Morgan: Chapter 2 (Reader Plus CYOA) (Patreon)

You would go forward.

It took you away from the slaughter and it appeared to be the path most clear of places for those things to hide in.  Plus it was the most direct route toward that strange woman.  The more you thought about it the more you realized it was your best and possibly only hope for survival.  You needed somebody who knew about this place.  And even though she had trained the barrel of a rifle at you you would take your chances with another human any day over those monsters that you had just escaped from.  Literal monsters!  What the fuck was happening right now?  Why had this happened to you?  Would you ever see home again?  All those people…dead.  Mike!

You shake your head.  Focus!  Your life depends on it.

Creeping to the front of the vehicle you take a peek around it to discover the snowy haired woman was gone.  Where did she go?  Had she hidden to try to draw you out of cover or had she simply disappeared behind the rise.  Either way those heart-wrenching groans that you could still just hear told you that it was time to move.  Your eyes dart about trying to find a route up to the top of the cliff.  Normally you could have plotted the easiest path between any two points in this city but the destruction and upheavals had changed the landscape significantly.  You plot it out as best you can then get ready to run.  How you wished you had your bike.  After a moment to consider you click the safety back on and stuff the pistol into one of the voluminous pockets of your sturdy cargo shorts as you wanted your hands free to climb and vault.

Like a sprinter out of the blocks you take off straight down the street.  The ground is slick with a fine layer of mud from the sleet mixing with layer of dirt and ash that covered everything but you adjust your gait to adapt.  Thankful to not hear any shots ring out you shift your entire focus on just finding that woman.  As you run you spare the occasional glance to your left and continue calculating how to make it up that rise without taking unnecessary risks.  It is then you notice a bent and twisted ribbon of track of what had once been an elevated railway.  Your eyes follow it’s length up the sharp rise.  If you could get to the base of it that would work, though that would require entering the building in which the track had cut into like a band saw.  With time of the essence there was nothing for it.  No other route was immediately obvious and every moment you wasted down here was a minute that woman might be moving on.  With each panicked stride you clung harder and harder to the one and only lifeline you had.  You HAD to find that woman!

Slithering, skittering, quivering horrors stir in every shadowy space and crevice but you keep your focus straight ahead.  If you paused or even let your eyes dwell for too long you felt that you might just lose your life, your sanity, or both.  You had never been more terrified in your life and without this thread of hope to follow you probably would have broken down completely.

You zig through some ruined cars and zag around a rusted dumpster then make for a hollow window.  Too late you attempt to slow down.  Your shoes slide in the slick mud sending your legs hard into the stone of the building, your momentum clumsily flipping you into the window frame you had meant to hurdle through.  You land on hard tile and jagged chunks of concrete.  Gritting your teeth against the pain you scramble to your feet and scan the area.

A large lobby yawned into darkness before you.  This was a building you knew well.  One that received regular deliveries.  You would have been stopping her next had your last delivery gone to plan.  You stop a moment and try to control your heavy breathing so that you could listen.  You hear nothing.  You see nothing.  And yet you sense…something.  Ahead of you.  Blackness within blackness.  A shadow within a shadow.  A pair of inky eyes unseen but felt.  Something stirred inside of this room!

You fumble for your pocket but when it doesn’t immediately open you abandon the pistol and take to foot once more.  Ahead and to the right was the stairwell and you could see a chunk of wall that had been punched through by some great force.  Diving through you slide and hit hard against the solid metal railing, a numbing pain shoots down from your shoulder and through your arm.  No time for that.  Climb!  Run!  Faster!

Back through the hole you’d jumped through there comes a low wail like the howl of a mid-winter blizzard.  The mud caked on your shoes makes you slip but you grab the rail and pull yourself we ever greater urgency up the flights of stairs.  Two and three at a time you stride.  The only light within the well comes from the top high above which was open to the gray sky.  Below you hear the crunch and tumble of the hole being torn at by something with a strength greater than any man’s.

