yards away, hunched over and crying gently. Seeing her in distress, the two young fluffies jogged over and embraced her legs.

“Wha wong, Cwicket?” asked Jumper

“Poopies awe meanies! Poopies huwt poopie pwace!” The young mare had unwisely eaten a share of dry grass, and the sharp blades of cellulose were making their presence known. Once evacuated, she turned around and glared down at the two dry wads she had produced. “Nu huwt fwuffy! Nu be meanies! Yu nu smeww pwetty!” she scolded them, puffing her cheeks out threateningly.

Orange tried to distract the tempermental young mare. “We wan’ fin’ num nums! Yu hewp?” Cricket agreed and waddled after the little team. They spread out to browse for anything edible. After a few minutes, the little colt called out.

“Mummah! Mummah! Winky find nummies! Bewwies aw gud nummies!” said Winky with his mouth full. He was prancing cheerfully around a small, woody bush laden with tough little red berries, which he was plucking off one by one and chomping happily. The rest of the fluffies ambled over, chattering to each other.

Wendy stripped a handful of berries off the plant and chewed them cheerfully, the red juice staining the fluff around her mouth. “Gud cowt babeeh! Mummah happy fo babeeh fin’ nummies! Mummah wuv babeeh an’ gif huggies! Babbeh? Babbeh?” Her expression slowly changed from joy to concern as she saw her male offspring start to shake a little.

“Huuuu… huuuu… nu feaw gud. Nu feaw gud.” said the little red colt. He hung his head and tail, and wavered a little on his legs until he flopped over on his side. “Haf tummeh owwies. Tummeh owwies.” He started chirping in distress.

Wendy waddled over and bent down to sniff at her foal. Feather curled up into a ball and started crying while Jumper and Cricket stood nearby, confused and alarmed. The stricken little foal chirped and mewled, and then suddenly puked up a hefty portion of reddish goo with tiny black seeds floating in it and wiggled his little hooves in the air. He followed up that performance by spewing a similar amount of diarrhea from his hindquarters.

“Nuuu! Babbeh haf sickies! Nu be sickies, babeeh! Mummah gif huggies fo make babeeh nu haf sickies!” bleated the grey earth pony, sitting on her haunches to wrap both her forelegs around her foal. It was then that she started to look queasy. “Wendy nu feaw gud nao. Tummeh haf buwnies! Nu wike tummeh buwnies!” She rolled away from her ill colt and wrapped her legs around her midsection. “Pwease nu gif owwies, tummeh! Pwease nu huwt fwuffy! Fwuffy nee’ gif huggies to sickies babeeh!” she begged.

Jumper was staring hard at the crimson jelly that the foal had coughed up. “Jumpa fink bewwies make sickies. Jumpa fink bewwies nu gud fo’ fwuffies.” he said seriously. Cricket looked up at him, and then looked at the berries with a fearful expression. She didn’t want to get sick!

Despite being given frantic hugs by his mother, Winky didn’t seem to be recovering quickly, so the little gang of fluffies called an early end to the foraging expedition to get him to safety. They burst into the pine-scented space between the evergreens with the ill foal on his mother’s broad back. The mare had recovered a bit but still had a worried, haunted expression on her face.

********************************9*****************************

To Rusty, it was as if his family had left one second and returned the next in dire straits. Jumper, Cricket and his special friend burst into the clear space under the trees with his filly trailing afterwards, all sqawking and chattering urgently. His drooling, huffing mate fell to her knees and tried to ease Winky off her back, but he had long since outgrown riding his mother and simply slid off onto the bed of pine needles.

“Buu huu huuu! Nu be sickies, babeeh! Mummeh gif huggies and wuv su yu nu be sickies!” moaned Wendy, flinging herself down and wrapping her forelimbs around the patient once again.

“Wha happen?” asked Rusty, utterly baffled.

“B-b-babeeh num bewwies… b-b-babeeh num an’ den nu feaw good an’ make sickies and poopies! Huuuu, huuuuuu, nu be sickies babeeh, babeeh!” cried the distraught mare. The little foal was still limp and breathing in short gasps.

“Jumpa fink dat bewwies aww nu gud fo’ fwuffies. Babbeh num wots of bewwies befo’ Jumpa see.” reported the sturdy earthie.

“Bewwies? Bwiget wan’ bewwy num nums! Bwiget wike num bewwy nummies!” observed the pregnant pink mare, coming alert for the first time since she plopped down. Rusty turned and looked at her thoughtfully for a few seconds, then shook his head and turned back to sick little Winky.

“Speshul fwiend, yu stay an’ gif huggies and wuv to babeeh. Otha fwuffies wiww go wook fo’ nummies.” He turned his head away from his sobbing mate and offspring. Jumper wordlessly nuzzled his mate, Cupid, as she lay on the ground with their three foals, and then walked over to Rusty with a serious look on his muzzle. “Nibbews, yu come wiff Wusty an’ wook fo nummies.”

The pale pegasus slowly rose to his feet and shuffled over. “Nibbews haf tiwedies… nu wan’ go wook fo’ nummies. Nu wan’ outies.” he whined.

“Cwicket wiww,” squeaked the young mare. “Cwicket wan’ hewp.”

So the little team of four fluffies left their sick, nursing and pregnant compatriots behind and ranged out into the field to look for anything edible. They fearfully avoided the berry bush, but there was not much else that was still green in the late season. They pulled up what remaining green grasses and still-florid leaves they could and tucked them into their cheek pouches. The sun set, and the night air was just cold enough for them to see their breath when they scuttled back to the little copse.

Bridget, Cupid and Wendy had huddled together for warmth against the biggest trunk.

“Gif nummies? Bwiget wan’ nummies!” bleated the pregnant pink unicorn as she humped and waddled forwards to confront the foraging team. She angled towards little Cricket, hooking one of her hooves over the smaller fluffy’s back to hold her still while scarfing the food from her back. The little unicorn cried in protest.

“Nuuu! Fwuffies haf’ tu shawe nummies! Nu huwt fwuffy!” but the pregnant mare paid no mind and simply kept eating while shoving any other fluffy that approached. Cupid stood up and approached the nummies pile with her three foals trailing after her, chirping and squalling about the unaccustomed cold. After eating his meager pinch, Nibbles was upset to find burrs in his coat, and feebly tried to pull them out before giving up.

“Buuu, huu huuu… haf owwies in fwuff… haf huwties when way down… pwease gif huggies an’ make huwties go ‘way!”

While Jumper tried to strip the burrs out of the crying stallion’s coat, Rusty made sure his family got a portion of food. Wendy was loath to leave the stricken colt alone for too long, and Feather was beside herself with grief at her brother’s condition. The little earth pony colt was weak and feverish, and gritty liquid would drool from his anus periodically, vanishing into the bed of cold pine needles. He lifted his head and tried to eat a little, but it was clear he had no appetite. Rusty’s insides seemed to churn when he gazed down at his worried, huddled family.

“Babbeh haf sickies, buu huu huu… Wendy am bad mummeh.” said Wendy in a low voice. Rusty told her she was a good mother and tried to comfort her. However, his heart sank when his poisoned little colt turned his head up and croaked.

“Wan’... wa-wa… pwea’..” it said in a voice that was mostly breath.

Rusty looked down in pity and horror. He hadn’t seen any water the whole time he had been foraging. He looked at Wendy, who read the fear and confusion playing on her mate’s face and started sobbing.

“Wha’ du? How get wawas fo’ babeeh? Babbeh nee’ wawas.”

“Wusty… Wusty nu know.” They stood in silence until they realized that the colt had fallen asleep, or at least passed out. The pegasus stallion turned to the rest of the fluffies who were already piling up together against the creeping cold. “Fwuffies nu can stay hewe. Nu nummies o’ wawas. Haf to weave in bwite time an’ go fin’ nuu den. Time fow sweepies.”

The members of his little herd were too tired to complain or protest. They piled up together and went fitfully to sleep, the ones on the outside shivering in the unaccustomed chill breeze.

***********************************10***********************************

Rusty started awake. Some fluffy was nudging him in the pre-dawn gloom. He blinked and rose up into a sitting position, but the other fluffy was too close for him to resolve them easily in the blurry light.

“Wha..?”

“Hu-hu-huh, b-b-b-babeeh… babeeh take wongest sweepies, bu hu huuu.”

Rusty realized that it was Wendy, and that her face was wet with tears. She was shuddering.

“Speshul fwiend?” he murmured

“Winky nu bweafe, nu move, buu huu huu, babeeh dead…” blathered the distraught earth pony mare. Rusty finally caught up to what she was saying. He felt as though he had swallowed a cold rock, and all he could think to do was put his front legs around his crying mate and comfort her as she shook and sobbed. The dim light seemed sour and hateful to his eyes as he wept into his partner’s grey fluff.

“Babbeh dead… babeeh dead… am wowst mummah evew… babeeh dead…” she mumbled into his chest.

Once she had calmed down a little, he rose to his feet and walked around the fluffpile to where his colt’s corpse lay. Wendy joined him, still sobbing softly and puffing out clouds of warm breath.

“Nu wan’ fiwwy to see cowt make wongest sweepies,” he murmured, “fiwwy be sad, nu undewstan’ wongest sweepies. Wike when Wendy was haf babeehs an’ one babeeh nu wake up.”

Wendy didn’t respond but just stood there shivering and weeping silently. Rusty stooped over and picked up the dead colt by the scruff of his neck, feeling its utter flaccidity, and carried him out into the field with his mate shuffling after him. They were two particolor blobs floating against a dead grey and brown landscape. Once they had trudged a reasonable distance from the little copse, Rusty tried to scrape out a shallow depression in the cold soil. It was rough going, and he had to lay his dead colt’s body down and switch off from front to back hooves to keep scraping. His mate lay down and nuzzled the stiffening corpse, breathing in the fading scent of their offspring.

“Pwease haf wakies, widdle babeeh… pwease nu be foweva sweepies..” she begged, but she knew it was hopeless. Sobbing, she pushed the burgundy body into the tiny trench. Her tears plinked down onto the soil that Rusty was scraping back into place. The fluffies stood and cried together, but suddenly Rusty heard a noise - heavy crunches, jingling sounds and the rumble of distant voices. Out of the dim light, he saw three shapes move into the field - to judge from the nearby plants, two of the shapes were twice as tall as a fluffy pony, but the third was a towering, bipedal figure.

“Hoomans!” he hissed to Wendy. “Hoomans come! Wun to Safe Pwace!” Still obeying The Rules, he and his special friend scampered as quietly as they could back to the little stand of fir trees, back to the pile of their sleeping herdmates. The memory of the old den lay heavy on their frightened minds - there, they could disappear underground and be protected by the timbers and wire of the old chicken coop. Here, all they could do was peep out under the pine boughs or between the trunks and watch the human and the two other creatures - dogs, Rusty now realized - make a slow circuit of the field.

Once well clear of the gravel lane, the human released the dogs from their leashes with a snapping motion. They bounded free, cavorting in circles and whuffing out great clouds of steamy breath. Rusty and Wendy watched them fearfully around the tree trunk, with Rusty making anxious little murmuring noises as he considered what he could do if they came too close. Just by watching them, he could tell that they were faster than any fluffy, and his herd was almost all still asleep.

Suddenly, one of the dogs paused, nose down and obscured by a twiggy, dry bush. His tail wagged, then stopped, then wagged again as he stood erect again, and in his mouth was a little reddish package. It was the just-buried corpse of the colt. The dog pranced about holding it high, as if it were a toy.

“Nuuu! Babeeh! Babeeh! Munsta nu huwt!!” squealed Wendy, and lumbered to her feet, but she didn’t make it a step before Rusty leapt onto her and pinned her to the ground.

“Nu!” he barked into her ear, “Hoomans get yu! Hoomans an’ munstas kiww you!” She struggled a little, and he dropped his voice and spoke urgently. “Babeeh make wongest sweepies! Nu can hewp babeeh! Babeeh dead!”

Rusty listened to his mate sob and moan, and felt her squirm as he held her down, and he kept watching as the two dogs began to sport and play with his offspring’s limp, dirty body. In a flash, the dogs had both siezed one end of the little cadaver and yanked on it a few times before ripping it asunder. It made a horrific midair mess followed by a sizzling splatter. Bellowing and waving his arms, the human scolded the dogs and with some difficulty rounded them up and leashed them. He made a grumbling noise of disgust and kicked at the dirt where the dogs had dropped the dead Winky.

“B-b-babeeh..” moaned Wendy, and turned away to bury her face against Jumper’s side in the fluffpile and sob. Rusty watched the human depart with his beasts and joined her, his heart heavy and cold in his chest.

*****************************11*******************************

The fluffies rose after the sun had warmed the ground up to a fair degree, but it was a colder, harder morning. They rose with emptier bellies, and were more fearful when they scavenged for their breakfasts in the strange, dry field, and the take was even less satisfying than as before - each fluffy pony got less than a mouthful.

“Weggies huwt,” whined Nibbles, “hoofies haf owwies! Gif huggies, pwease?” Cricket trotted up to embrace him, but broke it off when he shifted position and started sniffing at her hindquarters.

