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“Why don’t we wait here?” Ava said. “Give you some space.”

Without a word, the man ushered the woman and girl straight back into the main part of the shop, checking over his shoulder before he disappeared with them.

I stayed still, my fingers loosening around the knife.

“It’s weird running into other people now,” Kirby said quietly.

“I like their idea of the nail gun, though.” Ava went over to a shelf and lowered the flap of an open cardboard box, peering inside. “Straight through the temple without all the cardio.”

“Except we’ll have to carry all this shit now,” I said. “We should have grabbed a car first.”

A hushed conversation drifted through from the other side of the wall, then a moment later, their footsteps came closer.

“We could break into a house and get hold of a key fob,” Kirby pointed out. “We’ve already killed one of those things. It’ll be easier taking down more with better weapons.”

It made more sense than trying to find an abandoned vehicle on the street with the keys still inside. Quick, quiet. We could be back on the road and heading out of town in no time.

“Not a bad idea,” I said. “Provided there aren’t scared people inside ready to defend their property.”

“Now, why would you plant that idea in my head?” Kirby asked.

The three strangers came back through the doorway. The man appeared first, guiding a wheelbarrow piled with supplies. He made sure the other two were following him, then gave us a tight-lipped smile. “Good luck.”

“You too,” I said, then remembered what I’d seen before we came inside. “A car was heading this way a few minutes ago. Might pay to stay out of sight with the stash you’re moving.”

“Thanks.” The woman’s smile came easier this time. “I hope everything works out for you.”

The girl sent Ava a shy smile as she slipped through, following what I assumed were her parents.

Their footsteps faded as they took off down the alley, and Kirby let out a loud breath. “That went better than expected.”

Ava slid the meat tenderiser onto the nearest shelf as if she couldn’t wait to get rid of it, then passed through the doorway. Kirby and I left our weapons beside hers and followed her to the main floor.

A counter and register backed onto the storeroom, and rows of floor-to-ceiling shelves filled the rest of the space. We stuck together, moving down an aisle packed with work gloves, clear face shields, and other forms of PPE. It gave me flashbacks of the airport, and the sound Kirby made suggested I wasn’t the only one.

“I can’t do that again,” she said. “It’ll make me claustrophobic.”

We kept moving, heading straight for the tools aisle. Only a few spaces were empty, and the rest appeared undisturbed, covered in a layer of dust.

Kirby selected a claw hammer and gave it an experimental swing, then put it back and grabbed another with a longer handle. “This is it. This is the one.”

Ava checked out a display of hatchets, testing one in each hand before settling on the smaller of the two. “I’ll start a pile over here,” she said. “We’ll figure out how to carry it all later.”

She took Kirby’s hammer with her and left both tools near the end of the aisle.

I found the last nail gun, reaching for it on a higher shelf. “Here we go.”

“These things really go through skulls?” Kirby picked up a box of nails and turned it over in her hand.

“Apparently.”

She lifted her head as Ava rejoined us. “Apparently?”

“I’ve never used one.”

She frowned. “Weird. I don’t know why I expected you to be an expert.”

I opened the box and pulled out the instruction booklet. “I used to work with my hands, just not as a builder.”