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This is the exciting small print for this tale.

First, the characters, locations, and events in this story are fictional creations of Reserved Rodent. Certainly, there are names of locations and entities from the real world referenced in this work. These are all used to grant realism to the setting and should in no way be considered accurate representations of these places, events, things, or people in real life. Any other resemblances found within this work to other works are accidental as well as coincidental, and should not be considered monumental. In whole and part, original characters in this work belong to Reserved Rodent, so please make your own characters. This work was written with the intention of posting it and surrounding chapters on SoFurry.com. If you must take it and post it elsewhere, at least leave it fully intact, including these warnings and give credit (or blame) where it is due.

Second, this story has reached a point where there is some violence. I am not sure it is strong enough to merit being adult content, but I also know different folks have different levels of sensitivity. So be warned, fighting and violence appears in this chapter. I do not consider it extreme, but then, I am certainly one of those who has likely been at least a little desensitized by TV. If you are in doubt, please pass on this chapter.

Future chapters are going to range from spotlessly clean to various levels of naughtiness. I do not foresee delving into extremes, but there will be various adult level activities, including M/F and M/M. I will make sure to tag such adult segments correctly, so make sure you pay attention, because they will also have the following warnings (mentioned here so you don't get surprised (not that I expect you will be if you're browsing this site.))

If this is something you are not old enough to legally view in your society, please obey the law and turn away. If this kind of subject matter will offend you, I know you can find something else that will not, so keep browsing. (Unless you want to be offended, then, read on, I suppose, just don't complain if you get what you're looking for.)

Special thanks to my good buddy, Tengu the lynx_, for proofreading this chapter for me. Anything less than perfect that remains is due to me being stubborn and ignoring his help._

For Every Door that Closes

by Reserved Rodent

Three

Four hours later, I was sitting against the stone wall of the pit, ten feet uphill of the remains of my Dodge Intrepid. I was finishing off the last of the leftover ham my mother had sent home with me. My cooler had remained intact, but the ice was almost gone and I doubted I was going to find replacement ice any time soon. It was best to finish off the perishable leftovers now.

I figured I would have no trouble devouring all the meat and cheese. It had been a long, hot, and tiring four hours of work.

The bodies were buried.

I had scavenged more than I could carry from the various vehicles, then trimmed it down to 'still too much' crap - I had been a pack rat even before looking like one.

I had examined my new body and was almost starting to feel comfortable in; just minutes ago, I finally got things trimmed down to what I figured I could carry out of the pit packed up and ready to go.

I had also finished stashing the useful things I'd have to leave behind as securely as possible, which was good in case I had to beat a hasty retreat tonight.

Daylight was almost gone, the shadows reaching over halfway up the east wall.

Dusk would be arriving soon.

I imagined my light sensitive vision would allow me to see decently, especially with the light reflected off the almost half-full, red moon that risen into sight about twenty minutes ago. I hadn't known for sure I was going to get any moon until I saw this one.

Sadly, its alien appearance did little to reassure me.

While everything in the pit was exactly what had been in the almost hundred foot diameter circle of light, it appeared that outside that circle was another world. Everything that looked like it was buried in the wall actually ended smoothly at the wall. Including my own car, I had discovered. If it had landed five feet forward, I'd be missing my toes.

Around the top of the pit, there were several different types of trees visible. A few had even fallen in while I had worked. They weren't trees I was familiar with, but then, I'm no expert on that matter. I'm not even sure what a tree expert would be called; tree-ologist is my best guess, and it can't be right.

Looking at those alien plants made me assume I wasn't on earth any more, but it was the squirrel-sized scavengers that showed up about two hours ago, when the squid monster was starting to decompose, that convinced me.

They were mostly scaley, rather than furry, but had feathered wings for their front limbs. These, they folded above their backs when at rest, appearing like a feathery shark fin. Sharp, vulture-like beaks were excellent tools for tearing into the thick, sandy hide of the dead creature. Most alien, however, were their prehensile tails that they used to wrap around several separated strips of meat when things started getting crowded so individuals could have their meal to go.

I was certainly happy I had decided to burry the three bodies first this afternoon. Having seen how efficient the scaley squirrel-monkey-vultures were at stripping down the huge corpse, I did not want them tasting humanoid rat while I was here.

Luckily the things - Squonkles? Vurkies? Yeah, I better not put myself in charge of naming things - did not seem interested in me.

