Afterworld: A Band of the Strange

Chad had never intended to become a vampire. After the plagues, he'd discovered that drinking human blood made him stronger and faster, and he'd taken advantage of that to survive. Then he'd discovered that it was also addictive, and he couldn't stop drinking human blood or he'd die. None of us really blamed him; when civilization was first falling apart, we'd all been really desperate. Most of us recognized that any of us could have fallen into that trap. 

Devon, as I said, had been hunted by beasts while camping with his friends, killed one, and taken its skin to wrap around him so that he didn't die of hypothermia. After a couple of hours, he found that having the skin around him caused him to become one of the beasts, which gave him a quicker way back to what remained of civilization. I don't think I can adequately describe the expression of relief on his face when he talks about realizing that he could remove the skin and re-assume human form. 

I'd been struck by a couple of drones from a Night Mother, but managed to stumble out into daylight in time to slow the transformation into one of her children. It had turned my left forearm and calf into black-skinned flesh, harder and stronger than human flesh by far, but only slowly spreading towards my brain and full control of my faculties -- usually when I exerted myself. My right boot was equipped with lifts to help me keep my balance. 

My wife, Mary, had gained her pneuma at a hidden temple east of the Mississippi just after the incident there, after a wandering monk had intervened to help us out. The monks had stabilized my transformation, too, limiting them to my left arm and left leg... which still made me a freak of sorts, but at least I wasn't still turning into something worse. My beautiful wife, with her new gifts, had taken 'cutting words' to a new level: she could breathe out monsters of her own, or use her breath to attack or defend.

Jason was... nobody was quite sure, because nobody else had seen whatever he'd survived, and he wasn't entirely clear on where he'd come from or how he'd gotten here to join up with the rest of us. His body was covered in thorns and spines, which he used as armor, claws, and fangs. He'd married one of the survivors that Devon had brought in, and they seemed happy as a couple.

Ishanna was a hunter, equally comfortable with bows and guns; somewhere she'd picked up the ability to be all but undetectable at night. Like Jason, she had no idea where; it was just something she'd discovered she could do as she made her way through the end of days. 

Jenny had turned into something like a fox-girl, with red-orange fur, excellent senses,  and claws and fangs. She says she started changing as a result of the plagues themselves, and not anything that came after. Unlike Devon, her form was fixed; she looked the way she looked. 

"We're going to head out and see what's out there," I told Ms. Lili, who was... not exactly the mayor, but something very like. "And try to make sure none of it gets all the way here."

Ms. Lili had been a high school teacher in the Before Times, and sometimes that still showed through; the look she gave me was very much what you'd use to convey your approval to a student who was taking his own initiative on a project, and never mind that I was in my late forties and had a high-school-aged kid of my own. "Excellent," she said. "For my part, I'll make sure everybody stays on the campus and ready to shelter in place, and that the emergency squads are ready to go."