Going Gray Read online

  “What is it!” she demanded, but his square shoulders blocked the view. She glimpsed a cash register, and a conveyer belt that was still filled with a shopper’s emptied cart. And she could see the large glass windows that every supermarket seemed to share.

  Through the glass window, the fog rolled endless wispy folds, turning over and over, slow and methodical. “The fog? Yeah, so what! I walked through that shit. Did you?” Peter dropped his hands. She could have slapped him in the face, and it probably wouldn’t have been as painful as what she’d just said. She intended to hurt him, to guilt him into moving out of her way.

  “Are you sure?” was all he asked, and Emily pushed past him, saying nothing.

  “Oh my God,” was all that she was could mutter. Her stomach was in her throat, and she’d wished that she’d listened to Peter. Nothing good could come from seeing this.

  A stampede was the closest thing she could think of to describe what could have created such a scene. Bodies lay stacked on top of one another. Cordwood, she recalled. Some half in and half out of the store—all of them having tried to get inside, having tried to get into the safety of the store.

  Emily envisioned what happened: morning shoppers, leaving the store, taking their groceries to their cars, unloading overstuffed shopping carts and suddenly becoming overwhelmed by the falling clouds. Their clothes were the first to go, melting into their skin, becoming a part of their flesh. The screams surely began at once when the first burns bubbled up into bloody erupting welts.

  Someone probably yelled to go back into the store. They ran. They all ran, leaving their carts of food and open trunks, trying to squeeze through the Food-Mart’s doors at the same time. But the poison was faster than they were. How many bodies had made it inside before the hole was plugged, before every square-inch of space in that opening sealed the store from the outside?

  A few reached the store, but the fog had melted their insides by then. Dozens of bodies were face down in puddles of blood. Emily considered Mrs. Quigly and the drowning sound she’d made before collapsing.

  The front of the store was littered with more bodies. A man hugged the glass like a Garfield doll in the rear window of someone’s car. His mouth lay agape, spilling his insides, dried and staining his front. Others were pressed behind him, keeping his dead body upright. Emily wondered how strong the glass was. She wondered how many bodies it would take before the glass cracked.

  Close to them, she saw that a woman had run headlong into the heavy front window. She held her two young toddlers—one under each arm—and had tried to break through the plate glass with her forehead. A smear of drippy red jelly fused the woman’s head with the glass. And her blouse had been torn open, or disintegrated, leaving her bare breasts pressed against the glass. Under her arms, she carried the remains of her children; pouches of clothes that could have come from the mall’s OshKosh B’gosh kids clothing outlet. Dozens more piled up behind the mother and her children, an avalanche of bodies squashed against the windows.

  But what happened to everyone else? She looked over the dead bodies inside, the father covering a baby carrier and a pair of teens locked in a deadly embrace. Dread filled her with a familiar horror. The poison breached the Food-Mart, and anyone who’d sought refuge inside had died a slow and miserable death. They’d all died.

  She flashed a look up at the metal rafters and then back to the large plates of glass that separated them from the poison. The fog was eating the Food-Mart like it had eaten her house, and it wouldn’t be long before it collapsed on top of them.

  So overwhelmed with what was in front of her, Emily didn’t realize that she was rubbing her arms. Peter was doing the same around his neck. Her arms were burning like they had when she was back in her house, the salty poison needling with a sting that was deep and painful.

  “We can’t stay up here,” she said. Her tone was flat, but exacting. She’d seen enough and turned away. Emily walked back the way they came, reaching the center of the store where the aisles split. Standing there, searching for nothing in particular, she collapsed. It was too much. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the ghost image of the mother carrying her two babies. She was crying by the time Peter reached her. He pressed his hands on her shoulders, but she waved him off.

  “No. Don’t,” she said.

  Her father did that to them. He did that to the young mother who’d used her face to batter against the window to save her babies. Emily clutched the handle of the knife, pressing the blade into her thigh. She pressed the edge until it nearly cut into her skin. She wanted to feel a pain like the mother had. Emily tried, but then stopped. She couldn’t go any further, and her shrinking courage only made her want to cry some more.

