Overcoming

Chapter 1

* Hi, my name is Melanie, and this....drumroll please...is my very first attempt at a novel. If you use Wattpad like I do then you've been in my position before. Please let me know what you think. There shouldn't be too many mistakes, but let me know if you see one.

All righty. Let 'er rip.

Chapter 1
I've been on the road hitchhiking for 3 days. I ditched a biker when he got handsy two days back. I did manage to liberate him of his sleeping bag. Since the bomb only the really dodgy drivers are offering rides. Being a werewolf I'm strong and fast enough to take care of myself so I do jump into those cars and trucks, but the rides are inevitably short when they discover I'm not easy prey.
I'm 63 but look 25. Werewolf bodies don't corrupt with age. We stay looking young. We can still die, of violence and murder, or even mundane things like cholesterol and hypertension. We get viruses, just not most human ones, maybe a few canine ones. Our muscles are dense, and we weigh 3 times what a human or wolf our size would. Our bones don't break. Our muscles don't get fatigued.
"Hey darlin'," a voice calls out from a pick up beside me. "Do you need a ride sweet thing?"
"If you let me sit in the back I do." I shout back. I'm sure he thinks once I get in he'll have me captured until he stops somewhere private.
"How far you headin'"
"West Montana." I'm headed to Yellowstone, but he doesn't need specifics. I have about a few hours left to travel before I get close enough to turn wolf and run the rest of the way. I hope Beverly made it. Mom's never been woodsy. She's a bit more high maintenance. But we'll meet up soon. I'm still not sure why she ditched me.
My driver sticks to the freeway, and I sit in the back with my hair whipping around my head. I knock on the glass of the cab when we get far enough. He glances back, but doesn't pull over. Time to ditch him.
We're going freeway speed, but that shouldn't be a problem. I leave the sleeping bag I won't be able to carry with me as a wolf, and jump out of the moving vehicle, rolling into the grass at the side of the road. It gives me a few scrapes, but with strong bones I'm not really hurt.
Time to change. A lot of stories will tell you that bones have to break and reset and that changing is really painful. That's not true. For the most part humans and other mammals have the same bones. They're just not the same size and length, so our joints are in different places. Besides could a humanoid change into a canine in any other way than magic? We don't have wads of hair under our skin waiting to break through, and our teeth don't grow. It's magic. Unfortunately the story of our making has been lost to time. So has the power of our creation. We can't bite someone and change them. You're born one or not, and we can't inter-breed with humans or wolves.
I lay flat in the grass in my human form, then stand as a wolf. I don't need to take off my clothes, and they don't rip apart. They just disappear. Interestingly enough the it takes less of a physical toll when the molecules of the fabric are metabolized to help the change. I don't do it this way often though, I don't have an endless supply of clothes.
I shake myself off, and run. I'm running from the bomb the Species Guard set on a block of New York. I'm one of them. Well, I was.
No one knows where the vampires came from. By the time they were noticed, they'd organized. At first they were saviors. They came forward with cures to a lot of diseases. Blood borne diseases like HIV, and Leukemia. Human's sent them data, blood to test, tissue samples, and live human organs to cure more. With that information, the vampires created the virus.
The virus was created to control humans. To get your treatments you had to donate blood, a lot of blood...and money. If you didn't have blood to give because of old age or disability, or money for the ransom, you died of the virus.
It was a long drawn out painful death.