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Post by Wes Flatfield on Dec 12, 2012 18:08:49 GMT -8
He refused to give in. He had steadily been creeping towards the 4th round of beeping as the week went on, but this morning he stuck to his guns. He reached backwards, dismissed the alarm clock, and made his way to his display model bathroom inside one of two “home comfort” stores he had been staying in. The mall was big to begin with but, as most survivers had come to learn, space only meant more shadows, corners and places for something to pop out of. It seemed like he had everything at his disposal, but rarely did Wes step outside the same four stores. The lantern flickered as he brushed his teeth and splashed his face with bottled water in attempt to fully awaken. No, he wasn’t driving to the firm or headed to the library, but waking up early to prepare was what he saw as the only reason he was still around. Once ready for the day, Wes walked three stores over and stepped into the sports store. He began working on the project he had started yesterday. With plenty of duct tape lying around, he had started building a sort of light weight armor by taping pieces of hockey equipment to a long sleeve Nike shirt. It looked terrible, but he figured out that one of the keys to surviving was making yourself mobile and resistant to scratching, biting, or anything that opened a wound. As he reached for some face gear, Wes heard a knocking in the distance. He was perhaps five stores from the double door eastern entrance to the mall. Without skipping a beat, he took his hunting rifle and sprinted towards the noise.
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Post by Delainie Carthage on Dec 12, 2012 19:01:32 GMT -8
Delainie was disgusted with herself, she had spent the last night in a dumpster. A dumpster! Honestly she didn’t think twice when the pursuit was occurring last night. Four of them on her before she even knew it. She had been stumbling about trying to look for survivors just as she had done every day and night since the infection, she had found some in the earlier days, but now it was getting tougher to find any one alive, and if she did, they were paranoid, they were crazy, they were desperate, and they were losing their humanity just like the monsters they were hiding from. She remembered specifically crouching next to a young woman who was hiding in a hardware shop, the door had been left open so Delainie had causally strolled in search of something to help her defense instead she found this murmuring woman who ended up having lost her mind. Delainie had dropped to her knees next to the young woman, asking her if she was all right, if she needed food, how long she had been there, if she- and at that point the lady had dug her fingers into Delainie’s caring arms so hard the tips that didn’t break her skin had left black bruises that were only now in the healing stage of yellow. Delainie broke loose and stepped back quickly wondering if this crouching human was infected and she had misjudged. The young woman hissed at her with feral eyes and Delainie backed out of the shop and once out turned and ran to find a place to tend to her new wounds.
Last night, and just like the other nights, nothing. The twist that occurred as the sun went down though was Delainie being greeted by a lovely game of four on one tag. She supposed it could have been worse, but she will never consider herself lucky in this world. She had skidded and slipped and flailed as she sprinted away, she had made the fateful mistake of running to an alley, that had about a five foot chain link fence barrier, she had never been a climber and has absolutely no upper body strength, and saw trying to climb that short dilemma being the cause of her death, so what did she do? She looked to her right, and swung herself into the dumpster and slammed the black lid over herself, as she trembled in the muck.
She stopped noticing eventually but the initial time spent in there was painful, she heard them out there, her pursuers, stumbling around and grunting, she bit a fist as she held back the urge to cry, and yell and scream about how unfair life was. Three weeks ago, she had a home, a job, and decent life. Now she was hiding for her life in a dumpster and was seemingly alone in this world. She vowed if she lived through this night, she was leaving the next morning. She was leaving the city, she was going to find some kind of wilderness and escape in it, hide deep in an uninhabited forest and live off the land. Wait this whole infection. So when morning came and she was alive she listened carefully and peeked out of the dumpster to find a clear coast. Once the fresh air was inhaled she was again choked out by the smell of trash and hoped out of there, landing, and skinning her knees, she wretched but then stood up. Her legs were weak, but her mind was not.
