Prologue: 7 weeks after the outbreak

Gun fire and screams blared in the distance as I crept through the street, weaving between abandoned cars. They seemed to be already looted and I wasn't going to risk drawing attention. I was in the outskirts of the city. Real quiet-like, but I still did not want to take any chances. Even out here it was dangerous. I didn't normally like getting out, but I was running low on supplies and I needed to restock. Home was pretty far from here and that's how I liked to keep it. Less chance of being followed back and most buildings in my area were left unscavanged. This was for two reasons. One being in case of emergencies, I could scavenge them and the second one being for cover. If someone wandered into my neighborhood and saw a bunch of looted houses and shops, they might go looking for nearby survivors. This is something I took note of with the more violent scavvers. Not all survivors are just trying to get by. Some are seemingly enjoying this hellish new world we're in. They aren't afraid to hurt or kill other survivors to get what they want. Now, I'm no saint. I've done some bad things in my life, but I'm not keen on mercilessly killing other scavvers. I may steal from a few at times, but I never killed any unless they presented a threat.

What I'm doing now used to be considered theft, but considering that all law and order has essentially disappeared there was nobody left to enforce it. Plus, this wasn't petty theft for thrills. I needed food and water to survive. As I crept along the streets trying to stay hidden and alert to any noise or signs of life, I spotted an SUV down the street. What stood out was that unlike all the other cars on this street, this one had no shattered windows or doors left ajar. It seemed to be fortified a bit. Metal shielding welded to the doors and windows. I pulled out my binoculars to get a better look. Inside the creases in the weldings in the windows, I could see boxes and bins of what I could only assume was food and water.

Had I seen this weeks ago, I would have just walked right up to it and taken what I could. Now I know better and I got that knowledge from experience. I had fallen for the very same thing a week or so into the outbreak. I saw a shopping cat full of food in the grocery store parking lot and ran right up to it. What I didn't see was the woman lying underneath the car right next to it with a pocket knife. Fortunately for me, she was rather new to her newfound profession and only gave my leg a good deep cut. Thankfully I was wearing a baggy pair of jeans so she missed her stab. It still hurt like hell though.

This SUV was just like that shopping cart. Seemingly packed full of supplies and right out in the open. Far too good to be true, but I needed food and it was getting dark. I gripped my leg which was mostly healed and peeked underneatht he car I was behind. I needed to find whoever laid this trap and deal with them before I took a look inside. I carefully poked my head above the car and looked around to see if there was any trace of movement. I saw nothing, but there was no way I'd risk just going up to it. It was way too dangerous, but at this point my stomach was starting to growl and I was still seeing nothing. I had been just sitting here in the open for about twenty minutes. I needed to decide what I was going to do, but as I was debating it in my head, I caught movement in the coner of my eye. I slunk down real low and peered over the car with my binoculars.

I saw a man slinking over to the SUV. He seemed a bit off, almost as if he was high. I was about to find out what this trap was. When he got to the SUV, he just opened the driver side door and peeked in. He then pulled himself out and waved back in the direction he came from. Three other men, quietly rushed to the SUV. They started to pile in and I heard the engine turn on. Shortly after, some woman ran outside of the nearby house yelling at them to get out, but she was quickly silenced with a few gunshots and she ran back inside.

I grunted in anger because I sat there for twenty minutes trying to figure out what the trap was and these tweakers just ran up and took it. There was no trap. My over-cautiousness costed me my dinner. They turned the car around in my direction and started to drive. There was no way in Hell I was going to let this group of tweakers get away with my shit. While still staying crouched and hidden, I went to the side of the car I was hiding behind. As the SUV approached, I readied myself. I grunted and lunged at the side of it as it coasted by. The tweaker in the back seemed surprised by the loud thud on his door and probably also surprised by the man glaring at him through the window. He tried to pull his gun out and fire, but accidentally fired the gun at the tweaker in the passenger seat. I pulled out my USP and popped a round through the window slit into his eye. The driver started panicking and swerving as he screamed incoherently. I held onto the top of the SUV as I opened the door. I reached in and pulled the dead tweaker out and hid behind the door as the driver blindly fired shots through the window he had just punched out. Looking at the other backseat passenger I was about to fire at him, but I paused for a second because he didn't even seem to realize I was there. He seemed so stoned out of his mind that he probabl couldn't tell just what the Hell he was doing. I quickly pulled out my Kukri knife and drove it through the head rest of the driver seat and peirced the tweaker's neck. As he swerved uncontrollably, I dove out of the car and rolled out onto the pavement. Thankfully, he wasn't going too fast or that would have really fucking hurt. It turned out I had jumped out just at the right moment because a few seconds later and I would have been in that crash. I got up and walked over to the car. It rear ended a bus. Not much damage to the SUV itself and it looked like it'd still drive. I opened the driver side door and dragged out the tweaker corpse. The passenger-side tweaker's head was smashed against the window and blood trickled down the bullet wound in his shoulder. He didn't sruvive. I heard some upbeat humming and looked in the back. That damn tweaker was still stoned and seemed to be having a good time. He was really out of it. I walked around the car, opened his door, then pulled him out. He fell to the street and didn't even seem to notice the change in his surroundings as he hummed an offbeat tune. Down the street ahead of me I could hear howls.

