September 13, 1993
“A-are you sure about this? Pa said that there are ghosts in Bunker 3…”
  A tentative and meek voice echoed through the ashen wastelands of a once great city, while winds howled and shards of artifacts of the past whipped through the air. The whole ground teemed with an odd, radioactive warmth as two figures treaded amongst toppled buildings. The leading figure, a cheetah with a ragged hoodie and a bulky gas mask turned to look at the source of the tentative voice, a red fox wearing a similar outfit and gas mask. “Calm down, Emilia, those are just stories. Ghosts aren’t real…”
  Emilia remained unmoved by this, remaining standing amidst the gray landscape with her arms crossed. “But mutants are, Jake! If we go in there, we could be torn to shreds!”
  Jake rolled his eyes under his mask, and shrugged. “Ah come on, I got my dad’s gun, we got snacks, and we have filters. Nothing is going to go wrong…”
  “But it could! What if the radiation gets us, and we come out looking like mutants! The NFCP could-”
  “Relaaaax, come on, where’s your sense of adventure? Plus, think of all the riches we could find in an abandoned bunker!”
  “My sense of adventure was spent the moment we stepped into a radioactive hellscape! I’m taking not one step further!” Emilia remained still, pouting slightly.
  “Oh? Well, are you gonna head back to Bunker 2?”
  “Of course not, I’m gonna wait for you knucklehead…”
  Jake’s face contorted to a grin (not that Emilia could see it) and he teased, “Well, have fun standing out here with only one filter, since all the extras are in my backpack…”
  “You wouldn’t dare leave me here!” But, Jake did dare to do so. The cheetah spun on his heels, and continued to walk toward the elusive Bunker 3. “Jake! Jake! Come on, please don’t make me go there…” Emilia continued to shout at him, but her voice did little against the iron will of the feline. Unfortunately, her will was of clay, and she quickly dashed to keep up with her friend as he marched forward, with her curses lost to the wind. Emilia wouldn’t leave Jake to die in Bunker 3, but she was damned close to dragging him kicking and screaming back to Bunker 2.
  Soon, the two figures approached the ruined remains of a decrepit building, standing at two broken stories with a sign advertising it as “San Francisco Bunker #3.” Unfortunately, along the walls of this entrance were also warnings of not entering, as the Bunker had been abandoned for four years now…
  Emilia rushed into the building, catching up with Jake and finding him poking around inside an air vent. “What are you doing?”
  Jake continued to work, nonchalantly speaking back to her, “Removing the air filter. The vault door is sealed shut, so we’re gonna have to get creative with breaking in…”
  Emilia sighed. “Don’t you think that the door being sealed is a good sign to go away?”
  “Clearly not a good enough sign, since neither of us have gone away…” Jake replied, removing a large, dusty air filter from the vent, and looking down into the air vent. “Oof, that’s a steep drop… I think that’s like twenty feet?”
  “Good, then let’s head back. Clearly there’s only a one-way entra-”
  “Not yet! Ya boy thought ahead, and brought a tool for this~” Emilia watched with a combination awe and disgust as Jake reached into his backpack, and pulled out a rope. As the cheetah got to work tying one end to a metal pole (presumably part of a metal divider before the Apocalypse), Emilia sighed loudly.
  “If only ‘mah boy’ had thought ahead to our unfortunate demise in Bunker 3…”
  “Better to die in Bunker 3 than live in that shithole back home…” Jake replied as he dropped the untied half of the rope down the shaft, and tugged to check for tautness. “Coming down with me? Or gonna head back home and live in a steel hallway for the rest of your life?”
