After opening the door, Jordan saw the girl close one of the drawers and move to a nearby cabinet. She began searching through it, still unaware of their presence. He quietly stepped inside, followed by the others, making sure they didn't make any noise.
Everyone remained as silent as possible, but Felix soon broke that silence. "Why the fuck are we sneaking around? She's already making noise. If there were zombies in here, they would've been eating her by now."
The girl flinched when she heard his voice and pulled back from the cabinet. They could now see her clearly. Her hair was pure white, her skin pale, and her eyes had no color except for the black of her pupils. She wore a black shirt and skirt but had no shoes on.
Amanda glared at Felix, then looked back at the girl with a gentle expression. She slowly walked toward her, careful not to scare her.
Just as Amanda was about to speak, Julie jumped in, unable to hold back her curiosity. "Hi there," she greeted, staring at the girl's hair and eyes. "Why do you look like that?"
The girl tilted her head a little, as if she was trying to figure out what Julie's question even meant. She didn't seem sure how she was supposed to respond.
Felix leaned forward, his tone rude and impatient. "Do. You. Speak. English?"
The girl said nothing to him, but her eyes showed that she thought his question was stupid.
Felix's eyebrow twitched as he grew more annoyed. "Look here, you little shit. What the fuck are you doing here? And don't even pretend you don't know what the fuck I'm saying, cuz your expression says you know damned well what I just said."
Amanda stepped in before he could go further. "Hey! That's no way to talk to a child! That could just be her way of displaying that she may be frightened!"
"Frightened?!" Felix shouted, not believing it. "This little shit has been making all kinds of noise in here, without a care in the world! Frightened, my ass."
The girl stayed calm, her eyes moving back and forth between Amanda and Felix as they argued.
Seeing the need to hurry this along, Jordan interrupted their disagreement. "Enough, you two. We have to make sure this child is going to be safe. The more time we spend here arguing, the longer it's going to take."
For once, Amanda and Felix both agreed that Jordan was right and stopped talking. Neither of them wanted to remain outside much longer since it was getting late.
Skyler chose to handle the situation in a gentler way. She approached the girl, knelt down, and asked, "Hi, sweetie. Are you alone? What's your name?"
The girl smiled for the first time. "Hi, my name is Lieselotte, but you can call me Lilo. Nice to meet you."
"Ah, Lilo? Well, hi, Lilo," Skyler replied kindly. "My name is Skyler. Are you alone?"
Lilo shook her head. "No, I'm not. My friends are in the back."
Lilo shifted her gaze to the door leading to the stockroom. If anyone was really back there, they would have come out when Felix shouted. To be safe, Jordan sent Oliver to the door while the rest of the group kept their distance with their weapons ready. Confused, Lilo simply watched what they were doing but didn't get involved.
Oliver placed his hand on the doorknob and looked at Jordan. Jordan nodded once, signaling him to go ahead. With Jordan's approval, Oliver turned the doorknob and pushed the door open. He then immediately stepped back. The others took aim as the door swung wide, waiting to see what would come out. There was nothing but silence.
Several tense seconds passed without a single person coming out. Eventually, Jordan decided to speak up. "Is anyone there?!"
There was no answer, only the sound of cans clattering inside. Oliver moved closer and leaned in cautiously to check the room. The moment he peeked through the doorway, a Zed was right there. It grabbed his gun, and the shot he fired didn't hit.
Oliver struggled with the Zed as it forced him back into the main area of the shop. Unable to keep his balance, he was knocked onto the ground, allowing the Zed to get on top of him. Oliver held the barrel with one hand and the stock with the other, keeping the weapon across his body to stop the Zed from biting him. Instead, its teeth bit down on the middle of the gun. More Zeds came out of the room and headed directly toward Oliver. They began crouching around him to eat him alive, but before they could touch him, the Jordan and Skyler opened fire.
"Stop! They're my friends!" Lilo cried out as the two members of the Aurum Wolves killed the Zeds one after another with quick shots to the head.
