Song ~ War (Stripped) - Jordan Max

The virus spread like than malicious gossip has everyone cowered in fear, to the cities underground. This mutation was neither natural or bio-engineered, but mother nature creating her cause against us it has an over ninety percent kill rate.

Animals seem to take a different take to the virus, they basically bathed in knowing that us humans are fair game, becoming immune to the virus. They developed feature's that made them astronomically large to proportion and basically merge with the species around them.

We didn't need ninety percent of the products being produced but they were attempting not to ruin the planet as much as they already have, they didn't want to start another war when everything was so damaged already and wanted technology to be better for the generations to come. Most folks abandoned the malls and supermarkets, except for the ones who couldn't afford to and were left to be Surfacers.

After the merge to underground cities, the world up top was ruled by the Mutation. Human's never roamed up here again, well besides the Surfacers. A few years before the tipping point we realized our insanity for over fifty years, they still have all the consumer goods they needed to live a comfortable modern lifestyle. They had enough electronics, ovens, spoons, bowls, bedding, clothes in the homes and in stores all over the world to just hunker down until Undergrounders technology would somehow make the Mutation disappear.

Kaiser was left out of that equation when he struck in the supermarket as a child, he had lost his mother in the chaos right when the Mutation proceeded to get worse and amongst the commotion at the storefront. People were downright starving, and decide to raid the supermarket. Since the government was already demolished by the uprising, nobody cared about the law.

People went crazy with rage, and high on adrenaline and his mother was taking away amongst the riot. He had woken up, in the middle of the store, confused and memories washed away. That's when he was left to fend for himself at the age of twelve, with no prior engagement with humankind as he continued to hide in the storage room of the supermarket. Since then, he has had no human interaction.

After the course of seven years, he had been left to fight on his own. He had figured the necessities by raiding hospital, supermarkets, and outfitter stores loading his oversized backpack and a raising amount of masks to shield whatever the mutation had created, from his nose and mouth.

He was running low on bullets and decide to enter into a rundown store; which had a fish reaching for a hook out of the water. He jerked open the automatic doors which had been kept close and cracked from the Surfacers attempting to get in, (what they didn't know was a button just to the corner of the doors would have gained them entrance) dead bodies surveyed the entrance. He needed to replenish his camping gear and a new backpack as well.

He couldn't read, due to the Mutation, he no longer had someone teach him the art of recognizing words. He spoke English and that was better than nothing, but he never spoke, his thoughts were what kept him company. He shuffled his assault rifle to his left hand and kept an extra gun; a sawed-off shotgun in his bag for safe keeping.

He looked around the store, and notice a mirror reflecting his image upon itself. Kaiser hated his reflection, he practically cringed every time he saw a mirror.

Kaiser was just over six foot, his unruly hair shoulder length hair was knotted from the years of travel and afraid that the water was contaminated, he avoided it at all cost unless he found a bottle of water to wash the dirt and scum from his face. His eyes a brown, but he couldn't quite tell since most places he found mirror held no light, besides his flashlight.

The light was what drew the Beast in, he learned that the hard way. He was so cold, walking his way toward New Mexico from the cold bitterness of Montana. Before everyone disappeared underground, word around street was that New Mexico was accepting children without family but that ended up being false hope. He wasn't thinking about the fact of a fire attracting anything, he was young at the time and stupid.

The Beast crept onto him, one beast was never the same, always a different creation. This Beast was stealth like a lion, but quite like a mouse and it was an exact hybrid of a lion and mouse. He didn't see it coming till the lion yanked at his face, ripping into his lower jawline into a clean cut.

Kaiser could feel the tear of the wound and first, it came thick and strong, flowing through his fingers as he clasped the ripped flesh. He felt the blood move over his hand, the thick fluid no warmer or cooler than his own skin.

His defense was to kill the beast, with his rifle in hand he fired in rapid succession. Two shots, one to the eye and one to the back side, his first kill and his last fire.

Kaiser reaches up and lightly touches the scarring that the Beast had caused, still pink from the incident as he wenches in pain from the rawness.

He wasn't a medic and couldn't even stitch himself, he would have asked the Surfacers for help, but they all went crazy and killed themselves. He avoided any human contact and made himself aware of the dangers that came along with friendship.

After he finds his necessities and carries on back outside, his foot light to the crunch of dried pooled up blood underneath his hiking boots, as the cool burning September air built up around him, he couldn't remember that the last time sunlight had reached his skin but he remembers the warmth.

Kaiser glanced around for any sightings before digging out his map, his next destination in Florida.