The apartment went still, the man with the cleaver stepping back as he gasped in shock. The monster’s throat began to move as it swallowed mouthfuls of blood from the woman's neck, and to everyone’s shock, the blood underneath her corpse came alive. The red liquid flew into the creature's mouth despite gravity attempting to pull it into the carpet.

The monster’s flesh wriggled as its wounds closed. To Leon’s horror, its ribs also snapped back into place - one after the other - before its broken arm straightened out with a wet squelch. The bones all clicked into place as though the monster had never been injured in the first place.

Seconds passed as people did nothing but watch the girl’s body get drained of all its fluid. When she was no more than a skin-covered skeleton, the monster stood up without a single scratch on its body. It turned to the man holding the cleaver. Silence ruled the apartment as the monster stared at him, its expression as inhuman as the rest of its form.

A metallic clang echoed throughout the apartment as the man dropped the cleaver, and then a wet squelch overtook it when the monster lunged at him and ripped his right arm clean off. The man let out the most gut-wrenching, visceral scream that Leon had ever heard. Blood squirted out of the stump as he rolled around on the ground. He tried to staunch the bleeding with his hand, but the blood just spurted out between his fingers until he stopped moving altogether.

The skeleton groaned in pleasure. The noise commanded everyone’s attention, and they all noticed the same thing at once. Its skeletal form was more filled out now, and there even seemed to be a hint of wisdom in its previously listless eyes. Instead of vaguely looking around, it stared at everyone in turn, measuring them with its disquietingly white eyes.

It turned to the other man who had tried to pull it off the girl. Having woken up during the screaming, he turned and ran for the door. Sadly, he wasn’t fast enough. The monster pounced on the man and shoved him to the ground. Firmly on top, it slammed its fists into the man's chest until his ribs cracked and his chest caved in. The stranger wheezed, choking for air that refused him.

The monster stood up and left him to die without hesitation.

It didn’t consider who to kill anymore. With its vengeance over, the monster pounced on another person, beginning its chaotic slaughter. They either tried to fight or flee out the front door. Seeing them escape, Leon thought to run for the cleaver so the others could flee.

His body refused to move. Despite his many years of fighting experience, he had no idea how to fight a monster. Leon was almost guaranteed to die, and if he didn’t, he would risk becoming severely injured. Even if his friends did nurse him back to health, an injury now would mean becoming a burden.

It would mean being left behind.

People were torn apart in front of him, their whimpers filling his mind as they slowly bled out on the floor. He roared at his body to move, but it remained locked in place. He couldn’t risk it. To show weakness now was a thousand times worse than death. He couldn’t live through being left behind again, especially when he didn’t know if the rest of his family was even still alive.

But none of that mattered when Leon realised he'd taken too long to overcome his cowardice.

Another creature stepped out of the crack in the lounge. It was bald, skinny, and had fang-like teeth just like the last. The monster was lethargic until it fed on a nearby corpse. In a matter of seconds, it came alive and pounced on someone huddling in the corner of the lounge, whispering stuttered prayers that they wouldn't be found.

People were torn apart left and right while some managed to keep the monsters away by wildly swinging the stools that were at the kitchen bar. Others ran and hid in the two bedrooms, one of the monsters clawing at the door.

Marcus and Olivia ran over to Leon on the balcony. Marcus shook him on the shoulder, but he didn’t catch what his friend said. Although the ringing had faded enough for normal conversation, he was left in shock once more, frozen and unable to process what was going on until he forced himself to wake up.

“Pardon?” Leon blinked, rubbing his ear to stop the slight ringing that lingered. “What did you say?”

“I said we need to get the hell out of here. Do you know where the emergency exit is?”

“Wasn’t it at the end of the hallway? I think I remember seeing it when we came out of the elevator.”

Marcus looked over his shoulder, and Leon copied him. The first monster was wildly clawing at the front door with its long nails, leaving deep marks in the solid wood. As for the other one, it was trying to run out down the hallway that led to the bedrooms.

There was a fire escape on the side of the building, and the only way to access it was to climb out of a bedroom window. Not only was the monster in the way, but it was also held back by a wall of furniture. Someone had dragged a desk from one of the rooms and blocked the lower half while a few guys shoved the creature back with stools when it tried to climb over.

The only exits were blocked.

Leon searched around for options until his eyes landed on the walls of the balcony. Every outdoor area was connected by a solid concrete floor. The architects had merely put dividing walls between the apartments to separate the spaces, but as the balconies were glass, the wall ended just before the metal railing. It would be difficult to climb around while the glass was intact, but now that it wasn’t…

“Quick, follow me!”

Leon ducked under the railing and then helped Olivia when he was on the other side. She tried to run in her heels but stumbled and almost fell. Leon could see a shoe rack beside the front door so he told her to go steal a pair. He then helped Mila over and told her to do the same.

Marcus managed to get around without help, leaving them to stand by the door while the girls changed their shoes. As Mila was tying her laces, a man stumbled out of the hallway in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. He had obviously been in bed until he heard someone walking around his apartment.

“W-what the? Are you stealing my shoes? Get the fuck out you damn kids or I’ll call the cops.”

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Marcus glared at the guy. “Get a clue, dumbass.”

