"If the lights are off, so are the coolers. That means– " Mother coughed, hacking up phlegm as she did so. She held a dish rag to her mouth, the most discreet way she could contain the snot after tissues sold out. It was a louder cough than last time, though she insisted on walking to this grocery store with her daughter. She hacked, recovered, and composed herself. "What was I saying?" a softer voice this time, afraid to strain the throat. "If the lights are off, that means the food in the coolers has gone bad and isn't safe to eat. Stick to room temperature instead. Every box and can on these shelves."

"Potato chips?" Kayleigh asked, with all the eagerness of her nine years.

"I'd like you to eat real food, but sure, whatever." Mother put some bananas in their cart. "Try to go for this produce first. When it rots, I don't know when there will be another shipment. Bananas today, oranges this week, apples for the next few months. Then you'll probably have to switch to canned." She had a thought and turned the cart around. Passing by a man who coughed as badly as she just had, she found her query: a children's gummy multivitamin. "When you go to eating nothing but processed foods, they probably won't be as nutritional as fresh. Take one of these a day so you don't get, I dunno, rickets or something. But just one! They may be gummys but they aren't candy. Understand?"

Kayleigh nodded.

At the checkout, the clerk asked, "Do you have cash?"

"Uh, no, I never carry any," Mother responded, flustered. "Is the credit card reader down?"

"Been offline since this morning."

"Crap. Uh, do you have a carbon reader? Tally up the bill, take down my credit card info, enter it when it's online again?"

"We have the reader, but we're out of the papers for it."

"Listen, she needs to eat," Mother said.

The clerk gave her a reassuring smile. "I see you here every week. I'll write up the receipt and you can pay me later."

"Sure you don't want to write down my credit card info by hand?" Mother asked.

"To be honest, I am so high on cough syrup right now that I don't think I could keep the digits straight."

"Thanks," Mother said. As she bagged her groceries, she remarked, "There's a lot fewer staff here than last time."

"Most of them are sicker than me," the clerk said. "Two of them are dead."

Mother inhaled as much as her ill lungs would let her, steeling herself to make the request. "If there's no one here, will this store close?"

"Of course."

"Will you lock the doors?"

"Of course."

"Do you have to?" Mother pressed.

"What do you mean?" the clerk responded.

"This is my daughter," Mother explained. "She's not sick. Out of everyone in our house – in our town – she's not sick."

"Is that so?"

"But I can only stock up in our house so much. She's gonna need to eat."

"You expect me to leave this store unlocked so she can rummage through it like a post-apocalyptic wasteland?"

"Yes. If it comes to that."

The clerk tallied up the bill and put it in the last bag Mother packed. Then he looked around. It was against company policy to leave the registers entirely unmanned, but the regional manager had just died so who was going to stop him? "Follow me," he said. He led them through a door marked Employees Only, past the stock room, to a door next to the loading bay. "This lock broke two days ago," he explained. "Someone pounded a rock into it. Of course we can't find a locksmith now."

"So even if everything is closed…" Mother reiterated.

"Exactly."

Mother opened the door. "Ah, there's that side road. Kayleigh, do you recognize this? Could you find it from the outside?"

"Yes, Mom," Kayleigh replied flatly.

"No, I'm serious, listen to me. Could you find this from the outside?"

"Yes."

"Good."

–

When Mother and Kayleigh returned home, it sounded as if no one was there, even though three people already were, all in Kayleigh's parents' bedroom: Father, Little Brother, and Baby Sister. They all slept on the large bed. They were bloated and covered in snot. Only Father's chest moved.

"We've equipped her," Mother told Father.

Father responded with a grunt.

Mother turned to Kayleigh. "You know, that trip really took it out of me. I'm going to rest now. Would you like to join us?"

Kayleigh shook her head.

"Suit yourself."

"Do you want me to light incense and open the windows?" Kayleigh asked, smelling urine from the bed.

"Not yet," Mother said. "The incense might make the cough worse. We don't want that." She weakly smiled at Kayleigh. "Why don't you watch some TV?"

"Netflix doesn't work."

"I'm sorry about that," Mother responded.

Kayleigh didn't press it, even though the same inconvenience last week would have resulted in a tantrum. Instead, she left the bedroom and closed the door. It felt like sealing a tomb.

She studied the road map that Mother had explained to her: This is our home. This is the back road that goes to downtown. As you north on it, the neighborhoods get denser, so you're more likely to find someone else who isn't sick. Trust a woman more than a man. Take any other children under your wing. Defend yourself with this pepper spray and steak knife. Be sure to put all your weight behind it when stabbing with it.

With no internet to keep her awake, Kayleigh went to bed. The next morning, she checked on her family. No one's chest moved. She opened the windows, lit the incense, and cried like she had cried for many of the previous days.

The morning after that, she left the house with everything Mother had packed.