𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬 [𝐦𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐫 𝐱 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫]

look alive, sunshine

"Would you be quiet? You're going to wake up Mike."

"Too late," I said, rubbing my eyes.

"Sorry," Will said apologetically.

"It's fine. We've got nothing but time, anyway. I can sleep forever if I want to," I said, sitting up. Lucas, Max, Dustin, Will, and I were in an aisle of an abandoned grocery store. The cereal aisle, to be exact.

Every night, the kids, teens, and adults took separate aisles. Which is bullshit, because I'm sixteen years old. Lucas and Dustin are seventeen, Max is sixteen, and Will is fifteen.

The "teens" weren't even teens. Steve is twenty, while Jonathan and Nancy are twenty one.

"Does this place have a clothes section? I've been wearing this polo for a week," I said. We don't have much clothes-wise. Usually we raided clothes stores, but we haven't seen any in a while.

"Let's go look," Max said. We stood up and wandered the store.

We found a clothes section relatively quickly, and ran over to it. The clothes weren't too bad; sometimes we try to raid clothes stores but there's too much 'monster goo' all over them.

"Do you ever miss life before this?" Max asked, picking up a pair of jean shorts.

"All the time. I'm kind of hoping the government or something will save us," I said with a chuckle.

"I'm surprised we haven't run into anyone else. It's been a while since we went on the run," Max said.

"I guess. We don't really need to meet anyone else. This isn't really a time for making friends," I said, flipping through a clothes rack.

"Yeah, but it'd be nice to expand our team," she said.

"It's big enough," I said sternly. Sure, Max was one of my closest friends, but we don't get along most of the time. Before the 'incident', we were at each other's throats. I guess being on the run brought us closer together.

I picked up a dark blue long sleeve polo and hung it on my arm. Max already had a couple of outfits. I didn't see the point. There's no one for me to try to impress, so why would I need so many different options? I usually wore one shirt for a week, and then get a new one. Disgusting, I know. I guess I just don't really care anymore.

Well, until I met her. But I'll get to that eventually.

I know what you're thinking.

"Wait, how do they shower?"

It was a concern for a couple days when we first went on the run. Most of the water was contaminated, so clean water was scarce.

The further we got from Hawkins, the cleaner the water got. Sometimes we break into abandoned houses and use their showers. Everywhere was like a ghost town now.

Max and I walked back to the aisle, several outfits in her hands and a single shirt in mine. I sighed and dropped my shirt on my sleeping bag. I forgot pants.

Max set her stuff down and sat next to Lucas, indicating I was on my own for getting pants. I trudged back over to the clothes section and found a couple pairs of joggers on the ground. Yeah, sure. This works.

—

The next morning, Hopper woke me up. I slept in super late, something I had gotten used to now. Like I said before, we had all the time in the world.

We gathered our things and discarded anything we didn't need anymore. Then, we headed out. It wasn't too hot out, which was concerning. Six months ago, it was April.