  Jake did not wait for a response before moving to climb down the shaft to the first level of the abandoned Bunker, leaving Emilia sighing. She liked Jake a lot as a friend, but he was a fucking moron. A moron she wouldn’t abandon, however. “Guess I’ll die…”
  Emilia soon slid down the rope, and landed on the cold steel floor of the bunker. As Jake turned on a flashlight from his bag, the fox suddenly realized just how… cold the bunker felt. She couldn’t say it was like in most bunkers, but Bunker 2 was always perpetually too warm due to the large population, perpetual heating, and the occasional campfires set up by the homeless. Here however, it smelled of cold biting steel and felt cooler than the outside, compared to the body odor and perpetual warmth of home… Emilia shivered. She’d have never thought she would find the smell of Bunker 2 preferable to something…
  Jake continued to glance around the bunker. It looked similar to home, with a long stretch of metal hallway leading away from the entrance/exit elevator, but it was shockingly clean. No dirt from travellers’ shoes, no mysterious stains, not even any cigarette butts. But, as Jake’s flashlight panned down the hallway leading deeper in, Emilia let out a sharp gasp as she spotted something! A single sneaker laid in the hallway, not soaked in blood or any filth… It looked nearly pristine! Jake walked over to it, and suddenly tossed it to Emilia! As she stumbled to catch it the cheetah remarked, “Here ya go, it’s old world shoes, not even made in a Bunker Factory. You could get your own filters by selling that!”
  Emilia grumbled slightly at this, “I’m not selling this! This is probably from some person who died here! Besides, why would I want filters?”
  Jake was already hunched over another artifact of the bunker, a lost gas mask with filters still on it. “Relax, it probably just fell off someone as they were running. If they were killed by something, there’d be blood on this stuff… And you’d buy filters so I don’t have to foot the bill of these adventures.”
  “Well, you make money off of working in the hydroponics bay, not everyone is as well paid as you…” Emilia grumbled, tossing the shoe to the side. Even though she was paid poorly as a vendor clerk, she wasn’t going to deface graves to obtain payment…
  The duo continued to walk down the hall, and when they got to a stairway, Emilia begrudgingly followed Jake down it… Although, it somehow felt even colder as they approached level 2. “Say, do you know what happened in this bunker to make it get evacuated?” The cheetah suddenly asked.
  “... I dunno, Mr. Jefferson said it was a problem with structural integrity…” Emilia responded quietly.
  “That’s odd. One of my coworkers said it was a coal fire… Although, it certainly doesn’t feel like a coal fire in here…”
  “Huh… Well, this only was abandoned four years ago, and most of the refugees went to our bunker, surely people would know why it was abandoned?”
  “Maybe the air conditioning went haywire. It’s fucking frigid in here…”
  Emilia chuckled slightly at this. “Considering turning around?”
  “Nah, I’ll be fine, just as long as you hold my head between your thighs~”
  “Jaaaaaake, come on, you have a girlfriend…”
  “I’m kidding, I’m kiddi-the fuck is that?”
  Jake’s teasing suddenly went to confusion as his flashlight beam traced across the bottom of the level 2 stairwell, which contained a mass of dried grass, shredded steel, and rock shards… It looked like a nest, but filled with so much sharp glass that nothing would be able to rest comfortably in it. Emilia gawked slightly at it, and froze in place behind Jake. “Th-that’s a mutant nest-” She whispered to the cheetah, and they stood still at the landing of the stairway, before Jake moved toward it…
  Emilia remained frozen until Jake called back after examining the nest, “It looks abandoned. Covered in dust and stuff… Geez it’s even fucking colder down here, the fuck?”
  Emilia felt slightly reassured that the nest was abandoned, and moved down the stairs cautiously. “Yeah but… What could make mutants abandon their nest?”
  “Definitely this cold. Mutants hibernate during winter, and down here it feels chillier than even snowy nights… They probably died due to not being able to move in the cold.”
  “Well… Where are their bodies?”
  Jake and Emilia remained at the stairway for a bit. Every breath of theirs was visible in the light of Jake’s flashlight, as it had gotten much much colder… The cheetah eventually pointed his flashlight down the hallway of the second level, and examined the hall of doors. “This will probably be the spot where we explore. Deep enough for valuable items, but not so deep that we freeze to death… Air conditioner must have gone on the fritz on the bottom floor…”
  Emilia was tempted to mention that the air conditioner was designed to cool all floors equally, but decided against it. She wanted out of the bunker, NOW. As Jake walked down the hallway, she followed in silence, until her belly suddenly growled loudly.
