Warning: mature themes, death, swearing
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Everything fell apart quickly when the virus outbreak spread faster than anticipated.
They tried to contain it or subtly kill off those infected. Soon, people realised that running was thier best solution and abandoned everything.
Bridges out of town were blown up. People were bricked in or shot down.
Those who were infected had no medicine to combat the disease. Slowly, they suffered until thier bodies withered away and thier minds melded into that of a hoarde.
They called them zombies, but they were more like Wendigos.
Starving, wandering things with no mind of thier own. Left to roam the lands and become sponges for the bullets of those trying to still survive out there.
I became one of those Wendigo's when I was infected and left to die. My family had already escaped when evacuation was announced so many years ago.
I was at work when it happened. I was supposed to meet them at the border, but panicked people and chaos blocked me in.
I didn't know I was sick until I approached the border and was shoved away.
To survive, I ran. They were going to gun me down otherwise.
After that, I started to wither. My mind called for those that had suffered the same fate and turned into this monster.
Safety was in numbers. We created hordes to stay safe. Sunlight grew too bright for our sensitive eyes to handle, so we huddled in caves during the day and hunted for any sort of fresh meat when night fell.
Growls and snarls replaced words. Feral, we still had a system in place amongst our lost souls.
The old ways were gone. It was all about survival now.
Wendigo's bred and birthed new ones to add to the horde. Wailing beasts clung to the sunken bones of thier hunched mothers when we moved together to find food.
They grew quickly when thier blood was pumping with the disease. Blind babies soon were gangly children picking through bones or snapping for scraps.
They took priority. We shared the responsibility of keeping our youngest alive to try and live to adults.
They were stronger and more feral than the originals. Faster too. They were our chance at trying to outlive those who tried to wipe us out.
I kept us safe. With my skin bleached white during my death into this state, survivors tended to be more wary of me when they hunted out hordes.
I was a mutation they seperate from the common wendigo. I was taller and fuelled with more aggression. It took far more bullets to try and take me down.
My skin was stretched and warped from old wounds. I ran my claws down my arms when I waited outside our cave the others poured into.
I had to keep watch. We were most vulnerable with our backs turned. I could take hits that the others couldn't.
Bodies shuffled past to try and settle further down in the pit of the cave where it was cooler.
I huddled in my little patch of shade while trying to squint through the burning sunlight.
One of the children paused to join me. They drew themselves up as I did, peering blindly and clicking.
Children were exclusively hunted since they couldn't fight back as fiercely as a fully-grown wendigo. Although still dangerous, a child was far easier to pin than an adult.
The survivors couldn't eat our contaminated meat or use our acidic skins, but they had a system of bartering our fingers for currency.
The rarer, the more worth it was to them. Mine still bore gouges from the many times I had been held down and sawed at in the earlier years as a teen. Now an adult, my fingers were a lot stronger and harder to restrain.
Rather than take what was nessesary, this child was missing its left arm. The skin twisted into a scar from where it had rotted back into place.
Five fingers. How much was that worth to them?
Keeping my eyes on the open landscape, I pushed the child back towards the horde.
It huffed and obliged to limp its way to the depths.
Monsters.
A faint humming pricked my ears and caught my attention.
The horde beside me paused, snarling at the intrusion droning closer.
There was no fear with them. If something approached our nest, we would rather chase and kill than remain hidden.
Eliminate the threat and get fresh meat. It worked better that way.
The ones the furthest from the nest bolted down the broken road towards the noise advancing. The ones behind them fanned out and followed with thier own screams and clicks to call on others for the hunt.
Abandoning my position, I rushed out with them into the burning light.
Squinting through the sun, the noise screeched a few meters away and started to bang.
A motorbike. And a gun.
I could smell the metal in the air. The clouds of poison piercing our familiar stench only made it easier to find the intruder.
I heard the horde growling and fighting for thier feast. More droning joined the gunshots snapping through the relentless Wendigo's.
Wordless shouts cried out as the droning stopped. I snarled and bolted towards the black blurs before the snapping sound of a lighter was heard.
"Molitov!" I screamed at the others.
Untainted couldn't understand me, but they knew the sound of a warning that alerted the others.
"That motherfucker!" a voice snarled when liquid fire devoured the tar and melted the skin from those boiled alive "that must be the leader!"
Growling, the horde tried to rip the fresh meat from thier bikes. The gunshots kept them at bay, along with the snapping of another molitov being lit.
