text: [Themes: horror]
  
  "Gorram automatic weapons!" you say as you drop you attempts to stop your own bleeding and charge the men shooting at the shamblers.You quickly pass the slow cannon fodder as see that two of those still standing have assault rifles and need to be taken down fast, your mutants have also easily killed a man each but they are stopping to feed and at risk themselves because of it. You quickly send to order to attack humans relentlessly, only feeding once they are all dead and leap at the closest human.
  
  You clearly take him by surprise with your speed, bullets pass you by but luckily none hit as you plow right into the man knee first, feeling his ribs crack and sending him flying backwards. You can sense that he is still alive but you doubt that he will be moving any time soon. You spin and land a heavy punch on the next man, knocking him out cold before he can even get an aim at you. You feel two more human minds vanish behind you and glancing back you see the mutants mauling two more before moving on "No more automatic weapons now" You think as you shove the last man standing towards the shamblers as be desperately tries to reload his rifle.
  
  Then you feel one on the mutants flash in pain then vanish. looking over you instantly see it on the ground, bullet wound to the head. You search for the cause and see two of the wall guards, one still aiming down her gun at your dead mutant. You snarl, they were going to pay for that. The second guard grabs the woman "Briar, you killed it, now let's go!" and the both start running along the platform to the rear of the compound.
  
  You give chase and know you can cut them off if you run through the buildings quickly enough. You start dodging through, hearing gunfire still happening and know that other humans had finished off the last of the shamblers at the gate, but your second mutant and 3 shamblers were already loose between the buildings, hunting for humans.
  
  You rush out the side to see the two you are chasing jumping down and running for what looks like a bunker hatch where other humans are already gathering.
  
  > pull back and wait to see what is going on, there is a lot of them
  Chasing them down would be suicide and they would instantly notice your wound and that you are not one of them, pull back for now and observe.
  
  You slip into shadows between a house and some old decorative tree and watch what happens. The two fleeing guards are welcomed into the strange bunker and as the door opens you realize that a bunker is exactly what it is. One of the old 'survive the apocalypse' things you always laughed at. Even at a glance you can can see it has solid metal walls, a solid metal door and lots of room inside with shelved stuffed with food. "They weren't messing around with that thing, I bet dynamite would barely scratch it!" You think as you watch a family running out of the houses to the right, two shamblers in slow pursuit. "Even with a toddler they can outrun them" You think as the family gets to safety and the shamblers fall to gunfire.
  
  You send you mind out and realize the mutant has been doing its job though. there are no more guards on the walls and the gunfire has stopped although is is wounded, probably a single gunshot you think. You watch as the last humans run out from the houses toward the bunker and a man gets taken down from behind by the Mutant, you quickly change it's order from rampaging to surviving and feeding and it drags the body bad into the shadows, barely dodging the bullets from those at the bunker.
  
  You watch the humans look around desperately before all retreating inside and sealing the door. You find yourself along in the compound with your pet mutant and a small pile of dead humans.
  
  > Time to feast and heal
  You grab the two nearest bodies and head into a house at random. You find a well kept little home and feeling oddly out of place in the clearly well-loved house you take the bodies into the kitchen and start eating there, feasting until the easiest to devour meat and organs was gone and you couldn't eat more without serious risk of your stomach splitting open.
  
  You are about to take a limb with you but again the house puts you off and you head up empty handed after wiping the blood off your face with a cloth. You reflect on your own odd behavior, you have never respected property before but you guess that it might be different due to this clearly being a well loved home that was lived in literally until moments ago, the owners might even be alive just across the yard in their bunker, or they might be one of the dead you just ate. Either way you can literally feel how you are supposed to act here and find yourself obeying the old unwritten rules of a guest in another home without even thinking about it.
  
  Almost out of spite to how you were just behaving you head into the master bedroom and use it for the night, leaving your mutant orders to guard you as wel as feeding during the rest of the night.
  
  > Morning in the well loved home
  You wake up feeling a little strange in the house again, but this was no time to be put off, You have started healing but you need to feed more to expedite the process and you head back down to the kitchen. This time as you feast you start looking around and find all the things that you might find in a normal home before the infection came "Seems like they avoided the worst of everything here" You think as you gnaw on a piece of tough muscle. "Must have had a low turn rate when it became airborne and killed those who turned quickly to stop it spreading, guess I give them credit for that" You keep looking around and realize that there is a note on the fridge, a chore list addressed 'To myself' and signed "Cara" You laugh aloud "This is Cara's house!" you smile to yourself, no longer caring about the house, only thinking about how you tricked and killed it's owner as you feast.
  
  THe next three days pass much the same way, you feasting on humans and occasionally observing the bunker but nothing changes there when you are looking and you never sense any of the humans leaving it. Your wound is closing up already so you think it is time to start doing somthing.
  
  > test the bunker, there might be a way it if the company selling it were scammers
  You can't sit around just healing for any longer so you decide to finally test out this bunker of theirs. You know there have always been companies selling these, some good and some scammers but also that the industry boomed as the virus first began to spread, and most of the boomer companies were frauds, installing the bare minimum for looks then leaving with the money before they had to be used.
  
  You move closer slowly but sense no response from the humans inside, they are so close together is is very difficult to tell anything from them though. You finally edge right up to the door and still no reaction so you start your investigation properly, running through a checklist of possible obvious problems "Hinges are on the inside and the door edges form a perfect seal, walls clearly go deep underground, no windows or large panels, internal welding, the air filters are imbedded right into a 3inch steel plate..." You run through everything you can think of but find no weaknesses, only that it appears to be extreamly well made and large, the 25-30 people you estimate inside seem to have spare room.
  
