RADIO

chapter 23

The rain poured and the three teens searched for items. 

“We should invest in umbrellas” Tris huffed, hating her soaked clothes and hair. “Lets just get this stuff and go” Duchess ordered, leading them into a store. It was relatively small and looked like a gas station. 

Duchess looked up at the sign of the store and bit her tongue, “not here” she mumbled, moving on. 

“But there might be stuff in there!” Jane called after her. Duchess then gestured to the barricaded doors and the walkers clawing at them through the scratched up windows. “Oh” she frowned a bit. 

“Here!” She pointed to a supermarket down the way. “Theres gotta be stuff in there!” She said, breaking off into a small run with the others following behind her. They ran past the supermarket and a few wanderers caught their eye. “We should be careful” Tris said. 

They made it into the supermarket and the doors were closed. Duchess pouted and examined the area. “Well what now?” Tris asked. Jane grabbed a crowbar from her bag, “here” she spoke, lodging the metal in between the broken automatic doors. She pulled back and let out a low growl of effort. Duchess used her body weight to help push and successfully pried the door open. 

Tris jumped up to help and squeezed her small frame through the opening and used her foot and shoulders to push the door open wide enough for the others to walk through. “Thanks” Jane spoke, her voice echoing slightly in the new room. 

Duchess looked up and scanned the supermarket, almost amazed. She stepped off the carpet and onto the smooth tile floor. She slipped and fell un gracefully on her ass, “shit” she cursed under her breath, rubbing her tailbone as she got back up quickly. 

Jane broke out into a laugh and Duchess couldnt help but do so as well. Their laughter echoed through the supermarket and Tris chuckled, “okay you guys, lets get the stuff and go” she encouraged. 

“Okay okay okay” Duchess caught her breath, “you take left side, i'll take the right side and jane, you will take the middle” she ordered. 

“Alright, lets go” Jane said with confidence. 

They split off into their instructed paths and searched the shelves for anything. They were all stripped clean. Tris found some canned goods like fruit and vegetables. Jane found a few bags of expired chips and tossed them aside in annoyance. Duchess found nothing seeing as all the bakery’s were shut down, overrun and abandoned, or just completely empty. 

Duchess peered over a counter and looked around for some more supplies, finding some canned ingredients. She climbed over the counter and grabbed the loot, stuffing it in her bag. She smiled with pride and went to search the back. 

Then a crash came out from behind the back doors, startling her. She jumped and immediately froze up. After the crash the dark haired woman listened for any other sort of noise. She could hear footsteps and clutched the handles to her forearm blades like tonfas. “Oh shit” she mumbled to herself out of fear. 

Meanwhile Jane was still searching for items. She found some canned cat food and put it in her bag for Tris. Then she spotted a large case of water. Her eyed lit up and she ran over to it, opening it with her machete and immediately stuffing the bottles of water into her bag. 

A loud crash rang out from one side of the building. It startled her and she pulled her bag full of water bottles and items close. “Duchess!” She called out. 

She waited a moment for a response but never got one. So she threw her bag over her shoulders and followed the source of the noise. She turned the corner to see Duchess looking over the counter and into the back room where the door slowly swung open. 

"Duchess" she called out in a soft tone. 

Duchess put up one finger and looked into the room to see more wanderers. Although one was standing up tall and behind a fence. She frowned but didn't have time to examine them much when a Siamese wanderer fell out of the room. 

"Woah!" Jane jumped at it's sudden appearance. 

"I thought this place was cleaned out" Duchess frowned. The conjoined beings stumbled and creeped towards them. Duchess grabbed her radio from her bag and immediately contacted Tris. 

"Tris it's time to go" she spoke into the small device. 

Jane clutched her machete that was tied up to the end of her staff, creating a makeshift spear, and grabbed Duchess's arm, pulling her back from the walking corpses that crept closer to them by the second. "Kill it!" Jane whisper yelled. 

"You have the spear" Duchess said, gesturing to her weapon. "I'm on my way" Tris responded through the radio. Duchess tucked the radio away in her bag and Jane clutched her spear until her knuckles turned white. 

She swung her arm down onto the crawling fused corpses and the blade sliced through ones head. Blood splattered and spewed out of its new wound. Inside the shattered skull a 3 inch parasite came crawling out. 

Duchess gagged and turned away,"that is disgusting" she squeaked. Jane groaned in disgust. The other corpse it was fused to struggled to crawl and reached for them. "That is sad" Jane scrunched her nose at the scene. 

Tris finally reached them and stopped in her tracks once she seen the situation. "What happened here?" She asked, looking away from the corpses. 

"Something we shouldn't talk about" Duchess said, pulling out her pistol and shooting the other piece of the wanderer in the head to put it out of its misery. "Let's go" she said.

"Agreed" Tris added. 

The two women followed Duchess back to the front only to be met with more wanderers. "What the..?!" Duchess squeaked, reaching her arms out Infront of the two teens who followed her to stop them from going any further. 

They were conjoined like the last one and they all knew that there was no way through them. “Shit it's a swarm” Tris gasped. 

"Uh Duchess? What do we do?" Jane asked. 

"We run" Duchess ordered.