She was getting the hell out of here, that was something she was set on. She pulled the 9mm out of the back of her pants where she had been storing it for a very much so life threatening event, but she was done. She was going to kill anything that tried to get in her way. The first poor corpse was a woman in her bood stained sunday dress, the woman turned and eagerly came towards Delainie, with a scowl she rose the weapon and pulled the trigger, impaling this monster’s forehead with a quickly pooling red decoration. She fell to her knees and then fell forward and permanently stilled. However, Delainie did not see this, she had hardly stopped her furious strides to shoot the thing, she wasn’t gonna wait around for the others to come and see what all the commotion was about. She ended up breaking into a jog, and running into a few more, it wasn’t long until a few more of those fell and more came out to see. Pretty soon her gun was clicking and she groaned as she tucked it back in it’s spot, she pulled the combat knife out of her boot and switched to hand to hand combat. She was growing weaker and tired, and when this occurred she got sloppy and that was when she would be killed, bit, or scratched, all resulting in her turning. Not on her agenda, she was ready to get out, so she brought a leg up and pushed the man grabbing at her back, giving her enough of a gap to run. She sprinted again seeing a sign for what she never even considered.
If she was going to make it out of here, she needed supplies, where better to get these supplies that the place that has everything? Fox Hills Mall. She reasoned with herself as she ran towards the towering building. When everything happened, those infected...felt sick.... so when people feel sick they go to bed, or to the hospital...they do not go to the mall, so there can’t be too many of those infected in there...could they? She was out of ammo, she was getting out of steam, if she had to hole up in a shop and lock herself in while she recouped so be it. It wasn’t a dumpster. Bath and Body Works sounded pretty nice right now.
Delainie saw the parking structure looming to her left and figured that was a recipe for disaster, she would go through the main entrance poke around and see if she can grab some stuff, ammo first...beauty products later.
She approached the glass entry way and slowed her jog to a fast stride, she placed the knife back in it’s sheath, and pushed the door way gently, she didn’t want to make too much noise, just incase, although she couldn’t hear very well with her heart pounding in her ears. The door wouldn’t budge, she took a few steps back not understanding, and that was when she saw it, one of those massive cement planters that seemed so incredibly useless in between kiosks, was blocking the door from opening. She lost her temper and began to shake the door a bit more agressively and that resulted in her slamming herself against it in efforts to try to make it move. But she was a woman of 5’6 and 130lbs which was dwindling probably to 120 since everything happened. She was stronger now than when the initial out break took place, but her pants were barely hanging on to her these days. She cried out in anger and hit the door once more. It was fine, she would just have to find another entrance, she walked around the mall with a pretty empty parking lot, she found a sliding door. Power was out- she got an idea, she stuck her thin fingers in the creases of the automatic doors and began to pry, putting her whole body into the movement.
It gave way and she slipped in, putting the doors back together was easier than she thought it would be, she cautiously strode through the store, who knew what was in the shadows of this retail hot spot. When nothing lounged and she emerged into the main entry way of the mall she relaxed, but her guard was still up, she needed to make this quick. She knew the mall well and knew where the army surplus shop was she wasn’t far. Upon arrival she looked at the overwhelming selection of weapons, she loved the gun she’d been using and so she started to grab extra magazines and ammo filling the back with everything she knew she would be able to carry.
She tried to eject the magazine, but it was jammed, she sighed and began to gently tap it against a rack, when it wouldn’t come out she set it aside and nearly began to cry with frustration, all she needed was to take a breath and figure it out, she hadn’t realized how foolish making the tapping noise was.
word count: 1449 <--- didn’t mean for this to happen!! |
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Post by Wes Flatfield on Dec 12, 2012 21:39:54 GMT -8
Wes had reached the door and didn’t need to examine much to see that nobody had burst through. Before he could look over to the adjacent hall, he again heard the noise. As he approached the suspect store, the possible scenarios that could pan out raced through his head. He remembered the two men on Harleys he had hid from on his way from the hospital to Fox Hills. He knew what he was about to find was just as likely to be a desperate survivor as they were of being a threat. He remembered finding the mall and doing a couple laps around it before climbing up and down through a gap in the parking structure in order to come in a back door, he could only assume was reserved for Macys’ employees. He, of course, tried to initially scout out the mall for survivors. That’s when he found that there was no plausible way of securing the entire mall from outside intruders and that the only logical alternative would be to set up camp in a few select stores.
