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Neil slugged down the hardest thing he could find from behind the counter, wincing as he surveyed the torn-up bar room. Tables lay split in half, toppled on their side with drinks smashed all over the hardwood floor, amidst the mutilated corpses of their would-be imbibers.

He had nearly been among them. His only saving grace was needing to take a piss at the moment before the creature tore into the room. The back hall had been narrow, and the adjoining storeroom held a semi-automatic handgun--thankfully loaded. He didn't have a whole lot of experience with guns, and probably would have been dead if it hadn't been, since he'd not bothered to check for the presence of a magazine.

It'd been a split second decision. Paralyzed by the screams and feral animal noises, he'd nearly left himself undefended in the tiny little bathroom, when the inspiration to search for a weapon in the service area had hit. The creature had already scented and stalked him, and he had moments to turn and squeeze the trigger when it sunk its teeth into his arm--a beast the size of a man, and the shape of a coyote.

"Shit... it's burning..." he muttered, pressing his jacket down over the bruised bite. It hadn't been terribly deep--the shock of the gunshots to the creature's stomach saw its abstinence from outright mauling him... so why did it feel like such a bitter defeat?

Perhaps it was better if he recounted the events of the last year. It was 2015. His name was Neil Burbank. He was a survivor--maybe one of the few from the East Coast not to be annihilated when the meteors hit. He'd driven the country, seen the devastation of a bizarre radioactive blight, spreading across the land. Now he was hiding out like a rat in this little shit-hole of a ghost town, with maybe seven or eight people, just waiting to figure out whether tomorrow would come or not.

There were things out there. Bad things. Glowing, rotting bone-men. Zombies. Los Muertos, the locals called them. Revs, or Revenants, if you lived upstate in the East, where there were still some survivors trying to scrape a normal living. People who'd been too close to the interstellar light--the Contaminant.

And now this. It seemed the year had allowed for some new unpleasant surprises to develop. Beautiful. He only hoped it wasn't too late now that one of them had turned him into a chew toy.

His head swam--but this wasn't an ordinary buzz. He shivered, rubbed the sweat from his head. Was it shock, or Rev Fever? Tightness in his gut told him it was time for another trip to the men's room.

* * *

He held a big cleaver he'd procured from the kitchen, and wavered for a second unsteadily, raising it over his upper arm, just above the elbow where the bruised puncture wound had swollen shut, like a snakebite. He felt his world spin, his balance offset, as he braced against the sink, looking at it in the mirror.

Just let your arm drop. Just swing as hard as you can.

His breath drew shallow, his knife hand shaking over his right arm...

He dropped the blade with a clatter, and sunk his head in despair.

"I... can't." he moaned, feeling the pulsing of his veins, the beating of his heart. There was just no way. He'd bleed out. Even assuming he could cleanly cut the limb, there was no assurance that it was going to save him. He eyed the handgun he'd stuffed carelessly in his pocket--but that was no good either--he'd lived too long already through this nightmare to even begin to contemplate suicide.

All there was, was to wait, and hope. He'd had a friend once who'd been bitten--not by this sort of monstrosity, but by a Rev. It started innocently enough, a little tenderness, like being scalded under hot water... then a rash, then peeling skin... and oh god...

He wretched.

* * *

Finding himself a scenic view of the catastrophe, Neil distanced himself from the slaughter at the pub. Even now, the crater sat, glowing a gold-red, like a harvest moon, whose light cast eerie shadows over the half of the town the meteorite had not wiped out. It had to have been small for there to be anything left at all, and yet the impact site looked like a deep and yawning chasm that hung down straight in front of the apartment suite whose balcony he now stood upon. In the moonlight, amidst the glow, he could make out wiry, shambling figures, that ambled blindly about, wailing impotent, genderless moans of torment.

Revenants. He flicked an empty beer can down into the pit, and watched the figures respond to the movement, some limping, others sprinting wildly for the clanging object as it bounced off the rocks and hit bottom, rolling into the glowing hell only to be tackled and fought over. It turned into a maddening frenzy as several of the beasts began attacking one another, clawing for the thing to snuff out its 'life'. He didn't really understand it, but those things hated sudden movement. He wasn't sure if they were still sane enough to know the horror they were experiencing. Maybe it was just mindless hunger. Maybe they just wanted all life to suffer--suffer like them.

He looked at his hand. This was something new, he was sure. He wasn't going to die, he wasn't going to become one of them. That didn't scare him anymore. He just hoped he'd keep his sanity.

...The thick, black claws that had split through his fingernails felt alien as they grew from his tender nail-beds. All across his arm, ginger fur had begun to spread, and scaly black hairs netted together into a smooth mat, across his swollen palm and fingertips.

A gunshot rang in the distance, and he spied two figures on a distant eave. One fell, and rolled into the pit, and the other turned, and climbed into a window.

He battled with himself over whether to investigate or stay alone, and ultimately decided that human company would help him retain a semblance of humanity. He shot off for the hall, and down the stairs, clenching his pistol in his still-human hand.

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