"I can't believe this! How could she?! Where am I even supposed to go? Our house is gone, our town is gone! There's nothing left..." Tootie surveyed her surroundings, the city continued to burn around her, the smoke nearly blocked her view of the airship in the distance. Vicky always had a flair for the dramatic, but that thing was ridiculous, a huge aircraft carrier looking thing that flew? Sounded like something out of a comic book. "Probably where she got the idea..."
Tootie heard heavy footsteps from a few houses down. "Damn, they've found me already? They're really stepping up their game..." she broke into a run toward a house that was less destroyed and lifted up the scorched couch in it, revealing a hatch. She turned the valve and lifted it up, then climbed down the ladder and shut the hatch behind her.
After reaching the bottom of the ladder, she turned on her flashlight, and looked around the bunker she had cobbled together out of someone's basement. There were several weapons she had scavenged from Vicky's private soldiers, foodstuffs she had found, and a pink hat, Timmy's hat. She grabbed the hat and clutched it to her chest, she had taken it from the body of one of the soldiers, she hadn't been the one to kill him, it was them, whatever they were, they weren't human, not anymore. They tore at whoever they found, ripped them to shreds, when they were finished with you, you were lucky if you were anything more than a bloody smear on the ground, they even took the bones, though for what purpose, she didn't know. "Timmy... please be okay..." she hoped he was holding out somewhere, she hadn't yet gotten to his house, it was usually surrounded by guards, but she had never seen them take him or anyone out of the house. And they were always driven off by the soldiers.
She didn't know what they were, likely something her sister had done to people, some infection... or sickness... she didn't know, they had started appearing a week after Vicky began to burn the city to the ground. Any survivors that encountered them didn't last long, most were torn apart... they were lucky, some were dragged away kicking and screaming, she didn't know if these... things had a lair, but those who were taken weren't seen again. But after they took people, there were always more of them during the next attack, so it seemed pretty obvious what they were doing.
Tootie surmised that it must be an infection of some kind, that must be how they were making more of themselves, that, or they used people as breeding stock... she shuddered at the thought. "Here's hoping it's the former..."
They were disgusting, a horrible mockery of what they once were, creatures covered in scales, reptile-like, but so much worse. Their skin was a greenish-black color, they had razor sharp claws, they always crouched, like their spines had adapted to a crouching posture, when they communicated, it was through clicks and grunts. They had massive eyes, but they were black as black could be, there was nothing in the eyes, no emotion, no mercy, nothing. It was why she didn't want to believe they had been human, she hoped they were just some kind of mutated animal, until she killed one. Maybe it had just been her mind playing tricks on her as she descended into insanity, but when she filled it's chest with bullets and it fell over, she heard it gurgle out "Thank you..." the shock hit her like a truck, this thing had been human once, and this one at least suffered, realized what it had become, and welcomed death. She had stayed in her bunker for days after that, tried to cope with what she had done. Then she did it again, and again. And realized people were wrong, it did become easier each time, still, she didn't go looking for a fight, where there was one, there were always more.
"This won't last... I only have enough food for a few more days..." the soldiers were getting closer to her hidey-hole, she knew that if they caught her they would kill her... or worse. "Urgh... where else can I go? They'll find me eventually... either the soldiers... or those things... I can't believe things got this bad so quickly..." Vicky had left a few years back, without a word. She returned on her twenty-fourth birthday, in that airship, and immediately destroyed Brightburg, left it a smoldering crater. The authorities, the government, the army... no one could stop her, it was like she was protected by magic or something... They had even tried nuclear missiles, every single one had been a dud, no way that was a coincidence. Everyone that tried to stop her was destroyed, anything they sent at her, she sent back tenfold, eventually they gave up, went into their little bunkers, or just left the vicinity, she didn't leave Dimmsdale's airspace, she was searching for something, or someone, evidently.
Tootie was eighteen now, 'old enough to know better', as her sister once said. She had cut her hair short, it was only a hindrance to have long hair now, she broke her glasses while running away from those creatures once, she had found a box of contacts, but they would only last her so long. The skirts were traded in for thick jeans, to avoid cutting her legs in debris, and her girlier shirts were swapped for darker colors, so as not to draw attention. She and Timmy had dated for awhile after Vicky left, but they broke it off after only a year, she was the one who did it too, saying that something about them being together didn't feel right anymore. They had stayed friends though, and that was why she searched for him now, but to no avail.
She heard frantic stomping from above her and shut off her light, a few seconds later she heard gunfire and cursing, followed by a skittering sound, she was silent for several minutes, barely even breathing, until she felt it was safe. "I'll have to leave sooner than I thought. They're getting too close..." she eyed a handgun near her hand and picked it up looking over it carefully. "Maybe... maybe I should just end it... better than living in a world like this, where my own sister wants to kill me, and my best friend and parents are dead..." she put the gun to the side of her head, and felt the cool metal on her skin. She was shaking hard now, the thought of ending it had come before, but she had never taken it this far. She wrapped a finger around the trigger and began to squeeze it, as she did, she began breathing harder and harder, until she let out a scream and pulled the trigger.