Four floors up you throw yourself into the door.  It grinds open to your efforts no more than a foot and half but you force your way through the space.  There!  At the end of the hall.  The rail tracks jutting through a huge rend in the wall.  Between you and there however…there rose a shimmering mound of gelatinous flesh.  It had been lying in a flat mound but at your appearance had begun to form itself up into a misshapen pillar.  Beneath its reddish translucent surface you could see parts of…things.  Things you recognized but torn from their proper context.  A canine foot…the beak of a gull…a human ear…and more all suspended within this thing like fruit inside a jello mold.  And the unnerving way it begins to move was unlike any natural thing you had ever witnessed.

You overwhelmed mind shatters at the sight of it.  The last fragment that remained pulsed its urgent message over and over.  The woman!  The woman!  Get to the woman!

“AAAHHHHH!!!”  You let out a scream of terror even as you charge straight toward the fleshy pillar.  As you near it it spins in place and you see a row three mismatched and bloodshot eyes lock onto you.  “AAAAAAHHH!!!”

At the last second you leap high into the air.  Slapping both hands down onto the wet clammy peak of the pillar and vault even higher, your back scraping against what was left of the ceiling.  You can barely believe it when you find yourself on the other side of it.  You run.  You run like you have never run before.

Though you are four floors up you don’t hesitate an instant before hurling yourself through the open space into thin air.  Snatching out with your left hand you grab the cold iron of the track and swing around under it.  Without a backward glance to see what that thing was doing you climb, climb, climb climb.  It is only when you are most of the way up the slope and it seemed that nothing was on your trail that you allow yourself to slow down.  Clinging to the track you look back to the city, your city, sprawling out a shattered remnant of its former glory.  Hugging to a tie, the cold wind cutting you to the bone, you take a moment to collect your breath and your wits before you start your climb again.

The rail passes no closer than fifteen feet from the top of the cliff so you find the best place you could and hang from it then let go to drop to the ground below.  You land nimbly and spring up.  Up here the buildings had been laid flat, the upheaval of the earth beneath them causing them to tumble like bowling pins.  Crawling across the slabs of broken concrete and twisted beams of steel you make your way toward what appeared to be a path.  As you go you hear none of the stirring and crawling that haunted you in the streets below.  Up here all seemed still.

You find the path which is no more than narrow gap down the center of what had once been a tree lined avenue.  At the base of one of a nearby building you spot a familiar cornerstone and realize that this used to be an area of affluent condominiums, but this neighborhood ought have been over half a mile from here.  Whatever moved this chunk of earth hadn’t just risen it but pushed it across several blocks of the surface.  What power could possibly do something like that?

You turn left and peer ahead where you see a clearing at the edge of the cliff.  You could be wrong but you are pretty sure that was the very space that you’d seen that mysterious woman staring down a scope at you.  You scan to the sides to make sure there were no more abominations ready to get you then creep forward, your hand slipping into the pocket with the pistol as you go.  Despite your best efforts your hard, gulping breaths and trembling body makes true stealth impossible but you do what you can.

Just reaching the clearing you are frozen in your tracks by the sound of heavy inhuman snort.  Your eyes shoot the direction you heard it and there maybe fifty yards further down the trail you see a huge humped bison-like beast with shaggy soot black fur.  You believed that it was facing away from you but in this crazy place who could really tell front from back.  The only thing that kept you from running from it was that strapped onto its back is a sort of pack saddle loaded with all manner of boxes, sacks and rolls.  It was clearly some sort of beast of burden.  Belonging to the woman?  You take two cautious steps forward but then are rooted back in place as the creature turns its great horned head around to look at you.  That was no bison!  It’s large bulbous eyes were a milky white and beneath the hung a mass of writing tentacles!

“What the fuck are you?”  You whisper as you pull the pistol from your pocket.

CRACK!

Your hand is struck by something hard, sending your pistol flying from your grip.  You spin to see what had hit you when suddenly a leg is taken out from under you sending you on a one way trip to the mucky ground.

“NNNFFF!”  You grunt as you land hard and flat on your back.

Before you can sit back up a foot comes stamping straight down onto your chest knocking whatever wind you had left from out of your lungs.  You lay there gulping like a fish out of water staring up at…a beauty so powerful that for a moment it even cuts through the terror that clouded your mind!

