Days Gone By

Chapter 2

"Do you remember memes?" Barry asked as we walked down a quiet, desolate road on our way back to the supermarket to scope the place out. Although it wasn't something I wanted to do, there might have been good supplies there, it looked untouched besides the Drudgers, and they barely actually ate anything from stores and warehouses.

"Yeah I do, vaguely." I answered, Barry began to giggle under his breath.

"All I've been thinking this entire walk is knuckles going 'do you know da weh' and I can't stop laughing about it in my head!" Barry laughed louder this time. I did a bit of a one syllable laugh which turned out to be just breath coming from my nose with a slight sound. Barry took a deep breath after laughing and wiped a tear from his eye, continuing on the road.

"I really don't think we're going the right way." he added. I gestured over to a street sign that was scratched off a bit and only had half of the street name left on it, green metallic paint must have landed on the pavement underneath, only to be blown away in the warm summer air, never to be seen again.

"We saw this sign yesterday and walked about 5 more minutes and we got to the store. We're going the right way." I explained. Barry agreed with me by gesturing down the road and shrugging. We continued walking down the street until the plaza came into our view. The wind blew into me, brushing some leafs up against my jeans. It was colder than yesterday, winter was coming fast. I hiked my backpack higher up on my shoulders, and jogged to catch up to Barry.

"I was thinking we go into the grocery store beside the Zellers, Zellers has been shut down for a while now, I think this one just remained abandon." Barry explained, I nodded and pointed to the dollar store next door.

"We can check there for stuff to if we have room or time.” I added, Barry agreed and we continued walking. I think a lot of the time, me and Barry both had the same plan in our minds, but we needed to just say it out loud to make sure the other agreed. Even though they would, I think it was just a mentality we needed. Or, we just needed to know that within this world, at least one person was going to be there to follow the other to the end of the universe.

When we got up to the doors of the grocery store, the first thing I noticed was the broken front window. It was big enough for many people to fit in, so the chances of Drudgers lurking in the shadows of the store were higher. Drudgers preferred dark places, I had noticed this in the early days. Their brains were probably strained from the chemicals in the pills, and they may have been sensitive to light. Or maybe they just thought being in the dark was more humorous, either way, I was sure we would run into some of them in the dim store. Barry slowly crept over to the broken window and stepped inside, the glass crunching harshly under his shoes. I winced at the echoing sound. He stopped moving for a moment, and silence reigned. Once we determined no Drudgers had heard us, Barry continued inside.

Once he was fully in and no more loud crackling glass sounds filled the air, I followed, taking one step at a time ensuring I wasn't making loud noises either. Once we both entered the store entirely, we walked over to the shelf area, scanning the metal for some supplies. There were a few cans of corn, and a can of green beans. I placed them inside my backpack and continued further into the store, going up and down the isles on the right while Barry went up and down them from the left. I found a few more cans, but a lot of them were either rusted to a point where we would get sick if we ate anything inside and the others were already opened and dumped everywhere.

“Hey Ethan, come here for a second.” Barry called from the left, I placed the last good can into my bag and walked towards his voice. It was getting progressively darker as I walked over. I pulled out my flashlight and flicked it on, just so I could see where I was going. I was a little blind, and my glasses had broken a long time, so I needed to have at least some light to navigate through things. I spotted Barry standing in front of a counter, his flashlight in his hand, pointing at a glass cabinet that was smashed.