You can’t pump water out of the ground if your electric pump doesn’t work, and not many people had the foresight to buy a hand pump, choosing to invest in electric generators or solar power - or put their trust in municipal systems.

When your electric generator is burnt up, along with your house and everything else you own, you head to the nearest water source. Which would normally be a general store with bottled water. In this case, that would be a nearby stream, the Pearl River, or the Chitto river, which is where Jenny and her people had chosen to migrate.

When did I decide that Jenny was the leader of her people? And just when did I develop this prejudice for those who have abilities like mine? Jenny is no more qualified to lead those people than I am. I chewed on this while I considered the logistics of winter.

The minimum number of calories a body needs to avoid going into starvation mode is about 1200. That’s 500 cans of soup for 5 people for 3 months of winter. I have maybe half that on the farm. We’re going to depend heavily on hunting and fishing to get everyone through this winter, not including all the other mouths to feed.

Holup.

When did I decide to start saving other people? I should be making plans against the hordes of desperate and hungry. [1]

I mulled over that line of thought as I rode through Brush, passing the burnt out petrol station, restaurant, and dollar store that were once the main commercial buildings in the area. There was a flea market located on the edge of town next to the school, which was still intact. I spotted a few people with dim heart stones and orange auras picking through the items and waved at them, getting three suspicious stares and one shy raised arm in return.

People would begin migrating towards water sources. There’s a lot of creeks in the area, but they would need some sort of purification system to keep the water clean and enough smarts not to shit where they drink. I knew the basics on how to make a purifier, all you needed was gravel, sand, and charcoal, but how many of these survivors knew that?

There would be millions and millions of deaths in the coming weeks and months. Then winter would be upon us and the real struggle would begin. I think I should prioritise gathering as many canned goods as possible to survive, followed by seeds and books to educate the survivors. Civilisation was built by standing on the shoulders of our forefathers. Without books, without knowledge, we would have to rebuild everything from scratch, the hard way.

The public school was right on the edge of the city limits. It was ruined, although the brick building was still standing. Just a guess, but it probably had a static sprinkler system that saved the structure. Broken windows and soot were visible in several palaces, evidence that the interior had still suffered damage.

If someone could repair the roof and interior area, it would make a good shelter for the hard times ahead. I made a mental note to raid it for books on the way back. I could possibly salvage some from the school in the Village, but I can’t be certain it survived.

The woods were scorched for miles around, charred trees standing in acres of burnt underbrush that was still smoking in places. There were 20 miles between me and Covington and what used to be a 20 minute drive was now 8 hours of riding with rest breaks. About three miles on the other side of Brush I passed the volunteer fire department. It was a blackened mass of metal. A group of vultures were gathered in front of it, feasting on something. No. Not vultures. Vulturoids. [2] These things looked more like mutant dinosaurs than vultures. I watched them, they watched me, I rode past without trouble.

The miles passed slowly, some areas appearing completely untouched and then miles where fire had ravaged everything, still smoking with fires waiting to spring back to life. There were lots of little farms and retirement homes in the area and it appeared that only a few survived unscathed. I discerned a pattern to the destruction after awhile, every transformer had exploded along the road and in most cases the surrounding area had caught fire. Mine was surrounded by a gravel drive, so there wasn’t anything to catch and burn when it blew up, which probably saved my life.

There’s a lot of time for introspection while travelling alone. A lot of time for rehashing old failures and anticipating new ones. You can’t just turn on the radio and distract yourself with someone vomiting their opinion onto the airwaves and telling you why you should be outraged; you have to work things out for yourself.

But when you have newly awakened psychic powers, alone time is practise time.

So what have I learned in the last few days?

I can step outside my body and wander around the astral plane in my emotionless spirit form. There’s a silver cord that connects me to my material body and I can increase its length by pulling life force from my material body. Similar threads bond me to animals. Maybe even to other people like that experience I had with Sarah? I can feel a faint tug to the northeast when I think of her, some etherial thread still connecting us.

There’s a white spark in my head. People I’ve met with a similar spark have been gifted like me, everyone else has had a spark around their heart and no obvious powers. The sparks come in various colours, and I’ve seen red head-sparks when encountering both tentacles and fire use, and a yellow heart-spark that seemed to repel my aura. Sarah had a yellow head-spark and could bond with animals and hear the truth. I’ve seen black ones in the hearts of people with mutations, and a black one in the porcuweiler. I’m not certain, but I’m pretty sure the sparks are related, but the colours mean different things depending on where they’re located.

