The next morning, I recollect my small camp and set off to enter the city. I hope to see some other people there, even if it's not many.
As I approached, there are signs of people digging graves to put people in, but looks like they never finished.
Entering the city, there are corpses everywhere. The city stinks from decomposing bodies. After searching a bit, I didn't find any other people.
My pants are looser...
I'm on my last buckle, why is my body slimming? Is my hypermetabolism gone even more hyper?
After doing a quick check, nothing is bad is happening. Is this the side effect of lightning strikes? I will become a stickman?
This is concerning, as I start stuffing myself with MREs during which, I plan to stay at the nearby malls and other food stores to check if they have any canned foods to continue stuffing myself. I really don't want to be a stickman.
After a few days, I began to realize more changes... The chest area slightly protruded, missing the third arm, hair grew long and white with the tips being black, it never grew longer than my elbows. And I stared at a mirror in a nearby mall, my eyes are heterochromatic; red on the left, golden without a pupil on the right. I became a slightly flat chested girl... I changed into better fitting clothes from a nearby mall... I really hate girl's tight clothes. It made me have a difficult time looking for something that'll have use, not fashion. How am I supposed to carry things with these? After a while I switched to some cargo pants I found. I also grab a suit vest and jacket.
What? It's my style. I still have a mind of a man and I never liked showing skin. I rarely wore shorts with the exception of daily physical train when I was in the military.
But anyway, what a weird side-effect of a mutation, but this change had me thinking. Does that mean I can recover faster? My body seemed to change to its nominal form. Small cuts heal within a minute, but I don't want to do further testing, I'm not a masochist.
I can also sense energy throughout the air, I can sense it being absorbed as soon as it flowed into me. What is that energy? I could guess radiation or something, or a wild thought: Mana. But all those thoughts are dismissed after testing, it seemed to be flowing from the direction of where a nuke detonated, thus I concluded it's radiation. Being able to sense the flow of radiation may be handy in finding safe havens for non-immune living things. I'm getting tired of seeing a lifeless city with a grey-black sky tinted a slight red.
In a few days, I'll go in the direction of the flow and hope to run into a grove.