I saw the blur of the second one sail toward me. The cloth stuffed into the sloshing bottle was dark and easier to distinguish than the rest of the weapon.
Darting as the glass cracked and spilled more fire across the ground, I felt the fire twist its way up my back leg and devour the kneecap.
Swatting at it, I bolted for the safety of the shade. Snapping followed me, spewing more fire that pierced along my buttock and tailbone.
There was wailing from the intruders. I didn't turn back until I was at the mouth of the cave where my eyes could adjust and focus.
The horde were ravaging one of three bikers. They screamed as thier organs were torn up out of thier throat and threaded through thier splayed ribcage.
The other two, seeing how erratic the swarm was now, abandoned thier destruction to skid thier bikes around and retreat.
The horde followed, screaming out for the meat that was eluding them.
I screamed with them, crying out when my leg wouldn't bear weight.
The white skin there was crisped and dangling. I saw the fresh blood dribbling around the layers of charcoaled flesh my teeth sliced between so I could strip it.
I couldn't be bleeding out like this. Tearing at the burnt layers and lapping up the blood spilling in response, I started my own impromptu first-aid.
It had saved me many times before. Packing dirt into the wound would congeal the blood burning over my boiled skin.
Scanning the road where the dead were piled, I noticed that the intruders hadn't mutilated the bodies.
Probably didn't have time. They'd be back for thier bounty for sure.
Money was literally laying on the road. We'd devour the organs and meat, but leave the bonier parts for the other wildlife.
Would they risk thier lives to wait until we did the work for them? It'd take days to snap up that many of our own.
Food was food. I saw the blur of the horde returning in the distance from thier abandoned hunt, still on high alert and ravenous.
Clicking, I called the rest to meal, hobbling out myself as they rushed past me.
Exposed and nestled amongst the hundreds of bodies of the others, I kept watch while the others focused on feasting and gnawing at my burnt skin.
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Bellies filled and children satisfied, we all nestled into our pile for the night.
Others still bloated themselves outside eagerly. I curled up in the middle of the cave and gingerly rested my throbbing leg over a body that twitched in its sleep.
I couldn't close my eyes. All I kept thinking about was how those people could return and burn us all alive. One Molitov down the mouth of the cave wouldn't kill us, but it would destroy the children currently sleeping there.
No. I couldn't sleep.
Picking my way over the bodies, I hauled myself up the cool rock of the cave, dragging my leg behind me.
Others shuffled past me to join the resting horde. I saw a few stragglers spread further up the road to inspect our surroundings.
We needed a new nest. It took us almost half a year to find and claim this one. Not many secluded places were left now that the survivors had crumbled in most of them once they realised what our patterns were.
Fucking survivors.
Huffing and dragging more handfuls of dirt towards me, I added to the layer already wedged beneath the burns.
It crumbled and rolled to the ground I snatched up.
Pausing, I raised the dirt to my nostrils to pick up an unfamiliar scent.
Checking the quiet surroundings, I left the cave to follow the faint trail.
It led me down to the road and over the twisted bodies. I lifted a hand I saw had been partially harvested and dropped it down to scan the carnage again.
My eyes were better at hunting in the dark. Unlike the survivors and baby Wendigo's, I could determine my surroundings without the need of light.
I spotted it almost immediately. A survivor huddled down in the bushes, hoping I wouldn't find it.
Charging and snarling, I lifted myself up to my full height and started to call for the horde before it cried out, holding its hands up.
"I'm unarmed! Oh, fuck! I'm unarmed!" it shook and cowered before me.
That only made me more suspicious.
Where were the others? They didn't send in scouts alone, especially at night.
The survivor was a young woman. Orange hair knotted into a plait and a torn checkered shirt over a grey singlet.
Her skin was stained with dry blood that made her smell like one of us. I noticed a loop of burnt fingers dangling from a belt. There was a knife tucked into her pocket.
Unarmed? Did she think I was a fool?
Glaring at them, her eyes followed.
"H-here" her fingers trembled when she slid past the bounties and to her backside. She revealed a first-aid kit that was stuffed with bandages, ointments, and freshly cut plants all sectioned into individual bags.
Her hand grabbed a bandage to hold out to me, dropping it.
Was she some kind of herbalist trying to create medicine, or someone sent out to harvest the lost bounties of today?
"P-please don't kill me" she whimpered as she took a step back "b-bandages. They're y-yours. O-oh!"
Shaking hands tossed out a small brown bottle as well.
