He knew that he would face a struggle as soon as he showed his face, but he didn't expect the struggle to be quite so difficult. As soon as he had appeared in front of the infected they looked up and attacked him without any hesitation. Ludwig, of course, was prepared for their attack, but he wasn't prepared for their strength. The ones he faced inside the mall seemed even stronger than the ones by the hotel.
They were growing in strength.
Ludwig held his ground and waited for the first one to lunge, and when it did, he drove his knife up into the base of its skull and pulled it out expertly. He wouldn't allow himself to make the same mistake he had at the hotel. If he wanted his knife back, he needed to avoid plunging his knife into their eye sockets, their joints, or any other areas that would restrict his knife.
The body fell to the ground in a bloody heap at his feet, motionless and lifeless as soon as Ludwig's knife was retrieved. Though the creatures were arguably more powerful than they had been before, they still died with a knife to the brain.
The second one ran at Ludwig with a ferocity unlike the first one, its teeth were clacking and its arms were stretched out toward him as if the creature was looking to be embraced. Ludwig did not hesitate to kill this one. It too fell to the ground beside its infected brethren, lifeless and breathless with no semblance of its previous self remaining. Ludwig spit on the corpse and stuck the knife back into the makeshift knife holster wrapped around his thigh.
With each passing creature Ludwig was becoming quicker and smarter in dealing with the infected, he was also becoming more emotionless when it came to killing them. Before he would feel guilt - even sadness - at having to kill the creatures that used to be humans just like he and the rest of them. But, as the days progressed and the number of the infected he'd killed began stacking up, his sympathy for the once sane creatures began steadily decreasing. He could now do it without batting an eyelash. Whether that could be considered a good thing or a bad thing was a nagging question.
"Wow," Feliciano said as Ludwig turned back around to face them, "you're really strong, Luddy."
"The key to killing them is not strength, Feliciano. If you kill them before they get their hands on you, you don't even need to worry about how strong you are." Ludwig said as he absently flicked the creature's blood off of his right hand and onto the floor beside the motionless corpses.
"I don't think I could do that," Feliciano said with a frown, regarding Ludwig's bloodied form while worrying his bottom lip between his teeth.
Lovino was about to open his mouth to remind Feliciano that he already had done it - had already killed one of the infected - but vetoed against it. He remembered the way his brother had broken down after saving Ludwig; they didn't need a repeat of that in the middle of a mall that could be scaled with the infected in question. Lovino, instead, patted his brother on the back and directed him toward the dairy. "It doesn't matter, Feliciano, we'll be out of here in no time."
Feliciano nodded his head as he allowed his brother to guide him toward the dairy.
"Right here," Heracles said, pointing at a silver door gleaming in the late afternoon sun. He grabbed Kiku's shoulder and strung him along behind him without waiting for his response. Heracles cautiously opened the light metal door and entered slowly, peeking around each corner before approaching the fuse box at the front of the room. They were both lucky that there was nothing waiting for them inside, the whole way down they were in direct sunlight, and the circuit room itself was large and barren. If need be, they would be able to hide out in the confines of the double-bolt locked room.
Heracles closed the door behind them quietly, grateful that there was a window in the circuit room so they could see through the dark. If there hadn't been one, they would have had to have risked their lives by keeping the door to the outside of the mall open. That could have invited a lot of unwanted attention.
Heracles locked the door behind them and instantly got to work on re-routing the circuits in the mall. He knelt down in front of the machine and whipped the door to the heavy fuse box open; he was immediately befuddled by what he saw.
"What is it?" Kiku asked in a worried tone, leaning over Heracles' tense shoulders. He - unlike Heracles - knew absolutely nothing about circuits, so the tangle of coloured wires and twisted copper in front of him didn't mean anything other than 'energy'. However, Heracles clearly seemed disturbed by the state of the wires inside the box.
"Someone did this purposely," Heracles said. "Someone came in here, re-routed the circuits, and shorted them out in the process."
"Why would someone do that?" Kiku asked. "If they wanted to stay here, what would have been the purpose of that? And didn't they know that someone else could want to come here to get supplies, why would they make that so difficult?"
Heracles swallowed hard around a growing lump in his throat. He was certain that he knew the answers to those questions, but he didn't want to answer them in fear of being right. He didn't want to know the answers to the questions Kiku was posing, he didn't want to be right in his thinking. Heracles didn't want to think someone could be so cruel – so barbaric.
