24.

“The store, it’s fucking haunted. Don’t go in there,” the leader of the small band hissed as Santi and his team got closer. Broken glass crunched under their shoes as they entered the small salon. The chairs were slashed, bottles of shampoo and conditioner tossed to the ground, detritus littering everywhere. The small salon had been ransacked, but little of worth had been taken.

“What do you mean haunted?” Hana asked, her voice quivering as she asked. Santi wanted to know too, but he suspected it was much more likely it was cursed than haunted.

“I’m Corona, we all worked at the store. It’s stupid, we were having a big show-n-tell and management had us all there. We all came in at eleven with the management team to get the store ready.”

“Yeah, we don’t need the whole story, just tell us what happened to make you think it’s haunted?” Santi cut him off, not wanting to hear a long drawn out story.

“First off, fuck you, don’t interupt me,” Corona snarled back. He was an older middle aged Hispanic man, bald with a dark goatee that had a thread of snow in it. Short and leanly muscled, his dark eyes sparked with anger as he stared down Santi. Santi swallowed his pride and backed down, he needed the intelligence from the former worker if they wanted to raid the store.

“As I was saying, we were all in there because management made us be there so we can show off for their bosses. Then, well, it happened.” The apocalypse had arrived a few minutes shy of midnight.

“Power went out and a few of us decided to walk out of there to see if there was power anywhere else,” Corona paused to point at the two other silent workers. Both of them were young, with pallid faces and deep bags under their eyes.

“Those little red fuckers came out of nowhere and started breaking and destroying everything. We ran back into the store, but something was off,”

“Yeah, it was like, way to cold in there. All the flowers were like, all wilted and shit,” one of the others cut it. Corona shot them a look, raising an eyebrow at being interrupted again. The younger man shut-up and sat back, letting Corona finish.

“We were going to the back, but we saw a customer come racing out. Full on sprinting to get away. We followed him, cause we’re not stupid. You see someone running, you start running.”

“Smart.” Chloe chimed in behind Santi. Santi could feel his blood pressure rising. So far he hadn’t heard any type of evidence that the store was haunted or cursed.

“So, you saw someone running and decided it was haunted?”

“No. And stop interrupting.” Corona shook his head before pausing and staring absently at the floor. After only a moment he started again, never looking away from the floor.

“We got to the entrance and I turned around to see, you know, if there was anything following us. It was the other’s, they all had these green collars on them with these spectral chains leading deeper into the store. Like chained ghosts. Anyway, yeah, we got the fuck out of there.”

Santi leaned back and thought on that. Definitely sounded like a curse. Workers being chained up in their place of employment. If this place had been hated badly enough, resented enough, then it could have spawned a curse.

“We need the supplies in the store. We will just have to be careful and clear it. Where are you guys going?” Santi asked the three survivors. While Corona had a bit of an attitude, they weren’t a panicking mess like the others they had seen had been.

“There’s a few others around the plaza. We were hitting the smaller stores to see if we could get anything, then we’re headed out of town.”

Stolen story; please report.

“We have a small base. If you want, you can go there.” Santi gave them the address and got non-commital answers from the trio. They took off, heading toward another small store in the plaza, while Santi turned to the rest of his raid team.

“What do we think? We try it, or go to another store?” Santi was genuinely curious to hear what they said. He’d abide if they weren’t invested, there were plenty more stores they could pick clean around the area. This one was just the closest.

“If it is haunted, that means none of the monsters or other survivors have gotten in there yet. It’s fully stocked,” Chloe said immediately. So far, she had been the one Santi was most impressed with. He had never seen her the first time, but someone this driven wasn’t one who would have stayed anonymous. A victim to bad luck in the original timeline.

“Fuck ‘em, let’s empty it out.” Paulie added his two cents. The rest of the team just nodded along. Daniel and Hana went back out and started to peak around the busted automatic doors of the store, while everyone else rounded up shopping carts. They piled the carts up by the front entrances and waited for Santi to give them the order.

Santi had rarely led teams, always working solo as a scout. The weight of it, of the responsibility, was enormous. Eight other people were putting their lives in his hands. If he made the wrong call today, they wouldn’t have a future. They’d be nothing but another moldering corpse.

“Daniel and Hana first. Then me, Paulie, and Beto. Chloe and Rayleigh next, Trevor and Justin watch our backs. If they don’t die, we run. If they do die, we kill everything in the store. Aisle by aisle. When it’s clear, then we start loading stuff up, ok?”

“Let’s get it.” Paulie was bouncing with excitement again, his pipe smacking into the meaty flesh of his palm over and over.

“Daniel, Hana, lead us in.”

Daniel and Hana slid through the broken doors, trying to avoid the worst of the broken glass. Santi followed right after, trusting the others to not abandon him. He gripped his sword pommel tight, eyes scanning around to take in the scene in front of him.

They had come in right next to the floral section of the store, and like the trio had said, they were all dead. The flowers were nothing more than wilted husks, drooping down to brush the floor. To the left was a line of empty cash registers, to the right the produce department.

“Through produce,” Santi whispered, his two scouts nodding as they moved through the department. It was a series of tables, all of the food that once decorated it rotting. Flies buzzed around in thick swarms, the pungent smell of rot filling the air. Light streamed in through the windows behind them, but with every step deeper into the store the light grew dimmer and dimmer.

Daniel was nearly invisible, the shadows pulling around him to keep him from prying eyes. Hana walked in a half crouch, a knife in her hand as she walked forward slowly as she took everything in. Santi was missing his old fellow scouts, one’s with real abilities and nerves of steel. They would have cleared this place in moments, not been nearly frozen with fear as they inched along.

They crossed through the entire produce department, which ran from the front of the store to the back, and got to the meat department. If the stench of the rotting produce had been bad, the meat was vomit inducing. Refrigeration had been off for two days now, but this type of accelerated rot was something else.

“Definitely a curse,” Santi told himself as he pulled his sword free. This early on the curse wouldn’t have time to sink into the actual building. It would be an anchor, something that had been a focal point for all of the pent up resentment that had been animated. Destroying an anchor would break the curse, leaving this building and all its contents to the normal ravages of time.

They crept along, the gloom this deep in the store nearly a pitch blackness. Following the back wall of the store, no one suggested entering the back. They cleared aisle after aisle, seeing nothing but perfectly stocked shelves. Unnaturally well stocked shelves. It was like out of an ad, without a single facing missing.

“You guys notice the shelves are all fully stocked?” Santi asked. There was a series of quick looks and some questions, but Santi ignored it. It was a clue and one he needed to point out. If things looked out of place, then they likely were.

“Where the fuck are these chained up people?” Trevor asked. He was sweating, blonde hair limp on his head as he looked around frantically. The longer they went on without seeing anyone, the worse the tension was growing. They reached the far side of the store, the bakery, and saw the first scenes of violence.

Shelves were overturned, rotting sludge strewn across the floor. Sticky black blood, thick with flies, decorated a wall. A half open door with an Emergency sticker above it gave hints to what had happened.

“All right, time to check the back,” Santi said. Daniel and Hana paused, looking at each other before Hana waved toward the back door next to the bakery with the Employees Only sign on it. Daniel shrugged, adjusted his dagger, and then went into the back.