Leslie purses her lips together and pushes out a deep breath. Her lips vibrate and make a loud noise, and for just a moment she can’t hear the asshole talking. Some people feel the need to assert their dominance, and it is clear that he is trying to do just that by referring to them as kids. Maybe that would be reassuring if they were all in elementary school, but some man who spends all day mowing the park in the summer and plowing the roads during the winter is hardly going to inspire confidence in any of them. He’s just puffing himself up to look bigger because he is scared, not worth her attention.

Surer than she is about anything else, she knows that if she has to listen to the brain-dead prattle on until someone comes to save them, her brain will start oozing out of her ears.

There is no way that Isabella is smarter than her. She must have gotten lucky on some test. Probably a multiple-choice one, maybe a scantron-type test. Had there been a test this year where the answers made a heart or a happy face when the bubbles were filled in right? Leslie purses her lips and narrows her eyes. She can’t think of one, but there is without a doubt an explanation. Isabella probably knows the rankings won’t be released until closer to graduation and is trying to humble brag since nobody can prove her wrong. The stupid teachers won’t tell what anyone else’s grades are, so she could get away with it until the rankings are announced with final exams.

She doesn’t know why it is bothering her so much. It isn’t like there is the slightest chance that the cheerleader is any kind of competition. Even with that test last week in history that stupid Mr. Fitzgerald wouldn’t let her retake there is no way that anyone else could surpass her GPA. It isn’t her fault that his handwriting is so bad that she studied the wrong chapter, and when her grandma goes to the meeting she has scheduled with him next week, she’ll-

She’ll do nothing. She’s dead.

Leslie pulls her hands out from below her thighs, and shivers as they leave their warm resting spot. Her knee starts to bounce, foot waggling about. Anger swiftly replaces the grief that wants to take over. She refuses to give it that chance.

The idiot woman, the murderer, is sitting only ten feet away, clutching the back of her chair as she watches her father arguing with Isabella. Only ten feet, she can cross that before he notices, and as worked up as he is getting he might not even hear the sounds of the woman choking…

Wait, why is he arguing with Isabella? The girl has all the gumption of a snotty piece of tissue.

“No! You are not volunteering Leslie to go out there alone!”

“She's the only one the right size to wear that cover! Unless you're volunteering?”

“If you want someone to march all the way to the front of the store with only a thermal blanket to protect them, surrounded by those…things, then you do it.”

“I’m quite a bit taller than your friend, honey, there’s-”

“Call me honey again and I will hit you so hard that you will be spitting up teeth for a week.”

Leslie blinks rapidly and stares at the petite girl. She didn’t think Isabella had it in her to argue with an adult, let alone threaten one. What had she missed? “What are you two arguing about?”

“Of course, you weren’t listening.” Isabella rolls her eyes and jabs her little stick at the man. “He wants you to go up and climb through the broken window of the manager’s office and unlock the door. And if he wants someone to do it so bad then he should do it himself! He can use this extra blanket to make the other one bigger, problem solved!”

He chokes on something, his own spit perhaps, and looks back at Leslie frantically.

“That moron would trip over his own feet and rip it, then he would be dead, which I don’t care about, and I would lose my cover, which I do. He’s not getting my cover. He can go out without it.”

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At another time, the suffocating fish look on his face might have been funny, but sleeping propped up in the corner of a cold room has left her exhausted and unwilling to deal with any of their crap.

Still, listening for even the moment has given her something to think about. None of them can be trusted to go down and get the doors open. If any of them try to take her cover, she will stab them. It’s not something she has ever thought about doing. But she is sure that she can, just like she is confident that she can get from the break room to the front office unmolested.

Getting through the window opening may be harder, with broken glass possibly still in the frame. The glass could be the same type that is used in vending machines, designed to chunk when it is broken like automobile windshields. Or, the owner might have gone on the cheap and used plate glass. Would someone who made such a problematic security system have scrimped on the office window that protects the manager? With how easily Marcus went through it, she was willing to bet scrimping was the chosen path.

Then, there is the issue with the window being at least hip-high. Hoisting her body up and through the window is going to be a problem. Even if there is no broken glass still in the frame, she will have to climb in, and her only protection from the senses of the creatures is the thin sheet of silvery material that will be wrapped around her body. ‘It won’t stay put when I climb in,’ she thinks to herself, shoving her hands back under her thighs.

