28 Items Later - Day 5

Today, the supervisors crossed the line.

There we were, serving the endless hoards of custombies again, when it started to get busy. We expected to hear an "Express Alert", but it never came. We worked harder, trying to keep up with the custombies' rising numbers. But today was the day the custombies brought out a new weapon...

It seems that during the night, a custombie broke into the store and placed a sign near the 30-can boxes of soft drink. The sign read "2 for $1". This had a terrible effect on us. Every custombie in sight was carrying 2 or more of those boxes. Serving them was a nightmare... Not only would they complain about prices and have their offspring shout at us til our eardrums burst, but they also made us physically scan every single one of those boxes.

And 30 cans of soft drink equates to quite a heavy box. We tried to tell the custombies that we could "scan" them with the computers at the registers/defense posts, but as we all know... custombies ain't that bright. Even if they were smart enough to breathe and walk at the same time, I doubt they'd refrain from handing us those heavy boxes to scan.

Within minutes we were completely drained. We lost 6 people today...

The few of us that survived got back to the staffroom, arms practically broken, mad as all hell at the supervisors that had decided not to give us the backup we needed... When we made a horrible discovery.

The managers office had been locked, and noone was answering our cries of anger. Eventually we broke the door down, and found the room was empty. A hole had been dug in the ground, just large enough for a person to fit into.

Pete investigated for us. He dropped into the hole, and called back to us that it was a tunnel. A tunnel that went for roughly 500 metres, then came back up through the ground. He could see the light of day at the very end. He hurried towards it, urging us to follow. That tunnel had good acoustics, lemme tell you. We could hear everything he said, crystal clear.

Suddenly though, we heard the faint voice of the manager:

"Sorry Pete, but we can't leave this open. They might follow us."

There was the sound of a massive explosion and the tunnel collapsed, burying Pete alive somewhere near the end of it.

If I live through this, I'm going to find those bastards and avenge his death.


- Steven Gints