“To the front, run to the front” he answered her, and then gagged, dry-heaving until his cheeks puffed out like small balloons. “Smell shouldn’t be as bad at the front of the store.”
Emily took care to follow in Peter’s footsteps, matching where he placed his feet and how he navigated the store. Yellow emergency lights eclipsed the walls, high up near the ceiling, painting yellow stains across the tiles. She wondered how many days or hours remained on the emergency light batteries, and was thankful the front of the Food-Mart was mostly glass. Gray daylight bled indoors, lighting up most of the store, but leaving the back in a deep shadow.
The retched stench clung to them as they passed the rotting meat. And as Peter had suggested, the walk-in freezer had been left open. But the locker door had also been propped open with a crate of rotting vegetables. Intentional. Shelves of drippy meat spewed an odor that she was certain would stay with her forever. And as she suspected, the tattoo man hadn’t died from the few noticeable burns, but instead he’d been murdered. Half of his face had been pummeled—battered into a mess of dried gore—erasing any recognizable features.
A few feet away from tattoo man, a small red fire-extinguisher sat on the ground, perched upright, as if at attention and ready to use in the event of a fire. And though they were moving quickly—running past the obscenity of it all—she could see the bottom of the fire-extinguisher, the dented metal, the caked blood, the pieces of skin and bone: tattoo man had been beaten to death. But for what? There was hate in the way he’d died. True hate in the way his attacker took the man’s identity. What if tattoo man’s attacker was still in the Food-Mart. What if they were in the Food-Mart with them? Emily felt for the impression of the small knife in her pocket. But what would that do, other than open pharmacy boxes? They needed something to defend themselves.
The kitchen aisle!
They’d reached the kitchen aisle and Emily took the first weapon she saw. A long chef’s knife gleamed the gray and yellow light from the emergency lighting. She yanked it from the shelf, breaking the hanging tab with one quick snap. Peter slowed, heaving, and then stopped. His eyes grew as round as saucers when he turned to find her poised with a knife in her hands. He stumbled back, throwing his hands up in front of him.
“What are you doing with that?” Emily realized how she must have looked and lowered the blade, but gripped the handle with a tighter squeeze. She liked the feel of the weight in her hand. And she liked the effect it had on Peter even more. “Seriously, Emily, what are you doing?”
“It’s for protection,” she huffed out. Her voice rasped in a throaty tumble of words. She motioned back to tattoo man, and managed to add, “I don’t think we’re alone.” Heat rose from beneath her collar. Sweating and irritated, Emily stripped out of the heavy sweater. The Food-Mart air was thicker than in the mall; uncomfortable and muggy, like a wet summer day.
“Protection?” he asked, raising his arms outward and turning side to side, indicating that they were alone.
“Did you see the dead man? Did you see the way he died?” Peter shook his head and lowered his arms. “He was murdered.”
“Could’ve been the explosion… I mean look around, half the shelves in the store are toppled over.” Emily considered what he said, but realized that Peter hadn’t seen the fire-extinguisher.
“Falling canned goods wouldn’t do that to his face. Someone beat that man with a fire-extinguisher. And who knows if that person isn’t still in here… in the store with us.”
Without another word said, Peter reached over to the aisle shelves and pulled away a meat tenderizer. He cupped the wooden handle in his palm, closing and opening his fingers around it until he was comfortable with the grip. When he wagged the square metal end in the air like a hammer, Emily could have sworn she saw satisfaction.
“I feel like Thor with this thing,” he said half smiling, but she didn’t get the joke. “Here, let’s do this right then,” he added, and pulled two leather straps from the shelf. Peter showed her how they’d use the straps to hold their weapons. An unexpected pinch of nerves fluttered inside her when he knelt down in front of her. She braced herself with her hands on his shoulder. The flutter turned into a stir as he reached around her middle.
Looking up at her he said, “This will hold your knife… and just don’t cut the strap, or yourself,” he pleaded, shaking his head. Peter continued working the strap through a belt loop, pulling her closer to him, until he had the leather strap wrapped around her.
