“You have to be kidding me,” Cora muttered, drawing her hunting knife and planting herself on the veranda outside the abandoned farmhouse, muscles tensed, sweat dripping down her face. Storm clouds had fast approached, and with the change in pressure that matched what her barometer read, dozens of salamanders crawled out of the earth in waves, lazily walking about.

If they had been regular salamanders, the kind that several odd people in Lazarus had managed to breed and keep the species alive in homes and personal farms, she wouldn’t have had a problem with it. This, however, the three sickeningly bright-blue stripes spanning an entire salamander’s obsidian body, itself easily over five feet long from tail to head, with a barbed tail and acidic tongue, she couldn’t hope to deal with.

No creature that survived the horrors of the Great War without human intervention was weak. There were two varieties she often ran into whenever she did field work--those who adapted to living in the irradiated land, the powerful beasts with hides too thick to penetrate with simple metal, and those who were born deformed and horribly unprepared for the brutal reality of nature, but had a high birth rate so more of the abominations were born.

Both were extremely dangerous to handle without proper training, which was why farmers had to deal with infestations of creatures that came outside Lazarus’s borders on occasion. Before, when ores were plentiful, gunpowder combined with functional guns obliterated any creatures that posed a threat to the town’s safety

Like all the other technology that Lazarus started off with, the guns grew too brittle to continue using, and the potassium nitrate once readily accessible was depleted in gunpowder and fertilizers, leaving future generations stuck with handheld weaponry, crossbows, or bows.

Bows, which nobody bothered carrying because some mutations moved faster than a person could aim and shoot. As far as she knew, only three farmers bothered carrying a bow on their persons at all times. Those were the ones who had raw talent and expertise. Everybody else resorted to handheld weapons or crossbows.

There was nothing she could possibly do with her hunting knife against one of the salamanders. Even if she had earned her crossbow after passing the Rake, there'd only be so many shots she could fire before the salamanders overran her. The blood of one alone was toxic enough to make people’s lungs seize if they breathed in too much air tainted by blood, which combined with the stormy air was guaranteed.

Until the salamanders broke out of their hypnotic state, she could flee. She sketched the number of salamanders and their approximate distance relative to the house, shut her journal, slipped it into her backpack, and exited the opposite side of the house.

Empty fields swayed in the winds picking up speed. A lone wheelbarrow clanged when a branch hit the side, leaving a tiny dent in the rusted metal. Several tools the field workers had irresponsibly left behind flipped over, the strengthening gale making the wheelbarrow shudder. She bent over and picked up several tools, selecting scythes and bunching their handles in one hand, when the earth crumbled beneath her feet.

A dark wet mass swallowed Cora's foot whole. The sensation of pin pricks ran across the top of her foot, numbing her sole, reaching her ankle when she shrieked. She hacked at her unknown assailant with one of the scythes, managing to cleave the flesh from her ankle, yanking her foot back and scampering to her feet. The wet mass shrieked, dove beneath the earth again, leaving a pit through which she could fit her entire leg inside.

The sensation of her boot’s rough base returned to her numbed foot, but she inspected the site for any puncture wounds. Relieved at seeing none, she threw down the scythes save for one. Though they were meant for field work, their blades had been sharp enough to cut the mysterious creature off her, which meant it could work against the rest of whatever it was.

After several tense seconds where she paced from side to side in irregular intervals so the creature wouldn’t predict her, she ran, knuckles clenched around the scythe, running harder than she ever had. Her lungs began burning and a stitch formed beneath her ribs, but she was determined to make it back to the comfort of the paved cobblestone streets.

The streets were so far away, though. Her heart thundered. She was left alone to deal with a new mutation. A horrible creature that had sprung like a trap and apparently sensed vibrations through footsteps. Owens told her that all mutations were predictable--their existences were long since documented in an almanac each farmer owned, and those few new varieties were quickly added to keep information recent.

