Prologue: Ain’t No Grave -Johnny Cash
Solomon’s Day Count: 877
The darkness was thick with the smell of wet earth and rotting leaves, clinging to him and crawling into his nose and mouth with every shallow breath. The Hunter crouched low, one patched kInee sinking into cold, sticky mud, fingers clenched around his prototype—a gun the size and shape of a massive water gun, hastily painted matte black in an uneven attempt at camouflage. The plastic was chipped and gouged, copper wires looping along the barrel and arcing toward a makeshift holding tank bolted to the top.
He had to rush this. The sun was already setting, and he couldn’t wait any longer to test his theory.
*This had better work,* he thought, *because it’s going to cost me.*
In the clearing ahead, moonlight revealed a wretched creature crouched among the fallen leaves, oblivious to anyone’s presence—especially his. Its snout pulled tight with every breath, head hanging low, shoulders slumped. He studied it automatically, cataloging details the way he always did.
*Humanoid. Dog-like facial structure. Restricted airflow.*
Blue veins threaded beneath its skin like the others. Its chest and arms were carved up with repeated lacerations, the tissue around them inflamed and weeping, glowing faintly where regeneration had gone wrong.
*No wonder it stank,* he thought. *The wounds were infected.*
*Moonmutt. Figures.*
He couldn’t remember how long he’d been kneeling there, only that his knee had gone numb and wet had crept through the seam of his patched leather duster. Cold pressed into him from all sides.
*Beta Test 1.0.*
He’d fired the prototype exactly once—into a tree outside his workshop. That single shot had left him shaking and useless for the rest of the day. This was going to be worse.
It had taken two days on foot to reach this clearing. Two days away from shelter, away from safety, carrying nothing but a theory and a half-finished weapon.
But that was the point. He needed to be able to leave the compound, and he needed the energy.
*That tree won’t recover,* he thought. *It got smoked.*
He waited for the right angle, sighting the creature’s exposed side. The moment never came. The Moonmutt stayed bent forward, unmoving, arms limp.
Leaves stirred.
The smell vanished.
His stomach dropped.
*Oh shit. Wind changed.*
He snapped the prototype to his shoulder just as the creature’s breathing hitched. It lifted its head, nostrils flaring, and turned toward him with a low, wet growl.
*Shit.*
He tightened his grip, skin pressing against the copper wires. They hummed faintly beneath his fingers. He exhaled once and pulled the trigger.
The wires flared blue.
A beam tore from the barrel, slamming the gun back into his shoulder. The shot clipped wide—but not wide enough. Light burned across the creature’s face, neck, chest.
It screamed.
Its body came apart inside the beam, edges unraveling, flesh evaporating as the energy dragged backward toward the gun. The wires brightened, overloading, and the holding tank filled with writhing blue light.
The Hunter staggered, sweat breaking across his forehead, lungs burning. A laugh tore out of him before he could stop it.
“It works,” he gasped into the dark.
Then he heard another laugh, not his own.
Not relief. Not joy.
A laugh that scraped down his spine and stayed there.
He froze.
He hadn’t heard laughter—real laughter—in two years. Hadn’t seen another person in just as long. He’d dreamed of it, wished for it, hated the silence enough to cry over it.
In that instant, he wished it would stop.
The sound came from behind him.
His shoulders locked.
“What the hell—”
He rolled forward into the clearing, coming up hard with the gun raised. “Who’s there?!” His voice cracked across the trees.
Nothing answered.
Just his breathing. Too loud. Too fast.
For a moment, he was a boy again, standing beside his father in the dark, listening to wolves call across the hills. His father’s voice echoed in his head—steady, calm.
*Apex predators. Kings of the wild. Don’t cross their ground.*
Now, two days from safety, he feared he’d crossed something worse.
Movement at the edge of the clearing.
The figure stepped into the moonlight.
It wasn’t a wolf.
The Hunter’s six-foot-two frame felt small all at once, dwarfed by the shape in front of him. Pale skin. Long limbs. And a flash of red-
A grin.
“What the hell are you?!” he shouted.
The figure didn’t answer.
It just smiled the first smile he’d seen in two years.
He wished he hadn’t.
“Nope.”
Adrenaline burned through him as he fired again. Faster this time. Stronger.
The beam tore past where the thing *had been*.
It moved wrong; smooth and easy. Nothing like the Moonmutts with their twisted bodies and half-functioning limbs. This thing flowed out of the way, laughing, and lunged into the clearing.
Moonlight caught it fully.
Tall. Pale. Muscled. Arms and legs stretched just a little too long. Fingernails grown into long claws. Red hair hung loose in a wild mullet around its face.
*It’s a guy,* the Hunter thought.
Then something hard hit him. It was too quick too see, but it felt like a tree branch.
White burst across his vision as he flew backward into a tree. Something cracked—wood or bone, he couldn’t tell. The gun slipped from his hands and hit the ground, the holding tank snapping loose as it skidded away.
