Aliyah and Aiden had both, surprisingly, managed to get some sleep last night. Both tossing and turning throughout the night but their bodies were too tired to fight with the memories that cursed them as they slept, so they slept through.
What did manage to wake Aliyah up however was when she heard a slight creaking noise. A noise that could only be caused by the opening of a door. She could still hear the zombies crowding around the entrance, obviously unaware that the animal they had seen inside so long ago, was still inside but was dead. And she knew from her observations that her and Aiden were both still alone in the storage room that they had cleared and camped in the day before. So that left only one more known entrance. The door through which they had entered merely hours ago.
Aliyah weaved through the boxes, urgency clawing at her. Her heart was begging for her to just yell and wake Aiden up but her mind knew that in doing so she would be killing them both. So she kept going through those boxes until she reached Aiden on the opposite side of the room.
Her arms reached out. One muffling over his mouth to prevent any noise and the other shaking him awake. Tears caused by the panic begged to be released from her eyes but she swallowed them back.
"Aiden. Aiden get up." She softly pleaded for him to wake up, for him to just wake up so that she had some sort of back up.
His eyes sprang open in a state of horror. When they connected with Aliyah's he realised what must have been going on and his heart rate began to settle slightly. He sat up and relaxed his back against the wall.
They were looking at eachother now. They needed a plan. Aliyah knew that Aiden needed a weapon, so she placed her index finger over her lips and raised from her crouch. Her eyes scanning every section of the room for a weapon that Aiden would actually be of some use with.
Aiden caught onto what she was searching for and brought himself off of the ground to join her in the almost silent search. Aiden's hand had been skimming a top shelf when he felt metal and grasped a hammer in his hand. Aliyah turned to see what had caught his attention and in seeing a hammer in his hand and his confidence still in place she guessed he was good.
As they retreated back to eachother they heard a sound they had dreaded since the start of the end. The handle of the door was moving down. They had nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. This was it.
They both took a breath, seeming to center themselves, and prepared to have to beat the shit out of whoever was coming through that door.
Both teenagers took steps back as a man came barrelling through the now open door. He was tall, powerful - wait, no. He just held himself like he had power.
"Well then. What have I found?" He had a sly grin plastered onto his face and the look in his eyes reminded Aliyah of the feeling she would get when she heard footsteps that weren't her own at night.
Her stance faltered and her facade fell. She looked scared. And as much as Aiden enjoyed her walls being down this was not a wall he wanted breaking. He wanted her fears to stay her's. To stay private. He didn't like it when she was scared.
Aliyah really wanted to be the strong one. To be the protector. But she couldn't be. She was a child, only 16, she needed protection. She met evil when she closed her eyes or saw her own reflection. She had been strangled twice before. They were both dead now. She had been on her own at the start of all of this. But the fear she felt now was incomparable. She had never been so scared.
Aiden could see her trying to build up her walls again. He could see her desperately scraping the depths of her mind for extra bricks. For protection he knew wasn't gonna come. She knew that too, somewhere. Somewhere she knew that there was no help, no extra bricks.
As this danger took steps towards the two children Aidens hand transferred the hammer from his right to his left. His right hand, now empty, reached behind Aliyah for the 'sword' she had been using before. He knew he had to end this man's life but his hesitance to kill a living person must have shown because before he knew it the sword had been picked up by Aliyah.
She raised the tip of the blade until it touched the man's neck. Her brain still felt cloudy. She knew what men like this would do. She seemed to only be partly aware of her own actions.
The man merely laughed and opened his mouth to continue talking his bullshit.
But before he could Aliyah seemed to have snapped back. She lowered the weapon and then in merely one intake of breath raised it and ran the blade against his throat causing a deep cut. The man fell onto his knees infront of them.
Before he could even begin to choke on his own blood Aliyah readjusted her grip on her weapon and struck him through the head.
Then she breathed out.
Aiden was still processing what had happened when Aliyah's grip loosened and she took stumbling steps backwards until she was sat on a small wooden stool. She seemed shocked by what she had just done. But when Aiden tried to approach her she raised her hand. Clearly, setting a boundary. She took a more stable breath and held up two fingers, indicating that she just needed two minutes to go over what had happened herself.
Aiden gave her the space she needed and began approaching the dead body to retrieve the weapon. She would want it cleaned before she sheathed it again, so he took to wiping it down in a separate corner.
She seemed to have pulled herself together by the time Aiden was done. He raised the handle towards her and she nodded in appreciation before placing it appropriately on her body.
And just as they believed the worst of it was over another pair of footsteps came running into the building. They both left the room they were in. This time they would not be cornered. They had made their way to a more open section of the store when another man came wandering towards them.
Before the man even had time to speak Aliyah had raised her weapon towards him.
"Are you with him?" She questioned. Aiden had already taken to scouting the rest of the store for anyone else who would clearly love to join.
Note the sarcasm.
"With who?" This man seemed to be extremely intimidated by the knife placed by his throat.
"The damn Church! No. The fucking man who's now dead in the storage room."
The man was visibly unsettled by this statement but continued with
"No. I'm not here with anyone. It's just me."
"Sure..." Aliyah didn't lower the point of the blade from his neck. She also didn't believe him.
Out of breath, Aiden came skidding from around a separate isle.
"Aliyah, there's nobody else in here. Only one car out front. And somebody ended all the zombies. There's just bodies scattered everywhere now."
This caused a small chuckle to leave Aliyah's lips.
"So either you ended them all, which means you do have a weapon. Or Mr. Pedo did. And he couldn't even shut up when this same blade was at his throat. So I don't think it was him."
"Okay. I have a knife. And they were distracted. So I took them out. I can give you my knife... if that's what you want?"
"Aiden?"