  You tut aloud as you plan your next move
  
  > leave and head back South, you have learned what you need to crush the Eastern colony
  Time to get out of here and head East. No point wasting any more time now that you know you have the abilities needed to take out the entire Eastern colony. "Thousands, or even tens of thousands of humans just waiting to be eaten!" You think as you load up on some meat strips and Start the walk back South.
  
  You grab a few shamblers at first but think better of it and send them to the compound instead to harass anything that tries to live there again and walk on South alone smiling to yourself. There isn't an infected now that you are scared of as you can control them all. Maybe another harbinger could give you some problems but you know inside that you are the strongest, the alpha predator.
  
  You work out plans as you walk. A colony as big as the one you are heading too can't be handled the same way, even with only a small number of dead, the bodies started to rot before you could devour them all so you will need a smarter method. Maybe kill a couple of hundred at the start to make sure they know you are in control of their lives then trap the others with shambler and mutant guards. You can have them in little groups, each with their own guards or you could even ring the entire colony in a wall of infected, preventing any hope of escape. "I will need to increase my powers for that one though" You think.
  
  "Going to have to keep the majority alive, maybe use them as slaves while I feed off them slowly. a population that big could sustain me for years to come, my own little herd of cattle waiting for the slaughter." You are enjoying the ideas when night finally falls. You find a broken down building to camp in and sleep a few hours before setting off once more in the morning.
  
  > Reaching the highway from the North
  You move quickly the next day and cover a lot of ground by jogging and walking quickly, your hunger is already starting to return and you want to reach your goal as fast as possible. You think about grabbing the minds of some infected you pass but again decide against it, you can get stronger and better fed ones in the city. You could even grab a few mutants before crossing the bridge if you wanted as there should be a couple around there.
  
  As dusk begins you can make out the highway in the distance and keep jogging and hour into the night until you finally get back to the furniture van with the sofa in it. You lock yourself in once more and eat a few of your meat strips, as long as you keep eating those, then the hunger seems to keep itself at bay. It never truly vanishes though unless you consume fresh flesh.
  
  You consider this for a time, it used to be that your meals would come days apart, then weeks apart and you would have to horde scraps of human and animal flesh to get by. The hunger stayed away though, but now the more you eat, the more the hunger returns, getting stronger each time. Feasting on the humans in such numbers recently has made it stronger than ever and you can feel it constantly weighing on your mind, pushing you to kill more and eat more.
  
  "It's like a second voice where a conscience used to be, but the opposite, telling me to kill and feast on humans, which then makes it stronger. Maybe this is a curse harbingers face, each human they devour feeds the hunger inside which then drives them to kill more an more. I will have to be careful I don't let it influence me too greatly."
  
  With those thoughts you drift off to sleep
  
  > East with the dawn
  You set off with the dawn as you know you have a few days walking ahead of you at the very least and wanted to relish the sofa for a few more hours.
  
  You keep heading East and don't find much food on the way but your powers increase even further, with you able to control and direct large groups of shamblers from a distance
  
  You learn to differentiate the minds of shamblers and fast types, even a mutants to the South easily fall under your control as your range increases. Your tests let you control several infected at once and direct them as you please individual without lessening your grip or concentration on the others. "They will have no idea what hit them when I reach the Eastern colony" You think to yourself. Your physical abilities have also improved. You were already faster and stronger than any normal human but that has increases along with your mental abilities, you know there isn't a normal human alive who could face you in a fight and you can rip a car's door clean off its hinges with only a little effort.
  
  It's not long after that you finally reach the bridge across the river. There are infected on it but this wont stop you now as they are just shamblers and you direct them over the sides of the bridge to fall into the deep flowing water below. After a few moment you realize that either the fall or the drowning has actually killed most of them but shrug it off as another test, they are just prey after all.
  
  Then the pain begins. A sudden sharp stabbing right into your mind forces you to your knees. You try to fight it off and feel it diminishing, like you are holding a barrier up against it, protecting your mind with your powers, but you feel just how much strong the other force is. It feels like a glacier bearing down on your mind, slow but inexorable.
  
  You lash out at it with your mind, trying to force it away and almost imagine your attacks as flames striving against the attack. Then the attack pauses, it cannot gain any more ground against you. The pressure is still there and the pain is throbbing in your head but you stopped it in it's tracks. You grin as you stand up as straight as you can, they probably cannot see you but if another harbinger is going to attack you then you will destroy them while standing tall and showing your superiority. You do however feel the blood streaming down your face from your nose and realize that this is the worst nosebleed you have ever had "But of course, they launched a surprise attack on me, anyone would take a small hit but I held them off, I stopped their surprise attack easily and now I can destroy them!"
  
  Then the second weight hits your mind and your defenses shatter, this one felt different, almost ethereal but once it hit, your already stretched defense shattered instantly, letting the original attack succeed, the pain spikes suddenly . But then the pain suddenly stops.
  
  "Sorry about this, I really am, but you are far too close to being red to get in here alive. Only a matter of days before you went fully over so it is much better you are killed now before you actually become a threat worth worrying about."
  
  You try and respond but find that everything feels fuzzy, you are sure the voice in your head is female though
  
  "Oh yes, might have damaged a few things there, attacking really isn't my strong suit so I might have used too much strength, well either way it doesn't matter now. Bye"
  
  You feel a slight pain then everything fades out to black