The Girl in Red

Red moved in that direction, peeking at the floor as she did so. She couldn’t see any marks that indicated they were heading in the correct direction. What she did see were boxes of dried goods on the shelves. Not a lot, but there were several unopened cases of soups and other things that could be useful.

“Hey!” Red called. “Did you see all this food?”

“Yeah, the soldier-boys must not have had enough room in their trucks for everything,” Adam said. “Come look at this.”

Not enough room in their trucks, Red thought, and that made something go twang deep inside her brain. Before she could latch onto that alarm and explore it further she was next to Adam.

He pointed to a hole underneath one of the storage shelves. It looked like something had chewed through the concrete.

“There,” Adam said triumphantly.

“What about it?” Red said.

“The trail leads here and there’s a hole, so whatever came out of those people went in here.”

“It looks like a rat hole. And Norway rats can chew through concrete,” Red said. “In fact, those streaky marks on the floor probably are from rat tails. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.”

She shuddered a little, because she really hated rats. She didn’t like mice, either, to be honest. As a child she’d turned away from books with rodents as the main character (and there were a surprising number of these, as if children’s authors thought every kid was in love with small furry animals even if they were disease-carrying monsters) because just the thought of their slithery little tails made her sick.

“Rats didn’t bust out of those corpses,” Adam said.

“I don’t think anything did bust out of those corpses,” Red said. “I think maybe a person did it.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Adam said. “The chests look like they exploded from the inside, not like they were cut from the outside.”

“Do you have a medical degree? How do you know?” Red asked. “It makes a lot more sense that rats came and nibbled on the corpses and left those tracks. And that would also account for the mangled insides.”

“Then where are the rat paw prints in the blood?” Adam asked. He gestured toward the hole in the ground. “I say some freaky alien thing grew inside their lungs and then broke out and ran away in here.”

“And I say you have no proof,” Red said. “But if something like that did happen, you probably don’t want to put your face so close to the hole.”

Adam stood up so quickly that his pack banged into the shelving behind him and knocked over a bunch of paper towel rolls.

“Look, whether it’s rats or aliens there’s no creatures now,” Red said, glad for the mask that covered her mouth so he didn’t see her grinning at him. “So let’s collect the food we need and get out of here.”

Adam shot one last suspicious glance at the rat hole (Red was going to think of it as a rat hole and nothing else, because the other option was absurd and that was that) and then followed her.

They spent some time figuring out how many cans of soup they could each realistically carry. Red wished for the meal pouches she’d started off with but splitting them with Adam had made them disappear fast, and this was not the kind of grocery store to carry those types of goods.

They collected some more granola and cereal bars and packaged nuts, then hoisted their packs back on. Adam moaned immediately.

“Oh my Christ, it’s so much heavier,” Adam said. “What the hell? Do we really need to carry all this?”

“I just don’t know how many times I have to ask you if you want to eat on a regular basis,” Red said.

“I am never going camping ever again,” Adam said. “Once we get to Grandma’s house I’m never leaving.”

Red didn’t say that when they got to Grandma’s house there would probably be just as many, if not more, tasks to stay alive. Adam was not ready to hear that. But they wouldn’t have to carry their packs every day, and Red could admit (quietly, to herself) that this would be a relief.

She covered her ears and said, “You whine more than a four-year-old without a nap.”

Adam said something that was indistinct because her fingers were pressing into her ears.

“La, la, la, I can’t hear you,” Red said.

He grabbed at her, trying to take her hands away from her ears, and she darted away through the door into the main part of the store, laughing.

She always remembered that afterward, that she and Adam were laughing when she walked out and there was a man holding a rifle pointed at her face.

CHAPTER 11 The Hurlyburly

Before

Trapped, Red thought. After all her plans and all her schemes and all her caution they were caught anyway, pinned like butterflies on a board.

The man was shouting, telling them to get down on their knees and put their hands on the back of their head and Red followed his instructions but everything inside her had gone numb.