text: [Themes: horror, fantasy]
  
  At that moment, the drive to keep fighting the Hunter's domination of the human race was reignited inside you, if only briefly. You grabbed the creature's right leg with both hands, as tightly as you could, and pulled backwards. The Hunter didn't expect it, and it slid backwards. It tried to create traction by hooking its claws to the concrete ground in front of the door, but this only created a horrible scratching noise.
  
  The creature howled in anger and kicked you in the chest, sending you flying backwards. You landed in the brush a few feet away, but your work had been done. The sound of the Hunter's claws on the concrete had woken up the apartment's inhabitants. Flashlight beams shone from the windows above, illuminating the Hunter. It howled, and fled as quickly as it could, once again paying no attention to you.
  
  A human emerged from the back door with a flashlight, and scanned the woods. You were already down and lying in a pile of leaves, and apparently the human didn't see you. Once the human decided it was safe, the flashlight beam disappeared, as did all the others. The door was locked, and you could hear scuffling sounds as something big and heavy was pushed against the door.
  
  When it was safe again, you rose, and patted your chest. The kick didn't break any bones, and you were still upright. After you knew you were safe, a new emotion took hold of you, one you didn't know still existed: pride. You saved people. You saved an entire building of people from the jaws of a wicked beast.
  
  The feeling of happiness didn't last long, but the thought didn't leave your brain. You looked up at the apartment building, then at the woods where the Hunter had fled. You decided to stay by the apartment building, just in case something else came in the night. You searched around for a place to hide from the sun when it rose, and eventually came to rest in the building next door to the apartment.
  
  It looked abandoned, and there certainly weren't any people inside, so you stayed in, and explored. From what you could gather, the building used to be something along the lines of a nursing home, but it was stripped bare. No posters or photos, not very much furniture remained. You were curious about what happened, but the thought didn't survive long.
  
  You idly watched the apartment building from a window in the nursing home until you saw another figure approaching. Too small to be a Hunter, you knew immediately it was another taken. Another former human. You left the nursing home, and looked up at the sky. Sunlight couldn't have been more than a few hours away.
  
  The pale-faced ex-human approached the apartment's boarded-up front window and began to push against the glass. You could only stare at the thing as it awkwardly tested the glass, trying to find a hole or weak point. You called out to the thing quietly. It ignored you and kept leaning against the glass. You wondered if would be best to leave the thing be, until a spiderweb crack appeared on the window.
  
  The glass was thick and secured by wooden boards, but the thing was eventually going to get in. Several emotions fought for control of your next move. Part of you wanted to save the apartment again. Make a noise and alert them. Another part of you wanted to stay neutral. Stopping the Hunter was different, because a Hunter had killed you, and you held a grudge. A Hunter was a massive, gangly beast. This was just another person, like you.
  
  > do Nothing
  You watched from the window as the taken human slowly but surely made progress in breaking the window. It was about halfway through when in stopped short and tensed up. You could see, even from far away, that it had realized there were humans inside. Its urges took the wheel, and it effortlessly shattered the window and tore through the flimsy wooden defenses.
  
  You remained motionless, knowing inside that you held the taken human's existence over that of the apartment's occupants. You could hear noises inside the building as the monster made its way upstairs, and the feeding frenzy began. The taken human emerged a few minutes later, soaked in blood and moving considerably slower.
  
  The memory of elation that came from stopping the Hunter began to fade out as you watched the corpse amble down the road. Your mind was a pool of uncontrollable thought, unsure of which direction to pull you in. After some time, you eventually steered your thought process back to your original goal: you were on the humans' side. Letting the taken human attack the apartment was different. It didn't count. You couldn't stop another creature with just the same goal as you. Your enemy was the Hunters. The thoughtless killers.
  
  As you began to think about an actual game plan for combating the Hunters, a few options became apparent. Bombing the land wouldn't work, as that would most likely kill humans, too. It also wouldn't necessarily kill all the Hunters. Then you realized you didn't know if explosions would hurt Hunters. Did anything hurt them? You'd never seen a dead Hunter, nor an injured one. Either they were scared off, or they killed.
  
  The next option was a military force of some kind to sweep the land and eliminate their hiding places. A militia to hunt the Hunters during the day, when they were weakest. You doubted any official armies were still around, like the police or national guard. That left you with two options: gathering regular townspeople, or going in search of a military base or government building. You could at least find some sort of weapon stash or information to aid you.
  