The fight ended almost as soon as it started. Their suppressed weapons prevented the gunfire from attracting other Zeds, but they still avoided firing unnecessary rounds when possible so they wouldn't waste ammunition. Jordan bent down and extended his hand to Oliver. With Jordan's help, he got back on his feet and let out a shaky sigh of relief.
"Fuck, bro. They nearly had me."
"Next time, try not to do something so stupid again," Jordan said firmly. "You should've waited for them to come out like the rest of us."
"Sorry, bro. Won't happen again. I hope."
Aiden was amazed by what he had just seen. It was the kind of thing he thought he would only see in a movie.
Lilo, however, was clearly upset. "Why did you kill my friends?!"
Amanda knelt beside her and gently placed her hands on Lilo's cheeks. Lilo calmed down a little, but she still looked unhappy.
"I'm sorry, sweetie, but they weren't your friends anymore," Amanda explained. "If you want, we could be your friends now! Would you like to come with us?"
Lilo stared at her for a moment, then smiled brightly. The change in her mood was sudden, but nobody commented on it. "Okay! You're not my friends yet, but maybe you'll become my friends later!"
Amanda replied with a friendly tone, knowing Lilo might need more time to trust them. "Ah, of course! I do hope we manage to win over your friendship, little one!"
Felix rolled his eyes and groaned. The thought of having to escort another kid annoyed him. "Are you kidding me?! This isn't part of our mission!"
Fed up with his behavior, Skyler confronted him. "Didn't you just agree with checking up on her?"
"I didn't expect to actually have to bring her along!"
"Well, things won't always play out the way you want them to."
Irritated, Felix's gaze drifted to Amanda and Lilo. He stared at them for a few seconds, then smirked, making Skyler wonder if he was planning to do something bad to them. She wasn't sure if her suspicion was correct, so she stayed quiet and decided to observe him discreetly.
After watching Amanda lead Lilo toward the other three children, Oliver furrowed his brow, clearly confused by how fast her mood had changed. "I don't know, man. This girl is weird as fuck." Despite what Oliver had just said, Lilo didn't seem to care.
Aiden remained curious about Lilo. Just like Julie, he was interested in her unusual appearance. White hair was strange enough, but white irises too? That was far from normal. He remembered Julie's earlier question, already aware she had been referring to both Lilo's hair and her eyes even though she hadn't said it outright. Now that things had settled down, he brought it up again, this time more directly. "Hey, you never did answer. Why do your eyes and hair look like that?"
Lilo tilted her head once more. "What do you mean?" she asked, calm and expressionless, like she genuinely didn't understand the question.
"Well, they're white."
"Yeah, they are."
Aiden felt insulted by her simple reply, believing she was messing with him. His eye twitched as he tried to explain what he meant. "I know that they're white. I'm trying to ask you why they're white."
Julie stepped in when she noticed the frustration in Aiden's tone. "Why do you even need to know that?"
"I just wanted to know."
"Well, it's none of your business." Julie stated. She briefly closed her eyes and sighed, then turned her attention back to Lilo. "You can ignore him. He could be a bit slow sometimes."
Aiden clenched his teeth, annoyed by the jab. "What was that?"
Setting the example herself, Julie ignored him and continued talking to Lilo. "Anyway, where are you from?"
At that moment, Jordan, having just made sure there were no threats outside, gave the order to leave before Lilo could answer. "All right, team. Let's move out."
The group gathered behind Jordan and stepped out of the ice cream shop. Julie held Lilo's hand, and as they followed Aiden and Lydia, Julie chose to repeat her question. This time, however, Lilo looked away, maintaining her silence. Julie and Lydia glanced at each other, sensing Lilo's hesitation. They were concerned about the strange girl, but they respected her privacy and didn't insist on an explanation.
It did not take long for Aiden to become interested in Lilo's appearance again, but when their eyes met, he immediately glared at her. Intimidated by his hostility, Lilo lowered her gaze and moved a little closer to Julie. Julie quickly told him to stop being so harsh, but he kept staring. Because of that, Lilo's discomfort kept growing.
