1. The Beginning Of The End.

"Beep, beep, beep"

"Will that be all for you today?"

"Ah, yes ma'am."

Leon is picking up a couple of things to eat for the next week at a small grocery store. He lives alone in a small apartment just down the road from this store. Leon usually spends most of his time there and only makes the occasional trip out for food and other necessities.

As Leon pays for his food and is about to leave, he hears rumbling in the distance, and then it hits him.

The ground begins to shake violently and he's quickly thrown off his feet. "An earthquake?" He drops his bags and tries to stabilize himself while looking around. There are people screaming in the distance, there are only a few people and the cashier that are in the store right now.

There are cans and jars falling off the shelves and shattering upon hitting the floor. There's dust coming from the ceiling and car alarms blaring outside. Leon sees the cashier taking cover under her counter while the other people are still shocked and haven't moved from their initial spot.

Just as he's about to move over to another counter to take cover, the ground stops shaking and everything goes quiet. Leon slowly stands up to take a look outside. "It looks like it's over." He says while checking outside. There's nothing really noteworthy out besides the dust that's covering everything and the obvious destruction of some parts of buildings.

The other people and the cashier walk over next to Leon to peak outside as well." Damn... I've never been in an earthquake before." says a guy in his late twenties. Besides him there are two other girls, one of them being the cashier.

Leon cups his hands around the window to get a better look. As the dust slowly settles and the street becomes clear, he finally gets a good look.

"It looks like someone's hurt." says the cashier. There is a person outside in the middle of the street limping around, he looks hurt pretty bad. The guy starts walking to the door to go out and help the person. Leon is still looking through the window at the supposedly injured person. "Somethings not right." just after he's says that, two more people walk into the street. They're limping and walking like they are drunk.

The guy puts his hand on the door handle but just before he does Leon jumps back and falls on his rumpus. "Wait, don't open the door!" Leon whisper yells out to the man just before he opens the door. He looks back at Leon with a questioning look.

"Why? Those people might need some help." The guy says.

Then the other two girls jump back in fright just the same way Leon did and that's when the guys gets really confused. He runs back over to the window and sees the injured people walking towards the store. But that's not all, they have bones sticking out of their skin and one of them is even missing an arm.

Leon hurriedly runs over and locks the doors. He looks around for something to block the doors with as well. The girls are still sitting in front of the windows terrified. The guy runs to help Leon as they shove whatever they can find in front of the doors.

"What the hell are those things man!" the guys looks at Leon. "I'm not sure, but they don't look friendly." Just as they finish pushing a large shelf in front of the double doors, there is a loud bang on the other side. Then more and more frequent bangs slam into the other side. Leon and the guy take a few steps back.

All of a sudden the banging stops. Before anyone is able to do anything...

BAM.... CRASH!

Something rams into the door and the shelf falls over with a loud crash. Then three gross looking people start climbing over the shelf to get inside. The look like humans but their skin is rotting and their bodies are literally falling apart as the bump into each other.

The cashier and the other girl scream as they back away from the creatures. Leon snaps out of his shock and looks both left and right for a weapon. He sees a bar that is usually used to separate groceries on the counter.

Leon runs over and grabs the plastic bar. The creatures made it inside after falling over themselves a few times. The guy that was helping Leon isn't moving, probably due to fear, but they're almost on top of him.

Leon runs over and with all his strength he slams the bar over the head of the closest creature. It's head caves in with a disgusting squelching sound. The guy finally snaps out of his stupor and quickly backs away.

Thankfully it seems they are not all that durable. Leon isn't completely ignorant either. He knows these must be some kind of zombies but he just can't wrap his mind around it right now. His survival instincts are in full drive. He forgoes thinking about it for the moment as he charges towards the next closest one.

There are only two more left that made it inside. Leon swings the now bloody bar horizontally to the zombies head but it staggers and ducks under Leon's swing. The zombie grabs Leon by the torso and tries to wrestle him to the ground.

While Leon is not the strongest person in the world, he's also not the weakest. He often goes hiking and camping in the mountains, and on top of that he does parkour here and there as well. Leon tries to wrench the zombie from his waist but the thing has an iron grip.

So instead he wraps his hands around the zombies torso and with all his might lifts it up and swings it into the last zombie, knocking it a couple of feet away. The zombie is still holding on despite all that. That's when the guy suddenly emerges from the back of the store with a large crate and drops it on the zombies head that Leon knocked over.

Leon then, with no other options left, decides to grabs the zombies disgusting rotted head and squeeze as hard as he can. His finger squish inside its head until...

Squelch!

The zombie falls to the floor completely limp as Leon is left there with blood dripping from his hands.

He finally collapses to the floor from mental exhaustion. After a minute or two, the guy walks over and introduces himself as Rob. Apparently Rob used to be in the military but was medically discharged due to an injury he received.

While Rob and Leon were talking, they were also blocking the door once again. The girls slowly walk over and introduce themselves as well. The cashiers name is Beth and the other girls name is Rachel.

"So do any of you know what's going on exactly?" Beth asks. "I'm not sure exactly." Leon says. "But these look a lot like zombies."

"This can't be real." Rob says. "That sounds crazy."

"look I know its crazy but that's the only explanation I can come up with at the moment." Leon says. "We need to move away from the windows so we won't be seen in case there are more of them out there."

"We can go to the back store room for now, follow me." Says Beth as she leads everyone to the back of the store and unlocks a door. Once everyone was inside she closed the door again.

The store room was packed full with various boxes of food and produce. Leon walked over and took a water bottle to try and clean off his blood covered hands.

Leon is not sure what exactly is going on or why there are zombies all of a sudden but his main goal right now is survival. They are going to need weapons, food, water, and transportation as well.

Luckily they're in a store with plenty of food and water so he doesn't have to worry about that at least.

While everyone is resting up, Leon decided to climb up to the roof to get a better look at the situation.

"Where are you going?"

The cashier, Beth, said when she saw Leon going towards the door.

"I'm just going to climb up to the roof to take a look around, I'll be right back."

"Okay, just be careful."

Leon nodded as he made his way back out to the store. He made his way to the front where they fought the zombies and sees something unexpected.

Three shiny marble sized stones are in the spot where the zombies bodies were previously, and also a small talisman made from what looks like wolf teeth and fur.

As Leon picks up the three stones a small blue screen pops up in his vision surprising him. It looks sort of like a status page from videos games. It has his name and then it lists all of his stats like strength, agility, and even intelligence.

After examining the page for a little while he finds that he can choose to use the three cores to upgrade some of his stats. It says the cores are only E rank which seems to be the lowest rank.

Before he uses the cores he decides to take a look at the other item the zombies dropped.