Those diagrams connected each mutation that the farmers thought were related. From what she'd seen, none of them had a creature like the one she just saw. No anatomy combined so many different animal parts that somehow all worked together.

Her hair flew into her eyes, as it always did whenever she didn’t tie the hairband correctly or forget her bandanna. Sputtering, she slowed to a walk and tried working the hair out of her eyes, blinking furiously to relieve the irritated sensation, when the earth erupted in front of her.

Dirt sprayed into the air. She threw herself aside, losing her grip on the scythe, as a slimy tendril snatched at the air where she’d stood a moment ago. Bony projections slid out of the tendril, covering the entire appendage in spikes, the tips tainted a metallic gold. She’d never seen a monster of its kind. If she had doubts before, there were none now.

The rest of the creature surfaced. Another slimy tendril extended its bony spikes to create a semblance of arms. Three smaller ones writhed from its back, ichor dribbling down the stump of the fourth, motionless and disfigured. The body of the creature resembled a tall, skinny bowl, domed where its head was, with limp strands of what she figured was hair draped over its face, obscuring any identifying features. A crimson line ran across the bottom of its face, parting, and the glint of yellow serrated teeth sent her adrenaline levels skyrocketing.

Whatever this was, it was more horrific than any creature she or any other farmer ever saw. She scampered to her feet and hurled her knife at its torso, protected by sporadic patches of green fuzz. To her shock, one of the bony tendrils swatted the knife out of the air, planting itself a good distance away There was still the scythe, having been knocked out of her hand, lying a few feet from reach. She could grab it and run...

But that wasn’t a choice. The creature fell onto its front, two more legs sprouting near the bony tendrils, and its head raised enough to part its hair aside. Milky eyes devoid of life stared back at her.

“Help!” she screamed, bolting. She heard the muffled footfalls of the creature behind her, but it was always the same distance away, so she wasn’t sure if she was outrunning the creature or it was playing with her. The stench of rotten flesh reached her as did the creature’s snarls, slowly closing the gap between them.

Her backpack bounced with every step she took, forcing her to pull the straps until they bit into her skin, but the backpack didn’t dig into her back anymore. She risked a glance behind her. The creature was hurtling towards her on all fours, with one of its legs bent at an unnatural angle, slowing it down enough that she hadn’t been torn apart the moment she ran.

Where were the farms? Had she really come this far out from the outskirts of Lazarus for her assignment? She cried out in relief. The first farms materialized in the gloom, devoid of torchlight, their occupants probably out supervising the fields.

“Help!” The side stitch bloomed a fiery pain that made her gasp. There was no stopping. She’d be devoured if she slowed down for even a second. Something moved at the edge of her peripheral vision. The silhouette of a man or woman leaned against a barn door, watching, still, until they lunged.

The creature hissed out in pain and braked to a stop. She never stopped, although she glanced back to see a javelin had impaled the monster through its abdomen, protruding out the other side of its stomach, sickly purple tissues and reddish organs hanging from the end of the javelin. Milky eyes raised to meet hers. She shuddered, but those eyes swiveled back towards the lone farmer who unslung a bow and aimed an arrow’s tip at the monster.

Her boot sank into a pile of mud, throwing her forward. She felt a force about to tear her ankle’s tendons apart, but she managed to raise her foot in time as she fell face first into the dirt. A sharp pain pierced her nose, and seconds later her fingers felt the warm trickle of blood.

Remembering early lessons of medical aid, she leaned forward and pinched the bridge of her nose, counting the drops falling until the roar of an explosion made her lose track. The farmer--Mira, with her black hair tied into a bun and a nose piercing--notched another explosive arrow and released it.

Cora shivered as a pained wail resonated in the air. Some dozen feet away, the smoking remains of one of the bony limbs crashed onto the grass plains, incinerating the surrounding vegetation. The faint rainfall she hadn’t noticed until now extinguished the flames Mira’s arrows produced.

Mira stood in front of the barn door, notching yet another arrow, but it lacked the distinctive red fletching her explosive arrows bore. Some short distance away, the twitching remains of the mutant smoldered, smoke curling lazily upwards.

