Chapter 7 - Looting the Store

Alexander placed his foot down on the creatures body, and gave a hard tug to the katana, pulling out the blade, then wiping the blood off the blade. The sheath then reappeared in front of him, and he sheathed the blade and made his way to the store entrance where people where started to walk out of the store, as Bob tore at the creature.

He looked up to see the first person emerge from the door, a curvy blonde female with long wavy blonde hair cascading down to her waist, and blue eyes, wearing tight fitted blue jeans, and a plain black tight fitted top. Alexander paused, and stared at her large assets, his exhaustion forgotten as she approached him, and others emerged from the door.

"Hello?"

Alexander snapped out of his daze, his eyes raising to her eyes, blushing slightly in embarrassment, the slight red on his cheeks being covered in the darkness.

"Errrr, hello."

The blonde female gave him a beaming smile.

"Thank you for helping us. My name is Emma."

"Alexander."

Alexander looked behind her, to see six people make their way out of the store.

"We were stuck in that store for four days, worried that we…..."

A loud hissing sound broke through the air, interrupting the two. After looking in the direction, Emma turned to look back at Alexander.

"We can talk later. We plan to bring the food to the Bunnings Warehouse down the road there." As she talked, she pointed down the road.

Alexander nodded. "I can meet you there later."

Emma ran down the street to grab a trolley packed with food, while Alexander headed into the store. Looking around, Alexander was disappointed. Most of the grey shelves were empty. He made his way carefully down each of the 4 rows, and he found a six cans of food, and ten bottles of fruit juice, and 5 sealed long life milk. He got Bob to store it all. As he browsed the shelves, he looked at some of the miscellaneous items that were still on one of the shelves, staring at it in a daze.

These items were not as important as food, but one never knew when he needed it. He might be able to cook himself a decent meal if he could gather ingredients, he was honesty sick of eating canned food. And, some of the containers he could see could be used to store water.

Bob barked after he stood staring at the kitchen utensils for five minutes, snapping him out of his thought. Alexander's eyes widened as he berated himself for not asking a basic question.

"How much items can you store Bob."

"Woof!" "Woof!"

Alexander slumped, dejected. "Of course, that's why. Forget I asked."

Mulling it over, he decided to get Bob to store the items, thinking to himself, that he could always dump the items if he didn't need them. He went towards the storage, at the back, but all he could find to store was five bottles of water.

After storing those, he made his way cautiously to the front of the store. He made his way to the front of the store, silently, with Bob at his heels, before freezing just before he reached the glass door.

Outside, there was three hulking humanoid figures with red skin and red eyed, the faint glow of there dark red skin visible in the darkness, making them stand out even if they stood thirty meters from the entrance to the store. Alexander hesitated, debating whether to go outside and hop they didn't spot him, or if they did, he was fast enough to make a break for it. Eventually, he decided against going outside.

They were huge, and looked powerful. Enough to snap him in half should they catch him. And each time one of them took a step, he could hear the thud ringing out in the empty air, growing louder as they gradually approached, towards the store. As hastily as he could while minimizing the sound from his footsteps, he made his way to the back of the store, wanting to get away from the abominations before they spotted him.

Once he could no longer see the hulking creatures, and was halfway to the back of the store, he started sprinting, making his was to the emergency exit as quickly as possible, Bob at his heels, the sound echoing in the silence. Shortly after he started running, three loud, guttural roars sounded in the air, breaking the eerie silence in the darkness, and three large thuds could be heard as they made it's way closer.

Alexander sprinted, making his way to the back, cursing himself for a fool for running, when he could have simply just walked away. As he passed the aisle with the pans, he picked up wok as he ran passed, and he reduced his speed while approaching the end of the aisle, Bob following his lead.

Reaching the end, he tossed it to the left, where the bags of vegetables used to be kept, and shattered the glass, while stopping, and walking as fast as he could, through the entrance leading to the warehouse and loading area.

Making his way down the grey corridor, he walked to the end, ignoring the branching corridor. Once he reached the end, he could see a small, cramp room, with a small window up top and some boxes and crates lying around, and a couple of shelves.

Piling the red crates up, he stood on them to look out the small window out. Outside, he could see the twelve of the basic creatures milling outside. It was a lot. He wasn't sure he could take that many. He stood there, considering his options. He could either go back, and try to slip around those big abominations, or try to slaughter his way through these.

Eventually, he decided to make his way through this crowd. He got up, and looked around, eventually picking up a phone lying around around on one of the shelves. He picked it up, and lobbed it through the window, as far as he could manage near the corner of another building.

Once it hit the end of the street, some of the creatures turned around and started dragging their feet towards the sound, leaving four creatures left. Alexander took a deep breath, gave his katana for Bob to hold, then made his way through the window, lowering himself to the concrete floor as slowly and silently as possible. Looking at the basic creatures, he was relieved to see that they didn't look towards his direction.

Bob stood right next to the window, and the katana reappeared. Alexander caught it, hastily, before it clattered to the concrete.

After retrieving his katana, Alexander took slow, steady, footsteps, and made his way to the creatures slowly, while trying to minimize all sound. Drawing his blade, he slashed four times at the creatures, and they dropped to the ground, decapitated, before realized he was behind them.

Alexander turned around, to help Bob get to the concrete below without making any loud noise. He almost buckled under Bob's weight. Bob moved towards the creatures, but Alexander held Bob back, pulling him away.

"Wait until we kill the other four and see what else is around here. If this was it, they could have exited through this way earlier."

Bob licked Alexander's hand.

Alexander looked around, and made his way over to the house where the gaunt, grey humanoid figures were. They turned around as he and Bob approached, letting out a loud hiss, Alexander quickly lunged forward, stabbing one through the head. Bob pounced on another, sending it crashing to the ground, breaking the eerie silence, and snarling, bit at it's neck. The last two moved towards Bob, and Alexander stepped forward hastily, swiping his katana across their necks, sending them tumbling to the ground just as the one on the ground stilled.

"Okay Bob, you can feas...."

In the house next to them, a loud crashing could be heard. Alexander's eyes widened in fright.

"Run!"

Without caring about anything, he ran forwards, hoping to get behind the second red brick house in front of him, so he could hide from the site of whatever was in that house.

A loud crashing sound sounded behind him as whatever was inside of the house crashed into the house behind him, causing the house to rumble, and Alexander looked over his shoulder to see the house moving. The sight caused Alexander to turn around and double his pace, Bob keeping pace, trying to push out as much speed as possible and get behind the second house before that creature emerged and saw them.

THUD

Alexander started breathing heavily as he shot towards the house, focusing everything on trying to squeeze more speed out of his limbs. He was closing in on the house. He was almost there...

CRASH

The hulking, red humanoid figure crashed through the brick wall, letting out a roar, and it's pea sized red eyes fixed on Alexander. It let out a loud, bellowing roar, and gave chase.