With Beam and Fang Ch. 06

Chapter Six: Changes

Infected: 2,111,985,298

Healthy: 5,074,253,393

Day: 15

Kiwi opened his eyes to the sound of the President of the United States.

"We must remain calm in the face of this sweeping set of changes. But we cannot remain calm if we cannot face the truth: The truth is that this virus is real, and that it has been introduced to the oceans by the terrorist Desmond Freeman, now styling himself as Sageclaw. We will not rest until he is found and brought to justice..."

He slowly sat up, putting his hand against his forehead...

And felt a horn.

"Whoa..." He kept his eyes closed and slowly rubbed his hand up along the horn, to the sharp point at the top. He grabbed the other horn, feeling it cautiously. Then he opened his eyes and looked down at himself. His shoulders had gone from broad to very broad, and his chest bulged with muscle as if he had become Arnold Schwarzenegger. But his skin was brown...and it wasn't quite skin. Rather, it was covered with a short, bristly fur. His thighs were as barrel thick as his chest, and he had a long tail sprouting from above his butt, tipped with a fuzzy ball at the tip. He put his hand on his face and felt, first, his nose - broad and thick and with massive nostrils. He snorted, and half expected thin jets of steam to come out.

Then, of course, he pushed the sheets fully back and checked out his junk.

"...well, it's not all a downside..." He rumbled.

A knock came at the door and Kiwi jerked his sheets up, then reached out to shut the alarm clock that had woken him up off. The voice of the President - which had started outlining the attempts at quarantine that would be going into effect - shut down and Kiwi called out: "Come in!"

The door opened and Dr. Redfield stuck her beak into the room, her head following a moment later.

"You're up? Good. The quarantine on the building has been lifted, come."

And with that, she drew her head back, the door closing. Kiwi stood, and put his horns through the ceiling. He jerked his head back and the ceiling panel came with, showering him with plaster. "Augh!" He threw his hands up, stepping backwards, and felt the hooves he had instead of feet slip along the ground. His butt went backwards and his massive bulk landed on the cot jammed into the room. The cot cracked in half with a loud CRUCH and the entire room was thrown into chaos.

Dr. Redfield opened the door, sighing. "Corpo..."

She trailed off.

Kiwi put his hand on the ceiling panel, dragging it off his horns with a few quick tugs. It broke into two pieces under the strain and showered him with yet more plaster. Throwing them aside, he sighed and looked at the doctor, saying: "You can call me Kiwi, you know?"

And then he saw where her eyes were locked. Her beak hung open, and he swore that he could see a faint red blush glowing underneath the corners of her beak, blood flowing and lighting everything up. The fact that an attractive crow-girl was checking him out sent a tingle through Kiwi, and he soon felt blood rushing to his cock, which started to swell and swell, until it slapped against his belly, covering his belly button completely. It was easily thick enough to give Kiwi at least three new reasons to be completely smug about his lot in life.

"...I should go..." Dr. Redfield stammered.

The door closed with a slam, and Kiwi stood, cracking his knuckles and putting his hands behind his neck, rather proud of himself. He looked down and said: "Oh yeah. She wants me."

"I-I-I do not!" Dr. Redfield stammered through the door.

"Then give me some privacy!" Kiwi called to her, and only once he heard the quick clack clack clack of her toe-claws on linoleum did he grab up the sheet off his cot. He sighed, softly, closing his eyes. The first thing he imagined was unbuttoning her blouse, revealing those firm, furred breasts. He'd find her nipples with his fingers first, then close his mouth around them as his fingers rubbed her sex, finding her clit with the ease of practice - that was the trick. Practice, practice, practice. He grinned as his hand closed around his cock, feeling the hardness, the hotness, the smoothness.

He started to slide his hand up and down his shaft, pre slipping onto his palm, making him slick as he started to breath heavily through his nose, tiny spurts of air blowing out as his hand slid from the tip of his cock to the base. His hips started to move with the motion as his imagination moved from foreplay to the actual fun part: His cock slipping into tight, hot bird-sex. He imagined her beak opening, then closing as he thrust into her, her tight body shivering and shuddering, her feathers trembling.

