Chapters Author's Note
Sorry about the delay. Life hit my prereaders and left me in limbo. I probably won't have anything close to Scribe's update schedule, but I do mean to work on this. I made a promise to myself that I'd work on this every day, even if it's 30 minutes between work and my car trying to die and whatever else is trying to hit.
Again, this is for me to improve, so if you have something constructive to add, toss it at me.
2: Diamonds and Rust
I stared at my clock with a glare reserved for ‘too early in the morning.’ Not only did I have to be stuck like this and without my family, but apparently I had to get up at 5 in the morning. Not that I didn’t feel rested. I’d went to bed so early the night before that I’d gotten the sleep I had needed, but it was still rare I had to get up this early. I stumbled out of bed, quite literally as I toppled forwards when trying to get off of it, ending up front first on the floor.
Someone had to take care of the dogs, though. This is usually when someone else let the dogs out and fed them in the morning. I started with going through the necessary cycles of the morning before checking the bedrooms one more time in some hope that everything was fine now, only to be met with the near-crippling fact that these people who were around me, who were so important to me in my life, were nowhere to be found.
They were gone now and it was hard to come to terms with. More so than even the idea that a large swath of humanity was gone. I wandered their rooms for a moment, looking at the things that reminded me of them. It was once said that one is not truly gone from this world until your name is uttered for the last time. I would try my best to make sure that some memories of them lived on. Perhaps if we ever got any sort of communications back up again after all this was over, we could add a few GNUs for lost loved ones.
My dad had kept a sketch journal. It would have to come. My project taking care of our beehives was something I did with my mother, we had a journal that we kept that covered all we did with them. A little humidor, something of my brothers, he enjoyed the occasional cigar. They would have to come with me. My journal, too, I guess. Hadn’t written in that since I was half my current age, though. Maybe it would be useful now. If nothing else, I could go through the things I had once written about them.
Heading back to my room, I realized I hadn’t had any coffee in almost two days. I gave my hooves a hateful glare before propping myself up onto the shelf where the coffee maker was. At least it was a Keurig. I preferred the pods but had I known this would happen, this thing would have been top of the list. It was easy enough to work even without hands. The hardest part was removing the old k-cup with my mouth (Blech!) and putting in a new one.
Ok. No. Scratch that. The hard part was somehow getting the cup to the kitchen without spilling it. I openly laughed at this. Something I had taken for granted before now was a difficult task. I sufficed with using a box cutter from work in my mouth to hook the handle and one hoof to steady it, hobbling my way back to the kitchen.
Granted, at this point I started to realize how flexible all my bits were during this process. More so than my dogs at least and more so than I thought a horse should be. The weren’t exactly hands, but even the hooves could sort of clinch in and twist far more than expected. We were going to have to design cups for this because like heck I was going to give up coffee.
Once settled in the kitchen, I had to dig out the step ladder to get my hot cocoa down. Don’t judge, I like my cheap-aaaaaa… Cheap-butt, half-butted mochas. And I only dropped a few boxes on my head getting it out, somehow all targeted for the exact center of it. I climbed back down, grumbling words of revenge on those particular packages.
Coffee, Hot Cocoa, and Milk. Drinking it wasn’t easy until I fished a straw out of the cupboard. I just sat there and drank it because there was no way I was getting it elsewhere in the house like this. Fished out some fruit from the fridge, too. Eat all the perishables. Noticed that hard-boiled eggs didn’t bother me like meat did. Not questioning it. Just gonna go with it. If I think too hard on it I’m sure I’ll go crazy before Wolf ever gets here.
I set myself to task after having some brew and breakfast. The computer in the living room was always up. I still had a connection to the internet for now, but that didn’t really matter to me except to make copies of things I still wanted. Download Wikipedia? That was such a strong survival trope I was sure half the survivors out there already did exactly that. Honestly, I would probably waste so much time looking up how to download entire sites and databases I’d never get anything done.
The primary reason I had gotten on was to pull up our camping supply list. An Excel document with a large checklist of all the things we brought with us when camping. I would want much of these items. Typing would be a pain in the butt, though. Sort of. I was already hunt-and-pecking with an item with my mouth. I just needed a way to extend that to my hooves. Sweatbands and pens worked decently enough, filling out additional items on the list.
Some of it seemed a little unrealistic to me, but I wanted my nice things. The beehives were coming with, to start. They were an easy and simple supply of sugar that has been used far longer than sugarcane or the like. Kept well over time. I would just have to somehow figure out how to work through their boxes without hands. All the other supplies I had already been organizing, the various craft gear I had been gathering. We would have to make things ourselves now. ...We were going to need to get a Lathe at some point (Fun Fact! Lathes are one of the few tools we use that can make copies of itself).
I didn’t have one here, so I left it off the list, printed up when finished. Tossed it on a clipboard and began planning how to go through it. Starting with dumping out plastic containers of items no one would need anymore. My family was bad at packing things anyway. For each, I scrawled the contents (badly) in permanent marker. Bee stuff, beer stuff, crafting supplies, pots and pans, camping supplies. A pile of cleanly organized and marked boxes started to form at the front of the garage.
Only 5 boxes in and the dogs started going ballistic, barking up a storm like I hadn’t heard in a day. I would have just discounted it as the usual ‘dogs bark at moving leaves’ but my hearing had improved with these new ears. I could hear what they hear now between their breaths (sort of). It was the sound of a running engine, wheels on pavement, and stereo system blaring.
Putting my checklist down, I headed out to the front of the house in time to catch a car turning down the street. An older red Pickup truck, 90s Ford by the headlights (and the Ford symbol). In some ways, it reminded me of my first car because you couldn’t separate the rust from the paint.
I sat down on my haunches while I waited for it to pull up. He had his head hanging out, yelling at other people’s dogs as he came down the street. Hearing my ‘callsign’ was reassuring too. Meant that was assuredly Wolf. Much earlier than I had expected, but I was not going to complain about that. Less time on my own in that case.
I made a good attempt to dart down the hill to meet up with him like those few moments would matter. It was only a good attempt because I had actually managed to get a few dozen feet at a gait before crossing my hooves and sliding down the grass front-first like I’d come straight out of a classic cartoon, tail drooped over my face from my undignified position. Good, that meant he couldn’t see how embarrassed I was.
I righted myself as he got out. “Not exactly how we planned on meeting up.” More like ‘not how I planned it.’ “Hi, I am Qesun. I’m a horse right now. Please tell me you are actually Wolf and not just here to eat me.” Despite all of these things being obvious, I had to state them anyway. Or at least they seemed obvious to me. Right place, direct route and all that.
Upon getting out of the truck, he dropped to all fours. He was actually shorter than a human, but that didn’t matter. Those arms were ham shanks in thickness and a backhand from those would probably feel like getting hit by a cinderblock. One of the big, meaty hands was being used to cover up just as large of a yawn.
His blue coat was not something I had been expecting. Then again, considering my own coat at this point I wasn’t really surprised. At least I was not the only one stuck with a ridiculous fur color. My own mind mused a moment while trying to determine if his new body was relatable to any known earth species. Maybe some sort of hound with that nose, but I couldn’t really say which one. Wasn’t something I had a lot of knowledge on, anyway.
“Not unless you’re into that.” He tried to smirk or smile but only got another large yawn forcing its way out.. “But yes, Wolf, at your service." He flourished his arms and bowed, netting a more relaxed smile from me. I was just glad to have someone around, a friend. Someone to help lift some of this burden it felt like was on me. "Gods I’m beat, I can’t believe how much MORE tiring driving is without everyone else on the road.”
