#so I was doing a mental exercise imagining that bookstore 6 months post zombies

[rust-bearer]

Another zombie au writing exercise, feat: a bookstore

First Aid imagined, before, that places after the end of the world would be much more… dilapidated. Weed-filled and destroyed by both weather and time. But, surprisingly, these places were often just… fine. Speaking from that perspective, at least. The area wasn’t prone to flooding, so there was no water damage, barring extreme circumstances. There were no tornadoes, no hurricanes. There were some earthquakes, occasionally, but nothing major. So maybe some downed power lines, maybe some toppled trees. Old car crashes, some that had crashed into storefronts, some into each other. Destroyed windows… and maybe, rarely, a few adventurous plants trying to creep inside.

But mostly? They were all fine. When he entered the bookstore, the only ravages of time that he beheld were dried blood, slumped corpses melting into the floors, and layers of dust over the store that no one had any reason to scavenge. Some of the bookshelves were toppled over; many of the books were on the floors. Expensive things, like television shows and electronic reading devices- they were mostly smashed up and stolen, by those early days of chaos and looting. Maybe, if First Aid had been trying to scavenge from the old coffee shop in the corner, he would have had more trouble- but he wasn’t here to try and take moldering bags of coffee.

Instead, he was here to take their board games.

There was a lot of board games left, actually. A lot of card games undamaged, tossed onto the floor- old style games, simplistic ones, mixed in with the kinds based off of television shows and movies. First Aid fingered the plastic covering on a board game version of Halloween, checking out the price tag on some idle instinct- 60$, it said, and he smiled sadly at the knee-jerk reaction to put it back because of the price. He set it down anyway, not really interested in it. Instead, he picked up some variant on monopoly, stuffing it into his bag. The store had fidget toys that the kids would enjoy, and he grabbed a few of those too, letting them mix with the classic card game packs he’d picked up off the floor. He was pleased to find a normal version of Uno, too.

How do you pass the time without normal activities? It was like this. First Aid imagined he wasn’t the only one thinking of scavenging these games, because many were missing from the shelves- but he knew that, most of those missing were before ‘now’. When people thought this would blow over soon, and they jumped to take things they’d wanted, things they suddenly craved to have. Still, after a beat, First Aid grabbed one of those television board games and put it into the bag. This one was… based on the Thing, yeah. He’d actually wanted to play it before all of this. Maybe it be good?…

As First Aid got up to leave, he cast a wistful, wary glance to the darker sections of the store, the parts where the sunlit, shattered windows didn’t reach; textbooks, informational guides. Not this time, no.

But he did, on his way out, manage to stuff a few stray candy bars into his bag. He hoped they wouldn’t melt like the last time.

@mr-miss-anonymous for youuu