  “Geez, Em, did you eat anything before we went?”
  Emilia blushed nervously, and rubbed her growling gut. “Well, I had a snack… Did you happen to bring any snacks with you?”
  “Yeah I brought some of that processed stuff from the subfactories, but it’s not very filling…” Jake handed over a small chunk of gray substance from his backpack. The subfactories were a pre-apocalypse feature of the bunker, which took plant matter to create some nonperishable food for stockpiling, but it was absolute garbage to eat. It tasted and felt like eating chalk. However, Emilia managed to avoid this unpleasant feeling by shoving the rectangle of the dubious food into her maw and swallowing whole!
  Emilia let out a sigh, but her stomach still growled deeply… “Err, any other food?”
  “Fucking hell, Em.”
  “S-sorry! I promise I ate enough…”
  “Are you always this hungry? It may explain the pudgy thighs…”
  Emilia’s face turned bright red upon hearing this. “Sh-shush…”
  “I’m just teasing, Em! Don’t take it so seriously…” Jake responded casually before moving to begin exploring some of the abandoned rooms, but as he did, some odd thoughts ran through Emilia’s skull… She thought briefly of eating Jake whole! She brushed that thought aside, confused as to where the idea came from, and followed Jake into the room.
  As Jake moved from room to room, Emilia’s stomach continued to growl and groan, demanding more food, and she felt even hungrier somehow! And as she followed Jake, her thoughts grew more intrusive and lingered further… ‘Do it, eat him… He’s a jerk, and no one will miss him anyway…’ As they examined a wardrobe for any clothes that could be sold, Emilia swore that her thoughts became so realistic that she could hear them as though they were being whispered to her! ‘Imagine his flavor, those rippling farmboy muscles and fluffy fur, just slipping past your maw…’ Sweat began to drip on Emilia’s brow despite the cold, her heart thumping and the whispers completely overwhelming her thought process! Her eyes grew wide, and she looked around the room, trying to piece where the voices were coming from! ‘You feel so hungry, so greedy, so gluttonous… Just turn him into foxfat, just swallow him down…’
  “Em? Em!? What the fuck, let go!”
  As Jake’s voice cried out, it pierced the whispers, and the fox came to realize that Jake’s hand was inside her mouth! She quickly pulled away from his hand, apologizing profusely, “Fuck, sorry! Sorry, sorry, I don’t know what came over me!”
  Her face was bright red in Jake’s flashlight, making the cheetah feel like something was very very off. “Geez, Em, if you wanna leave, you should have just said something, no need to put my whole fist in your mouth…”
  Emilia wanted to protest, to scream that she wanted to leave from the very beginning, but stopped herself as Jake began to leave. No reason to protest if they were leaving this dreaded place…
  However, as they walked down the hallway, Emilia suddenly heard a noise behind her! Jake and her both turned around and saw what looked like a flash of black fur! “What the fuck?” Jake asked incredulously, and Em began to feel like her mind was melting!
  “Jake, we have to get out of here we have to get out of here we have to get out of here!” Emilia practically shrieked, while the whispers she had heard grew even louder! She shut her eyes and sobbed, tears streaming down her eyes as she clung to the cheetah’s arm with a ferocious fear, voices screaming in her head! It felt like the whole world had turned into a blood-red haze and sirens blared in her ears! The cheetah turned away from the hallway, and began to run with the fox in tow, but he seemed to move in slow motion! Suddenly, Jake’s flashlight panned from the floor, and straight down the hallway, and Emilia screamed at what she saw, while Jake gasped in terror!
  Standing right in front of them, nearly motionless, was a terrifying beast. It had grizzled black fur like that of a feral wolf, with two claws on it’s long legs, with muscled arms and a rippling chest, as well as two enormous clawed hands. However, most unnerving was its face, which resembled a deer skull with pronged horns and extremely sharp teeth, with two piercing white orbs where the sockets should be, staring right at the two of them! As Emilia looked upon it, Jake’s screams were drowned out by the screams and sirens in her head, her whole world going blurry and her throat crackling as she screamed silently. The beast stepped forward, towards them, a claw stretching towards the two as they were frozen in place! However, as the thoughts of eating Jake, of devouring him whole filled her head, a foolhardy idea appeared in her mind, a candle of hope in a world of shrieking darkness.