“You made a scabbard,” she called it, having learned the word recently.
“Yeah, kinda. I know it’s just some material used for crafts, but it’ll work until we find something better.”
“Thank you,” she breathed. Her cheeks felt warm, and as he stood, her hands wandered down his tight arms, reaching his hands with the other piece of leather. “Here, let me.” When his belt was tied off around his waist, he pushed the handle of the tenderizer through, sitting and at the ready.
“Emily, if we do run into anyone, don’t hesitate,” Peter looked at her gravely, and then motioned to her knife. And now this was a part of their every day too. “There’re no more laws, and people—well, men—are going to want to do things.” Emily closed her eyes, wanting to go back five minutes when she felt safe.
“I don’t even know how to use this,” she answered. Her voice shook with the thought of what he was suggesting. Vulnerable. He must have seen her expression, and took her in his arms.
Stay strong
, she thought, but what he said had terrified her,
I’d rather die first than let that happen
. The Food-Mart whispered silently, making the types of sounds she’d expected to hear in an empty market. Her ears felt taught, pushed back high, trying to listen for any signs of life.
A sound came from the front of the Food-Mart, breaking the tension. Emily wiped her cheek with the heel of her hand, and Peter affectionately wiped her other cheek. Bringing his face to within an inch of hers, he pressed his finger to the dent in her upper lip, leaving it there.
She nodded, understanding.
And other than her knife and his tenderizer, silence was their only weapon.
Sweat beaded on her arms and her face, and she saw the heat in Peter’s cheeks, which had flushed blotchy red. And there was something else about the air, something that reminded her of lightning storms, buzzing with static.
The hair on her arms and neck stood up, and an invisible hand gripped and turned her stomach. She followed Peter to the front of the store, careful not to step on canned goods and dry-goods. When he turned to face her, he shook his head and tried to say something, but the words were slow to come out.
“We should turn around,” he said at once. He spoke in a solemn tone that she hadn’t heard before. His hands trembled and he flinched, turning away and then shuddered. There was dread in his face, and a morbid curiosity rose in her that needed to be answered. “Let’s just find what we came for and go back.” He was protecting her. But from what?
“What is it!” she demanded, but his square shoulders blocked the view. She glimpsed a cash register, and a conveyer belt that was still filled with a shopper’s emptied cart. And she could see the large glass windows that every supermarket seemed to share.
Through the glass window, the fog rolled endless wispy folds, turning over and over, slow and methodical. “The fog? Yeah, so what! I walked through that shit. Did you?” Peter dropped his hands. She could have slapped him in the face, and it probably wouldn’t have been as painful as what she’d just said. She intended to hurt him, to guilt him into moving out of her way.
“Are you sure?” was all he asked, and Emily pushed past him, saying nothing.
“Oh my God,” was all that she was could mutter. Her stomach was in her throat, and she’d wished that she’d listened to Peter. Nothing good could come from seeing this.
A stampede was the closest thing she could think of to describe what could have created such a scene. Bodies lay stacked on top of one another.
Cordwood,
she recalled. Some half in and half out of the store—all of them having tried to get inside, having tried to get into the safety of the store.
Emily envisioned what happened: morning shoppers, leaving the store, taking their groceries to their cars, unloading overstuffed shopping carts and suddenly becoming overwhelmed by the falling clouds. Their clothes were the first to go, melting into their skin, becoming a part of their flesh. The screams surely began at once when the first burns bubbled up into bloody erupting welts.
Someone probably yelled to go back into the store. They ran. They all ran, leaving their carts of food and open trunks, trying to squeeze through the Food-Mart’s doors at the same time. But the poison was faster than they were. How many bodies had made it inside before the hole was plugged, before every square-inch of space in that opening sealed the store from the outside?
A few reached the store, but the fog had melted their insides by then. Dozens of bodies were face down in puddles of blood. Emily considered Mrs. Quigly and the drowning sound she’d made before collapsing.
