Dr. Borous’s monitors fuzzed in confusion as he rechecked the scrawling computer screen in front of him. The fluid in his brain case bubbled slightly as he swiveled around to face Dr. Dala.
“DALA” he buzzed “What HAVE you been doing to my system? I’m reporting another CONTAINMENT BREACH from the X8 laboratories!”

Dala hummed to herself, desperately trying to block out the harsh diatribes of her colleague as she watched a holo-file from her personal collection on a flickering monitor. It was a security video of that strapping, two-legged, two-armed Courier that had passed through Big Mountain a few weeks ago and helped them sort out the trouble with Dr. Mobius. Dr. Dala watched raptly as the figure on the screen adjusted their weight slightly while sitting. She gave off a slight murmur as The Courier coughed slightly, then lightly sneezed into their sleeve.  Dr. Dala’s lower monitor, which depicted a pair of feminine lips licked themselves as her favourite part happened. On screen, the human sniffed slightly, drawing in air through nasal passages clouded with dust and mucus. They brought up one hand and drew their finger back and forth across the upper lip, scratching at a phantom sensation that they once described as an “itch”. Dr. Dala’s ocular screens started to fuzz a she silently upped her dopamine levels ever so slightly…

“DALA!”

“Ah!” the closet sapienphile yelped as she swiveled around to face her accuser, simultaneously terminating the video. “For Science’s sake Dr. Borous, I was in the middle of something!”

“Enough of your PERVERSIONS Dr. Dala” the sputtering form of Borous harshly barked. “Scanners are indicating a FAILURE in the security system on the lower levels of the X8 facility. This could be a fatal error, or the machinations of Dr. Mobius or even…” His voice dropped into a low, ominous growl “Communist agents….”

“Well, first of all” Dr. Dala stated indignantly “I don’t know what you’re talking about when you say I have an unhealthy fascination with the organic form-”

“I DIDN’T” Dr. Borous interrupted.

“And secondly” Dala continued, breezing past that comment. “I fail to see the issue. Things fail around Big Mountain all the time. So a few lab rats are running rampant, the lobotomites should take care of them pretty quickly. And thirdly, why on earth do you think it’s MY fault?”

“Why WOULDN’T you try to sabotage my laboratory? I always SUSPECTED that you were unusually LIBERAL” Dr. Borous buzzed, agitatedly hovering in place. “And LIBERAL is one step away from SOCIALIST, and SOCIALISM is one step away from….”
He paused for dramatic effect.

“COMMUNISM!” he finally cried. But Dr. Dala was no longer in front of him, instead halfway across the room of the Think Tank, once again transfixed with the recorded activities of The Courier. Dr. Borous grunted and checked his internal chronometer. Apparently his dramatic pause had lasted several hours longer than intended. Having lost the audience, Borous turned back to the flickering monitor in front of him and double checked the readout. A previously restricted zone of X8 laboratories had indeed been flung wide open, and whatever denizens inside had long since fled the facility and perhaps even further into the desolate wastes surrounding Big MT. The ancient brain of Dr. Borous crackled slightly as he found himself remembering something…something…important. Something about the test subjects in that lab, something about them being a mutagenic carrier or some such…
Bah, didn’t matter. Even if one of X8’s subjects had escaped into the wastes (highly unlikely, as it would be the first, no matter what that courier said), they would be perfectly fine. The renegade test-subject was one of Borous’s glorious fusions of coyote and rattlesnake, built to survive the harsh Californian desert. Yes, the good doctor’s little creation would be just fine….

*************************

The Nightstalker’s body spasmed as a second 20 gauge round tore through its skull and neck, blasting apart the top of its head and scattering shreds of its brain across the rocky Mojave landscape. The shooter opened one eye and scanned the horizon, keeping her senses sharp for any other incoming predators.
It was weird. Usually one nightstalker meant five or so if its friends tailing right behind, but this one seemed to be all on its own. Wandering the wasteland without a pack or purpose.

The lone gunwoman gave a small, rueful grin “What, y’get caught humping the alpha’s daughter or something?”

In truth, Rose of Sharon Cassidy identified with the beast she had just slain a great deal more than she was willing to admit. They were both loners, tough desert dwellers that seemed destined to make it on their own. And sometimes Cass wondered if they were destined for the same bullet riddled end.
Granted, Cass had also gotten separated from her own pack, though she wasn’t holding her breath for a reunion. After a couple weeks of travelling together, Rose’s wayward companion had decided to set out on their own, telling her to wait in the exact spot that they had begun their conversation; in the middle of the goddamn desert.
That had been three days ago.

