Arrival

David, a mid-twenties man with short black hair, was walking down an alley with his 3 man team. Their objective is to scavenge some supplies like food, medicine, and clothes. For now, since the colony was short on food, they have to go a bit further from the base to find any food resource. Usually, it was not that far from the base to scavenge for food. But after years of survival, food around the area near the base was depleted. Many minimarkets have already looted, houses have been emptied. To even find canned food is a miracle.

The base is a survivor shelter surrounded by a big wall of scraps and metal. At first, it was just a fence and covering a small amount of area. However, the committee, who built this shelter, willpower was amazing that they keep expanding their territory and finally able to build a wall. Since then, they started to recruit so many survivors and created a colony to help everyone. Thus, they started to feel safe. But not for long.

With more people joining their colony, they started to run out of food. Starve, famine, and crime are plaguing the colony more than the zombies itself. That's when things get ugly. Everyone fighting for food that the committee gave. Until at last the committee, people who built this colony, chose to no longer give food. Instead, the survivor has to feed themselves. The colony will only give protection with wall and security unit so no crime will be committed inside the wall. Crime rates were at first rise up. But after a while, people realize that they will run out of people to rob if this continues. In the end, people started to go out of the wall and search for food. However, only trained hunter and people who were used to and still remember surviving outside were the ones who are able to come back.

David is one of them. He was lucky that his late friend was some kind of survival expert. He was always with him until his friend got badly sick ..., and died.

Now, he is living his best trying to repay what his friend had taught to him. He wanted to make a good use of it.

Years passed by, now David and his team had to go away from the base with traveling time around six hours to go and come back to the wall. Usually, it would only take an hour to go to the farthest place the survivor usually came.

"We can't keep going like this for years ahead," said Derek. A tall man with age around David. He had a fine muscular body that could be used to move a heavy object. He carried a baseball bat in his right hand while holding some rocks he picked up along the way.

"Quite smart for a muscle-guy to consider that," joke Jay. He is a short man with a grey hoodie masking his head.

"Years surviving in this world really took my mind into my breaking point. Good things I can endure it. Or else, I would've gone insane."

"I agree with you though. What do you think, David?" They turn attention to David who was peeking into a road full of broken cars.

"I agree. We should go to some herbalist store or somewhere we can get some seeds." Actually, the idea of finding seeds was his late friend's idea. But they never got a chance to realize it.

After scanning the are for a while, David feels that the road ahead is safe. Though, he never really sure about it. He waved his hands to the other two signaling them to follow his lead and walk slowly. Derek and Jay followed David's steps while looking at their surrounding. They slipped between the cars trying to go to a mall across the road.

David knew this is the worst decision he could've ever made. But, taking a detour would take a lot of time they might unable to go back to the colony before the sunset. So, it's out of option. He knew that cars contain so many useful things that may help them. However, the risk of turning the alarm on is too much. It will attract many Zombies and their position will be overrun by those creatures. That's why they try to not touch the car.

Walking around cars like this brings another problem. While the place is quiet enough for David to feel safe, doesn't mean there are no Zombies either. If you look inside, there are many corpses that may be woken up by a slight noise. Their noise might trigger something from the car and attract another Zombie in the process. Also, they can't always check below the car just to see if there are any Crawler below.

After proceeding slowly through the road, they finally arrived at the mall. Crossing a road full of broken cars is already a problem. Looting a mall is another matter. He only brings a team of three because usually, the destination was a small minimarket, house, or cafe where they don't need to go thoroughly a wide area of search. Also, David has a habit to avoid a possibly crowded place such as park, recreation area, and mall. But, after a fair amount of attempts of failure finding loots, they chose to try the mall hoping to find a good amount of foods. So, it was kind of a change of plan to actually go to a mall.

They passed the parking area cautiously after looking at the surrounding. A few Zombie were spotted wandering around the parking area. Their appearances varying to each other. Some are a mindless walking corpse with their limbs intact. The things that differentiate them with human are their attitudes and their rotting body. The others were Crawler. They are Zombie but with no leg. That forced them to move using their hands. These two are the most usual zombie they encounter around the base. There are a lot of another type of zombie sighting reports but those reports mostly came from survivors that went too far.

They used some car to cover their movement considering Zombies vision, while not perfect, is still working. Their hearing, though, is what worries David so much. They moved swiftly between the cars hoping their feet didn't make enough noise to attract Zombies. At one moment, they had to stop. A Zombie walked in front of them, not noticing them, and slowly bumped into another car. David wanted to gasp but a little noise would attract that Zombie. So, they stayed silent until the Zombie moved away from that place.

'We are lucky that the car's alarm didn't go off,' he thought.

They continued to move. Several zombies walked past them but none of them seems to notice their presence. After a few minutes, they finally arrived at the mall entrance. Looking inside from a broken glass door, they find only a few zombies were present. However, David is cautious enough to consider that they can't fully take a look inside since they can't see behind the shelves and shadows.

"We're gonna take the backdoor. I don't feel like coming from the front." David whispers to Jay and Derek.

They nodded. Followed by David's hand wave, they start to move to the back. Luckily, between the mall's wall and the bushes, there was some space for them to move. While occasionally looking out, they keep proceeding slowly until at last, they arrived at the backdoor with a sign, "staff only".