When I got there the street was fucked. Like, the actual street. The asphalt of the road was a spider web of cracks, with some sections having been lifted half a foot above the rest. Further down the street, a water main was pissing water up almost ten feet into the air. The rainbow effect it was creating reminded me of my current gender predicament. Slay, queen? Ew. Cringe.
Anyway.
The houses up and down the street looked pretty worse for wear, but surprisingly only a few had whole collapsed walls. All up, looked like a giant had gone down the street, gently pulling the houses' foundations every which way. There were fissures up and down almost every wall, indicating where the walls had been weakest. The earthquake had taken full advantage of those vulnerabilities.
The street wasn't lifeless, though. A few people were cautiously tiptoeing out of their houses, some with guns in hand. Shit, what if they saw me coming out of my house? My neighbours were chill, but if they saw a stranger leaving a house she didn't live in…
The closest of them was still thirty yards away, so I had time to hurry away from my house and pretend I’d been walking down the road.
It wasn't just the fact that they didn't know this face, though. I had big fluffy bunny ears, now. It’d probably be best to hide them, at least until I knew what was happening. Making the decision, I tucked my weird new ears into my long hair — another thing that was new. My boy form had pretty short hair.
When I felt as inconspicuous as a six-foot-plus girl could possibly get, I jogged towards the nearest group of people — a woman with two teens who were staring around in shock. It was a couple weeks into summer break, so there were going to be a lot of kids home.
“Are you okay?” I asked as I reached them.
The mother’s eyes swung around to stare at me like a startled cat. “Yes. Why do you have that weapon?”
Oops. I guess a spear was probably pretty intimidating to a random suburban mum.
The girl of the two teens had different priorities. “Holy shit, you’re tall.”
“Personal defence. The spear is for personal defence. Oh, um… and I mean, I don’t know why I’m so tall. Wait, I do — genetics, probably? Anyway… uh, do you need—” I babbled, and yeah, maybe I was a little flustered at what the teen said… tall girls were amazing, and now I was one? Insanity.
Anything else my stupid filterless brain was going to regurgitate got cut off by a cacophony of gunshots. They echoed through the post-earthquake quiet like a bowling ball hitting a lego castle.
“Oh crap, those were close.” I muttered.
“Where are the emergency services?” asked the girl, who was maybe fifteen years old.
She had a point. There were no sirens. In fact, there were no car sounds at all. That was probably why the silence felt so creepy, we were so used to hearing cars in the distance that their absence made us uneasy.
“No cars at all,” I said, somehow finding it within myself to worry even more. The roads were broken here, but they couldn’t all be ruined, could they? Looking to the mother, I said, “We should gather everyone we can and form a group, go somewhere safe.”
“Safe from what?” the kid asked, scared. “What’s happening?”
“Um, did any of you get the… fuzzy emotion things?” I asked, completely butchering an attempt to be discreet about the system. If I was the only one that had it, that changed things.
The two teens didn’t say anything, they just looked confused, but the mother’s stare turned bug-eyed.
I met her gaze with a reassuring smile. At least, I hoped it was reassuring. “Did it ask you to choose?”
“Yes,” she said softly, as if unable to believe that the strange thoughts in her head weren’t just due to shock from the earthquake.
“I’m guessing you didn’t get any… fighting choices?”
She nodded once, and I sighed. Okay, it stands to reason that a housewife wouldn’t get anything combat related either. I wonder how many people did get something to do with fighting.
“Mom,” the second teen said suddenly. He’d been staring at his phone for a long time now, fiddling with the buttons on the side. “My phone isn’t working. Sometimes it starts, but then it glitches and dies again.”
“Not now, Jackson,” she shushed him.
Huh. I’d stuffed my phone into my hoodie when I got changed. Pulling it out, I clicked the lock screen button, but nothing happened. Trying again, this time I held the power button to turn it on. The screen flickered, and for a brief second I saw the initial logo, but then it died again. Crud.
“That’s weird. Mine’s not working either, dude,” I told the kid. A sinking feeling started to drag my stomach towards the asphalt. If the same thing was happening to two stranger’s phones, was it happening to other stuff too? I was about to ask about cars and anything else electronic, when the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
Quickly glancing around, movement caught my eye. There was something between two houses on the other side of the road. My stomach dropped entirely. I was going to play the hero. There was nobody else who could do it, and whatever was between those houses was one, not human, and two, as big as one.
“Find others,” I said to the mother, keeping my eyes on the other side of the road. “Find other people, stick together, and see if you can’t get somewhere with nice, thick, unbroken walls.”
No sooner had I urged them to leave when something leapt out of a scraggly suburban hedge, heading straight for me. Fuck, it was fast!
Lifting my makeshift spear, I held my ground, despite every single neuron in my brain screaming that I run. Grey, white, and black speckled fur blurred while shining rust-coloured teeth flashed. Holy fuck, it was a squirrel the size of a husky!