I gestured up the incline to the house before heading up towards it, walking up more carefully than I had tried coming down. “No idiots on the road to force you to pay attention. I actually figured you were leaving in the morning. Not last night. I wasn’t expecting you until later.” Not like it would have made a difference.
“I got tired of just waiting for everything to fail, so I just took off. Night driving fueled by jerky and dew. Although-” He interrupted himself with another large yawn. Dear gog those jowls were huge. He was a friend and I still couldn’t help but imagine what he could do to me with that bear trap for a set of teeth. “I may need to requisition your… sitting… thing.” A moment of silence followed, looking like he was gathering his bearings again after having tried falling asleep right there. “For unconscious time.”
The dogs had not stopped barking the whole time. I had just been ignoring them because they were inside. I started showing him inside. “I can help with that,” I said before clamping my own teeth on the door knob (I need to find a better way). “It’s right ove-” I could hardly hear myself over the dogs, let alone him hearing me. “Oh for the Love of Gog! Shut Up the lot of yo-”
RROAOW!
The barks of my dogs were one thing. His was a completely different thing like it had been fired like a shot from a megaphone. My head spun for a moment while it recovered how it hit my ears. It got everyone to shut up. For a moment, the intense urge to just bolt filled my thoughts. ‘Go! Leave!’ I managed to stay put with some effort.. “Er… That was… Um… Awful easy,” I forced out.
“Heee, dogs love me.” He dropped his bag of stuff on the floor of the entry as I lead him back towards the living room.
I wasn’t so sure about love yet so much as ‘don’t mess with the bigger dog.’
“Yea, here, couches,” I stated, waving a hoof at the large ‘L’ shaped couch separating the living room from the rest of the house. “Sure you don’t want a bed? At this point, there are two spares open.”
Let's be practical. As much as those ‘belonged’ to my family, they weren’t using them right now.
"Nah, couch is the right prescription for now." A shadow formed over my head, coming down on me before I could react or fathom what it even was. He patted my head. He had just pat my ffffff... "Thanks."
I glowered at him for that. “Somehow I feel as if this should be in reverse order.” I’m not the dog here, after all!
The line may well have been lost to the air. Crashing on the couch was probably the most literal it ever was going to be, one of his arms flopping over onto the floor.
“...Rest well.”
Work came to the forefront of my mind again with that handled.
Once you get into a routine, you tend to think less about how you are going to do things and just do them. I kind of wished I had paid more attention as the plastic storage crates formed a nice organized pile at the front of the garage. Heck, even my writing wasn’t as atrocious when I didn’t think about it. Kerosene, Lamps, Tools, batteries. I almost wished that I could take the stove, washer, and water heater. That was just impractical, though.
After dealing with all the important things, I gathered things that weren’t as important. My Portable hard drive and laptop, for one. With my studies, I had gathered quite a supply of data, all of it geographically informative. Topographical data, FEMA Flood maps (the newest ones), hydrological data (in a program specifically covering it) and so on. If I really had to help plan for the survival of People in whatever physical format they ended up in, I would want to figure out the best ways and places to put them. Maybe my knowledge could be put to use yet.
I wanted to take my desktop, too, but that was just silly. What was I going to do, play games on it? The laptop had all the programs I needed, all the data. It had also had Civilization installed. I bet I could manage that. Didn’t require precision.
Disks came next. Yes, I already had those programs installed, but if something happened… I didn’t want to think about something happening like that. I started clearing data from the drives in my desktop instead, just to be sure I would have a backup of what data I did have and to start grabbing what other data I could.
An idea struck me.
I immediately went to the USGS (United States Geological Survey) site and looked up Landsat image data. Something had happened in the last day to this world. I didn’t have many hopes on finding out what or why. But if we did want to look into it later, I would want that data. If nothing else, I could use it for other information later. As many images as I could for the last few days.
Land use data was next, the sort that Google and other services used to help you find various services. Parcel data for as many places I could. Just anything related to what I knew.
The day had ticked by while I had struggled with my computer and packed all this away. It was getting late, so I decided to work on dinner. It took a moment for me to figure out how to best work food in this state. It started with a step ladder, one of the taller ones that have the loop/handle going over the top. It gave me something to lean my body against so I could focus more on cooking and less on not falling over. As stood, I think I was just going to wear hair scrunchies all the time now, they were too useful for strapping things to myself. Maybe find myself some wristbands like you might see joggers use.
With only a matter of time before we lost utilities, it was time to use the eggs. Best not to give them time to go off. Ignoring the fact that I had a refrigerator in the camper, anyway. I knew eventually Wolf would wake up, so using a fork in my mouth, I managed to shimmy some bacon into a pan as well. I just had to avoid breathing that greasy meat smell. Or try to pretend it wasn’t there though it didn’t seem to invoke my revulsion near as much just smelling it.
We might have to try something fun tonight. Something to ease the stress of ‘everything is fffffuu-- messed up.’
That thought was interrupted when what sounded like a vacuum in reverse started bursting from Wolf in the living room. It wasn’t quite like waking a slumbering giant because he was only ‘giant’ relative to me. I kept focused on my cooking because I was having enough issues just holding the spatula.
“Izzat, is that bacon?” were the first words muttered from my companion in hours.
“Yep.” Short and simple, meant I didn’t have to leave food unattended as long. Even if I did want to make a remark about having captured and cooked Miz Izzet while he slumbered.
The dog-ape that was now my friend rose from the couch slowly, eyes focused on the kitchen. They weren’t locked on me, but they unnerved me for a moment. It abated as I took an interest in them, milky green rather than white for the cornea. That or the iris on whatever he became was just huge. That left a slit for a pupil as the only other feature. His hunched build really did favor the upper half of his body when it came to muscle mass.
“Sleep over, food time.” He began stretching himself out, a number of little bone-pops emanating from him. The one pop from his shoulder nearly had me reaching for mine. “EVERYTHING smells more vibrant now. That bacon is like dancing pops of pure joy.” Sniffing at the air again, he gave me a quizzical stare.
“Good, it’s all yours,” I stated flatly. “I couldn’t even stand the stuff when I was normal. Now I can’t seem to stomach any meats.” It’s true. I’m sorry, folks. I was one of those horrible people in the world before now that didn’t like bacon.
“I mourn your meat-based loss.” He studied me over for a moment. Or probably more accurately, he was probably studying my set up that was letting me get away with this as much as I was. “...d’you, ahh, want me to help with that?” he finally asked.
“Ah Aff fa eerm ha fa ho fhish..." I stopped that thought for a sec as I realized I was trying to talk around my spatula. Ptuey! It clattered into the pan, perhaps helping me to voice my irritation with having to work everything with my mouth right now (though I was beginning to notice how oddly adept it was at it). “I’m learning,” came my slightly more annoyed response.
He backed away, holding up his paws. I knew he meant well, but I wasn’t about to get babied or whatever just because I didn’t have hands anymore. I’m a big horse, I can take care of myself!
Even after sitting down at the table, he still watched me cook. For a minute, the only noises were the birds chirping in the back yard and me clanking away at the stove.
“This is so surreal,” he finally added.
"I wish it was.” I stared at the hooves in front of me, the utensils that had been rigged to them. I could go on about missing my hands more, but I’ll just let people assume that fact from here on out. “...but after sleeping on it, we seemed to have left the 'sur' prefix back in yesterday and we've just been left with what is real." That was the part that I would have to deal with, the reality of it.