Around the second sundown, Cass had decided to fall back on that most reliable of philosophies which had served her well up until now: “Fuck it”. After securing shelter for the night, she had begun the trek back to the nearest trading outpost, where she would then embrace step two of her master plan: crawl into a bottle of whisky and wait there until that idiotic courier decided to come get her. If the rough and tumble travelling merchant had to be completely honest, she had known one-night stands with more commitment than her current on-again-off-again travelling partner. She still remembered the look on that mousy-looking hooded girl’s face when Rose of Sharon had told the Courier that she wasn’t looking for a threesome, which immediately caused the Courier to wheel around and politely tell the power-fisted young lady to piss off. That should have given the merchant a heads up over what her prospective new friend thought of long-term relationships. Though to be fair, her judgement was a little fuzzy when she was drinking.
It’s a shame she was almost always drinking.

Cass approached the carcass of her quarry, pulling out a combat knife with one hand and adjusting her straw hat against the noon sun.
“Don’t suppose you got anything on you worth the shells I peppered ya with. Whatever, still have a little meat on those bones”
The wasteland trader already had a full pack of vittles, ancient breakfast cereal and booze, but her father had taught her to never waste a kill. She skillfully inserted her blade into the maw of the dead nightstalker and pressed against the soft pallet of its mouth. Almost automatically, a pair of yellowed fangs slid out from in between the top row of its normal teeth, dripping slightly. Wasting no time, Cass placed an empty Nuka bottle underneath one of the teeth and twisted the knife slightly. A dribble of oily, pearlescent venom fell from it’s fangs, collecting in the makeshift flask. Satiated with her harvest, Rose withdrew from the carcass and capped the container of volatile liquid.
“Sure I’ll find a use for this somewhere” she muttered, already feeling a need for a shot of something else toxic.


The sun hung low in the sky by the time Cass decided to settle in and make camp for the night. She was used to cobbling together improvised bedding, but today she’d been fortunate enough to stumble across an abandoned campsite. A couple of ratty, worn mattresses were loosely laid out around a makeshift campfire, but to Cass, this was the lap of luxury. She sprawled out on the one bed that seemed least likely to stab her with one of it’s springs and set about lighting a fire. Her chosen resting place was huddled up against the two remaining walls of a ruined building, and as the sun began to sink lower, the shattered concrete and twisted steel rebars cast long, jagged shadows across the ground. They almost looked like crooked fangs, closing around the small woman siting within them.
Cass decided that now was time for that drink.

The merchant rifled a bottle of her personal moonshine from her travelling pack and pulled the cork out with her teeth. The first shot went down fairly smooth, but second had a rough time of it, eliciting a rare cough from the seasoned drinker. Rose decided to send a third shot down to make sure that the second was alright, and then a fourth shot to ensure that the third one knew the entire plan. When she didn’t hear back from it, she decided to send down a fifth to locate the fourth, then together they could get the third back on it’s feet and gang together to locate the second and ensure a group rendezvous with the first.
Cass shook her head and tried to decide which of the two campfires in front of her was real. Giving up, she shook the bottle of moonshine and frowned at its lightness.  She’d held enough emptied bottles to know that this one had one last good swig in it, so she had better make sure that it would count. Rose of Sharon grabbed her recently acquired bottle of nightstalker venom and carefully dipped a finger inside, using her wetted digit to paint a thin, glistening line on the back of her free hand. Swiftly, she licked the deadly fluid off, then immediately chased it with the last of her moonshine. The burning fizzle from the venom was carried off of her tongue and down into her belly, where it simmered and diffused itself throughout her body.
Halfway through her second piece of mole rat jerky, Cass’s ears pricked up. Someone was stumbling around in the dark behind her. Her back to a wall, the travelling merchant pressed her ear against the barrier that stood between her and the possible interloper…

***************

Two-Spike cuffed his hunting partner on the head for knocking over the nearby trashcan and possibly alerting their quarry. He pointed at the visible glow emanating from within the crumbling structure with enough intensity to convey that he wanted his compatriot to run a quick recon to make up for the previous blunder. Spent-Shell flicked him his favourite obscene gesture and crept closer, drawing a rusted gladius from his belt. Two-Spike followed closely behind, tightly squeezing the grip of his 10mm.

