Jacob pressed his back against the low concrete ledge of the rooftop, keeping his head down as he peered over the edge.
Behind him, his wife Mary was kneeling on the cold floor, holding their sixteen-year-old twin daughters close to her chest.
Ella was trembling quietly, her timid eyes wide with fear, while her twin sister Ilas stared past her father toward the shattered streets below.
They had been trapped on top of this five-story apartment building for three full days. Below them, the city had dissolved into a nightmare.
"Jacob, what is happening down there?" Mary whispered, her voice shaking violently as she adjusted her grip on her daughters. "Is it another pack of those things?"
"Stay quiet," Jacob instructed in a hushed tone, waving a hand to keep them low. "Just keep your voices down."
Jacob had served as the deputy mayor of the district before the collapse.
He was a man used to authority, order, and clear protocol, but none of his political experience had prepared him for the horrors unfolding in the streets.
He shifted slightly, adjusting his glasses to get a clearer view of the town square below.
What he saw made his breath catch in his throat.
A single, small figure was moving rapidly across the open pavement.
Unlike the sluggish, mindless corpses that wandered the alleyways, this creature moved with terrifying speed.
She wore a pair of heavy metal gauntlets on her hands and thick leather boots on her feet. If not for her grey skin, he would’ve mistaken it for a human.
As they watched, a group of three ordinary zombies shuffled toward her. The dark-haired zombie girl did not stop.
Instead, she leaped into the air, landing directly in the middle of them with enough force to send a shockwave across the pavement.
In a flash of brutal motion, she crushed one head with an invisible force, tore through the throat of another, and smashed the third into the asphalt.
She reached down into the shattered skulls, pulled out the red cores, and swallowed them without hesitation.
"Look..." Ella timidly whispered, her small voice cracking as she pointed a shaking finger over her father’s shoulder. "It is eating all the zombies. Would it be a mutated one?"
"It is hunting them," Jacob murmured, his eyes wide behind his lenses. "It is actively hunting its own kind."
The four survivors watched in stunned silence as the zombie girl sprinted toward the far side of the square.
She moved like a trained predator, striking down every corpse in her path with terrifying efficiency. Every time a zombie fell, she harvested its core and ate it like candy.
Suddenly, the zombie girl stopped near an abandoned vending machine. She stretched her arms, and a soft, dark crimson light briefly enveloped her entire body.
When the light faded, her posture seemed even more refined, and a strange, sharp intelligence gleamed in her glowing crimson eyes.
She raised her right hand into the air and flicked her fingers toward a mindless zombie walking near a trash bin on the far side of the square.
The wandering zombie instantly froze in its tracks. Its clouded eyes twitched, and without any warning, it slowly turned around, faced the dark-haired girl, and bowed its head in submission.
Up on the roof, the family watched the scene with absolute horror.
Ilas breathed heavily, her face turning pale as she grasped the arm of her jacket. "It is controlling other zombies... they have started to mutate."
"Controlling them?" Mary cried silently, tears streaming down her dirty cheeks as she pulled Ella closer. "How can something like that exist? What should we do, Jacob? What are we supposed to do if it comes up here?"
"We wait," Jacob said firmly, trying to keep his voice steady to reassure his terrified family, though cold sweat was dripping down his back. "I am a deputy mayor. The emergency response teams have my coordinates. No way the government will abandon me and my family here. Help will arrive."
As if answering his desperate words, a deep, rhythmic thumping sound echoed from the northern sky.
The low hum of rotating blades grew louder by the second, bouncing off the walls of the surrounding skyscrapers.
Jacob stood up straight, his face lighting up with overwhelming relief as he pointed toward the sky.
"Look! I told you!" Jacob shouted, completely forgetting his own command to stay quiet. "They came for us!"
A military transport helicopter broke through the heavy dark haze above the city, its searchlight cutting through the grey sky as it descended toward the flat roof of their apartment building.
Mary let out a choked sob of joy, pulling Ella and Ilas to their feet as the wind from the helicopter blades whipped their hair around their faces.
A soldier clad in tactical gear leaned out of the open side door of the aircraft, holding a megaphone to his mouth.
"Do not worry, sir! We are under orders from central command to evacuate—"
Before the soldier could finish his sentence, a massive, dark object hurtled through the air from the high-rise building directly opposite their position.
It was a gigantic concrete boulder, easily the size of a small car, thrown with terrifying velocity.
BANG!
The massive rock slammed directly into the side of the helicopter with tremendous force. The aircraft exploded in mid-air, bursting into a fiery ball of metal, orange flames, and thick black smoke.
The blast wave knocked Jacob, Mary, and the twins off their feet, sending them tumbling backward onto the hard roof surface.
Burning debris rained down across the rooftop and the street below.
Shocked and deafened by the sudden destruction, all four survivors slowly lifted their heads and stared in horror toward the source of the projectile.
Standing atop the ledge of the opposite building was a gigantic monster. It stood over three meters tall, its grey skin stretched impossibly tight over massive slabs of unnatural muscle.
Spikes of jagged bone armor protruded from its shoulders, and a dark, violent light pulsed from a crystal set into its wide forehead.
The giant monster looked down at the four terrified humans cowering on the roof across the gap.
At their sight, its wide, fanged mouth opened into a terrifying, grotesque grin.
Without a moment of hesitation, the giant creature flexed its massive legs, shattering the concrete beneath its feet as it leaped across the open air directly toward their roof.
The four survivors stared in horror as the massive, three-meter-tall abomination slammed onto the rooftop.
The force of its landing shattered the concrete beneath its heavy feet, sending deep cracks spiderwebbing across the roof and knocking the four of them off their feet once more.
Dust and grit filled the air. Mary squeezed her eyes shut, pulling Ella and Ilas against her chest so tightly her knuckles turned white.
Both girls wept uncontrollably, their small bodies shaking as the suffocating stench of decayed flesh and iron filled their lungs.
The giant creature straightened its towering frame. A sickening, wide grin split its fanged jaw as its bloodshot eyes locked onto the terrified family.
It took a slow step forward, savoring their helpless agony.
Despair hit Jacob. Yet, as the creature closed the distance, the instincts of a father overruled his sheer terror.
Crawling forward on his hands and knees, Jacob threw his body in front of his wife and daughters, using his own torso as a fragile shield to cover them from sight.
"Don’t look," Jacob choked out, tears blurring his vision as he raised his trembling arms to shield his family. "Don’t look, just stay down..."
The giant monster raised its massive, clawed hand high into the air, coiling its thick muscles to smash the tiny humans into paste.
BANG!
But before that, a thunderous crash echoed directly behind the giant beast.
A thick plume of concrete dust exploded outward, engulfing the rear edge of the rooftop.
The monster froze, its claw halting in mid-air as it slowly turned its heavy head around.
Jacob peered through the gaps of his fingers, his heart pounding in his chest. Through the swirling grey smoke, a slender silhouette stepped forward.
Two deep, glowing crimson eyes burned brightly within the haze, fixed entirely on the giant creature’s head.
Then, a light, almost cheerful voice cut through the deathly silence.
"Find you..."