It was nice having a clear goal after spending so long in uncertainty.

He spent five days in the basement, sleeping plenty and working his food intake back up, venturing out only an hour or two each day for more supplies. Once he felt he had returned from the brink and some strength returned to his limbs, he packed his pink bag and left along the road. He was low on both food and water, but there had to be plenty of places to restock in the city. He guessed there weren’t many survivors like him running about, so what was not destroyed would likely remain untouched.

He passed the village he’d been to previously, and soon after he began to see farmhouses along the road in ones and twos. They stood out in barren fields that had likely been thick with crops not long ago. One of them had been left relatively unscathed. Rooting through it, he came across some more canned food—two tins of sardines and two cans of chicken noodle soup. He wasn’t stoked about the sardines, but it would have to go down one way or another. The taps didn’t work, so no water, but he found two bottles of soda in the fridge. It fizzed like crazy when he opened one, but was otherwise fine.

After that he came across a larger settlement, a suburb with little rows of residential houses. He heard inhuman moaning and screaming from there, so he took a wide detour to avoid the place, rejoining with the road further down.

Eventually he came out onto a larger highway, littered with burnt-out cars. Some had the remains of their drivers still inside, while others had been vacated with the corpses lying close by in the road or the ditch.

Jacob followed the highway until he heard an odd, distant sound. A rhythmic thumping somewhere off to the left, coming closer. He ducked behind the wreckage of a truck and peeked out at whatever was coming.

What Jacob could only interpret as a wheel made of flesh leaped out from over a ridge, bouncing downhill as it made to cross the highway at an oblique angle. The creature was the size of a Ferris wheel and consisted of a roughly spheroid central mass—studded with lidless eyes whose pupils wheeled around with the motion of the body—and ten stump-footed legs that radiated from the central mass like spokes. It would bend the knee of each individual leg when it contacted the ground and push off with it to generate speed.

The creature crushed two cars underfoot when it crossed the highway, some fifty meters from Jacob. It did not seem to notice, and proceeded to knock down dead trees as it continued across the landscape. Eventually it had gotten far enough that he didn’t worry about being seen.

Okay, things are definitely getting biblical. What the fuck.

Unable to fully process what he had just seen, Jacob decided to just ignore it and move on. Enough had happened to him that he found himself just accepting things that would have been absurd before becoming a User.

It was afternoon when Jacob got tired and had to rest. He ate beside a pickup truck—sardines and his last can of baked beans. Eating was rapidly losing its novelty and becoming a chore again, but he had to consume as much as his body would tolerate to build back muscle mass. He hoped that his points in Vigor meant he would pack some on automatically without the need for targeted exercise, but it was still too early to tell.

He slept in the truck bed, the sides providing decent protection from prying eyes. He had the other can of sardines for breakfast. It was actually all right—the bones had an unpleasant texture, but were soft enough that he could pretend they weren’t there.

He set out early in the morning and the city came into view before midday.

He didn’t like what he saw.

From where he was standing he only got a good look at the nearest section of buildings and the less developed land bordering the city limits, but it was enough. The buildings were in ruins—this was not surprising, he’d expected as much—rather it was the creatures wandering the city streets that caught his attention. They were tall and thin, almost stretched out, towering far above the broken buildings. They had no skin, only reddish pulsing flesh, and their faces were dominated by a single huge eye and a wide mouth. With spindly arms that nearly reached their feet, they picked through wreckage for crispy human corpses to stuff into their mouths. He saw at least five of them.

They’re gonna be hard to sneak past. I should probably cut through buildings when possible and limit the time I spend out in the streets.

It was easier said than done. He made it to the edge of the city by moving carefully and ducking behind cars whenever one of the gangly creatures turned his way. He ducked under a gap in a warped chain link fence and stole across a construction site, concealed under the skeleton of an unfinished apartment building. Then he was stuck waiting while two of the gangly ones wandered through the street he wanted to cross. There was a disagreement of some kind, and the creatures let out shrill, ear-splitting wails. They swung their elongated arms at each other, trying to score open-handed slaps. One of them went down with a crash, taking out a section of a car dealership with it, and stayed down, though it continued to let out miserable wails. The other one, having lost interest, turned away and shuffled off. With that, Jacob gained enough of an opening to slip across.