His thoughts scattered.
Sound warped. The forest pulsed in and out.
*Don’t black out-* Too late. Everything skipped.
No falling. No darkness.
Just a cut.
When he came back, the world felt wrong. His head weighed a hundred pounds. Pressure packed his skull until his vision swam. He couldn’t see at first—only hear the hollow ringing in his ears and feel his stomach roll.
He tasted copper.
Something laughed nearby, dragging him awake.
Firelight flickered to his right, replacing the moon. Smoke curled upward through a ragged hole in a roof that barely deserved the name—sheets and clothes stitched together with rope and pitch, sagging like a child’s idea of a fort. Branches piled into walls. Bones scattered across the dirt floor.
A hut.
No. A den.
Pain flared in his wrists.
Rope bit into his skin, raw and burning. Cold metal pressed into his palms. He lifted his head and saw the hook—rusted, crude—holding him suspended, boots barely brushing the ground.
*In the wolf’s den,* he thought.
He breathed through it. Forced his heart to slow.
*When the trail turns hard, most give up and run,* Pop used to say. *Catch your breath. Make it fun.*
The Hunter flexed his fingers, eyes scanning the hut.
Then he heard a voice.
“You’re funny. More than the other ones.”
The Hunter jerked his head toward the voice.
A dirty little red-haired boy, looking no more than 14, sat across from him on a crude bench—one long log balanced on two shorter ones. His legs swung back and forth, boots kicking the air. The broken prototype rested in his lap, copper wires dangling loose, the holding tank hanging by a thread.
“This is cool,” the boy said. “What is it?”
The Hunter stared.
“Hey,” he said carefully, “that’s not a toy. Where did the guy go?”
The boy didn’t look up. “What guy?”
“The tall one,” the Hunter snapped. “Creepy smile. Red mullet. You know exactly who I mean.”
The boy turned the gun in his hands, peering down the barrel. “How’d you make it light up and shoot?”
The Hunter exhaled sharply through his nose. “It’s complicated, and we’re in danger. Give me the stool you’re sitting on.”
Instead of standing, the boy raised the gun to his shoulder and aimed it directly at the Hunter. He squeezed the trigger and made a soft *pshh* noise with his mouth, mimicking the blast.
The broken holding tank swung loosely from the wires.
“I bet it’s ’cause of this thing,” the boy said, scowling. “*You* broke it.” He glared up at the Hunter. “I’ve been trying to shoot you this whole time, but you broke it. And you took forever to wake up. Way longer than the others. How do you shoot it?”
The Hunter’s stomach sank.
“What the hell…” His brow furrowed. “Who are you?”
The boy tilted his head. “Who are *you*?”
The Hunter’s voice hardened. “*What* are you?”
The boy’s mouth stretched wide.
Too wide.
The smile pulled and warped his face, skin creasing in ways it shouldn’t. A full-body shiver tore through the Hunter as the boy laughed—high, delighted, wrong.
*What in the Alabama swamp family hell is wrong with this kid?*
The boy stopped swinging his legs. He let the gun drop to the dirt floor and hopped down from the bench.
“I’m Apex,” he beamed. “You shot my food. So I took your gun.”
The Hunter’s nose curled. “You…eat the Moonmutts?”
The boys brows furrowed. “Moonmutts? I like that name. Yeah, they’re so stupid it’s funny. I like to make them fight each other”, he grinned again “and then I eat the loser.”
He acted it out—snarling, clawing the air, jerking side to side—then made shrill yelping noises and laughed again.
“They rip each other up. It’s funny.”
The Hunter swallowed. *That’s why they’re so beat up.* “And then you *eat* them?”
“Yeah.” The boy’s eyes never left him. “I’m gonna make you fight one too. Then I’ll eat you. But first—how do you make this thing light up?”
*Okay. I’m done.*
The Hunter kicked his legs up, slamming his boots against the wall, searching blindly for uneven branches. His foot caught on something solid. He shoved his weight upward, arms burning, until he felt the rope lift off the hook.
Then his balance tipped.
He hit the ground face-first, bones shattering beneath him. Sharp fragments cut his gums and tongue. He spat, choking on the taste of dust and rot.
“HEY!”
The boy’s smile collapsed into a snarl.
Fire flared behind his eyes.
His body surged upward, growing six feet taller in a heartbeat. Pale skin caught the dying glow of the coals. Long red hair spilled to his shoulders. Fingers stretched, splitting into claws.
*This is the apex predator, true king of the wild,* the Hunter thought. *And it’s a creepy little bastard.*
He staggered to his feet, spitting bone shards onto the dirt. They locked eyes.
“You want me, you little shit?” the Hunter growled. “Come on.”
The scream that followed ripped through the den, bouncing off stone, rattling his teeth. The cold fury of the creature hit him a split second before it lunged.
“COME ON!” he roared back.
He’d be damned if death took him again.