From where you lay she appeared as a towering giant but even without this forced perspective she looked to be at least six foot tall.  Her face was fiercely regal, like some warrior queen of myth.  She had hints of Asian heritage in her features but her ancestry was clearly mixed.  She wore a cobbled outfit of mismatched fatigues and rugged outdoors wear, all in muted colors made for blending in and not standing out.  And the powerful build within those clothes filled them out wonderfully.  In her late thirties to early forties she seemed to possess both a youthful vigor and the wisdom of years.  Just the way she stood reminded you of an athlete in their prime and yet there was something in her face and eyes that exuded ‘old soul’ vibes.  And speaking of those eyes, WOW!  They were unlike any you’d seen before.  They were large, expressive, and most lovely and unique shade of pale violet.  Her long snow white hair allowed to flow freely down her back and the long rifle that she carried across that back told you that this was indeed the woman you had seen from below.  One detail that catches your eye only because of how it clashed with the rest of what you were seeing was prodigious bulge that filled the crotch of her pants.  You might have missed it but the way the fabric stretched as she kept a foot planted on your chest made it impossible not to notice.  You could plainly see she was a biological female and yet…there it was.  She either had a purse or pouch stuffed down there for safe keeping or she was the most impressively passing transwoman that you’d ever noticed.

Her beauty can only keep you distracted for a moment as the panic and fear come flooding back.  You grab the toe of her boot, not to push it off but to cling to it as if your life depended on it.

She leans over to study you a moment before saying.  “I would appreciate it if you did not shoot my animal.”  She pulls her foot from your grip and steps back.

“P-Please!”  You beg.  “I-I don’t know what’s happening.  I was there…and then I was here.  All those people!”

“The Seep found your time and place.”  She says as she kneels down to pick up the pistol.  Standing again she gives it a once over, pulling the clip and checking the chamber before clacking it back together again.  “You did well to make it this far.”

“Please!  What’s happening?  Those people!  Those things!”

“Welcome to hell.”  She sighs.  “On your feet.  Are you hurt?”

You roll to your knees then struggle to your feet.  She makes no move to aid you but neither does she appear to be enjoying your misery.

“Um…uh…a few bruises.”  You say as you feel around your body.  “Nothing serious.  My…my hands itch.”  Opening your hands you see that your palms and the bottoms of your fingers were blotted with little dots of pink.  “That thing!  I touched it!”

The woman leans forward and looks at your hands.  “You’ll be fine.  Be clear in an hour.”  She continues looking you over, concurring that you indeed look in good shape given the circumstances.  “You’ll need warmer clothes.”  With a deft spin of the gun she holds it by the barrel and offers you the grip.  “You’ll need this too.  You lucked out coming through with a weapon.”

You recoil from the gun as if it were on fire.  “WAIT!  I’m fit!  I can keep up.  I won’t slow you down.”

“Calm down.”  She says.  “I’m not going to let you die.  You showed you were worth something just by making it here.  You got the survivor instincts.”  Stepping up she grabs your wrist and forces the gun back into your hand.  Taking the gun you clutch it to your chest.  She pats your shoulder.  “We don’t let fellow survivors die if we can help it.  There’s not enough of us left to spare.  Okay?”

“O…Okay.”  A great wave of relief washes over you as you realize she was taking you with her.

Still holding your shoulder she looks into her eyes and makes a human connection, in doing so she passes some of her inner strength to you and allows you to begin to settle.  “I am sorry you had to go through that.”  She says, her tone not warm but full of sympathy.  “I’m glad ya made it.”

“Thank you.”  You whisper.

She gives a nod and steps back.  “Are you virile?”

“Ex-Excuse me?”

“Can you have kids?”  She asks.  “Can you get it up?  Are you shooting blanks?”

“Uh, yeah, I mean no, I mean…everything works.”

“Did your junk get touched by any magic down there?”

“Magic?”

“Well?”

“Uh, no.  No, no.  Nothing like that.”

“Look at that.  You are a lucky one aren’t ya.  I could use a little luck around me.”  With a nod toward your privates she says.  “You protect that.  It’s your most valuable asset.”

“Uh…right.”

She turns, her long hair whipping behind her, and waves for you to follow.  “Come on Lucky.  We’ve got a camp not too far away.  It’s safe.  Safe as it gets anyway.”

“M-My name is Ashe.”  You say as you hurry to catch up.

“Morgan.”  She says in return.

“Morgan.”  You repeat under your breath.  What a lovely name.

Chapter 3