Cold Apocalypse: My Wife's Betrayal

The Chimera King Awakens

The students screamed. It was a chaotic, ear-piercing sound that echoed off the brick buildings of the university.

They scrambled over each other, falling on the rapidly forming ice, their thin autumn jackets providing no protection whatever against the plunging cold, or the nightmare that was taking shape before them.

A young fellow in a varsity jacket pushed his way to the fore, slipping on the frosty grass and falling right into the path of the mutated Frost-Hound. The monster was not hesitant. Its jagged, shark-like teeth caught hold of the shoulder of the boy and tossed him aside like a broken ragdoll. Blood spurted over the white snow and steamed in the air of the minus twenty degrees.

Panic erupted. The courtyard turned into a stampede.

"Kaelen!" Maya screamed behind me, and her hands were clinging to the door handle of the armored SUV. "We have to go! Please!"

I didn't run. I would have cowered in my past life. I would have pulled Maya away, cowering in a corner as the strong lived. But I had no more hiding. The apocalypse was part of the merciless, and in order to save my sister, I had to transform into the top predator.

Get in the truck and lock the doors! I shouted, and my voice was slicing through the wind. Open not to everyone!

Maya hesitated a moment, but seeing the utter certainty in my gaze, she scrambled into the heavy vehicle and banged the door. The jarring of the armored locks as they clanked behind me reverberated in my ears.

She was safe. It was now only the beast and me.

I reached into my tactical jacket and drew out the eight-inch, black-market hunting knife that I had purchased a few hours earlier. Its carbon-steel blade was gleaming in the fading sunlight.

The Frost-Hound tossed the bleeding student aside and turned his blazing blue eyes back to me. It smelled of my want of fear. That had been a challenge to a predator. It gave a guttural bellow, a bellow that shook in my bosom, and sprang.

It was fast. Unbelievably quick for an ordinary dog. But I had years in my previous life to avoid starving scavengers and wild dogs in the slums. My body was not trained, but my head was hardened by many years of harsh survival.

I did not step back; instead, I dropped low. My knees were sliding over the frozen pavement, which was slick. The monster flew over my head, and its icy claws had an inch to spare my face. And as it flew over me, I plunged the hunting knife to the hilt upwards into its exposed, mutated underbelly.

Black, freezing blood fell down on my jacket.

The Hound hit the ground and spun around, shrieking in pain. It didn't retreat. The mutation caused it to be violently aggressive. It flicked its huge paw and grabbed my left arm. The cold claws ripped through the thick tactical material, cutting into my body.

The agony was debilitating, scalding as dry ice rubbed right into my veins. But I didn't scream. I smiled.

I felt pain, which meant I was alive. Suffering was that I was not freezing to death outside the door of my wife's.

The monster threw itself at my throat, with its jaws open. I didn't dodge this time. I lifted up my left arm and pushed my thickly padded, bleeding forearm right into its open mouth. The monster bit, and its teeth lodged in the Kevlar lining, temporarily stuck.

It was precisely what I desired.

I took hold of the handle of my knife with my right hand, and, with my left hand, I aimed at the glowing blue eye of the beast and drove the blade deep into its skull. I turned the carbon-steel handle brutally, shaking its mutated brain.

The Frost-Hound stiffened. The blue light that was left in its other eye flickered and passed away. Its enormous body fell on the snow, and I was stuck to the freezing ground.

I heaved the dead body off my shoulders, breathing hard. My left arm was bleeding; the cold wind had already begun to freeze the sides of the wound. I had to make it to the bunker.

But before I could take a step, the world around me came to a standstill.

The wind ceased howling. The snow-falling had been caught in mid-flight. It was a mechanical, piercing sound in my head, then a voice, which was so old and cold.

[Target Destroyed: Tier-1 Frost-Hound.

[Host First Kill Confirmed. Initializing Protocol...]

[The Chimera King System has Awakened.

A deep-blue holographic screen that was translucent shattered into existence right before my eyes.

[Host: Kaelen Vance]

[Condition: Injured, Minor Hypothermia].

[Identified Extraction of Genetic Material: Tier-1 Frost-Hound Core.

[Would you like to Splice? YES / NO]

My heart beat thumped against my ribs. I had heard rumors, in my previous life, of individuals who had awakened strange abilities several years into the apocalypse. They were worshipped as gods. But I had never heard of a system of this kind. A system that not only bestowed magic but also enabled me to consume and steal the physical appearance of the monsters themselves.

I didn't hesitate. Yes.

[Splicing Commenced. Caution: Radical Cellular Reconstruction.

The dead Hound’s body dissolved into a cloud of glowing blue ash. The ash flew out in the air and hit me right in the chest.

I sank to my knees, screaming. My body was as though liquid fire was being sprayed directly into my bone marrow. My muscle fibers snapped and tore apart, and immediately wove back together, thicker and denser than previously. My heart was swollen, pumping oxygen into my body at a horrifying speed.

I glanced at my left arm. The deep claw marks were physically sealing, weaving together under my skin. The cold, below twenty-degree cold, which had been oozing out of my bones, disappeared altogether. The wind had not ceased, but it seemed to me that it was a soft spring breeze blowing on my face.

[Splice Complete.]

[New Traits Learned: Minor Cold Immunity (Passive) | Apex Speed (Active)]

I slowly stood up. I felt lighter. I was unbelievably strong. I squeezed my hand, and I could hear the tendons in my hand cracking like steel cables. I had fought my first battle, and the prize was unconditional power.

A wild honking brought me out of my trance. Maya was banging the horn of the SUV, her face against the glass, and pointing at the gates of the campus.

I turned. The college was a bunch. There were at least a dozen other students on the ground, twitching and convulsing on the ice. But they weren't just dying. The drastic cold was also activating latent mutations in the human genome. But the feeble did not receive a System. The feeble merely turned into monsters.

Frost-Hounds were leaping over the university walls and were attracted by the scent of blood.

I ran as fast as possible to the SUV. My new Apex Speed came on. The world that existed around me appeared to fade. A distance which would have been covered in ten seconds was covered in less than two by me. I ripped the driver's side door open, slid into the leather seat, and slammed the door shut just as a mutated hound slammed its body against the reinforced passenger window.

Maya screamed and put her hands over her ears. The monster clawed at the bulletproof glass, its jaws snapping ineffectively.

Put your seatbelt on, I said, with my voice quite calm.

I switched the giant SUV to the drive mode, stomped my foot on the accelerator, and drove the monster over. The tires that were heavy smashed their heads with a horrible pop.

We rushed out of the gates of the university and left the screaming campus behind. I entered the main highway and drove directly to the industrial district where my bunker stood.

But the apocalypse was gaining on me more rapidly than I had imagined.

We were driving along when the streetlights overhead burst into a cascade of sparks. The road lights were switched off. The power grid of the city failed in all aspects as the entire downtown skyline disappeared in a flash due to the extremely low temperatures of freezing.

We were thrown into complete darkness, and the only light was the SUV's headlights piercing the heavy, blue snow.

Maya whispered, "Kaelen," her voice shaking in the darkness. "Look."

I slammed on the brakes. The tires were heavy, and, sliding on the black ice, brought us to a standstill just before the main suspension bridge to our district.

The bridge was totally blocked. Not with cars left behind.

A beast three times the size of a Frost-Hound stood in the middle of the road, which was lighted by our headlights. Its huge shoulders were covered with thick, bone-plated armor, and a heavy, spiked tail smashed the concrete into dust. It gave a roar of deafening noise that shook the whole bridge.

It wasn't a dog. It was a Tier-2 Armored Behemoth. And its glowing red eyes were locked right on us.