Down the street. Here was the Volvo with the open door. She closed it. Not sure why – maybe because now it didn’t look so out of place, or out of respect for whoever the driver was, or … never mind. It was open, she closed it, keep walking toward the store, that was the goal.
She passed the Molinaros’ house and thought about stopping to check on them. She got halfway up the walk before she caught herself. If the Molinaros were … were like the Harrings and the man in the Volvo, did she want to know? Put another way, could she handle knowing that right now? She was already shaking so much she felt like she might vibrate to pieces, and she still hadn’t checked the store. If she went someplace else, at the rate she was going she might never get to work.
She gritted her teeth, backed away from the two-story house with the copper-colored trim and resumed her journey. Keep walking. Keep walking. She kept telling herself that.
And finally she was standing in the little parking lot. Around the corner were the sliding glass doors of the entrance. Would they be locked? Or still working, having never been shut down before everyone … she felt tears welling up and willed them back. No, she had to be strong. Regardless of what was going on, she had to keep it together, because if she fell apart, she might not get herself reassembled again. If the world had gone to Hell, the last thing she needed was to break down.
She swallowed, went around the corner, walked toward the doors. They slid aside like magic, open sesame, just like it was a normal Monday morning and everything was fine. She looked to the left, and there was Ganj, slumped over the counter but clearly not taking a nap – he looked boneless. And sitting by the soda fridge, leaning against it like a puppet with strings cut, was Bilbo – Bill Phelan, who got his nickname naturally due to his short stocky build, hairy feet and passion for Dungeons & Dragons.
Kelly froze except for her head, which turned as she scanned the area. Nobody else. Nobody alive. No one but her. And there was just the slightest smell of decay.
SHHHHHHH! She jumped as the little sprinklers in the produce section kicked on, keeping the lettuce and celery and kale damp and fresh. Food no one would buy again …
Her feet started moving without her even thinking. Down the main aisle, checking each section. No one. No one. No one. No one. No … NO!
Of all people, it had to be Rose Li and her year-old son. She’d collapsed face-first in the pasta and canned goods aisle. Tiny Chun was still seated in the cart, his head tilted back at an unnatural angle, his mouth open in a silent wail.
Kelly sprinted from the store, fell to her knees outside the still-working doors, and wept and screamed until she couldn’t anymore.
3
SEARCH
It took about ten minutes for Kelly to stop making noise, and another ten for her to stand. Exactly how were you supposed to act when everyone around you was dead? No class or seminar ever covered that scenario. She pictured Cillian Murphy wandering through London in a hospital gown in 28 Days Later, and realized he didn’t have a clue what to do either until he ran into another survivor. Though if Noemie Harris came around the corner with a machine gun, she knew she’d lose it all over again.
Besides, if she was going to start taking life tips from movies, she was probably screwed before she started.
She needed to get her emotions out of the way as much as possible and deal with facts. She knocked the bits of gravel off her pants and took a deep breath. Fact: everyone in the store was dead. Everyone she’d seen so far this morning was dead. Fact: there were all those reports about a pandemic and lots of people dying. Fact: she was not dead. That was an important one – she was still around, still breathing, still standing in the parking lot.
That brought her back to the earlier hypothesis: if she was alive, someone else was too. Sayler Beach had a few hundred people, and at least one – her – had survived whatever this was. So two could’ve, right? Or four, or ten, or … who knew?
Not her, but it would be a good idea to find out, wouldn’t it? Yes, it would. How?
Okay, that was tougher to answer, but she had a car with a full gas tank, and Sayler Beach was not large. It wasn’t a city, it wasn’t even really a town. It was a “census designated place.” She could go around all of it in an hour or two while … yelling or something, no, there had to be a better way to do this. Think, Kel … she needed to make some noise, get the attention of whoever might still be stirring.
Oh, that might work. Her coworker Sarah was politically active, often going to San Rafael or San Francisco on her days off to protest. And she owned a bullhorn. She could borrow Sarah’s …
But that would mean going to Sarah’s place, a rental house she shared with LaSheba and Vivi Fifi and two other girls. (Young women, really. Once Kelly passed thirty she’d started thinking of any woman much younger than her as a “girl.” Ageist, but whatever.) If Sarah was dead too – and given Ganj’s first message about her going home sick
