AVERY’S POV
The pharmacy had more than I expected.
I found a torch behind the counter, two boxes of protein bars shoved under a bottom shelf, bottled water in the small grocery section at the front and a full first aid kit still in its packaging that someone had never gotten around to buying.
I took all of it and went back to the stockroom and dropped it in the middle of the floor and looked at Hannah and Joel.
“We’re packing properly. Come here.”
Hannah came immediately.
Joel followed a second later, quiet as always and crouched at the edge of the pile.
I picked up one of the backpacks I’d grabbed from a hook near the entrance and held it open.
“Heavy things at the bottom, closest to your back. Medical supplies in the front pocket where you can get to them fast, not buried. Water goes in last because you’ll need it first and you want it accessible.” I handed Hannah a pack and she started moving without waiting for me to tell her twice, sorting through the supplies with quick steady hands.
I watched her for a second and thought that Hannah was going to be okay, that whatever Hannah had in her, she was starting to use it.
At least she was starting to adapt to the fact that we were all going to die if anyone decided to slow down or hesitate.
Joel?
I couldn’t read him.
He followed every instruction exactly— he picked up what I pointed to, packed it where I said, didn’t fumble nor hesitate— but he offered nothing.
He just watched everything with these flat, careful eyes and I didn’t know if he was traumatized or calculating or both.
Maybe I was just waiting for him to talk to fill the silence and ache caused by the disappearance of Keiran and the others.
Were they okay—
“Painkillers?” Hannah held up two boxes.
A soft sound escaped me.
“Both. Antibiotics too if you see any, check behind the counter.”
She went and I kept packing, strapping the torch to the outside of my own bag where I could grab it without opening anything, tucking the spare magazine into my jacket pocket rather than the bag because the bag might not always be on my back.
“There’s a phone,” Joel said.
I looked up immediately.
It was the first thing he’d said since yesterday and his voice came out slightly rough from not being used.
He was holding up a mobile he’d found on the floor near the back shelf, cracked screen but still lit.
Thank fuck.
Forty percent battery and no signal, same as everything else, but forty percent was forty percent.
I pocketed it without saying anything and Joel went back to packing and neither of us mentioned it again.
We ate protein bars for dinner, sitting on the stockroom floor with the torch angled at the ceiling so the light diffused instead of throwing shadows.
Hannah tipped her head back.
“Do you think the others are okay?”
A twisting sensation rumbled in my guts.
“Yes. They’ll pull through.”
But I wasn’t sure.
What was I even sure of?
Right, we were in a dead world.
I set up watches.
Hannah first, two hours, then Joel, two hours, then me.
What I didn’t tell them was that I stayed awake through Hannah’s watch and half of Joel’s, sitting with my back against the shelf unit and the gun in my lap, listening.
It was not because I didn’t trust them but because every time I closed my eyes the basement came back in a way that made sleep feel impossible, so I just sat there in the dark and breathed and waited, and when Joel tapped me for my watch, I pretended I’d been asleep a minute ago before I took the torch from him and he went and lay down in the corner without a word.
The street outside had been quiet for over an hour.
I waited another twenty minutes just to be sure, then I took the phone out of my pocket.
No signal but I tried anyway, because trying felt like something I owed.
I typed in my dad’s number from memory and pressed call, held it to my ear and listened to it ring out.
Once.
Twice.
All the way to voicemail, his voice saying his name and to leave a message, and I had to press my lips together hard for a second before I ended the call.
Fuck.
What was I expecting?
I tried my mum next.
It rang for a long time and nobody answered and then that was it, just the dial tone cycling back to silence.
I sat there in the dark pharmacy with the dead call in my hand and the torch between my feet throwing a small circle of light on the floor.
Everything hit me all at once— I was really scared.
Were they okay?
Or were their bodies strewn across the pavement like the others?
Three minutes.
I gave myself three minutes to stifle a cry.
Then I put the phone in my pocket, picked up the gun and went back to checking the door.
When Hannah woke up for her shift, she found me cross-legged on the floor going through the supplies again, reorganising the medical section.
She frowned slightly.
“Get some rest.”
I forced a tight smile.
“Of course.”
***********************
We moved at dawn.
The street outside was empty, just the same wreckage it had been the day before, and the three of us came out through the blown pharmacy window in single file.
I took point with the gun out and kept us tight to the wall, moving fast and low through the pale morning light.
Two blocks out, Joel stopped walking.
I immediately paused and turned to him.
What now?
A pack of mutants, six or seven of them, moving slowly through the intersection ahead, and I was already opening my mouth to signal him to move when I registered his face.
He was staring at one of them specifically, a man near the back of the group, broad-shouldered, moving with that wrong fluid quality they all had now, wearing a faded red jacket with a white stripe down the left sleeve.
Joel’s face had gone completely white.
“Joel,” I said, very quietly.
“Joel, don’t make a sound…”
His body trembled and he stumbled back.
“God—” Then he made a sound that made me shiver in my bones.
Hannah’s eyes widened as the group partially turned to us.
Oh shit.