Baskets rattled with the hopeful sound of medical supplies as the four figures walked down the slope of the cinema floor. Matthew was still writhing on the floor. They'd taken a few bottles of water from the display in the pharmacy to help him wash down the medicine.

"Did you find Donovan?" Matthew winced.

Gowan crouched beside him. He used the lit candle to light the remaining two. As the room began to glow, Amy and Violet made a start on sewing, bandaging, and pooling their rudimentary pharmaceutical knowledge together to make the best choices for treatment.

"I'm sorry mate," Gowan said, "We needed to get back to you as fast as we could. We only found Masina through sheer luck. She was in the pharmacy."

Victor stood a little away from the group, not taking his eyes off the wounds being sewn up and the blood glimmering in the candle light before the antiseptic was added.

Elizabeth approached him. "What's next?" she asked.

"We need a bible."

"What about food? Water?"

"We can survive three days without those things if we have a bible." He said plainly. "What you should be doing is being wary of anyone who wasn't originally in the cinema. The evil can enter any place invited. Even once the darkness has departed."

Elizabeth calculated her next words, "Victor, I trust that you know about this. I do. But our little base camp here has prayer. It has you. Now it has light. Aren't all of those things kryptonite to," She thought for a minute, "To whatever took Gideon away?"

"Gideon went to them. They could take him. They could still make it to us. They just have to be invited in. You did that with her." Victor subtly pointed over to Masina who was crouched on the ground with Amy and Violet.

"But she was already here. She was locked in the pharmacy."

Victor turned his eyes towards the industrial vents above them suspiciously. "Evil is smarter than you give it credit for."

"So the demons in this darkness mess are basically vampires? You have to let them in?" Elizabeth tried to mask the skepticism in her voice.

"Ever since the forbidden fruit, we have always had to invite sin in first." The light caught Victor's pensive expression.

Elizabeth found such a statement jarring. Victor looked like the kind of boy whose mother would tousle the mop of his hair and remind him to get a haircut. He looked like the kind of boy who would have his maths homework done three weeks early. She'd seen edgy young adults who were keen to join the armed forces to find a purpose, but she'd never seen a young adult who hadn't been in the armed forces so organically produce such thoughtful cynicism.

Elizabeth looked to the candle light flickering over Matthew who was still lying on the ground. Her gaze drifted across the scene with Amy and Violet beside him, cleaning and bandaging. As Gowan walked back towards Elizabeth and Victor with one of the candles, Emilio dropped himself into one of the fold down cinema seats. His hands were clasped in front of him as he leaned his elbows on his knees as he looked deep in pensive thought.

Elizabeth looked up to Gowan, "Next on the list is bibles. We should probably get blankets and water as well."

Gowan hesitated, "I don't want to be crass, but I've been camping a lot and we should probably consider bathrooms too. Three days is a long time. Even if most of that time is lying in wait."

Elizabeth turned back to Victor, "We can get buckets, food, and water at The Home Store. I know you said we don't need food, but I think it's a smart idea anyway. If it doesn't have a bible, there's a book store near the food court."

Gowan looked over to the silhouette of Emilio, "Perhaps it should just be us this time. Emilio looks like he's going through some stuff right now." He turned to Victor. "Are you sure you need to stay here?"

Victor held up his scrawny, pale arm in the light, "Do you really think I could be much help in anything strength related?"

He turned back to Elizabeth. "I guess we're the expendable ones. Story of my life." He walked back to the group around Matthew to grab one of the now emptied baskets. He transferred the contents of the remaining basket to the floor. "Ok. Let's get going."

Clutching one of the candles and two of the empty baskets, the couple walked back up into the darkness outside the safe haven of the cinema doors.

The flickering light of the candle made the corridors seem longer. There was no hard point where the shadows begun. The metal vents around the building would occasionally pop. Elizabeth hoped it was just the building settling in the unfamiliar solitude that had befallen them.

Elizabeth broke the silence, gesturing with her head back to the general area of the cinema at the top of the escalator. "So what's your read on that whole situation?"

"I've been on worse dates." Gowan's eyes remained scanning the darkness as they walked around the chairs stacked on the tables in the food court. His prominent brow was furrowed in concentration.

She smiled gently before looking up at him from over her shoulder. "Nah, but really. What do you reckon?"

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

He was peering up at the directional signs above their heads that were hazy in the dark. His voice remained deep in concentration. "I've worked in youth ministry long enough to know that any event run by teenagers, even teenagers that are old enough to drink, is going to be a circus. Ever read Lord of the Flies? That book got it wrong. They'll turn on each other even with adult supervision. They weren't even faced with the apocalyp-" He grabbed Elizabeth's basket and pulled her behind him.

The feeling of hot TV static began to trickle down her spine at a shape in the dark corridor in front of them. Scurrying footsteps accompanied a small shadow that hurried into The Home Store. Elizabeth could only let out a single, unbecoming, whisper: "Fuck."

She let out a sharp breath and doubled over with her hands on her knees. Her head was spinning. The images of Gideon's charred remains flaking into the night air flashed in her mind as fear began to weave it's way through the very cells of her body. She wasn't ready to die.

"What do we do?" She whispered frantically.

