Quinn's tongue clung to the roof of his mouth like a starving leech.
Not just thirst—desiccation. The kind that turns spit to dust and makes men lick dew off rusted metal. He ran his cracked lips across his teeth and tasted blood.
He left the highway's graveyard behind, where metal corpses bled oil into the asphalt. The suburbs welcomed him with sagging porches and shattered bay windows. A doll's head stared up at him from the curb, one glass eye cracked, the other scooped out by something hungry.
Quinn moved carefully, boots avoiding the worst of the glass. His hand hovered near his knife, but nothing stirred. Just the wind pushing a shopping cart down the street, its wheels squealing like a wounded animal.
Miller's Market stood between a collapsed laundromat and a gutted bookstore. The sign hung crooked, but the building looked intact. No broken windows. No bodies piled at the door. That alone made it worth checking.
He tried the front entrance. Locked.
The alley smelled like spoiled meat and wet cardboard. A steel door sat at the back, rust bleeding down its edges. He kicked it once. Twice. On the third try, something inside snapped, and the door groaned open.
Inside, the storeroom swallowed the light whole.
Quinn stepped inside, knife out. The storeroom was a maze of towering shelves, their shadows stretching long under a single flickering bulb. Dust floated in the air, lazy and undisturbed.
He found water first. A whole case of it, tucked behind a stack of bleach bottles. He drank one fast, then another, the cold clearing the fog in his head.
Canned goods lined the next aisle—beans, tuna, peaches in heavy syrup. He stuffed them into his jacket, the weight a comfort. A pack of saltines followed, then a handful of protein bars. He ate one standing there, the taste like sawdust and salt, but his stomach didn't complain.
A moment of weakness. That's all it was.
A bag of chips sat on the shelf, unopened. He tore into it, the sharp tang of vinegar filling his mouth. For a moment, it was almost normal.
Click.
The sound was soft. Deliberate.
Quinn froze.
A gun's muzzle dug into the base of his skull with the intimacy of a lover's kiss. Cold. Unforgiving.
He raised his hands slowly, fingers still clutching the half-crushed bag of chips. The vinegar sting on his tongue turned sour.
"Drop the knife," the voice ordered. Male. Young. Trying too hard to sound like he'd done this before.
Quinn let the K-Bar clatter to the floor.
A second figure emerged from behind a shelf of bleach bottles—a woman in her thirties with sunken cheeks and a tire iron dangling from her belt. Her eyes were the color of old dishwater, but they didn't waver.
"Military?" she asked, nodding at his shredded fatigues.
"Marines." His voice came out rougher than he intended. The thirst still clung to his throat like a parasite.
She stepped closer, her boots kicking aside empty wrappers. "Sarah Monroe. Second Battalion."
The gun barrel twitched against Quinn's scalp. "Bullshit," the kid holding it spat. "Vance's boys wear stolen uniforms too."
Vance. The name slithered through the air between them, heavy with unspoken history.
Sarah studied Quinn's face. The way his hands stayed perfectly still. The blood crusted under his nails. "You don't smell like one of them," she said finally.
"Smell?"
"Like rot and cheap whiskey." She jerked her chin at the kid. "Lower the piece, Danny."
The pressure disappeared. Quinn turned slowly. Danny couldn't have been older than seventeen, his acne standing out like bullet wounds under the flickering lights. His hands shook around the pistol.
Three more figures materialized from the shadows. A thick-necked man with a crowbar, knuckles scarred from fights that hadn't ended clean. A girl no older than twelve clutching a kitchen knife like it was a holy relic. An old woman whose swollen ankles barely fit into her slippers, her cane tapping an uneven rhythm on the tile.
The man with the crowbar spat near Quinn's boots. "We should put him down. One less mouth to feed."
Sarah didn't blink. "We're not Vance."
The store's emergency lights buzzed overhead, casting long shadows that made the girl's knife glint like a fang.
Quinn kept his voice flat. "I just need supplies. Then I'm gone."
Sarah's laugh was a dry thing. "Everyone's just passing through." She nudged a can of peaches with her boot. "Take what you need. Then you're gone."
The others didn't like it.
The big man with the crowbar – Greg – spat near Quinn's boots. "He's seen the storeroom. Knows what we got."
Sarah didn't blink. "And if he was with Vance, we'd already be bleeding."
A teenage girl with a kitchen knife twitched forward. "We should at least take his boots."
Quinn eyed her. Small. Malnourished. Wouldn't last a week. "Try it."
Sarah stepped between them before the girl could. "Enough." She jerked her chin toward the shelves. "Five minutes."
The store smelled like old vinegar and rat piss. Quinn moved down the aisles, acutely aware of Greg shadowing him from three paces back. He grabbed water bottles, warm but sealed. A dented can of peaches with no bulge. A roll of duct tape, half-used but better than nothing.
Greg's breath hitched when Quinn's fingers brushed a first-aid kit. "That stays."
Quinn pocketed it anyway. "Make me put it back."
Sarah appeared at the end of the aisle. "Clock's ticking."
She walked him to the front, past shelves picked cleaner than a carcass in the sun. The others followed like a pack of nervous dogs, all teeth and no bite.
The little girl – the one with the knife – darted ahead to block the door. "He's got the good can opener in his pocket. I saw."
Sarah sighed. "Give it up."
Quinn pulled the opener from his jacket. Cheap metal. Red plastic handle. He tossed it at the girl's feet. "Enjoy your soup."
Greg caught his arm at the threshold. His fingers smelled like old blood. "We see you again—"
"You won't." Quinn shook him off.
Outside, the air tasted like wet asphalt and something burning in the distance. Sarah fell into step beside him, her boots crunching broken glass in perfect rhythm with his.
"You're going the wrong way," she said.
Quinn adjusted his pack. The first-aid kit dug into his ribs. "Not your problem."
"Vance controls the east quarter." She lit a cigarette with hands that didn't shake. The smoke curled around her face like fog. "They'll smell that Marine stink before you get three blocks."
Quinn kept walking.
Sarah matched his pace. "I know a tunnel system. Comes up behind the old high school."
"Why?"
She took a long drag. "Maybe I hate Vance more than I hate you."
The wind shifted. Somewhere behind them, the market's door creaked open. A sliver of light spilled across the pavement, then vanished as someone pulled it shut.
Quinn studied Sarah's profile in the gloom. The cigarette's ember reflected in her eyes like a distant fire.
"Lead the way," he said.
She exhaled smoke through her nose and turned down an alley without checking if he followed.
Quinn waited three heartbeats. Then went after her.