  You sat and played with the ideas in your head, molding them like clay. Eventually, you decided that gathering a makeshift army was your best shot. That would prove difficult, but not as difficult as wandering the earth, hoping to chance upon a military bunker stocked with guns. Yes, that was your plan. You would search around for a way to form an army, and then you could save the world from the Hunters.
  
  > You're Lying To Yourself
  The plan would have to work. After all, there weren't many options for you to try. You had been a human at one point, and never had you heard a whisper of trying to hunt the Hunters. It just wasn't worth it back then. But now, knowing the risk, you could at least try to convince someone. Anyone. Someone would listen.
  
  You began to walk away from the apartment building, knowing full well that the sun would be up soon, and that you were actively walking away from the only inhabitable safe space you would see for awhile. You made an assumption that no humans would be willing to take you in, and the chances of two abandoned buildings within walking distance of each other was slim.
  
  Your mind was fading, and you repeatedly forgot what you were doing or where you were going, only to remember a few seconds later. You knew you were losing consciousness, that the inevitable pull of darkness would soon overcome you, and you did nothing about it. As long as you could save the world, everything would be fine.
  
  You walked until the sun was beginning to peek over the horizon, and then you moved into the woods for the extra cover. By the time the sun had fully risen, your apathy had left you unprepared. You quickly moved into the back door of a nearby building, which happened to be a restaurant. The back door led to the kitchen, where you stood.
  
  There weren't many places to hide in the kitchen, so you resorted to locking yourself in the walk-in freezer, among boxes of frozen beef patties. The biting cold was little more than a faint tingle on your skin, and there was a small window near the ceiling on the back wall. You sat between two rows of boxes facing the window, patiently waiting for sundown.
  
  You had drifted off at some point, and you were miles away until the sudden noise of the freezer door opening woke you up. You watched a short, fat human wearing white step into the freezer, look around, and then pick up one of the boxes of meat. He inspected it, decided it wasn't useful, and put it back to choose another box. Your brain took several minutes to make the connection that a human was two feet away and unaware of your presence.
  
  Your first thought was hunger, to kill the human. You struggled to diminish that thought, and distracted yourself by thinking about your plan. Maybe this human would be understanding, and you could get him to know you weren't going to hurt him. You were running out of time, as the human had found a satisfactory box and was selecting a package of frozen meat out of it. The only thing stopping you from trying to speak was the fear that he would kill you.
  
  > get His Attention
  If you really wanted to save people, you had to start somewhere. The human was just about to leave you behind, you needed to act quickly. You stood up and stepped out of your hiding place. The human saw you immediately, and dropped the package of meat in fear.
  
  Your intention was to try to communicate with him, but that wasn't what happened. As you opened your mouth, your hunger took control, and you stepped forward and bit the human's neck. Your teeth effortlessly sliced through the human's skin, and you began to suck his blood. The human yelled in shock and tried to push away, but you were too strong. you kept drinking until there was nothing left, and the man was lifeless on the ground.
  
  After you finished, you looked up to see, through the freezer door's window, a horrified human staring at you with wide eyes. He slammed the freezer door and locked it, trapping you inside. You ran to the door and tried to knock down, but even at full strength you couldn't get it to budge. You watched helplessly through the window as the human scrambled out of the kitchen.
  
  The blinding light coming from the windows of the kitchen told you it was the middle of the day, and you hadn't slept as long as you thought. You were stuck in a room with only one entrance, and there were undoubtedly several humans in the building. A sense of doom began to grip you tightly. Sure enough, a group of humans came back into the kitchen to see you. They all watched in awe at the monster trying to open the freezer door.
  
  It was clear they had no intention of letting you out. All they did was stare at you. This fueled your rage, and you pulled at the handle with all your strength, only to have the handle snap off. You fell backwards, immediately sat up, and looked at the piece of metal in your hand in disbelief. There was definitely no way out now.
  
  You became something of a tourist attraction. Humans came from all over to eat at the restaurant and see one of their evil oppressors locked in a small room. Your rage quickly boiled over, but there was nothing you could do. You screamed and threw boxes of meat and scratched at the walls, only entertaining the humans.
  
  After a few more days, the cold temperatures started to get to you, and your mobility decreased. Your joints locked up, and your eyes froze in place. It was quite a show for the humans to see you stare at them with wide, bloodshot eyes from the safety of a thick metal door, and all for just five dollars plus purchase of a meal.