I can drink up the various coloured motes, which really should have a name by now, and use them to power my abilities. I’ll call them ‘Mana’ because why not? I can even drain selectively, consuming everything or just the organs and bones, leaving dust or a meat filled skin sack behind. The black motes are powerful and leave me drunk, but they feel dangerous and chaotic, a primal and untamed force. It’s just a guess, but if I can selectively drain mana and the bodies vanish, that means everything is made of mana, right?

My tentacles have grown in range, from ten yards to over fifteen, maybe twenty yards. They’re stronger up close, kinda squishy, and can be shaped into various forms from long-range hands to finely netted threads useful for gathering up aggressive mosquitoes. The aura I push through my legs is probably just as agile, and I bet I just have to overcome some mental block about ‘arms and legs’ before I can use them properly. Jenny seemed to no problem running around with a dozen tentacles, so I shouldn’t either right?

My auric ‘hearing’, the psychic radar, is good for about two hundred yards now, and my ability to see auras is less than half that, a 360 degree psychic vision a hundred yards in radius. It’s like constantly being on your guard, always looking over your shoulder. There were ten million things thinking and hunting and eating that I can’t identify and they all grab at my attention until I dismiss them as a non-threat. If I processed one per second, I’d only have 6 months of aggravation before I could instantly sort everything in the world as threat or non-threat.

Healing is a huge unknown. I’m allowing my aura to heal this body without thought. With new teeth pushing painfully through my gums, it seems like it has a template to follow and will restore me back to OEM condition if I let it. I wonder if my appendix and gall bladder will regrow? The collar bone I shattered two decades ago, will it realign?

I placed a hand on my right shoulder and felt for the lump where the bone had healed over. It was a bit achy as always, but seemed smaller. Hell, it was smaller.

Healing other people is bigger unknown. I quickly learned to tell their bodies to burn fat for energy while doing repairs but I have no idea what the long term consequences are, or if I should even care. There’s no way that I can heal more than a couple of people just using my own juice.

Besides, most people will trade living today for troubles tomorrow, right?

The ability to channel power from other people was a huge surprise. When my reserves run low, I can drink something dead or ask for a donation. As long as the person is willing, I don’t seem to have a problem pulling power from them.

And finally, there’s my golden auric ‘skin’ that has many different purposes, like keeping the bugs off me and cooling the air around me down to a reasonable temperature. It’s well over eighty degrees in the hazy sunlight, but I’m mostly comfortable and surrounded by a skin tight mini-breeze evaporating the sweat off my body. I can push it out about 30 yards, like some sort of soap bubble, but since it’s made of the same stuff as my tentacles I have to choose one or the other. I bet with some practise I can snatch arrows from the air.

So what about my weaknesses? Proper introspection requires a frank breakdown of all my faults.

I’m old, on the wrong side of 50. While my body seems to be repairing and regenerating itself, I still have aches and pains in my joints. Worse than that, I know I’m set in my ways. I have decades of experiences, assumptions, and prejudices filling my head.

My mental state seems to be in flux. I’ve killed people, and I’ve enjoyed it. I swear, I promise, I’m not a psychopath, I’m not. I regret my actions, there were definitely other solutions to the problems, but at that moment in time - I felt justified in my actions. I still feel like I did the right thing. I think.

Also, I was raised by a racist, sexist, physically abusive man who was a product of his times. I know that some of his attitudes have rubbed off on me. I’ve spent decades learning to see people as who they are, not what they look like, but prejudice is a subtle thing. Protect women, expect them to serve you. You’re superior because of your external genitalia and skin colour. You have a higher value because of your education.

Utter bullshit. I can’t mechanic a car, I can’t milk a cow, I can’t build a house, and while I raised my boys as a mostly single father, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done - and I’m certain others could have done a better job and left them fewer mental scars.

Well, I suppose I could learn to do those things, but I’m positive that others without my swinging dick, skin colour, or university degrees could do a much better job.

My brain is not young and flexible anymore, it’s full of shit that doesn’t matter. Jenny has a dozen tentacles, I can only manage my “arms and legs”. In the future, she will probably kick my ass unless I learn to unlearn and adapt to my new abilities.

And what’s the first rule of Zombie Apocalypse? Cardio, and I need a personal trainer. The psychic powers help me immensely, but I still get winded when exerting myself physically. I need to get into shape before I run out of juice and something gobbles me up and shits me out.

