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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The shadow that was Alpha lunged away from the elevator's entrance. Chaos exploded in the car park beyond: the thunder of weapons fire, blunt echoing retorts and impacts with concrete and derelict vehicles. The pack's cries broke across the tumult, rage-filled demands for blood.
The urge to answer those calls burst through pain and hunger. The den was under attack.
"Gull, don't you follow that mutt! Keep your damn head down." A gasped command—not his alpha's.
He snapped teeth at the bound prey lying beneath him. How dare it give him orders? He should bite it, fill his belly. But the pack's cries tore his ears, wild calls that pulled at his blood.
This meat could wait. His fangs were needed elsewhere.
With shuddering limbs, he hauled himself out of the sunken elevator into carnage. Darkness alive with racing shadows, firelight, and muzzle flashes. Carcasses lay strewn about broken cars: rotting bones and still-warm meat. Human and animal. Pack kills. But while many were fresh, some less than an hour old, even newer death bloodied a car chassis in front of him.
A bullet-torn wolf, its skull glistening ruins.
Headshot. The lethal bite of a human enemy.
He bared teeth, rage trembling through him. As the pack surged forward, a dark wild wave, he joined the attack, charging toward the enemy, toward—
A lone figure in a filthy business shirt crisscrossed with weapons and ammo, her bare feet planted wide on a utility van's roof, her glowing eyes aligned down a rifle's sight. With swift, precise movements, the two-legged hunter punched out rounds. As pack swarmed over and around vehicles, wolves jolted and fell, crashing to the ground and onto bonnets. Furred flesh tore open. Snarling heads vanished in ruddy bursts.
Blood. The pack's. The scent made him want to rip meat from bone. But that pleasure would belong to the strongest and fastest. Packmates had already reached the enemy's position. Five wolves leaped up to—
A bang. An explosion of white-grey smoke.
Its smell burned his nose worse than any den trash fire. Human defensive trickery: a smoke grenade.
The two-legged hunter burst from the haze, leaping past attacking wolves to land on an SUV.
The pack spun to follow; surged over and around cars. Its prey jumped vehicle to vehicle, chopping and changing direction, staying one step ahead of death. An amusing chase that inspired excited barks.
A game the prey would lose.
He jumped up onto a minivan's roof, ignoring pain and flinching muscles. Anticipation of the kill wet his mouth as the hunter swung her head to calculate her next move, the pack right on her heels. Her bright stare caught his an instant.
He expected to see terror, meat knowing it gasped its last breaths.