He gently placed a shoulder against the door of the store as he peered in. It didn’t take long before he found the root of noise. He knew she was a survivor after immediately dismissing the notion that the walking dead had learned how to load 9mm handguns. He put his gun down, hands up, and whispered “Please don’t let me startle you” after picturing her likely violent reaction to him creeping up on her.
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Post by Delainie Carthage on Dec 12, 2012 22:03:46 GMT -8
Delainie placed a hand on her hip and used the other to push her over grown bangs back in line with the rest of her pulled back hair, she then wiped her face with the back of her arm. She took a deep breath and told herself she was going to be okay, she would fix this jam, she would get out of here, have supplies and live to see society rebuild itself. That was when she heard it- how stupid had she been to let her guard down.
Though nothing more than a whisper, she jumped none the less, heart racing she turned to see where it had come from, she instinctively grabbed for the gun which... was jammed and completely useless, yet she was in a shop full of them. How stupid could she be? She scolded herself for not thinking to just grab another for that “in case” scenario.... like now.
However, when was the last time an infected whispered at her before lounging at her, let alone a kind phrase that she may have just deluded herself into thinking. But standing in the door way of the shop was a man, with his hands up. Not a monster with it’s hungry arms extended. She took a moment to slow her heart and blinked a couple times in order to convince herself this was real. She had spent all this time looking for survivors, and just when she gave up one comes waltzing in on her way out of town.
She refrained from clutching her chest and proclaiming that he got her good. She didn’t know this man, and after the last few she would not believe that he was harmless, no one who survived this long was harmless- or so she had come to learn. A memory of the bruised arms she concealed under her sleeves assured her of that.
”I take it you’re the one who blocked the door?” she said having it all click. Of course there was someone hiding out here, who knew how many others were here. Wouldn’t this man need someone to watch his back while he slept? She had to be careful, he may not be armed, but his buddies outside may be, then again what did she have that they wanted? They were holed up in Fox Hills Mall? She got a sick wave of nerves- she wouldn’t let it come to that, and she wouldn’t think about that unless it was going that way. The knife was sheathed, but concealed on her belt loop that was covered by her shirt. Element of surprise, if it came to that. ”I’m not here to invade your safe haven, I just needed some ammo and I’m on my way out,” she felt the need to proclaim she meant not to steal supplies or tread on his territory. She watched him though, trying to see if she could tell his intentions or his story from just looking at him. She rose her own hands lazily on her hips to show she meant no harm, but wasn't about to wave a white flag.
word count: 518 |
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Post by Wes Flatfield on Dec 12, 2012 22:28:03 GMT -8
The last time Wes tried to approach someone was while coming out of the cafeteria storage room back at the hospital. He approached a lady he was crouched over, with her neck straining to look around the corner and down the hall. The second he touched her, she swung a scalpel around and slashed the upper half of his right forearm. She then sprung up and away before Wes stuttered backwards and hit the wall behind him. With the intruder, Wes had clearly taken her by surprise but the moment she responded he felt he had a faint grasp of her character. Instead responding with a “who are you” or the ever popular “back away”, she made it known she was aware of who he had done.
He only responded after her second sentence. She said that she wasn’t here to invade, but rather salvage and leave. He too one step forward and replied, “Are you alone?...Are you okay?”. Immediately he regretted the order of his two questions. He saw her glance at all three entrances to the relatively large shop and take a step back. “I’m the only one here”.
