6:08pm
October xx, 2024
The sight that lay before Advrik could only be described as a nightmare. He’d only been gone for a single day, having taken a monster hunt contract that took him off the mountain to the foothill towns below. Contact had been maintained, specifically with Brigid, but Desmond and even Eligh had shot him a few texts as well.
Not even an hour into his drive, still more than an hour away from his actual destination, the first text came in,
DESMOND: Lotsa activity up here all of a sudden. Sirens ‘n shit. Gonna check it out.
The first thought that came to the wolf’s mind was, “Great, another troll”, but it was 8am, and the sun was shining.
A few moments later, another text came from Eligh of all beasts,
ELIGH: Sorry to bother you, but Brigid isn’t answering my texts. I shouldn’t be asking you this, but could you possibly message her and tell her to call me, please?
That would be the last he’d hear from either of them.
Brigid promptly replied, promising to call Eligh but also telling of weird happenings she was seeing and hearing on her morning hike. Huge, black, unmarked helicopters were hovering in the distance, canisters dangling from long wires, even the howls and screeches of unidentified monsters.
A military exercise, the wolf had to convince himself.
Conversations with Brigid had been light following that, her keeping him occupied throughout the day while the hunt for the monster proceeded.
BRIGID: When you get back, we all need to get together and plan our Halloween activities!
It had been the last message she’d ever send him, for every other reply he’d sent that night and the following morning went unanswered. Eligh, Desmond, and even Dr. Reigns failed to answer texts and calls. With the mark down and payment collected, Advrik was ready to make a mad dash back to Brickhedge. Speed limits be damned.
The sun had fallen as he finally coaxed his aging Camry back into town, past the K-Mart, which was totally void of customers, unheard of on a Friday night. Driving through one of the small neighborhoods that surrounded the central part of the mountain town, he began to notice more and more oddities in the houses themselves. Broken windows, doors hanging open, curtains blowing in the wind through the shattered, jagged remains of the window panes.
He felt his paw pads begin to sweat as he drifted slowly through the increasingly bizarre state the town was in. Worries for his friends flooded his mind as he began to note a total lack of life, Something that even at this time of day, there had been kids playing beneath the street lamps outside their homes or within their fenced-in yards.
Brickhedge Police Department vehicles were usually seen doing just as he was now about this time, scanning the area for monsters that might have slipped into town under the cover of waning daylight, but the only real and unfortunate evidence of them having been here were the sawhorses that blocked the entrances to Main. Ten streets in total connected the outskirts of Brickhedge to the central Main Street—four to the north and south, one to the east, and one to the west—and each one was named after a vegetable. Turnip, potato, tomato, corn, yam, carrot, cabbage, pumpkin, spinach and onion.
Since he’d driven back into town from the south, he found the likes of Turnip, Potato, and Tomato Street all blocked off entirely, with sawhorses and abandoned vehicles alike.
Now nearly to the point of panic, the wolf whipped out his phone and began dialing everybeast he knew in town.
“Your call cannot be completed right now,” was the only reply he got. It’d only been after the fifth try to Brigid’s number that he noticed the lack of a wireless signal, with his phone having connected to a nearby public Wifi location.
Putting his phone on speaker, the wolf continued his drive until he made it to Corn Street, which was only partially blocked off. Still no answer from anyone.
“What in the heck is going on here?” he pondered to himself, trying to see beyond what the headlights allowed him. The darkness that washed over the town tonight was far worse than even the nights he’d spent in the forest hunting monsters.
Placing his car in Park, the wolf emerged, headlights fixed on the remains of the sawhorses that had been placed in front of Corn Street. The sight before him had sparked a fear within, somehow feeling foreign.
Blood, and lots of it, splattered across the sawhorse, along with two streaks that likely had belonged to whoever the blood spilled out of. The marks smeared across the yellow board and ended with two splat marks on the pavement below.
The urge to call 911 quickly sapped away at the sight of various abandoned police vehicles, all with similar splatter.
Unable to move his car any further, Advrik decided to go on paw the rest of the way. He needed to get to the town hall as soon as possible…
Corn Street, like the other nine similarly named streets, connected to Main like arteries to a heart. They fed Main Street with an irregular stream of beasts, primarily on business as most of the local shops in Brickhedge were located along the idyllic town center, but a good portion of traffic were just beasts returning home, either from a long-winded jog or from work elsewhere.