I have property in a rural area to which I’m a bit attached. Yes, I could easily move and set up shop elsewhere, but I like my little farm. It’s mine. And if things really have collapsed, I’m going to claim the entire wildlife preserve next to me and gain a serious amount of riverfront acreage.

I also have friends and family. Not many honestly, and mostly scattered around the world, but they’re a huge weakness that can be used against me. A double-edged sword if you want to be optimistic about the matter, but I’ve never been one of those guys. The glass is not only half empty, but someone spit in it too.

And I worry a lot. Who the hell wants to listen to a grizzled old bastard complain about his arthritis and prostate?

Cardio.

I slipped from the saddle and began to jog, leading the horses in a brisk trot down the highway. I was heaving like a bellows after fifty yards and cycled my aura through my lungs, gaining a second wind. Not sure if I’m helping or hindering my physical progress. I’ll start a journal and document my experiments. I continued the pace for a couple miles, running until I was winded, then pulling energy from my spark, and running some more.

My concentration slipped while jogging and I didn’t detect the corrupted beasts until I was less than fifty yards from them. They were occupied with something, but the sound of steel shod hooves on the asphalt caught their attention.

More dogs. Or dog-things.

A motley crew of mutated canines came bounding over for fresh meat and Mr. Hatchet came out to greet them. Two spikes went splattering through the lead dogs and the rest vanished.

Literally vanished into thin air.

Seconds later they reappeared on my psychic radar, blobs of deep violet closing in from all sides. One appeared on my right and leapt at me, catching Mr. Hatchet in his neck. The others surrounded Sparky, attempting to cut him off from me while a few kept me engaged. It was intelligent behaviour I’d never seen before.

Or maybe I just haven’t watched enough nature documentaries.

I sent my last two spikes at the four harassing Sparky, hoping to cull their numbers and cow them into running off. One spike hit, the other went skittering down the asphalt in a shower of sparks.

I slapped out with my left tentacle and snatched up the bastard that attempted to hamstring Miguel, dragging him into the range of Mr. Hatchet and getting a good look at my assailants for the first time.

They may have been dogs at one time, but now they sprouted six wiry whiskers growing from the base of their beaks. Their snouts appeared beak-like, giving them the appearance of a strange mixture of hawk and dog. Peering beyond their aura, I could see a dark network of veins emerging from a black spark and running throughout their body.

Several of those neck-tentacles passed through my aetheric ones and I received a psychic jolt. More of a tingle actually, like licking a 9 volt battery. Highly unpleasant and not something I’d want to do again. I sent the beast sailing into the ashy field and turned my attention back to the three harassing Sparky. He’d managed to kick one and send it yelping into the burned field, but the other two were running him in a tight circle waiting an opportunity to latch onto his legs.

Snatching up a couple of rocks from the side of the road with my tendrils, I lobbed them into one of the beasts cracking ribs. Miguel went down hard next to me, one of the beasts had managed to latch on with its whiskers and apparently tasered the horse into submission.

I planted Mr. Hatchet into her spine and flung her into the ditch, getting a psychic jolt for my efforts.

The other two vanished into thin air. I whirled around, waiting for them to reappear but they never did.

Miguel climbed shakily to his feet, our psychic bond filled with pain and complaints. Laying hands on him, I imparted a bit of healing energy to ease the bruises and scrapes.

Sparky was in high spirits, mad as hell and willing to stomp things into the ground. He snorted nervously over the link, rolling his eyes wildly and wanting assurance that things were handled. I sent back calming thoughts as I inspected Miguel for injury.

Three of the beasts were dead and food for my ghoulish appetite, yielding three black mana stones. The injured ones had vanished, leaving only the one I had smacked with Mr. Hatchet. It was crawling through the ash filled ditch on two legs, the hind legs paralysed where I had severed its spine.

It hissed and clacked as I approached, while I considered how to dispatch it. Getting close to those electric tentacles was not in my top ten list. The snapping beak wasn’t encouraging me to get close either. While searching for a spike or a convenient rock, I realised I had an opportunity here.

Stabbing out with a golden filament, I burrowed into the aura surrounding the creature. It yowled like a cat and grabbed at my filament with its whiskers, causing me to flinch at the mild psychic shock. I pressed forward, worming through the aura and into the beast itself until I reached the black spark inside.

Latching onto the spark with my psionic tentacle, I was stunned by the mental ferocity of the beast. It scratched and clawed at the inside of my mind while I kept up a steady pressure demanding that it submit to my will. My head was pounding like Topper Headon breaking in a new set of drums as the creature tried to kick me out.