It was a slow and painstaking process. Often he spent minutes waiting inside a building for a decent opportunity to run. A few streets were clear of gangly ones, but most of them had a good three or more clumped together. They appeared to flock to each other even though they didn’t get along very well. Fights often broke out when two of them went for the same morsel.

At least they couldn’t hear, or their hearing was very poor. Considering that they used vocalizations, the latter was more likely. None of them reacted when he had to smash a window or clear away heavy chunks of debris to enter a building.

In the sparser sections near the city limits there were parks and open fields where he just had to make a run for it and hope for the best. He used Dash sparingly, not sure how his emaciated body would handle the strain.

There were corpses everywhere inside the buildings. Most of the ones outside had likely gotten snatched up by the gangly ones already. The ones that weren’t burned beyond recognition looked… wrong. No two were the same. He saw oddly textured skin, warped limbs, extra limbs, melted faces, skulls split open, swollen organs protruding from the body. At first he thought they might be dangerous, but none of them moved. Even when he prodded one with his foot, there was no reaction.

By midday, Jacob had made it to a more densely constructed area of the city, so he figured he had to be going in the right direction. But all the running had worn him down, left him weak in the knees, and even after twenty minutes of rest and some food he didn’t feel much better.

He decided to head just a little further before stopping for the day. Entering a hospital through an ambulance bay, he made his way across the first floor and managed to score a few bottles of water from a messy jumble that had once been a cafe. He was walking through the lobby, about to leave, when another earthquake hit. It was a harsh one, set the walls shaking and the floors cracking open. Over the clamor of the building shifting and groaning and resettling, he could only just make out a suspiciously human scream.

The earthquake petered out, and Jacob heard muffled sobbing from somewhere inside the building. Sounded like a kid.

Probably a bad idea to investigate. I don’t know if any of these creatures sound human, or can mimic human voices.

But he went anyway. Something inside him wouldn’t leave it be. If it really was a kid, someone who had managed to survive all this, not helping would be orders of magnitude more despicable than his usual questionable behavior.

“Hello?” he called out. “Can you hear me? Are you human?”

“Hjelp,” someone cried weakly, the voice echoing through the empty halls.

“I’m coming to you, don’t worry. Just keep talking.”

The kid just kept repeating ‘hjelp, hjelp, hjelp’, as though that was the only word she could use.

He found her behind a help desk, curled up with her knees to her chest. She was maybe ten, pale-skinned and pale-haired, eyes red from crying. Her clothes were dirty, and there was dried vomit on her chin and her collar.

He avoided looking directly at her eyes when he got close to her, but he could still make out the look of horror on his face. She went all stiff, and her lower lip quivered.

With how he looked, he couldn’t blame her.

“It’s all right,” he said as he knelt down in front of her, holding his hands up in a gesture of peace. “Don’t be scared. I’m here to help you.”

The girl didn’t answer.

“Do you speak English?”

No answer.

“Hey, I bet you’re hungry.” He took off his backpack and got out the chocolate bar he’d been saving. Rather than getting too close, he slid it across the floor to her, and it came to a stop against her shoe.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

She glanced between him and the candy, then snatched it up and tore open the wrapper, stuffing half of it in her mouth.

Jacob tried out a smile. “Pretty good, right?”

He sat in silence while she ate. Once she finished the chocolate he offered a selection of canned foods for her to pick from, but she turned her nose up at that.

Not desperate enough for that yet, I guess.

There was an awkward silence as he struggled to figure out what to say. He had never been good at talking to kids. All he knew was that he wasn’t going to ask her the question. That question.

Where’s your mom and dad?

He already knew the answer to that.

“You’re very brave for doing so well on your own,” he said.

She gave a weak nod.

“I’ll be going on a boat. Have you ever been on a boat?”

She shook her head.

“I’ll be taking the boat across the ocean. Only a little ocean. Would you like to come with me?”

She was quiet for a long time. Then: “I think I’m sick.” She had a noticeable accent, but her English was good.

