Chapter 3

Leo slept for almost a full day. He woke up in the late morning on his bed with sunshine beaming towards his eye. Hearing movement coming from her son's room, Catherine knocked on Leo's door.

"Honey, are you awake? How are you feeling" She cannot stop worrying that the worst could still happen.

"Mom? I am feeling great right now. What happened yesterday?"

"Oh, nothing much, you fainted, and we carried you to bed. I am so glad nothing happened to you!" Catherine barged in the door with the realization of her son's recovery, only to be greeted by Leo's morning wood that had not died down since yesterday.

"Mom...!" Leo quickly covered himself with a blanket while giving an embarrassed call to his mother while blushing.

Catherine's face also flushed red, but she still approached and sat next to him, giving Leo another round of marshmallows to the face. Leo let his mother embrace him and said nothing. The hug went on for minutes, he had to hold his breath. By the door, Sarah was already holding her laughter while watching her little brother struggle under Mt. Catherine.

It was too late for breakfast and too early for lunch. The family sat at the dinner table having brunch with leftovers from the Deli. And as expected, the meager amount of food will not do justice to Leo's new appetite. Sarah as well, with her mutation, required increasingly higher amounts of nutrients.

"This is a big problem, I guess Leo and I need to head out to scavenge for food." Sarah nonchalantly stated the food crisis and took a deep look at her little brother.

"But..."

"No buts mom, I know I can take care of myself. I assume Leo can as well. The fact that Leo hasn't turned could mean he is immune to whatever those things are. Leo and I have the best chances out there"

"Then take the gun with you" Catherine stood up to grab the gun.

"No mother, that's for you to defend yourself. I am not going to use a gun outside; we would be dead meat" Sarah continued to assure her mother that she and her little brother have gained strength from the strange mutation. She demonstrated by lifting her mother up with ease and claimed that some handy blunt weapons were all they would need; Leo agreed with the same confidence.

Reluctantly, their mother had to face reality and made the practical choice of letting her children go without her, as she would most likely be a burden. The family decided the siblings would clear out the zombies in the vicinity so she could fortify the defenses with whatever material they had.

By noon, the vicinity was cleared, the slow zombies scattered around the street were picked off by the siblings one by one as practice targets. It was now the time to move further into the city, to the nearest supermarket to secure a supply of food. The road condition, scattered cars and wrecks from accidents, tells them that going there by foot will be a lot easier than driving.

Making their way out of the neighborhood was an easy task, but as the siblings approached the closest supermarket, the hordes became increasingly crowded. Most of them were drawn to the market by other survivors that were attempting the same thing. While the status was unknown, the sibling could only hope there will be enough food left by the time they figure out a way in.

It did not take a PhD to guess that zombies were attracted to sound. The loud sound of a car crashing at the other end of the street, made by other survivors, as an attempt to lure the zombies away. The sibling took the chance to sneak towards the rear end of the building. Sarah opened the back door by showing off her lock picking skill.

"Where did you even learn that?" Leo whispered.

"I had a good teacher during middle school" Sarah winked playfully at her little brother.

The rear of the market was the employee lounge, next to the meat freezer and close to the butcher's room. The door to the main shopping area was blocked with some furniture. A couple zombie corpses were on the ground and a woman collapsed on the sofa that seemed to be dressed as the manager had a gun in her hand.

"Seems like she shot herself." Leo inspected her and quickly moved on to check the nearby corpse. The siblings were disinterested in what happened in the lounge but were careful about checking any corpses, to be sure they didn't come back to life.

Suddenly, they heard screams from the main shopping area. The other survivors that distracted the zombies, sent a team to the market through the front entrance. They were equipped to fight off the zombies, but from the sound things weren't going as they expected.

Quickly clearing the path to the main area, Leo and Sarah slowly approached the crime scene. A muscular zombie was feasting on a female survivor that was still barely alive. Her boyfriend and the rest of the team were all on the ground with blood gushing out of their bite wounds. The zombie sensed the presence of the two, shouted out a war cry and charged towards Leo.

'It can run!!' The thought quickly flashes through the sibling's minds. Leo readied himself and also charged forward to meet the attacker. Sarah stood there without moving, it was very unlikely that there was only one zombie. The survivors seemed to be knocked out almost simultaneously. Sarah was on guard for zombies that might come from any direction.

'There it is!' Sarah swung her club and struck the child sized zombie that tried to attack Leo from the side. At the same time Leo dislocated one of the arms of the muscular zombie but couldn't quite finish it off. The muscular zombie was large in stature, even more so compared to them. He shouted in anger when he saw the small zombie did not get up from the ground.

Just as Leo was ready to deliver another blow to the muscular zombie, his senses tingled and he quickly took a step back, dodging a swipe from another zombie wearing a long dress. It had sharp nails and that seemed to be claws growing out of its fingers. 'A close call' Leo sighed in relief.

Round two commenced, the muscular zombie continued to charge towards the siblings while the zombie in dress jumped on top of the shelves. The brother and sister quickly looked each other in the eye and glanced at the zombie in dress. Leo quickly dashed off to the muscular zombie, drawing away its attention while dodging its strike. At the same moment, he threw his metal pipe at the zombie on top of the shelves. The zombie in dress, had its attention on Sarah, was knocked off the shelves and fell to the ground. It was the perfect moment to beat it while it's down! Sarah easily finished off the female zombie with the baseball bat to the head.

All that left was the muscular zombie. Clearly, it was the strongest of the three. The sibling had it surrounded from the front and the back. Sarah threw her trusty baseball bat over to Leo and picked up the metal pipe herself. The muscular zombie still chooses to charge toward Leo.

