The snow and ash fell with each other in a desecrated rain to the cold rubble below. An opressive fog suffocated the land. Spawled out, sleeping on the snow, was a speckled white leopard-like young woman. Her fur was covered in snow flakes and soot and her icy hair was shiny in the snow. Her ears twitched in surprise when a snow flake landed on her sensitive nose. Opening her ice-blue eyes she looked to the sky for a glint of sun.
"Nothing," she wispered. "How could anything survive in this wasteland?" A deep sense of loneliness filled her and it dropped like a stone to the pit of her stomach. Frosty tears clouded her eyes but she wiped them away with her paw-like hands and hugged her furry tail. She sniffed the air and strained her ears for any sign of people or prey. Nothing. There was nothing anywhere except ice, snow and the damned corpeses of the giant skyscrapers, the last remnants of humanity. She had sacraficed so much to be here so that she could pass on the last fragments of humanity after the war. The war that destroyed the world, sending it in to a seemingly eternal winter.
She padded on all fours around the area. "Why am I the only one left?" Tears clouded her eyes once more as she walked around. "I am the only one in this damned world," she shouted. Angry, upset and alone she burst into tears and broke into run. She loped across the tundra, losing herself in the beat of her stride and her hair streeming behind her. As she ran she thought of the of time before the war. When she was fully human, with human hands, red hair and her relatively hairless body. They had asked her division of scientists, the geneticists, to create a fallback plan in case of a nuclear winter, a devastating event in which case the Earth's temperature would be lowered. They worked for the company that created the nuclear bombs that their country used in the war. Her and Eddy that was. He was her fiance. He proposed to her the day the bombs dropped. The day that it all changed. The fallback plan they had devised was to have 20 volunteers to be genetically modified to have the features of a snow leopard, the perfect animal to survive in these conditions. They would have improved senses and fur and cat-like ears, a tail, immunity to raditation-an added, most likely nescessary feature-and even their hair colour would be changed to blue or grey for camoflague. She was one of the volunteers along with her fiance. Before the bombs dropped they were sealed in high-tech chambers where they were modified by their colleagues as they slept stasis. After the process was complete a timer for almost 10 years was set for them to be ejected in their capsules into a general area in the wilderness which was now dowsed in snow and rubble, changing the landscape dramatically.
Lucky thing I survived, she thought with distain.
She remembered the last thing she said to Eddy. "I'll see you around, I guess," she said shakily, tears running down her cheeks. Eddy cupped her cheek and looked into her eyes.
"We'll find each other. I promise," he replied, tears running down his own cheeks. "Even if I look like a house cat," he joked.
They laughed a little. He held her in his arms and cradled her head, uncertain of the future. Then he got down on one knee and pulled a box from his pocket.
She gasped and choked on her sobs at this, overwhelmed by it all.
Opening it he asked, "Will you marry me?"
"Y-y-yes," she said.
He slipped the diamond ring on her finger and they hugged for the last time before the other scientists pulled them apart and laid them in the capsules.
She remembered when she awoke changed. She took off her clothes from the last decade, having no use for them. But she kept the ring on. She inspected her new tail and ears and delighted in them, although she was, at least a little, disturbed at her new feline features. Afterwards she searched what she thought was the general area of the capsules but had only found one of the twenty, aside from her own. She suddered, as she ran, at the memory. The capsule was open and there were faint paw marks in the snow. She remembered the smell of human and what she guessed was the smell of a leopard, having only smelt her new leopard scent recently. She followed the trail to a steep slope where the smell continued down. She was about to continue when she saw blood. Blood everywhere. Down the slope jagged stones rose up from the ground like teeth of some freak monster. There, skewered like a kebab, was the body of a man. Panic seized her heart when she saw this and she sniffed hard to make sure it wasn't Eddy. No. This man's scent was different to his. And his face didn't resemble his in the slightest. She walked away uneasily and since she had not found a single capsule.
A crunching sound snapped her back to the present. She spun on one paw to face the fog where the noise emenated from. 
Crunch.
Crunch.
Something was walking in the snow. She sniffed the air. No. No, it couldn't be.
The figure coelessed in the fog as it came into view. A leopard human. She stumbled back, completely stunned.
"W-who are you?"
The figures eyes lit up when they saw her. They ran up to her and looked
into her eyes. He smiled, such a sweet, sweet smile. "I promised we would find each other."
A tear rolled down her face. "Eddy." A sliver of sun peaked through the clouds. And for the first time in a long time, she truly felt that she could brave the cold of the Earth. Of humanity. She kissed Eddy's familar lips, although this time his whiskers tickled
her nose and cheeks and she was filled with a warmth that was untouchable by this winter. This Nuclear Winter.