Rise of the Night Stalkers
Rise of the Night Stalkers Book 1
Kurtis Eckstein
COPYRIGHT © 2020 – KURTIS M. ECKSTEIN
The author, Kurtis Eckstein, holds exclusive publishing rights for this copyrighted material. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the copying, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the author is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.
This version of Kurtis Eckstein’s copyrighted material is for exclusive publication on Amazon. Any copying, uploading, or electronic sharing of any part of this book, outside of Amazon, is unlawful piracy.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, business establishments, events, institutions, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ASIN: 1656879905 (Paperback)
Cover Art Copyright © 2020 Kurtis Eckstein
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Table of Contents
Prologue
1. Awakening
2. Complications
3. Hallucination
4. Communication
5. Party Member
6. Diet
7. Hunting
8. Attack
9. Counterattack
10. Teamwork
11. Stats
12. Magic
13. Reintroductions
14. Target Practice
15. Recovery
16. Recruitment
17. Rescue
18. Horrors
19. Pursuit
20. Betrayal
21. Assault
22. Violation
23. Boss Battle
24. Critical Hit
25. Reward
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Prologue
As she got into position to strike, I quickly realized that stalking must truly come naturally to our kind, because the little demon proceeded to expertly sneak up on the man like a ninja, leaping onto his back and sinking her teeth into his neck.
I could hear the snap from here, as she broke his spine at the base of his skull, dropping him to the ground in an instant. However, the fact that I could hear it so loudly also meant that the other man did too.
He whipped his head around, just in time to see a four-legged creature dash behind another car.
Crying out in shock, he fired his gun a few shots after she had already vanished, only to run over to his partner in crime, continuing to point his weapon towards the car.
Little did he realize that she was already on the move the moment he glanced away.
Chapter 1: Awakening
Apparently, the whole world had gone to hell, and I couldn’t even remember it happening. The cityscape was a mess, with many buildings destroyed by massive black towers that rose into the sky like enormous thorns. Cracks all along the bizarre structures glowed bright red in the darkness, creating an eerie hellish hue at night. And they were so wide that one spire could block four or five parallel city streets, possibly even more.
In the distance, the occasional growling and shrieking of monsters hunting each other could be heard – mindless beasts deformed by an unknown black substance, creating disfigured abominations resembling the human shape they originated from.
I was one such monster.
Or at least, I had been, prior to regaining my consciousness.
I had woken up earlier on a cold concrete floor, curled up like a baby, with a large tail between my legs that I was hugging like a kid’s teddy bear – my face resting against an attached midnight blade as a hard flat pillow. I knew there was no light in the tiny room, and yet I found myself being able to see, everything illuminated in a red glow.
It wasn’t until I sat up that I realized the red glow was coming from my own eyes. I had raised my large hand to my pounding head, covering an eye in the process, immediately noticing the reduction in light.
Lowering my hand to examine my body, I discovered that it looked as if it were covered in black bony armor, except it wasn’t armor – it was my skin, or at least resembled skin in the sense that I could feel through it, like some kind of tactile biosuit.
My gray palms were reminiscent of the human I knew I once was, along with the bottom of my fingers, but the back of my hands and arms were covered in a rough midnight shell, as if someone had poured lava on my body and let it harden. I could sense that most of my body was like this, minus my face and hands. My hair was snow white, and long enough to get in my face, so the first thing I did was cut it short with my tail. I was sure it was an uneven mess now, but I didn’t really care – so long as it didn’t affect my vision. Thankfully, the hair on the top of my head was the only thing to worry about, not having facial hair at all.
Like my hands, the bottom of my feet were mostly uncovered as well, with black spots in strategic places as if I had padding instead of shoes.
I certainly wasn’t wearing any clothing, and yet I found that I was far from exposed. There was nothing to be seen in between my legs, even though I was confident I was male. Just more black carapace.
Honestly, between the alien skin and bladed segmented tail, I almost felt like I was half scorpion, though the wings on my back made me doubt that was the case. I stretched the extra appendages out in the cramped space to test them out, the motion feeling familiar even though I had no recollection of ever using them. Really, I had no recollection of anything except the vague memory that I had once been human.
Venturing out of what I later determined to be a closet inside of a small boiler room – if the tanks and pipes were any indication – I soon had my first encounter with one of my own kind shortly after. It was a mindless beast with a bulbous head and clawed arm nearly as long as its body. However, it became clear rather quickly that my natural weapon was far superior.
I impaled the monster from a distance, my sectioned tail coming unhinged to grow nearly three times longer. It was a little more difficult to control the swing of the blade at that distance, but shooting it out like a spring-loaded spear certainly did the trick.