We struggled in a timeless space. It clawed at my mind, dragging furrows deep into dark places filled with blood and unreasoning fear. I fought to wrap a psychic blanket around it, surround it with an impenetrable field of domination where my will was the only thing in existence. It lashed out mentally and my vision burst into stars as my brain throbbed, dropping me to a knee.

The black ichor running through its veins poured into the dark cloud of motes surrounding its mana stone, burning my mind with raw, chaotic emotion. I poured more energy into the link, increasing the size of my filament and flooding it with golden energy. The darkness shifted away like a shadow moving across a wall, evaporating into silver motes that washed through the beast, detonating with miniature explosions, erasing more of the black substance.

With the constant shocks and sheer brutality of the mental defense of the creature, I was about to give up and kill it when tried to roll over and present its belly to me. I could feel it submitting to my will and pressed harder, pumping more of my amber energy into the link until the last of the black vanished leaving behind an indigo spark. The bond snapped into place, adding a new presence to my mind.

With the bond forged, I focused on healing the wounds of my new beast companion. It didn’t have much body fat to work with, so I allowed it to pull energy from our link to heal the terrible gash in its back and the severed spine.

After ten minutes, it struggled to its feet and stared at me curiously, its head cocked adorably. The bond carried a presence even more alien than the horses, a sly, inquisitive intelligence that was on the very cusp of sapience. Forcing my physical revulsion away, I examined the beast closely.

She was covered in short, mottled blueish-black fur with six thin, prehensile ‘whiskers’ sprouting from around her mouth. A grey hawk-like beak with a savage hook had replaced the snout, which was filled with a blood red tongue that had the rough consistency of a metal file. Possessing large, tufted ears, cat-like eyes and retractable claws, I first thought it was some sort of mutated cougar, but it appeared more like a doberman in stature and carriage.

I commanded her to teleport like the others had and a sense of emptiness came through our link, carrying with it a need for sustenance before she could do that.

“So what do we call you?” I asked my new bond. “Are you a good girl?”

The stumpy tail wagged as it clacked its jaws and pranced at my feet. “G’grrl!” she squawked excitedly.

“You can speak?” I exclaimed, surprised.

“G’grrl!”

“Yeah, you’re a good girl,” I smiled, scratching her head awkwardly. Her tentacles wrapped around my arm and legs, squeezing tight. “We’ll call you Sassy, how’s that?”

“S’ssy!”

“C’mon Sassy, let’s go see what you guys were eating before I interrupted.” I said, walking up the road.

Sassy bounded ahead while I followed along with the horses. The bond was filled with strange and alien chatter while they used my mind as a meeting place to investigate one another and determine the pecking order. As a mutant carnivore, Sassy quickly established dominance over the horses.

Three bicycles lay scattered in the road. Kids bikes. My stomach tightened at the sight of the scattered remains of the riders. Motes, mana, drifted lazily above the mangled corpses. I started collecting them with my tentacles before I processed what I was doing.

Do I eat children now?

The bodies are going to dissolve into nothingness anyway, so shouldn’t I strengthen myself?

While I wrestled with these thoughts, Sassy stepped up and began eating, scaly whiskers waving over the corpse collecting the motes while her beak crunched bone.

Are we just going to let Sassy eat those kids?

Well, honestly, I was going to consume them, so what’s the difference? I’m not happy with the situation, but as a ghoul I suppose I should get used to the facts of my new life - People are food too. Is this my life now?

I pulled my canteen from the pack on Miguel and washed the bile from my throat, spitting on the asphalt. Retrieving a two liter jug from Sparky’s saddlebags to refill the canteen, I noticed that it was leaking. A quick inspection of the other four revealed they were leaking too, sweating water from dozens of tiny holes in the plastic. I refilled the aluminum canteen and set the bottles aside, digging out the small bottle of chlorine bleach I had brought to purify water. The thick plastic seemed in better shape, but covered my hands in white dust.

I’m not sure what’s more disturbing to me right now, Sassy’s crunching, or the discovery that all my plastic jugs had leaks.

I absorbed the remains Sassy left behind and collected two tiny white stones. I assume she ate the other two.

Footnotes

1. This was the point where Emmet began thinking about establishing a safe haven for survivors.

2. Vulturoids (Coragyps atratus digitus) Status: Hostile

While resembling their avian cousins, they are much more aggressive than vultures. A vulturoid has teeth, a set of small arms with three clawed fingers in addition to their wings. They are possibly the ancestors of Harpies.

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