"Heracles?" Kiku asked, concerned.
"We need to go," Heracles said in a harsh whisper, "we need to go, get the other groups together, and leave right away. We can wait to get supplies from somewhere else."
"You're scaring me," Kiku said as he watched Heracles close the box without giving it another look. "Heracles, what's wrong? You know that we can't do that, Ludwig and Gilbert both said that we would run out of gas before we even got anywhere else."
"Gas doesn't matter, our lives do, and if we stay here we're all going to die. Even if we run out of gas on a different supply run, we can still walk. It's safer than staying here, Kiku. We need to leave, now."
"Hera-"
"You're clever, I'll give you that," a husky voice started, echoing around the circuit room. "But, I expected this. I had two weeks to analyse the lot of you, after all."
"Shouldn't we have taken more?" Antonio asked as he lugged another carton of milk under his arms.
"No," Ludwig said as they made their way back to the gun depot, "it would be pointless, it will all go bad in a matter of weeks. The powdered milk is more important because Peter could live off of it for months. Even though he's an older child, it could still sustain him for a long time."
Antonio nodded his head in agreement and followed close behind the rest of the group. Antonio hadn't dealt much with babies as a nurse, but what Ludwig was saying was common sense.
They had made it to the dairy without too many problems; however the sun was descending faster than they had expected it to. Places inside the store were already becoming too dark for comfort, and the time it was taking Heracles and Kiku to get back was starting to nag their fears back into place. They tried not to bring the two men up, afraid that it would jinx any progress that the two of them were making. The only thing they needed to worry about was getting back to the rest of the group safely; everything else would have to be put on the back burner.
When they stopped in front of the weapon depot Ludwig took the duffel bag off of his shoulder and handed it over to Antonio, who in turn took it without questioning him.
"Is it locked?" Lovino asked from behind Ludwig.
"Yes," Ludwig said as he scratched the back of his head, "I don't know why though."
"What do you mean?" Lovino asked, "wouldn't it make sense to lock it all up? There are weapons in there after all."
"The outbreak happened during the day," Ludwig corrected, "so it shouldn't have been locked. Unless, of course, they locked it while running out of the mall, but I doubt anyone would take the time to do that during all the chaos."
"Hmm," Lovino said, appearing just as confused as the rest of them, "so what do we do? We can't just break the damn glass."
Ludwig didn't respond to the Italian's incessant questioning and started inspecting the lock on the door. It was connected to an electronic alert system, but since there was no power running through the building, they didn't have to worry about it making noise if they tried to break in. The only problem from them was the fact that if they broke it, it would leave them vulnerable during the night. If the infected somehow learned to manoeuvre door handles, that would spell bad luck for them.
"I could break it," Ludwig said, "but that would leave us open for attack if one of the infected decided to try to get in."
"Wonderful," Lovino said, letting out a breathless laugh.
"Other than that, if any of you know how to pick a lock, now would be a good time to put your skill to use."
Lovino shifted uncomfortably.
"Lovi knows how," Feliciano said with a shrug.
"How the hell do you know that, dumb ass?" Lovino asked, all the while glaring at his younger brother for opening his mouth.
"Because, dummy, I remember you picking the lock on the neighbours fence when we were little so we could go swim-"
Lovino put his right hand over his brother's mouth, but it was pointless, his brother had already successfully spilled all the details. All the details, that were, sadly all too true.
Ludwig and Antonio both looked at Lovino with twin lopsided smirks.
"When I was little," Lovino said, regarding the remainder of the group with a heady glare before looking back at Feliciano. "And you shut your damn mouth for once."
Ludwig wanted to scoff at the irony.
"So, can you pick it?" Ludwig asked.
"Yes, damn it, I can pick it," Lovino said, shrugging past Ludwig with a bitter look on his face. He leaned in close and examined the lock for a brief moment before holding out his hand. "I need a safety pin from the first-aid kit," Lovino said before turning around to face Antonio - who was holding the duffel bag with the first-aid kit.
Antonio reached inside the duffel bag and retrieved the first-aid kit, carefully pulling out the bag of safety pins from its confines. Before he could even hand it over to Lovino the dark haired man ripped it out of his hands and pulled a safety pin out of the bag, completely disregarding the rest and allowing them to fall on the ground in a messy heap. Antonio didn't even complain as he hunkered down - resting on his haunches - and began picking up the fallen safety pins. Lovino ignored this as he dropped to his knees in front of the lock, squinting his eyes as he tried to properly open it. With a few curses, Lovino successfully yanked the door open without any protest.