Deciding I needed to get my bearings, I found a stairwell and began climbing effortlessly – a very human thing to do – only to start leaping from landing to landing when I realized I could do so just as easily.
When I arrived on the empty tar-pitched roof, I discovered the apocalyptic sight that had befallen a city I didn’t recognize. And so, that’s where I found myself, sitting for hours on the edge while my tail silently swayed behind me rhythmically, listening to the occasional cries of monsters in the night.
The blanketed moon rarely peeked beyond the overcast skies, though its pale light was only enough to slightly change the hue of the crimson glow coming from the massive towers. I was sure they were spaced miles apart, but there were so many of them in the distance, that it seemed as if the whole planet had grown the spiky hairs of an insect – hairs that were nearly a mile high to the unfortunate fleas that still roamed this wasteland.
Of course, I was one such flea.
I wasn’t even sure if normal humans still existed at this point, but if they did, I suspected they would rather shoot first and ask questions later. Which meant, I couldn’t just go seek them out and say ‘Hi.’
And why even bother? What would be the point? It didn’t change the fact that I was no longer human myself. My extra appendages, which I could feel just as well as my arms and legs, made that fact crystal clear.
Really, I
wasn’t certain what the point of anything was anymore.
There was nothing to do in this wasteland. No entertainment to be had among the mindless beasts that hunted and fed off each other. At least, assuming a creature like myself didn’t find joy in killing just to kill, but I personally did not.
Currently did not.
I wasn’t sure what I had done in my spare time prior to ‘waking up,’ but I imagined my activities hadn’t been much different than what I saw and heard below me.
But now, I saw no purpose in anything.
And so, I just sat on the ledge, watching the sun rise over the horizon, finally bringing with it a light that would chase away the thinning clouds and brightly reveal the chaotic mess before me, hiding the red glow of the fractured towers in our star’s brilliance.
The sounds of the night died away as well, the growls and shrieks being replaced with birds and insects chirping, as if it was business as usual for the daytime wildlife. A pigeon even flew onto the ledge barely ten feet beside me, twisting its head every which way as it eyed me, before fluttering down to the pitched roof to grab a piece of wire and fly off.
Really, as I looked in the distance, I saw that nature was doing just fine. It was the people who seemed to have been obliterated from the surface of the planet, replaced with horrors of the night. Granted, that was just in this particular city. I had no idea how things were elsewhere. But the scene before me wasn’t unlike a zombie apocalypse, only lacking the undead.
Then again, considering I had once been human, maybe a zombie apocalypse wasn’t so far off.
It made me wonder what caused this change – was it a bite? A virus passed along through a sneeze? Some kind of ancient pathogen that arrived with the towers?
And where did those towers even come from? Did they originate from the planet itself? Was this some kind of natural disaster caused by seismic activity? Had the spires been bursts of lava that rapidly cooled?
Maybe I would seek out a human after all, just to see if they had the answers to any of my questions. However, I had no idea where to even begin.
Without really thinking about it, I abruptly rose to my feet, no fear in my heart as I teetered dangerously on the ledge. My wings spread out automatically as I lost balance and dropped into the open air below, my extra appendages beginning to pound at the atmosphere.
As I rose above the buildings, my bat-like wings flapping effortlessly, I quickly discovered that my tail was vital in maneuvering myself while airborne.
I climbed even higher, aiming for one of the nearest spires in the distance, before beginning to shift into a lazy circle like a hawk, scanning the ground below for any signs of life. I imagined I might sincerely look like a predatory bird, such as a hawk or buzzard, or maybe even a humanoid dragon, stalking the skies for my prey.
I hadn’t seen any others flying in the night, so I wondered if my version of monstrosity was rare here. Or maybe we were just easy targets for any surviving humans with powerful rifles – the thought, of which, gave me pause about my current choice of actions. But thus far I hadn’t seen even a hint of a normal human who might wield such a weapon.
It was unnerving that my eyesight was so sharp at this distance, seemingly no matter how high I flew, to the point that I had no trouble noticing even the smallest of details – such as a cricket on the corner of an overturned dumpster not far from a small trail of dried blood leading to a pile of rubble. Or the nearby fissure in the pavement of the alleyway, spiraling out like a spider’s web.
Or the stuffed animal resembling a puppy, with some cotton coming out of a ripped leg…
Unexpectedly, a small speck of white light caught my eye when I focused on the toy, though the moment it disappeared I couldn’t detect what had given it off. There was no metal on the stuffed animal to reflect the sunlight, not to mention it was still too early in the day and the alleyway was shaded. I recalled that it wasn’t uncommon for such toys to have wiring in them to play sounds when you pushed on the hands or feet, but this one seemed like a normal stuffed puppy.
