Leslie stops moving, laying flat on the ground so she can reach her right arm out to pat her grandma’s shoulder. The fishing boat they are treating like a hermit crab’s shell stopa, and the ear-wrenching noise of metal on tile stops as well. Somewhere down past her feet, a similar sound is starting and stopping but not getting closer. “Why aren’t they following us? It sounds like they are moving away.”
“Maybe because we didn’t tell them what we were doing.” Her grandmother sighs and Leslie can imagine her running her hands back through her hair and tugging on the parts at the back of her neck. It is what she always does when she is distressed by something. “That girl has the Mayor’s kid and he works here, I assumed he would guess that we are trying to get back to a room with a door. Well, as they say, when you assume you make an ass of u and me.”
Leslie rolls her eyes at the emphasis on the different parts of the word broken up across the sentence. She has heard it so many times before. It isn’t always true, but often enough. Sometimes, it is safe to assume. For instance, she assumed that the idiots in the other boat would do something stupid and be eaten, and it looks like she will be right. Her grandma urges her to get moving again so she does, throwing one bent arm after another in front of her in what she knows is called an army crawl. There isn’t enough room to move their legs out to the side, so they are moving mostly just by arm strength, and hers are already starting to ache. The boat is heavier than it looks. How did her grandma get it moved around so easily?
In the last hour, while lying in the dark and waiting to hear the sirens signaling their rescue, Leslie was left with a lot of time to think. Her grandma was settled in next to her, breathing deeply. The image of calm. Imaginary image, of course, since they couldn’t see each other with the edge down. It was unsettling, which was strange, and it took her a little while to figure out why. In her mind, she has always thought of her grandma as a bossy woman, always on the move. If something needs to be done, she ensures it gets done. Anyone who isn’t helping is hollered at until they do.
She never talks about her time in the army as a young woman, but Leslie assumed she was emulating an old drill sergeant she admired so she would feel tough. Leslie knew her grandma was in Kuwait during the Gulf War, and that she was on the frontline. She never talked about it, though. It wasn’t hard to assume that she was running dispatches or something the whole time. She sat around doing puzzles at a little table in front of the television when she wasn’t working the fields outside. There wasn’t anything scary or imposing about her. She was just bossy.
Now, Leslie is getting another image of her. The way she was able to analyze the whole situation while her granddaughter froze in those seconds after the attack started was eye-opening. She had the presence of mind to observe and then react, and when her initial plan of heading for the other door was almost immediately ruined she switched tracks and made another plan. During those first moments under the metal shell, Leslie was sure that they were going to be sitting ducks and the creatures would be on them as soon as they were done eating whoever was still screaming outside. But the screaming stopped, and her grandma started to explain why she was making so much noise opening packages. And it made sense. All of it.
Thinking back, the smooth black face was too smooth. There weren’t any eyes. And there were no external parts of an auditory meatus. If her grandma said there were no ears, then she believed her. She helped tie corners together at the ends of two blankets to be able to cover her whole body while her grandma did the same to her own blankets. They whispered because speaking louder seemed like tempting fate, but Leslie quickly became sure that her grandma was right. The things couldn’t hear them. When Sasha called out from nearby she was able to explain a few things but the girl probably didn’t understand most of it. That slow drawl made her seem like she wasn’t very smart, but mostly it was her grades that made Leslie feel like she was a few brain cells short.
Shaking her head, Leslie quickens her arm movements to keep up. Her side of the boat is starting to angle back. The older woman is quick for her size and age. Their goal is to get to the cross-aisle that spans the width of the store and lets out near the break room. As long as no bodies are blocking their way, it should only be a minute or two to get there, especially at the pace her grandma is setting.
The front of the boat hits something and there is a rattle, followed by a crash. Someone begins to scream and her grandma lifts up the edge of the boat to look out. Just in front of them is the tall, round clothing rack that held all of the thick coveralls she noticed when they came in. The rack is on its side and two people are huddled in what would have been the center of it. They must have hit it just right, and the height plus weight of it knocked it over. Her grandma crawls out in a hurry, calling for the woman to stop screaming. She grabs the man and shoves him at the boat.
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Leslie scoots to the far side and holds it up for the man to crawl underneath. They can’t all fit next to each other, but she figures getting them all under it will buy them a minute to figure out how to move forward. They should have just kept going, but as soon as the little figure wrapped in silver shot from underneath the boat their plan changed. The man slides in next to her and reaches out to grab the woman’s hand, tugging on her to pull her under. The woman is fighting, though, swinging out as she screams. She hits his hand and it smacks up against the metal edge. He swears and yanks it back.
On the other side, a dark shape flits between the displayed tents. Leslie’s voice catches in her throat. She wants to scream at her grandma to leave the idiot, but she can’t get the words out. Somehow, her grandma knows. She grabs the woman and shoves her as hard as she can and the man pulls her underneath.
