Variant Strain

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The single infected that Peter was consuming hadn't even finished settling down yet when he'd already begun to move.

He'd torn it free of the razor spike it was on using tendrils projected from his right arm and was still in the process of drawing the body into his own when he'd raised his left arm and willed it to shift.

There was that brief pained spasm as his body protested that it didn't have enough to work with, but the fresh infusion of biomass was like a warm rush of relief, unclenching his gut and allowing his arm to take on its bladed-ended whip form.

The red veins shot through his arm flared with heat and light. The shifts in mass tugged faintly at his miniscule reserves. The biomass from that single body really was just barely enough to allow him to shift forms and adjust his mass somewhat. He wasn't expecting to need to throw cars again.

Better to be ready, though, Cain grumbled back.

Peter hadn't been consciously aiming the blade end of his arm, but he had a moment of absent surprise when he realized that he'd been adjusting its position against one of the Hunters scrambling across the walls of a nearby building. The flare of heat and blast of displaced air as the blade launched caught the Hunter unaware.

The blade went right through it's lower back, the bulbous root that the blade projected from, where Peter's stubby fingers were folded into, drove into the Hunter's spine slamming it and pinning it against the brick wall, It roared, fighting to push free of the wall, to draw out the blade that had run it clean through, but Peter didn't give it a chance.

One of the blade end's useful properties was that its mass and gravity effects could be adjusted independent of the rest of Peter's body. That was what had allowed Dr. Connors to do all sorts of useful tricks with it. The weight of the blade shifted, magnifying and redirecting so that local to itself, 'down' would be the building. Peter didn't have a lot of mass to work with, but even for a Hunter, having nearly two hundred pounds of weight applied to a pinpoint on its spine was a bit much.

It howled louder, unable to free itself, but Peter's arm was now sufficiently anchored to take his weight... and the Hunter was sufficiently trapped to make it unable to fight free.

The fingers of that hand drove into the Hunter's flesh, feeding tendrils unfolding into its body, solidifying Peter's hold further and filling his reserves further.

Peter leaped, his arm contracting sharply. He didn't allow the vertebra like bones of his whip arm to snap shut, instead using the point of contact as an anchor point to whip himself forward. By the time he'd passed, body poised in mid-leap, the Hunter was entirely consumed and his arm was snapping back to its neutral position.

His body shifted mass with ease, allowing him to glide with a grace he hadn't possessed before. That last Vulture had made him far more at home in the air. In fact, far more at home than the ungainly Hunters who merely powered through it with leaps and bounds.

He watched them move, tracking their headings individually. If he paid attention, he could make out the trajectories of each Hunter. The points in their movements when they'd be most vulnerable. He caught the tone of his own thoughts. He'd only just barely come out of his brief freak out and already he was considering how to take down the largest group of Hunters he'd come across so far.

Funny how just a few days ago he was running away from a handful of them, his voice drawled in his mind. See how far you've come?

Which was part of what he was afraid of. But once again... he didn't have time to think about that.

He oriented on the nearest one, when he hit the peak of his glide, then shifted weight and flipped forward, arrowing towards it feet first. His feet shifted into talons and caught the Hunter through one shoulder. It howled as Peter clenched his talons, grinding hard against bone, before he whipped his other leg around, blades slicing easily through the hairy mane and biting deeply into the Hunter's throat.

Its roar turned into a gurgle and Peter's smooth forward glide began to turn into a plummet from the extra unshifted weight.

He angled the fall to smash the Hunter head first into the nearest building, applying his new full weight onto its skull, crushing it easily. The tendrils in his legs unfolded and were still consuming even as he jogged to the edge of the building roof and launched himself into the air once more.

Peter caught sight of his reflection in a building window as he arrowed towards another Hunter. One arm almost looked normal, except there seemed to be a hand still sticking out of his shoulder. His other arm and leg were both grotesquely swollen, tendrils still churning and flailing. A Hunter's face was caught in mid-scream on his bicep. The mane of hair stretching across his shoulder and down his side to merge with another mane where an extra withered set of legs still stuck out of his hip. His face was shadowed in the hoodie, but his eyes were glowing red from edge to edge.