She woman mimed brushing her arm, daubing it, then wrapping it, all while still backing up.
I glanced down at them both, only to see she had started running.
My gut bubbled as it demanded the chase and hunt, but I knew I wouldn't be able to with my injury.
Letting out a frustrated snarl instead, I snatched up the bandages and bottle to shuffle back to the cave.
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The bandaged leg was a fascination amongst the horde. Many hadn't seen medical supplies like this since the virus had turned them. The babies and children had been born into a world where things like these didn't exist.
The bottle had smelled worse than our nest inside. Even with birth, blood, shit, and stale piss, whatever brown liquid was in that bottle that I poured over myself trumped it all.
Maybe I was just used to the smell of my own kind, but that bottle burned right down into my lungs and made me gag for breath.
Still, even with it boiling between all my layers of mutilated skin, it worked better than the dirt.
I hated how it made me smell different to the horde who hissed at the unfamiliarity, but there was nothing else I could do.
I'd have to live with this medical stench soaked into my skin. It even turned my leg and left buttock a nice shade of caramel beneath the bandages I strangled it in.
With the pressure, I could walk. I had a chance to protect myself from intruders again.
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I saw them approach again when I laid outside the cave in the cool shade.
The growl of the motorbike approaching had me instantly to my feet and snapping.
I heard the restless horde stirring behind me as the bike looped over the bodies to turn back the way it had come, stopping.
On the back of it was the girl from the night before. She peeled herself from another so she could start untying a covered box on the back.
I charged, calling for the others.
They screamed as they followed, fanning around me when they sprinted for the bike that dumped its load and reved away.
Some gave chase while I remained at the box, sniffing the cover that was stained with oil.
Another trap? A new bomb?
Dragging it up, I threw the box off the road and scampered back. The others flooded around me, some of the braver children swatting the new object to test it.
It wasn't exploding. It wasn't ticking either. There was no fire or smell of fuel.
What was it?
Others started shredding the cover as I approached. Snatching it up again, I swung it with all of my might over my head so I could smash it on the road.
Wood buckled and flew. Cans rolled out in all directions. A few even bounced down the slope of the ground that children eagerly chased.
Food? Survivors didn't give up thier food. They hoarded it and killed each other over it.
"Wait" I snapped to a mother piercing one with her teeth.
Peeling it from the grabbing hands of her baby, I dug in a claw to curl back the lid and inhale the clean scent of the green beans inside.
No poison. My claws stirred the mixture and pierced one to taste it.
It was salty, but there was nothing laced there.
"It's safe" I handed back the beans.
Snatching up a can for myself, I quickly darted out of the way when everyone dove in and fought over the food.
Fresh vegetables weren't even found out here anymore. We only had the dried, gnawed wild roots to pick at. Even abandoned shops and homes were looted of anything edible.
Why would they dump precious goods here? Had I failed in not detecting something wrong with the suspicious package?
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I was picking through my tin of whole peeled tomatoes when the bike returned.
This time, it killed its engine a few meters down the road so it could roll quietly closer.
The child with the missing arm watched from beside me when I glared to the returning girl and her new male driver.
"See?" she whispered "that's the one."
The driver wheeled the bike around for a quick escape. They both remained silent when the girl slipped off and started to saw off the abandoned burnt fingers.
There was no threat here. We didn't need those parts anyway.
I kept plucking out the tomatoes and eating them as I watched on. The child nibbled on one I offered it.
"That's the leader?" the driver asked.
He was armed, unlike the girl. A shining shotgun slung across his back, and a box of rattling bottles was harnessed to the end of the bike.
My lip peeled at the sight of them, which amused the driver.
The moment he reached for one of those, he was dead. Both of them.
"See, I think they don't have a leader. They all work together. That one did let me go when I gave it the bandage around its leg."
The driver squinted, leaning towards me.
"Well, I'll be damned" he smiled.
"They're smarter than we think. We could learn a lot from them. Figure them out so we can live better."
Now that was something i hadn't hear a survivor say. How we could work together? That we were smart?
"The Wendy's have mutations, like us" the girl kept whispering "Harold had Heterochromia, that one has Leucism. The ones with mutations seem to be bigger than the others, doesn't make them leaders."
"The thing is a monster" the driver blew out a breath.
I glowed, still keeping the child close.
"Are you done? They won't want burnt bounties."
The girl cut off a few more to stash into her pockets, climbing back onto the bike that was kicked to life.
The child retreated behind me and I watched them closely as the engine roared out and a segment of the horde spilled out after them.
