Good Thing At a Bad Time- scottmcniceass

Part 1

Niall slows down near the pharmacy. They'd passed it on their way into town a few weeks ago, and Harry had drawn them a map to find it, not that they needed it. They don't talk as Niall parks the car and hands Liam the pistol. Personally, Liam likes the shotgun better. The pistol with a silencer attached to it is just too awkward in his hands. But they ran out of ammo for the Model last week while cleaning out another part of the prison, so it can't be helped.

Liam scans the area around the car. The only movement he can see is to his left, too far down the road for him to bother taking it out. It'd be a waste of a bullet, and they can't afford it. Niall nods his agreement and Liam gets out, gun at the ready just in case.

He moves towards the building fast and flattens himself against the glass, trying to see inside. He can see the entire front room, mostly. There's a few shelves, but they're all short enough that if anything lethal was behind them, he'd probably see them. Probably, but not definitely. Crawlers (walkers without legs -- or with broken legs) are a different story. The back room, though, where they keep anything that he actually needs, is blocked off.

Liam lifts a hand to Niall, signalling that he's going in, and Niall lifts up a thumb. Liam can see the tense set of his shoulders even through the slightly tinted windows of the car, but he'll be fine. And if not, it's not like he's the most important one of them all. They could all move on if he was gone. They couldn't if it were, say, Harry or Jen, both of whom are important members of the group.

Liam pulls open the door slowly, standing up on his toes to grab the bell hanging over the door. A quick yank and the bell comes off in his hand. He learned that trick from Harry. Almost all store doors have bells to signal to cashiers that someone is coming in. Now it signals to the dead that the living are coming, so you have to be careful and find a way to stop it when you open a door.

The front room has a set of freezers, each one filled with drinks that Liam's itching to grab, but he can't. No matter how refreshing a warm bottle of lemonade would be. Next time, maybe.

He heads for the counter that separates the front room from the actual pharmaceuticals. The behind the counter stuff. He can't spare Niall another glance, just in case, and he lifts his gun to shoulder level, finger on the trigger. The door behind the counter is, thankfully, unlocked, and he turns it while holding the gun in his left hand.

The room is just a few sets of shelves. Liam takes a quick look around and then heads for one of them, shoving the gun back in his holster. He doesn't know what he's looking for, so he pulls his bag off his shoulders and starts filling it with one of everything. Best to be on the safe side.

He's leaning up to reach for a bottle on the top shelf when the atmosphere in the room changes. It was something he wouldn't have been able to pick up on before, when survival instincts weren't needed to live. Now, he can feel the shift in the air, knows he's not the only one breathing it in. He reaches for his knife in his belt (no need to grab for the gun when there's only one), but before he can, the cold press of a blade digs into his throat, and a body presses against his from behind.

"One move," the person holding the knife to his throat says, "and you die. Understood?"

--

He slept in the pharmacy for one reason: the dead are really fucking loud. It's impossible for one of them to make it through the front room, and then into the back room where he sleeps, without making noise. And if one does make it into the back room, the way Zayn has the shelves set up (which didn't take much rearranging, thankfully) assures that they'd have to knock into at least one to get to him, and the sound of the bottles moving or falling would wake him up.

Sure, it's not foolproof. Sure, there's too many variables, so many chances being taken. He can't help it, though. There's nowhere else. Not when he'd run out of ammo three days ago. Not when he has no idea what he'll find when he leaves this building, because he'd stumbled into here days ago in the middle of the night after staying awake for three days straight and running non-stop for two of them without anything to drink.