The tendrils bulged and unnatural forms were shifting and heaving under his skin and clothes but he'd never really seen himself that far gone. That... inhuman.

He almost hesitated, but Donna snapped at him, You do not have time for this. Use it. Remember? You think you're a monster? Fine. You are. But right now, you need to be the meanest, nastiest, most dangerous one out there, because otherwise...

He snarled out loud, "I know!"

The last time he'd eaten this fast was probably when he'd consumed the Walkers on the stairs of the Watson house. MJ had seen him doing this. She'd seen him become this inhuman thing and she'd still kissed him.

Cletus made a throat-clearing noise that eloquently expressed his oft-stated opinions on his maybe-kind of-sort of girlfriend.

Peter pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind, where he could already feel the splinters of mind from his new victims slotting gently into place. No time to review them now, he noted. Perhaps later.

His swollen arm shifted to its whip blade form once more. He lashed out, smashing into the head of a Hunter in mid-leap and immediately drove his feeding tendrils into its skull. The body flailed at the end of the cable of flesh and Peter gave his shoulder a shrug, slamming it into yet another Hunter, stunning that one briefly.

He pulled hard, contracting his arm with a snap, aiming to land on the stunned Hunter with his talons, but it managed to shakily roll aside at the last moment.

That had caught the attention of the other Hunters as the one he'd missed, hastily backed away from Peter before he could pull his talons free of the roof.

The closest Hunters had stopped their leaps and turned to face him. Clinging to the roofs and staying low. Peter could hear the growls, the scent in the air changing in some undefinable way.

Pheromone communication, Connors whispered. They're coordinating again.

They'd noticed their vulnerability and weren't about to let him have any more easy pickings.

Well it was too good to last anyway, Cletus opined.

At least they're not going after the convoy, Donna pointed out.

There's fifteen in this group. Cain murmured. Staticky bursts of radio comm chatter echoed in their mind. The rest are already engaging the tail end of the convoy or going to catch up soon.

Then we don't let this bunch stop us. Peter thought back fiercely.

They're all also all in front of us. Cain graveled. Don't think they're all that happy.

"They're about to get a lot less happy," Peter growled.

The Hunters stalked closer, closing in around him. The closest one, the one he'd missed skewering lunged forward, diving in low to hamstring him. Peter took a few skipping steps back, narrowly avoiding the swipe of claws.

The moment's distraction from that was enough to set up two Hunters to leap at him. One aiming high, going for his head. The other angling for his mid-section. The claws were out, but from they were setting up to tackle him. Pin him down. Keep him from moving so they could tear him apart-- and eat him-- at their leisure.

Between the two Hunters and the third at his feet, he was too well boxed in.

Peter dropped down, bracing himself solidly as he shifted his full mass through his body and brought his arms up into defensive positions as well as he could. His tendrils flickered across his skin briefly and he noted absently that it had turned the same corpse-pallor gray of a Rhino's.

The Hunter trying to tackle him slammed hard into his mid-section, but he barely moved. He felt the blow drive the wind from him, but he stayed upright, rather than being pushed over as the Hunter had obviously planned. It's claws scrambling for purchase at his lower back couldn't seem to quite cut into him deeply enough, even though he could feel them slicing at him like thin paper cuts.

No time to think. Reflexes caught the one leaping for his head in a clawed hand, the blades digging into its face and scraping against skull as he stopped it in mid-leap. His grip tightened, bone claws digging into its head for a brief moment and holding it suspended horizontally in a haze of red, before he slammed it with the full measure of his restored strength into the Hunter that had been trying to hold his waist.

That knocked it loose, sending both Hunters sprawling at his feet, as the one he'd held had torn loose from his claw, losing an eye in the process. The two were stunned and disoriented, but not quite yet out of the fight.

Which might have been enough for Peter to finish them off if the other Hunters hadn't taken his moments of distraction dealing with his first two playmates to surround him and begin their own attacks. He shifted mass away once more, making himself light enough to move at his full speed.

