Tally's eyes didn't close so much as they surrendered to the weight of her own exhaustion, the muscles in her eyelids finally snapping like overstretched rubber bands.
The floor of the "e aco" was cold—a leaching, industrial chill that seeped through her expensive, high-waisted leggings and settled into her marrow. For hours, she had sat in the dark, weaving a tapestry of resentment, stitch by jagged stitch. She had watched the back of Justin's head, the way he breathed with a heavy, self-important rhythm, and she had hated him for it. She hated him for being the one who decided when they ate, when they slept, and when they moved. But even a mind as sharp and glass-edged as hers had a breaking point, and as the 4:00 AM silence pressed against the store, her consciousness finally fractured.
As her head lolled against her shoulder, the store dissolved. The smell of copper and stale chips faded, replaced by the cloying, heavy scent of Baccarat Rouge 540 and expensive Italian leather.
In her dream, she wasn't in a gas station. She was in the back of a black limousine—the one her father had rented for her sixteenth birthday—the one she had complained about for three days because the interior lighting was "too warm" and made her skin look sallow in selfies. She was wearing her white-and-gold "SAVANNAH HAWKS" cheerleading uniform, but the fabric felt different. It was heavier, slicker. When she looked down, the gold sequins were actually tiny, polished teeth, shimmering in the neon-blue fiber optics of the ceiling.
Outside the tinted windows, the world was a blur of motion, but it wasn't the city. It was a garden. A vast, manicured labyrinth of white roses and marble statues that stretched to a horizon made of violet silk. But the statues weren't made of stone. They were people she knew, frozen in mid-motion, their skin bleached to the color of bone. There was the girl who had tried to take her spot as flyer—frozen in a mid-air tumble, her face a mask of permanent, terrified failure. There was the history teacher who'd had the audacity to give her a B+—frozen at his desk, his hands raised to ward off a blow that never landed.
This is how it should be, her dream-self thought, sipping from a crystal flute of something dark and bubbling. Frozen. Silent. Decorative.
Because that was the problem with people: they had a habit of moving. They had a habit of wanting things. They had a habit of taking up space that belonged to her.
The limo pulled up to a massive, wrought-iron gate. Standing there, holding a velvet rope, was Ella Belle. The six-year-old looked perfect. No blood. No dirt. She was wearing her favorite unicorn shirt, and her hair was tied in two neat pigtails.
"Can I come in, Tally?" the dream-Ella asked, her voice small and tinny, like it was coming from a broken music box.
Tally leaned forward, her face inches from the tinted glass. "Did you find my charger, Ella? The one you lost?"
"I'm sorry, Tally," the child whimpered.
"Then you stay outside," Tally whispered, her voice a low, vibrating hum of satisfaction. "Rules are rules, Ella. You lose my things, you lose your place."
She watched as the limo pulled away, the little girl's hands reaching out for the bumper until she was swallowed by the white roses. Tally didn't feel a pang of guilt. She felt a profound sense of order. In Tally's mind, the world was a ledger. There were assets and there were liabilities. Ella Belle, with her sticky fingers and her constant need for attention, had always been a liability. She was a drain on the family's resources, a distraction for their mother, a toy that had finally been broken by the world. It's better this way, Tally told herself in the dark, swirling depths of her REM cycle. Now there's more room for me.
The dream shifted. She was standing on the roof of the "e aco," but the store was a mile high, a glass tower piercing the bruised purple clouds. Below her, the entire city of Savannah was a sea of purple eyes. Thousands of them, looking up.
"Tally! Tally! Tally!" they chanted, their clicking jaws forming her name into a rhythmic, choral prayer.
She loved it. She loved the way they looked at her—with a hunger so pure it was almost holy. They didn't want her for her personality; they didn't want her to be "nice" or "supportive." They wanted her because she was the only thing in the world that still had value. She looked down at her hands. They were glowing. A bright, blinding gold that cast long shadows over the monsters below.
"You see?" she screamed at the sky. "I'm the one! I'm the one who survives!"
But then, a hand reached up and grabbed her ankle. It was Mari.
