Sorry about the huge delay. Haven't given up on the fiction just had too much stuff happening at once to work on it at all between school, work and life in general. Updates will be more frequent but completely irregular now. Which means maybe something every other day or nothing for 2 weeks. Enjoy!
Chapter 7: Survival
We walk into the small hallway that leads to the staircase upstairs and outside. It dawns on me that there are four other apartments filled with people here that could cause a lot of trouble in the future or help us.
“Fuck”, I really wish I got to know my neighbors at some point so I could better guess if they would be a help or a hindrance.But as long as they weren't too noisy I didn't see the point in interacting with them. To be honest I'm unsure if they are males, females, around the same age….pretty much everything about them is a mystery to me. It is probably best to just avoid that for now and deal with it when we getter a better grasp over the situation. Which may take awhile seeing as how this is a life and death situation where fucking magic has become real.
I look out the glass windows next to the door for the first time and realize that everything has changed far more than I thought in these first few hours. More more than I considered possible.
There is smoke coming from a hell of a lot of places in the distance. Some of the places are not so far away. The sun is still out and bright since it's not even 4:00 pm yet. So I guess we have that going for us.
We are looking for obvious dangers before we move too far ahead and all I see is empty streets. Not a car or truck can be seen driving around. There are a few cars parked, scattered around but 90% of the people in the area seemed to of drove off somewhere else.
Given that this was once a decently populated area…. this is giving it quite a creepy feel. Almost like the Apocalypse has just happened and all the good people have ascended and we are the ones that are left behind.
Maybe even an alien invasion, zombie invasion, but I guess this time it is just a simple animals mutating into monsters after god spoke to everyone and magic now existing scenario? You know that totally classic trope.
I mean it could be far worse than it is so far.
I think while we scan the surrounding area looking for a sign of danger or something out of place.
We don't see anything suspicious or any movement besides the wind. We slowly move around the building. I turn my head left and right to make sure nothing has seen us or is even remotely near us to attack us yet.
With the coast clear and the danger seemingly gone for now we sprint the length of the building at about a good 80 feet.
I guess all our luck wasn't gone yet since we were able to safely get this far. My window is about 20 more feet away from the corner where we are on the right hand side.
ARHWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Shit I think and dive in between the large blue recycling bins the landlord finally put behind the building near the dumpsters.
Shin is quick to follow me and I crouch down in attempt to hide myself but still be slightly ready for any danger. Hopefully it won't come to that.
Well peering as little as I can past the bin I look towards the woods. What I see is a large canine howling loudly and quickly another AROWOOOOOO follows it from the distance.
I can't tell what breed this dog use to be or if it was even just a dog before but its face held a semblance of a pitbull’s but that is where any semblance of a normal dog and this beast stopped.
It's fur was a mix of black and brown and its overall size seems to be around 7 to 8 feet.
It's legs were rippling with muscles half as thick as a tree trunk.
You could even see ab muscles on its torso. What kind of scary monstrous fucking dog has so many muscles?!?!?!
There is no way I'm fighting that or surviving a fight with that in one piece.
Soon after those thoughts raced through my mind 11 more dogs of varying sizes and breeds emerged from the woods and submissively put their heads down near big black. It was impossible to say what all the dogs use to be but I thought I saw signs of what use to be husky, retriever and Shepherd in some of their heads but it is hard to say for sure.
I duck my head back behind the bin bringing my finger up to my lips when Tye gives me a strange look.
He leans forward to peek but reaching my hand out I stop him and move myself closer to the wall of the building.
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten” I count in my head mouthing the numbers but not saying them in attempt to count more accurately.
If they haven't left by the time I got to 300 then we are going to have to risk moving stealthily to get away from them.
279, 280,281,282
I hear a weird noise then chanced a quick look to see a big white van speeding down the triple lane road to the left of us.
In-between the dogs in the woods and street.
Chasing after it were great horned beasts. They are the size of a horse but with elk like antlers that were sharpened to resemble knives. Even from where we were hiding I could see that their original ivory color was dyed red on most of them with little bits of debris, dirt and….. clothes on them.
They quickly sped by in the direction of downtown and EastDale University. The strange horned elk beasts were surprising able to keep up with the car and the canines quickly followed them probably looking for their next meal as well.
I count to thirty after they leave just to make sure it's safe and we rush over to my window. I slide the two hammers into the pockets of my pants, too scared to put them down when I may need them in a pinch. I grab the legs of the rat. One in each hand and brace both of my feet against the wall and pull as hard as I can.
ARRRRGH.
It seems to be stuck in the frame and it may not be possible to move it like I thought….
Shin comes over and grabs the left leg with both arms and I do the same with the right. We both brace our feet against the building and after 15 seconds of pulling like our lives depended on it….because it does. It finally starts to move some.
Finally getting a taste of success we pull even harder.
PLOP.
Tye’s ass as well as my own quickly fall hard against the cement payment but the little over half of the rat's corpse that was stuck in the window is finally gone.
