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It was a surreal sensation. Neil stood there in that kitchen, an alien expression of indifference crossing his face. For a moment, he had been a machine. For a moment, just before landing the killing blow--he had been disconnected from empathy, operating only on a need to survive.

When the recoil finally hit, he didn't recall, but at some point, he realized he had dropped the axe, and was just staring down at the battered remains of his opponents. Suddenly, they did not seem so intimidating--meek, crumpled mummies, oozing in pools on the tile.

These things were people once. he thought. This is so fucked up--I'm attacking other humans.

A palpation shot through him, and he watched his world spin...

What the fuck...

Suddenly, he was staring down at his own hands--one still human; one, bestial, clawed--and trembling, as he felt his blood pumping. What frightened him was not pain, or disgust... but contentment. A need that had been satiated... and a hunger that had not_._ Suddenly, he was on his knees, stooping over the creature he had hacked in two, whose liquid filth poured across the floor from its open brain... and he felt a ravenous hunger--felt his world spin, and go red, as he opened his mouth wide, and sank his teeth into the cadaver, golden nectar spilling forth from its dessicated skin--

So engrossed, he did not hear, so engorged, he did not react, when the footsteps came--when something hard slammed down on his head--

* * *

When he awoke, it all seemed like an uncanny nightmare. He didn't know himself from mud--didn't know where he was, how he got there, and it was all dark.

Then he realized he couldn't move. At first, he thought he must be dead, buried in the ground. Then the beating of his heart told him that could not be it. When the lights flicked on with the audible tripping of a switch, he was drowned in a blinding world of grey walls and cold, white fluorescence.

"Nap time's over." a female, Latina voice instructed. "I'm going to let you talk, but don't try to bite."

Her fingers touched down on his cheek--cool, but alive--and ripped back adhesive tape.

"Oww!" he yelped. "Easy! What the hell is this, Marathon Man?"

"What this 'is', is a biopsy." and with that, the woman grabbed his arm tightly, and jabbed a needle in the skin beneath his elbow joint. He winced, felt faint for a second...

"Yeah, and if he doesn't behave, an 'Autopsy', right doc?" another female voice threw from across the room--this one in a Texan accent.

"Damn! Where am I... how long have I been out, and who the hell--"

The woman tapped her finger on his lips and tongue, and prompted; "No biting," then slipped out the needle, and put a bandage on the inside of his arm.

He briefly looked around, as his world panned into focus, and realized that he was in a surgical chair, bound up and being examined. The doctor continued her minstrations, but it was the southern girl who spoke up to answer him.

"I found you actin' all crazy in the hotel a few hours ago, but since ya didn't look like no creepin' kerrrrrdaver..." she drew emphasis on the last bit, as if slightly sarcastic on the part of him looking cadaverous--

"I hauled your ass back to the doc here. You'd been eatin' the wrong side of beef, ya asked me."

The lady doctor touched his right hand, and ran a finger through the fur on it for a second, appraising it.

"Where did you get this?" she asked.

"What?"

She adjusted the chair, so that he was looking directly at her--dark, shoulder-length hair, hazel eyes, and glasses. She squeezed a little hard on his palm, and he was reminded of its strange, reconfigured new anatomy--barely feeling her thumb through the tough sole of hair.

She held his transformed limb up for him to see, wrapping her fingers around his man-paw hand.

"Where did you get this arm? What was done to you?"

"I got bit. By an animal." he said, tersely, clearly irritated by this point.

"This... 'animal'...?" She began, eying the woman behind her--a gangly redhead with pigtails, who could have easily passed for Pippi Longstocking if she weren't wearing a leather jacket, and didn't look entirely dead serious, with a shotgun slung over her shoulder.

"Dead." she muttered. "Looked like a coyote. Bigger than any coyote I'd ever seen. Killed some poor schmucks stayin' out late for drinks. Some of my guys. Idiots."

"You didn't bring the creature?" the woman protested, turning her head.