The red, wrong-sized moon certainly was another nail in the belief that, other than the bit of Earth in the pit, I wasn't going to see anything familiar here. Sure, that was being pessimistic, but I had no idea why or how my circle of Earth came here in the first place.

That didn't mean there were not other circles from home nearby, but I was not sure if I wanted more people lost with me... or dead like the other three.

Wherever I had ended up, there was no cell phone coverage or radio I was able to receive down here. I planned on keeping my cell phone with me to check occasionally, until it ran out of juice. But with no planes having flown over and no other sounds of distant civilization, my hopes were not high.

The last of the sunlight left the east wall. I could still see perfectly in the lessened light, so I pondered going ahead and leaving now rather than waiting for morning. Now that I had worked some scavenged wire and cloth into a comfortable way to keep my glasses in front of my rat eyes, I could function easily during day or night. But my new body did seem to be geared more towards nighttime functioning.

Sure, there would likely be predators day and night both, but it had been pretty stinking hot and humid while the sun was up. Even just wearing my boxer briefs, I was glad I was mostly the light sandy tan with several larger patches of white. If I was mostly the color of the sprinkled spots of dark, earthy brown, I probably would have overheated today.

Swallowing the last bit of ham I might ever eat, I washed it down with the last of the bottled water I had found in the trunk of the wrecked Buick. Well, it was the last of that bottle of water - there were eighteen more packed up in my backpack. Until I found a fresh supply of water, I was going to carry every bottle with me and keep the empties.

I just hadn't packed well for surviving the end of the world, so I had to do the best I could with what I had.

Just as I was preparing to get up to put the empty bottle in my backpack and start climbing out - the noise from the squabbling scavengers and the stench of rotting calamari had passed my tolerance levels about a half an hour ago - I looked up and saw the stars begin to come out.

I turned to look north and waited.

With it feeling like summertime here when Kansas was in winter, I could easily be on the southern hemisphere, so waiting to see if I recognized any constellations or could find the north star might be doomed to failure.

It probably was anyway.

While not a physics major, I did have enough interest in science to have read enough articles and watched enough Science Channel to be able to come up with several ideas. Unfortunately, I had no way to prove any of them - and a very active imagination.

All my ideas were well beyond what I thought humans were capable of accomplishing, and would likely be easily trashed by a real physicist. Certainly my transformation into a humanoid rat, complete with old scars and exact same level of near-sightedness, seemed to toss the whole event out of science and into dream or magic, but pondering possibilities distracted me enough to prevent total despair.

So I might have traveled through time. But when examining time travel out of fiction, one had to consider the fact that things moved over time. The Earth rotates and orbits around the sun, which spins around the center of the galaxy which also travels through the universe. Time travel seemed a very unlikely explanation. Sure, if the event that had the power to generate the multiple flashes of light that had transported so much matter had been caused by a sentient, their science might have been able to compensate.

A lot of ifs is the first problem there.

All the different things appearing in the different flashes before I had gotten hit myself suggested to me that control really had not been something being practiced by the event.

As a Star Trek fan, light beams moving things from one location to another suggests considering teleportation of some kind. Unfortunately, the real research humans were working on showed it as still theoretically possible, but also a huge energy drain that required technology on both ends. It was still on the level of getting one atom at point A to act identical to an atom at point B, then destroy the original so that they did not exist in two places at once.

Things appearing on Earth after each flash looked way too organized to be the results of destroying originals.

This place certainly seemed to have been in existence for some time considering the complexity of life I'd seen, heard and smelled since waking up, but there was no sign of technology.

Also, I wasn't all destroyed. No Star Trek here.

The only other possibility I could come up with was that somehow this was a different reality. With wave theory - something I only had the most general of concept of - these alternate realities were believed to exist, and certainly, there could be some means of moving from one to another. Yet, such connections between realities was also theorized to cause massive, big bang, universe-creating sized explosions. Not the flash of light I experienced.

And none of those possibilities explained why I was a humanoid rat.

It appeared most of the stars were out now and I saw no familiar constellations in the night sky. I was no expert, but it all looked different. I had no chance to see if the North Star was out from the bottom of the pit, but I imagined it would not be there.

"Great," I muttered just as the scavengers - no, everything but me - went still and silent. Having the hairs on the back of my neck rise felt a lot more creepy with all the fur there now.

Silence was never good in the wilderness.

