Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 10:41 AM
Countdown to Extraction: 64 Hours, 00 Minutes Remaining
Chapter 105: The Scavengers
Lila nodded, committing Alyssa's desperate grocery list to memory. Peroxide. Alcohol. A needle. Heavy thread. High-milligram painkillers.
She took a deep breath, her dark eyes scanning the massive, shadowy expanse of the gutted pharmacy. The store was a chaotic wasteland. The looters had ripped it apart days ago. Debris, shattered glass, and crushed merchandise littered every square inch of the dark aisles.
She couldn't search it all by herself. Not fast enough to save Caleb's arm.
Lila looked around the cramped space behind the drop-off counter, taking a quick, brutal inventory of who was left in the room now that Aaron and Daniel were gone.
It was a pathetic roster.
Rebecca was sitting on the floor, her arms wrapped fiercely around Lucas and Sofia, rocking them back and forth. The mother was staring blankly at the shattered front door where her husband had just disappeared, completely paralyzed by the very real possibility that Daniel was never coming back. She was out.
Kenzie was curled into a tight ball against the wooden cabinets, clutching Barbie's nylon carrier to her chest like a shield, her eyes wide and vacant. She was in full shock. Out.
Eleanor was kneeling beside Frank, whispering to him in the dark as the older man gritted his teeth against the agonizing swelling of his destroyed knee. Out.
That left exactly two people with free hands.
Monica and Jade were huddled against a dusty display rack a few feet away, clutching each other's hands in the dark.
"Jade," Lila whispered.
Jade's head snapped up. She looked terrified, her pale face illuminated by the faint, bruised-orange glow of the fires burning down the block.
"I need your help," Lila said, gesturing toward the dark aisles stretching out in front of them.
Jade hesitated. She looked at Monica, her chest heaving with quiet, panicked breaths. She didn't want to leave the relative safety of the huddle.
"I can't do it alone," Lila pressed, her voice a low, commanding whisper. "Rebecca has the kids. Kenzie is freezing up. You're the only one who can help me find this stuff before he bleeds out."
Jade swallowed hard. She looked over at the massive pool of blood surrounding Caleb, and the sight of it made her physically recoil. She clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle a gag, but the sheer gravity in Lila's voice pulled her to her feet.
She squeezed Monica's hand, let go, and crept quietly over to Lila, carefully sliding her boots to avoid crunching the glass.
"Look at me, not the blood," Lila ordered, stepping into Jade's line of sight to block her view of Caleb's dying arm. "We have a grocery list. We have to be absolutely silent. Slide your feet. Don't lift them."
Lila looked back down at Alyssa. The older girl was kneeling in the dirt, her bloody hands pressing down hard on the useless gauze packed against Caleb's bicep.
"Hold the pressure," Lila told her roommate. "Don't touch that shoelace until I get back."
Alyssa nodded once, her jaw locked.
Lila turned back to Jade. "Check the travel aisles near the front registers. Look for sewing kits. Little packets of Tylenol. Anything. I'm going to sweep the main pharmacy floor and the first aid aisle."
Without waiting for a response, Lila slipped away into the deepest shadows of the ransacked store, leaving the safety of the counter behind.
Lila didn't walk. Walking meant lifting your feet, and lifting your feet meant putting them back down. In a gutted pharmacy paved in shattered glass and scattered pill bottles, a single crunch could be a death sentence.
Instead, she slid.
She kept her knees deeply bent, dragging the soles of her boots across the filthy linoleum. It burned her thighs almost immediately, the lactic acid building up from the awkward, crouched posture, but she didn't stop.
Jade followed a few feet behind her, mimicking the agonizingly slow shuffle before branching off toward the front registers.
The deeper Lila moved into the middle aisles, the darker it got. Every knocked-over cardboard display looked like a hunched figure. Every hanging promotional sign swaying in the freezing draft from the broken window looked like something reaching out.
The low, distant moans of the dead out on the street bled through the open door, keeping Lila's nervous system completely flooded with adrenaline.
She hit what used to be the First Aid aisle.
It was a graveyard. Cardboard boxes of generic band-aids were ripped to shreds. The metal pegs that used to hold Neosporin, gauze pads, and medical tape were bent straight down or missing entirely.
Lila dropped to her knees. The linoleum was freezing, coated in a fine layer of pulverized drywall dust and dirt. She flattened herself completely onto her stomach, pressing her cheek against the gritty floor.
People panic, Lila thought grimly. When they panic, they drop things. And they don't stop to pick them up.
She reached her arm under the lowest metal shelf of the gondola unit. It was a dark, disgusting gap where the store's floor scrubber had never reached. Her fingers immediately brushed against something soft and dead—a massive dust bunny, or maybe a dead rat. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from recoiling and swept her hand deeper into the dark.
Her knuckles hit hard plastic.
Lila curled her fingers around it and dragged it out into the dim light.
It was a brown, cylindrical bottle. Hydrogen Peroxide. The cap was cracked, and a quarter of it had leaked out, leaving a sticky, dried crust down the side, but there was still liquid sloshing inside.
"Got one," Lila breathed, shoving the bottle into her coat pocket.
