AncilChapter 36: The Village
“We should head back to the boat,” I suggested. “It’s too many of them.”
“Sara-Lee where you find this coward?” Ronald asked.
“We can’t go back. They’re not armed,” Jack said, pulling out his blade.
“Jack, there’s too many of them,” Jinx said. “We can’t take them.” There was clear fear in her eyes but she was right. There were way too many of them for us to take and the numbers kept increasing by the second. They were gaining on us but nobody made a move, waiting for Jack’s orders.
Jack was in deep thought trying to come up with a way to fight off the jumbies but he seemed to be having a hard time with it. He finally said, “Back in the boat! Back in the boat!”
“Wait!!” Sara shouted. She then pointed our attention to an abandoned mall in the distance. It was a branch of the ruins of Trincity Mall and it seemed like a safe enough place. “We could hide in there.”
“Yeah,” Jack approved before leading the way. There were a couple jumbies on our path to the mall but nothing that our swords couldn’t handle.
We quickly got in the mall and closed the glass door behind us as dozens of jumbies pushed against it. While Jack, Jinx, Johnny, Sara and I pushed against the door trying to keep the jumbies out, Ronald and Jordan quickly ran into stores and grabbed as many things as they could find to barricade the doors. Things like bookshelves and tables seemed to have done the trick.
Inside the mall was dark and dismal with its wet floors, moss ridden walls, accompanied by ransacked stores and busted floors but it seemed empty with no other signs of danger. The only real sound that we heard, beside the loud echoes of our footsteps, was a constant annoying dripping sound.
The stores were wide open but most of the products were untouched. The ransacked state of the abandoned businesses seemed to have come from the force of the rising water levels entering into them. But the further we got into the mall the less ransacked and disorderly the stores looked. There were grocery stores packed with food and shops packed with all kinds of nifty gadgets, games and household appliances.
We passed a gym while walking through the corridors and Jinx said. “Ahh yeesss. A gym.”
“This is no time to work out,” Jordan said.
“Not for a workout. Wherever there’s a gym there’s a…..”
“Shower!!” Sara intervened, a bit too excited.
“Exactly,” Jinx said. “Sorry but I need to take a nice long shower and get out of this stupid jumpsuit.” Without awaiting anyone’s response Jinx went into the gym.
“Me too,” Sara said, following after her.
“How do you know it has water?” I asked Sara.
“This place would most likely have backup pumps,” Jack answered for her, noticing that Sara either didn’t hear me or ignored me. “If nobody was in here when the country went to hell then it should still have water in them.”
“You should go take a shower too,” Ronald mocked. “You smell like shit.”
“And yet still smell better than your mot…..”
“Jed!! Calm down,” Jack said.
“No no. Let him finish what he was going to say. You smell better than my what?”
Jack and Ronald looked at me waiting to see if I would have made the mistake of finishing my sentence.
“I’ll just go see if there’s water,” I eventually forced myself to say before heading into the gym.
“Yes. Good idea,” Jack said urging me forward.
I was getting to the point where I really hated Ronald. He wasn’t only tall, buff and good looking, he was also mean. I hated him. I couldn’t fight him though. He was clearly stronger than I was. I decided to take a nice long shower to get my mind off of him. Luckily enough there was water in the pipes. The water flowed at a low pressure but it was enough to make sure that I was squeaky clean.
Looking at myself in the mirror I could see the clear changes in my face. It looked dirtier, drier, hairier and more wrinkled than it was before. I was so skinny that I could see the outline of my cheekbones. I looked tired, my eyes looked droopy and for some weird reason I spotted little cracks on my forehead. While inspecting myself in the dim light of the gym bathroom, the door opened. I turned around in a bit of shock and I saw Sara walking in with a towel over her naked body.
