After a while of walking, Eilidh's eyes were stinging, and she was coughing up spit that was more dust than water. Breathing was becoming a chore, and she didn't feel safe on these streets, being able to hear the moans and cries of creatures she couldn't see. Luckily she knew that she was near the shops that connected to the mall, and that level B2 of the mall had a subway line to the main train station of the Southeast district should she need to leave the city entirely. She could get to the slums, and through the wall as there wouldn't be guards there if the whole city was like this.

She reached the first shop that was part of the mall. It was a chocolate shop. She kicked the glass door in with her rear hooves, and fell over from the inbalance. She'd have to get used to doing that. Once she was in the basement levels, she'd try and get some practice in. Picking herself back up, she entered the shop, and then the mall proper, naturally shoplifting a small box on the way, and eating it as she navigated the less dusty mall, though it still wasn't ideal, so she descended the stairs carefully, and with her hands on the railings at all times, until she was at B1, where she went to the hardware shop and took several packets of disposable safety masks, and some very expensive looking goggles. Putting the goggles on her head but not over her eyes, she carried on to the pet megastore, grabbed a saddle, acquired some satchels from the trendy handbag store, and with a little jiggery-pokery, soon had, on her back, a saddle with a satchel on either side, that she put the masks and chocolate in.

She spent the next half-hour looting anything useful from B1. Food, provisions, a tent, and on the way to this journey, she encountered several mutated nightstaff corpses and one janitor who had fused with his floor-cleaning vehicle, and he didn't approve of her stealing. Eilidh responded to his attempts to stop her by pushing him down the stairs to B2. He'll live if he goes down the rest himself, but wouldn't be able to come back up.

She then went to the PC store to see if she could get an internet connection. That was a negative, naturally. This was the Apocalypse. She took the best computer they had anyway, and their best MHD. She'd taken portable drives containing her hacking programs from her flat before she left, which were now in her satchels. She took some cables too, for connecting to other machines if wireless wasn't an option.

After a quick meal, she sat down in the middle of the mall, and tried not to let the horror and loneliness around her bring her to tears.