He flopped back onto the chair he was in, one arm hanging over the back and the other holding one of his massive palms to his face. “Ugh, this is going to suck..." I wondered idly for a moment if he could lay in all the positions my own dogs did, twisted in ways that made pretzels look like amateurs.
"Talk to the hand. Oh, right, none to talk to.” I started moving the food to the plates. Eggs and hashbrowns for both, and then bacon piled onto his. I then proceeded to stare at the plates. I had used paper plates, which in retrospect was a poor decision. How was I supposed to move these to the table? “Um, speaking of which... You want to, uh, move these to the table for me. As much learning as I would like to do, I just don't see a trick for these yet."
“Oh, yeah, sure.” He dropped himself out of his chair and joined me in the kitchen. Before he even grabbed the plates, one of the pieces of bacon on his plate immediately found its way to his mouth. Only once it had been placed there did his hands scoop up a plate each, the plates being dwarfed by the hands holding them.
Normally there wouldn’t even be room on the table to eat. It’s normally covered in a half-dozen family projects. But those got put up because they were supplies we might want in the long run to preserve food and make things a little less bland. I didn’t head to the table immediately myself, instead heading to the living room and grabbing the two hair scrunchies again. After sitting down in the chair in a remarkably upright matter, I shifted them both onto my right foreleg and shoved the handle of a fork under them.
Lack of hands just means tool using species just have to be creative. The table was silent short of the clatter of silverware and the creaking of Wolf’s chair as he shook his legs in the chair. Uncomfortable? Nervous? Everything was, in its own way, stressful at the moment, I couldn’t blame him if that was the case.
He finally broke the silence. “I'm ... not really feeling like preparing tonight, you know?"
I gave that a moment’s contemplation before speaking. "To be fair, that's what I've been doing all day. We might as well enjoy what is left of civilization before it begins shutting down around us."
"Hah, what's left of it before we all become road warriors..."
He stopped chewing mid-thought, giving the bite he had been working on a quick swallow while the idea in his head finished churning. “Wait…”
I’d realized what the thought was before he finished it. Post-Apocalyptic? Road Warriors? “...Have you seen Mad Max yet?”
He gave a big, toothy grin in response. I’d have to remind him later not to grin like that if we found others so not to scare them off.
“We have an Imax Theater here. I could show you our one and only tourist attraction." I held my hooves up in the air and fanned them out above me as if I was drawing a rainbow in the air above me, tossing the most exaggerated look of wonder onto my face as I could manage. "The US Space and Rocket Center." I even imagined that as a title card hovering before the imaginary rainbow.
"Then tonight we ride, shiny and chrome!” he bellowed out, a wide smile plastered onto his face as he looked down at me. His eyes were wide with a certain exaggerated insanity. “And we won’t even need to walk.”
I raised an eyebrow at him as I smirked myself. Or I think I did. Goodness knows how it looked on my face. “How are you at operating a projector with reels as large as some small cars?”
One giant paw enfolded another and popped like a wine bottle uncorking. “I’m sure I can figure it out.”
It was a short ride. With no one else on the road, what would have been a 20-minute drive ended up being half that. It wasn’t like we had to observe traffic laws. I had the great idea of telling him to park on the far end of the parking lot so we could start by Pluto. In retrospect, that was a mistake on my part as that meant I got to ‘practice’ more walking. It was something more akin to ‘stumbling up to the door.’
It was heart-rending going up to the dark building. It was still and quiet, the sounds of birds and wind replacing the noises that would have once risen from the nearby. We would probably be some of the last folks to see it while it was still running. To do so required breaking in. It didn’t bother me, though. This would all be overgrown and falling apart in 20 years anyway. There was no point in putting in thought towards conservation as there would be no one to conserve it.
The lobby was a glass building mostly, various displays of Legos and Erectors around built into models. The gift shop stuff sat on shelves in two of the three corners and then into the next building down. We ended up taking two lefts instead, which lead down the hall to the lobby for the Imax. While he managed with the projector (mostly reading the manual), I dealt with getting the popcorn machine loaded and going.
This involved balancing the bucket of unpopped kernels on my head. This took a few tries, one of which resulted on me somehow managing to dump it over my head. The fact that the hardest part was loading it was frustrating to me. And then I started collecting snacks. Malted milk balls, Reese's pieces, the whole nine yards. The biggest sizes of Coke, too. Not like we had to pay anyone.
Wolf whistled from the projector room, looking out through the window for it into the viewing room. A screen nearly 70 feet tall. I think the best he had seen before this was half that. This was a monster.
I looked like even more of a clown trying to get all of that up the stairs in the room then I had just tried to get in. It felt like I was teetering a line between tragedy, comedy gold, and sticking it to reality.
I made it, thankfully. All Wolf had from me that time was my disappointment. He didn’t think he could eat chocolates again. To be fair, it hadn’t even occurred to me that could be a problem for myself. He’d been surprised when I ate it with little regards for my changed anatomy. Perhaps I should be more careful with my intake. Maybe try something different. If my diet had changed, maybe I could eat more things? Like Grass?
Wouldn’t kill me to try, I suppose.
What happened after was pretty simple: we just enjoyed ourselves. Took in one last gulp of the civilization we knew before it faded away. Perhaps in the most ironic way we could, by watching our depiction of a world where it was already gone.
There wasn’t much more to remember than that. I fell asleep in the car on the way back, the weight of night pulling me down again. The abyss wherein dreams lay.
We covered dreams and their wild nature before. How they were the wildest screams of your subconscious, wild and sometimes ‘unimaginable.’ They still come from your mind, though. They are subject to our thoughts and feelings, whether they are hopes or fears.
For a moment, I was back in my own life, my own body. There was nothing in specific, just something. A thing that I was working on with my hands. Could have been electronics, or sewing, or one of a dozen things. Even my once intended career, data points flying by. But it didn’t matter. I knew two things now; what fingers felt like and what they didn’t. My brain just had to fill in the gaps for me, determining what method was best.
My brain reached for the feeling of hot wax, sending it through my mental digits, a hot almost stinging sensation with the almost latex feel that wax holds as it hardens, moving down as they faded from my palms, leaving me with vaguely stump like appendages. What’s worse is I almost felt like I was watched for a moment, my horror and fears out for all to see.
I awoke with a startled gasp that morning, finding myself in bed with no memory to how I got there. I sat up for a minute, bringing the world around me into focus and gathering my bearings. The dream was fresh enough that I could still remember it. I brought my hooves up in front of me, flexing them as best they could, trying to move limbs that weren’t there.
I wasn’t sure what was worse for me. The idea that those were lost to me or that I couldn’t even imagine the digits there. There was no ‘phantom limbs’ effect. I couldn’t even get that, the feeling of fake fingers as portrayed by my mind. Those connections in my brain must no longer exist. It was one of my worst fears come true, only behind losing my sight. I sat there for some time, for the first time really contemplating what life really was going to be like without something I had relied on for more than two decades.
A wet tongue on my face dragged me from my stupor, my eyes staring numbly at Mischief as he tried to get my attention. His tail was lax, ears laid back on his head. I blinked at him before it dawned on me that he was worried about me. What else could I do but seek the nearest comfort and family I had? I just took him up into my forelegs and just sat there hugging him for a while.
The release of tears may or may not have been part of the process. I refuse to confirm anything on that regard. What mattered is much of the stress of being like this and my family disappearing had eased.
Getting out of bed was easier than it had been the past two days. I almost considered it an achievement that I hadn’t managed to floor myself for the third time in a row. So proud was I of that achievement I never looked down as I moved to leave my room. Wolf had laid there on the floor, a lump of blue on a blue carpet.
