“What do you call a person who leaves an essential piece of equipment on the ground?” Red said.
Adam ignored this. “I should be in front.”
“Why?” Red said.
“Because I’m . . .” he began, then trailed off when he saw her expression.
“A boy? More able-bodied?” Red offered, but her tone was silky and dangerous. “You don’t have a weapon, and I’m not giving you mine. So get behind me.”
She moved along carefully, not because she was worried about something hearing them (they’d already made plenty of noise arguing) or a monster popping out in her face but because she didn’t want to miss the tracks. The lines on the floor were clearly demarcated close to the bodies, but they faded out pretty quickly once Red and Adam rounded the corner of the aisle.
She stopped, bent over, peered closer. “I don’t know. It looks like the tracks are disappearing. If they are tracks in the first place—the kind of tracks you mean. They could just be marks from where someone dragged those bodies on the ground.”
Red was trying not to think about the bodies. This wasn’t because they were horrifying but because she wanted time and quiet so she could contemplate what she’d seen. She wished to take out her mental picture of the Other Guy (as she now mentally tagged the man at the gas station) and compare it side by side with the couple on the shelves.
Maybe they had it all wrong. Maybe it wasn’t an alien or a lung parasite or some other completely unbelievable thing but instead was some serial killer who opened people up and pulled their organs out. Adam would scoff at this because he seemed (surprisingly) invested in the idea of an out-of-this-world monster, but the idea of a human one was a lot more plausible to Red.
A human who can peel back bone and bend it like metal? Are we talking supervillain now, Red?
No, she definitely did not need another potential option to contemplate. There were drawbacks to watching too many genre movies.
She was about to propose that instead of following streaks of blood on the floor, they go back and examine the wounds more closely when Adam shouldered her aside.
“Let me see,” Adam said, crouching down with his nose nearly touching the floor. “Yeah, they’re fading. But it looks like the tracks went toward that back room.”
He indicated a door with no handle a few feet away from them. The door was the type that you could push in either direction—handy if you were carrying a box of produce or a cart full of goods to restock the shelves.
Also useful if you were a handless lung parasite and you needed to hide away in a dark space.
She shook her head. Don’t get caught up in his fantasy, Red. The thing that killed most people is a regular old virus, the kind that you can’t see without a slide and a microscope. This thing that’s tearing open chests is something else, and it’s not supernatural.
While she was woolgathering Adam popped back up and made for the door with no regard for his own safety.
“Hey!” she said.
He turned around, his hand on the door ready to push it open.
She held up the hand axe. “What are you going to do if something freaky jumps out and tries to eat your face?”
“Scream like crazy and run,” Adam said. “Which is what you’re always saying people should do in those movies you watch. I’m no kung fu master. I’m not going to try to stay and fight it.”
He pushed open the door and went into the back room, leaving Red muttering to herself.
“Sure, and what’s going to happen to your one-legged sister while you’re running away? That’s probably part of your plan, to leave me here to get eaten and then you can hitch a ride on someone’s truck and you won’t have to walk anymore.”
She pushed on the door, hesitated (because she was born with an overabundance of caution even if Adam wasn’t), realized that if there was anything or anyone inside that Adam