  “Emily, it’s okay,” Peter tried to console her. “It’s not your fault.”

  “But it is,” she blurted. “I mean… I mean.” Her words trailed off, taken by the anguish erupting inside her. Peter said nothing else, but instead ran his hand across her shoulders and down her back, hoping it helped.

  She cried heaving sobs until her insides hurt. At some point, she’d stood up and faced Peter, intending to tell him everything. But then her hands were on his face, pulling him closer until her lips touched his. Peter pulled away, but only for a second before kissing her the way she’d hoped he would. Emily fell into him, and her breathing hitched on errant sobs as they kissed. His lips were soft and wet, and she moaned when his tongue touched hers.

  Peter abruptly stopped and backed away. “I’m sorry,” he stammered. Immediately, his expression was filled with surprise and embarrassment. “Emily, I didn’t mean to take advantage.” But when he tugged on the collar of his shirt, she didn’t believe it was embarrassment; it was passion. She shook her head and wiped her damp eyes. Gripping his shirt in her hands, she held him so that he couldn’t move away from her.

  “Nothing to be sorry about,” she said. Her voice sounded soft, and even a bit sultry. She didn’t know where the voice came from, or that she could even sound that way. She liked it. “I should be the one who is sorry, I kissed you.”

  He nodded, agreeing, but in a clumsy way that she found adorable.

  “We—” he stuttered, and then cleared his throat. “—We should get what we need and then get back.” Small bulbous welts sprouted on Peter’s neck. She motioned for him to turn his head, placing her fingers on his stubbly chin. A rash of burns spread down his neck, disappearing under the collar of his shirt. Peter brought her hands in his, and carefully drew a finger around the welts on her arms.

  “You’ve got the same on your neck,” she told him. “This place isn’t safe—not like the mall is, anyway.”

  “It’s got to be the masonry,” he exclaimed, and then turned to inspect the rafters above like she had earlier. “Metal and wood is no match for whatever this stuff is.” A pang of guilt ticked inside her. Whatever this stuff is. She didn’t know the what, but she knew the where.

  A deafening blast came from the other side of the Food-Mart, and instinctively they both squatted for safety. The floor shook, jars and boxes rattled, but unlike the earlier explosion, this one was inside. It was too loud to be a gunshot, and nothing else happened. Above them, the rafters moved, shaking like the end of a ruler after snapping it against a desk. The sound wasn’t an explosion; it was the building.

  “We’ve got to get the medicine and go!” she screamed, but Peter was drawn away, curious, standing, raising a hand. “The roof! It’s the roof, and it isn’t going to stay up there!”

  “How can you be—” he started to say, but another explosion interrupted him. A rafter separated from it’s support column, singing a terrible metallic song. Emily heard metal tearing from metal and shrank down. The roof stayed, but she could see a ripple of vibrations cross the ceiling. Peter dipped his head and waited for something to fall. “—Okay, let’s get back. But what about all this food?” Boxes and canned-food littered the floor as if someone had run up and down the aisles, sweeping the shelves with a
broomstick. Canned goods, bottled juices and water, all of it safely preserved, waiting to be taken.

  “We can’t do anything about that now,” she answered, but then saw the plastic trash bags and ripped open the box, handing a liner of black plastic to Peter. “Grab what you can, but be quick. The other rafters are going to fail soon, faster and faster, just like at my house.” Peter shook his head, staring up at the ceiling.

  The run to the pharmacy was slower than she’d hoped. Her hands had begun to bleed, the blisters swelling and breaking, oozing clear liquid mixed with threads of blood. Peter suffered the same. She grabbed boxes and canned goods, fruit juices and more, until the bag was too heavy to lift. The sound of scraping plastic chased her as she kept pace to reach the pharmacy. Emily pulled up on the trash bag, dragging it behind her as if it were Santa’s sack full of holiday joy.