Watching them leave, I noticed the girl taking photos until they sped out of harms way.
There was something suspicious about her, I just couldn't figure out what.
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Sure enough, night fell and everyone poured out to scavenge the land.
We moved together as we hunted, eyes in every direction.
The survivor's camp wasn't far from our nest. We avoided the lights burning around it and continued further out.
The horde reacted to a startled deer and quickly overwhelmed it. Nearby herd members fled, causing the horde to split and persue them.
I gathered at the body of a large buck that had been torn apart. Others huddled around me to feast.
A smaller one with burnt skin held back. I shuffled over so it could have room to feast.
It hesitated at the snapping of the others tearing the meat from each others mouths.
The little one would have barely survived the molitov's from the state of its crisped skin. It probably lost its mother in there too. The poor thing had no clue what to do without her.
Ripping off a lump and slashing at the teeth that tried to steal it, I carried it in my mouth to the child still standing there.
I wasn't it's mother. It would be wary of someone who could easily kill it.
"Eat" I held the meat for it to eye hungrily.
I could smell the crisped flesh of the child. The blood and bones of hundreds of others tainted it.
The child trembled when it leant over to nip at the meat with its mouth. Tearing it from me and scurrying off, I smiled and returned to the horde gathering to continue onwards.
The child remained hunched over. I growled for it to follow, clicking when it didn't.
It was a meek little thing. Being through something so traumatic, I wouldn't expect it to be anything different.
We moved together, covering the land like a river. I kept the child by my side the entire time we hunted.
It didn't react like the others. When they were so attuned to the noises that wildlife or straggling survivors made, it looked to me first for how to behave. It only watched while the others dove into fresh kills and fed thier stomachs.
It was too rattled by the attack. It didn't know what to do anymore.
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As we moved around the survivor camp to head back for our nest, the child stayed close to me. The others were too drowsy to care for it getting in thier way on their descent into the nest.
Daylight was going to start streaming in soon. I couldn't have the child going blind as well.
"Come" I called for it when it edged from the others and just stood near the road at the bodies.
Looking down at them, I saw it wasn't taking its wide eyes off the cave mouth.
As I edged closer, I realised the child was stiff. Was it holding its breath?
Why would it....?
The revving engine of a motorbike sped closer from the nearby camp. I snarled at the interferance, placing myself in front of the frozen child.
A mother shuffled to it to tug on its hand. The child dug in its heels, crying out.
"N-NO!" it panicked in perfect English.
Our heads snapped from the motorbike to the child immediately.
Gunshots lodged into those of the horde that swarmed the bike ploughing through them. I shoved the child out of the way when the driver tried to grab it, missing the fingertips with my own teeth.
"COME ON, MOTHERFUCKERS!" the passenger on the back of the bike yelled out in delight. They cradled a machine gun that tore through the horde that dodged the tyres of the bike.
I shielded the child from the gunfire and tearing teeth yanking at its legs. Bullets stabbed up my back and claws sliced ribbons into my arms.
We could have misheard it. This child wasn't one of them! It was ours! It smelled like us! Ate like us! Looked like us!
It wriggled from under me and screamed as it ran for the bike that doubled back.
The horde moved for both targets. Peppering gunfire killed those closest to the intruder and the child.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" I screamed after it.
"Get me up!" it threw itself onto the bike "Go! GO! GO! Blow it up!"
Smearing off it's own charcoal skin, I saw that of the girl peek through as the bike revved away. She gagged as she furiously wiped her mouth where the blood of the meat I had given her stained.
I followed with the horde being gunned down, taking the bullets and shoving through the pain to chase after them.
Why? Why did they do that?
Why did she pretend to be one of us? How did I not know?
It was a child. I didn't even fight the instinct to protect it.
The girl pulled out a blinking remote that had me stopping dead in my tracks to spin back towards the nest breathlessly.
"GE...!"
I couldn't even finish my scream when the cave exploded. Bodies came spewing out of the mouth, guts and limbs showering the landscape.
The scream of warning rolled into one of hate that echoed the skies. My eyes snapped onto the bike as I demanded blood from the horde swarming around me.
I trusted you!
I did everything right and I trusted you! You destroyed everything! You killed them all!
Letting the fury of the buzzing horde fill me, we thundered after the frightened eyes of the girl that had betrayed us.
I stopped once more, only to fill my battered lungs and let a blood-flecked scream shake through me.
"I TRUSTED YOU!"
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