Wolves, as Brock’s memory and the discovery channel would have it, were predatory, quadrupedal pack animals, a species of feral canine that very much enjoyed their meat fresh. And currently, what was more appealing than a wounded and weakened human as he frantically tried to push a mound of wiry fur off of him and escape?

"I'm so fucked."

Cursing, Brock shoved at the limp beast atop him, finding his strength coming short each and every time. As the creature’s large size would suggest, it was fucking heavy. The piercing howls ringing out in the distance only served to stoke his flames of panic, as he knew the time to run was slowly ticking down. It was quite a stressful scenario, to say the least.

He eventually managed to leverage both of his butchered forearms under the muscled body of the beast and heave it off, letting it roll to the side and flop onto the ground with a thump. He barely gave himself the time to pant before shakily returning to his feet and stumbling over to a nearby building, desperation flaring in his eyes.

A cold sweat worked its way down the back of his neck as the howls got closer. Fuck. Fuck. Fuckkkkkk.

Brock unleashed a mental middle finger to the System as he grunted and rolled himself over the front counter within. Another grunt followed as he slammed face-first into a messy stack of rotting papers and woven tree roots as they traced themselves throughout the place in the intricate patterns of nature, stalling the slumping structure from its inevitable collapse.

He glanced around his little space behind the wooden counter, the first floor being some sort of front office, similar to the one found in his own firm. Furrowing his brows, he gave an aggrieved sigh as didn’t see any items nearby that could staunch the bleeding. He had a pounding headache too, though he wasn’t sure if that was a side effect of blood loss or stress.

“What the hell is happening?” he screamed quietly, fear devolving his voice to nothing more than a shaky mess.

Though he was inwardly in utter turmoil, he quickly stiffened and clapped his mouth shut as a trio of clicks entered his range of hearing. It didn’t even take a second for him to realise what they were; the sound of claws on asphalt. The wolf pack had come, and they meant business.

Oh fuck...

His breathing hitched and Brock desperately attempted to squeeze into an even tighter ball and lower his profile further. Behind him, over the counter, the Pontiacs sniffed about loudly, hopefully focused on the corpse of their comrade and not on the fear wafting off of him. Dearly, he hoped that thing about smelling fear was a myth.

Brock couldn’t help but shudder as one of the beasts growled to its surroundings, seemingly aware that they weren’t alone. Only forcing his headache to worsen, their prey held his next breath and looked inward in a futile attempt at calming his racing heart. He found his hands to be soaked with sweat as the echo of claws entered the bounds of the building.

I'm royally fucked now. Oh shit, shit, shit.

Prowling toward the counter that hid a man behind it, the beast snarled, nose twitching greedily as it tried to pinpoint the conflicting scents. With great effort, Brock bit back a scream as a snout larger than his own torso poked out overhead, snorting the air for the presence of its prey.

Brock's eyes widened as he spared the muzzle a fearful glance, noting the snow-white fur and the luscious softness it seemed to possess, a far contrast from the beast he had brawled with before. A strange weight settled over him as he hid, suppressing him in a seemingly physical but faint way. What the fuck...

Tears threatened to leak from his eyes and trace a trail down either cheek as he was mutely forced to watch as a thick wad of drool hung out the side of the beast’s mouth and slid down, splattering across his shoes. Instinctively, he almost yelled out in a sorrowful protest, though he doubted the beast would understand the value of genuine leather. The guy he bought it from sure had.

Thankfully, after another thirty seconds of solid sniffing, the creature retreated and began to trot off, snarling in annoyance as it was left with nothing to show for its time.

Holy shit on fucking toast.

Allowing himself the mental catharsis of an imaginary heaving sigh, Brock kept still and waited several more minutes before he carefully peeked over the counter, his eyes meeting the sight of an empty street and a freshly savaged wolf corpse. Somehow, he found the emotional space to frown in disgust. The beasts had clearly consumed their own.

Putting down his survival to the oils in the wolf’s fur imprinting him with its overpowering stench, Brock thanked his gods, the almighty beer and barbecue, for blessing him with the generous gift of continued life. The scent the wolf had was certainly strong enough to mask the stench of blood and sweat.

The simple-minded wolf monster must have been unable to distinguish its own wolf-ly scent from that of his human one. Thank fuck.

Even though the beasts had appeared to have left his sight, Brock didn’t dare leave, opting to just huddle up behind the counter for a while longer. He had to shut his eyes tightly as tears threatened to leak out, the horrible throbbing from both his brain and arms filling him with abject agony.

It wasn’t until another half hour passed that he finally crept back over the counter, carefully listening for even the barest of sounds indicating danger. The blood flow from his arms had eased up somewhat in the meantime, now only a gentle trickle, leaving a shell of crusted crimson clinging to his flesh.

He wasn’t exactly sure how much blood loss was lethal, but he didn’t think himself far off from that critical threshold. As he stood and began to walk, he felt weak and dizzy, the corners of his vision giving way to an ebbing black and his hearing slightly obscured by tinnitus. But that wasn’t the most pressing issue as of current.

No, what he was most concerned about was the bacteria present on the claws.

Brock thought himself the opposite of an expert on the topic of bacterial growth and mutant wolves, but he’d bet twenty bucks that the combo wouldn’t lead to anything good. Cautiously, he poked his head out from the doorway he had originally entered from and scanned the street both ways. Luckily, apart from a few short-lived trails of dripping blood sourcing from the now mutilated corpse, it was deserted.

Unsure of how he should be feeling about all this, Brock placed a quaking hand over his forehead, feeling the sheen of sweat beneath, “This is a weeb’s wet dream?”