“Whewe bwudda?” peeped little Feather, scampering around the bed of pine needles and looking behind and under every other fluffy.

Rusty saw Wendy’s face sag with grief. “Bwudda go… bwudda go faww away tu wook fo’ num-nums, widdle fiwwy.” she said, her voice cracking a little. “Bwudda be back aftew time, aftew bwite time.”

“Otay,” The little filly seemed to accept this explanation, but she kept tossing her head about as if her sibling would suddenly appear from behind a bush.

The fluffy ponies gave up foraging in the dead field. They were unaccustomed to it anyway, and the field was full of burrs and brambles. Jumper blundered into some standing water in a ditch across the gravel lane, and the fluffies all lined up to slake their thirst on the frigid, muddy puddle that was lined with a thin frame of ice. None of the fluffies except Rusty knew why Wendy burst out crying at the sight. Bridget drank and drank from the puddle, stopping periodically to spit out grit.

“Dummeh wa-was! Nu haff nu-pwetty diwties! Nu wike! Wan’ gud wawas! Hate yu!” she snarled, and then ducked and lapped again, and then smacked at the water with one of her pudgy hooves.

Progress was slower this day: The fluffies were sore and their hooves were scuffed and chapped, and they were further from their last full, rich meal. Their meandering path led generally northward until a screen of trees filled the horizon, which Rusty headed towards. He knew a little about trees: They could provide shelter and concealment, and the humans’ homes and cars would not be found where they were thickest. To him, the standing array of red, gold and brown giants might provide his little herd a place to live. He hurried the little tribe along over their protests, but he was utterly baffled when he reached the wood and found that it marked the path of a little river.

The fluffies stared at the cold, clear water in consternation. There was no chance they could cross - it was plainly deeper than any fluffy could manage and viciously cold. The little strip of forest was only about thirty yards deep, and was fairly empty of undergrowth except at the riverbed. It was less exposed than the fields they had been marching through, but he saw nowhere his family and friends could be safe. Worse, the fluffies had been holding up fairly well while on the move, but once he stopped and ceased to lead them forward, they quickly became distracted.

“Babeehs… babeehs nee’ miwkies… nee’ haf westies…” croaked Cupid. She had been struggling. The foals riding her hips and back were big enough to walk around by themselves, but couldn’t hope to keep pace with the troop of adults. However, they were a serious load for a dam who was exceeding the distance she had ever traveled in a day ten times over. Jumper would try to bear a foal or two while on the move, but it made the little creatures anxious to be away from their mother’s scent, and they would witlessly wiggle and squirm, frequently slipping off.

The earth pony stallion was dependable and brave, but could not ignore the demands of his family. They chirped and squeaked for nourishment as he pulled them off his mate’s back and set them down between her splayed legs. They latched onto her teats and began to rhythmically squish their tiny hooves and suckle. Cupid clutched the third one to her chests and cooed at it in an attempt to get it to stop crying for milk and feebly shoving at her hooves.

“Buu huu huu… hoofies haf huwties..” moaned Nibbles. He walked directly over to Cricket and plopped down on his rump, extending his forelegs towards her for a hug. Somewhat awkwardly, she complied.

“Feew betta, Nibbews,” she said “Nu moar huwties. Huggies make owwies gu ‘way.”

“Cwicket gif gud huggies,” he observed, sliding down her torso a little. “Cwicket am pwetty mawe.” He swung his head to the side and sniffed at the ground where the little purple mare was sitting. “Yu wan’ be speshul fwiend fo’ Nibbews?”

“Nuuu,” said the young mare, pushing at Nibbles’ chest to break the embrace. She trotted deliberately off, putting Cupid’s reclining bulk between her and the despondent white stallion. He hung his head down and sniffled a little.

Wendy slumped down and called her remaining foal over. The big mare wrapped her hoof around the filly and held her tight, sniffling a little herself, while Feather squirmed, still anxious to go search for her wayward brother. At least, thought Rusty, Bridget was too tired to cause trouble. The pregnant pink mare was slumped next to a tree, nodding with fatigue. It seemed like she was more swollen every time he looked at her. Rusty stared into the swift-moving water, wondering which way he should lead his little herd next. Where was their next den? Where would they be safe from the humans, the dogs, the frigid cold?

**************************12****************************

In the end, he decided that they should turn upstream for no other reason than the sun had begun to set in that direction and he felt better with the meager warmth of it playing on his face and the ground in front of him. He could not have known that he had turned towards the city, and that as the little herd chugged along, the streets and buildings would rise in front of them in greater and greater congestion.

The fluffies found themselves standing on a steep riverbank next to a street and a bridge, perpendicular to their path, appearing to the fluffies like a mountain that had been cut and stomped by titanic forces. They couldn’t keep following the river without crossing the road, and they knew there was no shelter behind them. South of their perch, they saw a long, low stretch of buildings and distant shapes of humans - more than they had ever seen at the garden center - popping in and out of doors and cars in a bewildering pattern. That way was closed to them, too. They had to cross the road, and waiting only allowed the day to grow darker and more chill.

They were hiding in an evergreen hedge up against the bridge embankment. The fluffies ducked and hid whenever a car came near, being unsure of their powers. Rusty was doing his best to bolster their courage.

“Otay, fwuffies… haff tu wun acwoss fwat wocky pwace. When Wusty see dat nu metaw munstas come, wiww say ‘Wun wun wun!’ an’ fwuffies hafta wun.”

“Scawwy…. nu wike metaw munstas…”

“Babees stay in mummah’s fwuff! Nu faww! Nu faww!”

“Otay, fwuffies! Wun wun wun! Wun acwoss!” he blared.

The little creatures waddled into the road across a gap in the traffic. Jumper planted his broad head in Bridget’s rump, as it was obvious she would take twice as long to cross the road as any other fluffy under her own power. She squalled and cried, chugging along with her belly grazing the asphalt, rocking from side to side as she tried to maintain some kind of footing. Just as they hit the shoulder, a pickup truck crested the bridge and rumbled by, and the driver gave a long, loud blast on his horn at the sight of the colorful little biopets diving for cover.

The noise was incredible, rattling the fluffies’ teeth inside their skulls and whipping them into a momentary panic. Bridget planted all four feet solidly in the dirt at the edge of the road, bugged her eyes out and howled in fear as she cut loose a spray of runny shit directly into Jumper’s face. The other fluffies threw themselves on the ground with their paws over their eyes or ears, and two of Cupid’s foals soiled her fluff while the third one was so scared he fell off his mother’s pudgy back and smacked into the soil. Feather ran blindly away from the noise, making it about five feet before she fell down the riverbank towards the icy stream.

Rusty felt like his head had exploded. It was the loudest thing he had ever experienced, and it seemed to knock the thoughts clean out of his head. All his hair stood on end. Without knowing it, he opened his mouth and howled in response to the noise.

When he came back to his senses, he saw that his herd was scattered around the immediate area. His mate, Wendy, was chugging down the steep slope after their wayward foal. Nibbles and Cricket were hugging each other under the hedge, sobbing in terror. Cupid was cradling her foals. To his left, however, he saw something that startled him.

Bridget was laying on her back, her gravid belly flopped over to one side, and Jumper was half reared up over her, his face a snarling mask of anger under its fresh coating of dripping fluffy shit. He was hammering down at the prostrate mare with both front hooves as she moaned, rolled feebly left and right and held her own stubby limbs up to ward off the blows. Occasionally she would rock or cringe as Jumper would slip one through and bludgeon her muzzle or belly. He was growling through clenched teeth, and she was moaning and crying, alternately rolling her eyes or squeezing them shut in fear.

“Dummeh mawe! Nu gif poopies! Nu wike! Gif yu owwies! Poopies dummeh mawe! Hate yu!” cursed the enraged stallion.

“Nuuu! Huuuu! Stahhhp! Nu gif huwties! Nu gif huwties! Bwiget sowwy!” squalled the mare, then “Hukk! Hukkk! Nuuu!” as Jumper planted one of his front hooves squarely on her chest and used the other to deliver three rapid downward jabs to her cheek and ear.

Rusty, with his head still throbbing, had impulsively stumbled over and plowed into the angry stallion shoulder-first. Earlier in the season, he had wondered what it would take to get the pink mare to say she was sorry for anything, but he was in no state to contemplate the answer now. The three of them rolled in the cold turf, coming to their hooves at about the same time. Bridget’s shit was now smeared fairly equally among both combatants and their reluctant referee.

“Stahp! Stahp! Nu huwt! Pwease stahp!” begged Rusty, trying to stay between Bridget and Jumper.

“Buuu huu huu, nu gif owwies! Nu wan’ owwies!” complained the mare, shuddering as titanic sobs wracked her body.

“Dummeh mawe gif poopies to Jumpa! Hate dummeh mawe!” raged the green earth pony. He was unwilling to push past his friend, and so he contented himself with turning about and kicking cold dirt at the pink pegasus. He walked off in a huff to rub his face in the dry grass and rejoin his family.

“Hate poopies Jumpa! Bwiget make scawedy poopies! Dummeh Jumpa nu gif owwies fo’ scawedy poopies!” She stuck her tongue out at the stallion’s hindquarters, then broke down sobbing again as the pain from her bruises made itself known. “Nu wan’ wawkies nu moaw! Bad fo’ babees! Wan’ go home! Wan’ go home!”

Rusty panted and tried to offer comfort to the battered, angry pink unicorn, and when she seemed calmer he likewise tried to scrape off the smears of shit from his chest and shoulder. He looked across the road, flinching as cars rolled past at a steady pace, boggling at the short distance they had come and how difficult it had been. His stomach growled and he felt so tired and lost that it nearly made him cry. The last golden light from the sun vanished from the top edges of the nearby buildings and the air started to steal the warmth from his body.

****************************13*****************************

Jumper and Bridget proved unable to give up their squabble completely and would puff their cheeks and hiss at each other whenever they got too close. Climbing back up the bank with her foal gripped in her mouth took a lot out of Wendy, although they were lucky enough not to have fallen in the river. The fluffies trudged further along the riverbank towards the vanishing light of the sun, but they didn’t make it more than a few hundred more yards before young Cricket plopped down on her hindquarters and started crying.

“Haf cowdies! Haf cowdies and tiewedies! Weggies huwt! Pwease, wan’ westies an’ wawmies!”

Nibbles, who had been bumbling around the little mare at every opportunity since Elsie died, immediately harmonized with her.

“Nibbews widdle hoofies nu feaw gud! Pwease nu gif owwies, widdle hoofies! Nibbews wan’ nummies and sweepies!”

The familiar cold stone settled into Rusty’s chest. Trying to tune out his whining herdmates, he looked around the nearby area for any place that might serve as shelter. He was interrupted by Bridget.

“Bwiget haf hooman daddeh. Daddeh gif gud nummies an’ bwankies an’ wawmies. Fwuffies get num-nums an’ wawmies fwom hoomans! Hoomans dewe!” She raised a shivering hoof and pointed down an alley between two nearby one-story buildings, where the tall shadows of humans could be seen flitting back and forth.

When Rusty looked at the humans, he didn’t see food or warmth. He saw his herdmates crying as the metal wires bit their flesh, and he saw Elsie being dragged out of the den, screaming about her foals all being dead.

“Hoomans nu wike fwuffies. Hoomans make fwuffies go wongest sweepies.” he said quietly but with utter conviction.

Bridget’s voice went up an octave and grew a ragged, harsh edge to it. “Wan’ nummies! Haf tummeh owwies! Wan’ wawmies and snuggews! Nu wike cowdies an’ dummeh wawkies aww time!” she stopped to pant and shiver. “Tummy owwies! Weggie owwies! Nosie owwies! Nu gud fo’ babees!” she screeched at him.

Desperate for a nearby solution, Rusty waddled over to a curious little roofless structure twenty yards behind the nearest building. He found a great brown door with a fluffy-sized gap underneath, and inside a great green box that smelled like rotting food, vomit and feces. However, there were spaces to either side that were just big enough for a group of fluffies to lay, and he even found sheets of cardboard to keep their bodies up off the fold asphalt. He led his little tribe of colorful nomads over to it and pulled down the flattened boxes with Jumper’s help while the other fluffies complained of the smell. As soon as they had flopped down together, the exhausted little creatures started to nod off to sleep one by one.

Red was awakened in the weird blue dawn light by a worried fluffy for the second time running. It was Jumper this time, instead of his mate, who was nuzzling him awake.

“Speshul fwiend nu haf miwkies. Babees nu haf miwkies, an’ haf tummeh owwies.”

“Wha…? Wha do?” mumbled the pegasus, trying to focus. His most dependable herdmate was standing over him, shivering a little in the cold, with his eyes full of worry.

“Jumpa sowwy, buh… Kewpid twy gif miwkies to babees… an’ nu haf nuff. Babees onwy haf widdle miwkies, an’ one babee nu num, an’... babee haf tummeh owwies. Jumpa can heaw tummeh make noisies wif owwies. Babees cwy an’ nu haf happies. Nee’ find nummies for mummah, su mummah can make miwkies.”