His response was quick and loud, a yowl coming out of him as my body fell over him. My world was first filled with the familiar sensation of falling. But before I could quite make it to the ground, I felt his massive paw grab my leg and that sensation was replaced by sudden upwards acceleration. Hanging there upside down, I waited for a moment while his eyes blinked and focused on the world around him. Which was all fine, seeing as my head was still getting a handle on its current orientation.
"Morning..." he finally said after a moment.
"Yes, I can tell by the fact that I just about landed face first on the floor again." Sort of, kind of, close enough at least. My hooves crossed over themselves like I was crossing arms, and my eyes narrowed a bit on him.
Comprehension of the world around him looked like it struck hard. "Oh! Whoops." He took some care to try and set me down upright, which I appreciated a lot. "Sorry, your floor looked so ... Inviting" he stated with a big stretch. "And good for the back"
I winced at one of the pops his bones made as he stretched himself before turning towards my door and heading back through the house. “I'll stick with the comfort of cushions. Come on, everyone out! Time to go potty." The house erupted in a flurry of barks again, 4 blurs blasting past me towards the back door. As I headed there myself, Wolf instead directed himself towards the kitchen.
It had almost become a morning ritual for me, finding it easier to slot myself into the routine than I had before. Where before I had a sleep schedule that was best described as chaotic and I only took care of the morning needs of the pets on the light of a blue moon, suddenly I was moving through things like this had always been.
Admittedly, this didn’t help keep my mind off of things. Even with having to think so much about all my movements for the last few days, there still seemed a capacity in there for panic finally. Now with the initial crisis over and a certain ‘normality’ returning to the air along with having someone else around, I was free to panic, wail, and cry freely. Each of my movements was as smooth as a three-day old adult could manage, but they held that sluggish stiffness of distraction and exhaustion, like a zombie shambling about in a mockery of life.
Dogs, then the cats. Those were easy. You could just sorta ‘hug’ the bags and tip them into bowls We had a bird, too. Hades, I didn’t even think about the bird the day before! It had a wing missing! I couldn’t take care of it for that long! Not with things like this. It would also be a pain in the butt to feed like this. I didn’t really want to use my mouth on anything in that cage. I sufficed with clamping my hooves onto the edge of the food tray and carefully wiggling it out through its gate. I just poured food into it. There was no using the little cup like this.
What about my poor, half-broken turtle? We’d found him after a local flood years. He’d done much better since, but would he do well in the wild now? The bag with his food was ziplocked. I contemplated that for a couple minutes before finally deciding he was eating fresh today. It wasn’t like anyone else was going to be eating all this food.
The fish outside needed to be fed, too. Probably the only thing I’d finally considered putting my mouth on, tipping the plastic container over a little over the pond they were in. At this point, I could also catch the new smell that had entered the air. I took a few more sniffs at the air as a concept attached itself to the smell: Pancakes. At least I had something to look forwards to that wasn’t the idea of using the PETA approach to dealing with abandoned pets.
Heading back inside, I finally spoke up. If I kept focusing on what was ahead like I had before, kept giving myself time, I wouldn’t have time to feel sad or panic. "I've been gathering our camping supplies from around the house. We can use the truck and camper out front. But that's basic stuff. It's not food and it will only last for so long. We need to figure out what we need in the long run."
“Food is going to be key, that’s for sure… Got any sporting stores around? That dehydrated hiking food keeps a while”
I let a moment pass while I pondered that. “...Gander Mountain. It’s up University Drive near my school.” Chewing on that thought more, I made an addendum after another moment. “...More hunting, camping sort of stuff, though. Dicks and places like that are around though to be frank, my store has those on the shelf.”
The spatula in his hand, which could probably be used by pinching it with two fingers, worked at the pan and its food. “That'd be my target for food.... And jerky." He licked his chops at the thought of that. I was fairly sure he did it absent-mindedly. "Why is that so GOOD all of a sudden?"
“Anyway!” came poignantly, like he brought down a verbal blade down on that line of thought. “That's shelter and food, but after last night's entertainment I can't shake the need for a little self-defense."
I couldn’t argue with that. I doubted anyone would be in a condition to do anything, but people weren’t the only things that could be a threat. How long before everything we knew went wild around us? It wouldn’t be hard, though. It was north Alabama. Gun shops were everywhere though I couldn’t help one thought. Why just get any old gun when you could Military grade gear? “How do you feel about raiding a military armory?"
"There's a phrase I never thought I'd hear played straight." The humor in his voice was lost to me.
"Not like there is anyone there to lay claim to it. Or if there is, I want to see them try aiming that with their hooves.” I let myself stop do double check that thought for discrepancies. “...Discounting they end up like you." Such as that one. Important detail.
“Still need a bigger trigger guard.” His eyes gazed down into his paws as he said that.
“We’ll just cut it off.”
"Forgo safety for usability, aren't we just the survivor stereotype."
“We are the stereotype because we are in that situation. I'm bitter about it, but it's done. All we can do now is act." The words tasted about as bitter as they sounded.
Wolf frowned at his pancakes as he moved them off the pan, perhaps hoping I didn’t notice. It disappeared as he finished his stacks. “Order up!” was bellowed out, proceeding him as he delivered it to the table in a similar presentation. Nothing flashy, just big and present. A smile came over me for a moment before I let the pets back in. Thought the window, out into the yard, I looked out at the two beehives out there, dozens of them flying in and out. “I’m going to have to pack up my hives to bring with us.”
He might as well already been out there with them with the look on his face at the thought of that. “... Shit, of course you would take the bees." His paw smacked into his face and slowly dragged down it. "And Why wouldn't you? It's a good idea. God, I hope I'm not allergic anymore."
I loaded up on pancakes. Hunger, no matter how depressed or helpless I felt, was a pretty basic need to fill. "One of the first forms of sweets used by man. Transporting is the easy part, though. ...Or at least a sweetener that lasts a while when it reaches the proper water content.” Was it actually one of the first? Where did I get that fact from? I gave pause and corrected myself. "Was that one of the... You know what? Doesn't matter. It will be one of our first at this rate."
"Sounds like we've got a day of gathering ahead of us, best get those carbs in ya," he stated before shoveling another chunk of pancake in his mouth. It didn’t last long, adding to what he was saying after it was devoured. "And hey," he let out a low breath of air, "I haven't said it explicitly, but I'm glad to be here. With you, I mean."
Smiles were hard to find in the current happiness economy. I was glad he could find some in me. If not for Mad Max the previous night, I think I would have slated myself as being in a depression. But even then this was different. That was mostly just fun. Something was different about this. It was the sense of togetherness. several seconds, maybe a minute, was spent simply enjoying that feeling of ‘together’ while we ate before I spoke up again. “This would have been much harder alone. Just the idea that I could get to you all meant so much."
That feeling of togetherness lightened the mood a bit as he returned the smile before we dove back into our plates. Sweeter than I was normally used to, almost marshmallowy in flavor, almost ‘burnt’ and ‘woody. As I tried to put my finger around what it was, Wolf had blurted it out. “By the divine that rum is good!"
Of course. My Zaya. That glorious hound had nicked my Rum. I didn’t complain, it turned out well.
Rather, I drifted us back towards reality. "Before we go anywhere I need to take the mutts on a r-u-n.” You had to spell it out or no one would be able to hear each other over their barking. The looks they gave me and the back door made me worry that it might not work any more real soon. “It'll give me another chance to practice and let them get themselves spent before we are gone all day. Maybe we can jack some more of that rum from the ABC while we are out."
