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Marco was first into the store, Mickey and Randhir close on his heels. Mickey paused just inside the doorway to make sure the others were still behind them, stepping back to keep out of their way as they all stumbled across the doorstep. Marco gently pried Kitty’s hands away from his shoulders and set her on her feet before sinking cross-legged to the floor, breathing hard.

“You guys okay?” the guy with the shotgun asked.

Mickey nodded, gasping and coughing as her lungs spasmed from the exertion. Trying to speak was useless for the moment. She could hear the others trying to catch their breath around her, and for the first time was aware of being uncomfortably hot under her coat, which she began to peel away slowly while the blood pounded in her face and ears.

“Take your time,” their host gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Looks like you’ve had a hell of a race. Doesn’t look like any of them managed to follow you all the way here, though, which is good. They’re pretty slow, for the most part.” She nodded again, which he took as a sign to keep talking. “Yeah. The trick is not to attract ‘em. No loud noises, no bright lights, that sort of thing. When you’ve got your breath back you can tell me where you came from, and all that.”

After a moment she found she was able to breathe normally enough to speak, if haltingly. “Thanks for letting us in.” She said, looking her interlocutor, and then over at a large, burly man with a grizzled beard standing behind the counter glaring at them.

“Don’t thank me,” the large man said. “If it was up to me, I’d have left you out there. You’re damned lucky none of those things followed you inside.”

The younger guy shrugged. “We couldn’t leave you out there. It wouldn’t be humane. It’s what separates us from them. Chuck here’s just putting on his ‘tough survivalist hunter’ act. Really, he’s just a big softie,” he threw a grin at the other man, who scowled even more deeply, and though she wasn’t sure, Mickey thought she saw him flush an unbecoming shade of red under his beard.

“Thanks anyway,” she said. She looked over at Kitty, who had wedged herself against the counter and was hugging her knees as tightly as possible, and went to kneel next to her. “Are you hurt, kiddo? Did any of those things bite you?”

Kitty shook her head vehemently. “Marco hit them before they could bite me,” she said. “Their brains came out of their heads,” she added.

Mickey prevented herself from shuddering at the thought. “Well, good. They’re only out to hurt us, so it’s good that Marco stopped them.”

“So where have you folks come from?” the younger man asked. “You been out there long?”

Mickey shook her head, and since none of the others seemed inclined to speak, she answered for them. “We got caught in the metro over at Atwater. Spent the night at the Canadian Tire there, and made our way here after that.”

The man whistled. “That’s a hell of a long run. You mean you were aiming to come here?”

“Yeah. Well, it’s the only place nearby I could think of that stocks guns, you know?” Mickey said a bit uncomfortably.

“Fair enough. Good thinking, too. Guns are about the only thing that’ll work on those things at long range, anyway. I’m Kurt, by the way,” he carefully leaned his shotgun in a corner and put out his hand, which she took in hers to shake.

“Michaela. You can call me Mickey for short.”

“Nice to meet you. So who are your friends?”

“That over there is Kitty,” Mickey motioned to the little girl who was still clutching her knees and looking dazed, then looked over at the others. “You guys want to introduce yourselves?”

Marco got to his feet, working out the kinks in his arms, shoulders and back, then shook Kurt’s hand. For a moment the two remained locked in that position, and Mickey tried not to roll her eyes as she realized each was testing the strength of the other’s grip. Trust men to get their priorities screwed up in the middle of a crisis. Then both men nodded almost imperceptibly and released their grips as Marco introduced himself.

“Marco Giacometti. No relation.”

“I’m James Gabriel. It’s a pleasure.”

“Hey, from the radio, right?”

James smiled wanly. “That’s right.”

“Hey, cool. We listen to your reports all the time, isn’t that right Chuck?” Chuck grunted. “RIght, anyway. It’s really cool to meet you in person.”

“Uh, thanks.”

Randhir shook Karl’s hand enthusiastically. “Randhir Kumar. Pleasure to meet you.”

“I’m Paul.” Paul elbowed Donnie sharply in the ribs, saw that the boy wasn’t about to respond at all, shrugged, and answered for him. “And this is Donnie.”

“Marlene.”

Kurt nodded at each in turn. “Good to meet you all. Glad to see there are some folks out there with enough sense to make it through all this.”

Marlene looked up at that. “It’s thanks to Michaela that we’ve made it this far at all,” she said, smiling loyally at the young woman. “She’s been an absolute marvel.

Paul nodded fervently. “Yeah. She kept us all together and figured out a route to get here, and made sure we were all properly equipped and everything. Good thing she’s trained for this sort of thing, or we’d all be dead meat by now. Well, most of us, anyway,” he amended, glancing at Marco.