Felix hardly had any patience for the kids, and all the noise they were making only made it worse. "Quiet down, you stupid runts!" he rudely shouted.
Skyler spoke up, reacting to Felix's loud outburst. "Speak for yourself and keep your voice down. You're louder than them."
"Oh fuck off, you dumb bitch."
Seeing their argument escalate, Oliver decided to intervene. "Hey, bro. Chill out. We got kids over here."
Felix scowled at him. "Oh, you too? Why the fuck would I care about these stupid-ass kids?"
In response to what Felix just said, Aiden got involved. "What?! Say that again!"
"Oh?! Does the little runt want to play too?!" Felix taunted. "What are you gonna do, huh?!"
The commotion drew the attention of nearby infected, who started gathering at the entrances of stores and buildings in the area. They kept their distance from the sunlight, though their exact reasons for doing so remained a mystery.
Lydia was curious about the behavior of the Zeds. "Why do they avoid the sun? I mean, it's not like they're vampires or anything."
Out of everyone, Amanda was the one who answered. "No one knows. At first, people thought they were sensitive to the sunlight, or perhaps that they couldn't see too well when exposed to it. But after countless tests, they confirmed that it does nothing to them."
"So… they just don't like it?"
"It sure seems that way."
As the group passed by, they couldn't help but notice that the infected were standing still and staring directly at them. It wasn't the first time they had seen this happen, but it still made them wonder why the infected acted that way.
Oliver brought up a question that had been on the minds of all survivors in this post-apocalyptic world. He directed it first to Jordan and then to Skyler. "Hey, Jordan, bro, weren't you in the army? How did you guys lose to them? They're slow and dumb, and don't even like to come out during the day."
"I was off duty when the outbreak began," Jordan explained. He, too, was unsure. "How long ago was it again? A year? Quite frankly, I'm not sure why the military fell so hard either. It's one big mystery."
Oliver turned to Skyler next, wanting to hear what she had to say. "What about you, Sky?"
Skyler took a deep breath before talking about her role during those dark days. "I was on active duty, but my mission was to evacuate civilians. One night, while returning with a new batch of survivors, we suddenly lost contact with HQ. At first, we dismissed it as a technical glitch, thinking our defenses were impenetrable by Zeds. But when we arrived the next morning…" Skyler paused, remembering the terrifying scene they had witnessed when they returned.
Amanda saw how tense Skyler looked and gently asked her to continue. "What did you find when you got there? What happened?"
"I'm not exactly sure, but we saw corpses everywhere. We had layers of electric fences that should have kept the infected at bay, but it looked like something tore right through them. It wasn't just one section, though. It was as if they attacked our base from all directions."
Amanda considered another possibility. "Could it have been a massive horde of infected? Maybe their combined weight caused the fences to collapse in some areas."
Skyler shook her head. "Impossible. If you would've seen the state they were left in… Not even a horde of Zeds would have been able to do that. That wasn't all, though. We saw huge claw marks everywhere. On our vehicles, on the walls… The dead people near these claw marks… they were torn apart. Torn to shreds. It was horrendous."
Oliver raised a valid point, attempting to make sense of the situation. "Hold up, hold up. I thought Zeds only came out during the night."
"They do. We assumed this happened overnight since we were still able to contact HQ before we went to sleep."
"Damn, bro. That really sucks," Oliver said, feeling bad for her.
Thinking back on the condition of the base, Skyler's gaze wandered into the distance. "It does. To this day, we still don't know what happened. We don't know what those claw marks belonged to. This all happened within the first week of the outbreak, so we were terrified of encountering more scenes like that as the days passed. Fortunately, we haven't. And honestly, I'm relieved."
Oliver tried to imagine what Skyler had described. "Claw marks on the walls and cars? Shit, man. I'm relieved we haven't seen anything like that either, bro. Sorry you had to go through that, though."
"It's fine," Skyler replied. "I can't say we were the ones who endured it. Those who did… they're all dead. There were no survivors. Hell, maybe they were the lucky ones."