It meant something dangerous - some predator every animal wanted to hide from - was near.

The flock of scavenging Vurkies suddenly screamed a warning, similar to that of a blue jay, but much louder for their number. They rose as a noisy swarm and sped out of the pit, heading north.

Assuming the stench of the decomposing squid monster had brought a new threat to the area, I was sprinting to the open trunk of my car before the fliers had all lifted more than five feet off the carcass. I had the empty water bottle in the side pocket of my backpack and the bag out of the trunk and on my back before the first of the flock cleared the pit wall. By the time the creatures were disappearing among the trees up top, I had the highway patrolman's belt on and had made sure everything was secure.

I grabbed the machete I had found by the truck bed with my right hand, slammed the trunk shut, and started running towards the half-a-tree that had fallen into the pit about an hour after I had woken up. It was long enough to create a steep ramp up and out of the hole. I had tested it a little earlier, worried that since it had fallen down, it might finish coming down at an inopportune moment.

The half of the tree's roots that had not disappeared as my little patch of Kansas arrived had seemed to hold up to my quick test. I had not climbed all the way up earlier, but hopefully it would hold - no sense crying over not checking the tree better when it would change nothing. Besides, and perhaps more importantly right now, other than flicking the safety on, I had not checked over the officer's handgun yet either. So if I wanted to worry, it should probably be about that.

Sure, my lack of fully checking it out was partially because my experience with hand guns is very limited, but for all I knew, the guy had put all its rounds into the leviathan tentacle monster I had found him by. Hopefully, I wouldn't need it tonight, so it wouldn't matter.

Hopefully.

I was a third of the way up the tree when I realized that while I was putting on my backpack, my tail had grabbed the four-way tire iron I had decided not to pack but to leave in the trunk of the Intrepid. My tail evidently decided it wanted a weapon too, which was kind of worrying. I had pretty much left it to its own instincts with my balance and keeping out of the way as I worked today. It seemed to be hard wired to handle such things on its own - when I tried to consciously control it in such matters, we both got muddled up. But that it had unconsciously taken something I had consciously decided to leave behind...

Maybe it was just because I was worried about what was obviously hunting for prey nearby.

Was the tool just a nervous, fidget toy for my tail?

Okay, that didn't make me feel better at all.

Neither did the loud grumbling snarl followed by a child-like scream just to my left as I got back on solid ground at the top of the pit.

I turned to look. Part of me was cursing, because in movies you never turn to look. It slows you down with the whole running away thing.

Another part of me was thinking that it had sounded like a child screaming, so I needed to help.

A last part of me was snidely commenting that young rabbit screams sounded hauntingly like children when something caught them, then wondered what my scream would sound like.

A deep breath brought in multiple new and unidentified scents. My ears swivelled towards the sound of a pair of paws scrambling towards my position. Somehow, a furry, frightened, tired odor attached itself to that sound in my mind. At the same time, a dry, harshly sweet scent seemed related to the four heavier footfalls reaching my ears.

A loud crash occurred from that direction. At the same time a small, humanoid, hyena-looking child of maybe six or seven years tore screaming out of the underbrush towards me. His panicked scent was clearer now, letting me know the humanoid was both male and young.

Seeing the terror in the boy's eyes completely shut off my flight instinct. This young one needed protection, so I would fight whatever chased him, giving him the chance to escape.

"Keep running; get to safety," I said in a surprisingly calm, commanding tone.

I had no expectation the kid could understand me. Star Trek might have universal translators, but there was no writing team to make sure everyone spoke the same language backing me up.

I ran towards the tree closest to the underbrush the hyena child had appeared from, hoping to get there in time to be able to get at least one free attack on whatever was chasing the boy.

The heavy footfalls were approaching too rapidly, though.

I leapt forward, hoping the boost would be enough and shocked the hell out of myself before I remembered that rats were decent jumpers.

My tail released the four way as I left the ground, causing quite a clang as one of the arms must have hit a rock or something. When I reached the tree at a height of fifteen or so feet up, the claws on my toes and left hand gripped the bark tightly while my tail wrapped around the trunk as far as its five foot length would allow.

Damn, I thought, that move had to use up all my good luck and karma for the year.

Perhaps surprised by the strange sound of iron hitting rock, the predator pursuing the hyena child slowed down as it pushed through the underbrush below me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that the youngster had paused for some reason as well, which only sped my own response.