She crawled forward three feet on her stomach, her jeans soaking up the grime, and reached under the next section of shelving. She swept her arm in a wide arc. Her fingertips grazed a smooth, rectangular shape. She dragged it out. A full bottle of 70% isopropyl alcohol.
Lila pushed herself up off the floor, wiping the filthy dust from her hands onto her jeans. Two items down.
She turned her attention back to the raised pharmacy section where they had been hiding, slipping around the opposite side of the counter where the heavy narcotics used to be kept.
It looked exactly like what it was: the site of a violent, desperate riot. The tall wooden shelves behind the counter were completely bare. White plastic pill bottles were scattered across the floor like snowfall, thousands of pills crushed into powder under the boots of whoever had fought over this space.
Lila dropped to a crouch, picking up the loose bottles and squinting at the tiny, faded labels in the dark.
Levothyroxine. Thyroid meds. Useless.
Atorvastatin. Cholesterol. Useless.
The looters knew exactly what they were looking for. Every single bottle of Oxycodone, Hydrocodone, Vicodin, and Percocet had been thoroughly stripped.
Lila's jaw tightened. Caleb needed something to take the edge off, or his heart was going to give out from the shock.
She crawled along the back wall, her hands sweeping over the crushed pills. She found an overturned plastic sorting bin. She lifted it. Underneath was a massive, industrial-sized white bottle with a bright orange cap.
Lila grabbed it, tilting it toward the weak light filtering from the front of the store.
Ibuprofen - 800mg.
"Thank God," Lila whispered. It wasn't an opioid, it wouldn't numb the pain entirely, but 800 milligrams of prescription-strength anti-inflammatory might be just enough to keep his brain from short-circuiting.
She shoved the massive bottle into her other pocket.
Suddenly, a soft, frantic scratching sound came from the front of the store.
Lila's blood went ice cold. She dropped into a hard crouch behind the counter, her hand instinctively gripping a heavy metal stapler she found on the floor—a pathetic weapon against what was out there.
Scratch. Tap. Scratch.
It was coming from the registers.
Lila held her breath, peering around the edge of the wooden counter.
It was Jade.
The girl was on her hands and knees behind the ruined checkout lane, frantically waving at Lila from the shadows. Jade's face was completely pale, her eyes wide with terror, but she was holding something up in the air.
Lila let out a shaky, silent exhale and quickly shuffled over to her, keeping her head well below the sightline of the front windows.
When she reached the registers, Jade shoved a tiny, cracked plastic square into Lila's hand.
It was a travel sewing kit. The plastic case was cracked down the middle, probably stepped on by a looter, but the latch was still holding.
Lila popped it open with her thumb.
Inside, nestled against a tiny pair of useless plastic scissors and three spools of cheap thread, was a single, straight sewing needle. It was tiny. It was flimsy. It had absolutely no business being used to suture a severed human artery.
But it had an eye. And it was sharp.
"You found it," Lila whispered, looking at Jade with genuine, profound relief.
"It was kicked under the cigarette rack," Jade breathed, her chest heaving. She reached into her pocket and pulled out two slightly crushed, foil-wrapped packets. "And I found these. Generic Tylenol. Extra strength."
"Perfect," Lila said, putting the sewing kit carefully into her pocket with the alcohol. "We have the list. Let's get back."
They didn't waste another second. The open, shattered storefront was a massive, gaping vulnerability. Every second they spent out here in the main aisles was a gamble.
They turned and began the slow, agonizingly quiet slide back toward the drop-off counter.
The walk back felt ten times longer. The adrenaline was beginning to crash, leaving Lila's muscles trembling and weak. Her boots felt like they were made of lead.
As they neared the back of the store, the smell of copper grew thicker again, overpowering the stale dust of the aisles.
Lila rounded the edge of the drop-off counter and slid back into the cramped, sticky space.
Everyone was exactly where they had left them. Rebecca was clutching the kids. Eleanor was holding Frank. Kenzie was holding the dog.
And Alyssa was still kneeling in the dirt, her bloody hands pressing down hard on Caleb's dying arm.
Alyssa looked up as Lila and Jade slipped back into the huddle. The young nursing student looked absolutely wrecked. The skin around her eyes was tight with terror, her face pale beneath the smears of blood and ash.
Lila didn't say a word. She just dropped to her knees directly across from Alyssa.
She reached into her coat pockets.
First, she set the brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide on the sticky linoleum. Next to it, she placed the clear bottle of rubbing alcohol. Then, the massive white bottle of 800mg Ibuprofen and the two foil packets of Tylenol.
Finally, Lila pulled the cracked, plastic travel sewing kit from her pocket. She popped the latch and set it open on the floor between them, the tiny silver needle catching a faint sliver of the bruised daylight.
Alyssa stared at the pathetic pile of supplies. It wasn't a sterile tray. It wasn't a surgical suite. It was literal garbage scavenged from the floor of a dead world.
But it was everything she had asked for.
Lila looked Alyssa dead in the eyes, her expression stripped of all comfort, leaving only cold, hard necessity.
"I got what you need," Lila whispered, her voice steady as stone. "Now do your job."
Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 11:02 AM
Countdown to Extraction: 63 Hours, 39 Minutes Remaining