Jacob frowned. “Sick? What kind of sick? Is it your tummy?”

She shook her head. “Everywhere. Mommy and Daddy and Grandpa and Grandma got sick, and then everything got really scary, and then I was all alone. And now I’m sick too. It hurts.”

Fuck.

“It’s okay, Jacob said with another forced smile. “We’ll get you better, all right? What’s your name?”

“Rebekka.”

Of all the…

“Rebekka, huh? That’s a pretty name. My name is Jacob.”

“Are you sick?”

Jacob shook his head. “I know I look a little strange, but I’m not sick.”

“You’re really skinny.”

“Yeah. I’m… on a diet.”

“That’s not good. My mommy says it’s important to eat your food.”

“Very true. So why don’t you try and eat some of this, hmm?” He shook a can of chicken noodle soup at her.

“I can’t.”

“‘Cause you’re sick?”

“Yeah. I don’t feel good.”

“Does it hurt really bad?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s okay. This is a hospital, so we’ll be able to find you some medicine that will make you feel better. Let’s go look, okay?”

“Okay.”

Looking her over, Jacob saw that one of her index fingers had split in two at the end, the digit laced with greenish veins.

That looks like what I saw with the corpses. Some kind of mutation or corruption.

I don’t know if that means she’s already done for.

Little Rebekka followed him closely as he searched through the hospital. The only stairwell he could find had collapsed, so the upper floors were no good. There was a pharmacy on the first floor, but it was largely impassable with rubble, so Jacob had the girl stay behind while he wriggled between chunks of concrete and upended furniture that had fallen through the ceiling. He made it behind the counter and into the room where the medications were kept. The drawers were all locked. He tried to pry them open, but he was still too weak to budge them.

Back at the counter he found a corrupted corpse with extra faces along the sides of her neck. The features that were oddly spaced apart, and the mouths gaped in silent screams. She wore pharmacist white, so he picked through her clothes. Sure enough, he found a key.

The medications were all in Norwegian, but he found morphine tablets and got a box of ibuprofen out in the main part of the pharmacy from a knocked-over shelf.

“I’ve got you some medicine,” Jacob said as he squeezed out into the hall. “I’m sure—”

Little Rebecca was down on the floor, huddled up and shivering.

He knelt beside her. “Rebekka, can you hear me? Are you in a lot of pain?”

“I think I need to throw up,” she said weakly.

Then she started vomiting fingers.

Jacob watched powerlessly as the little girl’s mouth was wrenched open by fingers gripping her upper and lower jaw. Two hands clawed their way out of her and pulled at her cheeks and eyelids. Her eyes were wide with panic, and she made horrible little sucking sounds as she tried to breathe through the extraneous appendages. Her regular fingers split and split and split into more digits, becoming like terrible broccoli heads.

He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know if there was anything he could do. But it became academic anyway when he accidentally met her gaze. Just for a second, but he saw her death-guise flash, and her eyes rolled into the back of her head. She let out a muffled scream, spasmed for a few seconds, then went still.

Too much shock on her system.

Jacob sat there for a few moments, staring blankly at the dead child. The fingers coming out of her mouth were still wriggling.

Then he stood and walked away. And he pretended he’d never met a little girl named Rebekka.

*****

Jacob walked as though in a trance. He didn’t stop for the day like he was supposed to. He just kept going. He barely bothered hiding from the gangly ones, but by some miracle he avoided detection.

He reached a medium-sized marina with a handful of walkways by late afternoon and found a tangle of wrecked boats washed up on the cobbled promenade adjacent to it. Maybe one of the earthquakes had caused a minor tsunami. It was difficult to tell since the buildings were in such bad shape anyway.

He was looking over the boats to see if any were usable when one of the gangly ones wandered out onto the promenade. Before Jacob could make any effort to conceal himself, the creature’s one wandering eye rolled its focus across the promenade. It went past Jacob, then darted back, pupil dilating.

The creature’s face spread into an enormous grin and its flagpole arms shot out in front of it, delighted at the prospect of live prey.

