"Well, well, what do we have here? Such a small little thief?!" The man grinned evilly, grabbing his small arms.
The men threw him down with a bang, hitting the table leg. The man raised his feet to give him a kick.
It wasn't too heavy that he'd break bones or die, but every kick hurt very much and it probably wouldn't have felt much different from it.
The man's cohorts chuckled while the people around could only close their eyes and frown, with no one stepping over to help.
Luckily, there was still someone who was willing to take a small step. Someone around knew of him, and the person immediately called his sister who was working her 2nd job nearby.
"What are you doing?!" She yelled as soon as she arrived, to see a man kicking his brother for the nth time.
"Please stop!!" She screamed, running and covering her brother's body.
"He tried stealing from me!" The man said, but paused when he saw the girl more closely.
"And he's pretty good at it. He must've been doing it for a while, yeah?"
Horus could still remember the despair in his sister's eyes when she realized what he had been doing.
She sobbed but covered him with her body regardless.
"That's enough!" She remained firm, "He didn't get to steal anything did he?!"
The man didn't answer and just leered at his sister. Horus didn't like his stare and he tried to sit up to protect her. But he was too small and weak and powerless.
He didn't really know what happened after that.
All he knew was that they were taken to a cheap motel room and he was asked to wait outside.
He didn't know what his sister did inside the room, but the man didn't beat him anymore after. He even threw them some money.
He was confused, but he hated the feeling of helplessness very much.
He grabbed the money and threw it back to him.
The piece of crumpled money hit the man's leg, and a moment later he fell down.
For a moment he thought his throw was super strong and he grinned. But then the man's body started to twist in odd shapes, then he began growling, and then crawling to his direction like a monster.
His sister got out of the room and screamed, grabbing a random thing—a vase—and hitting him with it.
The vase broke but the monster continued to move, unbothered.
He felt himself being pulled back, behind her sister, as she took a piece of the vase and stabbed the man.
It continued to move, and his sister stabbed it over and over, until it finally stopped moving.
He saw his sister shaking and crying and held his hand. "We need to run." She said, shaking, but as they opened the door, they only saw more monsters.
They were everywhere.
But they closed the door and saw the monster of the man was still twitching. His sister frowned and kicked the piece of vase stuck in its head, and it finally, truly, it stopped moving.
"Is it really dead now?" He asked, but when no one answered he lifted his head to see his sister staring into thin air.
His sister paused. "System?" She voiced out, confused.
She looked at him with her red eyes still tearing up, but after a while she told him to hold a weapon.
He didn't really understand and he watched his sister take another piece of the vase, a bigger piece, and made him hold it.
With another piece in hand, his sister opened the door again. Horus was very confused and extremely terrified. "Sister??"
But he watched as she led one zombie in, closing the door again, and stabbing it over and over until it could hardly move.
"Kill it." His sister said, holding his hand and motions for it to hit the skull.
Horus shook, feeling the hard skull against the vase. "But…"
His sister sighed and held his cheek. "Don't you trust your sister?"
He shook his head. Of course, he trusted his sister.
So, with some guidance and a lot of snot and tears, little Horus managed to finally stab through the piece of porcelain into the zombie's brain.
[Welcome Terran Survivor 045 to the universe assistance system!]
"It's a screen…" he said, extending his hand and saw his hand go through the screen.
It was very pretty, like gazillions of super tiny luminescent powder forming an image in front of him.
"It's really there? Okay… okay…." His sister said, stuttering, before she dragged him back to the inner room and they locked the door.
They stayed there for hours, embracing each other in their shaken states. Fortunately, there was food in the small refrigerator of the hotel room so they did not go hungry.
Hiding inside his sister's arms, he looked up at her, "What's going on sister??"
"I don't know either…" she said, voice still stuttering. "It seems we're going to get taken to a new world…"
"No monsters." She said, but he felt she wasn't very certain.
They stayed like that for a few more hours, resting a bit, waiting for the counter to stop.
But a few hours in, and amongst the creepy scratching of the doors, he could see the changes in his sister.
"This won't do…" she said, "We can't waste time here..."
"We need to fill up our space." She said, "We ought to live better there, right?"
He looked at his sister, nodding, and they opened the door with weapons in hand.
They went out to take valuables within the motel, and they fought off the zombies together one by one using whatever they had on hand.
Fortunately, the motel was locked and the number of zombies outside their rooms was limited, giving them some time to adjust.
His sister took the emergency axe and he was given the longest knife in the kitchen.
They took away the people's wallets and went straight to the back room and took in as much food and supplies there as they could, especially food with long shelf lives like grains and uncooked pasta.
There was also some jewelry and little gold from the customers, though not much, as no one in the motel was very rich.
The most expensive they got was a wedding ring on a man's hand, and the man's alone, as the woman didn't have any rings on her.
It was not easy, but just as they finally got used to it and managed to scour much of the small motel, a circle of light lit up under them, bringing them to another strange, and even more dangerous, world.