Regeneration

Chapter 18 - What Does This Mean?

With a click we opened the doors and stepped out. We looked at the large yellow building a moment before walking towards it. The sliding doors were sealed shut but the glass had been shattered. It looked like the place had already been broken into.

We stood at the doors a moment listening for movement, our eyes scanning the shadows waiting for a hunter to emerge from the darkness.

Moments passed and nothing surfaced.

I looked at Romero, "A grocery has never looked so ominous to me before?"

I saw a small smile tug at the edge of his lips. He glanced at me, "Be ready for anything ok."

"Yeah."

We stepped inside cautiously, continuing to survey the place.

It was dark inside.

We kept our guard up, moving slowly; Romero had his gun in hand. I firmly gripped the knife he gave to me before we left the house.

We found the light switch. I flipped it on and the lights flickered on briefly before the power went out again.

"Great," I muttered under my breath

Romero walked around one of the cashier counters, rummaging around until he found a flashlight. Switching it on, he shone the light around the massive maze-like store.

It looked as though a stampede had passed through leaving behind shifted shelves and spilled food items in the store. I walked over to where the carts were lined up, pulling one out from the row as quietly as possible.

"Let's try to make this quick," Romero said lowly as he handed me the flashlight and took the cart.

"Agreed," I responded.

We walked through the aisles with the relevant items only picking up the most necessary things. The thick silence in the air paired with the darkness created an eerie scene.

It caused a foreboding feeling to linger on the surface of my mind.

I looked over to Romero who was picking up some packs of oats; he seemed unaffected by the atmosphere. That didn't surprise me; he always seemed to keep a level head.

Breaking the overly spooky silence I spoke up,"I am going to grab a few personal items," I announced.

I moved to walk away but was stopped in my tracks as he grasped me at the wrist

"What?" I looked at him furrowing my eyebrows.

"Don't go off alone. We still need to be careful even though we haven't heard anyone. We're done in this section, let's go together. "

"Umm... Yeah...Sure," I turned away from him and began walking out of this aisle, Romero following closely behind.

We turned into aisle eleven. I tucked my knife away as I discretely picked up what I needed. We proceeded to make our way to the exit.

"Finally we're getting out of this spook-"

"Be quiet," he whispered to me, urgency visible in his eyes.

Both of our heads snapped towards the end of the lane as we heard rapid footsteps move across the floor.

It's just a rat; it's just a rat, a really big rat. I tried to convince myself.

We began to move as quickly as we could; maintaining silence to hide our location, that was if it hadn't been discovered already. Suddenly we heard the shattering sound of a glass breaking in the aisle next to us.

We kept moving. We heard the rapid footsteps again followed by another glass object shattering on the ground, this time behind us.

We stopped and I quickly spun around flashing the light in the direction of the sound, catching a glimpse of the figure that darted off into the darkness.