The response I earned from that was a massive, energetic thumbs up followed by another massive bite.
I took my time with it, though. It wasn’t even a matter of not having hands. I just didn’t want to rush my meal. Meal time was one of two things for me: Family time or contemplation time. The family time portion was more or less spent already and instead I reserved myself to my thoughts for a bit, just wracking my head at all that laid before me. Not just thinking about the difficulties before me due to my current, er… deformities, but the frightful idea of actually going from merely dealing with myself to trying to deal with the needs of whoever survived.
The lack of food on my plate jolted me back into reality, blinking as I acknowledged the world around me once again. I craned my neck towards the back door for a moment before hopping out of the chair and heading for the door. “Do you want to come?”
"Me?" He looked like he hadn’t been expecting the invitation. "Well, I haven't done any real running since Track in college... Ah what the hell."
The mutts knew what was happening just from how I moved towards the door. As soon as my mouth pulled it open, something I didn’t think I’d ever get used to, they burst out at all speed and waited by the back gate. I made my way out at the best speed I could: walking.
As soon as they were away from us and waiting, I could talk again. “We both have to get used to these forms. There are only two possibilities: We are stuck like this or we’ll find a ‘fix’ and regain our original ones. Even in the case of the later, we don’t know how long it will take until we achieve that.” It was the analytical reality of the situation as far as I saw it.
"I won't lie, I've probably spent more time behind the wheel than on my feet so far.” It showed how he moved. He could still technically move on two legs, much like the hunchback of Notre Dame might. It was clear he was conscious of it too, as he tried working at it as we moved down the hill to the gate.
“Doesn’t matter.” A half-smile came to my lips. If I was going to be in this situation, I could make fun of it. “Even if I'd done the same, I'd still be on my feet twice as much."
“Oh, ha ha,” he responded flatly, before bopping me on the shoulder. “Funny.”
It wasn’t a hard or solid bop, but with my current sense of balance, there was a stumble to my step before I righted myself. “It also means I need twice as much practice,” came the inevitably more bitter side of my self-depreciating humor.
“Amazing how that works out, eh?”
"Sort of. It's worrying in some ways. Our brains were specifically wired for the bits and pieces we had. Or have, as it were. Now I have an additional limb and lack digits. I am at least vaguely functional, which suggests a certain amount of instinct, not too different from a foal standing shortly after birth. How sure am I that the person I am was not compromised by the process that rewired the rest of my brain?"
I moved to open the gate with my mouth, just as I had to two days ago. Whatever, it worked, complaining would do nothing for me. I’d find a way to make this work. I pushed open the door and let loose the dogs, the four of them bursting out the gate and tearing off into the woods again. I started walking along the path while I finished explaining myself. "I seem to act as I did, but could I tell if something was different?"
The dogs tore by us in our pause, though Chief and Billie slowed up and started sticking close to us. That was the norm for them. As much as they enjoyed running, they were quite fond of people and always did stick close.
"Herein lies madness," he stated, wafting his hand low through the air as if presenting something on a table before him. " What's the use in worrying about it? Either you are the same, or you're new. In the end, it's what you do now that matters." I noticed as I looked over how he had taken a moment to study his hands and arms as he continued speaking. "Because the way I see it, the fact that we're still cognizant AT ALL is so astronomically lucky that everything else is a wash."
"It's not that there is use in worrying about it, but that it is something that I came to pondering about this effect. Was it some sort of attack? Or maybe a horrible fffff--” inside me a little volcano bubbled in my head. It was how I visualized that frustration at not being able to use those words out of context. “Really!? ...I mean a mess up.” Considering my current status, I found it far more likely someone made a horrible mistake and we were unfortunately in that path. “I've got two book series that are coming with me that started like that, you know. There's a certain irony to that because they both involve a human town going to the past and messing history up."
The two ‘large’ dogs blasted past us again. This pass, I decided today would be another shot, attempting to pick up my pace again and mimicking their motions to a degree. It got me moving faster than a walk as long as one discounted all the times I stumbled, but it was better than my attempts two days ago. At least I was eating less pine needle this time.
"Look, I can't even begin to wrap my head around how this happened either. The best I have is that somehow our constituent parts all decided to exert their infinitesimally small probability to flip their state at the same time ... in an organized way... all over the world." He chewed on the thought as much as he chewed on his lips before adding onto that. “I’m just sure it can’t have been random…”
“If it were…” I began, raising my volume as a gap started to form, “What’s the odds of being lucky?”
“Enough that we should have bought the Powerball.”
I slowed up (not that I was going fast, per say) after a bit, stopping and turning about waiting for him a moment. “I think we already bought the farm with that and I don’t know how well you play fetch yet.”
“Nah, we’re too fleshy to be dead. Also, food’s still delicious.” After a moment of pause, he made an addition. “Any time you can wonder if you are dead.”
I started moving as he caught up again, again making some attempts to try something that resembled a run. It did a better job of getting me to run my mouth and complain, though. “You would think if this fuuuoooo- this fudging body has instinct enough to stand and move but not enough to move. It’s frustrating!” I declared, a little ‘growl’ to my voice though it was a rather pathetic growl.
“Maybe you’re just lacking the right motivation,” he stated. I’m sure he had a sly grin showing on his face when he said that, curling up into twirls on his faces as if he were the Grinch who stole Christmas while he let those words hang in the air.
I wasn’t quite paying attention, too busy focusing on my own efforts and making snarky comments that would come back to bite me. “Like what? You gonna chase me? You’re probably as uncoordinated as-”
I could feel it as much as I heard it, the sound hitting me as much as my ears and my body took over as the hairs along my neck and back all tried to reach for the sky. I was moving fast as I had wanted to, with no clue how. I didn’t have enough time to think on how either, as just about as soon as I was moving, I stopped with a sudden dull thud as I found a tree the hard way.
The ground was not as uncomfortable as I would have thought. “Is it night time already?” came from me almost whimsically, “Look! There's stars!” To this day, I can swear I actually saw the darn things.
Wolf was wincing as he came up over me and giving me a good glance over, probably to make sure I hadn’t done more damage to myself than the tree. I was a small equine now, one could only imagine how much easier it would be to hurt myself.
“...I think I’ll just stay a while and listen.” I said as my bearings finally started to straighten themselves in my head.”
“Sorry, I… didn’t actually think that would work.”
I finally felt like moving again. Probably not the smartest plan, I could have had a concussion or whatever else, but I felt fine at the time. I rolled over onto my belly, reaching up to my head with a hoof and rubbing it, feeling for blood and not finding any. “How did I not break something?”
His arm raised up as if he was presenting something. “You sure about that?”
Looking back to where he gestured, I found the tree half-uprooted, now leaning at about a fifty-degree angle. “Ok, correction, how am I not dead?”
“Evidently you’re made of tungsten under all that fluff.”
That didn’t make sense, though. I didn’t feel that heavy as I moved off the ground and back onto my hooves, not that I could really tell since that would have always been the case. I hoofed at the soil for a moment. before it struck me what probably happened. “...Naw. It's not anything like that. I still hurt, for one. Fact is, this is a wetlands. It's been raining lately. Look how soft this soil is. I bet you this tree was just teetering on the edge of tipping. There's another tree not far from here that fell of its own volition a while back. Just dumb luck."
His paw sunk right into the soil, an entire handful of it coming up with frightening ease. Even easier than I was expecting, to be fair, given what the area’s ‘soil’ was normally like. “...huh,” was all the response I got from him as he stared at the soil contemplatively, rolling it in his paws for a moment and testing it.
