Leon stared into the darkness between two fridges. They were pushed against the back wall, the left holding milk while the right held bottles of fruit juice. Between them, however, was a door to the loading dock where trucks would come in and unload fresh produce. It was slightly ajar, allowing Leon to see the vague movement of two shadows inside.

Another crunch echoed throughout the store followed by a wheezing exhale, and then the breathing stopped. Leon took an uneasy step back as a million horrifying scenarios ran through his mind. Halfway to the shopping cart, a wet squelch came from behind the door as some kind of liquid splashed onto the ground.

He couldn't see what was making the noise, the sounds alone painting an extremely distressing picture. Leon turned to run, but when he took the first step, he remembered that everything they needed was in the shopping cart. He couldn't leave anything behind, especially the radio. It would be their only source of news for a while and might help them find help.

Turning back for the cart, Leon froze as his eyes widened in abject terror. He should’ve fled the second he heard someone call for help.

A demon pushed its way out of the door to the loading dock. Looking past its skeletal body, Leon found a man lying in a pool of his own blood. His eyes were wide open, staring up at the ceiling. There was so much colour in his face that he probably died mere seconds ago.

The demon took a step forward, the door closing from its own weight.

It looked exactly like the others he had seen. Chalky white skin, eyes like a man with cataracts, and a body as thin as a skeleton. He didn't pay any attention to those details. Instead, he looked at its clothes. Unlike the other demons he'd seen - which were all naked - this one was somehow wearing a uniform. With a blue polo, khaki trousers, and leather shoes, it was definitely wearing the same clothes as the dead employee in the loading dock.

Had someone really been turned into a monster?

Leon pushed the thought out of his mind and focused on holding his breath. He didn't know how these things sensed other people, but from his limited experience, it was obvious that something triggered them. They shambled around like a reanimated corpse until they found something to kill.

After a painfully long stand-off, the demon stumbled forward until it stood less than a meter to his left. It was close enough for Leon to reach out and touch. The demon sniffed the air and raised something to its blood-stained mouth. An arm. It was eating a human arm. Having already taken off the pinkie, it bit down on the hand's ring finger, eating the gold wedding band and all. A wet crunch forced its way into Leon’s ears as it chewed on the bony finger, the noises sending a shiver up his spine.

Don't throw up! Leon begged. His nausea grew and grew while its fangs ground up flesh, crunched bone, and slurped blood. His body demanded that he take a breath. If he didn't breathe, he'd probably throw up.

Or worse, faint.

As silently as he could, Leon exhaled into his sleeve and breathed in just as slowly.

The demon stopped chewing on the finger. It tilted its head, and Leon instantly held his breath again. Had it heard him gasping for air? It opened its mouth wide and exposed its fangs dripping with bloody saliva, a horrible groaning sound leaking out of its throat. Finally, it spat out the gold wedding band onto the floor, the ring coming to a stop when it bounced off his shoe.

How strong is its bite force? Leon thought, his legs turning numb. The ring had been mangled by the demon's fangs. It was now a chunk of gold that more closely resembled a chewed-up piece of gum than anything else.

The demon stepped forward again, and Leon’s body rebelled as his fear rose to new heights. He jumped back and bumped into the rack of knives behind him. The world stopped as he waited for the demon to pounce, but when the knives clattered to the ground, it simply didn't react. The demon tilted its head before going back to its meal, biting off the arm's index finger.

Letting out a trembling breath to calm himself, Leon began to slowly pull out the twenty or so knives that had fallen into the cart. His hands still shaking, he winced as his finger bumped one of the knives. Some of them had burst out of their plastic casings without him realising. A line of blood streaked down his hand, the cut stinging as he held it up to the dim light.

The demon stopped chewing.

Leon didn't think much about it, but when he glanced at the demon, his body locked up as adrenaline flooded into his veins. It was staring directly at him. At the blood on his finger. Everything suddenly clicked. Healing from drinking blood. The girl with the bloodied tissue being attacked first. The birds made of blood. Everything made sense in his head, but it was too late to change what was about to happen.

The demon screeched and charged at him. It pushed him into the side of the shopping cart, Leon falling over with it as the demon landed on top of him. He grasped its neck and held its deceptively light body away as it scrambled to tear him apart.

It was definitely trying to kill him, but it was almost as though it was stiff and unused to moving. The creature thrashed and thrashed, and yet it barely scratched him. But when he looked up at its open maw, bloody saliva dripping from the nest of fangs hovering above his face, he failed to find a hint of comfort.

Punching it in the face, Leon felt its nose crunch and break under his knuckles. He thought that was a good sign if he’d ever seen one, but the demon simply didn’t care about his efforts to kill it. His elbow smacked against the tiles as he tried for a bigger swing, forcing him to twist so that he could get more force behind his blows.

One solid hit landed, its head bouncing away from the force, and then he tried two more times to cave its skull in before it suddenly came alive. The demon began to tear into his arms and face with its claws. Moving faster and with much greater strength, it nearly took out his eye in the first few seconds. Had he triggered some kind of berserker state? Leon tried to punch it again, but as his fist connected with its shattered nose, the demon opened its mouth and nearly bit his whole god-damned hand off.