  “Do you know where the pills are?” Another rafter ripped from its support column. She waited for the ceiling to settle. The weight of the roof proved too much, and the metal tensed. She listened to the haunted sounds of the rafters straining, groaning. “I grabbed more bags, just start filling them.” Emily threw Peter an empty trash bag and cleared the shelves of bottles. Dozens of pharmacy bottles went into the bag, but when she reached a locked cabinet, she knew that the drugs they needed were inside.

  She couldn’t read the blocky label names on the bottles, but recognized them from the list. Emily opened the small knife Ms. Parks gave her, and picked at the lock. She jammed the tip of the blade in the slot, feeling the metal ridges on the inside and tried to shake the lock free. It wouldn’t move.

  “Here let me try,” Peter said. Stepping up next to her, Emily handed him the small blade, but he didn’t take it. With one quick hit, Peter punched his elbow through the glass. Splintered shards fell like confetti, clinking as they hit the ground. “Just don’t cut yourself, okay?”

  She cocked her head to the side, annoyed. “Seriously?”

  “I’m serious,” he answered, motioning to the glass. “Stuff is sharp, be careful.” And as she went about picking out the locked medications and pain-killers, more glass shattered. The sound didn’t come from the case though—it came from the front of the store. The ceiling bowed in the front, pressing down on the large plates of glass. She thought of the mother and her two babies, and wondered if that was the section of glass to give first.

  Two more rafters popped, tearing the metal welds. Something wet crept down her leg. Slippery and warm: alarming, she thought for a moment that she’d peed. She pushed her hand over her thigh, bringing up a palm of bright red. The knife! In all the rush, she’d cut open her leg on the chef’s knife after all, but had never felt the pain. But now there was a low throb, a pulse where the blade opened her leg. Blood dripped from the cuff of her pant leg, crimson splatters like rain drops appeared on the pharmacy’s white tiles. It’s not that bad, she told herself.

  Emily pulled the make-shift belt, dropping the knife to the floor. The clink of steel on the tiles drew Peter’s attention. At once, he was at Emily’s side, kneeling to see how bad the cut was.

  “I’m sorry,” was all she could think to say. A rafter from the other side of the Food-Mart gave, and threw a booming sound that made them both duck. “I didn’t even know I cut myself.”

  “You had the blade in backwards,” he answered and then looked at her with mild contempt. This was another part of her every day too, where even the smallest of paper-cuts could mean something worse. I have to be more careful. I have to be better than this. “Doesn’t look life threatening—yet, but you’ll need a stitch or two. We better make sure we grab plenty of antibiotics… and a needle and thread too.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I didn’t mean to.” Peter picked up the leather strap, and tied it around her leg.

  “My fault,” he answered, motioning to ask if the leather was too tight. Emily shook her head, and Peter checked the knot. “I should have shown you how to carry a knife, especially one that big.”

  Emily pushed against the throb in her leg, adding more pharmacy bottles to the trash bag. She’d moved on to bandages and antibiotic creams when a pair of rafters broke away. The metal thumped, grinding. Welds that could never fail were being torn apart. She cupped her ringing ears, but then quickly covered her face from the debris thrown into the air. They’d stayed too long. They were going to be crushed to death by the roof when it fell in. Or worse, pinned under the steel girders, dying a slow and horrible death. Emily pulled her arms into her chest and screamed.

  Peter shook her by the shoulders, a peculiar expression on his face. Emily glanced over his shoulders toward the front. The store was already changing. The roof had dropped, leaning precariously to the right as though suspended by invisible cables. Another failed rafter, and it was going to fall. She heard a mix of terror and excitement in Peter’s voice, yelling at her while he pulled up on her arm, motioning to follow him.

  A large silver streak came down from the ceiling, stopping her from taking another step. Another streak, and then a thud of something heavy landed next to her. The sudden collapse pushed her hair up in a rapid waft. She cringed, fearful, and tried to move, but her legs stayed frozen in place.

  “What was that?”

