Breath

Chapter 7

Joseph, Cathy and Kai broke the glass doors to the grocery section of the shop. They stepped over the broken glass. Many of the items littered the ground. A lot of valuable food was on the ground, crushed or damaged in one way or another. Joseph, Cathy and Kai began collecting all the tinned food they could find. Joseph's watch showed the date aswell as the time so he could check if any of the food or drink had passed its expiration date. Luckily, a lot of the food and drinks hadn't expired so they were safe to take. Cathy and Kai walked down the cereal aisle. Kai picked up a box of cereal and opened it, he grabbed a handful of cereal and ate them. Cathy smiled and kept walking down the aisle. She came upon a storage room at the back of the shop. She figured that there would be some more food that had been brought in later than all the other stuff on the shelves. She walked to the door and tried to open it. The handle moved but the door didn't open. She held the handle down and pushed hard. The door wasn't locked. Something was on the other side. She shouldered the door opening it a bit wider. Finally, she gave one big push and the door opened just wide enough for her to get in. She looks around. The only light source in the room was a small window near the top of the far wall. But the window didn't produce much light either as it was covered in dirt and dust. Cathy took out her flashlight keychain which she took everywhere. It was given to her by her mother. It helped her remember her family. She turned the flashlight on. There was dry blood on the ground. There seemed to be a trail of it which went behind a large crate. She walked slowly towards the crate, weapon at the ready. She looked behind it. The flashlight lit up the face of a young child crouching over a body of a woman. Blood was around his mouth. He looked at her for a few seconds then spat and got up. Cathy walked backwards egging the young psychopath on. The child ran towards her, she dodged and tried to slash it with her meat cleaver. The child turned around. He was very quick. It was hard to hit him as he was small aswell. The psychopath ran at Cathy again who stood still and lifted her meat cleaver. She brought it down just as the child got close to her. There was a squelching noise. Cathy didn't look at what she had just done. She knew what had happened and the fact that she knew what she had done was bad enough, never mind actually seeing it. Usually, she wasn't affected by killing psychopaths, but it was different this time. She had never killed a child psychopath. Cathy looked around the storage room for anything useful. There was nothing but a bottle of water in a lunchbox. Cathy noticed how there was two sleeping bags at the corner of the room. She guessed that the dead woman behind the crate and the child psychopath had lived in this storage room. She was about to leave when Kai came in through the half open door. He looked at Cathy.
"Anything in here?" He asked.
"A bottle of water, a couple of sleeping bags, a dead woman and child." Cathy said.
"Shit, well we have enough stuff to last us a few months anyways." Kai said.
"Yeah hopefully."
"Are you alright?" Kai asked Cathy.
Cathy didn't reply. She thought for a moment. Then said.
"I had to kill the child."
"It was a psychopath right?" Kai asked.
"Yeah of course, it's just, he was so young, I've never done that before."
"Cathy its a psychopath, by letting it live, it could've killed a normal person." Kai said in a soft voice which was unusual.
"I know, I understand that, but... still." Cathy said.
Then Kai did something which surprised her, he hugged her.
"Cathy its alright." He said quietly.
"I know, I'm just acting stupid."
Kai let go of her.
"No you're not, haha, stop."
Cathy smiled. They looked at each other for a few seconds, then as if they had thought the same thing at the exact same time, they kissed. They kissed for what seemed like minutes until there was a crash from outside the storage room. They broke apart and ran out. Joseph was fending off three psychopaths. Cathy and Kai ran forward and helped. Joseph couldn't get out his weapon so he grabbed a tin of tomatoes and began smashing one of the psychopaths in the head. Kai whacked one of the psychopaths into the side of a shelf. After a few seconds of continuous smashing, the psychopaths head seemed to burst. Blood covered Kai's front. Cathy drove her meat cleaver into the side of the last psychopaths head. She tugged it out and hit it again. The psychopath fell to the ground with a thump.
"Alright?" Joseph asked.
"Fine." Cathy and Kai said at the same time.
"Alright, well I have managed to fill three trolleys with food and drink, it should last the whole group a few months, but getting it back will be the problem."
"If only we had Stan, Joey and Alan, we'd have some sort of defence on the way back." Cathy said.
"Well, let's just hope they got back safely." Joseph said as he began pushing the trolley out of the grocery shop.
The three of them began walking down the halls strewn with rubbish back to where they had come into the shopping centre in the first place. They were only a minute or so walking when the intercom sounded. Jays voice filled the halls and shops.
"GUYS, THE PSYCHOS HAVE BROKEN IN!"