Their claws came raking and stabbing at him from every angle, forcing Peter to give ground and dodge desperately, the bodies of the fallen and stunned Hunters serving as more platforms for him to use. There was no longer any conscious thought to it. No listening to Cain's graveled warnings. He'd had to move faster and faster, letting his instincts and senses direct his motions. The shifts in the motion of the air. The scents closing in. He fought back as he moved, once he'd gotten into the Hunter's rhythm.

An over extended claw would be met with a raking slice of his own claws. A snarling face that came too close could expect to meet a hardened elbow or knee. Taloned feet would swipe at unwary knees and perform messy disembowelments even as he danced around the blows.

He was still taking hits, cuts, bruises and near fractures from inhumanly strong blows, but his body kept healing itself, consuming his vanishingly small reserves of biomass and that was making all the difference. The Hunters didn't have Walkers or viral matting to consume. Every injury Peter inflicted on them stayed. Within a few minutes half the Hunters were nursing crippling injuries. Those ones had begun pulling back, hiding behind a screen of its healthier fellows.

Peter had hoped they were retreating. That he'd actually managed to do enough damage to scare them off, but it was a fool's hope.

The worst injured Hunter, the one whose belly had been savagely torn open and was just barely holding its guts inside with a clawed hand took a few skipping steps back, in a movement that Peter found familiar for having done it himself earlier.

Peter caught a shift in the air again and the four or so injured Hunters closest to the gutted one turned and began tearing it apart.

He knew he shouldn't have been surprised by that. It was the obvious... logical thing for them to do. One badly injured Hunter was a fair trade for healing several of them all at once.

All the injured Hunters dove into their meal with a will and Peter was left with about seven Hunters still blocking him. All only lightly injured, but tied up in keeping him away from the feeding frenzy behind him

He growled as he realized just how much they would slow him down. Granted, having these ones fighting him meant they wouldn't be attacking the convoy, but there were more there already.

The Hunters all seemed to take a step back at his growl and Peter had to blink in surprise. He realized that thanks to Hank, he was in their communications. He had their scent.

He could disrupt the Walkers. Why not the Hunters?

He snarled louder at them. A primal, wordless noise that seemed to send a shudder through the Hunters. There was something of Brian's mindless fury in the noise and a small part of Peter hated himself for drawing on it.

But that did the trick. The Hunters were already aware before that he was a danger to them, but he had just hammered the point home for them.

They were in the presence of an apex predator. He ate their kind... and that knowledge was rammed like an ice-cold spike into all their heads. A stone, cold fact. A fact large enough and strong enough to overwhelm their ability to communicate with one another. A Beck or a Hive could probably keep their coordination running, but the nearest ones were a few blocks away.

Too far to help.

He grinned savagely at the Hunters. If he was going to do what needed to be done, he would need to be a bigger monster still. His arm shifted to its whip-blade form and he shot it directly at one of them. The usual perfectly coordinated dodges turned into a fiasco as several of the Hunters got in each others way and fell down in a tangle of limbs. That held them still long enough for Peter's blade to pierce both, sending up howls of agony from the pinned Hunters.

Individually the Hunters were still as they were. Fast, durable, agile, terrifyingly strong and armed with razor sharp claws... but they were no longer fighting in perfect coordination. They made mistakes, getting in one another's ways. The feeding frenzy in the corner of the roof had turned into a brawl as the Hunters began squabbling and attacking one another in their haste and hunger.

Hunger.

Oh yes, Peter body still wasn't satisfied with the paltry offerings he had given it. The bleeding and broken forms of the Hunters just inflamed his appetite once more and he began attacking them in a frenzy. He swept his whip-bladed arm wildly across the roof as he moved and rolled and dived among the Hunters. No longer attacking as a pack, he could keep them from penning him in and trapping him between them. His arm flashed out, backed by talons and claws, slashing into them, tearing them apart and just as quickly pulling back to allow his feeding tendrils to flick out and consume any stray bit of blood and flesh that a Hunter lost.

