Free Bestial by William D. Carl Page B

naked people out there, and a lot of live ones, all waking up at dawn. I think we all changed. I think people who didn’t, people like you, are really in the minority.”
    “Are you going to change again?” she asked. “I need to know, Karl. When and where … I can’t just wait around for you to grow fangs and kill me.”
    “I don’t know. I can still feel something … bristling inside me. Like hair that’s grown on the inside of my skin. So, yeah, I’ll probably do it again, because I can feel it just itching to release itself. I can’t tell you when or where. But I think it’s coming.”
    They sat across from each other, the man in his bathrobe, the woman in jeans and a white shirt, her legs tucked beneath her. They sipped their coffee as golden sunlight streamed through the kitchen windows. It all seemed so normal and prosaic.
    Just what she had always longed for.
    But his words disturbed the peaceful scene, his suggestion that he was hairy on the inside of his skin, his violent actions hidden from her.
    How much had he hidden in the previous months, when her world was imploding?
    Had he been a monster before this transformation?

9
    SEPTEMBER 17, 9:16 A.M.
    R ick placed his arm around Chesya’s shoulder, feeling it necessary to steady himself against someone. Mistaking his gesture for one of solace, she leaned into the muscular arm, his biceps solid against her face. They stood at the entrance of the bank, framed by jagged pieces of glass in the doorway, staring out at the destruction that had overwhelmed them into silence.
    It was too much.
    “How do people go on?” Chesya asked, her eyes adjusting to the bright sunlight. “Something like this happens. . . . How do people just go on with their lives?”
    Rick shook his head. “I don’t know. But they do. Somehow.”
    “Like the people in New York City after nine eleven?”
    “Chesya, I think this is gonna be a lot worse than that.”
    Sixth Street of downtown Cincinnati lay in ruins. A gas main had burst, blowing a wide hole in the street and blasting chunks of blacktop everywhere, through the glass of various buildings, into cars. The explosion had shattered windows for a block in every direction, and the roads sparkled with bits of glass. Several automobiles had been driven into the gaping disaster, taillights still blinking. The road had cracked in several directions, occasionally dropping into darkness, revealing sinkholes. One of these holes had opened in a parking lot near Race Street, nipping at the corner of a rather large hotel, causing the thirty-six-story building to lean, wavering dangerously in the breeze. The explosion must have ruptured a water main, as most of the street was covered in a wet sheen, and water spumed from the cracked sidewalk like oil from deep inside the Earth.
    Near the end of the street, a city Metro bus had overturned,smashing the tops of several cars, creating a blockade. Blood caked the inside of the bus, blocking the view. In the distance, someone had piled hot dog carts into a huge pile and set them on fire. The flames had spread, burning several storefronts. Far away, sirens wailed, but Rick couldn’t discern whether they belonged to the fire or police departments.
    Not that it mattered. The streets were completely blocked by cars bumper-to-bumper, some crashed into each other, locked in a fatal embrace, and the overturned bus effectively closed off the end of the road. A Brink’s truck, probably headed toward the bank for a pickup, lay tumbled on its passenger side, smashed between two SUVs. Nothing was going to be going in or out of the city for quite some time. Not on these blocked streets. Not in this mess.
    Then there were the bodies. They were scattered, dotting the landscape like punctuation, commas of ruined flesh. Burnt bodies, still smoking, charred to little but blackened skin and bones. Bodies with their throats torn out, the blood pooled halo-like around their heads. Crushed bodies, smashed