And even if she can get past the hungry beasts, crawl through the potentially slicing window, and figure out how to open the grates, how will she get home? Grandma’s car is parked down by the other entrance. Where her keys are is another question. They could be on her corpse, or they could have ended up in the belly of one of the beasts. In theory, she thinks she can hot-wire the older model car she rode in the evening before, but in practice? And if that is the only option, it means she will also have to break at least one of the little windows because the doors will be locked. That will mean what little safety the car could provide will be severely compromised.

Leslie hums to herself quietly as she stares at the ceiling. The arguing has stopped between the others in the room, and the only other sounds beyond her humming are shuffling steps going to the bathroom or vending machine, and occasionally running water.

‘Running…’ She looks across toward the injured girl near the entrance. ‘Sasha can’t run, one of the others will need to help her out of here. She won’t be able to drive, so her car would be available.’ It wouldn’t be a nice one, the girl obviously comes from a less than affluent home, but if it could run well enough to get her to Rusty’s then it would probably run well enough to get Leslie away. And if there are more creatures outside, and they are the reason that no help had come, it could get her to her home and her more reliable car.

“You,” she calls out, jerking her chin toward the girl on the floor. “What kind of car do you have?”

Sasha’s ‘What’ is drowned out by Isabella’s abrasive ‘Why”.

“Because she can’t drive, so she has to go with one of you, and my ride was killed. I’ll drive her car.”

“Wait, you can’t just decide you get to have someone’s car-” Joseph cuts off when she glares at him. Why he felt he had to jump into the conversation, she doesn’t know any more than she does Isabella’s reason.

“If I’m going to risk my life to go and open the doors, I’m going to do it with a guaranteed means of getting away from here. And,” she rolls her eyes as his mouth opens to argue, “I’m not going to rely on any of you to survive and get me out of here. So, what kind of car?”

Sasha’s brows almost meet in the middle as she answers, as though she can’t remember her car. It probably has less to do with her injury, and more to do with her limited mental function, so Leslie schools her face into an expression of patience. “Right,” she responds when the girl finishes. She stands up and walks over to the mound on the ground. “Give me your keys.”

“Wait, you're leaving right now? Let us get ready!” Isabella takes the keys from Sasha and hands them up to Leslie, who immediately puts them in her front left pocket, where she would normally have her own.

“Then get ready fast.” Frowning, Leslie looks over the counter items until she finds the banged-up roll of electrical tape she remembered seeing the night before. “As soon as I am ready, I’m leaving.”

While the others whine and moan, or whatever they are doing, she takes the tape back over to her chair and pulls the neatly folded cover out from where she shoved it under her shirt. The corner knots holding the two four-by-seven-foot rectangles together are still, but she wraps the rubbery feeling tape around them anyway before sealing the open space between them to create one solid cover.

The simple, wider rectangle slowly transforms into something more resembling a hooded robe thanks to Leslie's laser focus and judicious application of materials. Any time doubts begin to nip at the edges of her mind she shoves them away immediately. The only way she is getting out alive is if she takes control of her rescue, and she repeats this to herself with every motion.

When she is finished, the cover conceals everything but her eyes while still leaving room to maneuver, and even her eyes can be covered in a pinch. She steps back and nods, checking for any obvious gaps, then slides it over her head like an oversized hooded kaftan. Each joint is checked again, ensuring there will be no body heat peaking through while she makes the miles-long journey across bloody ground.

“I'm ready,” she announces to the room. Isabella and Joseph wait until she is in position, and then begin pulling the table away from the door. Pulling it is obviously more difficult than pushing it, and it moves inch by laborious inch. Her heart begins to race in her chest as the gap gets large enough that the door will be able to open and let her through. She checks her hood and makes sure her face is covered, pinching the eye-opening from the inside so that it is barely more than a slit. As long as she moves slowly, she won’t need to worry about the length being too long, even if she steps on it she should be able to react in time before it pulls. Still, she kicks outward softly to make sure the material isn’t already in the way.

The grinding of the table stops, and Isabella leans across the edge to grip the door knob. “Are you ready?”

Leslie nods and holds her breath as the knob turns and the door opens. She steps forward, not wanting any of the collected heat from the room to attract any unwanted visitors that will slow her down. But before she can step through, someone shoves her back, and she stumbles. Her feet catch on Sasha and she is falling, her legs tangled and turning in ways they shouldn’t before she hits the floor. Snarling, she looks up to see who pushed her, but all that she can see is the back of a letterman’s jacket disappearing into the store.