Sorry it took so long everyone.  My proofreader/editor got sick and just finished fixing my last chapter so releases might be erratic until they feel better.

Chapter 6: Mysterious Orb

We take some of the garbage bags from the crate. Slowly we open them all the way up and cut them open from the sides so they cover more of an area.

After we put down about 10 feet worth of bags layered on top of each other I took out the old hand saw I had and put on some plastic gloves and put on one of the surgical masks.

“And let the fun begin!” I declare as I place the saw on the neck of the rat which is still trapped in the window even as a corpse and begin the sawing slowly.

It was an extremely tough job to do. Its fur and skin were extremely tough and it took 20 minutes of sawing its head to get it completely cut off from the rest of the body. I cut a bit higher than intended and could see it's salivary glands. Staring at its muscles and insides as blood started to drain from its neck all over the floor.

“Pretty glad I put those bags down now” Shin just gives me a really dude look?  But I pretend that I never saw it.

After I got it's head off I laid it down on the ground and started to saw it from the middle of its head down. My goal is to split it open and examine its head. It was a lot faster this time since I bashed its skull in until you could see part of its brain.

Tye Shin started to get disgusted at this point and slowly walked out of the room while covering his mouth.

“Yeah Yeah Shin no problem at all. I can do this all by myself at this point because I don’t find this part disgusting at all”. He yells sorry from the other room, but what he doesn't know is that it doesn't really bother me at all...

I have never had a problem with dissecting things since high school. I don’t know why though. It may have something with me always being a vegetarian. I have had a few different meats like  fish, and chicken but I am not really crazy about them and for the most part just stick with vegetables, eggs and milk for my diet, so you would think this would freak me out. Oddly enough when I would dissect stuff in high school i just felt strangely detached during it and interested. It didn't matter if it was a frog, fish, bird, pig or anything else. I would just follow the instructions and be perfectly fine with the whole process.

To be honest I was more than fine with it and kind of enjoyed opening them up to see how they worked and for someone with as bad as handwriting as I possessed I was surprisingly good with a scalpel.

To the point of the teacher always praising me during dissection days in biology class and even going as far as to use the samples of what I cut out of things as an example of how you should do things and to show off the different parts of the heart, brain and such.

At one point I was the one showing everyone how to do it instead of my teacher!  

Well anyway “enough getting distracted” I say out loud and saw a bit faster into the brain of the rat.

Once I am about halfway through its head the saw hits something hard. Something extremely hard. As hard as I tried  I couldn't get past whatever the saw was hitting.

I think it's even breaking the saw some….

The metal is bending a little and the saw’s teeth are becoming quite dull from hitting it.

I give up with the saw for now just in case I break it. There is no telling when I'll be able to get another one if this breaks and it is an important survival tool.

I remove it from the rat’s head just to discover that the middle of the saw’s teeth where i was rubbing against whatever is in the rat's head are broken.

“Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck, I was hoping they just became dull! A broken saw is just a useless piece of metal”

I grab the scalpel I had from my biology intro class in college from my crate and start to cut my way down in chunks. I was moving piece by piece of the pink rat brain into the trash next to me. It was a extremely slow and tedious jobs but my goal is to get to the hard object slowly.

At first I didn't want to damage it but it looks like my concern was unfounded since it was destroying my tools!

It took a few more minutes of moving rat brains but I finally reach it!

I cleared out the area around it only to find something amazing when I finished ripping the brain matter off of it.

It is something similar to a pure black marble with red veins running throughout it. It is definitely larger than your run of the mill marble with its two inch width and one inch height.

I immediately yell for Shin to come over and he runs over from my living room, looking a lot paler than he did before.

“You alright man?” I’m fine he says to me. Then he looks over at the open rat head with brain matter everywhere and it's cold dead eyes and I see his face get a few shades paler.

“You are going to have to get use to things like this for the future man. We don’t know what else mutated yet but it's safe to assume that this may have happened to every animal out there so we may need to kill a lot more of these things just to survive. Plus learning or at least trying to learn about how they work could save our lives in the future”.  

"I know , I know, I know! Killing them isn't the problem it's the smell of them mixed with all the different parts of their body, brain and insides in general that really bother me man, but I’m sure I can get use to it Titus!"

I nod and smile at him. ‘Why are you giving me such a creepy smile Dr. Titus.. While you are covered in blood and brain bits?”

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“Well Shin that is because of this”, I open my hand to show Shin the 2 inch black sphere with red veins throughout it.