Rusty closed his eyes, feeling the sweet embrace of sleep pulling downward on his mind and stealing the energy from his limbs. With a groan, he pushed himself up and disengaged himself from the warmth of the pile of snoring fluffies. Cloud cover had crept in, and there would be no warm sunshine today. He followed anxious Jumper around to where Cupid was laying curled up around her foals. She was trying to hold all three of them with her front hooves, but as Rusty spoke to her, they were obstinately trying to slip her grasp and clamber down to her teats. Cupid burst out crying as she spoke.

“N-n-n-nu haf miwkies since dawk time… babees hungwy, bu huu huuu… Kewpid am wowstest mummah evew… babees haf huwties…” she blubbered and sniffled, and lowered her head to nuzzle her constantly chirping, peeping offspring. They had been growing fast on the bounty from the garden center, and were quickly approaching teething age, but still depended on the bedraggled pegasus mare.

“Miwk!” squeaked one of them.

“Tummy owwies!” squeaked another.

“Mummah haf fin’ nummies fow make miwkies. Pwease hewp?”

Rusty knew she was hungry. They all were. They had walked farther and eaten less over the past two days than any of them ever had. He could feel a dull ache from his own stomach and feel a heaviness in his limbs even as his body fought to stay warm. He had hoped that they little herd could keep walking until they found a place to live, but he also knew that Jumper could not ignore his family’s demands.

Rusty and his sturdy friend nudged the other fluffies awake - Wendy and the little filly foal and Cricket and Nibbles. Jumper and Bridget seem to have forgotten their spat - the stallion was gentle, and the pregnant unicorn only whined and didn’t snarl.

“Haf to fin’ nummies. Fwuffies go aww ways, wook fo’ num-nums. Bwing num-nums back. Good fwuffies shawe nummies wif aww fwuffies. Nu get wost! Safe pwace haf big cowd wa-was one side, big hooman pwaces on da ofver. If yu get wost ow scawed, wawk next to big cowd wa-was.” said Rusty to his sleepy herdmates. To his surprise, none of them complained. Rather, at the mention of food, some of them gulped a little and rubbed their bellies.

“Wusty go dis way. Jumpa an’ Nibbews go dis way. Cwicket and Wendy go dis way. If hooman twy to get yu, wun to Safe Pwace.” It seemed strange to be recounting The Rules again, especially when their Safe Place was a smelly, roofless set of walls, but there it was. The fluffies ranged out, some of them searching the riverbank for greenery that was still edible this late in the season, some of them timidly plodding over to the squat brick buildings and sniffing in the alleys and crevices.

Before departing, Jumper helped Cupid plant two of her three foals on her broad back, where they kept crying for food but instinctively held on tight. The third one was the biggest and boldest, and was old enough to walk beside his mother if they weren’t going too far.

“Jumpa wiww fin’ num-nums an’ bwing back fo’ speshul fwiend” promised the stout stallion. His mate beamed at him and burbled her affection, and they briefly touched noses before he waddled off.

*************************13***************************

“Come wif mummah, widdle babees,” said Cupid, her optimism returning, “Mummah an’ babees fin’ nummies, an’ mummah make miwkies su babees nu haf tummeh owwies evah!” Her foals cheered, and she lumbered around the walls of their shelter, striking out towards the river. It was slim pickings. The turf had mostly gone to dry stubble. The mare toddled carefully down to the river to slake her thirst and clean her youngs’ droppings from her coat. She encouraged her foals to carefully drink from the rushing stream in the hopes that it would ease their pangs, but they did not take well to the frigid water. She nearly lunged at some bright moss she found growing between some stones.

“Dese nummies nu gud,” she whined, spitting mud out of her mouth, “Hafta fin’ betta num-nums fo’ make bestest miwkies.” Replacing her two smaller young, she laboriously clambered up the bank, until she found herself back at the crossing-place where her tribe had been so scared by the truck horn the previous evening. At first, the recollection made her huff fearfully and look about with wide eyes, but at this hour the road was quiet. Growing calmer, she bumbled about, stripping a fern that still clung to its moisture and chlorophyll and grubbing in the dirt for seeds, stems, anything. Her foal mimicked her behavior but stopped every once in a while to hug its own belly and cry.

“Miwk! Hungwy!”

“Nu haf miwk, babee, sowwy. Mummah twyin’ to fin’ nummies, buh..”

Suddenly, she popped up, nearly upsetting her brood.

“Smeww… Mummah smeww gooooood nummies!”

Eyes wide, the mother fluffy smacked the drooling saliva from her lips and sought out the source of the smell. It was unfamiliar, yet so delicious that it made her stomach gurgle and groan in anticipation. She slowly scanned her surroundings until finally she spied a thin plastic bag sitting in the roadway, and inside that a little paper box with a clear cellophane window on top, and in the box was a partially smashed two-layer sheet cake with coconut icing.

“Ooooohhhh… nummiest num-nums!” Even from ten yards away, the sweetness of the cake called to the fluffy like a siren’s song.

“Babees… if mummah num dose nummies, wiww make bestest miwkies eva! Bestest miwkies fo’ babees!” She bounced a little on her hooves in excitement, nearly bucking her two little riders off. They chirped in fear, but the one on the ground cheered.

“Bestest miwkies! Bestest miwkies!” it squeaked.

As Cupid was watching, she heard a familiar rumbling sound and a rush of air. Gulping saliva, she cowered and looked about in fear, until a low-built burgundy car appeared from between the nearby corner and rolled with incredible heaviness and speed right across her field of vision. Its outer tires seemed to brush the little bag with the cake inside, making Cupid’s heart lurch with fear. What if the metal monster stole the food? What if one tried to hurt her while she was getting it? She was savvy enough to know that metal monsters only went on the rocky places, but suddenly the distance to her quarry seemed dangerously far.

Yet, as she stood there, the foals on her back started crying for food again, and the one at her feet wandered over to mouth her hanging teat. They were so hungry, and she could tell that her body was not producing anything to nurse them with. Her biggest foal tried both of her teats, and finding nothing there, plopped down on his hindquarters and started to cry.

“Tummy owwies!” it squeaked.

“Hungwy!” squeaked one of her riders.

“Otay, babees. Mumma get nummies an’ make miwkies.” She flopped down on her side and gently tilted to slide her foals off her broad, fluffy back, helping them along a little with her stubby little hoof. She collected their squirming bodies together under the hedge, gently pushing them together. “Babees make fwuffpiwe! Babees haf wawmies an’ huggies! Mummah get num-nums an’ come back fo’ huggies and wuv!” she bleated at them. She couldn’t tell how much they understood. They chirped to be deprived from their mother’s warmth and squeaked at her uncertainly.

“Wuv huggies! Wan’ huggies! Wan’ Mumma!”

“Nu! Nu be bad babees! Haf’ fwuffpiwe an’ nu weave fwuffpiwe!” she scolded.

Cupid turned peremptorily around, her dewy eyes focusing on the little bag sitting on the shoulder of the street, and with determination began to waddle over to it. The air seemed to grow still as her scuffed leathery hooves carried her up to the little bag, and she fastened her flat teeth on a limb of the fluttering white plastic. She pulled. It was a heavier load than she expected, but the whispers of the scent of coconut drove her to put her back into it. She was halfway across the far lane of the road when the plastic bag began to slip off the box as the harried mother inexpertly pulled at a corner.

“Nuuu, nummies pwease hewp!” she complained as she let go of the bag and tried to shove the cake box back into the plastic sleeve. It was then, with her body turned parallel to the side of the road, that her right ear caught the squeaking of one of her foals. She looked up, and saw her middle-sized foal, a little unicorn, skittering into the road, sobbing and squeaking for her. “Nuu! Babee nu weave fwuffpiwe!”

Fear and alarm caused the mother to overreact. With an angry, frantic expression on her face, she chugged directly at her wayward youth, scaring it so badly that it stopped in its tracks and covered its eyes with its tiny front hooves.

“Scawy! Nu! Am gud babee!” it squeaked.

“Nu! Nu weave fwuffpiwe! Nu wawkies on wocky pwace!” begged Cupid, panting in fear and shoving at her foal with her front hoof, trying to induce it to turn around and flee. All three of her foals were now chirping in fear, rattling her nerves. The one in the road was loudest and its pitch rose sharply when she shoved it.

“Why mumma huwt? Am bad babee?”

Desperately, Blue gummed her foal by the nape and pulled it to its feet, and then more-or-less kicked it with enough force that it half-skidded and half-jogged off the road and onto the gravel shoulder. The disoriented fluffy mare bobbled back around to re-acquire the cake, and then walked towards it while trying to keep one eye on her disobedient offspring. She snagged the bag again and started to pull.

As soon as she did, a tan-colored Toyota sedan slid around the corner announced by the rumbling of its engine and the whooshing of air. Panic shoved tears into Cupid’s eyes as she desperately pulled harder on the bag, but she didn’t get it out of the far lane before the great black tires slashed past her at mind-numbing speed, inches in front of her snout. The bag was torn from her mouth, the cake was blasted into oblivion twice in one heartbeat - Smash! Smash! Fragments and smithereens and gobbets burst and splattered all over the road, the tires, the hull of the car, and the terrified fluffy pony.

“Guh… buh…” Shock gripped her mind. Her mouth and chest heaved helplessly as she slowly came to grips with the fact that she had survived a whisker-close encounter with a car and but was unharmed.

“Hahh.. hahh… whu…” She looked down at the cone-shaped splatter mark in the road, realizing that it was the food she was trying to recover. It was now several square yards of paste and several heartbeats passed as she struggled to comprehend how she might go about collecting it.

“Nummies… nummies gone… b-b-b-babees?” Recovering faster and faster now, her brain retraced its steps to the clutch of foals she had taken such a risk for in the first place. With a liberal coating of coconut slime still hanging from her forequarters, she chugged around to look back at her offspring. It was then that a great boxy brown UPS van crested the bridge to her right, bellowing as its driver accelerated downhill towards the embankment.

Cupid spent too long looking at her foals and registering that the fussy middle one had once again defied her and toddled from the gravel shoulder to the hard pavement. She rotated her head back to the cold binocular glare of the van’s headlights, and far too late she stumbled into motion. Blobs of shit began to leak from her ass as she bobbled a few clumsy, terrified steps forward and was struck.

The UPS van’s rumbling front tire mashed her body flat starting at the tip of her right rear hoof and across her pelvis, crushing her bones and flesh with the might of a Titan. Her guts burst and her belly split, ejecting ropy, glistening coils of her intestines out onto the cold hardball. In a flash, jer vertebrae were crushed to powder and her flesh merged with the roughened, stony surface so completely that her tan fluff was turned into a perfect cast of the tire tread, rimed at the edges with blood and soot.

She moaned her last lungful of air out followed by a gout of bile and blood as the wreckage of her gut spewed forth from both ends of her ruined body.

“Huuuu!! Buuuuuughhhhh! Bbbbbllluuuuuphhhh!” she honked as the momentary pressure made her eyes bulge outwards and the world spun. Mortal cold and terror gripped her mind, and her consciousness split into fragments. One was helplessly scrabbling at the pavement with her front hooves, but all she managed to do was bloody her already-worn hooves, for her stubby limbs didn’t have the strength to separate her hind end from the asphalt it had been unwillingly wedded to.

Another part of her mind watched in horror as her naughty foal bounded into the street, its face a mask of grief, followed by the tiny hopping steps of the tiniest foal, the little earthie. She could see them opening their tiny mouths to peep and chirp, but all she could hear was a dull, mushy drumming and roaring noise that seemed to come from inside her skull.

“Muuuuuhhhhhh,” she groaned, her head jerking helplessly left and right and her vision flickering on and off. She was trying to tell her foals to get off the road, but somehow she understood that she was merely spitting blood and gastric juices on them as they tried to hug her still-flailing front limbs. The last clear thing she saw was a white, pointy-nosed Dodge Neon appearing in her peripheral vision between the struts of the little bridge.

Her biggest foal was, perhaps, saved by its more strongly-developed intellect - it stayed huddled under the hedge, obeying its mother even as it saw her brutally squashed to tissue by the van. It squalled at its nestmates when they bounced forth.

“Nu! Nu be bad! Nu weave!”

“Mummah! Scawy!” said the tiny one, darting like a mouse onto the pavement.

And so the biggest foal huddled there and watched blood and cords of mucus gush from its half-mother’s nose and mouth, and heard her rasping and gurgling sounds, and it saw the Dodge’s rear end shimmy as the car accelerated and wiggled a bit towards the shoulder of the road. It saw the splatter of its mother and siblings’ liquefaction suddenly coat the grimy silver hubcap and trailing white fender. The Neon mashed the foal’s family and whisked off down the road, and in the returning silence the foal gazed at the gruesome slurry of guts, blood, brains, multicolored fluff and cake that now smeared the road.

************************14************************

“Whewe Kewpid? Wan’ speshul fwiend!” said Jumper for the fourth or fifth time. The fluffies had all set out to forage for badly-needed food, and shortly past noon on the cold day, the strongest and most able of them had either given up from fatigue or returned to the dumpster shed with their takings. It seemed wrong to them somehow that Cupid, laden with three foals and fairly timid on the best of days, would not have returned before young, vital Cricket or strong Jumper.