By the time Peter had dealt with-- eaten-- the other Hunters he leapt upon the tangle of still fighting Hunters. They were close enough together, that a single mass flare was enough to smash them into a paste that his tendrils were only too quick to lap up.

There were injuries all over his body. The Hunters had managed to score wounds that should have been fatal or at least debilitating, but Peter's body was flush with biomass once more. Tendrils knit wounds closed as he moved and the strange swellings of half-digested victims were settling in as his body shifted down to its default appearance.

He was breathing hard. Not winded, not tired. He was panting from the excitement. The sheer delight in showing them that he was superior to them. That he was the alpha.

He shuddered as he realized the grin hadn't left his face yet. Enjoying the monstrosity he was becoming was just one of those things he'd been terrified of. And here he was, doing just that.

He shook his head before any of his mental roommates could chide him. He knew there was no time. He agreed that it was necessary.

He was just getting worried about how deeply he was immersing himself in his role.

He ran, letting the wind rake at him as he launched himself forward in a burst of speed, continuing after the route the convoy was taking. Cain's eavesdropping on the military radio bands told them that the Hunters had already broken through the rearmost elements and were working their way towards the civilian vehicles.

--ammit! Keep shootin--

--e can't! They're just too fa--

-- stop them! For god's sake stop the--

-- in the car, ma'am! For your ow-- AGH!--

He cursed under his breath and poured on the speed.

It took only a few minutes for his immense leaps to clear the distance and find the first evidence of the convoy's encounter with the Hunters.

The street was still deserted, the convoy only a few blocks away and making good time still towards the Queensborough Bridge, but bullet holes marred several buildings. Peter's sharpened senses could still pick out sporadic gunfire and the smell of fear, living Hydra and spent gunpowder was growing cloying.

As he closed in, he found a tank that showed claw gouges in its armor which had rammed itself into a storefront. The hatch was open and Peter had no illusions about what was inside.

See? If you hadn't spent so much time fussin' maybe those poor fellas'd be alive. Cletus drawled.

"Shut up!" Peter snarled aloud, startling himself.

As he kept running, past an overturned APC and torn up streets, the first few bodies became visible.

He forced himself to concentrate and just keep moving.

They were slumped unmoving on the street. None of them had any major injuries that he could see. There were cuts, shredded body armor and a few minor injuries here and there, but nothing that should have taken them down.

Peter's nostrils flared as the real reason hit him. All of the soldiers and Thunderbolts agents scattered on the street were saturated with Hydra. The strength of the scents, grown confused by the immense mass of dead Hydra behind him and the overlapping scents of the Hunters, were sharp now that he was this close.

The Hunters hadn't torn them apart as he'd expected. Hadn't killed them and eaten them. They were injured just enough to make them vulnerable. Just enough to infect them. Here and there, the sleeping forms were beginning to twist into unnatural forms. A few of those seemed to be twitching or trying to stand. Others had already begun to break down, what distinctive features they had were smoothing out and melting into the rust reds and browns of viral matting.

Recouping their losses, Cain graveled. These newer Hives can turn Sleepers into Walkers. Or just straight biomass to use.

Connors pointed out, These infections are progressing very fast.

He ignored them as he ran past, his inhumanly keen eyes picking up on something else stirring near the Sleepers. Scattered among them were rats.

Rats with glowing red-eyes and expressions that were far too intelligent for even New York rodents.

Vectors for the infection, he realized. The reason why every unmoving body in sight was swimming in live Hydra. He hadn't seen the infected rats since the Bellvue Hive. Perhaps they'd been scattered among that mob, too small to notice in the press of Walkers. Peter realized that even if he killed every single Hunter chasing the convoy, they could still lose everything if the rats began infecting people unseen.

Perhaps the Hunters were meant entirely as distractions... he turned his gaze up the street wondering if the rats were hiding in the vehicles already. The Hunters were just... there to encourage the chase. To get them running faster to wherever it was the refugees and soldiers were going. Somewhere outside the cordon around the Forest Hills neighborhood or even outside Queens. Or had the rats always been in the mob? A quick and easy way to spread the infection. Not necessarily a plan, simply a part of the Infected ecosystem.

