I had no idea how long they dragged me along. My legs ached as if they'd been ground to dust, and my throat was so dry that every swallow felt like sand grinding down my insides.
Every time we passed a stagnant puddle, I fought a primal urge to throw myself at it and gulp whatever water I could.
I had to stay lucid. I'm not an animal. I'm a human being with intellect, with awareness, who once lived in an age of advanced science.
I repeated that thought like a mantra to keep my head clear, to force myself to analyze the situation as we moved.
A few people appeared along the road, half-hidden among the ruins. They crawled on all fours, completely naked. Some were gnawing at the flesh of others. Some crouched to drink filthy water. They had lost language, reduced to animal howls. They feared the half-beast monsters that held me; the moment they saw those creatures they scattered in panic.
The half-human, half-beast monsters seemed to have lost interest in hunting. They looked content with the spoils they'd taken today.
Aside from me, the group carried two other humans. They were slung along like cargo, already dead, limp and lifeless.
I should have felt grateful to still be able to drag myself along on my own two feet.
They laughed and talked among themselves, comparing the trophies they'd brought in and planning what to cook for dinner. I could not block the sound no matter how much I wanted to. I forced my head down, lips pressed pale and tight, and stared at the rope binding my wrists as the panther dragged me forward.
We kept going until the leaden sky slowly bled into a reddish-orange like dried blood, and then I saw torches ahead.
It was a village made up of many species: dogs, cats, birds. They lived in makeshift shelters of tarps and under fallen concrete.
I saw a little songbird hanging clothes with its wing still feathered. A cat-man split wood, his bulging muscles shining with sweat. Some kids rode on the back of a human tied to a stake, laughing as if this were their everyday play.I could not help but frown at the alien strangeness of it all.
The scene made me frown.
From what I knew of animal behavior, species tend to band together by kind. But this place was a mess of mixed groups. If these creatures had evolved a civilization, maybe this village was made up of outcasts from different packs.
Like the slums in human society, I thought.
So no species was spared that fate, then.
Knowledge means power, and power breeds war.
When the pnater dragged me into the village, every eye turned to me because I was clothed and walking upright like them.
"Duncan, what's that?" A girl with the same panther ears ran up, panic in her voice as she held a baby who looked the same.
Duncan, his name I assumed, yanked the rope hard enough to make me stumble toward him. He glanced at me and curled a contemptuous lip. "Looks like an abandoned pet. Odd enough, I'll sell him to the traffickers."
I felt a shiver run up my arm and dug my fingernails into my palm to stop from trembling. The meaning behind his words was clear enough.
If humans once hunted animals to mount or keep as pets, then when the tables turned the same would be done to us. We could become curiosities, amusements in a freak show.
The thought made my skin crawl, almost to the point of vomiting.
Maybe this was nature's revenge for humanity.
If it was, I would not complain. As a scientist, I had experimented on white rats, advanced inventions that harmed nature.
Perharps this was my karmic reckoning.
Duncan shoved me into a crude cage woven from branches and bound with rope. Around me were others locked in similar pens. Some crawled to the bars and reached out to touch me. Their nails were long and broken, caked in mud. Stench rose off them like animals. Their voices were dull, guttural sounds. Their eyes were hollow.
I shrank away and curled my knees to my chest, keeping distance. Night fell and a cold mist crept over my skin. At noon the sun had burned like a furnace; now the chill bit to the bone. The planet's atmosphere was clearly unsettled.
Unlike the cramped pens reeking of waste, farther from the cages the beastfolk gathered around a bright fire and talked loudly. I caught a blurred glimpse of a human body skewered on a stake, the head gone.
The sight turned my stomach. I bent double, dry-heaving though nothing came up. It was absurd, humans could dispatch a pig or a rabbit without batting an eye, but when the victim was their own kind, revulsion boiled over.
I clenched my jaw and swallowed my nausea to force myself to look. I had to gather information about these beasts' ways and their level of knowledge.
They had guns, but no electricity, no modern devices. They scavenged the ruins of our world but lacked the ability to rebuild scientific systems. Their civilization seemed nascent, perhaps only a few hundred years old.
With my knowledge I could escape from here.
But where could I go if I did?
This world no longer belonged to humans. The beasts likely held dominion over the earth. No matter where I fled, I would fall into their hands again.
Worse...
I glanced at the other humans in adjacent cages, reaching for me with hungry hands.
Worse, I might be torn apart by my own kind.
Were there any humans left who still retained reason?
I could not say. Everything felt foggy. My mind swam.
Waking from a long sleep and then being chased had turbocharged my metabolism. My stomach was empty. My lips cracked and bled from thirst.
Cold and hungry. I did not know if I would survive until morning.
And if I did, how long could I keep my sanity in this mad world?
I hugged myself tighter, both to warm my body and to console the loneliness that was eating me from the inside.
At twenty-five, when I learned my cancer was stage three, I was terrified. Instead of following my parents' advice to try treatments with slim chances, I had chosen to put my faith in the science I served.
Now that same faith was eroding me. I did not know how I would die, whether by the jaws of my fellow humans, at the hands of the beasts, or from the cancer spreading within me.
I had abandoned my family to enter that indefinite sleep. I did not deserve to miss them.
If I had been brave enough to face the cancer, to spend more time with my family, would things be different?
Amid the cries of my kind and the distant revelry of the beasts, my sobs were swallowed whole, to the point that I could no longer even hear myself.
***