It was on this street that Desmond violently punted the troll, the monster’s mass working with gravity to ensure that any and all fleshly appendages were torn and broken along the way. There was a veterinarian here, along with a farmer’s supply shop, but mainly, there had been old dilapidated houses that were already stamped for demolition.
Now, the street was littered with debris. Broken and busted cars, splattered with copious amounts of blood. The street lamps, too, were out, giving him only the pulsating glow of the squad car’s blue and red lights to work with.
“Phone lines are down, and all but two of the town’s police vehicles look like someone took a can opener to them. What the heck is going—“ Something moved in the dark, low to the ground, catching the wolf’s attention.
A body!
He loped through the darkness, finding himself next to the prone body of a beast. One arm was horribly mangled, the elbow shattered with jagged shards of bone cutting through the flesh, looking like tiny icebergs amid a sea of coarse grey fur.
An opossum, judging by the thick pink tail.
“What have we got here?” The wolf said to himself as he inspected the bloodied, battered remains of the beast. Bite marks all across each arm, shoulder, and even on their neck. A thick pool of blood beneath their head. The body was cold.
And yet, it moved anyway.
The opossum’s milky white eyes flashed open and stayed that way as the beast moaned. The arm, which would have had even the toughest beast screaming in pain, moved with the fluidity of a well-maintained machine.
Advrik jumped back in fright, both horrified by the sound of broken bones scraping together and the sight of the opossum’s half-eaten face.
Gore in movies had been one thing, but seeing it in real life was something else entirely. “Hey!” he yelled, catching the gaze of the fully upright opossum. Their identity as one of the local police officers now obvious, though the wolf would have been hard-pressed to recall their name at the very moment.
“Please sit down, you’re hurt. I’m going to get you some help—“ but the beast lunged, broken mouth agape with exposed bloodied teeth. Hands reaching outward in grasping motions. A gurgly, dark moan escaped the officer’s mouth.
He said as he gestured for his sword to appear but was met with naught. “Wh—what is this?!” He tried again as the opossum lurched forward, but to no avail. “How is this possible?!”
Nearly within grasping distance, the opossum surprisingly lunged with a gurgly hiss, gaping mouth full of foamy saliva opening wide as it attempted to fall atop the wolf, whose quick thinking and reflexes propelled him away from the threat.
The opossum fell forward, colliding with the curb and breaking its already damaged face even further, leaving what few teeth it had left on the sidewalk in a pool of thick black blood.
Noticing the gun had fallen from the officer’s body as it rose, Advrik dashed towards where the opossum had laid. Retrieving the gun, he aimed it at the beast’s head, finger on the trigger.
He’d never fired a gun in his life, he thought, but he knew well enough how to. They were such wildly ineffective weapons against anything other than other beasts that it was surprising that they even fitted cops with them nowadays.
“Stop or I’ll shoot!” he yelled, but the promise failed to halt the threat. Recognizing the motion the opossum took, the wolf had no choice but to pull.
The result was a bullet piercing the broken and mangled head of the opossum, punching through the brain, and then apparently lodging itself against the backside of the skull. It fell to the ground with a malicious hiss, then fell silent. The only movement was the rapidly growing pool of blood that poured out of the beast.
Advrik had no time to collect himself as the pounding of hand against glass, accompanied by similar groans and hissing from a nearby building, told him that he had to move. That whatever had happened to the cop had happened to others as well.
“Oh do I ever hope the clip is full,” he thought to himself as he carefully made his way back up the street, towards Main.
The damage was indescribable. The once peaceful, idyllic town of Brickhedge was a mere shadow of its former self. Not a single building escaped the mayhem that occurred here, nor did it appear that there were any survivors either. At least, not in the way he had hoped.
The beasts he had encountered thus far, the cop, and a few more locals on his way onto Main, all exhibited similar qualities. They lacked pain receptors and the capacity to feel fear for the muzzle of a gun. They wouldn’t even go down without a bullet to the head. Their eyes had become opaque, and all vocal capacity had been lost; their mournful groans and hisses were mere echoes of the intelligence once displayed.
They weren’t Primals, Advrik was sure. Even a beast in its Primal form retained their modern intelligence levels; though their mood became unstable and they had little constraint, they were still a modern-day beast. But these… things, they’d lost every bit of their humanity.
He’d witnessed the neighbor boy, a young coyote of about eleven, hanging half out of the upstairs window, dangling over the broken remains of the window pane. Almost as if he’d caught Advrik’s scent, he sprung to whatever pale imitation of life these creatures had and tried pulling himself towards the wolf, snapping and growling the whole time. Eventually, the window had cut right through the pup’s body, gravity taking hold as the child’s upper torso cut loose from his legs, entrails flowing through the air like party streamers as the child’s body fell from the second story.
