Story 872: The Hunger That Follows

The city was silent, save for the survivors’ ragged breathing and the distant sound of something reshaping itself in the dark.

Leon kept glancing back, his grip tightening around his rifle. “Tell me it’s dead.”

Reaper scoffed. “Did that thing look dead to you?”

Mia, still limping from where the Devourer’s tongue had wrapped around her leg, winced. “It… was changing. Right in front of us.”

Evelyn’s mind raced. The Devourers had always been adaptive, but this one was something new. It studied them, countered them, and now… it was learning.

They moved through the ruins of an abandoned shopping district, weaving between overturned cars and collapsed buildings. Every shadow felt like it was watching them.

Then, the sound of scraping metal.

They froze.

From the darkness, a low, guttural breath.

Samantha’s fingers twitched over her shotgun trigger. “No way it followed us that fast.”