Spent-Shell gritted his teeth and breathed heavy, his head still buzzing with the cocktail of narcotics dancing through it. Caution to the wind and feeling invincible, he vaulted over the wall and gave his fiercest battle cry.
The sight that greeted the fiend would initially be his last happy memory, before he took it all in. The pleasing sight of a pretty woman lying flat on her back on top of a mattress, staring up at him was somewhat spoiled when he realized that he was staring down the double barrel of a sizable shotgun. And then he didn’t think anything at all.            

********************

The first raider’s head exploded in a shower of blood and skull as Cass pulled the trigger on her firearm. Immediately, she rolled forward into a crouch against the wall and pulled her knife, even as the decapitated corpse tumbled back to the ground. Her maneuver paid off as the deceased attacker’s friend crested the ridge, planting his foot on the rough concrete top of the barrier and firing a wide spray of bullets at where Cass was a second earlier. She grabbed the foot that had the most weight on it and pulled, sending the fiend sprawling into the dirt. His flailing and profanities drew to an abrupt halt as she sank her hunting knife into his ribs.

All at once, the hornet’s nest was up and about. Gunfire lit up the western ridge and shouting voices filled the night air. Rose of Sharon fumbled another two cartridges into her gun and cursed herself for picking a resting spot so close to Fiend territory. Blinking away the haze that ate at the corners of her vision and doing her best to conquer the tipsiness that blurred her thoughts, Cass raised her shotgun and darted to cover behind a desiccated wardrobe. She exhaled, calming herself with the fact that Fiends always ran hopped up on every chem under the sun, so in terms of impaired abilities, she and them were still on equal ground. This reassurance was shattered with the knowledge that there were still many of them and one of her. Another fiend appeared in a collapsed doorway, raging and bellowing while he waved a buzzing ripper in each hand. With a pull of the trigger, Cass caved in his chest cavity with buckshot, but that only slowed him down. Her second shell tore apart his shoulder and neck, finally putting him down for the count.
“The problem with fightin’ Fiends; right there” Cass grunted as she sped to reload. “So hopped up you gotta put a dozen rounds in their brain before they have the good manners to realize they’re dead”

At least they were predictable, charging en masse instead of attempting any sort of flanking strategy. Another poked their warpaint-covered head out from behind a chunk of debris, and Cass lined up her shot. Suddenly, her gut seized up with excruciating pain, quickly spreading to her limbs with such fervour that she almost dropped her gun. Her target emerged, blowing a hole in the concrete two inches above her left ear with a hunting rifle and causing Cass to duck down, crawling on her hands and knees despite the agony coursing through her.

The pain seemed to ebb for a moment, then a new wave crashed into her. Cass’s vision darkened as she blindly fired at her attackers that had started to become blurry shapes. Having enough sense to know that she needed a new tactical advantage now that her aim was gone, Cass forced herself to her feet and scrambled up a half-standing staircase on to what was left of the second floor, which amounted to little more than an awning. A single pursuer with a shotgun attempted to follow her up, but the merchant had just enough of an eye to take him out at the knees with her own scattershot, sending him flat on his face with a howl of pain and plenty of blood. Having bought enough time to address the waves of sensation that threaded her body, Cass doubled over. It felt as though a pack of deathclaws were running rampant inside of her, and it showed no signs of stopping.

“Circle around and grab your grenades!” one of the fiends yelled “Bitch can’t hold on to that ground for long!”
As much as she hated it, Cass knew that the gang leader was right. If she stayed here, she’d be blown to pieces. Her gaze drifted upwards to the window on the far side of her perch. Beyond it, she could see right into the neighbouring building through a similar aperture. The place next door seemed to be in much better shape than her current accommodations, in the sense that it had four standing walls and multiple floors. It looked defensible and might even buy her a place to hide.
Gathering herself, Cass drew what strength she had left alongside what had been given to her by the alcohol swimming in her veins and broke into a dead run, bullets thudding into the ground around her as she leapt through the open window and into the adjoining building, rolling into a heap of limbs in an intensely ungraceful landing.