It’d been no surprise when the child, mad with whatever curse or disease had been inflicted upon him, pulled itself across the yard, the white picket fence that boxed it in the only thing stopping him from reaching Advrik.
He’d only met the boy once but had spoken to his older sister and parents multiple times. The child would always watch the wolf from afar, even running away if he’d been playing on the sidewalk when Advrik was returning home.
Now, the same shy coyote was biting and snapping, arms outstretched through the fence, trying to grasp the wolf the same way the other locals had. Whatever misery the locals had found themselves in, Advrik felt it was his duty right now to put them out of it, so he held the gun out and pulled the trigger. The child’s head exploded a split second later.
“I need to get to Town Hall.” He told himself as the mournful growls and hisses of other infected beasts responded to the gunshot. “Fast, from the sounds of it.”
Standing before the biggest government building in town, a ping of positivity had struck the wolf. The various police cars parked outside, coupled with the numerous sawhorses and discarded ammo clips, gave the wolf some hope that this had been where the survivors had fled. Having run out of ammo, he deduced, they ran into the building and barricaded themselves inside.
Now he just needed to figure out a way to get their attention without drawing in more of the infected.
The sight of the discarded clips prompted the wolf to inspect his own. One bullet left, he lamented. “Crap…” He said, jumping over a sawhorse as he moved inward, across the lawn, and up the steps to the large double doors.
He knocked seven times to the ‘Shave and a Haircut’ tune, hoping that any survivors within would take it as a sign and attempt to communicate with him, but to no avail.
A few minutes later, the wolf repeated the action but received the same results.
Despite the fires about town, the cold night air was beginning to seep down into his undercoat, lapping at his skin and causing goosebumps to rise. Wolves were hardy beasts, but not by much in the face of sub-freezing temperatures.
Thump, thump, thump!
The sound of pawsteps within pricked his ears. Somebeast had heard him! The rhythm of the steps sounded strong and healthy. Not the shuffling the infected all demonstrated. He placed his ear to the door and listened, his wolfen senses allowing him to hear inside almost to the point of visualizing it.
Eligh!
His relief was cut short as the bear’s giant hand punched through the thick wooden doors, bone exposed and flesh falling in shreds. His paw pads cut open and exposed the meat beneath.
Advrik jumped back, not having to wait for any sort of confirmation as to the fate that had befallen his friend.
The giant grizzly gripped the door and pulled it inward, ripping it from its frame and sending the two heavy pieces of wood falling to the ground in a mess of debris.
Eligh, or what was one Eligh, stepped out into the dim light of the fires that were steadily razing the town. His shirt was gone, exposing a pulsating mass of flesh that started at his chest and spread across to his right arm. His eyes were pale white like the others, the only clue the wolf needed to take aim.
“Eligh, no…” His aim was shaky, having to point a weapon at a friend. The infected bear’s presence inside Town Hall had dashed all hope he had of finding any survivors within.
His heart began to race. He didn’t want to think of Brigid, or Desmond or Callista shambling around like this. What had happened here?! WHY did it happen?!
Not wanting to see his friend suffer whatever infection had warped his body so, Advrik did what had to be done and pulled the trigger. The last bullet in the clip zipped through the air, smacking into the bear’s head with a thud.
The act had left the wolf feeling drained; Killing anything was tasking, let alone a friend with whom one had shared joyous times.
He watched and waited for what felt like an eternity for the bear to tumble backward, but it never came. The impact of the bullet had caused the grizzly’s head to violently jerk back where it had frozen in place as if the muscles suddenly contracted.
Eligh’s body began to spasm. First his hands, then his legs, then his torso. Finally, his huge head flew forward as if someone suddenly slammed on the brakes. Blood seeped from the hole in his forehead, mixing with the blond fur that covered his face, then into the orange-red that made up his thick beard.
His face began to crack and split, like a fissure running vertically up and down his head, running away from the bullet wound. The sound of the thick bone breaking and cracking along a fresh new seam was stomach-churning. Blood poured from the fresh tears in his skin as the line ran front to back; finally, his face fell in two, the mask that was once his face falling on either side and hanging limp by the flesh of his neck. Where his brain should have been now sat an orange, pulsating eyeball. Its thick, black pupil stared back at Advrik as he backed away, preparing to run.
