Mr. Lee was at his wits end. He did not know how much longer he could hold on for. Why did this had to happen to him? He was an upstanding citizen. Mr. Lee always paid his taxes; he never did anything evil and always upheld goodness on his actions. He paid his employees fairly and on time and never gave in to temptation whenever things got tough, doing everything the right way, not the easy way. Mr. Lee always tried to nurture a good soul.
There were so many evil men and people with wicked hearts out and about in this world, so why did the heavens see fit to punish him so?
It was truly remarkable how he had been brought so low by circumstances in three miserly days, but he had no frame of mind to feel awe towards the fickleness of fate.
Three days ago, he was still checking up on the inventory of his small shop. It was not much but it was his. Mr. Lee was very proud to have managed to build something from the ground up with nothing but his own effort.
He did not have a huge enterprise under his name, like many other supermarket chains you could find around without difficulty, but he wouldn’t trade this small store for anything in the world. Mr. Lee was of Chinese descent and arrived in Canada with nothing but the willpower to work and the clothes on his back.
Decades later, Mr. Lee was already getting old, almost at his sixties, with no family to call his own, neither a son to pass on his family name. He did not regret his choices though.
Mr. Lee was an ordinary person like any other, thus he had his fair share of romance during his long years, but he sacrificed everything in favor of working and progressing his carrer. Mr. Lee was always working like a busy bee.
It was not a coincidence then that he managed to build from the ground up all that he did 40 years later, through his own two hands.
Mr. Lee faithfully believed that if you work hard enough and never give in when facing adversity, it is inevitable that success will eventually follow, no matter how many failures you left on your path.
He was starting to consider giving in now, though.
Mr. Lee haven’t had something to eat ever since those blasted earthquakes hit, and the rampage that followed soon after. Everything happened so fast that even now he was not clear on what really came to pass.
One moment he was there, double-checking the list of products available in the store and calculating what orders he had to place for next week with the purpose of restocking, the other moment he was down on the ground together with his employees and his customers.
It had been a fairly quiet night until then, so the store had about half-a-dozen visitors at the time, and together with his two workers on the clock, there were less than ten people there when everything happened.
When the earth stopped shaking, Mr. Lee clearly remembered thanking whoever it was that had constructed the structure and foundation of the shop so thoroughly, without cutting corners. Many other edifices on the street were not so sturdy and had tragically collapsed during the tremors. It wasn’t necessarily that they were poorly made, however.
Never in his wildest dream, had Mr. Lee thought that his humble store would have to deal with earthquake-related issues, given that the city was not located close to any tectonic active areas, but here he was, thanking his lucky stars that the place he decided to set up shop was solid enough to resist the disaster.
However, just as Mr. Lee thought that the worst had passed and he could start assessing the losses he incurred during the turmoil, a crazy man entered the store through the broken glass entrance and started attacking the closest person to the exit.
Some of the customers and one member of his staff tried to separate the aggressor from his victim and hold him down, but the crazed man kept biting anyone that got near without care for his own safety.
When they finally were regaining control of the situation by immobilizing the lunatic, a woman equally out of her mind hurried inside through that broken entrance – which was the only way in an out of the place –, and tackled one of the people who was holding down the first madman to the ground.
All hell broke loose afterwards. The first man freed himself from their hands and proceeded to unleash mayhem inside the store together with the new arrival.
In retrospect, if everybody joined hands to deal with the threat, they could probably have held their ground, but during the panic and chaos that ensued, people scattered trying to save themselves, while only a few brave souls tried to reestablish order.
Mr. Lee definitely was not a brave soul.
He was old enough to have tasted the vicissitudes of life and was very clear that the first ones to go were the impulsive and hot-blooded, as they were the ones that would have to resist the brunt of the attack while also being the most susceptible to incur an injury and other accidents. At least, that was what he told himself as he locked the door of the janitor’s room behind him.
As soon as he saw the situation inside his treasured general store spiraling out of control, he did not hesitate to jump inside the first enclosed space he saw and barricade himself inside it.
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Looking back on that decision though, that was his first and most grave mistake. For all his opinions about going against the hot-bloodedness of youth and keeping an austere and calm mind, he still let fear undoubtedly dictate his actions without thinking things through.
Mr. Lee assumed that the police would soon intervene and he would be quickly rescued at the time, however, that was a grave miscalculation on his part.
When he locked himself inside, he had never considered the problem of whether he would be able to get out. Thus, when the screams and shuffling sounds stopped from the outside, Mr. Lee did not think too much about the consequences of his actions, and could not resist the impulse to take a peek outside to see if the intruders had fled from his property after causing all that ruckus or if the police had already arrived and took control over the place.
That was his second mistake.
