The back counter radio started playing static again.
Not loud. Not jarring. Just the gentle hiss of a nearly-tuned station, the voice a sound would make if it was just out of hearing. It had been coming and going for over an hour now, catching snippets of a news report—"mild symptoms," "containment," "public reassurance"—before dropping back into its black hum.
Edward sat back on the counter, elbows curled against his chest, observing as the second hand swept towards one o'clock. The overhead bulbs of the shop hummed dead and arrhythmic, and a little flinched more than normal, as if wires grew weary of bluffing. It was early enough that the after-school snack crowd or the random retirees who did morning work in the afternoons would drive by, but again the store was under a shroud of silence.
The silence wasn't silent. It was wet. Sticky. Like someone had tossed a wet blanket over the town.
Outside, light fought to get through, pushing in between large, almost-clouds, bleaching everything a faint yellow-gray. The windows hadnt been cleaned in weeks, and now smudges and dust made it seem like the world outside was closer than it was—like it had retreated behind a tapestry of static, too.
There was a new sign on the door that morning:
PLEASE SELF-ISOLATE IF YOU'RE ILL – PROTECT OUR COMMUNITY.
It had arrived in a dull envelope filled to capacity with others, brought by some goggle-and-masked servant who'd not entered. Corporate, one presumed, was the culprit. Darren'd brought it mutely, eyelids sticky with lack of sleep—or something worse.
Edward hadn't heard from him since. Catch a glimpse through the staff loo just a couple of minutes ago—a form behind a closed stall door. Coughing. Wet and congested. The sound had tightened Edward's throat just to remember.
Sam hadn't turned up at all. He'd knocked twice on the backroom door this afternoon, called his name quietly, but there'd been nothing. Her coat remained on the hook by the freezer aisle, the fabric dry and hard from water spots and a faint perfume odor sticking to it like a half-remembered recollection that never ever really left. Nobody saw she departed from the store. He could not even tell if there was anyone who might have been able to, the way she was yesterday.
12:47 did catch the ringing of the bell, though lackluster. Edward looked up.
There was another guy in a yellow raincoat just inside the door, but it wasn't raining yet. He just stood there rigid for a second or so and did absolutely nothing whatever, batting his eyelids open and shut like some old fellow attempting to find the correct switch for the lights in a shop. He had a pinched, dried-up line of red tracing along under his nose. He carefully took it off with the cuff of the back and began walking down aisle two in silence.
There was a vacancy to him—not physical, but indeed, because he was too thin and he seemed to be walking as though his bones were misplaced. His eyes did not track each other. He grasped a can of baked beans and spun it around in his fingers, examining the label as if it was written in cuneiform. And put it back. He did that with three other products. Touch. See. Put back.
Edward did not greet him. He could not any longer.
The man disappeared within a few minutes, leaving nothing behind but the pungent smell of strong antiseptic and an unearthly silence that lingered on the shelves where he had tread. Edward took a quiet breath.
He knew by then: this was not normal.
When he tried to describe it, there was no word. Flu season? Maybe. Stress? Absolutely. Allergies? Maybe. None of them took in the way bodies were moving now, as if they were in lag. None of them took in the glassy glaze in eyes, or the way even scents and sounds had.off. Not really off, but kinda. Like reality was getting something.
His phone buzzed on the counter at 1:17 PM.
Public Health Bulletin:
Reminder: Local outbreak of upper respiratory infection reported. Congestion, tiredness, or low-grade fever: self-quarantine. Use of masks indoors recommended. Low-risk strain thought. Hydrate and monitor symptoms. Don't freak out.
Edward read it twice.
Low-risk.
Don't freak out.
He scrolled backward to see it again, but the notice was among the common spam and weather updates. He cursed and blasphemed and dropped the phone onto the ground.
Something in back of him overbalanced.
The noise was abrupt and crisp in the quiet, such as a carton dropping or shelf toppling and shattering. Edward recoiled, and a stack of packets of chewing gum went tumbling onto the counter. They spilled hither and yon all over the floor like loose teeth.
---
He stood up slowly, his heart thumping against his ribcage.
There was just the creak of the stockroom door, the hinges soft and sighing.
Just the wind, he told himself. The fan on the other side of the room was finicky. Maybe it knocked something off the shelf.
But Edward did not respond at once. He looked into the open doorway as if summoning him to step inside through it—and he did not want to do that.
Gulped first, and went up to the doorway. Pushed the doorway open.
The storage room was empty.
The overhead illumination dropped twice. The air was. damp. Stagnant. Like it hadn't been moved for hours. Half-fulled stock was in cases, the boxes against the left wall still canted against them from when someone had bumped them yesterday. Something, though, wasn't just the same.
It took him a moment or two to catch the odor—metallic, with an odd, nearly sweet aftertaste. Bitter rust and disinfectant. The scent of something trying to cover up rot.
And then he noticed it.
Buried beneath a pile of canned soup, away from the view of the doorway, was a moist, streaked dark crumpled tissue.
Blood.
He didn't touch it.
His fingers inches away from his phone in his pocket, he didn't touch it. Not yet. He left the room and let the door close softly behind him.
Not until then did he retrieve the phone. The screen still powered up from previous use, his lock screen softly glowing.
And at the top, glowing like a ghost text above the real ones, was a new message.
No one.
Can you feel it, yet?
Edward saw, breathed, face twisted with bar wire pulled taut past flexibility.
Then, not a split second too soon, before his eyelids closed down, the note vanished. Evaporated. Left no residue on his desk.
Outside, heavens colliding, it still no later than 1:24 by the clock.
And from huddled shadows in the rear of the store, something clinked. Coughed.