Leon pushed himself up from the ground slowly, forcing his legs straight one shaky inch at a time. They trembled, not just from pain, but from sensory overload, as if his body still hadn't decided whether this was real or a nightmare he'd wake up from any second.
Only when he stood, swaying on the asphalt, did he really look around.
The city that had been the ordinary backdrop of his life that morning was gone.
A few hundred meters ahead, he spotted someone running for their life.
A woman sprinted down the street toward him, stumbling every few steps. Her hair flew loose around her face, which was twisted into pure panic, and her scream, raw, hoarse, desperate, bounced off the buildings like an alarm that refused to die.
"Help! Help!" she shrieked, as if the word still held any power.
Leon took half a step forward on instinct, without a plan. Some leftover piece of the old world still told him to react.
Then his gaze slid past her, and his stomach clenched so hard it hurt.
Shapes were chasing her, figures that only resembled people from a distance.
Up close, even from here, they moved wrong. Unnatural. Like bodies that couldn't quite remember how walking worked. Arms dangled at strange angles. Heads lolled to the side. Their skin had a bluish-gray tint, tight and cracked in places, slack in others, as if it were starting to peel away from the muscle beneath.
Some were missing chunks of their faces, exposing teeth bared in something that wasn't a grin or a grimace. Others had eyes that hung lifeless in their sockets, drifting without focus, as if they weren't looking so much as reacting to movement and sound.
They were "running," if you could call it that. More like throwing themselves forward,stumbling, colliding, tripping over each other,yet never slowing for even a moment. Low, guttural noises spilled from them, somewhere between choking rasps and wet growls.
The hair on the back of Leon's neck rose.
The woman glanced over her shoulder, and in the same instant her heel caught in a crack in the pavement.
She went down hard, her scream snapping into a high, panicked squeal as she tried to push herself up on shaking hands.
She didn't even make it to her knees.
One of the creatures reached her almost immediately, launching onto her with a force completely out of proportion to its ruined, half-dead appearance.
Leon watched, paralyzed, as it sank its teeth into her arm.
Blood sprayed.
The woman screamed and fought and begged. Her voice broke, collapsing into hoarse, animal sounds of pain as more of them piled on. Hands grabbed her legs, her shoulders, her hair, pulling, tearing, ripping her apart in a chaos so brutal Leon stumbled back a step without thinking, his knees threatening to buckle under the weight of what he was seeing.
He wanted to look away. He wanted to shut his eyes...
... But he couldn't.
And then, just as suddenly as the hell had started, something shifted.
The woman's screaming cut off.
The creatures drew back for a moment, and her body, mangled, blood-soaked, lay still in a short, unnatural pause.
Then it twitched.
Leon's breath locked in his chest.
The woman began to rise. Slowly and stiffly. Like a puppet being dragged upright by badly tightened strings. When she lifted her head, her eyes were completely white, no pupils, no awareness, no trace of the person who had been there a minute ago.
She didn't look at him.
She didn't look at anything.
She simply turned and shuffled forward with the same unsteady, inhuman gait as the others, joining the pack as if everything she had been had been wiped clean.
Leon stood motionless, like someone had turned him into part of the scenery. His mind clawed for something rational, an explanation, a context that would make the image less alien, less impossible,
But before he could do anything beyond shallow, uneven breathing, he noticed something that sent a cold shiver down his spine.
One of the creatures peeled away from the rest and slowly,almost lazily, turned its head toward him. Its neck made a soft, wet crack as it moved. A low growl followed, drawn out and hungry.
A second head turned.
Then a third.
Until several of them were facing him at once, their dead white eyes fixing on him with a certainty that left no room for doubt.
They'd seen him.
The growling built, stacking over itself until it became a chaotic, inhuman chorus. Their bodies jerked, like something inside them had just received a signal,
And then they moved.
Not running so much as lunging, hurling themselves forward, falling, scrambling back up, never slowing, like a pack reacting to the fresh scent of life.
"What the fuck… what is that?!" Leon screamed at the top of his lungs, his voice echoing off the buildings.
A second later, he realized what a catastrophic mistake that was.
As if answering the sound, more figures shifted in different parts of the street, shapes he hadn't noticed before, hidden behind cars, in entryways, along the sidewalks. Heads snapped toward him. Bodies began to sway, then turn, then stumble in his direction, drawn by his shout like a beacon.