“Are you okay?” Mira yelled, her voice carried by the wind.

“I broke my nose!” COra stood, shaking off the slight ache developing in her ankle, and debated whether to head towards Mira. As if sensing her apprehension, Mira fired another arrow into the creature, long since unmoving save for the smoke curling out of its body. When the wet thunk of flesh didn’t stir the monster, Cora rushed towards the elder farmer.

Cora's nose had stopped bleeding, the trickle reduced to a blood clot she knew she had to clear out of her nose eventually, but didn’t want to. The stench of burnt rotten flesh engulfed her all at once. Her stomach hurdled, bile rising up her throat. Mira’s warm hand pressing on her shoulder distracted her long enough to gasp and push her stomach’s contents down.

The wind shifted slightly, carrying the stench away from them.

“What in Lazarus was that chasing after you?” Mira said, planting her hands on her hips. With her tall stature, curly hair loosely tied in a bun, and bow slung across her back, she looked every bit the feral hunter Owens described her, the most talented out of anybody who had attempted archery.

And it showed. The arrows had obliterated the creature, its fleshy body ripped to shreds, its internal organs and other vital components evaporated under the compressed heat and pressure the arrows released instantly upon contact. Surprisingly, both of its bony appendages had survived, one blown near where Cora had been, the other lying next to a pile of torn flesh.

“I don’t know,” she said, feeling sick again. She crossed over to the smoldering body, poked it with the tip of her boot, then immediately jerked her foot back. There were no milky eyes to haunt her vision. No signs of the fluid movement the creature was capable of while buried. Mira had done well.

“Whatever this thing is, it took two explosive arrows to kill it. I’ve never seen anything survive the first one. And whatever this is made out of-” Mira nudged the bony arm, “-it’s not regular bone. I reckon Rhodes could take a look at this and figure out what it’s made out of.”

“Rhodes?”

She didn’t know every farmer, but Owens made a good habit of mentioning them from time to time, whether in good spirits or bad. This name sounded foreign on her tongue.

Mira’s eyes instantly widened. She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Gah, I forgot, but since you’re going to be a farmer soon, I might as well tell you who. It’s the man who lives in the lighthouse. I reckon you know him at least by word of mouth.”

Rhodes. So that was his name. A sense of elation filled Cora. She finally knew his name! The one Owens said he’d rather not share out of his wishes for the man in the lighthouse, who she now knew was named Rhodes.

What a strange, unusual name. So beautiful. She sounded it out in her head. Rhodes.

“Of course. Who hasn’t?”

Mira chuckled. “It’s a paradox when you realize he’s trying to stay as much out of the public eye as possible, but only worms his way into conversations. He’s a good man, that’s for sure, but I wish he was more sociable.”

Everything always came back to the man in the lighthouse. Rhodes, Cora thought with satisfaction. He was the figure running the most important operations in town and nobody treasured him for it. If it was his wish to stay out of sight, then when she became a farmer, she would respect it, too.

“Why does he only speak to Councilmembers and farmers?” Too late, she realized, flushing that she’d let the question slip past her mental restraint.

“That is an answer you’ll learn once you become a farmer.”

Why did everyone have to be so vague about Rhodes? “Fine. What are you going to do with the rest of the body?”

“Oh, that. We could give it to him, too, but the smell would make it unbearable to transport. You don’t happen to have some fire roses on you, do you?”

“None at all.”

“Shame. Orwen’s farm is not too far off from here. He has a horse that can pull the body and some incense to mask the smell. Do you know where his farm is?”

After running for her life, the last thing Cora wanted to do was expose herself to more potential creatures like this one. It had to have had a parent or parents, which meant there were at least one or more of these creatures prowling the lands, searching for people less fortunate than her.

“I’d rather stay here and watch over the body.”

“Are you sure? You might have to fend off some vultures once they see their food.”

“Positive. One hundred percent. Besides, I don’t feel too good right now.”