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Post by Delainie Carthage on Dec 12, 2012 23:34:32 GMT -8
She lowered her hands as he came closer, she let one remain on her waist, hovering just over the knife. The other one relaxed, but she was too tense. The first question kept her on her toes and her suspicions still high, but the second, knocked her right over. Was she okay? Had someone really just asked her if she was okay? Someone who was still alive and well enough in the mind and heart to ask another human being if they were alright, she allowed the other one, to fall to her side, then he offered the information that he was alone. She wasn’t getting that conniving vibe that she had grown proficient at detecting ever since she was young. Could it be she had found someone sincere... she shook that away, she was out of here, she was done with being in the city, she was done looking for people, remember?
”Is it safe here?” she asked, crossing her arms as she let some weight rest on the gun counter, she couldn’t see how a place this big could be safe, it scared her, but she regretted the question as soon as it came out, she had just stated she had no intention of staying in respect to his set up. ”I mean, I was able to get in; be careful,” she offered the same sincerity he had given her. She had to be careful herself, remember the plan. She suddenly became very aware that she still smelt like the dumpster she had spent the night in.
She eased herself away, not trying to be rude, but it had been awhile since she had been near another human and her first experience was going to be tainted by the smell of trash that would never get taken out. He looked healthy, he looked clean, she wondered how disgusting she must look and was sure she wouldn’t have to worry about him coming closer based on that fact alone.
word count:345
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Post by Wes Flatfield on Dec 12, 2012 23:52:08 GMT -8
Her responses showed she possessed a healthy amount of distrust. He could only imagine what she had been going through, out there. Wes’ reality, he had just realized, must seem like a cake walk compared to those who don’t have the luxury of going to bed behind a steel barrier. Maybe it was this same separation from reality that lead to him thinking she would all of sudden answer all his questions and accept his hospitality. Regardless, he tried. “It safe enough. I stay armed whenever exploring, but each store has a steel garage door you can slide down and lock. I’ve secured most of the stores, but still…”. He knew he may not see another human again, if he watched her walk away. He took another step forward and while extending his hand said, “I can show you if you like…my name's Wes”.
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Post by Delainie Carthage on Dec 13, 2012 12:53:20 GMT -8
She listened to his words cautiously. Sounded too good to be true, a secure simple fix to the dying at the mall problem. He would just have to be careful for other survivors wandering in and not being as careful- or even worse, malicious. She doubted her words would weigh very much considering she was a wasting away corpse who looked like a mess, and couldn’t even unjam her own gun. But she remained composed and when he stepped forward, refrained from flinching.
What he spoke of was something she dreamed of a safe place to sleep, to eat, to live, and wait out this mess. Wasn’t that where she was heading after all, except for the fact she was going to head out to the wild and revert back to the old way of mankind. This man was adjusting in the modern way, and weren’t these modern days? When he introduced himself and extended a hand, she eyes it cautiously. She figured she was better armed than he was and held the element of surprise- she expected him to try to attack her, but did he expect that she was ready since she first heard him?
She took his hand in her own and gave a polite shake, ”Delainie,” she said, wow had that been a long time. Funny when your own name seems foreign coming out of your mouth. She pulled her hand back to her side, and thought about his proposition. If she agreed to look around, maybe grab some supplies that he wouldn’t be needing or using, then it might make life out there a bit more bearable. Besides, agreeing to be shown around wasn’t agreeing to trust him or surrender, the world wasn’t that primitive yet, at least this man didn’t seem so. ”Sure, I have some time,” she allowed a small smile to crack, ironic. She had all the time in the world- or all the life that was left in her life span hour glass.
She made way to follow him out into the open, she didn’t like being trapped in the back of the shop. But before she looked down at the gun on the counter- ”You said you arm yourself?” she looked back to him as she picked up the jammed magazine, ”you mind helping me out with this?” she turned back to him, hand around the barrel and she extended it out to him. She placed the other hand on her waist where the knife was concealed just in case he thought she was so incredibly stupid to be handing over her only defense. Felt like a single player version of quick draw. She watched for his response.
