Limitless Evolution As a Snake

The first beast reached the fence while the gate guard was still explaining that orders weren’t his responsibility. I knocked his barrier control out of reach with my tail, then asked Hollis whether she wanted to save the argument for somebody who hadn’t been invited to get eaten.

She shoved him away from the gate and told the families outside to get through. Iona took the nearest child by the hand and directed the adults towards the water tanks, while Bridget moved a parked cart out of the lane so nobody had to climb over it.

The creature beyond the fence had a pig’s shoulders, a shovel-shaped skull and enough extra length to make my six-foot body look badly planned. It struck the lower rail with its forehead, lifting a section of mesh while the second beast circled towards the opening.

[System: Get the families clear first, champ; the oversized pork chop can wait its turn, and you’re not making me explain a queue-jumping death at breakfast.]

Then count me down properly, because I don’t fancy becoming the first door sold with a matching memorial plaque. I dropped beside the lifting rail and activated Nuh-Uh, turning my body dense enough to sink into the hard ground beneath it.

The next strike hit my side with a deafening PAN-THUNK that sent the nearest guard ducking behind a water barrel. The beast recoiled, furious that breakfast had started making kitchen noises, then struck again hard enough to bend the rail around my coils.

I couldn’t fly while I weighed this much, so I stayed braced and watched Old Mate count the fifteen seconds. Lukas fastened web-lines from the damaged panel to a concrete tank support, using the structure to take the strain rather than wrapping it around himself.

”That’s the sort of personal improvement I’d put on a birthday card if you could survive long enough to receive one,” I told him. He said he preferred money while tightening the second line, proving the injury hadn’t damaged the important parts of his personality.

Hollis fired two shots into the dirt beside the circling beast, turning it away from the last family through the gate. She kept the barrel clear of the people running behind her, which gave me an irritating reason to respect someone wearing Rusk’s colours.

[System: Four seconds left, mate, so pick your next spot now. You’re about to stop being a council bollard and start being something with very expensive feelings again.]

I’ll take the gap above its head, assuming the bastard doesn’t suddenly develop a talent for jumping that wasn’t in the brochure. Bridget pulled the last adult behind the barrier as my weight lifted, and I fired the jets along my fins to rise above the rail before the next blow could catch me.

Eight minutes stood between me and another turn as an unbreakable wall. The beast pushed into the gap I’d left, caught against Lukas’s webbing and shook its head hard enough to drag the panel sideways, exposing the soft seam below its armoured jaw.

I landed along its back while Hollis moved her people clear of its reach. My coils tightened behind its head, keeping me above the tusks as it twisted, and I drove a solid smoke edge into the exposed seam before it could throw me against the fence.

It staggered, struck the rail once more and dropped with its head outside the camp. I pulled free before its weight settled, breathing hard enough to hear myself over the transmitter’s low pulse and the second beast chewing at a loose strip of mesh.

[System: Ten out of ten, and your old training quest is finally finished. Another thousand EXP puts you at ten thousand, with no imaginary completion bonus for the paperwork.]

Put the certificate in the post, because I’m busy trying to stop the next oversized bastard collecting a participation prize with my face. The kill didn’t fix the fence, stop the lure or persuade the remaining creature to develop a less violent breakfast habit.

Lukas slid a loaded refuse cart along the inside rail while Bridget threw the camp’s spoiled meat over the far corner. The second beast followed the easier smell long enough for Hollis to move two guards onto the damaged panel and brace it with the cart.

It wasn’t a permanent repair, but it gave us a moment without anybody being dragged through a hole. Iona counted the people by the water tanks and found everyone who had been waiting outside, then sent a runner to check the sheds for anyone unable to move alone. A guard helped an old woman with her bedding while Old Mate muttered, [System: There’s one who remembers the job, mate; save your teeth for the prick who shut the gate.]

The guard who’d tried closing the gate complained that we’d interfered with an authorised relocation. Hollis asked him whether that authorisation covered placing a lure beneath occupied housing, and his attention moved towards the cable before he could stop himself.

”Excellent work looking directly at the thing you aren’t supposed to know about, because you’ve saved us a very boring guessing game,” I told him. Bridget photographed the cable route while Pike found a covered box beside the shed and lifted its loose lid.

Inside sat a battery, a timed transmitter and a sealed bait cartridge warm enough to stand out sharply in my thermal sight. Pike could disconnect the speaker, but he warned that the cartridge’s smell would keep drawing beasts until we removed it from the camp.

Hollis called Rusk over the militia radio and demanded a collection crew. The captain answered that residents refusing relocation had accepted the risk, then offered transport at a per-person charge large enough to empty most of the camp’s houses before their owners left.

Bridget was still recording when the transmitter changed rhythm and the dirt beyond the fence began moving in three separate places. The first two beasts hadn’t been the collection crew, because something much larger was following the lure from underneath the road.