At the same time, somewhere behind him, from inside the wrecked bus, came strange noises, metallic clanking, and those same low, guttural sounds that made his stomach twist into a painful knot.
His legs went weak. His knees trembled. His vision narrowed until the only thing that mattered was the oncoming swarm. His eyes filled with pure, primal terror, so complete it left no room for thought.
For a fraction of a second he stood there, suspended between panic and paralysis.
Then he shook his head hard, like he could snap himself out of his own mind, and with a desperate effort he broke free. He turned and ran.
No direction and no plan.
Just away.
Leon sprinted blindly, his breathing turning into harsh, broken gulps that burned his lungs with every step. The city stopped feeling like a place he'd lived in and became a maze of obstacles, threats, and dead ends where one wrong turn could mean the end.
He weaved around abandoned cars, some parked across lanes, others rammed into streetlights or fused together in piles. Windows were smashed. Hazard lights still blinked, steady and calm in a way that felt almost insulting against the chaos.
He vaulted bumpers, jumped mirrors, and every landing sent pain shooting through his knees. He kept glancing over his shoulder because the growls and dragging footsteps didn't disappear, they only shifted direction.
At one point he threw himself onto the hood of a car, using it as a makeshift barrier, and sprang down the other side.
His feet had barely hit the ground when a figure stepped out from behind the chassis, one he hadn't seen until it was too late.
It lunged at him immediately, mouth hanging open, arms reaching.
Leon moved on pure instinct. He twisted sideways, stumbled over his own feet, and barely avoided the grab.
He didn't stop.
He didn't even look back.
He just ran.
His heart pounded in his temples. The world flashed past in jagged snapshots: open apartment stairwell doors spilling a silence worse than screams; shattered shopfronts littered with glass and scattered goods; blood smears dragged along sidewalks as if someone had been hauled away; lone shambling figures that only reacted when Leon got too close.
He cut sharply again, hopping a low barrier, and fate mocked him with brutal simplicity.
On the other side, between two cars, another infected stood waiting. It lifted its head at the exact moment Leon landed.
There was no time to think.
Leon surged forward, almost sliding past it, escaping by inches.
The city looked like a hurricane had collided with a massacre. There was no order, no continuity,only sudden ruptures in normal life: a baby stroller overturned in the middle of an intersection, groceries scattered and beginning to rot in the heat, bodies lying in strange poses as if time had stopped for them in a single final second, apartment windows where someone had clearly tried to flee,or barricade themselves in.
Leon ran, scanning desperately for anything that wasn't an open street. Every meter without cover made him feel like prey under a hunter's gaze.
And then, between two buildings,he spotted a familiar sign.
A small convenience store. The same one he'd stopped at a few times after work when he couldn't be bothered to go all the way to the supermarket.
For a fraction of a second, something like hope sparked in his chest.
That's it, his mind flashed, almost hysterical.
Without thinking any further, Leon lunged toward the store, pushing his battered body into a final burst of speed.
He slammed into the entrance, nearly colliding with the door as it creaked loudly when he shoved his way inside. The sound felt unnaturally loud against the dead quiet of the interior.
Immediately,without hesitation, he grabbed the first thing he saw: a metal rack loaded with candy bars, sweets, and bags of chips. He shoved it under the handle with all his strength, wedging it at an angle that his panicking brain decided was good enough.
Only when the door stopped shifting, when the rack truly held, did Leon stagger back a step and press his spine against the counter. His breathing was ragged, uneven, and his legs finally began to fold under exhaustion.
A trembling sigh of relief tore out of him, deep and tight, like for a brief moment he actually believed he was safe.
The store looked exactly the way he remembered it, just… wrong in a dead, hollow way. Shelves partly emptied. Refrigerators still quietly humming. Baskets tossed aside. A few items scattered on the floor, like someone had dropped everything and run.
That familiarity made the tension ease, just a little.
And then he heard it.
A soft, wet sound.
Rhythmic and unsettlingly calm.
Like someone chewing something tender.
It was punctuated by short, low smacks, coming from deeper in the store, behind the aisles, past where his line of sight ended.
Leon froze.
His breath caught in his throat. His whole body went rigid as the sound came again, clearer this time, accompanied by a faint, guttural hum of satisfaction that held nothing human inside it.
Slowly, very slowly, Leon turned his head toward the back.
Cold fear slid down his spine as the realization landed:
The store he'd chosen as shelter wasn't empty at all.