But Mari wasn't a girl. She was a hulking, grey thing, her stomach swollen to a grotesque size. It wasn't a baby inside her; it was a hive. Tally could see the movement under the skin—thousands of tiny, purple-eyed spiders spinning a web out of Mari's entrails.
"Give me your light, Tally," dream-Mari hissed, her voice a wet, sucking sound. "I need it for the swarm. I need it for the replacement."
"Get off me!" Tally kicked at the grey hands, but they were like wet clay, sticking to her skin. "You're nothing! You're just an incubator! You're a parasite!"
That was the word. Parasite.
In Tally's waking mind, Mari was the ultimate thief. She had stolen Justin's focus. She had stolen the attention of the family. And now, she was stealing the future by growing a new life in the middle of a graveyard. Tally hated the baby. Not because it was an innocent life, but because it was a competitor. It was a new "star" that would demand the resources she needed to survive. Every bottle of water Justin gave to Mari was a bottle taken from Tally. Every hour he spent guarding her was an hour he wasn't guarding her.
In the logic of the narcissist, love is a zero-sum game. And Tally was losing.
Tally's eyes snapped open.
The dream shattered like a dropped mirror, the white roses and marble statues dissolving into the dim, grey reality of the gas station. She was back on the floor, her neck stiff, her mouth tasting of salt and bitterness. The air in the store was stagnant, heavy with the smell of the marsh and the lingering, metallic tang of the things they had trapped in the back.
She stayed perfectly still, listening.
From the back storage room, behind the heavy, reinforced door they had barricaded with pallets of bottled water and motor oil, came the occasional, muffled thud. A rhythmic, mindless hitting of flesh against metal. The zombies they had trapped inside—Bob the clerk, the hoodie boy, and the others—were still there, but they were a contained problem. They were just noise in the basement.
She looked to her left.
Justin was asleep, his head resting on a crate of Gatorade. Even in sleep, his brow was furrowed, his hand still gripped around the handle of the heavy Maglite. He looked exhausted, his "hero" mask slipping to reveal the scared nineteen-year-old underneath. Tally felt a flare of disgust. Look at him, she thought. Our brave leader. If I kicked him in the ribs right now, he'd probably cry.
Mari was curled up next to him, her head on his shoulder. Her hand was protectively draped over her stomach, even in the depths of unconsciousness. It was such a performative gesture, Tally thought. Look at me, I'm a mother, I'm sacred. Tally wanted to reach out and flick Mari's forehead, just to see if the girl would apologize for existing even while she was asleep.
Kenzie was a heap of denim and blonde hair further down the aisle, the Yorkie, Barbie, tucked under her chin. The dog's tiny ribcage rose and fell in a fast, frantic rhythm.
Tally was the only one truly awake.
She stood up, her joints popping with a sound like dry twigs breaking. She felt a strange sense of power in being the only conscious entity in the room. It was like being the only person at a party who hadn't gotten drunk—she was the one with the information. She was the one in control.
She walked toward the front windows, her socks sliding silently over the linoleum. The "e aco" was bathed in the deep, ink-blue light of the pre-dawn. It was that hour where the world felt like it was held in stasis, caught between the horrors of the night and the uncertain misery of the morning.
She peered through the glass.
The horde had cleared out.
A few hours ago, the lot had been a sea of grey skin and purple eyes, a mass of mindless hunger pressing against the tempered pane. Now, the concrete apron was mostly empty. The tide had gone out.
She could see the discarded items from the day's panic—the strollers, the shoes, the abandoned cars—sitting like tombstones in the dim light. Far down the road, she could see a few shapes moving, the slow, jerky silhouettes of the dead wandering off toward the smell of smoke or the distant sound of the military convoy that had passed hours ago. They were like sharks; they moved where the blood was. And right now, the gas station was quiet. It was just a glass box in the middle of a swamp.
Tally leaned her forehead against the cool glass. She should have felt relief, but all she felt was a profound sense of boredom.
Is this it? she wondered. We just sit here and wait for Justin to decide what's next? We wait for Mari to have her parasite? We wait to run out of chips?
