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Kirby groaned. “Oh, come on.”

“What?”

“We’re in the middle of the apocalypse and you’re reading the manual?”

I flicked through the first few pages to get the gist of it. “I was a plumber. If I shoot a nail into someone because I skipped the instructions, you’ll be the first one complaining.”

“That’s true,” she said begrudgingly.

I smiled.

Ava leaned over my shoulder while I skimmed the diagrams. My humour disappeared, and for a moment, I couldn’t concentrate. The words blurred in front of me, and her floral scent, her heat, took over.

I cleared my throat and forced myself to snap out of it. “They don’t shoot like a gun,” I said.

Ava pushed closer, getting a better look at the instructions. “Why not?”

I swallowed and turned the page. “Safety mechanism. It needs to be pressed against something solid before it’ll fire.”

Kirby’s lips flattened. “If you can’t shoot it from a distance, what’s the point in lugging it around?”

“Who knows? We’re not paying for it. Might as well try it out.”

I ditched the box and gathered a spare gas canister and a box of nails.

We did a quick sweep of the rest of the store and found a couple of duffle bags to haul our tools. I threw a few torches and batteries in with the collection and zipped it closed.

“Time to find a car.” Ava hoisted one bag over her shoulder and shrugged it into place, clutching the nail gun in her other hand.

I grabbed the remaining bag and peered through the front window.

The infected we’d seen down the end of the street were shuffling past the store now, with a couple of stragglers veering onto the footpath. We stood off to the side of the window as a man with a ripped throat bumped into the glass.

“We haven’t seen that many walking together before,” Kirby whispered as the last one passed by the shop. Axe clutched in both hands, her eyes never left the view.

The distant look on Ava’s face made me wonder if she was remembering how much effort it had taken to end one of them. Now there were eight travelling in a… pack? A horde?

We needed that car, or we were fucked.

As we were leaving, I grabbed a red pipe wrench hanging from a rack, and its shape and weight were immediately familiar. I’d never used one as a weapon, but it would be perfect for clocking the infected.

Kirby grinned. “Let’s move, Super Mario.”

With a quick smile, I followed both of them to the rear storeroom, and we left the same way we’d come in.

When we reached the mouth of the alley, Ava stopped and checked in both directions. “The car’s gone,” she said, then she nodded toward the other side of the street.

Three people wearing disposable masks were hurrying along the footpath, carrying bulging shopping bags. One kept glancing over her shoulder while another clutched a packet of bottled water against his chest.

No one shouted or tried to bother anyone.

We all just wanted to be somewhere safe.

“It still feels...” Ava paused and searched for the word.

“Normal?” I offered.

“As close as it can be, anyway.”