“That might be because that creature may have some toxic chemicals that are being released through the smoke right now.”

Cora shook her head. “I fell and injured my ankle. I’ll stay here and watch instead.”

Mira must've easily read through her lousy excuse, especially because Cora never made an effort to relieve the weight off her supposedly injured ankle, but nodded, looking mournfully at the javelin that had been snapped in half by the explosion. “That beast even survived my javelin throw. I skewered it straight where I thought the most organs would be concentrated.”

“It’s not a monster we’ve ever seen. Hopefully Rhodes finds something out about this creature."

"Oh, he will. I'll return in approximately half an hour--any longer and I'll probably have gotten eaten or something." When Cora's face contorted into shock, Mira laughed. "It's a joke. Relax. With my explosive arrows, I'd kill anything in a heartbeat."

She gnawed on a pinky nail. "About that…"

Cora never had a chance to finish when the remaining claw trembled. It swiped blindly around, the woosh of air as easily replaceable by human flesh had either stood closer. Mira unsheathed a knife and severed the remaining strands of tissue clinging to the arm's undersides. The claw died, immobile, although the same couldn't be guaranteed of the smoldering pile of the former creature.

"I got ambushed and nearly got my foot torn off,” Cora explained, taking a couple steps away from the corpse. Mira did the same, her hand resting on the hilt of her blade should the corpse stir again. “That thing could dig underground faster than I could run. I can show you the tracks it left, the burrow, the spot where I’d been attacked.”

Mira ran her free hand over her bun, unfastening the hairband, her hair falling in one swoop over her shoulders, the same length as Cora’s. “That’ll be greatly useful. Do you need me to fire another arrow into the body? It’ll have to finish the job, but I doubt Rhodes would want such a damaged specimen.”

“I’m good.” The truth was she didn’t trust herself within five feet of the decimated body. Mira didn’t need to know that. “Please make it quick, though. The smell. Yuck.”

“Right, right. Although don’t forget you’re the one who’s torturing yourself.”

Mira set off down a beaten dirt path towards a distant structure which Cora assumed was farmer Orwen’s farm. The rain fell harder in sheets, splattering the earth, extinguishing the last of the smoldering remains, soaking into her clothing. She tested the barn door and was relieved to find it open. She pushed the door inwards enough so she wouldn’t get wet, then let the back of her boot stop the door from swinging back into a closed position.

Here, she felt safe. Several enclosures had pigs, chickens, and even two cows milling about inside the barn. The nearest animals, the chickens, pecked at feed thrown onto the unfurnished ground, bare earth that was dry compared to outside. She folded her arms over her chest and scrutinized the body of the mutated horror. Once again, she felt a certain dread creep up her spine until she was forced to look away in fear of letting that dread paralyze her.

This creature had been built as an apex predator. The two bony arms that survived both explosions were proof of that. The mutation had dug at a speed faster than she ran, knew where she’d been even without sight, had the intelligence and reflexes to deflect a knife that should’ve impaled it, and managed to keep up with her despite a wounded leg.

Something in the corpse stirred. She tensed, but the movement stilled. She decided that was a product of the growing windstorm that would soon blow away anything that wasn’t firmly rooted to the ground.

She bit her lip. When she’d decided to become a farmer, she knew about the dangerous situations a farmer could find themselves in, whether through acquiring a disease, letting the bigger breeds of animals overwhelm them, get bitten by the local wildlife, or get mauled by the mutations. The prospect of finally having her childhood home back again, combined with her carrying her father’s legacy, eclipsed any fears she’d had. That, and the assurance that there were no land mines near Lazarus.

The mutation picked at her defenses, though. The single memory of her foot being trapped was enough to pick away a chink in her armor, doubt able to creep through that crevice. Unlike the creature, Cora wasn’t built to survive dangerous encounters. This mutation survived because it’d evolved to. Humans were only so strong before the horrors nature produced tore them apart. Weapons were the one way they had managed to compete against nature’s best killers and eventually conquer the globe, and it was those same weapons that led to humanity’s downfall.

