The air is thick with the scent of fear. Marcus always thought that was a strange saying. How can fear smell? It is an emotion, not a thing. It makes sense now, though. The smell of fear is sweat, sweet and sickly to the point of rolling a person’s stomach. He doesn’t need help with making that happen, though. His stomach hasn’t stopped rolling since those things ran into the store.
Soft cotton brushes against his cheek and for just a moment a sliver of orange light flashes into the dark little bolthole. He grabs the edge of the rowboat that sits against his hip and uses his fingers to try and force it down. “What are you doing? Put that down!”
The orange light dims but the crack is still visible from the corner of his eyes. Sasha pats behind herself, her touch light on his arm. Her calm Texan drawl seems out of place in their situation. “I can’t hear them, quiet!”
Heat flushes across his face. If the situation had been different, if she had just given him a second to analyze the situation, he would have been the one saving her. Not that she saved him. But she seems to think she has, and she is acting just like the other arrogant girls at school-
“Leslie!” Sasha hisses through the crack next to her face. Her voice is far too loud and Marcus flinches. He presses his fingertips down against the edge of the boat harder and grits his teeth. Leslie, the reason he is crammed underneath a rowboat with some girl who dresses like she is ready to go live with the Inuits. Fucking Leslie and her old half-wit grandma. Behind his closed eyes, the attack by the register replays in slow motion. The can of spray paint he just scanned hovering over the opened shopping bag, his hand caught tight by some invisible force. The man on the floor feebly hitting at the creature with his free arm, then going still when his neck is torn out. Someone grabs his wrist and he drops the spray paint. The sounds around him start up again and he hears people screaming. He stares at Sasha and wonders why she isn’t screaming like the other weak little females. Once again he wonders if she is even a female at all under all those clothes. She doesn’t act like one. She acts just like his dad at times.
She says something to him but he can’t hear it. He doesn’t stop her from pulling him out from behind the register, or from dragging him behind her. He trips and falls to his knees as the grate crashes to the floor in front of the door, but another creature slides underneath before it can descend all the way. Sasha grabs him beneath his arms and hauls him up, pulling him after her again. This time they run in the opposite direction. His eyes lock with Mooney, the night manager, through the glass window of the manager’s office. The bastard has hit the emergency button from safe behind his doors, trapping them all inside.
Turning, he pulls his arm from Sasha’s grip and grabs her wrist instead. Maybe the showcase doors are still open. The security system is old, and as far as he knows it has never been used. They round the last register and take off for the last aisle with all the outdoor displays. A woman pulling a child behind her nearly crashes into them as they make it to the aisle, and he shoves her out of the way. Ahead, he can see two people running back toward them. Leslie, he recognizes her despite the fear transforming her face. Always makes sure that everyone around her knows she has better grades. She thinks she is smarter than everyone. Perhaps if she was a little prettier he would have considered her and taught her how women should behave, but she isn’t so he never bothered.
Behind them, old Able is on the ground beneath another one of the things. Marcus skids to a stop, his head twisting around in all directions trying to find a way out. That is when Sasha yanks herself free and grabs his forearm again. She pulls him over next to an overturned fishing boat and lowers a small rowboat from the display section next to it.
Once she is underneath it she yanks on his pants leg to get him to crawl under as well. With nowhere else to go and the thing down by Able looking his way, he crawls in. Settling on his back and forcing her onto her side so they will both fit, he watches as the creature heads their way; a shadowy shape even under the orange lights. Then, the boat is down, and there is only darkness.
“Why are we under this boat if you are going to lift it up and advertise to everything that we are here?” He pulls himself from his memories and spits out the words in as low of a voice as he can. His eyes open up to see the faint light still illuminating the grey metal above his face.
Sasha ignores him, continuing her whispered conversation with the next boat over. He can’t hear what they are saying, only her side of it. The nails on his fingers cut into his palms and his face grows warmer in anger. Stupid cun-
His thoughts are interrupted as the shelter goes dark once more. Metal hits the ground with a soft tap and a small package lands on his stomach. Marcus reaches up with his right hand and feels a plastic package with neatly folded cardboard sealing it at the top. “What is this?”
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“Leslie’s grandma looked at the things close before taking off. She says she thinks they are seeing our heat, so she gave us two of the emergency blankets she grabbed before going under their boat.”
“That’s stupid, how would she know? They are probably smelling us. And we are under a metal boat sweating up a storm!”
Sasha doesn’t bother pointing out that he is the one sweating. Maybe she just thinks it is obvious, since she never seems to sweat, even under all of her layers. “I saw them too. They didn’t have eyes or ears, just these little dents on the sides of their snouts.” She rips open her package and continues as he tries to interrupt. “They weren’t nostrils. They looked like rattler pits, but bigger. I’ve seen enough of those to believe her.”
Marcus pinches his lips together and pulls at the cardboard topper, wincing as the thick paper slices into his thumb. “So we are going to save ourselves with aluminum foil? These things aren’t big enough to cover me. Tell her to pass over another.”
