Ashen

Part Five

Where we left off:

"Target has engaged with bystander."

"Fuck." Rudy stomped his heel just as they turned onto Fifth, a second before Mac saw the cursed renaissance painting of a Feral clutching a man in its claws in the center of the street.

Next!

"There!" She shouted while she rammed the car to a screeching halt, and all four officers shoved open their doors, bursting into the bitter autumn winds.

"Pull out your weapons!" Rudy barked the order, closest to the target, his handgun already lifted and in-line. Just as he took aim, the Feral, with burning eyes and crooked limbs, swung so the man he had by the neck was between its body and the police. The man cried in a strangled voice to every god that had ever been, as Rudy shouted more to himself than anyone else: "The bystander is in the way!"

No later had the words escaped his mouth than the Feral's claws had torn clean through the bystander's throat, leaving Mac to hiss bitterly. "He's already dead, Wilder."

As the human head hit the ground, and the rest of his corpse soon after, October got her first good look at a Diseased that wasn't from behind a glass. She gagged on her heart at the image. Seeing one's face close enough to make out its features was shocking, nauseating, and beyond her current depths of existential fear. It was achingly familiar, yet so utterly wrong- like the the first look beneath bandages at what used to be perfect skin, now marred permanently by a hideous, disfiguring scar.

All because the thing looked so unbearably similar to her- her father, her family, her friends, any Ashen she had ever known. But it's eyes were unnerving in that nearly undefinable way- wide and wild just as belonging to those who have lost their mind- and while it's body twisted as though its cartilage had melted like wax, in its dirtied clothes she could still see who it may have been in every moment it had lived before.

As she drank in the sight like acrid poison, the Feral noticed them. Instinctually, she took a step back, steadying herself for an impending attack, but instead, as if comprehending the ability of that which was here to kill it, it began sprinting- a blur of hyper speed- in the opposite direction.

Rudy's weapon dropped to his side. "Shit, it's running."

Already moving, Mac declared. "I'll use the car, cut it off." Before she could reach the door, Jasper interrupted.

"I can catch it."

Rudy, who had somehow become defacto leader, stared at the recruit with the dark, hungry stare, and snapped. "Then what are you waiting for?" Needing no further urging, Jasper took a runner's stance, and with all the force of a thousand gales, launched off his heels in pursuit. In seconds he hit fifty miles per hour, his coworkers left coughing on dust and awe, and in seconds he caught the creature by its collar, yanking it to a stop, sending its limbs flailing.

Distantly, he heard Rudy yell from behind him. "Drolden! Lift it!"

Struggling to keep the thing at arm's distance from tearing him apart, Jasper called back, wondering if he'd heard correctly. "What?!"

Rudy was nearing, steady, and held his gun so its trajectory was above Jasper. "Give me a clean shot!" Officer Drolden turned his attention back to the Feral, that was snarling at him like a rabid dog, spitting acid onto his coat, and with Ashen strength and one arm, lifted it over his head. Moments later, as he locked eyes with the beast that ruled his nightmares, he watched the bullet enter its forehead and explode out the other side.

When its body's had finally gone limp, he let it drop to the asphalt. More relaxed than he'd been in recent memory, Jasper extended his nails into claws, and calmly scraped the acid from his sleeve.