It surprised none of them that Bridget had only made a token effort, partially because of her character and partially because she had continued to swell in her pregnancy. Driven by a powerful thirst, she had waddled down to the riverbank to drink and become smeared with mud, which marked the end of her get-up-and-go. She retired to the dumpster shed.

The next fluffy to return to home base was Wendy, accompanied by her little filly foal Feather. The little one’s slight frame had been of a benefit, for she had been able to squeeze under a nearby dumpster and pull out a banana that was only half-rotten.

“Gif nummies! Wan’ nummies!” pealed the pregnant pink fluffy, chugging forwards and reaching out a hoof to stiff-arm Wendy while standing on the end of the banana to hold it down.

Making rude little noises in her throat, Bridget stripped away the skin from the fresher end and began eating in great bites. Wendy and the filly eased closer, their stomachs aching at the sight of the starchy food, but Bridget saw them and whipped her muzzle around threateningly.

“Yikky num-nums!” she said, spitting a glob of spoiled plant-flesh down onto the cardboard. “Bwiget nu wike muddy wa-was! Yu make Bwiget cwean an’ pwetty wif wickies!” Yellow rolled slightly, showing the mother and daughter pair her mud-caked lower flanks.

“Buh..” started Wendy

“MAKE BWIGET CWEAN AN’ PWETTY WIF WICKIES!” snarled the pregnant mare. Wendy scowled at her, but the pliant little filly skittered timidly closer and reached out gingerly to try to clean out some of the mud. She gave up after a few tries and sat down to cry.

Wendy became angry to see her foal so despondent. She confronted Bridget nose-to-nose.

“Gud fwuffies shawe nummies. Gif nummies to babeeh.”

“Bwiget hungwy! Nee’ num-nums fo’ haf babeehs!”

“Fiwwy nee’ nummies fo’ gwow big an’ stwong! Meany mawe shawe nummies!” Orange puffed her cheeks out and stamped on the cardboard.

Bridget stuck one hoof out protectively and humped about a bit, trying to turn away from the grey mare, but she was crippled by her bloat. Wendy dodged around the extended limb and shoved Bridget’s face away from the banana just as the pink fluffy had finished taking two monster bites. The pregnant mare half-snarled and half-whined at the earth pony, but was unable to keep a grip on the heel of the banana. She sat and fumed and watched the mother and filly gobble down the last crumbs, then started crying and holding her belly.

“Bwiget hungwy! Bwiget hate dummeh muddy wa-was! Buuu huu huu!”

The early afternoon was the warmest it was going to get all day, and the cold was still so harsh that the fluffies relented and huddled together, whining whenever the wind blew just right to slice down into the narrow space beside the dumpster. Wendy got up at one point and shuffled around the great stenching green box, backing into the corner of the opposite space and hunched over to empty out her bowels.

Jumper and Nibbles returned next, bearing only four bundles of tough crabgrasses and green-ish twigs tucked into their cheek pouches. They plopped them down and shared them out, except one on which Jumper planted his stocky hoof and refused to budge as the other fluffies chewed and gnawed, trying to extract some nourishment from the poor fodder.

“Dese nummies fo’ speshul fwiend an’ Wusty an’ otha fwuffies.”

“Mummah? How time tiww Brudda?” said Feather, sniffling a little.

“Mummah.. nu know, babee. Mummah sowwy. Suuu sowwy.”

Cricket came back dragging a can half-full of lightly molded, gelatinous soup. She had cut her muzzle several times on the jagged metal, and something had pierced a star-shaped, bloody wound in the suede of her hoof. The normally ebullient little mare was tired and shaken, but she beamed and wiggled her rump happily when the other fluffies cheered her arrival. Jumper became anxious and started asking after his mate, but none of his herdmates had a guess. That left only Rusty, and when he arrived, he appeared to be slumped under a heavy burden but was bearing no food.

“Jumpa, pwease fowwow… nee’ hewp. Yu babee nee’ hewp.” The fluff under his eyes was damp with fresh tears. Jumper, puzzled, rose to follow him, but then turned around and spoke sharply to Nibbles while pointing at the last remaining clump of grasses and leaves they had scrounged.

“Dese nummies fo’ speshul fwiend an’ Wusty. Nu wet anyfwuffy ewse num.” The two stallions plodded out into the cold.

“Wha… wha… wha happen…?” gibbered the green earth pony scant minutes later, slumped onto his rump at the crossing-place. Rusty had led him up the little rise and shown him the gruesome wreckage of his family. His mate and children’s scents were still vivid, and the smashed, soiled cakes of offal in the road still bore shreds of fluff in their colors.

“Nu! Nu! NUUUU! NUUUUU!” howled Jumper, alternately beating his hooves into the ground and running in circles “BABEES! BABEES AN’ SPESHUL FWIEND! NU! PWEASE! PWEEEEASE! NU BE DEAD!” The fluffy wailed and moaned, and by some perverse timing a great black SUV chose that moment to rumble by and smash Cupid’s sodden remains down for the hundredth time that day. “Huuuuu! Huuuuu! Wan’ die! Wan’ die!” Jumper hunched over and spewed a pitiful splatter of diarrhea out of his haunches, and then whipped around and plowed into it facefirst.

Rusty flinched in sympathy and tried to break into his herdmate’s consciousness. “Jumpa! Yu stiww haf babee! Wook! I hewd babee cwy an’ fin’ him hewe!” Red reached under the dry hedge at the side of the road and tugged the surviving foal from Cupid’s litter half out of the little pit he had been laying in. Sobbing Jumper flung himself on the shivering little foal, gripping him with both front hooves as he flopped in the mulch.

“Oh - oh - oh - babee… wha happen tu mummah? Wha-wha-wha… Nuuuu, huu huuu….” was all the bereaved fluffy could manage. The foal, despite being nearly a weanling, just chirped and squeaked like a newborn. It’s eyes were shut and its limbs were limp.

“I twy, buh babeeh nu wawk, nu tawk. Make widdle babee noisies. Nu know. Twy to cawwy babeeh, buh it cwy an’ cwy.” Red bit his lip and hung his head while his friend frantically nuzzled and licked the smears of his own shit off his last remaining foal between wracking sobs. He sat in the cold and watched his normally-resolute friend blubber and weep. Eventually, he had to help hoist the eerily mute and stubbornly unseeing creature onto his friend’s back so they could waddle back to the dumpster shed. It continued to squeak and chirp and waggle its little hooves, and would not exert the slightest effort to keep from falling off its father’s rump.

Back at the dumpster shed, the rest of the fluffies had shared out the near-spoiled minestrone as best they could, and collected themselves into a pile to fight the cold. Rusty and Jumper trudged back in the door laden with the catatonic foal, and their appearance was so haggard and careworn that the other fluffies just watched in silence as Jumper slid the foal down onto the cardboard and wrapped himself around it and sobbed.

“Nuuu, huu huuu… awww dead… awww dead…” he still had his own liquid feces smeared on his face but made no move to clean it off.

“Kewpid an’ two babeehs… took wongest sweepies.” Rusty reported to his shrinking herd. He didn’t know what else to say. His hunger and grief settled on him like a wet blanket and he sat down to gnaw on the tough wad of half-dried leaves and blades of grass that was left over from the herd’s forage. The fluffy ponies huddled together for warmth and listened to Jumper cry and moan while his foal would only helplessly squeak and chirp with its eyes shut.

**************************************15****************************

The light of the sun was fading in the west, and it was hard to tell that darker clouds had marched in overhead, but no room for doubt remained once the freezing rain and sleet started to slap down onto the rooftops and the pavement.

The stressed, fatigued fluffies had collapsed once they had eaten their meager mouthfuls of waste food and foliage scraps, huddled together for warmth and comfort. Rusty was uneasy deep in his mind, for he had searched and searched and found no more than a few brief mouthfuls of food. He knew the fluffies should continue their search for a new home, but the sight of Jumper’s family smashed to gory smears had shaken his resolve.

The first patters of frigid rain smacked down like icy lances, sopping into the little creatures’ dense, airy fluff and cruelly snatching pinches of warmth from their tender skin. Just like the half-frozen droplets pelting out of the sky, the fluffies’ agitation started small and grew into a steady roar.

“Whu..? Wha happen’?”

“Wawa… sky wawas come!”

“Nuuu, fwuffy wan’ sweepies! Nu wan’ wawas!”

“Nuu! NUU! NU WIKE! COWD! COWD!”

The fluffies started to panic as the sleet came heavier and heavier. Nibbles shut his eyes and started to bleat louder and louder, running in circles as his back and sides were soaked. He stepped on his herdmates, banged into the dumpster, and ultimately threw his forequarters down and raised his tail to spew out a small measure of runny shit.

The cardboard turned dark and damp, and then a pool started to grow too quickly for Bridget to rise up out of it. Her fluff wicked up a pint of the watery sleet, wrapping her in a heavy, frosty girdle. She opened her mouth as far as it could go and howled and howled, sticking her tongue out.

“Muh! Muh!” Rusty staggered up and shoved on the door to the dumpster shed, creaking it slowly open. It was obvious to him that his herdmates would only be soaked and frozen if they stayed put, so he frantically looked back and forth on the dirty ashpalt, searching for cover. Twenty yards away, he saw that the pavement in the lee of a nearby building was dry, protected by a narrow overhang and gutter. He popped back into the shed and hollered at his mate.

“Wendy! Wun to dwy pwace! Wun to dwy pwace! Offa dewe!”

“Nuuu, babee scawed!” sobbed the panicked mare. She reached out a shivering hoof and tapped the side of the dumpster. Rusty could glimpse his offspring’s canary yellow tail underneath the green metal.

“Babee nu make hidies! Babee haf wun to dwy pwace!” begged Wendy.

“Yu wun! Wusty hewp babee! Wun!”

Moaning with stress and fear, the mare turned and waddled out of the dumpster shed. One down. The rain started to drum down heavier. Rusty fairly shoved Cricket out the door after his special friend, ignoring the injured little unicorn’s limping and crying. He then planted his nose under Bridget’s rump and shoved her up to her stumpy legs. She was rolling her eyes and hooting, but she managed to lurch out the door as well. Nibbles at last had opened his eyes back up and bolted, leaving only Jumper and his cataconic little foal.

Jumper was shaking his head and muttering to himself, shaking violently as the puddle of icy water stole the heat from his body. He was wrapped around the foal.

“Wun to dwy pwace! Wa-was nu gud fo’ fwuffies! Cowdies!” exhorted Rusty.

“Nu. Nu.” mumbled the big earthie.

Rusty reached down and clapped his flat teeth on the little foal’s tail and gave him a long four-point pull. The foal slid free of Jumper’s grasp, chirping louder and more shrill as it was dragged over the quickly-soaking cardboard. Deprived of the sweet smell of his broken foal, Jumper got up and splashed after the pegasus, moaning like Marley’s ghost.

The fluffies cowered together in the narrow dry strip, a brightly-colored line of shivering, crying fuzzy shapes. One by one, they shook like wet dogs in an effort to dry out their sodden fluff, spurring a chorus of complaints.

“Nuuu, nu wike cowd wa-was!”

“Huuu, huhuhuhu… wan’ wawmies an’ huggies!”

Wendy stood at the border of the dry zone and bleated “BABEE! BABEE!” into the misty rain, but no answer came. Rusty stood by her, willing his stumpy legs to carry him back into the wind and spray to recover his lost young, but his body was shaking so badly from the cold that they wouldn’t respond. His teeth were hammering together and he couldn’t keep his head steady.

Just when the bedraggled little creatures had begun to calm down, a heretofore- unnoticed grey door in the side of the building was bashed open, screeching on its rusty old hinges and slamming into the brickwork. A man in a tan bowling shirt appeared, his butt cheeks planted against the door and a bulging black bag in each hand. The fluffies closest to him squealed and started bumbling blindly forward.

“Hoomans! Hoomans come! Wun! Wun!”

“Nuuuuuu, scawwwy!”

Nibbles once again tried to vent his bowels in fear, but having been short on food for several days, only produced a sad farting noise. Jumper snatched up his catatonic foal by the scruff and bolted. Rusty was so rattled he simply plodded away with what energy he had left, stretching his species’ limited cunning to put as much distance between him and the towering human as possible. He turned left, skittered across a narrow alley, stumbled and tripped on some soggy debris, turned right into the horrid, cold face of the still-falling sleet and ran between two parked cars. He kept running and running until he was confronted with a slick, muddy slope leading down to the nearby river. Moaning to himself, he turned left and continued jogging until he spotted a dark, sheltered place and dove for it.

“Nu… nu… cowd…” he gibbered to himself, shoving himself into a dirty crevice underneath a slab of concrete. As it turned out, he had blindly run under the next bridge upstream from the deadly crossing-place of the previous day’s horrors. It was a grimy, filthy place, but at least the frigid sleet wasn’t pelting him anymore. He sobbed and sobbed, but gradually came to his senses enough to realize that his herdmates were straggling in behind him: Nibbles rounded the corner panting and sobbing so badly he sounded like he was choking. Jumper came next, holding his limp, chirping foal, and lay it down on the cold stone to frantically brush rain off it with his tongue in between begging it to open its eyes. Cricket and Bridget appeared next. The young mare had been helping to push and guide the hysterical pregnant pink unicorn along despite her pierced hoof. Last was Wendy, whose eyes were bugged out with worry and who instantly started squalling and crying.