Kiwi grunted. "F-Fuck!" He gasped, jerking faster and faster, the slick noise filling the tiny room as he moved his other hand to keep the sheet near his cock. "F-Fuck! Oh fuck! YES!" He grunted, hard, and his hips bucked forward as his balls clenched. Seed spurted from his member, and he spent himself as utterly as if he...well, as if he had gone without wanking for five days. When the haze finally cleared from his eyes, he looked down and saw he had soaked the sheet and his hand with thick, white cum. Panting, he grinned. "Dang..."

He wiped himself clean, his cock softening, though the room would need an airing out - the musk was so intense that he wondered if, maybe, his sense of smell had gotten better. Once he was clean, he came to a new and rather frustrating problem: His pants didn't fit. Hell, his shirt didn't fit. Hell, nothing he had fit him anymore. He frowned, then rummaged around in his backpack. He found the backup sheet, then wrapped it around himself, toga style. That exposed quite a bit of muscle, and if a breeze hit him wrong, someone would get a good view of his balls, but...

Eh, that wasn't so much of a much, was it?

Kiwi opened the door and found Dr. Redfield waiting for him at the end of the hallway. She glared at him.

"That's not really what I'd call properly dressed," she said, her beak clicking at the end of that sentence, the corners of her beak turning down ever so slightly.

"Hey, my clothes were for someone who was five foot nine," Kiwi said, gesturing to how he had to stoop to keep his horns from scraping on the ceiling.

Dr. Redfield looked like she really wanted to complain. She flicked her eyes over his body, once, twice, three times, then shook her head, realizing she hadn't said anything for a few moments. "Y-Yes. Right. Quarantine is lifted."

"Oh? We're not infectious?" He asked as she turned and walked with him out of the offices and into the main part of the Dynacore building.

"Of course we're infectious," she said, sounding cross. "But current CDC projections show that the whole world is going to be infected in less than a week. My idiot CEO dumped the meteorite into the ocean. Do you know what that means?"

"Uh...no?"

"It means that every coastal city is infected. Do you know what percentage of the human race lives on the coastline?" Redfield glanced over her shoulder at him.

Kiwi adjusted his toga. "T-Twenty?"

"Try ninety."

"...ninety? Really?" Kiwi paused. "That actually does explain why we need so many marines."

Redfield snorted. "If the replication of the nanovirus remains consistent, then the ocean will be completely infected by the end of today. If it retains the ability to spread through the air, even while replicating in water, then it completely denuded the Earth's atmosphere in three weeks. Faster, if it is even moderately clever and takes advantage of certain weather patterns..."

"I wonder if it will fix global warming for us," Kiwi said.

"W...It is an alien weapon designed to transform humanity into...into these things!" Redfield gestured at herself. "Why on Earth would it do anything to our carbon levels!?"

Kiwi shrugged as the two of them came to the main entrance of the Dynacore building. There, the rest of the infected employees were getting ready to leave, packing up what belongings they had, talking excitedly on cellphones, while outside of the building, a massive media circus was laid out - choppers had landed and let out scores of media personalities and cameras, all of them a good way back, all of them wearing NBC gear.

"Uh, why are they wearing...oh, because, I figure any virus that gives me a donger like this has to love humanity something fierce. But, no, why are the carrion birds out there wearing NBC gear? Didn't you say everyone is basically infected?" Kiwi asked.

Redfield threw her hands up, her wings fluttering in agitation. "Of course! Extrapolate the mores of an alien civilization and their nanotechnological weapons via the size of your dick!"

"No, seriously, why are the press in-"

"Just because logically the entire human race is shortly to be anthropomorphic animals doesn't then follow that the human race will behave in a logical fashion," Redfield sniffed.

"Like ducking after a bullet zips by," Kiwi said, nodding.

"I...suppose, yes, that is an apt metaphor," Redfield said.

"Nah, this is more like ducking after the bullet hit center of mass. Heh, of course, I did that too-" He gestured at his chest, then gasped. "Hey! My scars are gone! And my tattoo!"

"You were, over the course of five days, transformed into a bipedal oxen by an alien nanovirus, and you are surprised that your scars have been obliterated?" Redfield's voice was cutting. The doors hissed open and Kiwi shrugged.

"Nah. Why do you have to say things in the most complicated way possible?"

"It keeps me sane," she said, sniffing loudly.

And then the media circus really and truly started.