Deciding to check it out, since I clearly had nothing better to do, I drew closer until I was near the alleyway roofs, folding my wings in and dropping down like a meteor.
The landing of my feet onto the concrete caused it to erupt into a spider-web marking not unlike what was near the toy, as if something else heavy had jumped from the roof recently. The noise reverberated off the cracked walls, being almost deafening in the enclosed space.
I walked over to pick up the toy, a different glimmer of light sparking in and out of existence in the blink of an eye at the edge of my vision, just as I touched the puppy. I looked up at the trail of dried blood, again seeing no sign of what had caused the flash.
Which left me confused.
Was I hallucinating it?
Somehow, I found myself knowing that humans with high blood pressure might see specks of light in their vision as the fluid in their eyes pushed against their retina, or even if debris caused by a head trauma hits the back of the eye…
Had I worked in healthcare as a human?
I wasn’t sure, but I doubted I had been a doctor if that was true, because I felt like my understanding of what might have caused this flash of light would be more advanced and technical. Still, it was strange to unexpectedly remember things without fully knowing who I had been.
Either way, when I noticed a small opening in the debris of fallen concrete, I decided to check it out.
Getting down on my hands and knees, I pressed my face to the ground to allow my eyes to illuminate what was within.
I sucked in a sharp breath when I saw the face of a small boy curled up deep inside, only to scrape my short claws into the pavement when I caught a whiff of urine combined with the scent of death from a festering wound.
I was shocked to find that I became both disgusted and hostile at the same time – suddenly wanting to attack like the predator I knew I was, while also wanting to vomit at the scent.
Instead, I was left at a momentary impasse, with one desire pulling me forward and another – more human one – making me cringe away.
It took me a few long seconds to clear my thoughts and focus, to ignore both urges.
In my estimation, the unconscious boy wasn’t much older than nine or ten, and he was still clearly alive, his breathing quiet and shallow. Whatever had chased him in here hadn’t bothered to try to claw him out, or I supposed if he had been with someone else, then maybe the monster had made a meal of his companion, leaving him hiding away while he awaited his own death.
And he would die, most likely, if left here – the smell made that clear.
However, I also apathetically discovered that I didn’t particularly care if this kid died. I certainly wouldn’t be mourning his death, and could even do the deed myself without any guilt.
The idea felt like it should bother me, but I processed that realization without much concern.
At the very least, the boy’s appearance did tell me something. He wasn’t chubby, but he also wasn’t emaciated either, indicating that either the beginning of the apocalypse hadn’t occurred that long ago, or else he was getting enough food wherever he came from. Or both.
Which meant, there must be people nearby.
People who might be more willing to share information if I brought them one of their own back alive.
But how to find them? Would the boy know?
And how was I even going to get him out?
I deliberated for only a moment.
Then, without putting anymore thought into it, I decided on what I was going to do.
Easing away a little, I shifted my body to insert my bladed tail into the opening, which was narrow in the front but allowed for more movement where the boy was curled up. Being careful to avoid cutting him, I angled the end of my tail, scraping the pointed tip into the pavement as I shoved him towards me with the flat side as far as I could manage.
In the end, I was only able to nudge him over about
a foot, but he was now close enough that I could just barely reach in and grab a couple of his fingers, due to the position of his arm. The tiny appendages popped as I tugged a little, so I readjusted my grip to his wrist once his limb was straighter.
Then, as easy as dragging the stuffed puppy doll behind me, I slid him out into the open.
He remained unconscious the whole time.
A quick inspection revealed that he had a nasty gash just above his ankle that didn’t look deep, but was definitely infected. Careful not to slice him with my claws, I gently opened an eyelid to look at a dark brown iris rolled back. I had no idea how people became monsters, but I figured if my irises were red, then his might show signs of turning crimson if he was going to change. Granted, that was assuming this was caused by some kind of contagion.
Instead, it appeared the infection in his leg was a normal one.
I assumed he must be running a fever, considering his skin looked dry and flush, but his temperature felt a little low compared to mine. Did that mean his was actually low? Or was mine high?
I didn’t know.
Sighing, I gently patted his cheek, doubtful it would rouse him. When he didn’t wake up like I hoped, I scooped him up in my arms, pausing when I saw another tiny flash of light spark in the corner of my vision.
I looked down at the stuffed animal, my brow furrowing.
That wasn’t a coincidence.
There was definitely nothing to reflect or create light in, or around, the cotton puppy. And yet, it was undeniable that the flash I had seen three times now was occurring in an extremely specific pattern.
Puppy, boy, puppy.
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