Y/N moved through the canned goods aisle, careful to step over the shattered jars and glass. A trail of dried blood led toward the back of the store, where the darkness pooled thick and impenetrable. Her boots crunched against broken crackers and plastic bottles. Outside, muffled by thick walls and distance, came the sound of gunfire. Then silence.

She checked her wrist. Three hours until sundown.

Three hours to find iodine, dressings, maybe a can opener if the gods were kind, and get the hell back to the hole she'd been sleeping in.

Something crashed in the back of the store.

Metal hitting concrete. A rack of something going down.

Then a scream—human, raw, female, cut off fast like a hand had been clamped over the sound. Y/N froze with her hand halfway to the shelf. The emergency light above her buzzed and died, plunging the aisle into near-total darkness.

He was six lanes over. He'd seen her slipping through the loading dock and followed her instead of staying on his route. A decision based on the desperate hunger in her movements and the fact that she didn't check her corners.

Another crash. Closer. Claws scraping tile.

Screaming from the back split into two distinct voices. A woman pleading. A man telling her to run. Whatever answered them didn't sound human. It sounded like a throat from a nightmare, ripping apart in jagged shrieks that echoed down the empty aisles.

Y/N's hand closed on something useful—a bottle of peroxide. She shoved it into her pack. Sweat slid down the back of her neck. The shrieks grew louder, hybridized. Two of them now, maybe three, voices twisting together in that terrible chorus she'd learned to dread. The infected fed together. They called to each other. They found you together.

Something feeding.