My time is running out. And I know it. They know it. We all know it.

But humans are the greedy creatures we were made to be. To be human is to be greedy. And so, if I can just extend my time a little bit longer.

I count one, two, three, five, no, seven booms go off all at once, and I'm so disoriented I stop my charge. One second I'm running, and next, I have been flung 10 meters from where I was originally, on all fours, with yesterday night's breakfast and a mixture of stomach acid coming out my mouth.

I am thrown off. Literally.

Standing back up in my jagged suit littered with cuts of varying sizes, stretched and torn in different parts, I don't know the source of. Just let it not be from them. My body is harmed with fire scats, slices thinner than grass, and grazes that cut deep and wide into my flesh. I breathe a sigh of relief.

Before I can stumble forward as my lower body compresses under the weight of my upper side, my world doubles over, and I am hunched as my body gets prepared to puke more contents onto the ground, but I know it. My time is ticking.

They know it.

Not just the civilians that run in and out of apartment buildings, trying to salvage whatever bits they can from the rain of bombs.

The rain of bombs that has blown that car now headed towards me at a surprisingly fast speed. I lazily squat down to let it fly over my head, and I can feel the air as it whooses just right above my head. I look up to meet face-to-face with a blonde woman with pale ashy skin. Her loud snarl as she struggles to reach the door while another gray person chomps down on her neck, keeping her in place. It is all in slow motion, and the very next second, she and her companion are thrown behind me.

Boom* The ground shatters and splits, unearthing itself, and fire extinguishers planted into the sides of the road sprout open dams. The levitation grounds have been broken like crumble cookies. I quickly turn my head away from the aftermath of the explosion. The ground and my body are struck with glass shards.

Not glass, Cretonium. Tempered glass which is shatterproof and is mostly found in Nova Scotia, Canada. Only well-to-do homes had it, but it's said to withstand the force of Tsunamis and even earthquakes.

I look up at the sky to find ash gently floating down like Sakura flowers in the spring. Up there in the skies are helicopters, large and sturdier than most. The official air force seal is marked on the tail of the helicopters. Was the government trying to kill us? 
If the government has resorted to this means...just how bad was this spreading? 

Oh God.

Tick tock. I hear my life span slowly drain down that hourglass. But in my case, it's a minute glass.

I turn back around to face the crowd of people waiting with spread arms.

Don't let me phrase it so nicely.

I stand with my back turned to a mob of flesh-devouring beasts. Their arms outstretched as they stumbled on top of each other to get to me. Even with the weight of the Qesla car that had earlier flown above me and had taken half of the mob down in bits, the other half clambered over the Tesla in a rushed attempt to get to their goal, which in this case is me.

Their bald, wrinkled heads turned up to the sour sky. They are like an infestation to the world. Taking out everything in sight, their wrangled arms that constantly twist in any way, as well as their slacked jaw that bobs up and down rapidly like a killer machine.

I turn my gaze back ahead to meet face-to-face with another mob of them. What the actual fuck were these things? They chase after mothers who have hoisted their kids up to their chest, mother and child desperately clinging to each other. They chase after fathers who fight off the air and claws too fast to be seen.

I stand there, my body cold and numb from all that happens around me. It feels like I'm a nameless narrator. What is this feeling? I feel so invinsible. Almost like all this chaos isn't happening to me. No, almost like it's not a reality. 

In a second, a father drops to the ground. Dead.

God, please don't let that be me. I don't want to be here or there on the ground.

"Your train to Shibuya comes in-" The jolly tone of a kid's toy echoes like a calm trail of water in a dewy mountain up in an unknown forest.

"One." A theme song plays out

"Two."

"Three." His body jerks

"Four."

"Five."

"Six." His fingers dig into the unearthed ground

"Seven."

"Eight."

"Nine." His body goes still.

"Ten." The theme song ends and a crack is heard as the man on the ground snaps back up, his wrist letting go of the metal baton he had been using to fend off the zombies.

The metal clangs onto the asphalt like the sound of a judge's gavel resounding in the finalization of a ruling. 

I hear a kid's scream behind me but I don't turn back around. The scream is either at the kid's realization of what their father has inevitably become, or when the father has bitten into the mother, causing both the mom and kid to go down, or that the kid themselves has been bitten.

"Your train to Shibuya comes in"

"One" The theme song plays out

"Two"

"Three-" 

Can I  just walk away from this?

Yes

                                                                       Author's note.

I'm back~~ cuties. Take your time to enjoy this chapter; I'll be back with more. 

The next set of chapters will be about Xander's experience with the apocalypse. And to clear things up, to prevent any confusion. This chapter is a few hours after the outbreak. Zylith's and Bliss' chapters are further into the story, but I wanted to do a quick background story for Xander.

Hear from me soon~