The glassed door in the entrance was just shattered completely and everything there was a mess. We breathed heavily and noisily, sniffing dusts sprinkled with the air every now and again. Though outside was bright, inside, you could see almost nothing. Shelves and racks jingled on the floor, straggling everywhere alongside packages of diapers and candies. 

“Chase, you stick with me, alright? Don’t get separated.”

I switched on my flashlight, leading each step while pacing through tumbling shelves. There was something eerie about the place, something haunted, though I couldn’t really explain what or why, but it felt like I was approaching danger instead of running from it. It seemed like a death trap, but to be honest, it was just a dark supermarket.

Or was it?

A growing guilt generated itself in my head and whispers of the shadows got their mouths on my ears. 

Is it a mistake coming here? Shouldn’t there be easier way to get a ride? But no. I can just collect a car key from the first body that I find and get the hell away before chaos started.

But so far, all the dead bodies were keyless. I also didn’t find the fondness of rummaging through their pockets, especially when they were three times stinker than a dead rat.

There was strange sound rushing behind our ears for one second. Chase and I gazed quickly to find the source. Nothing was there but air.

“Probably just a rat,” I said with a tremble on my voice.

We didn’t really know what we were looking for so stammering back and forth would seem to be the best plan. Finally, when there was nothing to be searched on anymore, we moved to the backside of the building where the garage was located.

Crates of various products were shambled throughout the entire facility. 

“Big chance that looters did this. A heaven for them, I’d say.”

“Or hell.”

But unlike the supermarket, the storage was brighter as it seemed that those giant rolling doors were opened, letting the sun went in and splashed the area with light. 

We tried to scavenge the area, though it proved to be useless. All that was left consisted of rotten eggs and scuffed salads.

Then we moved to the northern section of the Walmart: the office. It was a stupid idea to actually scour that place as everything was closed quarters. The hallways were tight, the rooms were small (and believe me, there were so many of them). Most of the rooms were empty as supposedly no one would go to work in a pandemic.

But it was very dark, so I had to keep both my eyes open. I could hear Chase’s hard breathing, intending that he was scared as heck, and I didn’t blame him.

The first floor contained nothing but junks, so we took the stairs and went up to check it out. The very first thing that I saw at the second floor was a lady predator, skimming the hallway like a guard dog.

Then a shriek came from our left, and it was revealed that another predator was there, standing in a room close to us.

I led Chase down the stairs for a bit and hid. I could see his lips trembling.

“How can those predators be there?” I asked out loud but more to myself. “They’re supposed to be at home.”

“Wokaholics?” Chase said with a faint laugh at the end. He was amusing himself.

“Chase, you brought that knife I told you to?”

He nodded.

“Alright. I’m going to try and kill one of them, see if they have a car key with them.”

“What? No. That’s just stupid. You’re not invisible, Ti, and this is not video game. You can’t just stealth kill them from the back and get away with it.”

I saw the sincere fear in his eyes.

“You have a better suggestion?”

“Yes. Let’s find a house with a car parked in front of it and search the key inside.”

“And what if there’re people inside with guns? I’m not willing to take that chance.”

“Ti, I’m grateful that you’re here to protect me and anything, but I don’t like the way you decide things. We’ve been lucky this far, Ti, but it’s not everlasting.” Chase’s face grew red. 

“I can’t debate for this. Just stay quiet behind me. I’ll do the hard work.”

Chase wanted to argue some more, but there was no point. He started to see that one of my bad natures was stubbornness. And that combined with my charming flicker of recklessness would produce something even more extraordinary.

Anyway, I returned my gaze to the matter at hand.

I crept slowly in the shadows of the walls, Chase slowly tailing me behind. He was my back up if something went wrong.

The first predator was looking the other way, standing still like he wasn’t interested in anything inside the building.

Quickly, I planted my sharp knife to the predator’s neck. It shrieked slowly, but I stabbed again the second time on its head. As I pulled the knife out, blood splashed over my face, but the predator fell lifeless to the floor.

I checked over it for keys, but found nothing. I did find a wallet.