I began moving again now, a bit worse for wear, but not broken in any way thankfully. Still hurt, though. An entertaining thought came to my head as I thought on painkillers. “...Should I use the 12-year-old instructions for Tylenol when we get back? I don’t think my mass justifies adult dosage.”
He tipped his hand over, letting the dirt and soil dribble off in wet chunks. “What are you now? Like sixty pounds?”
“We have a scale at home if you want to experiment with that,” I said while I began moving back towards the house. “I would bet that being slightly larger than my dogs that I weigh in the 100-pound range, though.”
Even with the dirt long gone from his hand, he continued to stare at his arm for a minute or so before we moved on. I’d like to say it was silent, except the forest now was seeming alive more than it did before everyone was gone. Like it knew everyone was gone now. The ‘talk of the town’ for the creatures living in it. As we got closer, my focus shifted to calling the dogs back, letting Wolf go ahead of me, people and mutts piling into the house one at a time while I closed the gate behind me.
That night we had all somehow ended up on my bed. I’d just given in to how my new body wanted to work, curling up on top of it like the rest of them. I was finding it rather annoying how this body wanted to lay compared to how I wanted to lay. It left me caught someplace between ‘this is how I settled’ and ‘this is not how I sleep.’ I even got some pajama pants on since I was sharing this time.
I lay up near my pillow, Wolf was down at the foot of the bed. There was an intense comfort in having someone there in proximity, anyone, that I hadn’t felt during this event. I guess at the time I was still feeling more of the shock than I wanted to admit.
Not that we could completely calm ourselves immediately. We were still winding down from messing with the dogs, helping them spend the last of their energy from the evening. That left us with time to talk about the rest of the day’s events. Which in the end, wasn’t much.
We had ended up getting food and getting my head straight on ‘we don’t need to carry off half the store.’ With how I had been feeling earlier, we had decided to leave the base for the next day. A whole, abandoned military site once belonging to the now defunct government of the United States of America. All to ourselves. That would be interesting, right?
With how the next day played out, I would have been lucky with just interesting...
Author's Note
I apologize profusely for the delay (again <<;;)! It really wasn't what I wanted, but it happened. I'll do my best to not allow quite as large a delay strike me again. It will, however, be something of a slow going for me, though with both work and school going. Just not this slow.
1: Dream Whales and Pony Tails
Dreams are like whales that float through space and sing songs about why they must write fan fiction even as they long for the days in which they could finally spend time progressing toward their personal goal to create true bacon without harming innocent creatures. In this sense, dreams are weird. You never know what to expect from them, though I usually enjoyed them. They’ve given me so many fantastic ideas, and places to explore that are beyond the reach of our experience. The night before the world changed, I had one of the oddest dreams I had faced in a while. Perhaps even one of the most foreboding, considering what was going to come.
At first, I just imagined myself exploring a place. Empty, broken streets and crumbling buildings. I’ve seen dreams like this before, places where the old world has crumbled away to a new order. Shadowrun-like places where wild things happen. A wave of my hands would fuse buildings or erase them. I never noticed at first how the buildings began to fill the streets behind me. Not until they overshadowed me. A sense of dread enveloped my being, the nightmare coming alive around me as I began to run, the sounds of tread on concrete echoing on the encircling buildings.
Thump thump thump thump thump
Corner after corner I turned, trying to escape what felt like a wave of shadows behind me until I found that one inevitable turn that lead to a corner. Normally, this would be the point I would wake, but the crash never came. Just silence, waiting for what felt like minutes for something that never came. I felt the warmth fall on me instead. Inviting, like the sun on a pleasant spring day. The kind you might lay on the grass in and just enjoy for a while. I finally uncovered my head and looked around, an exit to this alley before me, the sun on the street.
Click clack clack click clack clip
Out on the street, I found a different sight. The buildings had all softened, a little Greco-roman hidden in their architecture. Beings transversed it, paying no mind to me. Colors were never an issue for me in dreams, they were always there for me, but now they were really vivid. I was aware of the chatter, the good-mornings and how-do-you-does of the residents going on with life. It took a minute for it to register for me, the fact that they were all traveling on all fours, and far more colorful than the buildings.
Horses, they looked like horses. The little ones, ponies, that they could sometimes train as guide animals for people allergic to dogs. Except living as we were. I was fascinated, had to explore, so I continued down the street with the crowds. It somehow escaped my grasp at the time that I was now as tall as them. It seemed almost like new york… Except everything had been horsified. Even the Statue of Liberty.
Up to this point, I had been aware of sounds, but with the selection of only a handful of them, I hadn’t really registered hearing them. The music I was hearing. Just set of Acapella singers down the way, singing about the morning. What caught me by surprise was when others started to join them out of the blue. These equines, these people either stopped what they were doing or somehow joined in while doing whatever. It was a musical number.
There was no running from it. I got pulled in. One pony just hooked my arm and I was dragged in. The urge to join was irresistible. It reminded me of Elementary school, in an odd way. All of us square dancing at a PTA conference so that the school could have something to impress our parents with. We only did it because we were told to. That’s what this felt like for me.
The whole routine pulled in everyone, like a musical number out of a Disney movie. All about the sunshine and the beauty of the morning and how wonderful a day it was and all that nonsense. And each movement, each twist, and step felt awkward. Not only did I feel uncomfortable with the song, but it felt physically uncomfortable to be me in the process of it all. It all felt wrong in trying to be horribly, perfectly right. As we progressed through our dance, I could hear it in the background. Scratching and whining filling more and more of the world around me, slowly sneaking its way into the song.
I gasped deeply as I woke with a start, my eyes bursting open, staring up at the ceiling as I gathered my senses around me. The scratching and whining still continued, though. It wasn’t the first time I had woken up to the dogs needing out. Someone had probably just forgotten to take care of them before they had left.
With a sigh slurred together with a moan, I reached out for my glasses on the nearby plastic box that I used for a bedside table. I somehow couldn’t manage to reach it, though. So I pushed myself over to try again. This time I managed to reach them, rolling off the bed as I found my reach still too short. The pressure I applied to the lid popped it off, dumping all its contents on top of me as soon as I hit the floor with a thud. This included my alarm clock, perfectly positioned to nail me right on the head.
The yelp of pain that came from my mouth almost sounded like me, but only if I spoke an octave higher. I pushed objects off of me and out of the way. Purple? I figured my shirt fell on me or something for a moment. It was when I reached up to try and grab the bed that I noticed my complete lack of fingers and the fact that, no, that wasn’t one of my shirts. That purple was on me.
Ok, so new plan. Rolling. I hardly cared for anything down here anymore. I just rolled onto my belly and gave myself an unsteady push up onto my new feet. All four of them. They had hooves, which was all the more reason for me to quickly scramble over my bed and head straight for the bathroom at best speed.
This, unfortunately, consisted of struggling to open the door with hooves before resorting to biting the handle (Ew, hand oils!) and stumbling into the bathroom. I had to pull myself up onto the sink counter to get a better look at myself, covered in that purple fur and no longer at all appearing human.
What do you look at first when you’ve become a small equine? Oddly for me, it was the mane. I’ve always had a habit of keeping my hair short. It’s hot and gets in the way of things (especially with hot, humid summers). Now it was long enough that some women might envy it and as blue as some flowers. It even smelled like them too, a light mix of lilacs and lavender. I could feel the weight it put on my neck from the volume. I reached up to it with one of my… hooves and ran it along the cascade. I’ve ridden horses before, I know how course their hair is. This was nothing in that ballpark, smooth and sleek, almost like a heavy silk. My fur was nearly just as soft.