The front of the store was littered with more bodies. A man hugged the glass like a Garfield doll in the rear window of someone’s car. His mouth lay agape, spilling his insides, dried and staining his front. Others were pressed behind him, keeping his dead body upright. Emily wondered how strong the glass was. She wondered how many bodies it would take before the glass cracked.
Close to them, she saw that a woman had run headlong into the heavy front window. She held her two young toddlers—one under each arm—and had tried to break through the plate glass with her forehead. A smear of drippy red jelly fused the woman’s head with the glass. And her blouse had been torn open, or disintegrated, leaving her bare breasts pressed against the glass. Under her arms, she carried the remains of her children; pouches of clothes that could have come from the mall’s OshKosh B’gosh kids clothing outlet. Dozens more piled up behind the mother and her children, an avalanche of bodies squashed against the windows.
But what happened to everyone else? She looked over the dead bodies inside, the father covering a baby carrier and a pair of teens locked in a deadly embrace. Dread filled her with a familiar horror. The poison breached the Food-Mart, and anyone who’d sought refuge inside had died a slow and miserable death. They’d all died.
She flashed a look up at the metal rafters and then back to the large plates of glass that separated them from the poison. The fog was eating the Food-Mart like it had eaten her house, and it wouldn’t be long before it collapsed on top of them.
So overwhelmed with what was in front of her, Emily didn’t realize that she was rubbing her arms. Peter was doing the same around his neck. Her arms were burning like they had when she was back in her house, the salty poison needling with a sting that was deep and painful.
“We can’t stay up here,” she said. Her tone was flat, but exacting. She’d seen enough and turned away. Emily walked back the way they came, reaching the center of the store where the aisles split. Standing there, searching for nothing in particular, she collapsed. It was too much. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the ghost image of the mother carrying her two babies. She was crying by the time Peter reached her. He pressed his hands on her shoulders, but she waved him off.
“No. Don’t,” she said.
Her father did that to them. He did that to the young mother who’d used her face to batter against the window to save her babies. Emily clutched the handle of the knife, pressing the blade into her thigh. She pressed the edge until it nearly cut into her skin. She wanted to feel a pain like the mother had. Emily tried, but then stopped. She couldn’t go any further, and her shrinking courage only made her want to cry some more.
“Emily, it’s okay,” Peter tried to console her. “It’s not your fault.”
“But it is,” she blurted. “I mean… I mean.” Her words trailed off, taken by the anguish erupting inside her. Peter said nothing else, but instead ran his hand across her shoulders and down her back, hoping it helped.
She cried heaving sobs until her insides hurt. At some point, she’d stood up and faced Peter, intending to tell him everything. But then her hands were on his face, pulling him closer until her lips touched his. Peter pulled away, but only for a second before kissing her the way she’d hoped he would. Emily fell into him, and her breathing hitched on errant sobs as they kissed. His lips were soft and wet, and she moaned when his tongue touched hers.
Peter abruptly stopped and backed away. “I’m sorry,” he stammered. Immediately, his expression was filled with surprise and embarrassment. “Emily, I didn’t mean to take advantage.” But when he tugged on the collar of his shirt, she didn’t believe it was embarrassment; it was passion. She shook her head and wiped her damp eyes. Gripping his shirt in her hands, she held him so that he couldn’t move away from her.
“Nothing to be sorry about,” she said. Her voice sounded soft, and even a bit sultry. She didn’t know where the voice came from, or that she could even sound that way. She liked it. “I should be the one who is sorry, I kissed you.”
He nodded, agreeing, but in a clumsy way that she found adorable.
“We—” he stuttered, and then cleared his throat. “—We should get what we need and then get back.” Small bulbous welts sprouted on Peter’s neck. She motioned for him to turn his head, placing her fingers on his stubbly chin. A rash of burns spread down his neck, disappearing under the collar of his shirt. Peter brought her hands in his, and carefully drew a finger around the welts on her arms.