"There," Lovino said as he handed his bent safety pin over to Antonio - as if he hadn't just let a whole bag full of them fall to the floor carelessly.
Ludwig nodded his head in thanks and walked forward into the room with the rest of the group in tow.
When they proceeded into the shop, closing the door tight behind themselves, Lovino heard a gut-wrenching scream coming from the floor just beneath them. He didn't tell the rest of the group, but only because he himself didn't want to believe what he had heard.
Both Heracles and Kiku froze to the spot, bodies tense and still as they waited for the source of the voice to appear in front of them. The voice in question sounded like it belonged to an incredibly deceitful man, all high syllables - heavily accented.
"Are you going to show us your face, or are you going to continue ridiculing us from your hiding spot?" Heracles asked.
The man let out a deep, throaty chuckle before he appeared from behind a large pillar at the far end of the room. He was a handsome man, very tall and lean, with medium brown skin. His hair was messy, sticking out at odd ends - probably from not being washed for so long. His clothes, however, were so neat one would think they had just come from being washed and ironed. "Sadiq Adnan," the man said, "pleased to finally meet you."
Had the man not been toting a double-barrelled rifle like it was a toy, Heracles and Kiku might not have become so tense at his appearance. But, because he was, in fact, toting around a double-barrelled rifle like it was a toy, pointing it straight at them, Kiku and Heracles had no choice but to go on the defensive. This man hadn't shown up to make friends, that was for sure.
"Boys," Sadiq said with a dismissive wave of his hands, "there's nothing much you can really do now, so stop with the angry faces. As long as you answer to me, and follow all of my directions, I won't hurt you or your little friends; I promise."
"How does he know all of this about us," Kiku whispered breathlessly into Heracles ear, trying to keep his voice low enough to avoid Sadiq's exceptional hearing. But, even though his voice was at its lowest tone, Sadiq still picked up everything he said to Heracles.
"Like I said," Sadiq shrugged his shoulders, "I've been keeping tabs on all of you for over two weeks, I learned quite a few things about your little group."
"What do you mean by keeping tabs?" Heracles asked.
"I mean exactly what I said: I've been keeping tabs on all of you. I know all of your names – compliments of your little meeting after the car crash – and I know most of your personal feelings – compliments of the bugs embedded in the walls of your rooms."
"How were you even capable of doing that?" Heracles asked. "How could you plant bugs without our knowledge?"
Sadiq shrugged his shoulders, "I have my ways; ways that I'm certainly not sharing with any of you."
Heracles gritted his teeth, but chose to remain calm to save face in front of the brash man, the last thing he needed to do was look careless in the face of danger.
"So, now that we have all that out on the table, you must know that it would be wise not to speak out against me, am I right in assuming so?"
Heracles and Kiku remained quiet.
"I'm assuming your lack of response means you're going to follow my orders, but you aren't going to do it happily. If that's how it's going to be with you two, then I'm fine with that."
Heracles grit his teeth, "what will you have us do then, Sadiq?" Heracles said his name with indignance, all the while biting the inside of his cheeks.
"You'll follow me," Sadiq said, "and don't even try to defy me or run away, I know this entire place like the back of my hands. I'll hunt you down and kill you – that is, assuming that the brain-dead creatures dwelling in the dark don't get you first."
"We can bunk down in here for the night," Ludwig said as he laid his jacket down on the floor. "Early tomorrow morning we'll head back down to the first floor, if we're lucky we'll meet up with the others at the same time. If not, we can wait the night out inside one of the cars."
"I hope no one got hurt today," Feliciano said, "and hopefully no one gets hurt tomorrow, too."
"I don't think so, Feli, we would have heard something, or someone would have given us some sort of warning through the radios Heracles set up for us." Antonio looked down at his pocket, "speaking of the radio…" Antonio brought the device out and held it up to his ear, and with creased eyebrows, pulled it away and started flipping the device around in his hand as if he were inspecting it.
"What's wrong?" Lovino asked, getting close to Antonio to look at what he was doing, unintentionally putting his hand down on one of his thighs. It was getting too dark for any of them to see where anything was.
