Hinder

Chapter 1 (Brent)

-Three months later-

I woke up to a poignant smell and the sound of Asher's complains, he wasn't the type of person that was always making a big deal of everything so it had to be something important. I was hungry so I got up and walked up to Asher. The feeling of cold dirt under my bare feet made me feel safe, as if this place was already my home, my new family.

My stomach was grumbling a lot.

I started talking "What's for breakfast?".

"Water, that's all we have! So shut up and drink, I'm trying to think!" Asher responded.

He was really angry, so I took a look over his shoulder to see what had happened.

The food, all the stash, spoiled. Apparently the cooling system of the refrigerator stopped working, that's not good, mostly because the closest supply store was three hours from the hideout. We obviously had food that didn't need refrigeration, but those were mainly snacks and we couldn't feed everybody with that.The supermarket was the only thing left for us to get supplies from, and after two months it was already running out.

I turned around and decided to go out. Everybody was up and wide awake, you could also see that everyone had the same face expression, disgust, I guess it was because of the smell. The hideout is spacious, there are twenty people living here and it still had space for thirty more. It was also really comfortable, we figured out a way of making electricity possible down here, so it wasn't dark and it wasn't hot.

I started walking towards the stairs, when Marissa jumped in front of me. She was asking me where the smell was coming from. She's a seventeen year old girl, while I was nineteen. She was tall for a woman, Marissa is already 5'11'' (1.80 meters), she has long dirty blond hair and bluish green eyes that would hypnotize any guy she wanted. I explained her everything.

"Do you want to go out with me?" I asked her.

"Like in a date?" she responded immediately.

"No like out of here, out of the hideout" I replied.

She nodded and we started up the stairs. It was a cold morning, but the sun had risen enough for us to go out and take some fresh air. We stayed without talking for a while.

The city was already coming down slowly, everything was turning grayish, the paint from the buildings stared to peel off, cars crashed all over the place, stores destroyed. Even the street was starting to crack. I didn't know if we were the only survivors, but I do know one thing, we had to fight, we had to survive, because doing something, anything, is better than doing nothing.

Marissa started to talk, "So what are we going to do with the food? Man I'm starving here already!".

"I guess we will have to go to the supermarket to get more food, while Asher and the other guys solve the cooling problem from the refrigerator" I responded.

"We?!" she responded.

She seemed surprised, I didn't know why.

"You and I are some of the people in charge of the food, remember?". I replied to her.

I thought she already knew by now.

"That's right, but I don't want to go! The drive is too long and boring". She complained.

She was right I didn't want to go either, but it had to be done. So we went back to the hideout to see what was happening, if decisions had been made already or they were waiting for everyone to get up and share the news.

Asher was talking, telling everybody to hang in there, that food, real food, not just snacks were going to come, that he would make sure we had them by tomorrow. After he gave them the speech he directed his attention to us.

"Brent, Marissa, gather up the group in charge of the food, you are going to the supermarket, meanwhile I'll be fixing the cooling system, go as fast as you can".

We did as he told us to, there were four of us in the team, Jerome, Nick, Marissa and me. We were planning everything, which route would we take, how many food should we bring, how would we transport all that food from the market to the car, and how many guns we would take. We had to do this fast, because there were a lot of things to be done and we would loose 6 hours of daylight by just driving back and forth.

Jerome is 20 he's like my best friend here, since we are in the same team we spend a lot of time together, he is the bulky one of the group. Nick is 16 he's the youngest one from the group but we don't treat him differently because of that. Nick has his talents he knows how to defend himself, and he knows how to run, really fast. Marissa is believe it or not, a gun expert, her dad used to own a gun store and a firing range so it ran on the family I guess. I was the brain of the team and also the healer, I was a med student before the disease, if anyone gets hurt or feels weird, I fix it.

We were getting ready to go when Asher came to us, we all payed attention.

"Watch out for anything unusual, we never know what might come next, we are counting on you guys to bring us food, here's a disposable phone for us to communicate, my number is already on the contact lists, call if anything happens...good luck".

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Nick claimed shotgun, Jerome was driving, since he was the oldest one, Marissa and I sat in the back. We had three different routes, but all of them had a three hour drive to the market, we just alternated the routes for reasons of safety. We took the most common one, which was my personal favorite. You could see through the window all the clothing stores, and the tall buildings, my favorite place was just ahead, Gamestop. I was a video games fan, I loved playing them, but that is just something from the past, and I had to move on, we all had to.

Nick, Marissa and I were playing I spy, the first one to guess won, and it was their time to spy. We played this game for some minutes then we got bored. I was getting tired, so I decided to take a nap, after thirty long minutes trying to get some sleep, I finally got it. An hour or so later Marissa woke me up, she said we were only twenty minutes away from the market and I had to be wide awake and ready to help.

The last twenty minutes were killing me, as if they lasted more than the drive itself, but I couldn't complain, Jerome had driven all the way without a stop. Marissa was reading the guns, I was thinking how we where going to move all the food in a fast and successful way, also we had to figure how we would take turns, I'm guessing three worked and one rested for some minutes, but I don't know, I guess we will decide it at the shop.

We equipped ourselves appropriately, each one of us with a gun in hand just in case. Once we got there I noticed something right away, the lights were out, they were never out. I didn't understand, first the cooling system now the lights at the market? Maybe it was a coincidence.

We were walking to the door when it happened, I asked "Did you hear that?" I was whispering. Then it happened again, screams, not common screams, a normal human wouldn't have been able to do that.

More of them, they came form inside the supermarket, it was pitch dark, you could hear the stands of food being pushed to the ground, heavy footsteps, the sound was increasing by second, it was coming towards us, I looked around me the whole group was gun in hand, ready for anything.

I quickly took the disposable phone out of my pocket, called the only number in the contact list, and waited for an answer. Asher picked up "Yeah what is it?".

I replied, "Asher? We've got a problem".