Day 2

Tick Tick Tick

The matte black hour hand settles the last little bit to rest entirely over the number six. Joseph sighs quietly, barely more than an exhale, and straightens his arm out over his head. Nerves tingle as feeling returns to his hand. The floor is hard and cold, and he slept awful. He misses his bed, with its colorful quilt on top and soft sheets beneath. By 6 am his mom would already be up and getting ready for the day. The smell of fresh pancakes and scrambled egg whites never failed to pull him to his feet and get him moving, even when his pillow called to him like a siren.

There is no smell of pancakes and scrambled eggs waiting for him this morning. Body odor, blood, and nicotine merge to create a nauseating bouquet. The last one, at least, is a normal smell in the room. Rusty wasn’t a fan of the “No smoking” laws when they first came out, so he refused to enforce them and allowed employees to smoke in the break room with no repercussions. Every few years the walls would be painted to cover the yellowing hue, but since the walls were never cleaned first the stains leaked through the new layer, creating orangey-brown patches all over. And the smell never went away, even when freshly painted. Then, the room just smelled of nicotine and fresh paint. That smell is better than what it smells like now.

A low moan reaches his right ear, and a warm body curls against his arm. Izzie hasn’t slept much better, but every time she has drifted off she ends up curled against his side, her body instinctively going toward the nearest heat source. Joseph stills, relaxing his muscles to give a softer surface. The faint scent of citrus tickles his nose as her hair slips over her face. He doesn’t know what shampoo she is using, but it is the best thing he has ever smelled. It lets him, just for a moment, imagine he is somewhere else. He reaches across his body and gently moves the hair off her face so the tickle of the strands doesn’t wake her up. They all need as much rest as they can get.

Joseph wishes he could sleep again, even if just for a few more minutes. His eyelids feel like sandpaper when he blinks. Every time he drifted off, his brain seeking escape and a chance to reboot, he woke up shortly after, immediately alert and certain something was scratching at one of the doors. If there was, nobody else heard it, and he couldn’t hear anything after waking up either. But the thought was there and he couldn’t get back to sleep easily. The cold, the fear, the smells. It was a rough night.

The steady ticking marches on, a reminder that time has not stopped just because of their circumstances. With nothing else to do, he watches the second-hand race past the minute hand again and again while the short, stubby hour hand keeps a vigil over them both. Another hour passes before the sounds of life emerge. Someone stands and moves quietly to the bathroom, closing the door behind them. The warmth leaves his side and he turns his attention to Izzie. She has propped herself up on her elbow and is looking blearily down at his arm.

“Sorry,” she mumbles as she rolls onto her back. Her slender fingers rub at her eyes and a yawn worthy of some kind of record breaks free.

“It’s alright,” he whispers, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “You make a good space heater.”

She sits upright and looks around, tugging her hair back into an elastic she has pulled from who knows where. His mom usually has a dozen scattered around her in case she needs one. He wonders if all girls have special pockets meant entirely for hair things. Task done, she rubs her arms through her sweatshirt then crams her hands in the oversized front pocket.

The toilet flushes across the room and the door opens again. Joseph sits up and stretches as the older man tiptoes back to the three chairs he set up for the younger woman to lie across. He settles back down on the floor and wraps his arms around himself. Behind them, Leslie straightens from her spot in the corner and takes her turn in the bathroom. Izzie replaces her after she comes out, shaking her hands dry and looking around. Her eyes land on the fire extinguisher attached to the wall. Striding to it she pulls it from its brackets and marches to the snack vending machine where she begins to smash the heavy metal object into the glass. The older man’s companion jerks awake with a scream, falling off her chair platform and landing on the man. Sasha whimpers as she tries to move, and Joseph pats her arm to let her know it is okay. Three hits and the glass cracks, then breaks, chunks falling inside and outside of the machine.

Everyone is awake and alert now, except Logan. At some point, the boy rolled onto his back, but his eyes are closed. His chest is still rising and falling, so Joseph lets him be. Izzie charges from the bathroom, her stunted pike raised over her head and ready. Leslie gives her a disgusted look and reaches inside the machine, pulling out a granola bar and a bag of trail mix before going back to her corner to eat. Joseph glares after her, his heart racing even though he can understand why she did it. What if she is wrong and the things can hear the noise? The others seem to share his thoughts and switch their focus to the barricaded door.

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“Relax,” Sasha whispers with a cough. “They can’t hear us.”

Joseph pulls himself to his feet and stretches, forcing his face to exude calm. Izzie steps gingerly over the glass nuggets on the floor and pulls out a few packages of different types before walking back. She places a bag of mixed nuts in Sasha’s hand.

“Thanks, but I hate nuts.” Sasha pulls her water bottle closer and takes a sip to stop her coughing.