Seeing that his punches were doing nothing, Leon shifted his strategy and focused entirely on getting away. He screamed for help as he twisted his body. He pushed its neck with his free hand and used his leg as a lever, but when it began to fall to the side, it reached out and grabbed hold of him. Its clawed hand sunk into his right shoulder, cutting through skin and muscle like a hot knife through butter.

Aura saturation [45/100]

Leon panicked when it raised its other arm, but as it tried to latch onto him, the demon did nothing but flail around helplessly. Managing to glance down, he found that its claws were stuck in the skin of the arm it had been eating.

Trapped and unusable.

Failing to take proper hold of him, Leon struggled to get away as its clawed hand sunk further into his shoulder. The pain was unbearable, but he was forced to ignore it when the demon almost bit off his nose. Leon pushed its head away with one last burst of strength, and yet it continued to cling to him no matter what, its hunger insatiable and unrelenting.

Its head only drifted closer to his neck with each passing second. Bloody saliva dripped onto Leon's face, his arm burning from the constant exertion. Images of the girl in the apartment flashed through his mind. When the demon attacked her, it bit down on her neck on purpose.

Finally, Leon's strength gave out and he was forced to make a decision. Jerking to the side as he raised his arm, he allowed the demon to sink its teeth into his left bicep. Razor-sharp fangs dug into his flesh, piercing down to the bone. The agony was so intense that everything went white for a moment.

Aura saturation [73/100]

Leon ignored the words hovering in front of his face and reached out for one of the kitchen knives that had fallen out of the shopping cart. Blades spun away from him and handles refused to be grasped. He pushed through and kept reaching for anything that would help, but he was in too much pain to be certain if he was touching anything at all.

Warm blood pooled underneath him as the demon thrashed its head, eviscerating his arm into ribbons of flesh. His mind went blank again, but as the seconds passed, his arm began to go numb from the adrenaline that flooded his body. Finally, his fingers brushed against a knife.

Leon roared in defiance, grabbing the handle and thrusting the blade at the demon's temple. He missed. With his arm pinned on the ground and its head pushed against his shoulder, he only managed to strike the lower half of its neck. Worst of all, the knife was barely cutting into the demon's hard, leathery flesh.

Despite the terrible odds, hope for survival filled him as he struck again and again. Leon quickly sliced through part of its neck, almost reaching its spinal cord. Only a few more stabs and it would go limp. He was seconds from crippling it when the demon's chest rose. It took a deep breath, and then the pool of blood underneath him came alive, flying into its mouth in living streams of red.

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Aura saturation [49/100]

The demon's flesh stitched itself back together with each passing second. Leon screamed and cried as he stabbed harder, sometimes even poking himself in the chest with the knife. And yet, the demon healed faster than he could cut it, the white leather almost turning into liquid as it flowed back into one piece.

Leon’s strength was pulled out of him with every drop of blood it stole. His tears stopped flowing as his eyes dried out, the warmth of his body fading by the second. His screaming also faded to a whimper as his voice stopped coming. He tried to ignore it all, but the blood loss made the world spin, his nausea growing so much that he could barely gather the strength to move.

Then he became so weak that the knife failed to pierce its leathery skin for the first time, the weapon bouncing out of his hand from the impact. He couldn't even hear it clatter across the floor. Sound had stopped coming at some point, and he could tell that his vision would be going soon as well.

Aura saturation [21/100]

Leon stopped feeling anything after that. There was merely a vague sense of warmth in his chest. Everything grew dim as a sense of peace overcame his mind. He desperately tried to focus, to gather his will, but his thoughts refused to come no matter how hard he fought to stay alive.

Why should he bother when death was so peaceful?

But as his vision faded to black, a baseball bat flew over his head. Leon couldn't understand what was happening until a rush of adrenaline and heat forced him to come alive. The demon had stopped inhaling, the baseball bat smashing into the side of its head with enough force to stun it for a moment.

Aura saturation [30/100]

Aura saturation [55/100]

Aura saturation [78/100]

Seeing the demon recover from the blow, Leon reached out and easily wrapped his fingers around a knife. The baseball bat smashed the demon in the side of its head again, forcefully tearing it away from his arm. Its head flew back but its teeth didn't let go. Ripping out a massive chunk of flesh from his arm, Leon passed out for a second from the sheer agony. The flood of adrenaline and heat in his veins was the only reason he didn't die from shock.

With the knife in hand, Leon slammed it down into the creature's temple with more force than he thought possible. The blade disappeared inside its head, only stopping when the tip of the knife met the inside of its skull. A shock ran up the demon's spine, and as it seized up, several hands grabbed Leon and pulled him out from underneath the demon.

They dragged him down the aisle where he got a good view of the monster's dying breath.

It spasmed like crazy, some of its bones even breaking as it thrashed on the tiled floor. Then it let out a high-pitched screech and just… went rigid, curling up like a spider soaked in bug spray.

Leon breathed in and felt a wave of sensations wash over him. Pain shot up both of his arms, but his left arm was shredded down to the bone while the right had merely been stabbed by claws. The pain from the latter was basically non-existent compared to the former, but it still stung in the back of his mind.

