Shimmer, Glimmer, & Gleam - A Quest of Loss & Gain

You take your hand off the axe. Smashing through the door would be the absolute fastest, but some good sense you didn't know you had (maybe it's the coffee? It had relieved a need you didn't know you had...) says that the crowbar is also fast and relatively quiet, assuming you can break the lock. Time to find out, really. Note to self, figure out how relatively strong you are or aren't. You've sure been doing a lot of lifting and carrying and running, which bodes well.

You wedge the narrow end of the crowbar between the doors, find a good position, and push. The doors open that little quarter-inch that locked sliding doors do and then stop with a little tiny thunk! So far, so expected; you keep pushing, leaning your weight against the crowbar. The lock might be steel, and the seating for the lock is probably steel (why do you know that?), but the doors themselves are aluminum, and aluminum is, your own voice in your head informs you with the amused tones of memory, 'bitch made'.

Note to self: ask Jill what a bitch is, the referents you're getting do not make sense.

Metal groans, and then the lock snaps off. The sliding doors fly open, bounce in their tracks, and shed the stained glass. There is an eternal moment in which your panicked perceptions realize that the stained glass wasn't seated properly in the doors, and you watch it hop the grooves it wasn't quite inside of before going down in a technicolor waterfall of crashing, breaking, tinkling, and shards. You turn your head and raise your hand, and your reward for your quick thinking is being pelted by glass in your coat and clothes, which easily deflect the smaller shards without letting you get cut.

Well.

That was loud.

You hastily slip inside, gripped by a fear of potential sniper fire which, once you have the brick of the building between you and outside, you realize is a little unwarranted; there's no height around here, and the view from the tallest nearby roof - Bayview - is obstructed by signage for fast food as well as various billboards. You risk a glance outside just to clock if there's anyone watching the store, and as far as you can tell no one is. That's good. Let's take stock.

Barring necessities forced by a different building layout, every Sorrow & Sons looks exactly the same; they have the same layout, the same facilities, even mostly the same products. The front area is vaguely carpeted, and squishes under your boots; it's soaked in blood that has not had the chance to wholly dry, and the stench of it, so thick on the air, makes you choke. As you get your hat and mask back on just to have any chance to fucking breathe, you observe that, contrary to your fears, this place is untouched. At least, untouched by human(?) hands; the two registers that flank the carpet on the way to the exit stand unpowered, with convenience and impulse buys all around them. Toilet paper, candy, candy again, candy a third time, magazines, candy, cigarettes -

- Cigarettes cigarettes cigarettes you sweep behind the register and start stuffing your coat pockets with packs of cigarettes that have been sealed with wax paper before you sweep a pair of rolling machines, two boxes of papers, and three bags of tobacco into your backpack, there's gotta be there is in fact chewing tobacco, which you open with indecent haste. The taste is too sharp, too minty, too harsh, the clear sign of cheap menthol made for the average broke-ass citizen, and it's perfect, gods above it's perfection itself and the mint is even blocking out the scent of blood -

- stuffed animals, children's toys, and electronics. Leftwards from the door is a photo center. Twenty, thirty years ago this place would have developed film; now it's just a bank of cold computers people use, poorly, to get photos off their phones and turned into something physical. Why do you know that? Blown if you know, but as you take in the lack of power you realize with a pang that getting milk or dairy here is a fool's errand. The fridges are dark too. Maybe the soda pop (bop she bop she bop - DAMNIT) is still good, energy drinks and such, but that's a luxury for later, probably.

As you hook the crowbar onto the metal frame of your backpack again, you gently bop your head to both the earworm now stuck in it and to the gentle chiming of the store's soundtrack, like someone left windchime music on loop. The sight looking down the aisles is...odd. Here and there, where you're guessing outlets are installed at the bottom of the shelves given the presence of severed power cords on the floors, there are great glass flames, some "licking" up nearly as high as your head. You approach the closest; it gives off no heat, and you gingerly touch it. The color is astounding, as if someone had managed to freeze a true inferno all in glass, and you think back to that brief view you had of Salt Bay City burning. Maybe that's exactly what happened, the refraction sparing this place and maybe even many others...

Mysteries are for later. Some of the glass flames have shattered, probably from falling to the floor due to not being quite balanced, and you route your way around them while trying to stay as quiet as reasonably possible. A glance in the anti-theft mirrors at the ends of the aisles tells you there's no other people or statues in here, at least ones who have reflections, but it pays to be cautious when you only live once. Vitamins first, followed by pain pills, cold medicines, and other medical miscellanea that your new home simply doesn't stock because it can't also be repurposed for animals. After a moment's thought, you also scoop up a bottle of all-in-one body wash & shampoo and some dish soap, both of which might be useful to have, and take a second to repack your backpack so you can maximize its space.

Something is wrong in here. There's a prickling at the back of your neck, but at least that soothing, if somewhat irregular, windchime soundtrack is there to keep you calm. You move your chew to the other cheek and keep moving, scooping up variety packs of candy, pickles, and then hit the jackpot in the form of the jerky display. Protein, Jill said. Well, here it is!

Who mixed this soundtrack? The volume is so fucking irregular -

...

The building has no power.

You close your backpack slowly, tie it shut, and sling it over your shoulders before looking directly up. Swarming along the ceiling, supporting themselves with the struts that would normally be concealed by the cheap plyboard tiles all around the lights, are nearly a dozen...

