[This is based on a dream I about a week ago and decided might make a great story. This is the initial 'prologue' and decided I wanted some feedback on what people thought of it before working to turn the rest of the dream into story format as well, though I have a few other stories to finish up first. Please read and let me know what you think and it this sounds worth continuing.]
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'It was like something out of a horror movie. Things that you watch all the time, yet believed could never possibly happen in real life. But it did. We had seen many strange and unbelievable things in the past several years. We've fought aliens who sought to steal all of our planet's water. We've been sent back into the past to fight giant cyclops and a fire-breathing dragon. We've faced hideous mutations and powerful war machines. But nothing could have prepared us for this. Nothing could stop it. Not even us. This city was large and great, a shinning jewel in our world, and perhaps that's what made it a target of the constant strife that continued to plague it. But now it's population of millions has been reduced to barely a few thousand, and that number is shrinking every day. How could this have happened? What caused such a terrible force? Not Viper... not Dark Kat... not the Pastmaster... Since the Apocalypse, we've not seen any trace of any of the Omegas. Either they were smart and fled when it happened, or they've hidden themselves away, afraid to come out into the death and destruction that lies all around us. Of course, there's also the other possibility, the one that's happened to so many kats. Possibly the more 'humane' possibility. They're dead. Death might be a release from all of this, considering what the living are forced to endure... How could they have done this? How could they have been so stupid? Weapons. Always about weapons. But this time, their weapon killed us all. It's no wonder that Hackle left.'
Chance Furlong stood on the roof of his home, looking out beyond the mountains of military scrap metal that gleamed red in the light of the setting sun. Beyond the high steel-reinforced fence, topped with coils of razor-wire and wired to be surged through with currents of up to a million megavolts at the flip of a switch, he could see the tall towers of the decimated city. He and his friend Jake had to turn their home into a virtual fortress in order to simply survive the devastation that swept over the city in the past year. 'Had it only been one year?'
His thoughts wandered back to an earlier time, when he and Jake flew over that city when it was in it's glorious prime, in their masked alter personas of the Swat Kats. Their jet, the Turbokat, was a powerful weapon that they themselves had designed and built, and they use it to protect the city from every threat. But when the Apocalypse came, even they were helpless to stop the destruction that swept over the city in a wave of death and misery. The Enforcers, the city's military-like law enforcement, fought back as best they could, but their numbers were quickly decimated by the unstoppable force. But how could anyone stop it? How can you kill what is already dead?
Until only a year ago, zombies were nothing more than something out of the horror flicks that Jake loved so much. Kats who were killed by some mysterious virus, only to be brought back seconds later as a hideous, unstoppable, undead monster with no conscious thoughts other than to feed on the flesh of the living. That was the 'modern' zombie. The older ones were corpses reanimated to do the bidding of a necromancer or voodoo priest. If only it could have been that simple. Even the Pastmaster couldn't have been powerful enough to create more than a few dozen of them, and he and Jake, as the Swat Kats, could have stopped them. But who could have predicted that Pumadyne would have actually created a real virus that so closely mimicked the more modern views of a deadly contagion, sometimes natural, sometimes kat-made, that swept through a population like a plague, turning every living thing in it's wake into a brainless flesh-eater. Chance sighed and shook his head as he looked out on the ruined city of death.
'As if that wasn't bad enough, all the death and destruction awakened something else. A predator that had remained hidden away for centuries. The zombies arn't the worst things out there. There's a creature that feeds on them, as well as any living thing it can get it's fangs on. No, not "it". "Them". Yet another creature that's only supposed to exist in horror movies. For lack of anything else to call them, we've used the word "werewolves". If they actually can change forms, we don't know. Jake says it's doubtful. But we've known from the start that they're not ordinary wolves. They're too large, and too smart. They're vicious and blood-thirsty, with a social order that mimics true wolves. They're also extremely cunning, able to set traps and ambushes. We've faced them a couple times, and have been unable to kill a single one of them. I don't know about silver, since regular weapons seem to hurt them pretty well, but they're just so damned quick that it's almost impossible to get a kill shot on them. Damn. Well the Hell more can we do?'
"Hey Chance?"
The golden-furred tabby looked down to his friend. The cinnamon tom stood below him in the doorway of their balcony over the garage. "You coming or what, pal?"
"Yeah, I'm coming." He jumped easily down from the roof to land on the balcony. "Let's go kick some more zombie tail."
"Yeah. And pray we can find some more survivors."