My eyes were huge. Almost on the scale of a “Sonic the Hedgehog” character, enough that I was glad there was enough room back there for a brain cavity with all the real estate in my head they were taking. The irises were an equally stunning dark magenta hue.
I kept moving downward slowly, observing each piece in a detached manner like I was just watching some movie and analyzing each piece of it. My nose, or muzzle I guess, was short with softer features like it was daintier or something with a ‘cute’ little-dimpled nose. Sensitive, too… The lack of cleaning this bathroom had received was all the more obvious to me. The worst part was the coat. It was purple and svelte, but as much as I liked purple, I had made no plans to wear it for the rest of my remaining adult life.
At the very least, it seemed this had taken all my health issues along with my old body. Instead, It was something far better built. I could say I had a decent supply of muscles. Moving heavy boxes of food stuff in a store isn’t the most fulfilling work nor was it the best exercise, but it’s impossible not to form something. This was different. Almost athletic. It was like I’d become the designer model of the hottest new pet craze. Get your pet pastel hoofbeast today!
“What the ffffuuuu---” I stammered, teeth sticking to my lower lip. To be blunt, I cursed like a sailor. Often and a lot. Few places caused me to watch what was coming out of my mouth. I knew this word, what it meant, how to spell it. But right now, it was like it got caught in my throat. A lump in my throat that had to be swallowed before I could try again. “...the ffffuuuu… Fiddlesticks.” It was the best I could manage despite my effort.
Granted, that also meant I could talk. So that was a plus.
It slowly dawned on me that this all seemed awfully… Feminine. A frightening thought that maybe my species wasn’t the only thing that changed filled me with a certain dread. Ponderously, I looked down and shoved a hoof under the edge of the underwear I still sported from last night. I was relieved to at least find that I was still a dude. Whatever happened hadn’t taken everything.
I let myself down carefully from the sink as the world around me pierced through my tunnel vision. The dogs were still whining. The cat was meowing. Nothing else had changed, just me. Backing out of the restroom, I began towards the back door slowly. I glanced out the window as I passed by it, checking to see if anyone was home. Everyone’s cars were in the driveway and the street. I edged my way along, unnerved by both the fact that anyone could see me like this and that something felt off by that last observation.
After making my way to the back door and letting the dogs out (weathering my way through a swarm of yaps and barks as everyone burst out into the back yard), I edged over to my parent’s door. This was an odd problem by a mile, but they were usually understanding, especially my mother. I knocked. “Mom?”
The lack of answer, compounded by the deathly silence in the air filled my throat with a lump. Pushing open the door tentatively, I peered in only to find an empty bedroom. What about the bathroom? Nope. How about my brother? Nope, and his girlfriend wasn't here either. That one was a pain in the butt. They had a loft bed with a narrow ladder. I thought it sufficient that no one woke up to my yelling because there was no way in hades that I was climbing up that like this.
There was no one. Also, the underwear was getting annoying. So, trying to be a decent person in both regards, I did my best with my mouth to try and fit a pair of jeans. I managed to don a pair of khaki shorts. It felt ridiculous although I’m not sure if it was because of my efforts to put on pants as a horse or rather because I was a horse wearing pants. After finagling them around for a great deal longer than I liked, I finally decided to wear them backwards, somehow managing to chew the button in place over the tail. I’ll never laugh at my dogs again when they are trying to reach that one itch.
During the process, I found something even stranger about myself. There, on the sides of my butt, were pictures. Right there in the fur. I even felt them to make sure they weren’t some gag played by an invisible hand. Four caricatures of city blocks between streets, with an art compass and a ruler. Did that relate to my college studies? I didn’t really want to think about it now, or perhaps ever. Deciphering what an image on my butt meant wasn’t the top of my priorities.
It finally dawned on me how ridiculously early it was in the day as I went out. I usually woke up by 9 or 10 in the morning. I probably made it out the door by 8. As it stood, this was all too surreal for me to even consider the odds that someone would think that the purple horse was weird. I made my way down the light incline and went to our best (not nearest, he’s a butt) neighbor. No one answered. Next house, same response. I tried this for several houses.
At this point, the magnitude of just how real everything was finally sunk in. Dreams always seem to ‘forget’ details. They are consistently blurry affairs, and I’m sure I had one last night that I have hardly a memory of. This experience was as clear as day. While I figured my vision was good again just because this was all a dream (a concept quickly losing ground), I rarely had lucid ones. This was beyond lucid.
It was real.
I stumbled back down the street faster than I had walked it, though not by much. This was a new experience, walking on four limbs. I let the dogs back in and fed them while I contemplated my situation. If this was all real, then I was about to have a very real problem, and probably lots and lots of smaller ones. There were still a few other channels I could try. I had a phone, after all. While the dogs ate, I made my way back to my room and fished my phone out from the mess I made trying to get to my (now useless) glasses.
Granted, the new challenge was using it with hooves. I don’t know the specifics on touchscreen devices, but normally they don’t work with not-fingers. Or not normally. I had a pen from work that had one end dedicated to working on tablet and phone screens. I grabbed it and using my mouth managed to sort of manipulate the device. I tried texting people, I tried calling a few numbers. But after a dozen phones continuing to ring or going to their inboxes, I gave up in frustration.
I needed time to think. A way to sort my thoughts and figure out ‘what now?’ The dogs all looked anxious, like they knew something was wrong as well (how did they know who I was?). There were four of them. Mischief was mine. My mother had bought him for herself and he had attached to me for some reason. Then there was Billie. She was scared of just about everything. Both of them were Papillons, little yappy dogs with big ears. Alek was a big dumb, lovable golden retriever, a rescue. Finally, we had Brunnhilde, a german shorthair pointer whose hobbies consisted of running, more running and trying to be a lap dog despite not being near small enough.
So I figured I could take them for a run. Our property was backed up against a nature reserve, letting us take them out as we wished. If nothing else, maybe I could learn something from them. They also ran on four legs, after all.
As soon as I stepped out into the backyard, it seemed like the air was different. ...No, that’s not quite right. It felt like a weight, something that wasn’t physical, something not in the air. A sense that something had changed. It only grew stronger as I walked past our garden and to the back gate into the woods.
Most of the dogs took off to do their ‘thing’ when I opened the gate, but Mischief stayed with me as I took cautious steps out there. This was a good thing in two ways. It gave me someone to study and try to copy and it gave me something to focus on besides the powerful feeling of being watched by the woods around me. Were they judging me now? Trying to determine if I was fit or deserved to be here. It didn’t feel threatening, just overwhelming, like being at the head of the class on presentation day.
The dogs tore through those woods, blasting past occasionally as I sunk further into my thoughts, trying to make heads or tails of this and what I could do about it. The lack of sounds from the nearby road and especially the airport was unsettling. There was only the sounds of nature out here. Was everyone really gone, just like that? Including my family? My stomach clenched in fear, trying to do an impression of a singularity as it cemented in my head that this was real. Everyone can’t just vanish, right? I can’t be the last one left.
Either way… I guess I wasn’t finding out by panicking. I took some breaths as I tried to go through this again logically. The truth was I had only seen a small portion of my neighborhood. There were upwards of 7 billion people on this planet at one point and yet I was left behind. I only had an incredibly miniscule sampling of the world at large. I couldn’t possibly say with certainty that no one else survived. In fact, if these changes were widespread, they probably limited people’s ability to use their own devices. Perhaps some of those people couldn’t answer their phones? I hadn’t even exhausted all my options for communicating. The internet had a wider reach than anything else out there. I could try that next.
