Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ASHFORD SUPERCENTER
Derek Collins had worked at the Ashford Supercenter for six years, and he’d never seen the place like this.
The store opened at seven, and by seven-ten the parking lot was full.
Not a normal full.
Black Friday full.
Cars sat crooked across the parking spaces. People rushed through the sliding doors, pushing carts as if racing each other. Inside, customers grabbed whatever they could reach—cold medicine, bottled water, canned food—stripping the shelves faster than employees could restock them.
Derek wheeled a cart stacked with cough syrup down the pharmacy aisle and stopped short. The shelf he’d filled twenty minutes earlier was already empty again.
“What the hell?” he muttered.
A woman reached right into his shopping cart and grabbed three bottles.
“Hey,” Derek said automatically.
She didn’t even look at him.
Across the aisle, two men were arguing over the last box of cold medicine.
“You’ve got four already!”
“My wife’s sick!”
“My kid’s sick, asshole!”
Derek sighed and started unloading bottles onto the shelf again.
The store buzzed with nervous noise.
Carts rattling.
Voices raised.
Babies crying.
It felt less like shopping and more like people trying to outrun something they couldn’t see.
Two customers stopped near Derek’s cart. They looked like they hadn’t slept.
“Did y’all go to the game Friday?” one of them asked.
“Yeah,” the other replied. “The whole place stayed after to watch that meteor shower.”
Derek glanced up.
The meteor shower was the talk of the entire town. He watched it himself from his driveway, seeing bright streaks of fire tearing across the sky. People cheered from the stadium bleachers. Someone said it was the most beautiful thing they had ever seen.
The guy continued talking.
“My brother swears that’s what made everyone sick.”
His friend snorted. “Yeah, right. Meteors giving people the flu?”
“I’m serious. My neighbor was at the game, and he’s been sick ever since.”
Derek shook his head and kept stocking. “Flu season,” he muttered.
But as he pushed his cart farther down the aisle, he began to notice something strange.
A large majority of the customers looked sick.
Sweating.
Pale.
Feverish.
One man leaned heavily against a shelf like he might fall over.
A woman in the vitamin aisle coughed so hard she had to grab her cart to stay upright.
Derek slowed. “That’s not good,” he said quietly.
A loud crash echoed from the front of the store. Someone had knocked over a display of canned vegetables.
The store manager hurried over, trying to calm people down. “Everyone just take what you need—”
A man stumbled into Derek’s aisle. He looked like he had the flu from hell. Sweat poured down his face, and his hands shook.
He took two steps.
Then he collapsed.
The sound of his body hitting the tile echoed through the aisle.
For a moment, everything went still.
Derek set the cough syrup down and walked toward him. “Sir?”
The man didn’t move.
Derek crouched beside him. “Hey, buddy—”
The man’s head jerked upward.
His eyes were wrong.
Clouded gray like fog over glass.
Before Derek could react, the man lunged.
His teeth sank into the arm of the woman kneeling beside him.
She screamed.
The sound ripped through the store.
For a second, the entire building held its breath.
The woman screamed again.
The sound cut through the store like a siren.
Derek jerked back as the man clamped down harder on her arm, teeth tearing through fabric and skin. Blood splashed across the tile.
“Get him off!” someone yelled.
Two customers rushed forward and grabbed the man by the shoulders.
The man bit one of them too.
Another scream ripped through the aisle.
Someone shoved Derek from behind.
People started running.
Carts slammed into shelves. Medicine bottles crashed to the floor. A child began wailing somewhere near the checkout lanes.
“Call 911,” someone shouted.
The woman who’d been bitten staggered to her feet, clutching her arm. Blood poured between her fingers.
She took two steps.
Then collapsed.
The man who’d been helping her started coughing violently.
Derek watched him wipe his mouth.
His hand came away red.
The store manager pushed through the crowd. “Everyone, calm down! We’ve got—”
The bitten woman lunged at him. Her teeth sank into his shoulder.
For a second, no one moved.
Then the entire store erupted.
People screamed and ran for the front doors.
The automatic doors slid open and shut as bodies slammed into them from both sides. Carts overturned. Someone fell and disappeared beneath a rush of feet.
The man who’d been bitten in the aisle stood slowly.
His head tilted at an unnatural angle.
Gray film slid across his eyes.
He grabbed the nearest customer and tore into his neck.
Blood sprayed across the shelves.
Derek stumbled backward into the pharmacy display. “Oh my God,” he whispered.
All around him, people were changing.
The coughing man collapsed and started convulsing.
A woman near the vitamins began clawing at her own throat before throwing herself at another shopper.
The screaming grew louder.
Then the fire alarm started.
The shrill wail echoed through the building as someone must have pulled the handle near the front doors.
Red emergency lights flashed.
The store turned into a nightmare.
A mother shoved her child under a cart and ran.
A man swung a metal shopping basket like a weapon.
Someone tried to climb over the checkout counters and began feasting on the employee at the register, joined soon by two more bitten people.
The infected were everywhere now.
They moved through the crowd like wolves.
Biting.
Eating.
Derek turned and ran for the back hallway.
The stockroom door slammed open as employees rushed out.
“Lock it!” someone yelled.
Derek reached the door just as another worker shoved a metal rack across it.
The pounding started almost immediately.
Bodies slammed against the other side.
The metal frame rattled violently.
Inside the hallway, the employees stood frozen, listening.
Then it changed.
Less screaming.
More…tearing sounds.
Derek felt his stomach twist.
One of the employees whispered, “What the hell is happening?”
Something crashed through the door.
The rack slid several inches across the floor.
Another impact.
The metal buckled.
“Run!” someone shouted.
The employees scattered down the hallway toward the loading dock.
Derek burst through the rear door into the sunlight.
The parking lot wasn’t any better. People were running in every direction, some even fighting.
Others were already on the ground.
The infected staggered through the chaos, drawn by the noise.
Derek ran.
He made it halfway across the lot before something slammed into him from the side.
He hit the pavement hard.
The wind left his lungs.
The man on top of him smelled like sweat and rot.
Gray eyes stared down at him.
Then the man bit him.
Derek screamed.
His hands pushed uselessly against the man’s shoulders as teeth tore into his neck.
The sky above the parking lot looked strangely calm.
Blue.
Peaceful.
Like nothing was wrong at all.
The last thing Derek saw before everything went dark was the automatic doors sliding open again.
And the infected pouring out of the store.