Selvaggi Savages
Every time I go outside in one of these heavy suits I come back drenched in sweat. But they’re the only things keeping us from being mauled to death by the selvaggi. They’ve taken control over all but a handful of human camps.
I want nothing more than to go back to the old days, running free in the meadows. Now, we’re only allowed to go out to search for resources. It’s believed that all animals were turned into selvaggi after the spike in global warming and the nuclear war affectionately nicknamed “The Oven Period.”
“Hey Prot!” Crior shouted, hurtling me back to reality.
“What Crior?” I shouted back.
“There’s a selvaggi here!” he announced.
I sprinted over and saw it. It reminded me of a wolf but wrong. It had eerie veins of energy flowing through its fur. Its black eyes had no pupils; it was blind. They travel in groups, so it was strange to see one alone.
“Aaaaah!” Crior yelled as he drove his blade into the skull of the creature.
It limped about a bit and fell, lifeless.
“Guess we found our food,” Crior commented.
“Guess we did,” I responded, helping him carry this thing back to base.
We got back to base and handed the body to Doc for decontamination.
“Oh my god!” he shouted.
“What?” Crior and Prot asked in unison.
“You brought back a real body of a dead selvaggi! We must begin research immediately!”
Crior and I backed out and let the scientists do their job.
“Everyone get to the lab now! This is urgent, code red, people!” Doc’s voice announced a few hours later over the intercom.
We all hustled in and waited.
“We have found that the selvaggi DNA is very similar to ours,” he announced. “With almost 99.3% of the genome being identical. Even more unsettling, the DNA from this particular selvaggi has very similar DNA to Prot. Almost … family-like.”
There was a hush; everyone turned toward me. I was shaken; I briskly walked out of the lab. I walked faster until I found myself sprinting toward the suit room. I crawled into a suit and went outside. What is even the point of this helmet?! The selvaggi ARE us so it doesn’t even matter! I took off the helmet, exposing my scent, and breathed in fresh air.
“Prot are you trying to get yourself killed!?” Crior screamed. “Hurry, hurry! Put it back on, now!”
“What’s the point, Crior? The selvaggi, they’re us.”
At that moment, a group of six selvaggi sprinted at us.
“Run, Prot!” Crior shouted as he swung.
He missed and the selvaggi jumped on him and started tearing his body apart with its teeth. Something strange happened. Crior’s body was reconstructing itself. I watched in horror as I saw him turning into a selvaggi. I tried to run from the group of now seven selvaggi, but my legs were no match for theirs. The last thing I saw was rows of teeth.