“Jessica Langdon-Phase. Born September 21st, 1990, in Toronto, Canada. Poor lady,” I said with an unenthusiastic voice. I probably experienced seeing too many bodies that a stabbed woman in front of me didn’t even disgust me in the slightest, but learning the fact that these guys were once regular human beings just made me sad somehow.

“What do we do now?”

“I mean there’re more of them.”

I couldn’t hear myself but Chase definitely could. My body was thirsty for blood and I couldn’t control it. II had no more guilt at killing.

The second predator was a limp guy dressed as an office boy, probably his job before the world collapsed. He hissed at a damp mop at the floor, maybe thinking that it was a living being or something.

I rushed a bit too much and the consequence was fatal. I didn’t see the shattered glass on the floor, and when I stepped on them, a creaking sound announced itself towards the wondering predator right in front of me.

The predator turned to me, and I already raised my knife. It shrieked loudly at me, spitting me with a thousand germs and releasing its bad odor to my holy face. One of its eyes was popping out, and the sudden threat alerted me to what just happened. I slowly moved back from the charging predator with a building panic streaming across my face.

“Run, Ti!”

Chase pointed the two predators behind the one that I suppose to kill. I ran back, following him toward the stairs, but a predator somehow appeared at the hallway in front of it.

“Left!”

We swerved to the direction Chase pointed. We ran crazily, passing room after room until the hallway ended.

“Four are after us!” Chase shouted. “Get in here!”

Chase kicked one of the doors. We buckled inside without checking, and then with reflexes, Chase and I pushed an iron cabinet to the back of the wooden door, blocking it so those predators couldn’t get in.

“Phew, that was close.” My heart rate was never higher than in those moments.

Chase looked at me with a disappointed face.

“What happened? Why didn’t you kill it?”

“I rushed, okay? You were right. I should’ve put more thoughts into this.” And I meant my words when saying that.

The predators outside tried to knock the door off. They knocked and bumped, but nothing worked.

“That blockade won’t last forever,” Chase said, scenes from many thriller movies flashing before his eyes.

There was a strange sound, a different sound aside from the constant ramblings of the predators outside the door.

“Do you hear that?” I asked.

“Yeah, they’re trying to bust the door.”

“No. Listen!”

Then I realized there was another door leading to a hidden toilet we never realized it was there. The big office had an internal toilet. I saw the name tag on the desk. 

Colin Chung, Managing Director.

No need to stealth, I put my knife in and readied my lovely bat.

“Chase, open the door and run back as soon as possible!”

“Okay.”

Chase, standing beside the door, hand on the knob, trembled after what he had to do next. Suddenly, he just rotated the knob and I quickly burst in charging.

Nothing attacked me.

“What’s that?” Chase asked, his voice groveled by a scared attitude he was radiating.

Now, I’m about to describe you the most disgusting thing in this worldwide apocalypse. This is so messed up that Chase and I had to puke after seeing one.

The body of a man was stuck to the toilet’s wall with a pool of water flooding on the floor right below him. The man was very pale, but the back of his body was shattered and he was glued to the wall. Blood also blanketed him, and the most disgusting thing was we could see some of his inside parts. His body was like ripped open by something, but his heart was still beating, and we could see that. Transparent slime seemed to keep him alive, activating his system and organs and all, but he was consumed by it, slowly.

To put it in easy words, the man became one with the wall, and some unknown substance grew on him like a parasite. His body was also half shattered.

“What the fuck.”

The most disturbing thing we saw was the guy’s exposed brain. Just imagine seeing a brain for the first time.

Then, something even more horrifying spooked us to death. He spoke.

It was like a breathy groan, or maybe an agonizing moan. I couldn’t make up his words, so I foolishly approached him.

“Uuuuhhhh… Kkkkkiiiiiilll…. Eeee…”

I heard Jules puking behind my back.

“How are you still alive?” I asked the man with genuine wonder.

“Eeeeee…. Meeee…”

“Kill me?”

The guy nodded slowly.

My eyes sweated like crazy. I never felt such a burden in my life before. 

I raised my bat high, and then without second thought, I swung it up until it bashed his head. It was chopped off from his neck and blood sprayed out uncontrollably. The head hit the wall next to him and bounced right by my feet. 

My legs pulled me back a bit, and then I puked also. My stomach felt twisted inside out. That man was not dead, but he wasn’t a predator either. 