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I quickly throw it into a garbage bag from inside and triple bag it just in case.
I got a bit of blood on my hoodie but it won't be a big deal. Clothes are the least of my problems right now.
Shin takes the bag full of bloody guts that he has from the half inside and swiftly runs to the corner.
I stand there with my mouth agape until he starts to spin extremely fast in circles with his trash bag of guts in his hand until he lets it fly a good 50 feet into the woods. He sprints back to my door and I quickly run after him looking around for danger but we luckily made it back inside of my apartment without any injuries or danger following us.
We quickly move the couches and furniture against the door again to better barricade ourselves.
“Smart move throwing the bag Tye”
Once the door was barricaded we head into my bedroom to fix the broken bloody window.
It didn't take long and with the use of some disinfecting wipes and part of a closet door we managed to fix and reinforce the window.
We finished and moved back into the living room where we sit down on the floor slowly trying to think of what we need to do next.
“The first point of business should be deciding what to do next and gathering information”,Tye says.
That's when it dawns on me. I haven't checked the fucking internet for information yet. God that's fucking dumb of me. I’m 110% gonna blame that on Tye Shin.
It's like when you watch a horror movie and realize one cell phone call to the authorities would stop the killer. I went over to my laptop to do a quick search for some popular forums to see if anyone is talking about what's happening.
“Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck!” I try searching over and over but I don't have any luck at all. I can't get the internet to work or WiFi to even show up.
I try to plug it in directly instead via the Ethernet cord but still no luck connecting to the internet.
I knew things could get worst I don't know why I tempted fate and said they couldn't! Things can always get worst!
“Tye I need you to check your cellphone and see if you can connect to the internet”.
Tye takes out his cellphone and his screen is all black. “Sorry Titus I must have forgot to charge it in my drunken splendor last night". He casually walks over to an outlet to charge it.
A few seconds after he plugs it in “There might be a problem Titus”.
“What kind of problem Tye?”
“Well either my charger is broken or the electricity is out”.
I quickly run into my room and grab a few different chargers to try. Long ones short ones they all fail. “Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck!”
We even ran into my kitchen, bedroom and living room trying all the different outlets to no avail.
If there really is no more electricity then….our situation has gotten even more complicated and fucked up than what it already was. And it was already pretty fucked up.
I run over to the fridge and sure enough the light on the refrigerator isn't turning on. Luckily enough I don't have too much food that absolutely has to be refrigerated but I do have some stuff in the freezer that may go bad.
We need to start planning ahead and with the animals mutating along with the chaos that has been unfolding food availability may become a big concern.
I'm trying my best to not feel overwhelmed by everything that is happening but I don't think I'm succeeding well so I close my eyes and breathe in and out a few times. “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one” I feel a lot less panicky now.
After contemplating for a few minutes I decided that the best way to handle this is to divide tasks between Shin and I to handle.
Shin will use my huge Hydrate brand container, the same kind people pour on their coaches after a championship win and fill it with water now while we still have it but first he is going to need to boil it.
It's probably still safe to drink without boiling but I'd rather be safe than sorry.
After that he is going to use all the perishable ingredients that we have in the fridge. It’s better to cook those now so that we will have food longer instead of just letting it go bad.
“Thank God!” the gas stove is still working for now or we would really be fucked.
While he is filling up the 12 gallon Hydrate container and cooking everything we have I dig out an old rectangular cooler and fill it with ice and frozen food for now. This should keep our frozen food a little bit longer.
While Tye is cooking the food aka our future rations, I plan on dissecting the rest of the rat to see if there are any more useful materials before chucking the useless stuff into the woods.
I put down trash bags in layers just like before and get the tools out to dissect the second half of the rat. I had to use an expensive Japanese knife for cooking, since the saw has seen better days, to cut through the second half of its body.
I'm pulling through its guts and muscles in my bedroom and I hear “ Mama Mia I’m the best cook in the universe” in a terrible Italian accent from Shin.
I shake my head silently and dig through the rest of the rat. I suspect the rat bones,pelt and tail may be the only useful things I can gather from it.
It seems to be mostly be the same as a normal rat except for the fact that everything is bigger as well as sharper.
I had to take extra time to clean and cut off its disgusting tail because it may be useful as a whip or something else. It was strange because it's tail was about 6 feet long and pitch black once I got it all clean.
Throwing the useless parts into trash bags and cleaning up I decided that it is a good idea to check on Tye’s progress.
He's humming some unidentifiable song as he cooks. I can see empty cartons of milk , Macaroni and cheese, fried eggs, pasta, grilled cheese, regular sandwiches piled high with cheese. Lettuce, tomatoes, pickles and more.
He even started to stack the nonperishable food on the counter so there are plenty of soup cans and bags of rice that I can see.
I grab an old notebook and a pen and start to discuss what are next move needs to be to survive in this violent hellhole of a world.