You can't save her. What makes you think you can protect her? You couldn't save your sister, so how do you plan on keeping this one alive?

   “Stop.” 

   Just look at you, you're pathetic. You. Are. Weak. 

   “Stop.” 

   You’ll let her die too. You’ll kill her just like the others! 

   “STOP!” 

   I jolt up to a loud noise coming from the door behind me. Scratching and banging makes my mind clear and my eyes focus. In the dark I see Z’s silhouette shoot up from her place on the floor. The noise stops and she crawls over to me.

   “Miles, what was that?” she whispers, her voice trembling. I hush her and put my ear to the door. Silence. As soon as I'm about to pull away I hear the very noise that causes grown men to cry. No, this can't be happening. 

   The shadow that I thought we had escaped was right outside the door once again. It shreaked and clawed at the door. I don't understand! We haven't made any noise, there's no light, it shouldn't be here. How does it know we're still here? Is it just trying to get in because the door is closed? My racing thoughts are interrupted by sniffling. Looking up I see Z had begun to cry, her hands over her mouth in an attempt to muffle the loudness of her breathing. I pull her into a hug, comforting her the way I would my sister when she was scared of the dark. I look at my watch to see how long we had till the sun came up and ended this nightmare. 2:13. We had another four and a half hours to go. By the sounds of it though, the thing was starting to rip through the thick mettle of the door, leaving me to wonder if we would make it till then. With Z trembling in my arms I rub her back and begin to hum the first song that came to mind, no point in being quiet now. She slowly calms and soon enough, even with the racket of the abomination behind us, and falls asleep. I followed soon after, still wore out from my injury. 

   I open my eyes to a dimly lit hallway and Z laying in my lap kangaroo in hand. A beam of light hitting the ground in front of me catches my eye. Looking around I searched for the source, curious as to where it was coming from since there were no windows. I follow the beam to the spot that it originated from; It was from a gash in the door just a foot above my head. A few more minutes was probably all the shadow needed to get in and have a good ol 'time with us. I sigh realizing we had to leave this place before tonight or we would be just another stain on the wall. Z slept soundly, and I didn’t want to wake her into this terrible world, but if we were going to see another tomorrow we would need to get a move on. I shake her gently and sit her up. 

   “I'm sorry daddy, I know we were supposed to leave today, i'm just really tired.” she yawns. When she opens her eyes to look at me her face turns red. “Oh, im sorry, I thought that…” I stop her knowing exactly what she was feeling. 

   “It’s ok, but we do need to leave today.”

   “What, why? We still need to wait for daddy!” I point up and she looks confused but follows the line of my finger. Her eyes widen when she sees the reason. “O-ok, I'll go.” she nods her head still staring at the hole. “But we are going to leave something for daddy to know where we're going!” I agree to this and tell her to gather the things she would normally bring with her when she moved spots. While she does this I clean and change my bandage the best I could. I knew it would be a 50/50 chance for me to survive just this one wound. If it got infected, there was no way I would survive. 

   She returns carrying a backpack and dragging a much larger bag along behind her. “This one's mine and this one's daddies.” she said pointing to the larger bag. I don't think I can carry myself much less my stuff with another heavy bag, and she looks like she'd fall over if she had that thing on. I sit worrying about how we were going to get anywhere in the condition that I was in. The only good thing is the safe point I was going for when I came here was only 3 miles away, and we had all day. My planning is interrupted by Z scribbling on a sheet of paper. I look over and read her messy handwritten message.

   Deer dady, 

  im safe. i made a new frend and his name is mils we are going sum were els becus the monstrs tride to get in. mils has food so i wusnt hungre any more hes reely nise and funy. i love you sooooo much. 

   From: Z

   I smile at here spelling. Just like a 6 year old. “Do you even know where we’re going?”

   “No, but you do, so I thought you could write that down.”

   “Ah, so we have a wise guy on our hands do we? Well, hand it over then.” I doubted that her dad was still alive but for her sake I wrote down the information anyway. And if by some miracle that he is alive, at least he knows where his daughter is.

   Dear Mr. May.

   My name is Miles Carter. You are probably very worried about Z but I promise she is just fine. I will try my best to keep her safe. If you find this we are only 3 miles away at the Vontroy hotel in the middle of town. 11th floor, room 308. If you get there, knock on the door as loud as you can and we will let you in.

   Z reads this, and seeming satisfied with what I wrote, took it and ran off. Probably to put in a place where her dad could find it. 

   Resting the last little bit that I could, I muster all the strength I’ve gained back from sleeping for two days and stumble onto my feet. Lightheaded, I lean against the wall knowing this was going to be a long journey. Z comes back and manages to pick up my bag which is a little lighter than her dads. I take his but wince when I have to put in over the shoulder of my hurt arm. Z seeing I was struggling to stand runs off and comes back with a long thick hiking stick. I take the stick and lean on it relieved I have some way to keep my balance that isn’t Z.

   “Alright Z, from this point on you need to follow my lead. Do everything I do and there will also be no talking. Even in the daytime there are lots of things that could hurt us, especially now that I'm hurt and being slowed down. It will be pretty long but we will make it there before dark, I promise you that. You will not leave my side unless I tell you to. If you see or hear anything tap me immediately so I can quickly find a place to hide. These are super important, uh, also… do you have any shoes?” I say looking at her still bare feet. 

