Chapter 103: Don’t give up
The streets of Chavley had become chaotic, and it was getting worse by the second. Multiple shops and businesses that were open late had no choice but to close up. Unfortunately, some had failed to react in due time, causing them to make quite the loss in the process.
However, this had caused a certain development. The area of Chavley, although not one of the most affluent areas, was nevertheless under the control of the Underdogs. Many of those businesses either directly belonged to the gang or were at least affiliated with them. For the latter group, the owners had no other choice but to pay the Underdogs a percentage of their profits to keep operating.
Usually this would be a big enough deterrent for anyone else to mess with their businesses, but today that clearly wasn’t the case. The red and grey colour gang had come over to wreak havoc so they naturally didn’t care about any such conventions.
Of course, this had led to many angry business owners picking up their phones to contact the one group they had never believed they would, asking them for help. For once, they were about to demand for the gang to hold up their end of the deal and deliver on the ‘protection’ they were forced to pay for.
One of the businesses that was most affected by this was a local twenty four supermarket. It was medium in size, with several aisles that sold all the necessities. It even had its own bakery section. However, today it looked nothing like it would usually have.
The aisles with expensive electronics were mostly empty, raided by the members of the colour gang. The same was true for the alcohol aisle, as well as snacks of all things. Although it seemed to be limited to what the looters’ hands could carry as it was clearly something that was done on a whim rather than something that had been planned beforehand.
Inside the store itself, the employees had followed the protocol of such a situation and had attempted to flee into the supply room. However, one panicked employee had refused to wait for her colleagues and had sealed the reinforced door behind her, leaving the others to fend for their lives.
Three employees had been left behind the door. One of them was an older gentleman who had speckles of grey in his hair, as well as his beard. When his two female coworkers had still been imploring the others to let them inside, he had run over to the cleaning supplies and grabbed a mop, which he was swinging wildly towards the colour gang members, his back against the freezer section.
“Stay back, you fiends! I don’t own this store, so take whatever you want, just don’t hurt me!” The old man pleaded. Alas, he could see the look in these eyes, they were looking at him not like a fellow human, but some toy. It was clear to him that they were on some type of adrenaline rush.
The colour gang members didn’t care about stealing per se, they were just caught up in the chaos, and wanted to do what they knew they were not allowed to do under normal circumstances. The next moment, one of them had thrown over a paint can.
It had been impossible for the old man to watch them all and he had failed to notice it in time. When it hit the older man on the head, he let go of the mop and fell to the ground. In an instant, three colour gang members were upon him, kicking him while he was on the ground, before proceeding to steal from him.
At that moment, the two females came running and could see the sight happening in front of them. The young university student was shaking as she saw this.
“They’re going to kill him! They will do the same thing to us!” She mumbled under soft sobbing.
Maya decided to grab the girl by her hand, and run down a different aisle instead, until they were hidden among the cereal aisle. They couldn’t see any other members here, but turned to look around to see if there was that creepy guy following them.
“I’ll protect you, Amalee! I promise it will be okay. I won’t let that guy do anything to you.” Maya said with a forced smile to calm her colleague, yet it only caused her to be more frightened. The poor girl had started to work part time less than two months ago. Who could have known that she would find herself in such a grim situation?
The young girl could see the swelling and lump that now adorned the top of the middle aged woman’s head. Just moments ago, the person who they had met down the pet food aisle, had attempted to grab her.
It had been obvious what the teenage boy had been about to do. Although Maya knew that it might have been her best chance to try and escape, she had been unable to leave the poor girl there. Amalee wasn’t much older than Amy, making her motherly instincts kick in.
Maya had attempted to fight the person off. Alas, Gil had proven to be bigger and far stronger than her. The back of his elbow had hit her face, just above her eyebrow. It had been a big blow, causing her to fall into the aisle, knocking over some of the pet food.
At that point, Amalee had been frozen with fear, frightened that if she fought back that maybe worse things would happen to her. If she had to go through… ‘that’ and it meant he would let her live, then she would happily do it.
Seconds, before Gil could do anything else though, he felt something heavy whack the top of his head. The item dropped to the floor and turned out to be a heavy bag of dog food of all things. While he was dazed, Maya rushed over and grabbed her coworker, and started running. That’s when they saw the older man attacked.
“Amalee, never give up like you did back there, you hear me!” Maya berated her, placing her hands on her shoulder. “If that happens again, just run. You can’t give up like that!”
“She’s right.” A familiar voice spoke with a pained groan. “It wouldn’t be fun if you just let me do what I want.”
Both of the women’s hearts were beating, and they looked left and right to see if they could see where the person was, but neither of them could spot him down the end of the aisle. The next second, a hand came out from one of the serial boxes and reached for the two of them.
In that quick moment, without even giving it a second though. Maya pulled Amalee away, and instead of grabbing her, the large hand held on to the middle aged woman.
“Didn’t you hear me just now?” Maya shouted. “Run!!!”
It seemed like it was a hard choice for the young girl to make, but eventually closing her eyes she ran off to hide somewhere else, leaving Maya in the hands of Gil.