One thing at a time.

The rats seemed to catch his scent and as one turned tail and ran down the street, ducking into every crevice, nook and cranny until they became invisible presences given away only by their unmistakeable scents.

Peter cursed. He expected there were even more up ahead. Possibly hitching a ride on the Hunters.

He would have to deal with the rats as well, but the Hunters were the more obvious problem at the moment.

More disabled vehicles came into view as he ran. This time there were still injured Thunderbolts here and there, continuing to fight. The machine gun fire chattering pounded at Peter's senses and the spilled blood and spent gunpowder fought against the scents of Hydra for his attention.

More APCs were stopped on the road. Some with tires torn loose. One had crashed into a lamp pole because its driver had been torn out of the cab. Peter spotted ten Hunters scattered on the street, cutting their way through the few soldiers and Thunderbolts carrying on a desperate fight for survival.

Experience told him that guns could work on Hunters. Provided enough lead could be pumped into one. Or a lucky shot could take one in the head. Or a combination of the two, where just enough bullets were used to stagger or slow one down long enough for a kill shot to be made.

At least that was the theory. Except the Hunters were also very, very fast and could dart in to kill a man before he could even bring his gun to bear. Or keep going despite some horrific wounds. Despite those advantages, there were a Hunters sprawled lifelessly on the ground, blood splattered everywhere.

The soldiers at least were making sure the Hunters knew they'd been in a fight.

Peter didn't hesitate as he leaped onto one Hunter in a high arc, flaring heat to smash it flat into the ground, crippling it in the process, then turning the motion into a forward diving roll to tear the arms off another with his claws.

That seemed to catch both Hunters and soldiers entirely by surprise.

He snapped his whip-blade out, slashing wildly at the Hunters and forcing them to pay attention to him. That gave the soldiers opportunities for potshots at the distracted Hunters. Well, a few took shots at him as well, but Peter was aware enough of what they were doing to keep the Hunters between him and the soldiers, preventing them from getting any clear shots at him.

Three Hunters went down from the gun fire. Peter's whip-blade had slashed a fourth almost in half and claimed the legs from a fifth. Finding their numbers cut down sharply seemed to decide something for the Hunters.

They took off, surging past Peter and taking to the rooftops in bounding leaps. At least they were heading away from the convoy, he told himself. That was all he needed from them right now.

This close, he could tell that something was definitely wrong now.

A few soldiers gave a ragged cheer as the Hunters pulled back, but the Thunderbolts among them still had their guns up.

Peter didn't take any chances and shifted an arm to shield form as he continued running past them. No one actually took a shot as he passed, but no one seemed to know what to do.

He moved on before they really had the chance to change their minds.

The convoy's stopped moving. Cain murmured, putting words to what was bothering him about the situation. The scents of the vehicles had frozen in place. A shift in the wind carried the scents of burning gasoline and smoke back to him from the front of the column.

The screams were reaching him now.

The soldiers hadn't been enough.

The Hunters had gotten to the civilians.

More APCs were stalled on the road, soldiers and Thunderbolts were still in the process of coming out of the stopped vehicles and looking for something-- anything-- to shoot.

The screaming grew louder and Peter could see panicked people running past him. There wasn't any time for a count, just that there were a lot of them. He inhaled sharply and realized that mixed in with the crowd were infected, blank eyed and scrambling. There weren't any Hunters. It was all newly turned Walkers.

The rats had gotten to the refugees.

Once he became aware of them, it was impossible to mistake them for anything else. He picked them out from the crowd, over a dozen, randomly grabbing and attacking anyone they could. More were coming into view. All mixed together. Some of them still looked perfectly normal. Some were only just beginning to deform.

Peter's eyes widened as he realized what was about to happen.

He glanced over his shoulder at the soldiers who had just gotten their bearings... who were being confronted by a terrified mob. Soldiers who were just beginning to panic and raising their weapons to take aim.

Peter licked dry lips and let his heartbeat spike. He could try to draw their attention. He could make them shoot at him instead, but he realized there was one thing he could do instead.

