Page 49 of Hunted By Fae

Go.

I push into step.

The cardboard is soft under my boots, sweatpants silent in the friction at my thighs. Even my backpack is strapped around my midsection to stop it from bouncing against the curve of my spine. That’s too noisy in the dense quiet of the blackout.

The quieter we can be, the better.

I wait for the softening of steps behind me to draw closer, and the tension sticks to me.

I scan the area.

Pallets are stacked to my left. Nothing on them but t-shirts, crumpled, fallen, sagged. I only linger the light over them for a heartbeat before I shift to the glimmer of cracked TV screens.

I slip past the tumbled crates, then twist around to aim my light and barrel down the lane.

My nail thrums on the metal of the shotgun.

Tap, tap, tap.

Behind me, they don’t hesitate.

I cover the lane.

Bee comes up to my back and aims her rifle down the other end.

In the narrow path between our backs, Emily and Ramona are ghosts whooshing by. They dip into the aisle bordered by cracked TVs.

Best to not wander the main lanes. They are too wide, too open. Too much visibility for anyone watching us, anyone who might spot us.

Weaving through the aisles is our strategy. Never out in the open.

Like rats.

Bee and I pull out of the lane and back up into the aisle.

She takes point.

Emily and Ramona keep their torch lights off.

I follow suit, pressing my thumb to the sliding button. Mine goes dark.

Bee aims her light down at the concrete floor. The toes of her boots cut into the gleam with each purposeful step she takes through the electronics department.

I spare no more than a glance at the iPads, the laptops, flatscreens. Then homewares, sofas and rugs and consoles. The next aisle we turn onto is rows of booze.

Bee pauses, then runs the light over the broken glass bottles.

Most of the alcohol has been looted, probably when the darkness was on the coast and riots broke out. Now, shards of glass litter the aisle, and there isn’t much more left than rum and flavoured gin.

It’s all worthless now.

Even if the urge to snag a bottle flickers through me—and it does—it’s a risk we can’t afford. As much as I like a drink, a snort, a joint, whatever, say I do take a bottle, and I indulge, what happens when another group finds us and I’m too fucked up to fight?

Like everything else in here, the liquor is snubbed, and the aisle opens out into rot.

The flimsy scarves fastened around our faces aren’t enough to mute the putrid stink of an abandoned deli. So we do what we always do when close to rotting food. Hold our breaths, tuck our mouths to our shoulders, and move that bit quicker.

The butcher section comes after, then the bakery.