Margie kept her gun on the wreckage. “Come on! We need to move!”, she yelled to Kara and Paulie. He began to get alarmed at the amount of blood he was losing; he was having a hard enough time holding in the pain.
Margie stood behind as Kara, with Paulie putting much of his weight on her, hobbled by as fast as they could. With her arms getting tired from aiming at the doors of the wrecked vehicle, she began to see a shambling hoard of the undead descend on the doors. Margie heard the screams of those trapped inside as they were torn apart. She ran away, feeling like the zombies were doing a good enough job disposing of the twisted living.
Margie succeeded in hearing the gunshots ripping through the flesh of the zombies, but failed to see one that made it out of the vehicle and ran off ,leaving his friends behind.
“Get inside, GET INSIDE!” Kara yelled to Paulie. The mall’s doors were still open. Throwing all caution to the wind, Paulie ran through the doors, not even looking at his surroundings. Taking his actions as a sort of sign of safety, the girls followed in with him.
Suddenly, the group heard the noise of glass being shattered, it sounded like a store window and something heavy falling to the ground. They heard glass being cleared and two male voices talking in the distance.
“Let’s stay away from them. Who knows if they are friends of those guys outside”, Paulie whispered while grabbing at his leg.
“I don’t know. The voices didn’t sound hostile”, Margie replied.
“Guys, we need to find something for Paulie’s leg. It just doesn’t look good”, Kara said. “We should go to Bulls-Eye. They would definitely have something for him there.”
“Alright, let’s find a directory and head over to Bulls-Eye. Maybe we’ll find something useful and maybe some change of clothes, too.”
Kara ran over to a flickering directory.
“Look, there are different stores here. There’s a gun shop around here, too! Let’s go!”, Kara panted while she spoke.
Paulie was getting pale. His injury was worse than the group had thought.
“Is there anywhere we can get some sort of first aid for Paulie? He looks real bad”, Margie said.
“Guys, don’t worry. It’s nothing. Just go find something to arm yourselves with. This place..”
He paused to breathe.
“This place, just gives me the creeps.”
Paulie coughed up blood.
“Paulie…”, Margie said.
“There’s no time. We need to find something that’ll help us”, Kara desperately said.
The group heard heavy breathing and dragging feet behind them. Margie turned her gun at where the noise came from, but nothing.
The group, with Kara carrying Paulie, proceeded into the mall.
While they scampered into the mall, looking into the shops, all destroyed and emptied out, Margie began to imagine the scene where crowds of people were running around, trampling others, breaking windows and taking everything, even if it wasn’t useful to them. She shook her head trying to clear her mind in the thought. Only when she slipped in a small pool of blood was when she was knocked right back into the thought, only she was living in it’s aftermath.
The noise they had heard before grew louder and louder and was followed by low mumbling.
“Margie, did you see anyone get out of the car?”, Kara asked with obvious fear in her voice.
“No, I saw a bunch of those things going into it, but that was…”
Crack
A gun shot rang into the air and Paulie got much heavier.
The air around them grew quiet and time froze.
Paulie fell off of Kara and hit the floor hard.
Margie turned back just in time to see the lone survivor of the wreck aiming his rifle at the group. She stopped breathing when she realized that he had hit his mark.
Paulie was dead.
“RUN!!”, Kara yelled and immediately dashed in a random direction.
Margie stood there, staring at Paulie’s corpse. Not even a minute ago he was talking and hanging on to his life. She found it ironic that it was another survivor, not one of those beasts, that claimed him.
Realizing where she was, she ran after Kara.
“I’ll get you all, y-you killed them. They were all I had, you dumb bitches.” The voice of the twisted survivor rang in both Margie and Kara’s ears.
They ran towards the direction of the noise they had heard earlier. The shattered glass would prove an obstacle for the crazed man.
The girls ran. The last two of a once medium-sized group, without direction through the mall, ran up a flight of stairs, seeing the broken glass.
“I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!”, the man yelled.
The girls ran through the glass, Margie taking the lead. She ran to a dark figure, wearing a hat. She outstretched her arm towards him and he extended what looked like a gun at her direction.
Unable to choke out any words Margie left her hand in the air.
Kara looked behind them and saw the man standing at the end of the hallway. He struggled with something on his shoulder. He was in extreme pain. Kara saw blood pouring out of his shoulder and onto his clothes.
The man with the hat shot his gun and the crazed survivor shot his gun into the floor. He went down.
So did the freshly resurrected corpse of Paulie, with a chunk of the man’s shoulder in his mouth.
The man with the hat had shot the zombie.
Margie jumped onto him and they landed on the floor. Kara could not take her eyes off of the dead figures.
“Jay?!”
The present danger was all but over. Margie quickly got up and the man in the hat, pushed her down and held the gun at her.
“A-Are you one of them?”, he stammered.
Margie’s breath left her. She was scared.
He pulled back the hammer.
“ANSWER ME?!”, he yelled.
Kara ran over with a strip of metal from the floor, screaming loudly, she slammed the stranger in the back of the head, knocking him unconscious.
He fell to the ground again near Margie.
“KARA!”, Margie yelled.
“He was going to kill you! I can’t lose anyone else, not like this”, Kara replied.
Another man ran out of the shop with a shotgun in his hand.
“Jason?! Shit!” He held the gun at the two girls.
“Who-Who did this?!”, he yelled.
“I-I’m sorry”, Margie said quietly.
He pointed the gun at her and motioned the girls to stand together. He went over to his friend and nudged him with his foot.
The man on the floor stirred a little.
“Get out of here! The both of you! Just…just go!”, he yelled.
Kara and Margie ran off.
“I’m sorry”, Margie said again.
He lowered the gun and the girls, more assured of their safety, ran off down the stairs.
“Where do we go now?”, Kara said.
“I don’t know. Just, out of here”, Margie replied.
Dave
Dave stood over Jason’s body, looking around to make sure any danger was gone. He walked over to the man’s body. He kicked the gun away.