"You heard about Zhen and Nick?"
"I told you not to mention that again."
"Sorry."
"Enough."
Bryan and Endo fell silent at Ryan's admonishment. While both had been friends with the two recently dead kids, Ryan had been particularly close to Zhen. The three boys were patrolling the perimeter of the kids' new hideout, the derelict supermarket in the nearby shopping mall so close to their former school. While there was some food to last them a week, Matt still regularly sent out scavengers to forage for more. Most of the kids thought this was pointless since the mall and the school were in the same area so searching their surroundings made the foraging moot. However, a hypothesis suggested by Elias was that Matt wanted the scavs to search for signs of their dead friends for a proper burial. Elias had been shouted down.
Endo was the biggest boy in the group, dwarfing all the teachers back in school. He was tough, brave and a served as a de facto ward for the sick kids. Ryan was the group's second-in-command after Kumar's death, and he dedicated himself to fulfilling his duty as a leader. Bryan, while not as strong as the other two, was agile and acted well as bait for grown-ups. The three boys had even been in the same CCA, thus bonding them further as a team. Now they were on the lookout for grown-ups as the mall had not been properly boarded up yet. The team of kids Matt had sent to build barricades had yet to return with their escort, and the patrol was getting nervous.
"Are they dead?" Bryan asked nervously. Endo glared at him until Bryan backed down. Ryan gave no sign he heard, but he suddenly raised a hand. "Shush, someone's coming." The three readied their odd collection of weapons. Heavy breathing and running footsteps were heard, and the three relaxed. Grown-ups couldn't run, that's why ambushes and trapped kids were what killed most of the students. Ryan called, "How goes the defenses?" The running increased in intensity at his call, and Endo stepped forward, now wary. Endo said, "What happened?" The dark shape in front of him lunged successfully tackled Endo, knocking away his club and brought him to the floor. It was a grown-up.
Bryan yelled in surprise and backed up quickly, bumping into another human sized shape. He turned, thinking it was Ryan, and went down with a grown-up biting at his neck. Ryan swung his torch and knife, catching another running grown-up in the face. It recoiled, face spurting blood and pus. Ryan spared a glance at his friends and gaped, Endo was already dead an arm and a leg dangling from the hands of the grown-up that tackled him. Bryan was sliding away face down from the supermarket, grown-ups dragging him away. In the three seconds that Ryan caught glimpses of his friends' fate, the grown-up he sliced hissed in fury and grabbed him, tearing at him with its hands. Ryan heard shouting coming from the supermarket, and prayed the rest would arrive in time. All he could do was try to stop the grown-up on top of him from tearing him into pieces.
Ryan knew he was losing as his punches got weaker and weaker while the grown-ups attacks became more unbearable. It howled in fury and threw its head back. Ryan thought it was going to bite him but it suddenly leaped off him. He realized his friends had arrived to help, however late it might be. He saw Damien run his makeshift spear through the grown-up that had been tormenting him, and saw two more go down from rocks thrown by the kids. Ryan felt himself lifted up from the floor and brought inside the supermarket.
Diana and Misha were working on Ryan frantically. The rest looked on restlessly. They had managed to recover what was left of Endo but failed to find Bryan. He was assumed dead. Diana held Ryan's hand as she dabbed at his forehead with a towel. Under Misha's torch, she could see his exposed muscles through his horrible cuts on his body. Ryan asked weakly, "Are they there?Endo and Bryan?" Diana tried to humor him, "They're here, they're resting up. You'll see them later." Ryan closed his eyes and said, "No." Diana hesitated, and Ryan continued, "I can see Zhen. And Nick and William and Kumar and the rest we've lost. My dad. Mom." Diana shook her head, crying, "You're not dying." Ryan opened his eyes and responded faintly, "I am." and died.
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