word count: 477
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Post by Wes Flatfield on Dec 13, 2012 16:42:35 GMT -8
It was all give and take with her so far. She agreed to the tour, but made it clear she was leaving. She put down her defense and handed him the handgun, only to reach for her knife. Her distrust didn’t offend him but rather acted as a reminder of how isolated from the cruel, outside world he had become. He took her gun, swiftly turned his back and took a couple steps toward a large black display case. “I may be wrong, but this isn’t the first time she’s jammed on you huh?” He saw her reply with a soft headshake, and begin walking towards the now open gun rack. He gave her a small nod and asked her to pick one. She made her selection, and the two walked out of the gun shop, Wes leading the way. “Are you hungry?” Stupid question. He took a left in the direction of the cafeteria area but then panicked. He knew what they were going to cross on their way there. Here he was trying to be a welcome host and he was leading her into what was surely going to scare her off. He stopped, swallowed, and knew he had to get it out of the way before the two did anything else.
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Post by Delainie Carthage on Dec 14, 2012 12:27:13 GMT -8
After the gun problem was resolved she took a bit more kindly to him, especially since the incident of his turning her own weapon on her did not take place. She wouldn’t call it trust, but he was becoming an acquaintance and not so much an opposing survivor. They walked side by side out of the artillery store, she pulled her pack over her back, the ends of weapons jutting out of the nylon fabric, but it would save her later on, get a bruise now, save a bite later. When the question of her being hungry was asked, she rose her eye brows in surprise, ”You have food?” she asked, probably too bluntly.
She hadn’t had very much to eat this past week, much of the food that were in grocery stores and quick marts were going bad at a pretty steep pace. That is the good food- those wrapped sugary treats would go uneaten for years and years to come. So aside from the occasional candy bar every once and a while, and some dried cereal she really hadn’t been eating too well. She couldn’t imagine how people without refrigerators had lived. ”Only if you can spare it-“ she started and then stopped. She had been looking around the mall and the shops that were protected and cleared out behind those metal gates Wes had told her about, when she looked back over to her temporary host, something seemed amiss, he looked nervous.
”What’s wrong?” she asked, getting a little worried herself, she peeled her eyes away from him and surveyed the area, were there others he had heard, or the others ”what is it?” she lowered her voice to a whisper and slowly rose her newly fixed gun. She wouldn’t shoot until his go, she knew the noise attracted others, curious creatures- these infected were. She didn’t want to shoot anything that she could destroy in a silent combat… well quieter. This was his home and she would respect his rules. She glanced back to him and awaited his verdict.
Word count: 345
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Post by Wes Flatfield on Dec 14, 2012 22:28:03 GMT -8
Immediately after the outbreak, he hardly had time for quiet thought. He only found the time, after finding the time to sleep. He would try as hard as he could to not think of what he had lost, but rather what the future held. In examining his situation though, Wes couldn’t help but notice a few changes. The handful of people he came across seemed to “show their true colors”. If people were selfish before, they now thrived; and those who would never think of leaving someone behind were now extinct. It wasn’t long after reaching the mall that Wes reverted to his own old ways. He scanned the mall, fully armed, and always with a contingency plan. He tried to close as many exits as he could, before deciding the mall was too large and that he had to choose a specific spot in which to reside in. By the second week in, he began wondering how long this thing was going to last. Would the zombies starve off in a few weeks? He figured he’d be stupid if he didn’t take advantage of all the supplies he had at his disposal. Wes came to the conclusion he would capture and study one of the undead.
“I have a zombie tied up in that room”, Wes said as he nodded towards a shop on the left called Drug Warehouse. Now, before his world had been turned upside down, he would think twice before being so blunt around a girl he had just met. He knew talking to the opposite sex consisted off saying one thing, and meaning something else. He knew from the way she conducted herself that Delainie wasn’t just going to shrug off the fact that he had one of those things locked up a couple stores down from his own place. He figured all he could do is explain. “On my second week here, I caught one and decided I would try to find out how they work…I mean, what makes them not work”. He glanced back to see her clutching her handgun. “I’ve been seeing if any mixture of chemicals you’d find here in the mall would bring about any reaction from them. Best case scenario, we find something that can keep them at bay.” He realized only after the sentence was out that he had said “we” not “I”. Wes now worried that that little mistake would be the straw that broke the camel’s back; he hoped to keep zombies away, not humans.
