The plastic strips trembled again even as I stared at them.

I was not willing to give up the supplies that were here. I might joke about it, I might swear that I didn’t need them.

But that didn’t mean I didn’t want them.

And that made them mine.

"I still say it just a few ghosts," I muttered, my eyes narrowing on the movement. "I’m sure that there has been a few deaths over their pumpkin pie that would have resulted in pissed off ghosts. Even I think those things are to die for."

I looked over my shoulder at the men, and not a single one of them even cracked a smile.

Seriously!?

It wasn’t hard to use your brain to figure out what was out there.

Rats.

I shuddered at that idea. Honestly, ghosts would have been better. Ghosts were usually dramatic, but at least they didn’t make wet chittering noises from behind warehouse doors.

What was worse was that while rats and zombie rats sounded the same, their diet was completely different...

And for once, I didn’t know if I could create a hole big enough to make sure that they never came back.

Rats were one of the hardest things in the world to kill.

They could survive 50 foot falls, swim non-stop for up to three days, hold their breaths for three minutes.

Fuck cockroaches surviving a nuke. Rats would be the last thing on Earth.

Yuche stepped slightly closer to me without saying anything while Lingyun lowered the bag of candy he had been holding. Chenghai and Zhenlan stood a few steps ahead, both of them staring toward the plastic strips like they could already see through them.

Maybe they could.

Or maybe they were just committed to being creepy now.

A black shape darted beneath the edge of the plastic.

Fast.

Too fast.

It vanished under a pallet of bulk dog food before I could get a proper look at it.

Then another one followed.

Then three more.

The sound changed after that. Like something huge was breathing behind the warehouse entrance, except it wasn’t one thing. It was hundreds of tiny claws tapping against concrete, nails scraping, bodies pushing over bodies in the dark.

The plastic strips bulged outward.

Lingyun took one slow step back. "Nope."

For once, I agreed with him completely.

Then the darkness under the strips started moving.

At first, I thought it was shadow.

The emergency lights overhead flickered weakly, throwing pale strips across the concrete floor, and for a second my brain tried very hard to pretend the black ripple spreading beneath the plastic was just bad lighting.

It wasn’t.

Rats poured into the aisle.

Not a few.

Not dozens.

A black wave of them spilled across the floor, climbing over each other with slick, frantic bodies and glowing red eyes. Their fur hung in wet clumps over exposed flesh while thin tails whipped behind them like wires. They moved too fast and too close together, flowing around boxes and under shelves like dirty water finding cracks in a floor.

Fucking zombie rats.

Ewe?

Definitely ewe.

This was on a whole different level that I wasn’t sure if ’ewe’ even really qualified for what was happening right in front of me.

One of them skittered closer to the cart before Yuche crushed it under his boot.

It popped wetly.

I stared at it.

Then at him.

Then back at it.

"That was unnecessary."

"It was coming toward you."

"It was also disgusting. Now it’s disgusting, gooey, spread out, and still trying to get to me."

Lingyun gagged beside me. "Please don’t describe it like that."

"You saw it too."

"I’m trying to forget."

More rats poured through the plastic strips.

Their mouths were dark with blood.

Not old blood either.

Fresh.

One of them scrambled over the top of another rat with something pale sticking between its teeth.

Lingyun squinted despite himself before he immediately recoiled. "Is that a thumb in its mouth?!"

I looked at it for a moment before I nodded. "Yup," I agreed, "But at least we know why we got rockstar parking."

No one laughed.

Again.

Very rude.

A sound came from deeper inside the back warehouse.

This time, it wasn’t the rats. Unless rats were suddenly able to speak.

Not like it was really forming words, per se. The sound was weak, wet, barely loud enough to count as a scream. But it got points for trying.

Every rat in the aisle stopped moving at the same time like they were hundreds of bodies sharing a single brain.

Chances are, they were.

Hundreds of red eyes turned toward the plastic strips.

Then they surged back through them, flowing in the direction of the sound.

Chenghai moved first.

Of course he did. Did he not get that following zombie rats with human thumbs in their mouths was a bad thing?

I wanted to ask him if he ate the pod or drank the battery acid.

Without stopping, he stepped through the plastic strips, his body already low, already prepared for whatever waited beyond them.

I scoffed at that idea. There was no way he was prepared for the nest.

I saw one in my last life and I was still not prepared to see another one.

But apparently, I was outvoted.

Zhenlan followed him, and there was something about the way the two of them moved together that made the skin between my shoulders tighten.

Too practiced.

Too familiar.

Too much like they had done this exact thing before and knew how bad it was going to be.

Yuche cursed under his breath and followed.

Which meant I had to follow too.

Tragic.

The second I stepped through the plastic strips, the smell hit me hard enough to make my eyes water.

Rot.

Blood.

Waste.

Wet cardboard.

Something sour and fever-sweet underneath all of it.

The back warehouse was darker than the main floor, with only a few emergency lights still struggling overhead. Tall racks disappeared into shadow on both sides while pallets sat overturned across the concrete. The floor was smeared with drag marks, not from one direction but dozens, crossing over each other in black-red streaks that led toward the far wall.

At first, I thought the pile against that wall was garbage.

Then one of the bags blinked.

My stomach rolled and I fought back the urge to puke.

There was a pile of people taller than the wave of rats that were moving toward them.

Wanna know a secret?

Rats were smarter than most people thought.

They preferred living flesh to zombie. The specifically nibbled on people until they were only a few breathes away from death...

And then moved on to someone else until the first person could recover enough not to die on them.

Like I said... Rats were no bueno.