“You’ll attract the dead; you don’t want that, I don’t want that, okay? Calm down.”
She didn’t say anything but she seemed to have calmed down. I let her go. She immediately made a run for it down the aisle.
“Stop,” I called out to her and began to follow after her.
“Cate, let her go,” Ian said.
“She’s a kid Ian. We can’t leave her,” I said.
“She doesn’t want our help,” He argued.
“She’s scared and alone. We have to try and help,” I said and began to run after her again.
She turned to the left running down the hall between aisles.
She knocked a table down in front of me trying to block me. I managed to jump over it.
She suddenly stopped in her tracks. It didn’t take long to see why. There were two zombies in our path. They were walking towards her. She seemed to freeze in panic. Something told me she could take care of herself since she had obviously made it for a little while on her own. She must’ve been in shock from everything that had transpired.
“Down,” I said as I moved in front of her.
I took the first zombie out with a stab to the left temple. The next one I put the knife through the front of the forehead.
When I was done I turned to face the girl who was still standing there frozen in fear.
“Look, I’m not chasing you anymore,” I told her. “We’re not going to hurt you; we’ll help you but don’t take off running. It’s dangerous.”
She nodded and had a look of terror.
“You got a name?” I asked.
Ian and Milo were making their way down the hall over to us.
“Natalie,” She said.
“Nice to meet you Natalie. I’m Cate. That’s Ian and that’s Milo.”
She nodded and gave a small wave to Ian.
“I’m sorry,” she said with tears in her eyes. “I was just really scared.”
“It’s okay,” I said and put a hand on her shoulder. “How old are you?”
She sniffled a little bit. “Fifteen,” she finally said after taking a beat or two.
“Are you all by yourself?”
She didn’t say anything but she nodded.
I sighed and looked at Ian. He looked both concerned and astonished.
I looked down and saw the cuts on her hand. They looked fresh and were still bleeding.
“When was the last time you had anything to eat?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “I don’t remember. It’s been a while.”
“We got some snacks in this bag. I’ll give you some but we got to go back upstairs and get some things out of the other vending machine.”
She nodded and followed us upstairs.
Ian set back to work on the vending machine with the drinks. I gave Natalie a bag of chips and some candy. She scarfed both down before Ian had finished prying open the machine.
“Do you want something else?” I asked her.
She nodded shyly.
I handed her some peanut butter crackers. She took them and said “thank you.”
She opened the bag and began to eat them more slowly than her previous snacks.
“Shit,” Ian said.
I looked over and saw that he was bleeding from his arm.
“You okay?” I asked.
He nodded, “Yeah, just a flesh wound.”
“I’ll go get the first ad kit,” I said putting down my bag.
“No, Cate it’s fine.”
“It’s not for you jackass. Natalie is still bleeding,” I said pointing to her hand.
She looked down at her hand. “It’s bad isn’t it?”
I shrugged, “Not that bad. You’ll probably need to be stitched up but that’s okay. Ian may need to be stitched up too.”
She looked concerned, “Can you do that?”
I nodded, “Yeah. My dad was real big on teaching my sister and me a lot of survival stuff and he was a doctor so he taught us how to do stitches in an emergency situation.”
She smiled weakly, “That’s handy to know.”
I smiled back, “Yeah, it is. I’ll be right back.”
I put down the bag of food and began to make my way towards the back stair case.
“Cate,” Ian called out.
I turned to face him, “Yeah?”
“Be careful,” He said.
I smiled, “I always am.”
I started on my way again to the staircase. I made my way downstairs to the back door where we had come in. There was nothing of incident outside the door.
I headed around the building. Things had changed dramatically out in the parking lot. The zombies that were far off from this part of the parking lot had managed to not only make their way to this part of the parking lot but they were surrounding the Nissan.
“Shit,” I said under my breath.
Luckily there were only five of them but I didn’t understand their fascination with our car. When we pulled in, they paid no mind to the engine noise or anything. We’d never hit a coyote on the road or any other animal so there would be no blood to attract them to the car.
I decided not to worry about it and headed over to the car to kill the zombies.
A man that was near the passenger side back door turned towards me first. He had ugly rotting teeth that he showed to me as he snarled.
I put the knife in his temple quickly enough. The knife got stuck though and I couldn’t get it out in time for the next zombie. Luckily I carried more than one knife.
I let go of the one still in the zombie’s skull just before the next zombie got my hand. Her teeth were literally within inches of my fingers. She looked angry that I managed to move away before she bit down on her next meal. Well, she looked as angry as an emotionless undead creature could.
I got my