"And what the hell for? You want me to haul back every spook that's lyin' in a pile of hurt and guts now, that it?! We can put together the eight wonder o' the world, 'Leticia n' Kinsey, Freak Brigade' that it?"

"You are a cornball, Kinsey." the doctor smirked, removing the needle from Neil's arm, before turning around. "I cannot understand what it is that did this to this man, if I do not see the creature that did it, no?" she insisted. "You will bring it back, and I know just the fellow to help you."

"Yer crazy." the girl spat. "He don't even know what you want him for. He probably thinks we're a buncha organ scavengers--er somethin!"

"Fine." she sighed. "You. You can speak?" she turned and knelt over his side, cocking her head and making eye contact.

Neil nodded.

"You can think?" she asked, standing and tapping her head with a pencil.

"When required." he muttered.

"You will not... attack this girl?" she continued, looking actually hopeful he would--smiling at the notion.

"Assuming she doesn't HIT ME again." he growled.

"Hey, that was for yer safety, well as mine. What else was I sposed t'do, shoot--" she snapped, but the doctor cut her off.

"You will do." she sighed. "You help this girl, we'll see what we can't do to get rid of this--"

She squeezed his pawed hand, again.

"Right." Neil mumbled. Apparently, the three of them had formed some kind of strange alliance.

* * *

"So Freckles. What's your girlfriend's plan here?" Neil asked, as the two beat along a dusty trail in a pickup that had been parked outside the vet hospital where they'd dragged him.

"You talkin' to me?" the redhead challenged.

"Hey, easy Calamity Jane, we're smoking the peace pipe here. What's the plan, though? Doc gonna have me up and walking with you, just pick this body up and we... toss it in the trunk, and I walk free? Why send me--why the guy you don't know, with the--"

He reached out with his paw.

"Don't touch me with that!" she shouted, batting his hand away like a spider. "Doc Tish thinks you got somethin' special bout you, pardner, what with yer nasty critter mitt n' all, but I personally think I'm gonna put some twelve gauge in ya if you up and go crazy again. I was right sure about to blow your head off to begin with when I saw ya feastin' on them dead bodies."

"I honestly don't know what came over me." Neil whispered, wiggling his doggish digits in the darkness. "This... this thing... it feels like it's feeding off me. Changing me to want to do crazy things. Why 'did' you spare me, anyway? I must have looked like some kind of mess."

The redhead was silent for awhile, focusing on the trail. They'd chosen to swing out of town on a dirt road, to avoid unecessary confrontations with the locals--a plan that had so far payed off. Finally, she broke the silence, having calmed down a bit.

"Truth be told, somethin didn't feel quite right. You had a look about ya like you were in there somewhere, scared out yer damn wits--not like them horrible ghouls, what with the glow in their eyes. Givin another few seconds, I'da changed my mind, but I heard something damn right nasty callin' out in the night, and din't want ta draw its attention by shootin, so I cold-cocked ya and dragged yer ass back to the clinic."

He rubbed the back of his head, where there was a considerable knot still. "Yeah. Thanks for that..." he said halfheartedly. In truth, he wasn't sure what he wanted anymore, in this fucked up world. Not to get eaten, or cut up on a dissection table would have been a start, but he almost wished she'd shot him, when she had the chance.

"Welp, Doc sure wants it. I can see it when she looks at ya."

"What?!" he asked, suddenly confused. He was glad it was dark, because his cheeks had turned red.

"You know--" she continued on, "--the way she looked at you while you were out, like you were some prize stud she'd wrangled. I figure she wants to stick you up in some research institute, get herself recognized. Leticia Murphy, Monster Doctor or some such bunkum. Says she can fiddle with yer genes or whatever, figure out a way to stop the plague in these parts. Least make it easier to clean up without all the casualties, n' the need fer suits and crap to stop the radiation, or whatever the hell it is."

"Oh! Oh." He whispered. He'd misread her meaning entirely. He scratched at the back of his hand--it was itchy, under all that hair.