Technology and intelligence were the only advantages they had. As a farmer, where technology was limited to melee weaponry, intelligence was everything. Cora shivered. Was it anymore? Did it matter how well thought-out a plan was if nature evolved creatures that would survive such a plan? This mutation could’ve easily torn her apart if one of its legs hadn’t been crippled. Cora might’ve led it to Mira, and the outcome would’ve ended a bloody mess.

Stop. She shook her head, trying to rid herself of those traitorous thoughts mere weeks before the Rake. There were no doubts to be had. She’d pass the test, regain the deed to her childhood home, carry her father’s legacy, and feed and shield Lazarus from the unforgiving world.

Hundreds of others had come before her. There had to have been at least several people who questioned their decision as she was, but became a farmer either way. Most farmers lived to a ripe old age. She would, too. The odds were stacked up on her side.

Sucking in a deep breath, she waited a few more minutes until she was sure, absolutely sure, that the creature was dead. Then, checking the skies for any vultures, which she was sure would never appear during storms like these, she closed the barn door and planted her hands on her hips, scanning the barn for anything of use she could do.

Once she figured out what needed to be done, the next half hour flew by rather quickly, her hands working deftly with the animals, unafraid since they were teddy bears compared to the mutation that had nearly killed her. The chickens were the most difficult to cooperate with, as every time she got close to their enclosure, they squawked at her, their feathers ruffling up. Eventually, she gave up trying to befriend them and instead sprinkled food where they usually ate, gaining a final squawk before they ate.

Once she was sure enough time had passed, she opened the barn door. The storm was raging, torrents of rain crashing against the barn and Mira’s home, flooding the earth so a miniature river carried dirt and sediment away towards the fields, themselves bent backwards as the wind blew harshly.

Through the haze of rain that clouded sight of the land, she squinted for any geometric shapes or movement that indicated that she was back.

Of course, no Mira in sight.

Cora gnawed the inside of her cheek. Rain or no rain, the farmer should’ve returned, likely with Orwen for added safety. Farmers didn’t let the weather disrupt their work unless it was truly bad. Especially somebody like Mira, whose decades of experience wouldn’t deter her from a regular rainstorm.

Then her heart dropped when she noticed another sight missing.

The body was gone.

She shot out into the rain, scanning frantically for signs of the body, but there were none, not even the severed bony arm that had contrasted so distinguishably against the beaten dirt. She ran around in a circle, checking and double checking the spot where she was sure she’d left the body, but nothing appeared. No fragment of flesh. No fragment of bone. Nothing.

The rain couldn’t have washed the body away, nor the wind. It was too heavy. Just to be sure, she ran down the general area where the wind blew, where the body might’ve been blown towards. There was absolutely nothing.

She gritted her teeth, attempting to stop them from chattering. The barn door was flapping open and closed, squeaking on its hinges, the wind having found a new place to blow in. The animals let out a series of squawks, moos, and squeals.

Cursing, she ran back towards the shelter of the barn. She slammed the door shut and pressed a hand to her heaving chest. The body was gone. There was no way a bird of prey had taken everything. Definitely not the bony part, which was useless.

At the far end of the barn, one of the cows suddenly mooed, the noise louder than any she’d heard. Just as fast as the cow mooed, it fell silent, and the gurgle of liquid that followed immediately set her on edge. The second cow mooed, only to be silenced just as quickly.

Her heart beat hard enough for her to feel it. Terror numbed her extremities. After she heard an audible thud, she peered around the corner of a haystack, her breathing erratic.

A bony arm ripped a hole through the dead cow. Her breath caught in her throat. The still-living monstrosity twisted its head back, body still tearing apart the two cows, and smiled. Milky eyes swirled in their sockets. Her eyes ran to the hole right outside the cows’s enclosure, where a single bony arm lay, dismembered, within.

She cried out. And then the creature turned around and charged.