ONC 2022 shortlisted: The Emergence of a more virulent lycanthrope virus decimated civilisation. As a street scavenger, Gulliver Chase risks his life in his home city's derelict streets hunting for resources for his fellow survivors. But it isn't fo...
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Never take a knife into a lycan fight: it was a rule. And don't even bother bringing something as slow and ineffectual as a piece of rusted pipe.
But that's all he had.
Gull charged back across the roof towards the battle, sweeping up two pieces of piping from moonlit debris as he went.
There was another rule he lived by:
If there was zero chance of winning a fight, don't make it your goal.
Crouch-running along the edge of the fast-moving, snarling violence, he dragged one pipe across the ribbed zinc of a roof cap. The racket was nothing anyone with working ears could've ignored, never mind someone with mutant canine hearing. He didn't doubt he'd caught the fighting lycans' attention. Zera's attention.
He didn't stop to confirm that, already doubting his sanity. Boots hammering over old electrical cables and through tents turned to ragged ghosts, he made for the edge of the roof. He couldn't save the female lycan—wasn't sure he wanted to—but if she wasn't one hundred per cent brain-dead mutt, she could save herself.
Nearing the roof's edge, Gull dropped a pipe, though he doubted it would be needed. Mutts, especially those with hyper-aggressive personalities, rarely walked away from a fight, even one they were losing.
Not his problem.
Planting a foot, he leapt out into damp, dark air, the second pipe held flat in a white-knuckled grip above his head.
A drop straight down—through the middle of a cluster of wet power lines. As his stomach plummeted, anticipating death, the ends of the pipe jolted across the cables, not so much stopping his fall as redirecting it down the sloping wires.
A fast run down to the glistening black of a utility pole. He slammed into it boots first, bent legs softening the collision. A metal fire escape, just two feet to his right, provided him a better route of escape than a climb to the ground, where shadows were moving.
More lycans.
He dove up the fire escape, gaze cutting to the roof he'd just vacated.
Leaping and lunging bodies; dark shapes against the night sky. The crash and clang of collisions with roof debris carried into the night, along with savage barks. Amongst the clamour, the light thuds of running feet sounded.
A silhouette against the grey sky—a body jumping.
Gull's breath snagged as two hulking lupine forms rushed to the roof's edge and a human one fell—slid.
"Fuck." A mix of emotions hit—fear the strongest. Snapping his attention back to the mesh stairs before him, he powered upward, his heart a hammer. The lycans in wolf form couldn't follow down the cables, but Zera was back on his tail. What the hell had he been thinking helping her? So, she hadn't Changed into a mutt. He'd been dreaming to think, even for a second, the drug he'd given her was the cause. She probably just hadn't had time to morph into her wolf form before her packmates attacked.