“Whewe babeeh? Whewe Feavew? Wan’ babeeh!!” she screeched, rolling her eyes around. Rusty was struck dumb: In the freezing cold, panic, and pain, he had forgotten about his little filly foal.

“Speshul fwiend hewp! Hewp find babeeh! Whewe babeeh? Nuuuu, wan’ babeeh! BABEEH!” she honked and pleaded, running around in a panicked little circle. The other fluffies couldn’t bear to look at her and stuffed themselves into a soaking, shivering pile and cried. Rusty walked up to his mate and half-tackled, half-hugged her to try to get her to stop screeching and zig-zagging around under the bridge. She thrashed against his grip and began swatting and kicking at him.

“Wiww fin’ babeeh! Wiww fin’ babeeh aftew nu moar wa-was! Pwease nu cwy, nu gif owwies!” he begged.

“Yu wost babeeh! Wost babeeh! Babeeh haf cowdies an’ awone an’ yu nu hewp! BABEEHS AWW DEAD! NUUU, WAN’ BABEEH! HATE YU!” The mare broke down into sobs and went limp, allowing her mate to drag her over to the pile of fluffies who were desperately trying to stay warm, wedged under the cold concrete structure of the bridge. A tiny stream of frigid water drained out of their fluff and headed down the concrete towards the river, growing murkier and darker as it rolled over the grimy pavement.

**********************16*********************

Rosy-fingered dawn broke over the little city. The fluffies had slept, if you could call it that: each of them in turn woke up every once in a while and cried as hunger chewed on their bellies, pain climbed about in their stiffening, cold joints, and their stressed, sore muscles throbbed and throbbed. The rain had stopped after a short time and the sun had appeared in the west under the overcast, drying and warming the creatures just enough for them to avoid hypothermia and death in the frigid night. Only whispers of frost remained for the sun’s rays to chase away.

Rusty’s stomach felt like it was eating itself. His head pounded and his vision was hazy. Tremors came and went along his limbs.

“Fwuffies nu can stay hewe. Fwuffies haf to fin’ gud pwace to wive.” he said. Half his herdmates started crying at the announcement. “Go twy to fin’ nummies. Wusty wiww twy to fin’ babeeh an’ nummies. When bwighty-bwight goes up high, come back to… safe pwace…” he trailed off, looking at the dingy concrete cave that was now his tribe’s temporary den.

Bridget waddled a short distance away from where the herd had been piled and gingerly stood on the tips of her hooves to release a startling amount of urine. She was panting almost all the time now, and her body looked very strange - indentations between her ribs showed under her fluff, like ruffles of a great pink curtain, and the flesh was starting to hollow out from her face, but her teats were beginning to bulge and she would wince and whimper when she accidentally dragged them on the cold concrete.

Cricket’s muzzle bore criss-crossed scabs surrounded by chapped skin where the tin can had cut her a day earlier. She walked with a shambling gait to keep weight off her pierced hoof. Pain had dampened her normally cheerful spirit, but she was less prone to bouts of sobbing than any of the other females, and less than Nibbles. That pegasus stallion would only rise when another fluffy prodded him and even then his face was a permanent moue and his tail dragged behind him.

This morning it was Jumper who demanded the timid fluffy’s help hoisting his limp foal onto his back. The foal had still not said a word or opened its eyes, but Jumper had recovered enough from his bout of hopelessness to squeeze out a grating, desperate kind of optimism.

“Nibbews an’ Jumpa wiww fin’ nummies! Aww fwuffies wiww haf gud num-nums and babeeh wiww nu be cwy an’ wiww pway an’ make tawkies!” he chattered, but his face was a mask of worry.

Wendy walked up and nuzzled her mate a little pointedly and glared at him with tense, half-crazed eyes. “Wan’ babeeh! Yu hewp fin’ widdle babeeh! Babeeh wost and haf cowdies and awone! WAN’ BABEEH!” she shifted her weight and pawed at the concrete as if she was about to lose control. Rusty wordlessly nuzzled her and turned to clamber up and out from the bridge’s bed.

As it turned out, it was not such a great distance back to the little dumpster shed where Rusty and Wendy had last seen their foal. It certainly seemed like less of a journey in the sunshine and without near-freezing rain soaking them down. The stallion recognized the place and stopped to peek around corners and listen for doors and footsteps, but the mare had no such restraint.

“Babeeh! Babeeh! Mummah is hewe! Babeeh nu hide!” she bobbled around to the front of the dumpster shed, her piercing, desperate bleating echoing off the buildings and across the parking lot. She panted and grunted as she tried to nose open the door to the shed, but it had been diligently clasped tight since the fluffies fled the previous night.

The desperation in Wendy’s voice climbed a notch as she jammed her head into the gap under the door and began to scrabble at the pavement.

“Babeeh! Babeeh! Wan’ babeeh! WHEWE BABEEH!?” she bleated.

Rusty held his silence and followed her under the door as she scuttled first to one side of the dumpster, then the other, then back to the first one, wailing. Rusty saw that the cardboard he and Jumper had pulled down to serve as a floor for the makeshift den was gone. The pile of shit the fluffies had made on the other side of the dumpster was gone. The meaning was clear: Just like at the garden center, the humans had been at work here. The hair all over his body started to stand on end.

He lowered his head and peered under the great green box of the dumpster where he had last seen his little filly. The darkness was soothing to his eyes, and after a second he saw what he was sure was a glimmer of color in the back corner.

“Wusty see somefin’...” he mumbled. Wendy had flung herself down on the concrete and had both her front hooves covering her eyes as she wept, letting out a slow steady moan punctuated with cries of “Babeeeeeeh!” and “Nuuuuuuu!”

The blot of color resembled his lost filly’s gold-yellow tail more and more from close up. Rusty lay down on his side and shoved his face into the narrow gap under the dumpster, pawing and scuffing at the concrete for leverage. He strained and strained his complaining muscles, reaching out with his muzzle until he felt a tickle of something fuzzy on his tongue, but he couldn’t manage to bite it until he had hooked one of his front hooves under the dumpster and pulled himself forward. At last, he caught the stringy hair and clamped down hard.

One tug later and something big, canary-colored and wet popped out of the drain at the bottom of the dumpster with a loathsome splatting sound, followed by a gush of cold, tainted rainwater.

“Box make poopies?” said Wendy, who had got to her feet to watch her mate.

Rusty stumbled backwards, trying to avoid the stinking, growing puddle without losing his grip on the package. He pulled it out into the chilly sunshine. It was his foal.

One side of her head was flattened and abraded, with the skin stripped away and even the gleaming bone underneath crunched and crazed like an eggshell, and little globs of grey and red jelly poking through. Her body appeared to be permanently bent at the shoulder blades and swollen in the gut. She was stiff, soggy, and reeking from the dumpster, and her one un-mashed eye glared up at Rusty pitilessly. The half of her tiny foal teeth that remained were showing over her peeled-back lips in a ghastly, permanent sneer.

Sobs began heaving their way up from Rusty’s chest as he stared at his dead little filly, but he was interrupted when Wendy shoved him out of the way and leapt on the dead foal’s body, wrapping both her grey front hooves around it and burying her face in its midsection.

“NUUUUH! NUUUUUUUH! BABEEEEEH!” she howled in a muffled voice, rocking back and forth and rhythmically squeezing the corpse. “Mummah… mummah wuv babeeh…” she stuck her pink tongue out and began to wipe it gracelessly over the dead filly’s torn-up face and crown, pulling sticky strings of glutinous fluid up out of the wounds. Little flakes of bone and bits of filth from the dumpster drain stuck to Wendy’s tongue and made her retch, but she rallied and squeezed the corpse even tighter. It’s stiffened spine made the head dance around like a stalk of grass. “Mummah gif babee wickies an’ huggies an’ babeeh nu haf sickies!” babbled the mare.

The sound of a nearby door thudding shut - or open? - echoed down into the dumpster shed, scaring Rusty half out of his wits. He had been gaping at his mate, unsure of how to prod her to stop coddling the little corpse. He reached out and gently stroked her with his front hoof.

“Wendy.. we haf’ go ‘way… nu can stay hewe… Wendy… hoomans wiww come…”

Wendy didn’t react until he walked up and nuzzled her in the ear, and then she flinched in surprise and looked up at him with crazed, tear-rimmed eyes.

“Babeeh come wif.”

“Babeeh dead, speshul fwien’... babeeh make wongest sweepies.”

“Nu! Nu! Nu say! Babeeh come wif! Wuv babeeh! Wuv babeeh!” snarled the mare, baring her teeth and puffing her cheeks out at the stallion. He shrank back, no doubt in his mind that his mate was on the verge of violence. “Yu nu wuv babeeh! Onwy mummah wuv babeeh! HATE YU!”

He stared at her for a long second, but in the end could do nothing except turn and painfully crawl back under the great brown door.

**********************17**************************

Jumper and Nibbles trundled out from under the bridge on the upstream side. Jumper was trying not to notice that his foal’s intermittent peeping and chirping noises had been getting steadily weaker, or that when it wasn’t hugging its own belly with its front hooves, it was sucking on them. The foal would lay quiescent on his father’s back, but he was very nearly too big to stay put - his weak limbs would periodically give out and he would threaten to slide off. Nibbles shambled along in the wake of the bigger stallion, taking every opportunity to voice his complaints about how cold and hungry he was.

The greenbelt by the river was nearly all parched and dry. Fifty yards from the bridge, the fluffy ponies bumbled into a row of carefully-manicured crabapple trees. Both stallions felt very exposed and uneasy in the open, sunlit field, but as it happened they roamed untroubled back and forth under the bare limbs, sniffing out the few unrotten pinches of fruit that still remained after the birds, bugs and elements had done their best. The flesh of the fallen, late-season crabapples was viciously sour and fringed with mold and spoil.

“Haf nummies, babeeh…” pleaded Jumper, spitting out a thoroughly-chewed mouthful of red pulp on the ground next to where he had laid his catatonic offspring. The foal, eyes still shut, gummed the masticated fruit and appeared to suck a few mouthfuls of moisture out, but then turned away. “Pwease num nummies, babeeh… be big swtong fwfuffy, nu cwy…”

“Dese nummies gif tummeh owwies, make fwuffy feaw sickies…” mewled a grim-faced Nibbles as the crabapple began to turn his otherwise-empty stomach. A cold wind blew as he loaded Jumper’s limp foal back onto his sire’s rump and they turned away from the little row of trees towards the nearby buildings.

Jumper laid his colt down on the pavement. He simply could not forage without the weanling sliding off his back at every turn, and this little alley behind a row of shops was full of smells that made his mouth water and his empty gut rumble.

“Babeeh stay hewe. Babeeh be gud and Jumpa wiww fin’ bestest nummies aw gud fow babeeh.” he nattered. His foal simply lay with its eyes shut and made intermittent chirping noises.

Nibbles had clamped his teeth on the corner of a black garbage bag that reeked of food. He had planted all four leathery hooves on the stony ground and was pulling for all he was worth, but the tough black plastic was more of a mind to stretch than rip. It grew and grew under the fluffy pony’s pull until his jaw muscles gave out and he fell backwards onto his rump.

“Nuuuu, nu wike moufie owwies! Meany fing huwt fwuffy!”

Jumper plodded up and began sniffing the corner of the bag, now stretched into a thin, bulging pseudopod. He experimentally pawed at it and then reached out to try gnashing it between his teeth. He felt a prod at his side - Indigo had scooted close and was sitting on his rump with both front hooves out and tears in his eyes.

“Nibbews haf owwies. Yu gif huggies.”

“Nu! Jumpa smeww nummies! Yu hewp Jumpa get nummies!” snapped the big earth pony. Nibbles responded by pressing both front hooves into his eyes and starting to wail.

“Nu wike! Meany fwuffy nu gif huggies fo’ owwies! Meany fwuffy make cwy!” he blubbered, tears soaking his muzzle.

Jumper’s stomach clenched with another pang as he glared at his foraging partner. The anger, grief and frustration he had been carrying around boiled over and he found himself stamping on the pavement and snarling. “Dummeh fwuffy! Yu am stawwion an’ yu cwy wike widdle babeeh! Nu hewp wif nummies, nu hewp hewd! Yu dummeh poopies fwuffy!”

Nibbles’ eyes were full of pain and surprise when he pulled his hooves down, but he found that he, too, had reserves of anger to share.

“Yu dummeh! Yu dummeh babeeh nu moar tawkies ow wawkies an’ just wie awound wike widdle babee!” He thrust one of his hooves at the mouth of the alley where Jumper’s quiescent foal had been laid. Both angry fluffies involuntarily glanced there, and turned their attention back to their quarrel. Jumper breathed in deeply, preparing his rebuttal, but it died in his throat.