Mr. Lee had only opened a silver of the door to the rest of the store and called out softly for someone, anyone to make sure if he was alone in there or not. However, in that silent space, his voice resounded like thunder and drew the attention of all the undead present, old and newly turned alike.
Mr. Lee had the biggest scare of his life when he felt all those hungry eyes staring directly at him and going over his body. Like a deer caught in headlights, he stood behind the small opening dumbfounded. Just as the first creature started rushing towards him, Mr. Lee had already locked himself again.
He deeply regretted his actions, but the damage was already done. In that small three-by-two-meter room, Mr. Lee had now become a prisoner of his own making.
The room was barely big enough for him to lie down, but even when he put his back on the ground and tried to sleep, he could not chase away the uneasiness that had taken hold of his mind.
Ever since then, not even a single hour had passed that Mr. Lee could not hear the pounding and scratching on the door by fists and nails or the shuffling steps just outside the room.
The cramped space also ensured that any movement he made, any breath he released and any words he whispered on a slightly louder note were rewarded with the renewed vigorous frenzy of his jailors.
That made sure that his imprisoners would never leave and would be forever interested on this canned morsel, even if they could not open it.
That was not the end of his ails either. Very soon after Mr. Lee got stuck on this tricky situation, he realized a big problem: for how long could he actually last? On his hasty retreat, Mr. Lee had not considered swiping any food or water on his way in, so now he was paying the price for his own negligence.
The room was only so big, so Mr. Lee had already gone over everything within the place tens of times and no matter how much he prayed that he had overlooked something, that he would find a hidden treasure trove, reality cruelly shattered his hopes every single time. Redemption could not be found in there.
He did find the backpack of one of his staff members that was stored there however, but there were only a couple of cereal bars and a warm grape soda within and that was it. The silver lining was that there were quite a few gallons of water inside the room, allowing him to persevere longer without dying of thirst, but he would still have to go hungry.
How ironic it was that a mini-market owner would have to starve inside his own shop while just a few meters away from an enormous stash of food? Mr. Lee could not help but curse the heavens, feeling like he was the punchline of a sadistic cosmic joke.
No matter how much food he could find on the other side of the door, they might as well be miles away as far as Mr. Lee was concerned. What did the distance matter if he could not reach it all the same? They might as well not exist! The distant river cannot quench one’s thirst after all.
If he opened that slim barrier separating himself from those crazed people, the only possible outcome was death, and not a pleasant one at that. Mr. Lee didn’t even think about absurd things like zombies and such. For one he was too old, stubborn and fixed in his ways to even know about pop culture and fiction works, on the other hand, he just assumed that those people were on drugs or had caught some kind of weird disease.
If he went out quickly and painlessly, Mr. Lee might have already accepted his fate and bit the bullet, but he had no such misconceptions. He had heard the screams from the safety of his cage on the first day. Those poor souls did not go out quickly nor painlessly if those shouts were to be believed, and Mr. Lee had no reason to question their veracity.
Inside the room he also had not found any easy way out. There were no blades to cut himself with, and he was not sure about what effect drinking those chemical products would have on him. He could not even read the labels, since the power had been out for a long time already and he had remained consigned to eternal darkness in the small room.
Mr. Lee felt he was being tortured unjustly as he sat there in the shadows. Not only he had to endure the pangs of hunger, he was also subjected to the mental stress of his tireless hunters on the other side of that worrying small wooden door, all that while being subjected to the terrible smells from his own piss and shit originating from a bucket at the furthest corner of the room he could place it, which was not far at all.
Just because his circumstances were less than ideal, his body would not compromise and stop its natural functions, so it was with a reluctant heart that Mr. Lee went to the toilet again and again.
He spent the days like this, angry at himself for not assessing the situation adequately and reacting accordingly, angry at the heavens for being merciless against an honest and humble man, and angry at the government and the police for being slow in their efforts to rescue him. Until now, Mr. Lee still believed that someone would come for him eventually, he just wasn’t sure when and if he could hold on until then.
Mr. Lee had just managed to put himself to sleep in order to numb his suffering when Danny and the others reached the place.
Mr. Lee only actually woke up at the later parts of Danny’s group actions due the strangely quiet environment. Those last couple days Mr. Lee got used to the noise of nearby groans, door knocks and shuffling steps, thus, their absence was strangely unnerving for him and managed to disturb his sleep.
However, Mr. Lee did not make a sound after waking up. He had learned his lesson the previous time and would wait it out for as long as he possibly could without drawing attention to himself, without making a peep.
He tensely and quietly stood still in the dark, listening for clues and hiding his presence. Like a trapped rabbit, fearful of the wolves cunning attempt to lure it into a false sense of security as to make it leave the safety of its burrow.