  The foxgirl detached from Jake, and opened her mouth as the claw reached toward her! It opened wider and wider, the world moving in slow motion as her jaws defied the laws of physics, and the outreaching claw slipped into her maw. The beast faltered slightly at seeing this, but Emilia was already using momentum to her advantage! She wrapped her maw around it’s claw, and then swallowed hard, pulling it’s black furry claw in.
  The world seemed to speed back up, but the sirens and screams within Emilia’s head blared harder than ever before! She swallowed and pulled, letting the beast’s whole arm slide down her throat and peek into her belly! The fox’s mouth salivated as adrenaline carried her to swallow down more and more of the beast… Her white furred belly bulged out with every swallow, but also thrashed and moved as the beast tried to pull away. She could taste nothing, and hear nothing over the screams in her head, pure instinct and a drive for survival drove her to pull the beast’s horned skull into her maw, and swallow it down. Gulps drove the beast’s shoulders and the beginning of its other muscular arm and chest into her rapidly growing belly, as well as her sheer determination to survive.
  As Emilia gulped down the beast’s belly, her stomach had grown larger and larger, becoming bigger than the whole of her body! The white-fluffed orb wriggled and struggled as the foxgirl pulled down the beast’s muscular belly. She lifted her chin into the air, and swallowed hard with her eyes closed, pullin in the monster’s hips… Finally, she finished the job with a slurrrrrrp of it’s legs, tucking those clawed feet into her maw and sealing it inside her huge, gluttonous stomach.
  Emilia opened her eyes and blinked, panting with her tongue out… The screams had suddenly dissipated with the swallowing of the beast, and she felt deaf to the world. The cold which had permeated her fur had vanished, and a pleasant yet familiar taste suddenly filled her mouth… She smiled as she looked down at her belly, a haze filling her mind with the pure pleasure of her gluttonous act. Her hand reached down, and she touched her belly, it felt softer than silk and was a delight to massage and play with. Not only that, but it seemed to shrink with a supernatural speed! Emilia knew she had an iron stomach, but she did not realize that it was strong enough to melt a beast into nothing but chyme in near minutes! She moaned softly as her stomach shrank and softened, turning into a potbelly full of nothing but a nutritious stew…
However, as she looked at her belly, a scream began to grow in her skull. It seemed… familiar. It was masculine, but also terrified… As the scream increased in volume, she recognized it as the voice of Jake. “Relax, it’s all-” She turned to face her friend, and saw he was gone. She rolled her eyes, as the adventurous cheetah had apparently turned tail and fled. As she moved to go inspect the rooms, she felt a bit of gas building up in her throat, and suddenly unleashed a belch, spewing a solid object onto the ground. Looking down, she gasped as she saw a familiar plastic piece of equipment…
Jake’s gas mask.
The scream faded from her mind, and the cold returned to her skin as panic suddenly filled her mind. There was no beast, there was no attack, she hadn’t saved Jake, she had eaten him in a delusional craze! Emilia dropped to her knees, head in her hands as blood pumped through her skull. Her soft belly was no longer a soft thing to massage, it was the grave of her friend. She dropped onto the floor, and screamed into the hallway of Bunker 3 while in a fetal position…
After a long period of time, (minutes, hours, who knows?) Emilia had sobbed away all the tears she had, and she felt thirsty. ‘I should just die here, that’s what a murderer deserves…’ Emilia thought to herself, her arms wrapped around her belly as she contemplated what to do.
However, somehow, as she cuddled her belly, a new thought occurred, ‘Jake wouldn’t want you to die here. He knew the risks, he loved adventure, and there would be nothing better to do than to adventure further…’ She considered this to be selfish of her to believe, but as she held her stomach, it felt more and more comforting to think… Maybe, in a way, he was still with her?