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Post by Delainie Carthage on Dec 15, 2012 21:20:48 GMT -8
She kept her eyes peeled, but Wes relaxed and she watched his body language for queues as to what was going on. That was when he began to explain and she lowered her gun as he explained the method to what she had initially thought of as his madness. It slowly began to make since although she was concerned about the security measures this guy was taking. ”It’s tied up... in there?” she looked in the direction of the store he was pointing to. In a world with no upkeep electricity was one of the first things to go after a majority of human life. It was dark, so she could not see. However, she could hear it in there, rattling about and moving around.... stirring more like. Was it hungry? Was it anxious? Did they feel fear, millions of questions swarmed around this subject.
”How secure is it? How did you catch it?” she peered through the grate getting a little closer, but not close enough to have anything pop out and grab her... or pushed her through the weak mall security. She couldn’t see past the front layer of fixtures. She looked back to Wes, and awaited his answers, when he was finished she asked another question, perhaps the most important one.
”What have you learned from it?” she shot her glance back to him but then quickly turned back to the direction of where this thing was kept. She had never taken her eyes off one when in pursuit, she would never trust one enough to consider herself safe. She saw some movement and her stomach churned as it heard them too and the groaning began. Did it think it could communicate with them, or was this just a feral and primitive attempt to claim it’s food? She rose an eye brow and stood back up straight, she felt like she was peering into the nocturnal cages at the zoo, you were told something was in there- you could hear what was in there- but you could never see the attraction.
word count: 366 |
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Post by Wes Flatfield on Dec 20, 2012 16:38:33 GMT -8
“I haven’t found anything that would help the situation”, Wes began. “It hasn't reacted to anything I’ve tried, but I’ve only tried like half the chemicals and liquid mixtures I have found”. Wes didn't want to sound as hopeless as he felt. “Whatever I found, I would just try placing it near the thing to see if it was attracted or revolted by it”, he explained. He couldn't read her, but he didn’t think she approved of his experimentation, or maybe she didn't like the idea of exposing yourself to one of those things without killing it.
The cafeteria is this way, he invited. The two made their way down into the cafeteria. He could see Delainie’s eyes light up as she saw the restaurants and food courts lined up. Wes sought to capitalize on the brief and potentially rare instance of cheer he felt from someone else. “Remember when people used to complain about food being so heavily processed that it wouldn't rot?” he asked with a smile. Before she could respond, the two’s ears perked up when they heard a distant sound.
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Post by Delainie Carthage on Dec 27, 2012 13:48:59 GMT -8
Delainie nodded understanding that his experiment may not be going in the direction he had hoped and respected that fact. ”Sooner er later it will reveal something about them,” she nodded reassuring him that this was the way experiments went, you had to try something and if it didn’t work the first time you may have to try hundreds of more times. She shrugged it off to show it did not bother her that this creature was locked up in the same vicinity. If it could get out- it would have already.
She followed Wes to the food court; she had never seen it so empty before. “Remember when people used to complain about food being so heavily processed that it wouldn't rot?” She laughed at that comment, ” So I could have a slice of pizza,” she asked nodding over to the small restraint that was to their left,” or a burrito from Taco Time?” she let her smile widen as the world of possibilities just seemed a whole lot brighter.
Just as she was feeling good about this situation was when the light and humor went out of Wes’ eyes, something was wrong, and if she hadn’t been too stupid laughing and being giggly she would have heard it too, her own smile faded as she cursed herself for not being cautious. ”What is it now?” her voice lowered to a cautious whisper. She turned around and heard it too, commotion. However, it was careful commotion, human, non-infected commotion. Her stomach churned and based on the look on Wes’s face they weren’t any one he was expecting.”I take it they’re not your friends?” She froze, she hadn’t had to deal with any truly malicious people up until this point so why was her mind quickly going to that assumption? It wasn’t her mind, it was her gut.