Rose of Sharon honestly tried to gather her scattered belongings, but had barely been able to get her straw hat back on her head, major motor function in her fingers all but gone. Of course this bizarre affliction had seen fit to strike at the worst possible moment, just as she was fighting for her life. Drunk, poisoned and shot at; that was the trademark Cassidy luck right there. Cass fought the panic rising in her gut and pushed herself across the ground with her legs, hunkering down behind a small partition. This place looked like it had once been an office floor, leaving multiple low walls to divide the room into cubicles, some of which still contained collapsed desks and gutted computers.
“Where’d  she go?” a nearby voice growled.
“Musta bugged out. Search the other structures!” the leader from before roared.
“Gonna skullfuck that bitch” another added.
Cass opened her mouth in a silent scream as a new wave of burning spread across her skin. What on earth could be causing this? The obvious answer would be the nightstalker venom that she had just consumed, but she had done that trick a hundred times before, why would it be doing this to her now? Needles seemed to be pushing their way out of her every pore, simultaneously burning and itching like mad. Then a new sensation hit; a tremendous pressure along the length of her spine as though someone was pulling on her skull and tailbone in opposite directions. She writhed, flipping over on to her stomach and drawing in her knees and elbows. Cass clawed at the ground as she did so, not knowing that she was etching deep furrows into the floor.

The pain and radical sensations rattling through her seemed to obliterate thought, but Cassidy was just cognizant enough to hear the sound of scuffling feet downstairs and the click of loading guns. In fact, she could hear it with remarkable clarity, capable of figuring out purely from sound that there were four people on the ground floor of her new shelter and even picking up snatches of their conversation. If she brought her hand up, she would have noticed that her ears had risen up against either side of her skull, and developed an elongated point. The sound of feet on the stairs was enough to force strength back into the hiding woman’s limbs. She pulled herself onto all fours and crept deeper into her office, searching for a stairway or shelter, dragging her shotgun along behind her.
Cass found she could finally breathe again as the vice clamped around her ribcage started to loosen, replaced by an extraordinary itching across her entire body. She tried to ignore this, darting into a cubicle and levelling her gun at the doorway. Now that she finally had a moment of respite, Rose could confront what was happening to her. Her skin felt as though it was flaking off, she was burning up but not sweating, and it felt as though her spine was about to punch out through her ass.
“I’ve had hangovers worse than this” She growled as she reloaded her gun “Bring it on, shitheads”
It was only while she was fumbling with shells that Cass got a look at her hands. Either it was the light or some kind of some kind of hallucination, because otherwise it looked like she was growing…hair? Hairy palms, right. Granted it had been awhile since her last hookup and a girl had needs, but if that were the cause, then she was long overdue. And it was too short and fine to be hair, it was more like…fur? Even her nails had changed, blackening and growing sharper, more claw-like.
“The fuck…” Cass muttered.
A hooting war cry alerted her to company, and Cass decided to switch to her combat knife for the sake of stealth.
“Chick-chick-chick” a jeering voice echoed throughout the room “Chick-chicky. Come on out. I’m looooonely” the fiends words were slightly slurred together, probably from the cocktail of chems running through his head. “I gotta present for yah. Gonna screeeeeam when you see it.”
A shudder ran down Cassidy’s spine. Not from the taunts of the burned out raider, but rather another of the bizarre symptoms she was experiencing. His voice drew closer as Cass pulled her legs underneath herself, giving off a slight predatory hiss. She could hear the creep drawing closer, she could practically taste him. Check that, she COULD taste him. The changing woman stuck out her tongue, sensing the sweat and other odours wafting off of the fiend as he closed in on her position. That shouldn’t be normal, right? People didn’t smell with their tongues. Cassidy’s train of thought was immediately stifled as she saw the questing raider edge into view, framed by the walls of her cubicle. Barely even thinking, Cass leapt forward with a primal growl, going completely airborne and crashing into the fiend like a freight train, tackling him to the floor. His struggling and swearing were abruptly cut off as Cass thrust her knife into his neck, feeling warm blood on her clawed hands and her heart in her ears. She let off a triumphant growl and crouched over her prey on all fours, watching him tense and finally grow still. Her pulse quickened again, and the pressure running along her spine reached a crescendo. With a cry of pain and release, something new and heavy thrust out of her lower back, the raw skin stinging against the air as it curled and waved. Cass flexed the freshly forming muscles of her new appendage and panted, feeling it thicken and grow. Even before it touched the ground, the skin of her tail had hardened and cracked, becoming pebbly and tough, yet smooth. She twitched it instinctively, and curled it in front of her, examining the black diamond pattern that ran across the top against a sandier colour.
That…was intense.

