Edward woke up after an unknown amount of time had passed, he lay motionless on the ground for a while as the thing before he lost consciousness slowly returned to his mind.

"Fuck!"

He cursed when he remembered that he was in a life-and-death fight with a zombie and tried to move only to be assaulted by a mind-blowing pain, making him almost lose consciousness again.

Edward hissed and endured the pain, he was very afraid of pain but was even more afraid of death so he did not dare to relax for a bit.

Forcing himself to his feet, Edward looked around him and his eyes quickly landed on the figure of the zombie that had attacked him earlier.

He was so frightened that he tried moving away but the sudden movement caused him another wave of pain and he ended up falling over, he still gained distance despite the failed attempt.

"Damn, bastard!" He cursed again and rose to his feet, resting his back on the cold deformed metal of the room. Now that he had confirmed that the zombie had someone died, Edward was able to relax a bit and take a short break.

He examined his body and realized that he was not injured, not a single scratch was on his body. The blood was there, the memory of the zombie piercing him with its arm was fresh in his mind that he could almost feel the pain and his clothes were in ruins, but not a single scratch could be found on his body.

Edward attributed this to one of the changes that had happened to him after waking up, it was probably the same thing that had saved him but he did not know what it was as he had been unconscious the two times it happened.

Staring at the ruined state of the surrounding, it was now that Edward realized the amount of damage that had happened there.

"W-what happened here? And how did this zombie die?" Edward asked but no answer came to his curiosity. He could only stomach everything for now until he found his answers in the future.

He nodded at his thought and then glanced at the huge body of the dead zombie. He should probably inspect the body and might find clues to some of his questions, but did he dare to?

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Edward shook his head furiously, what was he thinking? Even though the zombie was dead, it was still menacing and scary. What if it suddenly came back to life like he had done twice and whatever it was that had killed it did not come back? Edward might be shredded to bits and pieces without a hope of reviving.

"Yes, I should get out of here fast," he said to himself and immediately staggered over to get his bag while keeping as much distance as possible from the unmoving zombie, he was still feeling the pain but could move as long as he was not too fast and did not sudden movements.

Edward thought of escaping the place immediately but hesitated when he remembered why he came in the first place, there were certainly people hiding his the store ahead.

He had nowhere to go at the moment since his former team had concluded that he was dead and he had no plans of bothering them again, he would not even be able to find them if he wanted to.

So what should he do? Go out alone? Hell no, what if zombies start attacking him again like this one lying down there? He would rather cling to a new team and move with them, it would be easier to escape a zombie pursuit with a lot of people.

Edward concluded and headed deeper into the store to look for the survivors who were hiding in it in hopes of joining them.

Of course, he changed his clothes first. Thank goodness he had packed a few more, he did not dare to appear in front of others in such bloodied clothes. They might think he was a strong fighter and ask for his help to fight zombies, wouldn't that be asking him to die and hinder his plans of escaping in case things went south?

...

Edward pushed open the door after some effort, turned out that there was a single shelf placed in front of the door for obvious reasons which further confirmed his guess that there were people hiding there; the zombies were still trying to force their way in through the front door after all, so there was no way for the people had hidden themselves here.

Bang! Bang!! Bang!!!

Edward looked toward the door that had suddenly started trembling, the number of zombies had suddenly increased.

"Looks like another batch of zombies had come to join their kind" Edward muttered softly.

Thankfully, the rows of shelves staked in front of the door were still doing their job.

Turning his head away from the door, Edward looked at the several shelves that were filled with canned foods, and other already-made meals that could go for a long time without spoiling.

Of course, some of the shelves were already empty while some were only half filled.

"I wonder what we will do by the time all the already-made foods run out or expire?"

Edward did not dare to think about it.

"Umm, hello? Is there anyone here?" Edward shouted in a low voice, afraid of further alerting the zombies outside.

He cautiously looked around as he moved in between the shelves on the lookout for possible danger but all he got was silence, of course, if the loud banging sounds from outside were ignored.

"Is there really no one here? Was I thinking too much?" Edward muttered to himself as he looked around the place, his eyes suddenly caught something.

Under one of the shelves that had fallen over, Edward saw something that looked like the fingers of a person, the fingers swiftly moved as if the owner had realized that they were too close to being spotted but Edward had already seen them.

He stood still in his position, not daring to approach the fallen shelf. Even though those fingers looked exactly like humans and not one of those hideous zombies, Edward did not dare to approach it for certain reasons. What if it was a trap like that green-eyed zombie from earlier?

'I would rather call out from here' He nodded quietly.

"I know that you are hiding under that shelf, I'm a human so you can come out," Edward said, his voice was loud and serious.

He expected the person to still ignore him or simply come out but was stunned when a total of eight people crawled out from under the shelf.

'So many?' he thought. Well, the shelf was huge enough to hide all of them. He just did not think there would be so many people here.