Word count: 318
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Post by sam on Dec 29, 2012 0:56:07 GMT -8
Malls were death traps. That was an unwritten rule most everybody knew about. It was easy to become trapped when walkers were hunting, and they always seemed to be hunting. He had as of yet seen or heard of a full walker leaning against a tree and contently rubbing its full belly while it picked its teeth with a tooth pick and gave out a loud burp. Fact is, they seemed to have an unquenchable hunger for raw flesh of any kind but especially human flesh.
He saw that three weeks ago when the migrant workers he had been supervising suddenly fell ill in the onion field they had been working. Carlos, Montoya, Jose, Ricardo, and so many more had all gotten violently sick and fallen over dead. He had helped pull the bodies to the edge of the field.
The other workers were also getting sick so he went to get them some water. There was a water truck just over the rise and, since he was the supervisor because of his ability to speak English fluently and interpret for many of the migrants who only spoke Spanish, he filled several canteens up with fresh water and quickly returned to a nightmare only the devil could have created.
The ones that were dead were attacking and not just killing but feasting on both the living and the dead. He stood aghast at what he was seeing, unable to move, his face filled with horror at the sight.
That was until some of his dead friends saw him and rushed towards him. What he did next was out of instinct. Throwing the canteens down on the ground he grabbed the first tool he could see - a machete. With it he fought the foul things off and ran for his very life.
Hiding had become his main objective. That and looking for food. He now possessed a 23 caliber Glock pistol and machete that had become his only means of protection. Slipping in and out of alleys and hiding behind garbage cans and inside vacant buildings was how he had maneuvered through the city. The places he had found to hide were varied.
Then he came upon the Fox Hills Mall. He watched it for two days but saw no one going in or out the glass doors. His stomach was growling at him angrily for sustenance so, with the noon day sun high in the sky, he made his way across the wide street and slipped into a glass door. It was a shoe store that specialized in women's fashion foot wear. Making sure it was safe he turned the lock on the door and cautiously made his way through the mall to the food court.
Tables and chairs were strewn haphazardly everywhere as though there had been some kind of horrible fight, as there could possibly have been. So many kinds of food shops were lined up side-by-side like some modern day farmer's market with big pictures of the kinds of food they sold. Hamburgers, pizza, soft pretzels, sub sandwiches, you name it they sold a version of it.
What caught his eye was the Taco Timoteo . That would be more to his suiting so he slid over the counter and went into the kitchen. It was dark so he pulled out his flashlight and poked around. On a shelf he found some unopened packages of flour tortillas and an unopened jar of salsa. Quickly opening the jar and tearing open the plastic on the tortillas he poured a small amount of the salsa on the tortillas and began to eat.
It was delicious and he wolfed it down and ate two more. On another shelf he found a liter bottle of unopened root beer. Grabbing it from the shelf he opened it and the escaping carbon dioxide mad a loud Shhhhhh! sound. It was loud enough to draw the attention of anyone or anything. That's when he heard something outside.
Freezing he waited, uncertain of what it was as some of the red salsa dribbled out of the corner of his mouth. He was dirty, his dark hair unkempt and he looked like a wild man. His tan slacks had long since changed to a filthy brownish color, his green shirt hung open revealing a dirty t-shirt and around his shoulders he carried a back pack full of what little supplies he owned. He had discovered weeks ago that to hook the backpack closed could be deadly. If a walker chased you they could grab the pack and you could make a get away while they tried to figure out what they had.
Pulling his machete out of the sheath that was attached to his belt he waited. The pistol was in a holster also attached to his belt but he figured it would make too loud of a sound and attract attention. As he stood there he realized he still had his flashlight on and, silently cursing himself for his stupidity, switched it off.
Maybe what or whoever was out there hadn't noticed the light coming from the dark kitchen. words count 864 (ooc: Sorry this is so long. I had to establish why he was there in the food court in order for it to make sense.) |
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