Hunger

Outside of The Walls, The Creature has been feeding and growing stronger. It has created many nesting places in the old buildings of the old world to rest and also to hunt. Thanks to the first time feeding on human flesh and bones, The Creature has also developed a peculiar taste in human meat, specifically the brain. Whenever it consumed the jelly-like substance in the skull of the human, it felt like its ability to think was getting more clear and the images formed thanks to the vibration tentacles were getting more vivid.

It has gotten into many battles. Both with human and other animals. With the animals, it always had a sense of disatisfaction when feasting on their bodies. Never had it ever had the same feelings like when human flesh was present. The difference in quality was clear. When it could, it saved human meat for later use.

Its intelligent was increasing at an alarming rate.

With the small size and the cunning nature, The Creature was incredibly elusive. In fights that it faced greater odds, it always chose to run rather than to continue struggling. The pig-like thing was smart and very calculative. It found ways to maximize its environmental advantages and minimize damage to its body. One more thing was discovered during the skirmishes to find and track down the thing, that is its tentacles can regenerate at an incredible rate, especially of enough food or nutrients.

3 months have passed since the incident of The Creature. In the 3 months, various similar sightings of the same species have occured all around the world. The reports have been conclusive about its appearance, abilities, and lethality. All the previous encounters, even with the best teams possible, the best results only lead to escape. None could catch The Creatures, let alone kill them.

But all of that information was of course out of the public knowledge. Only the highest of the countries and The Human Council could get a hold of the data and the researches conducted via samples brought back from the previous encounters. Because they linked the decrease in activities of the other animal species to the strange occurence of The Creature, soldiers were constantly dispatched to identify and to possibly defeat the thing. However, that only lead to more blood thirst. The more The Creature could experience human flesh, the more it got addicted to the taste.

Then, things started to become normal again.

3 months was definitely not long enough to revert back to the original situation if the time was 18 years ago. With the new era, post-infected world, the animal kingdom has changed drastically. They gave birth more, and gave birth faster, because of the harsh environment. Because of that, the activities outside of The Walls was slowing returning.

The Human Council, sensing the disturbance was gone, started to focus more on the area around The Walls to combat the usual occurence of the animals. Thus, dispatch of soldiers to the further zones of The Old World reduced.

The number of human venturing into the dangerous area of The Creature went down. Which means that the number of human meat and brains also went down.

That made The Creature mad. The addiction of brain matter is serious and the abomination does not intend to lessen its consumption due to any reason.

If they are not coming to it, it will come to them. Its hunger must be satiated. It craves more human, more deaths.

In the wilderness, most of the human soldiers that died obviously could not cover their tracks. The Creature based on that to trace back to the origins of them. It is certain that the human it ate lived in packs since it always saw them together.

First, it got back to the old theater, now burned down to a pile of ash.

It seemed to not pay any attention to its original birthplace. Instead, it based on the theater, made it the center to create a perimeter with a wide radius to start searching for clues of the human. But, for some reason, it had stood still in front of the burned down theater for a while before doing its own business.

A few days passed, and nothing concrete was found. Buildings and buildings were searched. Besides of the gray walls of the old world, it did not see a thing. There was no signs of trespassing of other human, only signs of other animals and birds. It had time, it definitely had lots of time on its tentacles. If only the urge to eat human was not getting on its nerves, then it could hunt for the day and then go back to its nest. Right when it was irritated and about to give up, it found something odd.

In the middle of the trees, there was a jeep.

The last six people had the job to burn the theater down. To do that, they had to carry gasoline. And with a team of 6 people, a target of a huge mountain of bodies, they needed a lot of gas. For that reason, they were dispatched with a military jeep.

Luck was clearly on its side. Many people have come and go to the theater, but the jeep stayed. It was probably because the jeep was well hidden in the trees and painted with camouflage, so not many soldiers noticed it until The Creature came.

At first notice, The Creature was startled. It had never seen such a weird looking animal before. The jeep did not make a sound even when The Creature attacked it, and blended perfectly into the environment. With no eyes, it could not see the color, only the shape was visible through the vibration of its tentacles. And even so, the shape of the jeep was something that it had never seen before.

It seemed to take great precautions because of that. After a while of inspecting, The Creature found out that the feep was not actually alive. There was no horns or tusks, or eyes and tails. Features that other animals that it hunted had, none was present on the jeep. The outside of the car was hard and rigid. Which was not particularly weird considering it had seen more absurd animals with hard skin before. When it got inside of the jeep, it thought that maybe the jeep was a corpse of something since the inside of it was almost completely empty. Or perhaps some other creatures had already eaten the innards.

Curious, it had developed teeth over the course of few months so it bit the chairs and tried to eat the softer parts. The taste was not bad, but also not good. The "meat" it taste felt rubbery, chewy and had no flavor. Where everything it had tasted uptil that point was always full with flavors, although the flavors could be both good or bad, the chairs tasted nothing. It then moved onto the control panel, or the head, the 'skull' of the jeep.

That was when things got weird for The Creature.

It extended one of its tentacles from a lump and gently touched a button. Nothing happended.

There were still many more buttons and levers, so it tried them all after confirming things were fine.

"Hello! Who's there! Over."

Static sounds suddenly appeared as it touched one of the buttons on the control panel. It was suprised by the noise, so The Creature immediately attacked the source with the sharp tentacles from its mouth, making a large "boom" and plunged out from the vehicle.

Its entire body was prepared to do battle. The appendages quickly got out from the lumps to cover its body. Maybe it was wrong, maybe "the animal" was not dead. Nonetheless, The Creature was ready.

10 minutes passed, nothing.

Another 20 minutes, still nothing.

Curiosity took over it one more time, and it got back into the jeep. Looking and the mess it created, it felt weird. The liquid that was present in all animals were clearly not there. The sound that it made when its sharp tentacles came into contact with the sound was also not normal. It was used to the sounds of bones breaking, but the sound prior was not the sounds of that.

What a weird creature. The thing thought. Curiosity in its mind reached the max.

It then remembered one more thing was the last word that came out from the jeep.

'Over'.

It had heard that somewhere. Not the animals, that was certain. No animals could articulate that complex sound. At least in did not hear its prey screaming that.

The sound was complex but with a stern attitude. It was the sound it often heard while stalking the human.

There was the clue it was looking for.

From that day onward, The Creature started to based its searching perimeter around the jeep. Tire tracks were found soon after, and it followed the way.

After many days, perhaps weeks of looking for more clues, it dawned on The Creature.

At one point, the tire tracks start to converge into one bit track.

A huge building, even bigger than those It had seen in The Old World. Not only that, but the thing stretched way over its sensors. The tentacles vibration could not reach the edge of the building.

It found its destination.

The Walls. And the smell of human.

Lots of it.

The mouth of The Creature started to water.