Tendrils wreathed his body and left him clad in bright yellow. He filled his lungs and raised his voice, now a deep booming bass, "Hold your fire! Let them pass!" His tone had an unmistakeable air of authority to it. Peter wasn't sure who that had come from, only that he knew it was a voice that thundered down and demanded instant obedience.

The sight of him in his faux Thunderbolt hazmat suit seemed to relax some of the soldiers. Peter could almost smell the tension in the men. They were badly rattled, but at least they'd listened. If nothing else, he'd managed to stop that bit of possible slaughter.

"Let them through!" He yelled again, "We'll deal with any infected."

A flick of the whip-arm thing'll take care of alla 'em right quick, Cletus drawled.

And kill everyone else and start the soldiers shooting at us, Peter snapped back, his eyes tracking every infected he could see.

There was one advantage to dealing with Walkers as opposed to Hunters.

Walkers were more fragile.

He let the numbers whirl in his mind, working with perfect kinesthetic perception of his own body. The awareness of his body's limits of movement. Of how he could move.

He had to work with the crowd. Up until now he'd never had to worry about collateral damage. He was free to be a wrecking ball, smashing into crowds of infected. Well now they were mixed with people.

He had to be a scalpel this time. He kept his body human. It took up less space and was less likely to prompt the soldiers to start shooting. Also, anyone bumping into him in the crowd while he had his claws, talons or whip-blade out were apt to be sliced to ribbons.

Every time he thought he'd gotten a handle on things, the rules changed on him, Peter thought sourly as he hurried. He slid past the crowd, reaching a gloved hand out to catch the infected closest to him by the throat. it pulled up short, jerked entirely off its feet as it was in the midst of grabbing a woman in her thirties. It looked like an overweight man in his forties. He forced himself to ignore that detail. To ignore the man's receding hairline and bad comb over. To ignore the wedding ring on his hand.

The woman shrilled hysterically as Peter crushed the infected man's throat and pulled him down, hiding him in the press of the crowd as his tendrils went to work. He danced around more of the running mob, dealing with the awkward burden on his arm by the simple expedient of using it to shove people out of the way.

The tendrils had almost folded back into his arm when he caught up to another infected. This one had pushed another person down to the street and was tearing at their throat with teeth that were entirely too flat and even to have been normal. Blood ran down its chin as it looked up at Peter sharply. He didn't even stop walking as he drove his arm downwards, into its head, the punch smashing all the way into the unfortunate victim. He... or she had already become infected. Peter didn't really want to look closely. He was going to be far too intimate with their personal histories as it was.

He pushed and wove through the crowd, taking out and consuming each Walker he came within arm's reach. His hunger didn't seem appeased at all. If anything each fresh body just made him eager for more.

Like popcorn, Cletus cackled. Can't have just the one, y'know?

Here and there Peter heard gunfire. The soldiers had gotten themselves organized once more. Any obvious infected that they could spot was dealt with harshly using bayonets and rifle butts.

At least they aren't shooting into the crowds, Donna pointed out gently.

They were about to, Peter thought back harshly. Wearily.

Crumbled shards of mind from the fresh Walkers slotted quietly into the back of his head and he could feel more memories and thoughts not his own weighing him down. There was nothing from the Sleepers. No minds there, no matter how freshly turned.

Ironic that he'd turned down all that flesh back at the barricade... It almost didn't seem like it was worth it anymore. He was beginning to wonder why he was bothering to do this.

Because otherwise, you really would be a monster then, Donna whispered.

He licked his lips, hoping that was true. He clenched his fists and moved.

There was more to do.

Peter spotted the Hunters finally as he broke out of the worst of the crowd. There were still civilians and soldiers trapped and unable to get past the bestial infected. Hemmed in by snarling Hunters.

And beneath the overwhelming scents of blood and carrion and smoke... sweetness.

Waffles.

Somewhere in that mess was MJ and he was close enough now to finally catch a clear thread of her scent despite all the other scents interfering.

There's another reason, his voice drawled in his mind.

He ran.

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