Jacob was not in the mood for this. He was unable to conjure up any emotions besides anger and annoyance when the gangly one charged towards him, shaking the ground with each heavy step.

He picked up a loose cobblestone, displaced by one of the boats crashing into the promenade, and hefted it in his hand. He threw it with a Dash focused just on his arm, the momentum ripping his shoulder out of its socket and causing him to spin around multiple full revolutions before he fell on one knee.

The square stone sailed beautifully through the air. He followed its arc until it shot straight into the eye of the approaching monster. It burst open with a flood of juices like a massive popped pimple, and the gangly one screeched in agony, so loud it set Jacob’s ears ringing.

The creature tripped over its own feet, and Jacob rolled sideways as it bore past him and fell face-first into the marina. It thrashed wildly, throwing up great showers of water, but its struggles gradually weakened.

Jacob turned away before it was fully dead and set his shoulder back into place with a jolt that made him wince. It clicked when he moved it, and he didn’t have full range of motion, but it wasn’t completely busted.

He returned to his task and found a fishing boat that looked promising. It sat on a trailer meaning it would be easy to get in the water, it had an intact hull and minimal heat damage, and climbing inside the pilothouse he confirmed that the electronics were still working. It wasn’t full up with gas, but he hoped it would be enough. The only problem was the motor’s propeller, which was tangled up badly in some coarse netting.

Evidently the gangly ones could hear, because when he looked up he saw a group of them in the distance, maybe a few blocks away, their attention turned towards him. It had to be the scream from the first one that alerted them. They started running, weaving between buildings.

The netting was too tough to rip with his hands, so he got the hunting knife out of his backpack and started cutting away at it, severing one twined strand at a time. It was slow going, and he sincerely wished he had a sharper knife. Especially when he saw how close the monsters were getting.

Then one of them abruptly turned its attention elsewhere and veered sharply to the side. Another one ran right into it, then another, then another, causing a pileup of noodle bodies near the entrance to the promenade.

Thank fuck for stupid monsters, I guess.

Jacob got the net loose and hurled it away. He engaged the wheel at the front of the trailer and pushed it from the back over to a ramp at the edge of the marina that led into the water. There he loosed the boat from the trailer and gave the thing a sharp kick. The trailer rolled into the water and sank, while the boat remained floating on the surface.

Jacob glanced behind him while he ran up the nearest walkway. One of them had come free and was dragging itself across the promenade on its belly.

Jacob leapt from the walkway onto the boat, not intending to stick around for the gangly ones to catch up. He got the engine running and spent a minute fiddling with the throttle before he got it working. Then he pushed the lever down as far as it would go, and he went roaring through the water, clearing the dock with frequent thumps as floating debris was knocked away against the bow.

A long, mournful howl echoed out over the water. Jacob looked over his shoulder and saw the one-eyed wolf pacing back and forth at the end of the walkway. The lead gangly one crawled towards it, jaws snapping together and eye wheeling about in its socket.

He should have left it alone. That would have been the smart thing. But he was sick of seeing things die.

Jacob turned the boat around as the wolf leapt into the water. Once he got close he turned off the engine and put the boat at an angle to kill a bit of inertia, slowing down enough for the creature to clamber on board. Its soaked black fur hung straight down, draped like a sheet.

The gangly one reached the end of the walkway and hurled itself over the edge without any regard for its own safety. It whiffed the boat by a fair margin, but threw off enough waves to set it rocking in the water.

“All right, let’s get out of here,” Jacob said to the wolf.

They sped out over open water, putting the thrashing gangly one and its very late friends far behind them. The wolf shook some water out of its fur, but still looked ragged and damp. Without the fluffiness of the fur adding to its size, the beast looked just as emaciated as him, a bag of bones bundled in a wolf pelt.

It sat down in the pilothouse next to him with a low groan. It looked up at him accusingly.

“What? I came back, what more do you want?”

The wolf stared at him, then gave a violent sneeze while shaking its head.

Jacob sighed. “Just don’t kill me in my sleep, please. Don’t make me regret this.”

The wolf soon fell asleep at his feet. He wanted to believe he’d found a friend.

If not, it would probably make a nice rug. I bet people would go nuts for that.