Gowan put his warm hand on her shoulder. He wasn't afraid. He couldn't explain it. He could just feel rage. This person, this thing, must have heard them in their previous endeavor. The fact it kept to the shadows suggested it wasn't interested in joining their coalition. At this stage, he could only deduct that it would hurt his friends. He couldn't do it again. He wouldn't let his friends be taken by his careless mistake.

He ushered Elizabeth forward.

"What are you doing?!" she hissed.

The flames cast an orange glow across Gowan's face that emphasized his determination that had settled within his dark eyes. "We need to know what that is. Then we need to stop it."

"What?" Elizabeth shook Gowan's hand off her. "What if it's..." She mouthed the words "A demon" as her eyes grew wide.

Gowan began to pick up his pace as he stormed past the bookstore and stood in front of the shattered The Home Store window. "Then I'll show that jerk how big my God is."

Before Elizabeth could argue, he had already began to crunch through the broken glass. She closed her eyes and sighed, following after the stubborn man who was potentially going to lead them to their deaths.

The inside of the store was eerily silent. There were no footsteps. There was no rustling. The pair were all alone with their candle light, surrounded by a cold womb of darkness that ascended into the raised ceiling above them where the drab fluorescent light fixtures hid impotently. The racks of clothes and shelves of homewares continued onward, seemingly forever, into the endless expanse which their eyes could not perceive.

Gowan steered them towards the bedding sections. They found an abandoned trolley which they began to fill with a number of thick throw blankets. Some linen sheets were taken just in case they needed more makeshift tourniquets.

Each step they took would echo through the store. Each step grew louder and louder in Elizabeth's mind. Anxiety rose in her chest as she continued to walk forward. She couldn't do it anymore. She froze.

"Come on. The longer we're out here, the longer we're unsafe." Gowan tried to hurry her reassuringly.

A small sob escaped her lips. "I can't."

She'd had to counsel veterans at her work who had come back from combat. She could empathise, but was fully aware she could never really comprehend what they had gone through.

The one that always stuck with her was the man who would simply go to rock concerts and sit up at the bar with a drink in his hand. He just wanted watch the crowds and contemplate that he was a nobody in a room of smiling people. His girlfriend had died while he was on deployment. In her note, she detailed her last moment of going to a local concert but feeling so alone even though all of her friends stood around her. She said her goodbyes to her friends and went home. She wrote an apology note for cheating. She was found later the next day.

The veteran told Elizabeth that he just wanted to feel what she felt and maybe he would understand what was going through her head. The unfortunate thing was that over time, he did. During a meeting, he had told Elizabeth that it hadn't mattered what he'd had to do during boot, what he had to lug around on deployment. He said that the heaviest thing in his life was coming home to an empty house and realising that the feeling of solitude never left him. Even when he was in a crowded room.

Standing next to Gowan, Elizabeth got it now. She felt nothing. She felt like she was the only person left in the world. She was trapped in a prison guarded by demons like it was fucking Azkaban and she felt alone. Why wouldn't she? They were all strangers.

"Hey." Gowan moved closer to Elizabeth. He tenderly put his hand on her elbow. "I get it."

She turned to him, pulling away. The hurt in her brown eyes swelled in the glow of the blessed candle. "No. You don't. We're strangers. I didn't even get through one date with you."

He placed his free hand beside hers on the long bar of the shopping trolley. "If we can make it through tonight, we have 48 hours. After that, I promise to take you on a real date. No blood."

"But you don't know that. You don't know that the world won't just end. What about all the people outside of this shopping center? The people who don't have a wiry little guy on hand to tell them about beeswax candles and bibles?"

Gowan nudged the trolley forward. "We all have questions and the only way to answer them is to keep putting one foot after the other to make it out of here."

Elizabeth focused on her feet. She slowly moved forward with the trolley as Gowan placed some bottled water and various snack items in the cart as they walked through the party food aisle and towards the stationary and books section. Gowan's eyes darted around the shelves as he tried to spot the figure that they had seen running into the store. No luck. Maybe all the luck, depending on what the creature was and if it wanted anything from them.

As they passed the kitchenware section, Gowan had an idea. He pointed to the knives. "Maybe we should get weapons."

"We just watched demon-air evaporate a dude into space and you think their one weakness is going to be a $7 knife?"

"What's the alternative? Candles and hoping for the best?"

He had a point. Jerking her head towards the larger knifes that came with silicone sheathes, she lowered her voice. "Get one for me and one for you. Keep it in your pocket. They might come in handy for general crafting but I don't think we should be giving them out to a room full of kids when one is already bleeding out." She thought for a moment. "And we need to make sure we get ahold of Victor's knife too until he proves he's not going to get stabby again."

Gowan pulled the two knives out of their cardboard packaging by using a less-secured pair of shoddy kitchen scissors. He put the weapon in the waistband of his pants. Elizabeth did the same.

By the time they got to the book section, the cart was heavy with items they thought would be useful. Buckets, kitty litter, toilet paper, food, water. Unfortunately, the bible was nowhere to be found in The Home Store. Maybe management found it too divisive.

Whatever the reason, they knew they'd need to make an additional trip to the shuttered book store further down the mall corridor. This would take them further away from the cinema. As the glass crunched under the wheels of the heavy trolley, they realised they'd need to make a detour first to dump the goods. For they were less limber with a loaded shopping cart.

This became more apparent as a dark figure approached them.

It was bigger than the previous shadow.

This one did not run away.