Humanoid-Nuclear (Humanoid Trilogy #1) [ON HOLD]

6

For awhile, that was my new shelter. There was no food in the house, so I had to scavenge sometimes. Same went for water; the guy who lived here didn't have a well. It felt good to live somewhere spacious. While I was snooping around one day, I found this rubber mask of an old man with crazy white hair. I decided to keep him, because I needed a good laugh every now and then. I named him Gerber, and he hangs out in my backpack.

I was making my daily vlog, you know, the one that keeps me from going insane, when there was a crash downstairs. I stopped abruptly, looking at the door, then back at my camera. Hurriedly, I pulled out my laser gun and quietly went downstairs, still recording. I kept close to corners, trying to stay out of view. I used my camera to help me see what was going on behind me so that nothing could sneak up and kill me. I pressed my back against a wall, gun ready, and looked with my camera to see what was happening in the kitchen. A zyrite the same as the ones I saw in the beginning stood in place, staring down at the thing it broke. My hand began to shake as I saw it holding a fiddle, its bow sharpened into a sword.

I took a deep breath, holding onto my gun as I made sure my backpack was still on my back. Seeing it was, I shot the zyrite with a laser, still in the safety of my cover. Sadly, the shot bounced off its head and broke a window, drawing attention to myself. Uh-oh, I swallowed thickly as the zyrite jerked its head in my direction, walking over to me. It never did make the trip, though.

A long, blue, furry tail crashed into the zyrite, sending it crashing into a wall. I cursed and pressed my back closer to the wall, trembling. The colorful hunk of metal got back to its feet, brandishing its sword at the hidden... thing that attacked it. Faster than both my camera and eyes could follow, the creature hidden from my sight jumped and roared at the mutant, becoming obscured again as they landed behind a counter.

This was my chance to escape. I could have run right out of there. But nope! I couldn't move! My body decided this would be the perfect time to freeze up. For some reason, the room began to stink with the heavy scent of vomit, making me gag. I could see two horns that resembled a blue jays' peaking out from the counter every now and then, and a fuzzy tail thrashing around wildly from behind as well. The horrid scream of metal scraping against the floor filled the room, along with a screech like roar and gurgling.

The smell intensified as something sizzled behind the counter, steam rising. It grew silent, but the creature was grunting and huffing like a horse or cow or some other large animal. Finally, my body unfroze, and I dashed out of the broken window. Without looking back, I ran to the deck near the lake where there were two jetflyers. I hopped onto one of them and quickly hot wired it, then sailed off at sixty miles an hour. What was incredibly remarkable--at least to me--was that I still held my camera.

"What the--what was--WHAT?!" I shouted, making my camera face me. I began to slow down, thinking I was far enough to take everything in. "So wait... There was something in the place I was staying at, and I had no idea? How could I have missed it?... Maybe it snuck into the house really early in the morning?... I dunno. I'll tell you if I find out. I'm going to watch this tape and see what that thing was, and then maybe I can piece everything together. But, until then." I shrugged, then stopped recording.

I stuffed my camera and gun in my backpack, then pulled out my radiation tester. It was green, so that made me relax a bit, but I kept it just in case. What sent chills up my spine was the idea of not knowing what was below me. There could be seven foot catfish in these waters, for all I know. I quickly kicked the jetflyer into gear, leaving behind choppy water.

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Surveying the video left me baffled. I slowed down the tape, but it was still hard to tell what it--as in that creature--was. I couldn't enhance the footage, either. All I could really tell was that the beast was big. As in, like, tall and broad. It also had two pillow-sized, blurry triangles on its back, so I guessed those were wings. I put a finger to my mouth thoughtfully. It was kinda like a blue jay, but... huge compared to them. And more in a cat like shape, too. So, was it hostile like the birds? Did it see me? And if so, did it follow me? "It'd have to be an idiot to follow me," I snapped under my breath.

My head began to hurt from watching the footage over and over again, making me more and more confused each time. I set the camera down and laid back, staring at the roof of my make-shift shelter. I was at least six miles away from any town, docking in some sort of bay. I was lucky I had finished my shelter before the rain hit. And to be frank, the rain burned. It was nuclear rain, after all. The vegetation here had mutated, acting like titanium when it came to the rain.

The night was rough, to be honest. I couldn't sleep. Fears of zyrites and that thing tortured me, making me jump when I heard things in the bushes or chittering in hushed voices up high in the trees. When dawn broke, I was already up and eating my beginning-of-the-day meal. I also encountered a few cardinals, which I discovered were much more aggressive than blue jays. The cardinals, though, are all dead. 'Cause I shot 'em. Dead... All of 'em.

When I reached the town on my map, I was uncomfortable when I found out it was one of those 'redneck towns'. There were plenty of fields that had turned into forests, and small stores that sat at the heart of the town. I raided a pawn shop, finding amo and a few new weapons, along with some clothes and a first-aid kit. My radiation tester was in my hand at all times, for precautions, testing out everything my gloved hands touched.

Sadly, I couldn't get any food or water, because it was all either eaten, drunk, extremely expired, dried up, or radioactive. After that town I kept going, deciding I shouldn't stay in towns anymore unless it was absolutely necessary. There could be zyrites...

Or something worse.