"Nothing, it's just-" Antonio shook the device a few more times and pressed a few buttons before bringing it back up to his ear. "The lights are on, but for some reason the radio is completely dead. None of the speaker buttons or the paging buttons are working on it."
"Here," Lovino said, holding his hand out in the darkness toward Antonio for the radio that he had been holding, "maybe you're not pressing the right things."
"I'm pretty sure I'm pressing all the right buttons," Antonio said. But, despite this, he handed the radio over to Lovino.
Lovino meddled with the device just like Antonio, but he couldn't get it working. "Piece of garbage," Lovino said, handing it back over to Antonio without any warning.
"It's not too much of a concern," Ludwig said, "we'll be meeting them all tomorrow, and I'm sure their radios are working just fine. It's probably just a technical malfunction, it's happened before. Stop worrying."
Feliciano tried to stifle a yawn, but it came out of his mouth despite his efforts.
"The rest of you should all go to bed," Ludwig said as he watched the younger Italian shift uncomfortably. "It's almost completely dark out, so those things are most likely going to start roaming around."
Feliciano nodded quickly from where he was hidden behind a shelf of locked up hunting knives. He and Lovino and Antonio were all pressed up close to hide themselves from the large and revealing plate glass at the front of the store. If the creatures were stealthier and a lot smarter than they were to begin with, they would have no doubt seen all of them, but the creatures were seemingly completely mindless, meandering around for the sole purpose of finding their next meal. They relied heavily on their senses; senses that seemed to be weak. The only thing that was strong about them was their sense of smell. All of these things were to question; none of them were scientists, after all.
Ludwig backed away from them and hid himself behind the shelves adjacent to the ones the other three were hiding behind.
"Aren't you going to sleep, Luddy?" Feliciano asked in a tired drawl. Lovino and Antonio were already both falling asleep, eyelids fluttering helplessly as they tried to listen in one what Ludwig was telling Feliciano.
"No, I'm going to keep watch. When we get out of this place tomorrow I'll have plenty of time to sleep. That is the last thing on my mind right now."
"You can wake one of us up," Feliciano said, "right guys?"
Antonio and Lovino both let out a quiet sigh, whether that meant 'yes' or 'no' wasn't clear, but it didn't matter to Ludwig. He didn't want to disturb any of their sleeping; he didn't care if it meant destroying his own physical health.
Ludwig backed himself up against the wall and stared out through the cracks in the cabinet, looking out at the quickly descending sun. Dusk was already upon them.
"Aww, so cute," Ludwig heard Feliciano rumble quietly at the two men sleeping beside him. Ludwig looked down to see that Lovino was wedged in between Antonio and Feliciano, where Antonio had casually snuck an arm around Lovino's slight shoulders. The Spanish man had presumably done so right after Lovino had fallen asleep. Ludwig just shook his head at them and returned to keeping watch, enjoying the brief silence; something he hadn't seen in a long while.
Ludwig was having a hard time keeping his eyes open when the sun had finally ebbed off into a dusky orange glow, with the silence and the barely audible sound of the other men's soft, steady breathing; it was becoming a difficult task. Night was only beginning, so Ludwig stood up to stretch his legs out and wake himself up.
"It's really OK to sleep," Feliciano said, his voice surprising Ludwig. He thought Feliciano had fallen asleep as soon as his head hit the floor, considering he had been so tired to begin with.
Ludwig looked down at the sleepy Italian and mustered his best fake smile, "it's not safe, someone needs to keep an eye out just in case something happens."
"Ludwig," Feliciano said seriously, "they're very noisy creatures, and that's bullet proof glass, we would all wake up if they tried something."
Ludwig's forehead creased, "I guess you're right, but we don't know what they're capable of quite yet. They did break into the hotel without our knowing, after all."
"We were in the middle of an argument, we couldn't have heard over all of the yelling," Feliciano said, voice ebbing off as he finally began drifting off to sleep. Ludwig watched for a while as Feliciano pressed himself up against his brother's side in his sleep, their fingers unconsciously intertwining as they brushed together. They looked like children, calm and unspoilt.
Ludwig fell into a fitful sleep an hour later.
"Keep your pace up," Sadiq said harshly, jabbing Kiku in the back with the barrel of his gun.
Kiku picked up his speed, keeping in close stride with the much taller Heracles. They had had no choice but to follow Sadiq's every whim because they both knew that the man would not hesitate to kill them, or any of the others, for that matter. They couldn't pick out what he wanted with them - or what use he had for them – other than to torment them for his own sick pleasures.