  “Holy Shit!” Peter screamed, staring at what had fallen. She peered around to see a bell-shaped light, laying on its side, spent like a child’s toy top. “One more step and—”

  “—Yeah, I know,” Emily gasped. Her voice sounded choked, and her legs felt wobbly. Emily was up and running behind Peter when another dome light crashed. The lights leaned like books on a crooked shelf, and two more of them dropped, punching the air with hollow thuds. They were all going to fall. Bells of aluminum and glass threatened to break free and drop on top of them like bombs.

  “The whole place is coming down!” Peter shouted. His voice strained as he dragged two giant trash bags behind him. He tossed her a kitchen towel, motioning to her mouth. When she saw the open hatch ahead of him and the tattoo man’s feet, she knew. The terrycloth felt soft and masked some of the smell, but there was just too much rot and decay coming from the walk-in freezer. Why would someone intentionally leave it open? They wanted the fog to consume the meat. And maybe, she considered, tattoo man might have tried to fend off the vandal, protecting the walk-in and the food. Attacker or no attacker, tattoo man was already dead like Ms. Quigly, he just didn’t know it yet.

  “Why does the air feel so much worse over here?” Peter asked, his words suddenly drowned in a dry heave. “This is bad!”

  Could it be that the air had become more toxic from the raw meat, consuming it, producing a by-product that made the poison worse? What would happen once the burns ate away someone’s skin? She glanced over at tattoo man, finding burns around his neck that hadn’t been there before. Would all the bodies decompose so rapidly? Her thoughts spun in her mind, confusing her, sickening her, letting her father’s involvement turn into a conspiracy theory and an even deeper mystery. Just get back to Justin. She shook it off, leaving the hundreds of questions alone.

  The stinging in Emily’s eyes became too much, watering them profusely, twisting the view of Peter in front of her until she only saw something gnarled and warped. She squeezed the tears out, letting her cheeks catch the wetness, soothing the itch and burn. And Peter struggled too, gagging, coughing and spitting, desperately trying to clear his view. Her nose and throat tightened, hampering her breath, cramping her face. And somewhere deep inside her lungs, a fire had started that she didn’t think could be doused.

  But it was her arms and hands that were getting the worst of it: fat sacs turned white and opened during her struggle to drag the trash bag. She’d grabbed a handful of first-aid kits from aisle eight, and would be the first to use them. That is if they made it back to the mall.

  Searing air and the crackling sound of lighting. A storm? She expected to see a blinding flash. She expected to hear a distant guttural rumble. But the thunder never came. Someth
ing was going to fall, and anxiety had them both looking high and low. Emily tensed her arms and legs, tightening her insides, holding her breath. They were going to be crushed by a falling light or a chunk of the roof.

  Emily was the first to see what made the sound, pointing it out to Peter who stretched his neck toward the front of the store. Another of the plate glass windows had begun to fail, and she was certain it was the one with the mother and her two babies. Large cracks ran down the face of it, spidering outward like the bare branches of a tree. The leaning roof was too much weight, and what the woman had started with her head—cracking the glass—was going to end soon. The plate glass snapped, turning into a canvas of abstract art, an illusion that hid them from the poison world. A monsoon of glass shards rifled into the store like buckshot from a shotgun. The hail storm of oval-shaped pebbles rained down everywhere, and even from where they stood, she could see tiny glass rocks tumbling into the food aisles, glinting gray light like costume jewelry.

  By now, they’d known what to expect and barely flinched as the window vanished from the front of the store. The fog could come in now, but like her house, and the opening of her garage door, the fog only tumbled around the opening. Knocking, but never coming in.

  “Look at that,” she managed to say, coughing up hot phlegm. “Stays outside. Just rolls against the opening. I’d seen the same at my house before it imploded.” Peter nodded, and then shook his head, furrowing his brow.

  “Structure?” he suggested, but gave her a look that told her that he had no idea. “Might not be coming in, but it’s getting a lot worse.” Peter dropped the trash bags and pawed at his arms, swiping at the burns.

  “Cover up,” Emily motioned to her mouth and nose, tying the kitchen towel around her head. “We need to run for it.”