The air is thick with the stench of rotting food and damp cardboard. Shelves, long picked clean, stand like empty graves, their broken frames casting jagged shadows under the flickering emergency lights. I move carefully, my boots crunching over shattered glass, my breath slow and quiet.

Then I hear it.

That horrible, gurgling click. A wet, inhuman rattle that slithers down my spine and freezes me in place. I barely have time to react before the clicker lunges from the darkness, its grotesque fungal face splitting open as it shrieks.

I stumble back, slamming into an overturned shopping cart. My hands scramble for anything—anything—to fight back. But all I find is a rusted can of beans. Useless.

The clicker moves fast, too fast. I barely manage to roll aside as it swipes, its jagged nails scraping across the tile where I stood a second ago. My heart pounds. My hand grips a chunk of broken shelving, but I know I won’t get a second chance.

Then—BANG.

The clicker jerks, a sickening crunch echoing through the store as a bullet rips through its skull. It wobbles, lets out a final, gurgling hiss, then drops like a sack of meat.

I whip my head around just as Ellie steps forward, lowering her revolver. Her face is half-shadowed, her expression unreadable, but her stance? Confident. Like she does this all the time.

“You good?” she asks, cocking an eyebrow.

I exhale sharply, nodding. “Yeah… Thanks to you.”

She smirks, twirling the revolver before sliding it back into her holster. “Don’t mention it. But maybe next time, don’t fight a clicker with a can of beans?”

I glance at the can still clutched in my hand and let out a breathless chuckle. “Noted.”

Ellie nods toward the shattered store entrance. “Come on. Let’s get outta here before more of them show up.”

I don’t argue. I follow her into the night, away from the horrors lurking in the aisles of the dead.