The front forecourt remained visible in jagged slices between aisle ends and advertisement stands. At least four more shapes had gathered near the entrance now, drawn by movement, sound, or some miserable combination of both.
One was pressing against the automatic doors hard enough to trigger them half-open before the damaged sensor stuttered and shut again. Another kept slamming into the glass beside it in a rhythm too thoughtless to be called patience but too relentless to ignore.
"Not out front, we need the rear lane… My Ute's out there." Arty said.
Leah hitched the bag higher over her shoulder. "Rear gate's gone."
"Then we move before the yard fills." Arty responded.
Dale pushed away from the counter and nearly folded to the floor. Leah caught his arm with her free hand and gave him a glare sharp enough to keep him upright out of sheer embarrassment if nothing else.
"Try not to die or collapse while walking, I won't be able to hold your whole weight." she said.
Dale managed a thin, disbelieving breath that might have been a laugh in a saner world. Good, humour still worked on him, another point in the alive column.
Arty led them back into the corridor at a quick pace, resisting the urge to run because running without visibility in a narrowing kill box was how people turned urgency into stupidity.
The office door stood open where they'd left it, the cool room door sat three metres beyond, silent now in a way he trusted even less than the banging.
They were almost at the rear access when something hit the inside of the cool room hard enough to bow the metal outward with a hollow boom. Dale swore. Leah tightened her grip on the tyre iron.
Arty didn't slow, but his eyes tracked the door automatically, another impact landed, higher this time, followed by a wet scraping noise that suggested more than one body behind it and not all of them upright.
"Tell me that's not one of the others," Leah said.
"No," Arty replied. "That's me not telling you anything."
They reached the inner door to the shed just as another crash came from the yard outside, then the unmistakable metallic squeal of something pressing along the corrugated wall.
The space beyond the door looked darker now, more crowded somehow, though that might have just been his nerves trying to sketch movement into every shadow. He opened it a fraction and looked out.
The rear gate had fully collapsed inward. Two zombies had already made it through, one dragging itself awkwardly across the concrete after becoming tangled in the chain-link fence, leaving its legs all but useless.
The other had reached the bins and was using its shoulder against them in the same mindless fashion the others used against doors and glass. Not because the bins mattered, but because motion and obstruction had become the same invitation to it.
A third shape stood just beyond the fallen gate, then a fourth moved past it. The lane beside the Ute remained technically open, though technicality was doing a lot of work.
Arty's mind snapped into the kind of cold calculation that always came easier once the room for hesitation had burned away.
Twenty meters to the Ute. Three people. One of them injured. At least two active threats already inside the yard with more arriving every second. The lane formed a narrow funnel that could work in their favor, provided they kept moving and nobody froze.
He glanced back toward the retail floor one last time. The front route was impossible. Staying was impossible. The cool room would only waste blood and time. That left exactly one answer.
"We go now," Arty said. "I take point. Leah, stay with Dale. If something gets too close, don't stop to help me unless I'm already down."
Leah's expression darkened. "That's not a great plan."
"It's the only one we have." Arty replied
She accepted that with the kind of grim economy she was starting to appreciate. Arty stepped into the yard and made himself the loudest thing in it.
"Come on then… you mindless ugly bastards." Arty spoke loudly.
The nearest creature turned immediately. Good. That was exactly what he wanted. The wrench felt steadier in his hand than it had back at the house, not because the danger was any less, but because the shape of it had become clearer.
The first one came from the left, half-limping around the bins with one arm reaching toward him. Arty met it three strides short of the bottleneck, using the first swing to break its momentum before stepping through with the second strike hard enough to drop it across the concrete.
The one dragging itself across the ground clawed at his boot, he kicked its arm away, stamped once on the wrist to break its grip, then drove the wrench down into its head without stopping his forward movement.
"Keep moving," he barked.
Leah pushed Dale through the gap, both staying closer to the wall than he liked but fast enough to keep pace with the moment. A shadow crossed the lane ahead.
For a heartbeat Arty expected another one of the creatures, but this time a living man vaulted the fence instead.
A man vaulted the low side fence from the neighboring property and hit the ground running, wild-eyed and bleeding from one cheek, a backpack bouncing against his shoulders as he sprinted toward the Ute like it was the last vehicle left on earth.
