The fluorescent tube light of the "Quick Stop" flickered an unwelcome greeting as El pushed through the glass door, the cheerful little bell above the frame jangling its usual tinny fanfare.
She was three minutes late for her 6 PM shift, and those three minutes felt monumental.
"Sorry, sorry, sorry," she muttered, tossing her worn canvas backpack behind the counter and already snatching her name tag
(El: Your Friendly Neighborhood Cashier)
off its hook. Her phone was still clutched tight in her hand, the screen displaying an unfinished text to her friend Maya about a boy she went out with.
"El! Good, you're here. Look, about the till count..." Mr. Henderson, the store manager, a man whose skin tone was a permanent shade of exhausted beige, paused, his eyes going wide as he looked past her shoulder.
El, mid-clip of her name tag onto her apron, didn't turn around. "I know, I know. I had my headphones on and was focused on beating my high score on block blast on the bus. I think I made a personal best! The concentration was insane. Seriously, I was in the zone. What were you saying about the till?"
Mr. Henderson's eyes were fixed. His mouth opened, but no sound came out.
"Sir?"
"No, I mean, the till is fine. Forget the till." He coughed, a dry, rattling sound. "Did you, uh... did you see anything odd on your way in?"
El finally turned, her dark ponytail swishing over her shoulder. She scanned the small convenience store's entrance, then the empty parking lot beyond.
"Odd?" She chewed on her bottom lip, trying to recall the blur of her walk from the bus stop. "Well, that old guy who always sits on the bench outside the laundromat wasn't there. That's a little odd, I guess. Usually, he's there arguing with pigeons and the rats."
She failed to mention the out-of-control city bus that had careened into a newspaper stand just a block away, or the subsequent commotion. That whole scene had been visually muffled by the giant billboard for a new reality TV show she'd been admiring she was too busy trying to decipher the terrible Photoshop job on the celebrity's face to notice the shattering glass and sickening crunch.
She also completely glossed over the brief, alarming moment when she'd nearly tripped over something or someone near a darkened alleyway. She'd been too busy trying to get a perfect screenshot of her block blast high score. When she'd glanced down for a split second, all she'd registered was a lump of grey clothing and an unpleasant, guttural snapping sound before she sidestepped it, thinking, "Ugh, why do people leave their trash everywhere?" and kept walking.
"No, that's not... look, El. The news is saying..." Mr. Henderson started, frantically fumbling with the small, static-filled radio behind the counter.
El waved a dismissive hand. "Oh, is it that weird flu going around? The one they're calling 'The Snapping Sickness?' Please. My feed says it's just a conspiracy theory spread by bots. They're probably trying to distract us from the price of gas." She pointed to the snack aisle. "I need to restock the cheese puffs before the night rush starts, which, by the look of it, is going to be super chill tonight."
She grabbed the box, humming the theme tune of her favorite video game, utterly unaware that the street outside was now filled with the sound of distant, wet screams, and that the "super chill" night was about to become something altogether less convenient.
El was on her knees, carefully stacking bags of Cheese puffs into a perfect pyramid a small act of defiant order against the general entropy of her life.
Mr. Henderson, meanwhile, was sweating through his pale blue shirt, his hand permanently plastered to the small, crackling radio. "El, look, the news isn't calling it 'flu' anymore, okay? They're using words like 'uncontained' and 'violent' and 'advised to shelter in place.' We need to lock the doors."
"Relax, Mr. H," El replied without looking up. "We'd lose too much foot traffic if we lock up early. Besides, 'shelter in place' is a phrase only used in movies and bad police procedurals. I just got a notification on my phone the internet is having a meltdown because someone at a major news network called it 'flesh-eating rage-people.' Clearly, it's just mass hysteria."
"But El, I saw"
"Did you see the price of Bitcoin? That's the real crisis," El countered, snapping a bag of chips onto the top of the pyramid. She stood up, brushing dust off her knees. "Honestly, I think we should just ignore the crazy tweets and focus on getting through the shift. Maybe put on some easy listening music? It'll lower everyone's anxiety."
Mr. Henderson opened his mouth, his face a mask of panicked urgency, but whatever he was about to shout was drowned out by the sudden, violent slam of the glass door and a torrent of sound.
Four teenagers tumbled into the Quick Stop. They weren't just running; they were fleeing. Their clothes were ripped, one girl had a streak of mud and something darker across her cheek, and their collective gasping was louder than the radio, the fridge compressors, and El's casual humming combined.
"Lock it! Lock the door!" a boy with a bright red backpack shrieked, skidding to a stop near the magazine rack.
El blinked, genuinely annoyed. "Hey! Don't slam the door like that! This isn't a locker room, guys. And you can't be yelling in the snack aisle, you're scaring away the legitimate customers."
The girl with the muddy face spun toward El, her eyes wide with terror. "Are you kidding me right now? There are... there are things out there! They're trying to eat people! We saw my neighbor, Mr. Harrison, on his lawn, and he bit the postman!"
El crossed her arms, unimpressed. "The postman probably deserved it. Mr. Harrison is notoriously cranky on Tuesdays. Look, if you're not going to buy anything, you need to leave. You're making a scene, and frankly, you're causing a disruption to the"
She stopped.
She wasn't looking at the terrified teenagers anymore. She was looking past them, past the glass door they'd just burst through.
Two things finally clicked into her brain:
First: The streetlights had gone out. The entire parking lot, the road, and the strip mall across the way were swallowed by an unnerving, deep blackness, broken only by the flickering green and yellow of the Quick Stop sign.
Second: In that darkness, a shape was moving. It wasn't shambling, and it wasn't running. It was a fast, unnatural lurch, like a marionette being dragged across concrete. The sound that came with it wasn't the distant scream of sirens El had been successfully ignoring it was a low, hungry gurgle and a wet, sucking noise.
And then, a large, blood-smeared hand slammed against the glass door, right where the "We Accept EBT" sticker was peeling off. The face that followed it was pale, gaunt, and possessed a truly astonishing number of teeth. It began to claw at the glass.
El didn't flinch. She didn't scream. She simply stared at the face and, with a slow, deliberate movement, reached up and pulled her bright yellow "Your Friendly Neighborhood Cashier" name tag off her apron.
"Oh," she said, her voice flat. "I guess it's not the flu."