She thought about her life three days ago. She had been worried about her tan for the lake trip. She had been worried about whether or not to text back the guy from the Georgia Southern baseball team. Those problems felt heavy and real. This? This felt like a badly directed movie.
She looked at her reflection in the glass. Her hair was a disaster—frizzy from the humidity and tangled from the floor. She had a smudge of dirt on her cheek that looked like a grease stain.
I look like a victim, she thought, her lip curling. I hate looking like a victim.
She began to pace the length of the front windows, her mind whirring. Tally was many things—selfish, cruel, manipulative—but she wasn't stupid. She knew that Justin's plan was to wait for "help." But Tally had seen the convoy. They hadn't stopped. They weren't looking for survivors; they were looking for a perimeter.
No one is coming, she realized. The thought didn't scare her. It electrified her. If no one was coming, then the old rules didn't matter. The "be nice" rules. The "share your toys" rules. If the world was a graveyard, then the person with the shovel was the boss.
She turned back to look at the others.
She hated how they leaned on each other. She hated the way Justin and Mari were a unit. She felt like an outsider in her own family, a third wheel in a tragedy.
They'd leave me if it came down to it, she told herself. It was a lie, but it was a useful one. It gave her permission to think about leaving them first. Justin would choose the parasite. He'd choose Mari. I'm just the sister who complains. I'm the one they'd 'accidentally' lose in the woods.
She reached into the pocket of her hoodie and felt the industrial box cutter Justin had left on the counter. She had swiped it while he was barricading the back door. She ran her thumb over the plastic casing. It felt like a scepter.
She imagined a scenario where the glass broke. She imagined the chaos. She wouldn't help Mari. She wouldn't grab Kenzie. She would run for the Jeep. She had the keys—she'd snatched those too, from Justin's jacket while he was sleeping.
She was a better driver than him anyway. She could be halfway to her father's base before they even realized she was gone. She'd tell her dad that she tried to save them. She'd cry—real, fat, beautiful tears. She'd tell him Justin went crazy, that he put them in danger, and she was the only one who could escape.
Her father would believe her. He always believed her. She was his "Golden Girl."
A small, genuine smile touched her lips. The idea of being the "sole survivor" had a certain cinematic appeal. It was clean. It was efficient.
She turned back to the window, feeling a strange surge of energy. The sky was beginning to turn a pale, bruised violet on the horizon. The sun would be up soon, and with it, the heat and the smell. She scanned the parking lot again, her eyes tracking the movement of a plastic bag blowing across the pavement.
Then, she froze.
About fifty yards away, near the edge of the tree line where the marsh began to swallow the road, something moved.
It wasn't the jerky, hitching movement of the dead. It was smooth. Deliberate.
Tally squinted, her nose almost touching the glass.
In the dim, pre-dawn light, she saw them.
Emerging from the shadow of an overturned delivery truck were figures. They were crouched low, moving in a synchronized, tactical way. One, two... three... four.
Five.
Five people.
They weren't wearing rags. They were wearing dark clothing—hoodies, tactical vests, heavy boots. One of them was holding something long and thin. A rifle? A baseball bat? It was hard to tell in the gloom.
They weren't whistling. They weren't clicking their teeth.
They were talking. She couldn't hear them, but she saw the way they paused, the leader gesturing toward the gas station. One of them pointed a finger directly at the front windows of the "e aco."
They were normal. They were alive.
Tally's heart didn't leap with hope. It didn't pound with relief.
Instead, a cold, sharp calculation settled over her.
She looked back at Justin, Mari, and Kenzie, still dead to the world, huddled together like sheep in the dark. Then she looked back at the five figures creeping across the lot, their eyes fixed on the store.
Tally didn't wake her brother. She didn't call out to Mari.
She stood in the silence of the glass house, the box cutter heavy in her pocket, and watched the strangers approach. She watched them move with a purpose that the dead didn't possess.
Who are you? she wondered, her eyes narrowing as a predatory glint flickered in them. And more importantly... what do you have that I want?
She didn't move. She didn't breathe. She just waited, the sole witness to the arrival of the living, as the first ray of a grey, dying sun began to cut through the swamp.