I’m Back -Libby
Thirty Seven
I’m Back -Libby
The store was intact—more than I’d dared to hope.
Shelves still held stock, though some items were askew, a few scattered across the floor.
Still, it was nothing like what one might expect.
The people here hadn’t had time to panic, or they simply hadn’t made it this far.
It was just like that first store in the city.
I moved sideways through the aisle, backpack unzipped and held open at hip height, sweeping items in by feel.
The bag was already heavy, pulling at my shoulder as I crouched to reach canned goods on the lower shelf.
Then something shifted.
A sound.
It was distinct and completely wrong. My body sensed it before my mind caught up.
I didn’t breathe. Didn’t move. I just turned my head slowly, too slowly, dreading what the flashlight beam would reveal.
It found him immediately.
He was less than four feet away, a flannel-clad shape that resolved into a man.
My breath caught on the details that flooded in too fast: skin like old paper, thin and split over the muscle beneath.
A jaw hanging wrong, held by a dark thread of dried tissue.
His lips were gone, pulled back to show every single tooth.
And the eyes—milky, filmed over, but they found me.
They saw me. A cold dread, sharp as broken glass, twisted in my gut.
His mouth opened.
The sound that came out wasn’t a groan. It was stiff and thick, something shifting deep in his throat, and then he lunged.
“No—”
I threw myself backward, my shoulder catching the shelf behind me hard enough to send cans rolling and crashing to the floor, my hands already scrambling for the gun.
He closed the distance faster than he should have been able to—faster than something that looked like that should have been able to move—one arm outstretched, fingers spread and reaching, nails black at the edges and peeling back from the skin.
“Stay back—” My voice broke on the second word as I scrambled backward.
He didn’t slow.
I got the gun up between us with shaking arms, elbows barely locked, the barrel wavering, and pulled the trigger.
The shot discharged in the enclosed space, and the pressure of it hit my eardrums like a physical blow. The recoil vibrated through my wrists and forearms, and the sound wiped out everything, the ringing in my ears replacing all of it instantly and completely.
His head snapped back.
Then he dropped.
Not slowly. Not like in movies. He folded straight down and hit the tile hard, one arm pinned beneath him at an angle that would have been agonizing if agony were still something he could experience.
The impact sent a dark, heavy spread moving out from beneath his skull across the floor, reaching the grout lines in the tile and following them as if it knew where to go.
What replaced the shot was worse than the shot.
I stood over him, both hands still locked around the gun, arms shaking, and looked at what I’d done to what had once been a person in a flannel shirt who probably had a name and people who’d waited for him to come home.
“Oh God,” I rasped. “Oh God, oh God—”
Move. Right now. Move.
The shot had been loud. Loud enough to carry. Loud enough to pull anything in a three-block radius toward this building with that horrible, single-minded direction they all seemed to share, and I did not intend to be standing here over a spreading dark stain on the floor when they arrived.
I grabbed the backpack, slung it without checking, and ran.
Back room, door, alley. The cold hit hard. I scanned both directions—clear—then grabbed for both water jugs at once and immediately knew that wasn’t happening.
“Damn it—”
One jug in the bag, one in my hand, and I ran. Full speed, boots loud on the pavement, the bag punishing my back with every stride.
I didn’t look back. Eyes forward, chest burning, every doorway a threat in my peripheral vision until the clinic materialized at the far end of the alley—dark windows, locked door, three people on the other side of it.
I hit the door with my shoulder, shoved through it, spun around, and threw the lock with fingers that barely cooperated.
The silence inside settled over me like a blanket.
“I’m back.” My back hit the door, and I stood there against it, chest heaving, the water jug still in my hand, the gun still in the other.