The world of Greg's childhood was gone, a dimly remembered places of wonders untold and lost. Sometimes, if he tried very hard, he could recall something called a "Sunday drive," where his father would load him up into a thing on wheels that moved on its own, and they would ride out to look at the rows of houses lining the wayside of the path. And he could recall the touch of his mother, as she pulled a blanket over him where he lay in bed at night.

But they were dead now, and he was no longer a child. He was twenty-two, and man—a man in the new world that had replaced the old one after the war.

His horse snorted, protesting the fact that he was keeping it out in the rain. Greg held its reins in one hand, his .30-06 in the other. The downpour had long ago soaked through the layers of hide he was wearing and he shivered as the cold breeze cut through the trees of the surrounding woods.

He had only two rounds for the rifle. The town elders had risked much in trusting its use and care to him; working firearms for which ammunition could be found were almost as rare gasoline in this new Dark Age of man. The elders had had little choice, though. As they saw it, only an old world gun stood a chance of stopping the beast, and its presence in these woods outside of town could no longer be overlooked. Just this morning it had struck again, killing two children as they played outside the town's walls while the villagers harvested the autumn's meager crops.

New Hope was a small town of only seventy folk, all Christian, and all trying to survive, yet it was the largest settlement for over a hundred miles. The war that ended the old world had left few alive, and even fewer places safe enough from fallout and mutants to live in. Mutation had arisen everywhere in the years after the fall, among humans and animals alike. In humans, it came mostly in the form of lesions, scars, webbed fingers, and the like. In Greg, though, it had changed his eyes.

As he'd grown up, they had started to glow an unnatural yellow, and only his skills as a hunter and tracker had kept him from becoming an outcast. They had also become extremely sensitive to light, so much so that he'd had to fashion thick, shaded goggles to even see in the light of the sun. At night, however, his vision was sharper than a cat's, which was why he'd been chosen to hunt the beast this night.

Greg checked the rifle, making sure there was a round ready in its chamber. If the tracks were any indication, he must be getting close to the thing's lair. Suddenly, his horse reared, struggling against the reins. He fought to hold on, but it knocked him from his feet and galloped off into the night.

As he tried to pull himself up from the mud, the beast burst from the tree line, loping toward him on all four legs like a wolf. He rolled away, swinging the rifle at its face like a club. The gun shattered, leaving behind a patch of blood-matted fur. The creature staggered for a moment, dazed, and Greg leapt up, drawing his knife from his belt. Then their eyes met.

Its eyes were yellow like his, glowing in the darkness.

In that instant, Greg's world went white. A flash erupted inside his mind:

…he felt the wound on his head where the gun had struck…he ran on all fours through the forest, stopping only to bay at the moon above…he felt powerful, alive, and hungry…he was nature's child, and the forest was his, and his alone…

Greg shook his head to clear it, and found himself staring at the beast. It circled him slowly, rumbling low in its throat, yet it made no further move towards him. It knew he saw the truth. It had never been a bear or a cat. It was like him, and he, like it. They shared a kinship deeper than the bonds of man.

Greg lowered his knife as it gave him one last look of pity, and then disappeared into the trees once more.

His knees gave way, and he fell back onto the muddy ground. A tear slid down his cheek, lost in the rain. He had failed his village, but had found a new world, a world that pulled at his heart. He longed to be a part of it.

Wondering who he really was and where his home truly lay, Greg looked up at the moon through the clouds and howled.