Finally free of the predator that had gripped her brain, Rose of Sharon examined herself. The sprouting of a new tail had completely shredded apart the back of her jeans, though her favourite belt was thankfully still in one piece. She picked at the ragged hole in the seat of her pants, unintentionally worsening the tear and ripping a seam down her left leg with her claws. It was almost too much to take in. She was something…different and alien. There was still so much of her body to explore. And the night was still full of surprises.
“Fuck wazzat?” Cass’s pointed ears swiveled in the direction of the stairwell as someone piped up down below “This building got animals?”
“Gonna carve me some steak” a female voice replied “Steak steak steakteaksteaksteak STEAK”
After picking at her tattered pants that hung around her legs for another second, Cass shrugged.
“Fuck it”
In a flash of her claws, her jeans lay in tatters on the floor and the new mutant was scampering back into the shadows, clad in nothing from the waist down but a very loosely hanging on pair of briefs. Unrestricted, the similar coat of tawny fur that coated her legs felt infinitely more liberating than it had while crammed underneath cloth. It ruffled slightly in the desert breeze and sent a million little tingles through her legs.
Cass felt something shifting in her tail as the very tip swelled slightly, growing club like ridges and stiffening. As she slunk into an adjoining room, she reverted to all fours in perfect unison to the pop and crack of reforming bones. Her skeletal system had shifted ever so slightly, making her just as comfortable this close to the ground as she would be standing. Her long, narrow tongue flicked out and tasted the air, picking up the body odour and chemical stink of the three remaining raiders downstairs. Cassidy sunk even lower to the ground, hissing ever so slightly. There was prey to be hunted.

**********************

Shiv glanced over his shoulder at the sudden pop of gunpowder and a strangled yelp. It might have just been a hallucination, considering how often he had those, but it sounded as though a member of his hunting party had just run across something. Legging it to the source of the sound, all he was greeted with was a splash of fresh blood on the floor and Gulf-Diver’s rusty helmet, lying discarded a foot or so away. He turned a full circle, painting a line along the walls with the crosshairs of his submachine gun.
“Diver!” Shiv yelled out. “Diver, where are you?” Naught but silence greeted him.
The only light in this place was what could faintly stream in through the windows, making his search conditions less than ideal.
“STEAK!” Junt suddenly yelled from behind him. Shiv wheeled around, facing his only remaining party member.
“Shut the FUCK up Junt. We got us a situation!” Shiv yelled at her “Make yersef useful and cut up something ‘sides yer dinner”
“If I cut it up, it IS my dinner” Junt giggled, licking the edge of one her two combat knives.
“Something else is in here.” Shiv stated, “Somethin’ that probably got the bitch we were hunting and mighta gotten Diver. Find it. Eat it. Fuck it. I don’t care, so long as it’s bleeding”
Junt only giggled again in response and sunk away, lost in her twisted thoughts.
If she had been paying more attention, she may have heard the telltale rattling as her stalker’s tail involuntarily twitched. As it was, her back was turned when Cass struck, the force of the blow knocking her off of her feet even as claws sank into her torso and arms.
Shiv caught the tail end of the gruesome takedown out of the corner of his eye and whipped around, firing a line of bullets into the crumbling plaster of the office building where seconds before, the shadowy blur that had just taken Junt had been.
“Tryin to fuck with me…” Shiv growled, feeling a chill run down his back that had nothing to do with withdrawal. He had only gotten a glimpse of the thing that he was after, though his first thought was “Nightstalker”. Problem was, this thing was too big, and too smart. It was something new.

Shiv followed the long smear of blood that had been left across the floor until he found Junt’s body, gurgling out her final breath as she lay in a spreading pool of crimson.
“Goddammit” he uttered, more upset that the last of his human shields was gone than at the death of his clan mate. The clatter of a scuttled can startled him enough to whip around and fire another dozen shots into the blackness that seemed to be closing around him.
“Goddammit” he said again like it was his personal prayer, fumbling with a fresh clip for his submachine gun. Just as he slammed in the magazine and pulled back the bolt, the sweating fiend saw motion out of the corner of his eye. He swiveled, raising his weapon and took a breadth of a second to take in his target.
It was definitely a nightstalker. A nightstalker balanced on its hind legs. And it was wearing a cowboy hat. And a jacket. But no pants. And it was holding a shotgun, which it promptly aimed and fired.

