Coyote Uglies
The wailing starts after dark. Thin, keening cries that carry across the clear night sky, somewhere between a howl and a scream, the sound of something in genuine and unending torment. Children of Lone Star grow up knowing that sound. They learn to fear it before they learn to fear the dead.
Coyote Uglies are coyotes corrupted by the zombie plague, though not in the way the plague corrupts people. They are born healthy, indistinguishable from any other coyote pup. But their carrion-feeding instincts brought them into regular contact with infected flesh, and unlike most scavenger species, they were not immune to the corruption. The plague does not kill them. It strips them down, slowly, over the course of years, peeling away everything that is not meat and bone. A Coyote Ugly in the early stages looks mangy and thin. In the advanced stages, it barely looks like an animal at all.
Scientists at Aggieland have noted a disturbing similarity between the degeneration of Coyote Uglies and the afflictions that mark the Retrograde lineage. Whether this is coincidence, shared biology, or something deeper about the plague's interaction with living tissue, nobody has been able to determine. The Aggies study the problem from behind secure walls. Everyone else just listens for the wailing and keeps their fires high.
The creatures are dangerous enough as predators, especially to the unwary and the young. But it is the sound that makes them a fixture of Lone Star nightmares: those drawn-out, pitiful screeches of something that is falling apart and cannot die. Equal parts horrifying and heartbreaking, the call of a Coyote Ugly is the wasteland stripped to its most honest voice.
Coyote Uglies are coyotes corrupted by the zombie plague, though not in the way the plague corrupts people. They are born healthy, indistinguishable from any other coyote pup. But their carrion-feeding instincts brought them into regular contact with infected flesh, and unlike most scavenger species, they were not immune to the corruption. The plague does not kill them. It strips them down, slowly, over the course of years, peeling away everything that is not meat and bone. A Coyote Ugly in the early stages looks mangy and thin. In the advanced stages, it barely looks like an animal at all.
Scientists at Aggieland have noted a disturbing similarity between the degeneration of Coyote Uglies and the afflictions that mark the Retrograde lineage. Whether this is coincidence, shared biology, or something deeper about the plague's interaction with living tissue, nobody has been able to determine. The Aggies study the problem from behind secure walls. Everyone else just listens for the wailing and keeps their fires high.
The creatures are dangerous enough as predators, especially to the unwary and the young. But it is the sound that makes them a fixture of Lone Star nightmares: those drawn-out, pitiful screeches of something that is falling apart and cannot die. Equal parts horrifying and heartbreaking, the call of a Coyote Ugly is the wasteland stripped to its most honest voice.
Plague-corrupted coyotes slowly stripped to meat and bone, wailing through the night.
Type
predator