I leapt down, machete held with both hands to pierce the dark, four legged shape below me without making a sound.

My trajectory was perfect.

I landed solidly upon the thing's hard, thickly armored back.

Unfortunately, I am not a ninja.

My desired death blow to the beast's neck failed miserably as the blade was diverted to the side and right out of my hand by the same rough, chitin shell I had just bruised my ass and thighs on.

The squat, pony sized, hairy, insect thing - Insairony? Porsect? Not the right time for that, focus here - started thrashing and jumping immediately, trying to dislodge me.

Now I grew up riding horses before I could walk, I've been told. I have never been bucked off of one, though I was scraped off of one by low hanging branches once.

Honestly, I never rode the real wild ones like you see cowboys trying to stay on at a rodeo. So I had a chance to stay on for a while, if I was lucky, but I figured I had already used all of my good luck, which is usually bad to count on anyway.

Also, this was so not a horse.

Once again, rat claws on feet and hands did an excellent job of finding little holds to slip into between the armor plates of the porsect. (Damnit, focus!) Meanwhile, my tail went to pull the two-foot Maglight from my belt and hold it up where I could grab it. Since the patrolman's billy club had not made it to this world, the heavy-duty flashlight was the next best thing - maybe even better, it was certainly solid and heavy at the end.

Unfortunately, I would have to let go of one of my solid holds with a hand, leaving the other hand and my two feet. I was still new enough to this body, I was not confident that my toe claws could solidly grip this thing. But the beast would probably toss me before it wore itself out anyway, so I'd better do as much damage as I can while I have the chance.

As I grabbed the improvised club with my right hand, my tail moved quickly to assist with securing me, wrapping around the predator's mid-section. I swung as hard as I could, bringing my arm around to strike at the side of the creature's head.

The loud crack of impact made the thing howl like a garbage truck backing up - so I did it again, resulting in a wetter sounding smack.

Then the porsect flung itself over backwards, smashing me between its back and the ground with a rib-cracking thump. I lost all the air in my lungs as well as my grip on my weapon. I could taste and smell the copper of my blood as well as a much thicker sweet scent I could only hope was its blood.

The beast rolled left and my grip had been completely broken, so I went right. I had lost the flashlight and was gasping wet lung-fulls of air. I was in bad shape for the thing not being dead yet, but I managed to stand again as I scrambled to get some distance from the killer monster.

I saw that I had ended up close to where I dropped the tire iron. I grabbed it with my tail as I turned to see what the creature was doing.

The hyena child was out of sight, so hopefully I had at least saved him.

Just myself to save now.

Ten feet from me, the creature shook its wolf-like, armored head, flinging clear liquid from the large crater where its right eye used to be. I had cracked the armor around the missing organ, but evidently the damage was not fatal. Well, not fatal quickly enough. It might be a dead predator walking now, but it could still kill me before it went.

And apparently, it intended to.

It roared at me, the four toothy sections of its mouth opening wide.

What an odd configuration, ran through my brain as my body leapt at the beast mid-roar. I wasn't entirely conscious of what my plan was, but the four way transferred from tail to hands mid-leap. As I jammed the iron tool into the things maw, rather than praising serendipity, I unsnapped the gun's holster with my tail.

I was starting to like this improvised plan.

Reaching for the gun with my right hand, I pushed with all my might against the tire iron to keep the creature's maw locked open as it backed up. It was a struggle to keep hold of the four-way as the beast shook its head, trying to dislodge me. But at least it kept backing up rather than pushing me down or in range of its legs, which appeared to have nasty claws of their own.

I managed to click the safety off the handgun and hoped there were still enough bullets for to get a kill shot. Despite the close range, I still didn't trust my legendarily bad aim.

With a grunt of extra effort, I thrust the four-way tire iron harder down the thing's maw and pointed the gun at the top of the back of its throat.

BANG! The gun kicked and my ears rang like they were church bells.

While I kept pulling the trigger, there were no more kicks from the gun. But the creature's thrashing exploded violently, throwing me into the air and back to the side.

As I flew back, I could see the massive damage I had done to the thing's head.

It was in its death throes and I wasn't dead yet.

Crap, I thought. I was unsure if it was an expletive of how impressed I was with winning the fight or one for being upset at how much trouble I was in.

The crack of hitting something hard with my back and neck brought total darkness before I could figure it out.