Both fluffies snapped their heads back toward the debouchment. The limp turquoise body of the foal was still there, but standing over it was a threatening dark shape. It was a cat. Not just any cat, but a matted, notch-eared tomcat, taller than Jumper but built like a bundle of barbed wire. It regarded the two stallions evenly for a moment and then turned its burning eyes back to the dumpling-like foal.

Nibbles put his front paw in his mouth and made a muffled cry of anguish and fear. Jumper shuffled forward, spluttering and stammering as his brain tried to work out how to proceed.

“Nu! Nu munsta huwt babeeh!” Jumper finally managed to say. The instant the blustering, anxious fluffy pony closed within five feet of the alley cat, it abruptly shifted into a different attitude altogether. Its ragged, scarred ears snapped back against its skull and its back arched as if it was being pulled up by invisible strings.

“Rrrrrroooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwllllllllllllllll” it growled, and then let go a harsh hissing noise. The hair stood straight out all over both fluffies’ bodies, causing Jumper to stop in his tracks and pace back and forth, his voice shrill and wobbly.

“Nu munsta! Nu wike! Weave babeeh awone! Pwease nu huwt babeeh! Jumpa wuv babeeh, nu wan’ owwies! Gu ‘way! Gu ‘way!” yammered the distraught sire.

Satisfied that the big fluffy wasn’t coming any closer, the cat appeared to relax again, pacing a few steps around the helpless foal as it waggled its front hooves around. The cat reached out with claws extended and smacked it. The hooks buried themselves in the fluff and tore little quarter-inch long red lines in the foal’s skin. The cat dragged the little turquoise foal closer, and the catatonic little creature squeaked as loud as it still could manage.

It was too much for Jumper. He chugged forward, anger and concern twisting his face, making an incoherent cry. The cat responded to the challenge like it was a mortal insult, leaping onto the aggrieved fluffy from three feet away like a bolt of furry lightning.

“YEEEEK! YEEEEEEEEK!” was all Jumper could manage as the cat wrapped him up like a christmas present and tackled him to the ground. The cat’s front claws snagged dug into flesh on the left side of his face and the right side of his neck, as it buried its fangs in his fluff and made a horrid growl-yowl sound in its throat. Jumper squirmed and screeched, but he couldn’t get enough leverage to plant his hooves on the ground or roll away from the enraged feline.

“Hewp! Hewp! Pwease! Hewp!” he bawled, but Nibbles was rooted to the spot by terror and could only gape at the melee.

The cat shifted its hips and brought its strong back legs up, bracing them against the fluffy’s belly for an instant before flexing every muscle in its body to rake them downwards towards his hindquarters. This was a standard overture among alley cats, but the fluffy had never experienced anything like it. Great gouges of fluff were violently ripped free from Jumper’s belly, leaving two long, red lines on his skin and snapping off one of the cat’s rear left claws. Jumper shrieked and began flailing all four limbs in agony. A jet of urine and a dribble of diarrhea splattered out of his hindquarters.

The cat grew even more enraged and thrashed with a devil’s strength until it had cocked its wiry rear legs back into raking position. It didn’t hesitate for a second, and this time its leading claws snagged the thin skin on the fluffy’s exposed belly. It rent four deep, dark parallel gouges down Jumper’s empty belly like a fisherman gutting a trout, and at the end of the stroke its claws popped free, tossing little dark jewels of blood into the cold air.

Jumper’s eyes bugged out of his skull and the searing pain made him scream louder than he ever had before.

“HUUUUUUUUU! HUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!” he gasped, jerking his head and limbs about as agony possessed his whole being. He felt the warmth of his insides leaking away into the air through the incredible pain of his shredded belly.

The cat abruptly grew tired of holding onto the miserable creature and it whipped its wiry body back up to all fours, bounding away and landing in a crouch a foot away. It need not have worried - Jumper was in no shape to press the attack. Still gasping and howling in pain, he closed his eyes and huddled into a crescent on the ground as he tried to cover his ragged wounds with his front paws, but his muscles gave out and he flopped out straight again, rolling about in an effort to find a position that wasn’t excruciating. Through a haze of tears, his eyes found Nibbles’ cowering form silhouetted against the brick alley wall. He reached out a trembling hoof.

“P-p-p pwease… huuuu…. pwease hewp…. kkkk… huuuuuuu!” burbled the stricken stallion. The cat, suddenly casual and unhurried again, gave its front paw a thorough licking and smoothed out the fur on its nape, keeping one eye on the fluffies as if to see what would happen next. Nibbles sobbed loudly and shook his head as if trying to clear it of the very idea of helping his friend.

The cat appeared to grow bored and walked in a short half-circle around where Jumper was squirming and sobbing in pain and looked down at the little foal. It seemed oblivious to everything going on around it, and was only making tiny croaking sounds with its eyes still shut tight. The cat stared at it, spellbound by the wriggling and raspy chirping.

“Huuuu… nu… munsta… h-h-h-uuu…” groaned Jumper, trying to pull enough of his consciousness out of terror and agony to protect the last member of his family. He pawed feebly at the ground, unable to use his rear legs to pry himself up out of his spreading pool of blood.

Nibbles saw that the cat was distracted, and so he got to his feet, shaking like a leaf in a stiff wind, and nosed into the brick wall as if he wanted to merge with it. He was trying to keep his eyes shut from fear, but had to open them to see where he was going. Every few steps he had to look up towards the cat, which would drive him back into a fit of shaking and sobbing and he would shut his eyes again.

“Nu nu nu nu nu nu nu nuuuuuu huuuu huuuuuu,” he moaned. “Wan’ go tu safe pwace. Wan huggies an’ wawmies. Munsta bad. Nuuuuu nu nu nu nu nu nu huuu huuuuu.”

Meanwhile, bleeding, sobbing Jumper and the increasingly irritable cat were dancing their own grim fandango. The cat would loom ever closer over the foal, practically licking its chops in anticipation, which was the only force on Earth that would drive Jumper to stop rocking back and forth in the pain from his rent belly and make a noise or drag himself a quarter-step closer.

“P-P-P-WEASE!” gasped the wounded fluffy as darkness started to cloud his vision, “PWEASE NU WEAVE! FWIEND PWEASE HE-HE-HEWP!”

“Nuuuuu huuuu huuu huuu” whined Nibbles, stuck to the wall, steadily inching his way clear of the danger zone.

The cat finally had enough. He rose to all fours and arched his back until he seemed to tower over the bleeding stallion. His notched ears snapped back and his eyes seethed with anger. Jumper saw his death written in those eyes and froze, feeling his heart thud louder and louder as it pumped more and more of his life’s blood out the ragged tears in his belly.

“N-n-nu..” he murmured, but the cat struck before he could finish. The cat carved a perfect parabola out of the air, wrapping its front paws around the fluffy’s head and neck and diving over it like a lover leaping into his partner’s bed. The momentum of the cat’s strike pulled the earth pony over onto its back, only this time the cat’s fangs latched onto his ear, punching a quartet of neat round holes through the sensitive skin. He squealed helplessly as he felt the cat’s array of daggers begin to bind and tear and the sound of its yowling filled his mind. Within seconds he was bleeding from a dozen new wounds and the cat had ripped half his ear off.

The shrill squealing struck Nibbles just as he was about to make his escape. He knew it was the sound of his friend dying, and that knowledge scared him so badly that he hunched his body over and shoved the last gobbets of shit out of his guts. He could not help but look over his shoulder at the two writhing figures on the ground, and as he did a strange instinct took hold.

As though moved by a different spirit, the shivering, crying white stallion took a step back toward the mouth of the alley, then stumbled, then took another two in quick succession until he was but two feet from the preoccupied combatants. He continued to stare at the two fighting creatures and as he craned his neck down and gently took hold of the poor catatonic foal’s tail. As soon as he had clamped his teeth down on the sweet-smelling fringe of hair, the spell was broken and he turned and ran for his life with the sound of his friend begging for mercy ringing in his ears.

****************18******************
When the fluffies had dispersed to search for food, the pregnant pink mare Bridget had only shuffled a little ways away from the bridge embankment to search for lingering patches of greenery near the cold river. She winnowed the dry, crunchy blades of grass and curled, half-dead leaves out from between the river stones, but she only grew more tired as she humped her pregnant body along. Her head began to spin and she coughed as the dry cellulose scratched at her throat.

It was not long before she slowly climbed back up the bank to huddle by herself under the bridge. She shifted uncomfortably as her stomach gnawed at itself and her head spun from fatigue and famine.

“Hungwy. Haf owwies.” she murmured to herself. “Haf hungwies. Nu wike.”

Rusty and Wendy were not gone long, but the only prize they bore was the stenching body of the dead filly foal. Wendy was holding it by the nape of its neck and trotting high to keep it away from Rusty as he bumbled along in her wake, pleading with her to stop and listen. She was having none of it. The image was so odd that Bridget could only stare.

“Speshul fwiend… babeeh make wongest sweepies. Nu cawwy babeeh…” he said, his eyes and voice full of concern, but his mate was steadfastly ignoring him. She flounced into the grimy, chilly shelter and flopped down facing away from the stallion and curled up around the down-covered, soggy little corpse. Bridget and Rusty could hear her murmuring to it and cooing.

The pegasus looked at his mate’s back for a few long seconds, and then hung his head. “Wusty gu an’ twy to fin’ num-nums.”

Bridget brightened at the prospect. “Wan’ nummies! Pwease, wan’ nummies an’ bwankies! Yu get num-num an’ bwing fow Bwiget!”

Off he slouched. Wisps of dumpster-reek drifted over to Bridget from where Wendy was curled, and the pregnant mare watched as Wendy first cuddled and talked to the dead foal, then started to gently, rhythmically lick it and coo, and then started to make sucking sounds. Every once in a while she would turn her head slightly and spit out tiny fragments of skull and sticky gobbets of mucus onto the concrete, then go back to licking and murmuring to the little dead body clutched in her hooves.

Cricket returned next. The enterprising little fluffy had found a paper bag with the sodden, moldy remains of half a fast-food hamburger in the bottom of it and dragged it back to the shelter. Smelling food, Bridget pried herself up on her tired hooves and confronted the lavender mare just as she was crossing into the shadow of the bridge.

“Gif nummies! Gif nummies! Haf wowstest tummeh owwies!” she bleated, butting the little mare aside and pulling the bag the other direction. She could only tug it a few steps before having to shift her bloated body, allowing enough time for Cricket and Wendy to waddle up on either side.

“Dummeh mawe shawe num-nums! Otha fwfuffies haf hungwies too!” gnashed Wendy, recalling the image of the greedy pink fluffy shoving her now-dead filly around.

Cricket was a friendly, timid soul, and only responded with “Pwease be gud fwuffy an’ nu haf angwies. Gud fwuffies shawe nummies fo’ make tummeh owwies gu ‘way.”

Assailed from both sides, Bridget chose to ignore them both and planted her hooves down on the paper bag protectively while snuffling and jabbing at it with her muzzle, trying to find the food that she could smell from the inside. Wendy gave up pleading with her and simply darted forward and seized a corner of the white bag in her teeth and began to pull.

Bridget flexed her front hooves and rocked forward on her swollen belly, making an angry whining noise and reaching out as if to bite at Wendy’s face when it came close, but she couldn’t extend far enough without shifting her bulk. Wendy planted her leathery hooves on the concrete and pulled steadily at the bag while the pregnant mare screeched and redoubled her efforts to pin the bag down.

“Nnuuuuu! Dummeh poopies mawe! Wan’ nummies for babeehs!”

“Pwease nu make wouwd angwies! Fwuffies shawe num-nums!” begged Cricket as her lacerated muzzle quivered and tears started to fill her eyes.

Squealing in anger, Wendy lashed her head away, tearing it as far as she could, and then recovering to dart forward at the slimy little lump of food that had suddenly been exposed to the light of day. Bridget was caught unprepared, and although she strained at the scrap of burger, she found that she had to get to her feet again to close the distance. The two mares’ skulls clacked together as they each grabbed a mouthful. The sodden burger fragment came apart like a pile of jelly and Wendy retreated, struggling to choke down the vile, half-rotten wad before squeezing her eyes closed and hollering at Bridget again.

“NU WIKE! DUMMEH POOPIES STUPIT FWUFFY! NU WIKE YIKKY NUM NUMS! HATE YU!”

Bridget used this time to scarf down two more mammoth bites of the semi-spoiled sandwich, but the foul odor and taste started to overwhelm her. Her head spun and it felt like all she could taste was the foul slime that had grown on the burger since it had been discarded. She screwed up her face and tried to swivel away from the torn bag, but again this required that she heave her pregnant bulk up onto her tired legs. She couldn’t get away before unhappily drawing in several more lungfuls of the vapors from the rotten onions and mustard.

She managed to get away from the bag, but it was too late. Her stomach clenched like a fist full of nails, and she elaborately vomited up the poorly-chewed chunks of fetid hamburger and bread onto the concrete on a wave of bile. She was utterly exhausted and would have fallen over into her puke if her turgid belly hadn’t helped keep her on an even keel. Instead, she dry heaved several times with tears dribbling from her eyes and gastric juices from her muzzle.