###

When Kiwi was swept out of the endless questions shouted through muffling gas-masks and the endless uncertain answers that seemed to be not heard at all, he felt only an intense feeling of relief. The hand on his arm pushed him from the crowd and into a limo, where immediately, he had to bend forward to avoid jamming his horns through the roof. He blinked as he saw that he was sitting across from three men in suits. They weren't wearing gas masks or anything.

"Greetings, Mr. Erwing, my name is Simon Schultz, this is James Vance and Kevin Dongles, we represent a rather important trust fund connected to several powerful multinational corporations," the man in the middle said, gesturing to his left and his right as he introduced names. That done, he held out a business card, which Kiwi took, looked at, then set down on the chair beside him as he reached for a seat belt that wasn't there, the limo shuddering and driving away from the crowds.

"Wait, uh, am I supposed to be leaving? I wasn't supposed to-" Kiwi jerked his thumb at the window, but before he could continue, the three men cut him off.

"Of course," Mr. Schultz said.

"Your discharge papers were forwarded to us," Mr. Vance said.

"Never you worry about a thing, Mr. Erwing," Mr. Dongles said.

"...right..." Kiwi shifted in his seat. "Why do you need me?"

"Well, you are one of the first infected, and, more importantly, we were able to get you, legally, assigned to us on extra-military duties. Essentially, what our corporations require is a product tester," Mr. Vance said.

"A...product tester?" Kiwi asked. "Like..."

"Food," Schultz said, nodding. "Those multinational corporations I mentioned? Farming conglomerates. And they see the wave of the future. The percentages released by the CDC state that forty percent of the infected become herbivores, and forty percent of the infected become carnivores, leaving ten percent to be omnivorous. Now, we know that some small select studies have been done - herbivores cannot eat meat, just as their fully...animalistic counter parts cannot eat meat. But, well, you are a bovine, and bovines are poisoned by a different set of foodstuffs than humans are. We need to know what kinds of food do what to what kind of people."

Kiwi blinked a few times.

"You will be paid handsomely, and have a full team of doctors..." Mr. Dongles said, holding out a piece of paper covered with contractual information.

"Wait, wait, wait, isn't this human testing?" Kiwi asked, taking the paper and looking it over. He could make no hides nor hair of it, until he realized he was holding it upside down. Sheepishly, he turned it over, and started reading again.

"Technically, you are not human..."

"Also, aren't you guys worried that you're going to get infected?" Kiwi asked.

Mr. Schultz shook his head. "We all have reason to be fairly sure that we have been infected already."

"Ah." Kiwi paused. "H...How much are you going to be paying me for this?"

They named a number.

Kiwi's eyes widened.

###

Celia stretched her arms over her head, then laid forward on her belly. She sighed as she felt hands slide along her back, rubbing her and scratching her and petting her. She started to purr, a rumble in her chest that made her whole body buzz softly as she closed her eyes. She buried her face into her arms and sighed as she felt those wonderful, wonderful hands slid down to her firm, tight ass. She groaned, lifting her head. "Mmm, that's nice, Spencer..."

The sound of waves was easily heard and, that and the purring and Spencer's soft comment about her ass - which was always appreciated - almost covered up the faint crunch, crunch, crunch of sand under hooves. Celia opened one eye and saw a dark hock beside her as Schaffer sat down, sighing softly.

Schaffer wore shorts that had been tailored to have a hole for a tail to reach through, but was otherwise bare: His chest shimmered in the sunlight, the black glossy and sleek. He shook his long head as he looked at the oceans, his eyes covered by huge aviator sunglasses that had their frames extended to fit over his head. They actually looked pretty good, and braced nicely against his forehead.

"So, I'm officially discharged," he said, sounding a bit wistful.

"Is that bad?" Spencer asked.

"I'm young, fit, and able to lead men into battle, but the Pentagon want an uninfected general as part of the Joint Cheifs..." He shook his head, looking at Spencer, then down at Celia. "My pension is pretty nice, though, even if I have little to spend it on..."

Spencer shrugged.

In the silence that stretched between the three of them, broken only by the sounds of the waves crashing on the beach and the distant sound of birds cawing and wheeling through the air, Celia pursed her muzzle, then sat up, pushing Spencer's hands back with her motion. Her breasts - covered by only a small bikini top - bounced slightly as she settled back on her thighs, looking at Spencer, then at Schaffer.

"Thanks for the pardon. I mean, you helped with that, right?"

"Oh, yeah, that," Schaffer shook his head. "That was easy enough to ram through, since everyone is going after Sageclaw with a wild passion. They should..." He growled. "There were ten people, butchered and eaten like..."

