First Encounter

Screaming and crunching echoed down the deserted city streets. 

Drake hunched into himself, moving as quietly as he could. The band of survivors he had been with for nearly a week, all gone... Just because someone had accidentally knocked over a recycling bin.

Drake had hoped that they could at least fight their way to the nearest building, where they could blockade themselves in until the horde lost interest, but as soon as the first zombie had rounded the corner, Gavin, the strongest man among them, had turned tail and ran, leaving them to fend for themselves. 

Although none of the rest of them were particularly strong fighters, they might still have made it, but panic had set in after that initial desertion, and Drake had only been able to make it out by imitating Gavin and making a break for it while the horde's attention was captured by the pained shrieks of his comrades. 

Guilt made his gut churn, but he tried to comfort himself with the knowledge that even if he'd stayed, there was nothing he could have done. With the kind of noise they were making, soon enough the entire city's zombie population would be here. 

He swept his gaze warily over the surrounding area, before freezing on a patch of shadow within a nearby alleyway, where huge yellow eyes stared back at him, too big for any domesticated animal. 

Drake hadn't seen any mutated animals since the apocalypse began, but he had heard tales about them from his fellow survivors, of huge, vicious beasts with strange abilities and a taste for human flesh. 

He wondered briefly if he should hold his jacket over his head and shout, like he'd heard you should do for mountain lions, when some unknown impulse had him instead slowly lowering himself to huddle crouched on the ground. A sound he hadn't thought he had capable issued from his mouth, a high pitched yet raspy noise like a cross between a yowling cat and a baby's cry. 

His mind spun, wondering if he had finally snapped, when he glanced back up and his heart nearly leaped out of his chest at the sight of the gigantic black feline less than a foot away from him.

 At this distance, he would have to look nearly directly up to see its face, and he quailed at the idea of exposing his vulnerable throat to something so obviously higher than him on the food chain. 

He felt his hair ruffle as the creature sniffed at his hair, before he was nearly bowled over by the rasp of an enormous tongue against the side of his head. 

Before he could recover from the entirely unexpected sensation, something tugged at the back of his shirt, and he found himself unexpectedly airborne.