Mariah's P.O.V.
Location; Shopping mall
It's really silent without Katie here, usually I hear her complain or just make one of her dark jokes, but today all I have is Leo poking me.
Not that I am complaining about Leo, but I just hate it without Katie, and she doesn't even have time for thinking about me.
"Mariah? Do you even listen to me?" Leo says, I just nod while I am still zoned out, I hear him sigh and then stand in front of me with both of his hands in my arms.
"she will be fine Mariah, you are not her mother, stop be concerned" he says, a little bit too harsh.
"yeah, I know."
I am in front of my bed with my little backpack on it, we all have decided that it would be smart to always bear a backpack with useful things with us. While Luna and Xiomara will stay here.
I think Xiomara starts to get impatient, she doesn't seem like a person that likes sitting and doing nothing. And I can see in Luna's eyes that she wants to come too. Brandon comes in the bed aisle and talks to Luna and Xiomara, I notice two walkie talkies in his hands.
"if we have problems, you will hear from us" he says while reaching one of the walkie talkies out to Luna, while she only nods.
"are you two ready?" he asks us, Leo, Hua and I look at each other and then back to Brandon, and we nod.
We all move down to the basement, Brandon wanted to check out the electricity in the control room, but we agreed that it would be the smartest to move down to the basement to check out the waterpipe.
We move silently down the escalator, now that I think about it, if we get electricity the escalator would start working again.
later Leo's POV
There doesn't reach any sunlight down to the basement, so we all are using our flashlight, Brandon walks in the front, while I walk behind, both our intention was it to protect Mariah and Hua in the middle.
Now that I think about it both Mariah and Hua must be under 18, I know Mariah's turning 17 soon, but Hua looks younger.
"we are here" Brandon says from the front, I only now notice that there is water up to the middle of my shin. It stinks down here.
We all stand in front of a wall full with different pipe and big water filters. Brandon uses his flashlights to look at that wall, but he seems more than clueless.
"Leo, u said that you have experience with this" he says while looking the most confused I have ever seen him. I move closer and also using my own flashlight. I can feel that Brandon is restless, probably because he feels useless right now.
"Brandon"
"yeah, son?"
"do you mind going to the control room" I say, I think he understands that he is just interrupting me. He nods and takes Hua with him. Now am I alone with Mariah. Mariah?
I move around, using my flashlight to see Mariah but she is a little blinded by it, I choose to go to her, my hands on her waist pulling her closer into a hug.
I can't see shit only my flashlight lighting down on the ground from her waist where my hands are positioned and there I see, two feet I look up with my flashlight just to see a Z standing in front of us.
Mariah POV
Leo hugs me tightly, but his body stiffens suddenly. I am about to move my body, but instead Leo pushes me to the side of where we stood.
Now I sit here in the water, just to see a Zombie trying to bite Leo. I was about to pull my knife to help Leo, but it must have fallen out while Leo pushed me. Fuck, he can't die, not now. The snarls of the Zombie are the only thing I can hear besides the drumming of my heart. My breathing becomes ragged as I look at Leo who's struggling. I clench my fist snapping myself out of whatever panic I was in.
I take my flashlight in my mouth, and start searching in the water for my knife. Tears are about to fill my eyes but I shake them away. Not now Mariah, you need to focus. I'm searching as fast as I can to find my knife that seems to have disappeared. I'm so stupid, I should've taken my tanto or gun. The only reason I don't have them with me is because the gun would attract more zombies and my Tanto needs to be sharpened.
I catch a glimpse of something shiny. I look towards it and there beside the pipe lays my knife and I quickly get up and slide towards the Knife. I grab it feeling the weight of it in my hand. I look towards the Zombie's who's fully on top of Leo.
I pull my arm back before throwing my knife at the Zombie, the knife lodging itself into the temple of the Zombie who immediately stops thrashing. Leo pushes it off and I run over to him and crouch beside him.
"Are you alright?" I ask as I help him sit up. He stares at me for a second before grabbing me by the back of my neck and slamming his lips on mine. At first, I'm shocked but I kiss him back and my hands finds his cheeks, I caress them. I pull away placing my forehead on his and gives him a relief filled smile.
"Thank you" He mutters before pecking my lips one last time. We pull away and I help him up, we both stare at the Zombie corpse, Leo bends down and grabs my knife from the Zombie's head and gives it back to me. He seems to notice the pout on my face before grabbing my hand and pulling me to him.
"Hey, I'm alright, I promise" He says moving a piece of hair that had fallen in front of my face behind my ear. I nod at him and muster up a small smile. He sends me a grateful smile then leans down and kisses my forehead. Leo pulls away and looks at the water pipe.
How did that Z surprise us? it seems like it was waiting for us to be alone and distracted, but that's impossible, but not only that, the Z moved so fucking silent, we couldn't hear him?
Leo looks at the Water filter this time, while I hold up my flashlight as he inspects everything.
"I thought you were a soldier" I say, how would he know about this. He told me he got into the army when he turned 18, he's right about 19.
"Well, my dad used to teach me stuff like this all the time" He explains as he scans the construction in front of us.
"Would've thought you knew something about this, you did after all set up the whole radio thing back in Clevedale" Leo says glancing at me. I shrug my shoulders.
" From the age of 14 I began taking online courses on different kinds of careers. Engineering was the first one and I know a little about the medical field." I explain then a small smile makes it onto my lips. "And using flammable things as bombs"
"Why would you need a bomb?" Leo asks glancing at me; I shrug my shoulders.
"Worst case scenarios." I say.
We notice a water filter that's overflowing, I think we found the problem. Leo flashes his light from the side and so he opens the filter. Leo then flashes his light back into the water filter
"oh god" Leo says in disgust. He puts his hand into the water filter, and there he pulls out a Z arm. The arm is not even the disgusting part, the smell is.
"well, you found the problem" I say to Leo while moving my flashlight to him.
"I need to get this filter cleaned, and then we are good to go" He starts to clean the filter with no problem.
The light in the basement turns on, seems like Brandon succeeded in getting the electricity back. We are standing in the hall way, and we were on our way back, we couldn't see the big horde of zombies that were down the hall before, but now we can see them, and they can see us.
They growl and starts running, shoot they are not the slow Z's, Katie gave me permission to call them flash, even though she thought that it was childish. Both Leo and I start to run out of the basement and up the stairs. We spot Brandon and Hua not so far from us.
"Run!" I yell at them and noticing the big horde behind us, they do and we all run towards the escalator. I look around trying to find some sort of way to get them off our backs "As soon as I'm up you roll that plant down!" I exclaim pointing at the plant that's in between the two escalators. Brandon nods and gets ready as soon as he's up. I hear the snarling of the Zombies that prompt me to run even faster. As soon as I'm off the Escalator he kicks the plant down and it hits the horde of Zombies knocking them all down.
"Give me a piece of your shirt" I say to Leo who just removes his shirt all together. I look through my bag finally finding what I was looking for, I pull out a can of cooking spray before pulling off the top. I grab Leo's shirt as I hear the Zombies struggling to get up from on top of each other. I stuff half of Leo's shirt into the can before grabbing my lighter. I light the shirt on fire then quickly throw it to the zombie horde, they look at the thing before snarling. They start to move towards us but it's too late. It exploded. I hear the loudest noise ever. I hold onto my ears as they start to ring.
My hearing is soon returned and I look at my friends and give them a thumbs up, then the sprinklers go off.
"Hey, the pipe is up and running again!"
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Writers; Kaynad M. & Maryam S.
Word count; 1742