Arty reacted before he thought it through, stepping sideways to block the lane and shoving the wrench up between them.
"Stop… Right there." Arty barked.
The man nearly crashed into it; his hands came up instantly. "I'm not one of those things."
That was exactly what a desperate liar would say. It was also exactly what a desperate honest man would say, which made it completely useless as evidence.
Behind them, another one came stumbling towards them after having forced itself through the gate. Leah swore, and Dale stumbled.
The stranger looked past Arty toward the movement and then back toward the Ute. "Please," he said, voice cracking at the edges. "They're coming from the houses; I've only just managed to stay ahead of them."
Arty had half a second to make a choice and hated all available versions of it. Two things tipped the balance. First, the man smelled like sweat, blood, and fear, not like the rotten-sour taint hanging off the others. Second, the backpack might matter.
"Passenger tray. Stay where I can see you. First, help her get him into the Ute."
The man nodded too quickly and moved, to help Leah. Leah shot Arty a look that promised a future argument if they lived long enough to afford one.
"We don't have room," she said.
"We have seconds."
The Ute was six strides away. Three, if you were willing to ignore the consequences. Arty reached the driver's side first, yanked the door open, and threw the wrench onto the seat as the stranger hauled himself into the tray with the graceless speed of a man powered entirely by terror.
Dale nearly collapsed at the rear quarter. Leah shoved him hard enough to keep him upright and got the bag into the cabin before practically throwing him after it.
Arty got one hand on the steering wheel when a thud slammed into the side of the tray. The stranger shouted. Arty looked up just in time to see one grey hand clamped around the top rail behind him while the rest of the body dragged itself upward.
He snatched the utility knife from the supplies bag, twisted in the seat, and drove the blade into the wrist pinned over the metal. It took two ugly sawing motions and a burst of black-red spray before the hand came free enough to drop.
The body followed with it, vanishing beneath the side of the Ute just as he threw the knife back and slammed the door shut.
"Is everyone in?" he shouted.
"Everyone's in! Go!" Leah shouted.
Good enough. The Ute lurched forward hard, tyres shrieking on concrete before catching as he fishtailed through the open lane and out toward the service road.
Something hit the rear once, then slid away. In the mirror he saw shapes converging, not just from the station now, but from the neighboring yards and side lanes too, as if the noise had rung a dinner bell across the whole edge of town.
He didn't slow until the station had shrunk behind them and the next block of houses had opened into a wider industrial strip with more yard space, fewer windows, and the kind of heavy structures he trusted on principle.
Only then did he risk a proper breath. Leah was twisted in the passenger seat, one hand braced on the dash, the other still gripping the tyre iron. Dale had his head back against the seat and his eyes closed, breathing through clenched teeth.
In the rear-view mirror, the stranger in the tray was crouched low behind the cab with both hands visible and blood from the severed zombie wrist splashed across one shoulder.
"Names," Arty said, eyes still on the road.
Leah answered first. "Still just Leah."
Dale managed a weak thumbs-up. "Still Dale."
The man in the tray leaned toward the rear window opening. "Tom."
Arty nodded once, "Tom, I'm Arty."
Three survivors. One Ute. Half a tank. One bag of stolen time. The service station had been a trap. That didn't mean it had been a mistake. It had given him supplies, fuel cards, and proof of something he would have preferred not to confirm yet.
The outskirts weren't empty; they were only quieter. His phone buzzed again on the dashboard; he stared at it for half a second before picking it up. Unknown. Two words followed.
Not enough.
Arty looked at the road ahead, then at the industrial buildings rising beyond the next intersection, larger, stronger, more defensible than any house had a right to be.
"Yeah," he said quietly, more to himself than to the message. "I know."
Because for all the movement, all the planning, all the small corrections he had made this time, the shape of the truth was closing in around him from every side. He had changed the route, he had changed the timing, he had changed the body count, none of it had changed the scale.
The world wasn't collapsing in one place; it was collapsing everywhere at once. He tightened his grip on the wheel and aimed the Ute toward the industrial strip, where steel sheds and fenced yards stood waiting like rougher, uglier versions of possibility.
This life still wasn't enough, he could feel that now in his bones, the question was how much more it would cost him to admit it.