“I only like pistachios, myself,” Izzie responds, nudging the bag closer. “But you've lost a lot of blood and iron will help. Once you eat that and let your stomach settle I'll change your bandage, and then you can have some dried fruit I saw in there.”

With a scowl, Sasha opens the package of nuts and moves one into her mouth. It looks like torture, but she keeps doing it, popping one in and chewing laboriously before swallowing and moving on to the next.

Everyone, or, everyone but Logan, makes their way to the vending machine and picks out something to eat. Joseph studies the choices for a moment, then shrugs and picks out a pack of Poptarts.

“What?” He asks when he drops down next to Izzie once more. She is eyeing his selection with a small smile floating across her lips.

“Poptarts? Are you a little kid?”

“I’ve never had them.” He rips open the package and pulls one of the thin pastries up enough that he can take a big bite. The edges crumble around his teeth and the strawberry filling stabs at his taste buds. Almost immediately he can feel the rush from the sugar. “I always eat healthy. But I figure if I die today, at least I can say I’ve eaten them once before I go.”

Her face falls, and she leans over her chewy granola bar. “Eh, I’m sorry,” he apologizes hastily, “I was trying to be funny. Make light because we are going to be fine.”

She continues to nibble her bar, all of her attention focused on the colorful wrapper in her hands. Joseph finishes his pastries. The sugar is sickeningly sweet on his tongue and feels like a lump of clay as it goes down his throat.

In the center of the room, the older man stands up to throw away his garbage. When he is finished, he turns to face the room, staying near the fridge where he can see everyone. “Alright, kids, we’ve all had a chance to eat something. I don’t recognize any of you, but I assume you're from the high school. I work for the town maintenance department. You can call me Mr. Shepherd. This is my daughter Layla. She’s a student at UW Madison. You’ve all done a good job staying calm so far, and the exceptions are all understandable. Now, we need to figure out what supplies we have and make plans to survive until rescue comes. There can’t be any more breaking things willy-nilly.”

He looks at them each, pausing and frowning when his gaze lands on Izzie, and then Leslie. Joseph’s eyes narrow and he leans forward to block Izzie. Leslie snorts and drops her garbage on the ground before pulling a chair back against the outside wall again. The man ignores them both and continues. “Has anyone been able to get a signal on their phone?”

“The building is cinder block, dumbass. Nobody is getting any kind of signal in or out,” Leslie retorts with a scoff. She crosses her legs at the knees and takes up the same position she had the night before.

“Now, now, that kind of language is unnecessary,” he sputters, pulling himself up to his rather impressive height. “I know you're upset, though. We are all upset. We need to calm down and work together.”

The man, Shepherd continues lecturing them all, but he doesn't have the fire or even a tiny spark to keep their attention. Joseph’s gaze drifts away, crawling over Logan’s face, his eyes now open and staring at the ceiling, scraping over the door barricade, and ending on Izzie and Sasha. Neither of the girls seem to be paying attention to him either.

“So, what should we do, Izzie?”

“I don’t know,” she responds, her eyes flitting to his and then going back to stare at a little hole in the knee of her jeans again. “Nothing has changed since last night. Those things are still out there, as far as we know. The store is still locked down. And we have no way to get out this so called emergency exit.”

“Okay. But we’ve learned new things. So what do we know about those things that might help us get away? ”

She sighs, wiggling against the hard cabinet door. “They don’t have eyes or ears, and they attack body heat. I’m cold, but I’m not THAT cold. They're faster than we are. And we don’t know what they are or where they came from.”

He nods, acknowledging her words. He didn’t see them as well as she did, he was behind the door when she made her foolhardy dash outside to grab that woman and pull her in. “You think they are some kind of deformed wolves or something?”

“Unh uh. They don’t look like anything I’ve ever seen before. But none of it matters. Even if we could get past them, we can’t get the doors open to get out.”

Sasha barks out a cough and wheezes, then follows them with a groan. Joseph forgot she was there for a second, so silent was she. “The office is as good as open now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like I said before: Marcus went through the window. Doesn’t matter if the door is locked. If someone was dumb enough to go out there they could just climb through the window.”

“Nobody is doing that,” Izzie begins, but a louder voice drowns her out from the center of the room.

“Then we need to get there and get the doors open. Everyone else can wait at this door to get out and make a run for our cars. And since this girl,” Shepherd gestures back toward Leslie, “can do it easily, she should be the one that can go. She has a heat blocking cover. It won’t fit me, or I would do it.”

Joseph closes his eyes. A throbbing is settling in behind his eyes, but he doesn’t want to take any of the pain stuff in case Sasha needs more. The bottle only had a few left. Shepherd is saying something, but whether he is trying to order Leslie around or is still lecturing them he doesn’t know and doesn’t care. Izzie begins to argue with the man, and Joseph rubs his temples. The voices raise, their words blending together into a soundless roar.