...People? Long, pointed limbs of gleaming metal reflect the light and hold them up; their fingers have become segmented claws of mirrored glass which they use to scratch at themselves. As you take the sight in, watching clothing and flesh flake away to reveal a bloodless chrome skeleton beneath, one of them opens its jaws a full hundred eighty degrees. Its voice is more like the person from the data splinter than like yours, though not pained and lacking that voice's comforting rasp; however, despite the person(?) being a good fifteen, eighteen feet from you, you hear its voice as if it was standing right next to you.

Can we interest you in a Sorrow and Sons credit card, valued customer?

"...Nnnnoooo," you say, slowly, "no thank you."

Wrong answer. Every last one of them shrieks and drops to land, heavily, onto the tops of shelves; the impact sends items scattering into the aisles.

Lose 2
[ ] All pretense of stealth & some ammunition
[ ] Any chance to loot this store again
[ ] The blood in your body
[ ] Your cover from any threats outside
[ ] One Gift

No time to think. The shelf before you wobbles when two creatures impact it, and you give it a high stomp kick, clean and beautiful and just at the moment when it's wobbling backwards. The part of your mind that never shuts up thinks, huh, okay, turns out I'm pretty strong. This is just as the shelf topples backwards, impacting the next, and the next, and the -

Unfortunately the store's layout means you can't get every shelf, so it's time to run. You sprint towards the back of the store, where the pharmacy would be, only to be cut off by one of these people(?) landing in front of you. Your quickdraw shot from the hip is like a thing out of a dream, a fluke of chance that you recognize instantly as you getting fucking lucky when it shatters the metal skull of your would-be attacker.

Ow your fucking wrist ow ow ow -

Do you have a membership? a creature asks, its voice inexplicably next to your ear. You snap your attention to the right and bring the revolver up, but it's already on top of you; you whirl left past a slash of its pointed limb, transfer the gun to your left hand -

- Duck on instinct, letting a third's swipe hit its compatriot in the neck. Something electrical inside of it sparks and lances through both bodies, leaving them smoking and jerking, caught in an overload -

You scramble under the two of them, completely undignified, and rip your axe from its place on your hiking backpack's frame.

Ask about our deals!

Ten for ten dollars until the end of Secunda!

Can we interest you in a Sorrow and Sons credit card?

Are they...they're begging. Pleading. It's there, just under the professional tone, lurking at the edges of forced smiles...

Motion, high right. You turn and kick a tiny propane tank, a little green thing meant for camping, right into the arms of a person(?) that is scrambling over the fallen shelves. It catches the tank, and your moment of 'oh shit' soon becomes 'wait, what?' as it turns immediately, desperately trying to right the shelf so that it can...restock...the item...?

Do they all do that?

You turn as another tank is rolling past and hit it with a one-handed golf swing using the axe's hammer head. It dents, releasing gas into the air, but goes flying straight and true, and sure enough the creature it's sailing in the vague direction of dives to catch it, cradling the item close before scrabbling towards the shelf.

You need some distance.

You scoop up a book of matches from the floor and tuck it into your pocket, kicking anything near you at the creatures. Bags of candy go spilling and flying, little metal tins of black pepper, boxes of dry pasta, a set of 'copper-powered' wrist braces whose box promises to treat arthritis. The people(?) are working together now, trying to lift and right the shelves, but each one is so obsessed with its own item to be restocked that they're working at cross-purposes, and only one could never lift a shelf in the first place. You walk backwards, towards the back of the store where the breakrooms and storage must, surely, be. Can they leave the store?

Can you take that risk?

You lean the axe against one of the unfallen shelves back here, right next to a selection of electric razors, and take a two-handed stance with your revolver. Your right wrist throbs and aches and complains, but it obeys as you let out a steadying breath, cock the hammer.

Squeeze the trigger.

The muffled thump! of the unbroken propane tank exploding makes your world go white for a moment; when your vision swims back into place, the front half of the store is ablaze. Fire licks along the ceiling, consuming the cheap plyboard of the tiles just as it consumes the cheap wood of the shelves. Shattered bottles of liquor burn hot enough to warp the glass shards of themselves, and many of the creatures run around, shrieking in pain, as their dried clothes and dried flesh burn like paper. Electrical fires join the gas ones as things inside of these people(?) short out and burn.

Not all of them are dead, but the survivors are running not for safety, but for the phones at the registers, in the photo center, in the beauty department. You can hear them mashing buttons and picking up the receiver, only to hang it up and then try again. And again. And again. And again.

There is a fire! We must inform Corporate! There is a fire! Keep dialing! Keep dialing!

As you scoop up your axe and slink back towards a door marked Employees Only, one of them spots you. It does not stop dialing. It does not stop chanting about Corporate. But it does mouth 'thank you', with tears streaming down its cheeks while the fires race towards it.

You run into the back, away from the inferno you've created.

You have 18 .45 rounds, 15 of them in speedloaders. You are 48 hours old.

This place is done for, but there's time; the back is mostly concrete, it seems, concrete and tile, and you might be able to slice open some of these pallets...

Prioritize 2
[ ] Your safety
[ ] More medicines
[ ] Protein
[ ] Maps, books, papers

You. You just killed a lot of...people, right? Those were. Those were people...?

Lose 1
[ ] Your doubts; it was them or you, and that's an easy choice every time
[ ] Your belief that those were people; they were monsters, pure and simple
[ ] Your stability. You've done something wrong. Something terribly wrong...