"Cattle?" Spencer asked.

Celia, remembering how delicious the meat had smelled, shuddered, her hand going to Spencer's scaled thigh, squeezing.

"Yeah," Schaffer said. "With Sageclaw out there, wandering around, you two are pretty much counted as no-ones. And, I guess, so am I."

"Well, you can visit your family, right?" Celia asked.

Schaffer shook his head. "My wife died ten years ago. We never had children. My grandparents don't want to talk to an ungodly abomination, and my brother was barely comfortable over the phone. It is...it is all right-" He looked, alarmed, at Celia, who had gasped rather loudly. "-I've got enough money to find something to do for myself."

"Well, why don't we go into business together?" Spencer asked. "We could use someone who actually knows what to do when things get hot..."

"I...what!?" Spencer stood, his hands going to his shorts, to make sure they didn't slip down.

"Whoa, no, not like that!" Spencer said, holding up his hands, scales glittering in the sun. "We're not going to go back to stealing. But, well, the world is going to be pretty chaotic for a bit. Life is going to take a lot of straightening out. That means, there will be...jobs for people who know how to get into and out of places quickly and easily. Rescuing kidnaped people, defusing hostage situations, handling whacko survivalists..."

"A booming market, I'm sure," Schafer said, still not sitting down.

"Yeah, and, well, we figure, with so many eyes on us, we should do stuff that's at least semi-legal. But, it will be dangerous, and...you know all sorts of people. Plus, come on, you're a young stallion, you have to have at least some adventures!" Spencer grinned.

Schaffer frowned. "Stallion?"

"...well, uh..."

"I'm a man, Spencer." Schaffer's voice was tight.

Celia sighed, pushing herself to her feet, so that she was on eye level with Schaffer. She reached up, taking his glasses off.

"You're a man, Schaffer. But you're also a stallion. You can run faster, jump higher, kick harder. You have hooves, and flexible ears, and I bet you only eat salads these days..." She smiled, slightly. "I...we're all going to have to adjust to this life. I don't think we asked for it, I don't think anyone asked for it, but we have three choices: We can act like we haven't changed, and ignore the claws and the night vision, the changes in diet and body...and go insane, trying to keep what we lost. We can give up, and kill ourselves rather than stay in a body we weren't born in, or we can try and make the best of it."

"Make the best of it?" Schaffer asked, his voice soft.

Celia nodded.

"How?"

Celia glanced at Spencer, then grinned. "Well, uh, Spence and I got used to it by having the best sex of our lives!" She said, her voice bright.

Schaffer snorted. "That's not going to work for me, I'm guessing."

"Why not?" Celia asked.

Schaffer blinked, then looked at Celia, then at Spencer. Spencer, who was still sitting on the beach towel, looked him over, rubbing his chin, slowly.

"We'd need the no-sex coffee date," he said, after a few moment's thought. "And the yes/maybe/no list. And some really big condoms."

Celia snorted. "Duh!"

###

Bobby Blitzer was starving. He had eaten twice since the transformation, and he had started to feel guilty. The doe, the female deer, she had screamed so loudly when he had sprung out of the alleyway, and she had seemed so beautiful. He felt sick at heart, remembering what he had done to her, before and after and even during the eating.

But he was so...so hungry...

He crept through an alleyway, not even sure which street he was near, which city he was in. He had moved around so much, since his first feeding, since his first kills. The kills still made him feel such power, so much power...

Then he heard a soft, ripping noise. It sounded almost like flesh ripping under claws, but with less moisture, less delicious, blood pumping noises. He crept forward, the pads of his paws making the movement almost silent. His tail twitched from side to side as he came to the corner, then moved around.

He found himself looking at a lion - regal, powerfully built, with blood flecking his body and his face. His jaw was canted at an odd angle, twisted and broken, while he was toothless and barely able to speak. He pressed against the wall of the alleyway, and looked at Blitzer, his eyes hazy and confused.

He was no prey animal...he was a predator.

Blitzer moved forward, getting his shoulder under the lion's armpit, hoisting him up.

Together, they shambled down the alleyway.

Blitzer knew a place where he could take him - nurse him. And as he walked, the lion whispered. "The pride...there's always a Pride..."

Blitzer didn't know what that was.

But he liked the sound of it.