“No!!!” the scream was something I could understand. It was language instead of a primal howl! I stopped, my hand tight around the neck. A boy's neck.

Something slammed into the side of my knee and I toppled to my right, the force of the blow rolling me over.

“Run boy!” screamed the man raising the metal pipe as he dragged the boy away from me.

Those words too I could understand. The burning hunger- the need- was still there but something pushed back at the fog. Things were suddenly more than they had been before. My head rang with pain. Perhaps he had struck me there with the pipe?

The man with the pipe was a greater threat, and larger mass, and as he stepped over the boy my decision was made for me. He didn't advance though as I began to scramble towards him on my hands, my working leg thrusting me forward when it could.

“Run!” the boy screamed.

I turned to look past the man, but I only caught sight of a leg as the boy raced around a corner.

“Run!” he screamed again from deeper in the house.

When I turned back the pipe wielder’s face was bloodless. He screamed as his backpedaling caused him to trip over one of the fallen raiders.

I hadn’t stopped my powerful scrambling towards him with my three working limbs even as I followed the boy's fleeing progress.

Hunger drove me to to the raider the man had tripped over, though I was wary of the pipe.

My hands exposed the flesh of the dead man’s neck by gripping his shirt near his chest and his chin and pulled them apart so that the neck arched up.

I watched the pipe in the wielder’s hands as he scrambled backward.

My teeth were made for this. Millions of years of evolution and a few thousand years of science, technology, and the psychology of war had given me teeth perfect for the tearing and rending of flesh, not that I knew of that when I bit and tore. All I knew was hunger, all I was was hunger.

Even after eating and eating and eating, my stomach full to bursting, my jaw muscles aching with exhaustion the hunger still drove me.

Memory as a concept wasn’t something I understood. I lived in the now. Sometimes the now was longer than other times.

This now stretched and stretched.

It had started with loud cracks, booms, and screams. The scent of blood and gunfire and death filled the air. And then I ate. Sometimes I had to chase but most of the time I only left the food when someone attacked.

As I gulped the torn flesh down I forced my damaged leg out straight. There was pain of a sort, but it was needed pain if it was to heal.

I heard the screams calling for the, "Eastern Rally Point," but my gut told me that was likely a ruse.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

My fingers worked at buckles and buttons and straps. I could chew through the clothing but my fingers and teeth knew what to do. I vaguely remembered the teeth being pulled. Small flashes of memory, over and over as the teeth were pulled.

I had parts of the collar bone and shoulder exposed when my gut told me I was full to bursting. I opened my mouth and let the flesh I’d torn drop free mid-chew.

I hungered for something else.

It had been a long time, the memories still shrouded in fog and darkness, since I’d been full.

I tried to stand, but putting weight on my knee caused me to collapse. I crawled over the body and out into the street. The street lights were off.

I had vague memories of seeing them from the elevated position of the wall. The fog of clouded memory was strong, but I had the sense that none of this was new to me.

There was power up there on the wall. That was what I was hungry for now. Power. Power that was always moving along the planks of metal forcing me to keep walking if I wanted to keep in contract with the energized planks.

The hunger for power was greater than that for flesh, and least currently. When the power in the planks had cut out I’d sought flesh.

It had been abundant. The gunfire and screams indicated where the next pile of meat was.

I couldn’t remember the scent of brothers and yet they were there, faces buried in the same piles of flesh I craved.

There was a light, just down the street. A vehicle of some sort slowly coming to a stop. Not that any of the concepts like vehicle were whole in my mind.

I knew it was metal with flesh inside. That it could move faster than I could and couldn’t be damage by my teeth.

I watched brothers rushing it, trying to get to the calories or power. they must not know of the hard outer metal, for many of them clawed at it and broke their teeth against it's armor.

There were gunshots and falling bodies, but I didn’t stop my speedy crawl.

There were more gunshots now and grunting.

Eventually something slammed into me, driving me down into the ground.

I tried to scramble away, to bite and tear and get closer to the electric light.

Only my mouth snapped and closed on nothing.

I could look with my eyes, but all I wanted to do was track the light. Get closer to it. Feed upon it.

I kept trying, even though nothing else was working.

There was a type of pain in my neck. That white hot pain of healing. Like what happened when they plucked pulled my teeth.

The sun rose.

I checked, making sure the powerful light source wasn’t electric in nature, but it continued to be the sun. Still I couldn’t reach the light on the vehicle just a few meters in front of me. Nothing below my mouth worked and the white-hot fires of healing scalding the back of my neck were not subsiding.

Someone was moving to my right. I’d broken down the calories from the previous meal already so I switched targets hoping they came within range of my teeth.

It was an older man, the wrinkles of his face caked with grime.

“Kenzi! Get over here!”

He had a long metal pipe in his hand. There was a faint memory of other times pipes had been used against me.

Someone else arrived.

I could feel them coming closer even though I couldn’t see them.

“Bloody chromed vamp Twelver isn’t it?” the pipe man asked.

“Fuck,” the other human said. They had a large motorcycle helmet on their head and a thick leather jacket with a high collar.

“Pull the teeth and call everyone back.”

“They haven’t even begun to scavenge,” the pipe man said.

My jaw worked faster as I strained. Now was my chance. He’d looked away from me.

I still wasn’t moving closer, but I tried. “The rest of these are class 1- dead farmers. That’s a fucking world ender.”

“Kenzi we need the scrap for the quota, you know-”

I could hear the pleading in his voice. I recognized that, though normally it was in the form of, “no. No please!” as I came for them.

There was a gun out and pointed at the man’s head.

“Then we hit another settlement. There’s never just one of them. Hell they could be laying in wait even now.”

“Those are stories-” his words stopped as the hammer clicked back.

The gun swung down until I was looking down the barrel.

It barked and pain brushed my left cheek, jaw, and ear.

“Get the teeth,” motorcycle helmet said as it bent closer, “Pull the teeth,” it continued as the gun came much closer, “and call everyone back-

I didn’t hear the gun go off or feel any pain.