Sighing lightly, he crept over to his coke as it rested, nestled between shards of glass, and scooped it up, taking a final chug of its remaining contents before tossing the bottle aside. Running a hand through his hair to calm his nerves, Brock considered the implications of beasts like them roaming about.

There's a pretty decent chance that they aren't the only monsters around. And if they all hunted in packs as those Pontiacs did, then he highly doubted that any potentially remaining people would have all that high of a survival rate, him included. Which might have altered his plans slightly.

Reluctantly, Brock deemed that searching for people among a transformed city fraught with danger was not going to be as fruitful as he had first thought it to be. And while he desperately wanted to return to some place of even remote familiarity, namely his office, the blood trails led in that direction, leaving him with no option but to move elsewhere. The question's where?

Despite how much he entertained the idea of holing up on the top floor of some building and waiting for help to come, he knew it would be a foolish endeavour. If another pack of Pontiacs entered the place and caught a whiff of him, he’d be cornered with no escape. Plus, he had a feeling help wasn’t going to be coming any time soon.

The obvious goal for him now was to pursue the strange quest he had received and find the ‘Source’. The main problem with that, he found, was that he quite literally knew more about rocket science than where and what the Source was. He didn’t even know what it would look like. I could walk right past the thing, and I wouldn't even know.

Ultimately, with no better ideas than the first one that came to him, Brock just began to walk in the opposite direction of the wolves, sparing some time to admire the almost artistic fusion of concrete and flora as he did so. While he was surrounded by hidden dangers and uncertainty, he had to admit that it was quite a surreal sight.

Only a few times during his leisurely yet fearful stroll did he once again have the pleasure of experiencing 'phasing', the strange phenomenon where he became an ethereal spectre, unable to find purchase on the physical world. Each time, it had resulted in either the entirety of his body sinking underground or just select limbs and portions of his body becoming immaterial.

Luckily, contrary to his greatest fear in this situation, he was always propelled back up into unoccupied space the moment before his phasing ended, as though it didn’t allow for him to re-exist in a place that already had physical matter there.

He wasn’t complaining on that last part, however, as he was sure he would find no joy in being crushed by the weight of the Earth any time he phased downward. It’d also be the last time it happened, on that note.

Throughout the entire trip, Brock was yet to spot evidence of the presence of even a single beast, barring the wolves he had first seen. Initially, he had been confused, but he soon concluded that it might have taken time for the horrifying beings to appear, wherever they came from. All he knew was they couldn’t be a natural occurrence, like native wildlife. They can't be, right?

On the other side of that cruel coin, he hadn’t noticed any signs of recent humanity either, further cementing the notion that Brock was the only human on Earth, or in the city at the very least, though that seemed oddly exclusive. The thought left him feeling scarily alone, walking through the towering jungle scape. For the first time in his life, Brock had no one to turn to or rely on.

He was truly alone in the world.

A bit rattled by the prospect of it all, Brock kept his head down and continued walking, hoping that the monotonous task would help ease his mind off the heavy topic. It worked, albeit by shifting it to something arguably worse; the dried gob of spittle clinging to his shoes.

The mere sight almost made Brock break down into tears. A bit over half a days’ worth of salary, wasted. Fucking dog.

Sporting ruined shoes and a slashed-up suit, Brock approached the boundaries of the city after a few hours of ceaseless walking, a frown marring his face as he dealt with the numb ache of every portion of his body. Beyond the bounds of the city, Brock observed a long highway road stretching into the distance, plains and wetlands to either side of it, untainted by the touch of civilisation.

It was a nice road, he knew. Often, he drove along it to get to work, opting to live ten or so kilometres from the bustle of the city, in a more rural area.

Putting that aside for the moment, however, Brock leaned down and rubbed his sore legs, unprepared physically for the walk he had just survived, before soon continuing on toward the highway, eager to escape the concrete jungle and enter somewhere less grand and more open.

He didn’t truly know if the Source was even in the bounds of the city and getting out to somewhere he could take a broader view of the place would help him spot any peeking points of interest in the canopies and rooftops, though he doubted he’d have any luck.

"What the...!"

What he didn’t expect though, was the collision of his forehead with an invisible barrier, rippling at his touch and rebounding an amplified amount of force back, almost bowling him over. Trapped in utter incomprehension, Brock watched as the air rippled like the surface of a pond, his point of collision the centre, before eventually stilling and becoming an invisible forcefield once more.

Disbelieving, Brock once more crept closer to the ‘wall’, and cautiously reached out, his finger brushing the barrier and getting pushed away softly, the air beginning to ripple once more.

Brock poked it again, with the same result, “…You’re fucking joking…”

Swiftly becoming frantic, Brock shed the weak finger pokes and began to bang on the barrier avidly with his fists, turning the air for as far as the eye could see into a storm of ripples. Each attack rebounded him with a painful amount of force, reopening wounds and sending pain travelling through his nerves, threatening to make him give up.

Soon though, he did give up, and he fell to his knees, panting and exhausted. His previously wounded arms had regained their earlier throb, and fresh blood had begun to ooze out from shattered scabs and re-broken skin, though it was nowhere near as bad as before. Tears welled in his eyes as he stared to the air before him with hopelessness.

If not for the prompt that abruptly appeared, Brock would have shortly risen to his feet and pounded on every portion of the perimeter until his hope gave out, trying to find a path to escape. But no, that remaining hope was squashed in an instant. Instead, dread arrived.

[Error #1617826 has been quarantined to locally affected area. Perish.]