The mass drew nearer, nearer.
I listened to the flick-flick-flick of the hooks against denim. One of the points snagged in the fabric.
The point!
I turned and jammed the tip of the baling hook into the seam between the sliding doors. I yanked with all my might. The doors peeled back, barely wide enough to slither through.
I shouted through clenched teeth, “JoJo! Rocky! Go!”
They darted through the gap, Cassius scrambling after them. My biceps were cramping, but I held on, gripping one baling hook’s handle with both hands, the other hook dangling from my wrist. Alex squeezed through the gap next, spilling onto the supermarket floor.
The horde was twenty feet away. Now ten. Ahead of the pack, Coach Hanson scrabbled forward on three limbs, one leg stuck out to the side, a splinter of bone thrust up through her thigh.
Patrick ducked beneath me to blade through the gap, but he was too wide. His chest jammed in the opening. The Hosts were almost on us. I wrenched the hook as hard as I could, prying the doors apart another inch, and Patrick tumbled through. I fell in behind him, feeling dozens of hands brushing my back. The doors banged shut around my ankle. I turned, looking back into the press of flesh filling the giant glass door. At the bottom, Coach’s breaths fogged the pane, her hands cradling my boot at the heel and toe, like a mom helping a child slip off a sneaker.
Cassius stood protectively over me, the fur raised along his scruff, barking at the glass. I ripped my foot back as hard as I could, and the doors slammed shut. Faces and hands smeared the panes, blotting out the light.
My chest jerked up and down. For a minute it seemed I wasn’t going to catch my breath ever again.
“They can use tools,” Patrick said. “Let’s move before they figure it out.”
I rolled out from beneath Cassius. He was upset now, his tail tucked between his legs. We ran through the dark aisles, heading for the rear of the building. Rocky clipped a grapefruit pyramid, sending the fruit rolling across the tiles. Being in here now was surreal, the aisles dark and empty.
We rushed through the swinging doors behind the butcher’s counter and through the car-wash curtain that never made any sense to me. The rear room, a concrete box rimmed with freezers, was cold enough that I could feel the chill coming up through my boots. Boxes and pallets and a broken meat grinder.
We doubled over, hands on our knees, breathing hard. It felt like when Coach Hanson made us run the mile during PE, screaming at us over her stopwatch, her face nearly as red as her Cardinals hat. I thought about her back there at the sliding doors, her broken leg stuck out to one side, not feeling the pain. Driven by a single focus: getting at us.
I shuddered, and it wasn’t from the cold.
Patrick put his hand on the dead bolt leading to the loading bay in back. Alex set her hand gently on his and said, “Don’t.”
He paused.
“The kids are too tired.” She gestured vaguely toward Rocky and JoJo. I realized I was standing behind them and hoped she wasn’t including me among “the kids.” She looked back at Patrick. “Give them a sec to catch their breath.”
A shattering sound carried across the aisles, followed with what sounded like bodies slapping the floor.
Patrick threw the dead bolt.
The loading bay was empty—whatever Hosts had been back here must have been drawn to the front. We jumped off the dock, landing on the asphalt. Patrick headed into the row of Dumpsters. We single-filed behind him, squeezing through the narrow space. Cassius scrambled to press into the side of my leg.
Patrick halted and held up his hand.
Ahead of him a shadow fell across the mouth of the makeshift alley between Dumpsters. I put my hand on Cassius’s back, willing him not to whine. The shadow tick-tocked back and forth, and a moment later a body crossed into the narrow view ahead.
Eddie Lu, one of the baggers, headed across the row of Dumpsters, his head angled toward the ground. Eddie graduated Creek’s Cause High last year. He still wore his hipster beanie and Piggly Wiggly apron. In front of me, JoJo opened her mouth, and I clamped my hand over it.
Eddie walked directly in front of us, never glancing over. He passed so close to Patrick that Patrick could’ve reached out and poked his shoulder. Eddie moved across our brief field of vision and disappeared. We heard his shoes scuff the ground as he made a sharp right angle at the corner of the Dumpster, and then his footsteps continued along the far side. We held our breath.