He helped Olivia up and ran out the door with both girls, leaving Leon alone with the bewildered man.

“You might want to run, dude,” Leon said, jogging out the door and into a crowd of people. “You’ve got new neighbours and they don’t seem very nice. Too many teeth.”

Minutes later, they stumbled out of the emergency stairwell to find utter chaos. Sirens blared across the city, people looted stores, and others ran for their lives. One thing was the same across the board though, and that was how everyone was running away from the mushroom clouds in the centre of the city.

The closest one nearly covered the sky above them, the ash cloud a veritable roof of soot.

“What the hell do we do?” Mila panted, her head swivelling to follow a crowd of people running down the road. “Should we follow them?”

Leon took a deep breath to collect himself, the forty flights of stairs taking their toll. “We can’t stop moving. The radiation alone might kill us, not to mention the monsters. We have to get out of the city as quickly as we can.”

They began to run with a big group of people, but once they got a few blocks away, Leon slowed down as he heard a strange noise. Something was echoing off the nearby buildings. The earthquake had subsided now, leaving only an indistinct buzz in the air from all the activity. And on top of that low drone of noise was a distant swoosh of something moving through the air. Leon searched the sky but it was extremely dark now that the light from the bombs had died down. Only the fires littering the city were able to cast any kind of light, and from what he could tell, it wasn’t much.

The sky was nearly black.

It happened faster than his mind could process. An ear-piercing screech ripped out from above, forcing everyone to stop and block their ears. Leon winced and prepared himself for whatever was about to happen, but he could only watch as over ten people were pulled into the sky by a series of red blurs.

Now that they slowed down, however, Leon could see what they were. A flock of giant birds hauled a bunch of people off the ground. The victims thrashed against the grip of their claws and yet they did nothing but wiggle in place, their efforts an exercise in futility. It was like watching a child being dragged away by their parents.

Mila grabbed onto his arm in terror, and Leon was silently glad to know that she was still there.

People screamed while others moved to help. Women threw their heels and men tossed their sneakers, but none of them managed to save their loved ones. Leon hesitated as his mind processed the chaos. He wanted to help, but he quickly came to a decision and began running again, dragging his friends behind him.

There was no saving them.

He only made it to the next street when he was forced to stop again. Something was whistling through the air towards him, and it was coming fast. He prepared to jump out of the way of any grasping claws, but instead of giant birds, a body slammed into the roof of a nearby car.

Glass rained over him and his friends, earning a scream of terror from everyone nearby. Leon also felt something warm splatter onto his face and clothes. He knew what it was, but as his stomach began to churn, he shut his brain off and began to move. He nudged Marcus awake with his elbow, took hold of Mila’s hand, and turned to run as quickly as he could.

Most everyone else did the same.

People were swooped up at random, and as they fell to their deaths with their arms waving about, they let out that familiar blood-curdling screech that Leon was becoming far too familiar with. Bodies fell all around him and his friends every other second. Sometimes they landed on another person, crushing them in the process, but most of the time they were dropped onto the pavement or the roof of a parked car.

The screams started to blur into each other as men and women were continually carried up and dropped from lethal heights. A woman slipped and fell over as a body crashed into the ground beside her, blood and organs drenching her silver dress. Not a single person stopped to help her up. How could they when no one could help themselves?

The crowd slowly turned into a chaotic mess as everyone tried to run in different directions. People shoved each other to the ground, leaving Leon caught up in a mess of bodies with no way out. He thought he had lost his friends, but he was grabbed on the shoulder and pulled to freedom by Marcus. Once they rounded the corner, he saw Mila and Olivia wave at them to follow, their forms disappearing as they ran into the fire escape of a small shopping centre.

It was one street down from the main road so no one passed through the area. Leon and Marcus followed the girls. Once inside, they joined them in an office space that some small company had rented out above the shopping centre.

“What the fuck was that?” Olivia said, panting as she sat down at the head of the conference table. “Did you guys get that voice in your head as well?”

Marcus rubbed his forehead. “Yeah, it sounded like it was directly inside my skull.”

“Me too,” Leon said, but Mila just nodded her head, looking dazed.

They were in some kind of meeting room with a view of the city. The windows were intact, somehow. Maybe because the shops were far enough away from the explosion? They had been running uphill the entire time, which gave them a decent view of the city now that they were a little higher up.

Leon numbly wrapped his arms around Mila from behind and looked out at the devastation. He didn’t even think about how clammy their skin felt. Holding her was the only thing that was keeping him sane, so what was a little discomfort?

The office lapsed into silence. Leon distantly knew they were all in shock, but he couldn’t think about anything beyond that. He was barely managing to hold himself together. Losing control now would be the end of it all. He needed to be calm; a rock in the storm that was the horror he'd just experienced.

Time passed slowly. Leon was staring off into space when he felt Mila’s breathing speed up. She looked around like she was lost, and then she glanced down at her white dress. It was covered in blood splatters and black stains. She tried to wipe away the blood but it only smeared onto her dress more. She began to breathe faster and faster. Leon tried to calm her down, grabbing her chin so that she looked away from the red, but she only got more panicked until she ran out of the room with a hand over her mouth.