You wait for daylight

Another night in the cold dank cellar is preferable to trying to move around in the dark so you sleep, or at least try to, until the light comes peeping in through the window. Taking stock of your situation you decide you have to move today, and you open a can a fruit cocktail for breakfast. Besides your makeshift bathroom is beginning to stink and you need to find a better place to live.

You head up the stairs and start to look around the nearby stores in the mall. Then you hear screaming again. You wonder if you will ever be able to get the sounds of screaming out of your mind. You wonder whether to hide again, or maybe it is time to act.

As it was a woman's scream you decide almost at once to find out what is going on and see if you can help. It is going to be a lonely world with almost everyone dead and you are going to need, and want a woman. You make your way down to the end of the mall, moving at a slow jog towards where the food court was located. Your hear snarling like some wild beast, and then you hear the scream again.

You slow down as come up on the food court. The court is well lighted from the skylights above so even thought the lights are out you see at once the situation. There is a girl, up on a counter in where the Sbarro Pizza had been. She was surrounded by three snarling dogs, already gone feral, who are looking at her as an easy meal.

Once again you think about how fragile modern society was, in a span of a few weeks things went from comfortable and secure to claw and fang. Then you realize that you left the gun in your basement home. Knowing there is not time to return for it you move swiftly picking up a piece of steel that is lying in the jumble of tables and chairs in the center of the food court. It looks like it was a piece of chair leg, but now it is your weapon. It is light and you swish it easily, a deadly club for you to use on the dogs. You begin to yell as you make your way towards the vicious beasts that were a few short weeks ago were a family pet.

The wild dogs turn and look at you with hungry, predator eyes. You look like easy prey to them, and they move towards you. The first dog a large German Shepard, leaps at you, and you swiftly split his skull with the hard metal chair leg. The dead dog falls to the ground without a sound. The next dog, some kind of mutt that has some Doberman in it, rushes you and you jam the metal chair leg into the dog's mouth, pushing the sharp fangs away from you. Kicking the dog hard in the stomach you cause it to move away from you. Then you feel the third dog land on your back and you are fighting for your life as the snarling teeth are inches from your face, your hands around the dogs neck trying to keep the teeth away from you. The dog you kicked in the stomach is trying to grab onto your legs and only your frantic kicking keeps it from tearing open the flesh on your legs.

Thank fully the girl is not stupid and she has armed herself with a large knife from the Sbarro area and stabs the dog on your legs in the abdomen, causing it run away with its mortal wound. She then moves up and stabs the dog trying to tear your throat out in the back and the beast lets out a yelp and snaps at her, missing her hand by scant inches. You bring you feet up and thrust the dog away from you picking up your metal chair leg. Faced with both you and the girl the dog slinks off dripping blood from the deep stab wound on its back.

Shaking with adrenalin and fear you collapse as the dogs leaves. You look over at the girl noticing for the first time she is not as young as she appears. Her face is that of a woman in her early twenties. She has dark hair, a very thin body, with almost no breasts.

"Hi, my name is Alex Smith. Hell of a way to meet, huh?"

She looks at you with big brown eyes, and you realize that she is very pretty, and answers guardedly, "My name is Tomi. Thank you for saving me."

You answer her, "I think you saved me. I am not much good at the hero stuff apparently. So tell me how did you end up on top of the counter in Sbarro fighting off wild dogs?"