The
thing about humanity being totally blindsided by an invasion of parasitic
aliens is that—for whatever reason—it makes the automatic doors in front of
grocery stores not want to open for you anymore. I learned this while I was loading a few extra shells into
my gun as Minh and I approached the entrance to Dan’s. The door didn’t open and the plexiglass shoved the barrel of
my gun back at me, causing the
stock to bite into my hip. The
pain was so sharp that I clutched the handle (trigger included) too hard and
BANG! SHATTER! I had just blown a hole in the door. Minh, who was standing behind me simply stared at the flurry
of broken glass on the ground, demurely walked over to the not-automatic door,
and pushed it open.
I
was slightly comforted to see that the glittering spread of glass that I had
created didn’t add much to the mayhem that had already arrived inside Dan’s
Food and Drug. Headless bodies
clung to overturned newspaper stands and palates of bulk dog food. They were splayed across checkout
counters and stacked up against the icy doors of the frozen foods section. I could still recognize that grocery
store smell of floor cleaner and refrigerated food, but it was buried deeply
inside the bitingly metallic stench of blood. I was jolted out of my horrified trance when Minh grabbed my
elbow.
“Shit!
Minh! I coulda blown your head right off!” She just shrugged and held up a
hideous fluorescent green and pink backpack. I noticed that she was wearing one of equally offensive
color.
“Oh!
Good idea, Minh!” I rifled through the pack to see how many little pockets I
could fill, “I don’t suppose they had any backpacks that didn’t look like TRON puked all over them?”
Head
shake. Followed by a confused
expression.
We
filled Minh’s pack mostly with light stuff—beef jerky, fruit roll-ups, and some
bags of mixed nuts. I found a can
opener and crammed as much canned meat, fruit, and vegetables as possible into
my pack. As I was doing this, two
thoughts barged into my head.
First, between the two of us, we could only carry about a week and a
half’s worth of food. Second, just
where in the hell were we going to go?
I stopped packing and thought about these two party crashers. I told Minh to stop for a moment. It didn’t make sense to pack without
having some kind of destination in mind.
Where did all the other survivors end up? In an instant so quick it felt
like a direct response to my question, I heard the earsplitting clatter of
metal pots crashing to the floor.
It came from somewhere towards the back of the building. I stepped in front of Minh and cocked a
shell into place.
“Minh,
I’m going to see what that was. Do
you want to stay here?”
Head
shake.
“Do
you want to come with me?”
Nod.
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