Desolation ✔️

Chapter 5: One Mission

The building in front of me literally falls to pieces.

It's a small store no larger than a Walgreen's, but obvious damage has been done. The glass door in front has been completely shattered, the shards piled outside the door, and bloody footprints trail outside and disappear somewhere far off into the parking lot.

How could everything fall apart so quickly? After only one week (eight days, to be exact) into—what should we call this, the apocalypse?—and things have already fallen completely apart.

Carefully, I step towards the wall and run my fingers over several dime-sized holes. There are exactly ten of them.

I look back at the parking lot. Cars sit haphazardly parked, some doors left open. Opened bags of chips, bread, empty water bottles, and oddly, a can of spray paint lie scattered everywhere.

I turn back to front of the store and inhale deeply. Silence pounds at my eardrums. Being that it's early in the morning—my guess is no earlier than three—it's still very dark. No working streetlights. If I enter the store, I'll be going in blind. Sure, I have a machine gun strapped to my back, but I've never operated a gun in my life.

Unless you count paintballing.

That was mine and Carter's first hangout.

Originally, I didn't want to go. I mean, Carter was really my only friend in middle school (yes, I was a science nerd then, too), but I still didn't want to go. Wasn't it weird for a girl to hang out with a boy outside of school? Can't risk the cooties, right? (Despite having an immense love for science, I was a firm believer in cooties.)

Anyway, I ended up going. Who can resist paintballing? It was probably the highlight of my middle school years. Yes, Scarlett Evans went on a play date with Carter Paxton, a boy. I bragged to my classmates. Handling a paintball gun was easy-peasy; my paintballing skills were...well...pretty incredible. About ninety-percent of the time, I hit the target. About eighty-percent of the time, I'm shot at. Usually by Carter. But guess who always came out on top?

You figure that one out.

So yeah, handling a machine gun should be a breeze.

"Psh, yeah right," I mutter under my breath.

I skim the outside one last time. As far as I know, anyone who came here is dead. Where the infected went, I'm not exactly sure. The alarm from the Safe House faintly screeches in the distance. A few car horns join the sound. Together, the two create one horrifyingly painful symphony I'm sure my music teacher, Mrs. Hall, would've definitely found a magical appreciation in.

Glass flickers outside the doors. Still no shoes, but there isn't any other way. I grab the door frame carefully to steady myself. The broken glass still attached to the door stings my hands, but I ignore the pain. I attempt balancing myself as I stick my right foot through the door first. When I place my foot down inside, the smoothness of the floor surprises me. The window must've been broken from the inside. I quickly pull my other foot in and right myself once inside.

The inside of the store looks like the result of a really bloody Black Friday. I can't tell where one aisle ends and another begins. There's food and supplies thrown all over the place and upside-down shopping carts. I can barely walk anywhere.

Okay, mission one: find shoes.

I trudge through the disaster, kicking stuff out of my way. I trip more than enough times and earn myself several scratches and bruises. Battle scars never killed anybody, I think, all the while questioning every item I touch.