So I realize there are some things I should have done with this story. I should have given it a title, made a separate world for it, and given you a character description. Whatever. I'll give you a character description in another post. Right now I'll just continue the excerpt I began. There's not enough action here either. It's coming.
I led Mothy through the town. It was raining heavily that early evening. It was way too cold for July. The mood was as gloomy as the weather. Our bare arms and legs were covered in goosebumps. The only sounds were the beating rain, the splashing of our footsteps, and our shuddering breath. We were hungry. We'd run out of food a couple of days ago, but the weather had been so persistently cold and wet that we'd put off going for more. It hadn't been any fun, crouching in a lean-to in the middle of the woods, but it beat walking a mile in this weather. Now it couldn't be held off any longer. So we waded through the deserted streets, looking for gardens to steal food from. We were sopping wet, hair plastered flat to our backs and faces. Runoff dripped from Mothy's bangs into her eyes. Suddenly, she fell on her knees and landed with a little splash on the wet sidewalk. "You all right, Mothy?" When she didn't get up, I turned. She was slowly shaking her head. "Come on, Mothy. Let's go." She looked up at me hopelessly. "I can't...I..." she whispered, lips barely moving. I knelt on the sidewalk next to her. Water lapped up onto the sidewalk and over my knees; the streets were flooding. "Let's go. We need to eat, Mothy." I said. She just kept shaking her head. I realized that the supermarket was only a few streets away. That was real food, not something just stolen from a garden. Real food. Just thinking about it made my stomach give me a particularly painful reminder that it had been empty for two days. I winced. I knew we shouldn't risk public buildings, which had security cams and people who were convinced that I was violent and dangerous. But my hunger won out. On an empty stomach, I had little willpower. Anyway, I reasoned, there wouldn't really be a crowd in this weather, would there? "Moth, come on," I said gently, "We'll go to the grocery store. It's not far from here. We can get anything you want there. What would you like?" "Pizza," she whispered, "with all the toppings." I smiled. That was an inside joke, a family thing. "Okay. Let's go get pizza." Talking about pizza must have made her hungry enough to move. Slowly, she got to her feet, and I took her little hand. We sloshed across streets and sidewalks, rain beating down on us, water rising higher up our legs every time we stepped down into a new road. The parking lot of the supermarket was a giant puddle. Our footsteps splashed and sent ripples across the surface of the water, bigger than the rings the raindrops made. There were no cars. I had been right about the place being empty. When we reached the store, the automatic doors hummed and slid open, and we were hit by a violent blast of air-conditioning. We were soaked, and that cold air was a kind of torture. But hunger was a worse torture, and all that good food was inside. So, shivering uncontrollably, we stepped into the store. We roamed the aisles, trying to be sneaky, grabbing things from open shelves rather than trying to get at the packaged stuff. Fifteen minutes later, I felt like an ice cube and Mothy was being less and less subtle. I figured it was about time to leave, but..."One more thing." I told Mothy. That was a big mistake, and even then, I kind of knew it. But I did it anyway.
TO BE CONTINUED...