'That thing sure likes little boys!' Sarah was disappointed that she couldn't have some more up close and personal action. As the zombie turned its back to her, she leaped forward and pointed the pipe at the zombie. Upon contact, a surge of electricity zapped the zombie and temporarily stunned its movement.

"Now!"

Before Sarah even shouted, Leo already positioned himself to strike at its head. Ending it in a shower of blood and gore. The sibling took a deep breath and inspected the surroundings once more. They noticed that the trio were the only zombies alive in the supermarket. Litter from corpses was everywhere; chewed on bones told the story of what might have happened. The trio must have hoarded all the survivors in the market and more free lunches had delivered themselves to the entrance periodically. There was no survivor left besides the two siblings.

"What was that?" Leo looked at her sister. All he heard was a buzzing sound and the zombie stiffened up.

"It's my new power I just discovered today." Sarah said with pride, showing off electric sparks between her fingers. "I wonder how strong it is compared to a taser?"

"Wow, not fair!" Leo was extremely envious of his sister's newfound power and continued to bug her to show him new tricks. After a couple experiments, she quickly found out that using such power drained her stamina extremely quickly, as if she just ran a marathon and made her dizzy.

"What is that?" Leo then pointed to the ground where the muscular zombie that no longer had a head. The busted skull had strange clear fluid flowing out and a ruby-like object could be seen. He fearlessly picked up the thing before his sister could warn him of anything.

"It's actually soft like a gummy bear."

Sarah was a bit annoyed at Leo for not being careful and picking up strange things and responded angrily.

"Yeah, why don't you eat it then?"

Into the stomach it goes. Leo actually put it into his mouth and swallowed it. He would swear he hadn't planned to. His hand just instinctively put it in his mouth, while his mouth was equally cooperative.

"What?! Wait! Spit it out! What the fuck are you doing?" Sarah frantically shouted and instantly regretted being annoyed.

Before Leo could explain, a feeling of warmth surged throughout his body. It felt so good he let out a seductive sound, but only if it came from a girl. Cringe, that was embarrassing, but he moved on quickly and started to act in excitement.

"Sis, you have got to try that thing, it felt so...so good. Like.... I am in heaven!" Leo said, running to where the female zombie had fallen.

"That's what people say when they try drugs for the first time...Hey, don't think about eating another piece!" Sarah ran to catch up the jubilant kid to stop him from doing anymore stupid things.

There was another ruby-like jelly in the skull of the lady zombie. Leo did not pay any attention to the lady zombie's ample breast and the red lingerie shown under the tattered dress. Instead, he picked out the jelly and observed it on his hand once more.

His sister caught up to him and attempted to snatch the jelly away from his hand. Leo masterfully dodged his sister and shoved his hand towards Sarah's mouth. Gulp! There was the sound of something being swallowed.

"You little..." Sarah wanted to kill her little brother at this point. But before she could finish her sentence, the same feeling of warmth brought the sister to a moment of ecstasy. 'Ehh..maybe I won't kill him.' Sarah quickly changed her thoughts. This time the lewd sounds and the erotic body gesture were done properly, but no carnal reaction came from the boy.

Sarah noticed that most of her fatigue had recovered and felt she had even more energy to use her power freely. Looking at Leo, who was making a small grin on his face. The sister went tsundere.

"I will let you go this time; but if you do something like this again I will let you taste what being tased feels like!"

"Aye aye, Ma'am!"

"Sigh....let's get to work." Getting ready to start packing food supplies, but Leo suggested a different idea.

"There's no way we can bring everything here back home, that is too many trips. Why not just eat our fill here and bring whatever we can to Mom?"

Sarah's eye brimmed with light for an instance.

"Great idea!" The sibling quickly got into action and aimed at whatever protein they could get. Utilizing the giant oven in the market and they almost emptied out the freezer. Of course, the overwhelming majority of that went into Leo's stomach. It wasn't that Leo was particularly hungry at this point, his stomach seemed to be a bottomless pit and could keep on eating as long as he could move his mouth.

As for Sarah, it was the first time she has ever eaten this much food in one sitting. She worried about her figure and pinched her belly. 'Hmm... Great! Not a sign of fat or bloat on my stomach!' It's not like she can see her own stomach below the pair of watermelons she was carrying.

Finally, the siblings packed canned food and other valuables and were ready to leave the market. Out of good conscience, they only consumed about 50% of the food in the market and left the rest untouched for other survivors.

The siblings took another route to get back home. The streets they came from are now infested with zombies. It's not a wise decision to fight through the horde while carrying all these grocery bags. Making detours and sneaking past zombies, they followed the path of least resistance. Eventually, they passed the vicinity of Aunt Sharon's home.

Aunty Sharon lived alone in an apartment complex a few blocks away from the shopping district. She was the younger sister of Catherine. Apart from small differences in appearance due to age, Catherine and Sharon were almost indistinguishable twins. Yet, the rebellious younger sister liked to dye her hair red to distinguish herself from Catherine. She also refused to get married but had several big break ups. Her reason being, they couldn't handle her heat or something along those lines. Leo couldn't recall the number of times their mother said Sarah acts just like her Aunty.

"Should we go visit Aunty while we are here? We've got to get her to come with us." Leo ended his recollection thinking about Aunt Sharon.

"No, it's late and the sun is setting. We can't protect Aunty while holding all this stuff. We will come back tomorrow."

The sibling arrived back home without any trouble. They were greeted by their mother with a hug each of their own. Good news for Leo was that having a stronger body meant he can hold his breath longer! Catherine prepared a hefty dinner that night to celebrate the great haul from the supermarket.