"I'd been thinkin' of movin' somewhere else, away from all the ruckus and danger and creepy critters, but it just din't seem right. I mean, twouldn't be no fun, and y'all would have one less gun on yer side here in this eerie place."

"Why 'have' so many people stayed here?" Neil asked. "You'd think an infested, empty ghost town would be... well, an infested empty ghost town."

"The coal mine." Kinsey answered. "People need jobs, people need ta protect what they've got, even if there are monsters now and again. Crater keeps things from gettin' overwhelmin', normally. Things've been worse since you rolled inta town, I think. Saw you drive in a couple nights ago, din't say much when ya hung yer hat and checked into the hotel, but we were pretty tame here, up til right last night."

"What happened then?" he asked, worried.

She shrugged. "Beats the everlovin' Hell outta me. Attacks on the barricade just got worse--more frequent--them dead sumbitches pushin' up outta the ruins, up the trail, tryin' ta squeeze into town, and then people up and, well--up and just started vanishin'! Cadavers leave bodies around when they attack, and there ain't none around."

"Maybe that's because the people who disappeared are still alive." Neil whispered, hopefully.

He felt a knot in his stomach, and a twitch of growth in his pants. He shuddered, shivered for a moment, as he felt an alien warmth filter through his body, tingling up and down his spine. Suddenly, he wasn't so uncertain about those vanished townsfolk. He had a sinking feeling that what had happened to them was in the process of happening to him, as well.

"Pull over, please." he groaned, suddenly nauseous.

With a screech, the tires ground to a halt.

* * *

The throbbing in his back wouldn't stop. It came warm, and regular, stretching and contracting. He felt his skin resist, stretching, tearing, and thickening to keep up with the new growth. Dropping his pants, he felt the new sensation intensifying, centralizing on a point, directly between his asscheeks. He reeled, dizzy from the blood pounding through his brain, warm and contaminated--knowing suddenly, that he was regressing. He felt a sharp snap in his neck, a hot prickles of new growth, pulsing in his collarbone, and along the back of his neck--needles of fur piercing from his epidermis--first tough and stubbly, then growing, elongating, and softening. What culminated however, was the tensing of muscle throughout his body in spasms, before finally climaxing with the growth and stretching of a new, naked limb, swaying, steaming with internal warmth, in the cold desert air.

His devolution had begun.

Through all of this, Kinsey watched, fascinated, and disgusted. She saw him wretch a line of glowing, gold fluid, and sink his head pathetically, as his ears perked like a dog's--sharpened, thinner, and elongated at the tips, but still holding onto their humanity, just barely retaining a naked, lobed appearance--remaining, for the time, at the sides of his head. She watched his spine flow down his backside, like a burrowing creature beneath skin, as the nub grew, inch after inch, thickening, curling and stretching, until it was nearly a foot in length. He knelt there, as the fur spread down his backside, stopping just short of his rear, and for a moment, the country girl wondered if it was best just to shoot him.

Finally, however, he stabilized. Like cooling magma, the changes slowed. Some of the fur even withdrew, like each follicle had needed a chance to stretch, and could now relax, back into his skin. He became steady, tranquil even, as he curled his nails into the dusty earth. His left hand had enlarged, and begun the process of change, to match his right. Already his nails felt brittle, ready to snap off--to be replaced with growing canine claws. Still, he had fight left in him. He wouldn't turn into a beast so quickly, not while there was the chance at a cure.

Standing, he had to drag up his pants, almost not bothering--almost shedding them altogether, along with his dignity. He hoped that Kinsey hadn't seen his maleness, hadn't gotten a good view of his changes in the dark. There were some things he just wasn't ready to accept--he didn't need this total stranger bearing witness.

The tail he had grown was awkward to deal with in blue jeans. He had to sit uncomfortably on it as he tightened his belt, and slid back into the passenger's seat.

"Let's go get yer critter." Kinsey whispered with determination.