"Siapa disana? Saya punya golok. Pergi."
Theo and Pras froze, hands instinctively rising. The voice was a frayed wire, sparking with panic from the gloom behind the counter.
"We don't want trouble." Theo kept his voice calm. "Just some supplies. Food, water. Then we're gone."
A thin man in a stained store polo shirt emerged, a long golok machete in his trembling hands. His eyes were wide, unblinking pools of pure stress.
"NO! This is ours! Our life! You take it, we die!"
As if on his cue, shuffling sounds came from the aisles. More figures emerged from hiding—a gaunt woman clutching a child, two hollow-eyed teenagers, an older couple clinging to each other. Their faces were gaunt, their eyes burning with a possessive, feverish light. They weren't monsters. They were desperate people who had built a fragile kingdom in this tomb of junk food, and they saw Theo and Pras as barbarians at the gate.
Theo's mind raced. Hostile parameters. Negotiation failed. Need new exit vector—
CRASSSHHHHH!
The world exploded in a storm of glass and screaming metal.
The poster-covered front window ceased to exist. A massive, dark shape filled the new opening, backlit by the hellish afternoon glow. It was the same silhouette that had bowed the pharmacy gate. The Brute.
It stood amidst the glittering wreckage, its chest-organ huffing a cloud of vapor into the cool, stolen air of the minimart. It had no eyes to see, but its blind, pitted face swung slowly from side to side, the vibrating membranes on its neck fluttering as it sampled the acoustic landscape of the room.
For a second, absolute silence. The store owner's machete trembled. The child stifled a whimper.
Then one of the teenagers screamed.
It was a short, sharp sound of pure, synaptic meltdown.
The Brute's head snapped toward the source with the precision of a tracking dish. It lunged, not with the piston-drive of the pharmacy, but with a terrifying, ape-like swiftness. Its club-arm swung in a downward arc. The teenager raised a can in a pathetic, instinctive block.
There was a wet, crunching thump. The scream was cut off.
The spell of possessive madness broke, replaced by the pure, clean virus of terror. The survivors scattered, screaming, diving behind aisles.
Theo was already moving, grabbing Pras's arm. "Back! The ceiling!"
They turned to flee toward the back wall. Pras, in his frantic backpedal, knocked over a display of energy drink glass bottles.
The crash was a cathedral of shattering glass—a high, piercing, crystalline cacophony.
The Brute, mid-stride toward a cowering old woman, froze. Its head rotated. The loudest sound had changed. The target parameters had updated.
Its blind face fixed on the source of the noise: Theo and Pras.
"Split! Use the aisles!" Theo yelled, his own voice now a liability.
What followed was a desperate, adrenaline-fueled parkour through a deadly playground. The Brute was a force of nature, but it was dumb. They were smart and terrified.
Theo vaulted over a low candy display, rolled behind a standing rack of magazines. The Brute bulldozed through the space he'd just occupied, sending a cloud of tabloids flying. Pras, using his kickboxer's agility, performed a running step onto a horizontal freezer unit, pushed off the wall, and landed in a crouch two aisles over, drawing the creature's attention with the thud of his landing.
Theo used the diversion. He scrambled up a shelf unit, using the shelves as a ladder, his boots finding purchase on cans and boxes. He reached the top, the ceiling tiles just above his head. He could run along the narrow, trembling tops of the shelving units, a precarious highway above the fray.
Pras saw him and mirrored the move on the opposite side of the same aisle. For a few breathless seconds, they were both above the Brute, which stood confused in the center aisle, its head swiveling, trying to triangulate the soft creaks from above and the tempting, panicked sobs of the hiding survivors below.
Theo pointed frantically toward the back of the store, toward the humming refrigerators. He mouthed one word: Sprinkler.
Pras nodded. He leaped from his shelf-top, landing with a heavy thud on the linoleum near the freezers. The Brute zeroed in and charged.
Theo dropped down behind the creature. His eyes scanned the back wall and found his target: the thick, rubber-sheathed industrial power cable feeding the fridge units. He yanked his wrench free and, with three brutal, spark-shrouded blows, smashed the junction box and tore the live cable free, its copper guts exposed and spitting angry blue sparks.
"The pipe! Now!"
Pras, with the Brute bearing down, didn't look up. He trusted. He sprinted toward the wall, planted a foot on a milk crate, and launched himself into a vertical jump. His fingers caught the thin black sprinkler pipe running along the ceiling. He hung his full weight on it.
With a metallic shriek, a section of the pipe tore loose from its brackets. A torrent of stale, rust-brown water erupted, showering down directly onto the Brute's head and shoulders.
The creature recoiled, not in pain, but in profound sensory confusion—the deluge of water drowning out all subtle sound, turning its world into a roaring, chaotic blur. It stumbled back, shaking its great head, its chest-organ huffing violent, misty breaths.
Theo saw his opening. He sprinted, the live, sparking cable in his hand. He couldn't throw it; he had to place it.
As the Brute cleared its water-blinded senses and zeroed in on the sound of Pras dropping back to the wet floor, Theo dove. He slid across the slick linoleum, right between the creature's tree-trunk legs, and lashed the exposed copper wires around its swollen, dripping ankle.
The effect was a violent, locking seizure. The Brute's entire body went rigid as thousands of volts grounded through it. A guttural, buzzing roar was forced from its chest. Smoke wisped from its hide. Its muscles locked, and it began to topple forward like a felled redwood, crashing onto its face with an impact that shook the floor.
It wasn't dead. Its chest-organ still pulsed, slower, angrier. Its fingers twitched. A system interrupted, not powered down.
"The machete!" Theo scrambled to his feet.
The store owner was still crouched behind the counter, catatonic. Pras sprinted over, pried the golok from the man's numb fingers, and sent it spinning through the air to Theo.
Theo caught it. The weight was good. Solid.
The Brute lay paralyzed, a mountain of twitching meat. Theo didn't hesitate. This was a decommissioning.
He raised the machete and brought it down with the focused force of a master mechanic driving a wedge.
Ch-thunk.
The blade bit deep into the thick neck. Not enough.
He wrenched it free. Raised it again.
CH-THUNK.
This time, the blade met concrete with a final, grating clang. The massive head rolled free. The body deflated, a final sigh escaping its chest.
Theo stood over it, breathing hard, the golok dripping in his hand. Pras joined him, staring at the slain behemoth.
But the sound of the fight had been a beacon.
From the haze outside, shuffling shadows multiplied. Milky eyes reflected the dim light. Shamblers, drawn by the commotion, began to clot the shattered front window, a slow, inevitable tide.
"Time's up." Theo's voice was flat.
They moved with savage efficiency, shoveling high-calorie junk food into their packs, grabbing bottles of water. Theo took the duct tape and the lighter. Pras filled a new backpack with cans.
The Shamblers were inside now, stumbling over the glass and the Brute's body, drawn to the freshest source of movement—Theo and Pras.
They didn't fight. They ran. Back through the stockroom, out the ruined back door, and into the stinking alley, leaving the groans and the weeping survivors behind.
They didn't stop until they were three blocks south, hidden in the skeletal remains of a street-side food stall. They slumped against a wall, hearts hammering, packs heavy with plundered goods.
Theo looked at the black fluid staining the golok's blade. The cost of goods had just been recalibrated. It was no longer measured in currency, but in adrenaline, lightning, and a permanent down payment on his own soul.