I followed Albus's gaze and saw the windows of the nearby residential buildings at first I could not see anything out of the ordinary in the buildings, but then I saw inside one of the houses, there was a pair of blood red glowing eyes that looked straight at me, the intense stare did not mean much to me, at first, as I looked in the other houses there were a pair of eyes on every floor in every window the number of people in there scared me, the stares now made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
"Oh my god!" Carly exclaimed in a terrified voice.
"And that's not the last of them," Albus said in a grim voice pointing towards the other building.
The sheer number of the zeds in these buildings made me want to leave and not come back ever again, so this was where they went to hide when the sun came out. I wonder then where are the ones who are resistant to sunlight. We had two options at this point, to go away from here leave to save our skins and risk handing over a store full of supplies to the undead, or steal from them what they would probably never use.
"What do you think we should do?" Carly asked in a small voice as if she was scared of triggering the zeds from that distance.
"Let's go in," Albus said which brought a grin to my face he looked at Carly once and continued, "look, it is a big store there could be a whole plethora of supplies in there and we are not just talking food, we are talking weapons medicine, gear and what not." When Carly still failed to look convinced he continued, "Look at that ceiling, that's made of a thin plastic sheet it sis translucent it might be good against the weather but it still lets enough light in that we can see around without necessarily having to pull our flashes out." Albus and I looked at her asking silently if it was a yes or a no on her end.
She gave an angry look that simply said that she didn't want to do this at all if she had an option. Albus noticed that and said, "You could stick with Liam if you want to." Giving me a sly grin.
"Oh, ha ha, I was thinking more like all of us sticking together, since the two buildings are full of zeds what is the guarantee that the store won't be."
"Yeah I like that plan." I said in an encouraging voice.
All of us readied our weapons and we moved into the store with a careful, guarded walk. It took a good minute for my eyes to get adjusted to the relative dimness inside the store. I let out a small gasp. This store was bigger than anything else I had ever seen. There were multiple floors in the store, the place was basically like a mall with far less stores. I think they called these like the mega stores or something as we went further inside the store Albus said, "Guys I know we said that we would stick together but I not so sure that we will finish everything in just a couple of hours. We need to split up." Carly immediately gave a shiver at that, which I think Albus noticed because he gave a look and said, "or maybe you two could stick together." I am not going to lie that decision relieved me a bit, I was not too excited in going into a store with this little brightness all alone.
We all turned our radio to the same frequency and left it on putting the earpieces in, Carly and I went off to gather all of the ready to eat or canned food supplies that we could find. The store still had a putrid smell from the decaying produce and meat and…. whatever possibly lived here.
In my ear piece I could still hear the sound of the footsteps of Albus as he sprinted around the store trying to get a sense of the store, if it was empty or just really silent. I still had my gun out and a flash in her hand while Carly had the flash of her rifle on. Every place our lights fell on just indicated more and more signs of water damage and mould.
"Super manly weapon by the way." Carly said clearly amused by her own wit.
"That's weapons mind you. And I wanted to travel light who knows if I find something worth my time here or you know we have to make a run for it."
I heard Albus snickering on the radio saying, "He usually lives by that rule, to be honest it has come in handy quite a lot of times. You guys found anything yet?"
"We are just reaching the destination we'll get there in a minute" Carly said in a low voice.
Something else had just caught my attention, there was a glint in one of the stores I tried to make out what the board said but it was destroyed to an extent where the colours could not be made out. I side tracked, going inside the store. Carly noticed that I had gotten side tracked and followed me inside the store saying, "What are you doing?"
"SHHH!" I whispered furiously, I couldn't see her expression but she went quiet and looked around the store with her flash. I moved towards where I had see the flash and checked the place out, there was a splash of dried up blood on the wall behind the counter and on the cash register, there was some sort of a cover behind the counter fallen on the ground. I looked around the small store and my blood went stale, "We need to get out of here quick!"
Carly still had not figured out what was wrong, she grabbed my arm as I was hurrying out, "Hey! What's wrong she asked looking around with her torch."
"There is blood here!" I said in a panicked voice looking around the store, I felt a layer of sweat forming on my body.
"So what? there is blood everywhere." She asked clearly confused by my antics.
"You don't understand there is fresh blood here, we didn't see anyone go out, come in and it is a small store they can't be hiding anywhere." As I finished my sentence there was a loud scrapping noise, both Carly and I looked up terrified of what we would find up there, it was indeed terrifying, we saw a glint of shining metal a handle of a sword sticking out of something that clung to the roof inspecting us. It was some sort of zed; it had the sword going through its chest and coming out of the other side it looked at us dead in the eyes before lunging towards us with a glass shattering screech.