Wendy was disgusted by the sight and suddenly felt like she might not be able to keep her portion down, either. She turned away from the scene and went back to the dead body of her foal, whose rotten funk she found easier to cope with.

“Nu wike dem bad, meanie fwuffies.” she said to the corpse. She cooed and ran her hoof over the cold, dirty yellow fluff, trying not to notice that strands of it were pulling out and exposing the grey flesh underneath. Her head throbbed where she had bonked it against Bridget.

Cricket tearfully and timidly came forward and inspected the remains of the food she had scavenged. She nibbled at it but could not find it palatable as the taste mingled with the stench of Bridget’s upchuck. She yearned to cuddle up with other fluffies and beg for hugs to make her feel better, but Wendy had turned away from the world again to nuzzle the dead foal and Bridget was still sobbing over her puddle as trails of bile slowly crept down the concrete towards the river.

**************************19******************
Sad and shaken, Cricket left the cheerless, stinking shelter of the bridge’s armpit and ambled up and around into the bright sunshine, thinking perhaps that she could find some greenery to browse on or chance on some real food. Instead, she was confronted by the sight of Nibbles chugging towards her.

Like all her kind, she was happy to have company, even though the stallion had a habit of constantly nosing at her hindquarters when he wasn’t blubbering. This time, however, she noticed something odd. Nibbles appeared to be holding something colorful in his mouth that dragged down between his front legs, forcing him into a clumsy splay-footed trot that still didn’t keep him from trodding on the mysterious package every once in a while. As he came closer, it was clear that he was upset, and the bright little something resolved itself as the last foal from Jumper and Cupid’s brood, the turquoise one that used to walk and talk but now only shut its eyes and peeped like a newborn.

“Muh - muh - muh” sobbed the ivory pegasus as he closed the gap between them. When he got close enough, he spat the foal’s tail out of his mouth and flung himself down on the dry, crunchy grass to plant his hooves in his eyes and start wailing.

“Munstaaaaaaa! Munstaaaa scawe fwufffies, buuu huuu huuuuu!” he bawled, “Meanie bitey munsta g-g-g-gif owwies tu Jumpa an’ make Nibbews feew s-s-s-cawedies!”

“Nu cwy! Nu cwy! Cwicket gif huggies fo make feew bettah!”

“Nibbews nu wike scawedies! Wan’ huggies an’ wuv!”

Cricket embraced the hysterical stallion as best she could. As he began to calm down, she stood to inspect the little foal. Its eyes remained stubbornly shut even though she had seen it walking and playing independently only days ago. It was weakly croaking and appeared to have some scuff marks about its face and shoulders from being dragged along the ground. She plopped down on her haunches and scooped it up, trying to soothe its feeble protests. It tried to nurse from her hoof and muzzle and anything else that came near. After some gentle goading, she convinced the pegasus to help her carry the foal back to the grimy shelter under the bridge. When she got there, Rusty had returned.

“Nibbews twy to fin’ num-nums an’ smeww gud smeww in wocky hoomin pwace, buh stwetchy fingy huwt Nibbews toofies an’ moufies! Haf huwties! An’ Jumpew nu gif huggies buh make angwies an’ say Nibbews is poopie dummeh fwuffy! Buuu, huuu huuu! Nibbews nu am dummeh, Nibbews am gud fwuffy!”

The winged white stallion started sniffling and hicupping at the recollection, but after a few deep breaths launched into his story again. Rusty had kicked the fetid remnants of the cheeseburger down the concrete ramp into the river, and had helped Bridget turn away from her equally nauseous vomit. His mate had turned from him to hunker down over the dead foal, and he was too exhausted and hungry to argue. Once Nibbles had started to tell his story, however, the grey mare couldn’t help but turn her head to listen, exposing the stiff corpse and the growing gouge in its cracked crainum where its mother had been nibbling and sucking on its rotting brain.

“An’ den - an’ den - meanie kitty munsta twy to take babeeh, an’ Jumpa say ‘nuuu!’ but den kitty munsta gif Jumpa bigges’ bigges’ owwies an’ he cwy an’ cwy! Nibbews haf scawwies an’ scawwies an’ take babeeh an wun away! Nu wike scawwies!” The pegasus was overcome and sobbed into his curled front hoof. The little foal stubbornly tried to nurse from Cricket’s milkless nipples. One of its legs was crooked and swollen, and it had lumps on its head where it had bounced off curbs during Nibbles’ flight. It resembled the corpse of Rusty and Wendy’s filly more and more.

“Fwuffies nu can stay hewe. Nu nummies an’ cowdies. Fwuffies haf tu fin’ new safe pwace.” said Rusty. “Buh wan’ tu see if Jumpa make wongest sweepies an’ wan’ tu see if nummies stiww dewe.” He met Nibbles’ eyes as the timid stallion peeked out from underneath his hooves.

Jumper’s body was splayed out on the concrete at the end of a curved smear of blood on like a sloppy question mark with a sad little blob of shit every few paces. His belly was torn open and his face and back was crisscrossed with parallel red lines, and patches of hair were missing here and there off his body. His ear and the left side of his snout and lips were a jagged mess, and one eye was nothing but a slimy, bloody pit. Nibbles would not approach closer than ten feet, so Rusty and Cricket crept up after looking around as well as they could for any sign of danger.

Red tried not to cry but he couldn’t hold it in once he was close enough to see his friend’s condition. He waddled forward through his sniffling and tears to nuzzle the departed one more time.

“Suu sowwy, gud fwuffy… suu sowwy nu hewp yu…” he murmured, pressing his snout against the earth pony’s dirty white mane one last time. When he opened his eyes again, he found that his friend’s eyelid had opened and he was staring into a bloodshot orb, the pupil constricted down to a pinprick.

“YEEEEP! YEEEEP!” screamed the senior pegasus, bouncing back away from his friend and feeling his bowels squeeze out a spray of liquid feces. Jumper’s head was shaking and shuddering, making his torn snout draw little figure eights in the air as his one remaining eye stayed riveted on Rusty as if an invisible cord was connecting them.

“Ghhhhhgkkk,” said Jumper, driving a dribble of saliva and blood from his shredded face. He appeared to be trying to crawl forward but his front hooves only jiggled against the pavement. He moved just enough for a fresh tablespoon of blood to drool out of his dark belly wounds and ripple its way out on the puddle. His ruined face squirmed and leaked as he tried to speak again. “Hgggggppppp. Hhhhhgggmmmm.” This time, a bubble formed on the left side of his muzzle where his mouth and nasal passages had been joined by a particularly deep tear. It popped.

Rusty could only sit on his tiny pile of shit and gape in horror. He could see his terrified face reflected in the glassy stare of his dying herdmate, and he could see the helplessness and terror that would be the final word between them.

Jumper began to make snorting and throttling sounds and with his last ounce of strength shoved down on the pavement hard enough to pry his chest up by an inch. The fluff was completely matted and soaked in blood. Jumper spit and gibbered and then made a horrible snorting sound as he tried to drag air back through the wreckage of his face and throat. His body gave an all-over twitch, and the leading edge of some dark, sack-like organ slid partially out of his flayed belly. The reddened eye that had transfixed Rusty rolled up towards the sky as the last whisper of life left the little fluffy’s body with a rattle.

After a few moments, Rusty rose up and tried to scrape the shit off his hindquarters on the cold concrete. Cricket and Nibbles, he realized, were huddled together behind him, sobbing together. He thought about asking them to help him look for food, but Jumper’s corpse and the trail of gore behind it seemed to take up the whole alley and he couldn’t bear to look at it anymore.

************************************19**************************************

Back at the narrow wedge of space under the bridge, Rusty curtly ordered his herdmates to move out and then resorted to nips and head-butts to chivvy them along. It felt good to him to be able to lash out at something. His mate, Wendy, only seemed to care about carrying about and coddling the rancid corpse of their filly. Bridget rocked awkwardly side-to-side as she strained to keep her belly from dragging on the ground. When Nibbles complained about being told to carry the catatonic little foal, Cricket volunteered but Rusty only responded by kicking and spitting at the pegasus stallion until he did as he was told.

Rusty was so hungry that his body felt like it was eating his bones and spots danced in front of his eyes as he and his bedraggled herd stumbled across a dead and inhospitable landscape. Again they moved into the face of the setting sun. They crossed roads and alleys and incomprehensible human structures that reminded him of the members of his herd that had already succumbed: Waggy vanishing, Shell and Elsie being dragged screaming from the burrow, Cupid and her foals being turned into wretched, sodden cakes of meat in the middle of a road, and Jumper being torn open by a monster and only living long enough to see his herdmate one last time. Rusty hadn’t even been able to clean his hindquarters of the clumps of shit he had shamefully squeezed out.

The fluffies made it a little over a half-mile and saw the landscape change in a peculiar way. The buildings doubled and tripled in size, changing from brightly-colored one-story shops to massive, drab cubes and squares fronted with miles of glass. Between them were seas of dry brown grass that crunched underfoot. They had no way of knowing, but they had crossed onto a college campus. Sidewalks arced this way and that and bare, dead shrubs and trees stood in beds at every corner, but the only obvious greenery was the needles of evergreens that the fluffies knew were about as edible as handfuls of nails.

The fluffies saw humans and cars moving about and Rusty tried his best to head them off, but this only drove towards the middle of the fields where they stuck out like blots of bright paint. At some signal from her insides, Bridget simply flopped down on her belly and started wheezing.

“Nu… nu… nu wike…” she sputtered between dry sobs. She didn’t even seem to have the energy to open her eyes all the way.

Rusty’s head and belly had been competing to cause him the most pain. Seeing the pink mare utterly exhausted, his agonies finally joined forces and declared victory. He looked one way and then the other, and chose the nearest sheltered space he could see: A curved wall perhaps five feet tall sat in the middle of a round planting bed full of woody shrubs, trailing off at both edges in a broad crescent. Printed on the convex side of the wall on a plastic and metal marquee was the legend:

“PIKE HALL * ADMINISTRATION * HUMAN RESOURCES * Established 1941”

…but the starving fluffy only saw a place where his tribe could huddle out of sight and out of the chill breeze. He planted his head behind Bridget’s broad rump and shoved her into motion towards it, followed by his grim little circus train of hunger-maddened fluffies.

“Hungwy. Suu hungwy. Nee’ num-nums.” quailed Cricket through her scabbed lips as she flopped down on the mulch and wrapped her legs around her belly in an lavender crescent. Nibbles dumped the limp foal down and flopped down beside it, whimpering to himself with his eyes closed. The other fluffies collapsed as well. It was obvious that none of the nearby hedges bore anything except woody twigs and crispy, dry leaves. Rusty lay down on his chest, shaking a little as his stomach pangs continued to writhe and bite. After he caught his breath, he tried to stand up but it seemed as if his legs were far away and would not listen. Soon, the whole world seemed far away and he couldn’t keep his eyes open.

When he awoke, the darkness of the sky frightened him with the threat that his little tribe of biopets would go another night without food. He had led them to yet another makeshift half-shelter, and the memories of his former home were fading along with the light. He had forgotten what it felt like to lay with his family in a cozy den with a full belly. He rose and nuzzled the other fluffies.

“Haf tu fin’ nummies. Go fin’ num-nums fo’ fwuffies.” he murmured. Bridget just turned away from him, pointing her face at the stucco wall that formed the back of the sign and making a groaning noise.

“Bu huu huu, haf tiewedies,” whined the normally energetic Cricket. Nibbles started crying as soon as he was awake, but he clambered to his feet even though he appeared to lack the strength to raise his head. On waking, Wendy huffed about until she found her dead foal, and then put her mouth on the nape of its neck and chugged away from the other fluffies a few feet before putting the corpse down again.

“Babbeh come wif mummah!” she said brightly. “Wiww fin’ bestest nummies!”

Nibbles and Rusty waddled off to forage together in the gloom and deepening cold of the early evening. They found some green patches on the huge green lawns, but many of them seemed to always have humans trotting about. When they found one that seemed easy to reach, they found that it was only a thin layer of clover or tough weeds nestled around a metal sprinkler head, and that only by painstakingly combing through the dead brown heath could they pull up a few meager mouthfuls. They ate some, and reserved the rest to take back to the little half-den. The evening quickly grew dark, infecting the fluffies with fear and chill until Nibbles started sitting down and weeping softly at every turn. Rusty gave up and turned back towards the big stucco-coated sign.

It was that night that Bridget’s poorly-formed foals would be pushed out her body ahead of schedule by fatigue and starvation and she would seize and die howling for her long-lost human owner. After watching her expel her premature brood before her final fit, an uncontrollably shaking Rusty rolled her limp but still turgid body away from the wall until it half-flopped, half-slid down the mulch bed between two dry, twiggy shrubs. He pushed her two dead prematures away afterwards, and finally the glob of fluids and shit that had marked their coming.