I ran out from the toilet and slammed the door close behind me. Then I slowly brought myself down to the floor. My heart drummed fast, my blood crawled from inside me, giving me goosebumps and fear.

Chase sat slumped across me, looking pretty pale himself.

“How… was that man not dead?” He asked. But I didn’t happen to know the answer myself.

I shook my head. 

Then I realized that four predators still tried to bust in. I saw the cabinet sliding one centimeter to the back, meaning that soon they would be able to dodge the door open and eat us alive.

“What do we do?” Chase asked without an energy left in him. 

I glanced around to seek a way. I had no time to waste. Escaping alive was my number one priority, so I scanned the room thoughtfully, corner to corner. 

I found a car key lying innocently on top of the desk, patiently waiting for me to snatch it. Chase saw what I found, but he still didn’t cheer up. The current state was too oppressing for us to even celebrate by a bit.

“There’re only two options,” I started. “Either we go through the window or fight them off.”

“Are you insane? You wanna break our legs?”

“You want me to fight four predators with one bat?”

Chase went silent. Sometimes, we had to make a choice.

Then I approached the window to have an idea how to survive the fall. We were on the second floor, so falling wouldn’t cause death, but something slightly worse than that. But luck was almost on our side when I saw an idea. A white container truck was parked below, and we could jump there and then to the ground without hurting ourselves. The only problem was that the jump wasn’t easy peasy. The truck wasn’t positioned directly below the window, but slightly further. We had to make the jump or else, it was for nothing and we ended up hurting ourselves far below.

“Chase, come here!”

Chase hurled when he walked to me. I think he was still overwhelmed after seeing that deformed human slash predator slash slime monster in the disgusting toilet.

“What do you think ‘bout that?” I pointed the truck.

“No! No, no, no! That’s just impossible, come on, Ti.”

“I mean, we haven’t any choice. This is the best option.”

“Ti, I just don’t like heights all that much.”

The next banging on the door shook us too much. The cabinet couldn’t hold long. We needed to do something.

“I’ll go first,” I suggested.

Chase sighed after leaning his body to the wall. He pressed his face with both hands, trying to suck up reality. “Okay. Just be careful.”

Did I remind him that I was also scared of doing the jump? 

“Let’s throw our bags down there.”

I slid the window open and we tossed our bags down. I checked the surrounding below. Though seeing no predator, I was still very paranoid. I didn’t want Chase to get hurt.

“Alright… alright, here we go.”

I stood on the frame of the window, looking down harshly. Somehow, it felt like I was standing on top of a skyscraper.

Then, without holding back, I threw myself forward and half my body landed on the container’s roof. My stomach slammed the side and it hurt like hell. Both my hands tried so hard to get a grip, but I was constantly pulled by gravity so it was so hard to stay up, but then I let go and landed on the ground below, back first.

“Gosh! You’re alright?” Chase’s voice seemed so far away up there.

“Nothing broke, that’s for sure,” I said with a groaning pain. I probably fucked the newly stitched wound on my shoulder.

“Alright, good to know.”

“You’re jumping or not?” 

I stood and grabbed my bag.

“Sure. Umm, just a minute.”

“Don’t linger there! They will come in any minute!”

“I don’t know ‘bout this, Ti.”

“You have no choice. Just jump! I promise you, it’s going to be fine.”

I heard a slam from inside Chase’s room. The packs of predators already busted in. Chase climbed the frame and leapt one second before a predator hand reached him. He was flying in the air, and finally slapping the container gracefully. He landed right on top of it.

“Yes! You did it!”

I saw Chase lying on top of the container. He still didn’t believe what he just did.

“Come down here and let’s get the hell away from this cursed place.”

I helped him down and looked up one last time. Hands were reaching out from the window we just jumped from.

I slapped my face and forced my mind to continue 

So we spent five minutes finding the right car and it was apparently parked on the office’s parking lot not far from our last position. The car was a black Honda Accord.

“Nice car.”

“Good enough.”

And a sense of hope returned to us at that point.

And the world didn’t feel so dark anymore.

At that point I knew we could survive this.

I knew we could make it ‘till the end.

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