   “Daddy was supposed to be looking for shoes while he was out too. But I can put on my old ones for now.” she does and I see why her dad was getting new ones. They were so worn out and her toes were sticking out of the front from growing. You could hardly tell they were tennis shoes in the first place. 

   “Well not much else we can do at the moment, so let’s get going.” Opening the door I take a look at what was left of our defense on the other side. The first layer of the thick metal had been completely ripped to shreds. It started high, even at the top of the door frame. Just goes to show the terror humanity is really up against. We begin our slow limp onward, to a destination I couldn’t wait to reach.

   I was surprised to find that Z did exactly as I told her. She was quiet and followed right behind me the entire way up to this point. For now we are going along building edges and any shadowed place we could quickly get to. I did this to survive when I was by myself. To survive alone, is to be invisible. We come onto the last half mile of our journey. I see the hotel in the distance and instantly have a boost of happiness. Being able to see our destination just willed me to go faster. Z pulls on my shirt and I turn to her wondering what could be so important that we stop just short of safety. She doesn't say anything but looks into the distance, pointing at something she had deemed important enough for notice.

   I hear it before I see it. It had been a long while since I heard the thunder of an engine. When I see the man on the motorcycle driving towards us I jump into action. Grabbing Z I drag her to the corner and duck into the alley between the two buildings. I push us flat against the wall holding my breath as the man rides by, pleading that he didn’t notice us. Only one type of person has the confidence to ride around on a motorcycle these days. The gangs controlled the streets during the day. They would catch anyone they found and use them as live bait during the night. You don’t ever die of the shadow, except on occasion. No, the people they took would only ever die of dehydration or starvation.

   The biker passes without trouble and I let the breath that I had been holding release. Keeping a guard up for any other people patrolling the area we make our way to the hotel. It didn’t look like much. Half the building was burnt and most of the windows were blown out, probably done by a bomb from the first attempt at fighting the shadows. Too bad nothing worked. We make our way through the parking lot, hiding behind car after car. I wasn’t taking any chances of letting someone know where we were, especially if it was the only secure safe place I had at the moment. 

   I could tell Z was struggling as we walked up the stairs. I was still slowly losing blood so I was struggling too. 10 flights was a lot of stairs, but at least we could huff and puff and stop all we wanted without having to worry about anyone finding us. Finally, we made it up the stairs and down the hall to the room. Ha! Stairs can’t stop us! That only took us, what, an hour and a half? I chuckle at how pathetic I was at the moment and open the door. I check to see if the small paper I put in the door had fallen. This was a safety precaution to make sure no one had entered while I was gone. I relax a little more when I see it lightly glide to the floor, that meant no one had opened the door.

   I had plenty of food stored up and a few other necessities. This is the longest I had stayed in a single place, so it was bound to get collected instead of me picking and choosing what I took and left. Z looks around at everything in awe at how much I had. 

   “Choose anything you want, eat until your full. From the looks of it, you need it.” I say as I pick and choose my own food. She doesn’t hold back. Cracking open a box of crackers, she goes nuts as she hunts for her next victim. When she comes upon a chocolate bar she squeals so loud I jump and slap my hand over her mouth. It had been a long time since I’d talked to someone, so just talking sounded loud. But her squeals, they were the loudest noise I’d ever heard in the silence of the room. She quickly quiets realizing how loud she had been. Her shoulders drop and I feel her mouth frown underneath my hand. Letting go I see her thinking. “Hey now, no need to be sad. You just startled me a bit, I’m sorry if I hurt you.”  I watch as she reluctantly placed the chocolate bar back where she had found it. I question why she did it and she plays with her hands as she explains, clearly wanting to take it still.

   “It’s something that’s really hard to find. Daddy said things like that should be saved for special occasions. It’s also yours. You worked hard to find it so it would be mean for me to eat it.” I smile at her honest innocence.

   “Well it is mine so I can do whatever I want with it. And there’s also a special occasion today.” She looks at me confused. “It’s the day we officially become partners in crime. I think that’s a pretty big thing to celebrate, so you go ahead at eat up.” Her smile widens more than I’ve ever seen as she carefully but swiftly opens the wrapper. She stops just before taking a bite. Breaking it she holds out half to me. “Oh no, you can have it, you really wanted it anyway. Way more than I did.” She doesn’t budge and glares at me. I laugh takinging it and go to take a bite. 

   “Wait! I do this with daddy when we have special things.” She pretends to clear her throat and in the most terrible British accent I’ve ever heard begins her ‘toast’. “Chears, chears, this is the fancy town president and we are gathered here to enjoy some delicious chocolate!” When she finishes her glorious speech she takes her chocolate and taps it against mine, making a clicking noise with her mouth. I bust out laughing as she nibbles her chocolate with her pinky’s up. I laugh so hard I begin to cry. I couldn’t remember the last time I laughed this hard. Oh wait, ya I do. It was the day my sister decided to put on a puppet show. That was the day before she… I stop the thought before it could finish. My smile and laugh faded but looking back at Z as she happily ate, at least made me enjoy the chocolate just a little bit more.