The last Lullaby

The world, for a time, was soft.

Ash knew warmth before he knew fear. His universe was a nest of frayed blankets, tucked deep in the shadowed belly of a closet. His mother's tongue rasped over his fur in steady strokes, her heartbeat a drum beneath his cheek. He squirmed against his siblings—two squalling bundles of fluff—batting at their tails with milk-drunk clumsiness. A moth flickered near a sliver of light bleeding through the closet door, and Ash's tiny claws flexed, instinct humming through him like a struck wire.

*Move. Chase. Bite.*

"Hush," his mother murmured, not in words but in vibration, her purr low and fraying at the edges.

Her green eyes gleamed in the dark, fixed on the door. The house groaned around them, its bones settling into rot. Ash didn't yet understand the stench—mold, rust, and something thicker, fouler, clinging to the air like a poison. But his mother's muscles trembled beneath him, and he stilled.

Outside, the wind carried voices. Not human. Not alive. A guttural moan seeped through the walls, answered by the creak of floorboards upstairs. His mother's claws unsheathed, pricking his skin.

*"Stay close,"* she hissed, her breath warm and sour with hunger.

Ash didn't know "stay." He knew *milk*, and *sleep*, and the moth's wings kissing his nose as it danced just beyond his reach. He lunged, tumbling over his sister's tail. She yowled, swatting him, and their mother's growl silenced them both.

---

Once, there had been sunlight.

The mother remembered. A child's laughter, small hands stroking her fur. Bowls of cream, the clink of a collar bell, windows unshuttered and pooling gold on the floors. She'd been softer then, her belly round, her claws sheathed.

*Safe. Warm.*

Now, the child was gone. The windows were boarded, the cream replaced by puddles of rainwater lapped from cracked tiles. The collar bell lay rusted in a corner, half-buried under a crumpled newspaper.

Ash pawed at the paper, its headlines bleached to ghosts: *QUARANTINE FAILS… RAGE VIRUS SPREADS… CDC SILENT.* The mother nudged it away with her nose. Words meant nothing to kittens. Scent meant everything.

And the scent was wrong.

Rot. Death. Metal.

It clung to the house, to the air, to the man who stumbled into the hallway upstairs.

---

The door slammed. Heavy footsteps faltered, dragging, as if the floor tilted beneath them. Ash's mother stiffened, her ears flattening. A low moan echoed above them—human, but warped, wet. A thud. A gasp.

*"Hide,"* the mother breathed, shoving the kittens behind her with her paws.

But Ash peered out, curiosity a bright flame in his chest. A shadow lurched into the hallway. A man, his lab coat streaked with dried blood, one eye clouded white, the other blazing with a terrible, fading lucidity.

"Subject… 9A," the man choked, his voice a rasp. "Immune… Lila… *please.*"

The mother hissed, her tail lashing. The man's milky eye fixed on the closet. He took a step forward, then crumpled to his knees. The syringe rolled from his grip, stopping inches from Ash's paw.

"No… no, not yet—" The man stabbed the needle into his thigh. His back arched, veins bulging black beneath his skin. A gurgle, a shudder, and then he collapsed.

Silence.

The mother crept forward, nostrils flaring. Ash followed, his tiny heart a trapped bird.

The man's scent was wrong—sweet decay, chemical burn. His hand twitched.

*"Back!"* the mother yowled.

Too late.

The man's head snapped up, his jaw unhinging with a crack. A roar tore from his throat—not human, not animal. A monster.

The mother lunged, a blur of claws and fury, raking at the thing's eyes. Ash froze, his world narrowing to the splatter of black blood, the snarls, the *crunch* of teeth meeting bone.

*"Run!"* his mother screamed.

One kitten bolted, vanishing into the dark. The other mewled, trapped beneath the monster's claw. Ash's legs refused to move. He watched, helpless, as the monster's jaws closed on his sibling's scruff———

A gust of wind slammed the closet door shut.

Darkness.

---

Ash didn't know how long he cowered beneath the kitchen sink, his throat raw from silent screams. The house had gone quiet again, save for the drip of blood pooling beneath the hallway door. His mother's blood.

He crept out, belly low to the ground. The monster was gone. The hallway was a carnage of claw marks and tufts of calico fur. His mother lay on her side, her flank torn open, her green eyes glassy. Ash nuzzled her, waiting for the rumble of her purr, the lick of her tongue.

She stayed cold.

A rat skittered past, and Ash's body moved

—*pounce, chase, survive*—but the rat vanished through a crack in the wall. Ash pressed his nose to the hole, breathing in the outside world: iron, smoke, and something wild.

---

Moonlight carved the porch into silver and shadow. Ash stood at the threshold, his white paw trembling. The neighborhood sprawled before him, a graveyard of skeletons—cars flipped onto their backs, houses gutted by fire, weeds clawing through concrete. And the *monsters*. Figures shuffling in the dark, their groans threading through the wind.

Ash's whiskers twitched. Somewhere, a book page fluttered, its final words smeared with blood:

*If you find Subject 9A, there's hope.*

But hope, like milk, was a luxury for kittens.

---

**End of Chapter 1**

---