Aura saturation [89/100]

The icy cold tiles felt like heaven, and as his mind relaxed, so did his body. He'd been awake for over twenty hours, run like a madman until he nearly collapsed, then fought and almost died to a demon. As the adrenaline faded, Leon opened his eyes and noticed the man kneeling over him.

"Stay with me, son," The stranger said, his white lab coat stained in blood. Leon tried to stay awake, terrified that it was his blood, but his body was slowly dragging him into sleep. He simply didn't have the energy or strength to stay awake.

The man turned and shouted behind him. "Where the hell are those towels?"

Leon couldn’t see anyone through the blinding pain. It was overwhelming him; consuming all of his focus as the exposed nerves in his arm throbbed and burned. He only managed to see the outline of a man standing over him, but beyond his clothes and some vague features, such as the greying hair at his temples or his blood-covered lab coat, he could see almost nothing else.

Worst of all, Leon could hear that no one had moved at the man’s order.

“That kid got bit. He’s probably going to turn into one of them,” The voice was hard, and it immediately pissed Leon off despite the haze over his mind. What was he even suggesting? That they should leave him to bleed out? “Look at the uniform the zombie was wearing. The guy worked here before he turned.”

“And?" The man standing over Leon replied. "I’m not leaving a child to die on the off chance that he becomes a monster.”

“So you’re willing to risk everyone’s life for one random kid? Look at what he’s wearing, for Christ's sake! There are still price tags on his tracksuit! He’s out looting after a nuclear strike and you want to risk the lives of what, twenty of our best and brightest for some guy that’s probably going to die from his wounds anyway?”

"Stealing clothes is no reason to withhold life-saving medical care. And besides, he’s only a boy. Do you… to…”

It was so hard to focus. Their arguing slowly faded into the background, but even Leon could see how things were going. If he was lucky, they would put him out of his misery. And if he was unlucky, they would bandage him up and lock him away somewhere.

Aura Saturation [97/100]

When they finally escaped the city, he would probably become a test subject or, if worse came to worst, he would become a demon like the one who had attacked him. Leon knew that he should be afraid; he had always been so anxious, and yet his exhaustion from tonight and the cold treatment he was receiving from his fellow man had turned that nervous energy into rage.

Why did he deserve to die without even turning into a monster first? Why did they have the right to control his fate? He had hopes and dreams. He had a future, and yet they were willing to let him die over a chance he might become a monster. His life hadn't even started yet.

He couldn’t die here.

He refused.

Leon saw nothing due to the blood loss, but he still searched for anything that could help his situation. He'd lost a lot of blood when he was first bitten, and now that they'd dragged him across the floor, it was continuing to pour out of him as though he'd sprung a leak. It was even warming the icy cold tiles underneath his back.

Still, no one moved to help him.

Then he felt a surge of warmth envelope his body. It was so comforting that Leon almost fell asleep then and there, but as he began to close his half-blind eyes, he noticed it was actually seeping into his pores and spreading throughout his flesh in waves. But unlike the scalding heat from the bombs, this was a gentle and comforting stream. His blood warmed up from its passing, his bones popped and crackled, and his wounds tingled as they began to mend themselves. The wave of heat was like a nourishing medicine. He wanted the feeling to last forever, but after the strange substance washed through his body once, it ended its journey by soaking into his spine and disappearing.

Aura saturation [100/100]

Something in his back ignited and came to life, triggering his shredded arm to burn as well. He could feel a line of fire running up his spine. The power was comforting and warm, nourishing and improving his body in every way imaginable. Then the pleasant sensations faded into the background as the inferno in Leon's arm began to move up his shoulder. Panic seized him when lines of text appeared in front of his face, but Leon ignored it all as his arm devoured itself.

No, his arm was being consumed; Taken over by whatever the demon had injected into him.

Leon screamed. It wasn't the first of the night, but it was the same one he had been hearing all this time: the scream that someone let out when they were about to die a horrible, agonising death. The fire was corrupting more and more of his flesh, taking his body over and transforming it into something that wasn't his own. He desperately wished to expel the demonic mixture from his arm, pushing against it in any way that he could.

And to his surprise, something actually responded within him.

A surge of power rushed to his call. It spread out from his stomach and filled his body, quickly repelling the demonic heat that burned him so terribly. The two forces collided in his chest. They bubbled and frothed as they fought one another, but the pressure from his stomach was endless while the demonic infestation was not.

The seconds of agony passed quickly, and the molten fire was pushed all the way back into his arm where something changed. The arguing stopped as a reddish-black liquid was flushed from the pores of his arm. It was all so real in his head, but to actually feel a boiling liquid seep out of his pores was another thing entirely. When the fluid stopped coming out, the pain disappeared and his arm seemed to become a hundred times lighter, almost as if the demonic poison actually was made of lead.

Leon gasped as hot tears poured down his cheeks. He was alive. He had lived even when those cruel bastards had left him to die. A smile unfurled on his lips, but he couldn't find the strength to bellow out any laughter. Exhaustion took over, and his body finally succumbed to the darkness of sleep.