“They will fit both of us just fine. We’re lucky she grabbed two extras as it is. Deal with it and be thankful.”
He doesn’t have to see her face to know it is covered in disgust. Over the last year, he has learned to tell her emotions without needing to look at her. Being forced to be near each other while their parents hash out their deal had some benefits, he supposes. And it has meant that his dad hasn’t been reminding him constantly what a disappointment he is. He pulls the blanket out of the package and tries to spread it over himself as well as he can despite the cramped quarters.
Once both are covered to the best of their ability, the boat grows quiet again. Marcus counts the seconds in his head, mouthing each minute as he gets to sixty seconds. By the time he gets to 6 minutes, he can’t take it anymore.
“So what is their big plan? Lay around on an upside-down cruise until those things die of old age?”
A quiet sigh travels across the curved metal surface to his ear. “Those gates will open when the police get here, right? The cops will come in and shoot all of them.”
Hiding, that was the plan. He doesn’t bother to muffle his scoff of an exhale. His dad wouldn’t be hiding right now. He would be fighting those things bare-handed if need be. And with every swing of his fists against them he would make sure to spare enough of his attention to tell Marcus he was a coward for hiding. Marcus’s arms itch and his fingers curl. He wants to throw the boat off of him. He wants to go out there and show those dumb animals that he isn’t scared of them.
Somewhere, someone else screams. The metal seems to vibrate with the sound. He can’t tell if it is coming from one aisle over, or all the way back in the stock room. “Now,” he thinks to himself. “Get out from under this thing and get out of here. Do something.”
Only, he doesn’t. His face is so hot that he can feel it heating the air around him. He isn’t scared. It is just that if he bursts out right now when he doesn’t know where the things are, he might just end up in their jaws before he can get off of the ground. It is better to wait, just a little. Let the lazy cops do their job for once. And if they fail like he knows they will, then he will have had time to come up with a plan.
Time goes slowly on, creeping to the tune of his impatient breaths. Without his phone, he has no idea what time it is. There is no point in asking Sasha. She refuses to carry a phone ever and he has never noticed a watch on her wrist. It could be buried under the three tops she is wearing. Why does she wear so much clothing?
His reverie is broken when a loud scraping sound comes from the area just outside their hiding spot. Light seeps in and this time he doesn’t try to hold his side down. Instead, he cranes his neck and closes his left eye so his right eye can see through the crack a few inches away. For a second there is nothing. Then, the tip of a much larger aluminum boat comes into view. The scraping continues, as though they don’t care about making noise. He becomes aware of Sasha calling for Leslie but they are closer to his side now and he hears no response.
For the first time since she pulled him out from behind the register, Sasha sounds flustered. “Well, hell! What are they doing? Where are they going?”
In that direction, it could be the showcase or it could be the stock room. Then again, they could just be trying to get to something to use as a weapon. It doesn’t matter. All the noise they are making is a good enough distraction. Marcus rolls onto his stomach and pulls himself forward a few inches to test if the boat will move as well. One of the benches hits his forehead and he winces.
“What are you doing, Marcus? Stop moving around!”
He ignores her and holds one arm over his forehead before pulling himself forward again. The boat shifts with him when the bench meets his arms. “Either get out or start moving. We need to get to the office.”
“What? You think the manager will let us in?”
He snorts at the hope in her voice. Of course she would get excited. She was probably already planning out what kind of favors she could offer the towering middle-aged man in exchange for shelter. “I’ll make him,” he declares pushing forward again.
Their boat begins to move, and with Sasha’s help turning them while still on her side, they make it out into the aisle and inch toward the front. From the crack under the rim, he can barely make out the tiles directly in front of the boat. They light up slowly and he knows they have reached the end of the aisle. There are more lights over the registers than anywhere else in the store. So he pushes from his side and turns the bow to the left. A yelp of pain and a thump, and Sasha hisses “Tell me next time. You made it hit my face.”
He smiles and keeps turning, pushes again, a little harder than necessary. There is another thump but she stays quiet. They straighten and move forward. Occasionally the metal shell hits something outside and things rattle as they roll out of the way. It is a good thing Rusty doesn’t like carts in his store. The baskets and stuff that were being clutched in the customer’s arms are easy to move.
Through the crack, the floor turns red. Marcus hesitates, not wanting to drag his body through someone’s blood or…other things. He lowers his head to the floor and lifts the boat another inch to peer out. The lump in front of them was human once. He thinks the shirt is the same one the first guy was wearing. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Then, using all the power he has, he heaves himself up. The boat crashes to the side and Sasha screams out, but he ignores her and pulls the emergency blanket up over his head. For just a moment he stumbles over the body in front of him before righting himself and running to the rectangular window set into the wall in front of him. When something hits him from behind he has just enough time to see the fear on his own face in the reflection of the large window before he hits it.