No, not just a squirrel. Its teeth weren't just rust coloured, they were literally jagged pieces of rusted iron. The teeth weren't the end of it, either — rusty iron plates covered its back, shoulders and forehead. Oh, Jesus, the armour was growing directly out of its irritated pink skin. The angel had said this would happen. She said the native wildlife would mutate.
The squirrel screamed, coiled its body tighter, and lunged.
Stumbling, I threw myself out of the way, shocked at how quick it was. It wasn’t like I wasn't The Flash or anything, but it would've had a noticeable advantage over my old body. The smell of its rancid breath followed it past me, and I almost gagged as the scent invaded my nostrils. Gross! Ew!
Following some instinct I didn’t know I had, I thrust the spear in its general direction. The point skittered harmlessly off the squirrel’s armoured shoulder, but continued down to pierce the flesh of its forearm.
Squealing in pain, it leapt away from me, iron claws skittering on the asphalt. The spear slid out of its arm with a weird sucking sound that made my skin crawl.
Watching it warily, I took the momentary reprieve to gather myself again. I was doing this, I was fighting a giant rust-flavoured squirrel. Think of it like a video game, Kai, it’s just that. You’re level one, you need to protect some people from this low level mob. Just… stab it.
I lunged. As I did, the squirrel launched its next attack — jaws wide and teeth sharp. The knife-spearhead rammed home into its throat with a horrid squelch, but it didn't die. I'd missed the immediately important stuff.
Still, the squirrel definitely hated it, and it bit down and thrashed wildly, trying to dislodge my weapon. That wasn't great for me, because the old broom handle haft broke, leaving me holding a vaguely sturdy stick.
Blood sprayed everywhere while it writhed around on the pavement, trying to dislodge the pointy end of my spear from its throat. All I could do was watch. It was way too dangerous to get close, what with all the sharp teeth and claws.
I had no idea what to do. I needed something to kill it with. Uh… the stick in my hand would probably do next to nothing to it.
That was when I remembered the stones that lined a rock garden in my neighbour’s front yard. Turning, I dashed for the sidewalk, hopped up, and then bent to lift one of the rocks. While I was moving, I glanced around, checking to see if the family had made it to safety. Their front door was swinging in the wind, and the girl was watching me through a crack. Distantly I heard the mother shout, and the peeking face disappeared. Phew, they were safe. Now I just needed to finish this horrifying beastie.
The stone I grabbed was white limestone and about a foot in diameter, locally sourced, I think? Didn't matter. Time to test how much strength this bunny girl form had!
For the first time ever, I actually made use of some skills I learned in the compulsory physical education classes. I hefted the stone like a shot putter and took careful aim. The squirrel was now pawing uselessly at its maw, oblivious to my plans.
Yeet!
The first stone crunched onto the broken pavement far beyond the monster and rolled to a stop. Oh. Damn! I was like, legit strong!
Okay, take two! Yeet!
This one sailed true and came down on a forepaw, cracking it and throwing the squirrel onto its side, where it screamed in pain again. Oh, that didn't feel good. It was rabid, but it didn't deserve to suffer.
Pity for this obviously mutated creature tugging at my heartstrings, I rushed over and hefted the stone again. If I were making guesses, I'd say the creature had been a normal squirrel until like, an hour ago. Something about it just seemed… newly twisted.
“Sorry buddy, you got fucked by fate, I guess,” I told it gently, and dropped the stone onto its pain-glazed eye. Crunch. The squirrel went still.
Ugh. That sucked. Poor critter probably didn’t even realise what was happening. It just knew that it was in pain and everything about its body was different. No wonder it attacked the first moving thing it saw.
Still… my spear was broken already, and the squirrel had chunks of it that were made of metal. The teeth especially. Ah, screw it. My life was about to become a twisted facsimile of a video game, may as well embrace it and begin the looting process.
Trying not to gag, I bent to one knee and carefully reached into its maw. When I found what was left of the forward section of my spear, I pulled it free and inspected the blade. The knife was actually mostly fine. I could still use it… except that the handle was still a little long. The metal teeth of the squirrel would fix that, though.
Using its jaws as a grisly tool, I chopped the haft of the spear down until it was just the duct tape wrapped section again. Then, I took the knife and looked at the monstrous squirrel. Those teeth were really sharp. It looked like under the rust, it was good iron. They’d suck for another spear, but I could make, like, an axe or something.
Cutting the teeth out of the squirrel was… fucking gross. Flesh makes the most awful sounds while you’re slicing it up. At the end of my efforts, though, I had two teeth large enough to be axe heads, and two that might make good tools of some type.
“First mob looted,” I muttered to myself, carefully ignoring that I was leaving metal on the bone, so to speak. The armoured parts would just be too grisly to extract for me right now, and I should probably run back home to put another weapon together. Time was a resource that too many people were running out of, and the more of it I spent fucking around, the more people would die.