"That's not good" I said and I checked my watch. 6:23. I stayed out too long. I should have gone home sooner.

I ran to the driver seat of the car, jumped in and tried to start the car. Thankfully, it started up. The bad news was that I was a little too late. A loud thud his the hood of the car. All I saw was bare feet that were starting to grow into some hairy mishapen monstrosity. I drew my USP and fired at the creature. It growled in pain as the bullets ripped through its human flesh while it transformed. The gun clicked empty as I ejected the magazine. I reached into my pocket and fed a fresh mag into the gun. It was my last one so I had to make it count. As I reloaded, the beast was now mostly transformed. It crouched down to look me in the eye through the window. Its brown human eyes shifted to an animal-like yellow as its nose and mouth formed into a snout. It bared its teeth at me and howled.

"Fucking werewolves" I said as I put the car into reverse and drove backwards.

The werewolf dug one of its claws into the hood to brace itself as it used the other to try to rip the steel mesh that was welded over the windshield. Raising my gun, I fired two rounds into the shoulder of the arm it was using to hold onto the hood. It growled in anger and slashed more furiously at the steal mesh. I quickly slammed the breaks as I shot a few more rounds at its shoulder. One shot missed, but the rest hit their mark. It loosed its grip and then I reveresed again. It fell off and scrambled to get back up. I saw one claw rise above the hood, followed by its head. Half of its body was above the hood and then I set the car into drive and floored it. The werewolf wimpered in fear as it started getting pulled underneath the SUV. It depserately held on for its life as I could hear its foot getting caught under the left tire. The creature looked me dead in the eyes and I could see its fear. Looking ahead, I saw the same bus the tweakers drove into. I sped up and slammed the front of the car into the same spot, crushing the wereolf and also slamming me into the airbag before blacking out.

I came to a few moments later and struggled to get out of the car. I was pinned by the air bag so I had to cut it with my knife. Why it didn't deploy with the tweakers is beyond me. I got out and looked at the front of the SUV. The windshield had been knocked out and there was a large metal shard aimed directly in front of the window. If the airbag hadn't deployed, I would have been launched out and impaled. The werewolf shuffled a bit and i raised my knife. It was alive, but barely so. I thought about killing it with my gun, but I was low on ammo and it would have been wasteful. I took my kukri and started edging my way to it. It was weak, but it tried to lash out at me before dropping its arm. I wasn't about to take any risk so I stepped down on the arm and hacked the hand off with my knife. It let out a long and loud howl. This wasn't good. I already made too much noise here and didn't want more attention. Lifting my blade, I quickly drove it through the beast's neck. It gurgled as it drown in its own blood. I wiped the blade on its fur and put it back in my sheath.

Getting back into the car, I heard runbling. I looked out the window and saw the street was beginning to crumble. I was in no condition to fight anymore and I was low on ammo so I needed to get out of there. Putting the SUV in reverse, I back out of there, turned around, and drove back in the direction of where I found the SUV. As I approached that house, I saw that girl on the front steps staring at me as I approached. I made eye contact and smiled as I drove off. I got to the other end of the street when I stopped hearing the angry yelling.

It was too late to try to get home now so I needed to get out of the city. I couldn't risk being followed home. As I weaved through the cars in my "new" SUV, I checked the glovebox for any CDs. The only CD I found was of Looney Tunes so I slid it in the player. Pulling out of the city, the stereo played "Hello! Mah Baby" as I coasted into the distance, looking into the sky as the dark vortexes poured all kinds of monstrous nightmares into our world.

Just another day in our new Hellish world.