But, something is wrong.
A trail of silver follows the woman. Leslie’s eyes and mind disconnect from one another as she looks from the silver of the emergency blanket clutched in the woman’s hand to her exposed grandma. She is already moving, diving forward to grab the blanket that has been ripped off of her by the frantic woman. Behind her a dark shape leaps, landing on her back. The screaming woman, still trailing the emergency blanket, grabs the edge of the boat and yanks it down. Leslie’s vision goes dark and finally her brain reconnects. She lashes her foot out at the woman down at the end of the metal cover, satisfied when a loud crunch cuts off the scream for a moment. Something slams into the aluminum boat as she tries to lift it again and the whole thing almost tips over and off.
“Don’t you dare come out here, Leslie!” A hand reaches out and rights it before pushing downward. Blood drips from the fingers, making small pools on the ground. The metal hits the floor again and Leslie can’t see anymore.
With the shrill scream changed to a pained whimper within, the sounds from outside are easier to hear. Grunts and a groan from just outside interrupt the ringing silence. Then the sound of something heavy hitting something soft and a harsh exhale that sounds too deep to be her tiny grandmother. Leslie realizes the diminutive woman is fighting back, and not only fighting back but actually hurting it. Something hits the ground and it is quiet again except for ragged breathing and a rustle of an emergency blanket.
“Leslie. Leelee. I need you to get this boat and these people and get them to the other side of the store. There is a door on the wall not far from the end of this side aisle that leads to a break room. Get them inside, you hear me?”
She shakes her head, and her grandma chuckles as if she can see her. “I’m hurt bad, but I’ll try to follow you. And if I can’t then I will distract the others that I see up by the registers until you can get there.”
Her voice trails to the other end of the cover and a weak push makes the metal squeal against the tile. “Go, girl! Take care of your grandpa for me. Oh, and make sure that fool cleans his darn tackle up when he uses the dining room table to sort it! I got a hook in my finger yesterday cleaning up.”
Another push and the boat is moving. The man has wiggled up next to her and is using the momentum of the push to get them going and Leslie hesitates only a second before moving as well. Her eyes are hot but nothing is coming out. A crash from outside tells her that more creatures have arrived. The boat is turned and the sounds fall away, muffled and covered by the scraping sound she and her new companions are making. “She’ll follow us,” Leslie chants in her head as she moves one arm after the other.
Their forward movement stops with a jolt. Leslie lifts the front end an inch to see they have reached the end and the wall is just yards away, but a body is blocking them. Long blonde hair with sections dyed a nauseating crimson floats on top of a shining red puddle.
“We can’t move the boat anymore,” she says in a steady, grim voice. We need to get out and make a run for the door. I’ll go out first to find it and call for you when I do.”
They don’t respond, but the man lifts the boat enough that she can crawl out before dropping it down again. Leslie stands up for the first time in over an hour, resisting the urge to stretch her back out. The blanket flutters around her. She grabs the sides and pulls them tight at the waist with one hand. The other makes sure that her head is still covered and then pulls the sides across her face, leaving a crack to see out of. Her loafers squelch in the still pool beneath them. She steps around the lump on the floor, registering the stylish jeans but unable to make out anything else in the mess above the belt. Looking to the left she can see another mound ten feet or so farther toward the back of the store. Not far from it is a nondescript door set into the side wall. In the autumnal colors of the emergency light, everything glows orange, but somehow the blood everywhere boldly maintains its hue. She wonders if it is her mind making it so.
Her feet pad through the liquid and out onto clean tile. “Well,” she thinks, “not clean anymore.” No doubt there will be a trail of footprints leading away now. She resists the urge to look back and check. When she arrives at the door she stops. What if one of the things is in there? What if someone else tried to hide but was too slow in closing the door? But she told her grandma she would get to the break room and if she survived then she would never stop yelling at Leslie about not doing it. Reaching out, she turns the knob and pushes.
The door moves just far enough for the latch to clear the frame and then stops. She pushes more firmly but it won’t move. If it was just a body she should be able to move it more, she is sure of it. Someone must be inside already and has blocked the door.
“Open the door and let me in,” she calls out, banging her fist on the surface.
A scream cuts through the air, and Leslie whips around to face the front of the store. It is too far away to be the people under the boat, but maybe that idiot woman tried to make a run for the front door. Illuminated by the much brighter lighting, she can make out Marcus leaping over a body, thermal blanket flapping behind him like a cape. Before he can land, one of the creatures hits him in the back and drives him forward. Even from where she stands, she can hear the crash as he hits the glass of the manager’s window. The weight of his body and the thing propelling him forward is too much, and the glass shatters.