************************

Cassidy felt a bullet zip past her ear even as she pulled her trigger. In either an astounding bit of luck or just poor marksmanship, the blast went wide and struck the fiends hand, knocking away his gun and taking a few fingers with it. It would have been an impressive shot if that was her intention, but now it was just inconvenient. Acting on pure instinct as the adrenaline started to build in her brain again, Cass reverted to all fours, pulling herself along the ground and then launching herself forward, arms outstretched and mouth open wide.
Her arms, legs and tail all wrapped around him tightly, pinning his arms and strangling any further outcry. Before another conscious thought entered her head, Rose of Sharon bit down hard on the fiend’s neck, punching straight through his skin with her two long, needle like fangs.  Cass felt a bizarre shiver at the sensation of an almost scorching hot fluid coursing through her mouth and erupting in two thin jets from the tips of her fangs, flowing into the raiders body, which stiffened unnaturally. Cass could almost savour this moment, but finally uncoiled herself and came up for air, falling backwards and watching her prey hit the floor, convulsing and frothing at the massive dose of venom coursing through his veins.
Cassidy hit the floor, breathing heavy and rubbing her legs together. After her final attacker had grown still, Cass found her feet again and rose to standing. Still a bit shaky and feeling as though her feet had changed shape, the newly minted mutant kicked off her boots and flexed her large, clawed toes. Walking with a lot of the weight on the balls of her feet was an odd new sensation, but it was something her body seemed accustomed to now.  The fight now over, Cass could turn her attention back to her fur, and the unholy itching sensation that finally caused her to strip off her jacket and shirt.

Standing in little more than her skivvies and hat, Cass picked her way through the carnage that she had conjured into a bathroom that lay against the far wall. Fortunately, one of the mirrors on the far wall was still in relatively workable condition, allowing her to rub away the accumulated grime and get a good look at herself with the help of a nearby electric lamp.
The thick, sand-coloured fur really did cover her whole body, from her toes to her pointed ears. By a small mercy, her patch of red hair had stayed right where it was, but it seemed as though the only places she wasn’t coated in fuzz were her thick, powerful feeling tail, a strip running the length of her spine and her face, all of which were instead covered with smooth, pebbly scales of a similar shade, save the black diamond pattern that ran along it’s length.
Her face. To Cassidy, it looked completely alien. All the basic shapes and lines were still there, but her new skin distorted the image into something almost unrecognizable. Her eyes had taken on a brilliant golden colour, the pupils having narrowed to slits. With her mouth open, Cass inspected her multitude of sharp canine teeth, interrupted by the two curved fangs that still seemed to drip slightly with pearlescent venom. It was at this moment that Cass realized that she had subconsciously licked all the blood off her teeth.
Her head reeling, Rose of Sharon rested her head against the fractured image, groaning in exasperation and fear. What the hell was she supposed to do now? Was there a way to fix this? Who the hell would she go to? And how much would she have to take off before she stopped feeling so damn itchy? Her tail cut long swathes through the air behind her before she finally rose to standing again. She wasn’t gonna get anywhere moping, and she didn’t have nearly enough whiskey on her to try to drink her problems away. Cass carelessly popped out her claws and set about shredding off the last of her clothing, letting her fur ruffle in the night air, insulating her against the cold and giving her a breath of relief at the liberating sensation.

Cassidy’s tail continued to sway as she reoriented her gear. Her father’s necklace, of course, would stay on, as well as the hat. Her gun belt resumed its place on her hips and her jacket went into the pack, only to be pulled out at the first sign of civilization. When it came to pants, Cassidy couldn’t find anything to replace her shredded pair on the raiders, who were all festooned in the standard grills, rags and pads ensemble. Something else to find on the road. In an act of small mercy, she did manage to dig up a bottle from the dead fiend leader, almost half full of liquid, amber and volatile enough to give Cassidy a small feeling of satisfaction as she took her first swig of purloined alcohol. It was remarkably strong stuff, but with a notable flavour of all things to it.
  “Thank god for bad people with good taste” Cass muttered as she packed up shop. She would head south, she figured, until she hit a settlement or got her head blown off by an overzealous sniper. Whichever came first.  Her next step would be there. Her forked tongue flicked out, tasting the air just as a breeze picked up, sending a thousand little eddies and sensations though her fur. The feeling was multiplied by her nudity, and made her feel simultaneously alert and comforted. Maybe this wasn’t so bad after all.
Humming a soft tune he heard on the radio a few days ago, Rose of Sharon Cassidy the night stalker loped off into the Mojave Desert, the only home she would ever really have or need.