The jaundiced glow of the emergency lights didn't fail. Instead, they hummed—a low, grating, high-frequency vibration that rattled the fillings in Justin's teeth and bathed the interior of the "e aco" in a sickly, stagnant yellow.
The light didn't offer comfort; it illuminated a nightmare. From their confinement inside the floor-to-ceiling bulletproof register enclosure, the world outside the thick plexiglass looked warped, like an image caught in amber.
Justin sat with his back pressed against the safe, his boots swimming in a shallow pool of sweat and spilled soda. Through the security glass, his eyes kept drifting back to Aisle 3. Bob the mechanic lay twisted among crushed bags of Lay's chips, the dark, viscous fluid from his shattered skull pooling across the clean linoleum.
He was dead. Dead as hell. Justin stared at the ruined skull, the reality of it sitting in his throat like ash. Bob hadn't been a sick, suffering man; he was a walking corpse. The virus, or whatever the hell had hijacked his system, was puppeteering dead meat. Justin hadn't killed a man in that aisle—he had crushed the skull of a reanimated husk that wouldn't stop coming.
Ting.
The sound cut through the hum of the emergency lights.
Ting. Ting.
Justin snapped his head toward the front storefront windows. The three mechanics who had ignored the military convoy were still there, silhouetted against the encroaching dusk. The man in the business suit had his forehead pressed flat against the glass, his bruised, empty eyes staring blankly into the store. He was tracking the faint yellow light inside. With a rhythmic, mindless twitch of a dead arm, he tapped his heavy gold ring against the pane.
"We're going to suffocate in here," Tally hissed.
She was pulled into a tight ball in the corner of the booth, her knees pressed against her chest. In the narrow, six-by-six-foot space, her frantic, shallow breathing was too loud. She smelled of sharp adrenaline and sour resentment.
"Shut up, Tally," Justin whispered, his voice completely flat. He reached back, his hand automatically checking the small of his back. The cold, heavy shape of his father's gun pressed reassuringly against his spine. He wasn't going to use it, but he needed to know it was there.
"Don't tell me to shut up!" she shot back in a venomous whisper, her golden-brown skin looking sickly under the yellow emergency bulbs. "Look at what you did! Look where you put us! We are trapped in a literal cage because you panicked and ran!"
"Tally, please," Mari breathed, wrapping her arms tightly around Kenzie, who was trembling silently, her face buried so deep in Barbie the Yorkie's fur that the dog was making a faint whistling sound.
"No, Mari! I'm sick of pretending he knows what he's doing!" Tally's eyes flashed with a predatory, volatile light. She leaned forward, targeting Justin across the cramped space. "You locked us in here with a corpse. And back home, you locked a living person inside to get torn apart by those dead freaks."
Justin's stomach dropped. The image of the upstairs window at the estate flashed behind his eyes.
"What if Ella Belle was hiding under the bed with him?" Tally whispered, her voice a cruel, jagged instrument. "What if she was right there, and you just... abandoned them?"
The accusation felt like a physical blow. Justin closed his eyes, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the flashlight in his lap. The brutal reality of it hit him again, fresh and suffocating—he hadn't just fled a haunted house. He had barred the door on a helpless, living boy, trapping him inside with the dead. The guilt settled into his gut like liquid lead, permanently altering the boy he used to be.
"I told you in the car," Justin said, his voice dropping into a cold, terrifyingly quiet register that made Tally blink. "If Ella Belle was up there, she would have come out to the door. She doesn't do silent. She wasn't there."
"You don't know that," Tally muttered, though she shrank back a fraction against the lottery ticket dispenser.
"I know what I did," Justin said. "And I know we're alive right now because of it. So sit down, eat your chips, and keep your mouth shut."
Mari placed a gentle, warning hand on Justin's arm, her jaw tight. She was fiercely guarding the secret of the life growing inside her, and Tally's erratic hostility was a direct threat to their survival.
Tally noticed the gesture. Her eyes dropped to Mari's stomach, her lip curling into a sneer of pure, unadulterated disgust. The tag-along. The 'plus one' who seduced my brother. Tally thought bitterly of her bedroom at home—the silk sheets, the perfect vanity lighting, the expensive perfumes. All of it gone, replaced by a trailer-trash nightmare, and they were all acting like Mari was the one who mattered.
Tally reached out quietly, her fingers brushing the metal counter of the register. Justin's industrial box cutter was lying right next to the receipt printer. With a fluid, practiced motion born of absolute selfishness, she slid the plastic handle into the pocket of her hoodie.
8:00 PM
The Texaco was a tomb of buzzing yellow light.
The emergency systems continued their relentless, low-grade hum, casting long, geometric shadows across the aisles. Outside, the distant, concussive thuds of military mortar fire had finally ceased, leaving only the eternal, erratic punctuation of the gold ring against the front window.
Ting.
Ting. Ting.
Mari had finally passed out an hour ago, completely spent, her head lolling heavily against Justin's shoulder. Kenzie was a motionless heap of denim and fleece at their feet, the Yorkie snoring softly in her arms.
Tally remained wide awake.
She sat in the corner of the bulletproof booth, staring through the thick plexiglass. She wasn't looking at the dead clerk in Aisle 3, nor was she looking at the sea of dark marshland outside. She was staring at her brother.
She watched the way Justin's hand was protectively draped over Mari's waist, even in his fitful sleep. She watched the way his face twitched, carrying the invisible weight of the dead thing he had crushed, and the living boy he had abandoned.
They hate me, Tally thought, her chest tightening with a dangerous, curdling resentment. They think I'm the liability. I'm the victim here. I'm the one who's losing everything.
She slipped her hand into her hoodie pocket, her fingers tracing the rigid, cold plastic of the stolen box cutter. She slid the thumb-switch forward, hearing the microscopic click as the razor blade extended in the dark.
It would be so easy. She could slide the heavy steel deadbolt on the security door, step out into the aisles, and open the front door of the store. She could let the three dead men with the bruised, empty eyes inside just to watch the look on Mari's face when the glass fortress failed.
But then she would be dead, too. And Tally didn't want to die. She wanted to win. She wanted her father, her house, and her power back.
She slid the blade back into its housing.
Through the thick security glass, she locked eyes with the businessman tapping at the storefront window. He couldn't see her clearly through the glare of the emergency lights, but he kept tapping.
"Sleep tight, Justin," Tally whispered into the suffocating, yellow-lit silence of the cage, a small, cruel smile touching her lips. "Tomorrow is going to be so much worse."
Outside, the thick, ink-blue twilight of early evening had fully consumed the sky, swallowing the "e aco" like a glass monument to a world that had died in a single afternoon.