Chapter 4

A month into the zombie siege, I was doing pretty well for myself, holed up beneath my secondhand supermarket.

That day, I had my legs crossed and was eating nearly expired chips while watching the girl bustle about reinforcing the hole.

Suddenly, she stopped.

Her bright eyes stared straight through the screen at me.

I froze. Had she found me?

Sure enough, she frowned, puzzled, then strolled over with a broom and smashed the camera.

The screen went black.

I’d completely lost my view of the supermarket.

Her shoes clacked across the floor overhead, filling me with an inexplicable panic. I even regretted not going up while she slept and slitting her throat.

Too late for regrets now.

She was a ticking time bomb.

Luckily, the outside camera still worked. I could keep watching what happened out there.

Night soon fell, and the zombie tide receded again.

Several days passed like that. As more people realized the zombies only came out during the day, more and more came to search the neighborhood for food.

Some accidentally attracted zombies, but most were safe.

I knew this situation would probably end soon.

The government had established a safe zone in the northwestern desert.

Few people lived there, so there were few zombies. The military had secured it as soon as the outbreak began.

I’d seen plenty of people slipping into garages at night and driving out of the neighborhood with their entire families.

But the girl stayed in my supermarket. Sometimes she knocked on the floor, looking for something.

I suspected she’d discovered the secret room. Maybe she even knew about me.

Three days later, she finally found the entrance. She tried to pry up the boards, but failed.

Every day afterward, I heard the grating scrape of a knife against metal at the entrance.

I kept a knife beside my bed. If she dared come in, I’d kill her immediately.

On the third day of her relentless prying,

an engine suddenly roared outside.

Horrified, I watched four burly men climb out of a van. Two had tattoos on their arms.

What chilled me even more was that they had guns!

They soon spotted the hole in the supermarket wall and effortlessly pulled apart the bricks the girl had so painstakingly assembled.

As for the fish tank,

it was nothing against that kind of strength.

Once they were inside, I had no idea what was happening.

I could just make out voices.

But the room was well soundproofed, and I couldn’t hear what they were saying. While I sat there at a loss,

someone began hammering furiously on the entrance.

They seemed to have used towels to muffle some of the noise. The dull, rhythmic blows overhead felt as though they were landing on my heart.

The girl had clearly sold me out.

Without hesitation, I activated the alarm I’d locked in the checkout safe.

It was so loud I could hear it down in the basement.

On the outside camera, zombies began arriving at the sound.

The pounding above the secret room stopped. Only hurried footsteps remained.

I hadn’t expected them to be so clever.

Two men ran to the van. One carried the safe containing the alarm. The van drove over the approaching zombies, sending blood and flesh flying.

The two of them were driving off to lure the zombies away.

I knew then that I was finished.

My mind raced.

About half an hour later, the dull pounding resumed overhead.

Soon, I heard the van again.

Apparently, the other two had shaken off the zombies and dumped the safe with the alarm inside.

With them joining in, the secret room’s door began to creak.

The wooden cabinet started rocking slightly too.

I was more frightened now than when the outbreak began.

I forced myself to calm down and stuffed every heavy object I could into the cabinet, trying to weigh it down.

But those people seemed determined to drag me out.

One man made a small sound of discovery. Then a chainsaw started up.

Fortunately, someone stopped him in time. The noise might attract zombies.

Soon, they got into the van.

But for some reason, it didn’t start.

I soon learned why.

The next second, the chainsaw roared again.

At the same time, the girl climbed into their van.

It sat quietly to one side.

To my horror, the zombies came back.

For a moment, I thought they were like monkeys being led around for someone’s amusement.

Then it wasn’t funny anymore.

The chainsaw pushed through the gap they’d pried open and cut into the cabinet. Sawdust showered down.

My heart slowly went cold.

I knew there was no escape.