Heracles bit down on his bottom lip as words tried to work their way out of his mouth. Instead, he focused on walking away from the man as quickly as possible, heavy glare present on his face. Kiku had never seen him looking quite so angry. There was something about the man that had caused it, but Kiku couldn't quite put his finger on it.
They were being directed through the darkness, but Sadiq seemed confident in them not running into any of the infected. It seemed as though he had the entire place mapped out strategically, knowing which way to go and which way not to go. He directed them through the dark with ease, not even bothering to shine a light - literally - on their situation.
"Stop," Sadiq said suddenly, causing both Heracles and Kiku to come to a jilted halt. Sadiq walked forward quickly, keeping his gun pointed at Heracles and Kiku all the while; only the outline of his body and the gun he held in his hand could be made out in the dark. "Don't even try to run," Sadiq said sternly, "not that it really matters to me. Even if you tried, you wouldn't be able to find your way through the darkness like I can, and of course, there's always the fact that I would shoot you both down before you could even take a dozen steps away from me."
Heracles scoffed.
"Is there something you wanted to say, Heracles?" Sadiq asked, voice rising steadily over the sound of grinding metal. They couldn't pinpoint what he was doing, but Kiku had an idea that Sadiq was leading them into a room.
Just as he was about to risk asking the man where they were going, his question was answered when a loud metallic creak stung his ears and a bright stripe of light painted his face gold.
"Go in before me," Sadiq said, taking his place behind them and shoving the barrel of his gun into their backs again. "I have someone in there that I'm sure you'd like to meet."
Heracles stumbled in first with Kiku following close behind. They walked into the artificially lit room and both landed on their knees in front of a very familiar face.
It was Arthur.
Antonio woke up to Lovino shaking his shoulders and whispering his name harshly. He sat up quickly and squinted, trying to make out Lovino's face in the inky darkness of the room. Even with his eyes adjusted to the darkness he could only make out the outlines of Lovino's face.
"What is it?" Antonio asked, voice still groggy from sleep.
"I heard yelling, and gun shots," Lovino said, his voice shaking. Antonio hadn't even noticed Lovino clinging to him until he felt Lovino's body trembling against his.
"I- I'm sure whoever it was is fine," Antonio said doubtfully, "but there's no point in dwelling on it, Lovi, there's nothing we can do in this darkness."
Lovino didn't stop shaking, "it sounded like Francis."
Antonio swallowed hard and let his eyes close, but he only did so because he knew Lovino couldn't see him. Had Lovino been able to see him, he probably would have tried to keep a false smile on his face to comfort the man. If someone was screaming, trapped outside with those things in the darkness, there wasn't much of a chance for survival. He sincerely hoped that wasn't it, but he had a feeling it was exactly what he thought it was.
"Even earlier, I heard a girl screaming and another man crying…"
"Lovi," Antonio said quietly, "there's nothing you could have done about it, OK? Stop dwelling on it, you're only going to make yourself sick." Antonio cautiously wrapped a comforting arm around Lovino's shoulders, "I'm sure everyone's fine. Now go back to sleep, you need your rest for tomorrow."
Lovino was quiet for a moment, but he complied with a quiet 'ok', and surprisingly didn't push Antonio's arm away. Instead he curled into him, face pressed into the crook of his shoulder. Whether he did it intentionally or unintentionally, it was something Antonio wouldn't come for forget.
Two hours later, they were woken up at the break of dawn by another scream, this one even more blood-curdling than the last. If any of them were asked to describe the sound, the word that they would all use would be 'heart-broken'.
A/N: There you go, guys! I know it's a little late, but my week was packed with last minute scholarship applications (what a pain). But, I'm almost done with everything! Almost all of my applications have been sent out, so things are going to finally start calming down!
Thank you for your patience, guys, really.
Starmix: I understand your concern, and while I know where you're coming from, I just want you to wait a little so I can get the 'full' story out there. Roderich – like one of my reviewers said – is much like Shane Walsh. He's not a bad guy, per se, but being under so much stress brought out the worst in him. And, as for the group's almost total disregard for Roderich's safety; I was doing that for a reason. All of these things are going to work their way into Roderich's development, trust me on this one.
In a few chapters I'm going to let out a Roderich POV chapter, then you'll really know what's going on with him. You can't judge the character until you see into their mind, no?