“Trained?” Kurt echoed dubiously.

Marco explained. “She’s an emergency dispatcher. Works for 911. We were coming back from work on the metro when this all happened. I work in the IT department,” he added, seemingly worried that Kurt might get the wrong idea about him.

Kurt seemed impressed, looking at Mickey with a newfound expression of respect in his eyes. “Guess you’re not just a pretty face,” he joked lamely. “Seriously, though. You did good. Most people couldn’t have done any of that on their own, let alone bring all these people back safely.”

Mickey rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand, pushing her wet hair out of her eyes. “We lost a lot of people,” she said softly, looking at the bedraggled form of Kitty, who was sitting in a puddle of water which had dripped from her coat.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Kurt said, sounding sincere enough, even though he didn’t know any of the people involved. “You were in the metro when all this started?”

“That’s right,” she confirmed. “There were nearly two hundred of us. We’re all that’s left, I think. Maybe some of the others got away down the tunnel, but I don’t think so. I could hear them screaming...” she trailed off. “We took shelter in the Canadian Tire.”

“You mentioned that.”

“That’s where we found Donnie. We thought we were safe there, but I guess we were wrong,” she found herself looking at Kitty again. “Someone got bitten and didn’t tell us, or maybe he didn’t know... I don’t know,” she suddenly felt very tired.

“Jesus,” Kurt breathed. “Who are the kid’s parents?” he asked almost irrelevantly.

She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter now. They’re gone,” she swallowed a lump in her throat.

“I’m real sorry. She seems like a cute kid. It’s a real shame. Look,” he reached out and put a hand on her arm. “Why don’t you all go hang your wet gear in the back, and then we can figure out what we should do after this. Sound good?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“We got a kettle in the back room and a bunch of instant coffee and hot chocolate. We weren’t really using it, but I think all of you could use a hot drink right about now.” He walked over to Kitty and squatted on his heels next to her. “How about it, squirt? You like hot chocolate?”

Kitty looked up and nodded. “Has it got marshmallows?”

“Afraid not. It’s not real manly to keep teeny tiny marshmallows in a hunting store. We’d get laughed at by all our hunting buddies, you know, especially if we got the pink and yellow ones.”

“Oh.” Kitty was clearly disappointed. “Well, that’s all right,” she said, somehow remembering that it wasn’t polite to lament the lack of marshmallows in hot chocolate offered by someone other than her parents. “I would still like some hot chocolate, please.”

“Coming right up. You want a piggy back ride to the back?” Kurt pulled her up onto his shoulders when she assented, and jogged to the back room, motioning to the others to go with him.

Michaela hung back in the front of the shop, having spotted the television on the counter. “Are they saying anything new?” she asked the large man named Chuck.

He grunted and moved his shoulders in what might have been a shrug. “Not really. Nothing we didn’t know already. Aim for the head, burn the bodies, don’t go outside if you can help it.”

She pulled up a stool from a corner behind the counter, well-aware of the dirty look he was giving her. “Look, I know you don’t want us here, but we didn’t have much of a choice. Where else could we go?”

He gestured dismissively. “It’s not like that. I just don’t want any of you bringing in zombies by accident. The more people, the better the chances of something going wrong. There’s no room for error here, missy. One of you leaves a door or a window open by accident, and we’re all zombie bait.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Yeah? How do you know that? Are you the boss of those people? Are they gonna listen to you? Are they gonna remember all your instructions and all your rules when those dead people come thumping on the windows? I can almost guarantee you one of them is going to panic and break, and then we’re all history.”

She sighed, then with one hand wrung the water from her hair, shuddering slightly as she remembered the feel of cold, slippery dead fingers grabbing at her head, tangling themselves in her hair. Her scalp was still sore where some of her hair had been ripped out by the roots.

“You’re going to want to cut all that off,” Chuck said, looking meaningfully at her dripping hair.

”What?”

“You’re asking to be zombie feed. You and the little girl. They grab onto whatever they can get their hands on. You’ve got tight enough clothes, but your hair’s what they’ll hang onto.”

Mickey instinctively brought up a hand to pat protectively at her hair. Maybe she ought to braid it and pin it in place. “So what were you planning to do?” she asked, avoiding the issue entirely.

“Me? I’m going to wait things out right here. I’ve got enough rations to last a good long while, and more ammunition than I can use in a year by myself. Even with Kurt here, we were fine.” He looked at her accusingly, as though it was somehow all her fault that they were being penned in by zombies and that there wouldn’t be enough food to go around.

“We’ll think of something,” she answered his unspoken accusation.

“Yeah. Sure.”

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