Eventually, Emilia decided that she would not die here. She strapped on her gas mask, and picked up Jake’s as she walked to the exit. It took a lot of effort to pull her way out of the air vent due to her large, soft belly, but she continued regardless, walking her way home.
When she made it to the entrance of the vault, her belly had entirely shrunk away, the chyme had drained away from her belly, and to the rest of her body. She had also run out of filters, as she had apparently digested Jake's bag of supplies, so when she arrived home, she was coughing and wheezing due to the dust in the air. As she was lowered by the elevator, a well-meaning Bunker 2 guard asked what had happened, and this made Emilia break down into tears as the adrenaline from travelling left her body, and she relived Jake’s death again…
Emilia’s story became a tragedy to the people of Bunker 2. A horrific mutant was lurking in Bunker 3, and it devoured Jake whole, only leaving behind his gas mask. People comforted her, not realizing she was the devourer in her story. Jake’s girlfriend, a wolf by the name of Bethany, was especially horrified by the tale, and sobbed into Emilia’s guilty shoulder… The fox gave her the gas mask, but it did little to mollify the situation.
When people finally left her alone, Emilia sequestered herself in a bathroom stall, and sobbed. However, as she was left alone by herself, she began to realize how… different she looked. Jake had always teased her about her chubby thighs, but those in the past were nothing compared to her thighs now! Her thighs had grown from her meal, and so too did her breasts and ass! It felt odd to realize just how much she had grown, she had gone up a few cup sizes and her pants strained her wider hips…
She hazarded a touch of her ass, and realized that the two cheeks had ballooned into two doughy orbs to play with and touch! Her sobbing stopped, and turned to a chuckle as she remembered how earlier today Jake said he wanted his face between her soft legs… It was an odd thought, but it was something to break her sadness. She took a deep breath, opened up her bathroom stall, and decided to head back to her house.
 
 
December 24, 1998
Souvenirs are odd things. Objects which inflict nostalgia and feelings of the past, sometimes despite the horrific connotations that came with said object. As Emilia looked at Jake’s gas mask, the first thoughts to come to mind was Jake’s laugh, his sense of adventure, his desire to see what was out there, rather than the horror associated with this mask.
As the fox pondered the gas mask in front of a bathroom mirror, a familiar figure came up behind her and kissed her on her cheek! Emilia smiled, and turned to the wolf, greeting her, “Hey Bethany.”
After Jake had disappeared, Emilia spent a lot of time comforting Bethany, as she felt it was her duty to do so. However, over time, feelings grew between them, and eventually the two of them started to date. Bethany smiled, and her face grew solemn as she looked at the mask. “Thinking of him again?” The wolf asked innocently.
Emilia nodded, and looked back to the mask. “He was a good man…”
“Yeah… he was. You know, for some reason, whenever I’m around you, I think of him. Not like, the sad feelings, but sort of a pleasant thought or two. Like I’m around him when I’m around you…”
Emilia nodded, and set the mask down. “Sometimes I find that my own presence reminds me of him…”
Bethany smiled, and wrapped her arms around the fox. “It’s alright, he’ll be with us wherever we go… Are you ready to go to the gathering? I hear they have real meat imported from Fresno this year!”
“Pfft, they say that every year, and they’re always wrong… Go on ahead, I’ll be there in a second.” Bethany pulled from the hug with another kiss, and walked outside the small studio-apartment sized bunker cell.
When Bethany was gone, Emilia looked up in the mirror, and began to take care of some pressing matters. Her claws had grown incredibly sharp, and she had to begin cutting them… However, as she snipped away those claws, she caught a glance of something odd in the mirror… There were two nubs on her head. She reached up with a paw, and touched at them, discovering they were hard… Like the beginnings of horns. As she pondered this in the mirror, her eyes suddenly turned pure white in the mirror, and she gasped as she backed away, but when she blinked her eyes were normal.
Emilia felt her breathing return to normal, and she decided to turn away from the mirror… This was just a small visual hallucination from her eyes, right? No matter, she had to put that aside for now, she was feeling very hungry…