I stepped forward just enough to see everything.

Bodies had been packed along the back wall in layers of torn plastic, shredded cardboard, and insulation pulled from somewhere deeper in the building. Some were tied up with cable and packing straps. Some were wedged between pallets like the rats had dragged them there and simply kept pushing until the bodies stopped moving enough to escape.

And not one of them was dead.

A man near the front had one hand still twitching against the floor. Two fingers were missing while the top of his hand had small holes just the size of two front teeth. The other three scraped weakly against the concrete every few seconds like he was trying to crawl away and forgot he no longer had enough body left to do it.

A woman beside him stared straight at the ceiling. Her eyes were cloudy, but they moved.

Slowly.

Following sound.

Rats crawled over her legs and disappeared beneath what was left of her shirt.

Her mouth opened to scream, but nothing came out.

It was definitely ewe.

No.

It was more.

Ewe with emotional damage.

Lingyun made a strangled sound beside me. "Fuck."

Yuche didn’t speak, but I could feel his eyes on me, waiting to see what I was going to do next.

Chenghai stared at the bodies with an expression so flat it looked carved onto his face. Zhenlan was just as still, but his hand had tightened around the knife he carried until his knuckles turned pale.

A rat crawled out of a hollowed section beneath one man’s ribs.

I looked away.

Then immediately looked back because apparently my brain hated me.

"They’re still alive," Lingyun whispered.

"Barely," Chenghai replied like Lingyun was an idiot for thinking otherwise. "Death would be a blessing at this point."

As he spoke, the rats started gathering again.

They came from under pallets, from holes in the insulation, from behind shelving racks and inside broken boxes. The shadows along the floor began to ripple as more red eyes appeared in the dark.

Too many.

Way too many.

The entire back warehouse was a nest.

Not a nest made of food wrappers or paper scraps.

A nest made of people who had come here for supplies and never left.

Zhenlan’s voice was low. "We need to end this."

One of the half-eaten bodies twitched harder at the sound of his voice.

Chenghai nodded once. "Before they turn into zombies."

I looked at him.

Then at the bodies.

Then at the rats.

Then at the untouched shelves farther back where several bright orange bags were stacked neatly above a pallet of bulk snacks.

Cheese puffs.

Beautiful, glorious cheese puffs.

I started walking away from the men, away from the nest, away from everything.

"Rouxi," Yuche said sharply.

"What?"

Zhenlan turned his head slowly. "Where are you going?"

"To get supplies."

His expression didn’t change, but something in his eyes did. "There are people dying right there."

"I can see that."

"We need to end their suffering."

"Why?"

The question came out flat enough that even the rats seemed to pause.

Lingyun stared at me. "Rouxi..."

I pointed toward the bodies without looking at them too closely again. "The second they die, they turn. Then we have zombies and zombie rats to deal with. Wanna guess who the rats are going to chose to eat next? I’ll give you a hint. It’s not the zombies. Right now we only have rats and almost-zombies. That’s less of a chance of us turning into those people."

Nobody spoke.

Good.

Maybe they were finally understanding basic math.

A faint choking sound came from the body nearest the pallet. The woman’s cloudy eyes rolled slightly in my direction while rats crawled across her stomach.

I looked at her.

Then at the cheese puffs.

Still not a competition.

"They are going to die either way," Chenghai said quietly.

"And when they do, we won’t need to deal with it."

"We won’t need to deal with it?"

I glanced back at him. "Yes. Because we’ll be long gone with Cheese Puffs and toilet paper."

The shadows moved faster.

A wave of rats surged suddenly across the floor toward my boots.

The baby vine exploded from out of nowhere, sweeping across the floor hard enough to send rats flying into shelves, pallets, and each other. Several burst against the wall with wet little pops.

I grimaced.

"Ewe."

The rats shrieked.

All of them.

The sound hit the warehouse like a broken alarm.

Lingyun moved immediately, flames bursting from his hand in a controlled line that cut off the nearest wave before they reached him. He then let out a string of curses that would have made sailors blush and threw fire toward another cluster climbing down from a rack.

With a wave of his hand, Zhenlan sent a few dozen rats flying into the racks, but it wasn’t enough to stop them.

Let alone the more that were rushing to replace them.

Chenghai cut through the ones that got closest, his movements too clean, too efficient, not wasting even a single breath. He didn’t look horrified anymore.

Neither did Yuche.

They looked like they had put the horror away somewhere it could not slow them down.

That was useful.

Also concerning.

I reached the shelf and pulled all the cheese puffs into my space with a single thought.

Then the chips beside them.

Then the crackers.

Then several boxes of candy because if I was already here, I wasn’t leaving them behind.

And still, the rats kept coming. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

Black waves poured around pallets and over bodies, red eyes glowing in the dark like someone had scattered burning coals across the floor. They climbed over the half-dead people without slowing down. One man’s hand twitched again, and rats flowed over it until I couldn’t see his fingers anymore.

Okay.

That was getting annoying.

The body nearest the wall suddenly jerked upright.

Not fully.

Just enough that its head lifted and turned toward us.

The woman with cloudy eyes opened her mouth again.

This time sound came out.

"Hungry."

Every rat in the room surged toward us at once.

The bodies started moving too.

Slowly.

Wrongly.

Like death had finally gotten tired of waiting.

I sighed and looked at the snacks disappearing neatly into my space.

"Seriously," I grumbled. "Can’t I catch a break?"