Only then, after trying to communicate with people and all means were exhausted, then maybe I could think about how to survive like this. I called out and whistled for the dogs as I headed back. They were more mindful than usual, coming back more quickly than normal. Then again, they’d realized things were off earlier. They were probably still spooked.
I went into my room and used a pen to hit the power button on my computer. Then capslock and pecking to enter my password. Reduced from typing words per second to a word a minute in no time flat. At least all my programs auto started. Being very careful with my mouse cupped underneath a hoof, I managed to finagle my way into the accessibility options and turn on some of those to at least try and make some of this easier, followed by turning down the sensitivity on my mouse.
Now I could actually somewhat manage to poke through my friends lists. I don’t think I’ve been so relieved to find the blue text of ‘online’ on Steam. No scrolling was needed, all of them were listed under ‘Besties.’
“-staring at my computer is at the upper limits of my usefulness at the moment.” I caught the end of someone’s statement. Lightfox’s from the looks of it, though it didn’t sound like him, and not in the poor audio quality kind of way. Too high pitched.
"So, I took a walk, guys,” I started up. “Or I tried to. I'm not very good at it right now. You think it would be easier with four legs, but you would be wrong.” It's telling when someone’s response to stress in a situation is sarcasm. Not helpful in the slightest, except to take some of the edge off for me. “So now I'm trying to discount all this as a dream.” I already had, I just didn’t want to admit to it. “Because, frankly, if I keep having to use my mouth for everything and taste all the things our hands have touched, I'm filing a complaint with both reality and causality."
"Oh thank god, Qesun! I was really starting to worry about you.” It sounded like everyone was off today. Lightfox still didn’t sound quite right. "As for it being a dream, have you ever been able to think this clearly in one. Anyway, if you do find reality's complaint department, please, please, please give me its address as well."
Hey, let me have my comfortable delusions, man.
"That makes 5 of us, out of ... what? There are over a hundred or more grayed out on my contacts in steam, and you are the only ones I've gotten a hold of,” Capt. Wolf was how we referred to him. He sounded more… gravely? Rough. About the only one of us not to go up in pitches measured in octaves.
"Aside from you all, I'm not seeing anything..." Neon added. I wasn’t seeing anyone else either, making the question no longer ‘why me,’ but rather ‘why us?’ It didn’t matter in the end, that question didn’t lead to anything we needed to survive. At least he sounded normal.
"Okay, assuming we ARE the last ones left of the people we know," Wolf interjected, "what are we going to do about it?"
"Well first, we make Neon get off League,” I started with. It was met with discontented horse sounds, but I didn’t pay it any mind. I just talked over him while my brain was ticking away at the problem. I had a reason to work towards a goal now that wasn’t ‘don’t die a miserable death alone.’ “I don't know how many are missing, but I can't help but find the lack of noise from the airport or any of the roads a disturbing sign that the lack of people logged on is not just because it was a nice day to go outside. We've built a civilization for ourselves that requires a lot of support services that no longer have the staff necessary to maintain them.”
"Wait, this stuff can't support itself? ...That really sucks." Neon added after I had finished.
"It can, Neon. It just can't support itself for very long. The net will die within a three-day window, and the power grid will depend on location,” Lightfox stated.
I continued. “We should pick a place to meet up before our communications fail. Getting there will be hard, but we'll have an easier time getting through this together.”
“Do you already have an idea for a meeting point?” LF asked. “Also, if we were to meet up, what about White? He's over in the UK."
"....I don't mind staying in the UK,” The diminutive voice from White said. What the hades had happened to him of all people? I’d have to ask later. "I mean I WAS supposed to catch a plane in a couple of days, but I mean, what am I gonna do, fly the damn thing myself?! I may as well just get used to being by myself instead of tormenting myself with the impossible."
"You want to speak of impossible? Look in the mirror." I’m glad Wolf was having none of that. "This is impossible. The fact we still managed to contact each other should be, at best, improbable. As far as I'm concerned, impossible doesn't exist anymore."
"You're.... encouraging me to fly a jet. Completely untrained, and 3 feet tall."
Lightfox added a simple “Yes.”
“So you would rather sit on your aaaaaa-butt and do nothing?” The word got caught in my throat again, feeling like I had swallowed air and stuck there. I coughed a few times after I got that sentence out like I was clearing out the bad. What next? Puking rainbows?
Wolf stepped up his encouragement. “No, White, I’m saying you’ll figure something out though. The worst thing you could do is not try.”
"White, all my resources VANISHED. Any help that I could possibly be will be gone by this time tomorrow. This is not something that we can figure out. This one is on you,” LF put out flatly. Truth sucks.
" ... soooo, where are we going?" Neon asked, putting us back on task again.
We needed a place that was central, that we could all get to. Someplace with water, vaguely arable land and a limit on the number of natural disasters that could happen. At least that’s what came off the top of my head. East coast and southeast coast were subject to hurricanes. West coast had earthquakes. Great plains and even Alabama where I was were subject to tornadoes.
I laid out the suggestion to try the Great Divide, specifically the Colorado Rockies. It had the potential for floods and for some nasty straight-line winds, but both of those could be planned for. We decided to meet up in Colorado Springs. It would give us a chance to gather up resources before trying to find a place up in the mountains to set up. I had family up there, we could check their cabins and try one of those.
Wolf and I further fleshed things out after parting with the others. He planned to come scoop me up here in Huntsville before heading up there. That bastard got to keep having hands and could drive easily.
After I signed off, I realized how hungry I was. I had hardly bothered to take care of myself today. Pizza, Spaghetti and Meatballs, Baked chicken… There were so many things I once could have eaten. But each one of these put me off by the smell and taste. It was the meat. If it wasn’t obvious enough by smell, the urge to retch overcame me as soon as I tried to eat it. Fffuuu… Fffffff-flipping Hades!
I gave up and just went with the spaghetti without the meatballs and a salad. That worked much better. I would have to keep in mind my sudden change in allowed diet. The dogs could have what was left of the meat. They would get to dine for the next few days. ...For as long as the power held out. Sort of. When Wolf got here, I would have to work with him to set up the mini fridge in the camper to work off of batteries or something so we could preserve some food for longer. Especially for me.
I sufficed with a shower after that, then took the time to take an account of all the supplies I had that might help. My family liked camping. It happened just about yearly. We had a small generator, all sorts of camping pans and a camping stove, kerosene, and so on. We also had a lot of craft stuff we liked to do. Pickling jars, beekeeping supplies (I have 2 hives though I don’t like the prospect of working on them without hands), and even alcohol brewing gear. Tools would be useful, too. I began lining it all up at the edge of the garage as best as I could given my lack of hands.
By that time, it was getting dark and I was feeling oddly tired of having done pretty much ssshhhh… Ffff- I did nothing at all. Not like I had much else I could do until Wolf arrived, so I crawled up into my bed, taking a smaller portion of it for myself. I spent an hour tossing and turning before I just ended up copying how the dogs were laying down, which was vaguely more comfortable than trying to lay down like I used to. Now came the true test of whether this was a dream or not: If I woke up tomorrow, I was in for some disappointment.
Well, not if. When.
Author's Note
Lets take an adventurous little foray into the wonderful world of writing fan fiction for fan fiction. But hey, I stopped being so worried about what people thought of my writing long enough to actually give it a shot, so there's that.