*******************20******************

Rusty opened his eyes in the weird blue light before dawn. He had rolled fitfully out of the pile of fluffies and had shivered himself awake with his back against the rough stucco of the big sign. He gasped, then groaned involuntarily as he struggled to his feet. Uneasy, he went to nuzzle each of his herdmates in turn as they slept. Nibbles cooed softly and smacked his lips in a deep slumber, but when he checked on Cricket he found that the little azure foal she was cuddling - Jumper and Cupid’s last offspring - had died in the night. It had never opened its eyes, taken a step, or eaten a morsel of food since seeing its family crushed to a pulp, and now it was a pitiful little dead thing with its mouth open and its legs curled like a tiny beetle.

He gingerly took its sweet-smelling tail in his mouth and slowly slid it free from Cricket’s hooves. He kept backing up until the little corpse was free of the fluffpile, and then took it up by the nape of its neck. He felt like weeping to see another of his herdmates dead, but he found that he couldn’t. At the edge of the mulch bed, he dug a little trench out of the wood chips and loamy earth, fighting the heavy, sore feeling in his limbs and pausing to catch his breath every minute or so. Once it was deep enough, he stood there panting, fighting off a strange, creeping darkness that limned his vision. Out of his gnawing hunger and utter fatigue, a thought beckoned.

And so he climbed back up the mulch bed and with the same patient caution pulled the stinking, half-brained body of his own offspring away from its sleeping mother and buried it in the same little grave. Next were Bridget’s tiny little grubs that had been born only to die. It was a poor job, and he could see bits of colorful fluff peeking out from underneath the mulch. Wheezing and stumbling left and right, he covered the spot with the only big enough object he could see nearby - the grimacing, bag-like body of dead Bridget, with the corpse of her last foal still peeking out of her nether regions.

He walked back to his herd - now just four fluffy ponies - and lay down with his face between Cricket’s rump and his mate’s belly. Even though he was flat on the ground, the world spun and spun around and around him, and he passed out more from starvation than a need for sleep.

“WHEWE BABBEH? BABBEH! NUUUUU! WAN’ BABBEH!” came the screech several hours later. The sun had climbed up into the sky high enough to crest over the rough beige curve of masonry that the fluffies had found shelter behind, but it brought only a hint of warmth.

Wendy burst out from the bunchy little bushes and began chugging about in random circles and crisscrosses in the sunshine. She was so crazed that she barely registered that there were a great many humans striding back and forth on their great, long legs.

“WHEWE BABBEH! WAN’ WIDDLE BABBEH! BABBEH NEE’ WUV AND HUGGIES AN MUMMAH WAN’ BABBEH! BABBEH COME TU MUMMAH!” she howled and bleated, finally growing so agitated that she lifted her tail and blew a few chunks of shit out onto the dry grass.

Rusty raised his throbbing head and watched as the grey blob danced back and forth between the branches of the dead shrubs. The part of him that wanted to stop her, comfort her or try to restrain her was no match for the sickness and utter exhaustion he felt in his guts. The two younger fluffies huddled close to him. The deranged mare, stinking of decay and carting around her dead offspring, had been making the other fluffies more and more unsettled for days and they were now afraid to see her screaming and running about in public with so many humans about.

“GIF BABEE! BUU, HUU HUUU” she screeched, stopping to gasp for breath and bounce on the turf in frustration. Wild-eyed, she finally seemed to notice a trio of humans standing on a nearby sidewalk. All three were dressed in blue jeans and carrying dark-colored bags from their shoulders. They had been watching the manic progress of the screeching little biopet, chuckling and batting remarks back and forth.

Wendy’s addled mind seemed to understand that they were laughing at her. She squared off, glaring up at them with her tearful eyes and stamping on the dry grass. They stopped talking and stared incredulously down at the maddened little creature.

“GIF BABEEH TO WENDY!” she snarled.

“Are you for real?” rumbled one of the tall, tall humans, cocking his head so that the sun glinted off his shades.

“HATE YU! WAN’ BABBEH!” The fluffy charged forward.

The inner characters of the three humans revealed themselves in the few heartbeats it took Wendy to cross the little patch of dry grass. One stepped carefully back, mouth open with a melange of fear, surprise and amusement on his face. The other turned towards his friends. The third, however, reacted with explosive decisiveness. He took a quarter-step towards the approaching little fuzzy creature with his left leg, and then tensed his whole body to deliver a heart-stopping kick that caught the fluffy right on the sternum.

“YU GIF BA- GHHEKKKK!” spat Wendy as the toe of the human’s shoe smashed a dent in her chest and lifted her clean off the ground. The breath was blasted from her body in a flash, and her starved, crazed brain lost its grip as the sky and ground revolved around her over and over.

Her hooves thrashed feebly as she tried to right herself in midair, but the spin was too great. When she smacked down onto the pavement of a nearby parking lot, the impact drove both her left limbs up into her body with such force that the bones snapped all the way up into her hip and shoulder along with her ribs. Jagged pieces of brittle bone punctured her organs and she contorted as tendons snapped all along her left side.

“Oooohhhh!” groaned one of the humans, theatrically holding his hand up to block the sunlight as he peered at the fluffy’s crash site.

“Hehhh! HEEEEHHH! BEEEEHHHHKKK! NNNNNGGGHHH!” came the agonized sounds as the fluffy tried to breathe, scream, and gnash its teeth in agony all at the same time.

The little earth pony pawed spastically at the cold pavement with her two working limbs, scraping herself around in a little circle. All-consuming agony tore through her being as her smashed ribcage and organs bled into each other, causing her belly to ripple and bloat in strange places. First she wiggled and fidgeted, moaning and snarling with the pain, then jerking like a marionette for two or three minutes, weaker and weaker until she was just shuddering and twitching, and then was still.

Rusty couldn’t so much as raise his head to watch. He wanted to wrap his hooves around his ears so he didn’t have to listen to his mate’s insane squalling or the wet thudding sound that cut it off, or the echoes of her mewling and gargling across the parking lot, but he didn’t have the energy. Nibbles and Cricket cowered next to him, sobbing and wincing with every new sound. After the scratching and moaning noises had begun, Cricket crept down the curvature of the wall and peeked out. When she returned, her scratched-up face was twisted with grief and fear.

“Hoomans gif Wendy huwties… she twy to wun wif onwy two weggies… huuu, make wongest sweepies.” she sobbed.

“Nuuuuuu!” moaned Nibbles, trying to shovie his snout under Rusty’s sedentary form.

Red was panting and shaking so badly that his nose drew little circles in the air. He gulped a few times, and made an empty farting noise as a shudder crawled up and down his spine.

“It nu fwuffies’ fawwt…” he wheezed, sounding like a grandfather clock finally winding down, “Fwuffies nu haf… <KAFF>... fwuffies do wha’ hoomans wan’... fwuffies aww b’cause of hoomans…” the two younger biopets stared at him, uncomprehending. “Aww fwuffies haf… happies an’ saddies an’ huwties and wuv… <KAFF>... was aww fwom hoomans… nu fwuffies’ fawwt.”

He gazed into nothingness for a few seconds, and his tremors stopped for a few heartbeats, and then his whole body hunched up and he vomited up a small puddle of clear bile and dark, dark blood onto the mulch. He closed his eyes, breathed in one last ragged lungful and puked up another tiny saucer of mucus and blood before slumping down and going completely limp.

He was dead. The two remaining fluffies hugged each other and cried.

*****************21*********************

“Nu wike! Nu wike! Nu make foweva sweepies! Gif huggies!” begged Nibbles. Cricket sobbed, but she had run out of tears and was so parched and tired that speaking hurt her throat. She wanted to get away from the dead bodies of Rusty and Bridget, but their little shelter was high and dry in the middle of a broad, empty lawn and she could see humans in every direction. She pressed herself down against the mulch flooring and wrapped her hooves around her aching, empty belly.

The two distraught fluffies huddled by their leader’s dead body as it grew cool. The noises from outside the little shady spot ceased to worry them, so they did not mark the arrival of a little golf cart with the university’s logo painted on the side. It was laden with tools and had two big plastic trash cans strapped to the back. A stocky man in a durable brown jumpsuit was driving it carefully down from the curb to the vicinity of Wendy’s dead body. He bounded out of the little vehicle and twitched his horseshoe moustache as he looked down at the little grey body. Without a further thought, he scooped it up and tossed it into a trash can like a child tossing toys into his closet.

His walkie-talkie squawked as he re-mounted the golf cart and guided it back up the ramp. He was about to wheel around and make his escape when he saw an unusual blot of color at the edge of a planter - Bridget’s bloated corpse. He cut the wheel.

Bridget’s body bounced off the plastic rim before vanishing into the big green trash can, but the man was startled to see a tiny, shallow grave under it. He poked the obscuring layer of wood chips out of the way and grumbled to himself in surprise to see the collection of little wad-like corpses concealed there - some big, some little. He glanced down at his gloves for a second, but then reconsidered and fetched a square-headed shovel from his cart.

The groundskeeper tossed the little stash of death and offal into his trash cans and straightened up, again ready to go about his business, but something made him take a third look. He spotted Nibbles’ whitish fluff between the scrubby branches of the bushes and grumbled to himself again.

The two fluffies had frozen in terror when the man approached. They huddled together, quivering, as they watched him shovel up the dead bodies and toss them into his trash can, and when he stopped and bent to look between the bushes, they knew the game was up. Nibbles started murmuring to himself and stirred just far enough to try to hide behind Rusty’s dead body.

“Nu. nu. nu. nu nu nu nu nu nununununu,” he began to mumble as the human stepped closer. Cricket’s bolder spirit made her shake off the fear. She looked left and right, and decided that the only way out was a narrowing gap between the human and a pair of bushes to one side. The human took another step, and she bolted.

The little unicorn was young and vital for one of her kind, but had suffered days of starvation and fatigue. The human was an easygoing sort, but was still a product of three million years of weapon-swinging killer apes, and gripping a shovel that would have made an emperor out of an australopithecine. It was no contest.

Cricket broke cover and the flat of the shovel smashed directly into her face with a harsh bell sound. Her stubby muzzle was crushed flat against the keel of her skull, driving teeth and shards of bone through and into her flesh and deforming her eyes. She staggered a step forward and fell on her side, trying to draw a gasp through the clump of bloody fragments of her face. One of her eyes was pointed upwards towards the groundskeeper as he winced at her appearance, and then shook his head and hefted his shovel up again.

“Nnnnnngkkkkhhhhhh,” she gargled.

The man brought the blade of the shovel down like a hoplite. It chopped Cricket’s mauled head clean from her body, leaving both pieces of her to leak blood and fidget until they were tossed into the trash can.

“Nu nu nu nu nu,” whined Nibbles audibly. “Nu wan’ die. Nu wan’ die. Nu wan’ die.”

The noise caught the attention of the groundskeeper, who walked as close as he could to the cowering fluffy and the inert corpse of his former leader without stepping on the plantings. Nibbles looked up at him with sad, tired eyes.

“Pwease, nu kiww. Pwease nu kiww fwuffy. Fwuffy nu wan’ die. Fwuffy nu wike scawedies an’ huwties.” The man in the jumpsuit was so startled and bemused he nearly took a step backwards.

The cowardly little fluffy continued begging. “Pwease mistah pwease nu kiww. Nibbews wan’ be gud fwuffy an’ haf nummies an’ huggies. Pwease nu huwt gud fwuffy. Nu wan’ die.”

“Ahhhhh, okay,” said the man, “Come on out of there, and we’ll get you some food and all that shit.”

“Weawwy? Nu huwt Nibbews? Gif nummies an wuvvies an’ be nice to gud fwuffy?”

“Sure! I got some food right here for you, just come on out of there, little fella!”

Indigo timidly rose to his legs and walked forward with small steps, looking up at the groundskeeper’s face. He started to feel bolder as he emerged into the sunlight, and tried to smile up at the looming human.

“Be nyu daddeh? Nibbews am gud fwuffy, wiww wuv nice mistah an’ gif huggies an pway an’ nu haf scawedies nu moar.”

“Sure thing, little guy!” boomed the human. “Here comes a big hug!” He stooped over the fluffy, who responded by plopping down on his hindquarters and holding up his front hooves, beaming in joy at the man’s moustachioed face as the big, gloved hands got closer and closer. Suddenly, they both clapped onto the fluffy with lightning quickness, squeezing a jet of urine and the last clump of shit out of the little animal.

Nibbles screeched as he found himself whirling about in midair as the man whirled him overhand, and then the stupendous impact as his neck was dashed against the sturdy plastic rim of the trash can. He felt something break in his neck, and a fiery numbness grip his whole body. He clipped off the rim of the plastic trash can and flumped down into something soft and wet. It took him a few seconds to recognize that he was splayed out on the corpses of Bridget, Cricket, Wendy, and the stew of contaminated mulch, soil, and dead foals that had preceded him into the can.

“Nuuuu! Huuuuuu! Huuuuuuu! Huuuuuuu!” he bleated, only being cut off when Rusty’s body darkened the round view of sky above him and landed square on his back. He wiggled a little as the bigger fluffy’s body slid off his, but then came face to face with the smashed remains of Cricket’s face. He kept shrieking uncontrollably as he felt the world shift.

The groundskeeper stoked up the golf cart and drove off, ignoring the fading cries of the last fluffy as they echoed across the turf like a siren winding pitifully down to silence.

The End.