"What do you think it is? I don't have the slightest idea what this is or what it means but it's hard enough to break a saw and has a pretty cool ominous look to it so I have a feeling that we should keep it. It may just become very handy in the future”.

I spent the next 45 minutes cutting up the rest of its head and extracting as well as studying anything that seems like it would be useful. Besides its teeth that smelled horrible but were surprisingly healthy and long with the average of 3 inches at its shortest and 7 inches for a few of the longer ones there wasn't anything of real use on it.

“With a little bit of cleaning we might be able to turn its teeth into something useful and I'm sure the rest of this, Tye Shin”.

"I was thinking they would make good improvised knives if I can get a proper handle made and put on them."

I did use the opportunity to look at a few things and I realized that its eyes were a lot larger than it use to be even when you took into considerations how big the rest of its body grew its eyes grew larger even more so. So much that they looked slightly out of place on its head. I don't know what that means exactly but I can guess it isn’t anything good if the current trends continue.

I look up at the window where the other 70% of the rat is stuck and look at Shin.

“We are going to have to go outside and get the rest of that you know….”

"What?!?!? I know it sounds bad but we don't really have a choice”. What do you mean Titus!?!?!? It's definitely not safe to be out there."

“As true as that may be I still need to dissect the rest of it on the off chance we can find anything of use. On top of that we will need to be able to close the window and board it up. That's not even to mention the fact that we have a bloody piece of meat sitting right outside my place which I feel a few mutant carnivores may want to take advantage of and if they eat that they may come and attack us to try and eat us too”!

"Fine , that makes sense and all but god help me if I die I am going to haunt the shit out of you for the rest of your life!"

“Haunt me Tye Shin? Damn right Haunt you. I'm going to blame you and make every intimate moment you may ever have weird and creepy by doing ghost things…..like whispering “hey sexy” and “yes baby” in your ear while you try to have sexy times with the ladies."

"ha-ha-ha-HA-ha! Fine with me" I laugh at his joke and smile or at least I hope that is a joke because I'm not taking any weird things off the table yet until I learn how things work now.

Shin starts to grab some gloves to get the parts of the rat we can’t use.

“Make sure you throw them in a bag and triple bag it with plastic bags from the grocery store.”He nods at me once and goes back to work.

I think he's trying his best to not be grossed out by the rat carcass so I figured it would be a good idea to let him just focus.

I go into the other room to try and examine the orb some more. I don't know what it is about this orb but it's insanely fascinating. What kind of purpose did it have in this mutated rat? Or is it just something that got stuck in it? Maybe some sort of weird magical tumor?

I put the ball away in my pocket for now. There is no use in worrying about what it is for now.

I go over to the closet  and grab a fresh set of clean clothes. Just some simple pants, sweatshirt and a hoodie. I made sure to grab a decent pair of boots just in case. Although they wouldn't be the best choice if I had to run for something the added protection they offered made me feel immensely better considering the entire mutant animal situation, so I decided to wear them anyway.

Soon after I was dressed Tye was ready to go out too. He was still holding a large chair, a hammer and a bag of all the things I deemed useless from the rat creature for now. It was really just a bag full of its brain and some  organs. I decided to keep its hide and bones on the off chance they provide some sort of use but I don't want the rest of its meat or anything because honestly who in their right mind is going to eat mutant rat when they have better choices? Certainly not me!

I'm also not too keen on keeping its meat around while trying to figure out what it does. If I can find anything more interesting than rats I may have to keep some organs.

Shin decided that bringing the whole chair out was going to be a bad idea.  After  grabbing one of the small hand saws I had available he tried to quickly cut the legs and part of the back off to make it less cumbersome but it still took about 15 min to completely his shitty chair shield. In the end it was simply vinyl fabric seat with legs cut off and just a small amount of the back left on it. He realized it would still be hard to hold with one hand but beggars can't be choosers.

I personally thought the vinyl fabric wasn't going to really help at all but if it makes him feel better then who am I to tell him it's a dumb idea.

He grabbed it from the small part of the back that was left and we turn to leave.

I still have the two hammers in my hand  and clang!

I jump into the air and turn around to see shin dropped his poorly improvised shield on the ground before we even made it outside.

"Sorry Titus! It was an accident." I give him my trademark death glare. He fumbles with the shield a bit before giving up and just leaving it on the floor.

“Ready Tye? Ready!"

"Then let's get moving!"