Leon walked up to the backpack and crouched beside it. Without overthinking, he pulled the zipper all the way open and,one nervous motion,dumped everything onto the concrete floor, like he needed to see what he was working with before he made any decisions.
Small items scattered out, the kind that had been part of someone's normal day just hours ago: a rolled-up work hoodie that smelled of detergent and sweat, a thick notebook filled with delivery notes, a few receipts crushed into balls, a keyring with a bottle-shaped charm, an old phone charger, a power bank with a cracked casing, a half-empty pack of cigarettes and a lighter, and a wallet that spilled a few banknotes along with the shop owner's ID card.
Leon stared at it all with a blank expression, then pushed the wallet aside without looking inside again.
"Money…" he muttered. "It's probably just paper now."
His eyes landed on the flashlight,solid, rubberized, visibly worn,and he picked it up without hesitation, testing the switch.
The beam snapped on instantly. Strong. Steady.
"That stays," he said, and slid it into the now-empty backpack.
He nudged the rest of the clutter toward the wall with his foot, making space,though he did shove the old charger and the power bank into the bag as well. Then he stood and headed for the food aisles, moving slower this time, more methodically, like each step was part of a plan instead of a sprint for his life.
"Alright…" he told himself under his breath. "Food. Water. That's the base."
He started with water because it was the obvious priority. He grabbed a few 1.5-liter bottles, then hesitated, weighing them in his hands, and set one back.
"I can't run around like a camel," he muttered. "Better less,but smart."
In the end he packed three bottles, standing them upright so the weight wouldn't drag one side of the backpack down.
Then he moved to food, and his thinking turned sharper, more selective.
He skipped the fresh bread,it already carried the faint sour hint of going stale,and ignored the yogurts in the fridge. The power was still on, sure, but he had zero guarantee it would stay that way. Instead, he went for cans: beans, stew, tuna, a few soups. Heavy, but durable.
"They last… and you don't need to cook," he murmured, sliding them in one by one until the backpack started to pull at his shoulders just sitting there.
He added a pack of crackers, a few energy bars, and plastic bags of nuts,high-calorie, compact. He hesitated over a chocolate bar, then tossed it in anyway.
"If I might die tomorrow," he muttered, "I can afford a little sweetness in my life."
When he finally sat on a crate and tried to eat, his stomach immediately rebelled.
He unwrapped one of the bars, but the smell alone made something in him lurch. Leon paused, breathing slowly through his nose.
"You have to," he told himself, hard. "At least a little."
He tore off a small bite,almost symbolic,chewed it for a long time, forced it down, then sipped water in tiny swallows, like he was afraid his body would reject it if he moved too fast. The second bite was just as small, the third even smaller,but after a few minutes he felt the dizziness ease, just a fraction.
"That's enough… for now," he muttered, sliding the rest back into the backpack.
He threw in a few more necessities: a pack of tissues, a roll of toilet paper, a small pocketknife he found near the register.
He searched the entire store for a first-aid kit,anything even close,but came up empty.
When he finally zipped the backpack shut, it was heavy and packed nearly to the brim, but the weight was balanced. Leon swung it onto his shoulders and tested the straps, rolling his shoulders to make sure he could still move freely. He bent his knees and straightened again, feeling out the load.
Then his brow creased.
"I thought it'd feel a lot heavier," he said after a moment.
He stood there with the sword resting against his thigh and the backpack on his back, exhaustion, fear, and lingering disgust all twisting inside him.
But underneath it, something else was starting to surface,an unfamiliar layer of excitement as he looked toward the ruined doorway and the daylight beyond.
Leon adjusted his grip on the sword and started toward the exit. And with every step, he became more aware of the state he was really in, because only now,now that adrenaline had dropped enough to stop drowning out his body,did the pain bloom everywhere at once.
Burning cuts along his forearms where glass had opened his skin. A deep ache in his ribs from being thrown around inside the bus. A pulsing sting in his knees, stiff already, crusted with dried blood.
He looked himself over critically,ripped clothing, dirt, blood, that purple slime,and a thought came instantly. Not panic. Survival.
"This could end badly," he muttered. "Infection. Fever. One nasty thing is enough."
He didn't need medical training to know open wounds were a death sentence in a world filled with rotting bodies and unknown pathogens.
He stopped just before the store's broken entrance, letting the backpack settle fully onto his shoulders, and closed his eyes for a moment.
He pulled up a map of the neighborhood in his head,street by street, the way he'd traced it a hundred times on shortcuts home. There was a small pharmacy on the main road near a bus stop and an old kiosk. He'd been there before for basic cold meds.
"It's not far," he whispered.
About five hundred meters. Two streets straight, then a right turn, a short stretch of open space, and the building with the green cross. In normal conditions, a five-minute walk.
He replayed the route again, precisely,cover spots, shortcuts between parked cars, places he could duck into, likely bottlenecks,then drew in a deep breath and straightened his back.
A tight smile tugged at his face, more grimace than calm, but enough to give him a sliver of courage.
"Alright," he said quietly.
The moment he stepped out, Leon started running.
Not a full sprint. Not blind panic.
A fast, controlled pace that let him move efficiently while still reading the environment,because the city wasn't something you could just run through anymore. It was a living trap, full of blind angles, corners, and strange sounds.
He stayed close to building walls, slipped between parked cars, slowing every few seconds to peek around a corner or listen for that telltale scraping shuffle… or a low, guttural growl. More than once he changed direction the moment he spotted lone figures wandering in an intersection, reacting to any loud noise. Another time he flattened himself behind a dumpster as an entire group staggered out of a side street, bumping into each other like drunks.
Leon didn't want a fight.
Every time instinct told him to tighten his grip on the sword, he remembered the store,the blood, the way everything could've ended on the tile between shelves.
Now there was only one goal.
The pharmacy.
At a larger intersection he saw something that snagged his attention for a second.
A man,maybe in his thirties,wearing a work jacket stood in the middle of the street, chest heaving, holding a makeshift weapon: a metal rod torn from a railing. A dead zombie lay in front of him, its head smashed in.
The man threw his arms up and laughed, loud and almost hysterical.
"It works!" he shouted. "It works, fuck,!"
Leon's stomach twisted.
He wanted to yell. To warn him.
Too late.
From beneath a nearby car, another figure slid out almost silently and grabbed the man's leg, fingers digging into his calf. The man's victory yell turned into pure panic. He swung the rod down once, twice, three times until the zombie's skull split,
But in that same moment, he jerked in pain.
Too late.
The zombie had bitten him.
"No,no, no!" the man screamed, staggering back, but the sound was a signal.
Another zombie stepped out from a side street.
Then another.
Then another.
Leon watched with wide eyes as the situation unraveled in seconds. The man tried to fight, tried to back away, swung again and again,until he tripped. And then he disappeared under several bodies at once.
His scream cut off abruptly, brutally, replaced by the familiar wet sounds of tearing.
It happened too fast.
Leon shook his head hard, like he could physically knock the image out of his mind, and kept moving. His heart hammered as one thought grew louder and clearer with every step:
Don't shout. Don't fight unless you have to. And most importantly,don't do anything stupid.
He ran on, dodging danger after danger, turning, doubling back, sometimes nearly crawling between cars,until, after long minutes that felt like hours, he finally saw it.
The green pharmacy cross.
Tilted slightly, but still glowing.
Leon didn't hesitate and he dashed to the door, yanked it open, and threw himself inside, slamming it shut behind him almost immediately,gasping for breath, his heart still beating far too fast.