36 Mutations

Light felt movement and turned around just in time to see an upside down human face smiling at him. He wasn't able to dodge in time, but thankfully Yukio was there to cover him. Yukio immediately shot at the creature before it could touch Light. The creature screamed out in pain with a human sounding voice.

Taking this moment where the creature was weakened, Light immediately kicked it back as hard as possible. The creature tumbled backward.

It was a close call, Light could almost smell the breath from the creature. Taking a step back, Light saw the creature in its entirety. It was the size of an average female human, and appeared to be a hybrid between a spider and a human. The creature had a normal human face, but it was attached to a spider's body with eight legs and 6 additional eyes on her forehead.

Light didn't hesitate to empty an entire clip into the head of the creature while standing in front of Rin.

Rin was stunned as he looked at the creature before him. He had never seen anything like it before, "Ahhhhh!!!!!!" He was totally freaked out! He absolutely hated bugs.

Calmly patting Rin on the head, Light reloaded his gun and shot another couple shots into the creature's body to confirm it was truly dead.

Scanning the area, the feeling of dread disappeared. He was fairly sure that they were safe now.

This spider-like creature had been hiding on the ceiling in a corner, which was why they missed it. After calming Rin down, the two of them went in this time with Yukio accompanying them. They relied on Yukio's sharp eyes to scan the area for anomalies.

As they walked through, Yukio's attention was focused on the walls as the spider had likely crawled out from above. Yukio pointed out the layers of web passing through the entire area, near the floor and on the ceiling. The webs were extremely thin, so unless you were to look closely they would not be visible.

As they walked towards the closet, the density of the webs increased. Yukio pointed at the closet and told them this was the highest density of webs, so it was likely the spider's lair.

Light stepped forward calmly and kicked the door open. Shriveled, mummified bodies fell out of the closet room. As it turns out, the door was not locked but rather it was so tightly packed with dead people they thought it was.

Yukio and Rin shrieked in unison and quickly hid behind the perpetually calm Light. He asked Yukio, "Are there any other anomalies in this store aside from the spider webs?"

"Um... Not that I can see," responded Yukio timidly. Having lived a sheltered life, he had never been exposed to something so grotesque before.

Light patted the twin's heads. He knew that although Yukio sounded unconfident, he would never respond without having absolute certainty.

The trio slowly walked out of the store. Carefully inspecting every inch to ensure that they had not missed any details. After confirming that it was safe, they waved Ace into the store bringing both Xiao Ai and Aida. While the store was creepy, it would definitely be safer than staying exposed outside.

The manager's room had a sofa, so they carefully placed Aida and Xiao Ai there. Ace had designed wireless chargers that the two were still wearing, so they were passively absorbing energy but Ace was not satisfied with the power intake. Instead, he ran around the store, not minding the gigantic human spider or dead bodies, as he gathered different pieces of hardware. His goal was to create a giant charger that he could safely plug into Xiao Ai and connect her to the wall outlet without any voltage regulators.

Meanwhile, Light, Rin and Yukio were cleaning up the store and making it shelter ready. It was already fairly clean to begin with, so the main priority was to move the dead spider and carcasses out as well as reinforce all the exits to make sure no one could break into the place with ease. Rin absolutely refused to be anywhere near the spider creature, so Yukio and Light were tasked with moving it outside while Rin cleared up the shrivelled carcasses.

Yukio did not mind the dead spider creature and instead exclaimed, "Poor spider, we could have become friends if you didn't try to hurt my brother."

"..." Light didn't know how to respond. In fact, he wasn't too sure how Yukio developed such a unique personality and perspective. Afterall, who would actively try to be friends with someone who eats humans even if they didn't try to each his brother??

After taking them outside, they burned the dead creature and carcasses as well. In the apocalypse, it's not just people and the infected that could kill them but diseases were equally as dangerous. They missed a shadow that quietly slipped into the store while they were busy cleaning up.

Moving the shelves to the side, Light directly drove the van into the store upon Ace's recommendation. He felt this would be a great way to ensure a fast getaway if anything should happen. They barred all the exits with the shelves and began organizing the food that was available. Light directed Yukio and Rin to get all the waters and non-perishables, and directly placed them all into the car in organized boxes.

By the time they had finished moving everything around, Ace had also finished creating a makeshift plug to safely inject energy into Xiao Ai.

The whole group gathered around Xiao Ai. Taking a deep breath, Ace carefully plugged Xiao Ai into the plug.

"..."

Nothing was happening.

30 seconds later, still nothing. Everyone looked at each other in confusion, what was going on?

Just as Ace was about to unplug Xiao Ai to check what was going on, there was a large boom!