Eligh continued his mutation as the hand he’d punched the door in with began to contort itself as the flesh fell away, exposing a skeletal appendage that was rapidly rearranging itself into a giant claw.
The mutated Eligh began to spasm as his mutation progressed.
Eligh-Thing threw his left arm forward, releasing the grip on something that, until that very second, the wolf hadn’t even noticed. A head, covered in a matted mass of green hair and thick with blood, collided with his chest, knocking the wind out of him.
He fell to his butt, the head of who he now recognized as Callista Reigns, the local GP, lay at his paws. Her spinal cord dangled, landing and coiling in a way that made her head appear like a snake that was coiling, ready to strike.
When his gaze returned to the bear, the beast he had once known was gone; the only recognizable trait was the side of his face that still clung to the now heavily mutated body by a thick strip of flesh. The other had fallen to the ground as Eligh’s body mutated further.
What the wolf saw before him now defied all description. Nothing that looked like what Eligh had become should be able to exist, let alone live and be upright, yet there it stood. A monster in every way imaginable, armed with a hand full of six-foot-long blades of bone.
Eligh-Thing roared, though from where Advrik couldn’t deduce. It had no mouth beyond the half of a muzzle that dangled like a loose tooth from the creature’s horribly disfigured shoulder.
“Eligh, Callista, Brigid, Desmond, I’m so sorry,” he whispered, unable to move out of raw fear. Had this been what others felt like when they accidentally peeked beyond his presence and saw the Wulphelk?
“I’m so sorry,” he cried, tears welling up. What else was there to do?
Eligh-Thing lumbered up to the wolf, abusing the fear-induced immobility that its prey had been struck with. It pulled back its huge claw and swiped.
2:49am
October xx, 2024
Advrik’s red eyes shot open with a start! It was a dream, he thought, looking around his living room. He clutched his chest, trying to still his beating heart from the raw fright the nightmare had pressed upon him.
Crunch, crunch…
He laid his head back against the couch, his mind’s eye searching through the fear and nightmare-induced fog that filled his brain. He remembered the Halloween party at the gymnasium, hanging out with Brigid and Eligh… How did he get home, he wondered? Why did he black out to begin with? He never drank, as hard as Brigid tried to get him to do so, so what had happened to cause that sort of surreal, realistic feeling nightmare?
Munch, munch…
The sound repeated itself, sounding again as if somebeast had taken a bite out of a juicy apple. The television was muted so that couldn’t have been it, not that the current hijinx of Alex Keaton currently displayed on the screen had anything to do in relation to the sounds he was hearing.
No, this was somewhere off in the dark, somewhere close… behind the couch.
He sat up and looked about the room, waiting for the noise once more. He didn’t have to wait long.
Crunch, crunch…
He shook his phone, the gesture activating the flashlight feature. He shined it over the back of the couch, first hitting the kitchen. Had it not been for the eyeshine of the beast that lay on the floor just seven feet away, he may have missed it.
Desmond.
He was dead, blood pooling beneath him. But before him, on their knees and totally naked, was Brigid. Her jet-black hair, normally in a thick braid, was flowing freely down her back. Never once had he seen her with any other hairstyle.
“B-Brigid, what’s wrong? Are you okay? What happened to Des?!”
The purple fox raised up, pausing momentarily thereafter. Slowly, her head turned to the left, revealing a blood-stained muzzle and a meaty chunk of mole flesh in her mouth, Desmond’s wiry grey fur sticking out the side.
Her mouth opened, gravity taking hold of the mole flesh and sending it plummeting to the ground below. It collided with the hardwood floor with a splat.
“Brigid, Desmond. Oh god—“ The sight of a living beast sent the infected fox into a fit, lunging and hissing at the wolf.
1:24am
October xx, 2024
Advrik shot up out of bed, his heart racing a mile a minute. The room was dark, save for the dim aura given off by a nearby street light attempting to penetrate his blackout blinds.
He flicked the lamp on his bed stand and looked about the room, then jumped out of bed and looked out the window. Everything was as it should be: Perfect.
The wolf grabbed his phone next and messaged Brigid, who replied a minute later, surprised to be hearing from the wolf at such a late hour.
BRIGID: The fuck you doing up? Go back to sleep.
ME: Sorry, just had a really weird, really bad dream
ME: Hey, do you want to do something tomorrow?
He laid back down, his body relaxing and the tension abating as reality set in once again. The world wasn’t the undead mutant hellscape he’d dreamed of, thankfully.
BRIGID: yES!!!
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